#30 More Manuals of Improvement by Mike Welham is a role playing game supplement published by Rite Publishing for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result. This is a sequel to #30 Manuals of Improvement.
This is a 21-page PDF that is available from DriveThruRPG for $2.95 but was purchased at a reduced price as part of a special bundle. One page is the front cover, one the front matter, one the Open Game License and two pages are ads.
There are some introductory, in-character, paragraphs about how some more manuals have been discovered since the first supplement, which may not affect attributes but do affect other abilities, with a sidebar on how each book can only be used once.
Next are the books in alphabetical order by title. There is an opening in-character piece of fluff on the book, an addition from the previous supplement, followed by a description of it and then the effects. All the books have at least two variants and many have free, meaning that there are far more than the described 30 manuals included. The higher the value of the manual variant, the more powerful the bonus from reading it. Unlike the first supplement, these concentrate on skills and feats, with, it looks like, only one book specifically aimed at a class, the gunslinger.
#30 More Manuals of Improvement in Review
The PDF is thoroughly bookmarked, with every single manual linked. Navigation is excellent. The text maintains a two-column colour format and no errors were noticed. There are a number of pieces of public domain art inside, all related to books, in colour, black and white and monocoloured. Presentation is okay.
This is a nice collection of magical manuals but a GM may wish to carefully consider some of them before using them, as some of the bonuses are rather significant, being +10, and stackable at that. These are also permanent bonuses that do not require a magic item to be constantly equipped, unlike similar bonuses that might be seen with other magic items. Even though such may require 10 ranks in a skill before the book can be studied for that benefit, a character can simply spend a few days reading the book and double their bonus in a skill. That seems a little excessive. It is a shame that the supplement doesn’t cover some of the classes that were skipped in the first book. #30 More Manuals of Improvement is a nice supplement, albeit a little overpowered in some places for some games, and it can be found by clicking here.
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