Sorry for the clickbaity title but this post came from really strong feelings that occured due to a breaking point. But really its not as bad as it sounds.
What do I mean when I say that I'm 'done' with Pathfinder? Well here's what it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean that I'll stop talking about Pathfinder on this blog. It doesn't mean that I'll stop writing reviews of third party material or ignoring news about it. It doesn't mean that I am angry at Paizo or Pathfinder. It doesn't mean that I'll stop playing Pathfinder.
What it does mean is that I won't be going out of my way to buy new Pathfinder material whether its third part stuff or Paizo stuff. I'll pick up some things that I wanted to pick up for a long time and things that are too good to pass up but I'm not thrilled with getting more stuff and will soon eliminate my Pathfinder budget. The Villain Codex will be my last hardcover purchase. The hardcover Curse of the Crimson Throne will be my last Adventure Path purchase. I do not intend to get new Player Companions or Campaign Settings. I have some third party things I intend to get to round out what I have, such as the remaining Spheres of Power supplements and maybe additions to the corruptions from Horror Adventures. But that's it.
Why?
1) I have enough stuff.
I have a shelf dedicated to holding all my Pathfinder hardcovers and the player companions/campaign settings. I have another shelf that holds all my print third party stuff. I have another shelf that's half full holding my adventure paths and modules. I haven't gotten the chance to even use all of it. I've only completed less than half the adventures I have, I have used bits and pieces of most of the other material but I haven't really used much of the options and classes and alternate rules that are on these shelves. The same goes for the gigabytes of pdfs on my computer. I'm pretty sure that I have enough Pathfinder material to last me a long while before I get bored, and better yet I have enough material to handle most concepts, settings, and styles that I can think of as long as they have some magic in it. I have material for outer space, cyberpunk, Ebberon-like dungeonpunk, and almost 200 different classes to work with. I'm good. I don't need any more. I can already do whatever I want now. For christsake, I have Ponyfinder, Thunderscape, and Aethera coming soon. I can throw ponies in space with magitech arms coming out of their backs that shoot lasers and they all fly through Stargates in a TARDIS to fight Galactus (LPJ's Crisis of the World Eater). What else do I really need at this point? Even the additions to the stuff I like are getting kind of unappealing because I'm not bored with what I have already. I have third party things that are expansive enough to represent things that will keep me busy for years but still have new things coming out of it. I was not actually ready for a Path of War 2. I wasn't ready for anything psionic past Ultimate Psionics. I already have so many things to do with that material.
2) Starfinder is coming.
I dedicated a lot of effort to collecting material to bring Pathfinder into outer space and making scifi or sci-fantasy adventures. Now Paizo is putting out an entire game where it's on a silver platter, and given the space Pathfinder game I'm currently running it'll probably go smoother than what I'm doing right now because I'll tell you right now that it is difficult to manage even with all the scifi crap that's out. Depending on what it winds up looking like I'm either going to discard or convert the scifi material I have because I know that Starfinder is going to wind up becoming my go-to Sci-fantasy game leaving Pathfinder to handle the straight fantasy stuff. That's an entire realm to be explored now that there is going to be a dedicated corner of Paizo working on it. And that's when we already have a shrinking new idea pool in Pathfinder itself that we take a huge chunk of territory to handle and just shoot it over to a new game. Plus its a new game to learn that's probably less crunchy than Pathfinder but likely more crunchy than Dungeons and Dragons. Either way given my enthusiasm for Space stuff in Pathfinder I'm all but guaranteed to buy Starfinder and Starfinder is pretty much going to talk over quite a few grounds that I use Pathfinder to cover because of it's nature. And its not just Starfinder.
3) I've been playing other games lately.
So here is the list of games that I've been getting into lately and will probably talk about more on this blog. Ryuutama, Savage Worlds, Dungeons and Dragons, OVA, Golden Sky Stories, and Fate. Now I have assorted feelings about each of these but most of them have a place and a mode of play that Pathfinder doesn't really reach or does not reach easily. I think that if I want to run a module or one-shot from Pathfinder, I'd much rather do Dungeons and Dragons than Pathfinder because its faster to make a character and conversion is very easy. Pathfinder doesn't do low fantasy very well and I suspect Starfinder won't do 'hard' scifi very well so I've been getting into Savage Worlds. Same goes for anyone who is fairly mundane like college students and stuff like that is hard to do with Pathfinder because even 'mundane' classes get super sturdy quickly. Some games I really need to represent something obscure or deal with entire campaigns where fighting just isn't a thing so I have the other stuff. Its not that I'm tired of medieval fantasy or whatever Golarion is, I just have some other stuff to play too and in some cases they are absorbing some aspects that I was using Pathfinder for due to campaign length or complexity. And really once that happens the more I don't need new Pathfinder stuff. I already have what I need to represent medieval fantasy to renaissance steampunk with airships, but I also want to play around with contemporary settings with normal people or a high school drama, or fighting Nazis on a land of the lost. I just have some other stuff to play and I don't want to deal with Pathfinder to do it because Pathfinder is kind of complicated. Which leads to my next point.
4) Pathfinder is kind of huge, bloated and unbalanced.
Over the course of collecting third party material I think I've found ways to handle pretty much any general balance issue that exists in the game. If magic in general is overpowered, just replace it with something more far reaching and more balanced. If martial options are too week there's stuff out there to make them better from just better options or entire rewrites or replaces the weaker classes. Skill distribution is unbalanced? Just introduce rules from Pathfinder Unchained. But that's the way that Pathfinder is 'unbalanced'. Pathfinder is unbalanced starting from its very premise just by the fact that it is very possible to have a badly made character and very possible to make a very well made character and the gap between that is huge. that the Strategy Guide exists is somewhat proof of this and that it starts with the core rulebook. Because of this as the game releases more and more options this gap gets wider. Now it is entirely possible to restrict books so that things aren't overwhelming but that kind of makes it seem like the complexity, the glut of options and the growth you experience by being able to make a 'good' character is a bad thing when that's one of the best parts about the game. It gives choices meaning, it makes you think about your character and it makes just the process of making a character an exciting experience. Not only that but having to look up stuff, crunch numbers or make builds just adds to the amount of hours being involved with the game and if that is fun for you, then its just more hours of having fun and the fun extends past the table. However there's a consequence to this and that is that new players that don't want to or can't look deeper into the rules because they don't want to spend the time or don't have the time or don't find it fun just kind of fall behind. It is possible to come to a table and your character just sucks and the rest of the party has to carry you or ignore you whenever combat happens, or even worse, the other players have to reign it in because one or more player can't hack it and start to resent not being able to do anything because its overpowered by comparison or use interesting options because it's restricted to another book. When everyone is on the same page Pathfinder works beautifully even if everyone is a new player just learning the game but I personally am starting to resent everyone when they aren't on the same page. I have to tell some players to tone it down because other players aren't up to speed and the gap is so huge that they need to basically break a leg to get in line. I have to spend an entire session to teach players how to make a character, even though they have played the game before, while the players that know what they're doing either have to twiddle their thumbs or just not attend session zero. I have to check character sheets so that players aren't running around with vanilla Rangers with 10 wisdom (which has happened before) or that they aren't geared towards making an army of summons or clones. I have to adjust the difficulty of NPCs so that they have to be able to handle the guy with a million AC but not be capable of immediately killing the guy that still doesn't know how Power Attack works. Its actually less work when everyone is overpowered because I can throw whatever I want at them and I don't have to check character sheets or explain things. Its also easier when everyone sucks because I don't need to look at stat blocks that look like essays because NPCs don't do anything more complicated than run up and attack, plus everyone is learning and growing together and getting into more and more advanced options and ways of thinking. But for now, since I actually like perusing and using the huge list of options I perfer to play or run Pathfinder when everyone knows what they're doing and leave everyone else to Dungeons and Dragons.
5) I have far too many adventures to run.
I like making adventures that are interesting or quirky or play around with genre. I also have a lot of published adventures. And really I find it difficult to get through them all and part of that is because I primarily focus on Pathfinder. One thing you'll notice is that the list earlier of RPGs I'm getting into is full of non fussy and easy systems. These aren't the only RPGs I own or that I like, but I only have room in my heart for one really crunchy system and the list is full of simpler games for expediency and price. I want to be able to run more concepts as one shots or short campaigns and I'm tired of doing that with Pathfinder because it is option heavy and front-loaded. If you bother to make a character in Pathfinder using a bunch of options and stuff I imagine that you're in for the long haul. At least 12 levels of campaigning that can take about a year. Because that character took work and investment compared to the 5 minutes it takes to make a character in Savage Worlds, Dungeons and Dragons, or FATE. So those adventures that take a few levels or five sessions to complete seems like a waste of time. Worse yet, I have trouble keeping a Pathfinder game going for long before somebody has a baby, or gets a new job or some other obligation and nobody can agree on a new time. The only adventure path I personally saw from start to finish had 12 different players go in and out, and only two of us (not including the GM) were there from the start. I have several Pathfinder Adventure Paths and actually got to play about half of them due to this. And again, I love having an invested character built from a ton of options in a long game but sometimes I can't do that or I only have a certain range or a certain power level of ideas. Sometimes I just shorten them out so we can get something done that has an actual conclusion. This is why the primary new games I'm getting into is FATE, OVA, and particularly, Savage Worlds. For a low price I can get a lot done really quick and the range is wide. Heck, I don't even like FATE all that much but its a game that builds other games instead of a game that has a very narrow focus so I'm good with it enough to need it for obscure concepts rather than having to pick up a whole new game that can only handle it's own specific type of play. And despite the difficulty to maintain group long enough to complete an adventure path apparently I have a lot of people in my area that want to play and like my campaigns so I just have a lot on my hands and Pathfinder doesn't go through it fast enough.
So that's why I'm done with getting new Pathfinder stuff. As I said before this doesn't mean that I will stop posting new reviews of third party stuff. I have enough of a backlog to go on with that for a long time. I also won't stop playing and running Pathfinder because I do really like the system. Some would say 'with it's warts and all' but in my case I really like the warts. I'm like a troll from Elfquest, that stuff just gets me off. I just have had my fill of it in the sense that I have more than enough to do quite a bit and lately I've been getting into things that can handle whatever Pathfinder can't handle without getting too much in the way. I just hit a wall where new Pathfinder stuff isn't really useful to me anymore so I'm just going to stop.
As it stands now, here is my RPG list and what I use for what.
Pathfinder: Heroic Fantasy and Dungeonpunk for long campaigns.
Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition: Heroic fantasy for short Pathfinder modules or string of modules.
Starfinder: Mostly speculation but, heroic sci-fantasy for long campaigns.
Savage Worlds: Contemporary fantasy/horror, gritty fantasy and dungeonpunk, hard sci-fi, superheroes, and anachronistic pulp for long or short campaigns.
Ryuutama/Golden Sky Stories: For their intended purposes (they have very narrow modes of play). Particularly for young players.
OVA/FATE: the remaining weird stuff that needs abstract or very narrow sets of mechanics like high school romance or replicating a linear subgenre. Particularly non-action or non violent subjects.
FATE, D&D and Savage Worlds has the most support so I'm going to talk about those on this blog the most after Pathfinder and maybe Starfinder when it comes out. Of course this is pending my overview of each of those games as a whole.
Showing posts with label pathfinder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pathfinder. Show all posts
Monday, October 10, 2016
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.
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.
Thursday, October 6, 2016
New Rule: Revised Action Economy
Pathfinder Unchained has been out for a while now and while the unchained classes get a lot of talk, the most facilitating part of the book for me was the Revised Action Economy. Pathfinder is not a perfect game, and the way that in combat actions work is often seen as the root of plenty of it's problems. It favors casters, its very complicated and it makes combat messier as you rise in levels. Despite the RAE claiming to clean up quite a bit I've seen it be very divisive as to whether or not its better to use. Even in my own groups its hard to get people to convert unless you force it at the beginning of the campaign and if it is explicitly an option even the players who would greatly benefit from it don't even try to use it so I have way less experience with it than I would actually like. Now there are several reasons for this. There are plenty of things that the RAE does not account for to make you be able to do everything that you could previously do. The change of Swift actions to be one action means that one turn swift action effects like arcane strike are basically dead in the water.
It is a drastic turn but I have a few defenses of it. The more I see it in action the more I think that it is easier to convert to than the normal action economy is to execute. So here are my reasons why I think you should use the Revised Action Economy.
1. Initiative Order Doesn't Change
This one is rather subtle but it makes a big impact when in play. In the normal action economy you can ready an action or delay which allows you to interrupt and act out of turn. This moves your initiative order to occur before the person that you are interrupting. And this is a huge pain in the butt for anyone keeping track of this. Sure you can take one of those magnetic initiative trackers or even an electronic one to keep things clean but when you get to the point where you peripherals just to keep track its still a pain in the butt even if it's a small one. You still have to make adjustments to shuffle that character around in the initiative order. With the RAE your readied action eats up your reaction instead of moving you around in the initiative order so doing so does not come with the added bonus of having to complicate combat more than it needs to. This sounds really minor but the difference is astounding. You don't need a shuffleboard of magnets to keep track of who's where in initiative and where they go when they do something like readying or holding or interrupting. You just go top to bottom and leave it alone.
2. You Can Move More
The RAE breaks up most instances of full attacks so something had to be done with options like two weapon fighting and flurry of blows. What winds up happening is that they add extra attacks to your first, second and then third attacks as you advance in that option. This is absolutely huge for any combatant that wants to move more while using these options. Lets take a look at the numbers here: If you are using TWF (Full BAB at lvl 20, two light weapons)with the normal action economy if you do nothing but attack you get seven attacks at +18/+18/+13/+13/+8/+8/+3. If you make a move action you get one attack at +20. With the Revised Action Economy under the same circumstances if you do nothing but attack you get six attacks at +18/+18/+13/+13/+8/+8, but if you make a move action you get four attacks at +18/+18/+13/+13. So with the normal action economy moving once makes you lose over 80% of your attacks while with the RAE you lose a little over 33%. This is true even for regular iterative attacks where you lose 75% of your attacks normally but with the RAE you only lose a little over 33%. And this is just for moving more than a 5ft step.
3. There Are Way Less Actions.
RAE is three actions and a reaction and that's it. The sheer amount that needed to be converted makes this seem a bit daunting but it all amounts to everything having a cost. Most things have similar costs with the normal action economy but not with the same currencies. You have full round actions that cost a move and and standard action, a 5ft step that will cost you your move action but not any part of a full round action, an attack of opportunity that does not encompass your immediate action, but your immediate action does take your swift action, that is a short action but only has a currency of one per round without move or standard actions being able to pay for them. And because of all these staggered currencies we can take advantage with classes that have a reason to benefit from a swift action, full round action, and 5ft step but if you miss out on the swift/immediate action and 5ft step you can't use those actions to pay for anything else. This is too many categories and too many false equivalencies and it just mucks up combat. With the RAE you do three points worth of stuff and you're done. The only reason why you need a dozen pages to define them in Pathfinder Unchained is because of the damage already done by the normal action economy which goes all over the place.
4. Fighter and Rogue Start Looking Good
This is a disputed point but its a popular opinion that spellcasters have a leg up on classes without spells with Rogues and Fighters being at the bottom of the barrel. And part of that is because of how the normal action economy works. With movement taking away attacks the Fighter suffers because that's the main thing that he does and Rogues because movement will kill sneak attack potential, meanwhile a caster can move and cast a powerful spell, basically losing nothing. But with the RAE Fighters can chase down casters and actually do something crippling and Rogues can move and get off more than one sneak attack. Add to that, both classes have relatively fewer opportunities to use all the actions from my third point. A typical fighter doesn't have too many ways to use a swift action but in the hands of other classes a swift action can be insanely powerful.
5. Converting is easier than it looks.
Pathfinder Unchained divides the RAE actions into Simple and Complex actions, then to what number of acts it takes with a couple of subtypes and most of the things in the game redefined. This doesn't encompass third party material or really weird splat book options but the logic is clear. 3 acts are full round actions. 2 acts are standard actions, and 1 act are move or swift actions. Reactions are immediate actions and attacks of opportunity, and the only awkward position is the new status of full attack which is still easy to understand or capable of just re-entering the new action economy as 3 acts. I think the only thing that gets awkward to convert is that the conversion guide states that Standard action attack actions would be 1 act. This makes martial characters go from better to insane really fast as that can include the likes of Vital Strike. Imagine doing that three times in a row. It also kind of flies in the face of the logic behind how combat maneuvers work where if they can sub an attack in a full attack then it's 1 act and if not it's 2 acts, which is drastically more sane and more in line with what the game normally does. But that all boils down to whether or not the attack action equates to 1 or 2 acts because both action economies don't equate attacks and the attack actions, something that is confusing and insane about the normal action economy that is often the source of confusion.
And there you have it. Those are my main arguments in favor of Pathfinder Unchained's revised action economy. Its not perfect, not by a long shot, but I do think that it is way better than the complex monstrocity that the normal action economy is.
It is a drastic turn but I have a few defenses of it. The more I see it in action the more I think that it is easier to convert to than the normal action economy is to execute. So here are my reasons why I think you should use the Revised Action Economy.
1. Initiative Order Doesn't Change
This one is rather subtle but it makes a big impact when in play. In the normal action economy you can ready an action or delay which allows you to interrupt and act out of turn. This moves your initiative order to occur before the person that you are interrupting. And this is a huge pain in the butt for anyone keeping track of this. Sure you can take one of those magnetic initiative trackers or even an electronic one to keep things clean but when you get to the point where you peripherals just to keep track its still a pain in the butt even if it's a small one. You still have to make adjustments to shuffle that character around in the initiative order. With the RAE your readied action eats up your reaction instead of moving you around in the initiative order so doing so does not come with the added bonus of having to complicate combat more than it needs to. This sounds really minor but the difference is astounding. You don't need a shuffleboard of magnets to keep track of who's where in initiative and where they go when they do something like readying or holding or interrupting. You just go top to bottom and leave it alone.
2. You Can Move More
The RAE breaks up most instances of full attacks so something had to be done with options like two weapon fighting and flurry of blows. What winds up happening is that they add extra attacks to your first, second and then third attacks as you advance in that option. This is absolutely huge for any combatant that wants to move more while using these options. Lets take a look at the numbers here: If you are using TWF (Full BAB at lvl 20, two light weapons)with the normal action economy if you do nothing but attack you get seven attacks at +18/+18/+13/+13/+8/+8/+3. If you make a move action you get one attack at +20. With the Revised Action Economy under the same circumstances if you do nothing but attack you get six attacks at +18/+18/+13/+13/+8/+8, but if you make a move action you get four attacks at +18/+18/+13/+13. So with the normal action economy moving once makes you lose over 80% of your attacks while with the RAE you lose a little over 33%. This is true even for regular iterative attacks where you lose 75% of your attacks normally but with the RAE you only lose a little over 33%. And this is just for moving more than a 5ft step.
3. There Are Way Less Actions.
RAE is three actions and a reaction and that's it. The sheer amount that needed to be converted makes this seem a bit daunting but it all amounts to everything having a cost. Most things have similar costs with the normal action economy but not with the same currencies. You have full round actions that cost a move and and standard action, a 5ft step that will cost you your move action but not any part of a full round action, an attack of opportunity that does not encompass your immediate action, but your immediate action does take your swift action, that is a short action but only has a currency of one per round without move or standard actions being able to pay for them. And because of all these staggered currencies we can take advantage with classes that have a reason to benefit from a swift action, full round action, and 5ft step but if you miss out on the swift/immediate action and 5ft step you can't use those actions to pay for anything else. This is too many categories and too many false equivalencies and it just mucks up combat. With the RAE you do three points worth of stuff and you're done. The only reason why you need a dozen pages to define them in Pathfinder Unchained is because of the damage already done by the normal action economy which goes all over the place.
4. Fighter and Rogue Start Looking Good
This is a disputed point but its a popular opinion that spellcasters have a leg up on classes without spells with Rogues and Fighters being at the bottom of the barrel. And part of that is because of how the normal action economy works. With movement taking away attacks the Fighter suffers because that's the main thing that he does and Rogues because movement will kill sneak attack potential, meanwhile a caster can move and cast a powerful spell, basically losing nothing. But with the RAE Fighters can chase down casters and actually do something crippling and Rogues can move and get off more than one sneak attack. Add to that, both classes have relatively fewer opportunities to use all the actions from my third point. A typical fighter doesn't have too many ways to use a swift action but in the hands of other classes a swift action can be insanely powerful.
5. Converting is easier than it looks.
Pathfinder Unchained divides the RAE actions into Simple and Complex actions, then to what number of acts it takes with a couple of subtypes and most of the things in the game redefined. This doesn't encompass third party material or really weird splat book options but the logic is clear. 3 acts are full round actions. 2 acts are standard actions, and 1 act are move or swift actions. Reactions are immediate actions and attacks of opportunity, and the only awkward position is the new status of full attack which is still easy to understand or capable of just re-entering the new action economy as 3 acts. I think the only thing that gets awkward to convert is that the conversion guide states that Standard action attack actions would be 1 act. This makes martial characters go from better to insane really fast as that can include the likes of Vital Strike. Imagine doing that three times in a row. It also kind of flies in the face of the logic behind how combat maneuvers work where if they can sub an attack in a full attack then it's 1 act and if not it's 2 acts, which is drastically more sane and more in line with what the game normally does. But that all boils down to whether or not the attack action equates to 1 or 2 acts because both action economies don't equate attacks and the attack actions, something that is confusing and insane about the normal action economy that is often the source of confusion.
And there you have it. Those are my main arguments in favor of Pathfinder Unchained's revised action economy. Its not perfect, not by a long shot, but I do think that it is way better than the complex monstrocity that the normal action economy is.
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.
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.
Friday, August 12, 2016
Infinity Matrix: Relationships
A while ago the party made a vote to determine the direction of the campaign. Originally it was going to be a magic macguffin quest to stop a planet sized robot bent on destroying the galaxy, something simple and familiar. But they were so enamored with Hypercorporations that I gave out the option to instead have more social conflicts involving them and they voted in that direction's favor. To make this work out I decided to put a little structure into the campaign. They will go on a long-winded delivery quest before getting the opportunity to gain their own ship and dealing directly with hypercorporations. The bigger reason for the delivery quest is for them to meet NPCs. When they get an opportunity to actually run a ship they will also have an opportunity to recruit these NPCs as their crew or take action against them as enemies. To that end I needed a system of friendship to determine who they recruit and who they make enemies of. The system I landed on is an amalgam of the Relationship system in Ultimate Campaign, the Influence system from Ultimate Intrigue and the group Leadership system from Everyman Games' 'Ultimate Charisma'.
As a group and as an individual the PCs have a list of groups and individuals that they have relationships with. The relationship is defined by starting attitudes and move according to different actions taken towards them. For an individual you can declare that you want to start a relationship with that NPC followed by a social skill check that influences their starting attitude and also grants a relationship score equal to your Charisma Modifier (minimum 0) With favors (positive actions like gifts, quests, dates, ect) or slights(Negative actions such as attacks, theft and so on) you can increase your influence on that character. Unlike normal Relationship rules, this does not go into the negatives but favors and slights also affect starting attitudes, so if you have a high relationship score with a character that moves from Friendly to Unfriendly the numbers are just as high but the reaction is negative rather than positive. Basically betrayal and redemption is pretty powerful. To develop a relationship you can interact with favors or slights to increase the relationship score to a limit of your level plus your Charisma Modifier. Favors and slights will also change starting attitudes but keep in mind that ignoring them, doing a favor for someone they do not like or making a slight against something that they do like can affect starting attitude as well.
Relationship scores come in tiers that have numerical bonuses.
0 is an acquaintance that doesn't really know or have a greater reason to trust/abhore you.
1-5 represents an Association.
6-11 is a Friendship if their starting attitude is on the positive side of Indifference and Competition on the negative side.
12-30 represents Fellowship/Rivalry.
31 and up represents Devotion/Enmity.
These tiers are grant bonuses or penalties on various rolls equal to their tiers, so 0=0,1-5=2, 6-11=2, 12-30=3, and 31 and up = 4. For example a diplomacy roll against a character with a friendship that is Helpful would have a +2 bonus but this would be a -2 bonus if that same character was Hostile instead of Helpful. So the relationship score is levels of familiarity whereas attitude is the degree of cooperation.
This does not mean that relationship scores don't go down. Anything that causes distance will lower relationship scores like ignoring the NPC or doing something out of character. As such there is an added mechanic 'bond' which represents the principle the relationship is based on and the nature of it. There's no real list for what kind of bonds there can be and they are less mechanically relevant than alignment, but an example can be a bond is Family. You have a familial relationship and hurting other family members or not supporting family can lower relationship scores as they try to distance themselves from you. However the score doesn't lower and rather their attitude changes if you affect them directly with slights like attacking them.
Similar things happen towards groups and organizations only on a much bigger scale and has functions similar to reputation within the organization. Also, while starting relationships is voluntary with individuals any slight or favor towards an organization automatically starts one. To this end most organization relationships will be tracked by the GM.
Additionally collectively or individually PCs can form a special group called a 'crew'. Individually a player can lead a crew of NPCs who's HD is equal to the player's level plus his or her charisma modifier(Max individual HD is level-4). In order to recruit an NPC their relationship with the leader must be higher than their Psych DC (HD+Wis or Sense Motive Bonus). The crew member must also have an attitude of Indifferent, Friendly or Helpful at recruitment. The party can form a crew pooling the HD limit. This forms any sort of ship crew, guild, company and so on. Since this somewhat makes relationships similar to Leadership a lot of the same numbers apply. Things that affect Leadership scores can change attitudes and relationship scores, usually forming slights and favors. Also cohort feats were banned at the beginning of the game so that this system could replace it.
I've already given players a rundown of getting relationship points with NPCs with them keeping track through a friends and foes sheet from Dyslexic Studeo's character sheets but it is next week that I'll be revealing the full scope of it and why it will be important to make friends now so that they will have a better crew for later when they have their own ship.
And there you have it. Quick and dirty relationship rules for building a crew. I'll be using the same system in future campaigns where the campaign goal is to build kingdoms, gain allegiances or build a pirate crew. As i tinker around with it more I'll slowly introduce modifications using Everyman Game's Ultimate Charisma. For examle, the relationship tier will serve as a bonus rounds of the Antagonized condition and I'll connect it more to reputation.
As a group and as an individual the PCs have a list of groups and individuals that they have relationships with. The relationship is defined by starting attitudes and move according to different actions taken towards them. For an individual you can declare that you want to start a relationship with that NPC followed by a social skill check that influences their starting attitude and also grants a relationship score equal to your Charisma Modifier (minimum 0) With favors (positive actions like gifts, quests, dates, ect) or slights(Negative actions such as attacks, theft and so on) you can increase your influence on that character. Unlike normal Relationship rules, this does not go into the negatives but favors and slights also affect starting attitudes, so if you have a high relationship score with a character that moves from Friendly to Unfriendly the numbers are just as high but the reaction is negative rather than positive. Basically betrayal and redemption is pretty powerful. To develop a relationship you can interact with favors or slights to increase the relationship score to a limit of your level plus your Charisma Modifier. Favors and slights will also change starting attitudes but keep in mind that ignoring them, doing a favor for someone they do not like or making a slight against something that they do like can affect starting attitude as well.
Relationship scores come in tiers that have numerical bonuses.
0 is an acquaintance that doesn't really know or have a greater reason to trust/abhore you.
1-5 represents an Association.
6-11 is a Friendship if their starting attitude is on the positive side of Indifference and Competition on the negative side.
12-30 represents Fellowship/Rivalry.
31 and up represents Devotion/Enmity.
These tiers are grant bonuses or penalties on various rolls equal to their tiers, so 0=0,1-5=2, 6-11=2, 12-30=3, and 31 and up = 4. For example a diplomacy roll against a character with a friendship that is Helpful would have a +2 bonus but this would be a -2 bonus if that same character was Hostile instead of Helpful. So the relationship score is levels of familiarity whereas attitude is the degree of cooperation.
This does not mean that relationship scores don't go down. Anything that causes distance will lower relationship scores like ignoring the NPC or doing something out of character. As such there is an added mechanic 'bond' which represents the principle the relationship is based on and the nature of it. There's no real list for what kind of bonds there can be and they are less mechanically relevant than alignment, but an example can be a bond is Family. You have a familial relationship and hurting other family members or not supporting family can lower relationship scores as they try to distance themselves from you. However the score doesn't lower and rather their attitude changes if you affect them directly with slights like attacking them.
Similar things happen towards groups and organizations only on a much bigger scale and has functions similar to reputation within the organization. Also, while starting relationships is voluntary with individuals any slight or favor towards an organization automatically starts one. To this end most organization relationships will be tracked by the GM.
Additionally collectively or individually PCs can form a special group called a 'crew'. Individually a player can lead a crew of NPCs who's HD is equal to the player's level plus his or her charisma modifier(Max individual HD is level-4). In order to recruit an NPC their relationship with the leader must be higher than their Psych DC (HD+Wis or Sense Motive Bonus). The crew member must also have an attitude of Indifferent, Friendly or Helpful at recruitment. The party can form a crew pooling the HD limit. This forms any sort of ship crew, guild, company and so on. Since this somewhat makes relationships similar to Leadership a lot of the same numbers apply. Things that affect Leadership scores can change attitudes and relationship scores, usually forming slights and favors. Also cohort feats were banned at the beginning of the game so that this system could replace it.
I've already given players a rundown of getting relationship points with NPCs with them keeping track through a friends and foes sheet from Dyslexic Studeo's character sheets but it is next week that I'll be revealing the full scope of it and why it will be important to make friends now so that they will have a better crew for later when they have their own ship.
And there you have it. Quick and dirty relationship rules for building a crew. I'll be using the same system in future campaigns where the campaign goal is to build kingdoms, gain allegiances or build a pirate crew. As i tinker around with it more I'll slowly introduce modifications using Everyman Game's Ultimate Charisma. For examle, the relationship tier will serve as a bonus rounds of the Antagonized condition and I'll connect it more to reputation.
Sunday, July 31, 2016
Horror Adventures: Drunken Overview Part 1
So when Ultimate Intrigue came out I decided to get my opinions out there early and read the pdf while typing out my general impressions on what I read. Reading a 300+ page book that’s mostly rules left me tired and staring at a screen for so long made my eyes burn so halfway through I started drinking a bottle of wine my sister recommended and finished off the overview pretty drunk That overview was actually a pretty popular post so I decided to have a go again, now that Horror Adventures is out, only this time I’m not messing around by getting drunk halfway through. I’m starting drunk.
Here’s how this is going to work; as I type the introduction out I’ll be nursing a mix of rum and coke. Eventually I’ll be switching to Everclear and fruit punch. I’ll read a significant section or chapter, and then I’ll type up my assessment. I held off reading the book when it first became available to download so all of my first thoughts and impressions are from an inebriated state of mind. This does mean that this is not much of a review and more of an overview since I don’t think alcohol is going to make my judgement on rules more precise. I have my phone set to deliver an alarm every hour so I can pace myself with pre-measured shot classes of what I’m mixing with my soda and fruit juice so that I don’t die. My wife will be spotting me to further prevent my from dying. My computer is still broken so I’ll be using my tablet. Luckily I got myself a bluetooth keyboard to make this easier but this still means that I’ll be typing without a great ability to edit on the fly so I’ll be getting to that when I’m sober. I’m through my first glass so I’ll start up now…
We’re skipping the introduction and table of contents because I don’t care. I will say that the cover is kind of fun. We have the iconic Wizard, Paladin and Cavalier getting mobbed by zombies. If this was anything but a 3.X game I’d be worried but if they’re high enough level this will be easy to get out of. The Wizard is probably fucked though if he needs to make some Fort saves. I’m always playing games where arcane casters are complete chumps against undead. Especially witches.
The first chapter opens up with the Paladin turning evil and now the Monk has to fight her. The Monk is probably dead by now. Unless he’s unchained, then he might stand a chance I guess. Or he’s a really sick build, but I saw his stats in the NPC Codex and he’s not so great.
The book then tells us how to make a character for a horror game, although I’m pretty sure all of these are ways to play any game. It tells you to ask yourself things like what your character’s motivations and fears are so I thought to myself, you know, like every character should whether they’re in a horror game or stabbing ponies in Sparkleland. I shouldn’t criticise it that much though. It's not like this happens as frequently as I’d like. And I enjoy that about pathfinder. some games try to tell you how to role play to the point where you might as well not play after character creation, the game just plays itself. Anyways, blah blah, teach us how to roleplay like rollplayers, moving on.
We get some rules on fear. This initially seems overly convoluted for something we already have status effects for, but for the most part it's just adding some extra severities on fear effects by dividing the stages that exist into more steps. Also you get some variant rules about replacing fear immunity. Then there’s sanity. Basically your highest mental stat becomes your sanity AC and different stuff will attack you with brain menacingness when you fail saves and stuff and if you lose, depending on the severity, you get some kind of insanity. So if you’re pissed off that you couldn’t stab things more often in Call of Cthulhu, there you go.
Corruption gets a pretty deep subsystem. Basically you get some corruption that scales like spell levels that give you feat-like powers based on how much corruption you have. The powers differ based on the nature of your corruption. But these powers have some kind of downside and many of them are pretty harsh. Your level of corruption also starts messing with your alignment and can also lead to occasional loss of control over your character. This is kind of a wet dream for anyone that likes to roleplay significant weaknesses and purity struggles, and a literal wet dream for anyone that’s into Corruption of Champions. if you’re into werewolves then, this is a great fun way to handle lycanthropy curses. speaking of which, I just agreed to play an 5th edition game and made a character along those lines and my list of options made me miss Pathfinder so bad for options like this. Currently my character is forced to half-ass my concept.
The core races get some new alternate racial traits and favored class bonuses, which disappoints me because I barely use Core races outside of humans at this point. Who want’s to play a horror game with an elf. That’s is super weak. I want to play with a mud monster man, or a ratfolk or something else spooky. In Frankenstein the monster’s plan was for his dad to make him a woman and go off somewhere but Frankenstein didn’t want to because that would make a race of Frankenstein monsters. I want to play that. Some half constructs that are born with bolts in their necks and get healed with lightning damage. Do we have that already? a Flesh golem race? Or just zombie people? I’m pretty sure I have some third party thing about it.
So the cult leader at the intro for chapter 2 has awesome facial hair. I’m also still endlessly amused that the iconic Occultist is more portly. The cosplay potential for Pathfinder ever increases and now I really feel like ‘I’ could be an adventurer with my own fat ass. Anyways this is the real meat of the book, the class options. As much as the subsystems so far are pretty nice and the corruption bit more than a bit nice, that part is awesome, people are mostly going to look through this book for options so this is the real important part. It’s where everyone is going to open the book and judge it because the GM can already do whatever he wants so nobody cares. And with no classes introduced in the book we have a lot of room for everyone to get in on the party. It looks like everyone gets two pages of archetypes and options. I’m not looking to see what class is missing.
Alchemist gets two archetypes. One that lets you turn people in kool aide and one that lets you cast extracts above your level at the expense of it being random. It's handy how they did that, you’re limited to the APG list and they tell you the number of possibilities so you can roll some dice without counting. Still kind of a bookeeping nightmare if you aren’t using an app that has all the spells on it.
Barbarian gets some gnarly rage powers and four fun looking archetypes. One is a murder trance guy and one is a werebeast one.
Cleric gets a Cthulhu cultist archetype and two new domains, Stars and Void. Wait a minute. don’t we have those already? I’m pretty sure we did. I’m not that drunk. Okay I’m a little dizzy at this point but seriously I was pretty sure there was alrady a void and star domain. Fuck it I’m tired, i’m not fact checking so these are new domains. Even though I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the Dark Tapestry subdomain before.
Okay so I notice Bard is missing so I guess not everyone is on board the Horror train.
Druid gets a couple of archetypes. I’m noticing one gets a spirit, a la the Spiritualist class. Seems weird to me. Also weird is the devolutionist Druid that can make animals feral and has a creepy devolved human as an animal companion. I’m not getting the horror theme on that one. Maybe it's a reference to some gross black and white era movie that will give me nightmares when I find it on the criterion collection. I will say that it's creepy but in a gross kind of way.
Page 52, I love that guy. Since he's in the Inquisitor section I guess he’s one of those. Probably the archetype that gets special eyes that are spookier than normal. naw, that’s the hex archetypes He’s probably the bookwork archetype that has Int as a main stat. Because he has a book you see.
Investigator gets three archetypes. I don't’ like most of them but I do like the one that is kind of an occultist but even then I’m not that enthused. I have to say, so far these options are way different from Ultimate Intrigue, in the sense that in that book the archetypes seem to be for roleplaying first at the expense of being actually useful but for the most part I don’t feel harshly crippled with little payoff with these archetypes. Sure there are exceptions but for the most part I feel like I’d pick these up more readily.
Kineticist gets two archetypes. Psycho and Dark. Both let you use Wis and Int respectively for your powers instead of Con, with different things happening in place of burn, or in the case of the Dark Kineticist, you can burn souls instead. . Its nice to have options like this because I was never that big on Burn. I’m especially happy that I can make myself an M Bison build now.
Good luck using the new Medium Legendary spirits. They’re all psychopaths that get you to do things that wouldn’t fly in most games.
I like the Mesmerist archetypes but really they aren’t making me too excited. I do like the prospect of being a freddy kreuger mesmerist even though in a lot of campaigns it's not exactly useful.
I absolutely adore the Occultist archetypes. One lets you have haunted implements with types chosen among the medium’s spirits, and the other makes for a fun japanese flavored paper talisman mage although the talismans aren’t by default paper.
Paladin Takes a weird turn by jacking class features from the Bard of all things. It's flavored as an effect cause by stigmata. The other two are more ‘normal’ but one switches charisma for wisdom so there's some interesting things to do with that.
Slayer gets two interesting archetypes and one that’s only useful in very specific campaigns.
Spiritualist starts off aping the bloodrager. Here is where I realize that I’ve been seeing a lot of class feature poaching in this book. More interesting is the other archetype that allows your phantom to be an undead creature as opposed to an outsider. Makes sense to me but I’ve seen so many arguments about the nature of undead and how they interact with class features and alignment to know that this will make some people’s head explode due to the way we think about ghosts and the undead in a non planar logic. Hell I’m on my… I don’t know what drink. I had two sodas worth of rum coke and another of vanilla coke rum, and I’m on black cherry soda and peach sake now, but anyways even now I get the difference between dead ghost and undead ghost.
Vigilante gets three new archetypes. They aren’t blatantly going superhero this time but still cover some iconic tropes of having a dual identity, like Serial Killer.
Witch gets a hefty slew of Patrons, mostly cthulhu mythos flavored. I couldn’t even read the second archetype because of Gingerbread Witch. FINALLY we get a proper fairy tale witch archetype. This will be my next witch. I’ll name her Totenkinder. You even get a gingerbread familiar. Mine will smoke cigars and swear and drink a lot with a scottish accent.
Wizard gets some cthulhu stuff. Lots of Cthulhu stuff in this book by the way. We get it. Cosmic horror in a horror book. If we get a Modern book then we’re all set to play Call of Cthulhu conversions I guess, but also two whole archetypes based on necromancy.
And that's it for the archetypes. lots of elder god/dark tapestry kind of things and a few stinkers but overall I feel like I’ve found plenty that I really want to play and not much is hampered by the feeling that the options are limited to very specific kinds of games. also lots of casting ability score swapping which is always nice to play with.
Next section is feats. since I don’t want to type about these all day i’ll just note the highlights. Nothing exciting. Some clarification occurs with the availability of monster feats because there’s some of those here. roughly half the style feats are interesting enough where I want to build around them. Story feats are back. Otherwise they are kind of mid ranged feats that you might take for flavor or when you’re running out of feats you need to fight or cast spells but not many actual trap options or anything that will become staples of the game except maybe fleshwarping but I don’t even know what that is yet.
Okay, I’ve been doing this for a while and I just burped up something that tastes like vomit so I’m going to call this Part 1 and finish this later. My general opinion so far, since I’m not even halfway through and we’re already done with feats, is that this book is a bit backed into a corner. If we didn’t have so much spooky crap in the game already, like zombies and occult stuff and all that jazz, then we’d have somewhere to go but right now I’m not exactly feeling the ‘horror’ of the book aside for re-teaching us how to roleplay with some actual consequences. I mean I like the archetypes for the most part but I’m not coming across much that seems drastically necessary. And the general themes seem to lean heavy on the Cthulhu corner since we’ve only really gotten bestiary stuff from that front. Out of the things that are worth the whole book no matter what the rest of it looks like is the Corruptions. That crap is awesome. I kind of wish it had been a class though but there’s more ways to play around with the concept as it is so there’s that. So far its the best part of the book. Of course the fear and sanity stuff is neat and i’ll use them but I’ve been doing something along the lines of sanity using third party stuff so i’m not that excited. And it’s got nothing on Corruptions. I love that subsystem so much. Although its probably a soothing a sore spot because 5e has given me nothing but crap in terms of making my concept actually work. I know people like the game and all and it is a cool game but this stuff constantly makes me feel like I have to play with my balls at home and I have nothing to rely on but DM fiat to do anything. People complain about the flavor options in Pathfinder being trap options but I love stuff like story quests and corruptions. It makes my weird whims and random ways for my character to suffer have some kind of mechanical relevance.
Sober me talking now; That was fun. I’ll find some time to review the rest of the book when I have some more extended drinking time. Please forgive the typos I missed and I’ll see you next time.
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
Pathfinder 3pp Top Ten, June 4, 2016
Every week Paizo sends out an email detailing the happenings of the
Paizo store. This includes top 10 lists of what sells on their stores.
Each week I'll be focusing on the list, 'Top 10 downloads from other
companies' and commenting on the rise of the companies involved and
changes of the list as well as new and trending products that catch my attention.
Here is the Top Ten list.
1. One on One Adventures Compendium - Expeditious Retreat Press
2. Kineticists of Porphyra 3 - Purple Duck Games
3. Kineticists of Porphyra - Purple Duck Games
4. Kineticists of Porphyra 2 - Purple Duck Games
5. In the Company of Treants - Rite Publishing
6. Everyman Options Kineticists - Rogue Genius Games
7. In the Company of Dragons - Rite Publishing
8. Ultimate Psionics - Dreamscarred Press
9. The Genius Guide to the Talented Cleric - Rogue Genius Games
10. Path of War Expanded - Dreamscarred Press
One on One Adventures is at the top this week. This products facilitates play with 1 GM and 1 Player allowing you to keep going when you're short on players. Its also very thoughtful of the needs and limitations of types of classes for the adventures.
This week is also another week of Kineticist Domination. The Kineticists of Porphyra series has been a top seller since I first started these weekly overviews back in March with Everyman Options: Kineticists joining the list more recently. All give new options to the Kineticist class including, new feats, new wild talents and new archetypes.
Rite Publishing hits the list this week with two race books, one for Treants and one for Dragons. In the Company of Dragons has been a high seller for a while, but In the Company of Treants is rather new, with a new paragon class and three different races of Treants. Rite Pubilshing's race books never fail to have satisfying crunch and beautiful fluff.
Dreamscarred Press has been out of the list a few times in the past few weeks but since last week they have a solid stand with the ever popular Ultimate Psionics, and relatively new expansions to the popular Path of War book, Path of War Expanded.
Rogue Genius Games continues with it's popular Talented line with the Cleric class getting the treatment this time. The Talented series takes paizo classes and breaks their class features and archetypes down to a series of edges and talents that you select piecemeal in order to get the kind of character you really want without the fuss.
As far as other things catching my eye this week:
Abandoned Arts, under Fat Goblin Games has put out a Spell Power: Animated Object, a book of feats to interact with the Animated Object spell.
Legendary Games joins in with the Kineticist trend with Legendary Kineticists. This product boasts over 150 new options for the Kineticist, including new blasts and talents but also new archetypes for other classes. Also from Legendary Games is the third part of their Trail of the Apprentice adventure, The Thieves Den. Its important to know that this series is a part of a line of adventures meant for beginning players and particularly compatible with the Beginner Box.
Continuing their supplemental support of Spheres of Power, Dropdead Studios now has the Enhancer's Handbook. This product has a lot of bang for the buck, introducing new talents for the Enhancement Sphere, five new archetypes for both Spheres of Power and Paizo classes. feats and expansions on animated object monsters.
Zenith Games now has Superhero Classes allowing you to play as a Superhuman, Animalman or Telepath.
Coming out from their kickstarter is Total Party Kill Games' Wardens of the Wild, a 200+ page book all about elves with more lore and options for elves for both Pathfinder and Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition.
Well that's it for this week. I'll see you next week with more looks at Paizo's top ten list as well as new and trending Pathfinder products that should be on your radar.
Here is the Top Ten list.
1. One on One Adventures Compendium - Expeditious Retreat Press
2. Kineticists of Porphyra 3 - Purple Duck Games
3. Kineticists of Porphyra - Purple Duck Games
4. Kineticists of Porphyra 2 - Purple Duck Games
5. In the Company of Treants - Rite Publishing
6. Everyman Options Kineticists - Rogue Genius Games
7. In the Company of Dragons - Rite Publishing
8. Ultimate Psionics - Dreamscarred Press
9. The Genius Guide to the Talented Cleric - Rogue Genius Games
10. Path of War Expanded - Dreamscarred Press
One on One Adventures is at the top this week. This products facilitates play with 1 GM and 1 Player allowing you to keep going when you're short on players. Its also very thoughtful of the needs and limitations of types of classes for the adventures.
This week is also another week of Kineticist Domination. The Kineticists of Porphyra series has been a top seller since I first started these weekly overviews back in March with Everyman Options: Kineticists joining the list more recently. All give new options to the Kineticist class including, new feats, new wild talents and new archetypes.
Rite Publishing hits the list this week with two race books, one for Treants and one for Dragons. In the Company of Dragons has been a high seller for a while, but In the Company of Treants is rather new, with a new paragon class and three different races of Treants. Rite Pubilshing's race books never fail to have satisfying crunch and beautiful fluff.
Dreamscarred Press has been out of the list a few times in the past few weeks but since last week they have a solid stand with the ever popular Ultimate Psionics, and relatively new expansions to the popular Path of War book, Path of War Expanded.
Rogue Genius Games continues with it's popular Talented line with the Cleric class getting the treatment this time. The Talented series takes paizo classes and breaks their class features and archetypes down to a series of edges and talents that you select piecemeal in order to get the kind of character you really want without the fuss.
As far as other things catching my eye this week:
Abandoned Arts, under Fat Goblin Games has put out a Spell Power: Animated Object, a book of feats to interact with the Animated Object spell.
Legendary Games joins in with the Kineticist trend with Legendary Kineticists. This product boasts over 150 new options for the Kineticist, including new blasts and talents but also new archetypes for other classes. Also from Legendary Games is the third part of their Trail of the Apprentice adventure, The Thieves Den. Its important to know that this series is a part of a line of adventures meant for beginning players and particularly compatible with the Beginner Box.
Continuing their supplemental support of Spheres of Power, Dropdead Studios now has the Enhancer's Handbook. This product has a lot of bang for the buck, introducing new talents for the Enhancement Sphere, five new archetypes for both Spheres of Power and Paizo classes. feats and expansions on animated object monsters.
Zenith Games now has Superhero Classes allowing you to play as a Superhuman, Animalman or Telepath.
Coming out from their kickstarter is Total Party Kill Games' Wardens of the Wild, a 200+ page book all about elves with more lore and options for elves for both Pathfinder and Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition.
Well that's it for this week. I'll see you next week with more looks at Paizo's top ten list as well as new and trending Pathfinder products that should be on your radar.
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
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.
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.
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
Pathfinder 3pp Top Ten, May 27 2016
Every week Paizo sends out an email detailing the happenings of the
Paizo store. This includes top 10 lists of what sells on their stores.
Each week I'll be focusing on the list, 'Top 10 downloads from other
companies' and commenting on the rise of the companies involved and
changes of the list as well as new and trending products that catch my attention.
Here is the Top Ten list.
1. Kineticists of Porphyra 3 - Purple Duck Games
2. One on One Adventures Compendium - Expeditious Retreat Press
3. Kineticists of Porphyra 2 - Purple Duck Games
4. Kineticists of Porphyra - Purple Duck Games
5. Everyman Options: Kineticists - Rogue Genius Games
6. Way of the Wicked-Book #1: Knot of Thorns - Fire Mountain Games
7. Hypercorps 2099 - Legendary Games
8. In the Company of Unicorns - Rite Publishing
9. Ultimate Psionics -Dreamscarred Press
10. In the Company of Treants - Rite Publishing
Once again its a week of Kineticists as Kineticist products take 4 out of the 5 top slots. This has been happening for weeks and it shows that the class has really taken everyone by storm. Perhaps it's the new way of "casting". Perhaps it's the similarities to the Avatar series. Whatever it is Kineticists are still a hot ticket. Purple Duck Games proved themselves with three excellent products and Everyman Options has been a fan favorite for a while leading in to new options. Recently Legendary Games even announced their own Kineticist book, and with the class trending high I'm sure I'll see it here soon.
One on One Adventures keeps it's number two slot. For anyone who wants to play at the table with friends but doesn't have enough consistent people on board, this is the perfect product to get your game on with only one GM and one PC. Filling out those kind of needs is what third party publishing is best for. I'm only crossing my fingers for a Fighting Fantasy-like adventure where you need no GM at all.
Way of the Wicked, the popular Adventure Path that is specifically for villainous PCs makes it to the list again. Another niche that rarely gets filled and has nearly a 100% rate of five star reviews among 19 reviews.
Hypercorps 2099 has made it to the list allowing players to play in a cyber-fantasy superhero game. Its full of fluff (fluff that is already impacting my games), tons of NPC and monster stat blocks, the exciting Hypernet, a digital plane of existence full of hackers, spam and virtual reality fun, a new system of being hyper powered beings and two new classes that do what hasn't been done before, including being a Flash like speedster.
Rite Publishing has already put out In the Company of Unicorns but their new race book, In the Company of Treants, has quickly risen to the list too. Instead of just some leafy people you can be a full fledged ent. In fact there are three entire new races of treefolk. Rite Publishing has never failed to produce race books that were evocative and mechanically interesting so I have high hopes for both of these products.
And Lastly Ultimate Psionics is back on the list. The popular remake of 3.5's Psionics has had a place on the list almost constantly for years so seeing it on the list is a familar and welcome sight. Ultimate Psionics is the one stop product for introducing psionics into your game with new classes races and other options along with a whole new system of mind magic that uses points instead of slots.
As far as other things catching my eye this week:
Dreamscarred Press has released their first Steelforge book. I got this from DP's Patreon and it looks pretty good. New magic and psionic items and some big 6 magic items for different slots for greater versatility. There's also new rules for handling magic items and a new prestige class.
Jon Brazer Enterprises has a new book for Arcanists detailing new normal and greater exploits.
Abandoned Arts has been under the Fat Goblin Games banner lately; Abandoned Arts being a publisher known for having products that get a lot done in a little amount of time. They're continuing their More Feats! line with Feats of Discipline. This product promises feats for monks, martial artists and ki users.
Flaming Crab Games has put out a new Letters from the Flaming Crab that handles a subject that I'm very interested in that I think isn't covered very often. Hygiene. This is going on my wishlist fast enough to leave skid marks on the website out of pure novelty but given previous Flaming Crab letter I've seen in the past I have high hopes that this will revolutionize my games.
Little Red Goblin Games has put out The Godhand, a class that grafts a minor deity to their arm? I'm not sure what to think by looking at the cover text but I can't say that I'm not interested.
Another hybrid class (Bard/Occultist) has made its way out of Shattered Skies from Wayward Rogues Publishing, in the form of the Librarian. This looks like the most interesting hybrid class from this series and really I hope someday to see all these in one book or something.
Rogue Genius Games, under the banner of Four Horsemen Presents, has produced Living Magic Items, intelligent items to spice up your games, a subject that isn't aptly explored in my opinion so I'm very excited. Best part yet, you get to PLAY a magic item. Forget my wishlist, this is going into my shopping cart now. Probably along with Flaming Crab's Hygiene book. Also from Rogue Genius Games is a continuation of the Talented class series with The Talented Cleric.
Well that's it for this week. I'll see you next week with more looks at Paizo's top ten list as well as new and trending Pathfinder products that should be on your radar.
Here is the Top Ten list.
1. Kineticists of Porphyra 3 - Purple Duck Games
2. One on One Adventures Compendium - Expeditious Retreat Press
3. Kineticists of Porphyra 2 - Purple Duck Games
4. Kineticists of Porphyra - Purple Duck Games
5. Everyman Options: Kineticists - Rogue Genius Games
6. Way of the Wicked-Book #1: Knot of Thorns - Fire Mountain Games
7. Hypercorps 2099 - Legendary Games
8. In the Company of Unicorns - Rite Publishing
9. Ultimate Psionics -Dreamscarred Press
10. In the Company of Treants - Rite Publishing
Once again its a week of Kineticists as Kineticist products take 4 out of the 5 top slots. This has been happening for weeks and it shows that the class has really taken everyone by storm. Perhaps it's the new way of "casting". Perhaps it's the similarities to the Avatar series. Whatever it is Kineticists are still a hot ticket. Purple Duck Games proved themselves with three excellent products and Everyman Options has been a fan favorite for a while leading in to new options. Recently Legendary Games even announced their own Kineticist book, and with the class trending high I'm sure I'll see it here soon.
One on One Adventures keeps it's number two slot. For anyone who wants to play at the table with friends but doesn't have enough consistent people on board, this is the perfect product to get your game on with only one GM and one PC. Filling out those kind of needs is what third party publishing is best for. I'm only crossing my fingers for a Fighting Fantasy-like adventure where you need no GM at all.
Way of the Wicked, the popular Adventure Path that is specifically for villainous PCs makes it to the list again. Another niche that rarely gets filled and has nearly a 100% rate of five star reviews among 19 reviews.
Hypercorps 2099 has made it to the list allowing players to play in a cyber-fantasy superhero game. Its full of fluff (fluff that is already impacting my games), tons of NPC and monster stat blocks, the exciting Hypernet, a digital plane of existence full of hackers, spam and virtual reality fun, a new system of being hyper powered beings and two new classes that do what hasn't been done before, including being a Flash like speedster.
Rite Publishing has already put out In the Company of Unicorns but their new race book, In the Company of Treants, has quickly risen to the list too. Instead of just some leafy people you can be a full fledged ent. In fact there are three entire new races of treefolk. Rite Publishing has never failed to produce race books that were evocative and mechanically interesting so I have high hopes for both of these products.
And Lastly Ultimate Psionics is back on the list. The popular remake of 3.5's Psionics has had a place on the list almost constantly for years so seeing it on the list is a familar and welcome sight. Ultimate Psionics is the one stop product for introducing psionics into your game with new classes races and other options along with a whole new system of mind magic that uses points instead of slots.
As far as other things catching my eye this week:
Dreamscarred Press has released their first Steelforge book. I got this from DP's Patreon and it looks pretty good. New magic and psionic items and some big 6 magic items for different slots for greater versatility. There's also new rules for handling magic items and a new prestige class.
Jon Brazer Enterprises has a new book for Arcanists detailing new normal and greater exploits.
Abandoned Arts has been under the Fat Goblin Games banner lately; Abandoned Arts being a publisher known for having products that get a lot done in a little amount of time. They're continuing their More Feats! line with Feats of Discipline. This product promises feats for monks, martial artists and ki users.
Flaming Crab Games has put out a new Letters from the Flaming Crab that handles a subject that I'm very interested in that I think isn't covered very often. Hygiene. This is going on my wishlist fast enough to leave skid marks on the website out of pure novelty but given previous Flaming Crab letter I've seen in the past I have high hopes that this will revolutionize my games.
Little Red Goblin Games has put out The Godhand, a class that grafts a minor deity to their arm? I'm not sure what to think by looking at the cover text but I can't say that I'm not interested.
Another hybrid class (Bard/Occultist) has made its way out of Shattered Skies from Wayward Rogues Publishing, in the form of the Librarian. This looks like the most interesting hybrid class from this series and really I hope someday to see all these in one book or something.
Rogue Genius Games, under the banner of Four Horsemen Presents, has produced Living Magic Items, intelligent items to spice up your games, a subject that isn't aptly explored in my opinion so I'm very excited. Best part yet, you get to PLAY a magic item. Forget my wishlist, this is going into my shopping cart now. Probably along with Flaming Crab's Hygiene book. Also from Rogue Genius Games is a continuation of the Talented class series with The Talented Cleric.
Well that's it for this week. I'll see you next week with more looks at Paizo's top ten list as well as new and trending Pathfinder products that should be on your radar.
Wednesday, May 25, 2016
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.
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.
Tuesday, May 24, 2016
Big Thanks to Fat Goblin Games
Here is a big thank you to Fat Goblin Games for the gift of several items from my DrivethruRPG wishlist. You may have noticed that as per my recent posting policy these items are now at the top of my review list taking place of my personal picks in between the (*) requested reviews. This is with the exception of Everyman Unchained: Skills and Options, which I put out just now, and a break in the order for Technology Unleashed due to very strong feelings towards that product in particular.
Also a big thanks for the first 5th Edition product on the list. Before that I'll post up my overview of 5th Edition so that everyone knows where I'm coming from. I'm also going to start adding 5th edition products to my DrivethruRPG wishlist. This does mean that from that point on I'm officially open to 5th edition products.
Another big change is that I'm going to soon remove my Paizo wishlist for practicality reasons. For one the little widget doesn't exactly work making it useless, but also I can post reviews on Paizo.com without having bought the product from them but the same isn't true for Drivethru RPG so I'm better off buying and receiving products from DrivethruRPG from now on. On a personal note, Paizo's pdfs come in a zip file that is labeled as the product but the unzipped files are often labeled in code making me have to rename it so that I can store it in a way that I can find it which is a pain in the butt.
Well that's it for now. I'll be back tomorrow with a new review for you and soon a surprise as I experiment with being a good game host.
Also a big thanks for the first 5th Edition product on the list. Before that I'll post up my overview of 5th Edition so that everyone knows where I'm coming from. I'm also going to start adding 5th edition products to my DrivethruRPG wishlist. This does mean that from that point on I'm officially open to 5th edition products.
Another big change is that I'm going to soon remove my Paizo wishlist for practicality reasons. For one the little widget doesn't exactly work making it useless, but also I can post reviews on Paizo.com without having bought the product from them but the same isn't true for Drivethru RPG so I'm better off buying and receiving products from DrivethruRPG from now on. On a personal note, Paizo's pdfs come in a zip file that is labeled as the product but the unzipped files are often labeled in code making me have to rename it so that I can store it in a way that I can find it which is a pain in the butt.
Well that's it for now. I'll be back tomorrow with a new review for you and soon a surprise as I experiment with being a good game host.
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.
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.
Monday, May 23, 2016
3pp Top Ten: May 20, 2016
Every week Paizo sends out an email detailing the happenings of the
Paizo store. This includes top 10 lists of what sells on their stores.
Each week I'll be focusing on the list, 'Top 10 downloads from other
companies' and commenting on the rise of the companies involved and
changes of the list as well as new and trending products that catch my attention.
1. Kineticists of Porphyra 3 - Purple Duck Games
2. One on One Adventures Compendium - Expeditious Retreat Press
3. Everyman Options: Kineticists - Rogue Genius Games
4. Kineticists of Porphyra 2 - Purple Duck Games
5. Kineticists of Porphyra - Purple Duck Games
6. Path of War Expanded - Dreamscarred Press
7. Hypercoprs 2099 - Legendary Games
8. Ships of Skybourne - Drop Dead Studios
9. Way of the Wicked-Book #1: Knot of Thorns - Fire Mountain Games
10. In the Company of Unicorns - Rite Publishing
Once again its another week of Kineticists. With all three Kineticists of Porphyra books and Rogue Genius Games' Keneticists options we have almost half of the top ten slots taken by Kineticist centered books. Everyman Options: Kineticists is more of a short and to the point addition to the class while Purple Duck Games' offerings go large and widespread doling out a ton of wild talents and archetypes to work with. During the playtest for the occult classes the Kineticist thread was by far the largest, and both then and now the class has been controversial for it's ability to functionally have at-will magic while at the same time critics have noted that it's damage output is relatively low and its less versatile than a traditional caster. All of this has combined for chatter about how broken or weak the Kineticist is but the constant domination in sales do show that there is a large market for the Kineticist, as it now stands to be the most developed new class in Occult classes by pure support.
One on One Adventures, a book that allows you to play with one GM and one Player without having to worry about the one player being overwhelmed by might or magic that it can't handle, is still in high standings. Meanwhile Knot of Thorns keeps on the list. Although very popular before the Way of the Wicked Adventure Path may be picking up steam with the current interest in evil adventure paths, especially since there are so few and few that do it so well.
This is also a good week for products from Kickstarters I've participated in. Hypercorp 2099 is now out and is already affecting my current Spacefinder campaign. Although there are new rules and options for playing a superhero cyberpunk campaign and an interesting setting the book also serves a wonderful toolbox for any post-modern setting, full of NPCs, organizations and even a few new classes. Skybourne has been out for a few weeks but the setting won me over back at the first kickstarter, however Ships of Skybourne is the real hot ticket right now where you can just get the rules for running and constructing airships in a way that's fun for the whole party.
In the Company of Unicorns continues Rite Publishing's habit of having strange and spectacular race books with plenty of options to keep it fun for a long time.
Little Red Goblin Games is off the list despite Gonzo 2 being cool as hell but there's a new contender out there. They've presented a fighter rewrite. I'm excited to see how it turns out and hope that it remains compatible with the great fighter material we've seen over the years.
Playground Adventures, publishers of the Playground Adventures series, a set of adventures that are more kid-friendly than usual, had started putting out some player content with The Royal base class. I'm thinking of a Noble made into an actual class.
Rusted Iron Games has put out material that was short but very admirable, with their Deadly Gardens series pulling a lot of bang for the buck for pushing a new plant themed monster but presenting it along with a bunch of items that brings the whole thing together. It looks like their up to the same with Deadly Gardens: Mulch Stalker.
Epic Level NPC, LLC is a company I'm not familiar with but one product drew my attention. Kaiju Beastiary Kamon the Living Mountain. Supposedly we get a new monster, that has a city (with city stats) inside of it. This is the kind of crazy off the wall GM tools that I love to see out of third party products so I'm all game.
And lastly Fat Goblin Games releases a new installment of it's Astonishing Races series with a new book on Fetchlings.
Well that's it for this week. I'll see you next week with more looks at Paizo's top ten list as well as new and trending Pathfinder products that should be on your radar.
1. Kineticists of Porphyra 3 - Purple Duck Games
2. One on One Adventures Compendium - Expeditious Retreat Press
3. Everyman Options: Kineticists - Rogue Genius Games
4. Kineticists of Porphyra 2 - Purple Duck Games
5. Kineticists of Porphyra - Purple Duck Games
6. Path of War Expanded - Dreamscarred Press
7. Hypercoprs 2099 - Legendary Games
8. Ships of Skybourne - Drop Dead Studios
9. Way of the Wicked-Book #1: Knot of Thorns - Fire Mountain Games
10. In the Company of Unicorns - Rite Publishing
Once again its another week of Kineticists. With all three Kineticists of Porphyra books and Rogue Genius Games' Keneticists options we have almost half of the top ten slots taken by Kineticist centered books. Everyman Options: Kineticists is more of a short and to the point addition to the class while Purple Duck Games' offerings go large and widespread doling out a ton of wild talents and archetypes to work with. During the playtest for the occult classes the Kineticist thread was by far the largest, and both then and now the class has been controversial for it's ability to functionally have at-will magic while at the same time critics have noted that it's damage output is relatively low and its less versatile than a traditional caster. All of this has combined for chatter about how broken or weak the Kineticist is but the constant domination in sales do show that there is a large market for the Kineticist, as it now stands to be the most developed new class in Occult classes by pure support.
One on One Adventures, a book that allows you to play with one GM and one Player without having to worry about the one player being overwhelmed by might or magic that it can't handle, is still in high standings. Meanwhile Knot of Thorns keeps on the list. Although very popular before the Way of the Wicked Adventure Path may be picking up steam with the current interest in evil adventure paths, especially since there are so few and few that do it so well.
This is also a good week for products from Kickstarters I've participated in. Hypercorp 2099 is now out and is already affecting my current Spacefinder campaign. Although there are new rules and options for playing a superhero cyberpunk campaign and an interesting setting the book also serves a wonderful toolbox for any post-modern setting, full of NPCs, organizations and even a few new classes. Skybourne has been out for a few weeks but the setting won me over back at the first kickstarter, however Ships of Skybourne is the real hot ticket right now where you can just get the rules for running and constructing airships in a way that's fun for the whole party.
In the Company of Unicorns continues Rite Publishing's habit of having strange and spectacular race books with plenty of options to keep it fun for a long time.
Little Red Goblin Games is off the list despite Gonzo 2 being cool as hell but there's a new contender out there. They've presented a fighter rewrite. I'm excited to see how it turns out and hope that it remains compatible with the great fighter material we've seen over the years.
Playground Adventures, publishers of the Playground Adventures series, a set of adventures that are more kid-friendly than usual, had started putting out some player content with The Royal base class. I'm thinking of a Noble made into an actual class.
Rusted Iron Games has put out material that was short but very admirable, with their Deadly Gardens series pulling a lot of bang for the buck for pushing a new plant themed monster but presenting it along with a bunch of items that brings the whole thing together. It looks like their up to the same with Deadly Gardens: Mulch Stalker.
Epic Level NPC, LLC is a company I'm not familiar with but one product drew my attention. Kaiju Beastiary Kamon the Living Mountain. Supposedly we get a new monster, that has a city (with city stats) inside of it. This is the kind of crazy off the wall GM tools that I love to see out of third party products so I'm all game.
And lastly Fat Goblin Games releases a new installment of it's Astonishing Races series with a new book on Fetchlings.
Well that's it for this week. I'll see you next week with more looks at Paizo's top ten list as well as new and trending Pathfinder products that should be on your radar.
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