They are good books for options. Mainly for melee combat (style feats). I like the magus and the alchemist is a good class as well. Gunslinger has yet to be used in our group, but mostly because other concepts were in the works first, not a balance issue.
What I would be wary of is the vivisectionist archtype for the alchemist by a race with innate multiple natural weapons. Any of them by themselves is okay, the combination of all is a dps monster.
The alternate negative channels have some awesome uses if you have a strong CHA cleric. The magus is a decent glass cannon. The oracle has different options worht looking at. The words of power are garbage.
In the ultimate combat has
The ninja and Samurai are both good classes. As Skylancer4 said the styles are awesome. The eastern equipment is neat as well.
A lot of the base classes really got a boost in UC with certain archetypes. Cavalier, in particular, got a lot of love, as well as the Monk. Style Feats gave unarmed combat a lot of flavor and crunch that it was just missing before.
If you're concerned about option bloat (and you have every right to be), you can certainly stay away. People ran without them just fine. I find UM to be relatively poorly balanced compared to UC. I would, at a minimum, allow the base classes from each book (Magus and Gunslinger), even if you did disallow the archetypes, feats and spells. They are good additions to the player option set.
They are both great books.
(Of course, in my opinion: I don't see why everyone is complaining about "option bloat." Yes, there is a lot of options. I am glad there is a lot of options (It's not like you need to have everything.)
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Just because you are satisfied with the core book does not mean everyone else will be. I have been playing regularly for more then a decade and I am bored as heck with most of the core classes. That or never liked most of the core classes to begin with. Having new options brings life and excitement into the game. Helps to Keep people playing rather than quitting because it gets to be the same old stuff over and over again.
Consider giving two players per campaign the freedom to pick a single new class or archetype each. This limits how much you have to learn so you do not get hit from all sides at once. Next campaign, give two other players the chance to pick two more classes or archetypes. If you were not taken aback by the previous classes, keep those on an open status. If you feel up to it, allow another two players to take new feats and or spells, ect. If you want to avoid surprises, You can tell the players that they must present their choices one level before they take them so you have time to review and ask any questions you have of them.
I strongly encourage you to open up, just make sure you look over the errata as well to make sure no mistakes take place. Better yet, tell the players they have to have the errata when they present their choices to you.
The words of power are garbage.
I disagree. They make standard casting look completely unbalanced, but lack comprehensive support. It specifically calls out certain spells as unbalanced. Haste, for example, functions as a level 5 spell with 2 metawords in WoP, which is more indicative of its power level than the level 3 spell in standard casting. That said, a party with only Wordcasting for spellcasters is going to look substantively different than the equivalent party without any Wordcasting.
Essentially, Wordcasting allows the Sorceror or the Oracle to play the adaptive role with a limited toolset while making Wizards, Druids, and Clerics look like complete stooges with large toolsets because of prep. It's far more difficult to play a Wizard Wordcaster than a Sorceror because the system is designed for the spontaneous casters to shine.
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I'm against the gunslinger with the ranged touch attack and high damage every round. Might have just been the build used in my game, but I won't be seeing one of those any time soon again.
Try the new claases, its worth the test, worst case you can pull a character that is not fun to play and swap it with a new one as a testing phase...
As for the extra spell options, awesome, can make different concepts and styles without having to create and balance your own custom spells...
The more choices the better I feel.
As for words of power, only good if you have an imagination, not all players do, so you can custom up more spells than you would have in your spellbook as a wizard (or other prepared casters) and lots of flexibility as a spontaneous caster, just could use some work and expansion as it is only a core set of mechanics.
I will be trialing it in a dungeon crawl campaign to see how well it works from the spontaneous perspective.
Our group pretty much just sticks to the core rulebook and Apg but I allow any spells from the ultimate magic books.
I have very much enjoyed Ultimate Magic, for the simple fact that it adds more spells, and thereby more spell combinations. All the other rules, feats, Words or Power, etc. are just gravy. Delicious, delicious gravy.
For Ultimate Combat, I like it but for a completely different reason. Often, I have run into testosterone-heavy groups that tend to focus on a LOT of melee. As in, "Well, there are two fighters a rogue and a Paladin, so I'll add some variety with a Barbarian!" In this case, adding some of the deep armor, wounding, dueling and weapon rules can make a more bland 'roll for damage' campaign into something a lot more intricate and skillful.
It also sure beats brow-beating your players into playing some casters or intrigue-based characters when they simply don't want to do so.
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Allow them with a line item veto.
Just tell the players that anything from those books has to be personally approved, first.
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Because you do or do not like them.
That's as good a reason as any, I think.
I know a gaming group that only uses classes from APG, UC and UM - and not the Core PF classes at all. I like UC, but am less satisfied with UM.
Of course Kaidan (Japanese horror) is my published homebrew setting for PFRPG, and Kensai (magus archetype) from UM, and Samurai and Ninja from UC are used heavily in the Kaidan setting. Of course Rite Publishing has a variety of archetypes for samurai and other oriental classes.
Everyone is different so I can't tell say why you should or should not use them. I can only make general statement. If something won't break your game then I see no reason to disallow it. These books are pretty good, and even if they had a few bad apples I would not ban the entire book. Just read the book, and ban what you don't like. If you see something that might be an issue then I would ask about it here. Try to get more advice from people that have actually seen it in play if possible. Sometimes an ability's "paper" strength is lower or higher than its "in-game" strength.
Ninjas are fun and much more playable as an "assassin" class that the prestige class. Since assassins and spies are universal, it is easy to ignore the oriental origins. Ninjas are not so great with traps and don't get evasion until late in the levels. On the other hand, invisibility lets them sneak attack nearly everything.
Gunslingers are great if you have a Renaissance or Pirates of the Caribbean type campaign. Also good if you want to dip into more modern settings or use time travel.
Samurais are more locked into the oriental flavor than ninjas. However, you can stretch them to be the "knight in shining armor" that rides around rescuing people.
Ultimate Combat has a bunch of gladiator stuff. Good for Roman-type places.
Ultimate Magic Words of Power can be amazingly more powerful than standard spellcasting in the hands of creative players. It's awful if the player lacks imagination to use it properly. I call it "Runecasting" in my campaign.
Thanks everyone. I appreciate the detailed feedback. When it comes to option bloat, my biggest concern is that I, as GM, will fail to account for an element or thing that will end up playing havoc with the inherent balance amongst the PCs. My most preferred version of D&D (and I consider Pathfinder to be an iteration of D&D) is B/X, where such issues are essentially nonexistent. So I sometimes fail to be as vigilant regarding player mechanics as I could be.
It is good you are being cautious. I am also very wary of option bloat because we have a power gamer and a min/maxer in a group. So far, neither I nor the players have found anything game-breaking.
I have so far avoided using the Ultimate books when I run campaigns (I am taking a break but was running two concurrent games, and will soon be running again). Option bloat is something that concerns me. At the same time, I have not bought the oops or even really examined the various options in the reference doc.
So, people that are familiar with those books and options, what am I missing? Why should I be allowing or using things from those books? Why not? How will allowing Ultimate resources effect my campaign?
Thanks a bunch.
Many of the additional Teamwork feats in the Ultimate books are very helpful for Inquisitors (remember, Inquisitors can use a teamwork feat even if their ally in combat doesn't have it due to Solo Tactics)
Combat styles for monks (and others) are nice!
Option bloat isn't too much of a problem so far
You shouldn't be using them because you haven't developed the confidence to make the decision yourself.
This is just unneccessarily mean and snarky Laz...OP is looking for reasons to purchase and use the books. Are you suggesting that people shouldn't buy Paizo product simply because they aren't familiar/confident/what-have-you?
They both have some interesting archetypes and feats. Having said that, I'm basically happy with the Core Rulebook and the APG at my disposal.
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There's a lot of good stuff in there, especially among the archetypes and feats - as previously mentioned they do a lot to shore up classes that don't get much love in the CRB or APG. There's a handful of clunkers in both, but underpowered rather than overpowered.
Magus and Gunslinger are both solid classes. The first does a lot of damage and the second does regular damage reliability, and they both have a few non-combat tricks. They're easy enough to remove if you're not a fan.
The biggest problem with both is the alternate rule systems. In UM, the binding and construct rules are interesting, but hardly applicable to most campaigns, and wordcasting could have used another pass. In UC, the vehicle system is useful only to those who really like additional complexity, the dueling and performance combat rules are limited to very specific campaigns (or even rarer instances within most campaigns, hardly worth breaking out a new ruleset for), and the partial armor rules are very unbalanced.
In short, mostly good, some no-so-good, very little bad.
I just ordered both books. I hope I won't be disappointed.
I just ordered both books. I hope I won't be disappointed.
I did not get them at first, but I have found stuff in both that I like very much. I am sure you will too.