The downloads for the new AP volume (197, Let the Leaves Fall) are doing that thing again where they fail personalization (both single file and one file per chapter) and end up showing a file size of only a couple of hundred bytes. The Core book PDFs, though, thankfully are personalizing and downloading fine now.
What I don't understand is the need to increase the prices of digital products already available. Could you explain that further?"Paizo is not immune to economic factors like inflation, nor industry-wide fluctuations in cost-of-goods, labor, or shipping and logistics, and we must periodically adjust our prices to reflect rising costs" Hosting and IT labor costs can explain it. If it takes 5 seconds of an IT staff member's day to make sure your PDF hosting server is up and running for every PDF sold, and Paizo has to pay X+20% to keep a competitive salary for their IT staff while it used to just be X, that +20% is going to be passed on, even if it's just 0.6 cents' worth of an IT staff member's time instead of 0.5 cents' worth.
I'm curious as to why you have blurry text issues in Foxit. It's what I use for my PDFs and I don't have any problems. 1440p 49" doublewide monitor, same CPU and RAM. Are you running a 4k panel, 5k, or what? Also, what OS version and are you using any text scaling?
PDFs are going out now. There's some rather interesting high-level magical items. Spoiler: I love the Rebounding Breastplate. Lets you go all Black Panther nanotech suit on your enemies. "You hit me several times? Fine." *AoE force blast* That and the new Apex items.
Also Paizo never had any Psionic products. The old Pathfinder Chronicles: Campaign Setting had a two-page section specifically on psionics, not just psychic or occult magic. No rules material, just fluff on its presence in Castrovel, Vudra, and the Darklands. As far as I am aware, though, that's the only time psionics has been specifically referenced. Edit: No, I was wrong. It's mentioned once in Gods and Magic, and then there are even alternative stats for psionic Seugathi in Into the Darklands.
I've got my PDF now. We get a new ancestry that were apparently creations of Aroden to keep him company on the Isle of Kortos, and I am not making the following thing up: Spoiler: the Shoony, or basically Pug-folk. Short, squat, and likely to get hit with the "they're worse than Kender and Kitsune combined" bat if they ever hit my gametable.
I wish I could disagree with you. I really do. Save me a table in whichever 1e old farts retirement home you're in, I'll be along shortly.
Just so we can move beyond all of the unit conversion math: -80 F -> -62 C
Incredible heat is anything above 60 C.
The 1E Bestiary also will include updated versions of characters that already existed in the original KM AP, but were only using Core Rulebook rules. So the Old Beldame will likely be restatted as a witch, Baron Drelev as a swashbuckler, and so on. Equipment might likewise be tailored to incorporate new magic items from Ultimate Equipment and later books. Exactly how many NPCs will get those kind of updates is yet to be determined, but there will be a fair amount of them. It took more searching than you might think, but I found it here.
I've gotten my PDF. The bloodlines are, sadly, only for either Bloodragers (Medusa, Sphinx), or Sorcerers (Phoenix, Unicorn). 4 pages of Mythic options for Occult, though the Kineticist options are specifically for Champions and Guardians. New archetype and aspect for Shifters from Vudra. Vigilante talents from the Mwangi Expanse.
Just an FYI for non-techies out there, DNS changes can, in some worst-case situations, take up to 72 hours to fully propagate, so you should be checking your spam folders still for another two days. (Ugh. Can we please finally purge all of the old networking gear that doesn't respect TTLs?)
I've got my PDF, but compared to all of the insanity of an end of AP volume, and one featuring full stats for multiple Runelords, as well as detailing what the aftermath of their return might entail, well, this one is almost an afterthought. Someone will get around to it, surely, but it may be a day or two.
Considering we still haven't gotten 1e campaign setting books for Kyonin, The Five Kings mountains, Arcadia, azlant, casmaron, garund, sarusan, various planets, etc. Druma would hardly be my next choice. Galt, as well as Geb, Nex, Thuvia, and well, any part of Garund not named Osirion.
I'm going to have to strongly disagree that black on white is a "dated" web practice. It comes down to accessibility to the widest range of visitors and the amount of resources available to create additional features. I think folks can agree we have bigger fish to fry than the color scheme :) Black-on-white is not dated, but it is both eyestrain-inducing and battery-drain-inducing for mobile devices. Dark themes are one of the things I always see requested for any mobile site, mobile app, or even desktop app, and more and more apps and sites are responding. Paint.NET just added one a couple of weeks ago, Adobe Suite has had one for almost two years now, and even Windows 10 and Office 2016 have dark themes. Ideally, eventually, if you ever decide to do anything along these lines, I'd think something like ArsTechnica's (arstechnica.com) options for it would be awesome. There's a quick, easy little hamburger menu (the "three lines" button) for the site, with black-on-white and white-on-black as theme choices.
What are the hexes? Did the witch get a new archetype? If so, what is it like? Spoiler: They're all based around waterlogged areas, so they focus on things like polluting water to curse those who drink it, or using water to create difficult terrain, or letting the witch see through any sort of fog or mist or dirty water, for example.
OK, finally got my PDF in front of me for review. Spoiler: 15 archetypes, with no class receiving more than one. The Constructed Pugilist Brawler is probably my favorite at first glance.
17 feats, including two 3-feat Style chains. As Barachiel said above, only two firearms, and honestly both of them read to me like things only a drunken gnome would be crazy enough to actually try and use when their life depended on it. 3 new Ranger traps, 4 new Vigilante talents and 5 new Witch hexes, but no new bloodlines, domains, mysteries, schools, or spirits.
What, one in a thousand celestials fall, but one in a million fiends rise? Yeah, growth industry.
I really hope one day we will get the Chronicles of the Righteous, with illustration for all the Empyreal Lords... *-* It would be a perfect book for good aligned npcs and pcs. I know we're kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel for book ideas, but before whatever happens for a Pathfinder RPG 2.0, I would love to see a full Chronicles of the Righteous and at least get something on the Concordance of Rivals for the LN/NN/CN Outsider Lords. Protean Lords, Psychopomp Ushers, and then whatever rules over Axiomites and Inevitables.
I'd say you got to that disturbing place with ease. Great work.
So, would it be safe to call this the Pathfinder equivalent of the third edition BOVD? Cause I'm definitely getting that kind of feel here. Is this the PfRPG's equivalent to BoVD? Yes and no. This is a book about the evil entities of the planes of the Pathfinder multiverse, and their servants, and while the old BoVD certainly had quite a bit of that, it was focused first and foremost on crunchy rules content for evil PCs and NPCs, not flavor and setting and worldbuilding. The Book of Vile Darkness was a 192-page book with maybe 60 or 70 pages of fluff and flavor, and the other 120 or so all taken up by prestige classes and new rules and feats and spells and whatnot. The Book of the Damned is a 288-page book with about 40 pages of dedicated "crunch" content, along with the Obediences and Boons scattered throughout almost every other section of the book. Both books have about 16 pages worth of new monsters, though many of those in the BoVD are just updated or newly converted to 3e from previous incarnations of D&D. All of the ones in the Book of the Damned are brand new to PfRPG as far as I am aware. (Edit: update on the Book of the Damned pagecount. 288, not 256.)
Folca actually gets (very disturbing) art, too! All of the Harbingers are just creepy or gross or disturbing, or all of the above. Todd Stewart, you maniac! :)
** spoiler omitted **That's a very fine Bloodrager bloodline, no two ways about it. Yet I'm wondering where the 'antivillainous' aspect comes in. The pained, agonizing, reluctant antihero isn't that much of a stretch. There's already a Martyred Sorcerer bloodline. The Suffering focus for a spiritualist's Phantom is all-new, though.
How much use would you say this book is for gameplay at levels 1-5? There are plenty of potential plots in here for PCs under 6th level. The CR 4 Nucol Sahkil, for example, could inflict a disease on a young child, then offer their parent the chance for a Remove Disease effect, but only if they agree to perform some twisted act on its behalf, like befouling the town's well with parasites. Is the parent to be held guilty for their actions? Can the infected be saved? Could a band of low-level PCs fall victim to the same plague? Could they threaten the fiend with its destruction if it won't heal all of its victims? It all depends on how creative a GM you want to be.
Lord Gadigan, if it's not too inconvenient, could you describe Ravana, Inma,and Zipacna? They're mythological classics so I'm wondering how they look here. Spoiler:
Ravana the First and the Last, the oldest of the Rakshasa Immortals. Four arms, three tiger heads.
Inma the Empress of the World, the most powerful of the Oni Daimyo. A void yai with dark skin, four arms, and three light blue eyes. Zipacna the Mountain Below. A four-eyed caiman with hands that are just a little bit too human. His art is moved out to the section of Chapter 2 focused on Xibalba, the home of the Sahkils within the Ethereal Plane, but it is there.
Could anyone share which of the archdevils, demon lords and horsemen got a new illustration? I hope the horsemen did, especially Charon and Szuriel. Charon and Szuriel do get new art. Charon's is by Tawny Fritz, not sure about who did the new art for Szuriel. Regardless of your feelings on the new art, the entire chapter on Fiendish Divinities opens with a breathtaking two-page spread of the Four Horsemen astride their mounts, bringing the utter devastation of the Apocalypse down upon some poor unsuspecting town. It's spectacular. The Archdevils (except for Mephistopheles) also get new art. Same artist for them (William Liu) as Bestiary 6, oddly enough. I'd have figured they'd just reuse the same art.
Who are the Asura Ranas, and is one of them Vritra? The four named Ranas from the original Bestiary entry back in The Infernal Syndrome (AP volume 28) are not detailed. All of the ones from the list in Bestiary 3 are detailed, however. Vritra is from the original list, and so is not covered.
I have wanted to do an "Ur Priest" type character, someone who "steals" divine power from the gods....does it look like this would work for that ?They do. There's a fair amount of tweaking that goes on there, though. It's an interesting balance point, and I like it.They still have spells I assume ? Not really. It's more "I keep saying my prayers out of habit if nothing else, and then something... else... starts answering those prayers."
Any spells of note, Kvantum? Spoiler:
None, and not just of note. I mean, none at all. Lots of new alchemy options, though, and some nice new magical items, including a coin every single Desnan worth their starknife will want to get their hands on. Crooked gamblers, too.
Spoiler:
The only type of fiend-specific stuff for PCs is a few new feats for those of Kyton heritage. Plenty of new options, just not specific to one type of fiend. Much more widely applicable to more kinds of fiend-touched PCs.
Zaebos gets the same brief couple of lines, an Obedience, and three boons, same as the other lesser Fiendish Quasidivinities. All four Queens of the Night have two-page spreads with art, though it's reused art if they already have art. Ardad Lili seems to favor more fallen angels than any specific type of devil beyond erinyes.
Anymore you can give us on become a fiend? Is it permanent, what type of fiends are available, etc.? Sorry all, had some other stuff to attend to. Spoiler: It's a series of four different rituals, ranging from 4th level to 9th, and the final one permanently transforms you into a fiend of some sort. The third ritual makes you a half-fiend, but you have to take at least a year after the third before attempting the fourth ritual, so it's not an instantaneous "make me a demon now!" thing. Also the requirement for the sacrifice of a sentient being of CR 9 or higher, preferably a good Outsider, and the risk of you and all of the secondary casters dying instantly if you fail.
What are the new cursed items like? Things like the Bloodbite sword, kind of a Vicious weapon that you can never turn the effect off from, nor can you ever use a different weapon; or the Overcharged Staff, a Staff of Electricity that has a nasty habit of its spells also leeching out to affect your allies as well...
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