Krazy Kragnar’s Magic Staff Emporium

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94013[1]By Thilo Graf

This pdf from Super Genius Gamesis 12 pages long, 2/3 of a page front cover, 1 page editorial & SRD, leaving 10 1/3 of a page for Kragnar’s latest enterprise, this time dealing with staves. So, what does the goblin have for us this time?

Staves, an arcanist’s ballista, are widely considered to be among the most boring items possible in PFRPG and while NNW have found some ways to make them more exciting, I was rather sceptical whether the latest installment of Kragnar could make them interesting again.

First of all, we get some nice back-story around Kragnar’s latest exploits prior to having new concepts explained: To give staves more flexibility, three levels of staves are presented: lesser, standard and greater, each with progressively more power. All the staves in this book come in these 3 versions and you can actually upgrade the staves to the next level – the upgrade costs being fully compatible with the craft-mechanics. Nice! Some staves herein also come with possibilities to recharge them at double rate, i.e. with sets of instructions that make recharging a) more engaging and b) a cool, viable option.

A new feat capitalizes on these properties, enabling you to create lesser staves starting level 8. even better, the concept of Tige Vierge is introduced – blank staves, whose final enchantment has not yet been determined. The rules to craft them are simple, but the possibilities are endless – in a world with magical units in the army, cults etc., a high jacked delivery of tige vierges makes for a great adventure hook. And what if the PCs try to sabotage a delivery of blanks to an evil empire’s outpost? AWESOME! Essentially, they have the potential to become arcane weapons of mass destruction without having the PC’s opposition use them against them. I love simple solutions that make otherwise impossible scenarios work. So far, the concepts presented are rather awesome, but can the 10 staves (each with all three versions) hold up to the high quality?

Mechnically, I don’t have anything to complain about; Evocative descriptions, full construction notes, recharging information and neat ideas (like the Staff of 4 Winds or the Staff of the white Necromancer), there just isn’t anything to complain about with regards to these staves – most even come with additional minor benefits in addition to their charge-dependant abilities. Especially due to a neat piece of additional service: Each and every staff herein gets its own piece of surprisingly gorgeous artwork from author/illustrator Marc Radle -it’s just great to show them off to your PCs and something I frankly didn’t expect at this price point. Very cool!

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice a single glitch. The pdf adheres to the 3-column SGG-standard and no bookmarks are provided. The extensive pieces of artwork provided serve to further enhance your experience of this pdf, adding visual pleasure to the innovative, cool ideas. The scaling staves and especially the tige vierges are just strokes of genius that had me facepalm for not coming up with the idea myself – elegant, simple, cool and full of story-telling and mechanic potential. For the low price, you get a top quality, stellar product that shines even among the excellent pdfs by SGG – innovation, nothing to complain about, added storytelling potential – my final verdict is 5 stars and the Endzeitgeist seal of approval – this pdf ranks among the best in SGG’s excellent catalogue.

Krazy Kragnar’s Magic Staff Emporium is available from:

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