Heroes of the East III

[Little Red Goblin Games]

Story
So I have a story. Last night I (Scott) got to do a full playtest game of Heroes of the East III. I wrote a LOT of the content for the book and I've been doing design/editing on it for like... 3 months. Sure the were other quick combats and our designers were playtesting stuff but last night was magical. We played a game that FELT like a wuxia/samurai film. There were exotic martial art techniques, honorable youxia, yamabushi putting the hurt on chaotic creatures, and bad dubbing (well... in my mind at least). It was hands down one of the best experiences I had playing pathfinder to date.

What's In It
We here at Little Red believe you should know EXACTLY what your buying. To that end, ask ANY question you want in this thread. We'll try to answer everything for you guys without actually giving mechanics and whatnot.

~Styles~ x4

Ninjitsu

Southern Scorpion Style Kung Fu

Jyoti Kun Do (JKD)

Wudang Sword

~Archetypes~ x9

Sorcerous Ninja (Ninja)

Oniwaban (Ninja)

Honorable Shinobi (Ninja)

Iga Ninja (Ninja)

Street Fighter (Monk)

Onna-bugeisha (Samurai)

Hwarang (Samurai)

Sikh Warrior (Fighter)

Khan (Barbarian)

~Prestige Classes~ x2

Dervish

Youxia

~Base Classes~ x2

Yamabushi

Shinshoku

Feats & Magic Items:

We are also including a few supplemental feats, a handful of new magic items (mostly wuxia themed weapons) but I don't want to give you guys bad info. We are toying with our page count at the moment to make sure you guys get the most bang for you buck!

Technical Details
We are launching on the evening of Saturday June 15th (we are AZ time so please keep in mind). The book will be about 26 pages long and will retail for $4.99. It's going to be submitted to all sites at once (Paizo, DriveThru, d20PFSRD, and IndyPress) but only DriveThru puts them up automatically.

The Team
We had Scott Gladstein on writing (Legendary Levels, Heroes of the East I&II, Tome of Ingenuity, Heroes of the West, Tome of Leaf & Thorn, etc) with contributions from Dayton Johnson. Editing was done by Caleb Aylsworth, Jeremiah Zerby, and Christina Johnson. Caleb, Zerby, Dayton, and Scott all playtested the heck out of this! (We can show you our combat logs if you'd like :D) Erin Radigan Hicks & Viking on artwork!

Pre-Release Feedback:

I've been playtesting the s&%~ out of the street fighter with adaptive style and tried to post on your google doc but I'm having a hard time logging in to it. So I'll just tell you here, if you don't mind. The combo is awesome, I've used it as an npc antagonist. He beat the s+%& out of my pc's the first time they met, the second time was much like the first. However the third time the pc's face him, the parties monk got the better of him and it was one of the most fulfilling combats I've ever been a part of. It was like watching a movie. I hope you do not nerf the archetype or the martial arts style.

Arkady Zelenka actually helped with some playtesting and we wanted to share with you guys his feedback!

Seriously you guys. This is one of our best books to date. AWESOME artwork, amazing content, and something (we hope) you'll use at your table.

Happy Gaming!
Red

[Distant Scholar]

Oniwaban? Not the more general onmitsu?

[Little Red Goblin Games]

Indeed. We are doing it as more the "spy" type ninja. However it has a unique mechanic that allows it to appear as it's target.

[Arkady Zelenka]

This book kicks ass, I actually started a secondary campaign based off this book with the other two and King of the Ring.
Thanks for giving me the chance to playtest this, the street fighter is my favorite.

[Chris Zank]

Are there any plans to compile Heroes of the East 1,2,3 into one big book. That could be pretty sweet. Or is the plan to stay strictly pdf? I haven't purchased any of these pdfs in hopes it would go to print. I was curious.

[Little Red Goblin Games]

We are currently working with drivethru on print stuff.My eventual plans would be to combine 1,2,3 and our eastern setting together in a print book (or maybe 1,2,3).

[Chris Zank]

Yes, that is exactly what I would be looking for. Something that combines all of the great pdfs into one solid book. I would pick that up for sure.

Also very excited about the Equinox setting coming out at the end of the month. The ideas sounds interesting.

[Little Red Goblin Games]

It's a lot of fun. We have one of our in house artist's on it and I love the artwork she is doing for it.

The book is still a month or two off. We are dealing with compression issues with InDesign (the default PDF is like 300 DPI while printing is 500 DPI). We have another test PDF out to see if our new export presets render the book correctly. Once that happens we can start rolling out print books. It's been on our plate for a while but we wanted to make our backers on Kickstarter for Necropunk got their product in a timely fashion before we moved on to another thing.

We will defiantly be doing a group deal for our Heroes of the East line (and we will probably toss in Heroes of the West as well).

[Arkady Zelenka]

I'm still waiting for King of the Ring 2. A compilation would be cool, except I already have the pdf's so it wouldn't really matter to me.

[Little Red Goblin Games]

I'll talk with the writer about a KoR II. I am not sure if he had plans for it but I'm sure we would be happy to write it.

[Chris Zank]

King of the Ring II would be great too. I loved the first one.

[Little Red Goblin Games]

Just spoke with Zerby. He has a few ideas bumping around in his head. He'll do a write up for me by the end of next Tuesday on a new King of the Ring book. If the pitch is good we'll run with it. I wouldn't expect to see it until the end of the summer however.

[Arkady Zelenka]

That is alright by me, I have enough material with your other books to last a few months. I think I could wait until the end of the summer for KoR 2. If you need help with that one, I'd be more than happy to trade my step-kids for a chance at that one.

[Little Red Goblin Games]

Oh! My bad. We also have the warrior monk yamabushi archetype (forgot that because it was tucked away under the yamabushi entry)!

[Little Red Goblin Games]

Uploading here after our head editor does a final read through (30 min or so).

[Little Red Goblin Games]

Heroes of the East III now live on DriveThruRPG.

[Little Red Goblin Games]

The Golem's got it! Now up on Paizo.com!

[Arkady Zelenka]

I have to wait to buy this, my wife told me I have to take it easy with the credit card spending. I'll try to wrangle it by the end of the week.

[Little Red Goblin Games]

We actually got quite a few sales on this one. All reactions have been very positive so far. We'd love a review. If you are willing please shoot us a private message and we will hook you up with a free PDF.
Please keep in mind that we like honest opinions. A glowing review is nice but only if we've earned it :-)

[Little Red Goblin Games]

I just realized we have never posted ANY of our combat logs.
We do a LOT of playtesting here at LRGG. So I just grabbed one and posted it up here. Figured you guys would enjoy it.
It's very important to us that things are balanced and I'd like to give you guys a little insight into how we test. This was just one of like 8 playtests we did at LRGG for HoE III.

---

Keep in mind that the following are scratch notes recorded from one of our late stage test combats (they are written shorthand). Characters were not overly optimized for this particular playtest. It should be noted that a number of our "break the system" tests resulted in higher damage outputs and ACs. It was at 10th level with 20 point buy and 10th level starting gold (not all spent in all cases). Particularly we were looking at early levels for the youxia & wunkong prestige classes & mid/late level balanced for yamabushi and shinshoku. In both instances characters were given one min prep time prior to combat.

Characters:

Yamabushi: Built with high str/wis to ensure max damage. Complimented by feats. Preps with lead blades on himself or others. Race: Vanara

Shinshoku: Focused on kami and making it HURT other things. Likes to keep it invisible when possible. Less spellcasting, more companion. Race: Human

Youxia/Monk: Low level youxia class feature testing. Race: Human

Wukong/Monk: Putting the hurt on with multiple attacks. Race: Vanara

Combat 1:

Shinshoku shoots lightning 30dmgs (10d6)+ TRex saves, (15 damages)
TRex bites the heck out of the shinshoku, and grabs.
Yamabushi lunges with naginata +15 and +7 hits with both. Deals 1d8 + 15 (2d6 + 15 w/ lead blades)
21 and 21 damages.
Wukong Spring attacks around T-Rex, stunning fists T rex. T-rex fails save DC (21) (rolled 5)
Youxia spring attacks, running behind t-rex, spends a ki point and power attacks for 25 damage.
Shinshoku kami 5ft steps forward Full attacks with 2 claws, deals 27 damage.
TRex is stunned, drops the Shinshoku
Yamabushi misses twice from terrible dice rolls.
Wukong: Spends 1 ki point, makes 5 attacks from flurry of blows with quarterstaff.
36, 28, 20, 29, 12 hits 3 times. 1d6+15 for each. Deals 56 damage.

Combat 1 was vs a single T rex. We knew we could kick it's butt.
We really just wanted to warm up and test damage output and AC values so we had some numbers to look at. We found that around this level 20-40 damage was a pretty solid range depending on a number of factors (25 being somewhere around the norm). Seeing mid 20s made us happy.

Combat 2:

Same Group vs 4 succubi
Shinshoku, flame strikes, deals 12 damage after resistance and successful reflex save.
Kami smites same target moves forward 30 ft.
Yamabushi: Moves forward, power attacks succubus, 27 to hit, (23 damages)
Wukong moves to attack succubus, misses.
Youxia: Activates quick runner's shirt and boots of speed moves 50 feet to succubus, makes 5 attacks hits 2, deals 36 damage over the both of them.
Succubi: #1 moves to flank hits exactly due to flanking. Deals 2 damage.
#2 casts vampiric touch defensively, makes a touch attack. Hits touch AC. Deals 23 damage.
#4 follows the suit of number 2, misses touch ac.
#3 casts dominate person on the yamabushi (Yamabushi fails. Gets dominated)

Shinsoku: Casts telekinetic charge on the kami, who spends a swift fo smite #3. Takes takes an immediate action to attack, then full attacks.
Yamabushi: Natural 20's on its naginata attack. 1d8+20 x 4 = 96 damage, dead. [Design note: +20 results from high strength and x2 wis because creature is a chaotic outsider]
Wukong Ki point, full round power attacks. hits 3 out of 5, 49 damages total.
Youxia hits 4 out of 5 deals 61 damages
Succubi: #1 dominated Youxia #3 hits mirror image.
Shinshoku: Kami attacks #3 deals 31 damage, due to extra damage from evil outsider.
Takes it out.

This 2nd fight was to test the party against multiple opponents. We also wanted to see how some of the builds fared against their favored enemies.
As you can see by that crit the Yamabushi PUNISHES the chaotic creatures like a paladin should punish evil creatures (and a x4 crit doesn't hurt!).

---
Gear
Also, we generally use mild gear because we are really looking to showcase and examine the class features/resulting stats rather than abilities from gear.

PrCs
Most often for prestige classes we test with "vanilla" (non-archetyped) classes that can gain easy entry to the class. For example: Our wukong was a monk with a few levels in wukong with no archetype.

Races
In terms of races we use fitting ones. This time we used humans for the youxia & shinshoku while we used vanara for the wukong (prerequisite) & yamabushi (good stats for it). We included Vanara in this playtest because we are utilizing them extensively in an eastern setting we are developing.

[Little Red Goblin Games]

Just a heads up, we did a quick update on a few misprints. Should be up in a day or so (It's up on DriveThru).