Review: Tides of War: Volley Fire Teamwork Feats.

While I was a huge fan of Flying Pincushion's previous Tides of War title, Mounted Combat Feats, I was kind of skeptical about Volley Fire Teamwork Feats. While mounted combat is pretty linear no one is really a big fan of teamwork feats due to their very nature, and I've never ever seen a party shoot in unison, but with at least three classes where teamwork feats are important and the prospect of more GM tools is appealing so there's hope. So what's inside?

This is short. There are 6 pages of pdf and only two of them have feats so it's a small product like Mounted Combat Feats. Unlike the previous pdf this one is a bit messy, probably due to it's concept but some of it are just typo or positioning kind of quirks. For example; There's some bolding going that was probably a mistake, one key feat, Group Fire, I have a hard time understanding how it resolves, and a sidebar describing positioning requirements for all the feats after the feats instead of before it. The list is a bit longer but you get the gist. I would probably blame the complexity of the feats themselves for some of the more mechanical problems but also the nature of how turns and rounds work.

Once you do understand fully what these feats do you will realize that they are kind of useless to players. For the most part a lot of them are not worth it without at least 2-6 archers in a group firing in the same round, so nobody is going to use them even with a companion or cohort, and there's no way I'll allow a player to have enough NPCs to pull any of these off. They will extend the threat level of a group of 12 kobolds though. Basically if there's a group of monsters with ranged weapons with these feats (or one well placed Cavalier) whoever is fighting them is in for a world of hurt.

For the purposes of NPCs I'll definitely use this, but it took way too long to piece together what they actually do and the rules language doesn't help. It tries to cover a few needed concepts but doesn't have the simplicity that the Volley Fire feat has. Plus there are a few glaring mistakes or confusing formatting. Overall I'd give it 3 out of 5 stars. I may have rated it lower but the rules as intended are easy enough to extrapolate and I have the perception that this is mainly useful as a GM tool than a player tool which makes the rules language less of an issue.

You can find it over on Paizo.com here.