Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Concordance of Rivals

4.80/5 (based on 4 ratings)
Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Concordance of Rivals
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Beyond Good and Evil

Monitors—neutral outsiders dedicated to maintaining their views of the universe—reject the battles between the wicked and the righteous and instead war over the underpinnings of reality. Join the cosmic debate with the secrets and esoteric lore found within, including:

  • Details on 24 monitor demigods—such as primal inevitables; protean lords; psychopomp ushers; and the mysterious aeon known as Monad, the Condition of All—and the divine powers they bestow upon mortal worshippers!
  • Rules for the proctor prestige class, along with information about different monitor sects, mantras for summoning monitors, and esoteric occult rituals that harness the power of monitor divinities.
  • A bestiary of new monitors and their roles within the universe, including irresponsible illureshi protean sorcerers, morbai psychopomp masters of healing and poisons, and knowledge-erasing agnoia aeons!

Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Concordance of Rivals is intended for use with the Pathfinder campaign setting, but it can be easily adapted to any fantasy world.

ISBN-13: 978-1-64078-127-6

Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:

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4.80/5 (based on 4 ratings)

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Solid, hook-rich slab of lore

5/5

First, fair warning: this is mostly a book of lore, with relatively little crunch. There's one feat, one prestige class, no magic items, and no spells. Remember -- this is the very last Campaign Setting book for Pathfinder's First Edition. It wouldn't really make sense for Paizo to publish a lot of spells and feats for a game system that's about to cease existing. But the lore will continue to be valid through 2nd edition, so most of what's in this book will still be good for years to come.

The quality is quite high. The lore is full of hooks that you can add to your campaign. The art is, as usual, lovely.

There are some minor issues. The Proctor class has a rather silly entrance requirement. Several of the monster entries have the weirdly common Paizo problem of "stat block plus art takes up all the page, so the monster only gets a single sentence describing what it actually is". (Guys, can you please fix this for 2nd edition?) And if you're going to have eight whole pages of lore written by the fallen angel, maybe put it in a slightly easier-to-read font?

But these are quibbles. Over all this is a solid, meaty slab of worldbuilding. It should leave any DM thinking "Oh gosh, I could use this in my campaign" at least half a dozen different times. And you can't ask for more than that.


Stuff I've always wanted

5/5

So I've always wanted to have all Good/Neutral/Evil axis demigods fleshed outs and I've finally gotten that. Sure there are still some left that are still only mentioned only in bestiaries, but with this books, Primal Inevitables, Protean Lords, Psychopomp Ushers and the Monad finally have backstory info and other stuff :D

There are no class or feat options besides monitor obedience and proctor class in this nor is there items(artifact for Concordance of Rivals being absent is kinda weird, but it makes me hopeful it might appear in future AP or something), but that just means more room for flavor :D

I'm actually kinda surprised, but Primal Inevitables are now my favourite type of monitor lords. Machine gods have always been appealing to me, but reason I got into them was how as demigods of absolute law and order their areas of concerns are really mundane and structured. Like for example, one of missing ones was demigod of calendars.

My current ranking of monitor demigods is primal inevitabls > monad = psychopomp ushers > protean lords. Issue I have with proteans in general that as random shapeshifitng chaos beasts, they are ALL snakes with two legs, though third of the new introduced bestiary proteans finally strikes my fancy as while they still have serpentine shape, they are way more chaotic and weird looking than majority of other proteans.

In general, all of new bestiary monsters are great, flavorful and weird :D Only two of the proteans, while cool that they fill lower cr roles, seem kinda standard to me, rest of them are wonderfully weird to me.

I think thats good way to summarize this book, its wonderfully weird. All of monitor demigods are some of the most interesting neutral aligned deities in the whole game.

(plus Pharasma backstory is cool. Plus I'm now formulating conspiracy theory of there being two or three different Asmodeus and the one in hell just stole other ones' name as he is prince of lies)


Glad we got this before the edition change...

5/5

It's a format Paizo has some experience with by now- the three volumes of the Book of the Damned, then the hardcover, the Chronicle of the Righteous- all the fingerprints of those books are on this one- but it's a more refined product than those earlier ones, benefiting from both greater experience- and more oddball subject matter.

The "monitors" (Monitor is to neutral outsider as Celestial is to good and Fiend is to evil) get codified a bit, and there, of course, some new faces, but the real meat of this sucker is in the various neutral-aligned Monitor demigod writeups.

Full disclosure: I'm a sucker for Psychopomps, so I found their Ushers the most engaging, but just about every category has something cool to run with.

It was also nice to see a bunch of demigods NOT saddled with Alignment domains for Clerics...


Lust for Gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?

4/5

Zapp: I hate these filthy Neutrals, Kif. With enemies you know where they stand but with Neutrals, who knows? It sickens me.

I have been waiting for this book be published for years now, and it finally arrived on my door step.

The largest part of the book is dedicated to exploring the various demigods that by and by cause reality in the pathfinder world to function (ensuring that gravity works and that atoms spin) and so far I have enjoyed this section. Much love was poured into making each of these leaders among psychopomps, proteans, inevitables, and aeons.

I found the bestiary very enjoyable and was quite happy to see my beloved harbingers of chaos getting some much needed love and attention by overtaking around half the bestiary all to themselves.

My only major gripes rest with the player options section of the book. The proctor prestige class stat-wise seems to be fairly balanced in power to the prestige classes found in the Book of Damned and the Chronicles of the Righteous, I found the class requirement of having to willingly turn down the aid of a celestial or fiend to be circumstantial at best. It seems rather detrimental to deliberately summon a CR10 good or evil outsider just to deliberately refuse it's aid to fulfill a class requirement, as immortals of any alignment can hold grudges lasting far longer than any mortal lifetime.

My other gripe with this section was that it did not contain any magical items that were themed for those with a heart the color of freshly poured cement. Particularly the absence of the in-game stats for the Concordance of Rivals artifact. The sister volumes of the works of Tabris have stats in their own books and I thought it a shame that this, one of the final published works for 1E was missing such an iconic detail. I'm sure I could create my own version to reflect the artifacts of the prior books with the power to smite those with extremism in their hearts and spells that reflect a soul tinted by the color of slate, but I still find this absence of the key detail to be a disappointment.

All in all, I find the book an enjoyable. There is honestly enough fluff and potential plot hooks in this book to keep me and my players busy as we prepare to continue the epic struggle between good and neutral.


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Dark Archive

6 people marked this as a favorite.

Who would have thought this would still come?
It seems tjat the last few books of PF 1 are things people have been asking for years. :-)


Interesting.

Dark Archive

3 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Whoo :D

My hope was that for the final year of 1e they would release as much material usable for 1e on topics long mentioned but never covered(such as at least one example of all outsider demigod types, I want to see asura rana and raksahsa immortal statblocks!) and as many deity information as possible, and seems like they are doing just that!

Contributor

8 people marked this as a favorite.

:D


YAY!!!!! *dances around madly and cackles with delight*

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2008 Top 16, 2010 Top 4

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Definitely interested in the Psychopomp Ushers.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Is "monitor" the new term for "morally neutral outsider", functioning in a manner similar to "celestial" and "fiend"?


This will be great. Can't wait.

Paizo Employee Developer

29 people marked this as a favorite.
Belltrap wrote:
Is "monitor" the new term for "morally neutral outsider", functioning in a manner similar to "celestial" and "fiend"?

Correct! We found it very important to find a word to stand alongside celestial and fiend lest we find ourselves constantly saying, "an outsider that is either lawful neutral, neutral, or chaotic neutral" a lot more than anyone would appreciate.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I am very down with this!


3 people marked this as a favorite.

Yay.

Now, please tell me this will have more pages than usual! After 3 Book of the Damned (with the hardcover hinting of a fourth one), Chronicle of the Righteous felt 1) too short, and 2) kinda underwhelming.

Silver Crusade

12 people marked this as a favorite.

What does Bethesda and Paizo have in common?

Rallying battle cries of ”UNLEASH THE TODD!”


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Now if we could only get a kaiju focused campaign setting book with stats for the rest of the kaiju (for 1e) and another softcover bestiary.Though I would still buy a hardcover bestiary with nothing but reprints. Also I would kill for a players companion that was completely filled with kineticist wild talents.

Dark Archive

4 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Ya know, monitor term is weird one because in retrospect its perfect name for good/evil axis neutral outsiders considering it does actually connect primary role of all of them(invetables monitor law, psychopomps death, aeons everything, proteans monitor chaos considering how religiously dedicated they are to spreading chaos...) ._. Like, you wouldn't think its something only now named

Anyhoo, while it'd be cool to have kaiju statblocks, I still kinda feel like kaiju statblocks dont' make sense unless you are simulating kaiju vs kaiju battles. Mostly because its kinda lame from Godzilla's perspective that bunch of adventurer's smaller than your toe claws stab you into foot until real life physics kick in and you collapse under your weight.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Psychopomps?! Cool. Perhaps I shall take a look at this when it hits the shelf...well, next year.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber

This sounds cool!


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Definitely want this! Had me with the ushers. Time to throw cash at this.

*Initiates GP Rain*


So will this book just talk about them or will we get stats for any of these demi-god level entities?


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Glad to see this. All we need now is a Starstone campaign guide.

Dark Archive

8 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber

Thank the gods! I've wanted a book on the neutral-aligned Outsiders, sorry, monitors, since... oh, 2e AD&D and Planescape? 25 years ago? TSR never gave us one, WotC never gave us one, but Paizo finally gives us one as a fond sendoff to 1e Pathfinder.

Bra-vo.


5 people marked this as a favorite.

So you're telling me that an axiomatic one of these would technically be a "monitor monitor lizard"?

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber
shaventalz wrote:
So you're telling me that an axiomatic one of these would technically be a "monitor monitor lizard"?

The "native of a lawfully-aligned plane" template is "Resolute", while the chaotic equivalent is "Entropic". Also "Primordial" for First Realm residents (I think) and "Dark" for Shadow Plane natives. Resolute and Entropic were introduced in Bestiary 2, but Primordial and Dark were only introduced in the Monster Summoner's Handbook.

But I can see a "Monitorish" or "Monitorial" template as an idea.

Silver Crusade

13 people marked this as a favorite.

Technically all Proteans are monitor lizards now :3

Dark Archive

3 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Rysky wrote:
Technically all Proteans are monitor lizards now :3

The puns, it burnssss

Silver Crusade

^w^


Well at least there is finally a term for all the neutral outsider groups.


Dragon78 wrote:

Well at least there is finally a term for all the neutral outsider groups.

Neutral on the Good-Evil axis, might still need one for the Law-Chaos axis.

Dark Archive

Aw no Aeons?

Silver Crusade

Souls At War wrote:
Dragon78 wrote:

Well at least there is finally a term for all the neutral outsider groups.

Neutral on the Good-Evil axis, might still need one for the Law-Chaos axis.

We have Fiends for any-Evil, and (taking a guess) Celestials/Empyreals for any-Good. If you were talking about NE-N-NG groupings they don't really interact in the same way that CN-N-LN do.

Advocates

4 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Maps Subscriber
ulgulanoth wrote:
Aw no Aeons?

The aeon deity/deities are the Monad, mentioned in the description by name!

Silver Crusade

Lindley Court wrote:
ulgulanoth wrote:
Aw no Aeons?
The aeon deity/deities are the Monad, mentioned in the description by name!

Ah neat, I missed that.


Rysky wrote:
Souls At War wrote:
Dragon78 wrote:

Well at least there is finally a term for all the neutral outsider groups.

Neutral on the Good-Evil axis, might still need one for the Law-Chaos axis.
We have Fiends for any-Evil, and (taking a guess) Celestials/Empyreals for any-Good. If you were talking about NE-N-NG groupings they don't really interact in the same way that CN-N-LN do.

Fiends/Fiendish/Unholy for Evil; Celestial/Empyreals/Holy for Good; we now have Monitor for Neutral on the Good-Evil axis; Anarchic/Entropic for Chaos; Axiomatic/Resolute for Law...


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Souls At War wrote:
Rysky wrote:
Souls At War wrote:
Dragon78 wrote:

Well at least there is finally a term for all the neutral outsider groups.

Neutral on the Good-Evil axis, might still need one for the Law-Chaos axis.
We have Fiends for any-Evil, and (taking a guess) Celestials/Empyreals for any-Good. If you were talking about NE-N-NG groupings they don't really interact in the same way that CN-N-LN do.
Fiends/Fiendish/Unholy for Evil; Celestial/Empyreals/Holy for Good; we now have Monitor for Neutral on the Good-Evil axis; Anarchic/Entropic for Chaos; Axiomatic/Resolute for Law...

Umm...

Fiends cover Evil outsiders, i.e. LE, NE, & CE.

Celestials cover Good outsiders, i.e. LG, NG, & CG.

Monitors cover the remaining Neutral outsiders, i.e. LN, CN, & (T)N, which is the (neutral) Law-Chaos axis, right?

Or, at least, that's what I understood from what was written in the product description.

Am I mistaken here?


Seventh Seal wrote:
Souls At War wrote:
Rysky wrote:
Souls At War wrote:
Dragon78 wrote:

Well at least there is finally a term for all the neutral outsider groups.

Neutral on the Good-Evil axis, might still need one for the Law-Chaos axis.
We have Fiends for any-Evil, and (taking a guess) Celestials/Empyreals for any-Good. If you were talking about NE-N-NG groupings they don't really interact in the same way that CN-N-LN do.
Fiends/Fiendish/Unholy for Evil; Celestial/Empyreals/Holy for Good; we now have Monitor for Neutral on the Good-Evil axis; Anarchic/Entropic for Chaos; Axiomatic/Resolute for Law...

Umm...

Fiends cover Evil outsiders, i.e. LE, NE, & CE.

Celestials cover Good outsiders, i.e. LG, NG, & CG.

Monitors cover the remaining Neutral outsiders, i.e. LN, CN, & (T)N, which is the (neutral) Law-Chaos axis, right?

Or, at least, that's what I understood from what was written in the product description.

Am I mistaken here?

(T)N, NG and NE would be neutral on the Law-Chaos axis.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Hope we can see the Harrowed Medium sooner or later too.
Maybe Nethys could put it on the site for free after 2E is out.


That's surely a must have!

Again, what's a Monad?


The Gold Sovereign wrote:

That's surely a must have!

Again, what's a Monad?

Mentioned up above. New name for Aeons.


Dark Midian wrote:
The Gold Sovereign wrote:

That's surely a must have!

Again, what's a Monad?

Mentioned up above. New name for Aeons.

Err...

Isn't the Monad the god-like entity from which Aeons are derived &/or revere??


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Seventh Seal wrote:
Dark Midian wrote:
The Gold Sovereign wrote:

That's surely a must have!

Again, what's a Monad?

Mentioned up above. New name for Aeons.

Err...

Isn't the Monad the god-like entity from which Aeons are derived &/or revere??

Yes, it's some sort of cosmic oneness/overgod that they believe exists and gives them direction/purpose.


Interesting. I couldn't remember it, or at least I didn't relate the name among the divines... I wonder if it will be able to grant access to domains and spells as a deity.


It would be interesting if it did grant domains.

Dark Archive

1 person marked this as a favorite.

We'll probably get only one more book in the Campaign Setting line after this one (in june 2019).
August 2019 will probably bring the "Tyrant's Grasp" Poster Map Folio... ;-(


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Well that is a depressing thought:(

Dark Archive

Dragon78 wrote:
Well that is a depressing thought:(

It is.

Supposedly june's campaign setting book will be about "Druma"...


Dragon78 wrote:
Well that is a depressing thought:(

I think he meant for PF 1e.


All I know is this book will be the high point of April. :p ;)


2 people marked this as a favorite.

God, I hope not, Druma is not a subject I would like to see the last 1e campaign setting book to be about:(

Paizo Employee Starfinder Society Developer

11 people marked this as a favorite.
Dragon78 wrote:
God, I hope not, Druma is not a subject I would like to see the last 1e campaign setting book to be about:(

Right. Through. My. Heart.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

YESSSSS! I'm super stoked this is finally coming!


*pats Thurston on the shoulder* Don't worry I'll still buy it. :)

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