Due to personal reasons, maintaining the news fell by the wayside. However, that just means that we need a big news recap! Let’s see what’s new in PFS for the past couple months. For those of you who follow Paizo’s site, some of this may be old news, but here’s everything that happened since my last news post (at the end of January)

Philly-Specific News

We have a convention coming up next weekend. If you haven’t signed up for Seelie Court yet, you should. It’s 4 days of module and new scenario goodness! Also, if this is your first time going to a convention, you should check out this post written for our last convention to get what we expect.

Also, DEXCON 17 has been announced for 4th of July weekend. There are no games to sign up for yet, but keep the date free (if you’re not doing anything else 4th of July weekend).

Pathfinder Society General News

John Compton released a new reward for GMs. It is a chronicle sheet that you can attach to one of your characters to give them various bonuses depending on how many stars you have and what level your character is. You can get it from the product page for the sheet, or check out this blog post and discussion thread on Paizo’s site for more discussion on how to use them and what they do.

Carrion Crown has been sanctioned for AP play. No word yet on when Warriors of the Reborn Forge or Tears at Bitter Manor will be sanctioned.

We’ve received the names and factions for all of the scenarios for the rest of the season. Our Factions page has been updated with the appropriate information and links to the new faction letters for the appropriate scenarios. As a reminder, if you are running a scenario from Season 5, then you should be taking a look at the appropriate faction letters beforehand so you understand what the faction missions are for that scenario.

The call for GMs for GenCon arrived about a month ago. There may or may not be spots left, but I wouldn’t be hopeful. However, there is one interesting piece of information there. We now know that there will be 2 specials released at GenCon along with Bonkeep 3 – but we also got a spoiler of the name of the first 3 scenarios in Season 6. Looks like we’ll be headed to Numeria!

Pathfinder General News

Sean K Reynolds, one of the three people on the Design Team of Pathfinder, left Paizo back in February. His presence helped to shape Pathfinder in many ways and it is sad to see him go. Paizo is still in the process of finding a replacement for him.

We’ve found out our first information about the Iron Gods adventure path! It’s looking really sweet so far, and I’m hoping to either play or run it when it comes out! Robots! Gods! Sci-fi in fantasy! Woo!

We also know the name and cover of the Free RPG Day adventure – Risen from the Sands. It looks like the adventure will contain pregens of 4 Advanced Class Guide classes, so that will be our first opportunity to see how those classes have changed since the playtest that we participated in. This module will be likely to be PFS Sanctioned, and we will certainly be running it in various places throughout the region, so keep your eyes open when we announce when and where we will be running it.

FAQs

Animal Shaman Druids Get Wildshape at Lvl 6 – Due to how the wild shape ability of the various shamans was worded, it wasn’t clear whether or not a druid with an animal shaman archetype (saurian shaman being one of the most famous) could actually wildshape at level 4 or not. The answer is no, you need to wait until level 6. But then you can start wildshaping into your specific animal early. (FAQ)

It Only Takes a Standard Action to Throw a Splash Weapon – This may seem obvious, but it stems from an entry in the action table in the combat chapter in the Core Rulebook. People saw that entry and freaked over whether or not we have been playing splash weapons wrong. The Pathfinder Design Team clarified that the “prepare a splash weapon” entry in the combat chapter is there for items like a flask of oil, which aren’t usually splash weapons to be made into a splash weapon. Your alchemist fire still only takes a standard action to throw (plus whatever action it took to get it out in the first place). (FAQ)

The Ice Tomb Hex Got Clarified – Ultimate Magic introduced a major hex called ice tomb, which didn’t give a range, duration or really any details besides the fact that there was a tomb made of ice around the target. The Pathfinder Design Team came in and clarified the restrictions on the ability. (FAQ)

An Amulet of Mighty Fists Doesn’t Add to Grapple – There was a big question about whether or not bonuses to unarmed strikes added to grapple maneuvers or not, especially since a lot of bonuses to unarmed strikes also said in the text of the bonus that it also applied to grappling. The PDT came in and made a post clarifying that they did not because grapple is not a weapon-based maneuver, and the amulet of mighty fists only applies when using unarmed strikes in a weapon-based maneuver. (Forum Post)