We've been talking about it for many months now, but we're finally getting close to the release of the Advanced Race Guide. So, the time has come to start giving you some previews of this hefty tome of racial options and lore.
To start, I thought I'd give you an overview of what to expect in the book. Inside, you will find four large, meaty chapters, filled with rules and information concerning all of the core races and just about every player-friendly race you'll find in the Bestiary, Bestiary 2, or Bestiary 3. The first chapter covers the core races, giving you ten pages of information about the race, including new alternate racial traits, favored class options (for all of the classes), archetypes, feats, gear, spells, and magic items. Following this up in the second chapter are sixteen races given six full pages each to explore new options, including alternate racial traits, a handful of favored class options, archetypes, and some additional rules to round out your choices. While not as common as the core races, any one of these selected races would make for a fine PC or companion (with your GM's approval, of course). Finally, we shift focus to fifteen uncommon races. Each one of these gets two pages, presenting race history, a few alternate traits, favored class options, an archetype a few additional rules to get you going.
After giving you a mountain of racial options for 38 different races, you'd think we would be just about out of space, but no. The final chapter of the book contains a complete system for designing your own races, balancing them against the others in the book, or even going above and beyond, creating more powerful races that emulate monsters from a Bestiary or your own imagination. This system went through a significant playtest a while back, and we think that with the final tuning, you're really going to enjoy tinkering with this system.
But enough of my rambling. Let me give you a brief preview of what you can expect in Chapter One of the book. Take a look at this art from the stonelord paladin archetype found in the dwarf section. This guy slowly transforms into stone as he goes up in level, gaining DR, a host of immunities, and the ability to summon a small earth elemental to serve him! Next week, we will continue to explore Chapter One, looking at some leafy friends.
Awesome, and ... just guessing here, but ninjaed 10 times
Edit: only once :) and leafy friends can only mean goblins!
Yay for goblins!
give us some more goblins ... okay I'll stop, bring on the pointy eared hippies.
It is cool that the core races get 10 pages but they will more then likely be the last thing I look at in this book.
I have mostly played humans since 3.0 came out and while Pathfinder did a better job making the other races interesting, especially the Half-Elf, I still prefer human too the other core races. With that being said I have found other races outside of the core that would be interesting to play such as Catfolk, Dhampir, Asimar, Tiefling, Vanara, Gripli, etc. that would actually get me to play something else.
I hate to self promote, but Jason Bulmahn gives out a lot of great info about this book on the latest episode of Know Direction. You can listen to it right here.
Needless to say, I'm really looking forward to it... and that dwarf is kinda scary.
Excuse my language but SWEET CHARON'S GHOST THAT'S MY NPC! The dwarf in my party wields a hammer with the soul of an ancient stonelord in it designed off one in the old dragon magazines from back in the day and I always wanted to have something in rules that I could use and well holy s!%$ that's it. He turns to stone, can pull out earth elementals, by the nine hells it's even lawful good! Paizo, just take my money and what's better it drops round my birthday it's like you just know when to put things out lol.
Yes a racial archtype is an archtype for a particular race and a particular class. They had an example a while ago for the Duegar with the monk class arctype that was interesting.
I'm getting really excited about getting my hands on this book! The stonelord paladin = awesome.
Dang, if only the Dragon Empire races counted as Core Races (I'm assuming they don't at least). I'd love to see a ten page write up on each of those, but I'll have to live with a six page write up ;)
I haven't played a dwarf or a paladin in 3.0, 3.5, or Pathfinder. But you tell me I can play a dwarf paladin who turns to stone and now all I can think of is how cool playing a dwarf paladin would be. Any chance that particular archetype retains its spellcasting?
will this re-iterate/re-print the alternate racial abilities as found in APG? (or for that matter, the base racial abilities found in Core)?
or will one have to cross reference multiple books (and own them all) in order to know the full gamut of alt racial abilities?
i'm not really interested in the custom race building rules at all, but more stuff to flesh out the various humanoid races is cool, and racial class archetypes sound cool. i guess this will be mostly world-neutral, but hopefully there is a bit to expand what we know of each race in Golarion. (beyond just Avistan, for one)
Although I do like the 10 pages for the core races, I am a bit disappointed that the other races, which did not get a whole companion to help their background and to give the special traits, feats, etc., are only getting 6 resp. 2 pages of content. Of course, it depends on the content in those 6 or 2 pages and what races are getting the 6 pages treatment.
Are you planning on creating companions for the races that will get only 6 pages? I see the Tiefling and the Aasimar companions. Are there any planned for the 'Genasi' races? Assuming that they will get a 6-page treatment as they are not that exotic (say yes, please).
Other than that, it sounds great. :-)
And yes, I do like to complain on a very high quality level. ;-)
Huh? I really hope that the dragon empire races are getting more than 2 pages. Admittedly, this is because I was hoping that kitsunes would finally get enough feats to get nine tails ;)
Edit: *Does some searches* Gah! Yea, it seems like Kitsunes only got the two page treatment. I guess we'll just have to hope for player companions for the Dragon Empire races XD
Unless something changed from my final approval of the book's files (or unless I'm simply misremembering), when Jason says:
"and just about every player-friendly race you'll find in the Bestiary, Bestiary 2, or Bestiary 3"
He really means "and every player-friendly race you'll find in the Bestiary, Bestiary 2, or Bestiary 3".
So far as I know, they're all in there.
If by "player friendly" you mean race with no racial Hit Dice, then yes, they are all in there. I added the "just about" because "player friendly" means different things to different folks.
So.. yeah.. I meant.. "just about" Erik.. so there :P
Unless something changed from my final approval of the book's files (or unless I'm simply misremembering), when Jason says:
"and just about every player-friendly race you'll find in the Bestiary, Bestiary 2, or Bestiary 3"
He really means "and every player-friendly race you'll find in the Bestiary, Bestiary 2, or Bestiary 3".
So far as I know, they're all in there.
If by "player friendly" you mean race with no racial Hit Dice, then yes, they are all in there. I added the "just about" because "player friendly" means different things to different folks.
So.. yeah.. I meant.. "just about" Erik.. so there :P
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Erik are you going to take that from Jason?!?!?! ;)
That's a question for Mike Brock over in the PFS section of the forums, but my guess is that the non-Core races will stay off-limits while a good portion of the extra options (alternate features, archetypes, etc) will be available.
i guess this will be mostly world-neutral, but hopefully there is a bit to expand what we know of each race in Golarion. (beyond just Avistan, for one)
If by "mostly world-neutral" you mean "entirely-world neutral," then yes.
As with all our rulebook hardcovers, Advanced Race Guide does not contain Golarion specific material.
If by "mostly world-neutral" you mean "entirely-world neutral," then yes.
As with all our rulebook hardcovers, Advanced Race Guide does not contain Golarion specific material.
It´s a shame. The demihumans of golarion deserved more spotlight.
You mean above and beyond the 32-pg Pathfinder Companion Supplements:
Dwarves of Golarion,
Elves of Golarion,
Gnomes of Golarion, and
Halflings of Golarion
Not to mention:
Humans of Golarion
And, lest we forget "Monster Races":
Orcs of Golarion,
Goblins of Golarion, and the upcoming
Blood of Fiends (Tieflings of Golarion), and
Blood of Angels (Aasimar of Golarion)
So how do the demi-humans of Golarion need more of a spotlight?
BTW, Thank you Paizo for keeping the rulebooks world-neutral, because although I enjoy Golarion greatly, and I frequently cherry-pick bits from it, I run my own homebrew setting.
You mean above and beyond the 32-pg Pathfinder Companion Supplements:
Also worth mentioning is "Classic Monsters Revisited" (Link) Which has a great rundown of the Golarion 'take' on all the classic monstrous races, including "orcs, ogres, goblins, hobgoblins, trolls, bugbears, and more". It's a 3.5 resource, but it's largely focused on the place these creatures have in Golarion and their behavior rather than rules stuff so it doesn't matter too much.
Don't be dissapointed by the "2 page" treatment of some races. The 2 pages on duegar previewed in one of the online mags was very inspiring and useful :)
@Guang, don't do it, you'll only go to the far far future, and after solving their crisis they will sent you back to last year and you'll have to wait even much longer.
If you don't trust me, watch South Park, Cartman had the same problem for the Xbox360.