Help Paizo Defend the Gauntlet!

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Just over one year ago, a team from Paizo made a pilgrimage to Card Kingdom to do battle for the Gauntlet. There we fought for honor, for glory, and most importantly, for charity. After facing off against other game companies from around the Seattle area, we emerged victorious! The Gauntlet was ours, and it has rested in the hallowed halls of Paizo ever since.

But now, we must defend it!

The time has come for Paizo to defend our title. If we fail, we will have to give up the Gauntlet, forfeiting our title as champions. We can't let that happen and we need your help!

Card Kingdom is once again hosting the tournament and each team (and team member) can raise money for charity to earn power ups for their team. Last year, these advantages were crucial in our victory. The more we raise the more power ups we will earn, giving us an edge in the games we must play against the other teams. This year, all of the money raised will go to Hopelink, a charity whose mission is to support homeless and low-income families on their way to self-sufficiency.

Of course, we want to reward you for supporting us in our quest to defend the Gauntlet. So, the Gauntlet team is putting together a special dungeon adventure, "The Champion's Gauntlet," and if you pledge at least $20 to our team (any one of the team members), you can get access to a PDF of this adventure on your paizo.com account later this summer!

To receive this PDF, you must use the same email address for the charity site as you use for your paizo.com account. We cannot send you the adventure unless you have a paizo.com account and you use the same email address! If you need to update your email address, you may do so on your Personal Settings page.

As of right now, this will be the only way to get your hands on this exclusive adventure! To sweeten the deal, the dungeon will grow larger and larger as the team raises more and more money. Here is how it will work.

Regardless of how much money we raise, all four team members (Jason Bulmahn, Erik Mona, Jessica Price, and Stephen Radney-MacFarland) will each design one room for the dungeon. Depending on how much the Paizo team raises, each team member will design more rooms.

Team Total	Rooms Per Member
$1,000	2
$2,000	3
$3,000	4
$5,000	5
$8,000	6
$12,000	7

In addition, each team member has personal goals. Check out their individual pledge pages for details on some of the great thank-you rewards you can score.

The fundraising ends at noon on May 17th, with the tournament happening that afternoon at the Mox Boarding House in Bellevue, WA. Donate today and if you are in the area on the 17th, stop by to cheer on our team. You can donate through any of the following links!

http://thegauntlet2015.causevox.com/team/Paizo
http://thegauntlet2015.causevox.com/jason-bulmahn
http://thegauntlet2015.causevox.com/erik-mona
http://thegauntlet2015.causevox.com/jessica-price
http://thegauntlet2015.causevox.com/stephen-radneymacfarland

Thanks again for donating!

Jason Bulmahn
Proud Bearer of the Gauntlet
Paizo Team Captain

The Gem

by Gary Kloster

Chapter Three: Taba's Hunt

"It's not really Dahren's boat." Khair was slimmer than his companion, and a little taller, but with their beards and clothes they looked similar. Related, or just foreign, Jiri wasn't sure and didn't really care. She sat with Fumo and Hadzi in the cracked prow of the ship, under the watchful eye of half a dozen hunters. The hunters were Jall tribe, Jiri knew, from their short, dyed braids and the pattern of their mud cloth, but they hadn't introduced themselves. They were far from their lands in the east, working for foreigners and being rude.

"He was renting the boat from some village we found upriver. It was taking us to Kibwe, before that storm washed it away." Khair smiled at them, and he almost seemed sincere. "Thank you for finding it for us."

"What's he saying?" Hadzi whispered to Jiri. The men from Nex used only Taldane, the common trade tongue, except when they whispered together in Kelish. Jiri understood Taldane fine, but while Oza had taught her a little Kelish she could barely make out a word of the men's whispers.

"He thanks us for finding their treasure," Jiri said.

"Are they going to reward us for that?" Fumo muttered. The man had seemed to age twenty years the moment the foreigners had showed up.

"I think that thanks was their reward," Jiri said, then turned her attention back to Khair.

The man was waiting patiently, his fingers combing through his tightly curled beard. "We could use a new boat, now. Does your village have one?"

"No," Jiri said.

"Ah," Khair sighed. "I suppose we'll just have to patch this one up then. More days lost in this stinking, leech-infested jungle." He shook his head and turned away, still stroking his beard, and Jiri had a sudden, fervent hope that at least a few leeches would someday find their way into that carefully tended garden of hair.

"Nexians." Fumo's fists drummed against the ships ribs. "A Nexian trader cheated my brother-in-law's youngest sister once, in Kibwe. You can't trust them."

Because they won't let you take their lost property?

Jiri didn't bother to say the words. The Nexians and their Jall hirelings were rude, but they hadn't treated them badly otherwise, and the fact that they were going to be hauling that great gem away from Thirty Trees didn't bother Jiri a bit.

Whatever that thing is, treasure or not, it's trouble. She watched Khair and Dahren come together in the center of the boat and leaned forward as they spoke, straining her ears. They spoke too fast, but she picked out the words for boat and trade, daylight and... baby? Child? That didn't seem right. Jiri sighed and wished she had studied harder when Oza had taught her languages.

It's not my fault that there are so many. She wondered when the Nexians would finally let them go. When they think their gem is safe, I suppose. Dahren had opened up the broken crate to carefully examine the stone, revealing it to be a huge oval, like a seed made of glass that gleamed in the steady glow of his spell-light. She watched them stare at it as they talked, Dahren's face calculating, Khair's frowning, anxious but trying to hide it, and wondered again what it was.

They're certainly acting like it's a treasure. But Khair seems almost afraid of it. A gem. A hippo-sized gem. What is it? The question buzzed in Jiri's head, almost making a connection but not quite, almost... What did Dahren say about a child? No, it wasn't that, or baby, the word was—

"Hatchling." Jiri whispered the word, and she was on her feet, staring at the great gem in horror. Oza had told her about something like this. He had told her about all the things that lived in the jungle around them, small and great. The size of it, though—that had tricked her. Not even the mokele-mbembe laid eggs this great.

"Khair." Jiri walked toward the trader, ignoring the Jall. They looked down at her, at the muddy medicine pouch that hung on her hip and proclaimed her a shaman, and let her by. "Do you know what that is?"

"I know what Dahren thinks it is. And what it's worth to the fleshforges back home, if he's right."

When profit awaits, Dahren is willing to take any risk.

"You'll never get it there," Jiri said. "Touch it. You can feel something moving inside. It's close to hatching."

"Jiri, what are you—" Fumo started, but Dahren cut him off.

"If it hatches, we'll cage it."

Jiri stared at the foreigner, stunned by his idiocy. "You think you can cage a grootslang?"

"Grootslang?" Hadzi said behind her. "What are you saying about a groot—"

"One fresh-hatched? Yes." Dahren stared down at Jiri as if she were something he had found crawling across his skin. "We've put together a cage, a wagon, a whole caravan for this beast. It's taken me almost seven years to find something of value in this green hell, and I will make my fortune from it, mosquitoes, snakes, sickness, storms, sinking boats, and short, bothersome natives be damned. Now shut up and leave me alone, so I can take this beast that scares you so much far from your fetid home."

"A caravan," Jiri said. "You're taking this thing to Kibwe."

"Only for a little while," Khair said, trying to sound soothing. "We'll be moving on as soon as we can."

"You can't take a monster like that to a city," Jiri snapped. "How many will die when that thing hatches out, hungry?"

"It won't get free!" Dahren shouted, his face twisting into anger. "Gods, I've had this argument enough with him." He jabbed his finger at Khair. "I don't need to have it with you, girl. Now shut up before I gag you."

Jiri watched him stomp away, then looked over at the Jall hunter who stood closest to her. "Did you know what you were helping them do?"

The woman pushed her yellow braids back and shrugged. "Our shaman told us what they had found. We decided that if they wanted to take it far from our lands, we wouldn't argue. And they pay well."

"And if that thing hatches here? Or in Kibwe?"

"Then that's their problem." The voice came from Jiri's other side, from a man who stood taller and broader than any of the other Jall. The skin of his chest was marked with the rough, twisting scars of leopard claws. "Or yours, I suppose, if they can't hold it."

"You're a blessing to your ancestors," Jiri growled and sat down beside Hadzi again, staring at the huge egg. The light caught in its rough facets shimmered, as if the whole huge thing had trembled.

"A grootslang?" Hadzi said. "Like in the stories?"

Jiri nodded. Oza had told them all the legend of the grootslang. How the gods had made them too powerful, and how they had taken them apart, separating their forms into serpents and elephants. But some had escaped the gods, and stayed what they were.

Deadly.

From her other side, she heard Fumo. "I— Why didn't you tell us? Why didn't you know?"

Blocking Fumo out, Jiri stared at the egg, and watched as it shook again.

∗ ∗ ∗

When morning came, the river had dropped enough to reveal that the boat was thoroughly stranded, wedged into the trees that had caught it in a mud bank yards away from the river's normal edge.

Dahren had cursed, then told the Jall to start pulling apart the boat to make a raft, which they had done after he had offered up enough coin. Fumo and Hadzi, with nothing else to do, had taken some of that coin and gone to work, too.

Jiri just stood near the boat, exhausted from a sleepless night, and watched the gemlike egg.

"How long do you think we have?" Khair stood next to her, his boots almost swallowed by the mud.

"How long has it been shaking like that?" Jiri asked.

"Since we found it. About three weeks. Dahren says it will take it a long time for it to crack that shell."

"Three weeks is a long time," Jiri said.

Khair swore softly. "I've put too much money into this. If that thing gets away..."

"My village is nearby, along with everyone I know and love," Jiri said. "Your coin—"

There was a sound, a brittle pop that brought Jiri up short. "Gods and crocodiles," she hissed, and ran forward. The crack didn't take long to find, a thing as long as her arm and wide as her smallest finger, running across the top of the egg. She tore her eyes away from it, saw the Nexians and the Jall, Fumo and Hadzi, all standing still and staring at the stone.

"Gods damn me." Dahren came forward, staring at the crack. "I'll not lose this thing now."

"You have no cage here," Jiri said.

Dahren spared a glare for her, then shouted. "Taba!" The tall, scarred Jall came through the mud to him. "You're always bragging about your hunting. Well, here's a chance to demonstrate your skill. When that thing breaks free, kill it and I'll fill your palm with gold."

"Dahren!" Khair shouted. "It's worth so much more alive!"

"It's worth nothing if it gets away!" Dahren backed off as Taba took up a spear and found a position beside the stone.

"This is a bad idea, Taba," Jiri told him, but the man shrugged.

"I killed a leopard with just a knife once. I can kill a newborn monster with a spear."

Jiri backed away, until she reached Fumo and Hadzi. "Go," she told them.

Fumo looked at her, his eyes wide with fear, and started to back away. None of the Jall cared. But Hadzi hesitated. "What are you doing?"

"I have to see what happens. You have to go." From the wreckage of the boat came another sharp pop, and even from here Jiri could see the cracks running across the surface of the egg. "Go. Get to Kibwe. Get Oza. Go!"

Fumo reached out, caught Hadzi's arm and pulled him after. "May all the spirits be with you, shaman," he said, his farewell sounding formal, final. Then they were gone into the jungle.

Clenching her fists, Jiri turned back toward the boat and started walking forward. In her hands, she could feel heat building, could feel the fire that came so easily to her when she was angry or scared, and she welcomed it. The egg trembled again, and this time a plate of clear gemstone the size of Jiri's head cracked free, sliding down from the top of the stone. Something flickered behind it, and Taba raised his spear, the heavy muscles of his back tightening. Everyone else was silent, still, watching.

The attack came fast as a lightning stroke.

Something whipped out of the hole that had been broken in the egg, something thin and flexible, like a rope of scale and muscle. It wrapped around Taba's waist, catching him and then slamming him forward into the egg. Jiri could hear the wet snap of bone breaking beneath flesh, and then there came another sound, a sharp, liquid noise, like branches cracking in mud, and Taba's body jerked. The smooth skin of his back broke, and there were six points jutting out of it, white things covered in red gore, needle sharp and long as speartips. Then they vanished, and Taba fell, crashing down at the base of the egg, flopping limply back like a broken doll.

The scars the leopard claws had left on him were gone, lost in the red ruin of what had been his chest.

The Jall ran then. Jiri barely noticed their flight, silent and panicked through the mud and into the jungle, gone. She was too focused on the egg, its shining surface now coated crimson.

Not here. Not here, no, not here.

But the gleaming eggshell crumbled, falling apart as the beast pulled its way out into the sun.

Coming Next Week: An angry hatchling in Chapter Four of Gary Kloster's "The Gem."

Gary Kloster is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel Firesoul, featuring the further adventures of Jiri. His short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Fantasy, Apex, Intergalactic Medicine Show, and Writers of the Future 25. Find him online at garykloster.com.

Illustration by Jasper Sandner.

Mike's Best Character Ever: Darago

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

When we were designing the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords Base Set, I proclaimed loudly that I wanted a necromancer as a character. The prototype game that inspired PACG was about messing with dead things, as folks checking out Lone Shark's upcoming Apocrypha Adventure Card Game are learning.

But back then, the Pathfinder RPG team quickly admonished me that while they admired my love of necromancy, a necromancer was a type of wizard, and thus I would have to wait until we had a product that contained a wizard who wasn't named Ezren. When Tanis started lining up characters for the Wizard Class Deck, I reserved a spot for Darago, the necromancer I wanted to unleash on the world.

Flavorwise, Darago is just fantastic. Darago has two ways to go after he starts trucking with forces man was not meant to truck with: He can become a Necromancer and raise an army of undead, or he can become a Soul Warden and battle people who do so. This is one complex cat.

But mechanically, that's where Darago became a trailblazer. The guy in the bone suit unlocked a vast part of the game we're still exploring.

From the start, I imagined that a player could place more than just boons in a character's hand. Even though banes didn't have checks to acquire, nothing prevented us from making a power that put a monster into your hand after you defeated it. But what exactly would you do with it? That, I theorized, was simple: You'd turn it into fuel.

"Fuel" is a concept I use to refer to any card that can be spent to trigger an effect. Lini, for example, uses allies with the Animal trait to fuel her powers. Darago is built to kill monsters that have the Undead trait and then combust them. So once he checks the appropriate feat, Darago can scoop up a monster that has the Undead trait and then banish it to add 1d4 to his check. And that's any of his checks.

Now, in an adventure without many Undead, Darago has a rough go. Thankfully, we don't actually know how to write one of those. And so Darago plows through the ranks of the fallen, throwing every Skeleton back at its bony brethren. If he checks another box on the Necromancer role card, he can pitch Zombies to help his friends as well, or he can keep the monster and just bank it as an extra hit point. This bag of party tricks is pretty darn fun to do.

But if he checks one more box...

...on his Necromancer role, Darago can do this trick with any monster at all, a vast improvement. Now Darago threshes every monster he meets, turning that nasty Ogre into a bonus on his check to acquire a card that has the Magic trait, which allows him to explore again and maybe find another Ogre for the same trick. After a couple of checkboxes, he's a blender.

Meanwhile, on his Soul Warden role, he can use Undead to draw his own cards. Put the Soul Warden near a Ghost, and he'll turn it into an Incendiary Cloud.

Evolutions of Darago: The Mancer Template

We called this bag of party tricks the "Mancer" template. For the design team, templates are phrasings that can be expanded and modified to make cool powers. Here's the template for Mancer: "When you defeat an X and would banish it, you may put it in your hand. You may banish a Y from your hand to Z."

Satisfied with Mancer's appearance on Darago, we put the template on Skull & Shackles Lini's Aquamancer role.

This allows Lini to hoover up monsters that have the Aquatic trait and banish them to help characters at her location fight. There are a whole lot of those. It's totally badass to play a gnome who picks up sharks and throws them at other sharks.

And then when we designed Wrath of the Righteous, that's when it really got nuts.

The summoner Balazar got two Mancer roles: an Eidolomancer for harnessing eidolons and a Tyrannomancer that can harness monsters. What's an eidolon, you ask? Meet Balazar's crazy snakebird friend, Padrig.

With Padrig in hand, Balazar is a Swiss Army Darago. You will be stunned at what he can do after he kills a monster. If there's a thing in the rules a character can do, Balazar can probably make a monster do it for him.

There might be more Mancers coming, too. It's all because a pasty-faced kid woke up one morning and said, "I'd like to rob some graves." And that's why Darago is my favorite PACG character.

Mike Selinker
Adventure Card Game Lead Designer

Society Unchained

Monday, April 27, 2015

Ever since its announcement nearly a year ago, players and GMs alike have been speculating about what would appear in Pathfinder Unchained. It was only a short step from there to start wondering what would appear in Pathfinder Society Organized Play. We started exploring this same question early in the book's production, and even then it was clear that some sections would not be a good fit for the campaign, others would absolutely play a role, and many others would require closer study. With the generous assistance of the Pathfinder Design Team and numerous volunteers, we were able to weigh the pros and cons and finalize what our Pathfinders might see in the field.

We'll start by discussing some of the sub-systems that likely come as no surprise to anyone, largely because they would require massive character rebuilds, severely impact how the game works for someone who just has the Core Rulebook, or require us to scrap the current XP system. Much of Chapter 3 (Gameplay) falls into this category; removing alignment, ditching iterative attacks, altering poison, heavy revising action economy, and introducing wound thresholds would invalidate considerable chunks of existing scenarios and possibly wreck how many of our existing characters function. Other features reference gameplay elements that simply don't appear in the organized play campaign, so dynamic item creation, alternate profession rules, fractional base bonuses, and staggered advancement are not a good fit. As intriguing as the many new skill options look, imposing consolidated skills, grouped skills, or background skills would just be too disruptive for a campaign in its seventh year. The same is true for many of the magic systems, including simplified spellcasting, spell alterations, automatic bonus progressions, and innate item bonuses.

Illustration by Tomasz Chistowski

Several other systems were not so cut and dry. We discussed the stamina pool system for quite a while before deciding not to include it; it is an extensive section that we may revisit in the future, but at this time it is not available in the campaign. We came to a similar conclusion for variant multiclassing. We are adding the Signature Skill feat for exclusive use by the unchained rogue—which I suppose spoils a later surprise. John is very excited to include esoteric components and scaling items on a few Chronicle sheets, but these items are not available for purchase otherwise.

Still, we imagine Chapter 1 (Classes) is the topic everyone is waiting for, and we have seen many of you making fairly accurate predictions. All four Pathfinder Unchained classes—barbarian, monk, rogue, and summoner—will be legal for use in Pathfinder Society Organized Play. The unchained barbarian, monk, and rogue are available in addition to the versions that appear in the Core Rulebook; as noted on page 8 of Pathfinder Unchained, "These classes can be used alongside their original counterparts (although individual characters must use one version or the other exclusively)."

In fact, we're so excited about these classes that we're announcing a one-time limited rebuild to anyone with one or more levels in these classes, allowing those characters to switch any levels in the four classes to their unchained version at no cost. This includes the automatic retraining of any rage powers or rogue talents, as well as the free retraining and selling at full cost of any feats, items, and other character options that no long function properly due to the unchained classes features. For example, a rogue automatically gains the ability to add her Dexterity bonus to damage, so she could sell back her +1 agile rapier at full price. Likewise, a barbarian with the Raging Vitality feat would no longer benefit from its increased Constitution bonus, so she could retrain that feat for free. Much like when we have offered free faction changes in the past, you'll need to take advantage of this opportunity before you play the character after April 29, 2015.

You may notice that we did not say the unchained summoner would be available alongside its Advanced Player's Guide counterpart. Effective immediately, the Advanced Player's Guide summoner is no longer available in the organized play campaign, and the unchained summoner is its legal replacement. However, we recognize that someone who already has a summoner (and the book to play it) should not be punished for this change. Therefore, if you have a character with levels in the summoner class, and you have played the character at least once at level 2 or higher, you get to keep your summoner as is; you may also continue to gain levels in the summoner class. Any character gaining a level in summoner for the first time must use the unchained summoner, and anyone character still within the 1st-level window of free rebuilding must also use the unchained summoner.

As a final note, we want to advise folks about archetype and other features' compatibility for the unchained classes for the organized play campaign.

• The unchained barbarian qualifies for any archetype that does not modify how the rage class feature operates (such as the urban barbarian archetype), and she is limited to any barbarian rage power that appears in Chapter 1 (including the rage powers on page 13)
• The unchained monk does not qualify for any archetypes, save those in future publications that specifically cite their compatibility with the unchained monk class.
• The unchained rogue qualifies for all existing rogue archetypes, but she is limited to any rogue talents listed in Chapter 1 (including the sidebar on page 24).
• The unchained summoner qualifies for all existing summoner archetypes, save those that modify the eidolon's type or base form.

The Pathfinder Society Team

Battle Foam for Pathfinder

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Hey Pathfinders!

This is Romeo Filip of Battle Foam, and I’m thrilled to share today pictures of the new bag we’ve been working on for Pathfinder!

Available late-spring 2015, the official Battle Foam Pathfinder bag is designed to carry all of your Pathfinder books, accessories, and other goodies, in new and exciting storage options.

We’re very lucky at Battle Foam to partner with the best companies in the industry, and working with Paizo and the Pathfinder brand has really pushed our excitement overboard while creating this new Pathfinder bag. We think it’s a must-have item for all Pathfinder fans, and we hope you agree.

Feel free to let us know your feedback here or Battle Foam on Facebook.

Romeo Filip
Battle Foam

UK Games Expo—Something for Everyone!

Saturday, April 25, 2015

UK Games Expo has replaced Gen Con as the biggest games convention in the UK. Four massive halls are packed with trade stands, costumed heroes and heroines pace the corridors, famous authors hold forth in seminar rooms, national tournaments are fought out across the tables and separate suites are dedicated to wargames, board games and roleplaying games of all description. Naturally Pathfinder has a whole suite to itself and the cream of the UK's GMs are running the latest Pathfinder Society adventures from Season 6, as well as many old favorites.

Legacy of the Stone Lords—bigger, better, loud and proud

On Friday evening you can take part in a multi-table Special with full sound environment from Syrinscape. They have kindly sponsored the PA system and visual display and will be bringing their atmospheric sound effects to enhance The Legacy of the Stone Lords. The UK was proud to run the play-test and now we are staging the fully polished final version with some fiendish surprises for players. This is the game that makes sense of the Season of the Sky Key. Expect a high pressure ride as you race against time for your survival. Join us in the Colonial Suite.

"The Timely Temple of Annihilation"

Make sure you save 20-minutes for a visit to the "Timely Temple of Annihilation" on the Syrinscape trade stand, K28 in the Kings Suite. If you can survive, against all odds, as the blood red sand trickles through the glass, you can win prizes. Ezren, Kyra, Merisiel and Valeros find themselves in a perilous place and you need to keep them alive. You'll hear them scream as the swords clash and the magic missile fly, accompanied by Syrinscape's sound effects. And enjoy the adventure in a fully 3D environment provided by Dwarven Forge!

CORE blimey guv! Max fun. Min rules.

UK Games Expo is the perfect place to try Pathfinder for the first time and we have some wonderful GMs running CORE games for newbies or for old timers. CORE games offer an easy entry into Pathfinder for players and for GMs, with maximum fun and minimum rules.

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game

There is no one better than UK Venture Lieutenant, Eran Aviram, to demonstrate the Pathfinder Adventure Card game. Don't miss this opportunity to pit your heroes against the traps, monsters, deadly magic, and despicable foes in these piratical adventures.

UK Games Expo takes place near Birmingham International on May 29-31. UK Pathfinder events are updated on the PaizoCon UK website.

Rob Silk
Venture-Captain, England—London

Happy Birthday to Me!

Friday, April 24, 2015

As I mentioned in last week's preview, Wednesday was my birthday, so for this week's preview blog, I want to be a bit selfish and focus on three of MY personal favorite figures from June's Dungeons Deep set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted plastic gaming figures.

Without further ado (and because I'm old now, and I'm rapidly losing patience), let's get on with it!

Here we have my favorite figure in the whole set, the Cruel Conjurer, from page 190 of the Pathfinder RPG NPC Codex. The Conjurer in that book is statted up as a 15th-level human wizard, but I think the figure works for just about any sort of evil mystic. I say evil because of the various hooked chains and things hanging from his belt, and for the foreboding hood he wears, but we all know a lot of player characters like to look a little tough now and again, so I can even see the Cruel Conjurer used as a player character mini. The Cruel Conjurer is a Medium, uncommon figure you won't believe isn't a rare.

Aside from a great sculpt and an awesome paint job, the Cruel Conjurer has two unusual elements that push it to the top tier of minis, in my opinion. The first is the unusual swirl of green mystical energy keeping him levitated off the ground. This is a weird effect for a mini in general, making the Cruel Conjurer stand out from the crowd, but the really exciting element here is the color of the energy. It's difficult to describe, and I'm not certain it comes out perfectly in the photos, but the green WizKids used here is an AMAZING shade of green. It's got just the right level of tone and opacity to create a very special effect. Whenever I take the Dungeons Deep figures around the office, the Cruel Conjurer is one that everybody highlights as a favorite.

But really, the coolest aspect of the Cruel Conjurer is his grimoire, which balances atop the green energy. WizKids went above and beyond with the tampo stamp effects on this guy to the point that his magic book even has magical writing on the pages! The photo above is a little rough and blurry, but you can see over his shoulder that this mini is reading a bit more than the usual blank pages so common among his 30mm peers. I love it, and consider the Cruel Conjurer the greatest birthday gift of the entire set.

But the Cruel Conjurer isn't the only disturbing figure in the set. For my favorite of the gross figures we've got the Mouth Horror, a familiar creature from page 153 of the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary. Dude is gross. I don't know what else to tell you except that you probably need three of them. The Mouth Horror is a Medium, uncommon figure.

And here's a figure that no one outside the office has seen yet, as we haven't taken him to any of our spring trade shows—the Emperor Cobra! Oversized snakes are a staple of fantasy fiction and gaming, and when it came time to add our own to the ranks of prepainted plastic, I just knew we had to go cobra. Inspired by Wayne Reynolds's cover illustration for Pathfinder Adventure Path #9: Escape from Old Korvosa, the Emperor Cobra stands well higher than a Medium adventurer, and its open mouth promises a nasty poison bite. He's even got a cool symbol on the back of his hood, as seen below. The Emperor Cobra is a Large, uncommon figure.

And that's it for my birthday favorites! Actually, there are so many cool figures in this set that I could add a handful more, but hey, I've got to make these previews last through June!

And now I leave you as a broken old man, crippled with age and arthritis, shuffling off into the slow decline into retirement.

Godspeed, all.

Erik Mona
Publisher

Now Available—Rise of the Runelords for Hero Lab!

Friday, April 24, 2015

Well met, adventurers! I travel here from the far-off lands of Hero Lab, bringing good tidings for GMs and players alike. Sit by the fire and heed my tales, and you shall discover how Hero Lab makes it easier to run your games!

As a GM who's been running Pathfinder and its forebears for almost 20 years, I'm always on the lookout for new ideas and stories to share with my players. Luckily, Paizo has the answer -Pathfinder's Adventure Paths have become indispensable tools for GMs like me, with nearly 100 pages of story, background information, and combat encounters released every month. We already include player content from each Adventure Path for free, and we're excited to announce that we're now bringing the encounters to Hero Lab!

The first Adventure Path up for release is the classic Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition. This new add-on package for Hero Lab gives you everything you need to run the combat encounters from Rise of the Runelords, including full details for every NPC and monster—even those referenced from other sourcebooks.

That means if a monster comes from the Bestiary, or an NPC uses a class from Ultimate Combat or gear from Ultimate Equipment, no problem! Hero Lab provides all the information you need to run the encounters, all included in this one convenient package. No more worrying about whether you have the right books or Hero Lab packages, or looking up statblocks during the game—this new package provides everything you need for use in all the Rise of the Runelords encounters. Every encounter and NPC is available to view, print, or use within Hero Lab's integrated Tactical Console.

And there's more! Are your players over- or under-levelled, or has an extra player unexpectedly dropped in to your game? Hero Lab has you covered - not only are all the Adventure Path encounters pre-built and ready to use, you can customize them to your heart's content by bumping up (or down) each adversary's challenge rating in seconds. With just a few clicks, you can add and remove templates, class levels, or even entire groups of enemies with our built-in Encounter Builder. Hero Lab automatically recalculates all the NPC and monster stats based on your changes, and the encounter is ready for use in seconds.

GMs (and players!), don't delay—Rise of the Runelords released for Hero Lab this week, so order your copy today! We're also planning to release a second Adventure Path in May—so GMs, keep an eye on our news page for more details, and players, tell your GMs to be on the lookout!

Not a Hero Lab user yet? Now's a great time to try Hero Lab for free, on Windows, Mac, and even the iPad!

Happy adventuring, and don't let those Runelords get you down!

Colen McAlister
Lead Developer
Lone Wolf Development

Unleashing Unchained!

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Alright everyone, this is the last blog before Pathfinder Unchained hits your local stores! Many of you have heard so far that with Unchained, we’re encouraging you to really experiment and play around with the system, so we thought we’d end with a bang and release information about two of the pieces of Unchained that we hadn’t previewed yet as well as give you even more content! That’s right, Unchained was so full to the brim with exciting rules changes and optional subsystems, that it couldn’t even fit it all. So let’s take a look at what we’ve got.

Illustration by Jorge Fares

First up is Automatic Bonus Progression. If you’re like me, you’ve probably been annoyed at some point or another that your characters more-or-less need to purchase certain magic items to keep up with the game’s math, and those items are super-generic and just add numbers. Why not take out the middle man and just give you what you need to keep up with the numbers, thus letting you be creative with where you spend the rest of your wealth, on fantastic and truly wondrous items. As the newbie designer, one of the first things I added to any of our books was a subsystem to do just that, and the subsystem in the book is an excellent addition to games that have low magic items as well! There are even rules to explain how automatic enhancement bonuses on weapons and armor will interact with special properties, like flaming. The system in the book is simple to adjudicate and curbs some of the potential problems with things like buying tons of different weapons with different iterations of the bane property (or making special qualities the workaround to boost your numbers ahead of everyone else, since you wind up making a trade-off). Take a look at this alternate approach, which allows you to follow the same mathematical progression for special properties, in exchange for using the table below.

Magic Weapons and Armor

Magic weapons and armor using this system never grant an enhancement bonus but instead grant only special qualities (up to a maximum of +5). Any quality that costs a flat amount is unchanged, but qualities that have an enhancement bonus equivalent use a slightly modified pricing system.

In this system, independent magical effects on weapons and armor can sometimes interfere with the process of attuning to the item. Therefore, each magic weapon and armor has a capacity, from 0 to 5, which indicates how much of a character’s attunement can apply to that weapon or armor. Any character who attunes to a magic weapon or armor gains an enhancement bonus equal to the minimum of her attunement and the item’s capacity. Increasing a weapon’s capacity requires a crafting cost of 2,000 gp x the total enhancement bonus of the weapon’s special abilities (and a market price of twice that). Upgrading a weapon that has a capacity greater than 0 requires paying the difference in the cost of the capacity. So for instance, a flaming weapon with capacity 0 has a crafting cost of 1,000 gp. Upgrading its capacity to 3 would cost 6,000 gp. If the crafter later wanted to upgrade the capacity 3 flaming weapon to flaming burst, it would cost 3,000 gp to upgrade flaming to flaming burst and an additional 6,000 gp because the capacity’s cost increases when the weapon’s enhancements increase for a total of 9,000 gp. In total, this weapon cost 16,000 gp to make and has a market price of 32,000 gp. Armor works exactly the same, but all costs are half as much.

Weapon Prices
Enhancement	0 capacity	1 capacity	2 capacity	3 capacity	4 capacity	5 capacity
+1	2,000	6,000	10,000	14,000	18,000	22,000
+2	8,000	16,000	24,000	32,000	40,000	48,000
+3	18,000	30,000	42,000	54,000	66,000	78,000
+4	32,000	48,000	64,000	80,000	96,000	112,000
+5	50,000	70,000	90,000	110,000	130,000	150,000

Illustration by Daniel Jiménez Villalba

Armor Prices
Enhancement	0 capacity	1 capacity	2 capacity	3 capacity	4 capacity	5 capacity
+1	1,000	3,000	5,000	7,000	9,000	11,000
+2	4,000	8,000	12,000	16,000	20,000	24,000
+3	9,000	15,000	21,000	27,000	33,000	39,000
+4	16,000	24,000	32,000	40,000	48,000	56,000
+5	25,000	35,000	45,000	55,000	65,000	75,000

But wait! There’s more! Early in the Unchained process, we decided to give you tons of sample monsters that use the new system. Later on, we realized that it would be even cooler if we also gave you step-by-step explanations of how we built them, to maximize your ability to make more of your own. You can guess what came next—explanations made each monster longer, so we had to cut a bunch of monsters. Well, the mighty tarrasque has something to say about that. It will not be chained. And while you read its mighty stats, here’s a flumph with laser beams!

Tarrasque CR/HD 25

Init +6; Perception +45 (low-light vision, scent)
Aura (DC 28) frightful presence (300 ft.)
Size Colossal (30 ft.); Speed 40 ft.; Special Movement rush

DEFENSES

AC 45 (touch 19, flat-footed 39); Fort +26, Ref +26, Will +21; CMD 58 (62 vs. grapple); SR 36
hp 616; regeneration 40 (cannot be suppressed, automatically rises from death after 3 rounds); DR 15/epic; Immune ability damage, ability drain, acid, bleed, daze, disease, energy drain, fire, mind-affecting effects, paralysis, permanent wounds, petrification, poison, polymorph, staggered
Defensive Options carapace

ATTACKS

Melee bite (reach 30 ft.) +38 (4d8+19/15–20/3 plus improved combat maneuver [grapple]), 2 claws (reach 30 ft.) +38 (4d8+19), 2 gores (reach 30 ft.) +38 (4d8+19), tail slap (reach 60 ft.) +33 (4d6+9)
Ranged 6 spines (range 120 ft.) +30 (2d10+22/19–20/3)
Attack Options (DC 46) critical striker, defense breaker, pounce, swallow whole (10d6+29 plus 10d6 acid), trample (12d8+51); CMB +56 (+60 grapple)

STATISTICS

Str +16, Dex +6, Con +12, Int –4; Acrobatics +45 when jumping
XP 1,638,400; N magical beast

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Carapace (Su) The tarrasque’s carapace deflects cones, lines, ranged touch spells, and magic missiles automatically, with a 30% chance to reflect them onto the caster.
Rush (Ex) Once per minute, the tarrasque can increase its speed to 150 feet for 1 round. This also doubles its bonus on Acrobatics checks when jumping.

The mighty tarrasque has a special DR type of epic, and a slew of special immunities. As it is the tarrasque, it has many more combat options than normal, and it has its own non-standard suite of attacks based on the expected damage (for instance, the 6 spines each do 1/3 of the damage for 2 primary natural attacks). The tarrasque’s spines and bite have a ×3 critical multiplier, and the bite has a natural 18–20 threat range before adding the critical striker option. The tarrasque also has two master skills instead of one master and two good (and one of the two is only at master level when jumping).

Well, that about wraps up our previews for Pathfinder Unchained! This book is shipping to subscribers now, and you should be able to find it in your local gaming store next week! Pick it up and unchain your game!

Mark Seifter
Designer

By Our Powers Combined!

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Changes have been brewing here at Paizo, and I'm pleased to finally share some of them with the paizo.com community!

Illustration by Liz Courts

Up until recently, the people who are behind the curtain, looking at flagged posts, responding to your emails, and peeking through tweets and Facebook comments have been doing so in addition to their regular day-to-day tasks—including getting products out the door, providing the best Customer Service possible, and working on integral parts of paizo.com and within the company. This kind of tactic has been challenging, and as our community has grown, we've recognized it's been changing and has different/new needs. Because of all that, it's become a real necessity for us to change as well.

We had to find someone who fit the role of Community Manager and also had an intimate knowledge and investment in our own community. Liz Courts is someone who has been invaluable to our community over the years. She's a presence that's been around on paizo.com for nearly as long as we've had forums, has been greeting newcomers with cookies, has worked and laid groundwork for the fan magazine, Wayfinder, and helped shape what PaizoCon has become today. And, I'm excited to announce that she's been moved to this position officially as of a few weeks ago!

As Community Manager, Liz will be on the front lines for forum issues, reaching out through our social media outlets, and coming up with new ideas for us to better communicate with you guys. She'll also be be working on not-yet-announced projects and initiatives for the community. Having someone who is as deeply passionate about gaming and the gaming community is a great opportunity for pushing us forward.

There's also another change that goes in hand with Liz's new role. Though you mostly see me posting "out of character" on our forums when things get hairy, I've also been creating and maintaining our digital products, generating and scheduling website content, and providing an array of customer-facing and internal support. Now, in order to assist and enable Liz to do awesome things for you guys, herd more cats related to all of the content on paizo.com, and guide our overall community policies and goals, I've been made into Paizo's Community & Digital Content Director.

These changes are brand new to Paizo, and our goal as the new "Community Team" is to make sure you feel like you're being heard and supported. We have come up with some really exciting things in these first few weeks (which we've only just begun), and I'm so, so excited for you all to start seeing the results!

Chris Lambertz
Community & Digital Content Director

What Inspired Firesoul?

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

This afternoon we're taking a break from our regularly scheduled Web Fiction, "The Gem" to have author Gary Kloster talk about the elements that were brought to life in our latest Pathfinder Tales release, Firesoul. "The Gem" will return with it's third installment next Wednesday!

I always have trouble answering questions like that. The problem is that I'm pretty chaotic neutral when putting together a new project. I start out with a mess of random ideas, plot, and characters, churning around in my head until it all clots into something that vaguely resembles a story. Then I get to spend a lot of quality time with a word processor prettying things up. So I'm going to pretend that I'm really a lawful good book planner, and slap a false veneer of organization over my chaos with the classic five question approach: who, what, where, why, and how.

What class should my protagonist be? I wanted this story to be rooted in a place, with a main character that had a strong connection to that place. A druid fit that well. And druid happens to be the class of the first character that I ever role played, which means I have a huge soft spot for them.

Where, in all of Golarion, should this story take place? The Mwangi Expanse. I wanted someplace rich in history, cultures, and nature. And I wanted a place that I haven't seen a lot of yet in Pathfinder fiction, especially from the viewpoint of the people who live there. Also, just to be honest, there are dinosaurs in the Expanse. And dinosaurs are awesome.

Who should the story be about? Like I said, I wanted someone with a strong connection to the place she is from. But I didn't want that connection to be easy. Jiri Maju, the young woman who is the heart of Firesoul, comes from a part of the Mwangi that bears a curse. Fire burns hotter and more eagerly there than it should. That curse runs through Jiri, and is a part of her gift for bargaining with the nature spirits that share their magic with her. Some of those spirits, the ones that burn hot and bright and dangerous, have always been too eager to serve her. Especially when she loses her grip on her emotions.

Why does the story begin? What happens when a group of adventurers find the Pyre, the hidden ruin that lies beyond Jiri's village of Thirty Trees? What happens when they ignore the warnings and break into that ruin and release something terrible that had been imprisoned there long ago? For the adventurers, the answer is simple—they grab the loot they came for and run. This place isn't anywhere they care about.

But it's Jiri's home.

How does it all end? Well that's the plot, and I don't want to give too much of that away. So instead, I'm going to talk about how I tried to prepare for writing this story, which, as usual involved a lot of reading. There was the background information, of course. Besides the Inner Sea World Guide, I drew from the Heart of the Jungle source book and the Serpent's Skull Adventure Path. For setting details, there was a lot of googling about jungles, along with questioning friends of mine who had lived or grown up in Africa and southeast Asia. Finally, I read books like Ocatavia Butler's Wild Seed, and Nnedi Okorafor's Who Fears Death, hoping that a little of their talent would rub off on me.

Despite the chaos of its beginnings, I really like how Jiri and her story finally came together. There's discovery, meaning, and growth—and monsters, magic, blood-drinking spears, and snark.

Oh, and of course there are dinosaurs too.

Gary Kloster
Pathfinder Tales Author

Chad's Best Character Ever: Seelah

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

When I talk to people about the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, I am inevitably asked, "Who is your favorite character?" For me, it's a bit like asking to choose my favorite child. As the lead developer for the game, I spent a lot of time and attention on every character, getting to know the good, bad, and awesome of each one. My honest answer is this: "My favorite character changes all the time. As I dive into each character, I really get to know its ins and outs, and usually, it becomes my favorite, at least for a little while."

That said, there's another answer that's both deeper and a bit more to the point: Since I started playing RPGs a long time ago, I've always especially enjoyed playing clerics, paladins, and monks—characters with strongly held beliefs that guide their actions in both everyday and extraordinary circumstances. In the PACG, that brings us to Seelah.

Pathfinder's iconic paladin Seelah is a bit of a badass. She first appeared in PACG in the Rise of the Runelords Character Add-On Deck alongside Amiri, Lini, and Sajan. Seelah has never topped the list of the most popular characters from Rise of the Runelords, but I'll let you in on a little secret: she's the best character in the set.

That's a controversial statement, so let me clarify. She's not the best at smashing or blasting monsters. She's not the best at acquiring boons, and she's not nearly as good at avoiding trouble or demolishing barriers as some. What Seelah does better than the rest of her party in Rise of the Runelords is explore. Her deck has a good mix of armor (in case something bad should happen), weapons (for making "good" things happen to bad people), and blessings (for helping herself and others). The first of her two powers gives her a good shot at dealing with whatever problems or opportunities might arise, while the second power lets her get through a location deck like nobody's business. Modeled after the paladin's ability to detect evil at close range—as well as her uncanny ability to have trouble find her, no matter how sleepy and bucolic the local village might seem—this power helps Seelah get through a location with speed and aplomb. In combination, these two powers let Seelah get to the good works that need doing: finding the problem and taking it down. In other words, winning. You're welcome.

With the upcoming release of the Wrath of the Righteous Base Set, we had a chance to show a different side of Seelah. Still every bit the badass, this take on Seelah is now less concerned with finding the evil hidden in the haystack—after all, in Wrath, the evil just isn't that hard to find. This Seelah is ready for war, able to take advantage of a monster's particular weakness and prepared to avoid the worst of a bane's initial onslaught. Given the assortment of nasty monsters in Wrath of the Righteous, I promise that you'll have plenty of chances to use her first power! Her second power extends her aura of divine grace out to include her nearby allies; in Wrath, you'll never be sad to have Seelah at your side. Finally, Wrath includes the new Corrupted trait, representing the corruption of the Worldwound intruding into the world. As a beacon of honor, Seelah will keep those tainted boons away from the world until they can be safely dealt with—destroyed, or perhaps even redeemed.

Once you get a handle on Seelah's character powers, you have a choice to make. Luckily, both of her role options are great! As an Inheritor's Blade, Seelah focuses on the aspects of martial and military practices that you might expect from a paladin of Iomedae in the Worldwound (and other, more... exotic locales). She learns to use her armor to keep her party safe, and she can heal herself or her allies when she displays Iomedae's blessing.

On the other hand, as a Wardstone Sentry, Seelah is even more expert on shrugging off and putting down demonic cults and monsters, be they summoned monsters or demonic armies. She becomes so deft at dealing with corrupted relics that they don't even slow her down. The potency of her aura increases, along with her opportunities to use it to aid her allies.

Additionally, Seelah in Wrath of the Righteous has a large number of good options for her mythic path, including champion, guardian, marshal, and hierophant. Plus, there's that other thing I can't talk about yet. I can say this: when Paul tells you about it later, you'll know what I was talking about!

Chad Brown
Adventure Card Game Lead Developer

Introducing New Product Launch Quests!

Monday, April 20, 2015

The Pathfinder Society team is always looking for ways to improve our relationship with friendly local gaming stores and offer things to help thank them for all they do in their support of both the Pathfinder Society Roleplaying Guild and Adventure Card Guild.

Retailers registered on paizo.com currently may receive a free Base Set for each Pathfinder Adventure Card Game adventure path in order to run Adventure Card Guild scenarios. Each week they also receive free copies of the Adventure Card Guild scenarios. And in the very near future, we plan on giving retailers access to the back catalog and all future scenario releases of the Roleplaying Guild scenarios.

We're kicking off this plan with an exclusive quest for retailers on April 29! This quest is based on and utilizes content from our latest hardcover release Pathfinder Unchained. In the future, our plan is to provide more exclusive quests coupled with new hardcover rulebooks upon their public release.

In this initial launch, the Unchained quest will only be provided to registered retailers. The registered retailers may schedule it as many times and on whatever days as they like, and it will be store exclusive through the end of PaizoCon. After PaizoCon, it will be made available as a free download for everyone! It is the registered retailers' responsibility to provide printed copies of the Quest to GMs to run the event.

Although the onus is on the retailer to make the most of this exclusive quest, I encourage all of you to speak with store owners and help them make the most of this opportunity. If your local store is not a registered retailer on Paizo.com, point them to our Retailers page to sign up!

We hope that the start of this new program, with the help of our VOs, will generate more interest in retailer exclusive content. This program will allow players and GMs the opportunity to familiarize themselves with new hardcover rules content, while allowing retailers to highlight a new product and hopefully boost sales in their stores.

To round out our latest hardcover release, next week's blog will feature how Pathfinder Unchained is being integrated into Pathfinder Society. This blog will highlight all the information you need to not only have a successful product launch in store, but how it will be be utilized for the foreseeable future in organized play.

Please let us know what you think, and as always, thanks to all of you for making PFS as awesome as it is today!

Mike Brock
Global Organized Play Coordinator

End of an Era—Sands of the Scorpion God Campaign Wraps Up

Sunday, April 19, 2015

The invite went out on November 25, 2008, three months after we released the Beta rules of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. James Jacobs, our beloved Creative Director (then Editor-in-Chief), sent the following email to a few select members of the Paizo staff:

"SO! It is time for us editors and developers and publishers to really start learning this new game we're building. One way to do that, the MOST FUN way, of course, is to play the game.

I've been mentioning this before, but I'd love to start up a campaign here at the office. I'm looking at running the game twice a month after work on every other Thursday, starting with the first Thursday after New Year's: January 8th of 2009. I was thinking of starting it in December, but after the holidays seems smartest so that we'll get a regular schedule going AND by then we should be more caught up AND by then the game itself should be closer to being finalized. This is not so much a playtest campaign as much as it is a "Learn the new rules" campaign, as a result. The first game will be on January 8th of 2009. It'll take place in the main conference room, and we'll start at 6:30 PM and play until 10:00 PM."

The first game started a wee bit later than James originally intended, as we were all too busy finalizing the Core Rulebook and getting it to the printer in time for its August 2009 release. The very first session actually took place on Thursday, March 19. You can read a recap of the first session (and several more) in the Campaign Journal on our forums.

The campaign was called "The Shadow Under Sandpoint," and was set in James's "home base" Varisian town of Sandpoint, which is heavily based on Point Arena, CA, where he grew up. That first session was mostly focused on character creation. Nine posts into the Campaign Journal, I piped up with the following comment:

"I finally settled on a name that reflects my first-level feat choices of Endurance and Die Hard: OSTOG THE UNSLAIN!

Let's see how long I can keep that title..."

The answer turned out to be six years and a couple of weeks. Last Thursday, April 9, we finally wrapped up the campaign!

The original players in Paizo's longest-running staff game were: Erik Mona, Sean K Reynolds, James Sutter, Wes Schneider, Chris Carey, and Jason Bulmahn. We were very shortly thereafter joined by honorary Paizonian and PaizoCon founder Tim Nightengale.

As the years went on, Sean, James Sutter, and Chris left the group, and Rob McCreary joined.

Our adventures in Sandpoint brought us up against key villains like the Red Bishop, the ghost of the serial killer Chopper, and of course the Sandpoint Devil.

In late 2011, James shifted the focus of the campaign from Sandpoint to the southern deserts of Osirion. He was eager for a change of scenery, but more importantly, he wanted to put us up against a huge challenge in the form of Gary Gygax's Necropolis, an enormous dungeon Gygax designed for the old Dangerous Journeys game. Our friend Clark Peterson had adapted Necropolis to the d20 rules system in a hardcover mega-adventure from Necromancer Games, and it was this version that James updated to Pathfinder, made his own, and sent us into like an ancient Egyptian meatgrinder.

Three and a half years later, we emerged into the burial chamber of the great lich lord Rahotep, eager to put him to final death. I was also eager to solidify Ostog the Unslain's title and reputation forever. Would we manage to survive?

From left to right: Thalestris (aasimar gunslinger played by Rob McCreary), Styrian Kindler (human bard played by F. Wesley Schneider),
Velmarius Elazarin (human sorcerer played by Jason Bulmahn), Howell Talbot III (human paladin played by Tim Nightengale), and Ostog the Unslain (played by yours truly).

I brought the Veuve, of course.

Even looking at these miniatures as I write this blog, it's weird for me to think that they won't ever appear on a gaming table together again. Nearly every other week for 6 years is a long time. I'm starting to get a bit wistful...

No matter. After throwing back some celebratory champagne, it was time to take the fight to the insidious Rahotep! By the time this session rolled around, we were 17th level with 2 mythic tiers. But all of us were worried that it might not be enough!

Our first battle was against a massive umbral dragon being ridden by "the Mother of All Boar Demons." You might not recognize boar demons. They're unique to Gary Gygax's Necropolis. Gary was kind enough to give them absolutely killer gaze attacks, which are always fun. Notice how the party is standing in a perfect group for a dragon's breath weapon attack...

We were still pretty confident, thanks in no small part to the huge number of precast spells Styrian the bard had pumped us up with. It got so out of hand we had to use the conference room whiteboard. Here's a peek:

To head off a few rules lawyers posting about how not all of these spells stack with each other... you're right. Some of the spells were only cast on a couple of us, and some of them were ladled on top of other bonuses to squeak out a little bonus even if most of the spell was not tremendously useful. We did it right, I assure you.

A quick note on the list to the right. Over the course of the campaign, each of us had gained a small statue of an Ancient Osiriani god, who acted as a sort of protective spirit at various points in the dungeon. Each of these acted as a "get out of one death free" card for the final session, where we ended up getting hit with multiple death effects per round. We'll check back later to see how that turned out for us.

With all of that buffing, we were able to dispatch the Mother of All Boar Demons and the umbral dragon without too much trouble. That led us to Rahotep's actual tomb, which looked like this:

Each of the Large miniatures represented a statue of one of the Spawn of Rovagug (did I mention Rahotep worshiped Rovagug?). And we all know nothing bad ever happens with statues in a dungeon, right?

The gentleman seated opposite us is James Jacobs himself, looking self-satisfied at the awesome spread he set out for us, and the fate he had in store for us. He also is about 100 pounds lighter than he was when the campaign started, so holy hell, let's raise some champagne to that!

The statues turned out to be horrific traps that _didn't_ spring to terrible life (much to our surprise), and in relatively short order we'd managed to destroy them and funnel their inherent energy into the room's central sarcophagus, opening the very tomb of Rahotep himself.

Very shortly, the room looked like this:

When the GM drops a Todd McFarlane action figure on the table to represent the campaign's Big Bad, you know you're in deep. The two tentacles, by the way, were the god Rovagug's ACTUAL TENTACLES, reaching through a planar prison to defend one of his most powerful earthly servants. If the tentacle touched you, you died. Period. It's at this point that the names of some of those Ancient Osiriani gods started coming off the whiteboard. If a name was erased, that god was forever banned from the world of Golarion.

With a great deal of effort, we managed to kill Rahotep. And that's when his mask came off and his skull immediately turned into a demilich.

The most shocking event of the night occurred when the demilich disintegrated our borderline-evil sorcerer Velmarius. That patch of dust in the below picture is Jason Bulmahn, lead designer of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. ZZzzzt!

Remarkably (for a character who had acted like a self-interested bastard for literally the entire campaign) Jason decided NOT to cash in his "get out of death free" Osiriani god token, reasoning that his life was not worth striking Osiris himself forever from the ranks of Golarion's deities. What a guy! Knowing Velmarius (and Jason), the sorcerer must have had something up his sleeve, but Jason played it cool and quiet. It was almost good enough to think that he was a little mad about his character dying...

We swiftly avenged our fallen ally and defeated Rahotep once and for all. Here's a look at the whiteboard at the end. Pay particular attention to the fact that Ostog never cashed in his get out of death free card!

OSTOG REMAINS UNSLAIN!
And here he is, being placed on the shelf for what I assume is the very last time.

James did a great job winding up the session with a brief story about each of the characters after the campaign. Ostog, apparently, has a linnorm with his name on it in the Lands of the Linnorm Kings. Will Ostog one day be a Linnorm King? It would take a pretty powerful member of the Paizo staff to make THAT happen, I reckon!

And what of the deceased Velmarius, the only character to truly die that night? Well, Jason had a plan for that all along...

I cannot summarize in a simple blog post what a treat and honor it was for all of us to play in James Jacobs's campaign. James is a masterful storyteller, and he always put in a ton of work to make sure that everyone was engaged and having fun. I'll miss the campaign terribly (though we're all getting together to start a Call of Cthulhu campaign on Thursday, so we'll still be playing together regularly). To James I say: Thank you, my friend. It was an absolutely fantastic campaign, and you are truly a legendary GM.

And since we're moving to Call of Cthulhu, I have no intention of naming my character "Unslain" or expecting to survive even the first session.

What a refreshing change death will be!

Erik Mona
Publisher

It's Alive—The PaizoCon 2015 Event Schedule is Here!

Saturday, April 18, 2015

The PaizoCon 2015 Event Schedule is live!

Clocking in at over 275 events over 4 days, PaizoCon 2015 looks like it's going to be our biggest and best ever! You'll get the opportunity to participate in exclusive lottery games, seminars, panels, and one-of-a-kind workshops throughout the weekend. We also will be debuting two Pathfinder Society Specials (Seige of the Serpents and Serpents Rise), and kicking off the Season of the Righteous for the Pathfinder Adventure Card Guild.

PaizoCon attendees can also start entering their preferences for the PaizoCon Event Lottery right now! The lottery this year includes games and workshops with limited seating, as well as the Pathfinder Society specials. It does not include panels, large seminars, or any the regular Pathfinder Society tables. Preference selections can be made until Monday, April 27 at 2:00 PM Pacific time.

The PaizoCon Event Lottery results will be available on Thursday, April 30 at 2:00 PM Pacific time. This is also when Open Registration and Event Trading begins, so you'll be able to register for non-lottery events, or swap seats with other attendees for events you may have gotten in the lottery.

Still confused about this whole "lottery" thing? We have a dedicated thread explaining the lottery process, buddy system, open registration, and event trading just for newcomers!

Haven't picked up a badge yet? Go ahead and grab yourself a 4-Day Badge or a Deluxe 4-Day Badge (which includes a ticket to the PaizoCon Banquet!) and get your selections for events in now! We also have a Kid's 4-Day Badge option for attendees 10 and under, as well as Banquet Tickets that are sold individually.

Interested in discussing PaizoCon with fellow attendees, fans, and staff? Want to discuss a specific event? Head on over to the PaizoCon forums!

Chris Lambertz
Community & Digital Content Director

GOLEMANIA!

Friday, April 17, 2015

This week I'm revealing two amazing figures from June's Dungeons Deep set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted plastic figures. The idea behind this set is to present high-utility figures based around a rough "dungeon" theme. This allows us to include whatever figures we want to, rather than attempting to adapt a specific adventure or Adventure Path. That's resulted in a few "dealer's choice" selections, letting us pick whatever we want for no reason other than "we think it looks cool."

Up until about a two years ago, "we think it looks cool" really meant "Erik Mona thinks it looks cool," as before that point I was more or less solely responsible for the selections in each set. That all changed when we added our Licensing Coordinator Michael Kenway to our team to help me out with the miniatures and other projects that involve working with teams outside the Paizo office to create cool Pathfinder-related content. Mike has been an invaluable assistant to me as he ushers sculpts, paint plans, comic sketches, soundsets, and scripts through the approval process.

But Mike Kenway is much more than just a paper-pusher. He got his start here at Paizo as an editorial intern, and has always had a keen interest in the Pathfinder RPG. In fact, every day at noon you can find Mike in our employee break room, running or playing in a daily Pathfinder campaign with several members of the Paizo staff. He knows his stuff, and his attention to detail is absolutely amazing.

So, a few sets back, I decided to reward Mike's excellent work by giving him an opportunity to choose a miniature of his own to include in a set—I think it was Legends of Golarion. Unfortunately, that set was the first to see a scale-back in the number of figures per set from 55 to 45, and Mike's enthusiastic selection didn't make the original cut for a variety of reasons. But it's been waiting silently in the shadows since then, eager for a chance to spread carnage when a slot became available.

Mike's first choice was this horrific Bone Golem:

The Bone Golem appears on page 133 of Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 3, where it clocks in at CR 8 and includes a creeptastic power known as "Bone Prison," in which it tosses some of its constituent bones at you to form a cage of bones that crushes you. A great guy to have at a party, or to protect the evil lair of a necromancer. In the image above we see the Bone Golem from the front, a jumble of skulls, ribcages, and muscle tissue just waiting to give a great big bear hug to your deserving player characters. The detail on this figure is insane. Take a look at his back:

More skulls. Maybe one day he'll add yours to his collection? The Bone Golem is a Large, rare creature. Way to go, Mike!

While we're on the subject of golems, let's check out the set's other major construct:

Here we have the Clockwork Golem, from page 137 of Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 2. If you're familiar with that book, you'll note that the design here is quite different. While the original version has a cool illustration, it didn't really sell the "clockwork" element as much as we would have liked, and its unusual limbs seemed ill-suited for a 3D miniature. So we had the creature re-illustrated for the Pathfinder Pawns Bestiary 2 Box, and that's the version we used as the basis for this miniature. The Clockwork Golem is a Large, rare figure.

And that's it for this week! To make sure you don't miss either of these two cool figures, please consider setting up a Pathfinder Battles Ongoing Case Subscription!

I'll be back next week (unfortunately one year older, as my birthday is Tuesday) with a special birthday treat—my personal favorite figures from the Dungeons Deep set!

Until then, I remain...

Erik Mona
Publisher

Magic Items Unchained

Thursday, April 16, 2015

We've all been there. We've faced the sad crossroads when we realized that our favorite magic item just wasn't cutting it, and we couldn't justify keeping it instead of equipping the new and shinier item the party just found instead. But what about the blacksmith who becomes a hero fighting with her father's sword? Or the halfling who found a strange item early in his career that turned out to be more than it seemed? That's where the scaling magic items from Pathfinder Unchained come in. These items scale as you level, allowing them to be an important part of your character (these sorts of items are called wonders) or a small and handy tool throughout your career (these are called baubles) or something in between. The math is all worked out to allow GMs to use a few different systems for the advancement, including automatic advancement (in which case, it's recommended to dole out less treasure if you want to keep the party at about the same power level) or advancement using rituals and gold (the easier method for someone running a published adventure). Scaling items have starting and ending levels for scaling, so I've included two of the most wondrous of the wonders: wonders that scale all the way up to 20th level!

Robe of the Faerie Queen

Price 4,800 gp
Slot body; CL 6th; Weight 1 lb.
Aura strong transmutation; Scaling wonder

When donned, this sheer, sleeved cape fades to near invisibility. It grants the wearer a +4 competence bonus on Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, and Sense Motive checks against fey. On command, the mantle glows in delicate faerie fire of any color, and a second command word ceases its glow.

8th Level: The mantle magnifies and sharpens the wearer's beauty such that her +4 competence bonus now applies to all Charisma checks, Charisma-based skill checks, and Sense Motive checks against creatures. Against fey, the bonus increases to +6.

10th Level: The mantle's wearer becomes manipulative and eloquent in social situations. Whenever she converses with creatures, she can insert a suggestion (DC 14 Will save negates) for every 10 minutes of conversation by succeeding at a DC 14 Perform (oratory) check. If she ever fails the Perform (oratory) check to use this ability, all creatures who witnessed her misstep are immune to this ability for 24 hours.

12th Level: Once per day, the wearer can release the glow within the mantle in a single coruscating burst of color. This blinds creatures in a 10-foot radius (Reflex DC 19 negates) for 1d4 rounds and completely dispels any darkness spells of 6th level or lower whose source is within its area.

14th Level: The wearer grows a pair of gossamer wings. The wings are delicate and weak, carrying the wearer only with difficulty. She gains a fly speed of 30 feet (poor maneuverability).

16th Level: The wearer's wings grow stronger, more agile, and more beautiful, as iridescent patterns trace along them. Her fly speed increases to 60 feet (good maneuverability), and she gains a +5 competence bonus to Fly checks.

18th Level: The wearer gains a small domain in the fey realm. She can access her domain from any location, creating a silvery gateway. Treat her domain as a mage's magnificent mansion except that its size is equal to 20 10-ft. cubes/level, the domain appears as a natural wilderness instead of a mansion, and the servants are tiny fey instead of nearly-transparent liveried servants.

20th Level: The wearer's type changes to fey, and she gains DR 10/cold iron. If the wearer's type was already fey and she already possessed DR/cold iron, her DR increases by 10 and magic weapons with enhancement bonuses of +3 or greater do not count as cold iron for the purpose of bypassing her DR.

Construction

Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, eagle's splendor, faerie fire, fly, mage's magnificent mansion, sunburst, suggestion, creator must be fey; Cost 132,000 gp

Crystal Tiara

Price 1,000 GP
Slot head; CL 3rd; Weight –
Aura moderate conjuration; Scaling wonder

Despite its fragile appearance, this intricate ice crystal tiara has hardness 12 and 10 hp. Its wearer gains the effects of endure elements against cold conditions only.

5th Level: Once per day, the wearer can summon a small ice elemental as summon monster II.

7th Level: As a standard action, the wearer can launch an icicle at a foe within 30 ft. as a ranged attack. On a hit, the icicle deals 1d6 points of piercing damage and 1d6 points of cold damage. The wearer can walk across icy ground without slipping.

10th Level: As part of her move action, the wearer can step into the air, creating crystalline stairs beneath her feat, adding new steps in whichever direction she travels, and melting away behind her. If another tries to climb the steps, they crumble away, leaving only the portions beneath the wearer's feet intact. This otherwise acts as the air walk spell. She can use this ability each day for 10 minutes per level, divided any way she chooses in 10 minute intervals.

12th Level: Once per day, the wearer can call forth an ice storm. When she uses the tiara to summon ice elementals, she can either summon 1d4 small ice elementals or 1 medium ice elemental as summon monster IV.

14th Level: Once per day, the wearer can travel to a safe, very familiar location, as if she had cast ice crystal teleport on herself. When she uses the tiara to summon ice elementals, she can also choose to summon 1d3 medium ice elementals or 1 large ice elemental as summon monster V.

16th Level: The wearer can use the tiara to call up a tower of ice, exactly as an instant fortress except that the tiara does not transform into the tower, the tower takes 1 minute to rise instead of 1 round, the walls of the tower only have 12 hardness, like the tiara, and damage to the tower does not carry over upon multiple uses of this ability.

18th Level: When the wearer calls forth a tower of ice, if there is enough open space, she can also choose to call forth a small palace instead, 100 feet square at the base with 20 foot tall rooms, with a central tower 20 feet square and 100 feet high. At will, she can spend 5 rounds to transform into a flurry of snowflakes that can move at incredible speed. Treat this as wind walk except she gains vulnerability to fire. It normally takes 5 rounds to transform back into her normal shape. However, she can revert to her original form early as a standard action. If she does so, she cannot transform into snowflakes again for 24 hours. When she uses the tiara to summon ice elements, she can also choose to summon 1d4+1 medium ice elementals, 1d3 large ice elementals, or 1 huge ice elemental as summon monster VI.

20th Level: The wearer gains cold resistance 30. When she uses the tiara to summon ice elementals, she can also choose to summon 1d4+1 huge ice elementals, 1d3 greater ice elementals, or 1 elder ice elemental as summon monster VIII. She can create ice stairs without a daily limit, and if she wishes, they last for 1 minute before melting, even if another creature tries to climb them. If she chooses to make them last longer, she can dismiss the stairs behind her as a swift action, potentially causing creatures climbing the stairs to fall.

Construction

Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, air walk, ice crystal teleport, ice storm, summon monster VIII, wind walk; Cost 132,000 gp

The magic chapter has even more surprises, including one of my personal favorite sections in the book, a narrative variant of magic item creation, complete with strange quirks that your item might develop ("My sword is sprouting tentacles!? Aberrant bloodrager, I knew we shouldn't have listened to your gut!" "Hey, the tentacles are helping, man!) Tune in next week for our final preview of Pathfinder Unchained!

Mark Seifter
Designer

Illustrations by Mattias Fahlberg.

A Look at Obsidian's Adventure Card Game

Thursday, April 16, 2015

I have the distinct pleasure to be part of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game digital team at Obsidian Entertainment! We are progressing towards an initial release this year starting with the Rise of the Runelords Base Set.

As fans of the physical version of the game, we are having a lot of fun bringing it to life on iPads and Android tablets. In some cases, we highlight the game's hardcore RPG roots. I think character selection brings this to life.

When we played the card game, it was clear that most of the character powers were in some way analogous to class powers, feats and skills you'd find in the Core Rulebook. And in Kyra's case, her powers matched the domain powers Sarenrae gave her (Rebuke Death and Sun's Blessing).

For those of you studying this screenshot, the page also has toggles for pass-and-play and permanent death. Though I am sure that all of you play by the book and destroy characters when they die in the physical game and will continue that time honored tradition on the tablet, we are giving new players the option to play a more forgiving version of the game. That being said, there will likely be specific rewards or achievements for playing through the game as Selinker intended, but that's a topic for another day.

When we started working on the concept for this game, we knew that we had a lot of tools at our disposal to amplify the "adventure" part of the card game. To that end, we are including things like MAPS! I've always loved Pathfinder's beautifully rendered maps and we have a perfect opportunity to use them to help tell the story.

Most of the time, Location Cards are analogous to specific spots on a map, and we are trying to match the lore as closely as possible (the farmhouse pictured has since moved to the outskirts of town). When you go to Magnimar or Thistletop, you'll encounter new maps.

When you visit and explore one of these locations, enhanced versions of the location card art become the backdrop for your looting and fighting.

One handy technical flourishes can be seen at the top left corner. As you encounter cards, the numbers underneath the Card Types tick down.

Before, I sign out, I want to give big ups to the team members bringing this bad boy to life! Kevin, Andre, Lindsey, Stephanie and Kristian, y'all are making a great game!

Nathan Davis
Producer
Obsidian Entertainment

Previously, Harsk of Rise of the Runelords
Currently, Ranzak of Skull & Shackles

The Tax Man Cometh!

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Hold fast adventurers! You may have earned your bounties chasing down bandits, or by slaying ferocious predators threatening farmers, but those roads you travel upon and the cities you spend your gold in require upkeep. Open up your money purses and remember—this is for the good of us all! It's time for a bit of lighthearted tax season fun!

Taxfest

On the 15th day of the month of Gozran, Abadaran priests accompany local tax collectors to ensure a fair and respectful collection of monies owed, as well as to ensure no foul play occurs on either side. The church does not believe in free handouts (indeed, going so far as to charge for healing services and scrolls), but on Taxfest, Abadarans put on a lavish feast to as many people as they can fit in their halls. In addition to the free meal, Taxfest provides a means for common folk to discuss directly with civic leaders on how best to spend the newly collected tax funds.

But while the celebrations take place, other members of the church are hard at work in the vaults and accounting offices of cities and nations everywhere.

Accountomancers

For some members of the Abadaran clergy, the truth held in Abadar's holy book, The Order of Numbers is more important than the rest of faith's trappings. Less often clerics, oracles, or paladins, in truth these "accountomancers" (as they refer to themselves) are folk who have mastered the intricacies of mathematics and numbers to further Abadar's purpose in Golarion. Residing in the banks and temples of Abadar, accountomancers ensure that proper procedures from The Order of Numbers are adhered to, and carry a ring of golden keys to indicate their rank. The most senior members of the order are addressed as Watcher, and bear a single large, unadorned gold key. Arbiter inevitables are the preferred familiar of accountomancers, as their flight allows the arbiter to assist accountomancers in the high shelves and expansive vaults, or any creature capable of climbing (like monkeys) or flying (like ravens).

Illustration by Crystal Frasier

Upon the completion of their personal copies of The Order of Numbers, accountomancers usually keep to the church of Abadar, administering to the collection and allocation of city taxes, assisting inquisitors who seek out tax evaders, or offering assistance on business practices and employment to gain Abadar's favor. The best accountomancers are sought out by archbankers and merchant guildmasters to review the financial health of city and guild, and these different divisions work closely together to support accuracy, completeness, compliance, justness, and order in their cities.

Taxfest is the holiest day for accountomancers, for while the cities of Golarion are deep in celebration, they busily record all of the past year's data in The Eternal Ledger. A holy book for accountomancers, the Ledger is held in a new city each year, with accountomancers making the journey to the host city to take part in the Ritual of Transference. The rite copies the entries in The Eternal Ledger to a copy held in the First Vault, and the city's accountomancers enjoy the prestige—and magical bonuses to many of their skills—granted by the holy tome.

Known Powers

Over the centuries of their existence, accountomancers have developed unique skills that have use far outside their dusty basements and dim offices.

Massari Method

School divination; Level cleric/oracle 1, inquisitor 1, sorcerer/wizard 1
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S, F (miniature abacus)
Range 30 ft.
Target see text
Duration 1 round/level

Developed by a pair of accountomancers dedicated to rooting out corrupt city officials in 4027 A.R., this spell was repurposed into combat applications when they had to chase down the offenders. When casting this spell, designate an ally within 30 feet. When you and your ally flank the same target, you gain an additional +2 insight bonus on melee attacks.

New Major Hex

In Triplicate (Su): As a full-round action, a witch can demand a target within 60 feet repeat its previous actions, or suffer the consequence. If the target fails a Will save, it must repeat the same actions that it did in the round previous, in the same order, against the same target (if applicable), for three rounds. If the target cannot repeat its actions, it suffers the effects of the misfortune hex for that round, but if it does manage to repeat three rounds, it gains the effect of the fortune hex for one round. If repeating an action would be suicidal or obviously harmful, the target may make a new Will save. You must have the fortune or misfortune hex in order to take this hex. This is an enchantment (compulsion) effect, and if a creature succeeds on their saving throw against this effect, it is immune for 24 hours. Cackle cannot extend the duration of this hex.

Fallen Accountomancers

Oaths taken by these Abadaran elite are not taken lightly, and oathbreakers viewed with a curious mix of derision, horror, and grudging admiration. Fraudulent and dishonest acts performed by an accountomancer while performing their duties are punished harshly, and immediately. Depending upon the crimes committed, stories tell of inevitables hunting down fallen members and permanently branding them, cutting them off from the source of their powers, or being cursed with poverty and ill fortune. Such axiomatic brands, often in the shape of a blackened and broken key of Abadar, are permanent, and even Katapesh merchants hesitate before dealing with one of these marked individuals.

Noted Abadarans

Archbanker Darb Tuttle (Guide to Korvosa), Black Olan (Pathfinder Adventure Path #8: "Seven Days to the Grave"), Howell Backus Talbot III (NPC Guide, Wayfinder #3), Jostlin Ferqyr (Guide to Absalom), Poss (Pathfinder Adventure Path #8: "Seven Days to the Grave").

Read more about the Master of the First Vault in Inner Sea Gods, and let us know what else you want to read about in the world of Golarion!

Liz Courts
Community Manager

Special thanks to our Counter of Magic Beans, Ashley Kaprielian!

Announcing the Season of the Righteous

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

We hope you're enjoying the Pathfinder Society Adventure Card Guild's "Season 0" trial run, Season of the Shackles. All six adventures will be available for purchase as of April 15, and we'll soon be making a Season of the Shackles deck available for purchase as a print-on-demand product at DriveThruCards.com. That deck will feature all the new cards we created for the season, so you won't have to use proxy cards if you don't want to. The Adventure Path loot reward Councilor's Ring will also be available at DriveThruCards.com at the same time.

We've learned a lot from Season of the Shackles, and we'll be applying that experience to make the next season of Adventure Card Guild play even better. Season 1, dubbed Season of the Righteous, will premiere with the launch of the Wrath of the Righteous Base Set on May 27.

Here's the planned schedule for the season:

	Early Release to Retailers/Coordinators	Compiled Adventure Goes on Sale
May 27, 2015	Scenario 1-1A, 1-1B
June 3, 2015	Scenario 1-1C
June 10, 2015	Scenario 1-1D
June 17, 2015	Scenario 1-1E
June 24, 2015	Scenario 1-2A	Adventure 1-1
July 1, 2015	Scenario 1-2B
July 8, 2015	Scenario 1-2C
July 15, 2015	Scenario 1-2D
July 22, 2015	Scenario 1-2E
July 29, 2015	Scenario 1-3A	Adventure 1-2
August 5, 2015	Scenario 1-3B
August 12, 2015	Scenario 1-3C
August 19, 2015	Scenario 1-3D
August 26, 2015	Scenario 1-4A	Adventure 1-3
September 2, 2015	Scenario 1-4B
September 9, 2015	Scenario 1-4C
September 16, 2015	Scenario 1-4D
September 23, 2015	Scenario 1-4E
September 30, 2015	Scenario 1-5A	Adventure 1-4
October 7, 2015	Scenario 1-5B
October 14, 2015	Scenario 1-5C
October 21, 2015	Scenario 1-5D
October 28, 2015	Scenario 1-6A	Adventure 1-5
November 4, 2015	Scenario 1-6B
November 11, 2015	(Veterans Day)
November 18, 2015	Scenario 1-6C
November 25, 2015	(Thanksgiving)
December 2, 2015	Scenario 1-6D
December 9, 2015	Scenario 1-6E
December 16, 2015	Scenario 1-6F
December 23, 2015		Adventure 1-6

Iconic Heroes Promo Cards

Season 1 will also allow characters to use promo cards from WizKids' Pathfinder Battles: Iconic Heroes miniatures line. Set 1 and Set 2 are available now, and at least four more sets will follow.

Each Adventure Card Guild character can treat the promo card that belongs to the iconic for her class as if it was in her Class Deck. For example, Wu Shen, a character from the Rogue Class Deck, would be able to take the item Footpad's Boots for any B or better deck upgrade, since we treat the set indicator P as 0.

If you're playing Merisiel in the Adventure Card Guild, you'll be in even better shape. Because Merisiel is listed as the card's owner, she can treat the Footpad's Boots as if that card has the Basic trait. That means she can start play with that card in her deck!

Change to Feat Progression

The biggest change to the PFSACG organized play system is a response to the feedback we've received from event organizers concerning the difficulty of mustering tables at small- and medium-sized events. Players from different local tables sometimes need different scenarios, but it can be difficult to backtrack and catch up. We hear that concern, and we're tinkering with ways to alter feat progression that will ease mustering problems. Details will come in the next version of the PFSACG Guide to Organized Play. In the coming days, we'll also be working closely with the organized play campaign's venture-officers to refine ideas and deliver the best possible experience for the first full season of the program.

New Guide to Organized Play

What a segue! That's right, the card game team is working on an updated version of the Pathfinder Society Adventure Card Guild Guide to Organized Play. This version of the guide will feature the update to promo cards mentioned above, as well as details on how the Wrath of the Righteous Base Set's mythic paths will be used in Adventure Card Guild play. We're also adding sections that explain how to fill out a Chronicle sheet, simplify the deck upgrade process, and address characters that want to play both Season 0 and Season 1. All the detail-oriented, rules-lawyering fun your greedy little heart could ask for will be coming to you through a download in mid-May.

Free Base Set Program for Retailers Continues

Retailers loved our free base set program as a way to get people into their stores and playing in the Adventure Card Guild, so we're continuing the program with the Season of the Righteous. Game stores that have registered with Paizo's retailer locator will be contacted in the next few weeks with details about how to get a free Wrath of the Righteous Base Set. If your store hasn't signed up, you'd best get to it!

Until next time, Pathfinders.

Tanis O'Connor
Adventure Card Game Designer

Faction Journal Cards

Monday, April 13, 2015

You may recall that back in November we first announced the idea of Faction Journal Cards, a new way to contribute to your faction's goals while also being able to experience the fun of factions in any adventure—even sanctioned Modules and Adventure Paths. Mike and I have both released some spoilers since then, showing off bits and pieces of the Silver Crusade's card to illustrate how the cards work.

I'm pleased to announce that the Faction Journal Cards are now available for download and use in Pathfinder Society Organized Play! The download includes an introduction explaining how to use the cards, but I'll also break the main concepts into a quick Q&A here.

Do I have to do anything special to get a Faction Journal Card?
Nope, you get one for free so long as you are a member of the faction. These cards are 100% voluntary, so you can ignore them if you want.

How do they work?
Let me summarize this quickly. Each card has three boons that your character can earn by completing certain goals on the back of the card. If you fulfill one of the goals during an adventure, you get to check one of the goal's checkboxes when you're receiving your Chronicle sheet. You unlock the boons based on how many goal's you have completed.

I am the GM more often than I play. Do these cards offer me anything?
Yes, there is a special faction goal that appears on each card and rewards a participant when she is the GM and applies the Chronicle sheet to that character. To get the full benefits of the card, you'll still need to play, but at least you're not missing important opportunities by applying GM credit to a character.

Some of these goals are really open-ended. Is that on purpose?
Yes. As noted, some are open-ended and others are very precise, and that's by design. It broadens the opportunities that PCs have to pursue these objectives, rather than forcing them to cherry-pick the one or two scenarios that would work—even tougher if you've already played that adventure. What this means is that there is a little GM interpretation involved in whether or not a PC actually fulfilled an objective. The Faction Journal Cards' introductory page advises GMs to err on the side of leniency when making that call.

One Liberty's Edge goal requires me to free slaves. Can I just find a random slaver, beat him up, and profit?
No, those conditions need to be part of the adventure you're playing. If the scenario involves slaves or other captives already, get ready to check off a box. If a scenario doesn't involve them, save it for another day. Remember that these goals (and cards) are supposed to be minimally disruptive to the game, and starting a fight that's not part of the adventure puts a burden on the GM and steals the spotlight from the other players.

I changed my faction after earning a few boons. What happens?
When you change your faction, you lose all benefits of any other faction's card.

I completely filled out my Faction Journal Card. Now what?
The good news is that we're hoping to release updated card sets for future seasons, each with some familiar goals and some new ones.

I would also like to thank both our new assistant developer Linda Zayas-Palmer for her valuable assistance in finishing this project and a local group of venture-officers and Pathfinder Society enthusiasts who have provided important feedback and playtesting as we have played through The Emerald Spire Superdungeon.

Get going and download the Faction Journal Cards! I'm excited to hear what you think of these!

John Compton
Developer

Two from the Codex

Friday, April 10, 2015

We've already revealed a ton of cool monsters and dungeon dressing from June's Dungeons Deep set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted plastic miniatures, and there are more to come in the weeks between now and the set's release. But Dungeons Deep has more than just creepy crawlies, and this week I'd like to focus on two figures from the set that are drawn from the fantastic art in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: NPC Codex.

Do you have the NPC Codex? I absolutely adore this book. Using the ready-made stats provided there has cut my prep time considerably in my own games, and it's great to have a whole army of classed characters at my fingertips. The book's excellent art is also a great resource for Pathfinder Battles.

As I travel around the country from convention to convention, I always enjoy chatting with hobby retailers and with folks selling our minis at their booths. And they almost always tell me the same thing: "We need more player character minis!"

It's unusual feedback, from a certain perspective. Hard-core minis collectors are often in the opposite camp. Over the years, they've already got a ton of humans, dwarves, and elves, and would much prefer that we focus our efforts on monsters, particularly monsters than have never before been made in prepainted plastic. Unfortunately, you can't run a successful miniatures business catering only to the hard-core collectors, as a set filled with nothing but catoblepases and flail snails is unlikely to impress the more casual collectors, who outnumber the hard-cores by at least an order of magnitude. And yet those hard-core collectors are the heart of the line, the folks who keep me always seeking out new and fun things to do with the minis line, and who support us release after release.

Customers at retail stores, generally speaking, come in looking for a figure to represent their character (a tough job for a catoblepas). The new Iconic Heroes boxed sets are a good answer to that type of customer, but the fact of the matter is that the mainline Pathfinder Battles sets need to serve both constituencies, which means I've got my job cut out for me when deciding which player character figures to include in a set. Too many, and I lose the hard-core collectors. Too few, and I lose the retailers.

In this environment, the NPC Codex is a godsend. Filled with awesome images of awesome characters, it gives me a great chance to pick and choose the figures I think will have the most appeal to just about everyone.

Here are a couple of my selections for Dungeons Deep.

This dashing gentleman is the Paladin of Abadar, Golarion's god of commerce and law. I've been looking for an excuse to include a "super good guy" mini in the line for a long time, and when I saw this guy's art on page 126 of the NPC Codex, I knew I'd found my man. He's perfect for any paladin or armored crusader in your campaign, whether as a player character or a haughty, annoying NPC. The Paladin of Abadar is a Medium, rare figure.

The imposing Dragon Smiter is also a paladin, but you wouldn't know that from looking at her. In fact, she's so covered in armor that it's difficult to tell much about her at all, except that you definitely don't want to get on her bad side. (Honestly, the figure is so heavily armored that it works as a male or female, and probably could be a human, elf, or half-elf with no one batting an eye.) The Dragon Smiter appears on page 120 of the NPC Codex, where she's a lawful good human paladin. For my money, she could just as easily be a villain. Either way, she looks cooool. The Dragon Smiter is a Medium, uncommon figure.

And here's a shot of both final figures together, haunting a plant in my office. I think they came out great!

See you next week for another look at upcoming figures from the Pathfinder Battles line!

Erik Mona
Publisher

PaizoCon 2015 Events Preview

Friday, April 10, 2015

We're just about ready to release the PaizoCon schedule, hopefully early-mid next week, and I've been getting super excited reading all the fantastic event descriptions as I've been working them into the schedule. While the full schedule isn't quite ready to be released yet, I thought you might like a sneak peek at some of the fantastic programming planned for PaizoCon 2015.

In addition to over 30 tables of Pathfinder Society and Adventure Card Game per session we have a ton of Paizo Staff, 3rd Party Publishers and other community members running games, seminars and workshops. Some are PaizoCon classics like "Secrets of Golarion", "Horror in RPGs", "The Whaler's Bluff Project" run by James Jacobs and "Kings of Absalom" run by Erik Mona. And some are new offerings like "Last Character Standing Gong Show!", "Crayon of Vecna", "Goblins and Dinosaurs" run by Crystal Frasier, and "PaizoCon Apocalypse" run by Jason Bulmahn.

Here's a look at what's in store!

"Secrets of Golarion"
Discover what's going on in the wide world of Pathfinder's official campaign setting, and participate in a Q&A with the people who create the mysteries of Golarion!

"Horror in RPGs"
Join some of Pathfinder's most macabre authors as they once again offer their game mastering secrets and terror tips to help you turn your roleplaying game into an experience sure to leave your players shaking.

"The Whaler's Bluff Project"
Thorne House has long stood on the cliff above the tiny town of Whaler's Bluff, where its history of hauntings became a local legend before culminating decades ago in a sensational confrontation between a strange cult and the police. Today, Whaler's Bluff is itself practically a ghost town, its citizens withdrawn and private, largely uninterested in the outside world. But when eager young filmmaker Ryan Wallace goes missing in Whaler's Bluff, the outside world takes notice. Did he really just run off with his investors' money, or did he actually spend the night in Thorn House, only to fall victim to foul play? Does any of his footage survive? This Call of Cthulhu adventure is set in the modern day, where YOU play the role of investigators sent to unravel the strange mystery of Thorne House!

"Kings of Absalom: Fall's End"
Deep below the city of Absalom, a rag-tag group of escaped slaves arrives in the cutthroat underground settlement of Fall's End, where the scum of the Darklands boils up to meet the desperate drippings of the world above. Their packs laden with treasures, the heroes must fight to survive and find a way to the surface in this freeform open world exploration. Bring your own 4th-level character and a painted miniature.

"Last Character Standing Gong Show!"
Put the stat blocks aside and tell us in your own words why your character is the best! See how long you can last before our panel of evil judges, and compete for the grand prize. Everyone who participates in this fun, open-entry competition will receive a prize!

"Crayon of Vecna"
Come spend a couple of hours drawing with Liz Courts of Paizo, and Lj Stephens of Rogue Genius Games. All skill levels welcome. Live cosplay models will be available in various genres. Door prizes and some art supplies provided. Artists, cosplayers, photographers*, even just the curious, are all welcome! (*photographers, please bring model release forms if you wish to use your photos for commercial purposes, thank you).

"Goblins and Dinosaurs"
Goblins are attacking Sandpoint, and they're done playing nice! Where did they find dinosaurs? How did they get lasers? Can the heroes of Sandpoint stop their Birdcruncher tribe before they turn time itself into the biggest pickle of them all?

"PaizoCon Apocalypse"
It's a usual evening at PaizoCon. Everyone playing Pathfinder, hanging out with staff and other guests. Wait, did somebody just get bit? Why are there people shambling through the halls... This event will be played using the End of the World game system.

PaizoCon isn't all about Paizo though, it's about the tabletop roleplaying community; making new connections, discussing new ideas, and reminiscing with old friends. In addition to Paizo staff, you'll be throwing dice and attending seminars with representatives from the industry (Obsidian, Kobold Press, Frog God Games, Legendary Games, Lone Wolf, Reaper, Jon Brazer Enterprises and Necromancers of the Northwest to name a few). In support of this portion of the community, we will again have Executive Editor James Sutter and Senior Editor Chris Carey hosting manuscript workshops. We'll be expanding our 3rd Party Publishers Workshop run by Community Manager Liz Courts to include Developer Owen K.C. Stephens and Accountant Ashley Kaprielian. For 2015 we've also put formal Portfolio Reviews with our Art department on the schedule, so if you've been wanting some professional constructive criticism of your artwork, you'll be able to meet with Managing Art Director Sarah Robinson, along with Senior Art Director Andrew Vallas, Art Director Sonja Morris, or Graphic Designer Emily Crowell.

I've been having a great time reviewing all the events going on the schedule and I'm looking forward to showing off the rest of the events! We have more than we've ever had on the docket before and I am so excited to see everyone at PaizoCon in just 42 short days!

Sara Marie
Customer Service Manager

Unchained Skills and Feats

Thursday, April 9, 2015

If classes are the main chassis of a character, skills and feats are its nuts and bolts. When they let us designers loose in Pathfinder Unchained, it's only natural that we wanted to play around with how the nuts and bolts attach, and even try changing the shapes of those nuts and bolts entirely! In Chapters 2 and 3 of Pathfinder Unchained, there are not only several daring subsystems that play with feats, there so many different options for restructuring skills that it's easy to lose yourself in all the possibilities. I've gathered some of the coolest tidbits from all those options to share with you today!

Starting with skills, the three major skills options each serve a different goal.

Illustration by Géraud Soulié

I Need More Skills to Flesh Out My Character
The background skills variant separates out certain skills as background skills as opposed to adventuring skills. It also adds some new background skills to the game, such as Lore, a very specific version of the Knowledge skill. To round it out, everyone gains 2 extra skill points to spend on background skills, no matter your class!

There Are Too Many Skills
The consolidated skills variant serves a somewhat opposite goal, combining current skill functionality into only 12 skills.

Assigning Skill Points Can Be Tough
The grouped skills variant makes it easier to assign skills, speeding up the level-up process. It also gives characters a middle tier of skills that they are pretty good at, rather than most characters having mostly max ranks, 1 rank, or no ranks.

As cool as the skill sections are, the sections involving feats are the showstoppers of today's blog!

Variant Multiclassing
Have you ever wanted to multiclass your character for flavor reasons—maybe pick up some bardic performances and versatile performance to represent the time you unexpectedly spent studying music one adventure—but then you realized that your character would be pretty significantly handicapped by taking those two levels in bard? It happens all the time, and it requires you to sacrifice something whichever choice you take. With the variant multiclassing option, you can choose a secondary class and trade out half your feats (3rd, 7th, 11th, 15th, and 19th) to instead gain a progression of special abilities based on which class you pick. Want to be a fighter who dabbles in divination magic such that he always acts on the surprise round or vexes his foes with hexes? You're covered. Want to be a druid who specializes in taking out dragons as her favored enemy or flies into a rage when the natural world is in danger? You've got that too. With variant multiclassing, you can open more combinations than ever before, without delaying your access to your main class's cool new features!

Stamina System
The stamina system offers new powers for every combat feat in the RPG line. Yes, you read that right: it specifically lists every combat feat in the whole line and then grants each feat new powers. Right from the start, the system offers options for you to just give the system to fighters or to give it to all martial characters, depending on your preference. Stamina is a new resource that allows martial characters to boost themselves and use their feats in new and exciting ways. It regenerates relatively quickly between battles, allowing you to enjoy an entirely new mindset to your daily exploration; a party of stamina-users benefits from hit and run guerilla tactics, emphasizing the value of mobility, stealth, and timing (as opposed to the mindset of "buff, buff, buff, speed through!"). Stamina lets you boost your effectiveness or change the rules of the feat in your favor. These special stamina powers are called combat tricks. While I'm sure that the ways to use stamina to boost your effectiveness will be quite popular (like Critical Focus, where under certain conditions, you can increase your critical multiplier, potentially multiple times if you roll high enough), I'm a fan of the combat tricks that let you retroactively apply an effect (like declare a Stunning Fist after you already know your attack connected), and my absolute favorites are the ones that let you trick your opponent through devious tactical play. For instance, the Combat Style Master combat trick allows you to spend stamina to switch your styles as an off-turn free action. So you can lure people into attacking you and then suddenly be in Snake Style before they can even call off the attack! In the same vein, I also really enjoy the combat tricks that let you use your powers when you normally couldn't, since that has two cool psychological effects: not only can it present great "gotcha" moments, but once your enemy knows you can, say, spend stamina to take a second attack of opportunity against them from the same opportunity, it changes the way they view your threat, and it might allow you to control their actions without even spending your stamina!

Tune in next time to learn more about magic—specifically, the new scaling magic items in Pathfinder Unchained that grow with your character!

Mark Seifter
Designer

The Origins of Origins

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Of the many pleasant surprises we at Paizo have run into since Pathfinder's inception, one of the biggest remains the popularity of our iconic characters. Perhaps we shouldn't have been surprised—after all, when Wayne Reynolds is doing the art, it's hard to not fall in love with whoever's getting painted. But when you get right down to it, the iconics were created to be tools. (And one might argue that some of them still are—we're looking at you, Alain!) The whole reason for their existence was to keep us from having to explain to each new artist what made a ranger a ranger and a rogue a rogue—we could just hold up Merisiel and say "draw her." But people started asking questions about the backstories, and before long we were writing Meet the Iconics blogs and seeding little bits of iconic fiction in the hardcover chapter introductions. Yet we held off on doing more, always feeling like the time wasn't yet right.

Then came Pathfinder comics. Before the contract with Dynamite even hit the table, we knew that we'd found our chance to bring the iconics to life. With Jim Zub as our writer, we knew the iconics were in good hands, and it was a thrill to sit back for a change and watch them go.

But we still had far more iconics than just that core team, and after several story arcs, we really wanted to tell more tales from the main series characters' early lives. So Erik Mona came up with the idea of Pathfinder Origins, a place for us to explore how our heroes got to be who and where they are, as well as introduce some of our other favorite iconics. With Jim busy on other projects, it was up to three of us Paizo staffers—Publisher Erik Mona, Editor-in-Chief F. Wesley Schneider, and Executive Editor James L. Sutter—to chart the course.

Since Erik's already spoken at length about the first issue, we brought in Wes and James to talk about issues two and three, both available now!

Pathfinder Origins #2

I think it's no secret that getting to write for comics is something of a dream come true for all three of us. While we'd all written our share of art orders, to be able to see an entire story come to life in the hands of a talented artist is a special kind of thrill, and it still hasn't worn off. (As everyone who sits near me in the office can attest, I still can't help but crack up every time I look at Vint the ratfolk from issue #2.)

For me, there was never any question of which characters I most wanted to write—a Kyra and Seelah team-up was simply too good to pass up, for a number of reasons. It's well established that I like writing about religion in Pathfinder, and here was an opportunity to show interactions between two characters of different good-aligned faiths. I wanted to show that paladins don't have to be gruff hard-liners or sticks-in-the-mud, and to explore that interplay between righteousness and redemption. And most of all, I wanted a cover that was two badass women-of-color warriors in sensible armor—which Stjepan Sejic (of Rat Queens, Witchblade, and more) delivered and then some.

Many thanks to everyone who's already picked up the issue (and double thanks to anyone who's reviewed it!). I can't wait to come back and show you all issue #4, in which the torturers of Nidal learn why locking up Merisiel causes more problems than it solves...

James Sutter
Executive Editor

Pathfinder Origins #3

Seoni got short shrift. Being the second character to get a Meet the Iconics blog in Pathfinder's earliest days, her write-up lacks much of the in-world detail of those that came later. While we got a bit more on Seoni's background in scattered pre-generated character write-ups and in the NPC Codex, details on her remained pretty thin for a long time. That changed a bit with issue 5 of Pathfinder Dark Waters Rising. In there, Jim Zub presented a grim flashback to Seoni's youth—the manifestation of her magic, getting her tattoos, and interactions with other Varisians. It was more than we'd seen before, but also raised several even more tantalizing questions.

Hazy details weren't the only complexity we had with Seoni, though. Over the years, we heavily detailed the Varisian people and their culture—Seoni's culture. Gradually, a bit of a gulf formed between Seoni's appearance and what we'd defined as the Varisians' traditional look. So what's the deal?

Then, atop that heap of quandaries, there was the ever-popular question: Why's Seoni dress like that?

Mysterious history, atypical appearance, distinctive dress—oh, and did I mention she's lawful neutral too? Despite being one of our most popular iconics, Seoni sure seemed to present more questions than answers. So, when the chance to work on the Pathfinder Origins series came up, I knew I wanted a crack at figuring some of those mysteries out!

As a result, Pathfinder Origins #3 reveals more about Seoni than we've ever seen before. Want to know about her life exploring Varisia? There's a good bit of that. Want to know about her family? Turns out Seoni looks a lot like her mom and has a little brother. How'd she wind up with her robes? Well, they didn't look like that to begin with. What's the real story with her tattoos? That's exactly what she's trying to find out.

For all the details about Seoni's past, though, the real story's about her early days learning what it means to be an adventurer and a leader. She's not taking the easy road either, navigating the rigid city of Korvosa, dealing with Hellknights, and reawaking ancient Thassilonian magic. Fortunately, in the course of things, she learns something her magic's really good for and that her strength comes from more than just slinging spells. The comic presents the perfect medium not just to show off more of Varisia, but also to highlight Seoni's personal brand of explosive problem solving. Overall, I think folks are really going to dig learning about one of Pathfinder's most dynamic characters, while still wanting to know more about the leader of the iconic team.

Oh, and my personal favorite iconic, Seltyiel, shows up. I figured that if we're showing some skin, we'd better make sure there's something for everyone.

F. Wesley Scheider
Editor-in-Chief

There's still time to get in on the action! Be sure to pick up the first three issues of Pathfinder Origins, available right here on paizo.com or in comic shops everywhere. Also, check out the awesome Paizo Exclusive covers for issues Origins #1: Valeros, Origins #2: Kyra, and Origins #3: Seoni, only available here on paizo.com!

The Gem

by Gary Kloster

Chapter Two: Thirty Trees' Treasure

The crocodile's jaws looked as big as Jiri. Its huge tail pushed it with the flooded river's current, angling toward the drift of brush that Jiri clung to. It would slam into that loose pile of logs and knock Jiri, Fumo, and Boro into the water.

Where they would all get to see exactly how big the crocodile's jaws were.

"Girl, are you as useless as you are cursed?" Fumo shouted. "Use your fire!"

Jiri could feel the fire in her hands, and the logs she clung to were beginning to steam with its heat, but she ignored it, ignored Fumo.

I don't think I'd hit it. I don't think it would turn it if I did.

Turn it.

Jiri held the fire inside her and reached instead for another spirit, tangling her soul in its magic, calling for its aid. In the river beside the crocodile, a fin broke through, bright pink against the dull-red water. The river dolphin Jiri's magic had summoned was barely a third the size of the crocodile, and Jiri doubted the armored reptile was hurt when the dolphin rammed into it, but that didn't matter. The charging attack, and then the crocodile's twisting reaction to it, was enough. The flood current caught the reptile and swept it away from the snag, rushing the animal downstream.

"Thank you," Jiri shouted to the dolphin as it jumped up out of the water and disappeared. She clambered to Boro and drove her hand underwater, reaching for his caught foot. Her head almost went under before she found it, jammed into the crook of a branch. Boro's muscles tightened in pain under her hand as she pulled at it, but it wouldn't come loose.

"Hold him," she told Fumo. Jiri stopped pulling and shoved against Boro's stuck foot instead, twisting it hard. Boro shouted, and his hand tore at Jiri's braids, but she fought away and pushed until Boro's ankle popped beneath her hand and his foot came free. Jiri almost fell between the logs as Fumo jerked his son up, out of the water, safe.

∗ ∗ ∗

"You broke his ankle." Fumo frowned down at his son's twisted, swollen leg as Hadzi laid him out on the stone outcrop.

"I had to," Jiri said, bending over the young man. "To get him free."

"I know that," Fumo said, shaking his head. "But I thought you could have done some kind of magic. I could have popped his ankle."

"You should have," Jiri said.

"I—" Fumo started, but Jiri raised her voice over his protest.

"Hold him still."

"I can hold still," Boro said through clenched teeth.

"Of course," Jiri said, her scalp still aching from where Boro had tried to rip out her braids, and looked at Fumo. The man frowned at her, but he bent to grab his son and held him down, ignoring his curses. Those curses turned incoherent when Jiri took Boro's injured foot by the big toe, pulling up until the bones slid into place and his foot was no longer twisted at an angle. Then Jiri called on the spirits, asking them to help, to heal.

Boro relaxed suddenly. Below Jiri's hands, his swollen ankle shrank to its normal size, marked only with the mottling of old bruises.

Happy now, Fumo? Could you have done that? Jiri kept her thoughts quiet this time, though.

"Oh, thank all my ancestors," Boro groaned. "And you, shaman. You saved my life."

Jiri shrugged, embarrassed and unsure, especially when she realized that everyone was staring at her. "It's—I— We should go back. It's dangerous near this water."

"Two can take Boro back," Fumo said. "I need the others."

"For what?" Jiri stood, acutely aware that Fumo wouldn't have spoken to Oza like that. "That snag could tear apart at any moment. Nothing's worth the risk of being out there when that happens."

"This is."

Jiri frowned at Fumo. The man was second only to the wara in the village. And Oza, of course. But he liked to act like he owned Kibwe. "Show me."

∗ ∗ ∗

The boat lay at an angle in the snag. Jiri moved carefully across the tilted wood planks that made a deck over the back half of the boat. The front was open, and she could see bits of cargo and debris floating on the water that swirled around the ship's ribs.

"Here," Fumo said, dropping down from the deck. Jiri followed, and stared at the dark hollow beneath the deck. A single crate filled the space, taller than Fumo and wider than both of them together, its wood so raw it still bled sap. Thick ropes lashed it in place, but the crate was scarred from where other cargo had slammed into it. Fumo pointed to a broken gap in its side.

Jiri plucked a stick out of the water splashing around her feet and called to the spirits as her hand swept through the air. Shadows flickered and vanished behind her fingers as she gathered sunlight and shaped it into a glowing golden ball that she fixed to the end of the stick.

In her spell-wrought light, the rough facets of the gem that filled that huge crate gleamed like a hundred thousand stars.

Hadzi hopes to one day become the wara himself.

∗ ∗ ∗

"That thing is worth a thousand mango harvests." Fumo's hands worked, splicing broken ropes together. "We'll all be rich."

"It's not ours," Jiri said.

"It is now," Hadzi said. "We found it. A diamond almost as big as a hippo!"

"A diamond," Jiri said. She reached through the broken crate and rested her hand lightly on the huge gem. It felt hard and cool beneath her palm, like rough glass. Then a shudder ran through it, as if some unseen blow had struck the shining stone. The whole boat was shaking as the river rolled around it, and it might have been just that, but...

"Can gems even be this big?" Jiri said.

"They are in stories," Hadzi said. His smile lit his face, making him even more handsome, but that wasn't enough to pull Jiri's thoughts out of the spiral that they were caught in.

Oza told me something, once, about a great jewel. A story? Some legend about lost treasures, like he told to the village children sometimes? Jiri pulled her hand away from the rough surface of the gem. No. Something else.

A warning?

She couldn't remember.

"Hadzi, take this." Fumo handed his son one end of the rope he'd spliced together. "Tie it to those braces. We'll anchor the ship to those trees, and move the gem as soon as the water drops."

If this whole boat isn't battered to pieces before then.

Jiri didn't say anything. She had her misgivings, but Fumo didn't, and she didn't think Fumo was going to listen to her. Best to let them finish, then get them off this wreck before it sank.

They would have listened to Oza.

Jiri frowned at the water rushing past, and she saw it. A dark shape in the water, twisting in the current. Her heart quickened, but it wasn't another crocodile. No, she could see the twisted ball of roots at one end, the ragged, broken crown of branches at the other. A whole tree, washed out by the storm. It caught in an eddy and spun in a slow circle, out away from the terrible current of the river's center, spinning away, spinning toward—

"Off the boat!" Jiri whipped around, and Hadzi was staring up at her curiously from the knots he was tying, while Fumo was shouting at a woman on the rock, telling her to tie off a line. "Off!" Jiri shouted. "Now!" She started to scramble up the slanted ribs of the boat, but she was already too late. She heard the splintering crash as the broken roots of the downed tree slammed into the ragged edge of the logjam the boat was caught in. Fumo looked back, his eyes wide, as the boat jumped beneath them like a guinea hen taking flight.

The side of the boat rose up and slapped Jiri. For a moment the world was just swirling color, bleeding toward darkness, but she wrenched her senses back. She was tumbling with the tilting boat, heading toward the water. Lashing out, her hand closed on the edge of a broken rail. The rough wood tore at her palm but she held on tight, stopping her slide. Then something smashed into her.

Heavy, it rolled over her, almost ripping her from her grip. She cursed, and the thing cursed back, and her free hand reached out and caught a handful of cloth. Hands grabbed her back, and she looked down to see Fumo gripping her leg.

"Can you hold?" he shouted.

Jiri's hand was in agony, splinters driving into it as Fumo's weight pulled at her. "Yes," she hissed between gritted teeth. Throwing her head back, she saw Hadzi clinging tightly to the ropes he had been knotting into the boat's bracing. "Help," she grated as the boat spun in sickening circles, its wood groaning and popping.

Hadzi took his rope and started crawling down the tilted hull toward them. When he moved, the boat tipped more, the edge of the hull dipping toward the swirling water.

"No!" Jiri shouted.

"Keep still, idiot boy, you'll sink us!" Fumo yelled. "Throw the rope!"

Hadzi shifted back up, the boat shifting a fraction with him, and threw the rope. It landed across Jiri's face, but with both hands full there was nothing she could do about it but curse. Then the agony in her hand diminished. Fumo had caught the rope and let go of her. Gasping in relief, Jiri almost let go, but that would still kill her, and she made her fingers hold on until Fumo pulled himself past her. He caught the collar of her shirt, jerking on it, and Jiri let go then.

Jiri slid enough to choke on the collar of her shirt, but she didn't fight. She let Fumo haul her up to where Hadzi was, and the boat tilted back a little more toward even as their weight counterbalanced some of the weight of the gem's crate, which had shifted when the tree had struck them.

"What do we do now?" Hadzi said, clinging to the braces that held up the boat's half-deck.

Jiri took hold of a brace beside him with aching arms, trying to wedge herself into place with her legs. The boat was jumping and jerking, spinning in wide circles, and over its side Jiri could see the jungle rushing past. The collision had knocked them free of the rest of the brush and out into the river, and now—

"Hold on," she gasped. The boat lurched again, the whole thing groaning, and then its spinning slowed. We're coming out of the current. Maybe we'll—

With a crunch the ship slammed to a halt. Jiri found herself tumbling again, but this time she landed on something softer. Hadzi cursed beneath her, but they weren't moving anymore. Jiri pulled herself up off him and stared over the rail.

The boat had been swept into a backwater, where it had crashed into a stand of gaboon trees, wedging its prow between their trunks. The water around them was moving slowly now, and not far away Jiri could see hummocks of earth rising out of it.

"Thank you, all my laughing ancestors," Jiri sighed.

"This is good." Fumo had climbed up onto the half-deck and was staring around. "I know this place. We're only a little farther from the village, and the boat's secure. We'll be able to get the gem back once the water's gone down."

"Is that what matters?" Jiri stared down at her hand, the palm rubbed raw and stubbled with splinters. "What about the others?"

Fumo frowned at her. "They were safe on the stone, out of the river."

"Safe, if one of your ropes didn't knock them in when it tore free. If that happened, then they're probably dead."

"What is wrong with you, girl?" Fumo pointed at the crate. The wood had split, and the gem was easy to see now, flashing in the sun like clear water. "Don't you think that's worth a little risk?"

"I don't know," Jiri said. "Because I don't know what that thing is."

"It's our treasure. Thirty Trees' treasure. We just need to wait for the others to come downstream and find us, and we can take it home." Fumo settled himself down on the deck, rubbing at the great bruise that was blossoming on his side. "It will be good, Jiri. Imagine what Oza will say."

Imagine. Jiri kept that to herself, and started to pull the splinters out of her palm.

∗ ∗ ∗

It was almost night before they finally heard voices. They drifted in from the shadows beneath the trees and echoed off the water that was slowly draining away as the river gradually shrank beside them.

"Finally," Fumo said.

Jiri peered too into the twilight-dark trees and caught a flash of light—not the flickering of a torch, but the steady glow of spell-caught light.

Is Oza back already? Can I turn this mess over to him?

The light rounded the edge of the stand of gaboons and Jiri stared at the man who held it. A heavier man than Oza, with short hair and a long beard, skin the color of sand, and the strange, layered clothes of a foreigner.

"Who are you," the man called out. "And what are you doing on my boat?"

Coming Next Week: Unexpected visitors in Chapter Three of Gary Kloster's "The Gem."

Gary Kloster is the author of the Pathfinder Tales novel Firesoul, featuring the further adventures of Jiri. His short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Fantasy, Apex, Intergalactic Medicine Show, and Writers of the Future 25. Find him online at garykloster.com.

Illustration by Jasper Sandner.

Wrath of the Righteous: The Demons Are in the Details

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Greetings and welcome to the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Wrath of the Righteous preview blog. I'm Paul Peterson, and I'll be your host as we delve into the depths of this demonic set. We've got a lot to cover here, and I'm going to reveal everything about this powerhouse set!

(Mike: Everything? No, you're actually not going to do that.)

Um, okay. Then... everything that you'll let me reveal.

(Mike: Okay. But rein it in. I'll be right over here. Watching.)

Okay! Hold on to your souls (at least for now), and let's dig in!

Mythic

From the beginning, I knew that bringing mythic heroes into the game was going to be exciting... and a huge challenge. I set some pretty lofty goals for this. First, the characters had to feel epic. They had to fight demon lords and travel to the Abyss and feel like it was well within their power to do so. Second, it had to be compatible with everything else. I wanted you to be able to bring Lem from Rise of the Runelords along and have him feel right at home.

So we created the mythic path cards.

Mythic up yourself.

At a certain point in the story, you get to pick one of these cards and add it to your character. You can pick any of them, so if you want Harsk to be a Mythic Guardian, you can make that choice (although you must live with the consequences afterwards).

These cards bring your characters up to a level more fitting of the word "mythic." At the start of each scenario, you add mythic charges to your card. These charges give you a bonus to EVERY roll of the dice for the skills associated with that path. You can also spend them to change 1 or more of your dice on a roll to a d20. That's right, a d20! And you can do it as often as you have charges to spend!

However, the players aren't the only ones who get to be mythic. What is the point of being a superhero if you don't have supervillains to face? Monsters get to be mythic as well, and defeating mythic monsters is one of the ways you can replenish your mythic charges.

Demons

As you might expect in an Adventure Path about an invasion from the Abyss, the set also has a few demons.

Those don't look nice.

And when I say "a few," I really mean OH MY GOD, LOOK AT ALL OF THEM! They start off a little slowly in the base set, just to give you time to adjust and put your affairs in order, but by Adventure 6, they're an overwhelming horde of evil, pounding at your doors and demanding entry.

And where there are demons, there are things to help you fight them.

These might help.

In this set, you'll find many tools that specifically target your evil foes, including weapons that bash them and spells that banish them.

Khorramzadeh

Speaking of mythic cards and demons, I'm just going to leave this right here for you to think about, right after I tell you that this is a card in the *Base Set*.

Don't say we didn't warn you.

Cohorts

This adventure path has a strong focus on the NPCs you'll encounter. Some of them grow and change as they share adventures with the players. In addition, many of the characters we were looking at creating showed a deep connection to their companions. We brought all of that together to create a new type of card: the cohort.

Cohorts act much like allies, but most of them start in your hand instead of your deck. A few cohorts have owners and appear on an owner's cards list. For example, Donahan is owned by the cavalier Alain, so at the start of each scenario, Alain gets to add Donahan to his starting hand. (Similarly, summoner Balazar has his eidolon Padrig; in the Character Add-On Deck, hunter Adowyn has her wolf Leryn, and shaman Shardra has her stone spirit Kolo.)

Other cohorts, like Cecilla, are handed out as part of a particular scenario. After the players draw their starting hands, they get to decide who gets those cohorts. Alternatively, the scenario might create a condition under which you would get a cohort, as happens with Vinst. After the scenario, these cohorts are returned to the box until they're called for again. Oh, and if your cohorts get banished? They're gone forever. So don't let them get killed, because if you do, they're not coming back.

Corruption

One of my favorite things about this adventure path is the theme of corruption and redemption that appears time and time again. It was essential that we captured that theme in the card game as well.

Redeem me!

Many boons in this set have the Corrupted trait. Corrupted boons have pretty severe drawbacks. However, you'll have opportunities to use the redemption card to redeem some of them. Once a boon is redeemed, the penalty is gone, and you're free to use the boon in all of its uncorrupted glory.

The Abyss

This set represents the first time that players really get a chance to spend some quality time on a plane other than their own.

Hold the phone. Is that a TRAIT on a location card?

Many of the locations in this set are in the Abyss, and the rules on a plane full of demons are not always the same as they are here. All of those lovely spells and weapons that give you extra dice when you're fighting an outsider don't work when your enemy is no longer considered one.

I hope you've enjoyed this peek at Wrath of the Righteous. In fact, I hope you're very excited (and a little afraid). I know that I am! I can't wait to tell you more about each of the adventure decks, especially Adventure Deck 3, where we'll be releasing...

(Mike: Okay, we're done here.)

WAIT... STOP... LET ME TELL THEM!

(Mike: Please ignore the sound of grinding and manacles.)

Paul Peterson
Adventure Card Game Designer

Represent Your Cause!

Monday, April 6, 2015

At the beginning of the Year of the Sky Key (Season 6), most of the factions underwent significant changes as their philosophies evolved and those with national ties distanced themselves from their homelands. New faction symbols followed, and in anticipation of the upcoming Faction Journal Cards, the Pathfinder Society team commissioned new symbols for each of the seven current factions. It is my pleasure to share the new art with you today.

To give you a sense of the changes, I first want to show you the two "unchanged" faction symbols, tied to the Grand Lodge and Silver Crusade. I call these symbols "unchanged" largely because their symbols' shape, concept, and coloration stayed largely the same; however, if we were going to update the five other factions' art, why not make them all even better?

Both the original Grand Lodge and Silver Crusade symbols were simple but elegant, and the updated art has taken two great designs and made them a little bolder. The other five symbols are equally exciting, with colors, interior details, and other elements that make each an icon worth rallying around.

We've also updated your Pathfinder Society ID cards with the new faction artwork, the faction pages and updated the Community Use Package so you can use these new images right away!

John Compton
Developer

Faction Symbols Illustrated by Taylor Fischer.

Giantslayer Marathon: Part 1!

Saturday, April 4, 2015

Not too long after we announced the Giantslayer Adventure Path, Wes was contacted by a group of maniacs who had plans to run marathon sessions of the Adventure Path and do a full and thorough report. Since I work on the Adventure Paths, I took over coordinating with those hardcore gamers, and I'm happy to be able to present the first of six reports we'll feature here on the blog.

The Giantslayer Endeavor

Pathfinder fans: How far have you taken your devotion to the game? What's the longest session you have ever played? We are Order of the Amber Die, an association of Pathfinder players, and for nearly 3 decades we have been playing marathon sessions of 48 hours, 72—even one 96-er. Last summer, we documented our journey through the The Emerald Spire Superdungeon, which was completed in just 35 days (195 hours). Now we're going for something much bigger. In fact, we're trying to do something so grand that we haven't been able to find documentation for anything this ambitious since the founding of the world's oldest fantasy roleplaying game.

Welcome to The Giantslayer Endeavor!

From March through August, 2015, we are attempting to play all six volumes of the Giantslayer Adventure Path. Each volume will be played in a marathon of roughly 48-72 hours, and maybe we'll throw in another 96-er to close out. Better yet: we're documenting the whole thing as a contribution to the RPG community. We don't know if we will succeed; we don't even know if our lives, careers, and loved ones can handle this.

To add extra challenge over the years, we have evolved our game into what we now call "Xtreme Pathfinder." Playing only published adventures, we use the rules, our GM brings the adventures to life as written, and we try our best to beat what the authors throw at us. Character death is accepted as part of the game, and we don't ask for leniency from Paizo's authors. If Pathfinder could be made into a competitive sport between a party and a module, our game would be it.

Why Giantslayer? It's as courageous of an adventure path as has ever been published. You don't have to be a veteran to understand the nigh-irreproachable aura that surrounds the name Gary Gygax. It takes the heroism of Iomedae herself to even tread near the sacred ground that was G1-2-3, Against the Giants, and yet that's exactly what Paizo has done. We have played through Gygax's series twice in serious form, and from the very first moments of "Battle of Bloodmarch Hill", Paizo has made it clear that this will be no rehash—they will carve their own path through the halls of the big folk.

Highlights from our Experience with "The Battle of Bloodmarch Hill"

The maps were as unique and detailed as we had hoped. We spent an entire Saturday exploring a map that was literally (and figuratively) a sandbox at 9 ft. x 5 ft (with some amazing miniatures painted by Blue Table Painting). During a climactic battle for a barricade played on this depiction of Trunau's inner quarter, Zadim the slayer hurled back an unexploded grenade just in time for it to detonate at the feet of the surprised orc who threw it.

Though we spent nearly half of the marathon roleplaying our way through an intricate investigation (props to the author for opening Giantslayer with a curveball), the rest of the module was packed with tough fights. With TPK looming in a tactically complex encounter, a 4th-level Crowe the bloodrager took on—and took down—two dire wolves by himself to put the other members in position for the win. Clutch.

Author Patrick Renie provided our group with something that despite having more than 140 years of combined experience at the table, we had never been a part of: a tug of war.

Character Deaths

At the close of a frenzy that is being called "the 19-rounder," a final orc shield-breaker wielding a shotel stood his ground against Oloch the warpriest. The Amber Die that is our namesake delivered back-to-back 20s, killing Oloch and earning the orc a place beside his lord Nulgreth.

During a special operation to destroy a siege engine, Quinn the investigator found himself grappled by orc bombardiers, forced into a catapult, and then launched 50 ft. in the air—well over the walls of Trunau. A hard landing marked his death as one of our most unforgettable.

Current Situation

The adventure proved difficult, and the party is in rough shape. They had to sell almost everything earned (a significant haul) to bring their slain companions back to life. They are entering "The Hill Giant's Pledge" with two characters that are under-level, and only three possessions of importance. We play a tight game to create intensity, and CRs will not be adjusted down. Luckily, one of these items is an artifact.

Best Quote from Marathon Part 1

Aerick (Oloch): "I slept in the same 5-foot square that I roleplayed for 77 hours."

For more pictures, campaigns, and information on the Order of the Amber Die, you can find them on Facebook and Instagram.

Be sure to stay on the lookout for the next report from the Giantslayer marathoners!

Adam Daigle
Developer

Things That Should Not Be

Friday, April 3, 2015

We love H. P. Lovecraft. The old gentleman not only wrote some of the most chilling and flat-out awesome horror stories of the Twentieth Century, but he also knew how to get his monster on. Fantasy author China Miéville, one of my personal favorite modern writers, was one of the first to point out to me that fantasy fiction monsters could basically be divided into pre-Lovecraft and post-Lovecraft, and my own obsession with reading early Twentieth Century genre stuff suggests he has a point. Before Lovecraft, monsters in fiction were usually giant animals, human-animal hybrids, or basically animals with multiple limbs. A few writers, like Edgar Rice Burroughs, mixed things up enough to invent awesome stuff like plant men with mouths on the palms of their hands, but for the most part you were looking at a field of giant animals.

Lovecraft changed all of that with an assortment of alien, eldritch beings designed to scare the crap out of his protagonists—and his readers. Many of those monsters have gone on to inspire tabletop games and the gamers who make them, and we here at Paizo are very much in thrall of Lovecraft's creations. Judging by the response to our past dabbling with his themes and creatures, such as the now-classic Greg A. Vaughan Carrion Crown adventure "Wake of the Watcher" and the monster article that accompanied it, Pathfinder players also love his creations.

So it seemed like a good idea to get some of them out in prepainted plastic.

Here then are three Lovecraftian monsters from June's Dungeons Deep set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted fantasy miniatures.

One of Lovecraft's most famous monsters is the brain-stealing Mi-Go, a flying alien creature that just loves to experiment on mankind. We've featured Mi-Go in a few Pathfinder adventures to date (notably in James Jacobs's Emerald Spire Superdungeon level), and in the Iron Gods Adventure Path's awesomely named "Valley of the Brain Collectors". The Mi-Go in Dungeons Deep is a Medium, uncommon creature.

The Elder Thing, or Old One, is one of the foremost stars of Lovecraft's famous novella "At the Mountains of Madness," one of our favorite of his tales. It was thus a certainty that we'd get to them as prepainted miniatures. The Elder Thing, like the Mi-Go, appears in Bestiary 4, where we learn that in addition to having the ability to fly around in outer space, Elder Things "possess a boundless capacity for war and egotism." The Elder Thing is a Medium, uncommon creature.

The Yithians starred in Lovecraft's tale "The Shadow out of Time," where they play the role of a prehistoric time-traveling race responsible for populating much of the Earth. Bestiary 3 describes them as planetary explorers eager to discover new worlds, where they fancy swapping minds with natives to experience strange planets from a local perspective. The Yithian, from my perspective, is one of the most impressive-looking figures in the set, a true "WTF" alien to drop on your unsuspecting player characters. The Yithian is a Large, uncommon figure.

That's it for this week! Tune in next Friday for another glimpse at the horrors and wonders yet to come in the Dungeons Deep set!

Erik Mona
Publisher

Time to Break Your Chains!

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Over a year ago, I went to talk to Erik about a book idea I had. The pitch was simple: "Let us do a book filled with whatever crazy ideas we have floating around in our heads". He said "no". I said, "Wait though, allow me to explain, our crazy ideas might make the game better." He said "tell me more", and Pathfinder Unchained was born.

This book is just about to be released and it is time for us to give you a good idea of the crazy ideas you will find inside. Pathfinder Unchained is a book full of rules tweaks and alternate systems you can use to mod your game, changing the way it plays. While we suspect that everyone will find their own favorite rules subsystem, just about everyone take a long look through Chapter 1, detailing alternate versions of the barbarian, monk, rogue, and summoner. So to kick off our previews, I've asked designer Mark Seifter to give you some of the juiciest tidbits about the Unchained variant classes!

Barbarian: From a game-balance perspective, the original barbarian serves her role admirably, but her mechanics are math-intensive, forcing you to recalculate numerous values once she enters rage and keep track of a bevy of once per rage abilities. Worst of all, she's the most likely character of all to die in a fight due to the way that ending rage lowers her current hit points. The unchained barbarian keeps the adrenaline-pumping fun of her former self but significantly simplifies the gameplay by adjusting the final mechanics instead of the stats themselves. For example, she gains temporary hit points instead of raising and later decreasing her current and maximum health (woo, no more dying at the end of rage!). Finally, she gains stronger versions of some of the mechanically weakest rage powers like raging climber (now you get an actual Climb speed instead of a small bonus!).

Illustration by Michael J. Penn

Monk: The original monk has many disparate abilities. While these abilities may be useful, they don't always synergize, and they are extremely inflexible. The unchained monk loosens up, gaining ki powers that allow you to customize your monk to fit your vision, whether it be a kung fu genius or wuxia mystic (my favorites are the ones like ki visions that let you gain divination powers that affect the narrative out of combat!). The unchained monk also has a full base attack bonus, an all-new flurry of blows, and some martial arts style strikes that help him reach his true potential (my favorite is flying kick, which lets you perform a leaping kick out to a distance equal to your extra monk movement speed once per flurry—mobile combatant for the win!).

Rogue: The original rogue has plenty of skill points and a damage increase in the form of sneak attack, but she needed a way to rule her own niche, especially with all the other classes that have things like big skill bonuses and accuracy boosts. The unchained rogue has a powerful debilitation ability that dramatically alters her ability to hit or dodge her foe, rogue's edge, which allows her to do unique things with her favorite skills (figure out surface thoughts with Sense Motive, Bluff so well you bypass truth-telling magic, use Disable Device reactively to protect yourself from a triggered trap, and much more!), and a significant boost to some of her rogue talents (For instance, minor magic? Yeah, you get that cantrip at-will). She also gets Weapon Finesse as a bonus feat and the ability to add her Dexterity to weapon damage!

Summoner: The original summoner has plenty of innovative features, but he also lacks focus and theme. As Jason was fond of describing it "You just have this amorphous blob with ten tentacles and two butts." The unchained summoner gains an eidolon that fits among existing outsiders, gaining additional abilities but also focus and theme (and if you want ten tentacles and two butts, we've still got that—go protean all the way my friend!). Some of these outsiders gain some pretty juicy abilities, like the angel's protective aura (that double strength magic circle against evil/lesser globe combo) or constant true seeing. Additionally, he possesses the spell list originally intended for the summoner.

So there you have it. We are confident that some of these classes will find a home at your game table, even if the Eidolon no longer has two butts. Tune in next week when we move on to look at some of the exciting new options in the Skills and Feats chapter!

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer

Welcome Amanda Hamon Kunz!

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

The most-welcome invasion of new Paizonians continues! You've already meet Linda and Crystal, but today long-time freelancer Amanda Hamon Kunz joins us as our newest assistant developer!

I'll let her introduce herself in her own words:

I can't believe I'm typing these words, but here goes: I'm Amanda Hamon Kunz, and I'm Paizo's newest assistant developer. It is fantastic to be here!

Tabletop roleplaying has been a part of my life since 2005. Back then, I remember poring through rulebooks and setting books with the distinct feeling that I had finally found a hobby seemingly made just for me. In late 2011, I merged my professional skills with my love of gaming and started freelancing for Paizo. Since then, I've worked on more than a dozen Paizo products and many third-party products. I quickly learned that making Pathfinder products is just as fun as playing them.

When I'm out of the word mines and away from the gaming table, I also enjoy roleplaying and survival horror video games, board games in similar genres, and a wide range of fiction (novels written in the Victorian era are a particular favorite). Needless to say, my husband and I are new to Seattle as of Saturday, but it's already starting to feel like home!

Amanda Hamon Kunz
Assistant Developer

So please join all of us in welcoming Amanda to Paizo!

F. Wesley Schneider
Editor-in-Chief

(P.S.: This ISN'T an April Fools joke. Maybe next year, y'all.)