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In addition to the alignment differences, Hobgoblins and Orcs are statistically quite different. Hobgoblins are as smart, wise and charismatic as the average human, while Orcs are reduced in all three 'mental' attributes. Orcs are freakishly strong, while Hobgoblins have greater endurance and coordination than both Orcs and the average human. I like the Romans vs. Celts idea. Hobgoblins would have better armor and weapons than the less-intelligent Orcs, and be more likely to march in formation, and travel over great distances (due to their superior endurance) than the faster-burning Orcs. Higher dexterity would lead to Hobgoblins being better able to take advantage of ranged attacks, and the Orcs might have contempt for such tactics. Orcs scream and rage and charge into melee combat, hoping to take advantage of their superior strength and ferocity, while Hobgoblins might be more likely to use tactics (withdraw and sow caltrops, to stop a charge, for instance, or turtle up behind longspears and tower shields). Back in 1st edition, when orcs were LE pig-men, and hobgoblins were dressed like samurai and hated elves, the visual distinctions were larger (even if the alignment was more similar). Hobgoblins of Tellene, for Kingdoms of Kalamar, IMO, is the best realized 3rd party writeup of hobgoblins, and could certainly serve as a source of inspiration for non-Kalamar settings. They come across as very 'Klingon,' focused on strength and honor, and have a pair of militaristic nation-states. Golarion has gone in the other direction, with the only 'humanoid' nation being the Hold of Belkzen, dominated by orcs, while goblins, hobgoblins and bugbears are more local threats. That might be another point of distinction, with hobgoblins implied to be a more 'modern' development (some sort of modified goblin), while orcs are an ancient race that has had a longer time to establish themselves (and perhaps naturally more fertile).
1) It's the surface world manifestation of The Braid, in the Darklands seas. 2) Aroden and the conjoined spirits of all the other dead Azlanti, which lay restless and unquiet, until 'the Last Azlanti' finally came to join them in oblivion. 3) Gozreh's summer palace. 4) It's the prison for another Rovagug-like entity, this one aquatic and serpentine and linnorm-ish, Golarion's answer to the Midgard Serpent, Jormungandr. 5) A breach into the elemental plane of water, conjured forth to combat the drying out of Golarion, as the seas were being drained into the Darklands by some unknown force. 6) It's a hostile reaction to the opening of the Worldwound, the natural world recoiling in an 'allergic reaction' to the festering sore that is the intrusion of the Abyss into Golarion. The only 'cure' will be to seal the Worldwound. 7) A curious Qlippoth Lord has come to Golarion, and the Eye of Abendago is sort of like his 'environmental suit' or 'life support system' or 'containment vessel' that protects him from the hostile environment of Golarion, which is not welcome to his kind at all. When he gets his bearings, which may take a few more centuries, he'll start wandering around, driving the Eye around like a car, and 'exploring' various coastal regions, and finally sweeping up onto the land and cutting a swath of destruction across whatever unlucky continent catches his fancy...
Seems to me that 'if he attacks you' is the factor. The attacker might, particularly if familiar with the feat, choose not to attack you at all that round, and attack someone else, or take a Total Defense action, or step back 5 ft. and drink a potion, rather than risk falling for that Broken Wing Gambit he's heard about (or that you pulled on him last round...). I don't think you get the option of not accepting a morale bonus from bardic inspiration or a bless spell, or an enhancement bonus to attack and damage from a magic sword, so I'm not sure you'd get the option of not accepting this bonus either.
The other, other kind of 'pro-active healing' is to find ways to give people temporary hit points. Aid and false life are the lowest powered options, and if you've got a Summoner who can call up lantern archons (Summon Monster III, at 5th level), those little dudes can cast aid once / round at will, providing your front-line dude with a buffer of 1d8+3 hit points every round for five minutes.
I'm amazed to see so many people heaping praise on Magic of Incarnum. Personally, I never liked it much - it seemed like a neat, if somewhat underpowered system with some interesting concepts but a LOT of fiddliness and a lack of overview of the various options. I loved the idea of the Totemist, but 'Magical Beasts' is just an enormous unthematic hodge-podge of creatures with no rhyme or reason other than 'critter that may or may not have magical powers,' so having a class based off of abilities sampled from this muddle made for what, to me, felt like a very unthematic mish-mash of a character. A 'Totemist' who was focused on Animal/Vermin/Dinosaur abilities, or Dragon abilities, or Undead abilities, or Fey abilities, or Elemental abilities, IMO, would have 'felt' more tightly on-theme.
Another random critter for Gozran priests, again, inspired by a super-character I played once; .
This unique water elemental takes on a humanoid form, crowned with jagged ice atop it’s head and shoulders, but dissipating into warm vapor that crawls in serpentine tendrils along the ground below the waist. UNDERTOW CR 5
DEFENSE
OFFENSE
STATISTICS
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Frozen Form (Su) Undertow can freeze its watery body into solid ice, assuming a form much like that of an ice elemental and gaining the following traits of that creature type; Cold subtype, halved land movement, but add burrow (ice and snow only) 20 ft., numbing cold, ice glide, ice walking, snow vision. Its slam attack inflicts an additional 1d6 cold damage in this form. Undertow can assume this form while in water form as a swift action once per round, but can also be involuntarily transformed into this state by any cold attack that inflicts at least six points of damage, while in its liquid state. A fire attack that inflicts at least six points of damage to Undertow in its frozen form will cause it to involuntarily revert back to its liquid state. In frozen form, Undertow loses its immunity to piercing weapons and takes full damage from slashing weapons (although it retains its damage reduction). Vaporous Form (Su) Undertow can superheat and disperse its liquid body into a vast cloud of steam, occupying the dimensions of a obscuring mist spell (a 20 ft. radius spread, 20 ft. high) and with similar vision-obscuring properties. In this form, it can vary its temperature from warm to scalding hot, and even vary this temperature within its area, selectively causing targets it chooses within its vaporous form to suffer 1d6 fire damage per round, if it so desires. In vaporous form, Undertow can move with a fly speed of 100 ft. and perfect maneuverability, but it’s swim speed is halved. Undertow can assume this form while in water form as a swift action once per round, but can also be involuntarily transformed into this state by any fire attack that inflicts at least six points of damage, while in its liquid state. A cold attack that inflicts at least six points of damage to Undertow in its vaporous form will cause it to involuntarily revert back to its liquid state. In vaporous form, Undertow is immune to all weapon attacks, but loses its slam attack, and its effective strength drops to 1, for the purposes of manipulating physical items. It gains the amorphous trait in vaporous form, becoming immune to precision damage, and able to move through any area that a Fine creature could squeeze through. ECOLOGY
Undertow serves Gozreh at its own discretion, and is an untrustworthy creature even at the best of times, best given simple and direct commands, with no room for creative interpretation or passive-aggressive distortion. Able to control its form, from solid ice to liquid water to a great cloud of scalding steam, Undertow tends to think of itself as far superior to a ‘mere’ water elemental, as some sort of transitional being of all elements. (Exactly how it could be thought of as a creature of earth is unclear, but the creature’s logic has perhaps not caught up with its overly generous self-analysis…) Undertow responds well to flattery, although flowery speech tasks its simple mind and it grows impatient with flattery that it cannot comprehend, regarding it as condescending. It fully intends to grow in power, through this association with Gozreh (which it regards, somewhat laughably, as a relationship between peers), and eventually become an elemental lord of godlike stature itself. The elemental enjoys missions that allow it to demonstrate its flexibility, such as a mission to infiltrate an encampment under cover of night, to awaken sleeping foes with scalding steam, and then assume an icy form to maul those that remain standing after its initial assault. Despite having been shattered on multiple occasions, or boiled away, or similarly defeated, Undertow has quite the selective memory, and always remembers itself as victorious or having willingly departed the material plane ‘because it was bored’ or because ‘the task was beneath it.’ Bringing up contrary evidence is a sure way to get on its bad side, while finding elegant excuses for a previous defeat, that makes them seem like brilliant tactics, or highlight how Undertows presence resulted in final victory, even after Undertow ‘left of its own accord’ will likely be well-received by the creature. While Undertow is primarily found on the Elemental Plane of Water, it appears to have an instinctive gift for finding planar portals, and has been found, uncalled, wandering the Elementals Planes of Air, and even Fire, as well as the seas of Golarion, and more distant planes as well.
Milani is a better choice for freedom fighters than Cayden. Milani has that whole martyr-y blood-soaked cobblestones 'I'm gonna get the entire party / the entire town / everyone who follows me totally killed making a futile gesture against authority' thing going on, which can be a bit of a turn off, compared to Cayden's more 'let's all survive this and hit the bar and get totally wasted afterwards' theme. I get that Milani is the most popular 'lesser' diety on Golarion, but even Iomedae, patron of chivalry and honor and paladins, doesn't have 'glorious suicide' stamped all over her like that. Desna (particularly in the shadow of Nidal), Calistria (in Cheliax, where elves are second-class citizens), Cayden, that token Halfling god who'se name I can't remember, even Gorum, have great potential for freedom fighters, as do less obvious choices like Shelyn or Sarenrae or Iomedae or Torag. Heck, in Rahadoum, underground sects devoted to *Norgorber* are a delightfully non-standard breeding ground for freedom fighters.
If you want to cater to this 'cleric-less party' concept and make it more feasible in your world, you can also buff up Treat Deadly Wounds (make it cost less per use, for example, and allow people to Take 20 on it between fights), and / or introduce an alchemical healing salve (although I'd recommend it being not quite so good as the one in the 3.0 Arms & Equipment Guide). Introducing herbal healing options for woodsy folk, better Treat Deadly Wounds options for skill-monkeys (like Rogues), or arcane transmutation healing options for sorcerer/wizards (not as good as divine conjuration, but still better than nothing), or fast healing-while-raging barbarian options, or double-healing-overnight-in-favored-terrain ranger options, or an improved wholeness-of-body monk option, or a bardic that uses a round of bardic performance to allow his allies to recover hit points equal to their character level, or something, that could go a long way to spreading the healing around to various other classes. There's a preconception that it's 'cleric or nothing,' and, having played a druid as a sole healer, I can agree that it's pretty sucky at the lower levels knowing that you can never prepare a spell other than cure light wounds, and you'll still never be as valuable to the party as a wand thereof, because you can't use your actual druid spells, but spreading the healing options (and therefore diffusing the healing *responsibility*) can make everyone's life a little more fun (as the 1st level bard or witch isn't *expected* to use one of his two spells slots on cure light wounds or his sole 1st level hex on healing).
Can I love a deity but hate its followers? I feel the same way about Urgathoa. She's all 'girls just wanna have fun' and comes off as utterly perplexed as to why the mean girl's clique of Pharasma and Sarenrae consider her their mortal enemy, when she's got nothing against them. Meanwhile her worshippers are all; 1) spread plague / animate people's grandmas for no apparent reason or benefit
Only replace 'profit!' with 'get killed for being idiots...'
The 'one away' rule opens up a ton of dieties that may or may not fit with one's personal preconceptions of the Paladin, flavorwise, particularly if you count the NG or LN members of the Dwarven sub-pantheon or the LN Eldest of the First World. Dranngvit, described as a spiteful goddess of vengence, for instance, would require a bit more thought than Iomedae (who practically has 'made for Paladins' stamped on her butt), as might Magrim, god of the underworld. Even the Empyreal Lord Arshea, a patron of sexuality, might 'feel' off for anyone who thinks of Paladins as sexless drones.
Ignoring what the word should or shouldn't mean (since D&D doesn't exactly use bard, cleric, druid or monk to represent a gaelic bard or a moslem cleric (or a tetragrammaton cleric or wine-making acappela-chanting tonsured western monk, for that matter)); A 'warlock' based on the currently popular definition of 'oathbreaker' would make an interesting PrC for either an ex-Cleric (one who has broken their oaths to the gods) or an arcanist who has somehow managed to break some sort of infernal or abyssal pact and, at least for now, 'get away with it.' A witch who has forsaken her patron and become an 'oathbreaker' warlock could be funky as well. As an archetype, it could replace the patron bonus spells with some other benefit, representing power stolen or usurped or whatever from the former patron.
So far we've got; 2 divine casters/healers
1 tank
3 kinda/sorta skill-monkeys
4 arcanists
Did I miss anyone?
The Osirion and Qadira guides, updated, expanded to Chronicles format, and with guest writers like Ari Marnell, Steve Kenson and / or C.A. Suleiman (from Hamunaptra) for Osirion and Jeff Grubb, Wolfgang Bauer and / or Zeb Cook (from Al-Qadim) for Qadira. I know that a 64 page book can't go as far as Hamunaptra or Al-Qadim went to bring fantasy Egypt and fantasy Persia alive (or Nyambe did for fantasy Africa, etc.), but, gosh, I'd love for Paizo to at least swing for the fences with this sort of thing. Taldor, Andoran and Cheliax could also benefit from this sort of expanded development. The 'big 5' Pathfinder Society nations / factions having half of the development of backwaters like Katapesh or the River Kingdoms, or even single cities like Absalom and Korvosa and Kaer Maga, feels 'off' to me.
Ooh, I like the floating city, held in place by chains! For deserts, a butte that's been hollowed out and has a city inside of it, like a circular cliff-city, that only has sunlight in the center of the city during mid-day (and uses bronze or copper mirrors atop the mesa, rotated to face the sun and reflect light down into the central shaft, to provide light the rest of the day) could be wicked cool. Cue Airwolf soundtrack. For plains, with a shortage of rock, the city could be dug into the earth (topsoil in the plains supposedly was 28 feet deep when we arrived here in the US, thanks to millenia worth of buffalo poop), and the actual building material could be mud bricks reinforced with plains grasses, which are surprisingly sturdy, if properly built. Terraced communities built atop hills or into ravines, similar to the stepped agriculture popular in central and south america (near sites like Macchu Pichu, sp?) could work. With much of the housing underground, and pasturage / fields above ground, the heavily populated dwarven plains lands would appear to be outlying farms of some greater civilization, with the actual cities dug into the ground, and not visible, with every inch of surface land devoted to agriculture.
Cheliax and Taldor have been human-settled and dominated for almost 5000 years (radically longer than human civilization has spent pacifying Europe). If there's any sort of humanoid or monster presence, it's probably a lone bugbear with a maxed-out stealth score playing boogeyman... Critters would likely be the sorts that could evade eradication in a built-up area, like ankhegs or giant ant hives (able to travel underground, and, in the case of the ants, perhaps having a hive mind that gives the queen adept or sorcerer abilities!), goblins or kobolds (able to squeeze into warrens in the hills that no human force could get into to exterminate them, although the Chels might try sending plague-ridden or poison-bladder-implanted slave halflings into their warrens to get eaten by them and afflict their devourers with contagion or toxin), or flying critters like chimera or manticores, able to escape pursuit, and lair in inaccessible places. There's room for the occasional non-bandit bad-guy humans, as well. A seaside town of goggle-eyed fishing villagers who pride themselves on their 'Azlanti blood' (which may have existed, back in the day, but mostly derives from their forbidden dalliances with Gillmen, these days, explaining the goggle eyes and 'fishy' appearance) could have some nasty traditions involving travellers who stay for the night, or maybe, a bite, before they show them their favorite obsession. Demon-worshipping rednecks also sounds fun. :)
tldr- Evil alignments ok in a mixed alignment party? I think InVinoVeritas has it right in that it's not the alignment on the sheet that matters so much as the player's motivations. If the player intends to be a disruptive jerk who causes the game to break down into PVP for his own lulz, he can do a *spectacular* job of that playing a LG paladin. Played intelligently, a LE or NE character can be very mission-oriented and team-friendly and non-disruptive. IMO, the least team-friendly alignments are CE, CN and LG. Those are the ones that seem mostly likely to attack NPCs for being uppity, or attack other party members over loot divisions or kill-stealing or 'interfering with my honorable single combat' or 'attacking my prisoner' or whatever. It's more important, in my experience, that the players all agree that whatever they are doing in a team venture, where they succeed or fail as a group, and to, if necessary, play on their shared motivations, than what two-letter-designation occupies the 'alignment' slot on their character sheet. And motivation is cake, because everybody wants loot and XP, regardless of their alignment. Most published adventures give out plenty of both, and even if the task is to rescue the good princess from the evil dragon, there's no reason an evil party wouldn't absolutely want the reward for rescuing the princess *and* the treasure of the evil dragon, making them exactly as motivated to 'follow the choo-choo' as a good party would be. The only difference will be that the party rogue will be poisoning the heck out of the dragon during the fight, and, afterwards, when the Paladin would have batted his eyes at the Princess and said, 'no reward necessary, milady, we were just doing our jobs' (to the groans of everyone else in the party), it will be the Barbarian saying, 'yeah, the dragon's dead. reward please. daddy needs a new keen falchion...' Someone who gets off on being disruptive is going to be a problem, even in a game with no alignments at all.
The other problem with Gandalf's 'heroic sacrifice' is that it's totally out of context. He was talking to himself. 'Fly, you fool! You should have prepared fly, instead of that second fireball...'
I would have him just leave, with a story about a solo quest to beat up the Grand Master of Flowers to gain his next monk level or garner entry into some Prestige Class that doesn't exist or something. The problem I see with a 'Gandalf' scenario is that I have almost never, in twenty years of gaming, seen a party flee when one of them is dropping and 'attempts to hold them off.' Ninety-nine times out of one hundred, the encounter ends with a total party kill, an improbable victory over amazing odds (and the NPC frustratingly still alive) or, in the occasional case where one PC *does* flee and everybody else stays to save their friend and dies anyway, hard feelings among the group because they resent the dude who ran away (blaming him for the deaths of all of their characters, because he didn't stay to help). Plus, if the whole point of writing the guy offstage is that he's overshadowing people, giving him a heroic sendoff, when any other PC that dies is likely to just eat an unlucky scythe crit to the face or botch a save vs. a save or die or something completely unheroic like that, kinda defeats the point. PCs die like chumps *all the time.* Having the GMPC die a 'very special episode' death is only going to make it look like PCs and GMPCs play by different rules. Don't have him 'just disappear' or something, *especially* under mysterious or suspicious circumstances (such as leaving behind signs of violence or a ninja attack in his inn room), as that can all-too-often lead to the party spending the next month ignoring the adventure, while they pursue the great mystery of GMPCs disappearance, mistaking it for a plot hook, and brushing off falling anvils, clue-by-fours and arrow-riddled messengers dropping at their feet, clutching the summary to the next adventure hook in their deathgrip.
Love the idea of the city in the middle of a lake! Reminds me of this picture, kinda sorta. A city built into a chasm / cleft deep within the earth, carved into both sides, and with bridges (both stone and rope) criss-crossing back and forth as 'highways' to and from the two sides of the city, could be neat. A similar city, built into a shaft that descends deep into the earth, built into all of the sides of the shaft and connected by spiraling stairs and ledges that go around, and rope bridges and 'cable-cars' (raft like vehicles that are winched from one side to the other, and back again) that slide across, could also be neat. If there is some sort of naturally occuring anti-gravity element in this fantasy setting, perhaps occuring in a 'Hollow Earth' sort of place, impossibly high towers could be built in underground caverns, connecting floor to ceiling, and composed of alternating bricks of normal ore and 'anti-g' ore, so that the weight of the tower is countered and 'at balance' could be funky. Cities or fortifications built upon floating islands of this ore could be precisely counterweighted, and anchored in place with cables moored into the rock of the surrounding caverns, with visitors to the island only allowed if they bring enough ore to counteract whatever weight they'll be adding to the delicate 'balance' that keeps the island bouyant. Instead of one giant floating rock island, dozens of smaller ones could be connected by chains and cables and rope-bridges, and orbit around a larger island like some bizarre molecular structure (imagery from Avatar or even the Undercity from the old Beauty and the Beast TV series could fit here). Instead of an ore being the source of the anti-gravity effect, some sort of fungus grown on the floating islands could cause them to levitate, or a city or structure could be constructed on the back of (or hanging underside of) a dormant mu-spore like creature. Solid cloud stuff, able to support cities, is also an old standby, popular with cloud giants and silver dragons, but there's no reason a society of dwarven sky pirates couldn't have such a dwelling, and use it in conjunction with hot air balloons and a longship enchanted with levitate spells to raid groundborne civilizations... Or one could have a dwarven city that has expanded underwater, using lava tubes, at first, but expanding to have underwater tunnels leading to an undersea fortification hollowed out of a coral reef or something, and from whence dwarves in special 'diving suits' and the rare apparatus of Kwalish forage for ore on the seabed, including deposits of gold gathered together by giant ammonites, and mysterious balls of manganese that form on the seabed or whatever. A city carved entirely of ice (alchemically or magically enhanced in some areas to be as strong as stone or even steel), in the polar regions, could also be (ahem) cool. Cities built on the back of zaratans (island sized turtles) could be funky, particularly if the dwarves have designed their city to be water-tight, and can signal the beast to submerge and travel underwater, unseen and unsuspected to surface dwellers, when need be, and then rise up in the harbor of a trading partner, to the shock of anyone who didn't know that they could do that. (Or just offshore of a rival nation's port capital, taking the battle to them in a most surprising way!)
The Cataclysm Epiphany Wow, I love the name of the organization, and Nettlehold, and Twelve Shackles Broken! Evocative. The organization is nicely confined to a specific location and agenda. They have a pretty cosmic endgame, but they aren't some world-spanning whatever that we've somehow never heard of before now with gazillions of GP worth of stuff and hidden string-pullers everywhere. Very tight focus, and I respect that. Eudego's Salvage Now this is pretty cool. I'm not sure I'd want to add aetherships to *my* Golarion, but I love the idea of a bunch of thuggish pirates getting into bed with something that turned out to be so much bigger than they were, and losing control of the situation. (Similar to the Riders of the Black Steppes and the Leng connection, from the top 32.) Still, this is the kind of campaign thing where the players could start out fighting strangely pale and sweaty pirates with strange aberrant abilities whose brains are later discovered in jars somewhere in the hold of the ship, begging for death. From something as prosaic as 'pirates attack!' you end up with an adventure path that's literally headed 'to the moon, Alice! to the moon!' Gonzo, in a good way. Circle of Ashes I like how this organization follows through logically from something already going on in the setting, and helps to tie a new APG class into setting events. The presence of a hag in the group allows the NPC witches to take advantage of the coven hex, in a way that no PC witch would likely ever be able to, and I like that they have taken the coven magic stuff one step further, and developed special techniques to extend their spells through 'circle magic.' I like the graying up of the situation, where a bunch of people, convinced that they are doing a 'good thing' by burning a bunch of witches, have instead *created* the problem of a bunch of pissed-off (and increasingly evil) witches rising up and striking back. It's very 'self-fulfilling prophecy,' and will lead to a sort of forever war, as the Pharasmins can now say 'See! See! We were right! They are evil! The obvious solution is to burn more witches!' And the witches resolve gets firmer (and any non-evil witches crying out for a less arms-racy response get increasingly dismissed as naive) and their responses become ever more evil and over-the-top. Good stuff. Could a specific Witch patron be fanning the flames? Or is the movement loaded up with an assortment of patrons? Fun possibilities. Must stop now. Replies getting longer and longer... Unlike Neil Spicer, I am not a machine. :)
A Friar Tuck staff-monk or 'spear dancer' barbarian inspired by the crazy peeps in the Wheel of Time novel could be funky, if the rules for those weapons didn't suck so hard. I kind of loved the quarterstaff (great parry!) and spear (impaling damage and good stop-thrust options) in GURPS, but I've seen nobody really do anything with either in D&D/PF, since some weapons are just flat out better than others, and spears are pretty much junk in this system. Even the theoretical ability to intercept a charge with a longspear has, in the six levels I've tried to make use of it with one character, *never* actually worked. (It's like counterspelling. Any combat option that requires you to announce what you are doing to the GM, and then give up your action waiting for him to do what you are planning to intercept, is a great way to stand around all combat waiting for what he's *obviously never going to do.* Might as well just spend the combat lighting a lantern, as providing light for your allies will be more useful than standing around holding your spear in a threatening position, waiting for some fool to jump on it and kill himself.) I'm not sure that Weapon Finesse even deserves to be a feat. Some weapons should just be finesse weapons, and anybody should be able to use their Dex mod to attack rolls with them. Tiny creatures should also automatically have the ability to use Dex for attacks, instead of almost every tiny creature (like the various familiars) having Weapon Finesse as their obvious default feat choice... Too many feats that allow options that anyone who has swung a sword for a few levels should already be able to do, like go on the reckless offense (power attack), or play defense (combat expertise), or sacrifice hitting power for accuracy, or using your awesome agility to make up for your feeble musculature to swing a light weapon more accurately.
Perhaps; "You are healed by negative energy and harmed by positive energy as if undead. You may be excluded from channeled energy via Selective Channeling, but are otherwise healed or harmed, even if the channeling cleric had not intended to heal or harm undead with that use of channel energy." Have I mentioned how much I prefer the Beta version of Channel Energy? Oy. [tangent]
Alignment Channel (Evil) is the only choice to take, whether you are a good cleric of Iomedae and have demon enemies you want to smite with your channeled positive energy or an evil cleric of Asmodeus and have devil allies you want to heal with your negative energy.
Animal Messenger's utility is limited also by our lack of having any druids in the party. Kriger might be able to send a bird back to the city, but what we need is a way for the city to be able to send a message to us. . Signal fires are junk. Just checked online, and a 100 ft. tall tower with a signal fire on it would still only be viewable 20 miles away, thanks to the horizon. Lame. A six foot signal fire on the ground would be visible 2 miles away, so, really, the benefits of altitude taper off pretty darn fast. Deadeye's arrow, on the other hand, has a range of 100 ft. + 10 ft./level if the arrow is thrown, or *the maximum range of the bow* if the arrow is fired into the air. (Maximum range is 10 increments, and a longbow has 110 ft. increments, for a maximum range of 1100 ft, or almost two miles into the air. Yes, that's freaking ludicrous, I know. Consulting teh intartubes, I got nothin,' cause the guy who made the chart used metric, and skipped from 328 ft. to 3280 ft... I'm gonna pull a number from my butt and say, maybe 40 miles or so, which is still only a day's travel.) . Meh. I think I'll wait until 5th level, when I can summon a Lantern Archon, which understands all languages via truespeech and can greater teleport with up to 50 lbs. of gear at will. Summon one with my last summon monster III SLA each night and send it to Oleg with instructions to wait around a minute or two for a message and then teleport back and give it to us. We can even send back some coin and have hot meals waiting for our nightly check-in, which the Lantern Archon can teleport back to us so that we get hot meals delivered in the field! Yes, that's right, Imma send an angel out to get me pizza. And I'm not even gonna tip the fool.
I did not read the judges comments before I voted unless someone was on the fence. I read the item, and then immediately replied or I jotted down my own notes which basically read as yes, no, or maybe. Ditto. I read the judges posts the first year, and promised myself to never again do that. I'd rather make my own decisions, and then look back at the judges thoughts and see where we agreed and disagreed (or what they caught that I totally missed!). I also went back and looked at them again, a day or two later, as I was in some sort of terriblenogoodverybad mood when I read them the first time, and didn't want my votes being entirely the result of low blood sugar. :) The second time, I had no trouble find eight to vote for, and even ended up with ten, counting the maybes, and had to winnow out the ideas I found most game-usable / inspiring from those ten to get it down to eight.
Thanks for the heads up. I'll look into it. Tien is now the 'common tongue' of the Dragon Empires, and, like Taldan in the inner sea, is the official language of several nations. Minkai would be the language more likely to be spoken by Izumi, Raith and Ameiko. Other languages include Dtang (faux Korean?), Hon-La (faux Mongolian), Hwan (?) and Minatan (faux Malaysian?). Plus various racial languages, for the Nagaji, Kitsune, Wayang, Tengu, etc. Senzar seems to replace Sylvan, as the 'language of fey/spirits.' Shizuru, Empress of Heaven, LG goddess of ancestors, honor, the sun and swordplay, seems to have Izumi written all over her. (She's pretty much faux Amaterasu Omikami, and is indeed popular in Minkai.)
Any input on my favored terrain? I was thinking mountains/hills but I want to be sure it'll be useful. The surrounding areas appear to be plains and hills, for the most part, with some forests and mountains as well. Obviously, arctic will come into play eventually, but we don't know that in-game, so getting all gussied up for it would be a bit meta. In theory, as part of a caravan, which seems likely to continue no matter where we go, plains seems the one we'd be most likely to be in consistently (since wagons don't work so well in swamps, forests, mountains, etc.). But that's attempting to apply logic to a fantasy game, and, for all I know, we're gonna spend months slogging this caravan through a tropical rainforest... :) Ah, just checked the Jade Regent Players Guide, and it suggests cold, forest, mountain and urban. So, plains are right out! We are an all-terrain caravan! Mountain or forest looks good, for now.
Set. I view acting good because of anything other than desire to do good to be false. I can understand the perspective of it, but to me ulterior motives undermine the associated intent of doing good. And yet, if the hungry get fed, the sick get healed, the homeless get shelter from the environment, I'm not terribly concerned that the person who provided that did it because 'it made them feel good' or 'it looks good on a resume' or 'now I can brag about it to my friends.' I don't have to respect a person's motivations to approve of their results. It's fairly trendy these days to assign unpleasant motives to anyone we disagree with, to attempt to undermine their position, but, in the end, the human brain has been shown to initiate action a half-second before consulting the part of our brain that then scrambles desperately to justify how what *we just now already did* is consistent with our so-called personal beliefs (which were only rung up and consulted after the fact). Hence, values/cognitive dissonance, as we spend our lives trying to rationalize what we've already done, and make some sort of 'consistent' characterization out of our terribly inconsistent past behavior, which is kind of a huge waste of time and only leads to self-delusion and frustration, as, when that next immediate decision comes around, we are going to do it all over again. Behaving in a moral (or immoral, or amoral) manner is a choice, and, like everything else, can become a trained behavior or 'easy path' or default state. Reply with violence or avoidance or outrage enough times, and you'll *always* reach for that tool, even in situations where it doesn't help. You'll get labeled a violent or socially awkward/non-confrontational/passive-agressive or angry/bitter person, but it's because you trained yourself to be that way, and can train yourself *not* to be that way (barring some sort of chemical imbalance...). It might take a heck of a lot longer to get rid of the reputation, 'though.
When I create a witch, it's always very tempting to spend every last feat on Extra Hex. Yeah. I'd take it to 11 and say that if there was a witch archetype that buffed up the hexes *and eliminated spellcasting entirely* I'd be there in line, itching to play it. That being said, Toughness and Improved Initiative are my two 'go-to' feats for just about everyone I play.
Random thoughts about the future; Servayn intends to learn Terran and Auran (2 ranks of Linguistics) to better control his elementals. Other than that, his skill points should go towards stuff that advances what we're doing here. Profession (farmer) and Knowledge (religion) will help him on his side-trek to settle the kobolds down. It looks like we are going to seriously need a way to stay in touch with the community while 'gallivanting,' and other than some complicated system of mirrors able to signal across many miles, I've got nothing other than using Independent Research from p. 219 to research up a 1st level spell that conjures some tiny wisp-creature that can fly back and forth with messages. If the critter has a Str 1 and no effective attacks, being pretty much 'animal messenger for arcanists,' it should balance fine as a 1st level spell, and if Servayn uses his last two skill points next level picking up Knowledge (arcane) and Spellcraft, he might even be able to do that, in an off week. Once it's researched, Lukasz can be assumed to also learn it, and be able to use it from the city to 'send up the bat-signal' while we are out in the field. If somebody's got a less expensive option (1000 gp. for the spell research, assuming I don't roll like I normally do on the spell research and summon Cthulhu to eat us all, and the permanant loss of one of my 1st level spell slots to keep it prepared, since I'm a spontaneous caster) like smoke signals or signal fires or fancy fireworks or something, I'm all for it! Isn't there an Erastilian spell that fires an arrow up into the sky and creates a visible-at-range symbol? That might be a useful alternative, and there's a cleric of Erastil in town... Ooh, just looked that up, Deadeye's arrow might be the perfect thing for what we need!
The difference between motivation for an action and results of an action determining 'goodness' or 'evilness' is just a huge can of worms. Is it 'more good' to do a good deed when you *don't* have any sort of empathy or 'feel good' moment afterwards? When it isn't a tax write-off or good for some cool popularity and bragging rights? Is it 'less good' to feel a sense of satisfaction after helping someone, and to enjoy that feeling? Are the 'good works' spoiled because you also benefitted from them, and can smile at yourself in the mirror the next morning and be all proud of yourself for making the world a teensy bit better yesterday? Is it 'less evil' for someone to coldly embezzle 1.2 million dollars from the retirement funds of seventeen thousand senior citizens, leaving them penniless and having to go to work as greeters at Wal-Mart to make ends meet, if I don't get a naughty thrill at all the people now suffering because of my actions? Or is it *more evil* that the plight of all those victims never even occured to me? I'm totally schizo on this sort of thing. Sometimes, I'm a results-first kind of guy. I don't really care if one's motivations for doing good works are selfish (I need to do good works, or I won't get into Heaven!) or selfless. Ideally, one should want to do good things because they are the right thing to do, but if someone does good things because they like the feeling it gives them, or crave the 'charity geek cred' it garners them, or because they've coldly reasoned out that donating X dollars to charity Y will improve their own situation by Z, then, hey, good works are good works. Other times, I find that motivation can poison *my opinion* of people, and it certainly seems to be fashionable to trash entire philosophies or movements based on the words or actions of their least-serious members.
Sounds like a great way to tie in a Samsaran Sorcerer's bloodline, or an Oracle's mystery. Ooh, good catch. A Samsaran child born to another race might also explain an unusual critter bloodline. A Samsaran child with the Draconic Sorcerer bloodline might have battered his way out of a dragon's egg as a child, to the surprise of his 'mother,' who arranged for her minions to go leave the little blue-skinned mammal on someone's doorstep. A Samsaran who was found floating in a tidal pool in a seaside cave could have a natural tendency for the Waves domain as an Oracle, while one found among the bones of a 'sky burial' in the mountains might be suited for Wind or Bones. It's mildly ironic that this particular flavor works so well for Sorcerers and Oracles, while Charisma is the one mental attribute that Samsarans don't have a strong leaning towards... :) Still, a wizard with an elemental school, witch with a nature-y patron, or cleric or druid with air/earth/water/fire/weather/animal/plant domains could match up flavor and mechanics this way.
If the 'kids appearing' thing doesn't work aesthetically, it's easy enough to say that Samsaran women don't get pregnant unless A) they are trying to do so and B) an appropriate spirit is waiting to reincarnate, and that their little blue babies are the reincarnations of other individuals. Or the 'Samsaran babies are born to other races, and then brought to the nearest Samsaran to be dropped off' idea. A whole raft of Samsaran specific traits related to having been reborn from another species, could be funky. A former Tengu soul, reborn as a Samsaran, might retain a single martial sword proficiency (or exotic sword proficiency, if he starts the game already having all martial proficiencies, as a Ranger or something), or a gift for languags, for example. On the other hand, the 'appearing kids' concept has potential as well. There might be certain specific areas where children are more likely to appear, like sacred caves, or spirit-infested glades in the woods, or whatever. Some might be found floating on giant lily pads in the middle of a special pool, or even pull their way from oversized pods grown from a rare tree. Those locations would be monitored around the clock by adult Samsarans, who watch out for them (and send explorers around the various surrounding nations, to locate any such 'birthing places' that they haven't already secured). The location of a Samsaran's 'birth' might also give rise to special traits. One that was dragged into a Samsaran community by a fox might have different traits than one that bubbled up from a sacred hot mineral spring in the mountains. Maybe all sorts of options happen; Some Samsarans are born to Samsaran parents (and are still reincarnated souls). Some Samsarans are born to non-Samsaran parents (and are raised by their birth parents, which might be kinda funky if 'mom and dad' where Nagaji or something!). Some Samsarans just appear in certain places, probably watched over by adult Samsarans, and quickly are bundled up and taken to a home. Some unlucky Samsarans just appear in *random* places (and the vast majority of them are eaten by wild animals or die of exposure within the next minutes or hours).
In a setting that already has organizations like the Pathfinders or the Blackfire Adepts or the Iridian Fold or the Aspis Consortium or the Hellknights or even the disavowed Darklight Sisterhood, it does seem like a credible challenge to come up with something new and fresh in that area. Whole campaigns can be run around the Prophets of the Kalistrade or the Red Mantis Assassins or the Bellflower Network or the Eagle Knights. Multiple adventures have dealt with the Whispering Way and the Church of Razmir. If this sort of contest can come up with some organizations that have that sort of evocative appeal, that would rock.
Ah, found the Cosmopolitan feat I was thinking of, and remembered what my thinking was on taking it. Here's the feat. Search was confuzzled because there's *also* a trait named Cosmopolitan which does something different... I was thinking that Garand, from his time in Kaer Maga (pre campaign) and his exposure to many languages and cultures, would take the feat and add 2 extra languages and Diplomacy and Linguistics as class skills. If you don't feel that's inappropriate, Dreaming Warforged/Celestial Bureaucracy (given the flavor of the feat, it's non-core nature, and Garand's less-than-cosmopolitan nature), I'll stick to taking Improved Initiative, but if Cosmopolitan is okay, I'll take that for Garands 3rd level feat instead.
Thoughts on this rabble-rousing dude; 1) Kalsgrim can probably speak to the man directly, making whatever Diplomacy roll we need to try and change the rabble-rouser's mind, and, ideally, anyone else present at his current speaking location, with Servayn taking 10 on an Aid Other check to give him a +2. Janku might be good for another +2, depending on his Diplomacy roll. I'm not sure if Davor or Kriger have that skill... Corso would likely be quite handy in that area, from what I remember of him, but he's stuck in NPC-land right now, sadly. 2) If the rabble-rouser happens to be some soft perfumed sort, that will make a nice contrast with our rougher appearance. The frontiersy people that would be attracted to a fledgling nation such as this would likely find it easier to identify with hard-fighting people who work with their hands, and are beating back the wilderness, than a pampered city dweller in finery. Might even be worth a circumstance bonus to talk down some of his points. If the rabble-rouser looks more like a grisled woodsman or ex-mercenary in well-used armor, then we can't play that card, obviously...
I was thinking of having a mixed offspring of this colour combination as they would be easier to figure out rules wise as they have the same breath weapons, immunities, weaknessess etc. What alignment could they be? Same as mothers or abit more chaotic due to their fathers heritage? With creatures who don't have an alignment subtype, I'm more inclined to have nurture, instead of nature, determine what sort of 'person' they end up becoming. If raised in exile, he's more likely to be bitter or even bestial (lacking a parent dragon to educate him) or to take on traits of those who did raise him (or local cultures that he spied upon, from on high or in hiding or whatever), and yet some 'rejects' go and reject those who rejected them right back and focus on becoming *better* than those who rejected them, to prove how wrong they were to dismiss them. If raised by a silver parent, he *might* take on their philosophy and morals, or he *might* feel that he's 'the mistake' that is unloved and unwanted and little more than a painful memory or obligation (particularly if the parent goes on to have more traditional children whom she 'loves more') and become resentful and go down a darker path, making it *seem* like a self-fulfilling prophecy that he was 'born bad.' Or he might work twice as hard as a normal silver dragon hatchling, feeling like he has to prove that he's nothing like his white parent, or that he has to earn the respect or love or whatever that a 'normal' silver hatchling would get automatically, and end up being 'more silver than silver,' and blame every tiny little mistake on his heritage, while kind of missing the point that every other silver dragon out there is making the occasional mistake as well... So, as with so many answers, I'd go with 'whatever the GM wants to advance the story' and find a rationalization for why *this* particular hybrid turned out like parent A, like parent B, like neither, like a little bit of both, or overcompensatorily 'more silver than silver.' That, to me, is always the right answer. 'Whatever I want to advance the narrative.'
Adding to the list of 'lich but I didn't wanna be', one of the ruling necromancers of Hollowfaust, in the Scarred Lands setting, was an apprentice who was summarily killed and brought back as a lich by one of the original rulers, who was attempting research into means of becoming immortal, by killing off his unlucky apprentices with various experiments. (And, indeed, considered the apprentice turning into a lich, instead of becoming immortal, to be a failure. He already knew how to turn into a lich. He wanted to be immortal and alive!) It seems I'm the only one who disagrees on this so I'm just going to leave it here. I just do NOT agree with the idea that some external force can fundamentally alter you soul without your choice. Not a will save, but your willing consent. Gods can't do it, so neither can mortals. The setting assumption appears to be that noncorporeal undead are indeed bodiless souls, twisted into a new morality, type, etc. (Amusingly, they also lose or gain attributes, and HD, during this transformation, making the Int 18, Cha 8 12th level wizard slain by a shadow drop to Int 6 (and 3 HD), but become vastly more personable and charming, with a Cha of 15, and the Int 8 paladin made into a wraith rise to Int 14, despite being assumed to be the same soul!) Ghosts are the only one that retain their original alignment (and mental attributes), so the ghost of a paladin who died having failed to deliver a healing relic to a community beset by plague and lingered due to frustration over their 'failure' in the hopes of finding a way to convince someone who discovers their body to carry on their mission, can remain lawful good, at least, for awhile, and possibly even continue using their paladin abilities, if they didn't worship a god who specifically loathes undead (such as Sarenrae), like Abadar or Torag or Erastil or Shelyn. But if a paladin is killed by a shadow? One round later, he's chaotic evil, and if that shadow is destroyed six seconds after that, he's a shiny new CE soul, probably bound for the Abyss and wondering why Iomedae no longer returns his calls. [Adventure hook! Your paladin buddy just got ganked by a spectre, and you positive energy channeled his incorporeal butt into ectoplasmic residue, but now you have to travel to the Boneyard and find his soul in Pharasma's line, and cast atonement on him for his 'unintentional evil' so that he can go to his deserved afterlife, and not become demon-fodder!] Them's the breaks. I'd prefer an Egyptian style 'multiple soul fragments' sort of situation where everyone has a 'shadow soul' or khaibit, that lingers behind in their body, and is what one speaks to with a speak with dead spell, or what gets twisted into the various spawned undead. Then again, unrestricted use of the spawning ability of undead has often been a pain anyway, for various reasons. With ghouls and vampires, it at least takes some time, and the creatures have reasons to *not* procreate willy nilly, but for incorporeal undead, the sky's the limit. Changing Create Spawn to being something that *can* happen and not something that *always* happens (at the GM's discretion, saving it for when it's narratively important, and putting out of the reach of any slob who manages to Command a shadow, to create an endless army of TANSTAAFL-defying perpetual death machinery), would be one way of negating the 'wight-o-calypse' scenario, where a single undead goes on a killing spree in a village full of commoners who can't even hurt it, and as the days go by, spread in all directions, until 10,000 shadows come swooping into city after city, adding to their numbers...
Forgotten Realms: Torm, the deity that got the bad taste of Lawful Stupid out of my mouth, and the Red Knight, a war deity that doesn't come from the "raging berserker" model. Heck yeah, you picked not only two of my favorites, but my exact reason for liking them! For the Realms, Lleira, Torm and Tymora were probably the most used at the table, in our games. The faith-specific spell 'Tymora's Touch' didn't help, since it was ridiculously awesome. In Greyhawk, it was Heironeous (the right and proper axe using Heironeous, not that charlatan in 3.0 core!), Trithereon and Wee Jas (the less said about her brother Hugh Jass, the better). Scarred Lands, Madriel (who'se pretty much Sarenrae), Corean (Heironeous with a dash of Torag) and Tanil (Mielikka / Ehlonna - esque). We didn't play enough Eberron to get much into gods, although, from a min-max perspective, playing a cleric of Onatar snagged one the Warforged Domain, and power to rebuke and command constructs, including the ubiquitous warforged (and funky variant homonculi). Nothing messes with a Xendrik Expeditions DM like usurping control of one of the encounters (with warforged) and sending them ahead of the party as damage-sponges for the rest of the session. :)
Arazni was a wizard?I am a bit lost with the nuances of this exchange of posts. First you affirm that Arazni was a wizard, then your later post seem to hint that you have found that information in this thread, but I don't see anyone saying that, so where you have found the information? I was lazy and didn't link to it, which I should have, since my posting something is generally an invitation to comment on my badwrongfun. James says she was a wizard here. So Arazni was a wizard, with an order of knighthood established around her. That's all sorts of intriguing! Was she big on tactics and military strategy and 'war magic?' Was she of royal blood, and associated with the noble class and knightly knights and whatnot? If so, to what nation? That's all kinds of fascinating to me and great fodder for non-traditional character ideas (like 'war wizards' as parts of knightly orders or mercenary bands). It's hard to argue that Cyric was on any team other than his own. [tangent]In the first novels, Cyric was a better friend to Midnight than Kelemvore, and she actually went to talk with *him* when she was feeling down (usually because Kelemvore was being a dick to her, again). And then, by the last novel, also by Richard Awlinson, Cyrics entire characterization did a 180 and he was a two-dimensional cackling bad-guy. At the time, I had no idea why the characters had changed so much in personality and were unrecognizable. I heard later that they switched authors and just used the same name, for some reason, and I think that might have had something to do with the radical changes in characterization, as Cyric had been written 'too nice' for where they wanted him to end up, and Kelemvore had been profoundly unlikable, which wasn't where they wanted him to end up either... And then Cyric went on to become the god of hare-brained evil-lulz schemes that never work, or backfire on their user, making him the perfect patron god of the Zhents, I guess.[/tangent]
Can a cleric even ascend? They'd lose all their abilities once they stopped worshiping their deity. Hmmmm. Hard to say. Iomedae seems likely to have kept her Paladin abilities even after no longer technically being a 'paladin of Aroden,' and apparently has not only not lost power, but gotten *stronger* with the death of 'her god.' At least *some* of her powers were, at least initially, likely granted by Aroden, when she was a mortal. They got along fairly well after she ascended, so perhaps he continued to maintain them, but, IMO, it's more likely that once she became a god, she granted her own Paladin powers... (Paradox loop! Iomedae receives powers granted by Iomedae! Illogical! Illogical!) Behold Jeshoba! Ascended cleric, now god of feedback loops and self-referentialism!
Yeah, that was a neat tidbit. I'd gotten the impression, from her Knightly followers, that she was Iomedae 1.0, another Paladin goddess, replaced by the next, next 'hawt girlfriend of Aroden that conveniently becomes a god.' It would be neat to see a cleric some day become an ascended god. We've got wizards and monks and paladins and fighters and rogues, but, even in the Realms, where three out of four members of an adventuring party went on to become gods, the cleric ended up getting spurned by his goddess, depowered, and then killed, while his three teammates went on to become gods. Maybe Aroden was a cleric, 'back in the day,' to some Azlanti god(dess) that nobody remembers the name of...
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