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Howdy, oh lizard king...
So i just got the Dragon Empires Gazeeter, and while reading through the Darklands entry, I noticed the mention that to explain all of the contents of Tian Xia's darklands (or Sekamina specifically), an entire book would be required. Was that just for dramatic effect? Or rather, my question would be: is it a good possibility that an "into the Darklands" sort of text will be written for Tian Xia?
Also, what do you think the average lifespan of a ratfolk would be?
I would LOVE to do more Darklands stuff, be it below Tian Xia or Avistan or whatever. The Darklands extend under entire continents, so it's not hyperbole to say that they could easily fill an entire book.
Ratfolk lifespans are given in Advanced Race Guide. And since we just got our office copies today... looks like ratfolk can live to about 40+1d20 years.
How about Catfolk lifespans?
Is Nidal literally shrouded in eternal night, or only figuratively? I've seen fluff that implies each in different books.Nidal's day and night work the same as anywhere else for the most part. There's probably some small scale eternal shadowy light spots here and there, but they're not that big. For the most part, the "shadow over Nidal" is a metaphor for Zon-Kuthon. Just as the darkness in "Age of Darkness" is a metaphor (the actual physical darkness caused by Earthfall probably only lasted a few weeks at most)....wait. The story behind the orc conquest of Avistan has always been that the orcs were able to manage it because the lighting conditions favored them for centuries, and they were only overthrown when the literal darkness ended.
How does this work now?
That also is, frankly, metaphor. Garnished with a heavy dose of orc revisionist history. What's more likely is that orcs managed to power through their light blindness and managed their conquering nonetheless.
I'm pretty sure that a thousand years of actual darkness would have caused a lot more ecological damage to Golarion than we want. And even if it DID last that long... it would have had to have been a magical darkness, since Earthfall itself as a physical event couldn't blanket a planet in darkness for that long. Dust settles faster than that.
Drudging this up again since I just re-read the Wayang race entry.
Wayangs are trespassers upon Golarion, a fact the world seems ferociously committed to reminding them. Tied to the eternal night of the Plane of Shadow, wayangs slipped between the boundaries between worlds during the Age of Darkness, finding shadow-engulfed Golarion well suited to their tastes. As the centuries-long night passed, however, wayangs found themselves trapped upon a world turning inhospitable under the light of a newly emerged sun.
I can see the reason for orc conquest being metaphorical, but is the wayang's description also a metaphor? Why would denizens of the plane of shadow leave unless it was non-metaphorical darkness? I'm having trouble seeing how it could be one and still fit with the description.
I'm confused.
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Hmm, I've been thinking about your previous answer James, and I was wondering, what was Aroden's relation to destined prophesy?
If he's not the god of prophesy (as you rightfully pointed out) then why did all prophesy collapse with his demise? According to the ISWG, even the other deities weren't immune (hmm, with the probable exception of Pharasma).
Or is this one of those 'nobody knows' situations?
Yep, I'm an Aroden fan. :)
I believe the phrophocalypse occured because of the failure of the massive prophecy that Aroden would return. If that was so unreliable, what chance anything else is true.
It's a question of a god's prophecy, not the god of prophecy...
Creative Director
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Hmm, I've been thinking about your previous answer James, and I was wondering, what was Aroden's relation to destined prophesy?
If he's not the god of prophesy (as you rightfully pointed out) then why did all prophesy collapse with his demise? According to the ISWG, even the other deities weren't immune (hmm, with the probable exception of Pharasma).
Or is this one of those 'nobody knows' situations?
Yep, I'm an Aroden fan. :)
Prophecies "collapsed" because his physical return to Westcrown at which point he'd usher in a new golden age for humanity was an INCREDIBLY well-known and highly-anticipated prophecy. When he died instead, it proved to the world that prophecies were no longer working. Indeed... it cast doubt on all the prophecies of the past, even—maybe all of them were just coincidences?
In any event, it's kind of a chicken and the egg thing. Whether it was Aroden's failure to appear in Westcrown that broke prophecy, or if it was prophecy breaking that made Aroden miss that date is unclear.
(In related news... the "death of prophecy" is also, in a metagame sense, a symbol of the fact that now Player Characters are in the world, and if PCs do anything well, it's derailing plots and breaking "prophecies" by doing something the GM could have never expected or prepared for.)
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Creative Director
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If a Mad Scientist Kidnapped you at gunpoint and Forced you to go back in time with his time machine and change one historical event, which would it be? and how would you change it?
Ooof.... just one?
And can I do ANYTHING? Like, oh, I don't know... deflect the asteroid or whatever that killed the dinosaurs?
AKA: For the sake of humanity, someone else with this wish should be prepared to go back in time and prevent me from saving the dinosaurs...
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Creative Director
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Is Nidal literally shrouded in eternal night, or only figuratively? I've seen fluff that implies each in different books.Nidal's day and night work the same as anywhere else for the most part. There's probably some small scale eternal shadowy light spots here and there, but they're not that big. For the most part, the "shadow over Nidal" is a metaphor for Zon-Kuthon. Just as the darkness in "Age of Darkness" is a metaphor (the actual physical darkness caused by Earthfall probably only lasted a few weeks at most)....wait. The story behind the orc conquest of Avistan has always been that the orcs were able to manage it because the lighting conditions favored them for centuries, and they were only overthrown when the literal darkness ended.
How does this work now?
That also is, frankly, metaphor. Garnished with a heavy dose of orc revisionist history. What's more likely is that orcs managed to power through their light blindness and managed their conquering nonetheless.
I'm pretty sure that a thousand years of actual darkness would have caused a lot more ecological damage to Golarion than we want. And even if it DID last that long... it would have had to have been a magical darkness, since Earthfall itself as a physical event couldn't blanket a planet in darkness for that long. Dust settles faster than that.
Drudging this up again since I just re-read the Wayang race entry.
Wayangs are trespassers upon Golarion, a fact the world seems ferociously committed to reminding them. Tied to the eternal night of the Plane of Shadow, wayangs slipped between the boundaries between worlds during the Age of Darkness, finding shadow-engulfed Golarion well suited to their tastes. As the centuries-long night passed, however, wayangs found themselves trapped upon a world turning inhospitable under the light of a newly emerged sun.I can see the reason for orc conquest being metaphorical, but is the wayang's description also a metaphor? Why would denizens of the plane of shadow leave unless it was non-metaphorical darkness? I'm having trouble seeing how it could be one and still fit with the description.
I'm confused.
It could be a metaphor... could be wayang written history messing with the truth... or it could be the literal truth. My preference is that the darkness overwhelming Golairon during the Age of Darkness was metaphorical, but it might not be. If it's NOT metaphorical, there needs to be a fair amount of heavy lifting to explain why the planet didn't completely die off due to the lack of sunlight.
Fortunatley, until we actually decide to set some sourcebooks or adventures there, I don't have to make that decision... so for now it can be both metaphorical and literal as the GM wishes.
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Chief Technical Officer
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If a Mad Scientist Kidnapped you at gunpoint and Forced you to go back in time with his time machine and change one historical event, which would it be? and how would you change it?Ooof.... just one?
And can I do ANYTHING? Like, oh, I don't know... deflect the asteroid or whatever that killed the dinosaurs?
AKA: For the sake of humanity, someone else with this wish should be prepared to go back in time and prevent me from saving the dinosaurs...
No need. If you save the dinos, you won't have existed, and so won't be able to save the dinos.
No need. If you save the dinos, you won't have existed, and so won't be able to save the dinos.If a Mad Scientist Kidnapped you at gunpoint and Forced you to go back in time with his time machine and change one historical event, which would it be? and how would you change it?Ooof.... just one?
And can I do ANYTHING? Like, oh, I don't know... deflect the asteroid or whatever that killed the dinosaurs?
AKA: For the sake of humanity, someone else with this wish should be prepared to go back in time and prevent me from saving the dinosaurs...
Time Travel: You're Doing It Wrong.
What everyone should do if you could time travel.
I mean really who wouldn't do this?
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What everyone should do if you could time travel.
I mean really who wouldn't do this?
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Intense Spell raises the cap on damage for a spell by 5 level provided you've got the caster level to benefit from that. As long as it deals damage that's based on caster level.
Does magic missile deal damage based on caster level? it adds one missile every odd level up until 9th.
Some people argue it adds missiles, and that the missiles deal 1d4+1 damage, so it doesn't benefit from Intense Spell, but the overall damage of the spell still seems level based. Is it?
1)Have you seen "Phenomena", "BlackHole", or "Don't be afraid of the Dark"? If so did you like them?
2)If you have seen "Don't be Afraid of the Dark", Do think the evil little fey in this movie would be cool to see in Pathfinder?
3)How long do Aasimar live? Dhamphir?
4)Who are least favorite character(s) in Game of Thrones?
5)Who are your favorite male and female characters in Game of thrones?
What kind of minions could you see an iconic witch villain as having?
What kind of minions would you like to have?
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Creative Director
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Many classes/archetypes have class features that grant bonus feats. Some say you need to have prerequisites to gain the feat, some say you can ignore any prerequisites for a chosen feat, some just say you gain the feat with no mention of the prerequisites.
Which is the default rule on meeting the prerequisites for any feats gained when there is no specific language in the class feature's description instructing to do otherwise?
If a class grants you a feat as a bonus feat, you never need the prerequisites unless it says specifically that you do.
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Creative Director
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Intense Spell raises the cap on damage for a spell by 5 level provided you've got the caster level to benefit from that. As long as it deals damage that's based on caster level.
Does magic missile deal damage based on caster level? it adds one missile every odd level up until 9th.
Some people argue it adds missiles, and that the missiles deal 1d4+1 damage, so it doesn't benefit from Intense Spell, but the overall damage of the spell still seems level based. Is it?
Magic missile is level based, and so I would say that it would indeed gain a benefit from Intense Spell.
2)If you have seen "Don't be Afraid of the Dark", Do think the evil little fey in this movie would be cool to see in Pathfinder?
They (or the version in the first film) were the direct inspiration for D&D's meenlocks.
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Creative Director
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1)Have you seen "Phenomena", "BlackHole", or "Don't be afraid of the Dark"? If so did you like them?
2)If you have seen "Don't be Afraid of the Dark", Do think the evil little fey in this movie would be cool to see in Pathfinder?
3)How long do Aasimar live? Dhamphir?
4)Who are least favorite character(s) in Game of Thrones?
5)Who are your favorite male and female characters in Game of thrones?
1) Maybe (there are multiple movies with that name), Yes, Yes, and Yes.
2) The evil fey in Pathfinder are kind of already in the game as meenlocks. Alas, they're Wizards of the Coast IP... but they're in Monster Manual II if you want to go back to 3rd edition and check them out... but they are pretty much exactly the same monster. They happen to be one of my FAVORITE D&D monsters too. So yes... something like that would be very cool to see in Pathfinder.
3) See Advanced Race Guide (my copy is at work so I can't answer right now).
4) Probably one of the characters whose name I can't remember because they were boring. There's honestly not a lot of them. Might not be ANY.
5) Male = Tyrion. Female = Arya.
It could be a metaphor... could be wayang written history messing with the truth... or it could be the literal truth. My preference is that the darkness overwhelming Golairon during the Age of Darkness was metaphorical, but it might not be. If it's NOT metaphorical, there needs to be a fair amount of heavy lifting to explain why the planet didn't completely die off due to the lack of sunlight.
Given the size of the crater that separated Garund from Avistan, the shattered remnants of Azlant straddling two hemispheres, and those suspiciously round lakes dotting Arcadia...
...I don't think you'll ever be able to make me believe that life on the surface of Golarion could possibly have survived without a lot of heavy lifting by suddenly-interventionist gods, whether or not the darkness of the Age of Darkness was metaphorical.
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Creative Director
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It could be a metaphor... could be wayang written history messing with the truth... or it could be the literal truth. My preference is that the darkness overwhelming Golairon during the Age of Darkness was metaphorical, but it might not be. If it's NOT metaphorical, there needs to be a fair amount of heavy lifting to explain why the planet didn't completely die off due to the lack of sunlight.Given the size of the crater that separated Garund from Avistan, the shattered remnants of Azlant straddling two hemispheres, and those suspiciously round lakes dotting Arcadia...
...I don't think you'll ever be able to make me believe that life on the surface of Golarion could possibly have survived without a lot of heavy lifting by suddenly-interventionist gods, whether or not the darkness of the Age of Darkness was metaphorical.
Fair enough.
What kind of minions would you like to have?Velociraptors. For starters.
Or maybe succubi.
Half-velociraptor succubi?
Half-velociraptor succubi?What kind of minions would you like to have?Velociraptors. For starters.
Or maybe succubi.
...wasn't that the main villain in V? (The original mini-series, at least, not seen the remake.)
Who's the better poet: W H Auden or Dylan Thomas?
It could be a metaphor... could be wayang written history messing with the truth... or it could be the literal truth. My preference is that the darkness overwhelming Golairon during the Age of Darkness was metaphorical, but it might not be. If it's NOT metaphorical, there needs to be a fair amount of heavy lifting to explain why the planet didn't completely die off due to the lack of sunlight.Given the size of the crater that separated Garund from Avistan, the shattered remnants of Azlant straddling two hemispheres, and those suspiciously round lakes dotting Arcadia...
...I don't think you'll ever be able to make me believe that life on the surface of Golarion could possibly have survived without a lot of heavy lifting by suddenly-interventionist gods, whether or not the darkness of the Age of Darkness was metaphorical.
Fair enough.
Eh, I was being too harsh there. Call it "rather difficult for me to believe." (After all, we the readers don't even know yet whether the sketch map of Arcadia is in any way accurate, so those maybe-crater lakes may not be round or even exist.)
Turkey, goose, or duck?
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Eh, I was being too harsh there. Call it "rather difficult for me to believe." (After all, we the readers don't even know yet whether the sketch map of Arcadia is in any way accurate, so those maybe-crater lakes may not be round or even exist.)It could be a metaphor... could be wayang written history messing with the truth... or it could be the literal truth. My preference is that the darkness overwhelming Golairon during the Age of Darkness was metaphorical, but it might not be. If it's NOT metaphorical, there needs to be a fair amount of heavy lifting to explain why the planet didn't completely die off due to the lack of sunlight.Given the size of the crater that separated Garund from Avistan, the shattered remnants of Azlant straddling two hemispheres, and those suspiciously round lakes dotting Arcadia...
...I don't think you'll ever be able to make me believe that life on the surface of Golarion could possibly have survived without a lot of heavy lifting by suddenly-interventionist gods, whether or not the darkness of the Age of Darkness was metaphorical.
Fair enough.
Sketch Map of Arcadia? where can this be found?
Sketch Map of Arcadia? where can this be found?He might mean this map.
I do.
Mr. T-Rex, is there anyway we can get a Player Champion for half elves as good as Blood of Fiends? I loved it and plan on getting Blood of Angels but I would instantly buy one for half elves.
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Creative Director
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Mr. T-Rex, is there anyway we can get a Player Champion for half elves as good as Blood of Fiends? I loved it and plan on getting Blood of Angels but I would instantly buy one for half elves.
Do you mean "Player Companion"? If so... we'll see. There IS a lot of non-world specific but super rules crunchy stuff for half-elves coming very soon in the Advanced Race Guide though...
Mr. T-Rex, is there anyway we can get a Player Champion for half elves as good as Blood of Fiends? I loved it and plan on getting Blood of Angels but I would instantly buy one for half elves.Do you mean "Player Companion"? If so... we'll see. There IS a lot of non-world specific but super rules crunchy stuff for half-elves coming very soon in the Advanced Race Guide though...
Yes I meant companion, I am working on a paper for college where the main reason a project succceeded was because of the project champion.
I have the ARG preordered but I really would like the campaign specific treatment like Tieflings and Asamars. So pretty please!
James,
Assuming a person can see ethereal plane creatures: what material plane attacks can 'strike ethereal creatures'? Some possibilities are listed below.
1) Force and abjuration spells. This is the only answer I am certain of being a yes.
2) All spells do half damage or a 50% chance of affecting ethereal (as per incorporeal)?
3) Magic weapons do half damage to ethereal (as per incorporeal)?
4) Ghost touch weapons do full damage to ethereal (as per incorporeal)?
Alternately, is there a page in the rulebooks you can point me to that states any of this?
Thanks, Gauss
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Creative Director
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James,
Assuming a person can see ethereal plane creatures: what material plane attacks can 'strike ethereal creatures'? Some possibilities are listed below.
1) Force and abjuration spells. This is the only answer I am certain of being a yes.
2) All spells do half damage or a 50% chance of affecting ethereal (as per incorporeal)?
3) Magic weapons do half damage to ethereal (as per incorporeal)?
4) Ghost touch weapons do full damage to ethereal (as per incorporeal)?Alternately, is there a page in the rulebooks you can point me to that states any of this?
Thanks, Gauss
For the most part, you need to go to the Ethereal Plane to fight creatures there. Pathfinder has deliberately pulled away from the idea that monsters can exist on both the Material and Ethereal Plane at the same time—ghosts, in particular, have NO connection to the Ethereal Plane at all.
Furthermore, being incorporeal does NOT mean you're ethereal.
James, I am not asking if incorporeal => ethereal. I am asking if ethereal => incorporeal. The two statements are different.
Blink states that ethereal creatures are incorporeal. Thus it would seem the incorporeal rules apply...or do they?
Ethereal Jaunt does not state that ethereal creatures are incorporeal.
Thus, either an ethereal creature is incorporeal..or it isnt depending on the spell you look at. The paragraph on page 440 regarding The ethereal plane is silent on the matter.
The problem is: From the material plane what spells, abilities, weapons affect ethereal creatures and where are the rules for this?
Respectfully, Gauss
I'm homebrewing a campaign set in Mendev about the crusades. I read something somewhere about the Eternal Charge, with a bunch of crusades raised as undead to continue the fight. I have been unable to locate an actual source for the existence of the Eternal Charge. Will you confirm or deny its existence for me?
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Creative Director
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James, I am not asking if incorporeal => ethereal. I am asking if ethereal => incorporeal. The two statements are different.
Blink states that ethereal creatures are incorporeal. Thus it would seem the incorporeal rules apply...or do they?
Ethereal Jaunt does not state that ethereal creatures are incorporeal.
Thus, either an ethereal creature is incorporeal..or it isnt depending on the spell you look at. The paragraph on page 440 regarding The ethereal plane is silent on the matter.
The problem is: From the material plane what spells, abilities, weapons affect ethereal creatures and where are the rules for this?
Respectfully, Gauss
Pretty much nothing but gaze attacks can cross that barrier between planes (And even then... gaze attacks can't affect Material Plane creatures when the source is on the Ethereal). You have to actually travel to the other plane to affect the other target.
In previous editions of D&D, there was a lot of bleedover between incorporeal and ethereal. In fact... in 2nd edition and earlier, there really WASN'T an "incorporeal" state—it was always ethereal.
In Pathfinder, we've attempted to draw a hard line between the two states, but there are places where the old language still bleeds through. Blink is one of those cases.