Trying to figure out what Pathfinder books to get... can anyone help me out?

[inuyasha]

Due to it being the holidays, I've gotten myself a bunch of new Pathfinder books, as well as a decent sum of money to add books onto that growing heap. At this point though, I'm really wondering what I should get...

Spoiler: The current collection

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• Core Rulebook
• Bestiaries 1-3
• Ultimate Magic/Ultimate Combat
• Advanced Player's Guide, Race Guide, and Class Guide
• Ultimate Campaign
• GameMaster's Guide
• Horror Adventures
• Ultimate Psionics (3rd party)
• Familiar Folio
• Bastards of Golarion
• And one or two of the [monster] Revisited line.

For the bigger books besides the setting specific ones, that leaves Bestiaries 4-5, Unchained, Occult, and Intrigue I believe.

Occult I've just seen as unnecessary, since it adds a new system of magic that is easily replicated in flavor by existing materials and psionics, and I'm not sure about Intrigue, since it handles a lot of role-playing and well... intrigue stuff that I think I handle on my own pretty easily.

So overall, what would you guys recommend next? And feel free to correct me if I've made a mistake here, and if you think Occult and Intrigue are pretty good, feel free to let me know that too, because I'm just really not sure what I should get next.

[DarkSoul]

Intrigue is interesting, for the Vigilante at the very least. Other than that I think you've already got most of what I'd mention, so probably the Path of War books from DSP. I like the first one; I think it compares pretty well to Tome of Battle. I'm still not quite sure what I think of PoW: Expanded.

Oh, Mythic Adventures. I really liked the Wrath of the Righteous AP, which relied heavily on that book.

I suppose if you run games a lot, the last two Bestiaries would be good purchases. You can never have too many monsters.

It's not exactly a book but if you have the spare funds left over, there's always Hero Lab with the Pathfinder rules to expand into.

[Coretron03]

I second path of war (which should be ok with you as you have Ultimate Psionics) and ultimate intrigue is another book there (I love the vilgante) and unchained is a pretty good book. Mythic handbook is also pretty good too.

[digiman619]

Other than the two Path of War books (which I use and love myself), I highly recommend Spheres of Power by Drop Dead Studios. Ever had a magic user bust your game open? Ever had a cool character that regular Vancian magic just doesn't cover? Then this is the book for you. It makes magic balanced and interesting again. I can't recommend it hard enough.

[inuyasha]

Oh, I forgot to mention that I have Mythic Adventures as well, I've just never gotten the opportunity to use things from it.

I might get Intrigue for the sake of having all the Ultimate titles, and the Vigilante class is sort of interesting now that I'm giving it a look. Same thing with the Occult classes, but I'm not entirely sure I'm sold on them yet

I'm seeing Path of War as a suggestion, and I've never really gotten into the system before, but it basically has a lot of new fighter-types with special abilities and powers that rival spells, right? I like the normal martial classes as is, but it could be an interesting addition to my shelf should they not suit someone's idea for a character

As for Spheres of Power, I've heard of this system quite a bit before. I'm a fan of Vancian magic, but alternatives are always welcome at my table if they're balanced. Do you think this system works well side-by-side with Vancian or is it more of a one or the other sort of deal? Also, is it possible to get a physical copy or is it PDF only?

[digiman619]

As for Spheres of Power, I've heard of this system quite a bit before. I'm a fan of Vancian magic, but alternatives are always welcome at my table if they're balanced. Do you think this system works well side-by-side with Vancian or is it more of a one or the other sort of deal? Also, is it possible to get a physical copy or is it PDF only?

While I think it works better as a replacement, it is also works reasonably well with Vancian, though do remember that "caster level" means different things in the two systems, and it comes with a Vancian/Sphercasting theurge class right in the base book. Also, yes it does come in hardback, as I have one right behind me as I type this message.

[exelsisxax]

Fourthing both path of war books. You already have ultimate psionics, so the following psionic supplements would be great, especially if you have the path of war books. There's some really great crossover.

[Sayt]

For third party, Path of War and Expanded are quite good, as is Spheres of Power.

I'd also like to reccomend the Player Companion books Arcane Anthology, Divine Anthology, Weapon Master's Handbook and Armour Master's Handbook.

[inuyasha]

That sounds promising! I might just have to pick that one up. It's too bad the hardback on Amazon (which is what a lot of my gift cards are for) is $50!

As for the Path of War, I've looked it over a bit more online, reviews and such, and it seems pretty good, I'll probably buy them if my funds are enough.

And with the companion books, I've seen some of those before and completely forgotten about them! Weapon Master's Handbook looks the most fun to me.

[Tuvarkz]

Weapon Master's Handbook is definitively worth the money for it, a lot of nice stuff for martials in there. Armor master's Handbook isn't as great but there's one or two things that are quite good as well.
I'd reccomend against Horror adventures, plenty of the rules are shabby, poorly balanced and there's little else of interest. Strongly reccomend Path of War+Expanded over it.

[blackbloodtroll]

Ultimate Equipment. Every player, every build, and even the DM, will get use out of this book.

[inuyasha]

Ah, Ultimate Equipment! Somehow I forgot about that one completely. I like having more magic items available, and that's the perfect book for it.

Also, I've been looking through Spheres of Power on its wiki and I've fallen in love with it, I'm definitely buying the hardback version of it.

Path of War is #3 on my list after the other two, so I'll get that if I can.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

I really like Occult Adventures. Yes, a psion and a psychic do somewhat tread the same ground, but you can't really say the same for an occultist, kineticist, or spiritualist. It's pretty good, completely different flavor than DSP's psionics, even disregarding the fact that I instinctively hold the latter in low esteem.

[digiman619]

Also, I've been looking through Spheres of Power on its wiki and I've fallen in love with it, I'm definitely buying the hardback version of it.

Then my work here is done.

[Ualaa]

The 'Expanded Options' book is highly recommended to go along with Spheres.

The base Spheres book covers all of the magic using classes, from the Core Rulebook.
The 'Expanded Options' gives you archetypes for most of the other Paizo classes, so you can have a Sphere Oracle, Sphere Summoner, Sphere Arcanist, etc...
That drastically expands upon the classes you can play, with the Spheres system.

Spheres itself comes with several classes of it's own.
With these, you can duplicate the types of magic from a variety of novels or tv series/movies out there.
The archetypes let you play a sphere version of an existing class, should you enjoy an Oracle but want to play one which uses Spheres.



Our table is using Spheres + Path of War + Ultimate Psionics.
I've seen a lot of recommendations for Akashic Mysteries too, and the system seems to be really neat.
However, for our group, if it isn't in Hero Lab then it is not available for use.
So Akashic Mysteries is off of the table, for the foreseeable future.

Spheres essentially reduces the options of magic, in the sense that once a character has been built they have less flexibility than a Vancian Wizard or Cleric.
But it enhances the options of a magic using class, at the time of character creation, as you could build a wizard who has both destructive and healing (life) capabilities along with mastery of Light and Darkness and conjures an Angel/Demon to serve as an ongoing intelligent companion; the wizard may cast their spells in armor, without arcane spell failure.
While they may have fewer options than a Wizard 10 (at 10th level, as an Incanter), they are far more flexible in the options they can choose for their class.

A Spheres guy will have unlimited uses of the base effect from the spheres they have access to.
So you won't have a level one wizard casting a few useful spells, and then switching to a shortbow or crossbow for the rest of the day.
Instead they can do their base ability an infinite number of times.
But have to pick and choose, strategically, when to use their finite spell points.

The net effect is that you can build the magic users you want.
And they're never forced to resort to non-magic/spells, after blowing through most of their spendable resources.
But their overall power is reduced.
And while you can give flexibility to players, and let them build anything they can imagine, through the Sphere system, you could also build a White Mage, Red Mage, Green Mage, Blue Mage and Black Mage, pre-selecting the spheres they have access to, and the magical traditions (boons which enhance magic and drawbacks that have to be played with) to create the system you want to play within your world.



Path of War has the opposite effect upon melee classes.

They are drastically increased in relative power, compared to the existing Paizo classes.
If the Path of War system is available, any melee that is not using it is much weaker and less flexible that one who is.

It is essentially spell casting, as a melee.
So you have abilities that you can use at 1st/2nd level, and better options at 3rd/4th, which can essentially be looked at as melee spells, which progress like a memorization caster.
These are martial themed, so you're not doing magic missiles.
But your power will scale much better with level.

The net effect of adding Spheres and Path of War to a game is positive.
If the old tier system were a numerical scale, the casting classes might be 9s and 10s while the melee might be 1s and 2s.
With Spheres as the magic system and Path of War as the melee system, you could be closer to 6s/7s for the casting and 4s/5s for the melee, in terms of destructive power.

With the Spheres/Path of War/Ultimate Psionics on the table, very few players are going to use other options.
A Warsoul (path of war, Soulblade) with Path of War maneuvers along with their Mindblade is cool; there are PoW archetypes for many of the existing Paizo options.

Moving the melee and casting closer to a happy medium, and reducing the disparity in power levels is a good thing.



I'll throw in a recommendation for Hero Lab too.

The base system isn't that expensive.
And the Community Package is completely free, along with a lot of their party products including Ultimate Psionics and Path of War.
You can purchase data packages (generally $10 for hardcovers), for everything Paizo has released, either lump sum or gradually over time.
There are a lot of products, so this could potentially add up.
But you don't need everything all at once.
Also, you could manually enter everything yourself, through the editor (which has awesome tutorials out there, along with very strong community support on its' forums), but for me the price vs the time I'd spend, makes purchasing options over time worthwhile.
Once you're caught up, there are bundles for most products that are coming out in a calendar year.
And for that matter, there are bundles for each of the existing combinations of products already out.

The encounter library is neat too.
If you're running a popular paizo campaign, you can purchase all of the encounters pre-entered into HL.
And the community package has most of the older adventures (and dozens of third party campaigns) for free.

Hero Lab checks validation rules, so you quickly know if something was built legitimately or if there is a bug/flaw in a build and it is not according to the rules of the game.
The error check is an awesome feature of the program.

As a search mechanism, it rocks too.
I can go to traits, and type in fortitude or initiative or dwarf, and get all of the options that fit that filter.
I can take the Paladin class, select an archetype for it, and then see which archetypes are still present, as once a feature has been modified/replaced any other archetypes that modify/remove the same feature are no longer valid... so you can stack archetypes legally, if you so desire.
If you're playing a Fighter Monk, and know you're going unarmored, you could search for a Fighter Archetype that gives up Armor Training by searching archetypes with that as a key word.

Purely as a search for valid options tool, it is very cool to have.

[inuyasha]

That was a very large, and very awesome post. Let me break down what I saw in general.

As for spheres of power, I'm already sold, it looks like a fun system, and I may or may not have already started building a character based off of Envy from Fullmetal Alchemist

As for Hero Lab, it sounds great, but pretty much all of the money I'm using to buy books is in the form of Amazon gift cards, which I don't think Hero Lab is sold through, ditto for the Spheres of Power Expanded Options.

As for the Path of War stuff. This is what I was originally hesitant about. As weird as it sounds, my group is very much not prone to optimization, and they prefer just having fun over optimal builds. This has led to them not minding the Linear Fighters versus Quadratic Wizards thing, and those that are prone to playing fighters and barbarians do so because it leads to less bookkeeping, and I don't really know if my group would go for that. This one is pretty low on my priority list, but that's not to say that I'll never get it.

And finally for the Occult stuff, I might get it, but again, it comes after Spheres of Power now, but the once I get it the two could merge quite nicely. As much as I'm all for reflavoring things, the Victorian feel is quite nice, and I've looked it over, and I kinda like it.

[Ualaa]

Path of War is a more involved character as well.

In addition to class features, characters gain maneuvers and stances at various levels.

A stance is something that is continually in effect, as long as you're conscious, until you switch to a different stance as a swift action.
You get your first stance at 2nd level, usually, and periodically add more.
Once learnt, you're stuck with each stance.

Maneuvers... you start off with so many and in a given encounter you choose to ready so many of your total maneuvers.
If you know seven, you may ready say four of them.
Each of the classes is different, but it is something along those lines.

A readies maneuver is essentially an encounter power.
Once you use it, it's gone.

However, each of the classes has two mechanics to recover their maneuvers.
One costs more resources, usually a full-round action of some sort.
The Warder for example, gains increased reach and can take Attacks of Opportunity, in their full-round maneuver recovery mode.
Or they can do something as a Standard action, and recover a single maneuver.
So once enough of the maneuvers are spent, a character may strategically choose when to renew their spent maneuvers.
And if you started with 1-3 plus 5, of your seven... you may choose to renew 4-7, as they're more beneficial for this combat.

A maneuver is one of three things.
It can be a boost, usually to an attack but sometimes to all attacks including those of allies for a duration.
It can be a stronger damage move, than simply swinging the sword.
And it can be a counter, which can be used in response to an opponent's action.

Starting at fourth level (and every even level thereafter), characters can unlearn a maneuver (but not a stance) and replace it with a different maneuver that they qualify for.
So if you had seven first level maneuvers and two second level maneuvers by fourth level, you could drop one of the first level to learn an additional second level.
What you replace and what you replace it with is a game too.
Generally, you'll balance between boosts, counters and strikes, but you could play a buffer melee with a lot more boosts particularly those that benefit the group.

There are a lot of disciplines, which are groups of related stances & maneuvers.
A character will generally have most of their martial moves from a couple of their disciplines.
Each of the classes has access to say five (or so) disciplines.
Most disciplines have an associated skill, so when you try to use the shield to deflect an attack, you'd make a skill check (the associated skill) against a DC of the attack number.

Non-PoW characters can take feats, to dabble into the system.



Anyway, PoW is a great system.
But between the two, I'd still go with Spheres first.

[137beth]

My personal recommendations are:

Book of Monster Templates--Much more useful than another Bestiary
Strange Magic
The Secrets of Adventuring
The Big Book of Bloodlines --Only if you or someone in your group likes sorcerers and/or bloodragers.
Liber Influx Communis

In addition to the reccomendations that almost everyone else seems to be giving: Spheres of Power and Path of War.

[inuyasha]

My personal recommendations are:

Book of Monster Templates--Much more useful than another Bestiary
Strange Magic
The Secrets of Adventuring
The Big Book of Bloodlines --Only if you or someone in your group likes sorcerers and/or bloodragers.
Liber Influx Communis

In addition to the reccomendations that almost everyone else seems to be giving: Spheres of Power and Path of War.

Ooh, some very different suggestions! I don't have a lot of money that would be applicable to that site, but the bloodlines one and the book full of templates look to be the most likely candidates for my buying. They look quite entertaining, and the bloodlines one looks like it's just the right kind of silly.

[Milo v3]

I'd suggest Akashic Mysteries by Dreamscarred Press. Really well balanced magic system and is very flavourful. If you ever saw 3.5e's incarnum ruleset, it's based on that but actually balanced and streamlined rather than having weird rules (also less blue).

It also has the benefit of players being able to choose how much complexity they want to have, if you want a decent amount of fiddling around with numbers you can play a guru who moves their essence around every couple of rounds, or if you want something simpler (which it sounds like your group is) you can play a daevic who basically set to go without any work.

It comes with three new classes, plus various archetypes for the existing PF classes, plus feats so anyone can dip into the system, and even a few monsters who use the system. So far all of it's reviews are 5 stars.

[Ualaa]

I've got more than a few Template books, several from Drive Thru RPG.
One of those has Hero Lab files, which I've added to the system.

Templates are good.
You essentially get to reuse the same content, but it is different now.
The aforementioned, 'Book of Monster Templates', is a good one. (Rite Publishing)
I also really liked, 'Pathfinder RPG Advanced Bestiary'. (Green Ronin Publishing)

[inuyasha]

I've already got the 3.5 copy of Advanced Bestiary, which, even though it lacks a few templates from the updated one, and it's not perfect, it still should do the job just fine.

As for Akashic Mysteries, I did buy Incarnum, but I've never used it, nor has any player of mine requested to use it (granted they probably didn't actually know it existed, but still). I've been considering this one a bit, and I've really grown to like Dreamscarred's stuff, so it's a possibility.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

I think it's one of their better books. Then again, psionics rubs me the wrong way, and even I admit PoW changes the power floor for a game, and I think it lacks options for GMs.

[Tuvarkz]

I think it's one of their better books. Then again, psionics rubs me the wrong way, and even I admit PoW changes the power floor for a game, and I think it lacks options for GMs.

Imo, PoW is very good at providing tools to create individual, powerful big bads that won't get necessarily instagibbed by the party's action economy advantage.

[baddriver01]

One of the basics I recommend is the Inner Sea World Guide. Not player specific but absolutely full of great ideas and starting points. Just my 2 cents. Happy Gaming!!

[EisenKreutzer]

I see most of the good stuff basics has already been mentioned, so I'm going to go ahead and recommend an excellent 3rd party campaign setting: Cerulean Seas.

In addition to being excellently illustrated, compellingly written and highly imaginative and original, it is perhaps THE best resource for underwater adventuring whether you use the campaign setting material or not. It has rules for a lot of central underwater mechanics, and handles adventures below the waves in a very satisfying way.