You open a small portal through the planes to pull a mote of concentrated darkness to assault your enemies. Make a ranged spell attack roll against the target’s AC. On a hit, the target takes negative damage equal to 1d4 plus your spellcasting modifier (double damage on a critical hit).
Heightened (+1) The damage to creatures increases by 1d4.
Shaped Charges are devices that are molded on to a grenade. As part of an action to draw a grenade, you can use a shaped charge as well. When you throw a grenade with a shaped charge, the grenade still targets a square, but it only damages targets in that one square. The grenade does not cause damage to any squares beyond the one hit by the grenade. When the grenade explodes, the shaped charge is destroyed as well.
Basics– INTO THE UNKNOWN! Settle a planet and fend off the wildlife AND the friends you brought along the way in this Kingmaker in Space adventure!
Mechanics or Crunch– This adventure focuses on building and exploring a location. The problem with this and most other RPGs of this kind is randomness. Each hex has a random chance to happen there unless something is scripted. This problem can lead to you having way too many encounters to the point the book even says reduce the experience the players get. That feels a bit cheap. Couple that with the fact that there are only eight random encounters means players can get bored quickly with the encounters. There are scripted events and locations that do make things more fun, but be aware! It’s fun, but it can get a bit same-y for the fights. Most of the fun comes from the social and that is done well, but if a party just makes all murder hobos which are excellent in the bush, they will get decimated in town as they will be out maneuvered at every turn by the people they came to lead! 4/5
Theme or Fluff– Just like in the crunch, the story can get same-y if you are not careful. Depending on how players handle the world, they can spend tons of time just running around in circles exploring the same hexes again and again if they are slow. The town encounters and managing all the NPCs is the bulk of the story in this one. There is some toward the end showing the world is more than it might have seemed, but most of the time there is just town and other local claims to deal with as the bulk of the story. It’s fun, but this is an intro game that will help power level the characters more than dig deep into the story. 4/5
Execution– PDF? Yep. Hyperlinked? Yep. Solid Art? Yep. Good layout? Honestly yes. Paizo does books and adventures well. Paizo was a publishing company before an RPG company, and honestly that experience shows in a clean book that is easy to read. 5/5
Summary-There is a reason players wanted Kingmaker in space. You build a location and make it shine! This book sets the foundation for that, but like all foundations it takes time to set up. This one is a bit slow and honestly needs an expanded random encounter table as eight separate things is just not enough. Give me 20 or give me more set encounters in each place, even if they don’t advance the story! That right there would lift this WAY up in the ranks as even my players had almost memorized what the D8 meant for the coming encounter! The story that is here is fun and my players quickly learned to love and HATE some NPCs. That makes me happy as a GM. It goes almost without saying that I love Paizo’s bookmanship, so top marks there. It’s a good adventure that just needs a bit more for the random to keep things a bit more entertaining. 87 %
Benefit: When moving throw an ally who is a smaller or equal size’s space, you can choose to treat that space and any additional spaces as difficult terrain and move the ally with you.
Normal: You can move through ally’s spaces with no penalty, but you can not move them with you.
Archetype Archetype Great Sword Prerequisites Great Sword Dedication
When the block brakes, you’ve learned to turn it just enough to save yourself some pain. If you use your sword to do a shield block, you reduce the damage you take by your strength modifier. The sword still takes damage as normal.
You swing hard enough, and you can block even the best attacks.
Prerequisites: Proficiency with shields.
Benefit: You’ve trained how to use a sword to block. If you are wielding a melee weapon, you gain a +1 shield bonus to KAC and EAC against melee attacks.
You know how to turn a blade to get the most out of it. Any two handed sword you are wielding has its hardness increased by 1/2, rounded down, its normal amount.
Basics– Ready to hit the Shadows Chummer? City Edition Seattle is a revamp of the new 6th edition rules for Shadowrun. It’s full of errata and new layout for the same 6th edition you know.
Mechanics or Crunch– If you were hoping for a completely new edition, this is not what you want. Sixth edition has been slightly controversial, but this book clears some of the issues with included errata. It’s still fundamentally 6th edition however. It works decently despite some misgivings that I have with some minor choices like only gaining a maximum of two edge per turn or deemphasizing strength for melee damage. 4/5
Theme or Fluff– While Shadowrun players may not like all the mechanical choices from the system, almost everyone loves the fluff the world provides. It’s deep and engaging with lots of short stories. Mechanics do match fluff and the arts and stories tie all of that together as well. This will make you want some cyberpunk tabletop in your life. 5/5
Execution– PDF? Yep. Hyperlinked? Yep. Solid Art? Yep. Good layout? Slight missteps. Catalyst did a good job putting a lot of errata into one package, but some things are still buried into the text. It’s much cleaner from what was before, but some things are still buried and its easy to miss small things with huge implications like how strength might not play the major role in damage but how almost all physical contests have Strength as a major factor in a contest of ability. 4.5/5
Summary– This book is a repackage of the rules that you may or may not love. It makes them more approachable and easier to read, but it will not fundamentally change them. The quality of life changes to the rules are fantastic, and the usual art and story are great as well. It’s now just if you like the basic rules or not. I have some issues, but overall it’s still Shadowrun to me, so I am having a blast. 90%
Tools, no matter how abused, are meant to be used. Two handed swords do not gain the broken trait when wielded by you nor do any two handed weapons with more than zero hit points have the broken trait. When a two handed sword is reduced to zero hit points while used by you, it instead becomes broken, is not destroyed, and can not be used then. Weapon broken while used by you can be repared even when reduced to zero hit points. Weapons with their hit points reduced to zero hit points are still destroyed if they were used by others.
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