Adamant's Tome of Secrets: How has it aged?

[Psion]

Adamant's Tome of Secrets has been out for a year now. Some of you may have been using it. Some of you may have even looked at similar classes in the new APG (Knight/Cavalier, frex). Some of you might have even played some of this material alongside each other.

Any impressions on how Adamant's book looks now.

Honestly, I was turned off by the sparseness of the pages when I saw the print version at GenCon last year, and only recently picked up the PDF myself.

 

[Shisumo]

In the whole book, the only thing I use is the swashbuckler.

 

[Hunter In Darkness]

Honestly I did not like the book and in good faith could not recommend anyone get it. Most of the classes were meh, the races were unbalanced to put it kindly, it looked like a bunch of 3.5 PDF's someone hand bunched together with very little thought to how some rules changes effected items in the book.


The swashbuckler was not bad that I recall, but as I said I would not recommend.

 

[Psion]

Yeah... most of the book seemed to me more like interesting experiements than compelling inclusions in a game.

I even wonder, with the Swashbuckler variant rogue, if the Swashbuckler class will even see much more play.

 

[Kvantum]

The Swashbuckler Rogue variant isn't nearly enough of a variation, it's just a few little changes. The Tome of Secrets Swashbuckler, though, that's probably still the best version out there. The rest of the book is basically worthless now, though.

 

[jaerdaph]

The chase rules (converted to Pathfinder from the original Hot Pursuit) in Tome of Secrets are still the best I have ever seen.

 

[pawsplay]

The Swashbuckler Rogue variant isn't nearly enough of a variation, it's just a few little changes.

Stacking it with the Scout variant helps a little.

The Tome of Secrets Swashbuckler, though, that's probably still the best version out there. The rest of the book is basically worthless now, though.

I'm curious to know more about it. I purposefully avoided the ToS in the beginning, despite it being one of the earliest support materials from a 3pp, partially because I didn't want to have to worry about plagiarization issues while I worked on Fistful of Denarii.

It doesn't seem to have had the staying power of, say, the Genius stuff, Denarii, some of the reworked Races of whatever, and so forth. I saw complaints early on about fluency in the Pathfinder design lingo, and GMS did not seem satisfied with how the book was received. I would like to check it out sometime, though.

 

[Kvantum]

Well, both books have a Knight class, but beyond that, Tome of Secrets is much more focused on magic-using classes than Fistful of Denarii. Warlock, Spellblade, Shaman, those are the kinds of classes you'll find in Tome of Secrets. I mean, other than a few of the Scholar's abilities, you pretty much ignored magic all together for Fistful, it seems like.

(And when are we going to get the next Tripod Machine release, anyway? Isn't it going to be a races book?)

 

[Dark Mistress]

I reviewed it when it first came out. I don't think the classes have held up real well. Other 3pp have honestly come out with better versions of most of the classes. The races where never great. Though I still think many of the optional rules are still pretty good to cherry pick from.

 

[Beholder Bob]

The tome of blah

I purchased this when it first came out and quickly found it unusable. The classes are not too balanced, the races blah or imbalanced. I thought the chase rules too cumbersome, and in general a pot luck of 3.5 stuff with a slight update. Adamant did not support their product except to provide a starting funds, age, and weight. The most usable item in the book was the swashbuckler, and at this point I maintain the pdf due to a packrat mentality more then a actually application for the material.

Given the above, I have to admit being disgusted with the material shortly after purchase. I'll admit to perhaps failing to appreciate something from the package. Is there anything in that book that someone feels is worth re-reading the TOS? I'd love to find some use for the darn thing!