Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Advanced Race Guide

If you want the long and short of it: I have always hated Dwarves in RPGs. This book makes me want to play a Dwarf, for the first time in 20 years of playing D&D.This book is a wealth of information. From the player perspective, it allows heaps of new options. It doesn't just flesh out the PHB races, though it does that a great deal. It also fleshes out what it calls "Featured Races," which before were just Bestiary entries with a little stat box in them. And by "fleshing out," I mean that it not only gives a little blurb overall, but describes their appearance, their society, their relationships with other races, their motivations, and more. I love fluff like this- it makes playing these races more appealing. Dwarves are no longer a bunch of short, angry drunkards with an inexplicable Scottish accent, they're now more well-rounded and interesting.On top of that, it introduces players to "Uncommon Races," which are races from a variety of sources, including adventure paths and the Dragon Empires campaign setting.Every race in the book gets more Racial Trait and Favored Class options. In the case of Core Races, it includes but adds to those given in the Advanced Player's Guide- each Core Race now has a Favored Class option for every class (to date). In addition, they introduce new feats, spells, and magic items restricted to or thematically relevant to each race in the book.This is great, as it encourages both players that reinforce racial stereotypes AND those players who would defy the stereotypes and experiment with new roles. A half-orc can get something interesting and rewarding, whether it's a Barbarian or a Wizard or a Paladin. Of course, if he goes Paladin, he's got a whole new class archetype, the Redeemer, that gives him the ability to deal nonlethal damage with his smite and force enemies to surrender peacefully.See, on top of all that, the book includes new racial Class Archetypes (or, in some cases, Cavalier orders or Sorcerer bloodlines) for every race. There are a total of 63 race-based Class Archetypes in this book. Each class gets at least two treatments (the least being the Barbarian and the Cavalier), and several get five or more (Alchemist, Druid, Monk, Oracle, and Rogue). I am incredibly excited by these.Most of these have incredible flavor, like the Kinslayer Inquisitor for the Dhampir, who use their own vampiric nature to hunt the undead, or the Ifrit Wishcrafter, a sorcerer whose genie ancestry allows them to grant wishes... and pervert these wishes for their own use. If you want to know about crunch, I would simply encourage you to look at the Orc Witch archetype called Scarred Witch Doctor, a full-casting class with CON as its casting attribute.In addition, the back of the book has a Race Builder, which allows a GM (or a player, if the GM is a crazy person) to create new player races. It uses a point-based system in order to provide some semblance of balance, and even breaks down the established races to show their point values. Want a race of water-breathing bear-spiders from the moon? You could probably build it with these rules.My complaints are few and thoroughly outweighed by my compliments. The Race Builder is organized in such a way that made it difficult to use, though this may have been intentional, as race building is not a task to be taken lightly. Also, I would have liked to see more attention paid to the Uncommon Races. Each of the core races had ten pages devoted to them, and the featured races got six pages apiece, but the uncommon races only got two pages per race. I can understand their motivation behind this, as these are intended to be rare creatures and having more information might encourage people to make them more common and less mysterious. I'm an information junkie, though, and some races, like the Suli and the Samsaran, really interested me, and I wish I could learn more about them.The art is about Bestiary-quality. It's very good, but it's somewhat sparse and often lacks a sense of scale. I don't have a problem with this, but I know there are people that would.I love the book. It was a great addition to my collection, and I very much look forward to taking advantage of it.

I'd read a lot of bad reviews of this before I saw it. I remember the bad old days of D&D 3/3.5 when so many of the supplements were kind of stupid, and the reviews had me worried that those days were returning. I've only run two game sessions since acquiring it, so I don't have a lot of time invested in it yet.But now that I have my own copy, it's the people who wrote the bad reviews that I'm worried about, because this book is awesome!There are a lot of races here. Too many to just open them all up. But I found a good handful that I could use starting immediately and I just dropped them into an existing word (albeit in the desert to the East that was about to come into play).I was disappointed that drow nobles were made from regular drow that have to spend a lot of feats. The bestiary says they are simply born that way, and my sorcerer's cohort is from the bestiary, so no wasted feats.There is a lot of variety here, and a lot of fun. I made a small army of ratmen thieves led by a ratman fighter, and it worked out pretty well.In summary, I love this book, it was a good purchase.

The first copy I received unfortunately had been assembled wrong, so I had doubles of some pages and was missing others. Thankfully, I returned it and the second copy I was sent was put together correctly.Despite the useful information inside the Advanced Race Guide, it cost the same as the Core Rulebook but has almost less than half as many pages.Overall, I enjoy the art, was excited to read about races I didn't know about before, and I'll definitely be using the book to build my next character.

The Race Guide adds race-specific spells, feats, and magic items and drastically increases the number of racial traits and favored-class options (introduced in the Advanced Players Guide but not updated in any of the later expansions) for the core races, brings the Bestiary playable races (Aasimar, Tiefling, etc.) up to speed, and introduces a bunch of new playable races, all with about equal options of about equal power. Want to play the callow Tiefling youth who's still finding her way in the world? Much easier now. Want to be a Halfling druid? You've got a favored class option now (and yes, that is a fun build). If you're a fan of the classes introduced in the Ultimate Magic or Ultimate Combat, or like the look of some of the Bestiary races, this is a worthwhile supplement to have.

If you've already bought into Paizo's Pathfinder system, then you already know what to expect from their books: nice artwork, nice designwork, everything we old D&Ders never had in the days of D&D and AD&D. The Advanced Race book reintroduces the core races we're all familiar with, and then gives the options to make them over into something new. The second section brings Aasimars, Orcs, Tieflings and other races, along with options and new bits of equipment, out as options for Player Characters. The last section is something we've all wanted: the rules for creating our own races, using the races presented earlier as examples of how they did it. They also show examples of new PC races, such as a gargoyle.You're looking for new roleplaying challenges this is a good buy, and it is invaluable if you're GM looking to design his own monsters or fashion the inhabitants of a world of your own design in your image.

Great book to have.

This is a splat book for Pathfinder, and as splat books go it is very good, gives us loads of options for all the basic races, more information about some less known races and a good leg up on some downright weird races and that's not even touching on the ability to create our own races.Haven't had a chance to put it to use yet but hope to soon!

Surprisingly cool book, expands on all the playable races in cool and cusomisable ways. A very useful book for any GM or player for giving depth and variety to a character or npc.

Excellent delivered on time

D&d book does exactly what it says on the tin

A well presented addition to the Pathfinder game. It is set-out well and is consistent with the core rulebook.