FormerFiend's page

I feel this is self-explanatory, self-evident, and true.

Firstly I would like to apologize for creating another thread on this subject. However, I have been trying for over three hours to get into the blog post/thread for the official announcement and the page. Will. Not. Load. I have been getting costant 502 errors and pictures of the yoshki mechanic doing "scheduled maintenance ad nauseam.

I recognize that this thread will likely be closed regardless, but I want to make it clear that I'm posting this here in a separate thread because I am literally unable to post it in it's appropriate place due to technical difficulties.

So, with that out of the way, let me put down my thoughts & take aways from this announcement while they're relatively fresh, and welcome any clarifications or corrections for where I am mistaken, and let me voice my own concerns & uncertainties for what doesn't seem to be explicitly addressed.

My main takeaways are in three points;

1. That Paizo's official position is that WotC/Hasbro does not have the legal authority or ability to revoke the OGL. However, implicitly by the existance of the following two points, Paizo recognizes that WotC/Hasbro disagree with that position, intend to do it anyway, and any legal action to stop them would either be too long & disruptive to creators even if won, uncertain to succeed on the merits, or potentially unwinnable through sheer attrition with the simple fact that WotC/Hasbro has a bigger warchest than anyone to devote to a legal battle.

2. Paizo's assertion is that while Pathfinder 1e *was* reliant on the OGL, Starfinder & Pathfinder 2e are distinct & divorced enough from WotC's IP that they no longer rely on the OGL to be published, and that when WotC/Hasbro decide to revoke the OGL & replace it, Paizo is perfectly within it's rights to continue publishing it's current product lines without concern of violating any license or IP ownership WotC has. I have to imagine that Paizo is supremely confident in this position, and imagine that preparing for this eventuality may well have gone into the specific design process for both Starfinder & PF2e, to the point that they are confident that either WotC/Hasbro won't pursue legal action to dispute this assertion, or otherwise that Paizo will win in the event WotC/Hasbro do pursue legal action.

3. Paizo's further assertion is that it's continued use of the OGL in Starfinder & Pathfinder 2e, despite their Point 2 assertion that said license wasn't necessary for their own publication, was to allow other 3rd party publishers to use said license to iterate off of Starfinder & PF2e using the license for convenience. In following that mentality & to circumvent this & any future attempts by WotC/Hasbro to nullify the OGL, Paizo is collaborating with several other publishers to create an independent open license, not tied to one mechanical system, to continue to allow these other publishers to iterate off of their own IP, and further, to insure trust in said license, it will be held by an independent separate entity without a financial incentive to abuse it, as WotC/Hasbro clearly have with the original OGL.

Is that about the sum of things?

If so, my main & biggest concern is this; what happens to Pathfinder 1e material when Wotc/Hasbro pulls the trigger on doing the thing that Paizo asserts they can't do, but also implicitly admits, they can't be stopped from doing, & revokes the OGL? I recognize that PF1e isn't Paizo's primary product anymore and hasn't been for years now, but I still would like to know; will these books be available? Will the pdfs be available? Will Paizo pull them from their storefront & recall them from brick & mortar shops? Paizo can assert that PF2e & SF are safe to carry on, business as usual, but they stipulate in their own statement that PF1e did rely on the OGL to exist.

I've got other questions, as well, but they relate more to what, exactly, the ORC is going to cover, what with it being "system agnostic", but I imagine the answer to that won't come until the license itself is hammered out and actually released to the public.

So the latest errata for PF2e has established an optional rule for all ancestries to take +2/+2 to any attribute at character creation without penalty, as an alternative to their previous published arrays.

This has sparked significant discussion & debate over in the PF2e general discussion forum, especially with the combined rule change that the optional flaw system, while still available, no longer grants a bonus & just exists for flavor now. Feel free to go skim those threads for details as I lack the energy to recount the debates over here.

But the question I have for the Starfinder dev team is, with the stated intention of this change being to address concerns of bio-essentialism, introducing nuance into pf2e's ancestries to "show they aren't a monolith", and the unstated but clearly implied bit of simply opening up all class options to all races without feeling like one is being deficient at one's role, is this something that will be implemented in Starfinder as well?

More broadly and for the room, I ask; does Starfinder's science fiction, space opera nature create enough disconnect between the playable species & real life people & cultures that bio-essentialism is less of a concern? Or does Starfinder's vast setting with near limitless potential environmental conditions to have shaped any member of any species apart from their "core" culture, mean that casting them as monolithic is even more egregious than in a contained fantasy world like Lost Omens Golarion?

Is Starfinder's math capable of accomodating a change like this? Presumably in SF the change would be to +2 to any attribute like humans enjoy rather than +2/+2 as that's Starfinder's baseline. Still, I'm constantly told how tight Starfinder's math is so one questions whether a change like this would be particularly disruptive to the meta.

Alright so the word is, cavern elf is not meant to represent drow. Devs have been very clear on that point here on the forums.

So my question is, why is it a thing at all, then?

One of the core design elements of 2e, as I understand it, is to be more setting specific. Everything published in 2e is tied to the Lost Omens setting with no pretenses of being setting neutral as the core books for PF1e tried to be.

But, cavern dwelling non-drow elves aren't really a thing on Golarion, at least not a thing that's been explored or mentioned or developed to any degree. The Jinin elves, kind of, but they just got to Tian-Xia via the Darklands, they don't live there anymore, they've been on the surface for centuries.

In the Lost Omens character guide break down of the five different elven cultures of the inner see suggests the heritage for *one* of them, specifically the Mordant Spire heritage, and even then, it's the third suggestion for those who've spent their lives inside the Spire, which... I mean that's not really a cavern, but sure, I guess.

I suppose this just bugs me because 1e actually had an equivalant to cavern elves in the Advanced Race Guide where they have an elven racial subtype called the dusk elf that gets dark vision not from having lived underground but by being magically "linked to the night" in the same way most elves are tied to the terrain around them. And, okay, that's a more esoteric, mystical type explanation that does conveniently allow for elves of such a heritage to pop up in any cultural group because the sun still sets pretty much everywhere.

But the ARG was one of those, pretending to be setting neutral but just barely, type books.

I'm always interested in seeing new & creative monsters but I've been finding that there seems to be a relative lack of third party bestiary style books. The Battlezoo bestiary is a notable exception and I've found maybe a couple others, but compared to how many I've seen for pf1e & starfinder & d&d 5e, there seem to be very few for pf2e.

Is it simply a matter of, the system hasn't been out long enough for these types of books to proliferate? Is building 2e monsters more difficult than 1e & starfinder monsters? Are the books out there & I just haven't found them?

I'm building a fighter. However, with the character concept I have in mind, I will never, under any circumstances, use a shield. How can I trade this ability that is useless to me for something else?

Okay so again, going through Drift Crisis for the first time & one of the developments is that the Burning Archipelago has been cut off from the rest of the Pact Worlds.

Two questions; firstly, how? You didn't need a drift engine to reach the Archipelago; the entrance was a tunnel in the material plane. Was the tunnel damaged by some of the planar effects of the Crash? This isn't made clear or even really alluded to, it's just flatly stated that the bubbles are cut off with no further explanation.

Secondly, why? From a narrative standpoint, that is. Like, I get that the point of the event is to really shake things up in the setting and introduce a new status quo, make new challenges, create new points of conflict, but why just shut off one of your more interesting and unique features in the setting? Seriously, how many other sci fi settings have a city on the sun, and Paizo just decides, yeah, no, you can't go there anymore, any stories told about that are going to be about trapped isolation within it or whatever. Was the Archipelago unpopular with readers? Was it unpopular within Paizo?

Maybe I'm being overly dramatic here as I suppose it's not outright destroyed & you could use this as a set up for adventures to reestablish contact, but it just strikes me as a very odd decision to make (and one that I intend to promptly ignore, all due respect), among many odd decisions.

So I'm finally getting around to reading through Drift Crisis(I've been busy this year) and in the proposed explanation section, specifically the idea that the crisis was caused by divine intervention on page 16, the texts brings up the gods uniting against Rovagug as a past event.

Correct me if I'm wrong but is this the first time Rovagug has been mentioned in Starfinder? And, via the context clues in this entry, it would seem that Rovagug's defeat is apparently a known event by at least some people in the modern Starfinder universe?

It's been a while since I've dived into Starfinder deep lore but I had always taken the complete lack of mention of Rovagug in any source I was aware of(and the fact that no one was apparently freaking out about the fact his prison has gone missing) to imply that his existence had been forgotten, if not erased by the Gap.

So the big setting lore chapter in SF AP #42: Whispers of the Eclipse(Horizons of the Vast Part 3 of 6) is on the history and current state of elven culture, titled the Elven Diaspora. Not referencing elves specifically inhabiting the asteroid belt known as the Diaspora, but rather the scattered & broken state of the elven people as a whole.

I want to talk about it, and I'm going to be doing so with no thought nor restraint on spoilers though from what I can tell it doesn't have much if anything to do with the plot of the AP itself - I get these things for the setting info & monsters and don't look at the actual adventure content.

So first thing to note is that I've never been a particular fan of elves. Like, at all. In anything. Conceptually I've liked them in a few settings, in Pathfinder I liked that they were from another planet but the confused nature of their lore presented two sides of them that I found equally unappealing. Just never been my thing.

But I did find this article deeply intriguing, both for the info it had on elves themselves but also more general setting info both for Starfinder but also implications for Pathfinder. So I'm going to highlight some points;

First thing first, the article reveals that the elf gates weren't wholly original elven inventions. They were based off of preexisting artificial magical portals on Castrovel that early elves found & used to explore and settle various other planets; specifically the article names Akiton, Triaxus, and Verces but the wording implies that these were just the main three of at least a few other worlds "within the solar system" that they traveled to. Golarion, notably, isn't one of these - the gate there was one of the ones the elves created on their own only after starting to settle the others.

Now I don't know if this has been established before elsewhere and I skipped over it because I presumed disinterest in elven topics, but if nothing else the question of who put those portals there and why is one filled with intrigue, as is the related question "why no pre-existing portal to Golarion?"

Second thing: the Oatia. This is an ancient sect of tattooed elven "scholar priests" that broke off from mainline elven society because while most elves were focused on establishing connections with the land of the worlds around them, they were looking out to more distant stars for wisdom, surveying even stars outside the Starfinder galaxy.

What's interesting here is two things; one, their methods included receiving messages from distant galaxies and making contact with "bizarre and powerful aliens" and "communing with cosmic demigods". So, that could mean a lot of spooky and dangerous things out there in the cosmos got some calls from Castrovel that could have drawn in some attention.

Second thing that's interesting to me about them is that the Oatia actually managed to spread out as they fractured into mores specific niches of specific study, they actually spread out into the stars closer to the entities or areas they were focused on as individuals. Including, explicitly, travelling to distant galaxies, and that is interesting to me because it is, so far as I am aware - and I could well have missed it - but this is the first mention of successful intergalactic travel in Starfinder.

It was a known thing in Pathfinder(And the Oatia and everything I've mentioned so far takes place well before even when Pathfinder is set) that Intergalactic travel was possible, but the idea of it hasn't really been touched on in Starfinder at all other than it specifically being mentioned that the Drift apparently doesn't allow for it. So I'm curious as to whether this is just an acknowledgement of this being something that used to be possible in this universe but isn't anymore, or if this might be bringing it up just to put it in our minds in case it's a limit that might be going away with Drift Crisis.

So yeah, one we could have tattooed elven old ones cultists waiting to herald the return of their cosmic demigod patrons into the world as an adventure hook and a possible hint of other galaxies being open to us, if I'm not looking too much into things & being overly optimistic.

So to highlight how far back in time this is, we now get to the bit on the Age of Darkness which is noted as being one of a few different things to happen within a relatively short span of time(for elves, at least) that caused a collapse of this interplanetary elven civilization. Absorbing a mass of refugees from Golarion back to Castrovel put a strain on them, but it would have been a strain they would have been able to handle if not for at the same time being pushed off of Triaxus by the dragons who were just now launching their conquest of the planet, and *something* happening on Akiton where all of their communities just flat out disappeared, and everyone they sent to investigate disappeared, so they just up and destroyed the gates to Akiton to be safe.

So they lost three of their major colony worlds at roughly the same time which, and it has been a long while since I've read one of the deep dive articles on Triaxus, but I think this might be the first mention of a firm date for when the dragons established their kingdoms there; to my memory that had always been presented as something of a time immemorial type situation on the planet. But the dragons rising at roughly the same time as Earthfall and the Age of Darkness is probably coincidental.

What really interests me here is what in the hell happened on Akiton. A part of me wonders if maybe this is going to lead into Aktion's John Carter of Mars origins & we'll see a hidden population of native drow on Akiton as the cause of this to stand in for Barsoom's black martians - seeing that they were the strongest inspiration for drow in the first place - but that almost feels too mundane to me. Maybe Aktion just likes to eat elves every few thousand years. Either way, I am intrigued.

We don't get any mention of what happened to the Verces colonies - or any of the other potential colonies they might have had though given the state of the other planets in the solar system we can at least guess on those. But presumably there might just be an uninterrupted elven population on Verces dating back to this time.

There's a quick recap of them resettling Golarion after the darkness passed, but the last thing on the pre-gap history section I want to talk about is on the "technological revolution" which is another piece that confirms the solar system, including Golarion, had entered into an interplanetary space age before the gap started. Elves were apparently somewhat late adopters, slow to embrace technology in general and starships in particular because of their comfort with magic and specifically magic portals, but at least one group, the Ivaria, eventually set off in a fleet of generation ships to explore other solar systems and are credited as being responsible for a whole bunch of still existent populations of half elves.

So now we move on to the Gap & the disappearance of Golarion, where it's mentioned that Golarion's elves were estimated to account for "at least half" of the total population so losing that over night was a big hit. It's also just speaks to either how few elves there are in general or how many elves lived on Golarion because apparently during the Gap the elves had tried expanding out again, with evidence of them trying to resettle Triaxus as well as the moons of the gas giants, and even the Marixah Republic and Daimalko of all places.

I'd like to pause a moment here and note one thing about the gap section of the article that either bugs me or concerns me because it notes repeatedly that the gap erased memories of interpersonal connections, but previous lore on the gap was very explicit on that not being how it worked. It erased memories of dates, times, events, but you still had your interpersonal relationships. You wouldn't remember when or where or how you met your spouse, or how long you'd been married, but you still recognized them to be your spouse. You didn't know how old your kid was, but you still recognized them as your kid. That sort of thing.

This article doesn't treat the Gap's memory loss as working this way, noting that a significant portion of the specific elven trauma is having to live with not knowing who your family, who your lovers, who your children are over that long period of time, and touches on communities established during the gap trying to rebuild with the relationship between the community members being unknown.

So, either this is a mistake and a misunderstanding on the part of the writer who otherwise did a great job with this article, which bugs me because that opens up the possibility that some of the other little tidbits I've latched onto in the article as intriguing hooks might be mistakes or misunderstandings themselves, *or* it's a retcon as to how Gap memory loss worked & they decided to make it somewhat crueler in terms of what you lost, which makes me think the immediate post gap fallout should have been even worse than it was if people didn't even have those very basic connections to hold onto for some form of stability during that time, and also if this is a conscious change to the lore of how Gap memory loss works, it should have been communicated better because a lot of people are going to miss out on this article. *Or* as a third possibility I suppose it's possible that this is just specifically how it affected elves and no one else for some reason which there could be a hook there but that would be an odd thing and it's not communicated as such in the article.

So moving on to the post Gap era and we've got a break down of the current events, restating that the "collective elven nation" suffered "a betrayal" during the gap with still no explanation as to what that could have been. I will state a certain frustration here, in that I realize it's left open ended (and should be) so a given DM can just make it be whatever they want to suit their purposes, but I feel without at least some sense of the impact of that betrayal, it feels very difficult to empathize with it. Leaving what the betrayal was and who did it blank is fine, but without knowing what the betrayal did, how it harmed the elven nation, the whole idea is rather silly because without a sense of the consequences, the majority of the elven nation retreats into isolationism and paranoia based simply on the knowledge that a betrayal occurred with no indication that the betrayal actually caused any material damage.

Speaking of isolation & paranioa, the image of Sovyrian painted here is one of it's more unflattering. Like it's not full on North Korea but the article definitely doesn't present this as being a good thing for the elven nation or the elves themselves.

Aside from Sovyrian, the Elven Diaspora is broken down into those elves who reacted to the trauma of the gap by spreading out into the stars, then the Delvers - those who've dedicated themselves into trying to locate lost Golarion and seem to being leading the most concentrated effort to do so that I'm aware of, specifically to recontact and if necessary rescue the elves that presumably still lvie there. Apparently these guys are hoping to commune with the Starstone to make that happen.

Then we've got the Vindicators who're a group of calistrian elven assassins who cultivate false friendships in order to assassinate those they believe are responsible for that betrayal up there. Their targets are all based on guess work in an entirely irrational need for revenge so these guys can be a great villain to add to a game of a friendly elven npc who secretly really wants to stab the party because they're convinced that the party is secretly behind whatever horrible thing happened to the elves that they can't remember. Their outfit looks amazing, btw. Kudos to the artist here.

Then you've got Utopians who're out exploring new world explicitly looking for undiscovered ones ripe for colonization so they can start a new purely elven society that will one day supplant Sovyrian as the center of elven culture in the galaxy. Lot of great villain possibilities with these guys on an even larger scale.

And one of the juicier bits; Planar Explorer elves who're settling not other planets, but other planes with limited success in the First World, the Plane of Air, Elysium, and the Astral Plane. This gets me hyped for potential planar adventures coming in the future.

So, yeah. I need to go to sleep now but this is far and away the most interested I've been reading an article on elves that's come out of paizo. Lot of nice tidbits and story hooks and that's the kind of thing I really love in these articles. Left me excited for what if anything might be coming next.

If one were to put the Called weapon property onto a Combat Scabbard, Sharpened from the Adventurer's Armory, when activated, would it teleport both the scabbard & whatever weapon was sheathed in the scabbard, or would it just teleport the scabbard, leaving behind any weapon that had been sheathed in it laying on the ground?

So I got the Starship Operations Manual when it came out but only tonight did I actually bother reading the Manufacturer's section & two things caught my eye. The first was the Guttertooth Processing Company; we need more lore on them, they seem amazing.

But the second thing & the thing that inspired me to create this thread, is this sentence from the first paragraph of ATech's section;

Pre-Gap records indicate that the company now known as ATech originated on the planet Golarion as a manufacturer of atmospheric vehicles such as jet aircraft and hovercars. The exact details of who or what financed such cutting-edge research is lost to time, but speculators have suggested that it may have taken an entire country devoted to technological advances, a league of individuals with extraordinary knowledge for their time, or even the cult of a lesser god.

So that's interesting in that it both suggests Golarion was a bit further along than present day PF Golarion before the gap started but not so much further along that a company producing jet aircraft would be common place. I don't know if it's worded that way to give DM's a bit of leeway in where they want the gap set in their games, or if we should be keeping an eye on stuff coming out of Numeria in the immediate future.

Anyway, hadn't seen anyone bring that up in any Gap-related threads since the SOM came out & I figured it might spark a little discussion or pique some interest.

Apologies if this is the wrong forum for this, seemed the best fit.

As the thread title says I'm looking for a very specific type of 3rd party book; I'm looking for original campaign setting books that focus on single, specific cities, ideally those that while possessing a unique flavor, are designed to be slotted into existing or homebrew campaign settings with fairly little effort.

Any suggestions would be most welcome.

Edit: forgot to add that while my preference is for First Edition PF, hence why I'm using this forum, I'm also open to suggestions for such books printed under other rule systems, though the more fluff heavy these are, the better.

I know there was at one point a rather active effort for converting warcraft races, characters, & other things over to PF1e and I saw some work being done for Starfinder conversions even, but has anyone taken a shot at pf2e conversions?

Obviously a quick search turns up nothing but I figured I'd ask in case someone had something off site they hadn't shared yet or some such.

Beyond "a cavern in Avistan", do we have an idea of where the thing is sleeping?

Okay so the dragonkin "draconic immunities" racial trait reads as follows;

"Dragonkin are immune to sleep effects and gain a +2 racial bonus to saving throws against effects that cause paralysis."

But, dragonkin have the dragon creature type, and the dragon creature type lists the following traits;

"Traits: Darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, immunity to paralysis and sleep."

Now, with the draconic vision racial trait that specifies they have low-light & darkvision, I can understand listing a racial trait just to specifically point that out so people who don't bother to go look up what having the dragon creature type actually means don't miss out on things.

But the draconic immunities trait is actively worse than the actual trait given by their type which makes them immune to the thing that the racial trait gives them a +2 save against.

I've searched the forums and no one seems to have specifically pointed this out. Is the point here to specify that dragonkin are specifically not immune to paralysis despite having the dragon type and that's just been poorly communicated? The NPC dragonkin is explicitly immune to paralysis, but they're also immune to fire where as the PC stats don't list that, nor do I see a source for that at a cursory glance, and they also get a bite attack that the PC doesn't as has been pointed out on here elsewhere.

For the past couple of days I've been trying to purchase the PDFs for a few products(specifically the first two Threefold Conspiracy books & Near Space), however whenever I click "add pdf", it says "Your request produce an error" with no further link or instructions.

So there's a whole mess of alien races that resemble anthromorphic real world animals. As of yet, aside from uplifted bears, these are all generally implied to be naturally occurring examples of convergent evolution.

But the thing is, and apologies if this has been asked before, but being that most if not all of the real-world animals in setting lived on Golarion and Golarion isn't there anymore, how common is the knowledge that these races resemble Golarion-native animals?

Would the average pact-worlds citizen know that nuar look like bulls or if they were to see a bull would they think it's weird that that herd animal happened to look like a quadrupedal nuar? Would they know that morlamaws are technicolor walruses or would they have any idea that walruses exist.

Question was spawned from an RP session where my character(a half-orc born and raised on Apostae, so not an abundance of any kind of wildlife) didn't know what a wolf was or that vlaka happened to look like them.

Have there been updates to the Divine Blessing feat to cover the benefits for followers of non-core deities? I'd personally be the most interested in benefits related to Arshea & Asmodeus.

Alright so I was flipping through First World: Realm of the Fey today for some research and it's been a good while since I've looked at this book because something stood out to me that didn't catch my attention before.

On page 49 there's an image of a humanoid creature that I'm not familiar with, dressed as a mounted knight, riding a dinosaur into battle armed with a lance. The creature is vaguely saurian itself with no nose, just nostril slits, a wide mouth, and three horns coming out of a crest, it's face resembling(to my eyes) that of a sauropod dinosaur.

This creature is never explicitly identified beyond a mention of "Cleft Lords" who rule "meager holdings" in the Thoraso Cracks, an ancient area of the First World. They aren't more specifically identified, the book doesn't cite any other source they're from, and they aren't statted out in this particular book itself.

Who and what are these guys? Are they statted out in a bestiary and I'm blanking on them? Were they meant to be included in this book and their entry was cut for space? Will they feature more in the future? Is there any info about them outside of this particular book at all?

You have dedicated yourself to the mastery of a weapon, regardless of it's form.

Prerequisites: Martial Weapon Proficiency, Int 17, Knowledge(arcana) 15 Ranks

Benefit: When wielding a weapon with the Transformative or Greater Transformative magical weapon properties, you are proficient with the weapon regardless of what form it takes, even if it is an exotic weapon you would not normally be proficient in. Any feats you have that apply to a specific weapon type (example: Improved Critical, Weapon Focus) can be applied to the weapon regardless of form, unless that weapon type wouldn't qualify normally(You cannot apply the benefits of Dervish Dance to any weapon but a scimitar, you cannot apply the benefits of Tripping Staff to any weapon but a quarter staff, etc)

Furthermore, if you have the Weapon Training & Advanced Weapon Training or Sacred Weapon class features, you can apply their benefit to the weapon, regardless of what form it takes.

So of all the alien races that made the jump from Pathfinder to Starfinder, shobhad have probably had the most drastic appearance change; in pathfinder they were very human in appearance aside from their four arms, pointed ears, green/blue skin, and being 11ft tall. Males appeared to have some small tusks, but proportionately these were less prominent than the typical half-orc.

Link

Link

Starfinder happens & the Alien Archive has shobhad with misshapen skulls, rounded ears, gaping mouths, and a pair of massive tusks framing a row of very sharp teeth, solid yellow eyes with no visible iris or pupil, and more spread out arms, and duller, grey/charcoal skin.

Link

Link

Which, fine. Makes them more alien, more distinct from orcs & half-orcs. One could even argue the unusual skull shape, while not identical to kasatha or witchwyrds, shows something of a connection. And is a bit more reminiscent of tharks, their inspiration from the John Carter of Mars novels, sans the lack of green skin.

But then, friend of mine shows me a picture of a shobhad female from a Starfinder society module. Can't find that image online but the module was Fugitive on the Red Planet. And this particular shobhad woman closer to the old pathfinder style; human shaped skull, pointed ears, white sclera with prominent blue irises, human shaped mouth with little tusks that would look small on a half-orc - which, actually the PF shobhad female didn't have but that image was less detailed than the others.

Actually thought the image was of a half-orc at first, partly because as a portrait shot it only shows her shoulders so you can't see that she has two pairs of arms. And her skin tone is a kind of a pale purplish grey which doesn't really match with what we've been shown of shobhads so far from either setting.

Anyway, point I'm getting to, is I'm wondering whether or not this was a mistake by the artist who came up with this depiction of a shobhad character based on how they looked in Pathfinder, or is this meant to show that shobhads are sexually dimorphic to the point of males looking like snarly tusk monsters while females look more human?

And I don't want to suggest there's anything wrong with that approach, that is not a hill I intend to die on. I just want some clarity on the subject.

Alright, so, suli-jann are described as follows; "Sulis are difficult to recognize by sight, since they resemble ordinary humanoids with, perhaps, an occasional flash of elemental light in their eyes."

All well and good, matches up with Pathfinder sulis, except one thing; the accompanying artwork is very distinctly non-human, with grey skin & black sclera & orange irises. I guess it could be a suli damai being that they're the one humanoid race with naturally grey skin that I can think of off the top of my head, though they still don't really match up.

Now, granted, I'm not really complaining because the art depicting the suli is actually one of my favorite pieces of character art from Starfinder thus far, but I feel like this was a situation where the artist and the writer were not communicating.

So, this is just something that occurred to me & it's a very minor thing, but I was wondering why when putting Starfinder together the devs decided to put Triaxus in ice mode instead of summer or a transition season?

I can actually guess a couple reasons; Castrovel kind of covers the jungle planet niche & unless I'm blanking on one of the Gas Giant moons there actually isn't another ice planet in the main Pact Worlds system so they need Triaxus to fill that role, and on top of that, while I personally prefer the look of summerborn ryphorians/triaxians, winterborn are perhaps more distinctive & unique in their appearance.

I just found it curious that Triaxus is in winter mode both in Starfinder & Pathfinder & they didn't take the opportunity to flip it & show the other side of the planet's cycle.

Work in progress, open to constructive criticism & input. My goal isn't to space up the warcraft setting with perfect accuracy but rather take something that has the look & feel of warcraft creatures & make them fit into a Starfinder mold.

Draenei
Ability Adjustments: +2 Str +2 Wis -2 Dex
Hit Points: 5
Gift of the Naaru: Draenei can cast Mystic Cure M1 as a spell like ability once per day for every three character levels it has(minimum once). Additionally, a draenei that takes the Major Psychic Power feat and selects Mystic Cure M2 can use it as per this ability.
Heroic Pressence: Draenei receive a +2 bonus on will saves to resist fear or despair effects
Traditional Enemies: Draenei receive a +1 racial attack bonus to outsiders with the demon or devil subtypes.
Shadow Resistance: Draenei have resistance 5 to cold & electricity
Skilled: Draenei receive a +2 racial bonus to Diplomacy & Mysticism checks
Low Light Vision

Draenei, Lightforged
Size & Type: Lightforged Draenei are medium humanoids with the draenei subtype
Ability Adjustments: +2 Con +2 Cha -2 Dex
Hit Points: 6
Light's Judgement: Lightforged Draenei can cast Overheat as a spell like ability once per day.
Celestial Radiance: As a standard action, a Lightforged Draenei can shed light, causing light within 10 ft of him to increase two steps up to bright, and light for more than 10 ft beyond that to increase one step, up to normal. This effect lasts for 1 minute, but the lightforged draenei can dismiss it as a swift action. Magical darkness can decrease the light level in this area only if it's rom an item or creature of a level or CR higher than that of the Lightforged Draenei. A lightforged Draenei can use this ability once per day, plus an additional number of times per day for every three character levels he possesses.
Traditional Enemies: Lightforged Draenei receive a +1 racial attack bonus to outsiders with the demon or devil subtypes.
Holy Resistance: Lightforged Draenei have resistance 5 to fire & electricity.
Skilled: Lightforged Draenei receive a +2 racial bonus to Engineering & Mysticism checks

Draenei, Broken (Krokul)
Size & Type: Broken Draenei are medium humanoids with the draenei subtype.
Ability Adjustments: +2 Dex +2 Wis -2 Cha
Hit Points: 4
Shadowmeld: Attacks against Broken Draenei in dim light have a 50% miss chance instead of the normal 20% miss chance. This ability does not grant total concealment; it just increases the miss chance.
Traditional Enemies: Broken Draenei receive a +1 racial attack bonus to outsiders with the demon or devil subtypes as well as a +1 racial attack bonus to creatures with the orc subtype.
Low light vision
Darkvision
Skilled: Broken Draenei receive a +2 to Stealth and Survival checks.

Kaldorei
Size & Type: Kaldorei are medium humanoids with the elf subtype.
Ability Adjustments: +2 Dex +2 Wis -2 Cha
Hit Points: 4
Quickness: Kaldorei have a base land speed of 40
Shadowmeld: Attacks against Kaldorei in dim light have a 50% miss chance instead of the normal 20% miss chance. This ability does not grant total concealment; it just increases the miss chance.
Weapon Familiarity: Kaldorei are proficient with basic & advanced melee weapons and gain Weapon Specialization with those weapons at 3rd level.
Skilled: Kaldorei receive a +2 racial bonus to Perception & Survival checks
Low Light Vision
Light Sensitivity: Kaldorei are dazzled so long as they remain in areas of bright light.

Shal'dorei
Size & Type: Shal'dorei are mediu humanoids with the elf subtype
Ability Adjustments: +2 Dex +2 Int -2 Wis
Hit Points: 3
Cantrips: Shal'dorei can select one 0th level spell to use as a spell like ability once per day plus an additional time per day for every three character levels they possess. Once made, this decision cannot be changed.
Arcane Pulse: Shal'dorei can cast Mind Thrust M1 as a spell like ability once per day.
Arcane Resistance: Shal'dorei receive a +2 racial bonus to saving throws against spells, but not against spell like abilities.
Skilled: Shal'dorei receive a +2 racial bonus on Culture and Mysticism checks
Dark Vision
Light Sensitivity: Shal'dorei are dazzled as long as they remain in areas of bright light.

Orcs/Mag'har
Size & Type: Mag'har are medium humanoids with the orc subtype
Ability Adjustments: +2 Str +2 Con -2 int
Hit Points: 6
Frenzy: Mag'har can fly into a frenzy once per day per four character levels, granting them a +2 to melee attack rolls and a -2 penalty to AC for one minute.
Weapon Familiarity: Mag'har are proficient with basic & advanced melee weapons and gain Weapon Specialization with those weapons at 3rd level
Skilled: Mag'har receive a +2 racial bonus to Intimidate & Survival checks
Orc Ferocity: Once per day, a Mag'har brought to 0 hit points but not killed can fight on for one more round. The mag'har drops to 0 HP and is dying but can continue to act normally until the end of his next turn, when he becomes unconscious as normal. If he takes additional damage before this, he ceases to be able to act and falls unconscious.
Low Light Vision

Mogu
Size & Type: Mogu are large humanoids with the Mogu subtype. They have a space of 10ft and a reach of 5ft
Ability Adjustments: +4 Str -2 Cha
Hit Points: 6
Thunder Attunment: Mogu receive a +1 racial bonus on attack rolls with weapons that deal electricity or sonic damage.
Storm Resistance: Mogu receive resistance 5 to electricity and sonic damage
Skilled: Mogu receive a +2 racial bonus to Engineering and Intimidate checks.
Low Light Vision
Normal Speed: Mogu have a base land speed of 30ft

Tauren
Size & Type: Tauren are large monstrous humanoids. They have a space of 10ft and a reach of 5ft.
Ability Adjustments: +2 Str +2 Wis -2 Dex
Hit Points: 8
Natural Weapons: Tauren are always considered armed. They can deal 1d4 lethal piercing or bludgeoning(a choice that is made at character creation and can't be changed after) damage with unarmed strikes and the attack doesn't count as archaic. They gain a unique weapon specialization with their natural weapons at 3rd level, allowing them to add 1-1/2 x their character level to damage rolls with their natural weapons(instead of just adding their character level as usual)
Charge: Tauren receive a +2 racial bonus on Combat Maneuver checks to Bull Rush
Skilled: Tauren receive a +2 racial bonus to Survival Checks
Low Light Vision
Normal Speed: Tauren have a base land speed of 30ft

I have more planned out. Note that the Mogu entry represents curse of flesh mogu, not stone mogu, the mag'har entry represents standard and uncorrupted orcs, only using the mag'har name to distinguish it from Path/Starfinder orcs, and the tauren race entry represents tauren, highmountain tauren, taunka, and yaungol.

I mean, it doesn't affect me because I'm disregarding the living heck out of that statistic, but it does strike me as curious.

Someone standing in the mid five foot range & weighing 200lbs is going to be fairly bulky, but at six feet that shifts over to them being on the leaner side, and by the time you get to 7ft(the max height listed), weighing 200lbs is going to look down right emaciated.

Was there a conscious design decision to shift half-orcs into a leaner, scrappier mold rather than the bulky bruisers they've historically been?

I like ancestry feats as a separate category of feats that doesn't interfere with other feat progression on a conceptual level, because as we all remember, in 1e, many races would get race-specific feats but these were rarely, if ever, worth taking in lieu of more generally useful feats.

So having a separate category of feats specifically for that is something I like.

Where I think it's going wrong is two many of the presented ancestry feats are just things that the 1e races got as part of the race right out of the box when that is unncessary. I mean, I can see it for some of the more absurdly powerful races from 1e such as munavri but I don't know that it's necessary with dwarves & half-orcs.

Ancestry feats should be reserved for things that were race specific feats or race traits(as opposed to racial traits, that language always was confusing), and maybe some of the more powerful, trade out two things for one, alternate racial traits from 1e instead of the standard, out the box stuff.

I'm sure this is by no means a unique hot take, just felt like throwing it out there.

A merciful weapon deals an extra 1d6 points of damage, but all damage it deals is nonlethal damage. On command, the weapon suppresses this ability until told to resume it (allowing it to deal lethal damage, but without any bonus damage from this ability).

Okay so mechanically that makes sense but from a narrative perspective, how would one describe that?

Would the blade of a sword with the merciful property bounce off someone's flesh as if it were dull & blunted, doing bludgeoning damage, bruising but not fatally? Or would it still cut and just not leave a wound behind?

So let me preface this by saying that I'm not a designer & in a lot of ways class design is very foreign to me. Math was one of my poorer subjects & I'm very much a layman in this arena.

And I've also got no real conclusion to make here or point, these are just thoughts that have been going through my head that I feel the need to put down somewhere. As a consequence this might be a little rambling in some places.

Alright, so, Pathfinder has 37 classes. Forty, if you count the alternate classes of Anti-Paladin, Ninja, and Samurai, and 41 if you count the Vampire Hunter class they did for that Vampire Hunter D book. And of course there are the "Unchained" versions of another four classes.

This is not to mention the dozens of prestige classes and dozens upon dozens of archetypes.

Starfinder, in contrast, as of this posting has seven classes and eight archeytpes, which in contrast to PF archetypes which are variations on specific classes, can be laid over any class.

Now I am aware that there are many on these forums who prefer fewer classes and dislike the "rules bloat" that comes with a large number of classes. And to be sure I can understand that point of view.

Personally I'm of two minds on it. On the one hand I can look back at 3.5 and a lot of it's classes and think they're badly designed(to me, the layman who doesn't know what he's talking about), needless, silly thing. On the other hand, I've never really had that feeling with pathfinder. I don't love all of it's classes, but I see why each of them exists. What niche, both in game play & in universe, they have to fill. Even with 4e, while I didn't love a lot of it's classes I also didn't start looking side ways at a few of them until very late in the edition's lifetime.

In general I'd say I have a chronic case of alt-itus, I like making a lot of different characters and I like to have several different classes with which to do so. So while I can definitely agree that there's a point of "too much", I think where that point is is subjective, and I definitely think it's well more than seven.

Having said all of that, what I see in Starfinder is a desire to condense. Paizo definitely seems conscious of this rules bloat and wants to err on the side of caution with this game, in my opinion. They've designed several of their classes to be, for lack of a better word, modular. Concepts that would have been entire classes unto themselves in Pathfinder would be better served worked into a piece of an existing class - be it a mystic connection, operative specialization, or soldier fighting style - in Starfinder, or failing that, an archetype.

Still I feel the desire to work out what niches still need filling, both from a mechanical and thematic view point, and would be best served as complete classes rather than pieces to be fit into existing ones.

To do that, let's start by eliminating the ones we don't need, period.

The two big ones that I don't think there will be any debate on are Fighter & Rogue. Soldier & Operative are Fighter & Rogue, updated for the setting, improved upon, and given name changes. Any elements, either in the core class or popular achetypes, that have not been translated are either those that don't fit with Starfinder's system or that can be worked into new combat styles/gear boosts or specializations/exploits.

Following that same logic I feel the following classes would be better served the same way as opposed to being updated or given an entire spiritual successor.

Cavalier/Samurai: The "order" element of these classes, I feel is already kind of covered in the Star Knight archetype. Things like challenges, banners, the specific combat elements would best be worked into a soldier fighting style. The mounted elements may be served likewise with a soldier fighting style that focuses on vehicle use, or it may work better as it's own separate archetype. That is a niche I think that needs filling, but it doesn't need it's own class to do it.

Slayer: I like Slayer, and not just the band. I think it's one of the better classes in Pathfinder and it filled a niche that needed it, being more combat oriented than the skill monkey rogue, more stealth focused than the fighter, and without the nature baggage of the ranger. That being said, in Starfinder I feel this would be better served with either a more combat oriented operative specialization or a more stealth oriented fighter combat style. It doesn't need to be it's own thing here.

Swashbuckler: See above.

Gunslinger: Well everyone's kind of a gunslinger, now. I have seen a 3rd party book that works them into an archetype that I skimmed and that seems to be the best way to do it if you're going to do it, because the Gunslinger class was about more than just being proficient with fire arms, but still I don't think it warrants a class unto it's self.

Vigilante was always a bit of a hard class because it doesn't travel well in a game set on one planet let alone one that could travel to several. Not to mention several elements of it can already be seeing in Envoy & Operative. There may be more to draw on here, especially from specific archetypes such as the Brute & Magical Child, but I don't see the class as a whole making the transition.

Okay those are the ones I feel pretty confidently that we don't need full classes for right off the bat. Running theme there is that they're all martial/non-magical and that isn't really a coincidence, because the question of "what we need" is a little trickier when it comes to casters.

There are a few things we're objectively lacking when it comes to spell casters in starfinder. Prepared casters, charisma based casters, and most notably, "full" casters, i.e., casters who's spell level goes up to 9th.

Now the sense I get on that latter one is that 9th level spells and full casting is a casualty of Paizo's condensing. The current spell lists have several spells that in pathfinder were level 7, 8, and 9, currently at level 5 or 6. So while there are those who may disagree with this assessment, for the purpose of this discussion I'm going to consider "full" casters not as a niche that needs filling but one that simply doesn't exist anymore.

Now as to whether or not prepared casters & charisma based casters(not counting Solarians for the purpose of this discussion) should exist, I'm not arguing they shouldn't but I also don't know what form they should take as that's a pretty bare-bones starting point.

Taking this back to things that we "don't need", and this might become a bit more controversial, but it strikes me that most of the divine casters are non-starters in Starfinder.

Going back to what I said earlier about condensing, the mystic is probably the biggest example of that. Mystic connections are analogous to and arguably encompass everything from a cleric's domains, an oracle's mystery, a shaman's spirit, and a psychic's discipline, along with the entire concept of the druid in the xenodruid.

Likewise, the divine champion & star knight archetypes along with feats such as connection inkling, divine blessing, and the psyhic power feats, read to me as the way pathfinder wants to go for creating characters that fill the niche for such classes as Paladin/Anti-Paladin, Warpriest, and more combat oriented Clerics. Maybe we'll see more, like a divine version of the Arcane Assailant soldier fighting style, but I don't see these classes getting updated versions on their own.

Some people may find that unsatisfying but that strikes me as the direction they're going.

Keeping us on casters but switching to arcane(and I understand that Starfinder doesn't have as hard of a line between the two as Pathfinder did);

Magus, I feel, isn't going to get it's own class. It's main mechanical gimmick doesn't really translate with SF getting rid of iterative attacks. Thematically I think this is the kind of thing covered by a soldier with arcane assailant & feats to give him spell casting, but maybe you can go full archetype with it.

Bard/Skald are especially two that I just feel are unnecessary. Mechanically they're covered by the Envoy and I think that thematically they are such creatures of high fantasy that, arguably more than any other PF classes, they'd be out of place in Starfinder's setting. Just my opinion.

Moving onto occult classes, most of them are out the window. Occultist & Medium, while fun classes, just don't seem to fit within Starfinder's design philosophy. Mesmerist is already covered between Envoy & the overlord mystic connection. Maybe there's an archetype to be gained from these three, but that would be about it in my estimation.

Meanwhile, Psychic is largely covered by mystic; maybe there are a few more mystic connections to be drawn from it, but again, that's it.

Okay so those are the hard 'no's' in terms of getting entire classes based on them in my estimation. So what's left.

Barbarian is one of the few martial classes that I think thematically could stand on it's own. Thundar the Barbarian is a cited source of inspiration, after all. Mechanically there might be an argument for wrapping it up in a soldier fighting style, but I think it could go either way. If it were it's own class, I'd package bloodrager in it.

Monk/Ninja?/Brawler: One of the more common things I see on here is the desire for a martial arts based build. I often see this in the form of asking for a martial artist operative specialization, and a soldier fighting style would be another way to go, but I think there might be enough meat here for an individual class. Thematically there's some overlap with solarian but a think a chi/ki/qi based martial artist class would compliment solarians rather than compete with them. Be the Chirrut to the solarian's Obi Wan.

Inquisitor is the one divine class from Pathfinder that I think can hold up on it's own in Starfinder. I feel it's unique enough both thematically & mechanically that you could work an entire class around it, compared to the more patchwork ways they seem to go about building clerics/paladins/warpriests via divine champion/star knight archetypes, the priest theme, & select feats. Deities may not have domains & sacred weapons anymore but judgments & banes are still something that could be put to good use.

Kineticist, the odd duck out among the PF occult classes, the one I feel can't be wrapped up into a mystic connection and that fills a niche Starfinder needs filling; a ranged counterpart to the solarian. Not much else to say here other than that I feel it does fit the setting and can't be slotted into the existing classes as an archetype easily.

Alchemist is arguably the best fit for a Starfinder class out of Pathfinder's line up, given that it's themes of mad science fit just as well here as they did in pathfinder, maybe better. The addition of genetic editing & bioengineering offer great ways to expand upon the class.

Getting into looser adaptation territory, there are three more concepts for classes I think need to exist.

Firstly is a caster that focuses entirely on arcane magic in contrast to the technomancer that blends magic and technology. I'm not entirely sure what form this should take as the best I can come up with is essentially an int-based mystic with sorcerer bloodlines & witch patrons filling in for mystic connections. Maybe this is where you add in prepped casting or split the difference with arcanist-style prep to make it mechanically distinct, but I just feel thematically this is a thing that needs to exist.

The next two are different takes on the same theme; pet classes. I like the mechanic but I feel thematically there needs to be a non-technological pet class to compliment it.

I'd start by more or less combining the summoner & spiritualist into one since they were more or less the same class to start with, just with the difference being one summoned an outsider & one summoned an undead. That could be an either/or decision, like drone vs exocortex for the mechanic, with this class.

Likewise I feel there does need to be a nature based class that covers the biological pet compared to the mechanic's drone & the summoner/spiritualist's super natural creature. I'm not sure exactly how you design this class without making the xenodruid connection obsolete, but I also feel that xenodruid alone doesn't do enough to cover the nature-hero niche. While I felt that Starfinder was too sci fi to include the bard/skald classes, I also feel it's too high fantasy not to include the ranger & it's derivatives.

Maybe you take off the spellcasting all together & have the base class include combined elements of rangers, hunters, shifters, & their archetypes into something that works in Starfinder's system, and rather than having a huge selection of animals to take as companions, the pet is based off a small selection of templates like the drone & eidolon that can be flavored however you want, with eidolon evolution style upgrades being themed as genetic modifications(Oras says it's okay!) to keep them competitive, which I think is actually exactly what the legacy conversion chapter in the CRB suggests, and maybe expand type to include magical beast & plants as well as animals.

Anyway I think that's about it, all I had to say on the subject. There is of course ample possibility for entirely new, entirely original classes down the line but speculating on those wasn't my purpose here so much as pontificating upon what classes & concepts from Pathfinder could reasonably stand on their own in Starfinder, which ones needed to be condensed, & which ones worked better through other means. I'm curious to see the thoughts of anyone who managed to read through all four pages in a word doc of my ramblings on the subject.

So if there's been an official statement on this I haven't been able to find it.

Basic question is if Paizo has any plans on scaling up production to include equivalent's to the monthly/semi-monthly releases of Pathfinder's Player Companion & Campaign Setting product lines?

Is this something the player base even wants?

Okay so I'm not getting into the debate as to whether or not Paizo went too far in trying to balance spellcasters & martials that they ended up nerfing magic users. That isn't what this thread is about.(and personally I'd probably come down on the side of the martials if it was)

What this is about is asking if, from an in-universe, lore/character perspective, is magic weaker than it used to be?

From a gameplay perspective, full casters in Pathfinder(and by extension, the pathfinder era; the distant past of Starfinder), were able to cast 9th level spells while Starfinder mystics & technomancers are only able to cast 6th level spells.

Is that, strictly speaking, purely a gameplay abstraction? More than a few of the 6th level spells in Starfinder were 7th or higher in Pathfinder. So is it that purely a gameplay decision where previously Paizo wanted to keep the stronger spells out of reach for longer to maintain the fiction of balance(and tradition of the game's lineage) and with the prevalence of advanced technology closing the gap, that's no longer necessary so the spell levels have been condensed to streamline the system but nothing's changed in universe?

Or, continuing on with that from an in-universe perspective, the levels assigned to spells were never actually a hard and fast, immutable law of how magic worked but rather a simple categorization given to them by mortal spell casters, and in the centuries since PF, magic users in universe have re-categorized & condensed the spells?

Or is it actually a thing that the spellcasters of the post-gap era are weaker than the most powerful wizards/sorcerers/witches/arcanists/clerics/druids/oracles/shaman/pychics of the past, and that they tell tales of the awesome power of casters of ages past?

Or is it one of those things that was erased by the Gap? Which wouldn't make a lot of sense given what all else they've managed to put together, and if nothing else, there should be some 9th level casters hanging out on Eox.

I've been pouring over various sources for this and I can't seem to find an exact figure for how wide the pit is. I've been able to find a couple pictures of it but I'm terrible at judging distance when the perspective and scale isn't subject to artistic license.

So I was hoping someone here would be able to set me straight, either by providing a source I've overlooked or don't have access to, or by one of the devs being willing to give the answer if it hasn't been published yet.

Alright, so, we're going to start with the assumption that either through point buy or roll, the character starts out with an 18 in their int stat.

The character can either be a tiefling(standard or daemon-spawn) or a peri-blooded aasimar. We'll be using Blood of Angels/Fiends for this exercise. Using the variant racial ability tables featured in those books and assuming either a lucky roll(40 for BoA, 46 for BoF) or a generous DM that would allow one to pick the boon they want from the table, the character gains an additional +2 racial bonus to their int score, bringing the total bonus up to +4 and their starting int to 22.

The character class we will be going with is Alchemist. We are now going to assume the long game by giving this character 20 levels and 10 mythic tiers. This gives us an extra +5 int from leveling, +10 from mythic advancement, +2 from the Enhanced Ability universal path ability. In addition, the character will take the Cognatogen discovery along with it's greater and grand variants, as well as the Awakened Intellect grand discovery.

At some point the character will have also taken the Longevity universal path ability and taken enough time off to reach old age or venerable. While on the path to venerable status, the character will begin work jumping through the hoops of the Transformation Ritual as laid out in Book of the Damned, vol. 2: Lords of Chaos, for transforming into a demon, finishing off at the third ritual to acquire the Half Fiend template, timing it so that they do so after having gotten to at least old age to secure the +2 bonus from aging before getting the +4 bonus from the template.

So we have a character who starts out at int 22, increases to 27 from pure leveling, 37 from pure mythic advancement, 39 with the capstone class ability, 41 with a mythic path ability, 46 from purchasing and reading a Tome of Clear Thought, 50 from becoming a half-demon, and 52-53 from aging while doing all of this.

They would then be able to temporarily increase their intelligence further by imbibing their cognatogen and putting on a headband for a total of 66-67, for a total modifier bonus of +28.

So I'm considering adding Darkseid from DC comics as a god to my home campaign to act as a bit of an iron fist counterpart to Asmodeus' silver tongue approach to lawful evil. He's going to be a full deity, 5 domains, 6 subdomains. Thing is I can't quite make up my mind on his 5th domain.

I'm set on evil, law, strength, and void. For the fifth, though, I'm torn between destruction and war.

Any suggestions?

Races, that is. Races not having racial hit die, instead being defined by their class levels, with minimal level adjustment, and being arguably appropriate options for playable characters.

taking from each bestiary, AP, and the Advanced Race Guide, not counting the "Monstrous" and "Very Powerful" options of centaur, ogre, shobad, drider, and gargoyle, and also not counting the variant races/subspecies of aasimar, tiefling, dhampir, and skinwalker as separate races, I have compiled the following list;

1. Aasimar
2. Android
3. Astomoi
4. Caligni
5. Catfolk
6. Changeling
7. Deep One Hybrid
8. Dhampir
9. Drow
10. Duergar
11. Dwarf
12. Elf
13. Elf, Aquatic
14. Fetchling
15. Ganzi
16. Gathlain
17. Ghoran
18. Gillmen
19. Gnoll
20. Gnome
21. Goblin
22. Goblin, Monky
23. Grippli
24. Half-Elf
25. Half-Orc
26. Halfling
27. Hobgoblin
28. Human
29. Ifrit
30. Kasatha
31. Kitsune
32. Kobold
33. Kuru
34. Lashunta
35. Lizardfolk
36. Merfolk
37. Munavri
38. Nagaji
39. Naiad
40. Orang-Pendak
41. Orc
42. Oread
43. Ratfolk
44. Reptoid
45. Rougarou
46. Samsaran
47. Shabti
48. Skinwalker
49. Strix
50. Suli
51. Svirfneblin
52. Sylph
53. Syrinx
54. Tengu
55. Tiefling
56. Triaxian
57. Trox
58. Undine
59. Vanara
60. Vishkanya
61. Wayang
62. Wyrwood
63. Wyvaran
64. Yiddithian

Am I missing any?

Alright so I'm putting together a gillman Spiritualist with the Fractured Mind & Exciter archetypes and I had a question regarding the Exciter's Rapture ability, which reads as follows;

Rapture (Su)

An exciter gains the ability to enter an ecstatic state in which he’s consumed and overwhelmed by his passions and driven into a fighting fury. This functions similarly to a bloodrager’s bloodrage, treating his spiritualist level as his bloodrager level, though he doesn’t qualify for feats or other elements that require rage or bloodrage. When entering a rapture, the exciter loses all other benefits from having his phantom confined in his consciousness (such as the Skill Focus feats and bonus against mind-affecting effects), but he can choose to exchange the normal +4 morale bonus to his Strength and Constitution scores normally gained from bloodrage for a +4 morale bonus to his Dexterity and Charisma scores or a +2 morale bonus to his Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma scores. In addition to the fatigue for ending a bloodrage, an exciter can’t enter a rapture again for 1 minute after ending his last rapture.

This ability replaces a spiritualist’s ability to manifest his phantom and use emotional focus abilities that require a manifested phantom.

So my question is, are the bonuses either Str & Con or Dex & Cha, or could I theoretically have a +4 Bonus to Str & Dex active, or any other two stat combination of the four possibilities, or is it just those two combinations or the weaker bonuses to all four?

I'm asking this on behalf of my DM; one of my fellow players in my current campaign wants to carry out a political assassination by giving an antagonist character a glass of sovereign glue and using prestidigitation to cover up the smell and taste.

Now, the DM has ruled that the glue wouldn't set in her throat because it requires a full round to set and it takes only about a second for liquid to travel to the stomach, but he's unsure about whether or not it would set in the stomach.

Anyway, we were curious as to whether or not anyone else had come across this scenario before and what their rulings on it were.

Alright. So you have a mythic character who has the divine source universal path ability that allows them to grant spells to divine casters.

If the player put in the work to establish a list of obediences and boons that were approved by a DM, could that player then select the deific obedience feat for themselves and then become an Evangelist/Exalted/Sentinel of themselves?

How do these two interact?

Despite the fact that one is a glove and the other functions as brass knuckles with blades, neither is in the weapons group that focuses on up close fighting. Any reason for this?