An interesting first foray into supplementing Spheres of Guile (from Drop Dead Studios).

What I would call the main focus of the book is the new class, the Conduit. A fun chassis that made me think of a Paizo Occultist if it was powered by Item Mastery feats (and then with Spellhacking from SoG thrown into the mix). Overall a pretty fun class with a lot of possibilities, with possibly too many Proper Noun class features to cross-reference as you build and/or play your character. Nevertheless, it is a HUGE chunk of content, with the class alone taking up 12 pages of the pdf, and archetypes for it taking up another 5.

Speaking of Archetypes (and class options), there are quite a few in here, and all are well-geared towards adding some supernatural elements to your non-casters, or some spell-twisting effects to your casters. Every single one gave me ideas for new builds, which is how you get me to love a book. The new Forte for the SoG Envoy class is terrifying.

Finally, we have a fun collection of Basic and Exceptional talents that cover several topics across all 3 Spheres subsystems. This is personally the weakest section thematically for me, as while the Spellhacking section is clearly all linked to messing with magic (the overall theme of Thaumic Potential), the other talents included are a smattering of cool ideas that don't really fit anywhere (like a Study [Utility] talent that lets you learn if gained knowledge is "important", or a Subterfuge [Plan] talent that lets you supernaturally change your equipment to that of a touched target). They are cool talents by themselves, and I want to put them on characters, but I feel like they didn't really fit the theme of this book.

Overally, quite a good book, with lots of ways to improve your characters, even if the focus felt a little bit off to me by the final chapter.

This book is amazing. I've never seen so much interaction between interlocking systems in a sourcebook before.

An individual player using this system can be a scrappy tinkerer who cobbles together functional weapons and armor with outlandish properties, or could be a lone tank driver escaping a distant conflict with nothing but his highly customized vehicle that he lives in.

There are gizmos that you can use to build out or modify existing equipment or even structures to incorporate tech into them. Imagine deciding that your castle needs handprint sensors to open/lower the drawbridge, and you've got the idea.

Or you could utilize the content in here to build out the tech in your setting, flavoring it and modifying it to suit factions as you please. There are mechanics and suggestions on how to incorporate all of these to your specific preferences

And just about everything I suggested above can interact with the other systems involved. It's absolutely bonkers, and I'm getting lost in it just like I first did when Drop Dead Studios released the core Spheres of Power, Might, and Guile.

My only caveat is that I am literally using a spreadsheet to build my characters. I count that as a plus, you may count it as a minus.

A very well-thought out update (don't call it an upgrade) for a mostly forgotten PF1E race.

Paizo put Samsarans in four books, and they have like half as much content as any other race in the game. Which is a tremendous waste, because they are such a fascinating concept as a race in pathfinder - reincarnated humanoids that eternally progress from life to death, keeping memories from one to the next. How can you NOT do something with that?!

Enter Diamond Recreational Studios to fill the void left by Paizo.

Diamond Polished Samsarans provides an update to the race as shared by Paizo. And while there are a ton of really cool updated racial traits and alternate traits and feats (the good crunchy stuff), what really sets this book apart is the thought and care put into the other aspects like Appearance, and Society, and Relations sections of the race entry. Entirely neglected in Paizo work, this book practically gives them the old Races of the Wild/Stone/Destiny treatment from 3.5e. A wealth of ideas and information that helped me really contextualize Samsarans in my head far better than most other books of this sort.

All of the above is not to say there isn't good crunch in here. I'm constantly theorycrafting characters, and this book got me percolating on new ideas right away, using the new racial traits and alternates. ESPECIALLY the ones that are designed to work with Spheres, and other popular 3pp content. Simple integrations that make a world of difference when trying to slot your puzzle pieces together and make a character.

As it says in the description, this is the first of, hopefully, many of these products to update more forgotten races in PF1E. If this first book is any indication, I'm excited for whatever comes next.

Great addition to the Spheres library.

Like a lot of Spheres books, this one contains some errata to standardize new content that came out a little while ago. A small portion of this book is dedicated to that, and everything else is new.

A couple new archetypes, a ton of new basic, advanced, and legendary talents, new character options (for core and Spheres classes), and even a few new feats and magic items.

All bookended by sidebars from the author explaining rationale and methods to adapt/modify the mechanics/rules presented.

Very happy to add this to my collection.