When tyrants wish to silence troublemakers, it isn't enough just to kill the man—they have to kill his dreams as well. So the evil and oppressive hire Nix Ra Bael, the assassin of aspirations, to solve their problems with a bolt between the eyes. Struck blind and twisted by the failure of his quest for "ultimate truth", this quirky contract killer now thinks nothing of exterminating his victims and obliterating their legacies, since all existence is absurd and meaningless. In the starry-eyed realm of Dream, his is perhaps the most dangerous philosophy of all.
This product provides Game Masters with details on a soulless sharpshooter found amongst the Faces of the Tarnished Souk, ready for immediate use in any campaign—but especially for use within the Coliseum Morpheuon. Each entry features ingenious stat-blocks from multiple OGL sources, history, motivation, secrets, and insight into the NPC's most carefully guarded dreams, along with complete game statistics for low, middle, and high levels of play.
Within you will find: Nix Ra Bael, a killer of dreams and assassin of aspirations
Faces of the Tarnished Souk: Nix Ra Bael, Dreamkiller by Rite Publishing
This product is 12 pages long. It starts with a cover and credits. (2 pages)
Nix Ra Bael, Dreamkiller (7 pages)
It starts off with a bit of history about him, followed by some lore checks and advice on how to use him. After a page of this we get to the three stat blocks, with advice on tactics. The stat blocks are.
CR21 - blind oracle siphon drow noble gunslinger* (arbalester) 17
CR15 - blind oracle drow noble gunslinger* (arbalester) 14
CR10 - drow noble gunslinger* (arbalester) 10
The extra's include the Arbalester archetype (crossbow version of the gunslinger), 3 new weapons, 4 new magic items, and 2 new templates. Blind Oracle and Siphon.
It ends with a OGL and ads. (3 pages)
Closing thoughts. The art work is black and white and pretty good as a whole. Editing and format are ok, I noticed a few minor mistakes. He is a pretty interesting character with a good history and better personality. I am not completely sold on the Blind Oracle template though, neat idea though. Other than that and the editing/format errors it is a very well done product. If you are a fan of the series you will enough this one. So what's my rating? I am giving this one a 4 star review.
This installment of the FoTS-series is 12 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 2 pages advertisement, leaving 7 pages of content for the Dreamkiller, so let's check him out, shall we?
Following the format of the FoTS-series, we first get one page of fluff complete with dreamburning information and lore-section- character-wise, I can say that Nix Ra Bael is so incredibly cool, it almost hurts - a nihilist albino drow assassin, he is essentially an owner of his own, depressing theater, complete with a never-complete Beckett-like play in the making with a nice nod towards Lovecraft. A killer of not only entities, but also dreams, he makes for a formidable, intelligent foe:
His low-level incarnation is a CR 10 level 10 gunslinger, his CR 15 incarnation adds to that 4 levels as well as the blind oracle template and the final incarnation is CR 21 and adds the siphon creature template as well as more levels.
We get additional content, of course - the blind oracle template (CR +1) that lets you dabble in divination and the siphon creature template that lets you absorb energy, even kinetic one, to turn it against your foes. It is especially the latter template that is plain genius and makes Nix the cool, aloof killer he is. Additionally, we get two new weapons, the wrist-crossbow and the bladed tonfa, a new weapon quality specifically designed for siphoning creatures and 4 new magic items: The arsenal gloves (better gloves of storing) , the mask of sightless dreams (which improves its boons when worn by blind people) and the two legendary wrist crossbows bullseye and sniper that guarantee that Nix is a terribly deadly adversary indeed. Additionally, we get a new archetype that lets you salvage the gunslinger base-class even if you hate black powder, the arbalester, a specialist of all kinds of crossbows, adding yet another option to utilize the gunslinger in black powder-less campaigns and ensuring that Nix has a place in just about every setting.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are good, though not stellar: The upper-case "B"s behind some feats should be superscript. Layout adheres to the old, classic b/w-two-column RiP-standard and the b/w-artworks rock, especially for the low price. I love Nix Ra Bael - he is a sophisticated, sinister, nihilist with a twisted sense of humor and mechanically VERY smart - the siphon template, his battle-tactics and items all complement each other to create a devious, deadly foe with a unique fighting style. Character-wise, he is my favorite f the FoTS-characters yet. However, the editing glitches serve as a minor blemish to what would otherwise be the coolest of the series, on par with Belladonna, Gozutozawa and Arhanot - my final verdict will thus be 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5 for the purpose of this platform.
Is there ever going to be a compilation of Faces of the Tarnished? In PDF or Print? At this point, don't you have about 80-100 pages of material? OK, editing out the redundant stuff maybe 60-80, but still, this would make for a great book, even just as a higher-level NPC book, let alone an expansion for the Colloseum.
Is there ever going to be a compilation of Faces of the Tarnished? In PDF or Print? At this point, don't you have about 80-100 pages of material? OK, editing out the redundant stuff maybe 60-80, but still, this would make for a great book, even just as a higher-level NPC book, let alone an expansion for the Colloseum.
1. I don't comment on compilations of series.
2. The series only has 13 npcs (including this one) so far, I would need double that number at least before I would even consider it.
