Search Posts
I thought the Pathfinder Tales novels were all very good (with the exception of the Greenwood one) and long for their return myself. I'm not into Starfinder or Pathfinder 2e so have stopped buying products, but novels would keep me in the Paizo-buying business.
Well, I've been a superscriber since the Dungeon/Dragon days and all through 1e. I've tried out 2e and the first AP there but my gaming group isn't interested at this time, so I'm going to have to cancel all my various subscriptions for now. Thanks for the decade of fun!
I am also being kicked to the home page 75% of the time when trying to navigate around the forums.
I got an email from Paizo saying my card was declined for part of this shipment, but I got the full change at my credit card company. I replied to that email (to customer.service@paizo.com) on July 12 but have received no response and it still shows as a problem in my subscriptions view. I don't want to just hit "process my card again" because I suspect I'll be double charged. Please follow up in email. Thanks,
Hey all! I just got my order yesterday and was reading Rise Of New Thassilon and it appears a whole block of pages are missing, pp.32-48. The adventure jumps from a map of Stethelos to Runelord Angothane. I'm not sure if this affects more people than just me, but I'd be interested in getting an intact version. It doesn't look like the pages were ripped out or anything, the binding looks intact and there's no gap, they just were never there in the first place. Unless of course it's deliberate to fit the time-jumping nature of the adventure... Maybe Seoni went back in time and eliminated that part of the adventure?
I'd buy it. Golarion is one of the key distinctive elements of Pathfinder and I love the little flavor sidebars in all the products... I make it a point to get them into the game and the PCs love it. The "drinks of Illizmagorti" was a hit...
I'm running a nautical campaign that is roving from Riddleport to sunken Azlant to Garund south of Sargava and this map is invaluable, thanks for doing it.
The problem with this is that people have a very "modern" version of how law enforcement works that isn't very compatible with a more Golarion-esque medieval/Renaissance world. The idea of a professional "standing" police force is not super realistic; law enforcement was very DIY in those times - apprehending a criminal and taking them to a judge was indeed your responsibility, and sometimes expected of you (see hue-and-cry laws, tithings, and other real medieval legal enforcement techniques). So while I understand where you're coming from and the kind of behavior you want to curb and why... I'm afraid history isn't really on your side.
Laori was our group's favorite NPC from CoCT as well. She was so positive and perky! As opposed to Count Obviously Going To Betray Us we dragged around for a chapter; we referred to those hangers-on as "The Boner Squad" to their faces. The vast majority of NPCs you meet in APs are grey and blah, either "I'm cagey!" or "I am a no nonsense authority figure!" or "I have no personality other than needing help!" We also liked that Grau guy, but in the end he didn't have as much game as Vencarlo so my PC ended up going after him instead. And that one Shoanti guy. CoCT had a lot more memorable NPCs than the average. (I think maybe sometimes devs lose track of the fact that memorable = enjoyable to actually interact with).
There'll be a CoCT hardcover?!?! Woot! My favorite AP ever, we ran it in PF Beta...
OK that's good to know. The hardest thing to do in these books is to come across with the "feel" of a culture or place. I found that city pic disappointing and to look like "just like everywhere else in pseudo-European Golarion" and it started me off with a hard slog on that chapter as it encouraged me to interpret everything in that light. The person pic does a lot of work to roll that back though. It's tough trying to seed whole cultures with a single city writeup because they have to totally drip with the different culture to not be interpreted according to the "usual" context. And starting with a city is hard for another reason; I assume most of us here think of Arcadia as more lightly populated than the European part but starting with a city makes it seem like "Oh so is there an Inner Sea-like population density there?" etc.
I've been using my more pared down ship combat rules but control water has come up. Skull and Shackles makes it a bit of an "uber" spell in the Player's Guide:
This is undesirable as it's pretty much a naval combat-ender in a fight with only a couple of ships in it (short of dispels). I've altered that, and set a navigation (profession: sailor) DC based on the depth to escape the hazard instead, with a speed reduction even on success. In large scale battles I also like using Spellcraft checks to determine precision of spell placement.
Yeah, I agree, I want a mini too. She was one of our favorite characters in that AP (we certainly hated and dismissed the rest of what we referred to as the Boner Squad that got sent along with us). It's exactly because she is anime-cute and no one else in the world is that it's notable! She was so perky we just couldn't help but befriend her. Most NPCs tend to be considered as tools or meat for the beast, it's unfortunate for them to kick against one who was actually interesting, there's whole APs where not anyone is interesting. (Finishing up Wrath of the Righteous now...)
Yeah, agreed. Too often it seems like the writers want to get some Diversity Points (tm) by including these things but then give them short shrift and no downside. They're unwilling to go full "Blue Rose" and just say there's no sexism/racism/whatnot at all, they still say it's there in Golarion, but then when it would come up there's just zero effort put into it. I'm not sure why. Is it just to tweak us if we're insensitive? From playing Wrath of the Righteous as best as we can tell all paladins and in fact perhaps all crusaders are gay, but there's no discussion of it except to poke it at you... They make noise about half-breeds being not tolerated (there's some city where they tend to emigrate to in southern Varisia somewhere) but then in play everyone seems totally 100% tolerant of everything... I think it's just the limitations of the "must be kid friendly" dictum, feel free and make it more realistic yourself.
Curse of the Crimson Throne gets my nod for first on the story front, while not perfect (go chase macguffin chains in the desert!!!). Then Jade Regent. I haven't run or played Iron Gods or Reign of Winter so can't speak to those.
For those who don't know - My gaming group is addicted to writing up session summaries, and by that I mean like 12-ish page PDFs from an average session which I then post on my blog, geek-related.com. We're just hitting Chapter 5 of Wrath of the Righteous and you can thrill to us mythic-cheesing our way across the multiverse. And I'm running a Pathfinder pirates game called Reavers on the Seas of Fate, which mashes together Second Darkness, Razor Coast, Freeport, a mess of Paizo modules, a mess of third party modules, some Dungeon adventures, and more into a big ol' multi-year R-rated piracy festival. Come follow along!
One pointer: I underestimated how devastating the control water spell can prove. If that's in the mix it can utterly neutralize a ship -- even the Pride -- by simply dropping it in a 10-20' deep water ditch so her guns point at a wall of ocean water. Yeah, my PCs have been doing LOTS of naval combat and this one was a corker; definitely a battle-ender. I decided that ships should get a haed Pro: Sailor check to get out of it so it's not automatic. One way to force more naval combat is what I do, using mass combat rules (not unlike the troop rules) for the crews. A unit of N guys gets one attack at +.5N/+N, and usually I break them up into 10-person units, so PCs just flying over and dumping into a ship with 40 crews aren't just killing infinite third level guys, they are fighting 4 troops attacking at +5 to hit/+10 to damage, which tends to take them a little more aback. Add some murder guns and they're happy to grapple and board and let their units of pirates take some of the heat.
Well, I hope it helps. Sorry you had to be the canary in the coal mine! I really enjoy your Jeggare/Radovan books by the way, they are both fun and show off Golarion in a very effective way.
I use the violates copyright or other infringement as spam posts are generally business related.Please use "Breaks other Guidelines". I just did my first spam-flagging and this definitely confused me - is there a reason not to add a "spam" flag as a top level option? It's good enough for google...
This is a very insightful comment, and I think the way teamwork feats could be fixed to be actually desirable is to give you some of the benefit solo, just more with someone else in the mix. For example, all the "+2 to whatever..." Maybe you get +1 when working with someone without the feat, +2 with. Or a similar minor trait-level bonus/juiced really nice feat bonus dichotomy if it's not a +something. Let's try this out. Back to Back: You receive a +1 circumstance bonus to AC against attacks from opponents flanking you. While you are adjacent to an ally with this feat, the bonus rises to +2. Allied Spellcaster: You receive a +1 competence bonus on level checks made to overcome spell resistance. Whenever you are adjacent to an ally who also has this feat, the bonus rises to +2. If your ally has the same spell prepared (or known with a slot available if they are spontaneous spellcasters), this bonus increases to +4 and you receive a +1 bonus to the caster level for all level-dependent variables, such as duration, range, and effect. Combat Medic: Whenever you use Heal to provide first aid, treat caltrop wounds, or treat poison, you provoke no attacks of opportunity, and can take 10 on the check.
Oh look I fixed teamwork feats. None of them are so badass you would certainly take them, but they rise from the level of "shaaa right" to "Oh, maybe for this build..."
Agreed but for different reasons. I didn't know this change was coming, and when I opened up my box I was like "what, is this now in large print for Grandma?" It looks wonky. I went and compared it to a bunch of other books I have of the same size (arbitrary pulls from the top of my to-read pile - Tim Butcher's Blood River, Philip Keith's Blackhorse Riders, P.G. Wodehouse's Leave it to Psmith) and I realized why - it hasn't been redesigned right for the new size factor, both on the cover and in the interior. The new size is fine in and of itself, and I have probably a full bookshelf of books with that exact size factor, but there's a design problem that makes it look like a kid in ill-fitting clothes. On the cover, the logo is oddly placed (low) and all the fonts aren't just larger, but seem to be stretched vertically to try to use more of the space. The back cover, without more content, seems to be making the odd choice to put the UPC code in a prominent location to burn real estate. In the interior, the text is leaving a lot of the page blank especially at the bottom. The existing design is fine for mass market paperbacks but it doesn't work "just bigger" for the new format. It makes it look clumsy and amateurish. It's like the cover expected to be a centimeter shorter at the top and the interior expected to be a centimeter shorter at the bottom. I strongly suggest going and pulling a bunch of books of that size factor and comparing how they do front and back covers and their internal pages. The Wodehouse book is a good compare because it uses a front to back art piece like PFT does, but even with that on the back they put in an artist bio, a pull quote, etc. to make use of the real estate. It also comes in at 293 pages for what I'm betting is the exact same word count by better use of interior space. Love you guys, love all (well, most, not a fan of the Greenwood one) the Pathfinder Tales novel, so this is loving constructive criticism - the design doesn't look comparable to other books of this size factor, and needs significant tweaking so it can look like "NYT bestseller" and not "self published like you see at a con" alongside other titles at the bookstore.
I always thought getting bent out of shape at the slohr thing was weird, it's not like 80% of everything else in D&D/PF/Golarion isn't stolen from some other source somewhere. We've got Cthulhus coming out our butts, and Godzillas, but not a slohr...
It's like that new State Farm commercial where the agents are chilling at the office but keep getting summoned away without notice by their customers. In fact... It's exactly like that. There's a bunch of gibbering mouthers in red sweater-vests somewhere in Orv whose job it is to take these calls.
Carmina Burana.
1. It costs two people a feat slot for a benefit it's not always likely both will be using all the time. And those players have to really work at joint character-building. 2. It's too easy for it to be taken away. God forbid the other PC dies, then you're jacked for life, but just if they are held or on the other side of the battlefield or otherwise engaged you are deprived of the feat. Doesn't happen with a "real" feat.
Monsters generally don't have Internet access to go troll CharOp forums all day.
Played in and completed Rise of the Runelords (3.5), Curse of the Crimson Throne (PF Beta), Carrion Crown, Jade Regent Currently playing in Wrath of the Righteous Ran Second Darkness (chp.1-2, aka "the good parts") Running Razor Coast!
That's awesome, Ernest. :-) Thanks man! One of the best techniques you can use slotting in 3pp stuff like this is "start early." Razor has all different gods, all different ethnicities, etc. so you just retcon early and often. Tulita = Bonuwat Mwangi, "Dolphin, Whale, and Whatnot" = some offshoot of Gozreh, whatever you need to bridge into your PCs. In this case the number of "shark" and "kraken" references in every other piratical/nautical thing is almost too much! "We went to kill the Shark Prince, captain of the Kraken's Caress, but it turns out he's not actually related to the Shark God or the Kraken... Just an emo poseur..." Heck, I think it's pretty likely that once they get down there, they might find that Barrison Hargrove is really that elusive serpent man in yet another disguise...
Thanks man! Yeah, we go way above and beyond on our session summaries. It's fun, but it also gives a lot of insight into how these adventures actually play out...
I ran my PCs through the Freeport Trilogy (in Riddleport, but whatever) and here's the hooks I have to get them down there. I mashed together Riddleport, Freeport, and Razor characters/plots freely to do it. 1. Elias Tammerhawk, rogue serpentfolk, escaped down there and they have a "dead or alive" bounty out for him.
My pirate PCs are in Ilizmagorti and preparing to head south to the Razor Coast themselves... It's been a long time coming!
Sorry, I don't check the forums frequently and since there's no email-update I figured this thread had died once it went quiet the first time. I'm not as interested in the history as I am in the people, as an ethnic and cultural group. (Obviously IRL the history formed that, but that's not strongly relevant - mainly I want to play characters that are recognizably Hispanic). I appreciate Diego and Odraude sharing their own takes on the concept...
Not listed on the wiki is the Blood Circus in Ilizmagorti.
I looked everywhere: my external storage, my notes, everything. Couldn't find it. As best I remember, it was supposed to be a paralysis inducing intimidation feat. Sorry I couldn't do better. I found it in the proofing files I still have, in the Appendix. Dreadful Gaze
My gaming group is mature adults who all watch hard-R media like Game of Thrones, so we have sex and sexuality in our games. Since love and sex have been a major part of every art form ever in the history of the world. I don't understand why people have this mental block only with RPGs as opposed to every single other form of art and media they deal with. In the pirate campaign I'm running now, one PC is the lover of a jealous voodoo loa (a fantasy version of Mama Wati). She occasionally shows up and things go all Angel Heart. One PC who's a serpent shaman got married to an actual serpentfolk woman and now she's pregnant, courtesy Honeymoon Rock from the Open Design module From Shore to Sea. One is a priest of Gozreh and is thus celibate. One is an assassin who rescued Lavender Lil from Riddleport and they have now joined up with the cult of Nocticula via a succubus they encountered. They have her profane gift and everything. All this makes the campaign the real story of the characters' lives, not a series of "CR-appropriate encounters" to be beaten into submission to win the game via leveling or whatever. We like to call it "roleplaying."
IMC in Hermea, since Mengkare controls reproduction of Hermeans closely, anal sex is very common. In fact, it's the only thing dockside sex workers are allowed to do, and that causes a certain amount of juvenility and excitement when ships find themselves in need of a stopover in Promise. (Inspired by the IRL practice of saddlebacking).
Erik Mona's PC Ostog the Unslain is a barbarian who just doesn't wear any armor. See his SRD entry. Three days ago he tweeted "OSTOG REMAINS UNSLAIN! 48 sessions and STILL no armor!" Sometimes being awesome is all the rules support you need.
There's not really a Mexican/Spanish "ethnicity" in the Inner Sea Region. There are some touchstones among the Taldans, Varisians, and Chelaxians with these ethnicities, but there's not an obvious analogue among the ethnicities of the Inner Sea Region. Fair enough. I might then suggest something with a slightly closer analogue get added at some point, in the interests of "we like people to be able to play something that speaks to them," what with a continent plus worth of that sort of folk. Good sales sense in addition to diversity sense.
I've gone through playing the vast majority of the Golarion human ethnicities - a Vudran witch, Tian-Shu, Tian-Min... And since I live in Texas and half my family is Hispanic, I started to wonder what the analogue is in Golarion. Of course pure-play Mexican would be over on Arcadia to use the RL analogy, but there's no Hispanic-flavored invaders there to make that happen with the Arcadians in the first place. And of course on Golarion things aren't always one to one - like Cheliax is part Italy, part England in turn - but in general they pretty heavily link to RL ethnicities (Keleshites, Tien, Vudrans, etc.) I'm not really sure who I would go to at all for a Spanish type feel. I don't see anyone with Spanish type names or flavor. Ideas?
He was pretty clear this is Cheliax/halfling type of slavery... Here's the thing. Most slaves - from earlier times to even modern sex slaves - stay where they're told to. Why? 1. You try to escape and you might get beat/something cut off/mauled by dogs/etc. Is it worth the risk? 2. You're going to escape to where? This isn't traveling in Andoran, this is in Cheliax. A random halfling wandering into town will get arrested and beaten into telling where the master he escaped from is. He's going to be wearing slave clothing, jewelry, haircut, etc. Depending on where you travel, you may have to keep a sharper eye; obviously you can't go places where slavery's outlawed without risk (there's many other threads with that list of countries in it). But heck, what does a slave know? How does he know that this mythical place you're traveling in that he's never even heard of before would just as soon turn him on or boil his eyeballs as liberate him? "Andorens, yeah, boy they really love to torture halflings to death, stay close lad..." If you're out in the middle of Varisia in Shoanti territory, you're going to run off to be dragged to death behind the horse of the first brave to find you? 3. Once you escape, even if not rounded up or die from direct hazard - yay, now you're penniless? Starving to death etc. is a real thing. You're going to get a job where? You're going to find some land you're allowed to live on where? From American slavery to the modern day fall of the USSR, the "suddenly free" often end up somewhat regretting it when the hard times come. People get used to things. Slaves get used to their station, and settle into "well, I'm getting fed and clothed and protected... I'm actually doing better than most of these dirt farmers we're riding by..." In Rome a master could kill a slave immediately, but some slaves were still very esteemed and highly placed due to their education etc...
You're definitely right in that in a given area of this size (Europe+++) there should generally be many smaller wars going on at any given time. I think the necessity of making a book describing "nations" (a pretty modern notion - read "The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe" for more on this) that needs to not be out of date in 2 months is partially at fault. The understanding that many medieval nations were loosely affiliated often-warring nobles isn't widespread. "What do you mean, that town described in Towns of Golarion has been burned down?" I think people also have trouble understanding a more ancient concept of war that's not modern "total war" - that Cheliax could just send in some troops and grab half a county somewhere without it becoming a "we must take over THEIR ENTIRE COUNTRY" kind of thing or not escalating till the lich-generals are unleashed upon the earth. Also, D&D-world wants to facilitate travel instead of the more xenophobic reality, and if you can't go from Andoren County #1 to Andoren County #2 because there's a land battle on, then the Adventure is Disrupted. To fix it - just add war. You shouldn't be able to rove across Varisia or anywhere without someone sending a raiding party/cavalry extortion troop/whatnot to their neighbors.
My PCs are about to sail south past the Eye of Abendego and then eventually north again. S&S and SS both kinda cheat by starting south of it - though there's the Free Captains' Regatta in S&S it's unclear how normal ships go north and south past the Eye and what the risks are. Seems like if you go out far enough you can avoid the Eye, but it seems like a lot is made of the Eye in terms of being a screener from the Chelish etc. How does this work?
Currently, in Wrath of the Righteous: LG male human (Tien) monk (monk of the sacred mountain)/paladin/Champion of Irori Previously, in Carrion Crown: NG female human (Vudrani) witch (campaign ended at L14) And previous to that, in Jade Regent: NG male human (Tian-Min) samurai (campaign ended at L13)
Not yet. Eventually. Every game system eventually shows its age, gets bloated, etc. The "3.5 back compatibility" restriction is becoming less important year over year, as the new Pathfinder Unleashed hints at. 4e was a fiasco but 5e has a lot of on-target stuff to reclaim a big chunk of the user base - the Golarion world and AP adventures are the big competitive advantage for Paizo, not the rules. In probably another 2 years, there will be about as much rules for Pathfinder 1 as anyone can/should ever read and/or use. At that point, taking a look at the chassis and heck, back-stealing from 5e to make higher level play better, etc. would be a good plan (and 3.5 compat would be less important than easy 5e porting). Of course those wanting 3.5e grognardism will still have 500 lbs. of sourcebooks to choose from, and new Golarion lore etc. will still be usable by them.
I have some 7th level pirates headed through Ilizmagorti and I was looking for good short adventures I might insert there for them. I considered Dark Deeds in Freeport (port city, but tropical jungle, revelation of secrets plot) but it's too high level and too long. They're eventually headed south from there but I wanted to get some of the flavor in (I have the Cities of Golarion that describes it). Are there any adventures people have used that would fit well into that context?
Very cool, I'm running a Second Darkness/Freeport/Razor Coast mashup myself, steal ideas at will from Reavers on the Seas of Fate. I'll follow along here and do the same! My guys are preparing to head to the Razor after they torment the Chelish coast for a while.
In my campaign, a NPC serpentfolk female and a PC fell in love. At first, while she was in human guise - I had Samaritha Beldusk from Second Darkness actually being a serpentfolk, mashing up with Serpent's Skull and the Freeport Trilogy a bit for a pirate campaign. The PC's nickname was Serpent, he had a snake animal companion, and took the snake shaman variant. When she was revealed to be a serpentfolk she fled, thinking he'd reject her, but he tracked her down and said "look at me, if there's someone out there who'd be into snake ladies I'm that guy!" Eventually they decided to get married and try to have a child; they ended up using the magical beach-rock in From Shore To Sea on their honeymoon to try to conceive - it worked! They have an egg they are keeping in a purpose-built sea chest. (Again, using the Freeport take on serpentfolk, so eggs instead of live birth.) More at Reavers on the Seas of Fate.
Best of luck Sean!
On the naming... The best classes are ones that hit an iconic note (witch! cavalier!). So with that in mind, I think the most obvious for Warpriest is Crusader. Sure, it's a cleric archetype already, but that ship already sailed with these class names anyway. You can try to go with something like Templar which was just a specific subtype of crusading knight but that gets a little too specific and real-world. Similarly on the Bloodrager - just call it Berserker, done, ship it. Sure, normally if we were to develop a berserker class from scratch it would look more like the barbarian - but that's called the barbarian. And the shape-changing/taking on animal attributes is part of the berserker legend. IMO it's better to pick an iconic niche and say "here's our mechanical definition of that which might be different than you would have done it" than to pick made-up names. Everyone can get what an alchemist, witch, cavalier, etc. is. Inquisitor - not really mechanically on point for the name, it's more of a monster hunter class, but screw it, "Inquisitor" is a good name and niche. Do the same thing here.
|
