Get the most out of your heritage with the Pathfinder RPG Advanced Race Guide! Embrace your inner monster by playing one of 30 iconic races from mythology and gaming history, or build an entirely new race of your own. If classic races are more your style, go beyond the stereotypes for elves, dwarves, and the other core races with new options and equipment to help you stand out from the crowd.
The Pathfinder RPG Advanced Race Guide is a bold new companion to the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook. This imaginative tabletop game builds on more than 10 years of system development and an Open Playtest featuring more than 50,000 gamers to create a cutting-edge RPG experience that brings the all-time best-selling set of fantasy rules into the new millennium.
The 256-page Pathfinder RPG Advanced Race Guide includes:
New rules and options to help you customize all seven of the classic core races, including new racial traits, racial subtypes, and racial archetypes.
30 exotic races, from mischievous goblins and reptilian kobolds to crow-headed tengus and deadly drow, each with complete rules for use as player characters, plus archetypes, alternate racial traits, and other options for maximum customization.
A complete and balanced system for creating an unlimited number of new races, mixing and matching powers and abilities to form characters and cultures specific to your campaign.
Tons of new race-specific equipment, feats, spells, and magic items for each of the races detailed!
All the new races and traits and feats and racial magic items really helped me flesh out my campaign world. The addition of being able to make your own race made me sing soprano. Excellent, excellent book for those who want to play a race that's completely outta the ordinary. Part of the reason I got this book is because in the core rulebook it says something like this: "only for more experienced GMs, having players play odd races can be rewarding and fun, but you have to be careful" etc. but doesn't give you a glimpse of the races or explain how they might effect a campaign world a certain way. Using this book, you can experience what it would be like to play a rare (and really cool) race. Being an Oread is awesome and probably one of the most exciting and fun experiences in my gaming career.
The book is focused heavily around the PFRPG "host" campaign, with no clear instructions on how to extrapolate for other campaigns (we use the 3.0 Forgotten Realms setting). So in the end, most of this book is filler and not really very useful. Even the second printing tied the book more closely with the "home team" setting.
What little can be gleaned from the book is helpful, but it's not worth the hardcover price if your campaign is something other than the generic one sponsored by Pathfinder. I wonder why it is, that almost every "host" campaign seems like a patchwork quilt of several others, with most of the interesting stuff left out?
The Race Guide is how the Advanced Class Guide should have been set up- with clear rules and customization options to create your own class. Great book for players and GM's ready to venture out into some custom races.
I don't quite know what it is but this is one of my favorite Paizo products to date. Maybe it's the way the book is organized with each race with its own section. Maybe it's the swappable racial traits akin to class archetypes. Maybe it's the artwork, showing two to three examples of each race to demonstrate the variety within each species. Maybe it's the archetypes, favored class bonus options, notes on society and appearance, spells, feats. It just felt like icing on the cake to include a race builder at the end.
so you're supposed to start off easy, right? go by the book, go by the campaign setting they give you. just stick to the six core races, and don't go overboard trying to invent stuff, right? well, I didn't exactly do that. I created a whole world from scratch, messed with the core qualities of numerous races, core races or otherwise, and on top of that, invented a pantheon and mythos which is completely incompatible with Golarion's. this is the first game I will ever GM. to be frank, I'm in trouble.
with that context, this book is a godsend, and I'm glad to have the freedom and ease of use this guide gives me. having a game world populated with multiple monstrous races (most of them completely reimagined), I needed to have a way to make sure the stats reflected the people. it breaks immersion to have a race with traits that quite clearly do not make sense for them. something that always bothered me with the core material is how race was treated: I found it restricted, stereotypical. clearly, the Pathfinder race system needs a little diversity, especially if your campaign isn't actually set in Golarion.
one clear example of the usefulness of this guide for worldbuilding and racial diversity is the Gnome trait "hatred". see, the rules state that the Gnomes have a deep-seated hatred of goblinoid and reptilian races, but in my campaign, Gnomes and Goblins hail from different corners of the universe, and logically, shouldn't even be aware of the other's existence. it simply wouldn't make sense for me to have a gnome character that's trained against a race they've never seen before in their life. thank god this guide has other plausible gnome traits that I can replace that problematic one with one with. not even to mention how the Ifrits, Oreads, Sylphs, and Undines had filled a gaping hole in my mythos. (though I was dissappointed to find that the Kobolds were still utter weaklings)
in another spur of greatness, I can already tell that my players, by now fairly intoxicated on the freedom I've given them, are going to love these new options. I can already see one of them deciding they want to go with one of the very comprehensive and imaginative archetypes, or choosing catfolk or kitsune instead of elf or goblin. the best part is, this book is so easy to figure out, so I am perfectly able to give them this freedom without puzzling over the rules for a month (like I embarrassingly did with the core rulebook).
trust me. if you're the kind of Game Master that doesn't like playing by the rules, and likes to do your own thing lore wise (like create a complete departure from the default setting), then this book is almost a necessity for you. for anyone else who likes the idea of monstrous PCs, you'll love this one.
No, they become a unique type. They can modify it how they want with a series of menu-choice options, and they can pick 3 over the course of their 20 levels.
I have a question in regards to release of the book. I went to my local bookstores (both my comic shop and major bookstore chain) looking to see if they have gotten copies of this book. They were checked at the store when they were expecting it and they said July 1st. I am wondering why that is? I mean my local bookstore is really good about having Pathfinder products. In fact until I started looking at the website regularly I usually just walked in and there was the latest release. So why is it the release date is so late?
The race itself has an "inner demon" or whatever ability where they can transform into a fiendish state. The ability itself gives them something like 2 claw attacks and fire resistance 5. If you want the ability to be at-will, I'd price it at 2 RP (the cost of those two abilities). If you want it to be 1/day or rounds per day, I'd price it at 1 RP because its not too powerful and its restricted in use.
Then, I would start adding feats to modify the ability. It could look something like this:
Feat #1
Benefits: While unleashing your inner demon, your fire resistance increases by 5 and your claws and any weapons you wield are treated as flaming weapons.
Feat #2
Prerequisites: Feat #1
Benefit: While unleashing your inner demon, you surge with power, granting you the effects of a divine power spell for as long as you remain in this state. You also grow a pair of wings, granting you a 20 foot fly speed (clumsy).
Feat #3a
Prerequisites: Feat #2, Feat #1
Benefit: Your flight speed while your inner demon is unleashed increases to equal your base speed and your maneuverability improves to average.
Feat #3b
Prerequisites: Feat #2, Feat #1
Benefit: Your body becomes rugged and tough while your inner demon is unleashed, granting you a +1 natural armor bonus to your AC and granting you damage reduction 1/cold iron. This damage reduction improves by 1 for every 5 character levels that you possess. In addition, your fire resistance improves to 15.
Etc., etc.. This way, players who want to emphasize the transformation can, while players who want to play your race without having a +4 LA slapped on them can as well.
If the sheer amount of feats bothers you, make some archetypes that grant them as bonus feats as sort of an...
That could work. Have to really start going through the motions, re-reading the book, and figuring out the math for what's possible.
The street date for this book is June 20th (tomorrow) and retail stores should not be selling it before that time. I don't have any insight as to why your store is getting it later than that, though.
Would somebody mind spoiling the Grippli Favored Class bonuses? I'm really hoping for something cool for my Summoner =)
Answer:
Alchemist: Add +1/4 to the number of toxic skin uses
per day.
Druid: Add a +1/2 bonus on concentration checks. This
bonus doubles in a forest or swamp terrain.
Gunslinger: Add a +1/4 bonus on attack rolls when
making a utility shot or a dead shot.
Rogue: Add a +1/2 bonus on Perception checks while in
a forest or swamp.
Ranger: Add a +1 racial bonus on Swim skill checks.
When this bonus reaches +8, the ranger gains a swim
speed of 15 feet (this does not grant the ranger another +8
racial bonus on Swim checks).
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Maps, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Cheapy wrote:
xevious573 wrote:
Hey, if someone would be so kind to this non-subscriber... could someone spoil some tidbits of the Vishkanya material.
Their rogue archetype... please, please, please tell me it replaces uncanny dodge and improved uncanny (It makes it available to ninjas then lol).
Any interesting feats or items and what type of favored class bonuses do they have.
I don't need the full write up but any tidbits would be really nice.
Only one of those are replaced.
The rogue favored class bonus makes them a bit more "slippery" in combat.
Thanks for the hints. I'm still worried that the rogue archetype might replace something else like trap sense or trap finding, making it incrementally more difficult for a ninja to take it but thanks for sparing a moment for me.
As this is the first book I've been interested enough in to want to get the pdf as soon as possible I am curious to know; will it be released at midnight (paizo time) or at some point during the day?
Thanks Liz! I love paizo and would order from you guys but if I don't support my locals I may never get those books. That local is what turned me on to you guys in the first place.
Are you guys honestly suprised, they pull this stunt everytime, i wouldnt be suprised if they delayed it another week, and announced that on the day of release. Notoriously terrible with deadlines, and getting everyones hopes up just to crush them every time. Id love to be proved wrong though
I'm not only gonna get the PFD, but I will probably get the book too. I'm actually more excited about this book than UM and UC, or perhaps my expectations are more down to earth this time.
Gonna get ultimate equipment as book and PDF for sure.
But, it really is the 20th and I still can't buy it as a pdf.
:(
Paizo is running on Seattle time, where it's still 19th.
But it IS the 20th.
:(
Edit Note: Yes, I understand the time difference. It is just killing me. Plus, I just finished working back 12s (1800 to 0600 EST) by getting off early tonight. Now, I am wide awake, but will need to be in bed beofre too long and I will not get up until not very long before going to work at 1530 EST which will leave me little to no time to buy and look at the ARG. So, it is really killing me that this has to wait.
PDF obtained! It's like Christmahannukhwanzika all over again! Thank you Santa Paizo!
One more short sentence with an exclamation mark! And again! Woo!
*sigh* Now, with the additional Age and Height/weight rules, a couple of the characters in our group have technically become illegal.
One almost 16-year-old street urchin tiefling rogue (Hey, even Blood of Fiends sported a 'roughly human lifespan' for Tieflings)
Our 5'10" changeling summoner (what happened to 'tall and slender'? 4'2" + 2d4 ain't exactly tall)...
Guess there are times I just have to pretend I didn't read some of the tables...