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Wayangs are one of my favorite races in Pathfinder. This is exciting.
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As a thousand PFS characters, each descended from a thaumaturgical superstar, all cried out in unison, "I'm from Inahiyi!"
(Well, not quite unison--a pronunciation guide might be appreciated for some of these exotic locales!)
Gloomspires sound awesome. Shadow anthropology sounds awesome, and could also be a 3rd-level Sorcerer/Wizard spell from the Illusion school. I'm looking forward to both.
Pathfinder Society Lead Developer
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Hrethnar is another gloom spires episode?
As one who has played and run flesh eaters, played labyrinth and run it multiple times, I simply cannot wait to see what happens in 8-15!
Pathfinder Society Scenario #8–15: Hrethnar's Throne takes place in the Gloomspires, yep.
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Isn't Totalcon this weekend?According to its website (see the link in the first paragraph), it's February 23–26.
*looks at that post*
*looks at prep I still have to do*
*groans, goes back to prepping*
(I'm almost done this 8-07 dungeon...)
EDIT: Also - does this one give us a picture for Calisro Benarry? She's currently on top of my list of favorite in-game Venture-Captains.
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Pathfinder Society Lead Developer
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Isn't Totalcon this weekend?According to its website (see the link in the first paragraph), it's February 23–26.*looks at that post*
*looks at prep I still have to do*
*groans, goes back to prepping*
(I'm almost done this 8-07 dungeon...)
EDIT: Also - does this one give us a picture for Calisro Benarry? She's currently on top of my list of favorite in-game Venture-Captains.
We provided art for Calisro Benarry back in #7–19.
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Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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Yay Calisro and her traveling Lodge of awesomeness.
Not so yay anything involving the race that I've only ever seen played for mechanics, not theme.
What theme? I like then so much because the mechanics are so divorced from fluff that they just have this weird mystery about them that you can play with.
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What theme? I like then so much because the mechanics are so divorced from fluff that they just have this weird mystery about them that you can play with.
This comment is exactly what I've a problem with. I've heard them referred to as "bug guys", I've heard them referred to as "goblins" (and played that way), I've most of the time seen them as just normal every day people (which they aren't). That's a problem with me.
There is a theme to Wayang, it's just that theme is utterly foreign to the majority of us as westerners. Nobody really bothers to figure that out, they just see a "small race, no -2 str" and look at it excitedly; or they see their trait list and go "well I have to exploit that" and don't bother with understanding the fairly rare and thematic race.
As much as I abhor Kitsune, Wayang are the one race I wish they hadn't made legal simply because nobody can care to figure them out.
So we get a story that fleshes them out. That boat of putting it into the characters unfortunately has long since passed.
Venture-Captain, Minnesota
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+1 Slanky!
I want there to be fluff! Wayangs are fascinating, but there is nothing substantial in the Pathfinder literature about them. I love some of the odd details with shadows and illusions, but it's not enough for me. I need more! The main reason I haven't played one is story. I need to really grok the story behind the race I'm playing, so that I can play it right.
I love Indonesian Shadow Puppet shows. I love that this race looks like Indonesian Shadow Puppets... but I need a culture too! With Kitsune and Tengu I could fall back on asian folktales. Unfortunately, Wayangs don't have that wealth of folklore behind them.
If they were puppets come to life -- literally popping into being with the force of storytelling -- that would be kind of awesome. But I don't think they are. They are clearly a real race that propogates itself in the usual way, but we know nothing about them.
Hmm
PS Awesome Wayang Art. Kudos to the illustrator!
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I don't think that wayangs are based on any classic mythological creature per se, that may be part of the problem. I mean, there's Indonesian wayang dolls, but those are just puppets representing people drawn in a particular style. And the word wayang just means "shadow".
So it's hard to say that anyone playing a wayang "got it wrong" - there was little to conform to.
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I don't think that wayangs are based on any classic mythological creature per se, that may be part of the problem. I mean, there's Indonesian wayang dolls, but those are just puppets representing people drawn in a particular style. And the word wayang just means "shadow".
So it's hard to say that anyone playing a wayang "got it wrong" - there was little to conform to.
I agree. Specifically, it's a type of shadow puppet theater, or the shadow puppet itself... it seems clear that Indonesian wayang is the inspiration, but what does that mean for the wayang themselves? Not much. We know they bleach and scarify themselves and we know they follow the philosophy of Dissolution but that would seem to be about it. Dragon Empires Gazetteer has this to say:
Their culture seems morbid to most
outsiders, one that idealizes a shadowy state of nonbeing
while demonizing the fierce clarity of light.
They have a patron goddess they don't like, hide from everyone, and are pulled toward neutrality. But then, adventuring wayang may have shirked the warnings of their elders to go explore the world.
So you could make up your own details (which is always fun!) but there's not really a lot to tie into with Wayangs. Not yet, anyway...
Oh, and outside of the "put your stat bonus anywhere" races, they're the only widely-available race with a built-in int bonus besides Elves. So that implies something there, too, but there's not enough context to really dig into it.
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I couldn't agree more with MisterSlanky!
As someone who studied Indonesian language for five years in high school, I was really excited to see Wayangs included as a Pathfinder race. We're so used to seeing Japanese and Chinese cultural influences in our fantasy gaming "Oriental Adventures" (ninja, samurai, tengu, white-haired witch etc), but so rarely those of other asian cultures.
Wayang are Indonesian shadow puppets and have a long theatrical and storytelling history. Troupes would travel from village to village, with performances starting at sundown and continue throughout the night, telling stories of an epic nature until sunrise. And while some Wayang do appear as the hunched, twisted characters portrayed by the Pathfinder race, they can equally be strong and noble heroes. An Indonesian friend created a Wayang hero inspired by Arjuna.
Characterising Wayang as a differently flavoured goblin without doing some rudimentary cultural research (eg Google) into stories told by Indonesian shadow puppet shows, is missing the point of this race.
I'm really looking forward to playing (reading / GMing) this scenario.
I'd like to see Wayang, Tengu and the other "always available" PFS races receive more representation in PFS scenarios and Pathfinder Battles miniatures. These races should be as iconic to our campaigns as Warforged and Dragonborn are to others, and should take a step forward.
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I refer to wangs as Spawn of Cosmo. The one true Trickster God deserves a race of tricksters, thankfully not in His image.
That's an assumption you are having.
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What theme? I like then so much because the mechanics are so divorced from fluff that they just have this weird mystery about them that you can play with.This comment is exactly what I've a problem with. I've heard them referred to as "bug guys", I've heard them referred to as "goblins" (and played that way), I've most of the time seen them as just normal every day people (which they aren't). That's a problem with me.
There is a theme to Wayang, it's just that theme is utterly foreign to the majority of us as westerners. Nobody really bothers to figure that out, they just see a "small race, no -2 str" and look at it excitedly; or they see their trait list and go "well I have to exploit that" and don't bother with understanding the fairly rare and thematic race.
As much as I abhor Kitsune, Wayang are the one race I wish they hadn't made legal simply because nobody can care to figure them out.
So we get a story that fleshes them out. That boat of putting it into the characters unfortunately has long since passed.
A huge problem is that a bunch of sources don't provide much information about them besides physical appearance.
and they tend to view wild predators and civilized
humanoids alike as coconspirators arrayed against them
to exploit, torment, and kill their kind. They gather in
small, tightly knit tribes and prefer to share a communal
existence, recognizing an entire tribe as family rather
than focusing specifically on blood relations, and relying
upon friends and neighbors for support as needed. They
prefer the shadows of dusk or the glories of deep midnight
to the searing light of the day, and while as a people they
are no more predisposed toward evil than they are toward
good, their preference for all things nocturnal has only
enhanced other races’ beliefs that the wayangs are, at
their core, a sinister people not to be trusted.
the end of the Age of Darkness, when the sun’s return
dissolved the interplanar corridors their kind used to
trespass on Golarion from the Shadow Plane. Now trapped
on the Material Plane, mostly in Tian Xia, wayangs toil on
Golarion by night, only to scurry away to hidden villages
when the sun rises. Despite centuries of existence in their
new home, wayangs still think of themselves as creatures of
shadow, and some are still able to hear the faint whispers
of shadowy patrons present in their original home.
Generations of being trapped on a world of inhospitable
brightness has left most wayangs with dour attitudes
toward life, culminating with a philosophy known as “The
Dissolution,” assuring wayangs that, upon their passing,
their souls will finally escape the Material Plane by forever
dissolving into the Shadow Plane. But while many wayangs
are content to endure until the day they join their
ancestors in endless night, others are drawn to
leave their communes in exploration of
the bright unknown, perhaps following
Transformed by Light
the same otherworldly call that brought the first wayangs to
Golarion millennia ago.
Note that in Inner Sea Races, Strix, Androids, Fetchlings, and Ghorans each get 2 full pages to themselves while Wayangs get approximately 1/3 of a page. Wayangs are lumped into a "Dragon Empires" section that is most similar to the "Aliens" entry for Kasathas, Lashunta, etc. The frank and honest answer here is that I don't understand how one can fault players for lacking "wayang theme" when we're presented with so little in-world explanation about them. They do ritual scarification. They stay in their own villages due to xenophobia. They don't like light. They've been trapped on Golarion since the end of the Age of Darkness. That's about all we've got to work with.
I've currently got one wayang character and the sole criterion for selection was "I want to make a light and dark themed caster. Here is a light and dark themed race." From there, I built out an Arcane Trickster.
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Not so yay anything involving the race that I've only ever seen played for mechanics, not theme.
Guilty as charged.
I made my wayang a cavalier, because it was the only way I was going to play one in Society. I had him come from Tian Xia through Galt and pickup a cheesy, outrageous French accent. But I had nothing to go on race-wise other than 'from the East'.
So I made him a huge liar. He's the mightiest knight on life in Galt. He's actually an Eastern goblin, no, an Eastern gnome, depending on the party. Bonneh is the noblest boar a knight could ride. (That last one is actually true.)
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The frank and honest answer here is that I don't understand how one can fault players for lacking "wayang theme" when we're presented with so little in-world explanation about them.
If you're Tian you're doing better than 95% of the Wangs I've seen.
But you gave exactly the reason that Wayangs never should have been approved for a Character race. There's insufficient information to allow them as a player race in the first place.
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Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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What theme? I like then so much because the mechanics are so divorced from fluff that they just have this weird mystery about them that you can play with.This comment is exactly what I've a problem with. I've heard them referred to as "bug guys", I've heard them referred to as "goblins" (and played that way), I've most of the time seen them as just normal every day people (which they aren't). That's a problem with me.
There is a theme to Wayang, it's just that theme is utterly foreign to the majority of us as westerners. Nobody really bothers to figure that out, they just see a "small race, no -2 str" and look at it excitedly; or they see their trait list and go "well I have to exploit that" and don't bother with understanding the fairly rare and thematic race.
As much as I abhor Kitsune, Wayang are the one race I wish they hadn't made legal simply because nobody can care to figure them out.
So we get a story that fleshes them out. That boat of putting it into the characters unfortunately has long since passed.
Inspired by shadow puppets is not enough of a theme and what little mechanics they do have points weird as all questions like what relation they have with gnomes and the Eldest.
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I just fell-back on an old trope to get around the lack of background. Golek was raised by elves. Doesn't know a whole lot about his own people. Well, compared to what he knows about anyone's people.
The creepy appearance plays beautifully into a character that has about as much social sense as Urkel. I think of him as a mix of Elementary's Sherlock and Urkel with poorer social skills than either. But doing the voice can get tiring.
He tends to climb taller people to get a better look. Refers to most people as their Test Subject number (which he calculates for anyone he spends any time with). But, he *very* rarely fails a knowledge check and provides a fairly reliable Aid (or three) per round in combat. I stole someone from here's idea to have him hand out a bag of useful, fairly cheap alchemical items* to the party. I printed business-card sized checklists to hand out to players to keep track of what they have from him.
Great fun to play. I just built on what little I know about the race and made something fun.
I guess I'm a bad munchkin, I forgot they lacked a STR penalty.
*Empiricist Investigator
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Well, then I'd have to say we shouldn't have allowed a lot of the empyreal lords and the like as valid options either. I basically have to make up everything about why my inquisitor worships Keltheald, other than "the halberd was a good choice of weapon for him".
In wholehearted agreement.
You suggested it, not me. ;-)
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The frank and honest answer here is that I don't understand how one can fault players for lacking "wayang theme" when we're presented with so little in-world explanation about them.If you're Tian you're doing better than 95% of the Wangs I've seen.
But you gave exactly the reason that Wayangs never should have been approved for a Character race. There's insufficient information to allow them as a player race in the first place.
And oh, the wangs you've seen...
Mine is Gokan, so I've got that going for me, I guess. I provide the very useful Heightened Continual Flame and Heightened Eclipse Continual Flame service for our lodge. Eclipse Light was one of my favorite cantrips until I replaced the metamagic feat with a rod given the light (haha! puns!) use I was seeing. He also recently obtained some organ donor cards to plant on his victims that should explain any missing kidneys.
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While I too am disappointed in the lack of wayang background, and particularly mourn the fact that Paizo squandered the opportunity to flesh them out in Blood of Shadows, I don't think they should be banned. It's clear that for them, like the Grippli, any PFS adventurer character would have to be an individual that significantly differs from their society's norms. That being said, I think responsible players can take the information Serisan copied, plus the info from Dragon Empires about their uneasy devotion to Lao Shu Po (The Old Rat Woman), and make a rich character.
Personally, I focused on the Lao Shu Po aspect and made an Animal Speaker Bard who talks to rats and will be able to summon rats with his songs. Because Pathfinders need a level of curiosity, I combined that with the inherent desire to hide in the dark, and made him a bit of a harmless creep who likes to spy on people, and then tell stories about it with his Perform: Oratory. So far, the character has been very well received.
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Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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While I too am disappointed in the lack of wayang background, and particularly mourn the fact that Paizo squandered the opportunity to flesh them out in Blood of Shadows, I don't think they should be banned. It's clear that for them, like the Grippli, any PFS adventurer character would have to be an individual that significantly differs from their society's norms. That being said, I think responsible players can take the information Serisan copied, plus the info from Dragon Empires about their uneasy devotion to Lao Shu Po (The Old Rat Woman), and make a rich character.
I feel like that is the boring route. Apparently, one of the other major deities that Wayangs worship quite possibly maybe is Nex.
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Well, then I'd have to say we shouldn't have allowed a lot of the empyreal lords and the like as valid options either. I basically have to make up everything about why my inquisitor worships Keltheald, other than "the halberd was a good choice of weapon for him".In wholehearted agreement.
You suggested it, not me. ;-)
I mean I'm making a Paladin of Lymnieris so long as the Bravo archetype from Heroes of the High Court gets approved >.>. I can assure you that the decision has nothing to do with weapon choices.
Wow! I have to say, Sebastian did an incredible job illustrating Golgatak. He looks better than the image in my own head!
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Well, then I'd have to say we shouldn't have allowed a lot of the empyreal lords and the like as valid options either. I basically have to make up everything about why my inquisitor worships Keltheald, other than "the halberd was a good choice of weapon for him".
Hey, hey, HEY. Slow your roll.
I love the Empyreal Lords. Most of my good characters worship them, and I do my best to RP the elements of them that I can.