Daviot's page

So yeah, USPS dropped my AP volume on my porch Saturday during a rainstorm, and neither knocked or rang the doorbell. By the time I noticed it, rain had soaked through the cardboard mailer and into the AP.

Despite drying it for four days, it's still semi-soggy, and the interior's a mess, with most of the interior pages crinkled:
Photo link

How would I go about getting a replacement?

Thanks,
Alex Putnam

OOC Musings, Banter, and the like goes here. You can also reach me by IM, email, or by phone to discuss things.

Numeria has a long history of mystery and wonder buried under its rugged landscape, for on that one fateful night thousands of years ago, the Rain of Stars scarred the land. The fragmented remnants of a ship from beyond the stars fell from the sky, scattering strange technological ruins and deadly perils across the land. Today, these sites are feared by the barbaric tribes and coveted by the sinister spellcasters of the Technic League. Yet something worse than brutish berserker or super-science wizard has risen to power in these hidden technological halls.
Private game; recruitment is already closed.

[Attempts to imagine the interplay of all six blights upon hapless mortals. Breaks into heretical laughter.]
But yes, had the pleasure of Ending that jerk Odin at PaizoCon 2013. Good times. :)

P.S. Aroden is totes OP.

H'okay, Azlant. As far as the defunct civilizations of Golarion go, we've probably been given the most information, but it's scattered around various sources, and in nowhere are we given a clear picture what life was like or a clear extent of the empire.
So on that note, this is my attempt to congeal useful and interesting factoids on Azlant and the Azlanti, and provide sources, since the PathfinderWiki is more than a bit outdated and incomplete on the matter. From this, I hope to be able to make non-canonical but logical extensions, hypotheses, and perhaps even a supposition or two. Spoilers, to about the level of actually reading the campaign setting books, exist below, along with more specific spoilers for the Serpent’s Skull adventure path.

The Azlanti People
—Physically tended towards dark, slightly receded hair (red, brown, black), olive to pale skin, and odd eye colors, including violet. (HG, ISWG, PCCS)
—Favored colors in clothing included crimson and deep green. (ISWG, PCCS)
—Names often started with vowels, and did not use surnames. (ISWG, PCCS)
—Once the majority human ethnicity by population. (ISWG, PCCS)
—Thassilonians, their civilization an offshoot of Azlant, were ethnically Azlanti (James Jacobs)
—Those Azlanti fleeing the Earthfall intermarried with local human tribes in Avistan, forming the Chelaxian and Taldan ethnicities. They also fled to the southern coast of Avistan and the northern coast of Garund. (HG)
—No pure High Azlanti remain; some Chelaxians and Taldans with seemingly-Azlanti physical features sometimes take up the known trappings of the Azlanti and call themselves such. (HG, ISWG, PCCS)
—Aroden, due to his agelessness brought on by deific ascension, was considered “The Last (pureblooded) Azlanti” (HG, ISWG, PCCS)
—Other Azlanti-descended peoples include the aquatic Gillmen (a.k.a. “The Low Azlanti”), and the dark folk, mongrelmen, and morlocks descended from those who fled into the Darklands. Skum were originally created from Azlanti humans. (ID, ISWG, PCCS)

Azlanti Culture/Relations
—Kept slaves. (ISWG, PCCS)
—Looked down on nonhumans. (PCCS)
—Warred with the elves. (PCCS)
—Fought with the Serpentfolk, exterminating them from the surface of Golarion, and driving them back to Sekamina. (ID, ISWG, SSA)
—The Azlanti hero Savith personally slew the avatar of the serpentfolk deity of Ydersius in the Darklands city of Ilmurea, but died in the attempt. The city of Saventh-Yhi was founded in her honor above the site of Ilmurea to guard against further Serpentfolk incursions. (ID, SSA)
—Taught/mentored by the aboleth, who eventually became prideful; the aboleth responded pre-emptively by performing a Colony Drop on Golarion, thus creating Eathfall. (HG, ISWG, PCCS)
—High Azlanti mages were haughty, and generally avoided getting their hands dirty/directly touching things if possible. (CP09, FSS)

Azlanti Architecture
—Includes cupolas, interlaced designs (ISWG)
—Includes marble columns, and the Pleasure Salon of Calistria in the columned style of classic Azlanti temples. (GA)
—Favored circular and square layouts, often nested or inscribed within one another. (CP09, FSS)
—Azlanti architecture on Garund incorporated stepped stones ziggurats. (SSAP)
—Included self-opening doors in some sites. (CP09, FSS)
—Inspired much of the architecture in Absalom and Andoran; the former’s Azlanti Era of architecture was largely designed by Aroden himself. (GA, ISWG, PCCS).
—The architecture of Ilvarandin, while a hodge-podge, contains some Azlanti elements. (ID)

The Azlanti Language
—Some to much of the actual language has been lost, though there’s enough for scholars to translate from, and it remains something of a liturgical language. (ISWG, PCCS)
—High Chelaxian Opera features librettos in Azlanti. (PCCS)
—The Mordant Spire elves are probably the last society to fluently speak Azlanti. (ISWG, PCCS)
—One of the most-spoken languages of its day, and influenced such languages as Hallit, Polyglot, Taldane (Common), and Varisian. (ISWG, PCCS)
—Absalom’s motto “Ex Prothex” (“From the First”) is Azlanti. (GA)
— Saventh-Yhi = “Savith’s Grave” (SSA)

Azlanti Magic/Studies/Technology
—Ioun stones were originally Azlanti, though the Thassilonians and the Pathfinder Society would later study and advance them. (CP09, SS)
—The Azlanti were obsessed with orbits (including those of celestial bodies), and not only made orreries and models of the Dark Tapestry, but entire floating buildings revolving around a central point. (CP09, FSS)
—Certain High Azlanti forewent traditional books for auto-levitating copper-leafed codices. (CP09, FSS)
—Some Azlanti magic items were in the form of metallic plates that when activated, would disassemble themselves and reposition themselves on or floating around a person, as if an article of jewelry or clothing. (FSS)
—Most Azlanti sites bear auras of extensive preservative magics, often reducing 10,000+ years of wear down to the equivalent of a few thousand. (ISWG, SSAP)
—The Azlanti possessed advanced knowledge of optics and lenses. (CP09, FSS, ISWG, LCG)
—Under the aboleths, the Azlanti developed “unparalleled art, philosophy, and science” in addition to magic. (ISWG)
—Entrapped/imprisoned/cultivated will-o’-wisps for lighting “like tulips” in glass cylinders. (CP09, FSS, LCG)

Known Azlanti Sites/Ruins
—Most Azlanti colonies were on the borders of the Inner Sea, and generally fall into three categories: the literal foundations for modern cities, ruined/little historical significance, or undiscovered and presumably valuable. (PCCS)
—What’s left of the continent of Azlant is a continent-sized archipelago of hazardous tors, mountains, reefs, and towers, jutting up from the Arcadian Ocean, and patrolled by the Mordant Spire Elves. (ISWG, PCCS).
—Escadar on the Isle of Kortos was built on an older Azlanti site, and houses an embassy for the gillmen. (GA)
—The Sightless Sea, the largest Orvian vault of the Darklands and one of the largest holds of the aboleth, is more or less directly underneath the continent of Azlant. (ID)
—Saventh-Yhi (“Savith’s Grave”) was an inland colony in the Mwangi on Garund, above the site of the serpentfolk city of Ilmurea, and survived Earthfall. (SSA)
—The Sun Temple Colony was a semi-recent attempt by Andoran to establish a colony on the ruined continent of Azlant itself. It Got Worse™. (ISWG, LCG, PCCS)

Azlanti Religion
—The Azlanti often had seemingly bizarre interpretations of the gods, by modern standards. (CP09, SSAP)
—Abadar was seen as a god of cities and wealth moreso than a deity of law. (SSAP)
—Acavna was a goddess of battle and the moon, who vanished/died shortly before Earthfall. (SSAP)
—Achaekek was seen as a god of monsters and natural disasters than as a god of assassinations. (SSAP)
—Amaznen was a pre-Nethys(?) god of magic, whose worship (and name!) was forbidden in Thassilon; he perished during Earthfall. (SSAP)
—Curchanus, a deity of travel, beasts, and endurance and mentor to Desna, survived Earthfall to be slain by Lamashtu. (GM, SSAP)
—Desna was seen primarily as a goddess of the stars/astronomy. (SSAP)
—Groetus was a late addition to the pantheon, added close to Earthfall. (SSAP)
—The demon lord Nurgal was considered the “vengeful aspect” of the sun, and placated. (LCG, SSAP)
—Pharasma was seen as a patron of prophecy moreso than as judge of the dead. (SSAP)
—Shelyn was seen as the muse and patron of the arts, and not of beauty. (SSAP)
—The demon lord Zura was originally an Azlanti queen whose thirst for immortality led to her dark ascension. Cults of Zura were infiltrating Azlant at the time of Earthfall, and might have undermined the civilization had Earthfall not happened. (LC, SSAP)

Sources
CP09: Chronicles: Pathfinder podcast #9, with Brandon Hodge
FSS: From Shore to Sea
GA: Guide to Absalom
GM: Gods and Magic
HG: Humans of Golarion
ID: Into the Darklands
ISWG: Inner Sea World Guide
James Jacobs: The word of the Creative Dinosaur himself, i.e. from a Paizo website or forum post.
LC: Book of the Damned vol. 2: Lords of Chaos
LCG: Lost Cities of Golarion
PCCS: Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting
SSAP: Serpent’s Skull Adventure Path
SS: Seekers of Secrets

Of the lovably hardassed face-punching enforcers of law that are the hellknights, the minor order known as the Order of the Coil, like that of the Orders of the Crux*, Pike, and Star, gets one brief paragraph of lore, be it on the preview blog, or on page 65 of AP #27:What Lies in Dust. And that's it, really.

In short, they're based in or around Eleder, and hunt down those who try to find, recover, and return Mwangi/Sargavan relics to civilization (especially the Pathfinders). Sadly, there's been zero discussion about them on the forums, and absolutely no mention of them in an AP that gives us the freaking gazetteer on Eleder.

To that note, I ask if and how any one used/had them show up in their Serpent's Skull games, and propose a thread (remarkably shaped like this one) for ideas thereof.

*Technically the undead leader of the now-mostly-destroyed Order of the Crux got his own writeup in Undead Revisited, but my point stands.

Though the maps in the AP don't quite get it across, Westcrown is a staggeringly huge metropolis, the largest in Cheliax, and still one of the largest cities in the world.

And with that, there are several other groups and secret societies beyond the titular Council of Thieves active or based in Westcrown, which don't so much as show up in the AP. Hence a thread for ideas to that extent. The three can come to mind off the top of my head:

•The Westcrown Shadow Hunters (Bastards of Erebus, Cheliax: Empire of Devils), led by masked woman Bluehood, are attempting to clean the streets of Westcrown of the shadow beasts. They have a dead drop at an unnamed tavern near Vira Leroung, but that's about all we have about them.
•The Aspis Consortium (Faction Guide, Inner Sea World Guide, etc.) The Inner Sea's arguably first megacorporation, the Aspis Consortium are a many-tiered organization that seeks profit at all cost. The Faction Guide notes they have their strongest power base in Westcrown, though their meeting spots are highly guarded and variable.
•The Bellflower Network (Faction Guide, Halflings of Golarion) A 'underground railroad' seeking to liberate Chelish halfling slaves, the Bellflower Network has no traditional headquarters, but the Faction Guide mentions an Iomedean private pub called the Bell of the Sea that acts as a central meeting place for the organization.

Any thoughts and suggestions?

I've come to a bit of a stumbling block and hoped my fellow forumites might have some suggestions.

The Setup: A wilderness shrine is home to its Venerable-age-category caretaker and sole resident, an expert-turned-cleric (3 levels of cleric) who was essentially the tour guide who took over as the priest when the other residents of the shrine retired, died, or left. As of now, he's old, really really old, and as per the random aging rules, he'll die sometime later in the year.

The conditions/stipulations:
•He's too old to effectively garden or provide for himself.
•He's out in the middle of nowhere, with no one to trade for supplies.
•He's too low in cleric levels to cast create food and water, and were he high enough to do so, he'd be strong enough to deal with the things lurking in the basement (thus not needing the PCs' help).
•A sustaining spoon is far out of the price range for this low-level adventure, and most of the cheaper solutions were by WotC and very much closed content. I'm looking for a homebrew or otherwise Open Content solution.

The question: How does he eat?

My Thoughts Thus Far:
•A magic item similar to the spoon, but for one character. (Price check?)
•A second-level spell that can feed one character, possibly with range personal (tentatively entitled "sustain self"), or has the ability to feed multiple creatures, but has a drawback (e.g. subsisting on the spell-fare for an extended period makes creatures continually fatigued).
•A magic item based on the above second-level spell (Price check?)

I'm open for ideas and suggestions for something sensible and flavorful, that lets the above fluff and the crunch work together in harmony. Any thoughts?

I'm trying to clarify a bit of the OGL, specifically what to include as far as the Section 15 Copyright notice goes as for the inclusion of other folks' Open Content.

The Appropriate d20pfsrd Page suggests that references should be recursive, such that if you, building Product A, reference Product B, you include all the references on Product B's Section 15. Presumably, for fairly inclusive works, or if a company references their own previous works, this could conceivably be a staggeringly long list.

But, not all the products I've seen do this implied degree of recursion. For instance, since the update to the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, the various AP's reference the two Bestiary Books in their stat blocks, but neither Bestiary (and its own long list of borrowings) shows up in that AP book's Section 15; generally the only citations are the Core citation, and the ever-handy Advanced Bestiary and Tome of Horrors when used to customize a stat block or bring in additional monsters.

With WotC long-divorced from the now-eleven-year-old OGL, is there anyone that can solidly clarify the issue?

Dear Paizo,

Page 83 of The Haunting of Harrowstone contain flying medusa heads, with Flyby Attack as a bonus feat, and the ability to temporarily petrify those they bite.
[Sniffles.]
Thank you. These are sure to harry whip-swinging inquisitors as they climb inevitable clock tower dungeons everywhere.
Kudos to whomever managed to sneak this shout out into the final product.

The Separated Negative/Positive Event List
The existing events list is alphabetical, and features positive and negative results mixed in willy-nilly. I believe another forumgoer requested a list in which positive and negative results were shuffled to either end of the spectrum. So, I present just that. Probabilities have not been adjusted, but I’ve tried to shuffle “more severe” events to the far ends of the spectrum: bad juju is closer to 1, while beneficent omens are closer to 100. I’ve otherwise not adjusted the chances from the list’s original appearance in Rivers Run Red. Enjoy.

d%_=_Event
1-5 = Monster Attack(continuous)
6-8 = Plague(continuous)
9-11 = Assassination Attempt
12-20 = Bandit Activity(continuous)
21-27 = Disaster
28-35 = Sensational Crime
36-40 = Feud
41-50 = Public Scandal
51-53 = Food Shortage
-----
54-60 = Food Surplus
61-65 = Good Weather
66-70 = Natural Blessing
71-77 = Outstanding Success
78-82 = Economic Boon(exploding 6's)
83-85 = Political Calm
86-92 = New Vassals(exploding 6's)
93-100 = Visiting Celebrity(exploding 6's)

Dear Paizo et al,

I've been following Golarion since the announcement that the license for Dragon magazine was ended (or else, I'd probably have a Dragon subscription instead of a Pathfinder Adventure Path subscription), and I recently snagged Pathfinder Chronicles: Seekers of Secrets at the FLGS after some of my players wished to know more about the lodge in Magnimar, and the closest Lodge to The Stolen Lands. The book is a wealth of history, fluff, and other enjoyable bits, but the one thing that has consistently bugged me is the dearth of information on the physical Pathfinder Chronicles books themselves, in-world.

Yes, we've been given snippets of a few, but the details my players and I have actually brought up, I have no answers for. Namely:

1. How big is a typical volume? They're repeatedly called "chapbooks", which while a vague term of itself, has semi-consistently referred to a small-sized, short (i.e. <50 pages, typically, sometimes just a pamphlet) cheaply-printed book. Yet, "...many volumes come packed with maps, trap diagrams, and detailed explanations..." 1 (emphasis mine). A page length, physical dimensions, etc. would be rather helpful.

2. How frequently are the Chronicles produced? While Volumes 1-5 are touted as being some of the more popular original editions, we're not given a good idea of how frequent they're put out. In Pathfinder AP #1: Burnt Offerings, it lists Volume 56 as being "published in the last decade" 2. Seekers of Secrets quietly changes this volume's number to 36 3.

So I did the math. Being generous and assuming that Volume 56/36 was published in 4697 AR (one decade before 4707, when PF#1 is set), and given that the first Chronicles volume was published in 4317 AR 4, that gives us a 380 year time span.
-If the numbering on volume 56 is correct, that averages to 6.8 years between issues.
-If volume 36 is the correct revision, that averages out to a whopping 10.6 years per every issue.

3a. Is this correct? For an organization with so many agents and projects going on at any given time, this number seems bizarrely low.
3b. That said, as of 4710, what volume are the Pathfinder Chronicles up to/when is the next volume expected?

4. Given the wealth of information the Decemvirate receives, is each volume only one to three tales (as implicated in the selected volume summaries), or would each volume have a few major stories in detail, and then have short appendices or brief "news release"-style mention of notable, but less "epic" finds?

1: Seekers of Secrets p. 42
2: Burnt Offerings p. 85
3: Seekers of Secrets p. 42
4: Seekers of Secrets p. 26

My demented GMing brain has determined that with the appropriate recasting and use of Engrish, my Kingmaker game would make an amusingly typical Super Robot TV series. BEHOLD!

SUPER STEEL SAVIOUR KING MAKA

On the peaceful planet RACEWIND in the Space Kingdom of BERUVO, humans and demi-humans live in peace. But this peace is broken when PITAXIAN STEEL SOLDIERS under DARK KING IROVETSU of the EMPIRE OF NUMERION attack RACEWIND. Now, RACEWIND's only hope lies in three young heroes: MASHIRO, dashing captain of the SAPPHIRE GUARDIANS and master of the ARUDORI-KEN sword style, the android hacker N.O.R.A., and the mysterious amnesiac girl TARA. The three heroes stumble across PROJECT KOROBADU, finding that RACEWIND had secretly built their own STEEL SOLDIERS for just such an occasion, the FAUSTUS MARK IV. But to defeat the DARK KING and the PITAXIANS, the FAUSTUS shall have to find true strength and combine to form...SUPER STEEL SAVIOUR KING MAKA!!

And of course, the dubbed import was called...Kingmaker!

Hail and well met, fellow Kingmakers!

Although I'm having a blast running Kingmaker (and so are my players), I've been sort of miffed at the maps. They're beautiful and the Map Folio is handy for the GM, but there's no real way to hand them to your players and say "here". Likewise, whether playing in person or via a number of online means, so far the only real options have been using the Player Guide's blank template or using a "Fog of War" approach.

I figure the basic lay of the land shouldn't be a surprise—the PCs should know where Restov is, for example.

So, I broke out the Photoshop Fu, combining the populated maps and PDF-extractor'ified maps to make maps that have solely the terrain, extant settlements, and so forth, with "A." to "Z."-style markers filed off.

Hopefully, these should be useful to my fellow GM's and players:
Clean Greenbelt Map
Clean Nomen Heights Map
Clean Hooktongue Slough Map
Clean Glenebon Uplands Map

Likewise, there's no composite map of the four Stolen Lands region, and I think I know why: the maps don't exactly match; there's some overlap horizontally and they don't quite match vertically. Also, the grid between the Hooktongue Slough and the Greenbelt just doesn't match. Still, it gives you a good idea of the scope of the campaign.
[Small Version] Composite Stolen Lands Small Map
[Large Version-1 MB file size] Composite Stolen Lands Map

Enjoy and tell me what you think!

I rarely deal with intelligent items, but upon rereading and comparing Pathfinder's to the 3.5 OGL rules, it's rather pleasant to have more modular rules instead of fixed special abilities. But to be frank, I think some of the weaker abilities are easier on the average GM's games. An intelligent sword that can cast endure elements on you or mage armor when its wielder helps it with its dedicated purpose is a bit more flavorful and less likely to "break" a game than the holy sword capable of holy smite thrice a day and auto-true resurrecting its wielder while questing.

Thus said, I think it'd be easier to use intelligent magic items with powers more piddly than what are currently on the list. I'm looking for thoughts and suggestions on the following:

1. On powers, there's sections for 0th-level spells at will, 1st spells 3/day, and it jumps up the ranks for 2nd through 4th spells, priced both at 1/day and 3/day. What would the price and ego (presumably +1) of the ability to cast a 1st level spell 1/day or the ability to cast a 0th-level effect 3/day? Dare I ask about 0th level effects 1/day?

2. On dedicated powers, the list starts at 4th-level at-will and moves up from there? What of 1st-3rd level at-will dedicated powers? What of dedicated spellcasting powers not at will, such as 1/day or 3/day? Would one simply use the prices from the non-dedicated list? Would there be a reduction in prices if this method were used, because the powers were situational?

Thanks in advance.

Addendum: I would have posted this in the /Pathfinder/Adventure Path section, but you can't post to that root; merely each campaign's sub-forum. So it's here for now.

Also, fun facts. Throughout the adventure paths released thus far(#1-31), you will find:
24 artifacts
13 intelligent magic items (9 of them artifacts)
12 set pieces
11 diseases
10 Deific Heralds (for the aspiring 15th level cleric)
8 templates
2 new materials (Noqual/Skymetal, Living Brass)
2 statted up deities/demons capable of granting spells (Achaekek, Treerazer)
2 NDE's (Non-Deific Entities; legendary unique beings that can't grant spells; Ahriman and Xotani the Firebleeder)
1 grenade-like item
1 theatrical play
1 real-life recipe
1 playable monster race (the Strix)
1 new use for a skill (the Cinderbrave Handle Animal trick)

And of course, 5 full campaigns thus far.

A question for those more knowledgeable than I concerning OGL matters:
Can one reference non-OGL materials?

I understand the purpose of the product identity clause is to prevent both the whole reprinting of those elements and to provide confusion over the original ownership of an idea.

More specifically, WotC developed a number of character classes, feats, and spells that are non-OGL. The Pathfinder Compatibility License allows one to references elements from the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and allowed accessories. There's no similar clear statement in the WotC OGL. Could one create an OGL work that, for instance, creates feats for the knight, invocations for the warlock, or references a spell from the Spell Compendium with the proper references, or would such a work be taboo and consigned to community content?

KQ has discussed the warlock class, and third parties (Adamant Entertainment springs to mind) have published new class abilities for 4e content, but I've not found anything definitive for the 3.5 OGL. Any help would be very much appreciated.