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Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Ultimate Wilderness

3.00/5 (based on 59 ratings)
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Ultimate Wilderness
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Wild, untamed lands hold a wealth of mystery and danger, providing the perfect backdrop for heroic adventure. Whether adventurers are climbing mountains in search of a dragon's lair, carving their way through the jungle, or seeking a long-lost holy city covered by desert sands, Pathfinder RPG Ultimate Wilderness gives them the tools to survive the wilds. A new 20-level base class, the shifter, puts animalistic powers into the hands—or claws—of player characters and villains alike, with new class features derived from animalistic attributes. Overviews of druidic sects and rituals, as well as new archetypes, character options, spells, and more, round out the latest contribution to the Pathfinder RPG rules!

Pathfinder RPG Ultimate Wilderness is an invaluable hardcover companion to the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook. This imaginative tabletop game builds upon more than 10 years of system development and an open playtest featuring more than 50,000 gamers to create a cutting-edge RPG experience that brings the all-time best-selling set of fantasy rules into a new era.

Pathfinder RPG Ultimate Wilderness includes:

  • The shifter, a new character class that harnesses untamed forces to change shape and bring a heightened level of savagery to the battlefield!
  • Archetypes for alchemists, barbarians, bards, druids, hunters, investigators, kineticists, paladins, rangers, rogues, slayers, witches, and more!
  • Feats and magic items for characters of all sorts granting mastery over the perils of nature and enabling them to harvest natural power by cultivating magical plants.
  • Dozens of spells to channel, protect, or thwart the powers of natural environs.
  • New and expanded rules to push your animal companions, familiars, and mounts to wild new heights.
  • A section on the First World with advice, spells, and other features to integrate the fey realm into your campaign.
  • Systems for exploring new lands and challenging characters with natural hazards and strange terrain both mundane and feytouched.
  • ... and much, much more!

ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-986-8

Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:

Hero Lab Online
Fantasy Grounds Virtual Tabletop
Archives of Nethys

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3.00/5 (based on 59 ratings)

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Good flavor, bad mechanics.

1/5 —

This book had everything to be great, the wilderness themed aspects of the game have a lot of potential and player interest, however the book seems a rushed production with a lot of mechanics that just disappoint.

The Shifter is a mess, the whole idea of the class sells a combat oriented master shapeshifter, and what you get is a underwhelming mockery of a combat druid. It's extremely weak and with uninspired mechanics.

Also on the options part, there are lots of useless feats and archetypes - some unplayable - what reminds me a lot of the 3.5 times. You can find some jewels like a fey themed rogue archetype that gets hexes, but they are rare.

Even with poor execution, the book is filled with great flavor, interesting concepts, really beautiful art and good new options, like items, familiars, animal companions and even useful plants.

It seems clear to me that the main problem with this book is the lack of playtest.

I would recommend buying it just for the flavor, but it's the worst pathfinder rulebook I've bought.

Where Uninspired and Lazy Intersect

1/5 —

I must say, I was quite excited for this book. Ever since the debacle that was 3.5 polymorphing, Paizo has seemed to do everything in their power to nerf everything that involves it, and avoid printing more content. Thus, the existence of the Shifter intrigued me, the many-formed wanderer is a staple of Fantasy fiction, but Druid has too much clutter in the way to allow everyone to enjoy it. I wanted a class that could shapeshift from the word go, with unique and interesting class features to support that choice.

What we got, is a combination of Monk, Druid, and Hunter, that takes the worst, least exciting, and least functional aspects from each. Several features are cut and pasted whole cloth from Druid, while Wild Shape has been nerfed to the point of being a mere shadow of its former self, a fact I will discuss later. The Aspects feature is a copy paste from the Hunter's base Animal Foci, with a minor progression added at 8th level, it even includes the limited duration and uses per day clause! Something that even the base hunter did away with under certain circumstances. But it's unfair to focus solely on what's been cribbed from other classes, lets talk about Shifter's Claws, one of the few new features added; and I think an accurate summary of my problems with Shifter in a nutshell

1. You only get claws. No matter your theme, no matter your animal aspects, you get claws. Yes, that includes the Frog and Snake Shifters. This decision baffles me. Why restrict the Shifter to only using claws? Is there an issue with allowing a bite? Or a gore? Or a slam? Or a tail slap? On a class designed around shape changing, the fact this is unusually static reeks of hurried design.

2. The claws scale in damage, but very poorly. Why not allow claws to scale at a similar speed to the Monk and Brawler's unarmed strikes? At low levels, a full attack with claws is essentially a flurry, while at upper levels, the flurry vastly outpaces the claws, because unarmed strikes benefit from iterative attacks.

3. Even the claws have a feature cribbed from the Monk, in the form of their scaling material/property changes. The only unique feature the Shifter will see in their first handful of levels, is still just a spruced up hand me down system.

As for the issue of Wildshape, first we need to talk about the Aspect changes. Unlike Hunter, which knows all their Animal Foci at 1st level, the Shifter is incredibly limited, knowing only ONE aspect at first level, and gaining another Aspect every five levels thereafter. That alone, is worrying when compared with the Hunter... but then there's the Wildshape. A Shifter can only Wildshape into a creature she has an Aspect for. Unlike a Druid, who has numerous advantages over a Shifter already, the Shifter is limited to transforming into a total of 5 animals over the course of their entire career. Forget about transforming into Elementals, or Plants, or any Aquatic creature, or any of the dozens of bizarre and useful forms a clever Druid can pick from. The Shifter gets five forms, drawn from a list of fifteen animals. I would also point out, that this Wildshape is limited in exactly the same way as the Druid's is, so the Shifter can't even be in their form for the entire day until higher levels.

This, right here, is the real crux of the issue with the Shifter. It's not even as good at Shapeshifting as a 9 Wisdom Druid or Feral Hunter.

The rest of the book suffers from the same issues as many paizo hardcovers of late, namely large numbers of misprints that greatly alter the power of abilities. Many archetypes that are seemingly designed for NPC usage, or are simply trap options for less savvy players (The Ooze Shifter may be the new gold standard for this, given that it can't wear any magic items when in natural form.); combined with a large number of reprints and nerfs to spells and abilities people enjoyed using. If you look hard enough, there are a few things worth using, such as the Wildshaping Warpriest, or the Mapmaker Investigator, but those diamonds are few and far between.

1/5 - Absolutely Do Not Purchase.

Lots of great stuff.

5/5 —

Dedicated shifter class. Even if you don't like the class, it still means there's now a class that will receive exclusively shifting-focused archetypes.

Feats. Dust the bad ones aside, and enjoy rage totem powers on non-Barbarians, wildblooded bloodlines on non-Sorcerers, some nice options for Shifter, and more.

Archetypes. So many great ones! Highlights include a venomous Brawler, a Monk with Kineticist powers, a Kineticist that uses all the elements based on their surroundings, and a Shifter that's an ooze. Animal companions and familiars get in on the action too!

Rules. Lots of cool foraging rules, and much more detailed weather rules. Plus, rules for salvaging magic items and the like when you're leagues from a handy marketplace.

Price. If you grab the PDF, it's just ten bucks. Seriously, go for it.

Overwhelmingly Underwhelmed

2/5 —

This is the first time I can remember that I've felt so disappointed at a Paizo product.

New content quality ranges from amazing to outright dysfunctionally broken . For every Green Knight Cavalier or Forester Hunter there's an utterly unplayable mess like Wilderness Warden or Nature-Bonded Magus. The "patch and reprint" policy is still going strong here, with a pretty good sized chunk of content being reprints. But most people don't care as much about that, so without further ado...

The Shifter Class sucks. It looks, both in design and formatting, like a playtest version of a proper class. The class seems to have started as some sort of Druid/Monk hybrid (cribbing a bit from the Hunter), and was just not developed from there. As it stands, the Shifter is inferior in the niche it seems to fill (shapeshifting themed beatstick) to Druids, Mooncursed Barbarians, Feral Shifters, and even Metamorph Alchemist. The archetypes, while flavorful, are sharply limited, when the entire draw of shapeshifting is flexibility and versatility.

That aside, there was some good content here. The expanded list of familiar and animal companion options is welcome (even with some reprints), the mundane/alchemical equipment is equal parts amusing and useful. Some of the archetypes are amazing.

Final Verdict: The book needs to go back in the figurative oven for a while, some of the content is still uncooked.

Mixed bag

3/5 —

I like some things about this book. From a fluff standpoint, the art and the flavor text are all rock solid, as most hardcover Paizo books are.

From a mechanics standpoint, you get a lot of new archetypes, a lot of new feats, some new rules on being out in the 'wilderness', some new spells, and the new class, the Shifter.

The Shifter is full BAB, 2/3 Fort 2/3 Ref 1/3 Will, no spells, wild shape sorta like the druid but a bit different, has a few things that only druids had before, and can get WIS to AC if no armor (or 1/2 WIS to AC if in druid armor). There are several problems with the class, outlined in many of the reviews posted after mine. I think, like many, the class is poorly designed. -1 star.

I give this book huge props for the section 'Spells of the Wild' that starts on page 156. Its good to acknowledge how magic, in a lot of cases, nullifies the challenge of wilderness settings. The section where they talk about how create food and water combined with the 0th level spell purify food and water make survival checks to forage food basically useless. Good on Paizo for going over this stuff.

Another issue, reprints. This book contains reprints. Not a ton like the Adventurer's Guide, but enough that it is noticeable.

Lastly, the problem of too many feats, archetypes, and spells are awful. Borderline useless. This happens a lot in Pathfinder over the last few years, Horror Adventures had very similar problems. I would rather have fewer choices that are meaningful. As it is right now, I feel like it adds to the bloat issue.

3 out of 5 stars.

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Scarab Sages
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Luthorne wrote:
Dragon78 wrote:
No, it is so that you can deal non-lethal damage with the positive blast to living creatures. So it could be actually useful beyond a undead heavy campaign.

That's an interesting viewpoint, but I'm pretty sure that even nonlethal damage dealt by a positive blast would still be subject to the restrictions that it only deals damage to undead and creatures who are harmed by negative energy, even if merciful foilage allowed it or you did it by using kinetic blade nonlethally. After all, I believe most would agree that a merciful fireball still deals fire damage, just nonlethal fire damage instead of lethal fire damage...

That would potentially be a cool adaptation of merciful foilage if it was rewritten to grant that special ability to positive blasts, though...

Doesn't an excess of positive energy make you explode? you should be able to deal damage with that somehow...

Silver Crusade
Stratagemini wrote:
Luthorne wrote:
Dragon78 wrote:
No, it is so that you can deal non-lethal damage with the positive blast to living creatures. So it could be actually useful beyond a undead heavy campaign.

That's an interesting viewpoint, but I'm pretty sure that even nonlethal damage dealt by a positive blast would still be subject to the restrictions that it only deals damage to undead and creatures who are harmed by negative energy, even if merciful foilage allowed it or you did it by using kinetic blade nonlethally. After all, I believe most would agree that a merciful fireball still deals fire damage, just nonlethal fire damage instead of lethal fire damage...

That would potentially be a cool adaptation of merciful foilage if it was rewritten to grant that special ability to positive blasts, though...

Doesn't an excess of positive energy make you explode? you should be able to deal damage with that somehow...

That's a trait of the Positive Energy Plane, not Positive Energy effects in general.

Yeah, but it would make a great high level power to cause living things to explode with positive energy.

I kind of wish that since your positive blast doesn't heal that it would at least deal non-leathal damage to living creatures healed by positive energy or some other use then dealing damage to undead(and negative energy creatures).

I once crated a evil positive energy beings who would heal you till you exploded...though in never got to use them in a game yet.
2 people marked this as a favorite.

I am just happy to see a new class that fills at least one of the niches I am looking for.
1 person marked this as a favorite.

I'm happy for a class that has more Varisians in it. :)
Scarab Sages
1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Thomas Seitz wrote:
I'm happy for a class that has more Varisians in it. :)

Like, having been eaten by Shifters?

I hope one day we will finally get 50 classes for Pathfinder(I am not counting Starfinder classes to that number by the way).
Silver Crusade
3 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Dragon78 wrote:
I hope one day we will finally get 50 classes for Pathfinder(I am not counting Starfinder classes to that number by the way).

At which point you'll start wishing that some day we will finally get 100 classes.

I'm a big fan of options so new classes do excite me, but there comes a time when enough is enough.
1 person marked this as a favorite.

Actually I am wishing for 100 0HD races, even I think 100 classes would be too much.
1 person marked this as a favorite.
jedi8187 wrote:

I'm a big fan of options so new classes do excite me, but there comes a time when enough is enough.

So, not a fan of new classes that cover things already covered by other classes and archetypes?

I am fine with new classes as long as they fill a niche or need that I am looking for. Archetypes on the other hand are a much harder sell for me especially for certain classes.
4 people marked this as a favorite.
John Kretzer wrote:
I once crated a evil positive energy beings who would heal you till you exploded...though in never got to use them in a game yet.

Add Tetori Monk levels so it can hug you to death.

3 people marked this as a favorite.

I kill you with love, hug, hug, hug.

Strat,

Some how I think we got WAY off track here...

I'm still wondering how this will be distinguished from the Feral Hunter.....I wish they would start leaking more information....
2 people marked this as a favorite.

Too bad the shifter can't replicate Beast Boy.
2 people marked this as a favorite.

Technically we really don't know what the shifter can and can't do...yet.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Does this new class mean we could get an archetype that trades wildshape on a druid for more spell slots or maybe even spontaneous casting!?
2 people marked this as a favorite.
Dragon78 wrote:
Technically we really don't know what the shifter can and can't do...yet.

Wildshape is an ability limited to a hour per level. Unless they make the capstone of Druids into the classes 5th level ability it can't. Even changing forms counts as one use.

Scarab Sages
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Thomas Seitz wrote:

Strat,

Some how I think we got WAY off track here...

I just want to know what you mean by "a class with more Varisians in it."

We have Sorceror, and Rogue, and Bard. They got a whole... third of a book? And nothing Stops a Varisian from being anything they want to be. You can play a Varisian monk, or Ninja, or even Shifter if you want.
John Kretzer wrote:
I once crated a evil positive energy beings who would heal you till you exploded...though in never got to use them in a game yet.

I guess the way to fight them would be to have half of the party actually damaging the Evil Healing Elementals and the other half of the party stabbing the first half repeatedly so that they don't explode.

Context? Who needs it?

I wonder how many archetypes the shifter will get.

I wonder how many kineticist wild talents(new and old) there will be.

Since they gave the kineticist wood element healing and positive energy blast. Will it also get other first world themed abilities like stuff dealing with fey or animal based abilities.
Guy St-Amant wrote:
jedi8187 wrote:

I'm a big fan of options so new classes do excite me, but there comes a time when enough is enough.

So, not a fan of new classes that cover things already covered by other classes and archetypes?

As long they cover them in a new I don't care too much. But I do prefer classes cover more new ground, since archetypes do a great job of allowing variations on a theme. The shifter could have been a fighter or barbarian archetype and I would have been happy, but the class is good to since it seems to be expanding wildshape in a way those archetypes usually don't.

Silver Crusade
1 person marked this as a favorite.
doc roc wrote:

Is the Shifter having any playesting....or are we too late?

I always feel that playtesting of a new class has huge benefits for everyone.

KingOfAnything wrote:
The shifter's mechanics are straightforward enough for internal and limited playtesting to sufficiently work through kinks.

I completely understand the reasons that the shifter wasn't playtested more widely, but I'm not going to pretend that I wasn't disappointed. I had a real blast with the Vigilante playtest and I did my best to make a positive contribution. I hope that it'll be possible to contribute to future playtests.

(Somehow, this hasn't been created yet :P)

Here's what we will find in this book:

- The shifter, a new character class that harnesses untamed forces to change shape and bring a new level of savagery to the battlefield!

- New archetypes for alchemists, bards, druids, hunters, inquisitors, investigators, kineticists, mesmerists, paladins, rangers, rogues, slayers, and more!

- New feats and magic items for characters of all sorts, granting mastery over the perils of nature, and harvesting natural power itself by way of cultivating magical plants.

- Dozens of spells to channel, protect, or thwart the powers of the natural environs.

- New and expanded rules to push your animal companions, mounts, and familiars to wild new heights.

- A section on the First World with advice, spells, and other features to integrate that fey realm into your campaign.

- Systems for generating weather and challenging characters with natural hazards and strange terrain from terrain both mundane and fey-touched.

- ... and much, much more!

So... what are your expectations for this book ^_^? The shifter will be a major game-changer as it is a new class. The only thing we don't know is if it's a hybrid class of fighter/druid. I doubt it is, but it could be possible.

The shifter seems to be focusing on gaining natural attacks and creature limbs for special abilities. For instance, talons for regular damage, bear claws for damage and grab, wings for flight, fish tail for swimming, weasel fangs for damage and grab, tentacles for reach, etc. I don't think it will get spells, but it might receive different shifting abilities, similar to how a kineticist selects talents.

Archetyping the shifter can open a lot of possibilities. If the base shifter is animal-focused, then any archetype that switches the creature type around would be neat. A shifter using limbs from aberrations, plants, vermins, magical beasts (like the Totemist from Magic of Incarnum), dragons, oozes (especially since blights were introduced in B6) and undead would be awesome :D If the base shifter uses limbs from more than one type, then archetypes could be focused on other types. For instance, a shfter could morph a limb into a longsword.

Archetypes for the other classes can go in several directions:
- Barbarians, druids, oracles, hunters, rangers and witches, being nature-based classes, will probably get the lion's share of archetypes.
- Kineticists could get more talents... but I doubt that Wood would be expanded, since it was expanded in Golarion booklets :S
- I'd like to get options for companions, mounts, familiars and eidolons here. I feel like it isn't much explored.

The weather and hazard generators sound interesting. Maybe that will give us a good reason to use weather effects duing play sessions XD

So yeah, what are your expectations for this book ^_^?

We know that the kineticist wood element will get a reprint/update. I am not sure if we are getting any of the wood talents from psychic anthology.

It was already said that the shifter will be a full fighter BA/HD martial class and will get wild shape at level 5.
Silver Crusade
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

My only issue with the lack of a playtest is that I have an Ironfang Invasion game starting next week and I'd really like to be a shapeshifter in that game.

Might have to cludge either Skinwalker Ranger or Druid to do the job.
DM_aka_Dudemeister wrote:

My only issue with the lack of a playtest is that I have an Ironfang Invasion game starting next week and I'd really like to be a shapeshifter in that game.

Might have to cludge either Skinwalker Ranger or Druid to do the job.

Take a look at a Skinwalker Feral Hunter ;)

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Or the Skin Changer ranger. It suffers from 'uses per day' wildshape though for a class where shapechanging to fight is supposed to be it's thing but otherwise is amazing.
1 person marked this as a favorite.

I'm not going to worry about it, i just won't buy it. :-)

More money to spend on Starfinder I guess. :-)

I wonder what kinds of fey touched terrain there will be.
1 person marked this as a favorite.

I will be buying both!

Honestly they had me at Shifter... and space

Disappointed at the lack of playtesting regarding the Shifter.... solves a lot of issues down the line... fills a gap as the 'Nature Paladin'.... although whether or not thats how it comes out will be another matter.

Other than that it has potential!!

I was interested in Starfinder but the more I learned about it, the more I didn't like. But that is another subject all together and belongs in it's own section.

I can't wait to see what the shifter will be like, can't wait for kineticist wild talents(new and old), can't wait for first world, fey, and nature themed options and I can't wait for more animal companion, familiar, mount, etc. options.

I hope this book will finally have the fey based polymorph spells.

I also hope that it will reprint other polymorph spells that are not in hardcover books.
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