This is perfect. I need some NPCs for a one-shot and just dropped these in.

I particularly loved that each character had artwork. In roll20, I was able to drop these in as new "maps" and when players went to interact with the NPC, their screen is an actual picture of this person. Thanks to the author for including the original art, it makes it so much easier for VTT or table-top games.

I will happily buy more of these.

As a DM, I would be happy to allow these races in my game. The overall product is solid. With some art and some clean-up, this would actually be worthy of an official product.

Strengths:

• Professionally formatted and well-edited.
• Races are relatively well-balanced. It's nice to see a race like the Mul (I'm a fan of Dark Sun) brought into 5th edition.
• Racial feats is a good idea and well-implemented. I expect to see something like this in a full D&D supplement.

Weaknesses

• The Hengeyokai have an ability that's very much like the Lycanthrope transformation ability: humanoid, hybrid, animal form. The limitations of the Animal form are explained, but the limitations of they Hybrid form are not.
• I'm not sure that Ashen Reformation is really a 2nd level spell. It's honestly a nice addition at 1st.
• The lack of artwork limits us to other reference material for good guidelines on how the races actually appear. I would love to a $5 version with art. Heck, I would pay for the $10 printed version with art :)

At its current price this is a steal.

This class is actually "just wrong". It uses the term "full caster", but it doesn't actually work with the Bard class which is a full caster. It should be explicit that only Druid, Cleric, Wizard and Sorceror can work with this class.

The wording is rough at several points, especially the Mystic Tradition ability which clearly confuses "and" with "or". "HP at higher level" is wrong.

From a balance perspective, this class is pretty powerful. It gets access to all of its spells "on time". It gets to cast Wizard spells in Medium armor. It also gets most of the class abilities at most a level late. In fact, as designed, it gets all of the class abilities at some point. Its only limitation is a kind of awkward limit to the number of memorized spells.

Overall I'm really neutral on this. It's not really polished, it makes very different trade-offs from previous versions of Mystic Theurge and I think it's a little too powerful.

I would not let a PC run this in my campaign.

This product is good and definitely points in the right direction. You can probably use this in your campaign "as-is", though it's a little rough.

Combining Shardmind and Warforged as Construct sub-races is a really elegant design. The racial traits function well within the 5E game.

Note that Wizards has attempted a 5E splash of Warforged here http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/unearthed-arcana-eberron

The version from Wizards is a step weaker and this version may be a little too strong.

This is absolutely worth the $1 asking price.

It's basically a book of ideas for customizing creatures in a consistent but balanced way.

Each template also has some built in options. So if you want to build a dungeon of Clockwork creatures, you would apply the basic template everywhere and then select one of four "bonus" abilities. This means that your Clockwork dungeon could have similar creatures, but each with a twist, keeping things in flavor but interesting.

Only two pieces of feedback for this 5-star book:

• Print-friendly version.
• Weird page borders on my even-numbered pages.

Strengths:

• Pro quality formatting.
• Nice use of design space, exchanging Hit Dice for temporary boosts.
• A magic potion that restores Hit Dice instead of HP also a neat idea.

Weaknesses:

• Awkward wordings and editing in a few places. You inflict a "Minor/Severe Wound" on yourself, which costs you an HD which then gives you a "Blood Point". What's non-obvious here is that you actually want to "Wound" yourself in order to power the other features of this Arcane Tradition. Maybe this just needs a side-bar in plain English to explain what's going on, but the "Blood" in "Blood Magic" is really your Hit Dice.
• This Arcane Tradition is very aggressive on the power curve. There are two or three significant abilities that all get powered up as you go. Most of the official Arcane Traditions are pretty clean, one significant but specific ability at each of 2, 6, 10 & 14. This one is more extensive. -- At level 2 this class has two bonuses for having Blood Points & 3 "Blood abilities". -- At level 6 you get 3 more significant abilities -- At level 10 you get 2 more significant abilities -- At level 14 you get 1 more significant ability + 2 upgrades to existing abilities.
• Overall, this makes the Blood Mage quite strong, especially at early levels or in campaign with less than the "recommended" number of daily encounters. You get to trade HD you're not planning to use for extra damage on spells. At level 6 and up, you get to "farm" minions for even more "Blood Points" without even spending HD.

For the future.

• I get that this is just a single Arcane Tradition with 3 pages of text for now.
• It could really use a couple of "blood-themed" spells or something that ties in better.
• Printer-friendly version with no background would also be nice.

Clearly, lots of effort went into the data gathering for this. However the layout and presentation is otherwise very plain, just a 101 Word document.

Suggestions:

• Page numbers, possibly a page header indicating that this is a "Calendar of Harptos"
• Seasonal Coloring for pages
• Moon Cycles. They all seem to fall on the 1st and 16th. Why not save space and use classic icons for this?

Used this for a Halloween session and it worked well. Actually feels like a real Church/Temple where people lived.

The description of the book would seem to indicate that the focus of the spells is "playful". However, what's here is mostly "juvenile": Lightning Arse, Projectile Vomit and Vomit Coment. Some of it seems to ignore existing spells: Fog Bank seems like a bad version of Fog Cloud. The 7th level spell "Bad Fish" is a neat concept, but it's a "save or die" for any enemy creatures within 60 feet and it makes Prismatic Spray seem a little wimpy.

Beyond just the concepts, the book is in heavy need of editing.

• The pictures are wholly unrelated to the spells at hand. They are just make the text harder to read.
• The structure of a spell's text block is pretty specific in 5e, but this book just fails to follow that format. Some spells (like Lightning Arse, Nitwit) don't even describe what they do. Other spells, like Army Ants, fail to describe it well.
• Most spells have inconsistent or muddled structure around saves, successes and fails. Again, the PHB has a specific clean structure that the author has simply ignored.
• One spell has a spherical area of effect defined with diameter, but another spell simple has a "20 foot sphere".

Some spells just have the wrong power curve all together. For example, Vomit Comet is a 1st level spell that automatically causes a creature to be smashed into the ground and become prone. It also has some damage component with a save, but fails to acknowledge how brutal this is for flyers. There's also no indication of what this does to underwater creatures or creatures generally stuck to a surface that isn't the ground (Lizards?).

The artwork here is definitely 4 star quality. It looks very good, especially for the price. But the overall product has issues.

The most glaring issue here is formatting. The Stat Blocks are very non-standard. They break across columns, there are no dividing lines, they're not blocked off from the picture, they're just kind of a mess to read. If you look at something like Dan Coleman's "New Twist on Old Monsters" or stuff from Alea Publishing, they following the Wizard's MM layout quite closely. Alea's formatting may be even better than the original.

There are no page numbers.

There are also several rules and text problems. One creature has the "magical weapon" requirement, but the text is not consistent with the MM. Another creature has the ability to take 2 Move Actions in a turn which is incongruent with the movement rules in 5e (just double the movement). A few new Traits are created, but the wording is awkward. None of the creatures have proficiency on any saves, even the big ones, which makes the CR20 a little sketchy. "Legendary Actions" have been renamed to "Mythic Actions" for unknown reasons.

The last oddity is the incongruity of images to abilities. One creature has fly & climb, but no clear way to fly. Another creature has a "bludgeoning tentacle" attack but the picture clearly has 4 limbs with big claws.

For the price tag, these are some fun ideas, but they lack polish.