This pdf is 18 pages long, 2/3 of a page front cover, 1 page editorial and SRD, leaving 16 1/3 pages of content for the divine archetypes, so let’s check them out!
The first 6 pages are devoted to the concept of archetypes and how the SGG-archetypes interact with the ones from the advanced player’s guide, namely the difference in focus: While SGG archetypes are broad in focus and usually can be taken by many classes, the advanced player’s guide archetypes are narrower and more specialized. The list of archetype packages is also expanded upon to include the new base-classes from the advanced player’s guide. The circumstances under which it might be possible to combine the two in one character are also explained, which is immensely useful in keeping the system uniform. Indeed, I’ve come to look at both takes as 2 branches of the same system that can complement each other quite well. As with the arcane archetypes, there are some which can only be used by casters and some which can only be used by non-casters.
That being said, we are introduced to the archetypes, beginning with the chantry, an rather complex and detailed archetype that represents a kind of divine bard who gets special chantric performances and the ability to counterpray divine magic and convert heathens by virtue of their angelic (or demonic) performances. I LOVE this archetype: Complex, balanced and a representation of a character trope that up until now had been neglected – excellent job! The next take on an archetype is one that has enjoyed better coverage over the years: The exorcist. Unfortunately, I do have some gripe with this one: While the basic mechanic of adding knowledge to increase the exorcism-DC is ok and general enough to allow for wide customizability, the effects are problematic: One ability that can force incorporeal creatures to their corporeal state, shapechangers into their natural form and heap penalties on other creatures makes for a versatile ability that may prove unbalancing in some campaigns that depend on the subterfuge of such creatures. While the DM could fudge the roll, I usually discourage such a behavior and subsequently am not too enamored by this archetype. Perhaps that’s just me, but to me an exorcist is a quintessential example for a PrC, not an archetype.
Heretics on the other hand make for quite interesting and cool characters, as the archetype offers the heretic a certain degree of obscurity as well as limited access to witch’s hexes. Simple, elegant, cool – I approve!
The same holds true for the spontaneous-casting Gnostic, who can select a domain and add its domain spells to his list, even if they are not usually accessible to his deity. He may also gain an epiphany once per day, casting a spell he usually does not know. The best of archetypes make you immediately come up with both character concepts and or adventure hooks and this is one of them – excellent job, once again.
Next up on the list is the martyr, who can draw strength and supernatural effect for her allies from her own suffering by granting them one or more of her 9 benedictions. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize both the roleplaying potential and the possibility for abuse of such powers, but the wording is concise and tightly-written to prevent the latter and enhance the former. Even better, a sidebox elaborates on the concept of evil martyrs and delivers some nice ideas for them.
The Wise is another cup of coffee that, while not that cool, fills a definite niche in a given community by providing the rules-background for the wise man/woman who has picked up a selection of quasi-magical cures sans being able to conjure up the wrath of deities like other divine caster can. This is a boon for GMs who no longer have to explain why the (quite capable) healer of the town can help patch together injured PCs, but fails to put an end to hostile threat xyz that necessitates the PCs intervention.
The final archetype is the evangelical witness who seeks to spread her faith while trying to find problematic areas/people and even gains limited access to the inquisitor spell-list.
The pdf closes with a summary of archetype packages of SGG-base-classes.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any glitches. Layout adheres to the clear horizontal 3 column-standard and the mostly b/w-artworks range from good to slightly above average. Unfortunately, the pdf has no bookmarks but at this length that’s no reason to detract a star. I did not expect to like the archetype-book, to be honest, and only bought it out of a completionist’s neurosis and oh boy, am I glad that I did! Surprisingly, this pdf blew its arcane equivalent right out of the water, providing not only more content, but much more detailed archetypes. More importantly, though, is the fact that in arcane archetypes one (the pact scion) archetype made me rejoice – in this installment, I loved 4! Even the subpar and rather bland exorcist can’t really tarnish the quality of the other material presented and the additional coverage of the APG is a boon to everyone who seeks to combine the two approaches to archetypes. My final verdict will thus be 5 stars – well done!
This pdf is 14 pages long, 1 page SRD and credits, 2/3 of a page front cover, leaving 12 1/3 pages of content fort the martial archetypes, so let’s check them out, shall we?
The basic concept of archetypes is explained in the first 4 ½ pages, after which we delve into the martial archetypes.
The first archetype we’re introduced to is the Blacksnake, a whip specialist (who may via a sidebar be converted into a cloak-fighting specialist) who not only makes whips a viable choice for a weapon, but via the ability to deal lethal damage as well as a selection of 8 special whip talents, for an interesting specialist fighter for those of you rather into smart and tricky fighting.
The Harrier is an interesting idea per se – a fighter centered on mobility and smart usage of the terrain. While a good idea on paper, the execution of this rather complex archetype is rather clunky, depending on the tracking of raid tokens which the player and DM have to track. There should be a more elegant way to represent such a mechanic in rules.
Next up is the physical exemplar, a paragon of health and physical prowess gets attribute-bonuses and physical feats to reflect an above-average physical condition. While general and easy to implement, I consider this one to be rather bland and boring.
The Spellhammer gets the ability to convert spell-levels into additional, scaling levels of damage. Due to Archon, Vanguard and of course Magus I don’t really see the necessity for this particular archetype. It feels like a very rough and tumble spell-burn approach.
Weapon Champions devote themselves to a kind of weapon, gaining additional bonuses to e.g. CMDs, threat-ranges etc. Ok, but again, rather boring in execution.
The final archetype we get is the Youxia, a type of fighter who gains access to Ki-points and talents (13 of the former are provided) – while I did like the concept of the Youxia, I would have loved to see more talents to choose from or a different take, as it felt more like a PrC or a set of classes to me.
The pdf closes with archetype-packages for base-classes by SGG.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any glitches. Layout adheres to the 3-column-standard and the full-color-artworks are fair. Unfortunately, the pdf offers no bookmarks, but at this length that’s still ok. All in all, this pdf left me underwhelmed, especially in direct contrast to the other installments of the series: While it provides easy to implement archetypes that may find places in almost any campaign, the archetypes didn’t manage to walk the tight line and rather fell on the side of being bland or mechanically clunky. While the blacksnake makes for an interesting take on the lasher, it’s not enough to warrant a recommendation of a file that lacks the elegant design of the other SGG-archetype-books. While the more generalist archetypes are ok, I feel that the spellhammer is superfluous at best and mechanically not too smart. In the end, the book is simply not a captivating or necessary resource and lacks the eureka-effect, the ingenious design, the elegance of the other installments. The Spellhammer’s mechanics didn’t feel balanced to me and, as I mentioned, rather superfluous. The general archetypes feel too general, the special ones rather narrow in focus or like PrCs and not archetypes.
Thus, my final verdict will be 2.5 stars, rounded down to 2.
Endzeitgeist out.
The final part of the epic Japanese horror saga by Jonathan McAnulty and Micheal Tumey is 62 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 2 pages SRD, 3 pages of advertisement and 1 page back cover, leaving 53 pages of content for your perusal, so let's check them out!
After the lurking estrangement and the despair-ridden darkness of the second installment, the PCs, cursed and on the run, finally have allies and will reap the seeds they have sown in the two predecessors on their way to the climax.
And boy, the introduction already serves as an epic lead-in to the things to come, first offering a brief bit of creepy IC-plotting and then moving on to elaborate the legend of Oni, Yurei and Kaidan and how it came to be the way the players find it. As a nice nod to people versed in Japanese folklore and history, the story does draw heavy inspiration and even shares the names form the conflicts between the Taira nd the Minamoto clan. This review is based on V.4.0 of the pdf, in v.3.0 there was a formatting glitch here that has been taken care of.
This being an adventure review, the following contains massive SPOILERS. If you're planning on ever playing this excellent saga, please refrain from reading on.
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Still here? Do you want to SPOIL the awesome climax?
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Ok, here we go!
As the PCs are still suffering from the curse of the golden spear, they'll have to find a way to infiltrate the daimyo's palace, retrieve the artifact and then get as far away as possible from the dread lord. After a brief respite from their ordeals in Part II in the Hengeyokai village they hopefully saved from an almost-insane kami and the depredations of a fiend in disguise. The allies the Hengeyokai promised, though, turn out to be up for a challenge: 4 Tengu (be sure to check out RiP's excellent In the Company of Tengu, if you haven't already - while not necessary to run this adventure, it is still an awesome file to have to customize further the avian allies.)are on the side of the PCs in this foray, or rather, they might be: First the PCs will have to prove their mettle in battle or otherwise leave an impression on them in order to lead them into the lion's den.
The planning of the infiltration of the daimyo's treasury might be a bit challenging for the DM, but thankfully the Tengu know of some underwater tunnels, which might provide an access to the palace that does not initially involve alerting the vast amount of guards to their presence. The infiltration via the river proves to be not as easy as the PCs might hope, but it is better than the otherwise extremely well-defended Shiro (that gets its own map) - after entering the palace via this secret route, the PCs will have to contend with a short 3 level-mini-dungeon. Braving the disease-ridden sewage-system, the PCs can stumble upon a potential ally among the prisoners (though they'll have to heal the poor sod first). Among the horrible experiments they'll have to brave are necromantically-infused wax-cocoons containing dread samurai zombies, barracks full of corpses that are the hunting ground of a terrible swarm of apocalypse spiders to undead hung from hooks that serve as a macabre sort of alarm as well as a silent-hill-style door that is held shut by a crucified corpse that is torn asunder by opening the doors and instantly regenerates when they are closed, serving as a kind of promethean punishment for the poor creature as well as having an unpleasant surprise in store for the PCs.
Once they have finally braved the treasure vault's guardian, the PCs can reap the plentiful rewards within the treasure chamber, among which new spells (2 from 101 3rd level spells) and the reason for their infiltration can be found: The golden spear is once again theirs! If the PCs have managed to trip the alarm, their escape will not be too easy as they'll be hounded by the daimyo's killers.
Spear in hand, the PCs will have to make the trek through the mountains, preferably via the name-giving Dark Path. Should the PCs choose to take another road, easy modifications are presented to avoid creating the notion of undue railroading. Commendable design! The daimyo's hounds this time are nothing to be trifled with and a duo of deadly killers seeks to intercept them. To add another complication to the already quite oppressive situation of the PCs, the oni will try to eliminate the threat of the spear once and for all, confronting them with a deadly snare by a Jorogume, a spider-like fiend with illusion-based abilities. The encounter comes with a beautiful map and features the STUNNING cover-art as a nice full-page illustration, perfect as a handout once the mask falls. Braving this trap, the PCs hopefully reach the entrance to the Dark Path, where another duo of the daimyo's deadly killers lies in wait to prematurely end their exodus from the lands of Kaidan.
The navigation of the lava-tubes that lead through the mountains proves to be perilous and oppressive in atmosphere, symbolizing the path to damnation and serving as a dread echoing amplifier for the things that stalk the tunnels. The plethora of wandering monsters (and their dread frequency) as well as the array of complications and mood-enhancing elements perpetuate and drive home the sense of danger and panic the PC should gradually become more and more convinced that they have stumbled into their smooth, black stone-encased grave. The blind, eyeless ghouls that will menace and attack the PCs are far from being the worst creature to hound the PCs - that honor belongs to a dread snake-oni (whose b/w-artwork is awesome!) which not only is a tough adversary, but also is rebirthed when slain, thus necessitating the hasty departure of the PCs. If they manage to find its lair, they can at least take its little hoard, which contains, among other things, a magic Kaidanese longbow. Even the sunlight that might greet the PCs once they have traversed the Dark Path offers no respite from their ordeals, though, as Jadoko, the hebi-no-onna that has hounded them since the first module, makes her final stand.
If the first two parts of the trilogy were any indicator, this would mean the end of the tribulations of the PCs, but those who would think so are in for quite a shock once they reach the deceptive tranquility of Gaijinoshima. Tranquility, oh yeah, there was something I forgot to mention: Of course, the PCs first have to procure a means to enter Uesaki and take the ferry or otherwise take a boat to their harbor of destination. Several possible courses of action are provided for the PCs to follow, ranging from the theft of a boat to disguising and sneaking abroad the ferry. Once in Gaijinoshima, the scarlet harlot awaits the PCs to ferry them out of Kaidan. Well. It awaits them. Along three of the daimyo's elite Danmastumabatsu-killers cleverly disguised and a squad of undead. The fight (featuring a nice map of the vessel) among the massacred remains of the erstwhile crew that will strive to include the PCs in their undead ranks serves as the furious finale of this rather breathtaking climax of the Kaidan-saga. Hopefully the PCs have the means to acquire a crew...fast.
In tradition of the first two parts, we get several appendices. While the reincarnation mechanic is not reprinted, you should probably already know all about it from the two sequels. More interesting, at least to me, is the appendix featuring the new beasts: From the poison-spitting bachi-hebi snakes and their big oni brothers to the supremely creepy Jorogumo (spider women), we get 3 cool new critters that fulfill my personal desire for unique monstrous abilities.
The third appendix details the Danmatsumabatsu, the dread Daimyo's cadre of elite assassins, each possessing a set of unique and distinct abilities that set them apart from regular NPCs - I love them! They are efficient, deadly, creepy and just about all I expect from elite foes like them. If all NPC-write ups were like this, I'd never have to complain about bland NPCs ever again. These necrotic warriors are indeed fine specimen, though I admit to wanting MORE.
This pdf is 28 pages long , 1 page front cover, 1/2 page editorial, 1 page SRD, 5 pages for campaign notes and 1 blank page, leaving 20.5 pages of content for the little village, so let's check it out.
My point of reference for this review will be Raging Swan Press's excellent "Swallowfeld"-supplement.
Moon's Folly is the name of a small timber-driven rural village not far from Mor Aldenn, Headless Hydra's default mini-setting that is unique is some peculiar ways, namely that lycanthropes can suppress their violent urges in the vicinity of the central henge-like temple of the local minor goddess the town was build around. Another idea that sets Moon's Folly apart from other villages is that there is a significant fey population coexisting with the 2 lumber-magnates and their efforts, resulting in a rather idyllic setting that seems rather bland at first sight, but I'll get back to that in the spoiler-section.
The town is presented with a timeline, a beautiful map of the town as well as the surrounding area and features some nice b/w-artworks for some characters, 4 of which come with their own stat-blocks. I especially liked that there are witches and one oracle in this product. APG-love is always nice. The town also comes with a nice town-stat-block.
After a summary of notable locations, we get some stat-blocks of significant NPCs, but unfortunately, not as many as I would have liked have been fully stated.
On the rules-site, we get a side-box for lycanthropic PCs, which, due to the small amount of space reserved, amounts to ECL+1, which I didn't like - PFRPG did well to get rid of ECL+X-races in favor of racial classes. One of the 4 new campaign traits also refers to lycanthropes, rendering it not too useful for people like me, but oh well. We also get 5 new feats, mostly dealing with lycanthropy and fey ancestry. While none of the feats felt overpowered, I didn't consider any of them to be brilliant. Nice to have and potentially useful, but not entirely awesome mechanics-wise.
The 4 new alchemical items (like a cold iron whetstone that ignores a part of the damage reduction for creatures susceptible to cold iron) are a completely different thing, though: I love them! There are also some random encounters for the wilds, short rumors and we get a new fey, the stiltskin (like in Rumpelstiltzchen) that actually gets fey done right. I love the critter. 5 adventure-seeds are also given and this is where the spoilers start. So again: Potential players, please skip to the conclusion!
SPOILERS
All right! Thought the town is too idyllic? Turns out it isn't! The two feuding lumber consortiums are actually working hand in hand. The local bard is happily plagiarizing and the reason for a love tryst between species is actually magic - on one side. The other person actually knows about the magic, but loves the enchanted person. The dryad-leaders of the local fey actually weep at the cutting down of trees and plot the downfall of the community via coercion of their fellow fey and up until now only a druid suspects the truth. What about the lame lycanthropy-suppressing moon goddess? It's actually an archon's spirit bound and imprisoned at the area and the local ghost is the only being who knows about the religion being a lie. Enough potential for conflict yet? Even better, all plots are somewhat easy to connect/are already connected, thus more or less delivering a complex adventure almost set out for you.
Conclusion:
Editing is good, I didn't notice any errors. Layout adheres to the two-column standard and is beautiful, as I've come to expect from Headless Hydra Games. Formatting is also top-notch and while I didn't care for one of the B/w-artworks, I liked most of them and enjoyed the beautiful map. However, the pdf is quite large: 35 megabyte is quite a lot and I don't get why there are no bookmarks to navigate the file. How does it hold up to e.g. Swallowfeld? Well, Swallowfeld featured more stats for just about any significant NPC and the NPCs are more detailed and get their own pictures. The bunch in Raging Swan's file also get mannerisms, distinguishing features etc. However, Swallowfeld is a rather traditional, down-to-earth village, while Moon's Folly is defined by both fey and lycanthropes. The latter being one of my points of criticism: There are no stats for the militia or the sheriff, the latter being a pity due to being a lycanthrope and thus a nice example on how the new rules work. With regards to the adventure seeds, I guess it depends on what you're looking for: Swallowfeld has more individual seeds and is a bit grittier and low-magic, while Moon's Folly's seeds can easily be combined into one complex adventure. Which is also a kind of problem I have with this file: While I love the new alchemical items, I didn't particularly care for the other new rules, the timeline etc. and as a whole, the pdf didn't really feel like a sourcebook, but rather like a sandbox-adventure. This may be due to the fact that there are not enough stat-blocks or that e.g. the lycanthropy-rules are rudimentary at best.
However: The plots and seeds afoot in Moon's Folly absolutely rock and the conjoined adventure you can spin from the yarn provided herein is cool, complex and intelligent.
Moon's Folly turns out to be exceedingly hard to rate for me: While there definitely are some significant shortcomings when seen as a village-sourcebook, especially when directly compared to Swallowfeld, it makes for a compelling adventure. Which quite frankly I would have in retrospective hoped for this to be: Were it an adventure without the relatively boring parts and more solid rules-information for the NPCs instead of traits, feats, etc., this might have become a full 5 stars as the plots afoot are quite cool. However, when looked at as a source-book, Moon's Folly falls somewhat short and needs too much work on behalf of the GM (stating lycanthropes, even low-level ones, SUCKS. Hard.) to be considered truly excellent. When directly compared to Swallowfeld (which now in addition to all the web-enhancements also comes with a iPad/e-reader-friendly version), Moon's Folly falls short, albeit by not much.
If you're into this file due to the crunch, you might consider this book a 2.5 - 3 stars. If, however, you're looking for a complex set of hooks you as a DM can weave together against a deceptively tranquil background, Moon's Folly definitely delivers and should be considered a straight 4 stars. For me personally, I'll settle for the latter as I went into this for the background and some ideas and will ignore the feats/traits etc..
This pdf is 16 pages long, 1 page SRD and credits, 2/3 of a page front cover, leaving 14 1/3 pages of content for new arcane archetypes, so let’s take a look at what we get!
The pdf begins with an introduction to what archetypes are and how to use the information presented herein. Due to the nature of arcane magic and its significant prowess, some of the archetypes herein come with restrictions, which are also elaborated upon: Essentially, some can only be taken by castes and some only by non-casters. Simple, coherent and elegant in its presentation. What are the archetypes we get?
First we are introduced to quite a shock: The acolyte is an archetype that gets limited spellcasting, true, but not arcane one. Rather it represents a minor access to divine powers, enabling the character to cast up to 4th-level spells. An interesting archetype that does deal wit arcane magic and which I’ve been looking for ages, is the Hedge Wizard, a arcane caster who can cast up to 6th-level spells, but only learns a very limited amount of them and thus, self-taught and not a true specialist, seeks to work with what he’s got and improve upon these limited spells. Finally those borderland/bandit wizards get a fitting representation. The Initiate is for druidism what the acolyte is for clerical magic, so you get pretty much what you’d expect, including minor druidic abilities like animal empathy. Once again, aptly-designed, elegant and easy to implement. The minstrel uses a similar mechanic for bardic casting with the notable exception of being non-spontaneous and INT-dependant with regards to casting.
Pact Scions are one of the coolest archetype-concepts imaginable, at least to me: Being available only to non-casters, the Pact Scion has a patron/outsiders/artifacts that enable her to cast deadly magic at a price of both obedience and minor, exhausting non-lethal damage. The mechanical implementation is brilliant, enabling the DM or the player to conjure up most interesting plot-lines, character concepts etc. Fans of the Sword & Sorcery genre will rejoice when reading this anyway. The next archetype, the shadow master, focuses on spells with the [shadow]-descriptor – while mechanically sound, I considered this one to be rather boring. The next archetype is anything but bland, though: The Sigil Mage carves his spells as tattoos into his flesh and thus can use some pretty nifty tricks: Preparing casters can use sigil magic of one spell-level higher to act as a potential for two lower-level spells, essentially preparing e.g. 2 3rd level spells in a 4th level slot and choosing the spell at the time of casting. Spontaneous caster can e.g. level up 2 of their linked spells, casting them as higher level spells than they usually are. This power comes at a price, though, and critical hits and erase are your foe if you’re a sigil mage…
The spellblaze can conjure up a bolt of raw force damage that scales with levels a limited amount of times per day, making for an iconic arcane artillery while avoiding making regular ranged weapons obsolete. The final archetype presented is the warder, a noncaster archetype who centers around negating hostile magic via sorcerous counterspells. These guys will see a lot of use associated with the henchmen of my NPC-inquisitors.
The pdf closes with an overview of archetypes and SGG-base-classes.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any glitches. Layout adheres to the clear horizontal 3 column-standard and the full-color artworks range from good to average. Unfortunately, the pdf has no bookmarks but at this length that’s no reason to detract a star. In direct comparison to the archer archetypes, we get a bit more of them, but 3 of them (minstrel, acolyte and initiate) are somewhat similar in what they do for their respective associated classes. However, their design is excellent and the Pact Scion alone, at least for me, alongside the warder is worth the low and fair price. Nevertheless I found the 3 very similar archetypes somewhat bland, especially due to taking up quite a bit of space that could have been used otherwise, perhaps in a more arcane-centric way. My final verdict for this installment will thus be 4.5 stars, rounded down to 4 for the purpose of this platform.
This pdf is 13 pages long, 1/3 page front cover, 1 page credits and SRD, leaving 11 2/3 pages of content for the new archetypes, so check them out!
Over the course of the first 6 pages, we are introduced to the concept of archetypes and sound advice on how to modify base-classes and design archetypes yourself. This section is comprehensively-written, smart and offers a slew of nice tools and warnings to heed when you work on them yourself. For the old-school gamers among you, archetypes are similar to 2nd edition kits, swapping class abilities with other ones, the SGG-take being general, i.e. each class can potentially take each archetype.
The new archetypes presented herein, of course, focus on ranged combat, the first of which already found his way into my campaign: The alchemical archer uses his trick arrows to impede and hamper the enemy and 5 kinds of extraordinary ammunition-types are also presented. If you want a general direction, think either Hawkeye or Green Arrow and you’ll know what to expect. Spellbows may imbue their ammunition with magic and magical qualities. The Tempest can get arrows in the air – a lot of them, resulting in a true hail of arrows raining down upon his foes and even ay a covering volley of arrows upon a field, threatening every area. The mechanics for this ability are so well-thought I’d use them on more occasions, e.g. when dealing with PCs marching through the cover-fire of an enemy regiment of elite-archers. The final archetype is the Zen-archer, an archetype who can use his highest attribute instead of his dex-mod to atk, up to his class-level. More importantly, though, is the ability of hitting targets based on intuition rather than sight and even shoot blindly or counterattacking via ranged attacks.
Next up are 5 feats (2 of which from the Genius Guide to feats of battle) that enhance your sniper’s capabilities by letting them fight with ammunition in melee, rerolling 1s on damage dice (rogues will love it), using INT instead of DEX and a defensive and offensive shots, the former negating AoOs and the latter sacrificing damage for improved accuracy.
The pdf closes with archetype packages for SGG-class guides.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice a single glitch. Layout adheres to the horizontal three-column standard by SGG and the artworks are ok. The pdf unfortunately has no bookmarks, but at this length, that’s ok and no reason to detract a star. Onwards to the content, then. This is, in fact, where the pdf truly shines: Each and every one of the 4 archetypes is elegant in its design, extremely easy to drop in just about any campaign setting and features a lot of potential for fun and cool ways to give the oomph back to archers without tipping the scales of game-balance. While the spellbow was slightly less imaginative than the other three, we still get some superbly-crafted pieces of crunch in this pdf. My only gripe with this guide is that I would have loved to see more special ammunition for the alchemical archer. Perhaps in a future installment that takes the APG-alchemist into account? My final verdict will thus be 5 stars – a well done addition to any campaign!
This pdf is 46 pages long, 5 pages are taken up by the SRD, the first page contains both ToC and editorial, leaving 40 pages of content for a very low price.
The first page introduces the concept of magical weapons that level with your character, providing the frame rules. If you have already checked out the predecessor of this book, Legendary Blades, you already know these.
After that, we get the weapons:
-Apocalypse Hammer: A hammer devoted to Armageddon, this one can damage the wielder and summon creatures associated with the end-times. It includes two statblocks for summonable creatures, an advanced riotus [sic!] Dire Wolf (CR 5), the mid-level summon being an elder fire elemental and an advanced crag Linnorm (CR 15). I liked this weapon, it's dangerous potential and the flair it has. I didn't like the one typo.
-Gambit: An acrobat'sblade that is the ultimate boon for groups sans rogues, as it enables the wielder to disarm traps and gain trap sense etc.
-Giant Killer: A Glaive for little people, this weapon is the bane of giant creatures and great for small characters.
-Heartwood Staff: A staff fashioned from a Treant's heartwood, this one didn't impress me too much. heard that one before. Plus: One ability talks about a "smite" ability that has not been mentioned in the weapon before. We also get stats for an advanced treant fighter 8 (CR 16).
-Hysteria's Chosen: A Hellraiseresque Morningstar of insanity and pain: What's not to like? ;)
-Mischief's Bow: A Bard's bow/instrument focusing on luck and trick shots.
-Night Axe: A weapon forged against the creatures from beyond the stars, the theme is actually not darkness, but rather the void beyond. The weapon comes with a stat-block a CR 5 lesser from of Star-Spawn (Mi-Go).
-Reaper's Scythe: Inspired by Poe's "Masque of the red Death", this scythe brings pestilence and death. The mechanics for its famine ability are a bit subpar.
-Shadowblade of the Dark Mistress: The blade of the servants of the Succubus Reviewer Queen, this sword has acombination of charm and shadow abilities.
-Spear of the Four Winds: A cool, Asian-flavored spear that can conjure up damaging winds.
-Spirit Glaive: A Glaive that can grants soul-tokens that can be used in a variety of ways and bind souls. There is a rather awkward sentence explaining the token mechanic that feels like the sentence parts before and after the comma have been jumbled.
-Stargazer: A great staff for mages, this one uses star-associated magic and some divination-abilities. Nice. There is also a little piece of unobtrusive advertisement here.
-Temple Sword: A sword that focuses on light-abilities and summoning cohorts. I liked this one.
-Woodman's Axe: An axe doubling as a feather token takes focuses on taking out evil plant creatures.
The pdf closes with a ToC.
Conclusion:
Layout is quite printer-friendly and minimalistic, Editing has some minor glitches but none that really detract from the enjoyment of the pdf. I really liked that the weapons all come with quite cool computer-generated artworks, making it easier to picture the weapons and providing some nice pieces to show to your players. I could have done without the additional b/w-illustrations, though, as they somehow feel misplaced when compared to the nice weapon artworks. The writing of the prose has improved since the last installment and is more versatile - while, due to the nature of the book, it is still generic, the prose for the weapons is actually nice and makes you want to implement the weapons. Another improvement over the predecessor is, that some abilities are more complex /far-out, although I would have liked to see more of the rather unusual ones. I also like that we get some weapons that belong to other types than swords, as we had enough of them in the last installment and I could have managed without the ones herein. Usually I'd rate this book somewhere between 3.5 and 4 stars, but due to the extremely low price and some cool ideas, I'll settle for a solid 4 - There is still room for improvement, but this is a great purchase nevertheless.
This pdf is 42 pages long, 1 page front cover/editorial/ToC, 4 pages SRD and 1 page of thanks for the feedback. That leaves 36 pages of content for $3.00! That is an awesome bang-for-buck-ratio. Now let’s take a look at whether the content suffers from the low price.
The pdf kicks off with a one-page introduction on how legendary weapons work and adds a variant optional rule for weapon jealousy. Nice.
The weapons follow a two-page format including b/w-artwork, requirements of the weapon, all the abilities and a table listing the weapon’s progression. The weapons are:
-Alieywishia, Orc Scourge: A bane curved scimitar-like weapon that helps slay and track Orcs.
-Asterion’s Soul: A brutal sword inhabited by the sould of a minotaur.
-Counter: A cool main-gauche for duelants.
-Crusader’s Sword: A holy consecrated blade for clerics, paladins and Inquisitors to kill evil outsiders.
-Diamond’s Edge: An incredibly sharp blade that is said to be connected to the mythic diamond dragons
-Ebon Whispers: A lethal Assassin’s Throwing Dagger
-Endless Winter: Ice-cold blade of a barbarian legend.
-Gladiator’s Response: A showman’s blade to kill beasts etc.
-Guardian: The sword of a heroic last defender.
-Lion of Iskander: A holy sword for the leaders of men.
-Mitra’s Blade: Undead-slaying sun-themed falchion
-Moon’s Vengeance: Anti-Lycanthrope side-sword
-The Red King’s Judgment: A fiery greatsword worthy of a villain (or an anti-hero)
-Sandman’s Blade: Rapier with time-abilities for bards and arcane casters.
-Sorrow: A creepy, tragic sword. One of my favorites.
-Summoner’s Tool: A Summoner’s tool to make his Eidolons stronger.
After that, we get one page with two alignment templates and a new combat maneuver: Parry. We also get another two pages containing three new feats and three new spells.
Conclusion: Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any typos or the like. The writing and prose are concise and do a great job of making the blades interesting in spite of the limitations in space and the setting-neutral background.
For the very low price, you get excellent blades and a HUGE amount of content. While the abilities could have been a bit more on the far-out side of things for me, I can’t help but like what Mark Gedak and Stefen Styrsky have done here. I love leveling weapons and this file provides them for an extremely fair price. I have high hopes for the sequel. (Which has just been released!) And a file for leveling armors. For now, I’ll rate this a very good 4.5 stars rounded down to 4 due to the fact that I would have loved to see some rather far-out abilities. (Like the Fiery Discorporation of “The Red King’s Judgment…)
This second installment of Rite Publishing's relatively new Lone Tree imprint focusing on glueless paper models is ambitious to say the least: This time, we don't get the tools to build a modular dungeon, but rather the tools to assemble a full-blown keep. Will it adhere to the first installments high quality standards or is this too broad a scope for such a product?
First of all, the pdf containing the paper-models themselves is a 32-page pdf, 1 page front cover as well as a 25-page pdf showing you how to assemble the models in easy steps accompanied by photographs in order to further illustrate the construction process. The assembly of the paper-models, once again, is almost glueless. If you already enjoyed the stellar first offering of the line, you'll know how to assemble the walls of the castle, as the same method is used herein. If you don't use iron fillings to weigh down a side of the wall, you won't need any glue. We get versions for 2'' and 2.5'' tall walls.
The 5-step assembly of the 2x2-tower is so simple that even a 6-year-old could easily handle the task and might even enjoy it! I know I would have loved assembling my own castle even then!
The same holds true for the 3x3-tower, but the true star to come is the gate-section with a portcullis. Wait, what? Yep, you heard me all right, we get a nice gate-section including a portcullis and while a bit of glue and dexterity is needed to assemble the portcullis, it is functional and not hard to assemble - quite a feat!
The Gate-design that works as complimentary/alternative to the portcullis comes a gate-section that is glueless apart from the back-to-back gluing of the doors. While approximately easy to medium in difficulty, it's still nice to see how easy functional gates can be created from paper.
The assembly of the easily modifiable parapets is simple to the extreme, enabling you to customize your castle via them and this modularity will be expanded upon in future products - nice! We get straight, angled, 2x2 and 3x3 parapets - options are always neat to have! The assembly of stairs, already something I commented on favorably in the first Fold-n-go-kit, is again among the easiest you could imagine for relatively complex items like stairs and glueless.
I was a huge fan of Jonathan Roberts offering of the Watchfire Keep in the Fantastic Map series, and with him providing the drawing for both this classic line of map packs and the fold-n-go-series, it should come as no surprise (but is a very pleasant addition) that we actually get a signal mound including stairs leading up to it and even wood to burn it. Before rolling your eyes and saying you don't need one, you should know that the design is modular enough that the mound might double for a classic sword & sorcery-style altar, or, if you're so inclined, a place for aerial knights (griffons, dragons, etc.) to mount their large mounts. The assembly of the mound is easy in the extreme and glueless.
But wait, you say, what about...well...houses? Yep, we also get a house (with an optional chimney) for the defenders that just about anyone could assemble, again, without using glue. It is here that my creativity has been challenged a bit: If you cut out e.g. the shuttered windows and put the shutter-graphic on the inside, you could easily create shutters and doors that open and close, making for a nice spot for crossbow-men or arcanists to hide. Just my personal recommendation, though. :) We also get an extremely easy to assemble storage house.
But what about the floor of the castle? The final page is devoted to the green ground that comes with 3 layers: You can turn the grid on and off and superimpose an angled path or a blocky path via a simple click in the pdf (yep, the pdf - no fussing around with adobe's preferences etc. just click in the boxes! - Now that's user-friendly!)- of course, the grid can be combined with both paths, facilitating play with miniatures even further.
It should be noted that the whole line comes with .studio-files for use with robo-cutters.
Conclusion:
Jonathan Robert's cartography needs no introduction to most people so I'll refrain from singing his praises once again. Instead, I'll elaborate on his fruitful cooperation with Brian Bartlow: Once again their combined talents have created a prime example of useful, easy to assemble paper miniatures. my only, very minor gripe of the predecessor, has been taken care of via the great checkbox-mechanic of the floor: If that was the standard for all maps, I would be a happy man and short of one recurring point of annoyance/criticism. Point being: This above and beyond mentality, user-friendly to the extreme, is beyond pleasant and greatly appreciated. I only have ONE very minor gripe with this otherwise supremely useful kit: The stack of wood on the signal mound and the storage house don't get their own assembly-instructions. Mind you, I don't think instructions are necessary there, as assembly is approximately as difficult as folding a filter paper to make coffee, but for absolute novices and/or children (who should have a blast building castles like that!) they would have been nice. I'm still kind of stunned by the modularity of this kit. The amount of tools to build just about any keep is quite staggering and you get a lot of extremely easy to assemble, beautiful, full-color pieces to create your very own keep. My final verdict will be 5 stars.
This pdf is 8 pages long 2/3 of a page front cover and 1 page editorial & SRD, leaving 6 1/3 pages of content for the new fodder for the summoner and his pet.
After a short introduction to the summoner and his tropes in literature and mythology, we get two very cool and useful basic forms for the eidolon, the hut and the ooze.
The meat of the product, though, is the 38 new pieces of evolutions. 15 first-level evolutions make the start, 3 of which unfortunately only duplicate the elemental mastery traits known from elementals. While not bad per se, I don't consider that to be ingenious design. The evolutions among themselves range from centipede-like movement (and resistance to trip) over ignoring slippery surfaces to metal skin (granting minor DR) to luminescence and even scintillating luminescence.
The 14 new 2-point evolutions are befitting of their more powerful nature and follow the sprinting cheetah one-page evolution, often find their originators in the animal kingdom: From a chameleon's camouflage, to a horn toad's ability to spray acidic blood from the eyes to deafening roars, crocodile death rolls to the ability to puff up like a certain delicious, albeit potentially deadly fish, we get a lot of cool, mechanically sound abilities, many of which will probably ring a bell here and there. The pdf does not stop with our mundane animals, though, and offers us aboleth-mucus, rust monster corrosion and intimidating hisses as well. The two winners of this category, though, are metamorphosis (which lets you change base form) and howdah, which enables the summoner to ride his pet -how cool is that?
6 new 3-point evolutions are provided as well, from adhesive lashes, suffocating slime and darts to some truly cool abilities: First of which would be self-destruct, which makes the eidolon a walking bomb and offensive digestion, which lets your eidolon maul foes with its STOMACH and even GRAB them with it (if you have the grab evolution) - now if that is not cool, disturbing and screams to be used, I don't know what is!
Finally, 3 4-point evolutions are presented, among which we'll find a strength-draining gaze attack, the creation of lava puddles and even hallucinogenic spores.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. Layout adheres to the 3-column standard and once again, the pdf has no bookmarks. Cover and interior artist Lin Bo should garner a special mention, as I LOVED the disturbing piece and the additional pieces of art (in association with Kimagu) are beauties to behold. Continuing the lack of fluff in SGG-books, I'll comment on the mechanics and let me tell you: They are nice, balanced and feel flawless. HOWEVER: With all the evolutions straight from animals/magic beasts, I also felt that they were in parts a bit lazy - especially when howdah and similar abilities push the envelope as they do. While their assigment to the respective evolution nevertheless needs some experience and due to nothing being wrong with using them as presented, I'll settle for a final verdict of 5 stars. However, in a sequel I'd love to see more far-out abilities.
This pdf is 6 pages long, 2/3 pages front cover, 1 page editorial & SRD, leaving 5 1/3 pages of content for the new oracle-curses, so let’s give them a closer look!
The pdf kicks off with a discussion of the nature of Oracles before introducing the curses. It is here that I should mention that the concept of Oracles is quite close to me: Drawing strength from “curses”, be they disabilities or ailments is a beautiful topic: Both from personal experience and from the trials and tribulations some of my close associates and friends had to endure, I can attest to the sheer force of will impediments may conjure up from individuals and this up until the release of the APG largely untapped potential finally has a powerful representation in the Oracle’s curses. The basic concept, thus, is close to my heart and I’ll try to be as objective as possible in the face of the topic.
The curses start off, unfortunately, with one I consider extremely over-powered: Addict forces you to be constantly consuming drugs (whose saves you can, of course, make) and as a benefit, all your spell-DCs are calculated as if they belonged to your highest level of spells known. OUCH! Giving the drug-rules a quick glance, I can see this curse being abused like crazy. The ailing and amputee-curses let you add some spells to your list of spells known. The drunkard-curse, quite iconic in itself, unfortunately suffers from too weak a benefit: Bonuses to Cha-based ability and skill-checks don’t make for a compelling reason to take this curse.
Additionally, I’m not entirely sure whether I get the Cha-bonus in relation to being drunk and the curse suffers from a missing verb in the rules-section, which makes identifying the benefits/drawbacks a bit harder than it should.
The frail and insomniac curses on the other hand, rock, or at least their ideas do: “Frail” makes you easily exhausted due to damage but nets you additional skill points and class-skills, but uses a clunky mechanic, as it depends on you calculating 50% and 25% of your HP – while not insurmountable or too inconvenient, I am hesitant to recommend any ability that needs additional book-keeping. “Insomniac” on the other hand, rocks, as it exemplifies the “strength-from-weakness”-mentality I’ve elaborated upon earlier: A resistance to fatigue is progressively gained and even immunity to exhaustion is gained. While I would have loved to see an additional rules-representation of the fugue-state people long deprived of sleep suffer, I still enjoy this curse, as its benefit coincides with my personal experiences of suffering from bouts of insomnia.
The provocative curse, which lets other people lust for you and makes knocking you unconscious easier (think Helen of Troy) is interesting, though its diplomacy-related benefit feels rather bland. Unfortunately the same is true for the extremely cool Cassandra-curse that marks you as an unbelievable source to other creatures –cool curse, boring implementation.
Then there are the peaceful soul and squeamish curses, both of which make violent behavior problematic. Both don’t feel like curses to e, but rather conscious decisions based on ethics and believe and subsequently I consider them failures as curses.
The star-crossed curse, again, is a killer, though: “11”s also count as “1”s for you, but you get a nice selection of additional spells. I still think that an additional ability related to luck would have been appropriate for this curse, though: Essentially doubling the chance for a critical failure is a significant drawback and the selection of additional spells does not entirely make up for this drawback.
Next up are 4 new feats, one granting resistance to curse-related spells and the others centering on Oracle’s Curses: Second Curse lets you select a second curse, which I am not a fan of: Combine e.g. “Insomniac” and “frail” and the penalties of frail can be subsumed in the penalty of “Insomniac” – abuse ensues. “Suspend Curse” as a feat lets you ignore your curse via sacrificing spell-slots for a limited amount of time, essentially undermining the central premise of the Oracle-class. I hate it. The final feat, variable curse, is one of the cooler ones, though: You choose 5 curses and assign numbers to them and roll a d6 every day: You are afflicted by the curse you rolled. On a 6, though, you suffer from 2 curses, which, again, is prone to abuse, but being temporary and unreliable, I still adore this feat.
The pdf closes with a brief, 1-column discussion of alternate uses of Oracle curses.
Conclusion:
Editing is ok, though I noticed a missing verb, which is unnecessary at this length. Formatting is top-notch and layout adheres to the 3-column standard. The CGI-Artwork by Sade is ok, though nothing to write home about. The pdf features no bookmarks. I’ll come out and say it: I’M terribly, terribly disappointed by this installment of advanced options: The curses often don’t feel like curses, but rather like moral choices and I’ve got some balancing concerns with them. Some of them feel like they don’t make enough of an impact, while others impede the oracle a bit too much for my tastes. The mechanics of the curses are simply nothing to write home about and felt uninspired to me. Even iconic curses like the Cassandra and Helen-curses felt lackluster and bland in their execution. Among the feats, I only liked one and this one is quite a burden on the player, potentially necessitating a lot of book-keeping for 5 different curses and/or combinations. I was pretty excited about this installment of advanced options and was terribly underwhelmed by its lack of focus on true CURSES, their half-hearted execution (does e.g. “Amputee” impede spellcasting? Skill-checks? –any rules for only having one hand? –Why not gain ghost-hand like special abilities? Why does this curse feel so damn boring when e.g. in the Malazan Book of the Fallen Saga a certain priest has a variant of this curse and is MUCH more exciting?) and finally, the feeling that balance-wise this pdf is painfully subpar. Uncharacteristically for SGG-pdfs, the crunch doesn’t stand up to even casual examination and due to the tradition of SGG-pdfs of lacking exciting fluff, not much positive to talk about is left. Unfortunately, my final verdict will be a rather devastating 1.5 stars, rounded down to 1 star – there is only one feat and 1 curse I’ll probably use, not enough to recommend this pdf to anybody.
This pdf is 9 pages long, 2/3 of a page front cover, 1 page editorial & SRD, leaving 7 1/3 pages of content for the new discoveries, so what do we get?
After a short discussion of the alchemist-class and the literary tradition of the trope, we are introduced to 29 new discoveries, 7 of which belong to two new sets of discovery-trees, which I’ll elaborate later. From bombs that blind, deafen and splitter bombs, explosives get a plethora of cool new options, two of which I particularly liked: Minibombs and High Explosives use half a bomb slot or two respectively, but are less/more effective than regular bombs, adding to the set of tactical options for bomb-focused alchemists. Even better, alchemists can learn to expand their range by creating rockets and expand the threat range – nice! Via essence discoveries, mutagens can be modified to add e.g. scent, greater invisibility etc. Extracts also get a cool expansion, by enabling them to heal minor amounts of damage, extracts that have a higher duration etc.
The second part of the pdf deals with alternate alchemy and introduces the concept of spagyric devices and metamorphosis, for which the alchemist must give up one of his alchemical areas of interest . The devices are particularly interesting: The field enables the alchemist to duplicate magic items with a certain GP-limit with his alchemical devices. Before you start screaming about magic inflation, let me elaborate: Apart from a very restrictive GP-limit-pool to create these devices from, they require maintenance and at best have a durability of 2 days when separated from their creator. Furthermore, they take up 2 item slots and are very fragile. 6 sample names for such devices are given and all said, I consider the field a gold-mine for roleplaying, offering players a very cool opportunity to develop their very own devices and come up with justifications for their usage. Three new discoveries for these devices are presented, one making his creations harder to break, the second enabling the alchemist to select spells not on his spell-list and create items necessitating these spells. The final one lets the alchemist create more items with his gp-limit.
The second new field of alchemical expertise is metamorphosis, which belongs to the field that seeks to create gold from lead, focusing on the transformation of both materials and persons, enabling the alchemist to duplicate polymorph-effects via the 4 discoveries. While an iconic idea and not unbalancing (turning lead to gold works, but takes forever…), mechanically, it can’t hold a candle to the cool spagyric devices.
The problem of the relative scarcity of low-cost magic items is also addressed and I’d like to add Necromancers of the Northwest’s “Into the Armory” (available for free) to the list of recommended material to expand it, SGG’s recommendation being, of course their loot 4 less-series, which I’ll hope to buy and review sometime in the future.
The pdf closes with 2 feats granting extra devices and metamorphosis.
Conclusion:
Editing is good, though is noticed a missing “e” in the metamorphosis-section. Layout adheres to the 3-column standard. The artwork is stock art and rather often used pieces at that. The pdf has no bookmarks. The new discoveries for bombs, mutagens and extracts all rock and I had no balance concerns with regards to them. The new devices also offer a neat and easy way to play a tinkerer and showcase Owen K.C. Stephens’ mastery of concise crunch-writing. Paradoxically, I think this pdf would have been better off if it were a bit shorter (or larger, of course!), as the new metamorphosis ability, while iconic, is simply not too rewarding and seriously needs more options to become a viable choice for all but NPC-alchemists. As written, transmuters will still mop the floor with these poor chaps and there simply is not that much going for them due to lack of support material. 2 additional pages of discoveries would have been either a viable options for the new field or a nice space for more discoveries. While these gripes are there, I still consider this book to rank among the finest of the advanced options-line and due to the quality of the crunch, will settle for a final verdict of 4.5 stars, rounded down to 4 for the purpose of this platform.
This pdf is 8 pages long, 2/3 of a page front cover, 1 page SRD &editorial, leaving 6 1/3 pages of content for the new tools for the Inquisitor, so let’s check them out.
After a short discussion on the nature of the rather interesting Inquisitor base-class, we are introduced to a central question that needs to be answered prior to integrating the new material: Seeing there are not that many judgments in the core rules of the APG, a new mechanic needs to be introduced to clarify how access to more judgments is handled. In a concise discussion, several options along their pros and cons are presented, with the easiest alternative being restricting any Inquisitor to 9 judgments and the most complex being a suggestion to have judgments earned in game by association with different orders in a given campaign setting.
15 new judgments await the perusal of inquisitors, from minor bonuses to reach and movement rates to improved capabilities with regards to certain combat maneuvers and the ability to make weapons feature a quality to bypass certain kinds of DR, a nice and balanced roster of abilities is presented. The true stars of this pdf, though, are the 7 greater judgments: Those of you following my reviews know that I’m always excited about iconic abilities and the greater judgments deliver: The ability to see invisible foes via blazing eyes, the power to banish summoned creatures to sickening and weakening strikes, the offensive judgments rock. The defensive ones are also quite cool, enabling you to play the deadly, unstoppable driven inquisitor via regeneration and SR – all the while balancing these at times powerful abilities within the rules. Great work!
The pdf does not stop there, though, as it delivers the alternate Inquisitor-class of the Justicar, a judgment-focused variant sans spellcasting. The Justicar gets d10, 6+Int skills, full BAB, good fort and will saves. The class feels balanced and interesting, though personally I’d prefer the spellcasting variant. I still think the class offers a cool alternative for many campaigns.
Finally, we get 7 new feats: Executioner lets you sacrifice a judgments use for a single strike with additional damage, the ability to use judgments more often per day, a feat to learn an additional judgment (depending on how you manage the acquisition of new judgments, this is necessary), a focus on a single judgment (+5 levels with regards to that judgment), the ability to make a judgment that last up to 15 minutes. My favorite one, though, would be Jury, which lets an ally benefit from your judgment. One of the feats, though, felt potentially problematic to me: Judgments Surge is rather strong, as it lets you use an additional judgment simultaneously. I’m not entirely sure whether I’d allow this feat, as my instinct yells that this might make for a certain power-boost.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any glitches. Layout adheres to the 3-column standard and the artwork is stock-art and ok. The pdf has no bookmarks. The new judgments presented herein feel balanced and add a nice plethora of abilities to the Inquisitor’s repertoire, the Justicar is nice. The Greater Judgments and the new feats, though, are what really shone for me and offer the abilities I love to see for the class, as it enhances the unique feel of the class. The Judgments per se and the one feat I didn’t like left a bit of a stale taste in my mouth and would necessitate some playtesting/extensive math for me prior to allowing it in my campaign. Thus, due to a lack of true gripes and only minor problems, my final verdict for this installment of advanced options will be 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5.
This installment of the epic Slumbering Tsar series is 54 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page of SRD, leaving 50 pages of content, so let's take a good look at the very first part of the epic Slumbering Tsar saga that had never been released under any other system, introducing the dark and dread temple city of Orcus!
This being an adventure review, the following contains massive
SPOILERS
so please, potential players, stop reading NOW.
Having survived the manifold and dread dangers of the Desolation, the PCs, at the beginning of this module, finally start to delve into the legendary temple-city, which is introduced via both an interesting background information and a nice idea that ensures the PCs won't get respite from the dangers of the Desolation or the City - the true citadel of Orcus is hidden between the planes and to explore it and end the sinister threat, they'll have to find 9 statues, the so-called 9 disciples while avoiding the alignment-warping effects of the city. But to enter the city, the PCs will have to brave the black gates of Tsar, i.e. Kirash Durgaut and the tower of weeping sores or find some other way into the city.
And wow, the Black Gates are not easily penetrable - the PCs will be assaulted by several siege undead (and we're not talking 6, we're talking about quantities of 50+) as well as a deadly "boss"-fight against a new creature, the dokkalfoer, which is essentially an intelligent animated tower that contains deadly yet illusory defenders and is HARD to destroy, even without other enemies. Alternatively, the PCs might try to use the sunken gates, gates to the city that have been submerged in a swamp-like environment, featuring not only plenty opportunities to drown, die by the hands of bog mummies and even a living swamp. Finally, the PCs might try to scale the walls or enter via the broken gates, both of which are not truly better options, as the walls are patrolled by undead and the broken gates still contain the remains of another potential boss battle with a battle hulk. However, if they act smart, the PCs might use this hulk to their advantage. We get an 1-page overview map of the city and 2 detail maps of 1 page respectively, one for the black gates and one for the sunken gates.
There is a reason, though, why the black gates never fell to the onslaught of the army of light - the siege castle Kirash Durgaut! The legendary siege castle features three floors of the castle, its maps spanning 6 pages, 2 per floor and one page of maps for the upper floors that make up the tower of the weeping sores. A quick glance at the maps shows you the siege weapons and details that will make the fortress hard to infiltrate, even for the PCs - they better have magic, good plans, stamina and their dice on their side, otherwise e.g. animated portcullises, iron maiden golems, strategically planted siege and regular undead (if you consider e.g. Athach-skeletons or Grey Render fast zombies regular...) will get the better of them. They can also meet a devilish thief and catch him in the act and will have to fight their way through the demonic/undead troops left in the fortress up to the tower of weeping sores and its torture chambers where they'll have to defeat General Myrmac, the deadly skeletal host general of the tower and his diabolical seneschal.
The pdf closes with two monsters ( both get their own artworks) and a magic item.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. Layout adheres to a clear and printer-friendly b/w-two-column standard and the maps are nice, have a parchment-look and come with grids. I would have loved key-less player-friendly maps to cut up and show to your PCs, but oh well. The b/w-artworks spread throughout the book are beautiful, often disturbing and capture the feel of Tsar. The encounters are cool and old-school, featuring some the PCs will easily walk over and some where the PCs will have to play it smart to prevail. In a nutshell, this installment of ST continues to provide the excellent quality and iconic locales we've come to expect from Greg A. Vaughan's magnum opus and Frog God Games. The pdf is extensively bookmarked, making it rather easy to use on screen. In the end, I don't really have any good points of criticism, this installment of ST keeps the excellent quality of the series and for people who don't want all of the books/don't have a subscription: If you need a dread siege castle or some ideas how to make your villain's evil fortress more impenetrable, you are at the right place. My final verdict subsequently has to be 5 stars.
Endzeitgeist out.
This pdf is 7 pages long, 2/3 of a page front cover, 1 page editorial & SRD, leaving 5 1/3 pages fort he new hexes.
The pdf begins with a discussion on versatility and an elaboration on the Hex-concept before plunging us into 29 new hexes.
Among the regular hexes, we have a balm that grants fast healing, incite rage or boost morale via her beautiful smile. While these are cool, there are some that stood out, at least to me: Familiar Growth lets a familiar grow temporarily to animal companion size, another Hex enables her to get Cat’s Eyes and a third one lets her grapple via unseen forces, e.g. entangling foes in rope etc. or even attack with her hair or drive enemies back with a terrible wail.
Among the major hexes, I enjoyed a kiss that modifies the memory of its victims or even bind her hexes into runes that are activated via reading them much like explosive runes.
The Grand Hexes, among of which we’ll find Kiss of Death, supernatural Allure etc.
The pdf closes with 4 new feats to enlarge and quicken hexes, add +2 to the DC of hexes or affect the same target twice in 24 hours.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any glitches. Layout adheres to the 3-column-standard, art is ok and the pdf has no bookmarks. Witches are an interesting class, as they are primary arcane casters and have to contend with wizards and sorcerers. Hexes as signature abilities serve to enforce a witch’s unique flair and subsequently, I consider any expansion to this aspect nice. However, the utmost care has to be exercised to emphasize the unique quality of hexes without watering them down. This is where this pdf comes in: Several very iconic qualities that made me grin with diabolical glee are introduced and smart actions on part of the players are encouraged via the hexes that depend e.g. on Kisses. Abilities that can be considered are “witchy” abound and none of the hexes felt like it was boring or useless. Subsequently, due to a lack of glitches and problems and due to the low price, I’ll settle for a final verdict of 5 stars.
This pdf is 48 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page blank inside the front cover, 1 page introduction to the subject matter, 1 page editorial, 2 pages ToC, 1 page back cover, 1 page SRD and 1 page advertisement, leaving 39 pages for 100 new hirelings, so what is actually within this tome?
The pdf kicks off with a one-page discussion on why this book exists, namely a significant dissatisfaction with the leadership mechanics and its problems. I'm sure we all experienced the unfortunate problem of cohorts simply not living up to being essential parts of a given roleplaying group and dying too easily/being just another set of (bad) stats. This pdf seeks to remedy that by providing a whopping 100 henchfolk and hirelings for your perusal. For ease of navigation, we also get a two-page table of the henchfolk to be acquired by the PCs sorted by alignment, with details on their classes and the respective pages as well as a two-page list by class as well as another one that presents the henchfolk by race. The alignments of the henchfolk covered are LG, NG,CG, LN, N, CN and LE, offering no cohorts for the NE and CE alignments. While I can understand the reasoning for not adding them as well and making e.g. one of the CN or N guys and gals evil is not hard, I'd love to see a sequel devoted to insane and/or depraved cohorts for NPCs/ evil parties.
The first rules presented cover the acquisition of new hirelings & henchfolk depending on the size of the town in which the PCs recruit as well as a d100-table to randomly determine applicants. The rules are simple, concise and easily implemented. Even better, they can not only be used for PFRPG, but for almost any fantasy-based roleplaying game. This is not where the rules stop, though: From easily used (Diplomacy-based) job interview with the hireling to be, to quick and easy rules for the hireling's upkeep, careful consideration is given to balance the additional support they offer for a party with costs, ensuring that the PCs don't simply amass a small army.
On to the hirelings, then: They are presented by race, starting off with 8 dwarven NPCs. While no full stat-blocks are given for the respective NPCs, they do come with alignment-information, basic ability-scores and their base class. More importantly, though, they all get the Raging Swan NPC-treatment, i.e. short information on appearance, background, personality and mannerisms are given. Each and every NPC within this book gets this treatment.
My favorite dwarven hireling would be the clam, level-headed and kind, yet extremely unpleasant-smelling Torgal Helkrak, called "The Oyugh", whose Cha-score of 6 is explained via his lacking hygiene and conceals a kind, gentle heart. Among the 8 elven NPCs, my personal favorite would be the stark, raving mad Cydul Nailo, who is convinced that all that stands between him and the whisperings of the dread dragon in the sky is his trusted, dented helmet. If you can't come up with some cool ideas resulting from this delusion (or is it one?), I don't know what might spark your imagination.
Within the Gnomish ethnicity, none stood as much out as among the first two racial groups, though the almost pixie-like, hyperactive and kind cleric Ellywick Foler with her pet chipmunk makes for a cool little cohort who is ure to be endeared to the PCs if handled right. All the better when the DM wants to kill off a treasured associate to avoid TPKing the party...
Among the 8 halfling henchfolk, the hedonistic, yet friendly Garrett Greenbottle (a sorceror of the fey-bloodline) caught my interest as well as the rogue Osborn "Ossie" Tealeaf, the latter for reasons I can't disclose here, with players reading this.
The 8 half-elven hirelings presented herein make for interesting companions, with Ilonal, a femme fatale cleric of the god of love ranking as my favorite, but while none fall into the dread emo-Tanis-trope, none really had me excited either.
The most interesting ethnicity with regards to hirelings, at least for me, would be the half-orcs, as they are hard to portray as anything but the cardbox-cut out tropes in the few lines available for each individual. A very cool character is the shoddy make-up wearing, female cleric of the god of beauty and love who was reincarnated into a half-orc by a druid. Formerly, Gerbo Nackle was a dashing male gnome - cool idea and makes for a lot of cool developments. The intellectual diviner Farnsley Thaddeus Biddle is another prime example for good character writing. I do have a gripe here, though: There are two half-orcs named Feng, one who is just called "Feng" and "Feng the Fang" - It would have been easy to rename one of them, why go with the ambiguity?
The vast majority (52 if I haven't miscounted) of the new henchfolk belong to the race of humans. Unfortunately, once again the name-conventions are a bit lazy: We get 2 Digorys, two Alans, two Cajas, 2 Kenver and one Kenvern, 2 Kittos, 2 Petroks, 2 Rosens, 2 Sowenas - that a lot of duplicate names. While we all know the frequency of some names is higher than others, players often have a hard time enough to remember all the names (at least in my campaign that holds true!) that we don't necessarily need names that are all the same. Yes, most have at least a different surname, but unique names would have made for nice bonuses, especially given the fact that you can always take an existing name and apply it to an additional character. This minor problem of repeatedly-used names is, though, the only truly negative thing I can say about the wide plethora of characters found herein.
This pdf is 11 pages long, 2/3 of a page front cover, 1 page editorial & SRD, leaving 9 1/3 pages of content.
The pdf kicks off with a short discussion on the nature of cavalier orders and presents a summary of the 7 new ones contained herein, 1 more than in this pdfs predecessor.
The first Order is already more original than almost all from the first pdf, being the Order of the Bow, an order that (Surprise!) focuses on mounted archery. Seeing that up until now this niche has not yet been covered well by the class, I consider this to be a nice addition. Especially the lvl 15 ability that lets the Cavalier end a mounted charge with a ranged attack is quite a nice one. If you’re the Cavalier and not on the receiving end of the charge, that is.
The next Order, the Order of the Citadel, focuses on battlefield command and tactical support of his allies, featuring the ability to issue commands that grant significant bonuses to his allies, going so far as to offering a selection 5 decisive commands in addition to the standard battlefield support, making this mechanic a) more versatile than a single one and b) actually pretty useful, as e.g. one of the tactics enables the cavalier to grant his allies his Cha-mod as morale bonus to their crit-confirmation rolls, initiative and ref-saves –Neat!
The Order of the Raven acts as a kind of dark enforcer for a lord, and, while not necessarily evil, they usually are feared. They are quite adept at demoralizing foes and generally speaking, I much prefer them to the one-dimensional oh-so-evil cardboard cut-out Order of the Skull. My only, minor gripe with this class is the lvl 15 ability that once again nets the Cavalier limited spellcasting at his level minus 14, which at this level is simply neither impressive, nor too useful. Plus, I’ve said it once and will say it again: The Cavalier, at least to me, is a rather worldly class and would be better suited for some supernatural or unique ability.
The next on the list is the Order of the Shroud, a dedicated undead slayer whose challenges are especially lethal against the living dead and who get usage to channel energy, but only for smiting purposes. Unfortunately, there’s a minor formatting glitch here: A part of the order’s cool crest’s white background conceals approximately one fourth of the letters of the first column on page 6 – while still decipherable, it’s still a glitch that could be avoided.
And now comes one of my favorite Orders from this pdf, the Order of the Trident, which focuses on aquatic combat – now that’s a bit out of the ordinary, gathered, but it can be a godsend and offers for some rather interesting new concepts with regards to what one think of when the term “Cavalier” is uttered. Even better, a smattering of sample aquatic mount stats are presented that range from the obvious dolphins, whales, sharks and orcas to the rather cool giant morays, manta rays and even 2 kinds of dinosaurs –now if that’s not cool, I don’t know what is. If you happen to own Alluria Publishing’s Cerulean Sea campaign setting, be sure to check this order out.
The penultimate Order is one of those iconic ones one practically has to like: An all-female Order of the Unicorn, who even can get the legendary creatures as mounts. The rules for the pure mounts are analogue to those of the Order of the Griffon from the predecessor and, while not necessarily the solution I would have chosen for the mount’s advancement, definitely work, though as a DM I would impose some restrictions with regards to the class-levels the mount can take.
The final Order is dedicated to the Wolf, a barbaric scion of a tribe who can inspire allies via pack tactics but also work alone. More importantly, though, he gains an extremely iconic direwolf mount. Oh yeah! Unfortunately, once again, the heraldic crest’s white background is somewhat superimposed over parts of some letters and while not impeding usability, it is somewhat annoying.
Finally, there are three new feats: One grants you +4 cavalier levels for the purpose of one of your abilities, one increases a mounts atk and damage and the final one, squire (intended for non-cavalier classes), lets you gain the skill-bonuses and class skills of an order of your choosing, but only as long as you do not violate the teachings of that order. This is a feat I really enjoy, as it practically combines a substantial, yet cool benefit with a background for your character, namely having served a squire. You don’t have to be a genius to come up with some neat ideas resulting from that.
Conclusion:
Editing is top-notch, I didn’t notice any glitches. Unfortunately, the same does not hold tue for formatting, as I’ve mentioned in the review. Layout adheres to the 3-column standard and the pdf has no bookmarks. The front cover by Redpeggy is beautiful and the b/w-crests for the orders are a nice touch. All in all, I’m very pleased to say that this book is superior to its predecessor in each and every way imaginable: Designer Marc Radle with Owen K.C. Stephens has trumped his last shot at orders by a huge stretch: While the Orders presented herein still remain easy to integrate in every campaign setting out there and are generic, they all offer enough touches, nooks, ideas to make them captivating in some way. Be it via an interesting, ability, a cool mount or just iconic imagery, they all serve a certain theme that goes beyond being the bland fulfillment of a trope. My only very minor mechanical gripes are the “spellcasting at level minus 14”-mechanic, which I consider useless and the class levels for the unicorn mounts, but these are personal preferences and not necessarily something I can hold against this pdf. Indeed, when all’s said and done my only true gripe with this pdf lies with the minor formatting glitches. If they would make parts of the text unintelligible, I’d detract a whole star. As the lines are only partially obscured, cutting of parts of capital letters, though, I’ll only detract the half star that separates a very good file from an outstanding one, resulting in a final verdict of 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5 for the purpose of this platform and making this, in my opinion, one of the best advanced options books.
This pdf is 9 pages long, 2/3 of a page front cover, 2/3 of a page page editorial & SRD, leaving 7 2/3 pages of content, so let’s check them out!
After s short discussion on the 6 new orders presented herein and how to implement them best in your campaign, we get to the crunch of the new organizations.
The Order of the Gauntlet is dedicated to protecting the innocent from threats and especially terror and fear-inducing ones. Stalwart defenders, they can halve the penalties they have accumulated via detrimental abilities at higher levels. The Order of the Glaive makes for interesting pole-arm wielding scions of a particular nation or lord, focusing on their weapon and the law they have sworn allegiance to.
The Order of the Griffon is a cool and iconic order, being devoted to the ideals of freedom for every individual, striking home at my personal ideal of freedom of expression of one’s self in a peaceful manner. Even cooler, at 8th level they get an improving Griffon mount that gains class levels instead of regular companion HD. A rather uncommon choice, especially due to the fact that spell-casting is not per se prohibited. I’m not entirely sure whether I’m comfortable with the implications and would limit the possible class choices of the griffon to prevent a mount from outshining its master or fellow party members.
The Order of the Rose is devoted to the spread of the good cause, gaining abilities vs. their enemies and expanded morale bonuses via their banner. Unfortunately, this order somehow feels like a light-version of the paladin and doesn’t offer a compelling reason to pick it.
The Order of the Secret Flame on the other hand, is rather esoteric in its outlook – it defends magic artifacts and other incarnations of the abstract nature of hidden power from those seeking to exploit it. Unfortunately, the cavalier does fall into the trap of just gaining some spells (at 15th level counting as a spellcaster of his lvl -14) and also receives the ability to read magic, cast a cantrip and get spell resistance at higher levels. I consider the mundane nature of the cavalier to be interesting and this order somewhat dilutes it. Additionally, the late spellcasting prowess does not make for an interesting ability at that level. Paladins and Rangers will outshine the Cavalier in the respective divine departments and the Magus and similar classes will do the same in the arcane department.
The Order of the Skull, dedicated to tyranny, death and similar unpleasant ideals, is practically the opposite of the order of the Rose, serving evil, demoralizing his foes and trampling foes under the hooves of his mount. Unfortunately, the order suffers from similar problems as the Order of the Rose: The Blackguard and Antipaladin already occupy the niche of the dread knight and surpass members of these orders in their abilities. If you really need an evil cavalier, you might have a reason to use this one, especially due to the mount gaining trample. For players, even those in evil parties, there are more compelling options.
Finally, there are 6 new feats for the Cavalier: One to gain an extra challenge, one to treat your level as higher with regards to challenges, a feat to use tactician as a move action and three feats that expand upon the option to belonging to 2 orders simultaneously. These three feats are obviously only available to cavaliers and can be only taken via their bonus feats. While I’d usually consider these feats over-powered, the fact that they take up a lot of feat-slots, I do somehow like them. Adhering to 2 edicts at once also makes for a good roleplaying device to prevent this mini-feat-tree from becoming op.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any glitches. Layout adheres to the three-column standard and the cover artwork by Sina Kasra is stunning. The interior art is b/w and features crests for all the orders, which is nice. Once again, I’m torn with regards to my final verdict: The orders are generic in the extreme and easy to implement into any given campaign. However, they also suffer from exactly this benefit – they are generic, too generic for my tastes. While there is nothing per se wrong with them, I didn’t consider any one of them truly exciting, the one closest to being out of the ordinary the Order of the Glaive. While I also liked some ideas of the Order of the Skull (to be precise, the 8th and 15th level ability), I still consider other classes to be more viable solutions for the tropes covered. The feats are all useful, balanced and cool and add a nice touch to the pdf – designer Marc Radle has done a good job there. While I did like the feats, I felt that the orders suffered from the lack of fluff and always felt that the Orders could have easily been made more unique. Thus, due to nothing per se being wrong with this pdf, I’ll settle for a final verdict of 3 stars – an ok buy if you’re out for more orders or feats, but not necessarily a must-buy.
This pdf is 52 pages long, 1 page front cover, 3 pages editorial and ToC, 1 page SRD, 1 page advertisement, 1 blank page inside back cover and 1 page back cover, leaving 45 pages of content, so let's check it out!
First of all, I want to make my position clear: While I always felt a kind of fascination for tatoos and body modifications, I have none myself and never had the inclination to get one. Thus, while I do love the culturally important and imaginative implementations in different media and games, I am not what you'd consider a wholehearted enthusiast for the subject matter, in spite of being aligned with two sub-cultures that heavily rely on tatoos and body-mods. Thus, I'll try to rate this from a skeptic's point of view and mostly in accordance with the contributions to one's game.
The book begins with a comprehensive and very well-informed and informative introduction to several roles tatoos can serve in diverse subsets of culture. After this rather intelligent and nice intro, we are subjected to the relevant skills for tatoos/body-mods in one's game world, i.e. 4 Craft-skills, 1 profession and 3 knowledge skills. We also get 27 new feats that span the range from crafting magical and miniature tatoos to "achievement tatoos", i.e. for example bonding tatoos for lovers and friends, tatoos celebrating that you've slain x creatures of a certain type and even one that kind of touched me and makes for a great RPG-opportunity, a tatoo for a fallen friend. From sexy to intimidating a lot of ground is covered and none of the feats felt superfluous. For those so inclined, we also get feats dealing with e.g. scarification.
What about the process of getting/or removing one's tatoos, though? It's depicted in stunning and imaginative detail and provides a plethora kits and items for said purposes, among them even a gnomish tatoo machine. I actually learned something about the material of the needles from this section, which is always nice.
After the basics have been established, we move on to the truly fantastic and iconic component of the book, magical tatoos. Mechanically, they take up an item-slot and even have an option for spell-tatoos that work as scrolls or a tatoo that can store spells. This section, in contrast to many item-books I've read so far, is actually a good read, thanks to the descriptions provided. Some might even serve as hooks for further adventures, which is always a nice thing for a DM to have. Mechanically, I have nothing to complain about - all of the 57 tatoos are well-balanced and most of them are iconic enough to actually consider using them.
Chapter 3 details so-called Inkantationists, i.e. magically adept tatoo-artists, and provides rules for a new wizard variant, a new sorceror bloodline and a new PrC, the painted one (d8, 4+Int skills, bad BAB (+5 over 10 levels),, medium Ref and Will saves, 8 levels of spell-casting and the ability to advance abilities from their old class). We also get 8 new spells, dealing with tatoos and surprisingly, contraception. I enjoyed them immensely, as I belong to the part of the audience that considers the topic of sexuality and childbirth an integral and fertile ground for adventuring. Pardon the pun. For the people who consider themselves rather adherents to the piercing enthusiasts, 13 new magic items, some of which actually made me smile and one even laugh: The Nipple-shield of Stunning pleasantly reminded me of a certain superbowl scandal whose repercussions swept over even to Europe and were considered somewhat bewildering. But don't fret - the other magical items are quite tame and the book remains mature and non-explicit about the topic. A magical device is also presented.
Finally, we get 3 (more or less) secret organizations centered around the topics of tatoos that are concisely detailed in the limited amount of space granted and might serve both as pro-or antagonists along the PCs. Each also features some short, stat-block-less write-ups of characters to help you flesh out the organization in question and provide potential for conflict, be it internally or externally.
Conclusion:
Editing is top-notch, I didn't notice any errors. Formatting and layout are b/w, printer-friendly, clear and I didn't notice a single glitch. The b/w-artwork ranges from cool to rather average and I personally am not a fan of the old-school style of the cover-artwork. I was rather skeptic with regards to balancing issues on whether all the iconic usages of tatoos in fantasy and mythology could be extrapolated to a general, non-setting specific book. Moreover, I wasn't sure whether this book would impress me enough to consider implementing it in my campaign. To cut a long ramble short, the company that brought you THE resource for gear & treasure shops has made magical tatoos not only a cool, but also a rewarding addition to just about any campaign. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to just about anyone. My final verdict will be 5 stars.
This latest installment of Jonathan Robert’s Fantastic Maps-line comes as a pdf with 35 pages, 1page front cover, 1 page how-to-use.
In tradition with the series of excellent and beautiful maps that has continuously received top ratings from yours truly, the pdf begins with a one-page overview of the map before offering 17 pages of the same map, blown up for use with miniatures in both full color and grayscale. All the maps come with grids that facilitate using them as combat terrain.
It is here I’d like to mention that watchfire keeps feature prominently in the borders of my nations and thus this map is very appreciated – just think of LotR or similar fare to recall how iconic these locales can be. It should also be noted that, while the keep does feature a prominent stack of wood piled together, this could also be for a religious rite (Burn the Witch/Wickerman, anyone?) or simply a stacked up pile for the winter that has been arranged so it can easily be set ablaze when the enemy approaches, offering more uses than necessarily intended. The keep features 4 large towers and two smaller ones as well as three buildings, enough room for a small garrison and/or a group adventurers seeking shelter… or trying t take the keep!
In tradition of the series, we also get maptool-files, high-res jpegs of the keep, a bonfire png-file and an alternate version of the maps in A4-format for Europeans like yours truly. There are no maps of the interiors of the keep’s buildings, but if you need some inspiration, just consult your KQ 18, the adventure featuring this map can be found there, albeit not with as much support, miniature-friendly versions etc.
Conclusion:
What can I say, this latest installment of Jonathan Robert’s beautiful cartography once again leaves (almost) nothing to be desired – the map is beautiful, the pdfs are all bookmarked and the map serves an as of yet uncovered niche within my map-array and comes with the plethora of support we know from the series. While I consider the lack of interior maps a bit of a drawback, I do like the idea of presenting a watchfire keep map enough to refrain from detracting a whole star, resulting in a final verdict of 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5.
This installment of Jonathan Robert’s fantastic maps series comes as a 59-page-pdf, 1 page front cover, 1 page how-to use.
The 1-page overview of the ship offers us a pirate ship with 12 scorpions/ballistae and 3 masts and after that, the blown-up version for use with miniatures spanning 28 pages comes as both full-color and b/w. The map itself is a stunning beauty to behold, as I’ve come to expect of Jonathan Robert’s work and features grids.
It should be noted that the support does not end here: In tradition with the extra-mile-mentality of the series, we get full maptool support as well as additional A4-versions of the maps, helping those poor Europeans like yours truly enjoy the map. Be sure to download the zip as well, as we get an additional bonus pdf: A 7 page pdf (again with 1 page front cover and a page explaining how-to use the map) of a pinnace, again featuring an overview and blown-up versions of the map including grids. The pinnace also comes with a full-color and b/w version and in both US-Letterpack and A4-formats.
Even better, though, the pdf comes with high-res jpegs of the ships and even 4 png-objects: A ladder, ballista and 2 versions of the ships further enhance the value you get out of this map-pack.
Conclusion:
The map-pack is extensively bookmarked (all of the pdfs!) and the maps are absolutely beautiful – the sea especially rocks. The pinnace is a great bonus. However, loath as I am to nag at such a great map-pack, there are some minor problems I can see with this one: There is a lot of sea surrounding the ship and while I really like the look of it, it is an unnecessary drain on the printer and one tile/page of sea that could be used to expand left and right of the ship would have been nice. The ship-graveyard of the same line is a bit better in that regard. I really liked the additional ballista/ladder pngs, but a cannon for the black-powder advocates out there would have been even better. When all’s aid and done, you get a great ship and a lot of nice additional material for your money, but due to the minor inconvenience of the amount of sea surrounding the sip, I’ll settle for a final verdict of 4.5 stars, rounded down to 4 stars for the purpose of this platform.
This pdf is 10 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page SRD, 1 page advertisement, 1 page mini-sheets for monsters, leaving 6 pages of content, so what is this sphere about?
Put simply, the annihilation sphere is a doomsday device of epic proportions, a spherical construct that was constructed by the aneishi (or was it? – never trust the first ones…) to counteract the human insurgency driven by the Kaga. The sphere, however, turns out to be a rather uncontrollable engine of devastation and subsequently was dispatched and forgotten in the subsequent time.
Unfortunately for the world of NeoExodus at large, the sphere was not destroyed and fell into NeoExodus’ Darkseid-like villIan’s hands.
The write-up of the sphere includes what some of the factions of the world and how they’d use (or fear) the sphere. The sphere itself comes with 2 sets of statblocks, one for CR25 and one for even deadlier CR 30. How deadly is there sphere, then? Well, the orbiting satellite spheres can blast up to NINE spells per round as a standard action at your PCs. This specific mechanic is elegant and unique, but even worse news for your PCs, the sphere also has a deadly dampening field that cancels out spells and psionics and some defensive abilities that might have your PCs sweating, although its hit points are nothing to write home about at this level, even though it has more HP than similar constructs due to a special quality. I should also note that beyond mechanics, we also get a new book-write-up to put the PCs on the trail of the sphere or learn about it.
After the SRD you also get a 1-page primer of the nations, religions, etc. of NeoExodus.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any glitches. The pdf is a beauty to behold, its layout adheres to the full-color NeoExodus standard and the artwork, as we’ve come to expect of LPJr Design, ranks among the best out there. The annihilation sphere is a deadly, versatile engine of destruction with several signature abilities and will force even the most powerful of PCs to play smart or perish at its arcane onslaught. For the very low price, you get two statblocks for a quite deadly and cool construct that will haunt the nightmares of PCs. All in all, due to the cool idea of the parallel casts (and its limitations!), the low price and the lack of glitches, I’ll settle for 5 stars and the Endzeitgeist seal of approval. This is my favorite book of the “Monsters of…”-series, on par with the Chanting Queen.
This pdf is 40 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving 36 pages of content, so let’s check it out!
After an IC-introduction to the topic at hand along a nice little foreword, we’ll delve into the “witchy” themes of this pdf, starting, surprisingly, not with additional material for the APG-witch, but rather a new 20-level racial base class for the Green Hag. The class has 4+Int skills, 9/10 BAB as well as HD-progression, a ¾ natural AC progression and good Ref- and Will-saves as well as a selection of spell-like abilities, coven-feats (on which I’ll elaborate later), at 12th level an animal companion-sized familiar and e.g. the ability to reproduce voices. With regards to additional information, we also get sections on her role in the world, age & height tables and even a lore section and some advice for players and DMs alike. All right, I’ll come out and say it: I’m not impressed by the mechanical execution of this class. At all.
Several of the abilities of this class feature spell-like abilities that can be used at will, among others invisibility, at 8th level. Not gonna happen in my game. EVER.
While I have a personal dislike for player classes with any kind of unlimited magical prowess, I especially abhor the tendency to soften rules that are supposed to give monsters an edge against the PCs and give the latter access to the former’s toolkit. Hags also work with Str-damage. The potential added work for the DM (which is btw. In my opinion rather meager) is explained away in the discussion by stating that monsters and NPCs “tend not to survive the end of their first fight”. Well…that depends. I don’t think that a bit Str-damage calculation with regards to stats is hard, but that’s just a piece of advice that doesn’t really help.
What weighs heavier against the class, though, is that in contrast to all but the Jotunnar-race-classes by RiP, the Green Hag cannot freely multiclass until she has reached 11th level. While I can see the reasoning behind this, I nevertheless think it limits the appeal of the class. Another gripe I have with the hag is, that in contrast to e.g. NNW’s take on the werewolf and several other great base-classes by 3pps, the Green Hag does not feature much choices: The modularity and plethora of choices many recent additions to the class-roster feature is unfortunately quite absent from the Green Hag’s class, limiting an already limited appeal even further. While some of the Hag’s abilities are very cool and I especially love the Hag Familiar, I’m not convinced anyone really needs this class.
Next up are 20 new feats for the Hag and witch, several of which expand upon the concept of coven magic and cooperative spellcasting and shared power. You’ll also find feats to give witches an additional familiar at 10th level and some that enhance potions. I liked all of the feats, although I’m once again missing modularity – while the concept of coven casting is cool and while there are some feats to enhance it and expand the spell-list, I would have loved to see more feats to expand the concept. I also liked the Black Sabbath-feat (Surprise), in which the members of a coven can meet as incorporeal beings and act in concert once a month. Cool idea that can spark of great tactics and adventures.
The section on Hexes offers 4 new hexes, 3 new major hexes and 2 new grand hexes. From iconic broomstick-riding to inciting hatred among allies, they offer some nice roleplaying abilities. Form of Three, for example, summons and two different age-category-versions of the caster to use in e.g. coven casting. Familiars can choose from 12 alternate familiar traits that work pretty much like alternate racial trait and e.g. let you exchange your familiar’s spell resistance for DR, lets it speak with all kinds of humanoids etc. pp..
The final section of this pdf is taken up by 30 new spells, some of which have the [ritual]-descriptor, making them more powerful when cast by a coven. What struck me as kind of wasted potential was the lack of implementation of segmented spells from Advanced Arcana Vol I here – the excellent book and its cool innovation sorely need expansion and covens casting complex spells (perhaps faster?) would have made for a supreme addition to this chapter, but I digress – on to the spells per se. All in all, I was positively surprised by the spells – while I felt a significant lack of segmented spells, the spells per se are ingenious, cool and most importantly either feature iconic imagery or benefits beyond immediate combat: In fact, due to long casting times, benefits etc., long-term planning and intelligent strategies on part of the PCs and their antagonists are encouraged by the new spells. From the curses (which have to contend with RiP’s excellent curses and thus don’t come out on top in every instance) to spells that make one day in a certain area become night to a deadly spell that halts the flow of time for the caster for 24 hours and thus leaves spells intact to a spell that uses the moon’s power to hurt someone below its shine (and in range, of course) to a rather disturbing reincarnation from a cauldron (Baba Yaga, anyone?), I liked most of the spells and don’t have mechanic gripes with any of them – well done.
Conclusion:
Editing is very good, I only noticed a typo in one of the bookmarks. It should be noted that Secrets of the Witch comes in both a screen and a printer-friendly version, the former having a used-parchment look. Both are full-color and feature some CGI-artworks, which, while rather nice, are not exactly up my alley, but I won’t hold that against this pdf. The screen-version is extensively bookmarked, the printer-friendly version unfortunately isn’t. I’m not sure whether it’s a fault of the layout or the formatting, but several pieces of the text of the pdf, due to some quirk, feel half-blurred/lower resolution than the rest of the text, being a bit hard on the eyes when you’re tired. Something seems to have gone haywire there. Mechanically, I have already elaborated on my take on the Green Hag and why I consider the class rather bland/problematic.
I’d like to mention some additional points: Why don’t hags get some hexes? Seriously, the racial class practically screams: Give me HEXES and the poor hags don’t even get spellcasting (but those damn unlimited spell-like abilities PCs never should have), so why not grant them access to hexes? The ones from UM, after all, would make for fine ones for Green Hags… The new familiar traits are cool, though none really blew me away and we don’t get a lot of hexes, which I would have loved to see more of – after all, they are a defining feature of the Witch-class.
Mechanically, I liked most feats, hexes and spells, especially due to enhancing the aspect of the game that goes beyond kicking the door in and offering some great fodder for adventure plots. Coven Casting is a cool concept that is touched upon, but quite frankly, we don’t get enough spells and feats centered on the idea – it’s central, yeah, and duly so, being the one defining and awesome central concept and ALL the spells have information for coven casting, but this being a new concept, I think more would have been nice, both in cool feats like Black Sabbath and possibly even hexes – coven hexes would have been appreciated by yours truly.
This pdf is 15 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page SRD, 1 page mini-sheets for monsters, 2 pages NeoExodus char-sheet, 1 page of advertisement and 1 page combat & initiative tracker, leaving 8 pages for the dark legend of Widowmaker Scarlet, so let’s check out whether she holds up to her dread moniker.
What is the widowmaker, then? From the stunning cover-image, I’d gather she is an extremely powerful Khaynite, one of the flesh-twisting first ones modeled somewhat in alignment with Hellraiser’s Cenobites. As always with the First Ones, I’d be both wrong and/or right, but more on that later.
To put it bluntly, Widowmaker Scarlet is one of the major antagonists of the NeoExodus-setting, a legendary bogeywoman for both First Ones and surface-dwelling races, a dread manipulator shrouded in mystery. Subsequently we are not introduced to one definite history of her, but rather a collection of historical accounts she might have influenced, once again using the rather ingenious approach used in the book on the First Ones for good effect. Scarlet being a dread creature even the First Ones fear, there seems to be a lot of misinformation and misconception, dread and fear regarding her person and subsequently, a significant section of her fluff centers around the different heretical and competing theories regarding her nature. In spite of what I first considered to be an approach prone to rather boring generalizations, I really like the plurality of possibilities that stem from these theories and I can see a campaign centering about PCs freeing or press-ganging heretics and scholars to learn about their nemesis. Aptly done!
Three sample statblocks are given in the tradition of similar books like RiP’s FoTS-series. In contrast to e.g. Brelin Swift, LPJr Design has taken care to once again (like in the EXCELLENT Folding Circle) create statblocks that are, while not as complex as in the FoTS-series, still sufficiently complex to make them interesting. The innovative aspect of this villain, though, is that while all statblocks that are given belong to the upper scale of levels (CR 15, CR 18 and CR 20), each one presumes another kind of Scarlet: From a possessing ghost, to an aberrant sorceress to a unique demon, all 3 are interesting builds and feature sufficient signature abilities to make them interesting in their own rights.
4 extremely rare spells centering on possession (of even First Ones) and converting people to the worship of Khayne as well as the stats for the legendary blade Singiver are also provided. Have I mentioned that there’s a theory that the sword is the true Widowmaker? Never trust any accounts of the First Ones…
Conclusion:
Editing is top-notch, I didn’t notice any glitches, layout adheres to the beautiful full-color two-column standard we’ve come to expect from LPJr Design. Formatting is good, although I noticed one particular problem: Some of the spells and feats herein are taken from e.g. the book on the First Ones and are referred by asterisks. While e.g. feats are explained, the new spells in this pdf are also marked by said asterisk. When running an encounter, this makes handling her slightly more complex than necessary.
On the design-side, I think that the aberrant witch-version would have worked better as the witch base-class with a new patron (like Khayne) instead of aberrant bloodlined sorceress. The final incarnation of her as a demon is a bit too straight-forward in her rather limited spell-like ability selection for my taste. Clocking in at “only” CR 20 also felt a bit off in this incarnation, as did for me the fact that her legendary sword is a rather bland accumulation of weapon qualities.
Some unique abilities, a lore-section on the well-known sword etc. would have gone a long way to improve this particular weapon. On the other hand, this pdf is rather cheap and offers interesting statblocks for the villain. All in all, though, I feel that Scarlet has much more potential than is realized herein and that the certain additional spark of brilliance is there, but only as an ember. In contrast to e.g. the Chanting Queen and the Annihilation Sphere, I’m also not that impressed by the niche in high-level enemies she occupies – a tighter focus on e.g. possession in the respective incarnations might have made her more interesting. She’s also not much more powerful than said other major players/creatures, so I’m not entirely sure whether her reputation in the setting is justified. However, these very nitpicky gripes make up my major points of criticism.
Subsequently, I’ll settle for a final verdict of 4 stars.
This installment of the ECS-series is 39 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages advertisement, 1 page SRD, leaving 34 pages of content for this latest installment of RiP’s iconic series. Let’s see how it holds up when compared to some of its excellent predecessors!
This installment, as we’ve come to expect, kicks off with an introduction to the haunted grounds of the erstwhile Patrician’s estates of Eiffelmacher, aptly written in the voice of Owain Northway, explorer extraordinaire and veteran narrator of the ECS-series. I can’t stress enough the importance and quality of the prose of his narrations over the course of the ECS-series, as said in-character exploits make for an easy way not only to capture the mood, but rather let the maps transcend being maps and become an iconic location.
Said estates are now lair to a gang of thugs called the spotty bottle gang, a band of sickle-wielding thugs who come not only with a stat-block for their captains, but also with a short write-up of their hierarchy. Their fighting style is interesting and also includes Bolas (though a typo calls them “bolos”). The leader of the gang, a saltwater-infused rogue/cleric also gets his own statblock that. His background-story offers additional adventure hooks in excess to the 4 that are already provided to justify the PCs exploring the estates. There unfortunately seems to be a formatting glitch in the fluff of the gang’s leader Ormea Kaletka, separating a sentence in the middle via a superfluous blank line.
Next up are haunts – 7 ones, three of which are linked, are presented to offer your PCs a chance to run for their money. They range from CR 2 to 4 and are of the stellar quality and creepy imagery I’ve come to expect from Rite Publishing. One of the haunts, though, has an editing glitch – it speaks of one manifestation of a singular obese person, while the following text continuously refers to “them” and “their”. Nothing too bad, but somewhat annoying.
I haven’t yet talked about the maps and damn, I should: We get maps of the 2 floors of the estate, an overview of its grounds, a map of the two floors of the barn, a map of two floors of the greenhouse and one of the basement amphitheater. All of the maps are full color and thankfully don’t feature annoying numbers and keys, thus qualifying them for good hand-out maps – Nice! The maps come with grids, though, for ease f usage and, as with all ECS-pdfs, we get blown-up b/w-versions of the maps for use with miniatures. The greenhouse and overview of the grounds are not among the blown-up ones, though.
Poor Europeans like yours truly also get all the blown-up maps (i.e. the estate, the basement and the barn) in A4-format in a spate zip-file.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting could have been better; I noticed glitches in both that could have easily been avoided. Layout adheres to the new, full-color 2-column standard you might now from the free Pathways e-zine. The stock-art is beautiful and fits the topic perfectly. The cartography by Richard Biggs Jr. once again brings to life the estates and you get quite some bang for your buck. The pdf is also bookmarked, though one of the bookmarks features another editing glitch. I mainly have two minor gripes with this installment of the series: First are the editing and formatting glitches, that, while not too prevalent, still are there and detract from the otherwise excellent atmosphere and writing. The second would be that I would have loved to see a blown-up version of the green house map as well. I know that there’s an excellent, supremely creepy ECS that deals with a green house, but I’d nevertheless would have enjoyed an inclusion of said location. Other than that, though, I don’t have much to complain about – while this pdf does not quite reach the heights of the best installments of the series, it’s still a solid addition and offers a lot of content for a low price. My final verdict will be 3.5 stars, rounded down to 3 for the time being - as soon as the glitches have been taken care of, I’ll round up to 4.
This adventure is 29 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page dedication, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 2 pages advertisements, leaving 23 pages for the adventure, so let's check it out!
The first thing you'll notice when reading this book is the beautiful layout: Headless Hydra's layout is nice, concise and features the two-column standard. the mostly b/w-artwork is cool and offers some nice pictures to show off to your players.
This being an adventure-review, it contains
SPOILERS,
so potential players please beware and jump to the conclusion.
Still here?
All right:
The basic plot line is rather simple: Animals and even magical beasts have been poisoned and the PCs are hired by a local druid to investigate a dark, spider-infested forest, unearthing the truth: One member of the coven of the Night Hag ( the grand villain of the Mor Aldenn setting) has unearthed an artifact of an archmage of old and uses the artifact to force animals and even magical beasts like unicorns to drink from a poisoned lake, thus killing them. The PCs follow the trail of dead creatures and marauding lizardfolk (strange choices as enemies - they usually are rather depicted as the noble savages instead of brutish goons that don't care about nature) to a dying unicorn at the edge of a sanctuary (which is not detailed). While the riddle and exposition provided are nice, the unicorn nevertheless just feels like it's there for shock value. After that, the PCs venture towards the tower of a curiously absent archmage (that gets a professionally done map) and battle through the enemies (mostly lizardfolk) and finally kill the perpetrator, a green hag and her right-hand maiden, an insane harpy. The adventure concludes with the PCs looting the as of yet untouched upper level of the tower and defeating the final guardian the archmage left.
While the adventure, as per the summary, seems straight-forward enough, I've encountered several problems with this one you ought to know about: First of all, this adventure is a railroad. Yes, it's a wilderness adventure, but there is ONE way to the goal and only one. PCs are penalized by wasted time IRL and random encounters when not succeeding in a tracking check, while the timeline is actually inconsequential for the adventure. There's no need to hurry. The adventure also hits a pet peeve of mine and provides a LOT of easily gained treasure in the tower. E.g. some standard lizardfolk fighting over a flaming shortspear. I'm against magic item inflation and very much for rather unique ones, but oh well - that's a personal preference and will not influence my final verdict. What will influence it, however, is the fact that the villain's "masterplan" is flat-out STUPID. DUMB. MAKES NO SENSE WHATSOEVER. Want me to elaborate? There you go!
The plot-device (TM) artifact is an orb that lets you, once per hour, put a geas on an animal or magical beast within 10 miles. Yep, that means the PCs actually get this artifact [!!! At 2nd to 4th level!!!] in the adventure. Oh, and no hard rules for the will-save are given (or any negative side-effects for owning the artifact), rendering it hard to judge/use. But back to the plan: The green hag has this extremely powerful artifact and uses it to force the animals to drink from the poison lake that can poison almost everything. Ok.
No reason is given for the lake to be poisonous and no stats are given for the undiluted poison that PCs almost definitely will bottle in large quantities. The diluted version of the poison is ridiculously weak for the levels, by the way. Why does the hag use the orb to poison the animals? Grab your seats: Because mages draw power from the land and even the animals. Mages. You know. Wizards & Sorcerors.
Come again? This makes no sense. If they went after druids, I'd be fine with the approach, but against arcane casters? Where does this assumption come from? As far as I'm concerned and after re-reading the PFRPG core rules, that's not how arcane magic works. Even better: The orb can geas animals and magical beasts at a rate of one per hour. Why don't they gather an army and attack en masse? Or send individual, good magical beasts like the unicorn out there to e.g. kill paladins etc.? That would, at least in my opinion, make for a MUCH more interesting adventure that would also pose moral conundrums: Do the PCs attack the unicorns/blink dogs/etc. or try to capture them?
Are the attacked persons perhaps corrupt? Have I mentioned the arcane library and the items the PCs are supposed to get in the end IN ADDITION to an effin' ARTIFACT that enables them to control an UNLIMITED AMOUNT of magical beasts? Why is there no information for the hag to use the artifact against animal companions? Why is there no information for an alarm in the tower and a coordinated defense by the inhabitants? On another note: There are no stat-blocks, no ToC and no bookmarks in this book, making it harder to use than it ought to be.
Conclusion:
Editing is mediocre, I noticed several punctuation errors and 2 grammatical constructions that felt strange to me. Layout is beautiful and formatting is also nice. The b/w-artworks rock and I didn't expect to get that many at this price-point. And yes, I can hear you with regards to the very low price. The price, though, does not change the fact that I can improvise better adventures than that on the fly, that there are several GLARING logic bugs in the villain's plans and that the potential loot is FAR too powerful at this level. While the production values are ok, especially for this low price, I'll just have to warn you that content-wise there is not much going for this adventure: It's railroady to the extreme, makes you look for the stats and is thus not easy on the DM and feels just BAD. Basic assumptions of the plot don't match the rules and I'll direct you to the VASTLY superior "Haunting of Soldragon Academy" - it's a bit more expensive, but there you get one extremely well-crafted adventure. "A Trail of Poison", though...not so. My final verdict, in spite of the very low price, will be 1.5 stars, rounded down to 1.
This pdf is 20 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 4 pages advertisement, and 1 page SRD back cover, leaving 13 pages for Slogar the Uncaring, so, what is he about?
After a full-color, one-page artwork of Slogar the half-orc and his zombie-steed daisy-pusher, we get a new short-fiction, Slogar’s statblock (half-orc cleric 8[theologian], btw.) as well as an elaboration of his motives and appearance as well as his background story. He is a prophet of the endtimes (no, that does not necessarily grant him leeway from my wrath ;D ) and seeks to hasten the inevitable final showdown between good and evil by vile deeds. The sample stories given center around gruesomely killing innocents and feeding them to his zombie horse. Slogar, as a rather straight-forward loner does not offer much in regards to network, resources or allies. It should be noted that Slogar's Hideout get a neat, beautiful full-color map as well as greatly expanded hooks to draw the PCs into conflict with Slogar. Full stats for his CR 4 Undead warhorse Daisy Pusher are part of the deal, as are 3 iconic signature magic items that enhance Slogar's fighting style and his uniqueness. Have I mentioned his new spell, which lets him divine from the entrails of those he has slain?
Conclusion:
Editing is ok, but I noticed some rather awkward phrases that could have been written more compelling. Formatting is ok. Layout adheres to the two-column standard and the statblocks feature some hyperlinks to d20pfsrd, which is nice. Layout has been updated to TPK GAmes new, much improved standard and feels more cohesive. The pdf has finally gotten a vast amount of bookmarks, which is awesome, as is the additional HEroLab--support..
I'm quite frankly positively surprised by the vast improvements TPK Games has made to Slogar - bookmarks, short fiction, magic items, a full-color map - there's not much left to be desired, honestly. Slogar's first incarnation left me unimpressed and this one has eliminated almost all my gripes. While I think he can't hold a Torch to Raxath'Viz and Temerlyth, he is FREE and you'll be hard-pressed to find any that well-written, professionally-presented NPC out there, even if he is not as compelling as TPK's other offerings. Without the "Free"-factor, I'd settle for a final verdict of 4 stars, but with it, there's no reason to not dl Slogar. And rest assured - the commercial releases by TPK Games are even better and thus, my final verdict will now be 5 stars.
This web-enhancement is 14 pages long, half a page of which is devoted to SRD and credits, leaving 13.5 pages of content, quite a bunch!
The pdf kicks off by providing 20 short NPC write-upss for use with the Margreve or any other ancient forest really: Each one provides at least some idea for the beleaguered DM to craft an adventure around. Combined with "Tales of the Old Margreve" (TotOM), they add a lot of details and depth to the adventures.
Next up are 25 reskinned monsters and 15 spells and boy: They alone, even if you don't plan to use TotOM, are worth the price - the idea is essentially to use the stats of a familiar creature with a new exterior and boy, boy, boy: They ROCK! Need an example? What about petrified treants for caryatid columns? Or what about animated, acidic spew-launching logs as a new take on Ankhegs? A spell that works as whispering wind, but carves the message into a nearby tree? (Can you see the horror-potential there?) - Pure awesomeness!
The Margreve bloodline with minor access to hexes and shapechanging is nice as well and incantation-fans like yours truly get another new one - yes!
The new magic items also scream: Brilliant! What about cursed or beneficial Matryoshka dolls? A wine-drinking quilt that may work as a solid bridge if sated?
Finally, we get 12 new traits to customize your Margreve (or forest-dwelling) PC and a new trick you can learn your animals to accept the presence of undead - why this one has not been done until now remains a mystery to me - simple, elegant and closes a hole in the rules.
Conclusion:
The pdf features full-color, flavorful stock-art, layout adheres to the 3-column standard and editing is top-notch - I didn't notice any glitches. While there are no bookmarks, the pdf doesn't specifically need them at this length. The amount of ideas contained in this extremely concisely-written pdf is staggering and you get more value for your bucks than in almost all other publications in this price-range. People who own Tales of the Old Margreve practically have to own this. Anyone else who want to get an impression of the quality should go for it - the content is easily adapted to just about any forest setting and at this price-range you have NO reason not to check it out. My final verdict in the face of this quality at this price-range is, of course, 5 stars and the Endzeitgeist seal of approval.
This adventure anthology/sourcebook is 113 pages long, 1 page front cover, 2 pages editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving 107 pages of content, so let's take a look at it!
The anthology sets the mood immediately via a two-page short fable about fey and beer and offers thus a great lead-in to the gazetteer-section on the Margreve, the ancient forest of Midgard, where both the wonder, strangeness, creepiness and awe of the forest come back to live and intermingle with the cruel Germanic and Slavic folktales. Both attitudes of the folk, their old ways and rites and customs and the global powers of the forest are detailed in a prime example of concise and flavorful writing. The culmination of this section is both the advice on how to play the "character" Margreve, different takes on it and a plethora of adventure hooks of the highest caliber for your perusal. The detailed subsections of the forest, ranging from creepy shadowfeyish to creepy dream-like and creepy primeval offer a vast plethora of potential ideas for DMs especially and even players on a minor scale. I guarantee that you'll find inspiration in these pages if your creativity hasn't completely dried up. Have I mentioned that e.g. Baba Yaga is a firm and unique part of Margrevian mythology?
On a rules-perspective, we also get a whole section on how magic works in the Margreve (subtly different, including visual clues) and mechanically different for those not versed in the Old Ways. We also get the obligatory part on new magic and, while this section more often than not, elicits yawns from me, let me assure you that each and every one of the 6 spells herein is pure killer and rocks - hard. Even better, for people like me who enjoy the primeval and dangerous flair of incantations, we get three new ones - Awesome!
Next up is the bestiary and in the fine tradition of Open Design, all of them, I repeat, all of them, are killer, no filler. From the Ala storm-witches, the supremely creepy children of the briar, the noble deer-centaurs, green hussars, undead mylings and rusalka brides, the extremely disturbing sap demons up to the majestic and lustful zmey, each and every critter herein has several unique abilities. Almost all of them feature their own unique artworks and concluding the oomphteenth time I read this section, I'm still all up in arms about the quality. If all bestiaries were of this quality, I could put my virtual reviewer's pen down.
All right, that's as far as I can go without spoilers, as now begins the adventure section of the book. Potential players, please stop reading NOW, SPOILERS abound!
...
Still here?
...
All right, the first adventure, "Hollow" by one of the masters of horror, Richard Pett, pits the 1st-level PCs and a tiny hamlet under their command against both mad animals and the dread harvester of the singing tree, the hollow man. The Scythe-wielding CR 5 Hollow Man makes for a very disturbing enemy, as PCs of their level don't truly stand a chance against it: While it is harvesting the heads of townsfolk and not interested in the PCs per se, they have a strict timeline in which they can try to stop the deadly enemy and finally confront and destroy the tree adorned with decapitated heads, which coincidentally sings unperceivable through the skulls and thus drives the animals of the forest insane. An awesome, smart and creepy introductory adventure!
Next up is "The Honey Queen", a completely different fare: Dreamlike and somewhat reminiscent of the Alice-novels, Jonathan McAnulty weaves a yarn of excellent narrative quality: The PCs are hired to acquire a special kind of honey that supposedly prolongs your life. Problem is, though, that the awakened queen bee lairs around hallucinogenic flowers (necessary for the honey) and that she does trade exclusively with the scáthsidhe, the shadow fey. As spokesperson and foe to the PCs on their way through the awesome, creepy hive is the adopted stepdaughter of the queen, a girl in temporal stasis who has developed the power to use bee-swarms as surrogate bodies. The PCs have to act smart to bring the girl back to life, get the honey and brave the bee-hive-dungeon. This adventure also rewards non-lethal problem-solving and can end on a plethora of notes, depending on the PC's actions.
"Challenge of the Fang" by Dan Voyce has two excellent adventures to follow up on and succeeds - Challenge of the Fang can have severe repercussions for the PCs if they fail: Every 3 generations, the battle between wolf and man is fought again, in a dread ritual that will determine whether wolf or man reigns supreme and earns the favor of the Margreve. How is the outcome determined? Well, think "Little Red Ridin' Hood" with the PCs and the wolves trying to get to the red-cape-wearing girl first, including a very fairy-tale like, cool series of tests, portents that come true etc. It's hard to capture the mood of a fairy-tale in an adventure and Dan Voyce succeeded with grace - One of the best takes on the material I've seen - sufficiently close for the players to get it and far enough and creatively different to make it challenging and surprising.
"The Griffon Hatchling Heist" by Michael Furlanetto is a nice change of pace, from the grim and fantastic to an adventure that could very well have your players smile: When they are being approached by a housecat, they may very well have one of the most unlikely quest-givers ever - the housecat turns out to be the polymorphed griffon-leader Lesharrkk, who wants the PCs to infiltrate a tower where she and her brethren once nested and which is now the base of a huge amount of bugbears led by ogres and a cyclops. The PCs should get in, take the eggs and get them out before they hatch - of course, just as the PCs reclaim the griffon's offspring they begin to hatch and getting them out without any one of them being perceived by the critters - after all, PCs probably don't want to raise griffons...or do they? Depending on the amount of griffons saved, whether they consider the PCs their mother, Lesharrkk might make for a cool ally in future adventures. All in all, a great change of pace and one that made me smile!
After the rather light-hearted heist, we get a disturbing race against time in Tim Connor's "Gall of the Spider Crone". When the PCs enter a tavern featuring a lot of Kariv, they quickly realize that the gypsies have something to hide: Just prior to the PCs arrival, one of the legendary spider-crones has stumbled into the inn and, while morally dubious, suffers from a huge gall that, in a disturbing perversion of pregnancy, is eating up the crone from within - operation seems to be not an option and the desperate crone offers the PCs the same rewards as the Kariv to embark on a race against time to procure the means to save her from one of her sisters. What she does not mention is, that temporary possession is a part of the cure... As the PCs embark on a stormy hunt through the trails of the forest, they are hounded by various complications before finally arriving at a spider-legged home clinging to a huge vine across a canyon. In order to return in time, the PCs will have to use the spider-legged house to navigate the Margreve back to the inn, save the crone and kill the ala that will burst from the gall. The iconic usage of the spider-house to travel back to the inn alone is worth playing the adventure - another winner!
This latest installment of the FotTS-series is 14 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page credits, 2 pages of advertisements and 1 page SRD, leaving 9 pages for the three incarnations of Brynhild.
As is the usual procedure in the series, this pdf begins with one page of aptly-written prose on the background of the character, a sidebox on how to best use her and information on dreamburning.
In the by now time-honored tradition of Rite Publishing and this series in particular, we get a very complex, multi-templated NPC, whom, in order to understand, we should dissect:
Minor spoilers ahead, players might want to jump ahead.
One of the templates is the mithril-clad template (CR+1 ), the template that (ironically) tarnishes Brynhild, for she obtained it from a devil who still can cash in his payment for the favor.
/SPOILER
Brynhild is an aellar elf, a rare type of winged elf and the race gets its racial traits presented as well: Aellar get +2 to Dex and Int, but -2 to Con, low-light vision, elven immunities and the aellar ancestry from another excellent book by RiP. Irt should also be noted that Brynhild utilizes the mixed mystery oracle archetype, which is also included herein. Oracle? Yep, our stalwart, honorbound valkyrie is actually an oracle with the curses of haunted and tongues, but represented in a way that is both unconventional and imaginative.
Her low-level CR 6 incarnation, Brynhild the Merciful, is thus clad in the template, but lo! And behold, her mid-level incarnation once again starts to show the imaginative interweaving of templates I’ve come to enjoy so much in these pdfs: The “Enchanted” (CR +1) template is added to her, as are levels – here, she clocks in at CR 13 as Brynhild Eirensdottir, the Iron Swan.
Her high-level incarnation also gets the immortal-template (CR +1) and boy, Brynhild Eirensdottir the Shining Valkyrie, is a terrible beauty to behold, both her b/w-artwork (though I’ve seen this one before), but mostly due to her CR 20-statblock, including cool abilities like turning into a fiery, positive energy elemental. She also gets access to the Mystical Healer feat, two new spells and 3 items, though you might know the spells “Cleanse of Alcohol” and “Discern Health” from RiP’s excellent 101 0-level-spells. The items are Robes of Renewal, greater and lesser and a helm that features a deathwatch and status-effect.
Conclusion:
Editing is top-notch, I didn’t notice any glitches. The same holds true for formatting. Layout adheres to RiP’s classic b/w-two-column-standard. The b/w-piece of artwork is nice. The pdf is extensively bookmarked.
Brynhild is a VERY interesting take on the valkyrie-trope – she is a healer, but one that may irk the players due to the tendency of enabling fallen warriors to fight again. Her carefree enthusiasm is contrasted starkly with the implied taint of her infernal-babbling fits of rage. I really like that particular duality, as well as the idea to use the mithril-clad template in conjunction with the metal mystery. Brynhild is a great character that might be utilized in a plethora of ways, as ally, adversary, annoyance or sponsor any combination of the mentioned. I really liked this installment of the series, though, as a healer and a rather interesting take on it, certainly was not too easy to design. Nevertheless, I slightly preferred the last three installments, some of which also provided a bit more content. Given that there’s nothing wrong per se with Brynhild, she still remains an awesome addition to your campaign and sans any true gripes and with only personal preferences to go, my final verdict will be 5 stars – Well done, once again!
This pdf is 16 pages, 1 page front cover, 1/3 page credits, ½ page SRD, leaving 14 1/6 pages of content, so let’s check out this offering of ZSP!
What actually do we get here? Well, the new 20-levels yamabushi base-class kicks the pdf off. The class is focusd on a perfection of both mind and body through transmutation magic. The class has d8, 4+ Int skills, bad BAB, good fort saves and access to full spontaneous spellcasting, restricted to the transmutation schools, be it divine or arcane. The associated attribute is Cha and you can ignore the divine focus component in divine spells, but both arcane and divine spells suffer from arcane spell failure chance if you cast them. Additionally, you’ll select a path that will determine some of the central aspects of the class, i.e. privileged spells that are always active on you, meditations, contemplations and the final lvl 20-realization. A side-box also explains the similarities between the yamabushi and the oracle and elaborates on revelations the yamabushi might take instead of his own contemplations.
The paths you get to choose from are:
- Path of the Razor Wind: This path focuses on wind-like spells, mobility and the ability to use attacks at range. The final ability is keeping all privileged spells active at once.
- Path of the Starry Eyes: This rather interesting path focuses on dimensional shifts, duplication and manipulation of perception and reality – nice for a rather cthulhoid/Himalayan-style yamabushi. The final ability is keeping all privileged spells active at once. I LOVE this path!
- Path of the Primal Dream: The shapechanger path enables the practicing yamabushi, enabling you to take extraordinary abilities and even use abilities from other creature they can polymorph into, possibly combining e.g. the extraordinary abilities of creature A with creature B. While a cool idea, I think it’s almost impossible to calculate the repercussions some combinations might enable the PCs to pull off. I’m not sure I’d allow this one in my game. The final ability is fats healing 5.
- Path of the Trying Steel: A path focused on melee, somewhat similar to battle oracle builds that can use special attacks to inflict bleed, reduce movement rates etc. The Revelation once again enables you to have all your privileged spells active at once. I liked this path.
-Path of the Maker’s Hand: The smith-path among the available ones and focuses on enhancing your equipment and forging magic items without knowing the spells necessary to craft the items as well as elemental powers and creatures. Again, the final ability enables you to to have all privileged spells active at once. This path somehow felt inconsistent to me – between elemental power, crafting and buffing I missed the clean line.
We also get additional information: The Daitengu race, a shapechanger-take on the Tengu as a playable race and the new yokai subtype. Unfortunately, while a nice bonus, the race suffers from the direct comparison with Rite Publishing’s excellent “In the Company of Tengu”. There are also two feats to change your known and privileged spells, which I liked in their elegant and simple design. A new weapon and weapon quality are also presented, but both are nothing to write home about. There are also three new spells, lesser beast shape, selective gravity and subjective time. The spells are surprisingly well-designed and imaginative. For your convenience, a list of all transmutation spells from core, APG and UM is also included.
The pdf concludes with the statblock of an iconic yamabushi.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any glitches. The pdf is extensively bookmarked and thankfully comes in both a screen- and a printer-friendly version. Layout adheres to the three-column standard and is clean, concise and well-presented. The artwork is very comic-style and not my cup of coffee – it feels a bit childish and does not really serve to enhance the flair that well. The yamabushi-class itself is modular and well-written, though I’m still rather cautious of the Path of the Primal Dream. While I love the quirky, whacky feel of the class as a truly specialist caster with some weaponfocused abilities and its enlightenment/weird abilities, I think it fell short of its own potential in a key regard, namely its capstone abilities: With one exception, they are all the same. While I like the ability to have the privileged spells active at once and due to the different spell-lists, they still feel different, I would have nevertheless liked some more diversity there.
The Daitengu race didn’t wow me either – probably due to RiP already having done the excellent Tengu race-book. The additional material is of varying quality – the weapon and weapon quality and race didn’t wow me, but the feats, spells and spell-list rock. The book’s mechanics are sound, but between the artwork not being the best, the varying quality of the additional material, the potentially unbalancing path I still have a strange gut-feeling and after some careful pondering, I realized that, while I love the general idea of the class, there is something missing. Yamabushi somehow fall short of what they could have been – with some more ideas like in the Starry Eyes Path, some more of these excellent unique spells, I could have ignored the sub-par parts. As it stands, the pdf is an interesting purchase for the low price for those who are intrigued by the specialist caster approach, though not one I can unanimously recommend. Thus, my final verdict will be 3 stars.
This pdf is 23 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1/3 page credits, ½ page SRD, leaving 21 1/6 pages of content, so let’s check out the fey!
The second installment of ZSP’s Fey-line threads an unconventional terrain in its first installment, offering us Red Jack, a tragic kitsune, i.e. a fox spirit who unjustly was murdered and clawed his way back from the dead to exact terrible vengeance on his tormentors. Infiltrating a village, the kitsune that one day would become dread Jack managed to marry and impregnate a girl and live will her as a human husband, only to be found out on his daughter’s birth and promptly be burnt alive. After transcending death and a vicious spree of rage he has now become the lord of his own demesne and convinced that there is one being worthy of his love and devotion: Lady Death, to whom he pledged his service. But before I go on to elaborate on Jack, let’s briefly discuss his demi-plane-like demesne, the semi-sentient Strngle Grove that can create deadly carnivorous plants along and e.g features a gallows-like grove of vines as well as the monument to death and revenge Jack made of his erstwhile wife, the major artifact murder stone.
Having once been a kitsune, Jack’s pdf also includes a lot of fox-related fey-like creatures, beginning with Kitsune, who get both their own stats as well as information on how to use them as a player race. The Kitsune get -4 Str, +2 Dex, +2 Cha, small, 40 ft. movement, low-light vision, are quadruped, get scent, a bite attack, can substitute the power of their tails for spell components, get an alternate form and can take fox magic feats, but more on them later.
Next up are the ghost foxes, Red Jack’s twisted kitsune, trapped somewhere in between life and death. Ghost foxes come with their own one page +2CR template to enable you to create your own. Formatting-wise there’s a rather strange decision, though: The template separates the entry of the pipe-fox into two parts, making this particular statblock harder to read than it necessarily should be.
Wait, wait, wait…pipe-foxes? Yep, the iconic secret-mongers are represented in here as well and even get 2 statblocks, one CR 2 and a CR 13.
Red Jack’s daughter, the one link that makes the difference between the contemplative, calculating schemer and the bestial, red-hot angry killer he was after his transcendence, also gets her own fluff-section and artwork, though her stats will have to wait for a future publication.
Red Jack’s primary statblock is a dread beauty to behold: CR 27 and deadly beyond belief. Even his bloodthirsty alternate statblock (when losing the connection to Ren), at CR 23 still will challenge all but the most powerful of groups. Befitting a creature of its power, the quasi-undead kitsune fey-lord of course has a unique weapon, an oversized starball called death bloom, which makes both for a cool signature weapon and an awesome major artifact.
3 new fey subtypes are introduced, the kitsune, the quiddity and the yokai, making for more diversity in your home game. Especially the quiddity is a very, very cool concept.
9 Fox magic feats are presented to enhance the flair of the kitsune and related creatures, their availability depending on the level of the respective foxes via the count of their tails. From the ability to create extradimensional spaces, enhancing attacks, summoning foxfire (ranged fire/electricity touch attack sans save) to changing planes and creating illusory duplicates.
The Kitsune’s star balls are also given their paragraph of information and a new spell deals with a convergence of these items with other wondrous items. Finally, there is something I greatly enjoyed and that is a new incantation for Kitsune to leave their bodies and possess them.
Conclusion:
The pdf comes in two versions, one b/w printer-friendly version and one gorgeous full-color version that will test the mettle of any color-printer. Layout in the full color version is just ravishingly beautiful, blue background and fine lines complement the stunning artworks that can be seen in most ZSP-books. The numerous illustrations just rock and both fluff and crunch are top quality. Editing is also top-notch, I didn’t notice a single mistake. The full-color version comes with full bookmarks, the b/w-version has none. Which brings me to the one weak point of this pdf, the formatting: The bookmarks are littered with unnecessary typos: there are 7 blank spaces in the middle of words too much and 2 closing brackets are missing. Furthermore, the last lines of the incantation seem to be in another font as the rest of the file. While these are only cosmetic blemishes, they did upset me a bit due to them being a) unnecessary and b) tarnishing an otherwise excellent book. On the content-side, I’m not entirely convinced whether the shapechanging Kitsune really should be a player race, alternate shape often being something I’m rather wary of, as is being quadruped or not bipedal. For those of you who always wanted to play a kitsune, this book has a lot to offer and DMs will cackle with glee at the sight of this malevolent, yet very striking take on a completely different kind of fey lord. My final verdict will be 4.5 stars, rounded down for the purpose of this platform.
This pdf is 34 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page blank inside front cover, 2 pages editorial/ToC (including the rhyme/stanza almost ever RSP-product comes with –awesome!), 1 page to help novice DMs read the statblocks, 1 page SRD, 1 page advertisement and 1 page back cover, leaving 26 pages for the wererat-installment of the TRIBES-series, so let’s take a look at what we’ll get!
This pdf’s introduction to the tribe in question is a bit different, kicking off with a rather general approach to explaining wererats, before going into details on two sample families, the Greentail Brotherhood and house Tarmaine. As the introduction text, the lore-section offers information on wererats in general instead of specific information on the tribes. After this general introduction at hand, we get a concise page of sewer features and hazards that can serve to enrich any encounters in the damp darkness, not just ones with wererats. For your convenience, 6 encounters with patrols and the like ranging from EL 5 to 10 have been provided.
In the tradition of the customizable TRIBES-line, we of course get new material, prime of which should be considered “The Filth”, a kind of abstract deific concept of decay, grime and…well, filth. The Filthe provides a new domain/patron spell-list, two new granted domain powers centering on disease and a new hex to instantly active a dormant disease. A variant sewer druid with stench, disease and vermin-focus is also provided, though I would have loved to see a more complex archetype here. The arcanists can now obtain delightfully disgusting cockroach familiars. Surprisingly, the rogue talents (usually something rather hard do) are very cool – in animal form, wererats can meld stolen items into their forms, making for some rather cool potential scenes. The wererats also get two new rage-powers, which felt odd to me – they would have better suited some more martially inclined subset of lycanthropes. Instead, I would have loved some new mysteries for sewer oracles or even wererat inquisitors – after all, they are the most social lycanthropes, why not?
The battle feats that define the respective tactics of a given tribe are also back: 4 feats for wererats that range from bland “ignore bad terrain” to the average “Sewer Guerilla” which lets you ignore any cover of flatfooted foes while in the sewers (and has a punctuation error) to the very cool “Roach Trainer”-feat that enables you to treat a roach as if it had up to 6 tricks.
5 new spells are provided, but apart from “Lunar Memory” (forces you to remember time while transformed) I liked none of them: “Detect Lycanthrope” is another one of these pesky, stupid detect spells that slow down game and should not exist: In a world with this spell, infiltration by lycanthropes is practically impossible, as it’s only lvl 2. The same goes for “Forced Transformation”, which hits another pet peeve of mine and is just a cheap cop out for the players of mystery adventures centering around e.g. wererats.“Detect Vermin” suffers not from this infiltration problem, but is still superfluous in my opinion.
The next section of the book details new magic items, including the filth fever flail (that gets its own artwork) and the hand of inglory, a minor semi-cursed brother to the hand of glory. My favorite item, though, is the alchemical Roachmusk that makes roaches friendly and helps training them.
The amulet of control though is not my cup of coffee – it helps the owner prevent change when he/she is an infected lycanthrope. While I’m glad the amulet does not prevent change altogether, it’s still a certain kind of item I don’t absolutely need in my game. All the items come with the lore-sections that can by now be considered part of the excellent RSP-standard.
Introducing the crunch-section, we get a page devoted to the distinction between natural lycanthropes, afflicted ones, what happens to slain ones etc., a lycanthrope abc so to speak.
Next up are the statblocks and as just about every DM knows – Lycanthropes need three of them and this book provides: We get Sewer Savages (Barbarian 4, with 2 sample RSP-NPC treatments), Sewer Shamans (Druid 4, with two names and RSP-NPC-treatment, i.e. sample hooks, mannerisms, etc.), Sewer Thieves (Rogue 3, again with two extensive NPC-infos to put names of the stats). More interesting, though than the other NPCs, is the sewer trainer (Ranger 3, 1 sample personality, includes trained giant cockroach and riding cockroach).
Of course, we also get sample personalities: Dinala (monk2/witch 5) is a one-handed wererat that looks after the orphans of the city and seethes with rage for a monastic order that took her hand when she was a child. Her plan to use inglory hands to this end rocs and makes for one of the best, most engaging backgrounds that may well see the PCs allied with her rather than as her primary foes. A great lesser-of-two-evils plotline waiting to happen!
The next NPC, Mkadi Litabou, an Halfling con-artist (rogue 8) of the most devious kind is another prime example for one of the most detailed and well-written NPCs in the line as of yet, almost on pat with e.g. Villains II.
On the other end of the social scale, Lady Ladonna Tarmaine (rogue 4/cleric 5), a decadent aristocratic devotee of Filth has managed to create a huge CR 9 cockroach abomination – iconic and cool.
This free offering yb the fellows of Zombie Sky Press is 8 pages long, 2 pages of which are devoted to advertisements, ½ page SRD and 1/3 page credits, leaving 5 1/6 pages of free content, so let’s check them out!
The first thing you’ll probably notice is the great Falling Leaves-comic by Ashton Sperry, which made me laugh. The Tattlebox as an item itself (rather as a major artifact) gets its full stats and makes for an interesting, albeit dangerous tool. Nice idea!
There is an extended discussion on how to split the party without boring the players and why it is actually a good idea. Or at least how you can enhance you game with this technique. While the column did not offer explicit new information for me, it did remind me of some basics I haven’t consciously thought about in quite a while.
The Marketplace of the file offers you a fine selection of new weapons – from the light ballista, the chain-whip and the heavy meteor hammer to the war fork we get neat selection of martial toys to crush our enemies. Or cut or pierce them. 6 weapon features for them are included and usually offer up to a +2 bonus on specific actions. Nice!
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any glitches. Layout is clean, writing is concise and the material is balanced, cool, helpful and best of all: FREE. The good kind of free, the high quality, almost KQ-level quality, but FREE. 0 bucks. You have no reason not to pick this up, it’s a great pdf and my final verdict is 5 out of 5 stars and the Endzeitgeist seal of approval. Go check this out!
The second part of the three-part Japanese horror saga set in Kaidan, "Dim Spirit" clocks in at a whopping 64 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page list of contributors, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page back cover, 6 pages of advertisement and 2 pages SRD, leaving 51 pages for the second part of the epic, so let's check out whether it stands up to the excellent quality we had in the first part!
First of all you’ll notice the, once again, excellent quality of the layout: The Bamboo-lined pages and the artworks serve greatly to enhance the overall, unique feel that made me appreciate the first Kaidan-adventure so much. The adventure is also bookmarked extensively for your convenience. After being introduced to the new country and its rules and subjected to some of the dark things lurking in the shadows of this place, the plotline now evolves: From a journey into the night and towards ever more sordid revelations of Kaidan I, the pace now changes into another direction and the fighting-spirit of both your PCs and players will be tested by this second part and its bleak, sorrowful narrative. Unfortunately, that’s as far as I can go on about this adventure without spoiling anything, so potential players beware, from here on reign the
SPOILERS
That could destroy an experience you would hate to see…well…spoilt.
….
Still here? All right! We left the PC’s trail when they entered Tsue-Jo to finally deliver Marl’s “Gift” and free his daughter from the clutches of the daimyo. Subsequently, the first act of the PCs will be to explore the town and settle in a Gaijin-friendly Inn the daimyo provides for unwelcome (or rather unimportant) visitors. Not all is expected to go well by the enigmatic merchant, though, as he sends the PCs to buy horses (they will smell the necessary fast getaway) and more importantly, to let them spread gifts among the populace – red silken handkerchiefs. For what purpose, though, only becomes evident later. It is here that I want to comment on something that is unfortunately rather rarely seen in adventures – social encounters. Both the handkerchief-dispersing and the horse-shopping (quite difficult with the xenophobic populace) as well as the resulting scene in the daimyo’s palace can be seen as prime examples for good “normal” encounters, which make the resurgence of the horrific aspects later all the more important. Even the visit at the daimyo’s palace, while disturbing, goes quite well and Marl can reclaim his daughter and even get a present. Nothing is as it seems in Kaidan, though, and I refrain from spelling out exactly what happens, but after the scene at the palace and the PC’s departure from there, they are marked and their escape will prove to be one laden with a severe handicap that will continue to be both problem and motivation for the PCs. Extensive advice for the Dm to deal with some of the potential problems is also offered in this section – nice!
The first station on the way is an abandoned village including a garden shrine, where a terrible tragedy of star-crossed lovers (yes, it’s the kill by accident trope, but with a twist) occurred, but before you start to yawn and move on, let me tell you that both the location are iconic, detailed and creepy, that the people in question are interesting and that, most importantly, they serve as a side-quest, a backdrop to a rather personal tragedy the PCs will have to face. If successfully united, though, the PCs might claim a katana that greatly improves similar to the wielder’s honor – a great concept and mechanic, one step beyond RiP’s excellent take on legacy items and one I hope to see expanded upon in future releases!
Again, this is a massive SPOILER, please players, jump to the conclusion.
…
Marl’s daughter, who seemed all fine, albeit traumatized, seems to recover from her ordeal at the hands of the daimyo, only to turn out to have been changed into an essentially hapless and tragic form of undead that can’t remember her deeds by day and reforms if slain – another burden, though one the PCs might, via a good DM, grow very fond of her and even pity her to the extent that they’ll try to find salvation for her. Presuming the PCs draw the right conclusions, that is. Otherwise one of them will be in for a nasty surprise indeed! Add to that Marl coming clear and telling the PCs about his handkerchief-scheme, which enraged the daimyo and they’re in for fun.
Bereft of the guide that acted as a mediator for the PCs until now, they are now hunted by a powerful force in this foreign land, handicapped by a growing weakness and a deadly killer that makes sleeping a gamble and encourages competent and creative problem-solving. Remember me telling you about despair? There you go, a perilous journey is ahead of them and let’s hope the PCs will be smart and stick to the bushes to evade the enemies hot on their heels!
Now, if you’re thinking about the wilds being the place for random encounters, you’d of course be right, but the encounters provided go beyond what you’d expect from individual short monster-bouts, being less random and rather exciting, from bakeneko to shadow stalkers and giant dragonflies, the PC will hope for solace at their destination. If your DM-alarm-bells are ringing again, don’t fret, once again extensive information is provided to ensure you’ll keep the plot going in spite of potential player-detours to the story.
Kitsumura, once again with a beautiful map, is a rather interesting place to visit – after all, it’s a hengeyokai village! (Look forward to the ITC-installment!) In the village, the PCs can find some kind of help if they play their cards right with the non-humans, i.e. by the PCs helping the henge in their troubles – their water-supply has been compromised and to add insult to injury, Snow-falling-on-the-blood, the mastermind behind one of the most disturbing encounters in Kaidan I, is now in the village, albeit disguised. While the PCs hopefully can put the beast to justice, they’ll also have to deal with a supernatural death squad as well as the now corrupted spring that has been tainted by a dread oni, its kami enraged and mad and probably a dread foe the PCs can overcome by being smart. The main antagonist of part I makes a return from the dead after that and it’s time to conclude this installment with the PCs learning (at the latest now), the way to end their undead companion as well as finally know what prompted their sickness – the PCs will want to get the source of their ailment. Which is, of course, in the lion’s den - the daimyo’s place. However, now the PCs have made friends with the hengeyokai and thus have a connection with their Tengu allies.
After that, we’ll get to the appendices, the first dealing with reincarnation, or rather KAidan’s twisted version of it. The second offers us new beasties, two great templates and some critters, all of which have some unique, cool fluff and some of which, once again are rendered in stunningly beautiful b/w-images, though not all. Rangers also get a new archetype, and a rather complex one at that as the yojimbo is spanning two pages – it is balanced, nice and makes for an interesting choice for eastern rangers. In another appendix, the concept of samurai honor is explained and its mechanics are expanded upon via two new feats. The pdf concludes with 4 pregens as well as an extensive-two-page glossary to help the DM run the saga and enhance the fluff.
This pdf is 19 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, 2 pages of advertisements, leaving 14 pages of content, so let’s check the latest installment of the #30-series out!
As we’re used to by now, the pdf kicks off with an aptly-written IC-introduction to the matter at hand and sets the traps located herein at the optional backdrop of Rakifabeer, the main necropolis of the land of tombs and manages to actually sketch an interesting civilization and backdrop in a single page - a commendable example of concise writing! Moreover, the designer’s short commentary informs us that we actually get 55 traps instead of 30 – more than our poor PCs bargained for. Even better, though, several are combined into trap encounters, making a case for the complex traps I love so much. But onwards to the traps – will they stand up to the excellent “Art of Traps” by Necromancers of the Northwest?
The first thing you’ll notice when delving into the traps is, that they are not simply an assortment of traps (though they can be used as such), but actually work as a kind of gazetteer of the necropolis, including details like victims of polymorph traps etc., which subsequently evokes a rather gazetteer-like feeling that goes far beyond a dry crunch-book and is even reminiscent of a sketch for a trap-focused adventure – Neat! This flair is further enhanced by providing e.g. a simple, grid-map for the “Tombs of Tamar”, including A LOT of information to give the PCs hints of what to expect via linguistics and smart thinking. The traps linked to a Tamar king’s tomb are especially devious, well-placed and cool and come with another map.
But don’t be concerned, even the regular traps we get, are imaginative: Picture a room with a floor that tilts into the corner where the most weight lies, add two swinging deadly scythes to separate the room into quarters and you get a nice example of an easy to implement trap, that is just plain cool in its rather simple, yet iconic deviousness.
Of course, the indy-trap, aka the rolling boulder had to get its representation, too and I actually prefer this one to NWN’s take on the trap, probably also due to there being a nice side-view of the traps make-up and the nice stumble-traps. No, that’s actually not it, rather it’s the addition of a reverse gravity for maximum pain n the PC’s part. And the alternative of a rolling ball of water. Water? Yep, and no the PCs are not supposed to drown. After all, there are those cute shocker lizards…
That’s what I’m talking about, it’s this kind of inventiveness that makes the distinction between good and awesome. Speaking of drowning: Combine magnets and water for a happy drowning and if that’s not enough, add one of the party-separation traps for even more fun. If you’re sadistically inclined (like I am), there’s also a downright cruel and evil trap that made me chuckle with glee: Teleport into a sarcophagus and transformation into a mummy – scream, PCs, scream! *Muahahaha*
That are the small and “simple” traps. Yep. I was wide-eyed when I read that, too. The Necromancer’s chessboard (again, with a schematic depiction), makes for a cool idea and the pit-traps that conclude the pdf make for a nice addition to the file. While at first I wasn’t too excited about them, due to their proximity in the file, I realized that they could easily be stacked for deadly effects and the “Ahhh-owww-ahhh-ow-ahhh-owwww-etc.”-factor.
Conclusion:
The pdf is extensively bookmarked and I noticed no editing or formatting glitches bar one: In the designer’s commentary, the pdf is referred to by its work-in-progress title “tricky traps”. That’s it and definitely nothing that could be considered a justification for detracting a star. Layout adheres to the new two-column-RiP-standard and artwork is b/w stock-art, but beautiful and very flavorful one. Indeed, I can’t bring myself to saying anything negative about this file – it’s a joy to read (in contrast to most crunch-heavy books), is easily integrated into any setting/dungeon, could stand alone as an adventure-locale/mini-gazetteer and would e.g. make for a great expansion of modules like “Pact-stone Pyramid” or the legendary “Necropolis” by Gary Gygax (R.I.P.), one of my favorite adventures of all time.
A crunch-heavy book full of imaginative traps, a practically complete trap-based adventure-sketch, an iconic flair and traps that truly deserve the moniker “imaginative” – Could one want for more? Yes, I missed one thing and have to admit that, while NNW’s “Art of Traps” has to admit defeat on all other levels, there is no complex puzzle-trap in here that necessitates the players thinking outside the box/logical and the complex traps from NNW’s book are just a joy to behold. In all other regards, though, #30 Traps for Tombs is just stellar and offers more content than promised – a lot more. It was not necessarily the additional crunch, but the stellar, captivating presentation and fluff that made this book a true blast to read and sparked off some truly insidious ideas in the twisted mind of yours truly –With all the praise I’ve heaped on this book, you might imagine what my final verdict will be: 5 stars and the Endzeitgeist-seal of approval. If you even have the slightest soft spot for traps, go check this out – the low price nearly forces your hand to do so. In fact, check it out even if you don’t like traps or trap-books: It might sway you!
This file is 25 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 2 pages of ads, so let’s take a look at what can be considered npc-boons on the 20 pages!
So…what are boons? Ever wanted to reward your PCs with something different than treasure? What about personal favors? Yep, that’s where we’re going. The boons presented herein can be categorized broadly into the categories urban, frontier, rural, nautical and wilderness and some of the characters and 8 of them get their own respective stat-blocks in order to better enable you to judge what they can or cannot do. The obvious favors with the city-guard make for the first couple of boons, thankfully including names so you don’t have to improvise on the fly. The bureaucrat and the judge as well as the upper class are more interesting, as is the ironborn guard captain who gets full stats,as does the cool wyrd luckbringer/rogue Cirith Masked Starfall. If you haven’t checked the wyrd, ironborn and luckbringer out, you might want to – the pdfs are all great. The tendency to give the sample, generalist and extremely easy to implement boon-givers a name and minor backstory, sometimes even with a secret, makes writing adventures around the boons and judging on how the PCs might obtain them, rather easy. Want an example?
Well, there’s an insane bard (?) or oracle who is in love with a frog washed down the storm drain. Gold!
A divine channeler sample-character is also provided, including all the information you need to run him, so if you haven’t picked up Secrets of divine channeling”, no problem! The same goes for a rather cool Jotunnar taskshaper explorer character, of course. You see how this book goes beyond being a bland list of skill- and monetary bonuses, not only in the characters that get their statblocks, but also in e.g. short sections on fae-boons, a ghost-contact and even an awakened advanced deer.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any glitches. Layout adheres to the traditional b/w-two-column standard of RiP and the stock-art is nice, the non-stock-art even better. The pdf is bookmarked for easy navigation. Oh boy, this is hard. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure how to rate this book, as I’ve never read one like it before, which definitely is a plus. First of all, I want you to know that neither mechanically, nor with regards to the fluff there is anything wrong with this pdf. It actually features a lot cool ideas and characters that can easily serve to populate a given setting, be it a city or a rural area and the general usability of this book makes it a valuable asset to have as a DM. The statblocks make for another bonus, as the characters provided are of the trademark cool race/class combination or RiP. It serves as a nice guide to some of the other RiP-publications, offering excellent sneak peeks at pdfs you might have missed. This is a humble book, not a crunch-heavy list that beats you over the head with values and calculations. Nor is it an intricately-woven story connecting all the NPCs. Rather, 101 NPC boons is just that: A lot of useful boons with some statblocks and great, evocative ideas in-between. I sincerely believe that almost any DM should and could use this book, if only as a nice little library to help if (s)he has to improvise an NPC for a plan of the PCs. The only thing I truly missed in this easy to implement book was a named NPC with a truly unique boon. And yes, I realize that e.g. luckbringer, channeler and taskshaper serve this niche for those of you who don’t yet know them, but I have read, reviewed and used them all and thus for me personally that doesn’t count. ;) In the end, though, I practically have to settle on a final verdict of 5 stars, as this book is severely needed out there, does something different and is immensely useful.
The first offering of RiP’s Lone Tree-imprint offers us the tools to make 3-d paper models to depict our dungeons – which brings me to a point I have to admit: I’m kind of a paper-model nerd and subsequently I love the idea of this series. I’ll nevertheless try to be as unbiased and grumpy as you’ve come to expect me to be.
Designer Brain Bartlow and master of maps Jonathan Roberts have combined their talents to deliver an interesting project: The zip-file contains both the components for the dungeon and some items, as well as .studio files for cutters and 2 pdfs providing instructions on how to assemble the models. Lone Tree seems to have a policy to shun glue whenever possible, which is a boon – after all, it enables you to create the models while e.g. on the train or bus once you cut them out. Which is another definite plus; As many items of a kind as possible have been fitted on each respective page conserving ink/toner while printing out the full-color pieces.
What do you get, then? Each component comes with step-by-step instructions with photos to assemble the parts along easy to understand comments. To construct the dungeon itself, you get instructions on how to build the wall (with the optional step of using a magnet and iron fillings to make the floor heavier), a door (which, due to the moving parts and other concerns uses glue, single, hidden and double doors are provided), an instruction to actually make EASY-to-build stairs, glueless pillars and 2d-floors containing wells, treasure, pits (including spikes) and so on.
The items include iconic things like barrels, crates, curtains (though I would have liked more than one color), treasure chests, bedding, chairs (that look good from every angle and DON’T NEED GLUE!), square, rectangle and roundish tables and none of them require any glue whatsoever! The instructions provided for the assembly once again are easy to follow and illustrated.
Conclusion:
The first offering of Lone Tree offers us a lot for our money, to be precise, all the basic furniture and components you need to create a basic model of a dungeon room. Given the modularity of the models, the ease with which one can assemble them and the fact that Jonathan Robert’s artwork is just cool, there is not much to complain about. I would have loved different-colored curtains or other artworks, just to offer an alternative, but that’s about the only thing I can complain about in this installment. For a very low price you get almost all the tools you need to create a basic dungeon and I hope for future installments to add new components and further expand on the glueless paper-models. My final verdict due to usability, artworks and ease of assembly, will be 5 stars.
This pdf is 106 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page blank inside front cover, 1 page header, 1 page editorial, 1 page back cover, 2 blank pages inside back cover, 2 pages of advertisements, 1.5 pages of SRD, leaving 95.5 pages of content, so let's check out this spell selection.
First of all let me say that I LOVE the beautiful full-color artwork - the full color artworks spread throughout the book rank among the most creepy, evocative and cool I've seen in any 3pp's book out there. Unfortunately, the file does not come with a printer-friendly version, though, so prepare your printer to be challenged.
The result is worth it, though! Secondly, you'll realize that this book offers full-blown support of the APG, including spells that have been specifically designed for the new classes and even features some new alchemist's discoveries in a side-bar. Which brings me to my hallmark for great spells, Rite Publishing's awesome 101 spells series, which as of the writing of this review, does not feature this support. (Though it is in the process of being added in the upcoming compilation!) Thus, Eldritch Compendium gets 2 plus points. What about the spells, then?
They are interesting, that's sure. Ever wanted your death to trigger the arrival of a terrible bird that carries your corpse away to have it resurrected? Create mirrors to show other places? Conjure up terrible silent, disturbing entities of pure magic (that come with awesome artworks - the Ether Child ROCKS!)? What about a spell for each school of magic that can be considered the epitome of the respective school, making you temporarily a tremendously powerful incarnation of the respective force of magic? A spell to make a ship fly for a limited amount of time? A spell that synesthetically exchanges two of your opponents’ senses, thus confusing him/her? A spell to summon tiny, disturbing stick effigies to obey your command? A spell to add magical blades to the sides of horses, making for an even more deadly charge. "Ladder of Tresses" lets the hair of the target grow long and makes it climbable. There's also a cantrip that makes regular surfaces temporarily a mirror.
There are also "Quintessential" spells for each of the schools of magic - these spells are 9th level and are the epitome of the arcane power of the respective school, making e.g. the necromancer an avatar of death. While powerful, I can see them being a great high-level-reward or even the aim of a caster's whole career. While some side-boxes acknowledge their power, personally I don't consider them OP. Among the rather story-centric spells, we also get a ritual to restore a ruin to its former state. A spell I considered interesting, but potentially unbalancing, is "Spellbreaker" - it works on another spell and makes it automatically bypass spell resistance.
We also get 6 new feats, 7 new magic items and appendices of spell-lists by schools, use, descriptor and author, helping to find the spells you're looking for.
Conclusion:
Editing is ok - I noticed less than 10 glitches on 106 pages and none truly impeded my enjoyment of the spells. Layout and full-color artworks absolutely rock - this is one of the most beautiful 3pp-books I've seen out there. On the downside, though, there's no printer-friendly version and this book extols a heavy price from your printer. The pdf is extensively bookmarked and in contrast to other spell-books, features a lot of spells with a story/non-combat usage, which is awesome, at least in my opinion - it means that the book serves rather as a complimentary book to e.g. the 101-series by Rite rather than being a direct competitor. The book is so different in focus and tone from RiP's stellar series that I'll be using both. Where the RiP-series is rather focused on mechanics and encounters, this book does not offer as many brilliant rules as RiP, but it has some story-heavy fluff that immediately makes you come up with cool ideas to use them. On the downside, though, some of these spells suffer from their rules being not as clear as they could be. While the book is stunningly beautiful, not having a printer-friendly version hurts the usability of the book. In the end, my final verdict will be 4 stars - if you're looking for an old-world-style spell-book, this is a great, albeit not perfect buy. If you're looking for some spells that feel different or some APG-support, this might even be 4.5 stars for you.
This full-color pdf is 16 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial/ToC, 1page SRD, leaving 13 pages of content for the Magus. so let's take a look at it!
As we are used to by now in this series, the pdf kicks off with a discussion on the Magus class, the official gish of PFRPG. Let me state something here - I really like the concept of arcane duellants and subsequently enjoyed both the Archon and the Vanguard by SGG (which I'll be reviewing, too), but the Magus has fast become one of my favorite takes on the trope.
However: The fusion of arcane damage potential and melee capabilities requires careful balancing to keep the Magus fragile or not too damaging to general balance. The discussion acknowledges the Magus as a fragile heavy hitter.
The next section provides 30 new feats for the Magus come with their designer commentaries, but no IC-fluff text and, adhering to my new format, I'll be talking about those that stand out, be it positive or negative. "Arcana Thief" is the first I liked: Capitalizing on the mage-hunter vibe I got from the class, it enables the Magus to regain spent arcane pool points by disrupting spell-casting, be it via attacks, counterspells or dispels.
I'm not a fan of "Cleaving Spellstrike", as it lets make cleave attacks instead of normal touch attacks. Additionally, you cleave with a touch-spell by expending one arcane pool point per attack, essentially getting multiple hits out of one spell - this, in my humble opinion, is severely overpowered, even with the pool point restriction.
Another feat that will never see use in my campaign, is "Hobbyist", which nets you your character level in skill points in a given skill, making skill focus look like an even poorer feat-choice at levels 3+. Once again, over-powered.
"Last-Ditch Effort" on the other hand, rocks: Once per turn, you can make a standard or move action prior to falling unconscious. Ladies and gentlemen, that's the stuff legendary last-second saves and heroics are made of.
"Grasping Strike" and "One-handed Grapple", unfortunately don't strike a chord with me: Grasping Strike lets you essentially initiate a grapple as a free action after succeeding an unarmed attack, duplicating a special quality usually (and rightfully!) reserved to monsters - this feat is far too strong and screams "abuse the hell out of me" to any monks out there.
Combine that with no penalty for grappling one-handed due to the second feat and you're ready for a monkish world of pain, both as a foe and as a DM.
"Parrying Defense" on the other hand, is a cool feat: You can sacrifice attacks for additional AC-bonuses, potentially speeding up play and offering some benefits. Nice!
"Precise Attack" is another winner, offering the chance to sacrifice attacks for better chances to hit the opponents.
"Savage Spellstrike" is even more overpowered/ high on the power-scale than the standard spellstrike ability: It lets you use the weapon's crit multiplier instead of x2. Hello e.g. scythes and you're in for SICKENING amounts of damage. I hate this feat from the bottom of my heart. It is a one-lucky-strike-kill-an-enemy-off-feat and if you as a DM use it, you might kill PCs with a lucky and not too heroic blow. Scoring a crit with a spell is strong enough, we don't need x4 for such an attack. I despise this feat.
"Touch of Opportunity" is the next feat on my op-list - cast a touch spell as an attack of opportunity? Sorry, not in this DM's game.
"Warding Touch Spell" fives you a personal contingency against melee attacks that discharges on the attacker if you get hit. Spells that grant multiple touches remain as a ward until fully discharged. The spell only takes up one spell-level higher.
"Weapon Reliability" is another feat that just does not conform with what I consider a good idea: With this feat, you no longer automatically miss on an attack roll of 1. This one is just a personal preference, though, and I don't have true balance concerns here.
"Wrap Strike", though, is a final feat I abhor: By using chain weapons and having weapon focus for said weapon, you can ignore any opponent's shield bonus to AC, further making shields problematic choices and ignoring a WHOLE CLASS of items and spells that grant this kind of bonus with one feat. I don't know where to start to explain in how many ways I hate this feat.
And don't get me started on "Spellstrike Multishot" and its inherent potential to dual-cast each round...
Finally, we get 3 sample magus builds, the fae blade, the lady of the lash and the rune fist. I mostly enjoyed the ideas behind the builds as well as the sidebar explaining the love for armor spikes and ideas to roleplay characters with cha as dumpstat.
Conclusion:
The one piece of artwork is niece and the full-color layout is beautiful. The pdf could have used another pass at editing and formatting, though: I noticed several upper/lower-case inconsistencies and some other glitches that could have been avoided. While there are some instances of feat-designs I personally didn't like, I've refrained from commenting on the feat-tree for ranged combat Magi, that, while stylish, could upset a campaigns balance.
More importantly, though, there are much more feats than in any other installment of the series that fall prey to power-creep, and not the subtle one, but rather into the hardcore-munchkinism way of power creep. Those of you who follow my reviews on a regular basis know that I'm rather conservative when it comes to power-levels and thus I didn't find much I could scavenge in this pdf. Rather than that, I found several easy ways to break components of a game and impede fun. There are some good feats here and for some groups this pdf might work, but my final verdict will nevertheless be a 1.5 stars, rounded up to 2 due to the saving graces. This installment replaces "Secrets of the Alchemist" as my least favorite book in the series and any DM allowing it should carefully ponder the consequences, not only for Magi, but also for other classes.
This pdf is 41 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page advertisement, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving 36 pages of content, so let's check out whether these swords are sharp...or whether they are rather dull!
In tradition with the new NNW-standard, layout adheres to the two-column standard and while the pdf is full-color, it comes as a printer-friendly and a non-printer-friendly version, the latter featuring used-parchment look. It should be noted, that while it's not in any way taxing on the printer to print out the pdf, even the printer-friendly version is still full-color. The pdfs are extensively bookmarked for ease of reference.
After 2 pages of aptly-narrated IC-introduction to the matter at hand and 1 page of introduction to the swords, we are given the first section of the book, detailing numerous new materials and both mundane and magical enhancements. The materials range from mundane bone, gold and stainless steel to magic-cancelling null-steel and crystallized malice, which grows progressively more dangerous to enemies and wielder with each enemy slain, hungering for more souls to consume. I'm a big fan of the weapon enhancements as an idea and from peace-scabbards to serrated blades, I do like them all. The new magical qualities have some interesting abilities, starting at less than +1 in ability ("Glowing" e.g. adding only +100 GP base price) and go up to +5. We get 35 new qualities, some of which, though, are x-wave weapons, electricity e.g., that, when unsheathed, blast elemental-damage in 10 ft. around the wielder and weapons whose blades consist of fire, force etc. The best quality, though, is the one with the "Vanishing" quality, which sends the victim of a hit on a failed save to a duel-demi-plane. Nice and devious!
Next up are 18 new unique blades, ranging from 4301 GP to 225320 GP in value. As you know if you've been following my reviews, I'm not a friend of the commoditization of magic items and prefer them to be unique. The items here all come with physical descriptions and extensive background stories, which is nice. On the other hand, I have some problems with some of the blades: The "Decimator" is a blade I'd never allow my PCs to wield: It always does 1/10th of the enemies max HP damage, no matter the Str-score or miscellaneous modifiers of the wielder, killing ANYTHING in 10 hits. A nice idea, but the implication for e.g. dragons, the tarrasque, your bbeg, etc. is horrible. The "Gambler's blade" lets you treat 3 die-rolls (saves, skills, attacks) per day as a rolled 20. Sorry, but not in my campaign for a meager 30K blade. The magnetic sword, on the other hand, rocks: You can use telekinesis on metallic enemies - nice idea! On the side of nice, yet dangerous ideas that might make for nice quest items: "the Sword of the Blind Prophet" automatically hits on odd rolls and misses on even rolls, unmodified by any other modifiers. While powerful, this enchantment is balanced by the miss-chance. Especially falchion-friends get a lot of nice fodder.
Conclusion:
As mentioned, layout is nice. Formatting and editing are top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. I liked the materials, the mundane qualities and some of the weapon qualities, although the elemental waves are rather bland and felt like filler, there are others that make up for it. The unique blades mostly are nice and the extensive stories are a great asset to have as a DM. However, you have to understand that the blades push the boundaries of what you'd expect from magical blades and while most of them are great, there are some you might consider problematic or that can be considered plot-devices/artifacts rather than regular blades. As long as you take this into account, you'll probably enjoy this book. How to rate this, then? Well, that's a hard one, as while most of the book is cool and imaginative, the content is rather high up on the power-scale and rather narrative-driven. If you're in for rather modular weapons, this book might be an average buy for you, at 3 stars. For people like myself, who prefer the story over the mechanics and see the latter as a way to enforce the former, this fares better: While some items are problematic in the context of the world, it still offers some great pieces, resulting in a final verdict of 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 for the purpose of this platform.
This book is 43 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving 39 pages for the traps, so let's examine them!
Arts per se are an interesting love/hate concept - after all, they can put a grinding halt to the action and result in the rogue searching every square and rolling the one disable device check that determines whether the trap goes off or not. On the other hand, they make for a fun diversion and, when handled correctly, can provide fun for the whole party. Traps can be very creative, but if you're carried away, you get the more ridiculous examples of the now classic (and mostly awesome) Grimtooth-series. One approach that worked very well was 4th Dimension games' "Skill Challenges: Traps"-book, which will serve a s a kind of benchmark for me in this review.
The first thing you'll notice is that the fellows over at Necromancers of the Northwest finally included printer-friendly versions of their books, making printing out the full-color book easier. While the printer-friendly version is not b/w, it still makes for a nice b/w-print-out. The pdf is also extensively bookmarked, making navigation to the respective traps easy.
The book kicks off with a nice 2-page short story and 1 page of introduction to the matters at hand before jumping right into the traps, though not literally. The traps range from humble CR to devastating CR 20. Better, though, is that each trap gets a nice, quite extensive description to read to your rogue if he/she spots it as well as some advice on implementing the respective traps in your campaign - that's the additional kind of oomph I like in a book.
The traps themselves range from classics like boulders, moving floors etc. up to more devious ones like an exploding pendulum. Mechanically, there is nothing wrong with them and they often take e.g. tending the fire of a furnace and similar maintenance costs into account, which is nice. Even better, some ideas to combine and place the traps are included to make the creative juices flow.
The true stars of this book, though, are the 4 elaborate traps at the end of this book: Each serves as a complete encounter. The first of these traps, the endless hall, is a nice minor puzzle to escape a teleportation loop, complete with extensive details on the surroundings and a schematic map. Oh yeah, schematic maps are provided for all the elaborate maps. The next puzzle is plain awesome: a ring-maze of rotating hexagons set with traps and various configurations - that one is plain awesome! Speaking of plain awesome, the next one is the bone bridge, a complex and potentially deadly bridge that should make for a great necromancer's lair - if you're going for master necromancer, this trap should find a cherished and deadly place in his/her lair. The final trap is rather straight-forward, a room full of fire walls, deadly heat etc. - while not as awesome as the other 3 traps/puzzles, this one is just deadly and fills an iconic niche that may yet offer some things to do for all the players.
The pdf closes with 6 new poisons featured in the traps.
Conclusion:
Editing is top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches on the 43 pages, quite a feat. Formatting could be a bit better: Some of the trap-texts feature 2 words of its final sentence on the next page, making reading sometimes slightly harder than it could be, though not enough to truly impede your enjoyment of the pdf. The maps of the elaborate traps are cgi-style and while I don't particularly care for the artwork, I love the content. The poisons are a nice bonus and while their green headers don't make for the most beautiful layout decision, they are a nice bonus.
Which gets me to the content: While I did like the regular traps, they did not kindle my imagination - there is nothing wrong with them and they go quite a way, but all in all, for this section I'd settle for 3.5 to 4 stars. However, the 4 elaborate traps ROCK hard and surpass even 4th Dimensions deadly traps. They are fun, easy to insert, intelligent - I don't have any gripes with them and would settle for a final verdict of 5 stars on this section, resulting in an overall verdict of 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5 due to the VERY low price for the quality we get. If you need or like traps, check this out!
This installment of the advanced feats series is 16 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial/ToC, 1 page SRD and 1 page advertisement, leaving 12 pages for the inquisitor, so let's check it out!
This installment of the advanced series begins, as is tradition by now, with a comprehensive discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the class to be examined before delving into the new feats. This discussion, while not strictly necessary, makes for a compelling read nevertheless - both for novices and experienced gamers.
The crunch of the product, though, are the 30 new feats for the inquisitor, all of which come with designer's commentaries, which serves as illuminating additional pieces of information. While I absolutely love this, on the down-side we don't get fluff-texts for the respective feats like in e.g. RiP's "101 Monster Feats", but I guess you can't have everything, can you?
In contrast to my older reviews, I'm not going to offer a list of the content, but rather will mention when a feat stands out, be it positive or negative. I'll start with the first, "Cautious Trip", which is a trip insurance - if you fail an attempt by 10 or more, you no longer risk being tripped yourself. While a great idea that can be applied to other combat maneuvers, I find it odd that it does not have any prerequisites - while I don't necessarily ask for "Improved Trip", I think that at least Int 13 would have been appropriate - after all "Improved Trip" has "Combat Expertise" as a prerequisite.
"Coordinated Fire" is an awesome feat: A teamwork feat that makes it easier for allies to hit an enemy you yourself hit with a ranged weapon. Can you see the deadly sniper squads? I can!
I didn't care for the mechanics of "Defensive Disarm" and "Defensive/Offensive Insight", as all three feats grant you bonuses (a free disarm after a missed attack of opportunity and Ac-bonus/bonus to attack after a foe's missed attack) after being missed - the first feat can be powerful, but is very, very specific and the second ones have a meta-gaming problem: They grants you the Ac-bonus/attack bonus to all enemies using the same statblock, something the players will remind the DM often enough, each and every time breaking the illusion of individual enemies I seek to perpetuate in my games. Offensive insight, strangely, does not have the "all enemies of statblock xyz-mechanic". And yes, I often add little details, different weapons etc. So yeah, I won't detract a star for them, but personally, I don't care for them.
"Ducking Shot", the little brother of "Point Blank Mastery" is a feat that rocks - +4 Ac against AaOs due to making ranged attacks with easier prerequisites, offering a non-weapon-specialization alternative that does not make the other feat obsolete and avoids power-creep. Two thumbs up!
In some other installments of this series, I grumbled about some feats feeling too non-specific and while with some restrictions this of course is due to the nature of feats, e.g. the Oracle-book oozed flair and fluff. "Eschew Divine Focus" is just such a feat, allowing an inquisitor to infiltrate hostile organizations thanks not having to carry around his focus to cast. I'm not entirely sure how many groups out there make the divine focus a central part of their campaigns, but in my campaigns, it tends to be an integral factor, thus: Kudos for a simple, elegant and cool feat that should see a lot of use. "Fast Track" offers the chance to better cover your tracks and hunt your enemies faster. Elegant, simple, nice.
A teamwork feat that made me chuckle as my players will love it, is "Friend and Foe" - play good cop/bad cop with your enemies! Excellent and fun! "Gotcha" is another candidate for an elegant feat - it lets you catch falling adjacent allies via a DC 10 str- or dex-check if you have a free hand. "Magical Insight" is another such elegant feat - if an opponent fails a save against a spell you cast, he or she suffers a penalty to future saves against your magic in this combat. The restriction to one battle makes this feat not only palpable, but straight-out cool for me.
"Misdirected Strike" is another keeper - a feat that makes a valid rules-definition to making your opponents hit his allies instead of you in battle, while being hard enough to get thanks to strict feat-requirements. "Subdue" is the final feat is really liked, disposing of the penalty for dealing non-lethal damage.
Finally, we get 3 sample character builds, the bloodhound (a bounty hunter), the Wolf-in-sheep's clothing ( no not the stump with the tentacles and the squirrel, but rather an evil, but oh-so-nice inquisitor) and the detective.
Conclusion:
The full--color layout is nice and the one piece of artwork is also cool. Formatting is good, but the file could have used another pass at editing - I noticed 5+ minor typos, from double letters to superfluous punctuation and while they did not impede my enjoyment of the file, at this length they could have been avoided. I did like a lot of the feats, but there were some metagamey ones among them and especially some of the combat-centric feats did not impress me that much. On the other hand, I did not notice any feats that had me explode in nerd-rage or shake my head. When seen in comparison to the other installments of the series, I did prefer the Oracle-installment over this one, but it's still a good buy. Thus, my final verdict is 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 for the purposes of this platform.
This adventure/setting-introduction is 61 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page SRD and 2 pages back cover, leaving 55 pages for the first part of the Kaidan-trilogy, so let's check it out!
Disclaimer: I'm a gold patron for Kaidan, but I didn't participate that much in the design process due to real life.
First of all, one cannot help but notice the beautiful full-color layout featuring bamboo at the page-borders (similar to In the Company of Kappa) and the stunning cover artwork - rest assured that the rest of the book is just as visually pleasing.
This being an adventure, I will have to go into some mayor SPOILERS later. I'll start off with what Kaidan is in the beginning, which one could consider minor spoilers, so beware. I'll explicitly add another warning prior to going into the adventure details.
There are a LOT of Asian settings out there, and good ones at that, so what exactly makes Kaidan unique? First of all: Its focus. Kaidan is a horror-themed setting inspired by Japan and Japanese mythology. Not L5R-style, not Chinese WuXia (like in the quite cool HotJO-setting), but by Japanese horror-stories. Being a bit of a fan of Japanese horror-games like Fatal Frame (aka Project Zero in Europe) or Forbidden Siren, I can attest to there being a plethora of almost unknown tropes of awesome and disturbing narratives that have largely been untapped by western pop culture and even rpgs. Kaidan seeks to at least partially remedy that, but does it deliver?
SPOILERS abound now, players please don't continue reading, you have been warned!
The adventure kicks off with a beautiful, full-color map of the land of Kaidan and an introduction to the basic concept of Kaidan: Shrouded and isolated in a perpetual cloud that only recently has been partially lifted, the place immediately evokes positive reminiscences of the best of Ravenloft's concepts, but goes further: Kaidan is essentially the idea of reincarnation going horribly wrong - the dead don't go to the afterlife and rather roam the land, become haunts and creatures or even trying to force others from their bodies, essentially killing living people and being reborn in the cruelest, most twisted take on reincarnation I've ever seen. Even worse for the poor people of this beautiful, yet haunted land, even this endless circle provides no true escape from the rigid and merciless caste-system.
So, what's the story? Marl Tyro, a merchant plans to kill an undead daimyo, who has taken the merchant's daughter hostage to force Marl to bring him a loyalty-enforcing, cursed golden spear. Marl, plotting vengeance, has condensed jewels of positive energy set to provide a nasty surprise for the daimyo and the PCs accompany him to the dread lands of Kaidan as Gaijin (longnoses), thus facilitating the introduction to the customs of this rather xenophobic land. The welcome the PCs will receive is a rather frosty one - the first ambush has already been prepared for them as soon as they get off the ship in Gaijinoshima, the gateway to Kaidan- Yakuza-thugs stand ready to confront and kill the PCs in the name of a mysterious woman. A full-color map is provided for the dock and the encounter, which is always a plus. Assuming the PCs survive, they'll encounter the rather uncooperative officials, who'll refuse them landing on mainland Kaidan until the proper papers have been obtained. The PCs are thus stranded in the town and can explore - as long as they carry the heavy chest containing marl's gift around, that is. The harbor-town also gets its own full-color map. After encountering a damsel in distress and rescuing her from an ogre-assault, she tries to recruit the PCs to accompany her to the cemetery, to ostensibly find gold her late husband has stolen from the oni-lords. This, of course, is a ruse, but more on that later. After all, the Yakuza seek restitution for the defeat of the welcoming commando and the PCs might be forced into a duel with one of their more powerful members or another full-blown fight. After being introduced to mind fever ( a sickness that precedes a replacement of souls), the PCs have an opportunity to dine with a Yakuza-lord, wrestle for his enjoyment (once again, the lair has its own beautiful map) and thus might secure the necessary friends in the right places to get the paperwork for their journey finally done. What about the damsel, though? She tries to lead the PCs into the clutches of a jikininki, a terrible, shapechanging, ghoulish creature the PCs will have to defeat. Once they PCs have survived this trap, they are free to finally set foot on mainland Kaidan. Well, relatively free, that is.
After all, they're still Gaijin and subsequently will be accompanied by 17 Kaidanese, there to make sure that the longnoses don't stray too far from their allowed trail. The first station along the way is a cursed way station inhabited by both a plethora of deadly haunts, flesh-eating ghouls, a ghost and featuring both tainted food and terrible nightmares for your PCs and, once again, a beautiful full-color map. This encounters alone might be worth the price if you're looking for some genuinely creepy encounter.
Once the PCs reach the highlands, the PCs will encounter bandits, a tamashinaki as well as an encounter at a bridge (again with a map) and another mapped, very creepy encounter with a well full of undead children and subsequently their dread killer. Further on their journey, the PCs can help defend the town Agoya against a coordinated bandit rush/siege, having consequences in the sequel as well as during their brief stay in the village. On the road to the next settlement, Tsuje-Te, the PCs will have another encounter (again, with a grided, full color map) with some mischievous Kappa and some additional random encounters before being assaulted by the damsel in distress from Gaijinoshima and her minion - an ogre-brute like the one they fought, only this time, the damsel drops her cover and, as a hebi-no-onna, attacks as well, serving as a nice and challenging climax to the adventure that ends with the PCs reaching the town of Tsue-Jo.
There are some appendices to take a look at, though: The first deals with PC reincarnation, as resurrection etc. don't work in Kaidan and reformation as a malevolent spirit (yurei), a tamashinaki or even inflict a Kaidanese with mind fever, supplanting him/her. This process also may entail foreign memories and the appendix also features a great mechanic for tracking karma and rebirth. We also get 2 new monsters and of course, full stats for the two featured tamashinaki, 4 pre-gens and a two page glossary/pronunciation guide to help a GM properly display the culture of Kaidan.
Conclusion:
Layout adheres to the beautiful full-color, bamboo-lined standard we already know from "In the Company of Kappa" and goes a long way to convey the unique atmosphere of Kaidan. Editing and formatting are very good - I only noticed one minor editing glitch and one minor formatting relic. When I started reading the sections on Gaijinoshima, I was rather underwhelmed with regards to the horror-aspect of the setting, but don't be fooled - this part of the adventure serves to accustom the PCs with Kaidan and the subsequent horror-encounters are demented, dark and deadly and rank among the finest I've read in quite a while - Kaidan manages to walk the tight rope between horror and fantasy with a deceptive ease and furthermore accomplishes the feat of being unique and captivating as both a setting and an adventure. Fans of Ravenloft HAVE to check this out. Fans of Gothic Horror should check this out. Fans of the darker aspects of Japanese folklore and mythology have to check this out. Have I mentioned that I love the extensive map support and the stunning, awesome b/w-artworks that rank among the best I've seen in 3pp books? Can you guess my final verdict? Yup, I award full 5 stars and the Endzeitgeist seal of approval - Jonathan McAnulty, Michael K. Tumey and the crew at RiP has done an awesome job of going out of their way to provide a premium quality horror-adventure of the highest caliber. I can't wait for part II!
This full-color pdf is 62 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page (almost) logo-less front cover, 1 page editorial & ToC, 1 page SRD, 1 page advertisement and 1 page back cover, leaving 54 pages for the drakes. So...what are drakes?
Well, drakes are lesser draconic creatures and, as the introduction by Adam Daigle and Mike Welham discusses, there is a certain necessity for these critters that has as of yet been neglected. But wait, let me elaborate on the thesis: I am an adherent of the mindset that dragons should be the most iconic of antagonists and monsters and subsequently I hate the tendency that was prevalent in 3.5 for some time to make anything half-draconic and spam dragons without any context into a given adventure. However, I still sometimes am drawn into said adventures, probably thanks to said iconic quality and the fact that I can't escape the pull and the temptation to include them once in a while. Oh, there'S another dimension: I don't like too young dragons: They are not large enough to evoke the awe I feel is an integral part of a dragon-encounter and more often than not, are easily killed by the PCs, which again undermines what I consider a good dragon encounter. That's where drakes come in - have your cake and eat it, so to speak: Drakes are related to dragons, but are not true dragons, thus offering a nice way to use draconic themes without detracting from the iconic qualities of true dragon encounters.
After a page of introduction to the topic at hand, we get the first section of the book, an ecology of drakes prefaced by a short, yet aptly-written fluff-text, which is interspread throughout the whole discussion of the drakes, greatly enhancing your reading enjoyment. Three classes of drakes are introduced: Esoteric, Material and Geographic drakes. After a short discussion on these types, all of the different drakes and their roles in the Midgard-setting. The ecology also features 30 sample drake pieces of treasure as well as 10 short write-ups of sample drakes, each an adventure hook in its own right.
Chapter 2 focuses on the interaction between players and drakes, respectively the part going beyond encountering and potentially killing them. With a rich and rather interesting mentality as companions, we also get 10 new feats related to drakes, some of which enhance their combat capabilities, some rather exciting and one feat being the basis to get a drake as a semi-permanent companion that has to be appeased with items. Inquisitors don't like drakes though, and from the table I gather there's a reciprocity there - malice and whimsy don't mix well with harsh judgments. I had a problem with one feat: "Tooth and Claw Form" has very low requirements and enables the user to either deal piercing, slashing or bludgeoning damage with his unarmed attacks. Depending on the focus of your campaign, this feat could potentially impede the character's necessity to plan/bring the right weapons to a fight. In addition to the new feats, we of course get new alternate class features for all the classes (including APG, but not the Magus from UM): Alchemists get a cool draconic mutagen, barbarians get a rage-focused breath weapon, bards get a calming performance based on euphoria, the cavaliers get a new anti-tyrant/rather chaotic order, Clerics can take the Drake Subdomain, Druids become Drakeshape druids, fighters get 2 alternate abilities to better combat dragons and drakes, Inquisitors can get a new anti-dragon judgment, monks can get a better focus on their stun, oracles can be cursed with claws or scales, Paladins get the very iconic "Dragon Challenger"-archetype, Rangers can replace favored terrain, with favored nemesis, specializing on being even better to kill a subset of his foes. Rogues get two new rogue talents and in contrast to the other abilities, I've got problems with one: While one cool one lets the rogue use sneak against blindsense, the other is simply overpowered: Crush Windpipe lets a rogue force an enemy to make a fort-save when sneaked AGAINST THE DAMAGE OF THE SNEAK ATTACK. If the save fails, the creature CAN NO LONGER USE ITS BREATH WEAPON OR VOCALIZE UNTIL HEALED! This is broken beyond repair. Wow. This talent screams "Abuse the hell out of me!", practically making ANY caster with verbal components easy prey for rogues and, to add insult to injury, fails to mention how it works on foes with breath-weapon and no windpipes and potentially deprives dragons of their most iconic breath weapon. This talent screams power-creep and I don't get how it could stand among the other, balanced and cool class features. Ähem. *Endzeitgeist calms down from a fit of nerd rage* The sorceror gets the nice new drake bloodline. Summoners can exchange half of their bond sense ability rounds for a bonus feat. Witches get an excellent new hex to temporarily take away flight via a new hex and expand upon their blight with a major hex. Wizards get a new draconic focused arcane school.
Summoners are kind of the winners on the class-sides, as they get a fully stated 20-level alternate base-class, the so-called dragon tamer focusing on summoning and modifying drakes and working with them. There is also a new PrC, the Master of Drake Forms (d8, 2+Int skills, medium fort and ref-saves, moderate BAB) focuses on shape-changing, draconic abilities up to an apotheosis. While shape-changing is required to qualify, no spell-progression is offered by the class, which makes it an interesting pick: I'd be screaming "unbalanced" from the top of my lungs otherwise, but breath weapons, resistances and natural weapons make for nice replacements of the lost spells: Nice job! Additionally, if you want to play a drake PC, full racial modifiers and information on how to use them for both Pseudodragons and candle drakes are given. Next, we're into the obligatory spell-section: 16 new drake-centric spells are provided, from the self-explanatory drake form-spells to veiling companions and mislead presences. There are two spells in particular, though, don't fit well with me: One spell "Greater to lesser" transforms a dragon of 15+ HD to 1/3 of its HD, with all the accompanying ramifications. It's also permanent. Wait, what? Yes, there are plenty of tales that feature similar themes, but a) I never liked them and b) this is one fort-save deciding between a climatic encounter of epic proportions and a completely whipped minor draconic being. Did we really need to potentially pussyfy dragons? And while I like the fact that having a piece of the dragon's hatching-shell can provide a -8 penalty to said save, I don't think we need it here. If this was a temporary effect, I could possibly look over it. As written, I'll never, ever use it. I also hated the spell "Protection from lesser dragons", which is essentially a protection from evil-spell against all things draconic. Quite frankly, I think this particular spell wastes space that could have been put to better use and don't really get why dragons should have their own protection spell. Isn't evil/good/chaos/law enough already? "Wingspan", on the other hand is visually cool and increases, you guessed it, the creature's wingspan, thus improving its flight capabilities.
We also get 7 new magic items, 4 weapons to increase the damage potential of the natural weapons of drakes and 3 new pieces of adventuring gear to carry around and/or capture drakes. The companion replica can force companions temporarily into the replica, making for potentially interesting roleplaying opportunities between the free-spirited companions and their masters. Dimming Paste also makes for a cool item: It impedes blindsense and blindsight. I had no problem with any of the items.
This pdf is 9 pages long, 1 page SRD, 8 pages of content.
The pdf kicks off by providing sketches for 10 guests at a feast to spice up your meadhall-encounters, each with the potential to act as a nice adventure-hook. Next up are some awesome ideas for disputes the player characters might settle at the Þing. We also 9 reskinned spells to make your magic more appropriate. On the magical item section, we get a cool artifact that continuously produces gold rings and 7 magical items including two magical banners as well as e.g. magical mead. I especially loved the later. A quite variable array of reskinned monsters is also provided, along the Frostveil (which is a cool flying algae),the lindwurm and the sea wolf.
Conclusion:
Layout adheres to the two-column standard, editing and formatting are top-notch and the price is very low - while the content absolutely rocks. The material contained herein serves as a great addition and expansion of the excellent material from the Northlands sourcebook and for the low price, there is literally no reason not to pick this up in addition to Northlands. My final verdict is 5 stars for the awesome amount and quality of content crammed into these pages.
This pdf is 114 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial/ToC , 1 page patron list, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving a whopping 109 pages for the Northlands, so let's check it out!
Disclaimer: I was a patron for this project and contributed my fair share of material to the book. Additionally, I'm working with Scandinavian literature and culture as one of my day-jobs, probably not making me the most unbiased of potential reviewers in this instance, but I'll try to remain as critical, nitpicky and obnoxious as in my other reviews.
Now that that's out of the way, let's check it out!
Northlands is a sourcebook for the North, to state the obvious, but from the very beginning you'll realize that it goes above and beyond what you'd expect of e.g. an environment-book like e.g. 3.5's "Frostburn", which will serve as my point of reference for this review.
You have to know that, while I did like Frostburn and consider it to be one of the finest publications for 3.5, I was also sorely disappointed by its lack of true understanding about what makes the North compelling as both a cultural backdrop and a setting and this is where Northlands gets it right: It starts off with not only an introduction to the climate, but more importantly, how both religion & harsh climate have shaped the social order and mindset of the people of the North: Shaped by relentless, deadly yet beautiful environments, a hard and gritty breed of men (and women) emerged from the climate, depending on strength of both sword-arm and wits and defined alignment-wise by what is considered honorable and what isn't. We're not talking chivalry in the north, though, as honorable is a relative term and reputation is a precious good not to be tarnished by excessive displays of mercy - being "good" or "evil" is much more relative in these regions. The semi-democratic social order and the differences from feudal, traditional fantasy settings is also extensively and comprehensively covered, providing for a concise and aptly-written introduction to culture and land for just about anyone - for scholars, it offers the basics to add fantasy elements to what they already know, for novices it provides a compelling read that conveys the necessary mindset to plunge into the north and get the most out of this book.
After these explanations on feuds, hospitality, tafl games and social drinking rules, the pantheon of the north and their implementation in the setting of Midgard, we are introduced to the continent of Thule and with it, one of the very best gazetteer-section I have read in all my years of roleplaying - from human-centric jarldoms and their feuds, the conflict-laden history of reaver-dwarves and men, the animal kingdoms of bear and wolf and the cthulhoid-threatened/pulpy lost lands of Hyperborea, we get insane amounts of seeds capable of sparking of whole campaigns and a stunning map of the continent.
All right, you say, but what about the crunch? Well, 4 human ethnicities are provided as well as a set of alternative racial traits for Reaver-dwarves. Hyperborean Day-and Nightborn (influenced by the strange energies of the Hyperborean aurora borealis) and Trollkin are presented as new races that serve their niches and have a definite reason for existence and go beyond the "X with arctic abilities"-races I've come to despise in 3.X. There are also new class features: Barbarians get 10 new rage powers and 2 alternate class features, ranging from sheathing hands in boreal cold to becoming so bear-chested that one counts as a size-category bigger. Bards get a whole alternate class variant with so-called Dróttkvætts (lordly verses) and a focus on fortitude rather than agility. I won't comment on this one, as I was the one who designed it. Clerics get 2 new domains and there is even a monk-variant, the Glima Master, who focuses on rather worldly pleasures, serving as a nice counter-point to all the ascetic monk types out there. Oracles get some love in the form of a new mystery (fate) and 11 associated revelations that make you an arbiter or fickle fate and the norn's destiny-weaving, serving greatly to enhance the theme of stoicism in the face of fate. Sorcerors get the new giant and hyperborean bloodlines and 10 new familiars, which should also interest teh witches, who get two new patrons. We also get expanded information on skills as well as a plethora of new feats, among which there are some awesome achievement feats - which are hard to do, at least in my opinion. They have to be hard to get, but not too hard and their benefits have to reflect that and if that's not enough, we get a huge amount of cool traits to customize characters from the very start.
As economy in the north is based on gifts and favors rather than monetary rewards and both sample rewards, new equipment and alchemical items are provided - Remorhaz fat and honey that makes the consumer easy to track being examples as well as prismatic steel and berserker iron as materials.
Of course, magic is also expanded upon and in a very interesting way: Rune magic grants bonuses for both knowing them, mastering them and scale in benefits with gained levels. Additionally, we get 4 new incantations, a LOT of new spells and magic items. Let me talk a bit about the magic items. You probably know that I'm not that into boring magic items or magic items as commodities. What can I say? I love the section. It's glorious, the items rock and are EXTREMELY iconic - what about snopw shoes that can make snow powdery and ice crash, for example? Or a kind of large ski that unerringly can lead you toward your destination, over both water and ice? Returning, yet jealous arrows that despise each other and are each other's bane? Or the incarnation of legendary, doom-bringing Tyrfang? I was drooling over this section and look forward to inflicting these upon my players!
The next chapter provides all the environmental hazards, haunts, rules for coastal, ski and ship chases, rules for altitude, boreal chill, midnight sun and boreal dark, frots bite and so called fate afflictions, a mechanic loosely tied to hero points, serving to further underline the feeling of preordained destinies and entwined fates woven by the norns. Sounds boring? Well, they're not! There are, for example, rules to escape the legendary maelstrom!
The final chapter of the book is the bestiary, detailing an avatar of Boreas, the master of the northwind, whose living glaciers slowly seek to bring the fimbul winter, a song of fire and ice-style, to the world. The Jotun, most powerful and ancient foes of the gods are given stats and some truly disturbing creatures are also found: The Krake-spawn (somewhat cthulhoid creatures) and the Nightgarm, the champions of wolves and worgs, who can give birth to falsemen-duplicates of people they devoured. The unearthly Liosalfar, a kind of creature that feeds on the mystic rays of the northern lights, Valkyries and the Son of Fenris - each and every monster in this section is a winner, has unique abilities and some kind of angle/ability I haven't yet read in any other sourcebook - top-notch material and each critter gets its own, cool artwork to boot!
Conclusion in the product discussion, post nr. 34.
This (now revised) pdf is 31 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 5 pages advertisement, 1 page back cover and 2 pages SRD, leaving 20 pages for the Tengu, so let's check them out!
In tradition with the series, the pdf kicks off with three tales that illustrate the mindset via 3 tales - I really enjoyed the read and the minor editing glitches of V1 have been taken care of. After that, we get the concisely-written and compelling IC-narrated origin myth of the Tengu race as well as a great introduction to the unique, enlightenment-seeking nature of the race as well as its concept of honor. The Tengu society and their relationships with other races (including the Kappa, Hengeyokai and Korobokkuru) and we also get discussions on alignment and religion, languages (including their love of poetry), discussion of their adventurers and nomenclature. It should be noted that the IC-narrative is consistent and consequently used and thus makes this a very enjoyable read.
After that, we get the racial traits of the Tengu: They get +2 Dex, -2 Con, +2 Wis, low-light vision, a natural bite attack, get two additional skills as class skills, +2 to Stealth and Perception (here is a blank line too much in the block), +4 to linguistics and learn more languages and proficiency in swords. Alternate racial traits are also provided, in case you want your Tengu to use axes or spears instead of swords, a tengu proficient with riding and handling animals, Tengu born in forests or mountains, especially gifted poets or brown especially fierce Kite Tengu. We also get an Age, Height & Weight table and an extensive discussion (including the Japanese terms) of the Tengu's take on all classes. Following RiP's excessively detailed and customizable standard, we get 9 favored class options covering the base classes as well as one for the summoner and one for the cavalier - nice!
Speaking of the cavalier: The Tengu get new archetypes and the cavalier gets one of the most kick-ass takes on the class imaginable.. I've got 4 words for you.
Dire-boar Tengu cavalry. HOW AWESOME IS THAT???
I'm a jaded cynic, but this just blew my mind!
And the mechanical execution rocks, too, providing you with mount stats and an extensively detailed order. Believe me, this one ROCKS! The next archetype is less awesome, but still nice, offering a valid take on a dexterous fighter. Their very own paladin-archetype, focusing on interaction with nature and kami and awakening the spirit within one's blade is nice.
Magus-friends rejoice, for RiP has added the archetype of Tengukensei, an awesome and very iconic take on our favorite arcane fighter in the revised pdf – this quite frankly goes above and beyond what almost any company out there does and once agin proves RiP’s commitment to offeing the very best to its fans as well as heeding the criticism they receive. Awesome!
After these, we get the Hishoken, the 20-level Tengu racial paragon class. The class gets full BAB, good fort and ref-saves, 4+Int skills per level and d10, being a fighting class focusing on agile attacks, lightning fast strikes and finally can become weightless (standing on e.g. thin branches) and even getting limited flight and the ability to temporarily transform into elementals.
After this rather cool class, we get a short discussion on the Daitengu, the legendary Tengu-sages of their respective mountains. The pdf closes with 10 new, Tengu-related feats, centering on improving their flight and swordsmanship. Mechanically, I didn't have a problem with any of the feats, all seemed balanced and like reasonable picks.
Conclusion:
Editing is top-notch, I noticed no more glitches, all the old ones have been taken care of. Layout is full-color and adheres to the beautiful, bamboo-lined Kaidan-standard. The artworks are mostly ok, but the b/w-artwork depicting the Tengu simply kicks ass - kudos to Mark Hyzer, I love this piece! The pdf is extensively book-marked and I'll come right out and say it: It's my favorite book of the "In the Company"-series to this date. I have no complaints regarding the racial class and the archetypes rock hard. I love the mindset of the Tengu and where "In the Company of Kappa" sometimes felt a bit confused with regards to IC-narrative/crunch, this book, like the wind and the mountains that gave birth to the Tengu, creates a concise and serenely beautiful work that makes for a great read while providing you with the tools to use the Tengu. Even better, V.2.0 offers more content (Magus-archetype), features no glitches and quite frankly is one of the most kick-ass reads for a asian-themed race/class. It offers an excellent bang-for-buck-ratio and you quite frankly have no reason not to pick this up. The new and improved “In the Company of Tengu” gets my highest verdict of 5 stars with the Endzeitgeist-seal of approval.
Endzeitgeist out.
This pdf is 22 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page back cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, leaving 18 pages of content - for the low price a nice deal!
After one page of aptly-written IC-introduction to the realms of fairy we are introduced to a general 5-page overview of Faerie and what its lords and dominions are about: Basically, the realm of the fey is a demi-plane-like conglomeration of parallel mini-planes that exist and partially overlap the prime material plane, resulting in paths that might teleport you to Faerie.
The next section of the book contains the fey and they are presented in an interesting format: We get one page IC-text, 1 page stat-block and rules and 1 page artwork.
The first fey you'll get is the faerie seer, a rather uncommon choice for a fey creature: At least I personally associate seers more with divine/oracleish/Norn-like figures. Befitting of its role, a faerie seer has a plethora of divination spell-like abilities and a cool aura: Being able to see the strands of time, any attack against the seers has to be rolled twice, the worse result counting. Thus, the creature has the unique ability I expect from a given monster book. Nice.
Next up is the Harvest Haunt, a tiny fey that can blight via an negative-energy instilled touch (sans being evil, mind you!) and surround themselves via a complacency aura that might prove disastrous for farmers. This tiny critter really intrigued me, as its potential for creating/threatening some truly disturbing famine winters and potential adventure twists.
The third offering we get is the spindler, a fey clothing merchants that is obsessed with his enchanted fabrics (coming with several sample clothings), who might well try to force his clothes upon his unwitting customers. While a cool comic relief creature or ok low-level adversary, this one felt rather goofy and does not offer much resistance or combat capabilities. If it had more, it might have made for a cool final low-level foe of an adventure circling around strange behaviors.
The final creature we get is the thin man, a fey that has lost one of his dimensions to the "nowhere" (detailed in the first section of the pdf) and subsequently can make for a very deadly assassin: After all, turning to the side, it practically becomes unperceivable and its blades can hit you and easily cut you to ribbons. Deadly, cool and vicious, the thin men mechanically do what one of my recurring villains in my homebrew does and offer for compelling killers, reaching the quality of the now legendary "Van RIchten's Guide to the Shadow Fey".
Conclusion:
Formatting is top-notch and layout adheres to the two-column standard. However, you should know that, while the book and the artwork is b/w, the layout contains blue elements and one of the artworks is full color, to be precise, the one that visualizes the relationship between material and fey realm. Editing is also top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. The critters per se are high quality and can be defined as weird with a capital "w" - which is fine and just what I like and expect from fey. However, I didn't care too much for the first section detailing the fey realms, as ZSP's "Along the twisted Path: Prelude" is simply the superior file with regards to being an introduction to the fey realms. I have one bone to pick with this book, though: The artworks. While the regular artworks are nice, the fey artworks all take up a whole page. This would be great if the artworks rocked. To be blunt, they don't. I know that art is expensive, but some of the pictures (especially the thin man and the harvest haunt) made me CRINGE. I honestly think the pdf would have been better off without them and the other two critter-artworks felt uninspired and not particularly fey. Less would have, at least in my opinion, been more here and would have made it easier to print out the book. The pdf is bookmarked, which is nice. What's my final verdict, then? The production values are high and the creatures original, but 4 fey are not too much and there is some fierce and excellent competition out there regarding fey. However, all of the fey get some individual abilities and the thin men are supremely creepy. My final verdict will be 3.5 stars, rounded down to 3 due to the cringeworthy artwork.
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