Ultimate Intrigue - Early thoughts

First and foremost, as the title suggests, this book is highly focused towards an intrigue style adventure/campaign. It works best in at low levels or in a low magic environment. If you are like me and looking for cool things to inject into a standard campaign you will be somewhat disappointed. This book is full of options but I found most of them to be very niche.

The Vigilante is pretty cool but I can't see myself playing one which is a bit of a shame. This could be one of those classes, like the Oracle, that I grow to appreciate over time but currently I don't see enough to excite me. The Avenger (Fighter) type Vigilante has great social options, and can do pretty good damage but I'm not sure they have enough defensive options. Overall I think the Avenger is decent and much more useful compared to the Stalker.

The Stalker (Rogue) seems to be built around the element of surprise. The problem with Pathfinder is that it tends not to support "one hit kill" style that the stalker seems to be built around. The stalker is devastating on the first round but then find its usefulness drop off severely.  I suppose you could pull the video game stunt of running away for 2 minutes until everything resets but no GM I know would allow you to get away with something so gamey.

Most of the new feats are geared towards an intrigue game although there are a few notable exceptions. Starry Grace brings me one step closer to finally be able to run a PC built around effectively using Star Knives.

Most of the Archetypes are niche as well. Many of the trades are for Intrigue options which won't be so useful in a standard game so form that point of view most of the archetypes are downgrades. Once I get the module for HeroLab I'll do more than throw some numbers together on paper but from a quick and dirty standpoint, many were very lackluster from a combat standpoint.

Overall the book contains lots of creative ideas and options but most are focused on an Intrigue style game which could be a lot of fun but we tend to play a more direct style.