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 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

I am in the process of converting from D&D 3.5 to Pathfinder much later than everyone else. In general, Pathfinder is an impressive system and the true inheritor of the Dungeon's and Dragon's brand. The problem with 3.5 that it emphasizes combat too much and role-playing too little is still a part of the Pathfinder system. However, the customization of your character is very impressive in Pathfinder.

This book did what it should for a DM. It filled my head with ideas for things that I can use. The character options are very well done. In 3.5 the primary way that you customized your character was through a prestige class. Pathfinder moves strongly away from that and customization happens with base classes. With the Advanced Player Guide, which I haven't read but will be soon, this rises to 17 classes. That's a great way of defining your character from the start.

There are five chapters, all of them really good. I personally don't think that I will use the words of power alternative magic system, but I think that it will be attractive to some groups. The spells in particular are very well done and very evocative. While the spells are very much combat oriented, they are very thematic. They allow more than ever before, the ability to play a character through their spell selection. They also address things like creating demiplanes and stopping the aging process. There are a mind boggling number of options for characters here.

What is really impressive is how well thought out it is and how much care went into it. Wizards always maintained far too fast a publication schedule and all their books are really mixed bags, often with a lot of dreck in them. This book is just well thought through and contains a massive amount of really good ideas. If you want to do a supplement for a rules heavy role playing game this is how to do it.

I some times wonder whether it is actually worth putting pictures in my commentaries because what happens if the link to the picture goes dead? Does it become something like this:

 

 

 

I think it does because one of the problems with Goodreads is that the pictures do not appear on the app on my mobile phone. They just appear as a small box, and I don't think the pictures port across to Facebook either, but then again I really only look on Facebook on my mobile phone, though sometime I will go onto it on my laptop or desktop to upload something. I rarely use Facebook these days anyway. Maybe the Goodreads app you can purchase does allow you to see pictures (and also allow you to like reviews, which is one of the things I don't like about the app because you can't like reviews and I wonder how many people read my commentaries on the app, like it, but can't say they like it because there is no like button, and also I have never paid for an app in my life, though I may be tempted to make an exception for Goodreads).

Well, what about this particular roleplaying product? I guess the fact that I have ranted about Goodreads and pictures and other stuff suggests that there is not really all that much to say about this particular product. I did own it, and I think I may have even flicked through it, and possibly even actually read it, but to be honest with you I can't really say. I am familiar with it though however it is really only about three kingdoms that lie to the south of Waterdeep.

One, Amn, is supposed to be modelled on medieval Spain. Another, Tethyr, is a land which has pretty much collapsed into anarchy (which I sometimes wonder is pretty much most medieval kingdoms outside of the main cities are like) and the third, Calimsham, is sort of a mix between Persia and Turkey. However, they then went on and produced another product, Al Quadim or something or other, which was supposed to be based on ancient Persia so I am now thinking that maybe Calimsham was supposed to be Turkey, minus the Islam (though I find it difficult to imagine a Turkey without Islam just as my disbelief is stretch when we deal with medieval European kingdoms with polytheistic Greco-Romam, or more particularly, Norse, deities).

I suspect that in the end it is simply another one of those T$R money making products that really serve no purpose, and if anybody actually USED this product, I would be very interested in hearing from them (and please, if you worked for T$R and playtested this product, that, in my books, does not count as using it).