The kickstarter for Ultimate Spheres of Power has gone live!

This is the culimation of over 3 years of working on the Spheres system, and compiles info from the original volume and over 20 handbooks into a single, 400+ page volume. Come check us out!

I'm most curious about who prints the 'Pawns' series if they use multiple people, but either way I wanted to know who handles their print needs.

If the players are hiking through the wilderness looking for a ruin, how long does it take to search a square mile to see if its there?

If the players are hiking through the wilderness looking for a specific object, such as a dead body, dropped item, or a hiding fugitive, how long would that sort of search take per square mile?

How much do generic alchemical or magical components weigh?

As a player, if you were planning on doing some alchemy/magic item creation on a journey, you'd have to buy the prerequisite materials before you left, which means if you're working on a +10 magic sword, you've got to be lugging 100,000 gp's worth of materials around with you. Alternately, as a GM if you're giving out 'magic item creation components' as loot raided from an enemy wizard's lab, they need to be able to cart that stuff out.

Long story short, I can't handwave it, so I'm wondering if there are rules/traditions/remnants of old editions that might help me answer this question without just assigning an arbitrary number.

Are there any rules about how templates work on creatures with a CR of less than 1?

Adding a +1 CR template to a creature who's CR is 1 or more is simple, but what does it do to creatures who's natural CR is 1/2? or 1/4th? or all the way down at 1/8th? Do they round up or down, or should they move one 'step' higher instead of a full +1 CR?

And even if the rules would be to round them up to 1, what 'should' it be instead, given that a celestial bat is much weaker than a celestial dog, whatever the rules say?

Spheres of Might (previously Spheres of Combat), the martial counterpart to the Spheres of Power system, has just gone live on kickstarter!

This book expands martial options using the same Sphere-based approach of Spheres of Power: concept-based, available right from 1st level, and filled with all sorts of awesome techniques to make each round of combat visceral and intriguing.

Come take a look and help us bring you Spheres of Might!

The time has come to announce our next big project, which comes to kickstarter this Saturday!

Spheres of Combat rebuilds martial characters in a similar fashion to how Spheres of Power handles magic; it lets you build by concept and opens up those concepts from 1st level. However, rather than focusing on effects, SoC deals in combos, letting you turn each round into a symphony of techniques.

We've got a team of writers on this one and it's shaping into something awesome, so come take a look!

After waaaaaay too long of a development timeline, Wizard's Academy is out!

Wizard's Academy was the other big Spheres of Power release we were working on; it's an adventure module with 8 possible villains and encounters designed for levels 1-20 for complete modular design. Also, it's coupled with over 120 pages of bestiary with both new monsters and old classics revamped to use the Spheres of Power system.

If you just want the bestiary and not the whole adventure, you can get that as well: Fantastical Creatures and How to Survive Them: A Student's Guide for Adventure and Study is available right now at RPG Drivethru, and here on Paizo as soon as the staff finishes clearing it.

Vigilantes of Skybourne and The Luchador have been the first non-Spheres of Power or Skybourne products we've printed in a while (technically the vigilante book is Skybourne, but they're also pretty setting-neutral).

Just looking for general feedback; how do they work? And would you like to see more products like these from us, or should we go back to the SoP saltmines?

What do you want from us?

We're best known for Spheres of Power and Skybourne and we'll keep on supporting those, but that's not all we do.

But recently we published the Luchador - a monk/vigilante hybrid class - and this Saturday we'll be releasing a whole book of Vigilante options.

I'm just curious; what are the things you'd like to see from us? Outside of 'more SoP support,' what would you love us to make for you?

I've seen stamina hailed as the savior of the fighter, but I also know people who hate the very idea of encounter-based powers.

What are you arguments in relation to the system, for or against?

You suffer a -4 penalty to disarm a target if you are unarmed. Does that mean if you have improved unarmed strike you no longer suffer that penalty?

Catch Off-Guard
Benefit: You do not suffer any penalties for using an improvised melee weapon. Unarmed opponents are flat-footed against any attacks you make with an improvised melee weapon.

Normal: You take a –4 penalty on attack rolls made with an improvised weapon.

I'm trying to understand the RAW and RAI of Catch Off-Guard.

When I see that name and that description, the image that comes to mind is someone, say, drinking beer from a mug, then smashing it over someone's head as a surprise round attack before the enemy had a chance to draw their sword. However, I don't think I've ever seen it used that way.

Heck, I've never even seen someone pick up a weapon from the environment. The few times I've ever seen someone take this feat, they ended up just carrying statues and table legs around on their belts as if they were swords. The weapons weren't 'improvised' as much as they were specialty clubs, usually used as part of a Disarm build where they would try and remove the enemy's weapon in the middle of combat in hopes they could get a Flat-Footed attack in. While this is a legitimate build, it doesn't quite make sense to me in either a thematic or a verisimilitude fashion; you're not really 'catching them off-guard' with the table leg any more than you would have with any other weapon.

Plus, I don't think the image the feat gives me works, anyway. If you attack someone in the surprise round they're already flat-footed if they haven't acted (assuming they would use their action to draw a weapon), so what's the point of the feat? I guess if you won initiative you could get an extra 'they're flat-footed' attack in the first round if they haven't drawn a weapon yet, but I've never seen that circumstance happen.

Am I missing something about this feat? Is there really a way to catch someone off-guard with the feat that feels like catching them off guard?

I had one player who carried a statue with him instead of a club, and I've seen some people try to game Catch Off-Guard by disarming foes so they're technically 'unarmed', but other than that I've never really seen someone use improvised weapons.

Have you used them in game before? And were they actually used as improvised weapons (i.e., look there's a chair let's hit them with it), or just as a replacement for a normal weapon, like club guy mentioned above?

We just wanted to announce that we've decided to split our upcoming vigilante book into two products. Before we publish 'Vigilantes of Skybourne', we'll be bringing you the Luchador, a new monk/vigilante hybrid class! We'll post more information here as it becomes available.

When people complain about martials, they usually complain about the lack of options; it takes 10 levels to solidify a build, at which point you have one trick you're really good at and that's it. However, I've looked over people's builds and some of those single tricks are REALLY effective.

Do these martial builds get boring, though? If you slug it out long enough to GET to level 10 and master your build, You may be powerful enough for the next 10 levels, but from a player-perspective, is it worth it?

Excluding the old "I had a feat to burn" option, I can only think of two reasons to use Combat Reflexes: You're building a controller (the snap shot tree or the lunge feat to threaten a large area and keep people from moving) and/or you and your teammates have a lot of Greater combat maneuver feats and you're all about group-stunlock-killing the enemy (trip him, disarm him, push him, and provoke an AoO from your allies with each success).

Am I missing some other build idea?

Everyone wants something different from a campaign setting, and we are trying to meet all of those needs. The first two Skybourne books are out and they're both very heavy on crunch: The Player's Guide to Skybourne is almost exclusively dedicated to airship crew rules, new skills, new races, new class options, and all of that, while Ships of Skybourne is practically pure vehicle-creation crunch and sample vehicles, including land, sea, and air vessels.

Our next two books are a city guide and a GM's guide for running the world, but after that...?

I'm wondering what people want to see from us for this line, not just from people who've already bought the first two books, but just generally what sort of things interest people about a new world.

We could keep expanding player options, we could do lore and history for all the different peoples and adventuring regions, we could do a book dedicated to space and planar travel that we'll do our best to make Starfinder compatible, or we could even do another expansion of the vehicle rules (we already introduced mecha/powered armor piloting in Ships of SKybourne, after all, so why not run with it?)

Two-weapon fighters and sword and shield fighters have a million feats to take, but if you're a two-handed fighter you eventually run out. I'm curious; after you've 'covered your bases' as it were with power attack, weapon specialization and other essentials, what feats do you like taking?

So the main defense against abusing combat maneuvers and easily getting into flanking position is that these things provoke attacks of opportunity, and in order to NOT provoke or better survive a provoking, you have to take feats (improved trip, improved disarm, mobility, etc.)

Just curious, but in order to cut down on your allies' feat taxes, has anyone just played a character who's job was to provoke AoO's? Like, "Don't worry, I'll run stupidly through the enemy formation so the rest of you can safely get into position"?

I've decided I really want the next game I run to get back to basics, not just thematically, but mechanically as well. Grim and gritty, low magic, high risk, monsters are truly dangerous, fey and non-human races mysterious and magical, that sort of thing.

Because I want to do this with as few major changes as possible, I'm thinking of primarily accomplishing this by limiting all classes available to only NPC classes-warrior, expert, or adept.

I'm curious, does anyone have experience running games with NPC classes, or have house rules that would facilitate this sort of game? I want to keep the game fun and allow people to play concepts, just without the mechanical bloat and hours-long character creation that makes character death a true pain.

So far, my thoughts are:

1. Multiclassing: Use Adequate Commoner (it has lots of good multiclassing feats), and allowing the feats-for-multiclassing as outlined in Pathfinder Unchained.

2. Spells: Allow adepts to pick a spell list (cleric, wizard, druid) at character creation to choose spells from rather than the adept list. Spheres of Power is also available.

3. Feats: Allow experts to spend feats on rogue talents, warriors to treat their class levels as fighter levels for the purpose of feats, and adepts to spend feats on witch hexes.

The spell astral projection creates a copy of you on the astral plane, and gives you the chance to create a copy of yourself on another plane if you travel to it. Is there any information out there on how this is accomplished? Do you swim to the other plane, and how fast do you travel? How does one 'navigate' to another plane? I've got homebrew ways of doing this, but I'm wondering if there is an official way (or even unofficial-but-generally-accepted-way) of handling this.

Through a bizarre sequence of events including our layout lady wishing to redo her work, freelancers popping up at the exact right time, and other factors coming together, we're getting the chance to do something I hadn't though we'd get to do for years: Expand and update our first book, Rogue Glory.

We're running an 11-day kickstarter dedicated to raising funds quickly, after which we send freelancers to work updating and expanding the book get some artists to do some original pieces, and get it out to everyone by Christmas.

Rogue Glory was a book all about the Pathfinder Rogue, including new abilities, rewrites of the Stealth and trap rules, new archetyes, new magic items, new feats and rogue talents, and everything else possible, all related to the rogue. While the mechanics are great, the book itself is black and white and riddled with first-time publisher mistakes. The mechanics are also a few years out of date with everything that's been happening in the Pathfinder world.

This isn't an update to Rogue Glory; we're going to be discontinuing that product and replacing it with this one, which will have a higher price point to reflect its expanded status. If you already own Rogue Glory you can get the upgrade for only $5 with a special tier. Otherwise, please come and check it out.

There have been a lot of people asking about when the next expansion for Spheres of Power will be published, but all my time is currently being spent on Skybourne. Clearly the answer is to bring other people in.

We have hired a lot of freelancers to do a series of Handbooks expanding each of the 20 spheres, which at a rate of one handbook per month, is a project we're fully-intending to take almost two years to finish. To get this off the ground and to help us pay for such a elongated investment, we've also started a Patreon. Backers will get playtesting documents, input on the artwork and potential chapter-starting stories, and of course copies of everything before anyone else.

Drop Dead Studios Patreon

I have loved the support Spheres of Power has been getting, and with this I hope to be able to bring more content to people at a much, much faster rate. Thanks to everyone who checks it out.

And now, back to writing...

So I'm going over the mass combat rules, siege engines, etc., and I have a question to make sure I'm understanding things. Namely, am I correct in deducing there is NEVER a time a time when a Profession (soldier) check is called for? And other than making the DC 15 Profession (siege engineer) checks needed to load a heavy catapult and the 5 ranks needed for some feats, am I correct that there is NO OTHER check nor reason for that skill's existence? It seems like everything I feel a high Profession (siege engineer) would help with is already tied to Knowledge (Engineering), including the more powerful siege engineering feats.

It just seems strange to me; if you are the helmsman for a ship there are (limited) reasons you might want to take Skill Focus (Profession [sailor]), but if you are the ship's gunner you'd be better served dedicating yourself to Knowledge (Engineering) instead, and there seems to be absolutely no reason nor ability to specialize in being a commander.

Just wanted to know if I was missing something.

Official Announcement: The Spheres of Power worldbuilding semi-contest has begun!

One of the goals of Spheres of Power was to let GMs and players step out of the pre-determined molds and make something new. We have an entire chapter in SoP about this full of sample worlds, sample organizations, and sample characters built with the system.

Now that the system has been out for a while, we want to see what you've made with it! From now until June 6th we invite everyone who wants to enter to post a link to their creations to our facebook page. On June 6th we'll hold a general vote, and the one who posted the best work wins one book of their choice (Spheres of Power, Wizard's Academy, a Skybourne book, etc.). Entries should be complete worlds: descriptions, casting traditions, NPCs, incantations, spellcraftings, and anything else they want to include (see SoP chapter 7 for examples, longer is not necessarily better, and no entry over 10,000 words will be considered).

While they won't be part of the official contest, we also invite anyone who wants to to post up any awesome creation they've made to the facebook page, even if it isn't a complete world: favorite NPCs, their character's spellcrafting repertoire, casting traditions, organizations, or whatever else they want to show off. Even if it doesn't enter them into the contest, their work will still be considered for the PDF (see below).

I'm calling this a semi-contest because while it is a contest with a prize and everything, we're also planning to paying you. The winner and any runner's up judged to be of sufficient quality (although honestly page-count will be more of a deciding factor than anything else) will get the offer to have their creation written up and included in a PDF titled "Worlds of Power". We pay 2.5 cents per word for anything used, and will be considering worlds and any independent creations we want to include.

As always, we reserve the right to disqualify and delete any entry, such as if it involves plagiarism or anything that would make it too inappropriate for the Pathfinder Compatibility License. Artwork is fine and can certainly enhance an entry, but unless you own the rights to the artwork in question it cannot be considered for use in the final PDF itself.

At a lot of literary conventions (WorldCon, etc.) they'll have kaffeeklatsch's, where people can sign up (usually in groups of 6 or so at a time) to spend 30 minutes with an author in a more informal setting and just talk; aspiring writers can ask advice, fans can ask about their upcoming books, etc..

I was wondering: how many people would want to see the same thing at PaizoCon? Sign up beforehand and get to sit down with Paizo staff and/or big name freelancers and 3rd party publishers to ask any questions you want for 30 minutes about their work, their life, their game, or whatever else you want to know.

Is this something people would like to see?

Spheres of Power is approaching its end (the final PDF update will come mid-February, and then the book heads off to print) and we're making progression on the Wizard's Academy bestiary and adventure.

And now we're launching our next kickstarter: Skybourne!

The great forest consumed the world, scattering the races to the underground, to the ocean, across the planes, to the frozen wastes, and to floating isles in the sky. Now teams of adventurers have a world's worth of ruins to plunder, provided they can keep their airship running long enough to make the journey.

This kickstarter is to fund the first three books in an upcoming line, each of which can be re-purposed and dropped into any home campaign, or can be used together to explore the Skybourne Campaign setting: Andrus: The City of Men, Woodfaring Adventures, and The Player’s Guide to Skybourne.

Andrus: The City of Men: Andrus is the last great city of the planet's surface. Founded in a crater not even the forest could claim, creatures the world over travel to Andrus to discuss their discoveries and seek their fortunes. Demon lords, dragon riders, merfolk traders, sentient plant creatures; anything and everything finds its way to Andrus eventually, and a thousand clans, cultures, and factions are constantly locked in battle for control over this last, great holdout of a bygone world.

Woodfaring Adventures: This book details the dangers of the forest and the treasures lurking within. From the relative safety of the treetops, to the dangers of the forest floor, to the inexpressible horror of the cryptwoods, this book details monsters, dungeons, and everything else a team of adventurers might encounter as they explore a dangerous new world.

The Player’s Guide to Skybourne: The Player’s Guide to Skybourne details airships and vehicles, new skill uses and player options, adventuring equipment, and everything else an adventurer needs to make their way through the world of Skybourne. With both completely new options and expanded and updated versions of some of our previous content, The Player's Guide to Skybourne details a host of player options for spicing up any campaign.

Skybourne runs from now until Feb. 14th!

1: Vital strike works on an attack action instead of a standard action, although previous FAQs have said you can't combine it with full-round actions like charges or spring attacks .

When you cast a touch attack spell, the standard action is technically casting the spell, and then you are allowed to make a touch attack or unarmed strike as a free action.

So can the two stack?

2: the aquatic bloodline base ability (dehydrating touch) is a spell-like ability, instead of the supernatural ability I always assumed it was. So does that mean it provokes an attack of opportunity and grants a free action touch attack or unarmed strike (as opposed to the touch attack being the standard action) as with other spells?

Long story short, I'm using the Eldritch heritage feats to create an 'Old Man of the Sea' character, and I want to know how I can make dehydrating touch valid for a brawler at high levels. Dehydrating vital strike punch is my hopeful option.

Does anyone have a quick guide to applying the skeleton/zombie templates, perhaps arranged by Hit Dice? If I'm understanding it right, the conversions are pretty simple (the new hp, BAB, mental stats, and natural armor replace rather than augment), there's just a lot of them in a row that end up the same for all creatures at the same Hit Dice. Does anyone have a quick guide or a spreadsheet of what the skeleton and zombies replaces stats are with each Hit Die of the original creature?

Yes, the rogue is underpowered. Yes, there're very few rogue builds where a ninja, slayer, or investigator wouldn't do it better, and yes, with Pathfinder Unchained rewriting the rogue all these points might be eventually moot anyway.

But before this incarnation of the rogue rides off into the sunset, I think we should all remember why the rogue is still so many people's favorite class. For example, here's two of my own favorite rogue builds that are a lot of fun to play.

(note: each of my builds finish after level 9 or 10, because I prefer having my playstyle finalized by then.)

What's your favorite rogue build, favorite memory of a rogue in action, or otherwise favorite thing about the rogue?

Almost every Cleric I've ever actually seen at the table has been a healbot. Maybe this is an isolated event, but for all the complaining you hear about how playing the party band-aid is boring, other than the occasional luck or travel domain, most of the clerics I've seen at the table have been spec'ed for little other than healing.

Today I was playing around with a custom deity (animal, plant, community, trickery, and travel) and I came up with a bunch of fun clerics I'd love to see at the table:

These are just a few I came up with, and each one sounds like a whole to of fun to me.

What's the favorite Cleric you've either played or seen at the table?

I'm curious; the basic bardic ability (Inspire Courage) is pretty combat-focused. It works best in a party full of combat specialists who can make the most of the bonus to attack and damage, and since most parties have at least one or two tanks/damage specialists, it's almost always useful.

However, there's a few bardic archetypes that get rid of this iconic ability and replace it with something else. Specifically, I'm thinking of the Street Performer that gains the ability to turn party members invisible, and the Negotiator that can give enemies penalties to saves vs charm and illusion effects, as well as the Appraise skill.

The Street Performer's power is custom tailored for a party full of sneak attackers, who'll also probably have the skill points to never be left out when the bard's talking, stealing, or infiltrating. The Negotiator's power seems like a ridiculously-underpowered effect for a main bardic ability, but if a party happened to also contain a dedicated enchanter and a dedicated illusionist, I could see it being a powerful combo.

Has anyone ever seen such a non-traditional bard/party combo at a table before, and if so, how did it work out? How about any other non-traditional party combos that were also fun to see?

For professional reasons I'm always making new character concepts, and through the intersection of a few thoughts ("Shouldn't Paladins and Cavaliers use multiple attacks with their class feature?", "Why does everyone play Paladins as if they're all naive idiots?", and "Let's make use of versatility/Equipment Tricks/multiple options.") I've come up with a cool character that I wanted to get some feedback on.

I'm going for fun, power, and versatility. While I want him to rock when worse comes to worse, I've seen too many characters fall apart when their one-trick didn't pan out, and I don't want to get too bogged down in the meta after initial creation anyway. The build works in theory in my head but since I can't really see how it plays until it's at the table, I thought I'd get some second opinions.

Klech, the Raging Paladin

I'm not sure where else to put this, but I've got a question about the Control Flames ability from psionics.

The chart includes a "space" category that begins at 1x1 foot, and goes all the way up to only 5x5 feet. What exactly is it calculating? It can't be the size of the flame (Collossal gives the example of a flaming Inn which is certainly bigger than 5x5) so what exactly is the space category for?

The wording on Shatter Defenses is a little ambiguous to me; does it make every shaken target flat-footed to you, or do you have to hit them first, making them flat-footed to the rest of your attacks until the end of your turn?

Does that first hit get the benefits?

the Polymorph subschool grants you a +10 to Disguise checks. Is this a +10 if and only if you are using Polymorph to attempt to appear as a specific individual, or is it assumed you make a Disguise check with each Polymorph in order to actually appear as the creature you are becoming?

(In essence, if I turn into a dog with a polymorph spell, do I automatically appear as a dog, or do I need to make the Disguise check to not accidentally make myself look half-pig?)

The form-changing spells (beast shape, undead anatomy, elemental body, etc.) give different abilities depending on the monster mimicked. With 4 official bestiaries and countless 3rd party ones, which monsters are the best to change into? I'm looking for any incarnation if the spells (I to IV) and for any spellcasting situation (Druids, full wizards looking for defense, Eldritch Knights looking for offense or utility, etc.)

Thanks in advance.

We're happy to announce that Owen Stephens (head of Super Genius Games) and Ben Wootten (artist extraordinaire) have joined the Spheres of Power team!

We've got less than a week left on our kickstarter, and we've got some more great stretch goals lined up that we're very excited about. We've also got PayPal options for those who prefer that method, so please check us out and help us make this project as good as it can be.

Drop Dead Studio's next kickstarter has just gone live. Spheres of Magic; a completely new system of magic for Pathfinder, redesigned from the ground up for ease of play, versatility, and just having a blast.

The kickstarter is here.

And here's a short presentation we've been trying to link in the project page, but for some reason Kickstarter doesn't want to link. A short description of the project, complete with stick figures.

Transferred from General Discussion:

So I just bought Super Genius Game's Talented Rogue and Talented Monk; love them to death. But they did bring up an interesting point. People are always talking about how to "fix" the monk and empower the rogue. Looking at the Talented Monk, I'm sure that'll do it- letting you finally build the monk the way you want, and making flurries of arrows or greatsword strikes just sounds awesome. But the talented rogue is balanced against the normal rogue, which means he technically has the same power issues. As a quick example, while the talented monk gets 3 edges at 1st level and 2 talents for the first several levels, the talented rogue only gets one of each, for each level. And while the monk gets edges that let him use full-BAB and flurries, the rogue gets edges that add +1 to two saves, and gain proficiency with 1 martial weapon.

I've already got my opinions on the subject, but I'm wondering what other people who've bought the products think. It's never been so easy to rebalance a class as with this new Talented line; do you think the Talented Rogue still needs a boost compared to other classes in the game, and if so, how much? Add another edge? Some extra talents? How would you do it?

So I just bought Super Genius Game's Talented Rogue and Talented Monk; love them to death. But they did bring up an interesting point. People are always talking about how to "fix" the monk and empower the rogue. Looking at the Talented Monk, I'm sure that'll do it- letting you finally build the monk the way you want and make flurries of arrows or greatsword strikes just sounds awesome. But the talented rogue is balanced against the normal rogue, which means he technically has the same power issues. For example, while the talented monk gets 3 edges at 1st level and 2 talents for the first several levels, the talented rogue only gets one of each. And while the monk gets edges that let him use full-BAB and flurries, the rogue gets edges that add +1 to two saves, and gain proficiency with 1 martial weapon.

I've already got my opinions on the subject, but I'm wondering what other people who've bought the products think. It's never been so easy to rebalance a class as with this new Talented line; do you think the Talented Rogue still needs a boost compared to other classes in the game, and if so, how much? Add another edge? Some extra talents? How would you do it?

I've heard people debate RAW vs RAI about whether rogues who are stealthed gain their sneak attack bonus on their first attack, especially since that's the only way to make Sniping rogues work by the book, but what's the PFS ruling on that issue? DO they allow it at society games?

Also, are sword-breaker daggers and the Eldritch Heritage feat tree legal?

Thanks.