Gorbacz's page

In before the first coffee, so I'll be brief...

GOOD: Swashbuckler, Knight, Warlord, Artifcer and Shaman classes are going to be used in games. Chase rules are absolutely awesome and alone worth the asking price. Occupations are a nice way to flesh out the character and live up the "OK, roll for you gold" bit.

OK: The other races and classes seem fine. Random magic item and adventure generators might be great for many people.

BAD: There are a couple of typos and omissions (weapon and armor proficiencies for Artificer, for example).

VERDICT: A solid sourcebook and a great buy at this price.

What can I say ? I have two bookshelves of 3rd edition material, seven Paizo adventure paths to run, and I want to roll with that.

And now, with the PFRPG, there will be ongoing support for the game of my choice. I don't have to ask new players to hunt down PHB on auction sites, I can just point them to the dirt-cheap PDF and have them up to date in no time. Splendid.

The changes are mostly sound, the new rules elegant, one would wish for a few more radical improvements but we must remember about the Backwards Compatibility with all the previous material.

It's a great update and a great way of keeping the 3ed torch burning. Oh and just for sheer cojones of the endeavor, Paizo deserves 5 stars.

First of all, I'm a sucker for all things planar. From the first MotP through Planescape to Beyond Countless Doorways, been there done that.

So naturally I was quite looking forward to the Pathfinder book of planes. I jumped when the word was out that Todd "Shemeska" Stewart will be the author - I was following Todd's work on Planewalker website, and he struck me as particularly imaginative and interesting writer.

The hopes were high, but did the book deliver ? I am pleased to say YES ! The Great Beyond offers a vivid description of Pathfinder cosmology, complete with writeup on all major inner and outer planes.

Todd was faced with a real challenge - how to write something similar yet different from the good old Great Wheel D&D cosmology ? There is much Planescape nostalgia among the 3ed fans, and one of the major criticisms aimed at 4ed was the case of uprooting the entire D&D cosmology and turning it pretty much upside down. Over the years, the Great Wheel picked up tons of legacy material.

Todd manages to handle it elegantly, conjuring a streamlined version of the Great Wheel, which still can be easily expanded with pre-Pathfinder sources. The classic planes such as the Abyss, Hell, Limbo are all here (however the much beloved Mechanus and it's Modrons had to go, curse you WotC IP !). Excellent new replacements have been created to replace modrons, slaadi and yugoloths.

Yes, it's a bit on short side. And leaves you wanting more. Here's to hoping that Paizo expands the cosmology in further books, but for now, The Great Beyond is an excellent starting point. Good job !

You know, honestly, towards the end of Second Darkness my faith in Paizo adventure-crafting skills faltered a little. SD 5 was plain ugly, SD 6 was rushed. There was I wondering, did Paizo lose the steam ? Was the mojo gone ?

And that's when you wonder about such things, suddenly Erik Mona jumps out of the darkness, flips out and drop-kicks you with a module made of "pure epic win". Everything about HotCK screams quality, from the rich, vibrant and baroque layout (gratz Sarah !) to the amazing ideas and concepts within the adventure itself, to the cool support material.

On the top of that, you get the WorldWorks terrain to run along with. Best outsourcing idea ever, I say.

This module feels so fresh and yet so wonderfully old-school. The ball is rolling and Paizo is once again on the top, here's to the hope that rest of the AP follows suit.

Rock on Paizo, for you rock mighty ! I am SERIOUSLY considering ditching SD and running this right after CotCT. That's how good it is.

(Oh, and Chupacabras really should have some arabic name, I won't dare to call them out loud in front of my group.)

A very good, clearly written urban adventure. The whole "murder paintings" concept is handled elegantly with monsters and items that support the theme. Good art and cartography.

My only problem is that the second part of the adventure is a dungeon crawl, which might be a letdown for those who look for a "pure" urban adventure.

Still, Gallery of Evil did a great job of being a sidetrek in my RotRL campaign. Recommended !

I usually sing high praise of Paizo's products, but this is apparently the biggest miss in whole Pathfinder range so far.

This module is basically a giant railroad set, kicking off with the players being betrayed by their apparently only ally and forced into some choo choo train of an intrigue which they can't really break off from and have to play along. Sure, it's all explained and makes sense, but betrayal and deception is a very risk plot tool, as few things irk players more than becoming pawns of all-mighty NPCs who can just sneeze them off the Prime Material.

Coming up next are a few random "tour the Golarion" encounters with little cohesion ...

And then PCs meet the Winter Council, who are basically a bunch of douchebags who sit around and pick their noses. And whoever ordered the art for Hialin ... how am I supposed to show him to players ? He should have a "I'm a very bad person !" t-shirt, because it's not really obvious from the artwork. (SARCASM MODE OFF)

And on the top of that, in the end you get a massive highish level combat with dozens of stat blocks that have to be handled by the GM, some of them casters. Ever tried that ? I did, and it's no fun !

What I love about Paizo stuff it that it requires very little DM work, because most bases are covered and there are almost no glaring logical errors or possible exploits. The MoD is so underwhelming that I will likely have to scrap it and rewrite, something I loathe to do as it drains my already limited time.

The saving grace for this book are the backup material (Calistra article is great, but where did the prestige class go ?). They bump the score by one star.

You know what my problem with humanoid monsters was ? I could never tell or describe the difference between Goblins, Bugbears, Gnolls... All low-CR cannon fodder.

This book solved that problem. It's full of really great ecology information that really helps bring these critters to life. It's not just about Gobilns and Ogres, several "poor mans" monsters like Bugbears or Lizardfolk get a quality makeover.

A truly great book !

There is only one complaint I have with "Into the Darklands" - it's too short.

Yet, despite just 64-pages it's so crammed with awesomeness that it makes WotCs Underdark book look silly. There are so many amazing ideas there... You won't be missing the absence of certain emo drow ranger or the Mind Flayers.

I was really afraid about how Paizo can try and make their version of Underdark "similiar yet different" from the Wizards' one. But once again, they pulled it off, thanks to great talents of James and Greg.

Having read the PDF I can't wait when I get to throw my players into the deep below Golarion. There's just too much cool stuff there. Thumbs up !

At some point I browsed the MM and tried really, really hard to see some meaningful difference between a Bugbear, an Orc, a Hobgoblin and an Ogre. Couldn't find any. Brutish low CR cannon fodder...

And then I got this book.

And now my life makes sense ! ;) Seriously, this book is pure gold, it makes these insofar generic monsters come to life. After an evening with CMR I have a clear vision about what makes an Ogre such feared opponent in Golarion. I believe any fantasy GM can profit from this volume, it contains plethora of plot hooks and cool trivia. One of the best Chronicles products so far !

This deck of cards is a follow-up to the acclaimed Critical Hit Deck. It allows for fun and game-enhancing resolution of "fumbles" in melee, ranged, magic and natural attacks. The resulting mishaps are a barrel of laughs and a great tactical diversion during combat. Nothing like hitting your buddy with a Power Attak critical, tee hee.

This book is a mix of various small articles, tables and aids that help GM solve most common problems in fantasy game - "Empty rooms worth describing" and "NPC Quirks" speak for themselves, but there is sooo much more to this small book ! Excellent value for the money, truly remarkable - no fantasy RPG GM should be without this gem.

This product had a lot of potential, which sadly wasn't fully realized. Maybe it has something to do with it being the first Folio. Anyway, the foldout map of Sandpoint is beyond awesome - I believe it was one of the major factors that hooked my players on PF1 - but the others...well, they could be better executed and more player-friendly. Oh well. Better luck next time, Paizo Map Team !

Wolfgang Baur is on it again. Excellent fantasy RPG content, not just for d20 players. Ecology of the Lich, however a paradox that title might be, is an excellent article. At the 6 USD price, KQs are a steal. Go Kobolds !

Let's kick off with a few facts:

A wilderness/dungeon crawl module with a very strong, 18+ themes. The adventure features some major gory and gross elements. This might put some younger and sensitive players off. Be advised.

Once we are through that, it's a great module featuring several unique locales and memorable characters. Nicolas Logue is a very talented writer and I enjoyed the plot as well as many small surprises within the module.

However, there are some points where the adventure lacks polish - a major settlement is left without a map and just some rough overview, there are 4 NPCs that likely join the party for some time and require major book-keeping and care, a few statblocks more would be really useful... The Paizo forums are full of useful advice and props helpful in running this one, so make sure to check it out !

However, it's still a great module, just needs quite a bit of prep work, far more than PF 1 and PF 2. All in all, I enjoyed running it and my players liked it a lot as well.

The original Flip-Mat was a great thing, mostly due to perfect choice of laminated paper, sturdy yet light and allowing use of almost any marker without stains and smears (unlike the Chessex mats).

There were three small issues with the original, and all three are fixed in this new release:

* both sides feature 1" grid now. Honestly, the hexes side was redundant for most D&D players, and everybody wished they could just flip (duh) the mat and have a second surface to write on

* coloring is changed - one side is light grey, the other sand brown with the grid lines in soft grey, making it look less like a ... grid, while still easily outlining the squares

* the grid extends fully to the edge of the map, eliminating the unnecessary border.

To sum it up, the best just got better !

When I read the description of the book, I thought "damn, a template book, like we needed more of those". But it was on the Green Ronin sale, so I picked up a copy.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover one of the absolutely most excellent monster books in entire d20 history. The templates are amazing, clever, useful and make you think "why didn't I think of such monster before ?". Sure, there is some work involved in applying them to the beasties, but the good Green Ronin folks gave us a "difficulty rating" of the templates, ranging them from easy to hard.

Anybody who thought that the Lifespark Golem from Skinsaw Murders was a cool idea, should get this book ASAP. It's a little marvel, and by a long shot the best template collection out there.

The second part of RotRL is basically two adventures in one: first you get to brave the horrors of a haunted mansion, and second you get to track a sinister cult in a sprawling metropolis.

The first part is easily 5 stars - the Haunts are a great concept, the fights are memorable (Ghoul Bat, ouch !) and as usual the thing I love about Paizo's adventures - the amazing amount of detail and GM-helpful little things that help to flesh out the environs and NPCs, making them so much memorable than the "you see a room and it's a ...erm... room".

The second part keeps up the story standard, but I found it somewhat hard to picture (and describe to my players) some locales, I guess the mapwork was a bit iffy. And despite the excellent chapter on Magnimar, I still had to do a lot of GM homework to cater for players who kicked off with the usual "a big city, let's do ten thousand silly things" routine. WTB Guide to Magnimar, akin to the Korvosa one !

And of course, the TPK final boss, which required me to wrestle with re-statting to make it somewhat more manageable. Grrr... Playtest the boss fights I say !

As a hint for fellow GMs - I used "The Menagerie" from Dungeon 126 as a side-trek in Magnimar, worked like a charm !

The Desna article was really nice and the new monsters were, as usual, a nice addition.

The idea is pure genius. A magnetic, system-neutral board for tracking initiative...

This tool REALLY HELPS the gameplay. It makes one of major chores soo much easier. With added space for notes, different magnets for PCs/NPCs/monsters, and the excellent "oooh shiny" factor, this is easily the favorite accessory of my gaming group.

I echo some of suggestions - make the board more sturdy and give magnets more distinct colors (eg. red/green/black instead of blue/black/green). Such Combat Pad 2.0 would easily earn 5 stars from me !

Wow, finally, a critical hit deck for d20 games. The game was really missing something like this, as it adds great flavour and excitement to combat.

Having seen the Critical Fumble Deck, I would improve some things - make ranged/melee/natural/spell categories as per CFD, and clarify the rules for 3x/4x weapons, as some of my players were mightily confuzzled.

Apart from that, a great work and my first Paizo purchase - it all started there teehee !

Hats off to Paizo for having guts to pick up the 3ed where WotC abandoned it. The changes look good so far, and it seems that the design team correctly identified the major issues with 3ed mechanics.

The open playtest idea is excellent, for the first time in D&D history the players have a real chance to influence the game design and let the designers know what the problems are.

There is still a lot to do, I'm eagerly awaiting revised combat rules and hoping for a lot of improvement in speeding up the game and making it easier to learn WHILE at same time maintaining backwards compatibility.

I'm not giving out 5 stars yet, because that will come when the full game arrives, hopefully being what Rules Compendium from WotC isn't - a comprehensive, all-in-one resource of rules for my favourite game system.

Oh, and why there is no pink sidebar on the cover, with bright green letters exclaiming "NOW WITH ADDED MONTE !!!" ? :)