5e Racial Options: Aasimar

One thing I wasn't all that keen on when it comes to D&D is that Tieflings have been front and center for two editions and Aasimar just feel like an afterthought or, in the case of 4th edition, replaced entirely. I don't exactly hate tieflings but I get enough players that choose them to be 'edgy' but also Mary Sues to have a bias against them without Aasimar representation, especially when they're tucked away in the DMG as an example. At this point they're my table's Drizzt. So I am happy that my first foray into third party 5th edition material is Fat Goblin Game's Aasimar book.

We get a page of flavor and tips on how to fluff up your Aasimar so we have a good idea as to what they are, before moving into the hard crunch. We start off with the list of what to put in for your size and speed and ect. You get darkvision, resistance to radiant damage, you get extra healing when you heal and/or get healed more when you can't heal (?). There are three subtypes for Aasimar. Each gives a different +1 to an ability score and a once per long rest spell. they also get an different physical damage (bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing) resistance but it's partial resistance. I wasn't too sure about what it was since 5e is a lot newer to me but there's a sidebar that explains it. Apparently this means they get old school resistance at a rate of 1 per character level, so at level 5 a Solar subrace would take 5 damage off of all slashing damage. You also get Lineage options which lets you trade off some of the base Aasimar racial traits for something new.

Lastly you have some new equipment. One is a super holy water that deals more damage to undead, and also gives an extra use of radiant racial abilities for aasimar. There's a weapon that has a few abilities that seem kind of redundant. It grants +1 to attack and damage but also grants advantage and an extra d6 damage. It only works for divine classes and aasimar though.  There's a ring that gives celestial derived creatures a once per long rest daylight and some extra darkvision. There's also a new spell that gives you necrotic resistance and can deal damage to attackers.

I hate to say it but despite a few of these options being really cool and flavorful there are multiple points where I think it goes too far. Looking at the weapon inside it grants a +1 bonus to attack and damage, a huge deal in 5e, but also improves accuracy and deals extra damage. Its redundant and does too much. I know I haven't been playing 5e for as long and deep as I have Pathfinder but I know that getting a weapon that gains advantage AND bonuses to attack and damage is an uber weapon even if it's restricted to aasimar, clerics and paladins. Not to mention that the abilities aren't in of themselves aren't very interesting. Its just boosting accuracy and damage. The partial resistance seems more troublesome than regular resistance since damage happens at a smaller scale. I know Dragonborn get an elemental resistance that's just normal resistance and it works out fine, but this kind of resistance starts off small and eventually becomes something hugely powerful, especially since any of the three physical damages are pretty common and usually come in attack by attack chunks. The spell does something defensive and offensive with a decent duration and doesn't require concentration means that it can stack with other defensive spells which in the context of 5e can easily lead to really overpowered defenses. Some of the abilities reek of 'Pathfinderisms' like introducing trade out racial options, old school resistance, and no-brainer benefits from magic items. Things that work out in Pathfinder but seem unnecessary or overpowered in Dungeons and Dragons.  The rest is fine but with a short pdf this is a significant downside.

I'm just not terribly thrilled with this entry into 5th edition Aasimar. Added to the gripes above there are some minor typos, particularly in the sidebar to explain partial resistance, and the ability to heal and get healed more is kind of wonky in that if you have healing abilities you can add your prof bonus but if you don't have healing abilities then you add it when you get healed. Nice to have a non-biased option but this raises questions, like where the line is for this since this is an either/or thing. Does Second Wind count? If I heal myself with my healing ability does this work?. I'm left with a document that I'm reluctant to use and I'm certainly reluctant to just hand it to players for them to sort out. For this I'm giving it a 2 out of 5 stars.

You can find this over on DriveThruRPG here.

Tides of War: Volley Fire Redux

A while ago, Flying Pincushion released an addition to their Tides of War line covering volley fire teamwork feats. I had uses for it but really the language made the feats difficult to understand and in some ways the rules as written didn't quite work. But they have since released a revision so here is a retrospective for the new product.

Like the mounted combat feats before it, this Tides of War is very short, with about two pages of usable feats but the pictures reduce it to about one and a half.

The first feat, Group Fire, is simple. Declare that you are making the special attack (A full round action) and anyone close to you with the same feat can make a shot as an immediate action at the same target. This gives everyone a plus one to attack and damage for each attacker at the cost of the participant (aside from the initiator) being staggered the next round. Its easy enough to follow and worthwhile for a gang of enemies or even a single cohort since it nets you at least a +2. There's a bit of weirdness where technically with the wording you don't need an ally to get at least a +1 bonus but given that its one shot for a full round action its not that bad since anyone in their right mind will just make multiple attacks. In fact at least it's something to do with the feat when you don't have allies which is nice I guess.

The rest of the feats require Group Fire and interact with it. Some are obvious, like the clustered shot one, and some seem to be there to compensate for situations where you only have one participant for your group fire. This is nice to have if you're an Inquisitor, or at least I assume so. I question whether or not for the purposes of Solo Tactics the participating ally gets to make an attack, gets the bonus and so on. Given the wording the I assume that the Inquisitor would be the 'source' of the ability and thus starts granting actions but not bonuses. I'm not sure how this works when she would have an ability that calls out granting a bonus to someone or even the clustered shot one. I'm guessing this is why Volley Fire and other teamwork feats function by things happening to you or you doing something than granting actions to allies. Bottom line is that I'm not sure if this is overtly useful for an Inquisitor.

For everyone else this is fine. With enough participants you can increase the threat range of weaker enemies, cluster your shots, get other ranged abilities a chance to participate, and hamper flying creatures among other things.

Everything is clear and easy to understand, which is a huge improvement from the product's previous iteration, but I do think that the inherent nature of how group fire works mucks up any ability that assumes that Teamwork feats don't grant actions or directly affects allies. Being initiated by an action as opposed to the feat enhancing an action does this as well. Case point is how Volley Fire works. As far as I can tell, only Solo Tactics gets confusing with it as it only calls out that participants don't receive bonuses but I don't think the rules intend for it to be able to grant immediate actions. Other than that I would take a hard look at any class feature that interacts with teamwork feats just to make sure.

I want to give this 5 out of 5 stars because the feats do grant new things to do and get creative with teamwork feats while being easy enough to implement, but the very premise is on shaky ground because I'm going to have to check for how it interacts with things. Perhaps Solo Tactics is the only outlier and I just have to rank all of this as mostly useless to it, but with the Inquisitor being one of the main classes that actually uses teamwork feats I'd like to not be confused as to how these feats interact with it. I also can't shake the feeling that this is inherent to teamwork feats not granting allies actions or new things to do specifically because of stuff like this. If we ignore those issues then these work fine whether you're dealing with a cohort or have a group of kobolds that you want to be a bit more dangerous.  In the end I'll give this a 'high' 4 out of 5 stars. There's a glaring issue but I don't think you'll encounter the issue in most circumstances that you'll use these feats.

You can find this over on DrivethruRPG here.

Occult Archetypes

A special thanks to Legendary Games for providing a review copy for this product.

Occult Archetypes is from publisher Legendary Games, a brand that frequently produces great products. Often they are divided into different categories based on Paizo adventure paths they allude to plug into but also in-house settings and entire modes of play under Pathfinder. In this case this is an 'occult plug-in' meaning that its all about Occult Adventures and the options that it presents with new archetypes and other options. There are a little over 20 archetypes in its 40 pages (along with some reprinted rules such as spells from the Technology Guide and Wizard elemental schools).

Being rather young classes, the Occult classes definitely need some room for growth and flavor and this product brings it.

The Kineticist archetypes brings us a radiation-based kineticist that's alignment-locked into non-good. One gives us a kineticist with some psychic spells. But other than that I feel like the archetypes are mostly cosmetic in the sense that they don't change any of the basic dynamics of the class although there are some cool concepts with importing some class features like channel energy and the oracle's curse. That's not to say that they are boring. There's some concepts that are mostly a matter of flavor but are really cool, like the archetype that sources the Kineticist abilities from an item rather than the character itself producing a kind of Green Lantern feel.

Some of the Medium's archetypes are obvious. Get a druidic caster mode and a psychic caster mode with archetypes to support it and also a short archetypes that tweaks a little with a lot of impact.

Mesmerist gets just two but I wasn't terribly interested in them. They give some new flavor to Mesmerist when the class is pretty narrow but I feel represent a flavor already handled by other classes. One even sprinkles a bit of Bard in there which is just blasphemy to me.

I'm a bit biased against the Psychic so this one is pretty subjective but I really am not feeling the archetypes inside. They are most pretty much a psychic only kind of like another class, particularly gaining some items from Wizard and Monk like Wizard Schools, Wizard Elemental Schools, all good saves and evasion. One even gets prepared casting. If you already a fan of the Psychic class these are pretty aggressively interesting changes that expand expectations of how the class operates but I kind of saw the Psychic as a different casting Sorcerer so adopting class features from other classes just transfers the class's boringness to a class other than Sorcerer.

The Spiritualist is another class that feels like a New Coke version of another, in this case the Summoner, and this book doesn't help by presenting an archetypes that makes the spirit even more like an eidolon. But there's also two other archetypes that give something new are imported from the occultist which are more exciting.

There's a revision on how to deal with psychic abilities with monsters to make it more in line with how spell like abilities work in monsters along with revised entries for those abilities from the more recent psychic creatures. I do have a beef with this. Not the fact that they did it or anything but there's a table for that right in the middle of the Psychic's archetypes that takes up a full page instead of it being right after the page that explains it, which is slightly confusing. Also I'm not fond of mixing some GM information in archetype books (player information) unless its a bigger book that covers a broad amount of categories of a topic. Especially since it's about six and a half pages of stuff I may or may not use really.

On a rules and rules language front I didn't notice any problems with Occult Archetypes. There are a few archetypes that are inspirational and open up new concepts and others I feel reeks of gridfilling mechanics onto the new classes. Overall its a worthwhile buy. At it's worst about half of it contains interesting archetypes that bring you closer to new concepts that you may have had trouble with before and at it's best almost all the archetypes give you a new dynamic to it's respective class and you can easily make psy-like abilities work the same way other spells work instead of being something new and weird. Honestly most of the things that I was less than thrilled with is a victim of how expanded Pathfinder is to me. Like the very concept of a fiend hunter mesmerist gives something new to the mesmerist but between almost all the divine classes, Slayer and Ranger I think I've had my fill of the concept and I don't see what the Mesmerist brings to it. But on the other hand the Mesmerist has something new to do that's interesting. Meanwhile there's straight gems like the Poison Earth Kineticist that uses radiation. I want to give this a 4 out of 5 because there's a significant chunk that I don't really care about but I think that if I look at it objectively its a solid product that expands what the occult classes can do without being huge nerfs or being overpowered so I'm bumping it to a 5 out of 5 for what it is.

You can find this over on Paizo.com here.

More Feats! Compilation: Volume 1

First of all, a big thanks to Fat Goblin Games for gifting this product. 

Abandoned Arts is a publisher that puts out some decent product. Not great but not terrible. But they are consistent in putting out their material that has a lot of crunch per page and not really wasting time on fluff or art, so you get quite the bang for your buck. However I'm not one to start picking up tons of little books, mainly because I don't want players (or myself) to go file hunting for just the right options by digging through a bunch of small titles. When it comes to player options I like my fat books or at least fat pdf that I can print out into a fat book, so the only Abandoned Arts book that I actually use is The Class Acts Compendium. Otherwise the company has drifted into obscurity for being fairly low profile crunch that I can honestly live without. Lately Abandoned Arts has started publishing under Fat Goblin Games, who I didn't really pay attention to until after their Fantastic Technology book, and most of the products I've seen after that book has been miles better than what I had purchased before so I see this as a huge step up for both companies. Here we have More Feats!: Vol 1, which is a compilation of Abandoned Arts More Feats! line.

This pdf is only 38 pages long but true to Abandoned Arts tradition it doesn't waste much space or time. These are a truckton of feats with seven pages being just the feat tables. The document promises another compilation as they put out more More Feats! books with two more compilations showing up sometime this year culminating in over 500 feats.

The feats here cover themes of Agility, Alchemy, Athleticism, Charisma, Courage, Dexterity, Endurance, Fellowship, Fury, Horsemanship, Intellect, Leadership, Marksmanship, Secuction, Speed, Strength, Style, Subterfuge, Wisdom, and Witchcraft.

The downside of wanting a fat book of feats is that I can't talk about every individual feat and how I feel about it so I'll just bring up my general feelings. Another downside is that this product is a bit difficult to judge. The feats inside are totally not equal. Some are pure gold that I want to take and are evocative and useful, granting you something new to do. Some are basically situational trap options that I'll never take. As far as I can tell not even one of them will break your game and they are written clearly enough for me to understand on the first try (Although I noticed a few typos and wonky language like gaining 'a bonus equal to the highest level spell..' not specifying spell level.), so do I judge it for the bad stuff or the great stuff? I guess judge by how much value I get for $9.95 it takes to purchase this product.

From that point you actually get quite a bit of value. I'm noticing some really cool feats for fighters and monks like one that lets you use Str for Initiative and a series of style feats that let you be really dangerous while mobile. There's also some really interesting social feats like distracting a room full of creatures enough to allow observed creatures to make stealth checks. The useless ones are situational but if you known what kind of campaign you're getting into they can be pulled off regularly. I would say that overall the feats are about as good as you'd expect from Paizo's Ultimate books with a large swath being ignored due to the abundance of feats you need for particular builds but the ones with good flavor and great usefulness peeking through, even producing new kinds of builds.

It does tend to mess up a bit less, where a number of the feats aren't bad but make me wish characters got more feats because really they do new things but will get crowded out by hyper-optimized combat focused builds needing feats to be way more aggressive. This is kind of a result of the product not exactly rocking the boat by revolutionizing the game or generating new subsystems or changing power dynamics but at the same time the tendency kind of keeps it playing safe and not messing up by completely bungling what its trying to do and wind up being completely useless or overpowered. Its the kind of thing that you wouldn't seek out with any real enthusiasm except for about a dozen feats and more of something that you're really happy to have when you have it. Its a dose of diversity that doesn't rock the boat that can be a really nice treat for casual games that have a particular kind of game in mind and giving a few new reasons to build in a weird way. From a powergaming grognard point of view there's only a couple of gems to break you from the core rulebook and is about as useful as your average Pathfinder Player Companion. That doesn't mean I wouldn't recommend it to a powergaming grognard because in context the same price is less than your average Player Companion and the density of the product does lend to it more actual content to sink your teeth into so it actually comes out as being as useful as a really good Player companion so I can deem it as well worth the price.

For the rate of traps per gems I'd have to lower my final score to somewhere between three stars and four, as that just adds more choice paralysis to anyone that has trouble finding feats, but I get more value out of it than others because I run and play a huge range of types of campaigns so my personal feelings lean it more towards a 4 stars out of 5 and call it a day.

You can find this over at Paizo.com here.

You can find this over at DrivethruRPG.com here.

Tides of War: Magus/X Feats

First of all, a big thanks to Flying Pincushion for the review copy. 

The Tides of War series from Flying Pincushion has had a huge upswing and a huge downswing making this one a bit of a gamble but with high rewards. Lets see where the pendulum swings in this installment where we get some multiclass enabling Magus feats.

Now I'm not stranger to multiclassing feats. Rogue Genius Games did a book a while back with a bunch of them, some poaching class features while others actually required you multiclass. Here out of the six pages of the pdf, as with the previous Tides of War, we get only a few pages of content. For this one it's two, or more two and a half.

Some of the feats let you use your arcane pool in new ways that interact with class features from another class. You can use your arcane pool to reduce the penalty of mutagens, issue extra challenges, get more rounds of Bardic Performance/Raging Song, or get more Rage.

You can also spellstrike from outside your spell list. get benefits from killing targets of your smite or favored enemy, re-target Hex targets,

One of the more interesting ones is one that lets you spend arcane points when using a Kinetic Blade to use your hit die as your caster level for the spell.

For the most part these feats definitely do some enabling. They are simple and to the point but actually do quite a bit to make multiclassing with a Magus viable. Best of all they are written very clearly and there's a variety of ways that they help. For feats you get some hefty bonuses but really you'd have to because in all honesty some of the class combinations aren't that great and multiclassing in Pathfinder can be kind of a bust in the first place. I'd give this a full 5 out of 5 stars. It does its job and does it well and in a short amount of time. Besides that you also get some actual incentive to mix the classes more without a single trap option in the mix. Bravo.

You can find this over on Paizo.com Here.

You can find this over on DriverthruRPG.com Here.

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. 

Heroes of the Advent Imperiax

A big thanks to Purple Duck Games for the review copy.

Heroes of the Advent Imperiax caught my eye because I'm an admitted nut for scifi material for Pathfinder, particularly since I'm using the system to play a space campaign, and the cover has an alien woman with a space gun. I am a little bit sad that aliens aren't immediately apparent when starting to read it. This is the fault of not being very familiar with Porphyra and not being bothered to look at the linked wiki. Which is moot point, with products like these I really have to judge them based on how the elements fit into homebrew campaign settings because that is where they will likely be used for me.

After some prose to set the mood we have new races. One note of criticism is that images of individual races are not next to the racial descriptions (with one exception), although they do appear throughout the pdf. This irks me a bit as this means that printing out the races separate from the rest of the product is less useful. This isn't helped by the lack of physical description sections. You have to hunt down direct descriptions or images in the product to get a good idea of the flavor of the race. In addition to new racial traits for humans and half-orcs in the setting there are four stranger races. Two of them are pretty much your bumpy forehead alien types with some interesting abilities but nothing extreme. Two of them are much weirder giving something a bit more unique. There's a race of people with four arms but use two of them as legs. They have some rules to work with their weird anatomy that are partially awkward but useable. Then there are a race of psionic sneaky people and a race of hot green chicks and a race of half ooze people.

After this is flavor text detailing the state of the hot green chick race, that they are the remnants of a crashed spaceship that settled on Porphyra and got aggressive with protecting their technology. This includes some city stat blocks and brief history of the three main cities of the Imperiax civilization. This comes with new settlement qualities. There are important-to-the-setting NPCs but not exactly NPC stat blocks. Just their names, common locations, important equipment and a brief description. I actually really like this method. There are some NPC stat blocks later in the book but really for these I don't need too much information and this saves some space while getting to important information.

The next section is on class options. There is a prestige class that I can honestly live without. Its not bad, just that at this point I feel like there's enough material out there to have the concept without having to resort to a prestige class. Plus I'm biased against prestige classes so there's that. There are also new options and archetypes that fill in concepts for the setting. Though they are mostly for the flavor of the setting they look pretty functional, albeit nothing spectacularly new except for the otyugh mount.  The Prestige class and the archetypes have a bit of psionic support with a new Terror and archetype for Dreads and the Prestige class requiring a power point pool.

This is followed by new feats. There are some psionic ones and many of them are racial but there are some general goodies in there. None of them feel superfluous or like trap options although Alien Weapon Proficiency brings up a system explained later about alien weapons that aren't exactly necessary given exotic weapon rules and the Technologist feat is sufficient for creating that kind of barrier for using certain weapons. We also get new psionic powers including powers adapted from spells from the Technology Guide which is way more relevant and interesting than the three new powers. 

Here things start to get a bit rapid fire. There are two new race options using the race builder from the Advanced Race Guide, two new alchemical items, three herbs which function on an interesting basis that I'd like to see more of, and six new drugs/poisons. We also get new weapons and armor including technological items. The highlights are a nerfed powered suit, a stun gun, and a number of non-firearm weapons. Sadly there are two instances where I feel the rules are unclear about how something works but on the bright side they are easy to spot and only number in two. There are also some general technological items. The technological items are all priced lower than I expected which is a common theme among third party books with tech. Overall I really like the tech items here as I find them very necessary to flesh out the flavor of technology but also gives us a bit more new things with psionic-tech items. Among our general psionic items. We also have new vehicle stat blocks as well as a new type of propulsion type before getting to a list of common technological items in the setting.

Finally we get a gallery of NPC stat blocks using options from the book.

Lets get the bad out of the way first. A lot of the book kind of runs into each other without breaks after the class options section starts, so its a bit hard to find what you want. The lack of a table of contents for a 64 page pdf doesn't help matters at all. There are also a few points where the rules can be clearer or handled differently, particularly where the Femax environmental suit and the Dhosari race are concerned. The fluff, while there and interesting, makes me feel a bit lost on the product.  I feel like I need more context outside of the Advent Imperiax to get a real feel for the setting and how this subsection of the setting interacts with the rest of it. I'm also a bit hampered by a somewhat lack of description. I generally assumed what this was and the product has a hard time conveying what it is and how it can fit into your game. And lastly the concept and execution of Alien weapon proficiency is beyond useless given how the rules for exotic weapons are sufficient for this kind of weapon barrier and simply doesn't play nice outside of it's own context.

For the good things; The actual content is really handy and things that I'll immediately put in my scifi campaign. I really like most of the races, The fluff regarding the races is fascinating, the NPC mini descriptions give me a lot to work with outside the setting, the psionic support to technology is very useful, the technological items are instant includes to a scifi campaign. The book as a whole is amazingly handy whether it's the fluff or the crunch and I would recommend at least getting it for the player options if you are running a tech focused game and moreso if your tech focused game involves interacting with crashlanded aliens in a normal medieval stasis world or a Iron Gods-like situation. I think I would give this a 4 out of 5 stars. Its a bit awkward to sort through but its full of things that I'll definitely use.

You can find this over on Paizo.com here or at DrivethruRPG.com here.

New Paths 8: The Trickster

So if you have seen my opinions about New Paths Compendium my views of The Trickster will induce a lot of deja vu. Like a lot of it's predecessors the Trickster class follows a lot of familiar ground and fills in a huge gap but adds a bit of new to make it a real novelty while still feeling like a real part of the game. As a whole that's the main strength of the New Path classes. They feel like they could have been printed by Paizo so its pretty easy to accept them in a game as opposed to completely new kinds of systems like Spheres of Power or sharp changes in balance like Path of War. They simply fit in and play nice with base Pathfinder and as much as I like my crazy stuff like psionic wolfmen from the future, or Aboleth parasite mutants that shoot bears out of their eyes I absolutely love my purchase of New Paths Compendium and products that simply fill in the blanks that the base game leaves behind.

So what is the Trickster? Well in a nutshell it's a 20 level Arcane Trickster in the same way that the Magus is a 20 level Eldritch knight. Its basic chassis is a 3/4 BAB class with  six levels of casting. It casts from the Sorcerer/Wizard list so avoids spell list conflicts that I normally have with new classes but does put it's casting a bit ahead of the Magus in terms of raw versatility. It has a spellbook but prepares spells known rather than spell slots, so it casts like an Arcanist (also INT based casting). It has a slower progression sneak attack and at fifth level can use sneak attacks to deliver touch spells which is where the comparison to the Magus comes in. At level 15 it can do the reverse and have spells that deal damage against flat footed enemies deal sneak attack damage which applies to all targets of the spell if the spell does damage to multiple targets in one blast (Yes fireball/No magic missile) making a surprise Burning Hands really sick all of a sudden at late levels.

There's also an option called Forte that serves as kind of a Order/Bloodline package choice that represents a focus. One makes you significantly better at acrobatics checks, one gives you a familiar that does quite a bit of extra things, like sneak attack and functionally giving you the Inquisitor's Solo Tactics with it. One makes feint pretty desirable. One allows you to steal spells but is about the only ability in the entire book that I have serious questions about. Its unclear whether or not the stolen spell is itself negated or if the stealing has to occur within a certain range or exactly when the opposing caster is casting. Either way it looks like it can swipe spells from other spell lists and cast them for a short amount of time. Plus later on they can hijack ongoing spells and control them.

The rest of the class features are mostly filler-ish or expected things. It gets six +1s to a number of  skills over the course of the class, three bonus feats from a limited pool or a metamagic feat. They get uncanny dodge/improved uncanny dodge, trapfinding and evasion. One interesting thing is that they can make ranged disable device and sleight of hand checks as if they were using mage hand to do it. Something everyone ever had tried to do before realizing that's not how the spell works.  Eventually they can hijack ongoing spells and control them.

 In the end I have to criticize an INT based caster with 6+INT skills per level. This can easily be seen as a "better Rogue" from that standpoint alone. Although that's true for a lot of things the class feels like the Rogue dropped all of it's worst abilities and replaced them with good ones. But overall, I like the class. I've seen a few 20 level arcane trickster type classes and this one fills in the checkboxes that I think are the most desirable things about the concept. Using mage hand to steal/disable, steal spells, cast with versatility. I also have to praise the points where it keeps in room for expansion with it's Forte class feature. Its a rather simple class that fits in about 5 pages but it's packed with so many small smart choices that brings it together. The Fortes make the focus of the class drastically different from each other, the Arcanist casting keeps it from being boring but still keeps it spontaneous, stealing control of spells, not shoehorning a talent selection (which would have made for a huge chunk of choice paralysis since spells are also involved.). I think this class fits in great next to the Magus in filling up concepts that fit in the six level arcane caster space and is probably my current favorite chassis for the concept. I think I can confidently give this five stars out of five. I'm sure that others will love it.

You can find this over on Paizo.com here.

A Page of Scrolls

A big thanks to Casey Brown for the review copy.

A Page of Scrolls is an adventure that serves an adventure that serves as part one for more to come. As an adventure product I'll try to get by without any spoilers to players while still giving a general impression of what it's like.

The backstory of this book is such: Big evil guy takes over the city and the citizens spend almost two decades ousting him in an insurgency campaign. However now the city is getting an influx of refugees fleeing from some threat in a nearby civilization.  The PCs are there for reasons looking for adventure.

The first bit is probably the most difficult of the adventure to manage. It starts off with the PCs helping to free a pickpocket but its in a way that the PCs have to be altruistic enough to step into things that's not their own business. With a bunch of typical adventurer types the scene plays out to make at least one party member want to get involved. but I've had plenty of tables where the party would just avoid something like this. Overall this is the fault of not having any real assumptions that the PCs have to fill in. They don't start off with an inherent direction and aren't in any direct danger so the pieces that kick off the entire story is somewhat avoidable.  On the flip side the PCs have to definitely not be Lawful Stupid or they're liable to burn the whole town to the ground.

Other than that the adventure is fairly basic. As the first instance of an adventure path it is lacking a few things. Mostly more locations to interact with and a guide to leveling for those of us who don't do leveling by XP. It also feels much more like a module over the beginning of an adventure path. I would say that with a normal party this all will take three sessions to complete the adventure even if they blow a lot of time roleplaying. Its basically a go in the dungeon and find a thing quest that's more complicated than it seems but still simple for the adventurers. I can definitely see it as a good generic thing for first time adventurers to get into without being overwhelmed by a bunch of story things that don't matter. This is still while giving enough details to know that the area is a lot more complicated and is capable of delivering more adventure and more complexities as time goes on.

The adventure gives you quite a bit to set the mood and flesh out details, particularly at the beginning. It also leaves room for expansion. The appendix gives you enough to work with to liven up the experience for the players. Despite needing to hit the rails hard at the beginning the city is expanded enough where you can sandbox a bit once the adventure proper is started. Once you get to dealing with the dungeon at hand the whole thing is pretty dense. I'm sure you're going to retreat to level and rest at least once. If you're running with a bunch of optimized characters the whole thing isn't terribly challenging but whenever a whole group of monsters show up there are variable amounts that the book lists so that you can up the challenge. If they get to level three though it will be a cake walk either way. Normal adventurers will be challenged a bit but nothing too stressful. 

The artwork is charming for what it is. It feels very old school and more evocative than detailed. The dungeon maps definitely feel home made but not in a way that really detracts from the whole experience. There's definitely roleplaying opportunities outside for the dungeon.

Overall I like it. Its simple but can lead to a lot which is what one would expect of a 'part one' adventure. I cannot see it as the first book of an adventure path because really not much happens but it is a pretty decent module that can be used as an intro to your own adventures. You have what serves as a home base with lots of opportunities and problems which serves as great 'blank space' for more story. It has some rough edges but covers a lot of bases and gives you what you need to run a decent adventure that leads to greater things.  I want to give it four out of five stars but I'll knock it up to five because really whatever adventures are further down the line makes or breaks it. Its decent and does it's job well but isn't particularly memorable, except for that it's hinting at more exciting thing and leaving threads to go there easily, whether it's further adventures from Casey Brown or something that you make up yourself.

You can find this over on Paizo.com here.

DragonCyclopedia: The Mage

Okay, a bit of a warning. This is a pretty nice class but you may never ever want it anywhere near your table.

What this is is pretty much a wizard. It has the wizard spell list and casts with Int. Has the same saves, HD and basic stats. What it does not have is a school, arcane bond or bonus feats. Instead it gets a mage talent every other level. The Talents are actually pretty interesting. They grant various buffs to different casting, one grants a familiar, one gives you access to a 'college' that has it's own talents for a form of magic. All around it's a pretty okay class.

Then there's the controversial part. The single most interesting and broken thing: It casts spells infinitely. Basically you can only have one spell prepared at a time, but you can prepare spells as many times as you want per day. Preparing a spell takes a full round action for the first level. As you level up your lower level spells can be prepared faster while your more powerful spells still take a full round to prepare. You don't have a spell book but you can spend money to memorize a new spell. You are capable of learning spells from a new level at the same rate as a wizard. If you're familiar with the Wizard's spell list this is broken beyond reason. About the only place it's not broken is in mid combat when you have to start preparing things while being attacked but the out of combat versatility is way too much.

But I'll give it this, in combat it is pretty worthless so there's that. And that's why it has such a high rating really. Its a different kind of wizard that wins in different ways. A more interesting and dynamic way and if the wizard spell list were different I'd allow it. But this thing is way too good out of combat, to the point of probably being able to avoid it altogether. But you may be able to have fun with it and I'm just paranoid so I'm leaving it with three stars but noting that I won't let this class ever touch my games.

You can find this over on Paizo.com here. 

Retrospective:

Its been a while but my feelings on this class stays the same. I still marvel at how it's designed and how it has this 'all day' aspect to it that feels more natural than spell slots. But there's the whole issue that spells themselves, particularly the ones on the Wizard spell list, are so pervasive that I don't feel comfortable with this thing having access to higher level spells too many times a day. I'm just too afraid of using this and it's neat design is the only thing that's keeping it from a one star rating.  

Into the Breach: The Magus (2nd Wave)

 Big thanks to Flying Pincushion for the review copy.

Previously Flying Pincushion was publishing under d20pfsrd.com Publishing and while there they put  out two Into the Breach series books covering the Magus and the Summoner. The Summoner was the first and while its original iteration was kind of lackluster but imaginative the revision and eratta made things much better. Unfortunately the Magus book did not get the same treatment and that was too bad because I really didn't like that book. Fortunately under their own banner Flying Pincushion released a new Magus book following their current styles and format.

At the beginning I'm immediately met with a bit of disappointment. Going through the archetypes I notice a lot of rules language that is either missing information that's needed to fully function, is drastically non-standard to the point  archetypes with similar changes don't have the same rules language or don't seem like they would work in the context of what the game actually does.

 For example; I really like the Mistblade, an archetype that makes illusionary doubles, despite missing crucial information on what save or skill check is required to disbelieve it, since whether or not it provides a flanking bonus depends on whether or not the opponent is aware that it is an illusion. It also implies that the doubles can be destroyed but no way to destroy them. One ability that makes them capable of dealing damage probably solves this problem and it can go away with a slight bit of houseruling but I hate having to do eratta work when it comes to player information.

There's also a habit of pricing abilities that use the arcane pool or arcane pool equivalent after the whole thing is described which isn't erroneous just a bit irritating.

Then there's minor things like "[Magus Archetype] gains one or more evolution points" where the 'or more' part throws me for a loop. Also minor is one archetype with abilities that function on a per combat basis which really irks me.

But it's not all bad news. Plenty of the archetypes function fine

I like the Fate's Edge. Its pretty precise when it comes to rules language and it has some neat abilities. It loses the enhancement bonus and gets a sort of future vision state that buffs it and allows it to use some other abilities. I absolutely love the Force Bulwark, an archetype that specializes in making force barriers. I even like the archetypes that have some kind of rules language that I don't like. You get a magus that can turn into a giant, teleport, create clones and so on, and really not that many are affected by undesirable rules language. The archetypes are imaginative and have strong ties to their themes. Not just that but they are actual themes not just ways to push a boring old magus that has a slight tweak.

The only ones that I really frown on are the elemental ones. There are two fire-themed archetypes here and while they do some cool stuff one. Then there is the Elemental Champion. The Elemental Champion is stable but relatively boring. It doesn't really solve the problem I have with elemental themed magi, in that its hard to find good touch spells for all the elements. But i could be suffering from being spoiled by other options. With other third party classes I have more than a mouthful of elemental themed gishes and even when just accounting for Paizo options there's plenty of ways to go elemental. This one just isn't doing it for me.

Following the archetypes are two new prestige classes.  One is a magus/alchemist mix that specifically requires the Hummunculist Alchemist archetype. I'm not esactly a fan as it suffers from a bit of rules language I don't like for it's bomb-spellstrike and it was not exciting to me but it's otherwise functional for what it is.   The other is a more nimbly magus. Rules language is still an obstacle. There's an obvious shortcut to what it does that the class doesn't take which makes the whole thing a little more difficult to understand. Its not one hundred percent functional but rules as intended is very clear.

We get one new feat that is a metamagic feat that interacts with fire spells.  (Again with the fire)

Before OGL credits we have five new spells. All of them are pretty nice. There's a duo of, for lack of better terms, lightsaber spells that create a beam of energy that I really like. I especially like the one that causes weapons to burrow into a target's body.

This one I'm conflicted about. In most of the options the rules as intended is very easy to get and I really like the archetype options, the writers did an excellent job thinking outside the box and bringing to the table archetypes that matter and grant a new play experience. It is miles ahead of it's predecessor in every way. But on the other hand there are plenty of niggling rules weirdness making some abilities difficult to fully grasp without GM oversight, and some rules language that makes an ability non-functional as its written. I'll probably have to give this three out of five stars. It may creep up to a 4 star if you're perfectly fine with making additional clarifications but I personally feel like it's at 3 stars.

You can find this over on Paizo.com here.

Pacts and Pawns: New Pact Magic Options

I recenty got a package in the mail. In it was a copy of Pact Magic Unbound: Vol. 2. I was excited to see some new material for a pact magic but also excited that some new support popped up on my radar from d20pfsrd.com publishing.

The pdf spends quite a few pages giving a crash course in Pact Magic. It’s potentially useless information as I probably would not get this product without Pact Magic Unbound. I guess if anyone gets this product on accident they have more of an idea of what’s going on.

Chapter One gives us three new spirits. I can see myself using them as the flavor is very interesting and the powers are fun and work well with the flavor. You’re essentially channeling the spirit of a trickster gunman (complete with a magic intelligent gun), a spellsundering Barbarian, and an unholy abomination from the stars.

Chapter Two gives some new archetypes. The first one is hilarious, an occultist that forces spirits on others granting the bad pact effects but none of the powers. The later abilities mostly revolve around making the target of a successful forced binding miserable. Oddly enough this makes the Occultist feel more witchy than the Witch base class. Then there’s the Legion Occultist, an Occultist that seems to be honing in on the Summoner’s flavor. Basically the Occultist binds spirits into creatures made of various material. Then there’s the Soul Armorer, a Paladin(and Antipaladin!!!) archetype that smites whatever the bound spirit does not like.

Chapter Three introduces a subsystem similar to schools of magic or war colleges in the Magic/Combat of the Inner Sea Campaign Setting books. Your mileage depends on whether or not you use War Colleges and Magic Schools mechanics in your games.

At the end there is some bonus content advertising Pact Magic Unbound Vol. 2, which I just got in the mail so I won’t discuss here. What I will discuss is that I saw this trend on a previous d20pfsrd product and it seems appropriate considering that d20pfsrd.com is a, er, Pathfinder SRD. Now if only I got sneak peaks at cool things I have NOT already bought.

So would I play with it?
Despite the pages of redundant information and information that I may or may not use, the new Archetypes and Spirits really sell this for me making up for the actual page count with strong crunch. By my count this pdf has extended into Barbarian, Gunslinger, Summoner, and Witch flavor, making Occultist even more versatile without losing it’s own flavor. As a bonus the Paladin/Antipaladin archetype looks really fun. The most important part is that the options in this pdf make me dream of ways to play with them.

So would I allow it at my table?
As far as I can tell there aren’t any errors that make it hard to play RAW. It also supports something I already own without stepping on toes. There is nothing that would wreck my games or would be hard to deal with as a GM. As a player the Organization information is not something I want to see when there could be more archetypes, but as a GM I see more tools for use.

I'm giving this five stars out of five.  I’m going to use this.

You can find this over on Paizo.com here. 

 Retrospective: 

My feelings stay the same but this one is a bit ill timed. Soon after there was a Kickstarter for a fat new book compiling and adding to Pact Magic, which still hasn't come out yet. Then there's a new class from Paizo with a similar theme which has been absorbing all the attention away from Pact Magic making it a hard sell. This all means that I didn't get as much use out of this as I wanted. Right now it's a neat little pdf but chapter three is the most useful at the moment.

Kineticists of Porphyra 2

I liked Kineticists of Porphyra so now we'll take a look at it's sequel. Both have been popular lately on Paizo's weekly top 10 lists so we'll also see if that popularity is deserved. Big thanks to Purple Duck Games for the review copy.

The last Kineticist of Porphyra filled in some blanks allowing the Kineticist to grow to be as robust as other classes. These blanks were pretty obvious but now we get into the slightly odd choices and elements that expand a bit past the 'bender' feel of the class. This starts with the first archetype, the Divine Conduit, that is somewhat of a Kineticist given it's power through divine intervention. It has to be good, has an aura of good and gets 'Kinetic Smite', effectively a Smite Evil for Kineticists. The rest of the powers pull a lot from the Paladin in some way except for a growing DR. Overall it gets cool powers that are well worth what they give up; elemental defense and a few wild talents for  a mount, healing, smite, a defensive boost and DR. All in all I'd go for it over any kind of elemental cleric for the streamlined theme. The Dragon Pact Kineticist is a bit hard to read being littered with exclusive wild talents that give it various dragon form abilities and breath weapon abilities making separating wild talent rules text hard to separate from class feature description until you run into a new class feature. once the whole thing is sorted out you're left with a sort of spell-less Dragon Disciple. I like it well enough where I'd put it above normal Dragon Disciple, again for the streamlined theme. The fusion Kineticist is a bit of a yawn. Nothing wrong with it but it's just a basic 'two elements at level one' kind of deal which is great for early levels but it's not like you're lacking in that kind of option at mid levels for normal Kineticist. Its a grid to fill.  The Hex Kineticist continues the theme of side-jumping Kineticist into mimicking other classes, this one obviously being a witch. By now this habit gives me the feeling that the kineticists non-spell magic system is being used to replicate a pseudo-Spheres of Power effect. They get a familiar that can later be an elemental gun, and Hexes.

There are new elements. Poison and whatever Viscera is supposed to be. I had to google that and I still don't quite follow how a viscera 'element' is supposed to work. I'm going to go with 'gross body kinesis' based on what the element does, but the point is that we're getting deeper into the non-element territory of elements to manipulate/produce and leaning closer to Pokemon elements. Poison gets an acid blast and Viscera shoots bones I guess.(I'm thinking Marrow from X-Men). The new composite blasts are obvious given the new elements but the new elemental defenses being a bit cool and powerful but a little situational depending on what you're doing so no better or worse than normal elemental defenses. It does open spell resistance and rotating energy damage resistance which is nice.

The new infusion wild talents have some of the same criticisms I had last time. Some of the talents are pretty powerful for what they do and at what level although I have to say that all of the overpowered looking ones seem to have an insane burn cost. If you're set on using them they can end a fight pretty fast but you're not going to be doing anything too interesting later. These are mostly status effect kind of deals like dealing ability score damage or continuous damage (crippling to enemy casters). The utility wild talents are less extreme but definitely keeps kineticist on the path of a themed caster rather than a thing-bender opening up things like making zombies. It also kind of sets it off more anti-caster abilities like the ability to force concentration checks, counterspells and continual damage.

Between all the new wild talents there's a focus on beefing up the new elements but lots of elements get some love with some cool effects so you're going to have to go digging even if you're just a vanilla kineticist focusing on one of the main elements.

From there we have some new feats. Some things that are pretty fun. There's one that I have a bit of a thing against, mainly because it opens cans of worms for cross company utility talents than anything abusive I can think of within normal or Porphyrian Kineticist options. There are some new magical items. Well a lot. Some of them I had expected to already exist but apparently they don't so there's a bonus on that front. After that we leave off with a sample Dragon Pact NPC before OGL text.

I felt like Kineticists of Porphyra had the theme of grid-filling, expanding the Kineticist class to elements and archetypes that seem like a natural fit or a logical extension for the class. Meanwhile KoP2 goes a bit off the reservation with it's elements and if I were to describe a theme it would be a distinct hatred of casters. On one front, the archetypes creepily seek to replace other casters and replace them as doppelgangers. Despite lifting mostly from the Paladin, if you're good aligned the divine archetype is a suitable replacement for divine casters in terms of themes. Then there's the Witch and Dragon Disciple branded ones. On another front a number of the new wild talents replicate spell functions to the extent that you can even perform some necromancy. If you can sort through the fiddly bits you basically can replace all casting with wild talent 'casters' and the flavor remains untouched.  Then there are the talents that outright do bad things to casters, numerous ways to deal continuous damage, spell resistance, good counterspelling. Its like the Kineticist not only wants the option to beat casters to a pulp but take their place as a less diverse but 'all day' caster.

Whether or not this is bad depends entirely on how you feel about the Kineticist in general. If you love the class and want it to be a bit more thematically or to do something other than being a blaster caster then this is a pretty decent product. It gives you new and exciting things to do and although I mostly did a single read through, I have not found any real problems in terms of rules and typos.

I would give this 5 stars out of 5. I have somewhat of a sarcastic tone with this product but it really does open up quite a bit and gives more utility to handle more esoteric problems and do cool things. This book kind of brings them up a bit past simply being an elementalist which does kind of bring it out of it's niche but also evolves the class a bit. During the playtest I felt like the Kineticist and it's Wild Talents felt like Spheres of Power-lite and I can definitely feel it here as the class branches itself. These are things that I really like, hence the five star rating. 

You can find this over on Paizo.com here.

Meditations of the Jade/Lotus

Anyone Remember the Pathfinder Player Companion? Inside was a new feat type for Monks. I don't know about anyone else but for me those were terrible. Meditation feats, the feats in question, could be taken in place of monk bonus feats and represented getting bonuses for meditating. The entry feat gave you a one time +1 bonus to a roll if you meditate for one hour after 8 hours of rest. From there you can take more feats that give you different effects for the day that can be quite good or just offer another minor bonus. Then there's Combat Meditation which lets you meditate for a full round to gain instant benefits from other feats often with their own limits. I thought this was a neat mechanic but not much about it appealed to me because there weren't that many of them and there wasn't a real way to build around them. Plus I saw Combat Meditation and Meditation Master as pretty steep feat taxes for the kind of bonuses along the line.

Luckily Amora Games has release more meditation feats to let this new little subsystem play out, which is a great thing. The list of feats for monk bonus feats has always been awkward to me and meditation feats feel like a flavorful substitute that should have been a mainstay in the class rather than a small blip in a Player Companion. Potentially as big as style feats.

In Meditations of the Jade the feats are honestly not that exciting, at least in terms of combat effectiveness. There are a few that get cool and interesting, like the ability to spit poison, making a shadow double once a day, using dimension door, or detecting magic and invisibility, but others feel like they're more in there for flavor, like being able to switch styles in mid combat by using a swift action.  I would say that half of them are nice to have or do something mildly exciting while the other half I wouldn't ever take considering that Meditation Master is already kind of a feat tax. This being a small book its hard to really judge because a few good ones can make the product good enough for most purposes and the low price tag doesn't hurt. I would warn customers not to get TOO excited but if you like the idea of monks getting a bit of divination and a bit of teleportation then this is a solid 4 out of 5 stars once you ignore the stinkers.

You can find this over on DriveThruRPG.com here.

In Meditations of the Lotus we are greeted with all kinds of excitement. Self healing, the ability to cheat in a bunch of ki points, reroll will saves, use ranks as BAB (okay that's kind of dangerous.).  There are some that interact with Grit, Panache or Stamina that I feel aren't really needed but if you're multiclassing then it couldn't hurt. As exciting this is I keep getting the feeling like these are going somewhere but aren't quite there, but I guess I was expecting something more outrageous and wuxia. At the very least more effective combat applications for meditations. The feats inside instead stay well within usual design paradigms and try to do the best they can.  What I really want to say is that I wanted more monk fixes out of meditations but what I got isn't bad and can still be useful. Especially things that interact with ki since a ki ability intensive build needs as many of those as they can get. Overall I would give this 5 out of 5 stars. May of these I would gladly take with a few exceptions.

You can find this over on DriveThruRPG.com here.

Class Acts Compendium.

There are a lot of bad things in this book. There are also a lot of good things in this book. Its pretty tight and concise making it a pretty dense book in terms of content. It opens up about as much class content as Ultimate Magic or Ultimate Combat. Its a fairly generic and unnecessary book bringing only a few inspired options along with a ton of option bloat. Overall for the price it expands potential list of choices without breaking the game and I see myself selecting quite a few of them so it rounds out at about four stars. Nothing special but nothing to sneeze at either and brings a lot to the table for a decent price.

You can find this over on Paizo.com here.

Retrospective: 

I agree with my previous short words on this. All the classes (Up to Ultimate Combat) get some love and a lot of territory gets opened up. Some of the archetypes are just plain bad and there's nothing groundbreaking that shifts balances or offer incredible new ways to play but it offers heavy amounts of crunch for a lower price than one of Paizo's hardcovers. Each class gets at least two archetypes and each class gets a slew of suboptions. 

However this product does suffer when you have your hands on other third party options. As I have leaned more on third party classes and options that do shift balances and offer new ways to play these options have seen less and less light until the point where its basically gathering dust now. There are just a lot of exciting things going on in Pathfinder for players to go gold digging through ignorable to 'pretty okay' options to get their build just right. 

I can't say that this is bad because really its not. If you have games that focus on Paizo classes and want to open them up as much as Ultimate Magic or Ultimate Combat does then here is your product and for a decent price tag. If you're more into expanding into psionics, spherecasting, martial maneuvers and new ways to resolve magic an fighting abilities then this might be a pass. If you do like the idea then I would recommend that you print this out and bind it at your local print shop and that you get this product rather than the multiple parts that make it up. The stress on printing is very low and isn't broken up by multiple OGL statements. Also even the ones with bad options have material that is very desirable so you'd want to get them all in one shot rather than pick and choose. 

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.

Cooking with Class

I love the idea of making food matter more for gaming but to some extent I don't feel like this book exactly delivers. It gives a lot of fluff that I've used in a lot of games but not too much crunch and the crunch that's there never gets used in my games.

On one hand I use the menus and food by region a lot but not much else. It has some great discussions about fluff but you won't be reading this too often or using too much out of it. I'm giving three stars to reflect this.

You can find this over on Paizo.com here. 

Retrospective:

I was excited to get this product and despite disappointment over what it could actually do I wanted food to be a bigger subject in my games but as time went on and the book became less and less used I just forgot about it. Even worse I've already made reviews on my blog that cover similar angles that are vastly superior. Dire Rugrat's Tavern series gives you a lot more bang for your buck in terms of making a resaurant feel alive and giving plot hooks that blend into and work with campaigns. Flaming Crab released a book on food that matters. Heck there's even a fat book that I haven't posted yet that gives you a lot to work with from weapon damage for bar items to new wondrous food items. Cooking with Class is just outclassed on all fronts making it borderline useless. Its easier to replace it with two items which combined are much cheaper and a thousand times better. 

At best there are three prestige classes that do not help in cooking at all and stink of fringe 3.0 design. 

I maintain my three star rating because it's not an inept product. You can get some value out of it and there's no overpowered crunch and some fluff to guide you along, it's just underwhelming and most of what it offers can be handled with a quick google search or some forethought.

Advanced Bestiary

Have 5 stars.
Seriously this is just really good for a GM. Its more than a bestiary or a compilation of templates, or an NPC book. Its all three. In fact its more considering that the templates are often very involved. This massive book effectively multiplies the entries in all the bestiaries and NPC codexes saving me a ton of trouble and making for incredible encounters.

You can find this over at Paizo.com here.

Retrospective:

My original review for this was rather short. Others has posted reviews in great detail and I just wanted to add my stars to the mix, but really there isn't all that much to say.

The product is very basic. Its a big fat book full of creature templates. The templates are diverse and create a lot of interesting abilities and plot hooks. Each template has an example creature that is either an NPC or monster that has the template. So the entire book is one part bestiary and one part 'pimp my monster' but has some weird NPCs in there.

To understand how good this is, think about how many monsters you have. We have five bestiaries, an NPC Codex and a Monster Codex. Each of those creatures when they have a template applied is pretty much a new monster given that these templates are far reaching and add some bit of flavor. So the amount of creatures you have at your disposal multiplies with each template. With, what I'm guessing is 200 templates, some of which have multiple 'modes' you can seriously  never have the same creature twice for a really long time. Gone are the days when your players can predict how a creature works completely, even if it's the same monster they've seen dozens of times. Monsters that they've fought at level one can show up more often with newer and more diverse abilities. My usual method of advancing monsters has been applying class levels but with this many templates I can do quite a bit very simply. I could even design entire campaigns around some of the templates because they do more than add a few plusses but can add a new dynamic or a new kind of enemy. Besides that the book is effectively a new bestiary given the amount of sample monsters.

This book reduces a lot of work for any GM and has been one of the most useful books I have to make encounters more interesting or buff up a monster that wasn't too interesting to fight. It is pretty much an automatic five stars simply by how often it  gets used.

Deep Magic

I like this book a lot. If I had my guess as to what Ultimate Magic 2 would look like, this would be it. More than just a book of spells Deep Magic supports magic in a lot of different ways.

The first chapter essentially gives spell lists by theme, discussing each with some flavor and providing some spell books that can be found containing the spells. There's also some smackling of rules such as new wizard schools, Ioun Stones, and leylines. This does mean that you wind up having to read the theme before you can find some rules, for example; there isn't a list of arcane discoveries unless you find a sidebar somewhere. This organization may be jarring but it has been a breath of fresh air for me as I tend to pick my spells and options by theme as opposed to sort out and optimize.
The new spells vary in usefulness and brokeness but nothing truly past the Core Rulebook in power per spell level. The spells also support other Kobold Press classes such as the Elven Archer and White Necromancer, which is a pretty big plus if you have those and ignorable if you don't There are also little side bars that give a bit more fluff to the spell themes.

Chapter 3 is a huge pluss for me. Ink magic seems out of place as it looks like it should have been in

Chapter 1, as it doesn't give new rules to the extent of the Glyphs and Runes. The Glyphs and Runes are winners for me by being means for even non-casters to get a touch of magic. Basically you take a feat or two and you get a static bonus and some scaling access to magical effects. Some of these are lifesavers and add quite a bit of fluff if you're running anything involving Norse gods or aboleth.

Chapter 4 introduces Incantations from Zombie Sky Press so if you don't have that its a fun bonus.

Chapter 5 and 6 give bloodlines, archetypes and mysteries. Nothing that special but they support a lot of themes introduced in chapter 1 and look like a lot of fun if you're working a theme.

Chapter 7 has some fluff and rules for undead crafting, familiar stuff and homuculi. I didn't look too deep into this chapter as I felt it didn't add too much that wasn't already achievable in the game. Plus it's a short chapter with just a few bits of crunch to look at.

Lastly there's some NPCs to throw at your players.

Overall I think this massive book is well worth the price. It brings life to a lot of themes that have been neglected and gives a lot to do with the flavor to match. Its more than just a list of options which I appreciate but will be difficult to sort out if you're just looking for those options. I'm giving it five stars despite that and some minor editing mistakes because as a whole this is almost mandatory for cool options for making magic.

You can find this over on Paizo.com here.

Retrospective:

I've seen a lot of comments about a number of the spells in Deep Magic being broken. Which is probably true. There are a number of spells that aren't exactly more troublesome than Core Rulebook spells but they're just as bad which is pretty bad. In using this book I've never noticed. Partially this is because I don't let my players touch the spells unless they come from archetypes or other class options. adding hundreds of new spells is inherently troublesome if the spells are at all exciting, and there are lot of exciting spells, because of the cherry picking they allow. What I usually do with third party spells is leave them for PCs to find in a library or dungeon so that they have a reason to discover things. While martials get some power creep too due to the runes this is still a book of magic and magic is pretty pervasive. This can get extra bad if you allow players to cherry pick spells from this book without offering some kind of martial power creep as well.

For me, this book has been has proven to be as exciting as I thought it would be but lately the use of it has been dwindling. When the Spheres of Power train arrived a lot of people jumped on board and this lead to sharp dislike of spells and spellcasters so sadly I don't really use it anymore. Then I started planning a scifi campaign and it just felt like there was no space for it without arbitrarily overloading players.

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.