Walk the Path of Virtue

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

So, earlier in the year, the ebb and flow of product workflow had me swooping in to serve as the lead developer for a few installments of the Pathfinder Player Companion line. Two of these products (Haunted Heroes Handbook and Divine Anthology) had already been outlined and assigned to authors, but one of them was completely up in the air and left to me to create. I kicked around a few ideas, but time and time again those ideas were pretty much 100% inappropriate for a player-facing product (they may or may not some day see the light of day in the Campaign Setting line or elsewhere). And then I had an epiphany.

We hadn't done a book about prestige classes in ages.

I love prestige classes.

And so Paths of the Righteous was born. My overwhelming preference for prestige classes is that they should tie into world flavor and reward players for actually bothering to invest in said world's flavor. I knew I didn't want to build a book that just randomly threw unrelated prestige classes out there (since I'd already built that book with Paths of Prestige), and tying the flavor to various religions made a lot of sense, since I've long been a champion of the concept of "every religion should have its own specialized class."

Prestige classes are the perfect solution to this, and so in Paths of the Righteous I decided to focus on the good-aligned faiths of the campaign setting. All of the good aligned core deities got a prestige class, along with two of the good-aligned "other gods"—Kurgess and Milani. That left five spots for prestige classes associated with empyreal lords (of which we had more than enough to choose from!). Once I had the 14 faiths chosen, I also wanted to make sure that these classes would work with as many different character themes as possible. That meant building several prestige classes that suggest non-divine spellcasting classes—there's options for wizards and fighters and swashbucklers and much, much more in this book!


Illustrations by Kent Hamilton and Graey Erb

But enough about the words... what about the arts? As a preview, here's images for the Devoted Muse of Shelyn, the Sacred Sentinel of Torag, and the Sphere Singer of Desna! Oh... and the Stargazer of the empyreal lord Pulura, because KITTY!!!

James Jacobs
Creative Director

More Paizo Blog.
Tags: Graey Erb Kent Hamilton Pathfinder Player Companion
Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Loving the Prestige Classes and their place in the world. I'm hoping this sees quick approval in PFS because that Muse is calling out to me badly! Outside that my local group might be starting Hells Rebels soon and well..so much inspiration!

Silver Crusade

Long haired Directorsaur and Shimmy!!!!


7 people marked this as a favorite.

Two of mine made it into the preview! ^_^

Grand Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.

I love the idea of prestige classes, but often find they do not compare to continuing with (and flavoring) the base classes. I assume that I'm not alone in this perception. Will Paths of Righteous be any different?

Sovereign Court

Wow... this looks cool. I agree with Xebeche though. I now love the base classes so much that I'm hoping these new PrCs don't ask for too much sacrifice if you invest in them. Based on JJ's write-up above, it looks promising!


3 people marked this as a favorite.

Okay, the kitty now has me intrigued.


Nice to see that the Sphere Singer is back! :)

Aside from Pulura (a favourite), which empyreal lords get their own prestige class? I'm crossing my fingers for Black Butterfly and maybe Arshea, Cernunnos, and Lalaci.

Sovereign Court

Ok... subscription enabled... (chores have been added to my list by She Who Must Be Obeyed)


2 people marked this as a favorite.

I wish you could favorite the blog entry itself . . . .

Dark Archive

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Bellona wrote:

Nice to see that the Sphere Singer is back! :)

Aside from Pulura (a favourite), which empyreal lords get their own prestige class? I'm crossing my fingers for Black Butterfly and maybe Arshea, Cernunnos, and Lalaci.

Other Empyreal Lords:

ASHAVIC DANCER (Ashava)
CRIMSON TEMPLAR (Ragathiel)
RUNEGUARD (Soralyon)
SCAR SEEKER (Vildeis)
Thanks to Skeld the PDF prophet and others for answering questions on the product page


1 person marked this as a favorite.
brad2411 wrote:
Bellona wrote:

Nice to see that the Sphere Singer is back! :)

Aside from Pulura (a favourite), which empyreal lords get their own prestige class? I'm crossing my fingers for Black Butterfly and maybe Arshea, Cernunnos, and Lalaci.

** spoiler omitted **

Sweet I was hoping for the last one you mentioned there and Arshea.

Love the art on the Vudrani Shelyn worshipper.

This looks like a buy for me. :)

Contributor

1 person marked this as a favorite.
xebeche wrote:
I love the idea of prestige classes, but often find they do not compare to continuing with (and flavoring) the base classes. I assume that I'm not alone in this perception. Will Paths of Righteous be any different?

After reading it myself, I think these are solid PrCs. Most have some way to advance spellcasting or similarly important class features, as well as offering flavorful, interesting, and mechanically viable options.

Basically, if you use these PrCs I don't think you'll feel "punished" for picking 'em up. I wouldn't say they're min/max-y, but I think if you're going for in-world flavor you're not too concerned with that in the first place.


Lemartes wrote:
brad2411 wrote:
Bellona wrote:

Nice to see that the Sphere Singer is back! :)

Aside from Pulura (a favourite), which empyreal lords get their own prestige class? I'm crossing my fingers for Black Butterfly and maybe Arshea, Cernunnos, and Lalaci.

** spoiler omitted **

Sweet I was hoping for the last one you mentioned there and Arshea.

Love the art on the Vudrani Shelyn worshipper.

This looks like a buy for me. :)

It seems a number of people were hoping for an Arshea stuff. I was hoping for something Korada-related, myself. Still, really neat stuff.

Liberty's Edge

brad2411 wrote:
Bellona wrote:

Nice to see that the Sphere Singer is back! :)

Aside from Pulura (a favourite), which empyreal lords get their own prestige class? I'm crossing my fingers for Black Butterfly and maybe Arshea, Cernunnos, and Lalaci.

** spoiler omitted **

Glad to hear about the other empyreal lords, by the end of my Rise of the Runelords campaign more than half the party was worshipping one of those lords in particular.

Also, I LOVE the artwork for the muse, definitely gonna have to build a PFS character around the art.

Sovereign Court

1 person marked this as a favorite.
PannicAtack wrote:
I was hoping for something Korada-related, myself. Still, really neat stuff.

Word. Korada is awesome. Temple of Empyreal Enlightenment FTW!! :)


No Arshea, a pity. :(

Thankfully, the others are good fits for Paizo's published material.


Quote:
It seems a number of people were hoping for an Arshea stuff.

Yes, we were. :(

Quote:
No Arshea, a pity. :(

I know right? My GF was so hoping on making her magnimarian ekujae half-elf burlesque dancer / worshiper of Arshea a reality. :(


1 person marked this as a favorite.

... I would still love to see a prestige class for worshippers of Black Butterfly ...


If they do two more books full of prestige classes dedicated to good deities and empyreal lords then I'd want the following powers for each of the two:

Empyreal Lords:
Andoletta, Arshea, Bharnarol, Black Butterfly, Chucaro, Damerrich, Falayna, Immonhiel, Irez, Seramaydiel, Tanagaar, Tolc, Valani, Zohls

Deities:
Angradd, Apsu, Bolka, Chaldira, Findeladlara, Folgrit, Grundinnar, Ketephys, Kofusachi, Qi Zhong, Shizuru, Trudd, Tsukiyo, Yuelral

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