The Indulgences are sold individually, but that would make for a lot of tedious short reviews, so I'm batching them up into the "Waves" they also come bundled in. They are all for D&D 3.5, though Pathfinder versions will be coming out soon, and you get rights to both versions with your purchase.
I really liked Nick Logue's work on several Paizo Adventure Path installments, most notably Hook Mountain Massacre in the Rise of the Runelords AP and Edge of Anarchy in the Curse of the Crimson Throne AP, so I was excited to see what he was doing with his new imprint, Sinister Adventures. I bought Waves One and Two recently, and here's what I got!
First, all four are beautifully done. Professional layout and striking art make them easy to read and vividly memorable. The last page of each PDF is wasted on the OGL statement; necessary but be advised that means the real page count for content is 29.
The Indulgences
Dajobas, Devourer of Worlds (8 page pdf) by Nicolas Logue is all about the shark god Dajobas. Dajobas is hunger personified, and wants to devour the world. His portfolio is listed as "cannibalism, carnage, hunger, the ocean, war, blood, sharks, gators, swamps, and ruin." Now that's a lot more descriptive than "evil, death" isn't it! You get rules for clerics of Dajobas and a new Hunger domain. You get a new monster, the Drolsharg, a herald of Dajobas, whose "massive chest is a field of shark maws squirming insatiably for prey." There are four new feats like "Reaver's Frenzy", two magic items, and a five level prestige class, the Dalang of Dajobas, with a example character called "Varog Gorebeard." That's a lot to squeeze into seven pages.
I thought this was very flavorful. It's obviously targeted at NPCs, and is just enough to make some memorable Dajobas worshippers without going overboard - if there were twenty Dajobas magic items, would that really be any better? This one gets an A+ from me.
Death Beneath The Waves (6 page pdf) by Wolfgang Baur is a set of underwater adventuring guidelines. It kicks off with advice on how to lure PCs into underwater adventures, as many of them try hard to avoid it. I'm not sure I like this part - the theme is basically that PCs avoid underwater adventuring because often it's a screwjob. His tack is to therefore screwjob them into it. He recaps the PH/DMG underwater rules, such as they are, and provides tips on using them. He offers two new spells, "Deep Dive" and "Buoyancy" and refers to pressure and the bends without bothering to propose any rules for them, which is a little annoying. There's a bit on simplifying the 3-D nature of large underwater combats and then a new monster, the Benthic Serpent. It's a fine monster (a classic sea serpent) but it seems oddly tacked on here.
I didn't like this one as much. There were very few real takeaways and the piece suffered from a lack of coherence. I give it a C.
Art of the Duel (6 page pdf) by Craig Shackleton is a set of optional rules for those duelists and swashbucklers out there. He mercifully refrains from coming up with "not like real combat" dueling rules, instead offering a set of variant fencing weapons that offer small bonuses, like a cup-hilt rapier that adds +1 to AC when using Weapon Expertise. There's a new special attack, "Bind", which allows you to bind an enemy's weapon instead of sundering or disarming at, along with a design note on why you would do this.
Then there are eleven great new feats for a light swordfighter. Some are just OK, like "Challenge to a Duel," which is really a variant of taunt, but there's a really interesting line of parry/riposte feats that are good but not overpowered as they come as part of a pretty long chain. Most start out with requiring Dodge and only give you the benefit against your Dodge target, which fits the "one on one" style of such a combatant well and helps with balance.
I give this one an A as well, and plan to let my players use it in our upcoming pirate campaign.
Blood Waters (13 page pdf) by Greg A. Vaughan is an adventure for four to six 7th level adventurers. It's a classic undersea romp. A son of the Sea King (the locathah good guys) has disappeared and the players must help! It's a short Side Trek, but there are a number of cool opponents squeezed in here. It can be worked into a larger Razor Coast campaign but is just as good as a standalone mini-adventure.
I'll give this one a B+ as the end bit is just a little too short - I would have cut some of the exposition and random encounters filling the first 4 pages to give a little more time there.
Conclusion
I thought Sinister did a great job of making these mini-products useful not only to people planning to buy Razor Coast but also to anyone running campaigns that ever hit the seacoast - and isn't that most of us? Now, they're not all tightly linked - the underwater adventuring and the adventure "go together" but to be fair it is four unrelated bits - but they are very good bits. At a minimum, the Dajobas and duelist pieces are must buys if you ever touch upon this area in your games (and if not, go buy the Green Ronin Freeport stuff and do it!).
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