The Ironborn of Questhaven is an exciting race that can be easily added into any Pathfinder campaign with some creative storytelling. (Treasure-hunting Pathfinders delve into ancient Thassalonian temples waking the sleeping ironborn! The Clocktower of Absalom dials open its inner workings and reveals its guardians and workers! A iceberg cleaves off the glacier in the Lake of Mists and Veils, revealing a hidden frozen temple protected by immortal Ironborn guardians!)
The PDF has a smooth layout and the illustrations simply whet the appetite for more unique ironborn.
The authors incorporate organic components into the ironborn to make them more accessible living characters instead of the easy route 'talking robot' characters. This eliminates some of the large complaints about those OTHER construct player character races. There are many roleplaying ideas and well-thought out options available to individualize your character with the numerous 'packages' available, each roughly equal to the Pathfinder Society Traits options for character generation.
The personalization options to craft radically different ironborn make for unique characteristics and avoids the cookie-cutter syndrome. This PDF includes additional ironborn Feats, a Sorcerous Bloodline, Clockwork Familiar template, and introduces motivational starting points for ironborn characters with the creation of Burdens, driving instincts derived from the ironborn master's purpose in crafting them. ironborn characters can learn to craft other ironborn, perpetuating their race and creating unique personalized cohorts.
One of the best Pathfinder compatible races available!

Disclaimer:
I HATED, HATED, HATED the Warforged. There are several reasons for this and it has, quite frankly, been the main reason for me not to buy this pdf for a long time. Until one of my players asked, whether it would be possible to play a gear-enhanced human and presented an excellent 4 page backstory. I dislike construct races for PCs, but his concept was cool.

To the review:
The base race is VERY well-balanced and the ironborn-subtype features the construct-flair without making wilderness/starvation/environmental adventures a joke for the character. Kudos!
The true strength is the versatility of the race, though. You choose a base-suit of abilities according to the purpose of the ironborn.
The concept of the "burden", i.e. an instilled craving to do what it was created to do helps to easily drop them in any adventurer group and makes for nice roleplaying opportunities.
The ability suits are well-balanced, with one possible exception: The Centurion Suite is, on low levels, the ULTIMATE tank. Plus, it hits a pet peeve of mine: It has a 25% chance to negate crits against the players. This is the only suite I'd exclude for my players, at least until they are level 5. My favorite was the Omenbuilt: I'm going to use the mini-token mechanic for other chars, too. Awesome!

The feats are well-designed and don't seem to be too overpowered, although two of them hit another pet peeve of mine: "Spring-loaded Reflexes" and "intricate joints" give Ironborn access to uncanny dodge, and improved uncanny dodge, respectively. These are class features for me, not something that other classes have readily access to without multi-classing.

While the prose is good, it's not as AWESOME as the prose in the "Wyrd"-pdf.

Due to the fact that it hit 2 pet-peeves of mine, I give it 4 stars. Highly recommended for any campaign and better designed than the warforged.

The main reason I gave this three stars is not due to the work put into this. Not only is the original concept a pretty good one when it first appeared in The Book of Iron Might, but the work to update and extract the OGL material into this product is pretty good as well.

Its a good, general construct race that doesn't require quite as much backstory as a certain other living construct race. That having been said, I guess I'm still of the opinion that I'm very leery of introducing a construct PC race. If I had a player that wanted one, I'd certainly offer this one up for use.

On top of the fact that living constructs can be a touchy subject, there is the fact that the race can be highly customized. This is both a plus and a minus. For someone that just wants to play a "golem," it might be a bit much to see all of the options at one time, although with a little digging its pretty obvious what are the best choices for what type of character you are going for.

So, to fully explain my three stars, I'd have to say that its more a matter of thinking that this race might need to be carefully introduced into a campaign for what it is, rather than the quality of the work involved. Not only is the design work solid, but its a fun read.

Give it a look, but if you are the type of GM that doesn't want too many "non-standard" races running around, know that you may need to be careful with how often you throw these around or how much access you let your players have to these guys.

The Ironborn are (in my opinion) a superior alternative to the Warforged and are actually relatively easy to slot into any established Campaign World with only a few minor adjustments to their history.
Obviously their current incarnation was written with the Questhaven Setting in mind, but by simply changing this to another City (all be it a slightly removed one from the current placement of your PCs) you now have an extremely versatile race to add to your Campaign.

As I noted in my title, this Race is amazingly modular in it's customizability, due to a few factors.

The Ability Packages, I think, are the real winner in this .pdf and are what really make the Ironborn shine. The idea that every Ironborn is created with a specific purpose in mind lets you take options for your character that will enhance the role that you have decided to cast your Ironborn Character in and truly work towards making each one a little more unique.

The capacity to chose your attributes has a nice twist to it that I think lets them have an edge without letting them become too powerful and they also have a small suite of Feats to help them out.

I also like the ability to play both Small and Large Ironborn and how it is handled in a way to keep them in line with a regular Medium Ironborn in terms of power.

My other big like in this .pdf though is (not a surprise to anyone who has gamed with me using the Pathfinder Rules) the addition of the Constructed Bloodline. I'm a huge fan of the Sorcerous Bloodlines and I think that this one captures the essence of what it is like to have magic coursing through your constructed being.

Now the non-rules stuff:
The backstory is masterfully written to integrate them into Questhaven and as noted above is quite easy to adapt for your own use.
Sections on their Society and Relationship with other Races as well as a Height and Weight Chart all help to give us a full view of this Race and aid in the Character Creation process immensely.

All in all, a top notch product and one which has me itching to play an Ironborn Character.

Having just recently gone questing through PFRPG compatible living construct options, I found this. And in so doing, found an incredible resource that meets my needs perfectly and surpasses many of my hopes. Well written fluff, great mechanics and solid design all around.

As a huge fan of steampunk or clockwork fantasy settings, the ironborn generally fits right into my views of fantasy. But it is important to keep this in mind if you like your fantasy more along the traditional lines.

I have to say, when I first saw the ironborn race in Monte Cook's Book of Iron Might, I fell in love with them. They were a great alternative to warforged and provided a good option for those players that enjoy odd races. This update for the Pathfinder RPG does a good job keeping the spirit of the original ironborn alive while providing some new material to the mix.

Overall, the material appears balanced and is certainly intriguing. I was most interested in the clockwork familiar, which is a concept I have been toying with for quite awhile now. It was well-executed and is effective.

When I brought this material to my last game session, I had a player immediately jump at the chance to play a member of this race. I thought it would be a great idea and I have gone about adapting the race's background for the Ptolus setting.

And that is an important thing to note. This material is easy to adapt to any setting, so long as you can see living constructs making their mark on the world of your choice. For instance, I can easily see the race integrated into Golarion by a number of methods. So don't let the default setting hold you back in that regard.

In addition, this particular product has seen a number of bumps in the road to release. Don't let dissuade you from buying a great product. Rite Publishing has done a fantastic job correcting those issues and re-issuing the document to their customers. Simply put, they are very professional and quick to answer concerns and questions. They are genuinely interested in correcting mistakes they have made with this material.

All in all, I would highly recommend this product to anyone interested in integrating this kind of feature into their campaign setting. I am excited to see what Rite Publishing will produce in the future.

Update: The layout to this PDF was changed to incorporate more changes from 3.5 to Pathfinder. I redid my review based on the new layout.

Ironborn is a good attempt to update this great race to the Pathfinder rules. However, it suffers from the subtle changes between 3.5 and Pathfinder as pointed out ironically enough by Monte Cook when he discussed 3.0 going to 3.5.

A good point for this PDF is that is not just a reprint of the OGL version of the ironborn. Many new rules and options have been added along with an all new background and culture. The new rules really take some options in PF like sorcerer bloodlines and run with them.

A bad point, as mentioned, is the frequent slips back into 3.5 rules. Here are some examples. The Centurion Armored Body Ability Package provides a +8 armor bonus to AC which should have increased to +9 in PF. The Artisan Builder and Legacy Knowledgeable Ability Packages provide 4 bonus skill ranks at 1st level and 1 bonus skill rank at every other level while Pathfinder characters no longer increase skill ranks at 1st level by 4. Divine Mark Divine Vengeance gives a +2 bonus to turning checks while in Pathfinder turning now requires a Will save.

Despite the 3.5 creeping in, the new rules and backgrounds outweigh the rules edition snares. The author really makes the ironborn come alive and the new PF rules he adds greatly increase your value even if you already have the Book of Iron Might.