This isn't railroady as the party could potentially go straight for the BBEG first. There are suggestions to the party that they should do certain things first (trying to avoid spoilers).
The art in the book is great. In the PDF, people get some extra pages with images of some of the individuals encountered and an item that might show up. That's great for a GM that wants an aid to help the party visualize what they're encountering without showing the image with text.
There are some encounters that could potentially be resolved through diplomacy or combat, which is nice for more combative or more peaceful adventuring groups.
I got this pdf and hardcover through the Kickstarter. This book has several options for characters, including three archetypes. Two of these archetypes are for the cavalier, magical beast rider and wyrm rider. The other is the sky pilgrim for the monk. One new race is included: half-fey.
Also included is various equipment, magic items and aerial vehicles.
There are sections covering challenges like falling and missile mooks.
A chapter is dedicated to concepts of an aerial battle grid, abstract aerial combat, the fly skill movement and further flying rules.
For a dungeon crawl, this has more opportunity for roleplay than most.
The first encounter can be quite deadly if combat occurs. I really was hoping to roleplay Togg, unfortunately, had a very trigger happy gunslinger (at least he was role playing his character). One of my few PC kills as GM came in this encounter.
After the first encounter, there's only one other real chance to roleplay. The rest of the time, it's just a typical dungeon crawl where you go get an item and report back in.
There was nothing difficult whatoever about this scenario, other than one particular thing (see below). Went through this and found nothing especially memorable.
Difficult:
The most difficult part of this was that no one was able to figure out that the girl was bluffing us and was really a mass-murdering halfling.
I am not a fan of the current chase mechanics (in season four), but I do like how it's done in the down hill chase. The combats were pretty good too. Just fun all around.
This is a great product that I got for Christmas. Anything that can be said about this, has been said. The only thing wrong with this, was specific to mine was with the latch. The latch is, at one corner, really dinged up pretty bad, almost like it had been grounded down and has other scratches on it. The content is great. Paper quality is fantastic. Having the handouts is great also.
This provides great information that any evil-worshipping character can use. The book has some details for some minor deities and organizations (including the Hellknights). The art is great as usual.
The walls are quite sturdy. The only complaint I have is with the bottom felt part. It is pretty thin and makes me think that if I'm not careful, something will poke through. I do like the felt part otherwise.
It's a good book. My problem is it takes too long in each chapter to figure out who that chapter is focusing on. Would be nice to know who the focus is on in like the first paragraph or two.
I got this and found that it is a large sized map, which is great for more detail (there is plenty of detail on the map). I ended up getting 2 copies of it, plus the pdf. I got one copy framed (which is expensive) and the other to take with me as needed. The pdf is great because, when I got it, I got both the single big map and the 4 quarter maps of it. Now the question is, "How long will it take to notice everything?"
Ok gotta abbreviate the review. First review was eaten.
First page is title page.
Second page is the legal stuff.
3 pages for TOC.
13 chapters over 358 pages.
Chapter 1 is an intro.
Chapter 2 introduces 4 new races, iblis, blue elf, seraph and stone delver.
Chapter 3 are the classes.
Divine summoner, holy guard, petitioner, and summoner savant. Summoner and wizard conjurer are reprinted. Animal shaman is a new druid build.
Chapter 4 skills and feats.
Knowledge summoning new skill.
New summoning focus feats and monster feats are reprinted.
Chapter 5 spell lists. Summon Monster is now 0 - 10.
Chapter 6 summoning tables.
Chapter 7 has magic items.
Chapter 8 contains supplemental rules.
Chapter 9 is about advancing monsters. This includes some basic epic rules for Pathfinder and 3.5.
Chapter 10 Universal Monster Rules. (Reprint from the Bestiary.)
Chapter 11 templates.
Chapter 12 creature reference sheets.
Chapter 13 presents 3 different eidolon builds from levels 1 - 20 each. Types are mount, guardian and spy.
The art in this is well done, just not my style.
This is well done.
I would have to say you're getting plenty for your money.
There is a lot of good material that can be used in this book for a dm. The only problem I have with the book is that there isn't any game statistics given so that a person could create a pc character out of the monsters presented. Not just any monster would be good as a pc, but having the stats to create a few pc monsters would have been nice.
