F. Wesley Schneider's page

Thank you Paizo for listening to the community once again. This should help improve the Pathfinder wiki in a not inconsiderable way.

We live to serve and all, but kudos on this one should really be directed Vic's way. The Technical Director is always watching. Always. 0_o

Teter's stapler never actually has staples in it, and the copy machine transforms everything run through it into Gygaxian prose.

*Wistful* That would make things sooooo much easier.

Frankly, I don't think any horror-flavored D&D should be without at least a little bit of a crazy hack and slash romp through a Haunted Graveyard full of Ghouls N' Ghosts

Nice!

So quick question, what are the two pages being used for? More adventure? Or an extra monster would be great! Just wondering, my issue hasn't come in yet?

It'll vary from month to month, wherever we need it. Sometimes the adventure runs long, sometimes an article, sometimes the Bestiary. In any case, unless someone's been keeping monthly averages, I don't think it'll ever be super obvious. There are a lot of monsters in #43... and the campaign outline... and an 8 page Ravengro article, so in this one the "extra" two pages went into that mix somewhere.

Ha! How'd I miss this. Awesome. And a great idea for Paizocon!

Yeah I am in favor of more chocolate in my peanut butter ... wait that sounded vaguely dirty... I would like to see some more cthulhu elements in Golarion.

No problem. Pathfinder #46 is chocked full, but there's plenty more coming down the line!

I kind of liked the ooze-bugs. They seemed sort of rolly-polly and comical

Ha! The torbles back in PF #25. Yeah, those guys are cool. They didn't come out quite as cute as the Dragon Quest slimes, but they're still cool. :)

AWESOME! And a super strong theme! Can't wait to see what folks come up with.

What if (as our GM did, playing right out of this book) the Haunt occurs in a location where its destruction is required. Like say a Choking Hand haunt in the town jail, or some darkened alleyway, as mentioned in the description? Doesn't do the town folk much good to say, 'Well don't go in there', or 'Don't worry, we will comeback every day and kill it again.' While haunts can of course appear in dungeons, they are also the sort of obstacles designed to show up in inhabited areas, and indeed this often the most appropriate setting for some of them.

But even in a dungeon the resetting nature of undestroyed haunts is a serious inconvenience. It’s rarely fun for the players to face the same hazard more then once. And they will rightly feel a bit put out having to expend resources to defeat a hazard they have already defeated (and may not get anymore XP for).

I hate to have to offer a spoiler by way of explanation since it sounds like your a player of this but...

Also, remember the Reset time on a haunt is not when it does reset, it's when it has a chance to reset. Something like the choking hands has a good chance of returning day after day, but it's not a sure thing.

But, really, if haunts are a problem, it might be a good idea to search out their source and put an end to it so they don't bug you or the imperiled locals any more. Or do what most threatened villagers do, hire some adventurers to take care of it for you.

So last night I have a nightmare where I'm in an asylum and all the crazies are trying to kill me. Thanks paizo... friends like these...

I think this is the highest praise you could have given us. THANKS! And sleep tight! :)

On a slightly side note I was thoroughly impressed with the Wendigo in the Bestiary. Truly kept it's roots and made a thorougly frightening/incredibly cool monster.

Keeping to the mythological/folkoric roots of real world creatures is a really big deal for me. Kingmaker let me get a bunch of more woods European monsters outs there, while Serpent Skull is thick with creatures from African myth. And you'll be seeing a bunch more around the end of the year. ^_~

But I think its good that Professor Lorrimor is left a little vague; it means that the players can help build a picture of him with their backstories :).

That's exactly the point Alex. He is the guy who worked with each PC that one time when they where over there. He's the everyman granddad/adviser/mentor the PCs need to hook them into coming to Ravengro. Once you know what your PCs need him to be, feel free to flesh him out however you please with no fear of us contradicting you later in the AP or future products.

Are the Alchemical Ooze swarms relevant in this chapter of Carrion Crown or will they be more important later? I don't see them at all withing HoH.

--Eye Vrocktor

Nah, not now or later really, they're just cool new oozes.

Actually, they're not that new, Adam Daigle put those together... uh... maybe for Council of Thieves and I just never had a good place for them until now.

Hi Wes, another bestiary question for you relating to PF 43. What happened to the size table for the animated objects?

BTW, I really like what was done with the animated objects, ie the extra options; I very much look forward to seeing what other options you come up with for the next five books!

Like S.W. said. I talk about it a little bit more over here.

One of my problems with haunts and there necessary destruction methods is that they are overly specific. Even assuming the players make the knowledge/investigation check to figure out how to destroy the haunt, it is quite possible to do so. The cold spot, requires 'heat metal' a druid only spell. So I hope you have a druid in you're party, or else the haunt is pretty much indestructable. Worse, another requires Bless Weapon a Paladin only spell. So again, a Paladin is required or your out of luck.

Why do you have to destroy them? If you can, great. If you can't, no biggie. You get XP for surviving a haunt, not for destroying it.

I can understand the view of completest parties that don't leave dungeons until every rat and slime is slain, and I suppose parties that want to do that with haunts can go hire resources they don't have as an extended part of the adventure, but that's their choice. (Kind of in the same way that if there's a trap they can't disable they might want to go hire a rouge.) All in all, though, it doesn't affect the adventure's assumptions about PC experience or the plot.

The aim is not to stall the game in its tracks, but to get the players thinking about their surroundings, the people who lived and died there, and see things through their eyes. That causes a far greater sense of immersion than normal, and the players should remember the spirit of the jilted milkmaid or the innocent hanged man far longer than if they were a wraith or ghost that jumped out, said 'Boo!' and got dispatched in...

Snorter is right on the money here.

Traps are just traps - just there to kill you. Many GMs view monsters in the same way (though that doesn't have to be the case of course). But haunts are really meant to have a reason and a story behind them. If you want to indulge that, great, it's there for you. If you don't, nothing lost.

Personally, I'd rather have too many awesome options for my adventure than not enough.

1st page of the Bestiary has a random table.

Yup! The Bestiary always has Random Encounter tables for the adventure, and in coming volumes will have details to help GMs liven up their PCs' travels from point A to point B (when appropriate).

I notice that the latest releases contain no reproduction of the inside maps of the different floorplans. Has this been definitely scrapped?

To be honest, the maps in the Serpent's folio have little use in the campaign while it is being run...

As for the Kingmaker series in which I am a player, I lent mine to the GM. And he had the same comment. Not much use for the map in-game.

Yes. The days of filling the Map Folios (now Poster Map Folios) with loose carbon copies of what appeared in the AP are over. Mainly because they felt cheap, looked cheap, and kinda were cheap. GMs of the APs almost always had all of that content already, at the same scale. If folks are concerned about elements of these folios not being useful to the PCs, I don't know what could be more undermining to an adventure than throwing down a map of the whole dungeon the PCs have just walked into.

That said, I'm flabbergasted by the thought of the Kingmaker Poster Map Folio (With all the hex exploring?!? Waaaaa?) or the Serpent Skull Poster Map Folio not being useful in game. Aside from being gorgeous wall hangings for all those cartographiles out there, those maps have like 0 spoilers for the actual content of the adventures they're in. And they're jaw-dropping handouts. You get to Smuggler's Shive, climb the big hill to take in the landscape around you, and BOOM here's a huge map players! You crest a rise and take in the City of Seven Spears in all it's sprawling ruin, and BOOM here's a a huge map players! You go deep underground and come out in a big cave and what's that? A HUGE map for the players! You have a mandate to clear out the Stolen Lands, they've been down there for 1 billion years (it's not the New World after all) so good thing your bosses back in Brevoy sent along this HUGE map!

To get to Gondolin's point above:

...it's not like you can just slap 'em down on the table for all to see.

No way, man, it's TOTALLY just like that. Did you play Assassin's Creed or Fallout? You get to a new city or area, don't know the lay of the land, climb up to the top of a big tower (or just wander around a bit), and BOOM, the area around you on the minimap fills up with buildings. You don't know the details or who lives in those buildings or what adventures you might have there, but you know over there is a neat structure, over here's a monument you might want to check out, over there is a lake you could hide in, and right there is a ruin likely to be full up with treasure. It's the same deal with these Poster Map Folios.

And its going to be the same with the Carrion Crown Poster Map Folio. We haven't said much about it yet, but one of the things its going to include is a huge map of Ustalav, and several maps of prominent Ustalavic cities visited in Carrion Crown and Rule of Fear. And if the first time the PCs hit these cities you wanted to throw down the related map, that would work great! Even if the PCs just started the campaign right out with the country map, it's not like you're going to be spoiling the plots by letting them know where the forests, rivers, and other towns are. In fact, there's a few times over the course of the AP where the PCs have to chart their course from site A to site B, so having these details are pretty important.

While I can see that there might be some GMs who want to keep all the secrets to themselves and be the PCs only source of details into the world of his game, it doesn't have to be like that. With a little bit of thought it's pretty easy to come up with a way to give the PCs all of the info on these maps (like the few possibilities I rattled off above). At the same time, I can't imagine a group being upset by landing on Smuggler's Shiv and just having you drop this huge gorgeous map down and say "Okay, you landed on this island. What do you want to do?" That adventure, and many city adventures, are in part built like that anyway, so these poster maps should be super helpful tools.

I mean... at least that's how I've always seen it. Maybe we've been thinking about these wrong. Maybe people are using these totally differently or we may have underestimated the importance of a GM being the PCs' only window into the game world. I'm not trying to one man dog pile on anyone here (especially not Gondolin above) with my many many words, but that's been my thinking on these. In any case, I'd love to hear what other people think and how they're using these products. The Carrion Crown Poster Map Folio (which we'll have a page up for soon) is already set, but if there's something you want to see for Jade Regent or beyond, do let us know!

We currently have The Haunting of Harrowstone pencilled in for review on either Episode #015 or #016. (We should be releasing Ep #013) very shortly.)

So - give it 2 months or so and we will have 3 to 4 hours of dicsussions and interviews with the designers and developers of The Carrion Crown AP together with practical GM advice based on our actual play through of the module for you to listen to.

Just let Rob and I know when you start rolling on this, we can hook you guys up with anything you need!

I want to give a shout out to Stephen Radney-MacFarland.

Seconded! Stephen has been hoping from lion's den to lion's den since we hired him and has been handling it with skill and humor that lord knows I wouldn't have in the same situations. When Ultimate Combat comes out (and on time) there will be no doubt that this book is his baby. We just have to get there first, but with SRM at the helm, I'm less worried about this hardcover than nearly any other we've ever done.

Looking forward to the Cthulhu mechanics but the APG (or is it the DM book?) also has some base rules on Sanity etc.

The GameMastery Guide has a simple system for sanity and madness.

** spoiler omitted **

Heh, I'm glad someone remembered that. I went a tiny bit self indulgent with the sidebar in that beastie since Saint-Saëns is one of my favs. :)

Fantastic stuff, though! I remember first hearing his work in Alone in the Dark (you had to find a record with "Danse Macabre" on it and play it to make some ghost dancers move). I thought it was SO cool I recorded the midi off my tiny speakers with a little hand-held cassette recorder- 'cause I was 12 and the internet wasn't a thing yet. Loved his stuff - especially "Danse Bacchanale" from Samson Et Dalila and "Aquarium" from Carnival of the Animals - ever since.

A good compilation CD of Saint-Saëns's work should totally be a staple of any RPG mood music collection.

F. Wesley Schneider wrote:

They have other methods of spawning that don't involved changelings.

Sure they're grisly unspeakable methods of spawning, but more Night Hag influence is always fun!

If you're really keen on learning more about hags and what they do in the dark, I wrote ecologies on all of the core hags but sea hags back in the Dragon days. While we of course can't draw directly upon that content, I've been thinking and writing about hags for some time now, so there are totally parallels and a measure of bleed-over. I don't recall of the top of my head, but I believe the "Ecology of the Green Hag" had a good bit on the hag life cycle (and had an awesomely creepy picture by Peter Bergting of a green hag dropping her alter self spell after getting a boytoy in her clutches). You can check these out in Dragon #324's "Ecology of the Night Hag," Dragon #331's "Ecology of the Green Hag and Dragon #345's "Ecology of the Annis Hag", all of which we've still got both print and PDf versions of. And maybe someday I'll actually clear my plate and hit Wolfgang up to see if he might ever need an "Ecology of the Sea Hag" for Kobold Quarterly.

And for those loving the art, it's all thanks to Jean-Baptiste Reynaud, who also did the AWESOME animated objects I showed off here. He jumps to doing the interior covers a volume or two in, so you'll be seeing a good deal more of him in Carrion Crown!

I was just getting ideas together for running the first AP and I was thinking of a vampire that might actually ally with the PC. Then it occurred to me I haven't read all the previews yet and there he was, Ramoska Arkminos.

Is the the same Ramoska Arkminos from AP #8?

Naaaaa, that's just a real common name for nosferatu. It's like John Smith for them. :P

Yeah, it's the same guy. I'm glad someone noticed. Arkminos and his boss might be kind of Mary Sue characters of mine, so I made sure he snuck his way into the outline. And yeah, he's been busy (and might have taken some advantage of the APG classes) since he ditched out those whinny Urgathoa cultists in "Seven Days to the Grave"...

Now that I think of it... he doesn't have a good track record with death cultists at all.

Sorry mate, it was not my intent to create and Acid Bath of a Thread. Unfortunately, we seem to have started to skinny-dip in the sea of chaos, flames and randy trolls...again, my apologies.

We can't have nice things!!!

No worries. Not your fault, man.

You never know what topics might turn the natives restless. :P

This thread and its vitriolic tone confuses me… well, half confuses me considering those involved. O_O

At the end of the day, the assassin class is built the way it is for all the reasons noted and for reasons not noted. (If you really, really, really want to hit us up for the meta details behind all this, come on out to Paizocon and we’ll talk all about RPG history and crazy times in cramped offices over cleverly named Golarion-themed booze.)

That said, if you’ve spent the last few months playing Assassin’s Creed and really want to play a dashing good guy assassin, feel free to file the alignment restriction off for your game or ask your GM if that’s okay with him. I PROMISE you no one from Paizo is going to come and tell you that you’re having badwrongfun.

While the series does have a sense of urgency in a "the bad guys are doing bad things! Stop them!" kind of way, you're not constantly racing against the clock. There are some adventures - the first three mainly - where there are challenges the PCs will face during the adventures that will probably make them not want to take time to do a lot of crafting, but after those plots are resolved, the campaign gives you time to stop, do some shopping, and make a few tools.

All that said, while the links between AP adventures never tell you "if the PCs don't move on to the next adventure by X time, the baddies win" I could see some GMs wanting to play up the over-arcing plot's sense of urgency. It might be best to just flat out check with your GM and ask if you'll have time to really indulge the character your talking about making. Better safe than sorry after all.

On page 80, under the Animated Object entry of the Bestiary, it says:

Animated objects have a number of Construction Points (CP) used to purchase abilities and defenses in addition to those presented above. A Medium animated object has 2 CP; differently sized objects have CP totals as detailed on the size chart on this page.

I can't seem to find a size chart anywhere. Can someone help?

Blast, that got cut for space to get more new abilities in, so this line is just a remnant. At one point I was going to represent the chart that appears in the animated object page of the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary - but I decided more cool abilities seemed like more fun than a reprinted chart.

That said. This is referring to the animated objects chart in the Bestiary hardcover, so just check out and you'll be in great shape!

I like to think that the power of the Starstone just kinda "ran out" and he was no longer a god. He just went back to being a regular dude, who promptly died because his body is like a million years old. Could this foreshadow the other 4 ascended humans?

Huh, that's kinda a cool idea... I could see a GM running a really epic feeling campaign based off of that premise.

There's also the fact that, even with talent as great as Paizo's, almost anything that they did reveal would wind up disappointing most of us.

I'd say that literally anything we did would end up disappointing a significant portion of readers. That's why we're just going to leave it alone.

It's our sense that "an idea" is fundamentally less interesting than "any idea." While we obviously don't take this stance with all of our secrets or products (there are nouns in our books after all) in many cases mystery can be far more appealing than certainty.

Anyone remember back in second edition D&D when the Far Realm was that mysterious unrealitly from where all things terrible, Lovecraftian, and gooey leaked into the world? Over the years, though, this place got so detailed in products - heck, we were even responsible for helping with this in Dragon - that it lost most of its mystery and just kind of turned into another humdrum extrapalanar stop. Ravenloft's Dark Powers had the same deal going, but no canon source ever said what they were, retaining their mystery for any story players want to tell.

I know the completist nature of many gamers make them eager to have all the facts or be in-the-know, but as Golarion is a shared world, we like the idea of there being big secrets that GMs can either ponder over or, if they want to answer them themselves, find an answer that's perfect for their stories and that isn't going to be contradicted by an answer they might think is less cool.

Again, we don't do this with everything - not very much at all, in fact - but for the top tier mysteries... go find the answers yourself.

Awesome!

Sounds like I was in the same boat. LOOOOOOVE LoveLoveLoved Dungeon Keeper so I freaked when I saw this. Got the demo as soon as I could. Tired to like it... tried real hard.

Wonder if I can just find Dungeon Keeper on Good Old Games or something...

Was listening to Varia Suite, remembered one of the spookiest bits from Super Metroid...

Nice.

That is all. :P

I found an album called the 50 darkest pieces of classical music by the London philharmonic orchestra...

[SCREECHING HALT!]

WHOA! WHAT!?

I just found "The 99 Darkest Pieces of Classical Music." It looks like this is an MP3 compilation only (probably/maybe?), BUT it's on Amazon for $2.49 right now.

Downloading it now.

And there are a number of similarly priced "The 99 _____ Pieces o Classical Music." There seems to be a lot of repetition between these collections, but for the price and the quality of the first few I've heard, I'm cool with that!

We just sent Pathfinder Player Companion: Humans of Golarion to the printer today.

That's relevant because there's a whole article all about Aroden in there. Might be worth taking a peek at.

I was curious, will the trust mechanic be used throughout the AP or is it reserved just for Ravengro in part 1?

Just the first.

This is kind of a plug, but Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Rule of Fear has a series of helpful tips and tricks you might try to heighten the mood of frightening encounters and adventures.

Regardless of the game system, I find that one of the biggest things you can do is cut down on distractions. I tend to get pretty hardcore about this in my games, but what it comes down to is that if people are playing on their phones, painting miniatures, making Monte Python references, or whatever, they're not investing themselves in their characters. Removing distractions around the game table is maybe the number one thing I would suggest to help keep a group focused, and thus more susceptible to identifying with the feelings of their characters and the mood of the GM's story.

Again, I go into this a good bit in Rule of Fear, with more on using music, sowing suspicion, and the like. So if you're already thinking about playing Carrion Crown, this is the companion guide to that AP, so it might help!

As it might come up, you might want to check out some of my long-winded thoughts on how the Church of Pharasma can and do get along with dhampirs over here.

My question is.........wouldn't the Inquistor burn the witch at the stake in Ustalav?

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: Magic is a reality in Golarion, the world's full of it, and deciding to deny or outright hunt it would be like like crusading against air. So if you're worried about inquisitors hunting magic-users, that's not a crusade any overarching religion endorses.

Alternatively, if you're concerned about inquisitors hunting witches because they're "evil," that's also not a widely held view - even in Ustalav. The Carrion Crown Player's Guide discussion on witches gives the typical Ustalavic view of this class - being rural healers and spiritual leaders. Joe villager likely will never be able to tell the difference between a witch, a wizard, a sorcerer, an oracle, or a bard anyway, so there's no reason for the populace of Ustalav to be any more wary of witches than any other class.

Alternatively, if you're concerned about the line in the inquisitor write-up in the Carrion Crown Player's Guide that refers to an ever-growing sect of Pharasmin inquisitors that conduct "witch" burnings, a bit of clarification. First, this is a reference to the Pharasmin Penitence, a group of Ustalavic hardliners who - especially in conservative Barstoi - have members who hunt evil magic-users as intruders in the providence of the divine. In this case "witch" is used to evoke images of Salem witch-trial-esque crusades, it's not meant to mean servants of this group hunt down just characters of the witch class. More details on the Pharasmin Penitence will appear in Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Rule of Fear.

So, how do you have your inquisitor and witch get along? Ask your inquisitor not to be of the intolerant sub-group of Pharasma's church built to allow for witch-burning villains.

NICE! Thanks for taking me up on that and posting feedback. So glad you like it.

Right now, it's looking like that in Carrion Crown only PF #46 isn't going to have some sort of gothic monsters toolbox.

So tune in to #44 for skeletons!

Ha!
<--- Might know more about asylums than even he is comfortable with. :P

Interesting. First thought: "What's a Kirkbride?"

Three notes:

1) I really enjoy that Jeff said "Lovecraft myself mentions"

2) Prince of Wolves is awesome and really fun reading if you want a tour of some of the same lands Carrion Crown's going to be treading.

3) TOTALLY WEIRD that Cage of Delirium might have some overlaps with Carrion Crown. (And though no one's seen it yet, TOTALLY WEIRD that Haverghast asylum and Havenguard asylum in Caliphas utilize the same Kirkbride design.) :P

You guys are making this REAL easy on us.

I don't see Thassalon being a part of the campaign. At all.

Given how you'll have to travel through/near a couple forests, I wouldn't consider Sylvan to be completely unreasonable.

What Erik said.

What about the Night Hag? Are they Hags like the Green, Anis, and Sea? If they are what would changeling of Night Hag get?

Night hags are fiends, not natural creatures. They have other methods of spawning that don't involve changelings.

Every iconic at level 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, and 16. Free pdf download. Done. Forever.

We've talked about doing this for a long time and I think it's a great idea. So does everyone else here. The trick, though, is that while we're a crushed by our schedule as we are and frequently miss as many deadlines as we do adding more work to the staff is not an option. We've made some changes recently that seem to be helping with this and still have a job opening for a new developer, so I'm hoping that in the next few months here things will get easier around here and we'll have time for more fun bits like this. But until we get the products we sell under better control, free products are going to be few and far between.

That said, it's Tuesday and the design staff do a new design blog every Thursday. If you start making some noise in some of the RPG General forums you might be able to convince Hyrum and Jason and his crew to start tackling a statblock or an iconic every week. It would take a bit, but at the end that's something we could pretty easily compile.

But, one way or another, it's not going to happen unless folks say the want it, so if you do, it might be worth heading over to those forums and making some noise!

I'm truly deeply saddened by the loss of the iconic write ups in Carrion Crown. I'm an AP subscriber and this has always been my favorite part of the books...

Ser... seriously? I mean, we've been rehashing if not outright copying that content for 40-some issues. To each his own and all, but if you want pregenerated characters I feel like we have numerous outlets for PC friendly statblocks (modules, free modules, the GMG, Pathfinder Society, the NPC Guide, the upcoming Rival Guide, etc). Not a lot of outlets for more Adventure Path content, though, which is what folks get now.

We knew this change - in fact, any change - would bother some folks, so if enough people voice their opinion here that they'd like the adventure or any of its support material to shrink back down so we can put the pre-gens back in, we're totally happy to listen!

OMG, INSANE Jeff! Thanks so much for pulling this together! Super useful. I'll totally be checking some of these out!

(And one particularly nice add in your OGL list. :P)

Let me run though these real quick.

1) Spring-heeled jack wasn't built with any DR and I think he's a fine challenge without it. Many fey have that kind of DR, but not all (the kelpie comes to mind). Scare got it's name changed to "frightening gaze" (which just never made it into its special attacks list).

2) The changeling gets discussed in detail here. Sounds like your questions are already addressed in there.

3) Keep the Cha bonus. The ecoplasmic creature is discussed here. What it comes down to is that the statblock should have 8 hit points instead of 9.

"4)" Numerous? I'm seeing it missing with the flaming skull, which should be a +1. Unless you also mean the swarm, which shouldn't have an attack bonus. As for the range on belching, say 30 feet.

The spell harrowing appears on page 295 of the new Inner Sea World Guide. It is a bard 3, sorcerer/wizard 3, witch 3 spell.

Feel free to stop by at some point. ^_^

Whoa! Neat! Bookmarked and Evernoted!

I just want to point out that it's not necessarily being presented as a Player Character race any more than the dozen or so races without racial hit dice in the Bestiary are.

Sounds like folks have already sussed out that they're really not beyond the typical power level we use for potential player races, but 0gre here is also spot on. These are not a core race, so any decision to or not to use them is right up to the GM.

All that said, remember, changelings also come with a secret penalty...

Some day, their mamas are going to come a callin'.