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Rite Publishing’s Ironborn of Questhaven introduces a Pathfinder RPG compatible race and related mechanics in the vein of the Warforged from 3.5 Eberron and 4^th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. I was pleasantly surprised at the cohesiveness of the product and only one thing made me frown while reading the 21 page e-book.

Ironborn of Questhaven was designed by Steven D. Russell and illustrated by Hugo Solis.

Race Description

I really like the race description as it is told in the first person perspective by the first Ironbound, Firstbuilt. Firstbuilt tells about how his race was born when a great artificer found her assistants lacking, so she built a construct to serve her. Then he, Firstbuilt, created another who also created another and so on.

I especially like how it plays up the slavery and mistrust angles. The one time I lost my suspension of disbelief is when, while speaking in the first person, Firstbuilt talks about alignment and specifically labels his lineage as “neutral good” (an Ironborn shares the alignment of its creator, which does make for interesting backgrounds and character development, but referring to the game terminology in the first person rubs me wrong).

Each Ironbound can create one more of its kind and so that was how the race procreated until the tomes explaining the process fell into the wrong hands. Since Ironborn share their creator’s ethos, this is how less than respectable Ironborn came to be.

One final interesting note is that all Ironborn have a Burden, which is the role they were created to fulfill. It’s sort of like built-in programming that Ironborn must comply with. Failing to engage in activities related to its burden results in an Ironborn losing control.

Racial Traits

The best part about Ironborn is that they provide quite a bit of customization as far as Pathfinder RPG races go. You can choose a straight +2 to Strength or place two bonuses in the Ability Scores of your choice along with a penalty to one other.

You may also choose to be a size other than Medium (Small or Large) by not taking the Secondary Ability from the Ability Package you choose. An Ability Package is a set of two powers that reflect the purpose for which an Ironborn was constructed.

There are 22 packages to choose from. An example package is Combat Virtuoso whose primary ability gives the Ironborn character a +2 to Combat Maneuver rolls (Battle Tactician) and secondary ability allows an Ironborn to use its Combat Maneuver check in place of its Combat Maneuver Defense (Counter Design).

Other traits include rust vulnerability, immortality, natural armor, immunities (sleep & poison), and are able to get by on ¼ of the food and water than normal humanoids require. Since Ironborn are still humanoid (they have organs inside the metal shell), they are able to heal and die normally.

Additional Mechanics

The book also packs in a decent amount of supplemental mechanics to give plenty of options for Ironborn players. While I haven’t play-tested any of the mechanics, they appear to be very well written.

Constructed Sorcerous Bloodline

A bloodline with a progression of powers that enhance animate object spells and grants an Ironborn construct traits (chance to ignore critical hits, spell resistance, and damage reduction). It also allows the Ironborn sorcerer to affect unintelligent constructs with compulsion effects.

Ironborn Feats

The book provides 10 new Feats, all dealing with Ironborn or constructs. A couple of Feats include Improved Natural Armor and Intricate Joints, which makes an Ironborn character no longer able to be flanked.

Clockwork Familiar

A wind-up construct version of a base familiar, the clockwork familiar gains hardness and a vulnerability to rust as well as needing to be wound up every day in order to function. It also has some bonus to Craft and Disable Device skills.

Conclusion

I really liked the Ironborn of Questhaven book. I think it adds a valuable and interesting race to the Pathfinder RPG game and clocks in under $4 for a PDF. The racial traits and description all meshes nicely together in a cohesive whole, leaving few gaps. It’s customizability is its most important attribute.

Note: Scores are out of a possible 5.0 points.

Review by Michael Brewer

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1. In the Company of Giants RPG Review

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When I first saw Goodman Games’ D&D 4e adventure, Death Dealer: Shadows of Mirahan, I had mixed reactions. First, I love Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer. I’ve seen all the Frazetta paintings, read the novels by James Silke, collected the comics written by Glen Danzig, and bought the Molly Hatchet album with Death Dealer on the cover when I first saw it back in the 80s (it was actually released in 1978).

However, the gamer in me balked. I was wondering how they could pull off an adventure about the Death Dealer without having the nearly omnipotent figure overshadow the player characters. There is only one Death Dealer, and surely the players would not be playing as the legendary anti-hero. I was also wondering how the adventure dealt with non-human races (I couldn’t remember reading about elves and dwarves in the novels).

The adventure is actually adapted from the Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer miniseries from Image Comics by Jay Fotos, Nat Jones (of 30 Days of Night fame), and Joshua Ortega. And in true gimmicky comic fashion, even offers an alternate cover available only through your Friendly Local Gaming Store (though I can see it on the PDF I was given).

Adventure Synopsis

A demonic army of undead, the Shadow Horde, is spilling out from Edani across its border with the Kingdom of Oro through the Cascada Pass, threatening to devour everything in its path. The heroes have responded to reports of unrest on these borderlands and find themselves trying to hold off the vanguard of the Shadow Horde in a ruined fortress as Edani refugees flee from the rampaging zombies. The next portion contains spoilers, so possible players should skip ahead to the New Mechanics and Pre-gens section.

This first chapter, The Siege of Cascada Pass, cannot be defeated in the conventional sense of slaying all enemies. Instead, the PCs must hold out for 30 rounds of combat employing smart tactics in a defend and retreat strategy. I like the idea of unwinnable encounters, but find they usually irritate players when such encounters have been thrust upon them. There is no end to the monsters of this encounter and there are guidelines to use when the PCs have been too successful.

The next leg finds the PCs fleeing the horde they just tried to stave off in the mountain pass, which becomes a Skill Challenge. If spotted, they are rewarded with an additional encounter before reaching the second chapter, the Eternal Forest. This chapter kicks off with a Skill Challenge for finding a path through the forest. Success means they don’t encounter any Shadow Horde Outriders before they reach the Ruins of the Old Ones. Once they make their way through the ruins, they find a druid ally who can send them to the Angra Swamp to summon the Death Dealer so he can lay waste to the Shadow Horde.

The final chapter of the adventure, Rise of the Death Dealer, begins with the PCs in a Skill Challenge to navigate Angra Swamp while eluding the Shadow Horde in order to strike at their master and free the Death Dealer. A single failure results in an encounter, the more failures the PCs earn the more resources the encounter will likely burn up. A complete botch of the Skill Challenge results in a full assault on the PCs by the Shadow Horde and its leader, Dazaka, making it unlikely for the PCs to survive the adventure.

Should the PCs win, well, you need to pick yourself up a copy to find out how that turns out. I will say, there is an appearance of the legendary force the setting was created around.

New Mechanics and Pre-gens

Appendix I of Shadows of Mirahan introduces five specific [human] races of the Lands of Iparsia. Each culture gets their own stat block and inherits the bonus at-will power and bonus feat from the 4e core Human race. It also presents two work-arounds for using non-human races in the world of the Death Dealer. One idea is just to accept that non-humans exist (which doesn’t keep with the current canon) and the other is to treat them as frightening monsters.

The first appendix also introduces two new Feats, Weapon Mastery and Defense Mastery. Weapon Mastery gives a player character a bonus to attack and damage rolls with a weapon type that scales with tier. Defense Mastery gives a player character a bonus to AC for a particular armor type that also scales with tier. I can see both Feats being valuable to players.

Appendix II introduces three advanced rules. The first is a modification to the use of Action Points. In Iparsia, PCs may spend Action Points to avoid the secondary effects of Critical Hits (another new rule introduced) and may spend up to three Actions Points during an encounter. The second appendix also introduces four tables, one per weapon group, to determine secondary effects for Critical Hits (piercing, crushing, slashing, and eldritch). The final rule grants a cumulative bonus to attack and damage to PCs for every milestone met through combat, which is lost after an extended rest.

The adventure introduces new monsters throughout the adventure and provides a collection of Shadow Horde undead in Appendix III. The monsters are decent, but don’t really do anything innovative. They also provide stats for the Death Dealer and his steed in Appendix VI. These stats are interesting, but are rather useless since the adventure is not made to employ them.

Appendix V introduces five seventh level pre-generated characters for the PCs to play, a druid, rogue, warlord, ranger, and fighter. These characters are all human and all but the rogue are male. I like that they included pre-gens since I get the feeling that this adventure is meant as a one-shot (especially since it is made for characters of 7^th to 9^th level).

Layout & Design

I did not have a physical copy of the book, so I cannot attest to the physical quality. But having encountered many other products from Goodman Games, it should be better than average. Everything is pretty easy to read, though I would prefer the page background texture to be lighter where the text resides. The headings and boxed text can be found quickly. The art is simply fantastic, as it was sourced from the Image comics and rendered by Nat Jones and Jay Fotos. I could do without the blood splatters at the end of each section.

I really dig the isometric maps, which remind me of the excellent renders from I6: Ravenloft, but I think the adventure could have benefited from full size (tear-out or tiles) encounter maps. The isometric style isn’t conducive to tactical combat play and all the maps were meant as reference rather than to be used.

My only other complaints are that I think they could have made the monster stat blocks easier on the eyes by implementing alternating color rows and some hyperlinks would have made navigating the e-book easier.

Final Verdict

If you’re 4^th Edition Dungeons & Dragons group are fans of Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer or of the Image Comics miniseries, then this adventure would probably be a good one-shot to play in between larger campaigns, especially at a $10 price point. The adventure has heavy-handed direction, but it’s hard to avoid when adventures are adapted from existing stories.

Note: Scores are out of a possible 5.0 points.

Review by Michael Brewer

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1. Age of Cthulhu: Shadows of Leningrad Review
2. Trail of Cthulhu Conversion Notes for Death in Luxor
3. Death in Luxor (Age of Cthulhu) RPG Review

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Necromancy and the undead are two of my favorite themes for roleplaying games. The undead have a strong presence in gaming and there are many interesting creatures that can be used in adventures. Unfortunately, there have not been many useful options for those that sit on the other side of the screen. As a player, I am always on the hunt for new and effective methods to harness the powers of death, the dead, and the undead.

Enter the Death Mage.

The Genius Guide to: the Death Mage is a fourteen page supplement from Otherworld Productions & Super Genius Games for the Pathfinder RPG. The Death Mage is a new arcane spellcasting base class that provides players five paths to choose from: Corpse, Ghoul, Tomb, Reaper, and Shadow mages. The Death Mage also introduces some new spells and a new creature subtype, Unbreathing (a not quite undead creature).

Class Description

The Death Mage is not merely a specialist wizard, bloodline sorcerer, or cleric with the death domain; it brings unique powers to the table. In addition, the class does not focus on pure necromancy, but also touches upon other themes associated with death (fog of graveyards, fear of dying, shadows). The class is built so that it may draw on the iconic powers of death without resorting to evil or undead, though those options are happily available as well.

The Death Mage uses Charisma as its key spellcasting ability (determines DCs, bonus spells, etc.) and prepares its spells much like a wizard (so no spontaneous casting). The spell list is naturally focused and short, but still gains a wizardly spell slot progression. The Death Mage does make up for its limited spell selection with original class abilities.

Class Abilities

There are actually three major components of a Death Mage. The first are common abilities shared by all types of Death Mages which include the ability to understand spirits of the dead (regardless of their living language) at 2^nd level, increased skill with Knowledge checks regarding information related to death (the dead, undead, necromancy, ceremonies, burial places) at 5^th level, innate ability to use the speak with dead spell at 10^th level, the ability to delay death in himself or allies at 15^th level, and eventually the ability to return new dead to life as if he used the resurrection spell at 20^th level.

The second component is the Death Mage’s Pale Road ability. At 1^st level, a Death Mage must choose a path to walk that determines one or two (all but the Corpse Mage gets 2 abilities at 1^st level) special abilities at 1^st level and another at 8^th level.

The Corpse Mage road gives the Death Mage the ability to command undead as well as the ability to gain zombie or skeletal minions similar to the Leadership feat. Minions develop into special undead like burning skeletons or fast zombies as the Death Mage increases in level (to the point of even being able to attract a vampire cohort).

The Ghoul Mage road imbues the Death Mage with the power to regain hit points and bonuses to attack rolls, saving throws, and skill check by feasting on the dead. That’s pretty sick (and right up my alley)! Ghoul Mages can also sicken or paralyze opponents with touch attacks.

The road of the Tomb Mage allows a Death Mage to control fear and pain. Tomb Mages are immune to pain and fear effects and have powers that inflict those conditions upon their enemies.

Death Mages opposed to the undead will probably take the road of the Reaper Mage. Reapers cannot create or command undead, but benefit from increased hit points and the uncanny ability to automatically stabilize when they reach negative hit points (as well as increasing the point of death by half their class level). They also gain additional melee damage (which is twice as effective against undead) as well as field that reduces the power of undead within its range.

The final path is the road of the Shadow Mage. Death Mages on the road of shadows benefit from persistent prestidigitation, unseen servant, and spectral hand spells. Additionally, they may use the shadow conjuration or shadow evocation spells to emulate any or bard conjuration or evocation spells in addition to wizard/sorcerer spells. Finally, Shadow Mages gain the ability to summon shadows.

The final component is the Death Bond. At 3^rd level, a Death Mage may chose to gain an unbreathing companion, access to either the death or repose cleric domains, or to create a fetish. The unbreathing companion functions much like a druid’s animal companion; albeit as a magical beast of the unbreathing subtype and calculated as if the Death Mage were a druid of two levels lower. Domains are handled just like the Death Mage was a cleric of the same level and includes bonus domain spells.

The third option, fetishes, is an altogether new mechanic. A fetish contains a collection of powers (2 to start, then one additional power every odd level) that are only effective against creatures of a type it is attuned to. That being said, a fetish can be attuned to any number of types by attaching small trophies taken from the corpse of a freshly slain creature. Some example powers include imposing negatives to saves against your spells, dealing additional damage, making a melee weapon your fetish, transferring powers to allies, and using the fetish like a voodoo doll to inflict damage on enemies.

Verdict

I have a few issues concerning how balanced each of the Pale Road paths and Death Bonds are, though I would really have to confirm my concerns by play testing a character from each road/bond to confirm my suspicions. I also have my doubts that this class is on par with the Pathfinder RPG base classes in terms of power and balance, but that is not necessarily a bad thing (I still like the base classes setting the bar for playability).

That being said, I think the Genius Guide to: the Death Mage is a solid addition to anyone’s Pathfinder RPG game that is looking for that hard sought necromantic class that is still effective and fun to play.

Note: Scores are out of a possible 5.0 points.

Review by Michael Brewer

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1. Divine Favour: The Druid RPG Review
2. Restless Souls Review
3. Super Genius Releases Mythic Menagerie: Winter Ravagers!