Art of the Wild

Friday, November 17, 2017

Now that Ultimate Wilderness is out in the wild, there have been plenty of discussions about what's in the book. Since words only go so far, I wanted to take this opportunity to show off some of the book's art. Feast your eyes on the bounties of nature.

Illustration by Kiki Moch Rizky

Illustration by Valeria Lutfullina

Illustration by Alexandre Chaudret

Illustration by Nikolai Ostertag and Brynn Methany

Adam Daigle

Managing Developer

It's a Dangerous World

Friday, November 10, 2017

Sure, we can probably all name adventures named after their big, spooky destination—anything from Hall of the Flesh Eaters to Crypt of the Everflame to Ice Tomb of the Giant Queen. Yet for all the gutsy action that takes place in these fanes of dark deities and towers of trash-talking tyrants, a big part of adventuring isn't about where you're going but how you got there. That means crossing the wilderness, the great nameless expanses that for many of us boil down to random encounters and conveniently forgetting to track rations.

So why is there such a dearth of adventures about exploration? One possibility is that location-based dungeon crawls lend themselves to more evocative titles, whereas stories about getting from Point A to Point B could as readily be named "The Ambushes Happen at Midnight," "A Tragic Series of Fortitude Saves," or the ever-popular "We Cast Teleport." Sure, we have some beautiful exceptions to this trend like the Kingmaker Adventure Path, but I'm going to posit we've really been waiting for fun ways to engage with the wilds and weave them more fully into our narratives.

Enter Pathfinder RPG Ultimate Wilderness, which hits shelves later this month. Whereas Stephen discussed shifters and Linda waxed poetic about leshys in earlier blogs, I'm excited to share some highlights from Chapters 4 and 5, which cover wilderness rules and companion creatures respectively.

Chapter 4: Mastering the Wild

I'd break down Chapter 4 into three major themes: travel, resources, and setting.

Travel's all about the making the wilderness experience more interesting. Full disclosure: I'm often a GM, so my definition of "more interesting" quickly gravitates to things that can kill or inconvenience the player characters. Like me, you might adore the Hazards and Disasters section (pages 146–151), which has rules for everything from brambles to volcanic eruptions to something cruel called "vampire orchids." Likewise, the Weather (pages 165–171) and Traps (172–173) sections are quite charming, providing not just a more robust system for determining what the weather's like outside, but also the rules for a swinging log trap that can knock out the party's wizard faster than you can say "martial-caster disparity." When I'm on the other side of the GM screen, I really enjoy being the party cartographer, so I quite like the Discovery and Exploration section (pages 124–127), which provides an easy-to-use, overarching rules system for exploring wilderness expanses, uncovering sites of interest, and turning the experience of reaching a dungeon into more than a brief travel montage. Perhaps the real gem is Spells of the Wild (pages 156–161), which provides a deeper look at common wilderness-oriented spells like pass without trace, diminish plants, and wind walk, particularly with an eye for how these spells can contribute to (but not necessarily bypass) wilderness exploration.

Illustrations by Roberto Pitturru

Resources cover all the great reasons the PCs would want to enter the wilderness voluntarily. Love free stuff (tends to share an answer with "Do you have a character?")? No doubt you'd love to be able to salvage components for alchemical gear, magic items, and costly spell components using the new Foraging and Salvaging section (pages 134–135). How about commemorating your latest kill with the Trophies and Treasures section (page 162–164), which provides ways to collect mementos, skins, claws, and more that you can use to create new items—which vary based on the trophies you collect—and remind you of your awesome deeds? Want to get more mileage out of Profession (herbalist)? Me too! Now you can with the new Herbalism rules (pages 152–155). But wait, there's one more prize awaiting you, and it's one of the requests I've heard most for Pathfinder RPG: Harvesting Poisons (pages 142–145), allowing you to at last extract the poison glands from one beast and jab them into another.

Finally, I'd like to linger for a moment on the setting resources, which cover two easily-incorporated pieces of Golarion lore that bring the wilds to life: the First World (128–133) and the Green Faith (136–141). The First World is the "first draft" of the world as we know it, having been plastered over with a new reality by the gods. That suits the native fey just fine, though every once and a while the boundaries between the two realms grow thin and allow enterprising explorers back and forth. If you like what you see, I recommend also checking out Pathfinder Campaign Setting: The First World, Realm of the Fey. Meanwhile, think of the Green Faith as the venerable religion that doesn't just seem to predate worshipping the gods; it spurns anthropomorphization of nature altogether. Founded when four rival sects of nature-worshippers witnessed a beautiful natural phenomenon and averted destroying each other in a civil war, the Green Faith represents the faceless power that fuels much of druidic magic.

Not enough? Very well...

Chapter 5: Companions and Familiars

What book about nature is complete without a bunch of new animal companions? Ultimate Wilderness has tons of new options for new animal companions, ranging from the eohippus (an early ancestor of the horse) to the marsupial devil to the full-size (read: Large) grizzly bear! Be the first to train a saber-toothed cat. Dive deep beneath the sea in the belly of your pet anglerfish. Relish the sight of your GM struggling to respond when you ask if your paladin's divine mount can be a giant porcupine. Speaking of which, page 178 also incorporates a bunch of these new options into the cavalier's, paladin's, and ranger's list of available animal companions. Author Mikko Kallio did a great job here.

Illustrations by Brynn Metheney and Leesha Hannigan

Animals are great, but what've really captured my attention since Ultimate Magic and Advanced Race Guide were the vermin and plant companions respectively. At long last, in Ultimate Wilderness, I got to write a pile of fun new vermin and plant companions. Some of my favorite plants include the creeping puffball, which explodes in Wisdom-damaging poison when struck; the gulper plant, which lets you recruit a walking pitcher plant as your battle buddy; and the sniper cactus, which can fire its spines at distant targets. There's also an array of vermin companions, including the giant mantis shrimp, which can make iterative attacks with its pincers; the web tyrant spider, which focuses on web-throwing rather than poison; and the giant solifugid, adept at pouncing on anything that moves. Want familiars? You can also recruit the suture vine, a symbiotic plant that survives on blood but also knits your wounds back together as it feeds; the giant tardigrade, an "immense" version of the thoroughly unkillable micro-organism; and the ravenous tumbleweed, a carnivorous plant that attacks by charging into its prey and gains extra speed during windstorms.

There's so much more in here, from companion and familiar archetypes to new animal tricks to new companion feats. There's just not time enough to cover it all, so I encourage you to grab a copy of Pathfinder RPG Ultimate Wilderness today!

John Compton
Organized Play Lead Developer

How About One More Ultimate Deck?

Monday, November 6, 2017

In last week's blog on designing the Ultimate Add-On Decks for the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, we purposely failed to mention one big thing: We're not doing just four of them. June's Ultimate Equipment will be followed in July with the fifth Ultimate deck: Ultimate Wilderness.

Why'd we keep that a secret? Well, we needed a little more time after the first announcement to make sure we wanted to do this deck. After all, when we made the decision to do those decks, the Ultimate Wilderness for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game was still being written. We didn't know what the book would contain, what would be illustrated in it, or even who the iconic character would be. But then this happened:

The Ultimate series—it ain't over till it's Zova.

Hi, Zova! As you saw last week, Zova is the iconic shifter from Ultimate Wilderness. Note the claws. She's got the ability to alter various parts of her body to animal forms. That's a cool idea, but one which we didn't really have a mechanic for. That is, until we designed the Hunter Class Deck.

For the Hunter, we sprinkled the deck with a new cycle of spells called "aspects." We designed this cycle for characters who want to take on aspects of certain animals, characters like the Feral Hunter and Shifter. Take a look at Aspect of the Stag, a spell that has the Animal trait.

Just one aspect of the aspects.

In Ultimate Wilderness, we're not exactly going to sprinkle the deck with aspects. The appropriate verb might be "inundate," really. Because requesting the art for the dinosaur and monkey aspects just made us smile.

There are also so many cool non-humanoids in Pathfinder RPG Ultimate Wilderness. We're gonna have trouble choosing between these.

A koala, an archaeopteryx, and a snapping flytrap walk into a bar...

We're also doing some fun new things with blessings in these decks. In each of the five Ulitmate decks, we'll introduce a brand-new Basic blessing. If you're playing a home game, we encourage you to mix and match these with the blessings of the Gods, the Ancients, the Elements, Ascension, the Archdevils, and even the Gobs. Because Basic doesn't mean boring.

So... Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic, Ultimate Intrigue, Ultimate Equipment, and now Ultimate Wilderness. That sounds like a great quintet. Bring on the Ultimates.

Mike Selinker
Adventure Card Game Lead Designer

From the Wilderness to Your Table

Friday, November 3, 2017

"Some people fear the wild, clustering into cities where the largest beasts they have to contend with are scurrying rats. I'd never want to live in one of those so-called bastions of civilization. Why, they build their own cages! Walls, they call them, to stave off the dark and the unknown. The energy of nature sings through my veins. It connects me to everything that moves and breathes. Through it, I am truly alive."
—Nalsa Tigerstalker

Illustration by Ramon Puasa Jr

Looking to play a character who thrives in the wild? Not in the mood for playing another city-slicker? Let me tell you a bit more about what we have in store for you in the upcoming Ultimate Wilderness. Stephen showed off the shifter in Tuesday's blog, and talked a bit about two of the three featured races: ghorans and vine leshys. Let's take a closer look at all three of these races.

Ghorans are an ancient race of plant creatures whose memories trace back thousands of years. Their bodies can only last a couple of decades, but they continually renew themselves by planting seeds that sprout into new vessels for their consciousness. If you play a ghoran, check out the delightfully odd aromaphile archetype. These mesmerists can produce clouds of sickeningly sweet odors. By making subtle changes to the aroma, they can alter the way it affects those who inhale it. These clouds can hypnotize and debilitate their foes, and they can also help their allies recover from negative effects.

Vine leshys are a new race in this book. Unlike most leshys, they don't devote themselves to a particular ward. Instead, they prefer to wander and explore, taking on new wards for only a short time before taking off in search of new and exciting vistas. I wrote these little guys, and they are leshys, so of course I love them. I've been playing a vine leshy named Verdant Taleweaver in a home game. She uses one of the new archetypes from this book: the herbalist alchemist. Herbalists rely upon their insights into the natural world rather than raw intelligence, and they can harness some of the secrets of druidic magic. Instead of throwing bombs, with their risk of harming innocent plants, herbalists use seedpods. These pods harness the powers of other leshy types to weaken and hamper their targets. Playing Verdant wasn't 100% about wanting to play a leshy PC, honest. I also got valuable playtest feedback. Please just ignore the fact that my door is plastered with pictures of leshys. *whistles innocently*

And that brings us to this book's third featured race, the gathlains. These playful fey are capricious and free-spirited to a level that makes even gnomes raise their colorful eyebrows. They soar through the air on winds of wood, venturing far from their homes on the First World. If you want to play a gathlain who loves a good prank, check out the fey prankster rogue archetype. These tricksters can harness their connection to plants to distract, trap, and befuddle. They can also weave illusions that sow confusion by disguising pairs of people as each other. These illusions work on objects too, allowing the gathlain to, say, make a piping hot bowl of soup appear to be a hat and vice versa.

You certainly don't have to play one of these new races to make use of the new archetypes in this book. There are over 60 pages of archetypes for all sorts of characters. There are new options for the classes you'd expect to see highlighted in a nature book, like druids, hunters, rangers, and kineticists. One of the druid options is a rot warden, a druid who can transform into vermin and command swarms. Plant master hunters form bonds with plants instead of animals, and they take on the aspects of creatures like assassin vines and giant flytraps. Several of the new ranger archetypes give rangers additional powers based upon natural features that help them wherever they go, like the flamewarden, who wields the power of fire to immolate enemies and restore the spark of life and health to her allies. If you want to play a character whose powers are intrinsically tied to her environment, try the terrakineticist, a kineticist who taps into the strongest nearby source of elemental power, giving her powers over water in the ocean and air in the skies.

These traditional nature classes certainly don't get to have all the fun, though. How about a slayer who is a master of death from above? He's called the avalancher for a good reason. Bacchanal skalds thrive on drinking, dancing, and wild parties. Even animals dance to their merry tunes. If you'd rather play a class that turns its attention to the skies, try the star watcher investigator, who combines navigational skill with a penchant for astrology. Star watchers produce horoscopes imbued with magical power. To pick one last archetype at random, summoners can become leshy callers. Leshy callers call forth extraplanar plant material and imbue it with leshy spirits, and they can summon adorable plant creatures to aid them in combat. These are just a few of the archetypes that caught my fancy, but the book has a lot more to offer.

Check back again in a few days for more previews of Ultimate Wilderness!

Linda Zayas-Palmer

Developer

Force of Nature

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Since people starting telling stories around the very first campfires, there have been heroes and villains who could shuffle off the coil of humanity in favor for something a little more wild, more primal, and more powerful. While shapechangers are nothing new in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, for the upcoming Ultimate Wilderness, we wanted to present a new take on the old trope—the shifter.

This class is one infused with primal magic. The base class serves as a guardian for druidic circles and is firmly rooted in those ancient religious traditions. While she is no spellcaster, a shifter's innate shifting magic is partly druidic mystery. The shifter learns Druidic and adheres to a philosophy similar to her druidic cousins, but her magic is very different. Like the hunter, the shifter is the master of the animal aspect, from the stealty bat to the terrifying deinonychus, but even more visible results. She uses those aspects to change her form and gain the power in more powerful ways. The most overt of these aspects is her ability to grow powerful claws. Without the need for manufactured weapons, she can defend the wilderness and her circle with ever-growing power that few can face for long. With increased experience comes increased control over her gifts. As she gains levels, she gains more aspects, as well as the ability to take her aspect's true form via akin to beast shape II. But unlike other shapechangers, she is not rooted in a single form. She can meld her lesser aspects and even enrich her true polymorphed forms with her lesser aspects, creating a chimeric form which can enrich her scouting and combat prowess.

Fully at one with the natural world, the shifter is more than a pure brawler. She also sports a defensive instinct granting her greater defenses when unfettered by armor or shields. She also gains wild empathy, track, woodland stride, and trackless step, making her as at home in the wild lands as any druid, hunter, or ranger.

At the highest levels, the shifter becomes a true master of forms. Her claws can tear through the most powerful enemy defenses. Her shape can be fine-tuned to confront whatever challenge she faces. She can slip into the mists and the shadows, only to return as a raging beast unrivaled by her foe's greatest nightmares. She is nature's wrath incarnate

While the base class is firmly tied to the world of druid circles, archetypes allow you to play shifters of a different stripe. The elemental shifter grants forms tied to the various elemental planes, the fiendflesh shifter detail those who make fiendish pacts for their power, while the oozemorph allows you to play an oozy creature who takes humanoid form as its disguise instead. Of course, just like all our Ultimate books, the new class isn't the only one getting new toys to play with. Ultimate Wilderness features a bunch of new archetypes for all the nature-themed classes and nature-infused takes on other classes. A personal favorite of mine is the green knight archetype for the cavalier. This archetype melds the Arthurian myths with high fantasy resulting in a stalwart protector of all things verdant and wild.

In case you haven't heard, Ultimate Wilderness also features new, nature-based, core races that you can play. Two of those races—the long-time favorite and delicious ghoran, and the band new vine leshy—are plant creatures. Those of you who pay close attention to the game's creature types might be wondering how these new races can become shifters. After all, the plant creature type has immunity to polymorph effects. No worries, we have you covered, we have made some adjustments to the plant creature type when they are played as a PC race. While you may lose some of the more powerful immunities to damage types, you gain the ability to use the shifter class, and polymorph spells to their full effect. You'll find these changes in a sidebar located in Chapter 1: Wilderness Heroes of the book.

Altogether, the new shifter class along with a wealth of new options presented in Ultimate Wilderness will enrich your game, whether you are out in the wilderness or just have a hankering for playing some wild and different. Enjoy your walk on the wild side!

Stephen Radney-MacFarland
Senior Designer

Meet the Iconics—Zova

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Today we introduce the latest Pathfinder iconic character, courtesy of the upcoming Ultimate Wilderness—Zova the Shifter!

By the time she'd come of age, Zova had long known she didn't fit in with the Clan of the Moon.

Although Zova's parents loved her and supported her in all ways, she was still the only daughter among four siblings, and while she got on well with her brothers, she often felt left out. As Zova grew older, her parents' Desnan teachings intrigued her, yet she felt a stronger kinship to the animals of the world than to the night sky above. In training for the hunt, Zova reveled in the act of stalking and pouncing like the animals she so empathized with, but she found herself impatient with her mother's preferred method of hunting with the bow and struggled to train her own archery skills. In time, when her friends began to flirt and pursue romantic trysts, Zova realized that while she valued and greatly enjoyed the company of those friends, she felt no drive to find such a romantic partner for herself. Increasingly she found herself restless, curious about the world beyond the Cinderlands. She'd seen illustrations and heard stories of the vast oceans, glacial wonderlands, and above all else the wonders of the deep forest, but paintings and tales could not sate her curiosity. Where the Clan of the Moon's territories in the arid west of the Cinderlands seemed to contain all the necessities of life for everyone she knew, Zova longed for the color green.

Zova's parents saw it coming, of course, well before she made clear her intention to travel the world and seek its wonders. They worried for her safety, but they also knew that of all their children, Zova's passion for life, her respect for the natural world, her keen perception, and her almost uncanny knack for getting the upper hand in a fight made her the best suited to leave the proverbial nest. Despite her awkward place in the clan, she still loved her family and adored her home, and promised to return as often as she could—and to bring stories of marvels from her adventures when she did.

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

She had no real plan or timetable to follow as she left the Cinderlands, knowing only that she wished to travel west, toward the oft-glimpsed lands of vibrant green she'd long been lured by. Whenever she felt homesick, Zova found she need only look to the sky to feel at home, knowing she gazed upon the same sights her family did. The moon was always there, a welcome and soothing constant in her life. As days turned to weeks, Zova found that nature itself was a more than adequate surrogate family, and more besides. Though she had always felt alone in crowds as a child, watching everyone else interact with each other, here in the natural world she felt like she belonged. The animals of the world were as companionable as anyone as long as they were treated with respect—and certainly more diverse and interesting as a whole than the people she'd known up to that point!

The Storval Rise presented Zova her first significant challenge. She knew of its existence, but had never seen the massive cliffs with her own eyes. Standing atop them, the sweeping expanse of greenery below seemed to taunt her—so near, yet so far. The carefree antics of falcons as they swooped out over the cliff filled Zova not with jealousy, but with inspiration. If only she could fly, she could join them in their graceful exits from the Cinderlands! But as she watched the falcons hunt and play, she felt her own perception grow keen, like a kinship with the raptors was waking in her vision. As if using a falcon's eyes while gazing down the cliffside, Zova found that she could pick a treacherous but navigable path down the cliffs. She did not marvel at this—she accepted it with simple pride.

Despite her keen eyesight, Zova's descent was fraught with peril. She nearly died thrice on the climb (twice to near falls, once to a redback rattlesnake she accidently stepped upon and was only just able to calm before it bit her), but late that night, as the waxing moon rose, she finally set foot into the Ashwood. Lit by the moon, the forest's greens appeared almost black, yet Zova reveled nonetheless. Here was the world she'd dreamed of, a realm that she had to imagine back home in the scrubby Cinderland hills. For the remainder of the night and well into the next day, Zova sprinted and explored, climbed trees and delved into tangles of roots, hunted and played and delighted until she finally came to a toppled statue along the banks of a rushing river. She made camp in the shelter formed by the oversized statue's moss-draped chin, and soon collapsed into exhausted sleep.

When she woke, it was deep night once again. The now-full moon's light filtered through the canopy in pale beams, and while the ground was hard and the air was cool, it was the peal of an unearthly howl that had roused Zova from sleep. The howl was unlike anything she had ever heard—plainly the cry of an alpha wolf, yet carrying within it tones of malevolence and cruelty that felt far too human. Truly frightened for the first time in her life, Zova staggered to her feet and took her bow in hand, only to find campsite surrounded by a pack of the largest wolves she had ever seen.

For the first few moments, Zova's arrows held the strangely aggressive pack at bay, but as the fight wore on, it became apparent to the wolves that Zova was no predator of note. Her arrows missed more often than not, and those lucky few that scored hits were only glancing blows. As she fought, Zova did her best to empathize with the wolves, only to realize in horror that a stronger will than her own imposed upon them. When the wolves finally overcame all fear of her archery, Zova threw aside her useless bow and reached for her knife—only to find she had lost it at some point during the previous night's enraptured frolic through the woods. The wolves closed in, and Zova feared her journey was about to come to a sudden end.

Again that malignant howl scarred the night, and Zova could feel a presence approaching through the tangles. As the wolves closed their circle around her, she found herself hoping that the wolves would kill her before whatever hateful thing they obeyed arrived to finish the job. When the first wolf struck, she frantically swiped at it with her hand, a desperate attempt of self-preservation. For a few moments, she couldn't understand what had caused the wolf's yelp of pain and its sudden retreat. The other wolves had frozen as well, as if confused—a confusion that Zova felt as she looked down at her bloodstained hands... only to see that they were now bloodstained talons.

The will to survive rose in Zova, and with a snarl, she went on the offensive. She lunged at the next wolf, slashing across its snout with the birdlike talon that, a moment before, had been her hand. Again and again she cut and clawed, and the wolves, unsettled by her transformation, fell back. Zova became the predator, and as the last wolf fled, she held high her talons and cried out in triumph.

That cry was answered by the selfsame hateful howl. The master of the wolves had come. Zova whirled, raised her claws in a challenge, and froze in fear. What had emerged from the darkest part of Ashwood was neither person nor beast—nor was it strictly alive. A ghostly form, seemingly shed from moonlight itself, crouched in the air above, a towering man-wolf with orange eyes, fur that shimmered and wavered in unfelt wind, and teeth and claws of all-too-solid razor-sharp bone. Yet what the thing said was the crowning horror.

"Welcome, sister..."

Zova didn't attempt to fight. She whirled and fled, never looking back as the mad howl of the ghost wolf pursued her. She clambered onto the toppled statue, sprinted across its brow, and plunged from its crown into the churning river below. Perhaps it was the current's speed that saved her, or perhaps it was the ghost's inability to pursue, or maybe it was just luck. Whatever the cause, Zova washed ashore a mile downstream, barely alive—but alive she was.

Zova never returned to the Ashwood. Those to whom she's told her tale smirk in disbelief—not from claims of an encounter with a ghost wolf (for many parts of Varisia host stranger terrors than ghosts or werewolves), but that she had escaped to tell the tale at all. The legend of Loper, the ghostwolf of Ashwood, has frightened many listeners, for in most of these tales the victims are lucky just to survive. Zova never revealed to anyone the two words Loper spoke to her that night, yet she feels that in those two words lies the explanation of her escape. She vowed to some day return to Ashwood and solve this mystery—preferably in the company of a group of adventurers, for a faithful pack brings so much more to a fight than can a lone predator!

Until that day, Zova travels from town to town, exploring her growing power as a shifter and the confusing nature of adventuring party dynamics. Her protective nature is augmented by the compassion she feels for these all-too-often orphans, for she knows she is not the norm among her traveling companions in having a family who loves her and a home she can some day return to.

Yet on nights when the moon rises high and unwelcome dreams torment her sleep, Zova can't help but wonder—are those she calls her brothers really her brothers at all?

James Jacobs
Creative Director, Pathfinder