Art of the Planes

Thursday, July 5, 2018

In previous blogs, we've talked about some of the lore and game content in Pathfinder RPG Planar Adventures, but since so many people have the book in their hands already and the forums are abuzz of what folks are discovering within, for this blog I wanted to show off some of the art.

Amiri, Kyra, and Merisiel fight a rift dragon in Elysium.
Illustration by Setiawan Lie

If you don’t have plane shift handy, sometimes you have to pay the boatman to get around the Great Beyond.
Illustration by Setiawan Lie

Travelers to the Dreamlands report descending a long spiral stair that deposits them out the side of an immense tree into the Enchanted Forest.
Illustration by Fabio Gorla

On the rare instances where one finds a way to the Akashic Record, they likely end up in a “reading room” like this.
Illustration by Fabio Gorla

Adam Daigle
Managing Developer

Monsters from Beyond

Tuesday June 26, 2018

Illustration by Setiawan Lie

Around here it's no secret that I like monsters. Some could say that monsters are one of the biggest reasons I have a desk in this office. Monsters are not only foes for player characters to fight in Pathfinder, they also help tell stories, particularly stories beyond mortal ability or understanding.

Some monsters have an intrinsic connection to places, things, or philosophical concepts, and no type of monster possesses these qualities more than outsiders. Even though Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Planar Adventures is a book about the planes and it's inhabitants, there are more monster types than just outsiders in the books' bestiary chapter. In Planar Adventures' bestiary you can find an aberration, an ooze, a couple of plants, a monstrous humanoid, in addition to a selection of outsiders that needed new members of their families.

You know what? Why don't I end this little blog with a list of what you'll find in Planar Adventures.

Monster List

Aphorite* CR 1/2 LN Mediuim outsider (native)
Archon, Bastion CR 20 LG Huge outsider (archon, extraplanar, good, lawful)
Argent Warden CR 8 LG Medium construct (extraplanar)
Cynosoma CR 12 CG Medium outsider (chaotic, etraplanar, good)
Duskwalker* CR 1/2 N Medium outsider (native)
Empusa CR 13 CN Medium outsider (chaotic, extraplanar, shapechanger)
Etheroot CR 8 N Large plant (extraplanar)
Ganzi* CR 1/2 CN Medium outsider (native)
Inevitable, Novenarut CR 4 LN Medium outsider (extraplanar, inevitable, lawful)
Inevitable, Valharut CR 11 LN Medium outsider (extraplanar, inevitable, lawful)
Irii CR 19 LN or CN Medium outsider (extraplanar, shapechanger)
Leviathan CR 30 N Colossal magical beast (water)
MoonHag CR 7 CE Medium monstrous humanoid (extraplanar)
Roseling CR 7 NG Small plant (extraplanar, shapechanger)
SapphireOoze CR 2 CG Medium ooze (extraplanar, shapechanger)
Sirrush CR 21 NG Gargantuan dragon (extraplanar, good)
Watcher CR 22 LN Gargantuan outsider
Whyrlish CR 15 N Huge aberration (extraplanar)
Wisagatcak CR 14 LE Small outsider (evil, extraplanar, lawful)
Wrackworm CR 20 CE Colossal outsider (chaotic, evil, extraplanar)
Xiomorn CR 20/MR 8 LN Medium outsider (earth, elemental, extraplanar, mythic)
* Denotes player race

Go out and get your hands on Pathfinder RPG Planar Adventures now!

Adam Daigle
Managing Developer

Divine Intervention

Thursday, June 21, 2018

When talking about the planes, you can't skip talking about the planes' most powerful entities. So we're going to chat about the gods for a little bit.

In Pathfinder Roleplaying Planar Adventures, all 20 of the core deities are presented in the book, each with a deity stat block. These stat blocks aren't actual stats for the gods, and they have some of the information you're familiar with from places like Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Inner Sea Gods. However, the presentation here includes some new things as well. The stat blocks cover things like domains, favored weapons, and sacred animals and colors, but it also helpfully collects information like allies, enemies, holy days, worshipers, minions, and the gods' heralds. The stat blocks also list each of the deities' divine realms and points you to which page in the book features more details on that realm. What's new and exciting about these is that it also includes something new—divine gifts.

Illustration by Ian Perks

Divine gifts are boons that gods bestow on devout followers who achieve a legendary task or perform a particularly pious act. These divine gifts are unique to each god or goddess and allow the GM to spice up the rewards in their game. They work as excellent rewards when treasure just doesn't cut it. Divine gifts should only be used rarely or else they run the risk of feeling underwhelming or watering down the experience. If used against players (or used to favor a specific character) using divine intervention has the potential to upset and alienate your players. Divine gifts should be used to forward the story and reward significant events in the narrative of the campaign. As such, they should only be handed out once per player per campaign—but, hey... as the GM you're the god of the world you present, so you can what you want.

Illustration by Vlada Hladkova

Here are a few examples of some divine gifts.

Pharasma's Divine Gift

The recipient is not affected by the next effect, damage, or other event that would otherwise kill him.

Sarenrae's Divine Gift

As the sun rises over the recipient's home world, he can perform a 10-minute prayer (this may be part of his daily ritual to prepare spells) to invoke the Dawnflower. For the next 24 hours, all healing effects the character generates heal the maximum amount of damage possible. In addition, during this time he can cast breath of life and heal as spell-like abilities 3 times each (CL 20th).

Torag's Divine Gift

The recipient can perform a 10-minute prayer (this can be part of her daily ritual to prepare spells) to gain divine insight into defense and strategic situations for the next 24 hours. During this time, the character gains a pool of 20 defense points. She can allocate these points among any number of recipients as untyped bonuses to AC or on saving throws, to a maximum of 5 points per target (a single target can receive this bonus only to AC or to saving throws, not both). She can reallocate these points as a standard action any point during these 24 hours, but each time she does so, the total pool of defense points available for the next allocation is reduced by 5.

That's it for now with all this deity discussion, but a little later I'll be back to talk about some of the other sections of Planar Adventures.

Adam Daigle
Managing Developer

Infused With the Planes

Tuesday, June 19, 2018

In a previous blog, I spoke generally about some of number of player-facing rules elements found in Pathfinder RPG Planar Adventures, giving rough numbers of different kinds of new mechanics for your characters.

Now I want to dig down a little deeper and talk about something brand new. Amid the archetypes, spells, magic items, and feats, Planar Adventures includes a new type of feats: conduit feats. Here's how the book describes them.

Illustration by Ian Perks

Conduit Feats

Conduit feats grant the ability to draw energies from other planes. The effects of conduit feats are supernatural and do not function in an antimagic field or similar effect. In addition, since these abilities require energies from other planes, you cannot use them in areas that are warded against planar or dimensional travel (such as those under the effects of dimensional lock or forbiddance) or when you have been denied this ability (such as via dimensional anchor).

There are nearly two dozen conduit feats, the most versatile of which is Planar Infusion. Each of the planes (and demiplanes and dimensions) detailed in Planar Adventures has a stat block listing things you've come to expect like alignment, gravity, time, and how magic works there, but the stat blocks also contain other new pieces of information. One of these is infusions. Infusions are meant to represent how planar energies can affect characters if exposed over a period of time or during a significant event. There are three tiers to infusions: basic, improved, and greater—each granting powers unlocked by the Planar Infusion, Improved Planar Infusion, and Greater Planar Infusion feats.

As an example, I'll share the infusions for a demiplane near and dear to my heart—Xibalba.

Illustration by Fabio Gorla

Infusions

Basic The dread horrors of Xibalba infuse your being, and there is little that can further unnerve you. Increase the save DC of fear effects you create by 1, and you gain a +2 bonus on all saving throws against fear effects.

Improved You can use phantasmal killer as a spell-like ability once per day.

Greater You can use insanity as a spell-like ability once per day.

Other conduit feats grant your character unique abilities, all deeply linked to a particular plane of existence. For example, Axiomatic Discourse helps you influence others, Blazing aura wreathes you in flame, Malleable Form converts you to a semi-gelatinous state, and Phasestrike lets you phase out a weapon and resolve attacks as touch attacks. Here's a full example of one of these conduit feats, the wonderfully named Chaos Reigns.

Chaos Reigns (Conduit)

The Abyss dreams of devastation; the slightest taste of its power is an incitement to bare-fisted violence.

Prerequisite: Knowledge (planes) 3 ranks.

Benefit: As a swift action, you can allow Abyssal wrath to overtake you. While in this state, you can use one of your hands as a slam natural attack that deals 1d6 points of damage (or 1d4 for Small creatures). A creature that does not have hands can instead use a different part of its body to make this slam attack.

You can use this feat's benefit for a number of minutes per day equal to your ranks in Knowledge (planes). These minutes need not be consecutive, but they must be spent in 1-minute increments.

That's it for now! Pick up Pathfinder RPG Planar Adventures here on paizo.com or at your local game retailer! Keep your eyes on the blog for more details about Planar Adventures.

Adam Daigle
Managing Developer

Todd's Top Five

Tuesday, June 5, 2018

I'm Todd Stewart, that freelancer who habitually begs for planar content, aka that protean and daemon person who neither admits nor denies to actually being a glamorous neutral evil fiend.

A decade ago Paizo had me write Pathfinder Campaign Setting: The Great Beyond exploring Pathfinder's cosmology and fleshing out its outsiders as something unique as it branched off as its own game. Since then, the cosmology has evolved and expanded, with such really cool additions as psychopomps, divs, and sakhils, the Book of the Damned series, and other resources.

Illustration by Marius Bota

For most of the past decade I've pleaded to see a planar hardcover for Pathfinder, and the begging finally paid off! As one of Pathfinder RPG Planar Adventures' freelancers I can't wait to see it released for you folks who've been asking for this for just as long as I have. So what do you have to look forward to? Here's a list of some of my favorite things in Planar Adventures:

Illustration by Gabriela Marchioro

1. The original Great Beyond was a solo project for me, but Planar Adventures let me collaborate with some seriously talented folks and get their awesome ideas into play. For me, it's like jumping out of bed, running downstairs, and feverishly opening up Christmas gifts, beyond excited at what you might find and having it all be a wonderful surprise.
2. Galisemni, the City of the Celestial and the Damned, originally showed up as only a name on the map of the Maelstrom, but for years it was the primary setting of my home Pathfinder campaign, and I'm incredibly excited to finally detail it. May the Watching Seven grant you favor, may the Lethe Wall not covet your name unless fate holds that in store, and whatever you do, don't get into a drinking contest with Il'setsya Wyrmtouched (ganzi arcanist, itinerant drunkard, pesh-connoisseur, and my PC when I played in Rise of the Runelords). This is my favorite location that I've ever created in any RPG supplement ever, and I'm proud to add it into the game and see what you folks do with it!
3. Shadow Absalom was another planar city originally from The Great Beyond and it and the Shadow Plane get additional detail herein. What plots does the great wyrm Argrinyxia, the Shifting Lady of Ebon Scales, spin? What mysteries lurk within the gloom for your PCs to find? Do you dare explore a landscape twisted by Zon-Kuthon's own dreams and nightmares?
4. The Negative Energy Plane is one of the most criminally underused planes, but here it shines, darkly so. Avoid the plane's native sceaduinar, the so-called raptors of the void, and take shelter from the Void's horrific natural hazards from the macabre (relative) safety of Malikar's Keep. Plumb the hungry, lightless depths for such legendary locations as Fallen Duromak, a Material planet swallowed and lost, or the enigmatic, manifest horror of Eternity's Doorstep that hideously feeds upon the undead. Planar Adventures provides reasons to visit each plane, flavor to inspire, and a myriad of locations to send PCs.
5. Really cool NPCs: Ssila'meshnik the Colorless Lord (protean lord of fate, freedom, and paradox); a deific information for The Speakers of the Depths; Inusalia the meladaemon alchemist and her cross-planar pesh emporium who harvests the souls of repeat clients to sate her own addiction; Jacarkas the Collector, harbinger thrall of Trelmarixian and lord of Abaddon's slave city of Awaiting-Consumption; and many more!

This book was a joy and a privilege to work on and soon it will be in your hands! Enjoy, have fun, and don't blame me if proteans eat your PCs.

Todd Stewart
Contributor