Review: Pure Steam

The only offering from ICOSA Entertainment is a fat 226 page book on steampunk.

The first chapter is on races. Not much time is spent here. Its generally Alternate Racial Traits based off of the core races with a bit of fluff to adjust them to the campaign setting of the book. Also inside is a write up of Orcs that is less monstrous than normal.

The class section details how each of the core and base classes, up to Ultimate Combat, fit into the campaign setting. There are two new classes. The first is the Chaplain, a bard-like support caster functions as a diplomancer. On paper it looks too involved with the campaign setting but in play it is kind of the non-music Bard I've always been interested in. The second class is the Gearhead. The closest resemblance I can think of is a wizard since it has full casting and 1/2 BAB but it's 'casting' consists of gadgets instead of spells. Where it gets interesting is that how it constructs it's gadgets resembles Words of Power from Ultimate Magic. It fits well here and is probably the most interesting 'non-spell-spell' way I've seen technomancers designed. It also opened up a gateway to a whole revision later in the book of the entire concepts of magic schools and magic items into a weird science counterpart. More on that later.

Past the new classes are new archetypes. There aren't that many of them, and some of them feel outdated by now with more recent classes and archetypes filling in their flavor, but they aren't bad. It ends with an optional system of scaling AC.

The feat section is rather short. About half of it consists of calibration feats, feats that serve as metamagic feats for the technomancing the Gearhead does, or feats to support the Chaplain. The rest has some real gems. A few style feats for a 'fire lance' and a series of medical feats that allow players to do a bit of healing and even limited resurrection without needing a caster, something I really appreciate.

Next we get a section on equipment. Here we call gold dollars and silver dimes for the purpose of the campaign setting. Also some new weapons. Only one really gets my goat a bit which is the Pneumatic Bowgun that functions by steam cells with no real solid mechanic determining such a thing and instead works by GM fiat to determine when it runs out. To me this presents a huge hole in the rest of the book in a similar fashion to a previous steampunk adjustment I've reviewed before. A comprehensive steam cell resource would have been handy. Anyways, other than that the section holds up, even giving some new rules for special material like stainless steel and lead and an assortment of mundane technology.

We get a section called 'Science' that gets into the bread and butter of the book, describing the fields of science, which are much like schools, how the gearhead's contraptions work and in the next chapter links it to wondrous technological items. This includes technological weapon and armor enhancements.

There is a vehicle section with tanks, pseudomechs and gyrocycles. Awesome. then the campaign setting, Ullera, which includes a few NPC stat blocks, some monsters including constructable robots, and a sample adventure.

If you came here for something it would be the gearhead and it's associated technology, including the technological weapon and armor properties and the general technological items. Its a gold mine just for that. The rest isn't bad but in most places I didn't feel like I NEEDED the product until I got to equipment, science, and vehicles. Although some of the feats follow closely behind. How much you would enjoy the rest of the book depends on how you feel about the setting. The setting is kind of an alternative post renaissance North America that's kind of lighthearted. But the technology is so valuable. If you have Thundercape: World of Aden this book fills in a lot of gaps and the gearhead's 'casting' is so interesting and on-flavor that you'll want to replace some of the casting in Thunderscape with it.  In fact, if you felt Thunderscape was lacking in the technology arena I think you need this book. I can't imagine running steampunk or dungeonpunk without both as Pure Steam has it where Thunderscape doesn't and vice versa. To me that deserves a five out of five stars.

You can find it over on Paizo.com here.