Review – Legendary Races: the Cyclops
January 30, 2011If your campaign or world has a greater place for those enigmatic one-eyed giants of legend, the cyclops, this product should provide you with a multitude of tools and ideas for their place and use in your game.
Legendary Races: The Cyclops is a 16-page PDF (13-pages if you remove the cover/credits and OGL pages) for the Pathfinder RPG written by Stefen Styrsky and published by Purple Duck Games.
The layout is a standard two columns format, and everything is clear and easily readable. The interior art is black and white and supports the product well.
The product begins with the legendary history of the cyclops race and moves onto their physical characteristics and society. Then their racial weapon, the six-bladed gieve, is detailed. For those wishing to play a full (large-sized) cyclops, a 6-level racial class is provided, as is the half-cyclops ‘race’. Various alternate racial abilities and favored class options.
Additional support for the cyclops comes in the form of a legendary weapon of the cyclops, the axe Thundercaster, precognition as a psionic power (or a spell for those who dislike psionics), seven new feats (most of which can be used by non-cyclops as well), and a new mystery for the Oracle class.
A sample half-cyclops character, two new templates (Man-Eater and God-Scorned) and a cthonic cyclops (a CR 16 monster) finishes off the book. It is an impressive and wide-ranging collection of material related to the cyclops race. However, it strikes me that the movie Krull should have been thanked for inspiration.
Disclosure: As a featured reviewer for RPGNow/DriveThroughRPG, I received my copy of this product for free from the publisher for the purpose of this review.
