Anthropomorphic animal races have been a staple of fantasy gaming for decades, and Pathfinder Player Companion: Blood of the Beast presents all the tools you need to play members of some the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game's most iconic bestial races. Packed full of character options for members of all classes, as well as some that members of other races can adopt, Blood of the Beast is sure to spice up any campaign!
Inside this book, you'll find:
New class archetypes including the tengu jinx witch, the catfolk serendipity shaman, the grippli war painter, and the vanaran fortune-finder.
Exciting new feats to accentuate beast-blooded races' inherent abilities, such as ratfolk's swarming ability and kitsune's shapechanging trickery.
Dozens of new spells, alternate racial traits, and favored class bonuses to customize characters of all stripes.
This Pathfinder Player Companion is intended for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and the Pathfinder campaign setting, but can easily be incorporated into any fantasy world.
ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-901-1
Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:
My oh my. Have we gone a looong way since Blood of the Elements.
This is a Player Companion which focuses on precisely 7 furry (bite me) races of Golarion. Okay, Gripplis aren't furry. OKAY, NEITHER ARE THE SNAKE GUYS. LIKE I SAID, BITE ME.
This could have been a disasterpiece, with each race getting 2 pages of lore on the race, 1 page of lore on its homeland, 3 racial traits, 2 feats and 1 spell.
It isn't.
See, somebody, and by "somebody" I mean the indomitable Alex Augunas, the intrepid John Compton and the ever incredible Crystal Frasier *waves The Crystal Fanclub Banner furiously*, working under developing gaze of the invincible Mark Moreland, figured out that you can tell a story using mechanics. Because when you write an archetype that's called "Prowler at the World's End" or a feat that's called Lovable Scoundrel, you're conveying lore through crunch. Which is kind of a smart thing to do if you have just 32 pages AND need to set aside some space for supergeil af artwork like the kitsune on pages 13 and 14.
Also, it doesn't hurt that the crunch is excellent. The Warp psychic discipline? I mean, this wants me to built a time machine and sent the people behind the recent Player Companions back in time and have them re-write some of the earlier books. Yes, Blood of the Elements and Blood of the This Book Isn't Really About Dhampirs. I am looking at you.
If there is any issue with this book it's the cover. I mean, it's not bad, but it's impossible to look at it while sober/not stoned. I've had to empty a vodka bottle to get this review done, which might or might not have some impact on coherency and relevance of my thought process. Bite me. It's a great book, go buy it.
Though each race is given an introduction, they are short and not overburden by too much text. However the rules and options in each races section are drenched in a sweet mellifluous layer of tasty flavour. I love the expanded options for new classes flavoured options.
If I am honest I was here for the Kitsune, Grippli and Vanara. Up till now I never considered a Ratfolk, but oh that Scavenger archetype. This steampunk take on the Investigator scratches an itch, a class that I normally overlook for the standard Alchemist. The majority of the options are open for other races.
There is a lot going on in this book, in which they still found place to add some really brilliant artwork. This book is unequivocally worth it.
Full of flavorful character options and useful for even non-beast races.
When I first saw the announcement for this book I was worried that Paizo was trying to stuff too many races into a single player companion again. Previous books with many fewer races than this one had only 2 pages of information per race, and the rest of the book was taken up by setting information that wasn't very useful for most players. It looked like the book was going to have space issues just like all the other race focused books before it.
Well, where previous race focused player's companions have failed this one has succeeded. It accomplished this by being *very* to the point. Very little space is wasted. It also focused almost entirely on extremely flavorful character options. Instead of devoting pages of the book to talking about the races at the cost of character options, Paizo instead mixed the world building and flavor into the character options. Everything gives a sense of the themes of each race and a bit of its place in the world.
Now, don't get me wrong, I would have loved to read pages and pages of information of the Kitsune, Tengu, and all the other races. However, I think four pages of character options for each race was the best we could hope for in a player's companion. We'll just have to hope that Paizo eventually releases a setting book about the beast races at a later date.
As for the quality of the character options, I have found that for the most part everything is well thought out and useful without being overpowered. For example, the kitsune have more ways to get tails now, can get Fox Shape at level 1, and can get +2 Int instead of +2 Cha so they can be clever tricksters instead of just good manipulators. Catfolk got archetypes that allow them (and other races) to shapeshift into beast forms. I'm not a huge fan of the gripili, but they have a very interesting Fiend Keeper Medium archetype that allows a character to contain (and draw power from) an evil spirit to try and keep it from causing damage to the world.
I have found that a few abilities here and there probably aren't as useful as they could be. For example, the Shapechanging Savage kitsune feat lets them get a feint as swift action after shapeshifting. However... there are action economy issues with this. You have to use an obscure racial option to get move action shapeshifting to even be able to get one attack off after the feint, and full attacks are mostly impossible. Luckily, abilities like these seem to be the exception rather than the rule.
One of the best parts of this book is that about half of the character options don't actually have race restrictions, and the book even explains how many of these abilities might be learned by other races. That means there are still plenty of useful things in this book for people who don't want to play as an anthropomorphic animal. Those who do want to play as one of the beast races are in for a real treat however.
(based on 13 ratings)
