cappadocius's page

Verbal components should ideally be shouted - "VENTAS FERROS!" - but a firm, projecting tone, as a professional speaker would use, is acceptable. You are, after all, warping the very laws of the universe to your will. The least you could do is be a little confident, a little forceful in your manner.

A hand-talker has about as much chance as surreptitiously slipping the somatic components of a spell into his conversation as he has of accidentally speaking American Sign Language with his gestures.

Material components must be presented to the universe at large and sacrificed in a manner indicative of the pride and might of a wizard. The universe doesn't grant ultimate cosmic power to people who cry because they crushed a live cricket, stabbed their own hand, or devoured a raw hunk of beholder flesh.

You wanna be a sneaky-ass wizard, take the damn feats.

7d6 ⇒ (6, 2, 3, 3, 2, 5, 6) = 27
1d20 + 3 ⇒ (8) + 3 = 11
1d2 ⇒ 1

8d10 ⇒ (8, 5, 1, 5, 8, 7, 4, 9) = 47

If only there were some new base character class that would resonate with all this desired gothic creepiness...

OOoo! OOO! Like the Cavalier! or the Alchemist!

A mister Howard Lovecraft mined the gothic horror tradition long, and he mined it deep. One must always be careful with requesting things using genre shorthand, lest one end up with some carefully researched fiction that is 100% what you asked for and 0% what you wanted. :)

Can't argue with a man named Cappadocius in a vampire thread.

Apparently one can. :\

I'd say that Vampires are classically supposed to be intelligent seductive predators, far from the walking, decaying, predatory corpses that most undead are.

You've got a funny definition of classically, since 19th century Bram Stoker is the first guy to really do "seductive" with vampires, and even his Dracula is something of a brutal thug. You don't get sexy, smart, seductive, beautiful dead people until Anne Rice and "Interview With the Vampire" in the early 1980s. Before then, they were, for the most part, walking, decaying, predatory corpses.

Zombies are animated cannibalistic cadavers.

Since the 1970s and Romero.

Ghouls feed on corpses, do they not? That alone means they'd be quite foul to the senses - like humanoid vultures.

Had a hamburger lately? Feeding on a corpse. Fried chicken? Feeding on a corpse. Eaten a carrot? Another corpse. We hate ghouls because they eat the interred, human dead, and the socio-religious revulsion that engenders.

Ghouls were initially a desert-dwelling, shapeshifting demon that can assume the guise of an animal, especially a hyena. It lured unwary travellers into the desert wastes to slay and devour them. The creature also preyed on kids, robbed graves, drank blood (OMG VAMPIRE), and ate the dead, taking on the form of the one they previously ate. Lovecraft made them a physical, material thing, and D&D made them dead things that ate the dead. There's nothing inherently repulsive about their appearance classically.

Joe Abercrombie's noir fantasy novels have what are effectively ghouls - men and women who eat the human dead to gain phenomenal mystic powers, and they can be very beautiful and very compellingly charismatic.

Now, mummies; mummies are sexy.

Amardolem wrote:

Gleamburg: it's outside Absalom, and burned to the ground, it's rebuilding.

This is not a real place.

Yoda, buddy, none of these places are real places. I think you mean that this isn't from an officially published source.

Does the Sanos Forest enclave near Sandpoint have a name?

KaeYoss wrote:

Skaven in Warhammer Fantasy.

Have they been turned from one thing into a completely new thing from one edition to the next?

Skaven have been one of the more stable elements of Warhammer. Ogres have received the biggest change of all the still-existing WHFB races.

I suspect the Gamemastery Guide is going to have a lot of triplicate tables, akin to the Low, Medium, Fast XP progression table. Low, Medium, High Magic for NPC distributions; "Points of Light", Mid-Range, "Medieval Europe" for population densities; that sort of thing.

Would you live in a town that could have no water from one day to the next,[...] I doubt that I would.

Millions of people all over the world already live in that town. I imagine they'd all be thrilled to have a GUY they could PROTECT that would guarantee daily, clean water.

It presented a three level PrC called the Adept of the Hovering Disk that focused entirely on boosting the carrying power and utility of Tenser's Floating Disk, and worked for a guild in a prominent harbor town.

That's badass and I'm going to look for this product based on this prestige class.

EDIT: and at a *dollar* over at DriveThruRPG, purchased.

The Fiend Folio was fueled by a VERY different design philosophy than Monster Manuals 3, 4, and 5.

That very nearly sold me right there. The rest of your explanation will have me checking it out.

Just sayin'. :-P

I've never seen the inside of this hypothetical 3.5 Fiend Folio. I've always assumed that, like the Monster Manual IX, it would be filled with things for which I had no use. I am willing to be persuaded.

Cappa's Favorite Monsters Revisted:

1. Wolf-in-Sheep's-Clothing
2. Carbuncle
3. Flail Snail
4. Umpleby
5. Adherer
6. Disenchanter
7. Brain Mole
8. Ixitxachitl
9. Nilbog
10.Su-Monster

Long-term Cappadocius favorites Otyughs and Gelatinous Cubes have already been covered, thus prompting the promotion of Nilbogs and Su-Monsters to the top ten.

It threw me off; I didn't know he was talking about 1e.

There's no Fiend Folio other than 1st edition. There was no Highlander 2. George Lucas only made three Star Wars films.

The Wolf-in-Sheep's-Clothing was actually in the Monster Manual 2. SHAME!!!!

My shame is mitigated only by the fact that my Wolf-in-Sheep's-Clothing statblock comes directly from Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.

Would the wizard's college rather spend time teaching 100 average INT people how to cast mending, or spend the same amount of time (and most likely less effort) to teach a half dozen gifted students (INT 16+) how to cast Ice Storm?

If they're not colossal jerkwads, and if they give half a crap about society, they'd be all over the former.

But aren't the exceptional students more likely provide a greater benefit through creating magic items, contribute funds, researching new spells, and bring back rare artifacts through adventuring?

Would those be the magic items that provide no benefit to society at large, the funds in the form of gold and treasures stolen from indigenous populations, new spells that focus mostly on killing other people in increasingly gruesome fashion when they're not about enslaving other sapient beings, and the rare artifacts that are, nine times out of ten, dedicated to some dark god and precipitate potential apocalypses?

So what you're saying is that the Wizards' colleges ARE run by colossal jerkwads who don't give a crap about society? ;)

I have been playing a devout worshiper of Zon-Kuthon in PFS for over a year now.

*sigh* I'd love to play in a game with her, an Urgathoan necromancer, and Seebo Murnig, my prophet of Rovagug. We'd be the coolest non-evil party ever.

I think fiend folio's the best one of them thar monster books.

Carubuncles, Wolves-in-Sheep's-Clothing, Umplebies, and Adherers? Damn straight it's the best monster book!

Man, stupid Hellraiser. Cenobites were invented in the 4th century AD by Saint Pachomius of Egypt!

Cenobites, of course.

Just tattoo the rodent and put continual flame on the tattoo.

This defeats the purpose of glowing rats and flaming pigeons - they're easy to find and ubiquitous! See a rat scurrying along? Zap it with The Glow. All those pigeons on the statues of Abrogail I? Zap 'em with The Glow. If you have to catch and tattoo the rats, you might as well just hire those lazy bastards in the Lamplighter's Guild again.

cappadocius wrote:

You could also just cast it on all the pigeons and rats.

1) continual flame doesn't work on living creatures.

continual flame as written, doesn't. Clever Jack's improved continual flame, researched at great expense (four whole nights at the pub!), does.

My wizards DO tend to be fond of dropping basic continual flames on the Dwarf's beard, though.

Casting continual flame on a 45 lb spherical 2 ft. diameter framework of wood or rattan made by a cooper or woodworker, and then covered with a thin sheet of beaten brass, decorated with very distinctive heraldry, would tend to discourage people from trying to walk off of it.

You could also just cast it on all the pigeons and rats.

It's worth noting that Paizo created Golarion before casters had infinite cantrips, so they obviously weren't considering the impact zero-point energy would have on their world. But if they're going to provide infinite magic to all those classes, it's something that should be taken into account. It's something that should, perhaps, have been taken into account when they conceived the idea in the first place. I know that the "infinite create water" effect came up at least once during the Beta playtest, but Paizo apparently didn't consider that the ramifications of one WIS 10 cleric generating enough water to sustain a village was a potential problem, even though it throws several baseline assumptions about how the world works out of whack.

I'm of two minds on the subject. On the one hand, it's D&D and you're meant to be killing things and taking their stuff while crawling around in an inexplicably underground labyrinth. Maybe there are lamplighter's guilds, and maybe there are Level 1 sorcerors doing the job, and maybe some civic minded wizard made hundreds of everburning torches for the city. Who cares? You take your sword, you follow the plot, you kill the monsters, and you get the loot. Stop asking so many questions! It's like speculation about the Endor Holocaust or R2-D2: the Only True Jedi - it's missing the point. If you can't suspend your disbelief enough to enjoy D&D "straight", why are you playing D&D?

On the other hand, Paizo's biggest selling point for me has always been the richness of the world, and the care taken to have everything make as much sense as possible without sucking the pulp adventure out of things. That sense of verisimilitude does encourage people to ask about Water-Lords of Thuvia vs create water, and Scribner's and Lamplighter's Guilds, and how you explain some of the purely game-balance based costs in realistic terms. And I think Paizo should capitalize on these questions. The fact that threads like this exist means there probably is a market for an article in an AP issue (maybe one of the Kingmakers) about the magical economy of Avistan, or what "wizard society" looks like in the various nations, or how to create a sense of depth by faking a market economy with varying prices. Maybe some of this will be covered in the Gamemastery Manual.

I give Paizo a hard time sometimes, because I'm ornery and somehow associated argumentation with friendship as a youth, but I trust them to make the product that will do the best for Paizo, even if it upsets some of us more simulation-y gamers.

increasing all Avistan populations.

I've never been one to hesitate saying, "I told ya so."

Inevitables, and maybe formians down the line here.

I will sell all my organs and give you the proceeds if the formians just friggin' go away.

Well, yes. I was thinking more along the lines of "how the world works and relates to any particular aspect."

I've always assumed the reason was "wizards are curmudgeonly old bastards and don't want a line around the block asking them if they could use some of their phenomenal arcane power to do something they perceive to be trivial or beneath them, so they charge exorbitant fees to keep the hoi polloi and the casually curious away."

Apprentice-never-becoming-a-full-blown-wizard-because-his-brains-will-turn- to-mush work.

GOOD. Means he won't go learning fireball and blowing up my factory. Maybe we can send kids to some sort of building, where they learn to go from one place to another at the sound of a bell, learn to follow orders from an arbitrary and shifting panel of superiors, fill out paperwork, and practice repetitive tasks all day. We can call it Schul or Skool or something, and have an entire generation prepared to learn their one cantrip, get their three shillings a day, and keep their mouths shut instead of asking why they can't be wizards, too.

Each rule set, whether it be for an RPG, board game, card game, whatever, is designed to mimic some real process in an abstract way.

The mantra in the indie scene is "Rules matter". Playing a Pathfinder adventure path using PFRPG will produce a different experience than using GURPS. The rules of a game determine what kind of story you can tell with that game - it's a sort of hobby-time Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. You'll never get a romance game out of the PFRPG rules - at best, you can ignore them to get your romance.

I don't need to know why the price of a 1st level spell is 100gp, only that it is and there's probably a good reason for it.

Game balance. Pretty much the sole reason. :D

There's a reason why the game is called "Dungeons and Dragons" instead of "Derivatives and Inflation." Or, "Pathfinder" instead of "Moneylender."

The folks in the chat could tell you all about my plans for a Spell Component Tycoon game. I probably won't be using the Home Invasion-based ruleset of the standard OGL, but the mad, beautiful settings of D&D are ripe for examining the social challenges of dealing with bat farmers, tiny foci sculptors, and vendors of nilbog urine while trying to avoid having the high-level wizard who was unhappy when the 250 GP of rubies he bought were not of a high-enough quality for the spell he was casting from casting fireball on your warehouse, or coping with the noble lady who bought the "cursed" dress of scintillating colors (makes the pretty color patterns, but doesn't daze or conceal; one of those happy accidents that sometimes occur when making magic items) and then tells all her friends that you're an amazing magical tailor.

Once the spellcaster can cast 1st level spells, they have even less reason to do work for cantrips, especially in a drudgerous way 4800 times per day. If your campaign world uses different assumptions, then it may be an issue, but in mine, it's not.

On the other hand, you need all of an Intelligence 10 to cast cantrips, and I bet there are hundreds, if not thousands, of lazy farmboys of average intelligence who would have no problem learning their ONE spell and going to work on the magic assembly line if it meant not being knee-deep in pig poop 14 hours a day, every day, until they die.

It just takes one entrepreneurial wizard willing to teach one cantrip to a hundred kids to kick off a magitech revolution. The 50 GP cost of mending is an entirely wizard-created cost, as the spell has no material components. Set up shop with half a dozen one-cantrip wonders and charge 1 SP to cast mending and you will have folks lined up around the block. They'll be BEGGING to give you their coin.

Am I being overcritical?
Anyone else have this issue?

Yes.

So it would be odd for the new rulers of Osirion to adopt the lesser title of Prince, instead of Pharoah or something equivalent.

Unless, like the Stewards of Gondor, they seem themselves as holding a regency position in anticipation of the return of the true Pharaoh.

Is this true? Does Wizards own the "real" Tiamat?

Wizards does, in fact, own the Tiamat portrayed as a dragon-goddess with five heads representing each of the basic chromatic types and serving as the evil mother goddess of dragon-kind. Technically, TSR owned her, then Wizards bought TSR.

They do not, on the other hand, own the real Tiamat portrayed as the primal sea, the chaos before creation, and mother of many kinds of monsters.

Well, there's Trilochan, the three-eyes dragon thought to be the wisest and wiliest of Rovagug's children.

We absolutely shouldn't get stats for them, but I'd at least like to get more info on the pre-aboleth humanoid ruins at the Crown of the World.

I could have asked about Norgorber as well, my question merely aimed at the intention of the author of placing deities in planes not identical to their alignment.

I would suspect to give a more pulpy, but also more "realistic", feel to the Gods, living wherever they please, being Gods, rather than the "All CN gods live in Limbo, whether it makes sense or not" of AD&D.

I mean, Norgorber obviously lives in Axis because he's a creature of cities and shadows and secrets, whereas NE Abaddon is a land of deserts and everything out in the open and covered in blood. I will note he's still hiding on a Neutral plane.

Yep, Calistria lives with the other Elven Gods, and Gorum is an entirely different kind of Chaotic Neutral than the raw, seething is/is not of the Maelstrom.

Another thing to keep in mind is that every nation in a fantasy setting supports sentient monstrous populations of some amount.

Which returns to my question, so many posts back, about whether that was 3 million HUMAN Chelish, or 3 million Chelish period. 3 million Chelish period made me scratch my head, 3 million HUMAN Chelish made me shrug and go, "Sure. We don't get a good census on gnomes and orcs and mermelants and jabberwocks"

If it has the tan borders at the top and bottom like the one in the image above, it's from the Campaign Setting. If it is just the map portion of the image above, then it's from the Gazetteer.

Although I wouldn't mind a poster of the Inner Sea Region on my wall rather than the CS' map of the Inner Sea Reigon.

Qadira and its parent state present a ton of problems for the setting (the description almost implies that players who use Garund and Avistan are setting their campaigns in a backwater and that Golarion’s real regions are to the east),

That would be an exciting change of pace from a lot of traditional fantasy RPG settings. :)

However, doing this will force you to assume that lots of cities that are not shown anywhere dot the countryside of Avistan. Either that or Avistan has a huge rural population.

I don't have any problem whatsoever with a pre-industrial society having a huge rural population, nor do I have a problem with lots of small cities. However, the more I look, the more it seems Avistan really is underpopulated.

Just for comparison purposes, the entirety of Europe in 1500 (a not unreasonable year to apply to Avistan as a whole) had 154 cities with at least 10,000 inhabitants, and 225 cities with under 10,000 inhabitants. This gave Europe, as a whole, a 7.4% urbanization rate in 1500. Given Barbarian kingdoms, non-human realms with non-human demographics and population patterns (I would think Kiyonin and Belzken might have as low as a 3% or less Urbanization, while Dwarven kingdoms might be as high as 25%!), and so forth, 10% urbanization overall might be high or low, depending on how much unexplored wilderness you want or how much more advanced over renaissance Europe you want it to be.

Europe 1500 has a total of 80 million people (coming off a couple of centuries of plague pandemics), and your totals give the entirety of Avistan at... 23.25 million, a THIRD of Europe. But Avistan also has an area of (and this could be wildly inaccurate, I'm guesstimating from an undersized web image at this point) 2.4 million sq. mi and Europe is a little under four million sq. miles. So, a third of the people in just over half of the area... Not as underpopulated as my initial impressions, but still pretty frontiersy.

But I've yet to really have anyone think the numbers were significantly too low.

I have, you know. In this thread.

For example if you take three types of country; Low, medium and highly urban (5%, 10% and 20% respectively),

Actually, if you do this, and then do a high, medium, or low overall population density, this gives you a lot of info without giving numbers!

Oh! It occurs to me - is that 3 million humans, or 3 million inhabitants? My objections are altered by this clarification. :)

Golarion Population Totals

Global Assumptions

2. Golarion is not as populous as medieval Europe. [...] Also, based on discussions on the board, I think people envision populations for individual nations being significantly lower than 10 million people.

Why are either of these assumptions being made? Golarion is postapocalyptic, yes, but it's also had something like 5,000-10,000 years to recover. We don't have any major population wiping plagues, even a low-magic world is going to be doing a bit better than a no-magic world unless, like Glorantha, the magic is REQUIRED to get to a no-magic baseline.

The area today known as "Metropolitan" France (basically, what we USians would just call France. French people include the colonies and islands and so forth as par of France, hence the distinction) had, in 120 AD a population estimated in the neighborhood of 7 million people. This is more than twice as many as you give the entire nation of Cheliax.

Rome, the city of Rome itself, had a population of 1 million in 120 AD. Now, by the time of its effective collapse, in 530 or so, that had dropped to 150,000 people, and hemorrhaged people until it got down to a low of 20,000 in the medieval period. Now we're looking more like Cheliax, in terms of cities, at least. In 530, due to war and lack of infrastructure, Metropolitan France had collapsed to around 6 million people, with Paris sitting at 80,000 people in 120 AD, and 30,000 in 530. By 1328 or so (right before the population crashes of the Black Plague), Paris has 250,000 inhabitants, and Metro France sat at 20 million.

France was, and is, more heavily urbanized than a lot of Europe at similar times, but a population of 3 million for Cheliax seems to be really low-balling unless Cheliax has significantly less area than France. For reference sake, Metro France has an area of 545,630 sq km (or 210,669 sq mi).

I suppose it's too late to complain that adult male gorillas stand about 5.5 feet tall, and not the 8 feet given in the Bestiary?

cappadocius wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

She's an enigma!

wrapped in a mystery, smothered with secret sauce.

Your new avatar is disturbing, cappa.

Not disturbing enough to keep four other people from using it. I'LL FIND YOU, AVATAR COPIERS! I'LL FIND YOU AND I WILL KILL YOU!

She's an enigma!

wrapped in a mystery, smothered with secret sauce.