How can you say "No" to a collection of Pathfinder haunts and templates, fearsome foes and unique encounters, feats and domains all of that bundled together with an Interview with Owen K.C. Stephens? You'd have to be crazy to turn it down.
Rite Publishing brings you Pathways, a free 'zine packed with plenty of Open Game Content for you to take to the table. You'll find articles by Jonathan McNulty (Curse of the Golden Spear Trilogy), T. H. Gulliver (#30 Haunts for Objects), Creighton Broadhurst (Caves & Caverns),and Ron Lundeen (Pathfinder Society Scenario #3-05: Tide of Twilight). Also you will find a retrospective look at the best third party products of 2011 by Endzeitgeist and Dark Mistress!
Cover Illustration by Colby Stevenson Pages: 48
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This installment of Rite Publishing's free e-zine Pathways is 48 pages long, 1 page front cover, 14 pages of advertisements and 1 page SRD, leaving a whopping 32 pages of content, so let's check it out!
After the neat editorial by David Paul, we delve right into the action with the cover-creature and the sublime creature template (CR +2) by Jonathan McAnulty: Sublime creatures are immortal, positive-energy-induced creatures and the sample critter is AWESOME: Kallia, the Sybil of Eldorus, the medusa from the front cover, makes for a truly deadly (CR 20) foe - the sublime celestial greater medusa oracle 10 comes again with a great fluff text, an excerpt from a ballad and a tragic background story, a new magic diadem, new magic daggers and 3 monstrous feats. Kallia ranks among my very favorite creatures presented in Pathways. Expertly-written with a stellar full color artwork. Two thumbs up!
T.H. Gulliver, master of the #30-haunts-series delivers a cool article on the destruction of haunts and suggestions on how to make the experience sufficiently rewarding. A neat read that makes me hope for a horror-mega-adventure by T. H. Gulliver soon!
Creighton Broadhurst, mastermind of Raging Swan Press, presents us three sample cutpurses and thieves (CR 1/4 Urchins, CR 1/3 Cutpurse and CR 1 Skilled Cutpurse) and a neat general encounter to have the non-violent guys try to steal from the PCs, including terrain, crowd etc. and even a list of cool distractions. Nice!
The next article is once again by Jonathan McAnulty and is entitled "Sacred Sepulchers" - continuing the longest-ranging of support for ANY class released by a 3pp so far - the divine channeler gets channeling effects for the murder and undead subdomains and 3 sample sacred tomes. This particular article goes above and beyond, though, and offers a new skill use for diplomacy: Dealing with grief. Two new spells are included as well, one to temporarily induce a depression and one to temporarily remove the condition. As one with enough experience with the topic, I enjoyed the take on the topic, although I would love to see a more complex take on the topic of grief, sadness and depression, perhaps in an upcoming release.
We also get Moso's Bluff, a fast, grimy intrigue-sidetrek set in Kaidan 8or any Japanese-style-setting) and feeling like a neat little urban noir adventure. Ron Lundeen, author of several adventures and most recently, mastermind of Run Amok Games (The first Run Amok-adventure, "Six Griffons Haunt" scored 5 stars...) presents us with a neat scenario based in the seedy Yakuza-infested underbelly between bakuto-parlors and tattoo-studios and makes use of the best Way of the Yakuza has to offer. This scenario alone lets me hope for an adventure anthology in Kaidan and look forward to Ron's next offerings! As a DM, you have to check this one out, it's an awesome sidetrek! Have I mentioned Tengu-archers and the blind bard?
Owen K.C. Stephens, master of crunch and one reason of the success of Super Genius Games, is next for a very interesting interview and an offering to aspiring authors.
Finally, in case you're too busy to check up on them, the esteemed Dark_Mistress and yours truly both present their personal top-10 of third party products for the Pathfinder RPG released in 2011. If you haven't checked them out, take a look - maybe something went under your radar.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are very good, I didn't notice any significant glitches. Layout adheres to the 2-column standard and the awesome artwork by Colby Stevenson of the greater medusa is stunning. The pdf has no bookmarks. Content-wise, this issue is absolutely AWESOME and blows most issues out of the water. The creature, the template, the advice on haunts, Creighton's encounter, the divine channeler support and Ron's excellent adventure all conspire to make this issue of Pathways my favorite so far. And it's free. Have I mentioned that this is free? It's worth every mb on your hard-drive and you should download this now. Final verdict. 5 stars and Endzeitgeist seal of approval. Great work!
I found the interview with Owen to be fascinating.
Owen is just gloriously brilliant. I have followed his work since his first article of elven names back in Dragon Magazine. He is always a pleasure to work with, has mentored me on more than one occasion, and has inspired my work on half-breeds, the Taskshaper, and the Luckbringer.
Glad to be a part of this again. Another great issue!
-Ron Lundeen
Thanks for writing a mini-Kaidan adventure. I thought it was very cool to see an author outside of Rite Publishing, creating awesome Kaidan content. Very cool!
I wonder if Owen was thinking a little about me too when he talked of "calling him if we didn't hear from him in a couple of weeks". I did and surely will do!^^
That said, the Sublime Template is... well, sublime! Makes me desire to create an entire PrC just to give it as a 10th-level boon!
And I love the poor unfortunate medusa oracle too.
Thanks for writing a mini-Kaidan adventure. I thought it was very cool to see an author outside of Rite Publishing, creating awesome Kaidan content. Very cool!
Yeah, that was a lot of fun. "Way of the Yakuza" has so many cool pieces in it, I had a good time picking out a few of them and jumbling them together into a mini-adventure.
I picked this up, mainly to look at the top ten lists. But have glanced through the rest of it briefly. Very interested to know that Owen's from Oklahoma, even if he is from Sooner country. (I'm a cowboy, what can I say.)
