A monster reference book focusing on humanoid monsters, designed as a resource for game masters to supplement their campaigns with more details about Orcs and Goblins and such. Lots of flavor text with backstories and trivia about the creatures. Apparently Lizardfolk only want to be left alone to live in peace, but the far more evil Serpentfolk worship a dead god. There are some surprising inclusions in the book like two undead races; I tend to think of the undead as their own category of monster and not as humanoids. Frost and Fire Giants are also included, and although Giants are humanoid I also think of them as a unique category of monster.

 

Given the popularity of the Horde among World of Warcraft players I am surprised that Dungeons & Dragons and its imitators have not explored more options of humanoid monsters as player character races. I know there are some options in supplemental works but they have never been part of the core game.

This was one really, really, good setting. However it is a shame that it brought a lot of Goths out of the woodwork which ended up polluting the roleplaying community. Sometimes I wonder if Mark Rein-Hagen was a Goth himself, because this setting is very dark and gloomy that has strong political overtones. Hagen had pretty much set the roleplaying world in a new direction with this creation, and in turn, had opened the roleplaying community up to a lot of newcomers.

I used to play LARP a while back, which is live-action roleplaying. Vampire is actually a really good setting for a LARP as it does not involve adventure like normal roleplaying games but political machinations. People don't go on adventures, but rather they work to move themselves up the social ladder by whatever means necessary. The only problem with LARPs is that there tend to be a lot of posers involved, and as it is with many roleplaying games, people used it to flee the real world and create an imaginary world around them that nobody is allowed to pierce. It was good for social interaction, but there was just too much backstabbing and resentment to make it an enjoyable experience (at least in my experience).

The setting involve vampires, and in a way they are traditional vampires, but in another way they are not. The first vampire was Caine (that was his curse) and the entire race was created from him. A vampire's power is determined by their generation, that is second generation vampires were turned by Caine, and the third generation were turned by Caine's children. These vampires are known as the antediluvians, so called because they lived before Noah's flood. The third generation vampires all became the fathers of the clans that many of the lesser vampires are gathered into.

There are two main factions, the Sabbat and the Camarilla (though I suspect that later editions pretty much destroyed the Camarilla). The Camarilla, while being vampires, try to keep themselves hidden and try to retain as much of their humanity as possible. The Sabbat are the opposite: they believe that they are more powerful than humans, and as such should be humanity's masters. Much of the setting involves the war between these two factions, though there are other powers and entities out there that are just as bad. As it turns out, vampires are the weakest of all of the supernatural monsters in the World of Darkness.

This is one really good game in one really good setting. However the catch is that it can be difficult running it like a normal tabletop roleplaying game. It is more about politics than it is about adventure. Further, it has set such a high standard with regards to vampires that pretty much anything to do with vampires that I have seen since (and in many cases beforehand) just simply does not compare.

This book is what 3.5 should have been. In retrospect 3.5 was where D&D started to go downhill. I suspect that this is when corporate types that had no understanding of role-playing started making core decisions and started alienating their fan base, 3.5 did not really revisit 3rd edition, but instead made a few tweaks to the game that were nor really better or worse, but caused people to have rebuy the books or to work with two slightly different systems. In contrast Pathfinder revisited the rules, reconsider everything and fixed all the problematic stuff. Unlike the disaster of 4th edition, Pathfinder is the true successor to D&D.

The main fix is that the core classes are boosted in power. There is now interesting new stuff for almost every class level and the core classes are as good as Prestige classes. Pathfinder gives a lot of love to the Core classes and quite a bit of flexibility which is only increased by the other supplemental books. That means that the core classes are just very interesting to play.

Everything else has been improved as well. That has been done by revisiting everything and cleaning it up where needed. Some of the highlights are combing The Player's Guide and The Dungeon Master's Guide into one book. The addition of the concepts of the Combat Maneuver Bonus and the Combat Maneuver Defense. This brings all the special actions in combat like bullrushing, overrunning, feinting and sundering under one system of rules. In particular, it simplifies grappling so that these rules are now simple enough that players are going to be tempted to grapple, instead of avoiding it because the rules are such a headache.

Another standout is the overhaul of skills. A number of skills have been rolled together. In particular - search, spot and listen have been rolled into one skill of perception, hide and move silent rolled into stealth and balance, jump and tumble into acrobatics. This is just much better and quicker. Also, a skill being cross classed is no longer such a big deal. Any character, can overtime, become good at any skill. For some classes, certain skills will be easier. First level, also works like all other levels for skills and that is just much better.

There are almost double the number of feats as there were in the 3.5 players guide as well. Magic item creation has been improved and players might do it now. In this book, there is not one change that I have noticed that does not improve the game.

My only beef with the game is that it continues to put too much emphasis on combat. From the start the bulk of the rules for D&D were always about combat because it evolved out of miniatures gaming. In 1st and 2nd edition there was a lot of hand-waving in the rules, so the fact that everything outside of combat was blurry did not matter so much, because everyone had to role play out situations including combat all the time. Once 3rd edition cleaned up combat, some more robust rules for everything else might have been useful, so that the game supported adventures that were less of the traditional dungeon crawl a little but better. The supplements address this a bit, by putting in spells that are really only about role-playing more frequently. Things like the Game Mastery Guide or Mythic Adventures don't fix this because there rule sets are bad.

However, Pathfinder is what 3.5 should have been and people playing any edition of D&D after 2nd edition should switch to Pathfinder because it is doing what 3rd edition did, only better and 4th edition is not worth playing at all.

This is pretty clearly the best rule supplement to any role-playing game that I have ever played. The bulk of my role-playing experience has been with D&D, but I have played since the Blue Box, so I feel like I have seen a lot of supplements for the game. Typically when a supplement is filled with rule options, only some of them are interesting. There is not a foot put wrong in this supplement and as a DM I have slowly skimmed it and read different parts as I became interested. I have slowly started to treat the entire supplement as core rules.

I am not a simple Pathfinder fanboy. I looked at for instance the Mythic Adventure Guide and the Gamemastery Guide and I do not see myself ever picking up either of those books as they have numerous problems, but the material here is all excellent.

The supplemental rules - which include traits, hero points and additional combat maneuvers are so good, that everyone should use them. In particular, traits start immediately making the players think about their back story, while allotting what amounts to only the equivalent of about 2/3rds of a feat

The six new base classes are likewise excellent. The Witch is so good, that I merely had to tell one player about it and he decide to be a witch. D&D has over and over again tried to do witches and failed. Here ir is done exceptionally well. The additional spells are very good, but not quite as good as Ultimate Magic, but still very good.

The addition of the concept of archetype for the core classes is also excellent. These allow you to take the existing classes and swap out powers to create variant versions of the traditional classes. Swapping out the existing classes is very well done and allows customization of your character in ways that are intelligent, balanced and exciting. The chapters on Races, Feats, Equipment and Magic Items are of a similarly high quality. All told, the whole work is very very good. It is a must buy for any Pathfinder group. The whole work is available on the Pathfinder website as part of the Open Game license and you can check it out before buying. There are also new prestige classes here. I am not a great fan of the Prestige class concept and I think what Pathfinder is doing in creating new base classes and new ways to customize classes is the right way to go because it allows you to play the character you imagine from the start. But for those who are interested, these prestige classes are all very well done.

Everything is thought through in great detail and should be treated as core rules, because there is really nothing here that does not make the game more interesting and produces a sense of individuality to the character creation process. By combining different combinations together in different ways,anyone can create a character that is truly unique. Also, the book is a great resource for GMs. The character options here are so numerous and interesting that NPCs can turn up and you can guarantee that you will completely surprise your players.

Superb supplement