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In the original publication of Rise of the Runelords, the Seven Thassilonian Virtues of Rule which the Runelords corrupted into the Seven (Deadly) Sins that power their magic were described essentially as more 'moderate' version of the same impulse as the sin they became, and were also to an extent held as 'virtuous' less in a strictly moral sense, and more that these were conditions a good ruler would create in their nation--i.e., the concept which the likes of Karzoug would eventually pervert into 'Greed' was originally about a ruler's duty to build the wealth of the nation. Later information about Thassilon instead made the Seven Virtues the direct opposites of the Seven Sins.
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When I ran Jade Regent, I subtitled it 'Journey to the East' to put the emphasis on the travel aspect which dominates the AP, and of course as a reference to the classic of Eastern literature which (as Overly Sarcastic Production puts it) kind of originates episodic anime encounters. In that context, the polar crossing seems a lot less disconnected, I think. (Although I did also throw in a Nogitsune assassin as they were getting close to the other side of the crossing.)
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I'm running a Strange Aeons game on Roll20, and we're starting What Grows Within next session. Does anyone have suggestions for battlemaps I could use for some of the semi-random encounters in the streets of Neruzavin, like the ambushes by Seeded creatures, or the fungal Juggernauts?
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So, with the Guardian Mirror, is there any more detailed means of deactivating it besides just breaking it? It says Dispel Magic just shuts it down temporarily, and just hitting it a bunch seems a bit anticlimactic a solution. How did other people handle it?
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Freehold DM wrote:
You know that was never the action that has been under discussion. You also know that even if it were, if someone did that to you, it wouldn't justify stabbing them a dozen times.
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Freehold DM wrote:
And you go right on ahead playing in a nightmare world where the personification of justice and honor acts like a petulant, Chaotic Evil brat.
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...I really have to think you are being deliberately disingenuous at this point if you can't see the inherent contradiction in 'power doesn't let you ignore morality' and 'It's OK for a God to do something immoral to you for a minor offense, because they're a God, and you're not.' 1) Mocking someone is not necessarily immoral, especially when that person is *more* powerful, rather than less powerful.
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Freehold DM wrote:
OK, so power means you get to ignore morality? You'd let the Paladin do it if they were 20th level questioning someone first level? Or if they had Mythic Ranks? Maybe if they had the Mythic Power that allows them to grant spells like a God?
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hyphz wrote: The problem with No Cause for Alarm isn't that it's narrow, it's that the dissonance of the Frightened condition means that now there are two kinds of fear, one which you can just calm people down from by talking to them in the normal way and the other which has a status effect and can only removed if you have a feat to let you to.. talk to them. ...Sounds to me like it's the Frightened condition *being a condition* that does that.
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Freehold DM wrote: I hope it is still in there. It continues to weird me out how good must equal nice and actively insulting a god means zero consequences whatsoever. Not having the right answers to inane questions is not an insult, and even if it were, assault is not by any reasonable standard a proportionate consequence to insult.
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NobodysHome wrote:
I believe Book 6 indicates that Lowls' actions will pull Thrushmoor into Carcosa if Book 6 isn't done. Not world-ending, but not great. Plus, he'll become a new Xhamen-Dor, where killing him in book 6 *might* eliminate the threat of Xhamen-Dor permanently.
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Themetricsystem wrote:
A psion dedicating all his power points to blasting one cheap effect would be akin to a sorcerer dedicating all slots to Magic Missile. Worse, in fact, by 3.P implementations, because psions have to spend extra power points to scale damage dice. Likewise, they had specific rules against Nova, as there's a hard level-based cap to how many PP they can spend on a single effect, including both the basic cost and further augmentations. Combined with the fact that they're drawing from a single fungible pool of 'slots', I think they're rather *less* nova-prone than Vancian casters.
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Robofallgames wrote: If they want to wait and see then let them arrive at Cassomir. They can still complete the Dream quests at Cassomir but will have to essentially "gauntlet" them since there won't be any ship events to break up the dream segments. My issue has been that it takes so much time between Illmarsh and Razmiran that there *haven't* been ship events to break up the dream quests, and most of the ship events are probably going to happen after they've completed the main meat of the book. Possibly, I should have encouraged them more to take crafting feats...
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They don't remove 'become a straight-up god' from the menu, though. Starstone's still there, and nothing the PCs do actually ensures Tar-Baphon can't access it, just that he can't do so *right now*. No given reason he couldn't just teleport there.
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Rysky wrote:
Off the top of my head...: Karzoug possesses Mokmurian and his statue in the Runeforge to taunt the players in Rise of the Runelords. Hell's Rebels is about as built around interacting with the villain as Curse of the Crimson Throne is. Iron Gods makes particular note of Unity conversing with the party during their explorations of the Silver Mount.
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Douglas Muir 406 wrote:
It's like if you watched Star Wars and saw the Death Star blow up planets, but any scene involving actual conversations or character moments fom Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin were cut. The Empire is obviously despicable and massively dangerous, but we'd be given no *personality* to hang it on. Tar-Baphon is a big fat cipher, a Generic Doomsday Villain without even the entertainment value of offering sadistic taunts. He's a villain that Paizo's been hyping for years, but I couldn't offer any new insights on his character after reading the whole adventure path dedicated to him. 'Scariest lich hates everything, has magic nuke' may be impressive, but it's not *interesting* on its own.
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James Jacobs wrote:
Reading through for me, the issue that came to mind was that the initial ambush might leave some players might leave players expecting some big attack on Breachill that they need to stay around to defend against, or, since they don't know the key they acquired last adventure goes to Ravounel, they might try to set up traveling there overland or something. Basically, that initial encounter *creates* a feeling of urgency, but disconnects that urgency (without metagame information) from the act of portal exploration the adventure actually depends on.
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I'm saying, someone being evil-aligned is not, and never has been license to attack them, and you certainly can't attack them *to find out if they are evil.* That is, in and of itself, evil and grounds for any Champion-sponsoring deity to retract those powers. This is one of the oldest discussions about paladin powers there is, and J can't remember the last time I saw someone seriously suggest that a Paladin had a license to assault people for the crime of 'being evil.' But then, given the fact you are trying to seriously invoke Iomedae in Wrath of the Righteous as not being massively out of character, let alone suggesting that it is any way binding or informative to GM decisions, I suspect you're not arguing in good faith to begin with.
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Rysky wrote:
He seems to be taking the position that Iomedae's appearance in Wrath of the Righteous was actually indicative of the alignment system, and not a massive, massive writing fail. Look, we all know that it was already a fall-worthy offense, not to mention something that would get your character arrested, to spam Detect Evil at everyone in town and attack them if they pinged. This is even worse because the detection is in and of itself an assault.
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'Follower alignments' only refers to Clerics, Champions, and other characters who are directly receiving power from the God. It's the replacement for the one-step-removed rule in 1E. A layperson can worship whomever they like, but Pathfinder's current thinking is that someone who channels the God's power needs to be pretty thoroughly in sync with them. That said, in my Golarion, Asmodeus will absolutely still empower LN worshipers, because the way I see it, that's an essential strategy for his Big Lie.
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Ekaj wrote: I have a question about the Oasis. Is the doubles fight going to be too easy if I don't do the tree fight? The tree really just seems unnecessary for the story, and it really doesn't make sense for it to occur and then the Mad Poet walks out and is all like "oh hello, didn't know you were here." So is the party going to be too strong for the final fight without it? Any unique experiences in general that anyone had with this section would also be appreciated. Haven't gotten there yet myself, so hard to say for sure. But if you want to tune up their doubles to compensate for them going into the fight fresh and full, you could probably give the doubles an extra level.
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Cat-thulhu wrote:
I'm with you there, honestly. I adored the Arcadian setting and want to see so much more of it, but as a brief visit in the midst of an apocalyptic crisis in the Inner Sea, it felt disconnected and unsatisfying to me in sum. Sort of the issues people had with the Cinderlands excursion in Curse of the Crimson Throne writ large, especially as I had previously been ignorant of Arazni's connection to Arcadia, or even that the Inner Sea and Arcadia had any significant contact beyond one Ulfen colony, let alone stretching back so far as predating the Shining Crusade. And especially the presentation of the reveal of how the obols could be used to engineer Tar-Baphon's defeat felt... lacking to me. I'm sure some of that is the difference between text and play, but despite her characterization as a magical expert who had made a study of the tree the shares were made from, something about the expository NPC felt off in being the one to outline things, especially given the enormous sacrifice involved. Maybe something to do with how newly she's introduced and the general potential sense of disconnect from Whispering Tyrant activity, the idea that someone the PCs have just met and doesn't really know who Tar-Baphon is, is telling them they need to annihilate themselves completely to stop him. Or maybe it's how hypothetical the whole plan feels, given how much of a sacrifice it requires.
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This was literally the first I'd heard that Arazni was from Arcadia or that Aroden had ever been there. My impression was that Arcadia was almost entirely uncontacted by the 'main' setting, aside from a relatively recent Ulfen settlement. I assume that this information was mentioned in other materials, but I think I would be far from alone in finding it confusing. And my point is that the information about Tar-Baphon's fate is not *in the adventure*, which is where it needs to be if you're asking the PCs to *annihilate themselves completely* to achieve it. The Radiant Fire is a monstrously powerful weapon, but Tar-Baphon is so powerful even without it, that if it's not perfectly clear that he can't go right back to sieging Absalom the moment he's put himself back together, it becomes very easy to get the sense that the PCs have destroyed their souls just to be a speed bump. That's not the intention or the actual outcome, but it is, IMO, the presentation.
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Rysky wrote:
The problem is, we have *no idea* what that something is. Technically, from the information present within the Adventure Path, we have no idea that something *is* up, because the fact that he does not stir from the Isle of Terror after rejuvenating is contained in separate material. So far as the adventure itself tells us, he loses a portion of a portion of his army; a weapon which was powerful but rapidly running out of uses, and which specfically did not factor into his attempt at gaining Godhood; and however much time it takes to rejuvenate and regather troops. There's no indication given that he loses any personal power, and his army is by its nature replaceable. He certainly hasn't lost his chance at godhood--he failed at one attempt, but the Starstone is still there. (And frankly, a full-scale assault on Absalom was the stupidest way of pursuing it, when all he had to do was teleport to it.) So far as the text of the adventure goes, the PCs accomplishment is wildly asymmetric at best. Getting rid of the Radiant Fire is huge, sure, but utter annihilation of the self is an out-of-proportion cost when it seems that Tar-Baphon could be back at the gates of Absalom in a month at the outside. Some specific mention, if only to the GM, that the lich's rejuvenation would be prolonged and that he'd lose a significant chunk of mythic power in the process, or damage his phylactery, or *something* would have gone a long way to mollifying the complaints. To say nothing of how the information about how this heroic sacrifice is received half a world away from someone who had no idea who the Whispering Tyrant even was. Like, I love the Arcadia setting that we got, but it's presence came right out of left field in this adventure path, and something about it makes the whole explanation feel that much more tenuous for me.
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blahpers wrote:
I have vague plans on employing Corruptions as get-out-of-death-not-quite-free cards if necessary. Also, in the second book, Klazcka might be able to get in contact with her superiors in the Church of Pharasma to arrange a Raise Dead or two, and in Book Three most of the really lethal encounters are in the Dreamlands where they won't fully 'take'. After that,they're starting to get to the levels where they can arrange their own ressurections more easily.
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By my reading, Unbreakable basically adds 10 ft. to the safe fall distance under Cat Fall, where you would be taking no damage--you subtract your Cat Fall distance, at which point you'd be taking damage as if falling 10 ft. Unbreakable then makes you take damage as if you fell half that distance--i.e., give feet, at which point, you're below the threshold at which damage is taken from falling.
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Captain Morgan wrote:
On the other hand, the lower levels of Cat Fall seems like it would combo fairly well with Unbreakable for making someone who can hurl themselves off fairly significant drops from earlier levels.
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It may be worth keeping Corruptions in your back pocket as a tool for saving a character from death with a cost before the party can get reliable access to Raise spells; the story being told can be tricky to bring new/replacement PCs into, given the central mystery of shared amnesia and the reasons behind it, so having a means of keeping the party alive that still emphasizes the horror instead of feeling they're under the DM's protection could be most useful.
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LordKailas wrote:
Surely 'total bonus in a skill' would include any circumstantial bonuses to that skill?
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Slim Jim wrote: Any addlepated GM out there who'd rule that "Channel Positive Energy" (paladin class feature at 4th) is not a subset of "Channel Energy" would also rule that paladins couldn't take Extra Channel in the first place because they're not meeting its "Channel energy class feature" prerequisites based upon the same twisted rationale. Good thing I didn't say either of those things, then. I rather specifically said that the paladin ability is a subset of Channel Energy, which makes it rather presumptuous in the first place to think that it's giving them special bonuses it's not giving to other people who have the same feature. What Paladins do not have is *discrete uses* of Channel Energy in the same way Clerics do. A Cleric gets a certain number of Channels per day, while a Paladin must expend two of the discrete uses of their seperate Lay on Hands ability to use Channel. So a Paladin has the Channel Energy class feature to qualify for the feat, but the benefit that it gains must be written in terms of its Lay on Hands ability, because it cannot use Channel Energy without the Lay on Hands ability. Also, until you pointed it out, I had thought the Paladin ability was just Channel Energy. Observing now that you are correct that the Paladin feature is specifically called Channel Positive Energy, your reading becomes even more indefensible: "Special: If a paladin with the ability to channel positive energy takes this feat, she can use lay on hands four additional times per day, but only to channel positive energy." With Channel Positive Energy being the *literal name* of the paladin ability, you'd have to resort to nitpicking about capitalization to think that sentence is not very specifically referring to that precise Paladin ability--and even that wouldn't hold up, since the cleric ability Channel Energy is *also* not capitalized.
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Slim Jim wrote:
At the time Extra Channel was written,the Antipaladin did not exist, no class besides the Paladin had a Lay on Hands' ability, and it was (and so far as I'm aware, *remains*) impossible for a Paladin to multiclass into something which can use negative energy and retain Lay on Hands due to alignment constraints. Lay on Hands', while using positive energy, has never elsewhere been referred to as channeling positive energy, that terminology exclusively applying to the specific Channel Energy class feature. Your reading requires assuming an extraordinary level of future-proofing which would make it unbalanced at the time it was published with the assumption that future options would empower Extra Lay on Hands by making it 'more broad'. Paladins have a specific class feature called Channel [Positive] Energy. This is shared with Clerics, with the exception that while clerics get a set (but scaling) number of usages per day, Paladins sacrifice two uses of Lay on Hands to use theirs--but while Lay on Hands fuels Channel Energy, they are still distinct abilities, with only Channel Energy referred to as 'channeling positive energy'. The stated purpose of Extra Channel is to allow the Channel Energy feature to be used more often in a day. You can't give a Paladin two extra uses of Channel Energy, because they don't technically *have* uses of Channel Energy. You can't give them four extra uses of Lay on Hands, because that would be extraordinarily powerful, especially in light of another feat which exists to grant two uses of Lay on Hands. Giving them four uses of Lay on Hands *which can only be used to fuel their Channel Energy feature* gives them the same benefit as a Cleric--two extra uses of the Channel Energy class feature.
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Slim Jim wrote:
That is a deeply tortured misreading. You really think that 'but only to channel positive energy' is there to preclude an oddball build that's already precluded by alignment restrictions, and not a straightforward reference to the fact that Paladins have a Channel Positive Energy class feature which is fueled by uses of Lay on Hands? Why do you think a separate 'Extra Lay on Hands' feat exists that provides two extra uses if you think this feat provides four without restriction?
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YogoZuno wrote:
As can the Pnakotic Manuscripts looted from Melissen at the end of the last module, though you need to study that for a week to get its bonus.
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Dream Hag might be a little powerful...but doing a quick PFSRD search for monsters from the Dimension of Dreams, the Dream Spectre might actually be perfect--call it an unfinished 'template' the oasis spits out since it doesn't have full access to his memories. And if I'm feeling particularly nasty, if the Dream Spectre drains the Mesmerist fully of his Charisma, it can spontaneously metamorphose into a nightmare doppelganger of him!
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So, my group is just starting in on Dreams of the Yellow King, and I need a bit of advice to plan for the final encounter. I've already got stats for the Nightmare PCs--except that I've also just taken on a new player, whose character is unconnected with the amnesia backstory. Since his memories we're never sacrificed, he presumably wouldn't have a Nightmare doppelganger. Any suggestions on how I should adjust the final encounter to account for his presence?
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After the fact advice is tricky,since you probably don't want to retcon, and it's not clear how long they've been playing their replacement characters now. Eventually, they'll be able to acquire Raise spells on their own, which makes the whole thing much easier. In the meantime, Winter Klazcka might have enough clout to get some Scrolls of Raise Dead from the Church of Pharasma for them, and you might look into having PCs who would die survive but gain a Corruption from Horror Adventures from the experience, or a similar sort of semi-permanent drawback.
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You left out curses and mental manipulation from your list, which I'd say are the *most* common archetypes of witchy magic, and coincidentally, the ones that base witches absolutely have in spades. Combined with the Hexes and Patron spells that dip a lot into those other capabilities, the complaint feels rather cherry-picked to me.
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Yeah, while some could have used better wording, I *much* preferred the 'moderations'; the inversions don't fit with their schools of magic anywhere near as well and make the Runelords the more cartoonish for becoming the complete opposite of what they were supposed to be. As well, the moderations spoke to a certain different cultural sense of morality for Azlant and Thassilon, which is a more interesting angle.
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Akumamajin wrote:
Setting aside that I don't think 'disciplinary beatings' are either Good-aligned or even productive: what's the lesson? The PCs are getting 'sense whacked into them' for not knowing a detail of theological history that is *completely irrelevant* to the matter at hand, or for having a firmly set opinion on redemption (but they'd better not be *too uncertain about it, either!) And all to judge their worthiness for a task they're going to be sent on one way or another and whether they get useful tools for that task.
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Rob Godfrey wrote:
Exactly. Which is why Paladins should not be prohibited from lying in that context.
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So, my players have just fled the grounds of Iris Hill to rest after clearing the outbuildings and the first floor of the manor. Iris Hill was already on alert for the PCs before this first sally, after Risi escaped a failed attempt to kidnap them. I'm looking for advice on how Melissen will respond to the intrusion. She had pulled some of her forces back to her inner sanctum already, to guard against the PCs teleporting right into her midst via Star Stelae, and will probably want to maintain at least some of that guard. Forces she has remaining:
One thing I've considered is if she should make an open attack on Thrushmoor while the PCs are resting outside town, trying to gather up as many sacrifices as she can in one fell swoop, and thin her forces a bit from that effort. Or just a hunting party that (coincidentally) only catches up to the PCs after they've had the chance to rest? Thoughts?
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ikarinokami wrote:
Or here's a thought, we could use actually clear language to label chemicals, and recognize that Paizo is not responsible for lab safety? Using inflammable to mean flammable may be technically correct, but it is inarguably confusing to no benefit. There's not even any nuance of meaning between the two. It's the height of grammar snobbery, really, since it's a 'mistake' which is made by correctly applying the general rules of grammar. Or if we must keep the word, at least start spelling it 'enflammable' instead.
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