From the fringes, the unknown beckons. Pathfinder Dark Archive contains secrets that any player or GM can use to reveal the paranormal lurking in their Pathfinder games! This spine-tinglingly secretive 224-page hardcover rulebook presents two new character classes perfect for delving into the unexplained: Unleash the untold power of your mind as the psychic or leverage supernatural secrets and mystic implements as the thaumaturge!
Beyond these new classes, eight secret case files each provide player options, GM tools, and lore into a different paranormal topic, including:
Strange cryptids glimpsed in the night, gear to track them, and the powers you might gain by surviving an encounter with one
Cults and esoteric belief, with apocryphal divine magic and the secret of becoming a living vessel for an eldritch being
Temporal anomalies, with archetypes that skim along the surface of time and a new mystery for oracles unbound from causality
Each file concludes with a short adventure to immerse players in the paranormal, spanning across Golarion—play all eight to uncover the inexplicable phenomena of the Age of Lost Omens!
Written by: James Case, Mikhail Rekun, Mark Seifter, Rigby Bendele, Logan Bonner, Dan Cascone, Jessica Catalan, Banana Chan, Kay Hashimoto, Sen.H.H.S., Patrick Hurley, Joshua Kim, Avi Kool, Daniel Kwan, Kendra Leigh Speedling, Luis Loza, Ron Lundeen, Liane Merciel, Jacob W. Michaels, Andrew Mullen, Quinn Murphy, K. Tessa Newton, Patrick Renie, Michael Sayre, Shay Snow, Alex Speidel, Solomon St. John, Geoffrey Suthers, Ruvaid Virk, Jabari Weathers, and Isis Wozniakowska
[Additional Web Content spoiler - click to reveal]
The following pages were distributed online after the release of Dark Archive for readers to decipher themselves. You can find them here:
The adventures contained within this rulebook, the "Dark Archive Case Files," are sanctioned for use in Pathfinder Society Organized Play. The rules for running these Adventures and Chronicle Sheets are available as a free download (923 KB PDF).
Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:
Both Thaumaturge and Psychic are really cool. The flavor text is awesome. Some of the adventures are hit or miss, but it’s cool that they provide short adventure ideas that can be i inserted into any campaign as a side plot.
Excellent game content and the adventure material and flavor is great as well
Product- Pathfinder Dark Archive
System- Pathfinder 2nd Ed
Producer- Paizo
Price- $41.99
TL; DR-New toys and adventures for things that go bump in the night. 97%
Basics- What goes bump in the night? Dark Archive focuses on all the stuff that gets thrown into your average Halloween party. It covers psychics, occult inquisitors called thaumaturges, archetypes, feats, spells, and a TON of adventures. Let’s dig in to this book!
Mechanics or Crunch- I love what’s here, but there are small problems that hurt things overall. The two new classes fit within the world of wizards, warriors, and clerics as now we have a mind wizard and an occult paladin. There may be a slight bit of power creep as these might be a bit better than the core classes, but it’s nothing absolutely game breaking. Feat, spell, and archetypes all fit solidly there as well. Interestingly enough, this book has almost MORE for the GM than the players. There are adventures and ways to upgrade monsters to add the occult feel like cryptids and secret societies. Aside from a bit of power creep, the other thing that I feel hurts this is the lack of inclusion into Pathfinder Society. PFS is the majority of the way I play an while I LOVE that adventures are included, new options that you only get when weird stuff happens to you are not given as options in the PFS documenting materials. What is here is well done, but balance and lack of inclusion into Paizo’s flagship gaming market hurt the book a bit. 4.75/5
Theme or Fluff- As a lover of ghost stories and campfire monsters, this book calls to me. I love the flavor here and the fact that crunch is being tied deeper into story. The new ways to add things like cults and monsters also helps. What’s here is amazing. I am slightly sad I didn't see much Lovecraft lore here. We can make it, but I still want my crazy horrors from beyond time and space to make more of an appearance in a book where time magic and feats get put into the system. Couple that with adventures that GMs can drop in instantly, this is a solid book on the Pathfinder occult. 4.9/5
Execution- This is a physical book and a PDF by Paizo, so I’m almost automatically going to love it. Solid layout, fonts, formats, hyperlinks make this a great book and a breeze to read. My one minor issue is this is a book with almost as many pages for the GM as the players. It would be nice to have a PDF of the maps and pictures that I can show to the players like they do with their adventure paths. But, if my criticism is that I want more, that's a good place to be in production. 4.9/5
Summary- I love me some crazy stuff, so I love me this book. I listen to too many podcasts about monsters, skepticism regarding monsters, and ghost stories to pass this book up. It has great additions to the system that might be a touch overpowered compared to things before. It has fun adventures with some amazing options that I wish PFS players could get their hands on. It has solid production, but a lack of web enhancements might hold it back a bit. What’s here is good, but I just want more ways to get at it. 97%
For anyone that is thinking of getting a non-mint copy of this. I thought I would share my thoughts, this is not a true review as I am only going to talk about the non-mint condition.
This like Book of the Dead has no issues I can find on it, despite it saying non-mint. I got vault of treasures new as part of the subscription and it seems to be in the same shape as them. Got 2 other non-mint and those had minor issues on them, so if you are on a budget and want to get this book the non-mint is worth it.
Not sure if this is the right place to ask this but will there be spell cards for the Dark Archive spells? I use the spell cards to organize a literal "spellbook" for my prepared casters and there are enough DA spells that I'm definitely going to feel the gap. Would love to buy the spell cards for this book like I did for APG and SoM.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Magis wrote:
Not sure if this is the right place to ask this but will there be spell cards for the Dark Archive spells? I use the spell cards to organize a literal "spellbook" for my prepared casters and there are enough DA spells that I'm definitely going to feel the gap. Would love to buy the spell cards for this book like I did for APG and SoM.
They probably need a minimum amount of cards in a set to be worth the printing runs, and there might not be enough spells in Dark Archives. We could get a "grab bag" set that combine Book of the Dead, Dark Archive, and a couple other Core books down the line, when totalling them all would make a more interesting number of cards?
To note:
APG was 149 spells.
Secrets of Magic was 205 spells.
Book of the Dead was 4 spells.
Dark Archives was 69 spells.
Treasure Vault was 1 spell.
So right now, that's 74 "other sources" spells. Still only about half of what APG had.
Not sure if this is the right place to ask this but will there be spell cards for the Dark Archive spells? I use the spell cards to organize a literal "spellbook" for my prepared casters and there are enough DA spells that I'm definitely going to feel the gap. Would love to buy the spell cards for this book like I did for APG and SoM.
They probably need a minimum amount of cards in a set to be worth the printing runs, and there might not be enough spells in Dark Archives. We could get a "grab bag" set that combine Book of the Dead, Dark Archive, and a couple other Core books down the line, when totalling them all would make a more interesting number of cards?
To note:
APG was 149 spells.
Secrets of Magic was 205 spells.
Book of the Dead was 4 spells.
Dark Archives was 69 spells.
Treasure Vault was 1 spell.
So right now, that's 74 "other sources" spells. Still only about half of what APG had.
It's a fair point, but missing 69 spells is a rather sizeable chunk of missing cards. You're right though that it's still a small threshold compared to the others... Perhaps Rage of Elements will add enough to give us at least the APG's threshold and a combined deck will become viable? Unfortunately the nature of the spell cards is that without all the spells represented, the cards inherent value is reduced and creates an uneven experience.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Magis wrote:
Elfteiroh wrote:
Magis wrote:
Not sure if this is the right place to ask this but will there be spell cards for the Dark Archive spells? I use the spell cards to organize a literal "spellbook" for my prepared casters and there are enough DA spells that I'm definitely going to feel the gap. Would love to buy the spell cards for this book like I did for APG and SoM.
They probably need a minimum amount of cards in a set to be worth the printing runs, and there might not be enough spells in Dark Archives. We could get a "grab bag" set that combine Book of the Dead, Dark Archive, and a couple other Core books down the line, when totalling them all would make a more interesting number of cards?
To note:
APG was 149 spells.
Secrets of Magic was 205 spells.
Book of the Dead was 4 spells.
Dark Archives was 69 spells.
Treasure Vault was 1 spell.
So right now, that's 74 "other sources" spells. Still only about half of what APG had.
It's a fair point, but missing 69 spells is a rather sizeable chunk of missing cards. You're right though that it's still a small threshold compared to the others... Perhaps Rage of Elements will add enough to give us at least the APG's threshold and a combined deck will become viable? Unfortunately the nature of the spell cards is that without all the spells represented, the cards inherent value is reduced and creates an uneven experience.
Actually, they have their own set of 240 cards. A set of spells big enugh to be worth a full package by itself.
They confirmed that there would be about 24 pages of spells, 4 pages for each elements. I would guess about between 80 and 100 new spells. That's smaller than the previous minimum set by the APG, but that box had 225 spell cards, which is actually smaller than the RoE one. So either the spells are bigger and many need to cards to fit, or they have a much wider spread across the traditions (like we get more card duplications because they are in 3 or 4 traditions)...
Hum... Now I have the itch to look at the "other sources" numbers I got here and extrapolate the amount of card it would need based on tradition spread... >_>
Not sure if this is the right place to ask this but will there be spell cards for the Dark Archive spells? I use the spell cards to organize a literal "spellbook" for my prepared casters and there are enough DA spells that I'm definitely going to feel the gap. Would love to buy the spell cards for this book like I did for APG and SoM.
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I doubt the 9th Case File will get an errata, but there is only a maximum of 32 research points available, so is unable to ever pass the 35 point Research Threshold, making the Truth ending impossible.
I doubt the 9th Case File will get an errata, but there is only a maximum of 32 research points available, so is unable to ever pass the 35 point Research Threshold, making the Truth ending impossible.
I think its fairly obvious fix in that case though, you get all of them, you get enough for the final threshold
I doubt the 9th Case File will get an errata, but there is only a maximum of 32 research points available, so is unable to ever pass the 35 point Research Threshold, making the Truth ending impossible.
I think its fairly obvious fix in that case though, you get all of them, you get enough for the final threshold
yeah but it took some time to realize it was the mistake of the adventure and not me miscounting.
Another thing, Clone Mirrors is out of line for a level 6 Hazard. Did you accidentally combine two hazards together in the editing process?
In the adventure it appears in, it works because its a third party in another fight, but it is as powerful as two level 6 hazards as is, making its current power level more like level 8...