I picked up Bloodstone Press's new release
Amazons vs Valkyries: The Maven (affiliate link), for PF1, yesterday.
I was quite stoked for this, as I get a kick out of the AvV setting, and I've mentioned before that Beth Jones has a noted track record for good products, and this one didn't disappoint. It delivered a solid new base class which had a very distinct identity, being a gish-type class who focused more on support and buffing than being a "striker" or backup melee/ranged type.
The maven class has two-thirds spell progression, and three-fourths BAB progression, but its arcane spellcasting is limited to non-attack and non-debuff spells. Short of certain battlefield-control type spells, such as summons or certain wall spells, etc. you're not going to be using magic to damage/impede anyone. There are a
few exceptions to the whole "no damaging spells" thing, but not many.
The core of the class, however, is that each maven picks one skill, gaining
heavily expanded powers based on that particular skill. It essentially turns skills into something like a sorcerer bloodline or an oracle mystery, having certain bonus spells and bonus feats that it grants you, along with a progression of special powers which complement your built-in class abilities.
I will note a minor bad decision in the layout, which is that the description of the class itself (i.e. the static class abilities, which don't change regardless of which skill you pick to focus on) is bisected by the expanded descriptions of the skills themselves. So the product opens talking about the proficiencies, Hit Die, class table, spellcasting, etc., and then if you want to read the class abilities from 2nd-level onward, you need to scroll to the back half of the product, since there's fifteen-odd pages of the various skill powers.
Really, though, my only complaint about the book is that it doesn't go above and beyond in what it presents...which in a very real way, isn't a complaint at all. What I mean by that is that the class is excellent as a class, but it presents
none of the supporting materials that PF1 introduced for new base classes. Some of those options became ubiquitous, others were quickly forgotten, but
none of them are here. Consider:
- There are no class archetypes, which is a shame since the class practically screams out for options to make it operate more like a magus, or a psychic spellcaster.
- There are no favored class options, which it a bit awkward considering that the AvV setting has a race supplement; you'd think it would include new favored class options for each of the setting's races.
- There are no class-specific feats, not even an Extra [class power] feat like so many other classes seem to have.
- There's no class background table (from Ultimate Campaign). That wouldn't require creating any new traits, just folding some existing ones into a table for potential maven backgrounds.
- There's no simple class template (from the Monster Codex), which would make it easy to make monsters who were mavens without actually having to level them up in the base class itself.
- There's no variant multiclassing breakdown (from Pathfinder Unchained), which would make it easy for characters to dip their proverbial toes into the class if they don't want to try conventional multiclassing.
Now, that's a
lot, and I can see it being off-putting to someone who wants to make new base classes for PF1. But as a customer, I'm partial to publishers remembering that these options exist, and like it when they go the extra mile by supporting them. As it was, there wasn't even a sidebar here describing how the expanded skills (which, recall, are now presented in a format similar to a sorcerer bloodline or oracle mystery) could have been tweaked so that they could have been used in that way, or how those options could have been used instead of a skill, etc.
All of that is a long-winded way of saying "it left me wanting more," which is far from being a particularly harsh criticism, but it made me a bit sad to think that there was design space left open which will probably never be filled.
