Ataraxias's page

Just browsing through Chronicles of the Righteous, several empyreal lords aren't beautiful.

Dammerich
Irez
Vildeis

Several more when you consider the ones that don't have art, but are based on RL myth such as Aizen-myo-o.

I, for one, would love to see Old Testament-style good outsiders; thousand eyes, a hundred grinding wheels. Be not afraid.

Too be fair old testament God/outsiders are more N than G, and this is how several aeons, psychopomps, inevitables are depicted.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

The Gold Sovereign wrote:

Really? I didn't know that. Cool. I just searched about it and I'm afraid I'm even more terrified by Geb and his ways of retribution.

Baba Yaga and her CR 30 aside (and it's likely he equals her there), Geb is by far the single scariest thing in the Inner Sea/Lost Omens region. He's just on another tier of power entirely from every other ruler in the area...by like 10-15 CR.

Except for may be

** spoiler omitted **

Kind of interesting the implications of both high level rulers having such an obvious similarity.

Well the blurb for book 6 of Tyrant's Grasp includes the line end the threat he now poses to the world...so maybe not?

So I reread the end times section and no outside entities are ever mentioned.
It does name the spire as a spear which will wound the bubble, and from the wound will be unending fissures that spread into the planes to collapse everything.

It then goes on to say that the gods that will attempt to heal the wound will get obliterated by entropy.

So now I see the other "divine destroyer" as the wound, or pure entropy.

Ataraxias wrote:

{. . .}

So I didn't interpret this as Rovagug battling the LHfB but the spire itself, as in that if none of the current gods can stop its growth from piercing the bubble then they'll let Rovagug have a shot at it.

That seems counterproductive, since the Qlippoths (including Rovagug) are Lovecraftian Horrors from Beyond in all but name -- same intentions, but they just happen to have their home inside the multiverse.

Aside note: If stuff, Lovecraftian or otherwise, is beyond the Horizon boundary of the multiverse, what do you properly call the space containing that stuff and the multiverse? The Hyperverse? And do we get more levels of Hyperverse above that? Reminds me of a few instances in which I woke up, and then found that I was actually in another dream that I had to wake up from.

Even without the LHfB threat the spire piercing the bubble creates irreparable damage to the foundation and stability of the multiverse and beyond. The spire keeps growing to infinity, the breach becomes some sort of nexus super maelstrom as numerous planes bleed into each other, a large number of gods and outsiders would war as their borders broke, etc.

Wow, that IS interesting - thanks for sharing!

So, in this model: things go pear-shaped, Rovagug is released (presumably but not definitely intentionally) in an attempt to have it defeat Lovecraftian Horrors from Beyond, Rovagug succeeds in defeating said LHfB, and then the remaining Gods manage to re-imprison Rovagug (again, presumably in some fashion that requires Torag & Golarion to become indisposed) and run the clock back to some sort of key point in the timey-wimey continuum, which could be when Aroden broke prophecy and died? Fascinating. Like Claxon said, lots to think about there. Is the clock re-run intentional, or just some kind of side-effect of the re-imprisonment, I wonder?

Tangent: does Concordance of Rivals talk about everyone's favourite skull moon, Groetus? As God of The End, surely Big G would have some feelings over Pharasma playing fast and loose with that whole "end of everything" situation. For me, Groetus is easily the most interesting part of Paizo lore, and I'll leap all over the book if it's got some more info.

So I didn't interpret this as Rovagug battling the LHfB but the spire itself, as in that if none of the current gods can stop its growth from piercing the bubble then they'll let Rovagug have a shot at it.

Claxon wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

"Killing them doesn't stick" for anybody with at least 9 mythic tiers, since they just come back in 24 hours unless they are CDG'd with an artifact. I guess if you're at the level where you're fighting things with 9 mythic tiers you should have an artifact appropriate for this laying around (ideally a weapon and not, like, a drum).

See that's a problem though. If it has explicit rules for it, you can kill it. It might be challenging, but it could theoretically be done.

With things like "catch Baba Yaga's death and return it to her body" you have a hard time even beginning to know what that means or where it would be. That's pretty much the domain of "if the GM wants this to happen at all" then you can do it, and if they don't you can't even start.

Players: We look for Baba Yaga's death!
GM: Where?
Players: Do we have any clues?
GM: Nope, good luck.

Unless you're playing an AP where the relevant information is defined and so is how it can be researched.

Even the AP doesn't give you any way to research it. It's a completely arbitrary location of Baba Yaga's own choosing.

the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

"Kill Yog-Sothoth first" is definitely the hardest "permanent death" solution, but considering how large the universe is, killing the current one and having the next one reappear in a random location elsewhere" is probably indistinguishable from death for almost everyone.

At-will interplanetary teleport makes that less reassuring than it might otherwise be.

"The replacement Tawil at’Umr typically does not reappear where it was killed, and it usually does not seek revenge against those who slew its predecessor. Usually." is one of my favourite bits of description in all the bestiaries; makes it sound like the most important part of killing Tawil at'Umr is somehow to do so without annoying it, which, Great Old One inscrutability as get-out clause aside, seems like a really nice challenge to throw at players and see what they come up with.

I think we have to consider the role this particular CR 30 Great Old One would have in a campaign, if it *really* wants to be somewhere, then "killing it" is never going to be the right answer since it will just come back. But this is just a signpost from the GM that "there is another solution" or "you can't really win here."

But if you really want the solution to be "go fight the thing" then you just follow the "usually" clause and have it be distracted by something else.

I figure "it's impossible for the PCs to kill this thing for good" is just a function of "this thing is an avatar for a deity."

One I wonder about is that in order to kill Baba Yaga forever you have to "find her death"... what does that even mean? I get that it means "kill her once, then go on another quest to get the means to kill her forever" but "finding one's death and putting it back in them somehow" is pretty abstract.

In Reign of Winter it's explained to the PCs what it means. But outside of that it seems basically impossible to make it work if you were random adventurers that didn't go on that AP.

Gray Warden wrote:

Being evil does not imply committing evil acts. People may have genuinely evil thoughts towards others, and yet do not put those thoughts into practice because of legal or social consequences. An evil person not hurting those who he hates is not non-evil, just well adjusted into society (so, at most, non-chaotic). Other people are truly evil, and yet manifest it in more subtle ways that do not necessarily involve crimes or physical violence, but hate and psychological oppression.

This is pretty much the point of The Purge: the one day you lift obligations towards law and society, evil people are free to act according to their true alignment, this however doesn't mean that the rest of the year they are not evil anymore.

So yeah, someone could detect as super-evil: most probably if you put him on a desert island with a person he hates and give him legal immunity, he will probably torture the guy in any possible imaginable way, but until then he's an innocent and upstanding citizen.

And this is really where the arguments come from. If someone can't be Good when they're not willing to perform good actions, how can someone be Evil if they're not willing to perform evil actions?

If someone isn't willing to perform evil deeds even when there's no chance he'll be caught, how can he be considered Evil? He's just a Neutral person, going along with the least-resistance flow of society. Alternately, he's Lawful Neutral, rationalizing the need for and binding himself by a strongly enforced set of laws that prevent people from doing things that he would want to do.

PRD section on alignment wrote:

People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent, but may lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others.

Presumably, this also applies to evil.

After all, a person who has good thoughts and recreationally kills orphans can't be Good. Also, a person who doesn't feel devoted to the concepts of...

Many societies consider inaction to be evil - e.g. child neglect, elder neglect, not reporting a fire, etc.

Lets say for some reason the party attempts to dimension door into a 5ft square, such as a closet.

Based on the shunting portion of the spell, is everyone supposed to suffer it? or does one person make it into the closet as intended?

Besides Mass Heal, is there another spell or method of removing diseases from multiple targets at once?

A mixed squad of gremlins. A couple of Pugwampis along with Hobkins is a menace.

Maybe the AP it appears in has some context in which the item makes sense...?

The Bellflower Network's agents are called Tillers.

These guys maintain the image of being slackjawed yokel slaves whilst going about underground railroad operations.
So basically instead of having suspicious looking vials on their person prime for confiscation, they have what would probably appear to be blocks of chewing tobacco.

https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Knight

A few are mentioned there.
The Mendevian Crusades page also mentions the Order of Heralds.

Thank you that was an informative post. I do like your idea of a bunch of bad guys forming a team to kill a "god". Though I am finding it very weird that people on here seem to get real upset at the idea of this. This is the rule of cool that drives this game. Tell a story and see what awesome stuff the players do with it.

Heck just last week my group was playing Deadlands and things went south and the mad scientist blew up his Electric flame thrower killing him, my character and another and we all thought it was awesome. These are games we are playing them for those cool moments.

Because the real crux of this is in order to "win" you basically have to bully the GM into letting you win.

You either lose when initiative is rolled, or the GM lets you become Simon from TTGL.

How would you get him to stay dead if you could kill him? Another Empyreal lord would probably just use true resurrection.

deuxhero wrote:

Considering magic is literally used to do laundry in Pathfinder and offensive spells rarer than Burning Hands (which can't outright kill a sick child even on a max damage roll till at least level 3) are rarer, thinking everyone doing magic is going to unleash the apocalypse even though most cities don't have any wizards powerful enough is just crazy. It's like assuming anyone with a multitool is going to stab a bunch of people with the tiny blade instead of cut out a coupon or fix a screw.

1. A level 1 commoner has 6 HP. A level 1 Burning Hands does 1d4 Fire damage. So, you can almost burn a "regular" person to do unconsciousness, and this is a cone. At level 2, casting burning hands into a crowd of "regular" people can possibly cause them to be in a fight for their life as they lie dying on the ground.

Apparently commoners are treated as monsters and only get average hp, so the beggar only has 4hp.

How does anybody realistically cast in a social setting anyway? Best case scenario, everyone only becomes unfriendly towards you and don't immediately attack you.

If you are in a city and begin casting a spell, people don't know what you are casting. You could be casting fireball, earthquake, etc.

I would expect most cities to have laws and regulations regarding spell casting. In order to even practice magic in a high population area, you will probably have to acquire a license to practice magic in public. Possibly even schedule events in advance so an official can observe.

In the presence of a ruler and want to case Zone of Truth or Detect Evil or whatever? Every guard in the room should immediately attack you. How do they know you aren't casting dominate person? Any king should have whatever protections in place that he can afford.

Maybe the king has an Anti-Magic Zone prepared somehwere? In fact, I would expect any prosperous kingdom to operate an anti-magic zone area in their prisons.

Kings can probably afford a set of magical items that render them immune to many effects. Mind buttressing Armor to be immune to charms, for example.

Even in most inns / bars of small towns, casting a spell should be treated as the equivalent of waving a gun around or revealing that you are holding a bomb. People are are trained in spellcraft may know what you are doing and not care. Not everyone will.

I understand that a lot of that is world building and maybe societies in your worlds don't care that someone might be opening a gate to allow their demon armies to walk straight into the middle of the city or transforming into a dragon or whatever. I'd like to be a villain in such a world.

So in the Malazan book series (which is based on the author's D&D campaign) the empress and other high profile people carry otataral which is the antimagic equivalent of kryptonite. The empress herself is a high level monk or brawler that crushes magical assassins that warp in and find themselves depowered.

Not sure if there's conflicting examples, but Aravashnial from Wrath of the Righteous wouldn't be able to read a spellbook according to JJ.

Can someone clarify if buffing right before a save against the onset of a disease, or temporary negative level can be done?

I recently heard the argument that you'd need to have those sort of effects in place for the duration of time leading up to the save for it to count, so a Bear's Endurance would need to last 24 hours to work for a save against a disease for a 1 day onset.

Is this correct?

Woo! The Unchained action economy was one of my favorite parts of the book! So happy to see that coming to PF2.

Quote:

The fighter, for example, has a feat that you can select called Sudden Charge, which costs two actions but lets you to move twice your speed and attack once, allowing fighters to get right into the fray!

This is super scary. This goes back to what I was saying in the other thread about what I love about Pathfinder--the way I can combine different classes, archetypes, etc. to get the abilities that I want. It will kind of suck if my character can't do cool thing X because they don't have the right class. Yes, there are boundaries within reason, but they have to be thematically justified.

I'm pretty sure it's called Sudden Charge for a reason. They're charging "faster", everyone else probably gets to charge as a full round (or 3 actions).

Erdrix wrote:

Concordia wrote:

I am not excited at all by this. I know I'll get thrashed by saying so, but I think the game is perfect as it is now.

This is purely and simply a consumering scam to get more of our money. I bought almost all of the hardcovers for "PF1", do you think I'll do it again? Sure as hell not!

I won't jump on that bandwagon.

Luckily your hardcovers won't turn to dust upon 2e's release and can still enjoy them.

Right, but won't be supported anymore (as of 2019, if I read correctly). What if I like that 2nd Ed? No way I'm buying a new Core Rulebook (70 Canadian $), another Campaign and GM guide, and 5 or 6 Monster manuals...

Skill system probably won't be the same, feats won't be the same, combat is already determined to not work the same way.

You've never had to do any of that. The rules have always been free.

Kirth Gersen wrote:

Be aware that essentially every monster Paizo publishes either gets massive bonuses against trip, or is outright immune. By the time you get Greater Trip, you're at the point where no enemy can be tripped, so what's the point?

It seems like bull rush might be okay if you had superior reach and Combat Reflexes, but meh otherwise -- but I haven't tried it.

Am currently running a campaign in book 6 of a published AP with characters at 17th level.

Trip is still effective against ~80% of encounters.

Please explain when exactly this "no longer usable" threshold is reached.

VoodistMonk wrote:

Tripping makes the opponent prone, essentially ending their turn, and predictably determines their next turn, opening up AoO from everyone within reach.

Depends on your build.

I've been looking at a battlefield control fighter with Shield Brace, a reach weapon with the trip property, and Shield Slam.

If you had Greater Bull Rush not only could you position opponents who closed to melee, they will provoke from your party members while moving and fall prone if they hit a wall.

Just for funsies I looked at what I thought would be the worst case scenario - book 6 of Strange Aeons - assuming everything would be some sort of monstrosity that couldn't be tripped.

Even there, it ends up not being totally useless. Out of approximately 41 sets of enemies, 19 of those are outright trippable, 4 of them are unlikely with cmd in the upper 40s into the 50s, and 5 are in between (they have an ability to become airborne but aren't constantly flying.)

Q-Workshop makes the Pathfinder dice, and they also already make an assortment of Call of Cthulhu dice. It's probably a redundant product for them. I know I've just been using the CoC dice for Strange Aeons so far.

So Bubonic Plague has the condition of:
"a victim who takes any Constitution damage from the disease must immediately make a successful Fortitude save or become fatigued until all his Constitution damage is healed."

If the Swashbuckler is using charmed life against the first save and fails resulting in CON and CHA damage, I'm assuming he cannot use it again against the save that induces fatigue since that would be 2 immediate actions.

Or should the charmed life bonus carry into this secondary effect?

Omnius wrote:

It is, but that's also literally the foundation of the Druid class. They're built on Captain Planet logic.

I mean, the question of "is metal armor natural?" is entirely separate from the question of "can druids wear metal armor?". The answer to the latter is obviously "no," for exactly the same reason that druids need a grasshopper's hind leg to cast jump - because the rules say so. It's a hoop that druids have to jump through, and if you don't like it, you can find a workaround or play something else. But none of that has any bearing on whether steel armor or radioactive waste or the Eiffel Tower are natural. The answer to that is obvious as well, unless you contort your worldview to maintain an image of humans as categorically special entities that stand apart from the rest of the universe.

The Aboleths stand by that.

Ataraxias wrote:

On a related note; where's the outrage over druidic then? No one else immediately loses their powers teaching someone else a language.

Considering effort was made to have Sylvan as a universal tongue, it seems pretty evident Druidic is intended for cryptographic use. I can question why they felt the need to have a class-only secure communication, but not punishment for breaking that security.

This only leads us back to the answer of the will of nature does what it feels like. It's not like some other druid discovers you betrayed them and shows up to expel you from the order, it's an immediate omnipresent event.

On a related note; where's the outrage over druidic then? No one else immediately loses their powers teaching someone else a language.

Saldiven wrote:

Why do you think that a Golarion philosopher arguing that point with the forces of nature is going to win the argument and change their rules?

This is how the world works. It's not going to change due to a philosopher's or scientist's arguments, just like the Earth isn't going to suddenly turn flat because someone makes an argument for it.

This is a strawman and you know it. The Earth isn’t going to become flat because the laws of physics would have to change for arguments to make it flat. Meanwhile, the world would already have known that metal is just as natural as animal hide, BEFORE Druids were even a thing, because it’s common sense to know that. And even if the world didn’t know that when Druids became a thing, what makes you think they are idiots? Their casting stat is literally Wisdom. If they are presented sound logic through science, they would have no reason to ignore it.

“BUT IT’S A RELIGION!”

No, it isn’t. If it was, they’d be forced to worship a deity. They can be deityless. They follow nature. And nature says that metal armor is more natural than leather armor.

Religions don't require a deity. Look at Druma.

Ataraxias wrote:

The Sideromancer wrote:

AaronUnicorn wrote:

Druids can't wear metal armor or use metal shields for the same reason that in the real world Orthodox Jews can't mix meat and milk in the same meal, or real world Catholics can't eat meat on Fridays during Lent, or real world Hindus don't eat the flesh of cows.

It's a religious restriction. It's not based on science. It's not based on "metal is less pure than leather." It's not based on anything other than "The Gods of Nature demand this. They grant me the spells and other powers that are a class feature of being a Druid. Therefore, I follow those demands or lose my class features."

And that's ok.

And if there were alternative choices for a religious restriction, that would be fine. But given the diversity of druid-legal deities (i.e. all of them), it's the equivalent of Orthodox Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Hindus, Bhuddists, Muslims, Taoists, and that guy who never gave up on Zeus all not eating beef. Imagine trying to buy a cheeseburger in that world.

Druids don't get their powers from a Deity. There is no alternative.

False.

AoN, Druid wrote:

A druid can't cast spells of an alignment opposed to her own or her deity's (if she has one).

Additionally, several deities have specific interactions with druids they provide spells to.

Keyword is if. Druids function just fine without any deities, such as those of the Green Faith. It's not the deities that dictate the will of nature. The druid could be a total heretic against their deity and still have the regular druid spell list.

AaronUnicorn wrote:

Druids can't wear metal armor or use metal shields for the same reason that in the real world Orthodox Jews can't mix meat and milk in the same meal, or real world Catholics can't eat meat on Fridays during Lent, or real world Hindus don't eat the flesh of cows.

It's a religious restriction. It's not based on science. It's not based on "metal is less pure than leather." It's not based on anything other than "The Gods of Nature demand this. They grant me the spells and other powers that are a class feature of being a Druid. Therefore, I follow those demands or lose my class features."

And that's ok.

And if there were alternative choices for a religious restriction, that would be fine. But given the diversity of druid-legal deities (i.e. all of them), it's the equivalent of Orthodox Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Hindus, Bhuddists, Muslims, Taoists, and that guy who never gave up on Zeus all not eating beef. Imagine trying to buy a cheeseburger in that world.

Druids don't get their powers from a Deity. There is no alternative.

I can't remember who it was on this forum that I got this from so I can't give credit where due, but it is important to consider the following:

The 9th level caster in this town shouldn't just be Wizard Automaton #1408, available for all your magical needs. This guy has his own life, his own schedule, he might only be available Wealdays and Firedays from 2pm-5pm cause he spends the rest of his time lecturing at the school two towns over.

I mighe be overthinking this, but can someone clarify for me how this form of piecemeal research is supposed to work?
How do they figure out which 3 books to read for each quest?

Each gift quest requires reading 3 books If they've only completed 1 or 2 of the listed books, do they still knock off kp but with a limit? I.e. reading 1 book allows you to get at most only the 20 and 15 kp info?

And what is the reading pace?

Klorox wrote:

As for the ring, the 'must wear it for 1full day before it starts working' clause is absent from the PFSRD. It wasn't present in the 3.5DMG either, I'm too lazy to dig out my AD&D DMG to check, but I bet such clauses hadn't even be thought of yet.

That wasn't in regards to the ring of regeneration, but a reply to Azten who felt the hypothetical ring of fast healing should have one.

Quote:

In my opinion yes, on a ring it would be too strong unless you had to wear the ring for a full day before it started working. Fast Healing 1 is next to useless unless you are outside of combat.

A ring of this type essentially also provides bleed immunity and the diehard feat since it's a magical healing source.

The Esoteric Order of the Palatine Eye.
Basically it's a secret fraternity type organization like the Masons or Illuminati that has Tabris and some of his writings as the foundation.

Let's not forget the Apocalyptic Resurrection ability they have, so you actually need to be able to find them and kill them again quickly (in like a single round). Otherwise they'll just send anyone home with their abilities after losing the first bout.

Because what makes a PC hero special isn't their stats or abilities, it's their astronomical growth rate. They're like those blob monsters that become the size of the city by the end of the movie.
Npcs take 50 years to get to level 7.
Pcs are there in like 2 months.

The biggest immediate problem is mythic blasphemy. 3 people are probably going to be sent home and they'll kill the 4th at their leisure.

Command undead isn't going to bring parity to the outer planes.

If the disparity occurs and Hell is seen as a vulnerable target due to a decreased population, they'll be forced to do what? Mass planeshifting undead off of Eox to bolster their legions? I'm pretty sure that'd be an unacceptable encroachment on the material realm under the agreement.

Let's not forget Pharasma's zealots provide a necessary service to all, including the undead.

The cold war agreement that the pantheon has in place is held together by the belief that Pharasma is able to distribute souls properly, and for the sake of argument, evenly.

If enough evil people that would have been destined for evil planes are converting to undead and locking their souls out of the system, you'll end up in a situation where good and neutral outsiders gradually become more numerous than evil ones. Then it'll likely be the evil deities to strike out at the undead to "claim what is their right", spiraling into apocalypse.

Holy moly. How can people seriously try to argue that a barbarian can't reload a weapon?

Let's examine the rules shall we?

Rage wrote:

While in rage, a barbarian cannot use any Charisma-, Dexterity-, or Intelligence-based skills (except Acrobatics, Fly, Intimidate, and Ride) or any ability that requires patience or concentration.

Hmmmm.....let's see. Is reloading a skill? Nope. Is it an ability? Nope. Oh look, it's just an action. Case closed.

If you're the GM of a home game and you're damn sure not gonna let those stupid barbarians reload while raging, go for it dude. Houserule it. More power to ya. But please, stop trying to argue that the rules say something they don't.

Edit: As an aside, I can think of soooo many examples of people who were raging mad yet somehow still possessed the capability to reload a gun both IRL and in popular media.

The wacky caveat to this are those court cases where they say the act of reloading shifts it from a situation of emotional reaction, to just murder.

Sauce987654321 wrote:

Lady-J wrote:

i would say its more of an influence than power, you could have a super powerful god that only grants 2 domains or a fairly weak god that offers 18 domains just because one offers more or less domains doesn't mean they are more or less powerful

I agree with this, and the game supports this idea, too. Mythic characters of can grant up to 4 domains before even hitting CR 15, likewise a CR 14 Elder Deep one can grant 4 domains with it's "Deific" special ability.

What I wrote was supposed to read as "Mythic characters can grant up to four domains" not "Mythic characters of can grant four domains"

I really hate typing on a phone.

I think it's both a combination of influence and power. Lamashtu's rise involves taking a domain, implying you at least need enough power to hold on to what you have against usurpers.

QuidEst wrote:

Second module has 'em. That's where the stats are from.

Yes, I know. My question is about how to roleplay one.

Quote:

Admit you goofed, and pull out the massively overleveled enemy with abilities that will mess up the PCs for levels with no recourse.

Eh. It's a horror module, and I told them at the beginning that I would be spicing it up with level-inappropriate encounters. I like this module a lot, but it suffers from the narrow straitjacket that Paizo forces on all its modules: you can have all sorts of weirdness, but you can never have an encounter that's OP. I'm old school that way: I think that once in a while there should be encounters where the only correct responses are "talk" or "run". And, as noted, I signaled this one pretty clearly (IMO) -- e.g., they found a previous victim and they know it can level drain.

Anyway, there it is. Any suggestions?

Doug M.

Well you'll like book 3 then. There's several OP encounters.

I think the actual issue is that the BBEG isn't actually anyone in the game, it's Hastur/The King in Yellow and the closest we really get to him is The Pallid Mask.

I plan to create an overbearing atmosphere with The King and Pallid Mask. Since he has greater teleport I plan to make him a Freddy Krueger style omnipresent stalker, dropping in at opportune times with confusion, charisma drain, greater dispel magic etc. then warping out, with Cassilda intervening if things go horribly wrong.

Cassilda and the Mask will negate each other since the King will punish her, however the Mask revives quicker than she does, creating a necessity for the PCs to make the most out of their time.

I'll throw in the King as a noncombatant also from time to time, just floating high above doing weird stuff.

Anyways my goal is to really drive the point that they're fighting Hastur, and everything happening in Carcosa is some strange game to him since Cassilda says there are "rules" of some sort.

God of Bad Players.

Grants the ability to reenter the game upon death with the same stats and gear, but altered appearance.

Basically anyone that plays in a megadungeon like Rappan Athuk automatically worships him.

thejeff wrote:

If the idea of "civilizing monsters" means "put them in charge and let them do what they want, subject to being punished when they annoy something more powerful", it's not really "civilizing".

By that standard Belkzen's orcs are "civilized" and so is the average goblin tribe.

I'd have to look more closely at the Irrisen example. I don't have the Irrisen campaign books, but that's not the idea I got from the stuff in RoW. Some monsters yes, but not given that kind of free rein, to kill and eat people as they please.

Civilizing goblins, even by raising babies from scratch (with all the horrific implications that being a good thing has), is pretty GM dependent. How much that's goblin nature and how it's purely cultural is loosely defined at best. Possibly even contradictory.

Civilized doesn't mean 'nice'. Civilized means lived in an organized city-based society.

Rome was civilized, and it was out conquering people left and right.

Sparta was completely horrible, keeping most of the population in slavery where it was not only free to kill them but something done as a right of passage, but it was civilized.

Irrisen's civilized, but the trolls really aren't a big factor in that, the Witches rule and keep the trolls in line. Some of the monsters who live there are more properly civilized, others just are given a spot.

Belkzen is semi-civilized. There is some cities and such, but most of the country is semi-nomatic tribes that sometimes take over a city. Give it time and I expect it'd become more-so with a more stable system.

Adding to this from Irrisen - Land of Eternal Winter book:

Sections like that heavily imply that the races involved with Baba Yaga's conquering armies are given a lot of leeway unless they upset a major Jadwiga.