Product-Pathfinder Campaign Setting-Inner Sea Combat
Producer– Paizo
Price– $20
TL; DR– A little long to keep me entertained. 77%
Basics– MORTAL COMBAT! Inner Sea Combat focuses on marital characters and how to build these characters and their world into your Pathfinder Game. The book starts by discussing nations and their interactions with martial characters. Next, the book adds feats and a discussion on how specialized martial characters function within the rules of Pathfinder. After specialization, the book moves to schools/guilds and rules to operate these in Pathfinder. From schools, the books present new prestige classes and archetypes for classes from barbarian to the rogue. The last section of the book focuses on magic items that specialized characters from this book might need.
Mechanics or Crunch-This books adds a bunch of ideas for a GM to add to his/her game, but the ideas are not ground breaking awesome that you would expect for hidden techniques grown on the mountain top monasteries of the world. The book adds lost arts that are the talk of many a hushed conversation, but when you look over the options, they might fit will in just a player line book. Also, the book adds schools and guilds. I don’t hate the mechanics behind these, but I think the numbers are off. I think the DCs are too high and will likely make life very hard for anyone who wants to go after a school and not get kicked out. Some of the options are well done, but it’s more diamonds in the rough then a constant flow. I did like the items that were added to this book. 3/5
Fluff or Story- I liked this the most in this book. The story provides lots of ideas for a GM to add to his/her game. I didn’t like the distribution of focus in the world, though. There isn’t much love for the pirates of the Shackles in terms of schools or options as well as a few other key areas. But, what is there are options it’s well done. 4.5/5
Execution-I think this book suffers from a “textbook problem.” This book has a few too many sections of just text that make the book less fun to read. It’s not hard to read, but it does tend to drag on a bit. The book does have some nice new art to help make reading a bit easier, but the format makes things feel long. The text is not bad, just a bit of a drag. 4/5
Summary-I didn’t hate this book, but it’s not one of my favorites. The mechanics and the textbook nature of the 64 page format are just a little bit off making this book slightly drag on a bit. I would have preferred this to be a few shorter 32 page books focusing on monks, fighters, or some other class. I did like the story that this book adds to the world. Also, knowing who the best of the best fighters are can give the characters goals for whom to fight later. It’s not a bad book, but just a bit long to keep me completely interested all the way through. 77%
Throat Punch Games 