Dynamite Announces Limited-Edition Seoni Statue!

Friday, October 19, 2018

Our friends at Dynamite have announced a Kickstarter to produce a resin statue for everyone's favorite sorcerer, Seoni. But this campaign isn't just for one statue... they're offering THREE limited-edition variants to add to your Pathfinder collection! Will you choose the Spellcasting Edition, which shows Seoni preparing to unleash a devastating spell? Maybe the Battle-Ready Edition, complete with dagger and staff at the ready, is more your style. For even more customization, there's a Kickstarter-exclusive, unpainted version that allows you to create your own unique look.

From the intricate tattoo designs to the hand-painted accessories, this highly detailed status is a fitting tribute to one of Pathfinder's most celebrated iconic characters.

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For those looking to complete their collection of Pathfinder graphic novels, Dynamite has included add-ons for both digital and print copies at a great value. They're even offering backers a chance to get the Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Sandpoint, Light of the Lost Coast signed by Pathfinder Creative Director James Jacobs.

Dynamite's Kickstarter for this limited-edition masterpiece is going on now, so don't delay!

Dan Tharp
Marketing Manager

Worldscape Workbook—Under the Moons of Mars

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Issue #3 of Pathfinder Worldscape, Dynamite's blockbuster all-star sword & sorcery supergroup crossover, hits newsstands TODAY, so I figured now would be a perfect time to peel back the curtain a bit and let you know about some of the decisions that went into the Pathfinder RPG rules appendix found in the back of the issue.

This month's appendix is a bit of a doozy because the issue's story features the first appearance of one of the major stars of the series, John Carter of Mars! The great Virginian steps onto our pages to join the likes of his green Martian ally Tars Tarkas, the she-devil Red Sonja, Frank Frazetta's jungle hero Thun'da, and more (to say nothing of Pathfinder stalwarts Valeros, Kyra, Merisiel, and Seoni).

Of all Worldscape's superstars, John Carter's star shines the brightest in the firmament of fantasy literature. Carter first appeared way back in February, 1912, in a serialized story entitled "Under the Moons of Mars," by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The story appeared as a novel entitled A Princess of Mars, in 1917, and it's been in print ever since.

Carter helped to define the "formula" for adventure story heroes (especially in a science fictional setting). He and Burroughs's Barsoom (Mars) also launched an entire sub-genre of fiction that arguably includes stories like Star Wars, but absolutely 1000% includes stories like James Cameron's Avatar, which borrows heavily from the tropes established in "Under the Moons of Mars."

Like many of the sub-genres we're touching on in Pathfinder Worldscape (including mainline "sword & sorcery" and especially jungle adventure stories), the heroes of "sword & planet" stories present an interesting challenge for the Pathfinder RPG, because none of them ever wears a scrap of armor. Indeed, John Carter's world probably reveals more flesh on a regular basis than even the Tarzan stories and their various knock-offs, which star a guy wearing a loincloth.

So, as I did with the sword-devil archetype in Pathfinder Worldscape #1 (which covered Red Sonja, so to speak), this month's appendix presents a brand new archetype called the warlord that allows players to run around in their briefs and kick just as much ass as John Carter did without a massive sacrifice to their Armor Class. From my perspective, it really stinks when the rules don't allow you to play a concept you want to try out, or even worse punish you for it. This archetype (and really all of the rules presented over Worldscape's six issues) creates new space for players to play heroes like Red Sonja, John Carter, or Tarzan without getting hit multiple times every round. The Pathfinder rules don't really handle characters wearing no armor and going toe-to-toe with monsters and fully armored enemies.

At least not until this series, that is. If I accomplish nothing else from writing all of the stories and appendices for this series, I hope that Pathfinder Worldscape develops a reputation as the Catcher in the Rye of no-armor martial archetypes.

The warlord is a fighter archetype, a particularly challenging breed of archetype because, unlike so many other classes, the fighter doesn't have a ton of class features to "swap out" as most other classes do. That's partially by design. When we sat down to create the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook, we thought it very important to include at least one class that was easy to understand and easy to play. The fighter has traditionally played that role, so we carried that forward into the final Pathfinder rules. This was, of course, a year or two before we came up with the idea for archetypes, so only after their introduction in the Pathfinder RPG Advanced Player's Guide did we realize that this might turn out to be a bit of a problem.

That's the reason that you don't see as many fighter archetypes as you see for other classes. There just isn't as much design room to make interesting options.

The class isn't without ANY options, of course, but things are a bit more challenging. I knew this going in, but I didn't really care. John Carter is obviously a fighter. One of his books is called A Fighting Man of Mars, for Pete's sake. So I had to make him a fighter archetype, design space or not!

First off, I modified the fighter's usual class skills to include Barsoomian staples Acrobatics and Knowledge (nobility), which replace Swim (not super useful on a desert planet) and Knowledge (dungeoneering). Fair trade, in my book.

Barsoom doesn't offer the same sort of weapon options we have here on Earth, so I significantly tailored the class's proficiency list to include only weapons that appear in the John Carter comics and novels, including the radium pistol and rifle included in the RPG appendix for Pathfinder Worldscape #2. This helps to keep warlord characters "on model" and representative of the way they appear in the source material, which is the overall goal of these adaptations.

The most important power the warlord has is likely Evasive Dueling, which allows a warlord to add a +1 dodge bonus to his AC in lieu of one of the MANY bonus feats fighters get throughout their careers. This means that the player gets to decide how important AC is to his warlord, and doesn't deny him the opportunity to drop some bonus feats into his weapons or other combat abilities. He can always come back for some more Armor Class when he really needs it.

And in case he needs more AC (which he will, because he's not even proficient in armor and a lot of his powers don't work when he's wearing it), I also created a power called Battle Bravado, which (at 3rd level) allows the warlord to add his Charisma bonus to his AC when unarmored and unencumbered, so long as he is not wearing armor or carrying a Medium or heavier load. This power even comes with a few more dodge bonuses spread out over the full 20 levels.

He also gets some weapon type-specific modifications to Weapon Training, and by the time he hits 19th level, he unlocks DR/5, the benefit of a life spent surviving against impossible odds in a hostile world.

So there you have it, a broad overview of the warlord archetype from Pathfinder Worldscape #3! You can order your copy from paizo.com right now, or you can pick up a copy in person at your game store.

To make sure you never miss an issue of Pathfinder Worldscape, consider setting up an ongoing Pathfinder Comics subscription today.

I'll be back in two weeks with a look at John Carter himself. Until then, keep rolling 20s!

Happy holidays to you all!

Erik Mona
Publisher

Worldscape Workbook—Inside Issue #2!

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

The second issue of Dynamite's sword & sorcery superstar crossover series, Pathfinder Worldscape releases TODAY in comic shops, and is now shipping from the paizo.com store! The issue features a foreboding jungle adventure in which Seoni the sorcerer awakens in a deadly dimension that harvests the deadliest warriors of three worlds. Before she can reunite with her friends Valeros, Kyra, and Merisiel, she must first survive the jungle alone. Her adventure sees her face a 10-legged Barsoomian banth, the mysterious forest goddess (and first female super-hero in history) Fantomah, Frank Frazetta's jungle lord Thun'da, and Tars Tarkas, the green Martian best friend of John Carter of Mars.

Like all Pathfinder comics, Pathfinder Worldscape #2 contains a short Pathfinder RPG rules appendix and a pull-out poster map. The poster for the issue continues the jungle scene presented in Pathfinder Worldscape #1, with a focus on an immense tree with ritualistic significance. You can put each of the two maps together to create a double-sized jungle encounter!

The text of issue #2's RPG appendix focuses on green Martians, everyone's favorite four-armed original creations of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Mars novels. I'd originally intended to include stats for Tars Tarkas himself in this issue, but the background of the race and its various abilities ended up hogging up so much space that Tars himself will appear later, most likely in issue #5, where the character again plays a significant role. This issue is more about creating the rules elements that I'll later use to make that character, as well as a couple of weapons that will also come into play next month, when we get to John Carter himself.

I used the race builder rules from the Advanced Race Guide hardcover to build the green Martian rules. As with previous Worldscape adaptations, I let the source material dictate my choices. For example, Large size and four arms are both extremely "expensive" traits in the race builder system (because of their significant impact on play), and those two powers alone make the green Martian a 15-point race, putting them on par with something like the fetchling or suli (by contrast, a halfling is 9 points).

But there's more to green Martians than their arms and size. There's also their ability to detect thoughts, their weapon familiarity with longswords and spears, their legendary ferocity, and a few other powers to boot. At the end of the day, green Martians are more like 23-25 points, putting them on par with the likes of svirfneblin (24) or trox (28), but well short of drow nobles (41).

The issue also includes rules for Barsoomian radium pistols and rifles, but I'll discuss that more in future blogs.

I've been very pleased by reaction to the first issue of Pathfinder Worldscape. I can't wait to hear what you think of issue #2, and look forward to hearing about your green Martian Pathfinder heroes and villains for years to come!

Until then, I remain...

Erik Mona
Publisher

Worldscape Workbook—The Fish that Got Away

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Pathfinder Worldscape #1, my new sword & sorcery supergroup crossover comic from Dynamite, is on newsstands and is shipping to paizo.com customers NOW! Early reviews are pouring in for the issue, and I've been thrilled by the initial response. Most readers seem to be digging the "fish out of water" story I've been building as our intrepid iconic heroes meet the likes of Red Sonja, John Carter of Mars, and Tarzan, and as the first issue shows, those meetings aren't always going to go down the way you might expect them to.

Each issue of Pathfinder Worldscape contains a short RPG appendix that translates some of Dynamite's heroes, races, equipment, and worlds to the official Pathfinder rules, and while writing comic stories featuring all of these amazing characters has been a wonderful and challenging experience, writing up their game statistics has, to me, often seemed even more wonderful—and definitely more challenging.

The biggest challenge, truth be told, is in fitting everything I want to say into the relatively short appendices. When you're suddenly unleashed on the world of Barsoom, for example, there's an awful lot to say, and not a ton of space to say it. For example, Pathfinder Worldscape #2, which releases three short weeks from now, was initially to include stats for the green Martians of Barsoom, stats for the most famous green Martian of all—John Carter's best friend Tars Tarkas—and stats for a new "warlord" archetype that will be used by both Carter and Tars as a way to model the "no-armor" fighting styles of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Mars books. All that plus a poster map and some ideas for how to use it in a Pathfinder game.

As it turns out, I only ended up having room for the green Martian rules in #2, plus some rules for radium rifles and pistols. Full stats for Tars Tarkas, as well as the warlord archetype necessary to stat him (and John Carter) up, will come in future issues.

But my space-bursting woes did not start with issue #2. I ran into similar trouble with Pathfinder Worldscape #1, and I thought it might be fun to use this week's Worldscape Workbook to take a peek at some Pathfinder rules that might have been.

I've already spent a lot of space in this column ballyhooing writer Gail Simone's 2013 "relaunch" of Red Sonja for a Dynamite arc entitiled "Queen of Plagues." I relied on Simone's characterization of Sonja for my take on the character in Pathfinder Worldscape, and I probably read the six-issue arc a half-dozen times during my preparation for the series.

Beside the great take on Red Sonja, which really does a lot to restore agency to the character's origin and remove some of the elements that might have made sense in the early 1970s but which seem regressive by today's standards, one of my favorite elements of the Queen of Plagues storyline were the weird fish-people used by Red Sonja nemesis.

Generally speaking, Red Sonja's world is more "mundane" than that of the Pathfinder world. Based as it is on Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age, the home of Conan the Barbarian, Sonja's setting is one of ancient human kingdoms, the occasional giant here and there, and maybe a serpent man lurking in the shadows. It's not—again generally speaking, because different writers and artists bring different approaches to each story—the sort of place where you wander into a tavern to find orcs rubbing shoulders with halflings, dwarves, and elves. When a genuine "monster" appears, it's generally a sign that something very unique and special is happening.

The fish-men of that first Dynamite reboot arc are—aside from some psychic ghosts—pretty much the only monsters in the bunch, and they stick out in a very good way. We see several images of the creatures, usually in crowd or battle scenes, and what we see is intriguing. Simone's fish-men, drawn by artist Walter Giovanni, echo the vast diversity of the oceans themselves. Some have heads like hammerhead sharks. Others have beards of octopus tentacles, or are encrusted with coral. Some loom large and powerful, others sqat and blubbery. All of them look interesting, and they also look like nothing I've ever quite seen in Pathfinder before.

So I wanted to include them from the very start. The red sea-creature Kelgeth, from the opening scene of Pathfinder Worldscape #1 in which Valeros finds himself on the Worldscape, belongs to this race. I included him in this early scene in part to show the diversity of the Worldscape as a unique representative of Sonja's Hyborian Age, but also because I thought his appearance would be a good anchor for a cool new Pathfinder race in the back of the issue.

That presented an interesting challenge that speaks to the difference between writing a comic and writing a gaming supplement. Although Gail Simone put a ton of cool characterization into snippets of dialog, and Giovanni's art made the creatures unique and interesting, none of Simone's scripts actually gives a formal name for the creatures. They're called "fish-men" a few times, but it's unclear if that's supposed to be the name of the race or if it's just something people call them dismissively. From a Pathfinder perspective, we generally like to avoid gendered pronouns in race names (we use "lizardfolk," not "lizard-men"), so even if that was supposed to be their name, it didn't really work for me. I started calling them "sea-spawn," and the name stuck in my head.

I imagined a Pathfinder Worldscape #1 appendix filled with options for your sea-spawn character. Want a big strong guy? You can! Want someone with a tentacle grab attack? Ok! Just choose from this list of options and build your very own unique sea creature, perfect for any campaign.

It never lasted more than a couple of days. Once I began laying down Red Sonja's sword-devil archetype and her stat block itself, it quickly became clear that I wouldn't have space to stat up the full sea-spawn race. Maybe I'll find time in a future issue, or maybe in some other future Worldscape project.

Until then, keep your eyes on the sea. You never know what might come out!

If you have not already done so, please consider picking up a copy of Pathfinder Worldscape #1 at your local comic shop or right here on Paizo.com! Or, to make sure you never miss a single Pathfinder comic you can set up a Pathfinder Comics ongoing subscription!

I'll be back next week for another Worldscape Workbook, where I'll talk about the game goodies to come in Pathfinder Worldscape #2! Until then, please let me know what you thought of the first issue of the comic, and if there's anything from the Worldscape you'd like me to make sure to make room for before I run out of RPG appendix pages!

Until then, I remain...

Erik Mona
Publisher

Worldscape Workbook—Today is the Day!

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Illustration by Pia Guerra

Pathfinder Worldscape #1, the first issue of my new comic series that teams up Pathfinder's iconic heroes with the likes of Red Sonja, John Carter of Mars, and Tarzan, comes out TODAY. As I write this, early reviews are already hitting the internet, and I'm thrilled with the positive response so far. Most of the commentary up to this point has focused on the comic book story itself, but here in my weekly Worldscape Workbook column, I like to focus on the RPG rules elements of each issue, and let you into my head a bit about some of the design decisions I made when adapting the Worldscape guest stars to the official Pathfinder RPG rules presented in each issue's appendix.

The first hero to get a full Pathfinder conversion is Red Sonja, who also features prominently in issue #1's story. Previous columns in this space have discussed Red Sonja's class, armor (or lack thereof), and adventuring gear. This week I want to discuss the "meat" of what makes Sonja different from other rangers, her archetype.

My desire to create credible "no armor" martial archetypes goes back to the very beginning, when Paizo Creative Director James Jacobs launched the first-ever Pathfinder campaign in our office conference room. I decided to play a barbarian named Ostog the Unslain, who in the years since has become a bit of a Pathfinder celebrity character, if only because I keep shilling for him (he never did die over more than 7 years of active gaming, after all).

In addition to being a great big gaming nerd, I'm also a book collector, and my shelves at home bulge with hundreds and hundreds of vintage sci-fi and fantasy paperbacks. Frank Frazetta's iconic portrayal of the bare-chested Conan the Barbarian made a huge impact on the paperback market of the 70s, and unarmored dudes in loincloths (and a few ladies following their example) basically took over sword & sorcery book covers for a decade or more. I wanted my barbarian to come from this "no armor" tradition, but in 2008, the options for pulling off such a character effectively using the Pathfinder RPG rules were essentially non-existent. I lobbied Pathfinder Lead Designer Jason Bulmahn—hard—to include a no-armor barbarian archetype in the Pathfinder RPG Advanced Player's Guide, and the savage barbarian was born.

Previous Worldscape Workbooks have covered why Dynamite's version of Red Sonja isn't a barbarian, though, so no matter how effective Jason's archetype had been for Ostog, it didn't do me much good to use it for Red Sonja. Instead, I looked at the armor power of the savage barbarian and the armor class feature of the monk to create something totally new: the sword-devil.

The name of Red Sonja's archetype hearkens back to her classic "She-Devil with a Sword" appellation, only with the numbers rubbed off a bit so that Pathfinder can use it independent of a formal Red Sonja license. We'll eventually add all of the non-proprietary rules in these Worldscape appendices to the PRD and to tools like Herolab, though it make take until the release of the final hardcover collection of all six issues early in 2017. Right now the best place to get these rules is in the Worldscape RPG appendices in each issue.

I don't want to get into too many specifics of the archetype today—after all, I really DO want you to buy the issue—but a general overview is in order. Here's my commentary on each of the archetype's class features.

Class Skills: I knew I'd be trading the ranger's spells class feature, so it made sense to swap out Spellcraft for Acrobatics. Red Sonja doesn't know much about magic, but she certainly can leap around like a monkey.

Death Vow: This power is meant to model Sonja's "Curse of Hyrkania," which features prominently in her origin and in the Gail Simone-written 18-issue run that redefined the character for modern audiences in 2013. I've used that highly enjoyable run as a benchmark for Sonja's characterization in the Worldscape series, and this is no exception. In the comic, Sonja puts the Curse on an enemy to put them on notice that she will definitely be killing them later, but probably not MUCH later. The mechanics here are an attempt to model that on the game table. Had I more space, I might have included a few other original death vows, but these Worldscape appendices are pretty tight on space, and I needed to focus on the meat of the matter.

Slashing Fury: The Sonja stores heavily emphasize her Dexterity and quickness over her Strength, with a prominent recent Conan/Red Sonja crossover written by Simone and former Pathfinder comics scribe Jim Zub specifically mentioning that Conan is much stronger than Red Sonja, but that she's no less a combatant for it, balancing things out with speed and style. I ultimately settled on a 14 Strength for Sonja. That's decent, but not enough to keep her competitive with most martial characters, who probably put their highest score in Strength. I thus needed to come up with a way for Red Sonja to add her Dex bonus to melee weapon attacks, something that involved significant negotiation and development with Jason Bulmahn and Owen K. C. Stephens, who were both extremely helpful to me during the process of building Sonja's stats and this archetype. They drew the line at also allowing this power to add a Dex modifier to damage. I tried, folks! With the damage adds from her death vow, I don't think she's much poorer without the bonus, especially when fighting somebody she absolutely wants to kill.

Inspiring Example: If Red Sonja has any "powers" above and beyond her combat prowess, it's in the inspiration she gives those she meets along the way of her adventures. As a roaming nomad who has seen two different publishers and hundreds of different writers over the last 40 years, Sonja doesn't have a very large recurring back-up cast. That means her stories typically involve her showing up in a community, encountering a problem, and solving it before moving on to the next adventure (sound familiar, Pathfinders?). A VERY common element of these stories, however, involves Sonja meeting some poor victim of the problem at the beginning of the story and later having that victim gain confidence and help her to solve the problem that once seemed unsolvable. Sort of like Doctor Who, Red Sonja doesn't stay anywhere very long, and doesn't keep companions for very long, but she does manage to leave both people and places significantly better off than they were when she first arrived. As long as they're not evil, of course!

Untouchable: This is my armor kludge, and with Sonja's 18 Charisma and a passel of dodge bonuses spaced out over various levels, she remains competitive in the AC department, so long as she's got good bracers of armor on. If she were MY character, rather than an adaptation, I'd probably pop for a dusty rose ioun stone and an amulet of natural armor, too.

Second Combat Style: This one speaks for itself. For Sonja's stats, I focused on the two ranger combat styles from the Core Rulebook, but we've added a lot more in various books that could serve to make YOUR sword-devil even more distinctive.

Seething Fury: I always feel a little goofy designing class features for 19th and 20th levels. Do people ever really make it that high? This power and the next were inspired by Dynamite's semi-recent "Vulture's Circle" and "The Black Tower" miniseries, which depict a much older—and much more prone to crazy, supernatural violence—version of the character.

Avatar of Vengeance: This is right out of those stories, in which Red Sonja becomes a living avatar of death. I made effectively no effort to balance this capstone ability whatsoever. If you've survived 20 levels wearing no armor, you deserve a gonzo reward.

And that's it for the sword-devil! I next go to work on the warlord archetype for John Carter and Tars Tarkas. I thought I could fit that into issue #2, but details on playing green Martian characters and Martian radium weapons took up all my space for that issue, so the warlord will appear somewhat further down the road.

But I'll be talking more about that stuff in future installments of the Worldscape Workbook!

Thanks for your interest in Pathfinder Worldscape! Please grab a copy at your local comic store, pick up a copy here on Paizo.com, or set up an ongoing comics subscription here on the site to make sure you don't miss a single issue!

Pathfinder Worldscape #1 is on shelves now! I can't wait to hear what you think of it!

Until then, I remain...

Erik Mona
Publisher