Cohorts and Companions

While conflict with villains and monsters is a significant part of any roleplaying game, the game would be considerably less interesting if the PCs didn’t have friends and allies as well. Whether they’re a local inn-keeper providing the PCs a room to sleep in or a loyal cohort who accompanies the PCs on their adventures, these friendly characters help fill out the rest of the world and provide variety beyond evil and/or monstrous opponents. Pathfinder Player Companion: Cohorts and Companions focuses on the followers and allies who aid the PCs in various ways throughout their adventuring careers.

As the book’s name implies, cohorts (gained from the Leadership feat) are a significant focus, but the book also goes considerably beyond these. The “Companions” part of the title can refer to animal companions, but also to pretty much any other person, animal, monster, or even object that in some way accompanies or aids the PCs—and there is quite an impressive breadth of options covered.

The book opens with a two-page discussion about why NPCs might follow PCs, and how PCs might go about gaining followers. This includes things like hiring NPCs as well as NPCs just following along for their own reasons. Naturally, there’s a fair amount of discussion about the Leadership feat, as well as mention of the variant Leadership feats that can be found in other products: Squire from Knights of the Inner Sea, Torchbearer from Dungeoneer’s Handbook, and Vile Leadership from Champions of Corruption. There is also a very good sidebar on “Who Controls Cohorts?” which discusses how to decide whether the GM or player (or a combination of both) gets to control cohorts’ actions.

Dirty Tactics Toolbox

“Dirty fighting” is a bit of a nebulous concept. In general, it tends to mean using techniques that are less than honourable—tricks, ambushes, poison, and so on. Yet what one person considers honourable isn’t necessarily the same as what another person does, and truth be told, if you’re in a fight to kill, is anything truly honourable or dishonourable?

Dirty Tactics Toolbox talks briefly about the “Ethics of Fighting Dirty”, pointing out that dirty fighting isn’t necessarily evil, and that context and culture can play a large role in determining what is considered dirty fighting. The book as a whole doesn’t make any judgements on whether any particular methods of dirty fighting are good or evil (even poison use), and instead merely focuses on offering various new options for Pathfinder characters to make use of.

Dirty Tactics Toolbox follows in the vein of its predecessor “Toolbox” books: Ranged Tactics Toolbox and Melee Tactics Toolbox. And much like those two other books, I have the same basic issues with it. While it’s a perfectly functional book, there’s not a lot in it that really stands out and is memorable when compared with the vast amount of other options already available in the game. That said, I do think it edges out the previous two books by a small margin by having a few more things that did catch my attention and a few more instances of nicely integrated world flavour.

Giant Hunter's Handbook

I must confess that I have grown somewhat tired of the Pathfinder Player Companion line. Over time, the line has become more and more focused on mechanical character options, and less and less on world description and flavour—pretty much the exact opposite of what I am personally looking for. Several months ago, for financial considerations, I had to cut back on how many books I was buying and, as such, Player Companions were amongst the first to go. I have not purchased any of the most recent books in the line. However, I do still have a backlog of Player Companions to get through, and I intend to read and review all of them.

When I opened up Giant Hunter’s Handbook, I expected more of the usual: new archetypes, feats, spells, etc. Those are certainly in there, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much setting flavour and background there is. In fact, the first new mechanical options (in this case, new uses for skills—something these books rarely do much with) don’t appear until page 11. Until then, it’s entirely practical information and advice that giant hunters in the world of Golarion need. Even when the book gets to the new feats, spells, and so on, there is still a lot of setting information to go with them.

The book opens with an introduction to the most common types of giants, separated into categories of “evil giants” and “nonevil giants”, as well as a sidebar with the most basic information that everyone knows about giants. After this, the book moves into more specific details about giants and how to effectively hunt or fight them. Each chapter is two pages long (a typical length for Player Companion books) and covers a specific topic.

Melee Tactics Toolbox

The first thing I noticed upon opening Melee Tactics Toolbox is the inside front cover, containing a list of schools teaching mêlée tactics that can be found in the Inner Sea Region. Four schools are listed: the Aldori Academy, the Crusader War College, the Grand Coliseum, and the Tempering Hall. A bit of the Inner Sea map accompanies each description and shows the rough location of the school. This immediately made me a little better predisposed to the book, as it's not one I was particularly looking forward to. I was expecting something that wasn't going to particularly stand out, much like Ranged Tactics Toolbox, which this book is an obvious companion to. World flavour is something I really wish Ranged Tactics Toolbox had more of, so seeing that flavour right from the start in Melee Tactics Toolbox raised my hopes a little.

Turns out, there's not a whole lot more world flavour beyond this, but there is a bit more. Like Ranged Tactics Toolbox, Melee Tactics Toolbox is primarily a book of character options, this time focusing on mêlée combat. Like its companion, it doesn't actually spend a great deal of time on the tactics of its title, but does have scores of new feats, weapons, magic items, and more. Also like its companion, it seems to be desperately trying to create new things for something that doesn't really need any new things added to it. By itself or in conjunction with Ranged Tactics Toolbox, Melee Tactics Toolbox will likely be a useful resource for players, but in conjunction with the scores of other books out there, it will likely be mostly forgettable. It's not a bad book; it just doesn't really stand out.

Ranged Tactics Toolbox

When the Ranged Tactics Toolbox first showed up on Paizo's schedule, I must admit it did not excite me. A book with new options for ranged combat in a game that already has huge numbers of options for combat did not strike me as something particularly innovative. Rather, it seemed more like...well, scraping the bottom of the barrel, to put it bluntly. Like ideas were starting to run out. The announcement of further books with “Toolbox” in the title only strengthened this impression.

After reading the book, that initial impression hasn't changed all that much. Don't get me wrong. This isn't a bad book and there are some interesting options in it. However, I do have to question what it really adds to the game, and I'm not sure I can come up with a good answer. The Player Companion books are supposedly part of the Golarion setting, and while this book has a few things keyed to certain lands and cultures, it doesn't really expand on the world much. Admittedly, this is somewhat in keeping with other Player Companion books, which have become more and more about character options than player-oriented world material. But its character options also don't really stand out amongst the myriad other options already out there. Although they are technically new, they feel more like retreads of things that have been done many times before.

It is an unfortunate fact that the more new options are added to the game, the more likely those options will end up never used. I find this particularly true of the Player Companion books. With a few notable exceptions, after an initial reading, the vast majority of them end up sitting on my shelf and never touched again—except when sifting through to look for one of those few exceptions, and then it's only to move them out of the way. I suspect Ranged Tactics Toolbox, despite what interesting things it does have, will end up being one of those never used books.

Of course, many people out there don't own every book and there will certainly be people for whom Ranged Tactics Toolbox may be the only book beyond the core Pathfinder books they own. Such people may well get quite a lot of use out of the book. I think it's important to keep this in mind, and I try to review products from both the perspective of how they work on their own separate from all other products, and how they fit into the larger whole. And that's why I say Ranged Tactics Toolbox isn't a bad book. It certainly has good and interesting things when looked at by itself. It's just that, when viewed as part of the larger whole, it kind of vanishes in the sea of options.

Familiar Folio

Many stories and fables place a “familiar spirit” at the side of a wizard, witch, or other practitioner of the “dark arts”. These familiar spirits are often some sort of demonic force that has taken on a corporeal form, usually that of a small animal. The image of a black cat at a witch's side has thus become an iconic one, and thus it's not surprising that spellcasters in fantasy roleplaying games should have the opportunity to have one of these familiar spirits as well. In Pathfinder games, familiars are generally more benevolent than their counterparts in the stories and aren't generally demons in disguise (though the more fiendish kinds of familiars can also exist). Nevertheless, familiars fulfil a similar role: they aid their masters in various tasks and, in the case of the witch class, are the source of their magical powers.

Despite the fact that familiars have been part of the game since the days of the find familiar spell in 1st and 2nd Edition D&D, they have gained a bit of a reputation for being a bit...well...useless. While not a reputation I fully agree with, familiars are relatively weak and are of extremely limited help in combat, where they will die very easily if not carefully protected. Of course, not everything should be strong in combat, but even outside of combat, familiars provide only limited benefits to their masters. Familiars can be great for roleplaying as characters to interact with (and I have seen many very fun familiars in my own games), but beyond that, they are very limited in what they can do. Ever since Pathfinder introduced options for wizards and sorcerers to not have familiars, I've found—in my own games, at any rate—that most players have gone for the alternatives, such as the bonded object for wizards.

I think some of the issue may come from the fact that there have been few options for modifying familiars in the way that so many other things in the game can be modified. The Improved Familiar feat exists along with a smattering of other feats and spells that affect familiars, but for the most part official sources haven't really done much with familiars (although third-party publishers have occasionally tackled familiars). Beyond a minor skill bonus variance based on the type of animal chosen for familiar, every familiar is pretty much the same. Even a witch's familiar, which is an integral part of the class doesn't offer much in the way of new abilities.

Animal Archive began to rectify this situation by introducing archetypes for familiars, along with new feats, new kinds of familiars, and various other ways to modify characters' familiars. But Animal Archive covers animals in general, not just familiars, so there is limited space in that book to greatly expand the options for familiars. Familiar Folio is the first official Pathfinder book dedicated entirely to familiars, and takes the needed step to expand familiar options considerably with new archetypes, feats, spells, magic items, and more.

Champions of Corruption

At its heart, Pathfinder (and many other fantasy roleplaying games) is about playing heroes who go on great quests to vanquish the forces of evil. Along the way, the heroes develop great powers and acquire awesomely powered magical items. Of course, there can be a lot more to it than just this: the heroes form relationships with other characters, both other heroes (the other player characters) and various other people (the non-player characters); the heroes can create items of their own; they can open businesses; they can fall in love. The breadth of possibilities is huge, but for the most part that heart of good heroes fighting evil remains.

Yet even that doesn't have to be immutable. Not every character a player creates in the game is necessarily good. There are nine alignments and only three of them are good, after all. Three fall in the neutral range, and many players will choose those alignments for their characters. They allow for characters who may not be bastions of goodness, but still rise up to fight against evil and save the day. But what if players don't want to save the day? What if they want to be the ones the heroes would normally fight against? What of the three evil alignments?

I'm not a big fan of evil campaigns myself, though I can see the draw. After all, the game is about pretending to be someone you aren't, and playing evil is perhaps the ultimate expression of that. And even if it's not the sort of thing you want to do all the time, playing an evil character just once to give it a try is a tempting lure (I have certainly done it). The difficulty with evil campaigns is that evil characters can have a hard time working together. It only takes one PC to turn on the others and suddenly the whole game falls apart—and possibly even the gaming group if some players aren't happy with what has occurred. But if you can get past the difficulties, then an evil campaign can have its own rewards.

Champions of Corruption is the third Pathfinder Player Companion book to take a close look at the alignments in Pathfinder and offer options for players playing those alignments. I was very impressed with the first two books, Champions of Purity and Champions of Balance, and so was greatly looking forward to this book. Even if evil campaigns are not my cup of tea, a discussion of evil in the game is an important thing, especially when there has already been a discussion of good and neutrality.

Occult Origins

Pathfinder products are published under several different lines of books. There's the Roleplaying Game line, which consists of the hardcover rulebooks. There's the Pathfinder Campaign Setting and Pathfinder Player Companion lines, and of course, Pathfinder Adventure Path amongst others. Each line gives an indication of what people can expect from the books published in it—rules material, adventures, etc.

However, within the lines, there are sometimes smaller series—not generally officially marked as such, but with naming patterns to indicate them. There are the Revisited and Unleashed books in the Campaign Setting, or the Blood of... books in the Player Companions. One of the smaller groups like these is the Origins books, with Mythic Origins, Advanced Class Origins, and now Occult Origins. These books are companions to rulebooks (Mythic Adventures, Advanced Class Guide, and Occult Adventures respectively), with each one introducing the concepts of their respective rulebooks in the world of Golarion and, primarily, offering lots of new player options. I've commented in my reviews of the last two that Origins is a bit of a misleading name, as they don't really discuss the origins of the new material or even the origins of characters using that material. That said, Occult Origins is better in this regard and actually does briefly discuss how characters become some of the occult classes.

In fact, Occult Origins is definitely the best of the Origins books to date. Paizo has refined the series with each successive book. Occult Origins is a book of mostly “crunch” (i.e. mechanical rules options for characters), but it is the best kind of crunch—the kind that supports the flavour of the setting as well as giving characters fun new options. The material in this book is full of flavour that both expands the world of Golarion and expands our understanding of it. And this only serves to enhance the gaming experience.

Advanced Class Origins

People who have read my review of it from last year will know that I am not a big fan of the Advanced Class Guide. It's not a bad book, but it just doesn't have much that I want or need for my games. To date, I have never used anything from the book in any of my games. Similarly, Advanced Class Origins, which provides additional options for the hybrid classes from the Advanced Class Guide and talks about how they fit into the Pathfinder Campaign Setting is rather useless to me as well. When it comes to reviewing such a book, it's tempting to just say, “Yeah, it's useless,” and move on.

But I'm not really the target audience for Advanced Class Origins. If I don't use any of the hybrid classes in my game, then of course I'm not going to get any use out of a book all about them. The target audience is, naturally, people who do use hybrid classes in their games and any review of Advanced Class Origins must take that into account. And so that is what I intend to do with this review. I will put my own dislike for the hybrid classes aside and look at what this book offers (or doesn't offer) people who like and use the classes.

People of the Stars

One of the most popular Pathfinder books is Distant Worlds. It's also one of my personal favourites (and one I really ought to review sometime—I will add it to my increasingly long list). Distant Worlds moves beyond Golarion to explore the other planets in Golarion's solar system. In doing so, it introduces not just new and exotic locations, but also scores of new creatures and races (most of them only described and not statted out). Not surprisingly, many people have wanted to play these new aliens in Pathfinder games, and many have since had stats published in Bestiaries and other supplements. However, People of the Stars is the first book to take a close look at a science fiction-type races for the purpose of using them as player characters. On top of that, it introduces a number of new options for characters in games involving aliens and space travel.

People of the Stars looks at four races in detail: androids, kasathas, lashunta, and Triaxians. It also has brief coverage of several other alien races. Like most Pathfinder Player Companion volumes, the focus is on mechanical options, with only a small amount of background information. The exact amount varies from one race to another—androids get half a page, for example, while kasathas get barely two paragraphs. In general these days, I tend to wish that there was more background information and fewer mechanical options because the game has enough options already; however, in this particular case, the game doesn't have a lot of options for outer space adventures, so the volume of mechanical options makes sense. And despite all that, there is still quite a bit of good and useful background information scattered throughout the book.

People of the River

The Sellen River cuts across eastern Avistan, all the way from the Lake of Mists and Vales in the north to Star Bay in the Inner Sea 1200 miles to the south. It passes through (or forms the borders of) numerous lands along its way. Amongst them are Numeria and the River Kingdoms, which are the main topic of People of the River, the latest release in the Pathfinder Player Companion line. It provides new options for players making characters from these lands, and also provides some rules and information regarding rivers in general.

The River Kingdoms are actually a grouping of numerous small kingdoms. Combined with Numeria, they make for a large amount of material for this one small book to cover. Not surprisingly, it can't cover them all and there are several River Kingdoms that get no more than a sentence or two of mention. As a Player Companion book, it also devotes a large amount of space to game options, like new traits and archetypes, further limiting just how much it can cover about these locations. In my review of the recent Numeria, Land of Fallen Stars, I stated that that book does a great job at describing what it is like to adventure in Numeria, but gives little information about what it's like to live there. Somewhat unfortunately, this book doesn't really fill in that gap. Players without much pre-existing knowledge of the lands covered in People of the River will come away from the book with only a smattering more knowledge than they started with. However, they will come away with several new options to consider for their characters, and for many players, that may well be more than enough.

Blood of the Elements

In my recent Pathfinder reviews, I’ve commented quite a bit on the sheer volume of options that are now available for the game, and how many of those options tend to end up forgotten because they don’t stand out and there’s just too much to remember. However, when I’ve brought this up, it’s generally been to praise new material for managing to stand out from the crowd. Several recent books in both the Pathfinder Player Companion and Pathfinder Campaign Setting lines have achieved this. Books like the Alchemy Manual and The Harrow Handbook blend together flavour and mechanics to create truly memorable and interesting concepts. Unfortunately, the new Blood of the Elements fails to continue that trend.

The book looks at the geniekin races (ifrits, oreads, sulis, sylphs, and undines), providing background and character options for each. It also goes beyond this and looks at the four elemental planes, as well as the famed City of Brass on the Plane of Fire—and this is part of where the book goes wrong. There have been a number of Blood of... books and the best ones (Blood of Angels, Blood of Fiends) have had tight focuses, while the weaker ones (Blood of the Night) have tried to do too much. Thirty-two pages really isn’t enough space to adequately cover five races and include a gazetteer of the elemental planes, making Blood of the Elements one of the ones that tries to do too much.

The Harrow Handbook

One of the greatest challenges with making new options for Pathfinder games is making those options stand out, making them memorable and different from what has come before. The sheer volume of books available for Pathfinder (especially when you include all the Campaign Setting, Player Companion, and Adventure Path books) can be intimidating and it makes it difficult to remember every single new option available. Most end up forgotten and never used. Even when they are remembered, it’s difficult to remember which book to find them in. Several recent Pathfinder books have done well in presenting new options that really stand out. From the Alchemy Manual to Inner Sea Combat and Inner Sea Gods, these books use their new options to develop the campaign setting, drawing on the setting’s flavour to enhance the mechanics, and using the mechanics to enhance the setting’s flavour. And now, The Harrow Handbook adds on to that list.

The harrow has always been one of the defining aspects of Golarion. Every campaign world has fighters and wizards (well, the vast majority of them, at any rate), but no other campaign world has the harrow. Of course, as the harrow is based on real-world tarot, other settings could certainly have tarot-like cards and fortune telling, but they would have their own versions and something quite different from the harrow. But the harrow is more than just Golarion’s version of tarot. It is uniquely tied to the mechanics of the Pathfinder game itself. Harrow cards have six suits. These suits represent in-game characteristics, but also the six basic attributes of all Pathfinder characters. The cards are also tied to alignments—a system that is very defining of Pathfinder and its progenitor, Dungeons & Dragons. By tying the harrow so closely to metagame mechanics as well as in-game aspects, you have something that can be exploited by players for their characters—and with that, an opportunity to create some truly original characters not seen in any other campaign world.

Alchemy Manual

Third Edition Dungeons & Dragons introduced the Alchemy skill to the game, and along with it a few alchemical items that characters could buy and use while adventuring (earlier editions had alchemical items but didn’t really have codified rules for them). The 3.5 rules changed the skill to be a branch of the Craft skill, but otherwise retained the same structure. Over the years, as the game added more and more options (new feats, spells, etc.), alchemy was strangely one of the neglected areas. Very few new alchemical items were added to the game and the ones that were there from the start were low-powered, making alchemy something generally only employed by low-level characters before they gained access to high-level spells and other powers. Pathfinder, however, has been gradually adding more and more alchemy to the game. Ultimate Equipment has a sizeable section for alchemy and numerous other books have added a few items (including more powerful ones) here and there. The recent Undead Slayer’s Handbook, for example, has quite a few new alchemical items in its pages. Most notably, the Advanced Player’s Guide added an entire class devoted to alchemy: the alchemist. This has made alchemy a much more prevalent part of Pathfinder than it was before. Nevertheless, alchemy is still an area that has not seen as much new material for it as other areas like feats, spells, archetypes, and traits. But now, the Alchemy Manual helps to redress that balance a little.

In a game awash with so many options that most will rarely, if ever, see use, the Alchemy Manual stands out as a book that is likely to see a lot of use. A first glance, it may seem like a book for the alchemist class—and in a way, it is, as alchemists will certainly get a lot of use out of it. However, one of the nice things about alchemy is that it can be picked up, learned, and used by just about any character. Craft is a class skill for virtually every class, and alchemical items don’t have limits on who can use them, unlike many magic items, even though they often create near-magical effects. The Alchemy Manual focuses on the skill, Craft (alchemy) and the items produced by that skill, and not on things like alchemist discoveries, which are limited to the alchemist class. In fact, some people might be a little surprised to discover that there isn’t a single new alchemist discovery in this book. This is a book usable by everyone, and that’s one of the best things about it. It has a huge number of new alchemical items (broken down into different styles of alchemy) along with a few new feats and tools to expand the versatility and options available to users of the Craft (alchemy) skill.

Undead Slayer's Handbook

Undead are an iconic part of fantasy roleplaying. There are few campaigns that won’t, at some point or other, include a few undead, be they mindless skeletons and zombies or more powerful undead like vampires and liches. Many campaigns will feature undead quite frequently and may even focus on them. The PCs may consist of vampire hunters, carefully stalking the creatures of the night. Or perhaps they seek out restless spirits like ghosts and spectres in order to send them to their proper rest. The Undead Slayer’s Handbook is a book that is geared specifically towards these kinds of characters. It provides tools and options for Pathfinder characters who hunt the undead.

While the Undead Slayer’s Handbook is a bit of a niche product, it still has a fairly broad scope, as undead are bound to show up at some point in just about any campaign. This makes the book more widely usable than a book like the Dragonslayer’s Handbook. Even in campaigns focused on dragons, PCs aren’t likely to encounter a lot of them. However, even in campaigns that aren’t focused on undead, PCs are still likely to encounter quite a few undead creatures, from zombie minions to vampire overlords.

Champions of Balance

I’ve been looking forward to Champions of Balance for some time. Over the years, there have been many books published covering the topic alignment in Dungeons & Dragons/Pathfinder games. However, these book have tended to focus on good and/or evil. There has been a dearth of books covering the alignment that sits between the two: neutral (there also haven’t been a whole lot looking at law and chaos). To an extent, neutrality’s position as an in-between alignment makes it harder to define and discuss. Yet, in many ways that makes discussing it all the more important. I was also quite impressed with Champions of Purity, which looks at good alignments in Pathfinder, so this is another reason I looked forward to the arrival of Champions of Balance.

The wait was certainly worth it. Champions of Balance is quite a remarkable book and exceeds my already high expectations of it. As I’ve said before (in my review of Champions of Purity, linked above), I’m not a fan of alignment overall, and I honestly think the game could be improved without it—though it would entail quite a bit of work to make the change. However, if it’s going to be there, you might as well make the best of it. Yet alignment can be a difficult thing to adjudicate. Good and evil can be hard to fully define, and if you can’t define good and evil, then how do you define what fits between them? In the real world, these are just abstract concepts. Everyone has their own concept of what good and evil are, and they bring these concepts with them into the game. Yet in the game, alignment is not so abstract; indeed, it is an absolute concept where one can be objectively defined as “lawful good” or “chaotic evil”. In the real world, most people will agree that other people can behave in evil ways, but virtually no one would ever actually admit to being evil, as no one actually believes themselves to be evil. There are always justifications and reason for actions. Yet in-game, a detect evil spell can state quite clearly that someone is evil and there’s little one can do to argue against it. Outsiders representing the ideals of particular alignments exist in the multiverse. These powerful beings’ very existences are centred on, and defined by, their alignments. As such, the game needs a clear definition of what good and evil are. I’m not sure that that definition has been fully attained—it probably hasn’t, as there will still be disagreements between players—but books like Champions of Purity and now, Champions of Balance have moved things a little closer to achieving that definition.

Bastards of Golarion

Bastards of Golarion is a bit of an odd book because it’s not immediately apparent from the title what the book is about. It appears to be in the style of the race books, like Dwarves of Golarion and Kobolds of Golarion, but the race(s) covered is not entirely clear. A perusal of the back cover leads one to believe it’s primarily about half-elves and half-orcs. While a significant amount of space in the book is indeed devoted to these two races, it’s not limited to them. The interior of the book makes it clear that its intended focus is on outcasts of all kinds from any race, not just half-blood races, but even there, it wavers from this intent a little by spending some time discussing half-elves and half-orcs who are not outcasts. The intended focus, however, is a bit closer in meaning to the word bastard than a book strictly about half-elves and half-orcs would be, but it’s still something of a misuse of the word, and can lead to confusion amongst potential readers. It’s telling when a book needs to have a sidebar on the first page explaining the way the word bastard is used in the book. It leads me to think that book needs a better title. To be fair, though, I’m at a loss for what that title would be.

Title confusion aside, Bastards of Golarion is a rather better book than I was expecting, even if it does at times seem unsure of its focus. It contains a lot of advice and suggestions for creating characters who are either half-human characters or outcasts from society in some way or another. As with any Pathfinder Player Companion, there are quite a few new mechanical options, but these are mostly limited to new traits that help support the “fluff” of the book. The emphasis of the book is very much on the background information, and this pleased me a great deal.

People of the Sands

It’s been awhile since Pathfinder products turned to the southern continent of Garund for further exploration. However, with the upcoming Mummy’s Mask Adventure Path being set in the Egyptian-themed country of Osirion, the time is ripe to turn setting-based products towards that region of the world. People of the Sands takes a player-centric look at the three countries along the northern coast of Garund: Rahadoum, Thuvia, and of course, Osirion. This is not the first supplement to look at Osirion. One of the earliest releases in the Pathfinder Companion line (before the name changed to Pathfinder Player Companion) was Osirion, Land of Pharaohs. While People of the Sands does have some overlap with that book, it does have quite a bit of new material as well and the overlapping material has been updated to the Pathfinder RPG rules (as Osirion, Land of Pharaohs was written for 3.5).

I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that region-based supplements tend to be my favourite ones, and People of the Sands certainly doesn’t disappoint. As part of the Player Companion line of products, it contains a lot of new mechanical options (as well as updates to things like the living monolith prestige class). However, it also contains a good balance of fluff, with background information on the histories and peoples of the region it covers, making it a book that is entertaining and informative to read, and useful for gameplay.

Magical Marketplace

There has been a lot of debate over the years about the ease with which magical items can be bought or made in Third Edition Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder. Some people feel that the existence of magic shops takes away from the wonder and mystery that magic represents, while others feel that, in a world with so much magic (and there’s little denying that D&D/Pathfinder worlds have a lot of magic in them), it makes sense that people would attempt to sell it. It’s just human nature. But whatever any individual’s opinion on it, the default assumption in the game is that characters can buy and sell magic items.

Yet despite this, there hasn’t been much attempt to actually describe what some of these magic stores might be like. Do they specialize in certain kinds of magic items or do they just sell everything? Can you sometimes get special deals, or does everything really always cost the same no matter where you are? The rules for designing cities given in the GameMastery Guide provide some guidelines on the kinds of items (based on value) that can generally be found in a particular settlement, but beyond this, the specifics about buying and selling magic items have generally been glossed over.

That’s what makes Magical Marketplace stand out. At first glance, the book might appear to be just another book of new magic items. With books like Adventurer’s Armory (which is in the same Player Companion line of books) and especially Ultimate Equipment already available, Magical Marketplace might seem superfluous and unnecessary. However, while Magical Marketplace does indeed contain many new items, it does something very different to either of those previous books. Rather than just a list of magic items arranged alphabetically with their descriptions, this book adds colour to something that is often just part of the background (the buying of equipment) by presenting these items as the contents of specific magic stores across the Inner Sea region. Fourteen separate stores each receive two pages of description, from general information on the store’s history and owner, to the types of items sold there, to methods of payment (including ways to get special discounts), and even to new abilities characters can learn from the store’s owner and/or employees. The book provides a creative way to give players lots of new mechanical options while simultaneously allowing GMs to spice up boring shopping expeditions.

Blood of the Moon

There’s a love amongst many roleplayers for new playable races beyond the core dwarves, elves, gnomes, and halflings. Part of the point of roleplaying is to pretend to be something different and what better way than to play unusual creatures with new and interesting abilities. From aasimars and tieflings to traditionally monstrous races like goblins and kobolds, expanding the list of playable races allows for new experiences and new options. Pathfinder has certainly provided many possibilities for players, with the Advanced Race Guide being the ultimate source for various races to choose from—including a system for gamemasters to design their own.

There have also been several Pathfinder Player Companion books that look more closely at some of these options, at how they fit into the world of Golarion, and providing new options for people wanting to play characters of these races. Most of these books look at races that already exist in the game, but Blood of the Moon does something a little different. It introduces a brand new playable race, skinwalkers, who are descended from lycanthropes (essentially the lycanthropic equivalent of aasimars and tieflings), as well as a number of skinwalker variant races that are tied more specifically to each of the various kinds of lycanthrope.

One could argue that there are already more than enough playable races in the game, and to be honest, I sometimes feel this way myself. However, one could also argue that there are more than enough monsters, spells, feats, archetypes, etc. in the game already, and yet numerous books continue to introduce more of those. Why not more races? While there are certainly more options available than anyone could ever use in a single campaign, the presence of such a large variety allows for different choices in different campaigns, giving each campaign the potential to be unique. From this perspective, I really like the variety. So while the races of Blood of the Moon are certainly not needed in the game, they make for interesting options for future campaigns.