Illustrations by Eva Widermann and Wayne Reynolds. Widescreen version here.
Dragon Empires Gazetteer Wallpaper!
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Check out this great wallpaper for the Dragon Empires Gazetteer, courtesy of two of the nicest and most talented artists in the business—Wayne Reynolds and Eva Widermann!
Illustrations by Eric Belisle and Wayne Reynolds. Widescreen version here.
Monsters Are Coming!
Thursday, December 1, 2011
The time draws nigh for Bestiary 3, so while you sharpen your blade and prepare your spells in advance of the monstrous onslaught, here's a little something to keep your mind on your task.
Illustration by Kekai Kotaki. Widescreen version here.
Death's Heretic Wallpapers!
Thursday, November 3rd, 2011
Death’s Heretic, the planes-hopping, soul-stealing new book in the Pathfinder Tales line (and the only one written by yours truly), releases in just three weeks. To help celebrate, Crystal’s used Kekai Kotaki’s awesome cover art to make Death’s Heretic wallpapers.
As I’m sure you can imagine, these will shortly be the backgrounds on every computer I own, and maybe some that I don’t. Wes is currently out of town—perhaps his monitor could use a little sprucing up? Or better yet—he’s always complaining about the glare from his big office windows, so I’m sure he’d prefer to have all that glass covered up by some nice color printouts...
Illustration by Kieran Yanner. Widescreen version here.
Planets in Peril!
Thursday, September 8, 2011
The latest release from Planet Stories, Robert Silverberg's The Planet Killer's: Three Novels of the Spaceways, is now blasting off from the Paizo warehouse. Kieran Yanner, who has illustrated all three of our Silverberg omnibuses with an eye-catching, nostalgic look, is in top retro-SF form once again in this new Planet Stories wallpaper!
Illustration by Dmitry Burmak and Daryl Mandryk. Widescreen version here.
For Glory, Not Gold!
Friday, September 2, 2011
A lot of folks have long been clamoring for more Norse-inspired gaming goodness, and we've got that coming for you to the axe-hilt in the upcoming Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Lands of the Linnorm Kings. To get you in that northern Inner Sea mood in the meantime, here's an awesome Linnorm Kings wallpaper featuring the art of Dmitry Burmak and Daryl Mandryk.
Illustration by Wayne Reynolds. Widescreen version here.
Jade Regent Wallpaper!
Thursday, August 25, 2011
With The Brinewall Legacy, Wayne Reynolds makes his triumphant return to the cover of Pathfinder Adventure Path, perfectly capturing Ameiko Kaijitsu's charming swagger and personality as Sandpoint's least-likely aristocrat. What better way to celebrate than with a commemorative wallpaper!
Illustration by Wayne Reynolds. Widescreen version here.
Ready for Combat!
Thursday, August 18, 2011
With Ultimate Combat fighting its way into eager hands, it's time to adorn your desktops with some appropriate wallpaper, featuring the ever-awesome art of Wayne Reynolds.
Illustrations by Damien Mammoliti and Maichol Quinto. Widescreen version here.
Deep, Dark, and Deadly!
July 15, 2011
It's been awhile since we've had a wallpaper, and this one's a doozie. Featuring some stunning artwork by Damien Mammoliti and Maichol Quinto, and themed around Dungeons of Golarion, it showcases Alain venturing into the Red Redoubt of Karamoss, a massive siege-fortress outside Absalom constructed by a combination of the machine-mage Karamoss's mechanical minions, powerful magic, and Numerian technology.
In the forefront is the leader of the kobolds living in the Candlestone Caverns, deep beneath rural Andoran. You definitely want to watch out for him!
Illustrations by Yngvar Asplund and Dmitry Burmak. Widescreen version here.
Don't Be Late for Your Very Important Date with the Harrowing!
Friday, June 24, 2011
It's no surprise that our childhoods influence who we are today. That's especially true for writers, since everything we do gets stored in our brains to be mashed together and filtered through our experiences, ready to jump out when the Muse strikes. The Harrowing, an adventure written by Crystal Frasier and designed for 9th-level characters, is such a mash-up: one part Time Bandits, two parts Alice in Wonderland, with a dash of a David Bowie-styled Labyrinth. In this adventure, the long-dead bard Sonnorae feared that her collection of stories would be lost when she died, and so she created a demiplane within her personal harrow deck to contain them. Over time, these stories took on lives of their own, and melded with the images on the cards themselves. But not all stories have happy endings, and the storykin who live in the Harrowed Realm have their own motivations and plots for power and some have even escaped into the real world. When the PCs find themselves drawn into the Harrowed Realm in search of a disappeared scholar, they must use all their wits and steel to navigate the landscape and politics of this strange wonderland and make it home again.
This adventure features an entire plane of fanciful locations and characters inspired by the popular harrow deck of the Pathfinder campaign setting. In addition, you'll find a brand-new monster and an optional rules subsystem allowing players to bend reality to their wills by using all 54 cards in the optional Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Harrow Deck to manipulate the strange demiplane in which they adventure.
We'll be shipping this adventure next month but until then, we hope this wallpaper fills you with Wonder.
Illustration by Dave Rapoza. Widescreen version here.
The Stars Are Wrong!
Friday, June 17, 2011
Wake of the Watcher, the fourth installment of the Carrion Crown Adventure Path, is on its way out of the warehouse and to retailers and subscribers the world over. In this chapter, the PCs venture to Illmarsh, an ugly town amid the nastiest stretch of swamp in Ustalav. On the trail of the Whispering Way, the PCs find themselves caught up between beings from beneath the seas and invaders from the darkest corners of the cosmos. Can the heroes save Illmarsh from its tradition of terror? Or will they be the next victims of the horror from beyond the stars? While you wait to find out, enjoy this wallpaper featuring a corpulent cthuloid and poor Merisiel caught up in the tentacles of some nightmarish spawn of a Great Old One.
Illustration by Tyler Walpole. Widescreen version here.
PaizoCon Is Here!
Friday, June 10, 2011
PaizoCon 2011 starts today! The massive event schedule lists all of the awesome activities attendees can expect to take part in, but here are some of the real gems that I'm looking forward to.
At the show guests and Paizo staff will have the opportunity to wine and dine together during Saturday's banquet. One of the reasons I'm excited about the banquet is the opportunity to meet and hang out with fellow Paizonians. Having gotten to know so many of you on the messageboards, it will be fun to finally meet some of you face to face! In addition to CEO Lisa Stevens's welcome and Publisher Erik Mona's preview of upcoming Pathfinder products, James Jacobs and Jason Bulmahn will be showcasing some really cool things about our upcoming products. I can't say here what they'll be, but you all should be very excited!
One of the neatest things about PaizoCon is the myriad opportunities to get the inside scoop on Pathfinder, Paizo, and the old days at TSR. Between “The Future of Paizo" on Friday, and seminars on writing for Paizo throughout the entire weekend, on Saturday there's a seminar on the "Secrets of TSR" with the likes of Ed Greenwood, Lisa Stevens, Ryan Dancey and maybe even Jeff Grubb himself!
Speaking of seminars, there are quite a few about the history of the industry, how to begin writing for RPGs, and breaking into the game industry. Here's a brief list of some of the seminars that you should try and get to: "Publishing in Kobold Quarterly," "Secrets of a Small Press Publisher," "Writing for the Pathfinder Society," and "Auntie Lisa's Story Hour" with Paizo CEO Lisa Steven's herself!
Finally (and perhaps best of all), expect to play lots and lots of games. Pathfinder Society scenarios will be run every day throughout the convention, and special events such as Stephen Radney-MacFarland's "Shootout in Old Korvosa," Jason Bulmahn's "Cursed Lot IV," and master of horror James Jacobs's "The Siege of Windy Hollow" (a Pathfinder RPG variant set in an apocalyptic earth ravaged by the Elder Mythos) are sure to be crowd pleasers. I might even have to sit in and watch some of these games being played—they sound that awesome.
We're super excited about this show and will be updating the blog throughout the weekend with news-bites, pictures, and updates. For those of you who can't make it, here's a wallpaper of the PaizoCon 2011 mascot: Unk the goblin!
Illustrations by Alex Aparin and Roberto Pitturru. Widescreen version here.
Everything She Does Is Magic!
Friday, June 3, 2011
Seoni is by far one of the most popular iconics we've ever written. The classic high charisma sorcerer, she's graced the pages of Pathfinder products from the very beginning. Now she can grace your desktop along with Alhazra, the iconic oracle, in this Inner Sea Magic themed wallpaper.
The Future of Pathfinder Society Organized Play Part XI: Pick Your Pace
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Well, loyal Pathfinders, I have returned from a weeklong adventure in which I conducted an ancient ritual at the prophesied time to eternally bond me with an intelligent magic item of incredibly high Charisma that now occupies my left ring slot. And whether the Rapture came or not, I'm in heaven (though there's little time to take in the sights as we scramble to get the finishing touches on all the great new Pathfinder Society material debuting at PaizoCon in little more than a week).
But enough about me and my new cohort (or am I the cohort?). Let's talk about one of the biggest changes coming to Pathfinder Society Organized Play next year: variable advancement tracks!
Illustration by Maichol Quinto
Currently, all Pathfinder Society PCs level at the same rate: 3 XP to level up, which breaks down to three scenarios per level, or at the most 37 scenarios between character creation and retirement after a completed 12th-level adventure arc. For someone playing only a handful of scenarios a year at large conventions, this means they can play the same PC for years and years and still feel like they're actually getting something out of those few sessions they play at Gen Con or PaizoCon annually. But for players who participate in the campaign on even a bi-weekly basis, they will have leveled a character from inception to near retirement in just over a single year.
We’ve listened to the feedback, and feel there's a simple solution already present in our rules system. The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game includes several different advancement tracks to allow GMs to run their campaigns at the pace that works best for them and their players. While most of our products to date assume the medium advancement track, some groups prefer using the fast or slow progressions to move more quickly to higher-level play or to savor each step along the way to 20th level. Pathfinder Society Organized Play will be implementing a similar optional advancement track beginning in Season 3.
Players who enjoy the three-scenario-per-level pace don’t need to do anything. For you, nothing will change. But for those who want a slower progression, you can opt instead to move at half-speed, earning only 1/2 XP, 1/2 the total maximum gold, and a maximum of 1 Prestige Point per scenario. Because the net gain per level will be the same whether you use the slow track over six adventures or the normal track over three, PCs will be able to choose which progression they'll use for their next level each time they gain a level.
In addition to allowing individuals to operate at their own pace, this plan should allow small home groups or even growing store and convention groups to cooperate to ensure that higher-level PCs slow down enough for new players or replacement characters to catch up, condensing the level spread to make things easier for event coordinators. I'm sure there are other benefits to these new options that we haven't even thought of in-house yet. What most excites you about this new development?
Be sure not to miss next week's Monday blog for a look at the fifth of the existing factions: the decadent empire of Taldor. Anyone who's already played The Dalsine Affair likely already has an idea of at least one change that will be coming to this faction—a change that players of the four new scenarios at PaizoCon are likely to notice right away.
Illustrations by Eric Belisle. Widescreen version here.
Rivals!
Friday, May 27th, 2011
It's Friday, and even though Hyrum's out at BookExpo America this week, he and Crystal still managed to set us all up with another awesome wallpaper—this time featuring some of the excellent art in the new Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Rival Guide. Now wasn't that thoughtful?
Enjoy the long weekend, and we'll see you all on Tuesday!
Illustrations by Jared Blando and Ryan Portillo. Widescreen version here.
Anybody Have a Mirror Handy?
May 20, 2011
One of my favorite movies as a kid had an awesome medusa put on the silver screen by Ray Harryhausen, a true master of physical special effects magic. The medusa in this wallpaper, from Tomb of the Iron Medusa reminds me a lot of that iconic one and now I really want to make a fighter with a divine heritage to chop her head off, in order to win the hand of the princess.
The first RPG product I ever purchased came in a red box, with a fighter laying the smack down on a red dragon. I was 12 and I've never stopped gaming since. I suspect that this fall some young whippersnappers will see this Beginner Box, pick it up, and begin their own journey into this great hobby of ours. With this amazing art from Wayne Reynolds, how can they not? And what can you do to make their journey easier?
This week's theme is witches and wizards: two new familiars, two new patron themes, and two arcane discoveries.
New Familiars
The following are two of the many new familiars presented in Ultimate Magic.
Fox CR 1/4 XP 100
N Tiny animal Init +2; Senses low-light vision, scent;
Perception +8 Defense AC 14, touch 14, flat-footed 12
(+2 Dex, +2 size) hp 5 (1d8+1) Fort +3, Ref +4, Will +1 Offense Speed 40 ft. Melee bite +1 (1d3-1) Space 2-1/2 ft.; Reach 0 ft. Statistics Str 9, Dex 15, Con 13, Int 2, Wis 12, Cha 6 Base Atk +0; CMB +0; CMD 9 (13 vs. trip) Feats Skill Focus (Perception) Skills Acrobatics +2 (+10
jumping), Perception +8, Stealth +10, Survival +1 (+5 scent tracking); Racial Modifiers +4 Acrobatics when
jumping, +4 Survival when tracking by scent Ecology Environment any Organization solitary, pair, or
skulk (3–12) Treasure none
Foxes are small, doglike carnivores with narrow snouts and bushy tails. A fox's master gains a +2 bonus on Reflex saves.
Hedgehog CR 1/8 XP 50
N Diminutive animal Init +3; Senses low-light vision; Perception
+1 Defense AC 18, touch 17, flat-footed 15
(+3 Dex, +1 natural, +4 size) hp 2 (1d8–2) Fort +0, Ref +5, Will +1 Offense
Speed 20 ft.
Space 1 ft.; Reach 0 ft. Statistics Str 1, Dex 16, Con 6, Int 2, Wis 12, Cha 7 Base Atk +0; CMB –1; CMD 4 (8 vs. trip) Feats Athletic Skills Climb +5, Stealth +19,
Swim +5 Ecology Environment tropical or
temperate forests Organization solitary or pair Treasure none Special
Abilities Spiny Defense (Ex) As a move
action, a hedgehog can roll itself up into a spiny ball. While rolled
up, it gains a +1 enhancement bonus to its existing natural armor, and
any creature attempting to grapple the hedgehog takes 1d3 damage on
making a grapple check. While rolled up, a hedgehog cannot take any
action other than leaving this state. The hedgehog can leave this state
as a move action.
Hedgehogs are spiny, insectivorous mammals. When threatened, a hedgehog
rolls up into a spiny ball as a defense mechanism. A hedgehog's master gains a +2 bonus on Will saves
Witch Patron Themes
The following are some of the alternative witch patron themes presented
in Ultimate Magic.
Arcane discoveries are a new option presented in Ultimate Magic. A wizard can learn an arcane discovery in place of a regular feat or wizard bonus feat.
Fast Study: Normally, a
wizard spends 1 hour preparing all of his spells for the day, or
proportionately less if he only prepares some spells, with a minimum of
15 minutes of preparation. Thanks to mental discipline and clever
mnemonics, you can prepare all of your spells in only 15 minutes, and
your minimum preparation time is only 1 minute. You must be at least a
5th-level wizard to select this discovery. Multimorph (Su): Your studies
in transmogrification have increased your control over shapechanging
spells. When you cast a spell of the polymorph subschool on yourself,
you may expend 1 minute of the spell's duration as a standard action to
assume another form allowed by the spell. You can do this as often as
you like, subject to the duration of the spell. You must be at least a
5th-level wizard to select this discovery.
Illustration by Dave Rapoza. Wallpaper design by Crystal Frasier. Widescreen version here.
Invasion of the Body Stitchers!
Friday, April 15, 2011
Burghers of Paizo, rejoice! The Beast of Lepidstadt has been captured! Next week we'll begin shipping the second installment of the Carrion Crown Adventure Path, and the Trial of the Beast will begin. The Punishing Man rises in the square outside the courthouse! The logs have been stacked against his flanks and the oil has seeped into his veins. The Punishing Man waits to take his passenger to the depths of Hell! And soon, he shall have his feast. Until then though, enjoy this wallpaper!
Hyrum Savage
Marketing and Organized Play Manager/Town Crier
Illustration by Wayne Reynolds. Wallpaper design by Crystal Frasier. Widescreen version here.
Ultimate Power!
Friday, April 8, 2011
Itty bitty living space? Nah, not with Ultimate Magic in your bag! This 256-page tome is the latest hardcover release for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and will be shipping to distributors in just a few weeks. Until you can hold the book in your hands, let this great wallpaper of the iconic magus Seltyiel by the always amazing Wayne Reynolds adorn your desktop.
Illustrations by Andrew Hou, Michael Saas, and Florian Stitz. Wallpaper design by Crystal Frasier. Widescreen version here.
Goblins for All!
Friday, April 1, 2011
Because you asked for it, the following changes are coming to Pathfinder:
Introducing the next in our popular Players Companion line of products: Goblins of Purity!
Goblins are popular. But they're not popular enough! With "Goblins of Purity," we're giving you what you've been asking for—the chance to fully embrace all of the madness and mayhem that is being a goblin—but in a way that allows you to still be a hero. This book is jam-packed with all manner of fun and exciting options for goblins dedicated to fighting against the rise of evil (as most often personified by greedy adventurers, slavering dogs, and those hateful horses with their sharp, sharp hooves and soulless eyes), all while maintaining the rip-roaring fun that being an arsonist or a baby-eater brings.
Goblins of Purity includes:
Two dozen goblin archetypes, including the Dog Hunter ranger, the Friendly Picklechucker rogue, and the Peaceful Beachcomber paladin
An extensive discussion of brand-new goblin versions of your favorite deities
An exciting reworking of the alignment system that allows you to play arsonists and baby-eaters while still being good-aligned
A brand-new 20-level base class built especially for would-be goblin heroes—the Goblin Babysitter, a class that gets extensive use out of this book's new "innocent accident charts"
We're not there yet, but when we send the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook back for another reprint, we'll be adding goblins to the list of core player races. Now everyone can be a goblin!
Starting today, goblins are now mandatory for play in the Pathfinder Society. Every group must have at least one goblin in the party. I expect some awesome stories from your games this weekend!
Later this year, we'll release the Goblinomicon, a 64-page book that outlines the foes goblins confront in daily life—including true and accurate stat blocks for dogs and horses!
Spoiler:
And... if you haven't figured out already, Happy April Fools Day!
Illustration by Daren Bader. Wallpaper design by Crystal Frasier. Widescreen version here.
What Happens in the Worldwound Stays in the Worldwound
Friday, March 25, 2011
Oceans 666—that's the best short description for Robin Laws's The Worldwound Gambit I've heard yet. Gambit is the fourth book in our Pathfinder Tales line and will be coming out in May, just in time to tuck it away in a bag and head to the beach. In this novel, preternaturally handsome and coolly charismatic swindler Gad decides to assemble a team of thieves, cutthroats, and con men to take the fight into the magic-twisted hellscape known as the Worldwound, intent on striking directly at the fiendish leader responsible for a series of raids into the surrounding territory—the demon Yath, the Shimmering Putrescence. Can Gad hold his team together long enough to pull off the ultimate con, or will trouble from within his own organization lead to an untimely end for them all? You won't be able to find out for a few weeks, but until then you'll have plenty of time to gaze on this great piece by Daren Bader.
So, I was out sick yesterday, and as a result missed out seeing Pathfinder #46 get sent off to the printer. Which is pretty exciting, since that volume's got more Lovecraftian awesomeness in it than anything we've done to date? The proof is in these out-of-context illustrations by Scott Purdy that are sure to get everyone thinking that the Carrion Crown Adventure Path will be taking some pretty drastic and unexpected turns! (Fans of Carrion Crown's Ustalav locations can breathe easy, though, since these pictures are from the foreword and the bestiary of the book, and thus don't actually depict events that occur in this volume's adventure.)
Illustration by Kieran Yanner. Wallpaper design by Crystal Frasier. Widescreen version here.
A-Hunting We Will Go...
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
I think we can all agree that Kieran Yanner is an amazing artist. And with this image, used as the cover for the latest Planet Stories volume, Hunt the Space-Witch! by Robert Silverberg, he's hit one out of the park. This cover screams pulp sci-fi and it proudly sits on my desktop as my wallpaper for this week. And now you too can adorn your sci-fi device of choice with Kieran's latest masterpiece.
For the last installment of the Design Tuesday blog on terrain, we are going to look at a relatively new type of terrain—terrain that you can actively manipulate. This kind of terrain can grant a creature a variety of effects, from an attack, to cover, to a special or enhanced mode of movement.
Some of the examples of this type of terrain will look familiar. Much of it can already be found within existing encounters. Where this is the case, it is up to you, the GM, to decide whether or not you wish to allow the special terrain effects described below.
Other samples of this type of terrain are new. Some, like the blink crystal, grant magical effects, and can add a sense of mystery and danger, as well as the possibility for strange tactics on the part of the PCs and their opponents.
Like the hazardous terrain presented last week, these new terrain types straddle the line between terrain and new dangers. Based on how much of this terrain you plan to use, you may want to consider adjusting the CR of encounters that use these more active forms of terrain, especially if their use grants one side of the combat more advantage than their foes.
Alchemical Devices: This terrain is actually a broad class of similarly acting terrains. They can be as simple as a workbench cluttered with beakers filled with roiling concoctions, or as complex as a distiller or even stranger alchemical machines. Manipulating such devices requires a standard action and any number of skill checks. Toppling a table requires a Strength check. Making a distiller shoot a gout of highly-pressurized alchemical gas may require a Disable Device check, a Craft (alchemy) check, or even a Strength check, if the PCs are using a strategic application of brute force. Interacting with more complex machinery usually requires a Disable Device check, though a higher DC Craft (alchemy) or Knowledge (arcana) check may do in a pinch.
Whatever the type of alchemical device, the basic rules for its manipulation are as follows. A successful check made as a standard action creates a 15-foot cone (or alternatively a 20-foot line) of damaging energy, controlled by the creature that successfully manipulated the device. It deals damage to creatures within the area of effect. A Reflex or a Fortitude DC halves the damage. Often alchemical devices create an area of acid, but the destructive energy could be cold, electrical, fire, or in rare cases even sonic or force damage, depending on the nature of the device.
To add more flavor and danger to specific alchemical devices, you can layer on additional conditions and effects. You could add bleed damage (which works well for acid or even fire damage devices), have creatures knocked prone on a failed saving throw (for sonic or force damage devices), or have a failed saving throw entangle creatures for 1d4 rounds (for cold damage devices) or even daze creatures for 1 round (for electrical damage devices).
The following are some suggestions for baseline effects of alchemical devices based on the base CR of the encounter.
Simple Alchemical Device (CR 1–5): Activating—DC 14 check; Effect—DC 12 Reflex saving throw for 2d6 acid, fire, or electrical damage, or a DC 12 Fortitude saving throw if the device deals cold, sonic, or force damage.
Complicated Alchemical Device (CR 6–10): Activating—DC 17 check; Effect—DC 15 Reflex saving throw for 3d6 acid, fire, or electrical damage, or a DC 15 Fortitude saving throw if the device deals cold, sonic, or force damage.
Advanced Alchemical Device (CR 11–15): Activating—DC 22 check; Effect—DC 20 Reflex saving throw for 4d6 acid, fire, or electrical damage, or a DC 20 Fortitude saving throw if the device deals cold, sonic, or force damage.
Magic-Infused Alchemical Device (CR 16+): Activating—DC 27 check; Effect—DC 25 Reflex saving throw for 4d6 acid, fire, or electrical damage, or a DC 25 Fortitude saving throw if the device deals cold, sonic, or force damage.
Blink Crystal: These strange, cloudy-white crystals glow with a faint purplish radiance. Typically blink crystals are the size of large gemstones, and they are always set in a statue or some similar large and immobile casing. If a blink crystal is removed from its casing, it loses its magic and becomes nothing more than a large piece of common quartz (worth 10 gp). A creature adjacent to a blink crystal can touch it as a free action, which causes the creature to teleport up to 20 feet to an unoccupied space on stable ground within line of sight. Touching a blink crystal as a swift action along with a successful DC 20 Spellcraft or Use Magical Device check can increase the range of the teleport to 40 feet. Failing this check allows the creature to teleport 20 feet.
Bubbling Caldron: A size Large bubbling caldron can be tipped over with a DC 15 Strength check made as a standard action. Doing so releases a 30-foot cone of boiling liquid from the caldron in the direction of the creature’s choosing, and deals 2d6 fire damage to all creatures within the cone’s area. A successful DC 12 Reflex saving throw halves the damage.
The liquid makes the area of the cone slippery (Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook 412) until it dries or dissipates. The cone of liquid affects creatures on the ground only. Flying or levitating creatures can avoid the liquid and its damaging effect.
Chandelier: Successfully leaping onto a chandelier allows a creature to hang from it and use its momentum to increase the power of a jump before the end of the leaping creature’s next turn. A creature is flat-footed while it hangs or balances on chandelier.
Using the momentum of the chandelier grants the leaping creature a +5 circumstance bonus on Acrobatic checks made to jump off the chandelier, and the jump is considered to have a running start for purposes of determining the DC of the check.
Chandeliers have size categories like creatures do. They are typically size Small or larger. A chandelier can easily support a single creature of its own size or smaller.
A creature larger than the chandelier’s size (or two creatures of the same size or smaller than the chandelier) can attempt to hang on it or use it to gain the bonus on Acrobatics checks made to jump, but at the end of the creature’s turn (or the second creature’s turn, if two creatures are using the chandelier for the same effect), the chandelier breaks free from its supports and both the chandelier and any creatures hanging from it fall to the ground. If either a creature two or more size categories larger than the chandelier or three smaller creatures leap on to the chandelier, the chandelier and those hanging on it fall immediately. Creatures take normal damage from the fall plus an additional 1d10 damage from the falling chandelier. At the GM’s discretion, extremely large or heavy chandeliers or chandeliers with sharp protrusions or other dangers can deal additional damage upon a fall.
Furniture: From flipping over a table to using a gong as makeshift shield, a movable piece of furniture can be manipulated to create partial cover for a short period of time. A creature that is adjacent to the piece of movable furniture can attempt a Strength check as a move-equivalent action to gain cover from the item until the start of its next turn.
The DC of the Strength check depends on the size of the furniture. The base is DC 10 for size Small furniture, and the DC increases by 5 for each size category over Small (moving a Medium piece of furniture is DC 15, moving a Large piece of furniture is DC 20, and so on). A creature cannot attempt this manipulation if it is two or more size categories smaller than the piece of movable furniture it wants to manipulate.
Rug: A creature can spend a standard action to attempt to pull a rug out from under creatures standing atop the rug. This requires a DC 15 or higher Strength check, depending on the size of the rug. If successful, each creature standing atop the rug (some of its space must be on atop the rug) must succeed on a DC 12 Reflex saving throw or fall prone. Creatures that cannot be tripped are immune to this effect. Rugs that are larger than a 4-square area require higher Strength checks. The DC increases by 2 for every additional 2 squares of rug area beyond 4 squares.
Illustration by Jesper Ejsing. Wallpaper design by Crystal Frasier. Widescreen version here.
If Winter Comes, Can Spring Be Far Behind?
Friday, March 11, 2011
We continue the month with another Pathfinder Tales-inspired wallpaper. This time we present the cover to Winter Witch by New York Times best-selling author Elaine Cunningham. I like all of the covers we've done for Pathfinder Tales, but this is my favorite to date. Something about the varied blues, warm reds, and general feel of the piece is just cool. (Pun intended.) If you haven't already, you should check the book out by getting it here or at your favorite bookstore. You can even read the prologue right here.
And now that winter is coming to an end, spring (and the sun!) is that much closer. Which makes this SoCal native very happy indeed.
In last week's Design Tuesday blog, I delved into the importance of terrain to push your encounter design to the next level, and provided you with some design philosophy to ponder when designing your own terrain. This week, I'm back with some concrete examples.
The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game assumes combatants are able to use their movement abilities with little or no hindrance. Sure, there are walls, doors, and difficult terrain to navigate, or maybe some obscuring effects to grant a little concealment, but for the most part PCs and monsters have free reign to move about the rooms and corridors of the dungeon as they wish. The following types of terrain are all exceptions to this norm. While some act as difficult terrain, they present further hazards while navigating the battlefield.
One thing to keep in mind about all of these new terrain types is that they typically work best as smaller, tactically placed patches. You may be tempted to fill an entire battlefield with one of these new terrains, but doing this should be the exception rather than the rule. They all work best when they give characters a choice between freedom and danger. When properly placed, they can reward the use of combat maneuvers and spells that grant increased mobility to allies or restrict or force the movement of enemies, and may limit the opportunities to make charge attacks without stymieing that tactic outright.
You may notice that these new terrain types are very similar to the hazards presented on pages 244–245 of the Pathfinder RPG GameMastery Guide. So what is the difference between these terrains and hazards? These hazardous terrains involve slightly more choice on the part of combatant than hazards do. Most, if not all, have effects when a character chooses to move into or is forced into them, and those effects should be relatively easy to determine before the combatant enters them, either by way of their physical characteristic or an easy Knowledge check (DC 10) of the appropriate type.
Anchor Stone: This strange stone has a debilitating gravitational effect on those who do not traverse over it quickly. Each time a creature starts its turn on an area of anchor stone, it must succeed at a DC 12 Fortitude saving throw. Any creature that fails can only take a 5-foot step on its turn. Any creature that succeeds at the saving throw must move at half speed on its turn.
To take the effects of anchor stone, a creature must be standing on or touching the stone. Anchor stone has no effect on those who fly over it or otherwise do not have physical contact with the stone.
Some areas of anchor stone are more powerful than others, having a DC of 15, 20, or even higher.
Choke Spores: This type of fungus thrives in subterranean caves and other damp and lightless areas. The first time a creature starts its turn within an area containing choke spores, the poison of the fungus is released, inflicting those within that space with the following poison.
Choke Spore Poison
Type poison, inhaled; Save Fortitude DC 14
Frequency 1/round for 1d4 rounds
Effect 1 Dex and 1 Wis damage; Cure 1 save
Once an area of choke spores releases its poison, that area becomes dormant for 1 day. With a single standard action, a creature can use fire (from a torch, a flaming magical weapon, or a similar implement) to destroy all the choke spore balls within all 5-foot-squares adjacent to the creature. Acid, cold, and fire damage from area effect spells automatically destroy patches of choke spores within the spells' effect areas.
Fey Mist: This strange swirling mist of purple and green gas and motes of light dazzles those who stray within it. Fey mist provides concealment. Furthermore, a living, non-fey creature that starts its turn within the mist must make a DC 12 Will saving throw or become confused for 1 round. Those that make their saving throws are dazzled for 1 round instead. This is an enchantment effect.
Some areas of fey mist are more powerful than others, and have and require a DC 15, DC 20, or even DC 25 Will saving throw to avoid its confusion.
Flame: A house is on fire and that flame rages in large areas, a hellish landscape burns around you, or a large bonfire rages in a clearing where a coven of witches chant evil incantations. While the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook has rules for forest fires, sometimes you may want to have a section of an encounter area that just burns.
When a creature starts its turn with its space fully within an area of flame, it takes 1d6 points of fire damage, and if the creature is wearing metal armor, it is affected as if by a heat metal spell. A creature that starts its turn with its space only partially within an area of flame must succeed at a DC 12 Reflex saving throw or take the damage and the heat metal effect if it is wearing metal armor. A creature that moves through areas of flame must make a DC 12 Reflex saving throw or take 1d6 points of fire damage, but avoids the heat metal effect. This save is made the first time a creature moves into flame with a move action or when it is affected by something that pushes or otherwise forces the creature into an area of flame.
Supernatural or powerful flames can have higher DCs. A raging fire can have a DC of 15 or the fires of Hell can have a DC of 20, 25, or 30 depending on the power of the flames.
Areas of flame often create smoke, the effects of which can be found on page 444 of the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook.
Haunted Ground: These areas of accursed ground are often the sites of horrid crimes or intense and bloody battles. The intense fear of those who lost their lives lingers and saturates the area. This fear affects living creatures that stray within these areas. A living creature that starts its turn in an area of haunted ground must succeed at a DC 15 Will saving throw or become shaken for 1d4 rounds. If the creature is already shaken, it becomes frightened for the same duration instead. Frightened creatures become panicked for the same duration instead. Creatures that are immune to fear effects are immune to haunted ground.
Razor Rubble: Either rubble made of sharp stone, or laced with small sharp blades, this terrain functions like difficult terrain (see Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook193), but each square a creature enters deals 1 point of damage to that creature. A creature moving at half speed, or that succeeds at a DC 15 Acrobatics check as a free action when first moving into an area of razor rubble can avoid the damaging affects for the round but not the difficult terrain effect.
Slick Ice: A frozen lake, a sheen of thick ice on a dungeon or cavern floor, or some other cold and slick surface, slick ice can be hard to traverse, but can also increase the speed of creatures that are agile or foolhardy enough to utilize its surface's lack of friction.
A creature traversing slick ice at more than half speed is required to make a DC 15 Acrobatic check at the start of the movement. Failure causes the creature to fall prone at the start of the movement. Running or charging on slick ice increases the DC by 5, with the same effect on a failed skill check. A creature that succeeds at this check by 5 or more can increase its move across the ice by 10 feet, but is considered flat-footed until the start of its next turn. Creatures (like those with enough levels of barbarian or rogue) that can't be caught flat-footed at the start of combat are immune to this flat-footed effect as well.
Tentacle Mold: This strange vermillion fungus clings to the moist walls, floors, and even ceilings of dungeons and caverns. When a living creature is in or near a patch of this fungus, acidic pseudopods lash out, with sickening effect.
When a living creature starts it turn in an area of or in a square next to (if it clings to the walls or the ceiling) of tentacle mold, it must make a DC 15 Fortitude saving throw; on a failed saving throw the creature takes 1 acid damage and is sickened for 1 round. Though the effect is like a poison, this is not actually a poison effect; the strange chemistry of this kind of mold makes it more alchemical in nature.
Illustration by Dan Scott. Wallpaper design by Crystal Frasier. Widescreen version here.
Bark at the Moon!
Friday, March 4, 2011
Last week we showcased the cover art from Howard Andrew Jones' Pathfinder Tales novel Plague of Shadows. This week we go back to the beginning and give you a wallpaper based on Prince of Wolves by Dave Gross, the novel that launched the entire line. If you haven't read it yet you really should. It's got fighting, murder, mystery, true love, werewolves, ancient magics, curses from beyond the grave, and even dead Pathfinders! Best of all, if you know any Pathfinder Tales subscribers, they may have received a free copy to give away...
And tune into this spot on Monday as Pathfinder Designer Stephen Radney-MacFarland guest-blogs and things get... explosive.
When designing an encounter, it's tempting to focus the majority of your attention on the mix of monsters and villains. After all, coming up with interesting enemy synergies and evocative scenes of terror, threat, and evil-doing go a long way in making encounters both memorable and fun. Often neglected, though, is making sure that the setting you place these bad guys in offers both threat and opportunity of its own. When designed correctly, the terrain of an encounter can provide opportunity and challenges that not only compliment the opponents that you select, but can make combat the stuff of gaming stories for years to come.
First Things First
There are two ways to go about terrain selection for your encounter. The first is to think about the environment that you want to set your encounters, or an entire adventure, within, and filling it with the proper terrain. When it comes to dungeon and cavern settings, much of this work is already done for you. Take a look at Chapter 13 of the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook, especially pages 410&ndash416, and you'll find a good selection of terrain types to stock your dungeon. You'll also want to check out pages 193—194 of the Core Rulebook as it has the rules for difficult terrain and obstacles, and maybe take a peek at pages 244–245 Pathfinder RPG GameMastery Guide for some sample hazards to play with.
Picking proper terrain is all about creating interesting exceptions, so the first thing you'll want to do is make decisions about the baseline terrain for your dungeon. Unless your group is full of seasoned Pathfinder veterans, you'll want to set those baselines at or near the base assumptions of the Pathfinder rules: Masonry walls, flagstone, and wooden doors are a good start. For the most part you, and your players will not have to think about these areas of terrain at all. They're the standard dungeon dressing everyone is use to. Then you'll want to think about the possible exceptions for your dungeon. Are parts of the dungeon in disrepair? Are parts of the dungeon in the midst of construction? Does the dungeon serve as an entryway to a subterranean cave system? Does it lead to an underground river or water or magma? Once you are done imagining your dungeon, and maybe even sketching it on some graph paper, you can start to figure out where the exceptions sit, and then start brainstorming possibilities that you can't find in the rules... but we will get to that later.
Straying deeper into Chapter 13, you can make similar choices for large areas of terrain that are not dungeons, but the principles are the same. Find your baseline, and then ponder the possibility of interesting and evocative exceptions to that baseline. Take some notes, ponder some possibilities, and search the rules for similar types of terrain.
The other way to go about creating interesting environments is to think about the monsters and villains you want in your encounter in the adventure, and ask yourself two questions. The first question is, what kind of terrain compliments the monsters' or villains' tactics? The second question is, what kind of terrain compliments your PCs' abilities? Answering the second question can be a little tricky, especially if your end result is being designed for a nonspecific group of PCs (say you're writing an adventure for a convention or Pathfinder Society open call, or you're already thinking about next year's RPG Superstar). More often than not, you'll want to try to fill your encounters with terrain that does both simultaneously. This creates better-balanced encounters that don't favor one side or the other overly much, which not only tend to create more exciting encounters, but can also bypass the need to adjust the CR of your encounters because terrain favors one side more than the other.
Whenever possible, it's best to use a mixture of these two approaches. Treat each one as lenses toward your ultimate goal—to create a fun game experience in a world that seem rich, vibrant, and full of possibilities and potential dangers for the PCs to explore.
Designing New Terrain
Whenever you get the itch to create a new piece of terrain, you should shoot toward making your terrain challenging to interact with but not overly frustrating. In general, you will want one of two speeds for your new terrain. The first speed is terrain that has automatic effects when a creature spends an action to interact with it, but the effect is always constant. Unlocked doors, stairs, and small passageways all fall under this category. They talk directly to the action economy of the game. Someone must spend an action or slightly modify her normal actions in order to use them (think squeezing, opening doors, or basic difficult terrain). This type of terrain is easy to use, quick to remember, but it lacks variability. Some of the most exciting terrain features effects that do not guarantee success, or, better yet, feature varying degrees of success.
Enter the second speed of terrain, where actions are often required, but the effect is variable. Usually such variability is tied to the uses of a skill. For most terrain you will want to pick a basic skill that can be used untrained and that makes sense for the terrain type. Acrobatics, Climb, Escape Artist, Fly, Survival, Swim, and even raw Strength checks are some obvious examples, with Acrobatics already doing a lot of the heavy lifting with the terrain found in the Core Rulebook (see hewn stone floors, rubble, and slippery floors). But don't be afraid to mix it up a little with other skills, even those that can't be used untrained (Disable Device, Ride, and even Stealth are some personal favorites). Creating such terrain is just another way where PCs (or monsters) with high skill bonuses have an opportunity to shine, but at a cost. Failure is a possibility.
When creating new terrain, it is not only important to make sure that they work within the normal rules of the Pathfinder RPG but that they are also the right fit for the PC and creature mix you are designing encounters and adventure for. Designing a fight on a frozen lake may seem like fun, but the last thing you want to do is slow down the encounter to a crawl with every creature being forced to make an Acrobatics check in order to accomplish any kind of movement whatsoever. Consider creating relatively safe areas (maybe areas covered with snow or rough ice that grants more traction), giving clumsy creatures slightly suboptimal movement choices, while allowing agile creatures to gamble for success, or even the possibility of greater effect. With those sheets of ice, consider giving them the possibility of bonuses when higher Acrobatics checks are rolled.
Can We Get Some Examples?
With some of terrain philosophy out of the way, start fooling around with creating your own terrain. Tune in next Tuesday for some new pre-made terrain objects to spice up your game. Next week we will be focusing on some terrain primarily designed to limit or focus movement and action types, and the week after we will unleash some crazy terrain options that grant new action options, such as movement and even some terrain that grants creatures special attacks.
Illustration by Daren Bader. Wallpaper design by Crystal Frasier. Widescreen version here.
A Plague on All Your Houses!
Friday, February 25, 2011
The latest Pathfinder Tales novel, Plague of Shadows, has started shipping to subscribers and stores. In this novel, written by sword and sorcery icon Howard Andrew Jones, the race is on to free Lord Stelan from the grip of a wasting curse, and only Elyana, his old elven adventuring companion and former lover, has the wisdom and reflexes to save him. When the villain turns out to be another of their former companions, Elyana and a band of ragtag adventurers must set out on a perilous race across the revolution-wracked nation of Galt and the treacherous Five Kings Mountains, bound for the mysterious Vale of Shadows. But even if they can succeed in locating the key to Stelan’s salvation in a lost valley of weird magic and nightmare beasts, the danger isn't over. For Elyana's companions may not all be what they seem.
Plague of Shadows is straight up old-school fantasy adventure. Bands of heroes race to complete a quest fighting dragons and other monsters along the way. This wallpaper showcases Elyanna fighting an umbral dragon (check out Bestiary 2 to see its stats!) inside the Vale of Shadows. To learn how the fight ends, pick up your copy of Plague of Shadows today either here at paizo.com or at your local bookstore.
So we have this book coming out soon called Undead Revisited. A 64-page book that's sort of a spiritual sequel to Classic Horrors Revisited, I suppose, in that it's got ten six-page articles that explore all sorts of scary monsters. But whereas Classic Horrors Revisited focused on frights that come from myth and legend, Undead Revisited focuses more on undead who were mostly created whole cloth for the game. A few in here, like the wight, are certainly from mythology, but most of the undead in this book are things like bodaks, devourers, graveknights, nightshades, and raveners—creatures made up for the game and only very loosely (if at all) inspired by overall stories featuring undead and threats from beyond the grave.
Anyway, when I was ordering art for the book, I decided to have a little fun. Each chapter opens with a half-page illustration, so why not show these horrible undead doing what they were born to do—kill player characters? So for each chapter opener, you get to see some violent undead monster killing off one of our iconics—pictured here, the iconic alchemist Damiel meets his end at the shadowy hands of a shadow.
Of course, there's only ten chapters, and when you count the three most recent additions to the party (the samurai, the ninja, and the gunslinger), we've got over double that in iconics. That DOES mean that only ten of the iconics get offed in this book. So make sure to check out Undead Revisited when it comes out to discover if YOUR favorite iconic bit the dust!
Among the Licktoad Goblins, fame doesn't come easily. If you want to be taken seriously by His Mighty Girthness Chief Rendwattle Gutwad and allowed to undertake a dangerous mission—such as retrieving a load of fireworks from a goblin cannibal—you need to be ready to prove yourself. That means engaging in any number of deadly and disgusting dares, from eating a bag of bull slugs or braving the dreaded Earbiter to the most fearsome challenge of all: attempting to ride the infamous Squealy Nord himself! (Presented above is an artist's rendition of one such attempt. Images of the aftermath have been deemed too graphic for public display.)
For more information on Squealy Nord and your chance to join the Licktoad heroes on their epic quest, be sure to stop by your local game store on June 18th to pick up your free copy of our Free RPG Day adventure, We Be Goblins!
Illustration by Sara Forlenza. Wallpaper design by Crystal Frasier. Widescreen version here.
Paizo Is Divine
Friday, February 18, 2011
It's been a divine week here at Paizo. On Wednesday we talked a little about Faiths of Purity, a book that discusses in depth the good-aligned gods and the role of religion and faith on Golarion. In that post we spoiled the code that paladins of Shelyn live by, which you can read about by clicking here.
Yesterday, James Jacobs gave us the subdomains for all of the deities mentioned by name in The Inner Sea World Guide that didn't in turn get a write-up in the Advanced Player's Guide That post built on the one from the week before, where he gave us Pharasma-friendly versions of the Death domain and the attached Souls subdomain. He also gave us the Dark Tapestry, Stars, Dragon, and Saurian subdomains, which fall under the Void and Scalykind domains, both of which can be found in The Inner Sea World Guide.
All of that is a roundabout way of presenting this week's wallpaper, a great piece depicting a paladin of Shelyn. Enjoy!
Illustrations by Christophe Swal. Wallpaper design by Crystal Frasier. Widescreen version here.
The Pathfinder Society Needs You!
Friday, February 11, 2011
One of my duties here at Paizo is to oversee the Pathfinder Society, the organized play program for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. In Pathfinder Society Organized Play, your character is a member of the Pathfinder Society, seeking fortune and glory all over the face of Golarion. Pathfinders are a diverse bunch of scoundrels and wanderers. Their loyalties lie on all shores of the Inner Sea, and beyond their adventures as Pathfinders, they often find themselves mixed up in the murky politics of Absalom and the five nations who seek to control the City at the Center of the World from behind the scenes. The campaign centers on the sprawling city of Absalom, where five factions (for now) engage in a shadow war for control of the city's politics and economy.
Pathfinder Society Organized Play is a constantly evolving mega-campaign played by thousands of players and the adventures you experience are shared by players around the world. Play is organized into Seasons, throughout which the actions and achievements of you and your fellow Pathfinders create an ongoing storyline. Each season consists of at least 28 Pathfinder Society scenarios (short, 4-hour adventures) set in a variety of exotic locations across Golarion.
Currently, the Society is waging a secret war against the Shadow Lodge, former Pathfinders working to bring the Society to its knees. This wallpaper, designed by Crystal Frasier with art from Christophe Swal, showcases some of what the Pathfinder Society is all about.
If you want to learn more about the Pathfinder Society, and the entire Pathfinder Society Organized Play program, head on over to the PFS Page to learn more.
Illustrations by Andrew Hou. Wallpaper design by Crystal Frasier.
We Love Goblins!
Friday, February 4, 2011
We definitely love goblins here at Paizo. In fact, more than anything we love them blinded, helpless, and fascinated. And with this new wallpaper, you can too! This wallpaper uses artwork from the soon-to-arrive Condition Cards, the latest Game Mastery card set from Paizo. With these cards you'll be able to easily keep track of the Pathfinder RPG's most common conditions, making it so you'll never miss a modifier again!
Illustrations by Kerem Beyit. Wallpaper design by Crystal Frasier. Widescreen version here.
Snakes, I Hate Snakes!
Friday, January 28, 2011
I've been in the gaming industry for a decade now and I still get a smile on my face when new product arrives from the printer and I get to thumb through it for the first time. This week was a banner week as I got preview copies of Flip-Mat Village Square, the new Pathfinder Tales novel Plague of Shadows from sword and sorcery master Howard Andrew Jones, and the theme for this week's wallpaper: "Sanctum of the Serpent God," part 6 of the Serpent Skull Adventure Path. This awesome piece showcases
Spoiler:
Vyr-Azul, the High Priest of Ydersius, the insidious villain of Serpent Skull who plans to restore his god and usher in a new Age of Serpents. You'll finally meet him at the heart of the serpent-god's sanctum, and the fate of Golarion hangs in the balance!
Illustrations by Carolina Eade and Mike Sass. Wallpaper design by Crystal Frasier. Widescreen version here.
Ebon Destroyers!
Friday, January 21, 2010
As I was contemplating which wall paper to put up on the blog this week, Warehouse Will made it super easy since he came by to drop off advance preview copies of our upcoming products. The Inner Sea Poster Map Folio (3-1/2' × 5' of map goodness) and Condition Cards are awesome, but what really got me excited were my copies of Cult of the Ebon Destoyers. Written by RPG Superstar 2010 winner Matt Goodall, the module pits 8th-level PCs against a murder-cult of terror set against the backdrop of Jalmeray and its capital city of Niswan. Can the PCs wipe out the Ebon Destroyers before the beloved ruler of Jalmeray is beheaded? You'll be able to find out in a few weeks! Until then, enjoy this fabulous wallpaper depicting one of the many members of this evil cult of Vudrani assassins.
Illustrations by Mauricio Herrera and Peter Lazarski. Widescreen version here.
Long Live The Gorilla King!
Friday, January 14, 2010
It's no secret that I love gorillas, apes, and monkeys. My avatar here at Paizo is a monkey, my personal Facebook icon for a long time was a Bili Ape, and I'm always calling my kids little monkeys. (They are the Savage Horde, after all.) When I asked the art department to create a series of wallpapers, you can only imagine my delight when Crystal showed me the wallpaper below. It's about as perfect a wallpaper as I could ask for: the Gorilla King, swarms of monkeys in the background, and all of the Pathfinder hardback covers. It's been on my computer since Crystal finished it a week ago, and now it can be on yours.
Illustrations by Vincent Dutrait and Kieran Yanner. Widescreen version here.
You Tried to Kill Him, Now Try to Save Him!
Friday, January 7, 2010
A few years ago we released a little family board game of murder in the dark. Kill Doctor Lucky had you racing to see who can kill Doctor Lucky while nobody was looking. It was a great product and has provided hours of fun. A few weeks ago we released the sequel, Save Doctor Lucky. This time you're on a titanic cruise ship sailing across the Atlantic with one very lucky old man and an errant iceberg that's just hit the ship. Doctor Lucky is a charismatic and well-respected philanthropist with a heart of gold. Of course, you secretly hate the old bastard, and you're probably going to try to kill him someday. But killing him aboard a sinking ship would be pointless. So you've decided to save his life instead, and do it while someone else is looking. That way, even if you go down with the ship, you'll at least go down in history. And now you can include this lovely wallpaper on your computer as you float to the bottom of the sea.
2011 is here at last, and with the start of the new year, we've got a new program that we are happy to unveil. Every Tuesday, you are going to see a blog from one of the members of the design team (that being Sean K Reynolds, Stephen Radney MacFarland, or myself), looking into the mechanics of the game and giving you tips, tricks, and tools to make your game run smoothly and easily.
I am hoping to use these blogs to present new and interesting rules and ideas to use at the game table, perhaps even a few serials, where we explore a concept or idea more deeply. For example, we might run a series of blogs that explore intelligent magic items and how they can be used in your game, giving you a host of samples, and presenting a few new abilities. Or, we might spend a few weeks looking at the rules for afflictions, and adding a couple of new curses, diseases, and poisons to use in your game. Now, I have a list of ideas for what we might use to fill up this space, but here at the outset, I thought it might be useful to ask you, the reader, what you want to see appear in this space. I'll leave the campaign-specific material and preview for the other days of the week—this space will be used exclusively to look at the rules of the game.
I want to hear what you want to see. Check out this thread on our messageboards and add your thoughts to the growing discussion. See you next week.
Illustrations by Eric Belisle and Wayne Reynolds. Widescreen version here.
Release the Hordes!
December 31, 2010
It’s the last day of 2010, and once again the Paizo offices are closed, this time in honor of the new year. It’s been an amazing 2010 here at Paizo, and we managed to cap it with a great new hardcover book. Bestiary 2 has begun to arrive in stores and in hands around the world, making it easy to surprise your players with new monsters during your games this weekend. Bestiary 2 is full of some great adversaries for you to defeat, and the poster we recently released will help you keep track of which ones have met their demise at the hands of your players. In honor of both the new year and the release of Bestiary 2, here’s another great wallpaper from our art team!
Illustration by Matt Dixon. Widescreen version here.
Happy Holidays!
December 24, 2010
None of us are in the office today, we're hither and yon, fording rivers and traveling through woods, celebrating the holiday weekend with family and friends. However, we hope you enjoy this week's wallpaper and that you have a wonderful holiday, eat as much great food as you can, and have the chance to decorate your home with the finest crystals available.
From all of us, to all of you, may you have a joyous crystalhue!
The Inner Sea World Guide, our revised, reorganized, and expanded look at the world of Golarion, is off to the printer! While it won't be back and ready to share in all its hardbound glory until sometime in March, we've done the heavy lifting and put together a beaut of a book we think is going to blow away both those visiting Golarion for the first time and all of you who practically live there. But for those who think they know what to expect out of our refreshed and 100% Pathfinder RPG infused World Guide, now seems like a great chance to give away five things about the The Inner Sea World Guide that you probably didn't know.
1. Shoanti. They're in the races rundown in Chapter 1: Races, right along with Chelaxians, Kellids, Tians, and all the rest.
2. The Darklands. They get their own four-page write-up now, right along with all the other countries and regions in Chapter 2: The Inner Sea.
3. Languages. A TON of them, listed, detailed, and divided into Modern Human Languages, Ancient Languages, and Other Languages, in Chapter 4: Life.
4. Guns. The Pathfinder RPG's first stab at rules for firearms shows up in Chapter 6: Adventuring, along with a ton of Golarion-specific gear.
5. Monsters. All of Chapter 7: Monsters is dedicated to investigating some of the deadliest denizens of Golarion, along with 9 complete write-ups for some of the Inner Sea's most notorious beasties.
If you knew all that already, well, then check out the new art for the Worldwound by Craig Spearing! I know you haven't seen that before!
Early last year a promise was made, a promise to those GMs who go beyond the call of duty. The promise was a special scenario, exclusive to 4-star Game Masters and Venture-Captains. Hints were dropped by Mark Moreland back in October that something special was coming, and now I can tell you that the special 4-star GM scenario will be released in January and enjoyed worldwide soon after.
"The Midnight Mauler," a Tier 1–7 scenario written by the always amazing Crystal Frasier, sends members of the Pathfinder Society to the former crown jewel of Ustalav's royal courts, the decaying city of Ardis. Tasked by the Society to look into the fate of Absalom's former Master of Blades Vonran Vilk, what they find will lead to exploration, diplomacy, murder, haunted pasts, and tragic love. Can the PCs discover the identity of the Midnight Mauler before it kills again? Find out in 2011!
Last Friday, Managing Editor extraordinaire Wes Schneider spoke a little about the upcoming Carrion Crown Adventure Path. This amazing AP starts with Pathfinder Adventure Path #43: "The Haunting of Harrowstone" and a stellar cover by Dave Rapoza. In honor of the upcoming AP, and as a new feature on the Paizo blog, we're proud to offer the first of many new wallpapers. Just download the image below and in no time you'll be able to gaze at Feiya and Merisiel kicking the snot out of skeletons to your heart's content, all from the comfort of your office chair. This might be the first new wallpaper in a while, but it definitely isn't the last, so keep an eye on the blog for more in the coming weeks.
In a flurry of crunched stat blocks and flung pages, the last two weeks have seen us send two volumes of Pathfinder Adventure Path off to the printer, Pathfinder Adventure Path #42: "Sanctum of the Serpent God" and, right on its heels, Pathfinder Adventure Path #43: "The Haunting of Harrowstone". While the former brings the Serpent Skull Adventure Path to its climactic close, the latter marks a total shift, taking us from the wild jungles and hidden ruins of the Mwangi Expanse to the foggy moors and haunted ruins of Ustalav, the seat of gothic horror in Golarion. Longtime readers know that every new campaign gives us the opportunity to not just explore new themes, lands, and menaces, but to also reinvent Pathfinder's look for a new series.
And Carrion Crown looks incredible. Beyond Dave Rapoza's fantastic cover and the work of numerous talented interior illustrators, art director Sarah Robinson and graphic designer Andrew Vallas have put together something really amazing that perfectly captures the brooding menace of this grim campaign.
I'm probably more than a little biased, though, as besides the fact that gothic horror is my preferred cup of tea, the campaign is taking place in Ustalav, one of my favorite corners of Golarion. While Carrion Crown continues our long tradition of sword-swinging, spell-slinging high adventure, its inspirations come more from the pens of Bram Stoker, Mary Shelly, M. R. James, Shirley Jackson, and H. P. Lovecraft than J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, and Jack Vance. Think of it as a campaign set in Transylvania rather than Camelot or the Hyborian Age.
In the weeks before the Carrion Crown Adventure Path begins, check back here for more previews on what to expect from the campaign. Things kick off in the coming months with "The Haunting of Harrowstone," a ghost story that sets the tone for the series perfectly. That same volume also includes details on the sleepy town of Ravengro, new rules and examples that vastly expand the haunts presented in the GameMastery Guide, a creepy new series in the Pathfinder's Journal (by yours truly), an outline of the entire campaign, monthly details on the legends and superstitions of Ustalav, and something a little bit different added to the campaign's Bestiary to increase your toolbox of classic horrors. We've also built a ton of support for the campaign into our Pathfinder Campaign Setting and GameMastery lines, but I'll show off some of that awesome insanity a bit later.
So get ready to start wrapping up those Serpent Skull campaigns, as the Carrion Crown Adventure Path kicks off 2011 with terror.
Last night marked the first night of Hanukkah, and today is the seventh day of the traditional holiday shopping season. Christmas carols have invaded my car radio on the drive to and from work, and the flood of wishlists from friends and family have my inboxes overflowing. But this past weekend, I saw some of the spirit of the season exhibited in our own community and wanted to remind everyone of the tools paizo.com offers to help you show your appreciation for your online friends!
This weekend, one of our generous Pathfinder Society members gave the gift of several scenarios to a fellow board member so that she could review them. Gifting products (either downloads or physical merchandise) was a new feature introduced to paizo.com around this time last year, but anyone can do it! When looking at your shopping cart, before proceeding to checkout, be sure to click the "show gift options during checkout" button to gain the ability to give the contents of the order as a gift to a fellow Paizo customer, either anonymously or with a message.
I know that I, for one, love wishlists, and used to fill my Amazon wishlist up throughout the year to send to family and friends around the holidays and my birthday so they could see alternatives to getting me socks, calling cards, and scratch-off lottery tickets. Paizo offers the same thing, and whether you use one to list products to buy yourself in the future or to list for others, wishlists are a great way to organize your desired products. When someone (either a relative you direct to the site or a random friend from the messageboards) orders something for you from your wishlist, they'll be able to send it directly to the address you specify and it will be removed from the list so you don't get duplicated items. Start your own wishlist by going to the "My Wishlists" tab at the top right of any page on the site. Who knows who out there on the boards wants to share the holiday spirit with you.
It’s been a long, frosty weekend and we’re still a little lethargic, but lets start things back off right. Check out what’s coming around the corner in the final installment of the Serpent Skull Adventure Path with Pathfinder Adventure Path #42: “Sanctum of the Serpent God.”
Tom Rex Found some Dinosaur Art for you Delicious People!
Friday, October 29, 2010
Greetings, meat-flavored fans! What's the scoop? Tom noticed that there is a shocking... no, criminal lack of dinosaur-themed art on this blog. Tom realized this when the Boss changed his messageboard avatar that there was unknown dinosaur artwork lurking on Paizo's servers. Tom likes dinosaur pictures, because they inspire Tom. And because Tom is so much more handsome in real life, dinosaur art makes Tom feel better about his tiny forelimbs and the recent scandals about Tom being a cannibal. (What can Tom say! Tom's friends and family are delicious.)
Anyway, back on subject, Tom! Tom went sniffing through the still-to-be-published art (did you know that Tom's olfactory senses are among the most highly developed in the world? Tom can smell you wherever you hide, so it's better to not bother and just let Tom eat you alive is what Tom is saying). And not only did he find the image that Boss Jacobs stole for his new avatar, but three others! Two from some big book about monsters, and another from some book about some sort of lost city with a big lake in the middle where there are dinosaurs. One of them is not REALLY a dinosaur, but Tom still has fond memories of the Todd Tylosaurus and his megalodon gumbo, so Tom's okay including him in the art preview. That's the scoop on that!
P.S. Sarah is on another continent. Tom, as a result, doesn't known who the artists are for these wonderful pictures. So don't ask Tom who made this art! Tom assumes the artists are yummy, though, and you don't need to know someone's name to know that. That's also the scoop on that.
Early this month I posed a challenge to the community to report their Pathfinder Society events in exchange for an extra-early preview of art from the forthcoming World Guide: The Inner Sea. Well, I'm overjoyed to report that the targets we set were the definition of an underestimate of what you folks were capable of. Not only did the number of events taking place in October surpass our monthly average, the total number of previously unreported events that finally got reported exceeded our expectations to a level we haven't seen since we sold out of the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook before it was even released. Seriously. I'm incredibly proud of the entire PFS community, and all of you should be too! I knew people were playing, and now we can actually see how much our fans are enjoying the campaign.
As a lawful being through and through, I will now uphold my end of the bargain. Though there are still a few days left in October to increase your numbers even further, the targets are already clearly blown out of the water. Thus will I release the hostage art. And this isn't just any art, mind you, but an image James Jacobs specifically didn't want to reveal until much, much later. Cries of triumph echoed from Erik's office, through the editorial pit, and as far as the warehouse when we saw the numbers, though, so you all get what you earned.
BEHOLD!
Illustration by Tyler Walpole
Now that you got what you wanted, don't stop reporting. I plan to keep the rewards coming for your hard work!
A few weeks ago we announced 13 Regional Coordinators that we're calling Venture-Captains. Since then, Mark and I have been going through the entire Pathfinder Society program and starting the process of making sure Season 2 ends with a bang you'll all remember, making plans for Season 3 (which will be awesome, trust me), and going through all of the rules for the Society program itself. In between all of that, I've reviewed a number of Venture-Captain applications and chosen a few new Coordinators. We're still not finished naming new Venture-Captains, but rather than sit on these names I thought it was more important to get them announced and out there building the Society in their area. And so, without further ado, here are your new Venture-Captains!
Canada – Ontario (Toronto)
Neil Shackleton
VCNeilOnt@gmail.com
Oh, before you head over to the messageboards, you should scroll down a little to check out what my new desktop image is. Isn't it amazing? It's the cover to Matt Goodall's RPG Superstar adventure Cult of the Ebon Destroyers done by a good friend of mine, Kieran Yanner. And speaking of RPG Superstar, we're hard at work preparing for the 2011 round, so start getting ready for it. Who knows, this time next year I could be putting the cover to your adventure on my desktop.
We're nearing the homestretch in development of Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Lost Cities of Golarion and that means it's time to start leaking some of the brand-new art you can expect to find within the tome's dusty pages. Check out these relics we've unearthed while plumbing the ruins of Kho in the Mwangi Expanse and Storasta in the demon-choked Worldwound.
This past Monday I spoiled on the Paizo Twitter feed that we're beginning the process of working on a Pathfinder intro set. Jason quickly retweeted it and it spread from there. So, what do we mean exactly when we say an intro set? First off we're not 100% sure of anything yet. What we do know is that it'll be useful for more than a couple of sessions, will be a great PFRPG teaching tool, and will help us get more people playing Pathfinder. It'll probably come in a box, it might have counters and/or tokens, probably a Flip-Mat or two, most likely cover a good range of levels, and have a handful of classes and a good collection of feats. Essentially it'll be everything you need to get people playing, and learning, the game. Because the more people playing, the more opportunity for gaming, and we can all do with more gaming right?
We're at the very beginning of this process and nothing is set in stone though. Getting some feedback would be really helpful, though, so what would you like to see in an introductory Pathfinder product?
Way back in August I began to make some cryptic references to moving to the Emerald City of Seattle, leaving the reasons why a mystery. People began to guess, but all was revealed a couple of Tuesdays ago by Paizo as I was driving a rented U-Haul up the 5 from San Diego to Seattle. Turns out I was relocating the Horde from sunny Southern California to the green, and very wet, Pacific Northwest in order to work here at Paizo as the new Marketing Manager.
What does that mean exactly? Well, I'll be working closely with Erik Mona, our fearless publisher, making sure you the fans know what we're producing, when it's coming out, what we're planning, and other cools bits of news. In addition, I'll be working with the rest of the staff in getting them on podcasts, interviewed by blogs and magazines, and out in the wild spreading the glory of Pathfinder and Paizo.
I'll also be working on some new ways of keeping you the fans involved in what we're doing and ways you can help us out. So if you have any specific ideas, please leave them in the comments below.
BTW, have you had a chance to look at our new FAQ system? What we've done is put a link that says "FAQ" on messageboard posts. If you hit this link it will mark the message, letting us know that there's something you think we need to clarify, explain, or outright fix, and then have included in the official FAQ for the product. Every message you flag for us will be brought to the attention of our developers, letting them know someone has a question or needs a ruling. (FYI, those with more "flags" will go to the top of the list.) You can check it out here.
Paizo sure has been hiring quite a few new people of late. I came on board as a Developer at the beginning of the month, and we just announced yesterday that Hyrum Savage will be joining the team as Marketing Manager. The third new hire of the fall is none other than Andrew Vallas, who started after Labor Day. As Graphic Designer he's been a lifesaver, taking some of the workload off Art Director Sarah Robinson as she puts the finishing touches on Save Doctor Lucky. So far, Andrew's time has been taken up with last minute changes to the Bestiary 2 as we approach the finish line for shipping that to the printer, and laying out Pathfinder Player Companion: Inner Sea Primer and Pathfinder Module: The Godsmouth Heresy.
Andrew first found Paizo while using art from Pathfinder as mini-painting inspiration and through the Planet Stories line of fiction. He attended PaizoCon in June, where he not only played his first Pathfinder game after last rolling dice during the days of 2nd Edition, but he attended the art seminars and met with Sarah, and the rest is history.
And since Andrew works so hard in Paizo's Art Department, we thought it fitting to use his introduction as an opportunity to display some of the incredible art coming to your gaming table next month in Pathfinder Adventure Path #39: "City of Seven Spears"!
Good morning, and welcome to S.M. Tours. Today we are offering a "virtual" tour of the elusive Paizo Publishing offices. Here to greet us as we open the front door is the ever-cheerful Customer Service Manager Cosmo! While tempting, we recommend for your safety that you do not stare directly at the moustache, as it has been known to attack on occasion.
On your left are the offices of our technical team. If we could see through the gloom in the first office, we would find the illustrious PostMonster General and his minion Ross. We here at Paizo try to simulate the native environment of these computer folks, as it helps with productivity. Please, no flash photography—it disturbs their delicate sensibilities. Moving forward, we see that our Technical Director Vic is not yet in. Unlike the cave where his team slaves away, Vic's office is usually cheerfully lit by fluorescent lighting.
On your right we have a set of cubicles: one for yours truly, one for the warehouse manager, one for a laser printer, and one for a set of label printers. While quiet now, in a few days those label printers will fire up to continuously spit out subscription labels for hours at a time—truly a sight to behold.
Pressing onward, we have several more administrative offices lying dormant. This is to be expected, as we started our tour fairly early this morning and the residents have not yet arrived. Behind the door on the right is our server closet, where hundreds of little hamsters feverishly run in shifts to keep the servers running and the website on.
And here we have the upstairs breakroom, complete with refrigerator, sink and the all-important coffee maker. Next, past the restrooms, we have probably the most impressive location at the Paizo offices: the combination conference room and library. Here you will find all manner of old, new, rare, and interesting games, books, and magazines.
We are tight on time, folks, so let's keep moving along. Here we have still more offices. You'll notice that the double-doored corner office is the largest of the lot, fittingly occupied by our CEO, Lisa Stevens. The expansive office seems to help with the various and sundry secret meetings which take place there.
If you'll follow me down the stairs, please, past the monsters... here we have the offices belonging to our publisher, managing editor, and creative director. On the left are the set of cubicles referred to (for obvious reasons) as the "Editorial Pit."
And what do we have here...? It would appear that, unlike the other unoccupied offices, this one has its door open. What do you think, folks, should we take a peek inside?
It appears this is the office of lead designer Jason Bulmahn. Jason is on vacation this week and seems to have forgotten to arm his office's defense system. You folks might be getting more of a tour than you bargained for!
Let's just take a quick look at what we have on the desk...
So, we're finally wrapping work on Lords of Chaos. As with the first volume of Book of the Damned (last year's Princes of Darkness), the chapters of the book will be separated by actual in-game entries from the Book of the Damned, complete with creepy illustrations. I'm showing off two of those pictures here—both great examples of why you might want to schedule your next vacation for the Abyss. Look how scenic it is, there? So what if that mountain over yonder might get up at any moment and come eat you? That's part of the fun!
If you know anything about me (and I'm not saying you should), you probably know that I'm Paizo's fiction editor as well as one of the developers. What you may not know is that, in addition to working on the campaign setting and making sure authors like Dave Gross are fed and walked regularly, I'm also a musician involved in variousextracurricular bands and projects. Usually that doesn't affect my job at Paizo much, save for that one time when Jacobs and I, in the first and only performance of Operation Banjo Thug, ambushed Wes with some impromptu talkin' blues. (An experience from which he's never entirely recovered and which, without witnesses, he can't verify as having actually happened.)
A while back, however, Jacobs and I were sitting around after work talking about what a Paizo theme song would sound like. We decided that it would really need to have two distinct elements: a big industrial section like Nine Inch Nails' "Just Like You Imagined" (300 had just come out), and a classic, Conan-style orchestral piece. And of course, no soundtrack would be complete without an homage to The Omen's big choral theme, which we in the office will forever refer to as "Sawhorse Middle School," for reasons I won't go into here.
The idea never quite left my head, and a few months ago I sat down on a Saturday and decided to do something about it. The resulting track was received with much hilarity at the office—which was really what I was going for—and people ended up liking it so much that they voted to use it as the theme song for Paizo at the ENnies this year.
While it's hard not to be proud of the awards we won—Best Publisher? Best Game? It literally does not get better than that—in my secret heart, my favorite part of Gen Con this year was hearing the fight song blasted over the PA every time someone from Paizo went up to accept an award.
Now that we're home, it occurs to me: why stop there? Hopefully some of you reading this blog would be equally amused by the track. As such, I give you my attempt at a Paizo fight song, "Pathfinder Est Domine."
Two weeks and counting until the start of Gen Con 2010 and the release of the Advanced Player's Guide. If you have not already done so, you might want to reserve it with your FLGS or order online now. To help encourage you to pick up this hefty tome, I am giving you a guided tour of the goodies inside. In the past weeks we have looked at some new race and class material. This week we will be jumping around quite a bit, looking at feats, gear, spells, and magic items. We've got a lot of ground to cover, so let's get going.
Starting out with Chapter 3, let's take a look at feats. This 26-page chapter is loaded down with 163 new feats, from combat and metamagic feats, the new teamwork feats that grant large bonuses when you and an ally use them together. But that's not all, not by a long shot. There are a host of feats in this chapter designed to let you add to your existing class features, like Extra Rage Power and Extra Hex. There are also a host of feats based on your race, like this one.
Ironguts
You have an especially strong stomach. Prerequsitites: Con 13; dwarf, half-orc, orc. Benefit: You gain a +2 racial bonus on saving throws against any effect causing the nauseated or sickened conditions and against all ingested poisons (but not other poisons). In addition, you receive a +2 bonus on Survival skill checks to find food for yourself.
As was mentioned at the preview banquet, a number of the powers of the 3.5 archmage prestige class have found their way into the Pathfinder RPG as feats that most spellcasters can take. Take a look at Minor Spell Expertise.
Minor Spell Expertise
You are able to cast a 1st-level spell as a spell-like ability Prerequsite: Ability to cast 4th-level spells. Benefit: Chose one 1st-level spell that you know. You may cast that spell twice per day as a spell-like ability. The caster level for this spell-like ability is equal to your caster level in that class from whose spell list the spell is taken. The spell-like ability's save DC is Charisma-based. You cannot apply metatmagic feats to this spell.
Moving on from feats, the gear chapter is short, but jam-packed with new tools and tricks to help properly equip your character. From an Lucerne hammer to wooden armor, from an hourglass to rope made from spider silk, there's plenty here for everyone. There are also a lot of tools for each of the new classes, including the portable alchemist's lab and the witch's cauldron. What has me most excited is the wealth of alchemical items in the book. Take a look at this gem.
Weapon Blanch (adamantine, cold iron, or silver): These alchemical powders have a gritty consistency. When poured on a weapon and placed over a hot flame for a full round, they melt and form a temporary coating on the weapon. The blanching gives the weapon the ability to bypass one kind of material based damage reduction, depending on its type. The blanching remains effective until the weapon makes a successful attack. Each dose of blanching can coat one weapon or up to 10 pieces of ammunition. Only one type of blanch can be used on a weapon at one time, although if the weapon is made of a special material, that material still applies.
Next up is a rather large chapter on spells. Discounting the tables at the beginning, there are 57 pages of spells here, containing spells for characters of every class and every level. This chapter also includes the elemental spell lists for those wizards who wish to focus on elemental schools of magic. Let's take a look at a spell that I am particularly excited to use on my players. It might not be incredibly powerful, but it is a lot of fun.
Enemy Hammer School Transmutation; Level sorcerer/wizard 6 Casting Time 1 standard action Range long (400 ft. + 40 ft./level) Target one creature Duration 1 round/level (D) Saving Throw Fortitude partial; Spell Resistance yes
You grab a creature with telekinesis and use it to batter nearby opponents or objects. You must target a specific creature when casting this spell, and once you select that creature, you cannot switch to another. Each round, as a standard action, you can attempt to hurl the target at any creature or object within 30 feet of it. You must make an attack roll whenever you use the target as a weapon. The attack bonus for this attack is equal to your caster level plus either your Intelligence or Charisma modifier (whichever is higher). If you successfully hit the new target with the creature, both it and the creature take damage based on the creature's size (Fine 1d4, Diminutive 1d6, Tiny 1d8, Small 1d10, Medium 2d6, Large 2d8, Huge 2d10, Gargantuan 3d6, Colossal 3d8). The target creature can make a Fortitude saving throw each time you attempt to use it as a weapon. If it makes its saving throw, it can act normally, but if it fails its save, it loses all action for the round and ends its turn prone in a square adjacent to the target of your attack.
Finally, this book contains a large chapter containing all sorts of magic items, from inexpensive soul soap to the mighty cloud castle of the storm king. Of course, it's not all wonderful. There are a host of new cursed items to inflict upon your PCs, lurking in this book. Take a look at ring of truth.
Ring of Truth Aura moderate enchantment; CL 9th Slot ring; Weight —
Deceptively pleasant looking, a ring of truth bears images of childlike angels and broadly smiling divine creatures holding onto links of a heavy chain. The wearer of this cursed ring is rendered unable to tell a deliberate lie, in either speech or writing. The wearer may simply omit the truth or choose not to communicate, but even then must succeed on a DC 20 Will saving throw to avoid answering a direct question truthfully.
And there you go. The Advanced Player's Guide is just two weeks away now. Next week's preview will be the last before release, so we will wrap up our tour of the book by looking at the new prestige classes and new rules systems hiding in this book.
The start of Gen Con 2010 is five weeks away, which means that the Advanced Player's Guide will be hitting game stores and subscriber mailboxes in just over one month. To celebrate the release of this impressive tome, we are going to be previewing parts of it every week until its release. Last week we recapped the information from the PaizoCon APG Preview Banquet. This week we are going to dig into some details with an extensive look at the races chapter.
As I mentioned last week, each of the seven core races receives a two-page spread of information. Each spread starts out with information about adventurers of that race, taking on each of the 17 classes available (that includes the six new classes found in the APG). This is followed up by alternate racial traits that allow characters to portray members of the race that are a little different than the rest, but still well within the theme of the race. To take one of these alternate racial traits, a character has to give up one or more existing racial traits. For example, take a look at this dwarven racial trait.
Stonesinger: Some dwarves' affinity with the earth grants them greater powers. Dwarves with this racial trait are treated as one level higher when casting spells with the earth descriptor or using granted powers of the Earth domain, the bloodline powers of the earth elemental bloodline, and revelations of the oracle's stone mystery. This racial trait replaces the stonecunning racial trait.
Or how about this Half-Orc racial trait.
Toothy: Some half-orcs' vestigial tusks are massive and sharp, granting them a bite attack. This is a primary natural attack that deals 1d4 points of piercing damage. This racial trait replaces the orc ferocity racial trait.
Each replacement racial trait is made to explore one facet of the race's inherent theme. Elves get abilities that tie them to nature, gnomes get abilities that explore their fascinations, half-elves can take abilities that help them live in both worlds, halflings can focus on their sneaky talents, and even humans are not left out. Humans can take racial traits that reflect their upbringing.
In addition to a host of racial traits, each race also receives a number of favored class options. These options are tied to a race's theme in most cases, meaning that races only receive options for classes that are racially common. Possessing one of these options just gives your character an additional choice whenever he gains a level in his favored class (instead of a skill point or a hit point). For example, take a look at this elven wizard favored class option.
Wizard: Select one arcane school power at 1st level that is normally usable a number of times per day equal to 3 + the wizard's Intelligence modifier. The wizard adds +1/2 to the number of uses per day of that arcane school power.
Once an elven wizard takes this power twice, he gains an additional use of that ability. Want more, take a look at this gnome bard favored class option.
Bard: Add 1 to the gnome's total number of bardic performance rounds per day.
Of all the races, only humans have an option for all 17 classes. Here is the human sorcerer favored class option.
Sorcerer: Add one spell known from the sorcerer spell list. This spell must be at least one level below the highest spell level the sorcerer can cast.
Although this chapter is only 18 pages long, in a 336-page book, it is absolutely crammed full of new rules for characters of any race and class, a philosophy we took with the entire rest of the book. Next week, we will delve into the classes chapter, starting off by taking a look at the six new base classes in the book, and I might even go into some detail on the changes made to them after the playtest was over.
To celebrate the return of our globetrotting senior art directorix, this week's preview takes another look between the words of the GameMastery Guide at more awesome art! Welcome back, Sarah!
Illustration by Christopher Burdett
Illustration by Eva Widermann
Next week, the wait's almost over, so it's time for the penultimate GameMastery Guide preview!
It's been a long, strange, and humiliating trip for the poor unlucky owlbear. He's been shot dead, turned into a pigeon roost and object of mockery for slack-jawed yokels, torn down and broken apart by barbarians, and defiled by wandering wolves. But as is always the case with that pesky circle of life thing that nature loves so much, eventually he gets to return to his beloved woods. And hopefully warn future generations of owlbears of the dangers he faced.
Or maybe not. Maybe his forgotten head will just serve as a dinner platter for the next one to come along...
If these installments of the Unluckiest Owlbear saga seem to suddenly be coming fast and furious, there's a reason—as our deadline for Gen Con "ship to the printer" approaches, we're finally seeing all of our product lines actually bunch up and get back on schedule. As a result, we've sent what feels like 40 installments of Pathfinder Adventure Path to the printer over the past few weeks. Which is, I suppose, good news for our poor unlucky owlbear, since that means the ongoing humiliations will be made public (and thus come to an end) all the sooner! This week, we present the penultimate installment of the saga, wherein the raiders have done their thing and moved on to other towns, leaving in their wake nothing but ruins and wolves. It's probably for the best that this illustration doesn't depict the natural progression of events as the wolves, moving in to claim new territory, begin to do what wolves do best when it comes to neglected statues...
In Pathfinder Adventure Path #34, things once again take a turn for the worse for our poor unlucky owlbear. It's one thing to be immortalized as a statue in the middle of a village, where children laugh at you and birds poop on you and you eventually become forgotten as part of the town square's mundane decor. It's quite another when the barbarians come to town and, in a sudden urge to show off their destructive power and strength, tear your statue down! At least the owlbear's ghost can take solace in the fact that those pesky barbarians are probably being equally destructive to the adventurers who got him into this fix in the first place.
So it's been about a month, and you know what that means! Yup! Time to reveal Chapter Three of the saga of the Unluckiest Owlbear. I had mentioned previously how the poor owlbear was destined for greatness... and as it turns out, that greatness is that he's now the pride and joy of Owlbearton's central plaza! Gaze upon his magnificent glory, preserved for all time* for the idle entertainment of passing rubes and for the perching comfort of well-fed pigeons! What more could a proud magical beast of the woods primeval hope for?
James Jacobs
Creative Director
*At least, until next month, when the indignities continue.
So! After taking a week to make the agonizing choice, Rob McCreary has selected the winner of the Rummy-Tug-Tugger illustration contest! The winning illustration was done by Silvia Gonzalez; we’ll be autographing a copy of the NPC Guide and sending it out to Silvia as thanks for the great illustration!
Illustration by Mikael Sebag
Illustration by Duane Lacher
Actually, there were a lot of great illustrations. We took time last week to sit in the editorial pit and look them all over, and Rob had a tough time making the final choice. And so he wanted to show a few honorable mentions as well; one by Mikael Sebag (who sent in a super-rotund and kind of cute version) and another by Duane Lacher (who sent in a much scarier version). Thank you to everyone who participated in the contest; it was great seeing what you all came up with. And that makes me wonder... would folks like to see us do more art contests like this? Let us know in the comments to this post!
Developer's Diary: They Came From Beneath the Sea!
Thursday, April 1, 2010
As Wes mentioned a couple of weeks ago, our Open Design partnership project From Shore to Sea has had a few problems on its way through development and editing. But I'm happy to tell you that we are now in the final stages of getting this thing out the door and into your hands!
Senior Art Director Sarah Robinson found a great artist, Damien Mammoliti, to pick up where the last one left off, and once that art came in, she put everything together in record time. Finally, there are some faces to go with the names (some of them pretty creepy, but faces nonetheless!). Coupled with Andrew Hou's fantastic, action-packed chapter openers, this adventure is finally coming together. And once we had the art, editorial questions like what is the correct plural of octopus (octopi? octopuses? octopodes?) were easily resolved. Here's hoping that the ocean between here and China is safely free of giant cephalopods.
Illustration by Andrew Hou
For a final sneak peek at From Shore to Sea, take a look here at Valeros trying to save some hapless (and disturbingly fishy) villagers from more of those pesky giant tentacles. And be careful when you go swimming. You never know what might be lurking beneath the waves!
As I mentioned back on the 22nd of February, the owlbear sort of ended up being the mascot for the Kingmaker Adventure Path. I also hinted that our poor mascot was going to have something of an unlucky streak. Turns out... the bad luck hits more or less immediately—in the second Kingmaker adventure, "Rivers Run Red," the PCs start to build their kingdom and tame the wilderness of the Stolen Lands. That's bad news for the owlbears, as you can see here.
Don't worry, though, because our unlucky owlbear is destined for greater things than merely providing a pile of experience points for some overzealous archer! It's just that the owlbear won't be all that aware of his fame when it finally comes!
One of my first duties at Paizo was to create some random encounter tables for the GameMastery Guide. It took more than three workdays, and by the end of the process I was seeing tables in my sleep. It was a little bit like the first time you play Guitar Hero, and you look away from the screen and think the world is scrolling up for a couple seconds. Except with tables. But, I'm done with that, so that's kind of neat. Now I can dream about normal things, like giant robot rock operas and going to Chipotle with my ex-boss of three years. Rest assured, GMs, there will be no shortage of random encounter tables for when your PCs randomly wander off into the woods, or cave, or different plane of existence. I've even snuck out a piece of art from the book by artist Kieran Yanner.
On a completely different note, I GMed a Pathfinder game yesterday, and it totally rocked. I'm always the GM, so it's not like it was a new experience or anything, and I've been running Pathfinder since it came out, but I finally figured out a core component to any tabletop roleplaying game: roleplaying.
You see, for quite some time, I was having trouble encouraging my players to roleplay. I'm the type of person who writes out the five-page character background when I'm a player, and I will totally handicap myself and give myself silly stats and gear if it matches my character concept. I don't expect every player to do this, but it would be kind of cool if my group got into character every now and then. Being a fairly chill GM, I wasn't going to force them to roleplay against their will or anything, since that would kind of defeat the purpose of playing a game. No, what I wanted was for them to want to roleplay.
So, I've been thinking of ways to do this, and I stumbled upon a rather valuable, yet seemingly obvious, idea. The notion was simple, and I presented it to my group before the game. "Alright, guys, I'm thinking of trying this new thing; everything you say at the table is in-character, unless you preface with 'Out of character,' and it can only be game-related at that." They were all kind of like, "Hmm, I dunno about this, Patrick, but we'll give it a shot for an hour and see how it goes."
One hour later: awesomeness. Few distractions, if any; everybody's talking with epic accents and saying ridiculously metal (aka really, really cool) things; and we're all getting really immersed in the game. The dark and brooding wizard was dark and brooding; the charming bard was courting the maiden he had saved from a coven of hags; the druid was giving the totally rad armor of a fallen cleric to the church instead of selling it for mad gold; and the summoner was poring over books in the library and hypothesizing the origins of the mysterious crystals they had found in the abandoned temple. This group of hack-and-slashers actually began to care about the adventure and NPCs I had crafted for them. Success.
I guess my point is that even if you think you know your group (mine consists of close friends), they can still pleasantly surprise you, given the opportunity.
Although I can't quite yet show off the actual rules you'll be using in the Kingmaker Adventure Path quite yet, I can show you how they look in play. Presented below is an excerpt from Merisiel's diary as she oversees the foundation of a brand-new kingdom in the mysterious Stolen Lands. NOTE: Merisiel's probably not the best choice in this group for a nation's ruler, but sometimes that's just how politics work. As time permits, I'll post a few more diary entries to this blog's messageboard thread so we can all learn from Merisiel's triumphs and failures. Certainly there'll be more triumphs in her future, yes?
1 Pharast: So it looks like I'm in charge. Queen Merisiel. I like the sound of that. Although, as Seelah is so fond of pointing out, I'm technically a baroness until this new nation of mine grows large enough. I'm still gonna be calling myself queen in these pages. Seelah's gonna be the general of my armies (she volunteered!), and I put Lem in charge of keeping an eye on the citizens to make sure they're loyal as the spymaster. And of course Kyra's our high priest. All the other leadership roles, for now, go to some of the other locals we've allied with during the past several months of exploring the Greenbelt. We'll see how they work out, I suppose—none of them seem particularly talented, but hopefully they'll grow into their jobs? And if they don't, I can fire them. I'm the queen, after all. Anyway, we've managed to claim a pretty sizable area around this old ruined castle that bandit lord was using as a hideout. The ruins should work pretty well as a new castle, once it gets patched up. We've started clearing the area around the ruins to serve as a good place to build up a town. I'm thinking of calling it Owlbearton, after that bandit's pet owlbear that nearly bit off Lem's ear, but Seelah says that's a stupid name. I told her that if she comes up with something better we'll call it that, but so far all her ideas suck. Surprise, surprise. So for now, Owlbearton it is! We've even built some roads around the place! It's gonna be a city in no time! Especially now that I've got some deliciously heavy taxes coming into the treasury! Who woulda guessed that taxes could be something to be happy about? So far, those taxes more than paid for the roads and land clearing and stuff. Not the rebuilding of the castle, though. That's expensive, as it works out. And while Lem says that the locals are complaining that all I'm doing is lying around and taking it easy while they pay for my little project, and while Kyra says she only barely managed to talk a group of farmers out of marching up to the castle to tear it down and (their words) "git back what we done paid for from that spendthrift pointy-eared harlot!" I'm not worried. Once they see how excellent this castle looks when it's all done, they'll all forgive me. I'm sure of it!
I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point along the way, the owlbear kind of ended up being the official Kingmaker mascot. Sure, the PCs will be facing evil fey, lizard and frog men, undead monstrosities, bandits, trolls, giants, dragons, and worse during this Adventure Path, but they'll also be facing a lot of owlbears. Some of which are really rather memorable.
Anyway, once we realized how owlbear-riffic this Adventure Path was going to be, we decided to open each one of Kingmaker's forewords with illustrations of the life and death (mostly death) of the River Kingdoms' unluckiest owlbear. There he is in the illustration above, wandering through the primeval woodlands of the Stolen Lands without a care in the world. I'm not going to name him, because that would just make the next five months of what happens to the poor guy depressing.
For now, though, he's at home in his element, with no idea of the pain and humiliation to come. What has cruel, cruel fate got in store for this poor, innocent owlbear? Tune in to this blog next month to find out!
My day... week... life as of late has pretty much been dominated by putting the final (-ish) touches on our next big hardcover, the GameMastery Guide. It's at that weird and exciting point right now where it's making that transition between a maddening number of .doc files and something at actually looks like a book. So between the dozens of tables, charts, stats, and hundreds of pages of advice, some pretty awesome art and incredible layouts are creeping in. While I'll save most of the really exciting parts for previews closer to this behemoth's release, I wanted to throw one of my favorite new half-page illustrations out there. For now, though, it's back to those endless tables. 100 dungeon features, here I come...
As I write this the finishing touches are going in on our newest Pathfinder Module, City of Golden Death, the climactic conclusion to the Price of Immortality campaign arc. Written by our own Events Manager, Joshua J. Frost, the adventure takes the PCs to the notorious Isle of Terror, where they'll face agents of the Living God Razmir, ageless menaces from ancient Thassilon, the undying machinations of the Whispering Tyrant himself, and even greater perils! Here's a sneak peak of some of the scenes your PCs can expect to face when the module releases in just a few short weeks. Enjoy!
Pretty much the last thing we did in 2009—before we ran screaming from the office, that is—was to pack Pathfinder Adventure Path #31: "Stolen Land", the first volume of the Kingmaker Adventure Path, off to the printer. So, to refresh your desktop for the new year, check out its incredible cover scene from artist Vincent Dutrait. Enjoy!
With most of the Paizo editorial staff being transplants from across the country, the holidays tend to be the one time of the year where we put aside talk of goblins and statblocks and deadlines for a few days (or at least try to). With much of the crew making treks across the country to spend a few days with much neglected family members, things might get a little spotty here on the blog up through the New Year. Even with the dedicated folks staying behind to man the walls, the holiday fever can get a little distracting, so to tide things over till January 4th, here's Eva Widermann's fantastic artwork for our 2009 holiday card. But that's it from us for 2009, everybody! Thanks to everyone for an incredible year, and do me a favor and yell at James Jacobs if you see him on the boards over the course of the next week. Happy holidays from all of us here at Paizo and we'll see you in 2010!
Andoran, Spirit of Liberty is due to arrive in January, and as the rest of the team is burning the midnight oil to get the next Pathfinder out the door, Wes deputized me to do a blog. Time for some preview art!
The patron celestial of Andoran is an avoral named Talmandor, and as there aren't avoral stats in the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary, we put their stats in Andoran—sort of a sneak peek for Bestiary II next year. The next picture shows that halfling paladins are just as badass as human ones—in this case the hero is Jamus Hainard, born to a farming family and inspired by the Eagle Knights to become a champion of freedom. Finally, a piece showing an Andoren general and his troops trying to cross a river.
Masks of the Living God is expected in our warehouse later this month. Written by Jason Bulmahn as a sequel to Crypt of the Everflame, it can be used as a standalone adventure, and helps set the stage for City of Golden Death in March 2010.
Masks of the Living God is a bit of a change of pace for Paizo adventures. While it has the usual elements of travel and combat, much of the adventure is a freeform or "sandbox" environment where the PCs are able to set their own pace and agenda for dealing with the Cult of Razmir—from the inside! In the adventure, the PCs join the cult to see what's really going on behind the locked doors of the temple. Is the Church of Razmir as benevolent as it claims to be? Are its good works and charitable efforts just a front for a gang of thugs and extortionists? Is there something even more sinister going on?
It's been just over a fortnight since I risked life and limb to infiltrate the stygian depths of Paizo's editorial pit, so I thought it was time to provide a few brief glimpses into the shadowy machinations of Paizo's editorial process.
As soon as Paizo's minions discovered my presence, they lost no time in hurling reams of word-filled paper at me. Armed only with a quill and a pot of green ink, I got right to work, slashing hanging participles and eradicating the feared passive voice. Along the way, I realized I was working on a comprehensive guide to realms of a most low character. While it was my great pleasure to read and edit a plethora of famed authors' impressions of such a dangerous and unstable land, I soon learned that mapping such a chaotic territory and compiling its history into a concise timeline were Herculean tasks of epic proportions. Nevertheless, I persevered, so that you, loyal readers, would get only the best.
But these riverine dominions were not my only task, for two new classes were ready to take their place in an upcoming guide to advanced play and needed a critical editorial eye before making their playtest debut before the eager masses. I was only too happy to give the oracle and cavalier my aid, and send them happily on their way.
As for what comes next, your guess is as good mine! I am hoarding a few secrets, of course (I've been sworn to secrecy on the threat of Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts regarding the happenings at last week's secret Sandpoint game, for example), but more tidbits will slowly be making their laborious way to bloglight, I can assure you. Until then, I bid you fond farewell. And watch out for the fish!
Sometimes, art makes the choices for me. When we ordered the cover to Greg A. Vaughn's "Mother of Flies," we asked Steve Prescott to paint us a scene in a thieves' guild treasury involving the iconics in a fight against a six-armed stone golem. The art, as you can see here, is great!
Unfortunately, by the time I got to the section in the adventure where this six-armed menace made its appearance, I realized something. A six-armed stone golem (particularly one armed with a pair of tree-sized-swords) would be something like a CR 15 monster. Not really a fair fight to inflict on 10th-level characters, and certainly not good design to have the dude guarding the treasury be tougher than the adventure's actual boss.
So, in a last-minute brainstorm in Wes's office when he was probably trying to go home, he, Crystal Frasier, Lisa Stevens, and I figured out what to do with the situation. The result is a new monster from distant Vudra, the six-armed calikang, a race spawned from a deity's failure and doomed now to seek atonement for an ancient sin. We ordered an extra piece of art for this volume's Bestiary, I wrote up the monster that weekend, and everything fell perfectly in place just in time to ship to the printers.
As for the calikang itself? You'll just have to wait for "Mother of Flies" to find out what he can do!
Wes is a pretty creepy guy. He always wears black and red, never smiles, lights creepy candles at his desk, and his voice is a spine-chilling hiss.* What better person to write Book of the Damned, Vol. I, Princes of Darkness?
This book is a seven-course feast of lore about Hell, devils, and Asmodeus. You get descriptions of all nine layers of Hell, each layer's archdevil ruler (such as Dispater, the Iron Lord of Dis), new hellish spells and magic items, a new diabolist prestige class (and her imp "animal companion"), information about the influence of true names and sigils on controlling devils, promotion and demotion among the ranks, five new kinds of devils (including the levaloch, soldiers of Malebolgia), and excerpts from an ancient book penned by an exiled angel about the nature of Hell and the origin of Asmodeus himself. The art is beautiful and evocative; art director Sarah Robinson has outdone herself yet again, producing a beautiful book about the ultimate place of evil.
Sean K Reynolds
Developer, Pathfinder Chronicles
*Wes is actually very nice, outgoing, and fun to work with. And I'm not just saying that because he's hissing. A lot.
The Preview Purloiners strike again! Featured here in a painting by Kevin Yan are Lem and Seelah, fending off a rabid undead dog and a fiendish tiefling inPathfinder Adventure Path volume #25: The Bastards of Erebus. Who knew that flutes could be wielded as deadly weapons?
Vadid and Nahk Preview Purloiners
"The city of Westcrown is dying. Since being stripped of its station as the capital of Cheliax, the wealth and prestige of the city has gradually slipped away, leaving the desperate people to fend for themselves in a city beset by criminals, a corrupt nobility, and a shadowy curse. Can the PCs fight back against champions of both the law and the criminal world?"
Howdy Paizonians! As you may have noticed, there's been a dearth of blogs lately. You can blame that on the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary, as almost all of the editorial staff (including the interns) are furiously working on getting the Bestiary ready for release and ensuring that other projects (such as the one that bears this cover!) stay on schedule. It's a busy and exciting time, but it means that blogs may be sparse for a little while. Still, Hank and I will do our best to make sure that you have something new to enjoy every day (or almost every day) here on the blog! In the meantime, here's some art! Enjoy Jesper Ejsing's awesome cover for Pathfinder Adventure Path volume #24: The Final Wish, in which a poor sitarist is skewered by a brass golem's sword.
As my foolhardy companion and I limp away from our latest excursion into the vault, we leave for you as a weekend preview the sepid div, a terrifying entry in the Bestiary of the upcomingPathfinder Adventure Path #23: The Impossible Eye, as depicted here by Jason Engle.
Four curling horns sprout from is giant's head and an inhuman tongue flickers among sharply filed teeth. Covered with pale, pockmarked and spiky flesh, this monstrous warrior stands fully twice the height of an average human and assumes a confident stance as it effortlessly hefts a sword large enough to cleft a horse in twain.
Snagged from the Vault: Pathfinder #23—The Impossible Eye
Monday, April 27, 2009
It is with the greatest pleasure that we are able to bring you some fantastic art with which to start your week. Featured here is the cover to Pathfinder Adventure Path #23: The Impossible Eye, painted by Jesper Ejsing. Valeros looks like he's really gotten in over his head this time!
Vadid and Nahk Preview Purloiners
Imprisoned by Flame A world of fire and wonder awaits! The path of the planes is fickle and the PCs' road home proves far more difficult than any had anticipated. Emerging from the pleasure plane of Kakishon reveals all the wealth and terror of a vast efreeti palace tightly sealed by ancient magics and situated at the heart of the incredible City of Brass. In this lavish citadel of sculpted flame, the PCs find hints into the burning obsession of their hidden foe. But will their discoveries be of any help to their imperiled world, hidden away in some distant reality? And can they ever hope to escape a prison that has, for untold centuries, imprisoned some of the most powerful creatures of a realm of endless flame?
Okay. Wow, check out that "Takin' it Easy" Unthread (or, if you're at work, maybe don't). There's more than 300 posts on there, most being some really hilarious captions for the scandalous scene from Pathfinder Adventure Path volume #21. Totally a hard decision, but at the end of the day the caption that had the editorial pit most in stitches was James Martain's short but sweet:
"Dear Pathfinder letters..."
James picked up a few free PDFs for his hilarity. We've got a few worth some extra special mentions, though! Thanks for everybody who posted. Really funny stuff everybody, thanks for playing along!
Little did his friends know that Exren's arcane eye functioned perfectly well underwater.
Merisiel: "Hey, is Wrinkles dead?! I'm taking his stuff!"
For weeks Sajan had suffered the jibes and taunts of the others. However, by not inviting him to the pool party, they had gone too far.
Several of us at Paizo have iPhones, but some of us flaunt that fact a bit more than others. Take Managing Art Director James Davis, for example—since he got his iPhone, we very rarely see him without at least one earbud stuck in an ear, and he heads back to show me some (admittedly cool) new app he found once a week on average.
Of course, the good news is that his iPhone obsession sometimes results in cool stuff we can share. Such as these three Pathfinder iPhone wallpapers! Check 'em out!
I'm deep in the development for the third adventure of Legacy of Fire as I write this—"The Jackal's Price." This is the first adventure to actually visit the fabled city of Katapesh, and the adventure only scratches the surface of what kind of adventures a group of PCs might find themselves in while visiting the city. Dark Markets, A Guide to Katapesh is looking to be a great supplement for GMs who want to explore the city's nooks and crannies. Pictured here is the sight that greets visitors to the fabled city as they pass through the gates.
So with all of the snow we've been having lately, I thought it'd be appropriate to show off some cold-weather-appropriate artwork. As it turns out, we've got just the thing in the upcoming Dragons Revisited—an entire chapter on white dragons! There's a chapter on all ten of the classic dragons, in fact, but it's those white dragons I'm afraid about whenever I wander outside these days.
So one year ago today, I made a post to this blog about what was coming in 2008 for Pathfinder's Adventure Path. I just went back and looked and it's some interesting reading. For the most part, we accomplished everything on that list, although as we got toward the end of the predictions for 2008, I note a few things that didn't quite work out the way I'd planned for them to. Pathfinder #16 didn't have a gazetteer of the Darklands surrounding the drow city, and as I'd feared, the article about Demon Lords did indeed slip from #17 to #18. But overall, pretty close!
Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that here we are at the end of 2009, and I need a topic for a blog post. Especially after we missed several posts over the past few days due to snow-related apocalypses. So, without further ado, here's what you can look forward to seeing in Pathfinder in 2009!
January: The Second Darkness Adventure Path comes to a close this month with Brian Cortijo's "Descent Into Midnight," taking the PCs into one of the deepest reaches of the Darklands. A gazetteer of the mysterious Land of Black Blood and an article about the 29 most notorious of Golarion's demon lords rounds out the first volume of the year. Followers of Eando Klein's adventures in the Pathfinder Journal won't want to miss this volume, for this installment brings his long adventure to a close!
February: We heat things up in chilly February by traveling far to the south of Varisia to start the Legacy of Fire Adventure Path. Paizo's own publisher, Erik Mona, penned this volume's adventure, "Howl of the Carrion King," and New York Times bestselling author Elaine Cunningham takes over the Pathfinder Journal, starting a new story that'll run alongside of the Legacy of Fire campaign.
March: Those who didn't get enough gnolls from the first Legacy of Fire adventure in February will love "The House of the Beast," by Tim Hitchcock. The picture shown here by Svetlin Velinov depicts just one of the exciting encounters you can look forward to in this massive dungeon crawl, proving that there's more than gnolls waiting for you! Sean K Reynolds continues his exploration of Golarion's deities with Sarenrae, and Steve Kenson explores the region around Pale Mountain in northwest Katapesh, ground zero for half of Legacy of Fire's adventures.
April: In April, we begin Wolfgang Baur's four-part series of articles about the Genies of Golarion, starting with an exploration of what it is to be one of these magical elemental creatures to begin with. Darrin Drader's first Pathfinder adventure, "The Jackal's Price," takes the PCs into the second-largest city in the Inner Sea region, and Richard Pett shows us what goes on in a typical Katapesh marketplace. Be afraid, as they say…
May: RPG Superstar finalist Jason Nelson's adventure, "The End of Eternity," takes the PCs into an unexpected realm both near and far from Katapesh, while Todd Stewart, author of The Great Beyond, explores the chaotic extraplanar race of the proteans. Wolfgang's genie articles continue with an exploration of methods to bind and command genies.
June: At the height of summer, Pathfinder heads into one of the game's most legendary sites—the efreeti-ruled City of Brass on the Elemental Plane of Fire. Greg Vaughan's adventure, "The Impossible Eye," delves deep into one of the city's palace fortresses, while Wolfgang Baur explores the rest of the City of Brass in a gazetteer of the mythic realm. And Sean K Reynolds adds Rovagug to the list of big deity articles.
July: The Legacy of Fire reaches its explosive conclusion in RPG Superstar finalist Rob McCreary's "The Final Wish," where we get to see just what happens when a crazed genie gets too generous with his wish-granting mojo. Wolfgang's genie articles end with all sorts of genie-powered magic, and we pull back the curtain on the spawn of Rovagug. The tarrasque is only the most famous one of many, after all!
August: Things start to get a little bit hazier once we move into Gen Con, as they usually do, but I do know that August sees the launch of something no less than the first ever Pathfinder RPG Adventure Path, "Council of Thieves." Fully compatible with both the new rules and the 3.5 SRD, this Adventure Path heads back north to the city of Westcrown in Cheliax, home of devil worshipers, tiefling bandits, and lots and lots of rebels! We've been pitching the adventure in house here as "The Godfather" meets "The Omen," but I'm still not quite sure what exactly we mean about that. Those of you who've been waiting patiently for lots of details on the Hellknights should find one of this volume's support articles of particular interest.
September: The Council of Thieves Adventure Path takes place entirely in and surrounding the city of Westcrown, and as a result, many of the adventures in this campaign will have a distinctively urban feel. This volume's adventure ups that ante, asking the PCs not only to brave the perils of urban adventures, but to take part in a violent and dangerous play in order to impress the local nobility! Anyone can kill an otyugh, but how many adventurers can remember their next line on stage during the middle of a fight for their life?
October: The PCs continue to oppose the Council of Thieves as Westcrown falls ever more under the influence of the mysterious thieves' guild, and the second part of an exploration of the Hellknights of Cheliax (a series scheduled to begin back in August) shows us even more about this organization's methods and resources.
November: At some point along the way in Council of Thieves, I suspect we'll be talking quite a bit about devils and Hell—about Mammon and Erebus in particular. I won't promise a lot more about this archdevil in November, but chances are good! This volume's adventure, tentatively titled "The Infernal Syndrome," explores just why it's a bad idea to rely too much on diabolic magic for comforts around the home.
December: It's pretty likely that by this time, we'll have a nice big article that examines the tieflings of Golarion. Also, I probably should have mentioned that Sean'll be taking a long look at the church of Iomedae back in September already, but in December we've got a toasty gift for everyone—Asmodeus, one of the deities most requested for an exploration in Pathfinder, finally makes his debut here!
And that's that! Wes and I are going to be spending a fair amount of time this week getting Council of Thieves all mapped out in detail, and in the months to come I'm sure we'll have more to say. But for now, the hints and clues and teasers above will have to suffice. Next year's looking like it could be Paizo's biggest year yet, in any case—hope to see you all there!
Earlier this week, we got in our first bound copy of Guide to Absalom. In the hectic "GO GO GO!" mentality that is the Editorial Pit, we're often surprised when books we send out do what comes natural and show up in completed print form back at the office. It sounds funny, perhaps, but that's the way it is in crazy Paizo-land!
Anyway, the book reminded me that we actually haven't shown off that much art from Guide to Absalom. This blog rectifies that! Behold, one of the First Guards of Absalom by artist Andrew Hou, and a nice view of the Starstone Cathedral by Ben Wootten.
Although Second Darkness is only two-thirds of the way to being out on store shelves, we here at Paizo are already heading deep into the fourth Adventure Path. The cover art for the first installment, Pathfinder #19's "Howl of the Carrion King," just came in, and while you can check out the actual cover over at the Paizo store, I thought it'd be cool to show off some of the new art here on its own! With Legacy of Fire, Jesper Ejsing joins the ranks of Pathfinder cover artists—I can't wait to see what he comes up with as the adventures grow increasingly genie-riffic!
In Pathfinder #18's "Descent into Midnight," the heroes travel deep into the Darklands, into the nightmare realm of Orv. There, in an immense cavern known as the Land of Black Blood, the final enemy awaits. This volume of Pathfinder includes a short gazetteer about the Land of Black Blood that details the numerous strange locations therein and several of the region's dangerous denizens, like the aboleth pictured here.
But there are also less intimidating (but no less creepy) denizens of the Land of Black Blood than monsters ready to challenge a high-level party. Numerous rare and unique creatures make their home here as well, most warped from more common forms by ages of exposure to the vault's strange magics and the deadly black blood.
Ghost Bats: The pale bats native to the Land of Black Blood typically sate themselves upon large insects and other vermin, though in their swarms they have been known to attack larger prey. Possessing transparent wings and no hair—just white flesh—these small hunters sometimes grow to shocking sizes. Ghosts bats have the same stats as normal bats and bat swarms, though the species frequent mutants might grow to the size of dire bats.
Ether Frog: These creatures look like nothing more so than an oversized, four-legged blister with nostrils and a mouth. With an undifferentiated body and head, these ghost-white amphibians hide a single overdeveloped parietal eye beneath their bulbous backs, which grants them darkvision out to 60 feet despite their lack of normal eyes. Most creatures avoid the frogs, knowing of their natural poison—Ingested, Fortitude DC 14, initial and secondary damage 1d4 Dexterity. In all other ways they are simply largish frogs with the same statistics as common toads.
Stirge Hounds: These rare, unnaturally large stirges are often used as tracking animals, capable of following flying creatures through the Darklands. Stirge Hounds have the statistics of a stirge advanced to Small size and 4 Hit Dice. They are very aggressive and prone to hunting in packs or even swarms. Their proboscis is uniformly ivory-colored, while their bodies are usually dark rust-red along the wings fading to black upon the body.
It's been many, many months since Leandra Christine Schneider won the first RPG Superstar contest, but we're finally almost there—her module, Clash of the Kingslayers, is going through its last bits of editing as I type this. To celebrate, check out some of the art from the adventure!
One of the most interesting things to see come out of Osirion, Land of the Pharaohs is some of the art. Osirion had always been, in my mind, "Golarion's Egypt." And that meant that it kinda looked like Egypt in my mind—but with more mummies and giant scorpions. But now we've got some art coming in, and now Osirion looks more like its own place—elements are familiar, but at the same time the region is starting to look uniquely its own. Check out these two illustrations for examples—one depicting a hidden valley of pyramid tombs and another a busy day market in Sothis.
That's what they call Absalom—the City at the Center of the World. The largest city in the Inner Sea region, Absalom's the cultural and religious center of humanity on Golarion. Of course, that doesn't mean you'll only see humans there! As the first truly enormous city we've detailed in Golarion, there's a lot going on in Absalom that would probably look out of place in smaller cities like Korvosa—but in Absalom, the unusual is an everyday facet of life.
The book just recently went off to the printer, so what better time to give folk their first official look at Ben Wootten's rendering of the skyline of the City at the Center of the World?
For more than 4,000 years Absalom has been the City at the Center of the World, a metropolis-sized showcase of the greatest treasures in all Golarion. But it wasn't always like this.
Or was it?
Cities aren't born, they're made, usually through centuries of back-breaking labor and innumerable hardships. But that isn't the case with Absalom. It was brought into the world in a single moment, ready to grow, ready to flourish, ready to claim its place as a city-state to rival empires. From the earliest records of that miraculous place, recorded in Pathfinder Chronicles Guide to Absalom, comes the following account:
"No account exists of Absalom's first moments, for Aroden was alone when he raised the Isle of Kortos from the depths and placed the Starstone where it is now, marking the focus of what was to become the City at the Center of the World. Even in the first centuries of Absalom, when Aroden was a common sight in its halls and on its streets, no one claimed to know how or why Aroden moved the Starstone, or created its resting place. Some believe the Starstone Cathedral is Aroden's greatest construction, while others say the Starstone itself built the monument that protects it. The Cathedral was finished before a single inhabitant arrived in Absalom, though it has continued to grow and expand itself in the centuries since that time. Aroden never answered questions put to him about the Cathedral, saying only that any who needed to know of it would find the answers themselves.
"Indeed, all records of the first few centuries of Absalom are spotty at best. The Founding Law of Absalom, the laws which even the Grand Council may not change or remove, were written in stone within Azlanti Keep, but no other original documents survive. Four millennia of mold, accident, and even intentional sabotage have ruined every book, scroll, and tablet kept before 400 AR. While copies of copies claiming to be true to the original texts can be found throughout the city, even within Forae Logos different editions of texts often disagree with one another. Much of the first millennium of Absalom is less history, and more mythology.
"What is clear is that Aroden established the location of the city when he placed the Starstone, and that doing so took a heavy toll on him. Some myths claim the Isle of Kortos belonged to a terrible sea-demon or god of minotaurs, and that Aroden delved into a massive labyrinth to face and defeat that original resident. Other legends place Absalom as an old outpost of the Azlanti, sunken and brought back from the depths by that civilization's last son, and assign that as the reason gillmen continue to live in and around the city. Most natives actually assume Aroden raised the island up from the depths when he recovered the Starstone, creating it from the raw rock and kelp of the sea floor, but no record of this version of events can be dated any earlier than 1,450 AR and no record of Aroden himself making the claim exists. While this last version of events is official dogma to several churches, many serious scholars discount it."
Pathfinder Chronicles Guide to Absalom by Owen K. C. Stephens releases this December.
In Pathfinder #17, the PCs visit the elven homeland of Kyonin. We'll be providing a gazetteer of this nation for GMs to use to expand adventures set in this verdant kingdom. As you can see by the two pictures here by Andrew Hou, though, Kyonin isn't just an idyllic sylvan setting with beautiful elven villages—there's a dark side to Kyonin as well. The fiend-haunted forest of Tanglebriar, empire of the demon Treerazer (that's his palace Witchbole shown in the not-so-friendly illustration), lies deep within the kingdom's borders, providing a constant source of high-level adventure opportunity for the brave and foolhardy.
In Pathfinder #17's adventure, "A Memory of Darkness," the heroes get to travel to the idyllic realm of Kyonin, the homeland of the elves. But as you can see here in Steve Prescott's cover illustration, Kyonin's not wholly a nice and happy place. Particularly down south, in the demon infested reaches of Tanglebriar, where bebiliths and other menaces replace bears in the "Reasons to fortify your campsite" list.
So, after a lengthy and unscheduled delay, it looks like we're getting quite close to finally getting Pathfinder #14 into our warehouse and ready to ship. It's been a bit since we talked about this one, but here's a quick preview of something a lot of our readers are looking forward to—what lies beyond the planet of Golarion!
In Pathfinder #14, we'll be discussing that very topic—what other worlds revolve around Golarion's sun, what sorts of creatures dwell on those worlds, and how they and Golarion's denizens travel back and forth between the planets through the inhospitable gulf of space. Naturally, the map of the solar system attached doesn't show the planets and the distances between them to scale (we'd have to have a giant foldout section to do that, I suspect), but it does show off how many different worlds there are out there. It's a little overwhelming to me, to tell the truth; we've barely scratched the surface of one small part of Golarion, and we're already talking about the other planets! Hopefully Pathfinder #14 satisfies the urge for info about these other planets for a while, though—at least long enough for us to catch our breath and figure out what to do with all these worlds!
Once more, I reveal unto you some great art for Pact Stone Pyramid by Bento Box Studios! Nothing much more to say than pictures of paladins headlockin' mummies. Paladins headlockin' mummies.
In this interior piece we have a girallon covered in glowing magical hieroglyphics battling Seelah and Kyra, set in one of the interior areas of the Pact Stone Pyramid. Well, it's not really a girallon, it's a magical curse in the shape of a girallon, but when the thing is quadruple-punching your face the subtle difference probably isn't your biggest concern....
Pathfinder #15 is off to press, and you know what that means! Time to start working on Pathfinder #16! Pictured here is the cover by Steve Prescott for "Endless Night," the fourth installment of the Second Darkness Adventure Path. In the coming month, we'll be revealing more about this volume's contents (driders and demons and mothmen, oh my!), but for now, feast your eyes on a typical day for surface folk in a drow city.
As the title and art may suggest, our iconic barbarian just loves tusslin' with great winged wyrms! This lovely bit of art is just one component of the cover to Pathfinder #15, "The Armageddon Echo," unfettered by logo or iconic image. Unfettered, I say! I hope you enjoy!
For the last several months of Pathfinder's Second Darkness Adventure Path we've been neck-deep in drow, with one terrible question looming over our heads all the while: With such a history of fantastic dark elven cities, where do the drow of Golarion actually live? The answer started as a sketch on a single piece of graph paper and grew into a tape and grid work monstrosity that would dominate my dining room table for several weeks. From this ever-expanding madness eventually developed a vast underground metropolis I eventually dubbed Zirnakaynin, the Last Home of the Elves.
While the city of the drow won't completely take shape until Pathfinder #16, players at last Gen Con's Ascension of the Drow Pathfinder Society event got a first look at the massive, tri-cavern subterranean domain. For everyone who missed out on Ascension, though, here's a sneak peek of the heart of the drow race, their stockade and sanctuary: Zirnakaynin.
None, not even the drow, can say how long their ancestors wandered the darkness, but for more than 8,000 years settlements have stood among the severe cliffs of Cocyrdavarin, the great cavern that now holds Zirnakaynin. The first walls of the city rose upon the cavern's highest scarp, and like a glacier slowly crashed down upon the lower slopes. Over time, each level took on a distinct name and characteristics.
Atop the crowning plateau stand the ancient bladed walls of the Last City, the densely packed heart of Zirnakaynin, where the drow first clustered in fear of the dark. Today, it is home to the city's wealthiest and most powerful non-nobles, cruel artisans and performers, and purveyors of all manner of decadences. At the plateau's westernmost edge, amid gardens of dark stone, stands the topless tower of Ileccinoc, the seat of the city's ruling council, the many-spired column that looms over all Zirnakaynin.
Beneath the heights of the Last City sprawls Arsyrvhar, the Pale March, home to most of they city's drow population, many of its everyday shops and residences, and the markets of Ovessia. Mingling among the common drow, merchants from Zirnakaynin's slave cities and strange locales throughout the Darklands travel here to bargain and curry the favor of drow nobles. Those traders whose wares are considered unworthy for elven consumption are banished from the bustling district to the slum-bazaar of Drashes in Ghenavoc.
The lowest span of Cocyrdavarin, the Pit of Ghenavoc hosts the most worthless of drow society: the low-born, the deformed, the city's few freed slaves, and foreign residents. Among workhouses, slave pens, drug dens, and warehouses, the least of Zirnakaynin's society scrape out pitiful lives.
It falls to me once again to reveal a tantalizing taste of some of the terrific tableaux contained within the pages of Pathfinder. Today I bring to you two pieces from Into the Darklands. The first is a bunch of drow and slaves leading freshly captured heroes into a drow city. Lucky them. The second is, well... it's an underground lost-world-type cavern where giant monsters fight dinosaurs. I think that speaks for itself. Have I mentioned before how much I love my job?
With Gods and Magic off to the printer, we now officially turn our attention to the next Pathfinder Chronicles product on the schedule—Into the Darklands. For those tuning in for the first time, the Darklands of Golarion are a vast network of caverns hidden below the surface world. The Darklands are at once an iconic location that should feel familiar and a mysterious new frontier filled with surprises. Sure, we've got drow and duergar and derro and aboleths in the Darklands, but there are also degenerate humanoids known as morlocks, mysterious lost worlds inhabited by dinosaurs, a secret nation of intellect devourers, Lovecraftian horrors like gugs and serpentfolk, a hidden empire of humanoid blood-drinkers known as urdefans, and more—all awaiting discovery by brave new explorers of the deepest parts of the world.
We'll have a few more detailed previews of Into the Darklands over the weeks to come, especially as sections of the book are edited and polished up for public consumption, but since the interior art has started to arrive I thought I'd show off what happens when a PC lags behind in duergar-infested tunnels!
One of the great things about working on Pathfinder is that I get to work with my heroes. In Pathfinder #15, we have an article about the drow written by none other than Jeff Grubb, author of such products as Manual of the Planes, Spelljammer, The Finder's Stone Trilogy, and countless other classics. And as it works out, he worked on my favorite D&D adventure of all time, the super-module Queen of the Spiders. So his resume was pretty solid for the guy who we wanted to write about our drow.
In Pathfinder #15, we'll have just such an article—everything you wanted to know about how the drow of Golarion are different from those of other campaign settings, or how they're the same. Jeff did an excellent job capturing the depravity that is drow, but they're different enough that they're unique to Golarion.
Ever since we started the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting, I've been thinking about the stars. Sure, developing the planet of Golarion is a blast, but what's beyond it? Look at how many stories we've managed to tell (and are currently gearing up to tell!) in just one region of one world—how many more could be out there on the eleven planets and dozens of moons in just Golarion's solar system? More importantly, how strange would they be? What dark mysteries and untold wonders reside on worlds not bound by Golarion's rules of evolution and magic?
Unfortunately for me, the stories weren't mine to explore. Publisher Erik Mona, though certainly open to suggestions, had staked his claim early on the solar system. Though both of us, as part of the Planet Stories team, love science fiction, his is a much pulpier view of the cosmos than mine. Where I saw hard science, astronomy, and almost unfathomable cultures at all stages of technological advancement, he saw Burroughs' war-torn Barsoom and Otis Adelbert Kline's lush Venus, filled with hard-jawed warriors and beautiful princesses wearing scanty moon-garments. Quietly, I shuffled my hopes of gas giants with floating sentient jellyfish and tidally heated moons into my desk drawer and moved on.
That is, until Erik got himself too busy with the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting and needed somebody to cover for him.
The result is Pathfinder #14's extensive overview of Golarion's solar system. Through Erik's love of pulp-era sword-and-planet, and my own affinity for hard SF, we came away with a compromise that I hope has something for everyone. Whether you're into steam punk or cosmic horror, bug-eyed aliens or familiar faces, our system has you covered.
Except for robots. Managing Editor Wes Schneider has long since made it public knowledge that his primary goal in life is to keep me from putting robots into our world all willy-nilly. (NOTE: There may still be robots.)
In any case, from Bretheda to Eox, Aballon to the Diaspora, I hope you enjoy the worlds we've created for you. To help give you a taste of what's to come, here's the entry for Akiton, the Red Planet:
Akiton, the Red: Colder and harder than Golarion, Akiton is a planet of brave four-armed warriors, their lances and flechette rifles gleaming against a backdrop of rust-red rock and sand. Monsters roam these cold mountains and desolate plains, and tyrannical empires raise stark and beautiful cities in the dried beds of ancient oceans. The tribes of the Shobhad-neh, 12-foot-tall behemoths capable of wielding a sword in each of their four hands, are fiercely territorial, and few sane creatures would challenge a single warrior girded in his battle harness, let alone one of the warbands and raiding parties that constantly redraw the giants' borders. Yet there are other races here as well: the timid and crafty Ysoki rat-men, or the red-skinned lizardfolk who hunt the great sand serpents with only crude spears and teeth. Perhaps strangest of all are the Contemplatives of Ashok, into whose soft and throbbing brain-sacs the ether occasionally whispers secrets of things past and those left to come.
So, if you'll allow me a moment here to go off on a tangent that's near and dear to my black, twitching, tainted heart—let me talk for a bit about the demon lords of Golarion.
I've always been a fan of demons. I've written at length on my personal blog, on messageboards, in editorials, and in various books about this admiration of all things Abyssal. The one person I've met who can match (or exceed) this perfectly normal and perfectly healthy obsession is Erik Mona. So with both of us pulling some key strings behind the scenes of Golarion, it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that demon lords are going to play a pretty key role in the world.
With the new Second Darkness Adventure Path starting up, we'll be doing quite a bit with those demon lords. In the months to come, you can expect to see a few new demons popping into the Pathfinder Bestiary at times (including at least one well over CR 20 menace), at LEAST one prestige class for demon worshipers, and in Pathfinder #18, an 8-page article about the demon lords themselves. For those who can't wait that long, we've put a preview into the hardcover Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting that lists nearly 30 of the world's known demon lords.
To long-time players of the game, many of the names on that list will look familiar. Many of the names are from real-world mythology (perhaps with a few spelling changes here and there), while more than a few are classic demon lords that, thanks to Necromancer Games' Tome of Horrors, are open content. For now, this list in the hardcover is pretty much all we've got on our demon lords, but since so many of the demons are established names, I thought it'd be helpful to list where they're all from.
Real-World Mythology: Abraxas, Aldinach, Baphomet, Dagon, Flauros, Haagenti, Kostchtchie, Lamashtu, Nocticula, Orcus, Pazuzu, Shax, and Socothbenoth are all from various real-world myths (although in some cases, like Orcus, the real-world inspiration is a mythological place rather than a being).
Open Sources: A few old favorites, like Baphomet, Jubilex, Kostchtchie, and Pazuzu, appear in the Tome of Horrors Revised. Of these, Jubilex is the only one who doesn't really have a real-world mythological source. (Those interested in keeping track of which version is the open content Jubilex and which one isn't the open one need look no further than the spelling of his name, by the way.)
Brand New Demon Lords: And that leaves us with 16 brand new demon lords: the razor-edged Andirifkhu, the brutish simian Angazhan, the mysterious sphinx Areshkagal, the poisonous and fungoid Cyth-V'sug, the insectoid infestation Deskari (whose freaky swarming minions are illustrated here), the froglike and ravenous Gogunta, the murderous werewolf Jezelda, the ghoulish Kabriri, the creeping spider-thing Mazmezz, the deformed and hateful hag Mestama, the dangerously seductive Sifkesh, the troll god Urxehl, the stony gargoyle Xoveron, the dinosaurian troglodyte Xevgavizeb, and beautiful but vampiric Zura. I think that's all of them. These guys and gals were created specifically for Golarion (or in a few cases, imported from my own home-brew campaign world), and beyond a few mentions elsewhere in print, we haven't said much about them yet. That's a situation I hope to change over the next few months, though!
So the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting book is at the printer right now. An early print copy of it showed up here at Paizo last week, and it looks gorgeous. It'll be available at Gen Con, but until then, we'll continue posting tidbits and previews here on the blog now and then. For today, we've had a request from the messageboards to see the table of contents, and that sounded like a great idea. So! Without further ado, here it is, along with some art from the book's entry on Varisia!
Foreword 3
Chapter 1: Characters 4
Races 6
Classes 41
Chapter 2: The Inner Sea 52
Overview of the Inner Sea 52
Nations of the Inner Sea 54
Beyond the Inner Sea 152
Chapter 3: Religion 158
Major Gods 160
Other Gods 170
The Great Beyond 178
Chapter 4: Organizations 186
Major Organizations 187
Smaller Organizations 196
Chapter 5: The World 198
History and Timeline 198
The Darklands 202
Domain Spells 204
Equipment 206
Fauna 212
Flora 214
General Feats 216
Languages 218
Lost Nations 220
Prestige Classes 222
Harrower 222
Low Templar 224
Pathfinder Chronicler 226
Red Mantis Assassin 228
Shackles Pirate 230
Psionics 232
Technology 234
Time and Space 236
Trade 238
Weather and Climate 240
Beyond the 20 core deities, there are those who have not become so ubiquitous that their names and faiths can be found throughout Avistan or Garund. In some cases, this is simply because their worshipers do not actively seek out new members of their faith, while in others it is the deity who discourages growth. In Aroden's case, a once mighty faith has crumbled to a shadow of its former glory after the god himself perished. Beyond these ten, there exist still more deities, but those generally focus on specific races or regions of the world and have not yet expanded out of their relatively narrow confines to touch other realms and believers. The ten Other Gods detailed in the Pathfinder Campaign Setting are listed below, several of which are being introduced to the public for the first time!
Achaekek (He Who Walks in Blood): God of the Red Mantis and assassins.
Aroden (The Last Azlanti): God of human culture, innovation, and history.
Besmara (The Pirate Queen): Goddess of piracy, strife, and sea monsters.
Droskar (The Dark Smith): God of toil, slavery, and cheating.
Ghlaunder (The Gossamer King): God of parasites, infection, and stagnation.
Groetus (God of the End Times): God of empty places, ruins, and oblivion.
Kurgess (The Strong Man): God of competition, sport, and self-sacrifice.
Milani (The Everbloom): Goddess of hope, devotion, and uprisings.
Sivanah (The Seventh Veil): Goddess of illusions, reflections, and mystery.
Zyphus (The Grim Harvestman): God of accidental death, graveyards, and tragedy.
So, as you can see in the picture here, life in Riddleport can be tough. It might be a nice, balmy summer day, a perfect day for smuggling some loot. You've got word that the overlord's gendarmes have all been bribed and your boss' rivals have other problems that have them looking the other way—moving the latest catch from a fat Magnimarian merchant ship to the local fence should be a simple job. But if there's one mistake a Riddleport native can make—it's letting your guard down. The local wildlife (like reefclaws or swamp barracudas or sharks or even the cranky bunyip pictured here) can pose an even greater danger to the locals than the city's more conventional thugs and thieves.
Pathfinder's 3rd Adventure Path, Second Darkness, is a much more global campaign than the previous two—but it still starts in Varisia, in the dangerous and exciting city of Riddleport. this volume comes with a gazetteer of the City of Cyphers loaded with adventure hooks and hidden secrets for your PCs to discover, businesses to visit, rob, or even own, and exotic games of chance to take part in. And plenty of monsters and opportunity for peril, of course. Just keep one thing in mind—Riddleport is at its most dangerous when things seem calm. Oh, and don't feed the wildlife.
Exploring Paizo's Pathfinder Society Organized Play, Part 5
Thursday, June 19, 2008
We know that a pathfinder's loyalties are often split between the Society and the nation that birthed them. We ask only that you endeavor to keep your interests in discovery and exploration ahead of your country's interests.
—Venture Captain Alissa Moldreserva
In Part 1, we unveiled our first faction, Andoran, and spoke a little about the faction system we'll use in Pathfinder Society Organized Play. In Part 2, we announced our second faction, Cheliax, and we talked briefly about faction prestige, how it's earned, and what it means for the world of Golarion as well as what it means for you as a member of the Pathfinder Society. In Part 3, we revealed the third faction for Pathfinder Society Organized Play: Osirion, Land of the Pharaohs. In Part 4, we brought you the fourth faction: Qadira, desert frontier kingdom, gateway to the massive continent of Casmaron, and the westernmost satrap state of the Padishah Empire of Kelesh. For Part 5, we uncover the final faction: Taldor, Golarion's decadent, failing empire with its fingers still gripping hard on the shores of the Inner Sea.
TALDOR
Decadent Failing Empire
The sun of Taldor's empire has set. It is up to us to see it rise again in our time.
—Baron Jacquo Dalsine
Old Taldor once ruled the entire northern coast of the Inner Sea, from gold gilded Oppara to the wild frontier of Varisia. Now it's reduced to a quarter of its former glory. As Old Taldor's gaze turned ever inward, its vassals and conquered colonies slowly slipped away without a fight. Andoran and Cheliax broke off hundreds of years ago, and few in Taldor had either the desire or the motivation to go to war to stop it. Why bother dealing with petty trifles in the countryside when your own political destruction is taking place in the lime light of Taldorian high society?
It's easy to forget Taldor's former glory and dismiss the entire country as a band of narcissistic fools who spend more time preening their wigs than they do defending their borders or quelling the unrest roiling within their great cities. Little do most know that while the majority of Taldor's upper crust are more concerned with this season's fashions than the well being of their collapsing empire, a few of the world's most dangerous operatives are honed in the constant battleground of Oppara's feuds. Old enmities between ancient houses have engulfed the Gilded City in shadowy violence and assassinations for hundreds of years, and more than a fair share of skilled adventurers have come up surviving the feuds, either as hired muscle or scions of noble houses mixed up in these simmering cauldrons of bloodshed.
Taldorians are decadent bon vivants, favoring rich foods, ornate attire, and jeweled accoutrements for even the most minor of casual affairs. To a Taldorian, appearance is an expression of power, and a keen sense of fashion represents a keen mind. Their appreciation for the arts extends beyond fashion and painting, dabbling in sorcery, dueling, and the murky strategies of politics and war. A Taldorian mind, when raised to ire, is a dangerous thing, and the rest of the Inner Sea is about to receive a painful reminder of this timeless fact.
Goals: Get Back in the Game
Petty differences and ancient feuds have slowly ground Taldor down from a great polished stone to a whittled nub. The key to restoring the empire's sense of purpose lies in finding an enemy to galvanize Taldor's splintered factions, an endeavor worthy of rediscovering the nation's august past glory. Seizing the political reins of Absalom is the perfect medicine for the wasting disease deep in Taldor's bones.
Methodology: Wolf and Tiger
Our weakness must now be our strength: centuries of petty infighting have afforded us one weapon – surely there is no one who can claim as true a mastery of intrigue as we Taldorians!
—Baron Jacquo Dalsine
Taldor's strategy for seizing control of Absalom lies in turning its enemies against one another. Misdirection and psychological warfare are the orders of the day. Taldorian missions involve sparking old enmities between Qadira and Osirion, driving Cheliax and Andoran to rekindle their old war. "Sick the wolf on the tiger and the hunter's work is done" is an old Taldorian saying, and the mantra by which Taldor's agents create havoc around the Inner Sea.
Check back in a week to learn more about Pathfinder Society Organized Play. Don't forget to check the Pathfinder Society messageboards as well to learn about some awesome opportunities to help launch Paizo's organized play at this coming Gen Con!
The Pathfinder Campaign Setting Hardcover is soon upon us and the anticipation around here is palpable (tastes like pancakes, incidentally)! Getting to see, and be a part of, the flurry of activity here is a great part of the job! Allow me to foster and nurture some of that anticipation in you by sharing some of the fantastic art that is going into this beast of a book. Enjoy!
Exploring Paizo's Pathfinder Society Organized Play, Part 3
Thursday, June 12, 2008
As for your life and limb I make no promises, young novice. Rest assured that you shall never succumb to boredom and your exploits will be sung and scripted for the common folk to marvel.
—Venture Captain Alissa Moldreserva
In Part 1, we unveiled our first faction, Andoran, and spoke a little about the faction system we'll use in Pathfinder Society Organized Play. In Part 2, we unveiled our second faction, Cheliax, and we talked briefly about faction prestige, how it's earned, and what it means for the world of Golarion as well as what it means for you as a member of the Pathfinder Society. For Part 3, we unveil the third faction for Pathfinder Society Organized Play: Osirion, Land of the Pharaohs.
OSIRION
Land of the Pharaohs
We must find the strength of mountains buried in our past and bring it to bear on those fools who think we are nothing but dust in the wind.
—Amenopheus, the Sapphire Sage
Osirion was once the most glorious empire of Golarion. Pharaohs ruled as gods on earth, their monuments towered over even Thassilon's mightiest, and their armies could churn a kingdom to mud and blot out the sun on wings of death.
Now, Osirion ages from millennia of foreign rule under the rulership of the youthful Ruby Prince Khemet III, who hearkens back to the ancient days of Osirion's glory. One year ago, Khemet opened the vast deserts of Osirion – long closed by the Keleshite overlords who held the nation as a satrapy of Qadira – to foreign exploration. Today the great treasures and arcane formulas of the living gods of ancient Osirion are unearthed for the entire world to see, and the ascendancy of the Land of Pharaohs is at hand.
Most Inner Sea nations view Osirion as a relic from a bygone age. In truth, Osirion is a slumbering giant that, when awakened, could wash away all fledgling challengers with the power of its traditions.
The Osirion are wise people who look deep into the past for answers to present troubles. Their sense of history gives them a unique perspective on the ebb and flow of power in the political landscape of the modern Inner Sea. Many folk of Osirion are of old Garundi blood, bronze—skinned, and gifted with the noble bearing of the ancient pharaohs. It would take a special brand of fool to ignore this semblance of power and dismiss the Osirion faction as less of a threat than any of the other four factions clamoring for control of Absalom.
Goals: Uncover the Power of the Past
In bygone ages, the pharaohs of Ancient Osirion created wonders beyond reason. They concocted potent arcane plagues to decimate their enemies and erected mighty monuments capable of entrapping the souls of deities. Let the other factions jockey for meager political fancy or table scraps like favorable economic sanctions. Osirion is interested in rediscovering the powerful artifacts of its heritage, and preventing their theft by aggressive powers such as Cheliax. Once these powers are returned to their rightful hands, no one shall dare breach Osirion's borders again.
Methodology: Hide Your Power, Lest the Enemy Seek to Take It from You
The grasping hands of petty thieves cannot take what they do not know you have.
—Amenopheus, the Sapphire Sage
For centuries now, the other powers of the Inner Sea have regarded Osirion as an impotent nation of conquered people. Osirion wouldn't have it any other way. Since the Ruby Prince ascended the ancestral throne a few decades past, Osirion has been gathering its power and preparing to make a bid for supremacy on the Inner Sea. Most of the Osirion faction's missions involve quietly undermining the power of their enemies. Osirion agents in Absalom plant the seeds of dissolution with a whisper or a poisonous draught, never with a naked blade, and never with a witness. Just as most of the Great Emerald Sphinx is buried beneath the sands of Osirion's deserts, so is the nation's power carefully hidden in secret brotherhoods and spies loyal to the pharaonic throne. When Absalom sits firmly in Osirion's grasp, then Khemet III shall declare himself Pharaoh in the tradition of his ancestors and Osirion's Second Golden Age shall follow.
Check the blog again on Tuesday for more information on Pathfinder Society Organized Play!
Exploring Paizo's Pathfinder Society Organized Play, Part 2
Thursday, June 5, 2008
No barfly at the local tavern who blusters on about his "adventures" shall ever know the heart-pounding rush of facing down the winds of Abendego on the prow of a pirate king's ship, or the majesty of the dawning sun cresting the Sphinx's brow at Sothis.
—Venture Captain Alissa Moldreserva
In Part 1, we unveiled our first faction, Andoran, and spoke a little about the factions system we'll use in Pathfinder Society Organized Play. In this segment, we'll talk briefly about faction prestige, how it's earned, and what it means for the world of Golarion as well as what it means for you as a member of the Pathfinder Society.
Missions and Prestige
You gain faction prestige by succeeding in specific missions. In a single scenario there will be one to three missions dedicated to your specific faction, all tasks that if completed give your faction an advantage in Absalom's shadow war. You might need to make sure a crime lord dies, protect an innocent merchant, save a kidnapped child, hand off an important missive, foil an assassination, or steal an important communiqué. Whatever the mission, a positive outcome earns you and your faction anywhere from one to three points of Faction Prestige. Every Pathfinder Society Scenario offers the same potential amount of Faction Prestige to each faction. It's up to you to make sure your faction scores higher than its competitors.
As you advance in Faction Prestige your faction rewards your excellent service. At the same time, the factions with greater prestige gain power and their star rises in the ongoing storyline of the season. Every month a Pathfinder Missive (our monthly newsletter) will let everyone know which factions are increasing in dominance over the city of Absalom and which factions are being nudged ever closer to ignominy and ineffectualness. At the season's conclusion, the faction scoring the most Faction Prestige rules Absalom from behind the scenes, while its enemies gnash their teeth and their kingdoms suffer the consequences. Having a Pathfinder in the winning faction gains that character access to rewards you wouldn't otherwise be able to obtain. (More on rewards later.) Every season ends in June at the Origins Game Fair in Columbus, OH. July is a "bridge" month between seasons during which the loosely connected storyline of the previous season comes to a close while foreshadowing the new season to come. Faction Prestige is reset in July, so that when the next season of Pathfinder Society Organized Play kicks off at Gen Con, every faction once again has the possibility to rule Absalom from the shadows.
And now a sneak peek at Cheliax, the Infernal Empire, and the second unveiled faction for Pathfinder Society Organized Play.
CHELIAX
Infernal Empire
Asmodeus himself smiles upon our endeavor and we shall not rest until the entire world trembles before Him.
—Paracountess Zarta Dralneen
When Aroden died, some say the soul of Cheliax perished with him. The once mighty empire tore itself apart, and only through the power of three noble Houses, each steeped in deviltry, was order restored. The empire runs on the backs of fiends now, a perfect machine of hellfire and blood, where morality surrenders to the needs of law and order. It's easy to curse Cheliax as a nation of devil-lovers, but few can argue with the results of their fiend-binding craft. House Thrune, the greatest of its diabolic noble families, has brought the empire under control once more. Cheliax rises like a dark star, as strong as ever, despite the recent losses of Galt and Andoran to rebellious forces.
Asmodeus proves as powerful a divine patron as Aroden ever did, shepherding his people toward glory and dominance of the Inner Sea. His plans reach eons into the future, and the minor setbacks of yesterday are all factored into the cost of doing a devil's business. The Chelish always plan for a long campaign, and never trifle over today's skirmishes. In the end all will burn in hellfire. It is only a matter of time and calculated conquest.
The pale-skinned Chelish believe themelves superior to all other peoples. Their compact with great devils gives them power beyond measure, and no other nation of the Inner Sea can compete with their summoners and warlocks when it comes to trafficking with dark forces. These devils require payment for their service, often offered up in the form of tender flesh and boiled blood. Slaves are an important resource of the Chelish as are artifacts of ancient power whose secrets are revealed to them by their timeless patrons. Even as Andoran revels in its newfound freedom, the tendrils of Cheliax's empire continue to expand. Arcadia lays open before them and Sargava is ready to fall under their hellish sway. The Inner Sea will fall with the rest as soon as Absalom rests firmly in the bloodied hands of House Thrune.
Goals: Hell on Golarion
The Chelish plan to spread the dark influence of Asmodeus across the face of Golarion. They bring order to chaos, quell the troublesome concepts of freedom and self-determination, and leave broken souls eager to accept the bondage of slavery in their wake. The world must come to terms with the order of things. Mortals serve at the knee of greater powers. The devils of the Nine Hells are Golarion's natural overlords and if the rabble gathered along the coast of the Inner Sea can't be made to understand this simple fact, then they will be purged in a torrent of fire.
Methodology: The Kiss and the Lash
A true corrupter can convince a man to hand over his soul, a blissful smile on his face.
—Paracountess Zarta Dralneen
The Chelish are masters of seduction as well as pain. They bring their enemies to heel with promises of aid, riches, and glory, but keep them in line with cruel lashes and hellfire. The Chelish faction wins others to its dark cause with temptation. Lust, power, riches, vanity, the Chelish offer all, and cater to the sinful nature in every man to bring him low. If a foe cannot be seduced, he must instead be scourged. Many missions of the Chelish faction involve tempting upright people into darkness and vice, and then threatening to expose their sins unless they aid the empire as dutiful agents. The tricks of devils have claimed men's souls since time immemorial and they serve the Chelish well in their quest for control of Absalom.
Check the blog again on Thursday for more information on Pathfinder Society Organized Play!
Exploring Paizo's Pathfinder Society Organized Play, Part 1
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Your life may very well be cut short, but your legend shall live forever. Strap on your blade, finish memorizing that spell and grab your pack. Your first journey awaits. The time to find your Path is at hand.
—Venture Captain Alissa Moldreserva
Pathfinder Society Organized Play centers on the sprawling city of Absalom, where five factions engage in a shadow war for control of the city's politics and economy. As you play, the outcome of your adventures, actions, and deeds affect events on a global scale, turning the tide of secret wars between some of Golarion's most powerful nations. The fate of the world is literally in your hands.
During the months of June, July, and August, Nicolas Logue and I will be writing a series of blog posts to peel back the curtain surrounding our plans for Pathfinder Society Organized Play. Premiering at Gen Con this August, Pathfinder Society is Paizo's first foray into the world of RPG organized play.
One piece unique to our RPG organized play system is factions. Every faction has its own unique history, culture, style and specialty. Each has its own modus operandi in the ongoing struggle for control of Absalom, and each offers the Pathfinders in their service different boons. Choosing your faction is as important as choosing your character class or race. It helps define your character in the campaign and ties your Pathfinder to one particular nation's destiny.
And now, a sneak peek at Andoran, birthplace of freedom, and the first unveiled faction for Pathfinder Society Organized Play.
ANDORAN
Birthplace of Freedom, Fledgling Democracy of the Inner Sea
The days of kings are long gone. We are the future of humanity, and of all peoples. Ruled by no crown or scepter, we instead rule ourselves.
—Captain Colson Mardris, Eagle Knight of Andoran
From humble beginnings as loggers and merchants, the Andorens proved themselves survivors on a hard frontier. Even before they won their independence they were an impressive people. Brave explorers and canny merchants, they were the first to sail the sea beyond the Arch of Aroden. They settled distant colonies, hewing a life from wild lands and an inhospitable coastline fraught with peril. The power of Old Taldor's navy rested on the shoulders of capable Andoren commanders whose skill at arms, fiery tenacity, and naval puissance was unrivaled in the empire's glory day.
Andoran shrugged off the auspices of Old Taldor when Qadira invaded the empire. Shortly thereafter they shattered Cheliax's diabolic chains. Now Andoran holds the reins of its own destiny in the strong hands of its people. They are the first government of the Inner Sea to entrust its power to its own citizens instead of dolloping it upon the crowned brow of a king. Their weapons are innovation, a stubborn dedication to idealism, and a firm belief in the potential of humanity. The Andorens are a hard people, dedicated to freedom for all, and unable to sit by and watch as the world around them submits to savagery and tyranny.
Goals: Common Rule for All
Andoran would see the tyrannic empires who once ruled them brought down. They would see slavery abolished and those who would buy and sell people punished in the extreme. They would bring the torch of freedom to the world's darkest places and banish mysticism, diabolism, and fear. Common Rule must be spread across each horizon.
Methodology: Light the Fires of Freedom
Our greatest weapon is the tyranny of our enemies.
—Captain Colson Maldris, Eagle Knight of Andoran
The Andoran faction attacks its enemies from within. They find dissidents, freedom fighters, and revolutionaries among the populations of their foes and offer them covert aid, equipment, intelligence and the funds they need to topple the tyrants. Missions assigned to Andoran faction members tend toward helping dissident groups within the other factions, though anything that shakes these tyrants' power is a worthy cause for an Andoren to lend himself to.
Being one of the newest employees here at Paizo certainly has its advantages, one of which is that I get to see some of the new stuff coming in. In an effort to not be a selfish, selfish man, I thought I'd share some of the love with you.
Here are a couple of sweet art pieces from August's Pathfinder Companion: Second Darkness. For those that don't know, Pathfinder Companion will be a new series of player-friendly, 32-page, bimonthly books designed to enlighten different aspects of the Pathfinder Chronicles campaign setting, such as Elves of Golarion or Osirion: Land of Pharaohs. This first Pathfinder Companion will be a key resource for players and GMs playing through Pathfinder's Second Darkness Adventure Path, which begins in Pathfinder #13.
We're all crazy busy here today making sure you get the awesome products you've come to expect from us. While we're at it, here's a pretty picture of the ever-popular Seoni from Pathfinder Module LB1: Tower of the Last Baron. Enjoy! :D
Pathfinder #11, "Skeletons of Scarwall" presents the 5th exciting chapter in the Curse of the Crimson Throne adventure path. Here's a sneak peek at some of the incredible art you'll see when it releases next month!
Darkmoon Vale is a dangerous place (indeed, it hosts the modules D0, D1, D1.5, E1, and LB1). Probably the most dangerous place in Andoran. But it does not exist in a vacuum. To give you a sense of place regarding the vale and what's around it, we present you with this sneak peek at the forthcoming Guide to Darkmoon Vale.
Neighbors
While civilization seems to actively avoid Darkmoon Vale, it has little problem developing in the areas surrounding the insular vale. The following descriptions offer a brief look at the largest or most influential civilized locations of interest near Darkmoon Vale. The interaction of these locations with Valers varies greatly.
Highhelm: An ancient and expansive dwarven Sky Citadel within and beneath lofty Emperor's Peak, Highhelm remains the center of dwarven culture on Avistan, as it has for millennia. Northeast of Highhelm, dwarves control the Five Kings Mountains with unquestioned authority, and passage among the many high peaks remains relatively safe from living dangers. Dwarven caravans from Highhelm seldom come to Darkmoon Vale, as most of them head west into Isger or Molthune. Roughly two or three times a decade, though, a group of Highhelm merchants gathers together and sends a caravan along the treacherous scree-covered trails that wind perilously through the mountains. The dwarves prefer to hire dozens of mercenaries to augment their tough dwarven guards and to act as arrow-fodder and spear-catchers during the inevitable attacks on these wealthy caravans.
Oregent: This large city several miles south of Darkmoon Vale houses the main office of the Lumber Consortium as well as its massive factory-like forges and sawmills. The government and people of Oregent consider themselves friends and allies of Darkmoon Vale, and particularly of Falcon's Hollow. Most newcomers to the vale originate in Oregent, either as citizens of that city or as travelers passing through from points south and east. In addition to company policies and replacement lumberjacks, Oregent also provides Darkmoon Vale with its main connection to the greater world beyond. Information flows into Olfden and Falcon's Hollow through Oregent, and many Valers suspect the news provided to them also flows through a Lumber Consortium filter, painting the company in the best possible light.
Inn of the Wood: Situated a short day's walk south of Olfden, Inn of the Wood is a popular place to relax for those traveling to or from Darkmoon Vale. The inn is the easiest place to find the sheriff of the Shire of Elberwick, Cage Blunnde. It is also the only safe place to spend a night between Olfden and Oregent, so it is frequently crowded. (For more information on the inn, see TC1: Into the Haunted Forest.)
So, it struck me that we haven't spent much time on this blog talking about art. We've shown off plenty of it, but remember, it all has to come from somewhere! Sometimes we go to specific artists to get illustrations for Pathfinder products, but we also work with several studios of artists as well. One of our favorites to work with is Concept Art House.
Concept Art House is an international art studio/outsourcing company whose clients include the film industry, video games, print media, and entertainment related intellectual properties—like Pathfinder. The core founders have over 20 years of industry experience, and while they're headquartered in San Francisco, California, they also have a full production studio in Shanghai, China. You'll be seeing plenty of their work in the pages of Pathfinder products (such as the two illustrations featured with this post), but if you'd like to see more, head on over to their art galleries at www.conceptarthouse.com. Trust me, it's worth the visit!
As inhospitable as the burning plains of the Storval Plateau are, several species actively seek to claw a life from the hard clay and lifeless ash.
Gargoyles: Bands of savage gargoyles have long made their home on the Storval Plateau. In the Cinderlands particularly, the ashen and brick-colored gargoyles of the Ashwing tribe soar from aerie to aerie, snatching up whatever meals they can and taking wing when the fires of the land grow too near.
Orcs: Raiders from the Hold of Belkzen and brutes from Urglin frequently prey upon the same animals as the native Shoanti, and upon the Shoanti themselves. Fearful of the deadly land, they rarely linger for long, yet it's not uncommon to fine the charred remains of orcs who were unable to outrun an emberstorm.
Shoanti: The Shoanti tribes of the Sklar-Quah wander the Cinderlands, preying upon the lands' deadly predators and following migrating aurochs. The flames of the land have long held a place in the faith and traditions of these warlike barbarians, most noticably in the fearless charges of the burn riders and in the rite of passage all quah members must face: the Burn Run (see "People of the Storval Plateau" and the Pathfinder's Journal
in Pathfinder #7).
Varisians: The wandering cousins of the Shoanti occasionally make their way through the Cinderlands, always either on their way somewhere else, or just to say they've been.
Queen Ileosa quarantines Old Korvosa! Bridges destroyed! People separated from their families! The shipments of supplies grind to a halt! Chaos ensues! Check out the great art that tracks the quarantine of Old Korvosa, from Pathfinder #9.
We've introduced several Varisian pastimes in the pages of Pathfinder, ranging from the goblin favorite of Killgull to the dockside fun of Knivesies. Well, in Pathfinder #9 we've got a new game for your characters to play: Blood Pig!
The basic idea of Blood Pig is pretty simple. Two teams face off against each other. Each team controls a goal and a pig. The object of the game is to get the other team's pig, then run it back across the field to place the pig in your goal. Of course, things are a bit more complicated than that, especially when the other team consists of a gang of crazed maniacs, the pig's a panicked squirming menace, and there are starving wolverines lurking in the pits that serve each team as a goal. And since the game itself was designed by one of Korvosa's more unstable and insane new crimelords, well, let's just say that a game that passes without a fair amount of bloodshed is something of a fluke. The rules, such as they are, certainly encourage violent tactics...
But don't let that scare you! After all, by this time your PCs will have faced riots and undead and all manner of peril, right? How much trouble could a pig really cause?
In Pathfinder #10: "A History of Ashes" the players leave the city of
Korvosa for the first time and set out into the wilds of Varisia.
Check out the monsters, foes, and encounters you'll face when
traveling the wilds of the fabled Cinderlands!
From the decadent courts of infernal Cheliax to the crumbling monuments of Osirion's timelost pharaohs, the world of Golarion offers countless opportunities for fantasy RPG adventures! This brief preview of some of the art from the forthcoming Pathfinder Chronicles Gazetteer gives an idea of the incredible images included in the book. Artists for the Gazetteer include James Zhang, Julie Dillon, and Andrew Hou, with 21 holy symbols designed by Jeff Carlisle!
The Pathfinder Chronicles Gazetteer (by Jason Bulmahn and some fellow named Erik Mona) is on its way back from the printer, and is currently set for a mid-May release.
The Pathfinder Chronicles Gazetteer presents—in addition to chapters about the various nations, gods, and races—a short chapter devoted to history and cosmology. In that chapter is a long timeline of important events in Golarion's past. The following presents a peek at some of the historical events important to various modules and other supplements. And yes, some of these connections are pretty tenuous, but the point is to illustrate how hard we've worked to show how things interconnect in Golarion. So please enjoy!
Get a quick glimpse of Paizo's reimagining of some of your favorite monsters featured in Classic Monsters Revisited. Goblins and trolls and ogres, oh my!
The Pathfinder Chronicles Gazetteer is off to the printer, so here is your first look at what you can expect this juicy 64-page book to contain.
Osirion
LAND OF THE PHARAOHS Alignment: LN Capital: Sothis (111,989) Notable Settlements: Ipeq (12,730), Totra (52,360), Shiman-Sekh (6,680) Ruler: The Ruby Prince Khemet III Government: Celestial Monarchy Languages: Osiriani Religion: Nethys, Sarenrae, Pharasma, Lamashtu, Irori, Norgorber, Rovagug
For almost 2000 years after the Starstone fell from space to create the Inner Sea, chaos and ruin defined Golarion. The old empires were cast in ruin, strange creatures born of darkness and fear stalked the land. It was a time of barbarism and terror, a slow decline into extinction for humankind. But humanity rose again in the jungles and deserts of the south Inner Sea coast. Osirion, a land of living god-kings and monolithic pyramids, rose as a beacon in a world ruled by barbarism, the first of the great kingdoms of man's Age of Destiny.
A prophet of Nethys known as Azghaad unified the warring tribes along the River Sphinx, initiating Osirion's first pharaonic dynasty in the city of Sothis, which still bears titanic statues carved in the image of Osirion's first ruler. The Osiriani folk honored their pharaohs as gods in the flesh, acceding to their every whim and marching upon their grand ambitions. Within 500 years Osirion controlled vast territories in Thuvia and modern day Rahadoum and Katapesh, as well as a lost colony that eventually became the kingdom of Geb. This First Age of Osirion generated pyramid tombs and temples for scores of pharaohs and their servants, many of which remain undiscovered (and well trapped) to this day.
A succession of lesser pharaohs and temporary foreign conquerors ruled Osirion in the middle centuries of the Age of Destiny, erecting cities and temples of their own in an attempt to leave a permanent mark on history. Most are forgotten today, and during this period Osirion waned in influence throughout the Inner Sea, ceding its marginal colonial territories.
Four competing warlords known as the Four Pharaohs of Ascension halted Osirion's decline about two centuries before the foundation of Taldor, restoring the nation's influence and holdings through using force and guile. The resulting prosperity fueled a rebirth in the nation's spirit, marking the birth of Osirion's Second Age.
In 1532 AR, foreign influence ended Osirion's pharaonic era when Qadiri agents toppled the corrupt government of Pharaoh Menedes XXVI, establishing Osirion as a satrapy of the Keleshite Empire of the East. Over the centuries migrants from Kelesh changed the ethnic character of the nation, crashing many of the old monuments and structures to the ground in an effort to chart a new destiny for Osirion.
This destiny brought the sun-focused religion of Sarenrae to Osirion, whose own religious traditions had always centered strongly upon the movements of heavenly bodies. As the cult of the Dawnflower achieved greater popularity among Keleshite and Garundi alike it became a threat to the satrap, who banished the dervishes to the deserts of Thuvia.
Members of the Dawnflower cult murdered the Satrap of Osirion in 2253, establishing the first in a long series of independent Keleshite sultans who ruled from Sothis. The last of these dictators fell to rebellion exactly 100 years ago, handing the nation to Khemet I, a Garundi prince who traced his lineage back to the Azghaadi Dynasty of Osirion's First Age. Thousands of years of oppression and decline made the people eager for a savior, and Prince Khemet offered them hope. Today, Khemet's grandson rules Osirion, calling himself the Ruby Prince. Some say that he might one day change this title to pharaoh, but such a shift would seriously trouble the desert nation's neighbors.
The youthful Prince Khemet III has opened the borders of Osirion to treasure seekers from around the world, offering a high bounty to those who uncover the hidden wonders of the past. As a result, Sothis is filled with treasure hunters of all shades. While the guards are keen to watch for anyone stealing the heritage of Osirion, there are plenty of ways to smuggle these ancient artifacts out of the country, and Osiriani relics have become a valuable commodity in markets across Avistan.
In a few short weeks, we'll begin shipping the first part of Pathfinder's second Adventure Path—Curse of the Crimson Throne. As with Rise of the Runelords, we've created a 16-page Player's Guide to help you not only build your characters for the new campaign, but also to help introduce you to the city of Korvosa, where the majority of Curse of the Crimson Throne takes place.
And as in the case of the Rise of the Runelords Player's Guide, the Curse of the Crimson Throne Player's Guide is free as a PDF. Even better? You can download it right now! (7.6MB zip PDF)
This 16-page product is packed with all sorts of flavor and crunch. An overview of the city of Korvosa, the largest city in Varisia, starts things off, including notes on the various districts and the important NPCs your characters might rub shoulders with. Notes on how all the core races and classes are represented in Korvosa come next, followed by some new equipment, weapons, and armor (some of which first appeared in the Runelords Player's guide, but others, like the sawtooth sabre, the doctor's mask, or the xxx, are brand new!). Several new feats are sprinkled throguhout the PDF as well (including one that gives fans of the crossbow some badly needed attention). The last few pages present several different background traits you can select for your new character to give him a instant "in" into Curse of the Crimson Throne's first adventure, "Edge of Anarchy." Oh, and the Golarion calendar is finally in print here as well—no more sifting back through blog posts to find out what day of the week and what month it is!
So go download your free Player's Guide, break out the six-sided dice, and start rolling up some stats! Korvosa's going to need all the heroes she can get before this Adventure Path comes to its concludsion!
James Jacobs Pathfinder Editor-in-Chief
Sneak Peek: Seven Days to the Grave
Friday, February 15th, 2008
Enjoy this interior art from Curse of the Crimson Throne Chapter 2: "Seven Days to the Grave." Just don't breathe too deep...
One of the problems I've seen with most game systems is the necessity of nailing down and quantifying a creature's speed. While this is certainly an important value, especially when combat begins, it carries with it an unfortunate implication—you're either always faster or slower or equally quick when compared to anything else. In other words... chase scenes are big problems in RPGs, since those static Speed statistics imply that you're either guaranteed to catch a slower foe or that you'll NEVER catch a faster foe or a foe that's as fast as you. Which is a shame, since chases have such promise to be exciting encounters (as anyone who's seen The French Connection, Raiders of the Lost Ark, or any of the Bourne movies can attest.)
Countless game designers have come up with different ways to simulate chase scenes in RPGs over the years—some of their solutions are quick and elegant, while others are needlessly complex and dull. In my opinion, chase rules should be fast and simple and exciting, and when I realized there's a scene in Nicolas Logue's "Edge of Anarchy" that had an exciting chase across the rooftop slums of Korvosa (a region called "The Shingles" by the locals), I knew that here was a chance for me to take a stab at coming up with some chase rules of my own.
Alas, I don't have room to go into the details here, but the basic concept is this: the region in which the chase takes place is represented by several pieces of paper on which are listed skill checks to navigate obstacles. A character can opt to just move one piece of paper a turn, or can utilize several different skill checks to move two or three pieces in a turn, thus risking a fall or other delay in order to close the gap between himself and his quarry. It makes for an even more abstract simulation than combat, sure, but in the end, the haste in which it all plays out goes a long way toward establishing the high-speed thrill of a chase through dangerous terrain. The last thing you want during a chase, after all, are bored players!
Here is a sneak peek into one of the living nightmares that you will encounter in the Lost City. Enjoy this evocative art, representative of what is featured in Crucible of Chaos.
Pathfinder Chronicles: Guide to Korvosa gives an up-close view of the city-state of Korvosa. Enjoy this sneak peek of interior art of this civilized and very cultured city.
Wow. Here we are at the end of 2007—I don't know about you, but it kind of snuck up on me. Things have been crazy busy here at Paizo over this last year, between the end of one era of monthly product and the beginning of another. Launching Pathfinder was great fun, but it was also a lot of work. Fortunately, Team Pathfinder has just about recovered from the triple duty of working on magazines, launching Pathfinder, and going to Gen Con—all just in time for our second Adventure Path to begin!
There are a lot of "Best of 2007" lists out there on the internet, and I suppose I could do something along the lines of "James's Favorite Moments of 2007" here, but to tell the truth I'm more excited about what we've got planned for 2008 in Pathfinder. We've got the contents planned out to volume #18, and even though a lot of those adventures and articles haven't yet been written (or even commissioned!), I do have a pretty good idea of what's coming next year for Pathfinder. And after reading the following list, you will too!
Listed here are 12 exciting things you can expect to show up in the pages of Pathfinder over the course of 2008. I'm only going to list one thing for each month, and as we get further out, details are more and more likely to change, but at this point they're pretty set in stone. Some of these details I might have mentioned on the Tuesday night chats, while I'm pretty sure I mentioned a few others last week at the book signing, and at least one of the following is something I haven't talked about outside of Paizo yet at all.
January: The Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path ends with a trip into the Kodar Mountains, and inevitable confrontations with abominable snowmen, giant-sized giants, dragons, and worse, in the ancient ruined city of Xin-Shalast, pictured here.
February:Pathfinder's second Adventure Path begins! Curse of the Crimson Throne is a much more urban campaign, filled with politics, plagues, and peril above and below the streets of Korvosa, the largest city in all Varisia.
March: Our exploration of Golarion's deities continues with Abadar, Master of the First Vault, written by Sean K Reynolds.
April: Want to know more about the rakshasas of Golarion and find out what role they play in Curse of the Crimson Throne? Then be sure not to miss the April Pathfinder!
May: There've been quite a lot of requests for more information about the Shoanti—Varisia's tribes of barbaric nomads. Those questions will be answered this month, in "The Shoanti Way of Life."
June: Check out your map of Varisia. Particularly, that little note in the east that says "To the Hold of Belkzen" and has an arrow pointing off the map. In June, we reveal where that little arrow is pointing. HINT: Belkzen involves orcs. LOTS of orcs.
July: The final adventure in Curse of the Crimson Throne, "Crown of Fangs," appears in July, marking Adventure Path master Tito Leati's first appearance in Pathfinder. I've looked at his maps of Castle Korvosa, and all I can say is wow. Actually, I can say more, but I'd better move on to August before I do.
August:Pathfinder's third Adventure Path begins! The Second Darkness Adventure Path answers the question of what Golarion's drow have been up to, and starts out in the lawless city of Riddleport. Assuming I ever finish writing this volume's adventure, that is…
September: Not everyone in Riddleport's out to rob you. A lot of the folk there just want to have fun. Worshipers of Cayden Cailean would fit right in, which is why in September we'll be exploring his faith in detail. Bring your tankards!
October: There's something sinister afoot in the Mierani Forest in western Varisia, particularly in the abandoned elven city of Celwynvian. Alas, you'll have to wait until October to find out exactly what waits for your PCs here!
November: By now, you know that Second Darkness features the drow as primary antagonists. And as logic dictates… that means the campaign should eventually head down below. We still haven't quite settled on a name for the vast reaches of caverns that riddle Golarion's underworld, but by November we will. I hope. Because that's when we're running a Gazetteer of the regions below that pertain to this month's adventure!
December: This MIGHT slip into January, depending on if we come up with a few different ideas, but before Second Darkness comes to an end in early 2009, you can expect to see a big, juicy article that talks about the demon lords of Golarion. They're who the drow worship, after all! And one or two of them might just be trapped here on the Material Plane with your characters…
So there you go! Something (hopefully) to look forward to each month for the entirety of 2008. Of course, the list above just scratches the surface of the adventures and supplementary articles and monsters you'll discover in Pathfinder in 2008—the bestiary will keep going strong, as will Eando Kline's adventures in the Pathfinder Journal. Cayden Cailean and Abadar are only half of the deities we'll be examining in 2008, and the drow are certainly not the only (or even the most dangerous) foes your PCs will face in the deep below.
With GameMastery Module E1: Carnival of Tears shipping out to all of your waiting hands, it is time to turn our attention to the next module, J2: Guardians of Dragonfall. Over the next few weeks we will be previewing some of the monsters and villains behind this draconic plot involving one of the more interesting locales in the Pathfinder Chronicles world, but for now, here is a look at a great piece of art from the module. Stay tuned.
Wayne Reynolds continues his streak of brilliant artwork for Pathfinder—this background for the cover of Pathfinder #7, the first installment in the Curse of the Crimson Throne Adventure Path, shows us that there are much worse things than alligators living in the sewers.... I particularly love the little details, like the inn's sign or the Hellknight about to take the monster out singlehandedly before the iconics get the chance. Click on the image to download a larger version.
Last week you saw Wayne's awesome white dragon fight for the cover of Pathfinder #5. This week, we've brought you the whole thing as a downloadable desktop wallpaper—including the newest iconic! Who is this well-equipped wizard? Only time (and, perhaps, a blog post in the imminent future) will tell....
Wayne Reynolds just delivered the cover painting for Pathfinder #5: Sins of the Saviors, and man, is it a doozy! Looks like Valeros has learned a valuable lesson about what it means to play meat-shield for the party when there's a dragon involved.... Click the image for a larger version.
By now, Pathfinder readers are getting to know Magnimar (detailed in Pathfinder #2). And when we launch the second Pathfinder Adventure Path, Curse of the Crimson Throne, there'll be all sorts of details on Korvosa. But what about Varisia's third city, Riddleport? While we do indeed have plans to eventually present Riddleport in greater detail, for the foreseeable future there's not going to be much about the notorious port town at the northernmost edge of the Lost Coast.
In Pathfinder #3, we'll be presenting a gazetteer of Varisia. Remember all of those names and locations on the map from the inside back cover of the Player's Guide? They all get, at minimum, a paragraph of descriptive text. Riddleport gets a little bit more—it gets a picture to go along with the following entry:
Riddleport: Varisia's northernmost port, the infamous city of Riddleport is renowned as a haven for scoundrels, outcasts, and worse. Cutthroats fill its harbor and dockside brothels, with Riddleport's officers of the law being just another gang of thieves (and hardly the most powerful one at that). Yet even in such a den of inequity and vice, scholars and historians abound, attempting to decipher the runes of the great arch known as the Cyphergate, which spans the mouth of the harbor and looms over each vessel that passes into the city. Although any progress on the inscription has been kept quiet, recent excavation hints that the massive arch might actually be just one segment of a ring that extends into the cliffs surrounding the port.
In his years of studying magical art, the sinister Imron Gauthfallow has collected a number of unique pieces from across the continent. But when he looted a spectacular piece from the abandoned mansion of a dead elven scholar, he got more than he bargained for. When he unveiled the painting in his own gallery, he unwittingly released a shadowy lurker.
These undead spirits of darkness were once the celebrated elven artisans. Betrayed by their own pride, ages ago they were tricked by the fey of the First World and bound away into shadow. Twisted by their hatred and loneliness, they were transformed into stunted, shadowy versions of their former selves. In time they discovered portals back to the real world. Ironically, these "portals" were in fact the paintings they had crafted so many centuries before, collected in galleries all across Golarion. Obsessed with their lost lives, the shadowy lurkers found their own works, and jealously guarded them from being seen by lesser beings. Over time, the shadowy lurkers have learned to manipulate the minds of people in the same way they used to play with paint and brush. Masters of light and illusion, they can be a deadly trap for the unsuspecting art enthusiast.
With Seven Swords of Sin now out the door and arriving in mailboxes everywhere, it's time to start looking at September's new GameMastery Module. This month we are releasing U1: Gallery of Evil. This module is our first urban adventure (hence the U code), so we thought we would start out proper by exploring one section of Golarion's most important city: Absalom. This vast metropolis sits on the isle of Kortos in the great Inner Sea, making it of vital importance to the region.
Gallery of Evil specifically focuses on the Ivy District, known as being home to many of the city's most influential artists and craftsmen. It's only natural, then, that the adventure focuses on the darker side of art, with one crazed master turning his works loose on his unsuspecting critics. Over the next few weeks, we will explore some of this module with a bit more depth, but for now, here's one of our favorite art pieces and the teaser text from the back of the module.
Art for Murder's Sake
The great city of Absalom is known as a center for trade, education, and art. Inside the Ivy District reside dozens of famous artists, but one has the talent to bring his paintings to life and uses paint to conjure terrible monsters bent on destruction. Can the player characters stop the mad painter before he perfects his art?
Gallery of Evil is an urban adventure for 8th-level characters, compatible with the world's most popular fantasy roleplaying game. This adventure includes details on the metropolis of Absalom's Ivy District, as well as the home of the diabolical artist and his twisted works. The PCs must track down the deadly paintings and discover the true identity of the artist behind it all.
This adventure is the first to feature information on the metropolis of Absalom, one of the largest cities in the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting.
Pathfinder #2 is off at the printer, which means it's time to give you all a sneak peak at some of the fabulous art we've got going into this volume. From the lamia matriarch to the skinsaw cultist with his fearsome war razor, we're really proud of the visual element of Pathfinder #2, and these are just a drop in the bucket when you consider how much art we have jam-packed into this book. Enjoy!
In the past, each time we've shown off the cover to a new volume of Pathfinder, we've been immediately deluged with requests for it as a downloadable desktop background, which we inevitably put up a few days later. This time we figured: why wait? After all, there's a long weekend coming up, and we wouldn't want your monitor to have to go without new Wayne Reynolds art for all that time. So here it is: the cover to Pathfinder #4, featuring everyone's favorite butt-kicking cleric of Sarenrae, Kyra. Looking at the stone giants Wayne's dreamed up for us, it's kind of amazing the heroes ever win, isn't it?
Tomorrow, June 23rd, is the first annual Free RPG Day, where you can stop by your local game store and pick up a free product. As mentioned in the post from April 24th, you can pick up the very first GameMastery Module, D0: Hollow's Last Hope tomorrow as part of this exciting event.
Hollow's Last Hope is a prequel to D1: Crown of the Kobold King and covers much of the lead-up to that adventure, taking brand-new 1st-level characters up to 2nd level and getting them ready for the challenges the kobold king has in store. The adventure also features a plot that allows it to be run as a stand-alone event. Here is some of the text from the back cover:
The Town of Falcon's Hollow Needs a Miracle The plague has come to the town of Falcon's Hollow, and not even the town's priest can abate its wretched course. With the coughs of the sick and the wails of the dying echoing through town, the local herbalist uncovers a cure, but she needs some brave heroes to retrieve the ingredients. Finding the cure means risking the dangerous Darkmoon Vale, infiltrating a witch's haunted hut, and delving the ruins of an abandoned dwarven monastery.
Due to its smaller size, Hollow's Last Hope does not include pregenerated characters. We wanted to make sure you could run the adventure as part of Free RPG Day festivities, though, so to help on that end, we've put together four ready-to-play PCs. You can download a PDF of these PCs right here.
To find a game store near you that is sponsoring the event, go to freeRPGday.com. If you miss out on Free RPG Day, but still want to get your hands on the module, you can order a physical copy through our store (for a small fee) or you can download it as a free pdf starting Monday.
Since we just got in some great rough sketches of notable Varisian landmarks courtesy of Andrew Hou, we thought we'd introduce you to some of Varisia's more infamous adventure sites. Presented below are but a few—look forward to more in the upcoming Rise of the Runelords Player's Guide.
Bloodsworn Vale: A fey-haunted pass to southern lands which played an integral role in Varisia's break with the crumbling empire of Cheliax.
Celwynvian: The doom-haunted capital of the Mierani elves, abandoned by its people.
The Face Pyramid: A great, timeless stone edifice rising forth from the Mushfen's murk.
Hook Mountain: A peak of dark repute, bent to resemble a colossal hook and the ancestral home of several tribes of inbred, brutish ogres.
The Mobhad Leigh: A vast and deep pit, which the Shoanti say has no bottom.
Riddleport: A depraved and lawless city whose ancient harbor bears a massive, rune-carved arch.
The Storval Stairs: Titanic steps cut into the face of the Storval Rise, the cliff face separating the lower half of Varisia from the eastern plateau.
Viperwall: The Citadel of Snakes, its walls of carved serpents endlessly leaking a venomous gas.
Kaer Maga: A city built inside the ruins of a single great structure of unknown function, perched atop the Storval Rise and renowned for its anarchic population of squatters and outlaws.
Everyone knows about goblins and worgs. Going all the way back to Tolkien, the goblin/worg raiding party has been a staple of sword and sorcery fantasy. Giving the goblins an iconic mount to ride makes them that much scarier, and also that much more usable. No longer confined to their underground lairs, a mounted group of goblins can range far across the countryside, strike at numerous towns and villages, and generally wreak havoc.
But why should the goblins have all the fun? The poor, abused kobolds lack that traditional iconic mount creature, and while they do enjoy their traps, without mounts they are a much more stationary threat. With Crown of the Kobold King, we decided to change that.
Enter the slurk.
Long ago, dwarves dragged giant forest toads beneath the earth and altered their physiology with powerful magic in hopes of creating powerful underground beasts of burden that would be perfect mounts. The slurk is the disgusting result of their aborted efforts. The creature's unappealing slime and foul reek caused the dwarves to drive away their creation in disgust. Kobolds, on the other hand, are less picky.
Slurks are oozy abominations resembling pale, slime-slick toads. Their backs drip viscous mucus while their bellies are coated with a thick film of greasy slime. They use their slime as an offensive weapon, coating their opponents with the glue-like phlegm and making it easier to bring their gigantic, walrus-like tusks to bear on their hapless victims. Their sticky back-slime makes them ideal mounts for the kobolds, who can adhere to their backs without the need for a saddle. The slurks are powerful leapers, and are capable of moving along the walls and floor of rough underground tunnels at incredible speed. They are not the brightest of beasts, however, and more that one kobold has had his skull crushed when his mount smashed his head into the cavern ceiling with a mistimed jump.
And now, by popular request... Pathfinder desktop backgrounds! While a desktop is obviously a totally different size than a book, and certain design elements are still being finalized, these three images are perhaps the best preview to date of what the first three Pathfinder covers (including the alternate cover for volume 1) will actually look like. So while you're waiting for "Burnt Offerings" to release, why not download one of these and throw it up as your wallpaper? After all, as far as we're concerned, everyone could use a little more Wayne Reynolds art in their lives...
I've made no secret of my obsession for new monsters. I love them. I can never get enough of them. Will I ever use all the monsters I've collected through my decades of RPG enthusiasm? Absolutely not. But I wouldn't give up any of them.
Unlike magic items or spells, new monsters are things that a GM can introduce into a game without fear that they'll disrupt a campaign. If they prove too lame (as was the case of my home campaign's flying, slavering eradu—a sort of warthog-shark intended to be the "new bulette," but who ended up being glass-jawed, one-hit loser), it's easy enough to never use them again. But once your PCs get your hands on things like new spells and new magic items, it's much harder to back them out of the campaign without a lot of tears and thrown dice.
With Pathfinder, we're embracing the new monster completely. Every volume will feature a bestiary that spotlights roughly six new monsters. Some of them will have roles in that month's adventure while others might just be there to add flavor to our new campaign setting. A few might even be previews of an Adventure Path years down the road. Some will be drawn from real-world myth, some from cryptozoological reports, and some wholly from the minds of our authors. Hopefully we'll all have some new favorite monsters in the months to come!
But talking about monsters isn't enough. We don't have art in yet for the six new monsters that are going to be in the first volume of Pathfinder to support the first adventure, "Burnt Offerings," but we do have descriptions of them. And while names of these monsters are placeholders in many cases, their descriptions are locked in. Check them out! (Warning: as with most of these blogs, spoilers below!)
Attic Whisperer
This undead thing resembles a child's skeleton with the paws and grinning skull of a fox. It is gray and covered with cobwebs, and dust falls endlessly from its mouth. It holds a ragged stuffed child's toy, its eyes pierced by pins, in its skeletal, fox-like hands. The creature is dressed in a small sleeping gown that looks like it was partially burned in a fire, as if it were the remains of a child who had died in bed.
Giant Gecko
There are two breeds of giant gecko in Varisia. The first is the size of a small horse or pony, maybe 8 feet long from head to tail. His eyes are bright blue and his body brightly colored. His open mouth holds hundreds of fangs, and his feet have large flat toes.
The second breed is much larger and more muscular, running about 14 feet long from snout to tail tip. This gecko has horns and a ridge of spines running down its back. Its eyes are bright red, and green smoking drool drips from its mouth, indication of its venomous bite.
Goblin Dog
While goblins ride worgs, wolves, and giant geckos when they can get them, most goblins are stuck with these disturbing mounts. Shaped like a limber greyhound but with a feral, ratlike face and tail, goblin dogs share their masters' hatred of real dogs. Their front two paws are tiny, black, ratlike hands, and their attitudes are all snarls and froth.
Goblin Snake
This strange snakelike monster is about 6 feet long and coiled around the roots of a tree that hang down from the roof of a cave. The snake has a black body with a thin racing stripe down its flank. Its back is a ridge of tiny horns. Its head is actually that of a goblin, but with a forked tongue and no ears. It has wide white snake eyes and a large mouth with two large viper fangs in the front. Some sages hold that goblin snakes are atrophied, deformed nagas, while most goblins believe that they're reincarnated heroes sent back to this world to punish goblin enemies.
Runespawn
Humanoid but deformed, the runespawn is an emaciated horror with unnaturally long arms and legs. Its hands each have two talon-tipped fingers and a thumb, and their legs bend like those of a dog. It's dressed in tatters and rags that expose much of its skin; veins bulge all over their bodies, forming dark blue or red patterns that look like twisted runes. Their flesh is pale and hairless. The runespawn's heads are curiously elongated. They have only a pair of slits for a nose, and their eyes are bulging and red, with no visible eyebrows. Yet for all this horror, their mouths are the most disturbing, for their lower jaw splits in half at the chin into pedipalps that end in tiny three-fingered hands that writhe about, eager to feed delicious morsels into an open gullet with a lolling tongue.
Sandpoint Devil
This critter is heavily inspired by the northeastern U.S. legend of the Jersey Devil. The Sandpoint version of this monster is a horrible horse-like creature with a fang-filled mouth, large bat wings, and a reptilian tail. Rumored to have been birthed by a woman cursed by Lamashtu, goddess of monsters and madness, the Sandpoint Devil is one of the most famous local legends. Despite long-standing rewards for its capture, it has never been caught. But when hunters and travelers go missing, chances are you'll hear tell that the Sandpoint Devil got them.
Cover illustration for volume 1. Click to enlarge.
Reinventing The Wheel
Friday, April 20, 2007
Originally, the main menace in "Burnt Offerings," the first Rise of the Runelords adventure, was going to be a tribe of kobolds, because let's face it—everyone loves kobolds. So much so, in fact, that they ended up being the bad guys for the first GameMastery Module, which hits the shelves two months before "Burnt Offerings." Which is cool for Crown of the Kobold King, but left "Burnt Offerings" without a pint-sized menace.
Enter Wayne Reynolds.
The decision to have Wayne paint the first dozen covers for Pathfinder had the exciting side effect of making Wayne the one to design the look for our goblins. "Make our goblins look almost as cute as they are scary," we told him, and he more than accomplished that goal with a swarm of flat-headed, toothy, red-eyed monsters wielding crazy jagged swords (which Editor-in-Chief James Jacobs immediately named "dog-slicers" because, as you'll see below, goblins hate dogs!). Based entirely on their look, Jacobs—who's also the author of "Burnt Offerings"—was able to come up with all manner of weird goblin affectations (the current staff favorite being the song they sing while marauding). Based on what Wayne did with goblins, we're all understandably excited to see his designs for our stone giants, ogres, and dragons... which you'll of course find sneak previews of right here.
Ten Fun Facts About Goblins
1: Horse Hate: Goblins excel at riding animals, but they don't quite get horses. In fact, their hatred of all things horse is matched only by their fear of horses, who tend to step on goblins who get too close.
2: Dog Hate: Although goblins raise horrible rat-faced doglike creatures to use as mounts (and ride wolves or worgs if they can get them—goblins are quick to explain that wolves are NOT dogs), their hatred of ordinary dogs nearly matches their hatred of horses. The feeling is mutual, so if your dog's barking at the woodpile for no reason, chances are good he smells a frightened goblin hiding in there somewhere.
3: Goblins Raid Junkyards: Garbage pits, gutters, sewers… anywhere there's garbage, you can bet goblins are nearby. They're weirdly adept at crafting weapons and armor from refuse, and are fond of killing people with what they throw away.
4: Goblins Love to Sing: Unfortunately, as catchy as their lyrics can be, goblin songs tend to be a bit too creepy and disturbing to catch on in mainstream society.
5: They're Sneaky: An excited or angry goblin is a noisy, chattering, toothy menace, but even then, they can drop into an unsettling silence in a heartbeat. This, matched with their diminutive size, makes them unnervingly adept at hiding in places you'd never expect… stacks of firewood, rain barrels, under logs, under chicken coops, in ovens, etc.
6: They're A Little Crazy: The fact that goblins think of things like ovens as good hiding places reveals much about their inability to think plans through to the most likely outcome. That, and they tend to be easily distracted, particularly by shiny things and animals smaller than them that might make good eating.
7: They're Voracious: Given enough supplies, a goblin generally takes nearly a dozen meals a day. Most goblin tribes don't have enough supplies to accommodate such ravenous appetites, which is why the little menaces are so prone to going on raids.
8: They Like Fire: Burning things is one of the great goblin pastimes, although they're generally pretty careful about lighting fires in their own lairs, especially since goblins tend to live in large tangled thistle patches and sleep in beds of dried leaves and grass. But give a goblin a torch and someone else's home and you've got trouble.
9: They Get Stuck Easily: Goblins have wiry frames but wide heads, and live in cramped warrens. Sometimes too cramped.
10: Goblins Believe Paintings and Writing Steal Your Soul: The walls of goblin lairs and ruins of towns goblins have raided are littered with pictures of their enemies. They never draw pictures of goblins, though—that's mean. Writing steals words out of your head. You can't get them back.
The Goblin Song
Goblins chew and goblins bite,
Goblins cut and goblins fight,
Stab the dog and cut the horse,
Goblins eat and take by force!
Goblins race and goblins jump,
Goblins slash and goblins bump,
Burn the skin and mash the head,
Goblins here and you be dead!
Chase the baby, catch the pup,
Bonk the head to shut it up!
Bones be cracked, flesh be stewed,
We the goblins—you the food!
Cover illustration for volume 2. Click to enlarge.
What's Pathfinder All About?
Thursday, April 19, 2007
By this time, you've probably heard all about Pathfinder, Paizo's brand-new Adventure Path series. (If you haven't, of course, you should drop whatever you're doing and go check out paizo.com/pathfinder.) Yet even now that you know what's going to be in Pathfinder, you're probably wondering what it's all about. The vision behind it. Where its heart's at. And to answer that, we've brought in James Jacobs, Pathfinder's Editor-in-Chief. Says James:
"Pathfinder's at once the most exciting and the scariest thing I've worked on here at Paizo. On one hand, it's a chance to dive headfirst into a brand-new world and craft a story from scratch for you to run your players through. And on the other… it's a chance to dive headfirst into a brand-new world and craft a story from scratch for you to run your players through. There's no convoluted canon or established game history to work around and make sure that we've got right, but that also means there's no awesome nostalgia or tradition to build off of. We have to start completely from scratch... right?
"Well, not quite. There are still an awful lot of classic monsters and other material we can use in the SRD. And while we can't really build directly off of established canon, we can certainly draw upon themes from the early days. We can also do the same thing that Gygax, Kuntz, Arneson, and the others did back at the game's dawning—we can draw upon real world myth. So as you read through Pathfinder's first Adventure Path and begin to uncover the sinister conspiracy that has driven the stone giants of the Storval Plateau to war, you might also see a few familiar names and themes from real-world myth popping up now and then, like Lamashtu, Baba Yaga, the seven deadly sins, and even Asmodeus.
Welcome to Varisia!
"The first step to building a new Adventure Path was a doozy, though For Pathfinder, we didn't have the luxury of a pre-existing game world to set our campaign in. Before I could even start writing the first adventure to Rise of the Runelords, I needed a world to set it in.
It all started with Erik Mona building up an enormous T-shaped map over the course of several sheets of graph paper. What he ended up with was several continents; way too much room for a single campaign. So I chose one relatively small (small as in "about the size of California") section of his map and started filling in the blanks. At the same time, the rest of the Pathfinder team—F. Wesley Schneider and James Sutter—and I began to work out the plotline for the inaugural Adventure Path: Rise of the Runelords. To a certain extent, the shape of this new region was dictated by the plot we came up with: we needed a mountain range to rival the Himalayas, a vast cliff face stretching hundreds of miles, and remnants from an ancient empire.
The result is the realm of Varisia.
During the course of Rise of the Runelords, we'll visit six major locations on the map of Varisia, including two cities, two legendary mountains, a fortress of giants, and a lost city. Yet those account for only six dots on a map—at current count, Varisia's got approximately 40 locations (including cities like lawless Riddleport and ruins like sinister Brinewall) and 20 sub-regions (including the inhospitable Mushfens, haunted Ashwood, and the giant-ruled Storval Plateau) waiting to be explored. Some of these might get some exposure in Rise of the Runelords, others will be the focus of GameMastery modules, and some are destined to be the stars of future Pathfinder Adventure Paths. But the point isn't to build just what we need for the next few Paizo releases—there's enough adventure in Varisia to set dozens of campaigns.
"Over the next several days, I'll be revealing more about Varisia, Rise of the Runelords, and other exciting developments on the Pathfinder front here on this blog. Want a taste? Then check out these notes I've jotted down for one of those mysterious locations on the regional map of Varisia—the remote island of Chorak's Rest.
Chorak's Rest
Although the Varisians have no name for this tiny and remote island, the giants of the Gnasher Mountains do. They call the place Chorak's Rest, after the legendary warlord said to be buried in a great tomb there. The giants of the Storval Plateau were not always the barbarians they are today; this much is obvious from even a brief perusal of the texts stored in the History Wing of the Great Library of Magnimar. Yet the giants of Chorak's Rest seem to have retained more of the old ways than their brutish cousins in the Gnashers. Whispers hint that these island giants are the descendants of King Chorak's honor guard, and that they've remained guardians for the past several centuries, preventing approach to the island by giant and human alike. Boats attempting to land on the island are quickly bombarded with boulders and spears, and aerial approaches are shot down with massive ballista bolts carved with strange runes or blasted from the sky by bolts of lightning. Yet for all these defenses, none have approached close enough to determine what, exactly, is behind this prodigious defense. What awaits the lucky (unlucky?) souls who finally manage to reach the island's shores is unknown, but many treasure seekers are sure it would be well worth the trouble.
For daily news breaks, sneak previews, and behind-the-scenes insight into Pathfinder, the GameMastery product line, and other Paizo projects, stay tuned to this blog!
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