by sdonohue

Legendary Alchemists was released by Legendary Games in 2019. It is intended for use with Pathfinder Roleplaying Game (1st Edition). It was written and illustrated by teams of designers and artists.

Presentation
This book is available in pdf or print editions. The printed version is a 60 page perfect-bound tome. It is softcover with full color covers on sturdy paper. The interior is on matte paper and is also in color. The book primarily uses a two-column format and is easy to read due to ample white space and generous artwork.

Content
This book is aimed at making alchemist a more interesting and cohesive class to play. It starts out with the new Legendary Alchemist class, which is a 20 level class intended to replace the alchemist. This version still has a number of granted powers at each level, but some of them are replaced with items that allow characters to choose. The other big change is the creation of alchemical disciplines which allow characters to focus on mutagens, tinkers, or toxicology and gain benefits when using those disciplines.

After describing those basic abilities, the book moves on to provide a list of alchemical formulae from various sources. The list is arranged by level, then alphabetical order, and each named formulae indicates which source book it came from. There are about 30 books referenced and you'll need the sourcebook to find more than the name and level of the formulae included. In a similar vein, the next section provides a list of discoveries. In this case, the discoveries are fully explained and are grouped by type (or specialty) and there are about 90 in all. This is followed by a few pages on Automata with basic stats based on level and a list of modification which could be made to the base model.

Moving to more familiar territory, we get 10 new favored class bonuses, each of which is open to characters of any race. Following this is a list of new gear. There are five magic items, three pieces of gear, and ten weapons. There are seventeen new feats, most with an alchemical focus and then nine new spells.

The tome then provides some alternative class features which can be taken to replace existing class features like throw anything or weapon and armor proficiencies. These are followed by a dozen archetypes to help further customize your alchemist character. Finally, we get a sample legendary alchemist character.

Evaluation
The alchemist always feels a little weird to me -- like a collection of abilities that are only slightly related. This book does a good job of creating more cohesion in the alchemist class by offering more options and allowing characters to pick a discipline and focus on it instead of having a smattering of powers from different but related diciplines. The alchemical discipline is probably the biggest change and, honestly, who hasn't thought about having a mechanical servant as a follower?

There are a lot of options here and they give the alchemist a number of different ways to develop and contribute to the welfare of an adventuring group. If you've always liked the idea of the alchemist as a character, but couldn't figure out how to play one, this is a good supplement -- it provides a number of ways to create an alchemist and one of them is bound to appeal.

by bryce0lynch

By Ben Gibson
Coldlight Press
1e
Levels 4-6

Gayle, priestess of the god of earth, has received visions; an annoying enemy of the god stirs up in the mountains. If servants of his temple can kill this enemy for good then the three earth elementals tasked with keeping him buried will serve the party for a month and a day.

This twelve page adventure describes a two level abandoned temple with about thirty rooms. A classic crawl that leans realistic while still not forgetting it’s a D&D adventure. And, not to worry, it’s not a joke adventure

Ye Olde Abandoned Temple Crawle, that’s what we got here. Because of maybe – “Quecho, cheerful llama-herder, pays for drinks for everyone at the caravansary with part of an ancient gold plate, he claims he found it up in the high plateau near a forbidden old valley.” or maybe “The family ancestor skull Qhawa recently woke up and started annoying his descendants, insulting them and telling them to go to the shrine where he once served. His family is desperate to get rid of him and offload him to the adventurers if possible. He knows the way to the shrine but will admit he only worked in the gardens outside of it when arriving there.” Two pretty decent hooks. Nothing more, really, than “you find a treasure map” but in both cases a couple of extra words to bring them to life a little more. Maybe a little Mort in that second example and perhaps implying a tone that is not present in the rest of the adventure, but, still, both of these have enough specificity that a DM can craft something around them. And that’s a good hook.

Once at the site we find some ruins above ground with an obvious hole in to the ground. Down you go! Oh, also, there’s a band of thieves up top who slay your followers, cut your rope, and rob you. Talk about the classics!

Down below is the two level Shrine of the Cabbage God. It’s a decent mix of traditional D&D elements along with a slight bend to a more realistic temple. One room has “Calendar Chamber: This domed chamber is painted in a yellowing white with black specks for the stars. A raised square platform is in the center; hovering 5ft over the platform is a gleaming golden +1 dagger (worth 3,500gp) with a steel core that points to the constellation currently ascendant “ Hey! Neato! Love a good ol star chamber! Also, that dagger is stuck in the middle of Gelatinous Cube. It told you. The DM told you. It was just suspended there. And you walked right up and tried to grab it anyway, didn’t you? And then half a second too late the light blub clicked on. This is a great encounter.

In other places there are nice little nods to some Indiana Jones style of traps and challenges. “This stone table holds a pair of golden masks (worth 550gp each), one with a melted face stuck to it. A dead thief, face missing, lies next to the table.” Well, yeah. Nice pairing there. The merlot goes excellently with that Stilton. I’m down.

The adventure is a mix of elements: other looters also trapped by the thieves up top, some vermin like the cube, the usual Avatar and other temply things like blessings and genuflects. “Avatar of Oleracea crouches in slumber, a vaguely humanoid shape built of bolted cabbage, half-covered by pebbles, it’s ears and eyes covered by the stony hands of a rocky statue (a patient earth elemental who only cares about silencing the petty god). Oleracea hears and sees through his avatar if the hands are removed and can give directions/ blessings (see spells) if he’s impressed by his interlocuters, but the avatar itself is wilted and cannot move “ Sounds like my fifth wife.

It’s a solid little adventure. I do find the writing a bit dry for my tastes. And the paragraph style formatting can get long in places. There is some bolding, underlining, tables, and what not to try to call out important details, but I still think it’s probably over the line of what can be absorbed quickly. Still, a decent little adventure with a wide variety of interactivity to keep things moving, situations to exploit or be exploited by that introduce some dynamism to the play.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/566390/shrine-of-the...

by bryce0lynch

By brine
Self Published
Yarn & Bone/Universal

A mage sits in a cemetery, sipping tea while his diggers excavate Lady Veshra’s grave. He must speak only in rhyme lest his lungs collapse. His murdered wife possesses the living to assist his ritual. The cemetery fights back with sentinel crows and grief wraiths. Veshra’s descendant wants the Soulstone inside the coffin… her last asset. Tonight he joins his true love in life or in death.

These twelve pages describe the idea for an adventure rather than adventure.

I don’t even know what’s real anymore. I don’t know how I got here. Somehow this made it on to my list. I THINK that means someone had to specifically ask me to review it. I know itch is worse than DriveThru and so I don’t go clam digging there. Maybe while I was drugged up?

It’s just twelve pages outlining the concept of an idea. A dumb ass mage who has to sip tea is digging up a grave to get some magic thing. There are undead in the cemetery, and a ghost-thing, and some other chick shows up with mercs who wants the same thing the mage is digging for. That’s the outline. And it takes twelve pages to do that.

Look, I’m not saying all of the ideas here are bad. One of the hooks has you showing up, as relatives, to rob the grave. “You arrived early to claim it before your “dear cousin” and her hired thugs “ That’s good writing and a decent hook. Or the local official sending you to deal with some chick who he thinks is batshit crazy who insists her ancestors grave is being robbed. As “hired hands” goes at least its got some life.

And, thus, some of the framings in this are fine, or more than fine. But it never does anything with them. It’s just a collection of motivations and ideas. Heavy on art and whitespace. I can’t emphasize this enough: this is not an adventure. It is a collection of ideas that one could build an adventure from.

Whoever asked me to review this must have been trolling. I see that the system, Yarn & Bone, is variously describe as world-first, conversation heavy and solo. Who knows. But it also says its compatible with all RPG systems. In the sense that this is just a collection of ideas, yes, it is certainly compatible, just as the OED is as a roleplaying adventure.

Gentle reader, why have you not shit in a box and charged $5 for it?

It’s Name Your Price at itch, with a suggested price of $5.

https://casadeocio.itch.io/the-steep-mage

by bryce0lynch

Phil Martin
Self Published
Knave
Level 2

Come for the frogs. Leave when it all goes to hell. The small hamlet of Roudenbush moulders on the edge of the Great Cheerless Swamp. Built at a crossroads, the town sustains itself on a mix of merchant caravans stopping for provisions, those that seek treasure in the swamp, and the bounty of the swamp itself. Wooden, thatched-roofed residences and stone municipal buildings make up the town. Two weeks ago, a tide of giant frogs breached the town’s outer wall, causing chaos in the streets until they retreated back into the swamp.

This thirteen page adventure uses three pages to describe seven overland locations and a five floor wizard tower. Napkin notes for an adventure, it exemplifies the IF rather than a THEN.

My brief foray in to products recommended that live in Itch has ended as I am, and no one else, is completely shocked. I find it FASCINATING in what both people seem to be willing to pay for nothing and in what people are willing to publish. For Money.So, some giant frogs showed in a a town int he swamps and rampaged through. I guess you’re going to do something about it for some reason. There’s some abandoned wizards tower in the swamp with a magnifying glass turning frogs giant. That location is called Frogtown. There’s also a wandering knight called Sir Robin Hell. Get it?

I’m in a foul fucking mood this morning. This thing isn’t help that any. I’m not going to waste a lot of time on it. Fourteen pages and it manages to put in just a few with encounters in it. This is nothing more than napkin notes. It’s not an adventure. It’s possibilities, rather than specificity.

What do we mean by this? There is some rather common tendency to be seemingly afraid of outcomes. It is as if the designer is terrified of actually stating something concrete may happen. In this sense it is more like a hex crawl but without the scope of a traditional hex crawl. You come across a village of 100 gnomes living in a mesa. “The hive-mind seeks the return of myconids that have gone missing, believed taken by the lizard folk as food / offerings. Will exchange fly agaric mushrooms from their grove for myconids that are found and returned “ I’m paraphrasing the set up but the outcome is from the adventure. This is classic “giant hex crawl.” But it’s not “overland journey to the adventure site.” In the starting village there are a couple of NPC’s. The are not specific to the adventure, just a list of NPC’s for the most part. One of them is a guy you can hire, Buckingham Craddlethatch. The second floor of the five floor “end site” tower in the swamp reads, in its entirety “Ruined arcane library and alchemical lab. Most of the tomes are mildewed and illegible, but an intact Chaos Spellbook can be found among them. If Buckingham Cragglethatch is with the party, he finds a book bound in human skin. Perusing it, he will suddenly announce that he must leave immediately. “

Those two encounters are representative of most of what is going on in this. They are possibilities. They are the “collapsed stairwell to another level of the dungeon that the dm COULD expand upon if they were so inclined.” In a traditional hexcrawl adventure these are the core of the adventure. It’s a wide open area that the party brings themselves to in order to exploit. Contract this to the standard “overland adventure” portion of adventures where to travel to get to an adventuring site. These are instead dangers and Lair, with associated lair treasures. And then contrast these two types of things to the keys found in most adventures. Obstacles and encounters to overcome. Those three encounter types serve much different purposes, influenced by the scope of the adventure and environment.

The muddling of the streams here results in adventure that is nothing but napkin notes for a small adventure.

No more itch for awhile.

It’s Name Your Price at itch, with a suggested price of $5.

https://daseinphil.itch.io/hell-comes-to-frogtown

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by Steve

On June 4th we meet to greet [user=shawnmccarthy][/user]

Happy Birthday Shawn!

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