A Treatise on Fantasy Gaming Economics is pretty straightforward, not only in its title but also in its presentation. At four pages long, with two pages set aside for the OGL, it’s a quick, simple examination of how economics should work in a d20/3.5/Pathfinder game system.

The text makes a quick comparison to historical wages in terms of practicalities; e.g. how much grain can be farmed in a given period of time, times its worth, for the amount of money the average family will earn, minus certain taxes and expenses. This is then compared to the “basics” that can be earned over time via Profession, and compared to a few other wages for standard jobs.

This product’s aim is a noble one – I’ve seen many people try to figure out how the “real” economics of a Pathfinder game world (using only and all of the standard rules) would work, and even attempted a few calculations myself. The problem is that this book suffers on multiple fronts from not showing its work.

For example, the basic costs of things aren’t linked or otherwise referenced. If writing a treatise on something, you always want to cite your sources, no matter how common or obvious you think they are. In this case that’s probably a link to an SRD or perhaps the d20PFSRD – who remembers that Pathfinder lists a pound of flour as costing 2 copper pieces? (There’s also an issue of measurement conversion; the treatise keeps using kilograms and liters, whereas Pathfinder uses pounds.)

Likewise, the book doesn’t show its math. When it tells us that an average person (a human commoner 1) who is trained at his job but isn’t otherwise exceptional will earn 28 gold pieces in a month if he takes 10, it’s presuming that we know this means that the commoner will have 1 rank in Profession, with a +3 bonus for that being a class skill, and no other bonuses (meaning his Wisdom is 10 or 11). This, then, gives an adjusted result of 14, which means that 7 gold pieces are earned in a week, for 28 gold pieces in a typical month. It helps to walk through things like this instead of simply skipping to the end without saying how you got there – true, it can be figured out with some simple reverse-engineering, but it shouldn’t have to be.

The book also looks at what the price of a suit of plate mail, based on the costs of the goods, and the monthly wages of the people making it. I’m not sure where the monthly wages come from, but he extracts a price that is very much lower than what is in the official rules, and then closes by suggesting that the official prices of most things be slashed.

This is another example of the book not even scratching the surface. There’s no analysis of the (admittedly flawed) crafting rules for their prices and times to create. There’s certainly no wider analysis of the impact of how this would shape the game world. Ultimately, what’s here is a plausible but very thin explanation for saying that the official prices are skewed, and lack internal consistency when viewed with scrutiny across a holistic scope.

The things that make this problematic are two-fold. First, the book doesn’t take into account all the various ways that skill checks can be inflated, even by very low-level NPCs; for that matter, there’s no real analysis of how much your average NPC will level over time, which is directly tied to how well their skill checks can be pumped up. Combined with a near-complete lack of the analysis of how much money various skill check results earn in the course of a year, and the lack of any but the most casual examples of taxation, and what’s here is little more than summarized guesswork.

To be fair, a lot of this isn’t the product’s fault. There is no standard mechanism for saying how much NPCs will level over their lifetime, what taxes usually cost, etc. There’s a lot of data that’s simply not available that is needed to calculate these things on a wider level – simply importing real-world data and then trying to make the game rules fit that model is likewise a flawed attempt to make the rules more simulationist than they were ever meant to be.

Ultimately, there needs to be a lot more than what’s here. If this treatise really wanted to cover the impact of economics in the game world, it’d need to construct some fairly baseline, though necessarily arbitrary, models for the basics of how skilled/powerful NPCs can become, overview similarly basic models for how widespread magic is and how its regulated by the law, come up with something approximating basic community sizes, and then calculate these into skill checks at various levels. None of these will be necessarily by-the-book, since most of them will be invented to help construct the economic model, but I can’t see any other way to do make a fully fleshed-out treatise.

That’s not what’s here, though. What’s here attempts only to take some basic calculations and show that they don’t pass internal consistency. It’s not wrong, but it’s so quick and so offhanded as to be of little value. This product has a long way to go before it can honestly be called a treatise.

Adding new races to an existing game world is a proposition that’s tricky at best. It requires an in-game explanation for why a particular race was never seen before, and is suddenly there now. One of the standard tropes is that a new land has been discovered, with that race being one of the more common inhabitants of said new place. This is the implicit assumption behind Caged Dragon Games’ Races of the New World: Coyotel.

A twelve-page book, RotNW: Coyotel takes a very minimalist presentation. It has no bookmarks (to which I say boo), and while the copy-and-paste option is enabled, every time I pasted the material it put each word on its own line, instead of preserving the paragraph formatting.

The graphic presentation is similarly stark. Other than the (admittedly somewhat evocative) image on the cover, and a small picture of a coyotel howling on the second page, there are no illustrations here. Each page has a single, plain black border surrounding the text on all four sides.

The book’s presentation is brief and somewhat workmanlike. We get a brief author’s foreword in which he tells us that this race is based off of the Coyote of Native American legend, followed by three paragraphs of descriptive text about the coyotel as a people, before we move towards the stats.

This, right here, is my major complaint about the book: there’s far too little exposition about the coyotel as a race. Leaving aside the implications that this race is from a “new world” (something which is likely to be campaign-specific), there three paragraphs we’re given don’t do nearly enough to tell us about the coyotel. We know that they’re chaotic, live in small groups on the edges of settlements of other races, and love playing pranks. There’s nothing about their religion, their psychology, their relations with other races in particular. It would have been cool, I think, if there had been a write-up on Coyote as their racial god, along with some information on his religion amongst other races, but that’s far beyond what’s here.

The racial write-up for the coyotel is fairly well-balanced, albeit on the stronger side. There’s no write-up given using the Advanced Race Guide point-buy rules, but if there were this race would be roughly on the same level as gnomes (their closest equivalent, in terms of their powers and abilities).

The book does present a fairly well-rounded set of alternate coyotel racial traits, several feats (many of which build on those racial traits, which is pretty cool), and favored class bonuses. Unfortunately, the tables regarding their height, weight, and age are all eschewed, which again deprives us of some of the flavor surrounding this race.

It’s here that we see another slight oddity in the book, which is the occasional presence of words that are in blue print (rather than black) and underlined. These have, in other words, the appearance of hyperlinks, except that they aren’t. Clicking on them produces nothing – insofar as I can tell, these were copy-and-pasted into the document from elsewhere, and the hyperlink imaging was preserved even though the links themselves weren’t. It’s slightly sloppy presentation.

The book ends with two coyotel-specific archetypes, the hashtaa (a bard archetype) and the wild druid (a druid archetype, naturally). Both are presented rather well, and have a paragraph of flavor text that nicely, if briefly, helps to tell us how these are the coyotel-versions of these classes, e.g. a racial spin on the bards and druids of other races (it would have been better, I think, if there’d been a sidebar expressly stating that these are the “standard” versions of these classes for coyotels, and that barring some deviants, they always use these archetypes for those classes).

All of this brings us to page seven of the book; the last five pages are taken up by the OGL, due to a huge list of Section 15 declarations. I’m frankly surprised by just how much is here, though I suspect that it’s copied wholesale from the d20pfsrd website. This is not incorrect, though I suspect that the author could have saved a few pages by going to the source for his material instead of citing the website as a whole – if nothing else, that would have saved people from expecting twelve pages of usable content when there’s really about half that much.

Overall, Races of the New World: Coyotel is a book that has potential, but needs some polishing to reach it. Hopefully an improved version will be released at some point in the future. As it is, the technical issues, combined with the sparse presentation make this a book about a race that can be inspirational and evocative, but only if the GM is willing to put some work in to fill in the gaps left here.

Sometimes it isn’t enough for a GM to throw tough monsters at his PCs. Sometimes he wants creatures that shock, disgust, and horrify them; creatures so foul in appearance and action that the responses to them are visceral. Sometimes, a GM needs to break out the Teratic Tome, by Neoplastic Press.

This one hundred-twenty page book – written for OSRIC – is expertly constructed, featuring full nested bookmarks and has copy-and-paste enabled. Far more noteworthy, however, is the artwork. Ye gods the artwork. A talented team of artists illustrated this book, presenting us with a black and white picture for almost every monster featured herein (I think maybe one doesn’t have a picture). I suppose I should warn that there are a number of monsters that have a feminine form, and thus there are quite a few bare breasts here, but really such a warning is hollow – these creatures are universally twisted images of horror, and there’s absolutely nothing prurient about them. The images herein are the sort of things that would make H. P. Lovecraft recommend that the artists seek professional help.

Of course, the illustrations in this book are reflections of the writing of author Rafael Chandler. I can only presume that Chandler dreamed up these monsters while smoking weed mixed with the ashes of Ed Gein, since what’s here are uniformly twisted beings. Take, for instance, the curhadac. While not too visually arresting, this insect-man-thing will always kidnap seven victims, bringing them all together and letting them watch as he slowly, painfully kills the victim. He then breaks down the pieces into art supplies (e.g. bones for a stand, skin for canvas, blood for paint, etc.) and paints a picture of one of the remaining six victims. It then repeats this process until there’s only one victim left, to which it sets free, with the other six pictures given as a gift.

That’s basically a par-for-the-course monster in this book.

Fascinatingly, there’s something of an undercurrent to many of the monsters here. While some, like the aforementioned curhadac, simply do what they do, a number of these monsters seek out particular kinds of victims based around themes of punishing bad people. The ruqoloi, for instance, only hunts blasphemers, punishing them by ripping out the organ they used to perpetrate their blasphemy (e.g. tearing out their tongue if it was spoken)…of course, it will also punish those who knew of the blasphemy and didn’t speak out against it, but such people are, by the monster’s logic, guilty also. Several monsters operate like that, such as the altar beast, that preys on those who would divorce.

What’s even more interesting are the hints the author drops throughout the various monstrous write-ups that these all exist against the backdrop of a specific world. Proper names, of places and individuals, are casually mentioned, but given very little exposition. We hear about lunatic sorceress Shauva Tiridan, or the Tenebrous Halflings of the Infinite Crypt, or the gnomes of Mecha Zel. Given the number of unique creatures in this world – such as the ten Venerable Dragons, each of which seems to bring forth some sort of particular apocalypse (in the days before each dragon arrives, horrible things are listed as happening) – this campaign world clearly seems to be on that is doomed, and may always have been.

The book closes out with a set of encounter tables based on both the monster’s type and its level, along with a helpful list of who produced what artwork. A quick about the author is given, along with blurbs for some of his other works (both novels), but I suspect that I’m going to need some time before I delve into Rafael Chandler’s works again…though now I certainly will.

In closing, this is a book that GMs should use if they want to make their players feel uncomfortable and afraid. Used right, these will be the creatures that will give your PCs nightmares for a long time to come. Even if your brand of D&D isn’t First Edition/OSRIC, I still strongly recommend you pick this book up; these monsters are absolutely worth going through the conversion process. Open the Teratic Tome, and your game will never be the same.

A year is a long time insofar as RPG’s are concerned. You can run an entire campaign with time to spare, or if you’re a content-creator, then you can produce quite a lot of new material in a year. How much new material? Well, if A Necromancer’s Almanac: 2012, by Necromancers of the Northwest is any indication, about three hundred pages’ worth.

Some background information: Necromancers of the Northwest produce free content each weekday for the Pathfinder RPG. All of this content is (last I checked) is still there, but as anyone who spends a lot of time online knows, there are times when you want to have offline repositories of online content. Moreover, there’s no real index of quick-reference for the online material – you need to have it memorized, or you’re out of luck.

That’s where this almanac comes in. It collects the sum total of the free (mechanical) content produced for 2012, and puts it all in one place. It should be noted that there is no overarching theme to the content here. While the content of a given week was often produced around a specific theme, the aggregate of 2012 material has no such thematic commonality. What’s here is essentially a grab-bag of content.

The technical aspects of the PDF are what they should be. I didn’t encounter any trouble using copy-and-paste (though be warned that tables, such as for the feats, seem to be images rather than text), and full nested bookmarks are present, which is good since this PDF would be a nightmare to navigate without them.

The book is divided up into four major sections, as per how the content was originally presented. First are classes, then feats, then magic items, and lastly spells. Let’s go over more in detail.

The section on classes presents a header for each class alphabetically, and then gives the new content under that. For most classes, these are new archetypes, though several classes that have suites of “selectable” powers (such as barbarian rage powers, rogue talents, etc.) there are plenty of new abilities to choose from. There are also several specific features like a new cavalier order, a new witch patron, new sorcerer bloodlines, etc. A few new prestige classes round things out.

This section does, unfortunately, highlight one aspect of the PDF that was slightly weak: rarely, you’ll run into new material that seems like it should reference other new material, but doesn’t. For example, there’s a witch archetype that gives the witch a summoned companion based on her patron, with a table showing what companion is given for what patron. Immediately after this, there’s a new witch patron listed…who isn’t on the proceeding table for companions granted to that witch archetype.

Now, to be fair, this sort of situation is, as noted above, rare. It’s not often that the new material presented here will end up referencing other new material, but the odd case like the above does pop up.

The feats section is massive in scope, which isn’t surprising since it’s around sixty pages or so long. Thankfully, there is a table summarizing the various feats at the beginning, though this takes several pages to fully present. Interestingly, in addition to metamagic feats, there’s also a separate table for monster feats, and short sections on Leadership feats and wrestling feats. By far though, generic feats take up the majority of what’s here.

The magic items section is notable for its eclectic variety. For example, there are new magic properties for magic armor and shields, but no specific magic items. The magic weapons, by contrast, are all specific magic weapons, with no new generic magic properties. Beyond this, there are new magic rings, staves, and quite a few wondrous items, but (for example) no rods or artifacts. Oddly (though not in a bad way), there’s also a short section on intelligent magic items (three new specific ones) and some magical beverages…apparently these needed to be noted separately.

The book’s final section is new magic spells. Just the section on spell lists for the various spellcasting classes takes over twenty pages, so you can imagine how many spells are here. Again, I did notice the occasional error (e.g. an illusion spell with no subschool), but for the most part these are eminently usable in your game – it’s notable that I didn’t seem to notice any of the new kinds of spells from the Advanced Arcana series that Necromancers of the Northwest produces; there were, for example, no segmented spells to be found here.

Taken holistically, the Necromancer’s Almanac is notable for the sheer variety of what’s available here. The sheer amount of new material for classes, feats, magic items, and spells is, in a word, daunting. While it may be off-putting to be charged for material that the designers admit is still out there for free, the usability of having it all in one indexed, offline, searchable location is, to my mind, worth the price. This is especially true when the result is three hundred pages of quality new material. Take a look back at what a necromantic year 2012 was, with A Necromancer’s Almanac.

The witch is one of those rare Pathfinder classes that follows a very clear thematic element without being necessarily bound to specifics. Yes, we all know witches ride broomsticks, and chant “bubble bubble toil and trouble” over cauldrons, but beyond that it’s less about concrete actions and more about the theme of those actions.

For Pathfinder, that usually takes the form of the witch class’s hex ability. While very expansive, there are still many different hex abilities that a witch can use to cause wrack and ruin for her foes…such as those written in Abandoned Arts’ Class Acts: Witches book.

Four pages long, with a page for the cover and another for the OGL, the book nevertheless packs eighteen new hexes into its remaining two pages. Of these, thirteen are normal hexes, and five are major hexes – I was slightly surprised to find no new grand hexes here, but c’est la vie.

The hexes themselves are surprisingly evocative, without sacrificing playability. The abeyance hex, for instance, curses a specific area, damaging everything within it; the heartstone hex grants a witch greater defenses (on their saves) and protection from disease; the last laugh major hex allows a dying witch to lay a debilitating (but not necessarily unbeatable) curse on an enemy, etc. There are many hexes here that, while not necessarily “signature” abilities of classical witches, are highly reminiscent of their powers – who but a witch could not only scry a creature through a cauldron, but affect it by pouring in magic potions (via the scrying cauldron hex)?

Sometimes great things come in small packages; if you want to give your witch character some new abilities that seem like they should have been there from the beginning, pick up Class Acts: Witches!

Love is like oxygen. Love is a many splendid thing. All you need is love…unless you’re a Pathfinder PC, in which case all you need is greed and bloodlust. To be sure, love can be a part of your game, but where’s the mechanical incentive for it? Purely role-playing rewards can be nice to, but they’re somehow less concrete than something that gives a numerical bonus. Love may be something that can’t be quantified, but that can certainly help.

It’s in that spirit that Lost Spheres Publishing presents Transcendent 10 – Feats of Synergy – Heartbound Heroes.

A short PDF at six pages long (with one page set aside for the title and credits, and another for the OGL), the book presents itself quite adeptly. While there are no bookmarks or table of contents, I can’t complain about that in a book with a half-dozen pages. Likewise, copy-and-paste is enabled, which is always pleasant.

The book has no artwork to speak of, but does have a simple-yet-stylish set of borders around every page. Between this and the red headers, it manages to avoid feeling entirely spartan presentation, something that’s usually difficult to pull off – props to the designers there.

The book gives us a brief introduction (which was slightly hard to follow; there’s an odd flow to the syntax), discussing the use of love as a motivator in your game (and warning to make sure that the group is interested and invested in doing so) before presenting ten new feats. Interestingly, these feats have a new descriptor: heartbound. A heartbound feat is a feat that grants you power based on the strength of your love for someone, hence the feat requirement you have a “partner” – a specific person who is the focus of the feat. What’s notable here is that the partner also needs to have a heartbound feat as well (suggesting that they genuinely do love you back), but it need not be the exact same feat; any heartbound feat will do.

It’s an intriguing mechanic, and certainly a more colorful one than simply giving us new feats with a mere thematic resemblance. The feats themselves are also slightly more expressive than you’d expect. Each one opens with a relevant quote (though the person making the quote seems to be a fictitious character, robbing this part of some of its impact), and after the usual feat presentation, has a paragraph of “GM Advice.” This “advice” is often the author explaining or expounding upon something rather than actual help in using the feat, but I still quite enjoyed the insights.

Many of the heartbound feats are surprisingly innovative. For example, the Heartbinding Spell feat makes it so that when you use a mind-affecting effect on someone, you enchant them so thoroughly that you feel some of those phantom feelings yourself, letting you use them as your “heartbound partner” (though I’d have appreciated a note here that this didn’t work for things like fear effects). Wordless Bond lets you and your partner share telepathy when close, and give vague sensory/emotional impressions further apart. All’s Fair lets you treat a target as flat-footed for a round (notably, this feat requires that you have sneak attack) if you’ve seen them harm your beloved. And of course, there’s a feat called Polyamorous, so that you can have more than one heartbound partner.

Of course, not all of these feats can be winners. Heart’s Vengeance is just like All’s Fair, save that it gives you a rather prosaic +1 BAB. Love’s Resolve seems somewhat too powerful, in that it lets you re-roll a failed save multiple times per day. Still, there are more hits than misses.

The book closes out with a new spell and a new psionic power. Interestingly, these are both essentially the same spell, with the latter being a psionic version; the spell allows you to quickly call out to your beloved, no matter where they are, and not only lets them know that you need them but gives them bonuses to track you down. It’s an interesting effect, though I’d have set the duration to “instantaneous” and noting that it lasts for so many days, rather than having an (easily-dispelled) duration of one day per level. Moreover, having a uniquely psionic version (which does take into account new Pathfinder-compatible classes like the tactician and the vitalist), with augmentations, is nice.

Overall, Heartbound Heroes does a good job of presenting feats that not only have a fairly substantial role-playing angle, but also present some interesting and balanced mechanical effects. There are some rough spots, but overall these feats can be a fun way to put your PCs’ love lives back into the forefront of the game…or at least, make them care about something other than gold and glory.

One of the things that makes Pathfinder such a great game – at least, to me – is its sense of continuity. Yes, it has its own set of mechanical changes, and we needn’t mention its original campaign setting, but there’s still a strong feel of connection to earlier editions. Unfortunately, it’s inevitable that, for various reasons, some aspects of the game fall by the wayside.

It’s therefore a great joy when somebody decides to pick up one of those lost aspects of the game, dust it off, and update it to the Pathfinder rules. That’s what Asparagus Jumpsuit has done here for magic items in their Tome of Missing Magic Items. Let’s take a look and see what’s to be found within.

The book’s technical presentation is perhaps its weakest aspect. At ninety-six pages long, there is no table of contents nor bookmarks, dealing a substantial blow to its usability. With no way to easily navigate through it, or even get an at-a-glance overview of what’s here, the book’s functionality is impaired. This is perhaps its single greatest weakness, and definitely worth knocking a star off its rating.

Luckily copy-and-paste is enabled, so there is that. I’m also of two minds about the complete lack of artwork. While I’m in favor of printer-friendly options for PDF products, that’s usually something I like to see in addition to a version with artwork, rather than instead of it. As it is, there are no illustrations of any kind to be found here. The best you’ll get it shaded headers and table rows.

I’m also slightly miffed at the incorrect use of the OGL. While the book does seem to comply with the Pathfinder Compatibility License, and does reproduce the OGL at the end, it doesn’t have a Section 15 citation for itself – worse, it has no declaration of Product Identity or listing of Open Game Content. Part of the strength of a work like this is that it allows for other companies to reuse what’s here and help proliferate the missing items back into the game. That’s hard to do if you’re not sure what’s OGC and what isn’t. Hopefully there’ll be an update to correct this soon.

Beyond the technical issues, what’s actually to be found here? Perhaps surprisingly, there’s a great deal more than just a collection of updated magic items; quite a bit more.

The book opens with a serious of random tables for determining treasure hoards and magic items – note that there are many more tables dedicated to randomly determining the latter. In fact, the sheer degree of tables is slightly awe-inspiring for how deep it goes. For example, you can roll “scrolls” on the random magic items table. You then go to table 4-1 to determine how many spells and of what level are on the scroll (or it could turn out to be a protection scroll or even a cursed scroll – can you feel the First/Second Edition vibe starting to ring through?). You then follow this up with a roll on table 4-2 to determine if the scroll’s spells are arcane or divine in nature. And then, you roll on the indicated set of tables for spells by level (e.g. a table for 1st-level arcane spells, one for 2nd-level arcane spells, etc. for all arcane and clerical spells). As a quick aside, this is only for spells in the Core Rulebook – and standard for all parts of this sourcebook.

As mentioned above, this trends very strongly towards the manner of magic item determination in First and Second Edition. I actually pulled out my copy of the 2E DMG and compared its magic item tables to this one – while not identical, the degree of parity was pleasantly great. There are even insightful footnotes for things like rolling randomly for how many charges rods, staves, or wands will have, and there’s even a(n extremely small) chance that you could find an artifact!

It should be noted, by the by, that these tables also extend to magic weapons, armor, and shields. I find this noteworthy because the tables allow for not just the random determination of what magic properties are present, but also what type of weapon/armor/shield is found, its size, etc.

After the sets of tables are the magic item descriptions. You’d think that, for a lot of these (such as potions and scrolls, certainly) the book simply doesn’t bother to give a full description – but notwithstanding the scrolls that just have random spells on them, you’d be wrong. Full magic item descriptions are given for things like potions (which, quite amusingly, have a paragraph of description regarding things like their smell and flavor) – though they refer you to the Core Rulebook for the effects of the spell effects – wands, and certain scrolls. Since the aforementioned tables are meant to be somewhat holistic in scope, they also listed standard magic items in the Core Rulebook as well; these are given an entry in the descriptions section that simply refers you back to that book, striking what I thought was a nice balance between needlessly reprinting existing materials word for word and omitting those existing materials entirely.

Of course, as mentioned before, there are a lot of magic items here that are from older versions of the game that have been updated to Pathfinder for the first time here. If you have fond memories of using things like an Alchemy Jug, a Chime of Hunger, a Girdle of Opposite Gender, or a Phylactery of Eternal Youth, you’ll be delighted to find these again here (perhaps with slightly different names). Even some existing items have tables given (e.g. what kind of ioun stone did you find, exactly?).

All of this takes us to just under halfway through the book, at which point we come to the section on artifacts. Here, the book takes a slightly different tact. The author denotes that a lot of what made artifacts such fun back in earlier editions was how they presented aspects of a greater campaign world without explanation, as though the reader were already familiar with the game world’s history. Correctly noting how this spurred the imagination, the author tries to take a similar tact here.

Each artifact is clearly an IP-free version of an artifact from the olden days of the game. One can’t look at the Cup of the Martyred Saint or the Iron Urn and not see the author quite clearly winking at the reader. What’s interesting is that the artifact’s description gives a few paragraphs of descriptive text, which clearly makes reference to the existing game world, but at the same time isn’t afraid to change minor details (or perhaps it’s more correct to say “necessarily changes minor details”).

The format of each artifact is that it opens with its typical game information (e.g. caster level, body slot, aura, etc.) before giving us its overview and history. We’re then given its powers, and the various DCs of Knowledge checks that can be made to learn more about the item (though I found these to be a bit too low for my liking). There’s also a section on the consequences of using each particular item – focused almost solely on the in-campaign ramifications of having an item of such fame and power – and the possible method of its destruction.

Interestingly, these artifacts don’t seem to have been “scaled up” to match with the generally increased power in Pathfinder. While I won’t say that these aren’t powerful, they don’t seem to subscribe to the theory that artifacts need to be uber-epic magic items in order to be awe-inspiring. Take that as you will.

After this, there’s still more to the book. In fact, the next sections are ones that most gamers will likely be split on, as they delve into the area of pre-listing things that GMs could make themselves – it’s a question of whether or not you find value in something doing calculations and writing listings for you (personally, I do find such things useful, so I’m inclined to look favorably on that).

To be more clear, it’s at this point that the book starts giving us full listings for various specific magic armor, shields, and weapons. I say “specific” here because you have things like a table for each kind of armor, which lists it with enchantments of +1 to +5, and the corresponding mechanics for that, such as the total armor bonus, price to create and cost to buy, speed reductions, arcane spell failure chance, etc. It’s basically a complete overview of that armor or shield with each enhancement bonus.

It doesn’t stop there, as it also has tables for each single kind of armor magic weapon property (presuming a +1 enhancement bonus) with tables to determine what specific kind of armor has that property, and the various statistics such armor would have (e.g. total bonus, arcane spell failure, etc.). There are even tables for those armors made out of special materials as well. All of the above also applies to shields as well.

In essence, these tables allow you to pick whether you want to start with a specific kind of armor/shield, or a specific enchantment, and cross-index from there.

The information for magic weapons is presented slightly differently. Each weapon is presented in the format of a specific magic weapon, a la how they appear in the Core Rulebook, but the actual weapon isn’t specified. So you’ll have a magic item entry for “melee weapon, dancing, +4” just waiting for you to plug in a particular type of weapon, such as a heavy mace or longsword, with all of the existing magic item information given (and even a few suggested weapons listed). Ranged weapons and even ammunition have their own sections.

What’s fairly clear in the above sections is that the book is again harkening back to earlier editions, when all magic weapons, armor, and shields were specific in what powers they had, rather than having powers layered on them from a master list. This is evidenced much more strongly in the weapons, but the undertone is there through this entire section.

The book closes out with four new feats presented which, collectively, allow for the creation of potions and wands containing spells of up to ninth level, along with the associated costs.

Overall, the Tome of Missing Magic Items is a book that splits the difference between nostalgia and utility, something for which I think the author deserves a great deal of credit. He could have simply dumped some updates of old magic items on us and run, and that probably would have been enough. However, he took the old-school mandate further and created a comprehensive set of randomized tables which, collectively, not only evoke the feeling of older editions, but help put forward a play-style in that manner as well, since you can now randomly determine most – if not all – of the treasure and magic items your party finds (be warned through, this means necessarily eschewing a great deal of the “game balance” as its presented in the Core Rulebook with regards to treasure).

How much you get out of the Tome of Missing Magic will depend not only on how much you want to see older-edition items updated to Pathfinder, but also how much you value the use of tables for random treasure content, and how much you prefer to have game books list mechanics in for you (rather than you doing it yourself). Personally, I adore all of these things, and so I think the Tome is an incredibly useful tool for an old-school Pathfinder GMs. The only major flaw I find with it is its lack of ease-of-navigation tools; an update on that score would find my upping my final score to five out of five – as it is, the content alone earns this book a healthy four out of five stars. Find what you enjoyed about magic items in previous editions with the Tome of Missing Magic.

There’s that one gamer at every table that seems to approach the game with the idea that irreverence is the soul of fun; that is, they draw joy from taking nothing seriously, regardless of the circumstances or consequences of doing so. The challenge for the GM, and often the other players, is usually to find a way to make that PC function within the boundaries of the game, where the player can be true to what they want, without being disruptive.

I mention this because Jon Brazer Enterprises’ Book of Heroic Races: Half-Faerie Dragons, seems to be aimed squarely at this middle route. Shockingly, it actually seems to manage to walk it. Let’s take a closer look.

The book comes with the requisite aspects of a PDF product, in that it has full nested bookmarks and copy-and-paste is enabled. More striking, however, is the book’s spartan visual presentation. Now, to be clear, there is artwork here, having several color and black-and-white pieces, usually set in the center of the page with the two columns of text flowing around them. The issue here is that that isn’t enough.

The nature of half-faerie dragons is that they’re Chaotic Outgoing, possessing a manic nature with a focus on pranks and illusions. It’s therefore something of an irony that, save for the aforementioned art, the book presents itself with stark austerity. There are no page borders here, nor are there any backgrounds; just black text on white pages. Normally I’m glad for printer-friendly materials in a PDF product, but here the contrast is sharp enough with the subject matter that I can’t help but find it somewhat ironic.

The heavy text itself has an off-putting effect, albeit a very slight one. While most of the pages have their visual design enhanced with bullet points, tables, sidebars, or the aforementioned art, you will run across the occasional page with densely-packed text and little else. It’s somewhat fitting that these sections tend to be the flavor text for half-faerie dragons, as it pretty well encapsulates the idea of them fluttering around you and chattering at you nonstop.

The book opens with roughly a page-and-a-quarter of framing fiction which very clearly encapsulates not only the mania but the magical nature that are archetypal among half-faerie dragons, after which we’re presented with their racial stats. I frowned just a little to see that they didn’t have the Advanced Race Guide-style racial point breakdown for their race’s abilities; this isn’t a big deal, but it references the ARG for one or two other things (such as alternate racial abilities, though it notes that are also found in the Advanced Player’s Guide), so their lack of inclusion is somewhat notable. Also, half-faerie dragons have the “draconic” subtype?

The book doesn’t dive into the crunch straight away, however, as we’re given several more pages of the flavor text, Core Rulebook-style, about things like half-faerie dragons appearance, alignment, why they advanture, etc. The surprising length of each section is characteristic of the book where non-mechanical aspects of the race are concerned, and is something I’m of two minds about. One the one hand, all too often we’re given a new race without any real idea of what makes them different – they’re given a few broad (and often predictable) strokes regarding the roles they fall into, and that’s that. Here, at least, the author is trying to give us more than just a few sweeping statements about half-faerie dragons; he’s clearly got a very specific idea in mind and wants to communicate that.

The drawback to this strong authorial voice is that, in addition to simply being daunting at times, it can also start to feel something like a straitjacket. The idea of half-faerie dragons as giddy magical pranksters is hammered home quite often throughout the book, to the point where you have a hard time seeing a half-faerie dragon character any other way. If a new race can be typecast right out of the gate, the half-faerie dragon surely has been.

I also can’t help but bring up the book’s stance that, yes while the occasional half-faerie dragon is the result of a faerie-dragon/humanoid pairing, most are born to existing half-faerie dragons. In other words, that there’s already a stable population of these half-breeds so that they now breed true. While not quite as disingenuous as Paizo’s “most half-dragons are the results of magical experiments, and not that dragons are kinky…honest,” it still smacks of a taking the easy way out regarding the thorny issue of half-faerie dragons being prevalent enough to get their own sourcebook to begin with. It’s not an issue of practicality, but it was still mildly irking regardless.

Beyond this, the book (quite wisely) switches back and forth between fluff and crunch as it progresses. We’re given a suite of half-faerie dragon-specific traits, alternate racial abilities, and favored class bonuses, after which is a large section on their psychology and lands, before dealing with their vital statistics tables (for which I give props for remembering an oft-forgotten part of including a new race). Following this are new archetypes and prestige classes, feats, and equipment.

The above new crunch is good, but nothing that sets a new standard, with one exception. Early in the book the flavor text tries to paint the picture that half-faerie dragons are drawn to arcane magic holistically, that they trend towards preparatory and spontaneous arcane spellcasting, rather than one or the other. If that seems odd, it struck me that way too, until I saw the new prestige class here: the dappled theurge. I was quite struck by this, because it’s essentially a mystic theurge prestige class for preparatory and spontaneous arcane spellcasters. On paper, this may sound like a silly idea, but it works…or at least, it works as well as the normal mystic theurge PrC does, which meanst hat, at the very least, it puts the idea of a multiclass preparatory/spontaneous character in the realm of something feasible – it’s something genuinely new, and given that it’s done by using such a small yet artful twist on an existing PrC, it’s truly notable for that.

Three new faerie dragon deities are presented, forming their own mini-pantheon for religiously-inclined half-faerie dragons. The deities themselves are presented in something of an abstract way, denoting their relationship to each other more than how they interact with mortals, though they do note how mortals tend to view them. I appreciate that these write-ups included subdomains and oracle mysteries, but it was slightly vexing that their holy symbols weren’t listed (nor, to be exceptionally picky, are inquisitions, a minor game mechanic introduced in Ultimate Magic for the inquisitor class).

Several new spells, magic items, and even artifacts follow, before the book takes a long look at several half-faerie dragon communities (no community stats given) and how to use the race in your game, finally closing out with three NPCs.

That’s the entire book in a nutshell. Overall, how much you take away from this is likely to depend strongly on to what degree the author’s intent for the race influences you. Without a doubt, there’s enough new mechanics here that you could do a great deal with half-faerie dragon PCs and NPCs for quite a while. It’s the flavor text, however, that will likely make or break your enthusiasm for what’s here – if you agree with and like the idea of this as a race of merry magic pranksters, but still want to really role-play them, then you’ll likely find this book to be made out of solid gold. On the other hand, if you find preconceived notions and attitudes for the race your playing to be obstacles more than springboards, then you’ll probably feel like you’re swimming upstream against the author’s writing.

Having said that, I do appreciate that having more to work with, even if you don’t agree with what’s here, is far better than lacking material to work with at all. When it comes to new races, less is not more. Given that, and that the other issues I had with the book were small omissions and stylistic disagreements, I can’t find any reason to give the Book of Heroic Races: Half-Faerie Dragons full marks. Five out of five fluttery butterfly wings.

Necromancy is one of those areas where a lot of people want to play one, but it’s always something of an awkward fit. Under the basic Pathfinder rules, the basic aspects of necromancy tend towards undead- and evil-focused material enough that you’re either not evil and doing it wrong, or doing it right but are evil as a consequence. It is, quite simply, hard to reconcile those two extremes.

No more! Zombie Sky Press’s Mysteries of the Dead Side: Sacred Necromancer threads the difficult strands between offering necromantic powers without (necessarily) being a servant of darkness. Let’s take a closer look and see how it pulls it off.

The book conforms to the minimum material necessary for a quality PDF product: copy-and-paste is enabled, and full nested bookmarks are present. No printer-friendly version is presented, but that’s not really a concern because (save for the front cover) there’s very little artwork here; just three color pieces.

The book opens with its new base class, the sacred necromancer. On its face, this class looks a lot like an oracle – same BAB and Hit Dice, same skill points per level – but the differences quickly become clear. While the sacred necromancer is a spontaneous spellcaster, each day it gets to change what spells are on its Spells Known list, but with a catch – they can only choose necromancy spells, off of any list (with a necessary exception for 0-level spells). Further, their spells are considered both divine and arcane at the same time; the sacred necromancer’s study of death crosses conventional limitations. Being able to channel energy is also a valuable ability, but in this case it’s limited by the sacred necromancer’s calling.

A calling is similar to an oracle’s mystery, in that it’s a theme that grants some basic powers, and then presents a suite of abilities, of which you choose one every so many levels. In this case, a calling decides what sort of channel energy you can use and how you use it (e.g. channel negative energy, only for harming the living), has a “connection” (a signature ability that is automatically gained), and a set of whispers to choose from.

There are six callings presented (counting the Journeyman as two). The chirurgeon is obsessed with the physical aspects of death. Like Doctor Frankenstein, he can construct a golem-like “monster” that’s somewhere between an animal companion and an eidolon. More interesting, at least to me, was his whisper that lets him remove the “evil” descriptor from spells that raise the undead – I know so many players who will want this just for that.

The Exorcist is focused around trapping, dispelling, and otherwise countering the effects of outsiders and undead. There are a lot of abilities here that are defensive in nature, as well as some battlefield-control ones (e.g. seal an outsider in a protected area for a short time). The Journeyman of the Pale Path, by contrast, is simply an expert at manipulating negative energy, to the tune of things like taking an immediate action to reduce healing with a tightly-focused channel energy, or create undead that share teamwork feats. Nicely, there’s a sidebar that talks about reversing this class to be positive-energy focused instead, and each ability has a short section saying how it would work in reverse.

The Psychopomp is concerned with the state of the soul. It struck me as the weakest of the themes here, but it still had several interesting abilities, such as summoning a spirit to be able to be the focus point of channeling energy, or being able to summon ancient spirits of great heroes into your allies to boost their abilities. The final calling, the Revenant, is much more fun – you get to play an undead creature! Limited only in that you’re not flatly immune to mind-affecting effects, this calling has some fairly tightly-focused powers relating to your former life, such as focusing your hatred against certain kinds of creatures (presumably the same sort that killed you) or even against specific individuals.

Beyond these callings, sacred necromancers also gain “fields.” Fields are like mini-callings, adding additional thematic flavor to what your sacred necromancer can do. Most don’t inherently grant any powers, but rather expand what whispers you can take. For example, the self-experimentation field allows access to four whispers based around augmenting your body to gain.

There’s also a brief sidebar which says it lists “all necromancy spells for the Pathfinder role-playing game.” That’s great, particularly since most (though it seems like it should be all) of them are linked to the d20 PF SRD, but I do wish that those spells not from the Core Rulebook were tagged with an indicator to show what book they are from.

Nearing its end, the book presents a sample sacred necromancer named Ren. Ren, who is a shout-out to a previous ZSP book, has a full stat block, but has no flavor or expository text of any kind, which is a shame considering her background. She’s also fox-blooded, which is a new +0 CR simple template, which denotes that you have kitsune ancestry – I liked this, even if it was slightly out of place in the book, because it lets you delve into taking kitsune-specific abilities. Speaking of which, the book has three new feats, one of which allows you to have an extra fox tail. The other two are more necromantic in focus, granting an extra whisper or allowing you to turn the living (a la turn undead).

One thing I haven’t mentioned up until now are the book’s weaknesses. Remember how I noted that the spell list was linked to d20pfsrd.com? So are lots of other parts in the book…but there’s no visual indicator of what words are links and which aren’t. While this does make for a more consistent (and prettier) visual display, it can be surprising when you click to scroll the PDF and find that you’ve clicked on a link to open something on d20pfsrd.

There’s also the occasionally-unclear ability. A high-level exorcist, for example, is protected from bodily contact with outsiders and the undead as a supernatural ability…unless they have spell resistance. So he has to make a caster level check with a supernatural ability against their SR? What bonus does he have for that? Presumably it’s equal to his character level, but it’s unclear. There are a few instances of that kind of uncertainty throughout the book, though only a few (e.g. is Extra Whisper limited to just whispers you can take, or any whisper in any calling or field?).

Overall though, I think the book was not only mechanically sound in what it prevented, but highly evocative as well. This is the sort of book where, as you read it, you can’t help but think about how much fun it would be to play this class. To me, that’s really the best mark of quality an RPG supplement can have. Delving into death was never so much fun as the sacred necromancer makes it.

It’s hard to deny that the intense mathematical aspect of Pathfinder is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it allows for a great deal of customization and mechanical creativity; endless combinations are possible to help define the sort of character you want. On the other hand, it can also be a lot to handle, particularly if you’re a GM trying to generate NPCs of a higher level (and if they can cast spells).

Raging Swan Press’s new book, 100% Crunch: Liches, looks to take some of the work out of this process, at least insofar as liches, those pinnacles of undeath, are concerned.

100% Crunch: Liches comes with a print version and a screen-reading version. Usually I’m a fan of printer-friendly versions of products, but in this case I honestly had a hard time determining any practical difference between the two; the only one that I saw was that the print version was set to display two pages at a time, something which you can easily toggle with the “View” setting on your PDF reader. Both versions have full nested bookmarks, and have copy-and-paste enabled, to their credit.

The book has a minimalist presentation on design. The illustrations here are extremely few, and there’s some white space on the pages – the author actually speaks to this latter point, noting (wisely, in my opinion) that it’s better to have each NPC on its own page for easy printing, rather than having the stat blocks sprawling across multiple pages in a jumbled mess.

The book features an expanded table of contents, which is a nice addition to its bookmarks, as the TOC shows the alignment/race/class breakdown for each entry, sorted by Challenge Ratings. It also reproduces the templates for not only the basic lich, but also the forsaken lich and the demilich, which is a nice touch.

The book further introduces three new archetypes for sentient undead bards, druids, and rangers. This was something of a disappointment because, while I like the idea of introducing undead-specific archetypes for these classes, what’s here didn’t go far enough. The archetypes are mostly concerned with deleting and replacing spells on the listed classes’ spell lists, though the undead bard also gets an ability to use its spells and abilities to bolster undead creatures, rather than living ones. There should be more here – what about the animal companions or druids and rangers, for example (should they have them)? More could have been done with these.

It’s following these that we come to the NPC stat blocks themselves. These NPCs are, as the book’s title says, 100% crunch – other than the brief visual description, these are all statistics shorn of any flavor or descriptive text. The stat blocks are, for the most part, fairly well done, but errors and poor designs do creep in every now and then. For example, the CR 12 halfling clerical lich has its domain powers and domain spells in its stat block, but the domains themselves (Charm and Trickery, by the way) aren’t listed. Likewise, the CR 20 succubus lich has, as one of its highest-level spells, teleport without error. Leaving aside that this should be called “greater teleport,” why would she have this as a spell when she can use it as a spell-like ability at will? Little things like these pepper the book, though somewhat infrequently.

Beyond that, I do have to give credit to the book’s author for really mixing it up with his choices. While it’s obvious in theory that there are so many combinations of races, classes, and lich templates to apply, it’s something to see some of them here. A human ranger forsaken lich, an ancient green dragon lich, a dwarf oracle lich, and others are here – though for you purists, there are plenty of more down-to-earth liches here as well, including the basic human wizard lich.

Overall, the book is a good one if you’re worried about sitting down and making a lich character from scratch. It also doesn’t range too far afield; none of the spells here go beyond what’s in the Core Rules. While some small blemishes are present, virtually all of them are easily spotted and fixed if you look over your stat block of choice with a critical eye. Otherwise, your only problem is which lich to pitch at your PCs.

The worst villains are those that are unintentionally self-created. While villains who are simply evil because they enjoy it are easily hated, those who became something terrible without realizing that they were walking the path to damnation are tragic figures, albeit no less monstrous for their tragedy. After all, if they didn’t realize the dire consequences of what they were doing, how do any of us know we’re not on the same path?

Such is the case with the Nightmare of Abul Khared, a new villain for the Hot Chicks RPG from Dakkar Unlimited.

Before we look at the Nightmare further, let’s quickly examine the book itself. The technical specifics follow in the usual fare for Dakkar. The three-dozen-page book is broken up into various sections by headers, eschewing any sort of chapter format. These headers are the basis for the bookmarks that are also present. Copy-and-paste is likewise enabled.

The artwork is Dakkar’s signature full-color CGI style. The pictures are as gorgeous, and as ghoulish in the subject matter, as you’d expect. Full frontal nudity for both women and men are to be found here, typically in the grip of Abul himself or his servitors. There is no printer-friendly option, so beware if you want to print this out.

The vast majority of the book, just over 75% of it, are narrative in nature; that is, it’s not so much about game mechanics as it is about story and background. This is something I suspect that some gamers may feel divided over – if you’re a gifted storyteller, you may not appreciate that there’s roughly eight pages of game statistics, with the rest being a story that you could have made yourself. On the other hand, if you prefer villains with a highly fleshed-out background, villains with complex motivations and detailed origin stories, you might find this invaluable. I tend towards the latter stance, but your mileage may vary.

The story of Abul Khared himself is an exploration of the descent into madness. A scientist who lost his family in the Depravity War, his search for the ones responsible came to a bitter end when he realized that he could find them but lacked the power or resources to harm them. Unfortunately, things became far worse for Abul from there.

The results of his impotent quest for revenge motivated Abul to begin forcibly evolving himself, and the results are chronicled in a series of in-character diaries throughout the book. These are broken up by out-of-character (that is, meta-game) text wherein the author analyzes and expounds upon what it is that Abul is going through.

Abul’s slow descent is a surprisingly gripping read, and the expository text does a good job of highlighting just what it is that he’s facing as he continues the process. There are some (as the author calls them) “high concept” in this, as Abul’s story is interlaced with science fiction; admittedly, it plays rather fast and loose with quite a bit of the sci-fi, but I don’t see that as a bad thing – what’s important is the character reactions, not the actual means used to provoke them.

Of course, this means that the book is more story than it is game supplement. While there are game statistics for the Nightmare, as well as its servitors, and even some new powers and the creature’s base of operations, that’s the sum total of it, plus a few adventure seeds. Ideas for using Abul Khared in your game are given, but I was rather surprised how the author had very few specifics regarding the “how” of having PCs fight him – I used to think that this was sloppy game design, but lately I’ve been rethinking that stance. The more free-form kind of role-playing, concerned more with creativity at the table than with carefully charted numerical modifiers, is clearly being referenced here; given that, the author’s very general brand of advice makes perfect sense.

Ultimately, the Nightmare of Abul Khared is one that we get to experience along with the eponymous characters, being walked through little-by-little his descent into something more, and less, than human. It’s only when the Nightmare is fully revealed are we presented with it in terms of an RPG, with a set of stats and some nonspecific advice on how to use it. Take from that what you will, but I personally enjoyed it quite a bit – this is a Nightmare that, used properly, your PCs will never forget confronting.

There’s a particular aspect with post-twentieth-level gaming that doesn’t get discussed very much: that the outliers tend to get screwed. What that means is that, for the usual reasons that level 20+ material doesn’t get supported, what support is given is usually to the baseline classes of the game. If you’re playing some sort of exotic class, you had better hope that you can find some generic options that fit your character, otherwise you’re just out of luck.

It’s that sort of problem that Legendary Levels II, from Little Red Goblin Games, seeks to address.

Before going any further, there’s one thing that should be made absolutely clear regarding this book. You need to have the first Legendary Levels book in order to use this one. While the legendary classes and feats are fairly self-explanatory in what they offer, there are some fairly important aspects of this book, such as legendary damage or divinity scores, that are introduced in the first book that aren’t explained herein; you’ll need the first Legendary Levels book for that.

With that said, let’s move on to the book’s technical presentation. This book was rather awkward in that it included a separate JPG file for each of the book’s interior illustrations (with one being presented twice), and a composite work of all of those illustrations together and in color. Why do I call this awkward? Well, beyond having almost twenty additional files included with the book, these pictures are large. The file size on most of them is around five megabytes, but that composite I mentioned before? That one weighs in at over sixty-five megabytes! The PDF of the book itself is just over a dozen megabytes in size.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy that LRGG decided to include separate files for the pictures, but the size of these is somewhat prohibitive; maybe my computer is showing its age, but opening these files seemed to strain my CPU. Moreover, it seemed to me that it called attention to this book not having a printer-friendly version, something I still think all PDF products should offer. The book itself is presented against a light tan “parchment” background. It does what a PDF should in that it allows for copy-and-paste, and has full nested bookmarks.

Moving away from the technical presentation, let’s take a look at what’s in Legendary Levels II. As with its predecessor, this book offers a series of legendary classes designed to take your game from 21st to 30th level. Whereas the first book covered the core classes, this one covers all of the base and alternate classes from the APG, UM, and UC, along with one of Little Red Goblin Games’s own original classes from their book Tome of the Bizarre.

These classes aren’t presented as “extensions” of the original class so much as they are as special prestige classes; I say “special” here because they have no prerequisites – obviously you can take the corresponding legendary class if you’ve hit 20th level in the base class (e.g. if you’re a 20th level witch your next class level would be 1st-level legendary witch), and that these levels stack with the base class’s level for numerical purposes (e.g. most class abilities). The book also notes that you can allow for these classes to be taken by a character that’s thematically near the legendary class (giving an example of a rogue 15/assassin 5 could still take levels in legendary rogue).

The classes themselves are all ten levels in length, and for the most part offer a parcel of original powers and abilities, though a few (such as the oracle) are based around expanding lower-level class abilities; e.g. more mysteries and revelations. It’s worth noting that quite a few of these powers are based around dealing or protecting yourself from legendary damage (e.g. being reduced instantly to 0 hit points), though there are still plenty that do not.

The new mechanics themselves are something of a mixed bag. While I generally liked what was here, minor errors cropped up with disappointing regularity. Some of these were issues of formatting, such as something that should have been indented or emboldened but wasn’t. Still others were small errors that were easily fixed (e.g. an ability that says it works on a 3-in-6 chance, and then says it works if you get a 3, 4, 5, or 6 on a d6 roll).

Still, if you can get past the fact that this book should have been through editorial polishing a bit more, there’s a lot to like here. Many of the class abilities are quite fun; I particularly loved the gunslinger’s Russian Roulette deed – blindly loading your revolver, or other firearm, you point it at yourself or your enemy, and have a 50% chance of firing or not, with a special result each way; or the legendary summoner evolutions, such as being able to get a gargantuan eidolon. There’s a lot to like here if you want to take your character beyond what 20th level can give you.

Two prestige classes are also offered, with the designers flat-out telling you that these are for multiclass characters who can’t otherwise take a legendary class, something which I consider to be a big plus. The first is the artificer, which is a spellcaster that deals primarily with magical technology – in this case, the class is based around having a pool of “spark of life” points, as this is the spark within both living things and magic, and being able to choose discoveries (e.g. class abilities) to spend spark points on. I’ll confess I’m not entirely sure what multiclass mix this is supposed to support, particularly as it offers full spellcasting progression. That said, it is quite cool, particularly since it supports “super heavy armor” which is essentially a suit of mecha.

The other prestige class is the dragonlord, which is meant for characters with some sort of animal companion; you basically give up the animal companion in order to get a dragon instead. It’s pretty badass, and the class is a mixture of set class abilities and getting to pick from a suite of abilities (a la rogue talents).

The book closes out with a section of new legendary feats, which means that they can only be taken by 21st-level and above characters. The feats are, rather interestingly, divided into two groups. The first group is roughly what you’d expect of new feats, offering (again, a very mixed bag) of new abilities. Some of these are what you’d expect at this stage of play, such as being able to make a full attack action during a spring attack, while others (particularly the metamagic feats) don’t seem to quite keep pace – I suspect that in the case of the magic-focused feats, this lack of greater ability is by design (as I recall it being in the first book), since legendary spellcasting is already such an advantage, it’s appropriate that feats should play more towards the martial-oriented characters.

The second set of feats are called scion feats, and these are another love letter to multiclass characters. In this case, the feats are designed to allow access to the less powerful abilities of the base legendary classes for characters that, due to multiclassing, wouldn’t otherwise ever be able to reach them. For example, so long as you’re a 21st-level character, with at least 10 levels in samurai, you can take the Bushi of Susanoo scion feat, which gives you the legendary samurai’s death before dishonor class ability. It’s a very elegant way to make sure that the multiclassed characters aren’t left behind.

Ultimately, this book is the necessary follow-up to the first Legendary Levels, covering those classes that were excluded. In that sense, it’s a very apropos sequel, as it has both the strengths and weaknesses of its predecessor. The flaws are primarily based around some necessary editing (Legendary Mounted Combat is printed twice, for instance), and some options seem, at least on their face, better than some others, but none of this ever drastically undercuts the value of what’s here. If you desire to return to the realm of gaming beyond 20th level, and you’ve long since left the core classes behind, lok to Legendary Levels II to dial your character all the way up to 30.

Familiars are one of those niche areas that’s never truly complete, since there’s always another animal, or some sort of creature, that could conceivably become one. It’s almost a competition among PCs to try and find the most bizarre, unique familiar allowable.

With the release of 100 Pathfinder Familiars, from Lee’s Lists, that competition just kicked into overdrive.

100 Pathfinder Familiars is self-explanatory in what it offers. The book is a short one, being four pages long, and interestingly is released under a Creative Commons License, rather than the OGL (though it has the Pathfinder Compatibility Logo, oddly enough).

The one hundred familiars are broken into eight groups, each having anywhere from less than a half-dozen to almost two dozen creatures, each of which covers a broad type; these are Insects, Arthropods, Fey/Elementals, Things That Grow On/In You, Birds, Fish, Reptiles/Amphibians, and Mammals. Each group lists (almost off-handedly) what existing stat block you should use to represent the creatures in that group, neatly avoiding the need to present unique stats for the creatures listed.

The above has one exception, however – each creature listed also mentions its unique familiar bonuses; that is, the mechanical benefit they provide to their master. Each such creature has them, and they help to make each every entry on the list stand out.

Of course, many if not most of these creatures don’t need that much help standing out. Perhaps it’s because most of the common familiars have already been detailed, or perhaps its because the author is insane, but there are some truly wacky familiars here! Yes there are some creatures like ducks and poodles that you can magically bond with, but what about a case of athlete’s foot? Or a winged squid? Or a living bit of music? There are some truly out-there familiars here!

Of course, that’s not always a good thing. Some of the listed entries stretch what the given stat blocks assigned to them could easily accommodate. Saying that the cat stat block should be used for all mammals is awkward when one of the listed creatures is an alpaca (which are about three feet tall and 150 lbs.). Likewise, canny Pathfinder players will know that a few of the creatures on here already have stat blocks (admittedly not in the first Bestiary, but still…), so things like a redcap or boggart familiar might be awkward.

Moreover, a minority of the familiar benefits stretch what the familiar’s master might consider useful. Normally, a familiar is the purview of a wizard, witch, and in some cases a sorcerer. So having a familiar that grants an extra round of barbarian raging (the wolverine, appropriately enough) or that increases damaging when channeling negative energy (the goat, presumably for its real-world devilish symbolism) might be a bit awkward. On the other hand, these might be the sorts of familiars that multiclass spellcasters would love to have; viva las corner cases.

Overall, 100 Pathfinder Familiars is a wacky book that sometimes plays a little fast and loose with what it presents, but never so much that what’s here is unusable – indeed, the combination of sensible and silly makes for a terrific set of possible familiars here (I recommend having your next PC roll randomly on this list for their familiar; everyone will be howling when it turns out to be a hookworm living in their intestines). If you’re in the mood to have your arcane spellcaster have an exotic familiar, you owe it to yourself to look here, where there’s a hundred of them.

It’s a truism that d20-based games are built around combat. It is possible to work against this slant and create characters that are focused on peaceful interaction, largely by focusing on skills and feats that lean away from combat potential, but there are comparatively few of those. NUELOW Games’s new book, Modern Basics: Feats of Seduction and Subterfuge, expands that roster ever so slightly.

The book’s presentation is notably minimalist, at least in terms of technical bells and whistles. Copy-and-paste is enabled, but there aren’t any hyperlinks or bookmarks…though for a PDF that’s only five pages long, this isn’t really an issue. The book takes an understated tone with illustrations as well. A few shots of the couple from the cover are all that’s to be found on the interior; this lends the book a nice sense of style in a “just what you see” way.

In terms of evaluating the book, I think it’s important to remember that this is geared primarily towards d20 Modern. The designer does not that these can be used with pretty much any d20 game, and he’s not wrong in that assertion; what’s here will work with pretty much any incarnation of d20, though I’ll say right now that some systems will necessitate some minor adapting. What’s more important to take away from the book’s focus on d20 Modern is the relative scale of what it offers (in terms of power) and the nature of its effects, something I’ll touch on more below.

Feats of Seduction and Subterfuge offers one new skill and eight new feats. Insightfully, the author gives a brief introduction wherein he mentions that the new skill (Seduction) should be a class skill for bards, Charismatic Heroes, and other Charisma-focused classes, and that the feats should be on the bonus feat lists for such classes. I have to give the author props here; mentioning who gets them as class skills is an oversight that most people make when introducing new skills into the game. The issue of bonus feats is somewhat less germane, but still appreciated.

Unfortunately, the Seduction skill itself was nothing to write home about. For me, the major downside was that it didn’t adequately describe what it does, and how it makes itself different from broader skills that have the same theme (such as Bluff). The skill says that it’s used to “sway NPCs into performing actions of your choosing,” but it doesn’t give examples of the degree to which you sway them the way Diplomacy does. Worse, the skill has no mention of the time required to make a seduction attempt, and oddly splits itself between the two sexes (e.g. Seduction (females) is different from Seduction (males)), something I found unnecessary. I also didn’t like the static DC, since I think that skill checks to influence creatures should be opposed checks.

The new feats were more passable in what they offered. If you have the Wardrobe Malfunction feats, for example, you’ve mastered the art of the nip slip (or other sexy reveal) – you can briefly expose yourself, feigning embarrassment at your “accidental” reveal; doing so lets you make a skill check to not only amuse those who see it and are fooled, but it also creates a distraction for your allies. It’s unfortunate that feats like this were the vast minority of the book.

To expound upon that, of the eight feats in the book, six of them were skill boosters, offering a +2 bonus to two (sometimes three) related skills; some also have an additional effect, such as how the No Sense feat grants not only a +2 bonus to Bluff and Intimidate, but also a +4 bonus to saves against feat. This brings us back to what I was saying before about the power scale of these feats being relative depending on the kind of game you’re running. For a d20 Modern game, these are comparable to a lot of the feats available in the Core Rulebook, as these stand alongside a host of other “+2 to two skills” feats, and even a bit above them. For a Pathfinder game, however, these will often be seen as somewhat underpowered compared to the other feats available.

Ultimately, I couldn’t bring myself to judge this book too harshly, since as a d20 Modern-based book it stands fairly well on its own; only the Seduction skill needs any major work, but it’s easily overlooked (though for feats that use it, I’d throw it out in favor of Bluff instead). The feats themselves range from about par to being quite innovative; I only wish there were less of the former and more of the latter. Still, Feats of Seduction and Subterfuge isn’t a bad book if you want to increase your Modern Basics.

Adventurers of any stripe are independent types; that’s a truism that goes back to the beginning of gaming. Few are the adventurers who care to have someone telling them how to take the risks they take, let alone telling them where to go and what to do. This is doubly so for those characters who are evil in nature…and yet that’s exactly what the PCs of the Way of the Wicked adventure path have had to endure. Until now.

Now, in the penultimate adventure, The Devil My Only Master, the PCs finally throw off the shackles of their earthly patron and take control of the plot to conquer the nation of Talingarde. But their master is not willing to go quietly. Let’s take a look and see how the adventure plays out.

The adventure comes with three PDFs. The first is the adventure itself, the second is the printer-friendly version thereof, and the third is a set of player handouts. Let’s look at these in reverse order. The player handouts largely consists of the adventure maps with the various keys and descriptors removed, which is a good thing to have; only one is an actual handout for the players to peruse. I had mixed feelings about these only being available in full color, as you’re most likely going to want to print these out – still, there aren’t that many (a grand total of six single-page items), so it shouldn’t be too difficult.

The critique about color artwork follows us to the printer-friendly version of the adventure. The printer-friendly version of the adventure has the same layout and artwork as the full-color version; what’s changed is that the page backgrounds (a parchment-color tan) and borders (a mixture of black and deep grey) are removed, with the borders being denoted only in grayscale lines. All of the other artwork and maps are present, color included.

I’ve mentioned before that I can understand leaving the artwork and illustrations in a printer-friendly PDF, as removing them requires redoing the layout. However, I’m less sympathetic to not finding a way to set the artwork to black-and-white at the very least. Would that really have been so hard to do?

Of course, the artwork is gorgeous – Michael Clark continues to live up to his high standards from previous works here, with artwork that seems to leap off the page, most in gorgeous full-color. Notwithstanding the maps, the bulk of the artwork goes to various NPCs introduced throughout the adventure, and the pictures do a marvelous job of showcasing just who it is your PCs are electing to go up against.

The PDF itself hits most of the technical marks you’d expect of it, having copy-and-paste enabled, and having bookmarks to each major section, though it’s still worth a frown that there are no nested bookmarks to sub-sections. I’d also like to see things like Mac-compatible files and epublishing versions available, but the lack of these certainly isn’t a deal-breaker. I should also note that there are some points of errata throughout the adventure as well – Cardinal Thorn’s CR, for example, is one point higher than it should be (unless it was bumped up to account for his gear, in which case that should be mentioned). Again, nothing that’s worth taking points off over, but if you have the time you may want to double-check a few things.

The book’s first act begins immediately where the last one ended, with the PCs now ready to turn against their patron, Cardinal Thorn. Indeed, at this point Thorn is already making preemptive strikes against them, whether the PCs have antagonized him or not, as his paranoia (and failure to act in accordance with the strict dogma of Hell) has already pushed him to the edge. The first act is therefore a mixture of dealing with Thorn’s agents as they attempt to kill the PCs and bargaining with his former associates to usurp his position. It’s here that the PCs manage to deal with the contract they signed way back in Book One, and the manner in which a particular loophole is exploited is quite diabolical indeed.

This part of the book features a sidebar wherein the author admits to this act’s repetitive nature – roughly a half-dozen encounters with outsiders teleporting in to either talk or fight. He mentions, wisely in my opinion, that you might want to consider spacing at least some of these out – this is good advice, but may be hard to put into practice; as I read it, only the last section can really bet set later in the adventure. Virtually all of the rest are required for setting things up. Also, the third section struck me as somewhat awkward, as it’s incumbent on a character from the previous Book having escaped alive – this is a bit tenuous for me; something should have been put in there to make this more definitive.

The book’s second act takes a detour, as the PCs now regroup and meet up with the Fifth Knot to gain some new intelligence on another old foe. The paladin Sir Richard has his story detailed here in full (something that takes a surprising three pages, and brings up another small complaint I have – at this point the PCs will only have met Sir Richard in combat once. There are supposed to be other instances where they come near each other, but these are easily downplayed unless the GM takes steps to play up the paladin’s accomplishments. This section, which covers his story in one place, makes it easier to do that; I just wish this had been highlighted earlier).

Of more pressing concern is that the paladin is currently on the Isle of Chargammon, attempting to secure funds for the army Princess Bellinda is trying to raise. The PCs must race there, overcome him and his company of knights, and make a decision as to whether they can try and kill their righteous foe once and for all, or something far more sinister.

This second act is the built-in “downtime” between the first act and the rest of the adventure. While it does have some combat, only the last part (with Richard and his fellows) is truly a threat to the PCs; far more important is what they do with the intelligence they gain, and what they do with Richard after his defeat. This islargely setting the direction for where to go next.

In this case, that’ll likely lead to the book’s third act; now that the PCs know that Cardinal Thorn is a lich, it’s time to go after his phylactery. Of course, this is no easy win – the phylactery is hidden in the lair of a truly terrible linnorm that dwells in a lonely cairn filled with undead. Contrasting to the previous section, there’s little politicking to do here; this is purely a smash-and-grab, and it’s likely to be a tough one. Of course, smart PCs will know better than to go charging in blindly (indeed, there are multiple notes in the book about one particular encounter being a likely TPK if the PCs don’t play it smart). Of course, once the PCs have the phylactery, it isn’t quite over, and then there’s the question of what to do with it.

I didn’t have any major complaints with this areas, as the book’s sole choke-point in terms of difficulty is addressed directly in a sidebar. I do wish that some discussion had been given to groups who try to employ the “fifteen-minute adventuring day” schtick, as this part of the book seems to lend itself to the PCs resting for a day after a difficult encounter, as most of the creatures are location-based.

The book’s final act is the assault on Thorn’s sanctum sanctorum, the Agathium. This two-level temple to Asmodeus is the final showdown with their old master and his few remaining servants. This last act is a mixture of the second and third, as there are multiple opportunities to make deals with some of the NPCs here, but at the same time there are plenty who won’t be willing to negotiate. Ultimately, this makes it something of a straightforward dungeon-crawl.

I quite enjoyed this section for its mixture of bloodlust and diplomacy, as it invites the kind of role-playing that I think Pathfinder does best. I do wish that there had been a larger section on the threats on the journey to the Agathium, but this is a small complaint as it does cover at least one obstacle on the way there, and by this time the PCs are likely using magical travel anyway, so it’s something of a moot point.

Far better is that this last section lends itself much more easily to scaling. The NPCs are largely divided by this point, thanks to Thorn’s paranoia and mismanagement of his resources; this can easily be changed if the PCs seem like they’re having too easy a time of it. I also don’t think this section suffers from the same “fifteen-minute” problem as the previous one, not because it necessarily goes out of its way to work around it, but because it’s somewhat self-evident that the PCs can’t stop halfway through a major assault on Thorn’s base of operations and then just pick up where they left off. Any GM who lets them get away with that is being far too lenient.

Once the PCs have settled the score, the stage is set for the final conquest, but unfortunately that will have to wait until the final book.

Luckily, this one doesn’t end here. A two-page FAQ is given on various areas where the PCs could go off the rails. In previous books, this was helpful – here, it is an absolute necessity. I’m frankly amazed that this section is only two pages long and yet manages to cover virtually all of the major deviations that the PCs could take; GMs would be well advised to pay close attention to this.

Following this is a section titled “Children of the Night,” a continuation of the same section from the previous book that deals more with vampire and lich PCs; whereas that was focused on the flavor of running an undead PC, this article focuses on the mechanics.

For vampires, the balancing mechanism for a vampire PC is largely handled as a feat tax. Specifically, becoming a vampire is set as a five-feat tree; only three feats are necessary to become a vampire, but gaining the full powers and benefits of the template from the Bestiary takes all five. This works well, I think, to balance the panoply of powers that vampires get (particularly since the vampiric weaknesses are not that difficult to ameliorate for smart PCs).

Liches are treated somewhat differently. Lichdom requires only a single feat, but crafting a phylactery takes months of constant effort. While some may find this lopsided compared to the degree of feats a vampire needs to pay, I think that it’s important to recall that vampires gain much greater utility and offensive powers than liches do, so I found this to be a comparatively equitable price to pay.

Of course, these aren’t the only feats in the book, as over a dozen new feats, and a half-dozen new spells and magic items each, all specific to the undead, follow. With spells such as “restore the destroyed” (a “resurrection” for the undead) and magic items like “the false heart” (so that a vampire may remove their real heart from their body, protecting it), these will definitely enable undead PCs to stretch their rotting wings to the fullest.

The book’s final section is similarly crunchy in what it offers. Titled “Hellbound” and written by Jason Bulmahn, here we’re given four new Asmodeus-specific class archetypes and nine new feats; most of the latter revolve specifically around striking deals with agents of Hell in exchange for power, albeit at the cost of your soul. Most of these were quite good, though I wish the antipaladin archetype had explicitly called out that changes the class alignment to Lawful Evil.

There’s one other aspect of the book that was disappointing in its exclusion; the PCs minions (a la the minion rules from Book Two). There’s simply very little for their minions to do here, as the book focuses almost exclusively on the PCs’ tactical actions against their enemies; while it can’t be helped given the nature of things coming to a head, it’s a shame that there are no opportunities for greater villainy undertaken on a wider scale here. Hopefully the evil followers of the PCs will play a greater role in the final book.

Having said that, the fifth book of the Way of the Wicked is a different beast than its predecessors, but not a lesser one. Here, there are extremely few good-aligned creatures to fight; instead, this is a battle against other villains to crown yourselves as the undisputed master of evil. This adventure is the first part of the dark reward your PCs will have been yearning for since the campaign’s start, and they’ll surely reap it with relish. From now on, each PC will bow exclusively to The Devil My Only Master.