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I posted this as an item review yesterday but doubt that many people will see it there so thought I'd re-post here.
Totally Useless and a Waste of Money
To say that I was disappointed with this product is putting it mildly. Call me naïve, but I expected that this deck would contain cards for some of the medium/major magic items contained within this adventure path. Instead, it contains pictures of mostly generic items with a blank space on the back to write notes on.
What's the point of 7 cards with pictures of shards on the front and nothing written on the back? Why not print the stats for the items instead?
How about linking the Ioun Stones to the correct shard and also incorporating its particular powers on the back?
Very poor effort Paizo.
Prux
It's definitely worth checking through the list of cards you're going to get in any given deck before purchasing them - there are often some surprising omissions/inclusions in the item decks.
I'd also prefer the back space be utilised (I'm not going to write on my cards, so it's basically a waste of space the way I use them). I think they've been unwilling to put game stats there in an effort to keep the line more generic and usable regardless of system.
IIRC, one of the goals of the Item Cards is to be usable by those not running the adventure path, which is one of the reasons the cards don't have anything more than some basic descriptive text. They wanted to make the cards flexible enough to be used by anyone.
I posted this as an item review yesterday but doubt that many people will see it there so thought I'd re-post here.
Totally Useless and a Waste of Money
To say that I was disappointed with this product is putting it mildly. Call me naïve, but I expected that this deck would contain cards for some of the medium/major magic items contained within this adventure path. Instead, it contains pictures of mostly generic items with a blank space on the back to write notes on.
What's the point of 7 cards with pictures of shards on the front and nothing written on the back? Why not print the stats for the items instead?
How about linking the Ioun Stones to the correct shard and also incorporating its particular powers on the back?
Very poor effort Paizo.
Prux
The cards clearly depict the artwork for specific unique items listed in the "Shattered Star Treasures" section of the AP (p 64-65 in the first volume for example). The reason they have generic names on the card is so GMs can have players use Identify or role-playing by asking NPCs about items, or if they want to change a particular item, or, as mentioned, you want to use then in another campaign.
The point of having cards with the shards and corresponding ioun stones is probably so GMs can give them to their players - whose characters are not going to immediately know what the shard does, or immediately now how it affects them by carrying it. I think it's a neat idea for a tabletop game, honestly.
I disagree that it was a 'poor effort'. I think they will be incredibly useful when running Shattered Star as a tabletop game. Online and play by post, maybe not so much. Combined with other decks, like the NPC one, or the various other treasure card decks, they make great visual aids.
Sometimes its hard for me to understand why people spend so much energy complaining about these types of products. If you don't find them useful, don't buy them in the future. It certainly doesn't mean that other people won't find them useful - I've explained several ways how above.
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I posted this as an item review yesterday but doubt that many people will see it there so thought I'd re-post here.
Totally Useless and a Waste of Money
To say that I was disappointed with this product is putting it mildly. Call me naïve, but I expected that this deck would contain cards for some of the medium/major magic items contained within this adventure path. Instead, it contains pictures of mostly generic items with a blank space on the back to write notes on.
What's the point of 7 cards with pictures of shards on the front and nothing written on the back? Why not print the stats for the items instead?
How about linking the Ioun Stones to the correct shard and also incorporating its particular powers on the back?
Very poor effort Paizo.
Prux
To each their own opinion, but I would completely disagree with your points about these cards. If they had posted everything on the back of these cards they would not be worth the cost of printing them. The idea of these type of cards is that they are reusable and not intended JUST for running the Shattered Star AP. Not printing a specific name and item information on these cards lets you combine every other deck they have put out into a massive library of item cards for any game you might be playing, adventure path, module, or just a complete homebrew. If they tried to make a deck with every item you would get in an adventure path the cost of those item cards alone would rise well above the cost of the AP itself.
My group makes extensive use of this deck and all of the rest of the item card decks and find that they work extremely well with a blank back. Having a generic card that we can use for whatever might happen in our game instead of buying a card that is good for only a 1-time use is much more useful and versatile. Pick up a cheap mini post-it note pad, write the stats and name on the note and stick it to the back of these cards and you can reuse them endlessly for anything and everything you need.
As for them being generic, the cards they include in these decks ARE generally the major items in the adventure paths. They may not put the name of the item on the card, but from owning all the cards and almost all the adventure paths I can tell you from seeing them with my own eyes that they are for the most part the same thing.