Everyman Unchained: Skills and Options

When Pathfinder Unchained came out I was ecstatic. The talk of the town was the new unchained classes but i was all about the series of house rules to adjust the game. Unfortunately some of the patches for difficult parts of the game were a little too conservative which resulted in them being fantastic ideas in their own right but not really enough or very functional for the space allotted. Even the best ideas required a bit of adjustment before going into a game. But that's the nature of house rules so I was really eager to see how third party publishers polished off some of these great ideas, and so we get to Everyman Games, now a part of Rogue Genius Games, with Everyman Unchained: Skills and Options.

For the first bit we get a new skill system, a hybrid of grouped skills from Unchained and normal skills. To make things short, you get your normal ranks and skills as normal but additionally you choose skill groups as defined by the table inside at first level(You have to start with the Background skill group.), second level and every 4 levels after that. You get bonus skill ranks that you have to spend on skills within a skill group you selected but only if you have more than half your level in ranks from a skill in that group. On paper and in use this system works very well and gives you a wider range of skills without just handing off a bunch of extra skills willy nilly. But your milage may vary because I personally don't think I'll ever use this purely because Its an added layer of complication which I don't like even though it still works without having to adjust anything else. When presenting it to players I've had to explain whats being said and there was a lot of back tracking for players. To be fair half of my usual group isn't very adaptive to any level of complication so you may take that criticism with a huge grain of salt. Also for the other half it seems fairly simple enough. In the end I just feel like it's the background skills system that threw an added complication by adding your background ranks into something that you have to keep backchecking a chart for instead of simply adding them to a set list.

The next section is on favored class bonuses. There are things that I do like and things that I don't like. I like the favored class bonus options that are class specific (but not specific to race/class combinations). Its a cool way to really give a little more variety within a class. There are even a few third party classes in the mix. Same goes for the racially specific bonuses, particularly that they aren't class specific racial bonuses as well, something that I've always criticized because it means each new race is burdened to account for classes that don't yet through updates. At the same time the class specific ones have the same problem that makes me like the racial ones in that there's no way for it to account for third party classes. to a lesser extent the same can go for the racial ones because races not represented here get basically nothing. But this doesn't exactly mean that non-represented classes and races get no action.  One set of bonuses are specific to classes with an animal companion, which works with classes or even archetypes that could come out next year and still functions. Then there are the universal options, favored class bonuses that don't require a specific race or class, which is basically the holy grail for me in this section. Particularly I like that you can pay favored class bonuses towards a feat that uses your race as a prerequisite. This little rule make racial feats a kind of mini paragon path which ups their value and flavor. Besides that it completely bypasses all the problems I have with favored class bonuses not being able to account for classes and races that don't exist yet or are third party while still keeping it racially relevant. Its one of those things where I wished the game was like that from the beginning. There are new feats that interact with the new favored class bonuses. They are nice but the real noteworthy thing is that humans make out like bandits with a new racial feat that gives them oodles of HP, skill ranks or both.

Lastly we have Alternate Multi-Classing options for the Dragon Paragon, Mystic, Occultist(third party), and Technician.

I may have lobbed some criticism but all in all this is a decent product. If you liked the background skills system from Pathfinder Unchained then the skill system is a better alternative. (I did not so I wasn't too keen on this system.) If you aren't finicky about getting new races and classes in on the favored class bonuses then you at least have an option to give them something. The thing I'm mostly taking from this book is the universal favored class bonuses and the associated feats but i can seriously see anyone else taking away more. So right now I'm on the fence of what to rate this because of a fight between what I feel like I'd use and what I feel others would use. I think 4 out of 5 stars is fair. Its a rating that doesn't scare people who would like it from the product but expresses that I really only consider two pages of the product useful to me.

You can find this over on Paizo.com here.

You can find this over on DrivethruRPG.com here.