Davia D's page

For gift, I'll go 'cornucopian blessing,' nicely cut out logistic/food problems down. As long as I commit an effort, a specific container can put out up to 10 tons of an agricultural substance per day.

Can use it to make food for our refugees.

Sorry for taking so long- I had something half-wrote up and then lost the tab :\

If there's nothing else, Lian suggests they head off once more, with thanks to the Dawnflowers and the new knowledge in hand.

There are planes of good and evil in a non-subjective sense, but the negative energy plane is *not* one of them- it's unaligned.

Destruction, consumption, etc. are often disliked by humans and negative energy is something that can be used to do nasty things to the soul, but the energies aren't innately evil, any more than fire is (and it's certainly possible to use fire for evil, I think you'll agree)- sorta like the ancient egyptians had a god of chaos protect the sun on it's journey through the night. Or how in Greek legend, Hades was one of the more chill gods.

Canon non-evil necromancers are a thing:
https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Giseil_Voslil
He's an elf who's an ally of the Shin'Rakorath, who spend most of their time fighting Drow and Demons.

I will also toss in, there's evil which is sometimes socially tolerated- like Asmodean followers, who follow the law and such- and evil which is not. Depending on the place, undead can fall into the former. Raising unintelligent undead is considered a minor evil (it has the 'evil' spell descriptor), but it's something that even good alignment wizards are capable of (though probably shouldn't too much).

Golarion isn't split into 'good' and 'evil' camps by any means, or at least not purely. Hellknights can be any lawful alignment and even Lawful Good ones do include Asmodeus among their five patrons. Demons are generally hated by *everyone* and if an army from Geb (land ruled by undead) showed up, there'd be grumbling but an acknowledgement that Geb is far better than the Worldwound- while the Whispering Tyrant, who spreads it's undead in an expanding horde, is far worse than Geb. A good person would talk to an ambassador from Geb.

A Necromancer being neutral and using unintelligent undead to fight far greater evils is something I think is quite doable in canon. Yea, even if the spell involves a bit of evil, on balance they can easily be in a non-evil category, and 'evil' does not mean 'kill' or enemies. We're allying with Hellknights, without a doubt defenders of civilization, who include members who are without a doubt evil, who fight alongside Hellknights who are good.

I just kinda went with the group, but am fine with alternate suggestions- if an NPC suggests "you'd be more help here," Lian would present it to the group.

Please do-
Include a variety of races- that is to say, skin colors among elves (and quite possibly dwarves/gnomes/whatever? But especially elves) from the start. I know in the plot their color is supposed to be quite varied with proper-brownskin elves around, but we never see them. We shouldn't have to rely on word alone to know they exist- and bonus points if they do NOT have white hair!

Seeing a black elf fight a drow in an early book would really draw the contrast between 'these ones are racial diversity, these ones made pacts with demons and are now purple and white.'

Please don't-

All-white or mostly-white non-draw elves.

Please give every signature character their own signature hats. This is exceedingly minor but I like hats.

Oh, more seriously:
Please give signature characters weather appropriate outfits.

It's fine if they have a main look, but it is *really odd* when the tropical sorceress and the cold-weather warrior both walk around in their native garb with no respects for temperature and, indeed, no temperature would be suitable for the whole party at the same time.

If every signature character had a mere two outfits, that'd be good- and by outfits it can be 'basically the same thing plus or minus some fur or a cape,' though being varied is fine too. The artists are easily good enough to make things not-confusing even with a few different outfits.

Please do:
Give a variety of mechanically distinct weapons that are worth using.

Please don't:
Make exotic weapons/weird weapons cost a feat (or other mechanical cost) *if they aren't better*. If they're just foreign, an orchish whatever or a different continent's thingy, then even if it's something used in a different way than a sword, it shouldn't cost anything.

People should be able to play with weird weapons without paying for essentially nothing or even a disadvantage.

I'm with Todd Stewart. It's fairly baked into the setting and I *luv* the planar stuff. The Hellknights serving five lawful gods across good, neutral, and evil is great setting stuff too.

I will say:
Make it clear in the main book alignments aren't personality types, OCD doesn't make you lawful/being scatterbrained does not make you chaotic. People of certain personalities can *tend* one way, but they're different things. This is probably the biggest play problem.

Also make it clear that what a person's code is matters. If a person has a code that says it's ok to depose leaderships in revolutionary mobs, well, then they probably isn't too lawful. In short, 'has a code =/= automatically lawful,' a code is just a person's personal description.

Don't tie alignment to class unless it involves working for a specific ideology. An organization can be tied to class, but a lawful bard/chaotic monk is fine. This might mean you may be a former member of X, but only stuff like spell-granting clerical classes or paladins should be alignment tied- and even then, I say switching gods or such is fine, fallen paladin options, etc..

Please this:
Fix the martial/caster disparity. I want them to be close to each other from a optimization perspective- and I include rogue types in 'martial' here.

Please not:
Leave martials getting pluses to hit or damage while casters are getting new *types* of abilities like flying, summoning, etc- sometimes multiple per level.

Don't make martials go through chains of abilities to get to good ones. Heck, feat chains in general- no one should need to pick up a low-level ability at high level. The first feat of a chain should be worthwhile. Like, if there's a chain, 2 or 3 things in fine, earning a thing is ok, but each step should be worthwhile and fighting styles shouldn't be reliant on putting your entire investment to one thing, and the thing at the top of a chain should be good.

I overwhelmingly cannot overstate how much this matters. High end fighters need to be equally imposing to high end wizards, and if this means performing mythology-like feats without external magic boosts, that's good. It should be possible to build a martial who's good at killing wizards without being consistently thwarted by 'summon in path/wall in path/fly away,' because there's no way to get the raw variety.

More minor-
Please this:
Lotsa races. I know it'll take time to build up the array of non-core races we had before, but most of what I play is ecclectic races like Androids, Ghorans, Kitsune, etc.. I *like* their flavor a lot and that it's reflected in their abilities. So yea, continue to have race matter and come in many flavors. Starting with goblins in the core is something I take as a good sign.

Keep alignments.

Have Proteans be chaotic and equally creation as well as destruction. None of this 'their goal is to return everything to the maelstrom,' stuff, there's so much more possibility.

Have an official name for planar exemplar types- you know, the alignment races that are tied to a plane and are it's big representatives, as opposed to just random-outsiders. Demons, Daemons, Azata, etc.. I call 'em planar exemplars but any collective name would do.

Make the good planes more distinct- don't have them share any outsider types.

Maybe mythic again, but more balanced/less rocket-tag-y? I'll understand if you skip this but I liked the concept.

Please not:
Don't in-universe change the setting in an in-plot to explain the rules changes. We all remember when Forgotten Realms did it, and I say pass on that. You can do some retcons, but none of the "and then magic changed in year X" stuff.

I think it's good there's a cult, Huhl puts forward.

Or, as a matter of fact, what's the deal with all of the different subtypes of evil outsiders? I'm in the process of porting a bunch of fiends to Starfinder, but I don't quite understand most of the subtypes.

- Demons like destroying things for fun
- Daemons seek universal annihilation
- Devils are classic schemer fiends
- Kytons are fiendish sadomasochists like that thing from Hellraiser
- Asuras are ???
- Qlippoths were there before Daemons but I don't know what they want
- Demodands are ???
- Divs are evil genie spirits
- Oni are fiendish trickster ogres

Any others that I'm missing?

Sahkil are fallen psychopomps who, rather than conducting the cycle of life death and souls, relish inflicting fear and terror. Basically they're former workers who've decided that rather than doing a boring job helping 'lessers,' they're just going to mess with them for kicks. Mass death or annihilation isn't their goal like some others, but rather twisting individuals with despair and horror and drive them to death and eat their souls/make undead. It's not so much about a grand goal as the ultimate 'screw the system' to them.

---

Daemons specifically seek the annihilation of intelligent life- they hate life, especially mortal life, as their highest goal. They want everyone dead and the souls destroyed.

Qlippoth want the destruction of everything that isn't them (back in the day they warred with everything), with Demons high on the list due to trying to take over the Abyss. Demons are created by mortal sin, so eliminating mortals would be a path to this (though unlike daemons what happens to the souls isn't a big priority for them).

So there's two omnicide sides, but one is more focused on mortals-like-you, it's highly personal to Daemons that your life and soul is annihilated, while the other is more alien and coldly destructive who'll do horrible things to you and everything else in the ultimate goal of eliminating all the horrible-to-them non-Qlippoth existence.

Honestly, since I don't like working out longer feat chains, and I generally like my characters having at least some social capability, it's pretty much my go-to for martial and martial hybrid characters.

A vigilante specialization (either hidden strike or BAB boost to full)

Or Spellcasting in one of three flavors, for that matter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also depends on the setting. In Mendev I assume that everyone will recognise a paladin of Iomedae. Orders are probably also based in some area etc.

In Mendev, I assume the response is, "Here, let me call your boss, they're nearby anyway."

Lundadork(sp) was not really interesting with his WH40K Commissar BLAMing. I doubt his lifespan would be any significant length even if WW didn't face him after the rest of German high command finds out.

Erich Ludendorff's a historical person even. And not a very nice one, after the war he pushed the 'we would've won if not betrayed by the civilians' myth and coined the phrase 'Total War,' and wrote a book advocating it. Him being Ares is not all that far fetched!

yes, but

** spoiler omitted **

And isn't screwing with the laws of destiny Chaotic, not Evil?

I think the ways it's screwed with matter.

For example, if the Axiomates screwed with fate to send far more souls to Axis and to rig it so lawful kingdoms took over more worlds, that'd be lawful meddling.

Screwing with how life itself works, though... that's more a good/evil axis thing.

That said, yea, a lot of the time screwing with destiny is going to be chaotic, but the action itself matters more.

Doomed Hero wrote:

Pharasma doesn't like the undead, and she's the final arbiter of all morality in the Golarion universe. It's pretty much entirely due to her (sometimes unreasonable) prejudice.

That's the in-setting reason anyway. The out-of-game reason is because James Jacobs likes his undead to be near-universally evil.

That is something I have been wondering about, Pharesma is against undead because it interrupts the journey of the soul, but being the goddess of fate/prophecy she would know that it was that person's fate to become undead so there is no interruption. Plus she knows that eventually they will be destroyed and things go on as planned.

Hmm... Pharesma=Tzeneech?

Knowing it's going to happen and wanting it to are two very different things.

N: Nethys. It's funny in that the "god of magic" is usually my least favorite god in any setting - I hate Mystra with a passion. But Nethys is very fun, very entertaining, and very intriguing in ways that I haven't seen a god of magic be before.

It is true that a lot of magic gods tend to be 'I study a lot and am overpowered because magic!'. Nethys is more than just a big OP wizard.

"They are against the laws of nature, which must make it evil."

So a ranger finds a blind wolf pup about to be murdered by the pack for being blind, saves the pup, raises him, teaches him to survive on his own despite being blind, and reintroduces him into the wild, where he passes on his genes that have a higher chance of producing blind wolves. This in turn over a thousand or so years creates a new breed of wolf. This act never would have happened if the laws of nature had run their course. According to this argument, the ranger is evil. But in actuality, he would be deemed good. So being against the laws of nature does not make you evil.

A bit different.

A human is, ultimately, part of nature and such. Yea, that is unlikely to happen naturally, but it doesn't actually break the laws of nature. The First World has weirder.

An undead is replacing a fundamental piece of literally all life- be it material plane, first world, or even outsider- with something else.

Not only can't it naturally occur, but it only became possible at all thanks to the rise of an evil goddess, Urgathoa. So the presence of an evil facilitator may play a role.

I mean, one can still view that replacement as something that should have little to do with the moral stance, but this something else normally stands in opposition to that something in all other life and tends to affect behavior accordingly, and most intelligent forms of undeath involve stuff that's more actively evil as well, and the Urgathoa effect all factor in.

LE - Zon-Kuthon. just.... is there any other?

Asmodeus would say there is ^^

Though Zon-Kuthon's cenobite-edgelordness is pretty appealing.

Every monk, as they say, is a Qinggong monk. Since you have 100% freedom on which class abilities to replace, the only reason not to be one is if 100% of the class features you want come from base form or other archetypes.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space

Why It's Bad: It's super campy and has evil alien space clowns with ridiculous, clown-themed weaponry.

Why I Love It: It's super campy and has evil alien space clowns with ridiculous, clown-themed weaponry.

Enough said.

The title not only describes the film but whether or not you're gonna like it. It's exactly what it says on the tin!

And as for your second point, if everyone made rational smart decisions in the face of complete horror and dire circumstance? That would be just as unbelievable and would completely yank me out of the movie as well. Not everyone is going to react like a well-oiled team of professional adventurers.

There were one or two decisions made in PROMETHEUS that were just plain DUMB and those were scientists who should have CLEARLY known better.

I'll note the space cargo haulers of 'Alien' were mostly pretty competent in their decision making, they just had Ash undermining them. And in Aliens, you had the newbie LT and the company man trying to run his plan, but the Marines, again, tended to be pretty good at making rational decisions.

Rational decisions didn't always end up being the *right* ones, but Aliens casts were traditionally surprisingly good at what they do.

People aren't smart, rational animals in the most realistic of situations. IN one where some really weird stuff is going on all of a sudden and they have no idea what it is or what to do? I'm guessing the horrible decision making factor goes through the roof.

Believe it or not, while reaction in the heat sometimes make mistakes (running for an exit normally *is* the best call- and if you misplace the location of the threat, that's not a judgement in error but in information), studies and reports show that people band together and act surprisingly well in disaster scenarios.

I mean, think about it, if humans became that much more likely to die in disasters, we wouldn't have survived all the disasters to be around today! Horror movies tend to take a less-than-real-life view of people's competence in high stress situations.

> Better PR for Axis. We have demons pouring out of the Worldwound and devils being summoned in Cheliax. Where's the messengers of law and order visiting or being summoned to give advice to those in need?

Axis is a really interesting place- it didn't form like most other planes.

It was built by a civilization of mid-level Outsiders (i.e. not the normal power range), who came from outside (and possibly added Law to the multiverse in doing so), to construct it and not just to make a place but to continue to expand, and the main Outsiders of the Plane are ones they made for that purpose. So the actual bosses are a civilization of CR 8 Axiomites conducting, basically, a war against both Maelstrom and Abyss, with the CR 2 through 20 Inevitables being their tools.

It's a totally different setup than any other plane.

Sounds like something a qlippoth would say...

*squints*

No, no, a Qlippoth would be eating your face...

LN and CN need some serious love.

I am really interested in some of those dimensions, pocket dimensions, etc. that are mentioned in the softcover planar book.

On pocket dimensions, it feels to me like Leng and similar lovecraft stuff could get it's own separate softcover.

Doodlebug Anklebiter wrote:

Wasted a free NYT article on this, so I might as well link it:

Ghosts, Warring Gods and the Apocalypse: The Best of New Science Fiction and Fantasy

"Unimaginatively named 'MegaCorps'?"

Given the long history of MegaCorps as a concept in science fiction, isn't that a lot like complaining about an author calling robots "Robots" at this point?

Like Davia D, I'm working on Convergence. Mospheira isn't really economically developed enough to sport any MegaCorps, but there are robots in the series, and Cherryh just calls them robots. I don't know, the other morning I was making myself an omelet and, after slicing a mushroom into 6 pieces, I cut one of the slices in half because 7 is kaibu and 6 is a very tricky number. Look, whatever, it's not like I'm over on the Shejidan forum posting about Atevi pizza. Those people are nerds; I just like to keep my numbers in good order.

Yea, like some times it's fine to use your own name for things, but there's no reason to not just use the default term.

Hm, I just realized the two lamps I placed in this room yesterday may not be kaibu, but the plants (three in number) probably balance them out...

CWheezy wrote:

I think its better than you have to ban schools.

It lets the wizard have some flavor, instead of the current base wizard which is "I can cast and do anything i want"

Where you say 'flavour', I smell impotence. Renouncing to whole schools of magic no less than cripples your character, I've played enough specialists in 3.5 to know that for a fact... the times I've wished I had acess to invisibility or enchanment spells (suggestion, geas etc, or even just Tasha's irresitible laughter...) and couldn't have confirmed that thes rules are no less than crippling, and crippled magician has a flavor of rotting meat too strong for my palate.

'Crippled' is relative. Yea, you lose major options that you feel in comparison to a normal wizard, but you're still a wizard and have plenty of options. Most other class normally has areas they can't contribute after all.

Any written wizard where? PF wizard have roughly the same flavor as the AD&D Magic User, and that's what they were built for. (beside the odious nerfing that took place between 1st and 3.75 ed)

Well, novels and comics of D&D come to mind. If one isn't talking very high level types, wizards don't normally show off their raw versatility nearly as much in the fiction.

A 'decide which one to get each level' maybe? Or under the mistaken impression that a widely scattered char will produce something like a jack-of-all-trades?

Klorox wrote:

and remembering what options are in what book is a PITA... heck, remembering all the options is a pain. Just recently I got reminded of an alchemist spell from the APG that I'd totally forgotten about, even though the APG was about all that was available back when I played my alchemist character.

Unnecessary. Most of the time, you deal with blocks of options that you know will work on a broad selection of builds and most of the time have a very high synergy. So "Archery", "Summoning" and so on. When new books come out, you check if something worthwhile for one of those blocks come up and make a note about it

You do, but that's because you've got your own internal system for how to sort that in your head. Not everyone does.

Isonaroc wrote:

While I do rail on and on about martial/caster disparity, in seriousness the fight doesn't suck in and of itself. It's good at what it does.

I disagree - a vanilla Fighter is easy to take out and at mid levels isn't good at attacking if only you stay out of his reach (since, you know, no pounce). "Role: Fighters excel at combat" - yeah, sorry, no.

Davia D wrote:

I really feel like Martial characters need to be more over-the-top with their abilities, more supernatural dare I say?

That is exactly why Fighter is way better than it used to be. With Mutation Warrior, Item Mastery feats, and Warrior Spirit, Fighters now have non-mundane abilities. At the same time, AWT and others (partially) fixed some of the weaknesses it should never have had.

@Jarrahkin: Apart from the fact that there are plenty of classes with stuff they never run out of either (like a Witch's hexes, a Summoner's Eidolon, or a Druid's Wildshape after a few levels), a Fighter will normally run out of HP before the casters run out of spells. That's if he doesn't fail a critical will save first. I'd say HP are significantly harder to take from the invisibly flying caster than from the guy who stands in front with low reflex save.

Yea, good newer options, and there should be more.

I'd really like some option with highly cinematic over-the-top mobility, though (and mythic has a little of this, but that's mythic).

Like a fighter that can go, "Oh, you're flying? Superleap strike, you're not out of my reach! Wall? Unless you've cut yourself off completely, I rush around it and get you anyway! Leap over your obstacles, weave past your lowly minions!" Sacrifice some damage in exchange for being able to get whereever to the point where you can actually make spellcasters go, "Wow, I wish I was a martial right now!".

Also, IMO spell breaking (using a sword or shield to counter/deflect spells. The barbarians have something like this in their rage powers but it's mostly for hitting spells that are already down rather than active defense) should be a thing for higher level martials, relying on saves shouldn't be the only option. Stuff like Gourry Gabriev batting away fireballs with his sword.

And finally, some special moves that are especially for big foes (as like you say, their CMD tends to be really high). How often in film or anime does someone fight something very big by using skill to dodge around it and make it really hard to hit, or use it's own tusks or whatever as handholds to get up on it and stab it in the eye or whatever?

Three different areas I'd like to see possible abilities in.

A cleric can buff, blast, fight... quite a lot depending on domains.

If you *want* to play a healbot you can, but you have the options for so much more, even without losing your healbot capacity. Having a 'boring' option isn't the same as being boring when you have so many other options.

Really, it's the good-and-'neutral' planes of the Outer Sphere that interest me. The evil planes each already have development and their own books, but it's mostly only in a big honking book do areas like that get developed.

There's always the 'Worf' approach-

Your character was raised by another culture, but is *super* in to their race's original culture, but learned it from a distance so they get things wrong and try to correct themselves and often end up being more true to the virtues of the culture than most.

I.e. a Dwarf with a Welch accent who can talk about honor and clan to put most dwarves to shame, and asks other dwarves they meet tons of questions.

The big problems I see with fighters remains-

One, feat tax. Sure, you have extra feats, but when you've got to spend multiple to get stuff, and removing simple penalties like 'firing into melee,' costs a feat, it adds up (It takes a feat for using a Dex based weapon to be good. It takes a feat to use a stronger weapon. It takes 2 feats to be a competent archer, 4 to be a good one... and that means you're well into the mid levels and still not gotten basics like power attack for the melee side. Spring attack, to let you be a hit-and-run fighter, has two prerequisits). It hurts them at lower levels and it means you can't be multi-talented for some time.

Two, once a feat chain is complete... you need to go back to getting low-level prereqs before you get good ones again, which hurts you at higher levels since once you finally get something big and cool, you generally need to go to something small and minor again, while your friends are getting big and cool stuff with each class ability.

Feats are a fairly weak thing to get and Fighters revolve around them, so..... yea.

I really feel like Martial characters need to be more over-the-top with their abilities, more supernatural dare I say? Barbarian Rage powers and Vigilante Talents can get some of this stuff, but feats tend to still be stuck in 'give bonus to swing sword.' Fighters don't even have a good way to get *pounce* (i.e. 'full attack on a charge'), not even at high levels, and even stuff you picture anyone at higher skill doing like Spring Attack isn't always worth the feats.

You *can* make strong Fighters as people have said, but you need to know your system mastery, and I generally prefer Barbarians and Avenger Vigilantes for martials due to the lack of feat tax equivalent to get their special hitting powers.

I think we tend to get more Evil outsiders because that's what players tend to fight. XD ...I do think Law and Chaos are a bit under-represented, though. (I mean, one of the reasons I like Chaotic Neutral Lovecraftian stuff is because they help fill in the niche of "non-evil chaos power"...)

And in Pathfinder? LN and CN are a lot more interesting than the D&D versions.

Axis is an expansionalist power pressing against the Maelstrom and Abyss. The Proteans are experimentors of creation and destruction formed into many choruses with their own motives. There's a lot you can do there that needs fleshing out.

Kender are proof that Natural Selection doesn't exist in D&D worlds.

(And I see Snowblind already linked to a good explanation why.)

Oh, it does- the real reason people act like it's no big deal is because they're a race of PCs. Forces of evil have survived attacking elves and dwarves only to die attacking Kender.

It's that old "pretend we're ok with the stealing because we're level 0 commoners and they could murder us because they've all got levels in Thief," thing.

I was just getting ready to mention the ones from the MotP (partly for that reason).

That said, a hardcover could probably justify throwing a page each at describing some variant planar structures.

Yea, like, if they wanted to throw 2-4 pages in the back for it? Sure, go for it, that'd be fun! It just is lower on the priority pile than, say, fleshing out Elysium or the Boneyard and what the Psychopomps are up to or some details on some planar movers and shakers.

Convergence of the Foreigner series by CJ Cherryh.

This is one of my favorite series, it handles diplomacy with aliens really well, and I highly recommend going to the start of the series and reading it- as evidence of how good it is, I'm still incredibly enthusiastic this far in ^^

Honestly I'm not getting what you mean by 'setting neutral' here. The Great Beyond, as you note, was not setting neutral, not in the least, and adding more information to the less developed areas would leave it also non setting neutral but still leave plenty of room for DMs (because the planes are still huge), and it doesn't strike me as hard to use it for non golarion stuff either if one so picked.

Are you looking for a planar toolkit? Or just less detailed planes...?

Or to put it another way, can you give an example of what you mean by non setting specific setting info?

My first thought was literally, "as long as its not Golarion specific. . ."

SIGH

So you're more into a generic, design-your-own plane type book?

I will note that while Golarion would consider it "Golarion's Great Beyond," the Great Beyond considers Golarion "one of a ton of worlds. Only really noteworthy for having Rovagug in it."

Actually, the reason Dragons have hoards is painful trauma remaining from the Crash of -2793 IC, which was the REAL reason for the end of the Age of Dragons. Prior to this, Dragons had kept their savings in banks, but rampant speculation by the increasingly unruly and unruled banks caused their savings to be in fact invested in toxic assets masterminded by the Aboleth. A few tried to warn of the impending financial disaster, but were derided as ones saying that the sky is falling. Then one day the sky did fall, and all the Dragons' savings were wiped out. Since then, the surviving Dragons have never dared to trust in banks ever again . . . .

Honestly I think Dragons are too economically smart for that- they all should know if they released their gold in response to another economic event at the same time other dragons do, it'd immediately devalue the gold to a level where it'd hardly help them.

The hordes are quite useful in economic actions during a healthy economy but gold not only isn't crash proof, it's often crash sensitive.

Funny you mention dragons and banks. In Rifts, in the city of Dweomer, dragons actually opened a bank and run it. Apparently many of them learned economics and finance. It lets them grow their hoards as well. And even in a world with rail guns, who wants to rob a bank guarded and run by multiple dragons?

Player characters.

We know at least one dragon literally is building a nation. Dragons are known to use their money and not just hold it.

I think Daw's got the answer.

Sure, it makes them a target to an extent... but it also gives them means to act and exert power. And being a powerful race, they're always going to be something of a target, so better have money to buy minions, or equip a loyal champion, or so on.

I think the race that really takes the cake in this regard however is Ghoran, they can't reproduce and their rights are heavily contested by their creators who'd rather just eat them. Not because they're some kind of freakish animals but because Ghoran's are literally delicious and were created that way.

Being delicious is the best drawback in the game bar none. It's the only drawback I can think of that makes people *want* to play as them.

How many fantasy adventure stories have actually gone into detail about Cat people, or Lizard people, beyond some VERY generic generalizations? This lack of detail gives a creative player the freedom to create an interesting character without being tied down by old ideas.

One of the nice things about (animal) folk is people have associations with them so while not rigidly defined, they aren't without hooks either, their very nature gives an angle.

I'll mention that Astomoi are probably the race out of all Pathfinder ones I have the hardest time coming up with anything with. They're a weird race, but unlike Ghorans and Androids don't have a specific origin, and their weird spaceiness doesn't evoke personality types like any of the animal ones, nor do they come from a specific environment. The main thing they have as a hook I'd go for is if I used one they'd really be into smells.

So having freedom is good, but IMO can go too far in some cases.