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Ratings now use both colors and stars instead of just colors (for color blindness and other reasons), and a few entries have been revised. More substantial edits, such as pulling together a bit more on the advisability of binding certain types of outsiders, are on the back burner pending a motherboard replacement.
Thanks both. Jezebel, I reworded the spot you mentioned, and while I don't expect anyone other than me to sink a lot of time into top-to-bottom proofreading, please do let me know any typos you notice. On point 2, it might be worthwhile to expand the short discussion in the introduction about how the most powerful and useful outsider in a given bracket isn't the same as the one that is the best idea for you to bind. There's a fair amount more that could be said than I have said so far; for instance, it's a published element, haha, of their flavor that elementals are impressed by displays of power, so binding them comes with a straightforward strategy for keeping them in line, which is a point in their favor even though an elemental is never going to be the strongest creature you can bind. On the other hand, there's room for tons of variation in how the nature of outsiders will be expressed by different GMs and in different games. In some games, you may be able to pretty much forget about a basic, pretty dumb fiend like a barbazu as soon as the binding is over; in others, binding even lesser devils may irrevocably draw you to the unwanted attention of infernal higher-ups. In other games still, you might want that attention and actively prefer fiends to celestials. Maybe you're a servant of infernal powers already; there's at least two APs for 1e in which you probably will be. So there's probably room for more of a general discussion than I have right now, but I'm not sure I can cover the topic of what broad families of outsiders are safer, or less safe, to bind in a reasonably authoritative, campaign-neutral way that also isn't just stating obvious things: handle fiends with care, at least be aware of whether you are binding an outsider for tasks aligned with its ethos or violently opposed to its ethos, etc. Besides that, as it stands now, some, but not most, specific entries do contain think-twice-before-binding caveats. Generally, they are the entries for creatures that present outstandingly glaring risks or hurdles: a deimavigga that can attack you from all the way back in Hell, a succubus that is fantastic at manipulating your enemies and just as fantastic at manipulating you, an early-access sahkil that might be stronger than you when you can first get it and that can come right back after the binding ends, and so on.
I recently completed the first draft of a guide evaluating all outsiders listed on Archives of Nethys (barring certain unique or noncallable ones) for their usefulness as called allies via planar binding and similar spells. This is only a first draft and needs further review (now that all entries are written, the next draft will largely involve reviewing for consistency, making sure that entries in the same bracket that I may have written months apart haven't drifted over time for e.g. what I deem good or bad in melee). Nevertheless, it's now complete enough to post for use, feedback, criticism, etc. Feedback is particularly welcome as I pause before taking a comprehensive second cut at it! Some similar guides already exist, though as far as I know all are either incomplete or cover a somewhat smaller scope. In particular I would like to mention a series of posts on planar binding, the diabolist, and related topics by Douglas Muir 406, with contributions from various other posters, on the order of a decade ago. I read those at the time and took from them a number of thoughts about what makes for a good outsider ally.
If the over-the-top prediction of doom I ended the first post on didn't give it away, I'm not taking this as seriously as all that, and I would like to pause here to reassure you that I'm not going to tell you you can't play wizards and I don't actually think this issue will bring Paizo's RPG empire crashing down. But in all honesty I do think there's some room for fixing weird descriptions, and I don't really agree with what seems to be the implied thrust, that weapon descriptions are irrelevant and pointless in general because it's all fantasy with fireballs. If Paizo had instead confused the names of longbows and crossbows, for example - which share the bow element in their names, just like slingshots and staff slings share the sling element - well, if they'd published a longbow weapon description that talked about a handled frame, a tiller, and a trigger assembly, I would also come here to post about it.
I want to agree. I'm sure that we can establish that real gnomes would have had no such thing, but I'm having trouble finding reliable information about real gnome flickmaces. Help! Also, I'm marginally too young and/or unlettered to really get the Dragonlance references, having started gaming around when 3.0 came out, but I'm happy to also blame hoopaks on the general principle of mob justice. (or in reality, the suggestion up thread that they just forgot to coordinate the description with the art, and the artist used a reference for what staff slings are but the writer didn't)
2e describes the staff sling as follows: This staff ends in a Y-shaped split that cradles a sling. This describes a slingshot - a modern weapon whose invention was dependent upon development of elastic materials, historically vulcanized rubber - but not a staff sling, which uses a straight staff with no fork. The writer likely confused these two weapons with one another thanks to the similar name - staff sling, slingshot - but they are different weapons and do not work much like one another except in that they both throw projectiles like stones or bullets from a pouch. The slingshot uses energy stored in the tension of the elastic cords attached to the pouch when you pull the pouch back and stretch them. The staff sling, like the regular sling and unlike the slingshot, is an arm-extension tool for throwing things; and like the sling, releasing the bullet is done by releasing one of the two cords, which need not be elastic. The Y-shaped fork that is characteristic of a slingshot would impair a staff sling; if the fork were at a large angle, it might well prevent the weapon from working at all. With a straight staff, the loose cord slips off the staff's end at a consistent point in the throwing arc that depends on the cords' length, which allows the projectile to separate from the pouch. A Y-shaped end could prevent the loop from slipping off during the throw, in which case the shot would stay in the pouch. Even if, after hypothetically redesigning the business end of a staff sling to impair the release of the projectile, you were nevertheless still able to get it to release (perhaps by using a curved-Y shape so that the ends of the Y get back towards parallel with the throw), you'd then have the additional problem that the pouch releasing the bullet is now connected to the weapon no longer by a single cord tied at the centerline, but by a single cord connected to the weapon by a fork arm that is offset from its centerline and thus possibly able to drag the projectile slightly to one side during release, making the weapon no longer throw straight and true. I'm sure the game will promptly collapse if this pressing issue is not addressed; please reprint immediately.
I would honestly strongly consider not doing the scene as written if the party has treated him well and rewarded his ambitions (as I guess they probably have if they made him king). Maybe consider letting them foil it, or even, if they have been particularly generous to him, having him reject it on his own and tell them about it later - and let them know this is the payoff for empowering and rewarding him rather than sidelining him after his fall. But if you do have the scene happen, maybe at least let his soul be properly damned when the party deals with him, given that: 1) the compulsion thing that the scene pulls from its butt to handwave away his contract is a continuity error.
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 Spoiler:
absolutely bogus redemption in book 6. It was such a blatant, in-your-face failure by the author to respect the elements of his own plot. It makes it seem like he did not bother to reread the scene he was writing the sequel to. Not only does he want to pull some surprise gotcha with the principle that devil contracts signed by compulsion are invalid (a principle never hinted at before but invented on the spot for the benefit of the author's Very Special NPC, and as a GM there are few things more odious than inventing rules on the spot for the benefit of a Very Special NPC); even that asspull also requires the AP to pretend that Richard was forced to sign the contract (when the previous AP book has Dessiter and the party not force Richard to sign but convince him - to quote exactly, if the party supports Dessiter, then the paladin "gives in to Dessiter's argument").
This wasn't a minor scene, either, it was the resolution for one of the AP's most developed characters, the only antagonist in fact who is meant to fight the party three different times in three different books, who has pages of ink devoted to chronicling his backstory and offscreen exploits. The AP pays more attention to Richard than to nearly any other NPC, and even so could not be bothered to keep his story straight. Such gross railroading - bulldozing not only over any party actions w/r/t Richard but over the AP's own prior scene - and for what? A lame gotcha. At this point, when the scene goes yet further and gratuitously gives him back full paladin powers with no need for an atonement, it's just par for the course. This is honestly the least bad part of this mess of a scene, but it is still an instance of the tendency to write plot points that handwave game rules rather than integrating them. 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.
I didn't even know there was the eighth sin at all! Not only are there more than seven sins (in most versions of Christianity), there are so many more than seven sins. The list solely of Catholic "mortal sins" on Wikipedia does not even try to be comprehensive and is currently thirty-seven entries long; any attempt to list what the Catholics call venial sins would probably become near endless. As far as the "deadly" or "capital" sins go, it's a bit of an Especially Serious Sins list, and there is also sometimes an argument that they are deadly because they are sort of root-cause sins that lie behind and have some role in causing all of the countless other sins, but even sins that have been very important in Christian theology and culture, such as despair (OP's sorrow), are often left out of the list for little apparent reason other than keeping the number to seven. (okay, in a very Christian type of setting you could say that the sin of despair springs from the deadly sin of pride - as with for example Faustus in Marlowe or, more explicitly, Denethor in Tolkien - but that link seems much more debatable in a setting like Golarion)
I have no idea how you guys are completing multiple characters, I can’t even get myself satisfied with one. I’ll figure it out soon, I hope lol Nothing wrong with sticking with one :) (I hope, since that's what I'm doing)
I thought about just having him be from an alternate earth where all the Viking mythology is true, but then I thought I should ask here if anyone has a specific setting like that which they would recommend? Preferably one they could post a link to?Honestly, an alternate Earth is probably your best bet if you want to keep your setting of origin laser-focused on the Norse mythology aspect. Re the request for settings, neither of these is strictly Earth-but-with-magic, but here are a couple setting books that, unlike Golarion Linnorm Kingdoms, include versions of Norse gods: Kobold Press - Northlands. I read this book a while back. I remember liking the setting gazetteer but thinking the archetypes and feats and general crunch were a bit hit and miss. It has direct copies of the Norse gods; they did make the decision to use continental Germanic names (e.g., Donar, not Thor), which of course is easily ignored. Frog God Games - The Northlands Saga. I haven't read this one but have read some good reviews. My understanding is that the book is largely an AP but comes with a fairly substantial setting attached. It's still not going to be value for money if you only want the setting. Speaking of value for money, for my part I generally wouldn't consider springing for a setting book if the actual game wasn't going to be in that setting. Alternate, magic Earth may do the job fine without need for a book as SoS said.
Radamare (The Devil God's Runaway) This sentinel stands alert, armored in elegantly wrought steel, her blade crackling with pale flame, but though she looks at you with her one dark eye beneath dark hair, for a moment it seems that she is looking through rather than at you, as if at something else very far away. The other is gone: eye and cheek have been eaten away by fire, leaving slabbed, bald scar. Slightly Spoilery Further Description (GM):
Beneath Radamare's armor are far more terrible scars: whip, steel, and especially flame have left a history of violence upon every part of her body, and the distinctive deep-cut, ridged scars of the lash have persisted even beyond death. In another life, Radamare might have grown beautiful – she is fit of limb and body – but there is nothing beautiful about what has been done to her. Above all, when seen out of her armor, the scars of burning are glaring and, unlike the others, supernatural, a strange effect of the uncontrolled hellfire ritual that both killed and empowered her. When her power is full, they are overwhelming and ubiquitous: parts of her body charred black, limbs consumed in places nearly to the bone, one eye ruined. As she expends her power and especially her oracle's magic, the horrific burns begin to fade; char flakes away, revealing living (though scarred) skin beneath; the lost eye opens whole and unburnt. But just as expending her magic causes the hellfire burns to fade, to renew her power is also to relive her death and burn anew, in a daily cycle that occurs during the hour in which she restores her spells; for Radamare was not a great mythic hero in life, bringing echoes of her own might with her into death. What strength she has here in Kisarta comes not from how she lived but how she died.
Background:
Life and Death Radamare is unusual, perhaps unique among those who after death came to serve the Liberator, holy Milani: her soul was not that of a great mortal champion of liberty, but of a slave-priestess of Hell. The story of that soul's life was a pitiable one, born into slavery to her god, Asmodeus, King of Hell, and to his mortal church: a nameless life, full of darkness and pain, of obedience brutally enforced until it seeped into the heart and mind and became second nature. The story of that soul's death was, perhaps, inspiring, a single spark of hope kept alive deep within, inspired by a whispered dream sent from the goddess herself, leaping to sudden flame. A mythic ritual meant to empower nine elder cardinals of the Devil God, exploiting their obedient slave priestess as a conduit for dangerous planar energies, sent awry by her self-sacrifice, disrupting the ritual and letting its unbound energy sear her vile masters to ash even as her own body was likewise consumed. The story of that soul's afterlife... might be unique. Milani, goddess of revolution and liberation, had played a critical role in inspiring the heroic death of that soul, but as she wound her way as a petitioner through the River of Souls towards Pharasma's judgment, the celestial hosts who serve the Everbloom were troubled at heart. After all, heroic deaths may be glorious, but evil deeds, even those done under vicious compulsion, scar and darken the mortal soul, and who could say whether the Gray Lady would assign heroic rebellion the same importance as it bore in Milani's sacred halls? What if the death goddess's judgment took a soul who had died striving for freedom and decreed that the balance of her life would condemn her to Hell? Azata being azata, and not over-fond of putting their faith in the procedures and trusting the process, a group of knights took matters into their own hands, raided the River of Souls, and stole the priestess's soul away to bring her before their goddess, that she might lay her claim in a way that even the Lady of Graves would be hard pressed to undo. Yet they did not reach their destination. Devils are not ones to forget a theft or easily yield the possession of souls they consider theirs, and their anger was such that a war party of their own swiftly mustered, daring to attack the raiders even as they passed through the outskirts of Paradise with their rescued prize. It was in that second battle, as fiend fought angel and black spellcraft clashed with holy fire, that the soul herself disappeared amidst the chaos, lost to both sides, seemingly destroyed. The devils withdrew, grimly satisfied in the belief that what they could not have, now no-one could; outraged holy knights called their comrades to arms and swore vengeance. Conflict flared for a time, as it often does between those of Hell and Paradise. None knew that the soul they had lost was lost indeed, but not destroyed. note to GM: I may tweak this somewhat if accepted. One thing I am considering a variant in which the conflict happens after an adverse judgment from one of Pharasma's judges, rather than before judgment. I think the arc of a good dead character might be more interesting if they are facing the weight of an unfulfilled negative verdict: dying heroically did not outweigh a lifetime of service as Hell's slave, at least not in the eyes of the yamaraj who delivered the ruling. Awakening Radamare awakens with grave goods that had been intended to serve her when raised up as an azata knight: a noble blade, elegant armor, a surcoat of blue silk embroidered with brilliant red roses. But she is not an azata knight; and moreover, she never had the time an azata has to let go of the trappings of her mortality and, as a petitioner, subsume her old personality into the freedom of Elysium. Radamare remembers her mortal life very well. She remembers her afterlife, the conflict, the achingly short glimpse of Paradise. And her death, burning in hellfire and raw mana: she remembers that also, still with terrible immediacy. Indeed, it is especially this connection to her death that grants her the extraordinary powers* with which she awakens: the connection to the strange mythic ritual that the first and last rebellion of her mortal life so fatefully disrupted. The misfired ritual energy still lingers within her, a searing wellspring of power that was never properly bound and tamed to the will of the nine cardinals for whom it was intended and instead has settled itself within the soul that was only meant to be its conduit. It is a painful and unwelcome connection, but also a strong one, and Radamare finds that she can draw upon that strength. *read: oracle gestalt
Combat capabilities, broadly speaking:
*The usual life oracle thing where you provide life link fast healing to the team, combined with a few other ways to heal and buff without wrecking action economy. *Pretty tough, like a paladin should be (especially a paladin who also makes a habit of taking others' damage). *OK in melee. Can become a pretty good melee combatant via self and team buffs with oracle spells etc., or a really good melee and decent ranged combatant with that plus smite. *Active healing: 6d6 channel energy, or 8d6 with the Sacred Servant's Divine Bond active. Can channel a lot of times per day. Quick Channel if needed and enough uses per day (between oracle channels and paladin channels converted from lay on hands) to get some mileage out of it. *Using channel to actively heal also provides a team buff (basically a mass heroism that lasts for one fight) via the Milani channeling feat. *Sacred Servant's planar ally. Although GM, if accepted we might need to talk about whether this particular ability of the Sacred Servant makes sense for the setting. I'm not married to it and am open to changes if it does not. OTOH, *Oracle's curse prevents casting chaotic or good spells, and though this does not apply to SLAs, it does limit some oracle spells (summon monster...) as well as a pretty substantial number of paladin ones. Statistics:
Human sacred servant paladin 8//dual-cursed oracle 8 CG Medium humanoid (human) Init +1; Senses Perception +8 Aura courage (20 ft; full fear immunity) Defense
Offense
Statistics
Gear, math, misc. accounting:
Automatic bonus progression (Armor +1/+1, weapon +1/+1, resist +2, nat arm +1, deflect +1, mental +2, physical +2) 16.5k to spend
Ability scores: 25 point buy: 14/10/10/13/10/18
Saves Fort 6 base 2 res 8 grace
favored class bonus: energy resistance (cold) 1 through 3, subsequently oracle spells known (2x 1st, 2x 2nd, 1x 3rd) Bard unsanctioned knowledge:
Other than the CG paladin thing you OKed earlier, I am using only first-party Paizo material, so there are no special approval requests.
Rahlmaat Hey, I remember Rahlmaat from Into the Abyss :) Seer, as a general question, is there anything divine casters should know before starting out about the nature of religion and gods in this place, whether deities take an active interest, etc.? Whether that's very setting-specific gods, say Iomedae or Milani, or gods whose influence embraces multiple worlds and perhaps settings, e.g. Asmodeus or Pharasma. Also, juuuuuuust out of curiosity, how do you feel about CG paladins? I'm only starting to think about this and am not at all committed to either CG or paladin, so this is an informational question, not a please-consider-allowing-them-even-if-you-don't-normally-like-them question.
Reviving this thread to observe that the duration of the ascension spell, which grants a (normally extremely temporary) mythic tier 1, is 2 hours per caster level (4 with a greater extend rod). Starting with a straightforward CL 21 (20th level, ioun stone) and a baseline of the +514,000 CL from 257,000 coven members from Cevah a few posts up, that gives us a coven-assisted caster level of 514,021 when we first cast ascension. That means that you, a nonmythic caster, can make yourself tier 1 mythic for 234 years and change, which is already a pretty attractive entry in the list of things you can actually use your super CL for. But you can also do the same for 171,340 (one per three caster levels) of your closest friends. They are only mythic while within 100 ft of you (assuming you carry the focus), but this entire exercise already involves getting all your helpers closer to you than that... Furthermore, this makes the mythic improvement option accessible without the fairly hard requirement that the caster must already be in a Mythic game as well as the extremely hard requirement that they must already possess enormous numbers of mythic marshal coven-witch friends with the Perfect Aid path ability. Mythic options for further increasing the CL never got much attention in this thread. Presumably because if not just you but also all the helpers have to be mythic, well, that's a completely impractical corner case... ...but it's no longer impractical at all if you don't have to find hundreds of thousands of mythic marshals, you can create them without even needing to start out mythic yourself. I think not requiring all the helpers to start out mythic makes it more reasonable to factor this in. Using the nonmythic CL boost to cast ascension twice will allow you to make the entirety of your initial coven into mythic marshals and thus get Perfect Aid on every Aid Another boost you receive (adding, effectively, 257,000d6+257,000 caster levels to the amount you will get from Aid) for a total, assuming average die rolls, of 514,000 (calculated by Cevah) plus 1,156,500 (Perfect Aid) = +1,670,500 from the coven alone. Without requiring you to be in a Mythic game.
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.
In semi all seriousness, can everybody who is still here, and interested(with or with a completed character & alias), please post with all relevant character info(if you lack a profile) to let us know you're still around. I generally don't create a profile unless actually accepted into a game, so all relevant info is in this post.
Including when it comes to dice rolls, apparently :)
The fires of God are hotter to me than all the pleasures of this dead life, fleeting and loaned. I'd like to submit The Pious One, an Evangelist Cleric slave-priest of Asmodeus. Background:
In a previous life, the Pious One was a dissolute aristocrat from the Chelish borderlands, the last heir of a minor, dwindling family who wasted the final dregs of his inheritance on luxury, vice, drinking, gambling, whoring, and every kind of luxury and dissipation, living far beyond his means. The house of cards inevitably collapsed as debts multiplied beyond all hope, and in court it was found that even seizing all his remaining properties and goods would hardly settle the sums owed.
The law of Cheliax is not gentle to those who fail to repay their debts. That is how the Pious One found himself on the slave auction block, put up for sale, humiliated, brought low, his life of privilege at an utter and final end... and unbeknownst to him, a new and very different life about to begin. For he caught the eye, not of some petty merchant or aristocrat in search of mere labor, but of a witch and priestess of Hell. It was she who broke his former wilfulness and taught him discipline in the service of her merciless god. It was she who baptised him into a new life, not with water, but with his own blood drawn by the whip. And it was she who, when after a thousand torments she finally judged him ready, sent him forth with her blessing, selling him on again to be the slave, not of any mortal man, but of a god. The God. The King of Hell. In a strange way, the Pious One considers that all this was a mercy. An unearned grace. A second chance to tame the demons that once led him to ruin his own life. For the Pious One is no longer the man who was brought to the auction block. Reborn in that drawn-out and bloody baptism, he now goes forth to preach the same gospel that her whip carved into his flesh: the gospel of piety and subjugation, the gospel of discipline and punishment. He who has eyes to see, let him see. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Crime: Murder:
The Pious One came to Talingarde after being asked by Church figures to track down and slay a fugitive slave who had offended against the Church and Asmodeus. After meditating and praying upon the task, he accepted it, and succeeded brutally and publicly, burning the halfling alive with alchemist's fire on the very steps of the cathedral of Daveryn. The cost - being promptly convicted for murder committed in front of dozens of witnesses - was more than worth the gain - demonstrating, so very publicly, that there is nowhere where the vengeance of the Devil God cannot reach. Misc other IC Q/A and stuff:
What is your character’s name? The Pious One. The Pious One had another name once, but it was taken from him upon becoming a slave. 2. How old is your character? About thirty, but he isn't sure exactly. 3. What would somebody see at first glance (i.e. height, weight, skin color, eye color, hair color, physique, race, and visible equipment)? This Taldan man is bare from the waist up, a decision that draws immediate attention to the mass of scars that crisscross his ridged and mutilated body. His dark eyes gleam, set deep in his tightly drawn, angular face, but when he fixes his glare upon a rival, they smolder with a hidden light. The Pious One keeps himself clean-shaven all over, and he usually carries little gear on his person. 4. What additional attributes would be noticed upon meeting the character (i.e. Speech, mannerisms)? The Pious One is not quick-tongued or glib; he often speaks slowly, rarely answering casually or off the cuff and often taking a moment to gather his thoughts. Despite this, his words, when they come, often come with fervent intensity. 5. Where was your character born? Where were you raised? By who? The Pious One was born in Cheliax, heir to a minor aristocratic family of Taldan descent. He was nominally raised by his parents through childhood, though actually largely by servants. 6. Who are your parents? Are they alive? What do they do for a living? Neither parent is alive. They were minor nobility whose wealth and lifestyle were inherited. 7. Do you have any other family or friends? The Pious One's long-term owner before he was sold to the god Asmodeus was the Red Witch, a formidable scarred witch with hellish powers and a harsh disciplinarian whom the Pious One greatly respects and - in truth - also deeply fears. He suspects that their paths will one day cross again. 8. What is your character’s marital status? Kids? The man who would become The Pious One had several children from various unhealthy relationships, all out of wedlock and none cared for. His enslavement severed all bonds of kinship in the eyes of society and law, and since then, his embrace of asceticism has meant he has fathered no more children - nor does he acknowledge any responsibility or kinship to those from his previous life. 9. What is your character’s alignment? Lawful Evil. 10. What is your character’s moral code? Practice asceticism and obedience to the will of the King of Hell, taming unhealthy desires with punishment. Act in accordance with the knowledge that a small part of the God of Slavery's infinite honor is reflected in the moral conduct of his servants; do not act so as to tarnish that reflection, but rather, be steadfast and reliable to God and to one's comrades. 11. Does your character have goals? To spread the gospel of piety and subjugation. To further tread the path of ascetic enlightenment, leaving behind petty dualisms. To see the will of the Devil God done, even if it requires transcending the bounds of strict Church orthodoxy. 12. Is your character religious? Very. 13. What are your character’s personal beliefs? The Pious One believes that the experience of slavery saved his otherwise wasted life from his own willfulness and lack of self-discipline. The experience of being made to learn to obey another was traumatic, but ultimately, once he did learn, the discipline of obeying another translated easily into the self-discipline necessary to obey himself. This dark and bloody experience is at the heart of his religious philosophy. The Pious One has also been taught that all Creation and everyone in it is - in the long run, and regardless of their personal morals - inescapably damned. Even those who die and go to the Realms Above merely postpone the day of reckoning, for the heavens themselves will not endure. All creatures that come into being do so in a universe that is already past the divine event horizon of Asmodeus, and there is no escape - whether their path to the central singularity that is Hell is long or short. 14. Does your character have any personality quirks (i.e. anti-social, arrogant, optimistic, paranoid)? The Pious One can be oddly tolerant of even dramatically opposing beliefs; his process of judging whether to oppose, ignore, or even ally and work with those who do not share his faith is idiosyncratic, informed by mysticism and meditated revelation as much as by logic. There is no need to personally oppose and cast down all who do not acknowledge the King of Hell. All are damned to Hell in the end, and in a cosmic sense, it does not truly matter if they attempt to resist that fate. It only truly matters from the individual's own perspective. 15. Why does your character adventure? Enlightenment arises out of the crucible of pain. Seeking battle tests that enlightenment. In victory, wisdom will be reaffirmed and power honed. In defeat, one's own failings will be exposed, that they might be cauterized and burnt away. 16. How does your character view his/her role as an adventurer? As a journey of self-realization. As a holy mission to gain strength and hone himself as God's tool. These two are, in fact, one. 17. Does your character have any distinguishing marks (birth-marks, scars, deformities)? The Pious One bears extensive and severe scarring from whipping and other, still more terrible punishments and tortures during his time as the property of a Scarred Witch. 18. How does your character get along with others? Idiosyncratically. The Pious One does not have -friends-, per se, but he is a faithful ally to those he has determined will be his allies, a stern teacher and master to any who may come under his dominion, and a bitter and devoted enemy to those who oppose him. His fervent intensity of character can sometimes drive ordinary people away, but other times it can aid his words in making a real impact upon their hearers. 19. Is there anything that your character hates? The mortal world is plagued with many grave sins. Ignorance. Corruption. Weakness. Indiscipline. Dissolution. Burn these sins away in the crucible of punishment. 20. Is there anything that your character fears? The Pious One is a God-fearing man, but almost equally, he fears and respects the priestess who first bought him from the auction block, the Red Witch, whose evil eye was always able to pierce his resolve and lay bare all his moral weaknesses. It was she who broke his former wilfulness and taught him the service of her merciless god, and it was she who, when she felt he was ready, sold him to be the slave, not of any mortal man, but of that very god himself. At those times when his own weakness or irresolve has troubled The Pious One, she sometimes still invades his dreams, an unapproachable shadowy figure clad in burgundy and masked in an ivory devil-mask, saying nothing, only watching. He has always interpreted these dreams as a silent warning not to waste his second chance at life, for there will be no third. Heads up, GM:
First, heads up, I have partly played this campaign twice before. Both games ended prematurely due to GM burnout; the longer of the two reached the early parts of Book Three. Therefore, though I imagine that both GMs changed some things and that you might too, I know something about the general campaign plot and background, especially of the first few adventures. This doesn't bother me if it doesn't bother you - I figure it's an older adventure, so previous exposure is pretty likely for many players - but if it does bother you and you'd rather go with a player who is new to the plot, no worries. Otherwise, my general philosophy on this is that it's an opportunity to make a character who will be inclined to work with the adventure, be receptive to key early scenes, etc. Second: The first post talks about reliability, etc. I have played (briefly) with Monkeygod before, in the Into the Abyss campaign which ended due to GM disappearance. More broadly, I have only played in a handful of PBP games on these boards, but I have never ghosted any of them and I have the somewhat rare experience (since most games die) of actually having finished a Paizo PBP adventure. Third: Background details are of course open to change as needed to fit in with how you're placing Talingarde in Golarion. I don't know a ton about Golarion as a setting, especially outside the main countries.
Dice:
Hahahahaha, net +0. Looks like it'll be something single-ability. Str 10, Dex 8, Con 11, Int 8 (foible - thanks for the 4 base skill points), Wis 18 (focus), Cha 12 makes a tolerable caster cleric. Stats:
he ious ne
Spells Prepared (I'll fill these in if I am selected)
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. Tangential: Also, honestly, if that's the case, maybe it explains where some of those threads that would try to morally justify slavery would come from, back in the day. I mean, there's plenty of places in the world where people can pick up such beliefs, but I did used to wonder why it kept coming up here.
I put all these away as tales and fables
Digenes Akrites (Mavrogordatos's translation with facing-page Greek and English)
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
Please tell me there are train tracks that cross that road. ...sure! 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. 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.
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. ;)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." Me, I always wanted to live on the most memorably named street in my hometown (there's that my again!), Labor-in-Vain Road.
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?
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.
Hi, Do scholars of planar lore know that the Abyss is sentient, or is that something that hasn't necessarily been realized by anyone in the campaign setting? Thanks!
Aw man. I don't think I ever interacted with him much, but I liked him from afar.
I don't know if you've ever seen Doug M's old guide to planar binding, but one of the rules of thumb he recommended was to never try to bind anything higher CR than your level -1. This isn't an is-it-possible rule of thumb, it's more of a safety rule of thumb to minimize the chances of dying messily at the hands of an angry outsider. So 9th level to bind a CR 8. Which is actually lower level than you need to be to normally cast the spell, so if you can normally cast planar binding, knock yourself out on binding a Nabasu. If you're trying to do it with a scroll at low levels, though, be prepared to risk wasting some scroll money, not to mention your neck. It can be attempted but cannot reasonably be described as reliable, which is what you asked for. Now, depending on how strictly you interpret reliably, the strict answer might be never. No matter how good you are at binding, there's going to be some sort of failure chance. If you ever roll a 1 on your opposed Charisma check, the creature breaks free, modifiers ignored. Which means that if you have any access to reroll powers - not discussed in the guide - those are a great idea as well. Opposed check failures that aren't natural 1s don't let the creature break loose but do mean you'll have to roll again and have another chance to toss that 1. The chance of rolling a natural 1 on one check is, of course, 5%. If you need to try the Cha check many times, the chances of rolling a 1 at least once quickly get significant. However, if you're doing your bindings right (meaning that you have the necessary supporting spells, you put in the effort to make a proper calling diagram, etc.), then that natural 1 on the opposed Cha check should be the only one of the spell's mechanics that can let the outsider break loose once it has failed its initial Will save and has been bound. You should be able to raise the DC of the outsider's nonopposed Cha escape check (20+1/2 CL+your Cha, with a diagram) high enough that it cannot pass on a natural 20, and you should have prepared for your binding such that none of the other means of breaking loose discussed in the spell are allowed. The outsider may still be able to try to break free outside the normal mechanics of the spell. For instance, sweet talking your apprentice into doing something that will break the diagram. You should arrange your binding so as to forestall this as well - make it a protected location where the environment won't naturally threaten the calling diagram, and make it a secure location that others, including your cohort, can't get into when you're not there. A purpose-built summoning chamber in your dungeon or tower is not just thematic, it's pragmatic. Your character, as the main caster, may know better, but tricking someone less knowledgeable into breaking the circle is practically a demon binding trope.
Best wishes to your grandmother, Monkeygod.
Wouldn't this only work if the character is likely to go to Hell (which is unlikely for PCs, as most DMs won't let you play evil characters at all)? Yup, it does depend on whether you believe that Golarion Hell is something that will only ever happen to people who, theoretically, deserve it. However, it is a widespread tenet of Asmodean teachings, as presented in the campaign setting books, that he will eventually rise to supremacy via a secret hidden in the Contract of Creation. Per Princes of Darkness, Golarion Hell is not just a monument to the old ways of merciless order but a warning to the cosmos of what Asmodeus will (he claims) one day make anew. So Hell will (he claims) be forced on everything and everyone some day. LE souls may be dragged there already, but in the fullness of time it will be imposed on all the rest. Now, to be susceptible to the argument that you should take drastic, possibly evil actions to fortify yourself against inevitable damnation, you don't have to like it or think that Hell is anything but awful, but you do have to believe that it's going to happen whether you like it or not. Or at least that it's a big enough danger that you can't afford to bet against it. Asmodeus is a god of trickery as well as of slavery and damnation, so maybe you shouldn't believe that and shouldn't bother to prepare. Although he does tend to be the manipulate-with-truths sort of trickster, rather than just some plain old liar. He prides himself on his honor that way, and even good gods trusted his word enough to make him the guardian of the key to Rovagug's prison. So should you gamble that he's telling the truth or that he's lying? No pressure. The stakes are only infinite. Spoiler: Links are written by me. The speaker for the sermon, naturally, is an ascetic Asmodean monk. The other speaker is a ghaele azata in the court of Milani, formed from a redeemed slave-priestess, now apostate, of the Devil God.
And in the joke-answer category, as deployed by my DM when the party fought a deimavigga: “Topically applied fluoride doesn’t prevent tooth decay. It does render teeth detectable by scrying.”
Advice on Optimizing The Experience of Eternal Torture:
"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."
Your comment is also fine (subject to the caveat, as others have noted, that the best time to switch rulesets is at the beginning of a campaign), though the question of what to do in 2e with various things from the enormous pile of 1e rules, classes, feats, spells, etc. is different from the question of whether I want, and would pay, for them to start churning out new 1e classes, feats, spells, etc. again to add to that already enormous pile.
I would not buy any new PF1e rulebooks. Pathfinder 1e already has considerably more than enough crunch for my taste. In fact, I mentally checked out of the stream of new rules material several years before I actually stopped playing PF1e (which was in 2016 or 2017). I haven't sworn 1e off (although playing other systems has contrasted sharply with what an absolute drag high-level PF1e is in my medium of choice, real-time text messengers such as mIRC or Hangouts, and the contrast has been even sharper for our group's DM, who became much more relaxed after no longer having to endlessly wrangle high level statblocks). But in any case, the rules bloat was already actively irritating by PF1e midlife, and there's a zero percent chance of my paying money to get yet more of it. There are also more published PF1e adventures than any one person can reasonably play, but adventures are much more a matter of taste, and I might pay money for an AP that scratched the perfect itch. One piece of content I can definitely see myself paying money for would be an evil AP that covered similar ground as the third-party Way of the Wicked but did a better job of it, that had Paizo-level plotting and art and that was more adept with the game mechanics. (Hell's Vengeance, which never takes the party into evil-overlord territory, isn't the same...)
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
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:
2 full arcane casters:
1 full divine caster: Radamare, the CG ghaele cleric | hierophant/champion 1 Other:
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.
I love combining and tweaking real-world names for characters. Looking at a couple aliases from past PBPs, Choombolat the wizard came from Chumbylat and Shulme-Silule the Dark Tapestry oracle came from combining Shulme and Silulumesh from the Sumerian King List, which is a great source for names with a Conanesque dark sorcery vibe. Ishme-Shamash, Shar-Kali-Sharru, Amar-Sin, Ishme-Dagan...
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.
The ability to surge a caster level check vs. SR may come in handy, especially if you plan on casting a lot of buff spells in combat. Depending on how many nonhumanoids wind up in the party, you may end up having to roll against friendly SR, as well as the more traditional task of getting hostile spells through enemy SR. For example, I took Eldritch Breach for Radamare partly because if some demon or dragon or such in the party urgently needs that quickened heal spell to land to survive the round, I want to minimize the chance of fizzling against friendly SR. That said, surging lore checks would likely come in handy too, and if you plan on mostly casting your buffs before combat rather than in combat, friendly SR won't be as big a deal since it can just be lowered. Same if the chosen party doesn't end up including many characters with SR.
This depends on the fluff of the book, but if its role is to be a source of power related to bardic spellcasting/magic, you could also consider using the bonus for staffs and rods, which fill a similar role as sources of spellcasting power. They also correspond in body slot (at least, I presume a magic book would also be held in the hands when used, rather than worn). Also, it's being an ordaly to check which Mythic abilities, spells, feats, and other choices to pic. I don't know how you guys did it so fast. For my part, I have used the system before (albeit a while ago, back during the mythic playtest).
Dragons are great. I hope the party winds up with at least one. (Especially if I'm in it. Who doesn't want to make friends with a dragon?) Also, even if the party ends up more Good than not, I hope we end up with at least one nongood or evil teammate (though hopefully one who is actually committed to teamwork). Keeps things interesting, especially if they have a well fleshed out philosophy. I've always thought that a little alignment tension (not to the point of breaking up the party or derailing the adventure ofc) really helps the characters involved define themselves.
OK. I'm pretty happy with where this turned out mechanically. She feels like a solid character well able to pull her weight in melee compared to the other characters I glanced at who were put up already, but with a casting stat of 28 also won't be just blowing any actual humanoids out of the water. I saw that 40 Int earlier! :p This elegantly armored sentinel stands alert, her eyes radiating divine light and her noble blade crackling with power, but behind the light of her eyes is a thousand-yard stare. Character quote:
"So it's my fate to dare the Depths Below, that we might keep the Rough Beast sealed? Is this why the Devil God let me be free a little while and did not reel in his little runaway - so I could serve this purpose? Is this why the Gray Lady's hunters have not dragged me back to face her judgment?"
"I will go, though I had dearly hoped to heal a little longer. Maybe, with the Everbloom's grace, I will return." Radamare, Ghaele Cleric 1 (Milani)//Hierophant 6:
CG Medium outsider (azata, chaotic, extraplanar, good, shapechanger, mythic) Init +7 (+1 Dex, +3 tier, +2 luck, +1 competence); Senses darkvision 60 ft., detect evil, low-light vision, see invisibility; Perception +28 Aura holy aura (DC 22) ----------------------------
AC 37, touch 16, flat-footed 36 (+4 deflection, +1 Dex, +12 natural, +9 armor, +1 insight)
----------------------------
Speed 50 ft., fly 150 ft. (perfect)
Constant—detect evil, holy aura (DC 22), see invisibility
Spells Prepared (CL 15th; +17 vs SR; concentration +24, save DC 19+level; can convert a prepared nondomain spell to a cure spell of equal level) 7th—one, one, one, greater dispel magic
I'm not going to go so far as selecting prepared spells until I know whether the character is accepted. DM, if you're looking for eyeballed what to expect, traditional cleric self-buffs such as divine power, divine favor, and righteous might will be mainstays, as well as Divine Reach Heal spells for the team when needed and a few other team buffs. I also plan to be good at dispelling and pack a good deal of that. ----------------------------
Str 30, Dex 12, Con 22, Int 12, Wis 28, Cha 19
Background Skills: Artistry +8 (4 ranks), Profession: torturer +25 (10 ranks); Lore (Asmodeus) +14 (10 ranks), Lore (Milani) +8 (4 ranks) Radamare has been gradually retraining both of her higher-ranked background skills as the skills and memories of her mortal life fade, a process that is far from complete Languages Celestial, Draconic, Infernal; truespeechSQ light form, a whole bunch of class and mythic stuff detailed below ----------------------------
Amazing Initiative (Ex)
Bastion (Ex)
Demonic Knowledge (Ex)
Force of Will (Ex)
Gaze (Su)
Hard to Kill (Ex)
Hierophant/Champion Strikes and Path Abilities Radamare can expend one use of mythic power plus one for every two levels of the spell to cast any one divine spell with a casting time of one standard action or less, treating your caster level as 2 levels higher. This spell must be on your divine spell list (or your domain or mystery spell list) and must be of a spell level that you can cast using that divine spellcasting class. If you are a spontaneous spellcaster, you don’t need to have the spell prepared, nor does it need to be on your list of spells known. Using this ability does not expend a prepared spell or available spell slot. You can apply any metamagic feats you know to this spell, but its total spell slot level must be a slot level you can normally cast.
Whenever Radamare casts a spell with a duration of 10 minutes per level or longer upon one willing target, she can change that spell’s duration to 24 hours. If the spell has other duration conditions, those still apply (for example, the duration of stoneskin changes to 24 hours or until discharged). A creature can’t be subject to more than one spell affected by this ability at a time; if another is cast upon the creature, the first one ends. As a swift action, Radamare can expend one use of mythic power and pick any one metamagic feat she knows that increases the slot level of the spell by 0 to 3 levels. For the next 10 rounds, she can apply this metamagic feat to any divine spell she casts without increasing the spell slot used or casting time. She can also use this ability on a divine spell cast from a scroll, staff, or wand. She can’t have more than one use of this ability active at a time. If she uses this ability again, any previous use immediately ends (though any metamagic effects on spells already cast remain). Liberation (Su) Radamare has the ability to ignore impediments to her mobility. For 1 round per day (=cleric level), she can move normally regardless of magical effects that impede movement, as if she were affected by freedom of movement. This effect occurs automatically as soon as it applies. These rounds do not need to be consecutive.Light Form (Su)
Light Ray (Ex)
Mythic Power (Su)
Mythic Saving Throws (Ex)
Recuperation (Ex)
Surge (Su)
Spells
Possessions Evil outsider bane holy greatsword, evil outsider defiant full plate, stone of good luck, quick runner's shirt, prayer bead of karma, gloves of storing, ioun stones (dusty rose prism, cracked dusty rose prism, pale orange prism), lesser metamagic rod of quicken spell, 600 gp. Wondrous items are self-crafted. Radamare's favored class is cleric, and she has selected skill points as her favored class benefit for her only actual cleric level. She is a Devilbane Priest (which sacrifices a domain, so her only domain is Liberation) and a Foundation of Faith (which sacrifices Channel Energy). Radamare's Story So Far - The Abridged Edition:
For all her exceptional power among the Ghaele azata, Radamare is shockingly new to the order of Azata knights - indeed a newborn among the entire host of the Azata - and quite unique because of it. The mortal soul that formed her did not die long ago, to spend centuries roaming the paradises of Elysium, unlearning mortal weaknesses, forgetting memories, learning to know freedom as only the azata do, and gradually growing into its new status. Rather, she arrived barely a year ago and was raised directly to the rank of an Azata knight by the hand of Milani herself. And she was not the soul of a great mortal champion of liberty, but of a slave-priestess of Hell. The story of that soul's life was a pitiable one, the life of a bound slave of the Devil God, nameless, an existence of darkness and pain, of obedience brutally enforced until it seeped into the heart and mind and became second nature. The story of that soul's death was, perhaps, inspiring, a single spark of hope kept alive deep within, inspired by a whispered dream sent from Milani herself, leaping to sudden flame. A mythic ritual meant to empower nine elder cardinals of the Devil God, exploiting their obedient slave priestess as a conduit for dangerous planar energies, sent awry by her self-sacrifice, disrupting the ritual and letting its unbound energy sear her vile masters to ash even as her own body was likewise consumed. The story of that soul's afterlife... might be unique. Milani, goddess of revolution and liberation, had played a critical role in inspiring the heroic death of that soul, but as she wound her way as a petitioner through the River of Souls towards Pharasma's judgment, the hosts who serve the Everbloom were troubled at heart. After all, heroic deaths may be glorious, but evil deeds, even those done under vicious compulsion, scar and darken the mortal soul, and who could say whether the Gray Lady would assign heroic rebellion the same importance as it bore in Milani's sacred halls? What if the death goddess's judgment took a soul that had died striving for freedom and decreed that the balance of her life would condemn her to Hell? Azata being azata, and not over-fond of putting their faith in the procedures and trusting the process, a group of Milani's knights took matters into their own hands, raided the River of Souls, stole the priestess's soul away, and brought her before Milani that their goddess might lay her claim in a way that even the Lady of Graves would be hard pressed to undo. And the Everbloom smiled on the boldness of her knights, and decreed that in her court brave deeds would always meet with worthy reward. The soul that they had risked Pharasma's wrath to safeguard would be raised up to be one of them. Thus it was that a lowly and battered mortal soul, freed from the clutches of the Devil God and then stolen away from the Gray Lady's judgment, was raised up by the hand of a third goddess and formed directly a mighty knight of the Azata. But troublingly for Radamare, her hasty and unorthodox elevation from petitioner to azata left her no time to let go of the trappings of her mortality and subsume her old personality into the freedom of Elysium. Unusually, perhaps uniquely among azata, she still remembers much of her mortal life. Though she fervently prays to forget it. Radamare Today: Although Radamere's true desire is only to rest and slowly forget the traumas of her mortal life in the bliss of Elysium, where there are no whips, no chains, no lightless prison cells and brooding torture chambers, the very connections to her mortal life that Radamare wishes to be rid of also empower her - especially her connection to the strange mythic ritual that the first and last rebellion of her mortal life so fatefully disrupted. The misfired ritual power still lingers within her, a pulsing wellspring of mortal energy that no other of her order commands, and Radamare has already used it to resolve challenges that had proved beyond older and more established azata knights. Whether that power can carry her through the terrible depths of the Abyss - that is another question entirely, and a still unanswered one. Why neither Asmodeus nor Pharasma has yet come for her - that is another still. Perhaps now that Milani has so overtly staked her claim, they are unwilling to rock the boat. Perhaps the lesser goddess's gambit has succeeded. Or perhaps... the two greater gods were not so easily fooled by Milani and her azata. Perhaps they had their own purposes in allowing the soul that became Radamare to slip their net. Perhaps they foresaw that they would need someone like her. For a little while.
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