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Pathfinder Society Scenario #9-07: Salvation of the Sages PDFPaizo Inc.Our Price: $4.99 Add to CartExcellent scenario if you like a challenge.
Alexander Augunas
(Contributor)
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Without too many spoilers, this scenario is Season 9's Waking Rune. While lacking a hard mode, it is a well-balanced, tough scenario that will put the PCs through the ringer. GMs, make sure you Prep for this one; you need to know what happens where and why, and you need to track conditions on the PCs, including bonuses they've gained and penalties they've accrued. PCs, if you liked Waking Rune, you'll probably like this adventure. If you didn't like Waking Rune, you probably won't like this adventure. The adventure is masterfully crafted—John and Matt deserve a real shoutout here. This also excellently continues the "Faction Story advancement" theme of Season 9, and has interesting consequences for the Scarab Sages. As someone else mentioned, this is a must-play for members of that faction, and a darn good scenario for everyone else. We played this scenario last Saturday—party composition was catfolk bloodrager, halfling bard (Lem), human bloodrager (Crowe), and tiefling alchemist. Guys, seriously, this is by far one of the most FUN scenarios I have ever played. Immediately on my Top 10 list. The scenario does EVERYTHING right. Without spoilers, some quick highlights: — The Venture Captains take time to address the elephant in the room of, "What to do if you're a worshiper of an evil deity going to Heaven or a tiefling," and there are consequences for those character choices that are REALLY satisfying. — The adventure itself is extremely evocative and creative; if you're a fan of James Sutter's Redemption Engine, there are a LOT of callbacks to the Heavenly content first explored in that book. — Everything your characters do has consequences in Heaven; the adventure feels very similar to Unguarded But Unbroken in that regard. — The encounters are memorable and enjoyable in their own way; there is a very real chance your character will die in Heaven if they're unprepared, and the skill-based challenges are lots of fun and very rewarding. — The adventure satisfyingly follows up on two major characters; I know that there is some concern about the Tier of this adventure, but everything is handled with the upmost respect. I really, really loved this scenario. This is how you get new people excited and rearing to return to Pathfinder Society. To say that Thurston "Thursty" Hillman regularly challenges what makes for a fun, engaging scenario would be an understatement. The author of classics such as Siege of the Diamond City, Blakros Matrimony, and Traitor's Lodge, Thurston's scenarios are famed for "breaking the mold" of what the PFS experience is like, and Bid for Alabastrine is no different. As many have already pointed out, 7-22 has virtually no combat and is almost entirely driven by roleplay and social interaction. As a result, your mileage on this scenario will vary based upon the quality of your GM—players, try to sit down for this adventure with a GM whose antics you genuinely enjoy, as it will make the experience all the better. GMs, you 100% need to prep this one in advance. Not only is Bid for Alabastrine a low-combat scenario, but the "fun" is entirely in interpersonal interaction. You need to work to sell this one to your players, and the results will be well-worth it. I ran Bid for Alabastrine twice at PaizoCon this year, and both times my players left the table telling me that it was the most fun they had ever had at a PFS table. The key to success is making every character feel vibrant and alive. Thursty goes into extreme depth explaining every key NPC's personality and quirks, as well as their biases and interests. EXPLOIT THAT. Make sure to pick up a copy of Ultimate Intrigue and be familiar with the influence rules herein, which are summarized at the end of the scenario. If you've run Merchant's Wake or Blakros Matrimony before, don't worry too much about it—the scenario makes heavy use of the influence system that was created in those pages. The version in 7-22 is merely refined, and the quality shows. Grab your courtier's outfits and prepare yourselves for a slot like none you've ever played before. Alex Augunas
Final Score & Thoughts
Individually, the three volumes of the Book of the Damned are amazing, excellent reads. The fact that the series managed to hold the same level of quality throughout several years of printing and a slew of authors is a testament to Paizo’s mastery over the evil realms. These planes are ripe for use in adventures of all sorts, and I am pleased to have such a thorough, encompassing guide on the topic. I would highly recommend all three volumes to any GM’s toolbox: they will meet your needs and exceed them a hundred times over. For the full review, head to the Everyman Gaming blog. (Note: This review is for all three volumes of the Book of the Damned combined. Not that it matters much; this score applies to all three books equally.) Final Score & Thoughts
Individually, the three volumes of the Book of the Damned are amazing, excellent reads. The fact that the series managed to hold the same level of quality throughout several years of printing and a slew of authors is a testament to Paizo’s mastery over the evil realms. These planes are ripe for use in adventures of all sorts, and I am pleased to have such a thorough, encompassing guide on the topic. I would highly recommend all three volumes to any GM’s toolbox: they will meet your needs and exceed them a hundred times over. For the full review, head to the Everyman Gaming blog. (Note: This review is for all three volumes of the Book of the Damned combined. Not that it matters much; this score applies to all three books equally.) Final Score & Thoughts
Individually, the three volumes of the Book of the Damned are amazing, excellent reads. The fact that the series managed to hold the same level of quality throughout several years of printing and a slew of authors is a testament to Paizo’s mastery over the evil realms. These planes are ripe for use in adventures of all sorts, and I am pleased to have such a thorough, encompassing guide on the topic. I would highly recommend all three volumes to any GM’s toolbox: they will meet your needs and exceed them a hundred times over. For the full review, head to the Everyman Gaming blog. (Note: This review is for all three volumes of the Book of the Damned combined. Not that it matters much; this score applies to all three books equally.) Final Score & Thoughts
Chronicles of the Righteous is a must-own book if you do absolutely anything with good outsiders in your campaign. This book provides a much needed insight into the nature of the celestial races and provides plenty of fodder for potential gods and entities in your campaign setting. This product is a rich tapestry of righteousness that your Pathfinder collection is incomplete without. Final Score & Thoughts
Champions of Balance is one of my favorite Paizo products because of it’s beautiful layout. The colors throughout the product complement themselves perfectly and it’s extremely pleasing to look at. While the flavor could be stronger, I felt that this product was worth it’s price by merit of the Practiced Leadership feat alone; it is a new mechanic that I would love to see expanded upon in the future. Note that most of the other options in this product are great, it’s just that nothing stands out as the iconic, quintessential Neutral character option. And honestly, that’s okay considering that Neutrality is much harder for us to quantify as players compared to something easily identifiable such as Good or Evil. Despite my critiques, this is an excellent book to check out and a worthy addition to your collection for the reasons I’ve noted. Final Score & Thoughts:
Paths of Prestige is an awesome Paizo Product; it’s one of the very best by a long shot. That said, it isn’t without it’s flaws. Paizo hadn’t perfected the spellcaster prestige class by this point and honestly, maybe they never will; almost all spellcasting classes are dreadfully ill-designed for multiclassing because of the lack of a character-wide statistic like base attack bonus. Prestige Class flavor is awesome in this book, but don’t expect to be learning anything new about the organizations that they represent. That’s one of the curious things about these classes, as a matter of fact. The prestige classes that tend to be the most mechanically powerful are the ones that have campaign-neutral themes that are attached to specific organizations: for example, Bellflower Tiller is essentially “Harriet Tubman the Prestige Class,” Knight of Ozen is essentially “Undead-Slaying Knight,” and “Mammoth Rider” is less of an organization and more of a hobby-turned prestige class. This is coming from someone who is obviously biased on the topic, but I think Paths of Prestige proves that while prestige classes might be conceptually easier to design if they’re assigned to an organization, mechanically they’re more interesting and viable options if their themes are extend beyond that specific organization. Final Score & Thoughts Crunch: 5/5 Stars
As far as I’m concerned, People of the Sands is the definitive guide to desert PCs. It feels very complete offers 32 pages of background information essential to playing a character from this region. I would have preferred the artwork to match the topics a bit better and one piece in particular heavily contributed to the product’s 4 Star rating in the Texture department, but in all this is an excellent product that makes for a strong addition to any GM or Player’s repertoire. Final Score & Thoughts Crunch: 3 / 5 Stars
Inner Sea Gods is glorious to read, but its crunch is somewhat lacking. The needless restrictions on many of the feats harken back to my complaints with the Advanced Race Guide; restrictions need to make sense for both mechanical and flavor reasons. If they don’t, the option suffers for it. If you’re looking for deific crunch, this book has some decent stuff for you, especially the Prestige Classes. If you’re a GM, this book is priceless. You need this book to run the Inner Sea because you’ll learn so much more about the religions of the world you’re playing in as well as the gods who stand at the heart of it all. This book deserves every dollar you can throw at it. Legendary Games has an excellent reputation and a great line of designers behind it, so let's look and see what this product has to offer! Crunch:
That said, the path abilities in this product are underwhelming. Sitting at eight abilities in all, there is nothing here that feels mythic, and there are a couple that appear to be in direct violation of the inherent 'balance' of Mythic Adventures. I'm going to specifically call out Combat Feat Mastery, which lets you spend Mythic Power to gain a handful of Mythic Abilities whenever you want. It is essentially a Mythic version of the Martial Maneuvers core class feature of the recent Advanced Class Guide playest's Brawler class. For what you get, this Path ability quickly grows to outshine the Versatility universal path ability by 10th tier. Smashmouth, on the other hand, has the opposite problem. I like the concept of this Path ability, but it is too specific; it essentially causes your attacks against the target to penalize an opponent's bite attack. Why wasn't this expanded to allow you weaken any type of natural attack and called "Limbwrecker" or something along those lines instead? Reaping the Chaff is a very confusing read and has a very limiting focus; it can only be used against opponents whose Hit Dice do not exceed your Tier. That means my Legendary Hero can't use it on anything about 10th Level. Overall, these Path abilities are uninteresting at best and cheesy at their worst. 1 / 5 Stars. Flavor:
Mythic Minis wrote: Mythic Minis are not about exposition, philosophy, and campaign-building; they are just flat-out fantastic ideas and great mechanics for GMs and players alike, written by the same designers that helped create the official mythic rules. That about sums it up, except I didn't find these path abilities all that fantastic, as you just read. Star rating isn't applicable. Layout:
Final Score & Thoughts:
I wasn't a fan of this product. The path abilities mostly revolve around granting the champion temporary bonus feats, which doesn't fit into Mythic Adventures. There is a precedent for this sort of power that clearly wasn't followed and it is clear that the author didn't follow Paizo's Advanced Class Guide playtest when designing this product; even if the Brawler doesn't exist as a class now, as-written this would be like making a better version of Smite Evil a Champion path ability that anyone could select. The focus on feats and the lack of ingenuity was noticeable and I won't be showing this product to my players, if only because these path abilities can't stand up with the existing ones in terms of coolness. If it comes between any of these path abilities and Aerial Assault, you can bet that I'm going to pick the path ability that lets me charge my opponent through the sky and send them spiraling into the dirt face-first. Every. Time. —Alexander "Alex" Augunas I don’t usually review Paizo books because they don’t require the same coverage as 3PP products do, but I’m making an exception for this book. I am going to come right out and say that this is a 5-Star product; perhaps the most useful, inventive product that I have ever seen in Paizo’s Player Companion line. Go ahead, place Blood of the Moon into your sidecart before scrolling down to see why I’m making this robust claim before I’ve even started my review. I’ll wait. Crunch
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Final Score & Thoughts
Blood of the Moon is a paragon of what Paizo’s Player Companion could, and should, be. It is a book that is useful to virtually anyone; whether you play in Golarion, on the far-off world of Eox, in Greyhawk, or in a world comprised completely of your imagination. If this book isn’t on your gaming shelf, it should be. End of discussion. — Alexander Augunas Whoa, Nelly! I think this is the absolute LARGEST dungeon I've ever seen from Raging Swan. I agreed to review this, like, months ago after I had playtested it in my home game. Yeah, word to the wise: don't make that promise for a behemoth of an adventure. Just write the review. :) Crunch:
Where this product really shines, however, is magic items. The Sunken Pyramid comes equipped with a surprising number of custom magic items, a whopping three items! These range from the creative and plot relevant sharktooth amulet to the very fun, very memorable Obsidian Trident. I especially love the fact that this product goes the extra mile and includes an intelligent item from among its trove (no spoilers on where you'll find it, though!" Looking over the stat blocks, the author did an excellent job incorporating a wide variety of Pathfinder rules from an even wider list of sources. You'll find sahugin variants from the Skulls and Shackles adventure path and a treasure trove of memorable characters with well-known archetypes. As an experienced player and designer, it was pretty easy to note where the various rules came from, but if The Sunken Pyramid has one flaw, its that it doesn't cite its sources very well in terms of character options. The product sort of assumes that you know where to find the Free Hand Fighter archetype or the Magus base class. I would have liked to see that made a bit clearer for newer GMs within the stat blocks themselves. All around, this product left me very impressed, however. 5 /5 Stars Flavor:
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Final Score & Thoughts: Crunch: 5 / 5
This is a stellar adventure and is a perfect fit if you want to get your players' feet wet a little bit. It isn't particularly long; my players were able to finish in a couple of sessions, but everything is so well crafted that between the mermaid they saved, the sahugin they spared, and the people they met in White Moon Cove, running this adventure will have an impact on my game for a long time! — Alexander "Alex" Augunas Another month, another Class joins the Talented Line! I was really looking forward to this one, as the product's tagline basically strikes every single issue that I have with the cavalier / samurai class. I also love the idea that the theme for the cavalier is, "warrior of the noble caste." Very great theme and appropriate in my opinion. Let's see how SGG did with this product. Crunch
First, it breaks apart all of the Cavalier orders in the game into talents. This means that if you choose, you can have a cavalier who belongs to several different orders. Considering that this was fairly common in the real world, its a nice touch. Second, all of the archetypes and other abilities are available to play with here as far as I can tell. Finally, it ends with a neat section on how to incorporate Fighter talents with the Cavalier abilities. One thing I really loved about this product was the addition of a ranged-only challenge ability, called Mark. If you want to play a cavalier focused on fighting with ranged weapons, this product is the only way to do it well. That said, while this product is large it does not feel as modular as the other ones do, mostly because over half of the abilities have prerequisites. Everything is tied to other abilities (especially order abilities, as the product itself notes) and while other Talented Line classes have really expanded their classes into a wide array of cool builds and abilities, this product's crowning achievement is the ability to essentially multi-order your cavalier. Perhaps the weirdest thing, in my opinion, is the utter lack of weapon proficiencies in this product. For example, there is no way to grab a samurai's proficiency with eastern weapons. It was especially jarring with the Weapon Expertise edge (originally a Samurai ability) noting that a GM should choose what weapons categories are appropriate for the cavalier. Ultimately I wasn't very impressed with the class. It has solid foundation, but a lack of customization aside from taking multiple orders and a lack of overall "noble" feel aside from what Paizo has already published really pulled me out of this one. 3 / 5 Stars. Flavor
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Final score & Thoughts
I really wanted to like this product going in. Actually, that's not entirely accurate. I really wanted to LOVE this product going in, at least, in the same way that I LOVE the Talented Rogue or the Talented Monk. I think that more than anything, this product shows how poorly designed the standard cavalier is. The standard cavalier is so linear and uncustomizable that even the Geniuses couldn't save what's already been published for it. While its not perfect, I have high hopes that the Cavalier and Samurai will find new life in the Talented Line. My score might not be a perfect one, but I think that this product lays down the roots to make something truly great here. Now all Mr. Owens needs to do is design a bunch of new abilities that really drive home the fact that this class is supposed to be, dare I say it, a Noble Knight. — Alexander "Alex" Augunas Buy this. Buy this product NOW. Tell you what, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll explain why you should put this PDF in your cart if you JUST PUT IT INTO YOUR CART ALREADY! Crunch
How do I begin talking about how amazing this design is when translated to the monk? Everything, literally everything you could have ever wanted from the Monk class is here. I would literally be copy/pasting the entire book if I were to stop and talk about every little thing that makes this class great, so instead I will pick a few big notes. First, the monk’s “Flurry of Blows” attack bonus has been expanded upon greatly; basically, its now called a “Special Attack Bonus” and as you gain talents you select special abilities to use with this attack bonus. Flurry of Blows is only one such ability; one of the amazingly awesome new ideas to come out of this book is called Fighting Style, where the Monk chooses one Fighter Weapon Group and gains proficiency with all of its weapons and can use those weapons to perform most monk abilities (except Siege Weapons; as the book says, no matter how good you are you can’t use Stunning Fist with a catapult!) This leads to amazing character builds, including the “Samurai Jack” for all of you fellow 90s kids. Another great change is special talents that modify what alignments your monk can be, from the ki-less martial artist to the Drunken Master, who may now adopt a Chaotic Alignment. Ultimately, the crunch in this book is well pieced together and is character gold; you can easily look through this book and piece the abilities together into creative, unique character builds. 5 / 5 Stars. Flavor
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Final Score & Thoughts
This product is absolutely essential to a player who wants to create a Monk. Of all the Talented Classes, I would say that the Talented Monk is probably the most powerful. But honestly, that is for a good reason. The standard monk isn’t very fun or imaginative, and most of the best Monk builds involve drastically changing the standard monk with archetypes. This product takes that one step further and truly creates a character class that says, “Yes, I can hold my own in this game. I am fun to play. I am filled with story ideas. I am a character who you will remember and cherish.” This might very well be one of the best designed monk-type classes of all time. — Alexander "Alex" Augunas Sylphs are sort of a weird topic to talk about; their overall design has game history in the game (they were called Gensai back in the old days) but as a relatively new race, they haven't been touched much. Let's look and see how Abandoned Arts handled this race. Crunch
Speaking of logical risks, the archetype in this book is designed for Paladins. A very interesting choice, to be certain. Now, this archetype has me torn. On one hand, the archetype is very cool, very thematic. It sort of reminds me of the Stonelord Dwarf Paladin archetype from the Advanced Race Guide, which never really made sense to me as a dwarf option. It always looked like more of an Oread option to me, personally. Anyway, back on focus the paladin archetype that we get is pretty thematic, but in terms of special abilities its simply bad. It gives away Smite Evil, the paladin wrecking ball attack, for a once per day ranged slashing damage attack. The attack is affected by damage reduction (Smite Evil normally isn't) and generally speaking, static bonuses will out preform dice every time. The dice you roll for this attack aren't big enough and the daily uses are too limited to warrant trading away Smite Evil. The archetype makes several other lackluster trades. The archetype is sort of themed around liberation and air at the same time, but it doesn't do a very good job of sticking to either theme. I don't really care for the archetype at all, and as I said the other options were solid but forgettable. 3 / 5 Stars Flavor
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Final Score & Thoughts
This product is pretty good. It definitely is not a bad product by any means. However, the paladin archetype is pretty lacking and the abilities themselves, while useful, are not very imaginative. This product doesn't really have enough push to move into the "must-buy" territory for me, but it is a very solid buy. If you're playing a Sylph, pick it up. If you're not playing a Sylph, this product isn't going to convince you to or inspire you to. — Alexander "Alex" Augunas Before I get started, I’m going to warn you all. The kitsune are my absolute favorite race in Pathfinder, so everything you are about to read is incredibly biased. Proceed with caution. Crunch
The archetypes range from meh to HOLY CRAP THIS BARBARIAN ARCHETYPE IS AWESOME! The alchemist archetype is called the arsonist, which is a shame. I hate when universal ideas are wasted as racial archetypes, and there is no reason for an alchemist archetype focused on burning stuff down to be kitsune only. The oracle archetype is a bit on the underwhelming side; it forces you to take some mediocre revelations, but it gives you some flexibility as to when you earn them. The sorcerer bloodline makes no reference to the Nine Tailed mythology, which is a bit strange. Both of these options should have done so. But man, I’m willing to forgive ALL of that for the barbarian archetype. It is phenomenally well-done. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but the basic idea is this: instead of raging, you change shape into a fox-monster. It is incredibly awesome and the best piece of crunch in the entire product. The feats, on the other hand, are boring. There is a new take on the Nine-Tailed feat chain; it’s been condensed into three feats. The basic idea is that you get a ki pool-like resource based on the number of tails you have, and you can spend the points to do different effects. The powers themselves are okay, but where the feats fail spectacularly is that each feat actually penalizes you for taking it. These feats include drawbacks, and the drawbacks become more crippling as you invest more into the feat change. Pretty bad design, in my opinion. One new magic item rounds out the roster; a named meteor hammer. Now, to be fair, I did skip some crunch. The reason I skipped it however is that all of the kitsune crunch from Paizo’s Advanced Race Guide is reprinted in this book. Why? I have no idea, but it really bothered me. I can understand wanting to make the “definitive guide on the kitsune,” but all of those rules are available on various channels for free. It didn’t need to be hear and ultimately it came across as lazy. 2.5 / 5 Stars Flavor
If I had to pick one thing that bothered me the most, it was the origin story for the kitsune. The book glosses over a lot of the commonly used explanations, but then it says that all of them are wrong and promotes a poorly paced legend involving agathions as the definitive answer. I really hated this section for two reason; one, I personally use lycanthropy for my campaign world’s explanation for the kitsune, and that is hand waved away without discussion. And two, the product gives you an answer at all! Why give players (or GMs) an answer? What it should have done was go into detail on each origin story and discuss the merits and flaws of each and then let the GM decide for himself/herself. 2.5 / 5 Stars Texture
Final Score & Thoughts
I will not lie to you, readers, I went into this product expecting to love it. What I got wasn’t awful, but it left me confused, and I don’t think that this product is quite at the same level as many of the other Super Genius products. I nitpicked this product a lot, but if I had to pick three things that really hurt this product in my eyes, here’s what they would have been. 1) This product reprints everything from the Advanced Race Guide.
There are exceptions to all of those; the barbarian archetype is fantastic, the name generator is insightful, and there is an excellent article at the beginning of the product that does a darn good job explaining why kitsune should have a place in a campaign world. But ultimately, this is an average product from an above average company, and I’d be lying if I said that I was hoping for more than I got. Okay, that's going to be my one bad pun for the entire review. I promise. No croak. Crunch
Aside from those two examples, the rest of the feats are well thought out and they feel very appropriate for the grippli. Every feat plays off of a racial trait, which ultimately looks and feels very good. The race traits are both pretty decent, but despite loving puns as a form of comedy, I hate having them in my class features, so the character trait, "Its Not Easy Being Green" really rubbed me the wrong way. One of the alternate racial traits, which grants you hold breath, is so perfect that I can't believe Paizo didn't give it to the Grippli in the Advanced Race Guide. The other trait is pretty interesting as well; it makes it nearly impossible for someone who is not trained in Sense Motive to make untrained checks against the grippli. Pretty neat. Finally, we've got the Bogwalker. Its a swamp-themed druid archetype. I think that this archetype is a very good Druid archetype; its fun, its interesting, and it actually tries to give the druid some new powers. Aside from being swamp-based, however, it doesn't really feel like it should be limited to the Grippli. So I give this archetype a big thumbs up, but I don't see it as being grippli only. 3.5 / 5 Stars. Flavor
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Final Score & Thoughts
I think Amazing Races! Grippli is a good product. If your campaign features the Grippli or you simply want to play as one of these adorable little frog people, you should definitely give this product a look. That said, I wasn't as blown away by this product as I was the merfolk one, and that's mostly because of the puns and strangeness involves in the prehensile toes feats. I appreciate thinking outside of the racial product presented here, but honestly such feats are better tied to the racial traits themselves than the actual race. — Alexander "Alex" Augunas Sorry guys. I can't avoid the lame pun .... TIME TO DIVE ON INTO AMAZING RACES! MERFOLK! Hyuck, hyuck, hyuck. Crunch
The product makes up for that one feat with one of the coolest sorcerer bloodlines I have ever seen. It basically turns the merfolk into a siren, and it even has some great multiclassing potential with the bard, which is a somewhat rare combination. The bloodline is actually a pretty good one, too, and most of the abilities are well-suited to the theme of being a merfolk. I really like this product's crunch. 5 / 5 Stars. Flavour
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Final Score & Thoughts
This product is really, really good. I enjoyed this product a LOT better more than Amazing Races! Humans. The crunch is in the right place; all of the options are very good and very viable, but none of them make you think to yourself, "Man, why can't my human fighter take this feat?" They all play off of the powers and abilities of the merfolk and its environment. Most of the feats possess powers the other races can't get, but when you're talking about using your giant, fishy tail to suffocate a land dweller, I'm willing to let that one slide. — Alexander "Alex" Augunas This PDF was included in my Pathfinder Online Kickstarter bundle. Now that I have some time to look through stuff, I'll be posting up some reviews on the several hundred PDFs that have fallen into my position. ... this is going to take a while. •_• Crunch
Honestly, most of the feats AREN'T fighter specific, but in my opinion the absolute best ones are the combat feats who do manage to tie into the Fighter class. For example, there is a nifty feats that cranks up the Bravery class feature to 11; you can outright ignore the shaken condition from most non-magical sources AND you add your Bravery bonus to the DC to intimidate you (brilliant choice). Very cool. I like it. As a matter of fact, the feats that tie into Bravery are all very cool. I could definitely see a few of them as real contenders for a fighter's feat slots, especially when he's got a few floater feats to kill, which a Fighter will have throughout his career. There are a couple feats that are a little overpowered, such as this one feat that basically removes the penalty to deal nonlethal damage with the club if you're Power Attacking, and if you are Power Attacking and you use the feat the Power Attack damage (plus damage from Weapon Specialization) is doubled. Ouch; might be a LITTLE too good there, boys! That said, there are a bunch of feats that add to the gameplay of relatively underused weapons, like the whip (usually taken as a bard over a fighter), the club, and even the javelin. Overall, the feats are pretty cool, even if the rules are sometimes worded funny. 4 / 5 Stars. Flavor
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Final Score & Thoughts
This is actually a pretty good product. Some of the game mechanics are worded a bit strange and there are a couple of feats that seem ripe for abuse in my opinion (mainly that club feat I mentioned early), but overall I like this product. I would allow most of these feats in my game, and I think the ones I did allow would make for good, fun, flavorful additions to my campaign as well as my player's arsenal. — Alexander "Alex" Augunas Okay, so I finally got around to checking out all of the PDFs I got for backing Pathfinder Online, so let's dive in and look at the very first one I saw, Inkantations! Crunch
Getting into the new feats, most of them are garbage. Why would I waste a feat on an ability that gives me a +3 bonus to Intimidate AND a –2 penalty to Diplomacy? I could use that feat slot on Skill Focus (Intimidate), which improves with my level AND doesn't penalize me. Most of the feats are like this; they either have very unimaginative effects, downright poor effects, or they penalize you. If you're going to penalize someone with a feat, it needs to be like Power Attack. That feat is worth the penalty. Grotesque Tattoo is not. The best feats in this chapter are the ones that interact with the actual Tattoo Inkantations, which I'll get to in a minute, but there are just so many tattoo feats that aren't worth it, its easy to skip over them by mistake. When you finally get to the tattoos, the rules themselves are very weird. I get the feeling that 4 Winds sat down, maybe even talked to a tattoo artist or had some done themselves, and said, "How can we translate this exact process over to Pathfinder?" I'm sorry, but when you tell me that using colored ink has the SAME increase as making the tattoo masterwork, then that's the point where I say, "This is too much detail." If I am increasing my DC, I want real, tangible benefits. Not shiny colors. But of course, as I say that I find out that BRANDING people, as in touching someone with a blazing-hot iron rod, requires a skill check. What's worse is that this book came out in 2011, after brand was created by Paizo. A cantrip that does exactly what you're telling me I need a relatively difficult skill check to accomplish. Clearly all inquisitors are part-time tattoo artists. When you actually reach the point of the book that you're reading the magic item tattoos, then the book becomes pretty cool. These items are pretty well thought out, are decently priced, and they're well-balanced too. There are a few neat tattoos scattered throughout the section, but most of them appear to mimic existing magic items. One that I especially like is one called arcane bonds Its a very neat tattoo that allows the tattoo's crafter to enforce a hold person effect on the person with the tattoo. That's the sort of neat, inventive stuff that I like! Sadly, there are just as many tattoos that don't make much sense, like this one that lets you scribe an animal tattoo on your face, granting you that animal's exact natural armor bonus to AC. See the problem? Considering the cost of the tattoo doesn't scale, how do you justify the natural armor of a Tyrannasaurus to the natural armor of a tiger? Both are pretty awesome tattoos to have on your face; one is clearly better than the other with no increase in cost. There are some spells in this book too, as well as some body piercings that function as wondrous items. The spells aren't all that interesting; the spell that makes you super fertile is sort of random in the product. Its obviously there because there is a tattoo that transforms you into a fertility goddess, but overall it just feels strange. The product's crunch ends with a prestige class that basically uses these magic items better than anyone else, making it somewhat boring to read about. It seems solid enough, but honestly the tattoos themselves aren't really cool enough to warrant this prestige class. Ultimately, the crunch of this product had me scratching my head in confusion more than it did exist me. 1 / 5 Stars. Flavor
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Final Score and Thoughts
I do not recommend this product. Throughout the entire thing, there was only one tattoo that I thought was remotely interesting. Everything else was rehashed material that I have already seen before placed in an item system that has been done to death. Paizo does tattoos much better in Inner Sea Magic, and there is one page, maybe two devoted to the concept there. This book expands mundane tattoos too far, presumably to fill a page quota, while most of the magic items are existing wondrous items re-flavored as tattoos. I hate to say it, but I'm honestly glad I didn't pay for Inkantations. — Alexander "Alex" Augunas So Abandoned Arts has this entire line of racial products. I'm a little wary of this sort of thing, honestly, because I don't think I've seen a racial product that I've truly loved yet but at a buck a PDF, I'll bite. Crunch
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As I mentioned before, few publishers get race products right, and part of the problem is that some races (especially the halfling and human) just don't have much to work with. But when you look at a feat or an archetype and say, "Okay, so why can't my kitsune/half-orc/tengu/merfolk/half-dragon octupus/whatever select this character option," you are doing some fundamentally wrong. The only Pathfinder archetype I have ever seen get racial products right is the Cavern Sniper fighter archetype from the Advanced Race Guide. The reason this archetype succeeded where almost all others failed is that unlike every other archetype in the Advanced Race Guide, there is no dissonance between the flavor and the game mechanics. What does that mean? Put simply, when you have in your game rules that only members of a certain race can select a specific option, yet the mechanics of the option itself is broad enough that keeping it unique to a single race doesn't make sense, then you has a dissonance between crunch and flavor. Its like having crisp rice in your pudding; yeah, I like Rice Krispies and I like pudding, but putting them together is an awful idea. To show off an example from this book, let's look at the feat that grants 2 skill points. Skill points are a game mechanic that every single race has access to. All races can earn extra skill points from their favored class. And yet this product says that the act of having lots of skill points should be part of the human flavor simply because humans get bonus skill points. Almost every option in this product suffers from this dissonance; nothing in this book feels human, and that's honestly a product that Paizo's Advanced Race Guide had too. Another thing I hate is the Character Trait that uses the male pronoun to refer to a study of the arts. "As a young man, you were a favorite among your instructors." So a woman can't be a favored art student too? Little things like this add up to a very bizarre, unsatisfying flavor. That said, the racial traits are really good and fill in some neat gaps that Paizo hadn't covered yet. 2 / 5 Stars Texture
Final Score & Thoughts
Honestly, this product's 3 stars are on the lower end of the spectrum for me. If you couldn't figure it out from my review, I did not care for this product on the grounds of its flavor alone, which is a shame because much of the crunch really is good. I like the Seigemaster archetype; the problem is that it is not a human archetype. Most campaign worlds have dwarves as master seige engineers (see Warhammer Fantasty Battle) and the idea that only humans or dwarves can be master siege engineers is laughable. Now, if you are playing in a campaign setting where humans invented the first seige weapons and they haven't spread very far yet this is all well and good. But this is a Settings Neutral product; as a publisher you do not get to make the call what the status quo is in your world, and even if you go by Golarion, there is a high chance your work will end up dated or invalidated by Paizo eventually. Even Paizo shouldn't be publishing stuff that in the Advanced Race Guide because it makes assumptions about your world in a world neutral line. (Note: I am also against Paizo IP drops in the Core Rulebook line aside from the Iconic fiction between chapters.) When you design something that you intend to restrict a single race, you need to not only make sure that it makes sense for the race flavor-wise, but also mechanics-wise. Saying, "Oh, hobgoblins are a cruel, brutal race that likes whips so we'll make them better at demoralizing foes with whips," is not a good design choice. Look at history; humans are perfectly capable of demoralizing foes with whips because the idea that hobgoblins do this is based on our prior knowledge about what real humans have actually done. Now, if you gave humans an ability that allowed them to reselect their human bonus feat as they leveled up in the same manner as a fighter retraining his combat feats, then that's perfectly fine because all of a sudden you're tying your design to something that you can be 100% sure that only the human has; a human bonus feat. This will make your design stronger because you can assure yourself that your mechanics make sense for your race's flavor while finding support in what the race can actually do. — Alexander "Alex" Augunas Game of Thrones pun. On to the review! Crunch
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Final Thoughts
When I saw this product's price, I was like, "Geez, you trying to kill us, Crieghton?" $5.99 (or however many euros that is) is quite expensive for a Raging Swan product. But when you open it up, its very clear why the price is as high as it is; everything is spot-on perfect with this product. The adventure is very solid and it is massive; we're talking over 35 pages of content, which is like 17 cents a page. You really can't beat that! If I had one comment about this adventure, its that Dark Waters Rising has a bit more identity than, say, Gibbous Moon. The adventure is a little bit more set upon itself, and therefore it might not import into people's campaigns as well as the smaller adventures do. But that is an honest risk that you take when you make a bigger adventure, and it should be one that consumers are willing to risk. If they do, this product is head and shoulders above any other 3PP adventure that I have read so far. — Alexander "Alex" Augunas Normally I start with some sort of clever pun or silly question, but I can't for this one. Not for this one. It is stupendous. Exceptional. Read on to find out why. Crunch
The sheer scope of this product is incredible. Unlike the talented fighter, I couldn't find a single rogue archetype that wasn't accounted for in this product; you can even mix and match with the ninja with this product, allowing you to make a trapmaster ninja or one of a hundred different unique rogues. If you like the Core Rogue, you will love this product just because of how flexible it makes the Rogue class. 5 / 5 Stars. Flavor
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Final Score & Thoughts
This is the first Talented product that I have given a 5 of 5 to. Not because Paizo's messageboards prevents me from awarding fractions of stars, but because this product has truly earned it. I am firmly in the camp that the rogue is not a bad class as designed in the core Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. I don't think that of any class, actually. But when I look at the Talented Line, especially the Talented Rogue, I see customization that is simply not available in the core game. I see the pieces of myraid unique characters learning in every talent and in every edge, waiting to be placed together by a loving player with a specific style, flair, and heart in mind. I honestly thing that this is not only how Rogues should be, but how character creation itself should be. Not a premade package that is exactly the same for everyone, but a thousand real, hard choices that allow you to make the character that you have always been searching for. I would consider this product a staple in the library of any fan of the d20 system. — Alexander "Alex" Augunas
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Pathfinder Society GM. Starfinder Society GM. 6,465 posts (7,247 including aliases). 28 reviews. 1 list. No wishlists. 29 Organized Play characters. 4 aliases. 