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Dreamscarred really hit it out of the park with Ultimate Psionics. Aside from some occasional failures of the art to fully capture the essence of the material Ultimate Psionics was pretty much everything you could want form a self contained Psionics book. The material is clear easy to read and includes a fair number races, classes, powers, feats, items, options and rules information.
Ultimate Psionics not only very effectively updates virtually all the 3.5 psionics to pathfinder and matches it in volume with all new content. As with the original D&D psionics much of it is hit and miss since psionics covers a very wide range of ideas and has never been as well defined as the more traditional fantasy inspired classes, but the misses are a lot fewer than in previous editions and the hits are darn near perfect much of the time. The only things notably absent are D&D specific copyrighted material such as the Zerth Cenobite and a bestiary but with over 400 pages of solid, well written content they are hardly missed.
Ultimate Psionics truly lives up to it name and gives you tons and tons of content written by people with a clear passion for this often over looked and part of fantasy gaming.
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By the Sword is a fun little book with some great information, HOWEVER the way they formatted it cramming each entry with Hackmaster AND D&D information makes it a little hard to read. I really wish they would have just split the book in half and had one half be dedicated to hackmaster and one to D&D.
That aside the information in the book was really great. I really enjoy mechanically how they handled fighting styles with each fighting style actually changing the way a character fights in a small way such as fighting styles which swap out strength for dex, rather that just having fighting styles give a dull +1 to hit or defense. Beyond the fighting styles I enjoyed that the book really explored dueling, not just with swords, but the whole concept from battles of wit to duels of words and how to fully bring them to life in your adventure. I'm normally critical of "How to play" guides which often come across as a way to pad out the page count in a book, but the content here is all very insightful and didn't belabor the point.
Despite formatting issues By the Sword is a great picked for Hackmaster giving lots of new great new options for martial types and bringing a ton to that game system but just a decent pick up for D&D.
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The Adventurer's Guide to Pixie-Fairies was exactly what I wanted. Pixie-Fairies are a very unique race and due to their size and other factors are very different from the other races in Hackmaster. This book really explores that giving lots of information of fairie equipment, culture, fairie specific flaws and lot of other game information which was exactly what I picked it up for. I was further surprised however to find the book was also stuffed with information of pixie hybrids and other variant pixie creatures. I can't imagine playing a pixie-fairie without the AGtPF and would highly recommend it to anyone who plans to regularly play Hackmaster's most unique race.
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I've picked up one or two other Class Acts before and enjoyed them quiet a bit but I'm sorry to report CA:Monks fell well short short of my expectations from others other PDFs. The feats presented here at the same dull monk feats you get pretty much everywhere else. Like most bad monk feat they are overly narrow and don't really evoke any sort of different feel from your standard fighter feats giving you a slight buff to one specific attack. They are not particularly exciting or imaginative, they don't offer very much in the way of new options and they don't even offer particularly strong buffs for the power gamer. Further since many of them have a lot of requirements they are not even the sort of feats you can take up casually but need to fully commit to the exclusion of other feats, as such I'm sad to say I'll likely never use any of these feats. While normally class acts are a steal at a dollar with CA: Monks I don't feel I got my money's worth.
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Short but sweet. This is a great addition to the Wyld, just make sure you get this book AFTER you picked up the other books on the wyld first as it wastes no time and just goes strait into the content that was cut from other publications assuming you've already read the core wyld books. If you picked up the other book on the Wyld (Compass of Directions - Wyld) and enjoy it than there is really no reason not to pick this one up too.
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Arms and Equipment provides relatively little that the core rule book does not. Since D&D weapons are little more than carefully balanced stat lines the new new equipment is by and large not only more of the same, but not worth ever taking the exotic weapon feats needed to use them. The poison and alchemical sections are the highlight of the book but definitely do not make this worth the $11 dollar price tag. There is nothing here you could home brew with the most minimal of effort and I've seen much better house ruled content on the various D&D wikis. This book really lacks anything exciting or sufficiently different to justify picking up and the advice in here is very, very basic to the point that it is covered by dozens of youtube channels. Skip Arms and Equipment and instead pick up something like the complete Rogues or Adventure's handbook which include new interesting items along with feats and classes.
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A very strong source book both on the actual city of San Francisco but also as a snap shot of the Kuei-jin vs Kindred cold war along the West Coast of North America. The book is well written and while it is trying to cram a lot of information into a single book it does a great job of giving story tellers and players enough information to explore and expand on the setting in their own games.
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This is one of the best stand alone books for Word of Darkness. Few WoD supplements can stand on their own but Demon Hunter X does an excellent job of telling you everything you need to start playing as Shih or Agent of Strike Force Zero in Japan, if you already know the story teller system really almost no other books needed (though Kindred of the East will probably be very helpful for Storytellers).
This books strikes an excellent balance between giving you RP flavor of Demon Hunter X, mechanical information like new powers and abilities and storyline ideas for the series. Further the book is extremely well written and with rules and concepts being clear and easy to understand even for those not familiar with the WoD:East material. Demon Hunter X certainly has a different flavor than most Word of Darkness lines being more anime influence, but it comes off as refreshing and still in line with the spirit of World of Darkness as whole. Finally Demon Hunter X does a good job establishing Japan, an area rarely explored in most other WoD material and bringing it to life in spite of a limited page count. DHX is one of my favorite World of Darkness supplements.
*Note: WoD: Tokyo does also explore Japan but is a Wraith Supplement so while it touched on all WoD lines it isn't tightly focused, not necessary but like Kindred of the East can be a good supplement to DHX to help round out the DHX setting and expand on some WoD:East concepts.
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A much less informative than other WoD books. It spends a lot of time telling you how to role play "you are angry at vampires so you kill them blarg!" and very little time giving you the history of the hunters, their place in the WoD and game rules. This was clearly an early book and not even close to the quality of Demon Hunter's X or Project Twilight and was very disappointing. Most later books go out of there way to point out some of the material here is out of date and provide much more clear rules for rules and concepts of this volume. There are some good ideas here, but they are not given enough detail in favor of hitting you over the head with "Why Hunter's Hunt" and those sections feels padded, repetitive and underwhelming. If you can get this one for $4.00 or less I'd say it would be worth picking up as it does have a few good moment but most material in this book is better covered in other books. Project Twilight and Ascension's Right Hand between them have most the material in this book and are both better written. Over all I'd say skip it unless you really want the handful of new perks and flaws for human hunters in this book which is the only material I haven't found updated elsewhere.
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I got this book strictly for the Numia material to expand on the poorly written rules in Hunter's Hunted. I'm not sure how this reads as a Mage Book but as a WoD supplement to the mortal material I liked it a lot. The Numia rules are much better explained here, more clearly written and in the case of the Hedge Magic, expanded on nicely. If you are looking for Numia rules for your mortal characters I recommend Ascension's Right Hand over Hunter's Hunted. Still, if you are not playing mage I'd wait for it to on sale the Numia rules only cover a single chapter and are not worth 9 dollars. If you are not looking to play mage you can get decent Numia powers out of Project Twilight and the material is more relevant to the World of Darkness as a whole instead of just mage so I'd pick that up first and wait for a sale.
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I'll get right down to it, WoD is too much for one book. This book gives an alternate setting for WoD with new themes and feelings and it is simply way to much for the limited page count here. While Monte Cook does his best, and what you have in this book is good I don't think it is nearly enough. This product seems to me will really only will appeal to people who already know WoD given how obscure it is, but since this is the ONLY book on this setting I think most WoD will want more depth and rich RP material that Monte Cook was able to compress into this volume. This might be good as a stepping stone to try and introduce a D&D group to the WoD but otherwise I can't see playing D20 WoD over normal WoD.
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If you think WoD needs to run a bit more like D&D this is your book. While the combat options are decent, they are a bit clunky so expect to spend a fair bit of time, characters points and effort in combat if you want to include this module. WoD:Combat is well written dropping the RP fluff and getting right down to combat details to give you most you can get out of an RPG book but it mostly feels unnecessary for WoD so I'm not sure you will get your money's worth out of it as I can't see using these combat rules with very many stories.
Exalted or D&D are much better suited to more battle heavy games with volumes of combat oriented material written for them. While WoD:Combat does add a bit of spice with new combat abilities and more detailed mechanics it still pales in comparison to games built around combat. I think for most people added extra combat rules to the World of Darkness will feel unnecessary as that isn't really what WoD is all about it. I'd wait for this one to go on sale if you really want the extra combat options with the exception if you are planning on playing Demon Hunter X which I feel will benefit most from WoD:Combat.
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A solid book for people looking to run a character as part of the government in the World of Darkness. Usually the government is only brought up as being manipulated by the Kindred so these are a lot of good insight into human affairs in this book. The book focus on the USA and is sufficiently different Japan's from Strike Force Zero in Demon Hunter X that it stands on its own even if you already own that book. While most will prefer to play vampires, this book is a must for people looking to play a more average human fighting the good fight rather than a SFO cyber spy, Chi powered martial artist or a Supernatural style rogue hunter driving across the USA in an Impala with the Imbued power. The one downside to this book is it occasionally directs you to get more information from "Hunters Hunted" for a handful of paragraphs in that book which touched the FBI.
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