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PaizoCon 2014 Announcement Round-Up

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Missed the annual PaizoCon Preview Banquet? Enjoyed too many cocktails while there to remember what we showed off? This post is your one-stop shop for all the important announcements you may have missed!

After a brief greeting from company founder Lisa Stevens and an introduction of the staff by Publisher and Master of Ceremonies Erik Mona, Lead Designer Jason Bulmahn took over the podium to share some juicy details on upcoming books in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game line.

Advanced Class Guide

Jason kicked things off with an overview of August's Pathfinder RPG Advanced Class Guide, the RPG line's major release of 2014. The book contains 10 new base classes, each of which combines two existing classes to create a new hybrid that better serves a given character concept. The brawler, for example, mixes mechanical elements of the monk and fighter to create a scrappy martial fighter without all of the mystical elements or armor focus of its parent classes.

Jason's tour took us through eight spreads of the book, revealing details on the shaman class as well as arcanist archetypes like the elemental master, occultist, school savant, spell specialist, unlettered arcanist, and white mage. He also gave a preview of the book's numerous skald rage powers, a look at its feats, spells, and magic items, and finally a glimpse at the character class design guidelines included in the volume.

Monster Codex

He then continued with a tour of the Pathfinder RPG Monster Codex, a treasury of stat blocks, cultural details, and special rules for 20 of the Pathfinder RPG's most commonly encountered creatures. After a look at the fire giant chapter, Jason showed off several illustrations of the various creatures represented within, which are reproduced below.


Illustrations by Jason Rainville
Check out more monsters from the Monster Codex!

Illustrations by Roberto Pitturru

Illustrations by Alexandre Chaudret

Illustrations by Ben Wootten

Illustrations by Maichol Quinto

Illustrations by Jason Engle

Pathfinder Unchained

The big announcement for the RPG line came when Jason pulled back the curtain on Pathfinder Unchained, the spring 2015 hardcover that will take Pathfinder into exciting new directions. This tome of optional rules revisits the barbarian, monk, rogue, and summoner classes with entirely revised versions designed to improve their overall play at the table. The book also will include an optional (and much simpler) action economy for the game, as well as new ways of designing monsters and treasure on the fly that we think players are going to love. We'll have much more to say about this book going forward, but for now it's probably enough to say that we've been conducting some mad experiments here at Paizo Central, and we can't wait to share them with you!

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game

Following Jason's presentation, we were joined by Pathfinder Adventure Card Game designers Mike Selinker and Tanis O'Connor, who revealed more details about August's Skull & Shackles Base Set and the upcoming Pathfinder Society Adventure Card Guild Organized Play program. The highlight of the card game presentation was Mike's announcement that the NEXT Adventure Card Game base set will be Wrath of the Righteous, scheduled for a February 2015 release! We'll have full product pages for the whole path up shortly!


Sketch by Wayne Reynolds

Giantslayer Adventure Path

Following the Adventure Card Game presentation, Erik announced the name of the next Pathfinder Adventure Path: GIANTSLAYER! More details about the campaign will be announced at the Adventure Path team's Sunday seminar, and will hit the Paizo Blog in short order.

Licensed Products

Following the AP talk, I focused on a raft of upcoming Pathfinder licensed products, most so new that they do not even have product pages on paizo.com yet! They are:

Pathfinder Battles: The Lost Coast

The next section of the Preview Banquet focused on the Pathfinder Battles line of prepainted plastic figures we produce in cooperation with WizKids. In addition to showing off several of the already-revealed figures, Erik finally revealed the set's titanic case incentive figure—the mighty Shemhazian Demon.

Pathfinder Online

Following the annual presentation of our Volunteer of the Year Award (co-awarded to PaizoCon UK founders and masterminds Dave Harrison and Rob Silk), we invited Pathfinder Online executive Ryan Dancey to close out the ceremony with a look at the Alpha version of Pathfinder Online, which went live just last week. It's still very much a work in progress, but there has been a TON of progress in recent months, and it's been really cool to see people playing the game and having fun with it. Ryan and his team have been running demos all weekend, and it's become a great part of the PaizoCon experience to see the game grow from year to year.

Here's a look at the video.

And that's it for new announcements this year! We'll have a lot more to say about these products in the weeks and months to come. If you're at PaizoCon, it's been fantastic getting a chance to chat with and game with you. If you couldn't make it this year, here's hoping you get a chance to attend in the future!

Keep rolling 20s, everyone!

Erik Mona
Publisher

More Paizo Blog.
Tags: Alexandre Chaudret Ben Wootten Bugbears Drow Gnolls Goblins Hobgoblins Jason Engle Jason Rainville Licensed Products The Lost Coast Maichol Quinto Monsters Orcs PaizoCon Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Pathfinder Adventure Path Pathfinder Battles Pathfinder Online Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Roberto Pitturru Wayne Reynolds
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1 person marked this as a favorite.

Ooooo! From what they're showing here I really hope Paizo puts out a pawn set for the Monster Codex.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 32, 2011 Top 4
2 people marked this as a favorite.
Sara Marie wrote:
MMCJawa wrote:
Also...have we gotten any ANY announcements regarding new CS books...?
The Customer Service: Guide to Subscriptions has not been formally announced yet :)

I just want to know how to optimize my Customer Service-based character. If CS Care bear is my main (favored) class, and I take a two-level dip into Gninja Minion, am I gimped?

Anguish wrote:

I need to go start a thread: Customer Service Bestiary 1 Wishlist.

Top contenders:
1} Dire Cosmo
2} Dread Cosmo
3} Cosmolyxtrix Demon
4} Advanced Abysal Cosmo Ooze

This book may informally be referred to as the Cosmonomicon.

5} Mustache-of-Cosmo, Unfettered

6} Moustache-of-Cosmo, Unfettered (Mythic)
Set wrote:
Sara Marie wrote:
The Customer Service: Guide to Subscriptions has not been formally announced yet :)

Ooh, meta-products.

Stay tuned for Monsters of Paizo Revisited, with 'Ecology of' style articles for Cave Raptors (with the Cave Raptor Whisperer feat), Paizo Golems (and construction requirements thereof), Blinky the Triops (and rules for Triops familiars) and the Great Old One, Cosmo (complete with Domains and Favored Weapon).

Clowns, right? It's clowns, isn't it?

Steel_Wind wrote:
awesome stuff

One of the best posts I’ve read in a long time.

John Kretzer wrote:
Zark wrote:
John Kretzer wrote:

[…]

Also I am kinda sadden by the fact they are reacting to what looks like me a vocal minority on these boards about certain classes needing to be 'fixed'. It usually lead to some very poor design decisions as it did with the 3.0 to 3.5 transition. […]

Interesting, so over night the Devs went from being wise and trusted to being duped fools lured into something that "usually lead to some very poor design decisions".
Not saying it has happened yet...or overnight. Though really to 'fix' rogues maybe they should concentrate on making better Rogue talents...would that not be easier and actually better a fix the to scrape the old design completely?

edit:

You’ve got a point, a good point that the weak rogue talents is one of the big problems. The rogue use talents to pick feats, but the barbarian use feats to pick rage Powers, just as the alchemist and Inquisitor use feats to get additional class features. That said there are also some fundamental problems with the actual class.

One problem is that is that unlike Barbarian rage powers, there are only two types of rogue talents. To prevent people from taking two levels rogue just so they can pick all the good rogue talents, the Devs have to make the “lesser” rogue talents just as weak for a level 2 rogue as for a level 8 rogue. If some rogue talents had come with a level prereq (say level 6) those talents could have been far more ‘powerful’ than the ‘lesser’ ones.

Sneak attack. The Devs flat out admitted that the Shadow Strike was a fix. Gang Up and Improved feint are also fixes. You need to flank which means you can’t take on a foe one-on-one and you can’t be an archer. There are also creatures, spells, magic items and abilities that flat out negate sneak attack. Even if she does get to full attack with SA, the damage output is one of the lowest in the game and if she can’t SA the damage output is 1d6+1 at best unless you try to have a rogue with both high str and hig dex. If you do the dex will hurt and you have even more problem landing your blows. This brings us to another problem.

The rogue is one of the few classes in the game that have no built in ability to increase its bonus to attack. Monk is the other class with this problem. (Cavalier suffers from a similar problem but it is a full BAB class that at least offers the Order of the Dragon.). Rangers have FE and spells; Druid has spells and WS; Cleric has spells; etc.

Stealth rules are problematic: Unlike the Ninja, the rogue really can't use stealth in a meaningful way. The stealth rules really don't give the rogue the ability to so.

It’s one of the classes with the worst saves in the game. Frustrating since it is the class that is supposed to take the risks scouting ahead and dealing with deadly traps.

Finally we have the skills. “The rogue's schtick is skills and skills aren't very good. They certainly aren't good enough to explain why a class whose only real combat schtick is "stab a dude" is weaker at stabbing than pretty much everyone else.” There are other classes that can deal with traps and with all the new skill junky classes that can also contribute in fight in a meaning full way the rogue no longer can kick back and say, I suck in battle but I’m good at skills.

With the Investigator, Slayer and Swashbuckler all stepping on the rogues toes along with the Bard, Ranger and Alchemist the rogue really need a fresh new start.

So if the new rogue pleases me, but not you who then will belong to a vocal minority? ;-)

@Zark: And yet every time I play a rogue I never have these problems...shrug.

We will see what happens.

Also I never said the new rogue will suck....just saying the old one is fine...maybe needs a couple of better Rogue tricks to help it out.

Though I am curious how does the stealth skill can not be used by the rogue?
John Kretzer wrote:

@Zark: And yet every time I play a rogue I never have these problems...shrug.

We will see what happens.

Also I never said the new rogue will suck....just saying the old one is fine...maybe needs a couple of better Rogue tricks to help it out.

Though I am curious how does the stealth skill can not be used by the rogue?

Is not that Rogues can not use stealth is just that on theory is their iconic skill and many, many classes use it better, like ranger, ninja, inquisitor...

I think nobody on our party has made a Rogue since the beginning of Pathfinder. And we have made sooo much characters. Ninja killed Rogue for us, and Ninja still has problems, but is playable at least.
Monk on the other hand is one of our favourites classes; with archetypes, some little house rules and a high point array really is a great class.

On the other side, I'm really happy to see the Summoner redone and the barbarian a bit nerfed. Our (rotative) DMs are usually more worried about Barbarians that Wizards/ full casters, at least until 16+.

That first Bugbear reminds me of Mon*Star from Silverhawks.
Dark Archive
3 people marked this as a favorite.

Super-cool bugbears and drows, but the beauty-model like orcs are a let down.

About the orcs, I agree that they're too smooth/pretty but I think that's a function of the artist rather than the art direction. Jason Engle's art always has that "soft cgi" look to it. It works really well for things that are supposed to be somewhat otherworldly (drow, demons, holy warriors) but seems like a bad fit for orcs.
1 person marked this as a favorite.

Agreed. The Orcs should be more bestially. They look like green elves in tribal garb. Aside from that though it's some pretty sweet art.

I figured I'd drop a note and say that Know Direction seems to have covered the entire banquet preview announcements, which can be found here.
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