There'll be a few, but not a lot of, templates in Bestiary 2. Probably about as many as there were in the first Bestiary.
Will they be more fleshed out? The templates in the Bestiary were a paragraph at most, other than the Half-'s. I'd prefer the templates be more like the half-dragon/-fiend/-celestial than the giant or young templates. A paragraph just isn't enough space. Also, some template specifics on application would be nice.
I suspect we're gonna try to do all the templates on two pages, so they'll have about as much flavor as the ghost, lich, or vampire.
I'd love it if you did something akin to Privateer Press' 'Quickplates' from Monsternomicon I and II. They take up very little space, are quick to apply and still manage to change the flavor of a creature significantly. [I felt reminded of them when reading the 'simple templates' you did in the Bestiary, actually. Was that intentional?]
I stumbled across this series of pictures of a Ukranian village that made me instantly want to run an Irrisen adventure. Anyone else know of evocative pictorals for this or other nations in Golarion?
These appear to be concept art for 'The Witcher'. A quick google search gave me this and this. I'm sure there's more, maybe that will help you out for further Irrisen goodness.
I presume the phone number I've provided is just going to be held in Paizo and USPS systems - or is it possibly going to be printed on the label at any time?
Keep in mind that Paizo will probably only have a chance in shutting down any kind of warez site if it's under US jurisdiction. If their servers are on a remote island somewhere in the South Pacific, it becomes more difficult to actually enforce US copyright law. International cooperation in this field of law is somewhat limited, even if international agreements on intellectual property exist.
Still, it's good to make things such as this public.
While I was bummed out at first when thinking about all the things Paizo couldn't make room for in their cosmology and/or Golarion, I've since reevaluated that position.
Basically, the 'iconic' monsters from way back when are iconics of that particular setting and role-playing game system. Paizo has given us a clean slate. I actually think I will not include - for example - Githyanki and Githzerai into my game's cosmology, because even though I always loved them, there would be a lot of baggage attached. Players expecting them to behave in a certain way, et cetera.
What Pathfinder is about, for me, is: take the familiar patterns and redevelop them in new ways. Make goblins scary-but-funny little critters, instead of mere cannon fodder, for example. I'm looking forward to employing the Paizo 'analogues' such as Seugathi in PFRPG - but Mind Flayers, for me, will have to stay in 3.5Ed.
I suspect that both tieflings and aasimar will indeed be part of the Bestiary, just like many LA races in 3.5 were part of the MM. After all, all that would be needed is a "Tieflings as characters" sidebar or section.
After browsing the PDF, I want to say big kudos to Paizo for coming up with the AP's new art style and keeping it consistent throughout the book. I don't want to rehearse the old 'is the map useful' argument, just wanted to get off my chest that in terms of pure visual enjoyment, it is the best-looking AP you guys have produced so far, and that's saying something after LoF. Keep up the good work :).
This sounds like something that would best be done in a Wiki format, don't you think? Posting everything to this forum might lead to clutter really quick, and make it hard to find what you're looking for.
I got my shipping notification last night, and as per Lisa's post, I guess I'm not alone in this ;). Makes it a lot easier to wait, knowing at least I'll have access to the PDF on the 13th, even if the package will take longer than anticipated.
Anyway, thanks again, Lisa & Co., for making sure that even if everything went wrong with the Big International Packages (tm), they were sent out as soon as humanly possible. :)
As stated by Vic Wertz somewhere, the difference seems to be whether you are in the automatic shipping queue or the manual shipping queue. The former is faster, the latter apparently required for packages above a certain weight limit. Several Europeans here have already posted that they got their shipping notification, others haven't.
The only thing I don't quite understand about this, is: why wasn't the (international) manual queue shipped out first, if it was conceivable that would take longer and the orders included more books than those in the automatic queue? Just wondering.
Anyway, keep up the good work, Lisa & Co. - enjoy your week-end rest (and afterwards, pretty please, ship my order on Monday ;)).
Never mind us in the UK still waiting for delivery notification. (Based on previous delivery times from 14-21 days this puts mine somewhere in the region of 22nd to 29th of August assuming that I receive the notification soon)
I hear you ... Still nothing over here in Germany. Keeping my fingers crossed, though ...
Still nothing for me :( RPG, Cheliax companion, CoT #1 and Map folio are still pending and pending and pending ...
(edit) missed one page in this thread. I guess I'm in the manual queue, then - all hope is not lost ;).
Just to clarify: This is in no way intended to diminish the efforts of Paizo or its employees, who I'm sure are doing a heck of a job and lots of overtime just to get the whole shipping crazyness done. I just wish the PDFs and book were here sooner, that's all. In the second I get my shipping e-mail, I will probably switch from Automated Whining Mode (tm) to Supercharged Glee. Or something.
It's all a giant conspiracy against Europe, I tell you. Poor us ;(.
Kae'yoss: I share your concerns. Actually, I had hoped that overseas shipments would be sent out even earlier than this week, in order to make sure that they arrive on time for the August 13 release. Guess that was a little too optimistic ...
Sorry, I hadn't noticed this thread before (I asked the same question a few minutes ago, at http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizo/customerService/howCanISetMyCamp ainSettingToBeOvernighted).
Guess this means that I can set my shipping back to 'wait for PF', then :).
This question might be related, so I'll just ask it here:
I guess that if I have my subscription set to 'monthly' shipment, I will not, in fact, be receiving the PDF on August 13, but instead on the day that the whole package is shipped (presumably on the day of the Pathfinder release).
To avoid having to wait for the PDF (hey, waiting for the book itself to arrive is painful enough ;)), I've set my shipping option to 'never hold anything'. Will that ensure I get my PDF on the release date?
As I understand it, I can always switch my shipping option back to monthly after PFRPG has shipped in order to avoid additional shipping costs.
All elves are matrilinear. (This is the keystone that makes the rest of this work.)
Ownership is Power.
Therefore
Females in the corrupted elven society of the Drow, end up with almost all social and political power.
Without that, or a goddess like Lloth, Dark Elves being so Female dominant becomes a harder sell. (Not impossible, but I would like to see the hoops jumped through to get to that point.)
Sorry, Lord Fyre, but I think your logic is flawed here.
Drow being a female dominant race is not that far-fetched. The Drow article in Pathfinder ... someone help me out with the issue #? ... explicitly states that the dominance of the female gender is a direct result of the drow Descent, because the males largely perished on the way (hey, someone had to feed the ropers!).
In fact, taking this as granted allows for an argumentum e contrario: Drow are matriarchal because of special circumstances, which are not present for 'normal' elves. Therefore, 'normal' elves will not (necessarily) follow the same rules.
I'm with Kae'yoss on this one. Elves just don't care. They are egalitarian enough not to worry about a matriarchal or patriarchal society.
Also, some of the art is familiar because (I think) it first appeared in the Beta PDF. Reusing that would be entirely legitimate, it was a 'preview' of the final book, after all.
I guess you've arrived at a classic case of Logic vs The Rules ;). Keep in mind, though, that attacks of opportunity are an abstraction, a simple way to simulate distraction in combat. In order to provide a consistent gaming experience, I would have gone with the rules, as follows:
- The act that provokes AoO is the throwing of the grenade (or whatever). The door being open or closed is irrelevant to the question.
- The only (rules) explanation for not allowing your player an AoO in this situation would be that the assailant has at least partial cover.
- So, it all boils down to: How far did he open that door? If it was thrown open completely, then the player should have been allowed to take an AoO, IMO; if the attacker just opened it a little bit to throw his missile, then no AoO.
That's how I'd handle it, YMMV. The really important thing is that you didn't let this clog up your game session for (too) long :).
(3) There isn't a standing military--the Houses raise their own forces in case of an attack. The "patrols" on the streets come from whoever has power in that bit of town--Vesidyre in the Pale Market, Caldrana in Rygirnan, crime bosses in various areas not under tight control. I don't know where the gate guards come from in that case.
This is the way I read (and pictured) it. Basically, all houses have patrols in the streets at the same time; in an area where a given house has lots of influence, there will be more patrols from that house. Some areas might never see a single soldier from House X, because they're too insignificant to that house's purposes or too close to another House's power base.
The gate guards might come from a specific house, but they might as well be a mercenary company that has been tasked by the city's ruling elite to guard the gates at all times.
Critic, I have a similar problem. While I love the rest of the adventure (@ Greg/Daigle/ Paizo Crew: another superb effort!), I have serious issues with the 'puzzle trap' on the Entrance Level.
1) While I understand that the 'halve/triple' code might lead players to the doors numbered 1, 2 and 4, I don't see how they are supposed to figure out the correct sequence. The only way - as I read it - to do so is the Knowledge (arcana) Check DC 30, which automatically gives you knowledge of the correct sequence (why?). When I imagine this in play, I think my group will have a lot of frustrating 'd'oh, taking fire damage again ...' moments, because while they might figure out 1, 2, 4, they might start at any of those doors.
2) Adding to that, I am quite worried about the lethality of the Magma Vortex. The way it's written, the PCs might appear in Room 1a, miss the clue, and take door 3 - only to drown in Lava, maybe without any kind of protective spell active. 10d6 per round and being sucked down into drainage tubes for more immersion damage seems ... well, it makes sense from Jhavul's standpoint, but it's quite a lot of damage for an unsuspecting PC. This is aggravated by the fact that the rest of the group don't know where their guy has been teleported to ... no line of sight, nothing. If a fighter falls into the trap, he's dead, period.
Maybe that was intended differently? How long do you suppose someone stays "in" the Vortex until he/she is sucked down the drain? I read it as implicating 'after 1 round'.
I would think that it all depends on presentation. If you hand them a note saying 'this is Zenzirad, it's effectively a +blah blah weapon', players will look upon it as something to be sold and/or traded in for something more powerful. My suggestion: Make it a Really. Cool. Handout. One page, with a pretty picture on it, and write up a few paragraphs describing the weapon and the process of its forging. Then, at the very bottom, put the sword's stats. My bet is, your player(s) will be a lot more reluctant to sell such an 'important' item ...
Have there been any thoughts of combining these into zips (rars or whatever) by books?
A workaround - for the time being - might be using a download manager such as DownThemAll! I'm using it in conjunction with Firefox, and it works great to quickly download all PDFs. Then it's just a matter of seconds to create six subfolders and drag&drop the appropriate PDFs into them.
daemonslye: Thanks a lot for your continued dedication to your project :). I'm looking forward to the PFRPG final conversions, and will try to chime in with input every now and then.
I've set maptool up so that spells and effects that appear in chat link to directly to the SRD. Lookup time is zero. I look forward to changing it over to the Pathfinder "SRD" when it is robust enough.
That sounds intriguing. Would you mind sharing how you accomplished that? :)
Really nice, Kalandil :) That sounds like a great way to strenghten the connection between the PCs and Riddleport. I might even steal one of the backgrounds, if I may ;).
They're there in The Great Beyond, and they've moved to a slightly different cosmological neighborhood versus the Planescape archetype, but one that I think actually fits them considerably better. I actually went into considerable detail on them and their patron goddess Alazhra the Dream Eater... (snip)
Great, I can't wait to see what you have come up with :)...
F. Wesley Schneider wrote:
And yeah, they get hit on a bit in Great Beyond, no worries!
... although the concept of hitting on a Night Hag ... ugh ;).
Todd Stewart wrote:
And yes, I would -really- like to do something with the Night Hags in the future if given the option to do so. Hint Hint Hint Wesley. Wink Wink.
Few designers like hags more than me, and yes, the three primary mortal races of hag are going to together get the same number of pages as the other creatures. Breaking them up either separates the information across multiple books or causes one monster to dominate a single book, neither of which is any good. So they get their racial overview same as any other beastie.
Thanks, Wes - I was afraid you'd lump in the Night Hags with the others, although they have entirely different roles in D&D history (IMO). Night Hags fit better with a 'planes' themed book, which is why I hope the esteemed Mr. Stewart will devote some space to them in 'The Great Beyond' :).
1) Put a sticker into each FLGS copy that gives it an unique ID number (much like computer games and their serial code).
2) Create a page at paizo.com that features a randomly generated query along the lines of:
-- Enter unique book ID: --
-- Enter the following words:
-- The (random #) word on page (random)
-- The (random #2) word on page (random2)
-- The (random #3) word on page (random3)
3) Make that page link isolated from the rest of the page, meaning: don't link to that page from anywhere. Give the link to FLGS owners.
4) Every custome who gets a book at the FLGS can ask the owner about the 'activation link'.
5) Once a book ID is 'activated' (by inputting the correct characters), it will no longer function.
Upside: Should prevent the book owners' friends from downloading the PDF (since the ID was already activated, presumably). Prevents people who just browse the book in the store from being able to directly write down a 'download code'. Probably low-maintenance (since the activation page needs to be programmed once and that's it).
Downsides: Possibly costly (delays in shipping, sticker costs). Not entirely fail-safe (theoretically, someone could program a keygen such as exists for most pirated software today. Or someone might wright down the ID code and use a borrowed book to gain access to the PDF file). Depends a lot on the cooperation of FLGS owners.
Maybe someone has an idea to make this even more 'piracy-proof'?
That one looks clean, crisp, usable. Me likey :). If you want room for a tactics text, consider dropping the least useful rules bit (in this case, I'd say: the insanity effect description.) That should give you a few lines. Alternately, you could adjust the portrait (but that would be a loss, really).
One final suggestion: I'd tone down the colors a little bit (decrease tone/increase transparency?) to make the stat sheet go easier on everyone's printers.
But all that is just the perfectionism talking ;).
the new format looks good to me (so far); it is somewhat 'cleaner' than the old layout. Still, it seems to take up more space than before, which makes me wonder how this will work with longer (high-level) stat blocks. The font shouldn't be any smaller; it's already kind of hard to read in places.
I think that you should try even more to put only the most relevant info on the front page (e.g.: no ability scores, no spells a creature won't use anyway, no tertiary attacks etc ...). The goal, IMO, should be to enable you to run an ancounter using only the first page by default, and only having to 'flip' through the rest of the document when really needed.
Just my 2cp. You're doing great work. Keep it up, please :).
Yep! Cranking away at the editorial process right now and I'm confidant I can finish it within the next week and pass it off to layout finally. Thank the gods. Thanks for you patience everyone!
Hi Nick,
thanks a lot for the update; I'm glad the wait is finally over! Here's hoping that Razor Coast will be a success for you despite the 'hiccups' that occurred in its production. :-)
A question, though: How will the issues with Razor Coast impact future Dark Vistas products? Will those, too, be delayed?
How can they track illegal downloads? It seems like it would be incredibly difficult to get an accruate number.
They can't. Software companies that get pirated more than WoTC, and are better at technical issues can't do it, so I am sure WoTC can't. They can try to gauge an estimate, but so can I, however I would not bet money that my estimation, if I had one, or WotCs' "tracking" was even close to the real number, whatever it may be.
In this particular case, I strongly suspect that they didn't do much besides look at the 'Viewed: x times; Downloaded: x times' counter that Scribd provides... and multiply that number by the FactorThatOnlyWotCKnows :).
While IAAL, I am by no means an expert in US-american law. Still, I am wondering what this move spells for RPGnow & co. Didn't they sell PDF products with the stipulation that they could be redownloaded again and again? Then that's part of what the customers paid for with their money. By violating these terms, RPGnow could be looking at a lawsuit either way, either because they violate the agreement they have with WotC or because a customer decides to sue them ...
Re: the filesharing issue: I wonder which percentage of "shared" RPG sourcebooks on the internet are files that were formerly watermarked, then cracked - and which percentage is just plain scans made by some guy at home who just had a scanner handy? WotC's logic may be faulty in more than one way here.
Either way, if I hadn't already decided to stop supporting WotC, I would do so now. Way to alienate your customer base.
Why exactly do the Golarion Drow speak Undercommon?
Apart from that being a 3.5 holdover, wouldn't it make more sense for them to actually speak Elven, or at least a dialect of Elven? Undercommon, to me, has always been the UD/Darklands equivalent to Common, meaning 'you speak it when you absolutely have to communicate with other Darklands races, but not among your own kind'. Two Drow communicating in Undercommon feels as silly as, say, two Elves speaking Common amongst themselves.
Rules-wise, I think I'll handle it like this: Anybody who can speak/understand Elven, can also understand the Drow dialect. However, to actively speak it without attracting attention, I will require some kind of investment from the player. Maybe a rank in linguistics and some time spent among Drow?
Any thoughts on this or its implementation into Second Darkness?
