EZG reviews Amazing Races: Duergar
This pdf is 4 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 2 pages of content for the duergar, so let’s take a look!
The pdf kicks off with 3 new feats for the grey dwarves:
-Grey Craftsman: +2 to a Craft-skill to a craft-skill you have at least one rank. Ranks count as caster level for the purpose of Craft Magic Arms and Armor and only increase the DC by +2 for every spell requirement you don’t have. It also counts as the Master Craftsman feat, Awesome feat!
-Labor and Toil: Create magic items, spending 1 day for every 2K gold instead of the normal 1k per day.
-Slave Taker: +1 damage with spiked chains and whips. When tying up pinned foes, you may use manacles instead of ropes.
We get 2 new traits for duergar:
-Dour Pessimist: +2 to saves versus spell with the [emotion]-descriptor.
–Duergar Slave Master: Choose any language as starting language, even secret languages.
We also get 5 alternate racial traits:
–Armorsmith: -1 armor penalty when wearing self-crafted armor.
–Blacksmith: +2 to Craft & Profession skill checks related to metal.
–Locksmith: Gain disable device and use it to disable magical traps.
–Toiling Spirit: Unseen Servant 1/day
–Vanisher: Vanish 1/day, +1/day at 6th and 12th level.
The Duergar also get the Tormentor Inquisitor-archetype, who exchanges solotactics, monster lore and teamwork feats for access to torments. At 3rd level and every 3 levels thereafter, the inquisitor learns one of 9 torments. They range from gaining weapon focus (spiked chain and whip), demoralizing as a move action etc. to overpowered ones like preventing verbal casting via grapples (no check!!) and cursing others to detect as evil and hamper their spellcasting of [good] spells. or hobble foes. All in all, I like the idea of the archetype, but the archetype feels too limited in the scarce few lines allotted – why not make e.g. cruelties available as torments?
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are very good, but not excellent – I noticed some minor glitches here and there. Layout adheres to Abandoned Art’s 2-column no-frills standard and the pdf features no bookmarks, but needs none at this length.
This is a solid addition to the Amazing Races-line, mostly courtesy to the well-crafted crafting-feats – the traits and racial traits and the archetype didn’t convince me, though – they are ok, I guess, but nothing that would make me yell in excitement. Especially the archetype falls behind what it could easily have been and thus, I’ll settle for a final verdict of 3.5 stars, rounded down to 3 for the purpose of this platform.
Take a look at these craftsmen here on OBS or here on d20pfsrd.com’s shop!
Endzeitgeist out.
Thanks for the kind review, End. A note about the descriptor tag formatting: spell descriptors are actually never bracketed unless appearing in the “school” line of a spell text block. Where presented in all other contexts, spell descriptors are always unbracketed.
Some examples include enhanced and impeded planar traits (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/mastery/planarAdventures.html#_abaddon-%28neutral-evil%29), the nameless dread spellblight (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateMagic/magic/spellblights.html#_nameless-dread), and the Fearless Curiosity human feat. http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/advancedRaceGuide/coreRaces/humans.html#_fearless-curiosity).
Daron Woodson
Abandoned Arts
Sorry for teh glitch, Daron – I should have made clear that this did not facture into my final verdict. You’re correct – brackets are not mandatory, though personally, I like them – they help structure sentences/crunch.
Cheers!