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| Advanced Feats: The Witch's Brew - Collected Reviews |
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| Sigfried |
 Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2010 11:51 pm Post subject: Gamethyme of Talking Game: Balanced |
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Reviewer: Gamethyme
Website: Talking Game
Rating: Balanced
Not too long ago, I spent a few paragraphs on Advanced Feats: Secrets of the Alchemist, an Open Design product for Pathfinder which impressed me with its balance and utility. It's seriously very hard to balance Feats without making them too specialized to be useful.
VERY hard.
A few weeks later, they sent me a copy of Advanced Feats: The Witch's Brew, and I ... I never got around to saying anything about it - just like the earlier Secrets of the Alchemist, it's a ... well-balanced book of Feats for Pathfinder. Much like Secrets of the Alchemist, I had to have a friend who is an expert (although he'll never lay claim to the title) on D&D 3.x and Pathfinder. And by "expert," I mean "rules lawyer capable of breaking systems." When he tells me something "seems balanced," it means, "There may be something broken in here, but it'll take some effort to take advantage of." And I trust his gut feelings.
They also recently released Advanced Feats: The Summoner's Circle, as well. Given the success of the first two, I can only assume that it will also be both well-balanced and useful.
I mentioned that it's difficult to keep Feats balanced - and it is. You want Feats to be useful, but not so useful that they're the only clear and obvious choice. Players should have to think when choosing Feats. You also want players to be able to "flavor" their characters with Feats.
It's a tricky balance - one that I would not be able to pull off for more than a Feat or two. There is no way I could put together multiple booklets like these. |
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| Endzeitgeist |
| Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2011 6:46 am Post subject: |
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This pdf is 14 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial/ToC, 1 page SRD, leaving 11 pages of content.
The pdf, as all advanced feat books, opens with a introduction and discussion of the class.
After this short discussion, we get the meat of the book, 30 new feats for Witches.
The feats are:
Ability Damage Resistance: Reduce all ability damage by 2 points
Counterspell Feedback: Damage casters when countering their spells
Craft Magic Tattoo: Tattoo yourself and others with spell effects
Delay Spell: Delay the effect of a spell
Discriminating Spell: Alter a spell to affect or not affect a chosen race or creature type
Dispel Mastery: +3 bonus to dispel checks
Expert Healing: Heal 1d4 damage using a healer’s kit
Extra Familiar: Summon an additional familiar
Familiar Concentration: Familiar can maintain spell concentration
Familiar Development: Familiar gains abilities as if 2 levels higher
Familiar Feat: Familiar learns a feat
Familiar Focus: Familiar’s abilities are based on your character level
Familiar Range Extension: Familiar’s range extends to 100 miles
Familiar Reincarnation: New familiars know the spells of former familiars
Familiar Training: Familiar can utilize your feats
Guarded Casting: Fight defensively while casting spells and activating magic items
Hexing Familiar: Familiar performs hexes
Improved Caster Level: Increase CL by 4, up to character level
Infer Spell: Learn spells from spell trigger or spell completion magic items
Linked Resistance: Gain your familiars spell resistance for 1d4 rounds
Mass Effect Spell: Single target spells affect multiple targets
Opportunity Counterspell: Counterspell without a readied action
Potent Hex: +1 to hex DC
Rememorize: Change a prepared spell in 1 hour
Robust Health: +4 to saves against poison and disease
Seduction: Gain bonus to Bluff, Diplomacy, and Charm spells
Serve Two Masters: Gain a second set of patron spells
Signature Focus: Create an expensive item that replaces costly spell components
Soul Mate: Sense when your soul mate is in danger and gain a bonus to skill checks used on them
Touch Mastery: Use spellcasting ability score on touch attacks
Usurp Spell: Gain benefits of spell countered
Comments on select feats:
Ability Damage Resistance: Ok, why does this not have a prerequisite? 2 points ability damage less? That's a godsend at lower levels! Why doesn't it explain how this resistance comes about? A little fluff-blurb would have gone a long way to make this feat feel less metagamey.
Counterspell Feedback: Cool idea, neat balancing. I would take it.
Delay Spell: Another very good and strategic idea I like. Players will LOVE this.
Discriminating Spell: Another feat I like, as I use the mechanic already in my rather dark and grim home-campaign, where I've substituted alignment-based attacks with character belief-based ones. Neat.
Expert Healing: A godsend for low-magic campaigns that don't feature your med-kit cleric/druid at every corner.
Familiar Development feats: I liked them, as they make the witch feel more unique and her familiar different from e.g. the Wizard's one. It also forces hard choices on the PC: Use the familiar and risk it being hurt? Etc.
Infer Spell: While I like the idea, I somewhat have a mild disdain for the execution - learning spells from any items with one check seems wrong to me, but that is just my personal preference.
Mass-Effect Spell: Gold for buff/debuff casters and a nice alternative to all the mass X spells.
Opportunity Counterspell: Steep requirements, cool payoff. Never build your high-level caster without it.
Rememorize: Nice feat if you don't use the alternative rules of replacing spells in 15 minutes.
Robust Health: Great idea to help against poisons etc without conferring immunity.
Seduction: Just up my alley, this is a roleplaying feat as in opposed to roll-playing. Plus: I like some potentially adult themes in my games. Nice.
Serve Two Masters: This feat screams "character backstory"-development. I like it.
Usurp Spell: Complimentary to "Parry Spell", this feat is a good idea.
The pdf also has three sample builds, the Arch Witch, the White Witch and the Wicked Witch.
Conclusion:
Editing and layout are top-notch, gone is the parchment-like printer-unfriendly layout of "Secrets of the Alchemist". I didn't notice any typos. The cover artwork is the only one in the file and nice, although it didn't impress me either. All in all, I felt that this installment of Advanced Feats is superior to the one on the alchemist, mainly because I didn't find any feats I considered unsalvageable/broken. While "Rememorize" collides with the alternative rules I use and while "Ability Damage Reduction" still feels plain wrong to me, my overall impression is that this book focuses more on the Witch and making the class more unique, make her stand out more etc - i.e., it is more focused. Due to this focus and the overall improvement of both content and layout, I'll settle for a final verdict of 4 stars. While not perfect or as good as "Cavalier's Creed", this is a worthy addition to any Witches arsenal. |
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| Sigfried |
| Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 11:54 am Post subject: Sean Holland of RPGDrivethrough - 4 of 5 stars |
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Reviewer: Sean Holland
Website: Drive Through RPG
Rating: 4 of 5 stars
If you wish to understand the Cavalier class and to expand the options available to these mounted combatants, the Cavalier’s Creed is an excellent sourcebook. The feats contained within are mostly applicable to all classes but especially those characters with a mounted focus.
The Cavalier’s Creed: Advanced Feats is a 16-page PDF (13-pages if you remove the cover, ad and OGL page) for the Pathfinder RPG written by Sigfried Trent and published by Open Design. This is part of Open Design’s Advance Feats line for Pathfinder.
The layout is primary traditional two columns and the table of feats clear to read. The cover is full color while the minimal interior art is mostly black and white carefully chosen public domain art to support the theme.
The Cavaliers Creed begins with an introduction to this product and it intention, which is to provide a detailed look at the Cavalier class and ways to play it as well as providing additional options for the class. It then proceeds to do just that, outlining the strengths and weaknesses of the class and provides basic advice to consider when playing the class. All quite well done.
Next are the thirty new feats, only three of which are tied to Cavalier class abilities, and each has paragraph or so of commentary that talk about the reasoning behind the feat and occasionally potential balance issues with a feat. Personally, I really like this insight into the design process. The feats are solid mechanically and certainly aimed toward what the Cavalier does well including several new teamwork feats and others to be used by mounted fighters.
Concluding the product are three example builds: the Green Knight (defensive), Tawny Knight (expert rider) and the Black Knight (challenge master).
Disclosure: As a featured reviewer for RPGNow/DriveThroughRPG, I received my copy of this product for free from the publisher for the purpose of this review. |
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