Creative Director
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James, let's assume for the sake of argument that the OGL is the greatest thing to ever happen to the RPG industry. What is the second greatest?Dungeons & Dragons is the greatest thing to ever happen to the RPG industry. The OGL is probably the 2nd best. Which, in my case, would mean Call of Cthulhu would be the third greatest, because it not only popularized a style of RPG play that diverged SIGNIFICANTLY from the "kill monsters and take their stuff" but is one of two things that prevented Lovecraft from falling into obscurity (the other being Arkham House).Pathfinder has got to be the fourth greatest, because when D&D pulled a paper bag over its head, started babbling incoherently and crashed its car into a tree, Pathfinder picked up most of its passengers and got them back on the road (in a somewhat nicer, sportier car than D&D's old beater).
D&D's back behind the wheel again but their tires are a little wobbly and they keep mumbling stuff about "advantage" all the time.
Fair enough, but let's focus on the positives and resist the urge to badmouth other games.
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I think it's awesome that Paizo doesn't mudsling the competition. It's a great attitude - one winners use, and the second place companies seem to forget.
You don't see Coke putting out commercials insulting Pepsi, and it wasn't Nintendo bashing Sega in the 90s, but the inverse...
Any idea who spearheaded this policy at Paizo?
If you could smell one thing in Golarion, what would it be and why?
What would you least like to smell in Golarion?
And finally would you associate any particular scent with any of the nations of the Inner Sea?
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Creative Director
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I think it's awesome that Paizo doesn't mudsling the competition. It's a great attitude - one winners use, and the second place companies seem to forget.
You don't see Coke putting out commercials insulting Pepsi, and it wasn't Nintendo bashing Sega in the 90s, but the inverse...
Any idea who spearheaded this policy at Paizo?
It was common sense, pretty much. No one ever really needed to "spearhead" it.
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Creative Director
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If you could smell one thing in Golarion, what would it be and why?
What would you least like to smell in Golarion?
And finally would you associate any particular scent with any of the nations of the Inner Sea?
Sun Orchid Elixir, because I bet even a whiff of that would add at least a year to your life.
The Undersump. Technically that's in the Abyss, so if you want to limit it to actually on Golarion, I guess a middenstone vat in Carrion Hill.
No, because a nation is too huge and varied to be summarized by a single scent.
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Creative Director
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Any recommendations for awesome film soundtracks?
Oh god yes. Movie soundtracks are in fact my favorite genre of music.
Here's the ones I have on my iPhone that I'd recommend... it's not all the ones I own though....
(Spoilering for length... YOU ASKED FOR IT!!!)
Best of Godzilla
Kill Bill
Lilo and Stitch
Van Helsing
Godzilla (2014)
Rob Roy
Apocalypto
The Book of Eli
Evil Dead (2014)
The Hunt for Red October
RoboCop
Battlestar Galacta (TV series)
Europa Report
Underworld: Evolution
Perfume
Day the Earth Stood Still
Journey to the Center of the Earth
North by Northwest
7th Voyage of Sinbad
Aliens vs. Predator—Requiem
The Host
Matrix Reloaded
Dagon
Eyes Wide Shut
The Exorcism of Emily Rose
The Grudge
The Grudge 2
Hellbound: Hellraiser II
Sinister
The Fly
The Fly II
Mother of Tears
The Fountain
Requiem for a Dream
District 9
Tron: Legacy
Darkman
Ravenous
Planet of the Apes (2001)
Sleepy Hollow
Wanted
V for Vendetta
Casino Royale
The Descent
The Mist
The Matrix
Alien
Aliens
Titus
Final Fantasy—The Spirits Within
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
The Professional
It Follows
Rogue
Phantasm
1408
Suspiria
Phenomena
Below
The Chronicles of Riddick
The Insider
Black Hawk Down
The Dark Knight Rises
Inception
The Last Samurai
The Ring
Sherlock Holms
Batman Begins
The Dark Knight
Man on Fire
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Lifeforce
The Departed
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Return of the King
The Two Towers
Fellowship of the RIng
Avatar
Duell
Braveheart
Atlantis: The Lost Empire
King Kong (RKO version AND Peter Jackson version)
Signs
Unbreakable
Amadeus
Mirrors
Pan's Labyrinth
Frontiere(s)
Carnivale
Rome
The Sopranos
Game of Thrones (all seasons)
The Last Winter
The Omen II
The Omen (original and remake)
The Final Conflict (Omen III)
The Mummy (remake)
The 13th Warrior
Total Recall (Arnold version!)
Last of the Mohicans
Big Trouble in Little China
Escape from New York
The Fog
Halloween
Village of the Damned (remake)
Prince of Darkness
They Live
The Red Violin
End of Days
28 Days Later
28 Weeks Later
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
The Empire Strikes Back
Jaws
Jurassic Park
The Lost World—Jurassic Park
Memoirs of a Geisha
Munich
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Saving Private Ryan
The Terminal
Revenge of the Sith
War of the Worlds (Spielberg version)
There Will Be Blood
Army of Darkness
The Conjuring
Mad Max: Fury Road
House of Flying Daggers
Rescue Dawn
Inferno
Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl
Phillip Glass's score for the original Dracula
The Phantom Menace
Lost
Prometheus
I, Robot
Knowing
Mimic
John Carpenter's The Thing
From Hell
The Last Days on Mars
The Incredibles
Mission Impossible III
Cloverfield
Star Trek (1st JJ Abrams)
Gattaca
The Fog of War
The Thin Blue Line
Baraka
Samsara
Godzilla vs. Megagirius
Godzilla Final Wars
The Raid: Redemption
Hostel
The Last Temptation of Christ
The Illusionist
Koyaanisqatsi
Mishima
Candyman
Powaqqatsi
Naqoyqatsi
Aguirre
Nosferatu (Herzog version)
Psycho
24
Curse of the Golden Flower
Tenebre
Transformers
Hero
Godzilla 2000
Sorcerer
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
The Mothman Prophecies
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Triplets of Belleville
Doomsday
300
Blade Runner
1492: Conquest of Paradise
The Film Music of Akira Kurosawa
Bram Stoker's Dracula
Amelie
Princess Mononoke
Run, Lola, Run
Good Morning James,
Hope you're well.
I've been suffering from deadline fatigue. Knowing there are, and always will be forever, deadlines in my job that are, for the most part, unmissable.
Does that ever bother you? If so, how do you deal with it?
I apologize if this question is too personal.
Have a great day, and thank you again for all you do.
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As a fan of all things King, how do you feel about this article? I'm not really questioning whether he could play the role or not (he totally could), but wondering who you'd cast in your head to play that role until this moment. Does this piece of news change that?
Not a question... just a comment.
Thank you for Androffa.
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Creative Director
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What human ethnicity should I be looking at if designing a character whose elevator pitch is "Irish Pirate Princess?"
Varisian or Kellid, I guess, but as with most other questions in this line you've asked over the years, there isn't an ethnicity that is a great match for your character concept, and as long as you continue to strive to build characters that would make more world-sense in historical Earth settings, you'll continue to run into this problem. It's better, if you're as concerned about building a character that fits into the world, to take the Golarion ethnicities and use them as your inspiration instead of the real world.
That's absolutely NOT to say one should never use real-world historical inspiration for a PC. That's actually a great place (perhaps the BEST place) to go for character inspiration, but if you do, you have to do so eyes open and willing to accept the fact that someone from a real-world culture with hundreds or thousands of years of history is NOT going to be a perfect fit into a made-up world with only a decade or so of incredibly haphazard development (when compared to the development of real-world culture over the past several thousand years).
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Not sure if this has been asked, but does chemistry exist in Golarion the way it exists on earth? Is there the periodic table of elements?
Chemistry functions on Golarion exactly as it does on Earth. In fact, SCIENCE functions on Golarion exactly as it does on Earth. The presence of magic and supernatural stuff augments and distorts and changes science here and there, but the fundamental underlying reality of the way things work remains the same.
And so you COULD build a periodic table for the elements on Golarion, and it'd end up looking the same as one on Earth at its core, but no one has bothered to do so on Golarion since the presence of magic has caused this world's scholars and scientists to focus their energies in different ways.
But beyond that, a periodic table of elements type thing feels much more like a trope in science-fiction than fantasy, and as such, it simply doesn't fit the genre or themes of Golarion or Pathfinder. What does is stuff like what we've done for alchemy in the Alchemist's Handbook.
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Good Morning James,
Hope you're well.
I've been suffering from deadline fatigue. Knowing there are, and always will be forever, deadlines in my job that are, for the most part, unmissable.
Does that ever bother you? If so, how do you deal with it?
I apologize if this question is too personal.
Have a great day, and thank you again for all you do.
It bothers me pretty much every second of my life, frankly. At Paizo, I'm pretty much under pressure from a dozen or more simultaneous but different deadlines every day, be they books I'm working on, content I'm creating, blog posts I'm doing, approvals I need to do, and so on.
The big part of how I deal with it is to remind myself that I'm getting paid for it. It's fun to work at a game company... but it's still WORK. The fact that it's hard to do is why someone pays you to do it—even if it's you paying yourself not in money but in skill-improvement or whatever.
How I deal with it is pretty much to just put my head down and muscle through. It helps to close a door and create a space for yourself where folks won't constantly interrupt you if you can do so. It also helps to keep personal time set aside for yourself as well... if the only way to meet a deadline is to let it consume your every waking (and most of your sleeping) hour, then it's not your problem. It's an expectation/management problem, and the deadline is unrealistic and needs to be revisited and revised.
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Creative Director
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As a fan of all things King, how do you feel about this article? I'm not really questioning whether he could play the role or not (he totally could), but wondering who you'd cast in your head to play that role until this moment. Does this piece of news change that?
I think Idris Elba would kick ass as Roland. He's one of my favorite actors working today.
Brian Cranston was probably my next choice after Clint Eastwood, if I were in charge of everything.
And event hough Idris Elba being cast would alter some of the interactions between characters (particularly between Roland and Suzannah), I think that examining those roles and how they can be enhanced or changed to reflect something like this is a GOOD thing.
I read somewhere that someone was angry becasue of an element where Suzannah doesn't trust Roland initially because he's black simply wouldn't work if Roland were black, but I call BS on that—you can change it to Suzannah not trusting Roland because he's a man, or because he's not handicapped, or because he IS black, or because he carries guns with him wherever he goes, or simply because he is a mysterious alien from another world. Those are just a few alternates that come to my head, and I'm 100% sure that Stephen King or the show creators are MORE than qualified to solve the problem better than I could in this single post.
In fact, the more we see gender/race/whatever roles challenged in this way as time goes on, the BETTER. Just because it's been tradition doesn't mean the tradition is good. I for one would LOVE to see a superhero movie where all the characters of significance were women. Part of the reason I love Jessica Jones so much, frankly.
While we're at it... I would love to see Scarlett Johansen play Roland.
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What human ethnicity should I be looking at if designing a character whose elevator pitch is "Irish Pirate Princess?"Varisian or Kellid, I guess, but as with most other questions in this line you've asked over the years, there isn't an ethnicity that is a great match for your character concept, and as long as you continue to strive to build characters that would make more world-sense in historical Earth settings, you'll continue to run into this problem. It's better, if you're as concerned about building a character that fits into the world, to take the Golarion ethnicities and use them as your inspiration instead of the real world.
That's absolutely NOT to say one should never use real-world historical inspiration for a PC. That's actually a great place (perhaps the BEST place) to go for character inspiration, but if you do, you have to do so eyes open and willing to accept the fact that someone from a real-world culture with hundreds or thousands of years of history is NOT going to be a perfect fit into a made-up world with only a decade or so of incredibly haphazard development (when compared to the development of real-world culture over the past several thousand years).
You're absolutely right...though I was wondering more about where the accents might sound similar enough. Kellid makes sense though, considering Besmara's origins as a Kellid deity!
Good Morning James,
Hope you're well.
I've been suffering from deadline fatigue. Knowing there are, and always will be forever, deadlines in my job that are, for the most part, unmissable.
Does that ever bother you? If so, how do you deal with it?
I apologize if this question is too personal.
Have a great day, and thank you again for all you do.
It bothers me pretty much every second of my life, frankly. At Paizo, I'm pretty much under pressure from a dozen or more simultaneous but different deadlines every day, be they books I'm working on, content I'm creating, blog posts I'm doing, approvals I need to do, and so on.
The big part of how I deal with it is to remind myself that I'm getting paid for it. It's fun to work at a game company... but it's still WORK. The fact that it's hard to do is why someone pays you to do it—even if it's you paying yourself not in money but in skill-improvement or whatever.
How I deal with it is pretty much to just put my head down and muscle through. It helps to close a door and create a space for yourself where folks won't constantly interrupt you if you can do so. It also helps to keep personal time set aside for yourself as well... if the only way to meet a deadline is to let it consume your every waking (and most of your sleeping) hour, then it's not your problem. It's an expectation/management problem, and the deadline is unrealistic and needs to be revisited and revised.
I usually try not to clutter up your thread with responses to your responses, but thank you for taking time to answer that. It's something I've been dealing with for 15 years or so in my career, and it's.... just gotten a bit tiring.
Hearing how another professional with similar deadline issues, that isn't in my field, deals with it was very helpful.
Thank you very much!
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Here's a question I doubt you'll want to answer: What is the source of magic?
The Chronicles (supposed) origin myth of Asmodeus and Ihys doesn't specifically mention the birth or pre-existence of magic as the arcane beings of the setting might recognize it.
It does mention "the seal" from which the gods were born. That's the oldest thing I know of in the setting, this mythic seal. Would it be safe to say most researchers could logically conclude that, as the gods themselves were born from the seal, so to was magic?
As a fan of all things King, how do you feel about this article? I'm not really questioning whether he could play the role or not (he totally could), but wondering who you'd cast in your head to play that role until this moment. Does this piece of news change that?I think Idris Elba would kick ass as Roland. He's one of my favorite actors working today.
Brian Cranston was probably my next choice after Clint Eastwood, if I were in charge of everything.
And event hough Idris Elba being cast would alter some of the interactions between characters (particularly between Roland and Suzannah), I think that examining those roles and how they can be enhanced or changed to reflect something like this is a GOOD thing.
I read somewhere that someone was angry becasue of an element where Suzannah doesn't trust Roland initially because he's black simply wouldn't work if Roland were black, but I call BS on that—you can change it to Suzannah not trusting Roland because he's a man, or because he's not handicapped, or because he IS black, or because he carries guns with him wherever he goes, or simply because he is a mysterious alien from another world. Those are just a few alternates that come to my head, and I'm 100% sure that Stephen King or the show creators are MORE than qualified to solve the problem better than I could in this single post.
In fact, the more we see gender/race/whatever roles challenged in this way as time goes on, the BETTER. Just because it's been tradition doesn't mean the tradition is good. I for one would LOVE to see a superhero movie where all the characters of significance were women. Part of the reason I love Jessica Jones so much, frankly.
While we're at it... I would love to see Scarlett Johansen play Roland.
I'm with you 100% JJ, Elba would make an awesome Roland. I think he can bring sufficient gravitas and...I think melancholy is the word I'm looking for, to the role.
And now because I have to ask a question, Who was your favorite character from the Dark Tower series and why?
Mr James Jacobs
I think it's really cool that you answer questions so thank you.
I am considering making a wide eyed idealist Kellid who travels south to explore the world beyond just his clan. I was thinking of making him a cleric.
Are there many Kellid clerics and if so of what faiths are they mostly?
Is the role of cleric more a divine calling or something that appears more in the church as something one works towards?
And do many Kellids (specifically those from the realm of the mammoth lords) travel south? Either for adventure or to trade or for other purposes
Anything else you think is relevant to this character concept would also be greatly appreciated.
(Also if you couldn't have an alliterative name what would you change it to?)
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Creative Director
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Here's a question I doubt you'll want to answer: What is the source of magic?
The Chronicles (supposed) origin myth of Asmodeus and Ihys doesn't specifically mention the birth or pre-existence of magic as the arcane beings of the setting might recognize it.
It does mention "the seal" from which the gods were born. That's the oldest thing I know of in the setting, this mythic seal. Would it be safe to say most researchers could logically conclude that, as the gods themselves were born from the seal, so to was magic?
Once the source of magic is defined, it's no longer magic. It's science.
As for the "Seal" from which the gods were born... keep in mind that if that's mentioned in the context of Asmodeus's origin myth... can you really trust it? Asmodeus is a liar, after all...
Asmodeus, the king of contracts, and a being personified of law (and evil, but law nonetheless) is a liar?
I can see him twisting words like a monkey's paw wish, but not outright lying.
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Creative Director
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Mr James Jacobs
I think it's really cool that you answer questions so thank you.
I am considering making a wide eyed idealist Kellid who travels south to explore the world beyond just his clan. I was thinking of making him a cleric.
Are there many Kellid clerics and if so of what faiths are they mostly?
Is the role of cleric more a divine calling or something that appears more in the church as something one works towards?
And do many Kellids (specifically those from the realm of the mammoth lords) travel south? Either for adventure or to trade or for other purposes
Anything else you think is relevant to this character concept would also be greatly appreciated.
(Also if you couldn't have an alliterative name what would you change it to?)
Cleric is one of the more common classes for most ethnicities, Kellids included. We do list favored religions for all the ethnicities in the Inner Sea World Guide; the entry for Kellids on page 16 lists Desna, Erastil, Gorum, and Rovagug as the ones for them.
A cleric's role is both a divine calling AND something you work toward. Which one is more important to any one character will vary.
Plenty of Kellids travel south. At one point, there were large groups of Kellids all the way to where the Inner Sea is today. They were mostly pushed north by Taldor's expansion back in the day.
Best choice for your character, based on your notes above, would be to make this kellid a cleric of Desna.
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Asmodeus, the king of contracts, and a being personified of law (and evil, but law nonetheless) is a liar?
I can see him twisting words like a monkey's paw wish, but not outright lying.
Absolutely. What stronger support can a liar hope for if not a contract? Perhaps having lied for so long that it becomes commonly accepted truth? Oh wait.. Asmodeus has that too. Of course... maybe he's NOT lying... but that's part of what makes him who he is.
He's not "personified law" though. He's law tainted by evil. Or perhaps more accurately, evil tainted by law.
In Iron Gods 4 Casandalee's stats include Distrust of Robots special ability that prevents her from forming an aggregate with a robot and the note: "Future events in the Iron Gods Adventure Path may give the PCs a chance to help Casandalee remove this disadvantage."
Nothing else appeared about this in future volumes. Was there any plan to introduce some suggestions about how she might overcome this handicap, or did you always intended it to be left up to the GM without any guidance?
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In Iron Gods 4 Casandalee's stats include Distrust of Robots special ability that prevents her from forming an aggregate with a robot and the note: "Future events in the Iron Gods Adventure Path may give the PCs a chance to help Casandalee remove this disadvantage."
Nothing else appeared about this in future volumes. Was there any plan to introduce some suggestions about how she might overcome this handicap, or did you always intended it to be left up to the GM without any guidance?
That's an element that was dropped from the campaign but unfortunately didn't get scrubbed out of her stats. Ignore it, in other words.
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James does this Kubo and the Two Strings poster remind you a tad Ameiko Kaijitsu?
Not really. Head is too big and the weapon is all wrong. That said, the poster is super cool!
Once the source of magic is defined, it's no longer magic. It's science.
Actually, magic is a set of phenomena.
The study and application of magic is science. Science is classifying spells by school and conceiving spell levels and caster level. A wizard is the closest thing to a scientist of magic and so on.
But magic itself isn't science. It's like saying that gravity is science, when actually the scientific field is astronomy
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Creative Director
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Once the source of magic is defined, it's no longer magic. It's science.Actually, magic is a set of phenomena.
The study and application of magic is science. Science is classifying spells by school and conceiving spell levels and caster level. A wizard is the closest thing to a scientist of magic and so on.
But magic itself isn't science. It's like saying that gravity is science, when actually the scientific field is astronomy
Let's leave the answering of questions to me; if folks want to debate what magic is, that's a great topic for its own thread.
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Let's leave the answering of questions to me; if folks want to debate what magic is, that's a great topic for its own thread.Once the source of magic is defined, it's no longer magic. It's science.Actually, magic is a set of phenomena.
The study and application of magic is science. Science is classifying spells by school and conceiving spell levels and caster level. A wizard is the closest thing to a scientist of magic and so on.
But magic itself isn't science. It's like saying that gravity is science, when actually the scientific field is astronomy
Speaking of wizards and studying magic, I have been wanting to make a wizard that is studying the nature of magic and just trying to figure out what it is. What do think he should take for his school or what archetype should he be? Personally I was thinking spellsage but I would love your opinion.
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Speaking of wizards and studying magic, I have been wanting to make a wizard that is studying the nature of magic and just trying to figure out what it is. What do think he should take for his school or what archetype should he be? Personally I was thinking spellsage but I would love your opinion.Let's leave the answering of questions to me; if folks want to debate what magic is, that's a great topic for its own thread.Once the source of magic is defined, it's no longer magic. It's science.Actually, magic is a set of phenomena.
The study and application of magic is science. Science is classifying spells by school and conceiving spell levels and caster level. A wizard is the closest thing to a scientist of magic and so on.
But magic itself isn't science. It's like saying that gravity is science, when actually the scientific field is astronomy
To me, that's about as "generic" and "all encompassing" a wizardly focus as you can get. (I use those words not in a bad way!) As a result, a wizard who merely wants to focus entirely on magic and its source is the classical universalist wizard with no specialty schools and no archetypes whatsoever.
Let's leave the answering of questions to me; if folks want to debate what magic is, that's a great topic for its own thread.
I was just making a point because a thread about it indeed happened recently and one thing that immediately stood out was the misconception about what actually science as it was mixed up with natural phenomena.
That said, I have a question myself pertaining the fluff of some PF classes that is not necessarily restricted to Golarion:
If a Paladin or Druid/Hunter/Ranger worships a deity, does his/her divine power (access to divine spells and other magical abilities) comes from said deity like a Cleric or an Inquisitor, or it's just unrelated like a Wizard worshiping Nethys?
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Let's leave the answering of questions to me; if folks want to debate what magic is, that's a great topic for its own thread.I was just making a point because a thread about it indeed happened recently and one thing that immediately stood out was the misconception about what actually science as it was mixed up with natural phenomena.
That said, I have a question myself pertaining the fluff of some PF classes that is not necessarily restricted to Golarion:
If a Paladin or Druid/Hunter/Ranger worships a deity, does his/her divine power (access to divine spells and other magical abilities) comes from said deity like a Cleric or an Inquisitor, or it's just unrelated like a Wizard worshiping Nethys?
Well... by opening your point with the word "Actually" you made it in a way that made it seem like a challenge to my answer, which was kind of annoying, considering that it's part of my job to make rulings on things like the nature of magic as it exists in Golarion. Starting a comment with the word "actually" like that is, actually, one of my biggest pet peeves.
As for the rest of the post (which I'll answer even though you used the somewhat offensive term "fluff" for flavor text, which is another of my pet peeves...)...
Yes, if ANY divine spellcaster worships a deity (which is the case for the majority of divine spellcasters in Golarion, regardless of whether or not it's the case for the majority of PC divine spellcasters in any one game), then his divine power does indeed come from that deity and the spellcaster's faith in that deity. That's why it's called divine spellcasting and not arcane spellcasting.
Mr Jacobs,
Do you think that pathfinder can be used for a successful 1 - 1 campaign (the GM and 1 player character)? and have you ever run a 1-1 campaign?
I flicked through the game mastery guide and there was a small section on it. but it wasn't that substantial hence my following questions
If doing so from level 1 how does one overcome the difficulty with scaling encounters so that there still interesting but not overwhelming difficult?
Are certain kind of plots better for a 1-1 experience?
I was thinking about using various hirelings to provide support when necessary (a varying cast, to avoid attachment and the dreaded GM-PC. Maybe adding a leadership feat later on. Any Suggestions?
I have heard of gestalt characters but I'm not a fan. they seem a bit odd?
How would you handle the occasional necessary deus ex machina to save the character if and when they say fall into a pit and can't get out (I was thinking of having the player, temporarily play as the character going to save him or some such to make it more satisfying and less like a cop out)
And is Paizo considering making any 1-1 modules? (I know it is unlikely as demand probably isn't there.)
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Creative Director
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Mr Jacobs,
Do you think that pathfinder can be used for a successful 1 - 1 campaign (the GM and 1 player character)? and have you ever run a 1-1 campaign?
I flicked through the game mastery guide and there was a small section on it. but it wasn't that substantial hence my following questions
If doing so from level 1 how does one overcome the difficulty with scaling encounters so that there still interesting but not overwhelming difficult?
Are certain kind of plots better for a 1-1 experience?
I was thinking about using various hirelings to provide support when necessary (a varying cast, to avoid attachment and the dreaded GM-PC. Maybe adding a leadership feat later on. Any Suggestions?
I have heard of gestalt characters but I'm not a fan. they seem a bit odd?
How would you handle the occasional necessary deus ex machina to save the character if and when they say fall into a pit and can't get out (I was thinking of having the player, temporarily play as the character going to save him or some such to make it more satisfying and less like a cop out)
And is Paizo considering making any 1-1 modules? (I know it is unlikely as demand probably isn't there.)
Yes, Pathfinder works for a 1 on 1 campaign; you just have to take care with certain monsters who have shut-down abilities. Ghouls, for example, and their paralysis attack. I've run LOTS of 1/1 campaigns with various editions of D&D, and Pathfinder's similar enough that it would work just as well (although I've not yet actually done a 1 on 1 game of Pathfinder).
The best way to handle the encounters is to stay flexible and watch how the game is going. With only 1 player, there's not gonna be as many abilities on the PC side of things. The class the player chooses REALLY matters—if she plays a fighter, encounters against shadows will wipe her out, but if she plays a cleric, an encounter against a shadow is a cakewalk, for example. Another big step is to minimize numbers of foes—with only one PC the need for lots of foes is MUCH lower. Solo bad guys work much better, and fights against numerous foes can get overwhelming fast.
Finally, you should consider giving that solo PC a high point by. Even up to 25 point buy, or allow her to use the Race Builder Guide to play a 15 or 20 point race (or to boost a 10 point race up to 15 or 20).
The BEST way to handle it is to have an NPC or two accompany the PC. This lets you build a story with the PCs' friends and allies in a way that's very similar to how computer RPGs work these days, and it can be really fun to do so. Essentially, give the PCs 1–3 cohorts for free. Perhaps let them form organically from the story as the PC encounters NPCs she clicks with.
I'm not a fan of gestalt characters.
With NPC allies, the occasional deus ex machina is built in—allied NPCs can help the fallen PC without needing to stretch credibility. Another option is to have the foes not kill the PC but capture her; this gives you a chance to run a prison break adventure. Finally, you ABSOLUTELY should use a mechanic like Hero Points or Plot Twist cards and give the player a few of those to use each session; these are great ways to put the agency of the deus ex machina into the PLAYER'S hands, but doing so with a limited resource so they still have to plan ahead and time things right.
We've chatted a bit now and then about a 1 on 1 adventure here, but our module line is chronically behind schedule and we don't do many of them a year—and they tend to have other jobs, like one always has to be an RPG superstar one, another should be a support module for a new hardcover, and so on. Fitting in a 1 on 1 is tough.
Who was your favorite companion (or companions, you're the boss, pick as many as you want) from Fallout New Vegas?
Any particular quest or DLC that stood out as your favorite?
I just got New Vegas a couple weeks ago, I'm a bit behind on the times:-D
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Creative Director
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*gleefully reads A Song Of Silver*
*spots a NPC whose first name is Vanessa and last name is...*
I see what you did there...
Actually... I didn't do that. I think it was Crystal who came up with her name, back in part one in the portion of the Kintargo gazetteer she wrote (which was the bulk of that article). I didn't catch the play on words till I was working on A Song of Silver, and by then it was too late to change since part one had just been shipped to the printer.
Not that I WOULD have changed it!! :-P
Hope you like the adventure!
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Creative Director
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Who was your favorite companion (or companions, you're the boss, pick as many as you want) from Fallout New Vegas?
Any particular quest or DLC that stood out as your favorite?
I just got New Vegas a couple weeks ago, I'm a bit behind on the times:-D
Hmmm... New Vegas... been a while since I played that, but I think my favorite companion was Veronica.
My favorite DLC was, no contest and hands down, Old World Blues.
It's a fun game! Loved it! Have fun!!
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Creative Director
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Speaking of Veronica, any thoughts about her voice actress, Felicia Day, joining the cast of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 as their newest Mad? Or on the Kickstarted new episodes in general?
Her being cast as the new Mad is incredible. Before that, I wasn't all that interested in the new MST3K, since the talent behind that show that I actually prefer and admire are all over at Rifftrax now, but seeing that Felicia is on board with the new MST3K has singlehandedly made me eager for the new incarnation of that show.
That the only reason? Patton Oswald didn't do anything for ya?
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*gleefully reads A Song Of Silver*
*spots a NPC whose first name is Vanessa and last name is...*
I see what you did there...
Actually... I didn't do that. I think it was Crystal who came up with her name, back in part one in the portion of the Kintargo gazetteer she wrote (which was the bulk of that article). I didn't catch the play on words till I was working on A Song of Silver, and by then it was too late to change since part one had just been shipped to the printer.
Not that I WOULD have changed it!! :-P
Hope you like the adventure!
Heh.
And so far I am absolutely loving everything about Hell's Rebels, the story, the characters, especially the characters, everything! It hasn't unseated Reign of Winter as my favourite AP yet but it keeps getting closer :3