Call to Arms: Ceremonial Masks (PFRPG) PDF

This installment of the Call to Arms-series clocks in at 21 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page SRD, 1 page advertisement leaving us with 16 pages of content, so let's take a look!

This installment of the series begins with a nice, brief rundown of ceremonial masks within the context of our real world history, from Africa to Egypt, Asia, Oceania and all the other parts of this little ball of dirt we call home. The first array of masks presented here begin with regular masks and their masterwork equivalent before introducing a selection of masks that range from facilitating the binding of outsiders to supplementing arcane spell duel tricks or reduced ritual costs. Similarly, monster masks for theater performances are increased in their value by adding mechanical relevance to those wearing them.

Beyond the assortment of mundane masks, though, the pdf also features an array of magical ceremonial masks, 20 to be more precise - and they range in price from 4K to 90K gold. The first, the magical beast mask that conveys a hunter's animal focus to the wearer, though the wording could be more precise in stating that the animal focus is equal to the mask's features - the connection is RAW not explicit. The exorcist's mask may expel creatures...if they fail a DC 11 save...which is pretty easy, considering how most possessing creatures are pretty strong and tend to have good Will-saves. Not the most impressive of items and probably would have been served better via a scaling DC. Ghost Masks let you see the invisible and ethereal. The two healing masks increase base dice-sizes of cure spells and net a bonus to Heal checks and CLs when casting neutralize poison or remove disease (plus remove curse for greater ones...). The greater one sports a minor deviation from the default rules-language conventions, when channel energy can be expended to add "The result" to her CL check against the DC of the affliction. Result of what? The amount healed? WTF? That could even heal divine curses! Oo

The two variants of the masks of giants grant numerical bonuses and some limited special monster abilities associated with the giants chosen. Okay, but not brilliant. The mask of cosmic horror is underpirced slightly, offering 3/day 100-ft. save or suck confusion to all looking. I assume this activation follows default rules, but an action would have been appreciated still. Same goes for the mask of the krenshar, which is the weaker fear-based variant o the concept. The mask of the skull is evocative - it represents a skull flying to a target...and the target touched (50 ft. range) is finger of death'd. The range is pretty strong, but 1/day use is a balancing component alongside the minimum duration worn to activate, which prevents mask circling. It may be a spell in a can...but it is one with an interesting variation. Once again, no activation action, though. Which becomes weird, considering that the medusa mask does sport an activation action. Necromancer's masks let you shift death knell to allied undead. Unfortunately, I am not sure how the secondary boon is supposed to work:"If the wearer immediately casts animate dead, create undead or create greater undead on the subject creature after killing it, he loses all benefits of the death knell spell but the target permanently gains the advanced creature template." I get what this is supposed to do - but what does "immediately" mean? Within the round? Is the death knell still active, but needs to run its course sans benefits? No clue.

The ritual mask similarly feels a bit confused - the idea is that the mask lets you prolong casting time for more power: "By doubling casting time, the wearer may add +1 to the caster level, the spell, or to the level of the spell for purposes of applying a metamagic feat he knows." Ähem...two out of these are actually penalties, considering that numerical scaling is not modified by increased spell levels, only the save DC. I honestly don't get how this one's supposed to work, probably also because the numbers of the example are faulty....either that, or the sentence structure is wrong. The transference of non-instantaneous spell effects or magic item benefits to nearby allies via spellmasks is btw. a can of worms I'd strongly suggest not opening; targets of spells are crucial components of the balancing of the like and many a magic item actually has its bonus/slot/minimum wearing time for a reason. This breaks the system. That being said, there are some gems herein - what about masks you can affix to walls that then proceed to swallow AoE effects, converting them to luck for the person who hung it on the wall? Pretty cool! Similarly, masks radiating auras that cause vulnerability for designated foes make sense and work neatly! The tranquility masks can be used to quench haunts. Witch masks, even at 60 K, are way OP - as a move action, you can extend durations or round-duration-spells by 1 round. No limit. Not getting near my game, even before the modified mirror image effect add further value here.

The pdf also features 3 cool cursed masks and the intelligent mask that was created out of the attempt of dread Sabelest Anahm's attempt at lich-ascendence, providing the undead anatomy tricks as well as undead creation. The mythic Anubis mask grows the wearer as enlarge person and nets undeath to death 1/day. Mythic beings that also expend mythic power as part of channel energy to add up to tier number of d6s to the ability and prevent them from becoming undead. The artifact provided would be the mask of the outsiders, which allows for control over outsiders, trap the soul outsiders in the mask and hijack subtype traits of outsiders thus trapped, but at the cost of a negative level for the outsider - and ultimately, potentially, destruction. But what is the DC for the outsdider to get rid of the negative level? The trap the soul DC 26 or the control summoned creature DC 22 ability? I assume the former, but am not sure.

The pdf concludes with the masked shaman archetype for the shaman class, who replaces spirit animal with mask that provides a linear progression of spells granted by the mask 1/day each. Also, while wearing the mask, the spirit animal's granted power can be applied to the shaman, activated as a swift action for class level minutes, to be spent in 1-minute increments. A cool engine tweak that plays sufficiently differently.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are good on a formal level, though on a rules level, the pdf could be slightly more precise. Layout adheres to Fat Goblin Games' two-column full-color standard and the pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience. Artworks are neat and full color.

Jacob W. Michaels' masks aren't a bad installment of the series and in fact contain some gems - I like the archetype and the wall masks in particular. I am not sold on the pricing of quite a few of them, though and for my taste, there are slightly too much spells in a can...though, to be frank, they at least do interesting things to modify them. Still, this does have some rough edges. I can't go higher than 3.5 stars, rounded down to 3 for the purpose of this platform.

Endzeitgeist out.

This is a review for 'Call to Arms: Ceremonial Masks', a supplement by Fat Goblion Games. I'm not a native speaker (I'm German), so I may have fumbled my language skill checks from time to time. Give me a note if I wrote something wrong and I'll try to make myself more clear.

Call to Arms: Ceremonial Masks is about 16 pages long with some nice pics (and a cover, OGL and so on). Of those 16 pages, 1 page is a short story and 3 pages are about masks in real history. It is, you guessed it, all about masks, and we are presented with 11 mundane, 20 magical, 3 cursed, 1 intelligent, 1 mythic and 1 artifact ceremonial mask. Toward the numbers I have to add that the mythic mask has a nice non-mythic part, but even the mythic part is harmless enough to be useful in a non-mythic campaign without any correction. The artifact mask isn't really useable for predominantly good parties.

In addition we get one new archetype, the Masked Shaman, who is unsurprisingly a shaman variant. Essentially it replaces the spirit animal with a bonded item, which, again unsurprisingly for this supplement, is a mask.

The mundane masks presented are all nice. For a few coins they give a few boons which tend to be cornercase of course, but I like items that are useable early on in the game where they tend to enhance characters in roleplaying. Well done, especially the Devotee Mask, which enhances the too-much ignored Deiific Obedience and the Holy/Unholy Mask, which doubles as a holy symbol – simple mechanics but nice ideas, all of them fitting in less then 2 pages!

The magical masks are obviously the main part of the supplement, ranging in price from 4,000 to 90,000 gp.

Sometimes the wording isn't to clear, I assume the Greater Healing Mask doesn't allow the normal healing effects of Channel Energy in addition to enhancing neutralize poison and the other spells, but I'm not sure.

There are also masks which are to strong for my taste (and their price tag). The Mask of Cosmic Horrors seems underprized at 16,800 gp, allowing its user 3/day confusion for 1d6 rounds for everyone looking in 100 feet, even with its doable Will save. The (in my eyes very strong) Mask of the Skull from the Pathfinder RPG Core book is added here too.

Aside from this, most masks are nice and well done, covering a vast area of effects. I especially like the Witch Mask, which allows you to be a (limited) one-PC-coven and also let you use magic related teamwork feats like Shielded Caster with yourself. That opens up some nice possibilities which are mostly unuseable outside of a witch-only party.

The Mask of the Necromancer is pure gold, even if the picture for it doesn't resemble the description at all. Aside from this minor point, its an intelligent mask with a purpose and the means to achieve it, which can aid the user and endanger it also, forcing the user to walk a narrow path. I like the roleplaying potential of this item in good parties when morals and greed will undoubtly collide sooner or later. I'll add this item to my current campaign.

One last thing to know about this supplement: While most of the mask do use the head slots (some are slotless), you can change most of them at will (some are activated only after being worn for a time), so you don't have to worry about not being able to use more than one of these goodies for your favorite character. The temple mask for example, which has a bane effect like the weapon enhancement, can even be put on a pole or wall and still works with its cone-effect.

Conclusion:
While I'm not convinced by the archtype and some of the wordings the supplement has some nice mundane and magic items. Aside from the Mask of the Necromancer and the Witch Mask I didn't see anything great, but almost everything is solid, useful and well thought out.
All in all I'll give this supplement 3.5 out of 5 stars. If you like flavor like I do with masks hanging on temple walls and such you may round this up, if you are into crunch only you may want to round that down.

Have fun!