Pathfinder Roleplaying Game
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When D&D 4th edition was announced it was immediately rejected with a lot of negative feelings by a rather large number of people. Realizing a lot of 3 and 3.5 material would suddenly become mostly useless and that Wizards will be making a significantly different game, Paizo Publishing decided to cash in on the 4th edition naysayers and appeal to the people who wanted to stick to the old edition, but realized it still needed fixing.
Thus Pathfinder came about, usually called D&D 3.75, due to the fact that it largely resembles the 3.5 ruleset but with various non-drastic updates, fixes and changes. Notably, grappling now make something that might be called "sense" (gasp!) and Half-orcs, and Half-elves don't suck anymore. Spellcasters are just as crazy as ever once they've got a few levels in them, while melee classes, generally speaking, got buffed across the board. Not enough to make them outshine the wizards, but take what you can get. This is assuming that your DM isn't a newfag incapable of compensating.
Noted for the mishmash campaign world (which contains elements lifted from pretty much everything, ever, from real-world history to crappy pulp Sci-Fi to LotR with a dash of Order of the Stick thrown in for good measure), entire published campaigns called Adventure Paths, and decent maturity level (in both senses. Gay people exist, as do bum-fuckin', banjo-playing, inbred hillbilly ogres). The setting is both good and total shit at the same time, no better than any decent gamemaster can come up with on their own.
Essentially fairly well-done Darker and Edgier D&D. And the adventure paths & modules are pretty good. If you're the sort of skub DM who uses shit like that.
Golarion
The main setting of Pathfinder is the Inner Sea region (basically the equivalent of the Mediterranean sea zone in our world) on a planet called Golarion. Unlike other D&D settings, the cultures and civilizations of the Inner Sea region are in severe decline after the only deity which represents humans in the Great Beyond (the outer planes), Aroden, died a few centuries ago. To add salt to the wound, this caused a series of events which fucked up the world: the formation of a massive supernatural stationary hurricane that annihilated two entire nations and allowed pirates develop their own kingdoms, the obliteration of a noble barbarian empire by a tear in the tissue of reality opened directly into the Abyss, and most of the prophets and diviners committed mass suicide as an imminent prophesied golden age for mankind suddenly faded into nothing. As if this wasn't enough, the two greatest empires started to collapse in the religious hysteria, Cheliax (the Golarion equivalent of the Holy Roman Empire) suffered a civil war that ultimately put on the throne a noble house with links to the Nine Hells, making worship of the devil (Rock me Azmodeus!) the official state religion. Taldor (a mix of the Byzantine Empire and the Spanish Empire during the Habsburg era) started to lose territories at the hands of the Keleshite Empire (the "Persian" ethnicity in Golarion), while banks owned by brass dragons turned its culture completely decadent and stagnated by the bureaucracy. As this happened some provinces declared independence from Cheliax, creating two new countries, Andoran (which is like the 13 colonies after winning the Revolutionary War, so basically America (fuck yeah) with swords and sorcery) and Galt (France during The Terror with some elements which remind you of the Soviet Union after the end of the Russian civil war).
If all this political fuck up does not seem enough, Golarion is in fact a cage build by the gods for an entity know as Rovagug, basically a massive worm which works like a black hole and represents entropy. It is also connected with the Plateau of Leng and there are cults to the Old Gods (yes, the H.P. Lovecraft ones, so you can roll a CE cleric of Nyarlathotep for the evulz). Of course all of this is hidden by the Pathfinder society (National Geographic meets your standard Adventurers Guild), one of the many factions and secret societies whose selfish intentions are just helping civilization to sink more into the pile of crap it is stuck instead of helping it come out. The remaining deities and their churches aren't helping either, the veteran gods have already seen an apocalypse obliterate the world once and the new ones are just useless adventurers who can't grasp that they aren't mortals anymore.
Beyond the Inner Sea region, there is the continent of Tian Xia, where weabooness and furfaggotry meet; the Darklands (the Underdark of Golarion), divided in three levels, each more deep than the last; and if the planet seems too shitty for you, the whole solar system is full of civilizations and monsters to raid and slash in your quest for loot.
| The Classes of Pathfinder 1st Edition | |
|---|---|
| Core Classes: | Barbarian - Bard - Cleric - Druid - Fighter - Monk Paladin - Ranger - Rogue - Sorcerer - Wizard |
| Advanced Player's Guide: |
Alchemist - Antipaladin - Cavalier Inquisitor - Oracle - Summoner - Witch |
| Advanced Class Guide: |
Arcanist - Bloodrager - Brawler - Hunter - Investigator Shaman - Skald - Slayer - Swashbuckler - Warpriest |
| Occult Adventures: |
Kineticist - Medium - Mesmerist Occultist - Psychic - Spiritualist |
| Ultimate X: | Gunslinger - Magus - Ninja - Samurai - Shifter - Vigilante |
Pathfinder Tales
The series of Novels written for the setting. There are only sixteen at the moment but we are starting to see some Forgotten Realms authors starting to write for Paizo, most notably Ed Greenwood who made Forgotten Realms. This may be an indicator of how much Wizards of the Coast have been messing around with the settings and driving people off.
Iron Gods Adventure Path
Is well known the kitchen sink nature of Golarion, still one of the kingdoms of said setting always caught the interest of neckbeards more than the others thanks to its cross genre nature, Numeria. Mentioned in one of the tales found in the first Adventure Paths in the 3.5 era, Numeria is Robert E. Howard's Cymmeria meets Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, Temple of the Frog and City of the Gods first edition modules, a harsh land populated by warlike nomadic barbarian tribes in which nine thousand years ago crash landed a spaceship the size of Manhattan. Said even made the place even more inhospitable thanks to acid rain, radioactivity, malfunctioning gravitation technology, rogue nanobots, rogue robots, escaped alien fauna and sapient aliens.
A human civilization that thrived in a world without magic nor gods, the Androffans, decided to when full Star Trek and build a fleet of spaceships dependent of a single massive mothership named Divinity. As the Divinity explored new worlds and got closer to the center of the universe, in which Azathoth sleeps, the crew when more and more crazier with the revelations that magic and deities are a very real thing. Shit hit the fan when the Divinity made first contact with an space-faring empire named The Dominion of the Black, a conglomeration of sapient races obsessed with black holes and entropy. The encounter with the lovecrafnian aliens resulted into a mutiny in which most of the crew died and also made the main A.I. in charge of the mothership, Unity, go crazier than Salvador Dalí becoming a sanctioned psyker. The remaining sane crew, seeing that was highly dangerous to go back to Androffa Prime as it could lure the Dominion to their homeworld, they decided to crash the ship in the nearest planet around, a most unfortunate decision. Not only the remaining crew didn't survived the impact, they also brought to an innocent world a plethora of alien creatures, malfunctioning hostile robots and Unity itself, an A.I. with Messiah complex.
The kellid tribes living in Numeria always had taboos towards the technology brought by the Rain of Stars, still it brought adventurers interested to master its secrets, soon creating another threat to the already very hospitable land of Numeria. Sidrah Imeruss, a low rank official of the Androffan armada, survived the crash of Divinity thanks to a very resilient cryogenic pod and waken up in the strange world of Golarion. Sidrah, being unaware that the crash happened nine thousand years ago and most likely the Androffa Prime she knew no longer exists, decided to teach what she know about technology to spellcasters with the idea of create a secret organization that could help her go back home.
It didn't took long for Sidrah being murdered and her secret ragtag group turn into a mighty organization that now rules Numeria with an iron fist, the Technic League, which also became a puppet of the A.I. Unity when the spellcasters made their first explorations of the Divinity wreck (now known as Silvermount by the natives).
Iron Gods Adventure Path takes place after the events of Wrath of the Righteous, as Unity, now aware that the portal to the Abyss has been closed forever and that other major powers of Avistan are focused into cleanse what is left of the demonic corruption, has decided to settle in motion its plan for become a real deity. The only one who oppose Unity is its "son", Hellion, a Chaotic Evil A.I. demigod (yes, he can grant divine spells and everything) that is worshiped by the gangs that inhabit a massive junkyard known as Scrapwall. In this crossfire between "father-son" are caught the PCs, who discover about Hellion and his cult through events in the first part of the campaign, Firest of Creation, and try to stop him of activating a massive mining vehicle in Scrapwall as well as annihilating his techno-fetishist cult in Lords of Rust.
The party then would know about the true treat to the safety of whole Golarion, Unity, as Hellion's cult dogma is mainly based in the A.I.'s obsession with vengeance against his "father". The only way to face an A.I. far more powerful than Hellion is find the corpse of an android oracle named Casandalee, the first prophet of Unity that, like Hellion, flee from the control freak techno-messiah once she realized Unity was even worse than Asmodeus, the Four Horsemen and the Demon Lords of Abyss put together. Casandalee was hunted down and killed by a task force of robots but her body was reclaimed by an ex-member of the Technic League, the wizard Furkas Xourd, so the party must head to the place in which said spellcaster lives, the Choking Tower.
This leads the PCs to Iavendeigh, a town of Erastyl fanatics that are also Luddites which could be consider the most hypocrite lawful good oriented community in the whole setting as their soil's extreme fertility is a residual product of malfunctioning nanobots inhabiting the wreckage of an industrial spaceship, the Aurora. The Aurora was intended to be also an androids foundry, so once the party gains the trust of the local council granting them access to the ruined ship, they find it crawling with degenerated construct people and the task force of gearsmen send to kill Casandalee. The corpse is nowhere to be found but a stranded elemental summoned by Furkas plus video footage of the man exploring the wreck confirms that the wizard haves the body of the oracle android. Furkas Xoud was the member of an ustalavic aristocratic family that worships the minor evil deity Zyphus and also a paraphiliac (his fetish deals with smoke, toxic clouds, fog and similar), seven years ago he died while trying to perform an autopsy to Casandalee, as the android somehow programmed her nanobots to be extremely hostile to anybody that would try to profane her body. This means the Choking Tower is haunted by Furkas, crawling by gas themed monsters and some robots designed by the man (if you hate wizards then you will love to fight Furkas' robotic apprentices). The party then finds out Casandalee did a copy of her whole mind and uploaded it into a device, missing it in a place named the Spider Scar, a valley that even makes brave kellid warriors soil their loincloths as it is crawling with alien invaders.
Remember the guys that made the Divnity crew when insane like a bunch of fennec foxes high on acid and speed? They chase the ship to Golarion, liked the place and had been performing experiments on the natives since then and if that wasn't enough this has brought the attention of their traditional enemies for galactic domination, the mi-go. And the device that now contains the mind of Casandalee? Is now being used to help a technorganic device bring the coordinates of Golarion to the nearest Dominion fleet.
After dealing with ghost wizard that get diamonds hard with smoke and aliens obsessed with brains, the party finally gets their greasy hobomurder hands on the datapad device containing an A.I. develop with the memories of Casandalee, heading to Starfall to dealt with the Technic League and Unity.
In the fifth part of the AP the PC must dealt with two main dungeons, one is the Black Sovereign's palace and the other is the Technic League's main HQ. The focus of the module is the palace, as it contains perhaps one of the most powerful NPCs in the whole campaign, Kevoth Kul. Thanks to his addiction to Numerian fluids (the seepage of many spaceships wrecks which pretty much is liked Warp stone) the man is immortal and haves the physical stats of a demigod, making him a Conan 5.0. As the PC are most likely by now be wanted criminals by the Technic League, they must keep a low profile as they stay on the capital and get involved into the political intrigues on both the court of the Black Sovereign and the Technic League. The situation is as easy to fix as getting close to the behemoth of a man that is Kevoth Kul and cast on him a healing spell or use a pharmaceutic that makes the man clean of his addiction. Good luck to approach a guy which is high pretty much all the time, prone to violent outburst and haves a libido that could make a Slaaneshi paladin be proud (and I did mention the man is bisexual and he likes to force himself on characters with a high CHAR? No? Then better have a CMD high as fuark or your anus is going to turn into a bag of holding).
Finally, after so much suffering, the PCs can explore Silvermount (a.k.a. Divinity) and cleanse it of Unity's presence. Things would become System Shock on cocainum as soon as the PCs' party put their feet into a monorail as the place is crawling with xboaxhueg bots, undead security guards, aliens that are unaware of being trapped in a wrecked spaceship and the annoying nagging of Unity's cameras equipped with lazor turrets. The most dangerous encounters in this part of the campaign, a part of Unity itself, are Ophelia, a cyborg gargoyle who is the high-priestess of the mad A.I., and Bastion, the main security chief of the Divinity which is also a noqual alloy made extreme combat robotic unit.
Rage
Pathfinder's barbarians are champion swimmers, but only when raging.
The Pathfinder RPG inspires a large amount of nerdrage over its rules, with frequent bawwing over class balance, perceived nonsensical nerfs to fighters, buffed CoDzilla and wizards and general trollage. Any discussion of the differences between Pathfinder ("3.75" for fanboys) and regular 3.5 is almost guaranteed to produce a flamewar.
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Tau Pathfinders
They're the scouts and snipers of the Tau army. They're typically armed with light Pulse Carbines (which allows them to pin enemy units down) if they're scouts or Rail rifles, which are essentially bluemangroup-portable railguns, if they're assigned to do sniper support. The main use of Pathfinders are their Markerlights, which allows them to paint enemy units and allow everything targeting it to fire with greater accuracy fuck shit up even better. We've also got an article on the them.
Eldar Pathfinders
The veteran rangers of craftworlds, mostly Alaitoc, become Pathfinders. They function much like Rangers, in which they're primarily used for scouting or sniper support, however, their centuries of experience in the field makes them incredibly daunting opponents to take down while in cover.
Links
- Pathfinder at Paizo Publishing, for those too damn lazy to use Google.
- Pathfinder Wiki because every goddamn thing has a wiki these days.
- Pathfinder SRD For those of you who are too lazy and/or cheap to get the books.