Being an adventurer is a dangerous line of work, but the rewards are well worth the risk. The smartest adventurers never go it alone—they not only bring allies to help explore the dangerous reaches of the world, but also seek aid in the form of support, supplies, and secrets from powerful organizations. With such a group to serve as a guide, an adventuring party's chances for success have never been better!
Pathfinder RPG Adventurer's Guide presents several such organizations, each with its own suite of benefits and boons to grant those affiliated with it. Designed for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and drawing upon the rich traditions of the official Pathfinder campaign setting, this indispensable guide for adventurers provides a wealth of new character options for your game.
Pathfinder RPG Adventurer's Guide includes:
Details on 18 different organizations that use adventurers to further their goals, including the law-enforcing Hellknights, the sinister assassins of the Red Mantis, and of course, the world-renowned Pathfinder Society itself.
A wealth of new player options, including feats, spells, magic items, prestige classes, archetypes, and new abilities and powers for a wide range of classes.
Rules and advice on how to incorporate the new options found in this book into your own game, whether it takes place in the official Pathfinder campaign setting or in a world of your own choice or design.
Notes on the movers and shakers of each organization—nonplayer characters who can come alive in your game as allies and advisors for the player characters.
I didn’t expect to find such a connection to this book, having not played the APs that touch on the various groups contained herein (and also just generally hating hellknights), but hoo-boy was I surprised.
The writing is lovely, the characters and organizations are vivid, and the player options are exciting and well-designed. The gray maidens chapter in particular blew me away in particular. The mechanics of their player options are a pedect combination of flavorful and mechanically effective, and have the added bonus of fitting together into a coherent and effective character build.
These days, it can take a lot for a book focused on new feats, spells, etc. to impress me. I’ve reached a saturation point. There are so many options now that I can’t keep track of them all, and most new ones get forgotten soon after I read them. Adventurer’s Guide is one of the few books that stays in my mind and keeps pulling me back to it. I can’t recommend it enough!
The title is misleading, as was posited by many during the product preview, and mealy-mouthedly denied by Paizo. This is a Golarion book, period, which has no place in the core line, and the contents consist of an insultingly large percentage of reprints. Shameful, really.
Soooo...I'm going to say that I obsessively collect Pathfinder products, and as such, much of this material is old hat for me. Emphasis here is 'for me.' With that said, I want to examine this in a vacuum.
The artwork is good, but then, it's been good. It serves more as a 'Faction Guide 2' for me than anything, giving some details about the various organizations, class options, feats, and ties. In particular, though, I like that I don't have to flip through two or three books to get character options for the factions. Hellknights in particular were always a pain due to how diffuse their rules were. I can now hand this book to a person and say "here ya go. Here's some ideas of factions in the setting."
One drawback, as has been mentioned, is spoilers for the various APs. While I use those sparingly, it can be somewhat problematic, and I'd suggest steering players away from this if that's the case.
Overall, it's a decent enough product. If you're new to the setting, it's worth picking up as a nice collected list. If you're old hat, a few options inside are interesting enough, and a few setting updates are worth examining. I'm particularly interested in the Lantern Bearers' new direction.
This book helps clear up and collect a lot of older material, balanced now with other released material for GMs. It also adds in a wealth of new material for factions of Adventurers across Golarion.
What's good?
A solid collection of old and new under one singular heading.
What's bad?
Some factions contain major spoilers, making it hard for a GM to just pass off to players who may be playing certain APs.
What's fun?
Inclusion of multiple races and creeds and even transgendered factions and npcs in multiple parts of the book. This book really fleshed out some factions which had little to no crunch.
What's odd?
Certain feats are fun but others are less the useable. A feat that allows a bonus on maneuvers but doesn't stack with improved maneuver feats? Those are the ones that help avoid AoO. So what's the point of the feat? Additionally a heads up to some people about the amount of reprints would have calmed an angry section of customers.
Honestly I love the book and can't wait to try out some of the new material and some of the updated versions of older (and due to other books options more unbalanced) options.
When you get past the salty tears of angry optimizers, you're left with a fine entry into the guides section with Inner Seas flavour.
I wish. Still waiting for mine. This is the longest I have waited to get my PDFs since I started subscribing January '16. It's halfway through the month already.
One of the things I was most relieved about being able to do this book was to get errata in for the Red Mantis assassin prestige class.
1) They can cast spells in light armor without spell failure (similar to how bards work).
2) At 1st level, they treat sawtooth sabres as light weapons for ALL purposes, including being able to use Weapon Finesse with them. (This isn't as much errata as it is a necessary adjustment after the sawtooth sabre got adjusted in Ultimate Equipment.)
Pathfinder Companion, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
James Jacobs wrote:
One of the things I was most relieved about being able to do this book was to get errata in for the Red Mantis assassin prestige class.
1) They can cast spells in light armor without spell failure (similar to how bards work).
2) At 1st level, they treat sawtooth sabres as light weapons for ALL purposes, including being able to use Weapon Finesse with them. (This isn't as much errata as it is a necessary adjustment after the sawtooth sabre got adjusted in Ultimate Equipment.)
One of the things I was most relieved about being able to do this book was to get errata in for the Red Mantis assassin prestige class.
1) They can cast spells in light armor without spell failure (similar to how bards work).
2) At 1st level, they treat sawtooth sabres as light weapons for ALL purposes, including being able to use Weapon Finesse with them. (This isn't as much errata as it is a necessary adjustment after the sawtooth sabre got adjusted in Ultimate Equipment.)
Cool.
(I always thought they were Divine Casters...)
They've been arcane casters all along (as mentioned in the first line of their "Spells" entry).
Pathfinder Companion, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
James Jacobs wrote:
Rysky wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
One of the things I was most relieved about being able to do this book was to get errata in for the Red Mantis assassin prestige class.
1) They can cast spells in light armor without spell failure (similar to how bards work).
2) At 1st level, they treat sawtooth sabres as light weapons for ALL purposes, including being able to use Weapon Finesse with them. (This isn't as much errata as it is a necessary adjustment after the sawtooth sabre got adjusted in Ultimate Equipment.)
Cool.
(I always thought they were Divine Casters...)
They've been arcane casters all along (as mentioned in the first line of their "Spells" entry).
*nods*
I had never really looked at the prestige class and for some reason assumed they were Divine Casters.
Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
The Red Mantis Warpriest is a divine Red Mantis "Assassin", if you did want a Divine Caster Red Mantis! They are even PFS Legal...of course, this new one might be too...
One of the things I was most relieved about being able to do this book was to get errata in for the Red Mantis assassin prestige class.
1) They can cast spells in light armor without spell failure (similar to how bards work).
2) At 1st level, they treat sawtooth sabres as light weapons for ALL purposes, including being able to use Weapon Finesse with them. (This isn't as much errata as it is a necessary adjustment after the sawtooth sabre got adjusted in Ultimate Equipment.)
Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber; Pathfinder Companion, Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Apparently a lot of people are getting separate shipping notices for the battle cases and for the rest of their subscription orders. Naturally, people who have only gotten the shipping notices for their battle cases don't have their PDFs yet.
Well, this product has convinced me of 1 thing... To cancel all of my ongoing subscriptions from Paizo. It seems that there is really nothing new being added. OK so you get a bunch of new Prestige classes. These are very Golarian Specific. With work I could make them my world, but they are not needed.
I know there are some that will enjoy this bok, there are some that just want the book because... I want books that I can use, and this one is not one.
Pathfinder Card Game, Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
On the other hand, as someone who runs everything in Golarion, this book interests me greatly as I no longer have to do a bunch of work to make these organizations fit within established lore (unlike the Villain Codex, where I would need to tweak a lot of things to make them look more like an organization which already exists in Golarion).
Now if only that dang PDF would show up... (minis case shipped yesterday, no word of the rest of my subs though)
And as someone who plays in and out of Golarion, I absolutely love not having generic boring prestige classes that require more work than they are worth to use.
Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Holy Crap! this Book is Great! while some of the prestige classes are reprints from previous versions with some errata, I've gotten as far as the Eagle Knights and they have FOUR prestige classes, Golden Legionnaire, Grey Corsair, Steel Falcon, and Twilight Talon! as well as bringing in material from 3.5 that had not been updated yet!
Holy Crap! this Book is Great! while some of the prestige classes are reprints from previous versions with some errata, I've gotten as far as the Eagle Knights and they have FOUR prestige classes, Golden Legionnaire, Grey Corsair, Steel Falcon, and Twilight Talon! as well as bringing in material from 3.5 that had not been updated yet!
still reading.....
TWILIGHT TALON!? I have been clamoring for the 'Talons for awhile. Fantastic.
Linda and I are going through the book and will update Additional Resources once we're through the review process for May's products. We're treating it as part of our pre-PaizoCon workload.
Linda and I are going through the book and will update Additional Resources once we're through the review process for May's products. We're treating it as part of our pre-PaizoCon workload.
So Paizo publishes one book that you think you won't find useful, and you decide to cancel all your subscriptions? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Not.
Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
technarken wrote:
Silver Ravens info?
Spoiler:
it mostly focuses on post Hell's Rebels with a Prestige class and archetype for bards, focusing on the song of silver, a ranger archetype that gives your Raven animal companion into a figurine.
it's current goal is to work in helping others throw off the shackles of oppression. the three head member's it's list from the current form are Jackdaw, Rexus Victocora, and Shensen. also awesome art of Shensen at the beginning of the chapter.
If you can say anything on the wizard archetype that would be really awesome.
Runesage:
Affiliated with the Cyphermages. They experiment with the magic of ancient Thassilon without necessarily indulging in Sin Magic. Functions as a Universalist Wizard, but creates a runic focus, a gemstones with Thassilonian runes on it, that acts a specialist school focus allowing the runesage to memorize two additional spells of the specialized school and be unable to memorize spells from her opposition school. It floats around her head like an ioun stone.
It is their bonded object and the runesage never has to use material components (up to a certain value) when casting spells from their specialist school.
Unmarred as long as they keep their helmets on. :p
Gray Maidens:
Schizophrenic. There are not one but TWO groups of Gray Maidens:
The Erinyes Company shifted their service to Her Infernal Majestrix Abrogail II of Cheliax. They act to her as they did for Queen Ileosa.
The Scarlet Rose has abandoned Ileosa's corruption and are led by Sabina Merrin. They work to rehabilitate other Gray Maidens and help strengthen and fortify Korvosa.