Rogue Genius Games does a LOT of great stuff. Their "Talented" line for various classes was always something I wanted to look into, but since I haven't been playing Pathfinder all that much so I never bought any of them. But of course, I had to buy the Talented Witch.
As always I will be following my rules for these reviews, moreover, many of the people involved with these products are people I have worked with in the past. So I am going to try be extra careful in how I review these.
The Genius Guide to the Talented Witch
PDF ($4.95) and Softcover Print Options, 57 pages. 1 cover, 1 table of contents, 1 credits, 1 OGL, rest content. Color cover and interior art.
There is a lot to like about this really. The cover art is from the late Marcum Curlee and features an interesting trio of witches. There is art from Other Side friends Jacob E. Blackmon, Brian Brinlee, and Gary Dupuis. I really love the art, but that is expected. Hell, even that Morpheus font is like they are flirting with me.
The talented witch is a little different than the base Witch class in the Pathfinder book. It gets various Edges and Talents at alternate levels. These largely replace all the powers of the witch, including the Hexes.
Edges are first and there are 40 of these. Edges are a lot like Feats in how they are presented. They include Combat, Cunning, Elemental, Hag, Patron, Spellcasting, and Spellcasting Conduits. Hag for example can give the Edges of Bite or Claws to do damage.
Talents are more like magical powers, like Hexes, and also have groupings. There are 140 of these in Blessing, Crafting, Curse, Necromancy, Personal, Spellcasting, and Utility. There are also Major and Grand Talents. Talents that are Hexes are marked with an asterisk.
The idea here is customization. Basically, if you can imagine a witch, you could build it from these options. There is a dizzying array of choices here. There is even an appendix on familiars here and another on patrons and a compiled witch spell list from various Pathfinder products.
There is an absolute ton of information here and more than I know what to do with.
The Genius Guide to More Witch TalentsPDF. ($2.95) 25 pages. 1 cover, 1 table of contents, 1 credits page, 1 OGL page.
This adds more Edges and Talents to the witch class.
This gives us 5 new edges and 95 new witch Talents. And I thought I had options before. Talents that are Hexes are marked with an asterisk.
This one leans more into the curses which are nice.
Like the Genius Guide to the Talented Witch, this book provides a lot of options for nearly any sort of witch. Also, like that book the art here is really good.
I am not exactly sure where or when the Talented idea came about but checking the Rogue Genius Games listings there are lot of these. I am not sure how they change the game, but I do love the ideas here as a designer and player of witch classes. As a player, it would also be fantastic especially if you love character customizations. As a Game Master, keeping track of all of this would be a bit of a chore I think.
I'd have to print these both out I think to get a real feel for them.
One thing I didn't like about both books was the huge border around all the text. It makes the book pretty, but it is not as efficient when it comes to displaying the text.
