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.

Savage Worlds: First Impression

With limited internet I finally got around to trying out some new RPGs to add to the topics I talk about in this blog. One of them is Savage Worlds, and this is my impression after reading the latest core book, the Horror, Super Powers, and Fantasy handbooks.

Now I haven't gotten in an actual game with Savage Worlds. For the most part I built some characters and goofed around with fighting some monsters and gold-fishing some scenarios. At it's base its a very easy to learn game. As a generic game parts of it are nebulous because it depends on what you're running but as a whole it's solid enough to be able to go from campaign to campaign and generally know what you're doing.

Your Character

The setup is simple. Main stats go from 1d4 to 1d12 and can't go higher (until they do if you're running a game where super strength is a thing.) You get points to set them. Then there are points for skills that have a similar dice limit that have associated stats which dictate how many points it takes to raise them past a certain die. For example if you have a stat that is a d8 then the associated skill will take one point to raise it to a d8 but two points to raise it to a d10 and so on. You also have some derived stats which are your ability to dodge and resist damage. You get Pace (land speed) set at 6 and Charisma set at 0.

From there you get three 'Hindrances' (Two minor, one major). Hindrances are reverse feats that are basically character flaws that are mechanically relevant. Technically you don't NEED to take any they just count towards points to get some extra stuff at character creation but if you want to start at what's essentially level one with nothing but skills and stats then you want to take them. The extra stuff you get are points to spend on more skills, bigger stats, starting money or 'Edges'. An Edge, to use Pathfinder terms, is a feat. Aside from getting better stats and skills these are the main things taht define your character, granting them abilities and rules exceptions that make them one thing or another. This includes super powers and magic but I'll get to that later.

You can default as a human which grants you an extra edge (What's with humans and bonus feats?) but you also have the option of being whatever race is allowed in the campaign which have some extra abilities. There's a guide to making your own races.

And there you have it. You can punch out a character in about ten minutes but if that's too slow for you there are predefined archetypes that tell you what to put in where. There are only a handful in the book but online I've seen a number ranging across different settings. There's even one site where the core D&D/Pathfinder classes are defined as archetypes.

Advancement is expressed in experience points with about one to three given in a session. As you get them you achieve different tiers of ranks that are qualifiers for different edges and every five experience points you get a new edge, a stat boost, two skill boosts that are lower than their associated stat, one skill boost regardless of the associated stat, or get a new skill. Even though the ranks have a set limit the amount of XP you get is open ended so theoretically you could have a character with a million XP with the only restriction being that after 80 experience points you get your advancements every 10 XP instead of 5.

One thing to note is that minmaxing is considerably less useful here. About every attribute is painful to dump in an extreme way and even at the highest dice value the dice can be pretty swingy. So while character creation is about as easy as choosing an archetype, any player that chooses to optimize heavily can slow character creation considerably.

Playing The Game

Busting out a character is easy enough but gameplay is a bit trickier.

Combat sets initiative by drawing playing cards. Jokers sets off some abilities and resets initiative and you don't have any changes to initiative unless you have an edge for it. You get to act and move and that's it. You can perform multiple actions but they can't be the same action (or hand in the case of attacking with weapons) and it grants a culmulative penalty on each action. There are exceptions like automatic weapons and stuff like that but its mostly just move and act. There are a number of non-attack actions but they aren't really relevant...

...until you get you butt kicked. Then all of a sudden the extra combat options really matter because of how combat works and how being a generic game affects things. You see fighting, shooting and throwing are separate skills that go after the dodge statistic, 'Parry' or target the number 4 to hit. if you hit you roll damage and if it goes past the statistic to mitigate damage, 'Toughness' then that thing gets 'Shaken'. Shaken is a stun that you can roll to shake off but if you take damage when you're stunned or the damage is really high then you take a wound. Take four or more wounds and you're out (dead or knocked out depending on setting rules.). This means that stunning is very important and sometimes toughness is very high so it takes some teamwork to get through. Also attacking isn't the only way to apply the shaken condition. For the most part you're going to take out weaker enemies really quick, especially if they're regular mooks because it only takes one wound to kill them, but if something tough comes along you have to pull out all stops to take it down and things go hard core tactical all of a sudden. So even if you're a boring melee combatant and you're just running up to swing at monsters you're actually missing out on a lot of things you can do to make winning easier.

Adding to all this the setting makes power levels very uneven. A shotgun is definitely more useful than a bow and if you're using rules from the super power handbook you can functionally build Superman if you wanted to making shotguns completely useless very early. So a Heroic tier dude from Montana is overpowered or useless compared to similar tier guys based on the context of the campaign. Because of this enemies are all over the place and don't have a set criteria or rating for how tough they are, meaning that its possible to find out that you're in way over your head with an enemy when you're halfway dead.

Also pretty much every dice explodes indefinitely (on a dice per dice basis they can crit by hitting the highest number on the die which lets you add another dice to it.) so if it rolls enough fours in a row a chump monster dealing 1d4 damage can murder you in one hit. This is incredibly unlikely but the fact that its possible for anyone to get a lucky shot in means that you can't afford to mess around in combat.

Skills on the other hand are easier to work with. The target for success is almost always 4 with plusses and minuses depending on what's going on.

Bennies and Wild Dice

The game has a token system called 'Bennies', slang for Benefits. These are your hero/fate points that can be spent on rerolls and to take away the shaken condition. In general you get them for going something cool or otherwise amusing the table or GM, which seems like an added complication to the game but after reading the Horror Handbook it opens up bennies get rewarded for whatever you want. In the horror handbook you can award bennies for partaking in a 'vice' like drinking and premarital sex (anything that makes Jason Voorhees kill you faster.) in order to lure the players into horror tropes. My wife wanted to use Savage Worlds to play out her Sailor Moon Campaign and decided to award bennies to people who inspired love and hope to lure players into getting involved with magical girl tropes. Bennies are described one way in the core book but easily turn into plot carrots, positive reinforcement for playing out the way the GM wants. This is a pretty great tool for enforcing a genre or luring players into tropes of whatever they're playing.

Wild dice are a mechanic that I still think is an added complication. For any stat or skill roll you make you roll a d6 and can take that number instead of your trait roll. This only applies to 'Wild Cards' which are PCs and enemies that need more than one wound to die. It makes it more likely to roll well and makes you less likely to flub with 1s on a d12. But it also introduces critical failures, a 1 on both dice which are catastrophic enough for you to potentially cut your own dick off. so it's give and take. I know I think it's an added complication but I wouldn't take it away because of a tiny glitch in how probability works with exploding dice. Basically its slightly easier to meet a target number one step higher than the dice you're using. However the lower the dice the more likely you're going to roll double 1s and be that much closer to cutting your dick off so the game is balanced I guess.

Powers

Powers are supernatural abilities that you can access with edges. There are plenty of flavors of this that get introduced in the genre handbooks but the base game puts them at arcane magic, divine magic, psionics, super powers, and gadgetry. The flavors of these work differently but the end result is basically the same. Each power cost power points and has an effect. There aren't that many powers and they're pretty basic effects. You also attack 'Trappings' to them to more define them. Trappings are descriptors for what they are and what they look like, for example; a 'bolt' can be a 'fire''bolt' and so on. Same effect different cosmetics. Despite mostly being cosmetic there is a list of mechanical benefits for elemental/energy trappings which makes everything WAY more interesting. I'd say that the game as a whole needs more trappings with mechanical benefits. Each one exponentially creates new powers without having to fiddle with the powers list. But just with the core book its enough to get you going for quite a bit. Otherwise its up to the players and GM to spice up powers with flavor.

At their base Powers do things that you normally can't do but aren't drastically powerful. Using just the main rulebook everything is pretty gritty/low level no matter their rank but my comparison board is Pathfinder so that means a little less. Setting rules drastically change how useful each power is due to technological or magical equipment, as well as super powers working differently when you use the Super Power Companion.

Speaking of Super Powers, the Super Powers Companion has a weird sense of balance too. Technically you can make Batman and Superman with the same rank and number of points but the two are obviously not equals, or at least not in the same way. I appreciate this but it boggles my mind how this will work out in play. Also you really don't want to mix the genre companions if you want to keep balance. Its the equivalent of bringing a knife to a Death Star fight.

Conclusion

Everything else about the rules are simple and are either very concise or easily extrapolated based on how similar things work. Its flexibility is there at it's core so its not very hard to jump from one kind of setting to another without much of a fuss, although I think the individual genre companions will work out better due to their genre specific house rules. There are a few kinks in the road and there are some bits that seem counter intuitive but it functions well enough. With combat being the crunchiest part of the game by far, the game is easily action first but this doesn't mean that its useless to invest in non combat options unless you're just doing break down the door dungeon crawls.  With that in mind its kind of a rules-medium kind of system where there's quite a bit of situational rules but they are pretty easy to resolve and starting the game in the first place is pretty fast and easy.

I think a highest and lowest point of the game is that usefulness and power are extremely relative and contextual. futuristic armor and weapons are just flat out better than medieval ones, super power rules make obscenely overpowered characters and its easy to make a modern nobody that can't hold up to pretty much anything. On one hand this is in no way balanced to each other making genre mixing kind of a balancing act. On the other hand this makes all kinds of sense and to be honest Superman and Indiana Jones being on the same team is narratively very weak. This also means that playing different genres is very possible at it's core.

Another downside is that combat being so crunchy but posed to be fast and easy means that people will make the mistake of just running in and swinging to hit things which is a bad idea because at it's base players are pretty squishy so fighting blind is not always an option. Although to be fair, if the GM is just playing beatable monsters with low tactics everything is fine.

Despite being able to pull off high fantasy like D&D, Pathfinder and 13th Age it doesn't really have to ability to go overboard. Even if you're at the highest rank there's a slim possibility that an errant arrow from a goblin can turn things sideways and while you can realistically take on some epic level monster but its going to take a lot more forethought than typical Pathfinder characters. Basically fantasy Savage Worlds its pretty low gritty fantasy by comparison.

As a whole I think it tackles the kind of action adventures that I have trouble replicating with Pathfinder and D&D and without getting too abstract it has about the same range as GURPS without the complications and fiddly bits. Best of all is that after getting the three genre companions you're pretty much set to do basically whatever you want. In fact if anyone asked me to describe this in fewer words I would call it 'GURPS-lite'


On a personal note, I quickly fell in love with the system. It supports the genres I want to play in without too much hassle between genres and in a few books. Its easy to understand so I don't have to handhold the way I do in Pathfinder or even Fifth Edition D&D. Its the right consistency of crunchy and abstract to make for fun adventure games. It has plenty of really spectacular settings to support it and houseruling for worldbuilding is simple and pretty intuitive. I'm not giving it a rating because this isn't really a review but if I did i would give it a full five out of five.

What this means for this blog is that I'm going to be talking about Savage Worlds here now. I'll still talk about Pathfinder, and when I get around to my 5e overview I'll talk about that too. (Also Fate and Ryutama are on the menu.)

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.

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.

Where I've been?

If you're wondering where I've been for the past few weeks, the excuse is simple. My computer broke and I'm low on computer fixing money.

The long version is that for whatever reason I turned my computer off and now it won't power back on. I'm more savvy than a lot of people I know when it comes to computers and can fix some problems but many problems just leave me at a loss and I have no idea what to do. There are also a few family crisis and big convention going plans, which haven't exactly eaten up my free time but have eaten enough money where getting the funds to deal with them makes fixing my computer less of a priority.  I've been keeping up a bit on my phone and tablet which are still functioning but that involves typing with my thumbs or using a bluetooth keyboard on squinto-vision so I'm reluctant to actually make full on posts. I do have some access to stuff at work so I may post a bit to tide things over since I have a few half-finished posts that I can probably finish easily. For the most part I have about an hour and a half of typing per day on an actual keyboard/screen.

Sorry guys but reviewing will also be trickling in rather than getting back on the saddle since I'll be mostly reading them on my tablet, thinking them over and then posting about them rather than going through my usual re-reading and analysis since navigating pdfs on my tablet is kind of a pain and I have no real time for editing, so typos ahead.

My weekly top ten posts will be late for a while, this weeks will be on Wednesday, but I'll get them up starting this week.

Anyways, sorry for the lack of delays. Hopefully things will be up and running soon.

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.

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.