Brian Cortijo's page

So, flipping around amazon.com earlier, I decided to look at some current and upcoming Paizo books. Strangely, most of the ones I looked at had the wrong release date.

All of the following current releases (that is, books that released in May or June) have a listed release date of January 10, 2012, and are currently available only for pre-order:

Hunt the Space-Witch
GameMastery Flip-Mat: Country Inn
Rival Guide
Humans of Golarion
Academy of Secrets
Undead Revisited
Pathfinder Adventure Path #46: Wake of the Watcher

The following July releases are also listed with a publish date of Jan 10, 2012:
Faiths of Balance
The Planet Killers
Dungeons of Golarion
Pathfinder Adventure Path #47: Ashes at Dawn

Are these dates set by Amazon? By Paizo? By random guessing-games performed by the distributor? I know retail dates are usually 2-3 weeks after the on-sale date for Paizo.com, but we're talking almost 6 months difference here.

Okay, now I know some folks are already crying out that the magus should be able to do more in a given round, and that there aren't enough swift actions to go around, etc., but I'm more concerned with balance and sanity at the table than I am with how 'cool' the magus is to play, so I'm going to come right out and express my problem:

The spell combat ability, as written, gives the magus too much power.

A Quicken Spell, once per round, every round--so long as the magus takes the full attack action--is powerful enough (and yes, I know the character takes a penalty to attacks; that penalty becomes moot as the character advances in level, and is still not the equal of the Quicken Spell increase for spell slots). Its power is increased by an order of magnitude if it doesn't take a swift action to cast the spell.

On the whole, the magus is a pretty darned cool class, but I think the way it currently reads is as a class that's going to take a full attack action every round, even with the penalty. It's possible I'm wrong, and all but certain I'm in the minority, but this is playtest time, after all, and I've gotta speak my peace.

Umm, what's the meme on this sort of thing again?

Oh, right:

"Pics, or it never happened!"

This book was a fun one to work on, especially when the playtest characters completely embarrassed the Tarrasque. If you decide to pick it up, I hope you enjoy!

[Paizo/Vic: The fourth author's name should be "Greg Tito."]

Hey, folks!
For those of you that haven't been following, the folks over at The Tome Show conducted a series of interviews with the authors of the Second Darkness Adventure Path. They've just posted the final installment (with me, here) on their site, but the whole series can be found on there.

... I thought I'd share some of the topics of discussion.

James liked this one. <click here>

Wes was mad we blew his cover. <click here>

Jason is just irascible. <click here>

Enjoy!

Looking at the famed pumpkin carvings on today's blog, I can only think that SKR's carving looks a little bit like Homestar Runner dressed like a spider on a web. I'm sure I'm the only one, but still... it had to be shared.

You may proceed with your day.