"It's simple: your cargo or your life. I know which one is worth more to me."
In Dream, the vast and volatile Slumbering Sea stretches out past the edges of infinity—a gateway to impossible adventure, or a realm of lethal insanity more dangerous than any of its inhabitants. Consider, then, what strange and powerful beings might sail that sea for their leisure and profit. And then consider what kind of stupendously formidable pirate might prey on them.
This product provides Game Masters with details on a skull-crushing swashbuckler 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: Dread Captain Miraxa, a priestess of plunder on an ocean of wonder
For the sake of full disclosure: I received a free copy of this product in exchange for promising to write a review.
Dread Captian Miraxa: Queen of the Slumbering Sea
This is an 18-page black-and-white supplement. It presents the title NPC at three different challenge ratings: CR 21, CR 14, and CR 7. It also includes several additional items in support of the character: A new race (the Draken), complete with full alternate favored class options; 5 character archetypes; 9 feats (most of which are "horrifically overpowered" feats, which are essentially monster templates); and 4 magic items (one of which is presented in standard, lesser, and greater versions).
I chose this character as a potential additional NPC for my Skull and Shackles game. I did not realize that the character was going to be built around the "horrifically overpowered feats," which kind of rub me the wrong way. As monster templates, I can see their value, but I usually prefer my NPCs to be built around normal class options. I was also not that big a fan of the new Draken race.
Those complaints aside, the character's background and personality are very interesting. I can very much envision how to run this character if I chose to introduce her in my campaign. However, there's enough about the design philosophy of this character that doesn't sit well with me that I'd end up redesigning her significantly-- and if I'm going to do that, I might as well design my own character.
Overall-- interesting character that relies on some new rules I'm not fully on board with. This character would not easily plug into my game, but would do well in a game whose GM has more of an "anything goes" attitude that I do.
Overall: If you're looking for a very unusual pirate captain for your game, you're not going find one that's much more unusual.
Good overall, but doesn't knock my socks off.
3 stars.
V.2.0 now with signature weapon - very cool character!
This installment of the FoTS-series is 18 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages of advertisement and 1 page SRD, leaving 13 pages of content, so let's check this out!
All right, as per my standard for reviews of the FoTS-series, I'm first going to take a look at the basic additional crunch: We get the determination armor quality, the smashing weapon quality, 3 versions of the magical eyepatch of awareness and an enchanted spyglass. Two traits are also part of the deal, as are 9 feats, which also show that the character will be a deadly challenge for all but the best of PCs - why? Much like the last FoTS-installment, Miraxa's build utilizes "horrifically overpowered" feats from SGG's Guide, making her not only a gestalt, but also a master of skills and capable of using magic. Miraxa also utilizes multiple archetypes: Two generic ones, the physical exemplar and the spellblaze, which could be applied to any class, and we also get the Titan Mauler and the Sea Reaver archetype for the barbarian and the pirate archetype for the rogue.
If the cover was not ample clue for you, Miraxa is not a regular humanoid, but rather belongs to the race of the draken, a true-breeding race born from half-dragons - the race is btw. fully detailed and gets 2 to Str and Con, -2 to Cha, dark and low-light vision, 2 to all saves, natural weapons and a bonus on linguistic checks. They also come with 7 alternate racial traits as well as favored class options for all Paizo-base-classes but ninja and samurai and a racial feat that takes one of your characteristics and improves it, granting you for example vestigial wings/improving them to functioning ones etc. I like the race per se, but it should not be used for PCs - Draken are more powerful than the standard races. The entry also misses the age, height and weight tables necessary for character creation.
Onwards to Miraxa: The corsair's least powerful CR 7 incarnation already utilizes 3 HO-feats, which with her enhanced stats, increase her CR by 3. Much like the last FoTS-installment, these changes are transparent and make it rather easy to analyze how a given incarnation was built. Her CR 14 mid-level incarnation already sees her CR improved by 5 via these additional tools and has her already looking like a dreadful foe to behold, though her CR 21 high-level incarnation, including her deadly Morningstar Keel Breaker - where unfortunately I have a gripe - the stats of her morningstar are omitted, though I gather it's supposed to have the new smashing quality.
Her character, dreamburning information also make a nice twist - while she is hardened and tough , she also has a very good motivation - she is actually with child and hell hath no fury like a mother's! She could be both a deadly foe or an awkward ally - from villain to ally, she is very versatile in both character and build.
And then there's the coolest bit of additional content - the Impending Doom, a mithral-plated dreadnought with multiple cannons and multiple means of propulsion as well as deadly siege engine-class cannons - fully stated and featuring advancement options for the vessel. Great to see these stats supplement the concept of a corsair queen!
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are very good, though the omission of Miraxa's signature weapon irks me. Layout adheres to RiP's classic b/w-2-column standard and the pdf comes with fitting pieces of stock art as well as bookmarks. I'm a big fan of Miraxa as a character and her build is solid to say the least - she's a complex, cool, versatile and deadly fighter and her vessel is the icing on the cake (though I would have loved ships for her lesser incarnations as well). Usually, she would be a supreme candidate for 5 stars, but the lack of stats for her signature weapon is a major bummer for me. Thus, due to the lack of the weapon's stats, I'll be forced to consider her as "only" a good buy, resulting in a final verdict of 4 stars.
EDIT: The signature weapon has been added to V.2 - 1 star!
A note for those getting this: Yes, Her signature weapon somehow got lost between turnover for additional flavor and final publication. It happens and will be fixed.
