Evil Midnight Lurker's page

One thing you might do, James, is find the best extant pic of elf eyes -- or maybe have a closeup made -- and include it along with the description when dealing with artists who haven't worked on Golarion elves.

Visual references can be worth their weight in gold.

In an ancient Elder Thing ruin, maybe not even one worth exploring, just some rubble the caravan passes...

A statue of an Elder Thing... with butterfly wings. Cue the religious panic when the PCs realize this is a representation of Desna.

She's a very old goddess, after all. :)

Let me see... You've already got the Tatzelwurm somewhere around here, right?

Jade Regent would be a good spot for the Tsuchinoko if you have any open bestiary slots left.

More American folklore critters... like the gardinel! A house that eats people, was in one of the Silver John stories.

Swamp auger.

Rods, a.k.a. skyfish.

It may not really fit the alchemist, but you could give them telepathy/telekinesis.

Those would certainly be good options for Advanced Cognitogen.

Further thoughts. Full alchemist extract progression; slow BAB; poor Fort and Ref, good Will.

Obvious parts are obvious:

lv.1 - Cognitogenic Form, exactly as Mutagenic Form but with different fluff. As the master mindchymist can improve Charisma, the cog form is likely to be compelling in some way even if it's deformed.

- Cogitate: as Mutate, but with cognitogen.

- Advanced Cognitogen: several Ad Mutes can simply be kept or reversed - Disguise, Dual Mind, Restoring Change work as normal; Extended Cognitogen, Grand Cognitogen, Greater Cognitogen are obvious. Burly and Nimble can be replaced by similar enhancements to Int/Wis/Cha-related rolls (pick two). Growth Mutagen could be replaced by "Shrivel," turning the MMC one size smaller as his body wastes away. Need rough analogies or at least options to replace Draconic, Evasion, Feral, Furious, Night Vision, Scent.

- Bomb Throwing, maybe kept but slowed down to parallel the MC's impaired extract progression? Brutality needs to be outright replaced.

There's a niche, I think, for a mirror image of the Master Chymist: some guy who's so hopped up on cognitogens that he's developed a new personality to handle the extra brainpower. Think Alan Moore's Marvelman (or Miracleman), whose vastly enhanced intellect just completely outshines his mundane form.

Other than the obvious cognitogen versions of the MC's mutagen powers, I'm not sure what to give such a prestige class -- surely bomb-throwing is far too vulgar a pursuit for such a rarefied mind...

Slower BAB progression, good Will save, obvious... new list of discoveries, some mirroring the MC's...

(I've been considering creating a goblin mindchemist with this class, should it come to fruition. Think normal goblins have big heads? Tremble before the PULSING WATERMELON-SIZED SKULL of the ULTRA-GOBLINITE!)

BobROE wrote:

Fair enough, but shouldn't there be some mechanical reason to choose one trait over another? Why would I ever take Caravan Guard over Student Survivalist?

Personal preference—that's pretty much it. If two traits are mechanically identical, you should pick the one that comes with the flavor text that's more fun for you.

(Also, remember that you can't take multiple traits from the same category.)

But they aren't mechanically identical. Student Survivalist is absolutely superior.

Caravan Guard: You recently hired on to Sandru’s

caravan to serve as a guard, but the job, while it paid well,
gave you little chance to scratch the adventuring itch, since
the caravan never really ventured into dangerous territory.
You understand why Sandru avoided the more dangerous
routes, of course, but that didn’t help assuage your urge
to seek adventure. You’ve just told Sandru that you’re
quitting the job in order to try your hand at adventuring—
he seemed to understand, and even gave you some good
tips on how best to survive potential challenges. You gain
a +1 trait bonus on Survival checks, and Survival becomes
a class skill for you. NPC Choices: Sandru.

Student Survivalist: Although she is seen as something
of a mystery to most of Sandpoint’s citizens, Shalelu has
never really seemed all that mysterious to you. Of course,
that’s probably because she helped raise you. You have
never quite figured out why Shalelu decided to treat you
as a younger sibling, but you certainly appreciated it—
and you eagerly absorbed all of the survivalist tricks that
she showed you over the years. As a result, you gain a +2
trait bonus on all Survival checks, and Survival is a class
skill for you. In addition, you gain a +1 trait bonus on all
attack rolls against foes that threaten your mentor. NPC
Choices: Shalelu.

The vivisectionist archetype would go fairly well with the Master Chymist except that vivisectors get sneak attack instead of bombs, and MCs stack bomb-throwing with their alchemist levels.

Is it reasonable for a V/MC to get stacking sneak attack instead of bombs, or would that wind up as significantly more damage output?

The caravan setting is EXACTLY what I've been wanting for a long time -- a PC base that moves with them. It's been a problem with earlier APs that took care to give the PCs strong ties to a starting town and then took them away, sometimes never to return.

But how will this mix with the (presumed) ultimate goal of getting Ameiko to Tian Xa and putting her on the throne of Minkai? How much will the caravan system be involved with the end of the AP and whatever massive political squabbles the heroes get into?

Just saying I hope it doesn't get dropped entirely toward the end.

So let's say my shiny happy Stolen Lands kingdom wants to sponsor a trade caravan carrying shoes, ship (part)s and sealing wax to... oh, somewhere in Vudra.

What's the conversion rate from Build Points to caravan stats and back? Would a 1 BP investment be 4,000 or 2,000 gp worth of stuff?

The whole concept of the Runeforge kind of fails in the Pathfinder world. The groups needed to work together as they all had 2 PROHIBITED schools....but specialist wizards no longer have prohibitions, just oppositions. This drove me crazy in my efforts to convert all the wizards up to Pathfinder standards.

This could maybe work, actually. It sticks in my craw that magic never seems to advance, that wizards from a hundred or a thousand years ago are casting the same spells at the same levels and so forth...

What if Thassilonian wizards, who obviously had some differences with modern magic theory what with not treating divination as specialization-worthy, do still have prohibited schools? It's a big weakness of the Runelords waiting to be exploited.

I was disappointed by the Runeforge, but it's partly my own fault.

I had built it up in my head as some insane, decadent, magitech "factory" where bizarre "production lines" of deadly sinning would create sinspawn, evil magic items, and stranger things. A giant setup that the PCs would have to learn to influence and operate, not just kill their way through (except maybe the Wrath parts). Instead, we got a fairly straightforward sin-themed dungeon crawl, and two of the seven wings had been destroyed long before the PCs got there.

Oh god a mention of Zeist... MUST. STOP. THE. RAGE.

In my gaming group, "Zeist" is traditionally the verbal component for the spell power word: insanity. :)

145. Further nonexistent archetypes: Pokemon Summoner.

Here's a poser: were the aboleths aware, when they called down that meteor shower, that the Starstone was in there? Were they planning to give mortals the chance to become gods?

Given that it wound up at the bottom of the Inner Sea for a thousand years, were they after the chance for themselves?

Recently in a game, a dm threw a level 1 child kobold sorcerer at us as a surprise. He thought it was really funny, but had neglected to read the rules on when one can be a level 1 sorcerer. He talked about templates and other things like that. I merely pointed out that being level 1 has an absolute lowest age point, from which you cannot be any younger.

I merely point out that the DM's rule trumps the books.

My take is that an elf who mastered some profession or class and then moved on may have, a century or five later, actually forgotten most of what he knew. Long-term neglect of class equals literal level loss.

Have any PCs tried to get two or more of the five factions to mount a joint expedition to Saventh-Yhi instead of stabbing each other in the back all the way there? (Of course, the preceding two options are not mutually exclusive, but still.)

We haven't said much at all about Arcadia, but what we do know is that the modern Inner Sea region has only scratched the surface of what's going on over there. It's an entire continent, and one that's several times LARGER than Avistan. The people of Arcadia themselves, btw, don't refer to themselves as skraelings.

We'll eventually have more to say about Arcadia... but not for a while.

I'll have to remember to call them Arcadians then. :) (Native Arcadians? No, it's not like they really need the qualifier.)

I have high hopes for your take on the New World. There have been a number of versions already... the various Oltec people in Mystara; Maztica in FR (which was apparently so unpopular it got edited right off the planet); that third-party 3.5 book where the "Indians" were furries (?!)... never quite liked most of them. (Much as I love the Known World, the Atruaghin Clans were just badly done -- several classic/stereotype Native American cultures living in noble savage splendor in a little pocket of land right next to the most advanced capitalist merchant society on the continent? Any way you slice it, that makes little sense.)

You've got an opportunity and the creative talent to do something different and glorious, and I look forward to seeing it. :)

Been wondering about the New World, Golarion-style, and what the Paizo crew have in store for us there. It's an interesting situation, y'know? Like and yet extremely unlike the relationship between Eurasia and the Americas.

On the one hand, Avistani civilizations have known about Arcadia and been in intermittent contact with it for five thousand years. Let's let that sink in: five thousand years. That's ten times as long as it's been since that lucky idiot Columbus stumbled across the West Indies and kickstarted a new era of colonization and exploitation.

On the other hand, there are a LOT of factors preventing the Avistan cultures from overwhelming the Skraelings:

* Difficulty of the voyage. I get the impression that the actual distance is longer, plus it's not a simple sea crossing like the Atlantic -- you have to navigate the storm-wracked shattered remnants of Azlant, dodging sea monsters every step of the way.

* Lower population density than Europe (probably) means much less pressure to immigrate -- this isn't a world where humans can spread everywhere they want, there're too many monsters and savage races keeping the wilderness wild.

* Local Arcadian monsters and savage races, which the Skraelings will be used to and the colonists won't have been familiar with at first.

* The ubiquity of divine magic, and possibly even some of the same gods being worshipped over there already (as with Garund).

* Disease, working by Pathfinder rules, bears very little resemblance to real-world factors. (As far as I can tell, no one who isn't inherently immune to disease CAN develop immunity or even resistance to particular pathogens, so everyone on all continents and all situations is at identical risk to pretty much everything. That could maybe use some extra rules?)

...So even though there are apparently some current long-established colonies that are still in touch with and consider themselves to be part of their mother nations, the Skraelings probably haven't had near as bad a time as the Native American tribes did.

What I'm really wondering now is, with five thousand years of observation of, trade with, and adaptation to the Old World colonies, are modern Skraelings pretty much technologically on par with Avistan? Surely they should have gained not just horses but herd animals, crops, and the lifestyle that goes with it... not identical to the colonists' culture, but thoroughly adapting these tools to their own needs? Iroquois Confederation with actual cities and farmland? I really hope so...

Ummm...

Shoainti ARE an ethnicity. They're in the new Inner Sea World Guide.

They were left out of the previous hardcover on accident.

So I'm not sure why you're all worked up?

...I get worked up way too easily and don't stop to think before posting? n.n; Sorry...

The idea that the Shoanti aren't an ethnicity is stark raving nonsense.

It's been TEN THOUSAND YEARS. That's long enough for superficial traits such as skin color and facial features to EVOLVE FROM SCRATCH in a population.

My one complaint about Golarion is that the authors do not seem to understand, on a deep level, the insane amounts of time we're dealing with.

So, my imp animal companion I get from the Diabolist presteige class is amazing. Speceifically, when you dump a bunch of points in UMD, give it the Hermean Blood and Magical Apitude feats, and hand it a wand of fireball. What do you guys think?

Why in the name of all that's unholy would an imp have Hermean blood? They come from Hell, they're not part of a dragon's questionable eugenics program!

Have a look at the Harrow deck.

This thing is a continent-widely-known fortune-telling and gambling instrument, which presupposes that its users know not only the alignment system but THE EXISTENCE OF THE SIX ABILITY SCORES. :)

...Okay, the six abilities are talked about in terms of Desna's philosophies and six "towers" or pillars of the self, but still.

A hardcore Metroid should be immune to ice damage, but suffer the paralysis effect based on the damage it would have taken.

In the meantime though, we are taking suggestions for 'family name'. Something that sounds like a name(and nothing to d&d corny name sounding) that would be fitting.

Bel Mondo?

Valenti? (For Isabella Valentine, noteworthy wielder of a whip-sword who could easily be a Belmont branch descendant.)

I'm the groom, and I'm a little scared now. :)

Actually I went gnome -- I'm not a total min-maxer, there's silliness to be had as well. Took various gnome options to be a super-linguist as well. Current skills are disable device, history/geography/nature/local/arcana, linguistics, perform (oratory), spellcraft. Before I realized I was critically short on points I'd decided to use the gnome bard option of one extra performance round per level, but that should probably be thrown back into a skill point. Using 25-point buy, had 16 int and 16 (+2 for gnome) cha.

We're going into Serpent's Skull, and I'm playing a gnome scholar who's obsessed with everything about the Mwangi Expanse but especially its languages and finally decided to just sail down there and see it himself. He's completely overlooked the fact that he has no actual experience or training in jungle survival.

What I'd like to be able to add: dungeoneering, planes, bluff and/or diplomacy, UMD. I could dump planes from that list, even -- those last two knowledges are the least relevant to his interests, and there are other uses for performance. But it'd still be nice to have more skills. :)

Hm. I have to say I'm liking Ryuugan's better, especially if it could be taken multiple times.

I'm looking at my Archivist Bard, 6+Int mod (3) skill points per level, and realizing that there just aren't enough points to get all the monster-identification Knowledge skills plus everything else he needs.

Is there, anywhere in 3.5/Pathfinder, a feat that would just grant more skill points to be spent as desired? If not, should there be or are there game balance reasons against it?

In building such a feat, how many points would be appropriate from a feat slot? Would a feat that increases your points per level be too much?

Purest refined phlebotinum.

All a cavalier has to do to qualify for the Hellknight prestige class is be 5th level, lawful, and kill a devil of equal or greater Hit Dice. Since cavaliers are already classic knight-types, it's an obvious entry into the Hellknights that gives you a slightly different (and arguably more appropriate) base skill set than fighter or paladin.

This raises the question: if you're a cavalier-type training as an armiger within a Hellknight Order, with or without the intention of formally qualifying for full knighthood, would it not be appropriate to have a cavalier order package to reflect that training? Those who flunk out completely could still function as support troops for the Knights, and full knights of the Measure who don't advance all the way into Chain or Hellion could fall back on their base class advancement while retaining some hellish flavor.

At least some of the Hellknight Orders can probably be represented by the existing cavalier order writeups -- a Godclaw cavalier by the Star, for example.

I'm gonna try a writeup for one or two, see if it works without either making the resulting Knights too uber or unnecessarily duplicating their abilities.

Order of the Chain

Edicts: The cavalier must obey the Measure and the Chain at all times, and must never stand aside and allow a slave or convict to escape justice if it is within his power to prevent it.

Challenge: Whenever a cavalier of the Order of the Chain issues a challenge, he receives a +1 morale bonus on all nonlethal melee damage rolls made against the target of his challenge as long as he is threatening the target. This bonus increases by +1 for every four levels the cavalier possesses.

Skills: An Order of the Chain cavalier adds Perception (Wis) and Survival (Wis) to his list of class skills. In addition, whenever an Order of the Chain cavalier uses Survival to track an escaped slave or prisoner, he receives a bonus on the check equal to 1/2 his cavalier level (minimum +1).

Order Abilities:

...and right now I have too much of a headache to figure those out. >.<; Tracking, capturing, nonlethal damage, that sort of thing. I'll get back to this later, just wanted to throw it on the mercy of the forum...

But your puppies "Chopper" and "Chomper" can 'sic balls' round after round provided they do it on different opponents. Valeros is going to ask, "why didn't you just do that on the big bag guy over and over, rather than on each of his lieutenants?"

1) because the big guy knows what to expect now and is desperately covering himself when they approach, a standard rationale for encounter-type powers.

2) because the big guy only had the one set of privates and the dogs can't rip them off again, unless he's a troll. :)

Congratulations on advancing! I can't wait to see what you do with the villain round.

"It's a terrible waste to lose one's mind. How true that is."

This is far and away the best of the four entries that I felt motivated to vote for.

I plan to play one of these guys in a Kingmaker campaign soon. :)

Very disappointed by most of these.

Vote for eight? Only four were worth advancing at all. The rest ranged from "solidly meh" to "the single worst entry I've seen since RPG Superstar began." (I can only imagine the quality of the first-round wondrous items we don't see.) If I could take my remaining four votes and cast them against some of the others, I would.

alain_1970 wrote:

Seconded!

And maybe there could be some hints about the other "technologies" that apparently exist in Golarion (IIRC, kinda steam-engines and kinda electricity).

Yours,
A.S.

Please, please, please, no, no, no.

Do not turn Golarion into some gawdawful mish-mash of generes.

[gently weeping]

Be all things to all people and you become nothing.

Golarion has been a glorious mishmash of genres since Day One. If you haven't noticed Ravenloft next to Thundarr the Barbarian? The technomagical nuclear reactor under Kaer Maga?

I would rather have a world that at least acknowledges the possibility of progress and advancement, than one bizarrely locked into a technological stasis that violates everything we know about human nature in the name of "genre conventions."

"Destroy All Rovaspawn"

Since Golarion gets "more magic" as you go further south, it seems to me that Summoners are probably treated like sciopods or blemmyae in the Inner Sea, and ultimately hail from one of the unexplored-in-the-material lands.

Oooh. Sarusan! It's dreamtimeywimey and not all there all the time!

It's not the summoner, in other words, who has no pre-established role in Golarion... it's the eidolon who's the odd one out. (ALSO: Since a summoner HAS to have an eidolon, that basically means that guy not only needs 2 stat blocks, but 2 pieces of art—one for him, and one for the eidolon. Since they take up twice as much room as other classes... that presents a logistical reason why we don't put them into adventures nearly as often as the other APG classes.)

And finally... just because it's in an official Paizo rulebook doesn't mean it's officially in Golarion.

Stat blocks I'll give you, but the iconic summoner comes with just the one picture with his eidolon in it.

...Seems a shame to leave these guys out. There must be something that can be done.

I like Set's idea that eidolons are actually petitioner souls, given form by the summoner -- it could be a step on the way to true celestial/fiend status for them.

So we have two "families" of giant monsters -- the Spawn of Rovagug and the Tane -- plus Achaekek.

These guys have gotta fight!

Jabberwock versus Tarrasque, anyone? :)

We don't even have to think of the world as stagnant from this point. The Golarion timeline is advancing no faster than one year per real world year, and there's no metaplot to keep track of -- in fact, nothing is exactly happening unless DMs want it to -- so who's to say that firearms technology isn't slowly spreading from Alkenstar, that the Technic League isn't actually figuring out how their alien plunder works, that industrial revolutions aren't beginning to erupt all over the place? It'd take a few decades to really spread and change, and by the time the official timeline gets that far we may all have downloaded the PS9 into our cerebral cortexes and be sculpting our own personal Golarion sim-realities. :)

The major problem I have reconciling Golarion history with real-world trends is a comparative lack of mass migrations.

On Earth we have wave after wave of tribes coming out of Central Asia, rolling over Europe, settling down, then getting rolled over by the next wave of nomads -- look at the Book of Invasions from Ireland for the tail end of this process. On Golarion, just as one example, the Varisians and Shoanti seem to have been left almost completely alone for ten thousand years from the fall of Thassilon to the relatively recent intrusions of Cheliax and the other Inner Sea powers.

But as I have to remind myself, there are plenty of factors that mitigate such migrations -- chief among them the huge number of wild beasts, monsters, and savage humanoids roaming the landscape and forcing more civilized folks into defensive postures.

All reasonable thoughts, thanks.

I have been pondering a "divine summoner" archetype, who'd explicitly be calling a tiny aspect of a god (or archfiend, or empyreal paragon)...

I'm curious to know if there's any Golarion-specific lore surrounding eidolons. Are they all the same category of creature from some single portion of the Outer Sphere? Are they aspects of many different kinds of outsiders? Do some have their own agendas?

I'm looking for guidelines on customizing summon lists.

Just plain adding new monsters in is probably unbalancing, but what about doing some judicious swapping for monsters from outside the Bestiary 1?

I see that in addition to the ability to respec evolutions when the summoner gains a level, the 4th-level spell Transmogrify lets you do it at will (where "at will" means a one-hour casting time and expensive materials). What do you think would be an appropriate level of spell to change the eidolon's basic form, going from (say) biped to quadruped?

Alternately, would a mid-to-high-level feat letting the eidolon switch between two preset evolution and/or base-form sets be too abusive?

If the summoner has used Aspect to divert evolutions to himself, does he keep these evolutions when the eidolon is not summoned?

Can an eidolon benefit from both the Improved Damage evolution and the Improved Natural Attack feat, increasing its damage die by two steps?

We need stats for the four-headed man-eating haddock-fish-beast of Aberdeen...

Matthew Morris wrote:

Todd Stewart wrote:

Sadly I thought the thread title was "Golarion: Hentai style" ...

They let us write to a more mature level, but naughty D&D probably would be pushing it. ;)

More sadly, I read this and thought it said Golarion: Senitai style.

Already there. All the Red Mantis assassins need are motorcycles and they're practically set to be the (evil) Kamen Riders of Golarion.

All you need is one experimentally-upgraded Red Mantis gone renegade on a hog imported from Numeria and there you go... :)