New Paths Compendium

I have a lot of love for Kobold Press' products and it starts with New Paths Compendium, my first Kobold Press purchase. This book fills in a lot of mechanical gaps and adds a lot of flavorful options that I use constantly. If you want to add meaningful options to your game from new classes that just 'fit' and options that expand your Gunslinger, Monk and others you need this book. Five stars for being such a huge boost to my games.

You can find this over on Paizo.com here.

Retrospective:

My old review doesn't convey how good this product is because other reviews on Paizo.com already go into a lot of details so I just wanted to add my stars to the mix. I mentioned this a few times on this blog before and usually use the term 'gridfilling' and in the most satisfying of ways. If you want Pathfinder as a game to feel a step more 'complete' then this is a good book to start. Solid new classes, new archetypes, new feats and even some new alternate rules, this book has so much to give.

I've seen a lot of third party classes and what I take from the New Path classes is that they stand out by not exactly standing out. They feel more 'classic' as if they were a natural part of the game than being bogged with new expectations, paradigms and alternate resolution systems. They feel like they're supposed to be a part a Pathfinder from day one.

From new classes you have the Battle Scion, a full BAB arcane caster that feels very much like a Paladin with blaster capabilities than divine might. It's signiture move is shooting magic missile-like laser beams. It actually seems a bit wimpy at first level but by 6th level it's all kinds of tanky as the numbers catch up.

The Elven Archer is kind of an odd duck, basically a Ranger's chassis that got turned into a Arcane Archer base class, but it's specific to elves. It comes with a Dwarven Crossboyer and a Halfling Slinger that are specific to the races they're named after but curiously it also comes with the Mystic Archer which is the same thing but not race specific. Why the Mystic Archer doesn't headline the class I have no idea but hey, a full BAB 'arcane' archer is pretty great.

If you were around enough to be a fan of the Factotum from 3.5 the Savant is kind of a spiritual successor. An grand skill monkey and the ability to suddenly grab abilities to be a skill monkey, warrior or caster. It can even pull off mimicking a race and a few racial abilities.

The Shaman is a spontaneous Druid. Not much to say beyond that. It has more to it than that of course. It selects from a list of supernatural abilities, it heals instead of summon animals and a few other things, but it wild shapes, has an animal spirit guide (works differently from animal companion) and casts druid spells. It's the Druid's Oracle.

One thing awkward and cool is the Spell-less Ranger. which is exactly like it sounds. A pure martial Ranger that I actually think is kind of better. At the very least is more awesome since it has a variant where it's a wildshape without spells class.

The Theurge is a 20 level Mystic Theurge. It does basically nothing but cast spells and have class features that make casting spells better. But it has the most broken spell list in existence so there's that.

Then there's the White Necromancer, conjurer of the elusive good zombies in case you want to be a necromancer without being evil.

Past that you get some support for the classes already talked about but also some AMAZING support for the Monk, Ninja and Gunslinger, which seems like a random selection but comes with ninja clone jujitsu so I'm not going to complain.

There are feats and spells that do a lot more than support the classes inside. There are some nice style feats. There are also some condensed feat chains to make scaling combat feats and instructions on how to make more, which is pretty sweet. I like to use those.

There are new alchemical arrows that I use a lot. Rules for Scaling Magic Items. Then the best thing about the entire book. Tracking sheets for arrows, favored enemies, wild shape and prepared spells.

Seriously this book has so much and since it all plays so nicely with the base game it became a very frequent mainstay and full of popular choices. I especially recommend this for people who want 'more Pathfinder' as opposed to adding weirder elements from third parties, like psionics or something that shifts paradigms that the game sets up. 

Adventuring Classes: A Fistful of Denarii

This is a simple pdf with almost a dozen new classes. They're mostly mixtures of other classes making them somewhere between alternative classes and hybrid classes from the Advanced Class guide. Your mileage may vary as they aren't terribly robust classes that do anything new but since none of them are spellcasters they can make nice additions to your player's options. For the most part I feel like I could recreate the general theme or mechanics with existing options; Well except for the Scholar class.

The Scholar introduces nothing truly new but it has a lot of ways it can go and works out as a jack of all trades non-caster that really works. It even has the option of getting a few spells making for the dabbler that some bards try to be but their focus on spells and performances prevent them from truly achieving. Really the pdf could have been worth the price if it were just about the scholar and some cool feats.

Oh yeah the feats. The feats range from standard support for the classes in the book to gamechanging support for non-casters. Rogue and Dex melee strikers get two feats that bring them up a notch while not being truly unbalanced. Seriously some of the feats have become staples in my games.

I was going to give this four stars because most of the classes are things I wouldn't take but the scholar class and a good chunk of the feats are good enough for the price which overcompensates for the price leaving me to put it up to five stars.

You can find this over on Paizo.com here.


Retrospective:

This product has not aged that well. Since it's come out we've gotten a lot more out of even the weaker spell-less classes and the Advanced Class Guide came out giving us some mainstream martial classes along with archetypes and other support. This has made the classes of AFoD still solid to pick but kind of stagnant. Even my favorite, the Scholar, is getting a bit outclassed without the support to bolster it's theme.

As I said, the classes are still solid, and the feat support is still inspired. For the budgeted 3pp consumer I would still recommend it for a bit of martial diversity, but it's badly in need of an update and I don't think that all the classes would survive the transition. There's just better out there even within just Paizo options.

That said, the thought that went into this product is what put Tripod Machine on the map for me. Most of it's flaws are due to the product being ancient and in some of the aspects Paizo has not even caught up. Since then I've been keeping an eye out for large releases but sadly the only one is on the horizon, that being the space opera supplement from their kickstarter Conquest of the Universe.

The Book of Martial Action 1 and 2

Out of all the third party products I've picked up Book of Martial Action 1 is the first I'd have to penalize for simply not being enough.

The product contains a series of feats that allow you to generate a pool of points based on your BAB that you can spend on martial techniques. Each technique is it's own feat and the martial pool can be regained during the day.

Its a bit similar to Book of 9 Swords but dispenses with the whole 'vancian' techniques, however its is very sparse and shallow leaving me preferring this system but wishing it were longer. The product comes with martial pool archetypes for a number of classes but while that's nice I was left with a hankering for more techniques especially the 2-4 point ones so that I can do more with the pool.
A+ product but gets a C+ for just not being enough.

I was a big fan of The Book of Martial Action I so I was excited to see this.

The PDF consists of new technique feats divided into 5 schools. There is a Tank school, a speedster school, a dueling school, a buff school and a trickery school. Like before each technique feat uses points from an opt-in martial pool that refreshes after a minute of rest. If you're familiar with Path of War/Book of 9 Swords/4th edition these effectively makes them encounter abilities but since they are point based you can pull of a few large stunts or a lot of smaller ones. I like it a lot better than the 'Vancian' maneuvers of Path of War.

The new thing is the schools of techniques and they are a huge hit for me as they put a lot of flavor into the technique feats.

My least favorite part of the pdf are the new base classes representing each of the new martial schools. Because they are not nearly as robust as any other base class I cant help but to see them as unneeded class bloat, especially since I own a lot of third party products with new base classes. I'd much rather just use an archetype from the previous book or just get one base class that was flexible enough to represent any school. As it stands they feel like some extra content I don't care for but someone else may.

Overall the crunch is not useless but not broken and brings fun new things to do as opposed to full-attacking.

Retrospective:

When the stamina system came out with Pathfinder Unchained I fell in love with these books all over again, but by then I also had Path of War from Dreamscarred Press so there was a bit of complementing and a bit of conflict. 

Martial actions definitely have some power creep but way less than Path of War so it puts the GM in a position to decide just how much power creep is acceptable. Despite the power creep martial actions have costs that keep them somewhat more in line with Paizo feats and they have the unfortunate side effect that more martial action feats mean that you have several powers competing for the same pool of points. This means that while they add an interesting dynamic to the game they aren't all that powerful and they definitely aren't as pervasive as Path of War maneuvers and certainly not spells. If Path of War is more your speed then I cannot recommend these books but  if you want a slight nudge for you martial characters they aren't bad products. 

I will say that these aren't as popular with players as I wanted them to be. When you have access to better classes that can mix it up with fighting they just seem like a long list of more feats to think about and the high cost of some of them make them less accessible. Really, if you take a technique feat at the level you qualify for them, using it means you spend almost all your martial pool which puts an end to using them for a bit. The lower level ones are great but I could stand for the higher ones to be less powerful to  have less of a cost.

So overall I think being enamored with this has more to do with the novelty. Pathfinder Unchained has been out for a while but we still haven't had many third party things doing something with stamina but Martial Actions go really well with stamina  giving you a sort of a set of 'martial powers' that can boost classes like the Fighter without ignoring it and replacing it with a new class with a new martial mechanic. If something new came out that was more expansive and streamlined then I'd drop this pretty fast because for right now martial actions seem to fall more into enabling niche builds than being a martial revolution. I still love these products but I can see where it could have been 'more', and would definitely love to see the concept helmed by others.

 You can find this over on Paizo.com over here for part one and here for part two.

Review: Cyborgs

This product from Legendary games was an odd treat for me. I've seen a lot of tech classes but not all that many variations come at once. Usually a tech class tries to be a catch all for the subject, much like an alchemist so there aren't many base classes that explore the subject. The opposite of this is definitely Psionics with a whopping 10 classes that deal with the subject of psionics. This product also tickles my fancy in another way. I am a big fan of Thunderscape: World of Aden and particularly the Golemoid class which the Cyborg reminds me of. It takes the technology of it's genre and becomes it making an exciting parallel.

The class is a medium BAB class with a d8 hit dice. It gets 6+Int ranks per level and starts off with the Technologist feat at first level. (There needs to be a line here to tell what happens when you get the feat when you already have the feat.) It gets an internal nanite matrix which is basically fancy talk for having a giant pool of points to support it's class features.

At first level, 4th level and every four levels after they get a modification. These modifications eat up magic items slots which is tragic but workable, but one bit that gets ugly is that I'm having a hard time figuring if they eat each other's slots, particularly when they only go for one limb in the description. This is very important information so it's a big minus unless my reading comprehension isn't too good today. Since I intend to use this for a scifi campaign where there are three races with more than two arms this gets extra weird. Some of the modifications impose a -2 Charisma penalty (Yikes!) instead of eating an item slot. Given that a good amount of the modification abilities cost one nanite charge and you get five more points per level you do quite a bit with your modifications and they are pretty powerful. One or two have some fugly wording though. One of the dermal implants requires energy to use despite needing nanite charges anyways and I'm not sure if the energy needs to be damage. Given that some damage types are small and only a cantrip away I'm not sure why bother with this energy mumbo jumbo and just have healing nanites for the price of charges.  Some modifications need some clarification as to what kind of action is needed for them to be used. Some like the ones that affect ability scores, I can assume just kind of happen as a free action but some of them like Force Pulse Hand really need an activation time yet I can't find any mention of what kind of action activates these things. Unless someone can point out something I'm missing then this is a huge oversight. Past that the save DCs are frustratingly inconsistent. They all have a +10 but some add half the cyborg's level while some add the entire cyborg's level. Some add to the DC ability score modifiers, and some add tot he DC based on nanite charges spent.

Another thing I find problematic is the Humanity Loss class feature, which imposes a scaling Charisma penalty to get a bonus to up to four other ability scores. Given that you can't have -4 Cha and +4 Str this is a huge downside. Especially since you already have other sources in the class that lower your Charisma. This may be because I have a pet peeve against class features that start hitting your ability scores but I think this product relies on it too much as a limiter when the class isn't all that powerful to begin with. Besides that, the class doesn't even have a reason to use Charisma so it'll be a dump stat anyway. To me it's just arbitrary. 

Tweaks are introduced after the class which is something I don't like. Tweaks are basically spells that are limited by what slots you have modifications in. These are handled a bit awkwardly. There are no spell slots, instead you use your nanite charges and you have a tweaks known list. But you have to prepare tweaks. There's a line that says that they only effect the cyborg even if it would affect others, I guess like alchemists, but with most of the spells that doesn't work right. Add to this my rant about new spell lists and you'll find that I don't like tweaks very much.

The rest of the book is pretty neat but overall the class has way too much wrong with it. Despite all this I love this class and it's just a few house rules and clarifications away from being a 5 star product but there's so much wrong with it as it's written that I'm pushing it by giving it 2 stars. And that hurts me just as much because at first glance I was in love but when I started looking at it deeper I felt like it was too awkward to use as is. Its easy to get what is supposed to happen or what should happen and it's a great addition to a scifi game but requires too much GM oversight just to function and balance.

You can find this over on Paizo.com here.

The Combatant

Per week on Paizo's forums there are at least two threads discussing the Fighter class and what may or may not be wrong with it. In these threads there are common themes to proposed fixes. The Combatant in this product feels like it reflects a number of those proposed fixes despite it's insistence that it is not attempting to replace the fighter.
Essentially the Combatant is the fighter at it's core but with the following differences.
Good Reflex save.
4+INT skill ranks per level.
Acrobatics is a class skill.
Does not need dex requirement for TWF.
The biggest change, Armor/Weapon training is absent, and in it's place are Martial Art Styles. Martial art styles are combat styles associated with a number of feats. If you possess feats within a martial art style you have then you get bonus abilities based on the number of feats you have of that style.
For example if you have 3-5 feats of the archery style, you may ignore up to half your level in circumstance penalties to ranged attacks and stealth becomes a class skill. As you gain more archery feats you get up to 5 more abilities of increasing strength. Some of the feats are on multiple style lists so since you gain 3 martial art styles throughout your levels, you can get a number of extra abilities if you synch them up. The abilities themselves are either obvious numerical bonuses or something amazingly complementary. (like pounce) Overall these are huge boosts of power and versatility making the Combatant a pretty competent beast in combat.
The product also comes with a number of new combat feats and honestly, if you don't use the Combatant class you'll want to use the feats. A lot of them are amazing. A few feel very at home with a monk and a number I would call Must Haves.
Overall for the price of one dollar you're getting a lot. A spectacular class AND useable feats. Very useable feats. The price takes this from being a nice product to one that is silly not to buy.

Retrospective

After having this class for a while I have to say that it is not all that popular of a pick. If you're looking for a fighter fix for a buck then this is your guy but the feats inside have counterparts elsewhere and if you collect good combat feats and Fighter support then this class falls a bit short. Between Bravery Feats, Fighter Nuances, the new Fighter options from Paizo's Weapon Master Handbook, and stamina, the fighter is a beast. And even cheaper than that you can pick up Dreamscarred Press' Path of War if you want to replace the Fighter rather than fix it up. I guess what I'm saying is that the appeal of this product greatly depends on your previous collection and your budget. It is pretty much a better fighter. but doesn't have much support beyond the base class so if you're popping it in for a mostly Core Rulebook game this will shine a lot but the power creep for martial classes kind of stepped up when it comes to peripheral material.  

You can find this over on Paizo.com here.

Liber Influxus Communis

So this book introduces 14 new classes. There are other things but I'll spend a lot of time on the classes.

Battle Lord
Battle Lord makes as much sense as anything else. Of course it has the same problem that I generally find in classes like Cavalier and other support classes in that how broken it is depends on how many martials are in the same area. This will make a nightmare of an NPC but relatively niche for PCs. I like the class

Conduit
The Conduit is much more interesting than I thought it would be. I thought it would be weird and cumbersome but mechanically this is pretty nice. I'm guessing he can absorb AOE spells if he's in the target zone? My only real problem is that my games will have veils, spheres, powers and other non-spell magics so this guy may have limited use in the future. I've heard promises of a patch that works in other magic systems so there's that to look forward to although if you're in a low magic situation the problem still persists. Also there's kind of an 'Uphill battle to awesome' situation here where fighting casters buffs you which is a dangerous thing to do. Its not really bad as it has plenty of workarounds but requires a clever player to make the most of the dynamic. I like the class.

Demiurge
I was skeptical about the Demiurge as soon as I saw that there is a complexity disclaimer, and low and behold I still don't quite understand how the class works. So it gets 'Enlightenments' which are pretty much Demiurge domains but where it gets tricky is the Fascimiles and everything involved with them. They are obviously 'creatures of law' considering that their abilities read like a contract: "rhetoric always involves two facsimiles, one that is designated as the “argument” facsimile, and the other as the “arguer” facsimile.". Oh god there has to be a way to explain what these things are doing without a huge use of philosophy book sub-terms. I can barely read the class and even then I'm forced to track a large number (quintessense) and my mental constructs need directions measured in commands that I don't feel are well defined. At the moment this class is banned from my games until it's rewritten to be simpler or I figure out how it actually works. Its just a philospher with summoned thought constructs. I really don't like the class

Medium
With Paizo's upcoming Medium, Radiance house's Occultist and Thunderscape's Thaumaturge I was not looking forward to looking at this class. Its basically a class that has the spirit of another character that it can gain abilities from.It has a place despite the Occultist medium and Thaumaturge existing so I don't dislike it as much as I used to. Its fun, somewhat unique and allows for an interesting playstyle. I'm okay with the class.

Metamorph
The Metamorph is something that I felt I'd seen before (LJP's The Host) but its a bit more refined and diverse. It feels like an eidolon and a sorcerer had a baby, with a bloodline-like selection that gains powers and access to evolutions. If you want to 'play the monster' like a sorcerer without the baggage of being a full arcane caster then this is the class for you. I love the Genesis concept allowing a lot of different flavors to fall into the class. I really like the class.

Mnemonic
The concept of blue mages in Pathfinder is a hard road to travel becaust there are so many kinds of abilities in the game (more if third parties are involved) that scale differently it's hard to determine how such a thing would actually work. The Mnemonic works well enough for that I guess. Its way less book keeping than other classes I've seen that try the concept out (Rite Publishing's Taskshaper) and for that it gets five stars. I like that it doesn't even try for spells. Overall I like the class.

Momenta
Sort of the Wendy and Marvin of classes. I don't mind support classes. I've had players be each other's butler and this class fills that role. I do have a complaint that it gets points at the start of combat rather than regaining its pool after a minute of rest. I just hate abilities that call out whether it works in or out of combat but that's kind of a minor complaint since the Inquisitor already prompted me to have to define the beginning and end of combat so no harm done. I really enjoy the idea of using the Momenta to make a 'Princess' or aristcrat character. This class is a good way to go about the concept which is great because most other solutions I've seen involve class-based gold acquisition (I hate class-entitled treasure) or some sort of social subsystem. I really like the class.

Mystic
When the Kineticist came out for the Occult Adventures playtest it became the playtest's darling for being the most mechanically fascinating and weakest class in the playtest. The Mystic is less mechanically interesting but definitely stronger and more interesting in other ways. Smart move in making it off of the Monk's chassis, as it adds some flavor and doesn't pigeonhole the class into being 'the blaster'. The class itself is surprisingly rich by comparison too. Two mystics of the same element can look drastically different. I really like the class.

Pauper
The whole despair/hope mechanic irks me for being fueled by something so abstract and environment dependent. I feel like its an argument waiting to happen. Other than that its an okay class despite being the most wimpy flavor-wise. Think of being the brunette girl from Yugioh and that's the class here. I'm not sure if I like the class, I feel like it could have been absorbed by the Momenta.

Survivor
The survivor is probably the most boring and best functioning class here. I really like it. Its basically a spell-less ranger that's not a racist serial killer or too bogged down by the whole nature them. I feel like chest hair should have been a class feature. I like the class.

Synergist
There are a lot of support classes in this product. I think designating people as your cast feels kind of useless. It feels like just more language. I like the class but it doesn't excite me as much as some of the others.

Umbra
Okay so this has two pools of points that have a third term for what they are collectively? I know its somewhat nessesary but couldn't things be built so that it doesn't need a laundry list of extra language? I feel like I have ADD with some of these classes, add to that some of the classes have relatively esoteric terms. That said this doesn't apply to this class that much, its just not complicated like the and doesn't require too much bookkeeping. Its kind of like an incarnum kineticist, getting power to invest in ties to different inner planes. I like the class.

Warloghe
Warlogue is the spooky class. Basically someone taited so attracts and can bind spirits in a minor way to pretty much become a walking haunted house. I like the class a lot.

Warsmith
This class is boring. Its practically a Magus' Arcane pool attached to a crafter with some sunder sneak attack ability. I love it! Its kind of the artificer I've always wanted without weird mechanics or some kind of spell-like technology. Just a guy that can make stuff and break stuff really really well. But seriously this class deserves way more support.

Chapters 2 and 3 are pretty basic. Just some things to support the classes. Nothing terribly fascinating or gamechanging. Then there are new haunts and hazards which are nice.

Overall I have problems with the Conduit and Demiurge but a lot of these classes add to niches unexplored or refined rare niches that other products have only graced. Even the ones I complained about brings something new to the table and the two most boring classes are some of my favorites. There's enough holes filled that I want to call this a must-have but I feel like its not for everyone as it hits a few pet peeves I have on class design. If the problems above aren't your kind of problems this is a five star, but I'm giving it four stars.

You can find this over on Paizo.com here. 

Bevy of Blades

When I think of Amora Games and my book shelf of third party material the thing that stands out is the most excellent Liber Influxus Communis, which presented several new classes that give new play experiences and are a blast to build around. With this new product they introduce four new classes that appear to be martials in one way or another so I'm excited to see how  it stacks up to the quality and imagination standard set by LIC.

Since this product is pretty small, 21 pages counting the credits, introduction and cover, I can look at each class rather than my impression of the book as a whole.

The first class is the Aether Blade. Like a true martial it gains Full BAB and a d10 hit die. It also has good fort and will saves and 2+Int skills per level. The Aether Blade conjures it's own melee weapon and eventually can cannibalize magic weapons in order to get bonuses. Another important ability is an aura that it can use by the round (It scales similarly to Rage or Bardic Performance) which grants a scaling bonus to various things based on what kind of aura you want to apply.  As it levels the Aether Blade can use the power of staves, rods, or wands for increasingly more powerful effects.  Most of the rest of the abilities for the most part just give it numbers except from one class feature that basically gives it spells which I felt kind of put off by. It kind of feels like the ability makes it a 4/9 level caster but diminished when really we didnt' need to bring spells into the mix to begin with. Heck I would have rather seen another Arcane Paladin  than a pseudo non-caster caster. The mechanical negatives are fairly minimal. There are points like the Aether Blade's enhancement bonus redistribution not having limits on what weapon properties can apply or having the usual rules language that govern similar abilities that make me nervous and there are questions I have whenever pseudocasting comes up in regards to spell completion effects, but that's about it.  From a Flavor perspective I'm not particularly excited. It looks like it functions as a class but nothing gives me a reason to desire to play it over anything else with a similar gimmick that I could be playing. At best it's auras make it a unique gish-like class in that it can directly support casters when normally gishes are far from support classes.

Then there is the Shadow Blade. Another full BAB beef stick. The theme I've seen done to death but That can't be held against it. One of it's important abilities is it's Beshadowed Blade which grants a bonus to feint checks, which is important to activate it's strictly worse sneak attack-like bonus damage that activates when the targets is denied it's dex bonus. This ability gets some fuel from some talent-like options that start arriving at level 7. Beshadowed Blade comes at level 3 but it feels like just for the sake of making a centralized flavor and make it feel more diverse that could have come at level 1 and the talents could have come earlier and in place of the pseudo sneak attack. Since you do kind of want that damage on there it feels like the class want's you to be on the feint path of fighting which is kind of okay because I have some third party material that makes that work out okay but I'm not actually sure that it's really an effective thing to do with the core rules. The Shadow Blade does offer some options to make feint work without a million feats but since those are hard to come by you're a bit locked into some options since you have a lot of feint-based class features that you can't pick and choose from. The other really important ability is the ability to teleport through shadows. You only have a certain amount of feet per day to work with but if you go the Two Weapon Feint route it's a bit more doable, although situational. As far as I can tell this class mechanically works and nowhere am I stumbling to understand what to do.

The third class is the Verdant Blade. It has a retractable plant weapon that as passable wording governing it but some things make me wary about the rules language although part of it is for flavor concerns. for example; it takes root in the wielder's hand or wrist which makes me question how this affects the wrist or hands magic item slots. Other than that it's my favorite class out of the bunch. It has talents and 4 levels of druid casting but also has a cavalcade of interesting abilities like just macguyvering items together and planting seeds into creatures. It feels like what I would have imagined a Ranger would be if it were more of a magic nature warrior than a specific quarry hunter. Its also less of a damage dealer and more of a defensive debuffer with many of it's abilities either defending the Verdant Blade or obstructing an opponent without any real combat direction or damage boosts that most martials get.

The last class is the Vital Blade. Like two of the others it conjures a weapon but this one is made of blood. They also get a short pool of Blood Points that can be refilled with killing blows with the blood weapon or critical hits. I'm sure this will lead to bags of rats but the point pool is so small that there's no point so I won't see it as that big of a deal. It gains a list of talents it can take and on killing blows or by spending blood points it can get enhancement bonuses or weapon abilities (again no limit). The bonus gained is limited to the target's hit dice to avoid bag of rats tricks. Its probably the most concise out of the four, mechanics-wise but I've never been too keen on blood themes so its a net plus.

Following the classes we get archetypes for the classes. They all are pretty much mechanically sound and change their playstyles so they feel pretty necessary.  This is followed by new feats, one seems like a no brainer that should have been printed in the core rules by now, two are specific to class features of the classes in the product and two feel like they'll do way more to help arcane casters than these classes. In fact two of the feats are pretty strong when used for Bloodragers and Bards. I'll have to see them in actual play before I can call them broken but they seem really really good. One gives you 1/2  your caster level plus casting modifier as temporary hit points as a swift action effectively making a Bloodrager way better at tanking than a Barbarian by having an HP buffer each round. Its almost like having an Invulnerable Rager DR in one feat. The other one gives you some extra land speed as a swift action based on caster level so another feat nets the bloodrager some fast movement too. Sure these feats eat up your swift action but that never stopped anyone from using Arcane Strike.

Lastly we get favored class bonuses covering the core races

Overall there's nothing mechanically wrong with these classes other than what I've mentioned and for it's price tag the product is offering quite a bit, but other than the Verdant Blade I just have this continous feeling that these classes aren't exactly necessary, in the sense that I don't feel very compelled to use them to drive a theme or play with mechanics. That's not to say that I wouldn't be able to have fun with them as none of them are overtly weak or unfun in some way but Verdant Blade is the only thing I'm really clamoring for that I feel couldn't be portrayed with the base game and when third party material is involved it gets much worse because I see their mechanics and themes all over the place as archetypes or classes that have more to offer.

If you don't have a lot of third party material or you don't have the money for other material this is a pretty good deal and I feel that these Full BAB classes are mechanically more interesting to play than Fighters, Paladins, Rangers and Barbarians. But they do offer a rather narrow focus to the point where I think the product could have condensed the concepts into two classes and I'd be more enthused with it. Right now I want more of the Verdant Blade and the rest just don't appeal to me over other options I have, even just with the base rules, to appeal to the same character concepts. I'll give it 3 out of 5 stars with a note that it's a very strong 3 stars.

You can find this over on Paizo.com here.

Review: Monk Unfettered

At this stage of third party Pathfinder product collection this pdf has a lot of competition. Early on I had the priority of bringing weaker classes up to snuff so I amassed a lot of products that support the Monk class, including new toys to play with and entire class rebuilds. The Monk Unfettered is another class rebuild with the goal of making the Monk easier to build and play and to make it worth playing.

Unfettered Monk looks a lot like it's original in basic form but of course it has some drastic differences. Since this is a class rebuild I'll go over it in order of new class features.

First of all not proficiency with all monk weapon group weapons so a boo there but not that big of a deal since that's the baseline I guess.

Instead of Flurry of Blows the UMonk gets 'Flurry'. This flurry is not tied to TWF in explaination. Instead it's a full attack that has one attack. As the UMonk levels they get more attacks scaling up to six attacks during a flurry, and since this isn't modeled after TWF all the attack bonuses are the same. Also they do not treat your level as your BAB so at lvl 20 you get six attacks at +15 BAB. In the end this makes flurrying less exciting early on but on most levels this equals more bonuses than negatives so as a whole it's more accurate even without counting your level as your BAB. In the end you're about as accurate as a Rogue but you have twice as many chances at the same attack bonus.  That and it's a bit less complicated.

At the same rate as a fighter gets bonus feats the UMonk gets 'insights' which are essentially Monk talents. There's a bunch of them in the book that go all over the place. Some use Ki and some don't. If I go over them all I'd be here all day, so I'll just say that they range from okay to really really good. In general they're better than feats. They take the place of bonus feats meaning that some of them are the bonus feats normally granted but some do not specify whether or not you still need to meet the prerequisites so that's a bit of a bummer. Some insights grant two feats which makes me wonder about it's balancing point, especially when some are effectively three feats on a situational basis.  Some Insights are 'deep insights' which means that you can only have one active at a time (scaling to up to three at a time) and you can change them up once a turn. Some of the deep insights are things that can be taken again to stack but would be scary if you just started stacking them too early or too often.  I noticed areas where I don't know how they interact with some things making a few insights unusable but they're mostly all together.

And that's it for the brand new class features. From there it's feats and favored class bonuses. Nothing exciting and pretty standard. Then there are UMonk NPCs, which is handy, and new magic items. After that there are explanations and suggestions on how to fit the UMonk in your game including how to make it play with archetypes.

Finally there is an index for insights, something that I'm not sure isn't done in other products. Its basically a  feat table for the insights.

Sorting out how I feel about the Unfettered Monk is kind of complicated. By the time I had it, I didn't need it anymore so I wind up having to compare it to other Monk replacements, including the Unchained Monk and it has a ton of things for and against it on that leg.

On the plus side, it takes archetypes in consideration to some extent meaning that it can play a bit nicer than other monk rebuilds. It also gives a lot of insights to choose from. The pdf is also beautiful with great art. Flurry is drastically easier to deal with than Flurry of Blows. Unlike the Unchained Monk it's 'talents' aren't tied to ki so you can avoid being ki starved and outright bad abilities. 

On the down side, I think this is the worst monk at maneuvers I've seen. It has similar accuracy, AC and full attack dependency issues as the normal monk while at the same time some of it's insights are way more powerful than others making it difficult to pin down exactly how strong it can be. Soloing in a module it looks like it works out okay enough and can handle more situations than normal monks so it is an outright improvement. But I feel like I've seen better in terms of solving the Monk's problems. Also some abilities I stumble on because of a lack of rules language.

Looking at it as it's own thing its definitely a better monk. It takes a lot of what the Unchained Monk does wrong and does it better but it also doesn't fix thing that the Unchained Monk does. In the end I would feel like it's on par with the Unchained Monk but the Unfettered Monk is more diverse and the Unchained Monk is more devastating due to it's access to Flying Kick.(This does depend on how Flurry interacts with Pummeling Style. If Pummeling Style works with Flurry then the Unfettered Monk has a little bit of a leg up but the margin isn't that wide.) I really liked the Unchained Monk so I think I'm rating this at 4 out of 5 stars. Its pretty functional and is an improvement on the normal Monk but some moving sliding balance on some insights and some that are more difficult to use drags it down a mark.

You can find this over on Paizo.com here.

Review: The Chemist

Here is another ARMR free class. This is the one that got me to take a look at the series to begin with. So what do we have here?

On it's most basic level its an Alchemist/Paladin hybrid. It has the full BAB d10 HD chassis with four levels of  extracts. It gets an Elemental Smite; a butteloade of energy damage on melee attacks. It gets bonuses to saves against poisons and alchemy craft checks. It also gets bonus feats that can be used to access a limited number of alchemist discoveries. Their mundane alchemical items have higher DCs and they get a scaling energy resistance.

The chemist gets access to it's own exclusive discovery, and the pdf comes with three alchemical weapons. The weapons themselves are awesome but the weapon table is rather minimalistic so you're missing whether they are simple, exotic or martial and small weapon damage.

Well like the Zephyrus before this is mostly a big chunk of potential that feels like it doesn't go very far. Out of all the casting types Alchemy feels like it's in its own little niche, even with the Investigator around. Having a warrior alchemist is intriguing and the Chemist can certainly handle itself. Out of all the series the Zephyrus and Chemist are the only ones that have seen some play and the Chemist can get pretty tough since mutagen is involved. But of course this is a small pdf and so it gets only one exclusive discovery so mostly comes off boring after the first go around. The limited space for flavor doesn't help in that regard since the Alchemist can already be built to be a bit more fighty, disregarding that the Mutation Warrior Fighter exists.

That said if you don't have a product that covers it, the Chemist does come off as a satisfying alchemical elementalist that can utilize those crappy alchemical weapons you forget about by level 5, and it has a window of opportunity with it's discoveries for those kind of class features. It's technically a new play experience since you can use extracts on a much tougher character. Plus it settles my grid-filling instinct when it comes to casting types.

In the end the Chemist is a fun gimmick class that works and fills a mechanical niche but it has way more potential than actual substance. I would rate it as a 3 out of 5 star product for being so minimalist, but since giving it access to third party alchemical gear makes it far more interesting and it is free I'll push it up to 4 out of 5 stars.

You can find it over on Paizo.com here.

Review: The Zephyrus

This one has been making it's rounds on the Paizo forums. For a few days I couldn't see a reference to Final Fantasy's Dragoon job without mention of the Zephyrus. Being free it's not hard to take a look at it and at least judge for yourself but if this is completely off your radar I would suggest checking it out.

Its a full BAB class with good reflex and fortitude saves. It's main class feature is a leaping charge and a leaping  attack. Both have scaling d8s for extra damage but one is a full round action charge that deals a lot of extra d8s and one is a standard action that deals less d8s. Of course it gets a lot of jumping and charging class features to help it be more mobile and bouncy. It's High Jump Class feature adds it's level to Acrobatic checks to jump, Tactical Charge  lets it charge through allies and difficult terrain and even through enemy spaces. It gets armor training as per the fighter ability. His charge speed scales up to +50ft at lvl 20. It takes less damage from falls.

They also get a bloodline like package called Lancets that allow them a significant skill boost, some bonus feats and some extra abilities abilities based on the Lancet's theme.

Overall, on paper it's a more 'neat' than amazing. Being less than ten pages worth of crunch it feels more lackluster than it could be. With just five Lancets it has room for diversity but overall pretty bland. In play, however, it's pretty fun. it plays out like an ambush diversion tank with the right feats. Close quarters is not as fun due to many of the abilities making you want to move a lot but if you have a lot of enemies that are scattered about you wind up being a pinball of death. Because of it's shortness I don't expect anyone to really give it a second glance but its worth playing at least once and I hope to see more of it since it's a solid class that has a lot of potential. In a previous article I noted that a lot of ARMR free classes were buckets of potential that needed more support. In the Zephyrus' case, more lancets, archetypes and probably some feats would be nice. On it's own the pdf does stand on it's own more other novelty classes I've seen to the point where if I could see it as a class that I'd play more than once. If I had something bad to say, it would be that I think Leaping Charge would need to be more defined, specifically that it being a type of charge I wonder if it lowers AC for a round, whether or not I'd get the bonus to attack rolls or any other benefits from charge related feats. Some of that information I had to extrapolate based on the other abilities the Zephyrus has which was slightly annoying.

For anyone wondering if this adequately represents the Dragoon from the Final Fantasy series; Well it's the closest thing I've seen so far. It jumps and drops a lot of burst damage which is close enough I guess. More importantly it's a simple but solid class that doesn't die at the drop of a hat and is useful as an ambush caster sniper.

So my final verdict would be 4 out of 5 for it being a solid class that grants a new play experience but needs a bit of clarification and some more options to spice it up, but this being free business and that it actually does look like a Final Fantasy Dragoon rounds that up to 5 out of 5.

You can find it over on Paizo.com here.

Review: The Animist: Nature Incarnate.

I have two sides to how I think of this class.

On one hand it practically has one class feature. Its a full BAB chassis with a good will save. it has it's animism, a class feature that interacts with his animism and a capstone. That's it.

On the other hand the class feature it does have is all kinds of interesting. It gets two kinds of aspect slots. For major aspects of seasons or creatures that have a scaling suite of effects based on how many aspect slots are invested in that particular aspect. The minor slots don't have the investment slots and each are an ability that can happen once per day plus an extra time every five levels.  At 5th level and every other four levels after that it can swap minor aspects that have static effects or haven't been used so you can get a bit diverse without getting gimped.

The aspect system, particularly the major aspects and the investment mechanic is inspired and interesting, and almost every ability feels relevant, like they each add some power. A number of them are quite overwhelming, probably to make up for the lack of other class features, and you can make some devastating combinations so the class can stand on it's own legs.

But I have a hard time even accepting the amount of class features that the cleric has without being bored so the Animist feels like it really could have been knocked down to a d8 hit die and 3/4 BAB and gotten some more class features to spice it up. In fact I feel like I'd take aspects over the Hunter's spells and creature boosts, as the actual class feature feels like what I wanted Animal focus to do during the playtest and then some. The lack of class features or even bonus feats make the class not be able to interact with other parts of the game and feel lackluster.

I'd give this product 4 out of 5 stars. I know I have some harsh gripes with it but it really it's not bad, just feels a bit flat and its really a matter of taste. As I mentioned above, the cleric feels the same way and many people will still enjoy the cleric. If it could give up some BAB for some other abilities or something I'd be way happier but this is nice too.

You can find this over on Paizo.com here.

Review: CLASSifieds: The Apothecary

The Apothecary is something that I picked up because there is a glaring hole in the caster types. Namely that there's no full BAB 4/9 caster or full caster of the alchemy list. This looks like it serves as the latter. Granted it's not exactly necessary and can be troublesome to have a 'more alchemist' but I wanted to take a look.

Off the bat I'm a little irked. Normally when you present a class you get its hit die, class skills, and skill ranks per level before you get to the class features. Well I can guess it's hit die because of it's BAB but I see no Class Skills or skill ranks per level. These can be guessed given patterns from other classes but That is seriously not something to omit. That kind of thing alone gives me reason to throw this into my folder of stuff I'll never use, but for now I'll power on because it is easy to assume that it has a d6 hit die, class skills as the Alchemist, 2+INT skill ranks per level.

In a nutshell the Apothecary gets full casting alchemy including zero level extracts(!?), Discovery-like Concoctions every other level, Brew Potion, and a capstone ability.  This is simple and looks like it works okay but there are some minor things that set off alarms in my head. Due to how extracts work I'm curious as to what the heck the Widen and Bounce Ray concoctions do. That just raises too many questions. This also makes some of the choices for the spell list questionable at best and useless at the worst. Beyond that it doesn't give me much to differenciate it from the Alchemist. In fact with the loss of BAB (and presumably Hit Die) the extract list, even extended to 9 levels does not support the class enough to make it survive. It's list is nowhere near the Wizard's list so the BAB is not justified and it does not have enough abilities to support itself.

Overall the class as written doesn't work and even when you extrapolate what information should be there it is weak beyond belief and some of the abilities and the extract list show a painful misunderstanding as to how extracts even work. For me it picks at too many pet peeves for me to find useful so I'm giving it 1 out of 5 stars.

You can find this over on Paizo.com here.

Review: Anachronistic Adventures

If you bought enough of the previous component pieces of Anachronistic Adventures then this needs no introduction because you already have this. Enjoy. For everyone else that are potential buyers the general premise of Anachronistic Adventures is making a modern or pre-modern character that finds herself in medieval fantasly-land. This is done with six 20 level classes each based on the six ability scores. They're rather basic in the sense that they don't have setting assumptions in their crunch and are mostly flavored around their respective ability scores. They do have some deviations that set them apart from normal classes and binds them together. Each one has a few floating class skills to make them a bit more customizable and each have one more skill rank per level than what is standard to represent higher education standards in modern settings. They also each get an archetype from a pool shared by all of them. This is a big deal as there are a lot of archetypes with a lot of different flavors from a technomancer to martial artist. Because these archetypes are shared between the six classes this makes for a combination equal to six times the number of archetypes (21) making the classes very varied. For example, one is an Inventor. You can be an inventor that is a charismatic celebrity like Tony Stark or a pulp action scientist depending on what class you use for that archetype.

If this all sounds familiar, its basically d20 Modern in basic structure. And to that extent, being classes and archetypes without real mechanical setting assumptions, the classes kind of succeeds past their premise. Broken Earth suggests using it and the upcoming Conquest of the Universe from Tripod Machine uses it, so we have two settings with the settings of post-apocalyptic earth and outer space respectively, that can utilize these classes and from personal experience, it works. I've seen plenty of classes from scifi third party products and the Anachronistic classes do way more to meld with a pre-modern to post-modern setting. For example, I've seen a few 'pilot' classes that either drive cars or robots and are pretty much useless in any other situation. But here, you can take the Outrider archetype and attach it to six different classes to make whatever kind of pilot you want. I think the key part that makes this all work is that they don't try to make new rules to interact with, play well with Pathfinder rules as they exist, and the wording along with the floating class skills makes them work well with whatever third party thing you throw at them. Also it comes with proficiencies by progress level they come from so they don't choke on third party things.

Past that, there are a ton of new equipment and rules for adjusting to a new setting, including modern weapons and some rules on ESP. One thing I found genius was the Vehicle Template, which is a monster template that turns a creature into a vehicle. With one template you have as many vehicles as there are large enough monsters in your bestiaries and a foundation for making level appropriate vehicles. And the best part about these rules is that they play amazingly well with the rest of the game. Even new rules don't disrupt the game, so you have a lot of new crunch that does not choke on third party things like Broken Earth or Infinite Futures. And for the most part they are fairly mundane classes that don't suck so they fit wherever.

Currently this is my beloved baby simply by making Space Pathfinder more feasible. Technomancers aside I have not seen a product that gets so much done for the subject. This is outright the spiritual successor of d20 Modern and by sheer virtue of playing nice with the rules rather than being their own it succeeds it by being a potential foundation for other settings. This book is the very definition of what I look for in third party products too. It makes some things easier, it gives something new but still plays nice with the rules that exist and is useful beyond it's premise, so I'm giving it 5 out of 5 stars and for any post-1700s setting an outright requirement.

You can find it over on Paizo.com here.

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. 

Review: Infinite Futures 2.0

Infinite Futures is a big book with a lot of moving parts. Its also probably one of the most complete experiences I've ever seen in the subject of space and scifi for Pathfinder. As such its more of a huge overlay of the game rather than an attachment so it often tramples on one of my big pet peeves, being too different to really use with other things. To give it a shot I wanted to look beyond that and evaluate it based on how much it achieves on it's own and how smoothly it goes. Also since this is a huge book, going over 350 pages I have to be brief or else I'll be here all day.

Introduction

The Introduction is lengthy describing how to use the book and some logic to how it works. This includes it's own classifications on technology levels going from monkey grunts to might as well be a god. For it's purposes it's pretty useful but not as useful as others that I've seen where global proficiency rules are provided in the descriptions. The whole section is more about thematic considerations than mechanical ones. The book goes into it more later so I'll get to it later.

Origins

This chapter is about races. You have your standard created android race, created mutants, Robocops (Human parts in a robot body), Humans that are slightly different from standard, and a random alien race generator.  Each race is quite lively, having a lot of bits and pieces to shove on to make it more unique but I have a few problems with the created android race, namely that its divided funky making it hard to distinguish what's what. its easy to figure out but I always have to point that kind of thing out when I see it. Besides that I don't see many problems personally but there are bits that I can see as potentially problematic. For example: the android race can have +6 strength and +2 intelligence. Sure this comes at the price of -4 wisdom and charisma, but stat changes of over +2 tend to be a minmaxer's wet dream while going up to +6 can potentially be a nightmare to deal with. Some options are annoyingly saved for later in the book.

Classes

The classes inside are the Exporer(space Ranger), the Field Medic (space Cleric?), the infiltrator(space Rogue), the Scoundrel(other space Rogue), the Tech (space Wizard), and the Trooper(space Fighter). That isn't exactly fair. The classes inside have some superficial similarities to their sister classes but have some unique abilities that let them stand out on their own and some are better than their counterparts and emphasize the options further in the book.

However this is where I have to divide how I feel about these and how they stand in their own microcosm. Taking into account other 3pp options these classes are useless to me. Between Psionics, Anachronistic Adventures and the numerous technomancer classes I have I have no reason to allow these classes that have a limited scope and variance. But them being around doesn't exactly hurt anybody. Nothing is particularly broken and everything is clear mechanically even if in some places the formatting makes things confusing. There is an issue that the Techie is an INT based class that has +10 skill ranks per level(?!) making me have to re-read everything to see how this was balanced in whatever way. I don't think it is.  Instead of casting some classes have something called Insights, which are pretty much spells that aren't spells but Macguyverisms. They and are pretty much spells with a short spell list. You have to suspend some disbelief and make some assumptions to describe how these actually work.

Skills

There are new skills. I already have problems with new skills so I had to sit down and really think about them in context. The skills are Boat (already exists), Computer Use (expected), Demolitions, (Narrow), new uses for Disable Divice, Drive (already exists), First Aide (already exists), Engineering (already exists), clarifications and reiterations of Escape Artist Fly, Linguistics and Perform, (what's happening here?), Knowledge Galactic, Pilot (redundant), and Zero-G. This is why I praise how the Technology Guide handled skills using the Technologist feat. The entire skills chapter just complicates my character sheets with 9 whole new skills to the skill list and most of them are redundant to each other if not functions of existing skills. There had to have been a better way to do this, it just doubles down on the limitation placed on non Infinite Futures classes from multiclassing into space age classes and putting ranks in ranks in space age skills. The redundancy is beyond annoying too. Some of these skills could have really been mashed together. I've seen similar products add new functions to old skills and Pilot and Computer Use but nine new classes just wrecks everybody. Except the Techie who by nature gets more skill ranks than anybody ever.

Feats

Inside are new feats to help you along your space age campaign. Right off the bat I have a problem. The first feat refers to the skill, Knowledge (Earth and Life Sciences). Where was that last chapter? I may be missing something. The rest are pretty standard although I noticed a glitch here and there involving a lack of action designation for abilities.

Insights

Here we learn about insights and how they work and what terms they use. They're spells much like the Alchemist, Machinesmith, Technician, and Cyborg 'spells'. I have to say that I'm not feeling it in this case. The insights themselves are nothing fancy although one is way more complicated than it needs to be, I just find some non-spells hard to justify and in most instances there's more flavor to make me believe the spell format on a technology focused character. Here I'm not buying Macguyverisms being non-spell abilities and it becomes even weirder that it works by a per day basis.

Augments

There are mechanical and biological augments. Previously there was a lot of information thrown around like augments that finally get a payoff here. They cost money and a feat. Money because its an actual item and feat as a resource limiter, something I kind of hate because augmentations aren't equal so doubling down on what resources they cost is infuriatingly bad when they have the same basic cost (a feat). Plus this came out in 2015 when more than a few products including the Technology Guide presented cyberware that was limited by Con and/or Int making this kind of pricing feel archaic. Judging them as just feats, they range from weaker than existing feats (skill chip is outright inferior to Skill Focus and has a monetary cost) to okay.

Personal Gear

This chapter covers items like weapons, armor and general gear. It spans across multiple technological levels meaning that if you're using the Pathfinder Core Rulebook a lot of this information is useless. Minor changes are made though so you'll have to take a close look to see the differences. Also firearms work differently, damage being based on ammunition with their own effects. Everything functions within this context although the changes means that you have to learn this weapons system. I do find it overly complicated but not bad. It tries to cover a lot of bases which in some ways hurt the product by how complex things by not having a single space age as it's foundation. It certainly makes the tables kind of hard to sort through.

Vehicles

The vehicle section is over complicated in my opinion, becoming a massive blur of tables after a while and overall its difficult to decipher what's going on. The end result is actually rather simple to deal with once the craft is constructed.

Travel & Adventure

This section describes engines and how fast they go (why wasn't this in the previous section?) as well as well as hazards. Overall I question the math used but it functions for what it is.

Combat

Space age weapons use Wisdom for ranged weapons. This bothers me to no end but I'll let it slide. It also adds to and reiterates actions in combat, something that could have been just mentioned in the item section because all of the new actions involve specific kinds of items so a large chunk of this section didn't even need to exist. The rest is reiterating rules that already exist and information that should have been in other sections of the books. Among the new things is describing more about how space vehicles work within their own action economy, which should have been in the vehicle section.

Psionics

Inside this section we have a psionic class with a GM fiat/feat barrier. Why this isn't in the class section is beyond me. As far as formatting goes, until you get to the description of the powers the thing is a mess, including text invading tables and typos. I'm not sure why bother with this class. It's painfully inferior in every way I can think of to Dreamscarred Press' Psionics. EVERY way. I can't even say that it can stand on it's own in general.

Gamemastering

NPC stat blocks and some setting advice.

I had high hopes for this book but I really don't like it. The vehicle rules are handy along with some of the weapons/armor, and the race creator is interesting, but overall it's a complicated addition to the game with information spread weirdly, typos, bad formatting, and just doesn't play nice with the rest of the game and certainly doesn't play nice with any other third party thing that I may bring alongside it. And somehow this version comes out after the Technology Guide from Paizo and still feels outdated to the point where it feels like a discount 3.5 product than something for Pathfinder.

There are interesting things here. Some things that I may pick up while gold digging for house rules but as a whole I just have better rules for most of this subject and more that I know is in development. I'm giving this two out of five stars. There's a bit of gold digging here but playing with this is difficult and wonky and when other things are added including Pathfinder's core rules it just stops working altogether. 

You can find it on Paizo.com over here.