Hal Maclean's page

The term archetype has found its own niche but you could do Companions focusing on a particular adventuring theme pretty easily. For instance, "Hunters of Golarion" could take a deep look at monster slaying/capturing and maybe bounty hunting too. While you could do up some history in the flavor section much of it could probably focus on tactics instead. What about countering various monster abilities? How do you take down burrowing/climbing/flying/swimming creatures?

Personally, I'd hope that the book would offer up something for each class and showcase how of them could take part in monster hunting.

Speaking just as a fan and a subscriber. Those back page articles are the first things I look at when I get a new Companion and this often determines who eager I am to read through the rest.

Also, though I recognize there are some circumstances where it makes sense, as a general principle I prefer crunch in those articles over flavor. The main parts of the book are usually weighed very heavily towards flavor anyway.

I once made a halfling paladin/monk who wasn't good for anything but saving throws... :)

Unless whomever developed my turnover meant to insert something about cost in the text, sacred keepsakes don't have a price. When figuring out what to do for the book I noticed that halflings have these coming of age tasks. If they want to become accepted as adults they are supposed to do something to show they are capable of assuming adult responsibility. Once they accomplish their task they pick up some kind of momento or souvenir.

I thought it would be interesting to tie this bit of racial flavor to a simple mechanic. Halfling keepsakes allow a varient casting for a single first level divine spell. It's not really enough of a benefit to justify any sort of cost or requirement (like tying it to a trait for instance).

In a sense, your character earned the keepsake before the start of play by doing his or her coming of age task. It's a fun way to work something extra into a backstory.

I can see myself playing a wandslinger. I like anyone willing to push at the the tropes of heroic fantasy and try something different. If this round had word limits of maybe a 1,000 or so I think Josh would not have taken some of the short cuts he did; and worked out some of the mechanical wrinkles in his write up.

I'm looking forward to seeing what he can do in later rounds.

As someone who has unfortunately perpetrated some nefarious easter egging in my early writing work, I had to learn the valuable lesson:

Don't try to be clever. Try to be awesome.

Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da BATMAN!! :)

GMs take note. This concept has a lot of potential if you apply it to an NPC.

You thought the guy who didn't know he was a lycanthrope was an interesting NPC to drop into an adventure? Imagine the guy who doesn't realize that his nightmare is running amuck?

I don't know if I'd let a player take this but I'm going to use it for an adventure or campaign one of these days.

This gaming year I plan to:

Graduate from monsters and source material to writing adventures.

"Graduate?"

Adventure writers may assemble the jig saw puzzles but we make the pieces. :)

One thing I'm doing this is year is establishing "Friday Fiction". That way at least 20% of my writing time gets allocated towards cracking the fiction market.

This might make budgeting my time a little tricky if I get a big project but hopefully I'll stick with the resolution all the way through 2011.

This was developed from the version I sent in so don't take me as the final voice but it was intended as just one attack.

The original mandate for this spell (and a few others) was to come up with something that helped out a particular spell casting PrC. I think this one was meant for arcane tricksters since it fits the theme of "roguery at a distance" as it were.

Plus, halflings make everyone vomit. ;)

Except for ones based on "Halfings of Golarion"... :)

I do this sometimes without even realizing it. Not too long ago I sent in my turnover for "Haflings of Golarion" and Sean sent back a note about using jokey names for some feats I had written. They were part of a feat tree so I used portions of a well known phrase to link them together. Hadn't even occurred to me how that would look to someone who wasn't in my head.

It's definitely best not to do something that deliberately. :)

"Enemy Hammer" was my spell (one of a couple of things I did to make it into the preview). I don't want to step on Jason's toes but I'll quickly drop in and say the intent when I wrote it was if you make your save nothing happens to you that round (act normally).

Hats off, some very creative people are coming up with some really cool ways to use this spell. :)

RiTz21 wrote:

Not sure if this was reported...

But in the PRD, in the Creature Type section, the Giant Type title should be renamed to Giant Subtype

RiTz21
http://TheOnlySheet.com

Our policy is to only make corrections to the PRD when it disagrees with the most recent printing of the book, with any relevant errata. (Since this is clear error, I'm forwarding it to the editorial team, so it will probably be corrected in the next errata release for the Bestiary.)

I've noticed this issue around giants as a type/subtype a few times. Here are the only two I can remember off hand.

(gnome racial traits)

Defensive Training: Gnomes get a +4 dodge bonus to AC against monsters of the giant type.

(giant form II)

This spell functions as giant form I except that it also allows you to assume the form of any Huge creature of the giant type.

Snorter wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

Cryptozoology is a HUGE influence on Pathfinder.

It's how they find their freelancers!

Oy!

It's funny because it's true... :)

It also makes me wonder what's better for the humanity: locking Mr. Pett and Mr. MacLean in a maximum security mental institution, or having them write more books for Paizo ? Maybe both can be done at the same time.

Locking us away would probably increase our productivity... :)

You'd be surprised how many writers have read at least one dictionary. I think it's the equivalent of atheletes getting up when it's still dark outside just so they can exercise.

They actually like doing it.

Gorbacz wrote:

Are you trying to tell us that Mr MacLean isn't a split personality of yours ... Dr Pett and Mr MacLean ... I can totally imagine that !

Absolutely not.

Hal

Ditto.

Mr. P.

I'd guess they forgot to put a 1 in front of the levels. Meaning it's for levels 12-18.

I did the petitioner template for Bestiary 2. Assuming it makes the cut you might get some answers to your questions when that book comes out.

Mikaze wrote:

Toilets

17-20 Outhouse Mimic

Totally using that one!

It's a baby house hunter! :)

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

ThelistsarebackTHELISTSAREBACK!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

And my eyelid just stopped twitching last week... :)

Weapon Trick: Shield

Keen Eye: "Your chance to avoid having to make a saving throw against that creature’s gaze attack increases to 100%"
...Why not just say using your shield to avert your eyes automatically avoids the Gaze?

Shield Gag: " At any time you may release your shield, which means you both lose the grappled condition and return to your own squares, though your shield remains in its mouth."
Umm... Pathfinder grapple no longer "merges" the squares of grappling opponents.
If a creature with natural reach starts a grapple, their TARGET is moved adjacent to them, but if you are STARTING a grapple (as per Shield Gag), you yourself never move squares and are always inhabiting your "own square"...???

(incidentally, I like these varying effects stemming from one Feat but which have varying pre-req's, both feat and skill rank-wise. they have some of the feeling of 3.5 skill synergies, but more interesting)

Been awhile, but for Keen Eye I think it's because the existing rules about avoiding gaze attacks used percentages so it just seemed simpler to keep the same mechanical format.

Not sure about Shield Gag. I'd have to look at the text more closely before I could say whether there was a reason or just one of those anachronisms that sometimes creep in once you introduce an updated set of rules.

Glad you like the synergy concept (which is actually what I call them btw :) ). Their "mix and match" nature opens up a lot of territory.

The random tables might be neat, though.

That's the section Richard Pett and I worked on. I think we turned in something like 120 to 130 pages worth of lists and tables (and nearly 40,000 words).

Wes told us to make these lists useful for both beginners and old hands at running games so there's quite a range of stuff in them. I don't know if I should get too specific before the book actually comes to light but there's some really fun stuff in it.

The argument is that you (should) have the right to control access to your land or your building.

And the sign said long haired freaky people need not apply

So I tucked my hair up under my hat and I went in to ask him why
He said you look like a fine upstanding young man, I think you'll do
So I took off my hat I said imagine that, huh, me working for you

Something about this whole issue seems tailor made for a song... :)

I created the arrows in "Elves of Golarion" and that didn't stop me from stripping out the flavor and turning a few into bolts for a crossbow using PC. Not saying I'd do that for an official supplement but I didn't have a problem in my own campaign.

I really should check them over for balance before hitting submit but I don't have the book in front of me... :)

Jesse Decker went out of his way to send me some very encouraging (and insightful) rejection letters back when he still worked at Dragon many moons ago. It's something I really appreciated. Hope things work out for him.

Richard Pett and I did a few pages worth of books you can find in libraries for the GameMastery Guide. I have a bunch of random tables for determining things like book topics and language which I use to stock libraries. I might have posted them somewhere on the forums already.

70...pages...of new spells? Probably a ton of new feats too? Class abilities? Etc.?

My free time is going to tank when this book comes out and I get to add it up to the Archives. o.o

That's an affirmative :)

I almost lost my mind just coming up with all kinds of new spells, feats, magic items, alchemical items, special materials, gear, weapons, armor... And I'm sure there's a few things I missed from that list too.

Archiving them to boot? I'd have to change my name to Pinky and let the Brain do all my thinking from then on.

Pesh and Tobacco - Both of these are "addictive" but when I went to see what that means exactly it seems that there aren't any rules for this in Pathfinder.

Download Wayfinder #2 and look for the article called, "Drugs of Golarion." :)

Not only will you find a handy little sidebar offering up a simple system for addiction but also about two pages worth of new addictive substances which I had to cut from the Black Market section of Adventurer's Armory.

Wayfinder isn't official but the sidebar at least is a codification of the implied RAW found in different Pathfinder sources. By this I mean, there aren't really any hard and fast addiction rules that I'm aware of. But if you read the description of various addictive substances you start to see a pattern and the sidebar uses that pattern as its template.

Any other Willie Walsh fans out there?

Big fan here.

I remember when "PC Pearls" came out and I realized that I now shared a credit with one of the big names from the best years of Dungeon (no offense to the 3rd edition and beyond :) ).

With the Great City Urban Bestiary it's now two. Gotta scheme and get at least a few more.

However, I think that the book suffers from the "what the hell are Companions supposed to be" syndrome that plagues the line from the very beginning. After Paizo decided that Companions are player-focused books they decided to divide each into Combat, Faith, Magic, Persona and Social chapters.

I've written a goodly number of those two-pagers found at the back of various Companion books (so I'm pretty biased :) ) but, as a subscriber, they are my favorite part of the books. Most of the Companions have a lot of flavor and those two-pagers are the crunchy anchors that keep them from floating away.

Will "Pectoral Crest" ever be discovered in an update to the PDF or will it be in a book later on?

Maybe it will become one of the great mysteries of Pathfinder...

Or perhaps someone will create one for next year's RPG Superstar. :)

The one I originally did was not great so I cut it before I sent my turnover to Sean (which was already running long anyway). If ever pressed to come up with a new one I'll do something different and leave the first version safely buried somewhere within my hardrive.

My random thoughts on a first read:

Weapons -

Throwing Shield: Yes! Steve, John, and Jim all approved this item.

The shield tricks… YES! Now, something to make life interesting for the sword and board types.

:) I was thinking of them when working on that section.

Also...

Why do bayonets render crossbows/firearms unusable when mounted? That's not how they work. A to-hit penalty I could see...

Plug bayonets did block the barrel, ring bayonets, or any other slot based system, don't. I originally did both but likely they got merged together.

I don't have the text in front of me so I can't say the exact rationale for why you can't use them as both a ranged and melee weapon. Maybe the bayonet is designed to fit into the firing groove? An issue of throwing off the aim?

As a matter of game balance it seems okay to require users to make a choice about how they intend to employ their crossbow during combat.

Worse comes to worse, there's always the thumbnail expedient of creating an Exotic Weapon Proficiency... :)

Thanks for the clarification, Hal!

Now my curiosity is piqued - I must walk away and distract myself before it gets the better of me. Argh.... ;)

Trust me, you don't want to see it.

Developers cut for space. I cut for crap... :)

I was so happy to see this on my Downloads page this morning! :D

I just noticed an ommission under the Channel Foci section. The table on Page 24 lists a Pectoral crest (75gp, 4 lbs.), but there is no description for it in the section. Did this get cut, or is there info on this that can be shared?

Thanks!

Hope you enjoy the book :)

The Pectoral Crest is my bad. I actually cut it even before I sent it to Sean but somehow managed to miss chopping it from the price list.

But how would folks feel about something like "Crusaders of Golarion" or "Holy Warriors of Golarion" or "Knights of Golarion," that would focus not on one class but one GENRE of class, so that you'd be getting some info not just about paladins, but ALL classes who could, say, "count" as a crusader (such as paladins, fighters, clerics, and cavaliers)?

I'd still rather see books that show how members of any class can adopt a particular thematic archetype.

Paladins would be a little problematic for "Assassins of Golarion" but maybe not so much for "Bountyhunters".

"Crusaders of Golarion" could look at those who fight for causes including, but not limited to, deities.

"Explorers of Golarion".

What about something that focuses more on how members of any sort of class can fight on behalf of their god?

Not exactly on point, but you could have a lot of fun with a Demi-planes sourcebook. A chapter on how to build your own with notes on handling incursions. Then a bunch of examples as write ups. Four page format for each one?

I do like the idea of a place that gets wiped clean ever so often though.

Maybe a series of different catastrophes; each one with a way to postpone it. So, the best you can do is just keep the Damocles sword hanging overhead. This place would need a constant supply of heroes.

With a Geas/Quest spell, it has a duration if the task is open-ended, meaning it can't be completed through the character's own actions.

That's still pretty vague. I have a Quest spell placed on a PC that refrains him from a course of action. That action being "You shall not harm the undead."

So is it permanent until dispelled? Or is that considered a task he cannot complete through his own actions? (giving it a duration)

Hmm, what about this? "You must harm undead."

I don't have the spell text in front of me but off the top of my head I would want something more specific.

I had to stop reading this thread because it was taking too much time :)

One quick comment from an outside observer.

I think America's biggest problem is that roughly 45% of your population wants a low tax darwinian society and 45% wants a high tax social welfare state. And then you've got maybe 10% in the middle (I believe you call them swing voters) who seem to want both.

As in, one election they vote for tax cutters. And then the next election they vote for spenders who can't seem to raise the necessary taxes to pay for their proposals. And then next time around they vote in tax cutters who seem unable to eliminate some of the entitlements so they can finance their tax cuts.

Please, just pick the society you want and stick with it. You won't have the same deficit problems and you might actually manage to get your ducks in a row.

Or at least stop derailing the global economy... Zanny neighbors are fine on sitcoms, not so great in real life :)

Wicht wrote:

Do you need more material or do you just want excess to cull through?

MOAR!!! :D

I've got something in the hopper but a pressing project has kept me from finishing it. Once I get that out of the way (Monday deadline!) I'll send you a two pager.

Assuming they keep the section on new alchemical items I wrote...

Magic 8-ball?

All signs point to yes :)

Are we talking high level villains only? Or villains for low and mid-level adventures too?

Russ Taylor wrote:

And as a freelancer, you never know when you might get that hypothetical request to write 12,000 words in 19 days. Hypothetical, of course. :)

I did 176,000 in 30 days once. I will never, ever, ever, do that again. Never. No way.

Yikes!! Hair standing on end even as I read that.

Last year I did some web wandering and stumbled upon a list of authors who were termed "dark fantasy writers influenced by GRRM". Wish I had saved the link. The three authors I took note of and tracked down were all very good.

Scott Lynch
Joe Abercrombie
R. Scott Bakker

Bakker was the toughest slog of the three but still worth it.

And as a freelancer, you never know when you might get that hypothetical request to write 12,000 words in 19 days. Hypothetical, of course. :)

Only 12,000? :)

I like prestige classes that are more of a "vacation" than a "vocation" if you get my meaning. When I create a PrC I tend to go for five levels rather than ten.

What else... I don't have a problem with racial themed prestige classes. Or any other sort of exclusionary theme. So long as they actually make sense as exclusive.

A "cool stuff for X PrC" that isn't solidly rooted in that race, faction, etc is just begging for someone to strip out the flavor and keep the crunch.

I finally got a copy of "Red Seas" and have put it on my pile. Looking forward to it.

I had to cut most of the drug section which was originally intended for "Adventurer's Armory". Simply ran out of space. As Daigle mentions, I sent it to Wayfinder 2.

You might also find the rules for addiction useful. I pretty much took the assumptions found in the descriptions of many of Paizo's existing drugs and codified them a bit.

Oh, I see, just because I'm a zombie, of course I ate their guest of honor. That's what we zombies do, isn't it? Eat people, huh? We don't have our own lives, our own goals and desires? Maybe I want to write a great adventure, or read the collected works of Poe, or invent some new device to make people's lives better. Maybe I don't just want to eat brainnnnnnssss....

Stop the oppression of the heart beat challenged! We were people too, once!! End the hate!!

So easy a zombie could do?