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 Recent Posts
Yeah, it rocked. There was definitive movement on the story last season, but the first episode of this season already started to connect the dots. I have dragged my wife through every season so far, and this time she finally looked at me and said, "Okay.. this is getting good. They're really moving and the show has won me over." Spoiler:
The surprise cameo from Boone didn't hurt. She was mad when Boone got killed.
Little details! In the pilot or first couple episodes Greg Grunberg (aka "Matt Parkman") had a walk on part as 815's pilot or co-pilot. He got smashed by the Smoke monster almost immediately. If you listened closely, Grunberg was doing the pilot voice over on the parallel universe Oceanic 815 scenes. The dynamic between Jacob and "Smoke Monster Man" was fascinating. I finally remembered a scene between Locke and Walt from the 1st Season. Locke is trying to teach Walt how to play backgammon, and he holds up two game pieces and says, "Backgammon is a game between the White Player and the Black Player" and I think that was an early metaphor for the entire show. I want that map too! This is going to be a great final season.
Kindly and politely, I'd still love to see a direct clarification from Paizo. No disrespect to Skip or 'Rixx or those who agree with their interpretation, but this has been a contentious issue for a long time, with good rock solid arguments on both sides. I'd like to see it buried once and for all, preferrably by Paizo when they have the time.
Yes. Avoiding the specific example of "Trip" (which is controversial around here), in general yes they do. Check page 199, left column, second paragraph. Add any bonuses you have currently due to spells, feats, and other effects. These bonuses must be applicable to the weapon or attack used to perform the manuever. Magic enhancement bonuses on the weapon being used to perform the manuever used would qualify as 'other effects' in that sentence. Trip.. has specific issues with it related to what weapon can be used. Discussion of that might derail your thread. Just a warning. :)
Chris, I too was blessed with one of my "pit crew" (as you described them), who ran an independent playtest without me being present. Talk about illuminating. They found some issues that looked fine on paper but didn't translate to actual play very well. If you got the means to run a playtest, it's invaluable.
The wife and I loved it. Geoff Johns was in the actual credits as the author. Spoiler:
And he wrote Lex back in! I was tired of Luthor, but it didn't seem right that he was forever dead.. well they corrected that. Note, if you didn't watch it- Lex is *not* in it. However Dr. Fate reveals to Clark that he's not really dead either. I'm sure some people will hate it passionately. I can't say it's really great television, but I'm entertained watching it and that's all that matters to me. That being said.. this one had a LOT of 'fun factor' to it.
Let's get it on!Oh, Hell! Jim broke out the Marvin Gaye on us! ;-) Hahaha!! Ya got me Tom!
I've had funny little songs like that ever since Dennis posted a link to that funny little YouTube song about the 'Greatest Rivals OF Destiny'. I hope they're not frackin' with my writing too much. ;-) Incidentally, I found a funny little story about how Carl Douglas came up with that song: Spoiler:
EXPLOSIVE RUNES!
I wonder if, after the deadline today, we'll be allowed to reveal which monster we chose? I'm not dead set against it, but I think the Judges and Contest Admins are better served not doing this. Because that starts a whole cycle of analysis and pre-conception days prior to actually seeing the entries. "Who tackled the hard monster? Who choose an easy monster? Who picked my favorite?" (Note, what qualified as an easy or hard monster is actually subjective) All of that *is* going to happen anyway, however we might not be well served having it happen days before we actually see the entries themselves. Just my 2 copper! I won't cry if the decision is to allow it. :D
Ardorwesp CR 3
Implant (Su) Once per day an ardorwesp can sting a paralyzed foe with a touch attack, which painfully injects an egg inside the target. Victims must make an immediate DC 14 Fortitude save. The most suitable hosts, magical beasts or fey suffer a -3 penalty to this save. Failure indicates the egg matures rapidly, hatching into a juvenile ardorwesp after 24 hours. This violent, traumatic birth inflicts 3d8 points of damage. The egg may be removed prior to hatching with a remove disease spell or surgically with a DC 20 Heal check (healing kit requirements and action as per treating a deadly wound). Any other magical healing prior to removing the egg causes it to quicken and immediately hatch with a juvenile ardorwesp bursting out, inflicting 3d8 points of damage as usual. Armorbane (Ex) An ardorwesp’s primary claw attacks shred armor. On a successful roll to hit that also exceeds the target’s CMD, the attack also deals damage to the target’s armor. This attack does not provoke attacks of opportunity as if the ardorwesp had the Improved Sunder feat. Creatures not wearing armor are unaffected by this special attack. Smoke Vulnerability (Ex) Ardorwesps in the effect of a smokestick or pyrotechnics spell act as per the confusion spell. A peculiar amalgam of hornet and dragonfly, an ardorwesp is approximately the size of a dog. Its sleek, segmented body is flecked with copper, iron, gold, and—especially along its mandibles and six saw-toothed legs—adamantine. Fierce in battle, they rake their razor sharp serrated limbs across their foes as they fly past, shredding cloth and leather, and even sundering steel armor. Surprisingly intelligent, ardorwesps sometimes make alliances with humanoids. These collaborations are usually in exchange for assistance capturing hosts suitable for their young and preventing the flora they feed upon from being molested. Nevertheless they are temperamental and territorial creatures who put their own concerns above any agreement. Ardorwesps understand speech but reply telepathically. Found primarily in temperate forests and plains, ardorwesps nest by burrowing into trees or hillsides. The nectar of giant and exotic flowers, treants, and other fantastic flora provide the nourishment they need to survive, and the scarcity of it keeps their population under control. They prey upon magical beasts and fey, particularly stirges, pixies, and wizards' familiars as their supernatural nature makes them ideal hosts for their young. Such creatures (including a familiar tucked in a robe or backpack) have a strong odor to the ardorwesp, as per the scent ability. Nevertheless, any living sentient creature will suffice to incubate their eggs. Sacred to the goddess Calistria, ardorwesps share her propensity towards passion, craftiness, and vengeance. They have been known to reside at her temples as guardian creatures, or become companions to those who earn the goddess’s special favor. Similarly, clerics of Calistria may summon one with summon monster IV. Those faithful to the goddess are forbidden to harm ardorwesps, lest they face divine reprisal.
Duly noted Eric! Thanks for the lesson! Sometimes you have to know when to go with your gut, that time perhaps I should have.
Awww. Gosh Max, its folks like you that really make me want to put my head down and give it all I got. Thanks! I'm gonna ramble for a bit.. Spoiler:
I've always suffered from a self-confidence and self-esteem problem. It might be a pretentious of me to say so, but I think its less uncommon than you might think. That is, I think a lack of belief in one's ability to be excellent is one factor that holds a lot of people back, not just me. We have the tools, the means, and the opportunity, and for whatever reason we just don’t get there..
That's my challenge to myself anyway; To not hold back, to not compromise myself in pursuit of this goal. Someone close to me once played a clip from the movie 'The Matrix', she said it reminded her of me.
That doesn't sound particularly encouraging, but sometimes I do think opportunities present themselves and never get taken because 'we're waiting for something.' However, as we all know.. the Oracle is not stating a fact here. She's telling him what he needs to hear; liberating him from trying to live up to an expectation that has been placed on him. Ultimately, the decision to achieve his potential is still his... except now it really is a choice. We've got to want to succeed. That's the first step. Ha! I don't know if any of that made a damn bit of sense or not. I just know it's 7:45 am local time, and I guess I'm in a sort of crazy headspace at the moment.. and its time for me to get to work winning this here contest. Thanks for the note Max, I'll see what I can do for the both of us.
I'm counting on you to try again next year Seth!
This is the fifth in a series of posts where I discuss my Round Two entry.. I’m getting a little less verbose now. ;-) Names are hard Spoiler:
True confession, in my opinion skintaker is an adequate name but I was wishing all three days that I could come up with a better one.
Earlier names that were discarded included:
Names are hard, no doubt about it. I could have used a better name, but skintaker is the one that stuck. Intellect Devourers can do all this stuff themselves, so why do we need these things? Spoiler:
This was a hard one, no doubt about it. It stopped me cold and was probably the criticism that I took the hardest. Not meaning that I got upset, or that it was in any way unfair. It was just the one that I took the hardest (probably because it was the most compelling).
I’m not trying to dodge the question, but if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to turn it upside down and invite you to consider it again: If intellect devourers can do all this stuff on their own, why aren’t they? And why haven’t you wanted to use them in your campaigns before this? The simplest answer I have is that they don’t want to, probably for a myriad of reasons. Not liking the openness and exposure. Not having a place to retreat to when their stolen body decays. Not being able to enjoy that body in whatever perverse manner they choose to, without attracting unwanted attention from local and civil authorities. Not to mention concern about the proximity of people able to call upon protection from evil (a common 1st level spell to which they’re vulnerable). How about not wanting to do their own dirty work? That’s a time honored reason that has withstood the test of ages. :D I don’t mean to make light of this concern at all. I take it seriously. The best answer I have is that the skintaker serves to find a better selection of good and interesting bodies for the IDs to inhabit, without forcing them to enter cities to find one themselves. That is what allows you to take what was once only a bizarre subterranean monster and make it part of a broader storyline in many different locales, like an urban setting. I hope the possibilities this creates offsets the issue of redundancy. Underground labor? Spoiler:
In my text I mentioned that they can sometimes be found underground in the lairs of intellect devourers.
Simply, I think its good design to provide at least two different applications for a creature. It might not always be possible, but I think it is good when you can do it. Take my good competitor’s work with the Haga. It can be a seer/oracle in the capacity of an NPC, supplying the party with information in a role-playing situation.. Or it can be monster to be fought with directly. That offers you more bang for your buck when you find it in your Bestiary. I designed skintakers primarily for urban situations. However finding them in the Darklands (or your campaigns equivalent), doing the business of their masters just made sense to me. On that same note, if intellect devourers can inhabit underground cities, someone has to maintain those cities while the IDs enjoy their unwholesome festivities. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I don’t see skintakers as mushy soft bloody pulps, but rather quite durable and tough creatures. I hope that element of the design makes more sense now, as I wished I'd communicated it more clearly.
If you'd included this text and the related discussion in your description, I'd have probably voted for you, hands down. I like monsters with a consistent theme, and for monsters that are made instead of born, the explanation for why the monster gets the powers it gets is more important to me than the actual list of powers themselves. Ack! :D Well, that teaches me something. That got cut out in the interest of tighter writing, since I got a lot of feedback about excessive wordiness and passive language in the first round. I did like that line however, and gnashed my teeth over deleting it. I should have listened to my instincts. Thanks Eric!
I'll be honest with you Watcher, this wound up being one of the ones on my short list of 11 that I had a tough time deciding on votes for. Despite my initial impression, they grew on me a lot. I didn't vote for them, but based on polling I'm hoping you are through to the next round so we can see what's coming. Much appreciated! :D Especially coming from you, because I believe you have a great eye for what works and what doesn't. We'll just have to see. I don't want to sound in any way defeatist, but I'm happy and proud to have come this far. We'll see if I can do it again.
Just because a creature is described as coming from another creature, doesn't always mean it is a template. Ghoul is a great example of this. There are templates in various sources to turn any creature into a ghoul, but the base stats for a ghoul are a standalone creature. That's right! @ Chris, I felt a lot of empathy for you during this Round and I sincerely hope you make it. I'm not sure what I can say to make you feel better, other than I struggled with this same dilemma when I was writing my entry. My instinct was to make a skintaker template, which was logical to me because since they're transformed prisoners who might have had previous experience. However, as deinol explains, I had to push myself to think of my monsters as a base creature that one could optionally add additional class levels to, but were not required to do so. Just like the ghoul. (Now to stop talking about me..) I think another reason that you got unfairly pigeon-holed as a template is that there are so many flavors of mephits. I'm not sure if they actually qualify as a monster template, or 10 different creatures that just so happen share a common set of base stats and a small amount of unique powers and abilities. See what I mean? If the reader thinks of a mephit as a template, they could easily think of your entry as a template as well. I liked the Lantern Thralls. Once again, I hope you make it. The contest will be well served if you d0.
Whatever you do, don't drop that theme. It gives it a whole Invasion of the Body Snatchers vibe and that's what I liked about it too. Oh, I won't! I promise. I thought it was a good idea when I wrote it and I still do. I'm just differentiating what the intent and motive was. Not to steal what is cool from a doppleganger, but to provide a means to end for the skintaker. And thank you for your support! I'd love to write an adventure proposal. However I'm also a firm believer in the most important step in this RPG Superstar process being the next step. Whatever step that might be at any given time. I need to do my best in every Round, and hopefully everything else will fall in place. Finally, I believe the process will result in the best people and the best final winner. I'm hoping that I'll do well, but that's what we're all here to find out. The best way to see that happen is to make it happen. :D
This is my fourth post in a series talking about the skintaker! Please forgive my long windedness! I love to write! Another doppelganger and another skin-stealing creep Spoiler:
I was chagrined to learn that there were so many pre-existing skin stealing monsters. In my meager defense I missed most of the third edition generation of books and publications. I started with 1st edition AD&D way back in 1980, but had about a ten to fifteen year gap when 3rd edition came out (along with the OGL phenomena). I got back in the hobby in September 2007 when Rise of the Runelords: Burnt Offerings first came out. I simply and quite honestly was unaware that it was ground that had already been well traveled.
As far as being another doppelganger, actually the very last ability I added to the skintaker was the ability to take someone else’s form that they had recently fed upon. It wasn’t central to my core idea at all (if fact it came about as a suggestion from an early proofreader). That being said, I do take responsibility for including it, and actually I think it is still a great ability for the skintaker to have! However, a skintaker is kidnapper and predator first, and an identity thief second. The ability to steal someone else’s physical appearance is only an optional side-effect in how they reconstitute themselves, not a requirement or even a particularly compelling desire on their part. A skintaker could quite easily go through their entire sinister career always masquerading as their original true self. That’s because they always have the option of reconstituting into their former selves; but once a victim is fully consumed they no longer have that particular template to draw upon any more. The permanent theft of another identity is not sustainable for them in the long term. Nor is it necessarily particularly attractive, especially when they’re typically strongly motivated to regain some semblance of a normal existence. In some ways I regret the addition of the doppelganger effect because it received such criticism. On the other hand, it is one more tool in their arsenal of deception and infiltration. Whew! I’ll be taking a little break for a bit but then I’ll continue. I hope someone finds this interesting and not overly self-indulgent. I promise to focus in on specific comments soon.
This is the third in a series of posts discussing the ideas and thoughts I had when writing the skintakers.. and reflecting on some of the comments I received. Please enjoy! Undead? And the idea of the sympathetic skintaker Spoiler:
Both of these were interesting comments.
I tried really hard to differentiate them from the undead, but I can see I didn’t quite get it across in every case. They do share many qualities with the undead however (feeding off of others of their own kind), so it makes a certain sense. I suppose it stands to reason that anything that looks skeletal will be associated with death. Sympathy for skintakers was something I didn’t pick up on until the proofreaders started commenting on it. I was surprised to see the judges and readers follow that same vibe. Certainly that is a valid story element to use! However, when I was doing some research on villain design one critique came through very clearly- an awesome villain is not reluctant or passive. The way I imagine most skintakers who dwell in urban locations is that they are predators. They may hate it what they do, but they don’t hate it so much that they’re willing to suffer or sacrifice their own needs and desires. They want as close to a normal life as they possibly can get. They want to look in the mirror and not being repulsed by what they see. They want to enjoy fine foods and material comforts, as well as physical pleasures. They’ll prey on someone else to get those things if they must. If they can’t, they’ll go mad and kill themselves long before that point. In fact, I imagine not all skintakers are able to adapt. Along that line of thinking, I also think the IDs would screen out possible candidates that would be well suited to being ‘altered’. After all, why waste a good body if they’re just going to kill themselves in maudlin self-loathing? Skintakers are rare creatures, and the established ones are self-motivated to succeed. Nevertheless, they were once people, and under the right circumstances I’m sure they still remember that. It defines their existence. The desire to be normal again, for as long as you can. Their situation is a somewhat desperate one, at least until they can get into a well populated area where their activities are easier to hide and they get a good situation established. Think of Showtime’s TV series, “Dexter.”
This is a second in a series of posts discussing my thoughts and design ideas that went into the skintakers! Please enjoy! Too similar to the intellect devourers, and why do they look all gross and stuff? Spoiler:
The similarity to the intellect devourers themselves was something of a gamble, and not everyone thought that they were as original as they should have been to be a Superstar monster. I wince at that a little, but I accept it.
The decision to make them resemble of the IDs was (for me) a matter of internal logic and story. IDs are disembodied brains that are durable and self-sustaining without a body. I rationalized that if they had strange, advanced, and alien magic that they could hybridize a native lifeform into something closer to themselves. That begged the question, “Why?” After all, one of their primary goals seems to hinge on not being like themselves, and instead enjoying what it means to be ‘us.’ There are couple reasons: First and foremost, because it is cruel. Seriously, if you look how intellect devourers are defined, it is with the words cruelty and sinister. In fact, they are ‘one of the worlds cruelest races’, according the Bestiary. Skintakers are not born and they are not created. Instead they are transformed from people just like you; in an act of sadism and personal violence against everything that makes you who you are. In my mind, the intellect devourers delight in that, or take some perverse humor in it. Even when they’re not stealing your body, they’re still taking your humanity away. My original text mentioned that skintakers were “bizarre hybridized parodies of the intellect devourers themselves”, but that got edited out for word count and overall wordiness. Secondly, it serves to isolate and alienate the skintaker. There is no going home again. The skintaker may escape or run away, but the IDs need only ask a few hard honest questions, “Where are you going to run to? Where have you left to go?” The skintaker has lost all sense of community and fellowship, as well as physical sensation. Now the IDs have something to hold over them. They’ve used the stick, so the carrot (a potential reversal of their condition) will be that much more effective. Lastly, it is instructive. The skintakers may not understand the depth of intellect devourer cruelty and depravity, but by golly- they know what they want! IDs want to taste fruity wine, feel silk under fingertips, they want the sensation of agony, physical sexual coupling, pride in physical appearance, depriving others of what they want and watching them suffer.. they want to laugh, cry, and scream. They want to see something squirm underneath their terrible power. Emotion tied to physical sensation. When the skintaker is denied physicality, the intellect devourer can point out, “Now we have something in common. Now you understand what it is we want and how badly we want it. When it comes right down to it, you really don’t need to understand anything else.” The most horrible thing they can do to a person is make them like they are. The theme of both skintakers and IDs is the numbness and isolation of not having feeling or emotion, and the horror of that in of itself.. This has been a long winded explanation to say; I deliberately decided to make the skintakers resemble the IDs, not from a lack of a different idea, but because it felt like the best fit (for me) when I was writing it. Unfortunately it came off as uninspiring to some and I regret that. Deciding on their exact form was a bit tricky, and it changed several times. At first I was vague on the description and did not explicitly state that the brain was exposed. Too many of test readers felt they were too much like common undead skeletons. In fact, as one of them said, “The old brainpan floating in the breeze” was the creepiest and most novel part of their appearance.” It resonated strongly with their creators so I kept it that way. (It also reminded me of Doctor Manhattan trying to fix himself in Alan Moore's Watchmen!) Originally, they were going to be less messy sounding too. I was going with just a skeleton with a spinal cord and brain. That ran afoul with my notion of how the whole thing moved around and was somehow not undead. That was a central issue. I wanted something aberrant, not undead. Going back to the notion that the IDs could pare a living creature down to just the bare essentials, I had them wrapped in connective tissue that serves as muscle, but lacking any ‘unnecessary’ extras. Interestingly, I don’t see them as ‘bloody’ or mushy at all. They’re quite durable in the same ways IDs are, but the skeletal tissue itself is red like blood. In fact, my original text read “bloody red tissues”, and my proof-readers strongly suggested that I just edit it down to avoid passive language. For example: I don’t see skintakers leaving bloody footprints down the hall when they’re “naked” of all exterior skin. However if and when that exterior flesh melts that specifically could be quite a mess. I will confess however, that it crossed my mind to bank on the Paizo fan base loving horror. That has either backfired or come close to backfiring. I’ll be avoiding anything too common in the future.
Hi there! In these posts I’m responding to comments I’ve received, mostly by memory. Afterwards I’ll try to comb through the thread and pick out specific questions and comments and try to narrow down on anything I might not cover in this or the posts to follow. Intellect Devourers – and my deep rooted fear that I was going to be nailed by the judges for doing a servitor race This might be more about the devourers than the actual skintakers, but I hope to put some of my ideas in context. Spoiler:
Some of the strongest and most common positive feedback I received was about creating a servitor race of the intellect devourers. As many people picked up on, the IDs have been identified as a mind flayer surrogate (as mind flayers are not open license creatures). In fairness, in terms of Golarion, there are other possible “mastermind” races, like the Denizens of Leng and the serpent people. However, when the IDs were mentioned frequently I sort of screwed up my face and asked, “why?” They’re iconic and classic, but not always in a positive way, at least for me. I often joked about them as disembodied brains in search of a kitty litter box. However when I was done laughing at my own jokes, I considered what were my issues with them in the niche of the mind flayers. I found my biggest problem with them was that they were not planners or architects of evil. They were just really weird random underground encounters.
I’ll probably repeat this more than a couple times: my favorite monsters are something you can hang a plot on. You can do this with all monsters to some degree or another, because in adventure design even a seemingly random encounter can be part of a story. However some monsters lend themselves to it better than others. So I took a good look at the Bestiary and was really startled to see hints of a grander and more twisted role for IDs in the game. “Entire cities” the Bestiary mentions devoted to the dark pleasures enjoyed by these fiends. Then I checked out ‘Into the Darklands’ written by James Jacobs and guest judge Greg Vaughan. There the dark truth of High Ilvarandin is revealed, where at the city’s core is a mass gentle repose effect ongoing, that allows the IDs to keep their stolen bodies for an extended time. (Side note: Of course I had no idea Greg Vaughan was going to be the guest judge when I wrote it, and for all I know that might have backfired) That really excited me; and I think you write your best when you’re having fun and are excited about what you’re writing about. As a side note, my intention (and hopefully my execution) was not to riff off of Golarion or Ilvarandin, as that would have been against the rules. One reviewer, Starglim, was concerned that IDs creating enclaves was something unique to Golarion. However the Bestiary entry opens that design space for the IDs, suggesting they create their own societies. This becomes a possibility for any campaign setting. The existence of skintakers does suggest that intellect devourers as a group are capable of achievements that their individual stat blocks wouldn’t otherwise indicate. I feel okay about that, because that is consistent with what I read in Paizo adventures. I’ll touch upon this more when I talk about templates, but from my perspective almost any given monster or monster type has some unique and special individuals. From Harpy Monks, Ghoul Rogues, to fiendish otyughs; Paizo has always shown us interesting and special examples of certain monsters. It stands to reason to me that there might also be some very special and powerful intellect devourers that are capable of advanced fleshcrafting and arcane weirdness that the baseline intellect devourer is not. They are from another planet or dimension after all! ;-) All this aside, I was plainly worried that Judges would be mad as hell that I created a servitor race. I’d wake up in the middle of the night thinking of scathing remarks from the Judges that they wanted something wholly and completely original. I can’t say how relieved I was when that was not their reaction. Hopefully next year the skintakers might serve as an example that servitor races can be done. Nevertheless, there were a fair number of fan critics who didn’t like how I implemented this particular servitor race and didn’t think it was original enough.
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