| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
To summarize:
Battlecry! includes a new giant-related Ancestry, the Jotunborn.
The Andoran-Cheliax War is happening, and getting both an Adventure Path (Hellbreakers) and a novel (Operation Hellmouth).
Also Commanders will be able to do cool things with Troops now, which also feature in what appears to be some kind of massed combat 'thing' I suspect it's similar to siege weapons-- they've been setup to function in normal combat encounters, but if you want to have armies clash, you use a bunch of troops and presumably have them duke it out on a battlemap.
That's still a little bit of conjecture, but it appears to be the picture they're painting.
Love the art. Still not the biggest fan of the title but who cares. Gimme big bois.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Tell me more about Hellbreakers PLEASE
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I wonder if those are our iconics, an orc commander and a jotunblooded guardian.
Yup, they're on the cover.
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I find it interesting that Pathfinder's essentially following its predecessor's path of not making giants themselves a playable ancestry (Starfinder 1e being a unique exception), but a giant-lite one with weird skin: goliaths have their lithoderms (bony lumps on the skin that when combined with their gray and black skin tones gave them a literally craggy appearance, something that was disappointingly neglected as the editions rolled on to make them more conventionally attractive <_<) and now jotunborn will have their "weavings" with silk literally embroidered into their skin.
I find it interesting that Pathfinder's essentially following its predecessor's path of not making giants themselves a playable ancestry (Starfinder 1e being a unique exception), but a giant-lite one with weird skin: goliaths have their lithoderms (bony lumps on the skin that when combined with their gray and black skin tones gave them a literally craggy appearance, something that was disappointingly neglected as the editions rolled on to make them more conventionally attractive <_<) and now jotunborn will have their "weavings" with silk literally embroidered into their skin.
The starfinder setting it is a bit easier to deal with very big players but I can see them being a bit more hesitant for this to be a thing but with them finally letting large ancestries in howl of the wild I am not too surprised that jotunborn is a thing now. Given all the magic around and giants being not uncommon in a ton of areas some hybrids was bound to show up sooner or later.
I am so happy we are getting Jotunborn!!! I love giantfolk
I do think they look a little silly but like who cares my characters can look however I want them to, no one I know is a lore stickler to that extent
I have been using orc ancestry to represent characters with giant blood, I am excited to see the Jotunborn mechanics.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I imagine (/hope?) we'll get a good chunk of variety in the jotunborn heritages to represent many takes on a giant ancestry. Who knows though, maybe they will be only slight variations on what we see, for the record I love the way they look from all the art in the article.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I find it interesting that Pathfinder's essentially following its predecessor's path of not making giants themselves a playable ancestry (Starfinder 1e being a unique exception), but a giant-lite one with weird skin: goliaths have their lithoderms (bony lumps on the skin that when combined with their gray and black skin tones gave them a literally craggy appearance, something that was disappointingly neglected as the editions rolled on to make them more conventionally attractive <_<) and now jotunborn will have their "weavings" with silk literally embroidered into their skin.
I think its that Giants are generally designed in such a way as to emphasize natural power (like other monsters) rather than the ancestry-interchangeable class stuff. E.g. the storm giants are all storm power themed, but a player one could do virtually anything powers-wise, and ancestry feats aren't given a high enough power budget to dominate a build that way generally.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The iconic guardian being two handed makes me smile. That two hander quasi shield raise was one of my favorite feats from the playtest guardian.
I find it interesting that Pathfinder's essentially following its predecessor's path of not making giants themselves a playable ancestry (Starfinder 1e being a unique exception), but a giant-lite one with weird skin: goliaths have their lithoderms (bony lumps on the skin that when combined with their gray and black skin tones gave them a literally craggy appearance, something that was disappointingly neglected as the editions rolled on to make them more conventionally attractive <_<) and now jotunborn will have their "weavings" with silk literally embroidered into their skin.I think its that Giants are generally designed in such a way as to emphasize natural power (like other monsters) rather than the ancestry-interchangeable class stuff. E.g. the storm giants are all storm power themed, but a player one could do virtually anything powers-wise, and ancestry feats aren't given a high enough power budget to dominate a build that way generally.
I wouldn't expect us to ever get the Huge giants as playable. Even Large to Tiny is kinda pushing playability.
But you're right, even most of the Large giants can't really fit within the power budget of an Ancestry. You really can't fill the fantasy of being a Frost Giant or a Fire Giant without an appropriate damage immunity, and that doesn't really fly for balanced play. The Construct and Undead options get away with just having better defenses against the stuff they should be immune to, but that might just not work in this case. (My old 3.5 Monster Manual, which has PC stats for a lot of monsters, only includes them Hill and Stone Giants, and even those both have a +4 level adjustments, which is some arcane crap I don't feel like trying to explain, but it means it's hard to make those work as PCs)Up to now I figured at best we'd get some kind of Half-Giant Heritage, with Lineage Feats related to specific Giant varieties, but opening the possibility of the offspring of a Storm Giant and a Halfling kinda opens its own can of worms, logistically.
Creative Director
|
| 11 people marked this as a favorite. |
Tell me more about Hellbreakers PLEASE
We're quite a ways out from being ready to say anything more about this Adventure Path. We still haven't announced the one that comes BEFORE Hellbreakers, for example. I'm not sure when we'll be saying more about both of these, but I expect we'll be doing more push on the previous one before we even start talking more about Hellbreakers. So for now, you'll need to wait a few months at minimum (maybe more) before we tell anyone more about Hellbreakers.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Looking good. :) I'm very much looking forward to more Pathfinder novels.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I find it interesting that Pathfinder's essentially following its predecessor's path of not making giants themselves a playable ancestry (Starfinder 1e being a unique exception), but a giant-lite one with weird skin: goliaths have their lithoderms (bony lumps on the skin that when combined with their gray and black skin tones gave them a literally craggy appearance, something that was disappointingly neglected as the editions rolled on to make them more conventionally attractive <_<) and now jotunborn will have their "weavings" with silk literally embroidered into their skin.I think its that Giants are generally designed in such a way as to emphasize natural power (like other monsters) rather than the ancestry-interchangeable class stuff. E.g. the storm giants are all storm power themed, but a player one could do virtually anything powers-wise, and ancestry feats aren't given a high enough power budget to dominate a build that way generally.
I wouldn't expect us to ever get the Huge giants as playable. Even Large to Tiny is kinda pushing playability.
But you're right, even most of the Large giants can't really fit within the power budget of an Ancestry. You really can't fill the fantasy of being a Frost Giant or a Fire Giant without an appropriate damage immunity, and that doesn't really fly for balanced play. The Construct and Undead options get away with just having better defenses against the stuff they should be immune to, but that might just not work in this case. (My old 3.5 Monster Manual, which has PC stats for a lot of monsters, only includes them Hill and Stone Giants, and even those both have a +4 level adjustments, which is some arcane crap I don't feel like trying to explain, but it means it's hard to make those work as PCs)
Up to now I figured at best we'd get some kind of Half-Giant Heritage, with Lineage Feats related to specific Giant varieties, but opening the possibility of the offspring of a Storm Giant and...
That said, we do already have versatile heritages that would match up for some of the giants-- for example a Stormsoul Sylph Jotunborn, or an Ifrit Jotunborn, a Rimesoul Undine Jotunborn, and so forth. So that's actually in pretty good shape already.
So something I noticed, in the Polygon article they call it the Hellbreakers AP.
But in the Paizo Twitter post about the Polygon article they mention the Hellfire Crisis.
Is this 2 different events or a was there a name change?
|
Creative Director
|
| 14 people marked this as a favorite. |
So something I noticed, in the Polygon article they call it the Hellbreakers AP.
But in the Paizo Twitter post about the Polygon article they mention the Hellfire Crisis.Is this 2 different events or a was there a name change?
Two different things.
Hellbreakers is the name of an Adventure Path.
Hellfire Crisis is the name of the overall meta-event.
Hellbreakers is PART of the Hellfire Crisis, but there's a lot more to the Hellfire Crisis than Hellbreakers.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So something I noticed, in the Polygon article they call it the Hellbreakers AP.
But in the Paizo Twitter post about the Polygon article they mention the Hellfire Crisis.Is this 2 different events or a was there a name change?
Two different things.
Hellbreakers is the name of an Adventure Path.
Hellfire Crisis is the name of the overall meta-event.
Hellbreakers is PART of the Hellfire Crisis, but there's a lot more to the Hellfire Crisis than Hellbreakers.
Oh this is even more Diabolical than I thought.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Will we get the Battlecry specific font and a different colour on the spine pretty please?! ;-P.
Having War of Immortals come out with the same white spine and green font as the core rulebooks made me sad. All pre-master rulebooks outside of core had their unique font and colour on the spine and made the bookshelf look WAY better IMHO.
I'm not sure why it was decided to "bland-up" all the remaster spines.
Also Commanders will be able to do cool things with Troops now, which also feature in what appears to be some kind of massed combat 'thing' I suspect it's similar to siege weapons-- they've been setup to function in normal combat encounters, but if you want to have armies clash, you use a bunch of troops and presumably have them duke it out on a battlemap.
That's still a little bit of conjecture, but it appears to be the picture they're painting.
Players are gonna start buying Frostgrave or Oathmark boxes to represent their commander's mercenary troop, lol. At least normal troops are 4x4 gargantuan bases, which could be represented by 16 models on a movement tray. We playing Battle Brothers now.
Maybe the player Troop version will scale Medium(1 person)/Large (4 people)/Huge(9 people)/Gargantuan(16 people) like a Druid transformation.
So with this war, are we going to see Cheliax take more beatings and stop being a threat, or be utterly defeated and another big bad empire is removed from the board?
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
Looking forward to see the revised Guardian. Hopefully, the class turns my opinion around, because the playtest version did not make a good impression on me. At all.
I just hope that the Taunt mechanics (was that the name?), were treated with care, at worst, I'll try to work with something similar to Enmity from FF XIV TTRPG, (which I personally found better...), anyway now it's time to wait for the long months to come... When it's not MMOs messing with my anxiety, it's Paizo! I don't know whether to laugh or cry lol!
|
So with this war, are we going to see Cheliax take more beatings and stop being a threat, or be utterly defeated and another big bad empire is removed from the board?I am afraid about the same thing to be honest. "Hellbreakers" sounds a lot like Cheliax will loose this. And removing the last "Big bad evil empire" might feel good while doing so in the story itself, but leaves a big hole afterwards narrative-wise.
I believe "Hellbreakers" is also the name of an anti-Cheliax faction in Isger, so it may just be named that to signify that the group known as the Hellbreakers are a central focus of the AP.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So with this war, are we going to see Cheliax take more beatings and stop being a threat, or be utterly defeated and another big bad empire is removed from the board?I am afraid about the same thing to be honest. "Hellbreakers" sounds a lot like Cheliax will loose this. And removing the last "Big bad evil empire" might feel good while doing so in the story itself, but leaves a big hole afterwards narrative-wise.
To be fair, Cheliax works as a bogeyman but every time they appear in APs they get the stuffing kicked out of them and end up taking the L (which makes sense, since they're villains).
Even if we take into account that they win in Hell's Vengeance, this is counterbalanced by how thoroughly they got trounced in Hell's Rebels.
However, I don't think the AP will see Cheliax gone. I think a much better bet, given the geographical positions involved, is that Andoran takes part or the entirety of Isger, which has already tried rebelling before.
That would deal a blow to Cheliax without removing them from the board, so to speak.
So with this war, are we going to see Cheliax take more beatings and stop being a threat, or be utterly defeated and another big bad empire is removed from the board?I am afraid about the same thing to be honest. "Hellbreakers" sounds a lot like Cheliax will loose this. And removing the last "Big bad evil empire" might feel good while doing so in the story itself, but leaves a big hole afterwards narrative-wise.To be fair, Cheliax works as a bogeyman but every time they appear in APs they get the stuffing kicked out of them and end up taking the L (which makes sense, since they're villains).
Even if we take into account that they win in Hell's Vengeance, this is counterbalanced by how thoroughly they got trounced in Hell's Rebels.
However, I don't think the AP will see Cheliax gone. I think a much better bet, given the geographical positions involved, is that Andoran takes part or the entirety of Isger, which has already tried rebelling before.
That would deal a blow to Cheliax without removing them from the board, so to speak.
Yeah, though if Cheliax loses Isger then they would have very little left of their empire except Nidal, who are pretty independent anyway and are only staying under Abrogail's thumb because pulling off a revolution would be too much of a pain (and not the kind of pain that Kuthites usually enjoy). Cheliax would seem like a new Taldor, a has-been empire restricted to their home country, and in that case it might be better to destroy them outright than turn them into a punching bag.
Ultimately, that's the difficulty that tends to come up if APs are considered canonical: Since good/neutral campaigns are more popular than evil ones, evil threats slowly get eliminated one by one. At the start of the Golarion setting we had foes like the Runelords, the King of Biting Ants, Deskari, Irrisen, the Technic League, and so on, but all of them have been beaten or at least convinced to be less of a jerk. Even in the first evil AP, Hell's Vengeance, the PCs didn't actually make Cheliax more powerful, they just prevented it from collapsing entirely to the Glorious Reclamation.
But of course that doesn't mean the APs should stop being canonical, since people really enjoy seeing their characters have a real effect on the world. Maybe the best option is to to provide new threats or bolster old ones by writing APs like Tyrant's Grasp, where the PCs have to react to a new-ish threat (a freed Tar-Baphon turning Lastwall into the Gravelands) and are just trying to prevent the antagonists from taking over the whole world. In that vein, maybe Hellbreakers could see Cheliax start losing the war with Andoran, so Abrogail spitefully invokes a last-resort option in her covenant with Hell to let devils directly take over, turning Cheliax into a Hellish sort of Worldwound, and the PCs have to evacuate Chelish citizens outside the country and prevent the infernal tide from flowing outside of its borders? Something like that would let the PCs affect the world while still allowing some threats to flourish for future APs.
|
Creative Director
|
| 15 people marked this as a favorite. |
We try to make sure that when a villain or evil group or whatever gets dealt with in an Advneture Path or adventure that we seed in more villains for future games. I do this with "Spore War" in a few ways, as an example.
RPG Villains are trees, and we are the lumberjacks who need to nurture them and help them thrive even as we send them out to the harvsest so we have job security.
|
In that vein, maybe Hellbreakers could see Cheliax start losing the war with Andoran, so Abrogail spitefully invokes a last-resort option in her covenant with Hell to let devils directly take over, turning Cheliax into a Hellish sort of Worldwound, and the PCs have to evacuate Chelish citizens outside the country and prevent the infernal tide from flowing outside of its borders? Something like that would let the PCs affect the world while still allowing some threats to flourish for future APs.
Well, Hellbreakers is part of the Hellfire Crisis, so this could fit.
Maybe, due to the actions of PCs in Hellbreakers, all Hell breaks loose.
Would Tar-Baphon gain something from the collapse of Cheliax ?
Necromantic shopping spree?
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
It doesn't hurt that we've still got an entire Tian Xia's worth of plot hooks unharvested for the future - and with luck, Arcadia will join it soon!
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
It doesn't hurt that we've still got an entire Tian Xia's worth of plot hooks unharvested for the future - and with luck, Arcadia will join it soon!
And Casmaron! Myth-Speaker should give us a taste of that, hopefully.
It doesn't hurt that we've still got an entire Tian Xia's worth of plot hooks unharvested for the future - and with luck, Arcadia will join it soon!
Arcadia at least has some pretty fleshed out info with the gazetteer in the guns and gears book. It is not as beefy as the mwangi or impossible lands books but it gave us way more and better info than we had previously had and solid maps/layouts of arcadia.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It doesn't hurt that we've still got an entire Tian Xia's worth of plot hooks unharvested for the future - and with luck, Arcadia will join it soon!And Casmaron! Myth-Speaker should give us a taste of that, hopefully.
Mythkeeper has a pretty good casmaron entry that covers pretty well everything we currently know about it which was a lot more than I had ever seen.
|
We try to make sure that when a villain or evil group or whatever gets dealt with in an Advneture Path or adventure that we seed in more villains for future games. I do this with "Spore War" in a few ways, as an example.
RPG Villains are trees, and we are the lumberjacks who need to nurture them and help them thrive even as we send them out to the harvsest so we have job security.
Does that make me a tree hugger? Inquiring minds need to know :p
It doesn't hurt that we've still got an entire Tian Xia's worth of plot hooks unharvested for the future - and with luck, Arcadia will join it soon!Arcadia at least has some pretty fleshed out info with the gazetteer in the guns and gears book. It is not as beefy as the mwangi or impossible lands books but it gave us way more and better info than we had previously had and solid maps/layouts of arcadia.
There's still wide swathes of the continent we know nothing about: Mahwek lands beyond Port Valen, the other nations of the Segada Protocol, almost anything about the Arcane Empires and Primal League... our understanding's pretty full of holes. I can imagine a Deadshot Lands campaign, but I think the rest of the continent is still a little too thin for play currently.
|
|
So with this war, are we going to see Cheliax take more beatings and stop being a threat, or be utterly defeated and another big bad empire is removed from the board?I am afraid about the same thing to be honest. "Hellbreakers" sounds a lot like Cheliax will loose this. And removing the last "Big bad evil empire" might feel good while doing so in the story itself, but leaves a big hole afterwards narrative-wise.To be fair, Cheliax works as a bogeyman but every time they appear in APs they get the stuffing kicked out of them and end up taking the L (which makes sense, since they're villains).
Even if we take into account that they win in Hell's Vengeance, this is counterbalanced by how thoroughly they got trounced in Hell's Rebels.
However, I don't think the AP will see Cheliax gone. I think a much better bet, given the geographical positions involved, is that Andoran takes part or the entirety of Isger, which has already tried rebelling before.
That would deal a blow to Cheliax without removing them from the board, so to speak.
I don't think they really get trounced in Hell's Rebels - spoilering the rest of the discussion, just in case :)
- Kintargo is forced to export 30% of its meaningful exports to Cheliax at a set price considerably below market price
- The Ravounel government isn't allowed to sell or destroy any item without offering it to Cheliax first, and there's open access to almost anyone Thrune wants to go into the famous academies/museums/etc of Kintargo
- Cheliax still gets to call Kintargan troops to battle, even when it is the aggressor! A few nations are allowed an exception, but it's in large amounts - at least 50% of the nation's soldiers and navy is one example. Absolutely wild - that's not independence!
- Ravounel isn't allowed to aid in any war actions against Cheliax, including providing provisions to enemies of Cheliax
They functionally get a vassal state with a decent degree of autonomy, still getting most of what they want out of the land. They do lose the land, but it had no sites of importance in it, it's barely populated, and they still have primary access to its resources. And that's the best case scenario! Depending on the PC's results, they could be giving 70% of their resources away to Cheliax, or be forced to send their entire army + navy to support cheliax's wars, regardless of who they're fighting. It's definitely a loss, no doubt about that - but I think the Glorious Reclamation's seizing of Westcrown is more of a strike against House Thrune than the outcome of the Silver Raven's rebellion.
We try to make sure that when a villain or evil group or whatever gets dealt with in an Advneture Path or adventure that we seed in more villains for future games. I do this with "Spore War" in a few ways, as an example.
RPG Villains are trees, and we are the lumberjacks who need to nurture them and help them thrive even as we send them out to the harvsest so we have job security.
So are we going to be getting more villians and evil groups for the inner Sea? :)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So something I noticed, in the Polygon article they call it the Hellbreakers AP.
But in the Paizo Twitter post about the Polygon article they mention the Hellfire Crisis.Is this 2 different events or a was there a name change?
Two different things.
Hellbreakers is the name of an Adventure Path.
Hellfire Crisis is the name of the overall meta-event.
Hellbreakers is PART of the Hellfire Crisis, but there's a lot more to the Hellfire Crisis than Hellbreakers.
Perhaps someone should create a Hellfire Club?
|
Creative Director
|
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
So are we going to be getting more villians and evil groups for the inner Sea? :)We try to make sure that when a villain or evil group or whatever gets dealt with in an Advneture Path or adventure that we seed in more villains for future games. I do this with "Spore War" in a few ways, as an example.
RPG Villains are trees, and we are the lumberjacks who need to nurture them and help them thrive even as we send them out to the harvsest so we have job security.
Yes.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Yes.So are we going to be getting more villians and evil groups for the inner Sea? :)We try to make sure that when a villain or evil group or whatever gets dealt with in an Advneture Path or adventure that we seed in more villains for future games. I do this with "Spore War" in a few ways, as an example.
RPG Villains are trees, and we are the lumberjacks who need to nurture them and help them thrive even as we send them out to the harvsest so we have job security.
Oh good! For a little while there I was beginning to think that heroism might have finally won out! XD
That would have made for the most boring setting ever!