Malwing's page

Its exactly what it says on the tin. There are recipes that are very well formatted and easy to understand. Each dish is special in that it creates some sort of magical effect. But this product makes me angry. Why?

We spend four and a half of the 12 pages of the book on traits, feats, items, and even two archetypes, which is all well and good, most of them aren't that noteworthy but they're cute and flavorful and some of them have some real mechanical value, definitely things I'd pick up on a character that likes to cook, but what I really wanted was more food.

Yes its petty but the fact that this product is not it's own series but part of the Letters from the Flaming Crab series makes it worse. I need more food! There are 16 recipies which add well to the wondrous food from Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns and Taverns, and can add some flavor (Ha!) to Dire Rugrat's Tavern guides, but the book is only 12 pages long and nobody ever has enough food. Why can't books like this be 100 pages long? I feel like a fat guy at one of those expensive trendy places that have sliders that take one bite to eat. Sure it's delicious. The format and wording is good, the addition of instructions is flavorful, its crunchy enough to be interesting, but its over before I'm ready so now I'm just hungry.

I need more food. And for that matter, I need more exotic ingredients too. Some of the recipes require things like a Prestidigitation spell or an owlbear egg and things like the owlbear egg is the kind of thing that turns breakfast into an epic quest. That needs to happen more.

So despite it's shortcomings is it worth a bite? Well as I said above, its a nice product. If your players are like me or my players cooking is something a lot of people want to do but there's no mechanical incentive to invest in the skill so you're just throwing skills in the garbage can just for kicks. I also hear about all kinds of questions about cooking and cooking magically. I've seen only one other product that actually tackled the subject adequately and even then I was still starving so this product is a huge step in the right direction. Someone over in Flaming Crab Games knows how to make some fluffy crunch that's cute and relevant. I will say that in terms of actual flaws, some of the effects could easily be first level spells so a rare ingredient or steeper monetary cost could be more desirable, but overall its pretty good. Just not as good as the food, of which there needs to be more of. I'll give it 5 out of 5 stars but it comes with my expression of disappointment that it's not longer.

I already went through the first Book of Heroic Races from Jon Brazer and that was pretty nice so I have high hopes for this new Advanced series as it goes through some of the less detailed entries of Pathfinder races. The first one up is Changelings, the female gender-locked race of half-hags.

The book reiterates the changeling racial traits before granting some regular traits that they can take to be a bit more haggy. It also introduces a bunch of alternate racial traits, one of which is a paternal heritage, which is not only something missing from normal changelings but immediately makes it a very versatile race with a lot more flavor.

Of course the fluff that I liked in the first BoHR is back and welcomed here since changelings do not get that much of a write up in Paizo's books. Some of the fluff gives me the goosies as it inspires ideas for NPC and PC characters that I haven't considered before. Instead of a dull product of hag assault you get some thought and feelings making the race come to life and become more appealing to play.

Then we come to the racial archetypes. Here the class and replaced class features are at the top right after the name and the fluff text, something I don't understand why it isn't done more often, particularly with Paizo material. It makes reading archetypes and knowing what to replace so much easier. Besides that, the new options are interesting in flavor, not terribly complicated but are things I would take for what they replace. There are also new bloodrager and sorcerer bloodlines and new rogue talents. Most are things I would take. They add a lot of flavor and I don't immediately look at them as being too weak to pick. The options being interesting is meaning a lot for me because with so many third party products there are a lot of options to choose from so being interesting enough to really want to be a changeling is giving the product a huge compliment. The same amount of flavor and useability goes for the racial feats.

The eye dye, a racial item designed to hide the changeling's nature, is boring as an item but feels like a hot item for a changeling.

There are new deities for changelings. oddly this is where a few divine casting classes get archetypes. See my above comments for their quality.

The following spells are 'meh' unless you're a bloodrager or alchemist. If you are a bloodrager or alchemist You're definitely going to want to cast some of these.

After new magic items are some changeling NPCs, which are always welcome because my collection of non-core race/non-monster stat blocks is limited at best.

Overall I like this. If you are like me, the changeling in the Advanced Race Guide just isn't enough. Its just another half-human race that doesn't have much support to hold itself up. Not even the fluff was really good enough to make this more than a race to pass in favor of another human. This book on the other hand gives a lot of flavor and besides that touches on a lot of things I look for in a supplement. In particular it saves me time and imagination with new deities and NPCs, and it inspires with new things that feel like a natural part of the changeling race. I'd give this one a 5 out of 5 stars and hope that the rest of this series adds as much imagination and inspiration to other one page wonders of Paizo's races.

The Apothecary is something that I picked up because there is a glaring hole in the caster types. Namely that there's no full BAB 4/9 caster or full caster of the alchemy list. This looks like it serves as the latter. Granted it's not exactly necessary and can be troublesome to have a 'more alchemist' but I wanted to take a look.

Off the bat I'm a little irked. Normally when you present a class you get its hit die, class skills, and skill ranks per level before you get to the class features. Well I can guess it's hit die because of it's BAB but I see no Class Skills or skill ranks per level. These can be guessed given patterns from other classes but That is seriously not something to omit. That kind of thing alone gives me reason to throw this into my folder of stuff I'll never use, but for now I'll power on because it is easy to assume that it has a d6 hit die, class skills as the Alchemist, 2+INT skill ranks per level.

In a nutshell the Apothecary gets full casting alchemy including zero level extracts(!?), Discovery-like Concoctions every other level, Brew Potion, and a capstone ability. This is simple and looks like it works okay but there are some minor things that set off alarms in my head. Due to how extracts work I'm curious as to what the heck the Widen and Bounce Ray concoctions do. That just raises too many questions. This also makes some of the choices for the spell list questionable at best and useless at the worst. Beyond that it doesn't give me much to differenciate it from the Alchemist. In fact with the loss of BAB (and presumably Hit Die) the extract list, even extended to 9 levels does not support the class enough to make it survive. It's list is nowhere near the Wizard's list so the BAB is not justified and it does not have enough abilities to support itself.

Overall the class as written doesn't work and even when you extrapolate what information should be there it is weak beyond belief and some of the abilities and the extract list show a painful misunderstanding as to how extracts even work. For me it picks at too many pet peeves for me to find useful so I'm giving it 1 out of 5 stars.

Broken Earth is a campaign setting at heart but its also a useful toolbox for running modern or post apocalyptic games.

What the book is what it says on the box. It depicts a campaign setting where the earth is, well, broke, most likely due to some kind of nuclear apocalypse. I went with Radiation Zombies. It goes partially into Kamandi-mode with races of intelligent apes and mutant freaks. It also assumes that psionics is the norm as opposed to magic.

Inside you'll find new archetypes, three new races, feats, mutation rules, some psionic powers, equipment and plenty of advice on how to run a Broken Earth campaign. If you're like me and you just want the crunch you can use for your own homebrew settings I could say, don't get the whole book, but get the Player's Guide which has a much smaller chunk of the book that's mostly crunch and player options. But that would be a disservice to the product, especially if you're a GM looking to buy. The setting and the various indexes and GM tools included are really handy, even outside of the specific setting inside. Its mostly events and NPCs that can be placed into any similar setting and minor rules on handling the situations. This includes tables for random encounters and loot. The GM portion is just outright dense in material to use. The only problem for me is that the specific campaign setting, despite having a lot of details scattered about is still rather vague so in a way you kind of have to run with it, meaning that you can be running Mad Max, Kamandi, Thundarr the Barbarian or Final Fantasy. It covers basic assumptions and has some organizations inside but really the transferable material is much more prevalent. I know I say that it's a 'problem' but if you're like me this is the best part of the book because I deal wit my own settings more often than I do written settings, especially when there aren't many prewritten adventures alongside.

The book also suggests using Anachronistic Adventures to round out the player options, and combined it does work really well, particularly the gear, I feel, fills in what Anachronistic Adventures leaves out.

Overall, if you want to run a post apocalyptic setting that's set on Earth or close to being Earth then I think this book is a must-have. Its just incredibly useful. If you just want some more crunch to add to the options in Anachronistic Adventures, then I would just get the Player's Guide. It's pure usefulness earns it 5 out of 5 stars.

So what is a Masquerade Reveler? According to the fluff, its a fey inspired Barbarian archetype, but I'll tell you now that you will easily confuse it with an entire class. Throughout the whole thing I thought to myself, "Well, that's cool and all, but it doesn't have any other class features." and then I remember, "Oh yeah, it does barbarian stuff. Right."

Instead of raging the Masquerade Reveler spends it's rounds of rage wearing a mask. Each mask is a collection of eidolon evolutions tied to the theme of the mask. The mask themes are either fantastical or fey creatures or animals with each mask scaling from having 4 points of evolutions to 6 and eventually 8. You get 4 masks at first level and another mask every level after that. It sounds simple but it takes a lot of book keeping to know what masks you have and what each of the evolutions do. The sheer amount of different masks mean that you're able to have a lot of variety in what you do. There are even some Mythic Masks. The book also comes with a slew of new evolutions for eidolons and some feats to round things out.

Not much else to say. Its a straightforward product. That is probably the single best Barbarian archetype I've ever seen. It might as well be a new class considering the amount of options and the way that it just changes assumptions of the class. I'm willing to even say it is the best archetype of anything in Pathfinder. It takes the totem aspect of Barbarian and cranks it to 11. And on top of that it offers Mythic support and some nice evolutions for your summoner. Normal Barbarian should be embarrassed to even exist in the face of this archetype. I have no choice but to give it 5 out of 5 stars. It's just that good.

If you bought enough of the previous component pieces of Anachronistic Adventures then this needs no introduction because you already have this. Enjoy. For everyone else that are potential buyers the general premise of Anachronistic Adventures is making a modern or pre-modern character that finds herself in medieval fantasly-land. This is done with six 20 level classes each based on the six ability scores. They're rather basic in the sense that they don't have setting assumptions in their crunch and are mostly flavored around their respective ability scores. They do have some deviations that set them apart from normal classes and binds them together. Each one has a few floating class skills to make them a bit more customizable and each have one more skill rank per level than what is standard to represent higher education standards in modern settings. They also each get an archetype from a pool shared by all of them. This is a big deal as there are a lot of archetypes with a lot of different flavors from a technomancer to martial artist. Because these archetypes are shared between the six classes this makes for a combination equal to six times the number of archetypes (21) making the classes very varied. For example, one is an Inventor. You can be an inventor that is a charismatic celebrity like Tony Stark or a pulp action scientist depending on what class you use for that archetype.

If this all sounds familiar, its basically d20 Modern in basic structure. And to that extent, being classes and archetypes without real mechanical setting assumptions, the classes kind of succeeds past their premise. Broken Earth suggests using it and the upcoming Conquest of the Universe from Tripod Machine uses it, so we have two settings with the settings of post-apocalyptic earth and outer space respectively, that can utilize these classes and from personal experience, it works. I've seen plenty of classes from scifi third party products and the Anachronistic classes do way more to meld with a pre-modern to post-modern setting. For example, I've seen a few 'pilot' classes that either drive cars or robots and are pretty much useless in any other situation. But here, you can take the Outrider archetype and attach it to six different classes to make whatever kind of pilot you want. I think the key part that makes this all work is that they don't try to make new rules to interact with, play well with Pathfinder rules as they exist, and the wording along with the floating class skills makes them work well with whatever third party thing you throw at them. Also it comes with proficiencies by progress level they come from so they don't choke on third party things.

Past that, there are a ton of new equipment and rules for adjusting to a new setting, including modern weapons and some rules on ESP. One thing I found genius was the Vehicle Template, which is a monster template that turns a creature into a vehicle. With one template you have as many vehicles as there are large enough monsters in your bestiaries and a foundation for making level appropriate vehicles. And the best part about these rules is that they play amazingly well with the rest of the game. Even new rules don't disrupt the game, so you have a lot of new crunch that does not choke on third party things like Broken Earth or Infinite Futures. And for the most part they are fairly mundane classes that don't suck so they fit wherever.

Currently this is my beloved baby simply by making Space Pathfinder more feasible. Technomancers aside I have not seen a product that gets so much done for the subject. This is outright the spiritual successor of d20 Modern and by sheer virtue of playing nice with the rules rather than being their own it succeeds it by being a potential foundation for other settings. This book is the very definition of what I look for in third party products too. It makes some things easier, it gives something new but still plays nice with the rules that exist and is useful beyond it's premise, so I'm giving it 5 out of 5 stars and for any post-1700s setting an outright requirement.

The only offering from ICOSA Entertainment is a fat 226 page book on steampunk.

The first chapter is on races. Not much time is spent here. Its generally Alternate Racial Traits based off of the core races with a bit of fluff to adjust them to the campaign setting of the book. Also inside is a write up of Orcs that is less monstrous than normal.

The class section details how each of the core and base classes, up to Ultimate Combat, fit into the campaign setting. There are two new classes. The first is the Chaplain, a bard-like support caster functions as a diplomancer. On paper it looks too involved with the campaign setting but in play it is kind of the non-music Bard I've always been interested in. The second class is the Gearhead. The closest resemblance I can think of is a wizard since it has full casting and 1/2 BAB but it's 'casting' consists of gadgets instead of spells. Where it gets interesting is that how it constructs it's gadgets resembles Words of Power from Ultimate Magic. It fits well here and is probably the most interesting 'non-spell-spell' way I've seen technomancers designed. It also opened up a gateway to a whole revision later in the book of the entire concepts of magic schools and magic items into a weird science counterpart. More on that later.

Past the new classes are new archetypes. There aren't that many of them, and some of them feel outdated by now with more recent classes and archetypes filling in their flavor, but they aren't bad. It ends with an optional system of scaling AC.

The feat section is rather short. About half of it consists of calibration feats, feats that serve as metamagic feats for the technomancing the Gearhead does, or feats to support the Chaplain. The rest has some real gems. A few style feats for a 'fire lance' and a series of medical feats that allow players to do a bit of healing and even limited resurrection without needing a caster, something I really appreciate.

Next we get a section on equipment. Here we call gold dollars and silver dimes for the purpose of the campaign setting. Also some new weapons. Only one really gets my goat a bit which is the Pneumatic Bowguy that functions by steam cells with no real solid mechanic determining such a thing and instead works by GM fiat to determine when it runs out. To me this presents a huge hole in the rest of the book in a similar fashion to a previous steampunk adjustment I've reviewed before. A comprehensive steam cell resource would have been handy. Anyways, other than that the section holds up, even giving some new rules for special material like stainless steel and lead and an assortment of mundane technology.

We get a section called 'Science' that gets into the bread and butter of the book, describing the fields of science, which are much like schools, how the gearhead's contraptions work and in the next chapter links it to wondrous technological items. This includes technological weapon and armor enhancements.

There is a vehicle section with tanks, pseudomechs and gyrocycles. Awesome. then the campaign setting, Ullera, which includes a few NPC stat blocks, some monsters including constructable robots, and a sample adventure.

If you came here for something it would be the gearhead and it's associated technology, including the technological weapon and armor properties and the general technological items. Its a gold mine just for that. The rest isn't bad but in most places I didn't feel like I NEEDED the product until I got to equipment, science, and vehicles. Although some of the feats follow closely behind. How much you would enjoy the rest of the book depends on how you feel about the setting. The setting is kind of an alternative post renaissance North America that's kind of lighthearted. But the technology is so valuable. If you have Thundercape: World of Aden this book fills in a lot of gaps and the gearhead's 'casting' is so interesting and on-flavor that you'll want to replace some of the casting in Thunderscape with it. In fact, if you felt Thunderscape was lacking in the technology arena I think you need this book. I can't imagine running steampunk or dungeonpunk without both as Pure Steam has it where Thunderscape doesn't and vice versa. To me that deserves a five out of five stars.

We have an over 80 page pdf full of feats with no feat table. I'm already upset.

Looking at the feats I immediately started to encounter really broken feats but that's not the norm for feats other than the 'Birthright' feats, feats that can only be taken at first level. Its a nice idea that I've seen before but most of them are obscenely overpowered. Also, unfortunately, the first one I encountered is a result of a sexual encounter between a human and animal. Because that happens in legends I let that once slide but the book does have a number of feats that are not subtle. There's a feat that gives you bonuses to sex related charisma checks, one that involves period blood and one called Zooamourous Breeder, an item creation feat that allows you to breed mixed creature type creatures in your womb(or an artificial one). What is this F.A.T.A.L.? I noticed that the same author has a book called 'Fursona', should I be concerned? The fact that feats like this keep popping up every once in a while makes the product feel creepy despite there not being that many of them. And that's disregarding the descriptions on some of the birthright feats that conjure images that you don't want in your head. Now full disclosure; I'm a total perv, but this product is off putting to me because the attention to the subject does not feel mature to me, or at least feels like the work of certain kinds of players that will turn a game session into their weird sex fantasy.

There's some feats that feel like they had another system in mind. I find references to rules or actions that don't exist in Pathfinder. Ability score names are in ALL CAPS which is weird but doesn't hurt anything. Some have abilities with no description on what kind of action it takes to use them. Metamagic feats don't tell you how they raise the spells level.

I don't like this book. The tons of feats have no tables, they are either too broken, too weak, too gross or just outright don't work, and on top of that the feats referring to some sex act that even the old Book of Erotic Fantasy doesn't touch make me feel embarrassed that I paid money for it. I wouldn't allow most of the things in this book. Its like a litmus test for who's going to be the player you're going to have to kick out of the game. I'm giving this one out of five stars. And then I'm taking a shower.

Infinite Futures is a big book with a lot of moving parts. Its also probably one of the most complete experiences I've ever seen in the subject of space and scifi for Pathfinder. As such its more of a huge overlay of the game rather than an attachment so it often tramples on one of my big pet peeves, being too different to really use with other things. To give it a shot I wanted to look beyond that and evaluate it based on how much it achieves on it's own and how smoothly it goes. Also since this is a huge book, going over 350 pages I have to be brief or else I'll be here all day.

Introduction

The Introduction is lengthy describing how to use the book and some logic to how it works. This includes it's own classifications on technology levels going from monkey grunts to might as well be a god. For it's purposes it's pretty useful but not as useful as others that I've seen where global proficiency rules are provided in the descriptions. The whole section is more about thematic considerations than mechanical ones. The book goes into it more later so I'll get to it later.

Origins

This chapter is about races. You have your standard created android race, created mutants, Robocops (Human parts in a robot body), Humans that are slightly different from standard, and a random alien race generator. Each race is quite lively, having a lot of bits and pieces to shove on to make it more unique but I have a few problems with the created android race, namely that its divided funky making it hard to distinguish what's what. its easy to figure out but I always have to point that kind of thing out when I see it. Besides that I don't see many problems personally but there are bits that I can see as potentially problematic. For example: the android race can have +6 strength and +2 intelligence. Sure this comes at the price of -4 wisdom and charisma, but stat changes of over +2 tend to be a minmaxer's wet dream while going up to +6 can potentially be a nightmare to deal with. Some options are annoyingly saved for later in the book.

Classes

The classes inside are the Exporer(space Ranger), the Field Medic (space Cleric?), the infiltrator(space Rogue), the Scoundrel(other space Rogue), the Tech (space Wizard), and the Trooper(space Fighter). That isn't exactly fair. The classes inside have some superficial similarities to their sister classes but have some unique abilities that let them stand out on their own and some are better than their counterparts and emphasize the options further in the book.

However this is where I have to divide how I feel about these and how they stand in their own microcosm. Taking into account other 3pp options these classes are useless to me. Between Psionics, Anachronistic Adventures and the numerous technomancer classes I have I have no reason to allow these classes that have a limited scope and variance. But them being around doesn't exactly hurt anybody. Nothing is particularly broken and everything is clear mechanically even if in some places the formatting makes things confusing. There is an issue that the Techie is an INT based class that has +10 skill ranks per level(?!) making me have to re-read everything to see how this was balanced in whatever way. I don't think it is. Instead of casting some classes have something called Insights, which are pretty much spells that aren't spells but Macguyverisms. They and are pretty much spells with a short spell list. You have to suspend some disbelief and make some assumptions to describe how these actually work.

Skills

There are new skills. I already have problems with new skills so I had to sit down and really think about them in context. The skills are Boat (already exists), Computer Use (expected), Demolitions, (Narrow), new uses for Disable Divice, Drive (already exists), First Aide (already exists), Engineering (already exists), clarifications and reiterations of Escape Artist Fly, Linguistics and Perform, (what's happening here?), Knowledge Galactic, Pilot (redundant), and Zero-G. This is why I praise how the Technology Guide handled skills using the Technologist feat. The entire skills chapter just complicates my character sheets with 9 whole new skills to the skill list and most of them are redundant to each other if not functions of existing skills. There had to have been a better way to do this, it just doubles down on the limitation placed on non Infinite Futures classes from multiclassing into space age classes and putting ranks in ranks in space age skills. The redundancy is beyond annoying too. Some of these skills could have really been mashed together. I've seen similar products add new functions to old skills and Pilot and Computer Use but nine new classes just wrecks everybody. Except the Techie who by nature gets more skill ranks than anybody ever.

Feats

Inside are new feats to help you along your space age campaign. Right off the bat I have a problem. The first feat refers to the skill, Knowledge (Earth and Life Sciences). Where was that last chapter? I may be missing something. The rest are pretty standard although I noticed a glitch here and there involving a lack of action designation for abilities.

Insights

Here we learn about insights and how they work and what terms they use. They're spells much like the Alchemist, Machinesmith, Technician, and Cyborg 'spells'. I have to say that I'm not feeling it in this case. The insights themselves are nothing fancy although one is way more complicated than it needs to be, I just find some non-spells hard to justify and in most instances there's more flavor to make me believe the spell format on a technology focused character. Here I'm not buying Macguyverisms being non-spell abilities and it becomes even weirder that it works by a per day basis.

Augments

There are mechanical and biological augments. Previously there was a lot of information thrown around like augments that finally get a payoff here. They cost money and a feat. Money because its an actual item and feat as a resource limiter, something I kind of hate because augmentations aren't equal so doubling down on what resources they cost is infuriatingly bad when they have the same basic cost (a feat). Plus this came out in 2015 when more than a few products including the Technology Guide presented cyberware that was limited by Con and/or Int making this kind of pricing feel archaic. Judging them as just feats, they range from weaker than existing feats (skill chip is outright inferior to Skill Focus and has a monetary cost) to okay.

Personal Gear

This chapter covers items like weapons, armor and general gear. It spans across multiple technological levels meaning that if you're using the Pathfinder Core Rulebook a lot of this information is useless. Minor changes are made though so you'll have to take a close look to see the differences. Also firearms work differently, damage being based on ammunition with their own effects. Everything functions within this context although the changes means that you have to learn this weapons system. I do find it overly complicated but not bad. It tries to cover a lot of bases which in some ways hurt the product by how complex things by not having a single space age as it's foundation. It certainly makes the tables kind of hard to sort through.

Vehicles

The vehicle section is over complicated in my opinion, becoming a massive blur of tables after a while and overall its difficult to decipher what's going on. The end result is actually rather simple to deal with once the craft is constructed.

Travel & Adventure

This section describes engines and how fast they go (why wasn't this in the previous section?) as well as well as hazards. Overall I question the math used but it functions for what it is.

Combat

Space age weapons use Wisdom for ranged weapons. This bothers me to no end but I'll let it slide. It also adds to and reiterates actions in combat, something that could have been just mentioned in the item section because all of the new actions involve specific kinds of items so a large chunk of this section didn't even need to exist. The rest is reiterating rules that already exist and information that should have been in other sections of the books. Among the new things is describing more about how space vehicles work within their own action economy, which should have been in the vehicle section.

Psionics

Inside this section we have a psionic class with a GM fiat/feat barrier. Why this isn't in the class section is beyond me. As far as formatting goes, until you get to the description of the powers the thing is a mess, including text invading tables and typos. I'm not sure why bother with this class. It's painfully inferior in every way I can think of to Dreamscarred Press' Psionics. EVERY way. I can't even say that it can stand on it's own in general.

Gamemastering

NPC stat blocks and some setting advice.

I had high hopes for this book but I really don't like it. The vehicle rules are handy along with some of the weapons/armor, and the race creator is interesting, but overall it's a complicated addition to the game with information spread weirdly, typos, bad formatting, and just doesn't play nice with the rest of the game and certainly doesn't play nice with any other third party thing that I may bring alongside it. And somehow this version comes out after the Technology Guide from Paizo and still feels outdated to the point where it feels like a discount 3.5 product than something for Pathfinder.

There are interesting things here. Some things that I may pick up while gold digging for house rules but as a whole I just have better rules for most of this subject and more that I know is in development. I'm giving this two out of five stars. There's a bit of gold digging here but playing with this is difficult and wonky and when other things are added including Pathfinder's core rules it just stops working altogether.

Okay, sorry to put my final opinions at the top but I already love this series. I already know that I'm going to use it and what I'm using it for.

What this is, is a profile of three taverns for your PCs to interact with. Each tavern gets a description of the tavern itself to set the mood and a description of the food. There's also a simple map to give the place a bit of shape. There are two tables for each tavern, a rumor and an event table. The rumors and events have a lot of openings for whatever campaign you throw this in and actually interesting enough to partially write for a campaign as you will definitely feel compelled to work with the rumors and events as they feel organic for the tavern. But for the most part they are mundane and related to the tavern more than any other kind of flavor. There are also descriptions on the owners or workers or even patrons of the tavern. Vivid ones that PCs are bound to interact with and they all interact with the rumor or event table in some way.

About my only criticism is that two of the stat blocks were saved for the end of the book making things a bit awkward. And for the characters that don't have stat blocks it would be nice to get a page reference number to a Gamemastery Guide or NPC Codex stat block. The formatting isn't terribly fancy but its all clear and neatly divided.

Aside from the last entry I am impressed that food gets such an interesting writeup. I cant remember how many times that question was asked and I awkwardly made something up.

But above anything else is just having a nice tavern that players can actually interact with. Usually PCs just stop at an inn, lose some money and get their spells back. Plenty of times I've awkwardly tried to make things more interesting by improvising but there can be a lot of inns and taverns in a campaign so its taxing to make one that your players are willing to blow time on. This makes my job as a GM easier, it gives me NPCs I don't have to make up and can hook up to any kind of campaign. All of those are those are huge boons for me so I'm giving this five stars out of five. Its a lot of work saved for a subject that I don't see anyone really tackling frequently enough.

You can find this review and more at my 3pp Pathfinder blog.

The latest entry in Flying Pincushion's Into the Breach series covers the Inquisitor. Like the rest of the series it features several archetypes, an alternate class, Prestige classes and some options and items to round out the class in question.

The archetypes are imaginative and each one gives new and interesting options. Some of them however pick at a few peeves of mine when it comes to crunch. Some of it includes niggling details like inconsistent wording on replacing spellcasting or the Circuit Judge having an ability that calls out that it works for one round before calling out that it works for a number of rounds equal to it's level. Some of it includes personal opinions like some archetypes being too powerful, too weak or redundant for what they replace or Duplicating Accessor being, to me, a book keeping nightmare due to shifting ability scores as a payment for abilities. Nothing I've seen is outright wrong or anything that can't be solved with some clarification but the amount of instances where things like that happen make the product a bit awkward. The archetypes themselves may be worth the headache but tat would be chalked up to individual opinion based on whether or not what annoys me is the same thing that annoys you as none of them are objectively bad, or at the very least need more playtesting than number crunching to get a clear idea of how well or bad it goes.

The alternate class, The Vengeant, seems like a soup of classes. One part Paladin, one part Inquisitor, a splash of Monk and a slight hint of Cavalier. It's a full BAB, 4 level caster. Instead of armor it gets wisdom to AC. It gets an ability that functions a bit like Cavalier's Challenge ability and works with a Judgement-ish ability and makes the target susceptible to an Oath Strike, an attack rolls twice and takes the better number. Overall I like the class.

In the Prestige Class section is hard to judge for me because I generally don't like prestige classes. All I can say is that they didn't have any glitches I noticed and one is way better than the other in the sense that its incredibly more interesting mechanically.

The new Inquisitions are probably some of the most thematic inquisitions I've ever seen. There are some that are specific to a creature type, like Undead Slayer. They aren't too specific so you can make some actual use out of them. There are also racial inqusitions. A lot of them have some of the niggling problems I meantioned earlier, specifically that when an ability functions as a spell that spell isn't always italicized isn't always referenced as being spells or having a reference of what book it is.

Lastly there are new mundane items. Like any mundane item they aren't entirely impressive but hats off to them for having them. Its always magic item this and magic item that. Nothing happens unless it's magic. The all star of this one is probably The Bolt Feed, which along with Rapid Reload (I assume this works) lets you fire crossbows at the rate of a bow.

So as a whole? I like about half the archetypes which made me think this book was going to be a disappointment but the book gets much better further in. Like in a lot of the Into the Breach series I can feel the difference between authors of the material based on different wording and inconsistent levels of clarification. This bugs the crap out of me and if you can get past that or give some GM oversight the classes I didn't like can be saved, and they probably should be because they do present a new play experience and an interesting take on what an inquisitor is. So it's a product with a lot of potential but kind of flawed on entry. I'd give it a high 3 out of 5 stars as a rating for myself but for the taste of others I'm rounding it up to 4 stars.

You can find this review and more at my 3pp Pathfinder blog

From Flaming Crab Games, here is a collection of 20 new archetypes for your Pathfinder classes.

One thing that really stands out is that the pdf is nicely presented. At no point was I confused as to what something did, what an archetype replaced or had to squint to figure out which archetype was which. About the only problem was that the references to feats and spells don't have notifications for what book they come from.

On the crunch side there are a few bumps in the road that throw me off. Nonstandard language like the Quickblade's ability becoming 'constant' start me up but nothing that I've noticed really caused an ability to be confusing so its just me being fussy. And that's really where my criticism ends. I can't find an archetype that I didn't at least consider taking in the future. Some of the highlights is are the archetypes for the Advanced Class Guide. I particularly liked the Druidy archetype for Warpriest and War Genius for the Investigator. They aren't as outlandish as some archetypes I've seen but it opens up enough doors to be interesting and above a lot of archetype books I've seen.

All around these are nice archetypes that I would gladly take so I would give the product 5 stars out of 5.

You can find this review and more over at my 3pp blog.

This is a short and cheap PDF from Rusted Irons games. They haven't put up much that I've seen but I previously reviewed a Witch title that brings a lot of variability to one of the classes that I find boring as a whole.

In here is The Blood Rose Swarm, a CR 2 creature that is a swarm of angry roses. If they have some other vegetation to crawl over they can move fast for a plant and can fascinate creatures with it's scent. Overall its a nice little creepy critter but this product is a bit deceptive in that it offers a bit more than the monster. It also comes with four alchemical items where three of them interact with plants, so if you have a plant companion somehow they are pretty handy. disappointingly they aren't specified as coming from the blood rose swarm or at least crafted from it's remains, which would have made this pdf ten times more interesting. There is a new poison that specifically does come from the swarm but it's not that terribly interesting because poisons rarely are.

There are two natural hazards which look handy. an easy Sinkhole and a Rockslide. Also some terrain types, a think I think should be more common in a lot of products. Lastly there are two magic items, one of which I don't understand why it hasn't been done before; Its magic beans that instantly grow into a climbable beanstalk.

Overall it packs quite a punch for such a small product. I've seen similar products with the same price tag do so much less and still be really good so I will say this is a 5 out of 5 stars. Its not something I will say is super necessary but having it in you folder of monsters isn't bad to have as a GM and if you have a plant theme something to run you'll probably come running to this for material.

You can find this review and more here on my blog.

Faces of the Tarnished Souk is quite the bookful. It is a huge book with lots of pieces. When I first heard of it I was under the impression that it was pretty much an NPC codex but it’s a bit more than that making it a lot to take in and evaluate who would want this and what they would use it for.

Well for the most part it is mostly an NPC book but the NPCs are crazy. They’re all a mixture of third party classes, archetypes, templates, races and/or feats, making for characters that don’t really don’t really fit in most situations. They’re mostly NPCs that you would want as an endgame villain or the end of a chapter of an adventure path. To make them fit in a few slots other than the end of an adventure each of the NPCs come in high CR, mid-CR and low CR. That way if you encounter them early in your adventuring carreer you can meet them again later when they’ve leveled up too.

Each NPC has a few paragraphs about their personality and history along with how they appear in Coliseum Morpheuon and how to use them. Sometimes there is a lore chart to determine what kind of information you can get about them using knowledge checks. This is the point where I realized that while I’ve heard of the Coliseum Morpheuon I have no idea what that is, and I refuse to look it up for this review because really it can stand on its own and I think that’s important for my purposes.

There is a downside. Since there’s a lot of third party material used sometimes you’re left not knowing exactly what’s going on with a character. The races, feats, templates and traits are all covered because they mostly appear in the last ¼ of the book, (Which is actually pretty amazing, I didn’t know about some of these despite having a lot of third party products and some of those are really cool.) but you’re going to have to find some of the classes on your own. For the most part it isn’t that big of a problem but the psionic one, the Savants that make you need to really need to look at another product to figure out how the NPC works. Although the Artisan’s portfolio was confusing because I don’t know what it is. Luckily this doesn’t cost you money because all of the classes in the book appear on d20pfsrd.com except I can’t figure out if the Artisans in the book is a Drop Dead Studios Artisan or something else.

There are a few format glitches, like text that should be bolded, the Rite logo looking wonky and one bit where two paragraphs are in the wrong order but other than that I didn’t really notice anything wrong. As a whole I really like this book. These aren’t really NPCs that you throw in a game and more NPCs that you build a campaign around which says a lot for their creativity, vividness and uniqueness. The format is nice and easy to read, and the art brings some of the characters to life very well. I would give this product 4 stars. Its imaginative and useful but I feel like it makes me have to do almost as much work as it saves by pulling from such a variety of sources. I’m a bit okay because I have most of these options in other books I own but I can’t say the same for everyone.

So, its hard to talk about a product like this without giving something away so just in case I'll give a big SPOILER alert and try to be a vague as possible.

I ran this the day before writing this to absorb the feel and gather some opinions from my players. In a nutshell this is a Macguffin collection quest sort of akin to a videogame in structure. You have to find several things and each thing is in a different area each with it's own encounter. The encounters are mostly a diverse array of fights but there are a few roleplaying opportunities, particularly right at the beginning. You definitely don't want a narrow focused party, as the variety of threats is rather diverse, but this module doesn't take much thinking to get on the right track or guess the pattern of the plot so it isn't that difficult for a clever and heavily optimized party to rip it apart.

The simplicity makes the plot about as trivial as most PFS adventures but the stakes resemble more an adventure path with a evil about to be awakened. The simplicity also makes the plot vague enough to be able to be placed in any setting that has a dark forest making for an interesting detour in a campaign.

It isn't too hurt from going off the rails. The party I ran for eventually decided to abandon the area with one of the Macguffins and went to Andoran. Part of this was my fault for not making a definite goal but that they are effectively carrying around a 'one ring' for the campaign was too funny to pass up. You can avoid that mistake however by following the numerous tips and tricks included in the PDF.

Be sure to only print out the adventure as the art is way too gorgeous to be printer friendly. The rest come out nice in grayscale allowing me to take it with me for the session.

In the end this module is more about mood and opportunity than it is about combat and story. Within minutes the basics of the module will be guessed and while threatening no one was truly concerned in the fights. The module's strength is mostly in the tone it sets and how easy it is to grasp leading to interesting opportunities when things go off the rails or when the adventure is over, especially with Six new possible Mcguffins and an interesting artifact at the end. If you want to one-shot this I could reccomend it and despite it being easy to insert I would say it's not as strong of an option as jumpstarting a campaign. Its a simple start that have hooks that can stick into characters and last through a campaign. Overall I'd call it five stars. Its a high quality PDF, somewhere about the old Player Companion-sized Paizo modules.

So at 7 pages this product is short but it actually gets a lot done. It's a difficult kind of product for me because I'm not a fan of witches. Hexes often amount to a spell with an annoying frequency and patrons are just flavorless piles of bonus spells. After that they're just wizards with a different spell list. So I'm never too excited about witch books expecting more of the same.

This book starts off with more patrons. (yawn) just new piles of themed spells... Wait a minute. There's one patron called 'Divine', where you choose a Cleric domain or subdomain and you get the bonus spells the same way you would get patron spells. I don't know if that's lazy or genius. On one hand its just another pile of themed bonus spells, you're just slapping on half a cleric class feature to produce pseudo-patrons. On the other hand, they made one patron that single-handedly quadrupled your patron options. The rest of the patrons have bonus spells that don't seem overpowered or underpowered at their level but after the the Divine one they seem pointless.

There are new hexes specifically for the patrons in the book. These are a bit more interesting. Earlier the book mentions Super Genius Games' Patron Hexes as inspiration for this, and I think it works out. The hexes are mostly okay-but boring or hilariously fun. They certainly give a bit more meaning to the patrons in the book.

Then there are archetypes. Essentially a Cleric-Witch, Druid-Witch, and Bard-Witch in that order. Again, can't tell if lazy or genius. The Cleric-Witch gets to play with domain powers instead of two hexes and like the Divine Patron it opens up a ton of options and themes, moreso than a normal Witch. The Druid one gets a wild-shape variant. Lazy because, you just slapped on some class features from another class, Genius because 1/2 BAB Druid's and Clerics have been on the list of thing people frequently beg for, for a while. You're stuck with the Witch Spell list but you have a lot of range of options within the archetype. Then there's the Bard-Witch, a more charming witch that does another thing on the begging list, a charisma casting Witch. And honestly it doesn't look bad and it has a nice flavor to it.

Despite my somewhat negative comments, particularly about suspected laziness, this product brings a lot to the table. In less than seven pages it changes what I can do with a witch by a LOT and stands in for options I know people really like to see. Plus, nothing was confusing or weirdly written. It doesn't go high concept the way I prefer witch options to be but it gets the job done without any typos or rules arguments from me.

Inspiring use, granting variety and being clear and easy to use are the hallmarks of five stars for me. For a buck fifty you can dramatically change assumptions about witches in your games.

Powders.

This feels a niche as it gets, but here we are. The PDF starts off the actual crunch with mundane and alchemical powders for use including poisons. There are also magical powders, dust themed magical weapon and armor properties, diseases, an intelligent powder and a few class options mostly centered around throwing dirt in people’s eyes. There’s also a new kind of spell-in-a-can, magic dust which is like a potion only you throw it on your target and it can be made of spells leveled 4 and down.

So I’ll get the criticisms out of the way first. A few items are kind of vague in terms of how exactly they work. The intent is pretty clear and I only noted one instance where I couldn’t precisely figure out how they worked as written A good chunk of the powders are reiterations of items found in Ultimate Equipment. Making a count of each item and which ones were actually new, there are enough new powders to consider this a full book at about $6. I’ve certainly have payed more for less and didn’t have a problem, but it may be annoying if you expect this to be jam packed with all new material. Personally it irked me at first but really the powders presented are way under my radar and the new stuff is fairly new, numerous and useable.

In terms of quality of the rules; Well I didn’t expect to see a supplement with a subject as narrow as dust but really I can see myself using items and options here. From the magical to the mundane there are things to use and mostly concise rules to use them. For books like this that matters to me the most and while I can’t say that it’s indispensable for any type of campaign the character options, although few, are pretty much guaranteed to be a part of my next Ninja or Dirty Trick build. The potion-dusts also seem like a lot of fun and avoids some of the awkwardness of having to hand someone a potion. It’s not a wand but what is? I also like the rules and themes behind the weapon properties. The alchemical and mundane dusts are probably going to see more play in my games considering that at early levels they are pretty handy.

So I’ll be happily using a good chunk of this product so I’m going on 4 stars.

Another Into the Breach, another slew of archetypes. This one covers the alchemist.

Starting off is The Academian. It gets set trap bombs instead of thrown bombs and also a different kind of mutagen that grants a massive skill bonus, a spontaneous discovery and a spontaneous extract. The last one feels like I’d need to see it played out to a huge extent before I can determine if that’s too good. There aren’t that many magic bullet effects like the wizard’s spell list and it’s beyond useless in combat but some combinations with later level extracts may get wacky.

Then there’s the botanist which gets a new kind of damage for it’s bombs, some plant related bonuses including one against AC against plants, a plant mutagen and plant companion. The companion is the biggest draw getting a lot of spontaneous tricks with the new plant mutagen. The alchemist gets some new spells for his extract list. I’m sorely disappointed that this archetype didn’t go into full-on Swamp Thing mode but I think the ‘subject’ alchemist is valid.

There’s the Humorist that can cast elemental domain spells by drinking a new kind of drink based on the four humors that gives you a specific nerf. Doing the math this looks scary particularly since you can maintain six or more of these things at a time.. It does basically give you a bunch of free spells per mutagen. They’re elemental spells so not worth that much but at 20th level you can easily turn this into 46 extra spells throughout the day maybe more. You can’t really nova them because it severely nerfs you but still I’m not 100% on trusting an optimizer on this.

The Kiln Crafter can make cheap fragile weapons and armor with better crit ranges and DR. These can be modified with different glazes and additives and later make it seep acid. Eventually they can make terra cotta constructs. I’m not a fan of the primary ability being more capable crafting than having actual abilities but your mileage may vary on that one.

The Natural Transmuter makes Extractors and Transmutagens. What are those things? Extractors are spell vacuums that hold an arcane spell that targets them specifically. They can then throw the spells around after that. There’s no difference between extract slots used for this ability so my reaction is mixed. Its an ability I see a lot in third party products and while it’s a flavorful effect I’ve never found it to be useful. Luckily I think the language implies that you can still make extracts so its not going to be dead weight when you’re in a situation where there is no one casting arcane spells at you. Transmutagens suffer from the condition “I don’t know what’s going on”. You make Transmutagen much like Mutagen but you pour it, I guess, on things to turn them into armor, weapons or a structure. You can do this to creatures but they get a will save to negate. Same goes for attended materials. (..ok…) There’s a chart determining what you can turn into what else. This chart includes “substances” like Cold, Fire, Electricity, Sonic, Light, and Darkness, all of which I have a hard time imagining being turned into other things being non-things. For example; You can turn Electricity into Sonic. What as a standard action? How does that work? can I turn power lines into music? How much “Sonic” do I need to make armor? What do I do with the Sonic?

The Pyrotician makes Fireworks instead of bombs. I’m not exactly sure what the difference is other than Bombs being a splash weapon. What they do in terms of damage is noted but not much else about how they work, like how long before they go off when you light them. I presume that they go off on impact. But only that but it talks about listed ranges, so are we using the fireworks from Ultimate Equipment?

The Supplementum enhances alchemical items that already exist and class features. It is less problematic although for what it does the enhancement thing being a ‘maintain one at a time’ feels kind of limiting.

The Venom Bomber is probably the all star of the book. It builds complex poisons that are modified much like eidolon evolutions. It has very few glitches (although I don’t know what poison damage is. This isn’t 5th edition.)

The Viscous Arcanist’s theme can be replicated with discoveries all while being less confusing. But the ooze spell deliveries is a nice touch and its a functioning archetype so it works out okay.

The prestige classes fall into Alchemist/Ranger with emphasis on Favored enemy, and a Summoner/Alchemist which feels like it has less of a point.

The discoveries inside are numerous and some are genius and flavorful while some are problematic and terrible and the rest are kind of everywhere in between. You have some hardcore gems in there and some definite turds.

There is a nice list of Plant companions that will probably prove useful for more than the verdant alchemist.

As a whole I really wanted to like this one. Witch, Cavalier and Gunslinger all felt like they were going in the right direction for this series, particularly Gunslinger and it’s higher concepts without functionality problems, but this one seems like half of it doesn’t really work. It also seems incredibly obvious that a good chunk of the book relies heavily on replacing Bombs, or Mutagen with something with similar language despite differing value of effects. That one isn’t an actual complaint but it felt very cookie cutter in design. There’s quite a few gold nuggets to mine but I can’t say that with certainty that I’ll use any of this simply because I like to be able to hand a player option-based supplement to my players and they can build something that functions without hassle or house rules to fix it or having to worry about dubious balance issues. I’m riding on two stars for this one.

I got this product early on when I got the rune-fever. I came across other runic products that gave mundane magic to magic-less classes. As a result I've seen lots of rune-base products.

This one does things a little differently. Instead of making each rune be a magical thing that does some power or another it lets you put your spell in a rune. Depending on what kind of conditions and triggers you put on it the Craft DC to make the rune goes up by some amount and you've got yourself a stationary spell that goes off based on the conditions and triggers you set. By far it's the lowest word count rune rules I've ever seen as it works with something that already exists and gives a new way to use it. This eats up the spell slot that was used to make the rune until the rune is cast making for a clever balancing factor while making runes mostly free.

Now although it has a feat that lets anyone carve runes this product comes with it's own class, The Runesmith. The Runesmith has the cleric's spell list and can only cast them using runes. he also gets some buffs to cast those runes along with some packages that gives him new runemaking abilities and additions to it's spell list. Also he has his own generic explosion runes. Running this thing the Runesmith's Runecarving check is rarely an issue as it's just a DC10+spell level+whatever conditions/triggers, but I generally hate check-based casting even when it never comes up. This will likely lock one of your two skill ranks per level into crafting runes depending on how aggressive you are about making complicated runes. Speaking of complications this means that by nature this class has requires not only planning but plenty of tracking.

There is also a minor thing about how some of the scripts are worded, referring to using your levels in another class as your caster level which I think is backwards, I don't know what's going on there but The lines aren't really needed for it as it's obvious what it actually does without clarification.

Those complaints aside it's a neat class and a neat way to cast spells. I'm a bit torn about how much you'd want it. On one hand nobody really clamors to play it in my games and there are more interesting rune mechanics out there with a ton more flavor, but on the other hand I can't think of any rune mechanics that are as reaching without being complicated and adding the runecarving feat to a wizard is the closest you can get to something I would legitimately call a runelord so I you could say that it's necessary for making runes a thing in your world even if you're not using the Runesmith class.

I'd give this product four out of five stars. I wasn't exactly jumping for joy over it but I use it when I need the theme without the baggage.

I haven't been into 3.X for as long as some players so I was never intimately acquainted with the Warlock but from word of mouth I've come to understand the appeal. One of which is the concept of unlimited blasts or unlimited magic in general. With spell slots being rather unintuitive to a beginner there's a certain charm to just simply throwing energy bolts and not having to worry about having to cherry pick spells out of a long list of trap options and situational effects. The Invoker is a class that embodies that kind of concept. Its a simple caster that shoots it's laser and cast a few spell-ish things without worry. Its a mage at it's simplest and to an extent at it's most boring.

The main class feature is a standard action Mystic Blast that deals untyped 1d6 damage that scales up to 10d6 every odd level. These blasts can be enhanced later with Blast Traits ranging from status effects and damage type changes to changing the shape and range.

They also gain Incantations which are pretty much at-will spells that have 4 levels of effects. They come about the same rate as witch hexes.

The most interesting feature is the Pact class feature, representing 4 mystery-like packages that grant skill bonuses and a choice of powers to gain when you get it. It also grants a taboo that gives some sort of penalty, weakness or restriction.

The class is rather simple and easy to grasp for new players. It's indefinite casting does make it relatively conservative and while it can look scary it's not that strong of a class. It feels sort of what the Witch could have been. Overall it's a decent and functioning class. I've seen Warlock-y classes in other products but I think this one is unique in that its not terribly clever or complicated which gives it an appeal that other warlock classes don't have. It also has a really high floor for optimization making me feel like I could hand this to a player that is new to the minute strategies in regular casting that makes it so powerful but wants to contribute and feel like an actual caster without hassle.

There are a few quirks I didn't like, a few abilities that outright require GM fiat but those are few and far between and not really worth the nitpick. If you want a very basic no hassle caster for you games I would reccomend picking this up. It doesn't exactly contribute something incredibly necessary to the game but its simple and fun to play leaving me to give it 4 stars.

[Update: 6/11/2015] Since I last posted there was an update to the PDF clearing up language, adding some material and some changes to how things work. So how does this affect my feelings about the product? Well the changes are;

The function of losing life equal to the damage the recalled monster has taken is actually in the document. Something I knew but is somewhat of an important limiter. It means you can’t start catching a bunch of low CR creatures and use them for trap triggering. It also makes collecting monsters with spell-like abilities to make a sort of Schrodinger Wizard effect a risk. This does include what happens when a monster is recalled, specifically how it heals, clearing up some things.
The wording is less explicit about calling a monster being once per encounter and changing it to one at a time during battle. The situation is slightly more ambiguous but miles better than ‘per encounter’ which avoids a few silly interactions that can leave the trainer unable to switch monsters when they start with a monster already out, not to mention general complications that come with per encounter abilities that have the possibility of functioning outside of combat.
There’s a new sidenote that describes how to handle spells gained from monsters outside of the book referencing a new table that equates Bestiary monsters to monsters in the PDF for the purposes of spell lists. The sidebar also gives permission for the GM to restrict monster abilities that are obviously too powerful so the Trainer can’t capture a genie and start getting infinite wishes or something like that. There are some guidelines, mainly restricting SLA unless it's of a spell level that the Trainer can cast using the FAQ’s method of determining SLA spell level. Its a reasonable means of dealing with it but as a whole I don’t like the solution over outright restricting monsters capturable differently because at it’s heart it’s a GM fiat restriction and I hate it when products make me do work.
Without monster calling being a per encounter situation a lot of things stabalize and the rest of the clarifications make it so that I’m less likely to make judgement calls when players are using the class. There class still needs a lot of GM attention for my tastes for products but it has moved to being mostly functional without GM interference save for the GM judgement calls for powerful supernatural or extraordinary abilities as those aren’t really tied to any kind of progression. This moves the product up a star with my same general warnings and praises.
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Mystical: Kingdom of Monsters, introduces us to the Monster Trainer base class. Monster trainers hunt down monsters and catch them using a zero level spell that permanently imprints the monster in their aura. The class itself is built on a d8 HD, ¾ BAB, bad Fort, good reflex, good will, 6+int skills per level chassis. It also gets 9 levels of spontaneous arcane casting but doesn’t actually have a spell list other than it’s capture monster spell. In order to get spells the Monster Trainer needs monsters that give him a spell list.

The description of how monsters are captured and how they work after is a lot too short and not descriptive enough for my tastes but the general idea is there; Essentially you first find yourself a monster to catch. You get one for free at character creation so you have a bit of help. The monster you want to catch has to have a CR equal to or lower than your level, not be mindless and not have class levels. If the monster can be caught you can cast the Capture Monster spell. Since it’s a cantrip the will save on it is going to be fairly low, thankfully its a spell so Heighten Spell works but you can also increase the DC by reducing the monster’s hit points or giving it a status ailment (not really a fully defined parameter.) Once the creature fails it’s will save it is now a part of you and can be summoned from your aura. You can catch as many monsters as you want but you can only summon one at a time and only one per encounter. I also found out from the forums (not in the pdf yet) that if a monster is recalled you take damage equal to the amount of damage on the called monster. but this can’t reduce you to negative HP. When you have a monster out you can cast any spell that it grants you and even cast spells through the monster itself.

Every even level you add a spell granted by a monster you’ve caught to your spell list so that you can cast it without calling a monster. You get monster empathy, much like animal empathy. You can use your active monster’s spell-like abilities and later supernatural and then extraordinary. ( I feel like this is backwards in terms of power but whatever.) You get talent-like trainer perks every 4 levels, and a Dominate Monster spell like ability. Monsters you’ve caught also give you Favored enemy of it’s type. Each level you get a chance to advance a monster you’ve caught into a higher CR creature that’s related. And that’s the real relevant abilities.

The class itself is a bit hard to really grasp. Catching monsters and using them to fight is definitely a focus but because of the casting and there is definitely a lack of combat focus. Taking damage from your downed monsters and sharing your monster’s action economy means that you don’t have the same advantages of having an eidolon, animal companion or summoned monster. You have proficiencies with all bows but you’re feat starved so there’s not much you can do about that, especially since you’re going to need Heighten Spell. Disregarding that with 9 levels of casting getting into combat is going to make you as MAD as the Monk. When you hit the table there’s a bit more versatility by having different monsters but in a lot of situations calling a monster can be a liability. Essentially you produce 2 targets for the same HP pool and half the action economy. If you focus on your gimmick Favored Enemy and getting spells from your monsters will help you out without needing to summon anything. Being a full arcane caster with some monster abilities makes the design a bit conservative and have about one too many nerfs to really shine.

One thing you’ll notice is that Monsters don’t grant spells. Well in this book there are over 150 monsters that do add spells to a trainer’s spell list. Which is the beginning of part of this class’s problems. You can’t really start playing an adventure path with this class and hope for the best or your spell list will suffer. Sometimes thing go too well and you can gain spell like abilities that you have no business having, like a 9th level Wish. The class doesn’t really play nice with the rest of the game and takes direct GM support, GM fiat and house rules to function in a normal game. There’s also the business of calling monsters being encounter-based. There are ways to make assumptions to widdle out how this works in game but as written encounter limitations means the inevitable questions of how this works out of combat, why on earth it it happens in the first place when you can call and recall in combat, and the nature and definition of what an encounter is in the first place. There is also an issue of trying to make a Trainer at a level other than level 1 since part of your growth in power depends on actively catching monsters which are not defined by your wealth by level or anything like that. Then having any number of creatures means a ton of book keeping if you want to catch a lot of monsters.

If you can’t tell, this product allows you to play a pokemon-like campaign. It has all the tools to do so. You get a bestiary of 150+ (mostly)cute monsters to catch, that are all nicely bookmarked and referenced by spell they grant, CR and random encounter tables. Each group of monsters even comes with racial traits for a new Monstorin race that is essentially a Monster-tiefling/aasimar. Personally I think it comes off more like a blue mage from Final Fantasy but that’s just me. The Monster hunter functions in it’s own little universe but just isn’t a very solid class. The Monster catching rules are good enough but deployment and use is too wonky and it is very easy to come up with an incredibly shoddy trainer or abuse an exploit when it interacts with bestiary monsters. Luckily in playtesting I found that a few house rules and restricting what the trainer can catch more can salvage the class and make it more agreeable to the system as a whole. Unfortunately to me it needed too many house rules and GM fiat to really reach anything past 3 stars, particularly since it seems to be missing some rules and doesn’t define or mention some of the hard limits of things. I needed to check the product forum for clarification on more than a few rulings.

Fortunately it doesn’t fall into useless garbage because it does come with a cute bestiary, a realistic framework for a pokemon/monster hunter campaign, a race with around a hundred sub races and a class that tackles a very difficult subject and almost comes out of it alive. This product has too many small but glaring problems to really rate it highly but I like too many things about it to rate it too badly. Plus anyone that gets it will likely look beyond its problems and easily house rule or play a campaign where these aren’t issues so I’ll give it three stars. I love it and will recommend it as a resource but mechanically there are a lot of holes. Patchable holes but holes nonetheless.

I have very mixed feelings about this product.

On one hand the Technician class is one of the most diverse tech-based class and has a lot of interesting peripheral material. On the other hand it hits a lot of technology pet peeves making me need to apply house rules to fit it in my campaigns.

Like other tech classes it gains spell-like 'tinker's which represent small disposable gadgets he possesses. In the Technician's case he casts them by preparing them with charges from his personal battery (a point pool mechanic.) They also choose a diverse range of trades that define what kind of technician it is and a list of talents to further diversify the class. Almost everything evokes a lot of flavor and allows the technician to be built as a healer, a bruiser or a general problem solver.

The only class feature I didn't like was Gadgets, mainly because I hate Gadgets. To explain; Gadgets are pretty much technological wondrous items that have a list of upgrades that they can take. You also apply battery points to them in order to power up the upgrades and use them to begin with and that's where it gained friction with me. Its a series of technology that has to be bought, as opposed to being granted by the class, that only one class (unless you take a feat to use it badly) has real access to. It opens a whole new can of worms in regards to the nature of energy and battery points (only Technicians have the right 'kind' of battery points for gadgets) in a world of other technological items. Luckily the battery point pool is actually pretty huge so some house rules letting that battery pool interact with Paizo technological items was easy.

But for a lot of other people this is barely a problem if even that so if that kind of thing doesn't bother you then the the rest of the book is pretty sweet. You get a new kind of item that represents cyborg-ish bits to add as implants, new weapons and armor. Mundane tech gear. New races and some support from Ultimate Campaign Subsystems. All cleanly written, minimum glitches, concise and works well.

Overall this is a great product... but I have to knock off a star. Its kind of unfair but I hate how the Gadgets are bought/crafted items that for the most part one class can actually make or use effectively because it stops playing nice with other tech classes or crunch that could come along and it becomes hard to justify why its not a class feature or why it's exclusive. I just think that little bit is objectively bad enough to drag this product down to four stars despite that I know for a fact that is more likely to be five stars in anyone else's mind.

Okay, I was gifted this product as a review so I really want to dig in get deep, but before I get to actually reading it I’d like to take a look at the description again re-evaluate my relationship with the subject.

So Path of Shadows is about, er, shadows. It promises to give all kinds of new options for characters including a new base class all revolving around shadows, darkness, and other emo nouns. But really, why would I need this? I know it’s often difficult to stick to your gimmick with Pathfinder’s casting system but how hard can it be to make a character based on shadows and exactly how worthwhile is it to do that? Say I want to make Dhampir emomancer named… Drake. I want him to have cool and broody powers based on shadows and darkness because vampires. Its a common enough cliche concept that you expect to be supported so Drake will be my measuring stick.

I guess I’m a magic user, and I have charisma so I’ll go to the basic charisma casters first, Sorcerer and Oracle. And BOOM I already have a Shadow bloodline and I guess a Dark Tapestry mystery. Don’t need the book already. Although I can’t find all that many spells with the darkness descriptor. Maybe Black Tentacles counts, but not too much shadow going on. I guess there’s not much shadows can do. The shadow bloodline gives some cool powers but I’m a bit disappointed by the spells to support it. Maybe I do need this book. Its looking like Drake does if he wants his concept to be vivid. Well as of this sentence I have yet to read it so let me take a look inside to see what Drake can do.

After introductions, including a blurb about the low amount of shadow magic in the game, we get to chapter 1 and the new base class, The Nightblade. Its a general half-caster chassis. ¾ BAB, 6 skill ranks, 6/9 casting from it’s own list using charisma, good will and reflex saves. The class features are interesting and have some flavor to them. A lot of things are fueled by a ‘shadow surge’. Shadow surges are unlimited but you can only have one at a time and it takes a standard action to make one. You can spend the shadow surge on various other class features. It reminds me of psionic focus or maneuvers. There's a bit of teleportation through shadows and some extra surges among other abilities. Honestly there’s a lot here that I didn’t realise that I wanted to do. Its either a martial debuffer, illusionist or evoker depending on how you play your cards, and the shadow surge mechanic makes sure that you’ll never run out of interesting things to do. I’m surprised similar action economy resources aren’t in Pathfinder’s core rules. Nothing is overpowered but Drake is pretty happy. there’s enough shadowy things to do although you have to creatively describe some of the spells you cast. It is more than just an oogity boogity class but it looks like I can pump Drake full of cool abilities he’d like.

Chapter two gives us some new options for Nightblades and other classes, including a dew Advanced Class Guide classes. Alchemist, Antipaladin and Rogue win out on the cool factor here, other than that there's nothing to get too excited about unless you really want to run your darkness themes. The Nightblade archetypes are really nice though.

Chapter three’s feat list is short but to my surprise there isn’t one feat that I wouldn’t consider taking. There’s even some Wayang and Fetchling feats in there for you.

Of course there are a bunch of new spells all for shadow themes. and again I’m surprised as to how many I considered taking. This is really a book that doesn’t give much filler or trap options in terms of spells and feats.

The magic items are standard things. cool abilities but nothing people will pick up because they rely on specific things to maintain their builds but they look like cool abilities.

I would have expected the Nightblade to be pretty okay but its a pretty diverse class while keeping to it’s theme. The options for other classes are mostly take or leave but the spells and feat sections are really superb. I can also do way more with a shadow theme with it than I could without it. A lot more. I was skeptical about this product because I was not interested in such a narrow focus but it expands your options to a good degree and I don’t think Drake would be as cool as a character without it. I’ll give it 5 stars. It gives a lot of care for a subject that is neglected and does it in a pretty concise and well written way. I cannot wait to see what else Ascension Games pulls up next because this is a pretty dynamite first product.

I hate Prestige Classes!

I really do. Not really for a mechanical reason, they just insert more planning into a game to squeeze into a narrow concept and you have to spend several levels just not being that concept just to eventually maybe get into that niche. In almost every review I just kind of look at prestige classes enough to know that they work because really I cant be bothered to actually play them.

If you're like me this product is pretty nice. Basically its several Prestige classes in the form of 20 level base classes typically adopting some design or chassis with one or more other class. Many of them come across as hybrid classes.

Now as classes as a whole, they feel more than a bit watered down. These aren't fully developed base classes with innovative and new class features to compliment the features of the prestige class. They're just basic translations of the prestige class stretched into 20 levels. So it succeeds in what it does but don't expect anything with a lot of bells and whistles. There are some NPCs for each Prestige Archetype which is beyond nice, plus a couple of favored class options for core races.

For what they are, these classes do the trick. I didn't expect them to be elaborate or fully supported because of the nature of their origin but I can see myself playing most of these for when I have a concept that requires a prestige class but I need the concept at level one instead of level 6 or something. So I'll give it five stars.

Well since I got all three I thought I'd talk about The Complete Godling than write about each product individually.

So this product basically introduces one class that's really four classes. There's a buff full BAB one, a 3/4 BAB one, one with 6 levels of casting and one with 9 levels of casting and 1/2 BAB. Respectively the chassis of a Tank, Trickster, low caster and high caster, each of them representing the concept of being a half-god. Now this kind of plays around with the concept of classes, much like the sorcerer, where it represents something you are as opposed to what you do but it works out to play concepts that you can't normally do.

Aside from their frames each godling gets a domain. The non-caster godlings get more domains as they level. There are talent-like powers in the form of Divine Traits which range wildly, Acendencies for the casters, and Scion Talents for the non-casters. All in all they are a pretty modular bunch of classes. The casters can choose what spell list they use and what stat they can cast with but I seriously recommend limiting this to mental stats, Otherwise the casters can be a nightmare to deal with the inevitable Strength or Dex casters. The Acendencies and Scion Talents all look like a blast to use. The Divine traits takes some careful reading to know how exactly they work but not enough to call the classes complex. I think as a whole the product succeeds in giving four classes that feel like divine beings although I'm not feeling the prestige class.

The Godling
Ascendant is pretty much more Talents, Acendencies and Traits that bring in line some APG stuff along with giving a few goodies to other classes within the theme of godlings.

But the real question is can you make Hercules in the stylings of Kevin Sorbo with this? The answer is yes. Yes you can.

Barring the messiness with exactly how to deal with the caster godling's casting stat and exact spell list These are pretty neat options for the classes. They are straight forward and brimming with flavor and possibilities so I'd give it five stars.