Paizo News: PaizoCon Online Wrap Up

Pathfinder Remastered, Lost Omens: Highhelm, Starfinder Enhanced, Pathfinder Adventures, and more.

Catching up on spoilers and news about Pathfinder Remastered, Lost Omens: Highhelm, Starfinder Enhanced, Pathfinder Adventures, and more.

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If you opted to spend your PaizoCon Online 2023 playing games, don't worry, we watched the Twitch streams to make sure we were caught up on all of the spoilers and news that Paizo put out. The Keynote speech hinted at all of the things Paizo has in the works and the panels that followed expanded on and gave us spoilers for new books and adventures.

Pathfinder Remastered

First things first, the full color cover reveal. The sketches we saw of the covers will be the ones you can buy at your FLGS. Player Core and GM Core will be out in November with Monster Core and Player Core 2 out early next year.

The goals of these books are pretty straight forward: streamline the game, make it easier to enter the game by dividing GM content from player content, and get the books under the ORC license. You can still use any of your old books with no to minor tweaks.

Alignment has been removed from everything. This is partially because things like law and chaos only showed up along good and evil and partially because edicts and anathema cover those ideas in a better way. Clerics will have the option to sanctify themselves, gaining either the holy or unholy trait, and access to spells that become holy when you cast them.

There will be a new damage type: sprit. Spirit damage can be sanctified and works on incorporeal beings. Schools of magic will be removed due to the OGL.

Leshy and Orc have been added to the Ancestries and all Orc feats will be collected in this book instead of scattered everywhere. Versatile heritages makes it so you can mix and match heritages with more than half-human. Nephilim will be taking the place of Aasimar and Tiefling due to legalities with the OGL. Another versatile heritage we will see are Changelings.

Bards are getting more details about the muses and proficiency with all martial weapons. Anything dealing with Cleric's alignment got reworked, along with the warpriest getting master proficiency with the deity's favored weapon and expert in martial weapons. Druids got a tune up, including custom spell shaping abilities. They removed the open trait from Fighters as it was intuitive. Warden Spells have become core to Rangers and reworked the Crossbow Ace feat. Rogues are now trained in all martial weapons.

Witch has gotten one of the biggest reworks of the classes. The patrons are more specific and relevant. Familiars gain cool and unique abilities from the Witch's patron. As well as new feats that can turn a broom or polearm into a flying broom or have your patron use your familiar as a portal to reach out and grab your enemy's soul.

Wizards are going back to school and learning curriculums, such as The School of Battle Magic that lets you learn war-centric spells for the battlefield. This allows lots flavor and the ability to add new schools to reflect different parts of the setting. Wizards will also be getting weapon proficiencies.

Spell components are being reworked into manipulate and concentrate traits. This is to get rid of the holdover from the OGL. Some spells will be renamed, some will be replaced. Tree Shape will be replaced with One With Plants. A few spells will be compressed together: Light is now both Light and Dancing Lights. Condition removal spells will be stronger and focused around conditions as well as temporarily shutting off the condition if it doesn't counteract it completely.

The GM Core will make everything easier to find and is broken up into four sections: Running the Game, Building Adventures, Subsystems and Rules Variants, and Magic Items and Treasure. Subsystems were updated and adjusted to make them more player friendly, such as the research subsystem. More vehicles are added including a hot air balloon. The planes have had their names changed to use more Golarion terms and will include the new planes from Rage of Elelments.

Magic item activations now have a named activation to thematically tell you what it does. Talismans are easier to use and will be pulling more of their own weight. Reinforcing runes will be able to be added to shields to make them harder and more durable. Assistive items were added like corrective lenses, hearing aids, and wheelchairs.

Rage of Elements

Kineticists will continue to have their impulses. Composite Impulses will allow you to mix two elements together like a lightning rod where you throw a metal rod across the battlefield to call down a bolt of lightning. You will have to option to focus solely on one element or collect them all.

Each element will be getting its own chapter with new adventure possibilities, new spells, items, and monsters. Wood and Metal will be added to the current list of elements.

A big theme of this book is about choosing your elemental philosophy to take it beyond the four Greek elements. Every element will be getting a troop for you to do hordes of elementals, like the Avalanche Legion.

If you want genies, you’re getting genies with new lore.

How of the Wild

If you want creatures, this is the book! Lots of classic monsters are getting new variants and expansions. There will be hydras that eat starmetals to gain special abilities. Spellsong Lyrebird is a wizard’s attempt at creating a familiar that could help him cast spells, but has now become an invasive species that can cast spells independently.

There will be six new playable ancestries including Minotaur and Centaur. Minotaurs will be getting their own version of the Fastball Special. Centaurs will be able to be ridden for an interesting twist on mounted combat.

Highhelm

There are four levels to Highhelm: Kings Crown. Kings Heart, Stonebreech, and the Depths. Each level has its own character. The first adventure in the Sky King’s Tomb Adventure Path will take place almost solely in Highhelm.

While you are born into a specific Dwarven clan, there is nothing keeping you from switching as you grow up. Each clan focuses on different thing professionally.

Grindlegrubs are a domesticated grub that is the Dwarven equivalent of a cow. They make great steaks. They live on waste, removing the need for the city to have a sewer system.

Tian Xia

There will be six new ancestries. Samsarans were people who drank from a mystical spring, causing them to bleed water instead of blood and reincarnate. Tanukis use their big bellies for mystical power and can shapeshift into inanimate objects. Wayangs are native from the shadow plane and utilize shadows through different feats.

Pathfinder Adventures

Harrow Deck is delayed due to a production error with the box. Sky King’s Tomb AP will be a three parter starting in Highhelm and taking you deep underground. Season of Ghosts AP will be four parts and horror themed starting in October. Rusthenge will be a standalone adventure where strange happenings have been going on in Iron Harbor and it’s up to you to find out what’s going on.

Seven Dooms for Sandpoint is Adventure Path #200, coming in March 2024! This 200 page adventure will be taking us back to Sandpoint, where we started out in AP #1 Burnt Offerings. This will be for levels 4-11 and is an adaptation of the original Paizo office campaign. It will be available in both hardcover and softcover.

Darklands

In the Sky King’s Tomb backmatter, there will be a lot of new creatures (like the Algothullu and Ulatkini), everything you ever wanted to know about cave worms, new archetypes, and new items. New items include relics and long forgotten Dwarven artifacts.

Lots of random dungeons connect to the Darklands, not just Highhelm. Because a lot of Darklands is based in OGL, ‘Return to the Darklands’ will retcon previously revealed information. This includes Drow. In their place will be the Serpentfolk, who are now the bad guys of the Darklands and are trying to take over the world.

Cavern elves are now called Ayindilar, Umbral Gnomes are Drathnelar, and Subterranian dwaves are Hryngar. Hryngar will no long be taking slaves, instead they recruit you into their pyramid schemes.

Starfinder Enhanced

This book is going to have options for days for both players and GMs. New themes such as the battle medic, rancher, vid gamer, personal trainer, and street magician. New speces including playable holograms with hardlight bodies, Skiridates who have sonic breath weapons, Novians who are the embodiments of tiny dying stars, and more. Tons of new achetypes: Armored Visionary, Autocite, Exalted Champion, Major League Coach, Counselor, Menagerie Manager, and more.

Over 90 new feats! Arcane Ripost allows you to deal spell damage even if you fail to cast a spell because of AoE. Gag Gift is a dirty trick to put a grenade on someone. Starship Officionado inspires once per Starship combat without a check.

Four Enhanced Classes: Envoy, Solarian, Technomancer, and Witchwarper. The Envoy will be less pigeonholed as a support character by allowing things like an Inspiring Combo (doing a full action and using one of your improvisations). Solarians will now be allowed to advance attunement and spend attunement points without needing all three. Technomancers gain a technomatic talent every three levels. Witchwarpers get a pool of uses of Infinite Worlds per day that don’t affect their spell slots.

All classes got four pages of new stuff, in addition to the two pages each Enhanced Class has. Evolutionist got Divine Niche, Operative has a Mysterious Benefactor, Mystics gain new Connections, Biohacker has Hypermycology, and Precog gains the Seer Anchor.

There will be rules for designing spells as well as new spells and rituals.

New creature companions including bone familiars, vividile (they eat radiation), and Liminals.

Tons of new equipment! New rules for scaling equipment and customizing it.

There will be rules for narrative starship combat which is more flavor driven. GMs will have alternate skill DCs, Free Archetype rules, Milestone leveling, and new uses for Resolve Points.
 

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Dawn Dalton

Dawn Dalton

Erdric Dragin

Adventurer
Nothing for PF1e but they'll go out their way to remake Abomination Vaults for D&D 5e, their rivals, and then have the nerve to have their CEO post in the Pathfinder RPG Facebook group that they can't do even small PF1e bones to throw our way because of "resources". PF2e gets to play Inventors and new AP, PF1e has to sit on the sidelines and look at the new PF2e APs and never be able to play them or be able to play the Inventor class.

That's the reward we get for being loyal customers and keeping Paizo afloat all that time. Love the betrayal of TTRPG companies ditching our favorite editions and not even making a small department to give us new material now and then. The 3PP companies don't even wanna do PF1e stuff anymore. MMORPGs are better at this. Look at FFXI, servers still up and maintained, they even released a new expansion during a time when FFXIV was surging still.
 

Nothing for PF1e but they'll go out their way to remake Abomination Vaults for D&D 5e, their rivals, and then have the nerve to have their CEO post in the Pathfinder RPG Facebook group that they can't do even small PF1e bones to throw our way because of "resources". PF2e gets to play Inventors and new AP, PF1e has to sit on the sidelines and look at the new PF2e APs and never be able to play them or be able to play the Inventor class.

That's the reward we get for being loyal customers and keeping Paizo afloat all that time. Love the betrayal of TTRPG companies ditching our favorite editions and not even making a small department to give us new material now and then. The 3PP companies don't even wanna do PF1e stuff anymore. MMORPGs are better at this. Look at FFXI, servers still up and maintained, they even released a new expansion during a time when FFXIV was surging still.
MMORPGs have a thing called subscriber count to use to determine level of interest in their products. Square Enix can budget development resources directly against that income. TTRPG publishers don't have that luxury, so spending any resources when margins are tight on developing a product that demand is questionable isn't a wise business decision.

The irony of you continuing to complain about 3e no longer being supported isn't lost on me either. Any argument you'd like to use against PF2e or 5e existing would apply about PF1e/3.x as far as AD&D players are concerned. Your argument just uses the edition you happen to prefer as the "anything past here is a cash grab". By your logic, we should still be playing OD&D the way Arneson and Gygax originally wrote it.
 

Pathfinder Remastered


Alignment has been removed from everything. This is partially because things like law and chaos only showed up along good and evil and partially because edicts and anathema cover those ideas in a better way. Clerics will have the option to sanctify themselves, gaining either the holy or unholy trait, and access to spells that become holy when you cast them.

Yeah, this is what I basically figured when it came to changing alignment damage and such. Also edicts/anathemas are way better as character building tools.

There will be a new damage type: sprit. Spirit damage can be sanctified and works on incorporeal beings. Schools of magic will be removed due to the OGL.

First part, neat. Second part, whoa, that's something I didn't expect but makes sense. Schools weren't as big for Wizards as they were in 5E, but I'm guessing they are going to come up with something to reskin them as?

Leshy and Orc have been added to the Ancestries and all Orc feats will be collected in this book instead of scattered everywhere. Versatile heritages makes it so you can mix and match heritages with more than half-human. Nephilim will be taking the place of Aasimar and Tiefling due to legalities with the OGL. Another versatile heritage we will see are Changelings.

(y)

Bards are getting more details about the muses and proficiency with all martial weapons.

Cool, cool.

Anything dealing with Cleric's alignment got reworked, along with the warpriest getting master proficiency with the deity's favored weapon and expert in martial weapons.

nodding-yes.gif


Druids got a tune up, including custom spell shaping abilities. They removed the open trait from Fighters as it was intuitive. Warden Spells have become core to Rangers and reworked the Crossbow Ace feat. Rogues are now trained in all martial weapons.

Hm. Warden spells are core in what way? Like, added to the Core or are they a big part of the thing? Not sure I like that as much.

Witch has gotten one of the biggest reworks of the classes. The patrons are more specific and relevant. Familiars gain cool and unique abilities from the Witch's patron. As well as new feats that can turn a broom or polearm into a flying broom or have your patron use your familiar as a portal to reach out and grab your enemy's soul.

I hope this is as cool as it sounds because the class desperately needed it.

Wizards are going back to school and learning curriculums, such as The School of Battle Magic that lets you learn war-centric spells for the battlefield. This allows lots flavor and the ability to add new schools to reflect different parts of the setting. Wizards will also be getting weapon proficiencies.

Depending on what they give us, that could be an improvement. I know some people wanted a bit more for the Wizard class in general when it comes to flavor.

Spell components are being reworked into manipulate and concentrate traits. This is to get rid of the holdover from the OGL.

So like completely getting rid of components? I feel... kind of bad about that, but it's something I didn't use often enough to make it a true part of the game, both here and in D&D. It's something I always thought about wanting to integrate more deeply, having Wizards search for components like Geralt searching for alchemist reagents in The Witcher, but I never committed to anything regarding it.

Some spells will be renamed, some will be replaced. Tree Shape will be replaced with One With Plants. A few spells will be compressed together: Light is now both Light and Dancing Lights.

Huh, never thought of just combining those two before. Seems obvious.

Condition removal spells will be stronger and focused around conditions as well as temporarily shutting off the condition if it doesn't counteract it completely.

I'm blanking on these spells, tbh. Kind of cool, but not sure how much it was needed.

The GM Core will make everything easier to find and is broken up into four sections: Running the Game, Building Adventures, Subsystems and Rules Variants, and Magic Items and Treasure. Subsystems were updated and adjusted to make them more player friendly, such as the research subsystem.

Okay, but will they start making feats based around them? This is good, but it'd be nice to see some general skill feats in here for those systems, even if they are sectioned off as their own thing if you want to use those systems.

Magic item activations now have a named activation to thematically tell you what it does. Talismans are easier to use and will be pulling more of their own weight. Reinforcing runes will be able to be added to shields to make them harder and more durable. Assistive items were added like corrective lenses, hearing aids, and wheelchairs.

Good for shields, but will this also added to Automatic Bonus Progression so that any shield my guy picks up will be tougher than a rookie's?

Rage of Elements

Kineticists will continue to have their impulses. Composite Impulses will allow you to mix two elements together like a lightning rod where you throw a metal rod across the battlefield to call down a bolt of lightning. You will have to option to focus solely on one element or collect them all.

As someone who didn't play PF1 or 3.5 (at least, barely at all), I am very interested in seeing what this class can do.

Each element will be getting its own chapter with new adventure possibilities, new spells, items, and monsters. Wood and Metal will be added to the current list of elements.

A big theme of this book is about choosing your elemental philosophy to take it beyond the four Greek elements. Every element will be getting a troop for you to do hordes of elementals, like the Avalanche Legion.

Sounds cool.


If you want genies, you’re getting genies with new lore.

Looking forward too it.

Howl of the Wild

If you want creatures, this is the book! Lots of classic monsters are getting new variants and expansions. There will be hydras that eat starmetals to gain special abilities. Spellsong Lyrebird is a wizard’s attempt at creating a familiar that could help him cast spells, but has now become an invasive species that can cast spells independently.

Oh God, that last one sounds hilarious and I desperately need it.

There will be six new playable ancestries including Minotaur and Centaur. Minotaurs will be getting their own version of the Fastball Special. Centaurs will be able to be ridden for an interesting twist on mounted combat.

Hm. So are we getting Large ancestries now? I wonder if for the Minotaur you'll have the option to grow so that you can stay Medium if you like as a smaller part of the species and take a Feat like an Animal Companion to get bigger.

Highhelm
There are four levels to Highhelm: Kings Crown. Kings Heart, Stonebreech, and the Depths. Each level has its own character. The first adventure in the Sky King’s Tomb Adventure Path will take place almost solely in Highhelm.

While you are born into a specific Dwarven clan, there is nothing keeping you from switching as you grow up. Each clan focuses on different thing professionally.

Grindlegrubs are a domesticated grub that is the Dwarven equivalent of a cow. They make great steaks. They live on waste, removing the need for the city to have a sewer system.

Tian Xia

There will be six new ancestries. Samsarans were people who drank from a mystical spring, causing them to bleed water instead of blood and reincarnate. Tanukis use their big bellies for mystical power and can shapeshift into inanimate objects. Wayangs are native from the shadow plane and utilize shadows through different feats.

As someone who normally doesn't play in Golarion, I look forward to stealing lore from these things.

Darklands
In the Sky King’s Tomb backmatter, there will be a lot of new creatures (like the Algothullu and Ulatkini), everything you ever wanted to know about cave worms, new archetypes, and new items. New items include relics and long forgotten Dwarven artifacts.

Lots of random dungeons connect to the Darklands, not just Highhelm. Because a lot of Darklands is based in OGL, ‘Return to the Darklands’ will retcon previously revealed information. This includes Drow. In their place will be the Serpentfolk, who are now the bad guys of the Darklands and are trying to take over the world.

Very interested in seeing this. Again, I don't play Golarion as much but I love stealing ideas. Really interested in seeing a big studio put out a new spin on the old stuff.

Cavern elves are now called Ayindilar, Umbral Gnomes are Drathnelar, and Subterranian dwaves are Hryngar. Hryngar will no long be taking slaves, instead they recruit you into their pyramid schemes.

I would have preferred this for the Dero, but this sort of thing is a fine development.
 



TheAlkaizer

Game Designer
That's the reward we get for being loyal customers and keeping Paizo afloat all that time. Love the betrayal of TTRPG companies ditching our favorite editions and not even making a small department to give us new material now and then. The 3PP companies don't even wanna do PF1e stuff anymore.
Betrayal? Time passes and things change. They supported PF1E for one full decade. The company and the creators inside it will want to move to something else at some point; it's good for them, the company and the hobby. I'd roll my eyes if they had moved on a year or two after releasing a game and promised to support it, but there's no betrayal here.

I'm actually mind blown by the sheer amount of content released for PF1E, probably more than one person can play through in a decade. Are you sure there is no content you could dive in?

MMORPGs are better at this. Look at FFXI, servers still up and maintained, they even released a new expansion during a time when FFXIV was surging still.

MMORPGs are 100% not better at this. Quite the opposite. Most of them entirely close their servers the minute that the game is not profitable anymore. The example you've provided is an outlier from a company that has another MMORPG that's in the top 2 worldwide.
 

payn

I don't believe in the no-win scenario
Nothing for PF1e but they'll go out their way to remake Abomination Vaults for D&D 5e, their rivals, and then have the nerve to have their CEO post in the Pathfinder RPG Facebook group that they can't do even small PF1e bones to throw our way because of "resources". PF2e gets to play Inventors and new AP, PF1e has to sit on the sidelines and look at the new PF2e APs and never be able to play them or be able to play the Inventor class.

That's the reward we get for being loyal customers and keeping Paizo afloat all that time. Love the betrayal of TTRPG companies ditching our favorite editions and not even making a small department to give us new material now and then. The 3PP companies don't even wanna do PF1e stuff anymore. MMORPGs are better at this. Look at FFXI, servers still up and maintained, they even released a new expansion during a time when FFXIV was surging still.
I'd sub to a PF1 AP line, but I'm guessing the amount of work to make it happen would be the inverse of the demand.
 



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