bixnoodles's page

This seems like a perfect case for why Government intervention on anti-competitive practices is good.

It would be great if we can get the government involved since what Hasbro is trying to due is effectively monopolize an entire industry given how prevalent the OGL 1.0a is.

The government is also invested given that this can and will reduce tax revenues and increase unemployment.

all of this is true, but very unlikely to happen in the US. In Europe I'd say it's more likely, their courts hate monopolies so much.

Where did the name "Vidrian" come from? Is that an ancestral name for the region, or named after a person, or just something people came up with for other reasons?

besides elves and half-anythings, what's the most common other race humans tend to happily settle down with?

What kind of music would you use to represent Magnimar?

Also, what kind of transportation exists around the city? Going up or down the seacleft always sounded exhausting.

If someone grew up in Magnimar, are they likely to have seen a dinosaur?

At what age does someone "graduate" from Turandurok Academy? Would they just be kicked out of their dorm and turned loose on the world? Asking because I have a player whose character was an orphan and knew Tsuto from the academy, but wasn't sure at what age either of them might have left.

People who picked up Pathfinder a while after its release might forget that things like Archetypes and Traits are nowhere to be found in the Core Rulebook. On release, these mechanics did not exist. They were released incrementally over time. The robust customization options found in the game now are the result of 10 years of releases. Pathfinder 2nd Edition has things like archetypes built into the core assumption of the game, along with ancestry and heritage feats, a whole new spell level, a whole new class, a whole new race...and with the ability to control proficiencies, it means that in the late game, characters will be even more differentiated and specialized in their skills. The game is already, with what little has been shown, more dynamic than Pathfinder was at release. There are already more options. Consider my fears allayed.

I've played 5e a lot and I understand what makes that game less mechanically satisfying from a customization standpoint. This game looks to have none of those problems to me. It's just different because it's new, which was necessary. Pathfinder would not be improved by just continuing to add new stuff to it forever. The playtest for Pathfinder First Edition was 10 years ago. That's an enormous lifespan for a tabletop game, and it's bloated considerably with all the books out for it. The only way to improve the game is to start from the bottom up.

I'm mainly asking about the civil war that ended with the emperor's victory over the shogun in the early 4600's. The transfer of power from the shogunate to the empire. Was that a many-sided conflict with lots of dudes vying for power (like the warring states/sengoku era in Japan)? Or were there only two main combative forces, the shogunate and the imperial army that rose up against it? Sorry if this is a really obscure question.

Was the war in Minkai leading up to the "Battle of Eight Bridges" part of a full-on warring states period, or more of a binary conflict between the imperial forces and those of the shogun?

How much military power is wielded by the regional governors of Minkai? Basically I'm wondering if they are more like daimyo or magistrates.

What's your opinion on per-encounter abilities?

Are humans on Golarion from Androffa?

First of all, I want to thank you for taking positive steps in regards to how certain cultures etc are portrayed. We're in a pretty severe period of political realignment and it's always good to know your favorite game company isn't racist.

Anyway, my question is, since you have the Egyptian gods being worshiped in Osirion, were there ever talks to bring other real-world pantheons to certain corners of Golarion?

Is it likely that there are dinosaurs in Varisia?

Where would you send Orik Vancaskerkin, should he be talked out of serving Nualia? The last couple times I ran Runelords, I had him start working for Sabriyya in the Bazaar of Sails as an enforcer, more or less. But I'm wondering if he'd rather be somewhere else.

current favorite non-paizo tabletop RPG?

Since there's a goblin iconic, should we assume goblins are going to somehow become more acceptable in society? Like, such that the average country village wouldn't think twice about a goblin walking into town, where before they might have assumed it was prelude to a raid.

How do you feel about the new website design?

Is Rovagug older than Pharasma?

How did Baphomet get to be the patron of minotaurs? Dude's clearly a goat.

When Aroden died, did prophecy break just on Golarion, or across the material plane?

I think I read that the Aboleths and the Serpentfolk both claimed to have originated much of arcane magic. Which would you say the magic of Thassilon borrowed more from, Aboleth or Serpentfolk magic?

Do you keep up with paleoanthropology?

There's been some really intriguing stuff coming to light in the last few years. First, you had the Denisovans. I think it amounted to a single toe bone or tooth being found in the cave, but the DNA showed it belonged to an entire undiscovered species akin to neanderthals that interbred with humans in east Asia, and yet no bodies or tools or anything have been found in all this time, despite it probably being a huge population. Then you have Homo floresiensis, the "hobbit", originally thought to be basically tiny humans, now understood to be far more primitive, suggesting very early ape-like human ancestors left Africa (think Orang-pendak). Now there's a hotly debated study (by nonetheless well-regarded paleontologists) that suggests a mastodon in California was butchered with stone tools, hundreds of thousands of years before humans lived in America. There's also just a bunch of stories in general that suggest much of what we thought we knew about human ancestry and migration was just a small part of the story.

Sorry to dump all this here. To summarize, I'm not saying Bigfoot is real, but the statement "there would have been fossil evidence" at the very least is not evidence to the contrary anymore.

So when you kill a summoned outsider, it goes to its home plane and reforms. When you kill a called outsider (or kill one on its home plane), it dies, leaving a corpse. But you can't resurrect an outsider, because its body comprises its soul rather than housing it.

That said, since it has a corpse, could you raise it as an undead creature?

There's nothing in the rules to suggest you cant (though it would be congruent with the no-resurrection thing) but I can't think of any instance in the setting where it's happened. I can *imagine* a vampire succubus, but not for instance a ZOMBIE succubus, or a ghoul angel.

How much of the population knows that other planets exist and have life on them?

What's the deal with Thelsikar?

First he appears in a sort of blurb in the Beginner Box (I ended up turning that into my very first adventure as a GM, years ago! Wrote a whole backstory and gave him his own castle full of monsters). Then I see he's a villain in the comic series (along with Black Fang).

Then recently I open a Pathfinder Battles box only to find a miniature of him...

So was this guy part of some big story behind the scenes or what?

Would you say that, within Pathfinder's setting, any god worshiped as the judge of the dead (including, for example, King Minos, Yama, and Santa Muerte) is most likely just that culture's idea of Pharasma, and she receives those prayers?

What was your favorite animal companion/familiar to draw?

A number of deities and demigods appear to have started out as mortals somewhere and ascended through circumstance or by the will of another god. A lot of these, such as Milani, were born on Golarion.

Now, obviously Golarion is a special world being the cage of Rovagug and all that, and would naturally get a lot of attention from the gods. That still leaves the fact that with a whole multiverse of worlds, so many deities/demigods are themselves from that planet.

So, question 1: Are MOST of those specific deities/demigods who started out as mortals...from Golarion?

Granted, places like Triaxus likely have their own gods we don't hear about that were born a Triaxian. However, we know that for example, Iomedae is a deity judged by the powers that be as "of great importance" and given an expansive realm in Heaven. I'm assuming these other races from other worlds still go to heaven if they are LG.

So question 2: Would aliens worship any gods that started out as mortals on Golarion? Obviously everyone would have some equivalent of Pharasma or Gozreh. But given the apparent prominence of, for example, Iomedae within THE LG plane, would LG clerics on other worlds know about her (through a good old roll of knowledge planes), and worship her, just not really focusing on her origin amid a specific conflict in the Inner Sea?

Every group of players I've ever put in Sandpoint hates Belor Hemlock. They basically feel like the town guard is worthless in general, especially when I run RotR. Am I doing something wrong?

1. What's your favorite city in Varisia?

2. Favorite place that isn't a city or town?

3. Whats an out-of-the-way place in Varisia that hasn't been covered in an AP or module that would be a good place to run an adventure?

Who would Serpentfolk worship besides Ydersius?

Would they be inclined to ally with a member of another race, if that individual was telepathic and had similar outlooks on life?

What happens when an extraplanar outsider dies? Like for example an imp living in Korvosa. I've seen this answered in about three different ways, but I think a lot of people are assuming the old D&D rules still apply. If its body IS its soul, is its existence completely over? Does nothing travel back to the outer planes?

If its soul is dead, what happens to its body? I always had them crumbling to dust or whatever for flavor, but that's probably not accurate. Would a demon decompose is some fundamentally different way than a devil? Could you carry around a demon's skull after you kill one?

I always see outsiders on encounter tables but how likely is it to really bump into an extraplanar outsider in a big city (besides the imps in Korvosa thing)?

Hello, Mr. Jacobs!

I'm very much in love with Golarion as a setting, and I've been doing a lot of writing taking place in it, mostly privately, from various points in its history, about aboleths and thanadaemons and other things. A while back I wrote a thing from the perspective of Aroden that some people enjoyed, and it's over here.

This of course was before I was able to read Pathfinder #100 and all of the goodness within, which filled many of the gaps in the setting left by such an influential god, and altered a lot of my opinions about Aroden's character.

My question to you is, if you can answer it, what kind of person was Aroden? Was he someone full of quiet wisdom, like Jatembe? Did he love humanity? Or, as a lawful neutral deity, did he more precisely love what humanity could achieve?

In writing about him I ended up going in a tragic direction, that maybe he was someone who started out as a typically proud and ambitious Azlanti, but was incredibly pained and haunted by Earthfall (maybe even having been kept alive as means of punishment rather than being simply a survivor), enough that he grew to sincerely love the world and his people after humanity recovered. Or, at any rate, that people had enough of a good impression of him that his death would have been devastating to the common people, even those not of his faith. In the end I feel like maybe I portrayed him as too good of a person, besides being unwilling to wholly condemn slavery/tyranny.

And, in case you can't be too specific about all of that, what's your favorite prehistoric creature that isn't a dinosaur?