101 Hazards and Disasters gives you—yes, you guessed it—101 new hazards and disasters that will help make encounters in your game truly perilous.
From treacherous sites touched by powerful deities, to new unstable mosses, molds, and fungi that can grow at frightening speeds; to forbidden crystals that drive men mad, to horrific disasters like exploding lakes, tropical cyclones, and meteoric sites. 101 Hazards and Disasters brings a host of new options and risks to the lives of player characters.
Wholly compatible with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, 101 Hazards and Disasters is designed so that hazards have variable challenge ratings to help suit the need of campaigns at any level of play. Almost every new hazard has a way to identify it before a PC becomes embroiled in its dangers. Along with ways to overcome, destroy or bypass these perils.
Get yours now and make your campaign hazardous.
Author: Steven D. Russell Cover Illustration: Emma Lazauski Pages : 38
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I have been looking for a book like this for eons!. My DM Used a couple of the hazards last game and wow, mind blowing, so different and refreshing. I wish more campaigns I play feature dangers like the one in this book.
This is an incredible well designed book and is worth every penny, seriously, Seriously.
Every DM should own this stellar example of excellent design
This pdf is 43 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 2 pages advertisement, leaving 38 pages of content for the new complications to any Pc's life.
Before I go on to review this pdf, I want to tell you a little story - In my current campaign (which has been going for 8 years now), one of my characters had found a pot of clay in an abandoned storage room and had no idea what was inside. Said character carried around the pot for 2 years IRL, vowing that the last thing he'd do would be to unleash the pot. When his final reckoning dawned (against one of Mishka's Wolfspidergenerals), he threw the pot and my group erupted in laughter. Why? Well, turns out the pote contained a ultra-virulent strain of green slime. Suffice to say, the character died, but the green-slime pot will forever be a part of our annals. Another iconic story had my PCsuse brown mold to create a kind of magical freezer and transport spoiling goods, thus sabotaging the trade empire of a major organization that sought to kill them and made some decadent noble allies in the process.
What I'm trying to illustrate here is, that similar to e.g. haunts, hazards are not necessarily simple challenges to overcome, but actually plants, mold, crystals and the like do A LOT of mostly unrecognized work to make a campaign setting feel different from our world, feel organic, strange and magical. And yet, there is a sad lack of supplements to expand these little factors and make them feature in your campaign. At the top of my hand, I could mention "Two Dozen Plants" and similar files by LPJr Design, but that's about it. In this vacuum, Rite Publishing's mastermind Steven D. Russell throws 101 Hazards and Disasters. A quick read immediately shows us some very smart design decisions: Almost each of the hazards herein comes in multiple iterations, i.e. versions for different CRs. Even better, many of the hazards have a "done the wrong thing"-consequence - similar to growing brown mold subjected to fire, several (though by far not all) of the hazards have similar ways for the uninitiated to make them worse. We do get a plethora of slimes, btw. - for example one that will superheat and destroy equipment and melt full plates on their owners. There are vast amounts of extremely cool plants, for example ones producing rapture-like trances or even ghost plants that rip the soul from those passing their glades.
Of course, the pdf not only includes plants, but we also get locations tainted by the seven deadly sins, divine catastrophes and crystals. I see you yawning at crystals, but hear me out - there is one that actually amplifies sound to devastating levels when subjected to it. And there are crystals that may age you to venerable - which, as a nice nod, e.g. Time Thieves and Time Wardens can counter via spending time motes. It's little additional details like this that not only showcase great collaboration between 3pps, but make the respective supplements get more value. Have I mentioned carbon-monoxide bubbles rising from lakes to suffocate life? And then there is a new way to approach madness if you don't want to include a full-blown new system - essentially, the idea is that madness works much like other afflictions, but is rather hard to get rid of. Neat!
This is not where the pdf has its sole focus, though: There also are rather big disasters/problems that contain more complications and could be considered encounters or even location templates in and of themselves: Burning buildings (including smoke, heat, fire walls etc. and even alchemical explosions), conveyor-belts of doom (with rock crushers, steam, etc.) and e.g. meteoroid-impacts are covered, the latter of which some of you might know from 3.5's excellent "When the Sky falls"-event book by Bruce R. Cordell, one of my 3.5-all time favorite books. Have I mentioned rules for standing, fighting (and falling off) carriages, howler- or dire cheetah-drawn carriages and even trains?
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are very good, I only noticed two minor glitches, none of which impeded my ability to understand the content. Layout adheres to a 2-column, full-color standard. The pdf comes with full bookmarks.
Don't be fooled by the rather bland front cover - this pdf is the best start into the new year a reviewer like yours truly could ask for - this installment of the 101-series is on par, perhaps even superior in quality and usability with 101 New Skill Uses! The new hazards are awesome, imaginative and cleverly designed that I was smiling to myself almost all the time. From iconic plants and small hazards to the stellar, complex disasters and environmental complications like the aforementioned battle of a carriage/train-roof or burning buildings make this pdf an instant-classic that should be a part of ANY PFRPG-GM's library.
If you're a player and look for a present for your GM, BUY THIS. If you're a GM looking to recapture the magic of encountering your first green slime, brown mold etc. - BUY THIS.
Seriously, this is one excellent, stellar pdf that is a hot candidate for my "Top 2012-list", even now! All the potential ideas included herein make a campaign more detailed, challenging and organic. We need more of the ilk and I hope we'll get another 101 Hazards and Disasters soon. My final verdict? 5 Stars, Endzeitgeist seal of approval.
I think 101 Hazards and Disasters is a really good book. The different hazards are greatly varied in severity and theme, they are clearly defined, and the CR levels seems to be right on the mark.
There are places touched by gods, dangerous fauna, natural disasters, parasites, environmental hazards and many more. I think these are great and dangerous challenges which could be a nice change from combat encounters, or could bring an additional complication.
The difficulties are raging from CR 1/2 up to CR 25, and many of them has a varied CR to adjust to different player groups.
You may read my full review here :
http://rpg.org/review-101-hazards-and-disasters/
For the #30 series, you could put something together with interesting things that could be made via craft skills (e.g. alchemical concoctions, mundane smithed dungeoneering aids like a jack to hoist lowering stone doors and whatnot, add-ons for the gear of martial characters--a 'scroll holder' for a tower shield user to read off of, a quick-draw potion bandolier, etc.)
For the 101 series, some suggestions I'd offer might be straightforward like 101 character background traits or the like--or more oddball things such as 101 camp followers (quirky or contingent support or non-combat flavor npcs, wagoneers, aspiring squires, etc.) or 101 faction assigments, 101 sites / components for kingdom building and so on.
Either way, snagging this one for sure--it's a terribly addictive line ;)
For the #30 series, you could put something together with interesting things that could be made via craft skills (e.g. alchemical concoctions, mundane smithed dungeoneering aids like a jack to hoist lowering stone doors and whatnot, add-ons for the gear of martial characters--a 'scroll holder' for a tower shield user to read off of, a quick-draw potion bandolier, etc.)
For the 101 series, some suggestions I'd offer might be straightforward like 101 character background traits or the like--or more oddball things such as 101 camp followers (quirky or contingent support or non-combat flavor npcs, wagoneers, aspiring squires, etc.) or 101 faction assigments, 101 sites / components for kingdom building and so on.
Either way, snagging this one for sure--it's a terribly addictive line ;)
Going with 101 Pirates and Privateer traits for the February release.
Bought it, barely read it, already considering it a classic.
Key selling points:
- scalable challenges,
- imaginative hazards,
- classic, oh so classic themes - cursed places, natural hazards, stuff you need to think through instead of blasting it,
- advice on how to resolve problems (so that you don't TPK your players by accident)
No time to post a review - that requires more in-depth reading. Suffice to stay I'm putting several thingies into my campaign right now.
Regards,
Ruemere
PS. 101 things ideas to consider:
- 101 *** at sea.
- 101 dark ages/renessaince events to change your world (like Guttenberg Press, guillotine, black death epidemic, famine and possible causes like loss of crops, overly harsh taxes, Mongol hordes)
- 101 days in a life of a kingdom
- 101 NPCs to meet at fair (no statblock, just a name and a hook or tale to tell or ware to sell)
- 101 forbidden texts to place in wizards' library (a title, a subject and possible boon or curse to befall the reader)
Watching these roll off the press every day made me glad to be a 101 subscriber. Possibly my favourite 101 to date - so many are crying out to be dropped into my campaign instead of yet another monster.
Real men never allow suspicious grammar stand in the way of their libido!
Still, for your comfort I'm going to make it easier for you:
'101 '(.)+' at sea'
(I know that regular expression purists are going to have a field day with this)
I picked up the 101 Hazards and Disasters recently and I can not wait to add this to my current Kingmaker campaign. Hazards are fun twists that challenge characters but they tend fizzle out as characters reach higher levels. This product certainly can keep a mid and higher level part challenged. Fun
I picked up the 101 Hazards and Disasters recently and I can not wait to add this to my current Kingmaker campaign. Hazards are fun twists that challenge characters but they tend fizzle out as characters reach higher levels. This product certainly can keep a mid and higher level part challenged. Fun
That was one of my intitial design goals to make the product fun for all levels of play, rather than just the low levels :)
The description for Lifespark Site has a number of typos:
1) In paragraph 2 sentence one, the phrase "sometimes a idol" should read "sometimes an idol."
2) The sentence "Every living creature possesses in some part strains of a sorceress bloodline , " cuts off with no conclusion, and has a space-comma-space rather than a period at the end. Also, is that "sorceress" or "sorcerous"?
3) The text reads "If a creature with a Charisma score enters the site animates the largest object it can affect in the site as animate object with a caster level equal to the creature’s Charisma Score."
This has multiple problems. First, there are two verbs, "enters" and "animates". The subject of "enters" is "a creature with a Charisma score", but "animates" seems to lack a subject. Is it the site doing the animating? The creature? The action of the sentence is unclear.
Second, is there a threshold of some kind missing here? It sounds like the CHA mod of a creature entering the area is used as the CL of an Animate Objects effect. So ... what happens if a dwarf with a CHA modifier of -1 enters the site alone? Does the animation fail to happen, because the duration of the spell is rounds per level and -1 is less than 0? What happens if the highest charisma modifier in a group of creatures is still not enough to animate an object the size of the usual target, such as the idol from the example?
Third, is this limited to sophonts? What if the party sends in the wizard's familiar to scout the area? How about an animal companion? Both have Charisma scores. Does that trigger the effect? I'm not aware of any creatures in Pathfinder that lack charisma scores, PC, NPC, monster or otherwise. Is the effect going to be triggered each day when a bird flies through the area? What if there's an ant hive in the bounds?
Generally liking this, but that particular entry looks like it's suffering from a case of revision-itis.
Lifespark Site (CR Varies)
This location has been touched by the deity or ethos associated with artifice. A creature can identify this hazard with a successful Knowledge (religion) check, DC 25.
Once per day this place taps into the sorcerous power of a creature within its site to animate the largest object within the confines of the site, sometimes an idol within the site, other times something that has been broughtwithin the site.
Every living creature possesses in some part strains of a sorceress bloodline , If a creature with a Charisma score enters the site, this creature's untapped sorcerous bloodline animates the largest object it can affect in the site as animate object with a caster level equal to the creature’s Charisma Score.
The animate object spell can be dispelled.
This site can only be destroyed by a miracle or properly worded wish spell cast at its central location.
The Challenge Rating of this hazard is equal to animated
object’s Challenge Rating.
Quote:
Is it the site doing the animating? The creature? The action of the sentence is unclear.
The site is tapping into the creatures untapped sorcerous power to animate the object
When a creature enters its
Quote:
Second, is there a threshold of some kind missing here? It sounds like the CHA mod of a creature entering the area is used as the CL of an Animate Objects effect.
it is not its Cha modifier, it is its Charisma SCORE, there is no threshold other than having a Charisma Score, it triggered by the first creature to enter the site each day.
Quote:
Third, is this limited to sophonts? ... Does that trigger the effect?
Yes if the first creature to enter has a Charisma Score it triggers. If that is an ant with a Cha of 1 it triggers if its the really evil sword you barbarian cast away, it does not matter.
I am more about GM adjudication though, one could easily rule that because its a 6th level spell one needs a Cha of 16 to trigger it, but that's not how I wrote it.
