Pathfinder Battlecry! is now available! We enlisted a whole platoon of authors to bring you the most up-to-date intelligence from the front in the form of new backgrounds, classes, archetypes, spells, items, and more!
Pathfinder Battlecry! covers in all their glory. Art by Wayne Reynolds.
Commanding this motley crew is me, Jason Keeley, Senior Designer and the design lead on Battlecry! It all began with an idea for a book about the mortal wars occurring in the wake of Gorum’s death and the eventual clash between Andoran and Cheliax that is the Hellfire Crisis. While this is a book that focuses heavily on fighting and has a lot of options for martial characters, I wanted to make sure most other character types could join the battle. I wrote the guardian class and the story of Arianna Dreth’s encounters with Ulka Oathshriek and Grimmyr (with prodigious help from our more journalistic-minded editors). (Fun fact: The name Arianna Dreth came from an anagram of “Dan Rather” with some extra letters thrown in.) I’ve already been hearing a lot of positive buzz about the book—thank you so much! You can find me on Bluesky @herzwesten.bsky.social if you want to chat about games, books, and dogs!
Now it’s time for our battle-tested authors to sound off!
Rigby Bendele (they/them)
I was excited to contribute the field propagandist archetype to Battlecry! Archetypes like the dandy have always been my favorites, so it was a delight to put my spin on a similar type of design (hat tip to the dandy’s designer, Jessica Redekop!). I hope you enjoy playing with it at the table.
Tineke Bolleman (she/her)
Hi, I’m Tineke (she/her), and I’m from the Netherlands. I have been active in the Paizo Organized Play sphere for years, and many of you may know me from the Pathfinder and Starfinder scenarios I have written. For Battlecry!, I brought many of the marvelous troops in this book to life for you. It was amazing to work with others to bring you challenging and diverse enemies to face on the battlefield. I hope you enjoy them!
Jessica Catalan (she/her)
Hi, I’m Jessica Catalan (she/her), Senior Developer on the Starfinder team here at Paizo, head of the Starfinder Society, and frequent freelancer for the Pathfinder and Starfinder RPGs. For Battlecry!, I worked on character options for existing Pathfinder classes, which is a space I always enjoy exploring. I hope you enjoy taking to the battlefield as a summoner with a swarm eidolon, a thaumaturge with a shield implement, or testing out some new feats astride your beloved mount as a champion or cavalier.
Take care out there, folks!
Alain and his mighty steed leap over an enemy encampment. Art by Christoph Peters.
Jeremy Corff (he/him)
Hello! I’m Jeremy Corff (he/him). You may remember me from Starfinder Society Scenario #6-11: Gifts Ungiven, or the Kingmaker Anniversary Edition Companion Guide, Absalom, City of Lost Omens, as well as other work. I was thrilled to have the chance to contribute to Battlecry! My sections included the siege weapons, as well as held magic items and some work on the war mage archetype. Did you know a shocking array of musical instruments played a key part in armed forces before the advent of radio and more advanced communication technology? I did my best to provide a broad selection!
You can see more of my work in the upcoming Revenge of the Runelords Adventure Path, as well as yet-to-be-announced projects.
If you’re hungry for more, you can find me on Bluesky at @solorunstudio.bsky.social or at my Starfinder blog where I post weekly Starfinder content.
Rue Dickey (they/he/xe)
Rue Dickey (they/he/xe) is Paizo’s Marketing & Media Manager and a frequent freelance author, designer, consultant, and editor for TTRPGs. They take great joy in designing the macabre and the mysterious alike, and can be found at all hours holding his giant black cat, Belladonna. You can see some of Rue’s handiwork in Battlecry!‘s siege rituals and the necrologist archetype!
John Godek III (he/him)
Hi! I’m John! Besides Battlecry! I contributed to the Lost Omens Tian Xia Character and World Guides, as well as over a dozen other projects for Paizo, Legendary Games, Evil Robot Games, and Evil Genius Games, including Starfinder Society Scenario #1-00: Collision’s Wake, a special kicking off the release of Starfinder Second Edition at Gen Con this summer. For Battlecry! I wrote the war backgrounds, magic armor, and battle vehicle sections. As a veteran and former sailor, I am particularly excited by several of the entries I contributed. I loved trying to capture the attitude of grizzled soldiers with the veteran background, while the martial musician was inspired by my time in marching bands and drum & bugle corps. Working endless hours in the frigid conditions of Antarctica inspired the creation of the frost furs magic armor, while the eagle wing armor was something I wished I had while flying in helos over Greenland translocating musk oxen. I probably was most excited to bring the ice breaker into Pathfinder after working on three ice breakers all over the globe! Look for me at Gen Con, or reach me at https://knowdirectionpodcast.com/, on YouTube, @johngodek.bsky.social, or at johngodek.com.
Glide with grace while wearing eagle wing armor. Art by Roman Kierszenbaum.
Dennis Muldoon (he/him)
Hello! I’m Dennis Muldoon (he/him). I’ve been a Paizo contributor since 2019, and in that time, I’ve contributed to numerous projects across nearly every line Paizo publishes. For this book, I wrote the munitions master class archetype, as well as some magic ammunition and siege ammunition. I’m really excited for folks to get their hands on this book and to see what sort of epic adventures result! You can find more of my recent work in the Starfinder Galaxy Guide (the kalo ancestry), Starfinder Society Scenario #7-13 Ratrod’s Revenge, and Starfinder Mechaggedon!
Mikhail Rekun (he/him)
Приветствую, уважаемые читатели! My name is Mikhail Sergeyevich Rekun, and I’m a Russian-speaking Ukrainian-American historian, educator, and author.
Now, I’ve been writing for Paizo for a while, so you might say I have a bit of a reputation—the sort that leads our esteemed Jason Keeley to write me out of the blue and ask if I wanted to write ten thousand words on military gaming. I said yes. Actually, I think said something more like “YES!!!” Exclamation marks were involved.
In my professional life, I teach a lot of military history—mostly post-industrial stuff (ask me about trench warfare!), but I can expound on most anything at least a bit. This was the perfect assignment in which to inflict military doctrine upon an unsuspecting public, only with added reincarnating harpies and depressed lich-queens. I hope you find it fun, I hope you find it interesting, and hey, maybe even a tiny bit educational.
By the by, if you want to see more of my writing, you should head on over to the Luminant Age Campaign Setting”, where I am Creative Director. It’s cool, we’ve got teleporting mice.
Kendra Leigh Speedling
Hello, all! I’m Kendra Leigh Speedling, frequent contributor to Paizo. For Battlecry! I did the guerrilla and Iridian choirmaster archetypes; I had fun trying to map particular fighting styles and techniques to game mechanics and updating the Iridian lore a bit for Pathfinder Second Edition. I hope people who liked sniping duo will also like that one! I also got to do the whetstones, little magic items designed to give martials something magical to do with their weapons in a fight. My favorite is the key of unwinding, which lets its user rewrite time itself to avoid enemy attacks. Battlecry! has a lot of other cool stuff in it, also, and I’ll be excited to see how folks use it in games.
If you’re interested in my future projects/art reposts/cat photos, you can follow me at BlueSky @kendrarara.bsky.social.
Andrew White
Hello, I’m Andrew White! I’m the Digital Products Lead here at Paizo and a frequent contributor to neat books like Pathfinder Secrets of Magic, Pathfinder Guns & Gears, Pathfinder Book of the Dead, Pathfinder Rage of Elements, Pathfinder Howl of the Wild, and numerous others! For Battlecry!, I wrote up a bunch of exciting new battlefield-ready magical weapons as well as a whole slew of new troops to throw at your PCs, and I would like to thank Jason Keeley not only for hiring me for this project, but for not immediately deleting my turnover and never hiring me again when I pitched him a weapon called the chain of command. [Keeley’s note: I flipped a coin, and you got lucky, mister!] You can find me (infrequently) reposting smarter, funnier people on Bluesky @plaguecontrol.bsky.social.
Don’t even try to break the chain of command. Art by Roman Kierszenbaum.
Linda Zayas-Palmer (she/her)
Hi! I’m Linda Zayas-Palmer, former development manager of the narrative team at Paizo. I’m now a full-time freelance author writing TTRPG content, primarily for Pathfinder Second Edition and Starfinder. For Battlecry!, I wrote the follower rules, including the captain archetype, as well as some of the new troops. Both sections were good fun, but I especially enjoyed the process of distilling down the feel of iconic character tropes into mechanics that fit into Pathfinder’s companion framework. My most recently released work includes Pathfinder Second Edition conversion of Palaeogames’s Dr Dhrolin’s Dictionary of Dinosaurs and the living spell, bogey, and kraken ancestries for Roll for Combat’s Battlezoo Ancestries: Titans. I stream twice a week on YouTube as Arcane Mark, together with my game designer husband Mark Seifter. You can also find me on the Arcane Mark discord.
Rally your troops and prepare for war at hellfirecrisis.com! Subscribe to the Pathfinder Rulebook Subscription to be among the first to join the ranks with Pathfinder Battlecry!
Read more at this site