Pathfinder: Lost Omens: Tian Xia Character Guide review

The Tian Xia character guide is part of a set; it goes with the Tian Xia World Guide but can be used as a standalone product. This book has 132 pages of content centered around character creation. The chapters included are:

Introduction
Backgrounds
Magic and the Spirit World
Peoples
Character Options

As with every review I do, I won’t be taking you through the whole book but there is a good amount here that I want to call attention to.

A bit on the backgrounds

I like the backgrounds in this book just fine; okay, “fine” is an understatement. They’re so thematically appropriate that my group fell in love with them from the moment they started character creation. We had a Silk Farmer, StreetFood Vendor, and an Ocean Diver. On our second run, I opened up the options my players pulled out: Favored, Kajiu Stalker, and Zodiac Bound.

There is a lot of fun to be had here and each of the options opened a new pathway for us. For example, our StreetFood Vendor was the first to notice the campaign event that threw our one shot into motion. Of course, he wanted to finish serving his food first. Each background has mechanical benefits too but what we were most excited about was the roleplay.

Magic and the Elements

The next few chapters discuss Magic and the Elements. Magic starts by talking about the Spirit World, one of the things my players were most excited about and the hardest thing for me to world build. As you continue the chapter, you get some lore about how the average person in Tian Xia is treated for practicing magic. The next section details the Elements. You’ll be getting some details about how the elements are treated within the setting and a touch of lore surrounding the thoughts behind each element. I enjoyed both of these sections because they add some much-needed context about Tian Xia.

Peoples

This section details the inhabitants of Tian Xia and provides plenty of information and lore for each ancestry. One thing I like about this section is the little illustrations off to the side, the layout is nice and everything flows easily. Still, the art style here is a miss for me but regardless this is one of my favorite chapters.

You have to continue reading to find the character creation options and boy did Paizo deliver. Inside of the Tian Xia character guide, you’ll find the following options:

Dokkaebi Goblin
Hungerseed
Kijmuna
Tian Kobold
Tian Leshy
Tian Lizardfolk
Tian Sprite
Tsukumogami Poppet
Kitsune
Nagaji
Samsaran
Sarangay
Tanuki
Wayang
Yaksha
Yaoguai

My players enjoyed the flavor and mechanical benefits of the Tian Lizardfolk, Kitsune, and Wayang. At this point I’d like to talk about how my testing was done: Players were allowed to pick whatever they wanted from the book, but we could only use options once. So when the Tian Lizardfolk was picked it took that option off of the table for everyone else.

You’ll find that all the options here stand out in their own way. Honestly, I think all the options are fair and balanced but as I was going over this section, it dawned on me that I was wishing that this book and the world guide were one in the same. Now, I understand why Paizo keeps them separated but for ease of looking up information, having one book would’ve been much better.

Final Thoughts

The Tian Xia character guide offers a lot of options for players and there is seemingly no end to the amount of concepts you can come up with. While I enjoy the equipment and the character options fine as a game master, my players loved them. My players wanted these options to be a permanent fixture in our world right away.

A huge complaint of mine comes from the lack of linking within the PDF. The book is short enough that this isn’t too annoying, but it seems to be a trend with Paizo where the table of continents doesn’t link to anything.

Review Guidelines