Tangent: Harvester

By Thilo Graf

This pdf from Ignitus Innovation is 7 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial & 1 page SRD, leaving 4 pages of content, so let’s check out this tangent-line, shall we?

A tangent is essentially a short adventure, suitable for a single session and provides the bare minimum necessary to run the adventure – this, however, includes fluff, sample read-aloud text etc.

That out of the way, I warn that SPOILERS now abound.

Still here? All right!

Tangent Harvester has the PCs investigate a rather freakish series of events: The fields of a small town get harvested over night and whoever ventures outside during the harvest tends to go missing. The crops are neatly piled and stacked up, so while per se the act is not malevolent, people are freaked out nevertheless. Via basic investigation the PCs can determine which field will be the next to be harvested and wait there for the small (depending on the level of your group) army of harvesters coming. Harvesters are quadruped constructs with harvestblades, the ability to cloud themselves in smoke and emit searing jets of steam and clock in at CR 4. An advanced, awakened self-aware harvester is also included and has CR 8.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any glitches. Layout adheres to the 2-column standard and deserves special mention, as it ranks among the most beautiful layouts I’ve seen for 3pps and is something I did not expect at this price-point. The pdf has no bookmarks, is full-colour and comes with 2 sample artworks for the new creatures, which while beautiful, should be handled with care: While the statblocks speak of harvestblades, the artworks show buzz-saws and chain-saws, which are a) not the best tools to harvest and b) might annoy some people who are rather on the conservative side when it comes to steam-punkish elements in their campaign. When all is said and done, though, I really did enjoy this little pdf, as it delivers an interesting short scenario, solid statblocks and nice critters for a price that is hard to beat indeed. However, the minor gripe I had with the artwork and the lack of a map and the fact that we don’t get a printer-friendly b/w-version keep this little pdf from being a full-fledged recommendation. I got more than I expected for a meagre buck though, and the content is top-notch. My final verdict will thus be 4.5 stars, rounded down to 4 for the purpose of this platform.

Endzeitgeist out.

Villains III is available from: