Tools

Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide (Second Edition), page 54

CHAPTER 2: TOOLS

While the Core Rulebook provides all the tools you need to be a Game Master, you may want resources to create original game content, whether it be new items, unique creatures, or a sprawling new world for adventurers to explore.

This chapter provides a variety of tools to help you quickly and easily build your own elements for your game, as well as some special types of rules you can incorporate in your game, such as more hazards and strange magic items. This chapter is organized into the following sections.

Building Creatures (page 56) demonstrates a top-down approach for quickly and easily constructing the creatures and NPCs you want or need for any possible situation in your game.

Building Hazards (page 74) gives rules and advice for creating your own • brand-new hazards.

Building Items (page 82) teaches you how to create new pieces of treasure to delight your PCs.

Item Quirks (page 86) introduces simple but memorable quirks that you • can use to quickly personalize an item and make its nature seem just as unique and exciting as its special abilities.

Intelligent Items (page 88) includes rules for creating items with a mind of their own that are characters in their own right, as well as several examples to get you started.
Cursed Items (page 90) examines items that have a nasty drawback or might be altogether unpleasant. The section includes specific cursed items and a list of curses you can add to an existing item, akin to a rune.
Relics (page 94) are special magic items that increase in power along with the PCs, and that you and your players work together to build and enhance.
Artifacts (page 106) are the most powerful and story-rich magic items in the game, and can only be destroyed in a specific way.
Gems and Art Objects (page 114) expands the diversity of monetary awards given to PCs and includes 100 sample art objects.
Afflictions (page 116) provides a plethora of curses, diseases, and drugs for use in your games, as well as drug and addiction rules useful in creating your own afflictions.
Building Worlds (page 122) explains how to go about building your own entire world or setting from scratch. This section leads into the next three, which provide tools to help you flesh out the finer details of specific parts of your game world.
Nations (page 130) includes a system to quickly encapsulate a nation in a stat block that contains all the information you need.
Settlements (page 132) covers everything from tiny villages to incredible metropolises. The section explains the settlement’s role in a game and provides a system to describe a settlement in a stat block with all the important information.
Planes (page 136) includes the various planar traits you can use to build your own planes, and explores all the planes of reality in the Age of Lost Omens setting as well.

It’s up to you to determine how much of your game you want to customize. Many GMs use the default rules and creatures, and set their adventures on Golarion or another published game world. Other GMs devise and incorporate all-new creatures and places with strange themes that don’t fit in the standard Pathfinder game or world. Unless you’re building your entire game world from scratch, you can usually wait to implement any new rules creation until you think you’ll need it for your next session.

In this section

Building Versus Modifying Many times, a small adjustment to an existing creature, item, adventure, or other part of the game can serve you just as well as building something brand new.
Building Creatures Making your own creatures fleshes out your game world and lets you introduce concepts not yet available in published products like the Bestiary volumes.
Building Hazards Building hazards designed for your game allows you to customize them to match your story, location, and needs, as well as to surprise the other players at every turn.
Building Items Creating your own magic and alchemical items is an amazing way to customize the adventure and gameplay for your group and add unique elements without requiring quite the same mechanical depth as a whole new class…
Item Quirks Item quirks are peculiar characteristics that make items unique in unusual ways.
Intelligent Items Magic items with a mind of their own have been a hallmark of myth and fantasy for millennia. When integrated into a campaign, they can become memorable characters in their own right.
Cursed Items While magical items can be potent weapons in any adventurer’s arsenal, magic can be unpredictable and is not always benign.
Relics Some extraordinary magic items grow in power along with a character, gaining abilities that add to an adventurer’s legend.
Artifacts A globe of utter darkness that consumes all things. Powerful weapons created in antiquity carrying the hopes of an entire people. A simple deck of cards representing fortunes both transcendent and deadly.
Gems and Art Objects Many people treasure gems for their brilliant colors and for the alchemical or even magical properties some have. Works of art and their value, meanwhile, vary as widely as the concept of beauty between cultures.
Afflictions Wherever there is life, there are insidious perils that threaten the health and well-being of living creatures. Some of these afflictions, including many diseases, are inherent to the natural world.
Building Worlds As a Game Master, you control the details of the world your players explore.
Nations From the smallest of city-states to a continent-spanning empire, nations define the political landscape of a setting and inform local culture and traditions.
Settlements Adventures have to start somewhere, and everyone needs some semblance of a home. Settlements are where characters can rest, recharge, retrain, and dedicate themselves to other downtime activities, all in relative peace.
The Planes Beyond the world of Golarion and the void of space beyond it lie the vast planes of existence referred to as the Great Beyond.