Googleshng's page

While I like keeping things largely Pathfinder derivative, I'm hoping magic items and the associated snowballing economy get the axe.

I mean, you can still have treasure, but the way rewards and costs scale with level in 3.x/PF completely destroys realistic in-game economies (i.e. it's weird going into town and paying 1 SP for a stay at the local inn with meals included then selling 30 +1 swords for 10,000 times that, each).

Plus, it really disincentivizes peaceful negotiation. If I talk this guy out of a fight, I don't get his +3 sword and armor I'd have gotten from killing him, and wow that's a big chunk of change.

Being able to have rich and poor characters in the same party is also a nice dynamic to have access to via traits and such that doesn't work if everyone's getting insanely rich off adventuring.

... although on the other hand, investing a huge amount of cash in bigger and better spaceships has some appeal.

It's funny comparing the level of detail given in this thread and the snark one. Over there it's (and yes I am intentionally using a description here that does not apply to anything I have actually seen):

"Really? Pink elephants?" "No glaive-guisarme should cost that much." Etc.

Here, it's:

"Ooh! I really like you!"

Seems like the two should really work on the same standard, one way or the other.

Addressing the main argument in this thread:

Misogyny, at least in the sense people are using it here, is the systemic oppression of women.

Oppression is evil. This is pretty much the cornerstone of every moral philosophy out there, with the conspicuous exception of those that are transparently laid out explicitly to keep oppressors in power. Most relevant in this context, evil in Pathfinder is more or less defined as getting ahead in life by walking all over everyone else. Especially when we're looking specifically at Lawful Evil.

Therefore, misogyny is evil.

Misogyny is also lawful, in that the systemic part of systemic oppression implies an actual society-level system (so really, this is more the concept of patriarchy if you want to split hairs, but again, how everyone's been using it).

It absolutely makes sense for the most prominent LE deity to be a misogynist. Just like it makes sense for him to be pro-slavery, favor a rigid caste system, and lie constantly to present everything he thinks and does as perfectly justified.

It would make absolutely no sense at all for any good deity to support any of that. If you want a deity who mostly comes off as good, but makes allowances for outright evil things as an "interesting flaw" what you would then have is a neutral deity. Abadar is a great example. All about peaceful living and thriving cities, but he has this huge blind spot about money changing hands. Doesn't want his clergy turning away evil people or offering a discount to good, which can lead to terrible things. Pharasma's another example. She generally leans lawful good, very much into fair judgement, hates anyone trying to escape her judgement by going undead, but she turns a blind eye to daemons straight-up destroying souls, because they do it on their own turf after she's handled the processing. Or take Calistria. Very non-judgemental, wants everyone to have a good time, absolutely believes people should be punished when they wrong someone, but there's no real sense of proportionate response.

Also worth noting, before it was officially cleared up that Torag's traditionalism was more "I don't trust these newfangled printing presses, how do you get the importance of a story without a teller to emphasize the right words?" and less "women should be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen" I made a paladin for Kingmaker. The GM very strongly urged me to worship Erastil, as he plays a huge role in that AP and I was the only religious character in the party. Erastil-as-intended would have been absolutely perfect for this character, but Erastil-as-presented was so off-putting I ended up going with Iomedae instead. It was very clear at several points that we were missing out thanks to that, and at no time did it make things feel "more interesting" in any fashion.

All that said, unrelated sidetrack time!

Erm...about the whole "Good is never, ever, ever, ever, ever bigoted in any way" thing...

So a deity would automatically disapprove of the numerous good-aligned characters that are prejudiced against Goblinoids, Orcs, or Drow? Because I'm pretty sure there's a lot of them and they're still good guys despite hating people from those races.

Absolutely. Assuming, at least, that when you say "prejudiced" we're talking about the sort of character who unquestioningly kills all members of those races on sight, that is absolutely evil. You'd be playing a genocidal racist.

If we're talking about someone who regularly, constantly fights rampaging hordes of goblins, who is particularly horrified by how they just run around stabbing cats to hear what sort of sound they make and hiding in ovens to ambush people and such, having witnessed these things, that's much more understandable, so long as that character doesn't completely lose it when he runs across a fairly stable goblin making an honest living as a blacksmith's apprentice, and takes it on good faith that they are an exception to what they're used to based on how the local society clearly considers them a member in good standing.

Dwarves hate goblins and orcs (or Drow, giants, and dragons). That's built into your racial abilities; you hate them so much you're really good at hitting them.

Torag, a lawful good deity, approves of this. In fact, he approves of this so much that his paladin code instructs paladins of Torag that the enemies of their people must be defeated at any cost. Mislead them if you must. Do not accept their surrender. Don't give them a second chance. They are your people's enemies. Kill them, while conducting yourself in a way that honors Torag.

Either Torag's asking some kind of zen contradiction-riddle of his followers or he's pretty on board with Dwarves giving no quarter to goblins whether they're ALL tiny, psychotic pyromaniacs who kill for fun and aren't averse to eating babies every now and then or not.

Are we talking about the paladin code from Faiths of Purity? It makes no mention of any of those races, just "my people's enemies." And it most certainly does not preach genocide. "I will defeat them, and I will scatter their families" implies quite the opposite. Chase off anyone who might come looking for revenge when you kill the ones actively attacking you.

Similarly, dwarves don't get bonuses because they don't like people. They get bonuses because they have such a long history of war with those races, dwarven children are taught where to aim when fighting them.

That sort of teaching would inevitably foster a degree of racism, but that's another issue entirely, and not on Torag.

ARGH.... use commas in your numbers!!!!!!!!!

Right! Next year, nothing with a price less than 2,000,000 GP, or that weighs less than 1,000,000 lbs. from anyone!

It's going to get a little silly for skill bonuses.

I am 90% sure I made a couple of minor formatting errors (leaving a comma out of a price, forgetting to italicize a spell, etc.), and now there's this wonderful little argument in my brain as to whether these are so inconsequential they won't matter at all, or whether people will downvote it to hell for the unforgivable sin of not giving it one last properly detailed editorial pass.

This is true, yes. If you're already fighting with one hand tied behind your back, then yeah, it's a massive damage boost for free.

Mainly I just wanted to break it down for the sake of people worrying about swashbucklers becoming the new queens of melee damage or something. It's really not a better deal than the reigning standard of two-handed fighting, and it's not even the best option for a swashbuckler, where two weapon fighting puts you way ahead on panache and available deeds.

So, a lot of people are looking at that Precise Strike deed that Swashbucklers (and others) get access to, and flipping out at how much of a huge damage boost it seems to be. Let's break down real quick how it isn't.

From the level at which it comes online, you're adding your level to damage on all your hits. On top of that you've got the base damage for the rapier you're basically forced to use, your strength bonus, and whatever feats and class features you have to stack on extra damage (weapon training, precise strike, etc.) Rapiers also have an 18-20 crit range, which is always nice.

Let's compare that now to someone using a good ol' two-handed falchion, which is also an 18-20 crit range, and say we have the same feats.

First off, we have the actual dice involved. 1d6 vs. 2d4. Those average out to 3.5 damage per hit, and 5 damage per hit respectively. So that's -1.5 damage to the rapier user so far.

Next comes strength. You add your str mod to the rapier, but 2x str mod to the falchion. -1 potential damage for every 4 points of strength.

Power attack works along the same principle. Assuming we've got a full BAB character and we're really chasing damage, it's a no brainer feat, and we have that same ratio. 2 damage per 4 BAB with the rapier, 3 with the falchion.

So here's how much str you need at each level to outperform the precise strike deed (by that half a point there) at each level, vs. someone with the same str, assuming you're power attacking:

1: 8 (Precise Strike has yet to kick in, dice alone are a huge deal, no power attack here)
2: 8
3: 14 (Precise Strike is now online, assume we're both power attacking now)
4: 14 (PA edge just jumped to +2)
5: 18 1.5 2 2
6: 22 1.5 3 2
7: 26 1.5 4 2
8: 26 (PA edge hits +3)
9: 30 1.5 5 3
10: 34 1.5 6 3
11: 38 1.5 7 3
12: 38 (PA edge hits +4)
13: 42
14: 46
15: 50
16: 50 (it's +5)
17: 54
18: 58
19: 62
20: 62 (and again)

Now, putting it in these terms makes it look like a huge deal. Nobody's ever going to get their str up that high. But again, this is just to establish the baseline. Let's look at it in more practical terms.

If we assume both the rapier user and falchion user have an 18 str and never upgrade it...
Level 1: Falchion's hitting for 4.5 extra damage on each attack.
Level 2: Falchion's hitting for 4.5 extra damage on each attack.
Level 3: Falchion's hitting for 1.5 extra damage on each attack.
Level 4: Falchion's hitting for 1.5 extra damage on each attack.
Level 5: Falchion's hitting for 0.5 extra.
Level 6: Rapier pulls ahead with 0.5 extra, and gains an extra 1 point lead 3 levels out of every 4.
Level 16: Rapier has a 7.5 point lead in the damage race. This is about where most APs end.

Again though, no real melee character is going to neglect their strength that much. Every time you upgrade that belt, cast that enlarge person, or bull's strength, or activate a barbarian rage, whatever, you're upping that lead. It's not unreasonable to consistently be walking around with a strength of 34 by level 16 if you're really pushing it. Do that and the falchion user is closing out a 16 level campaign doing only 3.5 less per hit than the rapier user, and if you're upgrading belts/activating buffs regularly enough (or starting with a 20 str), you keep the lead for a bigger chunk of the low end of the level spectrum.

It's worth keeping in mind that, doing 4.5 more damage per hit at level 1 is a way bigger deal than it is in the mid-teens. It's potentially the difference in dropping something with only 1 or 2 hits, and needing 4 or 5. At higher levels, when martial types can set themselves up to consistently pile up enough bonuses potentially hitting the triple digit range, any single digit edge is pretty trivial.

Then of course there's the precision damage issue. If something is immune, the rapier loses an amount of damage equal to its user's level off this curve, which makes a huge huge difference.

You also feel this difference any time you score a crit... which is going to be pretty often. 18+ crit ranges on the weapons we're talking about, double that and it's a 15+, or 30% of the time. Now true, if you have the Precise Strike deed, every time you score a crit, you can use the point of panache you gain from doing so to add that lost crit damage back in, but that's assuming that A- You don't need that swift action for anything else, B- you don't need that point of panache for anything else, and C- You aren't scoring multiple crits in a single round, and wasting panache by hitting your cap. Plus there's this weird offset where the extra damage gets added to your next hit, not the crit, which can get kinda screwy at times.

This point is particularly relevant if we're looking at a single rapier swashbuckler next to one with, say, paired sawtooth sabers. The latter's critting more often, already getting the full damage from doing so, and getting to keep the crit panache to spend elsewhere.

So really, it's not at all like having some sort of always-on smite bonus, like it looks at first glance. It's just a weird offset to the potential damage you're losing by fighting with one hand. It doesn't come close to compensating at low levels, but kinda makes up for it by catching up on the high end of things, but at the end of the day, your output is just being brought up to par with Timmy Two-Handed.

Most of the major issues have been covered by other people (saves, swift action bottleneck, lack of appealing deeds, nothing you can't honestly do better as a fighter).

Also problematic is that the most obvious and archetypical way to throw one together is honestly a series of traps-

The whole premise of the class is to provide a viable dex-based melee character with a lot of charisma. Light armor, free better-than-usual weapon finesse, and of course, fighting with a rapier and buckler.

So to start off, we have our stats. Seems like the best way to go should be something like Dex > Cha > Con > Int > Wis > Str or some such, right? Not really though. Honestly, it's the most MAD class there is. You need a fair deal of strength in order to carry a reasonable loadout of equipment without exceeding your light load limit (which you absolutely must avoid), might as well make it at least a 13 for power attack and the various feats chained off it. You are a frontliner with a bad fort save, so you need all the con you can get. Bad will too, without any real consolation prize a la bravery, so you can't neglect that. Int is nice to have conceptually, and hey, 4 skills, but you're going to wind up dumping it through the floor, particularly since you can sub it out for feat requirements. Charisma, if you aren't subbing it in to qualify for combat maneuver feats, is shockingly inessential. Sure, it gives you more panache, but the swift action bottleneck and recharge mechanic mean you only ever really benefit from 2 points. 1 to keep the passive abilities going, one you're going to spend on some swift action or other every time it's there (and your odds of getting it back each round are fantastic). Plus, hey, there's a minimum of 1 panache, and a feat for 2 more. Totally covered no matter how low you dump it. That leaves dexterity which... honestly you don't need. You're not using a bow, you're not casting haste before the party spreads out, and your reflex save is fine without it. All you actually NEED dex for (if you're cynical enough not to chase the premise on principle with a truckload of tax feats) is AC... and even then, all you really need is enough to hit the cap for a chain shirt. Your dodge bonus, and easy shield access handle the rest. Or you can just ignore it completely and count on parry/riposte to keep you safe. So if you're looking purely at optimization, Str > Con > Wis > Int = Cha > Dex. Maybe Con ahead of Str honestly.

Now let's look at your options for weapons. Rapiers are clearly promoted, there's that deed that lets you add your level to damage if you use one, right? Well no, that's not a bonus, it's an offset, and a lousy one. All that extra precision damage does is offset the damage you're losing by not using a two-handed weapon (or paired weapons), and it's not like any of the other class features prevent you from doing so. All you're doing is giving up a big chunk of your damage every time you crit, or fight something you can't crit, without any real benefit. Speaking of crits, they're how you recharge your panache, so you want as many as you can get, and you get more with paired weapons. So ideally, you want an 18+ crit weapon in each hand, or an 18+ and a 19+. Even just two 19+ will give you a faster panache turnover. And, again, more damage on crits/against critless. Plus there's some cheese where you still get the precision damage when you aren't full attacking built into the wording.

A high dex, lowish strength smart charming rake with nearly no armor should be the best way to throw a swashbuckler together, but in practice you're shown up by a big tough dumb lug in a chain shirt with two sawtoothed sabers. Or a member of any other martial type with the amateur swashbuckler feat. You don't really feel the difference until level 11 or so when you're missing out on that bleed option, but you also aren't dying to a single lucky hit from a ghoul or a wyvern before you get there. And then there's the archetypes for Magus and Cavalier in the mix.

It keeps power gamers from breaking in-world logic by saying their character is an exemplar of everything that is good and just while making human sacrifices to honor the king of hell.

It specifically does not ever affect mental stats, so yes.

I am however reasonably sure you could not rack up another +3 to each mental stat by aging back up in your new body.

Fly gives you a Fly speed. Specifically, a 60' fly speed.

Spider Climb gives you a 20' climb speed.

Touch of the Sea gives you a 30' swim speed.

There are cases where there are important differences between similarly worded terms (Race Traits vs. Racial Traits, Character Level vs. Wizard Level vs. Caster Level vs. Spell Level), but the various "have this flavor of movement" spells are not such cases.

Abraham spalding wrote:

Yeah sounds like Divergent or Brave New World, or The giver or any other variation on that theme to me...

I would worry for the person not creeped out by the idea.

Hello, I'm a person who had their mind altered.

I suffered from clinical depression that for over a decade required medication. I regularly meet people who are leery or critical of using medication to assist when one's brain chemistry isn't doing what one wants. When I was depressed every single morning was met with dread, and pleas to some higher power for swift end was regularly a weekly occurrence. This was carved into my very physiology, and very likely my genetic code from my family history of mental illness.

Yet I had a feeling there was something better, and with placement of trust in my doctor, I agreed to medication that changed my outlook on the world, yet at the same time did not shatter my sense of self. If anything, it strengthened it, being able to look at some things in life and not be filled with a grey, morose feeling of emptiness made me have certain things to cling to, idealize, enjoy, and care about.

I understand the value of a personal identity, but if something is personal, then it is that person's, to do with as they see fit in accordance to their conscience.

Your examples of what you are creeped out by are specifically instances where a person outside the person themselves influences identity, in both cases a Big Government that wants to maintain absolute control over people.

I however, simply wanted control with myself.

See, the thing here is, you actually are in the more or less the exact same boat as the typical trans person, treatment wise. You both have a brain chemistry imbalance, which causes clinical depression. You both take medication which counters that imbalance, and leads to you being all happy and well-adjusted.

Now, if you want to use treating depression as a metaphor for some sort of hypothetical means of causing one's gender identity to conform to their body, what you have to ask yourself is, would you be fine with the anti-depressants you are currently taking if they had a side affect of completely changing your sex? You're suddenly physically in every way a woman, attracted to men, whole nine yards, but hey, you're not depressed, so it all works out, right?

Unless the answer is an unqualified yes there, it's not really a functioning metaphor.

Terquem wrote:

All I can seem to understand is that in the simplest terms, being Trans* means feeling a desire, a want, or a need to enact some kind of change. And to me, feeling a want, desire or need to enact a change, is something that transcends the Trans* experience.

And people have been explaining that being trans isn't just an issue "desire" or "want." It is as much an issue of biology and body chemistry, just like diabetes isn't an issue of "wanting" insulin. A trans person doesn't "desire" to be the another sex; they are another sex, but in a body that feeds them the wrong signals, pushes the wrong hormones, and generally makes interacting with the world harder and less fulfilling.

The hormone thing really just plain cannot ever be stressed enough. There is this very very common misconception that the reason people do the whole hormone replacement thing is something like "I want to feel pretty and have a higher voice and smoother complexion!" or "I'm really a man, so I need to be able to grow a big manly beard!" but those are really all just side effects.

What it really comes down to is that if you have brain structure X and hormone balance Y, it messes you up, like pouring sugar in a gas tank, and leaves you seriously, seriously depressed, basically all the time.

One of the surprisingly many number of transwomen I know only just came out as such a month or two ago, and I've had a chance to see this in real time as a result. It really was just like throwing a switch. Way before anything happened visibly, just purely as a result of blocking the flow of chemical A then supplementing in chemical B a couple weeks later, she totally turned around from frighteningly depressed and never sleeping right to downright perky and cheerful. It was a rather incredible to watch, really.

Speaking from the perspective of someone with a huge preference for sorcerers over wizards, I don't really see it being a huge deal.

On a general, day to day level, unless you have a campaign/GM which seriously enables the whole scry-and-fry approach, a spell book really isn't that great of an edge. I only have whatever spells I prep for the day, which in practice is going to boil down to a specific default list. Theoretically, I have access to all the others, but (short of arcane bond, which arcanists don't get) I'd have to leave and take a nap to get access to them. If it's not time-sensitive, I can really just go home and buy a scroll from somewhere. So me, I play sorcerers, and just work out spell lists that cover all my bases. Easy enough to do with some practice.

Playing a spontaneous caster is great, because if I can find room for some specialized spell that only matters now and then into my list, it doesn't deprive me of casting something the days it doesn't come up, and the days it does come up, hey, I'm potentially packing six castings. Great... but less so if you're an arcanist. They just plain don't get as many spells per day, so, that hurts. You might run out, or at least be stingier with what you have.

Plus when you're out, you don't quite have the same freedom to use exploits as sorcerers do with their bloodline powers. Very limited pool powering everything, and while sure, you can fill it higher by sucking down scrolls like pixie sticks, the sorc could just cast whatever spells are on those, and not have to commit so hard to doing so first thing in the morning.

The real things they have going for them are using extracts as a sort of build your own bloodline toolkit (which has a lot of potential) and a bit of a training wheels take on a sorcerer, where you can edit your limited spell selection on the fly when you realize there's bases that you haven't covered.

Sorcerers, if they're happy with what they do have, get more milage out of it, and some bloodline abilities really do nice things for you on a permanent basis. One gives you a druid pet, just flat out.

Wizards meanwhile have the wildcard spell from their arcane bond, always on the table, and at every other level, they have a whole extra level of spells to consider. Not bad.

And then there's Witches, who tend to get left out of this conversation, with their weird alternate spell list, and the interesting once per person per day limit on their hexes, they're still doing fine.

This of course is all assuming nothing on the final exploit list is crazy crazy great, particularly the elemental blasts which are getting a second look. If you can really lean on those all day long, getting short-changed on spell slots isn't much of a limiting factor.

There's also the fact that they get a multi-use Arcane Bond as an Exploit.

Wait, really? Was that mentioned in the recent preview?

Diekssus wrote:

Googleshng wrote:

So yeah, "biologically male" can totally be ubiquitous, totally depends which of the many biological factors generally associated with maleness you're going by, all of which are biological in nature, really.

I think the point that was being made was not "gender is a black and white issue" but more of; "In the end biology has created a term for every phenomenon under the horizon, So what's the name of this one" In science the line is drawn somewhere. and frankly I don't blame people for wanting to know that line, regardless of their opinion on the subject. Those kind of boundaries are a big part of what it means to be a person, and to know ones boundries is to know that person. Being vague about it is only acceptable to avoid prejudice or to hide shame. And I would've hoped (and from what I've seen in this section it has) that this community would be over both of those things by now.

Uh...the idea of two genders, of which you are always one or the other, isn't really biologically sound. It's more of a continuum than a binary choice, as are most things involving human beings. We try and put everything in these neat little boxes, but that's not how life (or science) actually works. And many cultures have acknowledged this to a much greater degree than our current one does.

And asking for the use scientific terminology in an article about a fantasy race that is sufficiently different from human beings that the two can't even interbreed is sorta a weird demand to make.

The real important thing to keep in mind when it comes to sex/gender related matters is, it is exceptions all the way down. 99% of the time, give or take, you're either male or female across the board, but within that 1% exception... it's just exceptions all the way down. This here for instance:

According to the best current evidence, a transwoman is born neurobiologically female with male external anatomy, eg, her brain is formed in an initial hormonal cascade in fetu and was on track for female development when there was an interruption that caused a separate hormonal cascade shaping the external anatomy. It's biology, not belief.

This needs a usually or two thrown in. While true to my understanding in the vast majority of cases, there do, I'm told, exist people who identify with a gender not matching the sex they were assigned at birth, but whose brain structure matches their assigned sex, and thus for whom the traditional hormone replacement thing, in particular, does not have a beneficial effect on their brain chemistry. Granted, that's just something like 1% of the 1% of the 1% of the population has to deal with. For the other 99% of the 1% of the 1% of the population though, yeah, that's how it tends to go, yes.

So when it comes to this here...

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Uh...the idea of two genders, of which you are always one or the other, isn't really biologically sound. It's more of a continuum than a binary choice, as are most things involving human beings. We try and put everything in these neat little boxes, but that's not how life (or science) actually works.

This takes away nothing of what I mentioned in my posts, the fact you think it is actually shows the problem here. Science does draw the line somewhere and makes definitions, if you are under the assumption that means dichotomy then that is your error and I would still like a relevant answer to it.

Science doesn't actually always do that. It's generally the goal, but we frequently run into cases where it seems like we have a topic fully figured out, then someone makes a new discovery, it turns out things are way more complicated than first thought, and there's a big scramble to study things more carefully and reorganize and re-categorize to compensate.

Take sub-atomic particles for instance. For the longest time, people thought they had everything pegged down. You've got protons, neutrons, and electrons, and they act like this, and tada, that covers all the properties of matter... oh well except light... there's a particle for that too... and hey, are these other things made of something else? And then it turns out there's quarks in the mix, and they're so weird we're at a point where someone just said "uh... they come in 6 different flavors. There's... up, down, strange, charm, bottom, and top." So suddenly that turns out to be this whole confusing mess we're still generally trying to get a handle on.

In this case, people used to think, up until really not that long ago, that being trans was some sort of mental disorder... and I mean REALLY not that long ago. The first country to officially take it off the books only did so 4 years ago. So there's a lot of classification and sub-classification actively being done, terminology still changing, and areas that could use more research, and we are not at a point where all the lines can be properly and definitively be drawn, if indeed it isn't really a case where "no seriously, it's a spectrum."

And it doesn't really help that the vast majority of the population has absolutely no education on the subject whatsoever, and people have an alarming tendency to react violently to things they have no understanding of, so the already small percentage of the population which is trans is not especially keen on stepping out from the crowd to help with the gathering of data.

All THAT being said...

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Huh? It's really pretty clear. She was born male-bodied, and eventually (after realizing she was trans*) used an alchemical version of hormone therapy to correct the hormonal issues. There's...really not another good way to interpret the end of the seventh paragraph.

If you've been reading the entire 10 pages of posts here you should've already know its not that clear-cut. and I would like it to be.

The most typical experience for a transwoman is something that's sufficiently well documented and research to say a fair deal about, has a nice scientific backing, and totally fits in with everything said about Shardra here, both officially in the blurb, and in clarifications in the ensuing discussion. She was assigned male at birth which means among other things, yes, born with a penis, and more importantly, with a physiology inclined to crank out more testosterone than estrogens, but with a female brain structure (so she's always been a woman where it really counts), and right around the start of puberty, she got all this well enough worked out to start in on (the fantasy equivalent of) hormone replacement therapy, to get all those hormones produced in the proper ratio for healthy brain function, which on the side also correctly manages all that hair growth/fat distribution/voice altering business which generally clears up any confusion. Basically setting every single flag you can look at to "woman" except for the relatively inconsequential one of what things look like below the belt, which is intentionally left ambiguous, as it tends to be in real life, largely because everyone who either is trans or has a bunch of friends who are are really really sick of the common misconception that that's the most important aspect of the whole thing, and tend to set up a fair number of laws and social stigmas based on whether people are willing to undergo life-threatening cosmetic surgery, primarily if not entirely for the sake of limited social acceptance.

A lot of people have alternative interpretations of what the story is here, primarily because there is a serious lack of any education on the subject, and if you don't have the faintest idea what it's like to be a transwoman, any story about it is likely to fly completely over your head. But again, clarification from the original source has been provided, so, there you go.

I really wouldn't call HP a sacred cow at all. That suggests that it's a bit of tradition that has gone unexamined and unquestioned for decades. Honestly though, other RPGs have generally been more keen on experimenting with other forms of damage tracking than really any other mechanic. Back in the day, Palladium had the whole HP+SDC (+MDC) system, so very many people have done random hit location tables, and limb damage, or systems that track wounds that just pile on penalties, or really abstracted systems where rather than physical damage, rolls not in your favor result in narrative consequences. Even Pathfinder has played around with a couple optional rules, like the whole massive damage thing.

At the end of the day though, HP has staying power because... it works. This really isn't a game about exploring he realistic consequences of violence, if it was, gaining extra hit dice as you level wouldn't be a thing, and combat is generally a showcase of a large variety of monsters with interesting powers, being put down fairly quickly so we can move on to other aspects of the game. Having a real simple abstract point tracking countdown to death works perfectly fine for that...

... and more to the point, as others have noted, the current system is so deeply tied into so very many aspects of the rules and how everything is balanced that you are going to really have to redesign pretty much the whole game if you pull too hard at that particular thread.

Replying to a year old post that was in response to something a year older than THAT, but hey-

The thing about the chart as is is that it is designed, primarily, to ensure most of the core races have the exact same chance as coming back as most of the core races as they do on the standard chart, but that every ARG race is represented. Which requires some tweaking.

A human for instance has a 15% chance of being human on the standard chart. On mine, it's a 63% chance of hitting the commonplace chart, then a 25% chance of hitting human. 65%*25%=15.75% Pretty darn close.

Human to dwarf? 12% chance on the classic chart, 11.97% on mine.

There's a 20% of hitting the sub-chart containing both half-orcs and half-elves, which each have 10% of the core chart, and each then has a 20% chance of coming up from there. So if you're starting as a human, you're technically down to a 4% chance of hitting either one, but you have the same chance you always did of hitting "half-human, half-something else."

Plus, dominating that group as they do, a half-elf (or half-orc) has a 53% chance of ending up on the mixed heritage sub-chart. So if you start as one of them, the odds that you will remain the same race you came in as is (drumroll), 10.6%! Vs. 10% even on the original chart.

So bam. Every single one of the 7 core races has the same chance as coming out as their original race as the old chart, and has the same chance as coming out as another of the core races (so long as you aren't crossing the half-human barrier).

While maintaining all that, you have SOME chance of hitting any given race from the ARG, and, much more importantly, if you are starting off as one of those more exotic races, you have a comparable chance to the core races of remaining the race you came in as, or a race with similar qualities to what you came in with (i.e. a goblin has a decent shot of at least staying some sort of goblinoid.

If all the core races were on the same sub-table, either the majority of races would be forced into an incredibly narrow slice of the pie, or I'd have to sacrifice the clear intention of the spell as written to generally maintain local population ratios.

I'm pretty darn proud of the math as I have it.

Googleshng wrote:

Even weirder stuff than that can happen too! Check out this cardinal for instance!

Side note: Found my IRL familiar!

I don't know, you'd probably need a really permissive GM to get a chromosomal chimera (which is the actual term, how great is that?) or "chimerism" if you want to do an image search for really amazing looking animals... plus the occasional human with stripes, it's not always a line down the middle like that.

Again, biology does all kinds of really surprising things you have to do a lot of research before you hear about.

I'm not sure how "biologically male" is "wibbly-wobbly, as regardless of appearance, she actually IS something genetically specific

You should study up then. It's a very common misconception that at least some combination of your chromosomes, brain structure, below the belt region, and tertiary sexual characteristics (body hair and such), and gender identity are innately tied together by some ironclad property of nature or something but... they aren't. It is absolutely possible, for instance, to have that manly XY chromosome pair going on, but come out looking like a girl by any standard you can observe beyond actually looking at those chromosomes. Just, while you're in the womb, the requests for those sex-trait expressing hormones that should be coming from your DNA get ignored, and the mother's body goes "eh, screw it, have a big estrogen bath instead."

Even weirder stuff than that can happen too! Check out this cardinal for instance!

That there is a bird where, due to a rare developmental issue, is male on the left half, female on the right (well, from the bird's perspective, your right and left respectively looking at it). Basically, at one point, there was going to be a set of fraternal twins here (one male, one female), but very early on the zygotes just kinda got stuck together, and developed like this.

It totally can happen with humans too, but you don't get such a dramatic look, because again, our genes are seriously outvoted by hormone baths in the womb.

So yeah, "biologically male" can totally be ubiquitous, totally depends which of the many biological factors generally associated with maleness you're going by, all of which are biological in nature, really.

It seems that she actually IS female, but had the unfortunate circumstance of being born with a deformity that made this unclear,

That's not the most flattering way of putting it, but it's not the worst way to look at what being trans means.

It is worth noting though that it's not strictly an appearance issue, there's also this big factor of how one's brain is structured, what ratio of various hormones are at play in keeping it operating properly, and what ratio one's body is set up to produce. Doesn't necessarily apply in every case (again, it's not a field where you get simple clear-cut answers when you really look into it), but correcting that sort of crazy hormone imbalance is a way bigger issue than anything cosmetic for a fairly large number of people.

Are we celebrating the character merely on grounds of their sexual beliefs and practices, or because of an appreciation for a fuller fleshed character that has to do with courage in the face of lies, greed, and fear?

Personally, I dig it because it's a well fleshed out story which touches on both a brush with death, and being trans, both of which are totally things that lead to one being identified as a shaman in various cultures. I'm not really sure where you're getting "sexual beliefs and practices" from though, because as far as her sex life goes, all that's really mentioned is an awkward first kiss, and an arranged marriage that didn't pan out, neither of which say anything particularly strong beyond her probably not really being into those two particular people, for whatever reason.

Something that comes up an awful lot in my games is unexpected sex swaps due to reincarnation. Particularly at higher levels, where the party is willing to splash out some cash for the revival of any NPCs who should happen to be killed in our vicinity. 50/50 shot it won't be an issue in theory, but in practice, "Well, the good news is, everyone killed in that last surprise attack is back with us, and the... OTHER good news is that our local high priest has volunteered to talk things out for the dozen or so of our fine citizens who have returned to us as female gnomes."*

I mean, we could splash out some more cash to correct that, but we're already out of pocket 1000 GP a person. We aren't running a charity here.

It comes up in-party now and then too (we are a cheap lot after all), varies from person to person whether we take a chunk out of the budget to do anything about it.

* It's always female gnomes. Not from GM fiat or anything, just how the dice always seem to fall.

@ Jessica: I wholeheartedly agree with you that the fantasy portrayals that cater to men are problematic, and that fantasy art should not objectify or humiliate anyone. I felt the need to explore what was meant by male power fantasies precisely because it has historically been about male empowerment through female objectification (and then defended falsely as equivalent).

As Necromancer said:

Necromancer wrote:

A better phrase might have been "conqueror fantasy" or "savior fantasy", but that doesn't have the same emotional impact.

It's useful to the discussion to point out the appropriateness of the term male power fantasy, because it indicates the gendered male agent/female object dynamic that fantasy art should avoid. One of these suggested terms would be fine when describing an appropriate specific instance, really, but it's important to acknowledge the sexist implications of the male power fantasy trope.

Important caveat: Although I'm calling out a specific post, I'm honestly not trying to attack anyone here. I just don't want to separate a term from its problematic history.

Is it time once again for the (NSFW) illustrated example of two half-naked female characters showing the difference between a sexual fantasy and a power fantasy?

Those really are just the best way I've seen of illustrating the difference there.

This is somewhat off topic from the original post for this thread though, so addressing that real quick...

I have read several threads somewhat lately where people have been complaining about art where some of the women display some level of sexuality. I can't help but think that contributed to the very sterile looking new iconics. If they pull up the brawler's belt a half inch, the entire female lot is ready to go for 1960's prime time television decency standards. Obviously there are some people that are very happy about this, but does anyone besides me find this a bad thing?

- The timing of art orders shoots that theory down.

- There has never been a time when iconics have been meant to serve as eye candy. They are there to give a quick visual impression of what a given class is all about, and to stand in for the PCs in the illustrations of various other books.

- There has never been a time when Pathfinder's female iconics just happened to be cheesecake-y as a rule. I mean, this is one of the first four classes to get one right here.

- You are severely underestimating the sort of outfits women wore on TV in the '60s, although I suppose if that's the standard you want to use, then yeah, most Pathfinder art is less cheeky.

- There are better places to look for attractive people showing a lot of skin than rule books for games, and even if that's where you restrict your searches to, fantasy art tends to skew towards what you're looking for well enough that you won't have to search for long.

- If you really want to see the latest batch of iconics showing more skin, honestly just wait a month or two, then do an image search. Some industrious fan artist should have you covered by then.

The rules specifically state that any character whose choice of deity matters for anything found within the CRB or APG must be within 1 step step of their deity, with the notable exception of inquisitors, who specifically are allowed extra leniency because the services they provide for their church outweigh the general heresy involved in doing what they need to do. Even then, they are only permitted a diagonal step from their deity's alignment (i.e. LG to TN). It is reasonable to extrapolate that without that special exception, any character must be within one step of the alignment of the deity of their choosing, there just was no particular reason to call attention to it when the non-divine classes were first written.

Really though, class shouldn't enter into it. If your alignment isn't listed as TN, then there is some basic philosophical concept your character has very strong feelings about, which somewhat inherently puts them at odds with any deities of the opposing alignment. You don't necessarily hate them, but you sure as heck aren't going to worship them.

In this case for instance, Asmodeus is an evil deity. He and his worshippers do a bunch of evil things. Sacrificing innocent victims such that their souls will be sent to hell and eventually reshaped into devils for instance, and commanding those devils to do all the nasty things they do. If you are totally OK with that, let alone considering the god responsible to be someone so great they deserve your worship, there is no possible way you can honestly refer to your character as good.

The same applies with law vs. chaos. To truly call yourself a chaotic person, you need to have a pretty fundamental and active disrespect for bureaucracy and tradition and such. I can't really picture someone who really deserves that C on their sheet not thinking Erastil, Iomedae, and Abadar are big ol' squares with huge sticks up their butts. Similarly, if you're really properly lawful, it means you're the sort of character who lives their life in a very orderly, regimented fashion, and just plain can't respect those debauched drunks and hippies in the churches of Cayden Cailean, Calistria, and Desna.

If you're neutral, there's no in-built world view so strong you can't have enough flexibility to see both sides of things, so that's all well and good, but it restricts you from several classes, paladin included.

Don't believe I saw this in the list yet- Blue Collar Gods.

The goddess of the sun for instance has to get up every freaking day before the crack of dawn to go make dawn crack, push that big flaming thing all the way up to the top of the sky, and back down again after lunch. Once she's packed the thing away she is way too tired to deal with squat. Just has a drink, and crashes the hell out until it's time to do it again.

The god of flowers has to personally oversee every single one of the little things bloom, individually, by hand. It's such an exhausting job by the time he's done he just needs to take a vacation, or deal with his other portfolios, until fall rolls around and he has to go tear down all these leaves still lying around.

Clerics then fit in because hey, at least A FEW PEOPLE appreciate all this backbreaking labor they're dealing with all the time, so hey, might as well slip'em a little something nice here and there.

Exactly like playing RPGs now, except less people were into it because crazy rumors kept them from picking up books (and, to a greater extent, there was no internet to provide a way in that didn't involve hitting up a game and hobby shop).

And I suppose it was kinda weird having devils called "fiends" for a while.

I believe the closest thing you're ever going to get to an official answer here is "This is precisely why GMs exist."

Personally I'd default to "self" defaulting to your currently occupied body for anything not enhancing mental stats or otherwise directly mentioning the mind.

Also if the question of using magic jar as a way to cheese permanent buffs onto a fighter they normally wold have no access to, I'd get out my munchkin whacking stick, although it's an expensive enough setup that I'd probably let it fly on temporary buffs.

OK summoner, you look like you're a caster, with most of the juicier bits of the wizard's spell list, so what's with the whole 3/4 BAB, d8 HD, light armor thing you have going on?

"Well, I'm not a FULL caster. I only get 6 levels worth of spells, you know, like a bard."

Aha. So you get similar spells, but while a wizard is getting their level 3 spells when they hit level 5, and a sorcerer gets them at level 6, you have to wait all the way until level 7 for them then. OK, I can see that.

"Well, yeah... some spells I actually get at a lower spell level than a wizard does though."

Oh, like the summon monster spells I assume. I suppose it would make sense that you'd get those around the same level a sorcerer or wizard would, moving some of the higher level spells down and such.

"Yeah. Stuff like those, and then stuff we'd want to cast on the summons, like haste."

... You get haste as a second level spell.

"Yeah!"

So you have access to one of the most useful spells in the game, 1-3 levels earlier than every other class that can cast it, granting your party early access, making it cheaper to make potions and wands, and preventing it from taking up one of your 3rd level slots, which you're then really using, I'm sure, to cast 4th level spells.

"I've also got this thing that's like a druid's pet except it frequently outperforms the barbarian in the party..."

1. The natural spell feat.

Pretty darn important if you're inclined to play a character who's really into shapeshifting, which is a perfectly fine thing to do in PF.

2. Scaling buff spells and quantity/stacking of buff spells.

Generally speaking, if players are stacking up a bunch of spells, it's time to do an audit and make sure it's all legal. There are very reasonable restrictions in place, although they could stand to be spelled out a little more clearly.

3. Wand of cure light wounds/knock etc in particular.

I've done without plenty often, but a generally headache free way to heal up out of combat is fine by me. The utility of a knock wand depends on a lot of things. I tend to play/run games without a lot of locked doors, and with people who recall you can just hack away until they're gone.

4. Cheap/easy magic item creation and/or purchasing power.

I don't like it, but it's too deeply integrated into the game to remove.

5. Number bloat/complexity.

I don't like the way skills scale, and a few formulae start to pull too far to the extremes at higher levels, but D&D/Pathfinder is THE numbers-go-up RPG in my mind. For anything else, I'd say it's just a weird habit, but here, no, you've gotta work your way up from goblins to dragons and such.

6. +16/+11/+6/+1, 4 attacks at +16 is fine by me.

I like the whole "get the first hit or get more hits" approach to combat tactics if that's what you're asking with this one. I do have a problem with a few newer bits of content that subvert that system (quick runner's shirts are too cheap for the rocket tag curb stomps they unleash).

7. Bonus strength damage via power attack/two handed weapons.

Pretty darn important. Getting str and a half damage with a one-handed weapon held in two hands however is pure munchkin cheese.

8. Large gaps in fort/ref/will saves.

If all saves were equal, there'd be a lot less strategy involved in playing a caster, although see point 5.

9. Spell DCs over 20.

As in, should all saving throws be capped at 20? Heck no. That'd lead to constant "don't roll a 1" situations by the mid-teens or so, level wise, and is a totally arbitrary restriction. Besides, pushing spell DCs is hard enough to min-max to be worth rewarding.

10. Unlimited ability score progression.

Part of that tricky scaling math you can't really change without breaking everything, and if we're talking about PCs, it's essentially limited to your starting stats (20), plus a maximum of 6 from equipment, and bonuses every 4th level. Past that you're looking at wishes and tomes, which still have their limits, particularly cost-wise.

11. Fighters with only 2 skill points (house ruled to 4 IMC)

I house rule in +2 skill points per level regardless of class. It's enough for 2 point classes to have a little room for personal expression, while maintaining the extra perk for 4 point classes, and those who were already drowning in skills usually just laugh and grab a profession and perform with the spares.

Obviously the poor fort is there to preserve the fighter's niche :P

Good fort and ref would just make him another "fighter but better" class for combat, which the game does not need IMHO.

A good fort save is not the fighter's niche. Retaining their mobility, and not being married to a particular weapon group or fighting style are where the fighter excels, and they have nothing to worry about on either front from a swashbuckler.

If you want to argue based on theme, there are only three existing classes with poor fort saves who don't also have 1/2 BAB progression and d6 HD. Rogue, oracle, summoner. The class which, in theory, is specialized in avoiding combat and dealing with all the other problems a party will face, the class which is explicitly frail or crippled due to their curses, and the wizard variant which only has 3/4 BAB and d8 HD as an odd quirk of design symmetry thanks to their odd spell list.

Arguing that a good fort save "doesn't make sense" for a swashbuckler is arguing that people specifically trained as experts in a style of swordplay should be less capable of shrugging off injury than clergy, entertainers, scientists, ranged combat specialists, wizards who also know how to use a sword on the side, and magic users who use summoned monsters to fight their battles for them.

On the other hand, a good reflex save can be found on bards, monks, rangers, rogues, alchemists, and gunslingers, the classes with a conceptual focus on ranged attacks/supporting the party from behind some cover. There is a strong case to be made that swashbucklers shouldn't be in the good reflex club, conceptually, as they are quite specifically melee focused, and while there is a component of avoiding hits in there, it's tied to offering up a thin profile to melee opponents and knocking attacks aside, which makes much more sense for keeping venomous fangs and stingers away from major arteries than staying low to the ground and not getting singed by wide area spells.

I'd rather not argue on theme though when there are serious issues with the basic mechanical underpinnings to debate on instead. Particularly for a class which could use all the extra thematic wiggle room it can find. And I'd also, again, like to see the final version before discussing it... so, I really should stop hitting reply in this thread, honestly.

The swashbuckler's saves have been a topic of discussion for awhile now. If anyone has the time and interest it might be worth running levels 9-12 of an AP or The Emerald Spire and counting the number of fort and will saves a swashbuckler faces.

If you dig out the playtest threads I kinda wrote a novel about the issues I had putting several swashbuckler builds through Rise of the Runelords. Chapter 2 really just murdered the hell out of every single one.

But again, hopefully they've been tweaked since.

thenovalord wrote:

Could you gain a level per 16 page adventure.....or would you need too many bonus xp from non combat?

You're an adventure writer, you don't know?

for the record i have no idea if you could get a level every 16 pages:)
can you?

You absolutely could. Depends what's on those pages, obviously, but... a big overland journey with a truckload of random encounters, that'll do it. A big ol' dungeon crawl which relies heavily on standardized mooks (either a stock NPC described once up front, or stock bestiary monsters).

What really eats up a lot of pages is any place you have a unique NPC, or any place with really detailed round by round tactics to lay out. You'll notice both extremes are often found in the same book to balance each other out. You'll get a book with an interesting variety of encounters one month, then the next you deal with a WHOLE bunch of exploring and/or same-y mooks, followed by a really memorable set piece with some really interesting NPCs.

Then of course there's the real extreme contrast example that is Forest of Spirits, which has all this great wordy interesting stuff early on, with banquets and nature spirits, and cultural flavor, then to make up for the lack of experience from an of that is this seemingly unending slog through a massive dungeon crawl that just keeps throwing the same monster at you room after room.

All the reasons for requesting a 12-part AP are described in my original post. In a few words what I request is more space for the authors to expand their ideas. I don't want to reach higher levels, I want to stop seeing glaring plot holes / omissions just because the adventure reached the page count limit.

More books per AP would not solve that problem at all.

Generally speaking, each book in an AP is written to stand on its own as a distinct adventure, and the various books in a given path are written by different authors, with overlapping timetables.

So let's say author A absolutely can't fit his adventure into the allotted pages or so, and it's all just so very awesome we can't bare to cut any of it, and we simply must let it spill over into an extra book.

First off, I think you're really overestimating the amount and frequency of awesome material ending up on the floor.

Next, we have the issue that this same author is now writing these two books back to back, which is a lot of extra stress.

Then, we have to deal with a weird cliffhanger. We obviously couldn't cram a decent conclusion in with just those 50 pages, and most APs start off with a bit of setup, then dive into a dungeon or two, with a lot of stat blocks near the end. So... how do you split that up? We can't move part of the setup into the next book, we can't say "the stats for these guys will be in next month's volume." Maybe we can move half a big dungeon over, but then it feels like we're just petering out at an arbitrary point, and hey, how many parties do you know who consistently explore all of one floor before poking around staircases?

Then there's the problem that nobody's ever going to be cutting HALF their planned content. When people go over a page count, it's still what they're aiming for. So even if we're talking about being 12 pages over the limit, this part 2 adventure has another 38 pages to fill in now. So... we pad that out, maybe with some nice big maps or towns, but it's still going to be a lot of stuff that's superfluous to the original concept, and we're probably going to want to stick to the same general percentage of combat per book, so, lots of random special NPCs to eat that up serving as major henchmen, hey, you can use one as the mid-boss at the end of the first book. Now things are really going to feel like they're dragging on for players though.

Plus, this is going to screw things up for the rest of the AP. If you're suddenly covering a wider level range, the next author, who again, was probably already writing their book when you went over the line, needs to rewrite all the encounters, heck, probably replace monsters who are no longer CR appropriate, account for a more powerful party, maybe make adjustments for any major details crammed in there...

And if you're suggesting this be a standard policy for all APs, that's going to really cause headaches for the authors who are comfortable with 50 pages for their 1/6th of a campaign... which again, I suspect is most of them, with how long they've been working with that restriction.

I'd really recommend handling it with care, because it also has high potential for upsetting folks.

It's honestly one of the creepier spells out there.

This would be the main reason why I cut it off just as they reach their target generally (well, that and it's a plenty decent spell already).

It's also why I'm rather alarmed that this item exists.

Kingmaker paladins should have some room to err on the side of their kingdom. Frankly, I don't think any paladin can really rule a kingdom of any size or difficulty without atonements. And how fun is that to set your pally player up to fail while everyone else laughs their way to emperor status.

I've been playing a long-running Kingmaker campaign, where I am both a paladin and the monarch, with a mildly antagonistic GM, and a degree of bloodthirst and sadism with the rest of the party, and I've never once had to choose between the lesser of two. I've had plenty of choices between evil and serious inconvenience, but that's something entirely different.

With Grigori, we actually ended up in this exact same boat as described here. We had a pretty decent code of laws worked up, and couldn't decisively prove him to be in violation of any of them. The rest of the party was working on various plans to discreetly snatch him up and prevent him from ever making his speeches again.

Being legitimately lawful good, I pointed out murdering/deporting/imprisoning someone whose only crime was saying mean things about you in public is a ludicrously disproportionate response, and that he totally had the right to voice his opinions, offensive and baseless as they were.

A long stretch of terrible dip checks mean it took something like 3 years before we finally managed to out-debate him into a laughing stock. In the meantime, we just dealt with that 1 point of unrest getting generated (and effortlessly cancelled out) every kingdom turn. High road taken, no real meaningful repercussions for doing so.

Now, if I were the GM in this position, I'd point out the moral realities of the situation when the party was first proposing this. "Are you seriously going to kidnap and torture someone to find out why he was saying mean things about you?"

I'd assume the ship has sailed on doing that, but you still have a chance to go double or nothing here. Grigori's a REALLY well-established public figure with a lot of connections and well-wishers. If the party caused him to suddenly disappear, people are going to question what happened. Let that blow up in their faces. People demanding the PCs look into this mysterious disappearance, holding big ol' protests to have him set free when it comes to light what they're doing. Really hold up a mirror to the party, and see how they react. It should either cause them to reconsider their course, or double down and get into some really clearly evil governance.

I have an odd little notion for a game I might run some time, largely centered around villains with nasty habits of not staying dead for a variety of reasons. Reincarnated druid, clone shenanigans, rakshasas (timescale permitting), maybe some old standby undead.

The idea would be to really push the theme, with lots of suicidal plans, and paranoia about old enemies turning up again in new forms, ultimately leading up to having to work out some unorthodox and possibly ethically dubious way to finally settle things (like, oh, dragging everyone off to stand trial in Galt).

A lot of the appeal here is in having the primary villain show up at various times, being outright defeated (or committing suicide in some spectacular fashion), only to crop back up later. The problem here is, PCs, inevitably, are going to treat this as a puzzle. Subduing the big ol' taunting archvillain through non-lethal means would derail the whole thing, so... I need to plan ahead for all the various ways that could happen.

Off-hand I can think of:

Non-lethal damage followed by imprisonment- Easily addressed in any number of ways.

Baleful polymorph/petrification/trap the soul- Ring of counterspells maybe?

Allying with some form of undead or daemon- I don't think there's any easy way for PCs to enlist one of the relevant creatures, but I could very easily be wrong.

So... brainstorming time. Any spells/magic items/other odd shenanigans I'm forgetting that could short out the premise here? Any better ideas for how to counter them?

I think enough of them probably underwent some serious changes in the crunch period between the end of the play test and what went to print so it's hard to say anything definitive. Generally speaking though, the design philosophy behind them seems to be trying to err on the side of underpowered so far as direct class comparisons go, but there's some really fun flavor to most of them. I'd expect maybe four of them to become serious mainstays after the novelty wears off, but that's really more a flavor issue than anything mechanical.

Brawlers in particular are clearly going to replace monks at tables where GMs need their arms twisted to allow for monks. Bloodragers have so much juicy flavor variation it'll take people a while to get bored. People are still going to play monks and barbarians though.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So naturally, we can't have a stat for it, as beholders are not open content.

But seriously, attractiveness is an extremely subjective thing, so even if there was some mechanical aspect of the game where it was relevant, a single numerical value wouldn't really make sense.

I would simply posit that, technically, the entry for Damage Reduction implies that there are attacks that ignore DR / -.

This is one of the stranger straws you've been grasping at but bypassing DR is not some weird hypothetical. There are in fact things which specifically mention they bypass DR. For instance:

"Regardless of the target, smite evil attacks automatically bypass any DR the creature might possess."

If the wording of quilted armor said something like "Attacks which deal bludeoning damage bypass this DR" then yeah, bullets would do full damage, because they count as bludgeoning, and that's what the rule was asking about. However, bludgeoning is not mentioned anywhere at all in the rules text for quilted armor. Piercing is mentioned. Bullets deal piercing damage, therefore, the DR is activated. The DR doesn't mention piercing, OR bludgeoning. It's just /- which means it applies to all physical damage regardless of type.

Another thing you keep insisting is that attacks which deal damage of multiple types count as whichever is most beneficial, which is untrue. They count as both at once. If anything calls out a type for any reason (as quilted armor does) anything it has to say about either applies. Usually, this works to your benefit, because most types a damage type is called out, it's in a beneficial fashion. DR for instance. If you have DR/Bludgeoning, all that matters is whether or not I'm dealing bludgeoning damage. Whether I'm also doing slashing or piercing damage doesn't enter into it. We aren't asking about that.

However, there are times when it doesn't work to your advantage. If you are fighting an ochre jelly for instance, bite attacks and firearms will always cause it to split.

Daggers, which do slashing OR piercing can get around things like that (although not in the ochre jelly case), because they only do one type of damage for a given attack, not both like a firearm.

The weird wording, as far as I can tell, exists for the explicit purpose of ensuring the DR still applied in this specific sort of corner case.

Like a big Ulfen guy with a rough beard, and bulging biceps, who looks like he washed down a steroid riddled ox roast with a gallon of mead...

We've totally got one of those. He's a dude in distress who tags along with the party from there out too even!

Krojun Eats-What-He-Kills fills in there too... and earlier someone brought up an imbalance of female genies in distress in Legacy of Fire, but, only one of them needs rescuing, and she's technically balanced out

To me, the imbalance on the illustration front is more:

-NPCs (especially those who are utterly insignificant and don't honestly merit having art included in the book at all) are more likely to receive illustrations if they are female (not by a huge degree, but it's an easy thing to pay attention to and correct).

- Female NPCs, regardless of age/race/alignment/backstory whatever, have a strong tendency to default to pretty with friendly/seductive expressions, while males... honestly have a pretty healthy variety to how they're portrayed. Which is great, but contrasts poorly here.

The professor rolls his eyes. "Seriously now? I mean, not to tempt fate or anything here, I'd turn down whatever you said, but I expected at least a effort be put in to the 'tempting' end of things. I mean honestly, the entire point of conducting a detailed study of the world around us is to refine the methods of examination. To just be handed all the answers would defeat the entire purpose!"

Lymnieris is the LG male Empyreal Lord of prostitution, chastity, and rites of passage, among other things.

And Arshea's the NG Empyreal Lord of beauty and sexuality and is genderfulid.

So...do those help?

Plus there's Dou-Bral, who absolutely was THE god of love/beauty before going on vacation and reassessing his priorities.

So sure, NOW it's Shelyn, but the concept is out there, and presumably if not for the idea to create Zon-Kuthon, that would would still be the case. Now, you could argue that you could just swap the two, and have Shelyn be the one to go all Hellraiser, but then you'd have the whips-and-spiked-chains dominatrix goddess, which would also be perpetuating a nasty trend (two really, since we'd also then have Dou-Bral trying to save his poor helpless sister). Can't address both trends at the same time here.

Googleshng wrote:

As for male nymphs, satyrs generally fill that role, but you'd want to take that one up with the ancient Greeks.

So, if Paizo decided that Paladins, Knights and Samurai would be male only, since it historically it has been so, would you tell people to take that one up with the Medieval Europe and Japan?

No. No you wouldn't.

So please, don't give me the "but mythology!" excuse. It's stupid, it's lazy, and it's profoundly irritating. We have no problems with ignoring and changing mythology when it suits us, but when it's something that doesn't bug us, personally, suddenly we have to be all according to the ancient texts.

Spare me.

Not sure where the anger is coming from here, but there's a few problems that come to mind with this comparison:

1- Your initial premise that various sorts of knights have "historically all been male" just plain isn't true, as was pointed out very very nicely earlier in this very thread.

2- You're comparing a type of creature to, depending how you're using the term, particular military titles, or just loosely defined character concepts. Generally speaking, Paizo makes it a point never restrict anything for strictly cultural reasons since the core books are written with the assumption that you are at least as likely to write all that up yourself as use their campaign setting (which of course wouldn't have that sort of restriction because they strive for gender equality with it).

3- Going by the original source material of greek mythology, seriously, there is plenty to suggest that the always-female nymphs and the always-male satyrs that are constantly dancing around the wilderness and sleeping with each other are really just the females and males of a single variety of creature, with some signifiant sexual dimorphism going on, in which case this is a bit like going "Hey! Why are there no female bulls?"

4- There is some inherent value in adapting creatures from various mythologies as faithfully as possible, and not adding new information along the way. Particularly when a major goal you have in filling out a big ol' book of mythological creatures is to present an unbiased catalog to flip through when trying to write a story based in a particular culture's mythology.

5- Really, I should have just started with this one. There actually isn't a single sentence on the page covering nymphs in the Pathfinder Bestiary which in any way indicates that all nymphs must be female. No restrictions on who their Blinding Beauty ability can effect either by the way.

6- Even if there was such language on that page, I'm not seeing how it could really be a problem. Nymphs aren't something you can play as, so if you're bringing one into a game, it's pretty safe to assume you're the GM. As the GM, you're the one making the world, so if you want there to be male nymphs in it, nobody is in any position to stop you.

One thing i have noticed in the "strong female character" is that they are all attractive, that these fantasy races that are female dominate are almost always described as attractive. Yes we still get the evil is ugly trope out of a couple of them but overall still pretty females are the rule. Male dominate are almost exclusivly stereotype brute male roles and ugly. I would just like to see more variance is all. If more options and variety are good for female characters and gamers is not the same true for males?

Do you have any actual examples here? There is, to my knowledge, one good leaning, generally attractive, matriarchal society in the setting, which is specifically a shout out to old pulp era planetary romance stories. That's not really a trend.

Also I'd kinda like to know where you're coming from with this "dwarves are ugly and brutish" bit. Seems more like you just don't like beards or something and you're doing a lot of projecting from there.

Now, if you meant to say there's a weird trend in illustrations of good women in positions of authority being presented as very traditionally attractive, there you totally have a point, but that's less an issue with the setting and more an issue of old habits dying hard with the artists being commissioned to illustrate everyone.

I've never told anyone "hey you, play a cleric!" I have told people "So... everyone else in the party is playing some sort of fighter. It's going to be way way too crowded and frustrating if you do, so I'd really really suggest you make a cleric or a bard or something along those lines."

And... I've said that to people who turned around and made a 4th or 5th fighter, and ran with it, and... as predicted, everyone in that campaign ended up really frustrated because everyone was constantly stepping on everyone else's toes, and fights were ending too fast, and there was nobody to remove diseases.

Generally, working out group dynamics before a game starts is an important thing to do, both for mechanical balance and just, you know, avoiding clashing personalities.

Orfamay Quest wrote:

Larkos wrote:

The society of Middle Earth is archaic and meant to evoke the mythical past. Using "Man" to mean human is fitting in the setting.

Yes, but "the mythical past" is also highly sexist, as Tolkien was well aware. As you point out, he was born in 1892, meaning that within his lifetime married women were granted the right to control their own property, to enter the professions, to stand for Parliament, and to vote.

I don't see any indications that women had any of these rights, even in the ostensibly more modern Shire. Just as a simple example, do we have any suggestion that any member of the Shirriffs was a female? Do we even have a suggestion of female leadership, such as a Mistress of Brandy Hall? (I note in passing that Peregrin apparently had three older sisters who were passed over for the position of Thain.)

"Ostensibly more modern?" The whole point is not it isn't modern. It's looking towards the past. Just because women had more rights in his time does not mean that they were equal or that sexism wasn't still around. It didn't even make causal sexism a minority opinion.

A fantasy writer today must contend with feminism's much larger cultural stake today. Readers will expect more female characters who do things. Even the 2000s movie adaptation gave Arwen a bigger role partially because they wanted more women on screen. (If you're more cynical, it's because they wanted to get their money's worth out of Liv Tyler.)

This wasn't true of Tolkien's era. The mere fact that he had Eowyn is amazing. Many other authors of his day wouldn't have had a woman who not only held her own in a fight but beat a powerful bad guy that none the male heroes could (though Merry helped too but he's not exactly Tolkien's society's definition of a suitable man.) Does this make Tolkien a feminist or even not a sexist? No. But it's better than many of his contemporaries.

As a whole, I do prefer Golarion to Middle Earth and gender...

Stop me if I'm putting words in your mouth here, but it kinda looks like the defense you're making here is roughly, "while feminism was a thing while Tolkien was writing, there was a historical nature to his stories, clearly setting them before the feminist movement."

The problem with that though, is that the basic premise of feminism is, put really bluntly, "Oh hey! Turns out women are actually people, not just talking pets who produce and care for children! We really should think of and treat them as such!"

So sure, if you're working with a historical setting (or, a fictional setting closely modeled after a period of history), it's totally valid not to go granting all the women equal rights within the story, and relegate them to the whole wife/mother/lowly servant box, if not full on treating them as some dude's property. However, as you, the author of this story, do live in a world where someone has, presumably, explained this whole "women are people too" notion, you are obligated to acknowledge that the lack of rights for women in both the story you are writing, and the historical period you're basing it on, represented an absolutely terrible, unfair, oppressive system, and that even at the time, this wasn't really something women were OK with, because it's not like they just magically became people some time around the early 1900s, that's just when there was a push to start acknowledging it.

So if Tolkien had been properly on board the feminism train, we'd probably still have Eowyn as the only woman on the battlefield, sure, but we'd have a lot of other women showing up in the story in general, and likely some commentary about how they're frustrated being stuck at home and not really able to have a proper impact on things. Not to the same degree we get in A Song of Ice and Fire, because that series has a huge axe to grind about overly romanticizing these sorts of societies, and pointing out the flaws and injustices is thus way more important there, but still.

And true, Tolkien does seem a lot more neutral with regards to feminism than actively opposed, so it's not really something to vilify him over, but if you want to compare him to his peers, C.S. Lewis, regardless of all his other issues, at least actively went out and wrote his big fantasy series with a consistent 50/50 gender split amongst the protagonists. There's still some weird double standards in there (Really Santa? Peter and Edmund get swords, but all Susan gets is a horn to call for help with?) but the effort is being made.

Oh, and bringing things back on topic a bit, a major justification for sexism in the real world comes from citations of passages from various religious texts, which generally reinforce the hell out of all sorts of societal norms, so, yeah, just having the pantheon it does goes pretty astoundingly far towards justifying equality in Golarion.

Well, if we're looking for proper examples to toss out as role models, no. Rorschach totally has the dedication and clarity of purpose sure, but there's that whole bit in there where you also have to rise above the evils you're confronting and generally serve as an inspiration to others, and that's where he really deviates from the concept.

Well, there's all he same restrictions you need to deal with when casting raise dead normally, aside from the material component, and in order to use it you need to burn through 10 uses of lay on hands, which isn't possible at level 4 unless you somehow manage to get a paladin that low up to 26 charisma. Technically, you shouldn't be able to take Greater Mercy until you get your first mercy, and Ultimate on the following feat level too, but... whatever GM is going to let you get away with cranking your cha that high that early would probably wave that too.

Otherwise though, yeah, it's an astoundingly handy feat.

I would have to assume not. Pretty sure the general version of goblin child reering goes:

Babies is born, generally ignored for a while.

Babies starts biting everyone's ankles, gets to be a problem action needs to be taken against.

Babies are rounded up, probably with tongs, and crammed into the open baby cages.

While in there, all the screaming starving babies in the other cages remind those with the tongs that oh yeah, these things need to eat, don't they.

Half the tong carries space out and do something else, while the others bring by a box full of rats or something to throw at all the caged babies.

Those babies that don't starve, and aren't cannibalized by other babies eventually work out how to unlatch their cages, or just plain full on outgrow them, and generally make a break for it, joining goblin society, such as it is, by getting distracted by whatever crazy things the adults are throwing together or trying to catch small birds to eat.

Presumably, boredom and distraction lead to fresh pregnancies often enough that people make cage runs frequently enough to sustain population growth.

That said though, I suppose they might have totally vestigial mammary glands. Humanoids generally tend to, they're probably derived from another humanoid race one way or another, and a lot of them worship Lamashtu. She's all about things having things there's no sensible reason for growing out of them.

This is a fantasy game. As long as the "likes girls" crowd is getting Samaritha, Aerys, Sasha, Ameiko, Sandara, and Arueshelae, the "likes guys" crowd should get options just as attractive, not the old, fat, bald guy who pees himself in terror when combat starts.

EDIT: And what's up with the 'S' and 'A' names, now that I list them?

Hey, you missed me!

Edit: Just wanted to mention what female players find attractive - usually they're looking for co-equal* characters, not damsel in distress types. Rescuing a female NPC may make her more attractive to the male NPC rescuer, at least if she's not totally drippy - the Princess Bride does this trope well, as does Star Wars ep IV - but male characters who need rescuing can be a turn off, unless they elicit a mothering response and/or handle captivity with great wit & equanimity - Johhny Depp can pull off the latter kind of character, Leonardo diCaprio the former, but it's a challenge for most GMs. So creating a strong male NPC potential love interest can be challenging. Vencarlo Orisini is done well IMO, eg he's shown in action being highly competent, before needing rescue later.

*IRL a superior competence man may be more attractive ('hypergamy'), but in power-fantasy RPGs the player probably doesn't want her female PC to be overshadowed by her NPC boyfriend/husband. His having a few extra levels on her may be fine, but not in a way to overshadow her - eg a martial or multiclass NPC could be somewhat higher level than his PC Wizard or Druid girlfriend, but won't risk outshining her at least by the time she's 5th level or so.

This is getting into tricky territory. Setting aside the issue of whether this might be a case of overgeneralization, you're introducing a nasty problem with this. The only NPCs I can think of that specifically exist as potential romance options are the ones from Jade Regent. Most of these are just NPCs who play a notable role in an AP that romance-minded PCs may happen to pick up on. Either people you rescue, or allies who actually actively help you out.

In a given AP, you are pretty much always going to be rescuing a lot more people than you will be making viable allies, especially if we're looking at ones who are on par with the PCs... and if you want them to stay on par for the duration, that's not going to happen at all. It's a basic principle of APs that the PCs are the heroes. The only ones who can save whatever city/region/nation/world/organization from certain doom and all. People in need of saving (or, otherwise are helpless to solve their own problems and inclined to show gratitude) are great quest hooks. Viable peers steal the spotlight from the party, and if you throw a bunch in, eventually the game isn't really about the party any more, it's about some big gang of people of which the party are just a small part.

Even if you did manage to get a viable peer for each rescuable "damsel" type, splitting them evenly gender wise wouldn't work by your logic. You've got, say, 3 strong independent ladies for people into those, 3 damsels in distress, and then only 3 "viable" male options in the form of tough fellow adventuring dudes, since we're ignoring our 3 "helpless beta male" types. So effectively, that's a 2:1 ratio. Now, if all the helpful peers were men, and all the people needing saving were women, you'd have your ratio in place, but... you also have a Very Serious Problem from a feminist perspective with regards to these NPCs.

As for Zellara:

Spoiler:

She's 'talking with the PCs and they don't even realize she's dead until they find the body' dead. That kind of dead hardly exempts her from being a love interest possibility. Hell, once they get Resurrection, she might not even be that.

Actually...

Big question; how do you have fun? This is big because I have DMed situations where nothing less than an firm railroad kept things active and CR 5s are proving too challenging for the 10th level party, and the amount of plot hand holding and needing just made an increasingly boring story for me. If the party goes to the tavern to find and apprehend the criminal One-Eye Willy, and walk through the door and do nothing but look at each other for thirty minutes inside I want to stab myself and then quit GMing.

So what exactly are you doing when they're just glancing back and forth?

My #1 rule when GMing is "dead air is the enemy." If there is ever of more than a few seconds, and especially if it seems like the party is collectively at a loss of what to do, I start talking. Maybe I go into more detail about the current scene, run over a quick version of what the've been up to in the grand scheme of things in case someone forgot an important detail of the plot, or I'll point out something that strikes me as particularly relevant to one of the characters. If there's a situation where they're deadlocked trying to pick one of several options, and are discussing it anywhere public, I will absolutely have an eavesdropping NPC toss their two cents in on the issue.

Works great. Especially the bit where you fill in extra details. I mean, extreme example here but compare:

"OK, you head over to the tavern where One-Eye Willy is said to hang out. Now what?"

or

"OK, you head over to the tavern. The door swings open easily enough. It's pretty lightly populated. There's a bartender with a huge handlebar mustache scrubbing out a mug and nodding as you enter. Over in one corner is an old man nursing a beer and keeping his head down. In the opposite corner, a lady of the evening is giving Bob the eye. The only other patrons you see are a trio of drunks, lined up at the bar with decreasing posture, and on closer inspection a fourth who's already hit the floor. Past that, there's just a rusty chandelier, and a stairwell leading up to a few rent rooms."

If the second example still isn't enough, eventually one of these people is going to engage the PCs, or someone else might wander in. If you just keep tossing out the details, you paint an increasingly clearer picture, and eventually SOMETHING is going to hook someone into engaging and you'll have things moving.