Kevin Andrew Murphy's page

Another problem is that if you release an edition of an rpg that is too similar to the previous one sometimes the fanabse is not as interested in purchasing it again. I know of some in my gaming circle that while they play in my PF game will not purchase any PF books because it feels too much like 3.5. Chaosium is rel;easing a 7E of Call of cthulhu next year most likely. Without any major changes. I like CoC. Do I want to buy 6E with some minor rules changes no not really. It's a paradox. Gamers don't want the same game wile at the same time don't want a newer version instead. To be honest we a gamers don't really know what the hell we want as a whole but I digress.

No, incorrect. We know what we want, perhaps you do not. The fundamental reason why people are upset over so many hard-stop editions, is that its difficult for players to float from group to group. The rules mostly, but also the cultures that develop at each gaming table are altered dramatically by the edition used. Even the changes from 3.0 to 3.5 were large enough to split up our gaming group, and make us all a bit cynical. Not only that, it hurts gaming retailers.

Now, and only thanks to Paizo's Pathfinder, has there been some consensus and stability among the gamers in my area: "This is a good product that we can all agree and use". And also, not a single retailer within 30 miles of me carries 4e books, its all Pathfinder and Indie titles.

Wizards keeps f'ing with their Kernel. They need to stop doing that and simply put out their equivalent of Adventure Paths and Settings.

From the PAX 2012 Q&A, that sounds like their plan... but I personally doubt they have the integrity to honor those claims.

Seelah. As an atheist, I'm always fascinated by faithful characters, especially paladins. I love to read about how and why they chose their path, or their path chose them.

Although I see by recent responses that the choice has already been made?

Only the first arc has been plotted out at this point, so as long as these first comics sell well, the sky's the limit!

When the Everburning Torch was priced for 3.0/3.5, it included not only the material component cost (50 gp), but the cost to hire a spellcaster to cast the spell as well (2nd level spell, min caster level 3, so 60gp.)

The Ioun Torch doesn't have the cost of a spellcaster casting the spell included, and charges 25gp for the dull grey ioun stone.

(grin) Yes it is, but my point remains, being able to work with a material doesn't mean you know how to make a given product normally made with that material.

@Proley
I think the difference between Appraise and Perception is that Perception tells you there are glittery gems in the staff and gold-coloured metal. Appraise is knowing enough to tell whether the gems are valuable or just glass, and that the metal is brass or gold.

I agree, two skills that are similar and may overlap are NOT the same as two skills that are interchangeable.

This makes giants, unlike any other monsters of equivalent CR, vulnerable to low-level spells like charm person and hold person. For some reason it's now easier to paralyze an ettin (CR 6) than, let's say, a centaur (CR 3).

I guess it's not all bad, since it makes Enchanters less useless during the higher levels, but it really makes giants not worth their CR against low-level casters.

I'm cool with that. Folklore giants were supposed to be dim-witted.

In PF, you can still lose your paladinhood under coercion by having your alignment forcibly changed (say, by a cursed item) or being forced to violate the code of conduct. This seems unfair if you think of it as punishment, but note that when you atone there is no additional cost for penance in this specific situation.

Fluffwise, I like to think of the loss of paladinhood in such a situation as a divine circuit breaker. Your god is removing your powers so that they can't be abused by a third party. As soon as the threat is gone, you can use atonement to reset the circuit. Ergo, your god is protecting you and yours rather than punishing you.

Make sure he is exceedingly modern in sensibilities, as if from our world, not Golarion!

Golarion is full of modern sensibilities. Women can go and do what they want to, African people aren't treated automatically as cattle just because of the skin tone, religious diversity is tolerated almost everywhere, openly LGBT people hold positions of power. If I wanted to play a simulation of medieval society, I'd play Ars Magica.

I've never seen a paladin player that would try to coddle npcs like that, as if their character graduated from a leftist uni and then went into paladin.

Oh, this sentence explains a lot.

<SHAMELESS PLUG>Latest of my Wayfinder previews is up!</SHAMELESS PLUG>

I think with Paladins Code issues, if you need to think about whether or not what you are doing is right, or worse, try to find a way of justifying an action that you feel uncomfortable about, then you just shouldn't be doing it. Being a shining light for good and order should come naturally to you. If your checking the fine print and looking for loop holes in the Paladin's code then you should be docked for lawful neutral (at the very least) behaviour.

So is everything that is unacceptable evil? Not, it's not. But if graverobbery is evil (and I think most would say it is) the defilement of a dead humanoid by drinking his blood should be, too.

As a humanoid, I'd be way, way more worried about the defiling of my *living* body with his longsword, than by what the Paladin does to my corpse afterwards.

This isn't EverQuest PvP. I won't be shaking my fist at the monitor if my killer /emotehumps my corpse.

It might be illegal. It might be gross. It might freak the locals. It might even be dangerous (if the departed had a blood-borne disease or parasitic infestation, or is in some other way unsafe for human consumption). But you kind of have to do harm to someone to do evil to them, and a corpse is past harm (unless you resurrect him and *then* do something nasty to him...). It's dead, Jim.

For it to be evil, it would have to be harming someone (perhaps even non-physically, such as traumatizing his wife and kids, who are watching aghast from behind the woodshed as you mow down on pops).

But, as a Paladin, anyone you righteously killed *without* falling from grace, you can probably stab one more time for a pick-me-up after they hit the ground. At that point, you've already killed the fool, and your travelling companions are pulling off his boots and turning out his pockets to search them for hidden coin, so any pretense at giving him 'dignity in death' is a poor sad joke, at best.

If he deserved dignity in death, he probably deserved dignity in life, too, and not to have his face cloven in twain by your righteous blade.

I've always wondered why so many walked away from Omelas yet no one ever bothered to take the kid, grab a car, and drive away from Omelas while giving that city the finger.

Fireball does not catch anything on fire. Remember, it's magic, try not to use too much "logical thinking".

Wrong. Fireball sets combustibles in the area alight.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/f/fireball

Does the spell state that it's flammable? No? Then it isn't.

Does the spell state that it's fireproof? No? Then it isn't.

And the only text in PF that hints to what it is is the butter.

I wonder if it can create I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.

It's real grease.

A week ago I showed off a proof of concept of a Google Map of the Inner Sea.
I've since "started over and done it right", and it is now available for public perusal.

http://www.mapsofgolarion.com/

Maps of Golarion offers an unofficial interactive Google Map of the Inner Sea, with clickable markers, info windows with a blurb about the location, and additional links to the Pathfinder Wiki or matching products on paizo.com. It currently has about 60 locations defined based on the hardcoded values in the Community Use Inner Sea map. The first data milestone will be to fully mark out all those hardcoded values. After that, I'll be adding any and all other locations that have been mentioned (which will take a loOoOong time), as well as Adventure Path and Module "journeys". There are pie-in-the-sky plans for future functionality like on/off filters and custom user-uploaded locations for your own campaign setting.

It also works and was tested on an iPad, for game table use.

Am Hellknight is a fine role-player of the hellknight's position, and their distaste of chaos and dangerous liberty. Bravo.

A tricky scenario Kevin, evil has quite a few tricks up its sleeve. I will run it in one of the my games.

Just a situation and a question for you GM-types out there:

Let's say a person is the target of some evil plot and is framed for a murder. You're a paladin, and you know absolutely that the person in question is innocent, but the evidence is so stacked against them that your testimony is not enough to save them from an execution sentence. You also know that the court in question is a fair one and is not corrupt itself.
In this type of scenario, the paladin faces a tough choice: Either save the innocent and go against legitimate authority, or allow an innocent to die for a crime they did not commit.

What, in most people's opinions, is the correct path to follow here, and in other situations where doing the right thing is also doing the wrong thing? How would you not break your code either way? (Before you say anything, I absolutely know GMs who would allow such a scenario!)

Firstly, I'd remove the emotive and loaded language from the above situation.

You say the paladin knows the accused is innocent.
How?
Is this backed up by solid evidence, that would stand up to unbiased, objective scrutiny and cross-examination?
If so, it should be presented to the court.
If not, then the paladin doesn't actually know the accused is innocent at all, he just has 'a feeling'.
You don't disrupt court proceedings over hunches, feelings, or twinges of pity.
No dilemma exists here. Let the court officials get on with their jobs.

Assuming the accused has a cast-iron alibi, is otherwise incapable of committing the crime, and/or compelling evidence exists that another person was responsible;

Has that evidence been put before the court?
If not, why not?
Is their defence counsel incompetent? Corrupt? Are they being intimidated?
These are grounds for requesting the removal of existing counsel, and ofering to represent the accused yourself. Show the court any evidence of corruption or tampering. The latter will predispose the judge to look less favourably on the prosecution.
No dilemma here. Let the evidence show the truth of the matter. The accused goes free.

Assuming the incontrovertible proof of innocence exists, and has been put to the court;

You say the evidence is 'stacked', yet in the next sentence, you say the court is fair and incorruptible.
This does not compute.
A court that has been handed such evidence, yet still goes ahead with the case, and/or discards the evidence of one side as inadmissable, is not a 'fair and incorruptible' institution. A paladin is in no way beholden to a corrupt institution, nor to the corrupted judgments they pass.
No dilemma here. You stop the proceedings, take the accused into your care, until you can ensure a fair trial.

Assuming the stacked evidence has been sprung by surprise on the 'fair and incorruptible' court;
Again, this does not compute.
Despite what years of Perry Mason reruns tell us, you cannot simply barge into an ongoing trial, yelling wild, untested claims.
If the prosecution are being allowed to do this, and the defence is not allowed to counter with equaly lurid counter-accusations, nor are they allowed to examine the new evidence, then you do not have a fair and incorruptible court. You have a court that intends to treat the accused as 'guilty till proven guilty'.
No dilemma exists. You stop the proceedings, take the accused into your care, until the new evidence for the prosecution can be investigated, and/or a new trial arranged in an unbiased court.

Assuming the court refuse to allow time to gather evidence for the defence, because they 'have to get this case over with quickly', then they are also not a valid court of law, but a kangaroo court, run by a bloodthirsty lynch mob.
A paladin is in no way beholden to follow mob rule or vigilantism.
The truth is more important than convenience.
The objective of any legitimate court (that would be recognised by a paladin) is to arrive at the correct verdict, even if doing so requires the case to be put on hold for a few extra days to allow for the gathering of evidence.
No dilemma here. You stop the proceedings, take the accused into your care, until the evidence for the prosecution can be examined, evidence for the defence gathered, and/or a new trial arranged in an unbiased court.

In short, there should never be a situation in which a paladin finds themselves at odds with a fair, impartial court, since such a body would share the paladin's aims of getting to the truth of the matter at all costs.

If you are able to give further information about the situation as it occurred in-game, and show that it avoids all the above, then please do so.

I would contend that, however the situation appears at first glance, there will not be any dilemma. Any practice a court may have, that would hinder the pursuit of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, would invalidate that court as a recognised legal authority by a paladin.
And any attempt by a GM to declare this a lose-lose situation would be false.

While I'm not trying to advocate evil or anything, some of their organizations have outstanding dental plans...

Kevin Andrew Murphy wrote:

1. Pray to CE Lamashtu for aid in conception and also to prevent the child from being monstrously deformed.

This is really not who you pray to for this. You pray to Lamashtu only if you want the baby monstrously deformed, as she likes her babies that way. She considers deformity a blessing, after all.

In the real world, this sort of 'worship' is probably better called propitiation. You aren't making an offering to a god of wrath or plague or misfortune because you want to be smited or diseased or cursed, but to placate and appease them, and, by offering them praise and gifts, basically bribing them to leave you (or your child, or your village, or whatever) out of their wrath-y, smite-y, plague-y plans.

In Golarion, I suspect most ship captains who toss some coins to the shrine of Besmara don't do that because they are all 'Woo, pirates and sea monsters! Yay!' but because they want to appease Besmara and sort of 'pay her to look the other way' before they set sail.

Some gods, such as Rovagug or Cthulhu might have a 'fine, I'll eat you *last*' sort of ethic about such matters (at best...), but more selfish ones, like Norgorber or Urgathoa, might find it far more useful to have living people fearfully continuing to honor them in secret, than to just kill everyone who prays to them.

Evil gods, after all, aren't robots.

And Lamashtu isn't a dummy. If otherwise good and neutral people are praying to her to not disfigure their children, that's a 'good' thing, in her eyes. Propitiation could be seen as the 'gateway drug' to full on worship.

Plus there's still madness, a much less obvious affliction she can pass on to the children of those who offend her...

I would also love to be Iomedae's 'sword'...

In Polish this would be quite explicit as the same word is used for sheath/scabbard and vagina.

If I were in a game with someone playing a arcane caster with a toucan familiar, I'd feel obliged to play a druid with a tiger animal companion so that we could embark on some breakfast cereal themed adventures together; preferably vs a leprechaun BBEG. It'd be GRRRRREAT!!!

Just wait until you run across Cap'n Crunch ...

The toucan should, of course, grant you the scent ability. :)

The vampire countess? She's on fire's menu too, and no matter how evil or crazy she is, she's not going to survive long in her unlife if she forgets that desperate people do desperate things. A 0-level scullery maid convinced the mistress will eat her tomorrow may decide to set fire to her mansion tonight.

I'd think it would be most practical to set fire to the mansion at dawn, when it is most difficult for the vampire to flee the premises. It won't do any good if the vampire is in the stone dungeon below the house in her coffin, but if she's one of those silly vampires that thinks keeping her coffin in the wood-panel bedroom upstairs is a good idea then fire at dawn should do the trick.

Of course that last situation might arise from forgetting that desperate people do desperate things. If she were more aware of that, she'd have a more secure resting place.

I encountered - at night - while hiking near the lodge at Big Sur with my ex - a mountain lion. Heard her (warning growl) more than saw her, but we retreated backwards as we could (I believe the term is expeditious retreat) while shouting. There are mountain lions up here in the woods as well, where I live, but I've only seen a dead one, by the side of the road, since then.

Anyway,

Friendly, talky or non-hungry undead = Terry Pratchett.

Vicious, murderous, sneaky undead = Pathfinder.

I may plan to strip the racial restrictions from darn near everything in the book and use them instead for non-race-specific organisations created by the given races.

For example: Elves create an order of druids called the leafsingers. It's all elves at first. But eventually, their secrets get out, or maybe they start allowing other races to become members. There's nothing inherent in the elf that makes them uniquely able to learn the abilities of the leafsinger. They just came up with it first.

Stuff I don't mind being restricted to race is biology-specific stuff or things that depend on specific racial abilities. A drow-only antimagic class building on their spell resistance would remain race-restricted, for example. Or restricted to any races with spell resistance.

The "exotic east" being presented as a diverse array of cultures and people with actual reasons for being who they are, as opposed to 'those inscrutable orientals' is also nice.

This seems like a recipe for very angry players and a short lived campaign.

Actions you do to fellow players can only use the 'I was playing my character you metagaming fiend!" excuse so much before people get tired of it out of character. When doing something like this, I would make sure that the players are okay with this.

Liz Courts wrote:

Regarding racial diversity in art, I think y'all should take a gander at the Prismatic Art Collection Kickstarter project.

The Prismatic Art Project isn't just awesome because it'll provide a big archive of freely-available stock art for gamers and publishers, but also because you can personally get art from me (including a Paizo-blog-style goblin of you) for a measly $50!

This is awesome.

...............

Can we get a goblin riding a pony?

Ashiel wrote:

Kevin Andrew Murphy wrote:

With the defilement of the body and whether it's evil, let's say we've god four cultures. The first thinks that the bodies of the dead should be interred in the ground. The second thinks corpses should be eaten by the living so their souls can be reborn as members of the tribe and it is the gravest insult to say "No one would eat you!" and putting someone in the ground as worm food means they will be reborn as a worm. The third culture believes that the soul inheres in the body so bodies should be mummified with pull-string "Speak with Dead" voice boxes attached so the living can hear endearments and wisdom from their ancestors. The fourth thinks that corpses are simply empty husks but ones that can be turned into skeletons and zombies to serve the community. All four cultures think the other three are mad and evil.

Now comes the question of whether they are. All four cultures think they're being good and reverential by their own culture's beliefs and standards but they can't all simultaneously be right. It's the GM's place to figure out who's correct, who's delusional, and moreover whether committing an evil act through ignorance or delusion weighs on the soul or not.

The simplest answer is generally the correct one. They are all wrong. At the same time, they are right in that they are all Good. The fact they are tried to do good, by respecting their fallen loved ones in the best ways they know how is a good act.

I should point out that this is a value judgement. If any act done with good intentions is a good act, then all that matters is the intentions, not the act itself. And following that logic, no spell should have the Evil descriptor or for that matter any alignment description--they are all neutral tools simply awaiting use.

While this is a valid line of theology, it is not the only one. Other interpretations can be that a deed is good if it accomplishes a beneficial end, regardless of the intentions of the one doing it.

Certainly that's one way to deal with the Judas issue.

The grossly oversymplified Hindu (and Tantric Buddhist) argument is that becoming undead is a part of one's dharma, and consorting with undead is only acceptable if one is providing the undead creature a means to moksha or at least a better rebirth (thus providing them with a good task or opportunity to do good is very righteous, since karma accrues regardless of intention). But notably, undeath is an incarnation - it's not an interruption of the natural cycle, but part of the expiation or punishment that the being endures for their previous actions. And if one accidentally condemns a relative to undeath because you neglect the puja due to ancestors, this is your own fault (and may lead to the same fate for you). Because so much of what can befall one in dharma is not really "fair" it's appropriate to attempt to post-facto redeem undead. Of course, generally, the being then goes onto a better life, so keeping the undead around afterwards instead of letting them be returned to bones and rot is pretty selfish.

I have read arguments on the board like: "that race is evil, it is ok to kill them". That sends cold shivers down my spine, since it is the Nazi argument.

This is the kind of slipshod thinking that drives me insane and usually ropes me into saying something. You cannot take the term "race" in RPGs to mean the same thing as "race" when it comes to humans. Because, we're not talking about races, we're talking about species (or sub-species, if you listen to some people talk about the fertility of half-orcs and half-elves).

Why does it matter, you ask? Because they're not necessarily built the same--their genetics and brain function may be entirely different. In the real world, we conflate all humans to the same level of equality. We do this for a number of reasons, but primarily from an ethic of reciprocity, in my opinion. All of us implicitly agree to the social contract, "I won't try to kill/enslave/kidnap/rob/rape/eat you and you won't try to kill/enslave/kidnap/rob/rape/eat me". But we don't equate a human murderer with the rest of humanity: they have shown they have broken the contract and they're no longer abiding by an ethic of reciprocity.

But now we're talking about a separate species altogether (goblin, orc, drow). And as such, you have to treat that species as your world has generated it. Culturally, does it believe in an ethic of reciprocity with other species? Genetically, can it even understand such things? If it understands such things, can it overcome, by willpower, the primal drives of it's genetics?

There are several imaginings, obviously:

1) Cultural - This is a species much like any other species (halfling, dwarf, elf, gnome) and can be included in the affairs of the good species, but only after it has achieved enlightment and respect for other species. We just need to educate them better and influence their culture. Of course, the fact that no such educated, enlightened tribes, nations, or even small communities of such species have ever been found tends to argue against this position. If you want this sort of specie, then you will want to address this in your world.

2) Cultural and genetic - This is a species irrationally opposed to the goodly species. Oftentimes this is presented as a direct result of their lack of empathy and compassion, or their belief in their own superiority (perhaps deity-driven). I see the drow, abboleth, and other intelligent, but dark-minded races this way. They have the arrogance of superiority (narcissism) and an absence of pity or mercy. The very intelligent ones among them will have philosophized and rationalized their elitism in a very pragmatic utilitarian way. "We are as superior to the [insert goodly specie] as the [insert goodly specie] is to the cow. As such they are our natural prey, tool, and beasts of burden." You might raise one of these specie from infancy in a goodly society and find that in spite of the love and care you give the individual, it turns into a cold-hearted mercenary at best or a serial killer at worst.

3) Genetic - This is a species that is not intelligent enough or doesn't possess enough willpower to overcome its baser instincts. They are like vicious animals, without empathy, and with cunning. Imagine if we took a hyena and gave him just enough cunning so that he could figure out how to best capture and eat humans; how to inflict pain, because it finds the screams of its victims funny. But not enough to see the consequences fully through (that it could also be the victim of such behavior) or to care or to overcome it's drive even if it does see and does care. You would then have this species.

Of the normal causes of evil (nothing divine or magical), I can't think of any others. All three imaginings are fine, if that's what you want in your world. #1 above is the one I consider the least likely for these "evil species", but is the only one worthy of giving a chance at redemption. I have yet to see a species such as this giving, in any non-aberrational way, evidence that it possesses empathy or wisdom or even a moral core, in any of the stories that I read. Treating them like they're criminals (under who's law? by what right are they judged?) that can be rehabilitated only places unrealistic restrictions on your ability to effectively prosecute these evil beings fully.

You might argue, "Sure, but the standards of goodness are not just inconvenient, they're tough."

To which I would respond, "True, but being stupid can be suicidal. Let's be both smart and good and avoid making mistakes."

In RPG terms evil comes under the the definition of "guys who its ok to kill because they are not good"

Literally. You'll notice generally speaking there are few explorations of Orc culture, cause if you realized that that orc barbarian who is mapped on either a germanic raider or a viking raider is stealing food from a village for his starving kids (because his tribe has been ousted from the nice places to live by humans) it becomes a game that's vastly different from D&D.

No it's a typo, the fact that it's in the book but was printed incorrectly makes it a typo. It's all explained here from James Jacob himself

http://paizo.com/forums/dmtz51rj?Juju-Oracles-White-Necromancers-and-nonevi l#25

You say typo, I say godsend for groups that are absolutely starved for flavorful support for non-evil undead.

I'm sticking with the original writer's intent on this one.

Mindless undead are evil in Golarion because Urgathoa flipped the non-good goddess of death the bird and broke one of her non-lawful rules, which makes her chao.... uh, evil!

Walking away with your hand in the air while Pharasma is talking is an act of such significance that it upset the natural order, introduced disease to the world, and made the line-cutter into a god.

Clearly someone had spent too much time waiting in the queue at the DMV and fantasizing about apocalyptic rampages. :)

Still, different GMs can work it different ways. You can dig into one of the Monsters Revisited books (Horrors or Undead, I don't recall which) and find a sidebar that states that skeletons and zombies *contain the trapped souls of their former hosts,* and that's why they are evil, because an animate dead spell can tear a soul out of the afterlife and trap it in it's rotting corpse for all eternity, in defiance of infernal contracts, celestial paradises and all the foot-stomping tantrums Pharasma can muster. Since the spell has no provisions for failing if the soul is otherwise occupied, this can even happen to corpses that have been dead long enough that the souls have gone on to become angels or pit fiends or *been devoured by daemons* or been trapped in gems by 9th level spells, and, perhaps souls that have gone on to become *gods.* (Ooh, I found a bone from Irori, when he was just an ascended master! Let's cast animate dead and *kill a god!*)

That's been suggested to be 'not-canon,' too, but, hey, you can find text supporting all sorts of whacky stuff.

If you find a typo or egregious error in a thread title, please use the "Markup/Display" flag.

Let's say enemies are charging the city gates...place the Silent Image in front of the gate to make it look like the air shimmers, as if a mirage, and have a pit trap suddenly appear. Make the way it appears similar to how an illusion spell fades, rather than is created, to make them think that they've "seen through" another spell. They'll stand in front of the pit trap, thinking what to do for just long enough for the archers on the wall to turn them into pincushions...

thing is...they'd need to interact with it, like try and jump across...which they won't do, assuming you make the pit deep enough...and full of spikes...

The only things that are official are FAQs and Erratas.

Everything else should be treated as a Paizo employee telling you "how I would resolve this".

Granted, the rules design people (Jason, Sean, Stepehen) are closer to the "official" interpretation than others are (say, James, who is a creative director and doesn't do much rules writing per se).

As someone else once posted (in regards to why the Worldwound doesn't spill over into Ustalav)...

That land (Ustalav) is spoken for. The last time someone made a move against the lord of that land he dragged a god down from on high and tortured her to death. Demons, too, know fear.

The Cheliax companion notes:

Some faiths, however, are forbidden upon pain of torture and execution. These include the worship of any god of chaos or any demon or devil other than Asmodeus.

I understand the outlawing of demon and daemon cults, but the part about outlawing the worship of other devils doesn't seem quite right. To elaborate, this is from Faiths of Corruption:

Asmodeus, being by far the most powerful being in all the layers of Hell, does not see the worship of his archdevils as a threat, knowing that their worship is an extension of his own.

So, am I the only one seeing a conflict here?

I'd ignore the Cheliax Companion line, since Faiths of Corruption is far more recent. Both the Inner Sea World Guide and the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting list Cheliax as the center of worship for Diabolism.

I could see Asmodeus frowning on major temples to individual arch-devils, but a Diabolist church, that honors Asmodeus as the ruler of the others, and has smaller individual altars, shrines or even clerics of the 'lesser' arch-devils would probably be an acceptable thing.

It's that unknown element for people who can't spellcraft that makes me think that common people would be a bit more perturbed by spellcasting in public, even in Absalom. If I'm a regular guy on the street, how do I know if that guy spouting incomprehensible words just used prestidigitation to clean his shoes, or cast magic weapon on his dagger? Or maybe, as you said, he's just waving his hands around and saying nonsense...

IRL, when I see someone with an unfamiliar handheld electronic, I don't immediately assume it's a bomb/detonator/phone hacking tool/laser designator or any of the other things that may be harmful (to one degree or another). Instead I assume it's something safe and likely legal because the guy IS using it in public.

Magic used in public is probably much the same. Assume that it's safe unless it is obviously not.

GeraintElberion's suggestions are good. :)

I'm happy to infer that this relates to all of the suggestions I have ever made.

Thankyou. :D

The problem is the archetype which most people here are reading as "the paladin falls if he cannot immediately murder every evil outsider in sight". The actual oath both allows for the paladin to drop the oath, and includes a clause "if able". Therefore, the paladin does not fall just for standing next to an imp, despite what the people who just seem to want to murder a familiar think.

Also, if the paladin feels that strongly about evil outsiders, why don't they stay home in the Mendevian Crusade? Seriously, what are they doing in the Pathfinders to start with? Upon joining it would become clear that they would have to interact with various Chelaxians and their feindish servants at some point.

The game is full of tough decisions. Having to make a hard moral choice (do I work with my companion and violate my oath, or do I kill this guy's imp and risk the mission?) is a great learning experience for a new player, and accentuates that characters' choices have consequences. In this case, the paladin risks losing his powers or skirting very close to violating the no-PVP rule. I don't see that as a position many would want to be in, but we shouldn't preclude people from experiencing moral quandries when playing a character that's all about morality (like a paladin is by definition).

Brandon Hodge wrote:

Adam has very feminine ankles...I suggest the shackles be TIGHT!

Noted. I'll also make a note to the shackle-maker that he take into account Daigle's morale bonus to Escape Artist checks.

Oooh! I get a morale bonus!

this is perhaps less technical, but drawings of outfits would be great. Always good for inspiration.

In my opinion, most deities are more concerned with their greater goals rather than every little action a single mortal takes. I'm positive Pharasma can handle the occasional strange bedfellow for her clerics if it serves her interests--though, as in the real world, various members of her church may be far more hard-line about everything.

That said, it's the GM's call. If he or she wants to play any of the gods as strict doctrine-oriented folks... well, maybe it's because that particular PC is more important than we realize, in the grand scheme of things, and thus warrants personal attention... (And of course, the reverse is also true--perhaps a PC is so important that a god is willing to bend the rules a little.)

It was said in the ASK James Thread that Eternal Youth and Immortality allow you to keep going until violence or disease gets you.

As a GM, I don't think it's appropriate or interesting to have the NPCs remain static when they are taking the actions necessary to advance.

I actually agree 100%... with the "as a GM part." We are not GMs when we are creating these books though. We at Paizo are only when we run games for our players. There's a difference between setting down the setting rules for use in play and actually bringing them to life in the game... and it's not appropriate for us to take on those GM responsibilities by making those in game decisions for every GM.

Closest you'll get to seeing our products behave like GMs is an adventure. Look at any of our adventure paths and you'll see thatt hings aren't static in that way at all. For example, in Curse of the Crimson Throne and in Kingmaker...

If we ever do a significant adventure or AP about the Sun Orchid Elixir or Razmiran... you can bet we'll not leave them static either.

Just to get that out of the way: Since Pharasma is true neutral (and not good, as wrongly stated earlier), there are no paladins of Pharasma.

And on a different note: to demand a taboo has to be uphold all the time and without exception is a purely lawful streak. I don't think (IMHO, of course) Pharasma would not allow a cleric to temporarily ally with an undead to prevent an even greater undead menace to reach its ghouls ... um ... goals.