Faces of the Tarnished Souk: Viscount Zanzig, the Crystal Seer, High Prognosticator of Sarnath (PFRPG) PDF

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Knowledge is power.

In the Khan of Nightmares’ legendary Coliseum Morpheuon, what you don’t know can hurt you. Thankfully, for those who can locate a certain soothsayer in the nearby Tarnished Souk, and those who can pay for the privilege to ask the right questions, there is very little one cannot know. Viscount Zanzig, the Crystal Seer, High Prognosticator of Sarnath is a peculiar diviner supreme with the arcane mojo to provide the information your party really needs to know. Whether they’re going to like that information is an entirely different matter.

This product provides Game Masters with details on an odd and incredibly useful character found amongst the Faces of the Tarnished Souk, ready for immediate use in any campaign - but especially for use within the Coliseum Morpheuon. Each entry features ingenious stat-blocks from multiple OGL sources, history, motivation, secrets, and insight into the NPC’s most carefully guarded dreams, along with complete game statistics for low, middle, and high levels of play.

    Within you will find:
  • Viscount Zanzig, the Crystal Seer, High Prognosticator of Sarnath, an eccentric mystic along with 9 exotic divination spells and the savant creature template
  • CR 16 Male savant elf wizard (diviner) 15
  • CR 11 Male savant elf diviner 10
  • CR 6 Male savant elf diviner 5

Authors: Matt Banach and Justin Sluder
Cover Image by Toby Gregory
Pages 7

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Are there errors or omissions in this product information? Got corrections? Let us know at store@paizo.com.

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3.00/5 (based on 1 rating)

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Three incarnations of a savant elf diviner

3/5

This pdf is 11 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 1 page advertisement, leaving 7 pages for the three incarnations of Viscount Zanzig, the High Prognosticator of Sarnath, so let's dive in.
In the beginning, we get once again an aptly-written 1-page introduction to the character as well as several hooks and a how-to for using the character.

As with the last installment, I'm going to start CR-wise at the bottom and move up:

His low-level incarnation is:

Savant elf diviner 5 (CR 6). He gets 2 new spells;

-Canny Shot (Sor/Wiz 0): +2 to your next ranged attack, reduce miss chance by concealment by 20%

-Foe's Measure (Sor/Wiz 1): Learn class and creature type of affected creatures. The spell is thankfully fooled by disguise.

His mid-level incarnation is:
Savant Elf Diviner 10 (CR 11). I found two capital Bs as minor editing glitches in the feat-section of this incarnation. He also gets a new spell:

-Perilous Strike (Sor/Wiz 3): Your next attack that misses gets a +20 to see whether it connects then. If this new attack would hit, with an attack roll unmodified by the spell , you confirm a critical.

His high-level incarnation is:
Savant Elf Diviner 15 (CR 16). He gets 3 new items:

-Diadem of Servitude: Nice twist on the headband of vast intelligence
-XYZ's (omitted due to minor spoiler) Amulet of Command: Deep Slumber,Feeblemind, Mass Charm Monster, Mass Suggestion, Mind Fog, Dominate Monster, Mass Hold Monster. As well as some subtle, devious abilities.

-Ring of Revelation: Permanent True seeing and Foresight

Zanzig also gets 5 new spells:

-X-Ray Vision (Sor/Wiz 5): Guess what that does.

-Teleport Tracer (Sor/Wiz 6): Track teleports

-Portrait of the Wanted (Pal 4, Rgr 4, Sor/Wiz 4): Obtain image of the last person touching an object. Why is this not on the Inquisitor's spell-list?

-Monstrous Lore (Clr 7, Drd 7, Sor/Wiz 7): Learn the names and only the names of the abilities of a touched creature, including special attacks, defenses etc. A bit metagamey for my tastes, but due to the name-restriction and the high-level actually appropriate.

-Mirrored Oracle (Clr 8, Sor/Wiz 8): Gain a pool of insight bonuses equal to the caster level. You may use these bonuses in increments. E.g. caster level 16 would provide +16, which you could e.g. divide into 2 +8 bonuses to rolls.

Finally, we get the savant template, which I did like. There is a case of a missing "h" in the section on skills, though.

Conclusion:
Layout adheres to the two-column RiP-standard, the b/w artwork is nice. I noticed some minor editing glitches. I did enjoy the new spells as additional content and the items as well as the interesting and plentiful potential hooks for usage of Zanzig. However, with regards to the complexity of the statblocks, this NPC is once again on a level with Primus Gearheart and thus not as complex or far-out as Ahnkar-Kosh or Le Loup Solitaire. That being said, I felt he was a bit better executed than Primus Gearheart, thus my final verdict will be 3.5 stars, rounded down to three for the purpose of this platform.



Just wanted to say thank you to Paizoians for getting this up.

RPG Superstar 2009 Top 16

Thank you for the review, End. Points are well taken.


Thanks for listening to feedback, I really did prefer this one to Primus. However, as Steve already mentioned, it'll take a bit longer for my demand of more complex statblocks to simmer through to the final pdfs. To make it clear: If Zanzig had been completely clear of editing mistakes, he would have made 4 stars, as I consider him to be the more usable and thus superior NPC.

All the best,
Endzeitgeist


thanks for the review end.

While get your desire for no editing mistakes, and I am striving to do so, there are going to be in any book. The thing is does the number of mistakes distract from the book. Even Paizo's best book has editing mistakes as does Coliseum.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Rite Publishing wrote:
Even Paizo's best book has editing mistakes...

Nooo! We're never make misteaks!

[sigh]


Of course every book does have some! ^^ It just is a matter whether I notice them and whether I consider them avoidable/how many there are with regards to the overall length of a book.
Plus: You guys @ RiP often manage to put out files without editing mistakes I notice, which is more than I can say about most other companies! And your content rocks most of the time! So keep up the good work!

(The same, of course, goes for Paizo, the only company that ever made me sign a subscription deal at my LGS...)

Edit: Ninja'd & LOL @ Vic - you actually made me chuckle in front of my monitor. And crave a nice, bloody steak. ;P

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