Pathfinder Wades Through Dark Waters Rising

Pathfinder: Dark Waters Rising Vol. 1

Jim Zub and Andrew Huerta
Dynamite Entertainment
May 28, 2013
Get It Now

To any Dungeons and Dragons players out there: I apologize. I am not the biggest D&D fan in the world. I’m also probably the worst player ever. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy it and my dice are freakin’ awesome. Seriously. I’d carry them around with me all day, everyday and everywhere I went if I could. They’re just so awesome and girly. They are great.

I’m not going to say that Pathfinder: Dark Waters Rising Vol. 1 is not a good comic. I think that it probably is a pretty decent one. I just wasn’t really into it. To be fair, it looks pretty good and I’ve read a lot of decent reviews for the individual issues of the comic But high concept fantasy is something I’ve always struggled to enjoy and though I’m working on it I don’t think I was quite ready for this. Plus it’s definitely geared towards people who are familiar with D&D and enjoy getting into the whole stats and abilities of the different characters.

Considering I’ve had zero level spells for six months of an on going campaign and didn’t realize that until a couple months in proves that I am not the best when it comes to that kind of stuff.

The story follows the exploits of a party of six very familiar archetype characters. You have your rogue, your warrior, your wise wizard, a ranger, sorceror, and cleric.  The story starts off pretty slowly plot wise though action wise? It gets you started right away. Valeros – who is pretty much the main character – and his pals are throw into a fantasy world with plenty of adventure to be had and battles to fight. I mean, it’s Pathfinder. I feel like if you’ve got a campaign where you’re not stabbing things in dungeons then you just aren’t being true to the source material. And, actually, the comic is a great way to present some solid Pathfinder material. At least it’s a bit more engaging than the usual books and manuals that are little more than a series of number and descriptions.

I just had a hard time getting through the comic because I got a little bored. I hate to say that but I did. I read through the first two chapters and called it a day.

What’s cool, though, is that each chapter of the story – which were originally individual issues – has it’s own series of related a content that let’s you work the characters and such into your own games. They have maps of the areas that the characters explore. I’m going to have my DM take a look at them and see what he thinks. It all definitely seems pretty cool and I think it might be worth trying them out in our campaigns.