So I recently purchased the RotR anniversary edition, but I'm also seeing all of these supplements to go along with it.
-Pawn Collection
-Item Deck
-Face Cards
-Map Folio
Am I missing any? Those are the 4 I was able to find. Would any of these be deemed "essential?" And if not, which are the most useful? And are any of them a complete and total waste of time and money?
Also, I have the Core Rulebook, Advanced Player's guide, Advanced Race Guide, Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic, Bestiary 1 & 2, Ultimate Equipment, and the Gamemastery Guide. Any other core books or supplements I'll need, or any that you can recommend?
I'm not new to d20 roleplaying, but am still fairly new to Pathfinder, (I've only ever DMed a homebrew adventure through level 10) so any advice before delving headlong into this is much appreciated.
:)
Face cards and item deck are definitely optional. Maps and pawns are optional, but add a lot to the game. The cards are cool in concept, but the items are not comprehensive enough, so you still end up with a lot of items you must make your own cards for anyway. The guides to Varisia and Magnimar can be incredibly useful.Your players will no doubt venture to Magnimar quite often as it is the closest place to buy expensive gear, so you'll really want to be able to flesh it out. We are on book four and are having a great time with this adventure path.
Read the whole book first. Knowing where it's going will save you massive headaches. I'm about to start part six and am already up to 50+ index cards of notes to remember when I start running. Make notes of anything you want to change and have some alternate CRs to swap out if needed. I'm serious, due to the possibility of taking one part in a different sequence, some of the Bad Guys could be too much. On the same vein, some could be too weak if taken later. Read through the monsters and make sure you know how to run them to really test your players. The worst thing you can do is cheat them with a lame run of a BBEG.
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I recently finished my RotR campaign, and the anniversary edition does a great job of fixing some the flaws of the original. You already have everything you need, and all of the other stuff you listed is optional. However, if you really want to go all out the RotR plastic miniature line has some great figures in it!
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The face cards are much better than the item cards. But, besides that there are the minis (mentioned above) and also the bestiary box in general is a good thing too. The players guide to varisia and magnimar are also good, as is the inner sea primer. Don't forget about the free players guide too! I've been prepping to run this starting sometime in the summer and have almost everything ready. I recently got the rune giant "mini" and that's the crown gem on my collection for props to run this AP.
Ah! I almost did forget about the free player's guide! I know that the inner sea campaign setting and bestiary were released also, would they serve any purpose in RotR or is the primer enough?
If your players aren't already familiar with Varisia, have them read the original RotR player's guide. It has a much better introduction to the region than the anniversary edition's.
We started three weeks ago, and have been going well. I've spent some cash on the minis(more than I want to talk about now...), and I sort-of wish I had bought the Bestiary Box instead and just worked with those minis instead, to save a little cash, and for re-useability in other campaigns.
I have access to a Crit Deck, and could've bought the map folios, but instead I bought one of those huge easel-sized sheets of Graph Paper and just drew the maps on that with markers from Staples. $20-ish for 50+ maps for combat. I think it's a slightly better investment.
Players Guide pdf is available for free. Also check out the RotR sub forum here...
And before the new addition parts of the original 3.5 AP were converted by fans to PF . So if you're looking for tweaked or scaled statblocks for an NPC or encounter search the sub forum or d20pfsrd.
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I have one of those leather maps that you can use wet erase markers on I have used it for the last 10 years, never had to replaced it, had to replace the markers but never the map. It has squares on one side and hexes on the other. It was the best $30 I have ever spent on gaming.
I imagine it was vinyl.
I've spent some cash on the minis(more than I want to talk about now...)
Miniatures are always so tempting, but I always regret buying them also. I probably have multiple hundreds of dollars worth of them collecting dust in my closet. My main problem is that I don't have many duplicates so I can't make very good use of them.
I am tempted to get some of the more major monsters in the campaign. The aforementioned Rune Giant looks pretty cool. Can anyone tell me if the Bestiary Box or RotR Pawn Collection has large sized paper miniatures? Or are they all on a medium scale?
I have plastic minis, paper minis (the ones you buy the pdf of and then print and cut yourself) and the pawns. The pawns are too tall to match the other minis on the table, and so I dislike using them. I like the paper minis line because they're cheap, and just take a bit of time to make. And if you make them out of decent cardstock then they'll last you a very long time. Also, once you get the hang of it, you can make custom paper minis with a photo editing program of your choice.
Please note the difference between the paper minis and the pawns series.
Yeah, I just looked into that. Sorry, still a bit of a newbie to the whole Pathfinder thing. Do the Paper mini's also have printable bases? Or would I have to purchase bases myself?
If you plan on using miniatures in your game, the RotR Pawn collection is excellent if you want miniatures that actually represent the artwork in the book, and are already printed on heavy cardstock. The pawn collection doesn't cover everything though - notable exclusions are a couple of named characters in The Catacombs of Wrath. You can easily fill in the gaps if you pick up the Bestiary Pawn box - it includes everything in Bestiary 1, and multiples of some monsters. It also comes with bases, which aren't included if you just get the RotR pawns.
The pawns come in small, medium, large and huge sizes, I think. There are bases to match, except in the case of tiny creatures.
Also, I second getting at least the Player Companion for Varisia. It's one of the best ones they've put out. Lots of flavor and background. Magnimar might not be entirely necessary, it's more useful for Shattered Star though.
Yeah, I just looked into that. Sorry, still a bit of a newbie to the whole Pathfinder thing. Do the Paper mini's also have printable bases? Or would I have to purchase bases myself?
Paper minis come with printable paper bases.
RotRL pawns do not come with plastic bases, they have to be purchased separately (or you can use the ones that come with the Bestiary Box if you have that.)