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If you liked the Malefactor base class that this expands upon, you'll like this as well. It adds a prestige class that combines the Malefactor and Witch into a hex-throwing, curse-loving, unholy debuffer that looks interesting, as well as adding some ability to theme a Malefactor's curse based upon certain "unlucky" terrains (swamps, icy areas, caves, etc).
My only complaint is that it doesn't include a Hero Lab file like the original class did. It makes it a bit less useful to my Malefactor character, and would be worth an additional star if it did.
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Ask a 8 year old if dolls are creepy - chances are they'd say no. Ask a 16 year old (or older) - and chances are they say yes. We imbue dolls and mannequins with life in our imaginations as children, but as we grow older we realize that if an effigy really were alive, it would be horrifying and wrong. This fear has led to all sorts of horror scenarios, from the classic Twilight Zone Talking Tina episode to the ludicrousness of Chucky movies.
Total Party Kill Games gives you a creepy doll for your Pathfinder games with Ischadra, Grandmother of Assassins. It's a well-thought-out and thoroughly detailed description of a unique adversary. The doll has been imbued with the spirit of a fanatical, ancient assassin who reveres the god of murder and one of the things it does - quite memorably in the opening fiction - is mentor children into becoming assassins themselves. Generation after generation have lived under her dark tutelage, making this little monster the leader of potentially a whole series of assassins of various power levels.
This unique approach gives the GM many options for utilizing the monster in your game - perhaps the party comes across an assassin or two that was trained by Ischadra, and attracts its attention that way.
One terrific addition to the work is that there are hyperlinks to the Pathfinder SRD contained within the PDF, so you don't have to remember what a particular item or magical spell does, you can just click and be taken straight there. (A couple of the links don't seem to point to the right thing, though, such as the Dust of Sneezing and Choking links on p.9.) Even rules like touch attacks have a link. This makes the supplement highly useful at the table and very effective on a tablet!
A large number of related NPCs are also presented, a welcome addition to a character whose main goal is highly social - to re-create the evil assassin's cult wherever it goes.
All in all this is a really cool, dangerous monster with many different options. If I had to pick a way to improve it (other than fixing the links) it would be to provide some plot hooks that are more appropriate for the challenge level. Characters that are taking on CR20 monsters are not likely to be dealing with the dreams of a little orphan kid, they're likely to be dealing with things of cosmic import - dismantling the whole cult rather than just handling one part of it. When you create an epic (small e) monster like this one you really want to have an epic problem handling it, and epic characters needed to defeat it, in ways other than in just combat prowess. This is especially true in Pathfinder where high-level spells permit bypassing simple situations and issues.
In conclusion, Ischadra will definitely be a memorable and exciting addition to your game. And I'm reviewer tilting up one star for the link-to-the-SRD idea!
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An Endzeitgeist.com review
This pdf is 83 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages ToC, 3 pages of advertisement, 1 page SRD, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 75 pages of content, so let's take a look!
After a two-page introduction by TPK Games mastermind Brian Berg and an aptly-written piece of short fiction, we are introduced to the first of the 5 new fey-themed races herein, but before I get into its details, here are some assumptions of the pdf: Instead of bogging everything down with a vast and massive cosmology, we get a concept that ties fey to the realms of dreaming, essentially a first world/plane of dreams-style demiplane that serves as a thematic link and to explain the weirdness associated with fey. Mentality-wise, the introduction shows a comprehensive grasp on what makes fey work and fascinating, showing TPK Games' aptitude with the creepier concepts of fantasy off quite well.
Now let's take a look at the first race, the so-called Briarborn. Before I get into the mechanical details, I want to mention that starting age, height and weight tables, favored class options, racial relations etc. are provided for each race in these pages. Briarborn get +2 Con adn Wis, are plants (with all immunities), get +2 to AC in forested areas, +2 natural armor, +4 to stealth in forests, Knowledge (Nature) and Stealth as class skills or +1, speak with plants at will, 1/day tree shape and low-light vision. They get +50% damage from fire and are potentially staggered by cold damage.
They may replace their barkskin with +2 caster levels for enchantment, get rid of their cold vulnerability by trading in some of their bonuses or lose tree shape and get -2 to Wis for +2 to Cha and +1 to fort-saves. In case you haven't noticed - this build is a 20 RP race-build and thus stronger than even the imho OP Aasimars. The whole book uses the ARG-rules for the race-builds and as much as I'm loathe to say it - it HURTS this pdf. Yes, the race feature a entry called "Effective Level: +1, but one of the things I enjoyed about PFRPG was that it got rid of those annoying ECL+X-races.
Now I maintain that even with the weaknesses and acknowledging the RP-build, the Briarborn are too strong - not necessarily due to the aptly-crafted Dreaming Tree Shepherd (insert Phantasmagoria 2 joke here)-archetype for the druid, but due to the 12 new racial feats included in here. Boy, are they broken. Grow an EXTRA LIMB for a feat, up to 2? There are feats for that. Make ANY weapon potentially stick to the briarborn? There's a feat for that! Permanently increase your size to large? Feat for that. 25% immunity to sneak attack and crits that doesn't stack with fortification, but from the imprecise wording I assume works as a SECOND chance to ignore the hit? There. It breaks my heart, really, for the feats represent cool concepts - take Ashen Bark: After having taken a total of 100 points of fire damage, the character can take this feat to get rid of the fire vulnerability and gain fire resistance 5. Apart from Briarborn scorching themselves over campfires and with one of the alternate racial traits, this race could get rid of BOTH vulnerabilities VERY fast. Concept-wise, these feats are nice and have good ideas indeed - balance-wise, though, they are quite broken. Have I mentioned the option of growing, sans costs, armor with up to +9 armor bonus?
Now the thing is - the race acknowledges its relative power and honestly, were it not for the options to get rid of the vulnerabilities, I'd still consider it a powerful take on plant races, but a viable one that has something going for it. The thing is, with the broken feats included in the deal, it just falls flat - especially since there are the Seedlings by Jon Brazer Enterprises, the Mandragorans by Rite Publishing, the Dalreans by LPJr Design, the Arborlings of Clockwork Gnomes, the Xhesa of Purple Duck Games out there - and all of them manage to be better balanced than the briarborn.
Their concept is great, 6 traits, racial lore, a new magical item and even a settlement statblock and a sample CR 2 NPC make for good supplemental material, but honestly - I don't see any justification beyond the fluff for this race to exist.
After another aptly-written short story, we are introduced to the Crimbli, storywise goblinoids/fey-crossbreeds that kidnap children for the fey lords - complete with disturbing nursery rhyme and once again a plethora of favored class options. Ability-wise, they get -2 to Str and Con, +2 to Dex, Wis and Cha, are small fey with a 30 ft base speed, increase their miss chance due to dim light to 50%, get resistance 5 to cold and electricity, can HD rounds per day turn invisible as a swift action (though only in shadow or darkness), get darkvision and low-light vision, skill training for bluff and stealth, +4 to bluff when lying and as weaknesses light sensitivity and a -4 penalty when dealing with animals.
As alternate racial abilities, they may replace invisibility with +2 rounds duration when summoning fey creatures or replace their increased miss chance with 1/day dancing lights, ghost sound and prestidigitation as spell-like abilities.
As a built, the race takes only 9 RP from the ARG-guidelines, which would make it weaker than dwarves - still, I consider it on par with them and even beyond them due to the superior senses, resistances and increased miss chance. As a racial archetype, they get a rogue archetype that is exceedingly fast. The archetype is supposed to be a child snatcher, but honestly, it doesn't get any abilities that would truly help abduct children, rather only ones that focus on getting away. The race gets 6 new feats, which include a useless scent-ability to track children (flavorful, but much like the witch hex - who'll waste a feat on that? Also: Oddly the only one with the [Racial]-descriptor...). Otherwise, they are solid. The same can unfortunately not be said about a spell that renders the whole archetype obsolete - Quickling legerity nets you the legendary speed of the evil fey alongside concealment, evasion and uncanny dodge - as a 4th level spell. Sorry, but the speed alone would be a tough pill to swallow - with the added benefits, I consider it broken. The withering stone, Cr sample character and settlement statblock are solid again.
The third race, this time not introduced by a short story, is the Glimmerkin - essentially a race of alien elves that have spent too much time in the dreaming, taking on slightly insectoid habits and creepy, off behavior. Concept-wise, I REALLY love this race, so what do we get mechanically? Glimmerkin get -2 to Str, Cha and Con, +2 to Dex, Int and Wis, +1 natural armor, electricity resistance 5, +2 to bluff and +2 to the DC when using sense motive against them, +2 to Perception, Blind Fight, can shed soft radiance (though the pdf does not specify in what intensity - torch? lantern?), may 3/day use blur as a spell-like ability that also work versus blind fight and tremorsense, low light vision, may make perception checks in place of will saves versus sound-based attacks (!!!!) and take +50% sonic damage.
The Dreamweaver archetype for the wizard is solid, though message-spells and premonitions are not particularly exciting. Among the 10 new feats, gaining spell resistance 11+ HD/levels, growing fully functional wings (Potentially at 1st level!!!) and fast healing while resting are contrasted with weak +1 to natural armor and fort saves or +2 to effective caster level for enchantment spells. Power-level wise, this race is a monstrous 23 RP-build - before the unbalanced feats are applied. Their light-based language, premonition-spell and supplemental settlement and NPC again are solid - but what good does it do? Why not scale the race down, keep the signature blur and actually make it balanced? At least the race is imho, even with the op feats, less broken than the brianborn.
Next up is the True Changeling - replacement creatures for kidnapped children/victims of teh fey and consummate spies/assassins. They get +2 to an attribute of their choice, are of the fey (shapechanger)-type, get skill training with bluff and stealth, +4 to diplomacy to gather information, +1 language per linguistics-rank and to bluff and diplomacy, Knowledge (History and local) as class skills (or +2 if they already are class skills), low-light vision, cold iron vulnerability and their trademark ability, mimicry:As a standard action, they may change appearance and get +10 to the disguise check, but always retain one tell-tale sign like an off-colored streak of hair, a birthmark etc.
The race is a 18 RP-build and what can I say - it's essentially the same as with Glimmerkin - the plethora of additional bonuses beyond the signature ability (which I actually consider balanced and cool!) make an otherwise great build much less accessible than it ought to be. The Fighter-archetype Shadowrazor, which gets access to gain sneak attack in lieu of bonus feats and is rather agile makes for a valid choice, whereas among the 10 feats we once again run the gamut from broken to pitifully weak. When not in natural form, they can get 25% chance to ignore sneak attacks and crits (not stacking with fortification - again, improperly worded - is it a second chance to negate or not) to the utterly INSANE Master of Mimicry, which nets you access to any physical abilities, extraordinary abilities and inherent ability score bonuses of the race into which you change. Combine that with another feat that lets you become large and a completely broken feat gets even worse. There's also a case of formatting gone wrong:
"When you are the target of a
Transmutation spell, you are able to gain
either a +1 competence bonus or caster
level per five levels. You may not choose
both. Additionally, when subject to harmful
transmutation spells, you may reduce
the amounts by a like amount and gain the
competence bonus as a bonus to saves." (pg. 53, italics added)
I wager the italicized sentence should be in the end of the feat's text or does it refer to the bonuses exclusively? If yes, it's a weak benefit, Compare that with +4 to demoralize attempts and we once again have a very wide span of powers between the feats. Two racial traits, a settlement and a sample NPC are also provided.
The final new race are the Sylfaen - marked from birth with swirling tattoo-like birthmarks, these elf-like fey with catlike ears and alien eyes were bred as a kind of warrior-caste by the fey and get +2 to Dex and Cha, -2 to Int, are fey, get +2 to AC in forests, +1 to all saves, +4 to stealth while in forests, reduce stealth-penalties when moving by 5 and may stealth at -20 while running, get skill focus (perception) as a bonus feat and may cast Alter Self, Blindness/Deafness, Blur, Dancing Lights, Ghost Sound, Prestidigitation and Speak with Animals 1/day AND 1/day Aspect of the Falcon, Aspect of the Stag and Chameleon Stride - mentioned in a separate entry that fails to mention whether the abilities also work via cha as the first set of spell-like abilities. They also gain elven weapon familiarity as well as low-light vision and may replace chameleon stride with barkskin or wood shape and Aspect of the Falcon with Tree Shape. Their ranger archetype, the Wylde Hunter, is actually rather cool and may designate whole groups as foes of the forest and later summon fey hounds to help him hunt. 7 new feats allow you to sing a masterwork bow from a tree, get DR 3/cold iron, 1/day dimension door, use cha in place of con when determining HP and intimidate foes via your barkskin spell - the feats this time around are not as broken as I've by this point come to expect. The race gets an additional racial trait, a poisonous whip and a sample NPC and settlement. This RP 20-race is yet another example of what I wouldn't consider good design - why? Because it tries to take a class/character role, namely the protector of the forest/wylde hunter and make it a race. A race with cool fluff, yes, but all those spell-like abilities bloat it and make it, again, overpowered when compared to the standard races. They also don't serve a racial ability's purpose of enriching a race, rather shoehorning the Sylfaen into a specific class direction, something I generally dislike.
And finally, there are the general additional pieces of information in the guise of 9 additional feats, which let you for example ignore any difficult terrain in a forest, let you add cha-mod to ref-saves or 1/day cast vanish. Nothing to complain about them, neither about the two traits – or at least I presume they are traits that got mixed into the feat-section. Formatting is inconsistent, offering flavor-text in italics in half the feats and non-italicized fluff in the other half, leading me to assume that the very weak “Favor of the Seelie/Unseelie Court”-entries actually are the feats in question – though, again, I’ not sure.
The spells again, though, have some issues: Harrowing Dance, for example, removes the ability of the target to move – replacing the regular movement with a forced movement of 10 ft. directed by the target. If the save is failed, the poor saps (1 per 3 caster levels!) also get -2 to AC and -5 to ref-saves and lose AC-bonuses granted by shields. To add insult to injury, the spell leaves the target exhausted for 1 hour per level of the caster, on a successful save 1 minute per level of the caster. Give me a pool of acid, magma, a cliff and any moderately capable foe and this spell, with no means to counteract the movement, even upon making the save, is a guaranteed TPK waiting to happen – and not in the good sense I usually associate with TPK Games. There are relatively bland protection/magic circle versus fey-spells and two heals-spells for plants and twilight spells that essentially give you an armor and sword that can be diminished and expended to produce magic missiles.
The pdf closes with dew that makes you faster and more graceful as well as a short 3-page mini-gazetteer of the Demiplane “The Dreaming”.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are worse than I’ve come to expect from TPK Games. There are a LOT of minor issues that start with anal-retentive nitpicks like Knowledge (Nature) being written as “Knowledge: Nature” and continues to whole sentences that are out of order. Not good and quite a bit short of the usual attention to editing and formatting details I’ve come to expect from TPK Games. Layout adheres to a nice b/w-2-column standard and the b/w-artworks are nice indeed, though the blank spaces between lines are rather pronounced, especially when compared to e.g. FGG-layouts, which means that much less information fits on a page than the page-count would lead you to believe. A minor additional nitpick you might want to know about is the fact that there are 2 advertisements in the middle of the book as opposed to the back – if you’re like me and print out all pdfs, something to be aware of and while I’m not a fan of it, at least that won’t fracture into my verdict. The pdf is excessively bookmarked and hyperlinked unobtrusively and efficiently to d20pfsrd.com – kudos in that discipline.
Let’s start with the more pleasant things I have to say about this book. TPK Games GET fey. They understand them and manage to capture the flair and panache, the danger and alien nature of the fey that resonates strongly with us and makes this pdf, fluff-wise, a huge joy to read. Fluff-wise.
I’ve said so multiple times, every time someone has asked me about it and I stand by it: The Advanced Race Guide is in my personal opinion CRAP. Not Savage Species-level crap, but crap nonetheless. Providing guidelines to create races is fine and all, but they need to be balanced on the respective point levels and, well, the ARG spectacularly fails at that. Not only that, the ARG also fails to provide cohesive means of balancing races of different racial point values, indirectly necessitating the thrice-cursed effective character levels that the system got rid of. I bought the book expecting the worst and only to keep up my reviewing and was not disappointed by its complete failure at the race-creation guidelines.
Now the races in this pdf use the ARG guidelines to create races and make it very clear how they were crafted and utilize the guidelines – the thing is, if the foundation of the rules-building you construct on is flawed, then the resulting construct will necessarily be flawed as well. And this is exactly what we have on a basic level here – the races, not even the 9 RP-race, can be considered perfectly balanced in context with the base-races or those generally found among 3pps out there. And there’s the issue – the other races are even stronger, and not necessarily because they need to be – they all have at least one genius idea/concept going for them, but are bloated by unnecessary spell-like abilities and minor skill bonuses that bloat their RP-builds farther than they’d need to in order to drive home their uniqueness.
Another issue would be that, essentially, they are slightly geared a bit too much towards specific rules for my tastes, but that pales in comparison with another issue – the races are not only not balanced with regards to the core-races, they also are not balanced among themselves, featuring quite a discrepancy in power-levels between each other, thus making an all-fey campaign also problematic. And that is when only taking the imho broken ARG Race-builds into account.
And then there are the feats. The feats are completely and totally all over the place. Apart from glitches here and there, we can encounter a STAGGERING discrepancy in power-levels here that range from minor skill bonuses in specific circumstances to absolutely SICK feats that are so broken, I won’t even start venting. Where a talented DM can salvage the races and tone them down to work in a context with regular races, upon introduction of the feats into the equation, any semblance of balance is completely and utterly shattered.
This is a completely and utterly depressing book for me to review – since even the broken feats carry a part of a concept in each and every instance that makes these races stand out and feel unique – but honestly, I feel like they would have been better off as racial paragon-classes to better balance the races. They are high-concept and per se glorious ideas – only terribly flawed in their execution.
So…is this a bad pdf? If you’re looking for player-races that are not utterly broken? Yes, then this is a 1 star-pdf for you. I maintain, though, that a capable DM who can judge their power and fracture that into the equation of CR-calculation might still get something out of this pdf – for this explicit purpose, this might be considered a 3-star file. My final verdict will fall in between the two, at 2 stars.
Endzeitgeist out.
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This time I’m reviewing Dwellers in Dream by TPK Games. It contains five new Fey player races and is Pathfinder compatible.
I’m not gonna give too much detail on the five races as I dislike giving away too much in a review, but I’ll mention some highlights. In their respective section, each race has a physical description, a picture, a brief overview of their society, their relations to other races, alignments & religion, examples of male and female names, abilities (racial, defense, etc…), traits and much more. There is A LOT of good, quality information here.
Briarborn
A race of plant-like humanoids. Described as “nature’s protectors,” they grow up from the ground itself and can have many wild looks as expected. I wasn’t expecting much out of the Briarborn, “plant people” creatures usually don’t do it for me, but I was pleasantly surprised here. A nice, well-rounded race, I particularly like the racial feats “Fists of Amber” (claws or fists coated in amber allowing you to strike with the power of nature) and “Photosynthetic Healing” (heal faster in direct sunlight). I also found the concept that you can spend a week “rooted” like an actual tree to gain certain advantages to be a really cool concept.
Crimbil
Described as goblin-blooded Fey and snatchers of children. I found it odd I felt a little bad for the Crimbil. They being essentially slaves to the Unseelie Court, yet they are a race that are known for kidnapping babies. I can’t determine if I am supposed to hate them or feel bad for them or both. Naming a racial feat, “Smells Like Children” either after the Marilyn Manson EP, or possibly it’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang inspiration, fits the Crimbil, but it breaks the fantasy a bit.
Glimmerkin
An advanced race of elves with elongated, single-colored eyes, the Glimmerkin almost seem to take an OCD approach to combat. It’s quick, clean, and efficient as possible. I liked that a lot as it seems to suit them well. I would suggest their ability to communicate with each other by giving off a radiant glow would get in the way of some stealth, but then again, could also help them create distractions they may need. I also found it curious that the feat “Proximity Sense” and Weaknesses of “Vulnerability to Sonic Damage” could make then a double for Daredevil, but again, it fits the character concept as a whole, adding a level of coolness to the Glimmerkin.
True Changelings
The True Changeling are shape-shifting Fey, able to shape-shift with “uncanny precision.” They are as replacements for creatures and/or children stolen by the Fey. Described as “almost always Chaotic of alignment” this race seems like the most fun to play out of the five, but also could be the one that is most often abused by the “Mr. I’m-Not-Evil-I’m-Just-Chaotic” douchebag some groups have. The new Racial Feat “Comfortable Liar” (you can take 10 on Bluff checks even under stress or distractions) seems like a bit overkill at first, but when you take into consideration the very nature of the race, it fits quite well.
Sylfaen
While the True Changelings seem like the most fun to play, the Sylfaen are definitely the most interesting. They are a race of created by the Fey to serve as protectors and soldiers. You do not want to be a logger who has come to cut down trees in lands protected by the Sylfaen. What I find most fascinating is the fact that they are not slaves in the strictest sense, nor bound, but they are born with the need to protect the lands they call home. You could make the argument that the Fey just created them as slaves without the chains, but the Sylfaen are following their own free will. Are you a slave if you follow your free will if the free will was determined by someone else? I’ve been coming back to this thought for a few days now and don’t have a definitive answer.
Random Thoughts:
Easily the best thing about this product is that even though it is dense with information, it is very easy to read and is never, ever boring. To manage to entertain while imparting information is a delicate balancing act and it is done masterfully here. With one exception (“A Good Day To Pie” which I’ll talk about below), the writing is very well done.
All of the content is hyperlinked to the d20pfsrd.com website, I.E. if you see the word “monk”, it’s a link to the page for monks on d20pfsrd.com. It seems a bit unnecessary to see a word like “fighter” linked 2x in the same paragraph or a bit odd having the word “identify” linked to the spell Identify when it is actiually being used as a verb. I’m not sure on the particulars of how that linking works, but it only helps, never hinders, and doesn’t get in the way. I thought this was a great addition to the PDF.
There are two short fiction pieces that are interesting, mostly because there are only two, one for the Briarborn and one for the Crimbil. That stuck out as odd to me. Why isn’t there a fiction piece for all five races?
The fiction piece for the Crimbil, A Good Day to Pie, really struck a false chord with me. It read less like a good idea come to fruition, but more like the author had a line he thought was clever and was going to get it in at all costs and write a story around it. And he was not content to just stick it in the title, so it was shoved it into the story as well. Crimbil or not, puns just feel out of place in this sourcebook. The story itself seemed average at best to me, but your mileage may vary.
My review copy was a PDF from DriveThreuRPG. I read it on my laptop for a bit and it looked great. I swapped over to a retina display iPad and it was stunning. Simply gorgeous.
There are some minor editing errors: A random comma, a missing space, a missing parenthesis. In one of the short fiction section a proper name is spelled one way and then misspelled later in the same paragraph. Races are capitalized in some places and not others; Briarborn appears to always be Briarborn, while Sylfaen is sometimes sylfaen. There is one section where the opening sentence is repeated. The amount of errors is small, and none of them make anything harder to understand, but there were enough of them for me to notice.
Which brings me to the humor topic. Overall, this sourcebook is a pretty serious book. The humor I’ve seen tends to stick out for this reason, and not in a good way. A few examples from the Additional Fey Resources section:
Verdant Dew – a potent phosphorescent yellow-green elixir. Sound familiar? One dose for cat’s grace, two for haste, three for both. And you’ll become fatigued (sugar crash, anyone?) when the effects are over. I just found it a bit too “cute” in a book that is 99% serious.
Twilight Armor and Twilight Blade – Let me give you the description for Twilight Armor: “A shimmering field of dancing motes and stardust swirls surrounds the spellcaster.” I could be wrong, but it sounds to me like someone is sparkling. I actually like them as written, but I’d have preferred to see them in a book is a little less serious.
Score: 4.5 out of 5 (DrivethruRPG doesn't allow 1/2 stars and it was more deserving of 5 than 4)
The missing .5 comes from the humor I felt was out of place and from the feeling this could have used another pass through the editing phase. That aside, this is another brilliant product from TPK Games and should not be missed.
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First response after reading this book at the convention,
“I literally just forgot what I was going to play after reading this class.”
My local crew headed down to GaryCon V last weekend to partake in some tabletop awesomeness and of course to look around the vendor room. Little did I know that I would find one of my favorite new Pathfinder class to date, The Malefactor by TPK Games. But, let me give a little more of a break down before singing it’s cursed praise.
TPK Games (total party kill for those that wondered) has been putting out some quality print on demand products, but this was the first product I have actually had my hands on and I have to say I need to play this class.
This book contains 17 pages, 20 levels, feats, religion, archetypes, magical items and all of it based on a character class designed around being cursed. Yep, you are seriously able to play a character that focuses on using their bad luck to their advantage. If I haven’t said it, I love this idea. Here is just one power that made me go, “Yeah, this needs to happen right now.” Which was then followed by everyone at the table looking up from what they were doing with curiosity painted on their faces. But I digress. There is a point in time in this class when you get an ability called cursebound which grants you immunity to cursed items. Even better, you can use any beneficial properties of the item and receive none of the penalties. Now, lets take this one step further in the direction of greatness. If you then hand that same item to someone else the curse kicks back in, forcing them to start making saves and all that wonderful curse filled stuff. I’ll pause and let that sink in....
The Malefactor class by TPK Games is as sexy as it sounds and full of some unique swagger that fits into any campaign. Just imagine this class in the Council of Thieves adventure path where devils, contracts and tieflings play a huge roll. I’d say pick this up as a pdf or print on demand for your group and add some curses to your gaming collection. Now time for me to make my Malefactor / Witch combo!
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The briarborn are a cool plant race, with a good backstory and reason for existing. The picture was really topnotch! I am looking forward to the completed product.
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This first pdf of TPK Games' monster supplements is 18 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 14 pages of content, so let's take a look!
This bestiary is different, as Richard A. Hunt's introduction makes clear from the beginning - this pdf is all about Fear and Dread and thus, we first get some interesting pieces of advice: People fear the unknown and thus, the pdf kicks off with advice on avoiding the sense of boredom that comes with e.g. the oomphteenth's ogre - from etymological research, avoiding monster names and reskins, we get a treasure trove of interesting ideas that also contain sample names, interesting features, descriptive combat and awarding ranks put into skills to research monsters/gathering information. If you're familiar with how the Ravenloft-books of old introduced great ways of making the game more immersive, then you'll get what approximately to expect from these pages. The pieces of advice are helpful, especially for relatively new DMs and especially the "never call a monster by its bestiary-name"/research-angle is great - I've been using that one for 2 campaigns now and it changed my game for the better.
The book also contains 6 new feats: One to enhance your blood-draining, one that makes you faster when you inflict a bleeding wound or inflict said bleeding wounds. You may also command your undead to form unliving shieldwalls around you, emit a despair-inducing cry, get an additional web ability use and a feat that enhances your webs to entrap, grab, trip or pull foes via your webs, each time you take the feat, get access to another of the web-uses.
The 6 new traits should drive the fear back into your players via their disturbing nature: Whether it's eating eyeballs, emitting weird keening, having a smelling, rotten limb, a creepy hide-out and the option to locate bodies of potential victims, these are dark with a capital "D" and offer some very specific and iconic options. Impressive!
The pdf, of course, also features new monsters, first of which would be the CR 21 Gravebane Colossus. Remember the Tombstone Elemental of Ravenloft? Yeah, this one's worse: Massive, deadly, the creature is an undead construct, immune to magic, healing fast, absorbing foes, can create elementally-infused fast zombies, disguise itself as a cemetery, throw deadly clutches of corrupted elemental earth and tombstone fragments and is surrounded by an aura of maddening whispers of the damned. A deadly pinnacle of necromantic arts, this creature has more signature abilities than many monster-pdfs! Stellar!
The second creature herein is no less sadistic: The Sundered One is the result of stitched together bodies of small creatures (yes, that means halflings qualify, as do children and other innocents...) and yes, the deadly undead is surrounded by an aura of madness, a master of using its mutiple limbs and is additionally covered in nasty, deadly slime.
There are also 2 new magic items - a magical girdle that inflicts you with lycanthropy and an infernal trident that is particularly deadly versus good foes.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are very good, I didn't notice any significant glitches. Layout adheres to a two-column standard with a parchment-style background. The pdf is fully bookmarked, but in contrast to other TPK-Games-releases, not hyperlinked to d20pfsrd.com The artwork is mostly stock, though we get two original, extremely cool artworks for the new creatures herein - at this price-point: Two thumbs up!
This is a great advice-book for DMs and the monster-feats are cool and balanced as well. What steals the show for me, would be the very specific (and cruel) traits! Traits mostly suck/are boring or overpowered. These are neither and should help prospective DMs drive home the fear of their psycho-killer humanoids. The two monsters are gloriously disturbing to behold and will see use in my campaigns. Two thumbs up again!
While personally, I didn't learn anything new from the DM-aid sections, the validity of the tips is undoubted and should enhance many a game. With the rest of the content being top-notch and available at the fair asking price, I practically have to settle on a final verdict of 5 stars + endzeitgeist seal of approval. Just don't be squeamish, this content is not for the faint of heart!
The runelord of evaluation has spoken,
Endzeitgeist out.
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I'm not big into giving out massive details of what is contained herein as I never want to give away anything to folks who might end up meeting the nasties inside this PDF on the far end of a DM screen.
Suffice to say it is well written and has a clean, easy on the eyes layout. As I get older and my eyes get worse, this gets more and more important every year.
While it has some monsters and helpful tips from many voices, all are articulate and communicate well. I did find one minor proofing error, but it doesn't detract from the overall product.
I will say the Gravesbane Colossus is the single most bad-ass enemy I've read in a good 5 years, if not more. Extremely well done. It *WILL* inspire fear in your players.
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RAWR! A Series of Monstrous Malevolence, Volume 1: Fear and Dread....man that title is a long one, lol. So, for the purposes of saving space, time, and my sanity...we shall refer to this product as RAWR!
So, 18 pages, with a linked TOC and bookmarks. Laid out in a dual column format, with two full page images, and two other embedded pieces of art. Of the art, two are from Joseph Calkins' stock offerings, while the others are originals to this product, and are both exceptional pieces. Scattered throughout the book are random “doodles” that work well to keep the pages from being just boring block text to look at visually. The TOC is laid out in what I found to be an excellent idea, in that the sections are credited with the contributing/main authors for each section.
OK....what is this book...and why do you need it? Well...follow me here. It's game night, you're setting up the encounter for your players, you've just started to give the description of the creatures they are facing and two of your players are already scanning their character sheets and are ignoring you now, a third is reaching for his critter killing 20....wait...wha?? This ever happen to you? Got a group of players that know the creatures just as well as you do? Annoying, isn't it? There's a great deal of the mystery gone when the play group knows what to expect, and how to fight it before you're even done explaining the freaking visual of what they see. So...how do you tackle this problem as a GM? Design completely new creatures? Well, sure, there is always that....but leaving behind some classic creatures would be such a shame...especially when there are so many easy fixes to this situation. And that my friends, is where this PDF comes in.
Right of the bat RAWR! Comes off as more than just a standard collection of new feats and traits, there is real world advice here, offered alongside concepts to try at your table. The concepts and ideas are presented sans system and mechanics, and are more editorial in their mannerism. Now, I will admit, this bugged me at first, until I realized this essentially turned the topic into a conversation, one between the reader and the authors. They are not so much laying out multiple options on page/screen as they are advising what they do at their own tables, with stories culled from previous games. The personal touch there really helps to connect with these pieces of advice, and make one see why they work better.
Now, interesting story ideas to make your creatures different from the standard speed-bump to treasure most players are used to facing aside, this is a collection of new material. And there are some interesting new ideas here to make sure mechanically your creatures have a few new tricks up their sleeves. 6 new Feats, with offerings such as Devious Web (Combat) – adding monster abilities that can be done in conjunction with a web casting...think Spiderman's tricks, but done right. Bone Shield (Combat) – allows for those with animate/control undead to use them as a “living” shield of sorts. Can actually say, after reading this feat that I was amazed this wasn't already available somewhere, as it seems like such an obvious combat tactic of something that can fill a battlefield with undead.
6 new Traits follow the Feats, with a simple rule of thumb when it comes to deciding what types of monsters deserve traits. Most of these traits could easily be applied to PCs of a monstrous background as well, half-orcs and such. Some of the trait names alone just make you want to spend a night hanging out at a game table with these guys....lol....Taste for Eyeballs, Rotten Limb, Bone Collector....OK, so the first one wins, hands down...lol.
From there we go to a couple of new critters...what? You thought there weren't going to be some new creatures to play with? First up, the Gravesbane Colossus...a CR 21 nightmare straight out a madman's twisted dream. Imagine, for a second, a graveyard standing up and walking off to go attack and kill whatever it came across...yeah, just standing up, as a massive hulking creature. Now, the artwork gives us a bipedal, the description says it has six limbs...I'll leave that to you to decide...either way, this is one seriously cool construct, with an even cooler creation ritual. Heck, the ritual to create one could easily become a storyline in and of itself with the players trying to stop it from happening.
And that brings us to the Sundered One. This thing is twisted...truly. And I applaud the boldness in going for it that caused this particular creature to earn TPK Games the slap on the fingers in regards to the compatibility license. It doesn't take much to see the original design in this creature, and I doubt in all reality anything mechanically had to be changed, it was probably all in the flavor text...what we are left with is a truly truly disturbing undead...thing. Oozing necromantic slime that makes even getting close enough to fight this creature dangerous long before the creature even attacks you. This twisted nightmarish creation does a very good job of channeling all of those late night Oriental Ghost stories into a weird, visually disturbing, mentally unbalancing oddity...oh, and then pumping it full of steroids, dumping a six pack on redbull down its throat and sending it screaming after you...Yeah...that kind of wicked creature design.
2 new magical items finish us off, the Belt of Bestial Woe – which grants an unstackable AC bonus along with the curse of lycanthropsy to its wearer...and no ridding oneself of the sudden furry lifestyle is not as easy as simply taking off the belt, lol. The Fiend's Pitchfork operates as a + weapon, with a smite good ability enhanced with a selection of handy perks.
Wrapping up, the sheer fact that the title tells us this is merely Volume 1 means there is more to come, new rules and ideas, spells and creatures, as well as improvements to the overall line. Editing wise I found only one mistake, and that was the repetition of a sentence within a paragraph...not bad, but not great either. The odd white area left from an attempt to lay one of the images as a transparent on the page background really makes the entire page look...well, less.
And, yeah...that's all I've got. Really...a sentence got repeated, and one picture probably needed more time in a picture editor being separated from its background before used....in all, I have got nothing negative in regards to the material itself. Now, as much as I enjoyed the conversational advice, I am wondering if that will continue or be toned back in further installments within this series...I imagine time will tell in that regard. Until then, I am going with a 4.5 for this product, rounding up to a 5 for the purposes of this forum's rating system. A good first offering for a new series, and an interesting concept for said series. I look forward to seeing where Vol.2 takes us.
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The Malefactor....oh where does one begin. Do we open with the sheer deviousness of this class? The insanely cool artwork that will forever define for me what this class is all about? Or the equally wicked NPC presented herein to accompany that oh so awesome cover image? How about we touch on all of it, lol.
23 pages of deliciousness, with the obligatory cover/OGL/TOC page count, all centered on very interesting character class idea. The malefactor. But, what is a malefactor exactly? To strip it the basics, the class encompasses those who have taken the crap luck given them by the world and life in general, and have learned to harness it, focus it, and use it to affect those around them. Give me someone who has spent their life just ahead of the torches and pitchforks, and I shall give you a malefactor hellbent on revenge. Yeah, that kind of character. Now, that is not to say that they are instantly an evil aligned character, but they certainly lend themselves to the darker side of the tracks when it comes to their dealings with friend and foe alike.
With opening words from both Brian Berg (the man behind TPK games) and Gary McBride (Writer/Creator of Way of the Wicked...quite possibly the only successful evil story arc...ever), the theme is set for this book right off the bat. This class is not for flower loving, let's all sit around the fire and hug kind of players. The malefactor is not for those seeking shiny acknowledgment and accolades...this class is for those wishing to twist the fate of all those around them, whilst escaping their own. A darker class for a darker player, without breaking the boundaries and going truly evil. It's a balancing act, to be sure, but one that is accomplished very well here.
PDF follows the standard dual column approach, with one embedded table for level progression. Background texture is marbled grey with a stylized border that can be challenging to read through in a few spots, but overall is light enough that most people should not have a problem with it. I can't help but think perhaps in editing setting the margins just back from the framework on the page would have helped immensely in the visibility of the text, but again, this is me being extremely nit-picky, and most will not have an issue with it. There were a few instances of spaces between words left out however, but there were only a few, and they truly didn't interfere with the understanding of the text.
As with many classes, the malefactor has its own set of cool goodies that reward the PC for continuing through the level progressions. Malediction (various “curses” that the malefactor can choose from as she progresses), Harrowing Strike (A maximized attack that only gets better as the levels get higher), Strife Points (a pool of points that the PC can spend to activate several different abilities. Very similar in nature to Psi points, or Time motes...any player familiar with either of these concepts will recognize this idea instantly)...and then we have the Aura of Misfortune. As long as the malefactor is conscious, every one around her (within range of course) suffers a negative to their saving throws. Now, here's the kicker folks, that negative...that everyone...yes, that means the fellow players standing around the Malefactor PC, and quite possibly her herself if she runs out of strife points. That born with crap luck sucks, lol.
So, why in the world would anyone want to play a character living under the weight of curses and bad luck you might be asking by now.....well, simply put...Those who understand an evil, are better equipped to deal with it. The malefactor class puts a character in an interesting position to deal with curses amongst others, as they can literally draw these curses to themselves, relieving others of them. They can ignore the effects of curse items, using them as if they carried no curses upon them, or even steal the victory right out of the grasp of their enemies by simply changing their luck from good, to bad.
So, how do they do these awesome things? The Yla. The Yla are the spirits of luck and chaos, for lack of better explanation, and they are that which the malefactor deals with when it comes to making a great many things happen.
Grand total we are presented with 18 Maledictions in this guide, 5 Archetypes and 12 Feats designed specifically for this class. We're also presented with the favored class options for 11 races. That's a rather impressive amount of information to get a class up and running, by any standard. Do I want more? Of course I do, and I have no doubt that eventually we will see more maledictions at the least...they are flat out to interesting not to have more designed.
Ending with an example, a fully fleshed out NPC to accompany that insanely excellent cover image, this PDF, intended to deliver a new class to us, gives us an amazing new character to drop into our worlds. And that cover image? Included inside without the text, just in case you have a spot on the wall needing some cool art.
Wrapping it up, I can say no more than what I have said many times now, buy this PDF!!!! The class design far outweighs the very few editing issues, this is one of those cases where design outweighs everything, period. This class brings some really cool ideas to the table, as well as inspires even more. Ignoring the one heading with spacing issues, this book is a solid 5 star. Yes, I just admitted there is an editing issue in the same line that I stated the book gets a perfect rating. That is how much I like the design work for this class, and how much I want to see more done with it. Oh, and since I failed to mention it earlier....full Hero Lab support files. Yeah, just keeps getting better.
Pick this one up folks, it is Well worth the price of admission!
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TPK Games are back with their latest installment of the Infamous Adversary-line, this time featuring a cool collaboration with fellow 3pp Super Genius Games. The pdf is a whopping 36 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial/ToC, 4 pages of advertisement and 1 page SRD, leaving us with 29 pages of content -still quite a bunch for a pdf centered on one particular villain.
From rather humble beginnings, the Infamous Adversary-line has improved so far to include some of the most iconic villains sold in PFRPG and this time, they take SGG's antipaladin variant-class Death knight to infuse unlife into it. As with all recent Infamous Adversary-pdfs, we get an extensive and expertly-written short fiction that draws the reader into the narrative, information on the villain's allies, resources, tactics, lair, quotes and motivations. After an introduction by Super Genius Games' Owen K.C. Stephens, we thus delve into the background of Urizen.
And it is here that I pronounce the inevitable SPOILER WARNING. I'm going into details that will spoil your experience with Urizen, so potential players: Please skip to the conclusion!
Still here? All right! Once, Urizen was a mortal barbarian living in the frozen wastes under the reign of cruel Utgaroth, god of the frozen north winds. Then, he was not only mortal, but also known by a different name, that of Graldis the Cold. Obsessed with the cold and seeing his brethren as weak for requiring the warmth of the fire to stay alive, he took his magical bone beads and was banished to the cold. Just before succumbing to the dread terrain, he found a suit of demonic armor that whispered to him fell promises of power and sure enough, he donned it. When the half-giant exilant winter witch Valkiri found him, she realized that this man would become the fabled dark messiah she had hoped for - guiding him towards the frost giants, Graldis managed to gain dominance over them - at the price of his death and, subsequently as per his pact, his immortal soul: Graldis rose again from the pyre, reborn in cold undeath as the Graveknight Urizen the Bleak Lord, the fragments of his erstwhile humanity being slowly shed like frostbitten toes and fingers.
The ensuing subjugation of tribes and giants now see Urizen on the brink of being able to wage a war from the north to extinguish the fire of the living, not unlike the threat of the Walkers behind the Wall in "A Song of Fire and Ice". Apart from his stats when he still was mortal (CR 6 armored hulk barbarian), we also get a CR 14-version with 8 Death Knight levels and the fearsome CR 19-incarnation of the true master of the north, sporting 13 death knight levels in addition to his armored hulk powers. Beyond that, we also get two possible mounts fully statted with an ancient skeletal wyvern and a skeletal mammoth that should serve as appropriate steeds for the Death Knight. Finally Valkiri also gets two incarnations, one at CR 10 and one at CR 15.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting, unfortunately, as much as I'm loathe to say it, can only be considered sloppy. Double blank spaces? Check. Inconsistency in names (Valkiri/Valkari as an example)? Check. "Nearby" in Arcane Familiar Nearby not bold? Check. Then we have punctuation errors, etc. making me REALLY wish this had gotten another pass at editing - it needs one, as the glitches detracted rather heavily from my immersion in what otherwise would be a compelling background story. The artwork of Urizen is top-notch indeed and beyond reproach. The pdf comes with extensive bookmarks and an additional, printer-friendly version sans artworks. As with all releases by TPK Games, much of the pdf is hyperlinked to d20pfsrd if you're using the pdf on your tablet/PC. Layout adheres to TPK Games' 2-column standard as well as a sufficiently frost-bitten looking font for the headers. The character comes with full herolab files.
This is one of the pdf that make me be annoyed at being a reviewer - there's a lot to be enjoyed in the pages here and Urizen is indeed a cool (pardon the pun) villain that will lead to memorable showdowns, cool encounters etc. While personally, I prefer Ischadra and Raxath'Viz, he is still on par with the line's high standard. Getting 3 different statblocks is also nice and ensures continued usability of the adversary. What is less awesome, though, is the rather unpleasant amount of editing glitches that has crept into these pages. I try not to be too anal-retentive when it comes to them, but this pdf is beyond what I'd consider neglectable, especially since they detract from the appeal of the otherwise great fluff and also found their way into the statblocks, which is a big no-go. As an additional gripe, I have to mention that the witch-consort featured herein lacks stats for her familiar - though these critters are rather crucial for witches. The rules of the Death Knight have been implemented well and the characters, fluff etc. are also executed rather nicely. But the glitches, combined with the lack of a familiar unfortunately make it impossible for me to rate this higher than 3 stars. If you don't care about them, go ahead, check it out. If you're really stingy about this kind of stuff, wait for the (hopefully upcoming) revision this pdf deserves.
Endzeitgeist out.
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Heroes, it’s said, are made, not born. What’s left unsaid is what it is that makes them: villains. Heroes are only as great as the villains they overcome, and so the darker, more powerful, more iconic the villain, the greater the hero. As such, it’s almost surprising that we don’t see more products devoted specifically to villains. One such book, however, is Urizen the Bleak Lord, part of the Infamous Adversaries line from Total Party Kill Games.
Before we examine this new paragon of evil, let’s look at the book itself. The product comes as two PDF files, and a set of Hero Lab files. Unfortunately, not using Hero Lab myself I can’t review that aspect of the product, other than to commend TPK Games for using Hero Lab in the first place; I’ve heard enough to know that there are probably a lot of gamers who’ll appreciate it.
The two PDFs are the main file and a printer-friendly version thereof. The printer-friendly version is notably shorter, in terms of pages, than the main file, eliminating the cover and several pages of ads in the back. More dramatic is that it completely eschews the gray page backgrounds and dark borders. I did frown a bit at it keeping the interior illustrations – this is clearly to keep the layout from needing to be redone, and it’s not a major issue since the three interior illustrations are in black and white, but it’s still not quite as printer-friendly as it could be.
Of course, there is more to the book’s illustrations than those three pictures. Dustan Kostic’s cover is reproduced inside the book, along with another picture, and the full-page pictures are visually arresting. Having no artistic background, it’s hard for me to describe, but there’s a sense of a slight blurriness there that contrasts sharply with the amount of detail in the pictures – those two aspects of the pictures sound like they should clash, but they don’t; instead, there’s a blend of details even as there’s an overall sense that you’re still not seeing the character clearly, making them even more menacing. It’s truly impressive.
Similarly impressive is the character of Urizen himself. The book, after the intro by Owen K. C. Stephens, opens with the narrative of Urizen’s genesis. The story itself is captivating, but seems to end prematurely, stopping as Urizen hits his zenith of power, but not going on to lay out his current state.
It’s after this that we’re given the first of three stat blocks for Urizen, and it’s also here that my first critique of the book comes – the layout needs to be tweaked. To be clear, I don’t mean that the book’s text layout is flawed (it keeps to the familiar two-column style), but rather the various sections of the book should have been placed in a different order. For example, the first stat block for Urizen is at his weakest, and is given far earlier than his later, more powerful incarnations.
That, to my mind, was a mistake. Rather, his stat blocks should have been either placed altogether, or had one (ideally the most powerful) up front and the others in an appendix, or (in what I think would have been the most poetic option) to have his narrative broken up by showing his stat block as it displays him at various points in the story. Now that would have been impressive.
I should also take some time to talk about his stat blocks as well. Other than the occasional problem (e.g. no XP listings, a fly spell-like ability saying it’s for “0 minutes/day,” etc., these are quite well constructed. Hyperlinks to various parts of the d20 PF SRD are used liberally, which is not only nice but absolutely necessary, since Urizen’s stats range from beyond what the Core Rulebook offers. Indeed, his base class is a death knight, from a third-party supplement (have no fear though, for his special powers are described in full).
Several pages are devoted to Urizen as a character, by which I mean describing him as a person – his goals, his personality, his lair, etc. These are fairly good, but are painted in fairly broad strokes; Urizen is a larger-than-life figure, and so there doesn’t seem to be any real degree of specificity or notable quirks that make him an individual, as opposed to a manifest archetype. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – Urizen is a BBEG in every sense of the word, but it’s more about what he is, rather than who.
There are several additional stat blocks devoted to his servitors; one is his terrestrial mount, another is his aerial mount, and the third is his lieutenant. This last one is the only one to have two stat blocks, which makes sense given her importance in Urizen’s back-story (though it makes me wish she’d been illustrated). These are helpful, but I’m of two minds about them being the sole degree of mechanical support which Urizen receives – on the one hand, adding too much else can be seen as restrictive in regards to GMs who want to really customize Urizen’s set up…but on the other hand, most GMs won’t feel bound by what’s here anyway, so why not give us some more specifics?
These don’t need to be full stat blocks, of course, but there’s a lot more that could have been done here. What’s a rough approximation of the forces loyal to Urizen, in terms of what creatures follow him and their numbers? Who are the power players in his court, and what’s their motivations in doing so? Does he take advantage of the cold environment to the point where living characters are likely to suffer environmental penalties? Maybe some of these could even take utilize of some of the expanded Pathfinder rules – does Urizen’s horde constitute having faction rules? Is his kingdom large enough to use the kingdom-building rules?
Ultimately, the major problem with presenting Urizen as a bad guy of campaign-ending proportions is that such characters aren’t enough by themselves; they exist at the top of a power structure of villainy that challenges the PCs – showing us only the ruler themselves is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg; there’s still a lot more below that that’s quite important, and we’re only seeing a little of it here. Imagine if Star Wars had focused solely on Emperor Palpatine, and shoved Darth Vader, the storm troopers, the Death Star, etc. into the far background…that’s the major problem here.
Overall, what’s here about Urizen himself is very well done; it’s just not enough. Sometimes a product is defined as much by what it doesn’t do as what it does, and this is an example of that. Hence, I wouldn’t really call this an error on the book’s part, so much as it’s a case of its vision being too narrow. There’s a lot to like about Urizen, and I have no doubt that you’ll be able to get a lot of use out of pitting him against your PCs. But be prepared to flesh out a lot of the forces sitting between him and the PCs; that’s the bleakest aspect of the Bleak Lord.
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Infamous Adversaries: Raxath'Viz, the Creeping Rot
This entry into the series of infamous adversaries has the usual good back ground that I have seen in their other products of this series. with very fully shown motives and back story to help fit the char. into just about any campain. The easy use of the stat blacks again is a plus in my mind. The big twist of the Raxath'Viz being a Kobold is amusing to me as it takes what is offen seen as a weak monster and makes it something much more a threat to most parties, and it tell you what he might have in the way of minions / disposable thugs to thow at the party as distractions.
As usual in these books the unusual creatures are fully ststed out and put in the standard stat block format for ease of use.
The addition of the Hero Lab files for the charathers/monsters/ items/ the "god" he worships add to the usefulness of this product only if you happen to own the hero lab program. I do own the Hero lab and use it.
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This entry into the series of infamous adversaries is nice and simple to follow in its layout. The Charather stats/spells/ gear and such are layed out just as in the "core" books for the Pathfinder system. That makes it easy to read and follow the stat block.
The best part of this was in my opinion was the way the background was set up so that it was campain netural and could be easly fit into just about any campain, I wil admit there are some concepts for campains that will not allow the use of this one as written. The backstory of how she was recruited and how the order/cult she belongs to operates would allow the creation of other charathers to support her or as spin off adventures.
The lack of detail of the cult is both a strength and weakness in my book as it allows freedom on the part of a GM to create more details on teh cult as/ when needed. The notes on how the order gets funding shows its level of "normal" deceptivness and concealment from most eyes.
The limited amout of art work looks very good to me. I am sure that it both keeps costs down, and by only using a single piece of art it helps afford better quality art to enhance the final look and feel of the product. I feel that the mirror immage art that was choosen helps convey the hidden nature of her threat as well as teh threat of her order/cult.
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The Malefactor base class is a two edged sword. It lacks enough power to be really effective on its own and its debuffs benefit other classes quite a bit (wizards, sorcerers and witches especially) but in a group they will always be apart because they are too dangerous to the group when they are close by (benefiting enemy spellcasters).
The idea of a character that has been cursed in some way, and who uses that curse to their advantage (most of the time) is certainly different from most and I think this class has a lot to offer a group that other classes typically either can't do or can't do very easily. In the right party I think they could make a big difference by making it easier for the party's spellcasters to affect the enemies, but care must be taken to not affect the Malefactor as well, so I think this class would work better in an experienced group who works to maximize the advantage vs a group that doesn't understand the ramifications of battlefield placement. They don't get evasion or improved evasion, so they will need some protection of some sort if the sorcerer wants to drop a fireball on top of them if they get surrounded for example. And the Cleric will not want to spend much time next to them when they need healing since their save penalty (the core ability of the class) affects everyone in 10 feet.
The writing is good, and the concept is pretty solid, so I'm trying this class out in the next game my group is playing, where we are starting out as zero level dwarves, and in the first session my character was cursed and blinded (this was just before this class came out and I was trying to decide what class he could still be effective as with that drawback, so this seemed like a pretty obvious fit).
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