Paizo is continuing its steady stream of releases this year, pushing both Pathfinder as a game and Golarion as a setting in new directions. Being a dynamic setting with a lot of potential hotspots, it was only a matter of time before war returned to the world, and Battlecry! is the launch point. So let’s dive in!
NOTICE: Paizo provided me with an electronic copy of the Battlecry! book for review purposes.
Overview
Right away, it has to be noted that this book is in the vein of other Pathfinder 2nd Edition and Remaster books. In that it’s a toolbox for GMs and Players alike. At a solid 226 pages, it’s packed with information, exposition, in-world reporting, and valuable content.
Conflict has long been a cornerstone of fantasy settings, but few games have wars as background events. In that sense I mean that in a lot of settings, when a war happens, it’s portrayed as a key event that the player characters are intimately involved in. Paizo is taking a different tact with this book. They present a number of flashpoints, set up the Inner Sea War event, and then leave it to the table whether they’re in it or not.
One thing that’s key and lays outside the rest of this review is how this book finishes a series of thematic shifts that have been happening in Pathfinder for some time. Namely, between this book and the Guns and Gears book, the setting can no longer be accurately called “fantasy”, it id definitively Science-Fantasy, and at the Dungeonpunk end of the spectrum. I’ve talked about this before, but it’s not really debatable now. And it’s good. The setting and game are stronger for it. It can still support the fantasy adventures that some want, but it offers so much more now.
The Good
The Commander and Guardian classes are excellent additions to the game. The Commander brings a powerful martial leader to the game with a variety of party benefiting buffs, and some sweet multiclass options. Meanwhile, the Guardian covers the defensive Fighter role that will make them EXTREMELY popular with magic user heavy parties that need a literal tank there to soak up hits without losing a lot of HP.
Likewise, the Archetype section has a lot to offer. An unstated but clear goal of the book is to show off the effects of militarizing aspects of a high fantasy world, and it does. The War Mage archetype displays this the best, moving the usually back row Wizard into the middle of the party, able to hold their own in a pinch and provide both firepower and support.
The equipment section is solid. A small selection of new weapons, and then a metric tonne of magic ones and magic armour. The section is called “The Armory” and just flipping through it told me that it’s going to be a fast favourite with martial class players looking to tool up their characters.
The decision to restrict table-level warfare to the skirmish level was smart. There’s a temptation with war genre material to go for the big set-piece battle concept, but that needs a lot of extra rules and mechanics. Whereas the conventional Pathfinder mechanics can scale up nicely to skirmish level with only a few additions. The scale picked is also good for players, because it keeps them engaged at a level the human brain likes; and by that I mean it keeps the game immediate by not getting so big that the battles become academic exercises. This was a good call and I appreciate it.
The Bad
In a book as packed with information as this one is, the now standard complaint about a lack of internal linking is serious. The main table of contents is linked, but the sidebar navigation isn’t. This book NEEDS this, especially when you’re dealing with the electronic format exclusively. I don’t know why Paizo is so resistant to this, but it’s a legit usability UI/UX problem.
The book doesn’t really touch well into the areas of Special Forces or Elite Units, places where conventional parties fit neatly into wars in this kind of setting. The more mercenary minded parties of Golarion are natural contractors or the core of special units during wartime, and this didn’t really get touched on in a way that makes it clear how to use/integrate them.
Where is the Combat Engineer?! This would have been a slamdunk archetype for the Alchemist class. Demolitions, CBRN, and so much more could have been a part of the operation! This was a big missed chance for the book.
The Ugly
The book includes a number of siege weapons and straight up magitech military vehicles that truly make warfare into a 3D battlespace with tools and equipment akin to the stuff used on modern battlefields in the 20th century. The book doesn’t get into how warfare on Golarion would be intrinsically different from the kind of medieval or even Napoleonic warfare that people are likely to immediately picture. I would have liked a deeper exploration of what conflicts look like in the setting, even if it was only the Inner Sea region.
Final Thoughts
This is a good book on several fronts. It’s packed with solid content that’s all gravy for the martial player base. It stumbles in a few places, but not badly. In my opinion, the stumbling points are more from a place of not considering implications as opposed to deliberate intent. That said? It’s a solid launching point not just for coming conflict around the Inner Sea, but also a great resource for martial class players and players who want a more combative edge to the characters. Good work, Rank A!
