Other than perhaps individual/personal opinion getting in the way... I have no clue why people have given this title such low ratings.

Tome of Secrets was the first 3PP product I bought for Pathfinder (in late 09, early 2010) and I must say that it's still one of my go-to's for ideas.

Tome of Secrets covers a lot of ground. From ways to modify your favorite monsters, unique races (Saurian have become one of my favorites), Tinker Mages (Artificer) and the best Swashbuckler I've seen for 3.5... to interesting flaws and awesome chase rules. You or your party can take this book to enhance roleplaying (instead of just roll-playing, like many supplements).

Not to mention they will give you a free PDF even if you bought the book from a local store! Now that's service!

I would give Tome of Secrets 4 stars, but I feel that many of the reviews here are very unfair. Especially the 2 and one star ratings that people left NO INFORMATIVE CRITICISM for.

Gamers! Give Tome of Secrets a shot. It's definitely worth it.

Paizo, please crack down on this stuff. Objective and Unbiased versus Ignorant and Careless.

My review is to big for the room given. So I will post it as a forum post below.

Although I liked the base classes and some of the content, there is a lot in need of fixing. I can stand typos and such, but I really feel too much of this is still stuck in 3.5 edition. I was most excited about the million item list (3 d100 lists) as the Diablo II: Awakening book from 2nd ed had this, and I liked it there, but there really isn't 1 million items. It felt a little ripped out of the diablo list without much change (which I kinda liked), but in the prefixes alone are missing entries 18 and 42, and the +1 to attributes are repeated, making the list feel a little underdone. I don't care that this list is unbalanced, but I got annoyed having to reroll this. I'm giving it 2.5 stars because I happened to get it on sale really cheap, which made the price an okay trade-off. This book came out around the time the final rules did and was one of the first third party to give something substantial. I just caan't understand with all these errors and reviews pointing it out why there iesn't an updated file.

I have to admit, I was more interested in the class concepts in this book than I have been with some of the other 3rd party books I've read for Pathfinder, but the execution on many of the classes, including some of the potentially interesting classes, just falls short, to the point of not really being able to figure out how to implement them.

Overall, its not a bad buy to pick up and sort through what might work for you, but be aware that, while it seems like there are a ton of good ideas, there are also lots of places where a good editorial pass would have fixed some problems.

The book has some really useful stuff in it.

Races : The races presented are relatively balanced, and while I probably won't use the Rat-kin in my game, the Half-Ogre is pretty decent, and I could see allowing them in.

Classes : The swashbuckler class is, honestly, the best swashbuckler take I've seen. Honestly, it's a really really good class. Unfortunately, the rest of the classes are just 'meh' (for example, the Knight is ok, but I prefer the old WoTC Knight) or just too complex to use (the new artificer for example).

Chase Rules : Not a lot I'll actually use, but they seem very detailed and relatively easy to use. Good if you like that.

Alchemical Items : Probably my favorite thing in the book, really. These are great, and add a lot to your game. None are overpowered, and they all have some utility use. Great addition!

Million Items : Ok, I have to be honest, the rest of the book is pretty good or at least average. This thing however, is seriously broken. I mean really really really broken. Stay away from it.

Monster Mods : These are pretty good as well, a good way for GM's to keep things a surprise for the players. The GM will have to be careful of course, some of the random tables can generate some really powerful monsters out of range of the characters. If you use it, I suggest picking modifiers instead of randomizing.

A ton of content, but nothing really worth the $10 cover price.

I dove into this and while reading had the same impression of dismal reads in the early 3.0 era. The book strives to raise few bars.

The font is gigantic. The classes are cobbled together from mechanics already in other classes in the PFRPG. 60 pages of the book are for chases and morale; I don't know who would use such overkill for their game. Lots of PFRPG text is simply cut and paste into this book.

There are references to rules that don't exist, very poorly worded powers and abilities and an overall feeling that little true care was used in putting it together.

Character Flaws and Occupations are good, so it's obvious there is some worth, but overall I was very disappointed.

All in all, I rate this book a solid 3.5 stars. The 3.5 crunchy bits that snuck past editing, when mixed with the incomplete editing and the ‘blah’ nature of some of the races keep it from being a 4. This is a good first offering for the Pathfinder RPG, and definitely has some ideas worth modifying/creating. The writers just need to tighten up the mechanics and editing.

I was very excited to pick this book up at GenCon, both for the new classes and races I could use in my PFRPG games, but also to support 3pp's who were willing to make content for my new system of choice. Sadly, the result of my eagerness was that I got a subpar product.

I like the idea behind just about everything in the book, from the three new races, to the new base classes, to the random adventure/monster/magic item generators. But when I was reading through everything, there are tons of balance issues. Some class abilities are incredibly broken, and rarely on the underpowered side. Races and classes are especially unbalanced as far as I can tell, some more than others. Many of the drawbacks are also rather unbalanced compared to one another.

I then look on the forums here and see that some of the major departures from the PFRPG design goals, like tying BAB/HD together, are being corrected in the main print run to release in a few weeks. Makes me think I should have waited to get the book then instead of supporting the publisher on release date. I still need to get the free pdf promised on the last page of the book, and hopefully any errata and changes will be updated in that document over time.

I will probably include many elements from this book into my games, but will have to thoroughly houserule most of it to maintain balance. I'm not opposed to doing this, but it would have been nice to have a sourcebook that would be more modular without the extra work to keep it balanced, though.