But until you nerf Shield Brace and Unhindering Shield (2 feats that just kill sword & shield combat style, cause they basically allow you to fight with your trusted Power Attack buffed two-handed weapon and still have a nice shield bonus) I will not give this book more than 1 star.
If new content just devalues a huge junk of old content - it's bad, horrible game design.
What's the point of this book?
To provide ready-to-use NPCs for a GM, so he will save time.
So my rating and review is based only on this criteria.
Art is (as usual) very good and inspiring, but the content... Really, I must repeat myself, really weak NPCs. Human Clerics from 9th+ level have something around 19-21 wisdom with +2 item? Really? Human Pyromaniac mage (CR 12) has Intelligence 22 with +4 item?? Really? He's spent all his ability bonuses on level-up on what? Strength?
The limitation to Core only even further make these NPCs subpar to even really non-optimized PCs.
I don't know why we need to have NPC Codex (really it should be treated like Bestiary) that fails to deliver adequate challenge? New GMs will have to deal with too weak NPCs that even non-optimized PCs will just trample, experienced GMs will have to spent their time on constant modification of these NPCs.
So. Overall this book really doesn't qualify for a rating more than 2 stars. It can be used as inspiration - yes. It can be used as source of great NPC art - yes. Can it be used as a source of ready-for-use NPCs? I really doubt.
