Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide

4.20/5 (based on 11 ratings)
Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide
Show Description For:
Non-Mint

Add Hardcover $49.99

Add PDF $19.99

Add Non-Mint $49.99 $37.49

Facebook Twitter Email

Whether you are a new Game Master or experienced storyteller, you can always find new ways to hone your craft. This 256-page Pathfinder Second Edition rulebook contains a wealth of new information, tools, and rules systems to add to your game. Inside you will find handy advice for building your own adventures, designing towns, and creating vibrant characters alongside rules systems for dramatic chases, thrilling tournaments, and deadly duels. This book also includes more 40 pages of sample nonplayer characters, from the simple town guard to the vile cultist, presented to make your job as GM that much easier!

The Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide includes:

  • Rules, advice, and guidelines to build adventures, campaigns, and the denizens and treasures that lurk within, from settlements to nations to infinite planes!
  • Creative variant rules to customize the rules to make the game your own, including variant bonus, feat, and magic item progressions, characters gaining the power of multiple classes at once, and more!
  • All sorts of new and variant magic items including intelligent items, cursed items, artifacts, quirks you can add to items, and a brand new type of item called a relic that scales with your character!
  • A catalog of subsystems to handle unique situations, from thrilling chases to researching mysteries to vehicle combat to elaborate duels to sandbox-style "hexploration" and more! Plus, a universal victory point system to help you design your own subsystems!
  • More than 60 new NPCs to use in your game, designed for maximum usefulness to all Pathfinder campaigns!

ISBN: 978-1-64078-198-6

Available Formats

The Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide is also available as:

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

Hero Lab Online
Pathfinder Nexus on Demiplane
Roll20 Virtual Tabletop
Archives of Nethys

Note: This product is part of the Pathfinder Rulebook Subscription.

Product Availability

Hardcover:

Available now

Ships from our warehouse in 11 to 20 business days.

PDF:

Fulfilled immediately.

Non-Mint:

Available now

Ships from our warehouse in 11 to 20 business days.

This product is non-mint. Refunds are not available for non-mint products. The standard version of this product can be found here.

Are there errors or omissions in this product information? Got corrections? Let us know at store@paizo.com.

PZO2103


See Also:

1 to 5 of 11 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | next > last >>

Average product rating:

4.20/5 (based on 11 ratings)

Sign in to create or edit a product review.

GMG good

5/5

Becomes outdated with the remaster / the GM Core. Was good though.


4/5


Mix of really great and some very bad

4/5

The quality of this book is very extreme: either it's superb or outright terrible. Personally, everything was well designed except for:

* Hexploration: very confusingly written, so few activities that everyone has to homebrew the other 50%
* Leadership: plain boring and even detrimental if you use lieutenants as cohorts
* Skill Points & Ability Score Variants: there's no benefit of using these except to shut up 1e diehards. Incredibly complicated mechanisms that play out almost exactly the same.


Essential for a GM Stepping Outside the Box

5/5

Relic weaponry is my favorite thing about this book - really allows you to personalize weapons or equipment for story purposes.


Website ate my first review of this, so this will be brief

3/5

In short, a great book for some GMs and of limited value to others. The distinction rests primarily on how closely you follow prewritten adventures or if you generate all your own content. The further towards the home campaign you get, the more value this book has for you.

The specific encounter types like chases and infiltration are terrific. Solid subsystems and I've made good use adding one or two of these into adventure paths and scenarios I've run. They make definite sense and once players understand them, ratchet up the narrativist play in complex encounters instead of being all about single rolls. One of the biggest problems I've seen in other games is watching group subterfuge always fall apart because one player rolls bad once. This softens that out, adds concepts for how a not-sneaky player can add to a stealth mission, and so on. Really happy about this.

The alternate rules are quite nice and some are highly creative. I haven't gotten to use any at a table yet, but I will when the timing is right (for instance, I'm strongly considering running Agents of Edgewatch with automatic bonus progression to avoid some of the loot troubles that AP appears to have). Dual classing is incredibly popular, I have seen around here and elsewhere, though I haven't had a scenario where it was a particularly good fit.

Other additions are nice. Monster creation rules, NPC codex, and basic GM advice are never bad things, though they are a hard reason to strongly recommend this book.

Not a buy for players, probably shouldn't be one of the first books a new GM buys either. But established GMs, especially ones building campaigns and encounters on the regular, can definitely get some mileage from this book. Overall, not essential but probably beneficial.


1 to 5 of 11 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | next > last >>
1 to 50 of 267 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | next > last >>

4 people marked this as a favorite.

Relics, eh? A throwback to Weapons of Legacy perhaps?


3 people marked this as a favorite.

Sweet cover image!


^ Agreed!

--C.

Dark Archive

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Camellen wrote:
Relics, eh? A throwback to Weapons of Legacy perhaps?

Relics in 1e are scaling items that get more powers when you do "triumphs" related to legacy of the item

So yeah, I'm glad they are returning :D And glad for library research rules and hexploration and variant rules and... Glad for lot of things!

My only confusion related to cover is that while it is call back to 1e gamemastery cover, this one isn't actually referencing the final confrontation with Alaznist from Return of the Runelords. Heck I don't think she even has black dragon ally in that one?

Silver Crusade

7 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

O hai gestalt multiclassing, it's been a while.


Will there be a deluxe edition for this book as was hinted at?


Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

They have done more than hint at it.


David knott 242 wrote:
They have done more than hint at it.

Sweet. I just didn't see the product listed. Thanks!


4 people marked this as a favorite.

Tag yourself on the cover. I'm the sheathed sword attached halfway down a skirt.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber

Awesome!


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Xenocrat wrote:
Tag yourself on the cover. I'm the sheathed sword attached halfway down a skirt.

Well... Magic? Or rather, MYTHIC MAGIC!

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Hmm. I thought this would be where the monster creation rules would be, but aside from the 'and the denizens and treasures that lurk within' line, I don't see anything to indicate those will be in this. That... concerns me, since monster creation is something I want.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Isn't that located in bestiary usually?


CorvusMask wrote:
Isn't that located in bestiary usually?

Nope. Monster creation rules will not be in the bestiary but will be available 'fairly shortly thereafter'.


Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Then I think this is indeed the book that provides them.

Designer

25 people marked this as a favorite.

Hi, this was my first "Product description page," which after 5 years is actually a bit surprising. Anyways, the "denizens that lurk within" are 100% monsters and NPCs, so there will be "Rules, advice, and guidelines to build" them.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Mark Seifter wrote:
Hi, this was my first "Product description page," which after 5 years is actually a bit surprising. Anyways, the "denizens that lurk within" are 100% monsters and NPCs, so there will be "Rules, advice, and guidelines to build" them.

Entirely understandable! I'm a self-published author by trade myself, and I swear that book descriptions are one of the hardest part of the process of publishing to get right.

Also, I'm really glad to hear that the monster creation rules will be in there. ^^


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Why am I so excited about variant rules before the regular rules are even out?


Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber

The red haired woman on the cover appears to be Alaznist, seeing she's wearing the same clothes as on the cover of AP #133 and is wielding the same weapon. The Thassilonian wrath rune that makes up the back of the throne supports that, too. But isn't she supposed to be dead now?

Dark Archive

4 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Zaister wrote:
The red haired woman on the cover appears to be Alaznist, seeing she's wearing the same clothes as on the cover of AP #133 and is wielding the same weapon. The Thassilonian wrath rune that makes up the back of the throne supports that, too. But isn't she supposed to be dead now?

As I said, its call back to 1e Gamemastery book where Karzoug was sitting on throne with dragon behind him(he was also dead when that book was released :p)

Its taking bit more creative liberties though since gamemastery cover was pretty much inspired by the RotR while this one is more inspired by Gamemastery cover than final battle with Alaznist


3 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber

Ah, I see. I also must have missed you post pointing out Alaznist.

So we know what to expect for the Gamemastery Guides for Pathfinder Third to Seventh Edition, then!


Zaister,

I'm hoping that we'll get maybe a Red Dragon for Xanderghul. Maybe. I dunno.


3 people marked this as a favorite.

You guys want to post any more Return of the Runelords spoilers for those of us playing it?

Silver Crusade

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
PFRPGrognard wrote:
You guys want to post any more Return of the Runelords spoilers for those of us playing it?

Well, I think nobody was expecting you, of all people, to follow closely product threads for PF2e :P

Silver Crusade

Zaister wrote:
The red haired woman on the cover appears to be Alaznist, seeing she's wearing the same clothes as on the cover of AP #133 and is wielding the same weapon.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

What Runelords looks like has never really been a spoiler(their statues are all over Varisia) O_o Also as I said, this cover doesn't spoil the Returns since its more based on Gamemastery 1e cover than what happens in AP.

Dark Archive

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber
CorvusMask wrote:
What Runelords looks like has never really been a spoiler(their statues are all over Varisia) O_o Also as I said, this cover doesn't spoil the Returns since its more based on Gamemastery 1e cover than what happens in AP.

The Cover doesn't spoil it. What Zaister mentions at the end of his post about her does...

Silver Crusade

They asked a question.

Silver Crusade

4 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I like how Pathfinder is back to author names on the cover. It's a nice tradition of the board game industry, worth carrying over to pnp RPGs.

Silver Crusade

3 people marked this as a favorite.
Gorbacz wrote:
I like how Pathfinder is back to author names on the cover. It's a nice tradition of the board game industry, worth carrying over to pnp RPGs.

Can I order Special Edition copy that has all the authors' names on it, please? :3

I think it'd be cool, and look cool too.


That's what I was looking for!
As a GM, I've always used my own campaign settings, complete with its own deities, planes, kingdoms, technology, unique monsters, et cetera, along with a few fluff and rules changes (I try to keep those as small as possible). Is this product the go-to resource for me? It looks tasty...

Dark Archive

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Will this book feature haunts or any similar subsystem, just as its 1E counterpart did?

Designer

13 people marked this as a favorite.

Even better! Haunts are a core type of hazard, alongside traps and environmental hazards, so they're in core (and they were in the playtest's hazards as well).

Verdant Wheel

Hmmm, I expected a more generic term, so we could have diabolic haunts or fey haunts that weren´t undead in nature.

Silver Crusade

3 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Draco Bahamut wrote:
Hmmm, I expected a more generic term, so we could have diabolic haunts or fey haunts that weren´t undead in nature.

At least in the playtest, there's nothing about the haunt trait that makes it undead-only.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Of all the books in the lineup for 2E, this is the one I'm most excited about. I've been running a homebrew Playtest campaign since February, converting to 2E when it's released, and the sooner I get access to some of the things in this book, the better. Premade NPCs, monster creation rules, guidance on magic item creation... it can't come soon enough for me.

Dark Archive

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Mark Seifter wrote:
Even better! Haunts are a core type of hazard, alongside traps and environmental hazards, so they're in core (and they were in the playtest's hazards as well).

Hoo! Glad to hear that, Mark! I don't know how I didn't notice them in the playtest file, but it's fantastic that they're a core hazard now! :)


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide wrote:
Creative variant rules to customize the rules to make the game your own, including variant bonus, feat, and magic item progressions, characters gaining the power of multiple classes at once, and more!

I'm really excited about this. And I'm *really* hoping (cross my fingers) that there'll be at least a couple suggestions for optional rules for how to boost Charisma, for GMs who are so inclined.

After a decade of arguments and flamewars about how to do this on this site alone, ranging from the dawn of PF1 (like in this 1000 post thread) to the dawn of PF2 (like in this thread), having some kind of semi-official guidance for GMs to work from would be a godsend.

If bribes of any kind (cookies? burboun?) are required, I can make it happen!

Dark Archive

4 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber
CorvusMask wrote:
Zaister wrote:
The red haired woman on the cover appears to be Alaznist, seeing she's wearing the same clothes as on the cover of AP #133 and is wielding the same weapon. The Thassilonian wrath rune that makes up the back of the throne supports that, too. But isn't she supposed to be dead now?

As I said, its call back to 1e Gamemastery book where Karzoug was sitting on throne with dragon behind him(he was also dead when that book was released :p)

Its taking bit more creative liberties though since gamemastery cover was pretty much inspired by the RotR while this one is more inspired by Gamemastery cover than final battle with Alaznist

I’ve just remembered- when the GMG came out, the version of the Karzoug fight was the 3.5 version, where I don’t believe he had a dragon friend. When it was compiled, he gained the dragon, retroactively making the cover accurate!

Dark Archive

It has been said that this book could slip to a Later release date...

Silver Crusade

January - February is what they said.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Lost Omens, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I'm hoping for a variant rule system for a more D&D 5e prepared casting system for pathfinder 5e.

I generally feel like the versatility in spellcasting is undermined a little bit when players have to prepare or know a specific level version of a spell to cast it and not "know Fireball and cast it at any slot you want that's 3rd or above when prepared".

Or I might Just homebrew it myself if needed.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Oh hey, this shows up in product list again. It had disappeared for while for some website related reasons :D

I think library research rules were covered under "victory point" subsystem, but was verbal duels something this book would have?


3 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Wish this one was coming out sooner, some of these rules would be of great use already.

Sovereign Court

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

So, we have to wait until January to get NPC stats? Lame

Silver Crusade

1 person marked this as a favorite.

That entirely depends on what NPCs you need?

Build from the ground up? Yes, but they are working on hopefully getting the monster building rules out for people to use before then.

Otherwise we have the Bestiary and the stats in the Adventures.


I'm getting this book anyway so it's kind of a moot point, but will adventure paths be referencing NPC statblocks from this book? I'm getting back into Pathfinder after only being at the beginning of 1e, and I just want to get a sense of what books I want to have on me for future APs!

Dark Archive

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Rysky wrote:

That entirely depends on what NPCs you need?

Build from the ground up? Yes, but they are working on hopefully getting the monster building rules out for people to use before then.

Otherwise we have the Bestiary and the stats in the Adventures.

It IS pretty unfortunate for people like me who are obsessed with getting rule details right :p Like, no matter what, it is not fun that there is four month gap between release and having all "necessary" books for GM.(npc/monster creation rules is something I consider "necessary" since while there are work arounds, honestly running campaign with only the bestiary would be hard)

Not much anyone can do about it though, hopefully Paizo gets the building rules out nice time and not few weeks before january.


Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

The Build Rules are out!

Silver Crusade

4 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

And as the preview on Paizo's Facebook indicates, there will be rules for gestalt PCs in this book.

1 to 50 of 267 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Paizo / Product Discussion / Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.