Pathfinder Lost Omens: Firebrands

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

If I thought I could put an :eyes: emoji on the forums without breaking something, I would.

Just know that I'm hyped as hell.

Seems like support for the five organizations profiled in the Lost Omens Character Guide is going strong; the Pathfinder Society got a book, the Knights of Lastwall got a book, the Magaambya got a full AP, and now the Firebrands get their time in the spotlight. It does make me wonder if some Hellknight goodies are on the agenda for the not-so-distant future...

This is potentially cool! The Firebrands have left me pretty cold so far, but I wasn't a fan of the Knights of Lastwall until their supplement sold me on them, so this has a decent chance to do the same.

Love that the Firebrands are getting the next expansion! I wanna hear about the organization of Chaotic Good swashbuckling rebels!

I wonder how Luis is feeling right now, given how the Firebrands were originally his baby, if I recall correctly.

Love that the Firebrands are getting the next expansion! I wanna hear about the organization of Chaotic Good swashbuckling rebels!

I wonder how Luis is feeling right now, given how the Firebrands were originally his baby, if I recall correctly.

I'd imagine that as the developer of the Lost Omens line, Luis Loza is doing pretty well.

Ezekieru wrote:

Love that the Firebrands are getting the next expansion! I wanna hear about the organization of Chaotic Good swashbuckling rebels!

I wonder how Luis is feeling right now, given how the Firebrands were originally his baby, if I recall correctly.

I'd imagine that as the developer of the Lost Omens line, Luis Loza is doing pretty well.

Oh, for sure! But I bet he's extra ecstatic that this is coming out!

Huzzah!
Liberté! Égalité! Fraternité!

Sasha Laranoa Harving wrote:

Ezekieru wrote:

Love that the Firebrands are getting the next expansion! I wanna hear about the organization of Chaotic Good swashbuckling rebels!

I wonder how Luis is feeling right now, given how the Firebrands were originally his baby, if I recall correctly.

I'd imagine that as the developer of the Lost Omens line, Luis Loza is doing pretty well.

Oh, for sure! But I bet he's extra ecstatic that this is coming out!

I am quite excited! I was most excited to share the Firebrands with our other authors as part of this project. I got to make the initial pitch and write the initial entry for the Firebrands in the Character Guide, but I didn't want to be greedy and hold on to them forever. This was a great opportunity to see what other authors could bring to the organization. It's not an exaggeration when I say that some of the writing in this book ranks among some of my favoring writing that I've had the opportunity to read as a developer for Paizo. There's a lot of fantastic stuff in here and I can't wait to share more about this book with everyone in the coming months!

Ezekieru wrote:

Sasha Laranoa Harving wrote:

Ezekieru wrote:

Love that the Firebrands are getting the next expansion! I wanna hear about the organization of Chaotic Good swashbuckling rebels!

I wonder how Luis is feeling right now, given how the Firebrands were originally his baby, if I recall correctly.

I'd imagine that as the developer of the Lost Omens line, Luis Loza is doing pretty well.

Oh, for sure! But I bet he's extra ecstatic that this is coming out!

I am quite excited! I was most excited to share the Firebrands with our other authors as part of this project. I got to make the initial pitch and write the initial entry for the Firebrands in the Character Guide, but I didn't want to be greedy and hold on to them forever. This was a great opportunity to see what other authors could bring to the organization. It's not an exaggeration when I say that some of the writing in this book ranks among some of my favoring writing that I've had the opportunity to read as a developer for Paizo. There's a lot of fantastic stuff in here and I can't wait to share more about this book with everyone in the coming months!

Okay, *now* I'm hyped.

Treading carefully here, so as to avoid moderator ire - I’m a little bummed that this won’t get a chance to feature abolitionism, as it seemed like one of the big obvious Firebrands causes. Not that there’s any shortage of other tyranny and injustice, but it fits them like a glove, given their Vidric origin and Bellflower allies.

Given that I have a Hell’s Rebels campaign wrapping up in a month, the timing couldn’t be better for us to get a glimpse at how the events of that adventure impacted the rest of the world! I didn’t think there could be a LO book I’d be more excited for than the Travel Guide, but this might be it.

Gotta say, I'm loving the trend of awesome ladies from lost omens legends getting to be centrepiece in gorgeous cover arts!

Treading carefully here, so as to avoid moderator ire - I’m a little bummed that this won’t get a chance to feature abolitionism, as it seemed like one of the big obvious Firebrands causes. Not that there’s any shortage of other tyranny and injustice, but it fits them like a glove, given their Vidric origin and Bellflower allies.

Who knows, maybe they will make exception here since its bit hard to talk about specific factions without touching it.

Either way this book will likely reveal how paizo will handle those parts of settings in the future

But yeah not too surprised that we are getting more faction books, I am curious though if Hellknights also get new book and whether other in the lore factions like red mantis might get some.

Bit disappointed with the overall direction of the 2e LO line. Instead of focusing on useful GM campaign material, the small books mostly contain dry fluff and some situational archetypes. Then the other books focusing on players like Dark Archive get quest seeds and adventures. What's up with that?

Bit disappointed with the overall direction of the 2e LO line. Instead of focusing on useful GM campaign material, the small books mostly contain dry fluff and some situational archetypes. Then the other books focusing on players like Dark Archive get quest seeds and adventures. What's up with that?

1.) The writers of the game have asked that we not refer to non-mechanical text as "fluff". Don't try to debate this point. It has been done before. Just accept it and use different words. Fiction, descriptive text, setting lore, etc. Language is rich.

2.) I don't think that books of setting-rich information and mechanics grounded in said setting that very much provide detailed adventure hooks can be reasonably described as not-useful-for-GMs. Pathfinder 2e is explicitly a setting-tied-to-mechanics game.

3.) The main rulebook line has recently started including mini-adventures to demonstrate the newer and more niche mechanical and setting concepts they introduce. If you want detailed adventures, the Adventure and Adventure Path lines are great. Not every book can serve every need. That's why they have lines.

I mean I think having the setting books be about setting and the rules books be about rules is a no-brainer.

Bit disappointed with the overall direction of the 2e LO line. Instead of focusing on useful GM campaign material, the small books mostly contain dry fluff and some situational archetypes. Then the other books focusing on players like Dark Archive get quest seeds and adventures. What's up with that?

GM campaign material comes out every month.

demlin wrote:

Bit disappointed with the overall direction of the 2e LO line. Instead of focusing on useful GM campaign material, the small books mostly contain dry fluff and some situational archetypes. Then the other books focusing on players like Dark Archive get quest seeds and adventures. What's up with that?

1.) The writers of the game have asked that we not refer to non-mechanical text as "fluff". Don't try to debate this point.

Why debate it, when you can just ignore it? Paizo is getting away from slavery, one hopes this applies to their customers as much as it does their fictional creations.

Why debate it, when you can just ignore it? Paizo is getting away from slavery, one hopes this applies to their customers as much as it does their fictional creations.

That's... um, well, that's definitely a point of view to have; if I've read it correctly, and I hope I'm actually misunderstanding your intent there.

Bit disappointed with the overall direction of the 2e LO line. Instead of focusing on useful GM campaign material, the small books mostly contain dry fluff and some situational archetypes. Then the other books focusing on players like Dark Archive get quest seeds and adventures. What's up with that?

Two things here.

The Lost Omens line is the place for lore. I don’t understand being upset about the setting line focusing on the setting.

2e Rulebooks contain material for both players and GMs, because making a book only a GM has any reason to buy means one person in the average gaming group is buying it, and Paizo wants to move more product than that. Rather than make content most of their fans have no reason to buy, we’ve been getting a mix - something I’m grateful for.

The 1e campaign books had like 30 pages of adventure seeds in them, stat blocks for certain monsters (like Monsters of Myth does), maps of dragon lairs and castles along with the lore. You could open it and insert custom stuff into your campaign in a couple of minutes.

Instead we get things like Knights of Lastwall, the Society Guide, Travel Guide and the Firebrands book, which I suspect will be similar in style. It's much harder to digest (has anyone made it through the Society Guide yet?) and doesn't really have a lot of usable and specific material in it. At most you can pull out a few NPC background descriptions and art.

That's what I mean with "fluff": it has no substance. That's in stark contrast to the bigger books like Mwangi Expanse and Absalom, which are both great.

Bit disappointed with the overall direction of the 2e LO line. Instead of focusing on useful GM campaign material, the small books mostly contain dry fluff and some situational archetypes. Then the other books focusing on players like Dark Archive get quest seeds and adventures. What's up with that?

It sounds like what you're looking for are pre-written adventures and encounters, like the short adventures featured in Dark Archive? Is that right?

I feel like Lost Omens features dozens if not hundreds of plot and adventure hooks in each volume, but those are usually one or two line things like noting that the local hunter has seen a scary and evil creature stalking the nearby woods and is afraid to venture in there until someone finds out what it is. These kind of hooks are there to get the gears turning in a GM's brain and hopefully inspire some fun encounter, adventure, or even campaign ideas. I'm guessing these aren't scratching that itch for you.

Would you (and everyone else here!) find a Lost Omen book that has more encounter maps, short adventures, and the like useful? I don't know if a book that is just adventures is the best fit for this line, but there might be a way to give it the Lost Omen spin, as it were, and make it a book that features content for players and GMs of all kinds, not just 128 pages of adventure.

I think dedicating a couple of pages (8-10 per 135 page book) to some very short encounters is probably a good idea since it sets the material into action and shows how it can be used. We're playing a game after all, right? I'm not asking for setting books that are essentially module/AP material.

The two line adventure seeds as described above are usually too short and "hidden" since they are usually missing the twist that make these things interesting (if that makes sense?). Like adding maybe 3-5 more sentences that describe interesting circumstances and backgrounds would already be good enough to weave that in.

I ran Age of Ashes and used the Katapesh: Dark Markets book on top. I was able to pull out like 20-25 encounters very quickly and these encounters conveyed a lot of the lore in playable material which was easier to use than a traditional Gazetteer.

Instead we get things like Knights of Lastwall, the Society Guide, Travel Guide and the Firebrands book, which I suspect will be similar in style. It's much harder to digest (has anyone made it through the Society Guide yet?) and doesn't really have a lot of usable and specific material in it. At most you can pull out a few NPC background descriptions and art.

That's what I mean with "fluff": it has no substance. That's in stark contrast to the bigger books like Mwangi Expanse and Absalom, which are both great.

I reject this pretty emphatically. Pathfinder's setting is /the/ reason why I'm here, both buying books and talking on these forums, and books like those you're decrying are completely stuffed with info you can use. Knights of Lastwall has detail on Kyonin's internal politics and how Oprak and Belkzen's diplomatic efforts are going, gives new info on certain gods and how their churches interact. The Pathfinder Society Guide has new info on Razmiran. There's tons of nuggets of good info in them.

Ditto for the Travel Guide - a book doesn't need to be for you to be good. Any of those holidays or festivals could be the memorable backdrop for a heist, or a horrific attack, or just a lovely bit of flavorful downtime. Knowing what people eat in different parts of the world means I can describe a local tavern better than "it has beer and mutton, I guess."

Even if I never play a Firebrand character (I don't expect to), I'm excited for new setting information, new character options, and new deities and pantheons. I'm sorry you're unhappy with what's been coming out, but to put down the hard work of others is unnecessary, and to make sweeping judgments about books plenty of other people like is just a little silly.

Would you (and everyone else here!) find a Lost Omen book that has more encounter maps, short adventures, and the like useful? I don't know if a book that is just adventures is the best fit for this line, but there might be a way to give it the Lost Omen spin, as it were, and make it a book that features content for players and GMs of all kinds, not just 128 pages of adventure.

I wouldn't personally like this, no. Pathfinder has hundreds of enemies and hazards I can use to build my own encounters, but the Lost Omens line is where I go for my direct injection of delicious setting lore.

The 1e campaign books had like 30 pages of adventure seeds in them, stat blocks for certain monsters (like Monsters of Myth does), maps of dragon lairs and castles along with the lore. You could open it and insert custom stuff into your campaign in a couple of minutes.

Instead we get things like Knights of Lastwall, the Society Guide, Travel Guide and the Firebrands book, which I suspect will be similar in style. It's much harder to digest (has anyone made it through the Society Guide yet?) and doesn't really have a lot of usable and specific material in it. At most you can pull out a few NPC background descriptions and art.

That's what I mean with "fluff": it has no substance. That's in stark contrast to the bigger books like Mwangi Expanse and Absalom, which are both great.

I've read both the PFS book and Knights of Lastwall. Both are very useful both in terms of lore and in terms rules elements. I literally built my current champion using several options from KOLW. These are books meant for BOTH players and GMs so that everyone can find something useful in them. Being a GM is about more than just maps and encounters after all.

Would you (and everyone else here!) find a Lost Omen book that has more encounter maps, short adventures, and the like useful? I don't know if a book that is just adventures is the best fit for this line, but there might be a way to give it the Lost Omen spin, as it were, and make it a book that features content for players and GMs of all kinds, not just 128 pages of adventure.

I don’t know that there are any pages of past books that I would have cut in favor of adventure material. And I’m not sure I’d care for an adventure book over, say, LO Arcadia. I don’t think i would ever reach for a book of disconnected adventures. And a book of connected adventures might get difficult to work into an existing campaign.

That said, I really enjoyed the adventures in Dark Archive. Adventures are a fun way to feature parts of the setting and make them come alive. Something low stakes/low impact to show off a group or culture could work in the Lost Omens line.

Would you (and everyone else here!) find a Lost Omen book that has more encounter maps, short adventures, and the like useful? I don't know if a book that is just adventures is the best fit for this line, but there might be a way to give it the Lost Omen spin, as it were, and make it a book that features content for players and GMs of all kinds, not just 128 pages of adventure.

Not me. Maybe I'm old school and out of touch with the current market, but I prefer GM and player books to be separate.

Luis wrote:

Would you (and everyone else here!) find a Lost Omen book that has more encounter maps, short adventures, and the like useful? I don't know if a book that is just adventures is the best fit for this line, but there might be a way to give it the Lost Omen spin, as it were, and make it a book that features content for players and GMs of all kinds, not just 128 pages of adventure.

I don’t know that there is any pages of past books that I would have cut in favor of adventure material. And I’m not sure I’d care for an adventure book over, say, LO Arcadia. I don’t think i would ever reach for a book of disconnected adventures. And a book of connected adventures might get difficult to work into an existing campaign.

That said, I really enjoyed the adventures in Dark Archive. Adventures are a fun way to feature parts of the setting and make them come alive. Something low stakes/low impact to show off a group or culture could work in the Lost Omens line.

The first line of your reply really nails it for me - I'm not *opposed* to adventure content in a LO book, but compared to almost any other kind of content (setting info, player options, items, monsters), it's the bottom of the priority list for me.

Would you (and everyone else here!) find a Lost Omen book that has more encounter maps, short adventures, and the like useful? I don't know if a book that is just adventures is the best fit for this line, but there might be a way to give it the Lost Omen spin, as it were, and make it a book that features content for players and GMs of all kinds, not just 128 pages of adventure.

I really, really like keeping setting lore separate from the rules and other mechanics.

As both a player and a GM, it's really useful to have the ideas separate and available for character creation, and for running my own stories on Golarion.

I would resent using up lore pages for mini adventures. I'd rather hear about smaller settlements, interesting NPCs, peculiar temples and shrines for otherwise standard deities. Heck, I'd even prefer illustrative stories about artifacts, relics, and rituals flavored for different LO regions.

Legends, folk-tales, campfire stories. All of these facets of Golarion are a lot more interesting to me than encounters and maps. Describe those encounters as tales, not hard-coded rules/monsters/sites.

I would resent using up lore pages for mini adventures

So same for Dark Archive featuring small adventures?

Dancing Wind wrote:

I would resent using up lore pages for mini adventures

So same for Dark Archive featuring small adventures?

Dark Archive isn't a Lost Omens book.

So same for Dark Archive featuring small adventures?

As keftiu says, Dark Archive is not a setting/Lost Omens book. It is, in fact, a Rulebook.

So, yes, small encounters that use newly-published rules to demonstrate how they actually work seem perfectly appropriate. And they should be as setting-agnostic as they can be under the circumstances (Paizo moving toward a more integrated setting/rules paradigm) so that I can use them in my home-brew world with as little reworking as possible.

Would you (and everyone else here!) find a Lost Omen book that has more encounter maps, short adventures, and the like useful? I don't know if a book that is just adventures is the best fit for this line, but there might be a way to give it the Lost Omen spin, as it were, and make it a book that features content for players and GMs of all kinds, not just 128 pages of adventure.

As I said when a similar discourse happened on the product page for the Travel Guide: the Lost Omens line is the best place for Golarion lore, and if I had it my way the Lost Omens books would be nothing but lore and details about the setting.

Luis Loza wrote:

Would you (and everyone else here!) find a Lost Omen book that has more encounter maps, short adventures, and the like useful? I don't know if a book that is just adventures is the best fit for this line, but there might be a way to give it the Lost Omen spin, as it were, and make it a book that features content for players and GMs of all kinds, not just 128 pages of adventure.

As I said when a similar discourse happened on the product page for the Travel Guide: the Lost Omens line is the best place for Golarion lore, and if I had it my way the Lost Omens books would be nothing but lore and details about the setting.

I don’t even play PF2, and I think this is too radical - spare some thought for the poor new Ancestries! :p

It does make me wonder if some Hellknight goodies are on the agenda for the not-so-distant future...

Hellknights are so 1e though.

willfromamerica wrote:

As I said when a similar discourse happened on the product page for the Travel Guide: the Lost Omens line is the best place for Golarion lore, and if I had it my way the Lost Omens books would be nothing but lore and details about the setting.

I don’t even play PF2, and I think this is too radical - spare some thought for the poor new Ancestries! :p

Okay, fine, the ancestries can stay. Some setting-inspired backgrounds and feats here and there. But I will concede no further!

keftiu wrote:

It does make me wonder if some Hellknight goodies are on the agenda for the not-so-distant future...

Hellknights are so 1e though.

Hellknights were literally in the first batch of non-multiclass Archetypes 2e received; Paizo loves them, as does a good chunk of the fanbase. They aren't going anywhere. They're one of the more iconic, uniquely-Golarion things that Pathfinder has.

Hellknights don't have to be the edgiest thing imaginable, even if a lot of their old lore heavily leans that way for understandable reasons.

The Order of Torrent being restored to some extent and working with the government of Kintargo does help LG Hellknights get into player hands more easily. I also like that Legends gave Toulon Vidoc (Lictor of the Order of the Scourge) is opposed to Abrogail II and is investigating the anti-Mwangi violence conducted by the Order of the Coil as an abuse of what Hellknights stand for. The Order of the Godclaw never stopped having its two LG deities in their pantheon, and the Order of the Pike is pretty inoffensive.

If we don't have LN Champions by the time we get some more Hellknight love, though, people are going to lose their minds.

demlin wrote:

So same for Dark Archive featuring small adventures?

As keftiu says, Dark Archive is not a setting/Lost Omens book. It is, in fact, a Rulebook.

Isn't that just splitting hairs really? Rules can be combined with small adventures to show them in play but a setting can't be shown using the same technique?

Personally I would not expect any adventures in rule books since these are supposed to be setting agnostic, right? Yet here we are and I honestly don't really have anything against it.

By volume, most of a Lost Omens book is already adventure hooks - they don't need to spend 6 pages of that on an adventure and devote dev time to that when they could put more setting stuff in. It's already annoying enough asking players to skip past the adventures in Dark Archive, and I LIKE that they're there (I just would rather they be in back).

Dancing Wind wrote:

demlin wrote:

So same for Dark Archive featuring small adventures?

As keftiu says, Dark Archive is not a setting/Lost Omens book. It is, in fact, a Rulebook.

Isn't that just splitting hairs really? Rules can be combined with small adventures to show them in play but a setting can't be shown using the same technique?

Personally I would not expect any adventures in rule books since these are supposed to be setting agnostic, right? Yet here we are and I honestly don't really have anything against it.

1e rulebooks were setting agnostic. 2e ones generally are not.

While I appreciate the feedback I've seen on the matter of adventure content for Lost Omens (and recognize that I'm the one that asked the question that got the conversation going in the first place), I think it might be time to move the topic to its own thread. I'd love to keep the conversation going, but let's bring back the focus on the Firebrands here.

Here's something that might get people talking: Like with Knights of Lastwall, this book features a number of deity entries that fit with the themes of the organizations. Some of these gods are getting stats for the first time. Who could they be?!

While I appreciate the feedback I've seen on the matter of adventure content for Lost Omens (and recognize that I'm the one that asked the question that got the conversation going in the first place), I think it might be time to move the topic to its own thread. I'd love to keep the conversation going, but let's bring back the focus on the Firebrands here.

Here's something that might get people talking: Like with Knights of Lastwall, this book features a number of deity entries that fit with the themes of the organizations. Some of these gods are getting stats for the first time. Who could they be?!

Oooooh I would love if Pahti Couatl managed to sneak into this one. I want all the couatl deities statted eventually (arcadia book when!) but the goddess of retribution, investigation and rehabilitation feels like one who could have found a following amongst the firebrands!

I will 100% buy this book when it comes out.

Not going to lie, Firebrands are the organization in Golarion that I have the most trouble getting my head around as both a player and as a GM. So in that respect, I expect this book to be very helpful.

While I appreciate the feedback I've seen on the matter of adventure content for Lost Omens (and recognize that I'm the one that asked the question that got the conversation going in the first place), I think it might be time to move the topic to its own thread. I'd love to keep the conversation going, but let's bring back the focus on the Firebrands here.

Here's something that might get people talking: Like with Knights of Lastwall, this book features a number of deity entries that fit with the themes of the organizations. Some of these gods are getting stats for the first time. Who could they be?!

Established gods I would expect to see: Calistria, Cayden Cailean, Desna, and maybe Sarenrae for the Core and Besmara, Chaldira, and Milani for other gods. I am very interested in seeing who else shows up.

While I appreciate the feedback I've seen on the matter of adventure content for Lost Omens (and recognize that I'm the one that asked the question that got the conversation going in the first place), I think it might be time to move the topic to its own thread. I'd love to keep the conversation going, but let's bring back the focus on the Firebrands here.

Here's something that might get people talking: Like with Knights of Lastwall, this book features a number of deity entries that fit with the themes of the organizations. Some of these gods are getting stats for the first time. Who could they be?!

EYES EMOJI

Luis Loza wrote:

While I appreciate the feedback I've seen on the matter of adventure content for Lost Omens (and recognize that I'm the one that asked the question that got the conversation going in the first place), I think it might be time to move the topic to its own thread. I'd love to keep the conversation going, but let's bring back the focus on the Firebrands here.

Here's something that might get people talking: Like with Knights of Lastwall, this book features a number of deity entries that fit with the themes of the organizations. Some of these gods are getting stats for the first time. Who could they be?!

Established gods I would expect to see: Calistria, Cayden Cailean, Desna, and maybe Sarenrae for the Core and Besmara, Chaldira, and Milani for other gods. I am very interested in seeing who else shows up.

Lubaiko?

Was thinking a bit more and I think it's likely Picoperi gets into this one. He's already been brought up in 2e, though not statted, and fits very well into the modus operandi of the firebrands haha

For those who missed todays panel btw, Calistria, Grandmother Spider, Besmara and Arshea are all confirmed for the book!

Here's hoping there's a 2nd level dedication feat for the Firebrands! Everybody else has one.

Here's hoping there's a 2nd level dedication feat for the Firebrands! Everybody else has one.

I would be shocked if there isn't one in this book.