From the impossible depths of the earth crawl horrible foes, but bold heroes rise to face them. Join these champions' ranks with Pathfinder Player Companion: Heroes of the Darklands. This chronicle of Golarion's underground realms prepares characters for their descent into the endless night, exploring the distinct regions of the Darklands and offering an array of new character options, including archetypes, feats, magic items, spells, and more. The Darklands may be deadly, but they're not a death sentence for those who are prepared. Make Heroes of the Darklands your guide to surviving the depths.
Inside this book you'll find:
New class archetypes, including the stonesinger bard; the spore-laden fungal pilgrim druid; and the blightburner kineticist, who can harness the power of radiation.
A host of new alchemical items both beneficial and destructive, as well as magic items that can help explorers survive the dangers of the Darklands.
Dozens of new spells, traits, and items suited to exploring the Darklands or created by those who dwell there.
This Pathfinder Player Companion is intended for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and the Pathfinder campaign setting, but can easily be incorporated into any fantasy world.
ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-936-3
Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:
It's always better to focus on the best parts of a book rather than what doesn't work well. The best parts are what will get used, after all! This book has enough fun stuff for a five-star rating in my book, although four stars would also be fair.
Fungal Pilgrim what pushed this from four to five stars for me, and I'll admit to some personal bias. First time I've seen a Wild Shape trade that I'd solidly consider. You could get a template on your summons, but modifying your animal companion is the really cool option. Lassie gets to host a brain fungus. At first, it trades movement and dexterity for strength, constitution, a ton of immunities, darkvision, and more natural armor. At tenth level, it now provides you with an unlimited supply of free scaling-DC poison (weak effect, but easy to hide in food and the like), and at fourteenth, it gets a fun poison AoE. As a capstone, it can make make temporary fungal zombie slaves out of weak enemies. Getting the immunities of plant type for yourself is gravy. I know that one review has limited influence, but I'd love to see more creepy fungal stuff!
Blightseeker Alchemist is a great archetype that gets debuffing bombs that stack with bomb modifying discoveries. This is nice design-wise, because it allows for much more flexible and enjoyable battlefield control and debuff builds. It's also a very stackable archetype, so you can mix and match!
Demon-Sworn Witch archetype is an evil-powers-for-(optionally)-good-or-neutral-ends deal, which we really haven't seen much of. Your soul may be toast after you die, but it's not going to screw with your alignment in the meantime to be using shady powers you don't understand. Throwing on some nontlethal damage to ALL hexes is a cool design touch to push towards the darker hexes, but it's low enough that you can still buff or heal allies if you need. Evil-but-subservient familiar that can be (expensively) raised with its internal spellbook intact is also a really nice perk. While it's not one I have a personal interest in, archetypes where you can immediately think of at least two players who'd love them are well worth mentioning.
Beastkin Berserker is a nice complement to Mooncursed Barbarian. It gives you a range of forms rather than focusing on just one, and focuses on the animal form rather than providing a hybrid form. While they each have pros and cons, between the two, players now have better choices.
Psychic Marauder is the last of my stand-out archetypes, and probably ranked second for me. Catches charisma-based up with wisdom-based when it comes to saves, and generates an aura of confusion that isn't always on (if anybody like Psychedelia, but didn't want to be responsible for a bunch of peasant deaths everywhere they go). While there's a non-lawful requirement, the penalties for becoming lawful aren't overly steep, and you can continue using taking levels in the archetype.
Speaking of psychics, Animus Mine is an amazingly fun spell. Booby-trap your own mind. Somebody tries to mess with it, and the mine goes off in their face. (Well, slightly behind their face.) The upgraded version can even protect you from whatever they were trying to do.
There are some good mundane items (like blasting jelly), a fun magical item to bend oozes to your will, and some traits that DO something rather than give numeric skill or caster level bonuses. Additionally, I've skipped over some archetypes for classes I'm not big on, so there may be more options that are worth five stars in your view!
(Grumpy rant time. The book has enough good stuff for five stars, and stuff that didn't live up to my personal expectations formed from half a sentence in the product description shouldn't take away from that.)
Since reviews are looked at for future work, I want to mention the Blightburner archetype for kineticist. I love the class, love the idea of element-specific archetypes, and I want to see more of both! I'm only including this bit because I'd love more kineticist material. But the archetypes should pay more attention to what's fun in the class and what it needs to keep to make it good.
Earth's kinetic defense is really cool for shrugging off damage, and pretty much the only reason I consider it over the more utility-focused elements like aether, water, and air. The archetype trades that away for a completely burn-dependent trivial retaliation damage setup. At minimum to seem about fair, that damage would need to be as high as the DR I just lost.
Kineticist also needs accuracy boosters for physical attacks and damage boosters for elemental attacks. The size bonuses to stats help with this, and also (equally importantly) offset some of the burn taken by boosting constitution. The class is pretty tightly balanced, and has few ways to use items to improve itself. The archetype trades those size bonuses out to provide scaling that its kinetic defense probably should have included by default.
Finally, make useful, fun trades. If I'm a radiation kineticist, I want to be able to shoot people with radiation! Apart from the aura mentioned above, the archetype allows me to… touch somebody for one nonlethal damage per minute as long as I keep touching them? Everything else requires radioactive materials to be present, which is at MOST 5% of the time in the <1% of campaigns that have it at all. And the net effect is that I can save burn by hanging out in radioactive areas, and spend burn so that I can hang out in radioactive areas. Super-specific abilities should also include general applications.
Lots of stuff in this Companion, both mechanical (which is normal) and story (which is a bit more unusual). Of particular interest are the new psychic tricks, notably the Animus Mine (trouble with mind-readers and enchanters? No more) and the Psychic Marauder archetype, first psychic archetype since the class was released.
Of course, plenty of other things, including the Demonsworn Witch (have a demonic pact without being evil) and the Beastkin Barbarian (turn into a Triceratops!). Good stuff all around.
As someone who does not subscribe to the PC line, as I do not play in person and thus have no use for physical softcover books in my cramped living space, I find this to be another disappointment in a long string of them.
The product page discussion hyped this book, and I bought it under those pretenses. I thought that the Vermin Rider would be useable, oe that the Darklantern wouldn't be absolute garbage which can leave you a drooling vegetable with Self-Inflicted Wis damage as a class feature.
I don't know why I thought that. Vigilante is such a horribly supported class - pretty much all of its archetyped are absolutely awful and its class featured are horribly situational. The Darklantern only compounds that.
The Vermin Rider is just plain awful unless you are a small creature and have the luxury of weighing ~22lbs. None, and I mean none of the allowed Vermin are strong enough to be used as a medium creature mount unless you are basically basically just boned but somehow have strength in the late teens to early 20s. Not even after their 4th level adjustment are they rideable.
It does nothing to adress this, or the fact that Vermin companions are absolutely awful since they have garbage stats on top of the fact that they get no skills, and no feats. You're basically forced to play Human (for Eye for Talent in order to make them useable). Don't pick this arçhetype. Play a Hunter instead where you basically have the same BAB when flanking and 6th level spellcasting.
I am not even going to go into how awful the Kineticist is (you are forced to take the WORST Elemental Defense, for starters) as it is basically a known fact that the Kineticist's first party support is plain awful. This does nothing to impress.
The Beastkin Berserker sounds good on paper, but don't be fooled. If you actually look at the Beastiary your options are basically Dinosaurs. You have only as much time in beast form as rage rounds, and the non-dinosaur options suggested by the fluff are awful. You're basically forced to pick the "best" form 2-3 levels before you can actually use it. What? You care about flavor, or you wanted a full BAB class to have meaningful utility? Too bad, because the archetype "doesn't trade much" for what it gets.
Save your money. Don't buy this disappointing Player's Companion, and maybe next year we will get some content that is better designed.
Svirfneblin is all i need to make my RPG life complete
(Oh and pleeeeeease make Svifneblin PFS legal; even if i have to backflip naked through a ring of fire supespended over a pool of sharks to get a race-boon)
I'd personally guess blightburner for being a variant on earth that can create radioactive rocks, but I could see fire as a possibility. Certainly intriguing...
Pathfinder Lost Omens, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Found a reference to Blightburn from Into the Darklands Pg.14.
Spoiler:
Blightburn (CR 7): The deadliest of the radioactive Darklands substances is lethal blightburn, a crystal that grows in isolated locations. It gives off a deep green glow as it slowly decays from exposure to air. The rays given off by blightburn are extremely deadly and poisonous to living creatures, though certain species seem to possess resistance to it.Blightburn is highly radioactive and emanates a nonmagical aura that provides a dim illumination equal to a candle. This emanation can be blocked by stone of at least 1-foot thickness or lead sheathing, as well as force effects. Contact with blightburn causes immediate pain, blistering of skin, and 2d6 points of fire damage per round.In addition, the radiation poisons anyone within 60 feet with blightburn, a deadly disease (Fort DC 22, Incubation instantaneous, 1d6 Con/1d6 Cha); victims of this sickness grow increasingly frail as sores erupt on their bodies,hair falls out, and bones grow shockingly brittle. Teleportation spells function poorly in areas where blightburn is present—in order to successfully cast such a spell in a cavern that has blightburn crystals in its walls or teleport to such a location, a spellcastermust succeed on a DC 30 caster level check.
Fantastic! I am VERY excited for this one.
Stonesinger bard sounds like a dwarf-style bard. Cool. The Blightburn Kineticist is very intriguing. I have a Lamplighter Investigator who is very intrigued about the "host of new alchemical items both beneficial and destructive".
Once again, makes me glad I am a Subscriber!
Blightburn has my attention. Hopefuly it stacks with Kinetic Knight, cause if so I'm making that character.
While that would be amazing, I'm not optimistic. Kinetic knight alters a lot of class features, and it's too new for the blightburner's writer to have had access to the kinetic knight when writing.
It's not impossible... but I wouldn't get too invested in the idea just yet.
Blightburn has my attention. Hopefuly it stacks with Kinetic Knight, cause if so I'm making that character.
I wouldn't bet on stacking. Kinetic Knight messes with your infusions, and this is almost certain to have some custom infusions. Probably easy enough to sort out with a GM if there is a conflict though.
Having a Bard archetype that a dwarf can take would be nice. I've seen the idea come up from players before, and have generally needed to cancel the Con bonus and Cha penalty. Bard has a ton of archetypes that just muck about with new performance types and a different bonus, and something that actually enables new class/race combos would be nice.
Is it me or does it seem she has issues with Drow?! Either that or this is one very long battle that has changed venues...from the table in Heroes of the High Court to the cavern in Heroes of the Darklands. Maybe the floor collapsed into the cavern, taking the table and these two with it! That must be it.
Otherwise the drow needs to be an iconic rival character. Because having more iconic villains/ nemesis types is always fun. Gives some fights a 'so here we are again' feel.
Blightburn has my attention. Hopefuly it stacks with Kinetic Knight, cause if so I'm making that character.
While that would be amazing, I'm not optimistic. Kinetic knight alters a lot of class features, and it's too new for the blightburner's writer to have had access to the kinetic knight when writing.
It's not impossible... but I wouldn't get too invested in the idea just yet.
I'm not expecting it, but still hopeful (I love the Kinetic Knight cause it lets me play the version of Kineticist I've wanted to since it was first published)
Did this get delayed? I noticed that subscription now has Heroes of the First World listed as next product and seems to have skipped over this one. (In my sub list at least)
Did this get delayed? I noticed that subscription now has Heroes of the First World listed as next product and seems to have skipped over this one. (In my sub list at least)
It's probably a side effect of the order spawning process. They're currently shifting it from "next product" to "current order". This is, if I'm not mistaken, a normal part of the process. ^_^
For those who might have worked on this book or the devs a quick question: Is the Blightburner kineticist going to be an archetype or a new elemental option like aether or fire?
For those who might have worked on this book or the devs a quick question: Is the Blightburner kineticist going to be an archetype or a new elemental option like aether or fire?
I'm not one of those, but it's listed as being a class archetype?
For those who might have worked on this book or the devs a quick question: Is the Blightburner kineticist going to be an archetype or a new elemental option like aether or fire?
I'm not one of those, but it's listed as being a class archetype?
Can't help but wonder if it shares flavor with the blights in MM6
For those who might have worked on this book or the devs a quick question: Is the Blightburner kineticist going to be an archetype or a new elemental option like aether or fire?
I'm not one of those, but it's listed as being a class archetype?
Can't help but wonder if it shares flavor with the blights in MM6
For those who might have worked on this book or the devs a quick question: Is the Blightburner kineticist going to be an archetype or a new elemental option like aether or fire?
I wrote the blightburn kineticist (and coincidentally the totally unrelated blights in B6) and it was designed as an archetype in the same spirit of the blood kineticist. I'm extremely excited to see any changes to it and I think folks will enjoy it!
Pathfinder Lost Omens, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Robert Brookes wrote:
doc the grey wrote:
For those who might have worked on this book or the devs a quick question: Is the Blightburner kineticist going to be an archetype or a new elemental option like aether or fire?
I wrote the blightburn kineticist (and coincidentally the totally unrelated blights in B6) and it was designed as an archetype in the same spirit of the blood kineticist. I'm extremely excited to see any changes to it and I think folks will enjoy it!
For those who might have worked on this book or the devs a quick question: Is the Blightburner kineticist going to be an archetype or a new elemental option like aether or fire?
I wrote the blightburn kineticist (and coincidentally the totally unrelated blights in B6) and it was designed as an archetype in the same spirit of the blood kineticist. I'm extremely excited to see any changes to it and I think folks will enjoy it!
Is it for Fire or Earth?
That's getting a little too much into the specifics than I'd care to before it comes out. I'll leave previews up to the developer :)
wow, crazy. just read the new Rat Queens and it had a fungus druid in it. find this a couple hours later and it has a fungal druid. think I have to order now ^_^
For those who might have worked on this book or the devs a quick question: Is the Blightburner kineticist going to be an archetype or a new elemental option like aether or fire?
I wrote the blightburn kineticist (and coincidentally the totally unrelated blights in B6) and it was designed as an archetype in the same spirit of the blood kineticist. I'm extremely excited to see any changes to it and I think folks will enjoy it!
Is it for Fire or Earth?
That's getting a little too much into the specifics than I'd care to before it comes out. I'll leave previews up to the developer :)
For good reason. Thanks in advance, I am REALLY looking forward to this product. Not just the kineticist stuff, but the new alchemical weapons, bard goodies (archetype and spells) for bringing light to the darklands.
Already got my 'Pending' notice, so it is coming next week!
That's getting a little too much into the specifics than I'd care to before it comes out. I'll leave previews up to the developer :)
So I hope this isn't asking too much information, but could you give us the exact wording you used to design the Blightburn kineticist complete with what it replaces, its restrictions and what it gains?
Or do you think that spilling the entire beans might be a bit too much information?
If Blightburner harnesses the power of radiation. Radiation == heat.
It's a fire based archetype.
I hope.. SINCERELY hope.. We can have an Aether based archetype, An Earth based archetype, An Air based archetype, A void based archetype (possibly more so focused on necromancy? YES PLEASE! And make it stackable with the kinetic knight archetype!), and a wood based archetype. All in the same concept as the blood kineticist and blightburner kineticist. That would rock!
If Blightburner harnesses the power of radiation. Radiation == heat.
It's a fire based archetype.
I hope.. SINCERELY hope.. We can have an Aether based archetype, An Earth based archetype, An Air based archetype, A void based archetype (possibly more so focused on necromancy? YES PLEASE! And make it stackable with the kinetic knight archetype!), and a wood based archetype. All in the same concept as the blood kineticist and blightburner kineticist. That would rock!
Friction and radiation may both produce heat, but that doesn't make a power that rubs two things together a pyrokineticist specialty. If blightburn instead converted rocks temporarily into plutonium, would you say it was fire and not earth?
That's getting a little too much into the specifics than I'd care to before it comes out. I'll leave previews up to the developer :)
So I hope this isn't asking too much information, but could you give us the exact wording you used to design the Blightburn kineticist complete with what it replaces, its restrictions and what it gains?
Or do you think that spilling the entire beans might be a bit too much information?
That would be too much information, especially before the book is released—equivalent to asking a leading actor to spoil the end of a movie that hasn't come out. You're effectively asking for him to suspend his professional conduct and reprint the archetype here before he's even seen what the final version looks like after it went through development and editing.
It's great that you're excited. No doubt answers will be more forthcoming pending a preview blog and/or the book's release in the coming weeks.
That's getting a little too much into the specifics than I'd care to before it comes out. I'll leave previews up to the developer :)
So I hope this isn't asking too much information, but could you give us the exact wording you used to design the Blightburn kineticist complete with what it replaces, its restrictions and what it gains?
Or do you think that spilling the entire beans might be a bit too much information?
That would be too much information, especially before the book is released—equivalent to asking a leading actor to spoil the end of a movie that hasn't come out. You're effectively asking for him to suspend his professional conduct and reprint the archetype here before he's even seen what the final version looks like after it went through development and editing.
It's great that you're excited. No doubt answers will be more forthcoming pending a preview blog and/or the book's release in the coming weeks.
Welp.
I tried dripping my post in as much sarcasm as possible.
But I still failed to come across as sarcastic enough... lol
That's getting a little too much into the specifics than I'd care to before it comes out. I'll leave previews up to the developer :)
So I hope this isn't asking too much information, but could you give us the exact wording you used to design the Blightburn kineticist complete with what it replaces, its restrictions and what it gains?
Or do you think that spilling the entire beans might be a bit too much information?
That would be too much information, especially before the book is released—equivalent to asking a leading actor to spoil the end of a movie that hasn't come out. You're effectively asking for him to suspend his professional conduct and reprint the archetype here before he's even seen what the final version looks like after it went through development and editing.
It's great that you're excited. No doubt answers will be more forthcoming pending a preview blog and/or the book's release in the coming weeks.
Welp.
I tried dripping my post in as much sarcasm as possible.
But I still failed to come across as sarcastic enough... lol
I wasn't being serious.
My reasoning:
It's hard not to take those requests seriously, especially if the author in question is newer, just bursting with excitement about one of his or her first contributions, and eagerly wants to share what's so cool. Sharing that information might be a fairly innocent flub of protocol or NDA (depending on who we're talking about), but in other circumstances, it could be a breach that inadvertently costs the company serious money or cleanup time—and costs a professional future work.
-
Robert's been contributing to Paizo products for more than two years, now, and has even produced and coordinated a really amazing campaign setting (Aethera); I am confident in his restraint not to spill the beans, as he demonstrated earlier. I am also not terribly concerned about people asking a book's development lead(s) for information, because said lead has a solid sense of what information is safe to distribute and when. My concern lies more in people pumping freelance authors for information the latter might not even have and whose sharing prematurely could jeopardize the working relationship.
I tried dripping my post in as much sarcasm as possible.
But I still failed to come across as sarcastic enough... lol
I wasn't being serious.
As a bystander, I will point out that tone doesn't carry well over text. Sarcasm is a "tone" thing, so you really do need to actually state "this is humor" sometimes for it to come across that way.
Smileys help.. but even they don't always get the point across.
If Blightburner harnesses the power of radiation. Radiation == heat.
It's a fire based archetype.
I hope.. SINCERELY hope.. We can have an Aether based archetype, An Earth based archetype, An Air based archetype, A void based archetype (possibly more so focused on necromancy? YES PLEASE! And make it stackable with the kinetic knight archetype!), and a wood based archetype. All in the same concept as the blood kineticist and blightburner kineticist. That would rock!
Um, heat is radiation, but not all radiation is heat. Since it's called the blightburner, which usually refers to either a very radioactive crystal or the disease caused by the radiation it produces, I honestly think it's more likely that it will wind up being an archetype for terrakineticists. It's also worth noting that at least some areas of the Elemental Plane of Earth (such as the blistering labyrinth) are known for radioactivity.
Anyways, I'm not saying that it's 100% definitely not for pyrokineticists, I can imagine it being possible even if I personally think terrakineticists are more likely, but just suggesting you might want to not leap to conclusions ahead of time. After all...we'll probably know soon enough which it is, since shipping starts on Monday.