The Advanced Race Guide is Coming!

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

We've been talking about it for many months now, but we're finally getting close to the release of the Advanced Race Guide. So, the time has come to start giving you some previews of this hefty tome of racial options and lore.

To start, I thought I'd give you an overview of what to expect in the book. Inside, you will find four large, meaty chapters, filled with rules and information concerning all of the core races and just about every player-friendly race you'll find in the Bestiary, Bestiary 2, or Bestiary 3. The first chapter covers the core races, giving you ten pages of information about the race, including new alternate racial traits, favored class options (for all of the classes), archetypes, feats, gear, spells, and magic items. Following this up in the second chapter are sixteen races given six full pages each to explore new options, including alternate racial traits, a handful of favored class options, archetypes, and some additional rules to round out your choices. While not as common as the core races, any one of these selected races would make for a fine PC or companion (with your GM's approval, of course). Finally, we shift focus to fifteen uncommon races. Each one of these gets two pages, presenting race history, a few alternate traits, favored class options, an archetype a few additional rules to get you going.

After giving you a mountain of racial options for 38 different races, you'd think we would be just about out of space, but no. The final chapter of the book contains a complete system for designing your own races, balancing them against the others in the book, or even going above and beyond, creating more powerful races that emulate monsters from a Bestiary or your own imagination. This system went through a significant playtest a while back, and we think that with the final tuning, you're really going to enjoy tinkering with this system.

But enough of my rambling. Let me give you a brief preview of what you can expect in Chapter One of the book. Take a look at this art from the stonelord paladin archetype found in the dwarf section. This guy slowly transforms into stone as he goes up in level, gaining DR, a host of immunities, and the ability to summon a small earth elemental to serve him! Next week, we will continue to explore Chapter One, looking at some leafy friends.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer