Asian folklore-inspired player options.
August 28th
2024
Countless Peoples, Countless Techniques!
The boundless continent of Tian Xia features innumerable peoples, each with their own rich history and practices. Bring your character to life with this 136-page guidebook crammed full of everything a player might need to build a hero hailing from or journeying through these vast lands, including:
The boundless continent of Tian Xia features innumerable peoples, each with their own rich history and practices. Bring your character to life with this 136-page guidebook crammed full of everything a player might need to build a hero hailing from or journeying through these vast lands, including:
- Six new ancestries, including the reincarnating samsaran, trickster tanuki, and shadowy wayang, as well as Tian-inspired additional feats and heritages for existing ancestries, like the peachchild leshy, bakuwa lizardfolk, and gandharva sprite!
- Feats inspired by Tian Xia’s diverse arts and practices, from new elemental medicine to alchemically fortified cuisine to how the zodiac can guide your character’s path.
- Spectacular magical and martial techniques to vanquish the toughest opponents, whether that's through weightless sword arts or by borrowing the ancient power of magical familiars.
- Dazzling new magic items and weapons to forge or find, from the subtle kotodama whistle to legendary artifacts like the staff of Sun Wukong.
Turning attention to the Tian Xia Character Guide, Ferron revealed the remaining three ancestries. Sarangay are people with the head and hooves of a carabao, who gain power from the magical “soul gem” in their foreheads. Yakshas are spirits that once resided in the mysterious plane known as the First World, and who consider the gods as derelict for abandoning that plane for the current mortal Universe. Finally, yaoguai are aspects of creation that awakened into sapience and assumed an animate form by cultivating power, be they animal, plant, or object. These ancestries join the previously announced samsaran, tanuki, and wayang for a total of 6 playable ancestries, alongside the newly revealed hungerseed versatile heritage, which any player can take to represent the influence of oni magic or blood.
As a special spoiler to close things out, Case and Ferron also showed off the starlit sentinel archetype. Case commented, “We’ve tried to really dig into research and our own experiences to bring a lot of deep folklore cuts to Tian Xia, but we also know there are popular types of Asian fantasy that are a bit more modern.” Ferron added that the starlit sentinel’s abilities, which involve transforming into a costumed magical alter ego, were inspired by the “magical girl” stories found in popular anime and manga.
