As we close 2020, on this last night of the year, each of us took a moment to reflect back on what 2020 brought for us.

Linda Zayas-Palmer (Organized Play Managing Developer): Wow, 2020 has been quite the year. For all its challenges, it’s been heartening to see the community come together and to watch online play flourish, keeping people connected and bringing in so many new players who had never seen a convention before. Kudos to the numerous dedicated volunteers, both GMs and organizers, who made that possible!

And kudos as well to the members of the Organized Play team, past and current, who also faced unprecedented challenges and pressures. Mike Sayre, James Case, Thursty, Jenny, Tonya, and Alex: I couldn’t ask for better coworkers.

I’m proud of what everyone’s accomplished this year, and I’m excited about what 2021 has to offer. So I’d like to take this space to announce the first of 2021’s big pieces of news: the newest member of the Organized Play team. On January 4th, Mike Kimmel will be joining us. Mike is the founder of the Freelance Forge group and a prolific Organized Play freelancer, author of scenarios such as The Unseen Inclusion and the interactive Hao Jin Cataclysm for Pathfinder First Edition, Iolite Squad Alpha for Pathfinder Society in Second Edition, and The Protectorate Petition for Starfinder Society. You’ll hear more from Mike soon in an upcoming blog.

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Jenny Jarzabski (Starfinder Society Developer): It’s hard to believe I’ve only been part of the Paizo team for a few months. Getting the chance to collaborate with the folks of Org Play full time has been awesome, and stepping up to take the helm of Starfinder Society is more than I could have hoped for so soon!

I began 2020 writing the Starfinder GenCon interactive special, The Last Bite, which got delayed before finally releasing online. We had some bugs, and it wasn’t the same as walking through the Sagamore and watching people play, but I hopped into different discord channels and listened to tables playing my adventure virtually. I later ran it at Emerald Con, also online!

As a freelancer—and even now after my hire—I’ve often felt isolated this year. But seeing the way our community continued to rally around playing games, raising money for charity, and supporting one another through it all has been truly inspiring. One of my favorite things about Organized Play is the connectivity to the community, and of being part of a living campaign. We don’t tell these stories in a vacuum. All of you reading this are part of them. Thanks for that—let’s do it again next year!

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Alex Speidel (Organized Play Associate): Obviously, this year was a big year for me, because I joined Paizo in March! While that’s exciting, I wanted to look at some other really cool things about this year:
- We managed to move our major conventions online, including our largest event ever with PaizoCon Online and the largest-ever online interactive specials at Gen Con Online.
- In addition to releasing a year of scenarios, we got caught up with Venture Officer maintenance, the Reporting Errors inbox, and so much more behind the scenes.
- Some of my favorite scenarios this year included SFS 3-07: Strike at Zone 78, which I thought was a great installment in the storyline of the copaxi; SFS 3-10: Live Adventure Extreme!, the exact scenario I have wanted since I learned about Zo! and his media empire; and PFS 1-25, because evil pipe organs are cool.
- In personal news, I earned my second Nova for GMing Starfinder Society, ran a group through 2.5 books of Threefold Conspiracy, got a bunch of new dice, and met a ton of fantastic players and GMs through conventions, the VO corps and the local Emerald City Lodge.

It’s been a weird year, but I’m excited to see what comes next!

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Thurston Hillman (Pathfinder Society Developer): With the transition from SFS to PFS, Thursty took on loads of new tasks just before the new year, leaving him deep in development and focused on bringing a quality program to your door.

For me, this year was all about being flexible. My job today doesn’t look like it did in 2019 or years prior. I got to attend two physical shows in 2020, and collectively the team went to four. I remember reading news about China’s issues with Covid in the airport on the way home from GenghisCon in Denver. Instead of seeing all our friends in-person, we pivoted to online events. PaizoCon 2020 set the benchmark - over 1500 tables of games during the event!

Our community showed its resilience and for that I’m eminently grateful. There is no way our gaming groups could have survived without the strong leadership demonstrated by the venture-officers. The online team provided assistance and education for the whole corps, but without the store organizers and the location coordinators embracing the change we would have been dead in the water. They thought it would be a few weeks, maybe a month, that we would need to maintain the shift. Seven months later, many of our locations remain closed. Despite online fatigue, they continue to make sure games are available to our players. I cannot express enough my gratitude and thanks to these stalwarts and I give thanks that we have such a wonderful group!

Despite the obstacles put in our way by 2020, the OP team stepped up and delivered! We kept the program going with only slight hiccups along the way, which is a HUGE testament to the professionalism of the OP team members. Alex joined the team in February and made such a huge difference so quickly, I’m amazed we ever had a program without him. I took several weeks of vacation this year and was able to relax, knowing the program operations would continue under his competent eye. We also had to say goodbye to two of our team, but in losing James and Mike to other teams, we gained Jenny and Mike Kimmel. I’m excited to see how they add to the team dynamic!

If you missed it last week, we sanctioned Troubles in Otari for Pathfinder (second edition). Be sure to check back on January 5th for Pathfinder Playtest news, and then on Thursday for the first of our 2021 Monthly Updates (including a bit of Starfinder sanctioning news!)

Until then - Explore, Report, Cooperate!

Tonya Woldridge
Organized Play Manager

The new Starfinder Alien Archive 4 brings nearly 100 life-forms, a dozen playable races, and new alien technology. In the last part of this series let’s take a closer look at one of those species, the symbiotic hadrogaans, and some of that tech!

Though now the symbiotic primary inhabitants of the three moons of Hadrogess—a desolate world in the Vast— Hadrogaans once lived on the planet itself, millennia ago. They possess knowledge of their life on Hadrogess’s surface, and their departure from it, that date back to before the Gap, but even so, much of that history has been lost. Obsessive historians have reconstructed pieces of their history, but uncertainties and inconsistencies still plague the field.

All hadrogaans know for sure is that some catastrophe caused the planet’s atmosphere to begin slowly leaking into space. Faced with extinction, they scrambled for a possible solution. Following a series of frantic and unsanctioned experiments, a team of fringe scientists discovered a sapient crystal that grew deep beneath the planet’s crust, one that could merge with a hadrogaan body in a process that—in most cases— led to greater intellect and insight. These scientists claimed that the crystalline organisms, collectively called kallestrine, not only willingly participated in these experiments, but that they had sent psychic signals to the scientists—leading the latter to discover them—and had even proposed merging the entire hadrogaan species with kallestrine. Successful merging caused a rapid processing-power expansion that many felt could propel the two organisms into a new era of enlightenment, and in fact, many hadrogaans saw this way as their only hope for salvation.

Modern hadrogaans know that most of their people accepted the merging and somehow found a way—before the advent of starships—to settle their planet’s three moons. In their new symbiotic forms, hadrogaans formed a society dedicated to science, philosophy, progress, and utilitarianism in all matters. Their advancements positioned them to embrace Drift travel soon after receiving Triune’s signal, and whenever possible, hadrogaans seek positive relations with alien life—but should peace talks fail, they have no qualms with swift and efficient military solutions.

Most hadrogaans stand at about 8 feet tall with long limbs, thin bodies, and elongated fingers. Large hollows perforate their torsos, limbs, and sometimes their necks and faces, each filled with glimmering crystals—the organism that hadrogaans merged with during the Gap. The merging altered the species’ genetic makeup, and hadrogaan children are born with these crystalline hollows, which can grow and shift over time.

Hadrogaan racial traits include Dual Nervous Systems and Hadrogaan Senses: The crystals in a hadrogaan’s body can sense subtle vibrations in the environment. A hadrogaan has blindsense.

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Alien Archive 4 is filled with alien related technology!

A massive species of spaceborne plants inhabits the rocky rings of gas giants throughout the galaxy. Known to Pact Worlds scientists as greater ring roots, these creatures resemble immense, hirsute tubers bristling with gnarled tendrils and alien eyes. However, countless tragedies since the Gap have earned the infamous plant its more common name: the shipkiller bulb.

GRAVITY GRENADE: Level 2-12
Derived from the gravitational organs of shipkiller bulbs, gravity grenades generate a micro-singularity that pulls affected targets towards the detonation point. Creatures in the area move the listed distance toward the blast’s center if they fail a Fortitude saving throw. Unsecured, unattended items of 1 bulk or less automatically fail this save. The force is not powerful enough to move bigger objects, such as Large vehicles.

Despite being large, bipedal creatures, thermatrods use a knuckle-walking quadrupedal gait resembling a gorilla’s stride, though they occasionally stand on their back legs or use their arms to climb.

MAGMA SLEDGE
Inspired by the red-hot stony body of a thermatrod, magma sledges are the larger cousins of the more agile magma blades (Starfinder Armory 38). At first glance, a magma sledge seems like an analog weapon with a steel shaft and a head of solid stone. However, when the weapon powers on, cracks form along the surface show the magma hidden within, held in place with powerful magnetic fields. When slammed into a target, the intense heat and force can send even the most powerful opponents reeling. Factory floors that mass produce magma sledges are often swelteringly hot.

Populating Triaxian children’s horror tales, ursikkas roam the Triaxian wilderness during the wandering planet’s winter years.

URSIKKA HIDE ARMOR
Some of the most intrepid hunters seek out ursikkas—and wily scavengers often search the tundra for fallen ursikka bodies—to harvest their hides. Ursikka hides are light, supple, and have an insulating quality that traps body heat, making them an ideal material for cold weather gear and clothes. Talented armorsmiths can create flexible light armor from this leather, which grants cold resistance in addition to the benefits listed on the table below. Basic ursikka hide armor provides cold resistance 10, and the resistance increases to 15 and 20 for advanced and elite suits respectively.

The Alien Archive 4 Cover Artist was Remko Troost with Interior Artists: Trevor Brown, Dominik Derow, Tuan Duong Chu, Nicolas Espinoza, Michele Giorgi, Alexandre Honore, Geun Cheol Jang, Víctor Manuel Leza Moreno, Artur Nakhodkin, Vladislav Orlowski, Mirco Paganessi, Rashad Pozdnyakov, Henrik Rosenborg, Victor Rossi, Gin Sakalauskas, Ruslan Skifonich, Olli Slyusareva, Luca Sotgiu, Matias Tapia, and Remko Troost.

Don’t miss the previous parts of the series that focus on the astriapi, the copaxi, and entu three of the twelve new playable species. Find your path to friendship and science-fantasy adventure with Starfinder!

Adventures Ahead!

Aaron Shanks
Marketing and Media Manager

“An older halfling woman in bright clothes quickly approaches, a large golden wolfhound at her side. She places herself before the heroes with a glint in her eye and grins.

“I don’t suppose you’re looking for any work, by chance?!” she asks. “If you are, I have just the task. Doesn’t pay much, but you’ll get full bellies and a place to stay, along with the joy of helping an old woman on Winter Week!”

She holds up a small cobble stone with great reverence and a slightly crooked facial expression.

“My name is Kupyn Baro,” says the halfling. “Me and my pup Darb need your help to make this rock into a stew that will feed our village.”

Everyone loves Winter Week! But a witch in a quiet town isn’t finding the preparations for the big holiday feast as joyful as usual, and she’s overwhelmed by all the work left to do. As the PCs respond to her request for helpers, can they ensure the festivities go off without a hitch?

Written by Patrick Hurley, Pathfinder Bounty #5: Witch's Winter Holiday is a Pathfinder Bounty designed for Level 1. It is designed to use the Pathfinder Flip-Mat Classics: Hamlet, which is available separately at paizo.com. The map is also shown in the adventure itself. It provides 3-6 players 1-1.5 hours of play time. The repeatable content is sanctioned for use in the Pathfinder Society (second edition) Organized Play program.

Pathfinder Bounties are a line of PDF adventure products, new for 2020, designed to last about an hour of play and act as an easy introduction to Pathfinder Second Edition. They can be used as standalone events or strung together in any order as a series. While they take place in specific areas of Golarion in the Lost Omens setting, they can be used in any fantasy world.

Bounties are also perfect for Game Masters who want to use their skills to increase the encounter difficulty using the Core Rulebook, Gamemastery Guide, and other rulebooks. Then they can be used as a transition or sidequest for more experienced groups.

How have you been using these new Bounties? We’d love to hear your stories!

Adventures Ahead,

Aaron Shanks
Marketing and Media Manager

Mazes are sometimes just the thing a story needs, but they aren’t usually much fun in RPGs. A lot of the “we don’t know which way to go” feeling is lost when the players around the table see the map in a top-down way. Here’s an easy way to include a maze-like experience in your games.

First, decide on an entrance, an exit, and an optional area, like a room with some treasure or a helpful clue—something that isn’t necessary for the heroes to find but that could aid them. You should also choose a minor hindrance the heroes might stumble into, which should impose a condition like being clumsy, enfeebled, or stupefied.

Let’s apply this to a maze of kobold warrens, clawed out of the earth, braced with rickety wooden posts, and barely large enough for humans to navigate. The kobolds have stolen some trinkets from town, and our heroes need to get them back. In our kobold warrens, let’s use the following:

Entrance: The warren entry is guarded by three kobold warriors (Pathfinder Bestiary 212). That’s an encounter of Low difficulty for 1st-level heroes.

Exit: The warren’s center is where a kobold dragon mage (Pathfinder Bestiary 213) and another kobold warrior have stashed the stolen trinkets. This encounter is of Moderate difficulty for 1st-level heroes.

Optional: The kobolds have a trap-making room with a lesser bottled lightning, a lesser tanglefoot bag, and a pile with everything needed to create two spike snares.

Hindrance: The warrens are full of traps like caltrops that lodge into boots (or feet!), entwining ropes, or similar inconveniences that make intruders clumsy until they have the time and space to get themselves free of the spikes, hooks, and knots.

Which passage would you take? Illustration by Jessé Suursoo.

In the Warrens

The passages are so narrow that one hero must lead the others. The hero in the lead must attempt DC 15 Survival checks, each taking 10 minutes (this DC should be one appropriate for the party’s level; for 1st-level heroes, DC 15 works just fine). Other heroes can Aid this leader’s Survival check (Pathfinder Core Rulebook 470). Once they accumulate four successes, they’ve reached the warren’s center. The heroes can return to the surface at any time by retracing their steps, but this reduces the successes they’ve earned to zero and, if they return, they must start again.

Critical Success The party makes good progress in the maze, earning two successes. On their first critical success, they also spot the side passage leading to the trap-making room and can collect the treasures there.

Success The party earns one success towards solving the maze.

Failure The party stumbles into a kobold trap! Each hero must succeed at a DC 15 Reflex saving throw or become clumsy 1 until they are out of the warrens and take an hour to untangle themselves from the detritus. Failed saves from multiple kobold traps increases this condition, to a maximum of clumsy 3.

Critical Failure As failure, and the heroes inadvertently return to the warren entrance, losing any progress they’ve made.

How will the heroes of Otari fare in the kobold warrens they find themselves in in this week’s chapter of The Shroud of Four Silences? Find out by signing up for a weekly chapter on the paizo.com marketing mailing list. New sign-ups will only get this story for a limited time, so start catching up today (we’ll offer The Shroud of Four Silences for purchase at a later date for those who miss it via email). Whether you’re adventuring in Otari using the Pathfinder Beginner Box, the Troubles in Otari adventure, or the forthcoming Abomination Vaults Adventure Path, or setting into a menacing maze in a campaign of your own, use these rules and share how they worked with you in the comments.

Ron Lundeen
Developer

Creating new rules and expansions for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game takes a lot of work. Over the past year, the design team has been focused on rounding out the core of the game, with the release of the Advanced Player’s Guide and the Beginner Box, and as we continue planning and working on projects for 2021 and beyond, it has become clear that we need more help to continue bringing great additions like these to your game table.

So today, I am happy to announce that the Design Team has added not one, but two new members to the staff, Michael Sayre and James Case! I doubt they are strangers to most of you, both having been brought over from our Organized Play program. Having got my start in Organized Play over 20 years ago, I can tell you that experience managing and developing scenarios in that environment is a great way to hone your skills and give you a deep insight into the game. So, it should come as no surprise that Michael and James have both gotten off to a terrific start here on the team. I hope you will all join me in welcoming them to the Design Team.

With that, I am going to turn this blog over to them so they can tell you a little bit about themselves and what they bring to the team!

Jason Bulmahn
Director of Game Design

Hello!
I’m Michael Sayre, one of the new designers here at Paizo. I’ve spent the last decade writing for TTRPGs, particularly Pathfinders first and second editions. In addition to working for Paizo as both a freelancer and the Pathfinder Society Developer, I’ve also done design and development work for other TTRPG companies like Amora Games, Drop Dead Studios, Legendary Games, Lost Spheres Publishing, Rogue Genius Games, and more. It’s been a real privilege to come join what I consider to be the most talented team of game designers in the industry and I’m excited for all of you to see what we are creating together. My first big job in my new role has been taking the lead on an awesome new book that we haven’t announced just yet but keep a close eye on our announcements early in the new year! I’m looking forward to talking to all of you about the great steps we can take as we move forward with Pathfinder’s second edition, and sharing some of the cool ideas we’ve already got under way!

Hi everyone, I’m James Case! I first joined Paizo as an editor right as the Pathfinder Playtest was starting up, before moving to work on the living campaign as part of Organized Play, and I’m excited to now be joining the design team! Having worked in ESL and editing, I’m especially interested in how we can design rules that are fun and exciting to play with, but also easy to pick up and run. I hope to get to know everyone better as we move forward with all the projects we have in the works! If you want to talk games, music, memes, or hyphen usage, you can catch me on The Twitter at @toriariaria.

The Paizo offices (or our home offices, I guess) may be closed for the holidays, but that doesn’t mean we can’t show off some of the great new minis coming next month in WizKids’s Pathfinder Battles: Darklands Rising set of prepainted plastic miniatures.

Last week, I hinted that maybe, if you were good, Santa would stuff your stockings with some figures representing many of the ancestries available to Pathfinder Second Edition players. Well, it looks like you were either good enough or critically succeeded in your Stealth checks while being bad, because he left quite the haul hanging from the mantle. Let’s dig in, shall we?

One of the goals of this set, apart from getting 3-D plastic versions of some of the Darklands’ most iconic creatures, was to get more minis into the hands of players whose characters aren’t found in the Pathfinder Core Rulebook. Heck, I wanted to make sure that we were offering something to folks whose characters weren’t even based on the Lost Omens Character Guide, which introduced the lizardfolk, hobgoblin, and leshey ancestries to the game. That meant I needed to look even further ahead—this set was designed around this time last year—to the Advanced Player’s Guide.

Let’s change things up and look at these by rarity. First, the common figures. Here we have the Hellspawn Monk, Hollowborn Rogue, and Tengu Bard, all Medium figures. Not to be ignored in a Darklands-themed set, the Deep Gnome Scout and Deep Gnome Warrior are also present at this rarity (both Small, of course).

At the uncommon rarity, we’ve got the Deep Gnome Rockwarden, Gnome Scout, and Gnome Warrior, both repaints of the common deep gnome counterparts of the same name.

In rare slots, we’ve got the Tengu Jinx Eater and Siora Quinndove, Pathfinder , both Medium figures.

Finally, all of this set’s promo figures are repainted versions of Darklands ancestries. Hopefully we’ll see a return of in-person conventions in 2021 so we can start handing these (as well as promos from a few other recent sets) to attendees who visit our booths or participate in our events. Until then, here is a glimpse at the Gnome Hook Hammer Lurker, Aiudeen Elf Rogue, Ekujau Elf Swashbuckler, and the Gateborn Rogue.

Next week, we’ll usher in the new year with a look at a miniature of life-size proportions coming out the first week in January, and then wrap up Darklands Rising previews with a look at some of fantasy’s finest foes. Until then, Pathfinders, stay safe and have a happy new year!

Mark Moreland
Director of Brand Strategy

We decked the halls, lit the candles, hung the holly, and partook of so many sugarplums! But before we settle in for our long winter’s nap, the team wished to take a moment and say happy holidays to our extended family of gamers. We appreciate you being part of our family and wish you health and happiness this holiday season.

Alex Speidel (Organized Play Associate): A merry holiday to all our players, GMs and volunteers! I hope this time of year brings joy to you and yours. If you celebrate a gift-giving tradition, then I hope your presents are filled with dice, rulebooks and adventures for the coming year. If you don’t celebrate at all during this time of year, then I hope you take time for yourself: watch a movie, make your favorite dish, or visit virtually with those you love.

Linda Zayas-Palmer (Organized Play Managing Developer): It’s certainly been a challenging year, and many of us are finding new and different ways to celebrate. Wherever you are, near or far, I hope that you and your loved ones find joy in this holiday season. If you’re looking for something to play that’s lighthearted and the spirit of the season, keep an eye out for the bounty releasing at the end of this month, Witch’s Winter Holiday.

Thurston Hillman (Pathfinder Society Developer): We’ve kept him busy in the workshop producing Pathfinder Society goodies for all of you this season!

Jenny Jarzabski (Starfinder Society Developer): What a long, strange trip around the sun it’s been! The solstice is always a time of reflection for me, and wrapping up this year I realize that with challenges both ahead and behind us, it’s more important than ever to take care of ourselves, support each other, and keep hope alive. If you’re looking to add something festive to your Starfinder games, check out the SFS holiday blog here. Merry Veskmas to all!

As a Paizomas gift, we’ve finished sanctioning Troubles in Otari for Pathfinder Society (second edition). Check out the product page for details. Unfortunately, while Jenny delved into SFS Additional Resources before she left on holiday, we didn’t make quite enough progress to have it ready for upload before our long winter’s nap (really, we’ll only be gone a few days. It just sounds better!). We’ll have a further update in our January Update blog on the 7th.

We’ll be back next week with our end of the year retrospective, then again on January 7th with our first monthly update of 2021! Stay safe, enjoy the season and don’t forget to Explore, Report, Cooperate!

Until next week,

Tonya Woldridge
Organized Play Manager

The restless dead sometimes wander the world as skeletons or zombies, but necromancers are as innovative as they are evil. This trap consists of several corpses interred within the earthen walls and ceiling of a narrow passage. When living creatures enter the 5-foot-wide and 20-foot-long tunnel, the corpses animate and lunge from behind the dirt, their rotted limbs grasping and their maggot-ridden faces moaning.

An unassuming underground tunnel can hide unseen hazards. Illustration by Jay Epperson.

Gravehall Trap — Hazard 4

Complex, Magical, Trap

Stealth +12 (expert)

Description When a living creature crosses the midpoint of the trapped tunnel, necromantic magic partially animates the corpses buried in the walls and ceiling.

Disable Thievery DC 24 (expert) to disrupt the magical trigger before the hazard rolls initiative, or Religion DC 18 (trained) to overwhelm the area with positive energy and prevent the hazard from using its routine for 1 round; on the third successful Religion check, the necromantic energies are disrupted and the hazard is destroyed.

AC 20; Fort +15, Ref +8, Will +14
HP 60 (BT 30); Immunities mental, poison; Weaknesses positive 10

Lunging Dead [reaction] (divine, fear, incapacitation, mental, necromancy) Trigger A living creature crosses the midpoint of the tunnel; Effect The dead reach out from the walls and ceiling, moaning and spewing writhing maggots. Creatures in the room must attempt a DC 21 Will save. The trap then rolls initiative.

Critical Success The target is unaffected.

Success The target is frightened 1.

Failure The target is frightened 2. It can’t reduce its frightened condition below 1 while in the trap’s area.

Critical Failure As failure, and the target is paralyzed for 1 round.

Routine (1 action) Undead fists assail all creatures in the hall, dealing 4d6 bludgeoning damage. Creatures in the hall must attempt a DC 21 Reflex save.

Critical Success The target is unaffected.

Success The target takes half damage.

Failure The target takes full damage, and its Speeds are reduced by 10 feet (to a minimum of 5 feet) for 1 round.

Critical Failure The target takes double damage and is immobilized for 1 round.

To see the inspiration for this hazard, be sure to sign up for our weekly marketing emails, which include a new chapter of Liane Merciel’s The Shroud of Four Silences novella each week. While this trap plays a role in this week’s chapter, “Welcoming Hands,” Game Masters are encouraged to use it in any campaign, whether it’s set in the town of Otari or not. Be sure to share your stories of thrilling adventure in the comments below.

Ron Lundeen
Developer

The Starfinder Roleplaying Game is both weird and wonderful. So, even though the Holiday season is upon us—or perhaps because of it—we present to you the full fungus entry from the new Starfinder Alien Archive 4 to battle, befriend or become. Introducing the entu colony!

Entu Colony

Entu colonies begin their life cycle as a collection of minuscule spores. Over time, the spores fuse together through intricate networks of mycelia that function similarly to neurons, creating sapient and mobile fungal colonies. These structures generate conscious thought and obtain sensory information about the colony’s environment.

In their first weeks of life, entu spores gradually coalesce into amorphous pools of opalescent slime with malleable pseudopod-like organs. At this stage, colonies can communicate telepathically with other creatures using a lexicon of sensory and emotional concepts. Entu colonies can reproduce asexually once they reach maturity, typically six months after they first sprout mycelia. Most of the resulting spores integrate into the parent colony, but some may split off to form a separate colony.

Thought not parasitic, entu colonies feed on emotion and thought. In fact, some seek to consensually merge with other sentient creatures rather than form into full-fledged and independent colonies. Instead of harming their host, an entu fungus’s adaptable cells mimic the host’s brain and nerve tissue. Their mycelia intertwine with their host’s central nervous system, creating new synapses and enhancing sections of the host’s brain. Despite inhabiting the host’s body, the entu fungus retains a separate consciousness which intertwines with its host through shared functional memories and sensory input. The resultant symbiotic life-form, called an entu symbiote, eventually attains self-awareness, complex thought, and even linguistic ability. Entu integration can sometimes result in entu symbiotes’ offspring already being seeded with the fungal life integrated into their bodies and brains; this development has led to the “uplifting” of entire species of previously non-sapient animals.

The nelentu, one of the founding species of the Kreiholm Freehold, is a prominent example of a successful symbiosis that spans generations. Originally a species of bat-like animals called neleks that evolved on Agillae-2, these once unintelligent, fruit-eating creatures encountered entu spores early in their evolution and willingly became their hosts. The two species formed a society based on this symbiosis. Today, nelentus inhabit tiered jungle-cities built around green spaces, known as Gardens of Thought, where they cultivate entu spores for future generations. Nelentus consider themselves to be one species, referring to themselves and other nelentus using plural pronouns in deference to their dual nature.

Entu fungi of all kinds seek constant exposure to emotion and thought to thrive, and those involved with symbiotes prioritize their hosts’ physical needs. They prefer to enter symbiotic relationships with creatures who can benefit from their cellular mimicry, living as long as the host creature does—and dying along with it. Entu colonies, on the other hand, can survive for up to 300 years.

The entu are two-playable-races-in-one!

Entu Colonies

Ability Adjustments: +2 Int, +2 Cha, –2 Str
Hit Points: 2
Size and Type: Entu colonies are Small oozes. Amorphous: An entu colony has the amorphous universal creature rule (page 152).
Entu Colony Senses: An entu colony has blindsight (emotion) with a range of 60 feet.
Limited Ooze Benefits: See page 34.
Limited Telepathy: Entu colonies have limited telepathy with a range of 30 feet. Tactical Symbiosis: See page 34.

Entu Symbiotes

Ability Adjustments: +2 Int
Hit Points: 4
Size and Type: Entu symbiotes are Small, Medium, or Large animals with the entu symbiote subtype. Entu Symbiote Senses: An entu symbiote has blindsense (emotion) with a range of 30 feet and low-light vision.
Extrasensory Perception: The mycelia integrated into an entu symbiote’s nervous system allow them to perceive ambient thoughts and emotion. They gain a +2 racial bonus to Perception and Sense Motive checks.
Limited Augmentations: The only augmentations that can be installed in an entu symbiote’s brain are datajacks and the mechanic’s custom rig.
Limited Telepathy: Entu symbiotes have limited telepathy with a range of 30 feet.
Natural Weapons: Entu symbiotes have the natural weapons universal creature rule with a kinetic damage type chosen at character creation.
Symbiotic Enhancement: At character creation, an entu symbiote chooses a fly speed (Ex, average), burrow speed, climb speed, or swim speed, matching thematically the type of animal on which the entu symbiote is based. The entu symbiote has that speed with a value of 20 feet.

The Starfinder Alien Archive 4 Editing Lead was Avi Kool with Editors: Judy Bauer, Gideon F., Leo Glass, Patrick Hurley, Avi Kool, Ianara Natividad, Kieran Newton, and Lu Pellazar.

Don’t miss Part 1 and Part 2 of Aliens Among Us which explore the astriapi, the copaxi, and species grafts. Next week we examine the hadrogaan and more!

Adventures Ahead!

Aaron Shanks
Marketing and Media Manager

Hello Pathfinders!

You may have heard Pinnacle Entertainment Group is converting some of Paizo’s legendary Adventure Paths to the Savage Worlds game system. Don’t worry…we’re not trying to steal anyone away from our friends at Paizo! Because friends they are—our founders have known each other for more than two decades!

You already know the staff of Paizo and how they created one of the game industry’s greatest success stories. If you don’t know Pinnacle or our founder Shane Hensley, you might know some of his work. He’s written, designed, produced, or worked on hundreds of games, from triple-A MMOs like Neverwinter or City of Heroes / Villains to miniatures, to roleplaying, card, board games, novels, and dozens of short stories. He’s even written, edited, or overseen dozens of books for various versions of the d20 system, from TSR’s original Dark Sun, Ravenloft, and Lankhmar settings to d20 versions of our own games. Of course he’s most famous for creating Savage Worlds and Deadlands: the Weird West.

You fortunate souls already get to play the incredible epic Adventure Paths. Paizo has done such an amazing job not just creating these legendary tales, but supporting them as well. From pawns to maps to supplemental books and other accessories, those of us at smaller companies look up to Paizo to see what they’re doing. They’re industry leaders, good people, and we’re fans of all they’ve accomplished—just like those of you reading this blog.

So why convert these adventures to Savage Worlds then? Because we love them.

Our rules preferences may vary, but we all share a love of great settings and epic adventures. And Pathfinder fits right into the types of worlds we love to play in, like the Weird Wild West of Deadlands, college horror and hijinks in East Texas University, the monstrous Victorian pulp world of Rippers, the far-flung future of The Last Parsec, the comic-strip heroism of Flash Gordon, or any of the other settings we’re known for.

Our fans play everything. We’ve seen homebrew versions of everything from Scooby Doo to Ghost Busters, Aliens, post-apocalyptic Savage Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and so much more. We also have a robust licensing program for companies who want to use our rules, creating even more worlds to explore, like Monster Hunters International, Interface Zero, Wise Guys, Trailer Park Shark Attack, and so many, many more.

But one of the things we most often see “Savaged” are Paizo Adventure Paths. Our fans and even our own staff have run dozens of Pathfinder adventures and campaigns with unofficial conversions. So why not give Savage Worlds fans official rules to stop the insidious Skinsaw cult in Rise of the Runelords, defeat Baba Yaga in Reign of Winter, or explore the scorching deserts of Osiron in Mummy’s Mask?

That was our proposition, and we feel honored our Paizo friends have trusted us to re-present their original work for our system. It’s truly an honor and a privilege, and one of the greatest projects we’ve ever worked on.

Shane Hensley
Pinnacle Entertainment Group

Shane Hensley is the president of Pinnacle Entertainment Group, and a former Executive Producer on several triple-A video games. He has a MA in military history, was a long-time freelancer for TSR, West End Games, and many others, and is the creator of the Deadlands intellectual property, the Great Rail Wars miniatures game, and the Savage Worlds roleplaying game system. He lives in Arizona, USA.

Fly Free or Die is the newest Adventure Path for the Starfinder RPG. It’s a story about working class heroes. They’re not trying to save the galaxy, they’re just trying to pay the bills. But their former employer has hired assassins to take them out, and a crime boss has sent an army of bounty hunters after them, and things just go from bad to worse. Your heroes in Fly Free or Die are quickly going to figure out there’s only two things in the galaxy that aren’t for sale: integrity and revenge.

This Adventure Path starts with 1st level characters and goes all the way to 13th level; the first two volumes are already available, and the rest are on their way. In addition to the story itself, with all the detailed encounters and amazing art you expect from Paizo, you’ll also find a complete system for the economic aspects of starship operation—how to find, buy, load, transport, and sell cargo, and you can use the profits from your business to improve your starship or expand your operations. In addition, the Adventure Path introduces Side Jobs—short 2-page adventures that a GM can use to fill a game session or accommodate players when they decide to go off script (which they usually do).

The first volume, “We’re No Heroes,” includes a 10-page player’s guide, “Working for a Living,” and we’re very glad to make this player’s guide available to you as a separate PDF you can download for free right here. “Working for a Living” was written by Chris Sims (lead developer on the Dawn of Flame Adventure Path), and it includes custom backgrounds that tie your characters to NPCs and plots in Fly Free or Die, as well as new gear and two new themes: the Vaster grew up on the fringes of the galaxy, and the Prole is a blue collar professional who works well with others. This article also goes into detail on EJ Corp (it’s pronounced “edge”), the faceless and cruel mega corporation that employs your characters at the beginning of the AP.

Don’t worry, you’re not going to be working for EJ Corp long. This is a story about freedom—about going where you want to go and doing what you want to do, answering to no one and being your own boss. But the trouble with being your own boss is, you’re on your own, and there’s no one around to catch you when you fall. Your player characters are going to have to stick together if they expect to survive living on the edge. The trips out here are long and cold. So take a deep breath, and I hope you live to enjoy yourselves.

Jason Tondro
Lead Developer, Fly Free or Die

My friends and supporters, I first want to first thank you for reading this, for supporting Paizo, and most of all, for supporting ComicBooks For Kids!

For those of you who know who we are, who follow us on Facebook and see the smiles of children sitting in hospital beds across the country thank you for your continued support. For those of you learning about us for the first time, welcome and allow me to share a little bit about us, who we are, and where this all began.

My name is Mark Weiss and I am the founder and president of ComicBooks For Kids (CB4K.ORG). As a child, I was diagnosed with severe asthma. On my 6th birthday, my mother brought me to a specialist who examined me, looked at her, and said, "It is a really good thing you brought him in to see me. Had you waited a little longer, this would have progressed into a situation where the ability to reverse the obstructions would have been very limited." And so began my shots and treatment which even today I still receive. There were many times that I felt challenged to just even be able to breathe as a child. Remember middle school, running laps in the gym? My gym teachers thought I was just looking for an excuse to get out of running ( a trigger for asthmatics if there ever was one). I remember times as a child when the bus dropped me off at the corner and all I had to do was walk three houses to my own house. That's it three houses. It was right there. I could see it but for all intent and purpose it may as well have been ten miles away, I would take ten steps, stop and grab my knees. Try to breathe. Then ten more. Knees. Breathe. And then ten more.

But I would get home and there they were. My mom had gone to the store and had bought me some comic books. Maybe it was Justice League (my favorite back then). Or Batman. Or Superman. Or Spider-man. Or Fantastic Four. I didn't care about who the publisher was, as a child that was not important. I just knew that with these comic books, I was fighting the Joker as Batman. I was flying like Superman. I was wisecracking like Peter Parker. And wow, did I want a green power ring! And forgive me but as a young lad, I so wanted those x-ray glasses that appeared in all of the ads.

Comics were my friends. And they took me away. I was in outer space fighting monsters, on an island running from dinosaurs, or flying through the sky. While I was in that fantasy world, my mind was not focused on my breathing challenges and perhaps a wonderful escape as the medicine slowly worked.

That is why we started ComicBooks For Kids! Illness strikes us all. Some more than others. Some children are in hospitals for a short period of time, others receive cancer treatments. Illness doesn't care about which gender you identify with. It doesn't care about your age, your belief system, your ethnicity. It strikes us all. And so we started ComicBooks For Kids to help children everywhere in every state of this country. It doesn't matter who you are, if you are a child(or teen) in need and in a hospital, we want to be there for you. Now 165 hospitals later and in every state of the country, we provide comic books, Funko toys and other pop culture items to bring smiles to the children while they are in the hospital.

We recognize that we can never take away the physical reasons that a child is in the hospital. But consider the emotional impact that being in a hospital has on a child. There is a fear that many feel as they walk through the doors and into that building. Even as adults, many of us become anxious as we walk into a hospital. Yet, with all of that, we have letter after letter from nurses and other health care professionals that comic books ease that emotional burden and let the children and teens relax while they are reading the comic book. And that is the point. While we can never take away the reason a child is in the hospital, we can for a period of time while they have these comic books allow them to be kids again.

We have also expanded. You see, as ComicBooks For Kids!, we often receive donations. We are often asked what is acceptable or we perhaps receive materials that are not always age-appropriate for children. What do we do with these? We created a sister site called ComicBooks For Troops. Now, regardless of your political affiliation, these brave young men and women, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, and uncles are out there serving their country. And what better way to say thank you to them, many of whom cannot be with us on holidays than to utilize these pop culture items that are not suitable for children. In this way, every donation is 100% used. They too for a brief moment can forget about the rigor of the day and lose themselves in the fantasy of storytelling be it a comic or a game.

So thank you! Thank you for supporting Paizo and supporting ComicBooks For Kids! Regardless of where you are from, we are working with hospitals in your state. Stay safe and healthy and best of holidays to you all.

ComicBooks For Kids! is a 501(C)3 organization as defined by the IRS. We are a GuideStar Platinum charity awarded to less than 1/2 of 1% of the over 3.5 million charities in the US. Further, we have been embraced and supported by both the Children's Hospital Association and the Association of Child Life professionals, received recognition from the Eisner Foundation, and support multiple military trusts and foundations.

Mark Weiss
Founder and President
ComicBooks For Kids!

Support ComicBooks For Kids! At Humble Bundle Today!

We’re just a few days from the most magical day of the year, but for Pathfinder players, every day is filled with magic, be it a healing potion, consecrated ground around a Pharasmin temple keeping the restless dead at bay, or a tactically cast wall of fire spell. As we delve deeper into the Pathfinder Battles: Darklands Rising set of prepainted plastic miniatures from our partners at WizKids, it’s hard to think about all that right now. I’m downright terrified of some of the creatures that lurk below. So, of course, I’m going to share some of them with you now!

First among them is the vampiric Vrykolakas, a Medium common figure, representing one of the Darklands’ many undead denizens. It’s far from the only undead creature in the set, however (thus the nightmares). Take, for instance, the Attic Whisperer and Blood Mist, Small and Medium uncommon figures, respectively. Who doesn’t love a creepy skeletal child with an animal skull instead of a human one, or a sentient cloud of aerosol blood? I know I do!

Some of the horrors of the Darklands Rising are more traditional, representing deep-seated fears shared by all sane surface dwellers. I mean, everyone I know is afraid of a Scarecrow (and not just because of Jonathan Crane’s fear-inducing gas), so this Medium uncommon figure is sure to scare the straw out of them when they find it in one of their boosters. But that’s nothing compared to the Animate Dream which is literally a nightmare made manifest. As a Medium rare figure, however, you probably won’t have to worry about it popping up too many times when digging into your pre-ordered brick or case.

For fans of more cosmic horror, Darklands Rising presents a few creatures drawn from the ever-popular Lovecraftian mythos, including the Leng Spider(Huge uncommon) and a Shoggoth(Huge rare), both Huge monsters at the uncommon and rare rarities, respectively. If you’re looking for even more alien additions in the set, look no further than the D’ziriak (Medium rare), Fungus Leshy (Small common), or Witchwyrd (Medium uncommon), three of the strangest creatures we’ve yet put into plastic.

Finally, we would be remiss not to include one of the gods of the Age of Lost Omens in a set like this. I’m happy to inform you that we weren’t remiss. We put the body-horror mastermind Zon-Kuthon (Medium rare) in the set to give you sweet dreams of exquisite pain, torturous vivisection, and impenetrable shadows. You’re welcome!

That’s it for this week, kids, but if you’re real good and you stop bothering your sister, maybe Santa will bring you a brand new preview next week. You can fit a bunch of Pathfinder Second Edition ancestries into a stocking, right? Maybe if we go light on the coal? I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, have a safe and happy holiday, and I’ll see you on the flipside.

Mark Moreland
Director of Brand Strategy

There are just a few days left in the open playtest period for Starfinder’s upcoming precog class. If you haven't already downloaded the free playtest PDF and tried out the new class, you still have time! The playtest ends December 25, and we need your feedback to make this class the best it can be.

Illustration by Matias Tapia

If you haven’t yet, test out a precog build in a home game or in Starfinder Organized Play, and then share your thoughts via our survey or playtest forum.

Meanwhile, we're already processing the feedback you've sent us so far and discussing the ways we might improve the precog class. Thank you so much for your respectful and productive survey responses and forum conversations—these are invaluable sources of feedback, and we've been keeping a close eye on them.

While any remaining playtesting should use the class as presented in the playtest document, we wanted to take this opportunity to let you know that the final version of the class will likely move away from using Dexterity as the basis for its spellcasting—though Dexterity remains an important feature of the class identity and will likely remain the precog’s key ability score. Again, your feedback—particularly that based on actual play— has been invaluable in making these decisions, so please continue to share it!

For those who have already participated in the playtest, we thank you, and to those who plan to still send us feedback: we eagerly await your thoughts!

The Starfinder Team

Today we continue a series sampling the Starfinder Alien Archive 4!

If you are new to Starfinder, the Alien Archives hold a trove of tools for players and GMs alike.

For players “AA4” holds a dozen races with full rules, letting you play everything from a fungus-uplifted animal to a humanoid made of magical coral. Last week we looked at the astriapi. We showcase at the copaxi below.

For GMs there are nearly 100 uncanny life-forms both classic and new, from the batlike grioth and horrifying brain collector to the vengeful endling and dreaded plasmalisk. Grafts were established in the Appendix 1: CREATING MONSTERS AND OTHER NPCS in the first Starfinder Alien Archive. They were further developed or expanded upon the subsequent Alien Archive volumes.

Now, Alien Archive 4 adds species grafts—new rules for grafting the strange physical traits of other species onto your own character, creating a staggering array of customization options!

SPECIES GRAFTS

This section introduces a new type of augmentation known as a species graft, giving you the ability to partially transcend your species by taking on the racial traits of other species. Species grafts follow the rules for augmentations (Starfinder Core Rulebook 208), in that they are installed in specific systems on your body. Once installed, they become a part of your body and generally can’t be affected by abilities that destroy or disable objects. Most of these augmentations are installed into the more common systems.

Species grafts can be cybernetics, biotech, magitech, nanite enhancements, or any other form of augmentation. A specific species graft might describe its form, but that is merely an example. Your GM might decide what a species graft looks like when you purchase one or you might determine its specifics when you craft it. This doesn’t affect how a species graft functions—only its appearance.

The benefits of a species graft don’t stack with the benefits granted by a racial trait of the same name. For example, a vesk character can’t benefit from the armor savant graft.

Read more about the new rules, how they are different from other augmentations, and see the list of over 20 species grafts in your copy of Alien Archive 4. Here are a couple of samples to entire you!

CHEEK POUCHES GRAFT — SYSTEM Throat
PRICE 3,900 — LEVEL 6

Ysoki’s cheeks are remarkably stretchy, and they use this to their advantage. Durable skin implanted in your own cheeks affords you the same benefit. You can store up to 1 cubic foot of items weighing up to 1 bulk in total in your new cheek pouches, and you can transfer a single object between hand and cheek as a swift action. You can disgorge the entire contents of your pouches onto the ground in your square as a move action that doesn’t provoke attacks of opportunity.

LASHUNTA MAGIC GRAFT — SYSTEM All Hands
PRICE 3,200 — Level 5

Most lashuntas have the ability to cast minor spells, even if they haven’t formally studied spellcasting. With tiny attuned crystals or magically aligned plates in your palms, you can cast daze and psychokinetic hand at will and detect thoughts once per day as spell-like abilities. The caster level for these effects is equal to your level.

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Copaxi

Copaxis evolved from copi, an unintelligent, coral-like organism that once covered their home world—the now heavily industrialized planet Tabrid Minor. Copi exhibit a supernatural attunement to the universe’s gravitational forces, and for ages, copaxis harnessed this organism’s power to create floating cities where they lived for centuries in a near-utopia.

The Signal changed copaxi society forever in 3 AG when copaxi inventors discovered how to refine copi into a semi-organic alloy suitable for constructing starships. Conflicting ideologies arose between traditionalists who clung to their people’s ancient mysticism and technological innovators who wished to explore the stars. These differences led to violence and, eventually, all-out war. The ensuing struggles toppled the established order, nearly destroyed copaxi mystical traditions, and led copaxis to abandon their flying cities in pursuit of industrialization. The newly united copaxis decimated the planet’s copi, simultaneously fueling a technological revolution while also severing their connection to the copi’s supernatural power.

Thanks to their world-spanning government’s fearful suppression of its past for decades, modern copaxis have only recently begun uncovering their planet’s history. Most admit that Tabrid Minor has suffered as a result of rapid industrialization, but few know the extent of the damage or comprehend their ancestors’ sacrificed connection to copi. Fewer still know the history of robotic life on the planet, for the government strictly monitors such technology and has instilled a superstitious fear of anything resembling a sentient machine in the populace. After Tabrid Minor began petitioning the Pact Worlds for protectorate status several years ago, the planet’s government increased its crackdown on historical introspection, fearing the world’s fraught past might undermine its chances of being accepted.

Read more about the cotopaxi in Alien Archive 4, including these racial traits:

Natural Communicator: A copaxi quickly adopts new forms of communication. Each time a copaxi gains a rank in Culture, they learn two languages rather than one language.

Regenerative Evolution: A copaxi gradually reshapes their body and neural networks to overcome new challenges. Each time a copaxi gains a level, they can retrain all the choices of one previous character level, as though they had used a mnemonic editor (Core Rulebook 226). They must have qualified for any new selections at the retrained level.

The Alien Archive 4 Authors are: Kate Baker, Tineke Bolleman, James Case, Jessica Catalan, JN Childs, Ed Chuck, John Compton, John Curtin, Adam Daigle, Katina Davis, Crystal Frasier, Leo Glass, Basheer Ghouse, Amanda Hamon, Sasha Laranoa Harving, Thurston Hillman, Joan Hong, Jenny Jarzabski, Jason Keeley, Mike Kimmel, Avi Kool, Chris Lambertz, Luis Loza, Ron Lundeen, Carmen Marin, Hilary Moon Murphy, Adrian Ng, Emily Parks, Joe Pasini, Lu Pellazar, Samantha Phelan, Jessica Redekop, James Rodehaver, Simone D. Sallé, Chris S. Sims, Kendra Leigh Speedling, Owen K.C. Stephens, and Viditya Voleti.

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Next week is a two-for-one alien encounter as we look at the entu colony and entu symbiote—both are playable!

Adventures Ahead!

Aaron Shanks
Marketing and Media Manager

On the first day of Paizomas, my GM gave to me…

As we close 2020, we give you exciting news of a new Pathfinder Playtest! Just after the new year we’ll release a playtest with two new classes for you to create, play, and share feedback on. The playtest will run from Jan 5-Feb 5. We wanted to share the news so you can plan some games in that window. For our organized play community, players will be able to try the playtest classes and earn credit for a Pathfinder Society character at the same time.

Be the first to play two new Pathfinder classes in just under 2 weeks!

Not sure how to find a game? Check out warhorn.net or our VTT partners (Roll20, Fantasy Grounds or Astral) for games. Need a pre-made adventure? Consider using a Pathfinder Society scenario (you can run them outside of Society rules), link together a few Pathfinder Bounties, or try Troubles in Otari!

We hope you all have a safe December, enjoy a cup of virtual cheer, and we’ll see you here on January 5th!

The Paizo Goblins

Beginning January 4, 2021, prices for all Pathfinder Society (second edition) and Starfinder Society scenarios, as well as the Pathfinder Bounties, will increase due to rising production costs. High-level scenarios (level range 7-10 and higher) received an additional increase due to the extra time and attention needed from authors/developers related to added complexity of play at higher levels. To help our community with budgeting costs, we plan to produce no more than one high-level scenario per month across both Pathfinder and Starfinder Society lines.

The changes outlined below apply retroactively to Pathfinder Society (second edition) and Starfinder Society scenarios and the Pathfinder Bounties. Pathfinder Society (first edition) and Pathfinder Adventure Card Game scenarios will not be affected

Product	Old Price	New Price	New Subscriber Price
Standard PFS2/SFS Scenario	$4.99	$5.99	$4.79
High-Level Scenario	$4.99	$6.99	$5.59
Bounty	$1.99	$2.99	N/A
Interactive Special	$9.99	$9.99	N/A

As always, subscribers will receive a 20% discount off the cover price for new releases in their subscription. Paizo Advantage customers can also receive free subscriptions to one or both lines of Organized Play scenarios.

Again, these changes will take effect January 4, 2021, and will apply to all previous adventures for Starfinder Society and Pathfinder Society (second edition). If you wish to make changes to your subscriptions in light of this information, please email customer.service@paizo.com. Thanks for your understanding!

Until then - Explore, Report, Cooperate!

Tonya Woldridge
Organized Play Manager

Last month I started a new monthly blog presenting the new Pathfinder- and Starfinder-compatible products—all PDFs—recently posted on paizo.com. Here they are for the month of November 2020.

I’m listing them by the publisher with links to their other works on our site. Let me know if you like this presentation or would rather they be sorted by Pathfinder First Edtion, Pathfinder Second Edition, and Starfinder. That said, I may switch it up from time to time so as not to play favorites with either publishers or games.

Dias Ex Machina

Amethyst Factions (PFRPG) PDF

RETURN TO THE WORLD OF AMETHYST
In this latest book, prepare to know many of the truths only hinted previously, entire lands and peoples revealed in intricate detail. Secrets will be exposed. New enemies will emerge. No gods will save this world. No prophecies will herald emerging heroes. With sides established, where will you fall—with darkness or light, chaos or order, magic or technology? Is there balance? Will you and the world survive long enough to discover it.

Compatible with Pathfinder 1st edition.

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Jon Brazer Enterprises

Book of Beasts: Witch Codex (PFRPG) PDF

Eldritch Lore and Powerful Curses
Do your PCs need to hire some arcane know-how? Does your upcoming session need a spell slinger with some spooky flavor? Are you seeking a villain who can work a great and terrible curse to end your campaign? The Book of Beasts: Witch Codex has the solutions you need, arming game masters of the First Edition of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

Compatible with Pathfinder 1st edition.

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Legendary Games

Aegis of Empires 4: Legend of the Burning Star (PF2E) PDF &
Aegis of Empires 4: Legend of the Burning Star (PFRPG) PDF

Legend of the Burning Star is a Pathfinder Second Edition adventure for 10th-level characters set in the Kingdom of Foere, the Grand Duchy of Reme, the Grey Citadel, and beyond in the Lost Lands Campaign Setting. This rich and exciting world 20 years in the making has been home to dozens of adventures from Necromancer Games and Frog God Games and produced with their cooperation to be compatible with The World of the Lost Lands campaign guide! It is the fourth of six adventures in the Aegis of Empires Adventure Path, with each adventure exploring hitherto unexplored areas of the Lost Lands with a combination of horror, intrigue, deadly danger, and the lure of ancient mysteries.

Sold in separate volumes, one is compatible with Pathfinder Second Edition and one compatible with Pathfinder First Edition.

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Aegis of Empires 5: Race for Shataakh-Uulm (PF2E) PDF &
Aegis of Empires 5: Race for Shataakh-Uulm (PFRPG) PDF

Race for Shataakh-Uulm is a Pathfinder adventure for 12th-level characters set in the Haunted Steppes and beyond in the Lost Lands Campaign Setting. This rich and exciting world 20 years in the making has been home to dozens of adventures from Necromancer Games and Frog God Games and produced with their cooperation to be compatible with The World of the Lost Lands campaign guide! It is the fifth of six adventures in the Aegis of Empires Adventure Path, with each adventure exploring hitherto unexplored areas of the Lost Lands with a combination of horror, intrigue, deadly danger, and the lure of ancient mysteries.

Sold in separate volumes, one is compatible with Pathfinder Second Edition and one compatible with Pathfinder First Edition.

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Legendary Planet Player's Guide (PF2E) PDF

Awesome Options for Interplanetary Adventure!
The Legendary Planet Player's Guide offers an amazing array of all-new options for Pathfinder Second Edition adventure, including four fantastic ancestries complete with over 60 ancestry feats and heritages, special equipment, and more! You'll find everything you need to use the clockwork-cybernetic auttaine, the chlorvian plant people, the four-armed psychic tretharri, and the mischievous winged reptilian zvarr in any campaign from fantasy to sci-fi.

Compatible with Pathfinder Second Edition.

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Stellar Options #1: Inferno Soldier (SFRPG) PDF

Burn It With Fire!
Sometimes the cleansing flame is the only way to be sure when it comes to eradicating your enemies, and Inferno Soldier really brings the heat! Within you'll find the inferno soldier fighting style, alongside 20 new feats, gear boosts, weapon special properties, and new pieces of equipment, from firewall debuggers and truthsweepers to dual-process pistoleer and molten commando!

Starfinder Compatible

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Stellar Options #2: Soldier Archetypes (SFRPG) PDF

Fall In, Soldier!
Everybody loves a good soldier, and in this PDF you'll find three terrific new soldier-specialized archetypes! The jump trooper integrates and weaponizes their thrusters to soar across the battlefield, while the siege walker leans into heavy weapons and laying down overwhelming fire. The titan masters brutal hand-to-hand combat and modernizes martial arts integrated with future tech and the shockwave power of raw force.

Starfinder Compatible

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Stellar Options #3: Outer Rim Themes (SFRPG) PDF

On the Rim!
These character themes are ideal for characters whose roots are in the grungy frontiers of interstellar civilization, the no-nonsense moisture farmers, free traders, rough-and-tumble miners, and hard-luck homesteaders that dot the sparsely populated reaches of the galaxy. Wherever the bright center of the universe is, their homeworlds are the planets farthest from it, and to tell the truth they kind of like it that way. Play a asteroid belt raider, a grunge-tinker salvager, a mineral-hungry stellar prospector, or a tough-as-nails wastelander and show those soft dilettantes from so-called "civilized systems" how it's done!

Starfinder Compatible

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Stellar Options #4: Inner Core Themes (SFRPG) PDF

From the Shining Center of the Galaxy
Four new themes perfect for heroes that hail from the shining systems and populous planets at the heart of interstellar civilization. You always had access to education and the physical, social, and intellectual resources that advanced technology had to offer, even if you lived on the margins as you trained for your adventuring career. Master music of the spheres as an adept of the song, become a star of the holo-news service as a correspondent, uncover the truth as a mystic detective, and learn the secrets of the ancients as a prehistorian. Any one of them is perfect for the discerning and cultured character!

Starfinder Compatible

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Little Red Goblin Games

Simple Classes: Beastspeaker (PFRPG) PDF

Keep it Simple: Beastspeaker
Simple classes are trimmed-down, streamlined classes designed to be easy to pick up and play for both new players and system veterans! Each has a sleek core set of abilities that isn't bogged down with options backed up with a strong but balanced chassis (HD, saves, BAB, etc)

Beastspeaker Base Class
As lord of beasts a beastspeaker is both at home among the wilds and able to command with animals.

Compatible with Pathfinder First Edition.

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Artifex - New Base Class (PFRPG) PDF

Forge a God, Grow Your Faith.
To forge a god is a bold move. Artifex are religious adherents to extremely minor deities: often household gods, ancestral family deities, and occasionally long forgotten gods that are no longer worshiped. The "little gods" they follow are often only as strong as adventurers and if anyone else worships the same god it's probably a close family member. Artifex use ancient rites and divine law to enable their deity to climb the ladder of the pantheon until they are a major god in their own right commanding legions of followers. In short: artifex forge new gods.

Compatible with Pathfinder First Edition.

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Rogue Genius Games

Files for Everybody: Scoundrel Option (PF2E) PDF

In this File, scoundrel options! Brand-new archetypes for characters with Assassination Dedication, Loremaster Dedication, Poisoner Dedication, and Scout Dedication! Bully foes you've Marked for Death, throw bombs of deadly blight at your enemies, harry them to discover their weaknesses, and more!

Compatible with Pathfinder Second Edition.

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Rogue Genius Ancestries: Loamlings (PF2E) PDF

Can You Dig It?!
Loamlings are a new ancestry for the second edition of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Molelike in form, loamlings have a strong connection to the earth and growing things makes that loamlings natural farmers, druids, and herbalists. Written by veteran second-edition designer Michael Sayre, this fully-illustrated pdf presents the loamling ancestry with all the roleplaying notes, background, and game rules (including four heritages and 20 ancestry feats) needed to make them an interesting and well-rounded part of your campaign!

Compatible with Pathfinder Second Edition.

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Find thousands of Pathfinder-compatible and Starfinder-compatible products at the paizo.com store every day.

Adventures Ahead!

Aaron Shanks
Marketing and Media Manager

In this week’s exciting installment of The Shroud of Four Silences, the adventurers head to Stone Ring Pond, home to Otari’s local druid enclave, in hopes of getting some answers to lingering questions. This location doesn’t play a prominent role in the Pathfinder Beginner Box, Pathfinder Adventure: Troubles in Otari, or the Abomination Vaults Adventure Path, but that doesn’t mean that Game Masters and players can’t make it a key part of their campaigns!

Adventurers look to the water for a glimpse of their fate. Illustration by Flrat Solhan.

Stone Ring Pond

Stone Ring Pond sits high on a rise overlooking Otari. One of the town’s most unusual and understated landmarks, the pond’s preternaturally still waters are mirror-bright. Twenty-four standing stones, each 12 feet high, surround the pond, their weathered surfaces bearing silent testament to their age. Some Otari residents visit Stone Ring Pond to glimpse the future in the pool’s still waters, but more come for the advice and guidance of the druids and itinerant naturalists that camp around the pond. These people rarely invite visitors, as they are folk far more at home in the wild than in a bustling town, but neither do they turn away people asking for their advice.

A gnome druid named Worliwynn has lived longer around Stone Ring Pond than the other denizens, who tend to come and go with the seasons. Having lived near Stone Ring Pond for 25 years, Worliwynn has taken it upon herself to educate and guide the fishers and lumberjacks of Otari. She teaches them to improve their yields by protecting the wilderness and not taking too much from nature. Worliwynn is one of Otari’s most esteemed advisors, even though she hasn’t set foot within the town limits for years.

Many of those who live near Stone Ring Pond are followers of Gozreh, the god of wind and waves, and the water of the pond is sacred to these Gozrens. Some make use of the following ritual to peer into the future.

Waters of Prediction — Ritual 5

Rare, Divination

Cast 4 hours; Cost rare incense and herbs worth a total value of 300 gp; Secondary Casters 3

Primary Check Nature or Religion (master, the check has the secret trait); Secondary Checks Nature, Occultism, Religion, or Survival

Range 20 feet; Targets 1 pool of water

You and the secondary casters peer into the still waters of a natural pool or lake to divine your collective future. Over the course of the minute following the ritual’s end, the waters display a scene of one possible future involving the primary caster and as many secondary casters as feasible. This scene is usually, but not necessarily, set within the next few days. The future is unwritten, so the casters would be wise to not read guarantees into the cryptic nature of the visions shown in the water.

Critical Success The scene gives hints as to at least one danger the casters are likely to face, as well as at least one method of effectively addressing the danger (showing the group examining an area of a wall containing a secret hatch to bypass a trap, for example).

Success The scene gives a hint as to at least one danger the casters are likely to face, or some cryptic method to effectively address or bypass a danger (such as a scene of lurking trolls, or a scene of the casters lighting several torches and passing them out, but not both).

Failure The scene consists of so many contradictory details that it’s impossible to identify a single danger or effective course of action from them.

Critical Failure The scene is wrong; it shows the casters facing a danger they’re unlikely to come across, or encourages actions that hinder a likely upcoming encounter (such as encouraging chopping down several trees before meeting an arboreal or a dryad).

Ron Lundeen
Developer

Last week we got our first glimpse into the myriad creatures included in the forthcoming Darklands Rising set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted plastic miniatures from our partners at WizKids. But there are still such wonders to explore in these unplumbed depths! There’s no rest for the wicked—especially among demon-worshiping drow and daemon-loving urdefhans—so let’s dive in!

What do you call a group of drow? Bad news.

Dad jokes aside, we have a bunch of drow in this set, and that’s good news for Pathfinder players, who have had to look elsewhere (or else paint their elf miniatures purple) for drow thus far. We’re more than making up for their long absence from Pathfinder Battles, though, with five of them. Darklands Rising includes: Drow Rogue (Medium common), Drow Priestess (Medium uncommon), Drow Fighter (rapier and crossbow variants; Medium uncommon), and Allevrah Azrinae (Medium rare).

Long-time collectors may be confused by that last one, since Allevrah, Elf General was included in the Rusty Dragon Inn set, but I assure you that the two are unrelated. Totally a coincidence.

So there are the demon-worshiping drow. They’ll be tough to defeat, but at least they aren’t accompanied by those daemon-loving urdefhans I mentioned alongside them. Right? Again, bad news. We’ve got urdhefans too. The race of transparent-skinned bloodsuckers from deepest Orv are represented by the Urdefhan Warrior (Medium common) and Urdefhan Tormentor (Medium rare), but also a giant undead bat the urdefhans use as mounts, called a Skaveling (Large uncommon).

Surely not every creature in Darklands Rising is quite so evil. Let’s take a look at a few that don’t really have much in the way of sentience (so not evil!) that your players definitely will never have to worry about. Take, for example, the Giant Stag Beetle (Large uncommon)—a perfectly harmless, mindless insect that would never hurt anyone. Or the Giant Amoeba (Small common)—it has “giant” in its name, but it’s still just a benign blob of cell-stuff. Or! Or the Dig-Widget (Medium uncommon), which is just a machine that digs so you don’t have to. Not only won’t it hurt anyone, it actively helps them!

That’s all for this week, folks! I’ll be back next Monday to ask you the most important question to consider before opening a pack (or brick, or case, even) of Darklands Rising: “Are you afraid of the dark?” Until then, Pathfinders, stay safe, and have a happy holiday season.

Mark Moreland
Director of Brand Strategy

Check out what we have in store this week on Twitch!

Also if you’re interested in running your own Pathfinder or Starfinder streams, we released some awesome art assets which are free to use for your own shows! You can find them here.

Be aware that some of the shows on the schedule may be canceled at any moment. We prioritize our employees and content creator’s safety over their productions as we all deal with the current pandemic, we apologize in advance if plans abruptly change from what’s scheduled here.

So here is what’s happening this week at OfficialPaizo on Twitch!

Pathfinder 1E, Rise of the Runtlords!, Dec 15, 6:00 p.m. Pacific

Join Dragons & Things as they return to their Pathfinder 1st Edition campaign! Will they finally be able to defeat their terrible foe? Or will their constant rolling of 1s finally bring them to their knees?

Catch them live on their twitch channel, or visit Paizo’s official Twitch channel to see it hosted there.

Pathfinder Beginner Box: Troubles in Otari, Dec 16, 5:00 p.m. Pacific

Every adventure has its beginning, and what better to teach you the way than the Pathfinder Second Edition Beginner Box?
Join Dragons & Things as they journey through the Troubles in Otari adventure that’s inside of the beginner box. Teaching you how to play Pathfinder Second Edition, all while keeping the dice hot and the adventure engaging!
Catch the show live every Wednesday at 6 p.m. Pacific on Paizo’s Official Twitch Channel.
Cast:

Cast:
Jim Rodehaver - Twitter: The Game Master
Katie Wilson - Twitter | YouTube | Instagram : Waverly Kent - Level 1 Human Cleric
Xander Jeanneret - Twitter | Twitch : Ingot - Level 1 Dwarf Wizard
Michelle Nguyen Bradley - Twitter | Twitch : Brick Vanderripped Jr - Level 1 Human Fighter
Gabe Hicks - Twitter : Thee Vairy - level 1 Elf Rogue

Band of Badgers, Dec 17, 1:00 p.m. Pacific

Band of Badgers explores the world of Golarion from the time of ‘Rise of the Runelords’ as the band of heroes start their journey across the lands of Varisia and beyond. They will be facing goblin raids, a cult of serial killers, fight backwoods ogres, stop an advancing army of stone giants, delve into ancient dungeons, and finally face off against a wizard-king in his ancient mountaintop city.

Catch them live either hosted on Paizo’s Twitch Channel or on their channel here..

The Band of Bravos! Dec 18, 2:00 - 5:00 p.m. Pacific

A troupe of performing adventurers find themselves hired to put on the show of a lifetime, but when the curtain rises, they quickly learn that they are the stars of a far more dangerous quest..

Join Paizo employees as they brave the absolute horrors that Director of Game Design, Jason Bulmahn has prepared for them.

Your adventuring party comprises…

• Social Media Producer Payton Smith as Lorn Barnes, Human Wizard
• Web Content Manager Maryssa Lagervall as Ilana Thistlefoot, Halfling Druid
• Developer Jason Keeley as Roark Thunderbird, Tengu Swashbuckler
• Pathfinder Creative Director James Jacobs as Shensen, Half-Elf Bard

Androids & Aliens by Glass Cannon Network Dec 18, 5:00 p.m. Pacific

Set in the distant future, five strangers find themselves caught in the middle of an interstellar mystery that threatens the very existence of the galaxy!

Join GlassCannon live at 5:00 p.m. Pacific for this officially licensed Actual Play of the Starfinder Roleplaying Game Dead Suns Adventure Path. Watch on Paizo’s Official Twitch Channel, or directly on their Twitch Channel here.

Age of Ashes with Squiddish, Dec 19, 12:00 p.m. Pacific

“Fires burn atop the ruined citadel on Hellknight Hill, sending plumes of red smoke into the air that could be a call for help. Now a gang of adventurers rise together to investigate the current conflict. How will they handle the Hellknights? Will they all burn in horrendous fire? Tune into this new Pathfinder Second Edition live play show!

Squiddish with the 2 Perception crew streams on the OfficialPaizo on Twitch channel every week at 2 p.m. Pacific.

Things in Space!, Dec 19, 6:00 p.m. Pacific

The Dragons & Things crew have blasted off into the wide and expansive universe of Starfinder! Strap yourselves in for an exciting and thrilling adventure through the Starfinder universe!

Catch them live on their twitch channel, or hosted on Paizo’s Official Twitch Channel.

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Do you have a Pathfinder or Starfinder Live Play? Tell us in the blog comments below! We’re excited to see what stories you come up with.

We've added a new Forum for Streaming & Actual Play discussions. If you have any questions you’d like to submit for our Q&A segments at the end of our Starfinder Wednesdays or Pathfinder Fridays you can do so in our Forums.

Pathfinder Fridays Fan Club

Starfinder Wednesdays Fan Club

If you have a Pathfinder or Starfinder stream, post it under Third Party Broadcasts.

Catch us live at our Official Twitch Channel. Catch the Video On Demand (VOD) on Twitch immediately after it is done or a week later on our YouTube channel.

While 2020 has certainly had its challenges for everyone, the holidays are a time for celebration and reflection. We’ve produced a year’s worth of products that we’re proud of, and we hope you’ve enjoyed playing our games as much as we’ve enjoyed making them!

To thank all of our wonderful fans for supporting us through another year, we are once again offering our holiday discount code for an additional 10% off of one order on paizo.com. Use the code “holiday21” during checkout, and the discount will be applied before shipping and taxes. This code is valid for one use per customer, so make sure to stock up on everything you need before using it!

Now is the time to get discounts on some of the most popular Pathfinder products we’ve released in 2020! You can get your hands on the new Pathfinder Beginner Box – the perfect tool to introduce new players to Pathfinder Second Edition, or learn how to GM. Explore new rules, creatures, and character options with the Gamemastery Guide, Bestiary 2, or the Advanced Player’s Guide. You can surround yourself in the rich setting of Pathfinder with the Lost Omens line, including Gods & Magic, Legends, and Pathfinder Society Guide. Of course you can always dive into one of the two thrilling Adventure Paths that released this year – Extinction Curse and Agents of Edgewatch. If you’ve already got all the books you need, why not browse through Pathfinder Accessories for helpful items like the Bestiary Pawn Box, the Advanced Player’s Guide Character Sheet Pack, or the Weapons & Armor Deck.

Starfinder has had an excellent year as well, and now you can use the discount code to save on some of the enticing offerings of the year. Go forth and discover the vast reaches of space with new rules from Near Space, outfit and operate your spacecraft with Starship Operations Manual, and encounter or play as all sorts of new alien species with Alien Archive 4. Uncover haunting mysteries and devious plots in the The Threefold Conspiracy Adventure Path, save the galaxy from the destruction of an ancient warship in The Devastation Ark, or start your journey as a band of misfits seeking freedom and revenge in Fly Free or Die. If you’re looking for accessories, this year also saw the release of the popular Deck of Many Worlds, the Starship Combat Reference Cards, and the Near Space Pawn Collection.

Never fear, our discount code isn’t just for new things! You can use it to stock up on just about everything on our website, including Pathfinder First Edition, the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, Pathfinder Dice, Starfinder Dice, and even the adorably helpful Skittermander Gamer Pouch. Feel free to browse around our newly-revamped store landing page, and start filling your cart today!

The discount code is not valid on subscriptions, preorders, backorders, non-Paizo downloads, or gift certificates, but it does stack with other discounts including the Paizo Advantage. This one-time offer ends at 11:59PM Pacific Time on January 17th.

Today we start a series sampling the Starfinder Alien Archive 4!

If you are new to Starfinder, one of the wonderful things about the Alien Archives line is that they not only provide a host of new friends and foes for GMs, they also include playable races, new spells, weapons, companions, and rules for players. They are books in which your whole group can find value.

I love to let our author’s work speak for itself to give you that browsing-through-the-gamestore feeling. So I’ve simply pulled a few excerpts directly from the hardcover to showcase how the twelve new playable races, new alien technology, and nearly 100 uncanny life-forms offer innovative options for players and GMs alike.

Overview

You are not alone in the universe. In the Starfinder Roleplaying Game, strange new creatures and cultures await your party of adventurers on every new planet and space station. Whether you’re on a routine trading mission in the most familiar sectors of the Pact Worlds or exploring never-before-contacted planets in the mysterious reaches of the Vast, Starfinder is a game about aliens—playing them, fighting them, and everything in between.

Starfinder Alien Archive 4 presents a sampling of such aliens, designed both for Game Masters to use in crafting challenging encounters and adventures and for players to use in creating and customizing their characters. It’s also a font of setting information and cultural details on the melting pot of different worlds that comprise Starfinder’s home galaxy. To fully use the creatures in this codex, you’ll need a copy of the Starfinder Core Rulebook, and the Starfinder Alien Archive contains the details for how to create your own alien foes and other NPCs. In this book, Appendix 1: Creature Subtype Grafts, Appendix 2: Class Grafts, and Appendix 3: Template Grafts give creature creators tools for constructing some of the aliens newly presented here. You can also find Starfinder rules online for free at paizo.com/sfrd.

This book is only a small sampling of the myriad creatures found in the Starfinder campaign setting. For more, see Starfinder Adventure Path volumes, Starfinder Pact Worlds, and previous Alien Archive volumes.

Alien Archive 4 also includes species grafts: a new type of augmentation that lets members of any species diversify their forms as they wish, gaining new abilities as they do!

But Alien Archive 4 doesn’t stop at creatures—this book also presents a ton of alien gear sprinkled throughout the creature entries, such as armor, magic and technological items, weapons, and more, that’s perfect for rewarding or customizing player characters.

There’s a whole galaxy out there, full of creatures to fight or befriend. Are you ready?

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Playable race: Astriapi

Astriapis are bipedal arthropods with chitinous exoskeletons, membranous insectile wings, and large powerful mandibles. Their pigmentation runs the gamut from dark blues through bold yellows, and some astriapis selectively carve their exoskeletons to create individualistic patterns. They can also naturally produce a restorative honey. On average, astriapis stand around 6 feet tall and weigh between 120 and 150 pounds.

When astriapis awoke from the Gap, they found themselves as the sole sapient inhabitants of an immense megalopolis that covered the entire landmass of the Near Space planet Colveare. Through impressive feats of magical and engineering prowess, the planet’s natural resources and native species had been preserved, with every part of the planet’s ecosystem carefully integrated into the urban sprawl. Astriapi society as a whole immediately dedicated itself to studying the city-planet’s workings to maintain the integrity of the system they found themselves a part of, surviving the struggles of post-Gap adjustments through a natural inclination to regimentation and cooperative obedience.

There is still a lot more to learn about the astriapis in the Alien Archive 4, including a unique racial trait, Honey Production! Ok, I’ll give you taste now.

Honey Production: Once per day, an astriapi can spend 10 minutes to produce a vial of magical honey. This honey functions as a mk 1 serum of healing. At 5th level (or CR 5), the honey functions as a mk 2 serum of healing, and at 9th level (or CR 9), it functions as a mk 3 serum of healing. Regardless of its level, the honey can’t be sold, and its magical properties expire after 24 hours, when it turns into mundane foodstuff.

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The Alien Archive 4 Development Lead was Joe Pasini. Development was by John Compton with Additional Development by Thurston Hillman, Jason Keeley, and Jason Tondro.

Next week we will explore species grafts and another playable race!

Adventures Ahead!

Aaron Shanks
Marketing and Media Manager

A teenage human clears red and yellow leaves from the roof before he collapses down with an exaggerated groan next to a girl on a checkered picnic blanket.

“Good afternoon to you too, Sab,” the girl says as she tosses him an apple from a small basket and smoothes her skirt out. “I take it the make-up practical went well.”

“Couldn’t remember which theorem applied to the second law of alchemical stabilization, so I guessed at the reagents and the whole thing bubbled over. Professor was furious.”

“Better that than an explosion of stinking gas, which is what happened to Paisley last week. They tried to ask the Cheater Ghost for help and it ended up telling them to add a ludicrous amount of sulfur.”

“Oh?! Did it!?! I’ll add it to the ghost list!” Sab pulls out a piece of parchment covered in a patchwork of barely legible scrawl, neat cursive, and stylized angular letters, making some notes next to an enormous “DACILANE MYSTERIES!!! HAUNTED LAB??? CURSED BEAKERS??? MALEVOLENT SINK?!?” Beaming, he turns back to his friend, “Ayen! Maybe the ghost used to be a devil!”

“That makes absolutely no sense, Sab.” Ayen puts a bottle of tea in the center of a stone tile and breathes out a fine stream of flame to heat it as she watches students run around the track in the yard below. “It’s probably just echos coming through from the nearby classroom. Besides, a devil isn’t a mortal so it’d have to—Oh look, Voxi’s taking his shot!”

Sab rushes to the edge of the rooftop to see his friend waiting nervously under the massive maple tree in the corner of the schoolyard, a basket of heart-shaped cookies in hand. Ayen continues, “He’s been wanting to ask Liro to the Winter Week festival all month.”

“Oh no, he’s in for a rude surprise—Liro’s transferring out soon. His mom’s going on a Pathfinder mission to Orcland and the family is moving for a bit. He won’t be back to the Academy till next spring at the earliest.” Sab sighs. “I hope they at least have time to catch the opening of the festival.”

“Belkzen, you mean,” Ayen corrects, pushing the picnic basket closer with her tail so she can retrieve two mugs for the tea and filling them both. “Father says there’s some sort of diplomatic thing going on with the Burning Sun hold. I can’t wait to hear all about it when Liro is back.”

“Must be nice, traveling around like that. We’ll have to catch the academy ghost by the time he’s back!” Ayen rolls her eyes at another mention of ghosts as a bell rings throughout the courtyard, signaling the end of lunch.

The two friends gather their things as they leave the roof. “I still think you’re just seeing excitement where you want to see it, but I spoke with the headmaster anyway. She’s going to reach out to J Dacilane himself to see if the Society’s willing to do a ghost inspection, so we should finish up our report. Maybe we’ll even get some extra credit!”

“Honestly, after that disaster of a practical, I could use it.”

The pair disappears into the stairwell, arguing good-naturedly about whether the academy is or is not haunted, possibly with a negotiation of how many Winter Week treats one will have to buy the other if they’re wrong. In the now-empty courtyard below, leaves fall, and laughter echoes.

Art by Samuel Azeredo (left) and Hannah Boving (right).

This month, we have our last two scenarios of 2020! In Absalom, we have Pathfinder Society Scenario #2-09: The Seven Secrets of Dacilane Academy, by Rigby Bendele. This level 1–4 adventure has the PCs investigating the school legends of Dacilane Academy to determine if student reports on strange activity are due to simple imagination or paranormal activity. On the other side of the Inner Sea, Steven Hammond has a level 5–8 adventure for us with with Pathfinder Society Scenario #2-10: In Burning Dawn. As the PCs head to Belkzen for a diplomatic mission with the Burning Sun hold, they’ll need sharp wits—and, given the area’s dangerous nature, likely sharp blades as well.

If you missed it earlier today, check out our Starfinder Society previews! Otherwise, have a great week and we’ll see you back next Thursday for more Organized Play news!

James Case
prior Pathfinder Society Developer

Celita was busy, as usual, but her colleagues had requested—begged, more accurately—that she attend their holiday gathering. She would never prioritize discussing trivial subject matter while intaking excessive amounts of nutrients above completion of her duties in the Cortex, but she knew it mattered to the others, so here she was.

Now, she stood inside a cramped Downlow apartment watching a crowd of her acquaintances squabble over plates of food and colorfully wrapped gifts. Zigvigix—Ziggy, she reminded herself, feeling an odd flutter in her cardiovascular system—had entrusted Celita with a solemn duty: record the gathering with their datapad. She agreed that a chronicle of this event would make a perfect addition to the Archives.

Truthfully, Celita had never attended a party like this before. In Kuthonas past, most of the other Starfinders were either out on maneuvers or bogged down with solitary tasks of their own. She had spent last year in her pajamas, watching the Newspark parade accompanied by cold Castrovelian takeout, and the Kuthona before that had been a marathon of endless data entry and review. She panned the datapad around the room and zoomed in on Fitch, who lifted a parcel wrapped in silver paper out of the reach of the ysoki children swarming around her. They grabbed for the gift with insistent paws, their voices rising into a barely intelligible din of “please” and “it’s mine!” and “you opened the last one!” Celita sighed. Everyone else but her seemed to know exactly what to do, and how to react to the surplus of food and gifts presented to them, but she had no frame of reference for this situation. At least recording duty gave her a convenient excuse to blend into the background. She moved the datapad’s camera lens away from Fitch and toward her other colleagues who sat scrunched together on a threadbare couch. Arvin and Ziggy chatted amiably, occasionally offering each other morsels from their overloaded plates.

“Try a cookie,” Arvin gestured to a platter full of colorful sugar cookies on a nearby table, grinning proudly. “I made plenty.” Panic skittered over the lashunta’s face as he scanned the food-laden tables for his contribution. “Wait a minute…I baked two batches. Where did they all go?” He asked.

“Mmmph,” a muffled voice spoke through a mouthful of cookies. “Sorry. Over here.” Naiaj huddled on an armchair in the corner clutching the cookie tray. Celita refocused to capture the gnome’s ridiculous outfit. Naiaj wore an oversized, hand-knitted sweater of bright green wool decorated with a gaudy pattern of snowflakes and red bows. She’d pinned a matching bow, probably from one of the wrapped gifts, into her short white hair. She caught Celita’s eye across the room and blushed, embarrassed at being caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

“Point that thing somewhere else, would you?” Naiaj growled in her usual gruff voice. Conversation died down as everyone enjoyed their food, and Celita quickly ran out of interesting subjects to catalog. Her stomach twinged, and she realized her blood sugar was low. Now that the group was settled, she could gather the requisite calories for herself. Without warning, someone shoved a plate at her. She fumbled with the datapad, dropping it in surprise, but a scaly hand appeared to catch the device before it hit the floor. It was Radaszam, who had appeared out of nowhere and now studied her through narrowed eyes. He crossed his arms in disapproval.

“Eat,” he commanded, “or you will have no energy for the games.” Celita recalled that holidays in the Veskarium often centered around competitive games, and she paled at the thought of playing harcoló or hoverskate racing on an empty stomach. “Exactly,” Radaszam said as if reading her mind. “I’ll take over recording duties for now.”

Celita gripped the plate in both hands and wandered toward the couch where her colleagues sat. No, not only colleagues, she thought; they were also her friends. She cared about them, and if they didn’t return those feelings of endearment, they would have never included her in this gathering. Feeling a bit more relaxed, she perched on the arm of the sofa next to Zigvigix. Their antennae twitched as they sensed her presence, and she felt the warmth of their telepathic voice fill her mind.

“Are you having fun, Celita?” Ziggy asked.

“Yes, I think I am.” She admitted. She took a bite of savory casserole. “Mmm, who made this?” Naiaj raised a hand to claim responsibility for the dish. Next, she sampled Arvin’s cookies, which were sweeter than she normally preferred but still delicious. After she set her empty plate aside, she felt a wordless mental nudge from Ziggy. They clutched a tiny box in their clawed hands and held it out to her.

“Is this for me?” Celita asked, feeling heat rise in her face. It was uncomfortably warm in the tiny apartment with everyone crowded in here. Fitch’s climate control system probably wasn’t built for this kind of load, she thought.

"This is my contribution for First Choices. Normally the gift exchange is random but…well…I wanted you to have it.” Ziggy gently deposited the gift in her open palms. Celita marveled at the intricate wrapping of gold foil paper and silver ribbons. She untied the bow gently, not wanting to destroy Ziggy’s careful work. She removed the wrapping paper with careful fingers until a plain box sat in her palm. “There’s a flap you pull to open it,” Ziggy directed telepathically. Celita opened the box, revealing a sunburst-shaped pendant strung with a delicate chain of braided silver.

“My project this year was jewelry making,” Ziggy explained in a rush, their words colliding into each other and flooding her mind with jittery energy. “One of the best things I made was this necklace. Oh! I almost forgot. You can push the button there and…” Celita used a finger to apply pressure to a tiny mechanism on the underside of the pendant. She gasped as a holo bloomed above it, displaying an image of a shirren with their arm wrapped around an android’s shoulders. Both faces lit up with smiles as they stood together, a perfect island in the frenzied crowd that seethed all around them. She recognized the image instantly from her trip with Ziggy to the Strawberry Machine Cake concert. Celita felt waves of emotion crash over her, one after another in a merciless tide, and she staggered under the weight of them. She was drowning. How could she respond to such a kind gesture? What should she say? Her eyes darted around the room, taking in the sight of the coworkers who had become her friends, and maybe even something approaching family, all laughing and talking together. Others were exchanging gifts and embracing. There was so much joy in the cramped apartment that she felt like she might explode. It was overwhelming, but it wasn’t entirely a bad feeling. Celita took a deep breath to collect her thoughts and exhaled, knowing what she had to do. She clasped the necklace around her neck without deactivating the holo, so that the image that encapsulated her relationship with Zigvigix broadcasted out into the world.

“Thank you, Ziggy.” Celita beamed at the shirren and grasped their claws with both hands. “This is the best gift anyone’s ever given me.”

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Wait, reader, you still have a present to unwrap! As a special gift to you, the Starfinder Team would like to share these Pact Worlds holidays to add a festive note to your campaigns.

Newspark: Believed to originate with the early abolitionist movement, today many androids throughout the Pact Worlds celebrate Newspark. Traditionally, celebrants plan a parade incorporating homemade floats, outrageous outfits, and loud music. The parade stops at various homes and businesses along its route, receiving gifts of food, drink, or conversation from the residents. Newspark is also a popular date for acquiring and showing off new personal augmentations. Though the famed Absalom Station Newspark parade begins at the end of Kuthona and lasts into Abadius, the celebration isn’t traditionally tied to a date. Instead, androids plan Newspark gatherings to spark joy in difficult times, and some of the greatest Newsparks in memory occurred during periods of economic depression, war, or other strife.

First Choices: This shirren-innovated holiday centers around the exchange of gifts, specifically, creations that epitomize your personal style, favorite hobby, or most recent experiment. Groups of friends, and sometimes even strangers, gather for a show-and-tell of these items. While reciprocal exchange isn’t unheard of, the most common format involves a grand choice-buffet accompanied by games to decide who ends up with which gifts.

Reunion: An Akitonian holiday that developed in the first century AG emphasizing generosity and kinship despite economic difficulties and great distances, as a result of the thasteron bust and mass emigration to find work elsewhere. Traditions include sending the gift of a message to distant family and friends, then gathering to enjoy a meal with those in your immediate circle. Traditionally, Reunion Day meals were prepared with cheap ingredients, ingenuity, and lots of love—resulting in outrageous dishes that many Akitonians choose to keep on the menu for ironic or nostalgic reasons.

Left to right, Scaranis by Mark Molnar and Millie by Beatrice Pelagatti

We’ve got two brand new scenarios lined up for this month. First, SFS #3-13: Silence at Outpost 634 takes PCs to a remote outpost to relieve a group of Starfinders on a long-term research mission. Unfortunately, there’s no sign of the research team and our heroes must piece together what happened to them before it’s too late. This adventure, designed for PCs of levels 1–4, was written by Emily Parks.

Next, Guidance sends a group of experienced Starfinders to retrieve a data fragment on Eox, causing conflict between the Society and the sinister Corpse Fleet. SFS #3-14: Fleeting Truth: Hollow Lies, written by Jessica Catalan, is an adventure for levels 9–12.

We hope you enjoy this month’s scenarios and holidays. For those who plan to celebrate: have fun, be safe, and enjoy yourselves. Downtime between missions is important!

Check back this afternoon for more preview goodies, this time of the Pathfinder Society variety.

Happy Holidays,

Jenny Jarzabski
Starfinder Society Developer

Here it is, our last product launch day of 2020. We’ve got adventures that run the spectrum—from beginners expanding beyond their hometown to a crew of scoundrels, rogues, and misfits doin’ a little bounty huntin’ and rustlin’ to high-level heroes who must save the City at the Center of the World!

But first, new rulebooks!

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Pathfinder Core Rulebook Pocket Edition

6.5 x 8.5-inch softcover, based on the second printing of the hardcover.

COVER ARTIST: Wayne Reynolds

This comprehensive 640-page guide to the Pathfinder roleplaying game provides everything you need to set out on a world of limitless fantasy adventure!

The Pathfinder Core Rulebook includes:

• More than 600 pages of game rules, advice, character options, treasure, and more for players and Game Masters!
• Six heroic player character ancestries, including elf, dwarf, gnome, goblin, halfling, and human, with variant heritages for half-elf and half-orc!
• More than 30 backgrounds like bartender, soldier, or apprentice to further immerse yourself in your hero's backstory!
• Twelve character classes, including the alchemist, barbarian, bard, champion, cleric, druid, fighter, monk, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, and wizard!
• Hundreds and hundreds of spells, class feats, and other exciting abilities to help you customize your character to become the hero YOU envision them to be!
• Streamlined and revised rules to help ease new players into the game while providing the depth of character options and tactical interest that have defined Pathfinder from the beginning!

The Pathfinder Core Rulebook Pocket Edition is the starting point for a great new collection of compact softcovers of the entire Rulebooks line!

Starfinder Alien Archive 4

COVER ARTIST: Remko Troost

ALIENS AMONG US
Aliens are everywhere in the universe of the Starfinder Roleplaying Game, their intent ranging from peaceful to pernicious. From robot dragons to crystal-infused humanoids and polyphonic gels to sun-skimming beetles, the creatures in this codex will challenge adventurers no matter what strange worlds they’re exploring. What’s more, player rules for a variety of species let players not just fight aliens but be them! Inside this book, you’ll find the following:

• Nearly 100 uncanny life-forms both classic and new, from the batlike grioth and horrifying brain collector to the vengeful endling and dreaded plasmalisk.
• A dozen races with full player rules, letting you play everything from a fungus-uplifted animal to a humanoid made of magical coral.
• New alien technology to help give your character an edge, including armor, weapons, magic items, and more.
• New rules for grafting the strange physical traits of other species onto your own character, creating a staggering array of customization options!

The Alien Archive 4 bundles well with the Alien Archive, Alien Archive 2, and Alien Archive 3 of course. Look for more details in an upcoming blog!

Pathfinder Bestiary Pocket Edition

6.5 x 8.5-inch softcover

COVER ARTIST: Wayne Reynolds

Unleash the Beasts
Over 400 of fantasy’s fiercest foes burst from the pages of this enormous compendium of the most popular and commonly encountered creatures in the world of Pathfinder! From familiar enemies like orcs, dragons, and vampires to new horrors like the nightmarish nilith and the three-headed mukradi, to suitable servants for summoners of every alignment, this must-have companion to the Pathfinder Core Rulebook is crawling with creatures to challenge characters of any level.

Note: The Pathfinder Bestiary Pocket Edition is not included in the Pathfinder Rulebooks Subscription.

The Pathfinder Bestiary Pocket Edition is the second volume in a collection of compact softcover editions of the entire Rulebook line that will expand in 2021!

Starfinder Fly Free or Die Adventure Path: Merchants of the Void (2 of 6)

COVER ARTIST: Tomasz Chistowski

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER DRIFT
You've stolen an experimental starship, and you've got the heat to match. Time to find work somewhere else while you wait for the Pact Worlds to cool down. So it's off the Veskarium, for a little bounty hunting, some stormrunning, and rustling a herd of wild carnivores. But you're about to stumble upon a secret that's way bigger than just another paycheck, and the Veskarium will kill to keep it quiet...

This volume of Starfinder Adventure Path continues the Fly Free or Die Adventure Path and includes:

• "Merchants of the Void," a Starfinder adventure for 3rd-level characters, by Leo Glass.
• A pair of side jobs—short adventures that can be played in a single session—featuring misleadingly labeled cargo and homesick undead, by Owen K.C. Stephens.
• A catalog of player options for those who like to play dirty, by Isabelle Thorne.
• An archive of new creatures, including the starship-sized shard divers of Vesk-5 and the insidious holofangs of Gaskar III, by Leo Glass, Lyz Liddell, and Ron Lundeen.
• Statistics and deck plans for the Oliphaunt, an experimental starship equipped with a one-of-a-kind null-space cargo hold, by Leo Glass.

Merchants of the Void pairs well with Starfinder Near Space, which details the galactic region that contains the Veskarium. Look for the Fly Free or Die video trailer later this month!

Pathfinder Agents of Edgewatch Adventure Path: Ruins of the Radiant Siege (6 of 6)

COVER ARTIST: Setiawan Lee

Battle for Absalom
Just as the Edgewatch agents discover the identity of the final member of the Twilight Four, their investigation reaches a fever pitch. The Radiant Festival’s stolen giant excavator, Graveraker, makes its grand reappearance by stampeding across the fairgrounds and threatening everything in its path. Meanwhile, the agents must locate the key to taking down the newly ascended evil primarch in the ruins of an ancient siege castle. The Agents of Edgewatch Adventure Path concludes with “Ruins of the Radiant Siege,” a complete adventure for 18th- to 20th-level characters.

CONTENT WARNING
While Ruins of the Radiant Siege contains typical Pathfinder action and adventure, it also presents scenarios that fall into the realm of horror. This includes body horror, gore, slavery, and torture, as well as depictions of fear of the other that draw from a history of ableism (see the sidebar on page 63 for more information). Before you begin, understand that player consent (including that of the Game Master) is vital to a safe and fun play experience for everyone. You should talk with your players before beginning the adventure and modify descriptions or scenarios as appropriate.

Groups who to run the Agents of Edgewatch Adventure Path may want to add books from the World of Lost Omens line to enhance their enjoyment of the setting!

Starfinder Starship Combat Reference Cards

Put the rules of starship combat for the Starfinder Roleplaying Game at your fingertips!

Whether you're a Game Master who needs a convenient reference for running starship encounters, a player who wants summaries of the crew actions your character can take, or a newcomer trying to learn the ins and outs of starship combat, this 110-card deck features concise guides to the essential concepts of starship combat from the Starfinder Core Rulebook, Starfinder Character Operations Manual, and Starfinder Starship Operations Manual on handy double-sided cards. Stop flipping back and forth through rulebooks—grab the cards you need and keep your starship combats running smoothly!

Don’t forget, these are now sold in PDFs and JPGs making them easy to share with your players on a virtual tabletop!

Groups the enjoy the Starfinder Starship Combat Reference Cards will love the Starfinder Rules Reference Cards Deck.

Don’t miss the additional product images!

Pathfinder Adventure: Troubles in Otari

COVER ARTIST: Igor Grechanyi

Onward to adventure!
This exciting adventure anthology expands the realm beyond the hometown introduced in the Pathfinder Beginner Box and brings thrilling new dangers to the heroes' doorstep! Designed for use with the rules in the Pathfinder Beginner Box and the perfect bridge to the exciting options of the full Pathfinder Core Rulebook, these adventures take your heroes to 4th level and beyond as they venture further into the nearby wilderness and face fearsome foes lurking all too close to home!

The anthology's three adventures introduce a number of play styles, including clearing out an abandoned fish camp, a sandbox romp to get to the bottom of sabotage, and a classic puzzle-filled dungeon crawl.

Troubles in Otari is a deluxe adventure for 4th-level characters written by Jason Keeley, Lyz Liddell, and Ron Lundeen.

Note: The rules found in the Pathfinder Beginner Box aren’t that different from those in the Core Rulebook, so some GMs might want to run Troubles in Otari using the full rules. They can and the adventure includes a guide.

Don’t miss the Troubles in Otari, a Beginner Box Adventure liveplay show on Twitch, YouTube, and podcast. The Pathfinder Adventure: Troubles in Otari can be combined with the…

Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Troubles in Otari

Bring the exciting adventures of the Troubles in Otari Pathfinder Adventure anthology to life on your tabletop with this double-sided full-color Flip-Mat featuring key encounter locations from the Pathfinder Second Edition adventure, Troubles in Otari, on either side! One side depicts a mostly abandoned fish camp and the other side shows a sinister and monster-filled dungeon, both prominent locations in the adventure!

Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Troubles in Otari measures 24" x 30" unfolded, and 8" x 10" folded. A Flip-Mat's coated surface can handle any dry erase, wet erase, or even permanent marker. Usable by experienced GMs and novices alike, Pathfinder Flip-Mats fit perfectly into any Game Master's arsenal!

Don’t miss the additional product images!

Starfinder Flip-Tiles: City Hazards Expansion

No city is truly safe!
Next time your players are enjoying the safety and security of urban life, you'll be ready to surprise them with unsuspected threats just around the corner. Starfinder Flip-Tiles: City Hazards Expansion Set provides beautifully illustrated 6" × 6" map tiles that can transform your city into a perilous landscape of fires, floods, and orbital bombardments! Inside, you'll find 24 richly crafted, double-sided map tiles. This expansion set, along with Starfinder Flip-Tiles: City Starter Set, allows you to create futuristic urban environments with endless variety! So stop your sketching and start your flipping today!

Suitable for experienced GMs and novices alike, this product fits perfectly into any Game Master's arsenal. Wet, dry, and permanent markers erase from the tiles! These double-sided city tiles come in convenient packaging for easy storage.

Don’t miss the additional product images!

Pathfinder Player Character Pawn Collection

Show off your character with the Player Character Pawn Collection, featuring more than 200 pawns for use with Pathfinder Second Edition or any tabletop fantasy RPG! Printed on sturdy cardstock, each pawn presents a beautiful full-color image to represent a wide variety of player characters! Each cardstock pawn slots into a size-appropriate plastic base from any of the Bestiary Box collections or the Pathfinder Pawns Base Assortment, making the pawns easy to mix with traditional metal or plastic miniatures.

There's one pawn for every combination of ancestry and class from the Core Rulebook. This product also supports the Advanced Player's Guide, with a selection of pawns for every new ancestry in that book, a pawn for each archetype, as well as a pawn for every combination of Core Rulebook ancestry and Advanced Player's Guide class. You'll also find a selection of pawns for the ancestries in Lost Omens Character Guide, as well as multiple familiars and animal companions!

Don’t miss the list of 285 pawns!

Pathfinder Flip-Tiles: Wilderness Starter Set

What do you do when the heroes get lost in the woods or decide to head off-road to seek adventures? With the Pathfinder Flip-Tiles: Wilderness Starter Set, we've got you covered! This set features 42 full-color 6 x 6-inch map tiles, with all manner of wilderness tangles and terrains to explore, both sides stunningly crafted by cartographer Jason A. Engle. These exciting new tiles put an endless wildland at your fingertips!

Suitable for experienced GMs and novices alike, this product fits perfectly into any Game Master’s arsenal. Wet, dry, and permanent markers erase from the tiles! These double-sided wilderness tiles come in convenient packaging for easy storage. Explore the wilderness to your heart's content!

These tiles are incredibly versatile and work with other Pathfinder Flip-Tiles sets, like the Pathfinder Flip-Tiles: Forest Starter Set and Pathfinder Flip-Tiles: Haunted Woodlands Expansion, to create larger play areas than a Flip-Mat ever could!

Don’t miss the additional product images!

Pathfinder Flip-Mat Classics: Slum Quarter

Whether your party's tracking a gang of notorious thieves or hiding out from the law themselves, no Game Master wants to spend time drawing every cluttered alley and squalid flophouse. Fortunately, with Paizo's latest Pathfinder Flip-Mat, you don't have to! This line of gaming maps provides ready-to-use fantasy set pieces for the busy Game Master. Full of beautiful details, including a battered gatehouse, dozens of hovels, and mazelike backstreets, this double-sided map makes the perfect setting for forays into any city's seamier side!

Don't waste your time sketching when you could be playing. With Pathfinder Flip-Mat Classics: Slum Quarter, you'll be prepared next time your players head to the wrong side of town!

A special coating on each Flip-Mat allows you to use wet erase, dry erase, AND permanent markers with ease! Removing permanent ink is easy—simply trace over any permanent mark with a dry erase marker, wait 10 seconds, then wipe off both marks with a dry cloth or paper towel. Each Flip-Mat measures 24" x 30" unfolded, and 8" x 10" folded.

Don’t miss the additional product images!

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Wow. That’s a lot. I’m proud of my coworkers for finishing 2020 strong, despite working under challenging circumstances. Don’t forget that all these products are available digitally, so we can play safe until we can share a table again.

Adventures Ahead,

Aaron Shanks
Marketing and Media Manager

Our newest Humble Bundle is here to help you deepen your knowledge of Pathfinder monster lore!

Paizo has been participating in Humble Bundles for years, but if you are new, here’s what you need to know.

What is Humble Bundle?

Humble Bundle sells games, ebooks, software, and other digital content. Their mission is to support charity while providing awesome content to customers at great prices. They launched in 2010 with a single two-week Humble Indie Bundle, but have humbly grown into a store full of games and bundles, a subscription service, a game publisher, and more.

How It Works

1. PAY WHAT YOU WANT
   The core of the bundle "philosophy" is flexible pricing. When you buy a bundle, you can choose the price you want to pay. You can even choose how your money is divided - between Paizo, charity, Humble Partners, and Humble Bundle.
2. CONTRIBUTE TO CHARITY
   Every type of product they sell contributes a portion of proceeds to charity. On many products, you can allocate part (or even all!) of your purchase to a charity of your choice. Learn more on our Charities page.
3. PLAY
   When you purchase something on Humble Bundle, you'll get a key to redeem a digital product on paizo.com.

Pathfinder has a new edition, but the lore of the world we have created for more than a decade is still valid and vibrant. This is your chance to dig into the Pathfinder archives and pull forth character and adventure threads that are still ripe for development. Get official Pathfinder ebooks and PDFs like Dragonslayer's Handbook, Dungeon Denizens Revisited, Hell Unleashed, Mystery Monsters Revisited, and Monster Summoner's Handbook.

Plus, your purchase will support ComicBooks For Kids whose mission is to make sure that every child in a hospital or cancer center has a comic book. Of course, not all comic books are right for kids, so they have a sister program called ComicBooks For Troops providing no charge comic books to all branches of the military. It is one great nonprofit with two great programs!

The Pathfinder Monster Lore Humble Bundle runs today through January 4, 2021, so click on the link below, pay what you want, get $378 in books, and support charity.

Go to Humble Bundle

A distinctively sharp and somewhat minty smell alerts travelers to the presence of redpitch pines, trees that have grown around Otari since before the town was founded. Redpitch wood isn’t much prized, as it catches fire dangerously quickly and burns fast, but its flammable sap is useful in many alchemical concoctions. Eager alchemists here often make volatile concoctions with redpitch pine sap, including incendiary bombs.

The town of Otari, as seen from the Inner Sea, by Will O’Brien

Redpitch Bombs

Redpitch bombs are martial thrown weapons with a range increment of 20 feet. They explode when the bomb hits a creature or object.

Redpitch Bomb — Item 1+

Rare, Alchemical, Bomb, Consumable, Fire, Splash

Usage held in 1 hand; Bulk L

Activate [[one-action]] Strike
Sap from redpitch pines, if properly distilled into a gummy, incendiary mass, ignites when exposed to the air. A redpitch bomb deals the listed fire damage, persistent fire damage, and splash damage. Many types grant an item bonus to attack rolls.

Type lesser; Level 1; Price 3 gp
The bomb deals 1 fire damage, 1d4 persistent fire damage, and 1 fire splash damage. On a critical hit, the target is clumsy 1 until the start of your next turn.

Type moderate; Level 3; Price 10 gp
You gain a +1 item bonus to attack rolls. The bomb deals 2 fire damage, 2d4 persistent fire damage, and 2 fire splash damage. On a critical hit, the target is clumsy 1 until the start of your next turn.

Type greater; Level 11; Price 250 gp
You gain a +2 bonus on attack rolls. The bomb deals 3 fire damage, 3d4 persistent fire damage, and 3 fire splash damage. On a critical hit, the target is clumsy 2 until the start of your next turn.

Type major; Level 17; Price 2,500 gp
You gain a +3 bonus on attack rolls. The bomb deals 4 fire damage, 4d4 persistent fire damage, and 4 fire splash damage. On a critical hit, the target is clumsy 3 until the start of your next turn.

How or why might this be relevant to Eleukas, Lisavet, and Wendlyn? Last week’s chapter of The Shroud of Four Silences was entitled, “The Redpitch Grove,” and this week’s is, “The Last Gullcracker.” Could they be related? Only readers following along will know for certain. Make sure you don’t miss an entry in the serialized novella by Liane Merciel by ensuring you’re getting marketing emails from Paizo!

Ron Lundeen
Developer

It’s been a while since I last previewed a set of Pathfinder Battles pre-painted plastic miniatures from WizKids, but I’m back for a year-end surprise. A few weeks ago, I got an email from one of our primary contacts at WizKids that Pathfinder Battles: Darklands Rising, originally announced for an April 2021 release, was actually going to be in and ready for release in January. “Would that be a problem for you?” he asked. No. No it wouldn’t. The more minis we can get, the sooner we can get them, the better!

But the set’s early release isn’t the only thing I’m happy to announce today; for the first time ever, in addition to the expected three Small or Medium figures that make up the bulk of the set, each Darklands Rising booster will contain either a Huge figure or two Large figures. You read that right. Two Larges or a Huge per booster box.

How did this happen? Well, it all started with this guy, who I wanted to see in plastic since he debuted years ago in the first edition of the Pathfinder RPG. The Adamantine Golem is a giant mass of plastic, and when WizKids started getting in production samples, they were surprised at how much it weighed. They couldn’t figure out how to make it work within the randomized distribution of the set without it being obvious that a given booster contained this piece. So instead of cutting it, they came back to me and said they wanted to add another six figures to the set. Rather than fill non-Adamantine Golem boosters with weights to hide the disparity, they figured they might as well fill them with another Large mini. The Adamantine Golem is an uncommon Huge figure.

Heck, while we’re showing off some of the big figures you can get in this set, let’s just rip the bandage off, shall we? My absolute favorite piece in the entire set is the Jabberwock, a rare Huge figure that is sure to find use in any campaign running the Kingmaker Adventure Path. Oh frabjous day!

When putting together the set list for Darklands Rising, I wanted to make sure that some of the iconic denizens of the expansive underground layers of Golarion that have never appeared in a Pathfinder Battles set made their debut. While that includes some of our first drow, it also means we get to make some truly horrific plastic representations of the fleshwarped mutants they create in their demonic alchemy labs. Behold, the Fleshwarp, Irnakurse (a fleshwarped elf); the Fleshwarp, Ghonatine (a fleshwarped xulgath); the Fleshwarp, Grothlut (a fleshwarped human); and the Fleshwarp, Drow Abomination (in this case, a male fleshwarped drow. The females still have spider bodies, but they maintain their elven upper bodies and heads without further mutation.) They are Huge rare, Large uncommon, and Large uncommon figures, respectively.

One of the best-known entrances to the Darklands from the surface of Golarion is the Earthnavel, a great spiraling pit into the depths in the primal Realm of the Mammoth Lords. So it should come as little surprise that we are including mammoths in this set. In this case, there are two versions of the mammoth, one bearing a barbarian rider and decorated in warpaint, and the other in its natural form. The rider is, of course, removable, increasing the possible configurations of these Huge uncommon figures.

Finally, I am thrilled to announce the largest miniature in the set, the premium Mengkare, Great Wyrm Gold Dragon. This is, without a doubt, the most impressive single figure we’ve seen in the Pathfinder Battles line across more than 20 sets. It’s truly awe-inspiring. No campaign of the Age of Ashes Adventure Path would be complete without one, nor would any collection of gigantic dragons. It’s no wonder Mengkare is so revered on his island nation of Hermea. Just look at him!

Next week, I’ll show off some of the smaller figures in the set, including a whole bunch of drow. Until then, stay safe, Pathfinders.

Mark Moreland
Director of Brand Strategy

Check out what we have in store this week on Twitch!

Also if you’re interested in running your own Pathfinder or Starfinder streams, we released some awesome art assets which are free to use for your own shows! You can find them here.

Be aware that some of the shows on the schedule may be canceled at any moment. We prioritize our employees and content creator’s safety over their productions as we all deal with the current pandemic, we apologize in advance if plans abruptly change from what’s scheduled here.

So here is what’s happening this week at OfficialPaizo on Twitch!

Pathfinder 2E Extinction Curse with Squiiddish, Dec 7, 1:00 p.m. Pacific

The Circus of Wayward Wonders has just arrived in the remote town of Abberton, and the 2 Perception crew are the stars of the show! After an unfortunate event the crew finds themselves in charge of keeping the show alive. But, how will they fare?

Squiddish with the 2 Perception crew streams the Pathfinder Second Edition Adventure Path Extinction Curse every Monday at 1:00 P.M. on Squiiddish’s Twitch channel here. We will be hosting this show on the OfficialPaizo Twitch channel.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker with Paizo, Dec 8, 1:00-3:00 p.m. Pacific

Did you know that our Social Media Producer Payton Smith never played Kingmaker? I know right!? We brought in Pathfinder’s Creative Director James Jacobs to hop in and be Payton’s Guide to Golarion. So if you’ve been curious about the history of Pathfinder, it’s lore, or overall want to get to know us

Join us on Paizo’s Official Twitch Channel and for all that is good in this world, help keep Payton alive as he journeys through the River Kingdoms corner of Golarion.

Pathfinder 1E, Rise of the Runtlords!, Dec 8, 6:00 p.m. Pacific

Join Dragons & Things as they return to their Pathfinder 1st Edition campaign! Will they finally be able to defeat their terrible foe? Or will their constant rolling of 1s finally bring them to their knees?

Catch them live on their twitch channel, or visit Paizo’s official Twitch channel to see it hosted there.

Pathfinder Beginner Box: Troubles in Otari, Dec 9, 5:00 p.m. Pacific

Every adventure has its beginning, and what better to teach you the way than the Pathfinder Second Edition Beginner Box?
Join Dragons & Things as they journey through the Troubles in Otari adventure that’s inside of the beginner box. Teaching you how to play Pathfinder Second Edition, all while keeping the dice hot and the adventure engaging!
Catch the show live every Wednesday at 6 p.m. Pacific on Paizo’s Official Twitch Channel.
Cast:

Cast:
Jim Rodehaver - Twitter: The Game Master
Katie Wilson - Twitter | YouTube | Instagram : Waverly Kent - Level 1 Human Cleric
Xander Jeanneret - Twitter | Twitch : Ingot - Level 1 Dwarf Wizard
Michelle Nguyen Bradley - Twitter | Twitch : Brick Vanderripped Jr - Level 1 Human Fighter
Gabe Hicks - Twitter : Thee Vairy - level 1 Elf Rogue

Band of Badgers, Dec 10, 1:00 p.m. Pacific

Band of Badgers explores the world of Golarion from the time of ‘Rise of the Runelords’ as the band of heroes start their journey across the lands of Varisia and beyond. They will be facing goblin raids, a cult of serial killers, fight backwoods ogres, stop an advancing army of stone giants, delve into ancient dungeons, and finally face off against a wizard-king in his ancient mountaintop city.

Catch them live either hosted on Paizo’s Twitch Channel or on their channel here..

The Band of Bravos! Dec 11, 2:00 - 5:00 p.m. Pacific

A troupe of performing adventurers find themselves hired to put on the show of a lifetime, but when the curtain rises, they quickly learn that they are the stars of a far more dangerous quest..

Join Paizo employees as they brave the absolute horrors that Director of Game Design, Jason Bulmahn has prepared for them.

Your adventuring party comprises…

• Social Media Producer Payton Smith as Lorn Barnes, Human Wizard
• Web Content Manager Maryssa Lagervall as Ilana Thistlefoot, Halfling Druid
• Developer Jason Keeley as Roark Thunderbird, Tengu Swashbuckler
• Pathfinder Creative Director James Jacobs as Shensen, Half-Elf Bard

Androids & Aliens by Glass Cannon Network Dec 11, 5:00 p.m. Pacific

Set in the distant future, five strangers find themselves caught in the middle of an interstellar mystery that threatens the very existence of the galaxy!

Join GlassCannon live at 5:00 p.m. Pacific for this officially licensed Actual Play of the Starfinder Roleplaying Game Dead Suns Adventure Path. Watch on Paizo’s Official Twitch Channel, or directly on their Twitch Channel here.

Age of Ashes with Squiddish, Dec 12, 4:00 p.m. Pacific

“Fires burn atop the ruined citadel on Hellknight Hill, sending plumes of red smoke into the air that could be a call for help. Now a gang of adventurers rise together to investigate the current conflict. How will they handle the Hellknights? Will they all burn in horrendous fire? Tune into this new Pathfinder Second Edition live play show!

Squiddish with the 2 Perception crew streams on the OfficialPaizo on Twitch channel every week at 2 p.m. Pacific.

Things in Space!, Dec 12, 6:00 p.m. Pacific

The Dragons & Things crew have blasted off into the wide and expansive universe of Starfinder! Strap yourselves in for an exciting and thrilling adventure through the Starfinder universe!

Catch them live on their twitch channel, or hosted on Paizo’s Official Twitch Channel.

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Do you have a Pathfinder or Starfinder Live Play? Tell us in the blog comments below! We’re excited to see what stories you come up with.

We've added a new Forum for Streaming & Actual Play discussions. If you have any questions you’d like to submit for our Q&A segments at the end of our Starfinder Wednesdays or Pathfinder Fridays you can do so in our Forums.

Pathfinder Fridays Fan Club

Starfinder Wednesdays Fan Club

If you have a Pathfinder or Starfinder stream, post it under Third Party Broadcasts.

Catch us live at our Official Twitch Channel. Catch the Video On Demand (VOD) on Twitch immediately after it is done or a week later on our YouTube channel.

Hi everybody!

The end of 2020 sees a bit of reorganization going on right now in the editorial department, with some new opportunities and challenges for our staff. This allows for exciting changes for our team, which officially went into place last week.

First up, James Case moved to a different position at Paizo. As this is an organized play focused blog, we aren’t spoilering his role here. You’ll need to keep an eye out for a future Paizo staff blog for an update on his new role, but you shouldn’t have too long to wait!

James’ departure left a vacancy in the Pathfinder Society Developer position. Thurston Hillman moved over from Starfinder Society to take the lead on Pathfinder Society. Thursty joined the Organized Play team at the outset of the Starfinder Society program almost four years ago to help build it and to shape the direction of its stories. While people nowadays may associate him more with Starfinder, he also has a long history with Pathfinder Society. Over the past decade, Thursty wrote over a dozen Pathfinder Society adventures of all shapes and sizes, everything from September’s Bounty, Blood of the Beautiful, to the interactive special Siege of the Diamond City and the wacky kobold hijinks of True Dragons of Absalom.

Jenny Jarzabski, meanwhile, stepped up to become the Starfinder Society Developer and will pick up the threads Thursty laid to take the program in new, Datch-inspired directions. Jenny hit the ground running when she joined the Organized Play team; it’s hard to believe sometimes she’s been here for months rather than years. Jenny also came to development through her work as a freelance author. Some of her contributions to the organized play scenario vault include this year’s Starfinder interactive, The Last Bite, as well as Honorbound Emissaries and Pact World Warriors.

Thursty and Jenny are both excited for their new roles, and filled with ideas for exciting adventures for your PCs. They’re already hard at work cooking up the metaplots for SFS Year 4 and PFS Year 3, as well as finishing off the current seasons with a bang. We can’t wait to share some spoilers with you and will do so over the next few months. Watch this space for news!

These changes do leave us a bit short-staffed for a brief time. In the near future, we’ll be bringing someone else on board. The hiring process for this position is already in full swing. To fill the spot faster than an open call, we invited a group of our highly qualified authors and volunteers to apply, and we’ve begun interviewing candidates. We hope to wrap the entire process before the holidays and will introduce our new team member to you soon after.

If you didn’t see it earlier, check out our Monthly Update blog. If you’re caught up, be sure to come back next week for Pathfinder Society and Starfinder Society scenario previews!

Until then - Explore, Report, Cooperate!

Linda Zayas-Palmer
Organized Play Managing Developer

OPM Musings

In many ways, I’m relieved to see the home stretch of 2020 and that the new year lies just beyond the horizon. With Covid, murder hornets, wildfires, protests, elections, and beloved icons passing, this year packed more into it than I’d expect in a decade. I felt the lack of conventions the most. You, our community, mean the world to me and it physically hurt not to get to meet up with you and get to chat about gaming, organized play, and maybe even our favorite television shows (though I have a great store of talking points now!). As vaccine availability allows us to reopen, I urge everyone to not rush back into games spaces, but to do so responsibility in an effort to keep our communities safe! We will be back together again soon, but only by being careful can we all be together again.

Scenario Release Update

As mentioned above, this year dealt us unforeseen challenges. Almost as if to put convention season crunch into perspective, good ole 2020 gave us a “hold beer” moment scenario production. We’ve done our best to not let the difficulties of remote work impact our production schedules, but as we come to the end of the year, we just didn’t quite meet our goals. We felt it best to share the changes to our schedule now, so that organizers and GMs can plan accordingly, instead of waiting for our monthly release blogs. Here’s a summary of our changes:

December scenarios (PFS 2-09 and 2-10, Bounty 5 and SFS 3-13 and 3-14) will be released on December 30th, the last Wednesday in the month. While we ordinarily try to release early due to the holidays, a pile up of products in the pipeline meant we just couldn’t meet our desired release of December 16th, and are opting to go with the standard organized play release date instead.

Due to an author not being able to complete their contract, we have to push one Pathfinder Society scenario out of January release and into February. In January, we will release PFS 2-11: The Pathfinder Trials, and Bounty 6 for Pathfinder Society. Both Starfinder Society scenarios (3-15 & 3-16) will release as well. February releases include PFS 2-12, 2-13 and 2-14, as well as Bounty 7 and SFS 3-17 and 3-18. Thank you all for your understanding and patience!

Sanctioning

Last month, we announced sanctioning for the Pathfinder Beginner Box. We divided the adventure in the box, “Menace Under Otari,” into two parts and wrote a chronicle for each part. As an incentive to reaching out to new players and building your communities, we designated the adventure as a repeatable event which awards double AcP; players must use the pregens in the Beginner Box or build characters using the rules within the product.

Originally, our next agenda included The Slithering for Pathfinder (second edition). To capitalize on the Beginner Box momentum, we’re diverting briefly to sanction Troubles in Otari first. For Starfinder, we queued up the Devastation Ark AP. Of course, we still have the remaining PF1 content on radar as well.

Several people asked what about our timelines and priorities regarding sanctioning. We tried a different process with the Beginner Box that worked reasonably well, so we will use that method on the next few projects and refine the process. We hope this will get the adventure sanctioning out the door without placing as large a burden on the product line developers and get us caught up so that we can achieve our goal of day one sanctioning on all products. But until that point, we are still a bit behind. We’ll inform you in these blogs as we have updates to share, so stay tuned!

Stars/Novas/Glyphs

Whether stars, novas, or glyphs, achieving a 5 ranking in any program involves a substantial amount of time. To achieve the 5th milestone, a GM must run 150 games, of which at least 50 must be unique scenarios and 10 special scenarios, as well as run between one and three games for venture-captains (program dependant). A conservative estimate of the time needed to reach the 5th milestone is 650 hours!

Two GMs received their fifth star in the last month. We had no one reach 5 Novas or 5 Glyphs.

5th Star: Densial Edmonds, Daniel Harvey

Congratulations to our new 5 Star GMs, and thank you for your dedication!

Conventions

December is usually a quiet month for conventions, but 2021’s schedule is starting to roll in. If you don’t see a convention on the list that you think should be there, contact the event organizer and ask them to register their event for organized play support!

Convention	Location	Start Date	Status	Interactive Events	Staff Attendance
Emerald Con	Seattle, WA	12/4/2020	Online	PFS2 2-00 The King In Thorns, SFS 3-00 The Last Bite	Tonya, Jenny
Con Damage '21	Gulf Region	1/22/2021	Online	PFS2 2-00 The King In Thorns
COTN 2021	Plymouth, MN	2/12/2021	Online	None

We’ve got an announcement for later today, so visit us back here this afternoon for some exciting news! And don’t forget: Explore! Report! Cooperate!

Alex Speidel
Organized Play Associate

Tonya Woldridge
Organized Play Manager

This week, our partners at WizKids released the thirteenth wave of Pathfinder Battles Deep Cuts unpainted plastic miniatures. Thirteen! I can’t believe our little baby is a teenager already. As we approach the darkest, coldest (and likely most socially distanced) part of winter, I imagine a lot of folks are going to have some free time to paint minis, and we’ve got you covered!

This time around we have two Huge figures, the Huge Air Elemental Lord and Huge Fire Elemental Lord that first appeared in painted form as premium figures accompanying the Maze of Death set. While both air and fire are clear, these nevertheless offer a lot of texture for you to put your own little touches on when painting.

We’ve also got three goblins, perfect for either a warband of enemies or as player characters. We’ve got male and female goblin rogues and a male goblin fighter, each presented with both a “low-“ and “high-level” loadout, giving you either an evolving character miniature as you level up, or twice as many variant figures for a warband.

There are a few longshanks in this wave as well, don’t worry. The human rogue male and elf fighter male are fantasy staples, and are also provided with two variants each.

Make sure you check out our complete line of officially licensed Master Series paints from our other partners at Reaper Miniatures, available now in two handy 28-color Pathfinder: Colors of Golarion collections: Paint Set #1 and Paint Set #2.

Previews for the next set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted plastic miniatures from WizKids start next week, so I guess I’ll see ya’ soon! Until then, Pathfinders, stay safe.

Mark Moreland
Director of Brand Strategy

This week on our series of Otari-themed blogs, we’re looking at Otari’s primary industry: logging. While none of the pre-written Otari campaigns (the Pathfinder Beginner Box, Pathfinder Adventure: Troubles in Otari, or the forthcoming Abomination Vaults Adventure Path) assume the player characters are loggers, the industry’s impact on the region is unmistakable. While exploring the woodlands around the town, player characters or GMs may wish to add a bit of local flair with the following rules for logger marks. Readers of the ongoing novella, The Shroud of Four Silences, will recognize these marks when they get to this week’s chapter, entitled “The Redpitch Grove.” What signs will Eleukas, Wendlyn, and Lisavet find, and what dangers will they help the party avoid (or lead the party toward, instead)?

Illustration by Will O’Brien

Otari Logger Marks

Like much of the Isle of Kortos, Otari is located in a heavily forested region. Three of the town’s oldest and most respected families log the forest, operating out of several lumber camps and bringing felled trees to Otari for milling. These influential families have long demonstrated a respect for the forest, understanding that later generations must rely upon the trees as well. Replanting is common, as is leaving markings upon trees to pass important messages (or warnings!) to other loggers who come by.

The logger marks around Otari are simple shapes scratched into tree bark. They are similar to marks made by vagabonds or drifters, in that they consist of only a few lines or curves, and interpreting their meaning relies as much on context as it does symbolic literacy. Marks sometimes appear close together or intertwined to create compound symbols with deeper meaning, such as “Danger” and “Grave” to warn of undead. Common marks include the following:

• Arrows Back and Forth: Hunters are common here.
• Arrow to Star: That way is north.
• Boot: Walk carefully around here; treacherous footing.
• Crossed Axes: Cut this tree first in this area.
• Crossed Circle: Danger.
• Hash Marks under Horizontal Line: This area is someone’s property (the image resembles a fence).
• Hook: Ogres (the image is a dreaded ogre hook).
• Open Stick-Figure Hand: People nearby will help you.
• Oval with Slashes on Each Side: Goblins (the image is a shape of a goblin head, with the slashes being ears).
• Plus: Something good; sometimes, a benevolent magical phenomenon.
• Row of Teeth: Predator.
• Spiral: Trees or branches fall irregularly here.
• Three Arcs Atop Each Other: This tree deserves respect (usually, because of its age) and should not be cut.
• Two Xs in a Circle: Grave.
• Two Upside-Down Vs: Look up, something noteworthy is above.
• Wave: Water, usually a spring.

Using Marks

To place or interpret logger marks, use the following exploration activities of the Survival skill.

Carve Logger Mark

Concentrate, Exploration, Secret

You carefully place a mark upon a tree or other wilderness surface to leave a message for others. Attempt a Survival check, which involves at least 10 minutes of evaluating the local terrain, which the mark will reference. The GM determines the DC for this check, depending on the obscurity of the logger mark and the complexity of the message you intend to impart.

Critical Success You place a mark so clearly that future checks to interpret it have the level of success improved by one step beyond the result rolled.

Success You place a mark that others will be able to read.

Failure You’re unable to impart any meaning into your mark, but you can try again in a different location.

Critical Failure You leave an inadvertently misleading mark. This generally imparts the opposite meaning (for example, safety rather than danger) or provides an incorrect direction if the marking is navigational in nature (such as to direct someone to a particular stand of trees).

Read Logger Mark

Concentrate, Exploration, Secret

You interpret the meaning in a logger mark you’ve found (usually, by Investigating or Searching). Attempt a Survival check, which involves a few minutes of evaluating the terrain around the mark. The GM determines the DC for this check, depending on the age, complexity, and obscurity of the logger mark. If you’re attempting to identify something that isn’t a logger mark—such as natural cracks in a rock or whorls in tree bark—you can’t achieve a result better than a failure.

Critical Success You understand the mark so completely that you can identify its approximate age, basic meaning, and another significant clue (for example, if the mark would point toward a logging camp, you know the camp’s distance as well as its direction).

Success You determine the basic meaning of the mark you’ve found.

Failure You can’t glean information from the mark you’ve found.

Critical Failure You incorrectly interpret a mark you’ve found and gain an opposite meaning (for example, to cut a tree rather than preserve it).

Ron Lundeen
Developer