Unfortunately the internet ate my first writing of this so I'm going to try and keep this one a little bit shorter.

To sum it up this book (and those in the tribes line) is meant to turn your random encounters battles into something like a mini campaign/vacation game for whatever big adventure you may be running allowing you to do everything from spice up your random encounters during a long trek in between dungeons to create an interesting jump off point for a gm looking for an interesting antagonist to kick off a homebrew campaign.

Now with that being said Raging Swan really brings it with the Bleached Skull tribe, giving us an ecology, stats for gnolls from various positions and rolls within the group, a whole new creature, encounter tables ranging from ambushes to shaman's and their vile retinues, and whole new magical items to really give the tribe its own distinct style. By the time your parties done they will know what it means when they find those terrible glyph carved skulls amidst the forests and learn to fear a gnoll brandishing a shriveled chicken leg. That being said the fact that those magical items that can be used as weapons count as masterwork for the purposes of attack and damage rolls seems odd to me and makes me wonder if they were meant to be treated as +1 items. Luckily that is but a minor quibble in an otherwise excellent book with this being able to be dropped into near any session in a forested area from the darkened forests of Ustalav to the gnarled jungles of your home campaign. I know for me I'm already looking for ways to bring the bleached skulls against my own party at some point in the future, maybe using them as a nasty horror to waylay them on their way home through primeval forests or see my own gm drop them in when we begin to roll out of civilization and our first time players begin to get their first exposure to what horrors the wilds of the world can hide. In the end if you whether you're looking for a way to give some organization to your random encounters or just give you a jump off point for your home game the Bleached Skulls are a great choice if your looking for an interesting take on the dark cult in the ancient woods.

Bleached Skull Gnolls

This pdf is 23 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page blank inside of front cover, 3 pages of editorial/table of contents, 2 pages of chapter headers and 1 page back cover.

That leaves us with 15 pages of content on the dread tribe of Bleached Skull Gnolls.

The pdf starts off with 2 pages on the general behavior of the tribe, including ecology & society, lairs, customs, combat & tactics as well as a side box on lore about the tribe, including DC. The prose keeps the very high standard of Raging Swan Publishing and does not disappoint the least. Once you start reading, you immediately know that you’re not in for your run-of-the-mill-Gnoll-tribe. This first impression is cemented further by one page containing 6 feats the tribe uses for their distinctive combat style. They are cool, atmospheric and not over-powered. Nice! After that, we get something that is all too often sorely neglected: 6 new (grab a chair, boys and girls!) ADEPT spells with an accompanying spell-list for Bleached Skull Shamans. Yeah, Adept-spells. You know, for the NPC-class. I couldn’t believe it first, but yeah, they are adept spells. Not as strong as regular spells, but cool and almost dripping flavor. That was a page well spent. On the next page, we get three new magic items, all located at the shamanistic bottom-tier of magic items and each with its own illustration. We get a potentially vampiric bone knife, skulls that double as freaky alarms and a rod to curse foes. This concludes the first chapter and we move on to stat-blocks/encounters. At the beginning of the chapter, we get 2 pages with 4 sample encounter parties as well as a huge side-box detailing all potential circumstantial modifiers for fighting in the woodland habitat of the tribe. After that, the stat-blocks of the tribe are listed: We get one page with 4 melee-warrior types, 1 page with 2 shamans with their respective familiars and 1 page with two ranged fighters and two stat-blocks for non-combatants. All the pages include, as a nice bonus, information the garbs the respective tribe members wear. Then, the map features a typical encampment of the tribe with a little b/w-map. (1 page) As if that was not enough, we get a new monster created by the horrific rites of the tribe as well as its minions, lore-section, artwork and the like. While this particular beast is nothing I’d write home about, it fits the specific fluff of the tribe perfectly and thus works awesome as a nasty surprise in an encounter. The pdf closes with a page devoted to explaining how to read the stat-blocks to novice DMs.

The b/w-art of the file is beautiful, the editing and formatting are top-notch. The writing is concise and while there might be a bit more fluff among the stat-blocks for my taste, I still enjoy the writing.

Conclusion: I was very skeptical about this one – I simply am not the biggest Gnoll-lover out there and a supplement like this could have easily degenerated into a messy pile of soulless stats. The contrary is the case, though: While the Bleached Skull Gnolls remain easy to implement in any given setting, they still are unique enough to stand out – and as far as I’ve understood it, that’s what this line is all about. I’ve thought long and hard and while I wouldn’t call it genius, this file is so rounded, so well-crafted, that it will get 5 stars from me. From a guy who’s not that into Gnolls. If you think about it, go check it out – it’s got a damn good bag-for-buck-ratio.

Bleached Skull Gnolls is a Pathfinder RPG supplement that details the culture and society of a new kind of savage and brutal gnoll. The product is well organized and well designed, and includes useful features such as a table of creatures by CR, a feat table, and a table of spells by level. It even goes as far as including reference rules from the Pathfinder RPG to assist in understanding the material. I though the attention to detail was good, and some of the artwork, particularly the image of a brutal gnoll, was excellent. Sometimes it's the little things that sway you towards a product, and Bleached Skull Gnolls has enough fine details to do just that. It includes several welcome sample encounter builds and a tribal encampment layout, complete with a map.

The material itself is well written. These gnolls largely differ from standard gnolls in their selection of feats, and the product includes just over a handful of new feats that make these gnolls unique. The feats cater well to the culture and background details, and while the concept of feral gnolls is not new, the shamanistic influences of ritual sacrifice make these creatures enticing and interesting to play. One of the best concepts in the product is that of the sacred tree, fed of the blood of sacrifices to create the dreadful bloodspawn treants. I though that was an excellent touch to make the background culture and society more than just feral gnolls. A good variety of creatures is included, such as scouts, snipers, warriors, shamans, champions and others. The combination of new feats and new adept spells, along with the bloodthirsty culture, make these gnolls feel different to standard gnolls, and that's a plus in my book. The collection of new adept spells and new magical items, all pervasive through the statistics blocks of the gnolls, round out an overall good product.

The intent of this product is to introduce a particularly nasty gnoll tribe that lives in the Tangled Wood area of the Lonely Coast (but who can be dropped in to any similar area of your own world or chosen setting). Rather oddly, it starts talking about how characters can go about identifying treasure looted from them before you get to meet the tribe itself - perhaps this is intended as an incentive, because unless you're into pest control you are unlikely to want to pay them a visit! However, it's about the mechanics of finding out what you have, ahem, liberated, rather than what you might actually find.

So, on to the Bleached Skull Gnolls. Now Pathfinder RPG gnolls generally regard everybody else as either lunch or a slave, but these gnolls are worse... their main use for their luckless captives are as sacrifice to their gods or for what they class as 'entertainment' about which the less said the better. Unlike most gnolls, they have taken well to forest life, although their main livelihood is still from raiding other more industrious folk. They have also begun to worship blood-soaked tree spirits rather than more conventional gnoll deities, although even their shamans believe that they are venerating nameless primal spirits of the woodland. Like many gnolls, they also respect their own ancestors, although this 'respect' takes the form of displaying their bleached skulls in their sacred groves - hence the tribe name.

There are lots of little details which help you picture their society and describe them when encountered in battle or at home, the little snippets that move them from just another bunch of monsters to be faced in combat to a living, breathing part of your campaign world. Game mechanics are not neglected either, with everything from information retrievable by use of the Knowledge (Local) skill to new feats that gnolls - or indeed anyone - can take. There is a whole new type of feat, the battle feat, designed to reflect the particular fighting style that a given group will develop over years of training and fighting as a unit. Their spellcasters, too, have developed appropriate spells, while the tribe possesses some unique magic items - including a really nasty bone knife favoured by shamans, which has necromanic abilities and questionable origins.

To take the tribe information to something more useful than mere descriptions, next comes several detailed encounters with the tribe. In each, the situation when the characters meet them, the numbers involved (including scaling notes) and their likely reactions are given... encounters are, unsurprisingly, liable to descend into violence pretty fast! There are also some useful notes on running combats in woodland and how to take advantage of the environment to make fights exciting. This is followed by a wealth of stat blocks, for different types of tribe member from chieftain and champion through shamans and scouts to the few who remain at home to cook and look after the youngsters. This section rounds out with a mapped and described encampment, should your characters find themselves visiting the tribe at home.

Finally, we learn of the awful result of the gnolls' worship practices... the creation of a bloodspawn treant. Brought to life by blood sacrifice and the fear, despair of victims, they exhibit bloodlust sufficient to impress the most bloodthirsty gnoll, who regard them as the embodiment of the spirits they revere. Full details of their appearance, abilities and combat styles are given; including their creation of horrific blood zombies from the remains of sacrificial victims.

Overall, this is an elegant addition to the denizens of the Lonely Coast... clear descriptions and everything that you will need to introduce them to your characters.