Analysis's page

Every place I look people claim different conclusions about this, so I would really welcome an official ruling. Effectively, do features like the wizard Immortality Arcane Discovery, the alchemist Eternal Youth Discovery, or the Imperious sorcerer Immortal Legend ability, or the Solar oracle Final Revelation let characters live beyond their racial maximum or not?

The regular monk and druid Timeless Body ability explicitly says with those abilities you still die of old age, you just don't take aging penalties.

The Time oracle Final Revelation explicitly says you don't die from old age, as does the living monolith capstone and the effects of Numerian Fluids, and the Longevity mythic path ability.

At least one published NPC (Jatembe) has the Immortality wizard Arcane Discovery and is thousands of years old.

So for the abilities that do not say either way, which is it? Will a character with those die of old age or not?

Intelligent item (+500 gp)

+6 dex/con/wis (144000 gp) (x1.5 multiplier for two of the stats included)
resistance +5 to all saves (37500 gp) (x1.5 multiplier included)
+5 enhancement bonus to AC (37500 gp) (x1.5 multiplier included) (base item cost exceeds 200001 gp giving 12 ego)
CL is 20 because it's a custom item made by a level 20 wizard who wants its CL as high as possible because that's the CL of the spells it casts. If he has CL boosting gear or mythic abilities it may be higher.

Custom Special Purpose: defend the daughters of the crafter or avenge them (+2 ego, +4 against people acting against the purpose)
cha 10
int 20 (8000 gp) (+5 ego)
wis 20 (8000 gp) (+5 ego)
telepathic (1000 gp) (+1 ego)
blindsense (5000 gp) (+1 ego)
casts prestidigitation at will (1000 gp) (+1 ego)
casts mage hand at will (1000 gp) (+1 ego)
casts magic aura on itself at will (2000 gp) (+1 ego)
casts liberating command 3/day (1200 gp) (+1 ego)
casts feather fall 3/day (1200 gp) (+1 ego)
casts air bubble 3/day (1200 gp) (+1 ego)
casts resist energy 3/day (2400 gp (+1 ego)
item has 10 ranks of sense motive (10000 gp) (+2 ego)
item can change shape into one other form of the same size (leotard suitable for use as either swimwear or sleepwear) (10000 gp) (+2 ego)
item casts dimension door 1/day (11200 gp) (+2 ego)
item can cast nondetection 3/day (18000 gp) (+2 ego)
item can use true resurrection on wielder, once per month (200000 gp) (in service of its purpose only) (+2 ego)
ego 42 (46 against a wearer acting against its purpose)

Total 499700 gp not including the dress itself. 300gp is adequate for a dress befitting the daughter of an archmage, bringing the total up to a half million even.

That's assuming that's a million gp for two dresses, not a million each. If it's a million each dress we can add a few purpose bound high level spells at will. And a bunch more cheap ego raising abilities because the whole point of this item is to have such a high ego that nobody can survive using it after...

This, very much. Though could have it as jewelry that can also shapeshift into dresses or armours.

James Jacobs wrote:

Analysis wrote:

Also, for the upcoming Occult Adventures, do you anticipate any new Mythic options for the new classes eventually?

Not so much. There's some Mythos-friendly elements in Occult Adventures, but it's not the book to do full-on Lovecraftian stuff.

I think he was referring to the Mythic Adventures subrules rather than Mythos stuff.

Exactly, I meant things like, how do Psychic Magic users interact with Mythic Paths like Archmage or Hierophant?

Also, for the upcoming Occult Adventures, do you anticipate any new Mythic options for the new classes eventually?

- Do you have any plans for elaborating on the religions of Ninshabur? Would it draw on Mesopotamian deities like Osirion with Egyptian?
- With many current fiends named from that mythology, would it make sense there was a lot of fiend worship in Ninshabur?
- What about the Mythos deities, where some stories attempt to link them to Sumerian mythology? Were they notably worshipped in Ninshabur as well?

1. The Imperious sorcerer bloodline for humans corresponds to descent from ancient human empires. Which societies (and corresponding present-day peoples) in Golarion would you say are most likely to give rise to such scions?

2. If a (likely rare) lich wanted to experience mortal sensations like food, sex, drugs etc.; how would it go about it? Could a lich use polymorph magic to gain living senses and reactivities? Could it magic jar into a proxy living servant to use its body? What would be most thematic in your opinion?

It would be awesome to have ways to call Dark Tapestry/Mythos creatures moreso than outsiders...

Very interested so far. :)

What was really nice with the Advanced Class Guide was how the new classes had many options for previously available classes to access them, there were plenty of hybrid class-like archetypes like the ones providing spirit access to other classes.

Since the things here fit thematically with many existing options for summoning, spirit communication, magic and so forth, having something similar for these would be great, e.g. ways for shamans to access the medium spirits, summoners to access spiritualist phantoms, archetypes giving psychic magic-type casting to arcane and divine classes, and so on.

Additionally, it would be good to have rules from the start for which mythic paths work for psychic characters, including perhaps some new path abilities offering similar things that already exist for specifically arcane and divine spellcasters. Similarly, some sort of theurge-type prestige classes would also be interesting.

James, for something like the Cats of Ulthar from HPL (and later encountered by Randolph Carter), are there any Pathfinder creatures that would be like them? Awakened or otherwise templated housecats, dweomercats, non-good Silvanshee agathions, pards, something else?

Also, how long would a pard live, or an awakened housecat, in your opinion?

Further, is there any way (wish spells and experimentation, perhaps) to make the effects of an Awaken spell breed true, to create a stable colony of intelligent animals?

Honestly? Grease and Glitterdust are really, stupidly, silly spells. I never use them, for this reason, because they are so silly. They feel like stage magic of Vegas, of Charlie Chaplin - not of fantasy wizardry. Apparently people who have tried long and hard to optimize have found they are often very useful in practice, but that doesn't change the fact you are conjuring a slippery patch of grease or blowing a cloud of glammy glitter. In my eyes, at least. :)

Oozi McOoze wrote:

Anything in the works for an Osirion based, pyramid tromping adventure path.

I dunno.

Would folks like an adventure path like that?

I can not speak for the masses, but I would like it a lot. Pyramid mega-dungeons and desert, tied to politics and maybe large-scale power play between several of the Garundi states? ("On the eve of war with Nex, a band of troubled thieves brave the halls beneath the Great Tomb.") Part of it set in Nemret Noktoria, perhaps? Dark Tapestry components, involving Nyarlathotep, the weird king on Aucturn and/or the Nameless City? Strong religious/mythological undertones, such that the tomb robbing can be considered either sacred or blasphemous from the perspectives of PCs and/or various factions? Necromantic archaeology aspects, maybe? Having to find the remains of various historical figures and speak to their shades in order to find some crucial and hidden information in a race against time, before the stars are right for northern Garund?

I like much of what I see in the playtest document, and will comment further on several things after doing some experiments. There is one thing that I would like to point out directly though: I am really missing some form of ability, either a mythic feat or a universal path ability, that lets a character live longer than their usual racial lifespan. Mechanically, it could be exactly the same as the Wizard Immortality discovery or the Alchemist Eternal Youth grand discovery.

There are some common arguments against this:

1. This is a fluff ability, so having it as a character option is a waste of a feat etc. that could have gone to increase combat efficiency

However, there are multiple class capstones (wizard, some druids and monks, time oracle, imperious sorcerer, alchemist) that does this already, so as the game is written so far, it is the kind of ability that gets taken as a feat, and it would be unfair to characters with those builds to assume it is an ability that every DM will provide for free. Currently, no other class/archetype combination than those described above, and certainly no multiclass or prestige class characters, can live beyond the time span their race gets, even when they become powerful enough to kill demigods, casually raise the dead or make their own pocket dimensions. Furthermore, it does have a rules effect. With an option like this in place, there can be, for example, martial characters with the experience of age (i.e. mental ability stat bonuses) still keeping up physically.

2. It is not needed since any NPCs that need to be Really Seven Hundred Years Old can just be DM fiated to be so with no rules needed, or assumed to have won the bidding for the Sun Orchid Elixir regularly.

However, I am sure I am not the only one who prefers that the rules for PCs allow for, in principle, everything that NPCs can do. We may be a simulationist minority, but in this case, a few lines of feat text is all we need to be kept happy. Furthermore, in a Mythic game starting at a level higher than first, being able to make a centuries-long backstory can help explain why this particular character has achieved Mythic power - it can be the culmination of very long training and exploration, or mean the character is a literal survivor of some past Golden Age. Not everyone will want this option, but for those who do, it will enrich the game.

To summarize, if possible, please add some generally accessible option to the final product that allows a character to escape death from old age without having to reincarnate into a kobold, become an Always Evil undead, or have all 20 levels of one of a handful of classes.

It doesn't actually say that you can unlearn anything from the ring, though. Given this, unless a dev chimes in on it, I am inclined to assume (sadly) that the first spell chosen will in fact stick permanently.

Another thing, by the way - consider using a formally evil party member to create contrast situations where your own goodness becomes clearer for it, without breaking party cohesion. That is, you can have heated discussions on whether to help poor debtors, villagers etc., you can bear some of the costs yourself because your evil teammate doesn't want to, and get more of the feeling of being an actual hero than you would have if there hadn't been a selfish jerk around to provide that contrast. The same, of course, goes in the other direction - you can act out being surprised, ashamed on his behalf, or angry - within civility's bounds - and that will give the other player additional black-hat moments just as it gives you white-hat moments. The Order of the Stick is full of this kind of thing, but it can work out in regular play as well.

James Jacobs wrote:

Nah... "They just ARE" feels kinda lazy to me. Histories behind mythic characters is a large part of what makes them actually mythical. Saying they just happen to be tough and not bothering to explain how or why is unsatisfying to me.

I misspoke when I wrote that. My intention is that mythic figures when it comes to describing them, or justifying their existence, do not or should not be bound 100 percent by the rules that bind player characters. Part of what makes them mythic is that they do things that the player characters should consider epic, even impossible.

When the Frost Giants test Thor, in one of them they challenge him to empty a drinking mug, he fails but they gasp because he actually managed to lower the level of the mug by a little bit. They then explain that they had bound the drinking mug to the endless sea and the fact he managed even that, awed and appalled them.

You don't write rules for things like that... at some level, they just are.

If mythic is defined as something a PC can never do, though, that also excludes by definition playing mythic PCs. This is probably an area where different people prefer different approaches. I know I am not the only one who want PCs to be able to, in theory, accomplish anything that NPCs could, even if that won't actually ever happen in the campaign in question. For others, the rules being different, not just in practice but in theory, might enrich the experience, I guess... in any case, looking forward to how James & co approach these issues in the playtests. : )

So, the Prophets of Kalistrade. Every description notes their code of avoiding certain kinds of meat and certain kinds of sexual activity, but nowhere have I seen which these are, or how they tie in to their philosophy. Is this deliberately left up to the individual campaign, or unique to each Prophet, or just not yet described? If so, what are they, and how are they intended? As some form of abstinence/asceticism intended to produce self-control, or intended to promote affinity to some particular force or celestial figure? Similar to Old Testament strictures or something else entirely? I realize it might not be prudent to give an explicit answer, but if you can say anything on it, it would be most interesting to hear. : )

- First and foremost, I would like to be able to become as cool as the mythic NPCs. That is, I would like the system to stat out, say, Nex, as a Wizard 20/Mythic Archmage 10, rather than have Nex be a Wizard 30 which would then be unattainable to PCs. I want to be able, as a mythic character, to accomplish the same kind of mythic deeds as the most powerful NPCs in the setting, not just have the chance to defeat them in combat.

- Immortality options. Currently, some classes get them as capstones. If you prestige out or multiclass, or play the wrong mystery or bloodline, you cannot get them. If mythic powers extend such options to more characters, I would be happy.

- Open-ended lists of mythic powers. I.e. it should be possible to add in new things ("I have ten familiars! Wheee!") for characters where they fit.

- Options to allow spontaneous spellcasters to swap out some spells known each day. Otherwise there will be demigods who can blast through the heavens but never ever learn how to identify magic items, no matter how much effort they put into it.

- Mythic metamagic that remove restrictions on spells, such as removing component costs or raising level caps.

- Demigod capstone things that lets you grant spells to your followers.

6)Do you always GM or do you get be a player character during conventions?

I want to play as JJ in a GenCon one-shot! What are his stats? : )

Have you ever given birth to anything?

Another magic question, if you please: Can an undead creature be (temporarily) turned into a living creature with a Polymorph Any Object spell? If so, and the now-living creature is subsequently killed, will the spell break and the end result be the undead creature, now destroyed, or will the end result be the previously living creature, now dead? How good of a diguise could this provide, for example, for a lich?

I'll note that the GM has a great deal more veto-power over prestige awards than over feat/trait selection.

There's an organization in the game that you must be in good standing with to achieve the prestige award. The GM doesn't need to house rule to cut you off from it.

I slightly disagree, actually. The relevant passage is:

Once a student leaves a school, he can no longer spend Prestige Points on that school’s benefits. If he was expelled,

he might even lose access to some of the advantages and boons he had already acquired from the school, at the GM’s discretion.

It makes a whole lot of sense that you could easily lose boons like having spells cast on your behalf, items lended to you, monthly stipends, social interaction bonuses, or access to retainers. It seems harder to argue that modifications to your body, spells that have already been taught to you or training that you already have received could be revoked. It would be very nice if one of the writers could chime in on this, though.

That said, this is doubtlessly much stronger than any of the other boons in the book, though...