Pathways #11 (PFRPG) PDF

Weighing in at 46 pages the latest installment of Pathways page breakdown is as follows
Ads – 18 pages
Opening letter – 1 page
Reviews – 8 pages
Full Page Art – 1 page
20 Questions – 4 pages
leaving us with 14 pages for new material

Contained within that new material are such treats as:
Poison Dragon Creature – a CR+2 template for turning your dragons into an ecological nightmare, all thanks to the corrupting hands of Oni.
I thought at first that the CR20 Dragon from the cover was our example creature using the previously mentioned template, but after reading her statblock, I find nothing of the template present. I also have to question the formatting here, as the entire Tactics section of this dragon (known as The Empress of Bitter Flame) seems to actually be for a wolf known as Jaws of Winter.

With The Path of Destruction we are given a glimpse into the #30 Haunts for Kaiden in a pair of Oni. T.H. Gulliver paints a captivating story, and leaves one wanting to get their hands on this book.

Next up we have Razlynvuren, a CR16 crystal dragon and his lair. Lord of the Earth Node is a random encounter with a fully fleshed stablock and lair presented by Creighton Broadhurst of Raging Swan as a sample of what to expect from his Caves & Caverns PDF.

Will McCardell treats us to not only a few items left out of his The Secrets of Forgotten Magic Items, but three new items as well in the article entitled Left Behind Forgotten Magic Items. The Wyrne Scrolls have already found a place within my home campaign, and were embraced by the playgroup instantly. Scrolls with charges, genius. We're also given alternate rules for the Cruth Galdr runes from how they are presented within the final product. For the new items we are given a new rune, a new dweomer sigil scroll, and an enchanted flask. All well presented and well written items.

Who Watches the Night Haunts introduces us to a vigilante organization through 10 different hooks. Written by Rob Manning to further enhance the Evocative City Setting, these 10 hooks would make it very easy to integrate the dealings of the Night Haunts into the lives of a playgroup.

20 Questions with Jonathan McAnulty interviewed by Steven D. Russell. Jonathan discusses several topics including what he's currently working on, how he got started, and where he's heading next.

The issue closes out with Reviews from both Shane O'Conner and this forums own Endzeitgeist.

Pathways is filled, issue after issue, with solid additions to the game. Templates, NPC's, Encounters, Items, all free. Add to that the previews into products, artwork from various artists, reviews from respected industry reviewers, and interviews with game designers, again, all for free. How can you not be already downloading this?

5 stars

This installment of Rite Publishing's free e-zine is 46 pages long, 1 page front cover, 18 pages of ads and 1 page SRD, leaving, 26 pages of content - so let's check it out!

After the by now obligatory introduction by David Paul, we are introduced to this issue's first bit of crunch, the Cr+2 Poison Dragon template, a template for dragons to recreate dragons that pollute and corrupt the land by their mere presence, in the vain of e.g. the Asian Poison Dragons of 3.5 of old. Neat template that comes with a whopping CR 20 sample dragon which unfortunately lacks the IC-narrative common with many of the templated creatures in Pathways.

Next up is a sneak peak of T.H. Gulliver, master of haunts, to his upcoming 30 Haunts for Kaidan, elaborating on the rather interesting background we'll have to expect, but read for yourself!

Creighton Broadhurst, mastermind of Raging Swan Press, provides us with a sample encounter against the Cr 16 Crystal Dragon in his earth node - a well-made encounter and if you're looking for more, think about checking out Caves & Caverns.

Will McCardell, also known as Cheapy on teh Paizoboards, provides us with expansions to his excellent "Secrets of Forgotten magic Items" by providing us with Wyrne Scrolls, a type of scrolls that enable you to sacrifice spell-slots to cast the spell contained on the scroll. The item does come with a reason why the item was cut, helping you to decide whether to integrate the item-class or not. We also get an alternative version of Cruth Galdr runes, a new rune, a new flask and a new dweomer sigil scroll - excellent, as I want to see more of them. Perhaps 101 Cruth Galdr runes?

Rob Manning introduced us to the Night Haunts, a benign carnivalesque secret police in the latest ECS and provides us with 10 adventure hooks including a secret/twist and an intervention of the Night Haunts - nice supplemental material for his best contribution to the ECS-series yet.

Next up is an interview with Jonathan McAnulty, who, alongside Steven D. Russell, was the designer that made my late joining of the Coliseum Morpheuon patronage project as enjoyable as it was (not to start with Kaidan...) and started the almost compulsive joining of patronage projects I've since went through. The interview is informative and spotlights a rather talented author of whom we're sure to read more in the future.

Next up are some reviews of the best products 3pp's have to offer at the moment by review-legend Shane O'Connor and some humble yours truly.

Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch - while the latest Pathways-issues sometimes had a couple of typos, this one seems ( at least to my inspection) mostly free of relics and the like. Layout adheres to the classic 2-column standard and the artworks are neat, although I consider the Eastern Dragon artwork to be slightly less appealing than the ones from the latest installments. The pdf unfortunately has no bookmarks. Content-wise, my favorite contributions would be T.H. Gulliver's fluffy sneak-peak, which made me anticipate Kaidanese haunts even more and Will McCardell's expansion of his stellar forgotten magic items. Best of all, this pdf is FREE. Starting to sound like a broken record, but nevertheless - how do you complain about a free, high quality labor of love? The answer is, you don't and thus I'll settle for a final verdict of 5 stars.

Endzeitgeist out.