Everyman Minis: Catfolk Options
Everyman Minis: Catfolk Options
This Everyman Mini clocks in at 9 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 4 pages of SRD, leaving us with 3 pages of content, so let’s take a look!
On the first page, we get a brief catfolk gazetteer: The race as a whole is dubbed Mauyujraa, which is then further differentiated between subspecies – it’s a small bit, but the presence of a bit of lore here helps contextualize them in a cool way.
The pdf contains a total of 4 new feats: Graceful Fall lets catfolk fall any distance, taking the minimum amount of falling damage, and allowing for Acrobatics to reduce falling distance. 5 ranks and Dex 13+ mean that the feat won’t break low-level module assumptions. Nine Lives upgrades cat’s luck to 9 uses per day, and extends use to any Dex-based skill check or ability check, initiative or Reflex save, rolling twice and taking the better result. Alternatively, you may use the ability after a roll has been made, but that use locks you into the new result. As a whole, this makes for a very potent use of a feat. Depending on the power-level of races and race-related options, it may be a bit overkill for some grittier games. Retractable Claws lets you retract or extend claws as a standard action – this allows you to hide them as with Sleight of Hand, with a +2 bonus to Disguise. Quick Draw and surprising opponent synergy is provide. Nice one. Split Tail nets you the disguise hex, and the feat may be taken multiple times, with additional feats providing access to more witch hexes, as chosen from a limited list.
Rangers with the skirmisher archetype can choose two new skirmisher tricks: Bellowing roar nets a 15-foot conical sonic blast, with scaling damage and daily uses. Cunning hunter lets the ranger declare enemies as though they were favored enemies for a limited number of rounds, but only one such ability may e in effect at a given time. Basically, this delimits favored enemy and makes the much-maligned ability more flexible, but extols its price by the action required to activate. Whether you like that this basically lets you freely favored enemy anything or not is highly contingent on your preferred playstyle.
The pdf also contains new material for Paizo’s shifter class, in the guise of 3 different cat-themed shifter aspects: Cheetah’s minor form benefit eliminates charging penalties and increases them at higher levels, and allows you to apply their benefits to all attacks made at the end of the charge. Major form provides an increased base speed, scent, low-light vision, a primary bite with trip and the sprint ability, with higher levels unlocking more sprint uses. Jaguar lets you make sneak attacks with minor form, increasing the damage dice twice over the levels. The major form benefits include 40 ft. speed, climb and swim speed, low-light vision and scent, a bite with grab, a rogue talent favored terrain equivalent and pounce. 8th level nets hide in plain sight in favored terrain, and increase of the bonus, while 15th level allows for the synergy of movement and sneak attack bonus damage. The lion aspect’s minor form nets your allies access to a teamwork feat for the purpose of determining whether you benefit from it. The number of teamwork feats to which this applies increases to 2 and 3, at 8th and 15th level, respectively. Major form nets 40 ft. base speed, low-light vision, scent, primary bite with grab, pounce and frightful roar. 8th level nets an Acrobatics bonus, and 15th level makes aforementioned roar cause targets to cower.If you’re a fan of the rather cool Unchained Fighter released by Everyman Gaming, you’ll also find an archetype for the class here, the pride commander. Instead of heavy armor and tower shield proficiency, the archetype gets 4 + Int skills per level and adds Knowledge (geography) and Knowledge (nature), as well as Perception, Stealth and Survival to the list of class skills. Weapon training is altered in that the archetype is limited to an array of certain weapon groups. Instead of armor training and advanced armor training, we get favored terrain, chosen alike the ranger class feature, with +2 to initiative, Knowledge (geography), Perception, Stealth and Survival checks. These bonuses increase by +2 at 7th level and every 4 levels thereafter, and the benefits may be shared with allies as though they were a teamwork feat. While sharing the ability, the pride commander cannot rest to regain Stamina, and allies retain the ability for 1 hour. How does he share? Leader of the pride lets the character spend 1 Stamina Point as a move action to grant all allies within 30 feet a teamwork feat for up to his class level rounds. At higher levels, the character can spend more stamina to share more feats – 2 at 11th level, 3 at 19th level. Alternatively, the archetype can share teamwork feats in a quicker manner, making action economy more flexible. Nitpick: There is a “cavalier” reference left in the rules-text – obviously a remnant from the tactician ability, on which this is based. This replaces second wind.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are good on a formal and rules-language level. I noticed only cosmetic glitches and nothing that would badly impact rules-integrity. Layout adheres to Everyman Gaming’s two-column full-color standard, and the artwork is rather nice and in full color. The pdf has no bookmarks, but needs none at this length.
Alexander Augunas’ catfolk options are situated, for the most part, on the slightly higher end of the power-scale, particularly considering the pouncing synergy options. That being said, the Paizo shifter really needs some unique or more viable options, so yeah. The commander archetype is solid, and the supplemental material, as a whole, can be considered to be nice. All in all, a pretty neat pdf for catfolk fans. My final verdict will clock in at 4 stars.
You can get this supplement here on OBS!
Missed the unchained fighter? You can find the fellow here!
Endzeitgeist out.
