Rival Guide

Pathfinder Campaign Setting

by Brandon Hodge, Colin McComb, Jason Nelson

The Rival Guide presents 10 fully detailed rival adventuring groups, complete with specialized spells, equipment, magic items, and unusual minions. These groups cover a wide range of themes, from haunted pirates to drow death cultists, monstrous slavers to nigh-unstoppable arch-villains, and much, much more!

Inside this 64-page book, you’ll find:

- Full stat blocks for 40 different NPCs, ranging from relatively minor foes at CR 2 to world-shaking menaces at CR 19. Use these as rival adventuring parties, or split them up when you need specific NPCs or even last-minute player characters.
- Background information on each group discussing its history and goals, as well as on how to incorporate its members into your game as rivals for your PCs to clash against.
- Several new alchemical items, feats, magic items, poisons, racial traits, and spells, along with a new template for characters haunted by ancient, sinister spirits and a simple template for alchemically invisible creatures.

Cover art by Alex Aparin

Genres: Role Playing Games

64 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2011

About the author

By day, Brandon Hodge owns and operates Monkey See, Monkey Do! toy store and the world-famous Big Top Candy Shop in Austin, Texas. When night arrives, he retrieves his pen and puts nightmares to paper as a freelance writer and historian specializing in the esoteric and occult. Brandon's award-winning writing and game design credits include works from Kobold Press and Paizo Publishing. He is author of the critically-acclaimed adventures From Shore to Sea, Feast of Ravenmoor, Rasputin Must Die!, and The House on Hook Street, and served as Creative Consultant on Paizo's Occult Adventures rulebook.

The demented twists he brings to the gaming industry can perhaps best be explained with his extracurricular hobbies: when he isn't writing, he brings curses home with him collecting ouija boards, haunted antiques, planchettes, and other Spiritualist-related items, and displays his world-class planchette collection on his website, www.mysteriousplanchette.com. Brandon’s research on Spiritualism history has appeared in the pages of the Smithsonian Magazine, and his popular Ghosts in the Machines column appears every quarter in the pages of Paranormal Review, the Magazine for the Society for Psychical Research.

Brandon is a respected lecturer in the occult history field, and has loaned his expertise as on-air talent for dozens of popular radio and television programs, including a segment featuring his séance artifact collection on Science Channel’s hit show Oddities. Brandon also appeared on Travel Channel's Ouija-related "Patience Worth" episode of Mysteries at the Museum. In addition, he makes frequent guest appearances in both print interviews and popular radio shows, and has contributed artifacts to a number of museum exhibits, including the Let the Spirit Move You exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Industry, the MIA's Supernatural America exhibit, and the Peabody Museum's Conjuring the Spirit World exhibition.

Brandon is currently working on a picturesque coffee-table book on the subject of spirit communication devices from their early beginnings to their modern equivalents. Titled "Talking Tables & Scribbling Spirits: A Complete History of Spirit Communication Tools," the book is slated for publication in the near future, and includes the most in-depth historical research ever performed on talking boards.

Brandon lives in the historic Hyde Park neighborhood in Austin, Texas, with two imps disguised as children, Jack and Elliot, and their innumerable pet ghosts.