Tian Xia: Coming 2023–2024!

Aeshuura wrote:

I skimmed this whole thing and no one made any mention of my favorite comment. Will we be getting a Momotarou peach leshy ancestry option?!?

They straight-up said it. Yes. Yes we will.

Yet, it seems that no one is excited about it but me... :(

I don't think that is the case. For one I am particularly excited about it but I am also excited about a bunch of stuff too. You may be one of the first people to mention it because maybe someone chose to focus on their favorite thing that is something else or because they chose to bounce off of what everyone else was talking about.

Sanityfaerie wrote:

Aeshuura wrote:

I skimmed this whole thing and no one made any mention of my favorite comment. Will we be getting a Momotarou peach leshy ancestry option?!?

They straight-up said it. Yes. Yes we will.

Yet, it seems that no one is excited about it but me... :(

I am! It's adorable (but of course it is, it's a leshy :P )!

If you had a party with one of them, a vanara, a shoony and...a tengu? Maybe a beastkin?...you'd be able to replicate the entire crew from the folktale!

Aeshuura wrote:

Sanityfaerie wrote:

Aeshuura wrote:

I skimmed this whole thing and no one made any mention of my favorite comment. Will we be getting a Momotarou peach leshy ancestry option?!?

They straight-up said it. Yes. Yes we will.

Yet, it seems that no one is excited about it but me... :(

I am! It's adorable (but of course it is, it's a leshy :P )!

If you had a party with one of them, a vanara, a shoony and...a tengu? Maybe a beastkin?...you'd be able to replicate the entire crew from the folktale!

Yess! MO-mo-tarou-san, Momotarou-san... Share your kibi-dango with me!

My wife is from the Okayama prefecture, the home of the Momotarou tales! Every time we visit her family, I make sure to bring back some kibi-dango!

I don't think that is the case. For one I am particularly excited about it but I am also excited about a bunch of stuff too. You may be one of the first people to mention it because maybe someone chose to focus on their favorite thing that is something else or because they chose to bounce off of what everyone else was talking about.

It is more than likely that you are correct. I was just sad that the discourse was more of the same... I am super happy though, that many of my Twitter friends are contributors on these, and that they are expanding all of the Asian analogues through Golarion! Sharing cultural tidbits from Southeast Asia in addition to the typical Chinese, Korean, and Japanese flavor will make my upcoming Celestial Regent campaign much better. As they pass over the Crown of the World, I want them to feel a definite difference between Golarion's Mongolia and through Northern China, then later through Southern China...

Having a map of Tian Xia will help me track their journey as well... ^_^

keftiu wrote:

Lost Omens books are never gonna be the place you find a new class.

Why do those concepts need standalone classes? What is a full Samurai providing to the game that a Fighter from Minkai in full O-Yoroi with a katana isn't?

The PF2 classes are all pretty broad, archetypal identities: you can find Rogues and Sorcerers and Psychics in all sorts of cultures, on every continent. Making new ones that are tightly-bound to specific geography is a losing bet.

I know that Lost Omens books typically don't give us new class content that's why I asking some prediction for more cultural related classes books.

IMO I think these concepts deserve a standalone class. They are far from main Fighter concept meets. Samurais for example have all sort of ritualist and spiritual context over it.

I'm very much against them having their own classes.

Doing so rapidly launches us into the 'old days' of ethnic stereotypes.

A Ninja is basically a Rogue with a different surname than one from Absalom.
A samurai is basically a Fighter or a Champion with a different surname than one from Absalom.

The moment you make them their own classes you've landed into "orientalism" - the othering of us Asian (or part Asian in my case) folk into a fetish / exoticization.

All you need is a few class feats on Fighter / Champion, and perhaps on Rogue. I'm not really sure you even need that because frankly I can't think of one that exists unless I start listing off ethnic stereotypes.

The other thing we should avoid here is making the setting 'All about this one part of Asia that has the cool movie with the hot chicks' and acting like all of Tian Xia is that. Ie: the very existence of Samurai and Ninja somewhat does that.

As an Asian... I'll just note that if you don't think an English Longbowman has any 'rituals and special things' to it, or that 'Joan of Arc' (a classic example for a Champion) doesn't need "spiritual context" then we need to go back to history / mythology class. Or we could look to 'he special rules needed to portray the heroic devotion of the Swiss Papal Guard or a Hungarian Horse Archer.

Because we can all sit here and 'exoticize / other' each other all day long with this stuff.

Let's just... not.

YuriP wrote:

keftiu wrote:

Lost Omens books are never gonna be the place you find a new class.

Why do those concepts need standalone classes? What is a full Samurai providing to the game that a Fighter from Minkai in full O-Yoroi with a katana isn't?

The PF2 classes are all pretty broad, archetypal identities: you can find Rogues and Sorcerers and Psychics in all sorts of cultures, on every continent. Making new ones that are tightly-bound to specific geography is a losing bet.

I know that Lost Omens books typically don't give us new class content that's why I asking some prediction for more cultural related classes books.

IMO I think these concepts deserve a standalone class. They are far from main Fighter concept meets. Samurais for example have all sort of ritualist and spiritual context over it.

I'm very much against them having their own classes.

Doing so rapidly launches us into the 'old days' of ethnic stereotypes.

A Ninja is basically a Rogue with a different surname than one from Absalom.
A samurai is basically a Fighter or a Champion with a different surname than one from Absalom.

The moment you make them their own classes you've landed into "orientalism" - the othering of us Asian (or part Asian in my case) folk into a fetish / exoticization.

All you need is a few class feats on Fighter / Champion, and perhaps on Rogue. I'm not really sure you even need that because frankly I can't think of one that exists unless I start listing off ethnic stereotypes.

The other thing we should avoid here is making the setting 'All about this one part of Asia that has the cool movie with the hot chicks' and acting like all of Tian Xia is that. Ie: the very existence of Samurai and Ninja somewhat does that.

As an Asian... I'll just note that if you don't think an English Longbowman has any 'rituals and special things' to it, or that 'Joan of Arc' (a classic...

I like the idea of making them Archetypes. Samurai was more of a caste than a job. This way you could easily have a samurai that is like Genjuro (from Samurai Spirits) using a Barbarian as a base, versus the Tachibana Ukyo (also from Samurai Spirits) where you may take Swashbuckler as a base. This way, they could have access to types of training that is afforded by their status rather than all be shoehorned into a class.

Same with Shinobi, some were assassins, some were spies. What their specialty was defined their training. I feel like it would be better served as an archetype that granted access to feats outside their training.

Anyway, I second your points about reducing Asia to specific tropes, and am happy that these books will introduce other cultures of Asia that have a little less exposure. ^_^

YuriP wrote:

keftiu wrote:

Lost Omens books are never gonna be the place you find a new class.

Why do those concepts need standalone classes? What is a full Samurai providing to the game that a Fighter from Minkai in full O-Yoroi with a katana isn't?

The PF2 classes are all pretty broad, archetypal identities: you can find Rogues and Sorcerers and Psychics in all sorts of cultures, on every continent. Making new ones that are tightly-bound to specific geography is a losing bet.

I know that Lost Omens books typically don't give us new class content that's why I asking some prediction for more cultural related classes books.

IMO I think these concepts deserve a standalone class. They are far from main Fighter concept meets. Samurais for example have all sort of ritualist and spiritual context over it.

I'm very much against them having their own classes.

Doing so rapidly launches us into the 'old days' of ethnic stereotypes.

A Ninja is basically a Rogue with a different surname than one from Absalom.
A samurai is basically a Fighter or a Champion with a different surname than one from Absalom.

The moment you make them their own classes you've landed into "orientalism" - the othering of us Asian (or part Asian in my case) folk into a fetish / exoticization.

All you need is a few class feats on Fighter / Champion, and perhaps on Rogue. I'm not really sure you even need that because frankly I can't think of one that exists unless I start listing off ethnic stereotypes.

The other thing we should avoid here is making the setting 'All about this one part of Asia that has the cool movie with the hot chicks' and acting like all of Tian Xia is that. Ie: the very existence of Samurai and Ninja somewhat does that.

As an Asian... I'll just note that if you don't think an English Longbowman has any 'rituals and special things' to it, or that 'Joan of Arc' (a classic...

I was going to add onto this but I think it's more or less been said. Whatever is game-mechanically missing from Rogue to make a 'ninja' should probably be a thing any spy/assassin style rogue could do through feats, or an archetype akin to Shadowdancer. Alternatively, if we're talking Naruto/FFXIV and other more flashy ninjas, perhaps an archetype more suited to spellcasting.

I'll grant there's possibly a full class concept to be gained from certain expressions of 'ninja' but at that point I'd rather not call it 'ninja' for the same reason why we don't call Rangers 'yeoman'. The intersection of stealthy spy and spellcasting/supernatural abilities probably has broader applicability than Minkai--the Lion Blades of Taldor, for example.

This goes double for samurai.

Unpopular opinion: I am one of the few that is not hyped for this. I'm certainly glad that a lot of people are getting something they've been asking for but ... the 1e Tian Xia stuff, to me at least, wasn't interesting ... like at all. Nearly every take on Asian-inspired RPG supplements and settings has always fallen flat and felt either lazy, feeding WAY too much into tropes and stereotypes, or seemed like they were trying too hard to avoid basically everything about Asian pop culture and fantasy that's been consumed/created before and then done to death, or simply just... poorly written and illustrated.

I'm also a bit, erm, put off is a good way to put it I guess, by the fact that there are 42 individual authors/writers all working on this project... that's more people than who wrote for the Core Rulebook and the Lost Omens World Guide combined which represents an exponentially larger scope than these two books. It feels like a too-many-cooks situation just WAITING to happen. Perhaps I'm a bit mistaken and among those writers cited in the blog post there are a ton of graphic artists listed as well...

Anyhow, that's my take, I hope it turns out great but it's not what I was personally hoping for and I hope my apprehension and concern about the style and immense writing team turn out to be moot, I just figured I'd chime in on the topic with something other than praise, thanks, and fawning as pretty much the entire rest of this thread is loaded with it.

Unpopular opinion: I am one of the few that is not hyped for this. I'm certainly glad that a lot of people are getting something they've been asking for but ... the 1e Tian Xia stuff, to me at least, wasn't interesting ... like at all. Nearly every take on Asian-inspired RPG supplements and settings has always fallen flat and felt either lazy, feeding WAY too much into tropes and stereotypes, or seemed like they were trying too hard to avoid basically everything about Asian pop culture and fantasy that's been consumed/created before and then done to death, or simply just... poorly written and illustrated.

I'll bite: if you don't want to do old tropes, but you don't want to avoid pop culture, and you don't want to hire a bunch of Asian writers... how should they do Tian Xia?

Having played 1E and 3.5 Oriental Adventures, were wu-jen something created by Gygax? I think that the are really no more need for Henjikai or even the Spirit Folk.

Unpopular opinion: I am one of the few that is not hyped for this. I'm certainly glad that a lot of people are getting something they've been asking for but ... the 1e Tian Xia stuff, to me at least, wasn't interesting ... like at all. Nearly every take on Asian-inspired RPG supplements and settings has always fallen flat and felt either lazy, feeding WAY too much into tropes and stereotypes, or seemed like they were trying too hard to avoid basically everything about Asian pop culture and fantasy that's been consumed/created before and then done to death, or simply just... poorly written and illustrated.

I'm also a bit, erm, put off is a good way to put it I guess, by the fact that there are 42 individual authors/writers all working on this project... that's more people than who wrote for the Core Rulebook and the Lost Omens World Guide combined which represents an exponentially larger scope than these two books. It feels like a too-many-cooks situation just WAITING to happen. Perhaps I'm a bit mistaken and among those writers cited in the blog post there are a ton of graphic artists listed as well...

Anyhow, that's my take, I hope it turns out great but it's not what I was personally hoping for and I hope my apprehension and concern about the style and immense writing team turn out to be moot, I just figured I'd chime in on the topic with something other than praise, thanks, and fawning as pretty much the entire rest of this thread is loaded with it.

So... this is a bit unusual, but the stuff driving the "huge number of writers' thing is basically intended to be the fix for the "asian takes always fall flat" thing. If I'm reading this right, the idea is that they grab as many capable, competent authors from the countries in question as they can, and they split them out into little groups so that Golarion!Vietnam is written by people who have personal roots in Vietnam, and so forth. In essence, it's not that it's one book written by 42 writers. It's that it's lots and lots of little books written by two or three writers each and then edited into a cohesive whole.

As far as I can tell, this is very nearly the best of all possible worlds as far as writing this kind of thing. For every one of those places, we get a small team of capable writers who know the deep lore of the territory because it *is* their background, who won't feel inclined to go to stereotypes or feel some weird need to avoid pop culture or whatever because it is their background, and who will have all sorts of glorious, glorious independent motivation to make this particular effort really good, because, you know, it seriously touches stuff that they personally care a lot about.

But yeah. It's not the usual way of doing things. On the other hand... well, you've seen the results of the usual way of doing things, no?

After a thinking a bit, I feel like the whole samurai/ninja debate might not be worth it to have. The writers will do what they want to do, if they include archetypes for those then they'll likely have a good justification behind it and are capable enough to find a way to handle it respectfully, and if they don't then they'll have a good reason for that and we'll get a lot of cool new stuff in it anyways. I do still think it would be really difficult to pull those off in a way that isn't offensive, but I think I'd prefer to talk about how excited I am for this book rather than debating over options that may or may not be included.

Having played 1E and 3.5 Oriental Adventures, were wu-jen something created by Gygax? I think that the are really no more need for Henjikai or even the Spirit Folk.

I think it may have been a bastardization of one of the various uses of the term Wu that refers to a Shaman or Sorcerer and possibly an attempt to take -jin from Japanese and shove them together. I have no proof, but there is no wu jien or wu jian that I have found to equate to D&D's wujen.

I don't know, maybe hiring an absolute TON of writers could inject freshness and a great new spin to this setting material, especially if they're new to TTRPG writing but I can't help but think that the end result will have to end up being that every article about the regions, culture, people, and whatnot will end up being done in a noticeably different style since if they have so many people tending to the stew they're all only going to get something like two to four pages (which themselves will be 1/3rd art/layout) each leaving it as a mishmash of writing styles and techniques.

On the other end of the potentiality of this many writers is that after editorial, sensitivity screening, and rewriting all of it the whole of it is going to end up being "mushed" into a more singular averaged style which in itself doesn't seem like an ideal approach to presenting something that's a cohesive and authentic, rather, when leveled out it could instead end up being very middle or the road stuff.

It's just... a LOT of writers, like, WAY more than one would ever reasonably expect and I can't help but feel like having that many people on it, again, more than were devoted to the entire CRB and the main setting/lore book for the game, could create more problems than solutions.

Will good direction and editing, it can be smoothed enough to keep the tone the same. We will see how it turns out!

Terevalis Unctio of House Mysti wrote:

Having played 1E and 3.5 Oriental Adventures, were wu-jen something created by Gygax? I think that the are really no more need for Henjikai or even the Spirit Folk.

I think it may have been a bastardization of one of the various uses of the term Wu that refers to a Shaman or Sorcerer and possibly an attempt to take -jin from Japanese and shove them together. I have no proof, but there is no wu jien or wu jian that I have found to equate to D&D's wujen.

that is a good guess

could also be wu jing

jing is very difficult to translate

could mean spirit

It's just... a LOT of writers, like, WAY more than one would ever reasonably expect and I can't help but feel like having that many people on it, again, more than were devoted to the entire CRB and the main setting/lore book for the game, could create more problems than solutions.

This is two Lost Omens books plus a four-volume AP, and it's covering a lot of prior canon that's pretty dicey in some places and underbaked in others. Lost Omens: The Mwangi Expanse was one book with 25 writers credited - is less than double that for twice the books, covering an entire continent rather than one Meta-Region, really so crazy?

The CRB, as a primarily-mechanical text, doesn't really work as a comparison to a LO release like this, and the LOWG was more about catching the reader up on Golarion canon than any sort of deep, meaningful representation for anybody. Again, the closest things are the Mwangi and Impossible Lands books - prior projects where Paizo made sure non-European fantasy settings had diverse rosters backing them up.

I have been waiting for this campaign setting since the Dragon Empires Gazetteer came out over ten years ago! And we are getting TWO BOOKS? Fantastic! I can't wait to see what there two hold!

Terevalis Unctio of House Mysti wrote:

Having played 1E and 3.5 Oriental Adventures, were wu-jen something created by Gygax? I think that the are really no more need for Henjikai or even the Spirit Folk.

I think it may have been a bastardization of one of the various uses of the term Wu that refers to a Shaman or Sorcerer and possibly an attempt to take -jin from Japanese and shove them together. I have no proof, but there is no wu jien or wu jian that I have found to equate to D&D's wujen.

Chinese as far as I know. Wu Jen in the Wade-Giles transliteration system is the equivilent to Wu Ren 巫人 : literally 'Magic Person' but can mean witch, sorcerer or shaman.

A Ninja is basically a Rogue with a different surname than one from Absalom.

A samurai is basically a Fighter or a Champion with a different surname than one from Absalom.

The moment you make them their own classes you've landed into "orientalism" - the othering of us Asian (or part Asian in my case) folk into a fetish / exoticization.

All you need is a few class feats on Fighter / Champion, and perhaps on Rogue. I'm not really sure you even need that because frankly I can't think of one that exists unless I start listing off ethnic stereotypes.

Archetypes seem like the way to go, potentially several for each "type" (e.g. poison master ninja being different from martial artist ninja). I could also see a single archetype for each type that you could then add to different classes to cover these (e.g. poisoner ninja would be an alchemist with the ninja archetype, not a rogue with the poisoner ninja archetype).

I don't know, maybe hiring an absolute TON of writers could inject freshness and a great new spin to this setting material, especially if they're new to TTRPG writing but I can't help but think that the end result will have to end up being that every article about the regions, culture, people, and whatnot will end up being done in a noticeably different style since if they have so many people tending to the stew they're all only going to get something like two to four pages (which themselves will be 1/3rd art/layout) each leaving it as a mishmash of writing styles and techniques.

On the other end of the potentiality of this many writers is that after editorial, sensitivity screening, and rewriting all of it the whole of it is going to end up being "mushed" into a more singular averaged style which in itself doesn't seem like an ideal approach to presenting something that's a cohesive and authentic, rather, when leveled out it could instead end up being very middle or the road stuff.

It's just... a LOT of writers, like, WAY more than one would ever reasonably expect and I can't help but feel like having that many people on it, again, more than were devoted to the entire CRB and the main setting/lore book for the game, could create more problems than solutions.

You understand what an editor does, right? They're literally there to make sure everything works together in a book with many writers.

The Shenmen AP is giving me some strong "The Wailing" vibes, which makes sense given I I think James Jacobs has been a fan of recent Korean horror (Which is awesome, and I heartily recommend folks check out).

For ancestries, that fish thing people keeping point to, to me looks kind of dragon-like. Dragonborn are a often requested ancestry that Paizo has shied away from. Given the histories of some of the nations in the setting, a "Asian Dragon" inspired "Dragonborn" could be a cool and original take, and there are even draconic humanoids in Chinese art and folklore. I also wouldn't take that artwork of the various yokai on the bridge too seriously as evidence of races; It's clearly homaging other portrayals of yokai.

On character options, to me a Samurai just feels like a knight with different regional flavoring. BUT I do see the Ninjas being sort of there own niche, as being mystical assassin/spies. Given the existence of Not!Mongolia and Not!Korea at the very least A shaman class could also be appropriate, assuming they haven't created one that I missed (I am still catching up). That said I am not going to be shocked to not see a new full class.

As far as ninja being region specific? eh, it's not more specific than druid.

Perhaps the Orang-pendak can make a return as an ancestry? Perhaps a heritage of a broader ancestry of Yeti type characters.

Because we can all sit here and 'exoticize / other' each other all day long with this stuff.

It's awfully reductionist to look at someone pointing to specific fictional archetypes and concepts they want to see represented in Pathfinder and try to handwave it all away as "exoticism" though, isn't it?

We want positive representation and we want to avoid othering in design elements, but there are also clearly concepts and idea, particularly ones that aren't as common in the eurocentric fiction D&D and its offshoots draw from, that Pathfinder does not enable particularly well and it's neither unreasonable nor insensitive for people to wish to see some kind of mechanics to enable these ideas.

I hadn't looked closely at the boat race image until just now and can I say how much I appreciate the subtle diversity of the racers? At a glance you might assume that basically all the oarsfolk were more or less human, with the main exception being whether you noticed the drummer on the orange boat. Taking a closer look and you find that there's at least 8 people of half- or non-human descent.

I love this sort of casual cosmopolitan vibe in settings. It can be easy to default to assuming that 'mostly human' means basically human with one or two off-screen exceptions that stand out from the norm. It's another thing entirely to see these different people as members of the same team, at once distinct looking but intensely unified in their purpose and group identity.

Has anybody asked if that might be a sahuagin, by the way? Because that's the first aquatic ancestry that pops into mind when I see that art.

The head shape isn’t quite right for a Sahuagin, IMO, but I could be wrong. I made a Reddit thread asking what the guesses could be, and the leading thought is that it’s probably that new Bakuwa Iruxi heritage?

Personally I don't think the boat race picture is very good. Maybe its supposed to be a different ancestry, but that neck of the first red rower just looks wrong (and also the second one which has the near exact same pose).

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Why now?

Loved to have seen this content for PF1 to fill in that region of the world for PF1.

Oh please back port mechanics to PF1. I sure the lore will be amazing and can be used as is for PF1, even though written for PF2.

If you want the mechanics in P1 you’ll have to do it yourself or wait for someone on Infinite to do it. Paizo isn’t doing it.

The head shape isn’t quite right for a Sahuagin, IMO, but I could be wrong. I made a Reddit thread asking what the guesses could be, and the leading thought is that it’s probably that new Bakuwa Iruxi heritage?

It's probably a lizard, yea, but that fish-like hinge in the jaw is really throwing me for a loop

I have to ask, are we going to have playable ninja? If so, are they going to appear as an archetype or as something like a Rogue's Racket?

You already have a playable Ninja, it's called Rogue. It even has some classic Ninja stuff, such as Hidden Paragon or Cloud Step.

I have to ask, are we going to have playable ninja? If so, are they going to appear as an archetype or as something like a Rogue's Racket?

I would say its very likely, but no one knows. After all Viking is an Archetype so in terms of precedent we'll probably end up with some rules option labeled 'Ninja.'

I'm very much against them having their own classes.

Doing so rapidly launches us into the 'old days' of ethnic stereotypes.

(Hopefully I got my quote attribution right.)

I'm not looking for an "oriental" reskin of existing classes either. Aside from any cultural squikiness, it isn't necessary as you point out.
My group had a Tian Xia themed champion in a game that was well played both mechanically and RP-wise, with no need for a new class or archetype.

Rogues are also a good example: there have always been archetypes and backgrounds that add particular flavor to rogues without making new classes, like assassins, but also pirate brotherhoods, spy associataions, and what have you.

I'd rather not see new classes for concepts better played with RP and/or possibly an archetype option. I do like classes that have their own mechanics like the upcoming kineticst so not opposed to new classes.

Overall, though, rather than new classes, I'd rather see more ancestry, class and archetypes feats, maybe some more archetypes, although there are a lot of archetypes already. More APG and Lost Omens ancestry guides without the new classes :)

And more regional focus, Darklands, other continents, maybe the solar system (not my thing but a lot of players really like that and would build on several existing AP)

Saving ACP for a Tanuki!

A "Ninjutsu Apprentice" archetype would probably be more appropriate than a Ninja class, especially if we're talking about the high-fantasy kind.

Loving the geo map and the art work. This does sound fantastic. For those late to the party, is there any chance on the Jade Regent AP getting some love on Drive Thru RPG? With all of the HYPE, I am hoping that this request is up for consideration. I have books 3 & 5, which can still be purchased through Paizo, but the others are out-of-print. I purchased a few of the other OoP AP books from Drive Thru RPG and am satisfied with the quality. I already have the PDF's but would be interested in physical copies.

IMO I think these concepts deserve a standalone class. They are far from main Fighter concept meets. Samurais for example have all sort of ritualist and spiritual context over it. For example they have a hard mental training that don't feats having will as it's weakest save also due many spiritual relationship to everything the samurai respects and honor their weapons like living things. It's would be very interesting if this had some mechanical effects (maybe focus spells) related to this, also like monks they have some ki concept too making them perfect to mix many fighter and monks characteristics.

Have you looked at a Thaumaturge with a Weapon Implement that is their inherited weapon? They are expert in Will and Fortitude saves and quite capable of being built as front line melee.

A rogue racket that gives some of the Tien weapons would be appropriate, but I don’t think that it requires a new class to play a shinobi. An archetype could also most likely do it.

The head shape isn’t quite right for a Sahuagin, IMO, but I could be wrong. I made a Reddit thread asking what the guesses could be, and the leading thought is that it’s probably that new Bakuwa Iruxi heritage?

Paizo's often made some redesigns for monstrous ancestries even within this edition, I mean look at the Bestiary's orc art compared to their art in the APG or Ancestry Guide. The fins on the back and tail just look too similar to the sahuagin to be anything else imo, I'm betting they just got a slight redesign to look friendlier, which hopefully could point to them making it in as a playable ancestry.

I really feel from this thread the biggest problem that comes up with the Ninja class is the name and if they'd be able to come up with a more generic name for that feels as if it could be used in any type of setting people would probably be more receptive to it and just to respond to any future replies about it only being suitable for a class archetype you could say the same for Gunslinger, Investigator and Swashbuckler imo but they were able to make those be their own classes

A good reason to do archetypes for things that represent a very broad range of characters in a specific genre of fiction is that it allows you to represent this by applying the archetype to several different classes.

Like there's no reason your Samurai couldn't be a Fighter, Ranger, Swashbuckler, or Champion really. There's no reason your Ninja couldn't be a Rogue, Investigator, Inventor, or Magus too.

I think the monk is a pretty positive example of a class inspired by Asian tropes that avoids negatively representing those tropes. Building a whole class out of a character archetype like that allows you to give them more variety and room to breathe than if you just said "build an unarmed fighter/rogue" or "make it an archetype;" it's the same reason why we have swashbuckler and investigator instead of particular fighter or rogue builds. Even now, there's no reason why you couldn't make your unarmed rogue character be a monk in-story, but I think the game would be lesser without having monk the class.

I have pretty good confidence in Paizo to be able to thread that needle with similar concepts, although I agree that it probably shouldn't be Ninja the class name/flavor at this point and something a little broader.

That said, what I'm mainly interested in seeing myself right now (as far as specifics beyond a more general larger-than-life wuxia-/anime-trope-inspired abilities) is the iaido unsheathe-Strike-sheathe fighting style, and an option that enables a martial to throw fulus/ofuda as weapons, possibly with various rider effects. Both of those could be accomplished with archetypes for the most part, even if I think they'd also work as class paths within larger class concepts, so I'll be happy if they or concepts similar to them are there in archetype form too.

Aeshuura wrote:

Terevalis Unctio of House Mysti wrote:

Having played 1E and 3.5 Oriental Adventures, were wu-jen something created by Gygax? I think that the are really no more need for Henjikai or even the Spirit Folk.

I think it may have been a bastardization of one of the various uses of the term Wu that refers to a Shaman or Sorcerer and possibly an attempt to take -jin from Japanese and shove them together. I have no proof, but there is no wu jien or wu jian that I have found to equate to D&D's wujen.

Chinese as far as I know. Wu Jen in the Wade-Giles transliteration system is the equivilent to Wu Ren 巫人 : literally 'Magic Person' but can mean witch, sorcerer or shaman.

Interesting. Thank you for sharing.

This looks really nice. I'll be getting the setting book for sure. Maybe even the AP, just for the material.

monk is good example of functional class

the weapon with monk trait make no sense at all

A good reason to do archetypes for things that represent a very broad range of characters in a specific genre of fiction is that it allows you to represent this by applying the archetype to several different classes.

Like there's no reason your Samurai couldn't be a Fighter, Ranger, Swashbuckler, or Champion really. There's no reason your Ninja couldn't be a Rogue, Investigator, Inventor, or Magus too.

There's also no reason for Swashbuckler and Investigator to be a class but they are. Even Magus could be a class archetype. Yet the Paizo designers felt that is not enough and they turn such concept as a class.

I still don't think that the normal fighter features and many feats (like shield block and many shield related feats) fits well in a fantasy samurai context and I still think that an archetype isn't enough to do this too (maybe a class archetype). Same for Ninjas like a reskined rogue it, specially with the rogue limited set of weapons also both of them can have many ki focus feats interactions like monks have.

That's why I'm complaining about this. We will receive a vast content of Tian Xia but most classes of the game will look like outsiders in the region.

PossibleCabbage wrote:

A good reason to do archetypes for things that represent a very broad range of characters in a specific genre of fiction is that it allows you to represent this by applying the archetype to several different classes.

Like there's no reason your Samurai couldn't be a Fighter, Ranger, Swashbuckler, or Champion really. There's no reason your Ninja couldn't be a Rogue, Investigator, Inventor, or Magus too.

There's also no reason for Swashbuckler and Investigator to be a class but they are. Even Magus could be a class archetype. Yet the Paizo designers felt that is not enough and they turn such concept as a class.

I still don't think that the normal fighter features and many feats (like shield block and many shield related feats) fits well in a fantasy samurai context and I still think that an archetype isn't enough to do this too (maybe a class archetype). Same for Ninjas like a reskined rogue it, specially with the rogue limited set of weapons also both of them can have many ki focus feats interactions like monks have.

That's why I'm complaining about this. We will receive a vast content of Tian Xia but most classes of the game will look like outsiders in the region.

Tian Xia's more than just fantasy Japan, I think a ninja or samurai class would feel pretty out of place in the vast majority of regions there. Also there were samurai who used shields, and you can play an effective fighter without using those shield options.

Besides that, which classes do you think would feel out of place in Tian Xia? For me the only ones that come to mind are the druid and psychic, Pathfinder's classes are generic and customizable enough to fit in a lot of fantasy settings.

Does not Tian Xia and/or Asian fantasy have people who...

-Work with chemical reagents to produce fantastical results
-Can get angry and become more powerful from it, to the point of supernatural ability
-Play music to the point of having magical powers
-Dedicate themselves in service of a divine entity or entities to gain magical abilities (x2)
-Commune with nature and animals to control the elements
-Fight
-Train in martial arts (jk nobody is surprised when Fantasy Asia: The Class is a viable concept in fantasy Asia, even if Paizo made Monk far more diverse of an option)
-Learn to stalk the wilderness and hunt
-Stab people in the back and have an eclectic skill set
-Have magical powers gifted to them by their supernatural bloodline
-Study the magic of ancient texts and scrolls

I mean, if when you picture a Champion you're exclusively imagining a knight in plate armour wielding a cruciform weapon in defence of their nation and their faith, of course that would look strange in Tian Xia, but the concept of a dedicated holy warrior doesn't exclusively look like a knight in plate. A samurai in o-yoroi who wields their katana in the name of the Empress of Heaven... that sounds like a cool character concept who has the spirituality and dedication to honour nailed and is 100% a viable Champion concept.

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Addendum: I don't mean to stray too far into the camp of "New class concepts shouldn't exist because X or Y combination already exists and covers it well enough." Absolutely new class concepts should exist, even if it seems like another class can almost be 'good enough' as the so-oft-touted example of the Swashbuckler.

I'm just leery of taking one specific culture's warrior archetype character and calcifying everything that makes it distinct, or even 'exotic' from the familiar version of that same archetype and reducing it to those stereotypes of what that warrior must do. The swashbuckler is a stock character type of a daring, acrobatic warrior who fights with panache, not a specific military unit that existed in France.

I certainly agree there's room for samurai to exist in the game, but the reason why I call for an archetype is the same reason why I don't think the Lion Blades of Taldor should be a class. The Lion Blades are not a broad, universal character concept and they belong to only one nation.

And again, there is definitely something to the design space of a stealthy supernatural character, but ninjas start to look pretty weird in fantasy Mongolia or fantasy Tibet unless they specifically came from Minkai, so maybe a class that isn't only a ninja would better serve that place?

Besides that, which classes do you think would feel out of place in Tian Xia? For me the only ones that come to mind are the druid and psychic, Pathfinder's classes are generic and customizable enough to fit in a lot of fantasy settings.

Psychics actually fit in decently well! The heart of psychic magical study on Golarion is Vudra, on the neighboring continent of Casmaron, which has a great deal of contact with Tian Xia. One imagines they're maybe one step less common than the typical Iroran monk, but not by much.

I bet Nagajor probably has some psychic talent via the aberrant Naga as well!