Philly-Specific News

Winter Gameday is coming! Make sure to sign up on the warhorn here to reserve your slot!

Congrats to Benn Roe on his fourth star!

Pathfinder Society General News

The playtest will soon be ending. I’ve had a lot of questions about what this means for Pathfinder Society. The answer is pretty much nothing. You can keep playing your playtest characters from now until when the book comes out. Once the book comes out, you have to update your characters to the new version of the class, changing only what has changed between the playtest and the final version. As usual, make sure you pay attention to the playtest forum during the final days of the playtest to see if there are any changes to the class from the pdf they released. (For example, they fixed one part of the Investigator since the last update.)

A recent blog post has posted the schedule for the first 3 months of 2014. Get ready for a 3-part series in Osirion!

Pathfinder General News

RPG Superstar 2014 has been announced! RPG Superstar is a competition Paizo has every year to gain new freelancers. The winner writes a module for Paizo, and the rest of the top 4 each write a PFS scenario. All you have to do to enter is to come up with a wondrous item and submit it to the linked page! Check it out and start designing those wondrous items. You have until the end of the year to submit your item.

FAQs

Let’s see what the Pathfinder Design Team has done in the past month!

The magus must use a spell in a magus spell slot with spell combat (unless he gets an ability that says otherwise) – As with any build focused on spell damage, a level dip into crossblooded orc/draconic sorcerer can do wonders for magus spell damage. However, this FA clarifies that you can’t use the spells granted to you by that level for spell combat by default. (Like usual, broad study lets the magus get around this restriction.) (source)

A weapon can get multiple bane enhancements, but their bonuses overlap – Pretty much what it says on the tin. A +1 elf bane human bane longsword only gets +2 to hit and +2d6+2 to damage when used against a half-elf. (source)

Celestial Servant only changes the type of the animal companion, not anything that would change because of the type change – Celestial Servant changes the type of your animal companion to magical beast. Magical beast, like any other creature type, defines what kind of hit die, BAB, save progressions, class skills, and other abilities the creature has. This would change a lot of things about the animal companion (including needing to rebuild 1/2 the animal companion table), but it has been clarified that the feat doesn’t do that.

Claws on your feet? Four legs good. Two legs bad. – Turns out the difference between talons and claws are actually something to pay attention to. The FAQ breaks down when you’re allowed to put claws on your legs and the reason for doing so. (source)

Clerics with outsider subdomains can actually use their planar binding spells – Normally, in order to use planar binding, you must make a magic circle spell of the same alignment to trap it. Unfortunately, all the magic circle spells have alignment descriptors of the opposite type of the creatures they trap, which means that clerics cannot prepare them if they are of the same alignment of their subdomain. This is off, so the FAQ lets them do the binding without doing the magic circle. (source)

Vestigal arms don’t grant you an extra attack – This is right in the wording of the discovery, but this FAQ clarifies what that actually means. Vestigal arms are still really useful, but they don’t actually give an extra attack in a full attack. (source)

Half Orcs can’t select the Acute Darkvision as a racial trait unless they kept their darkvision – RAW, you could trade away darkvision and get it back by taking Acute Darkvision. RAI, Acute Darkvision is supposed to be an upgrade for regular darkvision, not an ability that gives you darkvision in the first place. This FAQ makes RAW match RAI. (source)