Rules question: In your games, when someone with the fly spell up is knocked unconscious, does she (a) hover in place, (b) feather fall down as though the spell were ending, (c) come crashing out of the sky, or (d) something else?
And while you're thinking about flight, in your games, could a paralyzed mage with fly up still control her movement mentally?
Hello!
At the time WotC was accepting submissions for what eventually became Eberron, did you submit a concept?
If so, can you elaborate?
Thank you!!
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Dear James
I've always been a big fan of the cleric class, and really enjoyed the RP possibilities that it brings.
However, I do feel that there is a real gap in the divine family tree, that hasn't been filled in Pathfinder, for that of the D6 divine pure caster. In addition, I do feel that the cleric class is looking very tired and dusty!
I've seen some really good (and some not so good!)homebrew versions of a D6 Priest class on the forums and have been wanting to do one myself. Which of the following do you think would have the most thematic/mechanical merit and which would present the most challenges in designing?
1) Pathfinder conversion of the 3.5 Archivist (a WIS and INT divine caster).
2) A Priest class, which gives up the usual weapons, armour, HD, BAB, in exchange for maybe fleshing out the domains or giving out some other class abilities. Probably the simplest to design but maybe lacking a new twist?
3) The Apostle - harking back to the old days of AD&D speciality priests. It would have a school of magic that would be forbidden/restricted, a specialist school and a different use for channeling. It would completely do away with domains and be all about the schools.
Cheers for the feedback
Creative Director
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Do elves raise chickens, or are they more likely to prefer hunting things like turkeys and pheasants?I don't see chickens and their filth and stupidity being a good mix with the grace and style of elves at all.
They hunt the birds they eat.
I take it you don't like chickens, then. Touchy subject?
** spoiler omitted **
Chickens are delicious. But I don't have any respect for them. They're ugly stupid birds who eat and sit in their own feces. Probably because they've been over-domesticated.
As for my inquisition...
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Chickens are delicious. But I don't have any respect for them. They're ugly stupid birds who eat and sit in their own feces.My father raised a few chickens in Paterson, I did not observe that behavior. In many agribusiness farms though, the chickens are put in cages so limited in space, they don't have any choice.
A friend of mine raised a turkey in his dorm room. Since it wasn't overfed and it's wings weren't clipped, it looked much like an oversized white pigeon.
We had chickens pretty much the whole time back home when I was growing up, and they never struck me as particularly clean or graceful or smart birds. Not a fan of turkeys either.
Anyway... back to questions, please!
Mr. Jacobs is there any chance that you are going to abuse your powers at paizo to command them to make a AP for goblin characters :)
I mean now that were going to cross a line with the comming of an evil campaign ... is a goblin AP not the next logical step ?
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Mr. Jacobs is there any chance that you are going to abuse your powers at paizo to command them to make a AP for goblin characters :)
I mean now that were going to cross a line with the comming of an evil campaign ... is a goblin AP not the next logical step ?
No.
In fact, I might abuse my powers to NOT do a goblin AP. Goblins are not really all that appropriate subjects for a full AP in my opinion; they're fine and fun for short one-shot things like "We Be Goblins" but beyond that? They're best used a s monsters. Low level ones at that.
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JAMES JACOBS
I have to ask a question concerning a 3.5 D&D book you had a hand in Lords of Madness. (as well as Richard Baker and Steve Winter)Could you enlighten me as to the power level of the Mindsight feat in that book on page 126? Is it meant to work like Blindsense or is it meant to be more overpowered than that? Such as detecting everything, even through line of effect, with an Intelligence score, even if they are immune to mind-affecting effects? I ask because it isn't hard for PCs to acquire the feat and it ruins a lot of games so many of us wonder about the RAI of the feat.
If you do not know, is it possible to forward this or inform me how to contact the other two authors of the book to get clarification? Thanks!
Here is the beneficial quote of the feat:
A creature that has this feat can detect and pinpoint beings that are not mindless (anything with an Intelligence score of 1 or higher) within range of its telepathy. This works much like blindsense—the creature knows what square each thinking being is in, but it does not see the being, and the being still has total concealment unless the creature can see it by some other means.
The creature also perceives several observable characteristics about each being detected with mindsight, including the being’s type and Intelligence score. The creature need not take any additional or special actions to gain this information; it is as obvious to mindsight as the being’s race and clothing would be to eyesight
It's been well over a decade since I've had my head in 3.5, much less to say specific books like Lords of Madness. Furthermore... I'm relatively sure I didn't create that feat. And so I don't really have any special insight into it. But as long as the target isn't mindless, it's equally as powerful as blindsight in regards to locating creatures, but it also grants the type and Intelligence score.
Creatures that are immune to mind-affecting effects aren't immune to this unless they are mindless. You're only immune to mind-affecting effects if the effect specifically says it's a mind-affecting effect.
What was your favorite project for 3.5 you did for Wizards of the Coast?
What would say would be a good cohort level for a doppelganger?
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What would say would be a good cohort level for a doppelganger?
21st. AKA: Doppelangers aren't appropriate cohorts, due to their power to break plotlines.
Some monsters simply should not be cohorts. Doppelgangers are one of them.
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Do you have any movies/books/comics whatever other form of media that you keep in mind for what not to do when writing. Basically, touchstones for "if your doing it this way, you know your screwing up?"
Or something you've read/collected/watched because of a morbid fascination with the train wreck of an acting job/plot etc?
Do you have any of your own work where you think to yourself "I'm not going there again?"
I do, but I'm not gonna call them out in public, because I'm not really fond of badmouthing other people's creative work in public.
As for my own work? Not really, with the exception of not wanting to ever write an 8 page adventure ever again...
Good answer, thanks.
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I see. Because the issue has always been DMs trying to find a limitation on this so PCs don't end up discovering every hidden enemy within 100 ft or more (by easily qualifying for the telepathy requirements via prestige classes or other things) and thus ruining a campaign for a lifetime. (I have a player making a pathfinder Psion Telepath which will have telepathy extending out to 400 ft and more and basically making the party almost entirely immune to ambushes.)
I have heard it is best to treat it as Blindsense as the wording implies and that line of effect should block it (so stepping into a dungeon won't let you automatically know exactly where every enemy is in the entire level). Though the fault lies in the lack of clarifications on the Telepathy special quality which lacks clarity from both D&D and Pathfinder. It's rulings and what type of effect it is is very vague.
An even better solution is to limit the feat to NPCs or monsters.
The feat requires telepathy, yes? In the core game, there were not a lot of ways to be telepathic. At all. And so a feat like this is limited, and essentially off-limits to the intended player character pool. Then later if easy telepathy got introduced to the game, suddenly a feat designed mostly for monsters can come back and be a real problem.
One of the reasons things like telepathy are bad ideas to give to PCs as a limitless resource.
What would say would be a good cohort level for a doppelganger?21st. AKA: Doppelangers aren't appropriate cohorts, due to their power to break plotlines.
1. How would shapeshifting break plotlines?
2. What would you do in a situation where a player wants a shapeshifting romancable (and isn't out to break the plot)?
3. Come to think of it, I almost never see doppelgangers in adventure paths. Why is that?
If Golarion somehow got connected to our Earth by some forth wall breaking magic, Would everything related to the Great old ones and Outer gods become hazardous like all the Cthulu toys and such?Only if that's the story your GM wants to tell.
If you, personally, knew that you could GM a real-world game that caused the dimensional boundaries between our world and the fictional world that you helped create to break forever simply because you told a story where they broke, would you and why?
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What would say would be a good cohort level for a doppelganger?21st. AKA: Doppelangers aren't appropriate cohorts, due to their power to break plotlines.1. How would shapeshifting break plotlines?
2. What would you do in a situation where a player wants a shapeshifting romancable (and isn't out to break the plot)?
3. Come to think of it, I almost never see doppelgangers in adventure paths. Why is that?
1) The combination of shapeshifting and mind reading and all that tends to wreak havoc on a LOT of storylines, particularly mystery or infiltration type adventures. But also, having a PC who can be anyone tends to make them feel like no one—it's more interesting if a PC is the same physically session after session so that you can get to know them. A constantly changing doppelganger is only one step away from a player playing an entirely new PC every session, and that's kinda lame.
2) I'm not sure what you're asking here. If it's a situation where a PC falls in love with a doppelganger, that's fine. If it's a doppelganger PC who falls in love, that's fine too, except for the PC doppelganger part (see #1 above).
3) Because they tend to be complicated and frustrating to run, and tend to be hrpeyspecialized for specific plots, so that if you DON'T have them doing their thing (something that involves shapechanging and messing with society), then they're just not appropriate. It's like having a mimic in an encounter that's not mimicing something. They're kinda "trick" monsters and don't make sense to be used when they're not doing their trick.
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If you, personally, knew that you could GM a real-world game that caused the dimensional boundaries between our world and the fictional world that you helped create to break forever simply because you told a story where they broke, would you and why?If Golarion somehow got connected to our Earth by some forth wall breaking magic, Would everything related to the Great old ones and Outer gods become hazardous like all the Cthulu toys and such?Only if that's the story your GM wants to tell.
I would, because this world has some problems that magic could fix. Of course, those fixes might cause new problems... but then we'll just do more magic! :P
"In Hell's Bright Shadow" teases that Shensen has a
Was that true of Shensen when she was your PC?
If so, what's the story of how that came about?
If not, how did it get added to the AP - in the original outline, a neat adder by one of the authors, or in development?
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"In Hell's Bright Shadow" teases that Shensen has a ** spoiler omitted **
Was that true of Shensen when she was your PC?
If so, what's the story of how that came about?
If not, how did it get added to the AP - in the original outline, a neat adder by one of the authors, or in development?
Nope; the original Shensen didn't have a deinonychus. That's more of an easter egg to me for my World of Warcraft main character, who is ALSO named Shensen. She's a night elf hunter, and I pretty much started playing the game ages ago when it very first came out becasue I'd heard you could get a pet dinosaur. I've been playing that version of Shensen for as long as the game's been going, and as a result, that incarnation is one of the main ones in my mind as to her personality, so even though she didn't have a pet dinosaur in the original game I played her in... she does in her Golarion incarnation.
I'm writing the adventure where Shensen and her pet dinosaur Guttugger show up in the main plot, and also wrote the outline for the whole AP, so pretty much whenever you see Shensen show up in the adventure path, it's because I put her there.
The same more or less goes for any NPC you see show up more than once, honestly. In most cases, they're NPCs I came up with for the AP (like Shensen or Barzillai), but in others they're NPCs that someone came up with and I decided to "cross pollinate" with other adventures so they show up more than once. Which has resulted in even more re-writing and added writing in this AP than I normally do (which is normally a not-insignificant amount).
Rules question: In your games, when someone with the fly spell up is knocked unconscious, does she (a) hover in place, (b) feather fall down as though the spell were ending, (c) come crashing out of the sky, or (d) something else?
And while you're thinking about flight, in your games, could a paralyzed mage with fly up still control her movement mentally?
Don't know whether you just overlooked this one or consciously didn't want to answer, so I thought I'd try once more and then leave you alone. I hope that's okay! :-)
edit: sorry, I just realized that you chimed in on this issue recently in this thread, so I'll consider my question answered. Thanks!
Don't know whether you just overlooked this one or consciously didn't want to answer, so I thought I'd try once more and then leave you alone. I hope that's okay! :-)Rules question: In your games, when someone with the fly spell up is knocked unconscious, does she (a) hover in place, (b) feather fall down as though the spell were ending, (c) come crashing out of the sky, or (d) something else?
And while you're thinking about flight, in your games, could a paralyzed mage with fly up still control her movement mentally?
You're aware there's a really big thread going on all about this issue, JJ is aware of it, and he doesn't like answering rules questions, right?
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One thing I forgot to ask you about her.. Do you PVP much with her? If so.. open world, battlegrounds, or a mix of both?"In Hell's Bright Shadow" teases that Shensen has a ** spoiler omitted **
Was that true of Shensen when she was your PC?
If so, what's the story of how that came about?
If not, how did it get added to the AP - in the original outline, a neat adder by one of the authors, or in development?
Nope; the original Shensen didn't have a deinonychus. That's more of an easter egg to me for my World of Warcraft main character, who is ALSO named Shensen. She's a night elf hunter, and I pretty much started playing the game ages ago when it very first came out becasue I'd heard you could get a pet dinosaur. I've been playing that version of Shensen for as long as the game's been going, and as a result, that incarnation is one of the main ones in my mind as to her personality, so even though she didn't have a pet dinosaur in the original game I played her in... she does in her Golarion incarnation.
It varies. During the end of the original expansion before Burning Crusade, I actually did a LOT of PVP with her, focusing mostly on battlegrounds that weren't Warsong Gulch (at the time, druids ruled that one and hunters sucked). When Burning Crusade came out, a lot of the changes to the way hunters worked made them pretty unfun to play... and then when folks got good at abusing the fact that inside a certain range 95% of a hunter's powers go away (because of the minimum range requirement for bows and guns), it became an exercise in horror and frustration to PVP. So I stopped that for a LONG time.
Then, around the time that they finally did away with the dead zone and let hunters make attacks at point blank range like all the other ranged classes could already do, I started to tinker with PVP again here and there, but never really got all that into it as much as I was during the "good old days" of pre-expansion.
I generally avoid the open-world PVP like the plague. That type of MMO game play element is more or less my LEAST FAVORITE kind of MMO game play.
Hmmm... all this WoW talk makes me wanna play again! TIME TO HEAD HOME!
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I'm writing the adventure where Shensen and her pet dinosaur Guttugger show up in the main plot, and also wrote the outline for the whole AP, so pretty much whenever you see Shensen show up in the adventure path, it's because I put her there.
Was Rowyn in "There Is No Honor" (Part 1 of Savage Tide) inspired by Shensen? She had a crested fell drake named Gut Tugger.
Do the Old Ones and Outer Gods have Heralds like most of the rest of the Golarion Gods and, if so, any chance we will see any in Strange Aeons?
Also, does Zursvaater have a Herald? One didn't appear in the Bestiary for Anvil of Fire, even though the previous two Giant Gods spotlighted were given Heralds.
Any feedback thoughts on my homebrew ideas yet Mr Jacobs?
They're not that bad are they?!
Where does the finest/best/most renowned bacon come from on Golarion?
If you can please narrow it down to a region, and a particular animal please.
What would happen to the PCs if the Big Bad of the campaign followed the Evil Overlord List to a T?
I asked this elsewhere, and I just wanted to get your take on it:
I was reading the Giantslayer AP, and I had some thoughts: When giants are defeated and potions are found amongst the treasure, and these potions were manufactured by the giants, are these "giant potions"? Do they have multiple doses? Depending upon the size of the giant and the dose, do you have to carry it around in a barrel instead of a flask? Am I being too literal or trying too hard to apply reality to this concept?
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Mightiest of the Theropoda,
Who or What is the oldest mortal being, sentient or otherwise alive on Golarion?
What does the periodic table of Golarion look like?
Unrevealed, and unlikely to ever be revealed until we decide to do so in an adventure, but since doing so makes any future stories about the "oldest mortal" non-starters, I kinda want to hold back even then.
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I'm writing the adventure where Shensen and her pet dinosaur Guttugger show up in the main plot, and also wrote the outline for the whole AP, so pretty much whenever you see Shensen show up in the adventure path, it's because I put her there.Was Rowyn in "There Is No Honor" (Part 1 of Savage Tide) inspired by Shensen? She had a crested fell drake named Gut Tugger.
Nope. She was inspired by another of my characters named "Rowyn." Her pet drake was indeed inspired by Guttugger though..
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Do the Old Ones and Outer Gods have Heralds like most of the rest of the Golarion Gods and, if so, any chance we will see any in Strange Aeons?
Also, does Zursvaater have a Herald? One didn't appear in the Bestiary for Anvil of Fire, even though the previous two Giant Gods spotlighted were given Heralds.
They do not. As a general rule, only full-on deities have heralds. Not sure why they didn't give Zursvaater a herald; he SHOULD have one, being a full deity, but whatever. Sometimes thinks slip through the cracks.