Concluding Season 9, Heralding Season 10

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Every year, the number of scenarios released for Gen Con is huge, especially since it typically combines all the scenarios for July and August at once. This year's been an exception insomuch as the number of scenarios is positively immense with 15 different adventures across four different campaigns: 6 Pathfinder Society scenarios, 4 Starfinder Society scenarios, 3 Pathfinder Society Playtest scenarios, and 2 Pathfinder Adventure Card Guild adventures! It's so much that we're breaking our preview blogs into three different posts.

Thankfully, preparing so many adventures has been much more approachable thanks to our growing organized play staff. To reflect this, I've asked each scenario's respective developer to chime in with their own perspective on these excellent adventures.

Speaking of scenarios, by now Gen Con GMs should have received many of these in their downloads already. As of the time I'm writing this, we've completed all of our work on #9-24, #9-25, #10-01, #1-18, #1-19, Playtest #2, Playtest #3, and (just now) #10-00. Many of these have already been arriving in GM downloads, and most of the other adventures are just going through final checks over the next day or two. That means that anything you don't have yet should be arriving soon. Keep in mind that when we cued Gen Con GMs to receive these scenarios, you would have received a notice that you have them in your downloads; this is a placeholder file that's replaced with the actual file once they're on the website. We're regularly running the report to grant new scenarios as they're finalized.

With that, let's get a preview of the Pathfinder Society adventures coming up.

Michael Sayre (organized play developer): I enjoyed a journey across Golarion as I developed scenarios that took me from the ocean depths, to the savannas of the Mwangi Expanse, all the way to the Crown of the World, so I'll jump right in to sharing some of that journey with you!

The first scenario I'll be discussing is the Tier 5-9 adventure Pathfinder Society Scenario #9-24: Beneath Unbroken Waves from Kate Baker—who also wrote Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild Scenario #1-08: Sanctuary of Drowned Delight. Beneath Unbroken Waves takes the PCs to the islands and waters off the coast of Jalmeray, where the Pathfinders meet a group of undines who have discovered the ruins of a monastery containing martial arts techniques lost to Golarion…until now! It's not all fun and games in this coastal setting though, as the PCs will also encounter deadly threats like this individual illustrated by Maja Djeke!

John Compton (Organized Play Lead Developer): Ever since Season 7, the organized play team's been including more seeker-level (i.e. level 12+) content in the campaign, which is a delight because it opens up a whole new caliber of narrative. A year ago, the Pathfinder Society helped thwart the so-called Fiendflesh Siege that threatened Absalom. In doing so, we learned that several of the Society's old foes had teamed up to coordinate the siege, and the Pathfinders have taken it upon themselves to personally track down these villains. Agents realized their first victories in Qadira in this season's Adventure Card Guild scenarios, and we've now cornered two of the masterminds in the Five Kings Mountains. There they've taken over an ossuary sacred to Magrim—dwarven god of the afterlife also featured in the upcoming Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Faiths of Golarion—and established such potent defenses that only an elite team of Pathfinders stand any chance. Pathfinder Society Scenario #9-25: Betrayal in the Bones is a Tier 12-;15 scenario that concludes Season 9 on a high note. Not only has the author Tom Phillips brought his storytelling flair and devious encounter design to bear, but the scenario also answers numerous questions that we've been waiting to reveal since as early as Season 2. How did an ex-venture-captain use that fateful wish? Why did a particular faction leader take the actions she did? And how will it all end in these final confrontations?

Linda Zayas-Palmer (organized play developer): The Year of the Ten kicks off with a multitable interactive special for both the Roleplaying Guild and the Adventure Card Guild: #10-00: The Hao Jin Cataclysm (links here for the Roleplaying Guild and Adventure Card Guild versions). Long ago, the legendary sorcerer Hao Jin built a demiplane by tearing locations and peoples out of Golarion and stitching them together into an eclectic realm, bound together by the strength of her magic. The Pathfinder Society has made numerous excursions into this Hao Jin Tapestry demiplane over the years, cataloguing sites of forgotten history and forging alliances with isolated cultures. However, the demiplane is now in critical condition. Unless the Pathfinder Society acts quickly, the plane's very fabric will rip apart. It won't be an easy fix, however. The Society's allies on the Hao Jin Tapestry are in peril, as malevolent forces prey upon the chaos and actively accelerate the destruction. Even the tapestry's own repair mechanisms have malfunctioned horribly and now terrorize its inhabitants. Will you help save the demiplane from certain destruction? Mike Kimmel is the author for the RPG portion of this adventure, and Ron Lundeen wrote the ACG portion. If you want to discover the role this magnificent phoenix (illustrated by Marko Horvatin) has to play in the adventure, come join us at Gen Con or another convention near you.

Linda: Author Nicholas Wasko brings us the first Tier 1-5 of the season, Pathfinder Society Scenario #10-01: Oathbreakers Die. In most places, guilds that trade in death would have to operate undercover. In the setting for this scenario, Daggermark, the Assassins Guild and the Poisoner's Guild are effectively part of the government. Here, a Pathfinder agent who knows too much has been marked for death. The local Venture-Captain Istivil Bosk, illustrated below by Tom Ventre, has concocted a daring plot to save his life. Is your PC brave and skilled enough to save an ally without falling prey to an assassin's blade?

Michael: Moving on to our Tier 3-7 offering forces us to ask the question: "Do ants have bones in Golarion, or do the bones just belong to the ants?" Pathfinder Society Scenario #10-02: Bones of Biting Ants, by Sean McGowan, takes place in the savannas of the Mwangi Expanse, where the PCs have been summoned to assist the lone survivor of a past Pathfinder expedition. Daring the many dangers of the sweltering savannas, the PCs must help Ulfen skald Stuinvolk Hundrakson reclaim not just the lost relics of his previous expedition, but also a piece of himself that never escaped the deaths of his allies. Bad memories and Mzali border-guards won't be the fearsome threats the party faces though, as this fearsome foe illustrated by Akim Kaliberda shows!

Michael: The final stop in my personal tour around Golarion takes us far away from warm coastal waters and sultry savannas, to a markedly different setting. Pathfinder Society Scenario #10-03: Death On The Ice, by Scott D. Young, sees Venture-Captain Bjersig Torrsen sending the PCs on a chilling trek north to the Crown of the World, where a Pathfinder expeditionhas uncovered more than they bargained for beneath the polar ice. The PCs won't be alone on their dangerous journey though, as the snowy owl Kuokei leads the party ever-northward towards his master, the ranger and archaeologist Svala Ice-Rider. Svala's Varki ancestry gave her the insight to begin unraveling an ancient riddle from the Pathfinder archives, but will the PCs find the last piece of the puzzle in time to rescue Svala from a frigid fate? I hope so, because if not, this might be the only time you get to see Svala's illustration from artist Benjamin Widdowson!

Join us next week for a look at our upcoming Pathfinder Society Playtest scenarios!

John Compton, Linda Zayas-Palmer, and Michael Sayre
The Pathfinder Society Roleplaying Guild team

Warp Not, Waste Not

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Golarion is filled with adventurers from sleepy villages and pristine cities who spend their days navigating the labyrinthine social structures of society. In fact, there are a host of Paizo books filled with Pathfinder player options to support and encourage just those kinds of characters and stories.

Pathfinder Player Companion: People of the Wastes is not one of those books.

Rather, the myriad archetypes, feats, items, and class features in People of the Wastes are for characters who are from or adventure in some of the most treacherous parts of the world, from the demon-filled Worldwound to the corrupted Southern Fangwood of Nirmathas to the flooded Sodden Lands to the unpredictable and primal magic of the Mana Wastes.

This book, as such, provided us with an opportunity to gleefully provide options for PCs who, though often nonstandard, nonetheless fit right into these wasteland locales. Characters who have encountered the Cindersnort goblins of the Mana Wastes, for example, might choose this book's volatile fuse character trait, or its Sizzling Shot feat, each of which focuses on the use of powerful but unpredictable firearms.

Another fun option People of the Wastes provides involves advice for playing character with the mutant template from Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 5 (at your GM's discretion, of course!). There's also the constructed pugilist brawler archetype, which is perfect for mutant PCs who have chosen to use mechanical prostheses to augment their bodies. This archetype grants the brawler a constructed limb and provides a host of options for modifying it.

I won't spoil the rest of this archetype's specifics, though. I'll simply leave you with this illustration below.

Illustration by Benjamin Widdowson

Amanda Hamon Kunz
Development Coordinator

Your Personalized Armory

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

I had the pleasure of working on this month's highly anticipated Pathfinder Player Companion release, Adventurer's Armory 2. It had been a few years since I developed a player companion, and I was excited for the chance to tackle the follow-up to the most popular product in the line to date, Adventurer's Armory. No pressure, right? Luckily, I wasn't going it alone. As discussed last week, the inimitable Ron Lundeen did a thorough pass on the book before it ever hit my desk, leaving me that much more time to really delve into the most exciting elements of the project.

My favorite is the armor and weapon modifications system that appears in the Implements of War section. This system allows a player to customize his or her weapons and armor in more versatile and less expensive ways than adding magical enhancement bonuses and plus-based special abilities, and first appeared in Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Faction Guide back in 2010.

We expanded on the handful of modifications that appeared in that book, with six weapon modifications and eight armor modifications, allowing a player to increase a suit of armor's maximum Dexterity stat, treat a weapon as belonging to a different fighter weapon group, or grant a weapon a new special quality like brace, disarm, nonlethal, or trip, among many other customizations.

Each of these modifications comes with a drawback in addition to the cost of adding the modification to the piece of equipment. A modified weapon requires a level of proficiency one level higher than normal to wield, turning a simple weapon into a martial weapon and a martial weapon into an exotic one. This means that characters with automatic proficiency with all martial weapons will get the most out of the system, and it further lets fighters, cavaliers, rangers, and paladins customize their load-outs to fill more specialized narrative and tactical niches. Each armor modification comes with its own unique drawback, such as increasing the armor check penalty or adding extra weight to already heavy armor.

In both cases, however, a variety of new feats allow player characters to ignore drawbacks, more quickly apply modifications on the fly, or add more than one to the same piece of equipment.

What weapon or suit of armor are you most excited to apply a modification to? What new weapons and armor from Adventurer's Armory 2 do you think will lend themselves best to this new subsystem? Let us know in the comments below, and maybe if we ever do an Adventurer's Armory 3 we'll take them to even finer levels of customization.

Smiths the world over are prepared to customize your favorite gear.
Illustration by Benjamin Widdowson

Mark Moreland
Developer

Of Packages and Poppets

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Careful observers may have noted that a number of recent Pathfinder products credit a few new names as lead developer, namely Thurston Hillman and Ron Lundeen. We have since brought Thurston on as the full-time developer of our Starfinder Society organized play program, but Ron already had a full-time gig (can you believe how much he writes and now develops for us in addition to a 40-hour work week?!) so we had to settle for using his talents on what projects he had time for. Among the first I had the pleasure of working with him on was Pathfinder Player Companion: Adventurer's Armory 2—the follow-up to our most popular Pathfinder Player Companion to date. Here are a few words from Ron on his favorite parts of the book.

Oh, and many thanks to Ron for helping out when we needed it! You're a genuine hero, sir. —Mark Moreland, Developer

As Adventurer's Armory 2 is now hitting shelves and downloads everywhere, I wanted to talk about two of my favorite sections. Mark Moreland has been like my Yoda through this process, and he is going to pen a follow-up Adventurer's Armory 2 blog where he rolls up his sleeves (like on a spider-silk bodysuit, page 6) and pulls back the veil (as found in dancer's garb, page 29) on getting the most out of this book (such as any of its 8 new equipment tricks). So I won't steal his thunder (as delivered by a stormshaft javelin, page 9). Okay, no more games (like the imperial conquest board game, page 29).

First up are equipment packages. These are designed to include everything you'd need for your PC's first few adventures. These are more expansive than existing class-based kits (such as a sorcerer's kit), as they include weapons, armor, and even a few minor magic items. If you don't like the detailed accounting of purchasing starting equipment, or if you get overwhelmed by all the options, equipment packages will definitely interest you. They are designed by role or theme (such as "Daring Bravo" or "Wilderness Warrior"), and not by class, so each equipment package is attractive to a wide range of PCs. Equipment packages are expensive—each is worth around 1,000 gp—so a starting character usually obtains them as a gift from a wealthy patron (when permitted by the GM), after a big score in an early adventure, or through the Well-Provisioned Adventurer equipment trait (which lets you select any equipment package in place of your normal starting gold). Equipment packages take a lot of the detailed work out of shopping and allow a PC to quickly hit the table running. An example? Sure! The Holy Warrior equipment package provides good defense and a great selection of gear for overcoming DR, swarms, and enchantments.

Grab-and-go adventuring!
Illustration by Forrest Imel

Holy Warrior

The holy warrior is prepared to use her might and zeal to take the fight to the enemy, but she understands the importance of having the right equipment to overcome the resistances of her monstrous foes. This equipment package is well-suited to a cleric, inquisitor^APG, paladin, warpriest^ACG, or even a fighter with a religious background. It's especially suited to characters who focus on supporting their party members and making them more effective in a fight. Even more than with other equipment packages, the GM should consider substituting the masterwork longsword in this package with a masterwork melee weapon appropriate to the PC's faith. If the PC can cast spells, add a spell component pouch.

Armor: Heavy steel shield, masterwork breastplate.
Weapons: Cold iron morningstar, heavy crossbow with 10 bolts, masterwork longsword.
Combat Gear: Alchemist's fire (3), holy water (4), oil of bless weapon, potions of cure light wounds (2), potion of protection from evil, sunrods (3).
Other Gear: Backpack, bedroll, belt pouch, candles (5), chalk (5 pieces), crowbar, flint and steel, holy symbol (silver), mess kit^UE, sack, silk rope (50 ft.), trail rations (5 days), waterskin, 7 gp.
Total Weight: 102 lbs. (57-1/4 lbs. for a Small character).

My absolute favorite section in Adventurer's Armory 2—and perhaps my favorite spread in any Player Companion book—is poppets. Poppets! So loveably cute, so utterly disposable! Ahem. These simple constructs are helpful and loyal critters, but they're pretty fragile. Here's what a base poppet looks like:

Someone's ready for a hug!
Illustration by Benjamin Widdowson

Poppet CR 1/3

XP 135
N Tiny construct
Init +2; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision;
Perception -3

DEFENSE

AC 14, touch 14, flat-footed 12 (+2 Dex, +2 size)
hp 5 (1d10)
Fort +0, Ref +2, Will -3
Immune construct traits
Weaknesses vulnerable to fire

OFFENSE

Speed 20 ft.
Melee slam +2 (1d2-1)
Space 2-1/2 ft.; Reach 0 ft.

STATISTICS

Str 8, Dex 14, Con —, Int —, Wis 5, Cha 1
Base Atk +1; CMB +1; CMD 10

Even low-level characters can pick up a poppet with the Craft Poppet feat (available at 1st level), the Poppet Familiar feat (available to 3rd-level casters able to take a familiar), or buying one along with its ownership token—for which you'll pay about as much as you would for a masterwork weapon. But your little poppet need not stay feeble for long! You can augment your poppets with more abilities (such as fire-resistant sealant, climbing hooks, or armor), and even get a larger poppet. Although the rules say it's "Small in size," I prefer to think of it as "the size of a toddler"—and twice as cute!

Maybe three times as cute!
Illustration by Forrest Imel

Ron Lundeen
Contributing Developer