I'm just wondering if you allow them in your world do Kitsune (other than PCs) tend to be.in their normal I.e fox people form or do they hide it and spend most of their time looking like humans?
We've only had one Kitsune player (Runelords campaign) and we ran her as if she didn't know what she was, orphaned or abandoned from birth and had learned to hide her heritage lest she fall victim to abuse in the slums where she grew up (Realistic Likeness was her first feat). She never met another of her kind in the entire campaign.
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I'm just wondering if you allow them in your world do Kitsune (other than PCs) tend to be.in their normal I.e fox people form or do they hide it and spend most of their time looking like humans?
They are very sneaky. They mostly walk around in humanoid, when not in their own village. Kitsune villages are mostly on the Eastern continent of my setting, on the main land, most of the kitsune are either lone wanderer or urban kitsune who just want to blend in.
In the official setting? As seems appropriate by the writing. In a Carrion Crown game, for example - The locals would be doing a lot of crosses over the chest (well, equivalent) on sight. Though not necessarily hostile.
In a homebrew setting? I tend towards a bit of a Mos Eisley cantina set up. So not necessarily a sore thumb in either form but depends on the region.
I'm currently playing a Kitsune. The GM told me that my character would be kill on sight if they could see through the disguise. I pretty much never leave human form. With 1 rank in disguise, Realistic Likeness feat, and 2 magical items, I have a 64 disguise. (at level 11) If the current party spotter rolled a 20, their perception would be in the 50s and unable to see through my disguise. To answer your original question - as long as you remain in human form, no one will know.
the Kitsune PC walks around undisguised most of the time, kitsune npcs tend to stay in human form unless with individuals they trust or in a community of a lot of non-humans where the 'mos eisley cantina' effect comes into play.
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I like them as individual NPCs, I don't have groups of them but only maybe one or at most two ever encountered in the campaign I'm running now.
Since we're running a horror campaign in Ustalav, the kitsune end up more like were-foxes than asian flavored. I like them in traditional trickery and harassment of player roles, or maybe quest givers, like the role fey would play.
I'd expect people from the Land of the Linnorm Kings (which trades with Tian Xia) to know what kitsune are. Once a kitsune leaves the Lands for the rest of Avistan, a kitsune would be wise to stick to human form to avoid being mistaken for a werefox or other sort of dangerous monster. There'd be case by case locations where it'd be safe to drop the act (like most gnome settlements, I'd imagine), but yeah.
Like Riddleport, Magnimar, and other major port cities would probably recognize kitsune, but once you're in the boonies... Of course, a kitsune could also capitalize on the whole "you don't know that I'm not actually an inherently dangerous monster" thing in the right circumstances.
If the kitsune goes far enough south to reach the Shackles, Absalom, Jalmaray, or Garund, the kitsune can go back to safely walking around in a natural form - Absalom gets stranger visitors, the Shackles doesn't care, Jalmaray is home to weirder things, and Garund in general has its own animal people analogues (charu-ka, catfolk, etc.) so I can't picture a kitsune really raising eyebrows there.
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I talk a little bit about this in my Kitsune Compendium product (on my phone at work, so no link :-[ ). One of the ideas I toss around I the concept of a kitsune "coming of age" day where young adult kitsune spend the entire day in their true forms. Otherwise, they stay in their true forms most of the time.
This idea is backed by their psychology. Kitsune are shape shifting tricksters who prize loyalty and live in a world where they are often confused for Yokai / Lycanthropes. As a result, kitsune are not likely to hang around in their true forms unless they are with peoe that they know and trust. Otherwise, it would make sense for them to keep to the down-low even in a place they were well accepted.
I have them in, there was a monastery investigation involving one. They would be closer to a mythic monster than a common race.
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We've only had one Kitsune player (Runelords campaign) and we ran her as if she didn't know what she was, orphaned or abandoned from birth and had learned to hide her heritage lest she fall victim to abuse in the slums where she grew up (Realistic Likeness was her first feat). She never met another of her kind in the entire campaign.
My first kitsune was like that too. He was adopted by elves and was raised like a weird cross between an adopted son, a trophy (look at this rare and exotic kid I have!), and a conversation starter for social gatherings and the like.
He left home at Level 3 and adventured until Level 6 before meeting his first "fellow" kitsune. My GM wrote them into his world as a mostly enslaved race, so my character decided to set out and build a kingdom where his people could be free. He's had to deal with pirates, raiders, and slavers, all without incurring the wrath of the organizations those people belong to. I've learned that it is VERY hard to be both a hero and a protector simultaneously as a result of this campaign.
That sounds really good Alexander. Also sounds like you have felt the cost of protecting your character's people.
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Even in campaigns set in Golarion, such as the Mummy's Mask that I am running now, I tend to run the setting as Zoo (or Mos Eisly Cantina, if you choose) rather than strict. In my homebrew games, it was straight up zoo at all times. And I think that makes a lot more sense. In most fantasy settings, the world is packed to the brim with all kinds of strange creatures. Humans regularly interact with 'normal' creatures like Dwarves and Elves, can summon demons and angels with ease, live in fear of or are protected by dragons... etc. etc. In places of trade, where people come from all over the world, one shouldn't be surprised to see Orcs bartering with Fae, Hobgoblins and Gnomes bickering over the best way to build a suit of armor and minotaurs playing chess with a dimensional jumping wizard. In one campaign, I even had a Lich living in the open in one city. Sure, people knew he had done something terrible to become a lich in the first place, but he was an upright citizen now and had connections that would make a Mob Boss jealous that kept random adventurers from trying to end his hard earn immortality.
I hate campaigns where people get all uptight about race. "BY THE GODS! AN ELF?!" Yes, an Elf. I can teleport across the continent pretty early in my career, seeing me shouldn't be that surprising. In PFS, I mock the adventure for having only human NPCs when the party is usually composed of Tieflings, Aasimar and a bunch of Boon only races. After 6 months of PFS, I can count the non-human NPCs on one hand. It is silly.
I allowed a kitsune PC. It was fun, until his disguise slipped one day, and the jokes began to fly.
My favorite was "...are you housebroken?"
In terms of a fantasy world, I don't think any kitsune worth her second tail would be too quick in revealing their identity; it's their greatest gift, after all.
We all have to be aware and careful though, as some character types are prone to be attached to ...*ahem*...those types of players CRAVING endless attention. Just so long as everyone is having fun, and it adds something to the game, I'm cool with it.
That sounds really good Alexander. Also sounds like you have felt the cost of protecting your character's people.
You have absolutely no idea. Here's another sampler.
So basically, we set up shop along the cost of a fairly dense jungle. We've been a kingdom for just under a year in-game, and we've only just begun to stretch our feelers out. Now, kitsune are prized slaves in this region because A) they're rare and B) they have a talent for artistry. So early on I struck a bargain with a NG-aligned business that if they would procure kitsune slaves for me, I would pay for them and release them from bondage to act as civilians in my newly established settlement / kingdom. For about half a year this agreement has been going on, but eventually my "business" attracted the attention of people actually in on the slave market.
First, the Freedom Fighter Marianne. She's a kitsune sea captain who's primary agenda is to protect the interests of some far-off kingdom to the north. In her spare time, however, she's a freedom fighter for the people in the area. Most recently, she orchestrated the assassination of the local pirate king and threw all of the pirates in the area into disarray. I was undercover at that engagement and almost died in the process. (You can see a picture of what my character looked like after the explosion on the second-to-last page of the Kitsune Compendium.) Now, because I've been buying slaves, we have this huge misunderstanding and despite both of us being Neutral Good, she thinks that I'm some sort of hedonistic slaver of my own people.
Meanwhile, my business also attracts the attention of the local slave cartel, which is powerful enough to essentially be its own kingdom. I scare their initial scouting ships away from my settlement, only to have their admiral sail up and, in the most suave way possible, tell my character that he's either going to enter into a business deal with me or annihilate my settlement and everyone living there. The business arrangement was that I would essentially buy all my kitsune slaves from him instead of the third-party organization that I had been dealing with up until this point. So to save my people (in more ways than one), I agreed to his terms and am now buying (and releasing) slaves directly from a slave trader.
Life is complicated.
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Another 'Mos Eisly' world here. 23 PC races with more that aren't (yet, in most cases...). Humans are the most common, but not a majority, except in cities. As I work out of one city/'kingdom', I have a semi-detailed set of DCs for race existence and actual details. First column is a DC for general public awareness that such a race even exists (K:local).
Next is full of notes denoted by letters, I went way past 10. The relevant note for this thread is 's', with the 's' meaning a shape changer and the non-capital indicting an inferior type thereof (one form).
This is followed by columns for Knowledges and Favored Enemies. They probably should precede the 'notes.
Incidentally, the Kitsune entry reads DC 35; s (minor shape changer), - (no cultural presence in area); K:R (K: races) DC 25; FE: H (Humanoid) 25, FE: MH: (Monstrous Humanoid) 30, FE: S (shapechanger) 15. By contrast, a Human would read as DC 0; K:R 0; FE: H 0.
Basically, Kitsune aren't known except to anyone not specializing in the study of the rarer races, though Rangers specializing in shape changers are able to spot them...occasionally.
I'm just wondering if you allow them in your world do Kitsune (other than PCs) tend to be.in their normal I.e fox people form or do they hide it and spend most of their time looking like humans?
As my worlds are extremely cosmopolitan and not-racist, they generally have little reason to assume human form.
BTW ... unless I've missed something somewhere, the statement that the Kitsune Shapeshifting copies the Alter Self spell means it only has a duration 1 minute per level, right?
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My answer varies widely with the setting I use.
If Golarion - They tend to remain hidden in plain sight. Places that know about them tend to believe the darker tales about them. Places that have no knowledge of them become alarmed and may mistake them for other types of beings (werefox, rakshasa, dopplegangers, whatever).
It varies widely in my other homebrew settings. Two extreme examples -
A monk only campaign that only had humans in the world as a major race. The campaign was like a 70s kung-fu film in feel, and the only kitsune they ran across was a trickster and a villain.
to the other extreme -
A no human world somewhat like Ironclaw (major races were all anthropomorphic in appearance). Kitsune were common, and the human aspect was actually the oddball form that was considered fey.
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Well,... Golarion is supposed to be a Human dominated world, even if players fill their parties with outrider races.
Which means nothing, since you can either not play Golarion, or change it to your specifications regardless.
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I just assume the uncommon races are known(heard of) but rare. With of the strange things going on in Golarion I see no reason to hide it. I would guess they at worst, get treated like teiflings in a GM's game.
The same thing that happens to every other humanoid that is.
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So any thoughts on what would happen if a Kitsune was bit by a werefox?
from what i can tell all they would gain is some stat boosts the equivalent of a feat and forced will saves unless they stay in human form all the time (human form is a polymorph effect, meaning you get to say no to any other polymorph effects you dont want)