Legendary Planet Player's Guide (PFRPG) PDF

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Awesome Options for Interplanetary Adventure!

The Legendary Planet Player's Guide offers an array of advice on races, religion, and characters in the Legendary Planet universe, including rules for 4 brand-new playable races: the clockwork-cybernetic auttaine, the chlorvian plant people, the four-armed tretharri, and the mischievous winged reptilian zvarr. It also provides a dozen campaign traits to help tailor your character's background and motivation to blend seamlessly with the overarching themes of the adventure path, but without giving too much away. If your players are preparing for Legendary Planet, this product will give them a terrific roadmap to guide their path to adventure among the stars!

Download this 19-page PDF today and Make Your Interplanetary Adventure Legendary!

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An Endzeitgeist.com review

4/5

The Player's Guide for the Legendary Planet AP clocks in at 19 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page inside of front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, 1 page inside of back cover, leaving us with 14 pages of content, so let's take a look!

Okay, after the usual introduction to the matter at hand, we have to discuss one thing: The AP is set to officially begin at 2nd level, with the optional "The Assimilation Strain" prequel basically blindsiding the more mundane PCs. Hence, campaign trait selection is held off to the begin of the first "proper" adventure. Beyond that, there is a bit of a potential disjoint here: Namely, that this Player's Guide provides an array of new alien races, which make perfect sense in the context of the AP, yes, but also contradict the optional Assimilation Strain lead-in. Basically, if you elect to employ the "fish out of water"-approach and run the prequel with terrestrial PCs, you'll lock yourself out of basically all options in this book...until a PC dies/retires, that is. Which is a bit of a pity, since I prefer the approach via regular PCs stumbling, wide-eyed and bumbling, into the possibilities of Legendary Planet...but your mileage will obviously vary.

Anyhow, the first of the new races introduced herein would be the Auttaine, half-constructs that gain +2 to an ability score of their own choice, normal speed...and they have build points - 3 + initial Constitution modifier, to be precise. They can use these points to customize their own bodies - from internalized weapons to component pouches, the customized options are pretty cool.

Chlorvians are basically the half-plants here and gain +2 Con and Cha, -2 Str, low-light vision, +4 to Stealth in wooded environments, +1 natural armor, retries of Diplomacy-attempts only botched by 5 or less and treat Charisma for the purpose of the verdant bloodline as two higher, +1 level for purposes of the Plant domain. Characterized by the symbiotic bond with a seed, they also get +2 to saves versus mind-affecting effects, paralysis, sleep, poison, but thankfully not the huge array of plant immunities.

The Tretharri are 4-armed philosophers that gain +2 Str and Wis, -2 Cha, +2 to Swim and Climb checks and 4 arms - one is primary, all others are secondary. Still, this makes them brutal shredders.

The Zvarr, winged saurian humanoids, would be the final new race. Zvarr get +2 Dex and Int, -2 Wis, gain a climb speed of 30 ft, darkvision, +1 to Acrobatics and natural AC, a 1d3 primary bite attack that can be used as secondary in conjunction with weapons, +2 to Appraise as well as vestigial wings they can use via Fly to glide and prevents deadly falls. The races come with age, height and weight tables.

I was btw. positively surprised by the following section - from languages to focuses and skills, the pdf does offer some general, but very welcome guidelines to make the characters work well within the context of the Legendary Planet AP, discussing skills and the like - but the book actually goes one step beyond that, also featuring information on various intriguing classes from the 3pp-circuit - from godlings to luckbringers and machinesmiths, to, obviously, psionics, the Player's Guide provides quite a few nice shootouts pertaining how the classes work within the context of the saga.

The pdf also offers 12 unique campaign traits that count as their own category. Unlike traditional traits, these do come with extensive and evocative background flavor - whether you are a surviving experiment of the dread Jagladine, an interplanar gladiator or a xenobiologist, the traits generally are intriguing and mechanically relevant - bursts of movement, for example, are intriguing and powerful. I found myself pretty excited about them and hope the saga will actually reference them in the plot to come. Cool and well-crafted section!

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I noticed no significant glitches. Layout adheres to Legendary Games' beautiful 2-column full-color standard for the series and the pdf offers several beautiful full-color artworks for the new races, etc. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience, though they are a bit glitchy - they point towards e.g. sections of the intro and quite a few are called "_goback" instead of being properly named.

Will McCardell, Alexander Augunas and Neil Spicer have crafted a per se great player's guide. The races occupy the upper echelons of power and feel sufficiently brutal for the purposes of this AP. Power-wise, these aliens basically are in the upper echelon beyond the capability of e.g. the aasimar. For the high-powered gameplay we can expect from this AP, that works, though, and generally, the races seem to be pretty much on par. That being said, there are no favored class options for the races, in case you expected those.

This Player's Guide, as a whole, makes for a great offering for the demographic that wants to start Legendary Planet at 2nd level. Those of us, however, who wished to begin with the "fish out of water"-scenario via "The Assimilation Strain" are basically left hanging in the air. The enhanced power and campaign traits associated with the setting are useful and cool...but they ultimately don't help bridging the power gap between the races and terrestrial standard races. Whether it's "a simulation", a time-lapse or the like, the pdf doesn't really offer help reconciling the assumptions of this PG with the alternate, optional prequel. I expected to see some notes on upgrading regular characters to those herein or an alternate "unlocking"-system for the content herein...or something like that. As a whole, those of us who opted for this entry vector will get no help from this pdf, which is the one massive gripe I have against it. This does not make the Player's Guide bad, mind you - but it does limit its appeal and immediate usefulness for those of us who elected to run with the prequel.

This may not wreck the otherwise concise and well-written player's guide, but it does render the book less universally appealing than it otherwise would be. Hence, my final verdict will clock in at 4 stars.

Endzeitgeist out.


5/5

PDF only available, however at 19 pages long it is a very well written Players Guide.

I will let the players use this book when they finish the prequel and start Chapter 1, however the Skills, Feats advice will be known to them at the start.

The new Pantheon that SKR wrote is great, the campaign traits fit in well starting with Chapter 1, and the new races are just gold.

-- david


An Invaluable Resource for the Legendary Planet AP

5/5

I'll keep this brief - the Legendary Planet Adventure Path is not a Golarion-centric adventure. It has fundamentally different expectations - from the languages that will come in handy to the races you're likely to meet, this game is a little harder to prepare for than most.

This guide offers four new races suitable for the Legendary Planet AP (customizable half-construct Auttaine, living plant Chlorvians, four-armed philosophical Tretharri, and winged, reptilian Zvarr) as well as advice on equipment, skills, alignment, and even the deities characters might worship - Legendary Planet has a whole new pantheon of choices, and they're detailed more fully for GMs in To Worlds Unknown, the first part of the AP.

If you're a player, your GM may already have a copy of this. Either way, though, this is something you definitely want to read before making a character for this campaign.


Community Manager

Now available!


Aaaaaand now that it's been released to the public, reviewed!

RPG Superstar 2009, RPG Superstar Judgernaut, Contributor

Thanks for the review and your support, Rednal. It is much appreciated.

Scarab Sages RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games

Thanks and glad you enjoyed!


I would have liked to see a stronger link for the Assimilation Strain adventure in the campaign traits. Kind of springing the interplanetary goodness seems more appealing to me as a gm than just telling the players, make some outerspacey type characters.


On the other hand, I'm sort of glad that it isn't tied too deeply to the Assimilation Strain. Traits are something you keep for the entire campaign, and the Assimilation Strain is
a)Just the first level, and
b)Supposed to be optional.

I like that assimilation strain is there, but if I want to run To Worlds Unknown without having run Assimilation Strain first, it's nice that the traits still make sense.

Scarab Sages RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games

1 person marked this as a favorite.

The traits were intentionally kept more focused on the core campaign than on The Assimilation Strain, since as mentioned above it is meant to be an optional prelude adventure and one that is not specifically tied to any campaign world or location. The best solution is probably to give players the chance to select campaign traits once at either the beginning or the end of To Worlds Unknown. You could certainly let them select other traits when they start playing their characters if you choose to play The Assimilation Strain; one extra trait isn't going to break anything in the grand scheme of a campaign that goes to 20th level.

RPG Superstar 2009, RPG Superstar Judgernaut, Contributor

Wow! This product made the Top 5 PDF downloads this week. That's pretty awesome for a Player's Guide. Hopefully, folks check out The Assimilation Strain, as well...and the rest of the Legendary Planet Adventure Path as it becomes available. Thanks for the interest, everyone!

Grand Lodge

Regarding tie-ins to The Assimilation Strain...

I actually don't intend to give the players this guide until after running the first adventure, or at least only give them a heavily edited version.
It's not that I would hide anything about it, but rather that I'd prefer people hold off on playing something especially thematic (ex one of the new races) until To Worlds Unknown.


Scribbling Rambler wrote:

Regarding tie-ins to The Assimilation Strain...

I actually don't intend to give the players this guide until after running the first adventure, or at least only give them a heavily edited version. It's not that I would hide anything about it, but rather that I'd prefer people hold off on playing something especially thematic (ex one of the new races) until To Worlds Unknown.

Me also. I intend to run The Assimilation Strain on Golarian and when they "wake up" in To Worlds Unknown, allow them to use the new races on a DM / Player agreement, pick up a campaign trait, and perhaps "convert" to the wonderful Pantheon that SKR has created during the time in town.

-- david

Scarab Sages RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games

I think that's a good strategy for using the two, since The Assimilation Strain is written to be a mystery and the revelation of alien invaders a surprise.

RPG Superstar 2009, RPG Superstar Judgernaut, Contributor

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Neil Spicer wrote:
Wow! This product made the Top 5 PDF downloads this week.

Even more WOW! Number one PDF download this week in the Paizo webstore. You folks are awesome!

Legendary Games also has three other products in the Top 10. Amazing!


Looks like people are picking up on the kind of quality that's showing up here. XD Congrats, guys!

Scarab Sages RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games

I'm glad to see people enjoying it!


Reviewed first on endzeitgeist.com, then submitted to Nerdtrek and GMS magazine and posted here, on OBS, etc.


What's an Yllosan?

Scarab Sages Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games

1of1 wrote:
What's an Yllosan?

I think that was an alien race that may have gotten renamed along the way or perhaps even left on the cutting room floor as we went along developing the adventures.


Jason Nelson wrote:
I think that was an alien race that may have gotten renamed along the way or perhaps even left on the cutting room floor as we went along developing the adventures.

To Worlds Unknown describes them as incorporeal, and mentions them needing crystals to psionically communicate with material creatures. I'll try looking around Dreamscarred's stuff for something that fits, then I'll expand my search if I don't find anything I like.

Contributor, RPG Superstar 2009, RPG Superstar Judgernaut

1 person marked this as a favorite.

The yllosan are an elder alien species allied with the Bellianic Accord (i.e., the "good guys") in the Legendary Worlds Campaign Setting. They're loyal allies of the elali, but their numbers are dwindling. Even worse, they lack a physical form with which to affect the Material Plane and the various planets they visit. They're basically incorporeal beings that are cloud-like entities which are only visible in certain spectrums of light unless they make a concerted effort to manifest...kind of like how a ghost works in Pathfinder. They're users of psionics and other mind-affecting abilities, and they can use a magic jar kind of possession ability to take over other creatures so they can impact the physical world.

In terms of the role they play within the campaign setting itself, they make excellent spies, advisors, and messengers for the Bellianic Accord (especially since their incorporeal nature can allow them to cross the void of space unimpeded if they need to reach a moon, asteroid, or other planet without using a gate--though, it's slow going since they can't go faster-than-light). In addition, if they possess a powerful creature, they can also make a big impact in the fight against the Ultari Hegemony on the battlefield. Unfortunately, a lot of their more powerful abilities leave them considerably weakened when they use them. And, their enemies have learned to exploit that by drawing out the yllosan and then cutting them down when they're spent. That's one of the reasons why their numbers are in rapid decline. The other is that they simply aren't a very fertile race when it comes to procreation, and they have very long gestation periods even though they're individually quite long-lived.

Originally, we thought we'd include a bestiary write-up for the yllosan in Chapter 3 Dead Vault Descent, but Matt wound up going a different direction with one of his key NPCs, and he did write-ups on the divymm and hetzuud instead. So, realistically, we thought the yllosan would get included in Chapter 7 To Kill A Star, which Jason is still supposed to write as the capstone to the entire Adventure Path. We did make a reference to them in the gazetteer article for Argosa in Chapter 1 To Worlds Unknown, however, where the population statistics for Zel-Argose lists 450 yllosan living inside the city, the most significant of which is referred to as the Azure Syndic at the Chapel of Blue Radiance devoted to the yllosan deity, Kytheklo.

Hope that helps,
--Neil


Thanks for the info, Neil. My players just got to Zel-Argose, and there's a very good chance that they're going to run into the chapel of Kytheklo, so I was curious as to who was running the place. This should come in handy.

Contributor, RPG Superstar 2009, RPG Superstar Judgernaut

1 person marked this as a favorite.

If it helps, the yllosan known as the Azure Syndic is the main entity inhabiting the Chapel of Blue Radiance and it manifests either as a god-like bluish light to the rest of the clergy, or it possesses one of the monks in order to speak face-to-face with new initiates or those who visit the chapel.

Either way, it can also use psionic energy to manipulate things telekinetically or speak directly into a creature's mind via telepathy. In fact, many who visit the chapel never realize they're speaking with an yllosan, presuming the disembodied voice in their mind is a direct contact with a divine being, or they just think they're talking to an educated monk when it's actually the yllosan possessing them and speaking through them.

Roleplaying-wise, any interaction with an yllosan is meant to be an eerie, almost otherworldly experience. They're ghost-like in every way, but they're not undead. And, thankfully, unlike the member species of the Ultari Hegemony, the yllosan are usually far more benevolent in service to the Bellianic Accord. Of course, not all of them are. There are no absolutes in our setting. Yllosan, in general, are a good species, but some are self-serving. The Azure Syndic is a bit more like the latter and has no specific association with the Accord.


Double thanks, man.

Scarab Sages Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games

The yllosan just got added as the final monster in the Alien Bestiary Companion, coming soon!


This campaign starts at level 2. Is starting wealth assumed to be 1000 GP?

The guide mentions early firearms as an option. What rarity of guns is the home of the PCs assumed to have? Can a character's backstory say they come from a planet of commonplace guns and get a gun as a martial weapon at 25% of its cost?

Contributor, RPG Superstar 2009, RPG Superstar Judgernaut

It's up to each individual GM on how they want to approach starting wealth and firearm availability.

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