Greetings from Playtest HQ! The time has come for us to move on from the River Kingdoms, closing out Part 4 of Doomsday Dawn. Now we turn our attention north, to a land ruined by demonic powers. That's right, we're going to the Worldwound in Part 5, The Heroes of Undarin!

Now, I don't want to give away any spoilers, but for those of you who are playing, make sure to touch base with your GM, as they have very special instructions for you as to how you should make your character for this dangerous mission!

As a reminder to all of you playtesters out there, the surveys for all of the previous parts of Doomsday Dawn are still open. Once you and your group have completed playing Part 5, The Heroes of Undarin, make sure to take the following surveys! Your feedback is vital in making sure we get the game right for its final release!

Player Survey | Game Master Survey | Open Survey

If you have completed the Doomsday Dawn surveys, consider giving us your feedback in the general surveys for Ancestries, Classes, Rules, and the Bestiary. These surveys can be found on the Pathfinder Playtest landing page.

Update 1.4 - All About Ancestry

The past two weeks have been a real whirlwind for us in the design pit. In the two weeks since the release of Update 1.3, which brought some pretty big changes to the game, we've been hard at work on Update 1.4. While this one is much more modest in terms of scope, it nevertheless brings a pretty big change to your game: an overhaul of the ancestries!

The one thing we've heard mentioned over and over (as well as in our Ancestry Survey) is that many of you felt like the ancestries weren't quite giving enough at 1st level. We also saw a number of responses saying that taking a feat to be a half-elf or half-orc was too steep a price to pay. This update makes changes to the way that ancestries work, while also giving you some additional high-level ancestry feats to use in your game!

Starting with this update, when you make a character, you select not only an ancestry, but also a heritage from within that ancestry. Your heritage gives you additional physical characteristics based on your lineage, and your choice of heritage is in addition to the ancestry feat that you gain at 1st level. Half-elf and half-orc are now choices within the human heritage list, which means that you can play a character from one of these heritages, and still take a 1st-level feat from either of your parents as well!

So go grab Update 1.4! Those new feats might just give your characters a shot in the arm for the upcoming challenges they must face in the horrible, demon-infested lands to the north!

Jason Bulmahn

Director of Game Design

Join the Pathfinder Playtest designers every Friday throughout the playtest on our Twitch Channel to hear all about the process and chat directly with the team.