The Genius Guide to Expanded Favored Class Options

In the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, every time a character takes a level in a favored class, he or she gains a bonus. Under the core rules, that bonus is either an additional skill point or an extra hit point. However, the Advanced Player’s Guide introduced a new set of racial favored class options. Members of specific races can get these benefits when they gain a level in a class that is listed as a favored class for their race. These rules are extremely interesting in that they add a new way to differentiate between characters, creating even more potential points of difference between two characters who take the same race and class combination. The options given in the Advanced Player’s Guide help make some iconic choices more interesting, since each race (other than human) is given favored class options for only a few classes.

A GM who wants to make different regions or organizations unique could also take the new “racial” options and instead link them to a specific kingdom, knightly order, or school. Doing so is a simple and effective way to help show the differences between the crofter-folk of the Misty Plains and the battle-hardened fighting tribes of the Frostweald, regardless of what races make up those societies. Of course such uses might result in needing a good set of favored class options for dwarf alchemists, elf gunslingers, and halfling barbarians.

To help GMs have more tools to make campaigns flavorful, and to support players with a taste for unusual class/race combinations, the Genius Guide to Expanded Favored Class Options fills in the “missing” class/race combinations, so every race has a favored class option for every class (including new classes, such as the magus, gunslinger, ninja, and samurai). We also added a few more universal favored class options (available to any character) and a few racial options available regardless of class (listed under each race as “any”).

The original favored class options from the Advanced Players Guide are included in the lists below, each marked with an asterisk (“*”). Our hope is to make this a complete, convenient resource that allows readers to easily tell what options come from “official” products.

Because we want to support fans who use base classes from other products produced by Super Genius Games, this PDF also adds racial favored class options for all the Super Genius classes currently available. Some of this material overlaps with a free PDF we released several months ago, but is again included here for completeness.