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Good, but I was hoping for something different

3/5

This short PDF is about 13 pages long, 1 for the cover, 1 for the credits, 1 for the SRD, 2 pages for ads, leaving 8 pages to actually talk about Elspeth Black.

There are 3 different stat blocks for Elspeth at various stages of her career, as an Agent, an Operative, and an Executive Officer, which take up 4 pages altogether. I don't know Psionics, so I can't comment on how well built she is mechanically, but I do like that her tactics across all 3 versions remain consistent. Also, her high-level versions have tactics that say she likes to hang back and bark orders to her minions, which normally means nothing to a non-bard, but there are feats included in this book to make that tactic do something.

There are three feats in this book, which vary from okay to pretty good. There are two magic item properties included, Reshaping and Weightless. The former is essentially a glamer that can look like anything, not just normal clothes. The latter does exactly what it says, makes the armor weightless as well as some extra effects that come with that (less Armor Check Penalty, more Max Dex, less Arcane Spell Failure). Both interesting, but I'm not sure the Weightless is worth the +2 enhancement bonus that it costs.

There are a few magic items included. Three are a series of keys that let the user travel between planes, and one are a set of gloves that provide a bonus to Use Magic Device.

Elspeth has a sentient psicrystal, which also comes with three statblocks to match Elspeth's progression. An interesting sidebar is provided on the psicrystal's personality and how it tries to influence Elspeth.

Finally, there's one page provided that provides some details about Elspeth's personality and goals, as well as ways to use her in adventures. Some information is also provided about the organization of Blackblade itself. There's not nearly as much information as I was hoping for, though. Blackblade is fairly simple (an extraplanar mercenary group), but Elspeth is a fairly interesting character and I would've rather had an extra page or so to learn about her than one of the statblocks, or the gigantic picture of a fist on page 8.

Overall, my feelings are a little mixed about this PDF. I wish there was more information about Elspeth and less mechanics in here, and due to that lack of information I don't see myself getting much use out of this, but what *is* here is done fairly well. My final rating is basically a compromise between "this is done pretty well" and "this isn't what I was hoping for."