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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2009745" data-attributes="member: 18387">Crimson Contracts - The Assassin's Manifesto - $7.50 PDF - 128 pagesHooray.  Another book about assassins. This isn't the first one, nor even the first PDF one, but I feel it is one of the best ones.The first thing that struck me about this book is the cover art and design. It's very nicely laid out, but visually stunning. Most of the book is laid out nicely with a torn parchment header and footer, using nice clean fonts throughout and interesting black & white art. The chapter headers break from the style of the rest of the document with a black & grey beackground white text and a bloody, splattered graphical header and a striking piece of art that appears to be an oil-painting or some such medium (very surprising for a PDF product, in my opinion).The book is broken into 8 chapters - The Role of Assassins, Skills & Feats, Classes, Tools & Weapons, Spells & Psionics, Templates, Organizations and DM Tools. THe feel throughout is fairly dark, and definitely creepy in places. A majority of the chapters are rules-heavy, but they are all held together by a storyline that is also creepy (although definitely not an example of excellent prose). The storyline does a lot to make the whole book feel like a coherent whole.The first chapter is an excellent introduction to the mind of the assassin, types of assassins, stereotypes, character concepts, methods and means. This is the chapter that stood out the most for me on first reading, mainly because almost all PDF products I've read have been primarily rules-oriented, whereas this entire chapter is ideas and flavor material.The second chapter (Skills & Feats) includes expanded tables & rules for handling and manufacturing poisons and venoms, antitoxins, seduction and a batch of new feats, including several poison-specific ones. None seemed unbalanced, although some of the new knowledge skills seem underpowered. But since these knowledges are used as pre-requisites for the later prestige classes, the reduced power of them seems actually to be a good balancing act.The third chapter (Classes) includes three NPC classes that seem mostly fluff for most campaigns (maybe the thief would be fine, but the thug has already been done in several FFG books to date), as well as 15 prestige classes such as the Arcane Assassin (killers who specialize in ray spells), Brutal Killer (think of any slasher-flick), Dancer of Scarves (a VERY Oriental Adventures-style assassin), Fist of Righteousness (paladin - assassin? not quite, but definitely a good take on a lawful-good "assassin" that uses smite to take on the forces of evil), the Master of Toxins, Stalker of the Sands and even the dwarf-specific Stoneheart. Some of these classes are more powerful than others, but none are out-and-out overpowered to the typical screams of "broken", although some are definitely aimed at higher-power campaigns like Forgotten Realms where it seems the spellcaster prestige classes are particularly powerful. Most of the classes use the basis of the Assassin PrC from the DMG - non-spellcasters can become members, but often they learn to cast spells as part of the level progression. The spell lists start to blur together as you proceed through the chapter however.The fourth chapter (Tools) includes a large selection of new poisons (including some that are quite "Epic" in power and DCs, with quite high price tags to go with them). A small selection of new weapons are also included, as well as several pages of new magic items, minor artifacts and even some new psionic items (although the psionic potion seems somewhat out of the norm). The cool magical shuriken set are quite tasty.The fifth chapter (Spells & Psionics) add a half-dozen pages of new spells, almost entirely offensive in scope.The next chapter (Templates) is a very interesting set of new creature templates, with the "wirebound" being the most intriguing and flavorful of the set - characters or creatures magically melded with metallic barbed wire wound tightly over and through their flesh. The type of metal used determines what special powers are granted.Next (Organizations) comes another full chapter of information without rules. These are assassin organizations, some of which are the training grounds for some of the specific prestige classes earlier in the volume, others have the feel of being from the campaign world or pet project of the authors.The last chapter of the book is a collection of alternate rules and an encounter. The optional rules are quite detailed handlings of things like Torture (detailed rules-wise, without going into detail on the actual techniques in question), breaking necks, garotting, choke holds & kukris. The chapter finishes with a sample encounter with a brutal-killer character, which I have already used in game play when the party was "bored" at the local tavern (like that hasn't happened in almost every campaign at least once).Overall, I was impressed with the book. This is the largest (in page count and word count) PDF I have picked up so far, and I had to break it up on the print-spool to get it out of the printer, but it was worth it. Additionally, it came bundled with (less stunning) easier-to-print versions of the chapter header pages, making the entire document quite nice when printed without being a total ink-hog. At 128 pages, this is almost exactly what I would expect from something like "The Quintessential Assassin" or a similar work. It is definitely my favourite assassin book published to date, although the prose / flavor text / storytelling could definitely be better-written (much of the prose is in the format of dialogue, which feels quite weak as exhibition material when comapred to better storytelling methods). Combined with some of the new spells from the Green Ronin Assassin's Handbook and the real-world poisons therein, this book has become the basis for assassins in my games. A few NPC assassin write-ups with complete stat-blocks throughout the book would have been appreciated to make it more GM-friendly, but several such NPCs have been posted on the authors' website since the release of the PDF.</blockquote>

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