Content: 3 Layout: 4

Most of the Dept 7 classes, I've realy liked. Yes, they are overpowered but they tend to fill niches in the Modern setting nicely.

The Cold Bringer seems a little to niche to me. The powers are cool, and yes, it is also a bit overpowered, but it just seems to have too narrow a focus. It is a good class if you are looking to do a high-powered game such as Psi-Watch by the same author, but otherwise this class just seems a bit too narrow.

Dept. 7 Adv. Class Update: Cold Bringer is a short PDF product from Skortched Urf' Studios. The zipped file is just under five megabytes in size, and contains a single PDF. This PDF is nine pages long, including a page for the cover, a page for the credits/legal, and a page for the OGL. No bookmarks are given, nor needed.

The cover of the product is the only instance of full color artwork. Three black and white interior images (one being a reproduction of the cover) round out the art. However, the interior pictures are slightly pixelized, which is something of a stab at their quality. There is no printer-friendly version, but for a product this short, with relatively little art, that shouldn?t be too much of a problem for anyone.

The product opens with a short in-character description of a Cold Bringer in action, before the book briefly covers their history. Cold Bringers are relics of, appropriately enough, the Cold War. While the experiments done by the Soviets on making cold-using soldiers were initial failures, the children of those failures are successes, allowing Cold Bringers to be found working for almost any organization now.

At first glance, this class is martial in nature. It offers a nice hit die progression, and a solid array of offensive and defensive powers, such as Chill Strike (inflicting cold damage with your unarmed strikes) and Cryonic Armor (make a suit of ice armor around yourself). However, there's a strong subterfuge element here as well, with powers such as Infravision and Iceshaper. A handful of new feats that let you use cold powers a few new ways help to round things out. A balance is struck between using the Cold Bringer's elemental powers creatively and combatively, making this class work very well in the archetype laid down by characters such as Iceman and Sub-Zero.

Not everything is perfectly done, however. Minor errors do creep in, such as the Arctic Adaptation ability saying it grants the Cold sub-type, and then noting that the Cold Bringer takes half damage from failed saves against cold attacks. Also, a few spelling errors made it in, such as one that talks about "winery" conditions.

Overall though, the Cold Bringer does a great job of creating a cold warrior. This is a product that'll bring a winter soldier into your game, as a class best served cold. <br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: The array of powers that the Cold Bringer is given are nicely diverse, allowing for a wide range of icy effects to be created. This is something important to this class, as heroes (and villains) with icy powers have been done in other mediums, creating an expectation for what this sort of character can do.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: There were a few instances of minor rules and grammar errors, but nothing that'd impact this class's playability.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>