An Endzeitgeist.com review

This installment in 13th Age's monthly series of supplemental pdfs clocks in at 10 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial/SRD, leaving us with 8 pages of content, so let's take a look!

This pdf portrays basically an ecology on frog folk - but why did no one write about them? Well, there is this odd phenomenon - all who write about the frog folk seem to experience unpleasant accidents...and 13 reasons for the paranoia exhibited by and surrounding the frog folk are given: For example, what if ALL gods hate the frog folk, as they are a cosmic mishap? Or what if their skulls contain the fables toadstones?

Frog folk as creatures are pretty interesting - the abilities provide allow for a poisonous disengage, the option to duck out of sight in the right terrain, attacking foes currently not engaged with them in a leaping assault or an inability to be surprised. Even the frog folk mooks have poisoned spears, btw.

Other variants provided, like their monks, get flailing froggy fists of death and end in poisonous splatters. Spellcroakers can emit curse-based blasts and generate lethal effects that buff all their brethren or debuff adversaries. Nastier specials are provided for these guys, with frog knights also getting a sweet deal here. Massive mutant bullfrogs can also be found herein.

Those mystic toadstones I mentioned before? Well, several variants of them are depicted among the treasure-section, including the cursed and thankfully rare black toadstones. Frogskin Leggings that allow you to make astonishing leaps...or what about a bunch of magical muck you can shape into any form you want, throw into a swamp and see the swamp assume the shape you just made? Yeah, neat! Sample encounters also render this section interesting and easy to use.

Need some more inspiration to use with these encounter-guidelines? Well, what about 5 adventure hooks, each one tied to a different icon (archmage, crusader, three, priestess, prince of shadows, if you want to know) -and yes, one may put what amounts to the Armageddon-spell into the PCs hands...thankfully, only this potent at higher levels, but there you have your tailor-made reason for everyone wanting a PC dead...or enslaved...

The pdf also sports racial info for frog folk PCs: They get +2 Dex or Con and get a 1/battle tongue racial power to re-engage with foes. The feats add poison-damage to the tongue and allow for multiple uses (11+) per battle, respectively - nothing to complain about regarding balancing here.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I noticed no significant glitches. Layout adheres to 13th Age's two-column full-color standard and the pdf sports several nice full-color artworks. the pdf has no bookmarks, but doesn't necessarily need them at this length.

Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan knows his craft - quite frankly, at this point, I'm pretty much excited to see his name on any given supplement...and this ecology-style supplement is no different. Not only do the frog folk feel unique and compelling, the neat magic items and cool ideas sported herein render the content awesome even beyond the confines of the 13th Age-rules-set. If you ever needed some ideas to make grippli, boggards, etc. more compelling, this'll be your book. The solid racial rules and cool nastier specials add just the icing on a thoroughly enjoyable, cool supplement. The writing, while slightly tongue-in-cheek here and there, is never obnoxious or pseudo-cool, which is another plus.

All in all, a great offering, well worth 5 stars + seal of approval.

Endzeitgeist out.