Ixal's page

But again, that doesn't help matters when it happens at 5:30 PM on a Friday night and won't get removed until Monday morning. Unless you don't think moderators deserve to have days off?

And does attacking other posters make the mods wake up earlier so that they can remove the post sooner? No.

Seems like Galactic Magic will have a similar chapter as A Galaxy of Tech (The Magical Galaxy)

Dragonlance and Greyhawk both had "destroy the current setting" events, too, IIRC.

I'll do what I always do: take the stuff I like, ignore the stuff I don't, add stuff of my own to flesh out the former. Canon at your table is whatever you decide it is.

And, hey: maybe they'll use this to finally fix starship combat? I can dream...

Not sure about Greyhawk but Dragonlance's Age of Mortals was not received well either.

The drift is one part of what makes Starfinder unique and removing it now would only dilute the setting.
Does it prevent some stories to be told? Yes. But it also enables others which would be impossible with traditional FTL.

Instead of removing what makes Starfinder unique Paizo should instead improve the internal consistency of the setting to make better use of its unique aspects.

Planetary invasions are easy as long as you have enough nukes. Offer the natives the opportunity to willingly follow and enforce your laws, scrub them and repopulate if they decline. The Idari wanted the planet, not the inhabitants, after all. Their existence was an unfortunate and unforseen complication that could have been resolved from orbit, theoretically.

It surely has to be cheaper to bombard the population away and then fix any environmental effects than to invade with an army and take every city with house to house fighting. I gather the Azlanti run a mixed strategy, some of each. It's also probably cheaper than terraforming a lot of marginal planets, just do pest control on one that is already good enough.

Massed nuclear bombardment has the problem of heavily damaging the ecosphere. At one point you have to ask yourself what your goal actually is.

Also, the orbit is far less safe for the attacker than how it is usually portrayed in SciFi. The attack of Klendathu in Starship Troopers is a good guideline how just getting into orbit and landing troops on the ground will turn out when the enemy is equally advanced as you are.

I think the comparisons to holy water are in bad faith. The problem isn’t that tefillin are in the game--it’s that one of the three major pieces of ritual apparel for Jews (the others being the kippah and the tallit) is portrayed as a marker of pure evil. Maybe 99% of players don’t know what “phylactery” means. It’s not even a term Jews usually use for tefillin, although it may have been when Gary Gygax learned it, since he grew up during the days of abandoning Hebrew terms and adopting English ones in an attempt to appear less scary and foreign to gentiles. But when players look it up, the first thing they’re going to see is that phylacteries are something Jews wear.

So when Jews don't usually use it and the name not coming from Jews/Hebrew but from a general term from the Greek, why is it a Jewish term? Just because you have been told by others that it is and you have to feel offended by it?

I don't think it's a bad thing that Good gods are held to higher standards than Evil ones, nor do I think we should expect symmetry there - it's the nature of good and evil. It's hard to be good and easy to be evil.

If someone spends their whole life as an upstanding citizen, donates to charity, does volunteer work, etc, and then one time murders a person in cold blood, we don't characterize them as "mostly good".

I would also like to restate that for a deity especially there's a big difference between their actions and their tenets. I think you could have a Good deity who personally mistrusts dwarves, but not one who extolls their followers to hate dwarves. The difficult part, of course, is that this is a god and a religion we are talking about, so it can be very hard to separate a deity's character from their tenets - after all, aren't the followers of a god typically going to try to emulate that god to some degree?

Yet when you subscribe to alignment as objective forces then staying evil would require as much dedication to the force of evil than staying good would.

Ixal wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

AoE's system for loot is extremely problematic as written. You basically steal their whole wealth from anybody you want as long as you consider them guilty of offenses, even if you framed them yourself. It encourages PCs to play crooked cops, since honest ones will actually lose on wealth and equipment.

Thats the whole problem. While advertised as a cop AP you are not playing cops, you are playing adventurers. Still charging in with greataxes and flinging fireballs and still looting your victims.

As written, sure - but it would not take too much to change that. Converting from d20 system to something with a more narrative/story focus, this becomes less of a problem for me and my table specifically, as party power/competency isn't dependent on acquiring x amount of treasure and magic items.

EDIT: Also, if they do veer into bent cop territory, I get to introduce a new NPC from Internal Affairs who starts asking questions and making life difficult, which would gel nicely with the events of book 5.

IMO, I don't think every group of players will notice or care about the arguaby icky connotations of fantasy policeman looting the fantasy bank robber they just immolated with fantasy magic fire. It's a cool theme, players get to lean into broad cop genre stereotypes and have fun bashing malcontents with a truncheon. I game to get away from all the horse manure of daily life/politics, I don't need Paizo to painstakingly recreate the same environment in my fantasy game world and will just change anything that really irks me.

But hey, that's just me.

Getting back on topic, tis truly a glorious time to be converting Pathfinder 2 adventures to a system that isn't Pathfinder 2!

Sure I can rewrite AoE to require the players to think about how much force is appropriate instead of giving them a blanc cheque by making everything nonlethal, have them not loot enemies and instead rely on issued equipment and their pay, add NPCs and checks in case they try to swipe things anyway and introduce more cop dilemas.

Once they get to the other planets I wonder if Dragonkin will be playable like in Starfinder.

Although in SF genetic engineering is used as explanation why Dragonkin are shrunken to be just large (a requirement for PC adventuring) it is highly questionable.

AoE's system for loot is extremely problematic as written. You basically steal their whole wealth from anybody you want as long as you consider them guilty of offenses, even if you framed them yourself. It encourages PCs to play crooked cops, since honest ones will actually lose on wealth and equipment.

Thats the whole problem. While advertised as a cop AP you are not playing cops, you are playing adventurers. Still charging in with greataxes and flinging fireballs and still looting your victims.

The River Kingdoms definitely have jousting and competitive archery if I remember correctly from Kingmaker AP.

Any sort of international or big national league or standard would be implausible due to long travel times so there is likely wild regional variations in a "rugby VS soccer" kind of way.

Humbly,
Yawar

A modern national league certainly not, but a system where each regio sends a team to the capital once a year and they play against each other in a tournament could certainly exist.

I still think 2E APs have a serious problems which also affects Starfinder. Paizo is, for whatever reason, using uncommon (for PF/SF) adventure hooks instead of the normal adventurers. Circus, City Watch, a tournament, space trucker, etc.
Not sure how well Strength of Thousands with its school background is working out, but in the other APs the hook quickly fades away and the APs play out like any generic PF game with dungeon crawling and looting.
Agent of Edgewatch being probably the AP with the biggest disconnect between the hook/scenario and how it played.

Either Paizo really has to lean into its uncommon scenarios and rewrite a big part of how adventures are supposed to play out for each AP or they have to go back to having generic adventurer APs as thats who the rules are written for.

I am French. The French Revolutionary Terror was one of sources of inspiration for Galt. As was the Russian Soviet Revolution of 1917. But AFAIK Galt is very different from France in a number of meaningful ways. Where are the Chouans for one ?

Same for Taldor and Byzantium : it was one source of inspiration, but another was Louis XIV's France.

If you look for a deep level of in-world consistency when looking at Golarion, especially by referencing RL historical periods, you will be deeply disappointed.

Golarion is a nicely crafted patchwork of settings inspired by pop memes where it is fun to adventure, with its very own cosmology/mythology. Do not look for anything beyond this.

Sure there are no deep historic treaties in Golarion and some differences, just look at the at the role of nobility in historical politics and the complete lack of that in Golarion.

“Galt's state of anarchy is a direct and exact copy of the Reign of Terror in France.”

A meme version of a constant bloody revolution, an exception, not the norm.

“And Qadira is a satrap. Dou you know what a satrap is? A form of provincial government used by Persians. It also has a Vizir with a lot of authority, another Persian specialty, although later coped by the caliphates.”

Way to misread, I mean specific governments, not that governments don’t exist. Qadira is satrap, and? Andorran is a democracy. Neither of which are the only ones.

“And right next to it you have Taldor, basically the Byzantine Empire including their history, use of prefectures, their complicated government and even having their own version of the Varangian Guard in the form of the Ulfen Guard with the exact same reason for existing.”

Other than the Ulfen Guard that distinction is baseless. They’ve said the Byzantine is an inspiration for Taldor, but claiming it’s an exact copy is nonsense.

Having prefectures and complicated governments is not something unique to the Byzantine.

You really need to learn more about history.

Galt is not a meme version of revolution, France did resolve into exactly this kind of anarchy, including beheading the ones who supported it in the first place. It wasn't called Reign of Terror for nothing. Even the notable characters are similar.

Qadira is in fact the only satrap in the inner sea region. And the term satrap was exclusively used for areas held by Persian Empires (even when they changed hands). Quadira also uses positions used by the Persians and even the characters have (ancient) Persian names.
It is a mashup of several eras of Persia, but the connection to Persia is obvious.

Same for Taldor. It has the same background as Byzantium, the byzantine politics were famous for being convoluted and bloody, so much so that byzantine even became a word meaning exactly that. And Byzantium also inherited the roman system of prefectures which made it special to feudal countries existing at the same time. And as mentioned there is the Ulfen Guard.
Really it is obvious that Taldor is the Byzantine Empire. The only thing missing are chariot races.

“And its not just behaviour, many nations on Golarion are obvious copies of historic real world nations (Galt, Qadira, ...).”

In aesthetics, not copies of the nations and government themselves.

“So when even the autors say "this is France/Persia but with magic" you of course look at how the historic France/Persia looked like when you want to know details the source books do not provide.”

Where have the authors said that?

Completely and utterly wrong.

And Qadira is a satrap. Dou you know what a satrap is? A form of provincial government used by Persians. It also has a Vizir with a lot of authority, another Persian specialty, although later coped by the caliphates.

And right next to it you have Taldor, basically the Byzantine Empire including their history, use of prefectures, their complicated government and even having their own version of the Varangian Guard in the form of the Ulfen Guard with the exact same reason for existing.

And its not just behaviour, many nations on Golarion are obvious copies of historic real world nations (Galt, Qadira, ...).

So when even the autors say "this is France/Persia but with magic" you of course look at how the historic France/Persia looked like when you want to know details the source books do not provide.

Cheap serum of sex change exist. Problem solved.

Anytime you want to use history as a basis for making a game decision, I find that it helps to remember the "Well Actually..." problem. At almost every level of history education you are told that what you learned previously was inaccurate, biased, or incomplete. And ultimately, we only know what was written down or what we can surmise from the traces of the peoples long past.

We think we know what was going on, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Someone could discover something tomorrow and upend our entire understanding of social dynamics of historical people.

That is to say, Anytime I think I know something about history, I have to accept that what I think I know is probably wrong in some respect and has no more authority than just making something up in most cases.

That said, I do enjoy attempts to make fantasy worlds fit into our understanding of historical economic models. Because thinking about questions like "How does druidic plant producing magic effect the size of farmlands in this location? Or "This town shouldn't be able to sustain itself with the listed population and industries. There must be an explanation." is fun to me.

We might not know all the details and get some of them wrong, but the similarity between some parts of Golarion and historical Earth go far beyond details.

I already mentioned Galt. It is a very close copy to France during the reign of terror. It not only features the same setup, the same instruments and the same institutions, but even some notable characters in Galt are very similar to real world persons like Robespierre.

Another country is Qadira. Not only does the description fit Persia )or rather, a province of Persia), although imo with a Arabian blend which is not much of a stretch as Persia was later conquered by Arabians, the books also use Persian terms when calling it a satrap or having the position of vizir.

Even Sarenrae who came to the inner sea region through Qadira has similarities to Ahura Mazda (the main Persian god) as both are unquestionably good sun deities.

Why is this done? Because its a shortcut. Designers start with an already established foundation they can build up on and when you only have a limited amount of pages its easier to say "like France/Persia but X" and devout your pages to detail X. If players want more information, some which would be too special as to be practical to be printed in a game supplement, they can then open a history book and find tons of information there.
Everybody wins.

I thought PF2 was based on mythical interpretations of good and evil and some historical ideas?

It is, unless it isn't.

When pressed they try to weasel out of it by saying "its not history, its tropes!" which is basically a other word for mythical interpretation (although I fail to see how Galt is supposed to be a trope and not a copy of historic France)

But then some other topics are supposed to be seen through a completely modern lense despite pretty much all PCs being serial mass murderer under modern standards and not to be allowed to do what they do in the APs.

@Temperans I would argue that even then, the better way to take Erastil is that he wants someone staying to run the home. Having that parent need to be the mother is what would make this Good god unduly fixated on traditional gender roles. Erastil could be just as set on encouraging a traditional rural 'small c' conservative lifstyle by strongly encouraging one parent to remain home and tend the hearth, ensure the household is looked after, and raise the children and the other out hunting/farming/doing work without caring particularly about whihc parent does which role.

I tend to be fine with Erastil as a god whole prefers a stay-at-home-parent type of family, but if that's the case, he should be just as fine if it's a stay-at-home dad while the mother is the primary out-of-house worker

The thing is, pregnancy itself and also nursing babies requires the mother to stay at or close to home. After that period is over they can switch roles if its advantageous, but it might be convenient not to to avoid disruption of work when roles are switched.

Not that staying at home has the same meaning as it does today (or rather, had half a century ago). In a typical pre-modern village there is plenty of necessary work to do at home so its not that one person is the provider and the other is not.

Someone made the suggestion that there is a ritual or blessing which basically turns the milk of an animal into baby formula to allow someone else to feed babies when the mother is away, and after thinking about it I warmed up to this idea.

That was basically the discussion back then and the point some people started to throw around insults and accusations.

Rysky wrote:

I'd say "You must demand and fight for others’ freedom to make their own decisions." directly challenges Stockholm Syndrome and other abusive relationships, but I can see people arguing over this.

FWIW I agree completely. The Liberator will empower the enslaved to get back in touch with their inner strength, shatter the shackles on their minds and decide in full confidence and freedom what they choose for themselves.

The big question is how does the Liberator recognizes what the real free will of someone is.

I still so no reason that Golarion should not be more culturally advanced than earth in some regards. Earthfall was like 11000 years before the present (and there was like a Star Trek civilization before it) whereas the earliest known human civilization on earth was around 3000BCE.

Considering that chattel slavery still exists in many parts of Golarion in what whey are they culturally more advanced?

Edit: Or are you now talking about a different topic than Slavery and Liberators? Because I still do as that is the thread topic.

The thing about Liberators and Prisons is that the Liberator ought to be much more inclined for something akin to restorative justice, where the perpetrator of the crime understands and admits the harm that they did and makes amends to the victim and the community to the extent that is possible.

Obviously, Pathfinder is a game where you have like "demon murder cults" so that sort of approach isn't going to work for all crimes, but it's going to be a better approach for the Liberator in 90%+ of cases where someone did a crime.

Sounds more Redeemer to me.

Leaves either punish him with fines (physical punishment is not really an option either) or hope that the criminal understands that he did wrong. If he does not then.... what?
No idea really what other option there is. Guess its back to imprisonment and arguing that its not forbidden by the code. Or the Liberator says that normal crime is not his responsibility and ignores it.

...

If you consider something acceptable or not is subjective. Even with a modern mindset you will find many people who have no problem with working off your debt as long as the person is not mistreated and has a chance to eventually pay it instead of being kept in perpetual poverty even though that is (debt) slavery.

And in regions where slavery is still practiced you will certainly get very different answers about what is acceptabel.

What I said, or what I meant to say, was that "US" style chattel slavery (although not limited to the US but used around the globe. I only use US because most people here will be most familiar with that) was the worst kind of slavery based on:

- Enslavement without any fault of the slave
- No rights or protection from bodily harm
- Lives in poverty
- Harsh treatment
- No way to legally escape

Many forms of slavery used in history were better in one or more categories, for example it required the slave to do something to be enslaved like a crime or failing to repay a debt to slaves retaining their rights and posesions and have a way out if it. Up to the tiny fraction of slaves who lived a life of luxury.
Does any of those permutations make it acceptable? That is subjective. A Liberator would categorically say no. But when that differs from how the society, or worse the GM and players see it it creates problems.
Thats why I think that Paizo decided that on Golarion only chattel slavery which everyone can agree on is bad exists. (Based on them saying it was a mistake to have a LN slaver and other comments).
Introduce other forms of slavery at your own risk as it would make things more complicated.

You would even mean you have to define what slavery is. What about slaves who have been so indoctrinated to have accepted their lot in life (especially relevant for Liberators as they are all about personal choice). What about serfdom? Or the lowest rung in a caste system?

Again Absu for the win for requiring you to check if someone deserves smiting before doing so.

"Thing is, if you use more nuanced slavery based on history instead of always evil chattel slavery Paizo seems to have decided to use"

We call this softballing.

When I type that into google I get some very different results.

You could also, I'unno, not try to downplay the other forms of slavery?

How is mentioning different forms of slavery downplaying them?

In history there simply was not just one form of slavery but many different kinds which varied by who could be taken as slaves, how they were treated and what rights they had. Often there were several types of slavery even within the same country.

That ranges from the worst kind of slavery, people abducted or even born into slavery and worked to death, over temporary or even voluntary slavery who still had rights and even property of their own to slaves, as pointed out above, who lived a better life than most people and even though they were forcibly taken certainly did not want to leave once they got a taste of living a luxorious life.

The first one was probably the most common (except maybe the born into thing, that was specific to the west/europe/usa as far as I know) and the one Paizo thinks of when talking about slavery. That slavery was "an upgrade" only applied to a tiny fraction of slaves.

Thing is, if you use more nuanced slavery based on history instead of always evil chattel slavery Paizo seems to have decided to use Liberators would quickly become too disruptive to be playable.
But even if you do, when you follow the Liberators code to the letter they would also object to imprisonment as PossibleCabbage already hinted at.
How can someone make his own choices when he is locked up?
And when you try to rationalize it by saying "it his own choices that lead to imprisonment" you are instantly on a slippery slope of justifing some forms of slavery.
And when you say that imprisonment is different and ok, then one can ask the question why locking some one up and leaving him to rot is better than locking someone up and forcing him to work? Especially as doing nothing can be more harmful psychically than doing nothing.

Thats why I like Absu as a deity as he has "Think before you smite" written into his code and thus can work in a less black and white setting.

No one is ever "fairly enslaved" nor does anybody wish to remain enslaved.

In Golarion as envisioned by Paizo that is probably true, but in history there were instances where people wanted to be enslaved because it presented a rare form of upward mobility.

For example Osman Jannisary. They were essentially slaves, children taken from christian families at young age and trained into fanatical muslim elite warriors. Not unlike the Unsullied from Game of Thrones.
But they were quite high ranked and also took over administrative duties and rivaled nobility in status and power. So much so that often muslim families tried to smuggle their children into them.

Another example would be the Mamluks, which translates into "slave dynasty". A not insignificant country whichs upper echelon was made up entirely by slaves purchased and abducted from far away countries and even the ruler himself was elected from within the ranks of slaves.

Another point:

"*You must respect the choices others make over their own lives, and you can’t force someone to act in a particular way or threaten them if they don’t."

A slaver is making choices over other people's lives, so those choices are not covered here.

Otherwise, you could have the weird situation that it is always preferable for a Liberator to free slaves violently rather than non-violently (as the latter might involve non-lethal coercion). It would be more logical to suggest that decisions made about other people's lives need not be respected by a Liberator.

That makes things more complicated.

Historically it was also very common for defeated soldiers in a war to be enslaved. When the slave was not pressed into service but chose to become a soldier wouldn't slavery be a consequence of his choice he accepted when he made it?

It also touches on other things. The separation of church and state. While total separation is a modern concept there was always a conflict about secular and divine authorities. And while you have Rahadoum no noble anywhere except very pious ones would be thrilled to be overruled by clergy, especially as on Golarion you have dozens of different faiths. If they all could overrule him any secular title would be as good as powerless.
And while all this won't stop a Liberator, it will certainly affect how he is treated which is in many cases probably like a vigilante (Punisher, not Batman). Even a good ruler is probably not keen on a liberator executing a delegation from Cheliax which was just passing through.

Ixal wrote:

Fluff books were one of my favorites in Shadowrun.

But I don't think they will work for Starfinder. Simply to little attention has been paid when the game was first creates to have a world that makes sense. Instead of you have gameist systems everywhere like the whole economy which do not make any sense from a in character point of view, so it is hard to write fluff which meshes with the system.

Tech Revolution proves you undeniably wrong from the start.

No it doesn't. A few pages are something different than an entire book of fluff. And even the small sections in Tech Revolution only really work when you completely ignore the reality of Starfinder with item levels restricting purchases, exponential costs (good luck buying a car in Starfinder) and the ability to replicate anything everywhere (why ship goods when you can instead ship UPB and a schematic?) and so on.

Why would emergency care be anything other than serums of healing which are just so cheap? Clinics use Sprayflesh? Really? And media being shipped physically around the pact worlds instead of transmitted with encryption is also rather unbelievable.
And how can most people own domestic drones when you need to be level 2 to buy one?
And the list goes on.

Granted, sometimes the fluff does take specific game mechanics into account like how locks account for the lock spells ability to open two locks at once.

Fluff books were one of my favorites in Shadowrun.
But I don't think they will work for Starfinder. Simply to little attention has been paid when the game was first creates to have a world that makes sense. Instead of you have gameist systems everywhere like the whole economy which do not make any sense from a in character point of view, so it is hard to write fluff which meshes with the system.

You don't have to explain Paizos reasoning to me. I just disagree heavily with them as the hover chairs are very immersion breaking both by the way they function and how they fit in the setting.

That the chairs change their attributes depending on the user is just plain stupid. Yes you can argue that the Nuar does not fit into the chair of the Dwarf to dodge the issue, but you have the same problem when a Dwarf uses the chair of a Nuar and no paper thin excuse. Or when a Human uses a Dwarf chair (both medium) etc.

And Paizo did shoot themselves in the foot by making disabling injuries so easy to heal and augmentations so cheap and easy to use. When that is the case of course you, logically, won't have many disabled people in the setting.
The same way you won't have many obvious transgender when you can get sex change serums out of vending machines. Paizo needs to decide if they want to represent people with their real life struggles in their games (but then not represent their struggles or want their games to have easy solutions for those struggles which are not available in real life. You can't have both.

And while others are ok with just saying "don't think about it" I am not. Not being allowed to think about aspects of the game world and not being able to interact with them in any creative way because they have been designed to be broken from the ground up destroys one of the main advantages and draws of RPGs.