FallenDabus's page

Huh, I think this is the first time I've gotten my physical copy before the Player's Guide came out.

McMoogle wrote:

Mark Moreland wrote:

AJCarrington wrote:

Was anything mentioned re an .epub version as well? This will likely be the first hardback I’ve picked up in quite some time, but love the flexibility of digital.

Godsrain will be available as an e-book and audiobook as well.

HOLUP

Paizo is gonna give me audiobooks!?

Desna smiles on me TvT

Audible does have the audiobooks of the other novels we have released (and the audio dramas too if you like full cast with sound effects)

The audiobook for Shy Knives is quite good!

It would be very cool to have a list of possible representatives, with the idea that the GM selects who shows up based on what kind of characters the players bring, choosing people that could align with and know the PCs already or be a foil to others.

I would not be surprised to see that in the Player's Guide.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

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!

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.

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,

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.

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.

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.

The Schools being changed into something so anodyne they look like they came from an undergraduate college curriculum is depressing.

If Paizo is really that starved for people who are good at naming things, call Onyx Path. They always come up with weird, evocative names for stuff, but I think you can do better than "School of Battle Magic/Civic Wizardry"

Okay, this is a super late reply, but I've got a fun story to add here.

I'm one of Onyx Path's freelancers. We love those weird evocative names. But they also have a downside: they are harder for new players to track and comprehend.

Now, that may not apply to you personally Leon, I know several people who don't skip a beat with them, but I also know many people who find them obtuse and difficult. The solution is to have multiple names for our splats, some werid and evocative, other straightforwards.

That's why Ashem Mummies are also known as the Jackles, the Ferrymen, or Anpu's Torch. I love the Hirfathra Hissu, but trying to remember their First Tongue name is a pain, so I just call them Bone Shadows. That means something *to me*, but it means nothing to someone picking up Werewolf the Forsaken for the first time. We can imbue meaning into the plain english name, but each splat (at least in Chronicles of Darkness) gets multiple pages in core explaining what they are about. And more often then not get at least another chapter in a suppliment.

That's not going to happen for School in Pathfinder, so I think the School of _______ format works well enough. They could be jazzed up a bit, but for the role they play and the information they need to communicate, they fit. Coming up with a more escoteric name could risk losing clarity or require more wordcount that could be better used elsewhere.

JJ is consistently a patient class act. Thank you for the effort you put in here.

This. So much this. Thank you James for all your time, effort, and advocacy.

I'm still hoping to hear something about Shraen:

the city of Drow who got ousted from Zirnakaynin for worshiping Urgathoa instead of a demon lord, traveled to Vask, transformed themselves into undead along the way, and have a new city.

Like, a significant portion of their backstory is based on getting ousted from Zirnakaynin. Just up and replacing them with Sekmin, even undead Sekmin, loses a lot of development from the Extinction Curse AP.
It's a really cool city, and I'm just worried it's going to lose a ton of appeal in the transition, whatever that ends up looking like.

Personally, whatever happens, I'm going to continue to say its a city of undead cavern elves and leave it at that. I do kinda hope Paizo does the same, since its a super neat location and I think keeping that one city of elves could work with some retconning... but I won't fault them if they don't. Undead snake mummies has its appeal too.

Omegon wrote:

I'm not suggesting they keep drow as is and just change the name.

But, like the concept of Elves or elf looking creatures that live deep underground and worship demons is not exactly something WoTC can sue Paizo over. That's what they should keep.

Seeing how James Jacobs himself would have really preferred keeping the drows, I am really sure that Paizo's lawyers proved conclusively that the risk was real.

Very much this. IANAL, but I’m not convinced that there isn’t an IP violation suite there. Further, it may not matter whether or not WotC can win said lawsuit - just having to fight it off may do significant damage to Paizo.

Clearly Paizo’s been willing to fight if there life is on the line: that’s why they said they were willing to defend the OGL in court if they had to. But they don’t need drow to survive. If the choice is “avoid likely litigation” or “do a bunch of work that may or may not be enough” why pick the latter?

No one is going to court over a revamped intellect devourer. Drow are in the popular consciousness, they are part of the D&D brand. I am high skeptical that WotC wouldn’t at least try. And frankly, I’m not sure I’d fault them over that.

All that said, am I keeping evil undead elves in Shraen? Most likely. We’ll see. But expecting Paizo to that risk is unreasonable.

Omegon wrote:

So I get that *drow* cant be used anymore, but why not reimagine them?

Call them Dark Elves etc. or make them a society of Nephilim Elves that worship demons. Change their look a bit if you must.

there are many ways to update drow to fit the move away from the OGL and D&D legacy without replacing them with lizards.

Sibelius Eos Owm wrote:

The thing with American copyright law is that I'm pretty sure just changing the name and keeping all the details the same, or changing one or two superficial details doesn't grant immunity to copyright claims. Furthermore, it ultimately doesn't matter if WotC would never win the case, if they chose to make themself a problem, Hasbro has more than enough legal team to make it extremely painful for Paizo to toe too close to the line.

Okay but this thread is full of examples of things they are just gonna change slightly. Deep Gnomes, Duergar, Neolithids, intellect devourers etc. Why are drow different?

While I can't be certain, I can think of two reasons.

A) I don't think all those are just name changes. Looking at comments in other threads, Reddit, and Discord, it sounds like neolithids are also getting axed entirely and replaced with psychic cave worms - seems to have entirely different lore. Intellect devourers are apparently becoming octopus brains, which is rad as hell. Duergar and deep gnomes both have deeper roots in folklore/mythology and are getting their societies revamped.

B) Drizzt.

Not only is the expression of drow in Pathfinder rooted in D&D-isms, drow are also one of THE iconic features of Forgotten Realms and Drizzt is THE iconic protagonist for D&D. That likely means that WotC is going to be much more litigious about them and that they are much more likely to win in court. That's not a winning proposition for Paizo.

Cyrad wrote:

I'm loving this. I was worried the removal of alignment would be a missed opportunity to replace it with something better. If every character will have personal edicts and anathemas, then I'm all for it! It would be interesting to see if any mechanics key off of it, such as enchantment spells having differing effects and limitations based on the target's edicts and anathemas.

Don't you feel that mechanics keying off of edicts/anathema will just drive players to pick the edicts/anathema that give them the mechanics they view as beneficial, likely diluting roleplay?

Many other games have mechanical carrots to incentivize characters to be roleplayed a certain way. I don't see how this is different.

Case and point:

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.

Also, if Core doesn't explicitly do this, I'm writing a guide on how to make this work on PFI. CofD tying Willpower recovery to Virtue/Vice is a design feature I love and Hero Points is a great way to use that in Pathfinder.

I love the inclusion of popular edicts and anathemas so much. Bang on design!

The world of Golarion is huge and draws inspiration from fantasy works of all genres. It isn’t really possible to make a single list of inspirations for the setting… so instead I’m making a whole bunch of them! And since this is way bigger than a single person, I’m opening it up to the community as well to leave comments with media they think should be on the list.

You can find and comment on the document here.

It is a bit empty right now, but I'm going to add to it as I have time and I hope other people will too!

Any type of media is fair game as long as it relates to the Pathfinder setting and meets the Community Use Policy. I will probably try to sort media by book, movie, video game, music, non-fiction etc, but that is all dependent on how much time I have. If you want to include or add to a blurb for a particular work, you are more than welcome to include that too. Credit for blurbs will be given if you include your name.

This document does include an outline, so if you’d like to skip straight to a particular topic you can. Broadly it is divided into three sections: Inspiration by book, by region, and by adventure path. There will be some overlap between the three, so repeats are okay, but try not to duplicate entire lists.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave a comment and we’ll get building this list together!

Fumarole wrote:

Looks like this is the first second edition AP to not have any articles in it.

Yup. That's a result of an adventure that was larger than expected plus the fact that detailing out 18 Harrow Cards from the deck in each volume ended up taking four pages more than expected as well. In a way, Stolen Fate kind of wanted to be a 6 part adventure (that would have let us do only 9 cards per adventure, sort of like how we did Crimson Throne, with each adventure mapping thematically to one of the 6 ability scores), so cramming all those themes into a 3 part one that went all over the world (it takes more words to detail places we don't have a lot of Lost Omens book coverage for, remember) meant that I had to trim out some of the potential backmatter articles.

I'm eager to hear from folks if this is a good thing or a bad thing, in fact. Do you prefer having one or two articles in the back to support the adventure? Or do you prefer an adventure-only volume like this one?

If this only happens once in a while as need, I'm okay with it, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't bummed by the lack of articles. Understand why it had to happen here (and understood as soon as I flipped through the backmatter), but the articles are an even bigger draw for me than the adventure. It already feels like there is less worldbuilding in the 2e APs than 1e (IMO, YMMV).

Its a major darkhorse, but seeing Derhii as a playable ancestry would both be Golarion-unique and fit that curveball slot.

Some things will stay the same. Some things are going to significantly change. I'm actually pretty nervous about how everyone's gonna react to some of it... but it HAS TO HAPPEN.

For what its worth, the fact that the change must be made but its going to take things in a new, more distinct direction has me excited. I know there are probably going to be some things I like as casualties, but its evolution not destruction. That has me hyped. I look forward to seeing what you all are up to.

Cori Marie wrote:

I will spoiler a tiny bit of creatures

** spoiler omitted **

Are the two new demons also old obscure classics like how first book had return of rust and cabal devils? :O