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At least, that's what my players took to calling the globster that they (bravely/foolishly) attacked last time we played in my Whispers in Ravounel campaign that I just started up. The globster was hiding in a shipwreck they wanted to loot and explore, and when it started spitting out chunks of itself at them, my description of it "sticking out a mottled, bristly tongue that it then bit off and flung" seems to have had its intended effect. Anyway, thought I'd share the globster's stats here with you all, converted by me from its 1st edition incarnation. Have fun throwing these at 1st level PCs! (Note: This isn't a preview for an upcoming product—the globster's not gonna be in Bestiary 2, but I needed one to torment MY 1st level PCs for the new campaign I just started running on Wednesday nights here at the office.)
With 2nd edition, our Adventure Paths are going to hit 20th level each time as the norm. As such, the concept for a "Continuing the Campaign" article at the end of a volume makes little sense, because at this time, 20th level is the capstone of the game and there's not much else to go on to accumulate for PCs beyond that point. Currently, the plan is to close out each Adventure Path with information similar to what we've done in prior APs that hit 20th, like Wrath of the Righteous or Return of the Runelords, in the "Beyond the Campaign" articles. These articles would discuss ramifications of the adventure path on the world at large and could present stat blocks for future foes that you could use in your game that we'll be unlikely to follow up on in future publications. But I'm not sure how useful that would be. Which brings me to this question—what sort of information would you like to see in the very last volume of an Adventure Path, in place of the "Continuing the Campaign"? I'm about to work on the first one of these for Age of Ashes in a few days and I have my own ideas (as indicated above) but would love to hear some more from you all in the meantime.
Hey there, folks! So, there's no way I can ask this without making folks start to speculate and wonder... so speculate and wonder away. What part of Golarion (preferably the Inner Sea region) would your 18th or higher-level character want to go explore and learn about? If you also have areas beyond Golarion (other planets or planes), feel free to list them too, but ONLY if you first list a place ON Golarion that you'd like to see more about! Three locations you can't nominate:
Because I already know folks are interested in those locations! :-P
So! Now that the cat's out of the bag, and the hardcover version of Curse of the Crimson Throne is announced, I just wanted to thank everyone who took the time to post feedback and criticism and suggestions in this forum. When I first started working on this project many, many months ago, I combed through all of these threads and extracted a LOT of really helpful and useful advice. Now, I'm about a week away from being done with the development of the book, at which point it gets handed over to the editors and opportunities for significant new revisions or additions are more or less cut off, but I'm confident that what folks have observed and reported on over the past nearly 10 years have covered the critical parts and lots of the other warts and blemishes as well. And it wouldn't have been possible without all your feedback, so thanks again, everyone! And I hope you check out and enjoy the new book when it's out later this year!
Hey there, folks! If you get a chance once you get into this event, I'd love to see you post here and talk about what sorts of characters you'll be building for the game. I promise not to use this information against your characters when the game begins. Spoiler: Promises not guaranteed.
Hey there, folks! Looking forward to inflicting some mayhem on your poor, defenseless investigators! I'll be using the new 7th edition Call of Cthulhu rules for this game, but never fear... if your'e familiar with earlier editions, you'll find the differences are pretty easy to adjust to.
Hi there, everyone! So... you know how on the first page of an Adventure Path installment, on page 6 of each volume, we put a table of contents for the adventure along with a sentence or two of description for each part of the adventure? Well... it strikes me that those annotated tables of contents on page 6 do a MUCH better job at providing an adventure summary than the actual Adventure Summary section we put in each adventure. To the extent that I'm considering cutting the "Adventuer Summary" section entirely, starting with Wrath of the Righteous, and letting the much easier-to-navigate and process much more quickly version of the summary on page 6 do the job on its own. What do folks think about this? I can't really think of a compelling idea to keep the dedicated "Adventure Summary" section when we've got those page 6 annotated tables of contents... but I could be missing something. (AND: no, this would not mean I'm removing the Adventure Background section. That stays there. I'm specifically talking about the section that begins "Adventure Summary" and ends [typically] right before Part One going away.)
Howdy folks! As many of you may have heard, next Gen Con, in 2013, at August, we'll be launching a new adventure path set in the Worldwound. This adventure path will...
What I'm NOT 100% happy with right now, though, is the Adventure Path's title—currently, we're calling it "The Demonblight Crusade." Not a terrible title, but I'd rather call it something else. I've got a few ideas bumping around in my head... but I figured we have a whole messageboard of brilliant, creative people... so why not use that as well! So! I'm looking for suggestions as to what to call this Adventure Path! Post your suggestions below! If something comes up that I like, I'll let folks know and lock the thread so things don't continue forever (we DO have to settle on a title sooner or later, after all!). But until then... suggest away! For reference (and so folks don't propose Adventure Path titles that accidentally use constructions and elements from one of the specific adventures), here are the names of the six parts of the adventure path. These titles are solid—I'm not looking for new suggestions here, just for the name of the adventure path as a whole.
Spoiler:
This is the campaign journal thread for Rob McCreary's "Skull & Shackles" campaign, a game he started up here at the office. The game happens more or less every other Friday after work—we've got a session this evening, in fact! Several of us are keeping campaign journals, so you'll be able to see different viewpoints from the different characters. And it should go without saying: ARRRH! THAR BE SPOILERS AHEAD! Don't read this campaign journal if you want the contents of the Skull & Shackles Adventure Path to be a surprise! The cast of characters: Sasha Dracktus—female human rogue
So... I just did the preliminary stats for the revised Xanesha for the Rise of the Runelords hardcover, updating this much-beloved NPC to the Pathfinder rules while toning her down quite a bit from her over-the-top incarnation in the original adventure. So I thought as a quick preview for folks... I'd throw her stats up on these boards! Spoiler:
XP 6,400 Female lamia matriarch rogue 1 CE Large monstrous humanoid Init +7; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Perception +2 Defense AC 25, touch 16, flat-footed 18 (+1 armor, +7 Dex, +8 natural, –1 size) hp 123 (13 HD; 12d10+1d8+53) Fort +8, Ref +17, Will +10; +2 vs. poison Immune mind-affecting effects; SR 19 Offense Speed 40 ft., climb 40 ft., swim 40 ft. Melee impaler of thorns +17/+12/+7 (2d6+8/19–20/x3), touch +11 (1d4 wisdom drain) Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft. Special Attacks Wisdom drain, sneak attack +1d6 Spell-Like Abilities (CL 12th; concentration +19) At will—charm monster (DC 21), ventriloquism (DC 18) 3/day—deep slumber (DC 20), dream, major image (DC 20), mirror image, suggestion (DC 20) Spells Prepared (CL 6th; concentration +13) 3rd—cure serious wounds 2nd—invisibility, scorching ray 1st—alarm, cure light wounds, magic missile, sanctuary (DC 18) 0—acid splash, dancing lights, detect magic, ghost sound (DC 17), mage hand, mending, prestidigitaiton Statistics Str 20, Dex 25, Con 19, Int 18, Wis 14, Cha 25 Base Atk +12; CMB +18; CMD 35 (can’t be tripped) Feats Combat Casting, Combat Reflexes, Extend Spell, Improved Critical (spear), Power Attack, Silent Spell, Vital Strike Skills Acrobatics +23 (+27 when jumping), Bluff +23, Climb +29, Diplomacy +14, Knowledge (arcana) +17, Knowledge (local) +20, Sense Motive +18, Spellcraft +17, Swim +29 Languages Abyssal, Common, Draconic, Thassilonian SQ change shape (fixed Medium humanoid form, alter self), undersized weapons, trapfinding +1 Other Gear impaler of thorns, medusa mask, Sihedron medallion, snakeskin tunic, -26,610 gp Enjoy! Hope she's still mean, but not as mean as she used to be! (I'm thinking she MIGHT still be too powerful... but that there might be some new ways you can do things before in the adventure to prep yourself against her...)
Ahoy, ye land-lubbers and scallywags! Just a quick heads up... we've settled on the final AP title for this outing: "Skull and Shackles" Adventure Path! Thanks to everyone for their feedback on the 99% (but not 100%) name for this pirate-filled AP, and I'm pleased that we've got a name for this AP that not only has no hits on Google for previous products, but ALSO has an obviously Golarion feel to it (since the flag for the Shackles is the skull and shackles, after all). So! Folks can redirect their energy now from the name of the AP to furious predictions and requests for what kind of things they'd like to see us cover in the AP. 
Woo hoo! It's me!
Now that I've got your attention... When we started Pathfinder several years ago, one thing that folks really really wanted us to do was to provide statistics for our various iconic characters. We've been doing that every month since the first Pathfinder module and the first Adventure Path as a result, using the last page of every module or pages 90–91 of every Pathfinder AP for that very reason. What do folks think about us no longer doing this? Instead, the pages currently taken up by pregenerated iconics would be absorbed into the body of each book (likely adding a page or two of content to the adventure as a general rule). Stats for Merisiel and Sajan and Lini are already all over the place, and as we're gearing up for our EIGHTH adventure path, I'm starting to wonder if the usefulness of those pages has outstayed its welcome. So... let me know! Would removing the pregenerated characters from our Adventure Paths and modules break your heart? Would replacing these pages with more precious words of adventure fill you with joy? Let us know!
Abadius 20—The wind is making a creepy howling sound as it blows across the eastern slopes of the Hills of Nomen. At least, I hope it’s the wind howling, and not some sort of hungry wolf monster. Not that I’ve seen anything like that so far to support fears of wolf monsters, but we’re not in Brevoy anymore. Desna alone knows what sort of monsters lie in wait for us to the east! But I’m not frightened. I’m too excited to be frightened. I’m further away from Restov than I ever remember being, but this isn’t my first time in Iobaria. I was born here, according to the orphanage I grew up in. According to what little I’ve been able to learn or remember about my parents. From what I’ve been able to piece together, father died fighting a giant, and mother from some sort of sickness. I can remember mother, vaguely, but I have no memories of father at all. I hadn’t really thought much of them at all, truth be told, for many years. The chapel of Desna on the outskirts of Restov has been my home its few priests my family ever since I left that horrible orphanage so many years ago—every time I think about that place the stump of my left pinky hurts all over again. But when I saw my mother’s maiden name, “Arasti,” on a flyer tacked to one of the town messageposts, it felt like my whole world got turned upside down. It wasn’t about mother, though. It was about someone named Pezhvak. Who, apparently, was my uncle. I’d never met him before. Never even knew he existed. Now, it turns out, he’s dead, and I’m the only one left of the family line. And according to this flyer, Pezhvak left behind a keep, and that if his heir or heirs don’t come to claim it soon, the keep will revert to the Prince of Orlov. I’ve never owned a keep. I think I’d like that. So I went to the Murdered Manticore to look for Bribri and her friend Markus. Bribri didn’t usually hang out in the city much, but since she started hanging out with that quiet, intense-looking half-orc, they’ve been at the Manticore pretty often. I figured that if I was going to go all the way into Iobaria, it’d be a good idea to bring along a friend or two. They were there, complete with Bribri’s collection of pet sparrows, and when I told them about the notice and my plan to go to Iobaria, they seemed interested. And they each had some friends of friends there with them. And all of a sudden, there were seven of us heading over to speak to the Iobarian Ambassador here in town. Aside from Bribri and Markus, there were four others—each of whom seemed to carry with them their own collection of strange histories and secrets. There was Derrith, a good-looking-in-a-rugged-sort-of-way Kellid, bristling with weapons and about as talkative as any of them. And then Natasya, a woman who, although she looked Vudrani and dressed quite fancy, carried a dueling sword that glowed and had a horse-drawn cart. And with her was a little halfling woman with a burn scar who only referred to herself as “Z” and rode on an elk she named Zachirah—I’m unsure if the fact that her name is the same as her elk’s first letter means anything at all. And finally, an exceptionally beautiful elven woman dressed in studded leather—this was Magda. Several of these folks... most of them, as far as I could tell, seemed to be pretty rough and, maybe, even kind of “bandity,” but I figure that also means they’re capable of taking care of themselves in the wild. Which can only help. Anyway, all of that was eight days ago now. I filed my claim for the land with the Iobarian ambassador, found out that the keep... MY keep... was in a place called the Finadar Forest, and then set out for adventure! Well, we set out as soon as the rest of the group bought themselves some overly bulky winter clothes. I’ve got Desna’s magic to keep me warm—saved me some money, which was fortunate since buying the journal I’m writing in now used up the last of my coins. Hopefully my uncle’s keep comes with a fully stocked treasury! Oh yeah! We had our first fight this morning. Not with each other. With a bunch of goblins that had set up some sort of ambush on the western approach to the Maw of Karth. One of the goblins was riding a nasty-looking scabby dog thing and had a big blue goblin-troll-ogre-something that seemed to be his pet or slave. Magda took care of that one, stabbing it with such violent precision in the back of its neck that the entire thing just vanished in a burst of blue smoke! The rest of the goblins were easy to mop up after that—I even got to stab a couple with my starknives! If goblins are the worst that Iobaria has to throw against us, I should be sitting in front of a roaring fire and sipping wine in my very own keep by the end of the month!
Use this thread to ask questions about the mass combat rules presented in Pathfinder Adventure Path #35. I'll do my best to answer them in a timely manner. To kick things off, let me clear up a little bit of confusion regarding "Combat Value" (mentioned in the hp rules on page 55) and "CR." All mentions of "Combat Value" should actually refer to "CR." Combat Value was an early number we used to represent an army's power, and we decided to standardize that terminology to match "Challenge Rating (aka CR)" but missed making the change in the hp rules on page 55, alas.
SO! In the pursuit of publishing an Adventure Path that goes from 1st to about 18th level, we were going pretty well. In parts 1 through 4 of Kingmaker, your PCs are pretty likely to earn 3 levels each. But that's dropping to 2 levels in part 5's "War of the River Kings." Why's that? Because the mass combat rules not only took up about 5 pages of content, but also because mass combat elements ended up not being as high XP rewards as standard play. This was a conscious decision, because while I wanted there to be an element of mass combat in Kingmaker, I didn't want it to be the focus, since the mass combat rules are super simple and fast but they're not really all that robust like the core game's rules for combat. And because mass combat kind of puts the PCs on the sidelines. It's better for adventure paths to focus on the PCs, after all... so XP gained from mass combat is a bit low. What does this mean? Not much, for fans of high level play, fortunately. While it does mean that the last adventure, "Sound of a Thousand Screams," will assume PCs start at 15th level, I still expect this last adventure to bring PCs up 3 levels. Your PCs will probably be 17th level by the end of the AP (I'll know for sure late this evening or sometime tomorrow, depending on when I finish developing the adventure), which is still pretty high-level. Just keeping everyone up-to-date, since I know level ranges are important to lots of GMs.
In the upcoming Kingmaker Adventure Path, the PCs get put in charge of a kingdom. But there can be only one King, and there's usually 4 to 6 players in a group. As a result, Pathfinder Adventure Path volume #32 will present a dozen or so roles for player characters to assume to help rule the nation. One of those roles will be King/Queen. The others? I've got 11 more picked out, hopefully so that they'll give ANY PC a couple of attractive options to take up the role of. But I might be forgetting some. So! Use this thread to let me know what your favorite character's DREAM JOB would be if he were part of the leadership of a kingdom!
I thought I'd create this thread to find out what everyone's favorite level to play and adventure are at! Please drop in a post here and answer the following questions if you're interested: 1) What's your favorite experience level? 2) Why is that your favorite experience level? 3) What's your favorite adventure, and what level was it for? Why is it your favorite adventure?
Hi there, all! So in several of our products, we mention weird new monsters that don't yet have stat blocks. In some cases, like the linnorms from the Lands of the Linnorm Kings, these monsters might have stats from closed-content d20 sources, while in others, like the d'ziriaks of the Shadow Plane in "The Great Beyond" have no stats at all yet. I want to eventually make sure that all of these monsters have stat blocks in some place... but before I start to address that, I need to collect them all up. SO! If there's a statless monster from ANY Pathfinder product you'd like to see stats for, post it here! When you do, please post the monster's name, the book it is mentioned in, and the page number it appears on in that book. Thanks for the help, all!
So check this out. I just finished statting up the big bad end boss of "Legacy of Fire." As I did, I realized that this stat block (a CR 17 wish-fueled menace) is very likely to be the LAST 3.5 stat block I ever have to build/develop. It's all PF RPG statblocks from here on out. Made me a little teary-eyed, it did.
So, after several false starts, I finally got my first Pathfinder RPG game off the ground earlier this evening after work... the one I mentioned back in my foreword in Pathfinder #18, for those who first heard of it there. This campaign is, in theory, going to serve two purposes: it gets us in the Editorial Pit at Paizo playing our game and learning our rules, and it lets me get to talk in a funny goblin voice now and then. All we've done so far is create characters; the players are Erik Mona, Sean Reynolds, James Sutter, Wes Schneider, Chris Carey, and Jason Bulmahn. Of course, Jason didn't show up for this first game, because he apparently had some BETTER game to go to tonight, but he only missed out on character creation so he's not behind in XP. Yet. Anyway, I'm creating this thread to give the players somewhere to post journals, record funny quotes, and so forth and so on. I'll post more about the game now and then as well... but so far, there's nothing to report on yet... ...except that a pretty interesting group of heretics, cryptozoologists, violent crusaders, undying thugs, and creepy woodsfolk just walked into Sandpoint 3 years after the big goblin raid at the Swallowtail Festival. Wonder what sort of trouble they'll stir up?
So, let us assume that there will be dinosaurs in the Pathfinder Bestiary. A relatively safe assumption, since every edition of the game's core monster book has had them since 1st edition, yes? So, working on that assumption, I would love to hear folks answer the following questions: 1) How many dinosaurs is the right amount to do a good show of it? 2) What four dinosaurs would you hope to see in the book more than any other? 3) How important is it to maintain all five dinosaurs from the MM? Can we get away with just one dromaeosaurid (probably the deinonychus), with the assumption that one can make a megaraptor by simply advancing the deinonychus? 4) If #3 above is true, would it better to replace the deinonychus with the velociraptor? Velociraptor is more well-known these days, and it's easy enough to say that a velociraptor advanced up one size category is a deinonychus. 5) Dinosaurs don't have to be boring. They don't have to simply be hit points and a bite attack. Currently living animals have a wide range of biodiversity, with special attacks like poison, constriction, electricity generation, stunning attacks, ranged attacks (like tarantulas flicking poison hairs, archerfish spitting balls of water, or cobras spitting poison), and the like. Would it be too strange to give some dinosaurs a bit more flavor by giving them attacks that aren't necessarily supported by the fossil record? 6) Is there anything in particular with how dinosaurs have been stattud up in the game before that rubs you the wrong way that you'd like to see changed?
So, over the next couple of days, I'll be finishing off the writing and development for Into the Darklands. The book is mostly written, but there's still some stuff left to go in there. I'm trying to hit all of the deep underground tropes in there, not just drow and Lovecraft stuff and Journey to the Center of the Earth stuff and morlock stuff. I'm pretty sure that I've got most of the major bases covered, but as the time to turn it over to art for layout nears, I'm getting paranoid that I'm leaving something out. SO! Is there anything that you think absolutely has to be in a book that talks about what's going on in the deep underground world in a fantasy setting? (Keep in mind that kuo-toa, mind flayers, and umber hulks are all closed content that we can't use...)
SO! We're in the home stretch here with the Pathfinder Campaign Setting hardcover. I'm currently working on the pronunciation guide that's going into the appendix, and there's one word in particular that is a little vexing to me... Kostchtchie. I know how I say it. But I'm having a hell of a time, for some reason, finding a pronunciation online. But what about everyone else?
SO! By now, folk have seen the Rise of the Runelords Player's Guide and the Curse of the Crimson Throne Player's Guide. Here at Paizo, we're gearing up to start work on the Second Darkness Player's Guide (which is, in fact, the first Pathfinder Companion). We've got more room in this one than the previous two... Which brings me to this question. Is there anything that you feel was missing in the first two Adventure Path Player's Guides we've done so far? Anything we did include that you felt we gave the short-shift to and should expand upon? Anything you think we did include that we SHOULDN'T have included?
Ran another installment of Savage Tide for my D&D group today. They're in the middle of "Serpents of Scuttlecove," and the party's barbarian/druid who has the Destructive Rage feat single handedly tore down and knocked over the Birdcage, taking out a city block in the process and having to spend a Hero Card to avoid being crushed by the collapsing building (which wouldn't have killed her, but it WOULD have broken her gargoyle crown). It was terribly amusing.
The concept of a fungus that turns a living creature into a sloppy fungus-like monster is nothing new for the game... things like vegepygmies and yellow musk creeper zombies come to mind (even though a yellow musk creeper isn't technically a fungus...)... SO! What about other, more obscure monsters from d20 sources who are fungus monsters? What's your favorite?
The rusalka's a water-based fey, and I find myself in need of one. For Pathfinder, not in real life. I know of the version that appeared in Frostburn, the version that appeared in Polyhedron, and the version that appeared in Dragon, but all of these, unfortunately, aren't open content. I'd rather not develop a brand-new d20 version of them for the adventure (since this volume of Pathfinder's already WAY FULL UP on new monsters). I suppose I could use the tome of horrors' nereid, or throw a template onto a nymph, but I kind of need something that's also immune to cold since this critter's showing up in a high-mountain lake. So... does anyone know of any other open d20 incarnation of this elusive water-based fey?
Ok then. We'll be running a big index of all the Dungeon adventures (and campaign workbooks, and maps of mystery, and critical threats, etc. etc.) in Dungeon #150. Now... I know how I'd like to see the index look, but it's not just for me. SO! What would you want a Dungeon Index to look like? Do you want the index sorted by edition? Do you want to have seperate headers for specific campaign settings? Do you want to have all the Willie Walsh adventures grouped in one place? Make your voice heard!
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