Pathfinder Book of the Dead

4.30/5 (based on 25 ratings)
Pathfinder Book of the Dead
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The dead are rising! This blasphemous tome gives players and GMs everything they need to bring the shambling menace of the undead to their Pathfinder adventures. This book includes tools for fighting against the undead horde, but also options for the players themselves to control or even become undead creatures. GMs will find new tools and haunts, as well as information about the undead-plagued lands of the Lost Omens campaign setting. A massive bestiary section full of undead creatures brings more threats for GMs to use and summonable creatures for players, including more versions of classic undead like vampires, skeletons, and zombies. This 224-page hardcover rulebook also includes a full adventure themed around fighting the undead!

Written by: Jason Bulmahn, Brian Bauman, Tineke Bolleman, Logan Bonner, Jessica Catalan, John Compton, Chris Eng, Logan Harper, Michelle Jones, Jason Keeley, Luis Loza, Ron Lundeen, Liane Merciel, Patchen Mortimer, Quinn Murphy, Jessica Redekop, Mikhail Rekun, Solomon St. John, Michael Sayre, Sen.H.S.S, Kendra Leigh Speedling, Jason Tondro, Andrew White

Available Formats

Pathfinder Book of the Dead is also available as:

ISBN-13: 978-1-64078-401-7

The adventure contained within this rulebook, "March of the Dead," is sanctioned for use in Pathfinder Society Organized Play. The rules for running this Adventure and Chronicle Sheets are available as a free download (881 KB PDF).

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

Fantasy Grounds Virtual Tabletop
Pathfinder Nexus on Demiplane
Roll20 Virtual Tabletop
Archives of Nethys

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

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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.

PZO2110


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Average product rating:

4.30/5 (based on 25 ratings)

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Animating

5/5

Liked both the rules and the lore.


just here to offset the guy 1- & 2-starring all the PF2E products

5/5


Best most inspiring source book I've ever gotten.

5/5

Beautiful, interesting, entertaining.

The job of a splat book is to inspire. Once you've played a couple of campaigns you recognize that you don't need all the options provided. You learn the system, you come up with homebrew.

A splat book should drive your excitement to experiment.

This book inspires. This book makes you excited to play and write adventures for parties of undead. I want to play a vengeful ghost, I want to play a zombie just barely holding on to a shred of their old life.

What a joy to read.


3 stars on crunch, 5 stars on flavor / lore

4/5

This book is one of the most creative rulebooks I have ever seen. It is largely written from the perspective of the Ghost King Geb, which gives a hilarious (if biased) perspective on all manner of subjects from geopolitics to arcane minutiae.

The crunch is decent and opens up some interesting concepts and design space, but too much of it seems far too niche to see much use in average play. Most of the Undead archetypes either give up too much with limited benefit (Vampires), or don't get much for their investment (Liches) to be worth considering at all. Many of the archetypes seem to have very niche applications and limitations that are too-strongly imposed to let them function well outside of an undead-focused campaign. I give the items a pass since those represent less-permanent decisions than feats, and having a toolbox of items that can be used to address thorny undead-related situations can help out characters going for more of a vampire / undead hunter-type theme while using a more generalist class like the Thaumaturge or Inventor.

The things that do work hit it out of the park though. The Skeleton ancestry and Zombie archetype are both hilarious and truly play with the question of how an undead of their specific types would change how a player might interact with the world. Skeletons can use one arm to pull off their other arm and swing it around with a weapon in that hand, granting them reach when they otherwise wouldn't have it, as an example. Zombies can detach a hand and let it crawl around to assault people.


4/5


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Paizo Employee Webstore Coordinator

3 people marked this as a favorite.

Announced for March! Product image and description are not final and may be subject to change.


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

I want to hug the baby skeleton


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

Whoa, date cover!


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook Subscriber; Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber

My precious....


Was hoping for specifics on the player options, but the adventure is a real surprise! Has me worried about our chances for an Impossible Lands AP, unless they really wanna double dip.

Liberty's Edge

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Allips? Pleeeeeeease?

Dark Archive

5 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Reminds me of how Mythic Adventures had an adventure in it :O

Also holy crap the final cover is pretty awesome


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Love it! <3


2 thing's I want. 1 rules to become a lich. 2 stats for geb the ghost king!

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Cues up 'Land of the Dead'

Sounds splenedid!


1 person marked this as a favorite.

No words to describe how awesome the cover is!

Yet I'm surprised we didn't get a cover featuring Geb, the Whispering Tyrant or others of the most iconic undead NPCs.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Incredible cover, love when Wayne gets scenes with lots of characters, it really plays to his strengths!


4 people marked this as a favorite.
The Gold Sovereign wrote:

No words to describe how awesome the cover is!

Yet I'm surprised we didn't get a cover featuring Geb, the Whispering Tyrant or others of the most iconic undead NPCs.

Hmm...

Isn't that Geb sitting on the throne on the cover though??
(At least, that's who I thought it was...)

Carry on, I guess...

--C.

<shrug>


7 people marked this as a favorite.

It's definitely Geb.


Hmmm. This is definitely going to be a pre-order for me.

It would be interesting to see additional player options, such as undead ancestries, new feats to combat the undead, and new backgrounds like Vampire Hunter. Regardless, I'm sold.


vagrant-poet wrote:
It's definitely Geb.

Unless he's wearing some kind of mask, that's a completely different look from how he was depicted in Legends and on other products.

Wayfinders

5 people marked this as a favorite.

I'd chalk it up to Wayne Reynolds's idiosyncratic art style, but there's enough context clues in the picture as a whole (the fact he's all ghostly, the Egyptian-style architecture - Geb was Osirioni after all -, and some of the undead looking similar to those in that one Geb picture in LOWG) for me to think it's him.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
The Gold Sovereign wrote:
vagrant-poet wrote:
It's definitely Geb.
Unless he's wearing some kind of mask, that's a completely different look from how he was depicted in Legends and on other products.

Eh, I dunno.

Looking at his profile pic here, there's enough similarity (he's just cleaned up a bit since Arazni is no longer around to rule the nation he named after himself...), as well as context (look at all the ectoplasm slithering off of him!), to guess that that is who is centered on the cover.
Also, it was mentioned by developers--during Paizocon?--that the nation of Geb would get some spotlight in this book (the Grave Lands, too, but that is certainly not Tar Baphon on the cover, so...)

But if you feel differently, that's fine, too. : )
We'll know more once Paizo staff/the developer(s) are ready to say more. <shrug>

Carry on,

--C.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber
Ashanderai wrote:
Whoa, date cover!

Grrr... Freaking auto-correcting phone app...!

I swear I'm not into undead dating sites or necro-ing anything... Really!

;)


this is probably not the final cover. we didn't see GaG's cover until paizocon, about 4 months before its release. Using that same timeframe we'll probably see the final cover for this around november. cool mock-up though.


4 people marked this as a favorite.

I think some concept sketches for book of the dead back when it was first announced showed Geb in a similar manner. And I think an aesthetic change makes sense too. He has to actively rule for the first time in centuries and has a chance to finish his business with Nex once and for all, so the change may involve a shift in his role from brooding and reclusive to active leader and a shift in attitude trying to connect to his old traditions and power as he thinks of revenge buried in the past. He looks more tired, more severe, and more concerned with ceremony than the older artwork. I think it's an appropriate change.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Paradozen wrote:
I think some concept sketches for book of the dead back when it was first announced showed Geb in a similar manner. And I think an aesthetic change makes sense too. He has to actively rule for the first time in centuries and has a chance to finish his business with Nex once and for all, so the change may involve a shift in his role from brooding and reclusive to active leader and a shift in attitude trying to connect to his old traditions and power as he thinks of revenge buried in the past. He looks more tired, more severe, and more concerned with ceremony than the older artwork. I think it's an appropriate change.

Yeah, I remember the concept art shown during the PaizoCon keynote and the Q&A sections, and Geb did look like that in the cover. So it's most likely Geb.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

That's a kickass cover, some really inhuman-looking Vampires right there, are they Hobgoblins or is that a Ghoul in the bottom left.


5 people marked this as a favorite.
KaiBlob1 wrote:
this is probably not the final cover. we didn't see GaG's cover until paizocon, about 4 months before its release. Using that same timeframe we'll probably see the final cover for this around november. cool mock-up though.

But Secrets of Magic's temp cover was basically the same as the final cover, minus the new border and text. Since this was drawn up by Wayne Reynolds, I'm going to err on the side of this being close to done, maybe with another new fancy border.


I hope Geb is statted in the book I want to use as my BBEG for a undead campaign


3 people marked this as a favorite.
belgrath9344 wrote:
I hope Geb is statted in the book I want to use as my BBEG for a undead campaign

I wouldn’t expect a lot of stats for major NPCs outside of APs.


keftiu wrote:
belgrath9344 wrote:
I hope Geb is statted in the book I want to use as my BBEG for a undead campaign
I wouldn’t expect a lot of stats for major NPCs outside of APs.

that would be severally disappointing he looks awesome & his lore is great!


Is anyone else having trouble seeing the enlarged cover image? The link only works for me if I remove the "cdn." from the address.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

^ Yeah. However, even removing the "cdn." doesn't work for me; I have to open it in a private window to see it (& this only works once I've reset/refreshed all cookies for the site...).

--C.


3 people marked this as a favorite.
pixierose wrote:
I want to hug the baby skeleton

And how about the undead kitty?


4 people marked this as a favorite.

Really interested in seeing what they do with this. I quite the the idea of “themed” books like this…hopefully we’ll see them continue along this path and cover dragons, demons/devils, etc.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I love this cover


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Interesting. An adventure about fight Undead instead of being them? Darn. Granted, still an adventure I didn't expect to receive here! So it's a plus.

This page answers a question I hadn't been able to ask during PaizoCon, being which book set this would fall under. I figured it would be a Rulebook, which I'm glad it is, because it still leaves room for a potential LO: Eye of Dread book. Although, I suppose that was likely to still happen regardless, since not every nation is haunted by Undead in that region.


Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Is there going to be any advice on good aligned undead in this book? What kind of deities they'd worship, etc? It's hard to believe the entire undead population of Geb is evil!


so excited for this one
I don't know why undeads are so interesting to me

Dark Archive

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

(yay I can see the cover)

Tastey elf head tartare.


5 people marked this as a favorite.

I like the mural/painting behind the Throne where Urgathoa seems to grant power/knowledge to Geb, if that is Geb sitting on the Throne.
Or possibly being "Ain't no rest for the Wicked, have fun being Ghost"

Also like the Mummy carrying undead cat.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Routamaa wrote:

I like the mural/painting behind the Throne where Urgathoa seems to grant power/knowledge to Geb, if that is Geb sitting on the Throne.

Or possibly being "Ain't no rest for the Wicked, have fun being Ghost"

Also like the Mummy carrying undead cat.

Undead familiars sound fun. My first thought was that this cat might be the 2E version of a Migrus.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Omg this cover is amazing.


I wonder if this is where we'll see blood magic since it had to be cut from secrets of magic? I hope that playable vampires give us quasi immortality with mist form at 0 & coffin restoration. same with playable lich and the soul containers


4 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Routamaa wrote:

I like the mural/painting behind the Throne where Urgathoa seems to grant power/knowledge to Geb, if that is Geb sitting on the Throne.

Or possibly being "Ain't no rest for the Wicked, have fun being Ghost"

Also like the Mummy carrying undead cat.

Fairly certain that the ghostly figure sitting in the chair is in-fact Geb. This art does look different from some of his previous depictions; but his identity is certainly solidified, if by nothing else, by the ankh shaped hieroglyph situated at the crown of the throne, which represents the nation of Geb.

I too found the wall art incredibly interesting, as I don't recall it ever being implied that the Pallid Princess had any correlation to the rise Geb and his nation.

I actually hadn't considered that the incredibly tall woman with that cat may be a mummy. Would make sense, given the scarab on her outfit, representing Osirion. But, she actually struck me more as a lich than a mummy, primarily due to the distinct lack of wrappings. Liches aren't unknown in Osirion, but are certainly less common than say a mummy pharoah. But who knows. We are getting variant types of undead, or at least variant types of liches; such as the one Jason mentioned at PaizoCon that affixes and replaces its body parts with magic items. Perhaps we will see one that is more closely related to mummies and maybe store their origans in canopic jars, which function as their phylactery. Side note: the cat, though not exclusive to them, also made me think that she may be a witch; a rarity among liches.

There are a lot of neat details that stand out to me in the cover and I love it. The possible graveknight on the right. The zombie or gurgeist above them, whose engorged appearances reminds me of Bloatmages and Blood Magic (unlikely, I know, as the practice is mostly confined to Varisia). The seeming difference in social status between the two ghouls (ghasts?). The apparent difference in the intellect of the three skeletons, with the one on the left having lights in its eyes, which may indicate sentience compared to the other two. And, what I'm choosing to believe is possibly a Herecite of Zon-Kuthon holding the head as an offering. Not sure what else they could be, as they don't appear to bare the long ears of the ghouls, and the piercings on their back makes me think of the Midnight Lord.

Anyways, simply cannot wait for this book. I hope we get some more spoilers somewhere between now and its release.


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

I was thinking that the undead holding the platter was a nosferatu. Also, it might be unlikely, but I'd like to think the head is that of a newly-made dullahan being offered up to Geb so that it might be added as a new commanding officer for his undead army.

Contributing Artist

29 people marked this as a favorite.

It's Geb.


5 people marked this as a favorite.
Wayne Reynolds wrote:
It's Geb.

Thanks for confirming that. It's a beautiful cover! :)

Contributing Artist

12 people marked this as a favorite.
Gisher wrote:
Wayne Reynolds wrote:
It's Geb.
Thanks for confirming that. It's a beautiful cover! :)

Thank you. :)


I wonder if this will have what amounts to a PF1 campaign setting book for Geb included? Perhaps not at the same page count, as those were like 64 pages(I think?) but content wise. Book is definitely big enough to fit even 10 pages just on Geb.


i hope new shade monster and as a caracter race too.


10 people marked this as a favorite.
Ly'ualdre wrote:
Routamaa wrote:

I like the mural/painting behind the Throne where Urgathoa seems to grant power/knowledge to Geb, if that is Geb sitting on the Throne.

Or possibly being "Ain't no rest for the Wicked, have fun being Ghost"

Also like the Mummy carrying undead cat.

Fairly certain that the ghostly figure sitting in the chair is in-fact Geb. This art does look different from some of his previous depictions; but his identity is certainly solidified, if by nothing else, by the ankh shaped hieroglyph situated at the crown of the throne, which represents the nation of Geb.

I too found the wall art incredibly interesting, as I don't recall it ever being implied that the Pallid Princess had any correlation to the rise Geb and his nation.

I actually hadn't considered that the incredibly tall woman with that cat may be a mummy. Would make sense, given the scarab on her outfit, representing Osirion. But, she actually struck me more as a lich than a mummy, primarily due to the distinct lack of wrappings. Liches aren't unknown in Osirion, but are certainly less common than say a mummy pharoah. But who knows. We are getting variant types of undead, or at least variant types of liches; such as the one Jason mentioned at PaizoCon that affixes and replaces its body parts with magic items. Perhaps we will see one that is more closely related to mummies and maybe store their origans in canopic jars, which function as their phylactery. Side note: the cat, though not exclusive to them, also made me think that she may be a witch; a rarity among liches.

There are a lot of neat details that stand out to me in the cover and I love it. The possible graveknight on the right. The zombie or gurgeist above them, whose engorged appearances reminds me of Bloatmages and Blood Magic (unlikely, I know, as the practice is mostly confined to Varisia). The seeming difference in social status between the two ghouls (ghasts?). The apparent difference in the intellect of the three skeletons, with the one on the left...

Being one of the few blind players on the boards, I really appreciate this in depth analysis of the cover. It lets me "see" it through your description. Thanks!


Is there some Coco love in this cover?

Silver Crusade

I'ma say no.

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