The ‘Northern Thing’ has been around for a long, long time in fantasy and fantasy fiction, and Lands of the Linnorm Kings is Paizo’s stab at it. Like the rest of the Pathfinder Campaign Setting books, it is 64 full color pages long, with magnificent cover and inside back cover art, as well as a well done map inside the front cover that shows the location of every place mentioned in the book as well as a few more.
The first and biggest chapter, the Linnorm Kingdoms, is a brief yet information-packed guide to the nation proper. After a three page timeline, you get the various kingdoms. There are five of them, each with its own individual character like Hagreach’s border war with Irrisen and its witchery, trolls, and monsters, or the Ironbound Isles and their desire to reach out to the larger world. The kingdoms all get four pages of coverage, going into their rulers, local culture, and settlements. You also get sections covering the fey and monster-haunted Grungir Forest, complete with a city of talking beasts, and Icemark, home to reindeer-herding nomads.
Next is the Proving Grounds chapter, covering several adventurous locales and adventure ideas for the setting, ranging from the classic “Slay a Linnorm (Norse dragon) and become king” to exploring local dungeons and haunted areas like the rusalka-haunted Black Tarn and Kalva and its savage cannibals. Be warned, a few of the monsters are found in Pathfinder Bestiary 3, so you may want to get that to use this, though it’s not completely necessary.
Third is a chapter on how adventuring in the Linnorm Lands differs from other locales in the larger setting, and it is easily far and away the most unique part of the book. There are well-done rules covering the gaining and losing of reputation, something more valuable than gold among these people. There is a section covering effigies, basically a kind of ritual involving somewhat brutal sacrifices and preparation in exchange for putting very potent curses upon enemies. This is everything from the nithing-pole to the blood eagle to the wicker man. Next comes a section on weregild and ransom, and lastly are some well-chosen unique treasures for your players. The whole book is wonderful, a great source of ideas, but this is the best section from the ‘make it different but keep it simple to use’ viewpoint. I’ve used and read several Viking-based RPG sourcebooks over the years but few have used such basic yet utterly Norse-feeling ideas as this.
Lastly we get an extensive bestiary that includes both monstrous and human foes. You get the classic raider, cannibal berserkers, and monsters such as fey animals, the Scandinavian huldra, the truly horrid mindslaver mold, and Fafnheir. The latter especially is one of THE nastiest monsters ever to show up in a Pathfinder book.
In conclusion, this is far and away one of the best “Viking” books ever done in RPG form. The setting and feel of it is very Norse and it’s done in a way that’s easy to use. If you want something different in feel from the typical European fantasy setting that’s still somewhat familiar, or just want to see how to handle things like PCs developing reputations, get this book. It’s more than worth the money.
From the start, the dungeon has been the mainstay of fantasy roleplaying, a wild and weird place with violence and mystery (and hopefully treasure) around every corner. Dungeons of Golarion is an collection of six such places in the Pathfinder home campaign setting of Golarion. The book covers some of the classic ideas of dungeons such as the haunted mine, the monster-riddled cavern system, and the mad wizard’s tower, but all done with enough of a twist to keep it fresh. Each dungeon gets its own ten-page chapter, complete with a map giving an overview of the dungeon’s levels. Each level gets a brief description, hints as to the inhabitants and particular dangers, and recommended challenge rating for the encounters and hazards within. There is also a two page introduction that expounds on the idea of the megadungeon, and lists almost twenty other examples in the setting. Note too that while all of these dungeons are tied in to the Golarion setting, they can all still be used in other worlds with a little work.
The first dungeon listed is the Candlestone Caverns, a nasty place filled with vermin, kobolds, duergar, drow, and assorted horrors of the Darklands. It also lists some sample traps and treasures within, gives information on the Black Claw kobold tribe, describes a sentient and cursed axe, and has a detailed sample level for low-level characters.
Secondly is Gallowspire, probably the most dangerous and high-level dungeon in the book. A classic lich’s lair, Gallowspire is literally swarming with undead and evil spirits. It’s a bit different from most dungeons in that the idea here is not to open the place up but to keep it shut. It also has a new undead template, the Gallowdead, as well as an artifact for treasure.
Then comes Hollow Mountain, lost fortress of the Runelord of Wrath, Alaznist. It’s a bit different in that the safest chambers are at ground level, with things getting nastier and more horrifying the higher into the mountain and deeper into the earth you go. It has a new monster created by Alaznist, the savagely venomous shriezyx, and a sample new spell for those who dare the depths of Hollow Mountain.
Next is the Pyramid of Kamaria, a temple-tomb erected by a mad pharaoh that is now swarming with monsters. It has a new monster template, the Dream Eater, and describes the artifact that creates them. It also has a gaggle of squabbling demon cultists, all of them fighting each other and looking for allies and victims. Sometimes both at once!
Then comes one of my personal favorites in the book, the Red Redoubt of Karamoss. It’s the classic mad wizard’s tower with the twist of including super-science along with the magic and monsters. Fans of the old classic AD&D 1st edition module ‘Expedition to the Barrier Peaks’ should feel right at home amidst the sonic swords, murderous robots, and rampaging mutants. You get a template for turning any construct into a robot, samples of weird technology, and a written-up sample level as well as plot hints that add a layer of intrigue on to everything.
Last is my other favorite dungeon in the book, the Mines of Zolurket. This dwarf mine, abandoned when a collapse lead to starving miners dying and returning as ravening ghouls, now has several different and nasty power groups living in it for the players to fight and maybe even talk with. The chapter also describes Feast-O’-Marrow, the lord of the mines, as well as several traps and hazards and a few magic items intended for use against the undead. Pity about those undiscovered flaws, though… Again, this is a dungeon filled with chances for diplomacy and scheming as well as the usual mayhem. Only the lack of a detailed level prevents it from being the very best dungeon in the book.
If you want ideas for six good dungeons, get this book. If you want ideas, monsters, templates, treasures, traps, and assorted weirdness for places of your own creation, get this book. You will not regret it.
The third Creature Codex, like the first two, follows a theme. The theme this time is classic movie monsters from the 50's down through the 70's, and they picked some doozies.
The PDF itself consists of 11 pages, one for the cover, one for table of contents and introduction, eight for the monsters, and one for the OGL. And now on to the monsters!
First is the alchemical mutant from "Prophecy". It's basically a bigger, nastier, and much uglier version of a normal animal with some nasty twists to keep it from being just another dire animal. It could make a great pet for your favorite careless polluting alchemist.
Second is the beach horror, a very weird beastie with enough unusual abilities and traits to be more than just another sahuagin.
Then one of my favorites, the Crawling Terror. While the game has its share of mastermind abberations, a few more never hurt. It's both very true to the original source and at the same time downright Lovecraftian in all the good-creepy ways. It includes some very bizarre and quite flavorful magic items as well.
Next is the dire rabbit, followed by the dire shrew. Okay, these aren't the scariest monsters, but if you ever wanted dire beast rodents aside from rats and bats now you've got them. And who can resist the idea of dire rabbit-mounted halflings?
Then we get the molekin, who do a fine job of being a non-evil race of Darklands dwellers.
Lastly is that classic, the evil undead severed head. It's a template and should work nicely for a low-level undead mastermind. It can also work at higher levels, but for some reason to me it feels like a monster meant for lower levels.
You have some great monsters for a very fine price here.
Extra Evolutions is exactly what the title says, a fine set of some brilliant ideas for a summoner's eidolon. It is a PDF worthy of praise.
It starts out with a quick introduction and then lists two new base forms. One is the classic ooze, and the other is the hut, playing off such classics as Baba Yaga's chicken-leg house. Then we get the new evolutions, more than three dozen of them. There is no room to go into everything here, but I will mention that Guise and Mimicry are among my favorites (making your eidolon look like a normal creature, and giving it the ability to alter its appearance), along with treats like Howdah (giving your eidolon a built-in cabin) and the incredible variety of bizarre real-world animal traits listed, like the ability to disgorge its stomach onto an enemy. My one question would be about Metamorph, an evolution that permits your eidolon to change its base form as a one-round action. That seems a bit powerful for the price listed.
All in all, this is an amazing value for the price listed, and a near necessity for the players of summoners. Five stars!
While Endzeitgeist and Dark_Mistress have done their usual amazing jobs reviewing this PDF, I feel like adding a few words of my own as well.
As stated, it contains seven new cavalier orders, all of them amazing on both a game and story level. They have some very well done background and flavor written in, and I can only think of one I'd likely never use myself.
The Order of the Bow is for anyone who ever wanted to play a Byzantine cataphract or Persian savaran; indeed, it allows to make some of the most dangerous archers I've ever seen in the game. If you want to play a mounted archer with some social skills and decent armor, your quest ends here.
The Order of the Citadel is for players who enjoy handling and leading in combat, especially in a military campaign. Really, this order would go perfectly with the Battle Herald prestige class from the Advanced Player's Guide. Or it could make for a fine leader of troops all by itself!
The Order of the Raven is for someone who wants to play a cavalier who is scary without being necessarily evil. One of my favorites, Raven Order cavaliers work as great lieutenants to leading villains or as frightening allies for PC leaders.
The Order of the Shroud is focused on battling the undead. Depending on the campaign style and how much undead you face, this will be either too specialized or a must-have.
The Order of the Trident is specialized for underwater and ocean-going campaigns and adventures. As I rarely do such, for me it has little use, but if you enjoy such a campaign this is almost a necessity. And it has a good list of underwater mounts as well.
The Order of the Unicorn is for the classic virtuous maiden knight defending nature. Great for nature-oriented adventures and campaigns, and hey, you get to ride a unicorn at 8th level.
The Order of the Wolf is easily my favorite for one simple reason, you get a wolf or dire wolf mount. It also focuses on teamwork feats more than many other orders, and on working even better with your mount than many another cavalier. It is also mainly an order for members of savage races and tribes, so if you ever wanted to throw an orc or goblin cavalier against your PCs, here he is!
It closes out with three new feats, one specifically for cavaliers, one for anyone specializing in mounted combat, and one for non-cavaliers. A very, VERY fine bargain at the price listed.
The PDF consists of 105 pages, with a cover (one page), credits (one page), an introduction (two pages), and the OGL (one page), and then we get into the meat of it.
First come the Orders, basically the furry ‘races’ you can use (22 pages). They run the gamut from the expected like wolves, cats, and the like to oddities such as aliens, worms (!), and Lovecraftian horrors. You do get plenty of variety in here.
Next comes Customization, a listing of Lesser and Greater racial traits, with some of the greater traits cheaper for certain orders (30 pages). They cost 1-4 points each, and the character starts with 4 Build Points for buying traits. Some traits come free with some Orders. Be warned, some of them are definitely for people who like the kinkier aspects of furry fandom. And one or two are missing their price cost.
And then Disadvantages (9 pages). You can take up to 2, each providing 2 build points, to purchase more traits. Again, be warned, as some of these may not be to the taste of every gamer group.
Templates are next (18 pages). To further individualize your furry character, with some of them being a bit too powerful for beginning characters. This is easily the best section of the PDF, with many of the templates quite usable even with non-furry characters, like a Wendigo template for people who have ‘gone windigo’ and turned cannibal; the Queen Bee/Worker Drone templates for races like an insect hive; and Earthborn, for characters born on ‘our’ Earth who end up in a heroic fantasy world.
And lastly is a section on Campaign Notes (16 pages). How to fit furries into a PFRPG campaign, either as lone creatures or as members of entire species, and how important and/or well accepted they will be in the campaign. It has a racial package for Neanderthals, as well as a somewhat powerful sorcerer bloodline, a magical transformation spell and an item for ‘furrifying‘ existing characters. At the end of the chapter it includes some anthro-specific diseases.
Really, it’s a fine book with some very good ideas, along with some material that will have an admittedly limited appeal to non-furry fans. But the good far, far outweighs the bad, and there is a lot of ideas here that are 100% usable even for non-furry characters and settings.
After several years of reading endless 'save the world' stories from WoTC, this novel isn't just a breath of fresh air, it's more like a hurricane sweeping bad memories away. A story about low-level but important to the characters goals, that properly uses the world it's in and has decidedly imperfect yet still actually heroic characters doing the right thing (not always without some prompting, but...), and all of it done with some very competent prose? Pure gold!
I also liked the use of non-standard characters in Lord Varian Jeggare, a failed wizard turned investigator, basically a Golarion version of Sherlock Holmes, and his devil-blooded bodyguard Radovan, with the latter becoming part of a love triangle involving a female gypsy werewolf and a mute priestess (very well done, and quite funny); the aformentioned werewolf and her pack, who aren't insanely evil even if they're nowhere near 'good', and priestess (how many well-done mute characters do you see in fiction?), and so many more.
I love horror, and I love pulp fantasy, so it's no surprise that I love this. It's a great collection of classic monsters, from immortals like vampires and werewolves through their lesser-known cousins like the ghoul and the hag, to newcomers like the derro and the flesh golem.
The monsters are brought to (un)life in classic style, and the NPC critters are very well done and nicely illustrated as well. There are new feats and tips to individualize any monsters of your own creation as well. This book is worth every penny I paid for it.
Then you should like the Anumus book. It's a nice package for the price, with good modifiable rules and guidelines for making any one of a number of beast-folk characters for a game, ranging from the standard cat and dog-folk to such exotica as snakes, ravens, and even spiders!
It also includes a prestige class suited for use with the anumi, one that would work magnificently with the land of Osirion in Pathfinder's setting of Golarion.
I did have one or two furry complaints: (1) all the beastfolk are basically human heads on animal bodies (easily changed) and (2) I would have preferred to see a wider selection of beast types. That said, it's a very fine book. If you like animals and/or anthropomorphics you won't regret buying a copy.
Now, admittedly, dragons aren't my favorite D&D critters, so I went in to this with hopes of simply something workable -- and I got pleasantly surprised. Much of this is due to the very new takes on these various dragons. It's hard to say what's best, but certainly the evil-yet-schlolarly greens (and their counterparts, the bronzes) were one of the bigger and better surprises.
It's a good book and it does a fine job of covering some of the most iconic creatures of Dungeons and Dragons.
Then you will love this book. It takes the very best hollow earth 'bits' from the past hundred years or so and brings them all together in the vast, sprawling, and maddening Darklands of Golarion. It has ghoul kingdoms, demon-worshipping drow, hollow earth vampires, Howardian/Clark Ashton Smithian serpent people, massive caverns with dinosaurs, and even gugs. You can't go wrong with this!
"The Skinsaw Murders" is another great entry in the Pathfinder adventure path. The adventure, set in a truly nasty haunted house, is properly frightening; the main villains are all horrid (the Skinsaw Man in particular!); and the backup articles covering the city of Magnimar and the worship of Desna are well written and informative enough to spark many adventure ideas.
My own favorite bit, though, would be the treatment of hauntings as traps or hazards, thereby making them an active part of the adventure being played through rather then something nebulous in the background. It's one of those simply brilliant ideas that makes you wonder, "Why didn't anyone else ever come up with that?"
One minor complaint: I wish we could have gotten some tips on what happens when Iesha meets Aldern. That would have been memorable!
I love this book, and not just for the hidden temple of Lamashtu swarming with gnolls. It's a great quick take on the Golarion version of Egypt, filled with cursed tombs, shady foreign adventurers, touchy mummies angry over having their 5000-year nap disturbed, and everything else that a book like this needs.
My sole problem is that it could have been twice as long and covered even more, but this is a great piece of work.
This book is probably the best tome covering the iconic Western European knight without delving into paladin territory. It does suggest bringing in several other Green Ronin books, but none of them are necessary to use this one. It combines both crunch and fluff while staying world-neutral, and has some amazing art to boot.
Besides, look at that price! You really won't regret buying this book.
Now this is how to do horror for 3.5. The encounters are dangerous and there's a good chance your characters will bite the bullet if they don't get played very carefully... but with some common sense this will be a wild ride.
Oh, and I love the heartlessly evil and alien fey villains. This adventure hearks back to the horriffic fey of folklore, and in grand fashion!
It had its frustrating moments, such as the PCs getting chased out of town without even a hint as to what to do until the next book shows up... but that's minor at best. This book has some amazing characters in it, especially the vile Arkonas.
And there are the usual magnificent backup articles, with my favorite being the one covering rakshasas. And the Red Mantis? Naaasty.
I love this book, even though I got it by itself (it's part of a six-book series) and was completely lost on so many things, from new character classes (like the demon-loving Thaumaturgist) to monster templates to feats. But enough was given that I could use everything... and the background! Even a cursory reading reveals that there is an entire WORLD beyond what we read here.
The backup articles are grand as well, especially the one about the Mother of Monsters, Lamashtu. Really a great buy for your money!
I am delighted to see that Paizo brought the collected Jirel stories back for a whole new generation to enjoy. These were, and still are to me, some of the very best heroic fantasy ever written. The setting has a sort of fairyland feel to modern readers -- but this is classic Grimm's fairyland, a very dark and frightful land indeed that truly needs someone as brave and stubborn as Jirel to defend it against the ever-encroachng forces of darkness.
Just one complaint: why did they show Jirel as being another Red Sonja in the cover art? But that aside, this is one of the best fantasy books you could ever read. Buy it and marvel.
Just got this book myself, and I'm already blown away. More fluff than crunch, it lists legends of the major deities, their portfolios and appearances, and their churches with admirable depth considering the brevity (which is my sole complaint, as I would gladly have paid more for even more information). It also goes into some detail about many more deities worshipped by beings ranging from dwarves to monsters. Even the art is great!
I heartily recommend the Guide to anyone interested in adventures like Crown of the Kobold King or Carnival of Tears. It does a magnificent job of covering Darkmoon Vale, providing background info on everything from geography to history to individual characters. Also, it's got werewolves, and who doesn't like werewolves? ;)
It does have a very few flaws, however; one critter isn't fully detailed (the dream wolf) and one or two characters seem to have mysteriously changing stats from their entries in the book to the master list in the back, but these are really minor flaws.
These stories aren't the best early Kuttner -- that would probably be his Cthulhu Mythos stories -- but they are very well done and entertaining heroic fantasy stories. They have been out of print for entirely too long. Thank you, Paizo, for bringing these lost jewels of the Golden Age back for a whole new audience to read and enjoy!
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