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It's been a nice ride, we have a backdrop location, an adventure to kick off the campaign and now, what do we need? Bingo, additional Stuff! Feats, monsters, options and items and that is, what I'll provide!
First of all, there is a nice magazine called "The Rite Review" put out by Rite Publishing that has some interesting content you might want to scavenge. D_M has written an extensive review of the first issue, which you can check out (and download) here.
My review of the second issue:
This pdf consists of 65 pages.
1 page Front cover, 1 page back cover, 1 page OGL, 1 page table of contents and 16 pages of ads, leaving 45 pages of content.
There is one page of editorial, which was a nice read about being a 3pp and the chance to influence "mainstream" PFRPG.
Then you get 2 pages of new magic items, including nice fluff and bardic lore/Knowledge (Arcane) checks. The first is an instrument that can be used very swiftly, the second a gem to help with bardic lore and the third is an amulet helping you with your domain. The highlight here, is the prose, though. Captivating and concise.
After that we get a 7-page interview of 50 questions with Robert N. Emerson, mostly on the "Litorians"-book by Rite.
Following up, we get a gorgeous full-page illustration of the "Pasha of swirling Ashes" by Jason Rainville (taken from the Coliseum Morpheuon patronage project by Clinton Boomer) as well as his 1-page statblock. Got curious? Check it out! I haven't regretted being a patron for CM for one second!
Following up, you get the statblock of Venn "The Vulture" as well as a sneak-peak at the poison upgrades and feats from Rite's "Evocative City Sites: Rogue's Gallery Tavern", a highly recommended location that costs a measly $1.99.
I've written a review, so, if you're interested, go check it out.
After that, it's crunch-time: 7 new magical weapon properties is a preview for the Rite-book containing 101 of them. They are clever and neat.
Then comes the crown-jewel of the issue, at least for me: The 3 pages strong "Army of Darkness"-article helps the fledgling, world-conquering necromancer with new feats, a new rule for spontaneous undead creation, a new undead archer and 2 deadly and cool new arrows that put the fear of undead back into the hearts of those sun-worshiping radicals.
Awesome.
"Ghouls stalk the Night" is a cool 3 pages sidetrek with nice fluff that, thanks to 3 different statblocks can be used for different levels. And I can't see any group guessing what the creature is. Creative idea, for sure.
After that, we get a short, 1-page introduction to Questhaven that doubles as a preview for what to expect of the City of Spells series. Cool! we get more on Questhaven with the 1-page article "Rise of a Merchant Prince", plus the useful "Stone of silent alarm".
"Changing Fashions" deals with fashions in a high-fantasy town and the issues and is a nice supplement to the "Evocative City Sites - Intimate Shape Festhall".
The Aku-Boma is a new, intelligent plant monster of the creepiest sort. Spellcasters trying to bypass it will have a lot of fun... Hehehe.
Then there is "Jolunga", a suped-up, earth-infused, advanced bulette. Cute Critter, 2 pages.
The final new monster (again 2 pages) is the "Asanbosam", a predator-like aberration that can put the fear of the woods back into your PCs.
After that, we get 1 page of advice on using "Evocative City Sites", to be precise, "Kavit M. Tor's Emporium of Collectible Curiosities", followed by a page of 5 new first level spells from the upcoming "101 1st level spells" book, due on June 1st.
Then one can read a 2-page interview with Hugo Solis.
After that, we get the review section:
"Liber Vampyr: Secrets of the Blood" (2 pages), "Ashton Sperry's Paper Minis: Litorians" (1 page),
"Incantations from the Other Side: Spirit Magic" (2 pages),
"Darkness without Form: Secrets of the Mimic" (1 page),
"Adventuring Classes: A Fistful of Denarii" (2 pages) all written by Shane O' Conner,
"Heroes of the Jade Oath" (2 pages) by Dark Mistress,
"Kavit M. Tor's Emporium of Collectible Curiosities" (1 page) by Mairkurion {tm}
and Rituals of Choice 1: A Witch's Choice (1 page) by Megan Robertson.
5 Rudii, come on! You get all that for FREE.
All right, ol’ Endzeitgeist has even more stuff for you:
Do you need some additional feats or just some buff for your bards? Here you can download one fine file by Spes Magna Games for free, to be precise: "Latina Facta & Versatile Performance Redux".
This pdf is 10 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial and 2 pages OGL. That leaves us with 6 pages of content.
Latina Facta (2.5 pages): 15 feats that are based on famous Latin sentences. Most of them are quite cool and seem to be well-balanced.
One particular, though, at least to me, screams unbalanced: "Aequam Memento Rebus in Arduis Servare Mentem" – the feat lets you add your wis-modifier to any skill-check with a DC of 25 and higher. While unproblematic on lower levels, it means that mid-to high level characters will add a huge bonus on ALL skill-checks. No way, this will never be used in my campaign.
There are also cool feats like "Age. Fac Ut Gaudeam!" (Go ahead, make my day!) that force a via Intimidate demoralized foe to delay for 10 points on his next initiative.
My personal favorite, though, is "Cogi Qui Potest Nescit Mori", which enables you to resist acts while under an enchantment for a slight subdual damage.
The second part of the file consists of new Arts and Associated Arts for the Bard-class and are simply cool.
Ever wanted your Bard to dance over a spider's web? Or wanted your bard to call "Cut!" on an enemy and truly stupefy him? There you go. 3 and a half page of the pdf are devoted to making your bard more awesome, versatile and cool. For a class that rarely sees such cool concepts, this file is pure gold.
The editing, wording and formatting are high-quality, however, don’t expect too much artwork-wise. While there is some b/w-art, it's minimalistic and probably public domain.
Conclusion:
"But wait a second," you're saying, "Endzeitgeist, this one DOES cost $0.99!" Well, yes and no. Spes Magna Games has been so kind as to provide the file for free on their own page. You can get it here.
While the feats were nice, I would have loved to see more versatile performances – they are plain awesome. Due to the one feat I didn't like, I'd give it 4.5 Rudii, but for FREE, I’ll round it up to 5. Bard-lovers, go get this one – you won't regret it.
Ok, so you’ve got some extra feat, stuff for bards, monsters etc. – what is missing?
Yep, you’re of course right: Magic items, preferably some low-level ones. (It’s “Start a Campaign for free”, after all!)
Yeah, I’ve found a nice little book by Necromancers of the Northwest for you:
Into the Armory
This pdf is 59 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages Necromancers of the Northwest-logo and ad, 1 page back cover, 1 page OGL and 1 page table of contents.
That leaves 52 pages of content for this file. Let's dive in:
The pdf kicks off with an introduction on two concepts, i.e. Quasi-magical items (magical items that cost less than 2500 gp and may very well have no aura) and siege weaponry. Quasi-magical weapons have one supremely cool feature, which I've been using for years in my game: To construct them, you need ingredients, which are also listed. I'd love to see that more often.
Chapter 1 details armors (11 pages):
We get two new mundane armors, one medium and one heavy. We also get 3 new quasi-magical armors: One woven from clouds (think good-looking PCs and strong winds), exploding armors (essentially suicide bomber armors that deal a whopping 20d6 damage – might not be appropriate for every group and should be used with care by both PCs and NPCs…) and swarmnest armor, which transports a swarm but unfortunately lacks hard rules for the swarm – I guess that it does behave like the creatures from the bestiary and not the spell, but I'm not 100% sure.
Then, we're off to steam-punk-county with three so-called Golem-armors, which essentially are mechas your PCs can pilot. 2 One-man armors and one that can be piloted by up to 5 PCs. I like the concept and they don't seem to be that powerful. Might be a nice addition for some campaigns.
We get 11 new armor properties, which are interesting, but one of them, "Modular" should be flat-out disallowed. It makes it possible for PCs to change the particular enchantments for a armor every day. Flat-out OP.
After that, we get 7 specific magic armors. Notable examples would be "Iron Body", which makes you strong but stupid for 24 hours, a rust-monster hide and a powerful armor for paladins that punishes not adhering to a VERY strict moral code. The "Rust Monster Hide" seems a little OP for low-magic/rare-magic campaigns to me, but works well in other settings.
Chapter 2 has new shields for you (4 pages):
We get two cool new quasi-magical items and 3 new shield special abilities, one of which (Insignia shield), unfortunately fails to mention how long the summoned creature stays. The next 6 new specific shields are quite useful, balanced and cool, especially the Planar Gateway Shield: One second, it's a shield, the net second it's your gate to another plane.
Chapter 3: Weapons (11 pages):
We get 10 new mundane weapons, all of which I liked.
7 new, quasi-magical items are included in the mix, ranging from a grappling shot over net grenades up to a whip blade. We also get 19 new specific magical weapons. I liked the ideas within, especially the "Lightning Trident", (which should be modified to always include the wielder, though), but "Nocturne’s Fang" does not specify which potion corresponds to what kind of blood and the “Scythe of the Wretched” is op beyond belief: Once per day on a crit you are practically guaranteed to kill your enemy. If you're lucky, this could kill just about anything.
Chapter 4 deals with new equipment (10 pages):
We get the concept of randomized potions and 4 new rings, my favorite being the “Ring of useful things” – complete with a 10ft-pole) and my least favorite being the mood ring. A suggested DC of 15 to change what a character feels? Yeah, right. We also get a new rod and the concept of the randomized wand. 16 wondrous items are up next. Some of them are really cool, e.g. the “Lens of the Sun” or the “Gem of Vision”. The rest is rather standard-fare.
Chapter 5 deals with miscellaneous items (9 pages):
The 6 new alchemical items presented are extremely cool and useful. You'll like these. We are then introduced to 3 new so called “Living Items” – alchemically treated living organisms that range from a flower that makes you breathe water for 3 minutes and swarms-in-a-bottle, i.e. magebane and necrotic wasps. Good ideas there. 5 new poisons are also within these pages, from rather mundane choking/sleeping powders to the far-out polymorph poison.
We also get 7 new special materials to craft items from, favorite among which is the so-called Talectini, a symbiotic, living armor. My least favorite of the materials is Soul Steel, which is a little bit OP in my opinion.
The last chapter deals with siege weapons (6 pages):
We get short and concise rules for using siege weapons, including stats for 4 siege weapons. The chapter also has 4 special weapon abilities, 5 magical ammunitions and closes with 4 specific siege weapons.
The fonts used in this pdf are clear and concise. There are some minor editing glitches and the pdf features a brownish background, which is not perfectly printer-friendly. The fluff-texts for the chapters and comments of the vendor of those items are quite nice and, while not brilliant, they are entertaining. Art-wise, you get a picture at the beginning of each chapter, but don’t expect too much.
Conclusion:
The pdf suffers from some problems of "First Pdfs", i.e. some glitches have slipped past and some rules could be clearer. Some of the items seemed a bit OP for my rather conservative tastes when it comes to PC-strength. However, both the siege weapons and especially the quasi-magical items are very cool: I think that suggested ingredients should be provided in the craft-stat-block of any magical item – it only enhances enjoyment and makes fighting enemies even cooler, as your PCs try to scavenge monster-parts and then enhance their boastful stories of their exploits when drinking in the tavern.
While this pdf may be far from perfect, it is a valiant effort and contains some rather far-out and/or excellent/useful ideas.
Plus: This pdf is FREE, you can get it e.g. here.
Normally, I'd rate this lower, depending on the price somewhere around 2.5 - 3.5 Rudii, but for free, I'll give it 4 Rudii – there are some issues that would irk me, had I paid for it. But for free, it's a nice addition to your collection.
That's it for now, I hope you'll enjoy the books and the experiment "Start a Campaign for free". If I stumble over more interesting free stuff, I'll be sure to let you know!
Next time, I'm going to review a couple of race books by Rite Publishing.
I hope my ramblings proved to be useful to you all, until next time,
Endzeitgeist out.
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