Pathfinder Player Companion: Inner Sea Primer

Pathfinder Player Companion

by Colin McComb

Introduction to adventure!

The Inner Sea is the heart of the Pathfinder campaign setting. From devil-worshiping Cheliax to cosmopolitan Absalom, the savage and frozen Lands of the Linnorm Kings to the steaming jungles of the Mwangi Expanse, there’s a place for any character or adventure your imagination can come up with. Yet while a Game Master or player might know all the secrets of the setting, courtesy of the Pathfinder Campaign Setting World Guide: The Inner Sea, what does a character know about his or her world? With the Inner Sea Primer, Game Masters can quickly and easily introduce their players to the Pathfinder campaign setting, and experienced players can customize their characters with new, setting-specific tricks and traits.

Inside this Pathfinder Player Companion, you’ll find:

- Player-friendly overviews of every nation of the Inner Sea Region, telling characters what they need to know about their homelands—or those of their enemies.
- New character traits for every country and region, helping to flesh out characters and tie their backgrounds and mechanics into the setting.
- New archetypes for three Inner Sea sword fighting styles: the Aldori swordlord, the Qadiran dervish, and the Taldan rondelero duelist.
- A complete overview of the major gods in the region, and what every resident should know about them.
- Three new arcane schools: the item crafters of the Arcanamirium, Egorian’s infernal binders, and the stealthy illusionists of Osirion’s mages of the veil.
- Overviews of the most common races of the region, from elves to half-orcs, as well as the most common human ethnicities.

Cover art by Tyler Walpole

Genres: Role Playing Games, Gaming, Reference, Fantasy

Unknown Binding

First published November 1, 2010

Reviews

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a pretty bare bones introduction to the main Pathfinder world, but it was more than enough to get me interested. All the important fantasy tropes are covered, from the ancient magical cataclysm to the Viking nation. Plus, there's fantasy Egypt, a Gothic horror nation, and Baba Yaga, which are all pretty cool elements. And I like the inclusion of two high tech nations - one that's developed gunpowder to deal with being in a magic deadzone, and the other that takes bits and pieces from a crashed starship. There's a ton of plot hooks and ideas even in just the 18 or so pages it takes to describe each nation. I could imagine running a campaign in pretty much all of them, which means that my goal of reading this to figure out which nation supplements to buy has worked far too well. I'm definitely going to have to read the full Inner Sea Guide soon to learn all the backstory and world details and see if my guesses about what's really going on are true. There's only a little bit of mechanical stuff here, but it's not bad: three fighting styles and three magic colleges, and support for using them. I hope that sort of stuff is gone into more detail in other supplements. Overall, Golarion seems like a pretty cool world, and this gave me enough of a taste of it to want to explore the whole thing.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a primer, so there isn't a ton of information. It's a good introduction to the setting for new players, and a good reference guide to brush up on an area when need be.

It has information on the various cultures. It gives specific traits that characters from that culture would have.

It has their religious beliefs. A quick run down of all of the gods in the region.

It has a few different fighting styles that work as character archetypes.

[William Quest · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well written and informative first look at the countries and populations of the Inner Sea area of Golarion