Goblins!

Monday, April 2, 2018

Ever since the goblin song from page 12 of 2007's Pathfinder Adventure Path #1: Burnt Offerings, goblins have been a key part of what makes Pathfinder recognizable as Pathfinder. When we first started looking at what would become the ancestries in the Pathfinder Playtest Rulebook, we knew that we wanted to add something to the mix, to broaden the horizon of what it meant to be a hero in Pathfinder. That naturally brought us to goblins.

The trick was finding a way to let you play a goblin who has the feel of a Pathfinder goblin, but who is also a little bit softer around the edges—a character who has a reason to work with a group of "longshanks," as opposed to trying to light them on fire at the first opportunity. Let's look at an excerpt from the goblin ancestry to find out a bit more.

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

As a people, goblins have spent millennia feared, maligned, and even hunted—and sometimes for understandable reasons, as some rural goblin tribes still often direct cruelty, raiding, and mayhem toward wandering or vulnerable creatures. In recent decades, however, a new sort of hero has emerged from among these rough-and-tumble tribes. Such goblins bear the same oversized heads, pointed ears, red eyes, and jagged teeth of their crueler kin, but they have a noble or savvy streak that other goblins can't even imagine, let alone understand. These erstwhile heroes roam Golarion, often maintaining their distinctive cultural habits while spreading the enthusiasm, inscrutable quirkiness, love of puns and song, and unique mirth that mark goblin adventurers.

Despite breaking from their destructive past, goblin adventurers often subtly perpetuate some of the qualities that have been characteristics of the creatures for millennia. They tend to flock to strong leaders, and fiercely protect those companions who have protected them from physical harm or who offer a sympathetic ear and sage advice when they learn of the goblins' woes. Some goblins remain deeply fascinated with fire, or fearlessly devour meals that might turn others' stomachs. Others are inveterate tinkerers and view their companions' trash as components of gadgets yet to be made. Occasionally, fellow adventurers find these proclivities unsettling or odd, but more often than not goblins' friends consider these qualities endearing.

The entry in the Pathfinder Playtest Rulebook has plenty more to say on the topic, but that should give you a sense of where we are taking Pathfinder's favorite troublemakers.

In addition to the story behind the goblin, its ancestry entry has a lot of other information as well to help you make a goblin player character. It includes the base goblin ability boosts (Dexterity and Charisma), ability flaw (Wisdom), bonus Hit Points (6), base speed (25 feet), and starting languages (Common and Goblin), as well as the rules for darkvision (an ability that lets goblins see in the dark just as well as they can see in normal light). Those are just the basics—the rules shared by all goblins. Beyond that, your goblin's unique ancestry allows you to choose one ability score other than Dexterity or Charisma to receive a boost. Perhaps you have some hobgoblin blood and have an additional boost to Constitution, or you descend from a long line of goblin alchemists and have a boost to Intelligence. You could even gain a boost in Wisdom to negate your flaw!

Then you get into the goblin ancestry feats, which allow you to decide what type of goblin you want to play. Starting off, let's look at Burn It. This feat gives you a bonus to damage whenever you cast a fire spell or deal fire damage with an alchemical item. On top of that, it also increases any persistent fire damage you deal by 1. Goblins still love watching things burn.

Next up is one of my favorites, Junk Tinkerer. A goblin with this feat can craft ordinary items and weapons out of junk and scrap they can find almost anywhere. Sure, the items are of poor quality and break easily, but you will never be without a weapon if you have this feat.

We could not have goblins in the game without adding the Razor Teeth feat. This grants you an attack with your mouthful of razor-sharp teeth that deals 1d6 piercing damage. To be honest, the target of your attack should probably also attempt a Fortitude save against whatever you ate last night that is still stuck between your teeth, but we'll leave that for the GM to decide.

Finally, there is the appropriately named feat Very Sneaky. This lets you move 5 feet farther when you take an action to sneak (which normally lets you move at only half your normal speed) and potentially renders your target flat-footed against a follow-up strike!

There are plenty of other goblin feats for you to choose from, but that's all we have time for today. Come back on Friday when we'll look at some of the feats from the other ancestries in the game!

Jason Bulmahn
Director of Game Design

More Paizo Blog.
Tags: Pathfinder Playtest Wayne Reynolds
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Liberty's Edge

21 people marked this as a favorite.

I'm not sure of how I feel about this

Sovereign Court

35 people marked this as a favorite.

Personally, I cannot see how the goblin pests will fit in as adventurers in Golarion :p

Dark Archive

58 people marked this as a favorite.

Not a fan also dosent explain why Goblin adventurers wouldent be attacked on sight in a lot of places (Sandpoint) comes to mind


68 people marked this as a favorite.

I still am not a fan of Goblin PCs. This blog does nothing to change that. It adds a level of handwavium that shouldn’t be present in Core races.

That said, getting a bit of info about how races will be handled is interesting, but really my biggest takeaway is this:

Charisma!? Really?


26 people marked this as a favorite.

Yeah, I know goblins are a race many people love, but personally I have only ever seen them played as Kender light. On top of that.... lore wise it's a huge uphill battle. Sure you can play one, but to say they are so widely around and accepted that they could fit in to almost every campaign? Seems like a huge tone and lore shift.


11 people marked this as a favorite.

Really digging the flexible ability boost!


11 people marked this as a favorite.
Dαedαlus wrote:

I still am not a fan of Goblin PCs. This blog does nothing to change that. It adds a level of handwavium that shouldn’t be present in Core races.

That said, getting a bit of info about how races will be handled is interesting, but really my biggest takeaway is this:

Charisma!? Really?

Charisma a huge change, as in 1st edition it is the stat they lose out on. Going from -2 to +2 is pretty big. Did all goblins get mind controlled into better manners?


3 people marked this as a favorite.
RumpinRufus wrote:
Really digging the flexible ability boost!

I guess every ancestry has this?


3 people marked this as a favorite.

Never played in Golarion so I don't know about it lore wise but mechanically I like it. I hope that the gnomes are more fey less tinker and that orcs will be a playable ancestry soon as well. Personally I have just been re-skining half-orcs as orcs so that's one that can just be home brewed.


9 people marked this as a favorite.

OOOH, flexible stats seem to be a thing for more races than just (half) humans, this will allow more variation in race selection! I am excited to play my first goblin alchemist in 2e

Silver Crusade

8 people marked this as a favorite.

Interesting. Not to be too nit-picky, but before diving into rules discussion (and the hints here are helpful!), two language issues stuck out to me in the excerpt from the Playtest rules. I hope you can fix these before the Playtest goes to print!

Playtest Excerpt wrote:
These erstwhile heroes roam Golarion, often maintaining their distinctive cultural habits while spreading the enthusiasm, inscrutable quirkiness, love of puns and song, and unique mirth that mark goblin adventurers.

"Erstwhile" means "former" or "one-time," so it is not the right word here.

Playtest Excerpt wrote:
Despite breaking from their destructive past, goblin adventurers often subtly perpetuate some of the qualities that have been characteristics of the creatures for millennia.

Grammatically, "their" refers the reader to "goblin adventurers." But the "destructive past" referred to here must belong to goblins generally rather than the goblin adventurers specifically.

And I am sorry to start off with the nit-picking. I know it's not fun. But these jumped off the screen at me as errors. :-(

Otherwise, looks great!


5 people marked this as a favorite.

For those who want Goblin PCs, great! I'm definitely not into them, and will likely use them in my games only sparingly, but that's an easy houserule. Interesting look into how ancestries work though. So far nothing too revolutionary, but there's still more to be revealed I'm sure.

As a side note, put me down as a member of the Mark Seifter fan club. Jason's writing style is articulate and fun, but he tends to launch right into things, giving tidbit after tidbit without supplying much context. It's a little as though he's forgotten we don't have a copy of the full-rules in hand. Mark really breaks it down for you in a way that really helps situate you in the PF2 ruleset. I really get a sense of the why and the how when I read one of Mark's posts.

Designer

35 people marked this as a favorite.
RumpinRufus wrote:
Really digging the flexible ability boost!

It's one of ways you get to really customize your ancestry to fit your character concept, melding the story and life of your character to the mechanics. Plus you can play the class you want without worrying about as much of an uphill battle with ability scores if you don't match the bonuses from the race with the class you had it mind. Incidentally, it provides a really nice design space to much more easily create and handle subraces that have different ability modifiers... ;)


4 people marked this as a favorite.
Joe M. wrote:


Playtest Excerpt wrote:
Despite breaking from their destructive past, goblin adventurers often subtly perpetuate some of the qualities that have been characteristics of the creatures for millennia.

Grammatically, "their" refers the reader to "goblin adventurers." But the "destructive past" referred to here must belong to goblins generally rather than the goblin adventurers specifically.

It's in their past. For normal goblins, its not only in the past but also in the present.


11 people marked this as a favorite.

Hate goblins, so this is a solid miss for me.

Some of the details on how Ancestries work are interesting, though.


57 people marked this as a favorite.

From a marketing standpoint I understand why you are adding goblins, they are associated with Paizo far more than that golem is. But from an in setting standpoint, there is way too much handwave. No one would accept a member of a race known for being murderous arsonist psychopaths. Even drow elves would be given love and warm receptions before your version of goblins.

Also, your psycho murderer goblins who can barely form words get a bonus to Charisma? Excuse me while I laugh at how f#+~ing stupid that is.

I'm glad to hear there is a third ability boost. I'm dismayed to hear there is a static single ability penalty. I'd be much happier if each race had two abilities it got to choose from for the penalty. For example, a dwarf picks either Dexterity or Charisma for their -2. This would enable a lot more builds.

I'm glad there are apparently a lot of racial / ancestry feats available. I'm not so keen on that most of the ones you are showing off above look really weak. Why would I ever take one of those instead of a skill or general feat unless I'm incentivized to by a bonus feat that applies only to ancestry feats? If all the racial ancestry feats are weakbad, I hope you add an ancestry specific feat progression to the level table if you want anyone to ever take them.

Add kobolds as well, please. They actually require far less handwave than the Paizo version of goblins. :p

Silver Crusade

3 people marked this as a favorite.
Leyren wrote:
Joe M. wrote:


Playtest Excerpt wrote:
Despite breaking from their destructive past, goblin adventurers often subtly perpetuate some of the qualities that have been characteristics of the creatures for millennia.

Grammatically, "their" refers the reader to "goblin adventurers." But the "destructive past" referred to here must belong to goblins generally rather than the goblin adventurers specifically.

It's in their past. For normal goblins, its not only in the past but also in the present.

That strikes the note of racial sin, which I'm really not a fan of and which I assumed was not the intention of the clause. Hence my comment.


28 people marked this as a favorite.

I still think this is a very, very bad idea. Goblins are a sadistic, funny once joke that will encourage the worst in player behavior. Giving them an ancestry feat like "Burn It" and making the iconic alchemist a goblin is only going to make things worse.


67 people marked this as a favorite.

So basically, every goblin adventurer is just a Goblin Drizzt? A member of a usually cruel, barbarous, evil race that's different.

I mean, that's what basically all PC goblins already were, so this changes nothing. Nor does it present a good argument for the Goblin to be a core race.

Also: "often maintaining their distinctive cultural habits while spreading the enthusiasm, inscrutable quirkiness, love of puns and song, and unique mirth that mark goblin adventurers."

The distinctive cultural habits of goblins are stealing, killing, torturing, arson, hating dogs, hating horses and hating the written word. So, crazier, even more annoying Kenders.

Why are they good as a core race again?


42 people marked this as a favorite.

Meh. Not at my table.

This remains the one thing announced about P2e that I'm 100% negative about.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Mechanically, it all sounds very interesting. However, I just don't *like* monsterish races.It ruins the verisimilitude.

Now again, this is a very easy fix...I simply tell my players that our Golarion doesn't have goblin heroes.

All in all, I'm really excited and liking the PF2 stuff, but I'll probably take a pass on the goblin ancestry.

TLR

Liberty's Edge RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16

36 people marked this as a favorite.

The new background doesn't feel earned at all based on established Golarion lore. Even if there's a big event in the final 1E AP, that would suddenly make enough goblins good-ish to adventure with typical parties, not be attacked on sight in most cities, and be completely okay with reading? I don't buy it now anymore than I did with the first playtest announcement.

In addition, the boost to Dex and Cha and small size seems to really be stepping on the halfling's toes, as well as the feat choices like very sneaky, while the junk tinkerer seems to step on the gnome's jettisoned past of being the tinkers in the game - with gnomish curiosity still part of their makeup, it still feels somewhat appropriate for them.

Silver Crusade

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Fuzzypaws wrote:
I'm glad there are apparently a lot of racial / ancestry feats available. I'm not so keen on that most of the ones you are showing off above look really weak. Why would I ever take one of those instead of a skill or general feat unless I'm incentivized to by a bonus feat that applies only to ancestry feats? If all the racial ancestry feats are weakbad, I hope you add an ancestry specific feat progression to the level table if you want anyone to ever take them.

My understanding is that you are granted a specific number of ancestry feats, which avoids the kind of tradeoff you're worried about here. From the leveling up Blog:

Blog wrote:
On any level when you don't gain a class feat, you gain a skill feat to change the ways you can use skills, a general feat that's useful to any character regardless of class, or an ancestry feat that reflects the training or advantages of your people.


7 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Still unsold on Goblin adventurers in core.

Regarding how ancestries work, I'm assuming that you get an ancestry feat at first level (I think that was confirmed somewhere else?) Would have been nice to see a hint of how higher level ancestry things work in this post.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

In before "boosting WIS flaw is still a flaw!!!"


13 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I think the Charisma is part of their love of song. They also tended to like to intimidate others quite a bit. Better that than the old racial adjustments.

Dark Archive

19 people marked this as a favorite.

Also annoys me since there are plenty of other races they could have used that would have been easier to explain and all would be more likely to be accepted (Seriously has there been any other race that is so I'll regarded that they have a bounty out for hem that involves bringing in there severd ears.)

Sovereign Court

5 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber

I still have concerns, but I'm opening a little to the idea of goblin adventurers.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Is the "add a bonus to an attribute other than the ones your ancestry automatically grants a bonus to" universal to all ancestries, or specific to goblins? I wonder if this means humans (and half-humans) get two floating +2s.

Also I was really hoping we would get some indication of how often one selects ancestry feats. Are these a "once every 6 levels" thing so they are extremely precious, or are they somewhat more common?


I'm not a fan of goblins, personally. Then again, the only times I've ever chosen to play something other than a human is when I can't, so I'd have a similar level of enthusiasm if this blog post was about Elves or Dwarves. :P

Of particular interest to me are the mechanical bits mentioned. I can dig the flexible ability score boost (it's one of the things I like most about PF1 humans), but I notice that for goblins that effectively means +2 to three stats and -2 to one. That's pretty significant. It makes me wonder what the character generation assumptions are if they're so generous with the ancestral stat bumps.

Scarab Sages

8 people marked this as a favorite.

Main thing that I found interesting:

Speed is 25 feet. This seems to be something that could be wonky to deal with in several movement rules (unless those are all getting a major overhaul to not entirely work with speed.) Like Acrobatics for jumping, you typically get a +4 to the check for every 10 feet of speed over 30.

Additionally, having an odd number like this makes it irritating to divide by 2. Sure, its easy enough to say 10 because 12.5 rounds down to 10. But anytime you had to quarter 30 to 7.5 because of swimming or climbing, and then figure out whether that meant you could move 10 feet on a double move or 5 feet on a single but 15 feet on a double was annoying.

So I hope that if you are assigning some ancestries and monsters odd numbered movement speeds, that the system of halving or quartering speeds accommodates an easy way to calculate without having to worry about fractions rounding up or down or if you get to carry the fraction into a second action for movement to get that extra 5 feet or whatever.


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So. It seems we'll likely be doing two Class Blogs and one Race/Ancestry Blog every three Mondays. (That will get us to just before the playtest's release.) Rather interesting. And I think I've gotten an idea as to how other races will be adapted as a result of this.

First: all races will probably have an Adjustable Stat Increase. No doubt this is in response to some grousing of folk over humans and half-humans having that variable stat increase while all elves, halflings, dwarves, and so forth being "identical" with their bonuses. Given this bonus is in addition to normal stat increases, half-humans and humans will probably either have one fixed stat increase (like Strength for half-orcs and Dexterity for half-elves, and maybe Constitution for pure-blood humans) or even two separate Adjustable Stat increases (though not likely stackable).

Next, we have confirmed that movement while Stealthed is half-speed. No doubt there are Rogue Feats that increase that speed (it seems fairly obvious) but it's doubtful non-Rogues would have that benefit unless as an Ancestry Feat.

Third, someone at Paizo obviously thinks pun-making is a sign of charisma rather than a lack thereof. ;)

Looking forward to see Friday's blog. It should be interesting, though no doubt we'll end it with a half dozen quick Ancestry Feats and having the readers try to determine which Feat belongs to which race. ;)


25 people marked this as a favorite.

Leaving this here, for no reason....


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Well, that's intradasting. Goblins and hobgoblins, huh... Oh my.

That's an interesting take on racial- sorry, ancesteral ability ability adjustments. I have to admit that I like it. It should get the best for both the people that liked penalties and those that did not, while not being overly complex. I'm interested to see how it actually plays out in the book.

As for goblins getting a softer image, as long as it doesn't frame people that dislike them as automatically bad, I'm cool with it. That was really the only thing I couldn't forgive about Kender. I think that it's perfectly reasonable to be wary of the exception when the rule will eat your babies. Adorable little humanoid dingos...

I don't really have much of an opinion on the rest, because it requires context in the rest of the system. Looking forward to the playtest.

Silver Crusade

Leedwashere wrote:
Of particular interest to me are the mechanical bits mentioned. I can dig the flexible ability score boost (it's one of the things I like most about PF1 humans), but I notice that for goblins that effectively means +2 to three stats and -2 to one. That's pretty significant. It makes me wonder what the character generation assumptions are if they're so generous with the ancestral stat bumps.

Note that the "ability boost" here is likely not a flat +2. The Leveling Up Blog states:

Leveling Up Blog wrote:
You'll also amp up several of your ability scores every 5 levels. The process might be familiar to those of you who've been playing Starfinder for the last several months! There are, of course, a few tweaks, and we made all ability boosts work the same way instead of being different at 1st level. Learn it once, use it in perpetuity.

So if it's like Starfinder, a boost will be +2 if applied to a score of 16 or lower and +1 if applied to a score that's 17 or higher.


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Wis penalty makes a lot more sense than Cha penalty. After that, what is there to put a mental bonus in? A bonus to Cha makes much more sense than Int.

Unfortunately for my players, I don't think I'll be up for running a goblin PC outside of an all-goblin game. It's unpleasant for me to see them in core, but that's mitigated by two things. One, it's very nice for my one goblin-loving friend. Two, there are several monstrous formerly-known-as-races that I'd like to be able to play as common-ish, balanced PC ancestries. Kobolds and outcast gnolls are the main ones. Having goblins as a core ancestry will hopefully open up the doors to the ones I'm more interested in.


27 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Huzzah for Goblin adventurers! Lets get away from the tired old "once evil always evil" for monstrous races, or is social evolution only the right of certain races?

Liberty's Edge

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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Am I alone in really liking this? I've loved playing Goblins for a while, and making them core really boosts my chances to!


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I suppose I can just exclude goblin PCs from my games and pretend this never happened. Let's just hope it doesn't pollute Golarion as well.


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I was hoping for another class reveal.

Still doesn't make sense to add goblins as core. Plus their movement is only 25 not 30.

Ancestry feats sound a little weak, hopefully they scale by level.


Tallow wrote:

Main thing that I found interesting:

Speed is 25 feet. This seems to be something that could be wonky to deal with in several movement rules (unless those are all getting a major overhaul to not entirely work with speed.) Like Acrobatics for jumping, you typically get a +4 to the check for every 10 feet of speed over 30.

Additionally, having an odd number like this makes it irritating to divide by 2. Sure, its easy enough to say 10 because 12.5 rounds down to 10. But anytime you had to quarter 30 to 7.5 because of swimming or climbing, and then figure out whether that meant you could move 10 feet on a double move or 5 feet on a single but 15 feet on a double was annoying.

So I hope that if you are assigning some ancestries and monsters odd numbered movement speeds, that the system of halving or quartering speeds accommodates an easy way to calculate without having to worry about fractions rounding up or down or if you get to carry the fraction into a second action for movement to get that extra 5 feet or whatever.

It works out prettier if you think of it as moving five squares. Now you can cross ten squares in two moves, nice and simple.

Grand Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Tallow wrote:
So I hope that if you are assigning some ancestries and monsters odd numbered movement speeds, that the system of halving or quartering speeds accommodates an easy way to calculate without having to worry about fractions rounding up or down or if you get to carry the fraction into a second action for movement to get that extra 5 feet or whatever.

I would not be surprised if they were changing the 'half/quarter while Xing' to '10ft less while Xing' or similar.


3 people marked this as a favorite.

I know others are wondering this as I am, Why Charisma?

Would love to hear some of the thoughts/explanation why.

Also I didn't see this mentioned, are they still small sized? (are sizes still a thing?)

Is 30ft still standard speed as well?


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Hobgoblins would be a MUCH better choice for many reasons:

1. They are the flawless master race (second to Azlanti) that can take any class and do well in it.

2. They're alignment may be generally Lawful Evil but even still, a hobgoblin not trying to kill you is just as reasonable as any human or dwarf (cant say nothing about elves).

3. When a Hob walks into a bar or shop nobody is going to think that he will set it on fire just for fun (like a goblin or disgruntled elf would).

4. There has already been an Adventure that can end with a Hob Empire and there need to be very little modification to set up better relations with its neighbors (a standard non-violence agreement, and maybe a trade negotiations and your set).

5. Hobgoblins hate goblins just as much as everyone else, so they have far more in common with the standard races. :p


3 people marked this as a favorite.
willuwontu wrote:

I know others are wondering this as I am, Why Charisma?

Would love to hear some of the thoughts/explanation why.

Should it be intelligence instead? Should goblins be getting double physical bonuses, with the option for triple, so that they're the ultimate martial pick?

willuwontu wrote:
Is 30ft still standard speed as well?

Nope. Humans have 25 too, judging by the demo games.


Dragon78 wrote:

I was hoping for another class reveal.

Still doesn't make sense to add goblins as core. Plus their movement is only 25 not 30.

Hasn't been revealed that this is also the case for humans?

Liberty's Edge

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Awesome love it :)

Contributor

8 people marked this as a favorite.

Will goblin PCs be able to read? I’m really hoping to make a goblin wizard!

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