Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: GameMastery Guide

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Mastermind: GMs work to keep a game’s momentum moving in directions that entertain all the players while exploring the stories and settings they desire. To such ends, a GM manipulates dozens of elements, from how narrative components unfold to what rules are used and how they function in every situation. If you’re using the no alignment variant, remove or replace aligned damage (chaotic, evil, good, and lawful damage), which requires significant adjustments for creatures like angels and devils that were built with a weakness to aligned damage. One option is to replace them one-for-one with new damage types like “radiant” and “shadow” that don’t have any moral assumptions. Another option is to simply change the damage type needed for creature weaknesses to some other damage type on a case-by-case basis. A third option is to remove the weaknesses, reduce the monsters’ maximum Hit Points, and call it good. No matter what you do with creatures, you’ll also have to replace abilities like the champion’s that deal aligned damage in a similar way, or remove those abilities. At 7th level, you gain a +1 potency bonus to Perception, increasing to +2 at level 13 and +3 at level 19. Affinities Residual material harvested from a slain elemental can be used in the creation of magic items that have spells with specific descriptors, as summarized in the table below.

Affinities: The magical uses for a trophy in the construction of alchemical or magic items are listed here. When a trophy is incorporated into raw materials, its gp value is considered to be 20% greater than normal. Trophy Weight

Improvising a Creature

Determine the total XP award for the encounter by looking it up by its CR on Table: Experience Point Awards. This gives you an “XP budget” for the encounter. Every creature, trap, and hazard is worth an amount of XP determined by its CR, as noted on Table: Experience Point Awards. To build your encounter, simply add creatures, traps, and hazards whose combined XP does not exceed the total XP budget for your encounter. It’s easiest to add the highest CR challenges to the encounter first, filling out the remaining total with lesser challenges. As with all content that might be uncomfortable for some players, you should make sure to have your table’s consent before introducing the harvesting of trophies into your game. Harvesting Trophies

Classes with focus pools get all the Focus Points granted by all of them. These share one focus pool as normal, with the standard cap of 3 maximum Focus Points. When a character levels up, they gain Ability Points at each level, as shown on Table 4–2: Ability Points Gained. Unlike the Ability Points from character creation, a player can save these to buy a more expensive increase, and they can increase ability scores to a maximum of 22. When a player is ready to increase one or more ability scores, they spend the number of Ability Points listed on Table 4–3: Raising an Ability Score and increase the ability score accordingly. A player can increase a score more than once at a given time, but they must pay for each increase individually, such as going from 14 to 16 by spending 2 points to increase from 14 to 15, and then 3 points to increase from 15 to 16. For most games, it’s best to increase scores when leveling up, between game sessions, or during downtime. In this variant, gear can provide bonuses even if it’s not magical. This is useful for games and settings that set out to give fine, non-magical items the same prominence as magic items. High-quality gear requires the corresponding proficiency rank in Crafting to Craft.Level 0 Characters can play through the characters’ adventures before they take on character classes.

Stamina Points represent a character’s energy and readiness. They’re reduced by damage just like Hit Points, but a character always loses their Stamina Points first, and loses Hit Points only if they’re out of Stamina Points. If a character takes damage exceeding their remaining Stamina Points, the excess damage reduces their Hit Points. However, they lose any temporary Hit Points before losing Stamina Points. Affinities A rakshasa’s eyes can be used in the creation of any magic item that has detect thoughts as a requirement. TrollsSuccess You can continue encouraging your ally for a total of 10 minutes. If you do, they can spend 1 Resolve Point to regain all their Stamina Points. The following section details trophy uses for a wide range of creature categories. This list is not intended to be exhaustive, and GMs should feel free to add specific affinities to a creature as their campaigns demand. This variant removes the item bonus to rolls and DCs usually provided by magic items (with the exception of armor’s item bonus) and replaces it with a new kind of bonus—potency—to reflect a character’s innate ability instead. In this variant, magic items, if they exist at all, can provide unique special abilities rather than numerical increases. As PCs gain levels, the amount of treasure they carry and use increases as well. The game assumes that all PCs of equivalent level have roughly equal amounts of treasure and magic items. Since the primary income for a PC derives from treasure and loot gained from adventuring, it’s important to moderate the wealth and hoards you place in your adventures. To aid in placing treasure, the amount of treasure and magic items the PCs receive for their adventures is tied to the Challenge Rating of the encounters they face—the higher an encounter’s CR, the more treasure it can award. Skill feats are indicated by the skill trait and improve upon, or grant additional actions for one of the skills a character is trained in. Some skill feats require that a character be expert, master, or legendary proficiency in a skill before they can be taken. All characters gain skill feats at 2nd level and every even level thereafter, and some classes like the rogues and investigators gain additional skill feats on odd levels.