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So, Ashiel, have you seen the In the Company of Dragons: Lost Isles KS? (Corresponding thread).

It's a revision/expansion of an earlier supplement for PC true dragons that are balanced alongside normal PCs.
I was somewhat skeptical prior to getting the original, but it fixes essentially all the problems I had with prior attempts at implementing PC-friendly true dragons.

The second stretch goal is options for psionic dragons by Jeremy Smith.

And yea I'm just randomly posting this in different places, 'cause I want to get to playable psionic dragons!


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What's in the box? wrote:
It is Thursday and no one has posted anything for 2 days... This is one of the only forums I have followed since it started and I am like 16 pages invested... So... Somebody Ask Ashiel something...

Sorry about that. Been working mostly. (^~^);

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Ummm... Outside of the Detect spells what is the best way to determine an NPCs alignment?

Observe how they act and invest some ranks into Sense Motive to tell when they're just acting.

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What's your favorite Golarion god? Why?

Urgathoa. Partially because my least favorite is Pharasma (I think the supposed omniscience is both stupid and impossible), but mostly because I think Urgathoa is just really cool. Going by the her writeup on PathfinderWiki, I like the non-evil aspects of Urgathoa the most. She has a really cool liberalization and personal empowerment feel as she wasn't content to stand around and be judged and have the fate of her soul decided for her, and so she took her ball and went home. This act apparently was so profound that it made her a god without the starstone or anything. You go girl. (o_o)

Further, her religion seems really cool too. Hedonism is the name of the game but it's obvious that there's a communal aspect that balances it out. According to her relationships with other deities, she's capable of being friendly with other deities and it's clear she's not insane-evil, and seems to strongly agree with people doing what makes them happy without being repressed (which is why she doesn't like religions and such that stifle people's desires).

Her clergy are actually described as pretty cool individuals. Each of her temple-cults keeps pretty much to themselves without some sort of overarching command (which I would think drastically cuts down on corruption throughout the faith as a whole, but likely increases the chances of you finding variances in doctrine, kind of like early Christians). They are defined as having little responsibilities other than "helping those who desire undeath" and "protecting their own", and neither of those things sound particularly nefarious as both are quite altruistic and passive.

Their religious traditions pretty much involving having parties. Her temples are feast-halls and everyone gets together and has a big dinner. It's kind of like Thanksgiving every holiday. Heck yeah!

My least favorite thing is that apparently several of her priests are completely insane, based on this piece:

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Senior priests of Urgathoa sometimes practice a ritual known as the Reaping. The priest will put on a grey robe, and arm himself with a vorpal scythe. The priest then heads out into the world to cause as much death and destruction as he can before he is driven back to his sanctuary. They believe that if Urgathoa is pleased by the outcome of the Reaping she will grant a boon to the priest.[8]

The thing is, they simply believe that she will, which is pretty weird (it doesn't say why they believe this, or how often she's actually granted anyone a boon for this). Most of the rest of her lore is self-involved, not violent, and not even blindly malicious. If you read the whole thing, this paragraph feels bizarrely out of place. It doesn't seem to serve a purpose and is weirdly specific (so in a small cell-based cult structure, senior priests just happen to have a 72,000 gp (minimum) scythe lying around?

I've played several devout worshippers of Urgathoa with a surprisingly human bent. They do things like cook grand meals to honor the dead, give self-appreciation motivational speeches, have an appreciation for love which has a direct connection to loving yourself (and thus making the gifting of yourself all the more meaningful), etc. One of these characters was my vampire vitalist healer.

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Have you ever played a dwarf?

Yep, dwarves are hax. :P

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Do you or your players ever harbor racists opinions about any of the PF races (my party ALWAYS hates Gnomes, and one time I played a Half-elf and as I RP'ed I kept making these REALLY xenophobic comments about humans, like completely unintentional but I found myself repulsed by humans- never found out why...)

Not really. I've had a lot of players over time (I used to spend all my free time running games for different groups online) and I've seen some weird racisms against pretty much everyone (including humans). I myself actually love gnomes.

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Change the game forever!!! You have to pick one: What one class should be included in EVERY party? (I assume you will pick Psion, but idk... maybe you are full of surprises)

Ehhh, well, it goes against everything I believe in game design terms. I really believe no class should be mandatory (it's one of the reasons I freaking hate thieves in pre-3E). So the one class that should be included in every party is whichever class you want to play right now. :)

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Change the game forever!!! You have to pick one: What one (core- because saying Gillmen doesn't really have an impact, Gripplis??? Grip WHO?!?!) race should be eliminated from the game completely?

I'm not really fond of Wayangs but honestly I think it probably should vary from campaign to campaign. :P


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Tels wrote:
I don't know if you've followed along with the playtest thread after it ended, but Mark has teased a lot of stuff about the Kineticist. One of the things he did was intentionally released a weaker version of the Kineticist to see if anyone could come up with some gamebreaking combos, while the one at full release will be more powerful.

W-what!? W-why the **** would you ever do that!? *headdesks* (>.<)

Playtests: DOING IT WRONG!

Way to just completely invalidate any data collected. D:<

/nerdrage

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Yeah, it's difficult. The issue is that it's pretty easy to use nearly any race and make a strong caster, because caster's themselves are strong. The stat boosts of the Gnome, +Con and +Cha, makes it a little difficult to make most of the 6th level casters because, while Con is nice, it's a lot more important to boost Strength or Dex instead of Con because the point buy gets more expensive the higher you go. It's easier to get a 16 or 17 in Str/Dex with a 12 in Con using a +2 Str/Dex than it is with a +2 to Con.

The problem I see, is that, basically, the only good way to build a Gnome is to use magic in some way, and that irks me.

Gnome paladins are pretty baller. The +2 Con/Cha makes them very tanky, as does the +1 to hit and AC. The only downside is their -2 Strength, but you can do something like 12, 14, 14, 7, 12, 16 for their stats and make 'em pretty awesome. Optionally take the mount at 4th level, then use archery and lances from the back of your medium-sized mount. With small size, good dex, and so forth, your AC is pretty awesome and your mobility is top notch. One divine grace comes online, the Cha-bonus is effectively +1 to all saves.

Their favored class for Paladin is almost as good as the tiefling's (+1/2 level to lay on hands) but affects more than just the paladin (making them a decent pocket healer). The 12 Strength means little at low levels and can be compensated for at high levels.


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137ben wrote:

So, Ashiel, have you seen the In the Company of Dragons: Lost Isles KS? (Corresponding thread).

It's a revision/expansion of an earlier supplement for PC true dragons that are balanced alongside normal PCs.
I was somewhat skeptical prior to getting the original, but it fixes essentially all the problems I had with prior attempts at implementing PC-friendly true dragons.

The second stretch goal is options for psionic dragons by Jeremy Smith.

And yea I'm just randomly posting this in different places, 'cause I want to get to playable psionic dragons!

Wow, cool. I hadn't seen/heard of this. :o

I always liked dragons as PCs. I haven't had any player ask to play one in ages but today I think I'd be okay with them playing a dragon. :)


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I know we've had this discussion on Urgathoa/Pharasma before, but do you intentionally omit the times when the Urgathoans intentionally try and release plagues into the world to kill as many people via disease as possible? Or when they move into a village and murder all of them and raise them as undead or trap them to feed them to undead in the area? Or when priests travel the world to cure minor illnesses and infect them with something more deadly?

'Cause these are all things the followers of Urgathoa do. They also have things like "brood mothers" in temples who's sole purpose is to brith childen to be either raised as followers, sacrificed as a part of a ritual, or eaten alive in a feast.

I don't know if you're just unaware of everything Urgathoans do, but they aren't just the gluttonous party people you seem to think they are.

Though, I would say that out of the Evil gods, her followers are probably amongst the least harmful in the long run. They don't get up to as much raw destruction and evil as many of the other followers of Evil gods do.


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I was also impressed with the Urgathoa mythos. I have an NPC (Melinoe the Dead Peacock Priestess) who is(was?) in a love/hate relationship with Urgathoa. Idolizing the goddesses ability to ASCEND TO GODHOOD BY PURE WILLPOWER! And hating her own weak stupid mortal flesh that is incapable of doing the same thing... Well... she did hate her own weak stupid mortal flesh but THEN she did it. All she had to do was recognize that Dymlos (PC bastard!) never loved her and would never love her and her affections were merely a convenience... So... you know... She killed Lamashtu (when the balance of power shifted after the party slayed Rovagug) then used her new powers to absorb Urgathoa and Hell blast Pharasma from the cosmos... Now she is waiting to see what other puny gods need to be eliminated... Iomedae is on the list because that is the Goddess Dymlos (the bastard!) turned to when he forsook her...

She ummm... She really wasn't super evil before the PCs were SO mean to her...


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What's in the box? wrote:

I was also impressed with the Urgathoa mythos. I have an NPC (Melinoe the Dead Peacock Priestess) who is(was?) in a love/hate relationship with Urgathoa. Idolizing the goddesses ability to ASCEND TO GODHOOD BY PURE WILLPOWER! And hating her own weak stupid mortal flesh that is incapable of doing the same thing... Well... she did hate her own weak stupid mortal flesh but THEN she did it. All she had to do was recognize that Dymlos (PC bastard!) never loved her and would never love her and her affections were merely a convenience... So... you know... She killed Lamashtu (when the balance of power shifted after the party slayed Rovagug) then used her new powers to absorb Urgathoa and Hell blast Pharasma from the cosmos... Now she is waiting to see what other puny gods need to be eliminated... Iomedae is on the list because that is the Goddess Dymlos (the bastard!) turned to when he forsook her...

She ummm... She really wasn't super evil before the PCs were SO mean to her...

Uh... if your party was capable of killing Rovagug, you are more powerful than the entirety of the godly pantheon as it currently exists right now.

Previous to Rovagug going on a rampage, the Gods were more powerful then, than they are now, at least as long as James Jacobs has a say in the matter. He's stated on several occassions that if Rovagug were to escape now, the Gods would not stand a chance in defeating him this time.

So... if your Party was capable of killing Rovagug, your party is capable of killing every deity in existence with no one being able to stop you.


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Tels wrote:
What's in the box? wrote:

I was also impressed with the Urgathoa mythos. I have an NPC (Melinoe the Dead Peacock Priestess) who is(was?) in a love/hate relationship with Urgathoa. Idolizing the goddesses ability to ASCEND TO GODHOOD BY PURE WILLPOWER! And hating her own weak stupid mortal flesh that is incapable of doing the same thing... Well... she did hate her own weak stupid mortal flesh but THEN she did it. All she had to do was recognize that Dymlos (PC bastard!) never loved her and would never love her and her affections were merely a convenience... So... you know... She killed Lamashtu (when the balance of power shifted after the party slayed Rovagug) then used her new powers to absorb Urgathoa and Hell blast Pharasma from the cosmos... Now she is waiting to see what other puny gods need to be eliminated... Iomedae is on the list because that is the Goddess Dymlos (the bastard!) turned to when he forsook her...

She ummm... She really wasn't super evil before the PCs were SO mean to her...

Uh... if your party was capable of killing Rovagug, you are more powerful than the entirety of the godly pantheon as it currently exists right now.

Previous to Rovagug going on a rampage, the Gods were more powerful then, than they are now, at least as long as James Jacobs has a say in the matter. He's stated on several occassions that if Rovagug were to escape now, the Gods would not stand a chance in defeating him this time.

So... if your Party was capable of killing Rovagug, your party is capable of killing every deity in existence with no one being able to stop you.

More likely WitB's GM isn't sticking very closely to canon.

Hey, maybe whatever is in the box is a Manual of Ignoring Canon?!?


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Tels wrote:
I know we've had this discussion on Urgathoa/Pharasma before, but do you intentionally omit the times when the Urgathoans intentionally try and release plagues into the world to kill as many people via disease as possible?

It's mostly 'cause I just haven't seen it. Golarion isn't my first campaign choice unless I'm playing in an AP. The info on Urgathoa in my copy of the campaign setting book and on the PF wiki paints a very different picture, possibly because both are talking about the goddess rather than her followers. For example, here's a word for word transcript of Urgathoa's writeup from the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting, page 169. Bear with me as I'm holding the book in my lap and typing it out while I read it.

PF Campaign Setting wrote:

Some claim that Urgathoa was a mortal once, but when she died, her thirst for life turned her into the Great Beyond's first undead creature. She fled from Pharasma's endless line of souls and back to Golarion, bringing with her disease to the world. She appears as a beautiful, raven-haired woman from the wasit up, but below that her form begins to rot and wither, untill only blood-coveed bones remain at her feet. Urgathoa is worshiped by undead as well as dark necromancers and those hoping to become undead. As such, her clerics must often keep their activities a secret. Some who are sick with the plague make offerings to the Pallid Princess in hopes of alleviating their illness, but most turn to Sarenrae. The occasional gluttonous prince might make offerings to Urgathoa as well, be it for more food, women, or other carnal pleasures. She and Calistria vie for control of their overlapping interest, with the elven goddess representing lust and the undead one representing physical excess.

Ceremonial clothes in her church are a loose gray floor-length tunic with a bone-white or dark gray shoulder-cape clasped at the front. Traditionally the lower half of the tunic is either shredded or adorned with strips of cloth or tassels to give the overall appearance of increased damage as it approaches the floor, mirroring the goddess' own decay. Because most ceremonises involve indulging in large amounts of food and wine, these garments are usually stained from spills. Her temples are built like feast-halls, with a large central table serving as an alter and numerous chairs surrounding it. Most temples are adjacent to a private graveyard or built over a crypt, often inhabited by ghouls (which exhibit all three of the goddess' interests). Her sacred text is Serving Your Hunger, penned by Dason, her first knight-blackguard.

Urgathoa sometimes gifts female clerics who serve her particularly well by transforming them after death into hideous undead creatures called the daughters of Urgathoa. She has also been known to lend support to the daemon Horsemen from time to time, for many of their goals closely match her own. It is not uncommon to encounter daemon servants and guardians in her most powerful temples as a result.

So in the original campaign setting book that I've used for Golarion since I bought it, she seems pretty legit. She's got a dark side but it's no worse than the deities people actually worship in reality and seems plausible enough that you could actually see someone worshiping her. I feel that she bypasses the really big problem that most evil deities in RPGs have: the fact no one in their right minds would ever worship them because they have no redeeming qualities. Urgathoa, however, seems slathered in redeeming qualities.

Now this might be a strong point for Paizo in this in that they can write "villains" that I can appreciate. This is an "Evil" goddess that I could definitely see normal people worshipping, or even having relating about their happy events as children around the feast halls, or insisting to other non Urgathoans that they just don't understand all their is to the Pallid Princess beyond bad press she gets from some of the other religions.

Now it could be a problem with the fact I haven't seen Urgathoa actually do anything bad. Maybe it comes up in an AP or something (I haven't gotten to run more than the first CotCT book, but I know there's a plague later; so maybe she's involved somehow?), yet the information that's available openly pretty much describes what I have described here, hence where I stand on it currently.

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Or when they move into a village and murder all of them and raise them as undead or trap them to feed them to undead in the area? Or when priests travel the world to cure minor illnesses and infect them with something more deadly? 'Cause these are all things the followers of Urgathoa do. They also have things like "brood mothers" in temples who's sole purpose is to brith childen to be either raised as followers, sacrificed as a part of a ritual, or eaten alive in a feast.

See, I might just not have all the material, but I haven't seen any of this. Much of it doesn't even make any sense. The disease thing kind of maybe makes sense, but the lore on Urgathoa also remarks that it's fairly commonplace to beseech the princess to lift diseases from people, which makes sense. I mean why would you go to someone else to ask for passage from disease when you could beseech the actual master of disease?

Side Note: What's the best way to stay healthy and resist disease and/or naturally recover from diseases? Eat lots of food and drink plenty of liquids, even when you're not hungry and have lost your appetite. The best way to, without medicine, fight most diseases is to act in accordance with Urgathoa's tenants.

Maybe that would actually be the reason. Disease encourages people to become closer to their goddess. Disease also encourages people to embrace undeath because the undead are immune to diseases. However, since it would appear that the vast majority of her followers are still very much alive, it doesn't make a lot of sense for them to be interested in spreading deadly plagues that could end up wiping themselves out as well, or wiping out the living and thus starving their undead members who need those living members to remain functional (the vampire members would especially be pissed if you were actively killing off their lovers/food supplies).

I've also never heard of a brood mother. It sounds, honestly, much more in line with Lamashtu than Urgathoa based on the lore I've read. I'm not saying that you're wrong, I'm just saying that it's very contrary to what I've personally read and seems very contrary to the mode of operations that are ascribed to Urgathoa.

That said, followers be crazy. I mean, let's be real here: people are nuts. Look at the horrific things that human beings do in the name of our "most holy", "good", "loving", "merciful", and "peaceful" gods. Frankly it wouldn't surprise me if there was a support group for those molested by priests of Sarenrae somewhere, or people lobbying against Sarenrae for her insane radical followers in the Cult of the Dawnflower with her Dawnflower Dissidents trying to clean up the messes and conflict within her own orders.

And for the record, Sarenrae is like the most goodly good goddess of goodliness who has no enemies, even evil deities, other than Rovagug, and even a large portion of her followers are crazy ***-holes and somehow they still end up getting spells, so...yeah. >_>

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I don't know if you're just unaware of everything Urgathoans do, but they aren't just the gluttonous party people you seem to think they are.

Though, I would say that out of the Evil gods, her followers are probably amongst the least harmful in the long run. They don't get up to as much raw destruction and evil as many of the other followers of Evil gods do.

Like I said, I might just be working on really limited data, but according to the campaign setting I bought and the info on the PFwiki, this is pretty much what I get out of it. A believably evil goddess who actually seems like someone that could actually amass cults in the world with real day to day people having reasons to actually worship her. Asmodeus is another that seems pretty legit in that fashion as well.

The more balls to the walls crazy blatant world-destructing evil that the god/religion has, the harder it is to believe that it's even a real religious presence. Urgathoa has a lot of redeeming qualities and her mastery over disease, both its affliction and redemption, reminds me very heavily of the "giveth and taketh" of certain deities from our own world.


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What's in the box? wrote:
I was also impressed with the Urgathoa mythos. I have an NPC (Melinoe the Dead Peacock Priestess) who is(was?) in a love/hate relationship with Urgathoa. Idolizing the goddesses ability to ASCEND TO GODHOOD BY PURE WILLPOWER! And hating her own weak stupid mortal flesh that is incapable of doing the same thing...

You must love yourself. It was the Pallid Princess' undying love for herself that freed her from the bondage of death. If you love others as you love yourself then all wounds will be healed. He who believes in she shall have but one death and then everlasting life, but those who do not will die and be dead forever. Won't you join us and help spread the good word and everlasting life?

This sounds remarkably familiar...then again, I technically worship a zombie.


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Aratrok and I were talking about this on Skype and I thought I'd share some of the funny parts of the conversation here. :D

Keep in mind a lot of this is tongue-in-cheek.

Ashiel wrote:

Hahaha

[1:32:39 AM] Ashiel: Seriously, I see a /lot/ of parallels between Urgathoa and Christian religion, even if they're not intended to be there. The biggest difference is that Urgathoa is more hedonistic than altruistic, whereas Jesus is super altruistic, but he also professes an importance of loving oneself (which is really important in spiritual development I've discovered).
[1:34:26 AM] Ashiel: Meanwhile, the promises of the faith are remarkably similar. You have a mortal that died and returned to life as a god. Both promise eternal life after death for the faithful. Urgathoa's afflicting and recalling diseases is remarkably similar to the old testament descriptions of god (who giveth and taketh).
Aratrok wrote:

I wouldn't say "more hedonistic than altruistic", because it implies there's any altruism to Urgathoa's faith. :p

[1:35:00 AM]There are some cool parts but they're still a murder-death-kill cult for the most part
Ashiel wrote:

Actually, according to the written account, there is. A major aspect of her religion is aiding others who also seek that same transformation.

[1:35:40 AM] Ashiel: And let's be real here...Catholics are ****ing cannibals. :D
Aratrok wrote:
Yeah, aside from not literally killing and eating people/children like worshippers of Urgathoa often do. :p
Ashiel wrote:

See, that's probably the big part. I haven't actually seen anything for that. All the information I've got in my books points to Urgathoa being a kickass deity. lol

[1:37:54 AM] Ashiel: But then, is that really any different from our own religion? I mean, we have some pretty grimdark sick evil as the devil's kidneystones stuff in our religion, like the supposed accounts of god instructing isrealites to enact horrific acts of depravity on people, including but not limited to cutting open the bellies of pregnant women and spilling their unborn babies on the rocks of the ground.

That was...awkward to read the first time I might add.

Aratrok wrote:
"Urgathoa is an utterly amoral, hedonistic goddess, concerned only with satiating her own interests regardless of the consequences for others." is literally the tagline for the deity. :p
Ashiel wrote:
[1:38:56 AM] Ashiel: Mmmhmmm. What are her interests though? Oh yeah...helping others along the same path of enlightenment as herself. :P
Aratrok wrote:

"She has tasted the brains of human inffants to savor their innocent thought-meats, torn the heart from the last living member of a race just to know the sensation of its hot blood on her hands, and brought low with boils and leprosy the most handsome princes just to see the unique patterns on royal flesh."

Those are her interests.

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[1:39:38 AM] Ashiel: Ooh, where's that at? :o
Aratrok wrote:
The article on her from Ashes at Dawn
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Ashiel: What's Ashes at Dawn?
Ashiel wrote:

"and brought low with boils and leprosy the most handsome princes just to see the unique patterns on royal flesh"

Jobe. That is all. :3

Side discussion about Jobe, then Isaac...

Ashiel wrote:

We do have an account of God afflicting a poor child with a lifetime of emotional trauma however, when he was like "Kill your child, for me"

Then being like "Nah, I was just kiddin' dawg" at the last minute

Aratrok wrote:
I wouldn't really say trauma, Isaac went on to be a fairly big deal and was pretty unfazed by the matter.
Ashiel wrote:

Dear god, that poor child. Being tied up and literally experiencing being murdered by his father in all but the actual deathblow.

[1:43:38 AM] Ashiel: Well, yeah, they wouldn't write about the amounts of therapy he surely had to go through. XD
[1:44:29 AM] Ashiel: But I mean really, put yourself in Isaac's shoes for a sec. Imagine your dad deceiving you, then jumping you on a mountain, tying you up, dropping you on the sacrificial alter, and seriously and obviously going to murder you and his reason is "I'm sorry but this is what God wants"
[1:44:40 AM] Ashiel: Poor Isaac was probably flipping his s!+@. XD
[1:44:47 AM] Ashiel: Thinking his dad had flipped his. >_>
[1:45:45 AM] Ashiel: And then it was all like "Nah man, I was just kidding. I know I'm omnisient and supposedly know the hearts of man from the moment of their creation, yadda-yadda, but I still totally needed to actually watch you almost go through with it" XD
Aratrok wrote:

Also fairly sure it wasn't for God's benefit. That would be pretty redundant- it's heavily implied that the purpose was more as a reaffirmation of faith. In the same way that when you're asked if you'd do something in a serious situation, how you answer that question doesn't necessarily reflect your circumstantial actions.

[1:51:54 AM]: Also seems like Paizo authors are really not on the same page as far as deities. They're supposedly unable to directly interfere in mortal matters beyond granting spells and talking to people, but then the article on Urgathoa talks about her making food taste good/bad for people, cursing people with starvation, paralyzing people's legs, inflicting disease, and delivering freshly killed animals/humanoids to starving faithful.
[1:52:14 AM]: Which is a big pile of things that would get her a cosmic b#~&+ slap from everyone else involved in their deific non-intervention treaty.
Ashiel wrote:
Haha, yeah totally.
Aratrok wrote:

Also, really not a fan of the "deities aren't allowed to interfere because reasons" solution to divine intervention in fantasy stories.

I'm much more partial to either "Divines are still in the realm of being stabbable to high power mortal groups who might oppose them and don't really want to be a target for some up and coming godslayers" or "Divines are actually incapable of intervention"

Some side conversations about the bible and stuff not important for the thread nor amusingly funny.

Ashiel wrote:

But yeah, I really, really do see a lot of parallels. Which is one of the reasons I really like Urgathoa as a deity. She feels like an evil deity done right. Too often I see evil deities in D&D that read like this:

Gorg the Defiler's Portfolio includes
- F$$%ing babies
- Cutting the dicks off puppies
- Murdering your family
He counts an enormous number of followers hidden in the corners of everywhere, which are at war with Almander the Epic Dudeman, patron god of Puppies, Unicorns, and Weed.

Aratrok wrote:

There's a passage in the Urgathoa article about communities tolerating necromancers that round up uncontrolled and destructive undead because they'd rather have them guarding a hermit's tower than wandering around in their fields. xD

[2:06:12 AM]: Bloody skeletons sometimes get called "Sons of Urgathoa"
[2:07:23 AM]: Basically, there's some stupid stuff about Urgathoa killing babies and whatnot that you can toss out to make the deity remain interesting.
[2:08:00 AM]: Heh. Urgathoan church marriages don't include the line about "until death do us part". :p

Side conversation about Taylor Swift as another friend of ours jumped into the conversation. Also a comment about Gorg the Defiler sounding like a deity in FATAL.

Aratrok wrote:
"In the church, the date someone becomes an undead is a memorable event called ashenmorn, commemorated annually like a birthday. For undead that cannot stand the light, it also represents the last time they saw daylight. Ashenmorn is a solemn event and a time for personal reflection rather than sharing with others, especially as some undead don't know what day they turned or have been undead so long they no longer remember or have ceased to consider it relevant. A particularly sentimental undead who can create spawn may choose to convert a loyal servant on his own ashenmorn as a gesture of affection."

I love these conversations. :D


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Well, on the Urgathoa front, I believe the Pathfinder Campaign Setting book has been retconned because there was a lot of information that is no longer supported or conflicting now. I'm not certain if it was the Campaign Setting or another book, but I know one of the earlier 'setting' books was retconned and repleaced with the current Inner Sea World Guide or something.

The information I mentioned above comes from Inner Sea Gods. Straight up: most followers of Urgathoa and most of what's contained in the book seem to focus on Urgathoa's aspect of Gluttony, then Undeath, with only minor mention of Disease. It seems most of the followers seek only to sate their hedonistic desires, or seek to become undead, but some of them will sink into some truly dark depravities, and it's rare that a follower worships Ugrathoa as a Goddess of Disease instead of the other two aspects.

I'll quote some excerpts for you.

Excerpts from Inner Sea Gods:
The Church pg. 159 wrote:

The Pallid Princess also supports adoption, particularly by predatory undead who kill living parents and raise the offspring as their own; this increases the number of creatures worshiping the goddess. Many temples keep a "blood mother," a woman whose role is to bear children, either to raise them as members of the church or to offer them as sacrifices. The church allows contraception among its living members to keep pregnancy from interfering with hedonistic pursuits, and has no opinion on abortion or infanticide.

Urgathoa's rivalry with Pharasma has made the goddess of undeath particularly spiteful toward expectant mothers of that faith, and she teaches her priests minor curses and hexes that can harm or kill a fetus or birthing mother.

Priest's Role pg. 160 wrote:
Priests generally have few official duties beyond protection and aiding aspiring undead, for Urgathoa is satisfied when mortals excessively consume in her name, and she is content with the slow rate at which undead propagate. Occasionally, though, her cults concoct aggressive plans such as converting entire towns to zombie slaves or feeding grounds for undead.
A Priest's Role pg. 161 wrote:

Commoners usually avoid priests of Urgathoa, fearing their association with vice and undeath, but may seek them out for advice on how to bury a corpse to prevent it from rising as an undead on its own and how to protect it from predators.

Clergy may pose as clerics of Pharasma, offering blessings and funeral rites to communities lacking a true priest of the Lady of Graves, and malicious members use this ruse to provide commoners with "newly invented" wards against the undead that prove useless after the priests direct undead allies to these communities for easy hunting.

In lands suffering from plague, they may pass themselves off as knowledgeable healers, treating some of the sick and leaving others to die, or perhaps curing uncomfortable but harmless illnesses while infecting patients with quiet and deadly diseases. Urgathoa's priests rarely make demands in return fo r their services, preferring to use people's own desires to drive them to depravity.

Most of what is said in Inner Sea Gods paints a picture of most followers dedicating their lives to sating their own desires and rarely do they cause trouble outside of trying to procure the desire they seek. Most followers end up falling to to ever deeper levels of depravity including cannibalism of sacrifices. However, there are still many within the church who take the undead or disease aspect of Urgathoa as more prominent and these are the ones that have given Urgathoa such a bad rep with other gods and commoners.

However, interesting enough, while Urgathoans might agree with many aspects of the Whispering Way (a religious doctrine that believes undeath is the purest form of life and seeks to convert the whole world into undead), many Urgathoans will act against followers of the Whispering Way as many undead must feed upon the living and the end goal of the Whispering Way would prevent many followers from sating their desire; something that is paramount to most of Urgathoa's followers.

Like I said, when looked at in comparison to the other Evil deities, Urgathoa and her cult are amongst the most harmless, but that doesn't mean they don't do some truly evil things.


D&D Deities have always frustrated me. Difficult to worship as a Pantheon, seeming to provide little for their followers in terms of teaching, benefits or enlightenment and bizarrely specific domains... and with the case of the Standard/Greyhawk deities, ridiculous amounts of overlap. Do we really need Nerull when we have the (far more interesting) Wee Jas? Both Obad-Hai AND Elhonna AND the supposed "Old Faith"? Also I'm somewhat glad paizo (sort of) discarded racial deities. Eugh.

It's always a struggle to make any of these faiths feel like actual religions. It's something I've learned to relish the challenge of when playing a cleric PC. (And earned myself a few vaguely threatening PMs from a pastor halfway across the world for just adapting scripture wholesale. What drew him to my little corner of the web is beyond me).

Questions! What's the status of your blog these days? What do you think are the most interesting deities in the published pantheons? What did you have for lunch today?


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Twigs wrote:
D&D Deities have always frustrated me. Difficult to worship as a Pantheon, seeming to provide little for their followers in terms of teaching, benefits or enlightenment and bizarrely specific domains... and with the case of the Standard/Greyhawk deities, ridiculous amounts of overlap. Do we really need Nerull when we have the (far more interesting) Wee Jas? Both Obad-Hai AND Elhonna AND the supposed "Old Faith"? Also I'm somewhat glad paizo (sort of) discarded racial deities. Eugh.

Yeah, I was talking to Aratrok about that when I joked about "Gorg the Defiler" and his bizarrely specifc (and super evil) domains, yet despite writers frequently doing everything they can to make a deity worthy of universal revilement, they somehow always manage to turn around and insist that there's not only a healthy level of followers in the deity's service but that there are enough of them that they are a real threat to other less ridiculous religions. :P

Also, amen to that! Wee Jass forever man. :D

Quote:
It's always a struggle to make any of these faiths feel like actual religions. It's something I've learned to relish the challenge of when playing a cleric PC. (And earned myself a few vaguely threatening PMs from a pastor halfway across the world for just adapting scripture wholesale. What drew him to my little corner of the web is beyond me).

That sounds funny actually. I'd love to hear more about that. :P

One thing I've done in my campaign setting is try to give reasonable accounts for deities and their faiths. The good deities and their faiths are far from perfect, and the evil deities still have worthwhile qualities.

For example, one of the most prominent major good deities in the setting has a sort of heretic war going on between his followers. The larger mainstream tradition actively oppresses and hunts what they believe are dangerous heretics, while the heretics form resistance factions and secretly spread their version of the faith. Neither side of the coin is wrong, so the faith's biggest enemy is itself. This is something that some of the Paladins and Clerics in the campaign have to come to terms with and ultimately decide where they stand on that issue.

Meanwhile, evil deities have reasons why you'd worship them. For example, there are two sister goddesses that reside over the oceans, one good, one evil, but the two are often worshiped as a pair and each paid respects for different reasons. The evil goddess is commonly revered out of respect for her authority and tributes and respects are paid so that she will pardon your trespass or turn storms and the like away from you. However the two goddesses have a rivalry, and the good one often challenges the wrath of her sister for sport (the good deity is also the goddess of surfing and loves riling her sister up so she can get some serious waves going). Coastal cultures generally adore both of the deities for different life lessons that they teach.

Quote:
Questions! What's the status of your blog these days?

The status is: not updated nearly enough! Though I might make a post about deities now. :o

Quote:
What do you think are the most interesting deities in the published pantheons?

Oh lord...uhhh...

Well, I'm a big fan of Wee Jass from Grayhawk because I love how she's a non-evil goddess of magic, death, and knowledge and generally seems pretty cool. I posted some stuff about a Paladin of Wee Jass I played in a campaign years ago and would love to get back to playing that Paladin (or one like her) in the future.

In Golarion, I'm fond of (apparently early versions?) Asmodeus and Urgathoa because they really felt like they broke the mold for evil deities in a typical setting as they both had a presence that made them believable as gods people would actually want to worship and who would have roles that would be appreciated by the common people, such as those praying for deliverance from disease, or the fact Asmodeus kind of moved in and restored order for a nation of people and even if he's a bad dude, his presence was obviously a stabilizing force.

Serenrae is probably my favorite good deity in Golarion because she's super good in an unusual way, having love even for the evil gods in the pantheon. She feels like a super mary sue goddess of goodliness except without the Mary Sue part, which is hard to pull off and awesome. I also like that her followers are often screwed up which is very humanizing. She's got crazy religious military extremists trying to spread her love with swords and bloodshed. Seems pretty...human.

In Eberron, the Silver Flame and Vol are the only deities I really remember because I was interested in them. The noble order with the child prophet seemed cool and there was a lot of gray area in the church of the silver flame and a lot of cool "what ifs" here and there. A friend of mine who was an avid fan of Keith Baker got me interested in Vol because he explained prior to Wizardification, the cult was a grayer shade than the "Generic evil undead god", explaining that the cultists believed that mortals could unlock the secret of godhood but in a cruel trick by the gods were given lifespans too short to discover it. Believing that the secret to godliness was in the blood, their undead members were like martyred saints who forsook their own chance to become gods in exchange for the lifespans needed to discover the secret.

Though not technically a deity, there was also a philosophy that was popular amongst Kalashtar and monks (the name of which escapes me at the moment) but it was listed amongst the deities while explicitly noting that it wasn't actually a deity so much as kind of a self-improving philosophy.

In Forgotten Realms, I don't know a whole lot about the various deities but the ones I am somewhat familiar with and liked were Mystra and Shar 'cause I thought their weaves / shadowweaves were pretty cool, and I liked Eliastree (or however you spell her crazy name) and had a ranger that worshipped her in a FR game I was in once (unfortunately the GM thought it was stupid for our non-cleric PCs to be religious and would sic random encounters on us if we did or said anything relating to their beliefs).

Quote:
What did you have for lunch today?

A pack of nabs and two protein milkshakes.


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Ashiel wrote:
Serenrae is probably my favorite good deity in Golarion because she's super good in an unusual way, having love even for the evil gods in the pantheon. She feels like a super mary sue goddess of goodliness except without the Mary Sue part, which is hard to pull off and awesome. I also like that her followers are often screwed up which is very humanizing. She's got crazy religious military extremists trying to spread her love with swords and bloodshed. Seems pretty...human.

I also really heart Erastil. Lawful good without the idea that you need to kill 'em all, and with the idea that a simple life helps avoid corruption. It's like "let's put all the anti-lawful into a lawful good and make it work." Looooooooooooooovvvvveee it.

Ashiel wrote:
In Eberron, the Silver Flame and Vol are the only deities I really remember because I was interested in them. The noble order with the child prophet seemed cool and there was a lot of gray area in the church of the silver flame and a lot of cool "what ifs" here and there. A friend of mine who was an avid fan of Keith Baker got me interested in Vol because he explained prior to Wizardification, the cult was a grayer shade than the "Generic evil undead god", explaining that the cultists believed that mortals could unlock the secret of godhood but in a cruel trick by the gods were given lifespans too short to discover it. Believing that the secret to godliness was in the blood, their undead members were like martyred saints who forsook their own chance to become gods in exchange for the lifespans needed to discover the secret.

I mostly loved the religions of Eberron, though the Sovereign Host (the main one) felt kind of "generic meh" to me (which, I guess, was actually its purpose): the Silver Flame was awesome, Vol was endlessly fascinating (and retained enough traits of what you said after the Wizardification) for that reason (and also was explicitly not a goddess but an 16th level wizard...), and the Undying Court was a freakin' amazing concept ("hey, my 'god' is really my distanct ancestor... so I'mma go walk up to him and ask what I should have for lunch today. Yeah. He's right over there.") and I heart it.

And then, of course, was...

Ashiel wrote:
Though not technically a deity, there was also a philosophy that was popular amongst Kalashtar and monks (the name of which escapes me at the moment) but it was listed amongst the deities while explicitly noting that it wasn't actually a deity so much as kind of a self-improving philosophy.

... il-Yannah, or "the great light" which wasn't, exactly, a "self-improving" philosophy, though it certainly had elements of that as well. It was a "lawful neutral" "force of positive energy" (well, philosophy) with lawful good followers with the concept not just of self-improvement (though there was, by necessity, that concept) but also the concept of bringing about universal "enlightenment"... which doesn't mean "make everyone smart" but rather means "let's wage war against the ultimate evil - the darkness within men's souls - by doing really nice things and being the best daggum people we can be."

... and said warfare was literal, as they were literally trying to alter the current age and change things from the "eternal nightmare" made of men's dreams that the region of dreams was into a similarly "eternal dream" (il-Yannah).

Freakin' sweet.

Ashiel wrote:
In Forgotten Realms, I don't know a whole lot about the various deities but the ones I am somewhat familiar with and liked were Mystra and Shar 'cause I thought their weaves / shadowweaves were pretty cool, and I liked Eliastree (or however you spell her crazy name) and had a ranger that worshipped her in a FR game I was in once (unfortunately the GM thought it was stupid for our non-cleric PCs to be religious and would sic random encounters on us if we did or said anything relating to their beliefs).

There are far too many to go into here.

- Mystra/Shar/Selune (also the whole Azuth/Chosen/etc. thing)
- Eldath: ELDATH!
- Eilistraee
- TOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
- Red Knight
- daggum, there's a lot and I'm out of time.

Yeah.


party had to collect several relic weapons (The Six Spears of Heaven and Hell to be precise) and you need all 6 in order to destroy a god. The spears were ruined when Rovagug was slain.

So... they can't do any more God slaying.

But yes, this breaks with Cannon. Homebrew game.


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Ashiel wrote:
Meanwhile, evil deities have reasons why you'd worship them. For example, there are two sister goddesses that reside over the oceans, one good, one evil, but the two are often worshiped as a pair and each paid respects for different reasons. The evil goddess is commonly revered out of respect for her authority and tributes and respects are paid so that she will pardon your trespass or turn storms and the like away from you. However the two goddesses have a rivalry, and the good one often challenges the wrath of her sister for sport (the good deity is also the goddess of surfing and loves riling her sister up so she can get some serious waves going). Coastal cultures generally adore both of the deities for different life lessons that they teach.

Sounds brilliant!

On the topic of homebrew deities, my first tabletop experience and enduring on-and-off homegame has spun off into a spectacular homebrew of it's own, and each god is written with a positive and a negative aspect (and we've just as often found ourself opposed to the so-called "good" churches as we are the wicked ones). My personal favourite of these deities is Auslfare, the ever changeable goddess of love and war, and patroness of humanity. Both for the frankly magnificent pun on the hands of my GM (who I really can't give enough credit when it comes to worldbuilding) and for the idea of a deity of passion in all it's forms, patriots, jilted lovers, and beserkers alike.

Ashiel wrote:
That sounds funny actually. I'd love to hear more about that. :P

At risk of hijacking your thread for a spell... sure!

First, some context. For my sadly short lived Wrath of the Righteous game I set myself the challenge of making the most unassuming, mundane characters into a mythic one. I settled upon Harrol, the halfling cleric of Iomedae. I wanted to be as out of place at the Worldwound as I could possibly, a meek, unassuming Irish-Catholic altar boy was what I arrived at.

It ended up being an interesting contrast. Iomedae calls on her followers to emulate her in word and deed, yet Harrol was possibly the furthest thing from a knight I could've conjured. It wasn't long before I realised I was playing my Irish-Catholic grandmother if she were three feet high and armed with a sling. Fighting off monsters with little more than magic stone (a spell I was absolutely determined to see in play at the time, even if I had to bloody well cast it myself) I was far from a symbol of knightly virtue, and it made my relationship with the party paladin particularly compelling. His faith was his armour. The chirpy greenhorn got by among amongst grim-faced paladins and riftwardens simply by believing with all of his little heart.

I wanted to really play up the spiritual side of this PC. I was simultaneously playing an elven cleric of Desna and delighting at how different the two characters were, even though they were built almost identically. Their choice of race and deity defined so much about them. I also really enjoyed having such a tiny worldview. Harrol learned his letters when a preacher left behind his holy text at his families homestead. Unlike my Desnan pilgrim, or indeed most clerics, Harrol just plain knew nothing beyond the contents of his dog-eared holy text.

Harrol lugged his copy of the Acts of Iomedae everywhere (which are really heavily detailed on the wiki, actually having the CONTENTS of a holy text was entirely new to me, and altogether pretty great). I had him recite it when he cast spells, channeled energy, or just at moments of sufficient gravity, a nice break from his usual chirpiness and ridiculously transcribed accent. I'd either invent this wholesale, quote made-up saints or sections of the wiki, or more commonly just fiddle with a bible passage to make it appropriate. (Or leave it well enough alone. Most were perfectly applicable as is. Ephesians 6:10-15, anybody? Or Taldorans 6:10-15, if you prefer.) PbP is pretty enabling like that if you want to inject a little bit of research. Real sea-shanties, proper grammatical elvish, germanic folklore, I've had it all. I once applied for a game where the GM had us pen a poetic edda, kennings and all. It's really such a great medium.

Ephesians 6:10-15:
Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. 11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age,[a] against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

14 Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, 15 and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace.

The Church of Iomedae has been depicted in art as having a heavy catholic influence, and massive cathedrals like the Sancta Iomedaea only enhancing this comparison. So I injected my Iomedaean faith with as much of real-world Catholicism as I could. I'd never read scripture for it's own sake before (despite ten years of Catholic schooling, go figure) and was actually really enjoying injecting that extra bit of authenticity into my character.

Then out of the blue I recieve a PM.

The PM in Question:
Attention Brethren

You will be surprise to hear from me. I am Rev.James Allen from London UK.I have an important issue to discuss with you.

Since paizo is a public site,I will appreciate you to reply me to my private email address for more details:
rev.jamesallen@yahoo.com

I wait to hear from you.
God bless you.
Regards,
Your Good Friend
Rev.James Allen

How he'd stumbled upon this little corner of the internet I don't know. I'd never considered a PbP game as anything other than a private affair between five or so geeks. Maybe I'd have been a bit more sensitive with my subject matter otherwise, but this exchange seemed more than a little ridiculous. I won't share any more, but essentially I told him he was welcome to continue to PM me or report any offending posts, but he made a few more attempts to get my email and stopped responding. I rather wish I'd followed it up now, it surely would have been an interesting conversation if nothing else.

"ATTENTION BRETHREN" might still be my favourite preface to a letter before or since. Edit: Golly, that ran long. I will reiterate that you asked for this, and you've likely read this far, so no take-backsies. :P


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Well... I enjoyed the post :)


outside of a fantasy and... I guess eberron is sorta a steampunk setting?- So outside of the typical genre of DnD setting what sorta RPG worlds do you like/play?

There was one advertised on the Paizo site for the FATE system not too long back that was called "Secrets of Cats" and I just found that ADORABLE! (I haven't played because they won't process my order... kinda frustrating really). I ran a make-shift Suicide Squad mission for my players as a one shot (lol, the only player killed was killed by the rest of the party). I played a shadowrun ONE time and... just ABSOLUTELY HATED IT!

So... you know... your turn now.


In keeping with gods (and not having read this entire thread) Ash; Hardwares: do you have monks in your setting that are religious without being martial artists? In other words, do you have abbots, nuns, friars etc?


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Hey, Mark, do you mind finding that one post you did that was about a Commoner campaign, and either re-post it or link to it here or here? Or even, dare I hope, expand on it?! I wasn't able to find it recently, though that's likely just because I crit-failed my Search roll and am too super-lazy to look it up again.

On topic: Ashiel, how do you feel about me using your thread as a less-efficient means of communication than a PM which would probably be easier and less cluttery?


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Mark Hoover wrote:
In keeping with gods (and not having read this entire thread) Ash; Hardwares: do you have monks in your setting that are religious without being martial artists? In other words, do you have abbots, nuns, friars etc?

Absolutely. There are tons and tons of characters in the world, far too many to have different classes for, but that's A-OK because we don't need different classes! :D

The vast majority of magical characters in my campaigns are adepts. And there are certainly plenty of religious folks that don't possess or practice magics. Most of them would be commoners, experts, etc. In some cases, warriors and aristocrats if they lack the Paladin-calling.

In the same vein, a lot of Monk-classed characters aren't monks at all. A steely orc pugilist may not have a religious or spiritual bone in his body but he's pretty good at breaking everyone else's.

In the same vein still, a group of elven assassins and spies might have levels in monk but are far from the monastery-iconics.

That said, there's a certain amount of equal-opportunity in the main religions of my campaign. Their are male and female priests for example, and though it hasn't come up I suppose there could be male nuns, but generally speaking you'll see lots of acolytes, squires, and other introductory positions in faiths.

Similarly, hobgoblins refer to most any arcanist as a "witch", whether they're wizards, sorcerers, or the witch class. Some psionicists might fall into this category too, depending on how much their mojo looks like arcane magic to them.


I had this thought, recently (as in yesterday), on modifying skills similar to my thoughts on a 'Magic Skill' to diversify casters more.

Basically, it breaks up some of the more powerful or frequently used skills in a similar fashion. For example, Perception could be further customized by granting 3 sub-ranks for every rank in perception. Then you could use those sub-ranks to specify what type of senses you've practiced, those senses being Smell, Sound, Touch, Taste and Vision.

So someone with 5 ranks in Perception could be further clarified to have the following:
Smell: 2
Sound: 5
Touch: 2
Taste: 1
Vision: 5

Then you would adjudicate the various perception checks based off what kind of check it is. So, for example, instead of just using Perception to identify potions, you would instead use Smell, or Taste to do so. It's also easier to make a blind character this way, as one could dictate a blind character being incapable of adding points to Vision.

It also doesn't take away points from normal skills, it just makes people specify what 'type' of perception the character is good at.

I've had a similar thought for an 'Agility' skill, which would cover Balance, Acrobatics, and Jump, but in addition, every 5 ranks in Agility would grant a +1 to Reflex saves. So a Fighter who practices in Agility maneuvers would actually have a fairly decent Reflex save as a bonus instead of the crappy they save they have now, even if they are good at Balance and Acrobatics.

Do you think a 'sub-skill' type of system might make a Skill system a better system over-all? Would you find it more realistic? What are your thoughts on this type of system?


Ashiel wrote:
The vast majority of magical characters in my campaigns are adepts.

Just a quick follow up: Do you ever modify the spells/special power of Adepts at all to flavor them more towards one type spellcaster over another? For example I've used the generic adept, given them channeling instead of a familiar and flavored their Burning Hands spell as acid-based to represent a black-dragon-worshipping kobold cleric. Alternately I've taken a human female antagonist and given her more "witchy" type spells re-tooling her as an arcane caster and presenting her as a bonafied witch (though minus the hexes).

Have you ever and is there a formula that works for you here?


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Mark Hoover wrote:
Ashiel wrote:
The vast majority of magical characters in my campaigns are adepts.

Just a quick follow up: Do you ever modify the spells/special power of Adepts at all to flavor them more towards one type spellcaster over another? For example I've used the generic adept, given them channeling instead of a familiar and flavored their Burning Hands spell as acid-based to represent a black-dragon-worshipping kobold cleric. Alternately I've taken a human female antagonist and given her more "witchy" type spells re-tooling her as an arcane caster and presenting her as a bonafied witch (though minus the hexes).

Have you ever and is there a formula that works for you here?

I don't have an exact formula but I've experimented with some things. Generally speaking, adepts can be giving full access to cleric, druid, and wizard spells without breaking anything given the way their casting progressions works (given the limit of their power is not so much their spells but instead the limits of their spell levels and usage). Of course this falls apart in a game with Samsarans but I don't use Samsarans anyway so it's never bothered me.

I've also experimented with allowing them to trade feats for class features at certain levels with much success. I'm hoping to implement a system sort of like this for NPC-classes in our d20 core as I rather love the idea of NPC classes and allowing you season them with a few abilities goes a long way towards making them fit into different themed roles without having to build a heroic character from scratch.


Tels wrote:

I had this thought, recently (as in yesterday), on modifying skills similar to my thoughts on a 'Magic Skill' to diversify casters more.

Basically, it breaks up some of the more powerful or frequently used skills in a similar fashion. For example, Perception could be further customized by granting 3 sub-ranks for every rank in perception. Then you could use those sub-ranks to specify what type of senses you've practiced, those senses being Smell, Sound, Touch, Taste and Vision.

So someone with 5 ranks in Perception could be further clarified to have the following:
Smell: 2
Sound: 5
Touch: 2
Taste: 1
Vision: 5

Then you would adjudicate the various perception checks based off what kind of check it is. So, for example, instead of just using Perception to identify potions, you would instead use Smell, or Taste to do so. It's also easier to make a blind character this way, as one could dictate a blind character being incapable of adding points to Vision.

It also doesn't take away points from normal skills, it just makes people specify what 'type' of perception the character is good at.

I've had a similar thought for an 'Agility' skill, which would cover Balance, Acrobatics, and Jump, but in addition, every 5 ranks in Agility would grant a +1 to Reflex saves. So a Fighter who practices in Agility maneuvers would actually have a fairly decent Reflex save as a bonus instead of the crappy they save they have now, even if they are good at Balance and Acrobatics.

Do you think a 'sub-skill' type of system might make a Skill system a better system over-all? Would you find it more realistic? What are your thoughts on this type of system?

While I think the idea of a magic skill works pretty well, I'd be concerned as to the complexity of having multiple subskills devoted to other skills. Mostly because it would add a lot more bookkeeping to deal with and make it all the harder to introduce to new players.

It's a constant war between better emulation and manageable gameplay. (o_o);

I shudder to think what writing a statblock out would look like. :P

That said, we will certainly have multiple sub-uses for skills, so without going into the extra bookkeeping of having different ranks and such in in subskills, it would probably be pretty easy to categorize what sort of senses fell under perception and make notes such as "Scent gives a +10 circumstance bonus to Perception checks based on sense of smell" and stuff like that, or allow for tradeoff or specialization mechanics if you wanted to include those sorts of things.

You'll probably see a lot of this sort of thing in Athletics (our catch all for climb, jumping, swimming), Acrobatics (balance, tumble, fly), Perception (hearing, vision, olfactory), and stuff like that.


Ashiel wrote:
Mark Hoover wrote:
Ashiel wrote:
The vast majority of magical characters in my campaigns are adepts.

Just a quick follow up: Do you ever modify the spells/special power of Adepts at all to flavor them more towards one type spellcaster over another? For example I've used the generic adept, given them channeling instead of a familiar and flavored their Burning Hands spell as acid-based to represent a black-dragon-worshipping kobold cleric. Alternately I've taken a human female antagonist and given her more "witchy" type spells re-tooling her as an arcane caster and presenting her as a bonafied witch (though minus the hexes).

Have you ever and is there a formula that works for you here?

I don't have an exact formula but I've experimented with some things. Generally speaking, adepts can be giving full access to cleric, druid, and wizard spells without breaking anything given the way their casting progressions works (given the limit of their power is not so much their spells but instead the limits of their spell levels and usage). Of course this falls apart in a game with Samsarans but I don't use Samsarans anyway so it's never bothered me.

I've also experimented with allowing them to trade feats for class features at certain levels with much success. I'm hoping to implement a system sort of like this for NPC-classes in our d20 core as I rather love the idea of NPC classes and allowing you season them with a few abilities goes a long way towards making them fit into different themed roles without having to build a heroic character from scratch.

Take a look at Variant Multiclassing as released in Pathfinder Unchained.


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Is it me, or is Golarion A Lie? (Transcripted but not read from the Blame Cosmo thread, in which I'd actually like your opinion)

With all the retcons in newer material, so much of the inner sea world guide is total bupkiss. Plus, what originally drew me to the game is rather missing ("It's an age of exploration! Thousands of other adventurers! Blah blah!" ORLY!? Then why is it that in every adventure path my party is the ONLY ONE EVER DOING ANYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING!? Do you SEE how many NPCS have class levels higher than us that SHOULD be doing something about this?! Five level 1 adventurers to SAVE THE WORLD when the level 20+ ARCHMAGE is "researching the problem", kind of deal). Mythic retcon for the Starstone completely retcons several of my favorite gods into making NO sense. If the Pathfinder Society is such a large organization... Why are they sending rookies with no professional chaperones to deal with things? Where's the Aspis Consortium in all this? Does the world not have any mercenaries doing Adventurer work?


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Artemis Moonstar wrote:

Is it me, or is Golarion A Lie? (Transcripted but not read from the Blame Cosmo thread, in which I'd actually like your opinion)

With all the retcons in newer material, so much of the inner sea world guide is total bupkiss. Plus, what originally drew me to the game is rather missing ("It's an age of exploration! Thousands of other adventurers! Blah blah!" ORLY!? Then why is it that in every adventure path my party is the ONLY ONE EVER DOING ANYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING!? Do you SEE how many NPCS have class levels higher than us that SHOULD be doing something about this?! Five level 1 adventurers to SAVE THE WORLD when the level 20+ ARCHMAGE is "researching the problem", kind of deal). Mythic retcon for the Starstone completely retcons several of my favorite gods into making NO sense. If the Pathfinder Society is such a large organization... Why are they sending rookies with no professional chaperones to deal with things? Where's the Aspis Consortium in all this? Does the world not have any mercenaries doing Adventurer work?

If you've taken this viewpoint with Golarion, don't ever go anywhere near the Forgotten Realms.

If there isn't a 30th level archmage or 5 in the village you guys just stumbled across in the wilderness, it's because you failed your perception check.


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That's rather hyperbolic, Tels.

EDIT: for misspelling your name with two "ll"s. Not entirely sure how I did that.


Tels wrote:
Artemis Moonstar wrote:

Is it me, or is Golarion A Lie? (Transcripted but not read from the Blame Cosmo thread, in which I'd actually like your opinion)

With all the retcons in newer material, so much of the inner sea world guide is total bupkiss. Plus, what originally drew me to the game is rather missing ("It's an age of exploration! Thousands of other adventurers! Blah blah!" ORLY!? Then why is it that in every adventure path my party is the ONLY ONE EVER DOING ANYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING!? Do you SEE how many NPCS have class levels higher than us that SHOULD be doing something about this?! Five level 1 adventurers to SAVE THE WORLD when the level 20+ ARCHMAGE is "researching the problem", kind of deal). Mythic retcon for the Starstone completely retcons several of my favorite gods into making NO sense. If the Pathfinder Society is such a large organization... Why are they sending rookies with no professional chaperones to deal with things? Where's the Aspis Consortium in all this? Does the world not have any mercenaries doing Adventurer work?

If you've taken this viewpoint with Golarion, don't ever go anywhere near the Forgotten Realms.

If there isn't a 30th level archmage or 5 in the village you guys just stumbled across in the wilderness, it's because you failed your perception check.

Oh, no, I know all about FR. Had the time of my life in it back in 2E. Dragonlance was my intro to real D&D (and still my preferred setting), but I could only ever get FR games, and the occasional Dark Sun or Ravenloft.

I suppose my gripe with Golarion was the whole "mass of adventurers" was what originally drew me to the game, since at the time I thought we were finally going to get a game setting that makes a sort of sense with the inclusion of high-level characters and apparently other adventurers. Pathfinder Society for example.

I suppose a good example of what I kind of expected would be One Piece. Pirate King Jolly Roger or whatever his name makes a huge proclamation about all his treasure being in "one piece", and every pirate in the freakin' world, PLUS the world navy or whatever, immediately go try and find it... Okay, so I havent read/watched any of it in years, but I remember that was the general premise.

That's the kind of thing I expected when I read about the in-world Pathfinder Society, the whole selling point was "It's an age of exploration!", and later found out about the Aspis Consortium among others. I expected to actually have to compete with other adventurers as it were, and finally not be that whole "special flower". What makes the PCs so damn special if there are so many other characters and organizations with the same damn class levels? Why aren't there any references or rumors about other adventuring teams at the time? Why not get sabotaged by another party, even as like a random encounter or something? Is there a deific mandate that only 1 world-saving/destroying level of adventuring party can exist at a time? I get the whole lore is full of this stuff, but I wanted to actually SEE it in game, wanted to EXPERIENCE that kind of thing. At least a reference for it in the rules somewhere.

Came for the anticipation of something unique and was disappointed. Stayed for the mechanics.

That kind of game has actually run very well in my home groups. I've often built up various adventuring parties for the party to come across. There's always the rival team that's more anti-hero, there's the antithesis mirror party that is the whole 'evil clone' cliche. Even have the "Fanboy/girl" party that follows them around, and a party of second-rate heroes that always get to the dungeon after the PC party left (actually, my fiance started this one and I unashamedly stole it). Get NPCs talking about these kinds of parties. Stuff like that. Also, a bunch of better adventuring parties that don't even know you exist, legendary tavern-tale kinds of parties.


Artemis Moonstar wrote:
Tels wrote:
Artemis Moonstar wrote:

Is it me, or is Golarion A Lie? (Transcripted but not read from the Blame Cosmo thread, in which I'd actually like your opinion)

With all the retcons in newer material, so much of the inner sea world guide is total bupkiss. Plus, what originally drew me to the game is rather missing ("It's an age of exploration! Thousands of other adventurers! Blah blah!" ORLY!? Then why is it that in every adventure path my party is the ONLY ONE EVER DOING ANYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING!? Do you SEE how many NPCS have class levels higher than us that SHOULD be doing something about this?! Five level 1 adventurers to SAVE THE WORLD when the level 20+ ARCHMAGE is "researching the problem", kind of deal). Mythic retcon for the Starstone completely retcons several of my favorite gods into making NO sense. If the Pathfinder Society is such a large organization... Why are they sending rookies with no professional chaperones to deal with things? Where's the Aspis Consortium in all this? Does the world not have any mercenaries doing Adventurer work?

If you've taken this viewpoint with Golarion, don't ever go anywhere near the Forgotten Realms.

If there isn't a 30th level archmage or 5 in the village you guys just stumbled across in the wilderness, it's because you failed your perception check.

Oh, no, I know all about FR. Had the time of my life in it back in 2E. Dragonlance was my intro to real D&D (and still my preferred setting), but I could only ever get FR games, and the occasional Dark Sun or Ravenloft.

I suppose my gripe with Golarion was the whole "mass of adventurers" was what originally drew me to the game, since at the time I thought we were finally going to get a game setting that makes a sort of sense with the inclusion of high-level characters and apparently other adventurers. Pathfinder Society for example.

I suppose a good example of what I kind of expected would be One Piece. Pirate King Jolly Roger or whatever his name makes a huge proclamation...

As far as I'm aware, there aren't actually all that many high level people in Golarion, at least, not that many that are capable of solving problems.

Most of the time, there aren't a lot of high level allies for the party to rely upon, they have to do it all themselves. There's something like 20 or so NPCs that are given class levels and known to exist in general in the world (in Inner Sea Magic, I believe). But most of them are villains or neutral.

Then you've got NPCs from Adventure paths who are usually embroiled in the activities of the path and can't leave to go solve a problem elsewhere. For example, Queen Gallifrey is a 15th level Paladin Queen of Mendev, the Sword of Iomedae and resident badass of the crusades, but she can't exactly leave to smite some spoiled little girl of a queen in Korvosa even though it's within her power to do so. She has more important things to do.

When you go through the list of NPCs in Golarion who actually have the power to do something, most of them are truly wrapped up in plots and events or duties they can't just abandon. Especially since the 'world ending plots' usually aren't apparent at the time.

The events of the consequences of Shattered Star, for example, become gradually known over the course of the adventure path, and by the time anyone knows what could happen, the PCs in the AP are high enough level to handle it.

Golarion is very much so not like other campaign settings who have truly outrageously powerful NPCs who are single handedly capable of stopping world ending events, and yet aren't doing anything. Most of the beings of that level of power, are villains, and the ones who aren't don't know about the events in question, or can't react in time to do anything.

As for Pathfinder Society, have you not played much of it? I haven't myself, but my understanding is you come across rival factions in scenarios all the time. One of the basic premises of society scenarios is the PFS wants something, but another group has got to it first, so go take it from them.

The way I look at it, is that if you want to play a generic adventurer who goes off and travels far lands, witnesses amazing sights and beds all the womenses ever, then Pathfinder Society is what you're looking for. But if you want to play the guy who becomes the hero of a nation or saves the world from utter doom, then the Adventure Paths are more up your sleeve.

That's not to say the two can't intermingle (one series of scenarios involves stopping the rise of the Runelord of Gluttony, if I recall), but I tend to view Pathfinder Society as the creation stories of the NPC adventuring groups the heroes in an Adventure Path might come across.


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Artemis Moonstar wrote:

Is it me, or is Golarion A Lie? (Transcripted but not read from the Blame Cosmo thread, in which I'd actually like your opinion)

With all the retcons in newer material, so much of the inner sea world guide is total bupkiss. Plus, what originally drew me to the game is rather missing ("It's an age of exploration! Thousands of other adventurers! Blah blah!" ORLY!? Then why is it that in every adventure path my party is the ONLY ONE EVER DOING ANYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING!? Do you SEE how many NPCS have class levels higher than us that SHOULD be doing something about this?! Five level 1 adventurers to SAVE THE WORLD when the level 20+ ARCHMAGE is "researching the problem", kind of deal). Mythic retcon for the Starstone completely retcons several of my favorite gods into making NO sense. If the Pathfinder Society is such a large organization... Why are they sending rookies with no professional chaperones to deal with things? Where's the Aspis Consortium in all this? Does the world not have any mercenaries doing Adventurer work?

Honestly I know how you feel, albeit I was never super into Golarion since I'm not into PFS or anything like that. I bought the campaign setting and a number of modules and such back when they were publishing for 3.5, and I liked the campaign setting and the modules I've played/GM'd (I still haven't run all the ones I bought though D:).

When Aratrok was running Reign of Winter for us, very quickly we became disinterested in the story. There was always this nagging "Dude, none of the other powerful archmagi in the world would stand for this, why the hell are we going on this glorified fetch quest to find someone we don't even like and/or want who is arguably as terrible a villain or worse than the one we're fighting against to come back and deal with this?"

We ultimately felt like the game would have been a lot more fun if we were traveling around the world to get help from other big-wigs to help stop the world shattering calamity. I mean it's not like there isn't an archmage in geb who has a freaking goddess as his minion. :(


Ashiel wrote:
Artemis Moonstar wrote:

Is it me, or is Golarion A Lie? (Transcripted but not read from the Blame Cosmo thread, in which I'd actually like your opinion)

With all the retcons in newer material, so much of the inner sea world guide is total bupkiss. Plus, what originally drew me to the game is rather missing ("It's an age of exploration! Thousands of other adventurers! Blah blah!" ORLY!? Then why is it that in every adventure path my party is the ONLY ONE EVER DOING ANYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING!? Do you SEE how many NPCS have class levels higher than us that SHOULD be doing something about this?! Five level 1 adventurers to SAVE THE WORLD when the level 20+ ARCHMAGE is "researching the problem", kind of deal). Mythic retcon for the Starstone completely retcons several of my favorite gods into making NO sense. If the Pathfinder Society is such a large organization... Why are they sending rookies with no professional chaperones to deal with things? Where's the Aspis Consortium in all this? Does the world not have any mercenaries doing Adventurer work?

Honestly I know how you feel, albeit I was never super into Golarion since I'm not into PFS or anything like that. I bought the campaign setting and a number of modules and such back when they were publishing for 3.5, and I liked the campaign setting and the modules I've played/GM'd (I still haven't run all the ones I bought though D:).

When Aratrok was running Reign of Winter for us, very quickly we became disinterested in the story. There was always this nagging "Dude, none of the other powerful archmagi in the world would stand for this, why the hell are we going on this glorified fetch quest to find someone we don't even like and/or want who is arguably as terrible a villain or worse than the one we're fighting against to come back and deal with this?"

We ultimately felt like the game would have been a lot more fun if we were traveling around the world to get help from other big-wigs to help stop the world shattering calamity. I mean it's not...

Like I said previously, most beings of capable power either don't know of events yet, or don't care to react to it (most of them are villains) or are unable to do anything at that point in time.

Nitpick, but Arazni is a former demigoddess. Being killed by Tar Baphon and brought back by Geb stripped her of her divinity. Also, it's worth noting that the more powerful people in Golarion who might know whats going on, might be highly cautious. Baba Yaga is known to have the ability to change a mortal man into a demon lord of the abyss, and is capable of thrashing most beings that aren't true deities. So someone or something, that could take her out should be respected and be treated with the utmost caution.

That's neither here nor there though, as I'm sure I could probably make excuses for the events of nearly any of the adventure paths. I personally enjoy Golarion because it's such a melting pot, but at the same time, I've been feeling the itch to make my own world; because there are things I don't like or things I want to change or do that just wouldn't fit. But I lack the motivation (or a group to motivate me) to do so.


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Quote:
Nitpick, but Arazni is a former demigoddess. Being killed by Tar Baphon and brought back by Geb stripped her of her divinity.

According to Mythic Realms (I think that's the right book anyway), she still has Divine Source, meaning she can still grant spells and all. As far as most people know, granting spells is probably the primary hallmark of (demi)godhood, so I wouldn't say she's completely lost it, just been downgraded in power significantly.


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Orthos wrote:
Quote:
Nitpick, but Arazni is a former demigoddess. Being killed by Tar Baphon and brought back by Geb stripped her of her divinity.
According to Mythic Realms (I think that's the right book anyway), she still has Divine Source, meaning she can still grant spells and all. As far as most people know, granting spells is probably the primary hallmark of (demi)godhood, so I wouldn't say she's completely lost it, just been downgraded in power significantly.

She's considered a, I think, proto-deity, is the term I think JJ uses for it. Not quite a demigod, but not a mortal either.


Isn't there a spell that lets you give other people the use of a spell? I just looked through the PRD but couldn't find it, but I feel like I remember there being a spell that did that...

I mention because if granting someone spells is the hallmark of Divinity then people with those spells must have a spark of the divine.


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What's in the box? wrote:

Isn't there a spell that lets you give other people the use of a spell? I just looked through the PRD but couldn't find it, but I feel like I remember there being a spell that did that...

I mention because if granting someone spells is the hallmark of Divinity then people with those spells must have a spark of the divine.

Granting people spells is not entirely accurate as a qualification. To be a divine being, you need to grant people access to domains and have clerics that gain their spells by praying to you.

Answered a Question:
By the way, the spell you're looking for is Imbue with Spell-like Ability.

Have to remember this isn't the "Tels Hijacks *ALL* Your Threads Here" thread.


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Yeah, there's a significant difference between imbuing someone with the power to use a magical power once or twice and being able to empower actual full-powered PC-level casters.


The difference is really just scale though right?

I mean an otherwise harmless sun is turned into a scorching ray by applying a magnifying glass. The ants that are set ablaze don't see the difference between a vengeful god and some adolescent prankster.

And Gods aren't the only source of domain power and cleric spells. Some PC clerics could view themselves as gods empowered by this belief they would have given themselves access to spells and domains. They could even imbue others with spell casting abilities.

Couldn't another cleric believe enough in that PC that it grants them their domains and- while not cannon or a member of the pantheon- essentially turn them into a living God. One very likely to be killed, but the rules allow for this sort of shenanigans no?

This makes me think of Elan and his puppet god Banjo (Order of the Stick) or Martina and Zelmogustar-sp?- (The Slayers Next)


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Tels wrote:
Like I said previously, most beings of capable power either don't know of events yet, or don't care to react to it (most of them are villains) or are unable to do anything at that point in time.

Which is part of what I meant about this nagging feeling that the game would have been so much more fun if we were going around Golarion trying to pick up allies instead of trying to pick up stupid riddle keys for what has got to be the most railroading plot I've seen in years. :|

Likewise, I'm still pretty sure most of the super villains in Golarion wouldn't be fine with some upstart trying to plunge the entire world into an iceage. I'm pretty sure that wouldn't jive with even the most hateful of evil archmages if only because it would be a thorn in the side of their schemes. :P

But no, we gotta go find a two headed bird and explore some dumbgeons (with the absolute worst layout in the history of everything) to find someone we'd rather kill ourselves to come back and fix a problem that would have also been more fun to try to fix ourselves. >_>

Quote:
Then you've got NPCs from Adventure paths who are usually embroiled in the activities of the path and can't leave to go solve a problem elsewhere. For example, Queen Gallifrey is a 15th level Paladin Queen of Mendev, the Sword of Iomedae and resident badass of the crusades, but she can't exactly leave to smite some spoiled little girl of a queen in Korvosa even though it's within her power to do so. She has more important things to do.

Well, that's just the thing. Why not?

It'd take her like what, 15 minutes? Greater teleport, smite, greater teleport. "So what sort of proposals for the new aqueduct system have you councilmen come up with while I stepped out?"


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What's in the box? wrote:

Isn't there a spell that lets you give other people the use of a spell? I just looked through the PRD but couldn't find it, but I feel like I remember there being a spell that did that...

I mention because if granting someone spells is the hallmark of Divinity then people with those spells must have a spark of the divine.

Amusingly, imbue with spell ability is in fact a divine spell usable only by clerics (sans magic items and such).


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Ashiel wrote:
Quote:
Then you've got NPCs from Adventure paths who are usually embroiled in the activities of the path and can't leave to go solve a problem elsewhere. For example, Queen Gallifrey is a 15th level Paladin Queen of Mendev, the Sword of Iomedae and resident badass of the crusades, but she can't exactly leave to smite some spoiled little girl of a queen in Korvosa even though it's within her power to do so. She has more important things to do.

Well, that's just the thing. Why not?

It'd take her like what, 15 minutes? Greater teleport, smite, greater teleport. "So what sort of proposals for the new aqueduct system have you councilmen come up with while I stepped out?"

At what point in the story does Ileosa become known to Gallifrey though? Because there is a point in the story where Ileosa is no longer so easily killed.

Curse of the Crimson Throne:
Part 1: Ileosa is just a petty Queen who killed her husband to rule.
Part 2: Ileosa is heavily suspected at being involved with releasing a plague on her people.
Part 3: By this point, Ileosa has bonded with a demon and absorbed much of Kazavon's power lingering in his teeth.
Part 4, and 5: Ileosa has Korvosa under martial law and has been forcing them to start building a statue in her honor and taking blood samples.
Part 6: Ileosa has retreated to perform a ritual to grant herself eternal youth by sacrificing the lives of everyone she's taken a blood sample of, killing most of the people in Korvosa and leaving the remains under the control of the Church of Asmodeus.

By the time anyone can really suspect Ileosa of being more than just another tyrranical Queen mad with power, she has reached 20th level and has a veritable army of allies under her control and a not-insignificant level of personal power herself.

For the most part, by the time anyone usually knows what's going on in the plot of an Adventure Path, the PCs playing in it are capable of handling it themselves.

I mean, by the same logic, once people have reached a certain level of power, why don't they just take over the world? I mean, why hasn't Gallifrey just gone over to Cheliax and smite/murder all the people in charge, freeing the nation of the control of Asmodeus? Or how about going over to Nidal and killing those who have plunged the nation into the control of Zon-Kuthon?

Why hasn't Superman decided that the world would be better off if he ruled it with an iron fist to prevent any and all crime from further taking place? No one can stop him, and we know that he's a good guy, so he should obviously rule over us right?


Ashiel wrote:
Tels wrote:
Like I said previously, most beings of capable power either don't know of events yet, or don't care to react to it (most of them are villains) or are unable to do anything at that point in time.
Which is part of what I meant about this nagging feeling that the game would have been so much more fun if we were going around Golarion trying to pick up allies...
Ashiel wrote:
Tels wrote:
Then you've got NPCs from Adventure paths who are usually embroiled in the activities of the path and can't leave to go solve a problem elsewhere. For example, Queen Gallifrey is a 15th level Paladin Queen of Mendev, the Sword of Iomedae and resident badass of the crusades, but she can't exactly leave to smite some spoiled little girl of a queen in Korvosa even though it's within her power to do so. She has more important things to do.

Well, that's just the thing. Why not?

It'd take her like what, 15 minutes? Greater teleport, smite, greater teleport. "So what sort of proposals for the new aqueduct system have you councilmen come up with while I stepped out?"

I'm not sure 100% which AP the first one is a gripe about, but speaking generally and personally, the last thing I'd want is some far-off hero of another story to jump in, layeth the smackdown, and vanish while my PCs are still dealing with the low-ranking opposition from the earliest chapters.

Granted, I don't play in Golarion, but my group's homebrew world is one with a fair share of high-level characters around. But to avoid them stealing the show from the PCs or complaints of "well why doesn't (high level NPC #42) deal with the problem" the usual method is to have them busy with something else and their attention away from whatever world-threatening situation the PCs are dealing with in this campaign.

Because the alternative is anticlimactic and boring, even if it is more realistic.


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And that is one of the main reasons why I hate Golarion. If you want to run a camapign using the Inner Sea World Guide, people constantly whine that what just happened in your campaign could never happen because it contradicts one sentence on page 22 of Obscure Golarion Trivia Book #973.

If I start a thread asking for advice on a campaign I'm running, and say that X, Y, and Z already happened, and I am looking for advice handling V, which I expect to happen next, the thread gets hijacked by people saying that Y and Z would never have happened, because of what they read on page 30 of Obscure Golarion Trivia Book #344. No, it doesn't matter if you only use the ISWG, or if your group has modified the setting.

If I'm running an Eberron game and the elf the PCs have been tracking turns out to be a polymorphed dragon, no one cries foul if it doesn't exactly match how the actions of Khorvairian polymorphed dragons are described in Dragons of Eberron. Because people, even fans, understand that you can run the campaign setting with just the core setting book, and even then you are allowed to modify it if everyone playing agrees.

It happens to a much lesser extent with Faerun fans, and rarely if at all with fans of other campaign settings.

There are plenty of things I dislike about the setting itself, but the attitude of its fanbase annoys me just as much.


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Tels wrote:
Ashiel wrote:
Quote:
Then you've got NPCs from Adventure paths who are usually embroiled in the activities of the path and can't leave to go solve a problem elsewhere. For example, Queen Gallifrey is a 15th level Paladin Queen of Mendev, the Sword of Iomedae and resident badass of the crusades, but she can't exactly leave to smite some spoiled little girl of a queen in Korvosa even though it's within her power to do so. She has more important things to do.

Well, that's just the thing. Why not?

It'd take her like what, 15 minutes? Greater teleport, smite, greater teleport. "So what sort of proposals for the new aqueduct system have you councilmen come up with while I stepped out?"

At what point in the story does Ileosa become known to Gallifrey though? Because there is a point in the story where Ileosa is no longer so easily killed.

To avoid confusion (because it's a tricky topic), I'm going to see if I can bullet point my...err..points. :P

Knowledge vs Power
When I asked "Why not?", I was talking about this thing you said:

Quote:
For example, Queen Gallifrey is a 15th level Paladin Queen of Mendev, the Sword of Iomedae and resident badass of the crusades, but she can't exactly leave to smite some spoiled little girl of a queen in Korvosa even though it's within her power to do so. She has more important things to do.

In this point here, you point out that for some reason she just cannot help because of prior responsibilities and such, but I asked why is that because she could quite literally devote maybe a half-hour at best to saving the world. Now, you're 100% right that she'd have no in character reason to ever go smite her, but that's a drastically different reason than the previous reason given which strongly seems to be "doesn't have enough time". That's what I was talking about.

She doesn't have the knowledge IC to go fix things but she would certainly have the means to fix things unless her ever waking moment (which is 24/7 for a Paladin) is somehow accounted for.

Now in Curse of the Crimson Throne, that's A-OK. However, my complaint was about Reign of Winter. Specifically:

Why Reign of Winter Bugged Us

Reign of Winter:
In Reign of Winter, the evil queen BBEG is trying to plunge the entire world into an endless winter because...well because, I never got much into the whys. Point is, she's literally trying to destroy the world. This isn't someone poisoning a king or even becoming a lich or even taking over some land nobody really cares about. It's wrecking the entirety of the world in a way that no one, not even the undead nation of Geb is going to be happy with.

Despite the campaign starting more or less anywhere with the fey plunging little places into frozen winters, the party ends up in Irrison, discovers the plot, gets geased onto one of the dumbest railroad rides in history. Why is it so dumb? Because apparently the queen somehow trapped Baba Yaga out of the material plane and killed her murderous riders. So naturally the only thing to do is to go fight the minions of the big bad, grab a ride at Interplanetary KFC, and go find little fetch things to throw in a pot in hopes of maybe sort of getting Baba Yaga back into the material plane to deal with her daughter. Baba Yaga herself can choke on an uncut watermelon for how much the PCs will end up liking her (because you are constantly reminded throughout the game that she's a wicked old hag that's probably worse than the person you're trying to overthrow), so if you were like us, we were progressively less and less motivated to find Baggy-Pants the further we got in the story.

My character even broke the geas on the party and the only reason we were still actually participating in it was because we didn't want to make a million times more work for our GM by just being like "screw this crap, let's go back to the material plane".

So there you are, and you're expected to go on a convoluted and ultimately very disappointing fetch mission that spans several books, to go get someone that you'd rather stay gone to come back and spank the booty of the BBEG of the campaign because apparently no one else will. But you see, that's the thing...there are two obvious and way more interesting ways of dealing with this entire campaign.

Method #1: Guerrilla Warfare
The first is probably the least certain to work but man, it seems to be a lot of fun in the first AP. Being a thorn in the queen's side while undermining her efforts in an attempt to weaken her powerbase and ultimately end up with a big duel between the party and the queen would be pretty cool but more importantly it would be fun. Instead of some (not even glorified) fetch quests you'd be doing things like rescuing innocents, gaining allies, building a support group and resistance, taking out her movers and shakers, etc.

Method #2: Summon Bigger Fish
Now while it doesn't make a lick of sense for Ms. Paladin Queen to go spank Ileosa (and let's be real, a 15th level Paladin would indeed spank Ileosa, given she's one of the most pathetic 20th level characters ever and also evil), it makes more than enough sense for her to go out and curbstomp the queen of Irrisen. "Sorry, I can't be bothered to not stop an impending super iceage because I have to be here and rule my country in matters that concern it" does not fly when the world is about to be a Popsicle.

But her alone, could she do it? Nope. But now you round up the leaders of the undead nation Geb (who even if the cold doesn't bother them specifically, an endless winter of snow killing all their living livestock is going to piss them off really good). Then go find all those crazy fiendbinders and mages over in Cheliax. I doubt they will enjoy their glorious order being wrecked by someone throwing the world's weather out of whack. Now go find literally every major NPC on the planet who has any reason at all to not want the entire world turned into Elsa's playground.

Because with this scenario...this is the only logical conclusion. The tricky part would be to alert everyone about it and/or obtain a meeting with the big wigs, so voila, you've got a campaign where the PCs travel to different regions in the campaign to warn them about the impending doom and get reinforcements to go smack a witch.

Quote:
I mean, by the same logic, once people have reached a certain level of power, why don't they just take over the world? I mean, why hasn't Gallifrey just gone over to Cheliax and smite/murder all the people in charge, freeing the nation of the control of Asmodeus? Or how about going over to Nidal and killing those who have plunged the nation into the control of Zon-Kuthon?

I've always seen it as being due to upsetting other bigger fish. Tar Baphon for example was chillin' in Ustalav for a good long time and without even openly trying to conquer the world, in come other big fishes to wage a massive war with him. Now pretend that instead of just ruling some orc armies on some other side of the planet, Tar Baphon was actually trying to do something insane like set the world on fire, or turn it into an icecube, or cut it off from the positive energy plane, or do some other world-altering everyone-affecting shenanigans and see how fast every big fish in the sea plus a few deities are knocking on his door. Oh wait, Tar Baphon got almost as much with far less.

See what I mean?


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Ashiel wrote:
What's in the box? wrote:
I was also impressed with the Urgathoa mythos. I have an NPC (Melinoe the Dead Peacock Priestess) who is(was?) in a love/hate relationship with Urgathoa. Idolizing the goddesses ability to ASCEND TO GODHOOD BY PURE WILLPOWER! And hating her own weak stupid mortal flesh that is incapable of doing the same thing...

You must love yourself. It was the Pallid Princess' undying love for herself that freed her from the bondage of death. If you love others as you love yourself then all wounds will be healed. He who believes in she shall have but one death and then everlasting life, but those who do not will die and be dead forever. Won't you join us and help spread the good word and everlasting life?

This sounds remarkably familiar...then again, I technically worship a zombie.

naw, true ressurrection, not animate dead ;)


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The world is at stake kind of plot really does the beg the question of how casters with 9th level spells missed in in the first place.

I mean commune should pick it up.

Will the entire world be drastically altered in way that I do not like in the next year?

I think not even mind blank would cover you since you are asking about the world and not the mind blanked person.

That right there is a reason limit the number of big fish out there.


Kryzbyn wrote:
Ashiel wrote:
What's in the box? wrote:
I was also impressed with the Urgathoa mythos. I have an NPC (Melinoe the Dead Peacock Priestess) who is(was?) in a love/hate relationship with Urgathoa. Idolizing the goddesses ability to ASCEND TO GODHOOD BY PURE WILLPOWER! And hating her own weak stupid mortal flesh that is incapable of doing the same thing...

You must love yourself. It was the Pallid Princess' undying love for herself that freed her from the bondage of death. If you love others as you love yourself then all wounds will be healed. He who believes in she shall have but one death and then everlasting life, but those who do not will die and be dead forever. Won't you join us and help spread the good word and everlasting life?

This sounds remarkably familiar...then again, I technically worship a zombie.

naw, true ressurrection, not animate dead ;)

Create (greater) undead. :D


Ashiel wrote:
Tar Baphon for example was chillin' in Ustalav for a good long time and without even openly trying to conquer the world, in come other big fishes to wage a massive war with him. Now pretend that instead of just ruling some orc armies on some other side of the planet, Tar Baphon was actually trying to do something insane like set the world on fire, or turn it into an icecube, or cut it off from the positive energy plane, or do some other world-altering everyone-affecting shenanigans and see how fast every big fish in the sea plus a few deities are knocking on his door. Oh wait, Tar Baphon got almost as much with far less.

Which brings me to gripe number 2....

Why the hell do the gods, with such events going on REGULARLY in Golarion... Only ever threaten the PCs with Achakek? Sure, it's mentioned he's only supposed to go after anything that might pose a challenge to the gods... But he leaves every other level 20+ character alone for the most part (Runelords, I'm looking at you).... But I recall mention somewhere that if PCs get up to level 20 and start getting mythic power, they're on Achakek's s@%! list. And IF Achakek actually listens to some tribunal of gods as is hinted at... Why hasn't he been sent to ROFLSTOMP the World Wound?

Seriously. Reign of Winter (and a few other APs I've read the premises for) sound like I'd be expecting Achakek to come stomping through before it becomes a huge freaking problem. Why the hell wasn't Achakek thrown out against Tar Baphon, for example?

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