Occult Character Codex: Spiritualists (PFRPG)

2.70/5 (based on 3 ratings)
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The Spirits Have Awakened!

Occult Character Codex: Spiritualists contains 20 detailed spiritualist stat blocks, including a phantom for each and every one, for a total of 40 unique creatures and characters! The spiritualists tap into the power of raw unbridled emotion through their phantoms, channeling the power of dangerous impulses like anger and fear alongside hatred, jealousy, and despair, though some draw from the wells of dedication and zeal to wield their psychic powers! You'll find spiritualist humans, gnomes, half-orcs, and elves, but also stranger races like duergar, oreads, vanaras, and undines, running the gamut from good to evil and all points in between. With the Occult Character Codex, you'll have an entire arsenal of spiritualist characters waiting and ready to blow your players' minds!

The Occult Character Codex series brings you a fantastic collection of detailed, ready-to-use stat blocks for psychic characters using the new classes in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Occult Adventures rulebook. These characters can be used by GMs as allies or villains, friends or rivals, helpful characters or mysterious strangers, or any other use the GM can think of. Every installment includes 20 fully developed premade characters from 1st to 20th level, drawn from many races and specialties within each class and designed with a full array of spells, magic items, feats, psychic abilities, and detailed tactics for ease of use. If you'd love to introduce elements of the new psychic and occult rules into your campaign but feel a bit overwhelmed by the sheer volume of new material to absorb, this is the book for you. Each Occult Character Codex is an ideal complement to the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game NPC Codex from Paizo, Inc.

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2.70/5 (based on 3 ratings)

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Slimer, stop drinking that!

3/5

While I havn't checked the accuracy of the builds this book certainly gives a look how your PC will progress through levels though this book assumes phantoms made out of ectoplasm can drink potions. I don't think I would allow that in my game.


An Endzeitgeist.com review

3/5

This installment of Legendary Games' collection of Occult Adventures pre-built NPCs clocks in at 36 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages of how to use/introduction to the subject matter, 1 page ToC, 1/2 a page blank, 1 page SRD, 1 page advertisement, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 27 1/2 pages of content, so let's take a look!

Okay, it has been a while since I covered one of these, so let's recapitualte: The Occult Character Codex-series basically provides NPC-codex style entries for the respective class, utilizing automatic bonus progression as introduced in Pathfinder Unchained as well as buffing featured in the respective statblocks. The statblocks themselves feature a pre-buffing section where applicable and, for ease of reference, save DCs come with F, R, and W as shorthand for the saves in the respective spell etc. entries, allowing for an easy reference.

CR-wise, the NPCs herein range from CR 1/2 to CR 19, covering the whole breadth. The respective spiritualist builds, obviously, feature their respective phantom pet, rendering the overall statblock density of the book relatively high. The builds in the series do try to depict organically grown characters, i.e. the NPCs herein, while being efficient, also feature capabilities that ground them in the respective world, a decision I generally applaud.

As has become the tradition with the series, the NPCs featured herein diverge in their respective focus - while we do have some classic, CORE-races using spiritualists in the book, there also are samsarans and even grippli to be found among the builds. The onmyoji archetype is used in a few of the builds as well - so racial diversity's here; archetype-wise, the book could sport a bit more diversity.

Regarding the emotional focus of the respective phantoms, the pdf does provide a sufficient array of diverse options, with the foci generally fitting well the theme of the respective phantoms. The same can't be said about all of the spell-selections certain themes in spells can be readily identified - granted, there is diversity here, but it could have been a tad bit more pronounced. On the plus-side, while a similar observation can be made pertaining some feats, the overall breadth of strategies via builds is significantly broader. Kudos!

That being said, unlike the other OCC's I've covered, there is something I need to mention - the phantoms have some glitches in central abilities; unfortunately, these glitches tend to be rather crucial ones - slam damage is incorrect in some cases, correct in some and does not progress properly, extending the issue to the respective damage caused; similarly, DR-scaling of the phantoms is not accurate. The frustrating component here is that there are quite a few of the entries that work out well, but still, those are pretty central components in the respective build.

Does this make the book unusable? No. But it does limit its appeal.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting, on a formal level, are very good, though this time around, the uncharacteristic glitches in he builds do somewhat limit the book's appeal. Layout adheres to Legendary Games' two-column full-color standard and the pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience. Artwork-wise, we get some classic LG-artworks as well as the cool cover artwork.

Julian Neale's spiritualists are the weakest entry in the series and were a rather odd experience for me, reviewing-wise. Why? Because I happen to have the build-notes for them and while these also have hiccups here and there, they are other hiccups - while e.g. the DR in the build-notes for the level 20 NPC isn't correct, the slam attack base damage actually is. My theory is that: Something went wrong in layout/dev. Some of the glitches obviously are cut-copy-paste hiccups. EDIT: The author has contacted me and taken full responsibility - that takes guts and backbone, so kudos!!

That being said, there is still value to be drawn from this pdf - the builds themselves are pretty complex and even with their glitches, the pdf still represents some seriously spared time. The glitches mentioned can be relatively easily purged and while the pdf thus can't be considered to be the high-point of the series, neither does it deserve being dismissed. What's here, generally, is cool and GMs willing to invest a bit of work to fix the glitches get some complex builds out of this one. Still, the pdf could also have employed more in the archetype discipline.

In the end, I will settle on a final verdict of 2.5 stars; if you're in it for flawless statblocks, round down; if you want the majority of grunt work done for you, you'll still find use for this. My official final verdict will round up due to in dubio pro reo.

Endzeitgeist out.


Good concept but...

2/5

Like Paizo's NPC Codex, this book is supposed to serve as a time saver for GM's. It provides pre-generated NPC Spiritualists, at each of levels 1 through 20.

The good: I do like that they used Pathfinder Unchained Automatic Bonus Progression. Even if you don't use that system for PC's there is good reason to do it for NPC's because they can hold their own against the characters without having to be loaded with the same number and level of items that each member of your party has.

The bad: I don't think they figured out Phantoms correctly, and that would obviously be a major part of a Spiritualist NPC book. For example, the 20th level character has an Anger Phantom that does 1d8 +13 with its slam attacks. For a medium phantom of 20th level the listed base damage is 2d8, and an Anger Phantom does damage as though it were one size category higher, so that should be 3d8 + Modifiers. That same Phantom has DR 5/Slashing in ectoplasmic form, which should be 15/--. That was on a 10 minute skim of the book. It appears the slam damage dice for all Phantoms, and their DR is locked at first level, though their stats and AC are progressed (presumably correctly, but I didn't crunch the numbers on that).

The verdict: Not much of a time-saver if I am going to have to comb over each entry for errors then do major surgery to correct them. Probably sending the book back to Amazon. If they correct the errors in the PDF I may buy that instead.


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Scarab Sages RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games

Thanks for the review AntiDjinn. I've showed it to the author who acknowledged his mistake and will be resubmitting a corrected version soon. Send me your name and email address to makeyourgamelegendary@gmail.com and once the corrected version is available, I'll be happy to send you a copy.

We take pride in our work, and we appreciate when mistakes are pointed out so that we can fix them with a swiftness!


Reviewed first on endzeitgeist.com, then submitted to Nerdtrek and GMS magazine and posted here, on OBS, etc.

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