Eliandra's Best Character Ever: Erasmus

Friday, February 9, 2018

We continue our series of Pathfinder Adventure Card Game fans telling us who the best character ever is. One of our playtesters, Eliandra Giltessan, gives us a sneak peak at the iconic medium from Occult Adventures Character Deck 2 that has her over the moon.

People who know me may be saying, "What?! I thought you said Alahazra was the best character!" A year ago, that was true. Alahazra was the best character ever—in a world without Triggers. I recall when Skull & Shackles' version of Alahazra hung out at the Wishing Well and took all the boons from locations decks. Or Season of the Runelords, where the Oracle Class Deck's Alahazra examined nigh on entire location decks with a Scrying and a Headdress. Sigh. Good times.

But, my friends, we live in a world of Triggers. Gone are the days of "I only need one attack spell in my deck, right?" Now when Alahazra scouts, sometimes the cards bite back. She's still great, but there's room for the new best character ever: Erasmus.

At first look, Erasmus may not look like much. All d8s and d6s, with Arcane just d8+1 and Perception (of all things!) at d6+3. Well, let me tell you, Occult characters can do more with Perception than just defeat Camouflaged Pit Traps without rolling. They can fight and recharge and tell their Dwarf Mindblade friend to go kill things for them.

Let's move onto powers, cuz Erasmus has got some great ones! I'm developing an appreciation for characters who give you something to do with the junk cards you pick up, and Erasmus can bury his to change his results after the roll. No missed-by-1's with Erasmus, and when he overkills that Pit Trap with his massive Perception, he can coax away the consequences. His next power is the one I love oh-so-much: recharging boons at the start of your turn to add to all checks that turn. Not only does this make for great deck cycling, but it really takes the sting out of those early scenarios when you have no skill feats. That last power mentions something called "Spirit Relatives," and you may ask, "What does that mean?"

Ah, well, you see, Erasmus can channel the spirits of his dead relatives, and at the beginning of each scenario, he can pick one to give him some new skills and an extra d4 plus the adventure deck number. So when Grimslakes are threatening to eat your deck if you don't make a Fortitude check, you can pick Nissa. When you need to make an Acrobatics check, or when the villain makes you cry in a corner with no cards in your hand, you can ask for Baylock's help. After a power feat, you can even help other characters at your location.

"But Eliandra," you may say. "I'm stuck with one of these spirits for an entire scenario. That's not very versatile."

"Relax," I say to you. "We need to save something for roles." You see, Erasmus's roles allow you to put more than one marker on the card. Personally, I'm a fan of the Storyteller. Bury a card for a second token? Yes, please!

After all this gushing, you may still have your doubts as to whether this all works. Can Erasmus have one deck of cards and still be effective at all his roles? Yes. His powers more than make up for the small dice size, and the cards he doesn't otherwise need at the moment become the fuel to charge them. Erasmus is the first character where I put my skill feats in different skills every time, and I love it. He's the most versatile character I've seen, and he once closed two locations in his first turn armed only with a Force Missile and a Light Crossbow.

Vote Erasmus: Best Character EVER!

Elizabeth Corrigan aka Eliandra Giltessan
Adventure Card Game Playtester Extraordinaire

We're So Fancy, You Already Know

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Developers Amanda Hamon Kunz and Jason Keeley teamed up as the lead developers of Heroes of the High Court, a Pathfinder Player Companion that takes adventurers to the royal courts and noble houses of Golarion. Let's see what they have to say about the lords and ladies of high society.

Jason

This was the first book that I did a major amount of development on, having spent a few years in the word mines of editing—a place that holds a very special place in my heart and to which calls to me still. And I have to give major thanks to Amanda, who made sure I didn't spend my whole time on this project alphabetizing everything. It was exciting to take the glittering ideas fresh from our freelancer's minds and altering them to fit the needs of the product, much like a bespoke tailor creating a velvet doublet for his noble patron.

Illustrations by Bryan Syme and Javier Charro

Speaking of clothes, we all know how much those courtly types enjoy their fashion, so of course Heroes of the High Court touches on this important facet. From mundane attire such as long, silk gloves that grant bonuses against contact poisons to magical accessories such as a fashionable shawl that provides the wearer with her own illusory entourage, you'll be able to dress to impress. Once so attired, you might look half as nice as the silksworn, an occultist archetype that trades dusty ancient implements for ostentatious garments and expensive magic items. A silksworn casts spells as a spontaneous arcane spellcaster, and actually gets a few more spells per day than the regular occultist. He even gains a bonus on Bluff and Diplomacy checks depending on how much fancy clothing he's wearing. I mean, just look at Mavaro here! Isn't he fabulous?!

Amanda

For me, one of the most fun parts of character creation is coming up with a deep and intricate origin story. It might never come up in play, but my characters always have weird reasons for adventuring, and for being in specific locations when their adventures start. More than one has had traceable ties to a legendary hero (or has just made up a story and passed it off as fact!).

Regardless, Heroes of the High Court is rich in mechanical tools for building nearly any specific noble character you can imagine. The book accomplishes this in a lot of ways, but one of the most interesting is an expansion of the Noble Scion feat from the Inner Sea World Guide. The original feat gives you a mechanical benefit at 1st level based on the broad flavor of your character's noble family, but in Heroes of the High Court, we go a step further. With this expansion of the feat, characters can gain a mechanical benefit based on the actual nation from which their noble family hails.

Is your character, for instance, a member of frosty noble family from Irrisen? If they take the Noble Scion feat, they can reduce the amount of nonlethal damage taken from exposure to cold by 4 points (minimum 0). If they're from shadowy Nidal, they can gain low-light vision, or a +2 bonus on Perception checks in areas of dim light, and if they're from Taldor, they can gain a +2 bonus on Charisma-based checks when interacting with nobles or members of a noble court.

The Noble Scion options are really just a drop in the bucket of mechanical options that Heroes of the High Court offers to noble characters. Check out the book to find out more!

Occult of Indy

Friday, July 24, 2015

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Illustrations by Caio Maciel Monteiro and Wayne Reynolds.

Many of us are heading out to Indy next week for Gen Con 2015. In the Paizo booth there will be a huge display made from Pathfinder RPG books, and the latest of them's going to be Occult Adventures. Here's a last preview at the fantastic art before it officially releases on July 29! See you in Indy!

Illustrations by Igor Grechanyi, Caio Maciel Monteiro, and Mariusz Gandzel

Illustrations by Federico Musetti and Subroto Bhaumik

Sarah Robinson
Managing Art Director

Open Your Eyes—Occult Adventures Art Preview

Friday, July 17, 2015

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Illustration by Wayne Reynolds.

Subscribers are beginning to get a peek at the gateway to the unseen world in Occult Adventures, which officially hits game store shelves and the convention floor at Gen Con on July 29! Since our art department has been keeping a fairly low profile, I wanted to take over and give you another preview of the artwork gracing the pages of this book. Enjoy these selections from Occult Adventures!

Illustrations by Igor Grechanyi and Subroto Bhaumik

Illustrations by Ivan Troitsky, David Alvarez, and Alexandru Sabo

Sarah Robinson
Managing Art Director

Occult Adventures Class Preview: The Occultist

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Illustration by Alexandru Sabo

The world hides many secrets, some strange, some wondrous, and others far too terrible for the rational mind to contain. In just over a month, we'll be unveiling some of these secrets with the release of Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Occult Adventures. Within the pages of this mysterious 272-page book, we'll uncover the secrets of the occult and detail those who wield its might. In the meantime, we'll be previewing all six of the book's new classes, and investigate a new type of spellcasting power to add to your game—psychic magic!

First up is a class that harnesses the intrinsic power of ancient or psychically charged items, and then channels mental power through these items to cast powerful psychic spells: the occultist.

The occultist is a psychic spellcaster who uses rare and powerful objects called implements to manifest his magic. Each implement belongs to a specific school of magic and, as the occultist grows in power, he gains the use of more and more of these implements, increasing his power and the number of spells he can cast. In addition, he has a reservoir of mental focus to invest into these implements. Doing so not only grants him additional abilities, he can expend that focus to create even more powerful effects.

For those who took part in the Occult Adventures playtest, you'll find a number of things have changed during the development of this class. The biggest change involves the resonant powers of implements. Such powers are gained by putting mental focus into the item and, when more focus is stored within it, the item's power increases. In the final version, these resonant powers are not diminished as the mental focus is spent. As long as there is at least one point of mental focus remaining, the power remains at full strength! To add to the fun, each implement also had a few additional focus powers you can choose from.

The occultist is also very skilled at using magic circles to protect allies and hinder foes. At higher levels the occultist can use these circles to a trap enemies. After the playtest, we added a new ability utilizing magic circles. The occultist can now create a magic circle to call upon a specific outsider—a contact from beyond that the occultist can bribe or intimidate in exchange for aid. The occultist can use this outsider to gather information and, at higher levels, that outsider can deliver messages or small objects for the occultist. As the occultist advances in level, he learns to call additional outsiders, creating a network of otherworldly allies.

Lastly, the occultist can cast psychic spells from the schools associated with his implements. Since these are psychic spells, he does not have to worry about somatic or verbal components, but he does have to have a clear mind and steady emotional state to properly channel this type of magic. These components are unique to psychic spellcasters and we'll be talking more about them in the coming weeks.

Well, those are all the secrets we dare share with you this week. Next week we'll be delving into the history of Rivani, and looking at the powers of the psychic!

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer

Meet the Iconics: Mavaro

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Starting today, we'll be introducing you to the six new iconic characters featured in Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Occult Adventures as part of our Meet the Iconics series. This week we'll start off by meeting Mavaro, the iconic occultist!

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

Mavaro's earliest childhood memories are of the silent seclusion of a Pharasmin convent deep in the Mindspin Mountains. The boy never learned what brought his mother to the strange cloister built among ancient standing stones, but there she had sought refuge. The sisters' strict tutelage was the only life he knew; his only friends the esoteric books and scrolls of the convent's great library. He spent years in the library, devouring countless tomes to learn more of the world denied him.

Tales of horrors stalking the cloister's corridors held Mavaro's wanderlust in check. As he grew older, Mavaro dismissed the stories and learned to secretly navigate the forbidden halls of the convent, where he regularly bore witness to the nuns' strange ceremonies. One was a ritual of severe fasting and meditation that gradually wasted the sisters' bodies. After a period of fasting, novices would unveil a yellowed, sigil-scripted skull of the order's founding abbess, Mother Wren. The acolytes then listened in turn for a ghostly whisper from the skull to indicate a worthy candidate. Soon afterward, the selected nun's sisters would rise to adorn the candidate's body, withered in self-starvation, with strange sigils and specially cast silver talismans. They'd wrap her in fresh linens and carry her down into a hidden, spiraling catacomb to carefully place her among generations of similarly mummified worshipers spanning thousands of years.

In Mavaro's twenty-second year, Varisian traders arrived at the abbey. While the nuns took the opportunity to restock their food stores and other essentials, Mavaro felt entranced by a wagonload of riches reclaimed from the ruins of a stone giant temple. Tribal totems, esoteric steles, and ruined relics of forgotten cultures all called to him—representations of a world and cultures he'd only ever read about. When one of the traders pulled forth a strange sword of ancient design, bearing a carved, glowering face with gleaming red gems inset as eyes, Mavaro knew he had to obtain the treasures at whatever cost.

But as only a lonely scribe, Mavaro had no way to pay for the items. So he quietly stole into the forbidden catacombs where he knew the silver talismans of the abbey's mummies lay for the taking. Little did he know, though, that the sisters' starved bodies actually served as unwavering guardians, and with the desecration of their remains, an evil long held in check by their sacrifice slipped free. As the caravan trundled away from the holy ground, taking the convent's traded relics with it, the binding magic that held the entity in check cracked imperceptibly, and its spiritual corruption leaked forth.

The deaths began slowly. At first they just seemed like bad luck: a broken neck from a short fall; a drowning in the convent's well; three nuns killed in the collapse of an old stone wall in the kitchens. But soon the malevolent presence grew more bold, and the sisters realized something was hunting them in the quiet corridors. By the time the prioress realized that Mavaro's pilfering had jeopardized divine defenses centuries in the making, it was too late. One by one, the nuns were slaughtered by the dark thing of rust and chains slipping through their midst. The quiet butcher saved the prioress for last, possessing her body in anticipation of a long, self-inflicted torment. But wrenching back control of her body for the briefest moment, the prioress knocked a lantern aside and set fire to the convent in an attempt to destroy the entity—and herself—in cleansing flame.

Though injured, the vicious entity was not destroyed in the blaze, and only it and Mavaro survived. Desperate to protect himself, Mavaro shifted through the smoldering ruins of the haunted abbey, desperately collecting any holy relics he could find in hope of warding off the lingering evil. Vestments of razor wire still glowing red, the spirit soon found Mavaro. The young scholar would surely have faced his death, had not the skull of Mother Wren whispered to him from the ashes. The ancient holy woman commanded Mavaro to close his eyes and open his soul to the power of the items he had collected. Its long fingers flicking like the lashes of a scourge, the wicked shadow closed on the desperate youth, cooing promises of endless, barb-licked torment. Mavaro felt the power of the relics well up inside him, and shakily reached for the ruby-eyed blade he had purchased. Trembling, but full with strange power, Mavaro blindly struck.

A red gem shattered in the sword's hilt and the dark thing shrieked, flailing jangling fetters as it retreated through the ruins. Mavaro fled the holy site as quick as he could, never looking back at the only place he'd ever called home.

In the twenty years since, Mavaro's life has been a strange paradox. He's now a man of many indulgences, making up for his modest childhood with good food and raucous company. He deflects inquiries about his youth with inconsistent but highly entertaining tales tied in with his mysterious collection of relics and strange objects. Quietly, though, he regularly casts one eye over his shoulder, ever watchful for the shadow he's come to call the Thorn Priest, which stalks him still. Mavaro regularly consults the yellowed skull of Mother Wren, heeding her ghostly whispers as he pursues the relics he traded away long ago. His travels have taken him to markets across Varisia, the strangest of private collections, and many dangerous, distant locales. Still he seeks to reclaim their power, determined to undo the folly of his youth and face the Thorn Priest once more.

Brandon Hodge
Occultist Contributing Author