Coriat's page

I disagree about the story being bad. While not brilliant it is easily on par with Paizo APs that I have read or played.

Former Wicked player here. For me, elements of the story as written were very frustrating, and I frequently felt like the AP had a poor grasp even on its own plot, even without getting into its poor grasp on game mechanics that a better AP might have harmoniously integrated into said plot. Completely forgetting about plot elements introduced in earlier books is a repeated problem - not just once or twice but again, and again, and again, only a handful of which were addressed in the later Book 7 - and on some occasions the AP not just ignores previous scenes or lore but outright contradicts them.

There are any number of examples, but the worst and most frustrating IMO was Richard's

The AP does require a lot of work on the part of GM, but at the same time I really enjoyed the work. It felt like I was making a good thing better, not that I was salvaging bad work.

My own take is that it was an AP with some interesting and ambitious ideas that it mostly failed to execute well. I absolutely agree that a GM willing to do enormous amounts of extra work could make something very good out of it.

The stats work is capital-A Awful, and I do not just mean that it is absolutely riddled with severe errors, though it is that, but also that the AP's ability to challenge a halfway competent party is at best mediocre and at worst completely MIA after Book 1. You do not need to be a highly optimized party to blow this AP out of the water; you as PCs can mail it in after Book 1 and still feel little sense of challenge. Playing a witch, out of sheer laziness, I stopped selecting feats or filling more than one or two spell slots a level after Level 5. Just left placeholders on the character sheet. I had picked up a crafting feat at Level 5 but ended up leaving the majority of my character wealth in the form of a pile of uncrafted GP even as weeks and months of crafting downtime drifted by. Never needed or missed any of that stuff.

This is an AP that at one point throws a barbarian opponent at a 14th/15th level, and supposed to be high powered for its level, party whose threat consists of attacking in melee for 1d8+5 damage. Purportedly a CR 14 melee threat that the text describes as a "furious combat monster." Paizo's Clockwork Soldier has comparable offense (same to hit; fewer attacks but more than double the damage) at CR 6!

Not an outlier when it comes to humanoid NPC statblocks (i.e., statblocks fully built by the AP author rather than taken from a Bestiary), either. The boss of book 4 is another martial NPC who purports to be CR 15 and deals 1d8+7. Neither has Power Attack, so for damage what you see is what you get.

There are many other complaints that could be made, such as how not-actually-Good the good guys feel as written, but I'll save those for if I ever write an actual review. Players and GMs who put in extraordinary effort can make this a cool and interesting AP, but there are so many warts.

If I felt very strongly about staying on topic, I'd have given up posting here like a decade ago. :)

But okay, well, staying on the theme of deities, here's something I prefer to change about Golarion (and some other settings as applicable): not all clerics are clerics of one specific god, and even those that are tend have relationships that are more "there are many gods, and it's my job to perform the rituals for and invoke the blessings of this particular one" rather than "there are many gods, and I have special personal belief and faith in this particular one."

The war goddess bit is true, altho we have to remind ourselves that most of the records we have of that time come from Athens, and she was the patron godess of that city. It's quite likely that her importance in the greek pantheon was exagerated by the athenians, and that the rest of greece saw her as a more minor figure.

Athena may well have begun as only a pretty local goddess, but if so that was in a very early period. By the time of the classical Athens we all know and love, Athena can be found all over the place, with numerous cults and temples from Italy to Anatolia. For example, she had a prominent place in Syracuse, the most powerful polis of the Greek west, which would go on to cripplingly defeat the Athenians themselves during the Peloponnesian War.

In the literary as opposed to the archaeological record, she's also pretty prominent even in some of the earliest literature we have - a leading goddess in the Iliad and even more so in the Odyssey, and also frequently mentioned in Hesiod. None of which were composed in or are specially about Athens (Hesiod tells us that he lived near Thebes and his father came from Anatolia; there is no authorial info in the Iliad or Odyssey, but the scholarly consensus points towards Anatolian composition).

I've seen suggestions that various figures in Minoan religious imagery may represent Athena, which if correct would put her already outside Attica on the order of a thousand years before the Athens of Pericles or Plato. I'm not sure whether any consensus has formed around this topic, either accepting or rejecting the identification, though.

Going from early to late, she of course becomes even more ubiquitous in Hellenistic and (especially) Roman times. In the former case, there are a lot of cities in the post-Alexander East that end up associated with Athena in the form of Athena Polias. These long postdate Athens becoming a major center of cultural prestige in the Greek world, though, and many instances of Athena Polias surely owe their existence to the influence of that cultural prestige. If you need a protective patron deity for your newly founded Hellenistic polis, it's not a great leap to borrow Athena, already the patron and protector of many of the most famous and influential old Greek poleis.

Athena becomes so prominent that even non-Greeks begin borrowing her image for things like coinage (such as this interesting coin minted in Achaemenid Lycia, with the head of the local satrap Artembares on one side and helmeted Athena on the other).

Moving on even later, to Roman times, she crops up in yet more places. There are various reasons for this; notable among these is Minerva's role in the Roman Capitoline Triad consisting of Jupiter-Juno-Minerva. Since Greek Athena is identified with and syncretized with Roman Minerva, when Minerva is re-exported along with the idea of the Triad to the areas of the Greek East that come under Roman influence, she frequently arrives as Athena again.

Including when it comes to dice rolls, apparently :)

Golarion is knock-off Earth and they just copypasted slavery into their corollaries and treated it as something the setting handles with indifference.

This seems like a solid, succinct summary of what (people seem to be arguing) is wrong at the core with how some setting materials have handled slavery.

I should also point out those making a "morals were different back then" argument that it only holds up if, like the oppressors of the past, you don't count the opinions of the enslaved. If you consider the victims actual humans with valid opinions of their own, there is no "morals of the past" argument because everyone who has been oppressed knows it sucks.

We should count the opinions of the enslaved, but the "morals were different back then" argument wouldn't hold up that well even if we didn't. As made in real history it frequently had more than a whiff of insincerity about it.

The whole argument that slavery didn't suck - as made in real history - was not exactly normal across the long, long history of slavery; it was widely and fiercely propounded only in the places and the short periods in which slavery was under threatening attack and those with a stake in its preservation felt the need for moral arguments to defend it.

Sources from times and places where stakeholders in slavery didn't feel the system to be threatened often are quite open about admitting that slavery was evil and sucked, even sources from the very distant past who participated in it and lived lives surrounded by it.

Haec est sola malorum omnium postrema, quae liberis omni supplicio gravior est; nam ubi libertas periit, una ibi perierunt et omnia, as Saint Isidore wrote about slavery more than a thousand years before there was any such thing as abolitionism. This thing [enslavement] alone is the worst of all evils, which for free persons is the gravest of all tortures, for where freedom has perished, everything there is has perished with it.

This from a man who was anything but antislavery, but who had no ulterior motive to dissemble about how much it sucked to be enslaved because there was no social movement trying to end slavery and therefore no audience of fence-sitting potential abolitionists who had to be lied to.

Oh hey, it's a thread about the morality of slavery. Brings back memories, that does!

...ok, the truth is, I was following the other thread this split from and waiting for it to be split into a new thread before adding to it. But seriously, if anyone is feeling the need to turn this into a debate about how slavery isn't actually evil, feel free to not. I gather that Paizo is actively no longer interested in providing a platform on which to post that argument, which is all for the best since slavery is, pretty clearly, characteristically evil. I don't feel particularly nostalgic for those debates.

That said, I have fairly mixed feelings about the idea of just treating slavery as a forbidden topic in game. Part of that might be because I study slavery, like, a lot. I have a classics degree - yeah, the original great slaving societies - and though I did not go on to work in academia, I keep in touch with the field, especially in social-history topics such as slavery. So while I don't study Atlantic slavery much at all, I keep up with all sorts of stuff related to classical, medieval, and ANE slavery, and as is probably normal for something that someone spends a lot of time on, it bleeds over into my roleplaying. In recent years I've played a Viking raider who in his backstory had raided for slaves but had renounced it before campaign start, a very evil slave-and-slaver witch in Way of the Wicked, a LG bard who banned slavery in his fief and has recently been fighting a war against slave-taking giants... Right now in a pbp on these boards I'm playing an azata formed from the soul of a former slave.

I mean, I've also played characters who have nothing to do with slavery on either side of the slaver/enslaved line, I don't want to seem one-note, but like I said, something that comes up a lot in my reading naturally comes up a lot in my roleplaying. So I have a certain interest in not seeing it treated as an out-of-bounds topic.

Discomfort is always valid, but it can't dictate behavior. Not on its own.

I'm also sympathetic to this view. And discomfort also sometimes provides fertile ground for roleplaying. Though not always and certainly not automatically. It demands good judgment; a track record and built-up trust will help people who game with you to trust you to navigate discomfort well; etc., etc.

The same is true of companies selling gaming material to customers. If you want me to buy uncomfortable material from your company, a track record of handling it well helps.

I'm not terribly familiar with the way that Paizo has portrayed slavery in Golarion, whether in older books or more recent ones. Just not too familiar with Golarion lore overall, since my weekly Pathfinder game (when I had one) wasn't set there.

But I get the impression from posts in the other thread that in the past Paizo has suggested in setting materials that slavery is not evil, or provided for people to show up to organized play games and inflict their "nonevil" slavers on a bunch of strangers just looking to roll some dice, and so on?

If so, the stuff above about good judgment, being more demanding, needing a good track record, etc. cuts both ways. A track record of them handling this particular uncomfortable topic poorly might mean that for Paizo specifically, steering clear of slavery is for the best, even if others need not feel obligated to do so.

"I can also probe them with images."

Radamare waits a moment in case anybody has objections to such a plan, but if nobody does, she proceeds. A moment's silent concentration causes a few wisps of cloud to coalesce into an image of a tiny, winged demon with fierce curling rams' horns and an obnoxious leer. A quasit, such as the painted symbol seems to indicate.

She sends the illusory quasit winging towards the field of strange devices to see whether they react to intrusions in any way.

Major image. But if anyone prefers to go with a different plan, just post saying so and Rada will hold off on this one.

5. Slings have limited support.

I too want more awesome slings. I wanted this in 1e also. Somewhere in the dark basement storage of the forums there's a thread thousands of posts long about wanting more awesome slings back then.

—crossbow continue to be suboptimal choices compared to bows. While I understand perfectly the historical reasonings, we are playing a fantasy game, not a historical reenactment. Crossbows need to be better.

I mean, you could make an argument that the historical reasonings aren't even that strong, considering that crossbows not only competed with bows, but in many non-England areas outcompeted and replaced them.

In the hands of skilled users, not in the baby-simple-weapon-for-incompetent-conscripts sense. I'll see Robin Hood and raise you a William Tell.

Nah, she's equally willing to travel under her own power.

EDIT: OK, I changed my mind, it's probably a better idea to fly with Rahlmaat in case we wind up in air combat en route, since Rada's flying form is combat challenged. Plus, y'know, interaction.

After a moment's thought, Radamare reconsiders and also asks Rahlmaat for a ride, wondering what clue the sphinx will request of her.

Radamare politely accepts a ride if offered. If not offered, she sticks with her original plan of traveling by short teleportation hops until they are close enough to the palace to worry about wards against teleporting, at which point she has a shorter-term air walk spell ready.

Sabrina has half celestial flight. Radamare can fly only in her incorporeal light form. That prevents her from doing most useful combat things, but if teleporting turns out to be a pain for any reason, incorporeal flying is fine for out of combat travel.

Huh, weird, it's almost like fantasy tends to benefit from creating mythical creatures who can be stand-ins for more complicated concepts.

As long as it keeps moving away from and we make it easy to map those mythical creature stand-ins to real-life cultures.

I think my read was more that the orcs didn't want to go to war because war is a meat grinder for everyone involved.

I read it as being some of column A and some of column B. Sauron drives his orcs with the whip to the major battles (and we see the whips in the book, not just in the obligatory ultimate evil marching song), including some who are explicitly unenthusiastic, but then again Gorbag and Shagrat seem rather nostalgic about the prospect of freelance raiding.

Watched Fellowship of the Ring. Genuinely a beautiful movie.

Best of the three IMO! (not that the other two were bad)

The veiled woman regards Liliya thoughtfully.

"I should not be surprised that you could keep your nature concealed from my comrades," she replies. "It is as if it were you, not I, who is veiled, even to my eyes, which ought to see the auras of fiends whatever shape they take."

The azata agrees to accompany Britta to the libraries at least to learn where they are and what they hold in case they should need to return and consult them, though she voices no interest in trading or shops. Nor does she does move to rise just yet, instead waiting on the two powers to indicate whether the meeting is at an end or whether there is anything else they wish to convey.

In the meantime, she turns to Rahlmaat.

"I am afraid that I did not learn enough about most of you before this meeting to prepare a suitable gift in token of alliance. However, everyone knows about sphinxes and riddles, so I have made one for you, with the help of a friend. I am not clever enough at riddling to create a completely new one suitable for a sphinx, so instead I took a very ancient riddle, reworked it and made it new again."

Such renewals, taking something old and stale and changing it, are a frequent feature of azata artistry.

"I was going to wait until evening, but I think I will tell it to you now, so that you may have something to ponder this afternoon to distract you from missing the Libraries of Xinalata. Or at least, I hope it will last you the afternoon."

In the time of my youth -- twice-two fountains I drink from.
Once I grow older, cut, -- I cut vales and mountains
from the dark depths -- dare to overturn Nature.
After wasting away -- borne down by bitter death,
then bereft of body -- body I embrace,
and courageously confront -- rose's twelve-quartered roar.
Thus the years' turning -- transforms my fate.
What am I?

Um huh. Okay, linguistic question - if you are being sarcastic, then you are employing sarcasm. If you are being facetious, then you are employing...? I really don't know the word here. I wanted to default to "facetism" but if you say it aloud that's something else entirely. :)

Facetiousness.

Radamare takes note of Liliya's thoughts. Out loud, she voices her agreement with each of Rahlmaat's suggestions. She takes up the planar key to Vlorus, expecting that she will be the one to work the plane shift.

She turns to Britta as the archmage speaks of research and purchases, though she addresses the whole group.

"If we are to set out tomorrow, then after doing anything else you may wish to do today, let all of you also gather with me before I go to rest. I will then draw blessings around us all that may offer some measure of protection against the many dangers of the depths below."

Oh, so Sean K Reynolds made a statement. I'll quote some bits that seemed important to me in a moment.

I wonder how many more nails this particular coffin lid will need. It had already been looking pretty nailed by my lights.

Recording yourself yelling at someone so you can play it back to them a second time seems like the type of thing you'd see in a parody of dysfunctional management. So does reading out employee complaints for laughs.

You all are having quite the lengthy mental conversations in these matters of a few seconds of conversation with Korada.

I'll give a peek behind the spoiler tags: I've been calling out Radamare's telepathic conversation as pausing or trailing off whenever the out-loud conversation picks up. Int 12 and no native telepathy suggests to me that carrying on simultaneous conversations out loud and in mindspeech probably isn't a skill that comes naturally to her.

In "cringey video games" news, I joined a RuneScape Iron Clan a few weeks ago and now everyone but me has gotten bored and left. That's such a self-own on so many levels.

I remember playing that like twenty years ago! I got my grubby little eighth grade hands on an adamant square shield before practically anyone.

In 2001 that was top gear.

top. gear.

Here is a more organized list of longer than a day buffs that Rada will cast on each party member the evening before we set out, in line with the earlier post. Not listing shorter buffs here since the availability of those will be situational.

Per earlier post, if there is one additional hour/level cleric buff that you really want precast on you before we start, let me know.

Radamare can also keep an aid spell active on every party member at all times (except Gathroc, who’s immune to positive thinking). Listing it with the long spells since it will be effectively constant, even though it’s actually minutes/level. If it’s OK with you, DM, I’d prefer to just assume an average result for temporary hp (1d8+10=14) rather than roll d8s every 15 minutes of the day.

Enduring Blessing, extended freedom of movement (48 hrs) - various benefits.

aid (14 minutes at will) - 14 temporary hit points and +1 morale bonus to attack rolls and fear saves.
extended mass planar adaptation (38 hrs) - acid resistance 20 and immunity to harmful Abyssal environmental effects.
extended mass lesser reversion (48 hrs) - once during the spell duration, when brought below half hit points, you can dismiss the spell as an immediate action to heal 1d8+19 hit points.
extended delay poison (38 hrs) - poison does not affect you until the spell ends

Enduring Blessing, extended freedom of movement (48 hrs) - various benefits.

aid (14 minutes at will) - 14 temporary hit points and +1 morale bonus to attack rolls and fear saves.
extended mass planar adaptation (38 hrs) - acid resistance 20 and immunity to harmful Abyssal environmental effects.
extended mass lesser reversion (48 hrs) - once during the spell duration, when brought below half hit points, you can dismiss the spell as an immediate action to heal 1d8+19 hit points.

Enduring Blessing, extended freedom of movement (48 hrs) - various benefits.

aid (14 minutes at will) - 14 temporary hit points and +1 morale bonus to attack rolls and fear saves.
extended mass planar adaptation (38 hrs) - acid resistance 20 and immunity to harmful Abyssal environmental effects.
extended mass lesser reversion (48 hrs) - once during the spell duration, when brought below half hit points, you can dismiss the spell as an immediate action to heal 1d8+19 hit points.
extended delay poison (38 hrs) - poison does not affect you until the spell ends

Enduring Blessing, extended freedom of movement (48 hrs) - various benefits

aid (14 minutes at will) - 14 temporary hit points and +1 morale bonus to attack rolls and fear saves.
extended mass planar adaptation (38 hrs) - acid resistance 20 and immunity to harmful Abyssal environmental effects.
extended mass lesser reversion (48 hrs) - once during the spell duration, when brought below half hit points, you can dismiss the spell as an immediate action to heal 1d8+19 hit points.

Enduring Blessing, extended freedom of movement (48 hrs) - various benefits.

extended mass planar adaptation (38 hrs) - acid resistance 20 and immunity to whatever harmful Abyssal environmental effects an undead isn’t already immune to.

As noted previously, I am packing a few extra freedom of movement spells, but if any of the others end or are dispelled, don’t count on getting them back unless and until we get a full day of noncombat downtime… which, depending on the adventure tempo, might or might not be anytime soon.

Coriat wrote:

Me, I always wanted to live on the most memorably named street in my hometown (there's that my again!), Labor-in-Vain Road.

Please tell me there are train tracks that cross that road.

...sure!

Terevalis Unctio of House Mysti wrote:

Kobold Cleaver wrote:

I suppose whether an abusive poster develops a better attitude is secondary to me to the priority of ensuring they aren't posting abuse and harassment on my forums.

KC, while I don't disagree with the message of the post, one thing to point out, these are not your forums.

I don't know if I can think of a better example of the importance of reading people in good faith than assuming that the use of "my" to indicate the forums I inhabit was instead an attempt by me to seize control of the forums.

Wait, wait, hold off on the good faith for a second, I'm working on a way to parlay the phrase my perspective into becoming Monarch of All I Survey.

Coriat wrote:

MurderHobo#6226 wrote:

Kobold Cleaver wrote:

I suppose whether an abusive poster develops a better attitude is secondary to me to the priority of ensuring they aren't posting abuse and harassment on my forums.

Ah, "yours."

Henceforth in my own personal headcanon, whenever you say something like my street or my neighbor or my home state, I'm going to interpret it as a claim of literal ownership. ;)

When I was a kid, I lived on a street with our family's last name on it, so I could get pretty close to making a claim like this at the time.

Alas, now I must live adjacent to proper, paved streets named after individuals I have no knowledge or care about, like some kind of plebeian . Ugh.

Me, I always wanted to live on the most memorably named street in my hometown (there's that my again!), Labor-in-Vain Road.

Kobold Cleaver wrote:

I suppose whether an abusive poster develops a better attitude is secondary to me to the priority of ensuring they aren't posting abuse and harassment on my forums.

Ah, "yours."

Henceforth in my own personal headcanon, whenever you say something like my street or my neighbor or my home state, I'm going to interpret it as a claim of literal ownership. ;)

Yeah, it's funny how the most "fragile, emotional" trans people are actually usually the ones ensuring the most BS at any given time.

Enduring?

I have always worked from the notion that you praise in public, but punish in private.

You might be interested in a years-old discussion between Tonya and the inimitable Jiggy, in which the latter argues that praise in public, reprimand in private is sometimes an appropriate approach to some problems of forum moderation (or people management in general) but in other situations is frankly not the right approach.

In other words, questioning how good of an idea it is to "always" work from that notion, as if it were a required and indispensable principle. An alternative is to treat praise in public, reprimand in private as one among several moderating solutions, better suited to some problems and worse suited to others.

While the details of the problems were quite different (PFS stuff), a number of the broader themes of the problems were strikingly similar to those being discussed now, such as the trouble that arises when reprimand in private turns into toxic behavior goes publicly unchallenged.

unless concentration checks dont fail on a 1.

They don't :)

Re posting rates, no worries. I like posting as much as the next guy.

Radamare's veiled gaze slides to the sphinx, and she speaks again, seeming to decide that it is necessary to say outright what she had earlier left as an unspoken implication.

"Then let us hear what the lord of the Open Hand and the lady of the Ardent Dream would tell us of this threat, of our hopes for defeating it and the mission for which we are gathered, and of the consequences of failure, that all of us may plainly hear and grasp what is at stake should we not find a way to cooperate."

Spoilered for wall'o'text

In a remote region of the Astral Plane...

If you're taking Undetectable on your item, I don't think you need to know what your Stealth bonus is while invisible because you could roll up on someone while belting out The Internationale at the top of your lungs and it wouldn't even matter.

"In all the times your priests and tellers have told you the story of the woman who opened the box the gods had filled with evils and curses upon mortalkind, have you ever stopped to ask yourself: why was hope one of them?"

"The immortality of the soul is the greatest shackle in all this carceral Creation. It means one thing: when the hour of Asmodeus's triumph arrives, even in death, we cannot get out."

Going off the lists last page plus additions that have been noted since then (but I didn't check the whole thread...), it looks like the listed characters included:

By alignment

4 evil characters (2 CE, 1 NE, 1 LE)

4 neutral characters (0 CN, 3 TN, 1 LN)
6 good characters (1 CG, 2 NG, 3 LG)

Slight bent towards Good but overall very diverse.

By (primary) mechanics (noting that as mythic characters and monsters, a lot of us have broad capabilities; e.g., several of the martial characters have 4-level casting, monster/Divine Source SLAs, etc.)

10 martial, martial-skilled, or martial-with-some-casting characters:

Liliya, the CE succubus gunslinger | trickster

Azrielan, the NE legion archon bloodrager | champion
Lohkir, the LE psychic vampire fighter/monk/antipaladin | champion/psionic archmage
Draco, the CE antipaladin/bloodrager | archmage
Sabrina, the LG half-celestial paladin | marshal
Hadrhune, the NG shabti ranger/horizon walker | champion
Bizan, the TN zen archer monk | champion
Dar'Tenleth, the LN fighter/monk/swordlord | champion
Daniel Beatty, the LG paladin | marshal
Peace through Vigilance, the LG gold dragon | champion/archmage

2 full arcane casters:

Rahlmaat, the TN Sphinx wizard | archmage/champion

Britta, the NG android wizard | archmage/trickster

1 full divine caster:

Radamare, the CG ghaele cleric | hierophant/champion

1 Other:

Marcos the N bard | marshal/archmage, who seems to be a specialist in skills and bardic buffs

Lotta mythic martial firepower hanging out in this thread! Even two of our three characters in 9-level-casting classes are also dual-path mythic champions.

Jumping on the bandwagon of highlighting what my character's core schtick is intended to be. Which is basically "being a 14th level battle cleric" with a bit of extra mythic and azata sauce. Bold are the biggest highlights.

Major Capabilities

Radamare's biggest mythic trick is the ability to spend a point of mythic power and then for the next ten rounds (starting the round after, since it takes a swift action), cast any of her spells as Quickened without affecting the spell level. This enables things like high-level buffing while full attacking or providing quickened 150-point heal spells (with 30 ft reach due to Faith's Reach). She should be able to get them through friendly SR (with +17, roll twice take best). CLW at will means unlimited out-of-combat healing.

She has at-will dispel magic and prepared casting of greater dispel magic and should be very good at taking away enemy buffs, destroying magic traps, etc., with +17, roll twice take best on dispel checks. Could get into the +20s with different gear.

She also can give an ultra-long-lasting buff to each PC via Enduring Blessing. As she is a Liberation cleric, the default option unless requested otherwise would probably be extended freedom of movement lasting 48 hours.

Divine Interference exists to block the occasional character-vaporizing mythic crit.

Offensively, she hits at 27/22/17 for 2d6+18 (29/24/19 for 6d6+20 vs evil outsiders) before any buffs other than at-will aid. With a couple quickened self-buffs, say divine power and righteous might, she Power Attacks at 32/32/27/22 for 7d6+47 vs evil outsiders.

Minor Capabilities

Radamare would probably make an adequate scout (invisibility, incorporeality, teleportation, all at will; +28 perception, constant see invisibility and detect evil) if the party doesn't include anyone better at it, but pretty much anyone really specialized in it would be better. A few of her other SLAs may come in handy, though none of them are jawdropping. Defenses (AC, HP, CMD, saves) are not embarrassing (except Reflex) but are nothing to write home about either. Her gaze attack can probably slay endless hordes of dretches and inflicts shaken on enemies with more HD, but anything that could actually threaten us probably won't fail a DC 21 Will save..

Stuff I might change

There's one or two minor things I already plan to change if accepted (get rid of Mythic Power Attack, get rid of lesser quicken rod since I did gear before I did the mythic part of the character and determined I could afford all four Divine Metamastery abilities). I probably also will change the Contingent Spell feat for something else.

Also, depending on the party I might try to lean a little more martial (if we end up light on martial) or a little more caster (if we end up with plenty of martial characters who can do damage better than I can). At the moment I have some room to tweak in either direction without drastically changing the character, especially if ditching Mythic Power Attack leaves me with a mythic feat to spare.

YawarFiesta wrote:

Rysky wrote:

Slavery is evil, in both this world and Golarion, having a different cultural name for taking away someone’s right and humanity doesn’t diminish that.

Yeah, but slavery is not different from serfdom. There were nice masters and nice Lords as there cruel masters and Lords, but neither slaves nor serfs own themsleves. Yet I don't see much people complaining about PCs potentially having nobility titles.

Also, while deffinitely evil by today standars, there was a time in which slavery was a "merciful" moral innovation, with the previous alternative being the genocide of the defeated.

I'm really profoundly interested in slavery apologia. Merciful? There's always more options on the table than death or enslavement, and acting like the past was uniformly some brutal, murderous nightmare does no one any favors.

It also doesn't have much bearing on Pathfinder, where slavery is /definitively/ evil. I'm not sure what mentioning this is supposed to inspire - do you expect us to go "You're right, slavery isn't that bad after all"?

Yeah. Often quite pragmatic other options. Exact tribute and leave is a popular one with a very old pedigree. Make a peace agreement from a position of strength. Depose their hostile leadership and install someone friendlier in an attempt to turn them into allies. Incorporate them as subjects into your ancient kingdom. Just let them run. And so on. Most of these (except maybe the ancient kingdom one) aren't locked behind a particular degree of technological or institutional development. There never actually existed a period in human history when the only practicable options for a defeated enemy were genocide or slavery, or a period before that when the only practicable option was genocide.

And to quote myself from... yikes, almost a decade ago on these boards, I feel there are big holes in the argument "I could have killed you, and since I didn't, that makes it okay for me to do X to you instead."

As a minor addendum of interest, although classical writers do give the same explanation you provide for the origin of slavery (that it originated as an alternative to killing defeated enemies), there's no reason to think they knew what they were talking about. Slavery is older than recorded history, already evidently a developed institution in the very first written records of it, and writers of two thousand years ago were not at all close in time to its origins. The fact that it appeared in many diverse societies around the world, both Old World and New, suggests either that it is very, very much older than recorded history or that it has developed multiple times independently. Or both.

We don't actually know whether those origins had anything to do with war and sparing the defeated in order to oppress and exploit them instead of killing them. It is one possible origin. But slavery could just as well have developed out of relationships and hierarchies within communities as out of conflicts between them. Debt, for example, is just as plausible a suspect as war.

NE seems like the best fit to me. We don't actually have a huge amount to go on here - one specific incident and a few broad strokes - so saying NE seems like the best fit isn't saying that all other alignments are ruled out. One could make a case for other alignments, and additional information (such as the motivation for trying to "save" her drow rival, which is neither stated nor hinted at above) might change which alignment seems like the best fit (or might not go so far but might hint that movement away from NE is a possibility in the future).

This isn't really based on having that amulet in particular. I'd be reluctant to assign too much weight to a situation that, as presented, the character mostly stumbled into without understanding what would come of it. However, for what it's worth, in the aftermath, she is described as finding a way to use the amulet situation to her benefit (enhancing her ruthless reputation), rather than, say, as seeking a way to ameliorate what the treacherous sisters' ritual did.

More broadly, cultivating a reputation for ruthlessness fits well with NE, and she isn't presented as the type of character who cultivates a reputation for ruthlessness just to scare people off, but isn't really as ruthless as her reputation would make her. The one example of her ruthlessness in action that is given above has her trading away an extremely powerful artifact that for the sole reward of seeing a rival horribly punished, even if she didn't expect the particular type of punishment that in fact occurred. That suggests that you aren't aiming for a character whose bark is worse than their bite.

In addition to the specific amulet story, we have the following broad strokes:

a) The character is a shady artifact dealer who frequently has to deal with beings of vile evil. Out of necessity, she cultivates a reputation for being ruthless enough to give such beings pause, and she generally seeks to live up to the reputation rather than its being a paper tiger.
b) She's done so successfully enough to reach a state of infamy.
c) (Per followup post) She still would not be a nice person even if she were not in an evil setting, but she might not be as ruthless as she is now.
d) She's powerful and very good at her job.
e) She's generally cold and emotionless, which also manifests as a brazen boldness in dealing with the perils of the depths (Orv excepted).

NE is not the only alignment such a character could have, but it is a good fit:

A neutral evil villain does whatever she can get away with. She is out for herself, pure and simple. She sheds no tears for those she kills, whether for profit, sport, or convenience. She has no love of order and holds no illusions that following laws, traditions, or codes would make her any better or more noble. On the other hand, she doesn’t have the restless nature or love of conflict that a chaotic evil villain has.

Neutral evil characters embody pure selfishness. That single-minded dedication to themselves typically makes their inner lives very straightforward. Many strongly neutral evil characters are emotionless and affectless, sometimes to a terrifying degree, which further focuses their mental resources on getting what they want, and can make them experts at whatever interests them. If their lack of inhibition manifests as admirable boldness and fearlessness, they may become master infiltrators and manipulators.

Provided neutral evil characters are getting what they want, they have no problem working with anyone else.

They can even be trustworthy for extended periods of time when a larger goal is at stake or their interests or goals overlap with others’. If someone pleases them and seems nonthreatening, they may look after that person, possibly even becoming protective, though with a tendency toward possessiveness.

(emphasis mine)

If you're asserting that it was just some idle rhetoric and nobody meant slavery by the word slavery, OK, but if I were to use a synecdoche like they put the city to the sword when what happened was they mistreated the populace and beat them up with saps, clubs, and whips, I'd have gone wrong. Even though the sword can stand in just fine for the [whole set] of weapons in the normal use of the phrase put to the sword, swords are killing weapons and would not be a good stand-in for the [specific subset] of nonlethal weapons that I should refer to in a situation where people were beaten but nobody was killed.

Readers might rightly criticize the phrase as misleading.

And I certainly wouldn't follow up with "wait, there are people who think saps AREN'T swords? They're weapons at best!"

So, I'm sure you can foresee the coming analogy. If you are right about the synecdochical intent, then to follow on from the point in my last post, what we've done isn't call a set (forced labor) by the name of a more rhetorically loaded subset (slavery); rather, we've called one subset of forced labor (conscription) by the name of another subset of forced labor (slavery).

Which is as muddled as calling a sap a sword because both are weapons.

Diego Rossi wrote:

VoodistMonk wrote:

I like that description of the wall, a lot.

To clarify... I do not believe that things like the Blindness spell removes one's eyes, and is therefor reversible once the summoned creature that caused it expires...

Don't these clowns have enough already? Planar Binding is straight up cheating, there exist multiple summon to spells beyond reach loopholes, and these pr!cks don't ever get their hands dirty anyways!!!

Screw giving them they don't already have... a spell effect like Blindness does not remove one's eyes (to go along with the wall example)... so let it be reversed with the summoned creature that caused it expires.

There is absolutely NO reason to allow their temporary puppets to have permenant interaction with this world other than, you know, literally freaking killing people!

You are writing it a bit strongly, but Summoning is slavery.

Blindness goes away when the summoned creature goes away as it is a permanent effect. Even more interesting, as it is a permanent effect it can be dispelled.

Wait, some people think summoning ISN'T slavery? It's coercion it best.

Count me for one. I absolutely do not think summoning amounts to slavery. It doesn't fit any rigorous definition of slavery. Insofar as it can be matched to any particular social institution of coerced labor, the best match is conscription.

Summoning does not involve reduction of the subject from person into chattel property (the property definition of slavery); it does not involve obliteration of the subject's kinship ties and status in society by permanent, violent domination (the so-called social death definition). It temporarily coerces the subject's labor, typically for combat purposes. Conscription is the proper word for that.

Now, conscription and slavery are two types of labor regime that both fall within the broader category of forced labor, but they are different types of forced labor, they are not identical.

Q: How did ancient Romans learn about Gaul?
** spoiler omitted **

But... but Caesar said that about his blink-and-you-miss-it weeklong campaign in Pontus, in modern day Turkey. His wars in Gaul took a decade!

(just fulfilling the thread title...)

So I see there was a bunch of casual nonsense about New World slavery and the Civil War posted in the last couple pages.

I'm not gonna add material to it in that thread (it was a big digression to begin with), but I'll take a moment to point out Freedmen's Patrol, written by the former Samnell of Paizo. Lots of juicy deep dives and close reading. He lately did a series of posts about the rather muddled end of slavery in my home state of Massachusetts between 1780 and 1790.

OP, it does seem more likely than not at this point.

I was always opposed to the idea before on the basis that non-lawful alignments, by definition, lack the philosophical/intellectual underpinning to their beliefs necessary for a meaningful code of conduct, but after reading the preview of the proposed 2e paladin it doesn't really seem like LG pallis will be held to any sort of standard either so it probably doesn't matter.

I must have missed the part in the nonlawful alignment descriptions about lacking philosophical and intellectual underpinnings.

Even worse, I've been giving my nonlawful characters philosophy and intellect this whole time!

Damn it, I can't believe I did that! I'm so embarrassed. :(

I originally posted this on Dicefreaks.

I did a case study a while back to figure out how long it would take to build the Great Pyramid of Giza using a Lyre (or lyres) of Building. I share it in case anyone is interested. The estimate involves a number of estimates and assumptions, some of which are fairly arbitrary.

1. Work requirements of the real pyramid, in Ancient Egyptian man-days:

14,500 men x ten years, to go with one scholarly estimate. We'll round up some for conservatism and round numbers.

Rounded 15,000 labor force x 4,000 days = 60 million ancient Egyptian man-days to assemble the pyramid.

2. Conversion to Pathfinder man-days

The ancient Egyptian man-day is very low-tech and thus relatively less productive.

The lyre produces man-days of labor measured according to the output of a generic Pathfinder work crew, which is working with late Renaissance technology, which in construction includes cranes, windlasses, etc. Not to mention more ancient (but post-Egyptian) innovations such as iron and steel tools.

We’ll estimate, somewhat arbitrarily, that due to technological deficiencies the ancient Egyptian man-day was only half as productive as a Pathfinder man-day. Great Pyramid = 30 million Pathfinder man-days.

3. Lyre of Building base productivity

The Lyre of Building does the work of 100 Pathfinder men working for three days in a half-hour of playing. It requires a DC 18 skill check to keep playing for any length of time, but we’ll assume that if you are the type of person who can contemplate building a gigantic stone pyramid for yourself you can afford someone who can't fail the check. The lyre therefore performs 600 Pathfinder man-days worth of labor per hour that it is played, which is 4800 man-days of labor per 8-hr playing day.

4. Other considerations applied or not applied, and calculation of required time.

Since our lyrist has the rest of the week off, we’ll assume that given enough motivation he can play for 16 hrs on his one work day before fatigue intervenes. 9600 man-days per lyre session.

We’re going to neglect the effects of recurring time slippage (i.e., having to start playing 16 hrs later each week because that’s when you stopped using the item before). That makes the math irritating. We’ll assume our lyrist plays once a week with no time slippage.

The lyre work force requires no logistical support – no butchers, bakers, or candlestick makers. Part of the labor cost of the Great Pyramid, on the other hand, is to see to the needs of the workers. We’ll apply a factor of 1/2 to our 30 million man-days target to represent the fact that the lyre’s output is pure labor whereas part of the 30 million man-days represents logistical support. The adjusted target is 15 million man-days at a rate of 9600 man-days a week. We’re looking at 1562.5 weeks of playing, or roughly thirty years. Our estimated ancient workforce of about 15,000 Egyptian workers (=7,500 PF workers) is ultimately about three times faster than our bard.

5. Maximum lyrism

If we pull out all the stops we can go faster. Let’s assume that instead of a mortal lyrist our player is a lyre-obsessed bard lich who plays 24/7 and can’t fail the skill check. In fact, so obsessed is he that he never has to wait to use the lyre again, because he never stops voluntarily and is never forced to. This pushes his output up from 9600 man-days a week to 100,800 man-days a week. 139 weeks or about two years eight months.

6. Rejected factors and unconfirmed assumptions

I included no factor to account for production bottlenecks, when some workers are left idle because they are waiting on others to finish. One could argue that the lyre would be less constrained by such bottlenecks than mortal workers. I have assumed (and would rule) that the lyre’s production matches that of 100 mortal workers including those workers’ bottlenecks, and that no additional factor is necessary.

Besides the fact that the factors I applied are arbitrary estimates - I don't know whether a Pathfinder is really exactly twice as productive as an Egyptian work day, and in fact I pulled the specific factors out of a warm and dark place - another source of a potentially large error right now is that I am not certain that the scholarly estimate for the workforce really did include logistical support people. I have assumed that it did because it seems most likely, but I got the estimate from Wikipedia, and the link to the original had gone bad, so I did not verify. It is possible that they meant for their number to only include those directly engaged in construction, in which case our man-day requirement would double and so would our time to completion.

7. Cost of lyring compared to manual labor

Pathfinder unskilled labor is 1 sp a day. We’ll also estimate that skilled labor is 5 sp a day, average, and estimate that these average costs are similar for direct labor and for overhead. With our required 7500-person workforce of more productive Pathfinder workers needed to complete the pyramid on schedule, we’ll make a final fairly arbitrary estimate that this involves 6,000 unskilled and 1,500 skilled workers and thus that labor costs come to 600+750=1,350 gp/day over the course of 4,000 days, for a project total of 5.4 million gp in labor costs.

The lyre costs 13,000 gp up front, and let’s assume for the sake of argument that retaining a bard skilled enough to fulfil our requirements costs 100 gp/week, which I think is quite conservative (A bard with a +17 Perform modifier working for himself could make about 25 gp/week if he worked seven days; or if he's above minimum skill, with +20, he could make about 75 gp working seven days a week for himself). At our calculated 1562.5 (1563) weeks, this will cost 156,300 gp. Total costs for the mortal bard are therefore 169,300 gp. If we needed to match the Giza construction schedule, we might invest in three bards, resulting in 195,300 gp of labor-related costs to complete the project on the same schedule [1] [2] [3].

Potentially one could recoup half of the cost of the lyres after finishing construction, or alternatively one could build up a stock of a number of lyres and use them on many different projects while only paying the price once, but for the sake of conservatism I assume that the sticker price of each lyre is a fully sunk cost. Similarly, theoretically one could make use of various forms of compulsory or unpaid labor to avoid some labor costs of manual labor (since such huge work-forces are likely out of the reach of anyone but the government), but I assume that the labor cost is met fully.

8. Generalizing to generic structures

300 man-days per half-hour of labor, at the mortal bard’s rate of work (16 hrs) per week, means that the mortal bard constructs any given structure at about the same weekly rate as a team of 2,000 (1,920) dedicated Pathfinder construction workers working five-day weeks.

Our lich bard, or any other lyrist who can play without breaking, constructs any given structure at about the rate of 20,000 (20,160) dedicated construction workers, which, considering premodern logistics, might involve a total workforce substantially larger than 20,000.

Some notes/corrections for the OP:

Here's what I'm getting at - let's look at some heroes most might point to to represent very high level martials/non-casters:

•Heracles
•Gilgamesh
•Sigurd
•Samson
•Achilles
•Cú Chulainn
etc...

Pretty typical examples you might find when discussing the topic. But under a tighter scrutiny?...
•Heracles: Son of the King of the Gods. Divine blood flows in him.
•Gilgamesh: Another demigod. Not mortal. Pushups won't get you here.
•Sigurd: Dragon shenanigans gave him supernatural abilities. ie he's not mythical without magic.
•Samson: Strength gifted directly from God.
•Achilles: Dipped in magic to be magically magified. (I'm getting lazy, I know...)
•Cú Chulainn: Another demigod...

So...

It seems like "iconic epic warriors" only end up that way either through powerful magical effects bestowed upon them, or by being directly related to the gods.
ie: More than what leveling to 20 can do for you.

Correction: It has been some time since I read Volsunga Saga, but I don't recall Sigurd's prowess coming from the dragon shenanigans. Dragon shenanigans occurred, but the result was wisdom*, not power.

*At least nominally. YMMV on how wise he acts afterwards.

Correction/Note: Iliad Achilles, the one most people think of when they think of Achilles slaughtering armies and choking rivers with corpses, wasn't invulnerable by dint of magic river (in fact his need for armor in order to fight Hector is a plot point). Some lesser-known variants of the story do include dipping in magic, as you say, though. On the other hand, as the son of a minor godling, he was a demigod.

Note: Heracles may have been a demigod, but not all demigods were Heracles. Chumps like Athis suggest that divine parentage may have been involved in achieving legendary might, but was not by itself sufficient.

Note: You might want to also consider whether evaluating arcane magical classes by the same criteria has any implications for your point. For example, how many legendary examples of wizards and sorcerers enjoyed divine favor/power/heritage or got power from some external source such as a magic artifact?

For example, if pushups alone won't make you Gilgamesh, spellbooks alone won't make you Merlin (cambion) or Gandalf (yet another demigod).

I've always considered 'caster/martial disparity', '15 minute adventuring day', 'rogues suck', and various other accepted realities on this board different examples of what I would call 'poor GMing'... or perhaps 'enforced poor GMing' in the case of PFS.

None of these things should be an issue in a home game run by any half way competent GM. Setting up opportunities for each character to shine and/or be challenged is just part of the job... not even one of the more difficult parts.

Maybe so, but it seems to me that this particular set of rules we have are imposing a circumstance penalty on your good DMing check. Maybe you've got a high enough bonus to breeze past the check anyway, but that's not the same as denying the existence of the -5 (or whatever) circumstance penalty. ;)

I poured out some whiskey to her ghost tonight. I bought this little flask a year ago so that I could do the same for my grandmother, and I'm finishing it now.

The Clash--Somebody Got Murdered

Goodbye then (unlike yourself, I'm not sure the Books thread is enough to keep me around).

I am glad to see May take a hit, but (at least from the news over here across the pond) it seems like the late momentum largely turned on terrorism, and I wish it hadn't. I think that we have already granted terrorism too much influence over our societies. If 100% safety against terrorism becomes an electoral criterion then politicans will compromise other things in pursuit of it and perpetuate that.

OTOH, just a distant observer here, and I am sure other factors also played a role...

Orville Redenbacher wrote:

NPC Dave wrote:

Ambrosia Slaad wrote:

The Senate Intelligence Committee has just released Comey's opening statement for tomorrow. It's pretty good reading.

...

Edit 4: And here's Josh Marshall's (of TPM) annotated notes on the Comey statement. Also very interesting reading.

My own take... Swampey Comey's statement is as expected. Trump did nothing illegal or unethical but his actions are dressed up as much as possible to maintain suspicion that he is up to something. This is to help the Democrats save face and give a bone to those media outlets that want to keep maintaining the facade that Trump was obstructing justice.

When is Trump going after your enemies instead of filling his cabinet with them?

He already started, even before he took office.

Carlos Slim loses $5.8 billion thanks to Trump.

Say it with me. $5.8 BILLLLLLLLLLLIONNNNNNNN dollars. Eat that loss Carlos Slim. I love it!!!

I am a Trump supporter and I am not tired of winning yet.

Addendum to the first point - after the post above I realized that there was a simpler way to go about it than looking at raw economic data. The Forbes article you linked cites a bloomberg billionaires list as its source.

I went and looked at that list, which as of this writing shows this guy at +$11.6 billion (+23%) year-to-date, suggesting that whatever tide receded for your $5.8 billion loss has rolled back in and more.

Orville Redenbacher wrote:

NPC Dave wrote:

Ambrosia Slaad wrote:

The Senate Intelligence Committee has just released Comey's opening statement for tomorrow. It's pretty good reading.

...

Edit 4: And here's Josh Marshall's (of TPM) annotated notes on the Comey statement. Also very interesting reading.

My own take... Swampey Comey's statement is as expected. Trump did nothing illegal or unethical but his actions are dressed up as much as possible to maintain suspicion that he is up to something. This is to help the Democrats save face and give a bone to those media outlets that want to keep maintaining the facade that Trump was obstructing justice.

When is Trump going after your enemies instead of filling his cabinet with them?

He already started, even before he took office.

Carlos Slim loses $5.8 billion thanks to Trump.

Say it with me. $5.8 BILLLLLLLLLLLIONNNNNNNN dollars. Eat that loss Carlos Slim. I love it!!!

I am a Trump supporter and I am not tired of winning yet.

Two points.

One, that story is eight or nine months old and the info has gone bad. I'm sure that the value of that guy's pesos went down significantly after the election, when the peso fell from 18.5 to the dollar to 22 to the dollar - down almost 4 - but as of this writing the peso is back up to 18.21 to the dollar - up 0.29 compared to pre-election. The article you linked suggests that the peso fall was a major contributor to the fallen balance sheet, and that has reversed itself.

The other cited factor was a drop in international stocks. I can't say what stocks this guy might own, but so far the Mexican stock market has made up all its post-election losses and more.

Two, so one billionaire loses money to other billionaires. At some point during a pre-election discussion I remarked to you that I thought you were mistaking a factional struggle within the elite for a struggle against the elite. This doesn't convince me otherwise.

The billionaires I really care about right now are the ones Trump has stuffed the cabinet with.

Page 55 is a map, so I chose the 5th sentence of Page 555:

"On the 'urban graveyard effect', the negative growth rates taken to be characteristic of urban populations, see Sharlin (1978) 'Natural decrease in early modern cities'; Reher (1990) 59; de Vries (1984) European Urbanization, 179-82, both with further bibliography; Finlay (1981) Population and Metropolis: the Demography of London 1580-1650; compare also Landers (1993) Death and the Metropolis, on the demography of eighteenth-century London."

-The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History, Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell

Comey was the Director of the FBI, he was not in charge of the Investigation of Russian Email hack and election intervention.

The current acting Director of the FBI was in charge of the Investigation
in conjunction with Deputy Director in charge of the Counter Intelligence Division. They both reported to Comey but The FBI Director does not oversee Investigations he testifies before congress and manages the Deputy Directors.

Well, the President came out and said that the Russian investigation was a reason for firing Comey, so where does that leave this line of argument?