Now available!

Whoo!

YAY!

Got it!

Love these player's guides. Downloaded and looking forward to reading it. This will be the sign of whether I stay subscribed to the AP series after Skull & Shackles is over.

downloading

Reading, loving what I've seen so far.

The image depicting Magnimar and the Irespan is awesome!!!

A few comments.

Love the dress of the woman in the middle on the cover, other than the puffy shoulders and elbows. :)

The Magnimar skyline pic is great, any chance we can get a much bigger version of it in the blog?

I found it odd only one level of the manor house was mapped out when it clearly has stairs going up or down. Speaking of the stairs on the map. i am guessing the first flight in the hall go up or down to the large landing and then the other stairs finish going that way. Landing threw me a bit with the added little square part past the stairs.

The upper floors of the manor are the private quarters of the Heidmarchs and without a specific invitation, Pathfinders are not permitted outside of the shared areas on the first floor and the grounds. The interiors of the Thassilonian Houses are also not mapped, as those are also the private quarters of their respective guests.

So will we see a complete map in one of the AP's for GM's? You know in case the PC's do get invited up. I get this is a Players Guide and that stuff isn't really needed for them.

Awesome...I've been looking forward to this one.

So will we see a complete map in one of the AP's for GM's? You know in case the PC's do get invited up. I get this is a Players Guide and that stuff isn't really needed for them.

Nope. Being invited upstairs doesn't happen in the Adventure. We may expand upon the upper floors of the manor or the layouts of the outbuildings later, particularly in Pathfinder Society scenarios, but in the context of the Shattered Star Adventure Path, there's actually not a lot of events or the like going on in Heidmarch Manor, with the exception of...

I've noticed with this and the PG for Skull and Shackles that the character-specific material has begun to take a distant back seat to the supplemental material. While I understand that in this case, the stuff on the Society is necessary for players who don't play in PFS, and the chapter on the city is awesome, I wonder if we couldn't allow the page count to go up a bit to still get the usual paragraph for each race and class. After all, the players guides aren't printed, and any bandwidth concerns could be balanced by dialing back the formatting on those guides that go long and no one would complain.

Dark_Mistress wrote:

So will we see a complete map in one of the AP's for GM's? You know in case the PC's do get invited up. I get this is a Players Guide and that stuff isn't really needed for them.

Nope. Being invited upstairs doesn't happen in the Adventure. We may expand upon the upper floors of the manor or the layouts of the outbuildings later, particularly in Pathfinder Society scenarios, but in the context of the Shattered Star Adventure Path, there's actually not a lot of events or the like going on in Heidmarch Manor, with the exception of...

** spoiler omitted **

That makes me a sad panda :(

So when will you write the PFS adventure that fully lays out the manor house and outbuildings? :)

James Jacobs wrote:

Dark_Mistress wrote:

So will we see a complete map in one of the AP's for GM's? You know in case the PC's do get invited up. I get this is a Players Guide and that stuff isn't really needed for them.

Nope. Being invited upstairs doesn't happen in the Adventure. We may expand upon the upper floors of the manor or the layouts of the outbuildings later, particularly in Pathfinder Society scenarios, but in the context of the Shattered Star Adventure Path, there's actually not a lot of events or the like going on in Heidmarch Manor, with the exception of...

** spoiler omitted **

That makes me a sad panda :(

So when will you write the PFS adventure that fully lays out the manor house and outbuildings? :)

Me? Probably never.

Someone else might some day though.

I've noticed with this and the PG for Skull and Shackles that the character-specific material has begun to take a distant back seat to the supplemental material. While I understand that in this case, the stuff on the Society is necessary for players who don't play in PFS, and the chapter on the city is awesome, I wonder if we couldn't allow the page count to go up a bit to still get the usual paragraph for each race and class. After all, the players guides aren't printed, and any bandwidth concerns could be balanced by dialing back the formatting on those guides that go long and no one would complain.

The primary reason that the character-specific material has shrunk in size is because we're trying to manage our time better. Building a player's guide is a significant hit to our design, development, layout, and editing time, since it's not a For-Sale product it's "traditionally" ended up being a "do this in addition to your actual job" type job.

We've recently made a lot of changes to staffing levels and organization to address some of the resource issues, so maybe some day in the future we'll be able to go into a bit more detail, but for now we're trying to do less so that we DON'T burn ourselves out.

It's going to be a constantly evolving process of adjustments that, by the nature of the situation, we only get to adjust twice a year. If folks want to see longer "how to build a monk" or whatever sections in these Players' Guides... please look at what we're doing now and let us know if THAT is enough or not enough.

has there been any mention if the Alara'hai will play any significant role in the AP ?

I'm working on a character that is a Bladebound Magus, and wanted her sword to turn out to be an Alara'hai....but I'm concerned it will cause problems.

Short but sweet and well-written, I like it.

I like the cover characters too... immediately give me ideas for creating PCs.

The players were forbidden to look at the Player's Guide in the Skull & Shackles game I just started. (Although several had already downloaded it before the campaign became a possibility).

has there been any mention if the Alara'hai will play any significant role in the AP ?

I'm working on a character that is a Bladebound Magus, and wanted her sword to turn out to be an Alara'hai....but I'm concerned it will cause problems.

They have no role to play at all in Shattered Star. Although that could change... I'm about halfway through developing part 4 right now, though, and so far, they've not shown up.

The players were forbidden to look at the Player's Guide in the Skull & Shackles game I just started. (Although several had already downloaded it before the campaign became a possibility).

That's unfortunate.

We call them Players' Guides for a very specific reason, after all...

So very very excited... downloading now...

Is anyone else having issues on page 3 when viewing the PDF on an iPad in iBooks?

Is anyone else having issues on page 3 when viewing the PDF on an iPad in iBooks?

I just checked this out. It does look like iBooks is having a problem with the image element on that page. It may be something that it just doesn't like about the transparency or alpha channel. I'll see what can be done to fix it.

KigerWulf wrote:

Is anyone else having issues on page 3 when viewing the PDF on an iPad in iBooks?

I just checked this out. It does look like iBooks is having a problem with the image element on that page. It may be something that it just doesn't like about the transparency or alpha channel. I'll see what can be done to fix it.

It's also a problem in good reader on the iPad

I like it

way too much bloat in terms of classes and races to mention them all in any future players guides. Just produces lots more pages, and PF has enough pages already. keeping it short, snappy and all useful is the way forward

The players were forbidden to look at the Player's Guide in the Skull & Shackles game I just started. (Although several had already downloaded it before the campaign became a possibility).

Why?

sieylianna wrote:

The players were forbidden to look at the Player's Guide in the Skull & Shackles game I just started. (Although several had already downloaded it before the campaign became a possibility).

Why?

Spoilers on the AP in part. The fact that it didn't have the detailed information on suitable race/class combinations from the prior player guides was another part. The bottom line was that about the only meaningful thing for players out of the 16 page books was the traits.

To elaborate on sieylianna's point, the GM felt we didn't need to know the mechanics of the ship combat system, as apparently (I never got to that part) our characters wouldn't know that information.

However, since this is the Shattereed Star thread, I'll get back on topic:
The rendering problem on iPads isn't just on iBooks, so it's likely a problem with the way the iPad rendering engine handles these PDFs.

I've noticed weird rendering problems on some of the older PFS scenarios, too, in the faction missions. Since I just print those out, it's not a big deal there.

This product has been fixed up so it displays properly on iOS now. I'm not sure why, but it really didn't like the effects we applied to the image used on that page. We also made some minor corrections on the Credits page. Emails are going out presently :)

Got mine, thanks Chris. You guys are, as always, on the ball getting these things fixed.

I've just downloaded this, and I only see a 12-page PDF.

That seems a little short to me - has something got lost?

I've just downloaded this, and I only see a 12-page PDF.

That seems a little short to me - has something got lost?

Look HERE and search for Papa. I asked the same question.

-- david
Papa.DRB

Just wondering, I know Campaign Traits usually are not made PFS legal, but since this AP is very assumes Pathfinder agents, and that some of the traits are Pathfinder Specific (exchange agent for example.) If some or all of these traits will be made PFS legal?

Just wondering, I know Campaign Traits usually are not made PFS legal, but since this AP is very assumes Pathfinder agents, and that some of the traits are Pathfinder Specific (exchange agent for example.) If some or all of these traits will be made PFS legal?

That's going to be a call for Mike and Mark. Despite sharing the same name, though, the Pathfinder Society as our organized play program and it as an in-world storytelling device are quite different. As such, if campaign traits haven't been legal in organized play so far, there's nothing fundamentally different about these traits that would make them more permissive.

Yeah, since the campaign traits for Shattered Star are very much designed and intended for players of that Adventure Path... it'd be a little strange to take them for other campaigns. Still doable, of course, but strange. Like taking Council of Thieves campaign traits for a Kingmaker game.

After looking at this player's guide, it looks like Paizo is pushing the Pathfinder Society even more. That's fine with me. I'm wondering if Paizo is going to make the APs usable in society play somehow. I could go for that.

I had a question about the pathfinder society traits that were mentioned in this book.

On page 5, there are a list of traits that were originally only permitted to be taken by specific classes. However in this player's guide, they've changed the traits to only be an entire category such as combat or faith.

For example, the defender of the society trait used to require you to be a fighter. Does it no longer require you to be a fighter and any class can take it as long as its their only combat trait?