Claim what’s rightfully yours with Pathfinder Player Companion: Champions of Corruption! Summon monsters from the blood of your enemies with twisted Sarkorian magic, lord over your minions to further the causes of your dark masters, and use any means necessary to achieve your despicable goals. With Champions of Corruption, everything is fair game as long as you prosper and your enemies suffer.
Inside this book, you’ll find:
Detailed explorations of the lawful evil, neutral evil, and chaotic evil alignments, including example personas for your vile character.
New archetypes: the sanguinary blood summoner, the godless dread vanguard, and the bloodthirsty raging cannibal.
Savage new traits for characters who hail from dark lands, and rules for wicked ones who seek to lord over Golarion’s most debased nations and organizations.
Cruel new options like Vile Leadership and damnation feats, which let you use coercion and violence to compel your cohorts and allies to commit even greater atrocities.
Brutal new spells, magic items, and other sinister options to sate your bloodlust and strike fear in the hearts of heroes who would oppose you.
This Pathfinder Player Companion is intended for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and the Pathfinder campaign setting, but can easily be incorporated into any fantasy world.
Written by Paris Crenshaw, Jim Groves, Sean McGowan, Philip Minchin.
Cover Art by Claudia Schmidt.
Each monthly 32-page Pathfinder Player Companion contains several player-focused articles exploring the volume’s theme as well as short articles with innovative new rules for all types of characters, as well as traits to better anchor the player to the campaign.
ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-679-9
Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:
Champions of Corruption does not disappoint. While I would consider it my least favourite of the three alignment books, it's still a very good book, offering an in-depth look at what it means to be evil and providing interesting options for evil characters. And just because it's a Player Companion doesn't mean that it's just for players. GMs can get a lot of use out of this book to flesh out villainous NPCs.
This gives good advice on different types evil characters under different evil alignments and how to play them with other characters whether they are off same alignment or not. Even if you don't plan to play as evil characters, this seems pretty useful for creating villains as well.
However, I think this could have gone farther than this. Most of examples are just "evil for evil/selfish reasons" types of personalities, while motivations list in beginning had potential for more different types of evil. Would have been interesting to see example of tragic villains, like vengeance driven evil character who is ready to do anything to accomplish his revenge.
There also wasn't any mention of playing good or neutral characters turning to evil, fallen hero would have been interesting character example as well.
So yeah, if you are interested in trying out evil characters, sure go for it, but if you aren't that interested, this won't convince you to play evil character nor probably would convince your GM to let you play as one if they are against it.
Paizo’s September 2014 Player’s Companion release is Champions of Corruption. The final book in the Champions of series, this guide is focused on helping players develop evil characters and ground them in the evil organizations that plague the Inner Sea. From the beginning, you can see that the designers took this task seriously. On the front cover, Seltyiel is killing a unicorn. I kind of like that the unicorn doesn’t look all that good though. It would be a lot harder to see Seltyiel killing something that looks super sweet. Rather, it’s milky white eyes make you think that perhaps the unicorn is the corrupt one and the iconic is trying to defend himself. In fact, throughout the entirety of the book, the art makes it clear that these are not characters to trifle with.
Gods & (Summoned) Monsters
The guide’s inside covers feature familiar material to other readers of the Champions of series. On the front inside cover we have a chart detailing the evil gods. This could actually be really helpful during character creation. I think I may pull out the ones from Champions of Righteousness & Champions of Balance next time the party has to make characters. I’m hoping this will be helpful both for world immersion and for reminding them that it would not hurt to have an actual healer in the party. Much like the previous two Champions of books, this one closes with a feat improving the character’s ability to summon evil monsters. Like the other two, when a character with this feat summons a creature off the evil monster list, the summoning takes only a standard action.
Moral Uncertainty
Normally the “For Your Character” and “Rules Index” two pages seem like waste to me that could be much better filled with world-building or crunch product. Here Paizo has introduced ideas that are interesting about how they frame evil—certainly ambiguous. They’ve included a “Did You Know” box about Hermea and the inherent disagreements about how to characterize Mengkare’s alignment. Newsflash: Paizo staff can’t even agree as to whether or not Mengkare’s experiment is interesting to him or actually among the most diabolical things happening in the Inner Sea region. Adopting this viewpoint makes sure that any game taking place in Hermea is that much more interesting by giving us a rationale on how a character’s complex motives could make it evil or not in the eyes of some beholders.
Leadership? And with nightmares, planar binding? After all, it does specify in the entry for nightmares that they are 'never mere mounts, but rather willing partners in destruction'. Though I do hope that the Summon Evil Creature feat that certainly ought to be lurking in this book adds nightmares as an option...
Pathfinder Lost Omens, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Can't wait to see this! I've always wanted to play a red mantis assassin, but I've never figured out how to play a good quality lawful evil (I'm a natural NG) until now.
Hopefully the options presented here in this book will allow me to create a truly vicious avatar of Gorum, a warlord who rules over his fiefdom with an iron fist and leads his armies to war, a man who is feared more than loved. That would be awesome.
They are not going to make a champion of order and chaos books. All those alignments are covered in the combination of champions of purity, balance, and corruption.
They are not going to make a champion of order and chaos books. All those alignments are covered in the combination of champions of purity, balance, and corruption.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Hmmm. Interesting. Granted, I was hoping more for something more directly parallel to the Celestial Appearance Evolution in Champions of Purity, but that definitely looks interesting.
God, I hope they have information on Belkzen and Nidal in this book. Really I do. That, and the archetypes that come out of there. Rules for evil religious types and military commanders etc. God this is awesome. An Inquisitor of Rovagug archetype who seeks to destroy other divinities.
What I want Paizo to avoid in this book is to give evil characters super-duper-powerful abilities/spells, which are blatantly better than the stuff given out in Champions of Purity. Because that would play again into the stereotype that "evil is better than good", which I hope Paizo can avoid for once.
You could switch the polarity on any spell or item in this book which doesn't have an analogue in the Purity book, and vice versa, create a whole other doohickey. Both sides balance out, and you get more toys to play with.
Honestly I think power should always be easier for evil characters to obtain that good to explain why someone would bother to be evil, but never explicitly better.
Honestly I think power should always be easier for evil characters to obtain that good to explain why someone would bother to be evil, but never explicitly better.
Its pretty easy to argue that this is, in fact, true. It is easier to be selfish than considerate and easier to be hateful and angry than compassionate and sympathetic. At its core, Good is realizing that the universe doesn't revolve around you and that by helping others, you help yourself. Evil says, "Screw the hippie mumbo jumbo, this is all about ME, baby!"
Taking that approach to the gods, it will always be easier to appease Evil deities (and thereby gain their power and favor) than Good deities because every sin is based around self-indulgence at the cost of the happiness of others.
Oh of course. I mean that it should also extend into the mechanics of evil classes. Give them easier to obtain prerequisites but make them have lower overall potential per ability than good. So for mechanics sake inherently evil abilities are "zerg" to inherently good abilities "protoss" if we were to use an analogy from another game.
I'm not sure why this book is listed as preorder. I saw it at my books-a-million last night.
I have gone strictly PDF a couple years now so I can GM everything out of my laptop. But I'm holding off on the other Champions books till the evil one is available. It's evil to see the book in treeslice format when I gotta wait a few weeks for my preference...
I'm not sure why this book is listed as preorder. I saw it at my books-a-million last night.
I have gone strictly PDF a couple years now so I can GM everything out of my laptop. But I'm holding off on the other Champions books till the evil one is available. It's evil to see the book in treeslice format when I gotta wait a few weeks for my preference...
Hmmm...you just might be on to something. I truthfully cannot say for sure it wasn't. It did show several evil gods and minor ones. You're probably right.
Is there ever going to be a bundle for pdf's of the old issues of pathfinder companions?? Although I don't have necessary want all it would be nice for backup and 45 * $8 is a no go.