Okay, it’s been a minute since there’s been a Pathfinder review here, and it’s time to change that! Let’s dive into some DRAGONS!
NOTICE: Paizo provided me with a review copy of their new book, the Draconic Codex.
Background
Okay, there’s two here. First is that my account with Paizo had some serious technical difficulties when they migrated the site to the new format. Initially, I thought I’d been dropped from their media system, but events and emails proved otherwise. But it took a bit to get everything corrected, and then they hit me with all the review material from October last year on, so there’s going to be a steady stream here for a bit. So thank you Paizo for getting me sorted and reading again!
Okay, now that’s been covered, it’s time to talk dragons. Dragons are a core component of a lot of the games in the fantasy genre, and Pathfinder is no exception. Moreover, like many D&D descended games, Pathfinder adhered to the D&D metallic and chromatic formula for dragons. That is until now. One of the main parts of the remaster effort in Pathfinder’s second edition has been to divorce it as much from conventional D&D as possible. We got a taste of this in the Monster Core book, where they showed they were no longer recycling the Monster Manual with a few in-house additions. The Draconic Codex is a 230 page opus to dragons and what makes the dragons of Pathfinder distinct.
The Good
The Art. The art in this book is absolutely glorious. Not only does it stick to the vibe and aesthetic of the remaster and Pathfinder in general. This not only keeps consistent tone, it also lets them really showcase the world and what makes it unique. I especially liked the details in the section about draconic life cycles.
Completeness. There’s no stones left unturned in this book. No feeling like there’s an unannounced “Draconic Codex 2” needed to fill in the blanks. There’s four typologies of dragons, dragon deities, a metric tonne of player options to dragon up your characters and NPCs, and there’s a solid 56, count them (because I did) 56 dragons in this book. There are literally dragons for almost every occasion, adventure, and environment.
The LORE! I was, quite honestly, unprepared for the casual deep lore drops in this book. I came ready for dragon related lore, but I wasn’t expecting lore about the creation of the Pathfinder Universe, the ancient cyclops empire, or the many other little nuggets of knowledge scattered through the book.
The Ancestries and Class Options are outstanding. Kobolds, Dragonets, and a substantial expansion to the Dragonblood versatile heritage are rock solid entries. Pathfinder has always been a game that has encouraged players to play non-Tolkien standard characters, and pushed the limits that D&D fears to approach. This book adds more fuel to that fire and I’m here for it!
The Bad
I’m struggling here. It’s a really good book.
The Dragon Pantheons section could have been longer. I think that arcane and elemental sets would have nicely rounded things off. A component in the section about how the dragon gods interact with the larger deity scene on Golarion would have been a good inclusion as well.
The pdf is only partly linked. The table of contents is great, hop to anything, The Glossary & Index? Love that it links to the stuff in the book. What I would love to see is the sidebar linked. Being able to hop from section to section from within the book without having to go back to the table of contents would be a needed quality of life improvement.
The magic item, spell catalyst, spells, and pacts sections are a bit sparse. There’s enough to get the dice rolling, but compared to the in-depth exploration of dragons and the player options sections, they’re lite. I get that there’s page limitations, but for something this momentous and game defining as Paizo pushes Pathfinder deeper into its post OGL era, these needed to be deeper. Also, there’s no regular equipment section!
The Ugly
Nothing. There’s no “ugly” part in this book. I’d have to split so many hairs and torture logic so badly to find something ugly that it would invalidate The Good and The Bad sections.
Final Thoughts
The Draconic Codex is a must have companion book for a modern Pathfinder game. It’s a Rank A entry into the remaster lineup, only let down by the sparsity in some of the supporting chapters. This book isn’t just a casual collection of mildly expanded lore on well established dragons in fantasy roleplaying. It’s a line in the sand that Paizo has drawn to definitively say “this is not D&D, this is Pathfinder, and there’s more here than you think”. So don’t make assumptions, and pick this book up! For more details, you can head to Paizo and check it out.
