Malwing's page

This isn't the first time I've seen a dragonrider class. Normally it's a Paladin or Cavalier archetype but the most interesting part about this is that the dragon mount isn't just an animal companion with buffs. There is a deep flavor to this Dragonrider class that makes it stand out a bit and makes it understandable how a Dragon decided to play mount. It's not that the mighty dragon is a simple steed, the dragon speeds up it's growth and development by hiveminding with a person. This plays out in the dragon's power limiting mechanic where the Rider and Dragon kind of share the same actions. For a long time the rider and dragon cant make full rounds of actions separately so their action economy is not as good as having an animal companion or eidolon until the Focus mechanic beefs up.

The guy himself is pretty basic. You get 4 levels of casting from the wizard list. You're full BAB, All good Saves (this dragon link is making you a paragon) and some bonus feats and dragon traits. Nothing truly special but the spell list and dragon are kind of a doozy for a full BAB class with all good saves.

If there was a reason to buy this product it would definitely be the flavor it evokes. Its not just a class that gets you on a dragon to ride but actually makes it a real part of the class rather than just something with a monstrous mount tacked on. I give it five stars because I cant think of other classes/archetypes that handles the situation as elegantly.

So what is Spheres of Power? To keep it simple, its a new magic system. Instead of getting spell slots and casting spells there are spheres and spell points. Spell points are points of magical energy that you can spend in various ways. They function like a ki pool where you get your casting ability mod + ½ the level of whatever spherecasting class you’re in. Each sphere is an at-will magical power that is either augmented by spell points or has another ability that can be used by spending spell points. Each sphere has a number of associated talents which give you new abilities or allows you to change or improve the sphere ability that its related to. So it’s a bit like having magic come in feats instead of spell slots. When you get the ability to cast spheres you get a ‘tradition’ which is pretty much a way to impose limits to spherecasting like making it need somatic or verbal components and needing to prepare your spell points to particular spheres. This is in exchange for getting more spell points per level. We get this because, you see, one of the big points about this system is customizing it to whatever setting. Want to make this work via runes then you impose the need to prepare them before casting and maybe need a calligraphy check. Want it to all be blood magic, imposed the need to deal damage to oneself to cast spheres. The sky’s the limit. there are other ways to modify and expand this system. There are rules for constructing spells, scrolls, incantations, potions, wands and examples and samples of wacky things you can do including direct directions on how to generate Avatar the Last Airbender magic as an example for how flexible the system is.

Beyond that you get 10 new base classes that use spherecasting, archetypes to convert core classes to spherecasting, and a prestige class that mixes sphere and spell casting. Now those new base classes are great. They cover things that you can’t normally play with the rules along with wholesale replicating general themes. I can’t even get into describing each one because there’s so much to say, so I’ll just go over one because even the most boring class has a huge range. For example; There is the Mageknight, a typical warrior-mage class. It gets ½ caster level (oh yeah, caster levels work with this system the same way BAB does. Full Caster level are the strong mage types that probably have fewer abilities or lower BAB and HD, ¾ casters have more abilities and are generally ¾ BAB and have a d8 HD, and ½ casters are full on martials with weak magic.) and can use Wis, Cha, or Int as it’s casting ability. It has Full BAB and a d10 HD and Goood/Bad/Good saves. It gets a few bonus feats and some gish talents and for the most part that’s it. Once you put in the spheres its anything. Take the Nature sphere and congratulations, you have a Ranger-like nature gish. Take the Life and Protection or Enhancement or Light spheres and you got a Paladin. Switch Light with Darkness, Protection with War and Life with Death and you got yourself an antipaladin. Just want him to be a blasty gish? Take the Destruction sphere and have at it. Want a Jedi? Give him the Telekinesis and Mind spheres and hand him a laser torch. The most boring class in the book and you can make him into a Paladin, Ranger, Antipaladin, Jedi or whatever other kind of warrior mage you want. The possibilities are endless. With the rest of the classes the only ‘casters you can’t really make is an alchemist or artificer, although with the right traditions it would be close enough.

Now I’m going to say something very opinionated but it’s my review so I can say what I want; Spheres are better than spells. Spheres of Power is better than Pathfinder’s normal magic. Not more powerful, because it’s not, but just better for the game and for players. Why is it better?

(*) Its more balanced. Normal magic is way more powerful because it’s in limited resource. Each spell scales on it’s own, there are 9 levels of casting and you get more spells at each level. That is three axis in which spells grow in power. Compared to talent/feat based classes like the Fighter this is too much. With spherecasting the growth is as linear as a fighter by being talent-based so even adding the optional advanced talents to spheres that let you do more worldchanging magic you don’t get into God-tier power and fall more into the power level of an Inquisitor or Bard in terms of raw power and versatility.

(*) Its easy. The list of spheres and talents are about 50 pages, not including traditions and advanced talents but including all the full page images. That itself is as varied and encompassing as normal magic. Compare that to the list of spells in the Core rulebook ALONE which is about 147 pages. Nobody has time to read all that! Especially since most of them are trap options. And it doesn’t come near the versatility that spherecasting has in it’s measly 50 pages. You don’t even have to read all those pages. The names of the spheres are intuitive enough where you can just decide your theme and pick whatever sphere that sounds right and read that.

(*) It makes sense. To cast Fireball you don’t need to know Burning Hands or Produce Flame or have any knowledge of any fire spell to cast it. This has always bothered me to no end. You just grab the spell and you can cast it. With spheres you have a starting point. You want to cast a fireball, take the Destruction sphere and learn the Fire Blast talent first. Want to actually make it an AoE blasts, take the AoE talent from the Destruction sphere. This way anything magical you do is a consequence of other magic you know unless you’re picking up an new sphere.

(*) You always have something to do. Each sphere is has an at-will ability at it’s core. Sure you can run out of spell points and be that much weaker but this means you still have something to do rather than just sitting on your butt, wielding a crossbow or begging for a nap when you run out of useful spells. You can actually adventure for more than for four battles along with your martials.

(*) You can actually do things from that anime/book/movie/show/videogame that you wanted to do. Say you want to be Elsa from Frozen, and do ice things. Good luck doing that with normal casting. At best you can be a water elemental sorcerer and cast all kinds of things that have nothing to do with ice after digging through multiple books of spells so that you can get some useful ice spells. Want to be a time mage? Well you’re out of luck, most of that comes as higher level spells. But with spherecasting your icy dreams come true, just pick up the nature sphere with maybe an elemental focus tradition and you’re done. Probably conjuration with the elemental talent for the living snowmen. You can take the Time sphere and be a magical timebender. you can do pretty much anything you want without the baggage of spells outside your theme or abilities that don’t define your concept.

Spheres of Power is an out of the ballpark hit. It introduces a new magic system that works so well that you will wish it were the default magic system and beyond that it gives you the tools to make it as versatile as you could ever hope for. Its fun, intuitive and covers more styles of magic in one book than Pathfinder as a whole has covered. If you want a product that will change your game in a huge way this is the book to get and is potentially the single best third party product for Pathfinder ever by changing things for the better in more ways than any other book I've seen, granting it five stars.

This book hits a lot of topics that appeal to me so I have a lot to say before I get to the review. Don’t worry, this is really important for determining whether or not you want to purchase this product, I just want to describe where my needs come from before I tell you whether or not this product fulfills those needs.

Now I love Paizo’s Technology Guide. Up until that point I felt like there was not a real means to introduce technology into Pathfinder in a way that was easy to pick up. Most of the time there was an entire subsystem full of new terms and changes to classes and the need for new classes. Everything felt too convoluted or requiring a lot of house ruling to make work. With the Technology Guide I felt I was finally able to bring my fantasy games into the space age, full of pulpy goodness to go with my magic along the lines of Thundarr, He-Man, Thundercats and Final Fantasy. But with such a limited page count the Technology Guide had it’s limits and for as much as it introduced the logic of space age items brought with it realities of what technology does. Str and heavy armor becomes useless and the game becomes a ranged dex game. While this was very realistic it took away a bit of the fantasy aspects were a bit lost and some great fantasy tropes get left in the dust.

This brings me to Call to Arms: Fantastic Technology. The description promised one thing that I’d been searching long and hard for; melee technology. So of course I ate it right up, looking at each bit and thinking about characters. So did it deliver?

Well the first bit starts off with a discussion of technology and fantasy leading to a series of tips on how to deal with fantasy with technology involved. This includes some plot hooks and a few rules on how arcane or divine magic can interact with technology that you can take or leave.

After that we get some Kingdom Building support for technological facilities and learning centers based on technology level. To extent I felt the discussion of technology levels could have been discussed in terms of what kind of technology to allow in which age but Kingdom Building is nice. Don’t take my lack of excitement as a downside, I’m just biased because I tend to prefer playing and running heroic adventure rather than Kingdom Building so for the most part I just read through this section to make sure it made sense enough. I have nothing bad to say.

Then we get to the bit I was all worked up about: New technology. First there is a new crafting material: Plastic. OH MY GOD. Why has this not been covered before? It seems so obvious now. The plastic rules make sense enough. There is a bit of a glitch where I’m sure if the plastic takes 1.5 times damage from fire damage or the wearer itself. Its the first out of many points to bring up the question as to what happens for area effects. Logically if you’re hit with a fireball the plastic should take damage too but rules-wise this never happens with regular armor so I guess I won’t rule it that way.

Then we get to Augmentations, which are kind of the technological equivalent of magic weapon and armor properties. I don’t think it covers everything my imagination has conceived for technological weaponry but it covers quite a bit for the size of the PDF. You can put buzz saws on your weapons, make Captain Boomerang-type exploding thrown weapons, and plasma swords among other things. The armor augmentations cover some protection from firearms and beam weapons as well as just reinforcing the thing with ion tape. There are specific arms and armor that mix some of the augmentation with new functions. The entire section is just what I needed, including energy knuckles that deal a monk’s unarmed damage and a gravity hammer.

There’s also new glitches and AI for technological items somewhat mirroring intelligent magic items. It interacts with the skill chips from the Technology Guide which is probably the most interesting thing in the book. Then we get to technological artifact rules plus a new artifact, and new propulsion engines for vehicles. If you own any other vehicle book this is actually pretty useful. Really useful. I already have a use for it for a campaign.

Lastly there are new feats including robot and AI crafting feats, a thing recycling feat and a thing healing feat.

Bottomline: This book interacts really well with the technology guide and brings it to a new level. It brings technology to the Kingdom Building rules, gives actual means to make AI, introduces plastic and technological armor and weapon qualities and gives a means to put melee combat tactics into the future . Basically its everything I wanted and I love it.

There are some hiccups. There is a few weird points, like the stat blocks for the two AI being formatted differently and in the second one’s case missing it’s CR. The weapon damage from small to medium size is sometimes non-standard. These are among the occasional language that makes you have to re-read a bit carefully. Overall nothing comes out as completely unfunctional although there are situations that makes for DM fiat rulings like the situation with plastic and AoE fire attacks above.

So I wanted something and I got it with ignorable glitches. I think if you want to use the Technology Guide for a straight sci-fantasy game you need this product. Each item spun the wheels of my imagination and made me want more. It just makes the Technology Guide more complete for general use. I love it, and I’m going to use it so I guess I’m giving it 5 stars.

This is a short product. Really short. There's only two pages of actual content. But the content is pretty good. The premise is, if you you want to use a hammer, axe, flail or sword during your mounted charge take a feat and you can do something cool with that weapon. So it lets you do things other than just go in with your lance if you want to do something more than just do some regular ole boring damage. Small cavaliers can rejoice.

There isn't too much to say. These are neat feats that fill an unused niche. If you're into mounted combat this is a great thing to have. I'd almost call it a must-have considering that mounted combat can get linear so I'll give this five stars.

This is the third Bite Me! PDF I've reviewed. This one gets straight to the nitty gritty and gives us the Skindancer race, which are kind of like the Lycantrope race in that they are humanoid shapeshifters but have an additional creature type. One thing that I thought about in Playing with Lycanthropes and this product was; Exactly how do you pose as a Halfling as a medium race? I guess you just play a buff Halfling or something. Anyway, you don't get modifiers based on animal but you do get a chosen animal that you can shapeshift into. They also don't get to use their stats for their animal form so they can't be too buff in animal form. (well until you get to the feats.) Thematically this race is somewhere between the natural lycanthrope in the Playing with Lycanthropes PDF and a normal person. So the progression seems to be Wolf-man -> Sometimes wolf-man, sometimes wolf, usually hairy person -> Sometimes wolf, usually normal person.

From there you get the standard traits, racial traits, ect. There are archetyepes that are kind of 'meh'. The feats put in a lot more flavor giving Skindancers a few North American skinwalker-ish powers, especially one of the Incantation rituals that show up before the NPCs.

Well if you like the other two books this is a great buy. by the time you're in your third book there are a lot of ways to make a lycanthrope or lycanthrop-related race. Really out of the three, not including the first wimpy one in Wereblooded, I think this one is the least necessary if you're just looking to throw some werefolk in your campaign, but if you love your Skinwalker tropes then this is very welcome.

After reading Wereblooded and using the were-race in a campaign, the premise of this PDF seemed weird. I already have the were creature race, what is this? Since I'm getting a hard copy from the Strange Brew Kickstarter and I love my were-races I thought the entire line needed a look.

The first thing up are rules on how to handle becoming a were-thing via bite. You get bit, save or transform each full moon. If you make a Will save you can figure out what's going on and attempt to force transformations. Then there are the ones the ones that are just born with it that need feats to get a full were-on.

Once those concepts are introduced the book kind of sits down and talks to you as a player and as a GM on how to handle lycanthropy. For a while the book is more on roleplaying advice than crunch until you get to the actual new race. It has two creature types, Humanoid with the shapeshifter subtype and whatever racial subtype it would have if it weren’t a natural were creature. It has ability modifiers depending on what kind of were creature it is, ranging from bear to wolf. It gets your typical lycanthrope mechanics but also gets an animal form which scales like a druid’s animal companion. So this were-race is kind of a were-folk that transforms. Which is interesting. I like that this line has a solution for ‘Animal all the time’ from the other PDF or ‘Transformer’ types of were-folk for this PDF.

Followed up is the usual array of traits, alternate racial traits, a new bloodline and weapons. More interesting are the Lycanthrope racial feats that give you more lycanthrope powers. After that it’s spells and NPCs.

Honestly I felt like the Wereblooded PDF was solid but pretty basic without any pazazz, but this race of lycanthrope is interesting and takes a complicated situation of having a lycanthrope as a PC race and making it function as it feel like it should without being overpowered. Both this book and the one I reviewed before it are miles ahead of the Skinwalker race in Blood of the Moon, and cover so many bases that that book is just useless to me now, so I’m giving this five stars.

The big thing to note about Imperial Relationships is that there are a lot of terms and functions that make zero sense unless you're using Ultimate Relationships. Because of this my previously review of Ultimate Relationships applies here and will change once I'm done with this review as I review these PDFs as one entity. I could gripe long and hard about how these two should have been one product but I'm going to assume that Ultimate Relationships was meant to be able to apply to more adventures than Imperial Relationships. I also won't let that reflect on both reviews and they will share the same star rating.

In case you weren't around from my initial impression of Ultimate Relationships: "I wasn't too thrilled with this.

From the description I expected a more robust way to use Ultimate Campaign's relationship subsystem or a simpler way to do it. But overall I felt that the rules inside were more complex without enough benefit to use it as opposed to the relationship rules in Ultimate Campaign. It also seems to mostly function within the context of an adventure path meaning it takes some work and guessing to do this with a module or homebrew campaign. "

Now that still kind of holds true with the addition of Imperial Relationships. The key thing I'm missing is what ranks mean in the context of any game, meanwhile Ultimate Campaign grants examples and defines what each relationship score range means and defines them beyond numbers. How this changes with Imperial Relationships is that you are granted examples via 3 NPCs that define for themselves what each rank means. For the purposes of those three NPCs this is actually extremely useful as a plug in for certain adventure paths, and for those APs I would consider using it. Buuuuut that only goes so far for me. Its only three NPCs I don't like the new relationship rules for use outside those NPCs for being more complicated and having less defined numbers than the relationship rules that appear in Ultimate Campaign. If you're running 'Certain APs' I think Imperial Relationships and Ultimate Relationships will make it more interesting than it normally is so I gotta give an extra star rank because it is useful in it's plug in context. But it's at a price of a fiddly new version of an existing subsystem so I'm knocking both books down to three stars and both PDFs are being ignored until I need to plug it in to 'Certain APs'.

Since Ultimate Magic I've had kind of a facination with constructs. Using construct modification rules constructs weren't just things you fight or creatures you could build but never do, a new world was open that made the whole subject into a complex science. So what does this Construct Companion add to all this.

First of all this is a FAT PDF. Its 123 pages and most of it is crunch. So you have a lot of content for you money.

The first bit is just your standard construct bestiary stuff. New golems, new animated object examples. Sprinkled in there are some varient modifiers and mythic colossi. Everything has its own construction block. There is a wide range of CRs and general purposes (there's even a robo butcher) so if you want to make an 'I,Golem' campaign you have a lot to work with. There's also new abilities ranging from cool to goofy.

Chapter 2 gets into ways to modify your constructs with construction points including flaws like making your constructs disloyal. There are also rules for making a construct out of parts of another construct. Plus animated trap rules which will make for a very hilarious encounter. Chapter 2 also has a line of object animation spells which I don't disapprove of but I wouldn't allow it for a player that can't use it without wasting time because its a real potential time waster since you can allocate construction points.

This book covers a lot of bases. Not only can you cover golems and objects but you can also animate vehicles and my personal favorite aspect of the entire book; Complex construct modifications which includes Mobile Suit Golem. I repeat MOBILE SUIT GOLEM. Unfortunately it needs Wish to make one. (at that point I don't need a giant robot anymore!) There's also some new templates to make any creature into a golemized creature.

There are two new construct races which are rich in flavor and functional but nowhere near the top of my list of go-to construct races. There are racial and non-racial class options that range from okay to amazing-I've-been-wanting-this-forever (The shielded magus archetype.) The two prestige classes are okay but we really could have used a full base class in here.

Then there's the expected feats and magic items and such before getting to some more weird Golem templates for some extra Mythic support. Then a bunch of sample encounters with some context on how they would go about.

This massive book gives a lot of options and brings animated constructs to the level that Ultimate Magic's rules insinuated they could go. About the only thing I'm a bit sore about is the lack of a straight Iron Man class or archetype or the same with mobile suits. I'm tired of having to wait forever to wear a golem suit. Other than that this book covers a lot and has a lot to work with. The only thing keeping me from universally recommending it is that constructs to this degree don't fit in every campaign, but if you want to use constructs more often or one player really wants to pull off a golemancer concept this is a five star product that will give you all that you need. Also Mobile Suit Golem + Rite Publishing's Kaiju Codex.

Well I already got into reviewing two races from this book, Seedlings and Reapers, so here's the recap:

Seedlings are great and fairly easy to get into a campaign. Reapers are somewhat narrowed by their theme and so have a hard time finding the right setting but are otherwise interesting and okay. Both products came with a ton of lore and flavorful racial options.

The first thing I haven't already covered are the Half-Fairy-Dragons, or HFDs for the rest of this review. The base racial traits are somewhat boring but decent and pretty expected for what they are. They do have one weird ability. A breath weapon that deals multiple status effects in a cone including staggered which looks incredibly broken but the save DC is based on their CON which they get a penalty to. Still a powerful ability to put on a racial trait despite the race nerfing the ability, which feels like the most bizarre ability I've seen. And that's before the fact that the third status effect is an immunity to fear effects for the duration of the ability. Its a flavorful ability but it dances the line between overpowered and dumb. luckily you can live without it without being an underpowered race, its just that that one ability feels off.

Like the other races HFDs get a ton of fluff, traits, alternate racial traits, tables and class options. They also get a prestige class that requires spell levels from a prepared and spontaneous arcane caster. They also get feats and items and other goodies matching up with the Reapers and Seedlings.

Overall HFDs can either be your small dragon-ish race with some cool mysticism and lore or your campaign's Kender. But I may be biased because every GM I've seen roleplay Fairy Dragons have made them beyond annoying to me.

You get Umbral Kobolds in here. They're pretty much Kobolds but instead of getting +2 dex, -4 str, and -2 con, they get -2 str, +2 dex, and +2 int. After that I don't care what else they do or their flavor of coming from deeper underground than normal Kobold. They're just strictly better than Kobolds and don't have any extra abilities so you can just replace normal Kobolds and let them get all the kobold things that Kobolds get. They get similar goodies to the previous three races with a lean towards shadows and the shadow plane in some of them.

The rest of the races are nowhere near as supported or as interesting. You get Fosterlings which I can only summarize as Cthulu Tieflings. They get access to a 'progeny feat' that on top of making you fugly enough to have severe penalties to diplomacy gives you some kind of buff that takes advantage of your gross-looking mutation. There are Melodian, half fey pretty bimbos. There isn't much to them. There's Sashahars, which are snakey psionic people which are kind of redundant considering that Ultimate psionics has their own psionic reptilian race. Ursine are more interesting as a race of durable Bear-men.

You also get a lot of favored class options for all the uncommon races and races that appear in this book and some class options for uncommon races, which aren't that interesting but aren't bad.

Now I love the sections on HFDs, Seedlings, Reapers, and Umbral Kobolds. I also like the Fosterlings and the Ursine. But chunks of the rest of the book I can do without. The Melodian just seem like filler, the Sashahars aren't needed at all and although the support in the appendixes are nice aren't really needed. The four all star races, HFDS/Seedlings/Reapers/Umbral Kobolds come with a ton of lore, and options giving you a lot of tools to put them in your game and really get a feel for them. The remaining races get barely any support each, mostly filling about two pages and only two of them are really interesting so this book is less about 8 new races and more like 4 new races and a lot of footnotes. That said the first four kind of inflate the value of the book as a whole and the Ursine and Fosterlings make you wish they had more to them for being intriguing. I'm giving it four out of five stars. The book as a whole has a lot of value but there is too much filler for me to say that everyone that buys this will be completely satisfied if they were expecting all the races to get a similar treatment. The product is otherwise a great bang for you buck introducing 6 really interesting and useful races and options to make them a real part of your campaign. Would reccomend to anyone interested in the main 4 races.

This is a book that's easy to review. 5 stars. Goodbye!

If you want more of an explanation just read the product description. You get a bunch of oversized monsters to add to the existing three kaiju. Many of the kaiju have great art but the thing that makes this not just another monster book is how diverse and evocative these monsters are. On the low end of the totem pole and imagination is just a big goblin but you get psionic kaiju, a crab-dinosaur-mutant, Mechamantis-thingy and a huge blob. It also comes with some psionic rules so you don't have to go off and buy ultimate psionics to use your monster, some overpowered feats for them, the Kaiju subtype to help you make some kaiju on your own and a megazord to fight them. It closes with a little advice and a magic item.

If I had one complaint it would be that giant robot vehicles really need their own book, not one vehicle at the back of a kaiju book. If anyone is listening, we need a Jaeger book right now.

Otherwise this book has imagination, great rules and enough giant monsters to satisfy anyone.

I have mixed feelings on this book's usefulness.

On the positive side, I always liked the idea of having a list of rewards for PCs that isn't just hand them some items or gold. It makes games feel less like an MMO and more like a story, and there are plenty of examples here. Plus there are quite a few NPC stats using some of Rite's classes/races.

On the negative side, a lot of the examples are pretty obvious kinds of boons, and it doesn't cover things like magical gifts or favors or any new rules to cover that. It's more of an example book of mundane things with a bunch of NPC stats. The NPC stats also break it up a lot making the list of boons a bit making it a bit hard to read.

The book would be at three stars for being useful but not really feeling vital or indispensable when forming NPC Boons, but it goes up to four stars because the NPC stat blocks inflate it's usefulness, and the flavor in which the boons are presented keeps the boons interesting.

I wasn't too thrilled with this.

From the description I expected a more robust way to use Ultimate Campaign's relationship subsystem or a simpler way to do it. But overall I felt that the rules inside were more complex without enough benefit to use it as opposed to the relationship rules in Ultimate Campaign. It also seems to mostly function within the context of an adventure path meaning it takes some work and guessing to do this with a module or homebrew campaign. That may sit well enough with some people so I can't judge it too harshly but there just isn't enough in here and no real reason to not just use Paizo's relationship rules out of the box.

One thing to note, This product is a companion piece to Imperial Relationship. Its less valued without it so I'm giving my star rating to both PDFs as if they were the same product. The star rating for both is 3 stars. While both PDFs essentially make for three incredibly interesting NPCs to interact with the need to do this with a new, and to me more cumbersome, relationship system makes this a product I don't really need.

Spoiler alert; my opinion of the Thunderscape class books are pretty much the same so I'll copy and paste part of the review for each entry.

I love me some classes from the hardcover Thunderscape: World of Aden. Sure the vehicles, races and lore is fun enough but the classes cover new grounds or feature new mechanics that are fun and innovative without being confusing or hard to use. I was skeptical about the $12 price tag but honestly the class books give you a lot of bang for that buck. I was not aware of how small these classes were until these books and not only do you get some sweet sweet mechanics for the Thunderscape classes but you get some more lore, NPC stats to put into your games and even some new options for your Pathfinder classes in almost 50 pages worth of content.

This Book covers Seers and Arbiters. Both are solid classes but are kind of set in their ways. As a result compared to the other Thunderscape class support books they come off as lacking a plethora of options. Not to say that they don't have a lot of new options but by comparison they don't reveal whole new worlds of how to play like the Thaumaturge does. But they still come with a ton of fluff and options and tips to help you weave a better story with these classes including feats, traits and a Ultimate Campaign origin chart. So despite being the smallest book so far I won't knock it down a peg because it still delivers a ton for the more martial leaning nature of the classes. Their new mechanics are just too simple to make the book look like you're getting a ton even if in reality you're actually getting quite a lot.

Now granted you need to both have and like Thunderscape: World of Aden for this to be really valuable but even if you just like these two classes this is a lot of bang for the buck, not just giving you a ton of new options but tools on how to play these classes thematically, NPC stats to populate your world even if you aren't using Aden as a setting. With so much flavor and good mechanics filling these pages I have to recommend it for anyone that has the Thunderscape hardcover to get the most delight out of your experience. If you have the hardcover there is no reason to not get this book and every other book in the line of class option books. In fact it is one of the best class support books I've ever seen compelling me to give it five stars.

Spoiler alert; my opinion of the Thunderscape class books are pretty much the same so I'll copy and paste part of the review for each entry.

I love me some classes from the hardcover Thunderscape: World of Aden. Sure the vehicles, races and lore is fun enough but the classes cover new grounds or feature new mechanics that are fun and innovative without being confusing or hard to use. I was skeptical about the $12 price tag but honestly the class books give you a lot of bang for that buck. I was not aware of how small these classes were until these books and not only do you get some sweet sweet mechanics for the Thunderscape classes but you get some more lore, NPC stats to put into your games and even some new options for your Pathfinder classes in almost 50 pages worth of content.

This book covers Golemoids (One of the coolest classes to ever play with THE coolest looking iconic I've ever seen in Pathfinder.) and Thunder Scouts (Motorcycle Wizards). It comes with extra support for them including new weapons and implants for the Golemoid, new spells and vehicles for the Thunder Scout, new feats/traits/archetypes/items for both and a ton of fluff and multilevel NPCs to get them into your game. There is even a Bard archetype to give a little extra love. All these options were not just things that were okay or neat additions to these classes but as i read them these were things that I NEEDed. Sure I could have lived with just having the Thunderscape hardcover but not after knowing these options exist. There's just so much fun and so many things that just open doors to new ways to play.

Now granted you need to both have and like Thunderscape: World of Aden for this to be really valuable but even if you just like these two classes this is a lot of bang for the buck, not just giving you a ton of new options but tools on how to play these classes thematically, NPC stats to populate your world even if you aren't using Aden as a setting. With so much flavor and good mechanics filling these pages I have to recommend it for anyone that has the Thunderscape hardcover to get the most delight out of your experience. If you have the hardcover there is no reason to not get this book and every other book in the line of class option books. In fact it is one of the best class support books I've ever seen compelling me to give it five stars.

Spoiler alert; my opinion of the Thunderscape class books are pretty much the same so I'll copy and paste part of the review for each entry.

I love me some classes from the hardcover Thunderscape: World of Aden. Sure the vehicles, races and lore is fun enough but the classes cover new grounds or feature new mechanics that are fun and innovative without being confusing or hard to use. I was skeptical about the $12 price tag but honestly the class books give you a lot of bang for that buck. I was not aware of how small these classes were until these books and not only do you get some sweet sweet mechanics for the Thunderscape classes but you get some more lore, NPC stats to put into your games and even some new options for your Pathfinder classes in almost 50 pages worth of content.

This book covers Thaumaturges and Fallen classes. The Fallen gets Bloodline-like 'Stigmas' that cover what kind of curse or catastrophe that influence their 'dark side' abilities. In the hardcover they have an choice of six stigmas, this PDF introduces 10 new ones, each just as awesome and as flavorful as the rest. Then there are two NPCs across three levels each. The Thaumaturge has the option of legends to call upon to possess them and give them abilities and talent-like aspects to help them out. The hardcover gives them the choice of 12 legends and 12 lesser and 12 greater aspects, this PDF gives 15 more legends, and while the hardcover covers basic non-caster character types for legends this book covers legends from beasts and devils to sages and martyrs with mechanics that just bleed flavor for your Thaumaturge. There are also gives 18 lesser and 13 greater aspects to further customize your Thaumaturge. Plus two more NPCs to cover the class within three different levels.

Now I counted out those numbers compared to the hardcover to emphasize just how much you're getting. This isn't something like getting a few new options for your new classes, you're getting more of their options than the book they appear in. That's more than I can say about some other PDFs. Plus you get yourself six NPCs so you don't have to work at building characters to fit these classes into your campaign.

You're also given some items which aren't nothing really interesting but add to some flavor for the classes inside. The magic items and weapon/armor property are more interesting in supporting the fallen and thaumaturge. You also get some new feats, some of which are so essential that I wonder why they don't appear in the main book, and some traits.

You also get some archetypes, a new Cleric domain, a new Sorcerer bloodline, and some advice on how to create the fluff for your Fallen of Thaumaturge including origin tables a la Ultimate Campaign.

Now granted you need to both have and like Thunderscape: World of Aden for this to be really valuable but even if you just like these two classes this is a lot of bang for the buck, not just giving you a ton of new options but tools on how to play these classes thematically, NPC stats to populate your world even if you aren't using Aden as a setting. With so much flavor and good mechanics filling these pages I have to recommend it for anyone that has the Thunderscape hardcover to get the most delight out of your experience. If you have the hardcover there is no reason to not get this book and every other book in the line of class option books. In fact it is one of the best class support books I've ever seen compelling me to give it five stars.

I hate the Leadership feat. Most of the time it just leads to munchkinry and a non character that the PCs use as any other class feature. So why did I pick up this book? Well the idea of cohorts and what they mean to a character has still interested me, plus I saw a bit of buzz around it so I decided to take a look.

In a nutshell this product takes the leadership feat and makes it not a feat. If you introduce the rule, everyone effectively has Leadership or shares the ability among the party. Then it ties Leadership to Reputation from Ultimate Campaign. Sprinkle in some advice and rules to tie it together like feat-like perks for your leadership ability and some charts and you got yourself what looks like Leadership as I would allow it in my games. Seriously this book took a feat I hated and a subsystem I rarely use and innovated it into something more appealing than the previous options put together.

Of course this is not for every campaign, but neither is Leadership or Reputation. I really appreciate the advice on how to handle Leadership abilities as a GM.

Overall I really liked this product. Lots of advice, charts and new rules that bring a new light to old ways. Instead of being mechanically entitled to a cohort or followers by being a feat this product presents Leadership in a way that enables roleplaying which is a huge plus to me. I think I'll give it five stars. I won't insist that you need this book as it does technically handle a realm that the game already has but its an alternate rule that ties those things in a more interesting way than they previously did.

This product introduces Fighter Nuances. Nuances are basically abilities that are fighter only that can be taken in place of a Fighter's bonus feats much like how Wizard Discoveries work. So basically some extra options to make your fighter better. Personally I think the idea is pretty clever. Since the main class feature a fighter has are combat feats this is a nice little modular way without effecting other classes. It gives Fighters more of a niche and flavor. But something like this is going to really hinge on whether or not I'd take these as a fighter. If these options don't matter enough or change the way I play this will be one of those kind of PDFs that never see the table regardless of how adequate it is.

Not everything is a hit but some things are downright game changing. But nothing really feels overpowered. Okay that's not true, some are overpowered in the sense that a fighter with them is miles better than a fighter without, but in the context of the rest of the game they all seem fair. If I had something to really say that was bad about the nuances themselves is that there aren't that many of them and I think it could have gone further in covering more bases and enable more play styles. One thing to note that some of these really favor Intelligence as an important stat which may or may not be annoying.

There are also some discussion of alternate ways to use or grant nuances, like giving them a grit-like cost or just handing them out for free whenever the fighter gains a fighter feat. there are also some extra magical nuances in the back.

As a whole I think these are great abilities, but being such a small product it feels like there isn't that much ambition. While the low list of nuances makes introducing them easier there aren't that many things to do with it making me feel a bit lackluster about it. Still its a solid product, and for it's price you're getting a straight buff to your fighter without any hassle so I'll give it five stars.

Early yesterday I got this pdf as a gift. Cool because I'd been curious about the Book of Heroic Races line after using the entry on Seedlings. This is a bit more in depth because there are no reviews on it here on Paizo so I feel the need to give would be consumers useful information.

The PDF starts off with some prose to give you an idea of how the life of a Reaper may go. Then it's off to the race itself, the Reaper.

Reapers are sort of your psychopomp answer to tieflings or aasimar. They have the blood of death in them. The fluff around them doesn't make them really distinct in appearance, so they aren't terribly dynamic but they feel an affinity towards death and it shows in their racial traits. As a whole the reaper race isn't something I would stick in any campaign. They die a round later than a character normally would, they get bonuses to some social skills towards psychopomps and undead and can deal damage to ghosts and haunts as a racial trait. The social skill bonus feels weak since they get a penalty to charisma in the first place but since they can straight up get ghost touch on their weapons, which is situationally overpowered, I guess it's okay. They also can sense anything dead or alive within five feet away which I wonder exactly how powerful it is. They also get a situational bonus to saving throws when wearing masks.

In the right campaign the basic racial traits can be powerhouses or somewhat useless making them kind of slaves to their flavor instead of something that can be shoved in anywhere. The traits and Alternate Racial Traits follow this theme by being really ingrained in their theme while also alleviating some of the more situational abilities.

They get Favored class options (interesting ones) and Height/Weigth/Age tables before getting to some class racial options. A druid archetype I notice has the Associated Class/race listed first along with the replaced and modified class features... Why aren't archetypes listed like this, like all the time? Anyway it's pretty much a death druid which is interesting, with all the nature theme I would have thought that I could think of death themed druid off the top of my head so the archetype is unique and helpful.

There's a new psychopomp bloodline and two new subdomains. All seem pretty worth taking. There's a 5 level prestige class if you're into that sort of thing. Not great, not terrible. Doesn't gain anything terribly interesting. There is also a 10 level prestige class that gets heftier bonuses and is more interesting.

There are a number of racial feats centered around masks and racial/class features that revolve around masks. There are new mundane items that encompass the theme well enough. There two new psychopomp deities that feels sort of like Pharasma divided in two.

The new spells are interesting but nothing that will ruin or really change your campaign although there is an interesting cause fear-like effect for undead.

Then there are new magic items some reaper NPCs and a ton of more lore.

Because of how the race runs the definition of this PDF is flavor, flavor, FLAVOR. I never was interested in introducing a psychopomp native outsider race but if I wanted to this book gives a crapton of things to work with. Racial traits, class options, deities, feats. The race itself borders between powerful and situational. If there is a lot of death, whether or not it's walking around, reapers are at home and have a lot to do. In happy fun time situations not so much, plus their flavor lends more to grimmer campaigns than others. Introducing a race I didn't care about and making it something that I can definitely use in future horror campaigns does deserve some praise and there are no typos-ridden, unclear, broken or fundamentally weak options that I noticed so I feel comfortable giving this five stars. If you aren't into a race who's options are more metal than an auto shop (seriously they take the death theme and run with it. If you use all the options you're pretty much a real psychopomp in later levels.) then this product is for you, but if you want a death/psychopomp race in your campaign I can't think of a race that is as detailed, especially when it comes to the fluff.

Other reviews have covered this in more detail than I could ever hope so I'll just give my general impressions.

This is one of those books you can live without. Until you want to have an all underwater campaign that is. Then this book isn't just necessary, I cant even think of an appropriate substitute. Not only does it give you some useable underwater rules but it gives you a butt-ton of races and other rules so you can do it. It even comes with some fluff so you don't have to make a setting from scratch. There are just so many tools and rules for this to not be useful. But only if you are running a game that is underwater more often than not, otherwise it's a large word count and a ton of rules that you'll never use. But that's the kind of product this is. I reviewed Companions of Firmament today and this is in the sam vein. Unfortunately I do not have a product that helps you play underground or on the sun but if you want to play in the sky you get that, if you want to play in the water you get this, so by being pretty much mandatory for an entire terrain that takes up a whole lot of space on a planet this book gets 5 stars.

No question. If you want to play underwater get this book. You need it.

This is a big book. So what's in it?

Well the theme of the book is flying with the goal of putting your characters in the air more often. There are a few archetypes, some animal companions, some mundane and magical items, vehicles and a plethora of new flying rules including obstacles and rules for falling, and 3D movement.

The character options are sound enough. Nothing caught me as particularly brilliant but it all seemed necessary and all were things I would see myself take. You definitely don't want to just throw some of these options at your players unless you are in the air often.

But how are the new flying rules. Unlike a lot of people I never had too many problems with flying in Pathfinder. The game handles things adequately enough. Why do I need new flying rules? Well you don't...

Unless you're doing it all the time. Then you NEED this book. If you're flying every once and a while this is just a bunch of overpowered mounts and archetypes and vehicles, plus a bunch of words you don't really need that complicate something that can be handled with one skill. But if your players are flying early and often this book is mandatory. Flying rules just don't cover enough. Plus there's hazards expanded combat options and how to handle three dimensions in quick and easy ways.

For that the book kind of gets 5 stars for being too useful even if situationally so. Because even if it's situationally needed, when you need it you NEED it and the price isn't too bad for it. Plus this opens up new kinds of campaigns that you couldn't do without. Campaigns of airships and dragonriders and floating continents. You can recreate the cartoon Dragonflyz if you wanted to. And that's really all that a product like this can do, open up a new world.

For a pretty good price you get a lot in this bundle. You get the Tinker class, two books of class options for it, and three different prestige classes. A great deal! But the backbone of it is exactly how good the Tinker is.

I purchased the Tinker when I had little idea on what was out there to make my dungeonpunk campaign a reality. I was tired of medieval stasis and wanted to get into the world of high technology and wizards in the same room. So the Tinker was a random risk buy to try to get an artificer class in the options I presented.

The Tinker itself is a bit hard to grasp. The basics of it is that you need to learn some inventions to make blueprints to make small robots. You can only have so many robots up at a time, and at 4th level you get a big robot which is your main robot. The best way that I can grasp it is that you get some small robots that simultaneously function as pets and spells. The small robots are made up of multiple inventions that form their blueprint. They can attack and stuff but also do a bunch of little tasks like injecting potions or exploding. You can also make one as a standard action a certain amount of times a day depending on what blueprints you have prepared so they kind of have a spell feel to them but are pretty much a customizable Summon Monster that you have to spend action economy to direct. Your big robot is kind of like an eidolon in that it can do stuff in more relative independence. Plus it's a bit tougher and can use feats. There's more class features but the small disposable robots and your big robot is your bread and butter. This PDF package comes with a whole lot of inventions to customize your robots and makes for an interesting robot making system. It allows you to be creative and clever, mixing and matching the inventions you can put on your robots, and once you grasp what's going on the class becomes very open and unique.

I do have some gripes however. At it's heart it's a pet class. Which isn't what I wanted out of a technomancer class, or at least not the only thing I wanted. Thankfully the need for directives makes this not a nightmare to manage and it isn't much of an 'army of me' kind of classes. I also have the gripe I have with any other technomancer, that they have exclusive technology when that's not how crafted technoloty works but that won't be against it's final score. The last gripe is also unfair and won't stand against it. I own a lot of technomancer products for pathfinder and this is not in my top three list. Its just that other technomancers have robot pets as options but can do other things. That said this is the most interesting means of using and making robots rather than just being a construct animal companion so that criticism holds a bit less water.

The Prestige classes are I don't care. Nothing bad or anything but Prestige classes don't appeal to me. Unless they're like the Rogue Alpha, which is amazing. It's listed as an archetype but how it works out makes it look like a prestige class. Basically if your Tinker dies or his big robot gains sentience and goes all I Robot, the big robot can become a character in the form of the Rogue Alpha. It is about as beautiful and hilarious as it sounds.

Last but not least is some more support that can support you making giant robots.

Overall the class is fun varied and goes far. I don't get many chances to use it though because honestly I have a few technomancer classes that I like better and it is stuck in the robo-mancer sub niche. It sounds harsh but I'm giving it five stars because those gripes are truly not fair. They're just warnings so that you won't buy this product and get disappointed because you thought it was something else like I did. If you want a general technology based class look class there are other options, but if you want a class to robomance your pants off in cool ways that other techno classes don't then this is the class to get and this package is the package that you need to make it come to life.

At the time of writing this review there are 10 reviews of it already. Plus each expansion has reviews and the first product has 13 reviews. There are threads on Paizo's forums and other places on the internet. The book is often on the top ten list of Paizo's third party sales. There are arguments about the power level and articles about it and the publishers have two more entire subsystems coming out with a Kickstarter money, forums of fans and is often quoted as the only third party publisher allowed at certain tables.

What the heck am I supposed to say after all that?! I can't review this. Its probably the most acclaimed third party product in all of Pathfinder. Everybody loves it, and if you don't you probably aren't going to be too thrilled with any other third party product or someone is going to come along to explain why you not liking it makes you a dirty poopy-head, and they're right! Well if you're okay with the very idea of psionics to begin with.

What's going on in this book is that it's a compilation of the psionic stuff that came out before it making for a fat book rivaling the Pathfinder Core Rulebook, detailing new races, new classes, magic items, feats, archetypes and prestige classes all supporting psionics. In fact it might as well be the core rulebook for psionics. If you get this book you have pretty much a core rulebook full of information on an entire class of magic and enough classes and subclasses and prestige classes and options to keep you busy for years.

But what are psionics? In a nutshell it's 'mind magic'. If you want to make a crystal ball massaging gypsy curse dealing psychic you're going to be disappointed. This is more like Esper or Psychic Pokemon variety mind magic making it feel kind of like psuedo-scientific ESP stuff than talking to spirits or new age tarot reading. But these guys aren't just bending spoons, they're generating mind-light sabers and shooting psychic lasers. This is all centered around a new way to cast their spell-like 'Powers' with a pool of points representing their psionic energy. Its a neat system, especially if you're tired of spell slots, but not each of the classes in here are based around the powers. you get a few that use their mind to do other things like create armor and weapons, plus you get some feats so anyone can tap into their mind and do a few tricks. Its a new world, a whole new way to play. Once you crack it open and start playing it's hard to dismiss. Its just a cool bunch of options.

So why did I buy this? What made me go "okay, I'm going to use this." Well for one you can see most of the options on d20pfsrd.com, which helps you figure out if you think this system is more broken than a core rulebook wizard. I went ahead and did the legwork of comparing the best powers to Magic spells and how well they can cast and found powers to be overall weaker than magic with superior casting options but way less variety so the strongest psionic class comes off about as powerful as a well made Sorcerer. I also liked having the option of presenting casting that felt less ole-timey for when I wanted to run a steampunk or space campaign. It's also the most 'complete' alternate system experience I've ever seen, and trying it with newer players they were able to pick it up much and understand it faster than vancian casting. So it won me over. Five stars all around. You just cant lose with this book.

Its a fat book full of spells. How are you going to say no to that?

I have the rant that fat high quality hardcover books like this and Deep Magic can come out but barely anything dedicated to martials and their options come along and when they do its a small PDF or something but other than that it's a good book.

Being a caster can feel limiting when you have a theme or a mode of operating that you want to do but there just aren't any spells at the level you want. Magi are starved for touch spells that isn't Shocking Grasp to liven up your spellstrike class feature and I feel like I always have the same spell list as a cleric. So a bunch of new spells are great for realizing your schtick or expressing more of your class features or style, and this product delivers that in a lot of ways. You can also hide the book from your players so that you can supply them with spells in the form of old dusty tomes buried at the bottom of a dungeon, an eccentric hermit that discovered a new spell, or an ancient prayer sung by natives worshiping a similar god. With a list of diverse and fun spells the possibilities become endless.

As for the power level. Well nothing as bad as the Core Rulebook but there are a few that look like they can be dangerous if misread or used in wands. Nothing too far out but still there. They are few and far between taking a serious min-maxer to find but takes one or two bannings instead of chucking out the entire book. Other than that the book is pretty much perfect for what it is and I'd recommend it to anyone. Five stars.

This book introduces a class I don't care about. The class isn't badly written or badly planned but I have two problems that turn me off from it.

1) This isn't this product's fault but the theme of channeling spirits and forging pacts with them as a class is something I have on a lot of classes on a lot of products I've bought and they do it in new, exciting and simple ways. Emphasis on simple because my second problem is that

2) This class does too much. I have to track 6 levels of spell like abilites after I understand how they're different from spell slots, rounds of trance per day, a bloodline-like selection of influences and talent-like spirit boons every other level. and a lot of these things are front loaded making this an unfun class to start.

Once you get the class off it's rough start it's pretty functional. and pretty darn fun. The way that lower spell-like abilities can be infinite but not overpowering is clever and while I have a lot of Medium-like classes that handle the theme it has it's own place and does things differently making for a nice haunted or pactmaster (this is what I'm calling the class now that there is a 'medium' in the new Occult Adventures book.) class without feeling like you're playing multiple characters at once.

Then we get to the bread and butter of this product. Covenants. What these are are feats that you have to spend money on. Why is that so great? well they're powerful and supernatural feats. They represent paying or forging an alliance with a supernatural creature or spirit for super powers. Often the power of these covenants are directly related to the creature you got it from, scaling with it's HD or caster level.

This is the kind of thing that the game needs. These are the things campaigns are made of. It sets up means for non equipment treasure, the things that you quest for or sends you on quests. Its a way to interact with the supernatural. That they are feats is sort of an obstacle. What I wind up doing is when a Covenant is made (aside from the medium's class feature) the character gets it but loses his next feat. I also let it function much like HMs in Pokemon where you need a covenant as a mcguffin and the players have to decide on who wants to sacrifice a feat for it.

Now I had bad things to say about the class, and good things to say about the new subsystem it's involved with. You'd think that this leads to three stars but honestly my gripes about the Medium is partly not fair. It hits pet peeves and isn't something that I wouldn't play, but it's not something I cant see other people playing and I don't see it making any real problems in my games as a GM so I'm letting up on that and lean more to 4 stars with a warning to read my review carefully in case my gripes aren't things that you really worry about because this could definitely be a five star in your eyes even though it's a four in mine. The same goes for the covenants themselves. I think it's a must have kind of thing, but I can see how it can easily be cumbersome and annoying to use.

Monks, Fighters, and Rogues get a lot of flack for being weak classes and while I have generally positive views on the monk and the fighter only needs a couple of extra option to be versatile on top of being deadly I absolutely hate the Rogue class and most of that hate comes from the weak selection of Talents. (That and Players almost universally assume Murderhobo is a class feature.) To me talents are almost never as good as feats and that's one of their main class features. So when I heard a lot of hype about Rogue Glory I decided to get in on the action and purchase a hard copy.

After some fluff describing what a Rogue is we're introduced to some new class features to add to the Rogue class. They get some extra weapons added to their proficiency list. They get a pool of points, that is totally not ki, that can be used to buff skill checks by +2 or +4, and can be used to give a scaling bonus to hit. Also for as long as they have one point in their pool they automatically have Improved Feint. They also get an attack during surprise rounds that can sicken opponents if they fail a Fort save.

Now that we have a new rogue that effectively gets more accurate, ki, a bonus feat and proficiencies that it should have already have we move on to some new archetypes. Each archetype gets some prose flavor text and despite hijacking a few class features from other classes they are probably the best archetypes for the rogue I've ever seen. Because they actually do something. The theme continues with the new Talents and Advanced Talents. There are concervative amounts of them and sometimes they steal class features but they are things that I would actually take. Every one of them. There are also new feats and traits that are pretty okay.

Next there's new optional rules. Things that modify, sneak attack, stealth, Bluff, Perception, and some rules that interact with those. There are also some new trap rules for Rangers as well as a modified Trapper archetype and new traps. I didn't have any previous problems with any of these rules so I didn't care too much for them aside from modifying sneak attack to be capable of hitting in a dark alley.

There's some now traps and weapons and items, then more fluff and some NPC stats.

Well this product delivers what it promised. It wanted the Rogue to not suck and it gives Rogues tools to not suck. Probably too many as I ignored most of the new items and alternate skill rules and things worked out fine. For accomplishing that task without disrupting too much about the class itself or introducing complicated rules or too many things to track the book gets five stars.