Pathfinder Player Companion: Blood of the Elements (PFRPG)

Yes Brinebeast, more is always welcome in my book as well.

P.S. Still crossing fingers for player companion books for kitsune and changelings. :)

Gosh, if Wes or Patrick or someone asked me to contribute to a kitsune player companion for free, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Any traits or suggestions for elemental-touched characters of Mephit, Gargoyle, Azer, Pech, Nereid, Triton, etc. heritages? (or less obvious Air/Earth/Fire/Water/Cold races, like Invisible Stalkers, Fire Yai, Cold Riders or Adlets) Or is it all genies?

Bastards & Bloodlines, from Green Ronin, had a fairly awesome Gargoyle/Dwarf crossbreed race, for instance, and Azer/Dwarf or Nereid/Aquatic Elf seem kind of like a no-brainers.

Any traits or suggestions for elemental-touched characters of Mephit, Gargoyle, Azer, Pech, Nereid, Triton, etc. heritages? (or less obvious Air/Earth/Fire/Water/Cold races, like Invisible Stalkers, Fire Yai, Cold Riders or Adlets) Or is it all genies?

Bastards & Bloodlines, from Green Ronin, had a fairly awesome Gargoyle/Dwarf crossbreed race, for instance, and Azer/Dwarf or Nereid/Aquatic Elf seem kind of like a no-brainers.

Just Genies. Nothing else. It's really, really pretty, I mean some of the best art in a Player Companion yet, but the crunch is poor, at best.

Any traits or suggestions for elemental-touched characters of Mephit, Gargoyle, Azer, Pech, Nereid, Triton, etc. heritages? (or less obvious Air/Earth/Fire/Water/Cold races, like Invisible Stalkers, Fire Yai, Cold Riders or Adlets) Or is it all genies?

Just genies, and not even all that much for them. This book was definitely weighted far more towards providing information on the elemental planes and where the genie-kin fit into Golarion than actually providing a good amount of new crunch.

It's pretty to look at, but that's its strongest selling point.

zergtitan wrote:

P.S. Still crossing fingers for player companion books for kitsune and changelings. :)

Gosh, if Wes or Patrick or someone asked me to contribute to a kitsune player companion for free, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

I'd prefer you got paid for it. :) I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd definitely be interested Paizo turning you loose on a Kitsune Companion.

I call dibs on a "Catfolk Companion" book:)

I hope that "People of the Stars" has more crunch then this one.

Blood of the Beasts: a book on Kitsune, Tengu, Catfolk, and Ratfolk.

Blood of the Beasts: a book on Kitsune, Tengu, Catfolk, and Ratfolk.

This would be the best option. Those of us who wouldn't touch a Kitsune book with a 10-foot pole (unless said pole were on fire) still might find a lot of content to use with the other races.

zergtitan wrote:

Blood of the Beasts: a book on Kitsune, Tengu, Catfolk, and Ratfolk.

This would be the best option. Those of us who wouldn't touch a Kitsune book with a 10-foot pole (unless said pole were on fire) still might find a lot of content to use with the other races.

That would be my favorate player's companion forever, as long as they did the right balance of flavor+background and crunch. And also a nine tailed fox sorcerer's bloodline ;)

Books like Blood of Elements shows that it can be hard to get the balance right when your focus is divided between four races, and the creatures in a Blood of Beasts book actually would have very little in common. Less so than the elemental races.

Also tengu should be in a book about avian races not beast.

I would not be pleased to see 4 races lumped into one book. Bastards of Golarion dealt with Half Elves and Half Orcs predominantly, and it was good. The bone it threw to other Half races, just made me want to see something dedicated to them. I would much rather have just 2 spotlight races a book max so we don't have the issue of too little content for too great a spread of topics.

Any traits or suggestions for elemental-touched characters of Mephit, Gargoyle, Azer, Pech, Nereid, Triton, etc. heritages? (or less obvious Air/Earth/Fire/Water/Cold races, like Invisible Stalkers, Fire Yai, Cold Riders or Adlets) Or is it all genies?

Bastards & Bloodlines, from Green Ronin, had a fairly awesome Gargoyle/Dwarf crossbreed race, for instance, and Azer/Dwarf or Nereid/Aquatic Elf seem kind of like a no-brainers.

Nope. It's all basically genie-kin and sometimes "cause your parents dabbled a lot in you certain elemental magic". Sometimes it doesn't even give you that much (the sylphs are kind of the biggest offender there).

The crunch though isn't bad it's just buried in fluff that just isn't interesting or inspiring.

To sum it up, if I were looking at just the fluff I have no better idea of how to inhabit any of the genie-kin then I did before I read it.

Well, some good advice how to fit in "unusual" races to Golarion is surely a good thing.
Yet i wish there would be a bit more consistency in the Player Guide line.
Even books with the same titles like the Blood of.... series have a big variation on what to expect.
Then often it´s not really clear if it´s more useful for players or for GM´s.

That is actually something that keeps me from subscribing.

Maybe if beg really hard we could one day get an Advanced Races Guide 2:)

The digital versions of June releases will be available on the 25th.

TY for the info-- I'll pop back in and pick it up then.

I stick to PDFs 'cause it's much easier to carry a single laptop or tablet than several ruck-sacks full of books, but I do get 'em legitimately and support y'all... :D

I've only skimmed it once so far, but this is one of my favourite of the Blood Of... books. I dont have much use for mechanical crunch though, so the lack of such is a bonus to me, rather than a drawback.

I wonder whether it was slightly misbranded (if that's the term?) as a lot of stuff felt like it was from a campaign companion.

The elemental planes map is awesome. I need to find a way to use that as a player handout. :)

I wonder whether it was slightly misbranded (if that's the term?) as a lot of stuff felt like it was from a campaign companion.

I don´t doubt that the book is awesome, but that player companions feeling like campaign companions is a rising critique.

I had alot of fun working on this one.

Steve Geddes wrote:

I wonder whether it was slightly misbranded (if that's the term?) as a lot of stuff felt like it was from a campaign companion.

I don´t doubt that the book is awesome, but that player companions feeling like campaign companions is a rising critique.

You're probably right. I'm certainly enjoying them more, but I've always preferred flavour material to mechanical stuff.

Hayato Ken wrote:

Steve Geddes wrote:

I wonder whether it was slightly misbranded (if that's the term?) as a lot of stuff felt like it was from a campaign companion.

I don´t doubt that the book is awesome, but that player companions feeling like campaign companions is a rising critique.

You're probably right. I'm certainly enjoying them more, but I've always preferred flavour material to mechanical stuff.

From my point of view, the issue isn't that it was flavour material, but that it was flavour material that was more campaign orientated. The whole elemental planes thing feels more like it's going to be useful for GMs planning games, especially given that the elemental blooded races are Native Outsiders (unless I'm misremembering that).

I'd have appreciated more focus on the flavour for alternative heritage genie-kind (those who somehow ended up with mephits or elementals in the bloodline, that sort of thing), stuff that does feel more player focused to help them build characters.

Comes down to personal preference though.

Steve Geddes wrote:

Hayato Ken wrote:

Steve Geddes wrote:

I wonder whether it was slightly misbranded (if that's the term?) as a lot of stuff felt like it was from a campaign companion.

I don´t doubt that the book is awesome, but that player companions feeling like campaign companions is a rising critique.

You're probably right. I'm certainly enjoying them more, but I've always preferred flavour material to mechanical stuff.

From my point of view, the issue isn't that it was flavour material, but that it was flavour material that was more campaign orientated. The whole elemental planes thing feels more like it's going to be useful for GMs planning games, especially given that the elemental blooded races are Native Outsiders (unless I'm misremembering that).

I'd have appreciated more focus on the flavour for alternative heritage genie-kind (those who somehow ended up with mephits or elementals in the bloodline, that sort of thing), stuff that does feel more player focused to help them build characters.

Comes down to personal preference though.

This. Not saying that I would not be interested in a book on the elemental planes but as it stands I came for a book about playing elemental kin not to learn about the planes.

I think what a lot of people would have preferred is something like when blood of fiends game out where you have blood of fiends for players alongside the long running books of the damned to help gm's set the stages for the creatures that help spawn the tieflings.

I have also have to add my dice to the roll and say that I too was looking more for a Player Companion rather than a Min-Campaign Guide. Again, as others have pointed out, look to the Blood of Fiends/Angels for inspiration.

On the one hand, I agree that I'd rather the Player's Companions be a combination of crunch and player-usable flavor text (stuff that details what sort of roles the race plays in a setting, what sort of relations they might have with other races / cultures / etc.).

On the other hand, I see the plethora of races in Blood of Fiends and Angels and think 'wow, there's literally going to be a sub-race for everything, isn't there?' Tieflings and Aasimar are the new Elves. There's one for just about every attribute combination you could want, and I'm a little bit conflicted about whether or not I'd want to see Elemental-kin of every possible role and niche, or shadow-kin, or dragon-kin, or animal-shifters, etc. For a game that so strongly discourages people from playing orcs or gnolls 'because we want them to be two-dimensional monsters, into which one, absent pesky thoughts of moral or ethical alignment (which we insist is vital to the game, despite working extra hard to avoid being applied in any way other than mechanically), inserts blade for XPs and GPs' having a half-dozen different playable fiend-spawn seems like rowing against the stated current.

On the other, other hand, perhaps Paizo is attempting to mix things up a bit with the formatting, so that each new 'Blood of X' book isn't a somewhat 'easy' page for page rewriting of Blood of Fiends, just copying that success over and over until whatever magic made it work is stale and boring (and the game is flooded with a dozen new sub-races a couple times a year).

Elemental planes options seems a bit far-reaching, granted. An elemental-touched race isn't any more likely to interact with an elemental plane than a gnome is to visit the First World, or an aasimar to end up on Mount Celestia. It's also possibly quite setting specific. The Great Beyond is a Golarion thing, and quite different from the extraplanar makeup of the Wheel, or the configurations in Midgard or Eberron or the Scarred Lands. As long as they are delving into setting specific stuff, I feel that a section going into more detail about where the elemental-touched are prominent on Golarion (such as in Qadira, where they are purportedly even hidden communities of them) would be useful for character development and backstory and even GM use (need to know where I'm likely to find a city with a big oread or sylph population?).

This book is still very disappointing race book, second only to the blood of the night.

Actually Set, if you read the elemental plane sections they do tell what elemental plane touched races are found there and why.

For a game that so strongly discourages people from playing orcs or gnolls 'because we want them to be two-dimensional monsters, into which one, absent pesky thoughts of moral or ethical alignment (which we insist is vital to the game, despite working extra hard to avoid being applied in any way other than mechanically), inserts blade for XPs and GPs'

Ouch. Harsh but admittedly accurate.

On the other hand, I see the plethora of races in Blood of Fiends and Angels and think 'wow, there's literally going to be a sub-race for everything, isn't there?' Tieflings and Aasimar are the new Elves. There's one for just about every attribute combination you could want, and I'm a little bit conflicted about whether or not I'd want to see Elemental-kin of every possible role and niche, or shadow-kin, or dragon-kin, or animal-shifters, etc.

Frankly, that's exactly what I want. Decoupling the crunch bonuses from the flavor. In my ideal world there would be no such thing as, "Well, I really want to play an Aasimar fighter, but the default crunch just doesn't support it so I guess I'll look for a different concept..." Instead, my ideal world would be like, "I really want to play an Aasimar fighter...now where are the crunch pieces to make it work?"

Set wrote:

On the other hand, I see the plethora of races in Blood of Fiends and Angels and think 'wow, there's literally going to be a sub-race for everything, isn't there?' Tieflings and Aasimar are the new Elves. There's one for just about every attribute combination you could want, and I'm a little bit conflicted about whether or not I'd want to see Elemental-kin of every possible role and niche, or shadow-kin, or dragon-kin, or animal-shifters, etc.

Frankly, that's exactly what I want. Decoupling the crunch bonuses from the flavor. In my ideal world there would be no such thing as, "Well, I really want to play an Aasimar fighter, but the default crunch just doesn't support it so I guess I'll look for a different concept..." Instead, my ideal world would be like, "I really want to play an Aasimar fighter...now where are the crunch pieces to make it work?"

Seconded.

Crunch for a Aasimar fighter is in the Blood of Angels book but what you should be asking is were is the crunch to play an Undine fighter:)

You missed her point completely Dragon =P

Blood of Angels/Fiends are five star books (IMO, naturally) exactly because they offer this -- the crunch to make pretty much any sort of Aasimar/Tiefling you want.

The latter race books haven't offered this level of versatility, which disappoints me greatly.

So.... I haven't read it yet... but the book itself is Gorgeous!

I love the background image and the borders and heading fonts. So evocative, like the "Russian-y" ones in Reign of Winter.

And the map is unbelievable.

the two new spells "Enshroud Thoughts" and "Storm Step" p. 13 are missing the Components section

Good but disappointing. Too much Planes, not enough People.

I too was hoping for some non-genie variants, maybe a few more feats and spells, and especially more about how the elemental-kin lived and were seen on Golarion. That whole City of Brass section I could've done without. In and of itself it was nice, it just didn't belong in this book.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the book, and some of the things in it will get used by my Undine sorceress, but this felt like the main focus of the book got hijacked halfway through. I love you guys, but you kinda lost focus on this one. 7.5/10

Good but disappointing. Too much Planes, not enough People.

I too was hoping for some non-genie variants, maybe a few more feats and spells, and especially more about how the elemental-kin lived and were seen on Golarion. That whole City of Brass section I could've done without. In and of itself it was nice, it just didn't belong in this book.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the book, and some of the things in it will get used by my Undine sorceress, but this felt like the main focus of the book got hijacked halfway through. I love you guys, but you kinda lost focus on this one. 7.5/10

This sums up my thoughts nicely. Too much planes, not enough people.

I was really bothered by the fact that this book focus 10 of its precious 32 pages directly on the planes (12 if you count the Inner Planes map). That's two more pages that could have been given to each race. Between the fact that this book is a "Blood of" book (not an Inner Planes Primer) and the fact that this is a Player Companion book (not a Campaign Setting book), Blood of the Elements lacks focus. I also didn't like that all five races focus their player crunch on one really long archetype. I have the same distaste for the Elemental Commixture teamwork feat as well. The book felt stretched overall, like no one was sure what to talk about. This could be a very real issue considering that the book has a very broad theme (people with elemental blood).

On the map, it is gorgeous but also out of place in a product about NATIVE outsiders. As in outsiders native to the Material Plane. That's the biggest reason I felt this book was so unfocused. It spends 12 pages talking about the planes in a book about native outsiders.

Didn't the authors of this book slip in several regional feats not associated with particular elemental planes but not with particular races? I have seen them mentioned elsewhere but not in this thread, so I am curious to find out in three days whether my source might be in error on that point. I can see that the geniekin might have a greater chance than aasimars or tieflings of growing up on their non-humanoid parent's home plane.

Didn't the authors of this book slip in several regional feats not associated with particular elemental planes but not with particular races? I have seen them mentioned elsewhere but not in this thread, so I am curious to find out in three days whether my source might be in error on that point. I can see that the geniekin might have a greater chance than aasimars or tieflings of growing up on their non-humanoid parent's home plane.

Yeah they did sort of. Each race has a regional trait for them. The problem is that about 50% of them are thematically appropriate for the race they are coming from while the other 50% are don't seem to be. For example the Oreads have a regional trait from Jamelray that makes them better at social encounters and allows them to touch stone surfaces and doors and hear through them (very cool and thematic for them) while ifrits have one for Katapesh that says they are escaped slaves and due to your characters paranoia about being recaptured doesn't need to sleep much. The former fits very well with the theme while the latter is cool but not necessarily associated with the troubles and tribulations of being an Ifrit.

Okay, now that I have the PDF -- there are also separate regional traits for each of the elemental planes plus the City of Brass, none of which are tied to race. Combine that with the fact that my source was d20pfsrd.com, which had to remove the Golarion specific references as it added traits to its site. To cite one example -- "Merabian Mentorship" is on that site, but they renamed it in a way that it is unrecognizable unless you have the source material.

I guess my biggest disappointment is the lack of alternate racial traits. The closest thing I saw was the Suli Dualborn race trait, which modified a Suli racial feature. I don't recall any other cases of race traits being used that way.

The "Blood Of" books are very hit and miss... Blood of Angels and Blood of Fiends were nice, Blood of the Night was kind of a derailment, Blood of the Moon could have been better... Blood of the Elements was fated for problems the moment they decided to put 5 races (not subraces) in it.

Bastards of Golarion has more races than Blood of the Elements and talks about most of them better than it.

the two new spells "Enshroud Thoughts" and "Storm Step" p. 13 are missing the Components section

They're also missing divine casters. No druids for storm step? Really?

Bastards of Golarion has more races than Blood of the Elements and talks about most of them better than it.

But Bastards of Golarion had two "tiers" of races -- the Half-Elf and Half-Orc got the bulk of attention, while all of the other half-human races covered got no more than a feat and a trait each.

The problem for Blood of Elements is that it had to cover five distinct races approximately equally -- and no previous "Blood of" book ever attempted to do that. The total amount of crunch material in this book appears to be comparable to other Player Companions, but because it had to give equal coverage to five races, no one race seemed to get very much.

I think this book would have gotten a much better reception had only one of the geniekin races (most likely the Suli) existed prior to this book, and then this book introduced the other four as variants of the original geniekin race.

They should just treat each one like a race of it´s own, which they apparently are.
Half-elves and half-orcs are different there as in each of the parent races are well known and have good descriptions.

In my dream world, this book does not preclude the possibility of four separate Player Companions for air, earth, fire and water.

I think they mistitled this book....it is much more of a Player's Guide to the Elemental Planes than a books about the races. If you look at it that way it is not that bad of a book...but as a book that 'focus' on the elemental races...it is not that great.

In my dream world, this book does not preclude the possibility of four separate Player Companions for air, earth, fire and water.

In addition to variations based on different aspects of the genies or elementals involved, what other sorts of heritages might fit?

Right off, I'm seeing;

Air - air type mephits, invisible stalker
Earth - earth type mephits, gargoyle, pech
Fire - fire type mephits, azer, salamander, fire giant, fire yai
Water - water type mephits, triton, nereid, water yai

Perhaps elemental-touched could also be (distantly) related to (or influenced / altered by) dragons of the Air, Earth, Fire or Water types. As with aasimar and tieflings, the ability of the creature to actually mate with a humanoid is ultimately not terribly relevant, as one could end up with tiefling traits because one's mom was possessed or one's dad was a paladin infected with fiendish taint during a trip to rescue someone from Hell or something. Sex is just the easiest way to explain otherworldly traits or a Sorcerous bloodline. :)

And then there's the various Cold type creatures. There isn't currently an elemental-touched Cold humanoid PC race to fit next to the Sylphs and Ifrits, but it seems like a logical development.

Additionally, different lands have different elemental themes, such as the 'element' of Void, or the 'elements' of Wood and Metal.

Versions of Oread more focused on metal or wood, than earth and stone, could be one way to go, instead of creating entirely new elemental-touched races for those 'elements.'

Void, I'm less certain as to how to develop, since it seems to vary between 'void of space / celestial sky' and 'thought / spirit,' depending on the interpretation. You go in one direction and have it be a sort of ethereal psychic sort of thing, and another and be all dark and shining and just a little bit Lovecraftian. Or both...

Eh, I'll be honest, I'm pretty skeptical about non-outsiders leading to ifrits, oreads, sylphs, and undines...humanoid with fey influence somehow becomes an outsider? I'd prefer something more unique there, maybe some sort of fey-touched entity, though the fey creature template works reasonably well.

I'd also tend to say that oni (such as fire yai or water yai) would be more likely to produce tieflings in the Golarion setting, albeit ones with influence related to their fire or water heritage...I actually asked a similar question of James Jacobs last year in regards to brijidines (who are celestials who have the earth and fire subtypes).

I did take a look myself at (non-unique) creatures with the air, fire, earth, and water subtypes, sorted by type...

However, perhaps making alternate versions of ifrits, oreads, sylphs, and undines that retain their humanoid type would be better suited for allowing more elemental taints from non-outsiders, using them as a skeleton, or just providing an alternate racial trait that swaps out that outsider (native) type and subtype for something more appropriate...

In my dream world, this book does not preclude the possibility of four separate Player Companions for air, earth, fire and water.

That might be too much to hope for.

However, after downloading the latest Wayfarer, I see that fanzine as a more promising approach. Whereas a Player Companion has to cram everything into 32 pages, an issue of Wayfinder can have 100+ pages in assorted articles devoted to a topic. The latter page count is what you would need to do the geniekin races justice.

has this been added to the PFS legal update yet?

{edit) Nope

I might get it then as I have an oread boon.

Mike

Samy wrote:

Set wrote:

On the other hand, I see the plethora of races in Blood of Fiends and Angels and think 'wow, there's literally going to be a sub-race for everything, isn't there?' Tieflings and Aasimar are the new Elves. There's one for just about every attribute combination you could want, and I'm a little bit conflicted about whether or not I'd want to see Elemental-kin of every possible role and niche, or shadow-kin, or dragon-kin, or animal-shifters, etc.

Frankly, that's exactly what I want. Decoupling the crunch bonuses from the flavor. In my ideal world there would be no such thing as, "Well, I really want to play an Aasimar fighter, but the default crunch just doesn't support it so I guess I'll look for a different concept..." Instead, my ideal world would be like, "I really want to play an Aasimar fighter...now where are the crunch pieces to make it work?"

Seconded.

agreed