Nothing is what it seems in the fractured and fevered realms of Dream, and the innocent-looking bard plucking lute-strings on the street corner is no exception. "Laughing Lucky, the Vanishing Bard of Bedlam" is but a figment of an even stranger monster's dream, borne of alien hopes and aberrant aspirations for something unattainable for the abnormal: normality. Lurking behind this affable minstrel is its hidden master "The Ghost-Light that Dreamed, Gozutozawa."
This product provides Game Masters with details on a mind-bendingly bizarre 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:
The Ghost-Light that Dreamed, Gozutozawa, a strange creature just trying to make a friend
Faces of the Tarnished Souk: The Ghost-Light that Dreamed, Gozutozawa by Rite Publishing
This product is 16 pages long. It starts with a cover and credits. (2 pages)
The Ghost-Light that Dreamed, Gozutozawa (3 pages)
This one is a bit different it is a will-o-wisp summoner that wants to be humans. Instead of the normal 3 stat blocks there is 6. Three for Gozutozawa and three for it's eidolon. Like all of them the NPC has dreams and lore information as well as the stat blocks.
CR 21 – Will-o-wisp with two new templates, crafty and tough added, A 16th level Summoner with a new archetype, monstrous.
CR 14 - Will-o-wisp with the tough template added. A 10th level summoner with the monstrous archetype.
CR 8 - Will-o-wisp that is a 4th level summoner with the monstrous archetype.
The section ends with two new feats, rules for implanting ioun stones, 2 new magic items, 10 new ioun stones, the two new templates, archetype, and 3 new evolutions.
It ends with a OGL, Ads. (3 pages)
Closing thoughts. Artwork is black and white and fair. Layout and editing was very good. The NPC concept and history are very nice. Totally different with a nice new twist. The extra stuff is all well done and interesting. I really have nothing negative to say about this product. If you are fan of the series or just would like a new interesting NPC to use, then I recommend picking this up. So what's my rating? Well for lack of having anything negative to say I am giving it a 5 star.
Trust me, I'm a Succubus.
Excellent, but in a different way than its predecessors
This pdf is 16 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 2 pages of advertisements, leaving 11 pages of content, so let's check it out!
In contrast to the other FoTS-reviews I've posted, I'll head this with an explicit SPOILER WARNING for players. Please stop reading now, as there is a special twist to this NPC that is impeded by out-game knowledge.
Still here? Ok. As in all the other installments of FoTS, we get three incarnations of a certain creature and this time they cover CRs 8, 14 and 21. However, due to the nature of the creature in question, we get 2 stat-blocks per incarnation, as the character is actually...a will-o'-wisp summoner. Yep, a will-o'-wisp that stopped wanting to feed on terror, has surpassed its disposition and wants to become mortal and interact with all the normal people. You heard me. As an interesting twist, it's eidolon is actually what you'll interact with and looks like a human bard. It actually goes as far as to consider his eidolon his link to reality and the potential vessel for its reverse transcendence from incorporeal creature to flesh and bone. Far-out, heh? It gets even better, though: We get a whole slew of new crunchy bits: Two metamagic feats for summoners to use still and silent spells on their eidolon, a recap of how to implant ioun stones as well as 9 ioun stones and a new amulet, bracers and belt. There also is a new summoner archetype containing 3 new evolution for monstrous summoners and their eidolons as well as two short and simple templates to make creatures tougher or craftier. The IC-introduction to the character is, as always in this series, very well-written and works well to establish the character. Even more so, it's how-to-section and dreamburning information provide ample ideas for the DM to not only use the character, but tap its potential to tackle philosophical questions on what can be considered "alive" and the nature of eidolons per se.
While the stat-blocks are not as complicated as I'd like them to be, the sheer imaginative potential and expansion on what I considered to be the dullest APG-class has to be applauded and more than makes up for this minor shortcoming.
Conclusion:
Editing and Formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. Layout adheres to the two-column RiP-standard. The artworks provided for some items and the characters are nice and wit the tremendous potential of the characters, I practically have to settle for a full-blown 5 stars. This character made me reconsider what a summoner can be and the APG-love is much appreciated - it just shows the tremendous largely untapped potential of the new classes. I hope to see more of them.
Spoilers dwell herein. I suggest those who are not Game Masters and do not intend to run a campaign in the Plane of Dreams or Rite Publishing’s Coliseum Morpheon stop reading now, just in case.
I admit it. I am not a fan of most of the material in the Pathfinder Advanced Player’s Guide. I am not a fan of making a complicated game more complicated. Don’t get me wrong, some of the concepts show promise and are useful to me as a Game Master as NPC fodder, not for my players. Of the new character classes in the APG the one I liked the least was the Summoner. “What is an Eidolon?” I thought. To me it looks like something completely made up so that weak casters can be less weak, for a metagame reason, not a roleplay or story-centered one. In fact it makes the PC play second fiddle to his pet! So that was a definite “no” for my campaign.
Here comes along the clever people at Rite Publishing, who said let’s make an Eidolon into someone’s dream, and not just any someone, a sentient and ancient being of pure energy, Gozutozawa. This Will-o'-Wisp isn’t your typical one. It has been dwelling so long in the Plane of Dreams that it has gotten lonely. Yes, you read it right, lonely. Lucky, its Eidolon is formed out of its desire for interaction with others that does not involve merely eating their life essence.
Wow! What an amazing concept! Now I dig the Eidolon. I can insert this character as the avenue through which the Will-o'-Wisp perceives and interacts with the other individuals in the Plane of Dreams. In Gozutozawa’s desire to be a thinking and feeling being, it sends out his Eidolon, Lucky, to interact with those who are able to come to this Plane of their own accord.
What excellent roleplay fodder as well! Is Lucky a mere dream or is he a real sentient being of his own accord? Did he become aware after so long in the Plane of Dreams? And once the PCs discover that Lucky is the Eidolon of what they would normally consider to be a monster, what will they do? Who knows? If the PCs decide they want to free Lucky from his creator, can they? All these questions can and should be resolved by individual GMs and players. I can see my players’ interactions with Lucky and his creator turning into hours of fun.
Five big stars and two giant thumbs up for The Ghost-Light that Dreamed.
