Pathfinder Player Companion: Champions of Corruption

birthday gift

Over all I found the book to be good, however it is very . . . brief.

Great !!!

Interesting book. Great seller.

Ordered the book on Feb. 7th and have yet to receive any word on the product.

good book

These player companion magazines are always a little light on the ground when it comes to further information, usually preferring that the reader check the Inner Sea World Guide for further information. However, this one is especially so - if you wanted to learn more about the evil gods of Pathfinder then you're out of luck, as they're relegated to a quick table on the inside cover telling you their alignments and domains and precious little else. Well, besides a long paragraph in the middle of the book giving a few lines description of what their followers are like.On top of that, fully half of this book is dedicated to discussing the nature of evil alignments and how to fit evil characters into a party, something which can be found happily for free on any tabletop forum. Each alignment's double page spread does have a pair of new traits suitable for each alignment, which is nice, but hardly makes up 5% of the text of that section. Likewise, a one-paragraph description of each evil nation yields another trait for each, something I always find a little disappointing in volumes like this - inspiration can be nice, but the kind of GM who's running an Evil campaign probably has enough imagination to think up their own, making them feel like filler in a book like this.As for 'new' mechanics, we're offered the "Vile Leadership" feat (which is essentially the Leadership feat but with the negatives for killing your own followers turned into a positive - hardly anything groundbreaking) and a series of "Betrayal" Teamwork feats that focus around betraying your party for fun and profit. Seeing as each one gives a positive for the initiator and a negative for the victim, I'm sure your party will be itching to take one so you can push them into the way of incoming arrows.Its not all bad (good?) though. The new Damnation Feats that get more powerful the more you sell yourself to dark forces are legitimately interesting, and there are some new replacement Deity Domains in here to give more options to evil Clerics. 3 new Archetypes - one for Alchemists, AntiPaladins and Summoners each - add some nice new variety, with the Dread Vanguard variant being especially interesting as it focuses mostly around claiming land for your lord and inflicting terror on the populace. The Evil Item section is a treasure trove, too, because who doesn't love awesome new magic items to tempt the players with? There are also two evil themed new rooms you can add to settlements if you're using the Settlement Builder rules from Ultimate Campaign (though the idea of an public "execution yard" being an evil structure is a little controversial...) There's also two new spells up for grabs!Overall though, this guide hardly seems worth it. With half the book dedicated to the same kind of gamer philosophy about alignments you can find on any gaming forums, and much of the rest just being reskinned versions of existing feats, there's not a lot here that is actually "new". Whats new is interesting, but doesn't really seem worth the price of admission.If you like Traits but hate thinking them up yourself then this book is swarming with them. Otherwise, with mostly reskins and reflavours rather than new content, simply look the Archetypes up on the SRD and get a different Player Companion instead.