At Wargamer, we reckon some of the most impactful and memorable experiences in tabletop adventures – whether it’s DnD or any other tabletop RPG – come from character deaths. And Pathfinder 2e publisher Paizo clearly agrees, as it’s giving away free copies of the game’s Player Core rulebook (snazzy Sketch Cover edition) to fans who share tales of their characters’ demise.
Paizo announced the giveaway over Twitter on Monday, asking Pathfinder fans to “Share your stories of characters dying—whether for brave or silly reasons!”
“Each story shared is a chance to win a sketch cover of Pathfinder Player Core!” Paizo adds in the tweet – though it’s not clear exactly how many winners it’ll pick to receive a copy of the book, which costs a cool $60 (between £39 and £45 at UK stores).
Whichever version of the cover you have, the Player Core is – true to its name – designed as the main sourcebook for players, covering character creation and basic rules and lore, including eight full Pathfinder classes and eight playable Ancestries, a.k.a. Pathfinder races. If you’re looking to take a break from DnD and try out its crunchier cousin as a player, this is the first book you’ll want.
The Sketch Edition was originally an exclusive for partnered stores, but you can now buy it anywhere (or win it, if you tell Paizo a really good death story). Its striking cover art is an original pencil sketch version of Wayne Reynolds’ artwork for the cover of the regular Player Core book; both editions were released in 2023.
The giveaway comes a few weeks after we revealed exclusive details on Pathfinder’s upcoming expansion Lost Omens: Rival Academies, an exploration of various weird and wonderful magical schools, due out in Spring 2025.
At time of writing, no winners have been announced for the Player Core giveaway – but boy, have tabletop roleplaying game fans shared some tragic (and funny) deaths in their efforts to nab the book.
“Two of my PCs were killed by another PC, yes, not an NPC, a PC,” says Twitter user @arcisne.
“My 1st character, a wizard who had the vulnerability to positive energy due to events in the game, was killed by our fighter when he make him drink a healing potion “trying” to save him while unconscious.”
Yikes – friends don’t let friends’ PCs kill them, kids. Intra-party conflict can be really exciting and evocative when everyone’s into it and handled correctly – let’s hope this was.
User @mudbunny74’s character suffered more of a classic, slapstick end:
“The party was trying to get into a tower. My PC climbed up the outside and looked through a window. I was surprised to see a guard. The guard, with crossbow, was not,” they recall.
“One TWANG later, some dice rolls for falling damage, and I was working on rolling up a new PC.”
RIP mudbunny – we’re unpleasantly put in mind of a deadlier version of Prince Herbert falling from the tower of Swamp Castle, in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Still – as long as all your pals are comfortable with it – the potential for player death can add satisfying narrative depth, story development, and thrilling jeopardy to roleplaying; our own RPG aficionado Mollie Russell even argues dying in DnD is great.
And, with a couple of weeks still to wait until the new DnD 2024 Player’s Handbook drops, recounting a sad tale of fictional fatalities seems a small price to have a chance of getting into its biggest fantasy rival for free.
In the meantime, if you are more drawn to Wizards of the Coast’s behemoth, you can catch up on all the new releases with a brief trawl through our DnD news homepage – and stay updated daily by following Wargamer on Google News.
Source: Wargamer
