Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the PAIZO NEWS ROUNDUP! As always, I am your excitable and long-winded host, ready to give you all the deets on the latest from our favorite company of golems. It seems that Paizo is laser-focused on its newest upcoming release: Ultimate Wilderness! That said, they’re not about to leave Starfinder fans hanging in the solar winds. Let’s get started!
Let’s start things off with some reassurances for Starfinder GMs worried about the 22 new playable races available in the Alien Archive. Thurston Hillman lays out the Starfinder Society’s plans for incorporating the various races into organized play that will keep things sane.
First and foremost, the conventions around the world will be divided into regions that each have access to a smaller amount of the new races. Each region is scheduled to cycle through the different groups of new races, so GMs have an opportunity to learn the new races at an approachable pace and players still get the opportunity to try them all out (eventually).
For players looking to take advantage of different races immediately, the Starfinder Society is implementing a new player boon. Players who play six unique Starfinder scenarios with any combination of characters can gain access to two of the new races, while playing twelve or more opens up a third. Previously-played scenarios count towards this limit, so you may already be eligible to play your favorite alien!
Of course, no company is perfect, so the Golem is open to feedback on how you the players would like to see these new races rolled out. Feel free to bombard them with ideas, suggestions, and requests! They literally asked for it!
Now, on to Pathfinder, and from there to the upcoming supplement making waves: Ultimate Wilderness! This supplement is geared towards a primally-focused campaign or character. Stephen Radney-McFarland gives us a deeper peek at a new base class that taps into the same primal energy as the druid: the shifter.
The shifter a master of many powerful bestial forms and can combine lesser aspects into a single composite whole. The shifter also has a defensive instinct to keep her from harm, and uses her connection with nature to commune with animals, track, and move effortlessly and silently through the wilds.
Like all base classes, the shifter will come with a bevy of archetypes. Elemental shifters gain boons based on the elemental planes, while fiendflesh shifters make pacts with dark powers for extra strength. If you’re worried about being locked out of this new primal power because you want to take a spin with the new and improved plant races, worry no longer: the updates remove their immunity to polymorph effects, as well of some of their more powerful damage immunities. Ah, the price you pay for ambition. Should still be fun!
Don’t think I’m going to bury the lede on plant races, oh no. Your old tasty favorite, the ghoran, is joined by the vine leshy and the gathlains in Ultimate Wilderness, and Linda Zayas-Palmer has all sorts of tidbits to tell.
You’re probably familiar with ghorans and their delicious flesh (great grapplers they do NOT make), but Ultimate Wilderness provides a new archetype to try. The aromaphile ghoran produces clouds of sweet odors and pollen that can hypnotize or debilitate their foes or help their allies recover from negative effects.
Vine leshys are a new type of leshy debuting in Ultimate Wilderness. Unlike the leshys you may be used to from the Bestiaries, vine leshys only take up a static ward for brief periods of time. This allows them to wander around and search for new exciting vistas for their newest ward.
Vegetable people don’t get all the fun in Ultimate Wilderness. The free-spirited gathlains are a new race of fey that are capricious and fun-loving to a fault. Even other fey races might be shocked by their pranks. I’ll reserve my judgement as a GM on how excited I am about a race that goes out of its way to make mischief, but it should make for exciting and unpredictable campaigns no matter what!
A new supplement for Pathfinder wouldn’t feel at home without a new library of archetypes, and boy does Ultimate Wilderness provide. Over 60 pages are dedicated to archetypes for base classes, hybrid classes, and even the new occult classes.
Well that’s all for this edition of the PAIZO NEWS ROUNDUP! Stay tuned for more on the Golem, and possibly even some third parties!
Let’s start things off with some reassurances for Starfinder GMs worried about the 22 new playable races available in the Alien Archive. Thurston Hillman lays out the Starfinder Society’s plans for incorporating the various races into organized play that will keep things sane.
First and foremost, the conventions around the world will be divided into regions that each have access to a smaller amount of the new races. Each region is scheduled to cycle through the different groups of new races, so GMs have an opportunity to learn the new races at an approachable pace and players still get the opportunity to try them all out (eventually).
For players looking to take advantage of different races immediately, the Starfinder Society is implementing a new player boon. Players who play six unique Starfinder scenarios with any combination of characters can gain access to two of the new races, while playing twelve or more opens up a third. Previously-played scenarios count towards this limit, so you may already be eligible to play your favorite alien!
Of course, no company is perfect, so the Golem is open to feedback on how you the players would like to see these new races rolled out. Feel free to bombard them with ideas, suggestions, and requests! They literally asked for it!
Now, on to Pathfinder, and from there to the upcoming supplement making waves: Ultimate Wilderness! This supplement is geared towards a primally-focused campaign or character. Stephen Radney-McFarland gives us a deeper peek at a new base class that taps into the same primal energy as the druid: the shifter.
The shifter a master of many powerful bestial forms and can combine lesser aspects into a single composite whole. The shifter also has a defensive instinct to keep her from harm, and uses her connection with nature to commune with animals, track, and move effortlessly and silently through the wilds.
Like all base classes, the shifter will come with a bevy of archetypes. Elemental shifters gain boons based on the elemental planes, while fiendflesh shifters make pacts with dark powers for extra strength. If you’re worried about being locked out of this new primal power because you want to take a spin with the new and improved plant races, worry no longer: the updates remove their immunity to polymorph effects, as well of some of their more powerful damage immunities. Ah, the price you pay for ambition. Should still be fun!
Don’t think I’m going to bury the lede on plant races, oh no. Your old tasty favorite, the ghoran, is joined by the vine leshy and the gathlains in Ultimate Wilderness, and Linda Zayas-Palmer has all sorts of tidbits to tell.
You’re probably familiar with ghorans and their delicious flesh (great grapplers they do NOT make), but Ultimate Wilderness provides a new archetype to try. The aromaphile ghoran produces clouds of sweet odors and pollen that can hypnotize or debilitate their foes or help their allies recover from negative effects.
Vine leshys are a new type of leshy debuting in Ultimate Wilderness. Unlike the leshys you may be used to from the Bestiaries, vine leshys only take up a static ward for brief periods of time. This allows them to wander around and search for new exciting vistas for their newest ward.
Vegetable people don’t get all the fun in Ultimate Wilderness. The free-spirited gathlains are a new race of fey that are capricious and fun-loving to a fault. Even other fey races might be shocked by their pranks. I’ll reserve my judgement as a GM on how excited I am about a race that goes out of its way to make mischief, but it should make for exciting and unpredictable campaigns no matter what!
A new supplement for Pathfinder wouldn’t feel at home without a new library of archetypes, and boy does Ultimate Wilderness provide. Over 60 pages are dedicated to archetypes for base classes, hybrid classes, and even the new occult classes.
Well that’s all for this edition of the PAIZO NEWS ROUNDUP! Stay tuned for more on the Golem, and possibly even some third parties!
