Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Planar Adventures

That is one of the most awesome cover images on a Pathfinder book ever. <3

It is, isn't it?

What a disappointing cover, I mean really disappointing, heck the mock up art looked 10 times better then this.

Awesome art! Creepy and evocative.

Damn......I would buy this just for the cover :P

As always dragon remains unimpressed. :p :) Me I like it! I like it a lot.

Awesome art! Creepy and evocative.

I hope they offer a public poster version.

I like the cover. A little bit of mixed feelings on it for some reason, not sure what it is.

The daemon looks amazing.

Background seems more fitting for a horror book. However, it is still cool and it fits the book theme with the portal and all. I do think that the background is appropriate for Abbadon but it seems a bit less spectacular than what I was expecting for a planar book. I would have liked something less like a swamp or forest and more like floating orbs of liquid metal with haunting faces, lightning and meteors, maybe a fractured view of reality leading to many different realities. Yeah not that original but sometimes you don't have to be original.

Kyra looks decent. Misrell(sp?) is the weakest part of the cover I've seen her drawn much better.

Overall I like it.

The daemon looks amazing. :)

Thomas Seitz wrote:

Chris,

I think one of those bullets might need fixing:

A presentation of the 20 core deities of the Pathfinder RPG, including divine gifts they can grant their faithful.

I admit I COULD be wrong there...

The bullet is correct. There's quite a bit of lore about the deities in this book, from details on their planar realms to notes on their relationships to, as indicated on the bullet point, divine gifts they can grant worshipers in the form of divine intervention or other rewards for holy/unholy/whateverholy quests and the like.

How does the information differ from what was published about them in Inner Sea Gods?

James Jacobs wrote:

Thomas Seitz wrote:

Chris,

I think one of those bullets might need fixing:

A presentation of the 20 core deities of the Pathfinder RPG, including divine gifts they can grant their faithful.

I admit I COULD be wrong there...

The bullet is correct. There's quite a bit of lore about the deities in this book, from details on their planar realms to notes on their relationships to, as indicated on the bullet point, divine gifts they can grant worshipers in the form of divine intervention or other rewards for holy/unholy/whateverholy quests and the like.

How does the information differ from what was published about them in Inner Sea Gods?

It provides actual game mechanics and specific abilities granted by the deities to support the flavor and description. A deity can, of course, grant an endless variety of different boons and they can be of any power level, but the specific examples given for each of the core deities is more or less on the power level of a miracle spell. (And one option is to allow a player who casts miracle to duplicate their deity's boon as they cast the spell, which allows players more direct access to this stuff rather than waiting for the GM/their deity to award them a boon for a job well done, but still requires GM permission to do so, of course!)

For example: Pharasma's divine gift makes it so that the recipient is not affected by the next effect, damage, or other event that would otherwise kill them. (I used Pharasma's as an example mostly because it's one of the simplest ones to copy from the book.)

James Jacobs,

Plus I think you enjoy Psychopomps anyway... But yeah that's a cool and good example. :)

Cool. :)

That's an amazing cover, and I can surely say its among the finest ones.

I like it. I know it's not for everyone but I like it. :)

Can't wait to see what the race associated with the boneyard is like....I'm hoping for a revenant style race :P

I'll say this on the cover; I think that's a high quality art piece, one of the best I've seen for Pathfinder.

My issue with it is more that, even though that is a planar monster on the cover, the image speaks less to me of planar adventures than it does some kind of horror. Like, wandering through any given swamp on Golarion and then bam, monster.

Which I get there are certainly planes like that and Abaddon would be one of them. But if it were me I'd have gone for something more colorful & psychedelic, with a landscape that very obviously wasn't of the material plane. So proteans & the maelstrom would have been a good shout, I think.

I don't know, that's just a personal preference thing I suppose.

Yeah, the cover doesn't really make me feel like it has anything to do with a book on the Planes. Looks more like Horror Adventures 2 or something similar in theme.

I like the cover. When you fight creatures from the lower planes they should be scary. After all, they are not goblins or kobolds.

Thought something about that cover rang a bell.

That's the Menagerie from Book of the Damned (Vol. 3 p. 6) - a one-way portal from Nirvana to Abaddon.

Unfortunately for Kyra and Merisiel, they're on the wrong end of that portal.

Heh. Looking like Horror Adventures 2 is pretty much what an Abaddon cover should look like.

Which I get there are certainly planes like that and Abaddon would be one of them. But if it were me I'd have gone for something more colorful & psychedelic, with a landscape that very obviously wasn't of the material plane. So proteans & the maelstrom would have been a good shout, I think.

While I agree, they'd already tapped that well with the [/url=http://cdn.paizo.com/image/product/catalog/PZO/PZO9209_500.jpeg]Great Beyond cover.[/url] (Which I love!)

Certainly a more obviously 'planar' feeling background would have been cool, but it is what it is, and pretty much *any* background could exist on the planes.

I concur, the cover doesn't feel planar at all, more like swamp/graveyard. Some sort of swirling multicolored eddies might have been cool. But it is what it is.

I like the cover just fine. If you don't think any plane looks like that...or if only Golarion can look like that...well, imagination is a good thing.

I like the cover just fine. If you don't think any plane looks like that...or if only Golarion can look like that...well, imagination is a good thing.

A completely black cover would be just as valid, too - caves and darkness exist basically everywhere, after all. That doesn't mean it's a good choice when trying to depict the unearthly variety of the planes.

Are people literally judging a book by its cover?

Are people literally judging a book by its cover?

More like judging the cover by the book.

Folks, remember, book covers are not for us invested die-hard fans. You'd all buy this book even if the cover was jet black, for all that's worth. Covers are for distributors, retailers and casual bookstore browsing people who sometimes make their purchase decision based on the cover, not the content.

Folks, remember, book covers are not for us invested die-hard fans. You'd all buy this book even if the cover was jet black, for all that's worth. Covers are for distributors, retailers and casual bookstore browsing people who sometimes make their purchase decision based on the cover, not the content.

That is true. However, there is a difference between complaining about what's on the cover because you don't like the art or the scene depicted, as opposed to believing it doesn't fit with what the books actually about.

Let's take a look at Bestiary 6 for example, shall we. Personally, I think it's cover looks very nice, but there are some who don't share that opinion. Maybe the reason why they don't like the cover is because they don't like WAR, maybe it's because they wanted Krampus, or the Wild Hunt, or Lord Varklos, or a giant starfish for all I know, on the cover instead.

All of these complaints may have their supporters and detractors, but the fact of the matter is that the cover gives you an excellent idea on what the contents are going to be like. Bestiary 6 is big beefy book, and one that is full of high CR monsters, from demigods to dead gods, and the cover shows this, with Mephistopheles, Charon, and one badly out-of-his-depth brimorak hanging out in some unidentified hellscape. Even without any Pathfinder knowledge whatsoever, you can tell by the giant six-winged demon, the hulking humanoid bearing a blazing blade, and by the red-eyed boatman whose craft is decorated by severed heads that this book has some rather dangerous denizens.

Contrast the cover for Planar Adventures. While I also happen to like the cover as an art piece, it doesn't sum up it's purpose as well as it could. The astradaemon is a nice touch, but the background is comparatively drab. It doesn't exactly conjure of images of allying with archons, proselytizing with psychopomps, or haggling over trinkets in the Great Bazaar. To be sure, as many have pointed out, there are many points of the planes that do look like the background of this picture, but so do many points in the Prime Material Plane. It just doesn't have that distinct "Dorothy-you're-not-in-Kansas" factor that the planes can really exemplify.

Even with the Astradaemon, it doesn't necessarily scream out "Planar!" to the uneducated masses of non-Pathfinder buying people. Even a few people earlier in this thread expressed confusion over what type of creature it was, and it stands to reason that by shear virtue of being both subscribers (seeing how they saw the picture in the newest AP before it was posted online) and frequenters on the boards they would have greater knowledge on Pathfinder than your average player.

Now, all of this is really just a bit of minor grumbling, and it doesn't change the fact that I'm going to buy it as soon as I am able, no matter the cover, but I still feel that the complaints regarding the cover are not unjustified, however minor they be.

Fun Behind-the-Scenes fact: The original cover order for this was a few iconics fighting an astradaemon in the Boneyard, with Groetus looming in the background and the river of souls extending out into the distance... but then I realized we already did most of this cover for the cover of Horror Adventures (which takes place in the Boneyard—note the moon in the background!).

So I adjusted things—I kept the astradaemon fight front and center (because I wanted to feature a recognizable outsider "native" to Pathfinder, not exported from D&D, and one that we hadn't yet had Wayne paint—in both cases, the protean was covered already by both for the cover of the original Great Beyond, and an innevitable was a D&D export that I wasn't as eager to put on the cover), and set the image in Abaddon around a portal to Elysium, as two opposed outer planes (neutral good and neutral evil) that the iconics were defending.

The fact that it features an outsider and shows a magic portal front and center does the job, in my opinion, of selling this as a book about Planar Adventures.

Personally, I think Wayne knocked this one out of the park. :-)

(EDIT: It's certainly interesting, now that I think of it, that the covers for several of our recent hardcovers ALL take place on outer planes—Planar Adventures, Bestiary 6, Book of the Damned, and Horror Adventures.)

Fun Behind-the-Scenes fact: The original cover order for this was a few iconics fighting an astradaemon in the Boneyard, with Groetus looming in the background and the river of souls extending out into the distance... but then I realized we already did most of this cover for the cover of Horror Adventures (which takes place in the Boneyard—note the moon in the background!).

So I adjusted things—I kept the astradaemon fight front and center (because I wanted to feature a recognizable outsider "native" to Pathfinder, not exported from D&D, and one that we hadn't yet had Wayne paint—in both cases, the protean was covered already by both for the cover of the original Great Beyond, and an innevitable was a D&D export that I wasn't as eager to put on the cover), and set the image in Abaddon around a portal to Elysium, as two opposed outer planes (neutral good and neutral evil) that the iconics were defending.

Personally, I think Wayne knocked this one out of the park. :-)

Oh, don't get me wrong, It's a lovely cover, all my grousing aside, and I think Wayne always does a magnificent job. I guess we're all just antsy waiting for such a long anticipated book to finally come out. Any fun facts you feel like sharing about it to help ease the wait, Mr. Directosaur? ;)

Personally, I think Wayne knocked this one out of the park. :-)

Wayne knocked it out of the park on the original 'Great Beyond' cover and he's done the same here. I just now wish I wasn't back in school and had a job such that I could field an offer for the cover on this most recent one. :D

And it's really cool hearing about the evolution of the cover idea on this one!

Mr. Jacobs, how many "two pagers" are there among the monsters in this book's bestiary?

If you can't share that much, could you answer if there are dragons in it? What about true dragons?

Mr. Jacobs, how many "two pagers" are there among the monsters in this book's bestiary?

If you can't share that much, could you answer if there are dragons in it? What about true dragons?

9 two-pagers.

No true dragons, but there IS a dragon. A CR 21 dragon.

A CR21 dragon you say...interesting.

I think Dragon is waiting to see if it single. ;)

No, I would prefer a nice fey woman, settle down, and have fairy dragon children:)

While a new (non-true)dragon does interest me, I am still more interested in the CR30 non-outsider creature from mythology.

yeah, fey are cute, but they can't hold a candle to the totally ADORABLE mothers of monsters (Lamashtu, Yamasoth(?), and dear old Shub-Niggurath)

yeah, fey are cute, but they can't hold a candle to the totally ADORABLE mothers of monsters (Lamashtu, Yamasoth(?), and dear old Shub-Niggurath)

Then let me present my counter argument...

*Fires 9 parties of gerbies with rings of feather-fall at AmbassadoroftheDominion with a group of Trebuchets*

SUBMIT TO THE FRIENDSHIP AND BE SMOTHERED BY LOVE AND KINDNESS!!!!

*laughs like a madman.*

So...that's a CR 21 dragon then, Mister Jacobs eh?

I'm hoping that the CR 30 Creature is the Oniodaemon.
Dis they already reveal what it is and did I miss it?

I'm hoping that the CR 30 Creature is the Oniodaemon.

Dis they already reveal what it is and did I miss it?

They haven't. There's a thread somewhere with some folks' guesses, though. ^_^

Also, it's not an outsider, so it seems unlikely that it would be the Oinodaemon.

Also I'm pretty sure being chained up and eaten might lower his CR.. ;)

I might just let folks know about what the CR 30 critter is at PaizoCon, but not before.

Will you let us know if Aroden shows up at PaizoCon? ;) Also more seriously, is there a large section on planar magics in this book?

Will you let us know if Aroden shows up at PaizoCon? ;) Also more seriously, is there a large section on planar magics in this book?

Not really. There's about 6 or 8 pages of spells, and about the same for magic items, but that's about it. The bulk of the book is about the planes.

The Gold Sovereign wrote:

Mr. Jacobs, how many "two pagers" are there among the monsters in this book's bestiary?

9 two-pagers.

Would that be counting the three races that you already said would be two-pagers (i.e. the three races and six other monsters), or not counting them? (i.e. nine monsters excluding the three races we already knew were getting two pages)

The Gold Sovereign wrote:

Mr. Jacobs, how many "two pagers" are there among the monsters in this book's bestiary?

If you can't share that much, could you answer if there are dragons in it? What about true dragons?

9 two-pagers.

No true dragons, but there IS a dragon. A CR 21 dragon.

A CR 21 dragon in a book about the planes will surely be an interesting addition to the dragon type. *-*

Although anything above CR 20 is already interesting to me, as high CR usually comes for creatures with unique special abilities and flavor.

Is there a Kaiju in the book? =O

James Jacobs wrote:

The Gold Sovereign wrote:

Mr. Jacobs, how many "two pagers" are there among the monsters in this book's bestiary?

9 two-pagers.

Would that be counting the three races that you already said would be two-pagers (i.e. the three races and six other monsters), or not counting them? (i.e. nine monsters excluding the three races we already knew were getting two pages)

Yes. The three races are presented as two-page monsters.

Is there a Kaiju in the book? =O

Nope. Kaiju are pretty much Material Plane things.

Besides do we REALLY want a Demonically infused Kajiu running around the Abyss just so that people can try to kill it?

yes. yes we do, Thomas. (although we could just add fiendish, devilbound, and warped one to any of the previously existing kanji to make it happen)

I don't, I like my kaiju to be "home grown" on the material plane.