Kaer Maga might be a good place for unusual races, as the city is pretty much built in as a grimily cosmopolitan location where members of all sorts of races have agreed to live together in rowdy 'harmony'.
The Shackles might work too, just in my initial readthrough of the Skulls and Shackles path and the extras along with it, you have diverse entities like Hobgoblins, Cyclopses and Ogres interacting. I can imagine, say, a Crab-man on a pirate crew.
Katepesh might work too. They have gnolls going into cities there to trade in loot and slaves. With the Pactmasters working to insure trade betweeen all willing to trade; there's probably a pretty firm rule in the area that it doesn't matter what you look like, so long as you're into capitalism.
Well, seeing as in Golarion, you can get divine magic just as easily and fully from Demon Lords, Arch-Devils, Empyreal Lords, or sufficiently powerful Cthulhu monsters... or from just being an oracle and either being part spirit or being cursed/blessed to tap into the wellspring of the cosmos... an atheist of sufficient Knowledge (Planes,) could point at the way none of these entities are true gods. Therefore, there's little proof the gods are actually gods.
There's not even any particular advantage to getting cleric powers from a god over a demon-lord or angel-king. You don't get less powerful magic or fewer domains if Ragathiel or Jubilex is your boss instead of Desna or Lamashtu.
It's just prestige, mostly. And I guess if you worship a god, it's less likely your object of worship will get beaten up by something bigger. But there's still a chance of a giant space worm. Who is also a god, somehow.
Name: Tord
Race: Half-Orc
Classes/levels: Paladin 9
Adventure: Wake of the Watcher
Location: 280 feet under Avalon Bay
Catalyst: Grabbed, Crushed, and Savagely Bitten by Dhauggota, the Devilfish Sorcerer
The Gory Details: When the irascible gutaki sorceress attacked our deep-lake diving heroes, they slew her summoned sharks with ease, disabled her magic by a casting of silence from the party oracle, and intercepted her before she could reach Croon’s submersible. Her attempts to silently cast spells were ruined by a swimming charge from Tord, the smiting paladin of Ragathiel, who wore a helmet of underwater action. Quickly after followed Ursa the half-orc ranger, further complicating casting for the cephalopod spell-slinger. Frustrated and infuriated beyond belief, she expelled a cloud of Dagon’s Blood, releasing a darkness within which even their orcish eyes could not see. Now utterly noiseless and completely obscured, Dhauggota attacked.
Wielding the trident of warning (which gives the direction of underwater predators,) Tord was the only one able to find the silenced and concealed Dhauggota within the cloud, and engaged her in single combat rather than retreat and risk her casting spells or getting away. The duel was regrettably weighted, for he was still blind and she could see him perfectly. Though he wounded her seriously, eventually she grabbed the paladin, and once she held him in her tentacles, the cephalopod crushed, pinned, and savagely bit him unto death, (critically hitting twice on the bites.) Despite the brave efforts of Belmondo, the party inquisitor, to invade the ink cloud and save his dear friend, all was for naught. Tord, the half-orc paladin died in silence and impenetrable darkness.
That Dhauggota perished moments later when Belmondo detonated a bead of force centered upon himself, was little comfort to the survivors.
I had a first hand experience with running one of those against a party of 6th level characters. Fear drove one character running, and Shadow Evocation at caster level ten dropped another and put a third on his last legs.
10d6 is a lot for a level 6 or 7 character to deal with, even if there are technically two saves you need to fail, and that's even before the flying, incorporeal, deeper-darkness, and shadow-blend are concerned.
I had it be over-confident, and full of bravado, not using the darkness or shadow-blend, just to give them a chance.
I had a first hand experience with running one of those against a party of 6th level characters. Fear drove one character running, and Shadow Evocation at caster level ten dropped another and put a third on his last legs.
10d6 is a lot for a level 6 or 7 character to deal with, even if there are technically two saves you need to fail, and that's even before the flying, incorporeal, deeper-darkness, and shadow-blend are concerned.
Frankly, any smaller-than-tiny-creature swarm in the event the players are too low level to have many area-of-effect damage spells. A spider swarm is surprisingly lethal against any first level party who didn't bring torches because of light spells, or who doesn't have a sorcerer and their wizard rolled really low on his one casting of burning hands.
He has a +13 will save, that's nothing to scoff at.
Or fudge the rolls.
Well, if I'm going to fudge rolls, I might as well just decide it doesn't work ahead of time.
I have a player who's running a telepath psion. He has Mind Crush, which can reach a DC of 22 with the right amount of power points and reduces creatures to -1 and dying on a failed save.
Major Mythos monsters like the Dark Young are supposed to crush mortal minds, not the other way around.
My concern with the idea of designating certain words as keywords is that the game eats Words already. It devours them.
The words "witch" or "sorcerer" are inapplicable except for very specific kinds of spell-casters. That kind of takes away the word "sorcery" as well. A powerful "warrior" is apparently someone who took a whole lot of levels in a not-good-enough-for-PCs class.
"Enchant," and "enchanted," and "enchantment" are used for a very specific school of magic, so the phrases "enchanted weapon," or "enchant a weapon" which feel very iconic in fantasy fiction, have still received gripes by judges for Superstar.
The Bestiary alone has devoured oodles of words which used to be general or regional terms for folkloric, mythic, and legendary things. You can't really talk about "demonic" influence, possession, or anything else unless it specifically has to do with Demons from the Abyss. And a "ghost" isn't even a ghost unless it's really a "ghost." Say the word "specter" or "wraith" and people have very specific expectations. I'm hoping they don't name a specific incorporeal undead an apparition, because that would be another evocative word for spiritual haunting off the table. Oh. Hmm. "Haunt" is another one whose use gets iffy outside the specific phenomenon.
A keyword system by which the writers aren't able to use words like "proficient" or even something so fundamental as "action" except for very specific rules seems very hazardous to me, in terms of constraining the narrative tool-set.
Sorry for double-posting, but is it odd to anyone else that the Moit of Shub-Niggurath is immune to mind affecting effects and the larval form eats mind affecting effects, rendering its host immune to them, but the actual Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath has no such immunity. Was it an oversight or intentional?
I'm probably going to render it immune when my players confront it, partly because it's thematic and partly because it's a bit anti-climactic for the big-end-boss monster to be ended by a single Hold Monster or the like.
This might be running a bit late to the party, but I might use that theme for an upcoming confrontation my players have with a Shantak. I picked up the Metroid Metal CD at PAX East and it is cool!
However, a better choice might be Ridley - Dragonfood. It's an OverClocked ReMix by ReMixer: Rozovian, and it works with the Super Metroid boss theme which became Ridley's anthem.
.... okay, derail aside, but still speaking of aliens, I would love to see more extraGolarionals in Bestiary 4. Perhaps the Flatwoods Monster, or the Hopkinsville Goblins might entice? I remember that Planescape had a version of Men in Black called the Keepers that I found rather creepy and awesome. I'd love to see Paizo do a take on the Men in Black too. Or the Byakhee on a more Lovecraftian level? Nightgaunts are also something I'd like to see, though they're more dreamworld creatures than aliens. I suspect that Mi-Go, Color from Out of Space, Elder Things, and Dark Young were statted too recently to drop into the bestiary, but I'd love to see them.
I'm running a game of Carrion Crown that just got to Wake of the Watcher.
I've been sorting through my D&D Miniatures, weighing the options of using a Treant from Giants of Legend against a Beholder Ultimate Tyrant from Dangerous Delves to represent the Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath. The Treant captures the tree-like aspects and has the thick trunky legs; and the Beholder has the body shape, and the the eye-stalks pass for tentacles.
But it wasn't quite gelling, so I went online and did a search.
Then I happened across Fantasy Flight's Arkham Horror Monster Miniatures and found they have a Dark Young figure.
I was wondering if anyone had any experience with the figure line and could tell me how well the fig would work in a Pathfinder game. I read that it was the right size to be a huge creature for a 25mm game. I can't remember if the D&D and Pathfinder Battles minis are 25mm or 30mm scale... well... no, to be honest, I know nothing about Mini scales.
I was also considering grabbing a Gug and perhaps a Mi-go or two, but the bases look a bit big... at least for the mi-go it looks like it'd be large for a medium creature.
Anyone have experience with their figure line in general and their suitability for use in the Pathfinder RPG? Thoughts on the look of the figures would help too. Everyone has a different idea of how Mythos monsters look.
While we're on the topic, does anyone have suggestions on what I should use for minis for:
Hounds of Tindalos
Shantak
Moit of Shub-Niggurath
Gug
Dimensional Shambler
Mi-Go
Dark Young
Any other Mythos Monsters from Wake of the Watcher I forgot.
Wizards of the Coast miniatures are the ones I have the most of, and I'm toying with Fantasy Flight figures, but I could swing other ones in a pinch if they were good.
The funniest thing about the Slugspawn is that they can only be removed with with magic like Remove Disease after they have successfully attached themselves to a victims brain. Which means that they are classified as a... disease?
For me, the problem with this is understanding how the High Priest of Dagon managed to stay infected with a slug-spawn. Cure Disease is something he has access to at his level, and I'd expect it to be the first thing someone'd think about if they were infected by a parasite. The module kind of waves it away with him not really understanding what he's been afflicted with and not really considering it a threat, but I fear the players might think it a bit of a plot-hole.
I'm considering changing the weakness of the slug-spawn so it isn't quite so odd he didn't think of it. On the other hand, if I make it too counter-intuitive, if the PCs get infected, it might be a death sentence pure and simple.
King of Vrock, would you believe I almost said Frame Story, but actually ended up not doing so because I thought that term might only apply to works where the characters in the framing story are themselves telling unrelated stories; ala Scheherazade in 1,001 Nights (Arabian Nights,) or the pilgrim travelers in Canterbury Tales.
But yeah, that's the gist of it, and String of Pearls does rather well work too.
====
W E Ray, I'm not in a position to say what the final chapter is about, because, you know, spoilers.
But look at it this way. The conclusion of a frame story isn't necessarily what the whole work was about. And yet, the job of a frame story doesn't excuse it from being a good story itself, or from the obligation to have a satisfying conclusion.
I think you’re experiencing a disconnect between Paizo and yourself on what this particular Adventure Path is for; on what the AP is, as a whole, about.
The theme of the Carrion Crown Adventure Path involves exploring the various different subjects of Gothic literary and Hammer movie horror. The Whispering Way serves as a bridging story element. I’m sure there’s a term for this kind of a literary device, but I can’t remember what it’s called. The pursuit serves as an overarching framework allowing the heroes to take part in a series of self-contained stories… each exploring a different source of horror (Ghost stories and hauntings in volume one and Frankenstein & mad science in two, for example.) It provides the impetus for the characters to move from one story to another, where they wouldn’t otherwise have the reason.
Removing Volume 4 would hobble a chunk of the very point of the Path. The different chapters and horrors themselves are the purpose of the Carrion Crown AP.
If there’s a flaw or a failing in the Path, it might be that it does too good of a job at making the framework arc seem important (at least for yourself…) obscuring the relevance of the individual stories. Perhaps it’s overcompensation. In my experience, several past Paths do poorly in representing the over-arching villains providing the motivation and wind up with a “Who’s that guy/group? Oh, he’s/they’re the cause of all your troubles up to this point! Oh, really, um, okay, we’ll fight them then, I guess?” climax final volume.
To be honest, though, running the AP, I haven’t experienced such a problem. My players became engaged with the plot, conflict, and characters of each volume so far… and without losing sight of the pursuit, realized that each situation they’ve happened upon holds potential to get gravely dangerous unless someone intervenes as only they are poised to do. Perhaps your GM is overstating the dire immediacy of the Whisperers compared to the threats in the individual stories, or perhaps it’s just a “Your mileage may vary,” situation about this kind of literary device.
I think the idea is that Mayor Greedle isn’t supposed to tell you about Undiomede House until after you investigate the Church for him. By the book, he holds out on that particular bit of information as a reward.
That said, by this level in their careers, many players have access to mind-affecting effects, and that’s before you take extreme duress into account, (such as beating the heck out of the mayor, which I can see some players managing.)
As a GM, all I can say is Welp. Sometimes that happens. Players are notorious for finding their way around linear approaches.
The entry on slugspawn says the difficulty of recognizing a slugspawn as a threat is a DC 16 Perception check, but that they can be harder to find if they're hidden.
That being the case, what is the Stealth bonus of a slugspawn?
If the victim fails to notice a slugspawn and it pounces without triggering a Reflex save, does the victim now know of its existance? I'd assume that it'd be tough not to recognize a giant slug-worm burrowing into their flesh.
Slugspawn are Tiny, right?
Since they don't have armor classes, hit points, or saving throws, is anyone trying to do something to a noticed slugspawn is automatically successful? (except mind affecting effects.)
So, I'm reading an encounter in a module that involves a giant octopus.
The During Combat section says "The octopus stays in the water, attacking enemies on shore with its tentacles. It tries to grab as many victims as it can and then pull them into the water to bite and poison before it feeds on them."
How does it do this?
I assume that it makes a grab attempt on every character it hits, and if it hits more than one character, it may take a -20 penalty to its grapple checks so it can hold each character in a single tentacle instead of needing to focus all of its limbs on grappling one victim. (Hopefully this assumption is not wrong.)
If it succeeds at this, that's where things get fuzzy for me in terms of the octopus's subsequent actions.
A grapple check is a Standard Action. Does that mean that the Octopus can only pull one victim into the water at a time, and the rest just sort of dangle there from its tentacles? Or because it's taking a -20 to its grapple checks, can it use the move grapple option to move all of its grappled victims into the water at the same time with one Grapple Check? (or one for each victim?)
Assuming the octopus gets someone into the water, does it have to release them from the grapple to do a bite attack (since grappling is a standard action,) or to attack them with any tentacles that aren't currently holding victims; or can it just not elect to make grapple checks for additional constrict damage and whatnot? I know the rules pretty much state (with the grapple being a standard action,) they can't make the grapple checks and bite them at the same time.
Honestly, creatures with multiple attacks and grab are confusing and sometimes frustrating for a lot of reasons.
For one thing, with ones like octopuses and scorpions... grabbing prey and holding them tight while biting or stinging them is kind of what they do, but the rules aren't set up to parse that kind of behavior. For another, a giant monster with lots of tentacles, like a kraken, grabbing a bunch of people and waving them around and dragging them to their doom is rather iconic, but I don't know why any tentacled creature would try and grab more than one person and take the massive grapple check penalty if there's not really much they can do with multiple people in their tendrils all at once. And if they can't, well, there's an iconic fantasy/monster scene that flat out just doesn't work in Pathfinder.
Well... Crocodiles have a 2 charisma. Also, spiders.
Grant you, neither of the above are particularly intelligent, but they're also far from vegetables. Personally, with a 2 charisma, I would be looking to non-social animals and vermin for some inspiration, particularly in their interactions with other creatures. Grant you, this isn't perfect, considering they don't have human intelligence, but you have to start somewhere.
I admit that one of the things that bugs me... or at least, sometimes feels hard for me to mentally resolve, is the Golarion ecosystem. Golarion's ecology is an evolutionary riot.
You have fauna, mega-fauna, magic-fauna, giant vermin-o-fauna, and dinosaurs all in the same environment (say, the Mwangi,) without somehow driving each other extinct or consuming all the resources.
Frankly, I LOVE Pathfinder Bestiaries and LOVE that they include real animals, monsters, and prehistoric animals. I don't want them to stop.
Sometimes I think there's a problem in my brain because I can't just enjoy it all without wondering how it all fits together without major extinctions.
Weirdly enough, the animal companion, "Ape with a hammer," kind of describes the player character concept of one of my players in my Sunday game. The character idea was cool enough and he was into the idea enough that we kit-bashed together a vague sort of "intelligent gorilla" race for him to play. There should be a thread on the boards somewhere here about me mulling over how to make it. When the Advanced Races guide comes out, we'll rebuild him a bit to make sure we're in line with game expectations.
Now, I know PFS has to be much more regimented, but I just wanted to say I support the idea as a cool one in concept at least, and possessed of a lot of weight in the Golarion world when you consider the Mwangi expanse and the terrible ape warriors that live there.
Say, for anyone still mulling over what the Whispering Way might use as a substitute for the Raven's Head, I just had a lovely idea!
The Whispering Way forcibly calls an ancient, storied, raven-like psychopomp from Pharasma's Boneyard, and imprison it. The cultists torture it horribly over the course of days or even weeks, meticulously recording its screams and delirious ravings, either scribed into a scroll or using a magic item that stores sound.
Thus gained, the Chronicle of Raven's Tongue. While brewing the lich's elixir, the Whispering Way cultists recite or replay the litany, infusing the potion with the essence of the raven psychopomp's suffering.
Later, the party find the psychopomp's broken form in one of the Way's dungeons, its once regal raven wings pierced and pinned to the walls. Apart from the horrific tragedy of the holy servitor's torture... this is an "Oh heck," moment, when the party realizes the Way has their final component.
My original thought is putting it in Renchurch, but if there was an opportunity to slip it into the previous module, that might lend a touch of urgency for the party to strike at the Whisperers.
I am curious - this is a thread for complaining about stuff that we don't like about Golarion, surely you don't expect everyone to dislike only the things you also dislike? Presumably you were expecting people to dislike some stuff that you are okay with, or even like.
So why does this particular complaint bother you so much? Is it because you think we are hypocritical for our dislikes?
Well, probably the best way to think of it is as a meta-dislike. I understand that not everyone likes what I like or dislikes what I do, and I don't think my post is about denying that any more than other posts are about people bugged by real life analogues saying that Paizo's insistence on using them is not their prerogative.
My awareness that I, myself, may come across as contrary, was part of the reason why I prefaced the post by acknowledging I might sound like a jerk. ;)
It's just something that's been bubbling in my head for a long while, listening to people talk about distaste for real world analogues.
This thread is mostly about what bothers us about Golarion, and maybe I'm cheating a bit (or a lot) by playing the meta-card. But I feel like trends in the fandom of things I enjoy do sometimes color my experiences with the things I enjoy... and so I somewhat seized upon the opportunity to issue my counter-argument against the concept that fantasy worlds with real world elements are lacking.
DigitalMage wrote:
I don't mind inspirations, its when it is made too obviously an analogue that it can break my immersion. I guess I go into a fantasy game with the conceit that it is like a medieval society with monsters such as dragons and chimerae but anything beyond that which too closely resembles a real world culture just doesn't work for me.
I think that's perhaps the stress point for me. I hear how real world bases break immersion and don't make sense, but I see a lot of D20 fantasy as being a close real world analogue, except that it's a real world analogue of a very localized area. Like... a super-idealized England/Spain/France area with the conventions of a Renn/Medieval festival, occasionally with a vaguely Norse nation somewhere on the borderlands because viking raiders are awesome. And in fact, in a lot of D&D and D20, these other real world cultures and people get to contribute only their bits and pieces that read as super-awesome and cool... like pyramids and mummies, kung-fu monks and ninja, rakshasa and manticore; while the rest of the culture stays comfortably far off or nonexistent because people can come up with a reason for elves, or goblins, or European analogues to have invented ninja and shuriken.
And I think these cultures have more interesting elements to contribute than that.
At the risk of sounding like a jerk, one big thing that bothers me is... all the people complaining about real-world analogues in Golarion. It just... irks me.
There are two or three major reasons this bothers me:
1) Most D20 and fantasy campaign settings in general come across not as original world or settings, but generic rehashes of Idealized Medieval Eastern Europe, usually with really goofy names for everyone and everything. It's very hard to find honestly original fantasy settings, and people often call them too gonzo when you do. Apart from the sameyness this gives the genre, see criticism (2)
2) Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but mostly that makes it sound like cultures other than Medieval Eastern Europe are just not welcome in D20 fantasy. This may not actually be intended, but that's what it sounds like.
3) People have problems with analogues of real-world cultures on Golarion, but they're okay with creatures based from various different cultures of Earth mythology like trolls, dragons, goblins, sphinxes, minotaurs, rakshasa, manticora, vampires, and oni; (that's setting aside the Earth creatures like dinosaurs, tigers, and humans, if it's realism we're complaining about.)
So... to end this post on a positive note, I'd like to praise Paizo for including inspirations from real world cultures, ethnicities, folklore, and mythology in their fantasy world. Thank you!
I think the question I'd ask myself is whether or not I'm ruining something my spouse enjoys from Paizo. If she thinks they're "D'aww" now and you make it child-chewingly obvious how awful and hate-worthy they are, will she enjoy joining in the crusade to against them out of righteous fury, or be unhappy that something she enjoyed is no longer fun?
Mind you, this is a question I would consider important of any player at the table.
As a caveat, part of the reason I'm asking the question is likely that I consider the goblins to be adorably foolish and endearingly manic. It's part of the enjoyment I get out of them that I would lose if they were so reprehensible I had to hate them. So take my words with a grain of salt, maybe. ;)
The human-centric influence is sometimes too strong. I recently got my hands on Pirates of the Inner Sea and I was disappointed not to see at least one group of monstrous pirates. A band of orc or goblinoid reavers, or gnoll slaving ships could have really made the fantasy stand out a bit more. Maybe some dissatisfied tiefling pirates that hunt Chelish ships and harass their navy would be nice too.
I know this isn't a thread about pirates and I don't want to derail, but I have to admit I'm disappointed by missing the opportunity to see a bugbear or hobgoblin dressed as a pirate captain. Or gnoll buccaneers in general. I figured a place like the Shackles would be an unsavory enough place that we could see... shall we say, traditional evil races there without immediately going, 'Oh, it's an orc, killit,' but no. Meh. Even if they're cruel and unsavory, it'd be nice to actually get some hob-nobbing with hobgoblins so they could get some dialogue outside of death-screams.
That actually encompasses two of the things about Golarion that bug me...
1) There are plenty of "designated evil" races that have languages, and cultures, but really, there's rarely a reason to have a conversation with them. Because, you know, evil.
2) I sometimes wonder why the heck races like orcs, ogres, and hobgoblins collect money if they don't have neutral ports to spend it. At least gnolls can shlep on down to Katapesh to spend their ill-gotten gains.
I would very much like an AP based on other planets in the solar system! I would also like to state that I, too, would prefer to be off Golarion by book two.
I'm going to throw this out there, that while I enjoyed the Jade Regent adventure path, I was disappointed by how little time we spent actually in Tian Xia, let alone Minkai. I don't want to complain about the cool stuff we found in the Land of the Linnorm Kings or the Crown of the World along the way... but... yeah.
I was all charged up by the idea of a Path set in Minkai and now it's time to leave after only two books, and it'll probably be a while before we come back.
I don't want this to happen in a Planets AP. I want time to savor the alien worlds, and strange sciences and stranger sorceries, extra-terrestrial beasts, and other-planetary cultures.
There is probably quite a bit on Rovagug in the faiths of corruption book. And I agree that Rovagug is on par (or at least as close as any of the well known diety's can get) with the powers of a great old one.
So it's more like trying to ignite an A-Bomb with an A-Bomb. n.-
I think this whole Feldgrau conversation just goes to show that everyone is playing a different game of D&D than everyone else. My group managed to fight the Hangman's Tree, then decided to skirt around Feldgrau, bypassing the internal encounters entirely and accidentally homing in on the end bosses (Acrietia and Vrood immediately afterwards,) while at 8th level. The Paladin has 7 negative levels out of a possible 8 after Vrood enervated him.
Also, just before they hit Feldgrau, I'd just barely managed to increase their wealth-by-level up to what 8th level should have, (Desna blessed them with gear and powered up weapons at the Stairs of the Moon,) to make up for the lackluster treasure take inherent in Trial of the Beast and the fact that they ended up missing a bunch of stuff in Harrowstone entirely. So they were lacking the kind of gear and buffs some parties seem to be managing, though their numbers are at last shored up.
So millage may vary, but Acrietia and her gang very nearly killed our paladin, and the fight with Vrood (still in progress,) is causing my players much stress.
Numeria: Barbarians and robots and space hulks and mutants and aliens! Please, please, Pleeeeeeaaase!
Apostae: This is seriously an episode of Dr. Who D&D waiting to happen.
Eox: Planet of the Deeaaaaad! guitar-riff!
Aucturn and the Dark Tapestry and the Dominion of the Black: Can't get enough of that Lovecraftian madness
Castroval & Akiton- Frankly, most of the planets of the Golarion system would be lovely. A Golarion Bestiary of Aliens would be marvelous! I mean, the planets of the Golarion system are thick with possibilities.
Dragon Empires: I know we just did a Minkai intensive adventure path, but only like half of it actually took place in the Dragon Empires. I'd like to see more. Also, it'd be nice to know what portions of the Dragon Empires are based on which RL parts of Asia... some map more easily for me to see than others.
Land of the Linnorm Kings: I cut my teeth on Norse mythology, I'd love to see more taking place in this kingdom... and its neighbor...
Yeah, except he does not really want to fight a forest fire, he more or less wants to start one. So nukes should work, I just think it will burn very fast.
Actually, I think it's more like igniting an A-Bomb using sticks of dynamite.
No, daemons just want to destroy all mortal life. Annihilating all of creation is Lawful Evil - just look at the asuras.
Actually, I got the Book of the Damned on Daemons recently, and it's pretty clear on the topic. Their ultimate goal is pretty much obliterating all of existence, including eventually themselves. Wiping out mortal life and souls is just pretty much the first most manageable step. You'd be aces with them. Heck, the first Daemons were created from the turmoil of natural disasters and souls crying out in vindictiveness over pointless, tumultuous, maddening deaths.
To be honest, that's the book that made me wonder if Golarion's a little too dark for me. :/
My party just fought Acrietia, (whom I called Acrietia of the Withering Palm;) and her wight acolytes... and they pretty much wrecked the paladin. He limped out of that situation with 5 negative levels.
+10/+10/+5/+10 is formidable, especially with flanking.
...That said, I reread the encounter afterwards and I triggered the fight early. The encounter says that the wights hide and let most of the party in before they cut off the exits and attack. That might have made the encounter easier with spreading the wights out.
However, in my defense, the party did send the paladin in ahead while hanging back outside (which I hadn't expected,) instead of moving in as a group.
So... as a GM, I advise to be a touch careful with this encounter. It is possible to mistakenly overdo things.
It's worth pointing out that at a certain point, in Pathfinder, minions aren't as real a danger anymore. Surrounded a guy by 5 venomous snakes in the Mwangi yesterday night game. The stealthy snakes got the drop on him in the surprise round. He had a 15 AC and they had +2 hit. Four snakes missed, one hit and did 3 points of damage. When he got initiative, his AC went up to 19 and they had to roll 17 or higher.
Statistically, if you put in enough minions, some of them are bound to hit, but their damage will be paltry unless they get lucky, there are a real lot of them, and a whole bunch hit. It can stack up... but the likelihood of it compared to that Paladin hitting you like a holy freight train?
Grant you, minions working together with aid other works wonders (I'm not sure snakes are smart enough for that,) but that Paladin is made of pain... your pain.
Well, I don't think anything's stopping you from using Intelligence for his dump stat. Let's say that because the average starting Silver Dragon has an intelligence bonus of +4, because 14-10(which is average)=+4.
Say he rolled a 3 and put it in intelligence and that gave him a 7.
The stats in the bestiary are supposed to represent the average member of the species. Nothing says there aren't individuals who are better off or worse off than others, or who have differing strengths.
For a more extreme example of what you're contemplating, you might want to consider the Advanced Bestiary a 3rd party OGL supplement for 3.5 that focuses on important and useful templates to modify creatures. It's available as a PDF wherever you buy gaming PDFs and Paizo uses it extensively for its adventure paths, even in their PFRPG era. The reason I'm bringing it up is that there's a template in it specifically designed to remove the spells, spell-like abilities, and intelligence from dragons while increasing their physical capabilities, making them more akin to brute-style, rampaging, monster dragons that feature in a lot of legends.
I also like the Advanced Bestiary because it's just a cool PDF in general.
I'm running a pre-packaged campaign which involves monsters what can use dominate person once per day as the main villains.
I have one player who hate-hate-HATES being mind controlled... and I don't think most of the other players -like- it. But they all like the core concept of the campaign.
Am I a jerk because I refuse to remove one of the signature abilities of the main villain monster race, who used to rule humanity with an iron fist?
I'd like to think I'm not. I mean, players don't like their characters being paralyzed, nauseated, held, or even killed, but I'm not going to remove those effects from the game rules.
That said, I'm probably going to include this item in my game because I think the nice DM thing to do is to include an escape trick for the players most concerned about the effect.
Heh, well, I did mean primate-esque hominids, rather than game-term humanoids, however I thought that Gnolls were created by Lamashtu, Kobolds were specifically by-products of dragons, and honestly... I really don't know about lizardfolk (they might be a pre-corrupt troglodyte or something).
Like I said, my bad. I read humanoid when I should have read hominid.
If I'd been reading with enough comprehension, I would have noticed you meant primate-based, not just humanoid and intelligent. :)
As for giants, goblins, and subtypes... every humanoid has a subtype. Grant you, most humanoids are the only example of their subtype... (though neanderthals probably have the human subtype,) but still, one could argue they're (goblins and giants) simply more diverse than the others. Speaking of giants their subtype is a little haphazard around the edges. Not quite a catchall, but trolls don't seem to have much to do with ogres, and ogres at best have to do with hill giants, who don't themselves come across as particularly elemental.
I honestly wonder what trolls have (biologically) to do with any of the other giants, if anything. They seem to have a strong tie to the first world in some breeds, and there are a /lot/ of breeds.
Incidentally, if we're considering primate hominids, do Charuka (the chimp-folk of Garund,) fit into the equation, or are we sticking with just humanoid races? Just as incidentally, Sasquatch exist in Golarion! :)
Heck, Golarion is seriously like somebody duct-taped everything from the Forgotten Realms to Call of Cthulu together in some sort of sphere, rolled it around the office a few times, and said "Hey guys, we've got it".
With these words, I now associate Golarion with Katamari Damacy. Maybe forever. :D
Okay, so... Acrietia is a dread wight monk 6, which means she gets three attacks a round if she flurries; which means she can potentially drain three levels from the same target. I am reading this right, correct? Wights don't have that same inhibitor vampires do that keep the vamps from triggering energy drain more than once a round.
She's also located with four wight acolytes.
Grant you, good fortune may also save them, but I feel like this is potentially rather devestating if Acrietia and her band get the drop on a party.
Oh, actually, excuse me. I think that my mistake came in when I misread Tacticslion saying Golarion has 3 races of "native humanoids" rather than what he actually said, "native hominids.' That excuses gnolls and the reptile-folk.
My bad.
That said, most giants are rather hominid-ish, just really big.
Thanks, Nickolas! I don't have that book, so yeah.
I'd say that implies it pretty heavily, yes. So... basically goblins were created... on accident... and by murder. That explains so much.
Wait, wait, what about Gnolls, Kobolds, Lizardfolk, and Troglodytes? They're all humanoids and I remember reading somewhere in Golarion works that Lizardfolk and Troglodytes were two of the oldest humanoids races on Golarion and had among the earliest civilizations before they collapsed.
And aren't giants a subtype of humanoids these days, like (Human, Elf, Goblin, & Orc?) They can be affected by Charm Person these days, I hear.
The specifics of your campaign brought a couple if things to mind that you could consider working in. Don't overdo it, of course, but I thought of the following connections:
** spoiler omitted **
I know it's a long time to wait for a reply to a reply, but I just wanted to let you know your ideas on the General and (more immediately,) the vampire countess/diplomat in Shadows of Gallowspire have struck fertile ground. Most importantly, the Countess Natisha Pavalanis serves as a handy reservation writer for Vrood and his lackeys so I can allow Adrissant to appear in Broken Moon without the players finding his name in the journal and going, "Oh man, we gotta kill him!" ahead of schedule.
However, I decided to present her in a different way... one that demonstrates her usefulness to the Whispering Way without making the players feel like betrayed doofuses, should they choose to parley and work with the vampires of Caliphas (who I'm planning on keeping very Anti-Whispering Way.)
==== Below is my version of Countess Natisha Pavalanis ====
Spoiler:
Countess Natisha Pavalanis was a noblewoman of considerable beauty whose loveliness just started to fade and give way to the impartial hand of age. Fervently, she used every resource and ounce of influence to search for a method to turn back or halt the hands of the clock... finally even managing to gain audience with the infamous Vampire Court of Caliphas. However, the Vampire Lord Florian Lamorath scoffed at the petty, vain noble frantically trying to hold together the seams of her retreating youth, and denied her request to become an eternally beautiful vampiress. All the more desperate (and furious at being rebuked,) the Countess fell in with the Whispering Way and Adivion Adrissant. Ever the chessmaster, Adivion saw an opportunity to dirty the hands of a noble other than himself and remain hidden. He brokered an agreement with Natisha to transform her into a vampire, if she kept up the masquerade of being human, allowing the Whispering Way to use her noble title and sway in any manner required.
Should the players, while in Caliphas, decide to look in on the countess who wrote the introduction for Vrood and his necromancers, they may find the trail leading to the Vampire Court, where "Lord Florian" informs them of the petty woman they turned away not long ago, and her desperation for unlife to preserve her beauty... thus foreshadowing her appearance at Renchurch... allowing me the glee of portending another villain well before she appears!
Don't Ogre Mages use spell-like abilities, not actual spells? Spell-like abilities use a standard action, but don't use material, somatic, or verbal components. Since using them doesn't require a creature to wave their arms, speak, or fiddle with pouches, or do anything other than think really hard, doesn't that mean they don't interfere with stealth?
Though most ogre mage spell-like abilities are attack based, so they'd literally break their invisibility.
However, an invisible ogre mage could still cast darkness on a pebble or gold coin without breaking invisibility or dropping stealth, and could use gaseous form to become an invisible ogre cloud.
I've seen a lot of APs which use dragons. Many of them used them well enough, but in all of them, the dragon served as either an incidental encounter along the way, as one of the major lackies, or as the real boss's mega-tough second, third, or fourth in command.
A non-random 'random' encounter;
A Mega-Mook or Lieutenant;
Or a Major-Domo/General.
Despite arguably being the most potentially formidable customers in Golarion, the Dragon is never The Boss at the end. He is even arguably even seldom the boss of his own fate.
You'd think that sometime or other one of the creatures with the strongest creature type, the longest mortal lifespan, great spellcasting abilities, the potential to get mightier than the Tarrasque, and the widest range of challenge ratings without gaining character levels... would do something worthy of a band of heroes starting up an Adventure Path to just stop her.
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