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I was just wondering, what does Pharasma think of Naderi? Does she have an opinion of her at all?
And just as importantly, if a third party were to introduce the two and plea with Pharasma to let Naderi do the divine equivalent of couch surfing in the Boneyard, would she be up for it?
I know that Shelyn is the closest thing Pharasma has to a friend after all and she hates Urgathoa and would probably love to get one over on her or at least see the benefit of doing so rather than letting Naderi fall into her hands.
But on the other hand Naderi does have hints of love after death in her portfolio and so on with overtures of undead.
Think those two would get along at all, or no chance?

Oh and as an after question, Agents of Evil listed apathy as a good example of evil, all it takes for evil to thrive and all that Jazz.
Pharasma's entire thing is not giving two mehs about the fact that innocent people occasionally get caught between the cogs, good men fall and evil thrives, daemons get to chew on souls and thus cause entropy in the wheel of fate, let a good 80% of her own prophets go coo-coo for Coco-puffs when Aroden died (Which caused a massive amount of suffering by proxy), ect, ect, how come she's neutral?
Are there redeeming qualities to her that just come across much less frequently? I know there's the bit in the Boneyard description that hints that she occasionally allows restless souls to return despite it being against her own rules technically and having her own little domain for people who are in the odd sock drawer of spirituality which is described as a pretty nice place all around.
Which suggests that when its down to her she leans on the side of compassion a bit.
Does she ever put her thumb on the scales for the little guy that doesn't have a chance in the face of eternity? Are there rules that constrain even her and she tries to help when she can, or is she just really, really arbitrary? What's her deal really?
Or is the why of her aloofness something that's going to be talked about in the future and totally a plot point? If so, sorry for asking a question you can't answer at the moment


James Jacobs wrote:
Arrius wrote:

More of a professional history question: how far did your work go on the 3.0 Warcraft III Player's Guide, and are there any lingering records or documents from that period? It was due to be published on Feb 2002/2004.

As I recall online, the work was joint between you and one Paul Peterson.

Link to Amazon page.

I finished work entirely on that project; it was going to be my first hardcover credit for D&D, but then WotC decided to get out of the licensed game scene (in part, I believe, to an under-performing Starcraft RPG project they'd just done, but I could be mis-remembering).

The project was in editing when it got cancelled.

My section was most of the night elf stuff, the sample adventure, the blood elf stuff, and a chunk of spells and monsters and orc stuff. All of this was a few years before World of Warcraft hit, of course.

They gave me a spiral-bound printout of the edited but not laid out complete book, which I still have around here somewhere, but the book itself was never published. WotC sent the files over to Sword & Sorcery studios and they went ahead and did their own d20 version. I got a thank-you credit on the front page, as did the rest of us who worked on the book, but the contents were pretty different at that point.

Thanks for your answer to the question Arrius asked you here after I asked about your work over at the World of Warcraft forum at The Piazza.

Arrius didn't quite ask about all the things I asked over there, so I'll ask you the rest of the stuff myself, if you don't mind. :-)

I saw that WotC had already registered an ISBN for your cancelled book, but I had never heard about it before then. Did WotC release anything like a preview or a press release before they cancelled the book?

How did your unpublished work end up with Sword and Sorcery Studio? Did Wizards of the Coast sell on the licence, including your work? Or did you sort that out with Sword and Sorcery Studio independently? (Either way I'm glad your stuff was not wasted, even if I would love to see what the original form of it would have been.)

It must be frustrating to spend ages making stuff for fans to play with only to have it get buried at the last moment. When you wrote the book, were you hoping to stick with the Warcraft II campaign setting and make more books for it? Or did WotC see the project as a one-shot (like Ghostwalk)? (The title "Player's Guide" kind of makes me think there might have been a "Dungeon Master's Guide" and a "Monsters of Warcraft" book to follow.)

Did you run any test Warcraft III games, while creating the book? Was there every anything like a Web Enhancement planned for it?

Did you get a chance to look over what Sword and Sorcery did with your work? If so, how much do you think the rules changed from your rules to their rules? (Is the difference between your unpublished game and their game bigger or smaller than the difference between 3.5 D&D and Pathfinder RPG?)


James, I love the two golem conversions to robots (noqual golem -> Bastion and cannon golem -> pulsepounder) in The Divinity Drive, but I wonder if you agree with me that they didn't quite go far enough to full robot stats and need a bit more work.

1. Shouldn't both have Hardness 10 instead of the original golem DR 15/adamantine?

2. Shouldn't Bastion have combined arms as an ability? It seems to fit its combat role and design. I suspect the Pulsepounder should also have it, but maybe that one is more explicitly a heavy ranged combatant/artillery piece than a shred everything at close range type.

3. Are the skills appropriately distributed on these? (Bastion only has knowledge (engineering) and perception, no sense motive or disable device, to take two typical robot class skills missing. (Compare to the Annihilator, which gets Sense Motive and also Intimidate, not to mention acrobatics and climb.)

4. Shouldn't the Pulsepounder have Vulnerability to Electricity and Critical Hits listed as a weakness? (It did make it in for Bastion.)

More general questions about robots:

5. None of them seem to suffer secondary natural weapon penalties, whether for combined arms ranged attacks, or multiple types of melee (Surgeon robot). Is this intended, or should they suffer the penalty for everything but slam/claws in a full attack and perhaps use Multiattack (especially on the surgeon robot).

6. If an Amulet of Mighty Fists were placed on a robot, either as a custom piece or because it's medium size and clearly has a neck, would the bonus also effect integrated ranged weapons since they are natural weapons?

Radiant Oath

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Have you ever played a character who had a pet or some other animal accompany them that WASN'T due to class features? Not a familiar, not an animal companion, not a bonded mount, just a regular animal that you happen to love and take care of?


How widespread is the worship of the whore queens in Cheliax?

What about Ymeri and the other elemental lords? Are they worshipped in Cheliax?

Can half-elves and ratfolk have children?

Is there a version of Christmas on Golarion? What about New Years Day? And what are they like?


There seems to be at least one demigod from each outsider group...except aeons. Why not?

The Exchange

Merry Christmas James! Thanks for all the great stuff you've brought to my gaming life this year.

Hope you and yours have an awesome break.

Cheers


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Merry Christmas James! And thank you for creating Pathfinder!

Liberty's Edge

Did you enjoy your viewing of the new Star Wars?


Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

If Golarion exists on the same Material Plane as a presumably fictional counterpart of our Earth, do beings similar to the Residents of the Land of Light exist within the setting? And if so, what would be the best way to model such a powerful race?

Grand Lodge

Merry Christmas James! Thanks four all the hard work and putting up with our dumb questions all these years. In the spirit of today I ask you, what class do you think Santa would be?

Silver Crusade

Merry Christmas Directorsaur! Hope you have a good one as visions of Succubi dance in your head :3


Mr Jacobs,

Do you think that a character becoming a pathfinder would be a good story for a 1-1 campaign? Do you have any other I'deas for a 1-1 campaign plot?

Also, Merry Christmas from down in Australia.

Dark Archive

Happy Christmas James!

I wanted to share this family's monstrous gingerbread rendition of the Overlook Hotel from Kubrick's "The Shining," complete with a rice crispie treat maze and interior rooms depicting famous scenes!

It's fascinating!

I thought you were not the biggest Star Wars fan, I am happy you saw it opening week.

What are your thoughts on The Force Awakens? How do you compare it to the previous movies?

You are not a big Tolkien fan either, if you had to create an adventure and pick one, would you create one set in Middle Earth or in the Star Wars Galaxy?

What would some of those plot points in the adventure be?

Did you ever play the Original Knights of the Old Republic? The story line of that game was one of the finest in the gaming medium.


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Merry Christmas James Jacobs
1) What do you wish for Christmas?
2) What movies do you look forward to in 2016?
3) Favorite movies this year so far?
Kind regards Zark


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Thanks for everything you've done for us, James. Have a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

I have some questions regarding our favorite abominations, the Qlippoth.

1) What do they think of good outsiders when they aren't in direct conflict? Do they tolerate them with grudging appreciation for holding off mortal sin or do they think of them as another sickness to be wiped from the multiverse?
2) Does every Qlippoth Lord have a favored or direct descendant species, like Yamasoth and the Gongorinans?
3) I'm not sure if you're the right person to ask, but will we ever get more illustrations or an NPC of a Motherless Tiefling?
4) Will we be getting new Qlippoth soon, along with new Demodands and Proteans?
5) Will what we know about Qlippoth Lords ever get built on, like stats or info about Lords we've already heard about, like Thuskchoon? I ask this specifically because I've created a cleric of Chavazvug but there isn't very much to his lore or the lore of his cults at all (or any of the mentioned Lords other then Yamasoth).
Sorry if it's a bit much, but these questions have been bugging me for a whole now.


1)Has the name of Castrovel's moon been revealed yet?

2)Is Catrovel's moon like Castrovel or more like the mostly lifeless Golarion's moon?

3)Akiton doesn't have a moon, correct?

4)Is there any chance we will find out what the twin planets Damiar and Iovo were like before they were destroyed and became the Diaspora?

5)Do we know when in the Golarion timeline the twin planets were destroyed?

6)Is Aucturn more old one/elder god related or more dominion of the black or about the same for both?

7)Since the Ilee of Apostae are so different in form from each other wouldn't that make them very hard to stat up as a "race"?

8)Shouldn't the Aballonians have there own subtype or at least use the robot subtype?

9)What is your favorite planet(other then Golarion) in Pathfinder? Favorite moon of Liavara, Bretheda? and over all?

10)What movies have you seen lately?

Radiant Oath

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Have you seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens yet?


will the dreaded duckbunny (actual dragon magazine monster) ever make a apperanc in pathfinder?


Roughly how many pathfinders are there and how many pathfinder lodges?


Forgive me if this has been asked before, but do you guys ever run/play other games also, people around the office and/or in their personal games deciding to rock out some 2E AD&D, or Call of Cthulhu, or Vampire: the Masquerade, etc, or does everyone pretty much just stick to Pathfinder?


Hey, a few rules questions I wanted clarification on. I've asked in the rules section already, but I'd really like to see what one of the creators has to say on the matter.

-----

1. How does the monastic legacy feat interact with the brawler's martial training class feature? The closest thing to an answer I've seen is in this very thread, but involving monastic legacy's interaction with the champion of Irori prestige class:

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page=518?Ask-James-Jacobs-ALL-your-Qu estions-Here#25872

Now, I can see how in the above situation monastic legacy wouldn't work, as it runs afoul of this ruling. Monastic legacy is attempting to add effective levels to one's monk level, while the martial artist class feature is also attempting to add effective levels to one's monk level. Since that's two of the same type of number trying to add to the same thing, we could only take the larger of the two, which would probably be the number from martial artist unless we're literally just dipping into 3 levels of monk and 1 level of champion of Irori so that a paladin can smite and detect chaos.

I'm seeing the situation with brawler's martial training differently, though. There's only one iteration of a number trying to be added to effective monk levels, that being effective fighter levels. I would expect that this would give me an effective monk level 1.5 times my brawler level when determining my unarmed strikes' damage dice. However, I've been told that this is a situation of double-dipping, like the above example regarding champion of Irori, but I don't see how that is...

-----

2. What exactly does ascetic form work with? I'll give two examples of what I mean:

- Let's say I've taken an elemental ascetic kineticist and taken ascetic strike and all feats required for it (ascetic style, ascetic form, weapon focus in a weapon from the monk weapon group). Because kinetic fist and elemental flurry are made as part of an attack action with an unarmed strike, would I be allowed to use those abilities while equipped with the weapon I've chosen for ascetic style? Could I also feasibly use kinetic blade or kinetic whip so long as the ascetic style chosen weapon is one-handed and my other hand is open (although this would functionally have no different effect than using those abilities weaponless), or does an ability specifically need to require unarmed strikes?

- Suppose I've given ascetic style and ascetic form to an esoteric magus. Because of their unarmed strike class ability, they can treat their magus levels as monk levels when determining their unarmed strikes' damage. Would ascetic form also allow them to use their ascetic style weapon to deal the same damage?

-----

3.) What was the purpose of ascetic strike allowing one to ignore the still mind requirement on monastic legacy? The only reason I can think of to take both feats is if you haven't taken any levels in a class that can advance its unarmed strikes' damage, but wish to use unarmed strikes without taking monk levels, and you could do exactly the same thing with monk variant multiclassing with added bonuses (since it's taking five feats to achieve). And even then, it's only giving you an unarmed strike that acts as backup if you somehow lose the weapon you've chosen for ascetic strike, as it deals less damage after 12th level. Otherwise there's no reason you wouldn't use ascetic strike with your weapon instead. Basically, if you have ascetic strike, you don't need monastic legacy, and if you have monastic legacy, you don't need ascetic strike, so why link them like this?


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Mr Jacobs,

How well known was Cayden Cailean before he ascended? How about the other ascended gods like Irori and Iomadae?

And are the ascended known as gods on other planets?


1)Has been revealed yet what the name of Castrovel's forth continent yet?

2)What was the last animated movie you saw? What was the last animated movie you saw that you really enjoyed?

3)What comic movie of 2016 are most interested in seeing?

4)Aballon doesn't have a moon, correct?

5)Do you have a favorite element for the kineticist?

6)Which planet had humans first, Earth, Golarion, or Androffa?

7)How was your Christmas? Get anything good?


Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

1) What are some of the resource books you've found particularly useful or interesting lately in your work...or just enjoy perusing for personal enjoyment?

2) Who are a few of your favorite artists? Not necessarily anyone that makes art for Paizo, but anyone whose art you've enjoyed.

3) What are three periods and places in history that you think are generally interesting, off the top of your head? Can be either an event or just a general time period.


In Dance of The Damned, part of the adventure which concerns influencing the noble houses makes it clear that you can't recruit the pro-Thrune houses into joining the rebellion.

Spoiler:
What happens if you try to kill or kidnap the heads of the houses allied with Thrune? They don't have full stat builds but their levels and alignments are given. The writers must've anticipated that some players would want to "pay them a visit"


1)The Deities that decimated Androffa, what were they deities of? alignment(s)?

2)Are there any catfolk deities?

3)Are there any lashunta deities?

4)What was the last animated movie that you saw?

5)What was the most disappointing movie of 2015?


Where have you been?


Redbeard the Scruffy wrote:
Where have you been?

I'm going to guess, playing Fallout 4 and getting away from work, if only for a little while.


Happy New Years!

How was your New Years Eve?


1)What is your favorite movie of 2015?

2)What are your favorite two cleric domains?

3)Are there any rules/game mechanics that you would have liked to have changed but kept because of backwards compatibility for 3.5?

4)Are there any rules/game mechanics from older or newer editions that you would have liked for Pathfinder?

5)Are any of the Kaiju listed in B4 CR30 creatures? If so how many?

Grand Lodge

Happy New Year James!


Redbeard the Scruffy wrote:
Where have you been?

I imagine he went to visit his family in Northern Cali for the holodays. But that is only conjecture not hard and fast knowledge.

Dark Archive

Happy 2016 Mighty Tyrant Lizard!

What do you think of A Study in Emerald, where Neil Gaiman, pulls together the worlds of Sherlock Holmes and H.P. Lovecraft.

Have you tried the game based on the story?

Liberty's Edge

What domains would Adimarchus have? Obviously Chaos, Evil and Madness, but what would the 4th be?


Pathfinder LO Special Edition, Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, PF Special Edition Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber

What more does he need? :-)


A Kaijitsu lore issue:

"The Brinewall Legacy" says that Amaya was born in 4680, and Ameiko in 4689. "Burnt Offerings" says Tsuto was born in 4688. However, "A Song of Silver" references Lonjiku's disappointment in his children as the reason for cheating. Obviously, he can't be disappointed in his kids 8 years before the first one was born, and if you place Amaya's birth late enough for Ameiko to be old enough to have been a disappoint she wouldn't be old enough for Council of Thieves.

Obviously it isn't a big issue or anything, but just for the fun of lore, which version would you go with? Older Ameiko/Tsuto to fit in Amaya? Or nix the disappointment bit and add "cheating for no reason" to the list of reasons Lonjiku was kind of a jerk?


How would you describe the way the Hags call to their daughters? Is it a magic ritual? Or something more inbuilt to being a Hag (A Supernatural ability maybe?)
Is it something a non-Hag could be taught to do by a Hag or more in-the-bone as it were?

Also Happy New Year


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James Jacobs wrote:
Alayern wrote:

Elves of Golarion mentions something known as "The Brightness." Apparently it is a journey of self discovery that elves may choose to undergo to reach some sort of enlightenment.

  • 1. Does an elf know when he/she does actions that would help him to find her/his brightness?
  • 2. What happens if an elf (as I suppose many do) chooses not to seek their brightness? I sincerely hope it isn't as severe as the bleaching is to the gnomes...
  • 3. Since the brightness is a form of self perfection, does Irori inspire elven followers to seek it?
  • 4. If yes, how does he facilitate their journey?
  • 5. If an elf is affected by reincarnate do they lose their brightness? Do they lose their ability to find it? What if they had already attained it?
  • 6. Likewise, if someone is reincarnate-d into an elf, do they gain the ability to seek the brightness?
  • 7. Lastly, if you were an elf, what would you suspect your brightness to be?

Sorry for the many questions, but self discovery is a big thing for me, and the fact that elves have this tool to attain that is a wonderful concept.

1) Yes, if the elf is a follower of the philosophy. It's not a racial thing. It's a philosophical thing.

2) Nothing at all. "The Brightness" isn't something that all elves do. It's an elven philosophy, a not-quite religion. Those elves who follow the Brightness seek to reach a level of self-awakening, but those who do not don't. It's not an inborn trait common to all elves, any more than becoming a wizard or fighter or rogue is.

3) It's something that Irori approves of, yes. It may even have inspired him, at least partially, to achieve his own self-perfection.

4) He does not facilitate the journey unless the elf worships Irori. Most do not.

5) An elf that achieves Brightness for real does not want to come back to life, and thus can't be raised or resurrected. That's the whole POINT of the Brightness.

6) Only if they become a follower of the philosophy.

7)...

Hello James,

In "Elves of Golarion" (and some other places, I think) it states that elves believe in reincarnation. Is this an aspect of the "Brightness" philosophy, and therefore applies only those who subscribe to it? Or, is this something all elves believe in? In either case, how does this impact the number of elven petitioners of elven deities in realms like Elysium? Are these realms sparsely populated due to so many elven souls reincarnating instead?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Alayern wrote:

What led to the decision (if there was ever a conscious one) to not design an "art" style domain?

I bet there were a bunch'o factors, and I'm certainly not against homebrewing one for any Shelynite players, but I'm just wondering the Paizonian opinion.

The fact that there wasn't an Art domain in 3.5. We didn't want to change what domians our deities granted tremendously, if at all, when we switched from 3.5 to Pathfinder, which meant that going into Pathfinder we inherited a LOT of domains, which also resulted in the cleric's footprint in the Core Rulebook being the largest in the entire class chapter, which indirectly resulted in the cleric being the class that got the LEAST amount of new content or capstones or other stuff. Put more simply, there simply wasn't room to add an Art domain, nor was there a core deity that already granted an Art domain, so it didn't go in.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Ed Reppert wrote:

There are a bunch of farmsteads near Sandpoint. I guess these are free farmers. How much do they make in say a year, on average?

What about farmers in other lands? Is serfdom a thing anywhere? Are the farmers in Cheliax mostly serfs or slaves? What about Taldor? Andoran? The River Kingdoms?

They make enough money to subsist as farmers and lead comfortable lives without making enough money to become super rich. Since we don't really focus much on the economy of non-adventurers in the game, the exact details are nebulous.

In any event, the farmers around Sandpoint are free farmers, but there are serfs elsewhere in the Inner Sea Region. There's serf-type workers as close as the Korvosan hinterlands, in fact, and certainly serf-like folks in Cheliax and Taldor. Not so much the River Kingdoms, where it's all about every man/woman for themselves to fail or succeed based on their own ability.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

AlgaeNymph wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
The Fox wrote:
James, When is your birthday?
January 9th.

Wow, so's mine! :)

Anyway, some questions.

James Jacobs wrote:
Remember, Golarion is NOT the same as a real world medieval setting; it takes some inspiration from that, but the presence of magic and the fact that recorded history has been going on longer on Golarion than on Earth means that in some ways, their standards and quality of living might even be higher than we have today.

1. In what ways?

James Jacobs wrote:
Therrux wrote:
Who do you consider the scariest Runelord?
Alaznist.
2. How's she scarier than Sorshen?

1) Look at the rules and compare to the real world. Healing, for example, is MUCH more efficient via magic than via technology.

2) She's more unpredictable and more violent and angrier.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Bahamut wrote:

Mr. Jacobs,

With the coming of the new Strange Aeons AP I was wondering, what's your favorite Mythos creature(s) and why?

(Sorry if you've already answered this question)

Thanks!

Hastur is my favorite, because he's so mysterious and thought provoking and creepy, and combines into one entity everything that's compelling and frightening about human nature AND inhuman nature. And the fact that I liked the picture of him in the 1st Edition Deities & Demigods book the best of all the Cthulhu Mythos monster pictures certainly helped!

Silver Crusade

Yay! James' is back!

*glomps the T-Rex*


All hail our mighty T-Rex overlord. HAIL!!!

Also, welcome back James, hope the holidays treated you well!

Paizo Employee Creative Director

BLloyd607502 wrote:

I was just wondering, what does Pharasma think of Naderi? Does she have an opinion of her at all?

And just as importantly, if a third party were to introduce the two and plea with Pharasma to let Naderi do the divine equivalent of couch surfing in the Boneyard, would she be up for it?
I know that Shelyn is the closest thing Pharasma has to a friend after all and she hates Urgathoa and would probably love to get one over on her or at least see the benefit of doing so rather than letting Naderi fall into her hands.
But on the other hand Naderi does have hints of love after death in her portfolio and so on with overtures of undead.
Think those two would get along at all, or no chance?

Oh and as an after question, Agents of Evil listed apathy as a good example of evil, all it takes for evil to thrive and all that Jazz.
Pharasma's entire thing is not giving two mehs about the fact that innocent people occasionally get caught between the cogs, good men fall and evil thrives, daemons get to chew on souls and thus cause entropy in the wheel of fate, let a good 80% of her own prophets go coo-coo for Coco-puffs when Aroden died (Which caused a massive amount of suffering by proxy), ect, ect, how come she's neutral?
Are there redeeming qualities to her that just come across much less frequently? I know there's the bit in the Boneyard description that hints that she occasionally allows restless souls to return despite it being against her own rules technically and having her own little domain for people who are in the odd sock drawer of spirituality which is described as a pretty nice place all around.
Which suggests that when its down to her she leans on the side of compassion a bit.
Does she ever put her thumb on the scales for the little guy that doesn't have a chance in the face of eternity? Are there rules that constrain even her and she tries to help when she can, or is she just really, really arbitrary? What's her deal really?
Or is the why of her aloofness something that's going to be talked about in the future and totally a plot point? If so, sorry for asking a question you can't answer at the moment

We've an article about Naderi in the upcoming book, and I've not yet had a chance to read it nor have I done much work on her at all... if I had my druthers, I'd say that Pharasma is fine with Naderi and doesn't really have much of an opinion either way, but again... the writer of that article more or less went with what's been written already and I'm not 100% sure where that info went. So... I can't really answer these questions, and instead ask you to check out the new book when it's out in a few months for answers.

Pharasma's NOT about "not giving two mehs" at all. She knows what's going to happen, being the goddess of fate and prophecy and all that, and since the entire future is essentially "spoiled" for her, she just doesn't look at it in the same way us mortals do. It's easy for mortals to misinterpret this attitude as apathy, but it's not at all. In many ways, this makes Pharasma one of the most alien (as far as human mindsets go) of all the deities—she may be the closest deity we have to having an alignment of "none" but that's not possible in the game so instead she's Neutral.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

bigmac wrote:

Arrius didn't quite ask about all the things I asked over there, so I'll ask you the rest of the stuff myself, if you don't mind. :-)

I saw that WotC had already registered an ISBN for your cancelled book, but I had never heard about it before then. Did WotC release anything like a preview or a press release before they cancelled the book?

How did your unpublished work end up with Sword and Sorcery Studio? Did Wizards of the Coast sell on the licence, including your work? Or did you sort that out with Sword and Sorcery Studio independently? (Either way I'm glad your stuff was not wasted, even if I would love to see what the original form of it would have been.)

It must be frustrating to spend ages making stuff for fans to play with only to have it get buried at the last moment. When you wrote the book, were you hoping to stick with the Warcraft II campaign setting and make more books for it? Or did WotC see the project as a one-shot (like Ghostwalk)? (The title "Player's Guide" kind of makes me think there might have been a "Dungeon Master's Guide" and a "Monsters of Warcraft" book to follow.)

Did you run any test Warcraft III games, while creating the book? Was there every anything like a Web Enhancement planned for it?

Did you get a chance to look over what Sword and Sorcery did with your work? If so, how much do you think the rules changed from your rules to their rules? (Is the difference between your unpublished game and their game bigger or smaller than the difference between 3.5 D&D and Pathfinder RPG?)

The process of registering an ISBN for a book happens way early (often well in advance of the book's public announcement), and often a company will register a big stack of books all at once—they might know, for example, that they plan to release 10 books in a year, and on January just go ahead and register all 10 of their codes. If fate ends up making it that some of those books never see the light of day, that sucks for the book but doesn't, as far as I know, carry any "penalties" to the ISBN side of things. That's not really something I know a lot about though... so take that info for what it's worth. In any event, the text for the WotC version was never made public or previewed. The book was cancelled while it was in editing. They did provide me with a bound printout of the book, which was a nice gesture, and of course I got paid for it. And in fact, I think having my first D&D book get cancelled kinda ended up being a good thing since all the other folks there in R&D at WotC were super supportive of it, letting me know that it happens all the time and that it was not because I wrote poorly and all that.

Anyway, as far as I understood it, when Sword and Sorcery Studio got the rights, WotC merely sent them all the files we'd done to that point and let them do with them what they wished. By that time, World of Warcraft was much closer to release (but still a few years away) and so they were able to work with Blizzard to adjust some things that changed between that and Warcraft III (which was the game we had mostly been basing our work on). I didn't work with Sword and Sorcery Studio at all, and I'm honestly not 100% sure what of my work made it all the way into their book... I suspect nothing made it through completely unchanged though.

It was frustrating, but it's also part of the industry, and being okay with that when you're doing work for hire is a huge part of the process of being a freelance writer. If one doesn't do well with that, one won't do well as a writer, I guess.

I'm not sure what WotC's initial plans for it were, but they did do 3 or so books for Diablo, so I'm sure had they kept the license and had it done well for them, they would have done other books eventually.

I never ran any Warcraft games while making the book, nor were there any web enhancements.

I didn't get a chance to look over Sword and Sorcery's work until the book was published, and only then because I bought a copy of the book from a game store out of curriosity.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Slithery D wrote:

James, I love the two golem conversions to robots (noqual golem -> Bastion and cannon golem -> pulsepounder) in The Divinity Drive, but I wonder if you agree with me that they didn't quite go far enough to full robot stats and need a bit more work.

1. Shouldn't both have Hardness 10 instead of the original golem DR 15/adamantine?

2. Shouldn't Bastion have combined arms as an ability? It seems to fit its combat role and design. I suspect the Pulsepounder should also have it, but maybe that one is more explicitly a heavy ranged combatant/artillery piece than a shred everything at close range type.

3. Are the skills appropriately distributed on these? (Bastion only has knowledge (engineering) and perception, no sense motive or disable device, to take two typical robot class skills missing. (Compare to the Annihilator, which gets Sense Motive and also Intimidate, not to mention acrobatics and climb.)

4. Shouldn't the Pulsepounder have Vulnerability to Electricity and Critical Hits listed as a weakness? (It did make it in for Bastion.)

More general questions about robots:

5. None of them seem to suffer secondary natural weapon penalties, whether for combined arms ranged attacks, or multiple types of melee (Surgeon robot). Is this intended, or should they suffer the penalty for everything but slam/claws in a full attack and perhaps use Multiattack (especially on the surgeon robot).

6. If an Amulet of Mighty Fists were placed on a robot, either as a custom piece or because it's medium size and clearly has a neck, would the bonus also effect integrated ranged weapons since they are natural weapons?

1) Nope; they're golems, not full on robots. By keeping their original DR, that helps to differentiate them. What you're seeing is, in effect, the difference between a "Golarion robot" and an "Androffan robot" I suppose. Also, by varying their DR/hardness thing, we give some variance in how monster defenses work so that the PCs have to stay a little bit more on their toes.

2) Combined arms is actually a nonsense ability—what it grants is something all robots already have. It basically amounts to "since this monster doesn't use its hands to hold its ranged weapons, it can use those hands to attack with other weapons and STILL use its ranged weapons." So when a robot doesn't have combined arms, it basically still gets all of the abilities "granted" by it.

3) As far as I remember, yes, the skills are fine.

4) Nope. Again, these are variant creatures, and sometimes that means they have slightly different abilities than others. By not giving the Pulsepounder those weaknesses, we vary up combat a bit.

5) Yup; intended. They're tough, in a high-level adventure, and are meant to be dangerous as a result.

6) Nope; integrated weapons are not natural attacks, and as such aren't affected by an amulet of mighty fists.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Archpaladin Zousha wrote:
Have you ever played a character who had a pet or some other animal accompany them that WASN'T due to class features? Not a familiar, not an animal companion, not a bonded mount, just a regular animal that you happen to love and take care of?

Yes. Latest example was Sasha Dracktus, my Skull & Shackles character, who ended up with a pet parrot. Who probably starved to death after that TPK ended the campaign, alas.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

SCKnightHero1 wrote:

How widespread is the worship of the whore queens in Cheliax?

What about Ymeri and the other elemental lords? Are they worshipped in Cheliax?

Can half-elves and ratfolk have children?

Is there a version of Christmas on Golarion? What about New Years Day? And what are they like?

Not all four of the whore queens are equally worshiped in Cheliax, but all have worshipers here and there. Not very widespread; mostly localized. The Sisterhood of the Golden Erinyes is easily the most visible and widespread, but others exist as well (See Hell's Rebels for an example of their worship in the Kintargo area).

The elemental lords are barely worshiped in Cheliax. if they are, it's tiny cults here and there, but not to an extent that it's really noticeable at all on a regional scale.

Nope, half elves and ratfolk can't have children. I suggest adoption or polymorph magic.

There isn't an exact Christmas analogue on Golarion, by design. There is a New Year's day, but it's creepier—it's called the Night of the Pale, which is more like the Day of the Dead combined with Halloween, I guess.

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