If you're looking for a crunchy superhero RPG system this should be your go-to book. The flexibility in creating your hero is outstanding. Let me give you my example.

I made a pretty standard telepath/telekinetic hero. Then I made a technology controlling hero whose body produced nanites. Then I thought of a cool hero name and combined those two characters with the Alternate Form perk to make Hivemind, a telepath/telekinetic who can discorporate his body into a cloud of nanites! How insanely cool is that? I haven't had a single idea that I couldn't figure out how to create with these rules.

The gameplay retains that level of flexibility and does so with a level of crunch that maybe goes too far. Let me give you an example.

A strong hero picking up something heavy and chucking it at bad guys is a common trope, right? Well, to do that you have to measure the object's height and weight in SPs which is a pretty easy conversion from pounds once you start to memorize the low values but might still require you to google the specs on a dumpster. Now you compare your Agility Score to your target's score but if they're behind a concrete barrier you have to do another calculation to determine the minimum defense value and then you roll to hit and compare that number to a chart. Then you deal damage based on the weight and the speed at which you threw it. What's the speed? As far as I can tell, the on'y place that's ever defined is in the example for throwing a dumpster on page 382. Take that number and compare it to another chart to get your damage. And that's all just for one bad guy getting hit dead on. If he has two buddies standing next to him there is a separate calculation for determining if they get hit.

And I get it. That's all very realistic. But the perfect is maybe the enemy of the good here. I'll be the first to admit I'm being a little unfair. I cherrypicked a complicated interaction (though probably not an uncommon one). Punching a bad guy is way simpler. Even the most complicated interaction in this game is less confusing than grappling in D&D 3.5 (though I'm setting a low bar there).

I've written and rewritten this final paragraph four times now trying to sum up my feelings. It's a very good character creation system. It's a very good simulation of physics. It's up to you whether you want to model that level of detail or play something more approachable.

This a great adventure for 1st level characters and probably a pretty good one for first time players, too. The characters will be traveling to Kingsbridge where a call for help has gone out from the headman, Siegfried. Siegfried is trying to re-establish the town after it was abandoned decades ago but tools and food have gone missing, trees have fallen on recently cleared paths, and people have caught glimpses of a huge man with his face concealed behind a warmask made of bone. The same descrption given for the creature that killed Siegfried’s father and caused Kingsbridge to be abandoned all those years ago.

The plot is solid, the NPCs are written engagingly, there's opportunity for the players to get clever, and there's a couple pieces of GM advice for if the players try to get too clever.

I think my favorite part is that the end offers the characters a choice and that choice will determine which of two possible endings the players get. Oftentimes, no matter how much of a sandbox you played in the rest of the time, the ending is set in stone. The BBEG has this evil plan and he needs to get kicked in the face so he can't speak the words of the ancient curse because he's too busy choking on his teeth. The beauty of tabletop RPGs is the depth of choice available and it's nice to see that reflected even in the denouement.

Another Libram of Lost Spells to add to my game! Excellent.

Let's get the bad out of the way so we can talk about the good. This is going to seem like a wall of text but it's only 3 spells out of 21. Ashen Waste feels like it could be overpowered depending on how your DM handles blindness. Anyone in the 20ft radius area is blinded without a save and the area is difficult terrain. Blindness/Deafness works on two targets at that level but Ashen Waste could target a couple dozen. Call of the Grave, on the other hand, seems underpowered. A 3rd level spell that just makes an undead creature move to a space you designate and stand there while you concentrate for a minute? And it won't walk through a hazard to get there and breaks free if it's attacked? It seems like a waste of an action, not to mention a waste of a known spell or prepared slot. Rumored Demise get special credit as the most ridiculous spell ever. For an hour you can tell people that someone died and they believe you for the duration if they fail their save. Why? Why would anyone use a 1st level spell slot on this? Bluff is still a skill, right? And its effects are permanent until the dummy you lie to finds better information.

Now it's time for the good! And there's so much of it, seriously. Remember Legolas in the Lord of the Rings movies? When he's in hand to hand combat and ducking and shooting arrows at uruk-hai just feet away? That's Archer's Intuition. For a minute you don't suffer disadvantage for using your ranged attack against an adjacent enemy and you can make opportunity attacks with your bow with a 10' threatened area. So baller. Fire Charm lets you make a torch that can fascinate creatures that look at it. Kudos to the author for writing this so well. It can be hard to adjudicate if a creature is looking at a specific spot but the text is admirably clear. Rain of Poison Toads is a great 3rd level spell that obscures the area of its effect as well as making it difficult terrain and damaging creatures. Also it's absolutely hilarious; just frong dropping from the sky, man. It gets me. Ravenous Roots is genuinely creepy, like it makes me a little sick to think about doing that to someone. But it's also perfect for the druid and really screams with the power of nature; creation and destruction, predator and prey, everything goes back to being dirt in the end. Also, it's nice to see a new 8th level spell in general. Speaking of high level spells, this volume adds the first 9th level spell of the series, Sleep of the Dead. This makes a creature immortal and invulnerable to harm but also unconscious, so there's that. They geta new save every month but that should be plenty of time for you to get the body transported to another plane of existence where he won't bother anyone for a while. Also I would want to cast it on a fellow party member and use them for various household tasks like hammering nails or knocking out drywall.

I also want to give mention to Spell Skull, a 5th level spell that lets you implant a 3rd level or lower spell into a skull after which it follows you around for a minute or until you direct it to trigger the spell. It has to be an instantaneous spell that doesn't affect just a single target but it's a great way to get an extra spell out on a turn or deliver a spell in a place or manner that you couldn't normally. Secrets in Ink is an awesome level 1 spell that lets you leave a jar of ink somewhere that will later report everything it saw and heard. That's awesome utility and I love it.

I think 18 or 19 (depending on how you feel about Ashen Waste) out of 21 spells is worth 5 stars for a book under $4. I definitely look forward to further volumes.

When my home game decided to move from Pathfinder to 5e several years ago, I wasn't exactly subtle in my complaint that we were throwing away a lot of years of quality content to change the rule system. Even after years and a couple Whoever's Guide to Whatever books, 5e still doesn't have anything like the breadth and depth of options in Pathfinder. I've made my peace with this; I'd rather play an RPG based on a musical based on the Twilight series than not play with my group but I am nonetheless grateful for 3rd Party Publishers that add good, balanced content to the game.

That was a weird digression.

So, The Libram of Lost Spells! Twenty new spells spread out between all the casting classes in the game in a range of levels. Let’s talk about a few!

Accelerated Healing is a second level spell for druids and clerics that makes the target's hit dice heal for max when you rest and lets the target recover all their expended dice after a long rest. That's a big bucket of out of combat healing, especially at higher levels when you're up to your eyeballs in hit dice. A flavorful spell that can have a big impact.

Bone Spurs (2nd level wizard) and Circle of Serpents (2nd level cleric, druid and ranger) are both neat spells that hamper movement, the former by making it painful to move and halving speed and the latter by making a bunch of snakes eat your face if you leave their circle.

Clutch the Heart (6th level cleric, sorcerer, wizard, or warlock) and Kiss of the Vargouille (5th level warlock or wizard) are both nasty spells. Clutch deals a boatload of necrotic damage and keeps it coming if the target continues to fail its save. If it dies, its heart flies out if its chest and into your hand. That’s some real Kali Maa juju. Kiss is downright creepy and yanks the head off a humanoid target and turns it into a bat-winged chomping machine to gnaw on your enemies. When the spell ends because of a passed save the head comes back to its body and the normal head of the creature is restored. The spell text specifies that reducing the body or the head to zero hit points sends the head back and “the target creature is returned to normal.” One assumes that that means that the body is somehow healed to whatever its hit points were before the spell since it later says that damage to the vargouille doesn’t affect the target but the lack of clarity there isn’t great. If my reading is right, it's extra cool because you could cast it on a friend who was near death and give them a few rounds where their body couldn't be hurt. If you directed the varguille to flee instead of fight, you could have the full minute of duration to clear up the danger and then heal up your buddy.

The highest level spell is Glassteel (8th level sorcerer or wizard). It lets you turn a piece of transparent material into something like glass but with a higher AC than steel and a boatload of hit points as well as some resistance to damage. It’s neat and I can certainly see it used by a big bad or an NPC but I hardly see this coming up much for PC’s. That’s a little disappointing because when I GM I frankly don’t need a spell for my big bad or NPC to have super strong glass. I can just do that. This is too situational for players to have much interest in it and I wish the highest level spell in this book had a bit more appeal.

My total review score would be four and some fraction of stars. I dislike the ambiguity of Kiss of the Vargouille even as I love how cool of a spell it is. Glassteel is dissatisfying. I'm going to round up to five stars, though because 18 out of 20 is still a 90% good book and all the other spells really are great and range from cantrip to 6th level and there's something for every spellcasting class.

I finally had a chance to run this module for my brother and sister in law while we were camping. We had an absolute blast. The maps were simple enough that I could quickly sketch them out on a bit of paper but with enough complexity and blind corners and such that I could have their enemies really work their thieves guild theme. Kudos especially go to the neat traps in this module. The party was lucky that they had a rogue this time!

As the DM (especially one working from his phone and having ZERO preparation), I appreciated the writing with solid descriptions of rooms and good details offered for major NPCs. Without giving too much away, I think the scene towards the beginning in the market with the banner might have been our favorite moment in the module. It was a great idea and I think the trap and ambush there really set the tone for the adventure.

This is a solid adventure with no ethically challenging bits, nothing to stop you from going full murder-hobo. The bad guys here makes no bones about being bad. Or well, they do make bones but they are tiny elven infant bones and that rather reinforces the whole bag guy thing. Despite the fact that it's a pretty straightforward good guys have to stop bad guys thing, the story is actually pretty rich with the weight of a history between bugbears and elves behind it.

The bad guys, especially the high damage dealing bugbears are pretty nasty. True to the moniker, I think there's a real possibility for some TPKs. My only issue is a bit of a lack of diversity. The PCs will fight Goblins, Goblin Marauders, Goblin Archers, and Goblin Dogs with a lot of frequency. Worgs, too. Each bugbear captain is different and there are a few other beasties and traps but it's mostly hunting down little greenskins. It's forgivable since it's a goblinoid themed adventure but I could still wish for some additional types of goblins that could employ different tactics or maybe some caged and enraged monster they could point at the PCs.

Full stat blocks and other necessary information is available to run this game in Pathfinder or 5e and I didn't notice any obvious errors due to the translation between systems.

This book, as the name states, includes twenty new feats for anyone interested in being diabolical (in the truest sense of that word).

Things I liked: Some new feats for using spiked chains. I wished they did more than grant a shield bonus but you take what you can get to make such a flavorful weapon more appealing. Two new grit feats for adding hellfire to your shots! Hell to the yes. Pun fully and unabashedly intended. Hellfire Mastery feats to let you ignore some fire resistance. Fire resistance is so common it seems. These feats are a tax, but worth it to make a dedicated fire specialist. Feats for social interactions. The game isn't all combat and some feats to intimidate demons that are otherwise immune or to put the fear of the devil(s) into other folk that recognize the monster you've pledged yourself to are great.

For two bucks this is a great buy. This book can be utilized by more than just evil characters; make a character cursed by devilish forces or who made a pact with devils to hunt demons. So many great ideas that can be fleshed out by these feats.

Massing a huge 162 pages, Laying Waste is an enormous revamp of rules for critical hits in Pathfinder. The books starts with the new rules which essentially replace the confirmation roll and normal, boring damage multiplication with a severity roll and a host of potential effects based on the severity and damage type of your weapon.

All the possible crits have a save to reduce or eliminate the status effect. The save gets harder as your severity worsens as does, obviously, the effect. A light braining staggers for d2 rounds unless you make a DC20 Fortitude save. A moderate braining is staggered for d3 rounds and the severe version deals additional damage along with d3 rounds of the staggered condition. In each case, the DC gets harder by 5 as well. Even if your victim...er...target passes the save associated with the crit, they are still saddled with some bonus damage. The bonus damage varies from 2d6 with a x2 crit to 5d6 on a x5 weapon. This is a nice system that means a dagger to your kidney (or whatever strange organ drives your renal system) hurts just about as bad as a greatsword, which, while not necessarily going to make a simulationist happy, makes those that love variety in weapons ecstatic. Status effects caused by crits have conditions under which they can be healed. Rest or curative magic are generally there but in most cases you can also make a Heal check. Heal. It’s a skill. It’s between Handle Animal and Intimidate on your character sheet. You can be forgiven for not knowing it’s there; until now there hasn’t usually much reason to take it. I’m so pleased that this undervalued skill gets a real reason to exist in this ruleset.

After pages and pages of bashing, slicing, dicing, and otherwise mauling with criticals, comes ten or so pages of critical themed feats. There’s a lot of good stuff here like Sneaking Strike which causes opponents who take a crit from a rogue to become flat-footed until the end of the rogue’s next turn, a great way to get more sneak attacks in. There are achievement feats and mythic feats to be had here and a lot of neat things to do with combat maneuvers.

Then we have the archetypes. This is where I suffer from some disappointment. As the focus of this book is on critical hits, I can kind of understand why there aren’t archetypes for the sorcerer and wizard (although it seems like one that changed elemental damage into a physical damage type and did something with these rules is an easy fit) but not having a single archetype for the paladin, cleric, bard, druid, or any of the base classes means this whole section has limited value for me. What’s there is cool and chock full of flavor, though. The pressure point master is inspired and the scoundrel, mockingbird, disembowler, and urchin knight are great, too.

Next are the rules for fumbles, separated into melee, ranged, and natural attack fumbles. I’m a huge fan of these. In my group, some fights are just done by story and the dice are left to rest for a time. Inevitably, my players mix failure into their success and get thrown across a room, trip on a rug (which otherwise tied the room together), or simply stare dumbfounded at the unfolding horror of an elder god before the tentacular alarm clock wakes them up. But this never happens when we roll the dice. Misses are set aside and damage from the hits tabulated. The fumble rules give us the opportunity to force these situations into the dice rolling and enhance our stories. If I were an alchemist I’d take the vestigial arm discovery just to give this three thumbs up.

The remaining 30 or so pages are given over to appendices covering rules for called shots, armor as damage reduction, healing and scars, spells, magic weapon and armor abilities, a short bit of prose and a Laying Waste Iconic NPC.

I give this book 4.5 out of 5. The rules are pretty great. The fact that there’s an Android app for Laying Waste crits is great. the lack of variety in the archetypes section is an absolute travesty (figuratively speaking; literally speaking it’s more of a bummer).

Personally, I don't much like undead races. I wouldn't play one. I tell you this because despite that, I still really liked this book.

First, we have the Mortiss, undead creatures escaped from the afterlife to get a second chance among mortals. Basically a sentient zombie, with all the ripe smells that accompny such a character you'll be sure to be a real treat during mealtimes. There's a genuinely awesome magus archetype for the race and a mortiss paragon prestige class. Next up is the Forsworn, so called because they've given up their mortal soul in return for immortality. It's an acquired template instead of an actual race and I can certainly see a necromancer in your game seeking the rites to be able to do this to themselves. They have a witch archetype (a watered down 3.5 warlock), a paragon prestige class, and some really neat racial feats that allow you to graft bones onto undead as armor among other things. Third in the book and definitely the most gross is the Maghra. Once upon a time they were just jerks. Then they ate a bunch of ghouls and became undead jerks that eat people. If you've ever want to get a bonus for eating your fallen enemies, I have a solution for you. Also the phone number for a mental health professional. They have a racial paragon PrC and a bunch of feats to augment the bonuses you get for eating someone. Not content to just eat the flesh, you can also use feats to get a bonus for eating the skin or the bones. Because at that point, why not? Moving on, the Deathless are quite interesting. Another applied template, sometimes a god of death or necromancy needs some boots on the ground to take some petty vengeance or hunt down escaped souls. A sidebar suggests the template as a way to bring a fallen PC back to the party. If you want to do this, be aware that this template has a +2 level adjustment so you might need to break it down into two levels of abilities that they can get as though multiclassing or dropping two levels of their previous class. Deathless also have a racial paragon PrC and some racial feats. Finally, the nephandim are gnome-like little stewards of the underworld with control over hellfire and significant bonuses to necromantic spellcasting. They have a cleric archetype and, like the rest, a racial paragon PrC.

The book is liberally spotted with new necromancy spells, there's a new template for bonescriven undead, and a profile for Nergal, TPK's god of the dead.

A number of these races have really fascinating moral dilemmas built in for players to explore and TPK helpfully points them out. What does a person do when they're undead but yearn for life? Consumed with unnatural urges that must be controlled to fit into society among the living? These races lack the glitz and glamour of vampires. With the exception of the forsworn, it would be difficult to pass yourself off as normal playing one of these races. While that can create some problems at the table, I think it's outweighed by how this might turn even the most mundane conversations in interesting directions.

As a GM, if you have players interested in these races be sure to have a conversation about expectations. Undead have a lot of immunities. While they're probably going to be harder to heal for a traditional cleric, they're also going to shrug off most spells that require fort saves and a number of conditions. It's not impossible to do. I have a player right now who's doing it just fine. It just really needs open lines of communication so that everything works out for everyone at the table.

When Brian Berg told me that he was making a Gladiator class inspired by Spartacus: Blood and Sand I made a sound indistinguishable from that of a 13-year old girl at a One Direction concert. Lets dig in.

Just slightly more that 36 pages of content here. The basics of the Gladiator only takes up two of those pages. Eighteen (EIGHTEEN!) pages follow with talents to customize your Gladiator. They are divided into three tiers that you unlock as you progress. Each tier is loaded with great stuff to tailor your Gladiator to what you want to do. Interestingly, many of them are markedly similar to the abilities of various archetypes. This was a really great idea as it allows you to borrow from your favorite fighter archetype to get the weapon style you want working for you. Other talents help with skills, performance in the arena, maneuvers, mobility etc. A final page for this part has favored class bonuses for nearly two dozen races.

Eight pages of archetypes follow featuring thirteen specialties. Some of these are remarkably cool like the blind Adabata.

There are four pages of feats including a whole passel of achievement feats that you can gain in the ring. I think these will be really great for feeling the progress you've made in your area bouts. I also really like the feats inspired by real gladiatorial styles like hoplomachus and retiarius. The book wraps up with a bit more that two pages of traits.

I'm really happy with the way this book came out. the talents for two weapon fighting made me yearn to watch some of the fight scenes from Blood and Sand. The various talents, archetypes, and feats that involve animals were an excellent inclusion allowing for some not very PETA-friendly arena fights that will evoke the lions from Gladiator (and also maybe that nightmare I have with the whale in it).

This is an excellent supplement for GMs and players alike. Nearly 60 pages of content with some great art (the phenomenal cover included) there a lot here for everyone.

The first seven pages feature some really great advice for adding more personality to your monsters to make encounters more interesting. I think there's some good stuff here. As GMs, we often forget that every intelligent creature, not just the big bad guys, that the players face has lived their life and had experiences and has a personality. It's all too easy to just make them just boring slogs. Giving monsters occasional phobias or other forms of madness, angry or even happy (to have their dinner delivered) adds spice to your encounters.

Next we have some dragon specific goodies like rules for draconic barding, embedding treasure in their scales, and a few pages of feats. I really liked the rules for embedding treasure in scales, especially the mechanic that calls for it to drop off bit by bit while the dragon flies leaving a trail. What a great hook. If any of my players are reading this, follow the trail of gold and gems. Nothing bad will happen to you. I promise.

Lastly, come the bloodline feats. Until now, pretty much the only way to make your character born from draconic ancestry was to play a sorcerer. No longer. With Major Bloodline feats you can take at first level or traits that give you more limited access you can be part of a proud (or shameful) dragon lineage. Now you have access to a wealth of feats letting you grow wings or a tail, walk on clouds, get a breath weapon or spell-like abilities, or even more awesome stuff. There's a lot of potential for awesomeness here which always means potential for abuse so players and GMs should communicate about when is appropriate to introduce things like flight.

Brian Berg's introduction makes it clear that this adventure was a labor of love for TPK and it really shows. Where else are you going to find nearly thirty pages of plot hooks, NPC backgrounds and little side quests to start the adventure. It makes the town FEEL populated by real people and any GM that can't get his or her players invested with that much to work with should go sit in a corner and reevaluate their life choices.

Players have to contend with weather, gathering or buying food, and all sorts of little details that are often glossed over but serve to ratchet up the tension and make players decide whether they want full bellies at the cost of...well lets not give too much away.

Without giving away too much in the way of specifics, there are moral choices here, often difficult ones. Traps abound, a great variety of monsters lurk, and (sorry, I can't resist this one spoiler) THERE IS A WEREWOLF OGRE. This is where I sign up, right?

Get it. Get Reaping Stone, too, and start your players there. Murder them. Make them start over. MURDER THEM AGAIN. They'll thank you.

The Deductionist base class is...strange. Not bad strange like an animated mustache but the kind of strange where I don't quite know where this fits into the average Pathfinder game. It features the kind of skill use and knowledge you might expect from a Bard but without magic and with a slew of other abilities to confound his foes and assist his allies.

The class reads like something you might play in Call of Cthulhu investigating the deep recesses of the mind and the universe until his sanity inevitably wears away. I can see it being great fun in an investigation-heavy AP like Carrion Crown and definitely in Council of Thieves but I don't know where it would fit in something like Reign of Winter or Wrath of the Righteous. For what it is it's excellent. Thematic and full of flavor and fluff. But it's niche as hell. Deep in it's niche.

Let's be honest, GM's are the true heroes of our games. What our GMs prepare all week for, we blow through in a couple hours with our PCs. It's hard work but luckily, TPK Games is here to help!

The book contains Cytheria's Stat Block, complete with helpful links to d20PFSRD for quick reference. It also contains tactics, the stat block for her fiendish servant, a great backstory for her and her organization and two plot hooks to work her into your game. The art is also top notch.

Cytheria is great for your home brew campaign or even an AP. She'd fit in very well in Curse of the Crimson Throne or Carrion Crown, especially.