CynDuck's page

Bit of a weird analogy but I think a good way to explain the difference between the Exemplar and the Fighter might be to think of them like the Sorcerer vs the Wizard. The Fighter is for the warrior who's mastered the art of combat through training and experience on the battlefield, the Exemplar on the other hand is somebody whose combat prowess just comes from being lucky enough to get imbued with divine power. It's a pretty common narrative trope that the Fighter's always been a bit poorly equipped to handle, and I think it's a meaningful addition to the game overall.

Also it'll let me finally play a character like Jagganoth from KSBD so I'm feeling very hyped for that.

I don't have the knowledge to unravel what this means, but Michael Sayre just made a tweet hinting at some PF2e future product. In case anyone doesn't want to go to Twitter to read it, it says:

Man, I haven't posted about #Pathfinder2e in awhile. Been busy... How about this? I'm going to post 4 random words from the *secret project* I'm working on. Each one might be from running text, or a header, or a sidebar. I won't tell.

1) seneschal
2) destiny
3) weaver
4) broken

Recruitment is closed. Also sorry for taking so long to get this set up, I've been dealing with some irl events that popped up pretty suddenly and it might take a bit more time before I'm ready. I am still really wanting to run this campaign, it just may be longer than I was expecting until it starts.

I imagine an Arcadia book would have room a lot of new ancestries, it could just be that they're getting a few out of the way first so they have more space for new ones.

The bug ancestry could have something with more than two arms. That being said, just because they're messing around with the limits of ancestry design doesn't mean they'll do that for all of these.

Just checked out the picture, yeah that could be our remaining 4 ancestries, but also could be some Beastkin for the insectoid/badger. Pretty likely we're getting merfolk and locathah though. Gonna be a great book

All six members of the crew besides Baranthet are supposed to be the six new ancestries, so those two wouldn't just be beastkin.

Dunno how reliable this is, given the same source previously misinterpreted the Howl of the Wild description into thinking they were including a naturalist class, but Dicebreaker released a new article and they're using a picture they source to Paizo. While they don't talk about it in the article, there's what appears to be a Merfolk riding the Centaur guy from the reveal. There's also some fish guy which might be a Locathah, some kind of honey badger (I think that's what that is), and some insectoid engineer. Take it with a grain of salt though.

Merfolk would make me so happy, they're the ancestry I was hoping for most from this book. The insect one makes me think of the Klinkois that were mentioned in Guns and Gears who live in Arcadia. And I don't think that's a honey badger, looks more like an american badger to me.

Really sorry for not responding to questions over the past couple days, I was too busy to be able to but I should have the time now.

By the way, I was wondering how relevant Eberron's "main" setting is going to be to this game, since I know we'll be planehopping. Will stuff be going on related to the Material Plane (the Last War, the politics, the religious groups, etc), or will it largely be about exploring these cool new regions?

The focus will be on the planes, but there'll definitely be time spent in the material plane too

If you’re still actively considering character submissions, I will put one together ASAP and get it over to you.

It's still open, I think I'll be closing it on Thursday though. I'm also fine with allowing a second archetype with eldritch trickster like what Philo mentioned.

As soon as we can get some feedback on how dragonmarks and their prestige classes will work, I am totally in, but for the moment, I will develop a Runescarred Sorcerer ...

I probably should've thought through how dragonmarks will be handled, I'm really not sure. Certain ones could be represented reasonably well through archetypes like using the horizon walker for the Mark of Passage or shadowcaster/shadowdancer for the Mark of Shadow, but I don't know if there's one universal way it could be handled. If you've got any suggestions let me know.

Goes to show how arbitrary and unscientific these categories were.

Bit of a side tangent but honestly I'd describe them as unscientific for more of the opposite reason. Scientific categories tend to be pretty messy since the universe doesn't put itself in order for us, and more realistic spell schools would be pretty different from just eight categories that every spell innately belongs in. I'd love to see a game explore a more chaotic and realistic version of that, but I don't think Pathfinder is the right system for it.

I do hate repeating the same things as everyone else, but I'm betting on the AP being something either Runelords or Darklands related. I'd prefer another Tian Xia AP personally though, it would feel a bit weird to me to leave it behind this quickly.

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

It starts out being about drow reformers in the Darklands, but then in Book 3 they go to Riddleport and get kind of derailed.

So, the opposite of Extinction Curse.

...FOURTH DARKNESS

Fifth Darkness is just the entirety of Starfinder then

Malk_Content wrote:

I'm hoping your personal edicts and anathema's interact with new Hero Point rules. The current rules are lacklustre, but I love stuff like WoD tying Willpower to your characters Nature and Demeanour.

D&D2014 had traits bonds and flaws that gave inspiration, but nobody ever used them, not even their official/sponsored streams. D&D2024(AKA Not The One) they are removing it because their survey said those who want to roleplay do not need restricting mechanics for roleplay, they will roleplay regardless.

So in PF2e that is Hero Points you are free to reward roleplay and give those out if they follow their anathema/edicts same as you would now for following their alignment/background or "you might' and 'others might' ancestry/class roleplay hooks that exist now, or you can give out Hero Points for metagame reasons like someone bought pizza for the group. The rules do not need to dictate that either way for that to happen, they just need dictate how Hero Point mechanics work and leave it to GM discretion on reward with recommended rates and suggestions.

Well tbf most D&D games don't even use inspiration in the first place, so that ends up making those traits useless. Other systems have used similar ideas and made them work, including mechanics/guidelines for roleplay doesn't inherently hurt it.

After the first story I've been hoping for giant ground sloths to make it in as an animal companion, highlighting some lesser known extinct animals would be really fun

question on rule #4: "I'd like players to be familiar with the basics of Eberron's setting, or to read up on it before making a character."

Any advice on where/how to read up on Eberron, just found some pages on wikipedia, glad to read up on it elsewhere as needed.

p.s. Currently thinking about a beastkin inventor character, maybe an enginer on the Crystalmark...

This post on the Eberron subreddit goes over the basics, and the Eberron wiki can be used for looking into anything else you want to know about.

P - Pranks, what sort of mischief does your character like getting into

I'm the only one that didn't like that these magical items moved to a GM's book?

I'd prefer them in Player Core too, but I get why they made the change since they're trying to make that book smaller and less intimidating to new players.

Psychic could be renamed to Esper, I'd prefer that since it's slightly annoying to have the word "psychic" be both an adjective to describe their type of magic and a noun to describe the name of the class. It's not a huge deal in the end though.

Armsmaster could work as an alternative to Man-at-Arms, I do prefer warrior though.

CynDuck wrote:

One of the Paizo members mentioned on Twitter that this book will be"expanding the limits of what was previously considered standard ancestry design," so I'm expecting some of the new ancestries to be pretty dang weird.

Finally, I can play as an airship!

I'm a bit more excited for the ancestry that lets us play as the sound of howling.

One of the Paizo members mentioned on Twitter that this book will be"expanding the limits of what was previously considered standard ancestry design," so I'm expecting some of the new ancestries to be pretty dang weird.

CynDuck wrote:

Temperans wrote:

CynDuck wrote:

Temperans wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

nothinglord wrote:

My only question is what the full list of combination elements are.

You could certainly come up with an idea for all 30, but you might not have page space for it.

I mean they came up with 22 when there were 7 elements. So why wouldn't they come up with 30 now that there will be 8 elements. (I do not believe that they wont release Aether and Void Kineticist).

They've specified that they're only doing 6 elements in Rage of Elements. Perhaps Aether and Void will come out later, but that's not really relevant to this discussion.

I am talking about how they had space for a lot, so why wouldn't they have space now?

Reminder the original came out with 5 elements, with 1-2 blast each, the combination for those 5 elements, the talents for those 5 elements, the infusions for those 5 elements, and 5 other classes with all the stuff for those classes, and archetypes and spells for all of those classes.

Its also a book with a single class when the last two books with classes had two classes each.

In the Wargamer article that came out a while back they mentioned that this is the longest class they've ever released, and they've had to leave out some stuff due to space concerns. Keep in mind, this is a different class from the 1e version, you can't directly compare the two.

I mean obviously they left out stuff. They are not including Aether or Void Kineticist, and they are probably not including any of the archetypes which can change things quite a bit (Ex: blood kineticist).

So yeah they left out a lot. But writing a few composite blasts should really not take that much space.

My comparison was mostly "even if this is a long class it should not take more space than 2 classes worth of space".

The Wargamer article literally says that the element combinations were one of the big reasons the class is so long. I'd recommend reading it, when they talk about leaving out options they're talking about things much smaller in scale than you seem to think.

I guess to go back to the original message that started this thread, I feel like Howl of the Wild could help to "unlock" just about any region of the game since nature is, well, a part of everywhere. Southern Garund and Casmaron/Iblydos both could make sense since they often have the narrators of a book come from the region they're heading towards like in Book of the Dead and Treasure Vault, but I feel like those areas also probably need more work to get set up, and I'm not sure if they'd be heading towards them right after something as big as the Tian Xia books.

I think I'd probably lean towards this setting up a Saga Lands book, the Mammoth Lords could use some more animal companion options for players, and the area as a whole has a lot of wilderness throughout it. I don't feel too strongly about this since I think you can justify this leading to a lot of areas of the game, and I may be wrong about Southern Garund and Casmaron too, but there is also a lot of other stuff pointing towards it.

I've been wanting a book like this for a while, so I'm really excited for this to come out! There's so many ancestries I'd love to see that would work well for the remaining four like merfolk, sthenos, gargoyles, or maybe some sort of insect ancestry.

Unicore wrote:

The fact it has been Sayre teasing it makes me pretty excited for a shaman playtest very soon. The only thing that feels off to me about a shaman/shifter purely primal focus is doing 2 primal focus books in a row? Although maybe a decision was made, especially with 2 new elements and it being a major point of departure for the D&D-inspired fantasy lore, to really run with filling in primal magic specifically as it’s own thing. Like Dark Archive covered as much as they needed for a while with occult magic, but maybe primal needs two books to cover the elemental side, and then the more natural world side.

Arcane magic is maybe in a place where they want to wait on it until Golarion’s other traditions are more fully integrated. It is a rough space for wizards, my favorite class, but is maybe justifiable since wizards have sat at the top of the pecking order in so much of previous editions that they just don’t feel like pushing arcane magic feels unique to their world right now.

I don't know. Folks love to pigeon hole the shaman into the primal realm but spirits seem more divine to me. YMMV.

Well there's already the Consult the Spirits feat which shows spirits can at the very least be from the divine, primal, and occult traditions, so I could see a shaman class falling under any of those or being able to choose which tradition to use. Plus, occult and divine casters can still be tied to natural forces, I don't think the possibility of the shaman appearing in a nature themed book inherently means it has to be a primal caster.

The fact it has been Sayre teasing it makes me pretty excited for a shaman playtest very soon. The only thing that feels off to me about a shaman/shifter purely primal focus is doing 2 primal focus books in a row? Although maybe a decision was made, especially with 2 new elements and it being a major point of departure for the D&D-inspired fantasy lore, to really run with filling in primal magic specifically as it’s own thing. Like Dark Archive covered as much as they needed for a while with occult magic, but maybe primal needs two books to cover the elemental side, and then the more natural world side.

Arcane magic is maybe in a place where they want to wait on it until Golarion’s other traditions are more fully integrated. It is a rough space for wizards, my favorite class, but is maybe justifiable since wizards have sat at the top of the pecking order in so much of previous editions that they just don’t feel like pushing arcane magic feels unique to their world right now.

I don't think those two books being right next to each other is as big of a deal as people think honestly. From what I've heard from developer comments before, Paizo's not looking at the different traditions of magic and figuring out which one to add options for, they're trying to find places where they can add new content to the game to improve it. Rage of Elements just adds more elemental options, there's a lot of space for a nature themed book to work with, including areas outside of primal magic.

Is Baranthet taking the forms of all these creatures, or speaking to all their spirits?

As a hypothetical Iconic, I mean.

At first I was thinking he'd be a shifter, but framing it this way made me realize something

Maybe he's learning from Grandmother's stories how to commune with the Wardens of the Wild themselves, much like what each of these creatures are doing? Or in other words, him gaining the ability to channel magic from them as a shaman.

It would be cool to get different subclasses of shifter for sure. You could have the classic chimera animal version, maybe an alchemy body horror version, an undead or plant version? Lots to play with there, no reason to limit it to nature

I missed the "or" between the undead and plant part and now it's making me think of how fun it would be to be able to mix together different subclasses for the shifter.

A lot of people have mentioned that it feels like the recent Grandmother's Story posts from Paizo have been teasing a future product, so I'm wondering what everyone's predictions on that are. The two main leads from this are these new Wardens of the Wild they're introducing, and that Baranthet and his grandmother seem to likely be lizardfolk from Droon.

Personally I'm betting on some sort of wilderness themed book with the Wardens tied into it, it feels like there's not been enough buildup for a book featuring Droon in it as of yet. It would be a great opportunity to introduce Shifter and Shaman classes, and if so I wonder if Baranthet might be our future iconic for either of those.

MadScientistWorking wrote:

So they're Iruxi?

Sounds a lot like they are from Droon! :D

The description of a partly submerged city with buildings made of bone and glass also fits what we know of Droon so far. I'm really interested to see what this leads up to!

It might be fun to have more customizability for the shaman's edicts and anathemas based on the various spirits they draw power from. I don't think it would make sense to avoid having those in the class entirely from a thematic standpoint, but giving them some more flexibility would help in differentiating them from the other wisdom casters.

I imagine the upcoming Tian Xia books would be a good place to introduce a couple new dragon deities, but I do agree that taking random concepts and making dragon gods based around them would be a bit boring, especially if other gods cover those.

I can get feeling upset about certain monsters going away, I feel that towards a couple like the mimics and gelatinous cubes. But none of that anger should be directed at Paizo since they're not at fault here, and personally my excitement to see what new monsters they make outweighs that, or seeing how they're able to put a new spin on some of the classics.

I love this!

The mention of giant sloths makes me think of Arcadia, with the giant ground sloths that used to live in the Americas.

3-Body Problem wrote:

Temperans wrote:

<snip>

That might be a valid argument if this whole conversation wasn't about the use of the term master as it relates to the relationship between a familiar and the character who controls it. In that context, Master does strongly connote superior and inferior positions in a relationship, and to some people this conjures up images of slavery. If you're going to argue definitions at least argue about the ones relevant to the topic at hand.

So you're saying the Familiar should be either a dominant or equal position to the character, even though the game is expressly designed to not allow this simply because of how the rules for minions/summons as a whole function?

Don't get me wrong, Familiars being able to act like a character does isn't really gamebreaking, given how weak they are mechanically, but a core design principle of PF2 was to eliminate the "OP Summoner" builds that would ruin games either by slowing down to a crawl or trivializing encounters.

Mechanical strength is an entirely separate thing from position in a relationship, I don't know why you're equating those two things.

Part of me is actually a little hesitant to bet on a half dragon heritage because with draconic sorcerers/barbarians, kobolds, the dragon disciple, and smaller things like the monk's dragon stance making it in here that might just be too many draconic options in one book. Although at the same time, there's really not much else that makes sense besides it, a VH tied to fey and the first world could make sense but that's all I can think of.

I do wonder, could giants be hit by this in a similar way as the dragons? Like of course, the concept of a fire giant or storm giant on their own isn't gonna be defensible by WotC, but using the same lineup of giants as D&D, as well as the specific abilities for each of them does sound like it might be a bit risky. Although I'd also wouldn't object to some new Paizo original giants taking the spotlight.

So if Mirage Dragons are Arcane + Diabolic and Empyreal are our assumed Divine pair, then we have some guesswork to do!

CynDuck had the brilliant thought that Adamantine might be the Metal half of a Primal pair, both themed off the new Metal and Wood Elemental Planes coming in RoE. I’d wager that Fortune and Omen Dragons are our Occult pair, as fate, chance, time, and all that weirdness seems well in their wheelhouse. That leaves Mirage Dragons with a missing dance partner, currently unrevealed - Truth Dragons, perhaps, antithesis of those who weave illusions?

Thanks! I guess to go off that, I could see a wood dragon being themed around a special wood type in the game such as darkwood, considering that the adamantine dragon is based on one of the skymetals. Maybe it'll even be based on something new from Rage of Elements.

Or even the old Draconic sorcerer. Would still like the option to play as a silver draconic sorcerer or a brass one you know?

You'll still have the opportunity to use the old draconic sorcerer from the CRB, but I doubt they'll be including options for the chromatic/metallic dragons in Player Core 2 considering the OGL concerns. I'm excited to see what they replace them with though, with a few exceptions the classic D&D dragons have gotten a little stale for me.

With the new planes of metal and wood I wonder if the adamantine dragon might be one of the new primal dragons, and paired up with another more plant themed one.

I like Reaver. Someone got ChatGPT to suggest Rampager for Barbarian in another thread and if not Berserker then Rampager for that one. Reaver works quite nicely here. Destroyer might also work (if we can avoid the obvious warship jokes). Annihilator might work too?

The antipaladin has always felt like a bit of a cheesy villain themed subclass to me, and annihilator sounds perfect for that.

I know I should just ignore the thread, but I think that anti paladin is actually supported in setting?

Maybe I'm getting my head cannon mixed up with lore though. I had thought that the first champions were Paladins and were first empowered to fight against Rovagug. In response, Rovagug empowered its own champions, so they were referred to as anti paladins.

Anyway, Reaver is cool.

Even if there's a canonical reason like that for the name it still might fall under the OGL, and if so would probably be best to remove