Hello again my friends and welcome to another PAIZO PRODUCT REVIEW! The good folks at the Golem were kind enough to pass on a few copies of their newest and shiniest goods so that we can pass along our general thoughts, impressions, and recommendations. In this edition we have: the Pathfinder Bestiary 2, the latest supplement of things to kill and loot; the Pathfinder Bestiary Battle Cards, a handy reference for any GM; and the Pathfinder Chase Cards, for when the best option is running away!
First and foremost, the big boy in the room: the Pathfinder Bestiary 2. More than 300 new critters to drop into your games are tightly packed into this relatively slim 320-page volume – and that’s including appendices and indices! All the extraplanar and elemental rosters get a decent expansion, but I bet if you lay them all out together it’s the First World that gets the biggest showing here. It’s no surprise that Paizo has a thing for the First World and all its fey denizens given all the love they’ve shown it in recent supplements, but it can start to feel a little one-note at times.
I remain unhappy with the prevailing design decision to limit each monster to one page, although at this point there’s little that can be done about it. To me, the limit forces the developers to have to choose between providing readers with the excellent description, history, and ecology at which they are so skilled in creating, or providing GMs interesting and understandable stat blocks. Keyword soup is only as useful as the memory of the GM running a monster, and becomes counterproductive if it requires pulling out another book to find the rule description.
In short, if you were going to get the Bestiary 2 already, go ahead and get it – there’s loads of new monsters and new ideas to use against your hapless players, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot to make this a must-buy.
Now, on to the Bestiary Battle Cards! Again, not a lot of surprises here. This is a hefty brick of card packs meant for use at a physical table (oof, the timing) with one side dedicated to the beautiful art from the Bestiary and the other side displaying the stat block of the monster in question. As they’re 3” x 6” cards printed on sturdy, glossy cardstock, they’re definitely well-made and go a long way to explaining the $60 price tag. As far as their actual use goes, though, they seem more designed for a quick flash of “this is what you’re fighting” than for use as a display – there’s no official means of holding them vertically or integrating them with a GM screen, so do your best with paper clips and tape or try not to accidentally flash the stat block when your players ask to see the monster for the fifteenth time.
Fans of Paizo’s Pocket Editions will likely enjoy the Battle Cards a great deal, as they’re the perfect way to bring just what you’ll need for a night’s encounter without lugging around another heavy book. Just be sure you know what your players will get up to!
You can definitely see the utility of the one-page design and keyword soup from the Bestiary paying off here – limiting the amount of explanatory text in a stat block allows it to be printed on a card in a font that’s pretty legible even through the most smudged glasses, and keywords allow Paizo (or an enterprising GM) to put all the important explanatory text on the back of a screen. That said, for the beefier, more unique monsters, even the 3” x 6” space isn’t sufficient, and they require a two-card spread to contain all their abilities. Monsters that require two cards are generally larger and more impressive than your run-of-the-mill goblin, so why can’t their art be a splashy two-page spread? It’s something I hope to see implemented in future Battle Cards, and it’s one of the few missteps in an otherwise lovely product.
Last, but certainly not least, is the Pathfinder Chase Cards. This 55-card deck is meant to help GMs get a physical grip on the chase rules which can so easily spring up on an unsuspecting session. The GM lays out a random selection of the obstacle cards based on the difficulty they want to set for the chase encounter, and each side (chase-er and chase-ee) work their way through cards by earning Chase Points through skill checks and abilities like spells and class features.
The Chase Cards do a good job of giving a physical and visual way to interact with the rules in a rulebook, but they (like the chase rules in general) are written largely with a low- to medium-level party in mind. A huge percentage of the obstacles presented here can be easily bypassed if the party can fly, and then you’re right back into combat (or right back into exploration or downtime mode).
I applaud the effort of the designers to work skill and ability checks (normally associated with downtime or exploration mode) into encounter mode, but I can’t help but feel like the game’s design approach to chase sequences is fundamentally missing the mark. These cards and rules (and other chase rules in popular TTRPGs) largely focus on environmental hazards and obstacles as a way to introduce conflict and increase tension, but any good chase I can come up with always involves play and counter-play from the quarry and the hunter, and environmental factors are largely a non-issue because they affect both participants equally. That, however, is outside the scope of the Chase Cards, and will require your GM to come up with clever villains to both chase and be chased by your heroes.
That about does it for this edition of your PAIZO PRODUCT REVIEWS! Stay safe out there y’all.
I remain unhappy with the prevailing design decision to limit each monster to one page, although at this point there’s little that can be done about it. To me, the limit forces the developers to have to choose between providing readers with the excellent description, history, and ecology at which they are so skilled in creating, or providing GMs interesting and understandable stat blocks. Keyword soup is only as useful as the memory of the GM running a monster, and becomes counterproductive if it requires pulling out another book to find the rule description.
In short, if you were going to get the Bestiary 2 already, go ahead and get it – there’s loads of new monsters and new ideas to use against your hapless players, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot to make this a must-buy.
Fans of Paizo’s Pocket Editions will likely enjoy the Battle Cards a great deal, as they’re the perfect way to bring just what you’ll need for a night’s encounter without lugging around another heavy book. Just be sure you know what your players will get up to!
You can definitely see the utility of the one-page design and keyword soup from the Bestiary paying off here – limiting the amount of explanatory text in a stat block allows it to be printed on a card in a font that’s pretty legible even through the most smudged glasses, and keywords allow Paizo (or an enterprising GM) to put all the important explanatory text on the back of a screen. That said, for the beefier, more unique monsters, even the 3” x 6” space isn’t sufficient, and they require a two-card spread to contain all their abilities. Monsters that require two cards are generally larger and more impressive than your run-of-the-mill goblin, so why can’t their art be a splashy two-page spread? It’s something I hope to see implemented in future Battle Cards, and it’s one of the few missteps in an otherwise lovely product.
Last, but certainly not least, is the Pathfinder Chase Cards. This 55-card deck is meant to help GMs get a physical grip on the chase rules which can so easily spring up on an unsuspecting session. The GM lays out a random selection of the obstacle cards based on the difficulty they want to set for the chase encounter, and each side (chase-er and chase-ee) work their way through cards by earning Chase Points through skill checks and abilities like spells and class features.
The Chase Cards do a good job of giving a physical and visual way to interact with the rules in a rulebook, but they (like the chase rules in general) are written largely with a low- to medium-level party in mind. A huge percentage of the obstacles presented here can be easily bypassed if the party can fly, and then you’re right back into combat (or right back into exploration or downtime mode).
I applaud the effort of the designers to work skill and ability checks (normally associated with downtime or exploration mode) into encounter mode, but I can’t help but feel like the game’s design approach to chase sequences is fundamentally missing the mark. These cards and rules (and other chase rules in popular TTRPGs) largely focus on environmental hazards and obstacles as a way to introduce conflict and increase tension, but any good chase I can come up with always involves play and counter-play from the quarry and the hunter, and environmental factors are largely a non-issue because they affect both participants equally. That, however, is outside the scope of the Chase Cards, and will require your GM to come up with clever villains to both chase and be chased by your heroes.
That about does it for this edition of your PAIZO PRODUCT REVIEWS! Stay safe out there y’all.
