Pathfinder Player Companion: Blood of the Ancients

Mortar of the Constructs

When they say racial traits, do they mean alternate racial traits or traits that are race focused?

I think if they meant 'alternate racial traits' they would have stated such. We will, of course, know more when it is updated. Should be soon.

EDIT: or not as this is not out until May!

So long to wait! I'm planning a(nother) Medium, but I'm holding out in case there are interesting archetypes for it in this companion. If any title was going to provide some love for the Medium, it seems like this would be the one.

I could be wrong and there'll be nothing for Mediums here. In that case, I'll be kicking myself.

Blood of Tian Xia would be awesome :P

Still better if split up in several different books, handling different regions/possibilities there!

I feel like “People of Tian Xia” would feel better as a title, personally. Nevertheless, I hope it happens someday too! (Better yet if I get to write for it! For now I guess I’ll have to settle for being the author of the kitsune, nagaji, and wayang sections in their respective Blood of books. ^_^)

People of the Dragon Empires!

"People of Tian Xia" or "People of the Dragon Empires", both sound good to me:)

I would like a phoenix blood line.

I think some of the other races will partly get covered in Pathfinder Player Companion: Heroes from the Fringe.

I'm always up for Azlanti/Thasillonian stuff....but I would love to see more on Sakoris as well....

+1

Now if we could just get blood of dragons, blood of fey, blood of giants, blood of the mythos, blood of magical/mythical beast, blood of chaos/maelstrom, and blood of law/axis based books.

So do so many of us, but many of us fear how those would turn out.

Why the fear Souls At War, it is not like all the "blood of" books have been bad?

I've liked all of them, though I know Blood of the Night/Elements got mixed receptions for dealing with a lot of stuff, not just the races in question.

I love Blood Of The Elements!

I thought Legacy of Dragons was already a thing

Why the fear Souls At War, it is not like all the "blood of" books have been bad?

Blood of the Night, Blood of the Elements, Legacy of Dragons, and to a lesser degree, some of the "People of" books as well as Blood of the Moon.

I personally am looking forward to this. its not like i lose anything from wanting to see the book first before judging it. but i am similarly not going to say there is no chance that some people might be disappointed. still, i eagerly await to see the offerings first, since the mixture of options from Advanced Jistka technologies, to the forgotten divine magics of the Ancient Osirions, to the Arcane science of the Thassalonians, and Azlant empires.

So many opportunities for incredible stuff. hopefully not to be wasted, or squandered.

UPDATED DESCRIPTION AND COVER!!!!

UPDATED DESCRIPTION AND COVER!!!!

Wow! This just rocketed into a must-have book!

Oh indeed! This looks super sweet. Will be eagerly anticipating the contents of this one.

Wonder if Vestige bloodline will be a good Eldritch Heritage for Ancestor Summoners.

jinyiwei and vestige bloodline sounds cool.

The bloodline is the only selling point for me.

It saddens me every time I see a kineticist archetype I think "wow if they only used that space for new kineticist wild talents".

Sure. Why make a base class function in new and interesting ways when you could spend two pages turning a few more spells into wild talents? (That only a seventh or two of kineticists will ever use, no less.)

At least Kinetic Invocation cut out the middleman there. ^_^

Cover looks awesome. :)

Kinetic Invocation was so horrible, why spend a feat so you can choose to get a spell as a wild talent when it should have been a wild talent to begin with. Also not all wild talents function like specific spells or completely as the spell they were based on.

It doesn't help that none of the kineticist archetype were any good or all that interesting.

Your call.

*shows off a pair of 8s to John* I raise you one kobold!

Golem forged artificers. Will they be like normal artificers from dnd 3.5, or more like a cyborg. All I know is there needs to be a shory rune that levitates an area of ground. We need to make it so the most dedicated of high level pcs can have a literal Flying Fortress.

"the Spawn slayers of Ninshabur to the golem-forged Jistkan artificers and the Heaven-mandated jinyiwei investigators of Lung Wa."

I have little idea what any of these are but I now want to play one of each...

I’m liking these new details! Seems like an archetype-heavy book, and those are my favorite. Plus, we get a new bloodline.

Oooooo! That bloodline sounds super sweet. So do the archetypes.

Not so long now!

"the Spawn slayers of Ninshabur to the golem-forged Jistkan artificers and the Heaven-mandated jinyiwei investigators of Lung Wa."

I have little idea what any of these are but I now want to play one of each...

Pretty much my thoughts exactly.

As the current edition shuffles off to the discard pile, Paizo rocks out the weird and fantabulous...At least they can be recreated with cachet in the next edition...

What class are the "golem-forged Jistkan artificers"? The last time I checked, Pathfinder did not have an artificer class.

What class are the "golem-forged Jistkan artificers"? The last time I checked, Pathfinder did not have an artificer class.

Alchemist or Investigator archetypes would be my guess....?

Thinking of running a PC some how a related to one of the Returning Runelords and senses their coming! Test of faith to either stay good or go bad?

Will this book include things for the samsaran race? I'm sick of one of my favorite races getting no new material...

Sure. Why make a base class function in new and interesting ways when you could spend two pages turning a few more spells into wild talents? (That only a seventh or two of kineticists will ever use, no less.)

At least Kinetic Invocation cut out the middleman there. ^_^

Personally I liked Kinetic Invocation, wish it would have made it into a RPG Core book with an updated and expanded list, a couple pages could hold a lot of spell/invocations listed this way.

Personally I liked Kinetic Invocation, wish it would have made it into a RPG Core book with an updated and expanded list, a couple pages could hold a lot of spell/invocations listed this way.

Will this book include things for the samsaran race? I'm sick of one of my favorite races getting no new material...

BotA won't have any samsaran material unfortunately. Disciple's Doctrine has some material for samsarans, including a new spiritualist archetype! Otherwise, if you want new samsaran material, stay tuned!

Can someone please tell me what is the class of the artificer archetype? I plan on buying the PDF but this is the big thing I want to know and the wait to find out this one tidbit is killing me

I just want to explicitly note that my disinterest in this book does NOT reflect a general disinterest in "Blood of" books. In fact more "Blood of" books is my single most wanted PF supplement, and I want nothing, literally nothing more than more options for my favorite races: android, lashunta, shabti, ganzi, caligni, sylph (Blood/Elements barely gave them anything!) and the aforementioned samsaran. I will buy the heck out of any book where you give subraces and alternate racial traits for any of those races. I would literally pay double the normal price for the same page count, if you give me material on those guys. Especially lashunta. I'm crazy about lashunta. Gimme more on them before you close PF1e.

Subraces (for customizing ability modifiers) and alternate racial traits (for swapping out racial traits that you won't use) are the #1 most important thing to provide for races. Spells, eh, there's thousands of spells. Traits, same thing. Magic items, ditto. We don't need race-specific spells/traits/items, we can just use the ones available to every race. But we *cannot* use the subraces/alternate racial traits available to every race. They *need* to be race-specific, there are no generic ones available to every race. So we badly need for those to be provided. I guess favored class bonuses theoretically fall in that same bracket since (other than the base hp/sp option) there are no favored class bonuses available to all races, so they also need race-specific options provided. But I'm not so desperate about that because the base hp/sp option is pretty good and I'm happy to go with it.

Please?

(Also, it would be a really kind thing if you could slip in somewhere a couple of different ways for dhampirs to combat their negative energy affinity. It's a bit of a pain to deal with.)

Personally the only race options I like are alternate racial traits and racial feats. I have no use for race specific archetypes, spells, traits, and equipment.

I love spells!! Spells are cool!

I just want to explicitly note that my disinterest in this book does NOT reflect a general disinterest in "Blood of" books. In fact more "Blood of" books is my single most wanted PF supplement, and I want nothing, literally nothing more than more options for my favorite races: android, lashunta, shabti, ganzi, caligni, sylph (Blood/Elements barely gave them anything!) and the aforementioned samsaran. I will buy the heck out of any book where you give subraces and alternate racial traits for any of those races. I would literally pay double the normal price for the same page count, if you give me material on those guys. Especially lashunta. I'm crazy about lashunta. Gimme more on them before you close PF1e.

Subraces (for customizing ability modifiers) and alternate racial traits (for swapping out racial traits that you won't use) are the #1 most important thing to provide for races. Spells, eh, there's thousands of spells. Traits, same thing. Magic items, ditto. We don't need race-specific spells/traits/items, we can just use the ones available to every race. But we *cannot* use the subraces/alternate racial traits available to every race. They *need* to be race-specific, there are no generic ones available to every race. So we badly need for those to be provided. I guess favored class bonuses theoretically fall in that same bracket since (other than the base hp/sp option) there are no favored class bonuses available to all races, so they also need race-specific options provided. But I'm not so desperate about that because the base hp/sp option is pretty good and I'm happy to go with it.

Please?

(Also, it would be a really kind thing if you could slip in somewhere a couple of different ways for dhampirs to combat their negative energy affinity. It's a bit of a pain to deal with.)

Some options would be an amulet of channeled life, or keep a bunch of potions of life channel on hand. Or just go with the racial option that takes away the neg energy affinity.

Samy wrote:

(Also, it would be a really kind thing if you could slip in somewhere a couple of different ways for dhampirs to combat their negative energy affinity. It's a bit of a pain to deal with.)

Some options would be an amulet of channeled life, or keep a bunch of potions of life channel on hand.

The fact that those are even suggested, IMO, is a pretty good demonstration of how poor the current options are...as I said, a bit of a pain, to pay 12k gold just to receive *half* healing, and even that just temporarily.

Or just go with the racial option that takes away the neg energy affinity.

If you're talking about the "Life-Dominant Soul" feat, that only brings you halfway to viability.

Kinetic Invocation was so horrible, why spend a feat so you can choose to get a spell as a wild talent when it should have been a wild talent to begin with. Also not all wild talents function like specific spells or completely as the spell they were based on.

It doesn't help that none of the kineticist archetype were any good or all that interesting.

I'm with you on that one. A feat slot and a talent slot all for the ability to gain extremely limited access to a very limited selection of spells.

I don't think they ever really took into account how high a cost unavoidable burn is. I mean if you told a player they could get access to one of these spells once a day for 2 feats they wouldn't touch it, adding permanent health loss for the day each time you use it is a trade down.

If you ever see Kineticists in practice it's burn for defense and elemental overflow cap and that's it. I've used burn twice beyond that and regretted it one of those times when I though the day was all but over.

Or just go with the racial option that takes away the neg energy affinity.

Yeah for some reason I thought dayborn trait took that away my mistake.

Personally the only race options I like are alternate racial traits and racial feats. I have no use for race specific archetypes, spells, traits, and equipment.

To each their own.