This book is a summoner's best friend! Includes a MASSIVE list of additional creatures that can be summoned by the various summon spells. Adds quite a few new templates, and spells/feats that lets you apply them on already existing summon monster spells, adds lots of archetypes for classes to specialize more on summoning creatures, even for classes you wouldn't expect. Adds sever archetypes for Summoners, both unchained and normal, likely will be PFS legal. Overall I cannot believe how much they managed to cram into this book, not all of it will apply to every character, but critical for any GM, and useful for anyone who will be summoning anything. Ever.
As suggested by the name, this book introduces several feats, and archetypes that expands on the leadership concept. Not likely to show any promise in PFS games, EXCEPT FOR THE BEST CHANNELLING FEAT SINCE SElECTIVE CHANNELLING; but for homegames I expect that this can provide a way to improve the world's economy, or allow options to players to play in small er groups.
I GMed this for my regular group of 6 players, low tier.
Maps: The maps for this module are all very straightforward and easy to draw, I could easily understand where everything was, and had no difficulty transcribing it so my players could also understand.
Gameplay: There is a unique element in this one, which I won't spoil, but my players absolutely loved it! We'll be talking about that one for a while I think. Otherwise, the final fight was very fun, and well done; though I could see some parties having difficulty, which is a good thing I think.
Time: I tend to run almost every game long, whereas I finished this one in almost exactly 4 Hours, there was very little researching of obscure rules, and the gameplay was seamless, as the players understood where they needed to go next, and did so.
Monsters: The statistics for the monsters were in the back, though for the low-tier I didn't really need them.
Prep time: I had a very small window to prepare this scenario, but it made no difference, everything is setup so well, I could have run it dry.
I ran this for a table of 7; no real choice. 5 of which were very experienced, 2 of which were new. I really enjoyed reading the backstory and was happy my players had a chance to roleplay out most of it, though they could have very easily missed it all. This scenario was easy to prepare, with most of the monster statblocks at the back, as well as unlabeled maps if I chose to run this online. IThTheherI would however recommend GMs read the room descriptions carefully, as well as memorizing page 460 of the core rulebook. There were several ways each encounter could have been run which I'm sure will make the next time I run this vastly different. The only thing holding this back is the map. The map is overly complicated, and provides nothing to the story, additionally larger groups get bodyblocked a lot, which isn'tisn't the worst thing in the world, but my inexperienced players felt useless during combat. Completion time
Was 5 hours.
I ran this for a group of 5 players at tier 1-2, mostly level 2. The scenario really only thing that can be done in each area, all of which must be done in the specific order. It did keep my players interested, the lack of tactics allowed me to do things that actually made sense for the monsters, so it was more realistic.
Combat wise however, I feel that the encounters at the beginning were far too easy, and could be completed by a party of 2 players realistically..
I should also add that from a GM perspective there were some oddities, It was great that the creature stats were included in the back, made combat a breeze, it was odd though that there was one single encounter where the monster wasn't in the back of the scenario, causing me to look it up unexpectantly mid-fight. Additionally, there were stats for a creature that wasn't even included in the scenario, just happened to be on the same page of the bestiary. Slightly confusing as I thought I had overlooked an encounter.
