Faces of the Tarnished Souk: Elspeth Black, Executive Officer of Blackblade (PFRPG) PDF

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Blades for hire!

When the best-laid plans of kings and conquerors get bogged down in the dirty details, Elspeth Black offers heavy-handed solutions to hard-to-solve problems. Need a private militia? An assassination or two? Security for a brand new fortress of doom? The elite and morally flexible mercenaries of Blackblade are available for hire, and Elspeth Black is the connection that can make that happen. Elspeth is an experienced tactician and powerful psychic warrior with secrets of her own, commanding of a private army that can deploy to anywhere in the cosmos. Deadly, dangerous services like these are available in the Tarnished Souk for those who have a lot of coin—and not a lot of conscience.

This product provides Game Masters with details on a savvy and razor-sharp 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:

  • Elspeth Black, Executive Officer of Blackblade, a psychic swordswoman and public face of a vast mercenary organization.
  • CR 15 Female elan psychic warrior 5/metamind 5/war mind 5
  • CR 7 Female elan psychic warrior 5/metamind 1/war mind 1
  • CR 4 Female elan psychic warrior 4
  • Elspeth Black's psicrystal "Raze", a CN Diminutive construct with a mind of its own
  • A guide for Elspeth Black's cohort and followers

Authors: Matt Banach and Justin Sluder
Cover Artist: Toby Gregory
Pages: 8

Psionics Unleased Compatible!

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Fulfilled immediately.

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

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Average product rating:

4.00/5 (based on 3 ratings)

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Good, but I was hoping for something different

3/5

This short PDF is about 13 pages long, 1 for the cover, 1 for the credits, 1 for the SRD, 2 pages for ads, leaving 8 pages to actually talk about Elspeth Black.

There are 3 different stat blocks for Elspeth at various stages of her career, as an Agent, an Operative, and an Executive Officer, which take up 4 pages altogether. I don't know Psionics, so I can't comment on how well built she is mechanically, but I do like that her tactics across all 3 versions remain consistent. Also, her high-level versions have tactics that say she likes to hang back and bark orders to her minions, which normally means nothing to a non-bard, but there are feats included in this book to make that tactic do something.

There are three feats in this book, which vary from okay to pretty good. There are two magic item properties included, Reshaping and Weightless. The former is essentially a glamer that can look like anything, not just normal clothes. The latter does exactly what it says, makes the armor weightless as well as some extra effects that come with that (less Armor Check Penalty, more Max Dex, less Arcane Spell Failure). Both interesting, but I'm not sure the Weightless is worth the +2 enhancement bonus that it costs.

There are a few magic items included. Three are a series of keys that let the user travel between planes, and one are a set of gloves that provide a bonus to Use Magic Device.

Elspeth has a sentient psicrystal, which also comes with three statblocks to match Elspeth's progression. An interesting sidebar is provided on the psicrystal's personality and how it tries to influence Elspeth.

Finally, there's one page provided that provides some details about Elspeth's personality and goals, as well as ways to use her in adventures. Some information is also provided about the organization of Blackblade itself. There's not nearly as much information as I was hoping for, though. Blackblade is fairly simple (an extraplanar mercenary group), but Elspeth is a fairly interesting character and I would've rather had an extra page or so to learn about her than one of the statblocks, or the gigantic picture of a fist on page 8.

Overall, my feelings are a little mixed about this PDF. I wish there was more information about Elspeth and less mechanics in here, and due to that lack of information I don't see myself getting much use out of this, but what *is* here is done fairly well. My final rating is basically a compromise between "this is done pretty well" and "this isn't what I was hoping for."


Another nice NPC book.

5/5

Faces of the Tarnished Souk: Elspeth Black by Rite Publishing

This product is 13 pages long. It starts with a cover, credits. (2 pages)

Elspeth Black (8 pages)
She is the XO of the Blackblade mercenary outfit. She is designed to be used with the Coliseum Morpheuon. She has 3 stat blocks of different levels, CR 4, 7, and 15. Much of her build uses the psionic rules from Psionics Unleashed by Dreamscarred Press. At CR 4 she just starts off as a psychic warrior. At CR 7 she adds two PrC's Megamind and War Mind. The CR 15 just boosts the CR 7 one. There is also her Elspeth's Psicrystal, Raze, which is a crystal that is a fragment of her personality, there is stat blocks for each stat block of her. It is a very cool and neat little object.

In addition to her stat blocks we also get. Two new weapon properties, Weightless and Reshaping. Four new magic items.
Crystal Key, Lesser - Opens a portal on certain plane.
Crystal key, Greater - As Lesser but key stays with user.
Gate Key - As Greater but works on any plane.
Gloves of Activation - Grants a bonus to Use Magic Device.

There is also three new feats.
Battlefield Intuition – Gain wis-mod to Initiative.
Combat Advice - Move action to give allies +1 to hit and dmg rolls.
Command - Gain command points equal to your level. They can be spent to give allies bonuses to varies rolls.

It ends with a OGL and 2 ads. (3 pages)

Closing thoughts. The art is black and white and good. Layout is good as is editing. There was a couple of minor errors. The stat blocks are well done and the new items and feats where very nice. It is also very nice to see a 3pp company supporting another one. I am not well versed in psionics though, so I can't comment much on that part of the product. The background was interesting on her and I hope they eventually do a product about the merc company.

So what's my rating? I am going to give this one a 4.5 star review. It is very well done and the feats and items where very nice. If you are looking for stat blocks or a new NPC to add to Coliseum Morpheuon then this is worth picking up.

Trust me, I'm a Succubus.


Supremely cool Commander with very minor glitches

4/5

This pdf is 13 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, 2 pages of advertisements, leaving 8 pages for Elspeth, so let's dive in!

I'll go through the 3 incarnations in reverse order, from her lowest CR up to the highest. People who've followed my reviews probably know that I have a soft spot for Elans and this file details one. "Elan" you say? Yep, as this installment of Faces of the Tarnished Souk is a collaboration between Rite Publishing and Dreamscarred Press, offering support for my beloved PFRPG-psionics. AWESOME!

Can her 3 incarnations stand up to this great premise? I'll see!

Her low-level incarnation is
-Lady Elspeth, Agent of Blackblade (Elan Psychic Warrior 4), CR4 - Nice build, although there is a minor typo, with her name in the "During Combat"-section being written like exponentials. Other than that, a nice build! (1 page)

Her mid-level incarnation is
-Elspeth Black, Operative of Blackblade Section X (Elan psychic warrior 5/metamind 1/war mind 1), CR 7: An even cooler build that utilizes two complementary PrCs to their potential. Cool!

We also get 2 magic item properties, "Reshaping" and "Weightless" (both featuring an extra "h" in the CL-section)and 4 new magic items. The items are:

-Crystal Key, Lesser: Open a portal to a specific plane 3/day. Do not travel with the user.

-Crystal key, Greater: Like their lesser variant, but they do travel with their user.

-Gate Key: Like the Greater Crystal key, but works for any plane.

-Gloves of Activation: Bonus to Use Magic Device, three sets are given in the construction section: +2, +5 and +10.

We also get 3 new feats:

-Battlefield Intuition: Add Wis-modifier to Initiative, stacks with other modifiers.

-Combat Advice: Move action to grant allies +1 to damage and attacks

-Command: Gain commandpoints equal to your level. Each time you use a move action to direct/command your allies, you can spend command points up to your Cha-mod to grant allies competence bonuses to their rolls.
Items and feats take up about one and a half page.

Additionally, there are 1.5 pages of stats for the 3 different incarnations of Elspeth's Psicrystal, Raze, as well as a little sidebox on its personality - Nice!

Her high-level incarnation (CR 15) takes up 2 pages and is
-Elspeth Black, Executive Officer of Blackblade (Elan Psychic Warrior 5/Metamind 5/War mind 5) Much to my delight, this statblock also features a whole paragraph on a potential cohort of hers, including names and short characteristics.

As is the standard in the FotTS-series, Elspeth also gets 1 page of aptly-written character background, including dream-burning information and a side-box on how to use her.

Conclusion: Layout adheres to the RiP-standard, artwork is nice and the additional content provided (especially the feats) make this a nice deal. Once again, we get complex statblocks and her lower-level incarnations might make for nice rank-and-file Blackblade operatives. The fluff made me curious about the organisation and I'd like to know more about it in a future supplement. Given that I'm a sucker for psionics and that this character simply rocks, I'd immediately settle for 5 stars. Due to the minor glitches, I'll rate this 4.5 stars, rounded down to 4 for the purpose of this platform. (If the glitches are taken care of, this is a straight 5-star-file!)



Thanks to Liz for getting this up for us (We bow to the mistress of cookies).

Special Thanks to Dreamscarred Press for allowing us to make this Psionics Unleased Compatible!

Steve Russell
Rite Publishing

RPG Superstar 2009 Top 16

Rite Publishing wrote:
Special Thanks to Dreamscarred Press for allowing us to make this Psionics Unleased Compatible!

Seconded! We are very excited about Psionics Unleashed and its mind-bendingly awesome material.


Yes, Psionics! How cool is that? :)


And reviewed. :)

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Nice review End.


I wanted to thank End for taking the time to do a review of our product.

I doubt I will do an update for errors that are this minor as they don't impact the functionality of the product in any way.


Good to know! It's still a great installment! :)

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Reviewed.


Nice review, D_M!

RPG Superstar 2009 Top 16

Thank you both for the feedback.

The mercenaries of Blackblade are full of possibilities. I'm glad that you were intrigued by their potential.

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