Supine Arcanum

Initiate Brave CR 1/2 XP 200 Human Hussar 1 N Medium humanoid (human) Init +3; Senses Perception +4 DEFENSE AC 16, touch 13, flat-footed 13 (+3 armor, +3 Dex) hp 12 (1d10+2) Fort +2, Ref +5, Will +0 OFFENSE Speed 30 ft. Melee Tomahawk +4 (1d8+1/×3), Lance +2 (1d8+1/x3), Club +2 (1d6+1), or Dagger +4 (1d4+1/19-20) Ranged Composite Longbow (Str+1) +4 (1d8+1/x3), Tomahawk +4 (1d8+1/x3), Club +4 (1d6+1), or Dagger +4 (1d4+1/19-20) Special Attacks skirmish +1d6 STATISTICS Str 13, Dex 17, Con 14, Int 12, Wis 10, Cha 8 Base Atk +1; CMB +2; CMD 15 Feats Mounted Combat B , Ride-By Attack, Mounted Archery, Point-Blank Shot B Skills Acrobatics +6, Climb +0, Escape Artist +2, Handle Animal +3, Intimidate +3, Knowledge (nature) +5, Perception +4, Ride +6 (+10 when riding his bonded mount), Sleight of Hand +2, Survival +4, Swim +0 Languages Common, Slivic SQ mount (mustang), line of the arrow, favored (+1 Skill Point) Combat Gear potion of cure light wounds; Other Gear ...

Alright so we've got our concept, The Ogrekin Battle Cattle. The design doc is simple, and the bullets are laid out as follows. Needs to be strong and hit hard Needs to be tanky and both it and it's mount needs to be able to survive more than a few hits. This matches its giant nature and makes sure it doesn't just die to ranged attacks or a brace.  Needs to be kind of funny: It sounds silly and that's part of the point. They are like fallout super mutants on a cow. The players will laugh, and it will be disarming, which will make that first charge one of these (or a group in a cavalry charge) gives to the players all the more terrifying when it hits and the target basically explodes. It will be funny, then terrifying Now, to step 2! Step 2: Resources So, I know I want to make a mounted character, I know I want to put him on a cow, and I want him to charge things at high speed and blow them up with a single powerful hit. From previous experience in my...

For this post I wanted to try something different. I wanted to focus on one of my favorite things to finish but one of my least favorite things to do, NPC creation. I know it might sound odd, but the process of making characters in my experience is always a long, cumbersome experience. There's concepting, researching the mechanics I need to get it to work, cross referencing... the whole thing can be a pain. That said, I know I'm not the only one who gets anxious at the thought of building new characters, so I'm going to share my process with everyone here, and see if it helps. So, today I'm going to build some Blanks, NPCs that are not so much unique individuals but rather unnamed characters meant to fill in the rolls that you need during a given session. These are the unnamed bandits on the side of the road helping your king of thieves, the apprentices helping your wizard, the cavalry teams chasing you down. These guys don't have names, but they've got solid ...

One of the most difficult challenges unique to tabletop gaming is the unique demands of narrative and the audience. In tabletop, the GM often assumes that they are just here to write a story for a single viewer and that it is then performed (at best) more or less as they had written it by their players for the enjoyment of all involved. This is also the first mistake that many of us make, myself included. Tabletops are an interactive medium with not only multiple actors looking to engage with the narrative in an often literal way that changes it, but also with multiple audiences, each with their own wants, expectations, and goals when they sit down to play. In essence, each player is not only your player, but a whole new audience and demographic in and of themselves. So instead of writing 1 story for you and your 4 players to enjoy, you're actually writing 5 stories, that can all be wildly different, and might all have to be running all at once. This is a daunting task for an...

So, as I said in the last post, this one is one meant predominately for my players, a guide to some of the extra races that are both core to our home setting and common/associated enough with the area that they are options for players beyond what is in the Core Rulebook. That being said, I still think this is valuable to those outside my tiny group of players. For you, think of this as a window into some of the expansive things one can do with this system, a taste of how far one can go with the options for creatures one can play and/or interact in their own world with using these mechanics. Core Races: Feralfolk:  Feralfolk (aka the Skinwalker) are one of my top 3 favorite editions to the core racial options. Interesting mechanically, diverse in options, and unique in execution, there is nothing out there that plays like a feralfolk and is built to be played by players. You can play out your lycanthropic dreams without having to worry about murdering your teammates, you can be...

So, races. To start I'll clear up some things. For those of you totally new to Pathfinder and tabletops in general, the use of races in this context is something closer to species. It does not mean races as we tend to use them in real life and when the game does talk about other races within the game they tend to use the word ethnicity or ethnicities. I personally prefer just to call them ethnicities, species, or people to avoid the muddy complications that come about when we use the word race and to avoid the inaccuracies that it causes, but, for the interest of this walkthrough, when they talk about "races" in Pathfinder, this is what they mean. So, in Pathfinder, races are the various species or people that a player can select for their character to be. There are 7 in the Core Rulebook and dozens more throughout various bestiaries and other expansions Paizo has produced. For now, and in this post I'm going to be talking about the 7 that come with the CRB (Core ...