FallenDabus's page

Interesting

Oh excellent, thank you Jonathan! I figured it would be okay, but nice to have confirmation. I guess I have a project for my Spring Break.

I am very curious about whatever that three headed white and gold stag thing is on the side of the box

Friday is a big day!

That trailer is awesome, I can't wait to get my copy!

Oh damn that was amazing!

Gods I love Alarming Disappearence.

keftiu wrote:

shepsquared wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

keftiu wrote:

"Changing" is all we know about it so far;

Yeah, I would assume that in addition to one of the core 20 gods dying there's also going to be lots of other divine trauma, like multiple minor gods will die and some of the other ones will undergo things they would prefer not to have.

Like just because Cayden isn't going to die, it doesn't mean that he can't lose an eye or hand!

And new minor gods rising - I'm hoping for a goblin hero-god that's actually a goblin and not a barghest, an orc demigod that wouldn't have been considered CE, a godling adventurer, that sort of thing.

Keep an eye on Mahja Firehair.

If Sarenrae dies, Mahja would be right there to keep fighting the good fight.

Having an Orc stepping up to replace the goddess of sun and redemption would fit with Orcs becoming far more accepted around the Inner Sea and with the sun deity not being Core 20 anymore.

While I would be bummed because this would break up the Prismatic Ray, this outcome would be rad as (non-Asmodean) hell.

All of the previewed dragons are just so weird and I absolutely love it!

Ah yes, if anyone was going to drive my hype levels for Tian Xia to new height, it was going to be Hiromi. This was amazing, thank you!

While I don’t entirely disagree, Rusthenge has a 3.5 average rather than 5.0. That won’t drive Paizo under, but a) it may have an impact on sales and, more importantly, b) it is extremely frustrating.

Plane of Wood? Oh HELL yes.

I know this is a problem staff is aware of... but I feel its worth raising again. Without naming names, there has been a user who has rated every PF2 product 1 or 2 stars without any comment. I just went to check Rusthenge to see if I should pick it up and noticed there is now a second user doing the exact same thing.

Now, I'm pretty good at ignoring this, but it is annoying, and it continues it is going to increasingly hurt customer QoL by skewing star rating. I know there's a hope this gets resolved when the website gets upgraded and policing review can be fraught... but is there anything that can be done in the meanwhile? These are clearly bad-faith reviews by people who haven't actually bought all the books they are reviewing.

Its also possible Scoured Stars has a lower price point because it is consolidated and updated material, vs this one being entirely original and built from scratch.

Ah, missed this one! Sadly see them come for an end for now, but once more for the record: I will throw money at you in order to get a Wingsong Testaments hardcover!

If only because I'm going back and rereading all them to prep for a personal project... I gladly restate this. A Lost Omens Travel Guide style book built around the myths and legends of Golarion would be fantastic!

And more Windsong Testements would be very welcome in the lead up to Divine Mysteries and War of the Immortals!

This is a weird one and I'm not quite fully awake, so hopefully it makes a modicum of sense.

The community use policy allows products that are a) free and accessible to everyone and b) uses the text from the Paizo blog and webfiction.

Ergo, would a free podcast that does readings of Pathfinder/Starfinder fiction from the blog be acceptable as long as it gave proper credit/links/trademark & copyright notice? I feel like the answer should be yes based on my reading, but I can't find precident for it. I know I appreciate my fantasy podcasts/audiobook on my morning commute, so I suspect others would enjoy something along these lines if it is possible.

Hasn't shipped for me yet, unfortuantely. Very much looking forward to it.

Is this for 1st or 2nd Edition?

First Edition. Most of it is lore, however, so it can still have a value in 2e, although the Remaster means are some retcons, reemphisis, and renames to navigate.

I was a subscriber in the end days of Paizo's Dragon and Dungeon run too. I stopped playing D&D for a long time after that because of mental health issues, but when I started again, the most obvious route for converting Eberron was not 4e, but Pathfinder. Eventually Paizo got me full time into Golarion with Wrath of the Righteous and I never looked back.

Calliope5431 wrote:

Temperans wrote:

Wait what is the issue with the word golem?

Original first usage of the word was from Jewish mysticism, they were legendary constructs that could be created by inscribing words in Hebrew on their foreheads.

The most famous legend is the Golem of Prague from the 1500s, which was created by a rabbi to guard the Jewish people of the city from anti-Semitism. The golem goes mad on the Sabbath and eventually has to be shut down by the rabbi.

I can see an argument for it being problematic since it pulls from non-mainstream folklore. On the other hand, so do genies and kami, and they clearly aren't going away (and most people would argue they aren't problematic).

My Jewish friends like them because it's fun to see your culture represented in the game. For them, I get the impression that it's comparable to seeing Tian Xia if you have Asian ancestry, or Rusalkas if you have Slavic ancestry. Makes you feel more welcome. But I can see the counterarguments to the contrary, and I certainly don't want to argue with anyone Jewish who's offended by it.

*sigh* really that's it? That's why the name is changing? I don't even know what to say to that reason.

So, unfortuately I'm several months late and hopefully this doesn't derail, but I do have a more detailed answer for you. Give that it was recently confirmed the golem is becoming the bulwark, I think its topical too.

When ever the discussion of golems in RPGs comes up, I always think of this post. I know several Jewish RPG players very unconfortable with the use of the word, and even though I know many who are okay with it, Heavy Arms explains his issue very ellquoently. I've included it below the spoiler, so others can read it too and hopefully find it as helpful as I have. It is notable because he has no issue with golems existing in RPGs... he just wants them to actually be golems.

You can read the post I've quoted below in its original context here.

Additionally, all further "information useful for understanding those gods" remain highly welcome. For instance the following fields from G&M:

• * Realm
  
• * Allies
  
• * Enemies
  
• * Relationships
  
• * Temples
  
• * Worshippers
  
• * Sacred Animal
  
• * Sacred Colors
  

My single biggest hope for Divine Mysteries is to get the name and location of each deity’s Realm. Pie in the sky would be a short description of each. The rest of this info would also be deeply appreciated. They are nifty bits of worldbuilding that are I find I use a lot when I have them.

FallenDabus wrote:

So here's the big question for me. I am more than happy to pick up the Player Core. Is GM Core worth picking up if I already have Gamemastery Guide? I don't think I've seen anything major about magic items changing (as opposed to classes for Players). If there was more desposible income, I wouldn't mind getting this one too... but unfortunately I have to pick and choose right now.

There does seem to be lot of new magic items at least, but mostly replacing items that used to give wizard school bonuses (like the 8 school staffs)

It does have other neat stuff I don't think was in original book, though I don't know if its really "worth it" or not since that's subjective.

Knowing there is other stuff is useful!

So here's the big question for me. I am more than happy to pick up the Player Core. Is GM Core worth picking up if I already have Gamemastery Guide? I don't think I've seen anything major about magic items changing (as opposed to classes for Players). If there was more desposible income, I wouldn't mind getting this one too... but unfortunately I have to pick and choose right now.

I work on an Age of Lost Omens timeline for fun, but the dates are all AR, so I had to do a bit of math to put in the dates for Season of Ghosts. I thought I'd share it in case anyone else would find them useful and to save you some time.

I've done my best to descriptions vague to try and hide any plot points so players don't accidentally run across spoilers, especially any reference to the big twist. With that said, read at your risk, there could still be spoilers in there.

Link

Man, got the PDF yesterday and I love the twist in this one. I think I'm going to wait for the Tian Xia Lost Omens books to come out before I run this one, but I can't wait to see what my players say.

Yup, that shot it right to the top of my list for "must play" APs.

Would be amusing if they balanced out some extra skills by just adding an extra step to character creation that was just "people in the future are expected to have higher education than in medieval times, get 1 extra free trained skill"

100% would approve of this.

belgrath9344 wrote:

so does this mean that we'll get cr 26-30 creatures now & rules for building them

I really really really hope so. I maintain it's bizarre that some of the cooler critters of the Pathfinderverse like Sorshen, Tar-Baphon, and the Horsemen of the Apocalypse have known levels, but those levels literally have no mechanical significance.

That is certainly my hope as well.

My first idea for an Exemplar is actually a starfinder pc. Archeologist who specializes in the Gap comes across the tomb of a god that died during the gap and becomes empowered.

This is the way.

Dead Phoenix wrote:

They will probably make more undead full ancestries. or they should, so you can make a vampire ancestry, with the vampire archetype, so you can be a double vampire.

Not sure about allowing doubling up like that - it probably wouldn't be worth it since you are still constrained by the ancestry feats that you have.

What would be nice is to have Undead Archetypes like Marooned One and Derelict Shade to use instead of Mummy and Ghost.

Its a very "¿Por que no los dos?" situation in my mind. Ghosts and mummies shoudl be perfectly usable in Starfinder, but it would be nice if there was a Pact Worlds: Eox book to get some Starfinder-specific archetypes too.

Actually, speaking of that, I would love for Starfinder to adopt similar book types as Pathfinder 2e. A Pact Worlds and Near Space lore line would be fantastic!

I was very tickled by the realization that Pathfinder already has rules for some of the stuff that Starfinder needs. Gunslinger is probably obvious... but Psychics are a Sci-Fi staple and Book of the Dead's undead archetypes means that playing Eoxians can happen day one.

I am also very much looking forward to Starfinder dieties getting Pathfinder domains, but that is just me.

Sounds like amazing creature additions!

There are also

One can’t help but wonder what an Outer Planes rulebook might hold, and how likely it is we get something like it soon with the cosmology tweaks… perhaps that’s our angle on the long-awaited “divine book”?

That's a really nice and elegant angle. I'd dig it and really hope something in that vein is coming soon!

I definitely feel that with the ORC that we need new versions of The Book of the Damned The Chronicle of the Righteous and The Concordance of Rivals.

100% agreed. I love both books, but as the last DnDism get jettisoned I would adore for both to get a fresh coat of paint.

The cosmology map, I think I'm in love now <3

This book in general and that map in particular have sent my desire for an entire series of books on the planes (if this does well, which I'm going to do my damnedest to make sure it does).

Seems to me you could do one with Creation's Forge, the First World, the Netherworld, the Void, the Astral, and the Ethereal. The Outer Planes may be a bit tougher to divy up, but perhaps one book contrasting holy vs unholy, and other with the Axis, the Maelstrom, and the Boneyard, plus some of the stranger places like the Dimensions of Dreams and Time?

I would pay for all of those. Many times over. And given the ORC updates, it feels like a reasonable time to update Planar Adventures!

(Edit: Also, please ask Jess to write them!)

This is continuing a new series of "Art and Excerpt" blogs that we are exploring. Please continue to give us feedback.

Yes please, more of these!

The Maelstrom is vast, but not pictured are the innumerable other outer planes that might and could exist out there. Your homebrew planes, for example, or planes from other games you might wish to convert to your home game from other places. This has always been the implication, of course, but the way we structured things around the 9 alignments sort of set an implied limit.

This would likely include some demiplanes, and maybe even other afterlives associated with cultures that don't really fit into the ideas presented by the nine we've traditionally focused on as Outer Planes.

There's a lot of room to grow.

Lots of room for new planar books!

All of the previews I’ve seen so far I’ve got me extremely hyped for this book. Even down to the art style, this has an extremely Planescape vibe to it. No surprise knowing Jess is one of the lead writers, but it’s something I appreciate (and I do hope that Pathfinder is about to preemptively out Planescape the 5e Planescape book that’s coming soon).

Definitely picking up a hardcover of this one.

Rysky wrote:

Munavri that aren't a cringy racist fantasy for starters.

More info on the full on cities would be nice.

Belatedly responding to this, but I'd also enjoy more places to go in the Darklands that aren't expressly dangerous. Cities and towns that surface characters could possibly want to visit for peaceful reasons, and where Darklands characters could be from that wouldn't be hardscrabble.

I'd also like a bit of the Lost Omens Legends treatment and get info on some heroic and otherwise notable figures who live down there. Well perhaps not all heroic, the Darklands doesn't seem like the friendliest place, but a few would be fun.

Basically I'd like to see people and places that other Darklands dwellers would look up to and aspire to be like or make better, respectively. The stuff they care about rather than only various dangers that surface dwellers have to deal with.

Might be time to get some more chatter in this thread, so I want to say I absolutely agree with this. I would love to see more emphasis on the Darklands as a place that players should want to go to and explore, not just somewhere where everything is deadly.

I don't 100% know what I want in it, but I know that I want it. The Crown of the World is a pretty unique area that I don't think we see a lot in fantasy. I want to see more of what can be done with an artic fantasy.

Ah, excellent, more podcasts about Pathfinder lore is a welcome thing.

This thread is glorious.

The highest praise there is.

6) They see countless spirits shrieking in agony. Between this hint, the focus on nature in the next year or so, and the Rivethun in Highhelm, I think we're getting a Shaman class playtest in the near future. It may even be set in Highhelm and involve the Rivethun.

I get where you are going with that (and it would be cool)... but this seems like a bit of a reach to say it must be Rivethun. There are lots of other ways to interpret that and there are many, many spirits on Golarion.

Fact: You cannot make deadlines as a freelancer without a proven method of time travel.

Ooooofff, big yes.

Ed Reppert wrote:

I'm too lazy to get up and step to my bookcase. How many pages is Absalom?

A lot.

More specifically, too many. If it had actually covered Kortos and Erran, it could have justified the length but that never happened (and yes, I'm grumpy about it).

I'm quite confident that Highhelm is a much more appropriate length,

It has been a spell since I've made STLs of any Pathfinder monsters, but we fixed that today! If you've got a 3D Printer and I to have some Scrabbling Ribcages chase down your players, I have just the model for you.

I'm sure this has already been said, but anyway: Why don't Paizo does the same that Games-workshop did with the "dark elves"? I mean, they changed a little the name (from Drow to Druchii), a little the physical characteristics and the lore, and that all! The same happened with the "dark dwarves"...

Related to the post: I'm not going to complicate it too much. I will use the common elves as dark elves, and that's all.

a) To my knowledge, the dark elves were never initially called the drow and first got a codex in 1995 when DnD was still owned by TSR right when their financial problems were starting to skyrocket. Amusingly enough, it appears they were even involved in a legal dispute with RA Salvatore at the time...

Anyhow, Games Workshop might have been dicey ground at the time, but I wouldn't say TSR was as litigeous then as WotC now - and they had bigger fish to fry. By this point, WotC doesn't have a case, the Druchii are their own distinct IP.

b) There was an entire thread of this. James Jacobs posted the reasons several times and the mods have asked us not to rehash it in this one. But the short answer is time.

I wouldn't mind something of a reexamination of golems similar to the one genies got, personally. The idea of "golems are like elemental robots that can be themed around any kind of material" is very D&D, regardless.

Have we gotten any details on the genie reexamination by the by? I've been hoping for them to be more jinn and less Disney for a long, long time.

GOOSE

Peace was never an option.

LordPretzels wrote:

I love all the Windsong Testaments. It would be great if these get picked back up. I've reread this one in particular several times since it was posted.

Just came back to re-read this one yet again, and noticed the comment I was going to make was already here! It's a lovely piece of fiction, and I've love for more work like this to come out.

I'm still hoping for a LO Travel Guide-style book full of Golarion's mythology and stories like this.

James Jacobs wrote:

Terevalis Unctio of House Mysti wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

The Thing From Another World wrote:

I made my peace with the entire subject. Obviously still not happy yet between 1E, 2E, Pathfinder 1E and 5E have many versions of D&D that I can use the Drow.

All that I ask is that the Darklands have interesting villains in them. They don’t have to be unique just make them competent and fun to use.

With ghouls, xhulgaths, vault builders/keepers, urdefhans, seugathis, sekmins, gugs, chardas, various forms of undead, morlocks, calignis, deros, myceloids, jinkins, algholthus, and fleshwarps... there's plenty of interesting villains in the Darklands of all levels and covering the full range of "pretty much non-stop evil" all the way to "antihero capable." The removal of drow won't make the Darklands any safer for your PCs.

No, but perhaps less interesting

To you, I guess so. To me, more interesting. To the rest of the world, I expect a mix of both.

I'm hoping that in the end, this change will be more interesting to most, or at least be a stalemate. Because if it turns out that the part of the Darklands the vast majority of Pathfinder players liked was drow, then that means we (and I, in creating the Darklands in the first place) completely failed at making this region into something for Pathfinder and not D&D.

I've got my fingers crossed that folks are still interested, overall, in the Darklands, and I'm 99% sure most folks will be... but again, for those whose interest in the Darklands and potentially all of Pathfinder hinged on D&D-adjacent drow, there's not much I can do for you other than hope that by this time next year, you'll have found something equally interesting about the game to enjoy. And if that's not the case... that's fine too. No one game is for everyone, and no one game will be any one person's forever favorite. Times and tastes change.

As an educator I tend to get excited about the material that I teach,...

You know, as another teacher, I like to think two cores of our professions are passion and compassion. Having experienced what it's life for someone not enjoying something I'm passionate about, I do try to do by best not to be rude and antagonistic towards others, even if I'm disinterested. While you are correct that you are entitled to your opinion, you could have easily expressed a similar sentiment in a far more compassionate and understanding way. Hopefully this will be an opportunity to reconsider the impact your words have on others in the future.

Anyhow, Iat least half the things James listed upthread speak to me more than the drow at this point, so while I feel for the people upset about losing them, I think Underdark will be far more interesting with the, getting fleshed out.

Sanityfaerie wrote:

Actually... I notice that this book is giving us two different aquatic ancestries. We're getting Tian Xia, which has that Xidao tie-in. We just got Firebrands in... could we be seeing the lead-in to an Aquatic Adventures book of some sort? Possibly something about the Shackles?

I would love an aquatic themed book. :D

That thought did cross my mind. I'd love to see LO High Seas that fleshed out all of the underwater stuff that we only got glimpses of in Ruins of Azlant.

FallenDabus wrote:

I'm one of Onyx Path's freelancers.

Tell Dave to revive Mage the Awakening!

Spoilers since it is off-topic

Charlie Brooks wrote:

In WotC's apology letter back in January, they stated, "we wanted to ensure that the OGL is for the content creator, the homebrewer, the aspiring designer, our players, and the community—not major corporations to use for their own commercial and promotional purpose."

I don't know if I'm the only one, but I saw that as a kind of shot at Pathfinder.

To me, it sounds more like backpedaling on a blatant business decision, and (now) a bald-faced lie in an attempt to put naive people/businesses into a false sense of security.

If this sort of thing was really meant for those types of people, they wouldn't have done (or continued to do) the tactics they have done (or are doing) now.

I do agree that it reads to me as an attempt to shift the narrative, but both things can be true. There's defintely the undertone of taking a shot at Paizo, and I think underestimating how hard WotC will punch if they think a competator is infringing on their IP without using the OGL is a very bad idea.

Facinating tidbit got dropped in another thread.

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

Actually, it sounds like Season Of Ghosts is set in the past, which is cool, and I didn't know it at the time. I think it's probably about as far as they're going to go into that concept.

Season of Ghosts begins on the first day of summer in the year 7108 IC (which converts to 4608 AR), so 2 years or so after the Age of Lost Omens begins.

This is sort of an experiment in that regard to see how folks react to something like this, but also, the entire adventure path is pretty tightly constrained to a small region in Willowshore. There's not going to be a chance for your PCs to swoop around the world and take part in historical events in other words.

We'll see if we want to do something like that again in the future after these tentative first steps.