Stratagemini's page

Mikaze wrote:

I'm imagining it as Damiel having wandered into the middle of a fey turf war. :)

I'm imagining the mites dressed in little red leather vests and the dryad dressed like a baseball player mime.

I was imagining the mites Singing and dancing. "When you're a mite you're a mite all the way from the start of your life to your last dying day!"

I hope it's valeros. I bet he looked adorable as a kid. hopefully trying to wield his adult form's oversized-for-a-kid sword.

Will the Platypus Familiar be included in this book? Or will it be a mix of all new Familiars and familiars from APs?

The druid starts the grapple,
The Druid's now in pain
for once you grapple Succubi
You're hit with level Drain.

If you don't back the kickstarter there may not BE a super dungeon. And the dungeon certainly won't be as nice as it would be if you backed it. I don't understand this premeditated waiting for stuff which gets better if you support it.

Dragon78 wrote:

I wonder if we will get any info on the Gold Dragon incharge of the island of Hermea.

Mengkare is WAY too big of a subject for a few pages to do any level of justice to, therefore, he will not be featured in this book.

Sadness.... Can we at least get Mengkare's alignment?

Kcinlive wrote:

My only complaint about the art is that it doesn't always match the NPC that it's under. There can be a bit of a disconnect.

Can you give me an example of this?

A number. Okay. There are a number of Sorcerers and Wizards wearing armor which isn't represented in their stat block:

Sorcerers:
The bramble sorcerer on 162

Storm Sorcerer on 163

the Azure Bolt Sorceror on 170 has some sort of ice axe and neither equipment or spell to explain such a thing (also she's electric themed and dressed for the depths of winter)

The Aforementioned Ice mage on page 171 is dressed for what seem like jungle adventures. or at least much warmer weather than I'd normally expect an ice mage to venture into.

Wizards:
the Deep Marshal wizard on 191 is wearing full plate and wielding a warhammer (the weapon at least is in her statblock).

The grand Necromancer on 193 seems to be clothed in bone armor of some sort, odd for a wizard, but at least fitting the theme of necromancer.

Monks:
The Cruel Devotee on 98 is wearing a blindfold over his eyes despite being unable to blind-fight.

The harrying Brute on 99 is weilding a Sai and a sword of some type, despite a dagger in his statblock, and no sword anywhere near it.

The cautious hunter on 101 has some sort of flaming fists and at least one spiked knuckleduster (also on fire), despite no ability to elemental fist, or flaming amulet of mighty fists.

Paladin:

The Forge Rider on Page 119. He's Dual Wielding Greataxes (two handed weapons) despite his statblock stating his has an Urgrosh. he looks incredibly awesome though.

There are some more here and there. but those were the most glaring to me. That said! The art as a whole in this book is extremely awesome! Aside from a few gnomes and halflings that look disturbingly like bobbleheads, I think I enjoyed almost every single picture in here. Especially the Fiery Dragonkin Sorcerer on page 174.

Am I the only one who sees the champion path abilities and thinks "Hello Incredible Hulk?" Aerial Assault, Devastating Smash, Sweeping Strike, Wall Smasher and To the Death?

Tell me that doesn't sound like the Incredible Hulk.

Not just science! Super Science! It wears its underwear on the outside. that's how you can tell the difference.

It seems like paizo deliberately goes out of its way to make abbreviating product names into acronyms difficult. See the AP line: Serpent's Skull, Skull and Shackles, Shattered Star. I'm probably gonna default to calling this book "The Campaign book" myself though.

Kaijuu are larger than Colossal, for one thing. For another. A terrasque is all well and fine. But there are maybe only 3 creatures of its approximate CR and size. And most of them like the Terrasque are pretty strong flavor in Golarion (Spawn of Rovagug and all).

Why not use the Tessasque all the time? The same reason we don't use skeletons for every low CR enemies we need. They're different Monsters for different purposes.

I'd rather have a blueprint of the castle. The major NPC would be nice, but so long as I know if it's a (Warrior 5/Paladin 2) or a (Expert 15) I can probably stat out my own NPC. Flavorful stuff and overhead Views of the castles from the air? Complete with Sections labeled? Those are more interesting to me.

Lynxes, bobcats, cougars.

Cougars? Wouldn't they be better suited to the NPC Codex?

AlgaeNymph wrote:

5. Does Sorshen's (or any other runelord's) immortality grant immunity to madness like it does for Karzoug's?

5) Until I stat her up, we'll see. Probably so, but her route to immortality was different than Karzoug's so it may well have different side-benefits.

How did Sorshen gain immortality? Was it bathing in the blood of a thousand Virgins?

So it only works in the PFO Sub-forums? sad. I wish it worked everywhere.

Gary Teter wrote:

We're nearing completion on a major refactoring of the messageboards code. Mostly it's to add support under the hood for Paizo Game Space, but there will be a few usability and appearance tweaks, and I'm hoping it'll perform better than the old code.

I'm sure this is all well and good and if I was 20 years younger it may very well made a lick of sense.

As it stands, all you kids get off my lawn!

Then let me explain using the universal language, Small words SHOUTED LOUDLY!

PAIZO, WANTS TO DO STUFF.
PAIZO.COM CAN'T DO THAT STUFF NOW.
SO PAIZO IS POKING IT WITH A STICK UNTIL IT DOES THE NEW STUFF.

That's why the website went down. there may have been Goblins and Fire involved. and the Sticks may or may not have been Pointy as well.

I like the Synergies, but I also like APs having their own custom maps. Maps for standard stuff like cornfields and town squares and inns make sense and work. But I'd like to keep the dungeons specific to the APs so that I don't have to warn my players not to buy certain Paizo products.

Basically it comes down to: "Is there anything hidden on the map that I don't want players to see?" If so, I'd rather not have any synergism between the maps and the APs.

Apart from the Pathfinder Adventure Path volumes (all of which are 96 pagers), no plans to do more of them yet. Thornkeep's a bit of an aberration in that regard.

Thornkeep is an Aberration? So it's like Aucturn in that regard? Waiting till the stars are right to rise up and eat Golarion?

On a more serious note, will Thornkeep have it's own Bestiary with new monsters? Or is it just using Bestiary 1-3 monsters?

STR Ranger wrote:

Just cause they say FIGHTER ONLY FEATS wouldn't mean they, would be the only class with access. . .

Which is an amazing way to make people mad and resent their existing character. No, Class and Race specific Feats (and similar things) are terrible because there are plenty of other Classes/Races who can have a theme or build very similar to the reasoning/flavor of such things, and not being able to take them because your a Barbarian weapon master vs a Fighter weapon master is infuriating, and little off the wall exceptions (like an archtype) to allow access is no help at all.

Also, when you start getting Class/Race Only material, especilly in large quantities like in a players guide to ______, that starts to make such a book useless to 4/5's of the customer base.

"Useless" or not (and I'd argue heartily against the uselessness of the ARG simply because almost every player race got custom feats), the reasoning is that it gives flavor to the different races and classes that are distinctive. The reason barbarians can't use fighter feats normally is that they're more focused on harnessing their inner rage to go beyond normal limits, whereas fighters focus on mastering martial disciplines. Fighter feats are class features for those classes who focus on martial strength of arms through training (such as Fighters and Magi).

I'd argue exactly the contrary. Removing class and race specific classes makes everyone pretty homogenous and boring as hell. You make choices, those choices differentiate your character, those feats are heavily tied into the flavor of those who they're limited to. It's the same reason why Bards have a different Spell list than Alchemists or Magi. It's something that makes them unique and special.

Here's a for-real photo I took of The Great Disruption.

Huh. How fast does it take to get from that, to this?

Stratagemini wrote:

So you'd get more XP drowning a sackful of Kittens.

How much is a sackful of kittens? Would this be cost-effective, particularly if you could resell (or reuse) the sack?

The suffocation rules are kinda wonky. Assuming a Con score of 9, a kitten could take 20 rounds or more to actually die from this. Would dropping the sack from a 20 ft. height be better, from a time-management standpoint, allowing you to get more XP/hour?

Leveling is serious business, y'all!

Interesting Question! Lets run through this.

A basic house cat in Pathfinder is a Tiny creature with a challenge rating of 1/4th. Hitting it with a Young template moves the CR down a step to CR 1/6th. a single character defeating a CR 1/6th enemy gains 65 XP, I'm going to assume that this kitten drowning isn't a group event because A. that would be horrible. and B. if you're drowning kittens for XP you're very unlikely to want to share the XP.

Now how much is a Kitten? The Aventurer's Armory puts a Cat at 3cp. Since Cats are usually bought while kittens we'll keep that price. A Sack is both 1sp and Reusable, presuming you have something to tie to it so you can retrieve it after you drown the kittens. It holds 1 cubic foot of space. Now a Fine creature (like a kitten) occupies a space of 1/2 a cubic foot. So You should be able to fit 4 Kittens in a sack.

Assuming 20 rounds to drown a sack of four kittens that's 2 minutes, 1sp and 2cp for 260xp. Or 130xp every minute for 6cp. Excluding start up expenses like the initial sack. and Time spent buying or catching the kittens. that's a bit more than a CR 1/2 enemy every 2 minutes.

It would take 73 minutes and 85 seconds to gain 9600 xp, or about a CR 10 Enemy. And would cost 433 cp. Or Roughly 4 Gold pieces, 4 Silver, and 3 Copper. However, it would also require approximately 295 kittens, give or take a third of a kitten.

So You'd be slightly higher than Level 4 on a medium advancement track in slightly more than an hour.

It would probably be Effort prohibitive.

What's more important, stopping the evil Lich or spending years trying to nurture Goblin babies to good-alignment? Or atleast not-evil?

What happens when, despite your characters best efforts, a goblin baby does turn irreparably evil? Do you slay this creature you've spent so much time caring for?

This is going to be a fun book.

Well, as a result of nurturing it, it should probably have some class levels, and with all the Roleplay XP your GM might have given you for raising the thing, and all the XP from your tortured quest to put down the monster you unwittingly created, well maybe you'll get enough XP to level up high enough to kill the Lich. Or Better Yet! Maybe the Goblin will become the Lich's Apprentice! And you can kill him as the Big Boss' Right Hand Man. COmplete with a dramatic tear-filled death scene where the goblin finally admits that he did it all because he thought you never loved him, and he wanted your approval, with a heart touching reunion as the baby is redeemed at his moment of death.

That has to be worth Tons of XP.

I like the new format, but I do have to admit an ambivalence to roles so far. I'd much rather have feats or spells than Roles.

Huh. I thought this would only be available to PFO Kickstarters. Any word on when the Kickstarters will be contacted for reward redemption by the way?

Stratagemini wrote:

So, I just read about Briar in Artifacts and Legends, am I getting this correctly?

** spoiler omitted **
If that's true... Is ** spoiler omitted ** the first Villainous AP that Paizo has put out? or am I missing something?

Nope.

** spoiler omitted except for the phrase "mustache-twirling villain" **

On the one hand, it's great to have villains with tragic moral complexity. On the other hand, the mental image of

Anywy, I've enjoyed basically everything in the book so far. Especially the stats for the Alara'hai. Now if only there were a book of "Magic of Ancient Thassilon" with the seven weapons of rule, and stuff like the battering blast spell and the Gluttonous Tome.

I know it's not a question, but, thanks a lot for continuing to make great books with fascinating stories.

Also? Give whoever thought of the Staff of Ages my regards. Now between Ancient Thassilon, the Robots in Dungeons of Golarion, Grippli, Rovagug biding his time in his prison in the center of Golarion, The Magus class, and the staff of Ages, I can actually run one of my Favorite SNES Games as a campaign in the Pathfinder setting.

I really wish we got the Sovyrian Stone.

Anyone know what other artifacts didn't make the cut for this book?

Well, my list is sort of incomplete, but if these are the ones that DID make it in:

Major:

Minor:

Then the ones that Didn't make it in are:

And that's only the artifacts already statted up. there are a wide variety that are merely mentions, and I may have missed some statted artifacts as well.

Roles are an element of the new Player companion line. they're formatted as Follows:

TYPE OF CHARACTER, such as Gray Maiden, or Shoanti Outrider
DESCRIPTIONS OF ROLE
Race ______; Ethnicity ________

CLASS OPTIONS
Class ______; Class Features (of that particular class) ______
Class ______; Archetype ______ (of the class); Class Features ______
Class ______; Class Features ______

PREFERRED OPTIONS
Skills _______, _______, _________, _________
Feats ________, ________

DESCRIPTION
Insert description of the Type of characters this role describes here

ROLEPLAYING
Tips for Roleplaying this role as a player
Persona ________ (Particular personality quirks of this type of character)
Preferred Equipment ________; Preferred Languages _______

And so on. the template's a bit malleable. But you get the idea.

The monk is not broken. It's a skirmisher class, like the rogue. Thus its BAB is 3/4ths like the rogue. What they do need is a magic item that isn't an amulet of mighty fists that allows you to enchant your fists like magic weapons, for a comparable cost to a regular magic weapon. Make it only work on Unarmed attacks rather than Natural attacks if need be. that's literally the only thing Monks need.

"Hey! Where's Perry?"

I'm not sure I want to admit that I get that reference. though, Paizo definitely seems to have a Make-me-want-to-buy-it-inator that they use on all their books.

Still, Platypus familiars! You could separate them by sex, one with neurotoxin and one without. Or Small-Medium Platypus Animal Companions! My Gnome could ride one.

I want a Platypus. Either as a familiar, or an animal companion. We need some stats for a Cuddly Player Platypus Ally.

What do you do with all those goblin babies?

Cook them of course. They taste like Chicken. It's not cannibalism unless you're a Goblin after all. And if you are, that probably won't stop you.

How would you go about designing an Alaznist encounter? What would her tactics be? Would she have minions? What about her artifact-level weapon (how would you stat it)?

Alaznist has a couple things about her. First off, if you wanna stat an Alaznist encounter? Dungeons of Golarion's Hollow Mountain Entry is her resting place in Golarion (she's at the top of that in a Runewell much like Karzoug) Alaznist seems to have created and perfected Fleshwarping, especially Sinspawn. So I'd Give her some Aberration Minions, Maybe some sinspawn with significant Class Levels or custom Aberrations. She'll have some Giants of course (She favored Taiga Giants mostly), but to avoid being too thematically similar I'd grab the high level aberrations.

Next up, Alaznist has a couple Artifacts associated with her:
-Alanzist Holds the Scepter of Alanzist: This scepter of iron and adamantine is a potent tool for evokers, and can maximize, empower, and expand nearly any spell its wielder casts.
-Garvok, the Sword of Wrath is, if I recall correctly, a Greatsword. It's actually covered in Artifacts and Legend, but I don't know it's powers yet. She wouldn't wield it personally though.
-Her Polearm is an artifact Adamantine Ranseur.

A couple of other miscellaneous facts that might help:
-She created the Spell Battering Blast
-She may have been the First to Craft a Ring of the Ram.

-Alanzist Created the First Sinspawn. They made up the Bulk of her Infantry.
-She also created the first Shriezyx.
-She was allied with the nacent Demon Lord Yamasoth who taught her how to create Sinspawn. Yamasoth may be the Qlippoth who became the first Demon. Also? Hollow mountain is built atop Gongorina, the highest up of the Vaults of Orv. Gongorina was Yamasoth's demense or at least connected to it, back when Alaznist was in power.
-Alaznist encouraged Underlings and subjects to worship Demons. So she may have a few Demoniac apprentices.
-Favored Giants were Taiga Giants

Wait, I am confused by the Totem Warrior FAQ.

Is there no way to gain both a Beast totem and Fiend totem power?

Does the archetype no longer give you access to both?

It never did, apparently.

I hope that people who bought the PDFs won't have to pay twice to use those maps in the VTT. Nothing annoys me more than having to pay someone twice to use something I already own.
Even though you aren't implementing pathfinder rules, I hope you'll have the equations in the VTT so that we can easily access them. With a function to call numbers directly from sheets.Basically an option to overlay pathfinder rules if we want to use them.

I hope the Hellknight Signifier gets previewed. because I really want to see a hellknight caster.

This is about nations where Men are MEN! women are MEN! and MEN! are VIKINGS! Men of the North! The Northmen! or, if you wish, Norsemen.

Even longboats are MEN! in this book! I assume.

I imagine it won't if you're not familiar with the caricatures of the Yellow Peril era. Specifically: the long, clawlike nails, the hooked nose, exaggerated mustache, sneer with snaggly, fanglike teeth and narrow, slanted eyes are all typical elements of Fu Manchu-style demonization of Chinese and other Asians in the early part of the 20th century. Putting all those features together on an "oriental" race makes it extremely striking to someone who's familiar with this particular strain of racist propaganda.

And you would probably be correct, if it weren't a faithful replication of actual indonesian art. Racism isn't reprehensible because certain images are inherently "bad" it's the intent behind racist imagery that make it such a difficult subject. The intent behind the Wayang is crystal clear and not racist in the slightest. in fact, if anything it's the opposite, it brings into greater visibility a time honored tradition from an asian culture. When Wayang theater is performed in Indonesia it isn't inherently racist, so why would it become such because it is faithfully transferred with loving detail into another medium?

An argument that this is racist, even drawing on images from World War II and before hand with Fu Manchu and the "yellow peril", seems nothing but ignorant when confronted with the actual facts and origins of the image. It would be like saying all Norse runes are racist because they were used by rather prominent racists during the mid 40s. And Norse Runes have certainly been a part of fantasy literature and gaming for almost as long as fantasy gaming and literature as we currently know it has been around.

Does the Wayang look sinister? Certainly. It's supposed to. But those features weren't "Put on an Oriental race" they're an intrinsic part of the actual origins and inspiration for the race. they're part of that Asian tradition of Wayang Puppetry.

Aroden was the god of Humanity, Innovation, and History.

I was just reading Giants revisited and a thought occurred to me. The cyclopes of Ghol-gan. When Aroden died they quickly descended into Barbarism didn't they? In addition they were Prophetic too. And said to be so hubristic they declared themselves gods. Could they have murdered Aroden and the backlash from his death by prophetic individuals shattered prophecy?

Well, I for one Welcome the Changes brought by our new Artistic overlords. I like the more painterly style that paizo uses in their products today. And showing the illustrations to my players really helps with the feel of the path.

Also, A lot of the Drawings in the original path were somewhat simple, not as detailed or pretty. And if I'm buying a new version of Runelords, I'm happy to have new Art to look at so I can pick and choose what to show my players.

Will there be dinosaurs? everyone loves Dinosaurs! Custom Magical Beast Dinosaurs? Unique to the world of Golarion?

Kaer Maga? More Kaer Maga? And Distant Worlds as well? And a good look at the different factions too? With James Sutter? I need this adventure Path.

Yep, and if i know my Players they'll have plans to rent rooms at The Strapping Lad as soon as they hear about this book (because appropriately named brothels are always appropriate for every occasion).

New Mounts? Finally a Non-bonded mount that won't die to a single arrow? I hope we get rules for finally riding griffins and Hippogriffs, it would be nice to play a Sable Company Marine without having to resort to playing the ranger archetype.

Recruiting squires though... I shall name mine Sancho Panza!

Mounts and Exotic Pets. For those of us who are higher Level it's a Bit embarrassing to be a level 12 warrior riding in on you magnificent 15 HP war stallion that a single arrow can kill from under you. If we could get prices for some of the more exotic mounts and pets that would be good.

Also, War paints (and other battle oriented cosmetics). Like Woad, or Pitch, or Camouflage paints. Giving small bonuses to stealth or intimidate as the paint may be.

Actually, Pitch and tar could also be nice mundane attack items as well, like alchemist's fire. Maybe causing temporary blindness or rendering covered enemies more vulnerable to fire.

Tattoos. You introduced Tattoos as a class of items that you can create with a pretty interesting item slot and use mechanic, but they're basically Permanent Lesser Metamagic rods or temporary metamagic scrolls. They don't have any distinct identity This is especially egregious when you see what sort of vibrant life you poured into the (few but interesting) Thassilonian Runes. Even rods do more than just Metamagic. Please give Tattoos their own distinct identity in the same way.