Endzeitgeist
First Post
Disclaimer:
I HATED, HATED, HATED the Warforged. There are several reasons for this and it has, quite frankly, been the main reason for me not to buy this pdf for a long time. Until one of my players asked, whether it would be possible to play a gear-enhanced human and presented an excellent 4 page backstory. I dislike construct races for PCs, but his concept was cool.
To the review:
The pdf is 21 pages, 1 page Front cover, 1 page credits, 2 pages ads, 1 page OGL. That leaves 16 pages.
First, we get an ~2 page IC introduction to the Ironborn, including options to play small or large Ironborn, with some different ability modifiers.
This is a portent of the things to come: Ironborn are extremely modular and the better for it.
After reading this paragraph, I could see:
The base race is VERY well-balanced and the Ironborn-subtype features the construct-flair without making wilderness/starvation/environmental adventures a joke for the character. Kudos!
The true strength is the versatility of the race, though. You choose a base-suit of abilities according to the purpose of the Ironborn. We get 6 pages of ability packages, with primary and secondary (not accessible for large Ironborn) abilities and sometimes, even a variety of secondary abilities for a given suit.
The ability suits are well-balanced, with one possible exception, depending on the power-level of your campaign: The Centurion Suite is, on low levels, the ULTIMATE tank. Plus, it hits a pet peeve of mine: It has a 25% chance to negate crits against the players. This is the only suite I'd exclude for my players, at least until they are level 5. My favorite was the Omenbuilt: I'm going to use the mini-token mechanic for other chars, too. Awesome!
We get 2 pages of physical and psychological peculiarities of the Ironborn.
The concept of the "burden", i.e. an instilled craving to do what it was created to do helps to easily drop them in any adventurer group and makes for nice roleplaying opportunities.
Then, we get a new sorcerous "bloodline" and a feat to construct Ironborn.
After that, we get 9 new feats, mostly for Ironborn and new rules for clockwork familiars. This takes up 3 pages.
The feats are well-designed and don't seem to be too overpowered, although two of them hit another pet peeve of mine: "Spring-loaded Reflexes" and "intricate joints" give Ironborn access to uncanny dodge, and improved uncanny dodge, respectively. These are class features for me, not something that other classes have readily access to without multi-classing.
While the prose is good, it's not as AWESOME as the prose in the "Wyrd"-pdf.
(Review will follow one of these days.)
Due to the fact that it hit 2 pet-peeves of mine, I give it 4 stars. Highly recommended for any campaign and better designed than the warforged, Ironborn are as versatile and easy to integrate as can be, avoid many of the unbalancing contruct-traits and still manage to kepp the "special" fluff of the construct race.
I HATED, HATED, HATED the Warforged. There are several reasons for this and it has, quite frankly, been the main reason for me not to buy this pdf for a long time. Until one of my players asked, whether it would be possible to play a gear-enhanced human and presented an excellent 4 page backstory. I dislike construct races for PCs, but his concept was cool.
To the review:
The pdf is 21 pages, 1 page Front cover, 1 page credits, 2 pages ads, 1 page OGL. That leaves 16 pages.
First, we get an ~2 page IC introduction to the Ironborn, including options to play small or large Ironborn, with some different ability modifiers.
This is a portent of the things to come: Ironborn are extremely modular and the better for it.
After reading this paragraph, I could see:
The base race is VERY well-balanced and the Ironborn-subtype features the construct-flair without making wilderness/starvation/environmental adventures a joke for the character. Kudos!
The true strength is the versatility of the race, though. You choose a base-suit of abilities according to the purpose of the Ironborn. We get 6 pages of ability packages, with primary and secondary (not accessible for large Ironborn) abilities and sometimes, even a variety of secondary abilities for a given suit.
The ability suits are well-balanced, with one possible exception, depending on the power-level of your campaign: The Centurion Suite is, on low levels, the ULTIMATE tank. Plus, it hits a pet peeve of mine: It has a 25% chance to negate crits against the players. This is the only suite I'd exclude for my players, at least until they are level 5. My favorite was the Omenbuilt: I'm going to use the mini-token mechanic for other chars, too. Awesome!
We get 2 pages of physical and psychological peculiarities of the Ironborn.
The concept of the "burden", i.e. an instilled craving to do what it was created to do helps to easily drop them in any adventurer group and makes for nice roleplaying opportunities.
Then, we get a new sorcerous "bloodline" and a feat to construct Ironborn.
After that, we get 9 new feats, mostly for Ironborn and new rules for clockwork familiars. This takes up 3 pages.
The feats are well-designed and don't seem to be too overpowered, although two of them hit another pet peeve of mine: "Spring-loaded Reflexes" and "intricate joints" give Ironborn access to uncanny dodge, and improved uncanny dodge, respectively. These are class features for me, not something that other classes have readily access to without multi-classing.
While the prose is good, it's not as AWESOME as the prose in the "Wyrd"-pdf.
(Review will follow one of these days.)
Due to the fact that it hit 2 pet-peeves of mine, I give it 4 stars. Highly recommended for any campaign and better designed than the warforged, Ironborn are as versatile and easy to integrate as can be, avoid many of the unbalancing contruct-traits and still manage to kepp the "special" fluff of the construct race.
