Welcome to the Playtest

Friday, November 13, 2009

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

The playtest of the Pathfinder RPG Advanced Player's Guide begins today with the launch of two of the six new base classes set to appear in the book. The cavalier is a martial character. Like his name would suggest, he is at home fighting from horseback, but he is by no means crippled when his mount cannot be used. The cavalier gains a number of bonus abilities tied to his order, the oaths that he swears, and the challenges he makes. Next up in this playtest is the oracle. This spontaneous divine caster draws her power from the gods that support her focus, granting her special revelations as she goes up in level. This is your chance to take a look at these classes before they hit shelves in August. You can download the free PDF containing both of these classes here.

In the coming weeks, we will be releasing the other four classes, two each week. During these periods, we will be focusing discussion on the most recent classes, but the playtest itself will remain open until the end of January 2010. The release dates are as follows.

Group 1 (11/13–11/29): Cavalier and Oracle
Group 2 (11/30–12/13): Summoner and Witch
Group 3 (12/14–12/27): Alchemist and Inquisitor

Just like the Core Rulebook playtest last year, there are a pair of forums waiting for your feedback and comments. The first is a general forum, for discussing larger issues and announcements. The second forum is specifically for cavalier and oracle feedback. We will add an additional forum every two weeks as the new classes are released.

I want to take a moment to discuss what we are looking for out of this playtest. Since these are new classes, actual playtesting is of great importance. While comments and observations are still valuable, we need playtesters to actually use these classes in play and provide reports of their experiences. This sort of feedback will really help us ensure that these classes become a balanced and fun part of the game.

See you on the boards.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer

The Playtest is Coming!

Monday, November 9, 2009

It is almost here! The playtest of the six new base classes set to appear in the Pathfinder RPG Advanced Player's Guide will begin on Friday, November 13th. These classes will be presented as free PDF's that you can download starting Friday morning. Every two weeks we will release two of the classes, until all six have been playtested.

Each pair of classes will be spotlighted for two weeks, but feedback will be accepted through the end of January 2010. Special messageboards will be posted to paizo.com to allow playtesters to submit feedback, ask questions, and talk to other participants. The schedule of the playtest is as follows.

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

• Group 1 (11/13–11/29): Cavalier and Oracle
• Group 2 (11/30–12/13): Summoner and Witch
• Group 3 (12/14–12/27): Alchemist and Inquisitor

Getting involved is easy. Simply download the files and use them in your games. Create characters and villains using the new classes and give them a try. Then, come back here to post feedback and your play experiences in the playtest messageboards. If you are looking for more opportunities to play, these playtest classes will be available for use in Pathfinder Society events. Look for rules allowing these classes in an upcoming update to the Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play.

The playtest of the core rules was a fantastic success and I look forward to working with the community to make the Advanced Player's Guide playtest just as successful.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer

Leather-Bound Pathfinder Beta

Thursday, April 30, 2009

So our fans are apparently crazy... crazy awesome. Check out this leather-bound copy of the Pathfinder RPG Beta sent to our office by Sean, who posts on the messageboards as yellowdingo. The lovingly made book was well used by Sean and his fellow Beta playtesters, and includes all of the web enhancements for the Beta, as well as his personal notes from the playtest. It's really quite amazing!

David Eitelbach
Editorial Intern

The Shadow Under Sandpoint Campaign Begins!

Monday, April 6, 2009

Last Thursday an unlikely group of strangers gathered on the docks of Sandpoint, beginning what will doubtlessly be one of the most unfortunate misadventures in the usually peaceful town's history. This marks the beginning of the Paizo editorial pit's new biweekly Pathfinder RPG Campaign: James Jacobs's The Shadow Under Sandpoint! Watch the calamity unfold with ongoing character reports, missives, comments, journal entries, and sketches on the Shadow Under Sandpoint thread here.

And wish good luck to the people of Sandpoint—they're going to need it.

F. Wesley Schneider
Managing Editor

Bastards of Erebus—Final Playtest

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

And thus, the Bastards of Erebus playtest comes to a close, and we, the brave and foolhardy adventurers, are victorious. Highlights of the night: my half-orc dropping to negative 1 but holding out for one more round (thanks to orc ferocity) and dealing max damage before finally dropping; David's rogue once again getting hoodwinked by some sort of fear effect/spell and running terrified into the dark; one of the villains, down to about 1 hit point, turning to the main antagonist and pleading for help, only to have the villain reply, "Your sacrifice will be remembered!" and then torching him—along with us—with burning hands; our dwarf fighter running after said antagonist while he fled, pulling out his throwing axe and ending his movement just in range, and then hurling it into the back of his skull, just as he was about to vanish out the door, slaying him and thus concluding the adventure.

All in all, a fun adventure. It was also a lot of fun playtesting the latest version of the Pathfinder rules, which I really enjoyed. I'm not sure if we'll get to participate in the playtests for the rest of the AP, but I can say I'm really excited to find out what happens next...

♪We are the champions, my friends...♪

Hank Woon
Editorial Intern

Bastards of Erebus—Playtest Five

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Woe unto three.

Between us, the number three must have come up at least a dozen times. Still, it's higher than 1, so I guess that means we're getting better. Plus it was fun to watch Sean bang his head repeatedly against the dry erase board after the tenth 3 popped up.

David forgot his dice again, I think that's what did us in (not only did he forget his dice, but when he first sat down he had forgotten his character and pencil, too!). Later his rogue was hoodwinked into attacking Beaky, which kept us out of the fight for several rounds (me because my druid was busy chasing after him, trying to prevent him from killing my eagle).

I think the adventure is getting close to wrapping up, though. Sean said that if it weren't for the astoundingly poor rolls session after session, we surely would have been finished by now. He left us at a cliffhanger: right as my character burst through a door (that's her new gig, bursting through doors before the rest of the party is ready), he set up the room and called it a night, with a newly revealed NPC calling out his chilling promises of death and ruin; unless it was Sean saying it out of character to us, I'm not quite sure...

Hank Woon
Editorial Intern

Bastards of Erebus—Playtest Four

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

I love it when a plan comes together. We had pressed forward with our arrangement, but suddenly discovered a new element that had to be overcome—a lone guard. We decided to do the only smart and reasonable thing... kill him. After we feathered our foe, Sean sketched a quick depiction of the quite-deader-than-dead fella, and then we continued on our merry way, straight into an encounter fest. We only made it a short way in before Sean called it a night, and right now we're chasing down a cowardly fiend who just locked himself behind a door.

Much to our surprise, not only did nobody die this time, but we actually did really well. I think it's because I finally remembered my dice.

One thing I'd like to mention is how I've never had a GM so cunningly use (or insist upon) the rules for light radius. (And, apparently, neither have my 3 companions, since I'm the only one who bought any torches during character creation.) Anyway, I've decided that I like it. It's been adding a whole new dimension to our tactics, which is always fun. In fact, in one of the earlier sessions (I believe the first), our dwarf and some of the "enemy" got into this fun little game of tossing torches back and forth in attempts to grant visibility to one's side while denying it for the other. In this last session, our rogue, who had languished behind for a round to recover his crossbow, was literally left in the dark, which greatly affected his options.

So, during the next episode of "Bastards of Erebus," will our heroes continue on to victory? Will the players finally remember to bring their dice? Will their characters remember to buy some sort of illuminating device? Tune it next time to find out!

Hank Woon
Editorial Intern

Bastards of Erebus Playtest Three

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

"Forget the dwarf! Tumble past the bad guys, get the bird, and let's get the heck out of here!"

Things were not going well for us. David started calling these playtesting sessions "The Misadventures of Erebus." But still, it was fun. The interesting thing about this playtest was all of the planning and options involved. For this encounter, we had to choose from a number of stratagems. After finally deciding upon one, we launched into action. I again cast entangle (Sean has taken to calling my druid "The Entangler"), summoned an owl, cast magic fang on my eagle, then sent the two avian avengers to flank one of the baddies. We were also using some new rules of Jason's for animal companions, and because of a typo my eagle and summoned ally got severely nerfed. The actual rules are nicely balanced, but my tactic ended up being of little help because of the misunderstanding, and Sean quickly (and gleefully, I might add) turned them into feathery piñatas.

After my eagle, Beaky, and our dwarf fighter dropped, and my summoned ally vanished, I called out the line of the night to David, who refused to either run away or pick up my eagle. I warned him, though, that if he dropped too, I was only picking up my animal companion. Well, to make a long story short, we're going to be refighting this battle next session. ;)

So we continued with the story, and we were soon presented with more stratagem planning. I really like this about the adventure. So far with the 3 parts we have played through, there have always been a number of choices, each with its own interesting tactical advantages and disadvantages. This always ends up with a lot of debating, but I've long been a fan of this sort of thing because it keeps the players engaged. Of course, we always have the standard rush-forward-and-kick-down-the-door option, but unlike many modules out there, this isn't funneling us down a path where our only real options are which door we want to open next.

We had just settled upon our tactic for the third part of the adventure when Sean called it a night. Now we have to wait another week before we get to see if our carefully laid plans will lead to glorious victory or to humiliating defeat... May Shelyn protect us!

Hank Woon
Editorial Intern

Bastards of Erebus—Playtest Two

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

David is pretty busy with his appendix posts, so I'm doing the second playtest blog. It began with Sean having us reset and trying our fateful battle over. Pre-battle, we toyed around with some new ideas, but ultimately decided that our last tactic was working pretty well (that is, until we died), and so decided to go with that.

The encounter actually started off a lot better than last time. We took out our first opponent rather speedily... and right about then things started to go against us. First my eagle got taken out. Then our dice betrayed us. Now, I know everyone has had bad dice nights, but this was incredulously, astronomically, and hilariously terrible. Even Sean shook his head in dismay, chalking it up as a first in his book.

That's when we began dropping like flies. The dwarf fighter and my druid were dealing the most damage, but of course this meant that we were the first to drop (meanwhile my eagle stabilized at –9). This left the gnome sorcerer and David's rogue. The gnome, after having a series of unfortunate rolls (like all of us), finally managed to hit one of the baddies while also providing a flanking bonus for the rogue... and then dropped. That left David and the final baddie, mano a mano. It went something like this (and by something, I mean exactly):

Sean: (Rolls a d20) 1.
David: (Rolls a d20) 1.
Sean: (Rolls a d20) 1.
David: (Rolls a d20) 1.

Two rounds in a row! Meanwhile, the gnome, the dwarf, and my druid are slowly bleeding to death. The gnome stabilized at I think –8, the dwarf at –9, and I just kept dying. But then, with a mighty strike with his rapier for 1 point of damage, David dropped the last foe and Sean declared (because he's a nice guy), that David managed to save me—right at –9.

Afterward, we leveled up (woohoo!) and moved on to the next phase of the adventure, which involves some careful planning on our part...

Hank Woon
Editorial Intern

The Bastards of Erebus—First Playtest

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Much to our delight, David and I were invited by Sean K Reynolds to participate in the playtesting of his latest Pathfinder Adventure Path adventure, The Bastards of Erebus.

We really enjoyed the adventure (well, the part we got through before suffering from a TPK). In addition to a gnome sorcerer and dwarven cleric, our party contained a half-orc druid (me) and a human rogue (David). David's character was the only native Chelaxian, which actually proved pretty helpful a few times.

I can't really go into too much detail, but I will say that there was a lot of suspense, which provoked a lot of debating over which course of action to take (I always love that!). The battle that did us in was actually already pretty balanced, but we had some extraordinarily poor rolls, while the enemy enjoyed just the opposite.

My druid was kicking butt with her entangle spell, but alas, the spell's effect only reduces Dex mods instead of denying, so it was of little help to the rogue, and the defensive way in which I had cast the spell prevented easy flanking for not only them, but also ourselves.

Sean estimates that the playtest will take about 4 sessions to complete, and David and I are going to take turns blogging about it. Maybe his first blog will be better news than a TPK, but either way I know it will be a blast! Stay tuned.

Hank Woon
Editorial Intern