Pathfinder Dark Archive

4.60/5 (based on 19 ratings)
Pathfinder Dark Archive
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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:

[Solution to Additional Web Content - click to reveal]

The Lost Pages were discovered to lead to the following file:

ISBN-13: 978-1-64078-443-7

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:

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

Available Formats

Pathfinder Dark Archive is also available as:

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.

PZO2111


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4.60/5 (based on 19 ratings)

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Puts magic back into magic; should be the gold standard for RPG supplements

5/5

What a wonderful book!

It really puts magic back into magic, and not only when it comes to spellcasting. Listing my favorite things would be quite spoilerous, but please just know that I appreciate this approach to things like curses, beasts, feats, and everything else greatly.

This is the best book for Pathfinder, including all books for 1st edition, period. At least to my mind. Well done, wonderful job.

And those adventures - frankly, these are better than some (many?) standalone modules and AP chapters. There, I said it. Even the first one is already more complex, interesting and immersive, than most of "avoid traps and then kill them all" adventures.

The layout is really cool, but, even though at first I liked the idea, putting adventures and other spoilerey things (curses?) in the middle of the book is not very practical. I'd love to maybe try and cut some pages from the pdf and then show it to my players to let them see if there's something they'd like to use, and it would be much easier if all those things were compiled at the end of the book. I do think that more theme-focused approach to layout is cool, and I like it as well when I make stuff, but maybe just putting a simple blurb of an adventure at the end of each chapter with a reference to the page in the GM's part would be enough?

And, very last thing - I am all for including such short and "simple" adventures in literally every supplement. Please keep doing that. BUT, would it be possible to supplement them with a compilation of layered maps, like APs? Those maps are gorgeous (again - better than some AP maps), but I really hate to have immersion-breaking notes put on my maps in Foundry.
Quite frankly, in this day and age, the best thing to do would be probably to include a pack of high-resolution png files of the maps. People who like to print them could still do that, while VTT users would appreciate that.

Overall, this book is an absolute steal and almost a golden standard for how RPG supplements should look like. It's wonderful. It's completely my jam. And including short adventures using themes presented should become a standard not only for Paizo, but the whole industry.

Keep it up! I'm glad I'm playing Pathfinder 2e!


Good Book, Terrible website.

4/5

The contents of the book are great 5 stars. Having there be purchasing problems with every new release is very poor. So 5 stars for the book -1 star for the poor website.


A true treasure trove

5/5

The Dark Archive is a book full of story ideas. Every item, archetype, template and feat can serve as a potential catalyst for plot in your game. Two excellently designed classes to top it off and you have an excellent product.

The only criticism I have is that player and GM options could do with some more separation, but it is not a huge problem.




Varied content, useful for GMs and players.

4/5

Only criticism is I would have preferred that the content be organized by subject. The latter half of the book seems to be organized adventure->feats->items, adventure->feats->items, adventure->feats->items, adventure->feats->items, adventure->feats->items, adventure->feats->items, which makes it annoying to try and look up exactly what you're trying to find.


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Are there any plans for a Dark Archive spell deck to be made in the future?

Dark Archive

5 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

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.

Verdant Wheel

Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

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.

Grand Archive

1 person marked this as a favorite.
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.

Verdant Wheel

Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
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.

Grand Archive

1 person marked this as a favorite.
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.

Pathfinder Spell Cards : Rage of Elements

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... >_>

Director of Marketing

1 person marked this as a favorite.
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.

We can only discuss products that have been announced. Thank you for your request.


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.

Dark Archive

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
DemonicDem wrote:
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


CorvusMask wrote:
DemonicDem wrote:
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...

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