This Class Act is 5 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 3 pages for the 18 new inquisitions of the inquisitor, so let's check them out!
First of all, let me applaud the choice to focus on inquisitions: SGG as done neat judgments and RiP has delivered with the most awesome solo tactics-feats imaginable, whereas inquisitions have been mostly neglected. So what are these about?
-Absolution: Cha-mod on saves vs. evil spells and effects, ability to geas/quest willing subjects.
-Blood: Count 1/2 your Inquisitor level as fighter levels for the purpose of feats and make your deity's weapon flaming.
-Doomsday: +1 to DC of your fear spells, become immune against fear at 8th level.
-Guided: Gain guided hand as a bonus feat, meditate for 15 minutes to change one of your prepared inquisitor spells for another 1/ day at 8th level; +1/day for every 4 levels beyond that.
-Incarnate: Turn into an avatar of your deity wis-rounds per day. While in this form, you gain a +1 bonus on saves, attack rolls and damage, immunity to fear and may use one of your deities X/day domain abilities at will. At 8th level, you can manifest stigmata 1/day for cha-mod rounds that grant you fast healing 2 and immunity to fear. When combining both abilities, the stigmata instead grant you fast healing 5. NOW we're talking! This inquisition rocks!
-Judgment: Gain Enforcer as a bonus feat, +2 to intimidate while judgment is active, and when you change judgments, you get +2 to AC for 1 round. You may sacrifice latter bonus o gain fast healing 2 or guidance for 1 round as a move action. Another neat one!
-Karmic: Become immune to curse and luck effects and bestow curse 1/day. This one blows. Why? Take the Malefactor or the Luckbringer-class - both utterly invalidated by the inquisition. Not gonna happen in my game. *shakes head*
-Nightmare: Gain Skill Focus (Intimidate), dream and nightmare as spells as well as 1/2 your class level on weapon damage vs. foes suffering from fear-related conditions.
-Pestilence: +4 to saves vs. disease and the ability to convey spiritual afflictions 1/day at 8th level + 1/day every four levels beyond that. Immunity to disease does not help vs. this affliction and its save is a will-save, not a fort-save.
-Redemption: +4 to diplomacy and intimidate and sense motive vs. evil creatures, no leadership penalty when using evil cohorts/followers and the ability to use mark of justice.
-Righteous: Smite Evil 1/day as a paladin of your class level and leadership as a bonus feat.
-Slayer: Gain a favored foe that is a religion, impose your wis-mod in opposed stealth check with your foes on the results and gain 1/2 class level as bonus damage when foes of the selected religion are denied their dex-bonus. Cool zealot/religious war archetype.
-Silver: Gain a smite attack like a paladin that only affects creatures vulnerable to silver, force creatures to revert to their true shape 3+wis-mod times per day unless they succeed a fortitude save and cast a silver flame strike that also affects those hit to revert to their true shape. Nice lycanthrope hunter archetype.
-Spirit Inquisition: Gain a bonus to research restless undead and ghost touch weapon property. Very neat!
-Transcendent: Gain benefits of a personal light spell that only you can see and later treat the sight as see invisible and detect magic when dying, sleeping or otherwise unconscious - though it does not specify whether one has to hold your eyes open, whether you can move etc. Kind of wonky and needs minor clarification on how it's supposed to work.
-Wisdom: Gain alertness and a weird ability: As long as you have as many spell-levels prepared as you have ranks in perception and sense motive, you gain a +1 bonus to both skills per rank you have. Ok, does that mean I need e.g. 7 spell levels in reserve to get the benefits when I have 3 ranks in sense motive and 4 in perception? and does that mean I get a +7 bonus to both or +3 and +4 respectively? If I only have 3 divine spell levels left, do I lose both bonuses or just the one to perception? I don't know how this ability works from its text. Either way, essentially doubling two skills is insanely overpowered and broken, even apart from the mechanical problems. The inquisition also allows you to heal + wis-mod HP when healing with a verbal component AND grant an ally within 30 ft. one of your teamwork feats when you activate a judgment for the duration of the judgment. This inquisition is broken mechanically and overpowered.
-Witchbane: Get immunity to curses and hexes. *frothing nerd-rage* WHAT? Level 1 flat-out immunity to all hexes? Come again? AND TO ALL CURSES, EVEN THE HIGH LEVEL ONES? WHAT?? And the ability to disrupt Coven magic? BROOOOOOKEEEENNN. Sucks. I hate it. Two thumbs down. Worse than the Wisdom Inquisition. /*frothing nerd-rage*
-Wrath: This one is interesting, granting you a rage power while using judgment and increased damage via bane and greater bane when catching foes lying to you - two thumbs up!
The pdf closes with a table of deity-portfolios an appropriate inquisitions.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are very good, I didn't notice any significant glitches. Layout adheres to Abandoned Art's two-column, no-frills standard and the pdf has no bookmarks, but needs none at this length. This pdf started off so good and has some nice ideas with e.g. the incarnate inquisition, the wrath, silver and spirit guide ones etc.
However, the more I read, the more problems started cropping up. Some of the inquisitions feel a bit bland, but that's not a problem when compared to the horribly broken wisdom inquisition: I honestly don't get how it works and either option is totally overpowered, so however it works, it sucks. And then there are the Witchbane and Kismet inquisitions that essentially invalidate 3 (!!!!) classes completely. Honestly, usually author Daron Woodson has a fim grasp on avoiding such design-blunders of the highest magnitude. Flat-out immunities vs. signature abilities of a class (or ALL abilities of a class) are just one thing: Bad, bad design. Before reading these and the wisdom inquisition, I saw this pdf in the upper echelons of my rating scale, but they, at least for me, wreck the pdf. I'd slap immediately my 1-star verdict on this were it not for the good ideas featured by some of the inquisitions, which drag this up to a final verdict of 2 stars with caveats for any DM - strike through these 3 inquisitions if you value the mentioned classes.
Endzeitgeist out.