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There's a scene below Foxglove Manor featuring a Dire Bat, and this bad boy would be perfect for it. And the price is very reasonable too.

This mini is part of a collectible minis set, and it's a rare. That's why the cost is so high - they're very hard to come by. You'd have to open dozens of random boosters to get one.

It may not be worth it to you, and that's fine. But at least you should understand why it costs what it does, and to some people, if they really want that fig, the listed cost is much cheaper than getting at it by buying a ton of boosters.

The artwork that this mini is based off of (to my knowledge) first appeared on the cover of one of the Second Darkness Adventure Path adventures. When it did, I thought to myself that it truly felt like an iconic dark elf - exactly how I'd always pictured them in my mind.

Then this mini comes along, and perfectly captures that. Great detail, a painter of any skill level can work with this and made a good piece they can be proud of.

I can firmly say that without reservation, this is the finest RPG supplement I have ever read.

What made the 3.5 system great was that it made characters highly customizable. You had the class as a base, but you could dabble in multiclass, you could take prestige classes, you could take feats, and so on.

This has taken what's great about that, and multiplied it out exponentially. Now, the racial traits you took for granted are suddenly malleable.

The 6 new core classes are all wonderfully unique and varied additions to the game, as opposed to some kind of tacked-on perk to make people open the book and then never use. My next character is probably going to be a witch.

The class sub-types are insanely cool. I can make a "Zen Archer" monk now who can focus his training into bow usage now instead of being shoe horned into a melee combatant role.

The best thing about all of it though, to me, is that none of it really broke into any kind of power creep. All of these new abilities have trade offs. You want your dwarf to have magic resistance as a class feature? OK, sure, but you'll have to give up the "hardy" racial trait.

The new spells and feats follow the same tack. Useful but not overpowered.

The artwork is suberb, like the rest of the PFRPG line. The layout useful, intuitive, and sensible.

Just wow. If this is what we can expect, then I need to get a new job to pay for all the stuff I need to be buying. :)

OK I have to start by saying I really do love what Paizo has done with 3.5 and taking the mantle of the RPG and raising the bar. I really do. And this book is good. But it's not great.

First, what's good about it.

The artwork is on par with the rest of the PFRPG line so far. In other words, fabulous.

The NPC builds of varying levels for each "type" of NPC make for a wonderful time saving device for GMs who know roughly what they're looking for and just need a quick and dirty set of stat blocks for the band of highway robbers that set themselves on the road the PCs are travelling down. On a related note, I also like the random tables for giving NPCs little quirks that make them memorable.

Also, each DMG type book you ever get has a section on "how to run an RPG" and I usually skim or skip those because I've been roleplaying for a long time. But there was actually useful stuff in this one for me.

OK, now the stuff that was not so good.

At times I felt like I was reading the Paizo product release catalog. I lost count of the number of times I was told in the first 50 pages how useful and wonderful the Combat Pad is for tracking initiative. I own the Combat Pad, and yes, it is cool. I get it. Miniatures, flip mats, modules, adventure paths, map packs, the crit and fumble decks, and so on. I get it - they're useful. But I don't like paying $40 for what at times felt like blatant advertising.

There are also what seem to be an inordinate number of typos and spelling errors in the book. Another layer or two of proofreading would have done wonders.

Overall though, more good than bad, and it's definitely a book I will use significant parts of. So I think 3 stars is reasonable. I could probably be convinced to do 3.5 but that doesn't exist, and I don't think I could give it 4.