gamer-printer's page

Review up, and I Thank You gentlemen.

I've been looking forward to this myself. Rite Publishing has renewed my interest in Japanese-inspired fantasy RPG material, which I once thought long since burned out.

Not quite the same, but Rite Publishing has In the Company of Henge - which are the anthropomorphic shapechangers of Japanese folklore. And the henge feature multiple versions (subspecies) in that single publication.

Thanks for linking to that one, I'd forgotten about it completely. It's a great PDF, and the ones they have covering kappas and tengu are also great (and kinda-sorta anthropomorphic if you're into midget turtle wrestlers and sword-wielding birdmen).

they get it at level 10 as a monk bonus feat

At 10th level, the following feats are added to the list:

Improved Critical, Medusa’s Wrath, Snatch Arrows, and Spring Attack.

I'd echo Chuck's sentiments. But ToB:Bo9S can be polarizing. I remember when Louis Porter Jr. Design decided to add such elements in his Undefeatable line for Fighters and it wasn't well received if you were to go by the reviews here.

I bought Bo9S when it came out, but I never actually used it until October 2010 when I played a Warblade for the first time. The simplest response would be to say that there are some elements that I do like whereas there are some elements that would be ripe for abuse.

On a tangent, I'd recommend perusing The Players Guide to Arcanis - specifically their combat styles section pp 181-185. They were essentially 5 level prestige classes (1st lvl - trainee, 2nd lvl - novice, 3rd lvl - adept, 4th level - expert, 5th lvl - master) that covered 8 different combat style schools. They had their prereqs with a minimum BAB and assumed that the Combat Expertise feat was taken. Certain schools demanded a specific weapon requirement, carried their advantages and limitations, and brought in special abilities. Some were even targeted toward certain races or regions. Similar to Bo9S, this also had their own style maneuvers to choose from. Some schools could dip into similar style maneuvers while some were exclusive to a specific school. The difference is that this wasn't as manga / Exalted influenced as was Bo9S at the time and made things a bit more palatable.

I don't mind having magic elements introduced into a martial art style of fighting, but not excessively so.

I'm intrigued, but I'd have to see some samples before convincing myself to buy in on a project.

For those people who have trouble keeping non-CRB races in their world and keeping them making sense, I offer a bit of advice...

Map out your world (I use Fractal Mapper 8 myself), put in the major 'areas', countries, wastes, etc. Then type up a paragraph about each area. Then think about which races make sense living there, and put it at the end of the paragraph.

This goes a LONG way toward fitting in all the races your players might want. For example, let's say the game is taking place in Humandia, which is 95% human. The other 5% is made up of CRB 7.

However, one of the players wants to play a catfolk. You look over your world notes, and you see that Savannaville, which is on the south part of your continent has catfolk listed as 30% of the population. Now you can fit it in your head. He's a wanderer who's in the human lands, probably for some significant reason to get him this far north. He was a slave that was recently freed by the Humandia navy for example, and he's trying to find work to make enough money to get back home. Or he is seeking a lost relic that was stolen from his tribe, and his search has brought him to Humandia, as the thief was a human who used the coin of Humandia while fleeing.

It makes everything make a lot more sense when you know where in your world races would be from, and the environment, and why they might be somewhere else.

Core Rulebook, Advanced Player's Guide, Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic, and soon to be released Advanced Race Guide.
All this me and my group consider Core.

Super Genius Games and Rite Publishing have earned an automatic approval with their products.

Other 3pp must have approval and if a player wished to use must buy a copy of it for the GM.