Quick Review - Seeker of Secrets

Happy
Holidays
to
ALL!

Another quick review of a book I quite enjoy:

Pathfinder Chronicles: Seekers of Secrets—A Guide to the Pathfinder Society (PFRPG)
Paizo Publishing, LLC

At long last, the gates of the Grand Lodge have been thrown open, offering an inside glimpse of the Pathfinder Society! Packed with information about the most famous group of explorers on Golarion, this 64-page sourcebook is a must for any campaign that involves the Society, whether as employers or rivals.

Inside, you’ll find:
• How to join the Pathfinder Society, and the rights and responsibilities of Society members
• The origin and secrets histories of the Pathfinder Society
• A detailed gazetteer covering the Pathfinder Society’s reception and activities in every nation of the Inner Sea Region
• Detailed maps and descriptions of the Grand Lodge of Absalom and the Society’s newest lodge in Magnimar, plus profiles of 15 high-ranking and notorious Pathfinders
• Thirteen new kinds of mystical ioun stones, three new variants for each type, and rules on how to implant these bizarre magic items into living flesh
• Rules for the mysterious compasses known as wayfinders, and how their ancient magic interacts with ioun stones
• Three new Pathfinder prestige classes, along with sample characters for each
• New feats and spells to help characters uncover ancient secrets—and protect their own!

This book is fully legal for play in Pathfinder Society Organized Play, Paizo’s massive world-wide organized play campaign. To learn more about Pathfinder Society Organized Play, visit paizo.com/pathfindersociety!
By Tim Hitchcock, Erik Mona, James L. Sutter, and Russ Taylor
ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-178-7

Seeker of Secrets

Pathfinder Chronicles, produced by Paizo Inc, for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. This is one of the 64 page perfect bound Pathfinder Chronicles book.

This was the first of the Pathfinder Society guides that was required for Pathfinder Society gamemasters; it has since been usurped by the Pathfinder Society Field Guide.

This book gives lots of fluff, lots of background information, for running or playing in a Pathfinder Society campaign. The book is broken into 3 chapters. The first 24 pages cover "Welcome to the Pathfinder Society", this is mostly background information, with some crunch thrown in, in the form of 3 feats and 6 spells. The background information covers everything from joining the Society, duties, and training; to how the society operates and is seen around the world of Golarion. A Bit of Crunchy fluff is the 15 important figures of the Pathfinder Society scattered throughout the book, from Venture-Captains to the Master of Swords. The last bit of the chapter is the 402 year timeline.

The second chapter, "Where Secrets Sleep", primarily concerns itself with the different lodges around Golarion. The map of the Grand Lodge in Absalom is particularly gorgeous, as well as Heidmarch manor. While this chapter contains lots of information, it's definitely directed toward Pathfinder Society GMs. 

This 3rd and final chapter is "Tools of the Trade" This is the crunchy chapter, this is where the book introduces a few mundane items, and some magic items; but most importantly it expands the Ioun Stone entry, bringing several new cuts, and qualities to the stone, in addition they now interact with Wayfinders (See Inner Sea World Guide), to create additional effects. The last part of the chapter deals with Common Pathfinder Society prestige classes, three of them, the Pathfinder Delver, Pathfinder Savant and the Student of War. The Pathfinder Delver is a hybrid rogue/bard without the spells; or spell advancement, this is a real shame as the Prestige Class would have been much more enticing had it had a partial spell progression, since it also had no sneak attack it takes away far too much to be of real use. The Pathfinder Savant is a very good PrC, designed for PFS play, as it is a 7 level PrC, and you can enter it at 6th, meaning you can proceed to the final level of the PrC in PFS play. The class gives up a level  of spellcasting, not too bad, as the class grants lots of UMD based bonuses, and the ability to add non-class spells to your spell list is a great boon. The caster requirements only require the ability to cast 2nd level spells, so  it's easy to enter with a variety of classes, any can qualify though paladins and rangers won't be able to proceed to max PrC level. The final PrC is the Student of War. The Student of War Prestige class is for the intelligent melee combatant. It gives up the standard class powers for 4+int skills, and some decent powers, not optimized for PFS as you can only make 7th level, and the 2 best abilities are at 8th and 10th. 

Cost/Value: The standard $19.99 price that all the 64 page Pathfinder Campaign Setting/Chronicles books cost. This particular one is valuable to people playing in a Pathfinder Society game. I know I'll b eusing it for my PFS characters to enhance my Wayfinder. IF you're playing a Pathfinder Society Game, this can be an invaluable resource; even though much has been updated by Pathfinder Society Field Guide (also an invaluable resource).  90% overall rating.

OK so this wasn't as quick a review as I thought it was going to be...but, still a good book.

RPG NEWS! Pathfinder Bestiary Box

So one of the coolest things I enjoyed about the Beginner Box is the pawns. But in May, Paizo will be releasing the the Bestiary Box. 250 new pawns!! This I'm excited about, especially for the $34.95 price tag. so less than 15 cents per pawn. That's a great value.

original article: ICV2  

Review - Book of Beasts – Monsters of the River Nations

This is a review I did last year before the Blog took off, so here's a re-print of it for the blog:

Book of Beasts-Monsters of the River Nations

Disclaimer: This is a review of material provided to me free of charge for the purpose of review. 

Produced by Jon Brazer Enterprises, available from Paizo as a PDF for $5.00

First Glance:
From a quick perusal, it looks very promising. Nice artwork, bold trade dress, and 20 unique monsters and 7 additional pages of material.

In Depth:
Many low CR monsters, from the stumble fish to the Night Caller and Mature Piranha. Though my favorite of the new monsters is the Giant Fly Trap, I’ve always had a soft spot for nature fighting back. The Dire Fly Trap is even more vicious. Those are my favorites, there are a few of the monsters I’m not as convinced with. The Addanc has a strange name, which is an odd crocodile/beaver aberration. I’m not a fan of the Hatethrall Demon since it’s a disembodied head is strange for a demon, and the Hydrus has a new Combat maneuver, which doesn’t have an explanation, in addition it’s a bit of an undercon at ½ CR. The other monsters are all well-crafted creatures.

Extras:
In addition to being a monster book, it is a resource book for the River Nations campaign setting (not to be confused with the River Kingdoms of Golarion.)
To this end, the first appendix is Konrad the Bandit King and his Cursed Brethren, the second is Grammy Beshic, an ancient gnome with a dark secret. The Grammy Beshic entry includes three adventure hooks.
New gambling games and a new drug, Kobold Krack, though it’s primarily something particularly vicious GM might use with some kobold barbarians.
The best part of any Monster book is the templates. The Book of Beasts introduces 5 new templates; drunk, enraged, fey-touched, hungry and river-born. Though I would probably not use the drunk template, since it only emulates the sickness of being drunk, not the rage side.
8 new diseases grace the final appendix of the book, not only bringing such common maladies such as Influenza, Bird Flu, and the Common cold into Pathfinder; but also Faire Fever (fantasy version of Con Crud); Dryad Pox (my fave), Mountain Air Plague, Owlbear Filth, and River Sickness. The only problem is they’re only stat blocks, with no fluff.

In Conclusion:
A strong book, with something useful for almost any campaign, it’s not perfect, but I do recommend it.

Wednesday Review - Ultimate Magic Part 1 of 2

In keeping with the GenCon month. I'm going to review Ultimate Magic this week rather than a boardgame. The Weekend review will be Ultimate Combat.

Product Description from Paizo.com:

Unlock the magical mysteries of the Pathfinder RPG with this exhaustive guide to the art of magic, an invaluable resource for players and Game Masters alike!

This comprehensive 256-page hardcover reference unveils the magical secrets of the Pathfinder rules like never before. Tons of new tricks and techniques for every spellcasting class in the game fill the book, ranging from arcane secrets uncovered by studious wizards to dazzling ki-tricks performed by canny monks to new mutagens for alchemists, new oracle mysteries, specialized channel energy options for clerics, and more.

Ultimate Magic also introduces the latest Pathfinder RPG base class: the magus. Combining arcane spells with practiced martial skill, the magus incorporates elements of the warrior and wizard to walk a path balanced between two deadly efficient extremes. All this plus more than 100 new spells for all spellcasting classes, an innovative new “words of power” spellcasting system, a complete system for 1-on-1 spell duels, and more.

Ultimate Magic includes:
• New player character options for all 14 spellcasting Pathfinder RPG base classes, including alchemist discoveries and bombs, specific bard performances, specialized uses for channel energy, expanded druid domains and rules for vermin companions, new inquisitor archetypes, ki tricks, alternative oracle curses and revelations, new sorcerer bloodlines, additional summoner eidolon abilities and eidolon templates, new witch hexes and patrons, wizardly arcane discoveries, and more!
• The Magus, a brand-new 20-level base class that mixes wizardry with martial skill
• Extensive overviews of new and existing magic subsystems such as condition-based magic, cooperative casting, magical organizations, unpredictable primal magic, counterspelling, binding outsiders, crafting golems, etc.
• Lots of new familiars
• Premade spellbooks suitable for use at all levels of play
• Tons of new feats specifically designed for magic-using characters
• Brand new “words of power” alternative magic system
• More than 100 brand new spells!
• …and much, much more!

ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-299-9

Pathfinder Ultimate Magic Review

This is a review of the Ultimate Magic for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, as published by Paizo, under the OGL.

irst Glance: Paging through the book, the first thing you come across is the Magus, the new Fighter/Mage hybrid class. The next thing you come across is the magic based archetypes. One of the most enticing new things I ran across in the book is the Construct modifications rules; rules that have been sorely needed. They brought in special spellbooks, similar to the old pages from the mages articles from Dragon magazine. Then you run across the Words of Power rules, spells.

Main Review:

Chapter 1: Spellcasters

Let’s start with the Magus, I was leery of this class during beta testing of it, it’s a hard thing to make a combat mage balanced without stripping it of its appeal. I feel the magus does that. For the record, I hate the name Magus for this class and I feel that feedback in regards to the name was ignored. The magus is limited to level 6 spells, which is on par with the other caster heavy hybrids. (Combat heavy hybrids being limited to 4^th level spells.) Unfortunately the magus is still a prepared spell class; perhaps an alternate spontaneous class will be added later. Magus are able to fight with a one handed weapon and cast a spell with the other. Their real power comes with the Magus Arcana they can learn, like rogue talents, yet giving them a broad range of abilities. Eventually they gain heavy armor proficiency, thus the ability to cast spells and wear heavy armor, when out of spells, the ability to use martial weapons, keeps them in the fight.

Alchemists:

25 new discoveries, many are bomb discoveries, from blinding bombs to sunlight and tanglefoot bombs.Healing touch can transform the alchemist into an assistant healer. Several others give aberrant additions such as tentacles, vestigial wings, or the ultra creepy tumor familiar. 8 new archetypes, the Chirurgeon, lets the alchemist become a true healer. Others include Clone Master, Internal Alchemist, Mindchemist, Preservationist, Psychonaut, Reanimator, and the Vivisectionist.

Bards:

Bards gain a entirely new feat-like mechanic called Masterpieces; though they can be acquired by sacrificing a spell slot in lieu of a feat. Everquest™ fans will enjoy Triple Time the most, as it is a group speed increase, 10ft land speed increased for 1 hour, for a cost or 1 bardic performance rd. Now all you need is a drum that doubles the speed. Ever wanted to be a celebrity in the game? Well you can choose the celebrity archetype and be just that. Other Bard Archetypes include, the Animal Speaker, Demagogue, Dirge bard, the Asian inspired Geisha, Songhealer, and the Sound Striker.

Clerics:

Variant Channeling, this introduces a new mechanic, domain based alternate effects, for the cost of half the healing channel. Only four new archetypes, the Cloistered Cleric, the Separatist, Theologian, and the Undead Lord. The Undead Lord lets you play the divine based Necromancer….complete with a Corpse Companion.

Druids:

Druids get a slew of Animal and terrain based domains, which helps differentiate them from clerics more, whether it’s a Mountain Domain druid or an Eagle druid. Vermin companions, are introduced in this book. A bunch of new archetypes are introduced, including the Menhir Savant, Pack Lord, Mooncaller, Reincarnated druid, and the Storm Druid. The new shaman types are the Dragon Shaman, and the Saurian Shaman, one of my favorites, Tyrannosaur at level 1, advances to large at level 7….nice.

Inquisitosr:

A new type of domain is introduced for inquisitors, inquisitions, which replace some of the worthless domains. New archetypes include the Exorcist, Heretic, Infiltrator, Preacher and Sin Eater. Of these archetypes, I feel the Sin Eater is the most creative, the character must eat the sins of their enemy, kind of like counting coup of certain Native American tribes. By ‘eating’ their sins, you deny their soul to their god.

Magus:

So even though the class is new, there are four archetypes, The Black Blade’s bonded weapon is an intelligent weapon that grows with the magus and has an arcane pool of its own. The Hexcrafter borrows a little from the witch. Spellblades use force magic and have three of their own arcane. Finally the Staff Magus is a master of the quarterstaff, actually gaining the Quarterstaff Master at first level as a bonus feat. Which is pretty big, it allows taking weapon specialization, even with no fighter levels, and ignores the pre-req of weapon focus. There is a broken build currently, the Dervish Dance feat build (Inner Sea World Guide), I only say it’s broken because its almost a no brainer, because the dex becomes the to hit, damage, and ac modifier. In addition, the 18-20 crit threat of the scimitar works especially well to deliver extra spell critical damage during a spell strike. Watch out for Kobold wielding scimitars…

Monk:

What’s the monk doing in Complete Magic? Well they’re working on their Ki powers. Namely through the use of Monk Vows, but also with the Qinggong monk, which allows the monk to swap out powers similar to an archetype but much more freeform, even allowing you to select a swapped power from a lower level and get it later. This is something I pushed for during Beta, and I’m very glad to see it in print now.

Oracle:

Several new mysteries are Ancestor, Dark Tapestry, Metal, Time and Wood. Brining Wood and Metal in completes the five eastern elements for oracles as well. I would like to see a unified Five elements mystery as well. The Dual Cursed archetype allows the oracle to have two mysteries, at a price. Other archetypes include the Enlightened Philosopher, Planar Oracle, Possessed Oracle, Seer, and the Stargazer.

Paladin

Paladins have a new archetype which opens up lots of new options, the Oathbound Paladin. Once the oathbound archtype is chosen, multiple non conflicting oaths may also be taken, this gives the oathbound more restrictions role-playing wise as they must abide by their oaths and their deities code of conduct. The big thing that comes with the oaths is access to oath spells, like domain spells.Oath against Corruption adds true strike to the paladin’s list of spells, in addition to acute sense, touch of idiocy and spell immunity, for example. Other oaths against x, include Fiends, Savagery, Undeath and Wyrms. To round out the list of Oaths, are Charity, Chastity, Loyalty and Vengeance.

Rangers:

Rangers only have one Archetype in Ultimate Magic, The Trapper. The Trapper grants access to new Ranger traps in lieu of spellcasting, which is good to have another option for those who don’t want spellcasting rangers. The interesting thing about ranger traps, they aren’t just normal mechanical traps, they can be magical or mechanical, and can even be set “cast” by an arrow. This is especially insidious with the Swarm Trap…

Sorcerers

In addition to new Bloodlines, 2 new archetypes make their appearance, the Crossblooded, which is very similar to the Dual Cursed Oracle. And the mutated Wildblooded archetype which uses the subdomain mechanics reskinned for sorcerers, of which the Bedrock wild bloodline works off of the Deep Earth bloodline, and is defense oriented, which is a nice one for summoner type sorcerers as the arcana grants your summoned creatures DR (1/2 sorc level)/adamantine. The Bloodline power is Iron Hide at 9^th level, which grants sorclevel rounds per day of DR10/adamantine. The new bloodlines are Accursed, Djinni, Efretti, Maestro, Marid, Rakshasa and Shaitan. While the Rakshasa line isn’t ultra powerful, it is one of my favorite, I might run a Tiefling (rakshasa heritage) Sorceror with the Rakshasa bloodline after the Advanced Races Guide hits the shelves.

Summoner:

The main focus of the summoner additions is templates for easy eidolon creations. Very nice resource if your trying to get a specific look for your eidolon. Also nice for new players and for the GM on the go. New evolutions of note are the magic evolutions. Four new archetypes are introduced, The Broodmaster, Evolutionist, Synthesist and the Master Summoner, which gives up significant power for their eidolon for greater summon monster ability, and the ability to have their eidolon and summoned monsters up at the same time.

Witch

New Hexes, lots of them, and creepy NPC oriented ones to boot, such as Child Scent (ala Hansel and Gretl) ,Poison Steep (perfect for those poisoned apples), the cannibalistic Cook People, and Witch Hut, perfect for those Baba Yaga witch. Alternative patron themes are given. In addition four archetypes, Beast Bonded, Gravewalker, Hedge Witch and the Sea Witch; the Hedge witch is a good adventuring healer based witch.

Wizard:

Arcane Discoveries are the first new rules for wizards, which may be taken in place of the bonus feats. The two missing Oriental schools, wood and metal are introduced, making way for the Asian themed characters. The only archetype is a very cool concept, the Scrollmaster which can use scrolls as either shield or weapons, and of course, they received improved scroll casting at level 10, letting them cast scrolls as normal spells.

Due to the amount of text in this post, I'm going to split the review into two parts.

Ultimate Magic Part 2

Weekend Review - Advanced Player's Guide

Pathfinder Advanced Player’s Guide Review

This is a review of the Advanced Player’s Guide for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, as published by Paizo, under the OGL.

First Glance: When you page through the book you’ll first run across race options, from the pyromaniac gnome to the chain fighting half-orc. Next you come across the new classes, The Alchemist, Summoner, Oracle, Inquisitor, Witch and Cavalier; filing in some missing spaces in the class line-up. Next you come across the Core class options, the introduction of archetypes, and pretty much that’s where my personal first glance stopped, as I became fully engrossed in the options.

Main Review:

Chapter 1: Races

This chapter deals with races, each racial entry is broken into adventurers, alternate racial traits and favored class options. The adventurer’s section describes how each race fits into the different classes. Alternate Racial traits, give more options, by allowing a player to swap out different abilities.

Chapter 2: Class Options

This is pure perfection, to me anyway; of course it’s based on some of the work in the complete guides from 3.5, as they were the original options that swapped out class abilities for new focused class abilities. But, somehow Paizo does it so much better, fully capturing the essence of the different classes. Effectively an archetype works in such a way as to replace certain class abilities, for example, a fighter archetype, The Crossbowman, gives up the standard armor and weapon training lines to gain abilities which make him deadly with a crossbow, eventually getting the ability to make trip or bulrush attacks with the crossbow, or shooting through a target on a critical. One of the things archetypes have allowed is for classes such as the paladin and ranger to drop spell-use; the skirmisher ranger archetype replaces spell use with ranger tricks, which are similar to rogue talents.

This book provides so many options that you can easily play a multitude of ideas. The additional classes are some of my personal favorites, I have a Battle Oracle that’s a monster in combat, and an inquisitor that is one of my all time favorite classes, especially as I’m working on making her a dazzling display master. I have a dwarven monk, using both the Hungry Ghost and Monk of the Sacred Mountain archetype, which replaces most of the standard monk abilities, for a very fun alternate monk.

Aside from archetypes, lots of new options are presented. Barbarians get almost 50 new rage powers to choose from. For clerics, 66 subdomains have been introduced; for example the rage subdomain can be chosen instead of the destruction domain, allowing the cleric to rage at level 8 and even get rage powers at 12 and 16. Rangers have five new combat styles introduced, crossbow, mounted, natural weapon, two-handed, and weapon & shield, a much desired array of combat styles that were asked for during Beta testing. Rogues gain 20 new talent choices plus 12 new advanced talents. Sorcerers get 10 new bloodlines to choose from, including serpentine and shadow. Wizards get some love with the elemental schools, earth, air, fire and water. They also receive the new ‘focused arcane’ schools, the teleportation focused school allows the shift ability in lieu of the acid dart power. The Antipaladin makes its triumphant return to the game with the new Antipaladin alternate class.

Chapter 3: New feats.

With dozens and dozens of new feats, I’m only going to say, that some of the new feats close gaps in what you could normally do in combat. In addition, race feats are introduced; feats such as Razor Tusk or Racial Heritage.

Chapter 4: Equipment

New weapons, armor, alchemical creations are always nice.

Chapter 5: Spells

Almost 50 pages of news spells.

Chapter 6: Prestige Classes

Adds the following prestige classes: Battle Herald, Holy Vindicator, Horizon Walker, Master Chymist, Master Spy, Nature Warden, Rage Prophet, and the Stalwart Defender.

Chapter 7: Magic Items

Always fun in a book.

Chapter 8: New Rules

Combat maneuvers; 4 new combat maneuvers are introduced which are definitely gap fills. The age old Dirty Trick maneuver, such as sand in the face, is introduced, it was missing and needed. Drag, which was most assuredly over looked. Reposition, grab your opponent and move him against the wall. And the steal maneuver, snatch something off your opponent, oops, were you looking for that heal potion. Pathfinder introduces its own Hero Point system. Including hero point related feats and spells, and magic items. Traits are given their Pathfinder update in this volume, including updating the campaign traits from Rise of the Runelords AP.

Artwork: Epic! The artwork as always is littered with the iconics, making the entire book feel cohesive to the system. The artwork at the beginning of each chapter is dynamic, typical of Wayne Reynolds artwork. Each of the new classes receives its own WAR artwork.

Replay Value: The archetype options alone in the Advanced Player’s Guide provide so many combinations, that you could play hundreds of games and never play the exact same character. Even if you’re someone who enjoys a particular concept, reusing the name and vision of your character, you could play a dozen or more times, with slight modifications, using the same character.

Comprehension Level: There’s a lot of variation in this book, a good comprehension of the core rules is required before venturing into APG territory.

Game Mastering: This supplement adds a lot of complexity to an already complex game, make sure you review the material before allowing players to take options from this book. However, it’s fun to have more options as a game master as well.

Price Tag: The Advanced Player’s Guide will cost you $39.99, however, Paizo has a nice price point for their PDFs and that is only $9.99.

Value: For me, it’s well worth the money. I love complex characters and not necessarily optimized characters, this lets me have more and more options.

Overall Rating: EPIC! The amount of freedom you gain as a player is amazing, and generally it’s all very well balanced, not a case of any particular class becoming the flavor of the month.

Note: family rating is based upon the Core rules.

ENNIES at GenCon

Watching the Twitter for the Ennies!

Dresden Files has already gotten four gold Ennies, Best Production Values and Best Writing, Best Rules, Best Game.

Red Sands 1889 for Savage Worlds gets a Silver for Best Supplement.

Paizo gets LOTS and LOTS of Ennies. Including the Gold for Best Supplement for Advanced Player's Guide. And Fan Favorite Publisher

Silver goes to Wizards of the Cost for Fans' Favorite Publisher

Gold ENnie for Product of the Year goes to Pathfinder: Advanced Player’s Guide, Paizo Publishing 

Silver ENnie for Product of the Year goes to The Dresden Files RPG, Evil Hat Productions

Gold ENnie for Best Game goes to The Dresden Files RPG, Evil Hat Productions

Newbie Advice

This just came up on the Paizo Boards, introducing someone to Pathfinder who doesn't "quite" get it.

When getting a new player into a game, it's often very easy to overwhelm them with choices.  Perhaps they have some concepts of their own. "I want to play a Wizard!" Or, they get forced into the role no one wants "Hey, why don't you play a cleric!". If the game seems too difficult, it's not likely your new friend will return to continue gaming. For a game as complex as Pathfinder, this is extremely important.

The best thing to do, is to give the new player something easy to play. What's the best thing to start a new player on. There are a few schools of thought. One is to give them a fighter or barbarian with a big weapon, point them at the enemy and let them go. Of course with the number of feats the fighter gets it can become daunting unless being guided constantly. Barbarians can be fun because of the rage powers, but that's more choices.

Another thought is to give them a sorcerer, which is easy since you don't have to memorize spells, spontaneous casting being the easy thing to do. Sorcerers can be pretty boring when they're not casting spells. (Not as bad as they were in 3.5) And the new player doesn't always know when to stay out of combat. In addition, there is a big choice to be made right at level 1 with the bloodline power, could be a good thing, or a bad thing.

My personal thoughts are for a Ranger, with enough skill points to be fun out of combat. I would make them ranged combat for their combat style. This gives the player plenty to do, but not too much. It keeps the game fun, while not overworking them. If by 5th level they feel up for spell casting then they can, if not, use the skirmisher archetype from the Advanced Player's Guide. As a Full BAB Class, it isn't difficult to hit, especially with a decent DEX.

Another important factor when it comes to neophytes is start the game at level 1. There's enough to worry about without worry about more skill points, feats, and attribute advances.

Weekend Review - Pathfinder RPG Part 1

During this month of GenCon, my reviews will be concentrating on Pathfinder.  One of the best things to happen to role-playing in the last decade was the creation of 4th edition. True it created a rift in the community for a while, with the edition wars, but though it all came rebirth. People who didn't like 4e were suddenly free to explore new systems, a resurgence in all RPGs occurred. This is how I see what happened, The giant had left the door open, and the smaller companies flooded in. We just need to keep bringing in new gamers. The Golden Age is long gone, the Dark Ages are behind us, time for the Renaissance in gaming. Amongst the new systems leading this Renaissance in gaming is Pathfinder. A new system built on the foundation of old. For a taste of the rules for those unfamiliar with Pathfinder, go to the Pathfinder Reference Document on Paizo's site!

Pathfinder Role-Playing Game Review

This is a review of the core system rules for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, as published by Paizo, under the OGL. This is an update to the 3.5 Ruleset for Dungeons & Dragons.

First Glance: This book is HUGE, and it’s HEAVY; almost 600 pages Full color, glossy print, with gorgeous artwork. Glancing through You see all the familiar faces, from the fighter to the monk, the sorcerer and wizard, druid, cleric, all the core classes are there. No Major changes to equipment, though heavy armors did get a 1 AC Value jump. Only 1 major weapon change, with the spiked chain losing its reach.

Main Review: Pathfinder RPG, premier game line of Paizo publishing. The book gives you all the rules to play the game. All the classes from 3.5 core rules are included in this edition, from the cleric to the sorcerer, the core races included as well. The races received updates, each race receives a +2 to a physical, and a +2 to a mental stat and a -2 to a stat. There are many updates to the system, some sorely needed such as the grapple rules. All maneuvers from disarms to grapple are now covered under the Combat Maneuver system. Some of the updates are just new fluff powers, wizard’s gain new school powers, all the melee classes receive amazing revisions, fighters, rangers, paladins, and rogues. Cleric domains are updated. Many save or die/suck spells were changed to be not quite so brutal. Melee classes got a major boost. However, it is still the core system, thus it still has high level play issues, where combat at the upper levels can take a long, long time, and have a lot of book keeping, though the polymorph updates definitely helped iron out some of the issues by making bonuses static, not dynamically based upon what you changed into.One really interesting change is the Hit Die change, low BAB classes all have d6s, medium have d8s and full have d10s, except the d12 barbarian exception, this makes characters a little more hardy. I like the change, many do not.

As classes were the major update to the rules. I'll concentrate a portion of the review on classes. 
Barbarians: rage powers have been updated with additional rage powers which can be activated grant special abilities such as scent, or the ability to enter a rage even when fatigued.
Bards: Bards get a major updates to the performance abilities. In addition they gain a slew of new tune abilities, culminating in the capstone ability of Deadly performance.
Clerics: Clerics get a updates to their domains, adding additional flavor to the domains, instead of just receiving the single ability, with and additional 8th level power, while the domain spells got updated. Channel energy has been updated to also be used as a healing ability. A much debated change was the loss of Heavy Armor as a starting proficiency.
Druids: Druids received few updates, with a slight shifting of wild shape uses. Wild shape receives the same polymorph updates as the others.
Fighters: Fighters are majorly updated, while the retaining the bonus feats, they gain many new abilities making them a powerful force in world, gaining Armor Training, Weapon Training, Armor Mastery and the Capstone ability Weapon Mastery.
Monks: No major updates to monks in the Core rulebook, however, with so many abilities to modify,, they become very mutable in the Advanced Player's Guide. Flurry of Blows, and Ki (type) mechanics are the only real chance to the core monk.
Paladins: Paladins get a major rework, with smite and mercy abilities, in addition, divine bond, no longer is just a mount, it was be a weapon instead. The mercy ability combines the cure disease, blindness and other powers into a pool with expanded uses. A Code of conduct is added, returning to an earlier less carefree type of Paladin, with great power....

Rangers: Rangers return to being able to take a little more abuse, as they can now wear Medium armor once more. In addition, they gain favored terrains, and hunter's bond, hunter's bond replaces the animal companion rules and allows those rangers that don't want an animal companion to for a bond with his party instead.


Rogues: Used to be a 1 level dip class, now with rogue talents, rogues are fun for much more than just a dip class. Rogue talents include many things, from minor magic or weapon finesse, to the advanced talents of dispelling attack or even an opportunist strike, free AoO one a just struck opponent. The Master Strike capstone adds a sleep, paralysis or kill effect to a sneak attack...deadly!

Sorcerers: Sorcerers, while still trailing a level behind their arcane brethren, have bloodline powers, giving a class skill, bonus known spells, and powers throughout their career, as an example, the draconic bloodline grants, claws (1st), dragon resistance (3rd), breath weapon (9th), wings (15th) and power of wyrms (20th). These bloodlines really make sorcerers different from wizards.

Wizards: Wizards get some love as well with their own schools, granting a 1st and 8th level ability based upon the school. Including a Universalist school, with a nice little metamagic ability allowing free metamagic use based upon level.

Artwork: Epic! The artwork is second only to the artwork in the new Legends of the Five Rings, and pretty much only because I have a few gripes about the equipment illustrations which are recycled from the Equipment Card set.  The solid use of the Iconic characters throughout the book really ties everything together; these iconic figures are carried through the other Paizo products.

Replay Value: Excellent, as an RPG, there’s always good replay value. Pathfinder is amazingly well suited to running long term campaigns, with the advanced books, such as the Advanced Player’s Guide, Ultimate Magic, and the upcoming Ultimate Combat.

Comprehension Level: Good. There’s a lot of information in the Core Rulebook, so much information that it can be daunting. It is well written however, and the website provides plenty of answers to FAQs. The forums at Paizo.com contain hundreds of experienced players willing to help newbies with questions as well.

Humor: Pathfinder RPG is produced as a serious RPG. Not a lot of humor going on here, it’s pretty cut & dry.

Game Mastering: To game master; This game pretty much requires experience in previous editions of Dungeons & Dragons, I personally would not recommend picking up Pathfinder with the intention of running it if you’re not already somehow familiar with the system.

Family Rating: 9 and up, due to complexity of the game.  Lots and lots of number crunching, if you’re a parent looking to pick up something as a present, and you’re not a gamer yourself, you should find a gaming group for the kids.

Price Tag:  The core rulebook will set you back $49.99, however, Paizo has a nice price point for their PDFs and that is only $9.99. The Gamemastery Guide is NOT required to play (This supplement will be reviewed in a future post). To run the game you will also need at a minimum the Bestiary in addition to the Core Rulebook. Other supplements such as the Advanced Player’s Guide and Ultimate Magic are excellent resources, which both have archetypes, which introduce many, many choice options, to your characters. In addition to new classes, and race options.

Value: For me, it’s well worth the money. This is the true successor to 3.5. This is the culmination of 30 years of D&D.

Overall Rating: EPIC! This is quickly becoming THE fantasy RPG. As it uses the base 3.x OGL system, older adventures are easily converted, or useable as is (calculate party value as 1 level higher).

Note: To properly go over this book in detail it will take several reviews, I will return to Pathfinder Core review in a redux review in the future. Truthfully I could spend an entire month reviewing just this book.  Part 2 will cover skills and feats.