Everybody Sing, Oh Yeah, It's a Critical Hit!

Thursday, December 13, 2018

Critical hits are among the most dramatic, and most popular, moments in a Starfinder game session. A player scoring a critical hit is generally rewarded with cheers from fellow players, while an NPC scoring one often leads to groans and (hopefully good-hearted) booing. A critical hit can change the course of a battle, force new tactics to be adopted, and may also set a foe on fire, leave them insensate for a round, or even chop off a limb. Critical hits are rare, but memorable.

Now, groups can choose to make them MORE memorable.

Illustration by Taylor Fischer

The Starfinder Critical Hit Deck offers hundreds of new critical hit results that can be used to boost the breadth and impact of that natural 20. Critical hits results are divided into three broad categories of attacks listed on every card (kinetic, energy, or spell), and one specific "Extreme Critical" on each card that can be selected if the attack meets it's narrower definition (such as fire damage, or melee attack). When an attack is a critical hit, you use the appropriate critical for your broad attack category, or if you attack matches the extreme critical you can choose to use that instead.

A card's rules may give you an optional critical hit effect (one you can use in place of your attack's normal critical hit effect, if any), or a bonus effect (which you add to any critical hit effect you already have). These effects can add weapon special features, existing critical hit effects, extra damage, impose conditions on your foes, or grant bonuses to you or your allies. The rules card outlines how to determine the level of an effect, any required save DC, how to remove penalties that last until healed, and other details of applying the critical effects.

For example, if you critically hit a foe with a thunderstrike pulse gauntlet, you might pull a card with the energy critical "Which Way is Up?" with the listed effect "Crit Effect: The target is flat-footed for 1d4 rounds (Fortitude negates)." You can then choose to use your pulse gauntlet's normal critical hit effect (knockdown), or the energy critical effect, giving you a chance to make the target flat-footed for 1d4 rounds. However, the same card with "Which Way is Up?" also gives the extreme critical "Extreme Sonic: Sound of victory." That critical says "Bonus Effect: Allies within 60 feet (not including yourself) regain Stamina Points equal to their level." Since a thunderstrike pulse gauntlet is a sonic weapon, you can choose the extreme sonic critical rather than the energy critical, and since that's a bonus effect, you can both knock down foes and inspire your allies so much they regain Stamina Points.

Of course part of the fun of a critical hit deck is the names of the various critical, which often get a laugh or cheer from players. While not every critical hit name is humorous, the hope is that enough are to bring some grins to a typical game. Along those lines my personal favorites are "Kinetically Induced Stupidity" (Bonus Effect: The target moves 1 step down the Intelligence poison track until healed), "Shoot the Chandelier" (Bonus Effect: Create a square of cover adjacent to you or the target, as if using the Barricade feat), "Aftereffect Alacrity" (Bonus Effect: You gain the benefits of haste for 1d4 rounds), and "Extreme Piercing: Nailed in Place" (Bonus Effect: The target cannot leave its space [Strength DC 20 negates].)

So grab a deck, get an enemy in your sights, and hope you roll a 20!

Owen K.C. Stephens
Starfinder Design Lead

Announcing the Starfinder Roleplaying Game!

Saturday, May 28, 2016

Ever since Pathfinder Adventure Path #3, when James Jacobs and Wes Schneider had to hold me back from putting a space elevator in Varisia, I've wanted to take Pathfinder to the stars. A year later, I had the honor of writing up Golarion's solar system in Pathfinder Adventure Path #14, and then expanding it further in Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Distant Worlds. But I'm not the only one around here in love with outer space and science fiction—I think all of us have at various times said, "Wouldn't it be fun to do a futuristic version of Pathfinder?" Yet aside from the occasional jaunt to other worlds in adventures like Pathfinder Adventure Path #70: The Frozen Stars, it's always been a dream just out of reach.

Until now.

Next August, Paizo will be releasing the Starfinder Roleplaying Game—a new science fantasy RPG based on the Pathfinder universe and rules, but complete and standalone. It'll be backward compatible, so you can still use all those Pathfinder RPG bestiaries, but will feature all sorts of new classes, races, equipment, and other elements uniquely suited to our far-future setting. You want to play a lashunta technomancer using magic to hack the defense grid, or an android assassin with a laser rifle, or a ysoki ratfolk mechanic clambering around the guts of a spaceship as you blast your way through the enemy blockade? This is the place for it. There will also be new races you've never seen before, new worlds beyond Golarion's system that we've never visited, new twists on magic and the rules system itself—and, of course, ton and tons of cool science fantasy gear, from starships and computers to infinitely sharp zero-edge swords and rune-augmented plasma cannons.

The Starfinder RPG Core Rulebook will be releasing at Gen Con 2017, but that's not all—we're also going to be starting a monthly Starfinder Adventure Path in addition to our ongoing Pathfinder Adventure Paths. The Starfinder AP volumes will include both adventures and cool new rules and setting information to help expand your Starfinder game. Plus monsters. Lots of monsters.

So how does all this science fantasy goodness fit into the Pathfinder setting? Simple: Starfinder is set in Golarion's solar system, but far in a possible future—one in which the gods have mysteriously spirited Golarion away to an unknown location, and refuse to answer questions about it. In its place, the cultures of that world have evolved and spread throughout the solar system, especially to a vast space platform called Absalom Station. Gifted access to a hyperspace dimension by an ascended AI deity, the residents of the system suddenly find themselves with the ability to travel faster than light, and the race is on to explore and colonize potentially millions of worlds. But there are horrors out there in the darkness...

As the Creative Director of Starfinder, I can't wait to show you everything we've been building. Joining me as key players on Team Starfinder are longtime Paizo developers Rob McCreary and Owen KC Stephens, as well as Creative Design Director Sarah Robinson on the art side, but all the designers, developers, art staff, and editors are working on different parts of the project—it's an all-hands-on-deck affair. And it's not just us, either—as Starfinder will be released under the OGL, we're looking forward to robust third-party support of the game.

While the size and scope of the new game make a full public playtest infeasible, we'll be starting to bring in key community members to check it out in the next few months, so keep an eye on the blog for your chance to participate! In the meantime, we wanted to give you a sneak preview of some preliminary concept sketches for Absalom Station, androids, and ysoki from artist Taylor Fischer (who you might know from games like XCOM and Civilization)—while these are only our initial explorations, and far from final, it's fun to see the process as things change and evolve. And it's never too early to chime in and chat with us in the new Starfinder forum!

We hope you're as excited about Starfinder as we are, and that you'll join us as we boldly go where Paizo's never gone before!

James L. Sutter
Creative Director

Represent Your Cause!

Monday, April 6, 2015

At the beginning of the Year of the Sky Key (Season 6), most of the factions underwent significant changes as their philosophies evolved and those with national ties distanced themselves from their homelands. New faction symbols followed, and in anticipation of the upcoming Faction Journal Cards, the Pathfinder Society team commissioned new symbols for each of the seven current factions. It is my pleasure to share the new art with you today.

To give you a sense of the changes, I first want to show you the two "unchanged" faction symbols, tied to the Grand Lodge and Silver Crusade. I call these symbols "unchanged" largely because their symbols' shape, concept, and coloration stayed largely the same; however, if we were going to update the five other factions' art, why not make them all even better?

Both the original Grand Lodge and Silver Crusade symbols were simple but elegant, and the updated art has taken two great designs and made them a little bolder. The other five symbols are equally exciting, with colors, interior details, and other elements that make each an icon worth rallying around.

We've also updated your Pathfinder Society ID cards with the new faction artwork, the faction pages and updated the Community Use Package so you can use these new images right away!

John Compton
Developer

Faction Symbols Illustrated by Taylor Fischer.

Improvements Are A-Comin'

Monday, November 17, 2014

Illustration by Taylor Fischer

Over the past several months, there have been some growing concerns with Pathfinder Society Organized Play. As we would like to take action to correct the concerns instead of let them grow and fester, we reached out to all 395 Venture-Officers a month ago to receive their feedback on what was wrong with the campaign, what was good about the campaign, and what we could do to improve or correct things to make Pathfinder Society even more awesome. Even though there were some difficult opinions expressed, most were true and it caused us to take a hard look at the organized play program.

After receiving feedback from the Venture-Officers, we formed a team of Paizo employees to work on solutions for the concerns that were expressed. This team included Lisa Stevens and Erik Mona, Mark Seifter and Mark Moreland, John Compton, and me. There were 327 responses from our VOs regarding thoughts and feedback on the current state of PFS. I went through each and every post and listed every one of the concerns expressed on a large white board in our conference room. The meeting took upwards of six hours, and through debate, discussion, and some give and take, we came up with some solutions to most of the concerns that were expressed.

The Venture-Officers are aware of many of the initatives we have set forth to accomplish the goals. There are still other topics we are continuing to discuss on the Venture-Officer message board to make sure they are the best we can make them for the campaign at large. I wanted to write this blog to bring the player base up-to-date on some of the initiatives we have set into motion with the awesome collaboration that took place between the VOs and the Paizo team.

Factions

First, let's talk about factions and their roles. After much discussion here at Paizo, specifically on some problems that were brought up in the long discussion with all of the Venture-Officers, we agree that factions currently don't play as important a role as we would like them to. We want factions to have meaning and substance. We think our factions help to set PFS apart from other organized play campaigns. We have strategized a four-pronged plan of attack which we think will help return factions to a more important role in the campaign.

• The five new factions are receiving a professional makeover for their faction symbols. Grand Lodge and Silver Crusade faction symbols will remain unchanged. If you have suggestions on what they should look like, please start a different thread. The target goal for this to be implemented is by the end of 2014.
• There will be revised and improved write-ups of each faction for both the PFS landing page at paizo.com and the Guide to Organized Play. We plan to implement these write-ups by the end of 2014.
• We will be adding "The Story So Far" type of pages to the PFS landing page at paizo.com. John is assembling a team of writers to help him accomplish this goal for all past seasons. These will be spoiler-lite and help to sum up each season for new and old players alike. The target goal for this is end of February 2015.
• We will be producing Faction Journal cards, similar to the PAXPort or the quests cards we provide at Gen Con. There will be one Faction Journal card for each of the seven factions.
• • The front of the card will list a series of goals (likely 10) to complete for the current season. These goals will be generic enough that they can be accomplished from playing not just the current season, but past season scenarios as well. For example, the Dark Archive Faction Journal may have one of their 10 goals be to find and recover five named manuals to bring back to the archives in Absalom. These could include the Inward-Facing Circle book from Silent Tide, the dozen black vellum scrolls in Voice in the Void, and any other documents or manuals that are found in sanctioned adventures. Each time you accomplish a goal, the GM will check off or initial a box on that particular goal.
  • The back of the card will include three award thresholds for accomplishing a set number of these goals. For example, if a PC completes three of the 10 goals, they will receive a small favor from their faction or a unique, faction-specific item. If they complete six of the ten goals, they could possibly receive a unique title that provides certain benefits or a better unique faction item. If they complete all 10 of the faction goals, their clout with their faction is sufficent to extend benefits to other PCs at tables where the character is present, while making their presence (and that of their faction) important to every character at the table. As a working example, a Silver Crusade PC who has completed all 10 of her faction's goals on her card might be able to use the her renown to call in a favor and reduce the prestige point cost of any PC's raise dead by 4 so long as she's there to flex her faction's muscles. Although this might not be the reward that appears on the Silver Crusade faction card when we finish this project, it gives a good example of the type of reward we're aiming for.
  • To reward GMs, we are considering adding an 11th optional goal that would be applied to the three different thresholds of rewards. For example, we may list 10 check boxes and for each scenario GMed in the current season, one check box could be completed. Once all ten are filled, one goal toward the a reward threshold would be met, leaving only two more to complete through playing the character.
  • The back of the card will also feature a form of the revised write-up of the faction described in bullet number two above, as well as a summation of season-long goals in descriptive text. This descriptive text will explain why the PC is trying to achieve the 10 goals for the faction and how it will aid the faction in the future—likely in the form of the faction head letters.
  • We realize that we are introducing this half way through the current season so everyone may not be able to complete the card for this season. On day one of Gen Con 2015, no more faction goals may be checked off from the Season 6 card. On the same day, a new Season 7 card will become available that may include a bonus reward depending on if the character completed five or more goals from the previous season. We hope this fresh approach will help to build the excitement in factions for future seasons as we plan to introduce updated faction goal cards every season at Gen Con.
  • These Faction Journal Cards will be provided as a free download on paizo.com, so anyone can print one off for a new or existing character at any time.
  • Every character may have one card assigned to him. If the PC changes factions any time in the future, he would lose all benefits from the card.
  • The Faction Journal card would not override the primary and secondary success conditions set forth in the scenario. Those are still in place to continue enforcing the importance of being a Pathfinder. The Faction Journal card will allow for more depth by adding greater meaning to the factions.
  • Use of the Faction Journal card is optional. A PC never has to take one, use one, or try to complete one.
  • The Faction Journal cards should be available by the end of January.

Scenario Length

Over time, scenarios have become longer, both in terms of word count dedicated to the adventure (rather than to faction missions, for example) and in terms of run-time. To an extent, it's also tied to the increased number of lengthy role-playing scenes and tougher combats intended to match the six-player assumption (i.e. more PCs means more enemies means more time spent in combat). In most circumstances, the longer scenarios are, the harder they are to schedule and run.

We are taking the following steps to address this issue and bring the expected run time (time from mission briefing to the resolution of the final encounter, not including set-up and paperwork) to four hours:

• Cut one encounter from Tier 5-9 and Tier 7-11 scenarios. These higher-level scenarios run over most often, and it's mostly a matter of high-level combat taking longer.
• Revise encounter expectations for Tier 3-7 to minimize long, drawn-out encounters resulting from especially high challenge ratings. If necessary, we will cut an encounter from Tier 3-7 scenarios, but preferably these can still work under approximately the same model.
• There are no changes expected on this front for Tier 1-5 scenarios, which generally fit the four-hour model without much trouble.
• You should start seeing these changes implemented in scenarios in December 2014 or January 2015.

Scenario Difficulty

We have heard your feedback that scenarios have become harder to just pick up and run. In part this is due to a large number of scenario-specific subsystems that require the GM—and sometimes the players—to learn a new set of rules during the scenario. In part, it's also a result of the reliance on the Pathfinder Reference Document when providing only short stat blocks for encounters. There's also the matter of the increasingly involved stories that scenarios are telling.

We are taking the following steps to mitigate these issues:

• Provide an appendix that includes the full Bestiary and NPC Codex pages referenced in the adventure as well as an un-tagged copy of any custom maps that appear in the scenario.
• Cap the number of required GM resources at four books per scenario (including the Core Rulebook). This should be relatively easy if the Bestiary pages are already included in the back of the adventure, as in most cases approximately half of the books referenced are Bestiaries.
• Include full stat blocks for creatures modified by the advanced, giant, or young simple templates. The exception to this would be modifications that appear in the "Scaling Encounter XYZ" sidebars. For example, if the adventure says that there should be an advanced otyugh, the full stats for an advanced otyugh will be there and ready to go. If the scaling notes say that a four-person group should instead face a young otyugh, those stats would not appear. This should at least cover the essential modifications and reduce the amount of on-the-fly adjustment that a GM needs to do.
• Limit the number of rules subsystems in scenarios. Subsystems aren't going away entirely, but we need to avoid relying on subsystems and simply save them for the times that they'll have the greatest impact. Should an especially large subsystem such as mass combat appear in a scenario again for whatever reason, it would be advertised on the product page. Simple point-tracking mechanics that only the GM sees (for example, keeping track of how many clues the PCs uncover) are likely to show up a little less often but are still a useful tool.
• You should start seeing these changes implemented in scenarios in December 2014 or January 2015.

Season Plotline

Over the past four seasons, the Pathfinder Society Organized Play campaign has based its season-long plotline on the most recent Adventure Path products. In some ways this has worked well due to the new campaign setting content available to players, GMs, and authors, but nearly as often, this decision has caused problems—either by binding the story of the campaign to that of a different product (and the continuity difficulties that can arise), driving the Society to do things that don't necessarily fit its mandate, or subjecting the community to a long storyline when many participants begin losing interest after the first several months. As the list of scenarios grows longer, the list of metaplots grows as well, providing a barrier to newer players getting involved.

To combat these trends, we are taking the following steps:

• Stop tying the campaign's story to those of the Adventure Paths. Player responses suggest that the Destiny of the Sands model of using a current Adventure Path as inspiration for a three-part series is about right, and even then it's not mandatory that every Adventure Path receives this treatment.
• Provide Pathfinder Society its own storyline using its own existing plot threads and creating new ones.
• Expand the number of stand-alone scenarios that explore a wide variety of locations rather than get tied down in one location with an ongoing story that is tough to follow if one misses a few pieces.
• Provide a "The Story Thus Far" handout that provides a low-spoiler summary of each season's storyline so that a player can quickly catch up on the critical plot concepts when sitting down to an adventure that deals with ongoing metaplot elements. The working length for each handout is about four paragraphs or 300-400 words. There would be one such document for each season and perhaps one for a few of the most complex ongoing metaplots (Grandmaster Torch, for example).
• You should start seeing these changes implemented at the beginning of Season 7, though some like "The Story Thus Far" handouts are likely to appear sooner.

Quests

From our feedback about the success of the Silverhex Chronicles quest line, we are aware we need more Quests and Quest-like events. Since we already have nine different Beginner Box quests broken up into parts one and two, this was topic was a no brainer.

We have added two Chronicle sheets to the development schedule for the Beginner Box Demos. One will be for the four demos in part one and the other will be for the five demos in part two. These should allow for you to draw more interest from players wanting to try the system out, as well as give you another two sets of quest-style adventures to run, bringing the immediate total of quests to three sets with the inclusion of the Silverhex Chronicles quests. Look for these two Chronicle sheets by the end of 2014.

We have quite a few more changes and additions in the works, and I can't wait to tell you about them. However, some are more ideas than polished action plans, so we need a bit more time to make sure we get the other exciting changes to PFS in order before we release the rest of this information publicly.

As always, we look forward to trying to create the best Organized Play experience we can for all of you. Please read our collected thoughts above and let us know what you think, how we might improve upon the ideas, and what we could change to make them better. Thanks again for being the best fanbase any game company out there has. Without your input, as well as that of the awesome Venture-Officer corp, we certainly could not make PFS the best organized play campaign available anywhere in the world.

Mike Brock
Pathfinder Society Campaign Coordinator

Update: Open Call!

Monday, October 6, 2014

"Why haven't you been writing for us all along?"
Illustration by Tayler Fischer

With the recent release of The Silverhex Chronicles, I've been really excited about Quests. The short, fun adventures are easy to use as demos at conventions and game days, and now that we have a solid way to give Pathfinder Society Organized Play characters credit for playing them, I think they're going to get a lot of traction in the community. Several writers from the last batch of Quests came from the Open Call, and since I'm already excited about Quests, the last several days have been a great opportunity to read through more submissions. I've gone through a large swath of the Open Call's inbox, reviewed those submissions, and nearly finished sending out responses—including feedback—to those authors. I'll be reading through more in the coming weeks.

As noted back when the "Write for Pathfinder Society" adventure pitch turned into the Open Call, reviewing a Quest gives the developer a much better sense of how a prospective author can assemble encounters, execute stories, and wield the English language. As the medium for publishing these adventures has transitioned from individual entries in independent publications to larger compilations roughly the size of a full scenario, it's a little trickier to pick up and publish a submission, yet I've already seen a few that might find their way into a future product.

Even if your first submission didn't meet Paizo's standards, learn from the feedback, practice those skills, and try again. My best authors are the ones who have handled criticism well and incorporated it into the next project. If you haven't submitted an adventure to the Open Call yet, what are you waiting for? This could be your first step toward writing for Paizo!

John Compton
Developer

Bestiary 2 Box Preview

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

There are a lot of great things about our Pathfinder Pawns sets, but one of my absolute favorite aspects of the line is that each new product allows us to go back and order pictures of monsters and NPCs that have never before appeared in illustrated form. In the case of our Bestiary products, this means we get new images of elementals, dragons, and other creatures that have various versions in the book, as well as reimaginings of outsiders and other creatures that either don't fit within the specific shape of a pawn or that we’d like to see depicted differently. Here are a few of the new pieces of art ordered specifically for the Bestiary 2 Box , which will be releasing soon!

Illustrations by Rayph Beisner, Jason Engle, and Taylor Fischer

Mark Moreland
Developer