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You know, considering how good Rival Academies is...
I think I'd like to see a martial equivalent.
Something adding a bit more lore to the Aldori Swordschools, Houses of Perfection, gladiator schools, and other places where those interested in the fighting arts go to seek training.
Feels like it could be interesting, considering Battlecry is coming soon.
This could be themed around a coalition making a push against Tar Baphon, and trying to retake the gravelands. Have a few majors leading the thing, M'Wangi, Taldor, etc. then, in a surprising twist a contingent arrives from Geb. the message from their ruler "Tar Baphon has an outstanding debt to the Ghost King Geb of one queen. the last he sold was defective and ran off."
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You know, considering how good Rival Academies is...
I think I'd like to see a martial equivalent.
Something adding a bit more lore to the Aldori Swordschools, Houses of Perfection, gladiator schools, and other places where those interested in the fighting arts go to seek training.
Feels like it could be interesting, considering Battlecry is coming soon.
Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords vibes. That was such a fun book.
This is definitely a neat concept. We have all these schools of martial combat in Golarian dn most of them don't get a lot of attention.
I always thought PF2 lent itself really well to Bo9S style content given feats and feat actions being so integral to the game. From the very first book we had things like Sudden Charge and Power Attack that showed Paizo was willing to give classes unique actions that combined action economy or altered rules, it only felt natural that as the game developed it might build on that foundation.
... but barring the Kineticist and a little bit of the Inventor, Paizo's never seemed more inclined to give us anything more adventurous than that. Even classes I thought would be shoe-ins for getting unique feat actions like Thaumaturges or Magi don't really have much.
Would absolutely love a book that explores some of that space more.
I mean, I assumed Battlecry was already Rival Academies but martial.
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I mean, I assumed Battlecry was already Rival Academies but martial.
Even bigger than Rival Academies, given it's a Rulebook and not a Lost Omens title. Might be more equivalent to a martial character's Secrets of Magic.
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I really want an Ocean Stuff book. We've got enough aquatic ancestries to do a whole adventuring party without doubling up, but we've only got the Player Core and GM Core paragraph each for underwater rules. A version of Aquatic Adventures for 2e, especially with a full suite of underwater hazards, would be very cool, or even a Lost Omens: Wide Seas. Give us a Grindylow Goblin, an Aquatic Elf, or maybe a Triton or Cecaelia, and maybe a Fleshwarp heritage for aquatic stuff - algollthu and krakens both appear to do fleshwarping. Maybe a spellshape to do fire effects as steam, so they work underwater? And of course a bunch of magic items and spells for underwater stuff (I'd love to see some rituals based on real sailor superstitions, too - whistle up the wind and blow down a storm!)
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I think it would be very interesting to do an entire underwater setting book, really make it so that the oceans are alive and a viable setting for a whole campaign. Lost Omens: Deep Sea Guide. and it's written as a travel Logue from some Absalom citizen who got dragged on a deep sea tour by various sea dwelling races (some new playable, some expanded playable options)
I really want an Ocean Stuff book. We've got enough aquatic ancestries to do a whole adventuring party without doubling up, but we've only got the Player Core and GM Core paragraph each for underwater rules. A version of Aquatic Adventures for 2e, especially with a full suite of underwater hazards, would be very cool, or even a Lost Omens: Wide Seas. Give us a Grindylow Goblin, an Aquatic Elf, or maybe a Triton or Cecaelia, and maybe a Fleshwarp heritage for aquatic stuff - algollthu and krakens both appear to do fleshwarping. Maybe a spellshape to do fire effects as steam, so they work underwater? And of course a bunch of magic items and spells for underwater stuff (I'd love to see some rituals based on real sailor superstitions, too - whistle up the wind and blow down a storm!)
I don't think an AP or similar would work well for this, just because every adventure needs to be viable for the iconics. We don't have enough aquatic iconics for the adventure not to have to cater to land walkers in a way that would effect the feel of the adventure IMO. I'm not a big fan of "stranger in a strange land" trope when you can just be the people of that land.
A deep sea guide, while not my thing, should exist at some point. A whole year of ocean stuff, one book with ships and pirates then one that delves under water to the societies that have been there since earth fall or earlier.
I think what we don't have is underwater combat rules that don't suck.
I mean, I get it. Fighting underwater isn't easy nor something that should be expected, but I feel TTRPGs as a whole have a hate bonner for underwater combat. Two warriors jumping in the air and clashing their swords while staying in place enough time to trade some blows is way more on the realm of fantasy and its something the system supports, but swimming and swinging something that isn't a pointy stick seems to be the drawing line.
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Underwater combat and flying combat should be similar. Mostly full of charging, using momentum and doing mostly strikes on the run.
I at least haven't seen a ton of APs that encourage flying combat, though I think its equally if not worse than underwater combat, but since it isn't as common it kinda gets a pass. How I usually treat underwater combat is, for the sake of simplicity, to treat water as difficult terrain. My table also uses a free skill feats homebrew variant so everyone that's at least trained in Athletics has access to the Underwater Marauder feat. These changes still keep underwater combat being cumbersone but without being downright unfun for the players.
I really want an Ocean Stuff book. We've got enough aquatic ancestries to do a whole adventuring party without doubling up, but we've only got the Player Core and GM Core paragraph each for underwater rules. A version of Aquatic Adventures for 2e, especially with a full suite of underwater hazards, would be very cool, or even a Lost Omens: Wide Seas. Give us a Grindylow Goblin, an Aquatic Elf, or maybe a Triton or Cecaelia, and maybe a Fleshwarp heritage for aquatic stuff - algollthu and krakens both appear to do fleshwarping. Maybe a spellshape to do fire effects as steam, so they work underwater? And of course a bunch of magic items and spells for underwater stuff (I'd love to see some rituals based on real sailor superstitions, too - whistle up the wind and blow down a storm!)I don't think an AP or similar would work well for this, just because every adventure needs to be viable for the iconics. We don't have enough aquatic iconics for the adventure not to have to cater to land walkers in a way that would effect the feel of the adventure IMO. I'm not a big fan of "stranger in a strange land" trope when you can just be the people of that land.
It's less about the iconics and more about charcters in general. Too many PC classes simply don't work well underwater and too many things are shut down. It leads to a severe narrowing of the options for play and people going outside of those will have a bad time.
As soon as an adventure goes underwater for even an encounter, casters need a way to breathe underwater or they effectively can't cast and might as well sit out. Any build that isn't good at swimming will have an absolutely awful time. And on and on it goes. This was an issue in PF1 as well, except the adventurer writers back then just didn't seem to worry about it as much. But I'm playing in Shattered Star right now and in one of the cases where we needed to go underwater at low level, half the party said "right, good luck" and just sat out because they didn't have builds that would function and we couldn't easily go back to town to fix that. (And one of the characters that did actually attempt it had to be rescued by the other one and helped back inside before they drowned. It was not a good time except for the one character that could actually manage in that environment.)
PF2 isn't particularly better in this regard except that adventure writers seem to do less underwater stuff, especially at low level. For an entire adventure to be underwater, you might as well all play Merfolk or the GM needs to hand out some alternative, and it's a tough sales pitch for an AP to be so limiting. Ruins of Azlant spends a lot of time underwater and as seen in the rankings, tends to suffer for it.
Less hostile underwater rules would help, but since we don't have those, an underwater AP would require some major accomodation upfront to let PCs ignore the underwater restrictions or it's just not really gonna fly.
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Aquatic Adventures, despite the name, isn't actually an adventure book - it's in the vein of stuff like Guns & Gears or Howl of the Wild, more of a big book of lore (did you know that the Embaral Ocean has an El Niño and La Niña system? I really hope they do something with that), aquatic player options, and monsters. So a 2e version, with a remastered Undine, some of the 1e aquatic ancestries updated, and some specialised archetypes, spellshapes and magic stuff for being underwater is definitely a good option.
And, while I would prefer that we get a Wet Stuff book before getting an underwater AP, but I don't think the situation is as dire as you're suggesting. Put "strongly recommended: Athamaru, Azarketi, Merfolk. Recommended: Seaweed Leshy, Undine, Swimming Awakened Animal" in the Player's Guide, and give everyone with Athletics Underwater Marauder for free and you're most of the way to making it work.
It's less about the iconics and more about charcters in general. Too many PC classes simply don't work well underwater and too many things are shut down. It leads to a severe narrowing of the options for play and people going outside of those will have a bad time.
As soon as an adventure goes underwater for even an encounter, casters need a way to breathe underwater or they effectively can't cast and might as well sit out. Any build that isn't good at swimming will have an absolutely awful time. And on and on it goes. This was an issue in PF1 as well, except the adventurer writers back then just didn't seem to worry about it as much. But I'm playing in Shattered Star right now and in one of the cases where we needed to go underwater at low level, half the party said "right, good luck" and just sat...
So something like blood lords? As I said though, because of the difficulty of making it work for everyone its unlikely.
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Aquatic Adventures, despite the name, isn't actually an adventure book - it's in the vein of stuff like Guns & Gears or Howl of the Wild, more of a big book of lore (did you know that the Embaral Ocean has an El Niño and La Niña system? I really hope they do something with that), aquatic player options, and monsters. So a 2e version, with a remastered Undine, some of the 1e aquatic ancestries updated, and some specialised archetypes, spellshapes and magic stuff for being underwater is definitely a good option.
And, while I would prefer that we get a Wet Stuff book before getting an underwater AP, but I don't think the situation is as dire as you're suggesting. Put "strongly recommended: Athamaru, Azarketi, Merfolk. Recommended: Seaweed Leshy, Undine, Swimming Awakened Animal" in the Player's Guide, and give everyone with Athletics Underwater Marauder for free and you're most of the way to making it work.
Printing a spread of underwater heritages could work too. Aquatic Elf, Grindylows, Water Kobolds, Dragur skeleton and more i'm no doubt overlooking.
Except "water kobolds", all of these exist in canon, and it's not hard to imagine a clutch of kobolds raised in the ocean by a kraken, merfolk tribe, or what have you.
They'd all probably be similar where it's 25ft, water breathing, slow land speed, and then some gimmick so they're not all literally the same heritage.
Printing a spread of underwater heritages could work too. Aquatic Elf, Grindylows, Water Kobolds, Dragur skeleton and more i'm no doubt overlooking.
Except "water kobolds", all of these exist in canon, and it's not hard to imagine a clutch of kobolds raised in the ocean by a kraken, merfolk tribe, or what have you.
They'd all probably be similar where it's 25ft, water breathing, slow land speed, and then some gimmick so they're not all literally the same heritage.
Tunnelflood Kobold already exists, we just need a way for it to grab some gills to go with the swim speed. And I suggested all of those other ones (except Dragur. What's a dragur?) upthread.
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Tunnelflood Kobold already exists, we just need a way for it to grab some gills to go with the swim speed. And I suggested all of those other ones (except Dragur. What's a dragur?) upthread.Printing a spread of underwater heritages could work too. Aquatic Elf, Grindylows, Water Kobolds, Dragur skeleton and more i'm no doubt overlooking.
Except "water kobolds", all of these exist in canon, and it's not hard to imagine a clutch of kobolds raised in the ocean by a kraken, merfolk tribe, or what have you.
They'd all probably be similar where it's 25ft, water breathing, slow land speed, and then some gimmick so they're not all literally the same heritage.
Drowned skeletons. They're in Beastiary 2 or 3, I can't recall. And I must have missed your post. Great minds think alike!
Oh, Draugr! Yeah, some drowned dead would make for a fun skeleton heritage, even if you can kinda approximate it right now by sticking undine on there. It would be fun if a Draugr heritage, rather than gaining the aquatic trait, just straight up didn't need to breathe at all (for game balance reasons, basic undead benefits do not in fact remove your reliance on breathing). Have some feats for the swim speed and being stinky.
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Athamaru can already be stinky - Emit Defensive Odor is a 1st-level ancestry feat with a whole feat chain of stinky after it. So I guess as long as your teenage self smelled like fish...?
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Anything involving the Planes, particularly if Amber Stewart is involved.
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I know a Lost Omens: Darklands book is a popular book, and whilst I 100% agree that'd be good, I kind of feel like it might actually work better akin to a HotW/BotD-style rulebook themed around underground adventures (with a BotD/GnG style section listing various major settlements in the Darklands).
Either way, imo the most likely pre-existing ancestries to get a playable option would be caligni, kaseshi, munavris, and xulgaths. Whilst there'd be new options for cavern elves, umbral gnomes, fleshwarps, and dwarves who also get a hryngar heritage*. Sukri, ratfolk, kobolds, leshies, and orcs are all also ancestries which I could see getting content, but I just went with the four pre-existing that I would be kinda suprised if they got nothing.
*There's a strong argument to be made that hryngar would be their own ancestry, given drow were considered as such. But I feel like you can probably still just make them a heritage of dwarf.
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Lost Omens: Arcadia and I second on Lost Omens: Darklands. Maybe they could do their own version of "Drow" since they took them out to avoid WOTC lawsuits.
I'd really like to see Arcadia though because I'm hoping for Rougaru as a race.
I'd like to see some more focus on some of the newer heritages that don't have many feats, such as Hungerseed. Honestly they kinda suck compared to something like a Pitborn. I'm wondering if Raksasha blooded will come back too? (Or whatever they were called in Blood of Fiends.)
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I'll freely admit that this is entirely personal preference, but I REALLY want some kind of book exploring Dream Magic.
Whether it involve astral projection, the Dream Plane, Mindscapes, Dreamwalking, I'd love to see more dream and dream-related stuff get explored in more depth.
Dark Archive already has some material related to the idea in it. If it's NOT getting remastered, then maybe this could be a way to update it?
Wouldn't mind seeing Psychic Dueling come back in a more clarified form. Perhaps as Dream Battles?
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What I think I'd love more than anything right now is an Absalom or Highhelm-style deep-dive book for my favorite wretched hive of scum and villainy, Kaer Maga. Show how things have changed in the more than TEN YEARS since it was explored in City of Strangers, The Asylum Stone and The Redemption Engine!
I don't know how likely that'll become reality, though, since the place was very much James Sutter's baby, and he's mostly moved on to full fiction-writing last I checked (which, good for him, no joke!).
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I'm ready for Arcadia now, please.
*There's a strong argument to be made that hryngar would be their own ancestry, given drow were considered as such. But I feel like you can probably still just make them a heritage of dwarf.
Yeah, I've been thinking that too. I feel like it would be a heritage like Spellhorn Kobold, except it gives you an occult cantrip and the later feats are giving occult spells (like Blood Vendetta) or better darkvision (which is already a dwarf feat)
It could be it's own ancestry, but it really doesn't need to be.
Wizkids schedule and pre-orders have a lot of cool models on the way like the Clockwork Mage and Leukadaemon which us pretty exciting.
It makes me exciting about what other Pathfinder monsters could one day get plastic models. A linnorm, a pair of gongorians, sarglagon, larval ofalths, etc.
Crunchy things. At the very least, some sort of an "Unchained" tome which houses optional rules new and old; the latter shall salvage the last of OGL stranded rules such as Dual Class back into the ORC pool, with updated text of course.
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Huh... apparently, Lost Omens: Draconic Codex was leaked by a Barnes & Nobles page...
Dragons! The very name invokes power beyond reckoning, fire that can melt mountains and fangs the size of swords. To face a dragon is to face the ultimate challenge of any adventurer’s career. The reward for victory: gold, enough to twist any mortal’s heart into a bigger monster than the one they just slew. Inside this tome lies the secrets of dragonkind, as well as those mortals who look upon them with awe or with bitter envy. Research a fearsome foe or summon the courage to make an ally of these primordial beings and put your strength and wisdom to the test. Success will see triumph beyond measure, while failure leads to an ignominious end within the dragon’s maw!
Inside, you’ll find:
• Statistics for over 20 types of dragons, including expansions on the dragons found in Monster Core and Monster Core 2!
• Statistics for the ferocious archdragons, the oldest and mightiest dragons of their kinds!
• Expanded background and lore for dragons, including information on dragon physiology!
• Nine draconic deities for dragons and adventurers alike to worship!
• Ancestry and heritage options to play a draconic character of your own, from expansions to the dragonblood and kobold to a brand-new dragonet ancestry!
• Draconic pacts for those brave enough to tie their fates to these dangerous and magical beings.
• Character options for characters of all types that wish to claim the power of dragons, including the draconic acolyte archetype to take on the physical features of your draconic benefactor!
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Huh... apparently, Lost Omens: Draconic Codex was leaked by a Barnes & Nobles page...This is linking to Monster Core 2 (Which is still VERY cool), but where's the link to the Draconic Codex? Or was the name and description shifted?
Barnes and Noble must really hate dragon themed suprises. That's a pretty interesting list of features for the Lost Oments book.
That or jokes aside, they may think it would boost their sales.
I mean, that's like leaking dinosaur-themed stuff in the 90s :p
Director of Marketing
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Our upcoming keynote stream at PaizoCon Online is going to be a great place to learn about dragon things! ;)
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Wasn't the Dragonblood heritage accidentally leaked by Barnes & Noble too (specifically they'd put up a page like these for Player Core 2 when Paizo had been planning Dragonblood's reveal as a surprise on the book's actual release)?
That was Amazon that leaked that info from Player Core 2, not B&N.
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Wasn't the Dragonblood heritage accidentally leaked by Barnes & Noble too (specifically they'd put up a page like these for Player Core 2 when Paizo had been planning Dragonblood's reveal as a surprise on the book's actual release)?That was Amazon that leaked that info from Player Core 2, not B&N.
Thanks for the correction! I conflate the two sometimes...