Sethvir's page

Into the Breach – The Bard
Once more we venture into the Breach with the latest offering from Flying Pincushion games with their latest installment focusing on the bard. I did receive a complimentary copy of the PDF in exchange for a review.
The PDF is 41 pages long, with 5 pages being devoted to Cover, Table of Contents, Credits, OGL and a back of the front cover page with a Bob Marley quote.
The PDF delivers a dozen new archetypes, a new prestige class, and a new alternate base class, a new mechanic called Fairy Plays and a seven new instruments for the bard lover.
Virtually all of these new archetypes are flavorful and interesting and for some reason, many put me in mind of either classic and current movies or old fairy tales.

New Archetypes
1) Chronicler of Blades – This bard archetype reminds me of feats of daring-do, where the bard is the master of the fencing blades. I have visions of an elven version of Douglas Fairbanks running around, assuming Douglas was an elf as this has limited availability to elves, which both limits it’s utility and doesn’t do a lot for the elf as a whole.
2) Courtless Marvel – This bard archetype dances the dangerous line of interacting with the fey courts while not being sucked into the courts themselves. Tweaking their nose at them and leveraging what they are capable of and summoning the fey to do the bards bidding with modified summon natures ally spells. Good for campaigns where fey have a heavy presence.
3) Fabulist – The fabulist is the teller of tales that impart a moral lesson. I have visions of Aesop and his fables.
4) Grotesque – If you want to run a carnival for players with a traveling troupe, then this is the bard you need for your ringmaster. A master of the sideshow.
5) Jester – The jester is the master of the court, turning the sly remark into the thing that stops the subject of the remark in their tracks.
6) Lifeweaver – The life weaver is, I think, one of the more interesting archetypes presented here. It’s a solid mixture of the cleric and the bard, using music to provide healing and protection to the PC’s through use of modified cleric abilities including Channel Energy.
7) Matchmaker – Again another interesting archetype that helps others find their potential soul mates. A mixture of Sebastian from Little Mermaid (Kiss the Girl) and Will Smith as Hitch. Within a party, maybe not so much, but depending upon the campaign could be interesting as an NPC option.
8) Prop Comic – The prop comic takes the fine art of humor and makes it his own, to poke fun at, and distract his enemies. At once the stage magician and the comic relief. I mean where else can you find a clever use for a whoopee cushion. It’s all the Bugs Bunny cartoons where he uses props to distract his opponents.
9) Rookery Master – The rookery master gains a bird familiar and comes to know birds so well that he crafts wondrous items from their feathers and sees the future in the flight of birds.
10) Skirling Adept – The skirling adept is both a master of weather, able to whistle up a storm and using the effects of storm sounds as sonic damage against his foes. Sonic damage is always interesting because not many creatures have resistance to sonic effects.
11) Song Bow – The song bow becomes a master archer, imbuing his arrows or bolts with his bardic performance ability to affect creatures at a greater distance with ranged attacks. Nice way to translate a close bardic ability to long range.
12) Squad Leader – The squad leader reminds me a drill instructor. This archetype positions the bard as the party leader/battle coordinator, giving him the ability to effectively manage attacks against the parties’ foes. It would also be an interesting addition to a city guard unit when defending a city, or potentially dealing with civil unrest. It also provides a way to use Teamwork feats without every member of a party needing to take the feats.
Prestige Class
1) Holy Rhapsodist – A five level prestige class of the Holy Rhapsodist is a fine mix of the Paladin and the Bard, providing equal faculty to be both support and front line combatant. Another example of utilizing the sonic capabilities of the bard to change the smite evil to a sound based ability.
New Alternate Base Class
1) The Mime – The mime is a new alternate base class based around the bard which has no real unique abilities but rather acts as a mirror to the actions going on around him. Using the copycat ability, the mime mimics the attacks and actions of his allies, be it spell casting, melee based actions or feats. All this is done silently so they can make for an excellent scout.
Fairy Plays
Fairy plays function as a single use scroll. They are fun and entertaining and all designed around a group of PC’s creating the play and executing it. Each one provided gives examples of various levels of success. In some respects functions a bit like the Skill challenge from 4th edition, the more successes the cooler the results.
Instruments:
The PDF provides seven new instruments to add to the bard’s list of available items. All well considered and designed, but the two stand outs for me was the Hurdy Gurdy (I actually had to go look this instrument up. I’d heard of it from the Donovan song, but never knew what it was), and the Siege Carillon. Bottom line, a musical instrument as a siege weapon. How cool is that? Others include the Flying Lion Gong, Mask of Cowardly Courage, Moonlight Strings, Peddler's Charumera, and the Sylph's Slippers.

Overall a fun and interesting take on combining bard abilities into other classes and turning them into something new and because of the imagery it evoked for me, I’d give it a solid 4 stars, due to some limited usability of some items.

Once more into the breach dear friends. This time it is the Inquisitor that we are exploring from Flying Pincushion Games. This time they deliver a 29 page PDF that includes a front and back page, a credits page, a table of contents, and a one page OGL, leaving 24 pages of content for consumption. They deliver new archetypes (9), an alternate base class, prestige classes (2), and the new idea of Foe Slayer based Inquisitions (7), Racial Inquisitions (5) and finally a page of new mundane gear.

New Archetypes: As mentioned there are nine new archetypes each taking a slightly different focus about what it means to be an Inquisitor and how they get their job done.

Circuit Judge: – The circuit judge is a mixture of the inquisitor and the cavalier where by the judge gains a mount in much the same way as the cavalier. A traveling justice for remote areas and pronouncing judgement on them by means of a new ability called the Stain of Guilt, which turns other creatures against the foe for a number of rounds equal to the inquisitors’ level.

Duplicating Assessor: - The assessor uses abilities that function much like the mirror image spell, creating multiple copies of herself, overwhelming and confusing the foe. Additionally the assessor can use ability score values above 10 to grant her duplicates additional abilities, depending upon the number of Wisdom points allocated different abilities may be granted. This functions as Wisdom damage, but heals after 8 hours of rest.

Lineage Master: The lineage master uses the blood of her foes to determine their strengths and weaknesses much like the ranger’s Favored Enemy class feature. As the inquisitor grows in power, she can use her abilities to glean valuable information about a foe. And at higher levels curse them and then as a capstone, force all their vital fluids out requiring a Save or Die saving throw and the fluid becomes a blood golem under the inquisitors command for a period of time.

Ossuary Chaplain: The ossuary chaplain uses the bones of her enemies to craft ammunition for her chosen firearm. Depending upon the type of creature from which the bone is harvested, determines the effects and damage done by the ammunition. The ammunition is considered magical and turns to ash at the completion of the encounter. To create magical ammunition bones must be harvested from the fallen creature within 10 minutes of the creatures’ death. Rules for animal, demon, devil, dragon, human or humanoid, undead and vermin are provided.

Relic Seeker: The relic seeker gains rogue talent abilities enabling her to slip by traps and search out relics and bypass magical wards to do so.

Revelator: The Revelator gains abilities much like an oracle and because of their divine insights at higher levels begins to suffer penalties to her will saves. The offset to this is that it allows the inquisitor to use the revelations more efficiently and activate two at a time.

Righteous Assassin: The inquisitor gains the ability to conjure weapons and rogue sneak attack abilities functioning as an assassin of the faith. At higher level the inquisitor gains a pool of points to enhance their conjured weapon to grant up to a +5 at 19th level.
Sacred Commander: The sacred commander is just that, a leader for a group of warriors of the faith, leading them into battle and granting additional bonuses, teamwork feats and saves for fellow warriors in range. Do you want a battlefield commander, this provides a nice option.

Varying Verdicist: With this archetype, the inquisitor can make an impression on her foes by changing her size. The verdicist can change size from tiny to large at first level up to gargantuan at 20th level granting all Strength and Dexterity bonuses and penalties. The cost for this is a reduced spell casting ability at one fewer per day than a standard inquisitor.

Alternate Base Class: The Vengeant
Provided in this pdf is a new alternate base class, the Vengeant. Do you want to see what divine vengeance looks like on the battlefield? Then look no further than this class. The Vengeant is an unarmored walking disaster waiting to happen. She gains no armor proficiency whatsoever, much like the monk, and gains a Wisdom modifier to AC and CMD. Only bonuses from one class can be used, but they do stack for determining the additional AC Bonus. Additionally she gains the Oath of Judgement ability which gives bonuses for skill and ability checks against an opponent and allows her to make Oath Strikes (an ability gained at higher level) against the foe. As the Vengeant gains levels, she adds both Wisdom and Dexterity to initiative checks. Goes first on the battlefield, check! At third level, she gains the censure ability which essentially acts as debuffs for opponents. As she gains levels, the number and type of censures grows. When declaring an Oath Strike, she rolls attack rolls twice and selects the higher roll. This is driven by the Oath of Vengeance ability which is limited to a max of 7x a day at the top end. She also gains a limited spell use spells up to 4th level from the inquisitor spell list.

As the Vengeant increases in level, movement doesn’t provoke attacks of opportunity when moving against the target of her Oath of Judgement, and further can grant an ally the ability to make two rolls for their attack, limiting her from making an Oath Strike the next round. With critical hits, the Vengeant can ignore DR and in some cases cause creatures to lose their regenerative abilities for one round. At the top end of her abilities, she can move around the battlefield virtually unimpeded, and finally make two rolls on each attack without having to use the Oath Strike ability, although for the censure ability, it is still required.

Two prestige classes are provided as well, including the Infernal Enforcer, a 10 level prestige class, and the Soul Arbiter, a five level psionic prestige class. The Infernal Enforcer basically leverages the power of devils and archdevils as a source of power gaining essence points, much like ki points to fuel his abilities. He gains access to Circle abilities at each level beginning at 2nd that grant various abilities to make them a more fearsome foe. The second is a Soul Arbiter which is a prestige class for the Manifester, presumably from DSP’s psionic materials. Now never having been a fan of psionics, no matter how well done, I can’t honestly comment on this one. If you are a fan it might be interesting.

New inquisitions are provided, that allow for bonuses against different types of creatures including aberrations, angels, constructs, dragons, fiends, lycanthropes, and undead. Additionally five racial inquisitions are showcased, allowing the inquisitor of that race access to features that for a short time make them a paragon of their race.

Finally a few new pieces of equipment and tools are delivered, each adding something to the gameplay, from a folding holy symbol (harder to identify) to a folding shrine, to holy dust (dust infused with the vapor from boiled holy water) and a special enhancement for crossbows.

Final thoughts on this offering: I’ve played an inquisitor for about eight levels not too long ago, and enjoyed the experience with the class. I think some of the options here provide some interesting options for players that want to explore what the inquisitor is capable of being in many different circumstances. The usefulness of each archetype depends upon what type of game the game master is running, like any other archetype. I did see a couple that would have provided interesting alternatives in the game I was in as an inquisitor, specifically the Lineage Master and the Circuit Judge. By far though, my favorite two things in this offering are the Sacred Commander archetype and the new alternative base class, the Vengeant. Those two pieces alone make this worth the price of admission. Now I am not a big fan of guns in my fantasy, sorry for those that are, but I have to say from a pure flavor perspective with guns and ammunition in mind the Ossuary Chaplain provides interesting and flavorful options for this and I’d actually seriously considering playing one in a campaign that used guns. So bottom line how would I rate this? It is nicely laid out, no glaring errors, mechanics and flavor are well done and easy to understand and provide a few very cool options for the inquisitor, so my final judgment on this offering will be a solid 4 stars.

Ok, so it's not Shakespeare and it's clearly not a nunnery. However the priory in Retribution most definitely not a place of safety and security.

Before proceeding further, I need to note a couple of things. 1) I received a complimentary copy of this work in exchange for a (way overdue) review. 2) I am a Patreon of Raging Swan on the Patreon.com website.

Retribution is a 71 page PDF that includes 7 pages of either covers, OGL, introductory notes and a table of contents leaving 65 pages of content for the customer. Also note that this is an airchair review, never having either played in it or run it as a GM. So that being said, away we go.

Retribution is a well thought out adventure that includes many opportunities for social roleplay, as well as enough opportunities for the characters to engage in combat. Further, in one of the things I like about the module, is that it offers a timeline of events, to help move things along and render a sense of urgency about the unfolding events that should encourage the players to seek out the reasons for the goings on at the priory. In many adventures, the weather doesn't play a factor, or for that matter in many campaigns, weather is just sort of there, but generally doesn't have a material impact on a session or sessions. Although, I now have to admit within the last two sessions of the game I am playing in and since I started this review, the current DM has really capitalized on weather and weather related phenomenon to generate interesting and difficult, even arduous tasks for us to complete in those conditions. The snowstorm that strands the PC's at the priory and the events that lead them to be cold and wet and miserable upon their arrival clearly adds to the atmosphere of the adventure.

The adventure is broken down into three parts, the first as already mentioned the snowstorm and the struggles of the PC’s to get to the priory in the first place. The second is the more social roleplay section of the adventure wherein there are many strange goings on and the players become familiar with the quirks and foibles of the other folks stranded or living at the monastery. Finally, in part three, the denouement, where the instigator is revealed, along with their motivations for the events occurring at the priory. Here the PC’s get back in the saddle for the final showdown and either the hack and slash or more opportunities to seek an alternative solution to the instigators issues.

Some additional notes about the collected edition of this adventure, and that is based on the notes about the adventure this collected version incorporates other material that was previously added to Raging Swans website and used to expand and enhance this edition of the pdf. Some of the other things I really like about this, is the many sidebars, the include suggestions for adding to your own campaign, a well thought out background, guidelines for running the adventure, distances to other towns and features of the ongoing Lonely Coast world that comprises lots of the background material for Raging Swan. Additionally, there are notes for scaling the adventure for both higher level players and lower level players. Also included are tables of dungeon dressing hearkening back to RSP’s other products to allow the DM to easily inject more atmosphere into their location.

Finally there is an Appendix of the Dramatis Persona, which provides further insight to the NPC’s encountered within the priory.

Final thoughts. Based on all the material provided, the interesting location, the sometimes complex motivations of the NPC’s and the overall atmosphere as well as the guidelines and timeline provided for the adventure. Depending upon how the PC’s handle the conclusion, there are a few possible outcomes including having the instigator become a recurring NPC for the players to encounter as they adventure further in the provided world or whatever homebrew where it is used. I could certainly see myself running this or playing this as I think it hits all the right buttons for being a classic adventure that is well designed with opportunities for different types of players to have their moments in the sun, or the snow as the case maybe. Frankly there is nothing here not to like. For a low level adventure it strikes me as one that could capture the imagination of the players for a long time afterwards. At the end of the day, or at the end of the adventure, I’d have to give this a solid five stars.

First off, I was given a copy for the express purpose of providing a review, so let’s see what we can turn up. The PDF is 159 pages long, 8 of which are front cover, an introduction, OGL , table of contents and section headers for the four major sections of the material, leaving 151 pages of usable content. What I find interesting about Raging Swan is that Creighton and his stable of freelancers have taken over a niche in the campaign world that others have not taken the time to exploit, giving material to DM’s to make their worlds come alive around the PC’s.

This book is a compilation of a number of or all of the Wilderness Dressing line that has been previously published, all recompiled and clearly reorganized into the four sections of the book. In addition, according to the blurb on the web page, additional material has been made available in the product and integrated with the rest of the line. The additional material, per the website is comprised of: Farmlands, Small Caves, Borderlands, Shipwrecks, Coast and Campsites. So for those folks that may have purchased the individual files, there is also new material and to have it all compiled, reorganized and integrated should still be a possible reason for picking this compilation up.

The four sections are Events and Features, Folk, Land and Sea. First and foremost the Events and Features contains ideas/tables and tables of things that adventurers might find wandering around the wilderness, mostly manmade features, like old castles of various sizes, how a campfire might look and things that go bump in the night. The one section I really like in this grouping is the Extreme Weather tables and suggestions for running storms and adverse weather conditions. Weather always seems to be one of the things that get overlooked in campaigns. Not always but it has seldom played a part in many of the ones that I have been involved with over the years.

For the Folk section, again lots of tables to add verisimilitude to inter town/city travel, from Bandits and fellow travelers, tinkers’, tailors, soldiers and spies, bards, troubadours and minstrels. I’ve already found several ideas I can loot for my home campaign, just perusing these through.

The Land section covers all sorts of ground, in this case literally. It gives several d100’s worth of features and encounters to build the environment around the PC’s for deserts, forests of various kinds from normal woodlands to woods with a more primal element. Some of the forest encounters and descriptions I think would blend wonderfully with other products that touch on the forest from other publishers, particularly Tales of the Old Margreve from Kobold Press and the newly released 101 Forest Spells from Rite Publishing or really any product where the characters are traveling through forested lands. The product also covers other terrains, including deserts, from sand to tundra. For each terrain feature the product also gives a short blurb on perception and how each terrain affects the characters ability to see what is coming through the terrain towards them.

The product concludes with a long section on things one might encounter related to sea travel, including what the ship looks like, with descriptions of various parts of the ship that one might see on a sea going vessel, and again how they can all play a part in a shipboard encounter. Finally, want some more pirates and ship descriptions, for your Skull and Shackles campaign, look no further. My personal favorite section of this part is all about the sea voyage omens. Ever since Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I’ve always been intrigued by what other events/occurrences would make a sea voyager think about delaying setting sail or those things that might encourage them to leave sooner. The other one I really like in this section is what the carved figurehead is on the ship.

One quick little quibble that I noticed in this section is that the page number appear to reference the original standalone product some of this was taken from. Flags and Figureheads (page 10), Captain’s Names (page7). With the bookmarks it isn’t hard to find the relevant section, just a nit about some text that didn’t get cleaned up in the compilation.

Final thoughts on the product. Again a compilation of mostly previously released material, a couple of which I already have, but again reorganized and grouped in one fantastic collection of material, that gives any DM experienced or no, the opportunity to make your outdoor adventures memorable for your players. Like the Dungeon Dressing compilation, well worth its weight in gold. Do yourself a favor and pick this one up. For all the fantastic material, I again have to give this one five stars.

First of all, I was given a copy of this product in exchange for a review just to be up front about this. Secondly, when it comes to magic I have a weakness for three types, mostly because of my extensive reading of fantasy literature. Those three are, in no particular order, truename magic, magic cast by or augmented by music or done as a function of music, and shadow magic. My favorite character in all my years of gaming was the 28th level straight progression shadowcaster from Tome of Magic. So, preliminaries aside, let’s get into the meat of this product.

The Path of Shadows is an 81 page pdf, with a front and back cover, a credits page, an OGL page, a compatibility notice page and a table of contents, leaving a whopping 75 pages of content. The book is broken into five chapters, one covering the new class, the Nightblade, one for new archetypes and class options, one for feats, one for spells and one for new magic items and equipment. Options and references to other Pathfinder core rule books are clearly notated in the text, making it easy to backtrack to already existing content. The Nightblade is a 20th level mixed martial/limited caster with a medium BAB, poor Fortitude saves and good Reflex and Will saves. They have simple weapon proficiencies plus a few additional weapons to give them more combat options. The Nightblade can wear light armor without incurring any arcane spell failure, but medium and heavy armor is a limiting factor for this. From a casting perspective, the Nightblade has everything from cantrips to sixth level spells. Now what makes the Nightblade really interesting is the abilities that they are granted at each level. It is also nice to note that there are no dead levels across any of the levels, so kudos to the designer in that regard.
At first level, the Nightblade chooses a Path and once chosen remains in that path for the duration. The designer gave us five paths with such evocative names as, the Path of the Bloodied Chain, Path of the Darkened Fortress, Path of the Eternal Night, Path of the Ravaging Void, and Path of the Twilight Veil. Each path gives a unique set of abilities tied to the theme of the path, with powers increasing periodically over the twenty levels.

Additionally the Nightblade gains Nightblade Arts. These appear to me to function much like the rogue talents and are offered every third level. There are a core set of them and then each path offers additional choices that are again centered around the theme of each Path. Further, the Nightblade gains a Path power, much like the Sorcerer’s Bloodline power, that improves over the course of the levels.

Another power that the Nightblade gains is the Shadow Surge which functions similarly to a ki pool, but there is not a maximum number of times that it can be used per day. The Nightblade starts with the ability to hold one shadow surge and uses it to fuel the surge ability designated within the Path. Finally, there are the Path Techniques that are again tied to the Path selected that provide another very cool mechanic to affect the environment around them. The nightblade at 20th level can hold up to three surges and again use them to fuel their path surge ability.

As the Nightblade progresses in level, the dark stops withholding secrets from them, granting abilities such as Evasion, Hide in Plain Sight, Nighteye and See in Darkness Spells. What to say about them. While they do have a limited custom spell list, the author has drawn spells from all the major core source books, in addition to adding his own take on new spells. The spells are largely geared around the shadow subschool, and the Darkness descriptor. There is a whole chapter totaling some seventy new spells designed to maximize the use of shadows for all classes.

Many core and base classes are also offered new archetypes or new bloodlines, rage powers, a mystery or curse, including several archetypes for the Nightblade. Each one presents a new and interesting option for the class in question. 15 new feats are given to enhance the use of shadows for classes taking these shadow abilities and 10 new racial feats for fetchlings and wayangs.

The last chapter is devoted to new magical gear and equipment to again augment the users of shadow, from weapons to wondrous items.
Two final thoughts on this book, one is that it is nicely bookmarked and wonder of wonders, contains an index.

Now to provide a summary and rating. Bottom line is that I could go on for several more pages talking in more depth about what this PDF provides for lovers of shadow magic because frankly it is that good. I have not done a playtest on this, but compared it against my 28th level shadowcaster from Tome of Magic, again, my favorite character ever, and was not left wanting. Ok, that technically isn’t quite true. I’d like more Paths. What the author has done here is offered us a hand out and a step up in a major way from the Tome of Magic Shadowcaster and really any of the base classes from the Shadow Magic chapter and given us a way to move forward. Kudos on a job well done. If you are a fan of shadow magic, this is a must, and really if you are a fan of superb, well thought out design, you owe yourself a favor to pick this up. I give this a five star rating. Now I just need to find a campaign where I can play one.

Annals of the Drunken Wizard - +0 Weapon Modifiers by Interjection Games is a short PDF of 5 pages, with 1 page being the front cover and one page for the OGL, leaving three pages of content.

First off I have to say, that I love the series name, Annals of the Drunken Wizard. It just provides a whole host of imagery that just tickles my funny bone, in much the same way that the Krazy Kragnar from Rogue Genius Games line does and is nicely contained on the product description page, I might add. Maybe the drunken wizard and Kragnar should get together… So what do we get within the three pages of content? Well we get 20 different abilities that can be added to weapons that are low cost options and add some new wrinkle to the weapon.

The author starts off with a nice little introduction about how these options could fit within an existing game and an easy way to make low level weapons outside of masterwork but less than the investment in more high powered magic weaponry, more accessible in the first few levels of a character. Since this all assumes that these are nice additions that can be added in at low level, it generally assumes that the spells cast to make these minor additions are also of a correspondingly low level. Most spells are either Cantrips or 1st level, but not all of them. One I even had to go look up because I wasn’t familiar with it as it was outside my normal spell list, Channel the Gift. The author suggests a price of 500 gp to add these options to a given weapon. Additionally, while the all provide some benefit to the user, some of the also come with a cost, so even though a higher level spell may be used, the benefit is reduced or offset by a cost.

For example, the hooked option, provides a +1 enhancement bonus to disarm a combat maneuvers, but because the weapon has hooks shooting from, it, it reduces the wielder’s CMD by 2 when using this weapon. Others have similar cost/benefit structures as well. Finally some of the choices like lesser bladethirst and lesser erupting replace the damage done on a critical hit with an alternative damage option like an additional point of one type of energy damage or dazzles the opponent for 1d4 rounds.

All in all I think this is a nice little enhancement that can be added to any campaign to give the players new and interesting options at lower levels rather than just your average +1 run of the mill longsword, without breaking anything within the campaign. And speaking of adding to a game, since there are 20 of them, a nice solid 1d20 to randomly generate one of these for found low level weapons sounds fun. Since I haven’t playtested these at all, and I find the options interesting, I am going to rate this a solid four and a half stars for use and suggest a round up to five.

Class Expansions – Love for the Universalist by Interjection Games is a short product of 4 pages that introduces the idea of expanding the choices that a Universalist Wizard might have. Many of the other schools of magic have gotten additional treatment in other source books, like Ultimate Magic or the Advanced Player’s Guide, but the Universalist has had just one option. This offering aims to rectify that deficiency.

The product has four pages, one for the front cover and one for the OGL designation, leaving two pages of content and two Universalist options per page. In the core rule book, the Universalist appears to have gotten a bit of short shrift and this product I think acknowledges this.

Each set of options for the Universalist gives them three options, one which replaces the hand of the apprentice ability, one which replaces the metamagic mastery and one which replaces the bonus spell options. Like anything in the game there are tradeoffs.

The four Universalist options are the Arcane Researcher, the Beastbonded Arcanist, the Bookbonded Arcanist and the Spellweaver. Each option starts off with as short introductory paragraph to lay the foundation for what each option might mean for the character taking the option.

The first option is the Arcane Researcher. This option allows the wizard to be more efficient about researching new spells by reducing the time and cost of doing so. The second change allows photographic recall of those spells researched by the caster without need of a spellbook and finally because you researched these new spells you add a DC modifier to the spells.

I think this option is interesting for a couple of reasons and really this comes down to play style and what your DM allows and how they treat personally researched spells and what sources are used. Does the DM treat everything outside of the Core Rulebook as something you can personally research or 3PP material or something you make up on your own? I’ve only had one that “allowed” you to research new spells that were from some other source other than the core rulebooks being used. I think this option is interesting, but depending upon your play style may be more viable in some groups than others.

The second is Beastbonded Arcanist and here you are leveraging your familiar as a kind of living limited spellbook. The second benefit is gaining a bonus to the Aid Other and finally a bonus that limits your ability to be flanked or flat-footed. Now personally I have never been a big fan of the whole familiar idea even though it is a very familiar trope in fantasy literature and what not. Familiars seem to always to be sort of out there and forgotten more often than not by the players. But, certainly for the player that takes advantage of the familiar option it provides a new way to leverage their capabilities.

The third is the Bookbonded Arcanist . This option enhances your options for your personal spellbook giving you the opportunity to treat your spellbook as your arcane bonded item. The second option is increasing the security of the spellbook making it more difficult for looters or more difficult to damage and then finally if you have left your spellbook behind or someone has made off with it, and seemingly as a function of the arcane bond, you can summon your spellbook to you. For this, I suddenly have images of the movie Hocus Pocus and Bette Midler opening the window to their old house and calling out “Oh book…where are you?” and trying to bring it back. It seems like DM’s that target the spellbooks of casters, this might be a nice option and give the wizard some spellbook security.

The fourth option is the Spellweaver and for some reason I’m not sure why, this option resonates with me more than the others. This could be because of the Spellweaver class offered by Misfit Games (an excellent option, I think), or maybe just growing up watching various magic shows including Bill Bixby and the magic shows he used to host on TV. I’m showing my age with this one. The wizard gets to add his Dexterity modifier to the Spellcraft DC as their first option followed by the option to increase the casting time of a spell in exchange for increasing the caster level of the spell usable a number of times equal to half your Intelligence Modifier and then finally the ability to just increase the DC of the spell based on your Dexterity modifier.

With this one, there seems to be some discrepancy between the name of the option and the description. The name of the 13th level feature is Artful Gestures, but the text all refers to Insightful Gestures which is the ability that is gained at 7th level. So that was a little confusing, but the intent of the option comes through.

Now based on what I have said above, it may appear that I didn’t care for this product, however, that isn’t really the case. I think that the fact that the universalist is getting some other interesting options is great and looking at different ways to leverage some of the key tropes of the wizard class, with the spellbooks, the familiars and the gathering of news spells is all interesting, I just think that depending upon the game, the players, and the DM the utility may vary. That being said, I am still going to give this 3.5 stars based on that, but am going to round up to 4. I've also noticed that I may have generated a review that is almost as long as the product!

The Corpseshaper’s Toolbox by Interjection Games is a short product six pages in length that contains 1 page that is the front cover and 1 page that is the OGL, leaving four pages of content. The document is all black and white with a two column layout that is consistent with IG’s other offerings.

The first thing that struck me about the offering was the very cool art that IG chose for the front cover, a skeleton standing next to an altar with what looks like a skull under one hand and his other under his chin and one foot crossed in front of the other in a jaunty impression of Rodin’s The Thinker. I mean what’s not to love about that image.

That being said, on to the content and how that plays out. First off, I have not used any of the material in any sort of playtest, but rather spent time reading through the offering. Now, with a title like The Corpseshapers’ Toolbox, you’re first impression should be undead and necromancers. It was mine. A toolbox for making undead and modifying them. Things to make my undead better, stronger, and more powerful. We can rebuild them. We have the technology, we have the capability. Better, faster, stronger.

The offering starts with a new feat, Corpseshaper as a new Item creation feat. Once you take this, you can grant fresh corpse’s increases in strength, channel resistance and additional hit points and then you can create and use new tools that allow you to enhance the undead even further. Each tool gives you the option to create a lesser, standard or greater version, all for a price of course. Each can be used to affect a certain number of hit dice per of creature at a cost of one hour per each undead affected. So whether you are trying to create an army or just a few select more interesting undead is all a matter of the necromancer deciding what approach to take.

Each tool is well thought out about what part of the anatomy it works and how it works and the benefit it gives. Some of the tools can be used on multiple undead and some become embedded within the undead being worked on. In this case, if the necromancer wants multiple undead to have the same effect, then multiple tools must be created. Each tool has some unique effect that allows the DM to craft interesting and more powerful undead that will certainly cause the average gamer to rethink their knowledge of how the undead work and place them on edge when meeting them, realizing that there is really something different about these creatures.

Knowing that I am planning to use undead and necromancers in my home game, this to me is a no brainer acquisition and will certainly provide my gaming group, all long time gamers, some with an almost encyclopedic knowledge of various editions of the game, with something to think about when encountering creatures modified with these tools.

I am going to have to give this one a 5 star rating based on what I think are new and interesting ways to spice up your undead. I can just hear the necromancer walking through the street with his cart, to gather new corpses and shouting “Bring out your dead!” The only other thing to add, is that I’d like to see either a sequel to this or an expansion with even more clever options. You won’t be disappointed.

First and foremost I’d like to say that this is my first ever review of any gaming product, so in no way will it come close to that of the most prolific reviewer Endzeitgeist and will likely ramble. Secondly, I received a complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review to be posted at Paizo, OBS and Amazon.

This GM Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing is a compilation of a lot of material that Raging Swan had already produced, collected and compiled and I presume updated with any noted errata and it appears in many places may have had new material added that was not previously available in any other Raging Swan product.

The entire PDF is 339 pages long, with about 6 or 7 pages of covers, OGL and Table of Contents leaving a whopping 330+ pages of content to work with and explore. The PDF is divided into 4 major sections, including Dungeon Design, Dungeon Dressing, Riddles and Treasure Hoards.

The Dungeon Design section is all geared around thinking about why a dungeon might exist, who built it, why they built it, purpose, design, layout and history. It gives the GM things to consider if they are designing their own dungeon or mega dungeon. It also includes the Do’s and more importantly the Don’ts in many cases.

The next section contains the bulk of the material and I believe is all culled from the entirety of the Dungeon Dressing Line. Any set of features or object that player’s might encounter in a dungeon, altars, archways, traps, doors, fountains, floors and ceilings. Each section has a table or set of tables that the DM can utilize to spice up their dungeon, their keep, or abandoned guardhouse or any other constructed feature. Each table typically contains a d100 worth of options to explore. Many sections have pre-constructed options that allow you to just plug a really great option directly into your constructed building/dungeon. Two sections that I found particularly useful was the section on illumination and how far many of the core spells and core equipment cast their light. Nice set of summary tables as well for how the spells work. The other one that I really enjoyed was the table for graffiti and junk and rubbish. Your player’s certainly aren’t the first ones to go exploring the depths of the dungeon’s, why wouldn’t previous adventurers left behind broken gear, notes for people coming after them and all manner of other detritus.

The next section is all about riddles, including guidelines for using them, placing them and designing them as well as many options pre-delivered from the ever classic walks on four legs in the morning, two at midday and three at night to riddles about ability types and different sources and types of riddles.

The final section is treasure hoards from CR1 to CR20 and an even dozen at each CR. Descriptions to each special item be it standard weapons, art works, gems and jewelry to magical weapons. Each item given description and characteristics to make the piece memorable for the characters and in many case, I thought, maybe a plot hook to find out why the object exists, was created, and maybe motivation to find the original source of the item.

Conclusion:
While I have not read every single page and every single table of descriptions, I feel pretty confident that I can say that this is an extremely handy guide for any DM to add color and flavor to their world and their creations. The only thing that would make this material any better is if there was an electronic solution to plug all this into and have it generate the output. I’m certainly adding it to my list of tools to use in adventure preparation. I give it full marks for usefulness, organization and downright great stuff.