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In conclusion, The End of the World: Zombie Apocalypse offers a very narrative game, more akin to FATE than to any edition of Dungeons and Dragons, and whether or not a person will enjoy it will largely be determined by their feelings toward narrative, emergent story driven games. For myself, I really enjoyed this book. I found it easy to read and digest; I was able to read the book in an evening and got my biweekly D&D5e group to play it a few days later. The focus on playing the game as yourself in your hometown makes it very easy to run the game with little preparation other than setting the stage and Googling a city map. That said, there are a few downsides as well. There is no Strength characteristic, so determining how one of the characters could kick down a door was more troublesome than necessary. Also, as the game is ideally suited for intense one-shots or very short (two to three sessions) campaigns, I found that the characteristics that weren't Dexterity got short shrift. Overall, however, I feel like The End of the World: Zombie Apocalypse is a fun game that is well represented by its rule book, and give it 4.5 enthusiastic stars, rounded up to 5!

For a more comprehensive look at the system and how it works, find my full review here.

Two disclaimers: First, I received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest review. Second, this review is based on my reading of the material; I haven’t had a chance to playtest it, thus my verdict may change once I have.

That out of the way, the 6 pages of Conduits of the Age contain a new class for the 13th Age RPG, the conduit, which is thematically based on Mike Myler’s magic absorbing class of the same name from Liber Influxus Communis by publisher Amora Game.

The pdf begins with an overview of the class from play style to Icons. This section, and in fact the entire product, are formatted exactly as the classes in the 13th Age core book and 13 True Ways are, which is nice. The overview is solid and actually has me interested about a few things; it is noted that half-orcs and gnomes are particularly common among the ranks of conduits which makes me wonder why that is and could lead to some interesting world building. Mechanically, this section notes that conduits can add +2 to either their Dexterity or Wisdom (which cannot be the same as the ability score increased by their choice of race) which is also an interesting choice as I would have assumed the choice would be between Dexterity and Constitution.

Next we have gear and basic attacks which are fitting for a character of a more roguish type, skewing more to light weapons and armor. The roguish feeling continues as basic melee attacks use Dexterity rather than Strength to determine their to-hit and damage. The charts summing up the conduit’s level progression, stats, and weapons look really nice, once again evoking the feeling that I’m looking at the 13th Age core book.

The meat of this class, it’s unique feature, is the Conduct Die. The Conduct Die starts as a d6 at level one, progressing to a d8 at Champion tier and d10 at Epic tier. After each full heal-up, the conduit can assign one Conduct Power to each side of her die and then rolls the die twice to determine which powers are “charged,” the remaining powers are “drained.” Whenever a magical ability, which I suppose doesn’t need to be a magical attack, targets the conduit, they can choose to roll the conduct die as an interrupt action. If the die lands on a drained side, that side becomes charged and the magical ability misses all of its targets. If the Conduct Die lands on a charged side, the conduit can choose to have the ability miss all its targets and instead do damage to her equal to the attacker’s level. On the conduit’s turn, they always roll the Conduct Die and may use the corresponding power if it lands on a charged side. The feats associated with the Conduct Die are solid, allowing the conduit to reroll drained results on their turn, allowing them to assign Conduct Powers to 3 sides of the die, and giving them an additional interrupt action per round only for use to roll the Conduct Die. I have no complaints about any of them.

The very nature of the Conduct Die leads to a great deal of randomness in the conduit accessing her class powers at all, let alone which ones she may use. I personally like this design decision, but I can see it being problematic for some players. The bigger problems, in my opinion, are twofold. First, the Conduct Die interacts with “magical abilities;” 13th Age doesn’t really define what magical abilities are, and while a few monsters cast spells, I’m not certain if the Conduct Die is intended to allow the conduit to absorb a dragon’s breath weapon, for example. Or a drider’s web… or a goblin shaman’s shaking curse… While I am fine ruling on cases like this as a GM as they come up, there may be GMs out there who feel this creates an unnecessary burden on them; some clarity would be appreciated. Secondly, I really dislike the ability of the conduit to completely prevent area effect spells from affecting her companions. In my experience, there are very few situations where a party doesn’t benefit from a worst case scenario that has one person take (in this case, likely a fraction of) the damage from an area effect rather than letting it hit everybody. This second problem could be alleviated somewhat with a firmer definition of “magical ability.”

Next up are the Class Talents, of which a conduit selects three of the six options presented. The Controlled Conduct talent allows the conduit a modicum more control over which powers she may access; she may alter the roll of the Conduct Die up or down by 1. The feats associated are solid as well. Favorite Power allows a conduit to add the same power to two sides of the Conduct Die, allowing slightly more reliable access to her go-to powers. The associated feats are awesome, allowing the charging of a drained favorite power when the charged one is rolled, allowing the charging of both drained favorite powers when one would become charged, and allowing two different favorite powers as the Epic tier feat.

The Gigas Conduct talent precludes the taking of Controlled Conduct and increases the size of your Conduct Die to d8, d10, and d12 respectively but adds more randomness which may result in the inability to use the result you’ve rolled. The feats for this talent are pretty nice, allowing the conduit to ignore the d4 roll to a limited extent.

The Mystical Armor talent is alright, removing the penalties to attack for wearing heavier armor and increasing AC and Physical Defense. The Adventurer and Epic tier feats are nice, but the Champion tier feat’s bonus to Mental Defense seems a bit incongruous given the physical nature of the talent. The Mystical Weapons talent is interesting; I like the negation of penalties for using heavier weapons, but the extra damage die when your Conduct Die roll for the round is even seems like too much at low levels and like it will be pointless at higher levels… which I suppose makes it just about right if you look at it a certain way. The associated feats interact with the talent nicely. Finally, I don’t have strong feelings for the Wild Preservation talent. On the one hand, I’m not certain I like anything that adds modifiers to saving throws in 13th Age. On the other hand, it may not come up that often depending on your rolls, so it really doesn’t bother me overmuch. Two of the associated feats are interesting in that they affect recoveries, not saving throws, but again, this doesn’t bother me too much.

Overall, I like the talents. The Mystical Armor, Mystical Weapons, and Wild Preservation talents don’t interact much with the class’ primary feature, but they do offer a bit more breadth than just being a rechargeable magic battery. Honestly, my biggest gripe about them is that there aren’t more talent options, but I feel that way about all 13th Age classes, first or third party, so I won’t hold it against this one.

Finally, we come to the Conduct Powers, of which there are sixteen. I won’t go into depth on each, but they are what you would expect, being primarily a number of different single use attacks and defenses. There are some nice ones like Deflective, which may cause an attacker to miss as an interrupt action. Mending allows a target to heal using one of their recoveries. Mystical Movement allows the conduit to take an additional move action as a quick action. I will note that the various powers that allow the conduit to add an ability bonus (Dexterity for example) to a different ability’s check (Intelligence, say) will probably see less use than more strictly attack or defence ones. The assortment of feats for each power are fine for the most part, if somewhat conservative; there are quite a few increased damage dice among them, which are to be expected if kind of boring. I would love to see some feats that interact with the escalation die, which is a 13th Age innovation that has sadly been ignored entirely in this product.

The pdf itself is well edited and has a nice layout as I’ve noted previously. The design however, is not to my tastes. Each page has a trio of diamonds with large drop-shadows in the inner and outer margins. I find these distracting and dislike that the drop-shadows overlap with the text to a small degree; I’d prefer the diamonds, sans shadows, only on the outer margin. Similarly, the section headers use a mirrored font that I find distracting. Honestly these kind of things are probably me being persnickety, but they do warrant mention. On the other hand, the two pieces of art used are really nice; the fact I haven’t seen them before is just icing.

Sasha Hall shows a real aptitude for 13th Age design; she has done a really good job maintaining the theme of this class (magic absorbing blaster) from its Pathfinder roots and translating it into mechanics that honestly feel like something that was omitted from the 13th Age core due to space constraints. I hope she takes this as the compliment I intend it to be. The conduit’s biggest problems, its lack of facility without magic to absorb, and the lack of definition of magical abilities, can be alleviated to a large degree by a GM who knows how to design encounters to his players’ interests and who is comfortable making rulings in the absence of definition. I will end with a final verdict of four stars and a hope that I will see more 13th Age work from this author soon. Maybe even another LIC class!

Is it weird to write a review of the third product in a series when you haven’t reviewed the first two? Regardless, I’m going to do just that! Covenant Magic: Further Covenants is the second expansion to Legendary Classes: Covenant Magic published by Purple Duck Games. Covenant Magic, and the Medium class introduced in the first book, have been a big hit with my players; this feat based magic system has vast narrative potential that we have embraced.

This product opens up with a brief FAQ re covenant magic. I would probably have combined this with the errata that closes out the product, but that’s a small niggle.

Following this introduction we jump into the meat of this product with six new influences for the Medium class. The Dark Hedonism Influence is for characters that selfishly seek pleasure via excessive indulgence or deliberate harm. The Elysian Blessings Influence is for those who seek to gain power from the Azata. Faith Slayer influenced mediums seek to destroy religion. Mediums of the Kyton Enlightenment Influence revel in the sadism their patrons are known for. The Qlippothic Redeemer influenced medium is granted power to convert neutral evil and chaotic evil beings to other alignments in order to prevent the creation of new demons and daemons. I can’t even describe how much I love this influence; it is easily my favourite to date… it just has amazing storytelling potential. Finally, the Sacred Duty Influence grants the deathly power of the psychopomp to its adherents. Mechanically, all of the new influences seem to be on par with the ones introduced in the first two books. I didn’t note any that had a real differential in power. Thematically, these are among my favourite influences. The Sacred Duty, Kyton Enlightenment, and especially Qlippothic Redeemer influences in particular got my imagination fired up.

A new medium archetype follows the influences. The Technophobe must choose from a limited number of influences, gains additional Spell-like Abilities, and has a thematic selection of Trance Covenants and Trance Spell-like Abilities that can replace those traditionally offered by his influence. They can also call upon a technophobe spirit (which is described in the text) rather than the spirit type their influence traditionally calls. In all, this looks like a solid archetype for a Barrier Peaks / Iron Gods type campaign.

Eleven new covenants follow; like the new influences, these covenants seem on par with previously released material with regard to power level. The new covenants run a gamut of abilities such as preventing divine casters from casting for a round, resistance to the special attacks of undead, limited regeneration, or most importantly, granting the blessing of the qlippoth.

This book wraps up with stat blocks for seven covenant using NPCs of a variety of levels and races. I personally like having examples of what a character created with a new subsystem potentially looks like mechanically so I appreciate the inclusion.

Curiously, as noted above, the book closes with a short paragraph of errata for Legendary Classes: More Covenant Magic. Given the relative ease of editing a .pdf, it strikes me as odd that this choice was made rather than simply updating the appropriate sections of the noted product, but I appreciate the errata nevertheless.

Once again, Julian Neale expands on the topic of covenant magic in a thematically satisfying way; the new influences are among the best yet seen and the new covenants offer a few more exciting options for any character willing to treat with spirits for power. If you are using Purple Duck Games’ covenant magic subsystem, you need this expansion. If you are not using this subsystem, I would heartily recommend picking up all three books.

GM’s Miscellany: Village Backdrops details twelve small settlements that are part of Raging Swan Press’ Lonely Coast mini campaign setting (which is free to download and well worth a read), though they are intended to be easily divorced from that setting and dropped into any campaign with a minimum of fuss. Each village write up consists of a chapter heading page and five to six pages of description which includes a ½ to ¾ page hand drawn map.

The book starts with a page of author bios, which is something I’d like to see in more RPG books. This is followed by the table of contents, a list of stat blocks by CR, a section on how to read the stat blocks, and three pages on using this book with Ultimate Campaign.

Designing Villages is the first proper chapter of the book, and really it could be called Village Dressing. It starts with some useful tips on village design and then moves straight into tables detailing everything from government to industry to external conflicts to internal secrets to a 100 item table of sample village names. Using this chapter and a little imagination, a GM can make up a flavourful village in remarkably little time.

From here we move into the villages proper. Each village opens with a few paragraphs describing the village followed by a settlement stat block, a short list of notable residents, a short list of notable places, village lore which includes Knowledge check CRs, and a brief description of the average villager. The notable locations in the village then get expanded upon with a few paragraphs each. Each village closes with a table of possible events and a selection of whispers and rumours.

I want to commend the various authors of this book for making each and every village unique and interesting despite the relatively scant page count. While some of them tickle my fancy more than others (Apia, Bossin, Denton’s End, Oakhurst, and White Moon Cove are particular favourites), there isn’t a dud among them. Each village has enough unique flavour, interesting locations and plot hooks that a GM could keep his players busy for ages. While I was reading through the villages, I found myself constantly pausing to write down notes and ideas for adventures; this isn’t something that I find myself doing while reading most setting supplements.

The book itself is a nice solid black and white softcover with appealing black and white illustrations and simply beautiful cartography; I really like the hand drawn style of the maps in this book.

If I had to complain about anything, I’d say that the lack of a map of the Lonely Coast noting all the village locations in relation to one another was a missed opportunity, but otherwise this book is excellent. Once again, Raging Swan Press ably succeeds at their goal of supplying time strapped GMs with flavoursome, easily digested material that is dead simple to drop into a campaign; this book is worth an easy five stars. I can’t wait to delve into GM’s Miscellany: Village Backdrops 2!

Raging Swan Press specializes in releasing books that assist the beleaguered and time-shy GM. To that end GM’s Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing is a massive tome that will help breathe life into any GM’s dungeon forays.

Following the table of contents and author bios, the book begins with a series of articles on dungeon design culled from RSP mastermind Creighton Broadhurst’s blog (which is always entertaining and well worth a visit). As someone who has always struggled with dungeon design, despite my many years in the GM seat, these concise, well written short essays are appreciated and act as a wonderful primer for dungeon creation.

Chapter two deals with this book’s namesake: dungeon dressing. This chapter consumes most of the page count and provides a plethora of random tables that offer details on virtually everything one might find in a dungeon, from walls, ceilings and illumination to altars, gates and corpses to traps, legends and goblin’s pockets. The options and details provided are sundry and varied; often they provide hooks that could be fleshed out into quests and adventures should the players pick up on them. A GM needing a bit of motivation during prep could really just flip through this chapter and find plenty of inspiration.

Chapter three is all about riddles, about twenty pages of them, ranging from the very simple to the more complex. Anyone wanting to match wits rather than swords with their antagonists will find plenty of ammunition here.

The book closes with a chapter detailing treasure hoards for every level of play. In an ideal world I would personalize treasure for the characters in every instance. As the world isn’t always ideal, I appreciate having these at my fingertips when the need arises.

I opted to get this book in softcover (I prefer my black and white books in softcover for some reason) and, like all the other RSP softcovers on my shelf, it is sturdily constructed and looks to stand up to years of use and abuse. The two column layout is easy to read and the illustrations are appealing to my old school sensibilities. The white text on solid black cover looks great on my shelf. I’m a big fan of RSP’s trade dress; it’s very classy.

Like its sibling miscellanies dealing with urban and wilderness dressing, GM’s Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing is a must have book for anyone that wants to create a living, immersive world of adventure. As someone that misses the amount of detail found in 1st & 2nd edition modules, I use it extensively while I’m preparing my sessions, but also keep it on hand at the table for those frequent occasions that unexpected details might be required. I also love that despite the Pathfinder Compatible logo the book sports on the cover, most of the book is devoid of mechanics and can easily be used with any fantasy game system with no conversion required.

It’s a cliché that life is about the journey, not the destination. My years of gaming experience tell me that this is rarely true in-game; RPGs, in my experience, are almost always about the destinations. Forgotten tombs. Eerie ruins. Bustling cities with undead infested graveyards. Canyons shadowed beneath immense planar rifts. It’s easy to treat the distances that our protagonists travel to get to these adventuring sites as a nuisance to be glossed over with maybe a random encounter or two thrown in to spice things up and keep the players from napping. I’ve played with many GMs that have treated the journey like this. I’ve done it myself. In order to help GMs battle this travel apathy, Raging Swan Press once again steps into the breach and offers us GM’s Miscellany: Wilderness Dressing.

Like all of Raging Swan’s dressing offerings, this book is filled to the brim with numbered tables that offer details, features, events, complications, and yes, dressing, for nearly anything adventurers might find while travelling through the wilderness ranging from campsites to ruins to extreme weather. Essentially every one or two sentence description is a baited hook just waiting for some adventurers to bite; reading through them has given me dozens of ideas for encounters and adventures to throw at my group.

The book itself is a sturdily constructed black and white softcover with Raging Swan’s trademark cover treatment which I always think looks very sharp. Layout is simple, clean, and easy to read and the artwork has a distinctly old school flavour that I personally find appealing. I would also like to not that the included author bios are appreciated.

Once again, Raging Swan Press has produced a book that I feel should be in every GM’s toolkit. GM’s Miscellany: Wilderness Dressing is a flawless example of a game aid; I anticipate that it will get worn and dog-eared long before it runs out of utility. I award it a full five stars.

It sometimes surprises me that, in a hobby that is ostensibly about telling stories, relatively few resources are available to assist GMs in the task of making their worlds feel like they’re alive. I’m not talking about campaign setting material that tells me what percentage of country A’s population Is comprised of halflings or whether or not spicy peppers are exported to country X from country Z, I have plenty of books that will tell me those things. I’m referring to the little things that help answer the questions players will inevitably ask in the course of their characters’ adventures and create the illusion that the game world is a living, breathing entity.

“What do I see when I look down that alley?”

“What kind of soup does the tavern have on today? Would I eat the soup? Does the place look like it’s been cleaned recently?”

“That keening sound is coming from the southeast hallway? What’s in the hall? Does the floor look stable? How about the ceiling?”

"What type of shingles are on the roof? Can you describe the state of the chimney? Can I tell if the flue is open?”

If one is using a published adventure, some of the players’ questions may be able to be answered, especially if the question asked pertains to a plot driver, but I can’t fault module writers for skimping on relatively mundane or unimportant details when they’re wondering how much of a room description they can fit in when the demi lich’s two minions that populate said room have a half page stat block apiece.

Fortunately, Raging Swan Press exists to assist struggling GMs. GM’s Miscellany: Urban Dressing will answer the questions posed above and a plethora of others. The first chapter, Dressing, details urban locations such as alleyways, docks, graveyards, guildhalls, market stalls, parks, ruined buildings, shrines, statues, monuments, temples, theatres, and wizard’s towers. Each location has a series of numbered tables that will help detail its appearance, the items and NPCs that may be stumbled across, and any opportunities or complications that may present themselves. In addition to locations, sages, thieves, traders, craftsmen, and the watch all get a series of tables each.

Chapter two, Encounters, details fourteen different encounters ranging from EL 1 to EL 10. While the encounters aren’t all amazing, a fair few of them are quite interesting. Not all of the encounters necessarily have to be resolved via combat, which is nice in and of itself.

Chapter three, So What’s for Sale? is full of lists of items and sellers available in town. Each sized area, from small town through metropolis, has a minimum of fifteen different lists of items and ten different item sellers detailed, so if you hadn’t given much thought to what might be purchased or who might be selling it, there’s plenty of variety to choose from.

The final chapter, Taverns, offers tables that detail interesting features, patrons, staff, taproom events, menus, entertainment, games (including full rules for a game that can be played, The Dragon and the Thief), and brawls. Rules for barroom brawls are also presented as are three new conditions which are sure to be be popular with your players: Tipsy, Drunk, and Hammered. The chapter ends with a score of detailed sample taverns.

I opted for the softcover version of the book, and am very happy with the quality. It’s seen a fair bit of use in the brief time I’ve had it and is holding up nicely; the spine and pages are nice and sturdy. The layout is easy to read and is printed with no frills in black and white. There are remarkably few typos and errors for a product of this size, though I'm certain that entry 98 on Naming Locations: Table A (page 11) is supposed to be Wanton, not Wonton. Perhaps I'm mistaken...

This book is already a mainstay at my gaming table; I use it to prep for game sessions in addition to using it in play to quickly add random tidbits about the areas being visited; my players have commented about how unsettled they have become now that I am adding more details to random areas being described, not just detailing the important places and skimming over the rest. I’ll take that as a compliment, both for myself and the new tool in my GMing toolkit. Five stars!

Into the Breach: The Witch by Flying Pincushion Games has twenty-six content pages that are fairly densely packed with archetypes, an alternate class, prestige classes, new hexes, and new feats. Let’s take a look.

The document kicks off with the Bailiwick Hermit which gains benefits in a specific non-urban terrain while suffering penalties in unfamiliar terrain; in an urban setting, these penalties get worse based on the size of the settlement. This archetype also replaces the witch’s familiar with a Familiar Place, essentially a portable homestead that gains additional properties as the witch gains levels. It should be noted that the level 3-4 property, Illusionary Effect, is not described. Overall, this archetype would make a grand wilderness NPC; hermits generally make for poor adventuring companions, however.

Next up is the Bog Builder, which gains an altered Patron spell list and replaces the witches familiar with a Constructed Familiar made of bog materials. Overall, this seems solid, and the ability to design your own construct familiar adds a dash of flexibility.

The Bulwark Theurgist requires a good alignment and can designate one ally as its Ward who gains additional protections from the witch. A fairly bland archetype in my opinion.

The Disciple of the Bloody Hand is the first archetype that really tickles my fancy. The witch replaces the typical familiar with THEIR OWN SEVERED AND ANIMATED HAND! Awesome! The 14th level ability to summon a swarm of animated hands, which are fully statted, is also amazing. I quite like this archetype, it is very evocative and flavourful.

Dweomer Weavers must be female and replace the typical familiar with a Woven Witch’s Familiar, an article of clothing that must be worn while the witch prepares their spells for the day. This familiar also alters the usual properties gained by familiars. The 2nd and 8th level abilities gained: weaving two spells together as a full round action, temporarily disenchanting magical items of clothing, seem appropriate. The 14th level ability, Sever the Thread, seems very limited if you play in a game that doesn’t include Mythic elements or Hero Points. This is another archetype I could see using as an NPC, but I doubt it will get any love as a player option with my group.

The Feybound Crone replaces the Witch’s Familiar with a Fey Familiar… or two Fey Familiars so long as their combined CR doesn’t exceed 1. What happens if one of your two familiars is killed? Are there penalties? Can you only prepare half your usual amount of spells? Clarification is required. This archetype may, as a capstone, split into two fey creatures that “are independent and possess all abilities and spells listed in its stat block.” Which is troubling to me. When the witch uses spells while transformed, do they temporarily have access to spells they may not have previously known? Does using these spells use the witch’s prepared spell slots? Too many questions.

The Foul Temptress is the classic Snow White witch. Iconic in its fairy tale villain potential, I have no complaints.

The Gluttonous Crone gains power by eating people (well… intelligent creatures). More iconic fairy tale action is a good thing in my book.

The Marjara Bound is the classic black cat loving witch. I really like this archetype, though I question the balance as the black cat familiar is more powerful than the typical familiar; its shape change ability puts it at least on par with a Druid’s animal companion. Furthermore, the abilities that replace the Hexes granted at 8th and 14th level, short term transformation into hybrid weretiger form and the ability to summon a swarm of black cats (!) respectively, are better than most hexes.

Scorned Hearts trade away the first four levels of spellcasting for the ability to “transform herself into a savage avatar of retribution.” This avatar form is created in a similar manner as a Summoner’s Eidolon ; points in the “vengeance pool” are used to purchase Eidolon evolutions. This is a really cool archetype with a ton of roleplaying potential.

The Voodoo Caster replaces the witch’s familiar with Gris-Gris, essentially small fetishes or charms that the witch can imbue with spells or hexes. This is a flavourful archetype, though getting gris-gris into the hands or pockets of an opponent seems more troublesome than merely hexing them.

Following the archetypes is the full 20 level alternate class: the Sèvitè; a Wisdom based arcane spellcaster that is based on Haitian Voudoun practitioners. Sèvitè replace the witch’s hex ability with the ability to commune with spirits known as loa which grant the Sèvitè a number of spell like abilities. Aid can be requested from one loa at first level with additional loa granted at level 2 and every four levels following that. The document does not state the duration that the loa’s aid persists for; I would assume it is for twenty-four hours. Loa can also be permitted to take control, or “ride” the Sèvitè, granting additional powers while preventing access to skills, spells and the SLAs granted by other loa. Ending the loa’s ride is a move action, but the document doesn’t note if there is a maximum duration for this ability. Ten loa are detailed, which gives the Sèvitè a decent amount of variety in abilities from day to day.

Sèvitè cast spells drawn from the witch’s spell list; they can know any number of spells, but no method of adding new spells to their repertoire is noted. As their daily spell allotment is granted to them during their communion with the intercessory loa, Papa Legba, the usual method a witch would use to add spells to their familiar would seem to not apply. Sèvitè are also vulnerable to possession due to their connection to the spirit world. Despite the complaints noted, I really like this alternate class. It has a ton of roleplaying potential and would fit nicely in any campaign set in a Caribbean/tropical setting.

The two prestige classes, the Heathen (witch/magus) and Scarred Shaman (witch/barbarian) failed to impress me. The Heathen seemed unfocused and, though the prose notes how dark and villainous these beings are, they don’t require an evil or non-good alignment. The Scarred Shaman just seems bland, though the artwork depicting one on page 25 is gorgeous.

The document ends with a selection of new hexes, patrons, and feats. None of these made a lasting impression on me, other than the Babble hex, which, with its duration of 1 hour per witch level, could potentially cripple any spellcaster that fails their Will save. Awesome when in the PCs favor, but frustrating when they’re the ones targeted by it. And I’m the type of GM that would target PC casters with it with neither mercy nor remorse.

Into the Breach: the Witch is a mixed bag for me. While there are portions I really like, there is an equal amount I dislike or am neutral towards. There are also a number of clarifications that could be made to some of the content. If I could award half marks, this would get 3.5 stars from me, as half marks are not allowed, I will round down to 3.