Creative Director
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Wouldn't a ghost from the future already be a time traveller? Just a time travelling ghost?Maybe she's a ghost from the future? Or a time traveller?Why is there a woman who seems to call my phone every 3-6 months looking for her friend for the past 5 years or so? I can understand a wrong number here and there, but this is the same lady who keeps sporradically calling my number and doesn't seem capable of removing my number from her phonebook.
Follow up question: how can I educate her to remove my number from her phonebook so she doesn't keep calling me looking for Steve?
Yup.
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Creative Director
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So Second Darkness was very heavily elven influenced. Is there any chance (despite your dislike) of having a heavily dwarven influenced adventure path. I for one would buy it.
There's certainly a chance. Not much on schedule, though. Honestly, given Second Darkness's warts, there's a better chance I might try to present an elf AP again in an attempt to file off those warts. ;-P
OT: when GM'ing, do you prefer to use pregenerated maps (Flip-Mats & Map Packs FTW!) or draw them out as you go?
Sorry, but I love the drawn maps better even if it is a artistically challenged DM...because after a while I feel like I am playing those old video games with the recycled backgrounds.
Sorry for jumping in and answearing that question...I know this not the Ask John Kretzer Thread...
James, What language is most commonly spoken on the plane of shadow? And where is Aklo most commonly spoken?
A new book (the awesome campaign setting!) a new question: does the monk of the empty hand benefit as beautifully from Dervish Dance as I imagine it? In other words, can an empty hand monk flurry a scimitar and use Dexterity for attack and damage? Naturally the scimitar is reduced to a 20/x2 weapon, rather than 18-20/x2. A side question: how does the "piercing" aspect of the Dervish Dance interact with the monk of the empty hand? (I assume that the feat is a more-specific override of the general rule that the archetype provides.)
Saw your post about not getting a community welcome to the boards in the other thread - You are awesome for taking the time to write on these boards. I'm sure it's only because people consider you a host and us guests that it doesn't occur to give a welcome. Speaking for myself, you set my brand loyalty in cement from the commitment this kind and depth of contact demonstrates.
Why are classes more intrinsic to character customization than race? To put it another way, we've seen new base classes released, but no new races to speak of. Why one, but not the other?
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Creative Director
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if given unlimited resources, including time, money and personnel, what five things would you buy??
1) A boat
2) A house3) A first printing Lovecraft from Arkham House
4) A movie studio
5) Awesome gifts for all my friends
Five places you have at least a two week vacation in?
1) Antarctica
2) Australia3) Canada
4) Hawaii
5) Japan
Five products you would get Paizo to create?
This comes too close to spoilers, since products I would like to see Paizo create have a way of getting created... or are already in the works. So instead, here's five products I'd like to see Paizo license a talented company to produce:
1) A Golarion movie.2) A Golarion animated seires.
3) A Golarion video game.
4) A Golarion globe.
5) A life-sized statue of Treerazer made out of jade and bronze and obsidian.
Any chance there might be an official Pathfinder update to the WoW RPG? not from Paizo per se, but any 3rd party?
That's not up to us. That's up to Blizzard.
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Creative Director
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Since I got my new shiny Pathfinder Guide to the Inner Sea and I'm currently playing a 5th level Fighter 2nd level Hellknight and we have a shiny new Hellknight prestige class do I:
Convert it over?
or
Ignore it and keep playing the old one?
Are both still legal classes or is the old one obsolete?
Or should my poor Tiefling get eaten by a shadow T Rex and be replaced with his Good Pallie twin Hellknight since the new Hellknight is much more Pally friendly as a prestige?
This is up to your GM, frankly.
The intent is that the new one in the Inner Sea World Guide replaces the one from Pathfinder #27, though.
If you're in the Pathfinder Society, you have to convert the character over to the new one in the Inner Sea World Guide.
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Creative Director
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James, What language is most commonly spoken on the plane of shadow? And where is Aklo most commonly spoken?
Aklo is most commonly spoken in the First World, the Darklands, or by spooky cultists who have ties to Lovecraftian stuff. One way to think of it is as "anti-Sylvan."
As for the Plane of Shadow... the languages spoken there are those of the natives, so things like Abyssal, D'ziriak, Infernal, but also other languages of creatures yet to be revealed. There's probably a fair amount of Shadowtongue spoken there, but mostly by visitors from Nidal. And Common, of course. There's not a planer-wide Shadow language, though.
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Creative Director
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Any plans of an AP that has the PCs taking on good -- but misguided -- good outsiders (e.g., the outsiders are willing to cause massive damage to Golarion to stop a great evil, forcing the PCs to slow them down as they look for an alternative answer)?
Unlikely. We tried something like this with Second Darkness, which presented elves (normally good guys) in a not-so-friendly light, and it was kind of a failure.
Good outsiders would not be willing to cause massive damage to Golarion to stop a great evil. Neutral outsiders would be, but not good ones. Because they're good. I'm NOT a fan of letting alignment get all squishy and sloppy and mutable. Especially when it comes to outsiders.
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Creative Director
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What is this book you are talking about here?That pretty much describes Night Elves to a T. I kind of think of Night Elves as very tall dwarves with a feral fey streak. Their 3.5 adjustments were +2 Wisdom (Spirit) -2 Charisma. for Pathfinder I'd add a +2 Dex (Agility)Yup. Being the guy who initially designed night elves for the 3.5 rules (back when it was going to be an official Wizards of the Coast product), that's more or less the exact philosophy I took with them. (Of course, the unpublished draft of that book would go on to be heavily revised by Sword & Sorcery studios... so it's hard for me to say exactly what elements of that book's design remain mine or otherwise.)
The first hardcover book I was hired to help write for Wizards of the Coast was to be a 3rd Edition D&D version of the World of Warcraft that would have tied in to the release of Warcraft III back in the late 90s. Wizards had already produced several similar licensed products with Blizzard (3 different Diablo products and a Starcraft box set)... but after the Warcraft RPG book had been completely written and was in editing, WotC decided to bail on the licensed RPG scene entirely. This meant that the Warcraft RPG sat in limbo for a bit. Eventually, that license reverted to White Wolf and their Sword & Sorcery imprint, and they took the manuscript that I helped write as a baseline and redesigned a lot of it. They've since published a lot of Warcraft RPG books using the d20 system, but they've (obviously) shifted toward the World of Warcraft as the main tie-in rather than retaining Warcraft III as the primary tie-in.
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Creative Director
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A new book (the awesome campaign setting!) a new question: does the monk of the empty hand benefit as beautifully from Dervish Dance as I imagine it? In other words, can an empty hand monk flurry a scimitar and use Dexterity for attack and damage? Naturally the scimitar is reduced to a 20/x2 weapon, rather than 18-20/x2. A side question: how does the "piercing" aspect of the Dervish Dance interact with the monk of the empty hand? (I assume that the feat is a more-specific override of the general rule that the archetype provides.)
The monk of the empty hand can only benefit from Dervish Dance if he is proficient with the scimitar, and uses the scimitar as a scimitar, NOT as an improvised weapon. If the monk of the empty hand uses a scimitar as an improvised weapon using his class ability, it's no longer being used as a scimitar, and thus he gains no benefit at all from Dervish Dance whatsoever. So the piercing aspect doesn't interact at all with the monk of the empty hand.
The only way to gain the benefits of Dervish Dance is to use a scimitar as a scimitar. Which the monk of the empty hand can only do by NOT using his empty hand improvised weapon abilities.
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Creative Director
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Everyone knows of course that you're not a proper gunslinger without a sobriquet to strike fear into the hearts of your rivals.
We've had Billy the Kid, Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickock (who once shot a man for snoring) for example.
So suddenly the Melkotians (remember them?) decide that for thier sins the entire Paizo creative staff has been sent to the Old West and forced to survive as gunslingers.
What would be the nicknames they take?
I do not remember the Melkotians. So perhaps nicknames like:
"The Forgotten"
"The Who-What-Now?"
"The Other Dude"
"The Unfactored Variant"
"Mr. Question"
"Miss Who Knows?"
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Creative Director
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Saw your post about not getting a community welcome to the boards in the other thread - You are awesome for taking the time to write on these boards. I'm sure it's only because people consider you a host and us guests that it doesn't occur to give a welcome. Speaking for myself, you set my brand loyalty in cement from the commitment this kind and depth of contact demonstrates.
HA! Well, thanks.
That post was mostly in jest, though, to respond to someone who used the "Hi, Welcome!" thing on me because I was complaining about people being annoying or lame or pedantic or whatever on the internet. (And in so doing, they validated my complaints!)
It was a super sarcastic post, in other words, but thanks for your post anyway! :-)
Awesome! Thanks!
Does the same kind of liquor and alcoholic beverages exist in Golaria as what we have, or do they have more exotic stuff?
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Creative Director
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Why are classes more intrinsic to character customization than race? To put it another way, we've seen new base classes released, but no new races to speak of. Why one, but not the other?
Four reasons, really.
1) A player only gets to choose a race once in his career. He can always opt to multiclass into a new class or gain the benefits of an archetype or whatever later... but he can't really switch his race at all. Therefore, since this is a choice that only gets made ONCE per campaign per PC, it's not a very good idea to spam books with new PC race options.
2) Races, much more than classes, depend on the world setting for support. And that means races need places to live in a setting. Done right, you have all the races in your setting available for PCs to play at the start. It's really rather difficult to wedge in a new race to an existing setting without the whole thing feeling weird. If you invent a new race of two-headed backwards-talking rock people called Rokitars, for example, it's weird that suddenly, in a world that has an established history of hundreds or perhaps thousands of years that suddenly there's a whole nation of Rokitars popping up out of the blue. And honestly, justifying the Rokitars as a newly discovered race or some race that just came out of hiding is kinda lame too, because since they're new, things will skew toward Rokitars anyway, making the perception that there are Rokitars everywhere even though the game world flavor text says otherwise. Furthermore, our philosophy at Paizo is that we need to support our new creations in Golarion—and we're pretty happy with our current selection of PC race options for the Inner Sea region.
3) Humans are the core race. Every additional PC race we invent dilutes that. That might be fine for other settings who have far more cosmopolitan or unusual settings, but we don't have a setting like that. We don't WANT to dilute humanity by adding more and more PC race options to the mix. If we WERE to do, say, a big book of new PC races, we'd probably adopt a stance of "This is not for Golarion, but use it as you will." Which is so alien to our current philosophy of supporting our new rules content that it's unlikely to happen.
4) Coming up with new races is easy. Coming up with new races that are equal in power level to humans or the other core races is NOT easy. Not only do you have to contend with the fact that you need to make the game mechanics balanced, there's lots of other restraints. One of the greatest of which is that the fundamental structure of the Pathfinder world and rules assumes that ALL player characters are humanoid in shape. If we created a race of intelligent jellyfish that floated everywhere... that'd be incredibly complicated to fit into the game. What magic item slots do they have? Can they use boots? If not, how do you balance the race for the fact that suddenly they can't use as many magic items as every other race? And so on... so new races have such a narrow window of design flexibility that suddenly, everything starts looking the same. Look at the dozens (hundreds?) of humanoid races in, say, Star Trek. Seems like many episodes just made up a new race out of the blue to serve a plot, and never touched the race again. Frankly, that's kind of lame. I'd much rather limit race options to a few (say, our current core seven) and REALLY detail their societies, rather than have a race of, say, Gorns who only show up in one adventure.
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Creative Director
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In Tian Xia, is common spoken widely? Or is it like the Mwangi expanse with a lot of regional languages and a single common mashup like polyglot?
Common is spoken as widely in Tian Xia as Tien is spoken in the Inner Sea region.
Tien, in Tian Xia, is spoken as much as Common in the Inner Sea region.
Although it'd probably cause way too much confusion and thus is probably a bad idea, I'd be tempted to call the language of Tien "Common" in Tian Xia books, and the language Common "Taldane" in Tian Xia books.
Gah. Watched "Human Centipede" last night. Truly disturbing.
So. Front, middle, or end?
Why are classes more intrinsic to character customization than race? To put it another way, we've seen new base classes released, but no new races to speak of. Why one, but not the other?Four reasons, really.
I understand all of that and agree with it but four questions in relation to this topic..
1) I thought Pathfinder will be more generic...more that just about Golarion...so a I don't see how a couple of new races in the APG would have hurt. Am I missing something? Does everything in the Pathfinder has to serve Golarion needs? Though really...it is not that big of a deal as converting the races of 3.5. as say classes or PrCs.
2) Any chance of seeing a book that deals with playing non-standard races like a orc...or drow...or dhampir. Or can we only see those recieve a little support in the Destiary?
3) Speaking about this any books planned sorta like the Races of books back in 3.5? Sorta like a Ultimate Races books that expands on all the races?
4) Subject of Elven sub-races...it seems to me with the Elven flavor of being more intune to their enviroment and physcaly changing over time to adaapt to it you guys explained why their would be elven sub races...are you guys going to explore that more?
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Creative Director
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1) I thought Pathfinder will be more generic...more that just about Golarion...so a I don't see how a couple of new races in the APG would have hurt. Am I missing something? Does everything in the Pathfinder has to serve Golarion needs? Though really...it is not that big of a deal as converting the races of 3.5. as say classes or PrCs.
The more hardcover books we put out, the more likely they'll start to drift away from directly supporting Golarion. For the first few years, though, they're skewing significantly toward supporting our campaign setting in addition to being world neutral overall. So a big book of new PC races gets more and more "doable" as the years go on. So does, for example, things like a steampunk book or other books that aren't as useful to Golarion but could be really interesting topics. You're starting to see this happen already with the presence of wordcasting magic in "Ultimate Magic" or firearms in the upcoming "Ultimate Combat."
2) Any chance of seeing a book that deals with playing non-standard races like a orc...or drow...or dhampir. Or can we only see those recieve a little support in the Destiary?
There's certainly a chance. Not this year. Probably not next year. But some day, a book about playing monstrous or non-core PCs is a popular topic and I bet we'll tackle it eventually.
3) Speaking about this any books planned sorta like the Races of books back in 3.5? Sorta like a Ultimate Races books that expands on all the races?
We're doing 32 page versions of those books in the Pathfinder Companion line already. In fact, we've done most of the races already.
4) Subject of Elven sub-races...it seems to me with the Elven flavor of being more intune to their enviroment and physcaly changing over time to adaapt to it you guys explained why their would be elven sub races...are you guys going to explore that more?
Not really. We're not big into "subraces" here. That said, we will be exploring what happens to elves that live in arctic regions quite a lot in Pathfinder #51.
Actually there is a fair amount of playable races; not sure what you're concerned about. Over at tenletter I have a post about the current list. But as a handy reference:
Aasimar Bestiary, page 7
Dhampir Bestiary 2, page 89
Drow Bestiary, page 114
Drow noble Bestiary, page 115
Duergar Bestiary, page 117
Dwarf Core, page 21
Elf Core, page 22
Fetchling Bestiary 2, page 123
Gnome Core, page 23
Goblin Bestiary, page 156
Grippli Bestiary 2, page 149
Half-elf Core, page 24
Half-orc Core, page 25
Halfling Core, page 26
Hobgoblin Bestiary, page 175
Ifrit Bestiary 2, page 160
Kobold Bestiary, page 183
Merfolk Bestiary, page 204
Orc Bestiary, page 222
Oread Bestiary 2, page 205
Svirfneblin Bestiary, page 261
Sylth Bestiary 2, page 258
Tengu Bestiary, page 263
Tiefling Bestiary, page 264
Undine Bestiary 2, page 275
There are also 10 variant tieflings listed in the first part of the Council of Thieves AP. And the Changeling just got added in the first part of the Carrion Crown AP.
That's a fair amount isn't it? Do you really need more?
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Actually there is a fair amount of playable races; not sure what you're concerned about. Over at tenletter I have a post about the current list. But as a handy reference:
Aasimar Bestiary, page 7
Dhampir Bestiary 2, page 89
Drow Bestiary, page 114
Drow noble Bestiary, page 115
Duergar Bestiary, page 117
Dwarf Core, page 21
Elf Core, page 22
Fetchling Bestiary 2, page 123
Gnome Core, page 23
Goblin Bestiary, page 156
Grippli Bestiary 2, page 149
Half-elf Core, page 24
Half-orc Core, page 25
Halfling Core, page 26
Hobgoblin Bestiary, page 175
Ifrit Bestiary 2, page 160
Kobold Bestiary, page 183
Merfolk Bestiary, page 204
Orc Bestiary, page 222
Oread Bestiary 2, page 205
Svirfneblin Bestiary, page 261
Sylth Bestiary 2, page 258
Tengu Bestiary, page 263
Tiefling Bestiary, page 264
Undine Bestiary 2, page 275There are also 10 variant tieflings listed in the first part of the Council of Thieves AP. And the Changeling just got added in the first part of the Carrion Crown AP.
That's a fair amount isn't it? Do you really need more?
[sarcasm]
But all of those are boooring What I really want to play is (a different game) some thing that lets me be (overpowered, disruptive, my fetish)cool and different(unplayable).[/sarcasm]|
Chief Technical Officer
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2) There's a giant Paizo golem painting in one of our bathrooms.Does this mean that the Paizo bathrooms are single person unisex, or is it in the men's room?Downstairs, we have 2 unisex bathrooms.
Upstairs, we have a men's bathroom and a women's bathroom.
I never thought of it before, but that's a little strange.
That's because downstairs, the men outnumber the women at about a 5 to 1 ratio—and upstairs it's more like 2:1. (And when we moved in, I think we might have only had one woman downstairs!)
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Chief Technical Officer
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Why is there a woman who seems to call my phone every 3-6 months looking for her friend for the past 5 years or so? I can understand a wrong number here and there, but this is the same lady who keeps sporradically calling my number and doesn't seem capable of removing my number from her phonebook.
Follow up question: how can I educate her to remove my number from her phonebook so she doesn't keep calling me looking for Steve?
Maybe you should just give in to her and start getting in touch with your inner Steve.
Actually there is a fair amount of playable races; not sure what you're concerned about. Over at tenletter I have a post about the current list. But as a handy reference:
:Cut out list:
There are also 10 variant tieflings listed in the first part of the Council of Thieves AP. And the Changeling just got added in the first part of the Carrion Crown AP.
That's a fair amount isn't it? Do you really need more?
1) I think I mentioned the Bestiary addition in my post in my post. And just wanted to see if it they would be developed more.
2) Evidently some people don't think so...as I am guessing some people are thinking there are too many races even in just the core book...it is a matter of opinion.
As to your question...That is a fair amount.
Do I need more? No I don't need more I suppose...but I would like to see more. Is that some how...wrong?
Oh based on your article...what a horribly stupid thing to put into any RPG...just my opinion.
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Creative Director
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Compared to past and present rpgs, World of Darkness has a large number of female gamers. Why is that? And what'd you suggest to bring more women to play in Pathfinder?
There could be a lot of reasons... but I think the main one is that vampires appeal to women a lot more than dragons or dungeons.
One way I can think of to bring more women into the Pathfinder hobby is to do a better job presenting female characters in positive heroic roles. We've been trying to do this all along. Can we do better? Probably. Whenever I write an adventure, I really try hard to include interesting and compelling female characters, both on the good guy side and the bad guy side of the fence.
Another is to get more women writing for us.
That said, there's an awful lot of women on these boards as it stands. So I think we're on the right path there.
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In Tian Xia, is common spoken widely? Or is it like the Mwangi expanse with a lot of regional languages and a single common mashup like polyglot?Common is spoken as widely in Tian Xia as Tien is spoken in the Inner Sea region.
Tien, in Tian Xia, is spoken as much as Common in the Inner Sea region.
Although it'd probably cause way too much confusion and thus is probably a bad idea, I'd be tempted to call the language of Tien "Common" in Tian Xia books, and the language Common "Taldane" in Tian Xia books.
Perhaps an alternate word for common (standard sounds wrong but you get the idea) for Tien, whilst picking out Taldane as something unusual?
I have a question regarding the Half-elf alternate racial trait "dual minded" from the Advanced Player's Guide.
This is one of those rare times when I have to ask "Um, what?"
So, just because Bob here is Half-elven, he gets a bonus to Will saves? A bonus that neither Humans nor Elves get. And therein lies my disconnect.
I could see there being a bonus to Will saves if the alternate racial trait replaced, say, Elven immunities which grants a bonus to specific will saves. But instead, this replaces the adaptability racial trait. Which represents an individual's ability to adapt and focus their learning on a specific skill. As this somewhat resembles the Human racial trait skilled, it makes sense.
I guess that the question here is: Why is there a Half-elven racial trait that does not have anything to do with the Half-elves parentage, upbringing or anything really to do with being Half-elven?
Sincerely,
Confused in California
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Creative Director
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I have a question regarding the Half-elf alternate racial trait "dual minded" from the Advanced Player's Guide.
This is one of those rare times when I have to ask "Um, what?"
So, just because Bob here is Half-elven, he gets a bonus to Will saves? A bonus that neither Humans nor Elves get. And therein lies my disconnect.
I could see there being a bonus to Will saves if the alternate racial trait replaced, say, Elven immunities which grants a bonus to specific will saves. But instead, this replaces the adaptability racial trait. Which represents an individual's ability to adapt and focus their learning on a specific skill. As this somewhat resembles the Human racial trait skilled, it makes sense.
I guess that the question here is: Why is there a Half-elven racial trait that does not have anything to do with the Half-elves parentage, upbringing or anything really to do with being Half-elven?
Sincerely,
Confused in California
Because sometimes when you mix a little bit of option A and a dash of option B, the result is something entirely new. Options for half elves like "dual minded" help to give half elves their own toys that aren't inheritances from elves or humans, which is good.
As with anything in the rules, though... if that just rubs you the wrong way (and, of course, you're the GM of your game), just ignore it and don't use the option in your game.
What defines a "game breaker" in a game you are running?
In a game you are playing?
{pokes head in, looks around for missing horsey}
A list...
Oooh... it makes me shudder every time I hear you say that's a playable races list with Drow Noble on it.
Drow noble and maybe Svirfneblin look out of place on that list.
Uuuum... Right James? :P
Is there any chance we'll more archtypes like the Dawnflower Dervish in which only a certain set of class abilities are given up?? I'd love to see archtypes where one gives up say just Bravery, or the bonus spells, skill, and caster bonus for a Bloodline.
Also, I'm pretty sure as I write this there are a few other such archtypes, but id love to see more.
Ps,
Where's today's Paizo Blog post?? Hmmm?