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The Dominion alchemical golem has been statted up in the composition book I use with the Bioconstruct modifications (heart and brain), a Rune of Defensive Shock, and a creepy doodle. Looks a bit Phyrexian.

Thanks for the ideas guys.

I'm a little annoyed with myself for accidentally re-using the dungeon "gating" system from a previous dungeon, but "Can't open the boss room door until you switch on the power, can't open the generator room door until you find the key at the other end of the dungeon" is a cliche for a reason. It works.

I've got it set up so that once they turn on the power, they can use the holo-map thingy that they're there for, but it ALSO switches on the anti-boarding system, a Dimensional Lock, that will stop them from dim-dooring out until they kill the ship's control system (the powered-up Vespergaunt).

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James Jacobs wrote:

We've got SOME Dominion of the Black stuff coming up in a few months in "Doom Comes to Dustpawn."

One thing to keep in mind though... the Dominion of the Black is NOT Lovecraft monsters. The Dominion and the Lovecraft monsters do share the Dark Tapestry (which is a big place), but they aren't the same.

I really really really REALLY like the idea that the Dominion of the Black is made up of neh-thalggu though. A lot. To a significant extent. That will likely have repercussions in future Dominion of the Black information.

YAY!

I planned from the get-go to avoid just Lovecraft Monsters, making it clear that the Mi-Go are as much interlopers and looters as the PCs. LovecraftIAN doesn't mean ripped straight from Mountains of Madness. I'm drawing on a bit of Dead Space, Event Horizon, Alien, and Prometheus for this. Thinking of using some of the more interesting oozes as environmental hazards; a lot of things are going to be mundane monsters re-fluffed to be more spacey; the devourers sure won't look human. I'm thinking that the original crew is long-gone, leaving behind the "automated systems" and servitor creatures. Saves me having to describe the Dominion.

Cosmic Horror isn't just "lol, lovecraft monsters," and I respect that you guys try to maintain some restraint when it comes to using them.

Also, I just statted up Mr. Gray, the Mi-Go leader. CR 12, 7th level vivisectionist, looks NASTY with his buffs and dex mutagen. 6d6 sneak on a grapple, AC 30. I think I'll toss in some acid-filled exploding bioconstruct minions to be his flank-buddes. Or some mutilated brain-extracted wildlife.

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So, to preface:

I'm currently running a game that started out in Kaer Maga, but has since spread into a planet-hopping campaign. At the moment, I'm having a lot of fun ripping off John Carter on Akiton, as the players are following the advice of a cryptic soothsayer and a trio of caulborn, trying to figure out what to do with their McGuffin.

Anyhoo, they've been led to the partially-excavated site of a buried Dominion of the Black spacecraft. The diggers were already killed or turned into Bodaks when they arrived, and now they're about to 'port into the craft's interior. I have a week to make the creepiest, brain-ripp'nest, geigerest dungeon I can manage. It's gonna be more than a series of combat encounters; puzzles, environmental hazards, tragic prisoners that can't be saved, the works.

I just need to populate the damn thing.

A band of Mi-Go and their minions are already prowling around the place, led by "Mr. Grey," an Alchemist (vivisectionist).

I'm also considering using the occasional bodak as a sort of "trap" (open door, bodak on the other side, everyone saves vs gaze before you have time to close your eyes).

Final boss might be an advanced Heresy Ooze (from Inner Sea Bestiary).

I'm also going to use a Devourer or two, maybe hooked up to the ship's systems somehow.

So, I come to you guys looking for ideas: I need suggestions for monsters in particular, but also traps and non-combat encounters. I'm paging through every bestiary I can find looking for creepy creatures.

In case you haven't guessed, I'm stealing HEAVILY from Prometheus for this.

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http://www.scribd.com/doc/97945722/Ethergauntsfor3p

Behold! Stats for the Ethergaunts in the Pathfinder ruleset. I came up with an additional technomagical item or two, and a whole new caste, the alchemy-using Blues.

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I utilize a Kindle Fire.

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Thank you! I will look that up;

Its such a shame that Ethergaunts are property of Wizards; I really think they could be kickass "Core" foes/monsters for, say, D&D Next; they'd stand out among all the bugbears and goblins; uniquely D&D, but New by virtue of being kind of old and less-known. Shame Paizo can't use them.

You just reminded me of how much I liked Downer; I mean, just the setting was... quintessentially D&D. It felt like 3.5's "Real" setting, the one you'd actually get if you used all the cool stuff from the actual books.

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Drejk wrote:
I think that best option is to rebuild them from scratch using monster creation rules. Either pick CR you want them to have or HD/ability scores you want them to have and calculate from one of those points the rest.

That's what I figured I'd have to do. But I kind of like the idea of making a project of it; a formal write-up that other people can use. On that basis, I'd like to make sure that I do the build WELL.

Also, I want to get lots of milage out of them, which means making it easy to give them class levels. I was also thinking of something like the Pale Stranger; a monster with PC class abilities, like giving the Reds a Magus's SpellStrike or Spell Combat abilities, or the theoretical Blues access to Bombs; but maybe that's just too silly compared to the "semi-psionic sterile purity" of arcane spellcasting.

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So, while recently dicking around a certain 40K-loving imageboard, someone reminded me that Ethergaunts exist. I'm doing a Distant Worlds campaign right now, and they'd be PERFECT bad guys for when things get seriously space-y; great concept for some sort of nefarious alien race. The etherealness also makes them interesting; space has an ethereal plane, too, so their ships are invisible/insubstantial most of the time; they pop out of nowhere, like Eldar.

Problem is, the Ethergaunt stats in the Fiend Folio are a bag of dicks. The CR 9 red ethergaunt only has 27 HP. They're so poorly-made, I don't know where to start converting them. I'd like to create a flexible statblock that I can apply various different classes to, and I'm really not sure how to balance/build monsters with automatic casting ability.

So far, I think I'll just replace their spell immunity with normal SR, and maybe give them some ability that applies their Int bonus to AC and/or saves. I also had a thought that the Reds actually cast spells as Maguses, and maybe making a new caste, the Blues, that have Alchemist abilities.

Perhaps build them so that there's only one stat block, but I suppose there should be separate stats for the Whites, Blacks, and Reds.

Any thoughts? I know that EVERYONE owns a physical copy of fiend folio, right? Wink Wink.

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Sergeant Brother wrote:
I have a bit of a crazy question here ... why not just give undead creatures a Constitution score? While all undead are immune to poison and the like, it seems reasonable that some undead will be tougher than others, have denser bones, thicker flesh, more resistance to being melted or disintegrated because of the composition of their bodies. This toughness would be based on the physical body of the undead creature, not what ever Charisma represents. That being the case, why not just give them a Con score and be done with it?

Because "Under the hood" details like that is why some people like 3.5 so much. Creatures that aren't fundamentally "Alive" are designated as such by not having a constitution score. it's a cool and "transgressive" thing for them to have.

Since undead no longer have d12 HD, and constructs gain bonus HP based on size, undead needed some way to have the right amount of HP for their level. Back in 3.5, the "Unholy Toughness" ability (which did exactly what undead now automatically get) got slapped on pretty much every new undead monster in Monster Manual 3 and after.

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martinaj wrote:
I agree entirely, but I feel that just because something makes for good inspiration doesn't mean we need to use exactly what inspired us. I think that, within the world of Pathfinder, the qlippoth fill the role in question here much better than actual Mythos monsters. To me, they just mesh better with everything we've already got in place. The qlippoth and the Mythos creatures are redundant - only one is required, and the qlippoth don't put as much pressure (for me) on the fourth wall.

You've touched on something there.

While it's very nifty and kitchen-sinky and all those things, I have to admit that the various extraplanar horrors like the Quippoth/Obyrith (especially since the Abyss is now the fundamental "Outside" of the planes) kind of devalue/are devalued by the material-plane horrors of the Outer Gods. Paizo did a good job of justifying their existence, and I think that the Mythos elements fit in really well with the conventional universe, but they make the various outer planes feel...small. Quaint. Limited.

Back in 3.5, you had the Far Realm, which was a great way to mesh the lovecraftian "Outside" with the conventional planar cosmology and heroic fantasy genre of the game. But since there's no catch-all Horrible Place that's completely outside the conventional planar cosmology, and may in fact be far more representative of the greater nature of reality than the Great Wheel, you have to go back to material-plane-bound beings that partially exist outside reality alltogether (not extraplanar) with names like Yob-Sodoff, which render the Quippoth redundant.

Of course, nothing stops you from leaving out the mythos stuff and sticking to the usual abyssal/infernal/daemonic ultimate evil enemies.

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Nikolaus Athas wrote:

The Alien Xenomorph I believe is based on a work of Giger's called the Demon, which has the classic biomechanical look but also has black eyes in its skull. I think that the story goes something like Scott thought that the Alien creature would be even more terrifying if it was blind.

Demon Image.

And thus he gave us an endless supply of subsequent creatures, all with no eyes and piano-key grins. Everything from Phyrexians to Slake Months have that setup.

Drawing on Geiger for the visual moteifs of the Dominion sounds pretty good. I can also imagine them using some other messed-up stuff, maybe...bioconstructs? sort of like the various kinds of Husks the reapers use? Fungus robots?

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A concept I rather liked from the later 3.5 monster manuals, the one thing that made them worth looking at, were the...Monster Families, I guess. Stuff like the Mindflayers of Thoon, a bunch of monsters with a common origin that can serve as the recurring baddies in a campaign, formatted sort of like the various Outsider entries (devils, Asuras, and so on), but not necessarily a bunch of extraplanar spirit beings.

I also think that the bestiaries could do with more templates to modify existing monsters, or just variant abilities for existing monsters. I find such things very useful for making, say, Thassilonian Guardian Constructs or horrible creatures from beyond reality.

Speaking of that, I think that some monsters explicitly associated with specific Great Old Ones would play nicely, especially Paizo's original ones, Xamen-Dor and Mhar.

Xamen-Dor in particular would be a great place to put in some Necromorph-eseque plant/zombie infector undead, in the same vein as the Spawn of Kyuss (which I know at least SOMEONE at paizo likes a lot). Everyone loves Necromorph knock-offs.

Perhaps, if paizo ever makes a big thing of rules for undead creation, some undead specifically meant to be crafted by players, or bad guy minions, with more interesting abilities than generic skeletons. Undead with armor and weapons stitched/grafted on, that explode when you kill them and release toxic fumes, or big undead that you can wear like powered armor.

More Dark Tapestry monsters, more Aliens, and maybe some stuff from Australia and Arcadia. Also, if paizo wants to make more dinosaurs, you could 1. invent some new species based on speculative evolution, or, 2. make an intelligent dinosaur playable race. Like raptors. Everyone loves raptors. See: http://povorot.deviantart.com/art/Bronze-Age-118833770

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James Sutter wrote:
Since I wrote the third adventure for Shattered Star, I can safely say that you'll find some stuff from Distant Worlds hiding in there. And City of Strangers, for that matter. :)

Multiple questions/comments

1. Actually, I've been working on a City Of Strangers campaign of my own, and Distant worlds has given me a bajillion ideas for some arcs at mid-level. The two books really complement eachother.

by the way, does that fungus patch under Kaer Maga have something to do with the new Fungus Great Old One? Or is it just a demon lord?

Also, are the Dreaming Stones some sort of dormant Gate, or a navigational/scrying tool? I'm trying to remember anything else in City of Strangers that explicitly links to Distant Worlds.

2. If we want to really push the "this book is awesome" thing, what's the best way to do it? I already picked it up from my FLGS today, and I intend on spreading around some positive reviews. Is it better for paizo to have people buy things off the site?

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I've got to say, I find Varisia personally very compelling. It sort of typified what Pathfinder means to me; breaking out of old ruts in D&D and doing something interesting with old tools, making something that feels new and different despite being rather old. It heavily features the classic RPG mainstays of Goblins and Ogres and Giants and Wizards, but makes them actually fit into the world. It made Lamias a major enemy. Lamias! that's an achievement in and of itself.

Then the rest of the setting came along and went all kitchen-sink psudo-post-renaissance or whatever you call it. Which is great, don't get me wrong, but I still have a fondness for the original region.

I'm fine with Shattered Star being a true sequel to Rise of the Runelords, and I'm also fine with leaving varisia for a good while. Here's hoping the AP after that will finally be the Numeria one. My players have a hankering for alien juice.

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Drakli wrote:

Well, credit where credit is due.

I thank you most gratefully for inventing him and the Paizo developers for leaving him in place!

Out of curiosity, is there any kind of a story behind why he's called Third? Is he Allig the Third, or is Third his family name, or some kind of title or moniker?

If you read the article again, you'd see that he once had a last name, but started calling himself "Third" after investigating the ruin and becoming addicted to alien juice.

Just the moniker Third doesnt correspond to any *Earthly* titling system; the author probably intended to suggest that he'd come under the influence of something within the wreckage. Maybe he's the third being that the entity in the wreck has possessed/influenced.

Speaking of that article, I also liked the mention of the Bone Sages of Eox the Dead. Alien space liches are awesome, because they don't need to breathe in space.

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Damnit, While i like the idea of another AP set in Varisia, that finishes off most of the plot threads there and explores more territory, my players are going to cry "Why no Numeria AP?? I want to laser guns, and get addicted to Alien Juice! ALIEN JUICE!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Sigh.

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The first Book of the Damned has a thing about the origin of the gods and other spiritual beings; the Seal (I'm pretty sure it means like a seal on a letter, not a pinniped). It was a warm spot of light in the void of the outer sphere, and at one point, it disgorged motes. The motes swirled around, basking in it's glow. Then, an uncountable eon later, it disgorged a second batch, which were consumed by the first motes, which had grown in the interim. More motes were birthed, and not all of them were consumed, some surviving as lesser beings. and in this state before time, the first spiritual beings gained complexity. Fear and Predation, and Companionship and Thought, began to take shape.

And another uncountable eon later, the Motes had names of their own. The two greatest, from the first batch, were close, as brothers. One was called Ihys, and the other Asmodeus.
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The Seal is some sort of insensate, probably non-sentient power source. Sort of like a less tentacular, spiritual Azathoth, I suppose.

It's the closest thing to an overdiety you're going to find in-cannon, probably. It gives a source to all the spiritual entities that haven't come from the Abyss or the Maelstrom, since those are the other two big sources of reality (though the Maelstrom [and thus all of reality] might just be a cast-off fragment of the abyss. Or something. the Abyss certainly predated the Maelstrom.) Axis is apparently something that dropped in from a completely different reality, though. Maybe it was an accretion point for other planes?

But that's the outer sphere, not the material plane itself.

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So, I found a bid old stack of Dragon mags in my attic, and I moved them to the bathroom for toilet reading.

Trust me, I'm going somewhere with this.

Anyways, I found some tiny article on arcane focus, which was pretty much just like Psionic focus. And it occurred to me that forcing someone to chill and gather themselves for a big casting is kind of a cool subsystem.

Sometimes it strikes me that casting is a little too...easy. Barring an attack roll, or a concentration check when you're being distracted, casting a spell is like firing a gun. I realize that this is sort of part of vancian casting; you load the powder and the shot at the beginning of the day, then fire your brain-gun later.

We've already got on-the-fly casting in the Words Of Power system, so wouldn't it be kind of cool to also have a few more dramatic casting mechanics?

I guess what kind of sparked this thought was a friend of mine talking about why he liked the magus, but not other casters. he likes to be a s@!%-kicker, and it's hard to be a physical badass as a full-caster.

And then I thought of the Dresden Files. And it got me thinking about more dynamic magic systems, that allow wizards to push themselves in extremis, for example. Like, being able to take hit point or mental damage to cast a spell even when you're out of slots/points, or to jack the caster level at the cost of taking Fatiuge/exhaustion/going unconscious. I'm just saying it would be kind of cool for casters to have obvious physical/mental effort go into their art.

Then again, you could say the same for combat classes. melee combat is freaking tiring; anyone who's played AmtGuard for a few minutes knows that firsthand. even for someone with physical conditioning who isn't a pasty nerd, pulling off extended fighting full of fancy moves would be hard. Special actions like Power Attack could have a cost associated with them, like a certain number of Fatiuge points, maybe based off your con score/mod (like, you have Stamina equal to your Con+class level). A lot like Ki points, really. Yeah, fighter Ki points, that you spend to pull of semi-tome-of-battle-esque special moves, which you get access to via feats (something more to do with fighter bonus feats). Like: Pay 1 stamina, get a free trip with your next attack.

The only problem is that this would be per/day, when it really makes more sense to be per/encounter (up to a point). Maybe between combat, you can regain one or two stamina, but you can still be completely exhausted at the end of the day. It would be cool to have Fatigue come up a little more often, as a penalty for exerting yourself.

Of course, most combats don't go longer than a minute, ususally much less.

I mean, say what you will about 4E, but giving melee dudes lots of cool combat powers that let them shove people or lower their defenses or whatever was a pretty cool idea.

Just random thoughts.

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I think that a mod or two, evoking the style of Planetary Romance, might be a good test of the idea. Let people keep their swords-and-sorcery, but on sn alien world, with tech and magi-tech in the background

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Arnwyn wrote:
Fraust wrote:
Also, the fact that we played monsters, not some prancy little metro sexual emo whelps,

:D

Quote:
I'm not understanding your point on the vampire serial killer thing. Truly curious, by the way. You don't understand a serial killer that specifically targets vampires?

Nope. I would never, ever, use the tremendously inappropriate misnomer "serial killer" in such a circumstance. Just as nobody would ever call a person who swats mosquitoes a "serial killer" (of mosquitoes). Definitely a WTF moment.

(Also, see both Tobias' and Helaman's posts.) While my players certainly aren't necessarily "kill anything not in the PHB" type of people, vampires (or undead in general - definitely those marked as "any evil") aren't really given the benefit of the doubt. And good on 'em, AFAIC.

But mosquitoes notably lack the capacity to dread their own demise upon seeing the fate of an erstwhile acquaintance. I'm sure that mosquitoes, gifted sentience, would regard humans as dangerous mass-murdering monsters who crush harmless, starving creatures (What, you need ALL your blood?).

As I understand it, the killings are destabilizing the vampire power structure, which means that the younger, more reckless and bloodthirsty members will start with the wanton slaughtering.

Of course, you could just kill ALL the vampires; that works even better.

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gang wrote:

If I had no experience of Pathfinder and you told me about the basic idea of Numeria and super science and all the rest of it, I'd expect to hate the idea on principle. Sci-Fi and fantasy don't mix, I would think.

But I love Numeria. I don't know why, but I do. Admittedly, I don't have DoG yet, but Numeria is one of my favourite places on Golarion so I'm keenly anticipating the section on the Red Redoubt.

Hurry up!

Probably because it's literally Crashed Into the setting, rather than being an actual part of it. It implies a greater universe out there, and creates a crazy scavenger-world aesthetic in the region.

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Drejk wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:


Divs are corrupted genies, and genies are the elemental plane trying to ape humanoid shapes, so divs are relatively recent. They certainly came along after daemons, and might even have come along after demons.

If demons are corruption of mortal souls incarnated and genies are elemental response to humanoids then probably divs as corruption of genies could be thought of as elemental imitation of demons and thus younger.

Quote:
As for psychopomps... they're the new kids on the block and as such I've not put a LOT of thought at all into them. So far, their development's mostly being spearheaded by Wes. If I had to guess, though, they probably came along at about the time mortals started dying, so probably between devils and daemons.
But this begs question: where they here before mortals, waiting for the first one to die or had spawned at the moment of first death, or came into existence only whence mortal death was already strongly estabilished part of the world...

The description for the Psychopomps suggests that Pharasma may have found them already at the boneyard, and crafted more in their image. The whole arrangement of souls travel and migration and judgement and whatnot is not the "natural" state of things, it's a system put in place by the gods to provide for their mortal worshipers/maintain a steady influx of power, or so I understand.

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HOWEVER, it should be pointed out that many of the alchemist's abilities, like the bombs and his infusions and mutagens, are not purely physical. they're literally not repeatable, because they have no effect on anyone other than the alchemist (or, their wonderful properties vanish if the alchemist prepares a new extract using that slot, or whatever).

The alchemist sort of works like a fan-WoD Genius, in that they perform sciency-seeming but impossible wonders by sort of imbuing a fraction of their own personal soul/ki/mana into their creations.

How that interacts with mundane alchemical crafting is an open question, of course, which is the point of this thread.

I like magic and suchlike to be an overlay on the real-world physics of a gameworld, and magic must interact with it. so, for example, that bomb the alchemist throws does have incendiary chemicals in it, along with some other odd, seemingly non-functional elements, or maybe missing a key ingredient. and for some reason, if a non-alchemist were to mix them on the spot and throw it, it just...wouldn't be the same. it wouldn't burn as hot, wouldn't light properly, wouldn't actually explode, just smoulder.

Alchemists can create clones and homuncluli, but that doesnt mean they can do advanced genetics or assemble gooey bio-robots and synthetic organisms, or know all the intermediary steps to that level of technology. The methods they use to make a Homunclulus or clone are of an occult bent.

I like Fullmetal Alchemist as much as the next guy, don't get me wrong. I'd love to see an RPG with internally-consistent magic rules that aren't kitchen-sink, but D&D isn't one of those. No, D&D has Ki/Chi AND hermetic magic AND Alchemy AND Psionic Powers AND Divine Miracles AND weird semi-science elder-thing-occult--math-stuff, and probably has Morphic Resonance too.

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James Jacobs wrote:
Sanakht Inaros wrote:
Rusty Shackleford wrote:
Lovecraft was a...odd individual. A shut-in, phobia-ridden anglophile who was very racist even for his time period.
Who, strangely enough, did a lot of traveling. His travelogues were collected and printed by Hippocampus Press. His essays.

Yup; it's true. He traveled EXTENSIVELY. He was hardly a shut-in.

It's pretty easy to cast judgements back through time at earlier ages. Folks who enjoy that might do well to keep in mind that 100 or so years in the future, our descendants will be doing the same to us.

I should hope so. If people 100 years from now don't consider us backwards barbarians, something will have gone very wrong.

Odd. I watched a documentary on Lovecraft a few months ago, I don't remember mention of much traveling. It wasn't the focus of the work, so perhaps it was downplayed. Or I just didn't pay close enough attention.

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I have some thoughts on this whole thing; bear with me for a moment.

Spoiler:
Games are hard to make these days. As a random example, look at Bioware's output. Consider the old days of NWN and Baldur's Gate, or even Kotor. Now look at Dragon Age and Mass Effect. adding a new character or planet to modern games requires months of work with voice actors and animators, plus a lot of math work to give the character's knockers the proper bounce, if they're female. Or look at Morrowind and Oblivion. When they went from text-only to full voicework, it sounded like piss. Think of all the pages and pages of text in Morrowind, just in the dialogue. Compare that to Oblivion's conversations about mudcrabs.

With that in mind, imagine this: the perfect, easy-to-mod fantasy game engine. essentially, the Neverwinter Nights engine, but cleaned up a little, and using the Pathfinder ruleset. models and textures a little enhanced, maybe a little more capacity for animations, but overall very modest. No physics-jiggle on the t*&#, no lens flair, and no requirement for everything to have a voice-actor. Maybe the artwork could be a little stylized, like Borderlands. It's a good way to hide limited resources.

Paizo could make content for it, other people could be outsourced to make content for it, normal people could make content for it. Good content could be "adopted" by paizo, and sold for 1-5 dollars, sort of like the App Store. A great way for new talent to break into the industry.

Imagine an Adventure Path on this engine. there's your first relase: Rise of the Runelords, the PC game.

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Sir Jolt wrote:

I doubt it; at least not for a long while.

They've already poo-poo'd the idea of doing a Numeria AP because of all the fiddly little rules that they would have to come up with to make it work. Also, they've already stated that the Advanced Firearms from the upcoming UC will not be a part of Golarion. So I'm not sure how much additional tech there is in Golarion to cover.

SJ

Every now and then you see little bits of advanced tech, like all the logging machinery in Carnival of Tears, clockwork constructs, and so on, plus all the lost technology of Azlant and the Shory, and the Council of Truth's various efforts.

Nonetheless, I do hope that they'll at least make a module set in numeria, to gauge interest and experiment; sort of like what they did with carrion hill

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Regions where typical adventuring can be undertaken: Varisia, Numeria, the River Kingdoms, the Shackles, realm of the Mammoth Lords, Land of the Linnorm Kings, the hinterlands of central avistan (darkmoon vale, Isger's dense woods, the Nirmathas border) Mwangi Expanse, Katapesh, and probably more I've forgotten.

Plus, lets not forget political skullduggery, cloak-and-dagger stuff, which can happen in the largest, most civilized of cities.

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Jonathon Vining wrote:
Rusty Shackleford wrote:

Space Liches are cooler.

Actually, Greater Teleport is quite adequate for traveling across the void. Prep nothing but greater teleport, put on a space suit and a ring of sustenance, and some air source, and cast teleport and greater teleport as much as you can. drift for 8 hours, prep your spells, wash rinse repeat.

Space liches don't need greater teleport. They just drift for horrific eons, contemplating their dread thoughts with supermortal intellect.

Sort of like byakhee, if byakhee were superintelligent.

You underestimate the sentient mind's capacity for boredom. You can only go mad, then go sane, then go mad again so many times before the whole process becomes dreadfully tedious. Inhuman alien monsters evolved for void-travel can manage it, but even Elder Things go into hibernation.

You have to be very stupid to not get bored drifting through space.
"Space, space. So much space, gotta see it all. Play it cool, here come the space cops. SPAAAAAAAAAAAACE!"

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Blackvial wrote:
Rusty Shackleford wrote:

"How long do they last? How long can a sentient being exist in solitude? Many would crush their phylacteries after a few million years, moving on to see what long-avoided doom awaits them. It's better than reading the same book again for the 5 billionth time.

Others would leave. pack their libraries in extraplanar mansions, and be off to the void. Perhaps in a great skeletal craft of fire and steel, perhaps simply teleporting a few thousand miles at a time, inching their way across the void in short hops..."

Or transform themselves into Demiliches and travel the Astral Plane

Space Liches are cooler.

Actually, Greater Teleport is quite adequate for traveling across the void. Prep nothing but greater teleport, put on a space suit and a ring of sustenance, and some air source, and cast teleport and greater teleport as much as you can. drift for 8 hours, prep your spells, wash rinse repeat.

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At the very least, a bag-0-minis of themed dudes would be nice, especially dudes you'd be likely to use a lot. Like, a bag-o-goblinoids, a bag-o-undead of various sorts, a bag-o vermin, a bag-o-dinosaurs.

Maybe just a bag-o-chumps, that contains a bunch of goblins, kobolds, orcs, and human thugs.

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"On how many worlds has it happened? On how many words did death win? How many worlds did the beguiling idea of a cold eternity take hold?

Entire planets of the dead. Zombified animals shambling about in a parody of life, lesser servitor undead toiling for a few ascendant lich-lords. The population slowly dwindling over the eons due to accident, violence, or existential despair.

Until eventually, the final conflagration of egos begins, as the remaining lich lords vie for final control of the world. entire continents eliminated with a few ancient words from dessicated lips, moons called down to crush hemispheres. Until one remains, one immortal being of unliving perfection, with an entire world to himself.

How long do they last? How long can a sentient being exist in solitude? Many would crush their phylacteries after a few million years, moving on to see what long-avoided doom awaits them. It's better than reading the same book again for the 5 billionth time.

Others would leave. pack their libraries in extraplanar mansions, and be off to the void. Perhaps in a great skeletal craft of fire and steel, perhaps simply teleporting a few thousand miles at a time, inching their way across the void in short hops..."

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Windspirit wrote:


Hmm...Pharasma and Dhampir....not so sure who that would work. Reading up her (Trial of the Beast) I'm not so sure. I have to say I see latly TOO much posts with a Dhampir character...why not a classic race or something totally awkward...the Half-Orc Paladin, the Halfling Inquisitor...

...If Dhampir particularly work anywhere, they work in Carrion Crown. Even before the Twi-tards began to spread, heroic vampires and half vampires (and half-vampires that hunt vampires) are common, and admittedly cool. They exist for the same reason Drizzt clones exist.

1/2-monster characters that hunt monsters are a goldmine of easy angst for new players, and sometimes old players can bring themselves to embrace the cliche and just have fun being Blade/Hellboy/Dante.

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I can handle a diversity of themes. I LIKE high action/adventure pure-concentrated-awesome games. I like genre mishmash and Eberron and magic trains. If I want a hard-edged, generic game, I'll play that. Those already exist. Rise of the Runelords still sits there, being awesome, a prototypical D&D campaign with lots of unique, surprising features. With that out of the way, paizo should be free to have fun with Indiana Jones APs and Pirate APs and Numeria aliens&supertech APs.

I'm not personally a fan of Asialand or L5R or whatever. I find the cultures ossified and over-formalized, and there's too many Weaboos in the fanbase of such things. However, I realize that other people do like those things, so I don't begrudge an AP set in such a setting. I just wouldn't be able to run it with any particular passion.

however, I'd PLAY in it, if only to be the Blithe Spirit who shakes things up, or be the "F~&* you, my honor is my own" Ronin.

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Paizo made a particular effort to cram as many monsters in the Bestiary as it could, since that's what most people will actually use. Each monster entry gets a single page. They even had to scrimp here and there; the various sizes of virmin and staple monsters like ghasts don't even get statblocks, instead getting build rules.

There's a vast wealth of fluff for those monsters in previous editions, and Paizo puts their specific monster fluff elsewhere, like the Revisited books.

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pad300 wrote:
You might want to check out Lost Cities of Golarion, as they have an origin for shining children hidden in the Sun Colony section...

Jawesome. thanks.

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If the Hellknight is tanking, and someone doing the Constantine act, AND two sorcerors (I hope they coordinate to not be redundant)...You're short on skills, and knowledge, and even with the Inquisitor channeling energy, a healer would help. On that basis, I'd actually suggest Alchemist. you can brew healing potions, use that high int for Knowledge skills, and provide a little more damage and anti-swarm options, and utility. cover everyone's weaknesses. Have a look at the Ultimate Magic archetypes; the Clone Master would be fun as all hell later on.

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DM Aron Marczylo wrote:
ahh thanks guys, knew he was from Rhode Island in the states but never heard the term anglophile before. Heh, learn something new every day.

Lovecraft was a...odd individual. A shut-in, phobia-ridden anglophile who was very racist even for his time period.

The best summary/apology I've ever read for lovecraft's racism actually came off of 1d4 chan: "It's important to realize that this isn't the domineering, brutal racism of the Mississippi Klansman, but the fearful, neurotic racism of the skinny white nerd."

http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Lovecraft

Sadly, being an Anglophile has fallen out of fashion these days, what with the UK now being a Chav-infested Orwellian Nanny State.

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Maybe I didn't focus that question well enough:

Is there a particular person on the creative team behind these monsters, and will we ever see more like them?

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I'm actually a little sad that the AP after Jade Regent (which I'm not really overly interested in, but understand that other people are, and I like the "heir to the throne" concept of it. I'm not a big fan of asialand; the ossified, formalized cultures annoy me) will be Skull and Bones, if only because I'm still waiting on Razor Coast AND thinking of making a 4E homebrew maritime mini-setting myself.

I was sort of hoping for a Numeria AP, since that's what my players would like. a few times during kingmaker (into which I thew in some extra techno-artifacts), they expressed interest in a numeria AP, where they could fight robots and get addicted to alien juice.

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Do the current gods on golarion actually claim to have created the world?

Well...their follower's legends claim so, at least for all the early ones. The Book of the Damned chapters on Asmodeus and Ihys seem to indicate that they and the other motes created by the "Seal" were the original propagators of life, and fashioners of the heavens. With the Seal as some sort of ineffable creator...object/entity/whatever. regardless, a much more likely ultimate creator than a big beard in the sky.

Of course, the golarion universe also has horrible Elder Gods that predate such things, and the Maelstrom seems to have predated the various hierarchies of seal Motes, and the Abyss may have predated the maelstrom. And Axis just sort of came out of nowhere, fully-formed, likely from some other reality, a painful pin of order in the chaos of the Maelstrom.

And all that is the Great Beyond, and not the infinite physical universe of stars and planets and nebulas and slumbering-tentacle-gods. And the various Golarion gods seem to be mostly focused on Golarion itself (or it just looks that way to their worshipers, in the same way children think their parent's lives revolve solely around them). Do the other planets have their own versions of Pharasma and Erastil? Or are the known gods localized entities? Does Viltvoodle 6 have it's own Jetravartid god of the hunt, and it's own Jetravartid Maelstrom? Or is the Jetravartid god of the hunt just erastil with a few extra arms? Does the infinite Great Beyond have various districts? As in, if you travel far enough on axis, do you leave the part metaphysically connected to Golarion and reach one that's more tuned to not-mars or not-venus? Or totally-not-Vort-home-of-the-slaughtering-rat-people?

These are the inherent problems of trying to square an infinite material plane universe with the usual D&D cosmology, a created universe with a naturally-formed universe, gods that predate reality with gods that developed within reality. And it actually comes across really well in-game; no one really knows the answers to these questions, and the neat-and-tidy pantheon and creation story doesnt really hold up under scrutiny, but nor does the "endless, uncaring gulf of space that wants to eat your brain" square with a gives-a-s~~# pantheon of various divine entities drawing in and caring for mortal souls, whatever their eventual fate. No one in-universe ultimately knows, so why should we?

the inconsistency actually adds to the fun. Personally, I kind of like the idea of the wonderful multiverse of gods and heavens and angels and hells and souls still being a tiny, precious spot of light in an infinite sea of tentacular blackness. the Elder Gods scare the crap out of the regular gods just as much as the Cthuloids scare mortals; see Rovagug for example. Makes them a more sympathetic and relatable bunch.

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James Jacobs wrote:
Rusty Shackleford wrote:
I'm overall pretty square with this treatment of faith and whatnot. The only thing that needs a little clarification is that whole wall-of-the-faithless-esque thing in Pharasma's Boneyard. There's something a little head-slappingly silly about emulating one of the biggest, most contentious wall-bangers (sorry) in RPG cannon history.

I know I said I was "out of the thread," but I need to step back in to clarify something that, alas, wasn't made clear in the section that talks about what happens to atheists when they die.

Basically... the same thing that happens to ANYONE when they die—they either get punished or get rewarded.

For an atheist, if you're punished, you go into the graveyard in the Boneyard. If you're NOT to be punished, your soul transforms into a free-roaming spirit that leaves the Boneyard to drift through the planes to observe and watch and learn, sort of like a ghost, I guess, but without stats since you're not undead—your'e just an invisible observer at that point.

Pharasma's the one who judges whether an atheist was naughty or nice, in any case, and she does so fairly and as according to that particular atheist's success or failure at whatever it was he/she did in life.

So in essence, an atheist is like anyone else when they die; they either go on for a reward or they get eternal punishment.

That we haven't gotten that message out there more clearly is one of the biggest disappointments and failings of both "The Great Beyond" and "Beyond the Vault of Souls."

Well, now I feel really stupid. That makes more sense. Thanks.

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There's a monster that always stuck in my head: the Shinning Child of Thassilon, from RotRL #5. Their utter, horrifying OTHERNESS was far more compelling than slime and tentacles. I was glad to see it again in Bestiary 2.

Their various origin stories were creepy as hell, especially the insane reflections of a dying star and the celestials of the far future one. It's like they're Angels of some alien cosmos. Kind of gives me a slight Evangelion vibe, too.

Thing is, I saw the same background for something else...the Caulborn in City of Strangers, the hive-minded thought eaters that live under Kaer Maga. Since both creatures have ties to thassilon...

Does paizo have some sort of big idea behind these things? Will we see any more monsters in a similar vein?

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Still reading through it. Of course, I went straight to the Bestiary first. Great spread.

The only thing I'm a little sad about is that the Elder Thing is mechanically a little dull. I had hoped for lots of DR/adamantine.

well, they're just my favorite lovecraft monster ever, because they're essentially PEOPLE. I have an inordinate fondness for that moment of realization that the horrible tentacle monster is a thinking, feeling being.

Regardless, I'm loving it.

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Personally, I thought the first and second Second Darkenss adventures were golden. The plot was good,, the double-cross was GREAT, the Golden Goblin was interesting, and the open island and the summer-blockbuster action bits went over great with my group.

It just kind of turns to crap near the end.

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I'm overall pretty square with this treatment of faith and whatnot. The only thing that needs a little clarification is that whole wall-of-the-faithless-esque thing in Pharasma's Boneyard. There's something a little head-slappingly silly about emulating one of the biggest, most contentious wall-bangers (sorry) in RPG cannon history.

The only thing I could get out of it was this: The "atheists" who are fed to groetus were described as "those so damaged that they denied the existence of their own souls." Now, I'm personally a science-minded person in real life, who thinks that supernatural s#&~ is stupid, and our minds are the product of chemical processes in our brains. BUT, while I might intellectually think that, I still treat other people, and other living things as more than chemical processes, because I am not a sociopath. I may not believe in a "spirit of ART" that makes an assortment of pigments on canvas "art," but I still see the art as more than just an arrangement of pigments. Likewise with people.

the point of all this is that some nihilistic person that sincerely doesnt FEEL that they have some sort of special essence or some sort of greater connection between them and other people, or to the universe, is a damaged individual, very different from someone who just doesn't believe in magical sky faeries when there's no evidence for them, and said nihlist is also different from someone who lives in fantasy setting Y but refuses to bend his knee and offer up his sweet belief-juice to a cruel, irresponsible cosmic bully.

Truth is though, that most of the usual atheist complaints are moot in a D&D setting, since the gods ARE active, DO take responsibility for their follower's actions, and the ones who claim to be good actually ARE by-and-large GOOD. For example, a cleric of Sarenrae who commands his followers to slaughter an entire town or something just because they worship Erastil would loose his divine powers right quick, in a spectacular manner. Involving fire. Lots of fire. In the real world, he'd have an even chance of winding up a saint after the righteous, divinely-ordained holy war.

That's just how I square it in my head. i know this is a thorny-ass problem, and paizo doesn't want to accidentally offend their customer base.

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What's wrong with Trial of the Beast? It has everything a good adventure needs, apart from an amusing allied NPC. A few very flavorful mini-encounters, a big plotty event, and a creative dungeon crawl with very memorable monsters. Like the blind flesh golem with the Seeing-eye-homuncluli.

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The Lust Runelord appeared to have developed some form of eternal youth. Many Lust-built complexes (such as the Lust section of Runeforge) have an enchantment that keeps anything living there eternally young and sustained. Often, if they ever step outside of the area, time "catches up," and they rapidly age into dust like the bad guy in The Last Crusade when he picks the wrong cup.

Which might seem odd, since those magics have nothing to do with Charm Monster, but it needs to be remembered that the Runelords weren't super-focused in their use of magic, and many of their most awesome inventions were outside their specialized school (like how Karzoug was all about summoning Things from beyond time, like Denizens of Leng and Hounds of Tindalos), or how the Wrath (evocation) runelord apparently also went in for fleshcrafting (sinspawn and reefclaws).

I assume that someone in thassilon first invented Festrogs too; it seems like the kind of thing they'd do.

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InVinoVeritas wrote:

Fill the region with Bas-Lag Torque.

(Then again, perhaps the Torque is better saved for the Pit of Gormuz.)

You bastard.

"we think it might have once been a goat. Or a train."

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I really don't get why people complain so much about xyz element in a setting or game.

1. No one is going to walk in on your game session and force you at foam-LARP-sword-point to use Ninjas or Shoggoths in your game. Feel free to excise guns and alchemy and whatever elements don't fit with your narrow idea of medieval heroic fantasy from the games you run. I don't like Eberron's Draconic Prophecy or the Lords of Dust, so instead the eberron game I ran was full of Emerald Claw agents, Murder Mysteries in sharn, Warforged calling people "meatbag," the Dreaming Dark, and Cannith ruins in the mournland.

2. You may not like it, but other people do. I'm not personally a fan of Ninjas or Samurai (apart from Ronin). I'm going to be honest: I don't much like japanese culture. quite the reverse; some elements of it deeply irk me, and the people who idolize it irk me more. some bits of American culture also irk me, mind you. But just because I've had some bad experiences with Weaboo roomates doesn't mean that I'm complaining that Pathfinder has an asialand or rules for samurai and ninjas. I'm fine with it. Maybe one of these days I'll pull out my Ronin character idea and have fun giving the finger to authoritarianism.

3. Lovecraft is everywhere. Conan, Neil Gaiman, Hellboy, tons of other media use lovecraftian elements. He's in D&D from the get-go; mind flayers and aboleths. He creeps in everywhere. If anything, Paizo is doing what it always does: taking something old and making it fresh again. In this case, they're not pussy-footing around with Captain Erzatzes like everyone else does, they're using the original mythos elements without dilution or much alteration. That's pretty fresh, compared to the usual practice.

Frankly, in Pathfinder, I don't like Absalom very much. I find it stylistically boring compared to places like Cheliax, Ustalav, Kaer Maga, and whatnot. I also don't care much for the Startstone, Taldor, Galt, or the marginalized roles of Dwarves in the setting. Sometimes it seems they could just be removed whole-cloth, and it wouldn't affect very much. I would have rather Paizo try to do something a little interesting with Dwarves, like they did with gnomes or elves. even halflings got a little thought put into them. I'm also not 100% on the Planetary Romance or vintage Raygun Gothic elements of the Sci-Fi section of the setting; I much prefer hard sci-fi (with a littel lovecraft mixed in) in my Fantasy in SPAAACCEEE mashups.

But I don't mind, because I trust paizo to do a decent job with even those elements I don't like, maybe even enough to make me like them despite myself.

I LIKE numeria's super-tech. I LIKE the solar system. I LIKE explicit Mythos elements. I LIKE the guns.

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I'd like to chime in with props, in particular for the NPCs. The Amateur Werewolf Hunter will probably be another PC favorite. Depending on how the internet reacts, he might even join the same roster as Shalelu, Vencarlo, and Laori, mostly because he's so hapless.