Desna's Avatar's page

This is all incredibly cool - lore, equipment, archetypes, feats, and art.

Yes...*ahem*..."Hell" yes...to a book on Old Cheliax.

Saros Palanthios wrote:

Arachnofiend wrote:

I think the issue is that the bestiary portrayal of hobgoblins is just really bad art.

that's an astonishingly rude thing to say to the person in charge of art direction. even by the low standards of this forum.

The bestiary hobgoblins made a terrible first impression of the new art direction. I feel it's more constructive to point out why rather than simply allow Jacobs to be confused as to why people don't like goblinoids who look like goblinoids. I don't claim to speak for everyone upset by the new look but I really do not feel my criticism was out of line.

Good point.

For me, the new hobgoblins looks less /capable/, less "lawful", and less virile in general. I, personally, prefer an artistic portrayal of a robust, vigorous, athletic creature seeming more aligned with an organized, disciplined, militaristic culture.

The new hobgoblin, IMO, looks more feral, raw, chaotic, and liable to "go off" at any point. I think they could make fine creatures in their own right, just not what I picture being a hobgoblin.

James Jacobs wrote:

The official new look for hobgoblins is that they look more like Medium size goblins. Now and then, stragglers will slip through the cracks as we adjust our style for them, which we'll get better at not doing as the edition goes on.

Is there anything we can say to change your mind? The medium-sized goblin look is terrible.

Personally, I agree. For me, the P2E artistic portrayal of hobgoblins is probably my least favorite, going all the way back to AD&D and the 1st edition monster manual.

FYI: I received an update from Amazon that Lost Omens World Guide should arrive September 24th. I'm in the SF Bay Area.

Am I alone in this feeling? I hope not.

You are certainly not alone, and some of us, after having evaluated 2E, are sticking with 1E. For me, I'm picking nuggets of goodness from 2E to include in my 1E play, without converting to 2E, which didn't quite get things right - despite a few improvements (yet many drawbacks) - from my perspective. Instead, if I find any scenarios or adventures I like in 2E, I'll be back-converting to 1E.

Great episode! James seems like a real no-nonsense kind of guy.
Too bad about the computer problems at the end. Hope you can get it addressed without too much grief.

Very useful. Well done, and thank you!

RicoTheBold wrote:

snip

Agreed 100%. None of my players give a hoot about weapon quality. There's only normal weapons and magic ones. Simple.

My players over the ages have been exactly the opposite.

Fascinating. Especially interested in the rescission by the Ruby Prince. That makes total sense given recent events.

The living monolith is really cool. As usual with these pieces, the artwork is excellent and matches the mood and tone of the region and writing.

Well done. Huzzah indeed!

Luis Loza wrote:

World Guides will vary in their setting and rules material as is appropriate and necessary for their respective subject matters. Lost Omens World Guide (WG1) will have a bit over 20 pages worth of rules content, with the rest being setting information. This is due to the fact that WG1 is mostly about presenting Golarion and the Lost Omens campaign setting for new and returning players and GMs. Adding more rules content would cut into some of this valuable world flavor and lore and considering the Core Rulebook would have just released, we figure it was okay to be "lighter" on the rules content, as you just received 640 pages of rules!

Lost Omens Character Guide (WG2) features over double that amount of rules content. As that book looks to expand on existing ancestries, provide new ancestries, and also provide rules content to support a number of organizations, it is only fitting that more space is dedicated to rules. Mind you, some of this content, like the NPCs and templates, is more aimed towards GMs, but it's no less important important for the book.

These values are not set in stone, mind you. If we have a "setting heavy" World Guide, it doesn't always mean 85% setting material and a "rules heavy" WG doesn't always mean 50% rules. WG3 sure doesn't adhere to the same amounts that WG1 and WG2 do. The new product line allows us to play around with how much space we dedicate to either setting or rules material. I don't feel that we are beholden to always present the same amounts of material, because not every book fits that mold. It's exciting to give the book the amount material we think is right and frankly, trying to stick with the same formula with every book would lead to lower quality books and get boring pretty quick. Hopefully, people like what we have coming down the pipeline. We would love to get feedback on what does or doesn't work on a particular book as that will help us strike a better balance on setting/rules content going forward.

Thanks, Luis. Now I...

*radiates Aura of Wholehearted Agreement*

Nice overview of the Broken Lands and excellent illustrations (which I vastly prefer to the anime style). The top few especially reflect the "feel" of this region, while the topmost illustrates that beauty can yet exist amidst the scarred terrain of these lands.

Look forward to further Lost Omens blogs.

No, you're objecting to rich people being stereotyped. So, defending them.

Wrong.

And your defense of the upper class is irrelevant and impotent here.

Learn to read. I'm not defending the upper class, I'm attacking stereotyping.

There are plenty of both good and bad people in all "classes".

Desna's Avatar wrote:

Let's be careful with the stereotyping.

Why? The rich aren't.

More stereotyping? For example, I know a number of individuals others would consider wealthy who have the ability to focus on higher-order activities in life, such as fighting against blatant stereotyping of historically disadvantaged minorities in the US.

Your comment may be amusing, but isn't accurate.

Let's be careful with the stereotyping. I know it's easy to attack rich people, but judging by some of the prices for PF2 books, rich people may soon be the only ones able to afford physical copies of the game.

This is amazing! If the dayjob doesn't work out, Jason has a future as a novelist, methinks. I want to hear more about these characters!

If I were a lich I might wear a shaped breastplate to avoid being misgendered, since that must get old real quick.

I'm thinking most liches have bigger fish to fry, but that would be a neat quirk for a lich - to be extremely self-conscious about its gender expression.

Awesome! Can't wait for Age of Lost Omens World Guide.

Point #2 is easily the single most exciting thing about second edition for me. I like second edition monster design more than I like the 3-action economy. I've said this before, but just reading the second edition bestiary literally changed how I think about monster design. Monsters that are easy to run but still do cool stuff is awesome. Not having to decide which of twenty pointless, bolted on spell like abilities to use is awesome. Being able to look at a monster stat block and immediately go "this is what the monster does, this is why it's unique" is awesome. Being able to throw together a Wizard adversary and just go "okay, these are the spells he'll actually cast, who cares about the rest; here's some hit point and stats and here's a couple things that sound like wizard class features" instead of spending hours building the character like a PC is awesome.

As someone who almost always GMs, that is a huge selling point of the new edition for me.

Hear hear.

Good to get a preview of how Amiri perishes in 2nd Edition.

Another thing to add is that with the heritage update Ancestry choice isn't just about "Dwarf" or "Elf" but you also define as part of that option whether you are dwarf whose family hails from the desert, or from an important noble line. Ancestry combines both race and more specifically "who your parents/grand parents/great grand parents" were.

What would be far cooler, IMO, would be to have /both/ race and ancestry. You choose your race then choose an ancestry (ethnic and geographical background) within that race.

Desna's Avatar wrote:

No, the message received was /not/ harmful to a huge swath of people. What % that is, who knows. And ultimately, it's not harmful to anyone. Certain individual's interpretations of a word or phrase, or personal sensitives or predilections may make them offended by the word, but nobody is "harmed".

As well, anything can be offensive or harmful to someone, somewhere, at some time. The term "race" is used everyday in innocuous ways, in real life. It's laughable to suggest that people who hear the term in real life can't handle reading or hearing it in fantasy fiction.

Perhaps, but the term is inaccurate in the context of the game. Even more so when where things like half-elves, tieflings, and the like get involved. Nothing resembling these creatures exist in the real world which is why no specific real world terms apply to them. Hence we're left with three options:

1. Misuse a real world term like 'species' or 'race'.
2. Make something up out of whole cloth 'metasapients'
3. Confer a specialized meaning to a vague RL term like 'ancestry'

Personally, I favour option 3.

"Ancestry" is a "real world term" as well, so by your logic, that is equally as inaccurate.

The term "race" has been used without issue in fantasy gaming for decades and is highly recognizable. The term "race" is also used FAR more inaccurately in RL every day (tune in to CNN, MSNBC, etc.) to witness the term misused to refer to human ethnicities.

Ancestry is indeed a cool-sounding term and would be far more accurately used to refer to ancestries within distinct races or species.

Changing "race" to "ancestry" in the PF2 playtest was a solution in search of a problem.

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I mean, Pathfinder had things which were "race" that were clearly not, in a biological sense. Changelings are a one-off coupling of a Hag and a human, there are all sorts of "literal things from space" that you could play in PF1 (e.g. triaxians and yaddithians), there are things native to other planes (e.g. gathlains) and things which were artificially created (ghorans and androids). None of these things are meaningfully a "race" of some broader category.

Asking "who are your people, where do you come from" is a better way to phrase the question because it applies to gathlains ("I grew from a seed of a magic tree in the first world") and ghorans ("I am the continuation of a thousands year old lifeform who occasionally needs a new body") as readily as it does Dwarves ("my mom was a smith at Five Kings Mountain and my dad a miner") and Half-Elves ("Mom was an Elf, Dad was a Varisian").

I do not want "race" back, since it presumes we can only have versions of a common thing, else it's going to be used incorrectly eventually. I will also point out that "should it be ancestry or race" has never been up for discussion during the entire playtest, as devs have repeatedly indicated they are not changing it back.

Which is fine and works for them but I'm still going to mentally and verbally probably address it as Race myself because I'm so used to it and it works for me.

I will say the discussions of it tend to open up cans of worms that were probably better left un-opened.

Captain Morgan wrote:

But it feels like most folks think heavy armor is worse than it was in PF1, and if anything it seems to me it is better (at least in core.) I think folks just need to shift their perspective to account for this.

I mean PF1 heavy armor was bad I think we can all agree on that. But looking it over in PF2, I still don't really see a reason to use Heavy armor most the time.

Agreed. Through playtest, I and my various groups (30+ players) referred to "ancestry" as "race". The most common reaction to PF changing the term during the playtest was eye-rolling and head-shaking.

We all would do well to remember the differences between fantasy and reality.

Sounds like an awesome module! Can't wait.

However, equating darkness with evil is not new, is not a trend, and derives from mankind's fear of the unknown and what it cannot see. When something is shrouded in darkness or shadows, you aren't sure what could be there, and the imagination begins to race, often leading to fear.

Completely disagree. In order for success to be meaningful in an RPG, the possibility of negative outcomes needs to be possible. Finding a viable solution to a negative outcome can lead to a fun role-playing opportunity. I've seen it time and again in my games. Character is left without anything to do? Have a spare character on hand to play, or take over an NPC/retainer. Or take your lumps, cheer on your mates, and help strategize.

Threats have to truly be threats to be meaningful, and to make overcoming them rewarding.

Good rule Mark.

I'm not interested in debating the definition of a slang term that is defined differently depending on which random webpage you happen to be on. The very fact that "stripperific" contains the word "stripper" within it means that the object it refers to is related to a stripper in some form or fashion. So by the very nature of the word, stripperific accuses the object of looking like a stripper.

And no, just because some random webpage contains a definition of the term does not make it codified. I can create a webpage with a definition too. :)

By the way, multiple random webpage sources contain different definitions of the word. For instance, both Urban Dictionary and Definithing contain this definition, which is very similar to mine: "something that is equal to the feeling of watching a stripper."

I rest my case.

It's 2018 and women should be able to wear revealing clothing without being accused of looking like strippers or prostitutes. That's insulting to our collective intelligences. The fact that some here seem to want women to "cover up" smacks of prudishness and religious judgmentalism.

Seoni's outfit is nothing like that of any stripper I've ever seen, and yes, to many, it may be sexy, and is certainly revealing.

However, it is certainly not impractical as, again, a character with access to magic both high and mundane need not "cover up" or conform to the desires or stereotypes of others. As well, Seoni's outfit in the statuette is not indicative of the clothing she would wear in any circumstance, at any time. It's an extremely practical outfit, allowing Seoni comfort, breath-ability, and freedom of movement for effective somatic casting.

Seoni looks great, just the way she is, and doesn't need to change a thing.

We went through several iterations to arrive at the final dress, and modified it to be a little more modest in the process. This is 1st edition Seoni, though, not 2nd edition, so we tried to strike a balance.

Thanks Glenn, it looks great. Hopefully, there is room at Paizo to depict individuals in Golarion who are both modest and immodest, of all genders.

Nice, but I would've preferred the new not-stripperific outfit

Not a stripperific outfit. It's the outfit of someone who is comfortable with herself and her body, seeing no need to conform to the prudish instincts of some in society, and who knows she can magically defend herself against any who would seek to take advantage.

I'm still REALLY hoping Resonance gets dropped completely. Too many pools, too much bookkeeping, and too many headaches for it to be worth my time. When I sit down at the table, I want to play a game, not do algebra.

Completely agree - resonance is a monkey on the system's back, dragging it down. It detracts from every PF2 playtest game I've participated in, and the system would be cleaner, simpler, more fun, and simply better without it in my opinion as a long time player/GM of PF1.

Good points

This conforms with my experiences during playtest, both as DM and player. Paizo is asking for a lot of suffering on behalf of its players, many of whom were content with the game they were already playing, to slog through the playtest in order to arrive at a destination that is looking increasingly like a place they don't even want to be.

I'm afraid that - to me - the playtest doesn't feel like Pathfinder. When I first saw that your tagline for it was 'join the evolution' I thought: yes, they've got it; the game needs a few tweaks here and there to improve it, maybe the action economy from Unchained plus the combat stamina rules (not to be confused with the Starfinder stamina rules) to give the martials better options, cut down on feat bloat and feat taxes... essentially, PF1 needed streamlining.

The Playtest is in essence a complete rewrite. Feats being locked behind class barriers is the most glaring example. Equipment being locked behind "item levels". The introduction of "spell points" (that have nothing to do with spells?). Resonance. Even the terminology is off-putting ("bolstered" and "operate activation action" both spring to mind - and I really, REALLY wish they didn't).

This isn't an evolution. It's a completely different game. Some of it is excellent (action economy; critical success/failure). Some of it is...well, I've said my piece on the other threads so I won't sidetrack this one. But it's not Pathfinder.

I agree with this, nearly whole cloth. Having both GM'd and been a player in the playtest, there's just a sense that something is off....the game just doesn't feel like Pathfinder to me or my group(s). We're hoping this changes by the time the final version is released, but are not hopeful, given comments by developers.

Desna's Avatar wrote:

Catharsis wrote:

Vylatka wrote:

He could also be from a Ulfen family living in the Padisha as well. Nobody is scratching their head about Ekundayo coming from Absalom.

We're not arguing that it's impossible, but rather that it's a bad choice.

As for Ekundayo: Absalom is a melting pot. If he hailed from the Lands of the Linnorm Kings, people would in fact scratch their heads at the choice.

Whether it's a "bad choice" or not is purely a matter of opinion, but I'm guessing you wouldn't have had a problem if they had a dark-skinned character hailing from a region traditionally associated with light-skinned residents. Quite the contrary, you and others would likely be trumpeting and celebrating the "diversity" and how "progressive" the choice was.

Paizo has had dark-skinned people in light-skinned areas, and light-skinned people in dark-skinned areas. I don't have a problem with either of those, in fact I think its a good thing. My problem is that Paizo's ratio of light-skinned characters in darker-skinned areas is vastly higher than the reverse, (only 3 out of 8 iconics from Garund are black) and this sample of characters pushes that ratio higher. Ekundayo comes from Absalom, an area with no native population that is therefore very ethnically diverse, but whoever wrote this felt they needed to specify that he was from a Garundi family, whereas Tristian comes from Kelesh, an area with a majority population that does not look like him, and yet the writer did not take any space to specify his origins.

The majority of America is white. That doesn't mean we can't represent other colors or a diversity of ethnicities here. Perhaps not specifying Tristian's background is a way to pique interest and get people playing the game to find out more.

Some of these posters seem to be bringing too much real world racial sensitivity into their fantasy worlds.

Desna's Avatar wrote:

As mentioned above, multiple ethnicities reside in Kelesh, and imagining one as light skinned doesn't exactly strain credulity. Let's be open-minded.

Can you think of a real-life pale blonde ethnicity native to a desert country?

The name Tristian clearly implies that he’s not even culturally Keleshite. Now, if his migrant background had somehow informed his backstory, or if he had actually traveled to Keleshite lands to study Sarenrae’s worship in its heartland, that would actually have been interesting.

None of that matters. Nobody said Tristian is "native", just that he was raised by the church of Sarenrae. Maybe he is adopted after being abandoned by travelers passing through? Maybe his parents moved to Kelesh as pilgrims or evangelists for the church?

By the way, light skinned people immigrate to real-world desert countries, such as Saudi Arabia, and have children, who then become natives of said desert country.

You seem to lack imagination in this particular circumstance, and seem to be trying to fit things into boxes of black and white, instead of expanding upon the world of possibilities with the thought that grays can exist, and everything is not always the same.

Vylatka wrote:

He could also be from a Ulfen family living in the Padisha as well. Nobody is scratching their head about Ekundayo coming from Absalom.

We're not arguing that it's impossible, but rather that it's a bad choice.

As for Ekundayo: Absalom is a melting pot. If he hailed from the Lands of the Linnorm Kings, people would in fact scratch their heads at the choice.

Whether it's a "bad choice" or not is purely a matter of opinion, but I'm guessing you wouldn't have had a problem if they had a dark-skinned character hailing from a region traditionally associated with light-skinned residents. Quite the contrary, you and others would likely be trumpeting and celebrating the "diversity" and how "progressive" the choice was.

Simple (and I think obvious) solution - do what they did in the 5E D&D Player's handbook. Use "you" and "your" as much as possible. When not possible, use "his or her" and "he or she". Much fairer and more common-sensical approach compared to using solely "her" and "she" as was done here in the PF2 Playtest rulebook.

This is a silly change and I hope in the final product they use race once again. Its so nice that this is just a playtest and we can work out what is and isn't worth changing beforehand.

Agreed, it's a solution in search of a problem.

Everything has real world connotations, but this is a fantasy game. If some people playing the game are having difficulty separating fantasy from reality, I hope they are aware enough to recognize this is something that they, as individuals, need to work on, and does not mean there is a problem with the game.

In my experience with 30+ people during Playtest so far, the vast majority are still saying "race".

As a gender fluid LGBT activist, I was originally impressed with the inclusion of nonbinary genders, and the reduction of male pronouns.

After reading the playtest book, I decided to ctrl-F and search for terms, "he" "she", "his" "hers", "male" and "female"

In 47 years of fighting in parades, (I'm 60 now) getting arrested for being gay, being beaten up for looking different, and otherwise being the dump-on of society, I can truly say that it has been and will continue to be, an uphill battle to gain recognition and true acceptance in society.

That being said.
Do the LGBT community a solid favour and either make the pronouns EQUAL instead of a ratio of 48/254 male/female, or replace all pronouns with a gender neutral "they".
Equality isn't about removing one gender, so the other can flourish. THat's what we're trying to get AWAY from.

I cannot possibly explain how difficult it is, to try to convince a town council to take you seriously, when all they see is an attempt at dominance, instead of inclusion.
Games, movies, and media, are all the same thing that way.
We are trying to move towards TRUE acceptance. Not what we have now, which is some corrupted sense of, "accept me or you're a bigot" mentality, which is just bullying people into accepting you, and pushing supporters further away each day.

Please strongly consider either replacing the pronouns with "they" "their" and "them" or using an equal amount of male/female pronouns. ("They" would be preferred, and simpler)

Number of times "she" is used: 185
Number of time "him" is used: 7 four times in one paragraph, and the other times, the male is a villain

Your hearts are in the right place, but you're doing more harm than good.
Please.
Please fix this.
Us old timers have worked too hard and come too far, to skip chances like this to see resolved into a manner where we can find true acceptance in a hobby that we all love.

Namaste
~Danielle

Danielle - thank you. Your post sums up what many of us are feeling, and says it extremely well. You are heard, and accepted, just the way you are.

Sorry to say this, but I don't like the new style of the artwork (the cartoony harpy), I liked what we had previously. This is OK for PFS (I suppose) but I hope that's not the art style that pervades the Bestiary and PF2 in general.

Completely agree.

Desna's Avatar wrote:

Setiawan is amazing. I prefer her art and interpretations to those of Wayne actually.

Actually it appears he's a guy. His is a male's name in Indonesia.

I still prefer Wayne's, actually, I really like his style, colors quality and composition, but Setiawan is great, no doubt.

Ahh, well, I prefer /his/ art then! Thanks for verifying gender.

Setiawan is amazing. I prefer her art and interpretations to those of Wayne actually.

Put me down in the vehemently anti-resonance camp. When 2E was announced, I was excited, because I felt like Pathfinder could use a refresh and a facelift. However, a number of proposed changes have caused my excitement to diminish, predominant among them, resonance.

From what I've seen, resonance seems clunky, unwieldy, fiddly, strange to justify in-world, and just un-fun. I'll keep an open mind and playtest it, as I've pre-purchased the materials, but if anything close to resonance in its current form makes it to 2E, I'll houserule it out, completely, just stick with 1E, or migrate to another system.

Cost-benefit, resonance doesn't see worth it, or even close. As a DM, if I want less magic in my campaign, I'll hand out fewer magical items. If something this big within Pathfinder is changing due to abuses within Pathfinder Society, something is wrong.

To sum, resonance just feels...off, and I'm strongly opposed to it in its current iteration.