Tabletop RPG publisher Paizo has just announced Rival Academies, the first Pathfinder Lost Omens setting book of 2025. A press release from August 1 calls Pathfinder: Lost Omens: Rival Academies “a World’s Fair-style festival of magic, science, and invention” where six magical schools meet to share knowledge at the Grant Convocation. Ahead of its Gen Con reveal, we spoke to developer Landon Winkler and lead designer James Case about what to expect from Rival Academies.
The short answer? A “cozy”, “character-driven” setting book that introduces heaps of new lore and character options for your favorite Pathfinder classes. “Rival Academies has these six Golarian academies, who are very different in tone and vibe, coming together at a grand event where they’re sharing knowledge”, explains Case. “But also, as the name implies, there’s a lot of rivalry. Who has the best exhibit? Who’s winning in the sports game? Who’s cleansed the area of the most demons?”
Each school is introduced by a relevant NPC, who can tell you all about the school’s specialties, goals, atmosphere, and relationships. At least, they can tell you when the Pathfinder book arrives – and that’s not until the spring of 2025. Fortunately, we can give you an early introduction to the Rival Academies of Golarian.
Academy of the Reclamation
While the Grand Convocation is sponsored by all attending schools, the Academy of the Reclamation are the primary hosts of the event. “They are a new school in our setting that is based right next to the Sarkoris Scar”, Winkler tells Wargamer. If you’re not familiar, the Sarkoris Scar (also known as the Worldwound) is a key setting from Pathfinder’s Wrath of the Righteous adventure path and videogame.
“It’s an area that had been completely overrun with demons and has, thanks to the activities of players in Wrath of the Righteous, is now less completely overrun by demons”, Winkler adds. “The Academy of Reclamation is about rebuilding.” “There’s a lot of them trying to regain their last bits of culture”, they explain, “and they’re the ones who’ve brought everyone together”.
Cobyslarni
“Cobyslarni is a really weird school”, says Winkler. “It’s definitely the weirdest of all six.” Cobyslarni shares a name with its headmaster, who also happens to be a giant elephant that wanders the world of the fae. “Through its dreams and knowledge, [Cobyslarni] tangentially runs the school that’s built on his back”, Winkler adds.
Kitharodian Academy
According to Winkler, “the Kitharodians are our theater kids” of the group. “They’re from an academy in an ancient, slowly crumbling empire, so they’re really focused on repeating the same stories over and over again”.
“They also use their acting arts in service of the country as spies”, they add, “which is a semi-open secret.” The Kitharodian Academy apparently has a reputation for sending students to the Lion Blades, a prominent secret organization in Taldor that specialize in infiltration, espionage, and even assassination.
Case says, if he could join any of the schools, his choice would be the Kitharodian Academy. “I, like many people in this industry, was a bit of a theater kid”, he says. “I also really like the idea that everybody knows they’re also training to be spies. They use that to their advantage, and they’re very ostentatious.” Also, “their school uniforms may or may not be designed so they can quickly rearrange them and infiltrate places better”.
Magaambya
If you played the Strengths of Thousands adventure path, you’ll already be familiar with the Afro-fantasy magic school of Magaambya. Winkler says that this school already has a lot of published information about it, “but we’re adding some more, because they’re rad”. Given that their founder literally brought magic back to the world, Winkler says “if they weren’t here, it would just be weird”.
Since Magaambya has plenty of existing Pathfinder archetypes, the designers took a different approach to new character options for this particular school. “We’re looking for every one of the major schools to have a suite of options”, explains Case. At this stage, we can’t confirm exactly what those character options will be – but we do know more about our final two schools.
Monastery of Unbreaking Waves
“The Monastery of Unbreaking Waves is one of four houses of perfection, each of which is associated with one of the elements”, says Winkler. “They are, as the name implies, mechanically Monks, and they do a lot of water stuff.”
This academy apparently takes a lot of inspiration from Southeast Asian sources. Winkler explains that the Monastery was once destroyed, and their secrets were lost to history for hundreds of years. It’s since been rediscovered, and the Monks are in the process of rebuilding. “They’re one of the symbols of ‘we can rebuild, we can take things back’”, Winkler adds.
When it comes to mechanics, Winkler says to expect a school of new Monk feats (pun intended). “There are some new stances that let you use the elemental power of water. And then there’s some sweet otter-themed tricks like pushing somebody up with a geyser and grappling them, or tossing them in the opposite direction to crush them under the waves.”
“Instead of a different archetype, it made sense to expand the Monk options”, adds Case. “They have abilities that are more direct, such as swinging your sword and sending out cutting waves of water.” “But there are also more philosophical ones”, Case continues. Case in point with one feat: “if an attack is incoming, you can accept it and flow around it, and that improves your defense a little bit”.
University of Lepidstadt
Winkler says that the University of Lepidstadt has one main source of inspiration – Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. “It’s from Ustalav, which is our gothic horror corner of the setting”, they tell Wargamer. If you hadn’t already guessed, this school is all about weird science and harnessing the power of electricity. Oh, “and surgical solutions that may not seem entirely ethical to the other schools present”.
It’s thanks to the Lepidstadt students that Paizo was able to hide a stash of human brains on Rival Academies’ front cover. “What’s being shown on the cover is some of the folks from Lepidstadt and some of the folks from Magaambya arguing”. The source of their conflict is a machine called The Astonishing Engine, which is shown on the left of the page. “The Lepidstadt students will not tell you that it is, in fact, full of human brains”, Winkler says. “That is not an official thing that they will admit in public, but everybody kind of knows.”
The machine’s coils create faces that will answer a user’s question. “The problem being that these questions are answered not by a mystical force, but by the collective intelligence of these brains that have been cut apart and cobbled together”, Winkler says. Basically, it’s about as reliable as an AI summary spat out by a search engine.
“If you’re into Mary Shelley, the Lepistadt surgeon is the perfect archetype”, says Winkler. “It lets you take any class, and you get into a broad collection of Frankenstein stuff”. This includes a construct companion, surgery skills that you can use in combat, and sweet electricity tricks.
“My favorite is definitely that you can shock people enough to give them an extra action”, Winkler adds. Case also mentions a dedication feat that the University of Lepidstadt offers, which teaches you “how to use a small lightning coil to restore HP to your allies.”
Return of the Runelords
Case and Winkler also revealed some extra character options, though we can’t yet confirm what school they’re tied to. These are new character options for Runelords, a unique kind of Wizard that has been around since Pathfinder’s first-ever adventures.
Runelords specialize in magic that’s based on the seven deadly sins, and Case says they’ve seen a lot of changes in recent Pathfinder history. “Recently, with Player Core 2 coming out, we’ve completed our OGL to ORC [Open RPG Creative License] work”, he tells Wargamer. “The Runelords were one [feature] that we needed to reinterpret for the new ORC license, since the old ones were very specifically tied to something like evocation or enchantment [schools of magic], architecture that we aren’t really using anymore.”
In Rival Academies, the Runelords offer a new Wizard archetype. “It is a pretty heavy modification on your basic Wizard to get you more magic that you can use for specific sin spells”, Case explains. “Moving into the ORC license, this also lets us take spells that might have thematically fit but maybe weren’t in the right spell school beforehand.”
“You’ll see a slightly more diverse selection of spells for the Runelords”, Case adds. Sloth Runelords love to cast sleep, while Gluttony Runelords can cast Slither and summon a hoard of hungry snakes. Unsurprisingly, Wrath Runelords like to blow things up, and Pride Runelords can use magic to force others to bow down to them.
“I like the Sloth one a lot”, Case tells Wargamer. “They get a lot of abilities to summon objects and flip things around so they don’t have to move.” Their unique spell just teleports an object into their hands so they don’t have to walk over and grab it – that’s me on the couch when the remote is just a little too far away.”
Lost Omens: Rival Academies is set to release next year, with a more concrete release date yet to come. Until then, check out the playtest feedback Paizo recently shared about its upcoming classes. Or, for more TTRPG news, check out our DnD 2024 Player’s Handbook review.
Source: Wargamer
