One if by Land, Two if by Sea.

First off, I was given a copy for the express purpose of providing a review, so let’s see what we can turn up. The PDF is 159 pages long, 8 of which are front cover, an introduction, OGL , table of contents and section headers for the four major sections of the material, leaving 151 pages of usable content. What I find interesting about Raging Swan is that Creighton and his stable of freelancers have taken over a niche in the campaign world that others have not taken the time to exploit, giving material to DM’s to make their worlds come alive around the PC’s.

This book is a compilation of a number of or all of the Wilderness Dressing line that has been previously published, all recompiled and clearly reorganized into the four sections of the book. In addition, according to the blurb on the web page, additional material has been made available in the product and integrated with the rest of the line. The additional material, per the website is comprised of: Farmlands, Small Caves, Borderlands, Shipwrecks, Coast and Campsites. So for those folks that may have purchased the individual files, there is also new material and to have it all compiled, reorganized and integrated should still be a possible reason for picking this compilation up.

The four sections are Events and Features, Folk, Land and Sea. First and foremost the Events and Features contains ideas/tables and tables of things that adventurers might find wandering around the wilderness, mostly manmade features, like old castles of various sizes, how a campfire might look and things that go bump in the night. The one section I really like in this grouping is the Extreme Weather tables and suggestions for running storms and adverse weather conditions. Weather always seems to be one of the things that get overlooked in campaigns. Not always but it has seldom played a part in many of the ones that I have been involved with over the years.

For the Folk section, again lots of tables to add verisimilitude to inter town/city travel, from Bandits and fellow travelers, tinkers’, tailors, soldiers and spies, bards, troubadours and minstrels. I’ve already found several ideas I can loot for my home campaign, just perusing these through.

The Land section covers all sorts of ground, in this case literally. It gives several d100’s worth of features and encounters to build the environment around the PC’s for deserts, forests of various kinds from normal woodlands to woods with a more primal element. Some of the forest encounters and descriptions I think would blend wonderfully with other products that touch on the forest from other publishers, particularly Tales of the Old Margreve from Kobold Press and the newly released 101 Forest Spells from Rite Publishing or really any product where the characters are traveling through forested lands. The product also covers other terrains, including deserts, from sand to tundra. For each terrain feature the product also gives a short blurb on perception and how each terrain affects the characters ability to see what is coming through the terrain towards them.

The product concludes with a long section on things one might encounter related to sea travel, including what the ship looks like, with descriptions of various parts of the ship that one might see on a sea going vessel, and again how they can all play a part in a shipboard encounter. Finally, want some more pirates and ship descriptions, for your Skull and Shackles campaign, look no further. My personal favorite section of this part is all about the sea voyage omens. Ever since Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I’ve always been intrigued by what other events/occurrences would make a sea voyager think about delaying setting sail or those things that might encourage them to leave sooner. The other one I really like in this section is what the carved figurehead is on the ship.

One quick little quibble that I noticed in this section is that the page number appear to reference the original standalone product some of this was taken from. Flags and Figureheads (page 10), Captain’s Names (page7). With the bookmarks it isn’t hard to find the relevant section, just a nit about some text that didn’t get cleaned up in the compilation.

Final thoughts on the product. Again a compilation of mostly previously released material, a couple of which I already have, but again reorganized and grouped in one fantastic collection of material, that gives any DM experienced or no, the opportunity to make your outdoor adventures memorable for your players. Like the Dungeon Dressing compilation, well worth its weight in gold. Do yourself a favor and pick this one up. For all the fantastic material, I again have to give this one five stars.

First of all, I was given a copy of this product in exchange for a review just to be up front about this. Secondly, when it comes to magic I have a weakness for three types, mostly because of my extensive reading of fantasy literature. Those three are, in no particular order, truename magic, magic cast by or augmented by music or done as a function of music, and shadow magic. My favorite character in all my years of gaming was the 28th level straight progression shadowcaster from Tome of Magic. So, preliminaries aside, let’s get into the meat of this product. The Path of Shadows is an 81 page pdf, with a front and back cover, a credits page, an OGL page, a compatibility notice page and a table of contents, leaving a whopping 75 pages of content. The book is broken into five chapters, one covering the new class, the Nightblade, one for new archetypes and class options, one for feats, one for spells and one for new magic items and equipment. Options and references to other Pathfinder core rule books are clearly notated in the text, making it easy to backtrack to already existing content. The Nightblade is a 20th level mixed martial/limited caster with a medium BAB, poor Fortitude saves and good Reflex and Will saves. They have simple weapon proficiencies plus a few additional weapons to give them more combat options. The Nightblade can wear light armor without incurring any arcane spell failure, but medium and heavy armor is a limiting factor for this. From a casting perspective, the Nightblade has everything from cantrips to sixth level spells. Now what makes the Nightblade really interesting is the abilities that they are granted at each level. It is also nice to note that there are no dead levels across any of the levels, so kudos to the designer in that regard.
At first level, the Nightblade chooses a Path and once chosen remains in that path for the duration. The designer gave us five paths with such evocative names as, the Path of the Bloodied Chain, Path of the Darkened Fortress, Path of the Eternal Night, Path of the Ravaging Void, and Path of the Twilight Veil. Each path gives a unique set of abilities tied to the theme of the path, with powers increasing periodically over the twenty levels.
Additionally the Nightblade gains Nightblade Arts. These appear to me to function much like the rogue talents and are offered every third level. There are a core set of them and then each path offers additional choices that are again centered around the theme of each Path. Further, the Nightblade gains a Path power, much like the Sorcerer’s Bloodline power, that improves over the course of the levels.
Another power that the Nightblade gains is the Shadow Surge which functions similarly to a ki pool, but there is not a maximum number of times that it can be used per day. The Nightblade starts with the ability to hold one shadow surge and uses it to fuel the surge ability designated within the Path. Finally, there are the Path Techniques that are again tied to the Path selected that provide another very cool mechanic to affect the environment around them. The nightblade at 20th level can hold up to three surges and again use them to fuel their path surge ability. As the Nightblade progresses in level, the dark stops withholding secrets from them, granting abilities such as Evasion, Hide in Plain Sight, Nighteye and See in Darkness Spells. What to say about them. While they do have a limited custom spell list, the author has drawn spells from all the major core source books, in addition to adding his own take on new spells. The spells are largely geared around the shadow subschool, and the Darkness descriptor. There is a whole chapter totaling some seventy new spells designed to maximize the use of shadows for all classes.
Many core and base classes are also offered new archetypes or new bloodlines, rage powers, a mystery or curse, including several archetypes for the Nightblade. Each one presents a new and interesting option for the class in question. 15 new feats are given to enhance the use of shadows for classes taking these shadow abilities and 10 new racial feats for fetchlings and wayangs.
The last chapter is devoted to new magical gear and equipment to again augment the users of shadow, from weapons to wondrous items.
Two final thoughts on this book, one is that it is nicely bookmarked and wonder of wonders, contains an index.
Now to provide a summary and rating. Bottom line is that I could go on for several more pages talking in more depth about what this PDF provides for lovers of shadow magic because frankly it is that good. I have not done a playtest on this, but compared it against my 28th level shadowcaster from Tome of Magic, again, my favorite character ever, and was not left wanting. Ok, that technically isn’t quite true. I’d like more Paths. What the author has done here is offered us a hand out and a step up in a major way from the Tome of Magic Shadowcaster and really any of the base classes from the Shadow Magic chapter and given us a way to move forward. Kudos on a job well done. If you are a fan of shadow magic, this is a must, and really if you are a fan of superb, well thought out design, you owe yourself a favor to pick this up. I give this a five star rating. Now I just need to find a campaign where I can play one.

First and foremost I’d like to say that this is my first ever review of any gaming product, so in no way will it come close to that of the most prolific reviewer Endzeitgeist and will likely ramble. Secondly, I received a complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review to be posted at Paizo, OBS and Amazon.

This GM Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing is a compilation of a lot of material that Raging Swan had already produced, collected and compiled and I presume updated with any noted errata and it appears in many places may have had new material added that was not previously available in any other Raging Swan product.

The entire PDF is 339 pages long, with about 6 or 7 pages of covers, OGL and Table of Contents leaving a whopping 330+ pages of content to work with and explore. The PDF is divided into 4 major sections, including Dungeon Design, Dungeon Dressing, Riddles and Treasure Hoards.

The Dungeon Design section is all geared around thinking about why a dungeon might exist, who built it, why they built it, purpose, design, layout and history. It gives the GM things to consider if they are designing their own dungeon or mega dungeon. It also includes the Do’s and more importantly the Don’ts in many cases.

The next section contains the bulk of the material and I believe is all culled from the entirety of the Dungeon Dressing Line. Any set of features or object that player’s might encounter in a dungeon, altars, archways, traps, doors, fountains, floors and ceilings. Each section has a table or set of tables that the DM can utilize to spice up their dungeon, their keep, or abandoned guardhouse or any other constructed feature. Each table typically contains a d100 worth of options to explore. Many sections have pre-constructed options that allow you to just plug a really great option directly into your constructed building/dungeon. Two sections that I found particularly useful was the section on illumination and how far many of the core spells and core equipment cast their light. Nice set of summary tables as well for how the spells work. The other one that I really enjoyed was the table for graffiti and junk and rubbish. Your player’s certainly aren’t the first ones to go exploring the depths of the dungeon’s, why wouldn’t previous adventurers left behind, broken gear, notes for people coming after them and all manner of other detritus.

The next section is all about riddles, including guidelines for using them, placing them and designing them as well as many options pre-delivered from the ever classic walks on four legs in the morning, two at midday and three at night to riddles about ability types and different sources and types of riddles.

The final section is treasure hoards from CR1 to CR20 and an even dozen at each CR. Descriptions to each special item be it standard weapons, art works, gems and jewelry to magical weapons. Each item given description and characteristics to make the piece memorable for the characters and in many case, I thought, maybe a plot hook to find out why the object exists, was created, and maybe motivation to find the original source of the item.

Conclusion: While I have not read every single page and every single table of descriptions, I feel pretty confident that I can say that this is an extremely handy guide for any DM to add color and flavor to their world and their creations. The only thing that would make this material any better is if there was an electronic solution to plug all this into and have it generate the output. I’m certainly adding it to my list of tools to use in adventure preparation. I give it full marks for usefulness, organization and downright great stuff.