Amazing Races: Sylphs! (PFRPG) PDF

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The Amazing Races PDFs introduce new archetypes, feats, character traits, racial traits, and archetypes for the core, featured, and uncommon races described in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Advanced Race Guide. Every PDF contains two full pages of high quality content (no fluff or filler)!

Amazing Races: Sylphs! includes new racial feats, sylph character traits, and alternate racial traits for sylphs. In addition, this product features a new archetype for sylph paladins: the Skyguard!

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3.00/5 (based on 2 ratings)

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An Endzeitgeist.com review

2/5

This installment of the Amazing Races-series, as always, is 4 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page SRD, 2 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

Much like the Oread before them, the Sylphs have been so far left most untapped and this pdf seeks to add some unique flavor to the race, so what do we get?

Well, we kick off with 4 new feats:

-Cloud Gulp: Negate mists/breath weapons, but be affected by them in spite of immunities. VERY cool one, since there to my knowledge does not exist a similar means of canceling these effects.

-Mighty Wings: Fly in medium or heavy armor with poor or clumsy maneuverability respectively. Lame.

-Thundering Rage: Deal sonic damage when using elemental rage and if you have Storm in the Blood as a racial trait, you can deal 1d6 electricity damage to yourself as a swift action. Per se cool, but VERY specific.

-Windblown Resilience: Gain energy resistance and thunderous resilience racial traits. Yawn.

The two character traits allow you to hold your breath Con x 4 rounds or get +1 to atk and damage after aiding an ally for AC or atk. Nothing special going on here.

We also get 3 different new alternate racial traits – for jump 1/day, Dr 2/- versus ranged and non-lethal attacks or counting as one size category larger for the purpose of intimidate when in stormy weather, two size categories when in stormy weather under your control.

There also is a new archetype for the Paladin-class, the Skyguard – an uncommon choice for sure. Themed around the concept of liberation and air – and as such, the basic ability of the archetype is cool in concept – instead of smite evil, the Skyguard may use winds to deal damage at a creature within 30 ft., dealing 1d4 slashing damage per class level the paladin possesses 1/day per paladin level- Per se a cool idea – but a crippled one – the increase in uses per day when compared to smite is bought with no significant bonus to hit as well as a problematic, very limited range that renders the ability essentially almost useless – especially at higher levels, since it does not allow for iterative attacks. Gaining minor AC-bonuses and DR also make for a very weak trade in for divine grace. Gaining elemental channel (air) and 1/day freedom of movement don’t change these weak payoffs, nor do the high level abilities, which remain weak and not particularly exciting.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good, I didn’t notice any significant glitches. Layout adheres to Abandoned Art’s 2-column no-frills standard and the pdf has no bookmarks, but needs none at this length.

I applaud the approach taken with the Sylph – a race is imho very much defined by culture and unique tricks to pull off and this pdf seeks to introduce some – but ultimately falls short of its own concepts – where the first feat does something interesting, the latter ones as well as the racial traits and alternate racial traits fall slightly flat and remain, concept-wise, while not bad, also not particularly exciting.

And then there’s the archetype, which, even for my VERY conservative tastes, is simply weak. It is not often I complain about something being UNDERpowered, but this is one definite case of this being the case. The concept of the archetype is great, but its execution is woefully lackluster and especially compared with other archetypes we’ve seen from author Daron Woodson, rather uninspired. All in all, one of the weakest installments in the series I’ve seen so far and with the lack of truly intriguing material, my final verdict will hence clock in at 2.5 stars, rounded down to 2 for the purpose of this platform.

Endzeitgeist out.


Touching an Untouched Planestouched

4/5

Sylphs are sort of a weird topic to talk about; their overall design has game history in the game (they were called Gensai back in the old days) but as a relatively new race, they haven't been touched much. Let's look and see how Abandoned Arts handled this race.

Crunch
Abandoned Arts has a very specific style when working with races, and this product actually changes things up a little. It drops the race traits in favor of more, higher quality racial traits and it possesses less feats than other products done. That isn't to say the feats are bad; on the contrary, this content's pretty well done. There's a lot of emphasis on flight and defense against air-themed damage (sonic and electricity). This isn't a bad line up of abilities, but it also isn't very risky. The feats, the traits, all of this stuff feels very safe. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the Abandoned Arts products I remember are the ones that took what I like to call "logical risks."

Speaking of logical risks, the archetype in this book is designed for Paladins. A very interesting choice, to be certain. Now, this archetype has me torn. On one hand, the archetype is very cool, very thematic. It sort of reminds me of the Stonelord Dwarf Paladin archetype from the Advanced Race Guide, which never really made sense to me as a dwarf option. It always looked like more of an Oread option to me, personally. Anyway, back on focus the paladin archetype that we get is pretty thematic, but in terms of special abilities its simply bad. It gives away Smite Evil, the paladin wrecking ball attack, for a once per day ranged slashing damage attack. The attack is affected by damage reduction (Smite Evil normally isn't) and generally speaking, static bonuses will out preform dice every time. The dice you roll for this attack aren't big enough and the daily uses are too limited to warrant trading away Smite Evil. The archetype makes several other lackluster trades. The archetype is sort of themed around liberation and air at the same time, but it doesn't do a very good job of sticking to either theme. I don't really care for the archetype at all, and as I said the other options were solid but forgettable. 3 / 5 Stars

Flavor
Its hard to do flavor with highly mechanics-focused products, and Amazing Races! Sylphs does a pretty good job of emphasizing the air elemental aspects of the race. I think the flavor is top-notch, and the flavor of the paladin archetype admittedly helped to save it score over in the Games Mechanics section; its very confusing to see an option that you know isn't all that great, but the flavor really sells it to you! That said, I didn't really find anything new about the Sylph in this product compared to other Amazing Races! lines. At the same time, I don't want to fault the product for this; it is a noticeable flaw of all the half-breed "races." 4 / 5 Stars

Texture
I really like Abandoned Arts' set up for this product line. This is the first product that has changed it up (that I've reviewed thus far, anyway) but it still sticks closely enough to their formula that I didn't find it disorienting. 5 / 5 Stars

Final Score & Thoughts
Crunch: 3 / 5
Flavor: 4 / 5
Texture: 5 / 5
Final Score: 4 / 5 Stars

This product is pretty good. It definitely is not a bad product by any means. However, the paladin archetype is pretty lacking and the abilities themselves, while useful, are not very imaginative. This product doesn't really have enough push to move into the "must-buy" territory for me, but it is a very solid buy. If you're playing a Sylph, pick it up. If you're not playing a Sylph, this product isn't going to convince you to or inspire you to.

— Alexander "Alex" Augunas


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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 32

Thanks, Liz!

Daron Woodson
Abandoned Arts

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 32

Thanks for your review, Golden-Esque!

Daron Woodson
Abandoned Arts


Reviewed first on Endzeitgeist.com, then submitted to GMS magazine and Nerdtrek and here, on OBS and d20pfsrd.com's shop!.

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 32

Thanks for taking the time to review, Endzeitgeist!

Daron Woodson
Abandoned Arts

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