Jon Brazer Enterprises

Pathfinder: Strand of Fate Style

I’ve been a little busy lately and have not been able to post another martial arts style that I’ve written. As you may recall, I shared Stone Mountain Style last time. It designed by the dwarven masters of the ki. To emulate a mountain of … well … stone.

Strand of Fate Style was designed long ago and is largely in tales that few believe. Practitioner of the style are said to be able to snap their fingers and break their enemy’s strand in the fabric of fate, but that is just an old tale told around campfires. Few have actually seen such abilities worked, and fewer still talk about it.

Strand of Fate Style (Combat, Style)

You feel a connection to the strands of fate and know how to pull them in your favor.
Prerequisites: Unarmed Strike, 10th-level monk.
Benefit: You gain a +1 bonus to all your saving throws. While using this style, any living creature you successfully attack with your unarmed strike takes a –2 penalty to all saving throws until the start of your next turn.

Strand of Fate Tug (Combat)

Once you have felt a creature’s strand of fate, you can attack that strand from farther away.
Prerequisites: Strand of Fate Style, 14th-level monk.
Benefit: You gain a number of hit points equal to your Wisdom modifier. While using the Strands of Fate Style, you can attack any living creature within 30 feet that you previously attacked within the last minute with the Strands of Fate style as if you were within melee range. If you are using your unarmed strike, these attacks also inflict the –2 penalty to all saving throws per that feat.

Strand of Fate Shatter (Combat)

You can break someone’s strand of fate, killing them instantly.
Prerequisites: Strand of Fate Style, Strand of Fate Tug, 18th-level monk, ki pool.
Benefit: You are immune to death effects. While using Strands of Fate Style, if you successfully attacked a living creature in the previous round, you can spend 3 points from his ki pool as a standard action to shatter the creature’s strand of fate. The creature must succeed on a Fortitude save (DC 10 + 1/2 your monk level + your Wis modifier) or die instantly, its body turning into dust. This effect prevents the use of raise dead and resurrection to restore the creature to life (although true resurrection works as normal).

Run an adventure where you can use such a high level martial arts like Stand of Fate Style. Download Deadly Delves: The Chaosfire Incursion today at DriveThruRPG/RPGNow, the OpenGamingStore, and Paizo.

5e: My Top 5 Cleric Domains

This past weekend at Origins Game Fair, my daughter and I played D&D Adventurers League, including the D&D Open, and in one day our characters jumped from 1st to 4th level. This being her first character, she went with a fighter. Me, I played a cleric.

Gunther Runehammer of clan Runehammer upholds the clan’s proud tradition of serving both his deity and the cause of justice while helping his fellow adventurers. He’s a War domain cleric, which means he had the highest armor class of anyone in the group over the weekend. Add to the fact that he just got a viscous weapon means he’s going to be delivering the hurt to his enemies.

This isn’t the first cleric I made so I would like to share with you my personal favorites for the domains in the core Player’s Handbook.

5) Tempest

First off, let me admit, I never played a Tempest cleric. My wife, however, played one and I get to see it up close. A storm themed cleric is a solid choice, one that Durkon from the Order of the Stick would definitely approve of this cleric domain. I’m putting this one at 5 since I wasn’t the one that actually played it and cannot give it an actual play experience recommendation, but from seeing it in action, it seemed fun.

4) Life

I played this one at the launch of the Basic rules, before my PHB arrived. When it comes to being the party healer, you can’t beat the Life domain. Between never needing to pray for cure wounds, to healing more when you do cast it, to using your channel divinity ability to heal, and the ability to heal yourself, this one is a solid choice for being the party healer. Having said that, that is what you are: the party healer. You won’t be getting any class abilities that diversity the character in any way. As such, I only now use the Life domain cleric for a DM PC when no one in the group has the ability to heal.

3) Nature

When I want to blur the lines between druid and cleric, I take a nature domain cleric. Between domain spells that theme your magic to plants, animals, and the elements, a channel divinity that makes plant and animals your friends, and being able to use a reaction to grant resistance to acid, cold, fire, lightning, and thunder damage. This is a pretty sweet set of abilities that make the Nature domain stand out among its piers.

2) War

When you want to get your hands dirty with your enemy’s blood, the War domain is your domain. Between a serious armor class and martial weapon proficiencies, you can go toe-to-toe with the worst monsters out there. Add to that your channel divinity ability to add +10 to a roll makes sure you hit when the roll is bad and your domain ability to make another attack as a bonus action and you can stand next to the party fighter. Considering I was playing with my daughter among a group I just met, that was the reason I made that character, and it was fun to boot. A solid recommendation from me.

1) Light

A cleric that throws fireball, is there anything more you need to say about that? While cleric spells are typically defensive in nature, the Light domain adds to it a number of common wizard offensive spells to shake up the feel of the class.

This, like all the other domains (except Life, obviously) shake up the feel of the class. They add a new flavor to what can quickly be a one note class. This, more than anything else, should be guiding light to any 5e designer looking to write new class abilities, and the cleric class exemplifies this better than any other.

Pair these cleric domains with an awesome race. Download the Book of Heroic Races Player Races 2 for your Fifth Edition game at DriveThruRPG/RPGNow, the OpenGamingStore and Paizo.com.

13th Age: A New Age of Races Has Begun

A New Age for Heroic Races

Go beyond the standard fantasy races and play a new breed of hero! These intrepid adventurers forge their places in legend with circuit, claw, feather, and gill. Now you can play one of these heroic races in your home game and battle monsters like never before.

Book of Heroic Races: Age of Races 2 introduces a number of playable races for your 13th Age Compatible game. This 17-page supplement gives you everything you need to include the following races at your table:

Androids, born of logic and circuitry originating from beyond the stars
Geppettoans, wooden constructs who rebelled against their former masters
Gillfolk, human-like dwellers of the deep sea fighting the horrors below
Moonblooded, half-lycanthropes who become bestial in battle
Tengus, crow-like creatures consumed with greed and avarice

Be Heroic With These New Races Today!

Download the Book of Heroic Races: Age of Races 2 for your 13th Age Compatible game at DriveThruRPG/RPGNow and the OpenGamingStore.

13th Age: Shift Your Shape With the Moonblooded

Next week sees the release of the Book of Heroic Races: Age of Races 2, and we couldn’t be more excited. We are taking many of the races we developed in-depth for Pathfinder and bringing them over for your 13th Age Compatible game. We’ve got 5 races in total in this book: androids, geppettoans, gillfolk, moonblooded, and tengus. Today we are going to look at the moonblooded.

I will be honest, I was hesitant about bringing a shapechanger playable race into 13th Age with Richard Moore proposed it. As far as I know, there hasn’t been one yet, and I was not sure how it would be received. I know Richard knows his stuff so I gave him the green light. After seeing the race, I am glad I did. I really like this race and think it is a solid addition to any 13th Age game. See for yourself.

Moonblooded Racial Traits

Moonblooded have the following racial traits.
+2 Wis; also see Racial Power.

Change Shape (Racial Power)

You may shapeshift into a bestial form as a standard action once per battle. When you do so, you can increase either your Str, Dex, or Con by +2, and your unarmed melee attacks deal damage as though you were wielding a two-handed light or simple weapon for your class (unless you are a monk and your damage dice and attack bonus for such an attack would be higher than this amount, in which case you use the better of the two).
Champion Feat: You now change shape as a move action, and your unarmed melee attacks benefit from the effects of two-weapon fighting (see the “Attacks” section of Chapter Five: Combat Rules in the 13th Age Core Rulebook).

Download the Book of Heroic Races: Age of Races 2 for your 13th Age Compatible game at DriveThruRPG/RPGNow and the OpenGamingStore.

Pathfinder/5e: Lands of Eternal Chaos and Destruction

I know that last time I posted a blog post on my own vision of the planes for Pathfinder and 5e, I promised the chaotic neutral plane. Well, after thinking on my vision more, I realized that it was not Chaotic Neutral at all but Chaotic Evil. Since I am still trying to put my ideas for CN into focus, I will go ahead and share with you my idea for the Chaotic Evil plane, or as I like to think of it, the Lands of Eternal Chaos and Destruction.

Before I begin, I want to reiterate why I am doing this (incase you missed it on my various social media posts). Angels and devils and demons are a solid class imagery of good and evil … that I hate using. First off, they are ripped from a Judo-christian tradition. While there is nothing wrong with taking from real world mythology and putting it into your game, I do not feel it right to set one religion apart and say that religion feels are symbols of pure good and evil should be a fantasy world’s symbols for pure good and evil. So I want to change them into something that would be both unique and understandable to those in our own reality today, those 1,000 years ago, all the while still making sense inside of a fantasy setting. All that said, here we go.

There is a quote I absolutely love from the TV Show MASH.

War is war. Hell is hell. Of the two, war is worse. … In hell there are no innocent bystanders. Everyone there deserves to be there.

And this, more than anything else is my guiding light for my vision of the plane of chaotic evil. This plane should be a war-torn hellscape. Imagine the images out of Syria. That is this land of unreason. Constant fighting. Constant warfare. The element of fire’s forces are burning down the fey forests who are in turn fighting the air force’s sail barges, who are … you get the idea. Through it all are the mercenaries. These creatures of pure evil with no regard of loyalty or order care not for what they destroy as long as they get to destroy something. They join one side and help them for however long they are paid to do so and once they are done will gladly fight against their former employers if paid by someone else.

What is worse, this is where the worst weapons are first created. A people so obsessed with warfare are always looking for an edge over those they fight against. Military people that become consumed with the thought of destroying their enemies will be more than happily make whatever bargain the mercenaries are asking for, no matter how perverted, cruel, or conniving if it means they get a hold of the means for triumph.

Be sure to revisit JonBrazer.com frequently to see the next in our series of reimagining the outer planes. Next time we will do one of the good ones.

5e: 3 Reasons Why 5e Warlocks Are Awesome

Everyone has their favorite Fifth Edition class. The warlock, however, is in a class by itself. As someone who enjoys playing this newer class (newer being it was created during 3rd edition and made a core class in 4th, as compared to all the other core book classes first appearing in 1e or 2e), there is quite a bit to live with this class. Here are three reason why the warlock is just a downright awesome class.

1) Its a class with a backstory.

While it is true that every character should have a backstory, most other classes can have a rather boring sentence. Wizard: I went to school. Fighter: I picked a sword and started using it. Cleric: I worship a god and was granted powers. Druid: I worship nature and was granted powers. Sorcerer: I started doing magic one day. A warlock by comparison can have a single sentence backstory, it is by no means boring: I struck a bargain with a dark power and was given power. Even then, that single sentence draws a whole host of questions: which dark power, how did you get its attention, what did you offer it for your power, and mostly, are you really working against the good of all humanoid kind in exchange for your power? Already, that is one hell of a character that is exciting to play.

2) It is one heck of a versatile class.

Warlocks may not have the full spell list as the sorcerer or wizard, they can use quite a few spells. While they are not front line fighters, they have as many hit points and the same armor proficiency as a rogue. They don’t even need to carry a weapon since the pact of the blade option lets them create a weapon out of pure magical energy. On top of that, they get eldritch invocations that let them gets all kinds of tricks like being able to read all writing, let them use spells not on their list, gain proficiency with more skills. This class can dabble in many different kinds of classes and can be customized for many play styles.

3) Always max slot level spellcasting

One serious advantage that a warlock has over wizards and sorcerers is that they always class all their spells at the highest slot level. Why is that big? Take hold person for example. This second level spell paralyzes one person. But if it is cast using a 3rd level spell slot, you can paralyze an additional person. You never need to ask yourself which spell level you want to use. It is always your highest spell level. So at 9th level, a warlock casting hold person can always hold four people while the wizard needs to decide which spell levels will be needed later and might not hold those last few orcs, leaving them for the fighter to take on and possibly be overwhelmed.

But these are just my opinion. Why do you love warlocks? Tell us in the comments below.

Synapse is our signature android warlock. He made a deal with the great machine for power. Play his kind today by downloading the Book of Heroic Races Player Races 2 for your Fifth Edition game at DriveThruRPG/RPGNow, the OpenGamingStore and Paizo.com.

Pathfinder: Stone Mountain Style

Book of Heroic Races: Advanced Compendium

Last year, we created a number of hexes for witches based on their patron, and we released them on a weekly basis until we finished them all. Now we are doing the same thing with martial arts. These are created with monks in mind, but non-monks can take these, as long as they meet the qualifications.

Stone Mountain Style is designed for dwarven monks. Their style is one created by those that, like the mountain, do not move in the face of danger. Being hammer wielders, dwarven martial arts utilizes these weapons just as several martial arts styles on our world used farming implements as weapons. All that is the basis of Stone Mountain Style. I hope you find this style as fitting for dwarven monks as we do.

Stone Mountain Style (Combat, Style)

Like a stone mountain, you excel at absorbing damage.
Prerequisites: Weapon Focus (any hammer), 1st-level monk or base attack bonus +2.
Benefit: You gain a +1 bonus to all damage rolls made with a hammer. While using this style, you gain DR/bludgeoning equal to half your total character level (minimum 1). However, you can only move up to a maximum of 5 feet each round and your feet must be in contact with the ground to gain the benefits of this feat (you can still wear footgear). This style instantly ends if you move more than 5 feet in a single round for any reason.

Stone Mountain Stun (Combat)

Your hammer stuns like a rock falling from a mountain.
Prerequisites: Stone Mountain Style, Stunning Fist, Weapon Focus (any hammer), 5th-level monk or base attack bonus +10.
Benefit: You gain one additional use of your Stunning Fist per day. When using Stone Mountain Style, you can deliver your Stunning Fist attacks through any hammer you have selected for the Weapon Focus feat.

Stone Mountain Fortress (Combat)

Damaging you is like damaging a fortress made of stone
Prerequisites: Stone Mountain Stun, Stone Mountain Style, Stunning Fist, Weapon Focus (any hammer), 10th-level monk or base attack bonus +15.
Benefit: You gain a +1 bonus to your CMD. When using Stone Mountain Style, your damage reduction changes to DR/adamantine.

Emberwood is our signature wyrwood monk. Learn more about its race in the Book of Heroic Races: Advanced Compendium at DriveThruRPG/RPGNow, the OpenGamingStore, and Paizo.

Lots of 4- and 5-STAR Reviews

It was the end of last summer when I did the most recent review roundup. We have much to share since then so let’s jump right to it. Lets start with the 5-STAR review by Rick H. we got last night for our newest adventure Deadly Delves: The Gilded Gauntlet.

There are, however, many out-of-the-box problems that need to be carefully considered. I really liked this approach- the information the characters require is readily available, but making sense of it is key. Further, the encounters mix monsters with hazards in interesting environments. There’s a lot of content for the price, and I look forward to using it.

Read the full review at DriveThruRPG

I would also like to give a special shout out to John McCoy (no relation) for his first review ever. It was a 5-STAR review for Book of Heroic Races: Advanced Skinwalkers, and his review is short and sweet.

Love Skinwalkers, and this pdf is a great addition to them.

Thank you, John. We hope you write more reviews in the future!

Let’s skip over to Traveller and take a look at the reviews here. The d66 Compendium and D66 Compendium 2 are two of the most useful books in all of Traveller and people continue to recognize that. One person, James J, left very similar 5-STAR reviews for the both review for both, saying

Solid product. I bundled this and Compendium into a binder to take with me to Traveller sessions as Referee. Great stuff for ideas. This also works as a brainstroming setup for writing.

Another reviewer gave the D66 Compendium 2 a 5-STAR reviews, describing it thus:

Very useful, … I find it useful for both RPGs and Sci-fi wargames.

The d66 Compendium received another new 5-STAR review as well, saying:

It too is filled with lots of great d66 charts. But to be honest it also is a gold mine of great ideas. Just looking over some of the lists causes ideas to spring up in my mind. Not just a great place to randomly select a name, but to look at a name and begin to build out who or what it is. I have had fun just reading various entries and charts. I strongly encourage any GM to pick both this compendium and the 2nd one as well. They are both great additions to my collection and will be very helpful resources in my creative efforts.

The very same James J. gave Scenes of Space Hex Battle Maps a 5-STAR review, saying

I liked this a lot. I used the asteroid map in a recent Traveler Session. nice big hexes on four sheets. I like that there are different sizes. No problems printing and cutting these pieces to fit together with some tape. … I would buy more if there were more in the series.

Thank you very much, good sir.

Switching over to Fifth Edition, we are rather proud of Book of Beasts: Monsters of the Forbidden Woods getting Ismael A’s rating of “5 out of 5 stars, and my royal seal.” Let me reprint the whole review.

Now, I have to say that I am massively impressed with this product. It is not a bestiary so much as it is an ecology primer on a bunch of new creatures that are original, inspiring, and effective. Ranging from animal to elemental to monstrocity, there are plenty of interesting and original creatures to use in your campaigns. For each creature or type we are given a wide number of alternative builds, whether they be stronger versions of the base creature, or full distinct variations on a similar theme. For instance, we get young, adult, and elder spider bears, while the druidic guardians are varied by elemental type.

Each cluster of creatures comes with plot hooks, potential treasure (when it makes sense), and pointers for how a creature might behave in battle. This, coupled with the brief but comprehensive descriptions give creatures a depth that is not conveyed in a 1 page stat block. And although the hit point values are a bit low for a given CR, the creatures themselves are excellently represented for 5th edition statistics.

I very much look forward to seeing more books like this, and it has even changed my view on what shorter bestiaties should be. Without the history of older and established monsters, every new beast needs to be as fleshed out as the ones in this book.

Gaeton V reviewed Book of Heroic Races: Player Races 1, giving it 4-stars, describing it thus:

Overall though, I’m impressed. There are lots of “freebie” races out in the wilds of the internet, but very few of them have as much detail as these ones.

Martin S give a spoiler heavy 4-Star review of Pathfinder’s Deadly Delves: Along Came a Spider so I will only share his conclusions:

I think this is a good module and one that not only reaches its goal, but that offers many possibilities to expand on the material presented here.

That is a total Eight 5-STAR Reviews and only a pair of 4-Star reviews and nothing else in that time frame. Jon Brazer Enterprises has a reputation for exceptionally high quality work that does not disappoint. We do not release very fast because we take the time to do it right. Tell you friends about Jon Brazer Enterprises books for their games today.

Download all of Jon Brazer Enterprises book at DriveThruRPG/RPGNow, the OpenGamingStore, and Paizo.com.

Pathfinder: Brave the Gilded Gauntlet

A Fool And His Life Are Soon Parted!

The city of Hunstoc is experiencing a rash of calamity. Livestock and horses are falling ill, children and elderly people are dying off without any explanation, and the city’s clerics can’t manage to cure the mysterious malady. The Mayor’s Office has posted a bounty on strange clockwork creatures that keep emerging from the nearby foothills outside Hunstoc’s gates. Investigating these sinister happenings leads to a massive underground complex full of devious puzzles, dangerous traps, and alchemical wonders beyond anyone’s wildest imaginings—and only the most cunning of adventurers will survive the journey into its depths!

What would you do for limitless wealth? How far would you delve? What horrors would you be willing to face? Would you repeatedly risk your own life, or those of your friends or countless innocents, in order to have anything you wanted? The Gilded Gauntlet brings the classic feel of dangerous trap-laden tournament-style dungeons to Jon Brazer Enterprises’ Deadly Delves product line, and is fully compatible with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Each room of this dungeon was designed by a different author to confound even the savviest of players and the wiliest of characters. This 61-page adventure is designed to challenge a group of 9th-level PCs like no other content has to date. Inside this volume, you’ll find:

7 New and Variant Monsters, including the clockwork sentry, mercurial necroplasm, and thallium elemental
28 New Traps, Hazards, and Haunts with which to confound, maim, and torture your players again and again
20 Full-Color Maps detailing a treacherous underground complex filled with alchemical machinery and devious puzzles and also includes a separate PDF of all the maps in high resolution, making it easier ot use in your game
3 New Magic Items, such as the imprint helm and the eternal jar
A New Fully-Detailed Location in which to immerse your players: the City of Hunstoc, complete with a full roster of NPC denizens and an accompanying full-color map of the city’s layout
Enough content to take five 9th-level PCs to 10th level and beyond, with ideas to extend the story even further once you’re done exploring the complex

Dangers Unknown. Treasures Untold. Adventure Awaits.

Download Deadly Delves: The Gilded Gauntlet at DriveThruRPG/RPGNow, the OpenGamingStore, and Paizo.com.

Download all of our Deadly Delve Adventures for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game at DriveThruRPG/RPGNow, the OpenGamingStore, and Paizo.com.

5e/Pathfinder: The Plane of Law

I was thinking about the Planes in your typical DnD/Pathfinder game. I have never been satisfied with them. D&D has always had angels on the good planes, devils on lawful evil, demons on chaotic evil and something else on neutral evil. That always left me wondering, “What are on all the other planes?”

Paizo has refined that more, inevitibles, psychopomps, proteans, azatas, archons, aeons, and a bunch others. It is a step in the right direction, IMO, but I’ve always disagreed with they did.

Here’s my ideas: the Lawful Neutral Plane shouldn’t be machines because that is a modern idea of predictability. Even as recent as 50 years ago, people distrusted machines, not believing in what they produced. What represented law 1000-3000 years ago, metal (the iron age, the bronze age, etc) and military strength. So my own interpretation of lawful neutral outsiders would be a metal golem-esque military. Something akin to the kolyarut and marut inevitibles (get rid of the rest in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Bestiary 2), but even they look too machine-like. I mean living suits of armor. Pikers, phalanx shield fighters, military horses. All polished, gleaming metal, not something broken down and barely holding together-looking like the zelekhut. The plane would look something like military parades, factories, practice fields, etc.

Next time, I’ll talk about the Plane of Chaotic Neutral.

Find all Jon Brazer Enterprises products for Pathfinder, D&D 5e and more at DriveThruRPG/RPGNow, Paizo and the OpenGamingStore.