The Amazing Races PDFs introduce new archetypes, feats, character traits, racial traits, and archetypes for the core, featured, and uncommon races described in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Advanced Race Guide. Every PDF contains two full pages of high quality content (no fluff or filler)!
Amazing Races: Humans! includes new racial feats, human character traits, and alternate racial traits for humans. In addition, this product features a new archetype for human fighters: the Siegemaster!
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So Abandoned Arts has this entire line of racial products. I'm a little wary of this sort of thing, honestly, because I don't think I've seen a racial product that I've truly loved yet but at a buck a PDF, I'll bite.
Crunch
From what I can see, the Amazing Races! formula seems to be two pages of crunch, including new feats, racial traits, race traits, and an archetype to cap it off. Just to remind folks, racial traits are the abilities you get for your racial starting package while race traits are part of the Advanced Player's Guide's character traits system. Out of these options, nothing looks out of the ordinary but at the same time nothing really stands out as being great design or a unique idea. The one option I actually hate is a feat that gives a human 2 skill points. Considering the Core Rulebook establishes that a hit point and a skill point are about equal in value via the Favored Class Bonus system, if the toughness feat is going to give you 20 hit points over the course of your adventuring career, a feat that does less than this for skill points is not a viable option. The race traits are forgettable, but the racial traits are pretty nifty, swapping out the skilled trait for some pretty well-considered benefits. Finally, the Fighter archetype found in this product, the Seigemaster, is a pretty sweet idea that I like a fair bit. 3.5 / 5 Stars
Flavor
So big-time warming, race stuff is particularly important to me. Of all the game mechanics in Pathfinder race is byfar the one that affects your roleplaying more than any other. Sure, you might have to roleplay a specific way thanks to being a Paladin or a Cavalier, but how two different races view a given edict or code of conduct can vary greatly, and for that reason race is probably the most important choice a good roleplayer makes when designing a character. And when you get right down to it, this product does NOT capture what it means to be human. Not even close.
As I mentioned before, few publishers get race products right, and part of the problem is that some races (especially the halfling and human) just don't have much to work with. But when you look at a feat or an archetype and say, "Okay, so why can't my kitsune/half-orc/tengu/merfolk/half-dragon octupus/whatever select this character option," you are doing some fundamentally wrong. The only Pathfinder archetype I have ever seen get racial products right is the Cavern Sniper fighter archetype from the Advanced Race Guide. The reason this archetype succeeded where almost all others failed is that unlike every other archetype in the Advanced Race Guide, there is no dissonance between the flavor and the game mechanics.
What does that mean? Put simply, when you have in your game rules that only members of a certain race can select a specific option, yet the mechanics of the option itself is broad enough that keeping it unique to a single race doesn't make sense, then you has a dissonance between crunch and flavor. Its like having crisp rice in your pudding; yeah, I like Rice Krispies and I like pudding, but putting them together is an awful idea. To show off an example from this book, let's look at the feat that grants 2 skill points. Skill points are a game mechanic that every single race has access to. All races can earn extra skill points from their favored class. And yet this product says that the act of having lots of skill points should be part of the human flavor simply because humans get bonus skill points. Almost every option in this product suffers from this dissonance; nothing in this book feels human, and that's honestly a product that Paizo's Advanced Race Guide had too. Another thing I hate is the Character Trait that uses the male pronoun to refer to a study of the arts. "As a young man, you were a favorite among your instructors." So a woman can't be a favored art student too? Little things like this add up to a very bizarre, unsatisfying flavor. That said, the racial traits are really good and fill in some neat gaps that Paizo hadn't covered yet. 2 / 5 Stars
Texture
Texture is the product's layout, grammar, and similar formatting. Honestly, I have to say that Abandoned Arts has a really good thing going for them in this product. I like the links to their Facebook page, I like the format, I like the minimalist style combined with a parchment feel. The bright reds give the product a unique identity. My only complaint is that space doesn't seem to be used very well on the second page, specifically on the Archetype section. I'm confident that several more character traits / racial traits could have been squeezed in if they went with a two-column style instead of a one-column style. 4 / 5 Stars.
Honestly, this product's 3 stars are on the lower end of the spectrum for me. If you couldn't figure it out from my review, I did not care for this product on the grounds of its flavor alone, which is a shame because much of the crunch really is good. I like the Seigemaster archetype; the problem is that it is not a human archetype. Most campaign worlds have dwarves as master seige engineers (see Warhammer Fantasty Battle) and the idea that only humans or dwarves can be master siege engineers is laughable. Now, if you are playing in a campaign setting where humans invented the first seige weapons and they haven't spread very far yet this is all well and good. But this is a Settings Neutral product; as a publisher you do not get to make the call what the status quo is in your world, and even if you go by Golarion, there is a high chance your work will end up dated or invalidated by Paizo eventually. Even Paizo shouldn't be publishing stuff that in the Advanced Race Guide because it makes assumptions about your world in a world neutral line. (Note: I am also against Paizo IP drops in the Core Rulebook line aside from the Iconic fiction between chapters.)
When you design something that you intend to restrict a single race, you need to not only make sure that it makes sense for the race flavor-wise, but also mechanics-wise. Saying, "Oh, hobgoblins are a cruel, brutal race that likes whips so we'll make them better at demoralizing foes with whips," is not a good design choice. Look at history; humans are perfectly capable of demoralizing foes with whips because the idea that hobgoblins do this is based on our prior knowledge about what real humans have actually done. Now, if you gave humans an ability that allowed them to reselect their human bonus feat as they leveled up in the same manner as a fighter retraining his combat feats, then that's perfectly fine because all of a sudden you're tying your design to something that you can be 100% sure that only the human has; a human bonus feat. This will make your design stronger because you can assure yourself that your mechanics make sense for your race's flavor while finding support in what the race can actually do.
This first installment of Abandoned Art's new product line is 4 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page SRD, two pages of content, so let's take a look!
Each of the issues is focused on a different race and this one provides us with 3 traits - +1 to saves vs. traps and environmental hazards, 1 skill point and one trait that grants +1 to deceive or request favors, the bonus doubled to +2 when dealing with humanoids. Humans may now also opt to replace their skilled racial trait with +2 to cha-based skills when interacting with indifferent, friendly or helpful creatures or alternatively, treat profession as a class skill with a bonus of +4 to skill checks. The latter seems slightly too high for my conservative tastes, but seeing how Craft is generally more useful than profession, I'm still fine with it.
Beyond these, we also get 5 new feats exclusively available to humans:
-Diligent professional: Roll twice when using craft or profession to earn money and take 10 to answer basic questions related to your chosen field of expertise.
-Human Spirit: Based on Defiant Luck and Surge of Success, this lets you recover all daily uses of defiant luck (and inexplicable luck, if you also have it) when rolling a natural 20 on a roll modified by Surge of Success. Since surge of success is already based on good luck, this feat offers powerful benefits - but at a very specific circumstance - 2 crits or 2 natural 20s in one round. A feat for gamblers, I guess, but none I particularly care about.
-Mortal Pride: You don't take a penalty to atk, saving throws and skill or ability-checks for being shaken, but without becoming immune to it.
-Skillful Study: +2 skill points. Boring.
-Who, me?- +4 on saves versus alignment-depending effects and spells. Slightly too powerful for my tastes.
The second page of the pdf features the Siegemaster-archetype for the fighter-class and I LOVE it - the archetype replaces weapon and armor training and bravery with a slew of abilities that makes sure he is a master of siege weapons and that his crew is more efficient. Leadership via Int instead of Cha also makes this more interesting - Great to see the imho much neglected siege weapons/warfare components feature more prominently, especially with the announced mass combat rules by Paizo making the option to run war-campaigns a much more distinct possibility.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice any significant glitches. Layout adheres to a 2-column, no-frills standard and the pdf has no bookmarks, but needs none at this length.
Honestly, the traits and feats of this installment left me personally rather cold, being a tad bit too specific or not falling 100% within my comfort-zone regarding their benefits - but the Siegemaster is a great idea and something that simply hasn't been done by anyone so far. (Though I'd allow the archetype for dwarves as well...) All in all - this was a mixed bag for me, though one that, at its fair price point, is a solid addition to one's array. Hence I'll settle for a final verdict of 3.5 stars, rounded down for the purpose of this platform UNLESS you plan a war-style campaign - then the siegemaster would make me round up for you.
Endzeitgeist: Thanks for the warm review, Thilo. Humans are, by necessity, a sort of "vanilla" and baseline race. Making humans interesting or exciting is tougher than doing the same for, say, goblins or drow or fox-people with nine magical tails, so I'm relieved to hear that you liked the Siegemaster so much. : )
Greg: Thanks for the purchase; I look forward to your e-mail!
I do have a quick question. Brilliant Leadership (7th lvl) replaces armor training 1 (3rd level), Armor training 2 is at level 7. My assumption is that this replaces the baseline of all armor training and armor mastery at 19th.
Since they are based on Armor Training 1 and 2, I at least assumed it did - good catch, though. While minor, I should have complained about that one. ;)
I do have a quick question. Brilliant Leadership (7th lvl) replaces armor training 1 (3rd level), Armor training 2 is at level 7. My assumption is that this replaces the baseline of all armor training and armor mastery at 19th.
Have I guessed correctly?
This is correct, although the text should probably clarify as such, just so there's no question. I'll see about clearing it up.
Endzeitgeist: Thanks for the warm review, Thilo. Humans are, by necessity, a sort of "vanilla" and baseline race. Making humans interesting or exciting is tougher than doing the same for, say, goblins or drow or fox-people with nine magical tails, so I'm relieved to hear that you liked the Siegemaster so much. : )
Greg: Thanks for the purchase; I look forward to your e-mail!
Thanks for your review, Alexander Augunas. Your ideas about what makes a racial ability synch flavor with crunch are very interesting. As you did observe, humans haven't got a lot to work with. Let me recommend to you our Amazing Races: Goblins! PDF. You might feel less of a dissonance, as you call it, between mechanics and crunch with a product centered around a race with a little more going for it in terms of racial flavor.
Actually, Amazing Races: Merfolk! might also appeal to you. I really like your review format, and the specificity of your reviews. I'd be happy to get a review copy of either product (or any other) to you for your review.
PS: Thanks for the high marks on "texture;" I'm proud of what we've been able to do with virtually no graphical budget. Whatever one says about the content, I think our products are some of the nicest-looking out there. It's nice when someone notices the little stuff. ; )
