Does anyone have the Grimhollow books? If so what are your thoughts? Are they good? Are they worth the money? Do they work well with the other 2024 materials?
I cannot speak to their quality of worldbuilding and lore, as I do not use those portions of the books. Regarding the rest, I think it depends on what you want.
I like the monsters in the book - they tend to be a bit stronger and more dynamic than official monsters, which I feel is a good improvement (a lot of official monsters are insufficient to threaten appropriate players for their CR).
Player facing options, like subclasses, species, items, and spells, however, leave a lot to be desired. A significant number of them are power crept beyond official content, often in ways I think are problematic from a design stance (a problem not specific to this third party content - a lot of developers power creep their player options instead of aim for commensurate power with official content). This does mean they technically work with a lot of 2024 materials, but can feel a bit like they eclipse official content due to power creep.
I do use the lore and setting in one of my campaigns and it's a lot of fun if you like grim dark everything is hopeless settings. I especially like the country ruled by vampires where the sun hasn't risen in a century.
As for the power creep Caerwyn mentioned it's definitely there compared to official releases but I usually chalk that up like a lot of third party stuff to them designing to their own settings rather than worrying about whether the content is over powered compared to other settings. The monsters are more powerful and permanent death and injury is a big feature so lets give players a bit more oomph so to speak.
If you're worried about players being over powered my suggestion would be to not buy the Players Guide but to get the Campaign Guide on here for the setting lore and then go to Ghostfire direct to buy the Monster Grimoire for all their monsters (the 2024 Campaign Guide isn't available from them yet, they're still sorting out the kickstarter fulfilment, but the Monster Grimoire is backwards compatible and not planned for an update)
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Does anyone have the Grimhollow books? If so what are your thoughts? Are they good? Are they worth the money? Do they work well with the other 2024 materials?
I cannot speak to their quality of worldbuilding and lore, as I do not use those portions of the books. Regarding the rest, I think it depends on what you want.
I like the monsters in the book - they tend to be a bit stronger and more dynamic than official monsters, which I feel is a good improvement (a lot of official monsters are insufficient to threaten appropriate players for their CR).
Player facing options, like subclasses, species, items, and spells, however, leave a lot to be desired. A significant number of them are power crept beyond official content, often in ways I think are problematic from a design stance (a problem not specific to this third party content - a lot of developers power creep their player options instead of aim for commensurate power with official content). This does mean they technically work with a lot of 2024 materials, but can feel a bit like they eclipse official content due to power creep.
Thank you.
I do use the lore and setting in one of my campaigns and it's a lot of fun if you like grim dark everything is hopeless settings. I especially like the country ruled by vampires where the sun hasn't risen in a century.
As for the power creep Caerwyn mentioned it's definitely there compared to official releases but I usually chalk that up like a lot of third party stuff to them designing to their own settings rather than worrying about whether the content is over powered compared to other settings. The monsters are more powerful and permanent death and injury is a big feature so lets give players a bit more oomph so to speak.
If you're worried about players being over powered my suggestion would be to not buy the Players Guide but to get the Campaign Guide on here for the setting lore and then go to Ghostfire direct to buy the Monster Grimoire for all their monsters (the 2024 Campaign Guide isn't available from them yet, they're still sorting out the kickstarter fulfilment, but the Monster Grimoire is backwards compatible and not planned for an update)