Pathfinder Pawns: Curse of the Crimson Throne Pawn Collection

Having just completed a 103-session Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign, what better way to celebrate than a review of the Curse of the Crimson Throne Pawn Collection? I was very impressed by this collection as it had pretty much every named NPC in the adventure, including some that didn't even have combat encounters associated with them. It appropriately includes multiple pawns for common members of the various nefarious organizations running around the city, which is incredibly useful (when you need 5 of the same bad guys on the table, it's annoying to only have 1 pawn to represent them!). The collection also does a good job avoiding overuse of pawns already available in other collections like the various Bestiary pawn boxes (there are some, but only some). As I sit and think about it, I really can't come up with any examples of important encounters that the set left me hanging for, and that's really the best compliment I can pay. Definitely worth a purchase.

The pawns in the collections are excellent quality and look great. My only problem is that it doesn't include everything that can't be easily obtained elsewhere. I understand not including a bunch of Eel's End enforcers, as it's easy enough to use some thuggish looking NPCs from other sets. But why call for 2 necrophidiuses in the adventure, for example, when only 1 is available in the Bestiary 2 set and none are provided here? It's kind of a specific monster, and not easily replaceable. Similarly, the adventure calls for 4 wererats, but the Beastiary 1 only provides 1 and none are provided here. I would have gladly paid another $10 to $15 to get ALL the necessary monsters in one spot. And not including Sabina is a real head-scratcher. But overall it's a very good set and basically indispensable if you're running the campaign.

I love this set, it will certainly help bring Korvosa to life, highly recommended!

The review below does a great job with the specifics, so I won't bore you with more, but if you're planning on running Curse Of The Crimson Throne this is a must have!

This pawn collection has several gems:

If you didn't have enough gray maidens so far, this package clearly fixes that. The queen also gets serious attention - the 'continuing the campaign' version would have been icing on the cake, but ok. There is only a limited amount of generic Bestiary creatures, which I am thankful for.

Sabina is missing (as Troodos pointed out in the comments already), but actually I couldn't find really unique artwork for her in the hardcover either. Otherwise all important NPCs seem to be covered.

So overall that's a pretty good collection, with an emphasis on Medium sized creatures. The price is as usual for younger softcover pawn packages - rather high in comparison to the big boxes, but you still get something in return.