Doggest's page

Hey! I have a question that's fitting for every game with a level up system. How do you explain level up in your game and how do you explain it in Pathfinder/Golarion? Of course the simplest and most obvious answer is that leveling up is just an abstraction of the experience you get fighting monsters, raiding dungeons and so on. That's fine, I mean, it's what most people do and what I also do. Lately though I've been thinking. Aside from metagame-y explanations about the difference between characters and NPCs, why are there NPC adventurers that never really level up or that level up really slowly? I think it's enough for most NPCs to just say that they don't go on adventures, they don't fight people/monsters, they don't delve into ancient ruins etc., so they obviously level up at a slower pace in life. But what about those that do this kind of stuff? The PCs, in comparison, level up really really quickly. APs generally take place in the course of in-game months and PCs level up from level 1 to almost 20 in that short time. Personally,as a PC I usually rationalise it thinking that I'm special and destined. But it's getting boring to give the same explanation every time. The whole point of this question is not to challenge the system though, I really want to hear from you how you explain it or would explain it if you had to, in-game, that is. Or to think together about different explanations, or to talk a bit about suspension of disbelief and so on. Because I find really hard to completely resort to suspension of disbelief for this. Thanks for your time! Have a wonderful day :)

Doggest wrote:

Hello James! I have a question regarding the setting: in Pathfinder 1e Varisia was fleshed out quite a bit throughout various APs, would you say that Return of the Runelords is kind of the last chapter of the adventures in this region for a while? I thought about this when I read that you don't intend to come back to areas where PCs have played important roles in the past 10 years because anyway you have a lot to tell about other places in the world. I just want to know since I love paizo canon but I also have my own divergences after playing and mastering APs mainly in Varisia and I'd like them to be mainly ok with the official line. Of course, as it is now, it's perfecf since you just outlined very general outcomes.

Thanks for your time! Your patience in this thread is immense ;)

I've got plenty more stories I'd like to tell about Varisia, so no, I wouldn't say Return of the Runelords is the last chapter.

In fact, there's not any location on Golarion that I'm comfortable saying "We'll never go back there." If you want to build your own canon for your game, which you absolutely should, you should lean into it and be comfortable with your version of the game. That's a big part of what makes tabletop RPGs so much fun! :-)

Gotcha! Without disclosing details that you can't or don't want to for obvious reasons, would you say that there is a possibility to play around runelords as enemies in the future? Something like Belimarius being the last bad one of them, since Sorshen is kind of redeemed. And will we see more of Korvosa? :)

James Jacobs wrote:

Laird IceCubez wrote:

Is there some kind of qualifier that determines whether a creature gets the -folk title.

Like Girtablilu are referred to as Scorpionfolk, Ysoki are Ratfolk, Kitsune are Foxfolk. (Within their flavour text)

So could/would Tengu be referred to as 'Ravenfolk'?

Sure, I guess. But I wouldn't. In fact, I'd rather the "-folk" names for ancestries some day be regulated to tertiary roles in describing ancestries... or even get dropped entirely from the game.

The "-folk" portmanteau is not great. It's kinda reductionist and marginalizes the creature by speaking about them with a name that they didn't create for themselves. It'd be like aliens coming to Earth and calling humans "primatefolk" instead of humans. It's better to respect a culture by referring to them by the name they refer to themselves as, and as such in game, it's more interesting to give these ancestries their own names as well.

Where it gets complicated is when we pick up creatures from the OGL, so we often have to come up with variant names for them. But when something is generic (like ratfolk) or from mythology (like kitsune or tengu) there's much less of a need for this.

It's further complicated by the fact that for a fair amount of the first several years of us working on Pathfinder, we didn't really realize the value of not using "-folk" constructions instead of giving these ancestries actual names, so there's a legacy we built for ourselves in trying to self-correct. It's tough to do that in the middle of an edition cycle, but with the edition change that was a great place to start getting those names in print so that the baseline products will have that information.

As for why "-folk" and not "-man"? It's gender neutral.

Well, most cultures refer to themselves as "people" in their native tongues, but you went with Kitsune ("Fox" in Japanese), Tengu ("Heavenly Dog" or "Heavenly Sentinel" in Japanese), Android (Greek roots for "In the likeness or form of a...

I second this. For example, if ratfolks are now ysoki, does that mean that they have a kind of oriental/japanese flavor in them? Of course communities in the Inner Sea don't necessarily have it but maybe their ancestors moved from Tian Xia or something like that? Of course it's not like Ysoki MUST be a "japanese" word inside the setting, but it looks and sounds like it. I think it's a right choice for Starfinder (because of the cyberpunk-ish feeling) but not really for Pathfinder. Still of course it's just a minor thing.

Hello James! I have a question regarding the setting: in Pathfinder 1e Varisia was fleshed out quite a bit throughout various APs, would you say that Return of the Runelords is kind of the last chapter of the adventures in this region for a while? I thought about this when I read that you don't intend to come back to areas where PCs have played important roles in the past 10 years because anyway you have a lot to tell about other places in the world. I just want to know since I love paizo canon but I also have my own divergences after playing and mastering APs mainly in Varisia and I'd like them to be mainly ok with the official line. Of course, as it is now, it's perfecf since you just outlined very general outcomes.

Thanks for your time! Your patience in this thread is immense ;)

Divine Anthology wrote:

Ragathiel's Paladin Code: Redemption finds hearts from even the cruelest origins. I will strive not to act upon prejudice against fellow mortals based on race or origin.

Core Rulebook wrote:

Hatred: Dwarves receive a +1 bonus on attack rolls against humanoid creatures of the orc and goblinoid subtypes due to special training against these hated foes.

Would a dwarf paladin of Ragathiel be in danger of falling if they used their racial Hatred ability?

I know it's kinda off topic but may you write down here all the Ragathiel's code?