When I originally purchased the book, it arrived with minor cosmetic damage, but also with the far more serious issue of the mapping portions being misprinted where entire lines of the grids were missing entirely. I contacted DriveThru regarding this (with photos), and they were gratious enough to send out a replacement. However, the replacement arrived with the same printing errors. Errors I do not recall seeing in the creator's youtube video where he presented the book. Yet, at this point, I did not feel like pressing the matter further would result in any actual changes to the quality of the printed copy.

I would say, if you can get it somewhere else, do so, but do not purchase the hard cover from DriveThru.

The Hollowfield Harvest Festival is a great introductory adventure with a fun Halloween theme.

In addition to some spooky goings-on Hollowfield provides a great starting location or homebase for a new group of adventurers. The flavour-text is very well written and although I grabbed this as a seasonally appropriate adventure based on it's great (FREE!) price, the quality of the writting and presentation have definitely convinced me to invest in more of Fat Goblin's Vathak material.

I would highly recommend this adventure for anyone looking for a fun low-level adventure set against an interesting backdrop.

This is a really terrific value (how many hundreds of pages are here??? wow) and a great source of inspiration for RPGers. I read a little bit of an old haunted house story to my daughter and she loved it. Sending our best to Gideon (who we are informed via newsletter is a pet pig belonging to the publisher), a good boy recently overtaken by difficult life events.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This installment of the Close Encounters-series clocks in at 26 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page SRD, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 21 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This review was moved up in my reviewing queue as a prioritized review at the request of my patreon supporters.

Okay, so we have essentially an Event Horizon situation on our hands: Onyx Station vanished in hyperspace, and now, 50 years later, it suddenly reappeared. Scanners show biological life, and it’s up to the party to explore the returned station. Structurally, this is essentially DIY-make-your-own-module toolkit, providing brief overviews of respective sections alongside hazards ad creature suggestions, with every 2 levels getting their own suggested creature assortment and adventure hooks.

Unsurprisingly, this means that the majority of the pdf is taken up by a bestiary, but we also get two ships: The tugboat, which is a tier 3 shuttle coming with a gravity beam; I generally like this ship, though it has some space left to customize it, and the tier 5 pilgrim-class freighter. Both are not combat-focused, just so you know. They are not as meticulously-crafted as the vessels presented by Evil Robot Games.

Anyhow, bestiary: We have pretty much a nice array of the classic concepts you’d expect, conceptually: We have weird science-experiments (CR 6), chaos beasts (CR 7), columns of flesh (CR 10), sedating fungi, creepy sentries (think Alien: Isolation), fear-consuming nuisances, scifi-morlocks, etc. – essentially, the creatures herein have a pretty strong horror angle.

The good news here is that you can use these critters; the bad news is that there are some glitches in them, some of which obviously did stem from slipping in the line in the table. When a CR 4 expert creature has the EAC and KAC of the CR 3 critter, the source of the glitch is pretty obvious. Said critter has btw. also slipped in the HP column – but down here, sporting 20 HP more than usual for the CR.

Fly speeds, if present, do not list being extraordinary or supernatural. We have further hiccups in the details here, like an ability that obviously should be mind-affecting (both from context, and the fact that its damage is untyped). The statblocks per se tend to be correct, but also sport quite a few glitches, some of which seriously should have been caught: “…while those already exhausted become exhausted.” [sic!]

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are good on a formal level, okay on a mechanical level. Layout adheres to a two-column full-color standard, with quite a bunch of nice full-color artworks. Fans of Fat Goblin Games will be familiar with a couple of those. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience; weird: Each critter gets two hyperlinks to point to them: One critter name, and the CR.

Kim Frandsen and Michael Ritter deliver a solid little toolkit here; it may not be exactly mind-blowing, but it is a helpful little supplement if you’re looking for some hazards and critters to add to your game. The build-integrity of the content is significantly higher than in e.g. the ill-fated NPC Codex. Oh, and this costs a grand total of $1.50. Do I think that this is worth the equivalent of not even half a cup of mediocre coffee (a good cup cost more than €3 where I live…)? Heck yeah. This may not be mind-boggling, but for little more than a buck? Most assuredly worth checking out! As such, my final verdict will clock in at 3.5 stars, rounded up.

Endzeitgeist out.

Full Disclosure: I work for Fat Goblin Games, but I had no involvement whatsoever in the design, writing, editing, or publication of this book, nor did I receive this book for free in exchange for a review.

If you liked the classic 8-bit console games of the late 80s and 90s, The Fungal Kingdom will take you back. The designers very accurately captured the feel of the games in terms of setting, tone, and monsters. The 6 new Heritages designed for the setting are also faithful to the games, and in my mind were the right ones to pick - they are also quite balanced in my view, and playable.

What I really appreciated were the Environmental Traits being grouped in a single section right before the intro adventure (basically rules/conditions to a specific part of the Fungal Kingdom that would affect play, due to the unique environments) - I didn't have to hunt around for information - and the sidebar on the treatment of the "Damsel in Distress" trope that was common to many of those games, but which in our own times really needs to be questioned and re-examined. I also appreciated the effort made to provide some historical background, where it made sense, to explain some of the ruins and other atmospheric details which never would have received any attention in a video game - these are seeds of possible adventures in themselves.

The intro adventure itself takes the players on a grand tour of the Fungal Kingdom and neighbouring territories. It's very similar to a specific video game that inspired this setting, but in that respect it's a perfect homage.

Highly recommended. Can't wait to see more!

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This massive pdf clocks in at 70 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page SRD, 1 page advertisement, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 64 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This review was moved up in my reviewing queue as a prioritized review at the request of my patreon supporters.

This book contains 8 characters intended for general use, and 5 custom characters, so let’s take a look at the general use characters first, shall we? Structurally, we get a plethora of different builds for various CRs – CR 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, so quite a bunch of builds for each character. For the general use NPCs, the integrity of the statblocks is very important, obviously. Unfortunately, this is where this book falters. On a cosmetic angle the first two lines of the statblock (denoting gender + species, alignment, type, etc.) are missing from all but the first of the statblocks. Indeed, in a really annoying angle, all but the first statblock tends to be cut down to bare minimums, which don’t include e.g. speed (which is VERY important in SFRPG). While this triggers my OCD to no end, it’s most assuredly a factor that can be ignored if the statblock utility is up to par, right?

Well, there are a couple of other issues with the stats, and these, alas, are more poignant. There are quite a few instances where base arrays have not been consequently used, mixing and matching, for example, the values provided by expert array and spellcaster array. Race/class graft interaction also tends to be rather weird and inconsistent, and e.g. the hacker is missing the plusses for the (sometimes incorrect) skill values, instead putting the values in brackets. The whole array of the hacker statblocks do not feature the correct (good) skill values for Perception in the senses line. More egregious: What about spellcaster builds that only list the base spell DC and fail to add the spell levels properly? We have operatives sans the proper initiative boosts, and the truncated statblocks also mean that the speed enhancement is missing. Skill bonuses? Nope. The special abilities are all crammed into one header, instead of being properly integrated into the statblock.

So yeah, unfortunately, the mechanical flaws in the builds severely compromise this entire supplement, and the puzzling decision of these truncated statblocks renders using them hard, even for people who don’t care about mechanical issues.

Indeed, if anything, the entire book feels woefully rushed in a plethora of ways, and in a manner, that’s a pity, for there are these small touches that show that the team cared. We have a plantlike dragon template graft (with a header not properly bolded); but on the downside, we have improperly formatted spells and needlessly untyped bonuses here. Ironic: The new graft hasn’t always been implemented properly. The builds consistently fail to properly situate abilities where they belong in the statblock. And this is heart-rending, for the little details show some passion: When hackers at high levels gain an ability to represent how caffeinated they are, you have to smile. When you get essentially a transformer NPC, that’s neat to see; a professional fighter/big game hunter skittermander? Those are cool concepts, illustrated in a rather neat manner. A sentient ooze named Bleeb Glolump? Cool! The sentient hive turned DJ? Awesome. The concepts for the named NPCs herein are great; however, they are compromised by both the mechanical hiccups and the utterly puzzling decision to cut their statblocks down to a level that is no longer comfortable or convenient to use.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are not good; there are several formal glitches, math not checking out, as well as cosmetic hiccups. Layout adheres to a nice two-column full-color standard, with colorful artworks provided for each character. The pdf has bookmarks, but the bookmarks are nested in a weird way: “Introduction” is the header for the first character, who is the header for the second character, etc., until we are 4 sub-levels deep. Yet another indicator of a rushed release.

Ben Dowell’s NPC Codex is a supplement that really needed a second pass by the author; the puzzling decision to cut away vital parts of the statblocks eliminates immediate utility even for those tables that can look past the plethora of errors in the statblocks, and there are so many basic snafus in the stats that I can’t really recommend this pdf. At one point, I had a running list of issues, but I ended up deleting it; it felt like bullying/dissection, rather than criticism. Suffice to say, this has a ton of issues.

I like the concepts for the named NPCs and their little touches, but for a utility-focused book such as this, that does not suffice. My final verdict can’t exceed 1.5 stars, rounded up due to in dubio pro reo.

Endzeitgeist out.

This book is wonderful. Our DM for the horror themed campaign we're in the middle of was soo excited for everything in here, from monsters to items and everything else in between. I'm looking forward to what they throw at us next.

Read it, loved it, full review after I've run it...

I'm preparing my first ever turn behind the DM's screen in a few weeks to run a one-shot and this book has been an invaluable resource organizing my thoughts. Highly recommended for first timers like me.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This installment of the Strange Worlds-series clocks in at 16 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page SRD, 1 page advertisement, leaving us with 11 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

So, dead planets are not unified in biome, and are defined by an inability to contain sentient life; as such, the usual terrain concerns are potentially varied; much like the first installment, the pdf does feature the wind force table and collects relevant information and expands upon it. The temperature table is not included. Wind force is given in mph, as per the core rulebook; I think that, particularly for a reference pdf like this one, getting the values for the metric system as well would have been awesome, but that may just be me.

The pdf then proceeds to explain the airless world – cool here: The pdf does not forget about the absence of sound. The pdf then recaps the radiation rules for your convenience. The artificial haven would be next, including a CR 10 hazard – Law O: Overriden[sic!] (should have two “d”s) is a phenomenon where robotic life has taken to extermination – with concealed nanite infections concealed in certain areas. The pdf then proceeds to codify equipment fritzes, which employ the proper item level rules to determine DCs to get them up and running again. The pdf provides terrain features for crumbling ruins. Ancient tech malfunctioning is nice: We get a table ranging from CR 1/3 to 20, with save DCs and suggested damage noted. Rules for debris falling from ruins/buildings may also be found.

On former war worlds, we can find defensive lines terrain, horrible corpse stench (CR 4)…and what about minefields? And yes, there are rules to set mines and defuse them. Worlds haunted by necromantic catastrophes might feature e.g. the CR 7 blood boil hazard, which is a kind of proximity-trigger swamp gas carrying a disease that can make you an embalmed. What’s that? A new undead that clocks in at CR 2, using the combatant array. These get additional cold damage, noxious vomit and are pretty neat – minor nitpick: The defensive ability line is missing the unliving quality.

The Bloodshade (CR 20) is also missing the unliving quality; this deadly fellow with its cold aura and ability to freeze targets and execute deadly blood breath blasts is otherwise well-crafted, though the “life drain” ability is noted as “lifedrain” instead. Nitpickery, I know. Living holograms clock in at CR 5, and use the spellcaster array. The construct graft has been properly applied for the most part; unliving is missing, and the subtype is (technological), not (mechanical), but that is once more cosmetics. These holograms have 2 Resole Points and can use them to hijack armor, tech devices, etc. – an ability that deviates from standard verbiage slightly. This would per se not be bad, but the lack of a range for it is jarring. Cool, on the other hand: Short-range teleportation in the hologram’s habitat – where the hardware supports it. Finally, we have a CR 10 overseer robot using the expert array (again, wrong name for the subtype, unliving missing). They have a staggering gaze, regenerate near metal, and are a potent foe – however, the construct graft has not been properly implemented.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are good on a formal level; on a rules-language level, the statblocks have a few cosmetic hiccups, as well as a couple of hiccups that unfortunately influence mechanic integrity of the material. Layout adheres to the series’ two-column full-color standard, and we get nice full-color artworks here. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.

Kim Frandsen’s little pdf on dead planets starts off very strong – the whole hazard array is rather cool, and I genuinely would have loved to see more; the monsters, in comparison, fall behind that coolness: Only the living hologram really got me fired up, with the other monsters being less interesting. As a whole, I wished this had focused more on the planets, and less on the creatures. However, it should be noted that this pdf only costs 2 bucks, and I genuinely believe that the hazards and materials there make this worth getting. My final verdict will hence clock in at 3.5 stars, rounded up due to the low price point.

Endzeitgeist out.

I really enjoy this layout easy to get my thoughts down on paper!

very unoriginal. was hoping for more forms asking questions which would help put into words the ideas in my head

One of the most important ideas for any RPG product is that the style (i.e. the idea) and the substance (i.e. the mechanics) need to complement each other. If you have good substance but poor style, you end up with something useful but boring. Good style and bad substance make for a great idea that’s executed poorly. It takes both to make an excellent product.

Class Codex: the Spellwright is a book that has good style and substance to it.

Before we begin, let’s overview the PDF itself: twelve pages long, it has one page each for the front and back covers, one for the credits/ToC/legal, and one for the OGL, leaving us with eight pages of material. There are no bookmarks, but I can’t hold that against a PDF this small. The pages have borders, and we do get bits of the cover illustration used as the occasional interior piece of artwork, but again I can’t fault the PDF for not having a printer-friendly version; there’s simply no need when you’re looking at less than ten pages of stuff that you’d actually print.

In terms of style, what we have here is a spellcaster who uses cards to work their magic. Now, I’ll be honest here: I’m not someone who plays a lot of card-based games, particularly where trading/collectible card games are concerned. So it’s entirely possible that I’m missing out on some of the nuance here. I have a vague understanding of the “trap card” reference in the product description, for instance, but it’s entirely possible that there are some Yu-Gi-Oh or Magic: the Gathering references that I’m missing. Even so, the concept of “card magic” is ubiquitous enough in gaming circles (largely thanks to those two series, as well as several others in the same vein) that I’m familiar with the basic concept. In terms of the idea at play, this one is solid: the cards are the medium with which you utilize your magic.

It’s the substance where we see exactly what this means in the context of Pathfinder First Edition. The spellwright base class is a full-progression arcane spellcaster, utilizing the sorcerer/wizard list for their spells. An Intelligence-based class, they prepare their spells, and have the same BAB and save progressions as a wizard (though I’m quite pleased with them receiving 4 + Int bonus skill points rather than the traditional 2 + Int bonus; I’m of the opinion that 2 is far too few for any class), as well as no armor proficiencies and very few weapon proficiencies. All of that sounds a lot like a wizard, except that they have to prepare their spells on written cards instead of in their minds, wielding them as somatic components when they cast their spells (and, incidentally, using expensive material components when they prepare their spells, rather than cast them), and prepare their spells from a card catalogue instead of a spellbook.

Now, by itself, all of that sounds so much like a standard wizard that you’re probably wondering if this shouldn’t just be an archetype, or maybe even just a flavorful description with no real mechanical changes. But it’s the class features where the spellwright distinguished itself; although it never actually says so, this class comes across almost like a hybrid of the wizard and the magus.

The major way this is true is that spellwrights have an arcane pool, which they can spend to retain not just to retain a spell card after it’s used, but also to retain a scroll when they use the magic in it. It also serves as a power source for several of their “spellwright technique” class features, which they gain at every even-numbered level. More impressively, a spellwright not only gains the ability to cast spells in light armor (at 7th level) and medium armor (at 13th level), but can also add two spells from the cleric or psychic spell lists to his own spell list at every odd-numbered level. If that sounds too powerful, remember that they don’t automatically gain these spells in their card catalogue; they just gain the ability to add them. An enhanced ability to utilize arcane scrolls (choosing one of three possible benefits as a swift action when using them) rounds things out before getting to the capstone, which further increases what they can do with scrolls.

By itself that’s impressive, but it’s the spellwright techniques that present the real meat of the class. Split into twenty-one basic techniques and thirteen greater techniques, these are like rogue talents in that you pick and choose which ones you want as you level up, though you’re unable to select the greater techniques until 10th level and there are some that have others as prerequisites. Here you’ll find abilities such as being able to use your spell cards as daggers, with further techniques to increase their weapon-like abilities. And if that sounds bad for a half-BAB class, there’s a greater technique that allows you to treat your class level as your BAB when wielding your spell cards; this is a genius ability that can potentially change the way you play a spellwright character! And yes, there are spellwright techniques here for making “trap” cards, which basically store a spell in them until their activation conditions go off.

I have to admit that I’m very impressed with the array of spellwright techniques; they cover little things from making your card catalogue very hard to damage to allowing potions to be utilized with nearly the same efficiency as scrolls normally are to utilizing arcane pool points to power arcanist reservoir abilities and vice versa in case you’re playing a multiclass character (and yes, you can use the spellwright’s arcane pool in conjunction with a magus’s arcane pool; this is an inherent part of the arcane pool ability and doesn’t require taking a spellwright technique). There are a lot of variable options here, enough that you can easily play different spellwrights in very different ways (and yes, there are techniques to not only allow you to throw your cards, but charge them with energy, or even a touch-range spell, as well, allowing you to play a Gambit-like character).

It’s after this that we get a few pages of supplementary material, starting with spellwright favored class bonuses for various races. This section made me quirk a brow, because it’s where we start to see the one place where I found fault with this product. There are favored class bonuses for each of the seven Core races, and the three new races from other Golden Glyph Publishing books: the lagos, mineralite, and scyleen (a sidebar openly points out that these are from other GGG books). Now, there’s nothing wrong with a publisher promoting cross-product compatibility; my issue is that more could have been done here. While I don’t expect to see every race from the Advanced Race Guide to be here, the lack of anything outside of the Core races and the publisher’s own was a bit surprising. There’s no spellwright favored class bonuses for, say, aasimars and tieflings? None for catfolk or kitsunes? Dhampirs or changelings? More could have been done.

After this comes ten new mundane items and two magic ones. I’ll compliment the mundane items for being smartly-written: a lot of products would have glossed over the use of the spell cards and card catalogue, but they each get their own entry here, specifying things like their hardness and hit points, how much they cost, etc. Throw in little things like ink, pens, a scrivener’s kit, etc. and this nicely rounds out the class’s tools. The two magic items also nicely cover a niche, as one allows for expanded use of cards, and the other makes new (blank) cards ex nihilo.

A single new spell comes next, a 0-level spell that allows for copying pages. It also nicely rounds out the class, though the pedant in me notes that it’s only on the bard, sorcerer/wizard, and cleric/oracle spell lists. Surely the magus could have used this too? Or the occultist? Or the psychic? This spell is useful and its status as an endlessly-castable 0-level spell doesn’t seem likely to unbalance anything, so why not let other classes have it?

Two new archetypes round the product out. The first is the planescaller, which trades out much of the ability to manipulate scrolls (as well as gaining new spells from the cleric or psychic spell lists) in exchange for being able to use a summon monster spell. This is considerably buffed from the basic version of the spell, however, as it requires only a standard action to cast, remains for 10 minutes per caster level, and the level of the summon monster spell and number of summon monster cards that can be used goes up by one for every two class levels. If that sounds like it’s unbalancing, the power has a limit: it costs one arcane pool point per level of the spell to use this special monster summoning card. The spellwright can also use self-buffing spells (i.e. they target “you”) on monsters summoned this way. Later abilities trade out the use of armor to switch places with your monster when you’re targeted by a spell, and at 20th level can apply the Advanced simple template to these monsters.

I’m of two minds about this particular archetype, if for no other reason than it’s so different from the summoner base class. There’s no use of an eidolon (which is probably a good thing) nor any option to, say, utilize eidolon evolutions on summoned monsters (which seems like a missed opportunity). Ultimately, what you get out of this archetype will depend a lot on if you think the summoner class is something to be avoided or to be emulated.

The second archetype here, the talismanist, is much briefer. It essentially swaps out the spellwrights arcane spells for divine spells, and allows for arcane or psychic spells to be periodically added to their spell list, the same way the base class does for divine or psychic spells. A bit basic, but the variety is nice. Unfortunately, this technically can’t be combined with the planescaller archetype, since both trade out the enhanced understanding ability (i.e. adding a cleric or psychic spell to the base class’s spell list). I’d be tempted to simply handwave this contradiction away, since it’s clear that the talismanist version of this ability (“arcane guidance”) fulfills the same purpose, and so is obviously what’s traded out if you want a combined planescaller talismanist.

That’s where the product ends…and it brings me back to my major complaint from before, because more could have been done here. While saying “it left me wanting more” is usually a compliment, it’s this product’s single biggest weakness, because while the design space it left blank isn’t overwhelming, it is notable. Right off the bat, I can think of several things that should have been included in this product but weren’t.

The biggest offender are feats. There’s simply no excuse for not having a feat called Extra Spellwright Technique here that does what it says on the tin. Go to aonprd.com, click the “Search” feature, set it to search only feats, and have it search for the word “extra.” While there’ll be a lot of mishits, you’ll see that literally every class with a selectable pool of abilities has a feat to let them take more. Extra Discovery. Extra Hex. Extra Rage Power. Extra Rogue Talent. (As written, the Extra Arcane Pool feat, from Ultimate Magic, works for the spellwright just as much as it does for the magus, but it should still have been reprinted here.) How about a feat to let a character (not necessarily just a spellwright) use their spellcasting ability modifier when casting a spell from a scroll (probably a number of times per day equal to their casting stat modifier)? Technically scrolls use the default minimum modifier to set their DC (i.e. they’re treated as if the casting stat modifier was 10 + the spell level), which is going to be hideously low. For a class that focuses on scrolls so much, not having something like this feels like an oversight. Perhaps one to let the bonus from Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus be used with scrolls also? These are just some off-the-cuff ideas, and I’m sure there are other feats that could expand directly on what this class can do, but as of right now there aren’t any.

While not having feats is the big offender among what’s not here, it’s not the only one. Others include presenting this class under the variant multiclassing rules from Pathfinder Unchained, and giving us a simple class template version of it, from the Monster Codex. These are important because they’re two of the easiest ways for GMs to make quick-and-easy NPCs using what’s here, instead of having to build them from the ground up. The former would make it incredibly easy to swap out a few feats from an existing NPC in exchange for some spellwright abilities, whereas the latter is useful if you want to make a higher-level monster into a spellwright without throwing their CR out of whack.

And there’s still design space left unused! Remember the Background Generator tables from Ultimate Campaign? They had class-specific tables that you could use to help figure out who your character was, including determining if they had a story feat or a particular trait; how about one of those for the spellwright? No new traits or story feats would need to be written, just a table of background ideas that coordinate with the ones that we already have (and don’t tread on any of the existing class tables). Likewise, while mythic abilities aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, adding even one new spellwright-specific mythic ability (presumably for the archmage path, though making them universal in order not to pigeonhole a character is viable also) at 1st, 3rd, and 6th tier each would have been a nice way to expand on a spellwright’s options if they’re part of a campaign that’s going in that direction (and now I want to make a “Wrath of the Spellwrighteous” joke).

Ultimately, the spellwright is a great class. It takes a popular idea and brings it to Pathfinder in a way that keeps the style intact while simultaneously grounding it with rock-solid mechanics that not only make it viable, but do so in a way that allows it to be played in several different styles depending on which techniques your character takes. It’s also nicely rounded by the supporting mechanics…but not as much as it should be.

Now, adding in everything I lamented was missing (expanded favored class bonuses, feats, variant multiclassing, a simple class template, a background table, and mythic options) would no doubt increase the size of this book, and probably drive the price up commensurately, but I have a hard time imagining that it wouldn’t be worth it. This class is already a good one, and expanding its options would make it truly great. Hopefully we’ll see a revision at some point in the future.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This installment of the Strange Worlds-series clocks in at 16 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page SRD, 1 page advertisement, leaving us with 11 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

As before in the series, this little pdf is designed to be a one-stop shop resource to avoid flipping through the not always perfect organization of the core book, collecting relevant information for running ice planets in one convenient place, while also adding new material.

As before, we begin with the recaps of temperature and wind, and like before, I would have appreciated inclusion of °C values and kmh for wind speeds – and I’m sure the international audience not accustomed to the imperial systems would mirror this sentiment. Particularly °F are very hard for me to wrap my head around. Anyhow, on a plus-side, the pdf does cover the temperatures that prevent e.g. corpses from decaying, and the visibility section does differentiate between light and heavy snow, and terrain-wise, shallow and deep snow, as well as slush and ice receive proper rules.

The pdf comes with an equipment section that includes cold-weather gear, snow goggles, snow shoes, as well as portable heating units and ground-penetrating radar, which, while cumbersome, is a great little device to carry around. I can see this item be used in cool (haha) explorations.

The pdf also comes with a level 4 vehicle, the snow speeder; while easier to destroy than a police cruiser, it is easier to fight when piloting these. The stats, like the rules pertaining collision etc., check out.

The pdf then proceeds to present 4 different creatures – two of them have blindsight, with the type of blindsight properly noted; alas, both lack the customary range for these senses. One of the creatures also lacks the range for its darkvision. The first creature would be a CR 12 deep cetacean, which is built via the combatant array. The formatting for the multiattack line in the attack range is incorrectly-formatted, but the abilities make it functional. Ice biters are CR 1 mammals, which are mostly noncombatants, using the lower attack value for their only attack Their hard bite can still damage crucial equipment, though…At CR 3, snow goats might be smelly and built for the cold, with a stench aura and all, but their attack value is off, big time – only +5 for a CR 3 combatant? That should be at least +8. Finally, there would be the CR 17 tarrhidan. This guy has the wrong good skill values – they should be +29, not +22. With only a cold aura, these also are not too exciting.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are good on a formal level, less impressive on a rules-language level. Layout adheres to the series’ two-column full-color standard, and the pdf features nice artworks. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.

Kim Frandsen’s take on ice planets is the roughest of the Strange Worlds so far – the hazard section is once more interesting, but the critters feel rushed, featuring multiple rules-influencing glitches in the respective builds. While this pdf is very inexpensive and thus still potentially worth getting, I can’t go higher than 3 stars for this one.

Endzeitgeist out.

Look at this race. Isn’t it keen? A cephalopod-person called a scyleen. Wouldn’t it add to a world, a world that has…everything?

Well, let’s find out.

Racial Repository: The Scyleen is a ten-page supplement for Pathfinder First Edition from Kristopher Cruz’s Golden Glyph Publishing, released via Fat Goblin Games. After one page each for the front and back covers, one page of credits, and one page for the OGL, we’re left with six pages of content in total. I’ll take a moment to talk about the art here: the three full-color pieces do a great job showcasing what typical scyleen look like, and I especially loved the one of a scyleen in an octasuit! The tentacle-borders around each page were a nice touch as well.

What caught my interest right off the bat is that this Racial Repository is also a Starjammer-compatible supplement. While the mechanics here can be near-totally used without any reference to spacefaring settings (the only exceptions are the two new pieces of non-magical equipment, and the race’s “void vulnerability” racial trait), the flavor text is presented from the context of a spacefaring society. In this regard, the scyleen are introduced as being a race of sensuous artists, their long lifespans, unusual but not unattractive physiology, and latent psychic sensitivity making them mysterious without being unapproachable. Their description even contrasts them with the cecaelia from Bestiary 3, noting that they’re different races with no common ancestry.

Now, normally the flavor text of a race is something of an extra, since it can be discarded or altered into whatever’s necessary to reflavor the mechanics in question. But I have to take a moment to applaud just how well the mechanics reflect and complement the flavor text here. Everything I’ve described in the above paragraph is represented via game rules for the scyleen, something that far too many races don’t bother with. Would-be designers should take note of what’s here: this is how you build a race that comes across as unique and interesting, rather than just another collection of generic bonuses.

Nor does this strength stop with the flavor text: the mechanics are tightly-knit and take advantage of the various expansions that have been released for Pathfinder 1E over the years. For example, the scyleen racial traits all have their RP points given, letting the GM see their total allotment (16 RP) and judge accordingly if he wants to use them as a PC race in his or her campaign. Note that while this racial breakdown might seem high, several points relate to aquatic advantages; if your campaign doesn’t spend much time underwater (which is entirely possible, as this race has no water-based dependency), a scyleen won’t seem nearly as powerful as the numbers would otherwise indicate.

But that’s just the bare minimum. We’re also given four alternate racial traits (also with RP values), including one that maximizes their utility if you’re planning on staying above the waves. There are over a half-dozen favored class options, and a new racial archetype (though I’ll note that it doesn’t say it’s restricted “only” to scyleen characters).

I have to take a moment to talk about how much I enjoyed this archetype. The “witch of the depths,” for the witch class (obviously), sacrifices a few hexes in order to be able to make a contract with someone. Doing so allows for a transmutation spell to be permanently laid on them, in exchange for them also suffering from a permanent curse, all active so long as a token of the agreement exists. Now, given the tentacle’d nature of the scyleen, this homage needs no pointing out where it came from. But it’s so brilliantly done, so simply and adroitly presented, that I’m honestly surprised I haven’t seen it before now. This archetype alone is worth the price of purchase, and then some.

New equipment comes next, and as noted this is the only part (besides their race taking damage in a vacuum) that’s not really useable in a high fantasy world. Specifically because the new equipment is a spacesuit suited for their body type, and a machine to extract materials from a body of water. This last one might sound pointless, but the expansive description does a good job pointing out the potential uses, even if they aren’t something that combat-focused players will care about. The ability to purify water while simultaneously gathering potentially-valuable materials in the process is a great bit of flavor for this race, and we’re given just enough game rules to make it viable if someone wants to get into the nitty-gritty of how it works. It’s another example of the details making the overall presentation shine.

A few new feats and new APG race traits round things out. While none wowed me quite as much as some of the earlier material, everything here plays into what’s already established for the scyleen, such as increasing the efficacy of their tentacles at grappling or allowing them to have a heightened empathic bond with a chosen individual. Smartly, the product also remembers to include their starting ages, age categories, and height and weight tables. Bravo there! A lot of products forget those details. The book closes out with a GMG settlement stat block for an example scyleen colony (which I kind of wish had a name, but won’t penalize it for omitting).

Overall, the scyleen is an excellent product in every category. The flavor text fit the mechanics perfectly, the mechanics themselves were excellently constructed, they covered all of the bases that new races should when introduced this late in the PF1 life-cycle, and the entire package covers a niche that’s largely underserved but easily recognizable thanks to its smart focus on a few standout factors for what makes scyleen unique. You should definitely consider making the scyleen…

Part of your (campaign) world.