Pathfinder: Rise of the Runelords Player's Guide (OGL) (based on
15
reviews)
Paizo Publishing, LLC
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The 16-page Rise of the Runelords Player's Guide is an invaluable resource for players seeking to start this exciting new campaign.
The guide presents details on how best to customize your character so that he'll fit into the campaign. What’s the best choice of favored enemy for a ranger? Which of the region's deities will your cleric worship? What about new weapons for your fighter? And everyone loves new feats; there are several to choose from in this product, all of which are specifically designed to aid you in your fight against the Runelords.
Yet there's more to building a character than crunching the numbers; this guide also gives you extensive details on the frontier region known as Varisia and the town of Sandpoint where the campaign begins. Build your character from the ground up as a living, breathing addition to this brand new world!
Pathfinder is Paizo Publishing's 96-page, perfect-bound, full-color softcover Adventure Path book printed on high-quality paper that releases in a monthly volume. Each volume is brought to you by the same staff which brought you Dragon and Dungeon magazines for over five years. It contains an in-depth Adventure Path scenario, stats for about a half-dozen new monsters, and several support articles meant to give Game Masters additional material to expand their campaign. Because Pathfinder uses the Open Game License, it is 100% compatible with the 3.5 edition of the world's most popular fantasy roleplaying game.
I had already downloaded (and rolled 6 PCs for the group I DM using) the .pdf version -- which I thought was 5 stars! -- and now that I have the printed version in hand, I wish I could rate it 6 stars!
Top-notch printing complements the excellent writing to make this the best $2.00 value ever! (Or $10 value ever for 5 copies + 1 free for being a charter subscriber!)
This is a very high quality introduction to Varisia. There are too many hooks to mention individually, but suffice to say that adventure could easily take off in many directions, ranging from regional politics to dungeon crawls through sprawling ruins.
Just reading this makes my players want to jump right in and start. I'm holding them back until more material is produced because I know once we start they'll want to game more and more!
Very cool. Leaves me wanting more. Very first-edition feel; lots of potential stories, lots of questions, some of which I know will be answered later, in other products, and some I suspect will just hang out there, tantalizingly unanswered ... Very cool.
Well-structured product for the purposes of introducing players to the campaign. Following the general flow of character creation should help most players synchronize the setting material to their characters. Enough time was spent on key areas--race, class, locations, etc.--to give players something to work with while not losing them in too much detail. The treatment of humans was, IMHO, the strongest of the racial treatments; I look forward to seeing similar details on the other races. The class write-ups provide interesting hooks for players, while the regional equipment provides some distinctive flair without being outlandish or overpowered. I really liked the various feats presented, and will definitely allow them as bonus feats as recommended. The artwork throughout is high quality and inspiring.
This product is excellent, but has a few items to address. There are numerous occurrences of obviously inappropriate word usage (i.e. “wanders” instead of “wanderers”) and missing information (i.e. the Varisian name of the spell-like abilities associated with the Varisian Tattoo feat).
I would prefer a player-focused product to provide player-focused maps, and so the map of Sandpoint should not have number labels--a few general area labels perhaps but not 50 numbered areas. As the numbers were provided but with no key or legend, they are actually not useful to a player currently. Finally, I have a personal preference for open gaming content being distinctly identified somehow in the text (with a text box, distinctive font, or some such), as it helps folks like me who oftern snag OGC for use in online games.
Overall, however, this is a very nice product (especially as a free download!) and I highly recommend it for anyone running Rise of the Runelords or any campaign set in Varisia.
EDIT: I bumped my rating to 5 stars for one reason--on hearing about the missing Varisian Tattoo text, James and Wes were immediately on the issue and provided the list!
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