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You're in the right neighborhood with eastern European kingdoms, given the very Slavic naming conventions of most of the NPCs we see there. TV Tropes in particular described it as a mashup of Westeros and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but I don't know enough about eastern European culture and history to say definitively, apart from that Polish sabre fencing would actually be a likely inspiration for the Aldori Swordlords... If you're looking for something more like Celtic Britain, you actually may want to look further west: Places like Ireland and ancient Scotland were cited as inspiration for Old Sarkoris, and the Sarkorians were a clan-based society, ruled by clanlieges and it's where the Green Faith was founded, the druids there being the only ones who could gainsay a clanliege. Mendev, being Sarkoris' closest neighbor and where most of its refugees ended up when the Worldwound opened, probably feels very similar, especially as they intermingled with incoming Crusaders from places like Taldor and Cheliax, almost creating a Romano-British or possibly proto-Norman culture... Just some food for thought!
Wait, Iomedae fell? Not literally. They're likely referencing Herald of the Ivory Labyrinth, book 5 of the Wrath of the Righteous AP (which came out in 2014 as zimmerwald1915 noted). The conversation with Iomedae that occurs early in that module is still INCREDIBLY polarizing even 9 years later, and her reputation here on the boards has only recently started to recover thanks to things like Knights of Lastwall.
Well, you also have the issue of some ancestries, such as Dwarves, while potientally friendly with other races would never willingly mate with a non-Dwarf. Yehyeah! This ain't Warhammer Fantasy! There's none of that "our people are dying off due to how slow we reproduce and our stubborn insistence on seeking violent, often suicidal retribution over the smallest of slights" nonsense! And for that matter, elves aren't so horrifically snooty that they'd believe partnering with a non-elf is repulsive to the point of vomiting either!
The proficiency is perfectly relevant to other characters that might want to take the feat. For martial weapons, this is commonly relevant to rogues, for example. This is true, no denying that, but if you're playing something like a champion or a magus it becomes a feat tax unless the GM agrees to let you have it. Therefore if you're just designing a character in the hypothetical without a GM to yea or nay, you're out of luck.
My brain is failing me today, but I'm wondering: when it comes to weapons covered by an ancestry's familiarity feats, if the weapon is Martial, can a PC access that weapon if they have proficiency with martial weapons by default from their class, or do they need to take the familiarity feat to have access to those weapons period, regardless of class? Like, can an elf fighter use an elven branched spear right out of the box, or do they still need to take Elven Weapon Familiarity?
The two that stand head-and-shoulders above the rest are Kaer Maga and Westcrown. Kaer Maga just has so much gonzo weirdness going on and a very "Star Wars Cantina" feel that I always get drawn back to. Westcrown, on the other hand, is so full of rich and tragic history. Council of Thieves may not be the most popular AP, but it really gets you invested in the city and makes it feel like home, to the point where the end of Hell's Vengeance made me very sad. Plus, it's basically Golarion's equivalent of Venice!
If only Monk had a way of picking a specific weapon and saying "this is a Monk weapon now." Then I could stick a nodachi on a STR Monk with Mountain and Wild Winds stance and viola, Vergil from DMC! I miss that monk+cleric multiclass-specific feat from 1e that let you consider your deity's favored weapon a monk weapon...
YES! This bugs me too! And from the previews, it looks like it's still there! Consider the earthbreaker: it's the closest you can come to a historically accurate warhammer without being adopted by a gnome, but it has such strong cultural associations with the Shoanti that I'd feel awkward having a character use one if they didn't have Shoanti heritage. Same with some of the new armors. If I'm playing an elf druid who wants to wear armor made of the bones of animals I've personally hunted to honor them and Ketephys, the god of the hunt, the only thing that's close is the niyaháat, which means I'd be appropriating it from the Erutaki.
access to advanced weapons should be more straight forward in general. Them being gated by fighter and/or ancestry makes access if you want it difficult and convoluted. Advanced weapon training could have been a standard martial feat at 6th level across the board.The Inventor does need a way to iterate on an item that is not a level 0 simple or martial weapon though. Probably not at first level, but that should be possible.It would have been an interesting option for a level 6 feat for weapon inventor to choose an advanced weapon as their innovation and give them proficiency in it. By every god and and their MOTHER do I feel this pain...I have so many concepts I wanna use the Broadspear for, that don't involve being from Jalmeray...
Yep, Osirion bugs me for this exact reason. What is doubly weird is that Kobold Press’ Midgard Campaign Setting does exactly the same thing with their nation of Nuria-Natal, replete with Egyptian gods et al. I just don’t understand why this region is so compelling to be lifted almost whole cloth..twice. THREE times if you count Mullhorand from Forgotten Realms!
I think we might be talking past each other here: Kaspyr2077, you're thinking of the term "pantheon" in a more holistic, real-world sense, and it is very insightful. What I was more asking for help with was setting up the kind of Pantheons the game rules use, like the Demon Bringers or Hearth and Harvest, to best reflect this character and so I can determine which domains I can pick for things like Divine Access.
Since the two most general ethnic groups of Dwarves are the Grondasken (Underground Dwarves) and the Holtasken (Mountain Dwarves), the Dwarven word for Dwarf is probably "asken" or "sken" or "ken" something like that, since those words probably diagetically mean "Ground people" and "High people." I like this, and kind of thought it was the case anyway, "ken" sounding very much like "kin" so it could be like "groundkin" or highkin," to follow your examples. Dwarves DO place a high emphasis on clan kinship, after all!
I'm suspecting that you are overthinking this. I am overthinking it, yes. This character concept's been living rent-free in my head for almost 4 years now...
I was looking for advice on most of these aspects too, to figure out how best to represent the idea of a character who's both dwarf and elf and venerates deities of both peoples to help him deal with his horrifying Dahak-induced nightmares. I didn't want to just pick meta domains and spells and hope a GM would let me get away with it. I wanted it to be thematically cohesive, I wanted help getting the flavor right too since I don't trust my own personal taste.
The idea was to show this character as a product of his upbringing, honoring both his dwarven and elven heritage, giving both pantheons equal respect and blending their philosophies into something new. He has terrible nightmares of fire and destruction that started to become very real fires in the waking world, and things like smithing, herbalism and gemworking were ways to use that fire for constructive instead of destructive purposes, as well as actual spellcasting training obviously. He decides to take up the adventuring life because his visions have gotten increasingly specific, showing the destruction of a specific town, and he wants to stop them from coming true (he's written with the Age of Ashes AP in mind, specifically with the Haunting Vision background). Question. Is your character a class that requires a patron deity IE, champion or cleric]? If not, you can just worship multiple gods without having to make a pantheon. That was something I was discussing in the thread I linked in the first post: when I initially came up with this concept it was with the Oracle class in mind, but I wrote it before the most recent errata, so I was hesitant to commit to that class due to the original dwarf CHA penalty (since the base concept was slapping the half-elf heritage onto a dwarf instead of human), so I was debating classes like Druid as well. I didn't want to pick Cleric because that class carries the implication that you LIKE the god you get your power from and want to emulate them, and the idea was this character's power is coming from Dahak but he's channeling it for constructive purposes in defiance of him, which screams Oracle. Champion was on the table, at least as a multiclass, though, since it's very on-brand for me given my username. I suppose in that event I would have picked Yuelral as the primary deity of choice because I find her just so flavorful.
That was something else I'd considered as well, but it felt kind of tricky: going with Torag meant there was no real connection to the fire aspect of the character. Angradd was recommended for that aspect, but that feels kind of disrespectful to Torag, as he is the head of the dwarven pantheon, while the elven pantheon is more a loose coalition with no real hierarchy. I see your point that there should be more worshipers than just a single small family of a dwarf, an elf and their three sons, though. I felt like him having siblings was already stretching it in terms of the relative rarity. Like, part of what I assumed by reading the options allowing half-elves and half-orcs to be treated as Versatile Heritages was that such characters would likely be the only ones of their kind in possibly the entire Inner Sea region if not the world (which I kind of like in terms of angst and seeking an identity storytelling).
I'm in the process of designing a character who is a dwarf-blooded half-elf. One thing I was looking for advice on in the thread here was filling out the personal pantheon he worships, primarily a blend of elf and dwarf deities. The two deities I was dead set on are Yuelral and Torag, offering different perspectives on craftsmanship, since smithing is his big hobby. But a pantheon can't consist of just two deities! Beyond those two, however, I'm kind of stuck. I don't want the pantheon to be too lopsided towards one ancestry or the other. Angradd feels like a natural pick, especially since he's being themed around fire, but then the other elven deities like Findeladlara or Ketephys don't quite gel with the character's themes. Another wrinkle is that he has dark visions of the dragon god Dahak, to the point of possibly drawing divine power from him (depending on what class I finally choose for him), and I'm not sure if he needs to be included in the pantheon as a result, even though he is definitely opposed to Dahak's influence and machinations. Plus there's just the mundane concern of how many deities are in the pantheon, how many is too many? What do you folks think? Thank you in advance for any suggestions you might have!
Do half-orcs count? I had a half-orc Spirit Guide Oracle/Holy Vindicator named Jolon Vulture-Heart who was the child of an exiled Shoanti of the Skoan-Quah and an orcish adventurer she abandoned her quah to be with. Jolon's mom was forced to settle in Korvosa after his father passed, raising him herself despite the racism she endured, until the fateful night she was robbed and murdered by Gaedren Lamm. Jolon, having nowhere to go in a city that feared and despised people like him, found shelter with the Church of Pharasma, who provided him counsel when the spirits of his ancestors started Whispering reassurances to him. When Jolon grew up, he was officially ordained as a Pharasmin and recieved a note inviting him to meet other Korvosans who wished to bring Gaedren Lamm to justice, kicking off the events of the Curse of the Crimson Throne adventure path. While that campaign sadly fell apart around the start of book 3, I had a blast playing Jolon as a man struggling to figure out his identity while protecting the city he called home, blending Pharasmin doctrine with Shoanti spiritual beliefs and occasionally going berserk and letting one of his ancestral spirits take the wheel if he got pissed enough!
Do half-orcs count? I had a half-orc Spirit Guide Oracle/Holy Vindicator named Jolon Vulture-Heart who was the child of an exiled Shoanti of the Skoan-Quah and an orcish adventurer she abandoned her quah to be with. Jolon's mom was forced to settle in Korvosa after his father passed, raising him herself despite the racism she endured, until the fateful night she was robbed and murdered by Gaedren Lamm. Jolon, having nowhere to go in a city that feared and despised people like him, found shelter with the Church of Pharasma, who provided him counsel when the spirits of his ancestors started Whispering reassurances to him. When Jolon grew up, he was officially ordained as a Pharasmin and recieved a note inviting him to meet other Korvosans who wished to bring Gaedren Lamm to justice, kicking off the events of the Curse of the Crimson Throne adventure path. While that campaign sadly fell apart around the start of book 3, I had a blast playing Jolon as a man struggling to figure out his identity while protecting the city he called home, blending Pharasmin doctrine with Shoanti spiritual beliefs and occasionally going berserk and letting one of his ancestral spirits take the wheel if he got pissed enough!
I dunno if that fits quite right with the timeline of the Firebrands as we know it: the general vibe I got was that before the simultaneous revolution of Sargava and the events of Hell's Rebels (and to a certain extent both Skull and Shackles and Hell's Vengeance, if only because they explain why Cheliax lacked the manpower and materiel to crack down on both) the Firebrands as an identity or organization didn't really exist. You had individual pockets of revolutionary-minded folks, but they lacked the kind of name recognition the Firebrands now have...that's just my reading of the text, though, so take it with however many grains of salt you deem necessary!
I'm intrigued! A PF story outside the Adventure Path sphere would be a nice change of pace, more of a chance to play something where the narrative is tailored to the character rather than my usual method of trying to make the character tailored to an AP's themes and narrative ideas. I'm a very dedicated PbP poster, and have even been through 2 APs to completion (Iron Gods for 1e and Dead Suns for Starfinder), along with being active in several current AP games that have been going for years.
Oh, in that case it slots quite nicely. Where is this described? Does any book go into more detail? The information on velstracs is kind of scattered all over the place. The best place to start would probably be 1e's Book of the Damned, as it's a compilation and reorganization of the lore on various fiends Paizo developed over the course of 1e's run. Planar Adventures would be next, as it served a similar function for extraplanar lore in general (and was 1e's final hardcover). The long and short of it is that the first velstracs were sadomasochistic souls so terrible the gods imprisoned them in Hell, but they busted out and followed one of their Demagogues to the Shadow Plane, which remains their center of power, though many have now returned to Hell as ambassadors now parleying with devils as equals rather than as prisoners. Zon-Kuthon's twisting did indeed come from...whatever he encountered travelling the Dark Tapestry, the Dominion of the Black is more an extraterrestrial polity that lives in the Dark Tapestry. That his new mindset was so perfectly aligned with the velstracs is, at least as far as we know, pure coincidence. The velstracs just saw Zon-Kuthon and were like "Oh, hi! You'll fit right in here, welcome!"
Something just crossed my mind; a Small-size catfolk heritage, kind of like the ant gnoll, would be nice at some point. Not just as a way to roleplay something like Antonio Banderas' Puss-in-Boots, but also because there's a bunch of wildcats that are efficient hunters despite being much smaller than a lion or cheetah, like the rusty spotted cat, sand cat or black-footed cat!
I'll be honest, part of me's just wondering how much panicking I should be doing right now...like, on the one hand they HAVE to be seeing the amount of negative press this is producing and want to mitigate that, yes, but they also have to be aware that even their most successful competitors don't have the money to go to court, so they may just bullishly go for it anyway, damn the lost sales.
If there's any planar storyline I want to tackle in an AP, it's protecting lovely little Basrakal from anyone who wants to do it harm. Maybe some dastardly Aeon wants to come along and "correct" all its residents? Heck yeah! Love stories showcasing big magic chaotic cities and their delightfully weird inhabitants! Sigil, Sharn, Kaer Maga, they're all so much fun! Besides, I feel like Basrakal didn't get the spotlight it deserves because it kinda appeared on the tail-end of 1e's run. Now would be a GREAT time for it to take center-stage!
Ignore gesalt's advice here. They're a good optimizer but are prioritizing that over your concept because that's how they build characters. But also... Reassess my dude. Most of what you're writing is wrong. I usually tend to be...like I said, the more I learn about how everything in 2e interlocks, the more confused I feel about how to get the story I want out of the mechanics. Any Oracle can have a fire motif thanks to Divine Access and ancestry options. The flavor of the curse can be morphed to suit your needs. And you're already trying to sell a homebrew Heritage option, so if you make it half dwarf instead of half elf you're covered. That's just it: it just really kind of feels like the game has very specific ways it wants certain classes and stuff to be played, flavor and mechanic very strongly intertwined. I wouldn't even have CONSIDERED playing a half-elf-dwarf as an option if the Core Rulebook hadn't explicitly said "if you GM approves it, it's okay!" And Oracle kind of suffers this more than the others: each curse having a very different playstyle and generally not working well if you try to play it as something else, like a Flames Oracle as a Dex-based battle-caster, dancing in and out of combat with a finesse weapon and setting things on fire, as opposed to Flames' intended use as a blaster caster.
Really? I was under the impression that the devs were really trying to steer players away from doing "clerics of pantheons" and "clerics of ideals," one of the big things separating Pathfinder from the other big TTRPG. That the whole point of being a cleric was because ONE deity chose YOU to receive divine spells because you emulated the ideals they embodied or valued so closely. The vibe I got was "The pantheon rules are there, but they're not FOR clerics." And I thought the consensus on Warpriest was it sucked?
There's more to spirituality than divine spellcasting. Occult spellcasting literally has spiritual as one of its magical essences, and there's a variety of ways you can express a divine connection beyond being a full blown divine spellcaster. It can be anything from a divine ancestry feat to a champion, oracle, or sorcerer multiclass dedication. You're right about this, but again, I keep hearing the multiclassing is problematic: Champion is a good multiclass, but you need to have the Strength to do it, and if you're playing an ancestry with a CHA penalty, you're not going to have the boosts to make it viable. Oracle just isn't a good multiclass period because being flat-footed is just that dangerous, especially if you're trying to melee, and while Sorcerer is good, you're still not going to get Legendary spellcasting. There are so many familiar variants by now that you can pretty easily move away from the pet actually being a pet. Turn it into a tattoo, a mask, or a hunk of iron, for example. Really? I don't think there's any option quite like the Half-Elf Bonded Witch, Name-Keeper or True Silvered Throne Shaman archetypes from 1e where you effectively replace the familiar/spirit animal with a totemic item or book of some sort. Even Aeon Wyrds are creatures and thus have feelings and stuff, right? The general vibe I've gotten is "If you don't want the pet, don't play a witch, the wizard class is right there (and even then, why WOULDN'T you want the pet? Familiars are so useful!)." Why does it matter how many family members are druids? You're only playing one of them. Your rules here feel completely arbitrary. Either only one can be a druid or all three can be, but never two? I'm only playing one of them NOW (technically, I'm not playing any of them at the moment, this is purely in the hypothetical so I can have him ready to post next time someone wants to run Age of Ashes). I do have plans to play the other two brothers in future APs, and in fact the upcoming Gatewalkers one feels PERFECT for brother number 2, jealous of his older brother and seeking fame and fortune via elfgates himself! Plus, the final, peaceful druid brother would make an interesting fit in the plot of the upcoming Sky King's Tomb path: getting in touch with his dwarven heritage and helping old enemies become friends over a pint. As for why I feel like having two out of three brothers be the same class would feel lopsided...well, that's more a personal hangup than anything else. The last brother was always meant to be a druid/alchemist combo, I have my heart set on that, but if the eldest is a druid too, then the middle brother becomes the odd one by default, and I'd kind of meant for him to serve as a more grounded, "normal" character to contrast against his eldest brother's prophetic visions and strange powers. If all three are druids, then that gives the opportunity to explore the class from different angles and perspectives, but because I don't have a strong vision for brother 2 as opposed to brother's 1 and 3, I end up feeling like a caster class isn't necessarily a good fit for him from a narrative standpoint.`
You and gestalt are approaching this from opposite extremes. They are disregarding your flavor for the crunch, but you're so focused on the flavor that you aren't accounting for how easy it is to use a little reflavoring of perfectly fine crunch options. I can see what you're saying here. Part of the issue is that honestly a bunch of classes are a good fit for this character, and I've been indecisive about "locking in" a final decision and then feeling unsatisfied with it or changing my mind later (wanna avoid retraining down the line because I feel like the whole "dwelf" thing is already kind of a big ask, and I feel like if I have too many "big asks" eventually a potential GM's going to say "No, stop asking me to bend the rules for your narrative and meet me halfway by making some sacrifices.") Also Merry Christmas! Happy New Year too! Granted, a lot of this is kind of moot at this point because of the new ability errata that was just announced: now I don't necessarily have to worry about the CHA flaw...
This was all very helpful, yes. Thank you. And its even more flexible now that the alternate errata options exist, even easier to fit into the class molds. Now I just have to overcome my chronic indecisiveness and my weird narrative-based hangups... Pantheon rules, as mentioned, should be a great relief to you here - I recently whipped up a Pantheon of my own over in the Homebrew section, and it was maybe fifteen minutes of work. I continue to envy the speed and ease with which you come up with ideas and realize them, keftiu! I've actually kind of been percolating this for a while: what gods do I have in this Pantheon? How many deities should there be in it? The only two definite gods I want in there are Torag and Yuelral, a craftsy dwarf god and a craftsy elf god (one who SPECIFICALLY welcomes half-elves), but most pantheons don't JUST have two gods. Angradd is probably a shoo-in, given his fire motif, but then I feel like I need an equivalent elven god on the other side to balance it. Alseta may be a good choice as she's "elf-adjacent" (and she kind of features in Age of Ashes), but I'm not sure which other ones to put in or how many is too many. Do I need to have Dahak in there even though my character fears and despises him, and doesn't actually worship him in order to work mechanically? And if Dahak is in there, do I balance him out with Apsu? Then the pantheon kind of drifts away from its original intent as a "blended dwarf/elf pantheon."
With the word now out that Cheliax has abolished slavery (in favor of unfair contracts, massive debt, and being pressed into the military), one assumes Molthune is headed down a similar road - likely the "service guarantees citizenship" model floated above. Heck, Molthune pioneered that method, it's less like it's going down the same road and more like Cheliax is rushing down that road to catch up with them! ;)
I would remind people that its not the average employees that are making these changes at Hasbro and WOTC so please don't go all agro on the regular people there. Especially since a bunch of those employees came over to WOTC from Paizo in the first place (i.e. Wes Schneider, Liz Lydell, Jason Tondro, etc.)!
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