Krome's page

What makes the succubus different? No, no, besides the obvious.

I'd say it's this: succubi are, by their vary nature, social creatures. Other demons are solitary top predators, or slithering connivers, or rampaging monsters of pure destruction. But succubi need a social context to work.

So: succubi have a network. You could almost say an organization. Oh, it's a very chaotic organization, full of lies, jealousy, plots and treachery. Succubi don't actually *like* each other. But they have a lot in common, and as noted above they're social creatures, and also they can find mutual profit in working together.

How? Why, through the Sisters Market.

The Market is an informal network of succubi. It reaches all across the Abyss, and well beyond. Think of it as a Craigslist for demons. Though the current incarnation of the Market is fairly recent, something like it has existed for millenia. Because demons are demons, the network regularly gets crashed by cheating and abuse; but because it's so damn useful, it keeps getting recreated.

Succubi trade some physical stuff -- magic items and the like, and of course dominated slaves -- but mostly they trade information, roles, and hooks. Roles are identities that they've taken over. A "hook" is a Suggestion or Domination that a succubus has placed on a victim. (Yeah, it turns out that these things can be traded between two willing demons.)

So, say Candi has infiltrated a small mortal kingdom, dominating the queen and planting suggestions in the King's mind, and is driving the kingdom towards war and utter ruin. But suddenly she has to to away. Maybe she has a better job offer somewhere else; maybe she's suddenly become bored (this is the eighth kingdom she's ruined, frankly she'd like to try something different now); maybe she just got the news that the Shining Crusade is about to come to town and the palace will be crawling with good clerics and paladins. Whatever the reason, she contacts the Sisters Market and offers her role and her hooks -- the suggestions on the King, the domination on the Queen -- for sale. Tanya, who's been hanging around the Abyss torturing the same damned souls over and over, jumps at the chance; she offers an interesting magic item and, oh, the true name of a minor devil. An agreement is reached and, boom.

(Context: my PCs recently defeated a succubus; she got a Suggestion into one of them but then flew off because they were obviously too powerful. She's now traded the suggestion-hook to a more powerful demoness, who has just joined the party undercover.)

The Sisters Market also trades information. Much as they dislike each other, succubi tend to be gossips, and they love nothing better than a good, juicy secret. And they trade tactical information: I serve this demon lord, but I've noticed a weakness in his defenses. I'll trade it for information about the powerful good party that's rumored to be preparing an expedition to my plane of the Abyss. From a PC's point of view, this means that once you've encountered a single succubus, any subsequent one you meet may suddenly know much, much more about you. (This is especially true for characters who have embarked on a career of fiend-hunting, demon-binding, or anything else that seems likely to bring them into conflict with the sisters more than once. Demons are chaotic, but intelligent; they're not going to sit in rooms waiting for you to show up and kill them.)

The Sisters Market isn't only for succubi. Other fiends, and even high-level characters, can occasionally try buying or selling something. Just making contact would be a minor challenge in and of itself, and then of course you're dealing with a bunch of millenia-old chaotic evil outsiders with high Wis, very high Int, and very high Cha indeed. Good luck negotiating with the gal who can read thoughts, cast suggestions all day long, and -- oh, you have Protection From Evil up? -- talk rings around you anyway, because she has +27 Bluff.

Anyway, the Sisters Market. Thoughts?

Doug M.

Hmm.

Interesting arguments, however:

1.Mounted SUCKS.
2.Cavalier is mounted, see point 1.
3.New cavalier stuff is all still mounted, See point 1.
4. No options not to be mounted, just different versions of being mounted, see point 1.
5.Its great, can change the mount, can change what to do mounted, can even change everythign but the mounted options, still see point 1.

Point 1. Mounted sucks.
Unless you fix the fact that quite a bit of the cavalier cannot be used, not used effectivly, or used because they forced the game into a situation to be fair, otherwise you cannot use your character effectivly, then it still sucks.

Okay a rogue does not rely on backstab, but tell the people playing the rogue oh by the way, you can only use the back stab ability 1 out of 6 times, only in a dark room with four walls, of x dimension, otherwise you can never use it?

or you can turn undead, but you can only turn undead outside during the day.

Or a paladin can smite. But only in a wide open field, during the night.

Sure these abilities are not the most important class features, and there are other powers, but it sucks when a big power can only used sort of, some of the time, if the party and dm want to make an effort to work it into the game.

Point of interest... How many G's does Galarion possess? Judging from their art I'd say it's about .4 G, thus allowing for greater leaps, slow falls, gravity defying structures, and larger, perkier mammaries.

The implausible attractiveness of even the most dour iconic is due to the wide proliferation of transmutation magic over Golarion. So many transmuters caught on the obvious idea of using magic to make people look better that the magic saturates the planet.

The next AP will be a quest to track down and stop a prudish transmuter that is attempting to undo the effect and return everyone to average or below average appearance.

Point of interest... How many G's does Galarion possess? Judging from their art I'd say it's about .4 G, thus allowing for greater leaps, slow falls, gravity defying structures, and larger, perkier mammaries.

I am sorry I could of swore it was mentioned by either Sean K Reynolds or James Jacobs on the forum that reducing the number of pages was due to the staff killing themselves over releasing so many hard covers with so many pages. Hence the reason for reducing the page count.

Well, no matter what you heard and from whom, I can tell you that 100%, we did NOT reduce page count on any product due to staff killing themselves. That never ever entered into the equation. I was in those meetings where page count was determined and it was ALWAYS based on the content that we felt was needed for that book. Nothing else. If the staff is killing themselves, then we need to hire more staff. Or distribute the workload better. But page count is never the sacrificial lamb. Ever. Not as long as I own this company.

-Lisa

Do I understand this right? You think that rewarding outstanding work and punishing subpar results does not work? Really?

The day that Paizo starts talking about "punishing" employees is the day I find a new job. Rewarding good results, that's different. I find the notion of an employer having the power to "punish" a grown human being, like they were a child or a criminal, outright offensive.

HEY STUDPUFFIN!

You live near St Louis? Make a trip to Columbia this Saturday night for the PFS Smackdown at Valhalla's gate. We usually have three to six tables running. Always happy to have more!

Check out Facebook, Pathfinder Lodge of Missouri for more info or email me at oclark86 AT gmail DOT com

D'oh!

That's the night we game where I live! :(