This would be interesting, but I would like to see a Dragons Revisited 2 so we can get some Primal/Imperial Dragon love. Compared to many monsters, there is barely any information on these types regarding there behavior, outlook, etc.
Granted the Qlippoth have a somewhat lovecraftian vibe, but it's really hard to find much in horror that doesn't draw from H.P. Lovecraft. I don't see it as too much of a problem. As others point out, even Conan fought Lovecraftian monsters, so there is a long history of their use in fantasy.
I mostly don't like the orcs and dwarves because I feel so little has been done with them. Compared to the other races, they feel generic with no particular novelty to them to distinguish them from Dwarves and Orcs in other campaign settings.
I don't understand any of those monsters spare for the Triaian, I think I have to see pictures of them.
Insect-like can be anything, beetle, Wasp, Mantis, mosquito, moth, even spiderlike creatures like scorpions and crabs, so what insects do they resemble?
It's hard to explain...but they have insectoid characteristics, but don't really map onto any real life arthropods.
The lower parts tend to remind me of tauric creatures like drow, but the upper parts are...well alien and rather unique. I like them. Best comparison I can make is one is a monstrous humanoid with an insectoid like lower body and humanoid torso, with a humanoid head with a mouth and no eyes.
The other one has a lower part that has claws like a scorpion, but it's surmounted by this stalk like torso with a head that looks like a cross between a bug and a sinspawn...sorta.
according to the news article, this policy has been in place two years, and no one seemed to care until now. In fact the one solid news story I have found seems to be one parent complaining. How is this political correctness gone too far?
I can't remember if I have posted in this or not but:
1) While I think they have done a good job on elves, gnomes, and goblinoids, other races feel like more an afterthought. There isn't much really unique or interesting about Golarion's kobolds, orcs, gnolls, or dwarves
2) The always evil tendency of some mortal races. For that matter, how hardwired alignment is into the rules system/setting.
3) Lack of support/variety in non-evil outsiders
4) How the afterlife works
Mostly I like what they have done with the setting, including incorporation of parallels to earth cultures and being relatively humanocentric.
I would have renewed my campaign setting subscription, but I am moving at the end of the month and just don't have the money to pay for multiple CS setting products at one time.
Something where it could be set up so that you get a monthly deduction would smooth over that problem
Several Nations and cities have active Golem works, including Nex and Magnimar. And the Jistka Imperium if memory serves was an ancient empire that used constructs as a backbone of their army.
Here is a strange question for you all, if I(or someone else) get this item's PDF early and list the monsters in the book on the site. Would you want them listed by CR, alphabetical order, or by creature type?
I just want them to put them on spoiler, cuz I don't want to spoil the entire list that early for myself, its more awesome to be suprised with every page you turn, I spoiled Bestiary 3 for myself, while I didn't know much about mythology and folkore creatures then (I didn't knew about Adaro, Baykok and others for example) now I know most creatures so the spoiler niveau would be much higher.
So please if that time comes, put them in the [/spoiler ]
Agreed...although it's way way way to early to worry how to list the monsters
a good analogy to guns might be Byzantine Fire. If I recall, the Byzantine Empire was able to keep that a secret even though it was a powerful and useful naval weapons, and if IRC we still don't really know the exact recipe.
Also, guns are much less a game changer in a world where wizards can cast fireball...
Actually at least two of the feats I mentioned were basically nonfunctional, and the third was just a gross and unholy thing. Also, I'd like to note, that at least 1 of those feats received revisions making it functional (though no longer anything like it was described) by Paizo because of forum feedback.
If anything, I think the fact Paizo reads their forums is a sign that the company may continue to improve.
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I also feel it's a bit unfair to call out individual feats as if they were independent entities. They were packaged within a 200 + page rulebook. Really you should be judging these products at the level of the book, in which case I would say the developers probably do come off much better than an amateur.
I judge rules based on rules. I've recommended books to people that were 2/3 absolute crap because of some incredibly good rules for something buried in the 3rd portion. As an actual company Paizo has more reasons to not include craptastic nonfunctional stuff. Because it reflects on their standards, and it is a waste of time, money, and space.
But I'll admit it's probably difficult. See, more than likely they probably have a few in house writers working on some things and then get a lot of freelancers. Now freelancers are "professionals" but the quality of their work can vary drastically from writer to writer. I'm fairly certain that this is how a lot of the stinky stuff gets through. On the other hand this is also how a lot of truly golden stuff gets through (the Juju Oracle for example gave many players something they have been longing for since Pathfinder launched, but the devs said they wouldn't have published...
It's very very difficult. From what I can tell here, the developers are in a constant state of catch up with the product line. I just don't think you can expect each book to be 100% perfect...There are too many deadlines and too much stuff to write/oversee. The fact that most people seem to think the books are generally solid (with a few duds here and there) to me says a lot. I would hazard a guess that if you created a team of amateurs from this forum to produce a hardcover book under the same development constraints as the Paizo Publishing team has, most teams would fail spectacularly.
Okay, answer this for me then: Why does anyone want this job at all? My impression is you really aren't going to be raking in big bucks, or even average middle class money. You are lucky to get full time and 30k a year.
If it isn't a "fun" job, if there is any iota of pita to it, why stay in it? I mean what happens when you get old, and you have bounced from company to company...
That could be said of any job really. I suspect working in a successful DnD company is more fun for the people working there than working in insurance or medicine would be, but that doesn't mean it isn't stressful or cause the occasional burnout. There are elements of Academia I hate and loath, but I love research and have kept at it. I am sure the same extends to people working at WotC or Paizo.
I think the whole quality is real or not goes back to the fact it is at it's heart subjective. Ashiel labels some feats as "non-functional", while some posters have also referred to the Rogue, Monk, and Fighter as. But obviously some people don't mind those classes and play them, which means that by there definitions those classes are functional.
I also feel it's a bit unfair to call out individual feats as if they were independent entities. They were packaged within a 200 + page rulebook. Really you should be judging these products at the level of the book, in which case I would say the developers probably do come off much better than an amateur.
It's easy to bash a developer when you yourself are not writing hundred of pages of feats, monsters, archetypes, rule systems, etc a year for public consumption. I suspect most of the people here would do far far worse if they were in the developer's shoes.
I also get a sense that the rules are not written for power gamer optimizers...I suspect most people play at a level where they are not endlessly tweaking their characters for ridiculous amounts of damage, etc.
Yeah the character relationships just were not very developed for me to care, so a scene like this just seems...forced. I actually thought Uhura's and Spock's relationship was better fleshed out (but not by much). And there was a tad too much pointing and winking at the viewer "see we watched Wrath of Khan as well, especially with the immediate "KHAAAAAAANNNN"
Part of me wonders though if this will be the last J.J. Abrams Star Trek. He I think has flat out stated he is a bigger fan of Star Wars, and now that he got hooked up to that, I could see him sort of dropping Trek.
I just have the feeling that your dissapointment with Moffat makes you look much harder for problems in episodes than perhaps other people. I personally think this season was the weakest of the new who seasons, with only a handful of episodes I really liked. That said I enjoyed the last two episodes and thought for the most part there were remarkably few plotholes that really snagged my attention. I don't necessarily need every explicit plot point explained in detail...
1: I also haven't seen the old Who episodes, but the online info on the great intelligence made it clear enough for me. The white-faced minions were just other thought forms of him (which is why he could just pop into at will, and why they disappeared when he entered the time stream). The random prisoner knew about the doctor stuff because the great intelligence used him as a trap basically, knowing the information would get to the Doctors friends. As for how it could travel through time and space, it wasn't a flesh and blood entity, but a being of mind, and could probably ignore a lot of rules of reality
2: My impression was that the GI was just plain tired of having every plot and attempt at power thwarted by the Doctor, including plans that future incarnations have probably interfered with. The GI wanted to end its life in the way that would punish the doctor in the worst way imaginable.
I also don't think its cannon that GI is a Great Old One...I know some of the novels have dabbled with mixing Lovecraft and Who, but the show hasn't and that is really the cannon that matters
3: Agreed...Madame Vastra's wife should have stayed dead, at the very least
4: To each there own...at least part of the motivation was remembering stuff that happened from being in the Tardis tomb. I don't find this a failing of the writing but more a problem of having only 6 episodes with the character, and more time being devoted to her mystery than to her personality.
your 2nd post:
1: The GI was subtly messing with things, not straight up attacking the different incarnations. We see at least one instance of her helping...she suggested first Doctor take a different Tardis than the one he was going to. I assume most of the fixes she was involved in were minor butterfly effect circumstances
2: She wasn't navigating...she was splintered into a million versions throughout the timeline
3: Does she always die? Those two circumstances yes, but to be honest she was really in many ways already dead in Asylum.
4: This I admit was a bit confusing...although it didn't much bother me.
Irrisen getting buried in snow doesn't seem like such a problem to me. I live in Laramie and we don't get much snow, but do get the cold temperatures. We still end up with snow loss even on very cold days, due to dryness, plus I assume Irrisen still gets sunny weather, which would be enough to melt snow even if it's below freezing.
Also the snowfall might not be all that bad, and many of the major populations centers might be near areas that don't get much. Drifting patterns could also explain things...wind might cause snow to build up in certain areas but not others. And even with all that, you can still remove snow...snow removal might be big business in parts of Irrisen.
It was better than I thought it would be...I actually liked that I was spoiled on the Khan reveal, as I would have been more irritated with all of J.J. Abrams denials had I found out during the movie.
Spoiler:
Although the magic blood at the end was lame. I didn't for one second believe they would kill off kirk, so the long emotional goodbye there seemed pointless, other than just a nod to Wrath of Khan.
I suspect the same problem that I had with the last Abrams Trek will probably emerge. I enjoyed it while watching it, but a couple of weeks from now I will be hard pressed to remember much about the movie at all.
Minor annoyances:
Why the hell are there no ships around the Klingon or Federation home world? You think both races would invest in some sort of defense grid or at least have ships stationed and monitoring local space. Modern day USA has a better controlled airspace than that present during Federation rule
And really...The federation has no dedicated warships? I get they are peaceful for the most part, but how the hell have they kept from being conquered?
I think I recall them mentioning that they have had to "break up" that pattern in the past when a planned for AP didn't work out they way they intended.
I think that is why we got the Pirate and Journey to Tian Xia APs back to back.
There isn't a Rat King yet, but like the Namazu and some others Wesley said that the Rat King is on the list, so its probably in bestiary 4 or maybe it comes in a AP bestiary soon?
I do hope the Rat King would be a little bit more than just some normal rats that are merged together with their tails.
I hope they are intelligent alien rats that are merged together in horrid, distasteful ways.
I don't think the list you keep referring to is the list of creature in Bestiary 4, but rather a list Wes keeps of monsters to sometimes stat up. That could mean hardcover bestiary, but could also mean campaign setting, AP, etc. And it could mean statted out this year or 4 years down the line
In Distant Worlds, space travel is set up more through stargate like portals and technology-based space ships. It's less a fantasy take of space travel than one that draws it's tropes from classic science fiction/pulp
a "landscape turtle" though by it's nature needs to be large or colossal. Looking at a distant mountain or hill and then see it get up and walk away is part of the appeal of such creatures (the same way as fish or turtles who are so big they can be mistaken for an island, only for them to sink underwater)
having something that amounts to a pile of dirt walk away = not very impressive.
Actually the Blood war between devils and demons doesn't really exist in Pathfinder. Also it's debatable how much Asmodeus was actually kicked out of Hell...although so far we have only his side of the story.
I will support the early post. Sarenae is pretty much the archrival of Asmodeus, as she was the protege to Asmodeus's brother, who he murdered, and whose place she took.
If they get the rights back and then invest money into doing a big screen awesome looking adaptation of Dragonlance (or the Drizzt books), than I think they will make a fortune. Serious fantasy is in right now, and people will pay to see awesome dragons and medieval battles (see the LOTR movies, which were insanely successful, and didn't just attract book fans).
That said, neither proposed movie has any talent behind it that makes me optimistic, and Hasbro seems more interested in brainless action flicks than producing anything else, so I see that being the biggest problem.
An even better example of relevancy is if Shattered Star becomes cannon, than the Magnimar book is already out of date, since A good chunk of the city is taken out by a Tsunami, and a lost Thassilonian city now sits offshore. That all happens as part of the AP, not just a hypothetical possibility depending on if the PCs win or not.
I think you can carefully advance the timeline like they did in Shattered Star (by being vague and only advancing things when necessary). Entire inner sea cannon advancement is going to render a lot of stuff current product unsellable.
But I am working on the idea that we really don't know how Wrath of the Righteous ends
My guess is that the PCs take on Deskari, but does that mean if they win the Worldwound would close?
That would be a HUGE Change, since it would basically completely change a region of the world. Sure there would still be demons and much of the landscape would be tainted by the energies of the Abyss, but there would no longer be a new influx of demons, and people could realistically resettle and fight back the evil.
But we don't know if that will happen. Perhaps killing Deskari just creates chaos and a power vaccuum. The crusaders would have a respite as other demon lords or nascent demon lords jockeyed for power, and infighting within the enemies ranks would provide a respite for the crusaders. If the worldwound remains open, which might very well happen, then the actual layout of the inner sea might not change much.
Don't like anything published in a Paizo product? Rewrite it at your table, or spend your money elsewhere. Maybe try letting Paizo know by telling someone who works there instead of identifying yourself to the community as someone incapable of taking a marker to your own books. (And Paizo'll probably politely accept and discard your reasoning anyway as long as they're making enough money and/or believe they're doing the right thing in the end.)
The only value in threads like this one is to populate ignore lists.
So you're basically saying...
Don't like rogues? - rewrite it.
Think pally's are OP? - change it.
Believe color spray should be level 2? - house rule it.
Certainly there'd be fewer discussions. Oh wait, you've participated in many of these type of discussions.
Changing, say the sexual orientation or gender of a character, versus house-ruling classes, spells, etc is not comparable. If you don't like a character because of his orientation, the only thing you need to do is ignore him (if its a minor character), don't bring up the orientation with your group, or just change the gender to something you are comfortable. I would guess most GMs make far far more radical revisions to APs and modules than what I listed above, so why should this be such a huge problem.
to back up a bit...I never got a sense that people didn't like Shattered Star because it advanced the timeline, but because people didn't like reporting to the Pathfinders, or didn't like the repetitiveness of the dungeons, or people thought it was too traditional.
although at this point I wonder what if anything this has to do with Wrath of the Righteous....
Honestly, it sounds like whoever wins, we are going to be stuck with a crappy (if big budget) movie. I don't have much hope for a DnD movie written either by the Wrath of the Titans movie, or by the guy behind the Fast and Furious series.
The only vaguest sense of hope I have for such such a movie is that the success of Game of Thrones and the Hobbit might at mean we get a fantasy movie aimed at adults without heaping loads of cheese.
Yeah I got the feeling that Shane Black wanted to do an action movie, not a action superhero movie.
Spoiler:
How else to explain that even Rhody spent very little time in the suite, or how easily he was captured as Iron Patriot.
Although it's funny...given that the movie's focus was the idea that Tony Stark was a the super hero and not iron man, which was completely undercut at the end. Tony needed to be saved by a super-powered Pepper Potts, which kind of felt as if they were saying...well...Tony does need the suits after all
Angels/archons and devils might both appear in prayers, but they are not going to offer the same thing. And Angel will offer you what you need, not necessarily want. If you want power, wealth, influence, or just good old fashion revenge, a devil is more than happy to provide you with the means.
As far as why gods don't just smash everything if they don't draw power from mortals, well consider the following.
As mentioned above, mortal souls provide the troops and minions of the goods. Cut off the supply and you can not replenish your ranks in any sort of outer plane war, and you weaken your position.
Also many gods started off as mortals...they might maintain the status quo out of simple sentimentality.
Lawful evil understands that, so that is why they don't more actively smash worlds, preferring to orchestrate schemes that allow mortals to exist. And at least some lawful evil gods may actually be deluded enough to care about mortals in a strange sick fashion. Zon Kuthon wants to "improve" mortals, not wipe them out
Good doesn't intervene more directly...because Good is about helping people, not destroying/subjugating them.
Neutral gods probably don't care enough.
That really only leaves the neutral evil and chaotic evil gods. Some of those probably aren't powerful enough to challenge other dieties. Look what happened when Aolar ticked off Desna. Others have to worry about rivals in their own plane (see Lamashtu and Pazuzu, or demons and Qlippoth).
I mean, occasionally you get a destructive god hell bent on ruining everything. But those gods bring down the wrath of all the other gods, even those who are neutral or evil. Look at the cosmic throw down that happened when Rovagug tried to annihilate everything. No god wants to be imprisoned or killed if he/she/it can help it.
I think in a low magic world, the chance of a undead spawning another of it's kind is also much reduced. Normally, except for maybe those people who are evil or greedy, a person that is killed by a shadow just dies, and doesn't create a shadow.
Not RAW but that is probably how I would deal with those sorts of problems. That and make them naturally rare and limited to very specific locations.
Although Lizardfolk are neutral, correct? So I don't see why you couldn't have lizardfolk being raised by other lizardfolk.
There Xenophobia is a bit justified, given that they have mostly been pushed off into swamps, deserts, and other environments that the other races are less interested in. Raising up Lizardfolk with human-focused gods and trying to "civilize" them strikes me a bit too much as what happened to Aboriginal peoples in Australia and the new world.
Although that COULD make an interesting adventure hook right there...
Generally I have had mixed feelings on past Alluria Publishing bestiaries, but I would say the Bestiary section in Azure Abyss is solid gold, and their best yet.
I wasn't aware that economic success was the the only way we defined quality. In that case McDonald's is the best restaurant in the world, and Michael Bay's Transformer movies are a superior work of film than Schindler's List.
Missandei...who in the books is something like 10-11 years old. There is more of a mother-daughter vibe between those characters in the books, but obviously thats not a direction they are taking with show Missandei.
Not sure if I spelled her name right...going off of memory.
Scutosaurus is a pareiasaur, which belongs to a basal clade of reptiles. It MAY be a distant relative to turtles, although it is more likely some oddball that left no descendents
