PRPG Gamemastery Guide

Twowolves

Explorer
Lots and lots of announcements are streaming from the PaizoCon going on this weekend. Here is one of interest (on top of the 4-panel, hardback-book-thick DM screen that looks awesome):

Paizo Store said:
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game GameMastery Guide (OGL) Hardcover


This comprehensive guide to the art of Game Mastering goes beyond the Core Rulebook to offer tips, guidelines, and additional rules destined to take your Pathfinder Roleplaying Game campaign to the next level. Containing the accumulated knowledge and best practices of Paizo's award-winning creative staff and cadre of regular freelancers, this 320-page hardcover book is filled to bursting with encounter charts, idea lists, encounter design advice, tips for using and adapting published products to your personal campaign, and top-to-bottom guidelines for building a campaign from scratch. With a cover from fan-favorite artist Wayne Reynolds and lavish full-color interior illustrations, the Pathfinder RPG GameMastery Guide is an essential volume for gamers eager to take the next step in their Pathfinder journey.

The Pathfinder RPG GameMastery Guide includes:
Campaign basics such as choosing a tone, getting players together (and working together), and guidelines to establish exciting narrative techniques
An extensive chapter on handling players and their characters, from balancing a party to handling PC death and new characters to common house rules and solo campaigns
Tips for creating memorable Non-Player Characters, guidelines for followers, cohorts, sages, and hirelings, and more than 100 stat blocks for common NPCs such as guardsmen, knights, bandits, pirates, villagers, and nobles
Mountains of advice for handling treasure and rewards, from extensive lists of sample treasures to guidelines for nonstandard rewards like NPC favors, adjudicating wish spells, and making magic items
Rules and suggestions for world building, including community generation, overviews of different culture and technology paradigms, dealing with terrain, building calendars, and planar considerations
Advanced GM techniques such as fixing a "broken" game, using accessories, converting content from other systems, using props and handouts, when to "cheat," and how to prep a game from scratch in 15 minutes
Additional advanced rules including chases, sanity, hauntings, mysteries and investigations, research, weather, diseases, hazards, curses, poisons, traps, and much more
As many idea-generating and time-saving charts and tables as we can manage to fit between two covers!
…and much, much more!

While not exactly as necessary as the 3.X DMG (it's not "core"), it sure looks good to me, especially the parts I put in bold.
 

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Links for the lazy:

PRPG GM Screen - Sept 2009. Art pictured is final.

PRPG GameMastery Guide - Feb 2010. Cover art pictured is not final.

And a thread on their boards has details about PRPG mechanics as spoiled in a seminar this weekend:

- All races may choose their own favored class.
- Half-Elves may choose two favored classes.
- Half-Orcs, Half-Elves, and Humans have a +2 bonus to a single ability score, and no penalties. Yes. Half-Orcs.
- Jason Bulmahn previewed a change with the Barbarian in a thread here that spoke on Rounds of Rage and Rage Powers staying constant. This has made it into the final version.
- Clerics receive domain spells again much like in 3.5, but also retain certain Domain Powers at (typically) levels 1, 6, and 8.
- The Cleric's domain spell list now incorporates spells from other sources, such as the previewed Fireball.
- A Monk's flurry base attack bonus is now based off of the Fighter progression (Good). It is unknown how their normal base attack bonus will function.
- Paladins may use their Detect Evil much faster, instantly knowing who is evil.
- Paladins have a new mechanic called Mercy that they get at 3rd level and every few levels after. Each time they get it they may choose a type of condition (such as fatigue, nausea, etc.) and will be able to remove that when they use their Lay on Hands onto someone. Their ability to remove disease and the like is also factored into this.
- Paladin's smite evil works similarly to before, except it is target based instead of round based. A Paladin may choose a single evil target that they may gain their smite evil bonus against until that opponent is dead. This bonus doubles if the enemy is an evil outsider, undead, or evil dragons. During their smite, they also bypass their target's DR.
- Wizards do not need to pay as much anymore to add spells to their spellbooks. It will only cost 10 GP to add a 1st level spell to the book, and scales upwards from there to a maximum of 800 GP for a 9th level spell.
- All bloodline powers, domain powers, school powers, etc. are now located in their respective Class area. Less flipping around.
- There are a ton of Feats, many of which were previewed by Jason Bulmahn in certain threads and include various ways to improve Criticals, bypass DR, and other effects. A lot of these are Fighter (many high-level) based.
- Perception has been simplified, the five-sense differentiation being all but removed from its calculations.
- The Weapons table received a new column focusing on abilities of the weapon, such as Trip, Reach, etc. This will make it easier to reference the weapons.
- All Medium and Heavy Armors have had their AC increased by 1.
- Mithril weapons count as silver for bypassing damage reduction. This is so one does not have to use a weapon with -1 to damage to bypass it.
- Though Mithril armor still counts as one weight category lower, it does not do so for the purposes of proficiency. Thus Mithril Full Plate is treated as Medium armor, but the wearer will still need Heavy Armor Proficiency to use it properly.
- Poisons do not always activate immediately, some may wait hours or even days before affecting the target, and can damage them a day at a time (for a rather slow and painful death).
- Crafting is still based off a skill check, as in the Beta, and is normally low. Lowering the time or missing requirements can make this higher, failing by a lot can create a cursed item.
 
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Wow! Go, guys. :cool:

Some of the Pathfinder info to date has made me go 'hmm' or 'yeah, maybe. . .' (but not all, happily) so this is particularly awesome news, as far as I'm concerned. As in, I suddenly feel more positive about the game than I have at any other time.

Yay. :)
 



This excites me about the GameMastery Guide:

Erik Mona said:
By all means post topic requests to this thread, as there is still time to influence the contents of the book (I'll finish the outline in about two weeks, but even after that there will be time to squeeze things in).
 
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