Miracles Happen!

Wednesday, January 29, 2020

In my short time here at Paizo, I’ve learned that the production of a book is never an exact science. We know approximately how many words fit on a page and how much space a piece of art takes up. Even with these estimates, there’s always some content that does not make it onto the page. Sometimes, it feels like our books are actively working against us, constantly reshaping themselves and proceeding to taunt us about how we couldn’t fit everything we wanted into the book.

Once again, the books have teamed up with their old ally, physics, to taunt us once more. Even with the power of the gods in our hands, there was some cool content that we had to cut from Lost Omens Gods & Magic. Luckily, we have more tools to fight back against the literary menace known as “a lack of space”—free PDFs! We’ve collected a lot of cool stuff from the cutting room floor, dusted it off, cleaned it up, and are sharing with it you today!

Arazni, goddess of the abused, dignity, and unwilling undeath, stands at the ready while wielding her rapier.

Art by Ksenia Kozhevnikova

Gods & Magic introduced divine intercessions which allow deities to grant boons and curses to characters that have gained the attention of the gods. The book provides intercessions for the twenty core deities, but we had actually intended to provide them for the other twenty deities also showcased in the book, such as Arazni and Gruhastha. Unfortunately, due to a lack of space, these intercessions had to be dropped pretty late in production. Additionally, we never had a great spot to explain the design process for these intercessions to help GMs create their own. Thankfully, all of this great content lives again. We hope everyone enjoys this cool content. If you like what you see in the web supplement and you haven’t yet checked out the book, make sure to snag a copy of Lost Omens Gods & Magic.

Click here to check out the Gods & Magic Web Supplement!

Luis Loza
Developer

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Tags: Lost Omens Gods & Magic Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Pathfinder Second Edition
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Second Seekers (Luwazi Elsebo)

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Huzzah!!

Liberty's Edge

19 people marked this as a favorite.

Achaekek's major curse: when the GM is absolutely out of ****s to give.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber

Awesome! Thank you!


Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Wow, thank you.

The picture of Arazni is pretty awesome!

Also, playing Pathfinder Kingmaker, and it seems like Harrim has Groetus' Major Boon...

Oh, goodness... Hei Feng... Duke of Thunder spare us your attention!

Paizo Employee Organized Play Developer

6 people marked this as a favorite.
Wei Ji the Learner wrote:

Wow, thank you.

The picture of Arazni is pretty awesome!

Also, playing Pathfinder Kingmaker, and it seems like Harrim has Groetus' Major Boon...

Oh, goodness... Hei Feng... Duke of Thunder spare us your attention!

Hei Feng passing out intercessions the way someone would buy the bar a much-unneeded round

Scarab Sages

"Cay'n we't. I c'n' take an' mo'!"

HF: "Y" DON' WANNA BE TH' BUZZKILL NOW, DO YA?"

"Cay'n save me!"


Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

So...
Just out of curiosity, regardless of time frame, would this supplement get onto Archives of Nethys eventually?

Silver Crusade

1 person marked this as a favorite.

ARAZNI!

Silver Crusade

androyd09 wrote:

So...

Just out of curiosity, regardless of time frame, would this supplement get onto Archives of Nethys eventually?

The mechanics most likely.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Too bad you can’t decide number of pages AFTER the content is cohesive. You aren’t victims of your own system, unless said system is fractured. The “We have no control over our own process” excuse shouldn’t be offered publicly: it feels entirely unprofessional.

In my opinion, rapidly producing incomplete products isn’t good for your brand, and is possibly even counterproductive. It’s definitely sloppy.

Hopefully this .pdf doesn’t share the print obfuscation error present around most of the artwork in PFS modules when they are printed out (w/ professional version of Acrobat). Still an unsolved problem.

Silver Crusade

5 people marked this as a favorite.

… that's not how printing books work.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Rysky wrote:
… that's not how printing books work.

Yes it is. Overages of all types are statistically predictable in any mature industry. The content was obviously much too late in the process to allow for adaptation.

One page is entirely inadequate for a minor god with effectively the same powers slots and description needs as a major god.

Silver Crusade

4 people marked this as a favorite.

Like I said, not how printing works, there's timelines, and the books have to be a specific number of pages, you also just can't have the pages be whatever, they have to be in a specific order.

Also variant costs for every book would not be a good idea.

Quote:
One page is entirely inadequate for a minor god with effectively the same powers slots and description needs as a major god.

This is a matter of preference, this is a book on a number of popular deities after all


1 person marked this as a favorite.

“ but we had actually intended to provide them for the other twenty deities also showcased in the book”

Fully half of the gods have incomplete entries.

I suspect the understanding of the shortfall was obvious quite a while ago. A conscious decision to publish an incomplete book must have occurred.

Silver Crusade

3 people marked this as a favorite.

By that reasoning every rulebook ever published is incomplete.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Bottom line.

I have to use two independent resources, in potentially two different formats, to have all of the content.

A complete .pdf on time, followed by a delayed print run would be FAR better.

Silver Crusade

45 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

You got a free web supplement, fully formatted, with art assets, that took time and resources to create, and your first reaction is to criticise?

All of which could have been left on the cutting room floor, and we as an audience might never have seen which is the case with so, so many books.

That's a yike from me.

Paizo Employee Director of Brand Strategy

38 people marked this as a favorite.
AoXoMoXoA wrote:

In my opinion, rapidly producing incomplete products isn’t good for your brand, and is possibly even counterproductive. It’s definitely sloppy.

Adding a 16-page signature to the book after it had been solicited at its predetermined size and price was never an option. Changing the price, size, and weight of a book is far more disruptive to our customers and business partners than releasing the book at the promised size and price while leaving out some rules elements we'd have loved to fit in but couldn't. After all, we cut spells and feats and magic items and setting details from books all the time in order to get all the words to fit on the pages. The only difference with this book is that you know what got cut, and can read and use it in your game if you want.

Paizo Employee Managing Developer

36 people marked this as a favorite.

Furthermore, adding to Mark's post, the authors of that material deserve to have it available for the folks playing our game and I TRULY feel that this material is important for the community. It presents many opportunities for people to play a wide variety of characters (and for GMs to make antagonist cultists) for their games. The developers, designers, editors,and graphic designers also already put in the work into making this material that didn't quite fit into the final book.

That's why this web supplement exists, rather than this extra content sitting on some drive at Paizo.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Having not yet bought the book myself yet, I am thrilled to see extra content for the more niche deities given major coverage within its pages. And I am simply over the moon, er sun, that Shizuru made it in with the other prominent deities presented therein. Working on some Tian Xia specific ideas, and having further knowledge on her eminence in Heaven, as well as Tsukiyo and Hei Feng, will really help see some of my ideas fruition.

The Concordance

These are all very neat!

...dare I say, literally lost omens, in a way? :P

Silver Crusade

21 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
AoXoMoXoA wrote:
Rysky wrote:
… that's not how printing books work.
Yes it is.

No, it isn't.

Mass printers - like the ones Paizo uses in China in order to print their books cheap enough so that you all cheapskates can get your dose of creative writing at a silly price point that makes salaries in RPG industry increasingly out of touch with reality - accept commissions for printing in predetermined blocks (32 or 64 pages IIRC). That's how they get the printing cost down low enough to be able to pay artists and writers a semblance of a reasonable salary.

So, you inevitably end with cutting things to fit into those blocks. If you run over by 8 pages, as it's the case here, your choices are: cut down 8 pages or come up with 24 more, which means adding up to the price (that you already broadcasted to distributors), the weight and size (your warehouse, perhaps surprisingly, isn't infinite) and other considerations I might not be aware of. Faced with that, you cut down, and the cut content sometimes finds its way into another book (which you'll end up having to pay for) or as free web enhancement.

And here you are, complaining about getting free stuff.


3 people marked this as a favorite.

This is awesome. Thank you.

The Exchange

9 people marked this as a favorite.

This is what makes Paizo awesome. They could have thrown away all that stuff, they could have withheld and published it at a later point of time (additional costs for the customer included), but no, instead they decide to put it in a PDF and giving it to us completely free.

Thank you for that.


17 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Paizo: Here, have some game content for free!
Customer: That's sloppy and unprofessional of you.

What a world.


4 people marked this as a favorite.

Thank you for this, Paizo!
\(^o^)/

--C.


3 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Thanks for this Paizo.

As others have said above (for the most part) this sort of thing is what makes you a special company that inspires real loyalty from customers. Great work.


Arazni became a deity in the minor timeskip? Did she free herself from Geb's yoke and undo her undead state somehow (a mythic True Resurrection spell perhaps)? Did she take the Trials of the Starstone? I've got to read more about this!

Silver Crusade

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Berselius wrote:
Arazni became a deity in the minor timeskip? Did she free herself from Geb's yoke and undo her undead state somehow (a mythic True Resurrection spell perhaps)? Did she take the Trials of the Starstone? I've got to read more about this!

The events play out during the Tyrant’s Grasp AP.


9 people marked this as a favorite.

Oh wow, a web supplement!
When was the last time Paizo added game content in a web supplement?
Neat!


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Shisumo wrote:
Achaekek's major curse: when the GM is absolutely out of ****s to give.

Think of it as a more focused version of the old Hastur trick...


5 people marked this as a favorite.
Gorbacz wrote:
(your warehouse, perhaps surprisingly, isn't infinite)

I mean, a warehouse of holding is pretty average for, what, a 3rd or 4th level publisher? 6th if you spend a lot of money on enchanting your weapon first?


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Berselius wrote:
Arazni became a deity in the minor timeskip? Did she free herself from Geb's yoke and undo her undead state somehow (a mythic True Resurrection spell perhaps)? Did she take the Trials of the Starstone? I've got to read more about this!

Arazni freed herself from Geb's yoke and undid her undead state by.

Spoiler:
She used Tar-Baphon's superweapon to enable her to not be reformed at her phylactery when it destroyed her

Dark Archive

Quintus E Deveron wrote:
Berselius wrote:
Arazni became a deity in the minor timeskip? Did she free herself from Geb's yoke and undo her undead state somehow (a mythic True Resurrection spell perhaps)? Did she take the Trials of the Starstone? I've got to read more about this!

Arazni freed herself from Geb's yoke and undid her undead state by.

** spoiler omitted **

I'm aware of this, but I'm still not sure that this jumped her to godhood. I could also use some more explanation of this.


Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

She was already a god before the events of Tyrant's Grasp, IIRC.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Arazni WAS a god with god article back as mythic character in 1e :p She even had boons for all three prestige classes all articles provide options for


There's also a mythic fey from Ironfang Legion AP who suddenly appeared as a demi(?)god in the back table of Gods and Magic.

It's possible that the only retcon is that quasi-deities who in PF1 granted minimal domains/spells via mythic power are now equivalent to full deities from a player perspective, and that the "other 20" are based on importance/interest to PCs, not actual power. So in this interpretation Arazni is still a mythic wizard who can grant spells/domains, it's just that now she can do it as well as Pharasma and earns a spot with real gods despite being quite killable.

Similar for Cassandalee, who would be a demigod.


Very cool!


4 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Okay, I just noticed

Kingmaker CRPG spoilers:
that Groetus' major boon is the Touch of Unmaking that Harrim is blessed/cursed with in Kingmaker
and that completely made my day. Thank you, Paizo.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Also... James' avatar... never knew how badly a particular avatar could be desired before... :>


1 person marked this as a favorite.

This is a very nice gift! Thank you, Paizo!

Dark Archive

1 person marked this as a favorite.

This is so great to see. Thanks for putting this together and releasing it!

Grand Lodge

8 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

This is wonderful. Thank you Paizo for this lovely gift. Don't let the grumps get you down -- they're not the majority of your customer base.

You do know that most of us think this totally awesome, right?

Hmm

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8

2 people marked this as a favorite.

I'm not playing PF2, but I do like this supliment. Almost makes we want to get the new book just to see what I can backwards port.

Scarab Sages

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Wei Ji the Learner wrote:


Oh, goodness... Hei Feng... Duke of Thunder spare us your attention!

I only just now noticed Hei Feng and Ranginori were both called the 'Duke of Thunder'

Dark Archive

3 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
NECR0G1ANT wrote:
Wei Ji the Learner wrote:


Oh, goodness... Hei Feng... Duke of Thunder spare us your attention!

I only just now noticed Hei Feng and Ranginori were both called the 'Duke of Thunder'

That is probably why Ranginori has now a new title :p He noticed someone stole his copyright while he was sealed!

Hei Feng, that feathery fiend! :D


3 people marked this as a favorite.

It's not theft if it's not in-use for a few millenia... Copyrights DO expire.


3 people marked this as a favorite.

Top marks for this bit extra, thank you! Anything that gives me more about my main moon Grotus is always always welcome, even if I can't be a CG cleric anymore.

This is I want to say the second or third web supplement that's come out so far? I'm liking the trend. I wonder if this will be the norm going forward, handing out small bits to further tease products.


3 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

I am so dang happy you're releasing extra content like this. Thank you!

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