Customer Reviews

Pathfinder Chronicles: Gods & Magic (Pathfinder Chronicles Supplement)

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I have been a Tabletop RPGer nearly my entire life, started out of a little white box set, before a hardback book or full color soft-back for an RPG even existed. Recently the focus of many gaming products aimed at the non-computer RPG world have lacked asthetics, quality of writing, and offered contradictory mechanics within the same game system. Dungeons and Dragons, once claimed by Hasbro, fell into the trap of releasing material that was weak in both entertainment value and game mechanic value. When I discovered Pathfinder, which follows a superior game mechanic to 4th edition D&D, I feared the support material they would offer would follow the modern production mentality that can be best summed up as "slap it together and crank it out". I bought Gods & Magic a a gift for my wife, who has alwayed had a least one cleric in her active PC file, and for a chance to look at the efforts of the Pathfinder writing team away from the core books.

I was not only pleasently surprised at the balance of ROLE material to ROLL material, but actually found the detail writing to be revealing, colorful and inspiring -- and I am not ivolved with any Golarion campaign, where these gods are from. The two page layout for each major deity gives a "catch phrase" that nicely sums up the attitude of the god and their followers (reminding me of the better Planescape material from days gone by), a history of the god in a way that is role usefull, and a section that describes the daily life of an average cleric in service to the god. Each god has one or two exclusive spells or spell varients - Asmodeous' came from out of the blue, but boy did it generate some great ideas I wish I has access to in my last campaign. These varients are in keeping with the more player-power basis of the Pathfinder core books, without tipping into Monty Haul territory.

The book has encapsulations of lesser gods and their roles, and closes with a collection of magic items that are deity specific, the kinds of things you should consider carefully before tossing into a campaign. Strong items, for the most part, but not to the point where they are overpowering if distributed with care (in other words, if the NPC's who oppose your players have 'em too).

The most uplifting part of reading this supplement is that it was of high quality throughout. Well written, good role ideas, some nice support material, and had plenty of enjoyable art. It is nice to see there is still a company that can pull that off. I will try a few more support material or game module publications for Pathfinder now, just to see if the quality of Gods & Magic is to be found elsewhere. If you are playing a Golarion campaign, or just like to read fantasy god material to derive your own deities from, this is a very well done book. Buy it.

By itself Pathfinder Chronicles: Gods and Magic is a good compilation of deities to shoehorn into a campaign, unfortunately this item is sitting on a shelf next to the Pathfinder Inner Sea Campaign Guide. Gods and Magic just duplicates much of the material under the religion chapter of the campaign guide. It does include extra material on worship details for each of the deities, and describes some new spells and artifacts, however none of this material is substantial enough to warrant the purchase of the book if you already have or intend to purchase the campaign guide. In fact, Gods and Magic leaves out several groups of divinities described in the campaign guide (Empyreal Lords, and the Four Horsemen for example). The book might have better served if it deleted the extra magic and artifacts and fleshed out the smaller cults and pantheons, for those players who what to focus on the smaller faiths or the dead gods for those DMs who run campaigns in different epochs, or who wish to resurrect the fallen divinities. Those who remember of 2nd edition Dark Sun Campaign sourcebooks should recall that TSR tried a similar trick by reprinting material from the Dark Suns Dragon Kings hardcover as several separate soft cover sourcebooks. If you ask me, it is a bit of a rip-off.
In short if you have or intend to purchase the Inner Sea Campaign Guide don't bother with Gods and Magic you will already have the meat of the book and it will add nothing to your campaign. If you what to add a group of interesting divinities to your campaign, you should wait until you can get a used or marked down copy of the Inner Sea Campaign Guide for between 20 and 30 dollars. You will get main material in Gods and Magic, plus the deleted gods and demons, and the remainder of the book is still a source of good ideas even if you don't intend to use the campaign world itself. If you absolutely refuse to purchase any new campaign guides, but still want a new pantheon to play with than Gods and Magic is the book for you.

I very much like this guide even if I was a bit perturbed at the thin book coming out of the envelope for a very thick price. What I do like though is that this book focus entirely on Gods, the major ones and throws in a few minor ones and a few domain spells here and there. What I'm thankful it does not do is throw in tons and tons and tons of things like prestige classes and tons of other stuff that is errata basically and usually winds up being ignored. I like how the major god(esses) are described, the typical behaviors of followers, their 'church' and how they interact with each other. Though a few of them are high powered demons and devils these still present themselves as viable players on the inter cosmic stage that can have deep implications for pcs. I instantly saw many many campaign ideas springing forth from this small manual. Though it is rather high of this writing for price, I would give this serious thought as religion in a fantasy world and one that can bridge into other worlds or settings is an excellent resource tool for pcs and gms alike.

I was pleasantly surprised when I received this book. I had expected this to be similar to the WOTC books - heavy on mechanics with little storyline. Man, was I wrong! This book has the benefits of building on the Core Rulebook, so the mechanics were minimized, and the story elements were greatly enhanced. This book, and the Dragons Revisited book, sold me on Pathfinder and Golarion. The Rulebook when it arrived sealed the deal, but this product's excellent writing and attention to detail were the hook.

I ordered this along with 3 other 'books' and while I wasn't impressed with the overall size of the book - I was impressed with the information. The writers of this book put a lot of thought in to it and included a great deal of believability to the history. This is a must have for any Pathfinder player or DM.

Thorough yet concise presentation of all major deities. It's mostly flavor, but offers some crunch for clerics of particular deities. Good art and presentation, as is customary for Paizo.

The book is an excelent source for Golarions religions and faiths, detailing its 20 main gods a,d dozens of minor gods, and talking about the planes around Golarion and hinting at the existance of other planes anddozens of plots.

Great sourcebook.

Thanks Sean.

Gods and Magic is a great suplement for PathFinder. It has more complete descriptions of major gods with nice pictures, and information about new minor gods. It is really worthy to Pathfinders players and DMs.

As a book about the religion of Golarion (and one of the most important subjects of any fantasy scenario), I expected a more extended material.

The name "Gods and Magic" gives the wrong idea of the material, because we find no information about magic on it, only about religious magic itens, so it's a book about Gods, not about magic.

I bought this specifically to learn a little more about the deities in the Pathfinder setting. I found it very informative on the main gods. Especially with how the worshippers act and such. I have already used some of the ideas within my own campaign.
My one thing for this is that I wish it had gone a little more in depth with some of the lesser known gods. Especially in regards to race specific. It talks a little about the gobln gods, but not about kobolds or any other well known races. I enjoy spicing up the game with strange cults, and that was my main hope with the book. It helped a good bit; just not as much as I had hoped for.

The book Gods & Magic gives a detailed and interesting description of the Gods of Golarion as well as their worshipers. Little touches about what displeases the Gods really gives you a feel for them. The only flaw I could see is that it glosses over a lot of details about the demi-gods and lesser deities.