Pathfinder Review: Pirates of the Inner Sea

Once again, thank you for the awesome and insightful reviews, Steel. They do not go unappreciated.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Pathfinder Review: Pirates of the Inner Sea

Paizo's 32 page Players Companion line fills a number of roles in terms of Paizo's overall publication schedule. One of those roles typically has a Players Companion providing support for an associated Adventure Path in Paizo's product schedule. January's Dragon Empires Primer (about which, I'll have more to say in another review) provides a regional supplement for players in Tien Xia, the Asian analog in Golarion and the setting for half of the Jade Regent Adventure Path. Similarly, Sargava, The Lost Colony was released at about the same time as the Serpent's Skull Adventure Path and provided a regional overview of Golarion's Dark Continent and adventuring in the Jungle -- and a home base of sorts.

February 2012 was intended to be the release date for Paizo's new sandbox style Adventure Path emphasizing pirates, the Skull and Shackles Adventure Path. However, for a number of reasons, the release date on that product has slipped. As Paizo Publisher Erik Mona explains, "A combination of the American holiday season, unscheduled hardcover reprints due to strong sales (and the errata associated with those reprints), Chinese New Year, and the delayed effect of the staff's attention on the Dragon Empires Gazetteer and the Beginner Box all conspired to set our publication dates back a bit. The Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition, which contains significant updates and is managed by the same resources that handle the monthly AP volumes, also contributed."

As a consequence, while nothing is absolutely set in stone at this juncture (it may be that product will be delivered to Paizo from overseas in late March), it appears likely that most of the products intended for release in March, 2012 will be pushed into April. It will take a few months for Paizo to "catch up" with some double releases in the months that follow until the release schedule normalizes.

Mona confirmed to me that products intended to be released this year have not been pushed to the 2012-2013 publication year. "We have not shifted anything forward on the schedule. We don't like the idea of doubling up ever, but sometimes it needs to happen to get things back on schedule. The delay has caused us to put significant thought into how the Adventure Path product line is managed, how much resources we dedicate to it, and how we put the books themselves together from a content perspective. We've made some changes in-house to ensure that we get back on schedule and stay there as rapidly as possible," Mona explains.

However, the entire publishing schedule was not thrown off. While Skull and Shackles will deliver its first two volumes in that new AP series in April, the Players Companion intended to support that Adventure Path, Pirates of the Inner Sea has been appearing in subscribers mailboxes -- and on the shelves of FLGS -- this week.

Which brings us to the topic of this week's review.

There's ... a lot of Pirates on Those Seas

The demands placed upon a Players Companion in terms of the nature of the cross-support it provides will vary in accordance with the requirements of the associated Adventure Path. The Dragon Empires Primer focused upon a broad regional overview, with relatively little attention paid to personalities or "crunchy" game elements. To be fair, I think this was largely because crunchy bits for Jade Regent that might have been expected in a Players Companion were instead the focus of a large swath of an entire hardcover book -- Ultimate Combat.

With Pirates of the Inner Sea, author Amber Scott presents a broad overview on the subject of piracy and pirates in the Inner Sea, without any real bias in favour of piracy in the Shackles. Presumably, more campaign specific material for the Shackles will be provided in the Skull and Shackles Player Companion, a free download to be released in April.

Accordingly, for those players and GMs expecting the book to be of great help with Skull and Shackles will find that Pirates of the Inner Sea suffers from a lack of specificity tying it to the Shackles campaign area.

Part 1, Dangerous Waters, consumes fully half the pages of the 32 page book and provides an overview of various pirate organization throughout Golarion. This gazetteer style overview of the pirate organizations devotes two pages to each of the major groups, detailing the nature of their organization, leadership, and a paragraph on two or three key ship Captains. Generally, the sections also deal with those particular pirates' enemies, hunting grounds, targets as well as the group's agenda, if any.

As it happens, many of these pirate organizations do appear in other Pathfinder Adventure Paths, modules, or Pathfinder Society scenarios, albeit with diminished roles in most. For example, Scott provides an overview of the pirates of Varisia's Riddleport, a city of cutthroats and pirates which is the setting for the first volume of the Second Darkness AP. Most of the information she provides can be found within the first volume of Second Darkness or that APs Player Companion. Similarly, the pirates of the River Kingdoms, which may factor into the fourth and subsequent vols. of the Kingmaker Adventure Path receives 2 pages as well and this information is largely new. (More information on the river pirates may be gleaned from the Perils of the Pirate Pact, a Pathfinder Society scenario from Season 0).

Other organizations to receive major coverage include the Andoren Privateers, the Okeno slavers and the pirates who inhabit Mediogalti Island alongside the Red Mantis Assassins.

Pirates of the Inner Sea also provides cameos for the pirates of Bloodcove (detailed in Greg Vaughan's River into Darkness OGL GameMastery Module and Season 2's PFS scenario The Bloodcove Disguise) , the Ulfen Raiders of the Linnorm Kings (see Land of the Linnorm Kings et al), and the monstrous scallywags of the Sodden Lands near the Shackles.

While the information that is provided is somewhat useful, it's difficult to determine just who this information is aimed at. If it's to be directed at GMs, the information provided is bereft of real detail and provides only two or three NPC character hooks for the major pirate organizations (and none for the cameos). If the information is to be read by players, it's so brief concerning the campaign that he or she may be involved in that it's almost without any real use.

I'm not blaming the author for these decisions as I'm quite certain this overview was the assignment given the author by Paizo's creative staff. Still, the end result is so brief and so non-campaign specific that the book does not serve either a player or a GM well. Essentially, by trying to please everybody, I fear that this half of the book ends up pleasing nobody. Some of this is interesting stuff to read, sure, but the information just isn't very useful to either play in or run a campaign. Perhaps those GMs who intend to run their own homebrew campaign featuring the freedom loving Andoren Privateers vs. the Slavers of the Okeno will derive some use from those four pages devoted to those two specific organizations, but I doubt anybody else will.

Part II of the book, Pirate Gear presents some useful equipment that will be of interest to those participating in any pirate campaign. Of particular note, this section provides rules for the cutlass (short strokes: treat as rapier, slashing damage) and some esoteric equipment like a sextant, astrolabe, and peg legs and hook hands and so forth. It's very piratey, I'll give it that and moderately useful, too. While more brief than I would have preferred, I can see these pages being used by players and GMs alike.

A brief section on ships is also provided here, but without any substance, stats or cost. It has the feel that this ship material was more complete but was left out on purpose. I expect that some of this material will be provided in the Players Companion to Skull and Shackles and more fully detailed in vol 2 of the Skull and Shackles AP.

AAARR, Here be Disappointment: Archetypes and Pirate Prestige Class

Part III, Pirate Archetypes, is the section of the book that I was most looking forward to and that I had hoped would prove the most immediately useful to prospective players in the Skull and Shackles Adventure Path. There are already some decent archetypes for piratey characters in Paizo's existing hardcover line. The rogue archetypes in Ultimate Combat for the Swashbuckler and, most especially, the Pirate are pretty strong archetypes. I had hoped that Pirates of the Inner Sea would make an interesting archetype for the fighter and gunslinger class and provide something to compete with Ultimate Combat's Pirate archetype.

Alas, for the most part, it was not to be. Pirates of the Inner Sea provides 4 class archetypes and one Pirate prestige class. Without putting too fine a point on it, I don't think I would ever want to play any of them other than the Corsair and I highly doubt that you would, either.

The Buccaneer

The Buccaneer, a bard archetype, seems focused on keeping the bard true to the roots of its class' function. Standard bards in Pathfinder RPG provide great support to the rest of the party (hello Inspire Courage and Good Hope) but otherwise the class seems designed with a view to it not being able to kill an enemy in combat. The Buccaneer doubles down on that character concept by ensuring that if the Buccaneer DOES manage to hit anybody in combat, the player can choose to make the damage non-lethal or otherwise sing the enemy into surrender. I must conclude that this archetype was created for the "goody-goody" pirate player.

The Corsair

The Corsair, an archetype for the fighter class is a little more direct and to the point. It grants a free bonus feat of cleave and later great cleave (even if the fighter does not have power attack) and removes the penalty for attacking with each variant of cleave -- which I have to admit is pretty handy. The Corsair otherwise benefits from being able to maneuver in armor for acrobatics and even while swimming. I can already see the grimace on the GMs face when the Corsair player announces she will be doing the 100m freestyle in her plate armor. Still, I have to admit, it's mechanically handy -- even if the suspension of disbelief is lacking. The Corsair is a keeper.

The Freebooter and the Smuggler

The Freebooter, a ranger archetype, provides a hunter's mark, an ad hoc team-based flanking bonus and a higher speed while swimming without providing an actual swim movement speed. I don't think there will be many ranger players clamouring to play a Freebooter anytime soon. Similarly, the Smuggler archetype for the rogue can hide some gear and treasure both in port and from fellow players (doubtless, that should prove helpful in reinforcing party unity in an evil campaign) but has nothing flavourful and cool to compete with the Pirate or Swashbuckler archetypes already present in Ultimate Combat. So why would you play a Smuggler when you could play a Pirate archetype instead? I don't have the answer to that -- and Pirates of the Inner Sea doesn't provide one, either.

Uhm...Where's The Gunslinger Archetype?

Perhaps my greatest disappointment was in the archetype that wasn't there at all. There was no attempt whatsoever to provide a Pirate archetype for the new Gunslinger class in Pirates of the Inner Sea. While gunpowder in a FRPG is an inherently contentious issue at many tables, I would argue that there is no setting more appropriate for the presence of gunpowder within it than in a pirate campaign set in the Age of Sail. From discussions with Erik Mona on the last episode of the podcast, I conclude that the creative staff at Paizo made a deliberate choice to de-emphasize guns in Skull and Shackles in order to remain "true" to Golarion and erred on the side of the "anti-gunpowder" faction among gamers.

I would observe that while that may be a choice which is more "true" to Golarion, it one that rings falsely in the context of the pirate genre as a whole. The least Paizo could have done was to provide a pistol and rapier gunslinger archetype and then leave it up to GMs as to how he or she would deal with that character type in their own campaigns. Instead, Paizo appears to have made that decision for the GM all on their own. While it may be that this missing archetype will turn up in the Player's Companion to Skull and Shackles, for now, I thought that this was a glaringly obvious missed opportunity within Pirates of the Inner Sea.

The Pirate Prestige Class

Lastly, the Pirate Prestige class presented in Pirates of the Inner Sea simply failed to engage me or excite me in any manner. Originally presented as a Prestige Class in the OGL 3.5 Campaign Guide as "the Shackle Pirate", the Pirate Prestige class is now presented as a rogue style PrC variant for Pathfinder RPG. The Pirate Prestige Class provides a fair bit in terms of piratey flavour -- I'll give it that. But in terms of actual useful talents that a player will be inclined to give up a class level just to enter the Pirate Prestige class? There isn't much to justify that sacrifice. I suppose some ship captains may choose to dip into the class for one level to gain a moderate advantage while sailing in a storm or to choose to increase the speed of her vessel. But other than that, there is no reason to enter this prestige class at all.

Part IV of Pirates of the Inner Sea provides a treatment of the fickle goddess of pirates, Besmira. Besmira was introduced as a minor god in Golarion early on in the setting and Besmira's "Fish Bowl" in the Pirate City of Riddleport was one of my favourite aspects of that town. The author provides some good background and description of the goddess of pirates, though I would have preferred a little more crunch to go along with it. Still, it's a useful piece.

Turn the Pirate Magic Up Please, WAY Up!

Part V of Pirates of the Inner Sea, Magic, is the strongest part of the book. Amber Scott provides us with a number of new pirate themed spells. All of them fit well, all of them are highly useful and all of them make sense and seem appropriate in power level. I loved every one of these spells. After the relative disappointment that I found the rest of the book to be, frankly, I would have vastly preferred that the author had just carried on creating and presenting kick-ass pirate magic. These are some of the best campaign appropriate spells that Paizo has ever presented in a Players Companion and I wanted more of them. If doesn't matter what other pages you would care to remove from the book in exchange for adding more of this great pirate magic stuff -- it would have been a better book to have included more of it and less of anything else you care to exchange.

The book concludes with Part VI, a discussion of the Privateer and Pirate codes. Especially when applied to the problems which player characters may face in a neutral or perhaps evil pirate themed campaign, I expect the "rules" against fighting a comrade in arms on board a ship may prove useful...until the bickering players reach shore, that is.

The Verdict

By now, you already know that I was not terribly impressed by Pirates of the Inner Sea. I feel badly for the author as I know this is her first book for Paizo with a sole writing credit, although Amber Scott has co-written and contributed extensively on other Paizo products as well as for Wizards of the Coast. I can't help but feel that the decision to break up the focus of the first half of the book away from a campaign specific book and simply towards pirate campaigns, generally, served the author poorly. Had she been given a chance to focus instead on the Shackles -- or even on Magic at Sea, it seems clear that she could have acquitted herself very well.

However, in terms of the overall content breakdown, that's where the book goes astray. By trying to please everybody, I fear this book pleases nobody. Pirates of the Inner Sea contains some useful information on equipment and spells, the goddess Besmara and the Corsair archetype. As mentioned, the spells really are top notch -- but there are only two all-too-brief pages of spells in the 32 page book. It may also be that a GM who really wants to homebrew an anti-slavery nautical themed campaign can get some further use out of Pirates of the Inner Sea. I don't see how Skull and Shackles players will get much out of this -- and certainly not enough for multiple people at the table to own a copy of it.

In the end, this is a book that a GM for Skull and Shackles should probably pick up; however, beyond that focused acquisition and use, I cannot in good conscience recommend it to other GMs and players.

Pirates of the Inner Sea
Author: Amber E. Scott
Price: $10.99 (Print) $7.99 (PDF)

 

[Ratinyourwalls]

Frustrating that once again the Magic User gets the most out of a splatbook that has nothing to do with Magic Users.

 

[Dilandau Kale]

To be fair It has been stated from the very beginning that Gunslingers do not have a big presance at all outside of the Mana wastes so I can see why they wouldent get an archetype in this book.

 

[DragonBelow]

It's kind of funny, I am very picky about the Player Companion line, and this product is one of the few I have picked up.

I really liked having flavor text for Pirates from different regions of the Inner Sea, as well all the specific traits, it will help make your pirates different from one another. The Freebooter seems awesome, if you going to be in ship to ship combat often he's going to make a big difference.

The pirate code and slang pieces are nicely done, and the information about the ship flags.

I can see how it diminishes the value of the product if it collects information from other sources, which seems to be one of your main complaints, but if one doesn't own those books, it's a great deal. I know there is overlap between players and GMs, but I don't think I would buy an AP episode just because it contains 1 or 2 pages about pirates either, that seems like a worst deal if you don't intend to buy the whole AP.

 

[Feeroper]

Has anyone in Canada seen this one on the shelf yet? Toronto specifically.

Steel_Wind, I know you're also in Toronto. You mentioned that this has been hitting shelves in your review, did you mean US stores or have you seen it yourself? Ive checked with Hairy T and 401 and they have no idea about it, same with Dueling Grounds.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Has anyone in Canada seen this one on the shelf yet? Toronto specifically.

Steel_Wind, I know you're also in Toronto. You mentioned that this has been hitting shelves in your review, did you mean US stores or have you seen it yourself? Ive checked with Hairy T and 401 and they have no idea about it, same with Dueling Grounds.

Hairy T may have sold out of theirs. Ask 401 to get it in and it will be there in a few days.