This morning I woke up and did my morning pre-work routine which includes checking my email. I was surprised to see a sale from Rogue Genius Games going on until the end of November. Apparently RGG wanted to make sure that I get myself something nice for my birthday later this month. I went over to see what I can get with these sweet sweet deals and eventually realized that I have pretty much every Rogue Genius product that I felt that I needed.
I think I've sunk way too much money on these products. For a pretty good reason I guess. They are consistently awesome. And I don't mean that casually with the normal hyperbole that word is usually used with, I mean that I am often in awe about what they do crunch-wise. It started with the 'Talented' line of products. The first pdfs from Super Genius Games I got was The Talented Monk/Fighter/Rogue. On the whole it's a simple premise. Split a class into a series of Talents and Edges and feed in abilities from archetypes along with original abilities. On the surface its a deconstruction of classes to make them more modular in concept but for me, starting with the Fighter, Rogue, Monk and Cavalier was important because it does way more than make the classes more thematically modular but 'fixes' a lot of things wrong with Pathfinder's weakest classes. Once you've made a Talented Monk you have a hard time going back, and really the Monk needed it. Same goes for the Rogue and Fighter. The products lived up to the name of the company. It was Genius.
After that I got into more of their products, specifically the pdfs that added to a class. Most of the time one option that the class has gets new choices and sometimes there's an alternate class for them. Almost every product like this has outright changed how the class works. Not in the sense of modifying the class but just giving new options that strays from the cookie cutter ways the class can work. For example, the Alchemist book has new options to replace Mutagen, Bombs, or Alchemy, one of the choices is Spyragic Devices which singlehandedly turns the Alchemist into a competent Artificer. The book on Magus Arcana makes sword and board Magi possible. The Gunslinger book made Gunslingers into possible Swashbucklers before Swashbucklers even came out.
From there I picked up bits and pieces based on what I felt my needs were. I wanted to buff martials more so I picked up Feats of Combat and The Guide to Bravery Feats. I wanted more construct options so I picked up their Monster Menagerie on constructs. Some sales went on so now I have a metric ton to review before I get through it all since up to this post I have all the class options books, the Bullet Points line, almost all their classes and a ton of different option books. I've used roughly half of them at some point because there are just a lot material to play with. I could make this blog purely about Super/Rogue Genius Games products and be here for years. But for now I'll just list my personal highlights.
1) All the Talented Books.
Seriously, if you think any of the classes in the Talented line is weak, these books will change your life. Even for Ranger, a class I don't think is particularly weak like the Rogue, at the very least it's talented books made the class WAY more interesting.
2) Anachronistic Adventures.
On the surface it's pretty much just a means to play a character from 20th century earth in Pathfinder in a sort of reverse Rasputin Must Die situation, but this book is a pretty powerful toolbox. It features six classes based on the six ability scores that share a collective pool of archetypes. If that sounds familiar, it feels like a spiritual successor of d20 Modern. This does mean that the classes and the concepts they can represent go above and beyond putting a modern man into a fantasy land. The tools and options inside, in addition to the classes, make running any era a possibility. Throw in the Technology Guide or Broken Earth and you might as well have d20 Modern/Future with minimal mechanical fuss.
3) The Time Thief and it's brother.
Talk about untapped concepts. I didn't think I needed this until the subject came up and it is a fun pair of classes. I picked up the Time Thief soon after I got a Rite Publishing pdf that had an alchemical sonic screwdriver in it. You know what my next character was.
Of course there's more but those are the products that I feel changed my games the most. That's not to say that the rest won't change your games, just that the bar is pretty high and I don't want to be here all day. I haven't picked up the Veranthea Codex yet but I'm sure I need that even if its just for the NPC stat blocks. The Godling books are another untapped concept that was amazing. Some of the original classes filled in niches before later classes did. The Dragonrider book brings some interesting flavor to the concept. There's so much.
Eventually I'll get around to writing reviews for my favorite products and then to random things that they put out that I haven't reviewed. Although there are few there are some stinkers to watch out for along with good products that aren't exactly necessary if you want to save your money for their best products. In the meantime take a few gambles and go for some discounted products.
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