Another witcher inspired potion! I like the potion that damages undead that just hang out near you. Wonder if Pathfinder needs that?
Corpsebane Item 1+
Alchemical Elixir Consumable Usage held in 1 hand; Bulk L Activate
This flask filled with the essence of undead distilled and purified with prayer. When consumed, you emit a faint light out to 30 feet. Any undead in the area must make a Fortitude saving throw or they are damaged by holy energy at the start of their turn or when they enter the area. They must repeat this at the start of any turn in the area or when they enter the area.
Corpsebane (Lesser)Item 1
Price 3 gp Bulk L Saving Throw DC 17 Fortitude. It deals 1d3 positive damage.
Corpsebane (Moderate)Item 3
Price 10 gp Bulk L Saving Throw DC 19 Fortitude. It deals 1d6 positive damage.
Corpsebane (Greater)Item 11
Price 250 gp Bulk L Saving Throw DC 28 Fortitude. It deals 3d3 positive damage.
Corpsebane (Major)Item 17
Price 2,500 gp Bulk L You Saving Throw DC 37 Fortitude. It deals 2d6 positive damage.
TL; DR-Two tastes that don’t quite go together. 78%
Basics-How do we stop a hoard who feels no pain! Zombies or unfeeling monsters have surrounded the town, and you are called to aid the defence. But mid-meeting you are whisked away to do the bidding of a wizard. Can you save the town and stop being a mister fixit on call?
Mechanics or Crunch-This adventure is short! The major bad guy is the wizard who keeps summoning you. You can fight the zombies, but the book makes it seem like you will die. As a DM I would kill you as well. The tower with the wizard isn’t bad, but he also is pretty much the only thing in it. It’s a short dungeon with balanced fights, but just not enough of them. It’s a little too old school as you have to find the fights and the goods here as opposed to them being out in the open for you to pillage and kill. I didn’t hate it, but it will require you to punch up the adventure to keep your group involved. 4/5
Theme or Fluff-There are not one, but two things for the PCs to face. But, they are tied together. BUT, only you, the GM, really get that. The wizard only brings you in when he needs help. You have to find and explore the place in seven rounds before he sends you back. The zombies are ok, but why are they here? I know why because I read the book, but it feels like two different adventures put together. I didn’t hate this, but even after reveals, my players felt like there were really two adventures here. Both of the singles are good, but together it’s three Michelen star steak mixed with gold ribbon winning chocolate. Maybe these two things shouldn’t go together. 3/5
Execution– PDF? YEP! Hyperlinked? no…That’s honestly my biggest gripe here. The execution isn’t bad. I would like clean maps I can show my players without having things marked on the map that they find. Text read fast and I could play quickly. It is one of the standard well put together DCC modules I know and love. 4.75/5
Summary-I don’t hate this one, but this might not be the first adventure I show to new players. I was able to turn this to keeping my players on the purple planet. It works well that way, but the basic story gets lost in most of the GM fluff. Not bad, but unless the players work to make friends with their captor, they won’t get it. The dungeon needs more pieces and stuff to play with in the form of fights or toys. The presentation is good, but I still want hyperlinks! Overall, it’s an ok adventure that is maybe a bit too stuffed with disparate things. 78%
Set-up/Play/Clean-up– 30 to 45 minutes (2-4 players)
Type- American
Depth-Light
TL; DR-Set Collection Your Own Adventure! 95%
Basics- Who will you be? Call to Adventure is a character building game of set collection and dice rolling. Each character at the start of the game will be given three cards: a background, a motivation, and a destiny. The background and motivation cards have rune symbols representing traits that your character will use to attempt to adventure, as well as powers that your character can use each turn. Each turn your character must choose either an adventure or trait from the tableau. Traits are cards you just take, but adventures are events you must choose to encounter. Each adventure has two traits associated with it. You see if you have any matching traits on the cards you currently have, you add one of those trait’s runes to your “dice pool” (which is actually a rune pool) for each symbol your character has. Then you choose on the adventure card if you will attempt the encounter on the bottom or the top section. Each one has a different story AND different rewards/challenges. You then take the three basic runes that either give one success, no success, or draw a hero/antihero (one time use card) as well as the runes you gathered before based on your current cards, and you may spend experience to add dark runes to the pool. These either add one success or two success and make you more evil! You then cast the runes (instead of rolling dice), and you count your successes. If you succeed you gain the card and place it under your current one to show the challenge you overcame. If you fail, you lose the card, but gain an experience. Play continues until one player has three cards under their background, motivation, and destiny. All other players get to finish the round and have one additional round to catch up and then you add all victory points from any cards you played and sets of icons you collected, and the player with the most destiny points is the winner!
Mechanics-This game sneaks up on you as you might only have nine turns if you are lucky! It’s very quick, and it’s easy to forget that you are collecting sets of icons and points. But, man is it fun! It’s quick enough to not wear out its welcome, but it’s also deep enough that you will have to think a bit. Experience is a great way to fix the luck of the dice issue, but dice/runes can absolutely ruin your fun here. But even then, you will still not have a bad time as it’s not a long game and some traits are won by losing. Overall, it’s a dice rolling and set collection game. 4.5/5
Theme- This is a solid story game. When you are done, you will be amazed how well the story of your character emerges. I FEEL like I am this person playing a year long campaign forging this hero in an RPG. If you are a story gamer like me, YOU WILL LOVE THIS! 5/5
Instructions– The rules here are good, but you will end up on BGG. There are some corner cases where I have to check exactly what the game rules mean. Even without board game geek, you can figure out enough to settle on house rules to get you playing. The rules are written well enough that you will get running fast enough to play in about 10 minutes. These are solid rules, but a few flaws keep them from being the gold standard. 4.5/5
Execution– This is a fantastically executed game! Check out all the pieces here: https://youtu.be/n0OI0_nS1e8 YOU CAST RUNES! It feels like every druid fortune telling scene in a viking movie. That right there is amazing. The cards are excellent. Everytime I teach this game players want to stare at the cards as the details are amazing and tell a story themselves. The box is amazing. It has great compartments to keep things organized. Honestly, more games need to be built like this game! 5/5
Summary– This is a game you will either LOVE or HATE. If you want a 12 hour euro game where each move is planned six moves ahead, then this is not the game for you! If you, like me, played eight games of RPGs at the BGG virtual con AND have two play by post games going at the same time, then I have a board game for you and for you to woo your RPG friends into. It’s light enough to be a blast to play quickly, but deep enough for you to find a story to dig into with enough mechanics that you can enjoy your choices. Like all dice games, you can be wrecked by the dice, and I would like a bit more in the rules to elaborate. But, this game is a blast to play and one that any RPG gamer and board gamer needs in their collection. 95%
This helmet is made from bashed together metal plates from the scraps of other helmets of those who were the last to survive a battle. While wearing this helm, you gain a +1 bonus to AC and increase your maximum hit points by one hit point per level. In addition, while wearing this helmet, you will always be the last one to survive the battle. If you would be killed, you teleport to the last safe bed you slept in and are at one hit point waking up the next morning . If the last safe place you slept is not safe, the magic of the helm will continue to find the previous place until it finds a place where you are safe to wake up.
Basics– What horrors lurk under Farzeen? This is the first part of an epic heroic fantasy campaign from Sandy Petersen. This adventure starts off with mutiny aboard a ship, involves the crew being battered by horrible dreams, losing the crew, finding the city of Farzeen, and eventually finding the crew after they flee to a temple below the island. Along the way the players meet monstrous deep ones, less monstrous ghouls, and an ancient evil long forgotten below this island.
Mechanics or Crunch-This is a solid adventure. The math checks out as it’s just applying the basic 5e rules for the crunch. It uses Sandy Petersen’s dread rules, so you will need the Cthulhu Mythos book for that. Overall, a solidly put together adventure full of fun fights and exploration for low level characters. 5/5
Theme or Fluff-This part is where expectations have to be set early. I honestly think the best way to play Call of Cthulhu is a one shot. People in a normal world, thrown into a crazy situation, damaged beyond repair, then left to deal with the horror for the rest of their lives. That’s good cosmic horror. This isn’t that, and the book is VERY up front with that. This is heroic fantasy with horror thrown in. This adventure isn’t written to be 20 levels of just sheer cosmic horror. You get to be awesome stomping a deep one. Also, some of the main characters are ghouls. Some players are going to miss this, but Lovecraft ghouls are not DnD ghouls. They are more dog men really. It’s things like that that will require your players and you to adjust expectations. Nothing is bad, but you have to read this and see exactly what the author intends. 4.5/5
Execution– PDF? YEP! Hyperlinked? no…That’s honestly my only gripe here. The layout is good. Text size is good. Art is well done. There is even a separate book that is the Farzeen Gazetteer that gives you background on the town and island. That’s an amazing value for 15 bucks considering this is a full length adventure and a whole small book on the island itself! Just hyperlink and this would be one of the best products this year. 4.75/5
Summary-Sandy Petersen’s team put out another top notch product here. It has solid crunch for the adventure. The story is good, but you HAVE to read what it is and what it is not. I also love the pieces of this thing. My gripes are small-I always want PDFs with hyperlinks now, and I went in expecting only cosmic horror all day long. If you can get past those small issues, then you have an incredible start to what is shaping up to be an amazing campaign with the resources you need to make a fun, in depth game for your players. 95%
For the next hour, when you enter a fight, immediately after you kill an enemy or critically strike an enemy with melee attack, you my make a melee attack as a free action.
Been playing the witcher lately, and this is a potion that comes comes in pretty handy.
Potion of Escalating Assault
Potion, uncommon
When you drink this potion, you feel the anger build in you.
For the next hour, when you enter a fight, after each melee hit, increase your melee damage by 1, up to double your proficiency bonus. The bonus to melee damage is reduced to zero if you miss an attack or do not make an attack in turn.
There are powers to resist damage. How about to resist conditions?
(Condition) Resistance You been through a lot of pain in your life, and you’ve learned how to shrug off things that don’t just hurt, but cripple. • Cost: 12 Karma • Game Effect: When choosing this quality, select a status (p. 51). When under the effect of that status, gain a point of Edge before making a test for any test affected by that status and on tests to end that status.
How about more love for conditions in Shadowrun 6e?
Firebug Fire keeps us warm. Burning people keep you warmer. • Cost: 14 Karma • Game Effect: When when you inflict the burning status on a creature, increase the severity of the burning condition by 1.
TL; DR-How the mythos is meant to be played in 5e! 99%
Basics– Ia Ia Cthulhu Fhtagn! The grand cleric of the elder gods is writing for DnD 5e! Sandy Pertersen’s Cthulhu Mythos for 5e is a MASSIVE book with new races, class options, feats, spells, monsters, and mechanics that you can throw into your 5e game. Let’s break down the pieces to see what’s in here.
The tcho-tcho in the room-Ah Lovecraft…I love his work, but MAN he would not fly today. From mental illness to racism, Lovecraft in his original form isn’t post #METOO or #BLM friendly. So, how do you handle the insanity and cosmic horror with the subtext or just text of Lovecraft? Sandy Peterson walks this line extremely well with sidebars dealing with handling mental illness to just dropping the racist parts of the mythos monsters and human acolytes. We can go mad with terror from learning the true history of the universe without having to go to HR!
New Eldritch Toys- This book is a BEAST of content. This book features THREE new races with race specific class options. The old standards of 5e all get some toys as well with feats for everyone, class options for all the core classes, books of unholy lore, and a boat load of new spells. There are also several new items that all cover the fan favorites of star mead to things I haven’t heard of before.
New Mythos Monsters-A hero is only as good as the monster is bad. Then let’s make your heroes LEGENDARY! This book has everything from simple monsters you can throw into your game just because you want something weird to freak out the power gamer who memorized the monster manual to GAME ENDING TITANS who would be the final bad guy in your campaign. Again, you have the fan favorites here like cthulhu to some of the more esoteric, even for the Lovecraft alicionadio, like Byatis. This book also adds in new options for you to throw onto worshipers so your bland cultists into true harbingers of the mythos even at low levels.
New Mythology Mechanics-This book isn’t just a highlight reel of Lovecraft’s old toys. This book adds new crunch to 5e. There is a whole revamped madness and dread system. All characters can now learn how to cast some spells called formulas. There is even a whole new skill dedicated to understanding the cthulhu mythos. The final boss of a campaign now has a solid progression system where the fight becomes epic tales you will tell for years to come.
Ok, now my thoughts.
Mechanics or Crunch– Sandy Peterson is one of the foremost game developers in the Lovecraft mythos, and it shows. This book isn’t just a reskin book where you take a scary monster and now it’s cthulhu. The crunch here is truly Lovecraftian. Monsters feel like they are beyond human ken. There are DEEP dives into the mythos, and not just into the new stuff from people writing in Lovecraft’s shadow. Stuff that gets a small mention that even I forgot like the gnorri get a full race write up. The stuff that is in the base DnD 5e book gets revamped well. I don’t like the madness system in DnD 5e, but this book provides an amazing system that has a great write up that you can drop into a non-cthulhu campaign. I like most of what’s here, but there are a couple of things I have some minor quibbles with. The new mythos skill is called yog-sothothery. I just want it called mythos lore or even to borrow from Call of Cthulhu- cthulhu mythos. Also, I want stat bonuses you get from eldritch tomes to be permanent. But honestly, those are pretty small issues. This book is a solid addition to the Dungeons and Dragons 5e crunch regardless of if you want to run a Cthulhu based campaign or not. 4.9/5
Theme or Fluff-Sandy Peterson is one of the foremost Lovecraft scholars today, and it shows here too. This isn’t just a pile of reskins with tentacles so Lovecraft. This is a well crafted library of Lovecraft eldritch lore. I MYSELF learned stuff about the Lovecraft world from this book. This will teach you not only how to run a solid horror game but also about the world of Lovecraft. But, let’s say you just want a splat book to draw some scary stuff from? This has you covered too. This book is a solid addition to my collection as both a DnD DM and a someone who love the mythos. 5/5
Execution– PDF? YEP! Hyperlinked? YEP! AND IT NEEDS IT! This is a BEAST for 20 bucks. It’s over 400 pages. The base DnD books are not that long and cost twice as much! It’s easy to read but still feels familiar with the font and backgrounds looking like the base books with a decidedly eldritch flare. Monsters have TONS of pictures, so I can throw pictures to my players quickly without having to do a google image search. This book is a solid example of how to produce a 3rd party book. 5/5
Summary– I love Lovecraft. Any idiot can stab me, so that’s not scary. Any punk rogue can sneak attack my character and kill him-not scary. But learning the horrible history of my family and what cost I too have to pay to keep the thing in the basement “pleased” so my family prospers? That’s horror. This book will help you do that. I can’t heap enough praise on this book. I have my minor issues, but those are so minor it almost doesn’t matter. For the amount of content alone for 20 bucks, you can’t go wrong. If you want some monsters to throw at your bored players? Done. You want a book that will be the key and the gate to a world of horror you might never have known existed? This is that book! 99%
