Lord Of Darkness's page

Many role playing games that are produced by the larger houses these days show obvious signs of existing for the sole purpose of generating revenue. Never was this more obvious than when 3rd edition first hit the shelves with its extremely poor production values, and even worse editing. The revision to our beloved franchise, however, had its merits.

And it is those merits that the designers of Pathfinder seize upon, and seek to improve. Refining broken rules but maintaining the heart of what made 3.5 the game it was. The love of that game pours through on every page of this book, and in the absolute attention to detail that has been paid to the product.

That is not to say that the product is without flaws, but this is a game that has been made out of love of the game, not love of cash.

For any RPG setting based on the conflict of archetypes it is necessary to have a wide assortment antagonists to challenge the party. In that respect Paizo has delivered a quality product.

I do not begrudge the choice to leave some monsters out, or under-defined in the first book. After all, there is a lot of material to cover if we are talking about presenting all monsters from the various OGL pantheons. However, the organization of the book does sometimes make it difficult to locate things, and I find myself having to make frequent use of the table of contents rather than being able to simply intuitively find the creatures in the book. For that reason, I cannot give the book a 5 star rating.

I have both the PDF and the print versions, and find the the production values of both are quite consistently high. I have nothing but good things to say in that regard.

Paizo has delivered once again. It is clear that Paizo crafts their Pathfinder products for the love of the game, and nowhere is that more clear than in their free supplements. While one might disagree with the stats for a particular monster, the production values are consistently high, as is the attention to detail and game balance.

The artwork on the screen is well done, though it largely just a re-print of the standard Pathfinder class images.

The charts are well organized, with print that is large enough to read easily. Most charts that might be needed are available for reference.

The construction is very nice, and quite durable. Mine has held up through quite a few game sessions and many a rough and tumble trips in my game bag without tearing or excessive wear.