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I’ve been waiting for a product like this one for a long time. For quite a while now, I’ve been interested in treasures that were something other than magic items or piles of coins and gems. Sometimes favors are just as valuable as gold, if not moreso; unfortunately, there’s been too little discussion of the value of having someone owe you one…something that 101 NPC Boons, from Rite Publishing, aims to rectify.
The book is fairly upfront that it doesn’t use the basic method of boons laid out in the GameMastery Guide. Instead,there’s a brief overview regarding what sort of bonus they can provide on skill checks before the book divides itself into five general regions (e.g. urban, rural, nautical, etc.) and then subdivides each of these into groups you’d find within each one (such as city officials, upper class, and guards in the urban section). These descriptions offer about two paragraphs wherein they name a person and what they can do for the party.
The majority of the time these have no listed gp value, which is slightly disappointing but understandable. It’s hard to figure out the exact monetary worth of having a local judge tell you about the charges that a noble figure managed to dodge, for example. I personally didn’t find this to be much of a handicap, since these act as much as adventure hooks and ideas as they do favors. Given that the characters in these paragraphs are named, there are a lot of potential NPCs here to help you flesh out your towns and villages.
Not all of these are just name-drops, of course. There are eight NPCs with fully fleshed out stat blocks, several of which are from other Rite Publishing products. Helpfully, sidebars include all of the necessary material to run these characters even if you don’t own the books that they’re from. Again, I have to tip my hate to Rite Publishing here, since having full stat blocks for NPCs can often become an issue when the PCs take things in a new direction. These characters range from an awakened deer to a clockwork captain of the guard to a humble beggar, and more.
Unlike a lot of treasure books, 101 NPC Boons doesn’t just present you with a list of items and their numerical value and walk away. Rather, this book provides you with character ideas and favors that help integrate your PCs more closely with the world around them. This book isn’t just filled with a new kind of treasure for your PCs, but for your game world as well – being able to tie your player-characters to your NPCs more closely is something that leads to better role-playing, which is always more fun for everyone. Give your game a boon and pick up 101 NPC Boons today.
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Creator Reply: |
I wanted to thank Shane for taking the time to do a review of our product. Steve Russell Rite Publishing |
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I came late to the game where Raging Swan Press was concerned, though I couldn’t tell you why. It wasn’t until I saw this particular product that I went and took a look at Raging Swan’s products. Upon doing so, I realized that I’ve been missing out; well, no further – let’s take a look at Minotaurs of the Black Hills.
After the cover (an austere black with the title in relatively small print) and credits page, the book comes to the table of contents. It’s here that Raging Swan begins to distinguish themselves from other publishers out there, as even this is different from the usual fare. Not only do they have the usual table of contents, but they also organize tables for the various crunch offerings of the book, even though they could have gotten away with it. For example, there’s a table summarizing the four new feats in the book, a CR table to chart the Challenge Ratings of the book’s seven NPCs and creatures, etc.
It was this sort of thing that immediately drew my respect; these little things that aren’t strictly necessary but make things easier and more convenient for the people using their book. Things like this separate the adequate game companies from the really good ones.
There was a section after it that charts out how to read the stat blocks. Ironically, I do think this went a little bit too far, as most people who’d be buying this sort of product don’t need to be told how to read a stat block – as this book uses the standard Pathfinder format for monsters and NPCs, this part seemed superfluous, but even so I didn’t hold that against the book, particularly since after this it turned its attention to the eponymous minotaurs.
The book discusses the tribe itself and the race that they serve – known as the yith – in adequate detail, covering their culture, where they lair, giving Knowledge DCs, etc. It then turns its attention to the layout of the Black Hills region itself. My understanding is that this connects to at least one other Raging Swan supplement, though I was left uncertain if this fit into the larger backdrop of the Lonely Coast or not (though I suspect that it does).
Several areas of the Black Hills are given several paragraphs of description, emphasizing the fallen empire of the yith. No maps or detailed information is given, though there are terrain features and a random encounter table listed, which I was glad for – too often those elements are ignored, though I think they’re an important aspect of adventuring.
Following this, the second half of the book turns its attention to new crunch. A new ranger archetype and a new sorcerer bloodline, four new feats, four new sorcerer-only spells, and two new magic items help to round out the nature of the Minotaurs of the Black Hills, leading in to two minotaur NPCs and a stat block for the yith themselves.
This last part, the yith, was where I was quite disappointed by the book. For those with a background in Lovecraft, the yith are more correctly the Great Race of Yith, aliens known for being able to swap their minds with other creatures across time. If this had been the yith in this book that dominated the minotaurs, that would have been too cool for words.
Instead of that, however, the yith are simply bat-people who had an empire which has since declined to the point that most of them barely remember it. In other words, much less interesting. I can’t fault Raging Swan too much here; my guess is that they just didn’t know about the Lovecraftian Great Race and the nomenclature is simply a coincidence, but even so, it’s a poor one. The name suggests a coolness that simply isn’t present here, and that’s the main reason why I gave this book four out of five stars.
Having said that, however, this book does a good job of presenting an atmospheric location and populating it with material ripe for adventure. Raging Swan has a distinct style to their books, and it’s in full force here. The Black Hills evoke a feeling of harsh isolation, with the terrain and its inhabitants being cruel to those who wander here, and at the same time hiding secrets that can only be unearthed with great difficulty. It’s very gothic…I just can’t help but wonder how much more gothic it would have been if they hadn’t inadvertently hinted at something much more cosmic than they delivered.
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I should admit straight-up that I was a bit biased in regards to this product. As a student of Japanese culture, I was naturally intrigued when the Prelude to the Faerie Ring products noted that kitsune and yokai were among the fey it’d be covering. And when the next in that series, Along the Twisting Way #2: Red Jack, came out, that turned into full-blown eagerness. But what sort of presentation did the book make? Let’s find out.
Two-dozen pages in length, Along the Twisting Way #2 makes a strong showing of itself in terms of technical presentation. Presented with full, nested bookmarks and with the copy-and-paste on, the book hits all of the high-water marks. Much more notable, however, is the imagery. Presented on a light bluish background, the book only had four illustrations, but they were spectacular. I say this even with one of those being the cover illustration again, and another being reused from Along the Twisting Way Prelude. Julie Dillon’s artwork is just that vibrant.
Turning to the book itself, I was surprised by just how much Zombie Sky Press was able to squeeze into twenty-four pages. The book opens with Red Jack’s background and current sketch, before talking about his domain (with a sidebar noting its planar traits) and its major features (which also has a sidebar on a new major artifact, the Murder Stone).
Following this is an unexpectedly lengthy discussion about kitsune, and some subtypes of kitsune, before talking about Red Jack’s daughter, Ren. At this point we’re just over halfway through the book and it’s been almost entirely flavor text with little in the way of game stats. While I’m usually a bit of a curmudgeon about that, here I confess that I was captivated by the writing. There’s a style in this book that seems to suggest that it’s presenting only a piece of a larger whole, but feels no need to give additional details (though in several places it does make reference to where further information may be found).
It also helps that the second half of the book (noted as appendices I and II) is where the game stats come out in full force. In appendix one we get the stat block for Red Jack, who is a walloping CR 27, making him one of the highest-CR’d creatures for the Pathfinder RPG to date (notwithstanding v.3.5 material).
Following this is a sidebar discussing how fey lords of Jack’s type have a singular item, a memento mori, that gives them greater power. After this is the stat block for Red Jack if his memento mori is lost or destroyed, busting him down to CR 23. This part of the book made me frown a bit, simply because the jump from CR 27 to 23 is comparatively small, as are the tweaks to his stat block that make up this drop in power. While I can certainly understand the utility of having fully-formed stat blocks for each version of Jack, I wonder if it wouldn’t have been more economical to just list the changes made if his memento mori is lost (or have his power be reduced to a point where an alternate stat block was more necessary, like CR 21), since there was a lot of repeated text. Of course, this is a PDF, so space isn’t really a concern anyway.
After a listing for Jack’s personal major artifact (something to which I tip my hat to the author; it’s been too long since writers remembered that unique, powerful individuals should have unique, powerful artifacts) we move on to stats for kitsune.
The three types of kitsune – the normal kitsune, the ghost fox, and the pipe fox – are all presented here. Except, not really. Rather, we’re given a ghost fox NPC (since ghost fox is a kitsune-specific template given immediately after this), a kitsune NPC (since they’re a playable race), and generic stats for the pipe fox (which, to my delight, can be taken as improved familiars) and their elder variant. A sidebar discussing several new subtypes that kitsune have closes out appendix one.
Appendix two is PC-related information, in regards to the kitsune. After basic PC race stats (which include the method whereby the gain more tails), we’re presented with a series of feats that allow for different uses of fox magic. I liked this section, but it was too short by half (and it noted that these weren’t all the fox magic that there were); mostly absent were fox magic feats designed for having multiple tails (that is, being higher level). Hopefully there’ll be more in a future supplement of web enhancement.
Some discussion is given to a uniquely kitsune magic item, the star ball. It’s interesting that the star ball is designed to allow kitsune (which in their natural form have no opposable thumbs) to utilize magic items they otherwise couldn’t, since they can imbue their star ball with those items (using a new spell presented here). However, the basic construction information for how a star ball is made wasn’t presented here. A minor oversight, to be sure, but it would have been useful. The book closes out with an incantation that allows a kitsune to, upon a success, possess someone for a short while (something I’d keep out of the hands of a PC, even despite its built-in limitations).
Overall though, I greatly enjoyed this product. The references to Japanese mythology alone (particularly the story of Tamamo-no-Mae, which the author acknowledges and gives a surprising twist on) were enough to win me over. But even had they not been, the engaging writing and excellent new mechanics would have. Red Jack is a powerful foe who has long arms thanks to those kitsune who serve him, and with his wily daughter out there, there’s a built-in campaign waiting to happen, especially if you have PCs who want to play a kitsune.
The only real complaint I have about the book was that it was much too short. The section on new material for PCs could easily have been twice as long (more fox magic feats, stats for human-kitsune children, etc). And though I thought Red Jack’s two forms could have used more distinction, the character himself was truly epic (pun intended). If you’re looking for a method to add fey foxes to your game, look no further. The Faerie Ring: Along the Twisting Way #2 – Red Jack gives you a fox-faced foe you won’t soon forget, and all that he en-tails.
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Magic is a science in Pathfinder, with spells creating very specific effects without any possibility of variation. If you want to change any aspect of a spell you’re casting, you’re generally out of luck, unless there’s a metamagic feat for it. Otherwise, you need another spell entirely. This can be frustrating if you only want a minor change, because it’s likely that another such spell will be more radically different than what you want. In this case, you just need a spell variant…and here, Super Genius Games have produced 110 such variants.
The book provides a quick introduction, outlining how these variants are formatted. Organized alphabetically by spell level, after the variant spell name, we’re given what level the spell is for what variant class (note that APG classes are included – disappointingly, other Super Genius Games classes are not listed here), and how the variant differs from a specific spell, something that usually takes only a sentence or two. Of course, there are also different stat listings if the variant spell has them (e.g. this variant has an expensive focus where the original does not), but this is comparatively rare.
It should be noted that while simple, these variants are never obvious. The introduction says that they eschewed making something like an Iceball spell that’s a Fireball that deals cold damage. Instead, what you have here are spells like Detect Enemy, which is like Detect Undead but for one of a ranger’s favored enemies; Scry Trap, which is an Alarm spell with a built-in Scry spell when the alarm is set off; and Analogue, which is a Clone spell that is active as per a Simulacrum spell until you die and it resurrects you in its body.
Needless to say, these examples should show you that the variants herein are exceptionally innovative without being complex. Just changing a few things, without having those things be mechanical alterations to basics like damage type, and you have fascinating new spells on your hands. It’s easy to see here how a little bit can go a long way. Pick up 110 Spell Variants and discover brand new spells that you’ve known all along.
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One of the ultimate themes of any good zombie apocalypse story is that ultimately, the zombies aren’t the worst thing to happen to people – other people are. That’s a theme that Year of the Zombie, the d20 Modern “zombocalypse” campaign setting, has dealt with previously, and returns to with the location-sourcebook Eat the Rich. In this case, however, you’re not dealing with marauders or slavers, but an insular community of the uber-rich.
A seventy-three page PDF, Eat the Rich presents itself with the familiar ring-bindings on alternating sides of the page, as though you were flipping through a notebook in reading this. Full nested bookmarks are present, which is a must in a sourcebook like this. Lightly-shaded background elements are on the pages also, which appear to be bloodstains (one is a bloody handprint, implying that this notebook’s owner came to a bad end).
The book is peppered with illustrations, many of which are in UKG’s signature style of being full-color CG-generated images. However, there are a large number of black and white pencil sketches also, usually of key NPCs. The maps are somewhat spartan, but are still presented in full color with good labeling. It should be noted that there are no tactical maps here – all of the mapped locations are overviews of the entire community or a section of it (such as the security center).
Finally, a printer-friendly version is included that removes all graphic elements entirely; the illustrations, maps, and background images are all gone. It’s a nice extra, particularly since the rise of POD and tablet-viewing has seen the decline of printer-friendly material.
Fans of Year of the Zombie will find that all of the familiar elements are in place in Eat the Rich. The book begins with an overview of the gated community, going over its general location and resources. Right away you get the same gritty, hard-boiled edge that YotZ is famous for, with the place being tightly guarded with security that would seem almost ridiculously high until you remember that the people who live here probably have more money than most countries. The community itself is covered, building by building, and is a monument to excess and self-indulgence. All items for purchase are high-end, from wines to tech-toys to “companionship.”
The security group Red Talon is covered next, and they’re nothing short of a private army. It’s here that the book starts to move from “ultra-realistic” to being somewhat pulpy in feel; it’s nothing heavy, just that when you have the security group being in control of a subterranean base that can withstand a nuclear assault, you tend to think in more James Bond-style terms.
A brief coverage of the fish hatchery is all that remains before we move into a detailed overview of the residence of Green Hollows. And it’s here that the book stops restraining itself. The author makes no bones about the fact that these people are the scum of the Earth; rich enough that normal rules and laws don’t apply to them, most of these NPCs are completely debased, though in different ways, and at times it strays into near-supervillain material.
Each resident has their background and personality fleshed out for a few paragraphs, before displaying their d20 Modern stat block. After this is a “reaction to the Rising” section that tells us what these characters do once it’s clear that that the world is being engulfed in zombies. Most of the time, this is where the character’s evil comes to the fore, and several are summarily killed by other characters.
Following the detailed overview of the population of Green Hollows, we then get a look at Staffording’s Place, a nearby community of normal people that have been utterly victimized by their rich neighbors. These people have basically been zoned out of existence, with their resources and land gobbled up by people who have access to an army of lawyers and can pay off politicians easily. It’s a stark contrast to Green Hollows, and is already a near-ghost town before the Rising starts.
It’s in the last section that we get a timeline of how the Rising affects Green Hollows and Staffording’s Place. This goes in increments of a few hours, and showcases how things quickly break down, resulting in the community eventually closing and enduring a power struggle; each entry notes what can be seen on television. This section ends with the author writing directly to the reader about some of the campaign mysteries that have been built into the book (which I shan’t discuss here).
Overall, Eat the Rich is a great supplement to Year of the Zombie, and keeps the campaign’s tone of pulling no punches in terms of how brutal the people, the weapons, and the situations can be. Some may find this supplement harder to work into a campaign, simply because the interconnected nature of the Green Hollows community makes it difficult to incorporate outsiders (like the PCs) into the game – both in terms of the insular nature of the community, and because of the many overlapping plot elements. Still, the book takes that into account and does suggest ways to get the PCs involved. If you want to have your characters caught between the worst of humanity, and a rising tide of inhuman hunger, let them Eat the Rich.
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There’s an art to making monsters that can really challenge the PCs. Some of these are obvious, like correctly matching the power of the monster(s) to the power of the player-characters. Others are the sort of thing that only experience can really teach you, like how only an overwhelmingly strong creature can stand up to the fact that the PCs have greater economy of actions. And of course, one important part of keeping the PCs on their toes is to have the monster utilize powers and abilities they don’t expect or are unfamiliar with.
It’s on that last note that we come to the topic of this particular review, Rite Publishing’s 101 Monster Feats.
Almost twenty pages long, this book needs no description for its contents. All of these feats have the “monster” descriptor which expressly forbids them from being taken by PCs. Not that they’d likely be able to anyway, as almost all of these hinge on having a particular monster ability or a given type or subtype.
While discerning gamers will be able to pick out one or two feats from another source (another Rite Publishing book, in some cases), the vast majority of these feats are brand new, and quite innovative in what they offer. One lets a lich turn a victim of its paralysis attack into an ad hoc phylactery. Another lets an outsider take a creature with it to the Astral Plane (the better to deliver the poor soul unto damnation). One lets a creature with a breath weapon use the swallow whole ability, and has the victim take breath weapon damage once swallowed.
That last one was part of a few recurring themes throughout the book. Several feats were obviously directed towards certain types of monsters, such as how there were somewhere around a dozen feats dedicated to breath weapons. This isn’t a bad thing, since monsters have very few universal points, it’s just an observation. Another set of feats gave what was essentially the same power (choking a creature so as to kill it via suffocation) to different powers, e.g. constriction, pouncing, tripping, etc. I can appreciate why this was done, but perhaps it would have been more economical to make those feats simply have any one of those powers as alternate prerequisites.
Beyond that, there were a few spelling and grammar errors, but nothing that made any of the feats impossible to understand. Likewise, I have to give props for the book having alphabetical bookmarks. But what really made this book fun to read – beyond the new mechanics it offered – where the in-character descriptions for the feats. You know how, right after the feat title, there’s usually a line of text describing what the feat does? Here, that’s replaced with a monster talking about having used the feat against someone. It’s a small touch, but it puts a devilish tone to the material here, invoking exactly the right frame of mind for an enterprising GM.
Ultimately, while 101 Monster Feats has a few problems, they’re negligible compared to the value of what’s here. Want your incorporeal monsters to be able to damage creatures just by flying through them? How about lycanthropy that can’t be healed so long as the originating lycanthrope lives? Or night hags who can haunt the dreams of the innocent, alongside the guilty? It’s all here, and so much more. 101 Monster Feats is itself quite a feat for what it offers your Pathfinder game.
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Creator Reply: |
I wanted to thank Shane for posting a review of our product. 5/5 stars! Snoopy Happy Dance of Joy! Steve Russell Rite Publishing |
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One of the charges that’s often leveled against Pathfinder when going over the game’s negatives is that, in certain areas, it’s cumbersome. And as any GM who’s ever tried to construct customized monsters knows, that’s not an unfair charge. Creating custom NPCs is often a time-consuming task, requiring meticulous work to stack class levels and templates on creatures. Your third-level bugbear rogue, for example, isn’t something easily generated on the fly.
It was exactly this sort of problem that Creative Conclave set out to solve, at least as far as bugbears and their ilk are concerned, with The Lazy GM: Goblinoids (Pathfinder Edition).
An update of the d20 v.3.5 version of the same name, this book details various possible builds with class levels, templates, and more for goblins, bugbears, and hobgoblins, as well as wolves, dire wolves, worgs, and goblin dogs, among others. A truly impressive array of stat blocks are presented for these – more than I could hope to count – leading to this 166-page PDF.
What makes this book truly impressive is that it doesn’t just dump a big bunch of stat blocks on you and walk away. In fact, the book opens with an impressive series of tables that describe and organize the book’s contents. Not only is the book divvied up by creature (with a handy table of contents), but it opens with a handy introduction going over each aspect of the stat blocks and explaining the decisions they made and why. Following this are listings of all the monsters in the book by Challenge Rating, and class/template/variant, with each entry being hyperlinked.
Of course, the book isn’t without its flaws. Some of these are technical in nature, such as the lack of PDF bookmarks (though the aforementioned hyperlinked listings help to mitigate this), and the fact that the stat blocks aren’t in the typical Pathfinder format but are instead in the older 3.5 format. I also suspected that there were one or two details got overlooked – I could have sworn, for example, that some monsters had no favored class bonus.
Still, it should be blatantly obvious that this book is a major help to GMs who want to have goblinoid NPCs in their game. Having put together a truly impressive listing of goblinoids of various class, multi-class, and template combinations, you’ll find something of use in here, or at least something approximating what you’re looking for. If you’re a lazy GM, then this series is quite literally named after you, so pick the book up today and save yourself a lot of trouble.
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Creator Reply: |
You could be right about the lack of favoured class bonus - when we started putting this together Pathfinder was still in its early testing stages so this particular rule may well have been overlooked. My suggestion is to add a number of hit points equal to class level to any creature you think needs a favoured class bonus, which would be the easiset option, although it wouldn't be too hard to add another skill with ranks=level if you preferred. |
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Addendum to my previous comment, this is now the revised edition and those issues have been addressed - if you buy this now you'll find the stat blocks in standard PF format and favoured class bonuses included. We've also fixed a few minor errors and amended some features that changed between the beta test of Pathfinder and the final publication, such as scaling on feats like Skill Focus.
If you've got the older version the updated file is a available to you for free. |
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Sex in RPGs has always been a proverbial sticky wicket. While the topic certainly deserves some degree of prominence, actually integrating it into a role-playing game is difficult to implement and tends to end badly. Knowing that, I was thusly quite interested when I saw that John Wick was tackling the subject in his book Sexcraft: A Little Game with a Lot of Sex.
Before we get into it (yes, that was another regrettable pun), let’s take a look at the mechanics of the book. The PDF file is twelve pages long from start to finish, taking into account things like the cover, credits, etc. The book is entirely devoid of illustrations save for periodic silhouettes of various sexy women – the pictures are silhouettes with singular parts in white to highlight certain things, such as the silhouetted woman with a white bra on. In fact, all of these illustrations are of sexy women; a note near the end of the book explains that they simply couldn’t find any “sexy guy” illustrations.
There are no bookmarks, which is a shame, but nothing crippling in a twelve-page PDF. It should also be noted that both eBook and Mac formatting are present, allowing for plentiful options about which platform you enjoy this product on.
But beyond all of that, what is this Sexcraft book all about? As the name suggests, this is its own take on sex-based magic. The opening fiction hints at the basic nature of sexcraft as a dueling sort of magic…that is, two practitioners have sex, which for them is a duel of their respective magic.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Sexcraft explains that it’s meant to be a meta-system; you can take the rules in this book and integrate them into other RPGs seamlessly. In fact, this was where I feel the book fell down, as I didn’t find the new type of magic here to be easily added to most other RPGs, but I’ll get to that in due time.
The introduction then explains that sex is often ignored in RPGs because it has no tangible reward within the framework of the role-playing game itself; hence, giving it mechanics and a metagame framework will help to bring it more fully into RPG gaming. Now, I completely agree with the premise here – most RPGs that I’ve played have emphasized mechanics enough that even the best of role-players wanted the system-based rewards. Hence, you need to make any new aspect of the game part of that. However, I was skeptical of a one-size-fits-all approach…
The book begins to get into the mechanics of sexcraft by first explaining that characters can only learn this particular art by being taught, and that it’s a rare and secretive power only a few know. Beyond that, gaining power via sexcraft requires taking it from others…but those who are uninitiated have very little power to give. The quickest way to “charge up” is to engage in a sexcraft duel and take another practitioners energy.
Sexual energy, we’re told, is measured in points. The uninitiated have only ten points (and in mundane sex – that is, sex between people who can’t use sexcraft – everyone just donates a single point to everyone else, resulting in no net gain), but practitioners can have quite a bit more; the presumption seems to be that however much energy you gain in a duel is how much you retain.
Sexual energy can be freely given by those who know what they’re doing, or practitioners can actively take it. Note that in either case, sharing sexual energy is only possible during consensual sexual acts – forcing yourself on someone gains you nothing.
After some discussion on the effects of loss of energy, we’re then told what sexual energy can be used for. Instead of spells per se, there are a half-dozen different applications, called “roses.” Each rose is a different color, and most cost just a single energy to invoke. The blue rose, for instance, requires a touched target to truthfully reveal the answer to a single question asked, whereas the red rose causes the target to become obsessed with someone or something.
I was surprised at the relative narrowness of each rose’s application, and how few roses there are. Each is certainly colorful in what they can do, but there aren’t that many. Further, the idea that sexcraft is “beyond” other forms of magic (something mentioned earlier in the book) seems bluntly reinforced here, with various roses mentioning how each rose’s power cannot be removed or defeated by anything, short of a reprieve from the sexcraft witch that used it.
The above system of sexcraft magic is where I really took issue with the book. For all its talk about being a meta-system that can be put into any RPG, the fact remains that magic is specific to various role-playing games, and using sexcraft as its presented here can be a poor fit. Consider how well this magic would fit, thematically, with Call of Cthulhu? It’s risk-free to the user and subject, easily recharged, and even enjoyable…it’s against the tone of the game, in other words. Likewise, using this in D&D would bring up problems if you said that sexcraft powers couldn’t be dispelled, removed, or even disjoined. The simple mechanics here don’t mesh with that system’s intricate, technical magic rules.
Magic, no matter what the type, isn’t something you can make into a single-use system to put into any established role-playing game.
Following the list of the roses, the book talks about sexcraft duels between practitioners. Each sexcraft user has a number of six-sided dice equal to their energy, and each turn can decide how many to use, but with the caveat that the loser of each round doesn’t get those dice back. There are also four tactics that can be used – attack, counterattack, feint, and protect. Each can give you an advantage (a single bonus d6) against a certain other type of tactic.
This system isn’t a bad one, but seems to favor using all of your energy dice at once in hopes of simply overwhelming your opponent (especially if they’re conservative with how many dice they use at a time). While you can still lose this way sometimes, the result of “higher number wins” seems to favor making large plays, with the various tactics providing some variance only if the participants both bet a relatively equal number of dice.
The book closes out with a word from the author talking about how, if this seems inappropriate, consider how many pages of how many RPGs are dedicated to killing things. It’s a salient point, but one that ignores the larger question of why sex in RPGs isn’t more prominent. It’s not a question of the appropriate nature of the content described, but rather that for most people it’s an awkward and embarrassing thing, even if you marry it more closely to game mechanics. That’s not an excuse, of course, nor is it a condemnation of either traditional RPGs or this one – it’s just why sexual-based RPG materials aren’t more prominent.
After this there’s a bonus section with the sexcraft witch prestige class for D&D 3.5. A ten-level prestige class, this is fairly decent, but makes some mistakes if you’re a Third Edition aficionado. For one thing, it’s odd that a spellcasting PrC (full arcane spellcasting progression) also requires, and grants, sneak attack dice (particularly with the note that the sexcraft witch can sneak attack someone while having sex with them).
The class abilities are interesting, and notably don’t try to translate the “rose” powers from earlier into d20 terms. Rather, we get things like the sexcraft witch having the ability to put a compulsion on someone else which they have to follow until they sleep with another person, having the power to cause a negative level with a caress (like a succubus), or using a death effect against anyone she’s ever slept with.
These powers are imaginative, but a closer look shows that they have some design problems. Leaving aside issues like requiring the never-before-mentioned Craft (sex) skill, or lacking power tags (such as Ex or Su), the powers aren’t defined thoroughly enough. For example, many lack a range listing, or any sort of limiter on how often they can be invoked. Several are too powerful, such as a power that (with a DC 15 Craft (sex) check) lets the arcane spellcasting sexcraft witch use any of several healing spells (though to be fair, this is limited to once per person per night).
On the last page, there are short notecards for a character’s name, their current energy, and how many roses they know.
Overall, Sexcraft is – like so many other attempts to bring sex into greater prominence in RPGs – a good idea that doesn’t work. In this case, it’s not because the attempt is too prurient (it’s fairly light in the tone of its presentation), but simply because in trying to apply itself to any game system, it renders itself inappropriate for quite a few, if not most, of them. The attempt is laudable, but in order for something to be universally applicable, it helps to cover ground that no one else has touched, and magic, regardless of the theme of the magic, is not such an area.
Ironically, the book seems to know it too. Presenting the sexcraft witch prestige class is a nod towards the fact that sex-magic is an area that can be tailored much more directly towards a given game system (a message which is diluted by the fact that the sexcraft witch needs further system editing).
Like a teenager getting ready to lose his virginity, Sexcraft knows what it wants to do, but what it actually presents leaves room for improvement.
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Rangers are one of those classes that have made a success story out of taking two different ideas – the strong martial fighter and the skilled wilderness survivalist – and fusing them together. While on paper the ranger may seem like a mish-mash of ideas, in play the class makes them work quite well. The only real weakness of the class is its inflexibility – you can choose your favored enemy and combat style, but other than that one ranger is pretty much the same as another.
Gun Metal Games aims to fix that issue with the aptly named Rangers Renewed, the third book in their Class Options line for Pathfinder.
A ten page PDF, Rangers Renewed – written by the prolific and inimitable Stefen Styrsky – makes a very strong showing of itself. The PDF has nested bookmarks, which is praiseworthy, along with several pieces of high-quality full color illustrations. While aesthetics aren’t the most important thing in an RPG product, they help a lot, and I was quite pleased to see that such care was given to such a short book.
Before we get into the nuts and bolts of what Rangers Renewed offers, there’s an elephant in the room that must be addressed – since this book came out before Paizo’s Advanced Player’s Guide, with its plethora of new options for all classes, rangers included, we have to ask to what degree the ideas in this book overlap with that one.
The answer is: surprisingly little. There is some conceptual overlap to be sure, but not as much as you’d think. Two or three of the new combat styles are the same, and some of the alternate class abilities resemble those in the APG’s ranger archetypes, but that’s about it. The only other similar idea is that both books present spell-less ranger rules, but they handle them very differently.
So just what is here? First, we’re given a big list of new class abilities. Unlike the packages of alternate abilities that are APG archetypes, these are singular abilities which can be swapped in for normal class abilities (though the choice, once made, is permanent). Sixteen are presented, ranging from things like being able to gain a swim speed instead of woodland stride, intimidating animals instead of befriending them, or growing more skilled with a weapon (that is, gaining bonus feats for their combat style) instead of adapting to a new terrain.
After this, we’re then presented with two new alternate capstone abilities – new abilities that can be taken at 20th level instead of the normal master hunter ability. Essentially, these are also alternate class features, but they’re presented in their own section, something I thought was pretty cool, since capstone abilities are the rewards you get for playing a class through to the end. The first ability, veteran hunter, lets you be immune to one power of one specific sort of creature, while undying hunter keeps you alive despite hit point loss while fighting a favored enemy.
Following this, we’re given nine new combat styles that rangers can take. In a display of innovation, not all of these are actually focused around combat – rather, some let a ranger focus on doing something particularly well. The “beast master” combat style instead grants feats (several of them from this book) focused around connecting and bonding with an animal companion much closer. The “runner” combat style focuses on being quick and nimble.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t more traditional combat style choices here, however. From spear-fighter to mounted combat to mage-killer to trapper (using a net and bola), there are plenty of great options presented.
The section on spell-less rangers follows. These rules focus around a ranger giving up all spellcasting progression, in exchange for which they gain increased abilities with their combat style. That is, they gain several new combat-style class abilities at 11th, 13th, and 16th levels. Such new abilities are given for the nine new combat styles presented here, as well as the original two-weapon fighting and archery combat styles.
The book closes out with twenty-nine new feats. I found myself wishing that they’d included a table that listed them for easy reference; one of those things that you don’t realize how helpful it is until it’s not there. That said, the feats do a good job in presenting new options, with many being focused around animal companions – A Second Set of Eyes and Ears lets you add a bonus to your companions Perception checks, or to yours, or example. Companion’s Stride lets your animal companion use Woodland Stride. There are a number of great feats here.
Unfortunately, there are some problems here too. A few feats, like Death From Afar – which lets you coup-de-grace an enemy with a ranged weapon, so long as they’re unaware of you and flat-footed, from two ranged increments or less away – seem too powerful. Others make mistakes, like Sundering Critical letting you critical hit objects or constructs, despite the latter being vulnerable to crits already in Pathfinder. And a few just make what seem like simple errors, like several feats having “Expert Cast” as a prerequisite when it’s likely they mean “Expert Weaver.”
Still, despite its weaknesses Rangers Renewed does a lot to live up to its name. Even with the APG presenting quite a few new ranger options, most of the alternate combat styles and class abilities are innovative and present new options that aren’t found elsewhere. Alongside more than two dozen new feats and an interesting new way to have spell-less rangers, there’s a lot in Rangers Renewed that really does renew what the ranger class can do. Pick this book up and try something new with your ranger, instead of being another Aragorn knock-off.
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I’ve always enjoyed the fact that Pathfinder uses the same stats for creatures and NPCs that it does for player-characters. This is not only a nod towards ease of use – since what’s good for the PCs is good for the monsters and vice versa – but also allows for some interesting combinations when you begin to freely mix and match. Case in point, Faces of the Tarnished Souk: The Ghost-Light That Dreamed, Gozutozawa.
Gozutozawa, the Ghostlight That Dreamed, is an excellent example of a monster using PC-oriented resources, fleshed out with some new material, that creates a truly innovative character. In this case the eponymous Gozutozawa is a will-o-wisp with levels of summoner…and its eidolon is a human named Lucky.
The base form of Gozutozawa, which has an impressive amount of levels as well as two templates, is a hefty foe at CR 21 (with full stats for its eidolon, of course). The book also presents two lower-level versions for GMs interested in introducing this unique character to their group before it’s reached the pinnacle of its power.
Of course, this PDF is far more interesting for what it presents that round out the character. For example, we’re told what Gozutozawa’s hope, aspiration, and goals are should you place the character within the context of Coliseum Morpheuon (though the character works anywhere) along with a sidebar about ways to integrate the character into the game.
It’s after this that we see the new mechanics (and a few reprinted from other sources), and these are what truly make the character. Along with two new feats that let a creature like a will-o-wisp cast when it has no arms or voice, there’s a method for implanting ioun stones in a creature’s body, and a series of new magic items which include a generous number of new ioun stones.
Finally, we come to the new summoner archetype – the monstrous summoner. This doesn’t truly swap out any existing class abilities. Instead, it makes their eidolon have a humanoid form with a few mechanical modifications, and opens up some new potential evolutions. Finally, we have the new Crafty and Tough templates, which are tightly focused in strengthening a creature in their respective areas.
Gozutozawa isn’t just an incredibly innovative character, it’s also a great sourcebook for making characters that blend the line between monsters and characters. A will-o-wisp that summons a person is just the beginning of the possibilities that are presented here. The Ghostlight That Dreamed is a sweet dream that will bring a lot to your campaign.
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It’s always been a bit difficult to depict a robot chick that’s actually sexy. This isn’t to say that it’s impossible, but in the cases where it happens it’s usually that she’s a perfect gynoid, who can’t really be distinguished from her human counterparts; any robotic bits are seen as something of a failing in that they detract from her arousing appearance. As the ideas for technology have become more advanced (to say nothing of technology itself), however, we’ve started to imagine women like Eve Sylver, the subject of Dakkar Unlimited’s Character Studies #4, who are made of metal and yet sacrifice none of the sensuality of the feminine form. Let’s take a closer look.
The book opens with a brief overview of what it presents and what other Hot Chicks RPG books it references. This last part is key because, in my opinion, the Hot Chicks role-playing game is starting to get lost in its own mythos. For example, Eve Sylver as she appears here (she’s been featured in earlier Hot Chicks supplements) has already undergone the events of Inner Darkness 2: The Depravity War…but not the events of Villain-Net, which build off of the ideas presented here.
Now, none of this invalidates the usefulness of this product. Eve’s stat block is solid, with a minor caveat that it’s been altered for where she is at this point in her life, and works just fine in a game. Similarly, her back-story up until now is engaging and doesn’t require any other supplements to understand. It’s just that, if you’re looking for a cohesive narrative through the various Hot Chicks supplements (such as Eve’s development), you need to do some careful research on what products follow which others.
Having said that, Eve’s history is not a robot per-se, but rather is a person made of living metal. She has DNA and biological functions, just with a metal form. Her history is short but intense, and sets up several of Eve’s natural enemies (and a few allies as well).
For all of that, it should be mentioned that fifty-two pages of this sixty-four page PDF are full-page illustrations of Eve. These are all done in 3D computer graphic images, something which is Dakkar’s signature style. These have no titles or captions, which makes them somewhat hard to navigate (and the lack of bookmarks is no help there), which all of the pictures being single full color images.
The pictures themselves give us about forty images of Eve standing and apparently posing for the camera (it should be mentioned that most, but not all, of these have a fully developed background as well). The first twenty or so feature Eve in her natural, metallic form, and show her progressively stripping down until she’s naked. The next twenty repeat this process (using different poses of course; the pictures aren’t just repeated) but this time with Eve in her full-body makeup that she wears to disguise herself as a human. Then there are a little over a dozen images of Eve’s fight with Lillith.
One thing should be noted about Eve’s nude pictures is that they’re all erotica, rather than porn. What that means is that, while we’re getting to see Eve naked, it’s arousing but never what could be called lewd or lascivious. For example, Eve does playfully pose for the camera, but her legs are almost always kept shut, and she’s never touching herself; we never get a good look directly between her legs, and she’s always alone in the sexy pictures. In other words, these pictures are fairly tame, despite Eve showing off her T&A.
The book closes out with a word from the authors regarding their development of Eve’s character, along with a number of adventure seeds and where Eve is likely to go from here.
Overall, Eve’s character study is about four-fifths gallery and one-fifth character information. This isn’t a bad thing, as Eve is quite pleasing to the eye, but I found myself wishing that her gallery would have ventured beyond softcore nudity. It’s also somewhat ironic to read about what Eve’s future might possibly hold, when we know how her quest for vengeance turns out (though again, this doesn’t detract from the product).
My real complaints about the book are it’s lack of anything allowing for ease of navigation (bookmarks would have helped quite a bit here) and that, for all the talk about how Eve is a metal-yet-biological person, there’s no game stats for anyone who wishes to run a character like her (that said, you could try to reverse-engineer her character sheet).
With that said, this is still a solid and sexy book about one of the iconic Hot Chicks of the eponymous RPG. Eve has a lot of tie-ins to other characters and organizations of the Hot Chicks world, and plays an important role in shaping things. Her character is one you won’t regret studying.
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Feats are one of the best and most obvious ways to differentiate characters. Two characters of the same race, class, and level can be radically different depending on what feats they take, not just mechanically but also in terms of characterizing what sort of person they are and what their background is. Now design feats based around the inquisitor class from the APG – a class which is already full of flavor – and you’ve got some exceptionally colorful feats waiting to happen. Case in point, Advanced Feats: The Inquisitor’s Edge.
This sixteen page book introduces thirty new feats, only four of which are specific to the inquisitor class. The remaining feats cover thematic areas that the class excels at, but which most other characters could conceivably fill. For example, the Track Spirits feat lets you track incorporeal creatures, whereas Magical Savant lets you treat one mental ability score as though it were 4 points higher only for the purpose of determining what level of spells you can learn and cast.
Of course, the best part of this book (and indeed, all books in the Advanced Feats series) is the author’s insights, presented with a small commentary section at the end of each feat. Getting to peek “behind the curtain” as it were has always been both entertaining and informative, and this is no exception. The author telling us how the Eschew Divine Focus feat can be used to make an inquisitor who goes undercover since he doesn’t need a holy symbol is as evocative as it is fun.
There are also three sample class builds at the end of the book. These present a series of specific steps (telling you race to take, what feats to take when, what ability scores to raise, etc.) to make an inquisitor that excels in a certain area. These are the bloodhound (specializing in tracking down his prey and giving it a beat down), the wolf in sheep’s clothing (specializing in infiltration via lies and enchantments to make people think they’re trustworthy), and the detective (a Sherlock Holmes-esque blend of crime solver and skilled combatant using an enemy’s weaknesses against them). Each of these also has a sidebar covering the themes that these characters tend to deal with in game.
Unfortunately, a few errors did creep into the book. In a few places the author lists the Track feat (which doesn’t exist in Pathfinder) as a prerequisite. That’s a bit of an embarrassment (though certainly an understandable one) for one of the primary guys behind the Netbook of Feats. Also, in a number of places where there’s supposed to be a dash there’s instead a boxed X symbol, which throws off the next letter’s formatting slightly. These are small things, but they do mar what’s otherwise a flawless book.
Having said that, this book is still an excellent addition to any Pathfinder game. The new feats it presents are a boon to any character, particularly inquisitors, and the sample builds offer some great ideas about how to make an inquisitor that performs a given suite of tasks exceptionally well. Give your inquisitor an edge with Advanced Feats: The Inquisitor’s Edge.
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Rite Publishing’s Coliseum Morpheuon was a watershed product for the Pathfinder community, providing not only an excellent mini-campaign specifically designed for high-level play, but also providing a great new backdrop for campaigning. This was best highlighted by the incredibly colorful and diverse cast of characters that inhabited the city around the Coliseum. Given that, I was quite pleased to see that Rite Publishing is expanding that roster with their Faces of the Tarnished Souk line, which continues with Dark Lady Ninyante, Mistress of Venom.
A fifteen page PDF file, the product is fully bookmarked, which is always a plus, even for shorter books. The page borders are quite ornate, in Rite’s signature style, which may make printing somewhat difficult. Several black and white interior illustrations are spread throughout the book, showing Ninyante herself and a few of her toys, among other pictures.
The book opens with an overview of Lady Ninyante and her place in the City of the Coliseum. A poison-merchant and socialite, a sidebar covers several ways to intermingle her into a campaign with the PCs – delightfully, there’s also information specific to Coliseum Morpheuon, as it outlines plot threads from that book, and lists Ninyante’s dreams (for dreamburning rules).
Ninyante herself is presented next, providing a stat block that’s every bit worthy of its 21 Challenge Rating. Following this are two new feats, one to grant a creature the Poison Use ability, the other of which lets you make a poison specific to a creature; there’s even a way it lets you poison a creature normally immune to poison, on top of that! Further are three new magic items, all of which Ninyante herself uses. I quite liked these, as one of the big draws among the NPCs of the Coliseum was how they’re not only unique, but have unique stats and equipment. The PCs shouldn’t know exactly what they’re up against, as they’re just a few more fishes in a very big pond.
We’re then treated to two more stat blocks for Ninyante, each at lower CRs. It’s never explicitly stated, but these are probably for campaigns that want a lower-level NPC to use. I can understand that, but perhaps more could have been done here, like outlining that these were Ninyante as she was gaining power and rising up through the ranks of the Tarnished Souk.
Helpfully, the book then lists in full the two templates used in Ninyante’s construction: the Amalgam and Spellpowered templates. While both of these are from other sourcebooks, it was nice to see them here (and updated to Pathfinder as well). I consider this a bonus, since these are among the most versatile of all templates – one lets you merge two creatures into a new creature, and the other lets you assign any number of spell-like abilities.
Overall, this book adds a great new character in the tradition of Coliseum Morpheuon, helping to round out and present new opportunities for such a rich, evocative location. Ninyante, if used as more than a direct antagonist, presents some great opportunities for characters to make an uneasy ally or deadly new enemy among the Coliseum. And like other NPCs in that place, she can easily cross paths with the characters simply because she has a relationship with someone else the PCs might know. Even if you don’t play Coliseum Morpheuon, this is still an exotic, powerful character that’ll add a lot to your game. Pick your poison with this latest entry among the Faces of the Tarnished Souk!
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Creator Reply: |
I wanted to thank Shane o' Conner for taking the time to do a review of our product. Steve Russell Rite Publishing. 5/5 Snoopy happy dance of joy. |
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It’s funny that modern-setting RPGs aren’t as popular as their fantastic equivalents (or so it seems to me, at least). One would think that it’d be easier to play a game where the world in question is one we’re so much more familiar with. But perhaps it’s that familiarity that works against a modern RPG, since its failings regarding accurately portraying some facet of modern life are thrown into relief much more starkly. For instance, the way that celebrities and other pop culture personalities are able to let their fame work for them – something that Building Blocks: Active Reputation attempts to address.
The Building Blocks series presents a single new aspect to Modern d20 games, presenting a new organization, an NPC, and an optional rule that support a given idea. In this case, it’s using a character’s Reputation score proactively, rather than something that is made on the GM’s part to see if an NPC recognizes a character.
In my opinion, the best way to go about doing this would be to present the new mechanics, and then follow them up with an NPC to serve as an example for the new rules, and then the new organization to create a backdrop that helps bring those rules into the game world. The problem is, Building Blocks: Active Modern gets it backwards.
The book (after the introduction) talks about the new organization, Campbell Daniels Industries. While primarily a construction crew, its thrill-seeking president (the new NPC) uses it primarily to fund whatever activities he thinks will get him back into the public eye. We’re given the history of the company, some skill check DCs for learning about it or its owner, and then the NPC stat block for Campbell Daniels himself.
It’s only after this that we’re presented with the new rules for Reputation, and this is where things become a real letdown. Instead of presenting any sort of detailed new rules for actively using one’s Reputation to influence people, what we’re given is largely a couple of suggestions, largely boiling down to “use the Reputation score for a Charisma check, or some skill checks, or with a feat.” It’s a real disappointment, and comes across as an afterthought, when it should be the central aspect of the book.
Building Blocks: Active Reputation isn’t a bad book by any stretch of the imagination. It presents a new organization without any problems, gives us a solid NPC stat block, and has some good ideas. The problem is that none of these are anything that a competent GM couldn’t have generated on their own, and with ease and only a short amount of time. The company is fairly boilerplate, the NPC one-dimensional, and the new rules aren’t rules but suggestions. For a book that wants to increase the uses of Reputation, it doesn’t live up to the reputation it wants to project.
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I can sympathize with the sentiment behind Super Genius Games’s newest product line. Sometimes you really just want to ignore the flavor text and get straight to the new rules, so see where you can add them into your home game. In that regard, it’s also nice to see a line of short projects in this regard, since it lets them pitch ideas without worrying too much about them being viable enough to sustain a larger sourcebook. Case in point is the latest release: 7 Stupid Weapon Designs.
This three page product (opening, game rules, and OGL) presents seven weapons which are all fairly ridiculous. These are the bastard club (a really big piece of wood), the battle lute (a lute that you bash things with), the spiked codpiece (when yours just has to be bigger), the extended pike (a 40 ft. spiked pole), the glaive-guisarme-bec-de-voulge (every kind of weird polearm ever made all rolled into one), the greatwhip (a two-handed whip), and star-chuks (five nunchucks each attached to a wrist-ring).
It should be self-evident that these are something you’d never see in a serious game (inspired by anime notwithstanding). That said, all the necessary game rules are present such that you could use these if you were insane enough to; it mentions what their damage type is, if they’re martial or exotic, if they have reach or can be used to disarm, etc. There were one or two things that looked like errors (the small-size extended pike does less damage than the medium-size extended pike), but these were easily overlooked.
My biggest complaint about this product will probably be the same that other people have, though different in the specifics: that there were stupid weapon designs that didn’t make it into this book. Where’s the sword-bolas, for example? Or the crossbow that launches greataxes? Yes, it’s good to limit yourself to one page, but there were some contenders that should have been here. Your mileage may vary though.
Overall, these weapons may be stupid, but they’re stupidly effective if you want to go over-the-top in portraying your character.
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