OPC Log—31 Lamashan 4716

Monday, October 31, 2016

A few blogs ago, I mentioned some upcoming plans for Extra Life Charity involving Pathfinder Society. Well, we went a little bigger than originally planned! This Saturday, November 5th, Paizo will be teaming up with Dead Gentlemen/Zombie Orpheous Entertainment as Team Zodgepodge to participate in Extra Life's Game Day 2016. Streaming live from Zulu's Board Game Café in Bothell, three Pazionians and three ZOEs will face a tag-team of 5-Star Pathfinder Society GMs out to cause mayhem and madness.

Why Extra Life? According to their website, "Extra Life unites thousands of players around the world in a 24 hour gaming marathon to support Children's Miracle Network (CMN) Hospitals. Since its inception in 2008, Extra Life has raised more than $22 million for local CMN Hospitals." Each of us involved has a reason for wanting to support the Extra Life organization. Check out our Extra Life pages for our stories. But in the end, we get to play games, have fun, and support kids. What could be better?

Under the guidance of Jennifer Hilmo and her team of techs, our six stalwart players face trials and tribulations in a custom adventure by Daniel Ward. Set in the world of Journey Quest & The Gamers, the adventure utilizes Pathfinder Roleplaying Game rules. The live feed event starts Saturday, November 5th, at 8:00 AM Pacific Time and runs until 8:00 PM Pacific time. The stream will be available on Technician Thyssyk's Twitch channel.

Playing for Paizo are Lead Designer Jason Bulmahn, Pathfinder Society Lead Developer John Compton, and Developer Amanda Hamon-Kunz. From the ZOE side are Andy Dopieralski, Brian S. Lewis, and Matt Vancil. These six stalwarts must survive shenanigans by GMs Dustin Campbell, Gabe Dalrymple-Smith, and Venture-Lieutenant Louis Manko Levite.

But, there is a twist! There is always a twist! Log onto the Team Zodgepodge Extra Life page, select a team member, make a donation, and choose a way to mix it up in the world. Want to add some bonuses? Take away some modifiers? Make them reroll their save? Again? And Again? And Again? You can do that. The power is in the viewer's hands!

If you want to make life more interesting for our players, consider donating to our GMs for increased pandemonium! Donations direct to players will assist them in game. After the first $100 in donations, the players unlock a companion to journey with them. Make a donation of $20 to Jason Buhlman and he will play a character of the donor's creation. So bring on the crazy, the zany, and the kooky and watch our lead designer breathe life into them. Enjoyed a campaign setting? Donate to Amanda and give her a bonus power from one of the books she brought to life! Are you a fan of the increased social encounter in Pathfinder Society? Donate to John and help him succeed at the skill based challenges! Stumped for ideas? Check out Technician Thyssyk's Twitch channel for a list of possibilities.

From the main Team Page, you can click on the Roster title and get to any team member page. Click the donate button and follow the steps. Use the comment section of the donation to note the effect you wish your donation to have on the game, if any. The donations go straight to Extra Life—they get 100% of monies raised—and are potentially tax-deductible (talk to your tax advisor).

Zulu's Board Game Café, our hosts for the event, are staying open 24 hours in support of Extra Life. Besides the streamed game, they have space for anyone wishing to come out and play. Come join us with your favorite game or borrow one of theirs!

But Team Zodgepodge isn’t the only Pathfinder participation in Extra Life. This Friday, I travel to Spokane, Washignton, to participate in their Extra Life II convention. I’m running the retired adventure "Eye of the Crocodile King" as a charity game. We are raffling seats at the table, so if you are in Spokane consider stopping by! If you can’t make it to Spokane, but want me to spice things up a bit for the players, donate to my Extra Life page and I’ll give the characters a run for their money!

Other Extra Life events are going on as well! In Boise, Venture-Captain Ebee Roper is helming Extra Life 24 Hr Gaming. Last weekend, Cary, NC, played host to Extra Life 3: Revenge of the GM. In addition, many of our players are participating in other events or direct from their homes via online games. Where are you playing this weekend?

To all players supporting Extra Life, I thank you for your generosity.

Until next week—Explore, Report, Cooperate!

Tonya Woldridge
Organized Play Coordinator

Wild Things

Friday, October 28, 2016

Illustration by Mark Molnar

Last week we took a look at some magical foes from the pages of the upcoming Villain Codex, with an in-depth look at the Arcane Society. This week we're headed into the wilderness to explore some of the villains who operate on the fringes of society!

Nature's Scourge

No villain group embodies the wild as much as Nature's Scourge, a group founded by a druid known as the Blight Caller. I'll let the Renewer (their PR expert) explain it to you:

"Civilization claims to value progress, but it inevitably seeks stagnation. Its people take their coins to the market and buy what they have no incentive to learn how to provide for themselves. Farmers and hunters rely the least on civilization, but they enable others to survive who would starve if left to their own devices. Artisans churn out hundreds of similar items, ready for those who could never replicate their work to acquire in seconds. Worst of all are the ones who wield the most power in civilization. I cannot imagine a more pathetic creature than a noble, swaddled in silk and gold, forcing others to attend to their every need like grotesquely oversized babies. Stagnation is not natural. A forest knows that it must sometimes burn to clear the debris on its floor and make way for new seeds. If civilization insists upon clinging to its detritus, then we will be the fire, and we will nurture new seeds in our wake. Always seek to learn, grow, and move forward. We are not immune to stagnation, and we will cleanse it from our own ranks when we must."

Today we're going to take a look at the Blig... One moment please, technical difficulties!

OK, Nature's Scourge author Linda Zayas-Palmer has agreed to release me from the entangle spell in exchange for previewing the Blight Caller's trusted ally, the leshy known as the Wrathbringer.

Wrathbinger

The Blight Caller channeled a dying nature spirit into a patch of mushrooms to bring this fungus leshy to life.

Wrathbringer CR 8

XP 4,800

Fungus leshy skald 7 (Pathfinder RPG Advanced Class Guide 49, Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 3 177)

NE Small plant (leshy, shapechanger)

Init +2; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Perception +13

Defense

AC 19, touch 12, flat-footed 17 (+7 armor, +2 Dex, -1 rage, +1 size)

hp 110 (9d8+70); fast healing 2

Fort +15, Ref +6, Will +8; +4 vs. bardic performance, language-dependent, and sonic, -1 vs. anger or rage

Defensive Abilities ferocity, uncanny dodge; Immune electricity, sonic, plant traits

Offense

Speed 50 ft. (45 ft. in armor)

Melee bite +14 (2d6+7), 2 claws +14 (1d3+7)

Ranged puffball +10 (1 plus spores)

Special Attacks rage powers (atavistic totem†, lesser atavistic totem†), raging song 17 rounds/day (inspired rage, song of marching, song of strength), spell kenning 1/day, spores

Spell-Like Abilities (CL 4th; concentration +8)

Constant—pass without trace

Skald Spells Known (CL 7th; concentration +11)

3rd (2/day)—good hope, haste

2nd (4/day)—cure moderate wounds, gallant inspiration^APG (DC 16), glitterdust (DC 16), heroism

1st (5/day)—comprehend languages, expeditious retreat, hideous laughter (DC 15), remove fear, saving finale^APG

0 (at will)—dancing lights, know direction, mage hand, message, prestidigitation, summon instrument

Tactics

Illustration by Yan Kyohara

Before Combat The Wrathbringer casts good hope and expeditious retreat.

During Combat The Wrathbringer casts haste, uses raging song to inspire an atavistic fury in his allies, and then enters melee. He uses gallant inspiration and saving finale when his allies need assistance.

Base Statistics When the Wrathbringer is not using his inspired rage and isn't under the effects of expeditious retreat and good hope, his statistics are AC 20, touch 13, flat-footed 18 (+7 armor, +2 Dex, +1 size); hp 101 (8d8+61); no fast healing; Fort +12, Ref +4, Will +8; Speed 15 ft.; Melee bite +11 (1d8+4), 2 claws +11 (1d3+4); Str 18, Con 20; CMB +9; Skills Acrobatics +5 (+1 to jump), others all 2 lower.

Statistics

Str 20, Dex 15, Con 22, Int 9, Wis 12, Cha 18

Base Atk +6; CMB +10; CMD 21

Feats Blind-Fight, Improved Natural Attack (bite), Nature's Wrath†, Scribe Scroll, Skald's Vigor^ACG, Toughness

Skills Acrobatics +7 (+11 to jump), Perception +13, Perform (oratory) +12, Perform (percussion) +19, Stealth +9 (+13 in swamps and underground), Survival +4 (+8 in swamps and underground); Racial Modifiers +4 Stealth and Survival in swamps and underground

Languages Druidic, Sylvan; plantspeech (fungi)

SQ bardic knowledge +3, change shape (Small fungus; tree shape), lore master 1/day, rage powers, verdant burst, versatile performances (oratory, percussion)

Gear +1 black dragonhide breastplate, belt of giant strength +2, fungal slippers†, mwk drums

The Blight Caller created the Wrathbringer several years ago. The unusual circumstances of this leshy's creation ritual imbued it with emotions that plant creatures can normally never experience. Centuries before the Blightcaller created him, a powerful druid bound the leshy's spirit to a sacred grove of fungi. By the time the Blightcaller arrived in the grove, the delicate fungi were dying, poisoned by waste that nearby settlements had dumped into the water. The Blightcaller managed to draw the leshy's spirit into a body before it died with the grove, but doing so required him to give a small piece of his own spirit as well. This sacrifice formed a connection between the druid and the leshy and imbued the leshy with the rage against civilization that burned so strongly in the druid's heart.

The Wrathbringer is surly and quick to anger. However, it is a dependable ally. The Blight Caller trusts it more than any other member of nature's scourge and has given it several valuable gifts, including a breastplate made from the hide of the same dragon as his own armor and a pair of slippers made from the magically preserved remnants of the leshy's former grove.

Oh my, what are Nature's Wrath and fungal slippers? Will either of those explain how this plant is benefiting from raging song?

Merry Outlaws

Some villains aren't evil, and at least according to the locals, the Merry Outlaws might be full-on good guys. They rob from the wealthy and are known to distribute wealth to the poor and downtrodden. But there are others, those on whom the Merry Outlaws have preyed, who claim that there are two sides to every tale. What is the truth about this Robin Hood-style bands of miscreants? What will the PCs decide to do if confronted with such a group? These questions make the Merry Outlaws perfect for a nuanced adventure with shades of grey.

Ruthless Brigands

The ruthless brigands are mercenaries, pure and simple. If you pay them, they might even defend your city from the savage marauders or protect your carriage from the Merry Outlaws, but their loyalty follows the coin. That's not to say they're all evil, in fact, the reluctant witty jury-rigger shown here is good-aligned, yearning for the old days when they would fight for noble causes and increasingly regretting his life decisions.

Savage Marauders

The savage marauders are a marauding barbarian tribe who pillage the soft civilized folk, kill or capture the adults, and indoctrinating the children to join the tribe. This gives them a slightly more multicultural make-up than other barbarian tribes. Everyone in the tribe must prove her strength (in fact, the Fiend-Born Rager may some day grow to challenge the Crimson Lord should he show any signs of weakness), so that badass marauder down there with the earthbreaker and the icicle fingers? Yeah, she's actually a sorcerer!

Scandalous Pirates

Not everywhere in the wilderness is on land, and the scandalous pirates are a scourge upon the seas. They're organized with several captains all under the auspices of the Vile Admiral, which allows you to use them as a squabbling but vaguely cohesive group or as individual pirates (if, say, you needed an extra captain quickly in a Skull and Shackles game).

Illustrations by Anastasia Ovchinnikova, Gintas Galvanauskas, and Shen Fei

Stay tuned next week as we return to civilized society and expose the villains who make their homes in plain sight!

Mark Seifter
Designer

"We told Valeros that he was only allowed to take one full-size Snickers bar, but noooo…he just had to take two."
Illustration by Ian Perks

More Spooky Adventures!

Monday, October 24, 2016

Halloween approaches, and as I mentioned earlier this week, the Pathfinder Society team geared up to deliver some spooky adventures in this month's scenarios—both of which went live yesterday. Hopefully these provide you ample Halloween weekend material, but in case a pair of "fun sized" adventures isn't enough, we've also finished sanctioning Pathfinder Module: Gallows of Madness!

You can find the sanctioning documents download on the module's product page. Explore, Report, and Get Lots of Treats!

John Compton
Pathfinder Society Lead Developer

Faces of Korvosa

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Now that the hardcover edition of Curse of the Crimson Throne is out, countless groups of adventures are going to have the chance to meet the vast cast of NPCs featured in this campaign. The images in this blog post serve to highlight several, but not all, of the individuals you will be encountering or at least hearing a bout during the Adventure Path. For the player, consider the following information as common knowledge to anyone who's spent a few years living in Korvosa, while for the GM, the accompanying illustrations are great play aids to show during the game when the PCs are interacting with the NPC in question!

Those familiar with Curse of the Crimson Throne will doubtless note that certain key and important NPCs are missing from the following list, and that others might not have a significant role to play at all in the adventure—remember, this is a list of notable faces of Korvosa, and NPCs who only rise to prominence or arrive in the city after the campaign begins simply aren't logical choices to include here. Also, the presence of a few famous Korvosans on this list who don't play significant roles in the campaign should help to obscure for the new player exactly which NPCs have significant roles and are destined to play key parts! And of course, many of the NPCs presented below have secrets, hidden agendas, or surprises in store. In order to solve these mysteries, though, you'll need to play the game! (Or in the case of the GM, read the book—if you're having trouble finding an NPC in the text, don't forget the index of primary NPCs that appears on pages 438-439 of the book!)

King Eodred Arabasti II, ruler of Korvosa, is rumored to be in ill health.	Queen Ileosa Arabasti's popularity in Korvosa among the commonfolk has never been strong—many see her as a petulant spoiled young woman.	Ausio Carowyn is one of Korvosa's many nobles—an aristocracy increasingly out of touch with the commonfolk.
Boule is a successful businessman, but has long been rumored to be the leader of Korvosa's thieves' guild, the Cerulean Society.	Captain Cressida Kroft is the leader of the Korvosan Guard.	Archbanker Darb Tuttle is the leader of the faith of Abadar in Korvosa.
Darvayne Gios Amprei is one of many Chelish ambassadors who dwell in the city.	High priestess of the Cathedral of Pharasma, mysterious Keppira d'Bear is one of Korvosa's most powerful clerics.	Marcus Endrin is the leader of the Sable Company—Korvosa's elite hippogriff-mounted defenders.
Ruan Mirukova is a talented musician who finds his skills in rising demand for aristocratic galas.	Thousand Bones is a Shoanti shaman who has recently become a spokesperson for his people in Korvosa.	Toff Ornelos is the headmaster of Korvosa's world-renowned magical university, the Acadamae.
Trinia Sabor is a young but talented artist who's recent commission to paint the king's portrait has brought her increased fame.	Zellara Esmeranda is a talented Varisian fortune teller.	Arbiter Zenobia Zenderholm, known locally as the “Hanging Judge,” is well known among Korvosa's citizens for her harsh stance on criminal activity.

Illustrations by Kremena Chipilova, Julie Dillion, Andrew Hou, Irina Kuzmina, Nikolai Ostertag, and Imaginary Friends Studios

James Jacobs
Creative Director

Worldscape Workbook—The Fish that Got Away

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Pathfinder Worldscape #1, my new sword & sorcery supergroup crossover comic from Dynamite, is on newsstands and is shipping to paizo.com customers NOW! Early reviews are pouring in for the issue, and I've been thrilled by the initial response. Most readers seem to be digging the "fish out of water" story I've been building as our intrepid iconic heroes meet the likes of Red Sonja, John Carter of Mars, and Tarzan, and as the first issue shows, those meetings aren't always going to go down the way you might expect them to.

Each issue of Pathfinder Worldscape contains a short RPG appendix that translates some of Dynamite's heroes, races, equipment, and worlds to the official Pathfinder rules, and while writing comic stories featuring all of these amazing characters has been a wonderful and challenging experience, writing up their game statistics has, to me, often seemed even more wonderful—and definitely more challenging.

The biggest challenge, truth be told, is in fitting everything I want to say into the relatively short appendices. When you're suddenly unleashed on the world of Barsoom, for example, there's an awful lot to say, and not a ton of space to say it. For example, Pathfinder Worldscape #2, which releases three short weeks from now, was initially to include stats for the green Martians of Barsoom, stats for the most famous green Martian of all—John Carter's best friend Tars Tarkas—and stats for a new "warlord" archetype that will be used by both Carter and Tars as a way to model the "no-armor" fighting styles of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Mars books. All that plus a poster map and some ideas for how to use it in a Pathfinder game.

As it turns out, I only ended up having room for the green Martian rules in #2, plus some rules for radium rifles and pistols. Full stats for Tars Tarkas, as well as the warlord archetype necessary to stat him (and John Carter) up, will come in future issues.

But my space-bursting woes did not start with issue #2. I ran into similar trouble with Pathfinder Worldscape #1, and I thought it might be fun to use this week's Worldscape Workbook to take a peek at some Pathfinder rules that might have been.

I've already spent a lot of space in this column ballyhooing writer Gail Simone's 2013 "relaunch" of Red Sonja for a Dynamite arc entitiled "Queen of Plagues." I relied on Simone's characterization of Sonja for my take on the character in Pathfinder Worldscape, and I probably read the six-issue arc a half-dozen times during my preparation for the series.

Beside the great take on Red Sonja, which really does a lot to restore agency to the character's origin and remove some of the elements that might have made sense in the early 1970s but which seem regressive by today's standards, one of my favorite elements of the Queen of Plagues storyline were the weird fish-people used by Red Sonja nemesis.

Generally speaking, Red Sonja's world is more "mundane" than that of the Pathfinder world. Based as it is on Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age, the home of Conan the Barbarian, Sonja's setting is one of ancient human kingdoms, the occasional giant here and there, and maybe a serpent man lurking in the shadows. It's not—again generally speaking, because different writers and artists bring different approaches to each story—the sort of place where you wander into a tavern to find orcs rubbing shoulders with halflings, dwarves, and elves. When a genuine "monster" appears, it's generally a sign that something very unique and special is happening.

The fish-men of that first Dynamite reboot arc are—aside from some psychic ghosts—pretty much the only monsters in the bunch, and they stick out in a very good way. We see several images of the creatures, usually in crowd or battle scenes, and what we see is intriguing. Simone's fish-men, drawn by artist Walter Giovanni, echo the vast diversity of the oceans themselves. Some have heads like hammerhead sharks. Others have beards of octopus tentacles, or are encrusted with coral. Some loom large and powerful, others sqat and blubbery. All of them look interesting, and they also look like nothing I've ever quite seen in Pathfinder before.

So I wanted to include them from the very start. The red sea-creature Kelgeth, from the opening scene of Pathfinder Worldscape #1 in which Valeros finds himself on the Worldscape, belongs to this race. I included him in this early scene in part to show the diversity of the Worldscape as a unique representative of Sonja's Hyborian Age, but also because I thought his appearance would be a good anchor for a cool new Pathfinder race in the back of the issue.

That presented an interesting challenge that speaks to the difference between writing a comic and writing a gaming supplement. Although Gail Simone put a ton of cool characterization into snippets of dialog, and Giovanni's art made the creatures unique and interesting, none of Simone's scripts actually gives a formal name for the creatures. They're called "fish-men" a few times, but it's unclear if that's supposed to be the name of the race or if it's just something people call them dismissively. From a Pathfinder perspective, we generally like to avoid gendered pronouns in race names (we use "lizardfolk," not "lizard-men"), so even if that was supposed to be their name, it didn't really work for me. I started calling them "sea-spawn," and the name stuck in my head.

I imagined a Pathfinder Worldscape #1 appendix filled with options for your sea-spawn character. Want a big strong guy? You can! Want someone with a tentacle grab attack? Ok! Just choose from this list of options and build your very own unique sea creature, perfect for any campaign.

It never lasted more than a couple of days. Once I began laying down Red Sonja's sword-devil archetype and her stat block itself, it quickly became clear that I wouldn't have space to stat up the full sea-spawn race. Maybe I'll find time in a future issue, or maybe in some other future Worldscape project.

Until then, keep your eyes on the sea. You never know what might come out!

If you have not already done so, please consider picking up a copy of Pathfinder Worldscape #1 at your local comic shop or right here on Paizo.com! Or, to make sure you never miss a single Pathfinder comic you can set up a Pathfinder Comics ongoing subscription!

I'll be back next week for another Worldscape Workbook, where I'll talk about the game goodies to come in Pathfinder Worldscape #2! Until then, please let me know what you thought of the first issue of the comic, and if there's anything from the Worldscape you'd like me to make sure to make room for before I run out of RPG appendix pages!

Until then, I remain...

Erik Mona
Publisher

How to Summon the Party—Summoner Class Deck Preview

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Need someone to find out if that door is trapped? Go tackle that sorcerer? Carry you quickly to town? Chill your wine? Whether you need a demon, elemental, phantom steed, or trusty eidolon, the summoner knows that every problem just requires the right selection of summon to solve. Some parties quibble over who heals, who melees, who deals with traps. The Summoner Class Deck shows that the Summoner is the party.

Everyone's favorite Hatmancer and Battlechicken.

First up, let's look at our returning champions, Balazar and Padrig. Balazar uses the classic "-mancer" toolkit, scooping up monsters he defeats to use later. This iteration of Balazar is very friendly to anyone at his location (including himself). He can freely cycle his spells for monsters or monsters for spells, letting him cast his best spells for effect and keep his hand moving along.

Wolf beats chicken. Every time.

Alase and Tonbarse hail from the Worldwound, having been introduced in the novel Pathfinder Tales: King of Chaos by Dave Gross. As a Sarkoris God Caller, Alase believes her eidolon is a god. She has little interest in other summons and monster cards, instead focusing her spells as prayers to enhance Tonbarse. Tonbarse roams from location to location, and wherever he is, Alase can assist from afar.

Shh. Zetha will let you know when you can be useful.

Our last Summoner is inspired by the Shadow Caller archetype from the Advanced Race Guide. Zetha is a fetchling, the daughter of a sorcerer trapped on the Shadow Plane. Her eidolon is her own shadow sent forth to do her bidding. Zetha summons a steady supply of shadows each turn, allowing her to stealth her way past many a barrier or check to acquire. Of the summoners, Zetha is the most self-reliant (and least helpful), and she likes it just fine that way.

This class deck is also full of boons that might be useful to a summoner, including many new spells. Because none of the summoners rely on Attack spells, we loaded the class deck with utility spells, including lots of movement, evasion, and ways to add to combat checks.

Summoners don't need to keep watch at night. Or walk. Or bring bug repellent.

We also created a new cycle of allies, bound to the will of the summoner by power rather than kindness. If you can't back up your request with magical oomph, they are more costly than your normal allies, but if you've got the juice, they're oh, so sweet. In a pinch, Balazar and Zetha can also treat them as monster cards for added versatility.

So much power. Such a small price.

Summoners are some of the most crazy, fun, and versatile casters in the RPG, and I hope you'll find them equally crazy, fun, and versatile in the Summoner Class Deck.

Keith Richmond
Adventure Card Game Designer

No Trick, But a Serious Treat!

Monday, October 24, 2016

October scenarios always present an interesting challenge because they coincide so well with Halloween yet are also early enough in the season that I'm itching to develop the yearlong metaplot further. In the past we've had some creepy October adventures like Hall of the Flesh Eaters and To Judge a Soul, Part 2: Karma Reclaimed, but we've never had one with explicit Halloween imagery. This time, I carved out a piece of the Season 8 schedule like a chunk of pumpkin flesh from a cheerful jack-o'-lantern, tentatively naming the adventure "No seriously, Halloween." Linda and I didn't know quite what the plot would be until we combined it with another concept that had been percolating in our collection of madcap ideas. Then it all came together so beautifully that Linda couldn't resist writing Pathfinder Society Scenario #8-06: Reaping What We Sow herself. If we follow the jack-o'-lantern analogy, Linda is the candle—so often a cheerful source of light and warmth. From within the haunted depths of a jack-o'-lantern fortress, however, her creative energies shine with a truly sinister radiance. In this Tier 1-5 adventure, the PCs travel to a small town in northern Galt on a mission of peace and redemption, yet it can so quickly become a tragedy of blood and tears. Come for the Shelynite pumpkin-carving festival! Stay for the legacy of vengeance and terror (with notes so a GM can lighten the mood or play up the horror as befits the audience)!

Illustration by Marko Horvatin

In the office, we keep track of our long project queue with notecards. Early in the writing process for #8-06, Linda took a few artistic liberties with the scenario's project card, which I have photographed and spoilered below.

#8-06 Spoilers!

Illustration by Giorgio Baroni

The concept of an evergreen 1st-level adventure dates back to the First Steps adventures, and with The Confirmation in Season 5, it turned into something of a yearly tradition to release another evergreen adventure near the end of the calendar year. This has worked really well, providing players of all experience levels an infinitely replayable scenario designed to let the GM change several components to enhance the experience. This year, we made two big changes before we reached out to Andrew Hoskins to write the next evergreen adventure. First, we've changed the level, as Pathfinder Society Scenario #8-07: From the Tome of Righteous Repose is a Tier 3-7 scenario replayable for all of those levels. This helps address one of the big concerns that there are lots of low-level adventures—not that that's a bad thing—yet comparably fewer adventures that help a PC travel beyond the Tier 1-5 range.

Because we expect #8-07 will see a lot of play, we also aimed to increase the replayability beyond that of its evergreen predecessors by varying not only the creatures involved but also the location and the plot itself. The adventure allows the PCs to travel to three different locations and face off against one of four Major Threats, each of which has an assortment of possible Linked Threats (i.e. lieutenants and favored minions). On top of that, there are sundry additional monsters, traps, and hazards that a GM can use to populate the dungeons, each of which varies depending on whether the site appears in Lastwall, Ustalav, or the Hold of Belkzen. Don't fret though, as GMs just need to prepare what they plan to run, not every option. With Andrew Hoskins' writing, Linda's development work, and the guidance of our newest in-world venture-captain Shevar Besnik, you're in for many great adventures to come.

John Compton
Pathfinder Society Lead Developer

Villains Everywhere!

Friday, October 21, 2016

Pathfinder RPG: Villain Codex is double-dealing, backstabbing, and betraying its way into your hands next month! The book contains 20 different villainous organizations, and we're going to reveal five of those organizations each week, with themes of mystical villains, wilderness villains, civilized villains, and enigmatic villains.

Arcane Society

Our focus group this week is the Arcane Society. This group seems to be a benevolent multinational mage's guild, led by the beloved philanthropist known as the Eminent Spellqueen. Of course, things aren't always what they seem...

Illustration by Nemanja Stankovic
"Sweet Shelyn, what is going on there!?"

The Eminent Spellqueen's protective wards have prevented us from revealing more of her dark personal secrets here in this blog, but we managed to get the scoop on her equally-powerful right hand, the grand caller. The information bellows includes a slightly alternate set of prepared spells and additional facts to enhance the grand caller in your game!

Grand Caller

The Grand Caller is mentally insatiable but physically lazy, preferring the use of minions to perform his tasks. He provides extraplanar minions for the arcane society, including a marilith with whom he has a dangerous relationship.

Grand Caller CR 14

XP 38,400

Human conjurer (teleportation^APG) 15

CE Medium humanoid (human)

Init +10; Senses all-around vision, darkvision 60 ft., true seeing, Perception +16

Defense

AC 22, touch 13, flat-footed 19 (+4 armor, +1 deflection, +2 Dex, +1 natural, +4 shield)

hp 171 (15d6+116)

Fort +17, Ref +15, Will +18; +4 vs. mind-affecting

Defensive Abilities contingency (teleport), death ward, fickle winds, freedom of movement, getaway; Immune dimensional anchor, fear

Offense

Speed 30 ft., fly 40 ft. (good)

Melee mwk dagger +11/+6 (1d4-1/19-20)

Wizard Spells Prepared (CL 15th; concentration +23)

8th—maze, mind blank, moment of prescience

7th—greater teleport, mage's magnificent mansion, project image, summon monster VII

6th—getaway^APG, greater dispel magic, greater heroism, quickened dazing aqueous orb^APG (DC 24), true seeing

5th—dazing persistent aqueous orb^APG (DC 24), fickle winds, magic jar (DC 23), overland flight, summon monster V (2)

4th—dimension door, dimensional anchor, enervation, greater false lifeUM, summon monster IV, telekinetic charge^UC

3rd—countless eyes^UM, daylight, fly, haste, heroism, invisibility sphere, stinking cloud (DC 23)

2nd—bear's endurance, command undead (DC 20), darkvision, glitterdust (DC 22), invisibility, mirror image, resist energy

1st—comprehend languages, grease (DC 21), mage armor, protection from evil, protection from good, shield, unseen servant

0 (at will)—detect magic, ghost sound, mage hand, prestidigitation

Opposition Schools evocation

Illustration by Nemanja Stankovic

Tactics

Before Combat On a previous day, the grand caller set a contingency to teleport to a safe house whenever someone tries to attack him. He casts mind blank, getaway, moment of prescience, greater false life, mage armor, overland flight, countless eyes, darkvision, true seeing, fickle winds, greater heroism, bear's endurance, and shield and uses his scrolls of freedom of movement, death ward, and spell immunity (choosing dimensional anchor).

During Combat The grand caller summons appropriate minions for the situation to bolster those he has already called or created. He uses shift to keep mobile, dazing aqueous orb to control the battlefield, and telekinetic charge to help his marilith ally achieve full attacks.

Morale The grand caller rarely exposes his true self to danger, preferring to use spells like magic jar to control other bodies when he must be personally present. He flees whenever in true danger but fights to the death in a disposable body.

Base Statistics Without his spells, profane gift, and familiar, the grand caller's statistics are Senses no all-around vision, darkvision, or true seeing; AC 14, touch 13, flat-footed 11; hp 100 (15d6+45); Fort +11, Ref +11, Will +14; Speed no fly speed; Defensive Abilities no defensive abilities; Immune no immunities; Melee mwk dagger +7/+2 (1d4-1/19-20); Con 14, Int 24; CMB +6; Skills all 4 lower, Fly +5.

Statistics

Str 8, Dex 15, Con 18, Int 26, Wis 12, Cha 10

Base Atk +7; CMB +10; CMD 19

Feats Augment Summoning, Dazing Spell^APG, Dimensional Agility^UC, Greater Spell Focus (conjuration), Improved Initiative, Opposition Research^UM (necromancy), Persistent Spell^APG, Quicken Spell, Scribe Scroll, Spell Focus (conjuration), Spell Perfection^APG (aqueous orb), Superior Summoning^UM, True Name^UM (marilith)

Skills Bluff +22, Diplomacy +22, Fly +20, Intimidate +21, Knowledge (arcana) +27, Knowledge (history) +27, Knowledge (planes) +27, Perception +20, Sense Motive +20, Spellcraft +27, Use Magic Device +22

Languages Abyssal, Aquan, Celestial, Common, Infernal, Terran

SQ arcane bond (familiar, compsognathus), shift (11/day, 35 ft.)

Combat Gear reach metamagic rod (lesser)^APG, scroll of death ward, scroll of freedom of movement, scroll of spell immunity; Other Gear mwk dagger, amulet of natural armor +1, belt of incredible dexterity +2, circlet of persuasion, cloak of resistance +4, headband of vast intelligence +4, ring of protection +1, statuette for contingency, 282 gp

The grand caller is the Spellqueen's trusted right hand, an arrogant and paranoid man who acts like a chessmaster with the world as a board, manipulating or forcing others into acting as his pieces. He has numerous countermeasures in place, from a clone spell to a contingency escape plan, and he generally has several outsider allies called by greater planar binding at any given time. The grand caller has a bizarre relationship with the marilith whose true name he holds. In contrast to the normal hatred in such a situation, she is unusually fond of him, but she resents his loyalty to the Spellqueen. The marilith has granted him a profane gift from one of her succubus minions, and she hopes this will help corrode his ties with the Spellqueen. In a serious fight, the marilith will always be at the grand caller's side, but he doesn't use her frivolously as he does his lesser minions.

Death Cult

The death cult of Urgathoa, and its leader the Reaper, believes that death is the ultimate form of equality and an end to suffering in a world full of oppression. While they do want to spread killer plagues, they're equal-opportunity employers, even if you opposed them before you died. In fact, one of the Reaper's most trusted advisors was once an adventurer who helped kill the Reaper.

Demon Knights

The demon knights are a military force of pure destruction, each modeling themselves after a particular type of demon. For instance, their general is the mighty Merciless Balor, an antipaladin who fights with a blade and a flaming whip. While their training techniques generally kill their new recruits, the fallen recruits provide not only a good example for the others but also a nourishing meal.

Brutal Slavers

The brutal slavers are double-dealing and sadistic scoundrels, led by the silver-tongued slave master, who works as a lobbyist in favor of slavery in general and his own organization in particular, and the horrifying experimenter, who uses slaves as living test subjects with the goal of mastering the secrets of fleshwarping to create a more powerful version of mongrelmen with the strengths of every humanoid race. Someone needs to be around to tend to injuries that would prevent the slaves from performing labor for the slavers or selling well on the open market, so of course the slavers brought in a sadistic cleric of Zon Kuthon because that can't go wrong.

Diabolical Church

In a town suffering upheaval and tragedy, who wouldn't be happy to see a new lawful church enter town and donate their spellcasting services for free, healing the sick, fighting off marauding monsters, and helping build infrastructure? Never mind who secretly started that upheaval, the point is that the church of Asmodeus is just misunderstood. Surely nothing can go wrong if you accept your new protectors, and it's not like those favors you've started to owe them are going to amount to anything important...

Illustrations by Jose Parodi, Damien Mammoliti, Matt Forsyth, and Kent Hamilton

Stay tuned next week for a taste of wilderness villains!

Mark Seifter
Designer

New Adventures Against the Crimson Throne, Part 2

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Last week, I started running down my favorite new additions to the hardcover edition of Curse of the Crimson Throne—and this week I'll be doing more of the same! This time, I look at some of my favorite new additions to the campaign that appear in the final two chapters of the Adventure Path, as well as explore the contents of the extensive appendix that rounds out the book.

Chapter 5: Skeletons of Scarwall

Filling Up Scarwall

Scarwally is one of the largest dungeon crawls to ever appear in a Pathfinder Adventure Path. So large, in fact, that in its original incarnation I ended up having to cut several encounters and replace them with generic and uninteresting storerooms and kitchens and the like. When I started developing the text for the hardcover version, I went back to Greg's original turnover and found all sorts of old encounters that got cut for space. And so of COURSE I put them back in! Now, the saga of the undead orc chieftain Ukwar is there for your PCs to unravel, along with several other restored encounters. But even putting all of those encounters back in didn't do the trick; there were still empty rooms! And so I made up several brand-new encounters to spice things up even more, including a new category of haunt called a phantasm. I'm eager to see how folks react to phantasms, since they exist primarily to both fill in backstory and provide hints to solve the castle haunting, but also to mess with the players themselves, so they never no exactly what's going on. Phantasms generally ask that the GM have a specific player roll a skill check or saving throw or other die roll, but then advice the GM to make a show of noting the result without saying why. Other phantasms cause a PC to experience a vision that other PCs don't, but suggest the GM impart this information individual to players so the players themselves don't have the benefit of knowing the full picture of what's going on. It's a pretty meta way to handle haunts, and should help to infuse Scarwall with a sense of dread that will put even the most hardened players on edge.

As an example, here's a sample phantasm taken directly from the text:

Phantasm: The first PC who moves to investigate the strip of cloth must attempt a Will save. When you know the result, write it down and tell the player (regardless of the result) that his character feels a sudden panic at being caught in the arrow slit while trying to escape a murderous orc that's right behind him! Of course, there is no orc, and the Will save has no significance beyond being an attempt to unsettle the players.

(This particular phantasm is a haunt left behind by a castle servant who was indeed chased by an orc; when the servant tried to escape by squeezing throw an arrow slit, he got stuck and then murdered by the orc. In this way, the phantasm gives the players a brief glimpse into one of the numerous atrocities that occurred in Scarwall in the past, but also tinkers with their sense of safety and comfort by having a player roll a Will save that has no obvious immediate result.)

As noted early in the chapter, not all tables will be entertained by phantasms, and in fact I suspect some players will be more frustrated than entertained by them—and as such, you should feel free to omit them from your game if you see players reacting with frustration at their inclusion. They're meant to add to Scarwall's overall sense of haunting menace, but removing them won't cripple the plot at all.

Chapter 6: Crown of Fangs

Bolstering the Opposition

Unlike Castle Scarwall, Castle Korvosa was fully detailed in its original publication. It helped, of course, that Castle Korvosa wasn't intended to be a hyper-detailed dungeon crawl, but an active and occupied castle meant for several swift strikes rather than meticulous exploration. There's not a lot of new content in Castle Korvosa, as a result, but in the last part of the adventure I did add a few brand new encounters, both to mix things up a bit and to give Queen Ileosa more allies to call upon if things go bad. Among these additional threats in the Sunken Queen are two entities that have eldritch links to Runelord Sorshen—a scarlet walker (an extraplanar menace first detailed in the Anniversary Edition of Rise of the Runelords) and an immortal ichor that formed not from a god's blood but of seepage from the Everdawn Pool. And of course, there's one more monster at Ileosa's side in the final encounter!

Appendix

We've seven appendices in this book, each of which is intended to help the GM run her Crimson Throne game, or to expand it beyond the scope of the adventures as written.

Appendix 1: Continuing the Campaign

This short appendix suggests seven additional plots that can be expanded by you, the GM, to continue your Crimson Throne game, including one variant that sees Ileosa come back as a vampire! (And yes, of course we gave you art of vampire Ileosa!)

Appendix 2: Korvosa and Beyond

The adventures themselves present all the information about Korvosa you'll need to run encounters key to Crimson Throne's plot, but as in any urban game, your PCs will wander. This appendix presents a detailed gazetteer of Korvosa as it exists under Ileosa's rule, and serves as an expansion to the original Guide to Korvosa we published long ago. While owning that book will certainly help you run a Crimson Throne campaign, I strived to include enough information in this appendix that it's not necessary. In addition to all sorts of adventure hooks and location descriptions for the city, this appendix presents multiple city stat blocks for Korvosa as it undergoes numerous changes during the course of the campaign (from a healthy city to one on the edge of anarchy to one in the grips of a plague to one under martial law). Nearly three pages of rumor tables will help you drop hints to your players to foreshadow upcoming events, and advice on places where the PCs can rest and recuperate, shop for magic, or secure spellcasting services rounds the appendix out, along with some additional notes on the surrounding lands (including the Cinderlands themselves).

Appendix 3: The Harrow

The Harrow has always held a powerful role in Curse of the Crimson Throne, and this appendix not only provides you advice on how to use Harrow readings in your game and a mechanic for the PCs to use those harrow readings to influence fate, but also includes a list of what every single card in the Harrow deck symbolizes in the context of Curse of the Crimson Throne, so that when you pull a card during a reading, you'll know precisely what that card means for the PCs and their destiny.

Appendix 4: Blood and Pain

This short chapter is a sort of catch-all—here you've got rules for the plague that wracks Korvosa, but also rules for a kyton eidolon subtype. Why the subtype? Well, in the original version of the Adventure Path, we had an NPC named Shadowcount Sial, who had levels in a prestige class called "thaumaturgist"—a class that allowed a character to gain the services of an extraplanar minion. This prestige class, alas, was not one we updated into the Pathfinder rules, and while I initially toyed with doing so in this book, I settled on something better. I translated Shadowcount Sial into an unchained summoner, which gave me the perfect opportunity to give rules for kyton eidolons—something that there was no room to include in Pathfinder Unchained but which I know many folks have been asking for!

Appendix 5: Equipment and Magic

There's a few new items of equipment and many more new magic items to be found in this campaign—and they're all presented in this appendix. While some of these are updates from the original campaign (such as the third eye, Zellara's Harrow Deck, or the Crown of Fangs itself), others are brand new or have been quantified as items for the first time, including full details on the Everdawn Pool and rules for the strange poison known as "fool's leprosy" that Ileosa uses on her husband!

Appendix 6: NPC Codex

Curse of the Crimson Throne relies heavily on its NPCs, be they villains or allies. This appendix begins with an index that lists all of the significant NPCs in the adventure, along with their role and the page number you can find their stats on. But the meat of this appendix are the twelve significant NPCs presented in two-page formats. Here's where you'll find information on key NPCs like Laori Vaus, Blackjack, and Ileosa herself, along with a few newcomers—we've included statistics for Kazavon himself, for example, in case your PCs are unfortunate enough to let the mighty blue dragon come back to life! Many of these NPC entries include additional rules options utilized by these characters, such as new spells or feats—and if the PCs play their cards right, they'll be able to learn these new options from NPCs they encounter!

Appendix 7: Bestiary

Finally, we've got the bestiary. Here, we've provided several random encounter tables for you to roll up wandering monsters to spice up play, but have also presented full stat blocks for several new monsters: the soul-powered akaruzug, the tragic chained spirit, the malevolent danse macabre, the immense and alien havero, the plucky house drake, the pain-infused pharmakos, the lumbering red reaver, and two types of vermin that infest the city of Korvosa: drain spiders and dream spiders.

More Art!

And of course, I don't want to leave you without showing off some more of the new art we ordered for the hardcover edition. Check out these new interpretations of classic fights from the original adventures!

Illustrations by Caio Maciel Monteiro, Subroto Bhaumik, and Kent Hamilton

And that's enough for this week—tune in next week the last of our Crimson Throne blog previews, where I'll provide a player-friendly post that lists many of the faces of Korvosa—NPCs your characters can expect to encounter or at least hear about during the campaign. Of course, I'll leave it to your actual game play experience to find out which of these NPCs is your friend or foe!

James Jacobs
Creative Director

Worldscape Workbook—Today is the Day!

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Illustration by Pia Guerra

Pathfinder Worldscape #1, the first issue of my new comic series that teams up Pathfinder's iconic heroes with the likes of Red Sonja, John Carter of Mars, and Tarzan, comes out TODAY. As I write this, early reviews are already hitting the internet, and I'm thrilled with the positive response so far. Most of the commentary up to this point has focused on the comic book story itself, but here in my weekly Worldscape Workbook column, I like to focus on the RPG rules elements of each issue, and let you into my head a bit about some of the design decisions I made when adapting the Worldscape guest stars to the official Pathfinder RPG rules presented in each issue's appendix.

The first hero to get a full Pathfinder conversion is Red Sonja, who also features prominently in issue #1's story. Previous columns in this space have discussed Red Sonja's class, armor (or lack thereof), and adventuring gear. This week I want to discuss the "meat" of what makes Sonja different from other rangers, her archetype.

My desire to create credible "no armor" martial archetypes goes back to the very beginning, when Paizo Creative Director James Jacobs launched the first-ever Pathfinder campaign in our office conference room. I decided to play a barbarian named Ostog the Unslain, who in the years since has become a bit of a Pathfinder celebrity character, if only because I keep shilling for him (he never did die over more than 7 years of active gaming, after all).

In addition to being a great big gaming nerd, I'm also a book collector, and my shelves at home bulge with hundreds and hundreds of vintage sci-fi and fantasy paperbacks. Frank Frazetta's iconic portrayal of the bare-chested Conan the Barbarian made a huge impact on the paperback market of the 70s, and unarmored dudes in loincloths (and a few ladies following their example) basically took over sword & sorcery book covers for a decade or more. I wanted my barbarian to come from this "no armor" tradition, but in 2008, the options for pulling off such a character effectively using the Pathfinder RPG rules were essentially non-existent. I lobbied Pathfinder Lead Designer Jason Bulmahn—hard—to include a no-armor barbarian archetype in the Pathfinder RPG Advanced Player's Guide, and the savage barbarian was born.

Previous Worldscape Workbooks have covered why Dynamite's version of Red Sonja isn't a barbarian, though, so no matter how effective Jason's archetype had been for Ostog, it didn't do me much good to use it for Red Sonja. Instead, I looked at the armor power of the savage barbarian and the armor class feature of the monk to create something totally new: the sword-devil.

The name of Red Sonja's archetype hearkens back to her classic "She-Devil with a Sword" appellation, only with the numbers rubbed off a bit so that Pathfinder can use it independent of a formal Red Sonja license. We'll eventually add all of the non-proprietary rules in these Worldscape appendices to the PRD and to tools like Herolab, though it make take until the release of the final hardcover collection of all six issues early in 2017. Right now the best place to get these rules is in the Worldscape RPG appendices in each issue.

I don't want to get into too many specifics of the archetype today—after all, I really DO want you to buy the issue—but a general overview is in order. Here's my commentary on each of the archetype's class features.

Class Skills: I knew I'd be trading the ranger's spells class feature, so it made sense to swap out Spellcraft for Acrobatics. Red Sonja doesn't know much about magic, but she certainly can leap around like a monkey.

Death Vow: This power is meant to model Sonja's "Curse of Hyrkania," which features prominently in her origin and in the Gail Simone-written 18-issue run that redefined the character for modern audiences in 2013. I've used that highly enjoyable run as a benchmark for Sonja's characterization in the Worldscape series, and this is no exception. In the comic, Sonja puts the Curse on an enemy to put them on notice that she will definitely be killing them later, but probably not MUCH later. The mechanics here are an attempt to model that on the game table. Had I more space, I might have included a few other original death vows, but these Worldscape appendices are pretty tight on space, and I needed to focus on the meat of the matter.

Slashing Fury: The Sonja stores heavily emphasize her Dexterity and quickness over her Strength, with a prominent recent Conan/Red Sonja crossover written by Simone and former Pathfinder comics scribe Jim Zub specifically mentioning that Conan is much stronger than Red Sonja, but that she's no less a combatant for it, balancing things out with speed and style. I ultimately settled on a 14 Strength for Sonja. That's decent, but not enough to keep her competitive with most martial characters, who probably put their highest score in Strength. I thus needed to come up with a way for Red Sonja to add her Dex bonus to melee weapon attacks, something that involved significant negotiation and development with Jason Bulmahn and Owen K. C. Stephens, who were both extremely helpful to me during the process of building Sonja's stats and this archetype. They drew the line at also allowing this power to add a Dex modifier to damage. I tried, folks! With the damage adds from her death vow, I don't think she's much poorer without the bonus, especially when fighting somebody she absolutely wants to kill.

Inspiring Example: If Red Sonja has any "powers" above and beyond her combat prowess, it's in the inspiration she gives those she meets along the way of her adventures. As a roaming nomad who has seen two different publishers and hundreds of different writers over the last 40 years, Sonja doesn't have a very large recurring back-up cast. That means her stories typically involve her showing up in a community, encountering a problem, and solving it before moving on to the next adventure (sound familiar, Pathfinders?). A VERY common element of these stories, however, involves Sonja meeting some poor victim of the problem at the beginning of the story and later having that victim gain confidence and help her to solve the problem that once seemed unsolvable. Sort of like Doctor Who, Red Sonja doesn't stay anywhere very long, and doesn't keep companions for very long, but she does manage to leave both people and places significantly better off than they were when she first arrived. As long as they're not evil, of course!

Untouchable: This is my armor kludge, and with Sonja's 18 Charisma and a passel of dodge bonuses spaced out over various levels, she remains competitive in the AC department, so long as she's got good bracers of armor on. If she were MY character, rather than an adaptation, I'd probably pop for a dusty rose ioun stone and an amulet of natural armor, too.

Second Combat Style: This one speaks for itself. For Sonja's stats, I focused on the two ranger combat styles from the Core Rulebook, but we've added a lot more in various books that could serve to make YOUR sword-devil even more distinctive.

Seething Fury: I always feel a little goofy designing class features for 19th and 20th levels. Do people ever really make it that high? This power and the next were inspired by Dynamite's semi-recent "Vulture's Circle" and "The Black Tower" miniseries, which depict a much older—and much more prone to crazy, supernatural violence—version of the character.

Avatar of Vengeance: This is right out of those stories, in which Red Sonja becomes a living avatar of death. I made effectively no effort to balance this capstone ability whatsoever. If you've survived 20 levels wearing no armor, you deserve a gonzo reward.

And that's it for the sword-devil! I next go to work on the warlord archetype for John Carter and Tars Tarkas. I thought I could fit that into issue #2, but details on playing green Martian characters and Martian radium weapons took up all my space for that issue, so the warlord will appear somewhat further down the road.

But I'll be talking more about that stuff in future installments of the Worldscape Workbook!

Thanks for your interest in Pathfinder Worldscape! Please grab a copy at your local comic store, pick up a copy here on Paizo.com, or set up an ongoing comics subscription here on the site to make sure you don't miss a single issue!

Pathfinder Worldscape #1 is on shelves now! I can't wait to hear what you think of it!

Until then, I remain...

Erik Mona
Publisher

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Strategy #2—Playing Your Cards

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

This is the second installment of our strategy blog written by game historian Shannon Appelcline. You can read the first installment here.

Your deck of cards is your most personal resource in the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, and the one you have the most control over. So how can you make the most efficient use of it?

Cycle Your Cards Quickly

You want to move through your deck quickly. That's because you'll have some cards that are notably better than others, and you want to get to them. Even better, you want to get to them again and again. However, cards are your second most valuable resource [after time—see the first blog!], so you don't want to just toss them all into your discard pile. How do you balance these priorities?

You cycle cards, which is to say, you frequently play cards that can be recharged. For characters including Lem (recharge to aid), Lini (recharge your animals), Merisiel (recharge to backstab), Sajan (recharge your blessings), Seoni (recharge your spells), and Valeros (recharge your weapons), this comes naturally. Use their recharge powers liberally. Most of the magic users can also recycle their spells if they're careful. For the other characters, try and focus on rechargeable items and allies.

Oh, and recharge that armor at the end of every turn if you can—and if you can't, pick up magic armor and/or armor proficiency so that you can.

Corollary #1: Don't wait for the perfect use of rechargeable cards. It's tempting to wait forever so that you can use your rechargeable card just when you need it most. Don't. It'll clog your hand, and you may end up never using it. Yes, the card is gone once you recharge it, but you'll have something else just as useful in your hand, and you generally can't predict which card actually will be helpful on the next turn.

Corollary #2: If you can't recharge, discard and heal. Some characters (such as Amiri, Harsk, and Seelah) just aren't that great at recharging. But you still want to rapidly cycle their decks to get to their great cards again and again. Accept that their method of cycling cards goes through the discard pile: use their cards up, then have a healer ready to recycle them.

Discard Your Cards Quickly

When you get a card that doesn't look like it's going to be useful to you, don't be afraid to discard it. This is particularly important when you acquire a boon that's not that great. A few characters, such as Amiri (bury any card for additional dice), Lem (recharge any card to aid), and Lini (discard any card for improved skills), have reasons to hang onto bad cards. Absent that, toss those losers!

You should also aggressively play useful cards like blessings, allies, and weapons even if they're one use. Don't use them pointlessly, but do use them when they look useful, rather than hoarding them for some future day. Use what you have; you'll draw more!

Late in the game, you may even throw out formerly useful cards without using them. If you think there are no more barriers to deal with, get rid of that Masterwork Tools. If you're expecting to only support your friend fighting the villain, toss out your own weapons in the hope of drawing blessings.

The exception to this is, of course, when you're getting low on cards. You don't want your character to die! However, if you're forced to slow down, you should call over a healer so that you can quickly get up to speed again.

Don't Clog Your Hand

Cycling and discarding quickly is all about making sure that you don't clog up your hand. If you have the same cards in your hand round after round, you're not making the most efficient use of your resources. You could be using high-power cards that require discarding or medium-power cards that require recharging, but instead you're using low-power cards that require revealing... or maybe you're not using your cards at all! Amiri and Seelah are among the characters most prone to this problem, because of their lack of recharge powers, but anyone can get stuck with an immobile hand of cards.

A good rule of thumb is that if you get to the end of a turn and your hand is exactly the same as it was at the beginning, you need to do something.

Corollary #1: Unclog your hand by playing your cards. Most obviously, you can unclog your hand by using it. You should feel really free to recharge cards, even if doing so is a total waste. Alternatively, you should be discarding cards for their powers.

Corollary #2: Unclog your hand by discarding your cards. You might flat-out discard cards when resetting to free up your hand, particularly if you have duplicates of a card type—usually weapons or armor.

Corollary #3: Unclog your hand by moving your character. If the cards in your clogged hand aren't useful in your current location, but would be useful elsewhere, then move! If you've got a handful of weapons, go somewhere with piles of monsters, and if you've got a Crown of Charisma, go to a location that has a lot of allies, or one that requires a Charisma check to close.

Heal Yourself Quickly

In an ideal world, you'd save your healing cards until you were guaranteed not to waste any of their potential power. It seems wasteful to play a Cure that could heal up to five cards when you have only three cards in your discard pile! However, the world of PACG isn't ideal, and if you choose not to use your Cure, it's going to sit in your hand, wasting space turn after turn.

Sometimes you should just use your Cure to keep your hand cycling, even if you might waste some pips on the die roll. This is especially true for Kyra (who will probably recharge her Cure and who can heal it back into her draw pile with any Divine card if she messes up), for Lem (who can exchange any other spell for his Cure), or for someone else with multiple healing powers.

(You might want to be stingier if you're playing a Fighter or a Rogue that's depending on Father Zantus for a one-time heal sometime in the game.)

Hold On to a Blessing

Though you want to play your cards and cycle your deck, don't go too far. You should try to ensure there's always one blessing somewhere in your party. Kyra's a good person to be the Designated Blessing Holder (DBH) if she's in the game, since she can use it for healing.

By holding onto one blessing, you're slowing your progress a little bit, but you're also making sure that you're ready for that great boon or that awful bane that someone can't quite deal with on their own.

Take Your Time if You Have It

Sometimes you'll play aggressively enough that your location timer will get ahead of your blessing timer. This happens immediately in a one-player game, where your 30 location deck cards already match the 30 blessings deck cards. However, you can get ahead even with more players—sometimes.

When this happens, you should start playing more slowly. Don't worry about discarding or recharging as much. Dig more for good boons. Save your blessings to improve rolls, not to go again.

If you start falling behind, you can always speed up play again.

Next time: Knowing your cards.

Shannon Appelcline
Game Historian

OPC Log—18 Lamashan 4716

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

In the Pacific Northwest, our weather turned and rain now envelopes our Redmond office in a mist. Falling temperatures, transitioning leaves, and blustering winds replaced the bright sunshine and warm weather. The rough storms of the past weekend left us tossed about and quite a bit of debris and detritus blown about, but all are accounted for. For other Pathfinders, the inclement weather patterns of the past few months test their resiliency and survival skills. While we have heard from Venture-Officers and players on the eastern seaboard of the US, they still face difficulties with flooding and power outages. Though divided by location and language, we are all one huge family. If possible, where possible, consider offering a helping hand or a dry towel.

Upcoming Conventions

This Friday, I am off to Book & Board convention in Fairlawn, Ohio. Anyone else heading out to conventions? I know of Pathfinder Society events occurring at:

• What-Kahn 2016 (Loves Park, IL)
• ReaperCon 2016 (Lewisville, TX)
• Dan's Con of the Vale (Milwaukee, WI)
• FlatCon 2016 (Bloomington, IL)
• Asheville Scarefest (Black Mountain, NC)

If you're in the Akron area, consider stopping by to say "Hi!"

Adventure Card Guild

Besides rain, October brings with it Mummies! While some may knock on your door during the Halloween festivities, it is the ones arriving by mail or via your Friendly, Local Game Store that I write about. The Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Mummy's Mask Base Set releases tomorrow! I peeked at a copy in the office and am excited to get playing. Gorgeous artwork, innovative mechanics, new blessings, and a few surprises brought to us by Mike & Co at Lone Shark Games.

Illustration by Roberto Pitturru

With the new base set comes a new Season of Pathfinder Society Adventure Card Guild play. As I mentioned last week, we changed the naming format this time around. We don't have many mummies in the Adventure Card Guild season, so it seemed a bit of a misnomer. Author Amanda Hamon-Kunz suggested the title Plundered Tombs and we thought it the best fit in describing the season. So we exchanged the working title "Season of the Mummy" for "Season of Plundered Tombs".

As for the tombs themselves, this season involves much more integration with the Pathfinder Society and its associated allies and enemies. The Adventure Path introduction, written by John Compton, finds you landing in Sothis with instructions to report to Venture-Captain Norden Balentiir. As with Pathfinder Society Roleplaying Guild scenarios, the Pathfinder Lodges provide a backdrop and the Venture-Captains a resource for player interactions in the region. From Sothis, author Mark Seifter takes you on a journey in Adventure 1: Serpents in the Deep. Bet you cannot guess what organization features as the henchmen and villains!

Subsequent adventure authors include Linda Zayas-Palmer, John Compton, and Amanda Hamon-Kunz. They take the story up, down, over and under the northern portion of the continent of Garund. While there, characters meet new allies, uncover secrets, and engage in general pandemonium. All of their text supports adventure design by Keith Richmond of Lone Shark. Other team members include Vic Wertz (editing and development) and Sonja Morris (layout and graphic design). My task is project coordination!

Season of the Goblin

But before we debut Season of Plundered Tombs, we must wrap up Season of the Goblin. The second installment in the mini-Season of the Goblin will release tomorrow, Wednesday, October 19th! This time, our goblin friends engage in even more mayhem and madness trying to determine who is the best goblin of them all!

Upcoming Blog

Next week, John introduces us to the newest Pathfinder Society Roleplaying Guild adventures—#8-06: Reaping What We Sow and #8-07: From the Tome of Righteous Repose.

Here's the first paragraph John wrote introducing the Season of Plundered Tombs, to give you a taste and whet your appetite:

"Catastrophe struck the world 10,000 years ago, and mighty Osirion was one of the first great nations to rise from the ashes. For centuries, its pharaohs oversaw a golden age of expansion and innovation while crushing rivals such as the Tekritanin League and the golem armies of the Jistka Imperium. Eventually, the kingdom began to stagnate, its leaders unable to match the splendid accomplishments of their forebears. Following millennia of decline and foreign occupation, Osirion is once again autonomous and prospers under the Ruby Prince Khemet III."

Until next time—Explore, Report, Cooperate!

Tonya Woldridge
Organized Play Coordinator

The Last of the Deadly Foes

Friday, October 14, 2016

Deadly Foes, the next set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted plastic miniatures, releases next month! Over the last few months, I've been using this space to preview new digital sculpts for the figures, and this week I've got the final two miniatures for the set! The Paizo Warehouse Runelords tell me that our shipment of packaged product from WizKids hits our office soon, so I also hope to provide a few first-looks at actual production figures in the weeks between now and the set's official release date in the middle of November.

Then we've got ANOTHER whole set that WizKids just announced this week to cover in future previews—more on that at the bottom of this week's blog.

But first, let's take a look at the last two figures from Deadly Foes!

Up first is the Shadow Giant, the final creature figure to be revealed for Deadly Foes! This guy has a fascinating Pathfinder origin. The Shadow Giant first appeared in the illustration accompanying the religion chapter waaaaay back in the Pathfinder Chronicles Gazetteer, the first-ever look at the world of Golarion as a whole (co-written by yours truly). It took until The Inner Sea Bestiary to give the Shadow Giant statistics. Keep an eye out for their upcoming appearance in Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Bestiary 6 next spring! The Shadow Giant is a Large, rare figure.

The last figure of the entire set to preview is the Rope Trick, a fun piece of dungeon dressing suggested by my friend Ross Williams, a player in my weekly Pathfinder game (under GM Jason Bulmahn). During a particularly rough patch in the campaign, we found ourselves frequently hiding out in the extra-dimensional rope trick created by Ross's wizard, and it often became necessary to know where exactly on the battlefield the rope trick was meant to be. Ross suggested a rope trick miniature, and I thought it a sufficiently fun idea to add it to the set. Opinions here at Paizo are somewhat divided as to the utility of this piece, but I know I'll use it in my game, so it's in. As they say, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Absolutely! The Rope Trick is a super-rare piece inserted once per case in place of an uncommon figure. I hope you like it.

And that's it for Deadly Foes, which I think is one of our best and most useful sets yet!

The end of Deadly Foes previews comes just in time, as WizKids this week announced the NEXT Pathfinder Battles set, Crown of Fangs! Crown of Fangs contains 47 creature figures and a bunch of dungeon dressing. My favorite element of the set is the case incentive, the Court of the Crimson Throne, a full throneroom playset that contains thrones, a banquet table, courtiers, and more. We took the idea from the bar incentive in The Rusty Dragon Inn set and said "how can we make this waaaay cooler?" I think you'll be pleased with the results.

But that's getting way ahead of myself. There will be a lot more time to talk about Crown of Fangs in future weeks!

Until then, I remain...

Erik Mona
Publisher

That's No Moon...

Friday, October 14, 2016

...it's an internal playtest of the Starfinder starship combat system! While we aren't yet ready to fully unveil what the starship combat system entails (except to those of you who got to do the secret design seminar playtest at Gen Con!), I thought this might be a good week to drop some tidbits. For instance, as you can already see, starship combat uses a hex map rather than the square-based maps of normal combat. Additionally, everyone involved in starship combat has a crew role—a specific suite of actions that only they can take to use their ship's abilities or affect its performance. In this picture we see Captain Mike Kenway, Engineer Jason Keeley, Science Officer Owen KC Stephens, Gunners Erik Mona and Sarah Robinson, and Pilot Rob McCreary. Jason Bulmahn is, of course, the enemy ships trying to kill them. (Not pictured: Me, observing and taking notes. Let it never be said that the Creative Director hogs all the fun.)

That's all I'll say for now, but I look forward to reading your comments and seeing what folks can learn from zooming in on those carelessly uncovered pages... (Hey, it works in the movies, right? "Computer... enhance...")

James L. Sutter
Creative Director

New Adventures Against the Crimson Throne, Part 1

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Now that copies of the hardcover edition of Curse of the Crimson Throne are shipping out and we've provided the players with a mini player's guide to help create their characters, it's time to turn the attention to the new content in this version of the classic Adventure Path. All of you who are intending to play in this campaign, be warned, there be spoilers below!

Those GMs who ran Curse of the Crimson Throne in its first incarnation will find a lot of new content in the hardcover edition, but most of this content is relatively well-integrated into the text of the adventure. In some cases, this new content is simply material that we had to cut from publication the first time around, due to space limitations. But in others, it's brand new material that I created during the project's development—new content that may have been suggested by customer feedback, or may have simply been something that I was inspired to include to make the campaign more exciting, fresh, and memorable. One such addition was revealed last week—the Betrayed campaign trait gives players an option for characters who might be a bit less reputable than the classic campaign traits assume. But of course, that's only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Here's a sampling of my favorite new additions to the first four chapters of Curse of the Crimson Throne!

Chapter 1: Edge of Anarchy

The Lamm Legacy

Folks were disappointed the first time around that the villain built up by the Campaign Traits, Gaedren Lamm, didn't have a stronger presence in the campaign overall. While the hardcover edition doesn't expand Gaedren's role significantly (he was never meant to be a recurring villain, but a convenient foil to help bring the party together in the first place), it does give him a son—Rolth, the vile necromancer the PCs first learn about later in this chapter and first encounter in Chapter 2. By making Rolth Gaedren's son, this villain has a built-in reason to hate the PCs—he may not have loved his father, but he can certainly ache for revenge against those who bring him to justice! Further increasing Rolth's role in Korovsa, I decided to make him into the notorious Key-Lock Killer, a murderer only barely mentioned in the "Guide to Korvosa" as being the city's most prolific serial killer. The PCs will be able to find clues to Rolth's connection to Gaedren, as well as to his secret life as a serial killer, among the various treasures they can loot in Gaedren's den.

Chapter 2: Seven Days to the Grave

A Chance at Redemption

In addition to expanding on Rolth's role in the campaign, in this chapter I was able to expand a bit more on the role of the crazy elf Jolistina. In the original, she wasn't much more than a lunatic for the PCs to fight, but this time around, the PCs can do much more than just fight her. If they're careful or caring, they might be able to get Jolistina on their side and perhaps even help her along a path of redemption!

Chapter 3: Escape from Old Korvosa

More Rakshasas

In the previous edition of Curse of the Crimson Throne, the rakshasa had something of a glass jaw, and as such we were able to use a large number of them in the adventure without worrying about overwhelming the PCs. But with the publication of the Pathfinder Bestiary, we updated the basic rakshasa so that it more properly filled its role as a CR 10 monster. Which was good for the rakshasa, but not so good for Arkona Palace, which had a large number of these foes spread throughout the manor. My solution wasn't to remove rakshasas, but to swap some out for less powerful but still frightening marai rakshasas. Not only does this keep the dungeon's original themes in place, but it gives it more variety in the foes your players will face.

Chapter 4: A History Of Ashes

Deathhead Vault

While the additions to the previous chapters were largely in the realm of bits and pieces here and there to add flavor or clarify, we reach our first significant amount of new content in chapter 4. Not only did I rebuild the format of the original adventure to be less linear and more of a sandbox (without that distracting "Shoanti going to war" subplot that ended up going nowhere), but I added an entire new section. In large part spurred by customer feedback that players were disappointed to leave Korvosa for two whole adventures, but also because I was never satisfied with how the Gray Maiden's stronghold was handled "off camera," I added a whole new set of encounters as a third part to A History Of Ashes. Here, the PCs return to Korvosa after their allies are contacted by Boule, the guildmaster of Korvosa's thieves' guild, who has information on how the PCs can infiltrate the stronghold of the Red Mantis assassins AND the Gray Maidens. Doing so will not only allow the PCs to rescue Marcus Endrin from his fate, but explains exactly why the Gray Maidens and Red Mantis assassins mysteriously relocate their headquarters to Castle Korvosa in the campaign's climax. Of course, there's a lot more going on in Deathhead Vault, the underground complex the assassins and maidens use as their headquarters—pet catoblepases, creepy outsiders, and an undead arbiter are only a few of the dangerous foes the PCs get to face off against in this significant addition to the campaign!

More Art!

And of course, I don't want to leave you without showing off some more of the new art we ordered for the hardcover edition. Check out these new interpretations of classic fights from the original adventures!

Illustrations by Bryan Sola, Richard Suwono, and Subroto Bhaumik

And that's enough for this week—tune in next week for a preview of the new content in the last two chapters and the extensive appendix for the hardcover edition of Curse of the Crimson Throne!

James Jacobs
Creative Director

Worldscape Workbook—Gearing Up Red Sonja, Part 2: Finishing Touches

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

The first issue of Dynamite's Pathfinder Worldscape sword & sorcery crossover event hits comic stands NEXT Wednesday, and I couldn't be more excited! As the series author, I had a chance to push the series at New York Comic Con this weekend, and it was fantastic talking to so many comics fans eager to see how the big event plays out! I signed a bunch of Pathfinder comics at the Dynamite booth in my first-ever comic signing, and I'd like to thank all of the Pathfinder fans who made it such a fun and welcoming experience.

Before I get into this week's Worldscape Workbook, I want to remind everybody that I will be appearing live at 7:00 PM at Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles on Wednesday, October 19th, to celebrate the official release of Pathfinder Worldscape #1. If you're local to LA (or so fanatical you're pricing flights right now), I can't wait to see you at the event and chat about Worldscape, Pathfinder, Starfinder, or whatever else you have on your mind.

Can't make it to Meltdown next Wednesday? Can't make it to a comic store at all? Don't despair! You can preorder issue #1 right here on paizo.com. Or, to make sure you never miss a single issue, sign up for a Pathfinder Comics Ongoing Subscription!

Each issue of Pathfinder Worldscape comes with a bonus RPG appendix that translates some of Dynamite's most important characters to the official Pathfinder RPG rules. The first issue presents game stats for Red Sonja, the famous "She-Devil with a Sword" who has served as fantasy's most ass-kicking female protagonist since her comics debut in the early 1970s. Over the last several weeks, I've used this Worldscape Workbook column to detail my thoughts on translating Red Sonja's stories to the Pathfinder rules. I'll continue with other characters in the series—Tars Tarkas, Tarzan, John Carter, etc.—in weeks to come, but I've still got at least two more columns to cover before I'm done with Sonja.

Next week I'll reveal an overview of Red Sonja's much-anticipated "sword-devil" archetype, which allows rangers to swap out a bunch of their abilities to be more effective combatants while wearing no armor. (I mentioned in comments recently that with the Barsooman "warlord" archetype and probably a "lord of the jungle" archetype yet to come, Pathfinder Worldscape will be the "Catcher in the Rye" of no-armor martial archetypes.) Before I get to that, though, we've got a bit more ground to cover in terms of how I chose Red Sonja's equipment.

To recap previous blogs in the series, I first decided that Red Sonja's trademark "chainmail bikini" isn't armor at all. I then tried to figure out a way that her two armbands might be important original magic items before deciding, ultimately, to make them bracers of armor +4.

Recalling the simple list of Red Sonja's standard adventuring gear from last week's Worldscape Workbook, I knew that Red Sonja needed, at the very least, a longsword, a throwing dagger, and a shortbow. While the origin story that ultimately led me to determine Sonja was a ranger focused largely on her skill with a bow, that story was weighted toward Sonja's rural upbringing as a chieftain's daughter in the rugged Hyrkanian Steppes. In the modern day of the series, she's far more often depicted wielding swords and fighting in melee rather than at range. Yes, she often has a shortbow, and yes, she's very, very good with it, but a sword is definitely her primary weapon. They don't call her the "She-Devil with a Shortbow," after all. So the shortbow was in, to be sure, but I knew I needed to put the focus on melee weapons.

I knew that the sword-devil archetype I was designing would allow Sonja, eventually, at least, to choose multiple ranger combat styles. Because I wanted to build Sonja using the Core Rulebook primarily, rather than choose from the large number of ranger combat styles we've published over numerous books, that meant choosing between archery and two-weapon combat. Given that archery seemed like a secondary focus for Red Sonja, I decided to go with two-weapon fighting, even though Sonja is most-often depicted wielding a single longsword in the 18 Gail Simone-written issues I used as my primary inspiration for her game statistics. I also read dozens of other Red Sonja comics while writing Pathfinder Worldscape, and many of them depict Sonja with two weapons—most commonly a longsword and a short sword, but also occasionally a mace, an axe, or even a morning star. It wasn't a perfect solution given the source material, but I liked a Sonja who is better with swords than bows, so I'm confident it was the right decision. She'll get the archery combat style at 11th level, so it'll all balance out in the end.

Additionally, choosing the two-weapon combat style gave her access to Two-Weapon Defense as a bonus feat, which allows her an additional +1 shield bonus to Armor Class. Even with the armor-assisting archetype to come, Sonja needs all the help she can get in the AC department.

Sonja's swords themselves posed a bit of a problem. Unlike many fantasy heroes, Red Sonja doesn't have "a" singularly important blade with a unique name and history. The shape of Sonja's sword often depends on which illustrator is drawing her, and seems to be more a matter of artist preference than any attempt to hew toward a particular specific object. She most frequently wields a longsword with a sort of upward-turned half-moon hilt, but even this appears and disappears depending on her adventure. Further, while Red Sonja is definitely a formidable warrior and it's easy to assume that her blades carry a bit of magic in the Pathfinder RPG sense, they don't burst into flame, or talk to her, or float alongside her, or really do anything else to distinguish them from other swords.

I therefore decided to give her swords a simple enhancement bonus, +2 in the case of her primary longsword and +1 in the case of her short sword. I made her shortbow a +1 composite shortbow (+2 Str), allowing her to add the +2 bonus granted by her 14 Strength to give her added damage with ranged attacks.

All of that allowed me just under 3,000 gp left of her gear budget, which I dedicated to an item that allowed me to make sense of one of the most confounding elements of Red Sonja's skimpy armor—boots of the winterlands. I can buy that Red Sonja survives combats wearing next to nothing because her near nudity distracts her opponents (the "explanation" most often given within the comics themselves). I can buy that Red Sonja is such a skilled warrior she doesn't even need to wear armor.

I can't buy that she can survive in the winter wilderness wearing a metal bathing suit.

Boots of the winterlands allow Red Sonja to travel across snow at normal speeds (her enemies constantly curse her speed, so that works), but most importantly for my purposes, the boots warm the wearer as if protected by an endure elements spell.

Both of the illustrations accompanying this blog are by Jenny Frison, one of my favorite Red Sonja cover artists. I've liked both of these covers for a long time, but with boots of the winterlands, I no longer need to worry about how unrealistic it is every time we see her in cold weather.

A minor victory, to be sure. There will, I hope, be many more to come.

Check back at this space next Wednesday for a full overview of Red Sonja's sword-devil archetype, and check your local comic store on that very same day (October 19th) to grab your very own copy of Pathfinder Worldscape #1. Alternatively, start your Ongoing Pathfinder Comics Subscription today to make sure you never miss a single issue.

And if you're in the Los Angeles area, I'll see you next Wednesday at Meltdown Comics!

Until then, I remain...

Erik Mona
Publisher

Treasures That Lie Behind Closed Doors

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Liz continues her romance-novel preview of Mummy's Mask, here showing off the Character Add-On Deck and Adventure Deck 1: The Half-Dead City, which comes in the Mummy's Mask Base Set.

The land shifted from soft sand dunes to rocky hills that battered the feet of the caravaneers. With rhythmic plodding punctuated by errant grunts, the camels trudged at a lumbering pace and did not seem affected by the terrain. Though the morning breeze still held a breath of cool night air that kissed their necks, the cicadas danced in anticipation of the climbing sun.

Waving grasses sprung like soft hair from the verdant earth as the road descended toward the river. It would be hours yet before the weary travelers could rest, sponge away days of dried sweat, and luxuriate into silk cushions at the Tooth & Hookah. But now they could see the Half-City before them, darkly nestled between the legs of the Crook and Asp rivers. Morning light glistened through the linen-draped towers of the Sunburst Market, a brilliant sunrise of color, promising secrets behind the rainbow shadows cast. And carried on the wind, the chimes of the Pharasmin temple, luring treasure hunters to consign their fates to the lottery.

Spoiler: You win the lottery.

As the markets closed upon the hour of twilight, smoke from tall lamps of perfumed oil lazily swayed through the courtyard filled with an impatient throng. Travelers from every corner of Golarion jostled and joked in a dozen languages, stealing glances toward the yet-closed temple doors. Some were sun-touched and rough, apparent rogues and mercenaries experienced in the art of Osirion tomb-raiding.

The Quicksand Bunyip doesn't figure in Liz's story, but we couldn't help ourselves.

Others, such as a gracefully dressed woman—presumably a local by the fact she carried nothing but her heavy staff—seemed to be searching the crowd, seeking the fate-spark of companionship.

Her gaze landed on an unlikely target, a heavy man laden with a curiosity shop's worth of goods, his beard black as onyx. Their eyes met across the courtyard and, with a pounding of her staff, the sea of miscreants briefly parted, naturally, as if the perfect moment had been plucked from time. The conversation that followed was hushed, for the weight of the stories they carried was heavy and not easily shared. Mavaro, his name rolling with mystery of far-off places, made bold claims, but made them quietly. He promised her that he could do anything, given the right tools. This was the treasure he sought: not gold nor fame, but a wealth of memory.

Mavaro has an... interesting deck list.

He seemed so unlike her. Perhaps that is why she felt so intrigued, and caught herself licking her lips at his words. As his accoutrements were a jumble of worn hand-me-downs and stolen grave goods, deciphering the man beneath would be a challenge. "I can be anything you need—whatever you want me to be," he divulged with a low voice.

To demonstrate, he delicately untied a rusted khopesh strapped to his side. With a featherweight grace, he swung the blade, the bright steel edge glimmering with blue frost. "May I?" he gestured toward her elaborately-carved staff. His fingers brushed hers as he grasped it and the chill of the khopesh jolted up her spine. The sensation rushed upon her as if she were the sword itself, wrapped in a frigid enchantment. He glanced down and mumbled an apology.

As he held the staff, Mavaro's demeanor shifted, became aggressive. Waves of arcane power hummed from the staff as the world around them became somehow pliant to his whim. "Is it only weapons?" she chided. "A person can wield only so many." In answer, he returned her staff and pulled a scroll from a bag she hadn't noticed before beneath his coat. As the icon of Thoth unfurled, the uncertainty and fidgeting fell from his posture. His eyes grew old and cold with lifetimes of knowledge. Ahmotep could see the judgement of the dead upon his face. It reminded her of the Pharasmins.

The desert demands many different weapons.

As if called, the crowd fell silent and pressed close as the temple doors swung open, heavy with sculpted reliefs of birth and death in honor of Pharasma. The black-robed Pharasmin clerics poured out in two lines, followed by a large, simply decorated urn. The head priestess's face was a mask as she called out in a bell-like voice, "Attention. The first lottery begins now. Once all names are drawn, the gates to the necropolis will be opened." She paused for effect. "Heed well the laws, and remember how this came to pass."

There are three Laws. Don't break them.

The adventurers had found each other, and Ahmotep sensed soon there might be others. As the priest's hand descended into the urn to draw the first name, a palpable excitement buzzed between the two. Where would the will of The Lady of Graves take them? Ahmotep gritted her teeth and clenched her staff, ready to pull fate in her direction.

Liz Spain
Adventure Card Game Designer

OPC Log—10 Lamashan 4716

Monday, October 10, 2016

Last week I spent the latter half of the week in Las Vegas on holiday spending my birthday. I appreciated the break and am back, rested and refreshed, to continue working on projects. Over the next few months, I'm traveling to Book & Board Con in Akron, Ohio, and Extra Life in Spokane, Washington. Come out and play!

On the Extra Life front, we have plans abrewing with Zulu Games in Bothell and Zombie Orpheus Entertainment. Not ready to release the particulars yet, but we have a few weeks yet before the November 5th event. Keep tuned for more information!

Roleplaying Guild Guide Clarifications

Over the past weeks, the team focused on reviewing the Roleplaying Guild Guide and clarifying some of the ambiguities our industrious players questioned on the forums. There is still work to do, but it is progressing and should soon be ready. One answer we came to almost immediately. From today, the requirement for character wealth contribution to clear conditions when playing pregenerated characters, will only apply to the standard iconic pregenerated characters. Any scenario or module that mandates you play a pregenerated character, like 6-99 Through Maelstrom Rift or We Be Goblins!, will not require the pregenerated character contributions listed in the guide. Refer to the applicable sanctioning documents or chronicle sheet for changes to base resolution costs. For example, We Be Goblins, Too! lists the cost to raise as 5 PP. This change is scheduled to appear in the revised version of the guide.

Adventure Card Guild

We are wrapping up the second installment of Season of the Goblin. I hear the pesky creatures cause mayhem and madness wherever their cards are found. I'm curious to know—which of the characters are your favorite and why?

A week from this Wednesday (October 19th), the Mummy's Mask Base Set for the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game releases. Progress on the Adventure Card Guild Season of Plundered Tombs continues at a madcap pace, the team working to pull edges together. We changed the name of the Guild season to differ from the Base Set to emphasize that while Adventure Card Guild utilizes the Mummy's Mask Base Set, it is a stand alone story that doubles playable content.

Upcoming Conventions

I asked some of our convention organizers to put together blurbs about upcoming conventions, so that I could share them with other Pathfinders. If you're looking for a vacation or are in the local area, consider checking out these upcoming conventions!

From VC Alison Ooms, coordinator for Winter War:

Winter War 44, Jan 27-29, 2017 (http://paizo.com/events/v5748mkg0blzn)

We have more than 80 tables of Pathfinder Society scheduled at Winter War. Board games, war games, tabletop gaming of all kinds have been finding a home at Winter War for over 40 years.

Located in Champaign, the heart of Illinois, there are several good ways to get to Winter War. Being held at the Hawthorn Suites again this year, there is plenty of room for new and returning agents. For information on registering to play: http://winterwar.org/ If you would like to volunteer to GM: https://warhorn.net/events/winter-war-44. Events will be posting soon.

Hawthorn Suites
101 Trade Center Dr
Champaign, IL 61820
217-398-3400

For any further information you can contact me:
Alison Ooms (Venture-Captain—Central Illinois
pfs.centralillinois@outlook.com

Or if you're looking for something on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, VC Michael Meunier writes:

MarsCon

MarsCon is one of Virginia's largest SciFi/Fantasy conventions and is being held this year from January 13th to the 15th in beautiful Williamsburg, Virginia. Beyond that, it is also one of the largest gaming events in the state and has served at the primary Pathfinder Society convention for both the Richmond and Hampton Roads lodges for the past three years. This year is particularly interesting as they celebrate the Year of the Dragon (IN SPACE!). While it may not be the biggest event, MarsCon has a knack for getting some very interesting guests and really entertaining musical groups. What MarsCon is really known for though is it's atmosphere as there's a lively party scene and a number of laid back events as well as a very well stocked Con Suite. Beyond the con there are all the sights, sounds, and shopping that Williamsburg has to offer.

Well, back to reviewing the Guide. I hope everyone had a great weekend playing Pathfinder and that dice rolled well!

Until next week—Explore, Report, Cooperate!

Tonya Woldridge
Organized Play Coordinator

Order of the Amber Die—The Strange Aeons Experiment, Part 2

Friday, October 7, 2016

After what seems to be some harrowing experiences, the Order of the Amber Die completed the second adventure, Pathfinder Adventure Path #110: The Thrushmoor Terror, in the Strange Aeons Adventure Path in yet another marathon session. I'm going to keep this short and let them tell their tales. Be sure to check out the links at the bottom of this post to read more about their experience with this Adventure Path. Beware, players! Spoilers below!

The second adventure in an Adventure Path is always an important one, as patterns begin to emerge in the way the party performs, and we look to build momentum early in the AP. We spent the marathon as amnesiacs slowly piecing together the clues of a mystery while working alongside investigators from the Sleepless Agency, and we dabbled into the True Detective soundtrack to give us ambiance throughout 67 hours of play. Since there was so much role-playing involved, our GM brought one of the best actors in the Order down from NYC to play some of the slick-tongued cultists we encountered, and also tapped another member for the role of Winter Klaczka where appropriate.

As the facts surrounding our amnesia were uncovered, it turned out that each of us had a nefarious past. Erasmus had shady friends showing up who expected us to recognize them, while Quinn had once started a bar fight defending the honor of his boyfriend. Even securing lodging was a challenge in this adventure. To thoroughly immerse ourselves in the stormy town of Thrushmoor, we mixed fog machines with a 24-square-foot setup of 3D buildings, and some structures were even specific to the town itself. We also had a couple of Lazzaretti's maps remastered by Axion Studios and printed for play.

Highlights From The Thrushmoor Terror

• We're clicking as a unit more than many other parties we've had. The players all selected a teamwork feat to suit their needs in this path: Shake It Off. In our standard 2-by-2 formation, everyone gets a +3 to all saving throws, and it's made the difference on 12 saves already.
• Our GM doesn't pull punches. Travelling back from Caliphas, he rolled up a marsh giant as a random encounter at a waterlogged farmstead—and threw it at a 4th level party. We are veterans of Giantslayer after all.
• They say defense wins championships. During a 2-hour grinder against an evil druid and her fungal wolves, our 5th level party healed over 200 hit points, with 36 of those coming from Erasmus's seance boon alone—and defense prevailed.
• We awarded Daji the MVP for this module. The fox was on fire from the opening minutes: He picked up his sixth kill of the campaign, used his knowledge skills to identify the critical weakness of a foe that would likely have defeated us, located the secret door that led us to the final encounter early, The crowning moment was when the fox leaped onto an abomination known as a byakhee and engaged it with everything he had, despite the creature biting Daji into negative hit points.
• Something is wrong with Quinn, and it's stacking more horror onto this already scary AP. In the asylum he suffered horribly at the hands of ghouls—and despite being raised twice—he possesses an insatiable hunger. Quinn's skin is becoming thicker, and he smells so much like rot that it sickens anyone around him. Our companion has torn through our food reserves, and we sometimes catch him eating when he should be sleeping. We've tried everything from remove curse to remove disease, yet nothing works.

The Experiment

• We already track a lot of data across each Adventure Path, but we've had to add a new category that is very unfamiliar to us: Battles Run From. Ten so far. The team doesn't like to talk about it.
• One of our strangest moments in this module involved an interaction with something called an "Elder Thing." Two of them actually, and our GM swears that's the real name. They weren't immediately hostile, but we couldn't tell whether we should introduce ourselves or slay them. Then they spoke!

Character Deaths

• An assassin, Risi Nairgon, stalked the party around Thrushmoor, seizing our vulnerable moments to strike and get away. After tailing us to a safehouse, she patiently waited on a rooftop for the party to emerge the next morning—sans buffs. Despite sniper's fatigue, she scored a direct hit with a Death Attack on Alahazra: one shot, one kill.
• Three natural 1s on fear saving throws left Quinn alone facing a Manananggal—a vampiric horror we had yet to see in 138 modules. We could hear his screams while we ran.

Best Quote From Marathon 2

Cesadia Wrentz (lead detective): "How many people saw you carrying a body through town?"
Feiya: "Now? Or ever?"

Current Situation

Quinn's affliction doesn't bode well, but we'll keep trying for a cure. Good detective work has us hot on the heels of our quarry and headed south to piece together what our memories cannot. Alahazra and Quinn are a bit behind in XP, but this is made up for with author Tito Leati's generous amount of treasure awarded to those with the patience to look.

More Content

Read through the entirety of The Strange Aeons Experiment.
For character builds, questions about Strange Aeons, content and more, see our the Strange Aeons Experiment thread on the forums.
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Things are looking pretty grim for the crew. Tune in shortly for a report on their potentially nightmarish experiences in the third adventure in the Strange Aeons Adventure Path, Dreams of the Yellow King.

Adam Daigle
Developer

Curse of the Crimson Throne Player's Guide

Thursday, October 6, 2016

All the information you need to start and run a Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign is included in the new hardcover edition, but what if you're planning on being a player in the campaign instead? Well then, this blog post is for you! Alternately, you can check out the original Curse of the Crimson Throne Player's Guide we produced back in 2008 for even more details—most of the rules mechanics in that book have long since been updated to the Pathfinder RPG, with one notable exception—the Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign traits. These traits are presented in full detail in the hardcover edition, but they are also reprinted in this blog post for you to peruse with ease.

Illustration by Miguel Regodon Harkness

Character Tips

Curse of the Crimson Throne is primarily an urban-based campaign set in the city of Korvosa in southeastern Varisia, although there are a few lengthy portions of the Adventure Path that take place outside of Korvosa's walls. To a certain extent, these portions of the game are intended to force urban-themed PCs out of their comfort zone, but the reverse certainly holds true. You can absolutely play a barbarian or druid or other nature-themed PC in Curse of the Crimson Throne, but you should come up with an in-character reason to explain why your non-urban character is in Korvosa at the start of the campaign, as well as why you'd want to stay in Korvosa as things inevitably start to go bad for the city. Building strong links to other player characters is a great solution—your druid or barbarian might normally just abandon the city, but not when a close friend or relative or other ally who lives in the city is in danger!

Character Races

Korvosa is predominantly a human city, although all of the PC races in the Pathfinder Core Rulebook are welcome within its walls. Korvosa itself was founded many years ago by Cheliax, and most of its human citizens are of the Chelaxian ethnicity today as a result, although there are large numbers of Varisians, Taldans, and Vudrani present within the city walls as well.

Shoanti are also quite common, although they tend to be less welcome in certain parts of the city and face the specter of racism that lingers still in Korvosa, thanks in part to the city's unfortunate history of Chelaxian conquerors claiming the land from the Shoanti and forcing them to flee to the northeast to the harsh Cinderlands. While a Shoanti character may be subjected to bigotry from some of Korvosa's more narrow-minded citizens, having a Shoanti PC may open up other advantages later in the campaign. Other ethnicities are rare but not unknown in the city.

Dwarves mostly hail from nearby Janderhoff, many of whom have ties to robust trade and mercantilism between Korvosa and the nearby Sky Citadel.

Elves and gnomes are relatively rare in Korvosa, but not so much that they'd turn heads when spotted walking down the city streets.

Halflings are relatively common in the city; many have escaped from lives as slaves in Cheliax to the south, and many of Korvosa's shipping concerns have large numbers of halfling sailors on their payroll.

Half-elves and half-orcs are present in the city as well, but while half-elves can generally pass uncommented upon, many of Korvosa's inhabitants (particularly the Shoanti, who have a long, bitter history with orcs) react poorly to half-orc presences; bigotry and fear are unfortunately not uncommon against these oft-misunderstood folk.

Character Classes

Curse of the Crimson Throne, as an urban-themed campaign, presents numerous opportunities for intrigue-based characters to shine, yet there remain plenty of old-fashioned dungeon crawls and dangerous combats awaiting as well. As with all campaigns, having a balanced party with regards to combat prowess, magical ability, and intrigue skills will go a long way toward success.

Character Classes:

Alchemist, Arcanist, Magus, Sorcerer, Summoner, Witch, Wizard: Korvosa is welcoming to those who specialize in arcane magic, and there are numerous opportunities for an arcane spellcaster to flourish in the city—and being an adventurer is certainly one option for prosperity! One important thing to keep in mind, though, is that Korvosa's most well-known school for arcane spellcasters, the Acadamae, does not play a significant role in Curse of the Crimson Throne. If you wish your character to be associated with the Acadamae, speak to your GM or build your character so those links are relatively minor. All of the standard familiars are good choices in Korvosa. There is a long-standing feud in the city between imps (who've escaped servitude to Acadamae students and teachers) and pseudodragon-like creatures called house drakes. Both of these are classic choices for improved familiars. (A spellcaster must be 7th level and chaotic good to gain a house drake as a familiar; full statistics for these tiny dragons appear in Curse of the Crimson Throne.) Other commonly seen improved familiars in Korvosa include dire rats, lyrakien, nosois, and pseudodragons, but anything approved by your GM could serve.

Barbarian, Bloodrager, Druid, Hunter, Shaman, Skald: These classes are not normally associated with urban regions, but as long as you have a reason for your character to live in or be on an extended visit to Korvosa, the campaign will accommodate such characters (and in fact, when the plot moves beyond the city walls, such characters may well be particularly helpful!). A character associated with one of the Shoanti quahs might provide some additional advantages or opportunities as the campaign progresses, particularly if the PC hails from one of the quahs that dwells in the Cinderlands (the Lyrune-Quah, the Sklar-Quah, or the Skoan-Quah)—although if your PC is a member of one such tribe, don't assume that you'll be automatically welcomed back into your tribe's arms after spending a significant amount of time in Korvosa! Classes that take animal companions should be able to function normally in Korvosa—after all, this is a city where defenders mounted on hippogriffs exist. The sight of someone with an exotic animal companion is unlikely to raise many eyebrows, provided the animal companion is well behaved. Nonetheless, there are certain types of animal companions that are more commonly encountered in this part of Varisia, including alligators, badgers, bears, birds, boars, dogs, horses, ponies, small cats (mostly firepelt cougars), wolverines, and wolves.

Bard, Investigator, Rogue, Slayer, Swashbuckler: These intrigue-focused characters make excellent choices for an urban campaign like Curse of the Crimson Throne. Korvosa has a wide range of organizations and groups that characters like this can belong to, but the campaign works best for "freelancers"—intrigue-based characters who haven't yet selected a group to associate with, be they underground guilds or high society. As the Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign progresses, you'll encounter several groups with which your intrigue-themed character might ally with or oppose, and coming to these groups without having a strong affiliation at the outset makes for a more rewarding play experience. Of course, there's one group your intrigue-focused character should start quite loyal to—that of the player character party! If you want to associate with a particular group, speak to your GM before the game begins. Note also that any of these intrigue-focused characters could benefit from the specific information provided below for vigilante characters.

Brawler, Cavalier, Fighter, Monk: As with intrigue-focused characters, there are numerous options for martial classes to flourish in Korvosa. The most appropriate group to ally with in this campaign would be the Korvosan Guard, which serves as the city's police force and plays a significant role in the campaign. Other groups, like the Hellknight Order of the Nail and the Sable Company have specific roles to play in Curse of the Crimson Throne that make them poor choices for PCs. If you wish to associate with one of these two groups, speak with your GM before the game.

Cleric, Inquisitor, Oracle, Warpriest: All four of these divine spellcasting classes are well known and welcome in Korvosa—provided they do not use their religious beliefs and zeal to cause trouble. Consult the Religions section below for further details.

Kineticist, Medium, Mesmerist, Occultist, Psychic, Spiritualist: There are a few opportunities for psychic classes to particularly shine throughout the Curse of the Crimson Throne Adventure Path, be they links to the deep themes of spiritualism associated with the Harrow or explorations of particularly notorious haunted sites. Make sure your GM is familiar with and comfortable with options from Pathfinder RPG Occult Adventures before choosing one of these classes for your character.

Paladin: Paladins are an excellent choice for Curse of the Crimson Throne—with one caveat: do not let the lawful portion of your alignment rule your play choices. Things rapidly get out of control and go bad in Korvosa as the campaign unfolds, and your paladin's choices should put her or him firmly on the side of the PCs. Speak to your GM before playing a paladin in this game. As a general rule, it's probably better to play a paladin of a neutral good deity than of a lawful neutral deity in Curse of the Crimson Throne.

Ranger: If you choose to play a ranger, make sure to consult the information above for other nature-themed classes (barbarian, druid, etc.), including advice on animal companions. Note also that while Korvosa has a ranger-themed organization that operates within its walls (the Sable Company), that group is not a great choice for association with as a player character. If you wish to be associated with the Sable Company, clear it with your GM before play. The best options for favored enemy are animal, humanoid (human), undead, and vermin. These choices remain strong in the later parts of the campaign, but outsider (evil) and outsider (native) grow stronger as options. Most other favored enemy choices will be represented now and then in the campaign, but not nearly as often. The best favored terrain choices are (in descending order of importance) urban, underground, desert, swamp, and plains.

Gunslinger, Ninja, Samurai: These three classes are all but unknown in Korvosa. While samurai and gunslingers can fit in well with other martial-focused classes and ninja fit in well with intrigue-focused classes, there are no specific themes in Korvosa tailored specifically for these exotic class choices.

Vigilante: Korvosa's current political climate is ripe for the attention of a vigilante. In fact, the city already has one notorious legend in this category: Blackjack, a figure at once beloved and reviled, is a masked hero who has fought for Korvosa's downtrodden for many decades. Rumors about his or her identity, race, and gender are across the board, as are opinions as to whether Blackjack is one person or a role held by several over the course of the city's growth. Whatever the truth, Blackjack has been lying low of late, perhaps retired, perhaps dead, or perhaps (as the downtrodden hope) merely waiting for the right time to burst back onto the scene. Of course, this means the city is potentially ready for a new vigilante to look up to or to fight against. Your vigilante could even be interested in taking on the role of Blackjack, although if you do so, speak to your GM first to determine how that might be worked out.

Prestige Classes: The Harrow plays a significant role in Curse of the Crimson Throne, and as such, the harrower prestige class from Pathfinder Campaign Setting: The Inner Sea World Guide would make a particularly interesting choice for anyone who can qualify for it. Certain prestige classes are associated with key organizations in Golarion, and some of those organizations have key roles to play in Curse of the Crimson Throne. As such, these prestige classes are inappropriate for use in this campaign, but in order to avoid spoiling too much, those classes are not called out here. If you wish to build your character toward a specific prestige class, make sure to let your GM know as soon as possible so that she or he can either approve or deny your choice based on whether it makes sense to take levels in that class for Curse of the Crimson Throne.

Languages

The Common tongue is the most appropriate language for this campaign, but two others that will see a lot of use are Shoanti and Varisian. Beyond these three obvious choices, Orc, Thassilonian, and Vudrani will have some sporadic uses here and there. You can expect to encounter the typically wide range of creatures in a lengthy campaign, with more common languages (such as Dwarven, Elven, and Draconic) likely being more useful than obscure ones (such as Azlanti, Cyclops, or Orvian), which may not have much use at all.

Religions

Korvosa is tolerant of a wide range of religions and doesn't favor any one faith over another. The city's largest and most publicly active temple is the Bank of Abadar, but the city also hosts temples devoted to Asmodeus, Pharasma, Sarenrae, and Shelyn. Beyond these temples, the Pantheon of the Many in southern Korvosa represents 17 of the core 20 deities of the Inner Sea region—the only three deities who are not represented here are Gorum, Lamashtu, and Rovagug. While worship of Gorum isn't illegal in the city, his following has never been strong in the region (even among the Shoanti, who prefer a more shamanistic or druidic form of worship). While the faiths of Zon-Kuthon, Urgathoa, and Norgorber are represented in the Pantheon of the Many, their shrines are generally unused and neglected. When choosing a faith for your character, it's best overall to avoid worshiping an evil deity—if you do wish to worship such a deity, speak to your GM as your choice may be inappropriate (for reasons beyond alignment!) for this campaign.

Campaign Traits

Korvosa, like any city, has its share of undesirables. Cutpurses, thugs, thieves, burglars, assassins, and lowlifes of every sort can be found in waterfront slums, creeping in the sewers, or hiding in the tangled rooftop-scape known as the Shingles. The Korvosan Guard does what it can to keep the city's criminals from causing too much harm, but the cold reality is that crooks will always outnumber the law. And that means some crimes go unpunished and some criminals see great success.

The worst of these, perhaps, are the city's crime lords. Dozens of them operate in Korvosa today, from the scheming leader of the Cerulean Society all the way down to the Varisian Sczarni thugs who preside over a gang of a half-dozen friends and cousins. These minor crime lords are often, ironically, the ones who do the most damage to Korvosa's law-abiding citizens, as larger organizations have little need to bother commoners. One such undesirable is Gaedren Lamm, a despicable wretch who missed his chance at being somebody big in Korvosa's murky underworld. Well past his prime, the decrepit thief abducts orphans and forces them to support his parasitic lifestyle with petty crime. Many members of Korvosa's lower class have had dealings with Lamm, and even a few of the city's middle class and nobility have had their lives complicated by this foul old man. Yet no matter what he does, he always seems to slip away from the guards and avoid answering for his crimes.

Gaedren Lamm's luck is about to change, though. For among those his actions have recently touched are men and women destined to become some of Korvosa's greatest heroes—your player characters!

Before your Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign begins, look through the following Campaign Traits and select one that works well for your character. These traits detail how your PCs has been wronged by Gaedren Lamm, and set up the initial events for the Adventure Path—events that may well allow you and your fellow PCs to see that Gaedren Lamm answers for his terrible crimes, be that in a court of law or at the edge of a vengeful blade.

The campaign traits all tie Gaedren to a PC, and represent historical snippets that explain how this detestable crime lord has affected each PC in the past. Each trait is categorized into one of six unique themes with two separate choices for each campaign trait. In addition to selecting one of these campaign traits, each player should select an additional character trait; see Pathfinder RPG Advanced Player's Guide for more rules on character traits.

Campaign Traits:

Betrayed

You were hardly a model citizen as a child or young adult. Your reasons for turning to a life of crime may be varied, but what matters is that you eventually fell in with a certain well-connected and notorious crime lord named Gaedren Lamm. His reputation as a snake and a treacherous scoundrel was known to you, but for reasons of your own, you chose not to turn him down when he offered you a chance to work for him. You may have assumed you were an exception, or that you'd be able to handle him, or perhaps even planned to betray him. As it worked out, though, Gaedren got the upper hand and took you down you first. You may have served time in jail, may have been beaten by his thugs and left for dead, or could simply have had your profits stolen out from under you. Whatever the cause, Gaedren wronged you, and you are eager for the chance to get revenge.
Choose one of the following benefits.

Hungry for Revenge: You've never forgiven Gaedren for his betrayal, and have vowed to make him pay for what he did. Whether that's seeing him rot in jail or a shallow grave, you hope to taste vengeance someday. Whenever you deal damage with a melee weapon on a creature that is flat-footed, you gain a +1 trait bonus on the damage roll.

Reformed Criminal: You've given up the life of crime, and managed to talk your way out of any repercussions such as jail time or fines. You've told yourself that you would rather leave your past behind, yet the concept of seeing Gaedren Lamm pay for his crimes still appeals to you. You gain a +1 trait bonus on Diplomacy checks, and Diplomacy is a class skill for you.

Drug Addict

Someone you know has become addicted to shiver, a drug distilled from the venom of tropical arachnids known as dream spiders. The drug induces sleep filled with vivid dreams, during which the user's body shakes and shivers, giving the substance its street name. You've always thought of shiver as a problem of the lower class, but then someone you know overdosed on the stuff. You've done a bit of investigating and have learned that the villain who got your friend addicted in the first place was a crime lord named Gaedren Lamm. Unfortunately, the guards seem to be focused on the bigger dealers. They don't have time to devote many resources to what they've called "a bit player in a beggar's problem." It would seem that if Gaedren's operation is to be stopped, it falls to you.
Choose one of the following benefits.

Addicted Friend: The addict is a friend or lover who might or might not have survived the overdose. Your research into the drug scene and local politics has given you a respectable education in street knowledge. You gain a +1 trait bonus on Knowledge (local) checks, and Knowledge (local) is a class skill for you.

Personal Addiction: You were the addict. You blame Gaedren for your brush with death and hate how his drugs are causing similar problems among other youths. Fortunately, your body recovers quickly from toxins, and you gain a +1 trait bonus on Fortitude saving throws.

Framed

Someone you know and love was accused of murder. A supposed eyewitness account from a local fisherman seemed to be enough to seal the case, but the accused had enough alibis that sentencing wasn't immediate. Someone confronted the fisherman and discovered he was intimidated into providing false witness and forced into planting the murder weapon by the actual murderer—a local crime lord named Gaedren Lamm, whose thugs killed the fisherman before he could recant his testimony. Although this removed the key witness and resulted in the accused being set free, the stigma was enough to badly damage the accused's reputation. If you can find Gaedren, you're sure you can find evidence that ties him to the murder and can clear the accused's name.
Choose one of the following benefits.

Dropout: You were the one accused of the murder. Although you were eventually freed when a friend confronted the fisherman and got the truth, the damage had been done. You were forced to leave your school or church. As a result, you were forced to self-train and promised yourself you would become better at your chosen profession despite the spurning of your peers. You gain a +1 trait bonus on Spellcraft checks, and Spellcraft is a class skill for you.

Family Honor: The person who was framed was a family member, perhaps a father or sister. You managed to trick the fisherman into revealing the truth with your skilled tongue. You gain a +1 trait bonus on Bluff checks, and Bluff is a class skill for you.

Love Lost

Someone you loved was knifed to death in a dark alley one night. You were called to the scene by the Korvosan Guard to identify the body, and as rough as that was for you, you also noticed a ring was missing from your loved one's finger. Whoever murdered your loved one stole that ring—you're convinced of it. You've done some investigation on your own and recently found the ring for sale at a local merchant's shop. To your great frustration, you can't yet afford the 500 gp to buy it back, but the merchant did tell you from whom he purchased the ring: a man named Gaedren Lamm. It seems likely this criminal killed your loved one, or at the very least, he knows who did. The only problem is finding him.
Choose one of the following benefits.

All Alone: The murder victim was a lover. With your lover's death, a part of you died as well, leaving you haunted, grim, and prone to dark musings. You gain a +1 trait bonus on Intimidate checks, and Intimidate is a class skill for you.

Orphaned: The murder victim was your only surviving parent. You had to work hard to make ends meet for yourself and any siblings, and often had to scavenge for food. You gain a +1 trait bonus on Survival checks, and Survival is a class skill for you.

Missing Child

You suspect that a child you know has been abducted by Gaedren Lamm. Whatever the relationship, you've heard rumors about "Lamm's Lambs," and of how the old man uses children as pickpockets and agents for his crimes. You've even heard rumors that the child you're looking for has been spotted in the marketplaces in the company of known cutpurses and pickpockets. Although the Korvosan Guard has been understanding of your plight, it has its hands full with "more important" matters these days, it seems, and has not yet been able to learn anything more about Gaedren. No one else is interested in bringing Gaedren down and rescuing his victims—that task falls to you. Yet where could the old scoundrel be hiding?
Choose one of the following benefits.

Missing Sibling: The missing child is a brother or sister. Although everyone else has given up hope, you believe your sibling still lives. Your constant search for the missing sibling has developed into great skill at rumormongering and finding out information from others. You gain a +1 trait bonus on Sense Motive checks, and Sense Motive is a class skill for you.

Missing Son or Daughter: The missing child is your own son or daughter, a niece or nephew, or a child you were charged with protecting. The child was abducted during a trip to the market or other daily event. Your stubbornness and long hours spent searching for rumors grant you a +1 trait bonus on Will saves.

Unhappy Childhood

You spent a period of time as one of Gaedren Lamm's enslaved orphans, doing all manner of dirty work for him. Maybe you were abducted from your parent's home or during a trip to the market. Perhaps the irresponsible matron who ruled your orphanage traded you to him in return for a desperately needed financial loan. Or perhaps you, like most of Gaedren's slaves, were merely a child of the street who succumbed to his promise of regular meals and a roof in return for what he said would be "a little light work." Whatever the case, you spent several years of your life as one of "Lamm's Lambs" before escaping. You've nursed a grudge against the old man ever since.
Choose one of the following benefits.

Religious: One day, while on a job for Gaedren, you found a holy symbol of the god you worship, and intrigued by it, you snuck off to attend services. When Gaedren found out, he beat you to within an inch of your life and broke your holy symbol. Your faith let you block out the pain, and you escaped his control and took shelter in the church, where you spent the rest of your youth. You gain a +2 trait bonus on concentration checks and Constitution checks to stabilize at negative hit points.

Tortured: After you made one too many errors, Gaedren tortured you and left you for dead in a garbage heap. Your scars and memories have motivated you to hone your reaction speed and make you rather jumpy. You gain a +1 trait bonus on Reflex saves.

James Jacobs
Creative Director

Worldscape Workbook—Gearing Up Red Sonja, Part 1: Armbands

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

This week's Worldscape Workbook covers how I decided what magic items and adventuring gear to give Red Sonja for her official Pathfinder game statistics, but before I delve into the nitty gritty, I've got two announcements about personal appearances I'll be making to support Pathfinder Worldscape #1, which hits newsstands on Wednesday, October 19th.

Later this week I'll be signing pre-Worldscape Pathfinder comics I've written at the Dynamite booth at New York Comic Con! I'll be appearing from 4:00-5:00 on Friday and Saturday, and I'll even have some Pathfinder Goblin Mini-Mates on hand for dedicated Paizo blog-watchers.

At NYCC, I'll also be on Dynamite's "Dynamite Entertainment: Our Explosive New Comics of 2017... And Beyond!" panel on Thursday night at 7:30 PM at area 1A02 in the Javitt's Center.

On Wednesday, October 19th, to celebrate the official launch day of Pathfinder Worldscape #1, I'll be appearing at the world-famous Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles to sign copies of the new book and chat with Pathfinder fans! The signing starts at 7:00 PM. I'm super excited to visit the store again and to be a part of an official event there! Please join me!

Ok! With that out of the way, let's get down to Red Sonja!

In previous weeks, I've discussed the game design challenges presented by Red Sonja's "chainmail bikini," but of course the She-Devil with a Sword has more equipment than just her armor.

A few assumptions up front.

When determining Red Sonja's level, I wanted to leave enough room at the "top end" to allow for "future" Red Sonja stories like Dynamite's "Vulture's Circle" or "The Black Tower," and I didn't want Red Sonja to be so super-heroic that she was a novelty high-level-only NPC.

We assume the Pathfinder iconic heroes are about 5th or 6th level at the beginning of Pathfinder Worldscape. I wanted the versions of famous heroes they encountered in the Worldscape to be more capable than them (naturally), but still plausible adventuring companions under the Pathfinder rules, meaning they'd be similarly challenged by the same foes. So if the iconics were 5th or 6th, that meant I'd put folks like Red Sonja and John Carter closer to 7th. High enough to get the extra attack at 6th level, certainly.

To tell the truth, I had a lot of inertia to make Red Sonja 7th level. This has to do with the Pathfinder Society's rules for pre-generated characters, which come in a few specific levels, of which 7th is one. Let's just say I had reason to think it would be interesting to end up with stats that worked as a basis for a PFS pregen for Red Sonja and leave it at that. Nothing to announce, folks, I assure you. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Anyway, I ended up going with 8th level so Sonja would qualify for a class feature of her archetype that kicks in then, about which we'll talk in a near-future column. I'll reverse engineer her stat block to 7th later if I need to for whatever reason. For now I decided to go with the more interesting character build.

So, at 8th level, by the Pathfinder rules as a player character (because, come on, I'm not statting these guys up as anything less), Red Sonja should have 33,000 gp worth of gear.

That seemed like a lot, so I immediately started looking into the possibilities. First, I turned to my notes of all the gear I'd seen Red Sonja use over the first 18 issues of Dynamite's revamped series under the guidance of writer Gail Simone. Barring various different costumes or armor worn by Sonja over these issues, that list reads as follows:

• Sword
• Throwing dagger
• Leather gloves
• Left armband
• Right armband
• Leather boots
• Hooded cloak
• Shortbow
• Waterskin

As you'll recall from previous installments of this column, I had originally planned to design Red Sonja's chainmail bikini as a suit of "decorative armor" that offered a +0 armor bonus, but didn't count as wearing armor for certain class features. That meant that Sonja couldn't wear bracers of armor, which meant I needed a solution to cheat to get her improvements to her AC that would allow her to go toe-to-toe with other martial characters of her level, who generally would be wearing a lot more armor than she does.

I zeroed in pretty quickly on Red Sonja's armbands. Although each artist draws Sonja their own way, during the Gail Simone arcs, she had a pretty consistent look drawn by artist Walter Giovanni, who gave each of the two armbands a distinct appearance. Sonja's right armband was a solid ring of gold, while the one she wears on her left arm looks more like a coiled snake. Two different armbands, I thought, two different opportunities for some cool unique magic items to get around her armor problem.

I also had another problem I wanted to solve, and this one came from actual play. Over the summer, in particular at PaizoCon and PaizoCon UK, I ran special games based on the Pathfinder Worldscape ideas I was working on in comic scripts at the time. I kludged together a storyline similar to Valeros's manifestation in the Worldscape in Pathfinder Worldscape #1, complete with anachronistic enemies and the untimely arrival of a Barsoomian White Ape, and set it upon some of Paizo's biggest fans. At the end of these sessions, I set Red Sonja herself against the party—or at least a seriously "rough draft" version of the character cribbed from a kit-bashed stat block from the NPC Codex. And every time, she blew a Will save and the encounter ended prematurely.

So I wanted those two different armbands to do two different things. One, which I originally called an "armlet of natural armor" that enhanced your natural armor bonus and one called a "coiled armlet" that allowed you to reroll a blown save. The armlet of natural armor was a boring utilitarian item, essentially a slotless amulet of natural armor at twice the price. I didn't really think anyone needed to pay a professional game designer for such a simple idea, but oh well. She needed the bonus to her AC, sexy or not. The coiled armband was a little more interesting, but given that it involved creating a gp value for rerolling a failed save, I didn't quite know how to determine a price for it.

In this, as in so many things, I turned to Jason Bulmahn, and in the process of laying out an arcane way of doing it that I have already forgotten (but will try to get him to recount for a future blog), he reminded me that the feat Improved Iron Will would give Red Sonja that rerolled saving throw on the type of save for which she needed it most.

This was the same conversation that convinced me, ultimately, that Red Sonja's armor didn't need to be some rules-breaking contrivance, but that it could simply not be armor at all. Once the armor wasn't armor at all, that opened things back up for good old bracers of armor. I decided to give Sonja Improved Iron Will, which removed my other idea for a new, unique armlet.

At the same time, Dynamite supplied me with the illustration that would accompany Red Sonja's stat block in Pathfinder Worldscape #1. Much to my surprise, it did not feature two different armbands at all. Instead, this image of Sonja (by occasional Pathfinder Comics cover artist Carlos Gomez) has two solid gold armbands instead of two different ones.

At this point I decided to listen to fate, and I simply made Red Sonja's armbands bracers of armor +4 and called it a day. Sometimes the simplest solution really is the best one.

Speaking of calling it a day, I've rambled on quite a lot! We'll pick up this gear discussion next week, when I shift the focus to Red Sonja's weapons!

Until then, please do me a huge favor and consider setting up a Pathfinder Comics Ongoing Subscription. Doing so will ensure that you receive every issue of Pathfinder Worldscape delivered straight to your door. People are always asking what they can do to support the comic, and my answer is this: If you have a local comic store, ask them to add Pathfinder Worldscape to your pull list. If you don't have a local comic shop, please set up that subscription now!

I'll see some of you (I hope!) later this week at New York Comic Con and some more of you on the 19th at Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles!

Thanks for your interest in Pathfinder Worldscape!

Erik Mona
Publisher

Pathfinder Adventures—The Tiniest Table

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Hi! I'm André Nguyen, Art and UI Lead on Pathfinder Adventures. Our User Interface ("UI") has had quite a trip since we started. Let's take a trip down Memory Lane...

Simple Beginnings

As development on Obsidian's South Park: The Stick of Truth was winding down, and before Obsidian and Paizo greenlit Pathfinder Adventures, I was asked to mock up what a digital version of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game might look like and how it would play. I based it on how I played the physical card game, and how others (including Game Director Nathan Davis) played. I even checked photos and videos of other people playing. I created a playable Flash mockup for the owners here at Obsidian to show the game in action. Below you'll see some screen grabs of that mockup.

From the start of making a digital version, we wanted the locations and Sandpoint to feel like they had a place, so the map was a key part of the design. (Don't be alarmed by the giant hand—it was just simulating a hand using a touch screen because we had swipes and taps, and it would follow the mouse cursor in the demo.)

In the mockup, we had the locations show up as cards, just like the physical game. You could swipe left and right to go through them one by one. (This feature made it into early versions of the game before getting cut... but we're getting ahead of ourselves.) In the mockup, we had the player tapping a location card to enter that location.

Another thing we wanted from the start was to feel like you were gathering dice. You know that feeling in the physical game, when you gather the dice before you and think, "Is this good enough, or should I add a blessing, or get some help... ?" Well, we wanted you to have that feeling in the digital game. Every card you play that adds dice would add them on screen. When you're happy, you swipe over them to roll!

The Blue Period

Not only was the roll a success, but the mockup video was approved and we got the go-ahead to make the game. Or at least, we got the go-ahead for Nathan, myself, and one programmer—Kevin Smith—to make a prototype. Our prototype had a title screen and simple character selection, then jumped right into the game, with no real scenario selection—just straight into Brigandoom! It's clear I was working the design of the card back into the UI. We'll call this Pathfinder Adventures' "blue period." (Note that most of the screenshots we have were taken as bug reports, so they have 1 or more... er, "oddities" in them.)

Redder Pastures

You can see that we got rid of the location card carousel from the mockup and went with a fixed box on the left. Even in this early UI, most elements had found their home. A few months passed, and we had finished the prototype. We got the go-ahead to hire an artist because my painting skills are just TOO GOOD. Lindsey Laney joined the team, and we decided to go with a look a little like the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game logo: The reds, the tans, the filigree!

If you're unfamiliar, "filigree" is that fancy ornamental stuff around the UI edges. It breaks up the frame a lot and since the logo has that, it fits Pathfinder. The look of our game was inspired by the art Wayne Reynolds did for Pathfinder: his color, textures, and numerous buckles. Through a few more updates, we refined the UI a lot. It necessarily became more complex because the card game allows so many things.

Examining the Process

Now let's take a brief detour into process. I mock up most UI designs first, then discuss them with the designers. I try to go over all the criteria for that design and offer a few variants. In this case, I was designing what we call the "Examine Tray" and I wanted to make it clear which cards were on the top or bottom of the location deck.

I then give it to an artist (I say that as if we ever had more than 1 or 2 artists) who makes it pretty.

Getting Long in the Tooth

And finally, the game reached its current state. I think the game is slightly more complex than originally thought. Hey, is that a dragon?

It IS a dragon: Longtooth!

So that's it for the evolution of the tablet UI. For phones, we had to make some changes for usability and to receive approval from Apple and Google. Phones screens range in size from tiny to almost tablet-sized. We took a few things off the screen to declutter, and to make things more usable (buttons) and legible (text). For personal preference, we're also adding in a toggle letting you choose which UI to use. To demonstrate, here's Lem on a phone with a bunch of fancy dice!

So that's where we are. What's next? Fortress of the Stone Giants is out now for iOS and Android tablets and phones! If you want a taste of what Deck 4 has in store, check out Nathan's blog on the Obsidian forums! And in case you missed it, check out the Pathfinder Adventures mobile release trailer!

André Nguyen
Art and UI Lead—Pathfinder Adventures, Obsidian Entertainment
@gelatin

OPC Log—3 Lamashan 4716

Monday, September 26, 2016

Happy Monday! As I contemplated this week's blog and what to write, my head jumbled with thoughts, I realized a year passed since I started a Paizo. The realization prompted me into analysis of Pathfinder Society. The end conclusion what that, while some of the initiatives didn't quite work as intended, the overall health of the program remained well. PFS membership grew, convention support reached an all time high, we released many backlog items such as Advance Player's Guide pregenerated characters, sanctioned much of the available Pathfinder content for use in Pathfinder Society, produced one and a half seasons of the Adventure Card Guild, created new Seeker content, and released convention content with enough time for GM preparation.

The items that didn't work the first time out, such as the Regional Support Package (Game Day support), are back on the drawing board for version 2.0. The team also started a revision of Roleplaying Guild Guide with the intent to clean up ambiguous wording and address questions raised on the forums. At this time, the exact release date is unknown, but the goal is as quickly as possible given our production schedule.

Hats off to John, Linda, Mark, for being an awesome while working with me to make a memorable year of Pathfinder for you, our players. Thanks also to the Paizo staffers in other departments that support Pathfinder Society. Without all of us pulling together, we could not make PFS happen.

While the staffers supported Pathfinder Society from inside Paizo, the network of Venture-Officers provided support to all the local games. We currently have over 760 Venture-Officers in 49 of the United States and 35 countries spread over 6 continents. This number grows every week, as more people join the Pathfinder Society family. Unfortunately, there is not enough room to list them all here, but check out the Coordinator List for an up to date roster of our Venture-Officers. Huge thanks to all of them for making a global Pathfinder Society!

There is another pool of volunteers integral to the Pathfinder Society. Without the throngs of GMs, no games could run. While GMs spend large amounts of time preparing and running games, some dedicate hundreds of hours to the hobby. In recognition of the large amount of time spent providing games to others, we recognize GMs with stars. They earn the first star after running 10 games, which equates to approximately 50 hours of game time and another 10-20 preparing for the games. From there, we award two stars for 30 games, three stars for 60 games, and four stars for 100 games. Some GMs dedicate over 600 hours to running games, run at least 50 different games from the various PFS seasons, and run a game for a Venture-Captain, who verifies the GMs knowledge of the Pathfinder Society and the Pathfinder RPG system. To these GMs, the most dedicated of our bunch, we award five stars.

The following GMs achieved their fifth star over the past few months. Please join me in congratulating:

• Nils Janson
• Morten Fredricksen
• Atte Kiljunen
• Joe Kirner
• Ryan Bolduan
• Colin Webster
• Mark Cohen
• Þórarinn Sigurðsson
• Rigby Bedele
• Eric de Vries
• Tom Coolbaugh
• Hillis "Al" Mallory III
• Sebastian Mullins

Last year involved great change and upheaval. Currently, it is planning time. We are reviewing data, looking for trends, and setting out our ideas. Going forward, I'm focused on refining programs, tweaking operations, and streamlining processes. Oh, and working on the upcoming Season of the Adventure Card Guild. But more on that later, as I don't want to give any spoilers! At least, not yet. Perhaps next week!

Until then—Explore, Report, Cooperate!

Tonya Woldridge
Organized Play Coordinator