Pathfinder Preview: Curse of the Crimsom Throne Player’s Guide

I got a nice, very red, surprise in the mail yesterday.

It was Paizo’s Pathfinder #7, the 1st adventure of the series’ second Adventure Path, along with a copy of the player’s guide.

Since I got the guide this time, I thought I’d preview it first and then tackle the adventure tomorrow.

The Curse of the Crimson Throne Adventure Path is shaping up to be mainly focuses on city-based adventured centered on the city of Korsova

Don’t you think that it sounds more like a Czech Beer than a fantasy city? 🙂

The Player’s guide is a modest 16 page softcover stapled full color booklet.

It shows the usual high quality product values found in the previous Pathfinder products.

The interior of the front cover shows a high level map of Korsova while the back one shows a map of Varisia, the country where this Adventure Path (and the last one) occurs.

The booklet starts with the usual ‘how to use this guide’ and comes right out by saying that it doesn’t try to describe a large city in 16 pages (it actually only spends about 5 on the city itself). It points players and DMs to the separate 64 page Guide to Korsova. (A 12,99 PDF or 17,99 Hardcopy accessory).

<Rant>

I understand perfectly that a city can’t be covered in details in either the player guide (I actualy read all 750 pages of Ptolus… almost twice and it isn’t as complete as some would have liked it to be).

Still, I am somewhat irritated by the fact that this adventure path is not more self-contained. For instance a series of 10 page city Gazeteer could have been posted in each issue of Pathfinder leading to about 70 pages worth of material over the 7 issues.

Of course, nowhere is it said that it is essential to play the Adventure Path, but hints of it’s potential usefulness are seen in the early pages of both documents.

Anyway, I can’t fault Paizo for wanting to sell stuff… it’s just not my favorite way of going at it…
(Item Cards, Battle Maps, DM screen….I’m all for it… not gazeteer-style supplements)

However, to be perfectly honest, I always tend to ignore these world-setting accessories.. A Forgotten Realms fan I am not!

</rant>

The guide touches Korsova’s main neighborhoods and key NPCs.

It also features a few new feat that are nifty. For example, one gives a 4th level ranger a ridable hippogriph as an animal companion. Another grants instant reloading of any type of Crossbows (Woot Machine Gun Heavy Crossbow combo!) while another one grants 1 round summonings to conjurers. All interesting stuff really.

Then the guide offers a 4 pages on races and classes (1 paragraph each) and refers to the Rise of the Runelords (i.e. the 1st Adventure path) players guide for more details (available in PDF for 2$… also somewhat irritating for anyone wanting to start a campaign with the second adventure path).

The guide showcases a few Varisian and Korsova-specific pices of equipments like Bladed Scarves, Doctor Masks and Sawtooth sabers. Some of these items are reprints of the 1st guide (which is fine by me… considering my previous rant… )

One of the most interesting part of the guide comes in the last section. Here players are invited to choose a Background trait to link the PC to the city of Korsova. All these traits have in common that the PCs have been wronged in some manner by a named Korosovan crime lord (offering various avenues to explain why the players would band together).

Traits cover a wide range of backgrounds like drug addiction (as an addicted friend or a personnal addiction), having been framed, having a lost love, a missing child or unhappy childhood. Like the drug addiction example each trait offers 2 variations… a creative DM could create many others.

As an added bonus, each trait gives a small bonus to the PC. For example, in the Unhappy Childhood trait (where the player was enslaved by the crime lord and exploited as a thief) , a player can choose ‘tortured’ which explains that the PC was repeatedly mistreated and finally left for dead on a heap of garbage. This made the PC jumpy and honed his/her speed and reflexes (+1 Reflex save).

I really like this last idea, a great mix of minor bonuses with a focused background concept on which to build a character upon.

Traits are chosen by players and I can totally envision having a group disscussion with players over these traits to build ties between character during generation.

So all in all, the guide is a useful, interesting and accessible guide for players (at fully illustrated 16 pages, this is not a daunting reading assignments).

While this annoyed me, the existence of a City Guide that is already available for those who are hungry for more is an interesting addition to the adventure path (I would gladly review it if someone sent me a complimentary copy… I just wouldn’t buy it myself especially since I don’t plan to actually play this adventure path…)

Oh did I mention that both books are very very red?

Up next is the actual Pathfinder issue.