How to Summon the Party—Summoner Class Deck Preview

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

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

Everyone's favorite Hatmancer and Battlechicken.

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

Wolf beats chicken. Every time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

So much power. Such a small price.

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

Keith Richmond
Adventure Card Game Designer

I Can Call Spirits From the Vasty Deep!

Friday, June 12, 2015

Looking to see what will come when you call for it? Find the answer in our new Player Companion, Monster Summoner's Handbook!

Summoning is a popular tactic, and it's one of the few magic options that has an entire character class built around it (a class that is also one of the few to get a revision in Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Pathfinder Unchained). So when we dedicate a 32-page book to the topic, we know there are a lot of expectations, and a lot of concerns. As a big fan of summoning (so much so I stepped in and wrote part of this book, as did Assistant Developer Linda Zayas-Palmer) I wanted to make sure, it provided a wide range of options.

So, to put a lot of folk's minds at ease quickly, be aware that all the summoner class options we present in this book function with both the base summoner, and the Pathfinder Unchained summoner! Second, we provided options for expanding monster summoning spells with creatures from Bestiary 2-4, without just openly boosting the power of those spells. There are also options for priests of various gods to gain access to new summoned creatures when using either summon monster or summon nature's ally.

Illustrations by Darren Waud, Katherine 'Kez' Laczin, and Ian Perks

We also added two new outsiders (one with 5 HD and one with 11 HD, filling some gaps in the list of HD for outsiders appropriate for planar ally and planar binding spells), a slew of archetypes (my favorite being the elemental ally, a druid with access to four elementals, one for each element, that function as eidolons but with just one out at a time), simple templates (for creatures from elemental planes, Plane of Shadow, and the First World) and ways to access them, a way to use summoning spells to summon the SAME guardian spirit each time, and some anti-summoning options (ranging from the counter-summoner archetype to the summon bane magic weapon special ability).

It's only 32 pages of course (efforts to summon a bigger book failed...), and I'm sure there are yet more things people would have loved to see. But I hope we managed to provide a little something for everyone, and a lot of cool options for anyone wanting to master summoning!

Owen K.C. Stephens
Developer

Summon Monster X

Friday, May 15, 2015

We're getting closer and closer to the June release of Dungeons Deep, the latest, greatest set of prepainted plastic Pathfinder Battles miniatures from our friends at WizKids! By my count, we've revealed nearly the entire set so far, but I've been holding off on two figures in particular, waiting for the right time to show them off. Lots of folks have been asking if Dungeons Deep will have any iconic characters, now that we're also releasing those characters in the form of the spectacularly detailed Iconic Heroes Base Sets. The answer, my friends, is a resounding YES, and this set's iconic hero rounds out the ranks of the iconic characters we featured in our second class-centered RPG release, the Pathfinder RPG Advanced Player's Guide.

I speak, of course of Balazar the summoner and his beloved "pet," the otherworldly eidolon Padrig!

Let's take a closer look at Balazar, Gnome Summoner.

Balazar's sculpt captures him mid-spell, or perhaps directing the actions of his eidolon from afar. While the sculpt is similar to Balazar's appearance in the just-released Iconic Heroes Set 3, here the colors are somewhat brighter, and if I'm being honest I think I like this version of Balazar just a little bit more than the Iconic Heroes version, which is a bit darker. Balazar is, as I mentioned, the final iconic character of the original 17 to appear as a prepainted miniature in one of the random Pathfinder Battles sets. While the stand-alone Iconic Heroes boxes will delve further into the ranks of iconic heroes from the Pathfinder RPG Advanced Class Guide (and possibly beyond), Balazar is also the last iconic character to show up in the regular Pathfinder Battles line, at least for the next set, which contains none.

So let's take a moment to celebrate our tour through the iconic characters of our first two major hardcover rulebook releases. We knew we'd get to you eventually, little guy! Balazar, Gnome Summoner is a Small, rare figure.

Balazar is just a wee gnome without his best buddy Padrig, who in Dungeons Deep is called simply "Eidolon." The Eidolon represents a class feature with lots of variability, so it's probably fitting that Padrig is a weird snake/chicken hybrid. He'll see plenty of table use for folks playing the Balazar pregenerated character in the Pathfinder Society Roleplaying Guild organized play program, but I'm also hoping he gets use as a generic eidolon figure, or just as a weird monster used to throw off players who think they have every Bestiary memorized.

The sculpt here is a bit meatier than the Padrig figure in Iconic Heroes Set 3. Check out the back view to see Padrig's snake body fading away into clear plastic, taking a cue from his original Wayne Reynolds illustration. The figure twists and turns with some real dynamism, and it's growing on me even more as I sit and look at it now. Yes, he's a weirdo, but he's a fun weirdo. The Eidolon is a rare, Medium figure.

I leave you this week with a look at Balazar and his Eidolon as they face off against the vicious Gargantuan Red Dragon Case Incentive figure from the Dungeons Deep set.

Don't forget to order our most recent Iconic Heroes boxed sets: Iconic Heroes Set 1, Iconic Heroes Set 2, and Iconic Heroes Set 3, all of which are shipping now to paizo.com customers.

Better yet, set up a Pathfinder Battles Ongoing Case Subscription to unlock a whopping 30% discount on Iconic Heroes box purchases (the discount for new subscribers goes into effect only after your first case ships next month). Existing subscribers should also consider ordering the Iconic Heroes sets soon, as they've proven to be very popular and they will not last forever!

There will be no Pathfinder Battles preview blog next week, as we'll all be rolling dice and hanging out with fellow gamers at PaizoCon 2015! I'm going to try to have the entire Dungeons Deep set on display in the Paizo store at the convention, so swing by there to see these awesome figures in person.

I'd also like to remind all PaizoCon attendees that I host an annual Miniatures Trading Afterparty in the hotel bar following the formal close of the show. I'll have a bunch of Pathfinder Battles figures for trade, as well as remnants from my own personal miniatures collection that I'm looking to unload. We've been doing this event for something like 6 years now, and it's always a highlight of the show. Bring any minis (painted preferred, but there's a market in unpainted figures too) you don't want and trade them with other gamers for figures you do. It's awesome, and I'll see you there!

Until then, I remain,

Erik Mona
Publisher

Society Unchained

Monday, April 27, 2015

Ever since its announcement nearly a year ago, players and GMs alike have been speculating about what would appear in Pathfinder Unchained. It was only a short step from there to start wondering what would appear in Pathfinder Society Organized Play. We started exploring this same question early in the book's production, and even then it was clear that some sections would not be a good fit for the campaign, others would absolutely play a role, and many others would require closer study. With the generous assistance of the Pathfinder Design Team and numerous volunteers, we were able to weigh the pros and cons and finalize what our Pathfinders might see in the field.

We'll start by discussing some of the sub-systems that likely come as no surprise to anyone, largely because they would require massive character rebuilds, severely impact how the game works for someone who just has the Core Rulebook, or require us to scrap the current XP system. Much of Chapter 3 (Gameplay) falls into this category; removing alignment, ditching iterative attacks, altering poison, heavy revising action economy, and introducing wound thresholds would invalidate considerable chunks of existing scenarios and possibly wreck how many of our existing characters function. Other features reference gameplay elements that simply don't appear in the organized play campaign, so dynamic item creation, alternate profession rules, fractional base bonuses, and staggered advancement are not a good fit. As intriguing as the many new skill options look, imposing consolidated skills, grouped skills, or background skills would just be too disruptive for a campaign in its seventh year. The same is true for many of the magic systems, including simplified spellcasting, spell alterations, automatic bonus progressions, and innate item bonuses.

Illustration by Tomasz Chistowski

Several other systems were not so cut and dry. We discussed the stamina pool system for quite a while before deciding not to include it; it is an extensive section that we may revisit in the future, but at this time it is not available in the campaign. We came to a similar conclusion for variant multiclassing. We are adding the Signature Skill feat for exclusive use by the unchained rogue—which I suppose spoils a later surprise. John is very excited to include esoteric components and scaling items on a few Chronicle sheets, but these items are not available for purchase otherwise.

Still, we imagine Chapter 1 (Classes) is the topic everyone is waiting for, and we have seen many of you making fairly accurate predictions. All four Pathfinder Unchained classes—barbarian, monk, rogue, and summoner—will be legal for use in Pathfinder Society Organized Play. The unchained barbarian, monk, and rogue are available in addition to the versions that appear in the Core Rulebook; as noted on page 8 of Pathfinder Unchained, "These classes can be used alongside their original counterparts (although individual characters must use one version or the other exclusively)."

In fact, we're so excited about these classes that we're announcing a one-time limited rebuild to anyone with one or more levels in these classes, allowing those characters to switch any levels in the four classes to their unchained version at no cost. This includes the automatic retraining of any rage powers or rogue talents, as well as the free retraining and selling at full cost of any feats, items, and other character options that no long function properly due to the unchained classes features. For example, a rogue automatically gains the ability to add her Dexterity bonus to damage, so she could sell back her +1 agile rapier at full price. Likewise, a barbarian with the Raging Vitality feat would no longer benefit from its increased Constitution bonus, so she could retrain that feat for free. Much like when we have offered free faction changes in the past, you'll need to take advantage of this opportunity before you play the character after April 29, 2015.

You may notice that we did not say the unchained summoner would be available alongside its Advanced Player's Guide counterpart. Effective immediately, the Advanced Player's Guide summoner is no longer available in the organized play campaign, and the unchained summoner is its legal replacement. However, we recognize that someone who already has a summoner (and the book to play it) should not be punished for this change. Therefore, if you have a character with levels in the summoner class, and you have played the character at least once at level 2 or higher, you get to keep your summoner as is; you may also continue to gain levels in the summoner class. Any character gaining a level in summoner for the first time must use the unchained summoner, and anyone character still within the 1st-level window of free rebuilding must also use the unchained summoner.

As a final note, we want to advise folks about archetype and other features' compatibility for the unchained classes for the organized play campaign.

• The unchained barbarian qualifies for any archetype that does not modify how the rage class feature operates (such as the urban barbarian archetype), and she is limited to any barbarian rage power that appears in Chapter 1 (including the rage powers on page 13)
• The unchained monk does not qualify for any archetypes, save those in future publications that specifically cite their compatibility with the unchained monk class.
• The unchained rogue qualifies for all existing rogue archetypes, but she is limited to any rogue talents listed in Chapter 1 (including the sidebar on page 24).
• The unchained summoner qualifies for all existing summoner archetypes, save those that modify the eidolon's type or base form.

The Pathfinder Society Team

Time to Break Your Chains!

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Over a year ago, I went to talk to Erik about a book idea I had. The pitch was simple: "Let us do a book filled with whatever crazy ideas we have floating around in our heads". He said "no". I said, "Wait though, allow me to explain, our crazy ideas might make the game better." He said "tell me more", and Pathfinder Unchained was born.

This book is just about to be released and it is time for us to give you a good idea of the crazy ideas you will find inside. Pathfinder Unchained is a book full of rules tweaks and alternate systems you can use to mod your game, changing the way it plays. While we suspect that everyone will find their own favorite rules subsystem, just about everyone take a long look through Chapter 1, detailing alternate versions of the barbarian, monk, rogue, and summoner. So to kick off our previews, I've asked designer Mark Seifter to give you some of the juiciest tidbits about the Unchained variant classes!

Barbarian: From a game-balance perspective, the original barbarian serves her role admirably, but her mechanics are math-intensive, forcing you to recalculate numerous values once she enters rage and keep track of a bevy of once per rage abilities. Worst of all, she's the most likely character of all to die in a fight due to the way that ending rage lowers her current hit points. The unchained barbarian keeps the adrenaline-pumping fun of her former self but significantly simplifies the gameplay by adjusting the final mechanics instead of the stats themselves. For example, she gains temporary hit points instead of raising and later decreasing her current and maximum health (woo, no more dying at the end of rage!). Finally, she gains stronger versions of some of the mechanically weakest rage powers like raging climber (now you get an actual Climb speed instead of a small bonus!).

Illustration by Michael J. Penn

Monk: The original monk has many disparate abilities. While these abilities may be useful, they don't always synergize, and they are extremely inflexible. The unchained monk loosens up, gaining ki powers that allow you to customize your monk to fit your vision, whether it be a kung fu genius or wuxia mystic (my favorites are the ones like ki visions that let you gain divination powers that affect the narrative out of combat!). The unchained monk also has a full base attack bonus, an all-new flurry of blows, and some martial arts style strikes that help him reach his true potential (my favorite is flying kick, which lets you perform a leaping kick out to a distance equal to your extra monk movement speed once per flurry—mobile combatant for the win!).

Rogue: The original rogue has plenty of skill points and a damage increase in the form of sneak attack, but she needed a way to rule her own niche, especially with all the other classes that have things like big skill bonuses and accuracy boosts. The unchained rogue has a powerful debilitation ability that dramatically alters her ability to hit or dodge her foe, rogue's edge, which allows her to do unique things with her favorite skills (figure out surface thoughts with Sense Motive, Bluff so well you bypass truth-telling magic, use Disable Device reactively to protect yourself from a triggered trap, and much more!), and a significant boost to some of her rogue talents (For instance, minor magic? Yeah, you get that cantrip at-will). She also gets Weapon Finesse as a bonus feat and the ability to add her Dexterity to weapon damage!

Summoner: The original summoner has plenty of innovative features, but he also lacks focus and theme. As Jason was fond of describing it "You just have this amorphous blob with ten tentacles and two butts." The unchained summoner gains an eidolon that fits among existing outsiders, gaining additional abilities but also focus and theme (and if you want ten tentacles and two butts, we've still got that—go protean all the way my friend!). Some of these outsiders gain some pretty juicy abilities, like the angel's protective aura (that double strength magic circle against evil/lesser globe combo) or constant true seeing. Additionally, he possesses the spell list originally intended for the summoner.

So there you have it. We are confident that some of these classes will find a home at your game table, even if the Eidolon no longer has two butts. Tune in next week when we move on to look at some of the exciting new options in the Skills and Feats chapter!

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer

Meet the Iconics: Balazar

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

To join in all the gift giving going on today, here's a belated present for the season. Happy holidays from all of us here at Paizo Publishing!

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

The final decade of the Age of Enthronement brought hope and innovation to the people of the Inner Sea region. In the north, Chelish explorers from Korvosa founded the city of Magnimar. In the east, Taldor and Qadira reached an uneasy peace after centuries of antagonism and open warfare. In the treacherous Mana Wastes of the south, refugees fleeing persecution in Nex settled the Duchy of Alkenstar as a beacon of light and progress in a sea of magic-warped madness. And not far away, in Nex's capital city of Quantium, the Arclords adopted an orphaned gnome child named Balazar into their most prestigious school of magical instruction.

Diligent students of the scribbles and writings of the long-lost archmage who founded that nation, the Arclords deciphered codes and texts from the margins of newly discovered spellbooks and concluded that "children of the First World" would play an important role in the magical administration of the departed wizard's kingdom. In the years before the death of Aroden, prophecy was a much more valuable currency in the lands of the Inner Sea, and in 4601 the tradition-obsessed Arclords scoured the gnome communities infesting their beloved cities for young gnomes to press into service. To prevent their great works from falling victim to what they considered a chaotic and untrustworthy race of childlike anarchists, the wizards culled only the youngest (and thus in their minds least corrupt) gnome children from their parents, imprisoning or destroying families with the temerity to go against the marginalia of the wizard who had founded the nation and declared the city open to creatures of all races so long ago. To the Arclords, any gnome resistance was a revolt against the ideals of the nation itself, akin to treason.

By 4606, the human god Aroden was dead, the power of prophecy was broken, and the Arclords' eugenics experiment was veering toward abject failure. As the gnome orphan brood developed into maturity in the decades that followed, they brought chaos and catastrophe to Quantium's magical academies. And at the center of that chaos stood Balazar: an impulsive youth with a temper to equal the bright red ferocity of his prodigious mustache, a burning match on a bed of tinder.

In the early years of his instruction, Balazar revealed almost no magical acumen whatsoever, preferring to spend his days conducting merry pranks on his fellow students and instructors instead of absorbing himself in the meticulous study of the Arclords' curriculum. When one such prank resulted in the transmutation of an instructor's tower into a living being of elemental stone (thanks in part to a mysterious glowing rock pilfered from the school's vaults), Balazar and three gnome associates found themselves expelled from the academy, exiled from Quantium, and sent on the first wagon train to Ecanus, the sprawling southern city whose world-famous fleshforges churned out a legion of horrors to bolster Nex's armies and terrorize its squalid countryside.

The Ecanus assignment was intended exclusively as punishment, but the city's masters welcomed the gnomes with open arms, eager that their unconventional attitudes, boundless creativity, and unpredictable obsessions might aid them in conquering one of the most enduring mysteries of the monumental fleshforges. For deep within the dungeons below the military complex, in a room designed by the Archmage Nex himself, lay an extraplanar rift known as the Void Chasm, a shaft of sheer sides and cloying, multicolored mists that had driven insane all who had previously gazed within it.

One by one, Balazar's gnome associates gazed within the abyss, and one by one they lost their tenuous grip on reality. Balazar watched in horror as the color drained from their hair and skin, as if the whole of their life from birth to bleaching transpired within the span of a few moments. When the emotional strain grew too great and the gnomes cried out in anguish, the pitiless fleshforge instructors pushed them into the trench, where their howls soon faded beneath the swirling mists. If the gnomes could not discover the purpose of the Void Chasm, the administrators reasoned, perhaps a sacrifice to the unknown powers below would do the trick.

As he stood on the precipice of the Void, Balazar wondered if perhaps he should have studied more diligently in the relative comfort of Quantium's academies. Reluctantly, he cast his gaze into the miasma and felt the weird energies of the Chasm worming their way into his mind. Worse, he heard whispering voices in the mists, calling out to him and begging him to step over the edge. At first he thought the voices to be those of his lost fellow gnomes, and called back to them one by one even as the color drained from his hair and he felt his mind slipping away. But the voices were not those of his friends. They belonged to… something else.

It took all of Balazar's limited concentration to sift the many voices from each other. Some were angry, demanding to be left alone. Others beckoned with honeyed words of sweet oblivion. But one voice among the tumult spoke softly and plainly. "I will help you," it said in reassuring tones. "Give me form and allow me to leave this prison, and you and I will become as one."

With the hands of the fleshforge administrators on his shoulders, about to give the final push that would send him into nothingness, Balazar tried to imagine what the voice would look like. He dreamed of a creature with a vast serpentine body, with grasping talons and horrifying scales. And, perhaps because he had not eaten that day and was growing hungry, he imagined the voice speaking through the beak of a monstrous chicken. And then, just as he felt the muscles of his captors tense for the final push, the creature he had imagined emerged from the Void Chasm fully formed and fully real, screaming a hideous avian cry and weaving through the air with serpentine grace. Its claws tore at the necks of the administrators, its hideous beak making a mess of their unbelieving eyes. And all along, in reassuring tones only he could hear, it spoke to him. "Do not be afraid, little one," it said. "We were meant to be together."

Somehow, Balazar and the avian entity that called itself Padrig managed to win their way free of the fleshforges, of Ecanus, and even of Nex. As he fled up the eastern coast of Garund on a succession of merchant and smuggler vessels, Balazar and Padrig grew closer and closer to one another. Padrig explained that he was a bodiless being known as an eidolon, and that only Balazar could give him structure and form due to the affinity of their minds and souls. As the gnome made his way from Nex to Katapesh to Absalom, Balazar grew more and more adept at shifting Padrig's form to add more legs, terrible wings, or other features fitting the dangers and situations at hand. When things got too dangerous to be seen with a magical creature or when discretion was more important than protection, Balazar dismissed Padrig to some extraplanar hidey-hole, only to call him once again to his side when needed.

Although a great deal of the young Balazar's mischievous spirit remains, the horror of the Void Chasm remains with him to this day. Other gnomes often confuse his stark white hair for a symptom of the insidious bleaching that threatens all gnomekind, but through his constant and relentless travels Balazar remains as engaged and full of life as any of his healthy gnome brethren. When other gnomes inquire about his "condition" with the best of intentions, Balazar sometimes flies into an impatient fit of grumpiness, chastising his would-be helpers and instructing them to mind their own business.

Privacy is very, very important to Balazar, for the Nexian wizards he betrayed have not forgotten his singular mastery of the Void Chasm. Agents of the Arclords of Nex dog his travels at every stop, pushing him further and further away with each season. Balazar knows that each new stop—however temporary—will provide him with ample opportunity to learn new things and meet new people, to master the magical craft that always eluded him in Nex, and to do honor to the friends and colleagues he left behind. Despite occasional moments of maudlin reflection on all he has lost, Balazar takes comfort in his enduring friendship with the eidolon he recued from oblivion so long ago. As long as he travels with Padrig, he knows he will never be alone.

Erik Mona
Publisher

Pathfinder Advanced Player's Guide Preview #2

Thursday, July 8, 2010

The start of Gen Con 2010 is four weeks away, which means in just one month, the Advanced Player's Guide will be hitting game stores and subscriber mailboxes. In anticipation of this mighty sourcebook, I am taking you on a guided tour, touching on some of the highlights each week until release. Last week we took at look at the races chapter and the new alternate favored class bonuses. This week we are diving into Chapter 2: Classes by looking at the six new base classes.

If you were not a part of the playtest of these classes, might I suggest that you grab the playtest document, which is still available here at paizo.com. Now go read up on the all of the new classes. Don't worry, I'll wait. All finished, good. I am going to walk through each of the classes and spend a bit of time talking about what changes you can expect to find in the book.

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

Alchemist: Using all sorts of alchemical formulas, bombs, and mutagens, this class is focused on using strange concoctions to enhance the alchemist and damage his foes. Most of the changes to this class center around new discoveries that were added. Discoveries allow the alchemist to enhance his bombs and mutagens, but we added discoveries that allow him to use his bombs to dispel magic or to work better with poison, such as this new discovery.

Concentrate Poison: The alchemist can combine two doses of the same poison to increase their effects. This requires two doses of the poison and 1 minute of concentration. When completed, the alchemist has one dose of poison. The poison's frequency is extended by 50% and the save DC increases by +2.

Cavalier: This mounted warrior is skilled at directing allies around the battlefield and granting bonuses to his teammates. Each is dedicated to a specific order that grants abilities specific to his focus. Most of the changes from the playtest version of the cavalier are relatively small or designed to clarify an existing ability. For example, we clarified how large the cavalier's banner must be and how it must be displayed to grant its bonus to the cavalier's allies.

Inquisitor: Rooting out enemies of the faith, wherever they might hide, the inquisitor uses the powers of her faith to ruthlessly destroy her foes. One of her signature abilities is to declare judgment on one of her foes, granting her bonuses when fighting that enemy. The playtest version of this ability improved as the combat progressed. While this was a fun mechanic, it was ultimately rather unwieldy in play and was replaced with a simpler system. Now, whenever the inquisitor uses her judgment ability, she selects the type and gains a bonus based on her level. For example, take a look at this judgment of purity.

Purity: The inquisitor is protected from the vile taint of her foes, gaining a +1 sacred bonus on all saving throws. This bonus increases by +1 for every five inquisitor levels she possesses. At 10th level, the bonus is doubled against curses, diseases, and poisons.

Oracle: The oracle draws her power from the gods, but not one in particular. Her power is derived from her belief in a chosen mystery, which guides her and grants her additional powers. There were two big changes to the oracle from the playtest version. First, the bonus spells granted by the oracle's mystery are now granted a level sooner than before (the first arrives at 2nd level instead of 3rd). The second is the addition of the Life mystery, with powers like the following.

Enhanced Cures (Su): Whenever you cast a cure spell, the maximum number of hit points healed is based on your oracle level, not the limit based on the spell. For example, an 11th-level oracle of life with this revelation may cast cure light wounds to heal 1d8+11 hit points.

Summoner: The summoner is bonded to a special outsider, known as an eidolon, that gains powers and abilities as the summoner gains levels. His spells and class features all support this powerful, ever-changing ally. Most of the changes to this class were relatively small in nature, but the big one was a change to how often the summoner can call his eidolon. He can now summon the ally as often as he likes (provided it has not been banished due to damage recently), but he cannot use his summon monster ability at the same time. This allows him to keep the flexibility needed with the summoned creatures, but prevents him from overrunning the battlefield with too many creatures.

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

Witch: The witch is an arcane spellcaster with an extensive spell list of spells drawn from both the wizard and cleric spell lists. She also gains powerful hexes that she can use to augment herself or harm her enemies. The biggest change made to the witch involves her familiar, the creature that helps her to understand magic and serves as an envoy of the witch's mysterious patron. Now the bonus spells granted by a witch's familiar are no longer tied to the type of familiar, giving the witch a lot more flexibility in concept and theme. We also made a number of changes to the witch's hexes, including making flight a basic hex that does not grant true flight until 5th level, and added a few others here and there to round out the witch concept. For example, what witch would be caught without a cauldron.

Cauldron: The witch receives Brew Potion as a bonus feat and a +4 insight bonus on Craft (alchemy) skill checks.

Well, that just about rounds up our look at the six new base classes in the Advanced Player's Guide. Next week, we will continue exploring the mighty classes chapter (which is about 1/3 of the book) by taking a closer look at all of the options available to the core classes from the Core Rulebook.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer

Advanced Player’s Guide Playtest, Bonus Round!

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Although the playtest of the six base classes set to appear in the Pathfinder RPG Advanced Player's Guide was scheduled to be over yesterday, we have decided to extend it by two weeks to give you a chance to review and playtest the changes from the previous three rounds. We took all of your feedback and ideas and implemented a number of changes to the classes, combining them into one handy reference PDF. You can find the PDF right here.

You have two weeks to playtest and comment on these revisions in the Final Playtest messageboard forum. Make sure to post your feedback on in the correct forum, because we might miss it if you place it in one of the older forums. On February 15th, all of the forums will be closed.

As with previous playtests, this process has been a huge benefit to the development of these classes. I hope that you have enjoyed participating in the process. Look for previews of the final book to start appearing in June, ramping up to the final release in August.

See you on the boards.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer

Pathfinder RPG Advanced Player's Guide Classes

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Now that Gen Con is over, it is time to look into the future of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Over the next year, we have a number of fantastic products in store for you, but the one that has me the most excited is the Advanced Player's Guide. We gave a few hints about this hefty 320-page tome at Gen Con during the Pathfinder RPG Q&A seminar, but I wanted to take a moment to bring the news to you directly.

First off, this book is set to release at Gen Con 2010. It will include a host of new options and avenues for characters built using the classes and features in the Core Rulebook. That means you can expect to find new barbarian rage powers, new sorcerer bloodlines, new bardic performance options, and a host of other tricks and tools to modify the 11 core classes. The book will also contain a number of feats, spells, and magic items to expand your game. We are providing all of these in one book so as to avoid spreading out the goodness over a host of tomes, which tends to just make things difficult to find and use. Some of this material will be leaked early through this blog to use right away (and to help us playtest some of the more tricky aspects).

In addition to the expansion of the core classes, this book will also contain six new base classes. They are called base classes because they go from level 1 to level 20, but they are not core classes. Confused? Allow me to explain. We are making an assumption that these new classes will take a role in our world (and possibly yours) that is less common. You will not find them in every adventure, nor will they appear in every product. That means that you can introduce them to your game in a more limited fashion, without having to retcon them into every facet of your campaign.

Of these six classes, I am ready to talk, in a limited fashion, about four of them. I should note that these classes are still being designed and everything you read here is subject to change. That said, we are really excited about the ideas, and hope that you will be too.

When working out some of the initial concepts for these classes, we had two primary criteria that each needed to fill: a conceptual niche and a mechanical niche. This means that each class we come up with needs to include mechanics that we do not currently explore with one of the 11 other classes, as well as its own conceptual space.

The first class I want to look at is the Cavalier. While traditionally, this class has been focused on mounted combat, we have learned that classes such as this suffer terribly by the circumstances of the adventure. As such, the cavalier is going to have some aspects that make it a great mounted combatant, but it will also focus on directing and controlling a battlefield through a system of class features that allow it to enhance allies, unnerve opponents, and challenge foes. Unlike a bard, the cavalier will focus on individuals instead of large numbers, allowing it to have some greater effects. The class will not rely on spells or magic to get the job done, but it will be a bit more skill-focused than some of the other martial classes, especially when it comes to Charisma-based skills.

Next up is the Alchemist. Now, I know what you are thinking. Brewing alchemist fire and crafting tindertwigs is not the stuff of adventurers, and hardly enough to build an entire class around. On that, I would agree, but we are taking this in a slightly different direction. Think of the alchemist a bit more like Dr. Jekyll. He brews up elixirs, mixes up unguents and powders, and crafts all sorts of tricks to use in a fight. While some of these will certainly mimic spells, others might allow him to gain fiendish qualities, breath fire, or even transform into a puddle of living ooze. At higher levels, he will be able to use some of his concoctions on others, granting them some of his strange abilities. This class will work like an arcane caster, in that he will prepare his alchemy for the day and use them as day goes on, as they most likely do not keep for long. There will undoubtedly be a host of new alchemical items in the book for him to tinker with as well.

Next up is the Summoner. I should note that the title for this one is still a bit temporary as it does not quite convey the concepts we are looking for. This class is focused on the creation or summoning of a monster combatant or guardian. Think of it as a sort of arcane animal companion that is a magical beast, outsider, or aberration instead of an animal. While the class will still be able to cast arcane spells, in a bit more of a limited fashion than a sorcerer, it will have a number of abilities to enhance and empower its creation. Some of these will be able to be applied on the fly, while others will happen only when the summoner gains levels. The class will have a list of abilities that can be added to a monster as you gain levels, with more powerful abilities made available to use in your monster's construction at higher levels. To top it off, the class will be a bit variable in theme. You could be a pious summoner, creating a divine champion to guard and protect you, or you could be a foul chirurgeon, creating your monster from the corpses of other dead monsters.

Finally, the last class I want to talk about is the Oracle. This class is a spontaneous divine caster that is not devoted to any one god. Instead it is devoted to a particular concept or domain. The oracle draws his power from all the deities that support that concept, but none of them particularly hold any domain over him. A great example here would be Hercules, who would make a great oracle of strength. The class provides spontaneous divine casting, but the focus provides a host of other abilities and powers. You could expect feats of great might from the oracle of strength, while the oracle of fire is probably going to be able to roast you alive if you anger him. Think of the oracle more as an expert on a single topic and less as a seer of the future and you are close to the theme we are going for. I am really excited about what this class could do and the roleplaying options it presents. I might even have to give my current character a break to play an oracle as soon as the class is ready.

That covers four of the six classes in the book. I am planning on releasing information about the other two next month, at a seminar taking place at Gen Con Australia, in Brisbane. These classes will be put up for public playtest well before the book goes to print, and as soon as the schedule is finalized, you will find it here on this blog. I hope to have some more news on these classes, as well as a few sneak peaks before the playtest, as they develop. Stay tuned.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer