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A Necromancer's Grimoire: Paths of the Druid
by Timothy B. [Featured Reviewer] Date Added: 06/26/2012 12:30:42

I am not a fan of "Beastmaster"-like druids. I prefer the tree-hugging celtic priest archetype myself. That all being said, this book could make me change my mind. Plenty of new abilities for Animal Companions. There is a Beastmaster Prestige Class that I rather like. The other two PrCs are good, but not to my personal tastes. No new feats or spells though. I would have liked to have maybe a couple.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
A Necromancer's Grimoire: Paths of the Druid
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A Necromancer's Grimoire: Secrets of the Witch
by Timothy B. [Featured Reviewer] Date Added: 06/26/2012 12:27:43

This book offers up the Green Hag as a playable race for the Witch class. Sort of. It is more of a race-as-class, but close enough to the witch to work. Anyone that played D&D back in the late 70s will have no issues with this really. There are also plenty of new feats and hexes that can be used by the witch or Green Hag. There are also plenty of new spells. This is a good book if you are a witch completest like me, or would like to use hags in your pathfinder game. Or you can get it for the hexes and spells alone. In any case it is is a steal at this price.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
A Necromancer's Grimoire: Secrets of the Witch
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The Ebon Vault: Power of the Ring
by Shane O. [Featured Reviewer] Date Added: 06/24/2012 13:53:01

I needn’t talk about the archetypal nature of magic rings in fantasy. From the Ring of Gyges to Green Lantern, magic rings that grant their wielder great power are timeless. This continues to be the case in Pathfinder, which allows for all sorts of magic rings. All too often, however, these are minor things easily forgotten about (e.g. a ring of swimming) or are so standard as to be assumed for treasure (e.g. rings of protection). The Ebon Vault: Power of the Ring, from Necromancers of the Northwest, seeks to shake things up a bit.

Power of the Ring weighs in at forty-seven pages, and does most of what a PDF should. It has full, nested bookmarks, for example. However, copy-and-paste has not been enabled, so if you’re looking to copy something onto an electronic character sheet, you’ll need to retype it by hand. The book has no printer-friendly option, which might be a bit of a problem for those looking for a hard copy; while the book’s only interior illustrations are stock art of various rings, all of the pages are set against a cream-colored “parchment” background.

The book opens with a bit of fiction, which was actually much more intriguing than I thought it would be. Showing the exchange between a thief and one of the book’s intelligent rings, the banter between the two (particularly the bombastic ring, which kept giving the thief cutesy pet names) was quite fun, enough so that I wouldn’t have minded reading more about their exploits.

The book quickly moves onto a more proper introduction before giving us twenty descriptions of ring appearances. These aren’t tied to any particular magic rings, and so can be used for whatever rings your characters happen to find. Each description is a paragraph long, and doesn’t want for details; indeed, there’s so much detail to each description that you may find it might not be quite right for the magic you’re attaching to it (e.g. a stylized carving of two serpents about to swallow a gemstone might be a bit off for a ring of jumping).

The bulk of the book is devoted to new magic rings a la those in the Core Rules. More than fifty are presented (though a few of these are variants on the same kind of ring, e.g. the ring of bowmanship and its lesser and greater variants; this sort of thing doesn’t happen often, though) and they run quite the gamut. Unlike in the Core Rules, these rings tend to have a wide range of costs, from just a few hundred GP to three hundred thousand!

In terms of effect, most of these rings avoid more prosaic effects, focusing instead on a broader set of powers not easily replicated by spells or feats. For every ring of flying (which grants a 5 to Fly checks) there are things like the ring of branding (dealing fire damage to put a magic brand on the target, which requires powerful magic to remove and once a day can let you teleport them to you) or the ring of infernal wishes (putting you in contact with a powerful devil, and the more wishes it grants you the more closely you tie yourself to the infernal ones) or the ring of the body (you no longer suffer from aging, poisons, or diseases…but they catch up to you when you remove the ring). There’s a lot here for GMs and players to be inspired by.

Several rings are segregated into separate sections near the end of the book. The Five Legendary Rings of Matthias the Mad, for example, showcase four (the fifth is in the following section) rings with a hefty back-story, as well as unique powers. The Intelligent Rings section likewise presents a half-dozen living rings that gives us not only their appearance and powers, but also their origins and personalities (including, I was glad to see, the ring from the opening fiction).

The book closes out with a table of one hundred magic command words. These don’t appear to be based on any real-world language, consisting of nonsense words that can be assigned as necessary. Needless to say, this is quite valuable for any sort of command-activated magic item, not just rings. Although only a page long, this table has usefulness beyond the product it’s found in.

Overall, I was quite taken with what this book offers. The rings it presents range from weak but versatile (the key ring, which can copy a small set of keys to instantly unlock their matching locks) to the supremely powerful (the ring of dragon command, which grants great powers and defenses against dragons, as well as dragon-themed abilities). There was the occasional typo (the bookmarks, for example, list that last one as the “ding of dragon command”), but these were too rare for me to take off points for that. I do wish that they had taken care of the copy-and-paste issues, and had a printer-friendly version, but again I find that these aren’t so bad that I can lower the book’s final score.

Were I able, I’d give this book four-and-a-half stars, mostly do to the minor technical complaints. I‘ll round up though, as these are all issues that won’t come up unless you want to try and manipulate the book’s format. If you want to expand the nature of the magic rings in your game, glance inside The Ebon Vault: Power of the Ring. What you find will be…precious.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
The Ebon Vault: Power of the Ring
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A Necromancer's Grimoire: Masters of the Gun
by Thilo G. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 05/31/2012 06:36:53

This pdf is 26 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page advertisement, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving 21 pages of content, so let's check this out!

The pdf kicks off with a nice piece of high-noon prose between an bandit and one of the new PrCs herein, the Gun Mage. Unsurprisingly, to qualify for any of the PrCs herein, one needs a reservoir of grit via gunslinger levels or a feat and the Gun Mage is no different.

The 10-level Gun Mage- PrC provides d8, 4+Int skills, 1/2 BAB, ref and will-saves, 7 levels of spell progression and comes with 6 new deeds exclusive gun mage deeds. While e.g. dispelling bullets and arcane ricochets are nice and dealing energy damage in addition to the ammo's regular damage are to be expected, the class does some interesting thing mechanics-wise: You may substitute expending spellslots or prepared spells instead of grit to use some of these deeds. That being said, the class also provides one particular deed I'm not comfortable with: As long as a Gun Mage has at least one prepared spell/spell slot and 1 grit, he can expend spells to reload as a free action and, worse has UNLIMITED bullets. Seeing that reloading is a major balancing factor of firearms, this deed is problematic. And any kind of unlimited ammunition is something I don't want to have in my game. The class can also deliver touch attack spells via its bullets a limited amount of times per day, another ability I'm not wholly comfortable with, as it essentially makes close quarters touch attacks spells a viable option to hit far away foes. Extensive advice on playing a Gun Mage and the class's role in the world is also covered.

The second PrC is the Hair-trigger Renegade: This class gets d10, 4+Int skills, full BAB, medium ref-saves and no spell-progression. This class, unsurprisingly, focuses on fast attacks - 4 new deeds reflect that and include the ability to herd foes via attacks and even make a full attack at -2 to BAB with a firearm. The coolest of these deeds, is the "Six-shot": Incur a minus 4 penalty to attacks, but make 6 attacks with your modified BAB for a massive cost of 5 grit. If the rapid attacks have been not enough of an indicator - the HtR is focused on revolvers and gets nimble-bonuses, improved criticals with firearms with larger capacities. At 8th level, though, the class becomes ridiculous and adds 2 to the critical modifier of a gun. And yes, that means revolvers now have a modifier of x6. Read that again. x6. x4 is already bad enough, but x6? Really? Again, unfortunately, not gonna happen in my game. The class again comes with advice on playing the class and its role in the world.

The final PrC in the book is the diametric opposite of the HtR, the Sharp Shooter. This one gets d8, 6+Int skills per level, medium BAB and medium ref-save. The 6+Int skills are somewhat weird, though - the class only has 5 class-skills. This class is interesting in that it gets no deeds ( major downer), but instead can hide away and remain hidden while shooting foes, deliver touch attack-shots at greater ranges. Sharp shooters can also hit much better by aiming and even penetrate just about every DR with their shots - their capstone eliminates all but DR/- and DR/epic from the equation. The aiming, while very cool, also has one truly sickening component: Sniper's Aim adds 1 to the crit-range per round of aiming, up to half his class-level, which means a crit-range of x9 for 5 rounds of aiming and a 10nth level sharp shooter. On the one hand, I like that this makes snipers sufficiently deadly. On the other hand, the reliance on scoring a crit for the massive damage bonus is problematic - I would have preferred another kind of ability that adds less damage, but does so to all sniping attacks. And, again, a crit x9 is BROKEN in my book. As with the other 2 classes, this one comes with lore-section, role in the world etc.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are very good, I didn't notice any significant glitches. Layout adheres to NNW's used-parchment look and is fully bookmarked. The pdf also comes with a printer-friendly version. This pdf essentially provides 3 PrCs for gunslinger-tropes known from literature and yes, the classes accomplish what they are supposed to do. However, the concepts are realized in problematic ways - essentially, each of the 3 PrCs has one major rules-wise problems in my opinion: From the sickening escalation of critical multipliers to providing unlimited ammunition, I'm generally not inclined to allow any of these classes for my players. Which is a pity: The Gun Mage e.g. has potential galore and the synergy of grit/spells is a neat idea indeed and the same could be said for the sniper. In the execution, though, both feel not only a tad bit off - each of the classes features at least one ability I'd consider completely, utterly and totally broken. Thus, in spite of the great potential and the low price, I'll have to settle on a final verdict of 1.5 stars, rounded down to 1.

Endzeitgeist out.



Rating:
[1 of 5 Stars!]
A Necromancer's Grimoire: Masters of the Gun
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Codex Mechanica: On the Creation of Fabricants
by Sean H. [Featured Reviewer] Date Added: 05/18/2012 11:19:59

Codex Mechanica: On the Creation of Fabricants introduces a new race, they are living machines created in the forms of the various races (dwarf, elf, human, and so on) to perform various tasks. They are an interesting execution of that theme, gaining almost all construct immunities but being unable to be healed/repaired except through the craft skill. The Fabricants are well supported by: New feats, 22 of them. A class, Iron Warrior, that uses built in weaponry and magical devices is made just for them while the Iron Magus prestige class, allows a spellcaster to become a living construct. There is a lot here which places quite a burden on both a player and GM to use it well. Some example characters would probably have helped as would have a greater look at how fabricants might fit into a society. But it is a useful resource if you are thinking of including such beings in your campaign.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Codex Mechanica: On the Creation of Fabricants
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A Necromancer's Grimoire: Spirit Warriors
by Sean H. [Featured Reviewer] Date Added: 05/18/2012 09:48:51

The Spirit Warrior, is a combat focused class that channels the abilities of great warriors of the past. Each of the Spirit Warriors can channel three (of six possible) great warriors called exemplars, each focuses on a separate ability, one of whom the warrior will be especially attuned with and gain extra abilities from. While channeling an exemplar, the Spirit Warrior gains access to a variety of abilities but it can only be maintained for a short time. It is an interesting class but it is a tricky balancing act and it also lacks support for the class there are no feats, magic items or skill uses to support it.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
A Necromancer's Grimoire: Spirit Warriors
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A Necromancer's Grimoire: The Wonders of Alchemy
by Andrew P. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 05/08/2012 09:33:40

See Thilo G's review for a super-detailed and IMHO, accurate review. I'm just going to hit the highlights.

Firstly, I liked the ideas in this book. I think if this had come out a few years earlier, the alchemist class would probably more closely resemble an "actual" alchemist instead of the Edward Hyde: Midnight Bomber.

On the other hand, I thought that most of the new items were overpriced, at least for the economies of most games I've played in, but to be fair, most of my experience has been with lower level games.

The proofreading was terrible to non-existent. Guys, while not everybody's naturally gifted at writing, it's also not all that hard to find someone with mastery of the language willing to read through it.

Criticisms aside, I'd still recommend this book. While it may need some tweaking to fit into a given campaign, the ideas are very strong.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
A Necromancer's Grimoire: The Wonders of Alchemy
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A Necromancer's Grimoire: The Wonders of Alchemy
by Thilo G. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 05/02/2012 07:37:00

This pdf is 40 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, 1 page advertisement and 1 page back cover, leaving us with 35 pages of new content, so let's check this out!

After a one-page short story about a mad scientist, we delve right into the subject matter, but what exactly is that? Well, alchemy in D&D and subsequently Pathfinder has always felt at least a bit like magic's little brother - complimentary and sometimes useful, but nothing to write home about. Paizo has already done a lot to make alchemy feel more distinct and this book seeks to expand that even further. The first way in which the pdf tries to do this, is by adding two new item categories: Infusions and serums. Infusions are permanent ad change the bodies of those under their effects, but every person can only benefit from one infusion at a time. Infusions require ranks in alchemy, a certain minimum constitution of the person to which they are applied and also require skill-checks when they are applied. Infusions can also be flushed from the system and range in market price from 10.000 GP to 72.000 GP. 20 sample infusions are provided and each of their write-ups comes with individual drawbacks for the respective infusions - if you e.g. become immune to acid via acidium, you also lose 1 HP per HD you possess. On the more interesting side, the Buoyar-infusion enables you to fly, but penalizes your CMB and CMD due to quite literally becoming a lightweight. All in all, a well-crafted, innovative section that utilizes its drawbacks well to prevent any form of significant power-creep.

The second new class of items, serums, are usually directly injected into one's bloodstream, via a syringe or the new serum injector, a wondrous item, which makes it possible to have multiple serums ready on the fly. The 20 serums range in price from 50 GP to 500 GP and, as with the infusions, rules to craft them etc. are provided as well. In contrast to infusions, though, serums grant their benefits temporarily. Even cooler though, you can actually swallow additional doses for enhanced benefits - generally, 6 steps of consecutively higher benefits for the intake of a specific serum are given, though these bonuses come at a price: If you "overdose" on serums, you get consecutively nastier penalties depending on the serum. From bonuses to attributes, saves and skill-checks to DRs, the serums are interesting to say the least. Even cooler, some unstable versions are part of the deal: While they offer significant bonuses, they also come with e.g. risks of petrification by wild growths of bone or similar unpleasant demises.

12 new poisons are also at the beck and call of ambitious alchemists. The poisons all come with a lack of full stops, cpital letters in their effect description, but provide an interesting, high-level poison: Anti-panacea gets rid of foe's immunities. Ouch!

And next is a chapter which provides wondrous items... that can be crafted via alchemy, at 1/3 of the price instead of 1/2. A one-page explanation is given for this option, though it contains a duplicated paragraph. A total of 50 such items that blur the line between alchemy and magic are included in the pdf and provide requirements to create them by magical and alchemical means. From a draught that causes amnesia to artificial pheromones, vapors that increase combat prowess, elixirs to temporarily grant you racial abilities and attribute boosts to e.g. ever-burning salts to temporarily ghost-suppressing bombs and intensifying lenses, the chapter provides a neat selection of new tools for your alchemy-inclined character.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are not up to the highest standards: From missing commas and colons to double paragraphs and caps-errors, I've seen quite a bunch of them. The pdf adheres to NNW'S parchment-style 2-column standard and features stock-art, which is nothing to write home about, but also not required at this price-point. The pdf comes with an extra version that is printer-friendly and is extensively bookmarked. Once in a while, the Necromancers of the Northwest create a pdf that is not only useful, but at their constantly low price point, a total bargain. This is one of them. The expansions on the options of alchemy with the two new item-classes rock hard and if you like e.g. the "Witcher"-games and novels, a potential godsend. Especially if you're playing in a rather low magic world, this pdf is a treasure-trove of coolness and the content herein can be considered to be top-notch. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the quality-control that went into editing and in said discipline, the pdf unfortunately loses some of the favor its great ideas have built up, at least with me. It should also be noted that the "craft-via-alchemy"-rules could have been expanded further and made more unique, but that may be just me. More grievous is something potential buyers should be aware of: If you're looking for new mutagens, extracts or bombs for your ALCHEMIST-class, this pdf will sorely disappoint you by providing none. Yes. The alchemist gets no specifically-designed new class-features. While the pdf provides content galore, I would have loved to see the at best mediocre poison-section be cut in favor of options for the class - after all, alchemist players are probably one of the target audiences for this pdf. That being said, serums and infusions still feel like they complement the class well, though some advice of e.g. the way in which mutagens, extracts, serums and infusions interact would have been appreciated. It is the lack of said information that costs the pdf further points. In the end, we're looking at great new item-classes with some problems in their interaction, a lack of new features for the alchemist-class and some editing glitches - which is a pity. Were they included, in fact, were there a bit more fine-tuning, perhaps some content for the alchemist-base-class, this would be a stellar book, a 5 star + seal of approval recommendation. As written, though, it feels rough on the edges and somewhat rushed. Adding up the gripes, I find myself unable to rate this higher than 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 for the purpose of this platform. At the low asking price, though, I wholeheartedly encourage you to check this out.

Endzeitgeist out.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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A Necromancer's Grimoire: Mysteries of the Oracle
by Thilo G. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 04/18/2012 03:04:04

This pdf is 24 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page advertisement, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving 19 pages of content, so let's check this out!

After a couple of pages in which an oracle is added to an adventure-party seeking help, we are introduced to new oracle curses, 10 to be precise. The new curses herein range from mediocre annoyances like having to make a DC 5+spell level concentration check to cast spells, but not losing the slot or components on a failure to massive (counting as smaller for CMB/CMD, -2 to all physical attributes for an increasing bonus to all mental ones) and feel at least to me, partially odd in their balancing. I'm not a fan of "minor annoyance"-curses and the bonuses granted for the curses herein always feel like they surpass the drawbacks and impediments provided by the curses or vice versa. -4 against mind-influencing effects and not being able to become immune against them in exchange for +2+1/2 class level on sense motive as well as the option to later permanently see invisible things an even gain arcane sight and true seeing feels off to me, as does losing 1 paltry HP per level for a fast immunity against poison, diseases and gaining no old age penalties.

The pdf also presents the True-Cursed Oracle, an archetype that essentially amps up the regular oracle-curses for more revelations and 3 bonus spells. A kind of extreme-oracle, if you will. I actually enjoy this one, as e.g. playing an oracle with only half land speed that is unable to run should provide a neat challenge.

5 new mysteries are included in the deal: The Dreams-mystery is rather interesting in its basic premise and enables you to learn information while asleep and even cast while sleeping via the somnomancy revelation. The latter, unfortunately is restricted to a range of 30 ft., essentially making it mostly useless, but the ideas per se are ok. The same could be said about the fortune oracle, which is a ll about not dying and gaining rerolls/forcing bad fortune upon foes. While mechanically not bad, overall I considered the mystery to be unimaginative. Which brings me to the Pestilence and Serpent mysteries. Pestilence is the third such-themed version I've read and unfortunately, Open Design's Divine Favor: The Oracle features a much more compelling take on disease and pestilence than this pdf. The same holds true for the trite and boring serpent mystery. The Sun and Moon mystery on the other hand, while nothing too exciting, does some interesting things: Taking on the duality of both, many of its revelations are centered on sun/moonlight or both, which makes for an interesting mechanic. Unfortunately, though, not too much is done with it.

14 new feats are up next and once again are completely off with regards to balance: There's a feat that lets your magic utterly ignore the incorporeal nature of foes and the associated miss chance. Another one forces incorporeal foes to attack you not against your touch attack AC, but against your regular AC. Seeing the BAB /fighting capabilities of most incorporeal undead and I weep for all those poor ghosts. There is also a feat to take a revelation from a mystery other than your own if it does not require 7th level+.

Finally, the pdf reprints the Oracle of Delphi archetype, one of the few good parts of the otherwise rather terrible "Ancient Warriors: Sons of Sparta".

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. Layout adheres to NNW's 2-column standard with the used-parchment look and artwork is CGI-stock. The pdf comes both with bookmarks and a printer-friendly version. Oh boy. This pdf is just...off. There are some good ideas contained in these pages, but somehow, the balance of curses and benefits seems off. The True-Cursed Oracle has potential galore and could have been made much more complex and expanded upon and is a glimmer of awesomeness. And then, stoked up as I was, I read the mysteries...and encountered trite cliché after trite cliché. The disease-oracle has now been done 3 times and two times, this one including, badly. The two mysteries that bring some interesting ideas to the table, dreams and Sun & Moon, somehow half-@ss their respective concepts. The Serpent-mystery is boring. And the Fortune-mystery...well, don't get me started. Don't get me started on balance between the mysteries either - the fortune mystery, for example is vastly more powerful than the disease mystery etc. pp.

The new feats are nothing to write home about either and unfortunately are examples of the Necromancers cranking out feats without concern for potential abuse/relative strength when compared to others. And then we get a reprint of an archetype that has been included in another pdf, which per se is nice, but takes two more pages away from the overall page-count. This pdf has me singularly angry, not only because it failed to do its homework with regards to what's already out there, but because it is clear the authors CAN do what they set out to do - the manic-depressive curse, for example, ranks among my favorite oracle-curses around. Instead, a significant portion of the pdf feels like the least imaginative, boring, tried and trite concepts have been taken, solid, but again, not too interesting rules slapped on them and then put out. The low price is one of the saving graces of this pdf, but nevertheless, I consider Open Design's Divine Favor: Oracle to be the vastly superior book. With the lack of imagination and the massive balancing concerns I have with this pdf, I'll settle for a final verdict of 1.5 stars - some good parts can be scavenged, though. I'll round down for the purpose of this platform. If you want to support NNW, buy Advanced Arcana I and II instead - they are worth every cent tenfold. This is not.

Endzeitgeist out.



Rating:
[1 of 5 Stars!]
A Necromancer's Grimoire: Mysteries of the Oracle
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A Necromancer's Grimoire: The Book of Faith
by Shane O. [Featured Reviewer] Date Added: 04/08/2012 15:53:55

There’s an irony in the fact that the cleric, as a class, relies very little on religious devotion. If you’ve ever made a joke about clerics with no ranks in Knowledge (religion), you’re aware of the all-too-appropriate label of them being just another kind of wizard; after all, there’s no way to build faith into the class mechanics, right?

Enter Necromancer Games’ Necromancer’s Grimoire: The Book of Faith.

From a technical perspective, the Book of Faith isn’t bad. Just over three dozen pages long, it has full nested bookmarks, which is a plus. However, there’s no way to copy and paste the file (or the printer-friendly file), which is a bit of a drag. I do give it props for having a printer-friendly file, which eliminates the background and one page of ads at the end, but unfortunately it not only retains all of the interior illustrations, but still has them in color as well – if you have to leave the pictures in a printer-friendly file, you should at least make them grayscale.

It’s worth mentioning that the artwork is all of a single type here, being pictures of stained glass windows. As those are universal symbols of churches, it’s a pretty good fit for the book, though some other kind of imagery would have helped as well. The pages themselves are set on a tan background, so as to look more like actual pages from a tome.

After some opening fiction and a quick foreword, we’re taken straight into the book’s main offering – the priest, a new base class. Initially, the priest looks something like a divine wizard, having the lowest BAB and Hit Die progression, as well as being proficient with very few weapons and no armor. Things get more interesting, however, when you look at the priest’s spellcasting ability.

Unlike normal slot-based spellcasters, the priest has something called favor (points). Each day, they can choose a number of spells from the cleric spell list to ready – the readied list of spells then becomes roughly the equivalent of a sorcerer’s spells known list. A readied spell can be cast over and over…but each casting has a point cost in terms of favor, and once their favor is gone, the priest cannot cast anything else until they rest and regain their favor again.

There’s more to the class than this, of course. As the priest levels up it gains the ability to intrinsically know what will and will not please their god, gains the ability to work miracles, cast spells not readied (for greater favor cost), hold confessions, and more. The class is very tightly focused, and its class features serve to give it a much more religiously-minded bent than the “casting, channeling, and bashing” cleric.

While I think that would have been enough, the class then gets an expansive flavor section of flavor text, talking about things such as what’s known about priests on a knowledge check, how they get along with other classes and organizations, and a lot more. While I thought this was good, I wish at least some portion of this had devoted more space to expanded mechanical options – the lack of any archetypes or favored class options were noticeable in their absence.

It’s after this that we come to a section on measuring favor and piety. Like favor, piety is a new point-based system for the priest. Whereas favor is gained routinely and the amount of it rapidly swells by level, piety is gained much more rarely. The section here discusses how piety points are gained, and doing so is no small feat – basically, you need to make a positive advancement in your religion in order to gain piety. This isn’t something you can write off either, as piety has game mechanical effects; for example, you get bonus favor per day if you have a high piety score. There’s more that it effects, as several of the priest’s class features deal with piety as well.

Favor is also covered. While favor is gained as part of the status quo, a priest can gain (or lose) favor depending on how they act, with the threshold here generally being a bit lower than for piety. This is quite different than for most spellcasting classes, as being devout can have immediate impact (gaining favor) on your combat efficacy (using the gained favor to cast spells). A table summarizes how much favor is what degree of a reward at what level.

The book’s third section covers miracles – miracles are a class ability of the priest (categorized as spell-like, which I think was a mistake; I didn’t see anything about their effective spell level, for instance, and I don’t like the idea of these being subject to dispel magic) that are similar to spellcasting. Only so many miracles can be known at once, and they have some fairly strongest costs to use.

The major difference between miracles and spells is that the former are often very large in their area of effect (though the exact area tends to depend on the priest’s piety). A priest with a high piety score, for example, can use the Affect Crops miracle in a five-mile radius. Most miracles tend to have a correspondingly high duration as well. Of course, with a high casting time and a prohibition on how often they can be used, virtually none of the listed miracles (just under twenty) are useful in combat.

The last part of the book introduces the devoted apostle prestige class, which I found myself not caring for too much. The problem here is that this class has, as part of its prerequisites, that you have some piety already, so on the surface only priests can take this prestige class. At the same time, however, it increases your caster level, but not your favor per level, which means that a priest’s spellcasting ability takes a hit. The prestige class has several functions that are based around piety, both gaining it have having certain thresholds of it activate class abilities, so I’m inclined to think that it’s meant for multiclass priests (as it has a cleric’s BAB and Hit Dice), but I’m less than certain. It does have a nice flavor text section, however.

Overall, the Book of Faith does a fairly good job of presenting a new sort of character that has a closer tie to their religion than the existing divine spellcasting classes. While it requires a greater sense of their in-game religion, and requires the GM to play an active role as their god (in terms of awarding piety and favor), the priest much more easily fills the role of a character with a close relationship with their god, which has a direct impact on how well they can tend to their community. It’s unfortunate that the prestige class doesn’t do quite as good a job at finding its niche, but even then it’s not a total write-off. Altogether, this is a book that provides some concrete facts towards finding faith in your game.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
A Necromancer's Grimoire: The Book of Faith
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A Necromancer's Grimoire: Spirit Warriors II
by Thilo G. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 03/15/2012 08:21:44

This pdf is 32 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page advertisement, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving 27 pages of content, so let's check this out!

This is the second supplement to feature the Spirit Warrior class, a martial artist who channels legendary beings and their battle prowess. To balance the immense powers of the class, the spirit warriors have to make will-saves to continue channeling their exemplars. In the original pdf, there were opposed exemplars and the new exemplars herein offer more options for the Spirit Warrior to channel, as the exemplars herein have no directly opposed exemplars, but other restrictions. For a discussion of the base-class, which is reprinted herein, I'll point you towards my review of the first Spirit Warrior pdf.

So, what kind of exemplars do we get? The first of the new array is Ertanis Stargem, the first elf and progenitor of all the elven races. Being the progenitor of all the elves, only elven Spirit Warriors may channel Ertanis and receive a lot of dexterous abilities as well as collective abilities of drow, wood elves etc. The ultimate ability lets you summon a bunch of elvish einherjar (more on them later). What I don't get, though, is that ability scores for them are given, but not full statblocks. Stating level 10 immortal warriors is no fun and I want it done for me when I buy a pdf like this.

Ertanis' sworn enemy, the legendary Orcish chieftain Gortag, only available to those of orcish blood, is centered on causing fear via his authority and on fighting with his double-axes and gaining attacks as well as regenerating frenzied assault capabilities, making it possible for the orc to continue fighting when others would have already perished.

Torgrin Stonefist, if the name wasn't cue enough, is the mythic exemplar the dwarven people get, reeives a burrow speed as well as the dwarvish steadfastness as well as the powers to withstand a lot of damage and magic.

Fourth of the new exemplars, Primothas, father of titans, enables spirit warriors to grow and access his sundering powers as well as to smash all foes within 10 feet. Of course, the powers also include the option to ignore DRs via the most powerful infusion.

As a nod to the "Märchen der Daemonwulf"-supplements (still can't write that without feeling a cringe in my German heart...), the first of the Lycaonites (i.e. werewolves) is next and, surprisingly, is called...Lycaon. Spirit Warriors channeling him gain access to wolfish speed, increased stalking capabilities and even faster attacks as well as improved tripping powers.

When werewolves are covered, vampires are a natural next - Moran Heartseeker, first child of the goddess Nocturne. This is the first exemplar who actually makes for an interesting mechanic, as his powers contain a blood pool as per NNW's free Liber Vampyr. If you use material from that source as well, you can go for some rather interesting synergy effects. Apart from that, we get abilities to inflict negative energy powers, enter blood frenzies and use quasi-vampiric powers.

After that, we get a discussion on how spirit warriors will work in your game, lore tables etc. as well as the einherjar-template, which adds +3 to CR and makes you an eternal warrior as per the scandinavian mythology - einherjars rejuvenate. An ok template, although the usage with elves doesn't tickle my fancy - the two don't mix in my book.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are good - while I did notice some minor glitches, they did not impede my enjoyment of the book. Layout adheres to NNW'S 2-column used-parchment-style and artworks are stock CGI and nothing to write home about. The pdf comes fully bookmarked and with a printer-friendly version. On the mechanical side, the new exemplars are complex and feel balanced and I'm glad the concept of opposed exemplars was abolished. In fact, I'm rather glad that the spirit warrior, one of the classes with the most potential by NNW gets more content. However, I'm unfortunately not sold on the new content: There's a thin line between iconicity and cliché and, at least for me, the exemplars herein fell on the latter side. Where are the flaming scimitars, the truly unique abilities? None of the powers herein evoked the same feeling of awe that accompanied the original exemplars. Additionally, I'm still sorely missing advice on how to create and balance my own exemplars. And the basic problem of the spirit warrior's abilities being unreliable and working only in short boosts, which is by design, I get that, hasn't been addressed. The class may still propagate the 5-minute adventuring day scenario due to its abilities being dependant on single will-saves and having a bad will save. As written, the class sorely needed feats to e.g. burn attributes to continue working in battle or similar mechanics which simply have not been implemented. Instead, we get more of the same, only that the new content feels less unique than in its predecessor - in fact, making the exemplars mythic progenitors of WHOLE RACES makes implementing them as written harder in most games. Stepping a bit down and just calling them legendary heroes would probably have been a smart move and, while not hard to rectify, remains a minor bummer, as flavor is simply lost. On the one hand, I really like this file for adding options to the Spirit Warrior and increasing its usability. On the other, I feel like it has fallen flat of what it could have easily been. If you already own the first of the pdfs, this might be a 4-star file for you and definitely enhances book I to 4 stars. If you don't, though, it might actually disappoint you, as, apart from the vampire-synergy, the rules and benefits are bland when compared to vol I: For you, this one might be as low as 2 stars. Personally, I still like the idea, but the problems of the class remain in spite of the added versatility. Thus, my final verdict will try to reflect that and clock in at 3 stars.

Endzeitgeist out.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
A Necromancer's Grimoire: Spirit Warriors II
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Advanced Arcana Volume II
by Thilo G. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 03/02/2012 12:57:44

This pdf is 108 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, 1 page advertisement, 1 page back cover, leaving 103 pages of content, so let's check out the sequel to one of my most favorite magic-books for PFRPG.

In line with its predecessor, Advanced Arcana II kicks off with an aptly-written IC-introduction before going into a rather interesting discussion on some basics of spellcasting and introducing new spells into a given campaign. Instead of just shrugging their shoulders, the NNW-guys provide quite a neat variety of options. If you as a DM e.g. want to limit the amount of spells available to druids, clerics and similar divine spell-casters, there actually is a table herein and it turns out to be a valid approach. Information to buy this book in-game, research the spells, find them etc. is given in extensive detail.

Even better, we get a new kind of spell-class - spells that have different effects depending on the age of the caster (and yeah aberrations, dragons etc. are covered as well): An example would be a spell that tells you something about past, present or future depending on a caster's age or a curse that actually increases in power when uttered by older characters. While at first this might seem strange, these spells make for good reasons to actually play old/venerable etc. casters and explain a bit the respect given to old, fragile and yet powerful geezers. Much to my extreme enjoyment, my favorite innovation from Advanced Arcana I comes back with a vengeance - Segmented Spells!

Segmented spells take up more than one spell-slot and have to be cast in succession. How meta-magic etc. influences these spells and their detailed rules are covered along some cool extensions - the segmented spells in this book are more complex than I anticipated: Most of them can be aborted at some time during the casting of the spell, making the results somewhat less powerful and adding to the customizability of the respective spells. It should also be noted that segmented spells can be cast by multiple cooperating spellcasters and that the rules governing this cooperation are just as rock-solid as you'd expect them to be, making ritualistic spell-casting a valid and rewarding option in combat. Even better, segmented spells are not only high-level spells anymore and even the regular spells contained herein usually have more than one option of usage, somewhat similar to fire-shield, but often with even more modularity. offering multiple rather different effects. It should also be noted that the pdf has went with the times and includes spell-lists for the classes from APG, the magus etc., further enhancing the utility of the book.

Not stopping with basic spell-casting supremacy, the pdf also excels with regards to fluff by providing background stories for the archmages that loaned their names to the respective spells, introducing e.g. a paranoid abjurer and a dread necromancer that devised an extremely lengthy spell that is sure to annihilate his foes if they cannot find him first. Spellbooks are expanded upon as well - rules for uncommon bindings and prices for e.g. copper pages make spellbooks more versatile and somewhat lessen a DM's inhibition of targeting spellbooks of PCs - neat!Special inks like lich bile, gorgon blood etc. are covered in their very own section, adding somewhat minor meta-magic effects to any spells written in them, adding to the academic, esoteric flair of wizards. The poor witches are not forgotten either and get a selection of 6 new familiars, including intelligent oozes, bookworms and minor swarms of biting insects. Not stopping even there, the book also offers us a selection of alternate arcane bonds, e.g. to the elements, locations, spirits and even spellbooks. Oh, have I mentioned the appendix with a rather large amount of alternate spell components of disturbing body-parts ranging from doppelganger hearts to dragon#s teeth and their effects on spells cast?

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. The pdf comes with a printer-friendly version and features the used parchment-look and 2-column standard by NNW. The stock-artworks are nothing to write home about, but the vast array of bookmarks that enhances navigation is something I did enjoy about this book. At 103 pages, no glitches and extensive bookmarks are an impressive thing to pull off. Recently, I haven't been too impressed with many of NNW's offerings. This one is different: Well-thought out, I actually did not consider even one of the spells over-powered. The fluff that suffuses the respective spells adds another, cool dimension to the crunch while material components, familiars etc. constitute an awesome bonus of cool options that are sure to enrich your gaming experience.

The fact that this book manages to incorporate the mostly ignored age categories into the spell-casting process while adding a vast array of expertly-crafted, complex segmented spells and versatile spells that include a plethora of options. All while keeping the balance. Alex Riggs and Joshua Zaback have created a worthy successor to one of my favorite magic books ever and deliver more pages than you could ask for at the low price of 5 bucks, all chock-full of magic, imaginative goodness. If you're even remotely into magic and look for a book of complex spells that offers options upon options while providing advice on handling the introduction of new spells, this book is for you. In fact, I consider this book one of the best examples of work on the field of spells currently out there.

If you're bored by standard spells and want to check out magic that does things a bit differently, be sure to check this out. In fact, If you only buy 2 books from NNW - buy this and its predecessor - they are excellent examples that show what the necromancers can do when they set their minds to it. My final verdict of this stellar pdf will be 5 stars and the Endzeitgeist seal of approval.

Endzeitgeist out.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Advanced Arcana Volume II
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Ancient Warriors: Sons of Sparta
by Gene B. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 02/29/2012 09:34:21

Nicely written. If I want to put something small that should be my choice.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Ancient Warriors: Sons of Sparta
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A Necromancer's Grimoire: Steeds and Stallions
by Thilo G. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 02/24/2012 04:02:52

This pdf is 26 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving 22 pages of content for the new steeds and stallions, so let's check them out!

After 3 pages of short story introducing us to the matter at hand, we are presented with more complex rules for horses - from feeding horses (grazing vs. hay and supplemental food) to stabling horses in different kinds of stables. We also get horse-quality templates ranging from nag over broken-down to average and high-spirited as well as charger. Even cooler, we get rather detailed tables of quirks for horses to give them personality beyond the standard, from sudden stops, to biting steeds, we get several quirks and associated value modifiers. Included is also a special kind of horse disease and new rules to govern horse races.

While the templates are nice to have and add versatility to the horses, these new rules (introducing relative speed and stamina) are simple, easy to use on the fly and make for a cool additional usage for horses beyond the obvious means of transportation. In fact, a running battle on horseback could easily be pulled off via them. Speed is Str-mod+ Dex-mod+1d6+quality modifier, Stamina is Con-modx2+1d6+quality modifier. Players can use up to 3 points of stamina per round to boost speed. The GM rolls an open d6. Players roll one per point of stamina used and for each die equal to or above the DM's result, they get +2 speed for one round. Each rolled result equal or below the GM's result takes one point of stamina away from the horse for that race. Simple, fun, cool.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. the pdf features the classic 2-column layout and used parchment-look of NNW, along some neat pieces of stock artwork. The pdf comes with extensive bookmarks as well as a printer-friendly b/w-version. I really, really liked this pdf - the templates to horses make steeds more complex, the quirks grant them more personality and, especially when combined with 4 Wind Fantasy Gaming's plethora of statblocks from Phantasia Zoologica, make sure that no two horses are the same. The additional race-rules make for a great and easy way to add them to your game, even on the fly. It is here, however, where the one major gripe with this pdf lies - It's too short. It would have been rather easy to add e.g. chariots/carriages etc. to said rules or at least give advice on how to handle races with them. The lack of said rules makes the pdf fall a bit short of absolute excellence. My final verdict, though, will still be 4 stars and a definite recommendation to buy, especially at this low price-point.

Endzeitgeist out.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
A Necromancer's Grimoire: Steeds and Stallions
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Advanced Arcana Volume II
by Shane O. [Featured Reviewer] Date Added: 02/11/2012 13:08:15

I generally don’t agree with the sentiment that spellcasters, particularly wizards, are overpowered. To me, that’s something that’s true more on paper than in actual game-play. However, it’s undeniable that contemporary spell-design does think this way. Simply put, spells are designed to have one specific effect and no other; indeed, many spells will devote considerable space to telling you what they can’t do. That’s understandable, but ironically it takes some of the magic away from spellcasting. What’s happened to spells that have wide and creative applications?

The answer is simple: they’ve all migrated to Advanced Arcana II, by Necromancers of the Northwest.

Okay, the above sentiment is an exaggeration, but only slightly. Whereas most supplements that introduce new spells are just a hodge-podge collection of spells thrown together, Advanced Arcana II, like its predecessor volume, has several new themes to what it presents. We’ll go over these, but first let’s take a look at the book’s technical construction.

Weighing in at just over a hundred pages in length, Advanced Arcana II hits all of the checkboxes that a PDF should. It contains full, nested bookmarks. It allows for copying and pasting (I’m pleased to say that there are virtually no errors with pasting copied text here). Moreover, there’s a printer-friendly version of the book, which is always a plus. That said, the printer-friendly version eliminates the page backgrounds, removes one page of ads near the end of the book, and sets the remaining colors to grey – however, it does keep the interior illustrations, simply graying them. I’d have preferred removing the artwork altogether, something I’m presuming they didn’t do because it’d require a ne layout.

In terms of artwork, the book makes a fairly good showing for itself. All of the pages are set on a cream-colored “parchment” background, which makes it look as though the book is an actual tome. Periodic full-color illustrations break up the text, all of which are CG stock art pieces (oddly, each piece is captioned with a copyright notice for the original creator – I’d have thought it’d be enough to note them in the credits page).

The book opens with a one-page in-character introduction, and then a four-page opening (which is also in-character). It’s after this that we’re given an introduction by the actual game designers. Advanced Arcana II, they tell us, is different from its predecessor volume in that it wants to deal with the mutable nature of spells. To this end, its largely concerning itself with three “types” of spells – the first of these are “modal” spells, which allow for spells to have different effects, but you can only choose one when you cast it (a la fire shield). The second are conditional spells, where the local conditions determine how effective a spell is (e.g. a spell that causes fear is more effective in dim light). Finally, we see the return of segmented spells here; spells that have to be cast multiple times in rapid succession to have their effect take place.

This is last idea is turned on its head, however, as it puts two new variations on that theme: the first are segmented spells that can be cast a differing (instead of a set) number of times, with the number of casting affecting the spell’s efficacy. The variation allows for layering effects to manifest with each casting of a segmented spell, allowing for stacking effects per casting.

Interestingly, the book then goes on to detail another theme that many of its spells deal with: age. Specifically, there are a number of spells here that deal with adding or draining age from a creature – it should be noted though that none of these spells have aging as a “cost” of casting the spell (something from older editions of the game, which I sort of miss). I have to commend the designers here, as they delve into the mechanics of aging in Pathfinder and make sure no aspect of this is overlooked. They deal with questions of aging modifiers to mental ability scores and physical ones, with how different sorts of creatures age (e.g. what to do if you’re uncertain of how a monster lives).

While it doesn’t call it out as its own section, per se, the book then delves into a series of optional rules, mostly in regards to adding new spells to your game. The book cogently notes that it can be awkward to have new spells just suddenly appear in your campaign, particularly for divine spellcasters who have access to the whole of their spell lists. To that end, the book presents several ideas, such as having rare spells costing more or being harder to scribe, to having a “spells known” like ability for divine spellcasters using non-Core spells, to just having an in-game Advanced Arcana II be available to peruse. There are a lot of good ideas here that are worth exploring.

Full spell lists are presented next, which make sure to cover all of the spellcasting classes in the Core Rulebook, APG, and Ultimate Magic, before we finally move on to the spells themselves. I should mention here that while most of the spells fall under the themes described above, there are still a handful that are presented that don’t match with any of them, something I thought was great for rounding out the material in the book.

If Advanced Arcana II had ended there, that would still have been a lot. Instead, however, the book has several appendices where we’re actually given even more material to work with. The book’s first appendix is another in-game treatise describing several of the spellcasters whose names appear the spells given earlier. It’s a slight shame that this section is entirely in-character, as I would have preferred a stat block, or at the very least an abbreviated line detailing their race, class, and levels.

The second appendix, however, was much more fun. Here we’re given a truly expansive section on customized spellbook designs. These allow for three basic parts: customized binding (the hardness), customized paper (the hit points), and customized inks. Customized ink represents changing the spells scribed in the spellbook, so that there are altered effects whenever such a spell is prepared. For example, if you scribe a spell in alchemical mercury, when you cast that specific spell after preparing it from that spellbook, you get a +2 bonus to beating spell resistance. I should also note that the sections on binding and pages also have several special abilities depending on the material used, in addition to altering hardness and hit points. The balancing mechanism here, of course, is that these are all expensive, all the moreso if you use multiple options.

The book’s third appendix presents a half-dozen new familiars. I have to admit that I really enjoy new familiars, so I was tickled by what was here. Some of these were mundane animals that were rather oddly overlooked until now (a dog, for example), while others were creatures you wouldn’t ordinarily think of (a goldfish), and others were outlandish (a swarm of magical flies). Each has a full stat block, an expansive description, and a notation on what their familiar benefit is (as these are all standard familiars, and not improved familiars).

Appendix four presents four new arcane bonds for wizards. These are an elemental bond (sub-typed by what element is chosen), a bond to a location (which can be changed, though not quickly), a bond with a particular spirit, and a bond to your spellbook. This last one, in particular, seemed apropos – I’m amazed it wasn’t offered in the Core Rulebook.

The book closes out with a final appendix of thirty optional material components that can be added to a spell to lend it some extra power. Most of these come from specific creatures, and likewise only affect certain groups of spells. For example, a kraken’s eye allows for any conjuration spell, affecting it as per the Widen Spell metamagic feat. A handy chart lists how much these can be purchased for.

Overall, Advanced Arcana II actually managed to top the high bar set by its predecessor, something I didn’t think was possible. While the book presents so many new spells, its innovations come from the fact that it stretches the boundaries of what its spells can do, from being augmented by local conditions to packing variable options into its effects to the sheer brilliance that are segmented spells. Add in things like the variant spellbook construction rules and the new familiars and arcane bonds, and there’s so much great stuff in here that it’s hard to justify not using this book in your game. I say, five stars to this book – it deserves every one of them. Pick it up and advance your game’s spellcasters!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Advanced Arcana Volume II
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