Reviews - Advanced Race Guide (PFRPG)

In work


Advanced Race Guide
Produced by Paizo Publishing, LLC

Get the most out of your heritage with the Pathfinder RPG Advanced Race Guide! Embrace your inner monster by playing one of 30 iconic races from mythology and gaming history, or build an entirely new race of your own. If classic races are more your style, go beyond the stereotypes for elves, dwarves, and the other core races with new options and equipment to help you stand out from the crowd.

The Pathfinder RPG Advanced Race Guide is a bold new companion to the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook. This imaginative tabletop game builds on more than 10 years of system development and an Open Playtest featuring more than 50,000 gamers to create a cutting-edge RPG experience that brings the all-time best-selling set of fantasy rules into the new millennium.

The 256-page Pathfinder RPG Advanced Race Guide includes: 

- New rules and options to help you customize all seven of the classic core races, including new racial traits, racial subtypes, and racial archetypes. 

- 30 exotic races, from mischievous goblins and reptilian kobolds to crow-headed tengus and deadly drow, each with complete rules for use as player characters, plus archetypes, alternate racial traits, and other options for maximum customization. 

- A complete and balanced system for creating an unlimited number of new races, mixing and matching powers and abilities to form characters and cultures specific to your campaign. 

- Tons of new race-specific equipment, feats, spells, and magic items for each of the races detailed! 

AND MUCH, MUCH MORE! 

ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-390-3

What can I say, this is a great book.

There are going to be more in depth reviews out there, but I'm a bit busy with real life at the moment, so I'll make this one quick.

At a Glance:
This is a 256 page full color, full-size, hard cover book. Lots of full color illustrations as is typical for Paizo's Pathfinder books. If there's one this Paizo is great at, it's creating pretty books, second only to the Legend of the Five Rings, 4th edition.

Review: The book is divided into 4 sections. Core Races, Featured Races, Uncommon Races, and the Race Builder section, which I will be using to determine the RP value of the Earthdawn PFRPG races. The 7 core races get long write-ups, 10 pages each. Compiling all the information from various sources and expanding it as far as Base Race, Alternate Racial Rules, and Favored Class options. In addition are rules for Racial Archetypes, equipment, feats, spells, magic items, etc. Alternate Races, typically covered in other games by different stat bonuses are covered by alternate abilities instead in the ARG. While I'm not a huge fan of single race equipment, I have no issue with race based archetypes, and each race gets 3 or 4 archetypes. 

The Next section  covers featured races, these are the races which are close to the power level of the core races. The 16 covered races are; Aasimar, Catfolk (probably Ian's favorite), Dhampir, Drow, Fetchlings, Goblins, Hobgoblins, Ifrits, Kobolds, Orcs, Oreads, Ratfolk, Sylphs, Tengu, Tieflings, and Undines. Each Featured race gets core race traits, alternate race traits, favored class options, and 2 racial archetypes, which is pretty good for non-core races. Of course the only way you can play these races in Pathfinder Society is to earn the Race Boon at a major convention. Each featured races also gets Equipment, Feats, Magic Items and Spells, but in less quantity than the core races. Now the let-down here is that the wonderful tables that the tieflings got in the Council of Thieves write-up is left out and that the Aasimar did not receive one of those tables as well.

The uncommon races section covers less friendly or obscure races, from the Haggish Changelings (not doppelganger ancestry, but hag ancestry) to the ancestors of ancient Azlant the Gillmen to the Shadow born Wayang of the Far East. The uncommon races are Changelings, Duergar, Gillmen, Grippli, Kitsune (a favorite), Merfolk, Nagaji, Strix, Sulis, Svivneblin, Vanara, Vishkanya, and Wayang. Each Featured race gets core race traits, alternate race traits, favored class options, and 1 racial archetypes. Each featured races also gets Equipment, Feats, Magic Items and Spells, but in less quantity than the core races.

The final section is the Race Builder. Using RP, racial points, this is a step-by-step guide to race creation. Using humans as the baseline race, at 9RP, you can find out how powerful or weak an alternate race might be. With these new rules, some companies should look at their races and possibly give them an RP value. It is an invaluable tool for Gamemasters to use to create races for their own worlds, or to accommodate a player that wants something different. The section is full of examples of common and unique races from Centaurs, Driders and Gargoyles; to Ogres, Kasatha and Wyrwoods. Use this as a guide to covert races from favorite settings into Golarion or your own setting. Create a half-contruct Pinnochio race. At the end of the section, there's a break-down of the RP for each  Core and Featured race and a few Uncommon races.

Finally the book finishes with an appendix for age (appendix 1) and height/weight (appendix 2) of each of the  core, featured and uncommon races. Appendix 3 is the class and level lists for all the spells presented in the book.

Artwork: Each race has at least one illustration and each chapter has a 2 page splash illustration. All quality artwork, as to be expected from Paizo.


Parental Rating: It's a main rulebook, so it's really tame, no cursing, some dynamic action poses but nothing horrible. Rated RPG-10.  


Value: At $39.99 it's invaluable, if you can't afford it you can always get it in PDF format for $9.99.
No I won't post it for you, support the game if you want it to stick around. Don't ask.


Overall Rating: 

19 of 20.

Review - Classic Treasures Revisited

Pathfinder Chronicles - Classic Treasures Revisited

The Ultimate Reward
Every adventurer dreams of glittering treasures and magical relics, and such remarkable rewards spur the quests and ignite the imaginations of history’s greatest heroes, driving them to greatness—or their doom. Yet above coins of gold and gem-studded baubles rise those riches that are themselves the envy of kings, the causes of calamities, and the stuff of legends. With the power to slay titanic beasts, reduce whole castles to ruin, and change the flow of fate, such mythic items fill the stories of sages and treasure seekers the world over. And now, the greatest of these wonders rest within your hands.

This compendium of curiosities reveals the magic and legacy of 10 of the most famous and infamous items and artifacts in the history of fantasy roleplaying. From the head-slicing swipes of the vorpal sword to the awesome magical might of the staff of the magi, the depthless bag of holding to the world-warping deck of many things, the investigations within reveal the mysterious creations, cunning uses, magical variations, and untold other secrets of these ultimate treasures.
No matter the campaign setting, Classic Treasures Revisited unleashes a hoard of history’s greatest magic items upon your game—along with all the adventures they inspire—and proves that true treasures never tarnish.

Highlighted treasures include:
• Bag of Holding
• Cube of Force
• Deck of Many Things
• Figurines of Wondrous Power
• Helm of Brilliance
• Horn of Valhalla
• Sphere of Annihilation
• Staff of the Magi
• Vorpal Sword
• Well of Many Worlds

This Pathfinder Chronicles book works best with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook and the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary. Although it is suitable for play in any fantasy world, it is optimized for use in the Pathfinder Chronicles campaign setting.
ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-220-3

Quick Glance: This is Paizo's typical Pathfinder Chronicle layout. You get a full color, 64-page, perfect bound book with artwork on the inside front and rear covers, and throughout. This is one of Paizo's revisited series of the chronicles books. Written by Michael Kortes, Todd Stewart, Jonathan H. Keith, Jacob Burgess, Brian Cortijo, Jeff Quick, Amber Scott and Russ Taylor.

Main Review: I love Paizo's revisited series, it really shows how inventive the team can be. This particular example takes ten classic magic items and examines, expands and introduces more and more information into the game. One of the best things this book does is give more options to the gamemaster. Each Item is written by a single author, giving a more in depth look at the item, its history, lore and variants.

Each item is laid out with the following formula: A fluff piece followed by a basic description. Then the Base Item is presented in its entirety. (This is the ONE problem I have with the book, as the items are ALL in the Core rulebook, and this is wasted space.) Utility is covered next; what the item is typically used for, its role in the game. Next up is Related items and spells; pretty sell explanatory, for example the Handy Haversack being a related item to the bag of holding, while the wall of force being a related spell to the Cube of Force. Next up is the Campaign Role, similar to the utility section, this gives more in depth as to how the item can affect the campaign world, with perhaps some campaign hooks hinted at. Variants are the next section of each description, though some items are written with better variants than others. The final section draws the items into the lore of Golarion, this is great for running games in Golarion and adding extra fluff to those knowledge rolls for bards. Included in the descriptions are also feats such as having a Figuring of Wondrous Power Animal Companion or Familiar, a la a certain drow and his panther.The book provides so much information that reviewing everything would be folly. So go to your FLGS, see if they have a copy and page through it, you'll see what I'm saying.

Artwork: As always, Paizo produces some beautiful artwork (with the exception of sometimes using inappropriate item card artwork in certain books). Cover Art by Kerem Beyit. Interior Art by Christopher Burdett, Andrew Kim, Jeremy McHugh, Hector Ortiz, Michael Phillippi, and Florian Stitz.

Cost: This volume costs $19.99 MSRP for the print version, and $13.99 for the PDF version through Paizo.

Value: Excellent! This is a fun book that gives plenty of new life to familiar items. If you're looking to change things up in your game, or looking for inspiration on how to give an old item a new life, pick this book up while you still can, Paizo doesn't do a lot of reprints, so once this one is gone, it's most likely gone.

Rating: 18/20