Kickstarter Update: The Genius Guide to the Talented Bestiary.

As of the date for this post there are only 10 more days left to back up the Talented Bestiary on Kickstarter and I am beyond hyped for this project so here is a post to explain why you should be too.

The Talented Bestiary has some brand power to it's name for sure. First of all Owen Stephens is at the helm, a person who has not only written a ton of great third party material but is a Paizo employee as well with a lot of fantastic recent material coming from him. Rogue Genius Games has continuously produced third party books that are exceptionally innovative and groundbreaking making for new play experiences and opening up options that are both cool and balanced. This includes the 'Talented' series of books which breaks down classes into a series of talents and edges so that you can produce the class that you want rather than  be shackled by concepts hard coded into the class' framework. All of these form a pedigree of excellence from the creators but my excitement for the Talented Bestiary goes a bit further than simple faith can get me.

The Talented Bestiary promises to dice what makes up a monster into point-based chunks so that presumably you can just compile a list of them together to form your monster. Not only would this make monster creation fast and easy but modular as well. I am often a GM that makes a lot of home brew campaigns which requires custom creatures but I have various obstacles in the way of that. The most frequent is the time it takes to build a creature versus the amount of time it takes to kill it. I love the concept of easy monster creation at every CR just for the fact that I don't have to spend an hour making something that will last three rounds at the most. The ease of making a monster quickly is beyond desirable for any GM. Not only that but from a homebrew perspective, this also means that you can easily create variant monsters so that you can sun similar themes across levels or creatures that do strange things where normally to do that you have to stack up templates or start pumping in class levels which becomes complicated in it's own right if it even works.

Past that, its a flipping bestiary too, meaning you have all kinds of crazy variant critters as an example for what you can do. This is to the tune of about 230 creatures that are variants of the Bestiary's monsters. For the $25 it takes to get the pdf I know plenty of people that would shell out just for that part alone. This is a massive book since you're already getting a simplified monster creation system.

I want to make this fight a space ship in my current campaign.

And lets not forget that there are stretch goals that are already active that you can get your hands on. Soon after launch they unlocked options for player characters (!) then moved on to templates for GM and PC use, and then PC classes. So lets get this straight as far as what you're getting. You have a new bestiary, which is always a good thing. You get a system of monster generation that is fast, easy, and grants the most creature customization power this side of the Advanced Bestiary. You get tools and so that as a PC you can BE THE BEAST.  Now I've seen the concept of monster race classes across DriveThruRPG but I was always put off by them basically being spread out in small releases that may or may not encompass the monsters that I really want to deal with, but this is all in one fat release and supported by a monster creation system that can produce the likes of a spellcasting ooze or baby tarrasque.

Or a tsundere spider...

I'm not making a special post to promote this product so it can be successful. Its already gotten almost triple it's asking budget. I'm making this post as a favor to you, the consumer. I'm not just excited about this, but I also think that you will be MISSING OUT on something great. An amazing product that expands what you can do as a GM and player for at the minimum of $25 is a steal.



You can check out the Talented Bestiary Kickstarter here.

Infinity Matrix: He's got a gun! Extra!

A while ago I made a post talking about my decision to leave everything alone when it comes to firearm rules in a scifi setting and realized I had a few extra things to say. Realistically in a world with high tech guns it makes sense that the game becomes a gunfest, and by extension a game of 'Go Dex or go home.', but where's the romance and the flavor in that? I wanted to make sure that Strength had something that at least looked viable which means melee options had to exist. Luckily after doing the math, I still don't have to change much.

Currently Treasury of the Machine from Legendary Games has the best ballistic firearms which have a really convenient option of having a strength rating, much like composite longbows in the form of recoil. So if you want a big gun that deals more damage you need more strength and it keeps ballistic firearms unique and still on the table, and like the energy damage futuristic firearms there are plenty of defenses for it even if you aren't focusing on dexterity for touch AC.

But what about being hard hitting with melee damage? Damage kinds of catches up. The addition of third party material there are a lot more options to increase damage with powered weapons but it's the Technology guide that gives the real doozy. The Gravity Chip have weapons deal damage as if it were one size category larger and is surprisingly cheap. Imagine that with the vital strike chain. A normal earthbreaker ends up 8d6, but with a Gravity Clip it ends up  12d6. Add to that third party feats that allow you to wield oversized weapons anyways so if you try to replicate Cloud Strife from Final fantasy with a Gravity Clip your vital strikes can end at 16d6.  Past that there's the existence of a few technological weapons that do an absurd amount of damage and sometimes hit on touch attacks. If a large earthbreaker with a gravity clip is scary a chainsaw using the same strategy ends at 24d6. A monowhip has reach and hits touch AC while being possible to go with Two Weapon Fighting. Late game easily becomes a nightmare of numbers when it comes to melee combat so I'm less concerned about melee combat surviving, but whether or not HP can keep up.

There is a bit of rock-paper-scissors going on. If you focus on touch AC and resist energy weapons you'll get hit harder with ballistic firearms and hard melee weapons. If you focus on resisting ballistic firearms, energy weapons will get you and bulletproofing doesn't defend well from hard melee weapons. If you focus on resisting melee weapons then you'll get hit by touch attacks. About the only way to deal with everything at once without dying too fast is force fields or taking advantage of the environment. Anticipating force fields as a hot commodity I'm giving away a few for free in the first dungeon of Infinity Matrix to see how things go.

All that said some aspects of dealing with technological weapons is somewhat of an experiment. I can theorycraft and test play all I want but really  having players means tat the ability to deal with the power creep can lean towards one way or the other so I'll have to see what gets built. I am warning them a bit. I let them know that standing in the middle of a room with a lot of enemies with guns is generally bad. So is going through corridors in their usual konga line is pretty bad too. Also that they should use cover against firearms and where to find defenses for everything.

Topic of the Day: The Buy-In Dilemma

Occasionally on the Paizo boards a thread pops up questioning whether or not Paizo should make a second edition of Pathfinder. Usually the answer is a resounding no for logistical reasons with groups of posters either agreeing that a revised core rulebook would be more practical or wanting to change some things whole clot to make the barrier of entry easier for new players. Regardless of what's whether or not a second edition or revised edition of Pathfinder is healthy for the game there is a practical reason for people like myself to be resistant to any kind of major rules change that is probably the same reason why Pathfinder started. I'd like to call this reason the 'Buy-In Dilemma'. Its a simple idea that has probably plagued players across editions of Dungeons and Dragons; Basically, I have enough material for Pathfinder that anything that makes them in any way less compatible it becomes a huge pain in my butt because it means that I either have to make considerations for rule changes or reject anything new. But it goes a bit deeper and more complex than that because I collect a lot of third party material, and usually because of the very reasons why a new or revised edition would be called for. Here I'll go over some of the top reasons I think a second edition could be necessary and address how those reasons affect me as a frequent consumer of third party products.



Reason #1: Fix Balance

This one is actually another article waiting to happen. In fact I have several articles planned talking about 3pp and balance. But the general gist is that I don't need it fixed. I have enough material dealing with perceived balance between just about anything. Think a certain base class is too weak, well I have some new options for it. Think that item is too useless, well have you looked at this item book that gives more options to that item? You can't do X? Well I have an entire book about doing X. Third party products for Pathfinder is like an app store from the future. There's a book for nearly everything to fix whatever you need fixing. Of course different groups and different people have their own sense of how the game is balanced but luckily the kinds of material goes in all kinds of directions so you can find something that will tweak things to the direction you want. 

Reason #2: Fix Bloat

You would think that 3pp would do the opposite of handling bloat, but there is something that winds up happening when you start collecting to solve Reason#1, which is that you start collecting things that streamline a process. For example I've picked up and talked about Spheres of Power constantly. Although I've gotten other alternate casting systems this year as well something about Spheres of Power clicks with people enough where it's slowly becoming THE casting system of my table. Its mostly because it's pretty easy to wield, track, and understand but also a lot of niches and themes can be used because of it.  I hate to say it but after having it in action a bit I became more reluctant to purchase anything that had any kind of magic class. No matter how well the crunch is a product has to compete with whether or not I can replicate the same flavor using Spheres of Power. If you have a lot of imagination you can easily forego Psionics, Truenaming, and pretty much all of Paizo's classes without feeling like you're missing out on concepts. Not to say that those things are badly designed, far from it, its just that with all these things at my disposal I can make a campaign as complicated as I want or as simple as I want and on the simple end of the spectrum I can just replace all magic with one book and the game is instantly hundreds of pages less bloaty and manifests more concepts than before.

Reason #3: Clean up bad rules

This one is the second biggest reason why I collect third party material. In the macrocosm of Pathfinder material hitting home and Pathfinder Society tables I can understand most of the rules as they are. Between continued backwards compatibility and reigning in PFS difficulties Paizo does it's best to make the rules function while keeping things open enough to be creative. But if Pathfinder Unchained proved one thing it is that they are very much aware that the microcosm of individual tables have very different needs that the main game can't have and remain consistent. Since the dawn of Dungeons and Dragons people have made houserules and additional creations to help smooth over concepts or fix rules to better fit their own table. With third party material  these same people test, share and streamline their fixes and adjustment allowing for a lot of things to just work at individual tables.

Reason #4: Make simpler.

You got me here. While on the player's end of the table the game can be simpler. Fewer books can be used, between third party material and Pathfinder Unchained the game can rival 5th edition in ease of use. But there are two things that having less by adding more doesn't help with. Its still a chore for the GM that has to be conscious not just about how the game works but how her players work in order to make proper adjustments. It's also not easier for the new player that wants to read the rules without direction because no matter what you adjust because all these rules and rule adjustments aren't in one book. For me this is kind of moot point. I generally have an idea of what adjustments I need for a particular campaign and I'm not a new GM so I'm more bought in as a result. Also when it comes to new players I tend to use less Paizo material, let alone third party material. I generally start with the Beginner Box, then add to it using fabulous third party conversions of each class (up to the ACG) to expand upon it. Then it's on to Core Rulebook only playing fast and loose with the rules, and then to the rest of the game with third party material.

So the bottom line is that I've collected enough 3pp products to handle most of the difficulties of Pathfinder to the point where switching genres doesn't even mean that I have to switch systems. There's enough variety where I can keep busy with Pathfinder for years before I see every class actually used by my players. I have Pathfinder pretty much just the way that I want it, even if I want something different each campaign. So any major edition change would probably cause me to stick with Pathfinder as it is. meanwhile due to modularity being a key drawing point for collecting third party material a backwards compatible revised ruleset probably wouldn't hurt me because at this point I only touch the Core Rulebook when I have players new to the game, which is infrequent enough to cause them to gather a few spider webs. And despite getting into a game with a lot of little crunchy rules I've never really held too close to the rules, often making guesses when we don't have time to look everything up, and those guesses become house rules.

So is this bad? For me, not really. If a new and better edition comes out that's incompatible I'll probably miss out, but I'm not really unhappy with the edition I have so I guess I wouldn't notice. Getting players on board for 'old' Pathfinder would probably be the biggest obstacle so I'd still be resistant to an incompatible second edition even if I wouldn't use it. Also with buying into third party products for a lot of reasons to have a new edition I'll become more reluctant to even play a new incompatible new edition because I'd have to start over with fixes and adjustments that are inevitable. It will only get bad when I get bored with Pathfinder as I have it now and that's a long ways away. I currently have 170 classes on my shelf and enough material ranging from playing as cavemen to Transformers, so I'm good for another 20 years. Is this bad for Paizo? I would say it's pretty good since I'm now a locked in customer and presumably anyone else in the same situation. Then there's the history of their business model to look at as well.  The 3.5 era of rpgs was pretty full of d20 games, so something about the backbone of the system works.

In the end I still call it a 'dilemma' because at some point I have to admit that I locked myself in the game in some way. I have a lot of friends migrating to Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition and I can play with them with minimal effort because the barrier of entry is almost nonexistent. But I still have noir pulp fantasy, steampunk, space ranger and superhero cyberpunk games to play with Pathfinder plus some Ponyfinder so I'm still less incensed to hop in wholesale into 5th edition. It also automatically makes me resistant to large scale changes that aren't part of alternate rule books like Pathfinder Unchained. Its more than about the amount of books I have that would become unused or the third party material I have yet to use outside of playtesting. The game is a different beast than it was when it was just the core rulebook and it grew multiple heads when 3pp material is involved along with books like Ultimate Campaign and Pathfinder Unchained, and it's a beast that I'm unable to escape because at the very least I'm compelled to lop off the heads I've got before trying to move on with a simpler and probably less satisfying beast.

Topic of the day: A word on Balance

I run a blog exclusively about third party products for Pathfinder, which is a big subject but did you know that customers of such products are probably a minority? It makes sense though, with over 30 different classes dozens of hardcover books and plenty of Player Companions, modules and adventure paths,  Pathfinder is a pretty expansive game and I can see players not wanting to go much further than the Advanced Players Guide let alone dealing with a ton of new classes, options, alternate systems and settings, but often the reason I see for not allowing or using third party material is dubious balance. There is a general fear that the player that is asking to use third party material is trying to grab some broken spells or feats to make his character more optimized than the game normally allows. Its a sentiment that I understand. I've run across a few players that spend most of the game attempting to break it than playing a role and those kind of experiences, even when rare, really make you want to airtight the rules and trust in-house sensibilities of balance rather than have to deal with third party things that may not be balanced. But the truth of the matter is that the subject of balance is already a dodgy subject before third party materials come into play so to answer whether or not third party material is generally balanced or not becomes complicated. But I think there are some truths to balance in 3pp material that cause a lot of confusion on whether or not its generally more or less balanced than Paizo material. Here are the 'facts' that I think needs to be considered when deciding if things are too unbalanced for you.

Third party martial options are overpowered.

This is a fairly broad statement but more often than not if you compare a martial character or options for martial characters in third party material to Paizo material the third party option is better. And this isn't about not understanding the game or anything like that, its on purpose. In fact its something I actively seek out. Basically there is a sense among players and developers that Paizo is fairly conservative with abilities that have no resources or benefit non-spellcasting classes which makes them less capable of adventuring. In most cases the Wizard is the most capable core class, the Rogue is at the bottom of the barrel and the Bard is a happy middle. In most cases third party martial classes seem to fall into the same field as the Bard in terms of being capable. To make a long story short, if you believe that the Fighter or Rogue classes are perfectly balanced compared to a Bard or Wizard then there are a lot of popular third party materials that just aren't for you because third party spell-less classes and options are outright better. Sure there are more conservative publishers that function on the same paradigm as Paizo but in most cases I've seen the Fighter is outclassed to the point where I actively sought out third party material for the Fighter that actively makes it better or more versatile so that it's not ignored. Technically this means that in the realm of non-magical classes and options 3pp is in fact overpowered and thus unbalanced technically, but for me and my table this is more than acceptable because we didn't believe it to be balanced to begin with and third party material brings those kinds of classes up to a level we find acceptable. If this wasn't the case I wouldn't have started buying third party books in the first place. And I don't think I'm alone there. Dreamscarred Press released Path of War which actively designs martial classes that are NOT balanced according to classes like the Fighter or Rogue. Entire rewrites of the Rogue and Monk exist to corner the problem of those classes being less capable. The same goes for feats and class features. Often things like Rogue Talents and Fighter exclusive feats are seen as traps or just bad. There are a lot of martial feats out there that have to compete for feat slots left over from the long feat chains you have to get just to fight with two weapons or shoot a bow so they are often just better. Again, there are also more conservative publishers that have feats more in line with the average Pathfinder feat but I find myself actively seeking out the opposite.  The fact of the matter is that classes like the Alchemist, Bard or Inquisitor is the usual measuring stick for third party classes and the capability of abilities which makes martial classes or classes empowered by third party options way more versatile.

On the other side of the fence it does make spellcasting classes less versatile.

Alternative casting systems are weaker than spellcasting. 

There are a lot of reasons for this. Spellcasting has a large chunk of the core rulebook dedicated to it and each book seems to add new spells and much of the game is exclusively accessed by spellcasters. And since spells don't need prerequisites like feats do and none are generally madatory for entire playstyles like feats each new spell is another bit of modularity for spellcasters. Meanwhile third party casting methods generally have limited space to work with, no support outside of the company that made it and generally tend to shoot itself in the foot to make even what you can consider a 'full' caster of it's type as capable as a Bard, as opposed to a Wizard, usually by working around a theme or not being as modular as spellcasting. I have NEVER seen any alternate casting system that was not more capable than a spell list. The closest is Psionics but even then, you're mostly limited to the amount of psionic powers that the book holds and they do nothing as pervasive as spells like creating your own universe. If you have a casting character that does not use spells and you expect it to handle things as well as a well made wizard then you're going to have a bad time. At the most you'll get something along the lines as a Bard in raw power and versatility. This doesn't seem to bother anyone, as again some of the most popular alternate magic systems seem to be applauded for not being as powerful as spellcasting. In some cases players will worry about something being unbalanced despite a Wizard being able to do the exact same thing two levels earlier. And I have to admit that its a selling point because I actually do think casters like the Wizard, Druid and Cleric eventually get too strong compared to the other classes. But like earlier if you think that a Wizard is actually too weak of a class then there's no way you'll like some popular books because the casters that are theoretically as powerful as a Wizard are flat out not as powerful. That isn't to say that they are bad classes, they often have some mechanic that makes things interesting or useful but spellcasting tends to try to balance its limited slots with magic bullet type effects that are situational but extremely capable and third party casting systems do not have that powerful of effects mixed with the versatility spell lists give out.

Every spell added to the game inherently makes casters more powerful. 

 This one is a bit more subtle. Because there are no real prerequisites for spells each new spell is just adding to versatility. Of course to make the spell actually worth picking it has to be somewhat good, comparing to spells from the core rulebook or in some cases better in the cases of really weak spells. This makes it easier to have bunch of good spells and fewer situational ones for each spell that gets added to the game and new spells come at a much faster rate than new class features and feats making classes that do almost nothing  but cast spells get extremely versatile. For my games it is to the point where I just don't allow third party spells unless I hand them over, usually in the form of retraining or spell books. Letting players just pick from a huge selection just causes cherry picking the least situational spells eliminating one of the key limits of spellcasting. Granted this can go both ways, a player like myself will make his caster drastically weaker by cherry picking all of the cold damage touch spells no matter how useless they are because I wanted to make Sub-Zero from Mortal Kombat using an unarmed Magus but it also opens the door to having the spells to silver bullet any given situation.

Sometimes bad things just happen. 

As I noted in an earlier post, its actually easy to avoid bad products. As a rule of thumb, if there's some positive chatter about it on the Paizo or Giant in the Playground forums, especially from it's developers,  its likely worth getting. The stinkers I've purchased often have no reviews, hype or chatter, and I believe its because good publishers tend to interact with their fan base and are more in touch with what they want. Also when a lot of people like something there's some chatter that gives others a good idea as to what's in it which in turn makes more chatter when they like it.  But even then there are always screw ups. A too powerful feat or spell falls through the cracks, some ambiguous or exploitable wording, really weak options,  a typo or mislabel. Sometimes developers are just overzealous about how they view balance in the game and go overboard. I see them occur about around the same rate that Paizo makes them and they are often relegated to single products or entire companies unless they have a huge page count. I sometimes see statements that will take a screw up of one product and take it that all third party material offers the same mistakes, disregarding that core Pathfinder material has produced much worse. In one case on the Reddit an example was given about how unbalanced third party material was. It was one feat. From an obscure source that I have not allowed in my games nor felt the need to add to my games based on the product description and lack of vetting of the product. Of course I, unfairly or not, dismissed the argument because in addition it was nowhere near as bad as something Paizo has produced. I actually had to run numbers and make theoretical situations to say that it was too powerful, so it wasn't even outrageously overpowered. If the same standards were held for Paizo we'd never play the game starting from the core rulebook. There is a ton of third party books out there and when you get that much of anything some of it is bound to suck. But if you're patient, pay attention to acclaim and reviews and get what you feel adds to the game it is incredibly easy to get the products that will make you happy.


Later I have more to say in regards to balance and third party Pathfinder products. In some ways I have more to say about the thoughts above. I just hope that this article explains a bit about the landscape I've seen and how 3pp can seem unbalancing and possible try some out. Eventually I'll post a beginner's guide to 3pp to describe how to get in edge-wise and enjoy things without turning your game upside down or adjusting the balance assumptions in the game.

Topic of the day: Wierdly Important Things

A while ago I made a post about things that I look for in a third party product. Those things were very general, not going into detail and mostly applying to anything I look at. But there also little things that don't matter in a way that makes me rate a product higher or lower but are strangely important to me in terms of general appeal and how often I will use something. Below is my top 3 list of small important details that I like to see in third party products.

3. Pictures of Creatures

I like fancy artwork as much as the next fantasy geek, but I can live with pages and pages of crunch so long as the layout makes it readable. The exceptions are monsters and races. If it's described well enough in it's flavor text a monster or race can be perfectly useable. In theory anyways. That doesn't mean that I will personally use them. I have one monster product that is kind of lukewarm as opposed to bad, but I'll never actually use it due to the lack of pictures for every monster. It just makes me feel no impact so I'm not attached enough to even look at the stat block a second time, let alone use it for a campaign.  You can get away with this when you have templates or a bunch of variations of the same monster, but even crappy art will compel me to use a monster as opposed to no art at all. Its even worse for races, because those are things that build a campaign world and something that you're more likely to spend a lot of game time interacting with.

2. One Page Wonders

Here's a few scenarios; The PCs find a vehicle and need the stat block. I want to use one monster for a session. I want to give the PCs a magic weapon or a weapon with a magic weapon property. I want to use one race from a book but not the others. What those things have in common is that it is very annoying when that information shares a page with other information. In the case of vehicles, especially complex vehicles I like to be able to just hand the PCs a sheet of paper of the page I printed out without a bunch of other information coming with it. Luckily magic items take up block-like chunks of pages so its easy to cut them out and put them in a trading card sleeve, but sometimes half the information is on another page so I  just don't use it. Sometimes I don't use all the races in a book and want to print out just one or two to hand out to my players. The worst of them all is the rare time where monsters run into each other's pages too much. Sometimes printing snippets of a pdf is useful, especially if it's information that you want to hand to players. Having wonky pages makes this harder and makes a product less useable to me.

1. Separation of GM and Player

One thing I really love is player guides as companions to fatter campaign setting books. One of the main reasons why I like published material that is very good with rules language is that I like to be able to hand things to players and have the players be able to sort it out for themselves. This means I don't want to overload them with books information that I don't want them to see or things that I only use as a GM. From a printing cost perspective this is the best because more often than not GM information is not really required at the table. I'll do prep work to determine what environment properties or monsters or items I'll put out there, which is work that happens at my computer or with a tablet. While hard copies of books are easier to navigate and share I don't really need to print out or buy material that the players don't really look at. This means that books with too many subjects that bounce between GM tools and Player options wind up getting overlooked. Normally I don't have to deal with this. Setting books often have all the player options grouped up in one place but there are a few products where it's a general melting pot of GM and Player material and it is just outright difficult to deal with and I wind up not using them.

Topic of the Day: 10 products that need more.

Sometimes I'll really like a product but there just isn't enough of it. Often it will tackle a subject that really needs to be tackled but doesn't go as far as I really want it to go or involves a lot of things that the game really could use but doesn't have enough of them. Usually these come in small packages with a limited scope. Sometimes it's a series that just moves on to the next subject and could use another instalment. In each case there's potential untapped that could be the next mega-hit. Here is my top ten list of products I've read that could really just use more to it.These are all good products, I don't want to diminish them, but I personally could stand to see more material come out related to them.

10. Culinary Magic from Flaming Crab Games.

This one is fairly recent so there's no fault to it being short but really it could use more of the same, specifically the recipes for magical dishes, particular ones with exotic ingredients. Imagine it; a chef that cooks magic by hunting down monsters as ingredients for fantastical dishes. How many times have you had players that want to make monster bits into weapons and armor only to be dismayed that there's nothing mechanically special about doing so, or worse yet that unless you're going to enchant it having dragonclaw gloves does absolutely nothing. Making monsters into magical food with actual benefits is something that can bring some magic and adventure to monsters. It may turn them into murderhobos but a dragon omlette that gives you a breath weapon is hard to turn down. Plus it gives some realistic prep time and usefulness to food. Rules as written you could have max ranks and still take a week to make a sandwich that does nothing.

9. Book of Marial Action from Necromancers of the Northwest.

Before Pathfinder Unchained came out I recognized that the hinted martial pool sounded very similar to the martial pool presented in the Book of Martial Action. When it did come out it was indeed similar in a lot of ways, to the point where I just merged the two ideas. Now Stamina is a main part of the Fighter class and can take martial techniques. Its been fun but there are some flaws in BoMA and it's sequel. At this point the martial pool and stamina are practically the same thing so a revamp of the system to integrate it with stamina would be nice, especially if the costs get readjusted to fit with how stamina functions. Besides that, the concept is a bit outclassed by the sheer scope of Dreamscarred Press' Path of War. To me the martial actions have a niche where techniques can easily be the maneuvers for non initiators but the scope of the product is rather limited. I love the martial action books but I really could use more and less conservatively costed material and probably a revamp for what it does. If this was a big book that came with a $20 price tag I'd quickly buy it.

8. Fantastic Technology from Fat Goblin Games.

I never really looked at Fat Goblin Games before this aside from one or two products that I didn't like, but Fantastic Technology made me rethink their offerings. I love me some scifi in my Pathfinder, and Fantastic Technology handles so much in it's short amount of pages that I couldn't help but to love it. But after introducing Magnitude as the technological version of weapon/armor enhancement it feels like it doesn't cover enough of it from the item side of things. In the end Fantastic Technology feels like the first couple of chapters of a Paizo hardcover sized book that was going to have hundreds of pages of magnitude effects and specific technological items.

7. Feats of Runic Might from Rogue Genius Games.

For a long while I was looking for ways to put just a little magic in the hands of martial classes. Runic Might helped out a bit in that regard. With some of the runes they've been able to get out of a few jams that they normally would be completely helpless to, and it's a great way to interact with magic without being really magical yourself.  This can be key in a lot of cases as some monsters are impossible to interact with or fight without something magical leaving some characters to sit on the sidelines. Unfortunately Feats of Runic Might and it's sequel don't go the full mile on that range and stick with being neat little pseudo magic feats without getting too out there. They're nice little addition that someone might take instead of the outrageously interesting options that someone can't wait to take the way they could be.

6. Way of Ki from Legendary Games.

Same story as Feats of Runic Might only it actually does solve a few problems with the Monk, Samurai and Ninja, but I'm greedy. There needs to be more ki feats that do more things. Maybe even style feats that interact with ki. Or even new ki using base classes, because lets face it, the Monk and Ki kind of hide in it's own niche and each concept related to ki gets shoe horned into Monk when Monk already has enough problems. Way of Ki is an indispensable addition to any game that has a Monk or Samurai but it can easily be Way of Wuxia with a lot more content.

5. Fighter Nuances from Forest Guardian Press. 

Michael Sayre's Bravery Feats could have easily been on this list but even though he admits that the product was more conservative than he would have liked it feels kind of 'done'. It set out to make some feats that made bravery awesome and it succeeded. But bravery is a limited subject and you can only go so far with it, Fighter Nuances on the other hand feels like it opened some doors and now there are a ton of things that could go through that haven't yet. It basically gives fighters a new class feature but gives you one book worth of material for it when the Fighter is over a dozen hardcovers into the game. I may just be greedy but I think there needs to be at least two more of these. 13 pages just doesn't cut it.

4. A Fistful of Denarii from Tripod Machine.

I already want to poke Tripod Machine with a stick to see when that Conquest of the Universe will come out but out of the things that they already have out, I have a soft spot for A Fistful of Denarii. It is not common to have a book full of spell-less classes so AFoD is already a bit ahead of the game but it also brought up a lot of feats for mundane classes and class features for them. As much as I use some of the feats and as much as I love the the Scholar class the book is kind of old and not enough people at my table will give it a second glance. The book could use a refresh and/or some additions. New archetypes and options to differentiate them from their parent classes, a new name for the Hunter, and most importantly just more mundane goodness including more feats to help them out.

3. Whatever the heck ARMR is doing. 

I've only taken a real look at three of their products but I'm having the same reaction to each one. They're kind of cool but it could use some options, and other stuff. Based on the Chemist and Zephyrus alone these free classes need to be compiled into one book, given a bunch of options and archetypes and feats and items and junk, printed and sold. The crunch is there and they seem to be hitting points that are hardly hit but honestly if they had just a bit 'more' I would argue that they don't deserve to be free products and need to have a price tag.  Right now I just see a bunch of neat base classes for free when they do have incredible chassis that are the makings of great classes if more was attached to them.

2. Mystical: Kingdom of Monsters from Northwinter Press. 

Being a big book you wouldn't think that this needs 'more' but if you look at the book, it has a lot of space dedicated to the bestiary of 'mons leaving the class with some options but for me not enough. There is a lot of flavor throughout the rest of the game that it just doesn't really interact with and I see it capable of really going places.

1. Anachronistic Adventures from Rogue Genius Games. 

I've said it before but this product goes way past it's premise in terms of what it can be used for. The general idea is to get someone from the 1940s and have him fall into a portal to Golarion or something along a similar vein, but I've seen at least two products that use it as a basis for post modern classes, and I'm currently using it as a basis for futuristic space adventures. Rogue Genius Games needs to recognize what they unleashed here. This is basically a d20 Modern/Future port only it better integrates itself with the Pathfinder ruleset. This is why I was actually a bit dismayed that the progress levels for proficiencies stopped at the information age. No, don't stop. Keep going. This book needs modern and future equipment, spaceship rules, power source conversion rules, and mecha. It needs mutations, cybernetics, alien races, FX abilities and of course more archetypes and feats. Broken Earth has you handled on some of these things and maybe Conquest of the Universe will handle the rest, but unless CotU is everything we could ever need Anachronistic Adventures is currently half of d20 Modern/Future and I really want need the other half.

Topic of the day: Why you don't see many bad reviews

Looking at my review history on Paizo.com I noticed that I very rarely go under three stars in my reviews. I think only 4 enter the 1-2 star range with a pretty good chunk being within 4 or 5 stars. So what gives? Am I pandering? Am I an overly generous GM or reviewer? Why don't I review things that suck? Well the answer to that is complicated but summed up its because I tend to not buy crappy products. But I can't leave you with an explanation like that so I'm going to elaborate. In list form, here are the reasons why I don't write many reviews on crappy products.

1) I buy popular things.

I'm not made of money. Sure I'll get a review copy of something here and there but for the most part third party material gets funded by my beer money, so I have to pre-evaluate material before I buy it just like everyone else. I rely on buzz, threads about the product and reviews. Because I like large books and hard copies I hate it when I get a useless product. Its paper that didn't need ink and money wasted that I could have spent elsewhere so I at least try to make sure that what I'm getting is something that I want. I also will very often stick to big names in the field. When you start picking up a few things you'll noticed that some companies get talked about more and some have a higher rate of positive reviews. Eventually there are heavy hitters that you just trust to push out a solid product. But the fact remains that knowing whats inside before you buy is the lifeblood of Pathfinder 3pp. If there are no reviews, no discussion, no proper description that gives me confidence that it will be a smart purchase then it's dead to me and I won't pick it up. 

2) I buy based on my needs.

When you involve third party products there can be a lot of redundancy among themes,  options and classes. Sometimes when there's obvious overlap you don't want to overwhelm your players with different versions of the same thing, so when I find a good product that handles what I need, I'll very often forget about the product before it. Sometimes I'll even ignore a new product that's probably superior because I already have the ability to do whatever it offers. This makes my purchasing habits a bit more selective but it gets more selective because I don't exactly purchase what I think is good but what I feel that I need. For example; I'll run a game where I want a construct race to fill out some of the fluff that i want for the campaign setting, so I seek that out. Once I have it and it's adequate enough for my needs I won't go looking for another. If I wasn't looking for that kind of product to begin with then I probably wouldn't actually read any product on the subject. That combined with #1 means that my rate of exposure to actually bad products is rather low. I go out of my interests for review copies of things I'm requested to review but more often than not those people are giving review copies because they have confidence in their product and want to get some word of mouth so I don't get many review copies from Randy's Crappy PDF Shack and they're mostly from passionate publishers that put a lot of work into their products.

3) I review good products first.

When I get something good, I buy a hard copy, throw it on my table, use it and sing it's praises. It makes sense. If it's good then I want the company that made it to succeed. I want people to know how good it is and accept it in their games. I want the company to make enough money to make more. When something is bad, I forget it even exists. I am already a pretty lazy person so when I'm presented with a book that sucks every sentence feels like a millstone around my neck and I want to move on to something else. A terrible book is a chore to analyze so I put it off forever. Its like performing an autopsy when you're afraid of zombie movies, you just don't want to do it so it feels like the slowest event in the universe. You don't even really want to talk about it. This sounds bad as a reviewer but when I started reviewing products I already had amassed a large collection so naturally the first things I went to were the products that were good enough for me to pick up a hard copy of. These are products that I take to the table and use and am familiar with. I'm able to dive right in and pump some reviews out.

4) I don't rate low unless it doesn't work. 

If you read my reviews carefully enough you'll notice that sometimes I'll have some harsh words with something I rate highly.  That's because its okay to not like a good book. Sometimes I'm disappointed because I wanted something else or it's not useful for the things I wanted and is useful for some other reason. I try to be unbiased in my star rating but will describe what I wanted and what I did and didn't, because a good book is still a good book, its just that sometimes its not good for me. Also one or two bad options in an otherwise good book aren't going to stop me either. Really the only way to get a one or two star review with me is if I think that a significant chunk of the product doesn't work. Whether its difficult to read, has balance thrown out the window, has rules language that makes no sense or otherwise impossible to use as written. Usually if I don't like a product I'll try to see it in another light based on whether or not I can see someone else using it.  Two stars is when I just won't recommend it to anyone ever and one star is outright garbage that you can't even scavenge ideas from.

5) Some products are just not good enough to try.  

Okay so I have a ton of pdfs and even though I don't use everything at once those things have to compete with other products and Paizo material for the spotlight. Some products are less popular so I have to run them through oneshots to get a gist of how it works. The rest just kind of fall into the deep cracks of my computer, never to be seen again. Usually this includes the worst of what I have where I'm ashamed to even admit that I payed money for it and instead blocked it from my memory. And if you're thinking that's just hyperbole, one of those things in question has a feat called Zooamourous Breeder and it does exactly what you think it does. Sometimes I promise myself I'll look through such products to dig out some gems but really I just forget about them until I wonder about what some mystery pdf is in my badly organized Pathfinder folders and stupidly unearth it like some kind of eldritch horror movie monster.

Topic of the Day: Scifi in Pathfinder at a glance

Science fiction in Pathfinder is a vast and perilous landscape. If d20 has taught us one thing during the 2000s it’s that the system is pretty flexible for a rules-heavy game when it comes to genre. Being a child of d20 Pathfinder shares the same guts that can be pretty  flexible itself. Most of the time when we want to go out of genre we move on to a different system, sometimes even another d20-spawn, but luckily we don’t necessarily need to  with Pathfinder so you can enjoy your status quo and turn it up on its head too.

Equipment

Superficially, science fiction is distinguished by advanced technology, so when you run Scifi Pathfinder you want some laser guns,  some robots, maybe even a spaceship. The best and worst thing Paizo has done for this arena is their Technology Guide that came out right before the Iron Gods adventure path. It had a ton of items, introduced the concept of power charges and reactors that produce charges, and even gave a means of using your old skills for scifi junk with the  barrier of the Technologist feat. The book was great. The bad thing was that this was so concisely done that every third party scifi product that came before it instantly became dated. At this point in time, unless you don’t like tracking charges on your technological items and thus avoid Paizo’s technology guide, rules made before that are in an awkward position by not being completely compatible. You see, for the most part most technological items worked without energy or charges and can be crafted anywhere. So they were magic items that had a different name. In some cases there were just instructions to file off the serial numbers off of magic items to make them technological. That was all well and good back then but having technological items need power makes too much sense, plus on top of being really good and encompassing a lot of item types the Technology Guide is a part of the main game to the point of now being on the online reference document despite being printed in the Campaign Setting line. Additionally it didn’t change that much leaving you with new rules but little to have to memorize to get a technological game going.

Luckily there are some third party products out there that come out after the technology guide that fill in a few gaps, chief among them is Call to Arms: Fantastic Technology from Fat Goblin Games. If you run a technological game, Paizo’s Technology Guide should be your first purchase and Fantastic Technology should be your second. It introduces an item enhancement system in the form of Magnitude (which everyone should follow from now on), gives you some material for kingdom building, and keeps melee weapons in the game. There’s so many small gaps that this book fills in that I’m just sad that it’s so small. It could have easily been the size of a hardcover with as much subject matter technology brings.

Legendary Games didn’t slack either with Treasury of the Machine, a book of new technological items building on the rules from the Technology Guide, but sadly that’s about it. There’s some things that look pretty promising. As of this post d20pfsrd.com publishing is developing something involving space ships. Dreamscarred Press is playtesting some sort of technopsionic expansion with psionic mechs. But that’s about all that I’ve seen on the Technology Guide expansion front. Of course there are older titles but really your bases are pretty well covered with the Technology Guide, and its free online so they end up being put in a big pile of things I don’t use. And outside of old d20 modern material there is a huge hole in the giant robot department. Well for now there is. The closest adequate thing I could find is Infinite Future’s Mecha Guide and Charles Smith Games’ Mecha Construction Guide. Spaceships are tackled sporadically but for me at least the king of that category is Space Potato Productions with their stupidly free books of preconstructed starships.

Classes

There is, however, stiff competition when it comes to technological classes with some of the pre-Technology Guide classes aging pretty well. So well that I can’t really recommend one as the top of them all, they’re all so good. about the only bad thing I can really say is that I generally hate for technology and technology use to be class-locked but with the Technology Guide out the tech classes actually improve, because instead of being classes that are a barrier to science fiction that you have to have to hit your scifi tropes they become specialists that pull it forward better.

Barring the tech classes that come more from a steampunk or magical artifice direction a lot of classes that deal with technology seem to follow a pattern similar to the Alchemist. They get a list of gadgets that are for most purposes spells, and have some sort of talents they they choose every other level. Additionally they tend to have some kind of major choice that functions like a mini-archetype or Sorcerer bloodline. Legendary Games has the Cyborg, LPJ has the Machinesmith, Radiance House has the Technician. And like the Alchemist they are all very diverse classes with a lot of solid design. Running a game with high technology I’d be hard pressed to not include them. The class that stands out that goes out of the mold is the Tinker from Interjection Games. It’s more of a build your own pet robot class but makes it very surprising how diverse a pet robot can be when you loosen your view on what robots are supposed to be.

But what about classes that aren’t mad scientists and cyborgs and engineers? When I got my print copy of The Machinesmith I was surprised to find that it came with two extra classes. The Fleshwraith, a sort of bio-machinesmith, and The Host, a class that gets eidolon evolutions from its symbiotic mutant creature. (I just stick with it being a mutate class and leave out the symbiote.) Zombi Sky Press put out It Came from the Stars, which included, for lack of a better short description, a space wizard in the form of the Moon Child, and the space-gish Starseed. Of course if magic isn’t your flavor psionic classes from Dreamscarred Press’ Ultimate Psionics feel way more at home in a scifi campaign than they do in medieval stasis-land.

There are plenty of classes in plenty of books that handle mundane space faring folk but a good amount of time I have a hard time justifying them. One of the reasons why the Technologist feat from the Technology Guide works is that if you’re in a setting where high technology isn’t alien then you can give everyone the Technologist feat and that fixes the problem. Meanwhile specialized classes tend to just be another class with some different class skills. I’ve seen a few military grunt classes that are pretty much just fighters with laser beams or are completely outclassed by playing a fighter if the fighter gets free laser beam proficiency. They just come out too narrow for what they could be and too weak to be what they need to be. Rogue Genius Games on the other hand released a godsend for this dilemma with Anachronistic Adventures. Following a similar pattern to d20 modern you have six classes that loosely revolve around the six ability scores. Between them are a ton of archetypes that any of them can have allowing you to mix and match your tropes to a surprisingly huge degree. They also come with progress levels defined so you can set their proficiencies (and the proficiencies of other classes) based on whatever age they hail from. Since they don’t deviate much in terms of rules language and their abilities are pretty setting neutral they work surprisingly well with other rules.

Worlds

Paizo already as a few alien races and worlds under it’s belt and 3pp isn’t really behind. Titles like Veil of Truth, It Came from the Stars, and Age of Electrotech comes with a few races. Infinite Futures comes with it’s own alien race builder. There are a number of races from Skortched Urf. Then there are the numerous races that you can just file the serial numbers off to get the alien you want. But in terms of full-fledge campaign settings I have seen few that tickle my fancy. Part of this is biased because a bunch of crunch I don’t like are mixed in so I wind up not using them and I tend to make my own campaign settings when it comes to space but I haven’t seen too much that I can get attached to either. When it comes to my own setting It Came from the Stars gives me a ton of tools to work with while being setting neutral enough for them to be actual building blocks instead of random elements that I’ve stolen. In terms of campaign settings I could point out Amethyst and Neurospasta from Dias Ex Machina which are dense settings that are more or less intelligent and agreeable but they don’t really spark the creative flair like settings such as Starjammers. I missed the planetary kickstarter that Legendary Games did but I hear good things.

The Future

Since I first stumbled upon it after the kickstarter I have been keeping an eye on Tripod Machine’s space opera book, Conquest of the Universe.

Dreamscarred Press started playtesting an extension of the Technology Guide.

d20pfsrd.com Publishing announced their Starfinder project a while ago.

I jumped aboard the Hypercorps 2099 kickstarter and am very excited.

Savage Mojo promised some sort of techno egyptian setting, and as a Stargate fan I’ll be all over that when it eventually shows up.

So as you can see science fiction has been and is increasingly a hot topic for Pathfinder. As we move on I see more products I have getting pushed out in favor of more streamlined material with Paizo’s Technology Guide as the turning point.

Next time I’m doing a review that is long overdue, I’ll revisit some older reviews and I’ll talk about Kickstarters that I’ve backed and why.

Topic of the Day: What I look for in 3pp products

Before I start I’d like to remind everyone that these are my personal preferences as a consumer of third party Pathfinder products. Everyone is different and some will want different things so don’t take this as the end all be all of how third party products should work.

Now I have a LOT of third party Pathfinder products. I think I’m somewhere in the 200 separate pdf range. I know that the pathfinder PDF folder on my computer is up to 14 gigabytes. But I only have so much money so I can’t just buy everything and hope for the best. I have standards and goals when it comes to throwing down money on a product and that’s only the first step. I don’t normally use a product until I’ve read and vetted it so using and reviewing it has its own set of standards.  So here is a list of the top things I look for in a 3pp Pathfinder product. This list includes things that I look for that determine whether or not I buy a product as well as things that make me enjoy a product way more.

#1: Detailed  Reviews

A good review can be the difference between buying something or outright ignoring it and for various reasons. Sometimes the product description doesn’t tell me enough to get me to want something. Sometimes I don’t know how much I need a product until I see a review that makes a compelling argument. One reason why some reviewers stand out more than others is that they tell you the information you really need to decide whether or not you need the product by giving very thorough and detailed reviews. Because of this the review doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be positive, different strokes for different folks and all that, but reviews that describe what’s inside makes the whatever I’m looking to buy much less of a mystery.

This also includes general buzz and developer interaction. When fans start talking on forums and sharing their experiences using a product I get hyped. One of the main reasons to get a third party product is to increase fun in your campaigns and when a lot of people are having fun with it then you just assume or trust that it’s going to bring fun to your game. When publishers share details I have a deeper grasp of what I’m going to buy and more faith that the product is going to be balanced in some way.

#2: Promises of Change

When I pick up a book expect for things to change as opposed to give me more of the same. This means redundant classes are a turnoff, even if they are better designed than their Paizo counterpart, which is unfair but very true. A concept that can be easily replicated or approximated by existing paizo material isn’t that appealing. The only exception is if the Paizo equivalent is impaired in useablility in some way. With third party products I expect to bring something new to the table whether it be imaginative flavor or rules that account for things I couldn’t previously do.

#3: Promises to Stay the Same

This one sounds like a tall order after number 2, but I can’t have things be too different. What I mean by that is that I still want to play Pathfinder so drastic changes to the rules, huge swings in balance or normal departures in rules language can make a product difficult to use. Of course sometimes the goal of a product is to change rules or rebalance things, but the best examples I can think of that do such a thing still remain compatible with the rules as a whole without being disruptive, tend to stay in their own realm, and feel like a logical extension of the game rather than a huge shift. This is especially important within the realm of rules language.

#4 Makes Being a GM Easier

When it comes down to the bottom line I buy third party material because I’m either too lazy or less skilled to come up with my own rules to handle some things. Coming up with rules is hard work so I give someone else money for their rules so I don’t have to do that work. So my biggest pet peeve is whenever a third party product makes me have to do things and the best products are the ones where I don’t have to do anything at all or better yet make the things that I already have to do easier. GM oriented books like monster books, NPC books or shops and stuff are neat because it’s one less monster I have to design, one less NPC I have to stat up, or one less shop I have to roll for. This is why Spell-Like Abilities are the worst things in existence for me. Every monster that has one is another spell I have to look up because I don’t remember what all the spells in this game do.  If it’s a book that’s geared more towards players, I expect to be able to just hand them book and not have to worry about the rest. If the rules are unintuitive everyone asks me questions and then I have to make rulings and it slows down the whole game.

#5 Ease of Use

For players this is more important. If I want to introduce something new to players they have to be able to read and understand it easily. This means that layout and subject presentation is important. I really need to be able to hand things to players and have to deal with minimal complications. There is somewhat of a bonus when a book has a print version or can easily be printed. Even better if it is on d20pfsrd.com. For this reason I tend to prefer big books rather than numerous small ones. A big book I can get and carry with the presentation being pooled into a single resource. It is also why I like concept compartmentalization, concepts, flavor and tone that aren’t too diverse. Having a book with all my horror options and a book with all my pirate options is better than a single book of pirate-horror because I sometimes need one and not the other and anding a book with all that mixed together means that I either have to exclude a book I’m putting in a player’s hands, which is off-putting or allow an excess amount of information at once which is overwhelming considering how option rich the game is already. How important this is isn’t that obvious until you come across a bad example. The format is ugly and is too art intensive to print yourself, the information is scattered and hard to figure out all the rules for the thing you want to do, abilities aren’t divided by bolding, enough spacing or any kind of break, there are a million feats with no feat table. Some .pdfs are a complete mess.

_________

Well, that’s it for today. Next time I’m going to talk about science fiction in Pathfinder, including my favorites and upcoming products that look promising. Plus a new review that is long overdue along with second thoughts about old reviews. .