Primed for Adventure

Monday, June 17, 2013


Illustration by Paolo Puggioini

Next month, we’ll be releasing Pathfinder Player Companion: Pathfinder Society Primer, a 32-page player-focused sourcebook specifically designed for use in the Pathfinder Society Organized Play campaign. Written by John Compton and myself, the book should provide characters of all sorts with new options to use both in the organized play environment and in society-themed home campaigns.

Among the many new rules presented in the book are a series of feats designed to accentuate the difference between Pathfinder agents commissioned from the field after proving themselves as able adventurers and those initiates who receive training at the Grand Lodge before earning their wayfinders. While none of these feats has the prerequisite of either character background, those for field commissioned Pathfinders tend to focus on luck and spontaneity, while those for trained Pathfinders benefit characters whose abilities are based on study and extensive training.

Here are two sample feats from this section of the book.

Patient Strike (Combat)

Your training under the Master of Swords has taught you that a well-timed strike is worth waiting for and that patience will serve you well in the long run.
Prerequisite: Int 13.
Benefit: You can choose to ready an attack as a full-round action instead of a standard action. When you do so, you gain a +2 bonus on your attack roll when your readied action triggers.
Normal: Readying an attack is a standard action and doesn’t grant a bonus on your attack roll.

Versatile Spontaneity

You made a good name for yourself in the Pathfinder Society in part because you knew how to prepare for the challenges before you, even if your natural magical abilities lend themselves less to preparation and more to spontaneity.
Prerequisites: Int 13 or Wis 13 (see Special), ability to spontaneously cast 2nd-level spells.
Benefit: When you regain spell slots at the start of the day, you may opt to prepare one spell you don’t know in place of a daily spell slot 1 level higher than the prepared spell’s level. To do so, you must have access to the selected spell on a scroll or in a spellbook, and the spell must be on your spell list (even if it is not one of your spells known). This process takes 10 minutes per spell level of the selected spell. You can cast the selected spell a single time, expending the spell slot as though it were a known spell being cast by you. Preparing a spell in this manner expends a scroll but not a spellbook. A spell prepared in this way is considered its actual level rather than the level of the spell slot expended. You can apply metamagic feats to the spell as normal, as long as the spell’s actual level plus the increases from metamagic feats is 1 level lower than the highest-level spell you can cast. For example, a 12th-level sorcerer with this feat, a scroll of fireball, and the Empower Spell metamagic feat could prepare an empowered fireball spell in her 6th-level spell slot.
Special: If you spontaneously cast arcane spells, you must have an Intelligence score of at least 13 to take this feat. If you spontaneously cast divine spells, you must have a Wisdom score of at least 13 to take this feat. If you have both arcane and divine spellcasting classes, you can use this feat to prepare a spell using a given class’s spell slot as long as you meet the associated ability score prerequisite.

Pathfinder Player Companion: Pathfinder Society Primer is set for a July release, so preorder your copy today to ensure that you can start using the great character options within at the start of Pathfinder Society Organized Play’s Year of the Demon, which launches at Gen Con Indy on August 15.

Mark Moreland
Developer

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Tags: Paolo Puggioini Pathfinder Player Companion Pathfinder Society
Liberty's Edge 4/5 *** Venture-Lieutenant, California—Los Angeles (South Bay)

An interesting preview! I particularly like Patient Strike, which sounds great for setting up an ambush.


Versatile Spontaneity is a very good feat for spontaneous spellcasters when you need a spell, but can't get it via the other workarounds (such as ring of spell knowledge). Luckily my PFS sorcerer has an Int of 14, so he qualifies for it :D

I may have to find a way to fit that into my build...

Grand Lodge 5/5

Mark - I really hope some of the new Primer will explore the 'darker' side of the Society.

Pathfinders are not Harpers!


Something tells me my archaeologist bard is going to start carrying a spellbook around with him.

Scarab Sages

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, PF Special Edition, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I can't wait to get see the whole thing. Patient strike sounds like an amazing addition. Very balanced!

4/5

Will this book be considered part of the core, always available content or will it be like any other companion and to use the book you are required to own a copy? Seems like it should be part of the core of PFS given the topic but I can see arguments either way.

(of course I'll be buying this with my next AP shipment...)


Patient Strike looks interesting, if a bit underwhelming. It looks decent at early levels, where the +2 is likely to matter, but later on, most attackers won't need a +2 to hit at their highest BAB, and would probably prefer a bonus to damage or cause some sort of debilitation (like entangle or something). I'd maybe take it on a fighter, since they can retrain feats when they level up.

I really like Versatile Spontaneity, and the prerequisites and effects look balanced and fair.

5/5 5/55/55/5

Patient strike looks nice for archers interupting spellcasters.

I think i'm gonna regret blowing my PP on a bunch of low level wands now...


Patient strike seems to take readying an attack and making it a lot worse?

It seems that feats though improve your abilities, not make them worse.

My mind is actually blown here. Casters are so incredibly good, and you take away the drawback of being a spontaneous caster???

It is ok if you give martial classes some candy too

Scarab Sages 4/5

Um, when you ready you can only take a standard action, with this feat you can take a full round action and you get +2 to hit when you do. I don't know how you think this is worse?


Chris Mullican wrote:
Um, when you ready you can only take a standard action, with this feat you can take a full round action and you get +2 to hit when you do. I don't know how you think this is worse?

It never says that you can do a full round action. You have to spend the full round action in ordet to gain the +2, but the redied action is still limited to a standar action.

EDIT: to be honest as I am reading it, the feat is terrible. hopefuly is there is some feedback they will change it now that there is time.

EDIT 2: thematically the feat is full of win. but mechanically is bland at the begining but becomes really weak at later levels. ImHo, It should at least have some scaling bonus to damage.

+2 at 5th level 1, +4 at 10th level, +8 at 10th level, +16 at 20 level. or something.

Scarab Sages 2/5

Considering the other option with worshipping Erastil and gaining the Bullseye Shot feat, it is really not an option for ranged attackers. A move action to gain +4 attack, and then you can ready as a standard action, or have the option to just normally shoot with the +4? Unless you really want to maximize your thematic features of calming yourself before a shot like a sniper, Patient Strike would be secondary to the feat out there.

Liberty's Edge 2/5 *

Michael: I totally agree! Pathfinders are not Harpers! They are more like a rather naughty thieves guild


In reading the Patient Strike feet, while I admit it is not 100 percent clear, I believe it strongly implies that you can use a full-attack as part of the readied action.

So, you get to ready a full attack, and you get a +2 bonus on your attack roll, possibly only for the first attack, but I would rule that it is on all iterative attacks.

That's how I'd rule it, if I were running it in a game. However, I am more likely to convert the feat to the 7th Sea game as part of a Swordsman School.

Scarab Sages 2/5

Antimony wrote:

In reading the Patient Strike feet, while I admit it is not 100 percent clear, I believe it strongly implies that you can use a full-attack as part of the readied action.

So, you get to ready a full attack, and you get a +2 bonus on your attack roll, possibly only for the first attack, but I would rule that it is on all iterative attacks.

That's how I'd rule it, if I were running it in a game. However, I am more likely to convert the feat to the 7th Sea game as part of a Swordsman School.

If it was like that, then it would be a bit better, but seeing that it just states using an attack as a full-round action without stating that you can use your full attack with it, then I would rule it as the single attack.

Grand Lodge 4/5

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If you read their history, it sounds like the Society started as a grand academic experiment; you read and research like a PHD student for years, then travel the world and catalogue the wonders of the ancient empires.

Then the scholars started dying. Traps, vicious tribes, monsters. The brutes got recruited. The Society then became half scholars, intrigued and interested, and half brutes, killing and fighting so that the brains of the operation could get the artifacts back in one piece. These guys and girls barely respected the work, they liked the coin and the lifestyle.

'Course the situation got even worse once the Society started winning. Powerful artifacts meant that the nations got involved. Hellknight Officers. Andoren military brass. Qadiran master capitalists. The scholars became the minority in a sea of vested interests.

Today, it seems like those that remember the old days of Society are holding onto command just barely. The Society is rife with agendas and the original noble pursuits of Durvin Gest is just a one dimensional facade Pathfinders use as marketing while racing around doing the whims of the anonymous Decemvirate.

When Pathfinders do save the world, it's more for the fact that you can't profit or secure artifacts when nations are being enslaved by Aboleths, destroyed by Rune Lords or murdered and then magically animated by the Whispering Tyrant. It's easier to run the company when the status quo remains.

Just my take. It makes it an interestingly conflicted faction.

5/5 5/55/55/5

Pathfinders only save the world because that's where they keep all their stuff.


I would change it to this:

Requirement: 6 BAB

Readying an action now takes a Move Action, instead of a Standard.

Grand Lodge 4/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.
BigNorseWolf wrote:
Pathfinders only save the world because that's where they keep all their stuff.

Suddenly all those Hao Jin Tapestry missions seem a lot more sinister...

I can see it now; "Season 6: The Withdrawal."

Liberty's Edge 2/5 *

Hao Jin has proven itself susceptible to intrusion though , so I doubt any of the Dec would want to store anything there now. It will end up being a plaything for Aram Bey.

Its a quick trip to anywhere via the tapestry though.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Antimony wrote:
In reading the Patient Strike feet, while I admit it is not 100 percent clear, I believe it strongly implies that you can use a full-attack as part of the readied action.

It doesn't imply that at all. It explicitly says "you can choose to ready an attack as a full-round action instead of a standard action..."

An attack means one attack.

Liberty's Edge

I need a few of clarifications about Versatile Spontaneity:

1)Divine spellcasters can write a spellbook (prayerbook)?

Any arcane spellcaster can get a spellbook with arcane spells. Even if his class don't use a spellbook they can read one from another class that has the same spells and with this feat they can prepare a spell from it.

If a arcane spellcaster can use this feat at the cost of a few GP, or even using a looted spellbook and divine spellcaster are restricted to scrolls, the usefulness of the feat change greatly between the classes.

2) What happen when your class has the same spell at different levels? (Example, a summoner with a wizard spellbook with haste in it.)

3) You need to decipher the spell in the spellbook?

4) PFS related. It is possible to buy a spellbook with a few spells already written in it?
It is possible to pay a wizard in town to add spells in your spellbook if you are a member of a class without it?


Diego Rossi wrote:

I need a few of clarifications about Versatile Spontaneity:

1)Divine spellcasters can write a spellbook (prayerbook)?

Any arcane spellcaster can get a spellbook with arcane spells. Even if his class don't use a spellbook they can read one from another class that has the same spells and with this feat they can prepare a spell from it.

If a arcane spellcaster can use this feat at the cost of a few GP, or even using a looted spellbook and divine spellcaster are restricted to scrolls, the usefulness of the feat change greatly between the classes.

2) What happen when your class has the same spell at different levels? (Example, a summoner with a wizard spellbook with haste in it.)

3) You need to decipher the spell in the spellbook?

4) PFS related. It is possible to buy a spellbook with a few spells already written in it?
It is possible to pay a wizard in town to add spells in your spellbook if you are a member of a class without it?

What about spells you wouldn't normally have access to - a sorceror could prepare an arcane Ressurection spell from a witch scroll, or an Oracle could prepare a Spellstaff from a druid scroll...

Grand Lodge 4/5

Easy fix for pad300's question:

"...you may opt to prepare one spell you don’t know from your spell list in place of..."

Diego:

1. No divine class uses spellbooks, so this feat is obviously of lesser utility to divine casters than arcane casters.

2. You should probably treat any spell you prepare via this feat as being the same level as it appears on your spell list, +1. That should be shoehorned into the feat description somewhere.

3. Yep.

4. I will probably work out in Society play that you can add spells to your spellbook via the same methods a wizard does.

Silver Crusade 3/5 5/5

Matthew Pittard wrote:
Michael: I totally agree! Pathfinders are not Harpers! They are more like a rather naughty thieves guild

That is not always the case. There are very few "naughty" members of The Silver Crusade.

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