5e Racial Options: Aasimar

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

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

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

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

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

You can find this over on DriveThruRPG here.

Review: Cyborgs

This product from Legendary games was an odd treat for me. I've seen a lot of tech classes but not all that many variations come at once. Usually a tech class tries to be a catch all for the subject, much like an alchemist so there aren't many base classes that explore the subject. The opposite of this is definitely Psionics with a whopping 10 classes that deal with the subject of psionics. This product also tickles my fancy in another way. I am a big fan of Thunderscape: World of Aden and particularly the Golemoid class which the Cyborg reminds me of. It takes the technology of it's genre and becomes it making an exciting parallel.

The class is a medium BAB class with a d8 hit dice. It gets 6+Int ranks per level and starts off with the Technologist feat at first level. (There needs to be a line here to tell what happens when you get the feat when you already have the feat.) It gets an internal nanite matrix which is basically fancy talk for having a giant pool of points to support it's class features.

At first level, 4th level and every four levels after they get a modification. These modifications eat up magic items slots which is tragic but workable, but one bit that gets ugly is that I'm having a hard time figuring if they eat each other's slots, particularly when they only go for one limb in the description. This is very important information so it's a big minus unless my reading comprehension isn't too good today. Since I intend to use this for a scifi campaign where there are three races with more than two arms this gets extra weird. Some of the modifications impose a -2 Charisma penalty (Yikes!) instead of eating an item slot. Given that a good amount of the modification abilities cost one nanite charge and you get five more points per level you do quite a bit with your modifications and they are pretty powerful. One or two have some fugly wording though. One of the dermal implants requires energy to use despite needing nanite charges anyways and I'm not sure if the energy needs to be damage. Given that some damage types are small and only a cantrip away I'm not sure why bother with this energy mumbo jumbo and just have healing nanites for the price of charges.  Some modifications need some clarification as to what kind of action is needed for them to be used. Some like the ones that affect ability scores, I can assume just kind of happen as a free action but some of them like Force Pulse Hand really need an activation time yet I can't find any mention of what kind of action activates these things. Unless someone can point out something I'm missing then this is a huge oversight. Past that the save DCs are frustratingly inconsistent. They all have a +10 but some add half the cyborg's level while some add the entire cyborg's level. Some add to the DC ability score modifiers, and some add tot he DC based on nanite charges spent.

Another thing I find problematic is the Humanity Loss class feature, which imposes a scaling Charisma penalty to get a bonus to up to four other ability scores. Given that you can't have -4 Cha and +4 Str this is a huge downside. Especially since you already have other sources in the class that lower your Charisma. This may be because I have a pet peeve against class features that start hitting your ability scores but I think this product relies on it too much as a limiter when the class isn't all that powerful to begin with. Besides that, the class doesn't even have a reason to use Charisma so it'll be a dump stat anyway. To me it's just arbitrary. 

Tweaks are introduced after the class which is something I don't like. Tweaks are basically spells that are limited by what slots you have modifications in. These are handled a bit awkwardly. There are no spell slots, instead you use your nanite charges and you have a tweaks known list. But you have to prepare tweaks. There's a line that says that they only effect the cyborg even if it would affect others, I guess like alchemists, but with most of the spells that doesn't work right. Add to this my rant about new spell lists and you'll find that I don't like tweaks very much.

The rest of the book is pretty neat but overall the class has way too much wrong with it. Despite all this I love this class and it's just a few house rules and clarifications away from being a 5 star product but there's so much wrong with it as it's written that I'm pushing it by giving it 2 stars. And that hurts me just as much because at first glance I was in love but when I started looking at it deeper I felt like it was too awkward to use as is. Its easy to get what is supposed to happen or what should happen and it's a great addition to a scifi game but requires too much GM oversight just to function and balance.

You can find this over on Paizo.com here.

Review: Infinite Futures 2.0

Infinite Futures is a big book with a lot of moving parts. Its also probably one of the most complete experiences I've ever seen in the subject of space and scifi for Pathfinder. As such its more of a huge overlay of the game rather than an attachment so it often tramples on one of my big pet peeves, being too different to really use with other things. To give it a shot I wanted to look beyond that and evaluate it based on how much it achieves on it's own and how smoothly it goes. Also since this is a huge book, going over 350 pages I have to be brief or else I'll be here all day.

Introduction

The Introduction is lengthy describing how to use the book and some logic to how it works. This includes it's own classifications on technology levels going from monkey grunts to might as well be a god. For it's purposes it's pretty useful but not as useful as others that I've seen where global proficiency rules are provided in the descriptions. The whole section is more about thematic considerations than mechanical ones. The book goes into it more later so I'll get to it later.

Origins

This chapter is about races. You have your standard created android race, created mutants, Robocops (Human parts in a robot body), Humans that are slightly different from standard, and a random alien race generator.  Each race is quite lively, having a lot of bits and pieces to shove on to make it more unique but I have a few problems with the created android race, namely that its divided funky making it hard to distinguish what's what. its easy to figure out but I always have to point that kind of thing out when I see it. Besides that I don't see many problems personally but there are bits that I can see as potentially problematic. For example: the android race can have +6 strength and +2 intelligence. Sure this comes at the price of -4 wisdom and charisma, but stat changes of over +2 tend to be a minmaxer's wet dream while going up to +6 can potentially be a nightmare to deal with. Some options are annoyingly saved for later in the book.

Classes

The classes inside are the Exporer(space Ranger), the Field Medic (space Cleric?), the infiltrator(space Rogue), the Scoundrel(other space Rogue), the Tech (space Wizard), and the Trooper(space Fighter). That isn't exactly fair. The classes inside have some superficial similarities to their sister classes but have some unique abilities that let them stand out on their own and some are better than their counterparts and emphasize the options further in the book.

However this is where I have to divide how I feel about these and how they stand in their own microcosm. Taking into account other 3pp options these classes are useless to me. Between Psionics, Anachronistic Adventures and the numerous technomancer classes I have I have no reason to allow these classes that have a limited scope and variance. But them being around doesn't exactly hurt anybody. Nothing is particularly broken and everything is clear mechanically even if in some places the formatting makes things confusing. There is an issue that the Techie is an INT based class that has +10 skill ranks per level(?!) making me have to re-read everything to see how this was balanced in whatever way. I don't think it is.  Instead of casting some classes have something called Insights, which are pretty much spells that aren't spells but Macguyverisms. They and are pretty much spells with a short spell list. You have to suspend some disbelief and make some assumptions to describe how these actually work.

Skills

There are new skills. I already have problems with new skills so I had to sit down and really think about them in context. The skills are Boat (already exists), Computer Use (expected), Demolitions, (Narrow), new uses for Disable Divice, Drive (already exists), First Aide (already exists), Engineering (already exists), clarifications and reiterations of Escape Artist Fly, Linguistics and Perform, (what's happening here?), Knowledge Galactic, Pilot (redundant), and Zero-G. This is why I praise how the Technology Guide handled skills using the Technologist feat. The entire skills chapter just complicates my character sheets with 9 whole new skills to the skill list and most of them are redundant to each other if not functions of existing skills. There had to have been a better way to do this, it just doubles down on the limitation placed on non Infinite Futures classes from multiclassing into space age classes and putting ranks in ranks in space age skills. The redundancy is beyond annoying too. Some of these skills could have really been mashed together. I've seen similar products add new functions to old skills and Pilot and Computer Use but nine new classes just wrecks everybody. Except the Techie who by nature gets more skill ranks than anybody ever.

Feats

Inside are new feats to help you along your space age campaign. Right off the bat I have a problem. The first feat refers to the skill, Knowledge (Earth and Life Sciences). Where was that last chapter? I may be missing something. The rest are pretty standard although I noticed a glitch here and there involving a lack of action designation for abilities.

Insights

Here we learn about insights and how they work and what terms they use. They're spells much like the Alchemist, Machinesmith, Technician, and Cyborg 'spells'. I have to say that I'm not feeling it in this case. The insights themselves are nothing fancy although one is way more complicated than it needs to be, I just find some non-spells hard to justify and in most instances there's more flavor to make me believe the spell format on a technology focused character. Here I'm not buying Macguyverisms being non-spell abilities and it becomes even weirder that it works by a per day basis.

Augments

There are mechanical and biological augments. Previously there was a lot of information thrown around like augments that finally get a payoff here. They cost money and a feat. Money because its an actual item and feat as a resource limiter, something I kind of hate because augmentations aren't equal so doubling down on what resources they cost is infuriatingly bad when they have the same basic cost (a feat). Plus this came out in 2015 when more than a few products including the Technology Guide presented cyberware that was limited by Con and/or Int making this kind of pricing feel archaic. Judging them as just feats, they range from weaker than existing feats (skill chip is outright inferior to Skill Focus and has a monetary cost) to okay.

Personal Gear

This chapter covers items like weapons, armor and general gear. It spans across multiple technological levels meaning that if you're using the Pathfinder Core Rulebook a lot of this information is useless. Minor changes are made though so you'll have to take a close look to see the differences. Also firearms work differently, damage being based on ammunition with their own effects. Everything functions within this context although the changes means that you have to learn this weapons system. I do find it overly complicated but not bad. It tries to cover a lot of bases which in some ways hurt the product by how complex things by not having a single space age as it's foundation. It certainly makes the tables kind of hard to sort through.

Vehicles

The vehicle section is over complicated in my opinion, becoming a massive blur of tables after a while and overall its difficult to decipher what's going on. The end result is actually rather simple to deal with once the craft is constructed.

Travel & Adventure

This section describes engines and how fast they go (why wasn't this in the previous section?) as well as well as hazards. Overall I question the math used but it functions for what it is.

Combat

Space age weapons use Wisdom for ranged weapons. This bothers me to no end but I'll let it slide. It also adds to and reiterates actions in combat, something that could have been just mentioned in the item section because all of the new actions involve specific kinds of items so a large chunk of this section didn't even need to exist. The rest is reiterating rules that already exist and information that should have been in other sections of the books. Among the new things is describing more about how space vehicles work within their own action economy, which should have been in the vehicle section.

Psionics

Inside this section we have a psionic class with a GM fiat/feat barrier. Why this isn't in the class section is beyond me. As far as formatting goes, until you get to the description of the powers the thing is a mess, including text invading tables and typos. I'm not sure why bother with this class. It's painfully inferior in every way I can think of to Dreamscarred Press' Psionics. EVERY way. I can't even say that it can stand on it's own in general.

Gamemastering

NPC stat blocks and some setting advice.

I had high hopes for this book but I really don't like it. The vehicle rules are handy along with some of the weapons/armor, and the race creator is interesting, but overall it's a complicated addition to the game with information spread weirdly, typos, bad formatting, and just doesn't play nice with the rest of the game and certainly doesn't play nice with any other third party thing that I may bring alongside it. And somehow this version comes out after the Technology Guide from Paizo and still feels outdated to the point where it feels like a discount 3.5 product than something for Pathfinder.

There are interesting things here. Some things that I may pick up while gold digging for house rules but as a whole I just have better rules for most of this subject and more that I know is in development. I'm giving this two out of five stars. There's a bit of gold digging here but playing with this is difficult and wonky and when other things are added including Pathfinder's core rules it just stops working altogether. 

You can find it on Paizo.com over here.