James Jacobs's page

Hello James. A simple one: do elementals have souls?

(PS: customer feedback - I'm loving 2nd edition, and Luis and Eleanor are going great work).

Yup; elementals have souls. Elemental souls are one of the ways evil spellcasters animate golems (the good ones prefer to use sparks of positive energy or other options).

It means nothing. It's a nonsense word we made up because it sounded good to us.

Mr. James Jacobs,

If one was running Tyrant's Grasp as a mythic game, what point in the first part would be best as a moment of mythic ascension?

I dunno. I wasn't involved in Tyrant's Grasp beyond helping with feedback and suggestions during the outline stage. That said, based on my limited knowledge of how it all played out... I'd say RIGHT AT THE START. Doesn't get more mythic than how that campaign begins.

What is something fun you found out about recently?

You can't "hold a charge" on touch spells anymore, now that the way touch spells work don't require attack rolls.

Nah. The five current colors are it. There might be exceptions now and then, like the weirdo purple kobold from Kingmaker, but I'd rather not have kobold versions of every dragon.

Ever heard of cryptid called the devil monkey?

It is like Bigfoots eviller and territorial pissed off scary cousin.

Yup! That's why I put one in Bestiary 6 back in the later parts of the 1st edition Pathfinder days.

No, but it is clearly very different from playing a superhero adventurer.

I'm curious what you call it when someone is playing other than superhero adventurers.

Player Characters at the table or when I'm talking about them in an adventure to be read by a GM.

Adventurers in an in-game way (with variants like "heroes" or "mercenaries" or "troublemakers" or other context-appropriate descriptors based on the situation and what NPC is talking).

"There is a lot more in him than you guess, and a deal more than he has any idea of himself" - Gandalf.

"You are more worthy to wear the armour of elf-princes than many that have looked more comely in it." - the elvenking.

"There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure" - Thorin.

(I need to ask a question, so: is that the sort of thing you have in mind when you call Bilbo 'extraordinary'?)

That's some of it, yes. But mostly it's the fact that I go by definitions for words, and the word "ordinary" in this case is defined as:

adjective
1) of no special quality or interest; commonplace; unexceptional

A character who is "ordinary" by this definition makes a poor choice for a main character of a story, unless the story is about everything AROUND the character.

In my opinion, if you have a story about you, and that story is interesting, you are not ordinary.

Surely though you can see how Bilbo is closer to an ordinary person than Aragorn or spiderman or an adventurer? So what would call that whole category of characters?

Why is it so important for you for me to say someone is ordinary?

Being less powerful than someone else does not mean you have to be ordinary.

Thanks James, et all. Sorry for my initial reaction. It was born out of shock as much as anything else and wasn't appropriate of me.

No worries, but thanks for the clarification. Hope you and your GM can figure things out to keep the character viable!

What I meant by ordinary person is A) someone of normal capacity (By the numbers in d20, a lvl 3 is significantly above average and lvl 6 is literally superhuman, compared to real world humans at least ) and B) someone with a normal place in society, such as a smith or merchant or police or noble, but not some extraordinary hero/adventurer/murderhobo. Think Bilbo from The Hobbit, or the kids in Lost in Space.

If you wouldn't call them ordinary, what would you call them?

The thing that kinda led to this question is a story about a guy in a marketing company who used an rpg as a team building exercise in which each player was a middleclass woman with a product that were trying to sell and were all invited to a social party. "Ordinary" people in an ordinary setting ripe for all kinds of interesting drama and hijinks. It was interesting to read and sounds like it would have been fun to play in as well. But this got me thinking once again of how broad the concepts in movies and stories are in comparison to how narrow RPGs seem to be. I see RPGs with various traits of different genres but almost always the players are far beyond even the elites of their world and usually are explicitly adventurers rather than regular people simply handling a situation because there is no hero around to do it.

It disappoints me that I don't see more variety, but that was the source of my question.

So, what would you call such people if not ordinary?

I would call Bilbo extraordinary, or fated, or lucky, or doomed, just for starters. He managed to endure the one ring's influence and set into motion a whole trilogy of things that brought about the end of an age. That isn't "ordinary" at all. "Ordinary" in this case would be the hobbits who didn't leave the Shire ever, and thus weren't who the story was about.

James Jacobs wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

Salamileg wrote:

Funny enough, Nocticula doesn't allow for NG followers, so no redeemers for the Redeemer Queen.

And just like that my redeemer champion vanishes in a puff of illogic.

This s~+# needs to get fixed.

Wow.

Talk to your GM if you're that frustrated and maybe they'll adjust things in your game.

That's the only out I can see. His campaign is focused on Nocticula as the party patron, which is why I made a redeemer champion in the first place. Simply changing deities isn't really an option. Short of house ruling it in, I just don't see how I can "fix" the character without it destroying the core concept.

A chaotic good champion can still be interested in redemption, and can serve as a redeemed antipaladin. Not everyone who gets redeeemd has to be a neutral good champion.

SIDE NOTE: I pushed for names of these characters that were not verbs (the word "paladin" is a great example in that it's not a verb), in part because of the confusion this could bring, but I lost that debate. If it makes you feel better, some of the names I suggested for these classes included "templar" and "knight" and "partisan" and "gallant." Swap any of those in for the names of the NG and CG champions and that might help, I guess?

James Jacobs wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

Salamileg wrote:

Funny enough, Nocticula doesn't allow for NG followers, so no redeemers for the Redeemer Queen.

And just like that my redeemer champion vanishes in a puff of illogic.

This s~+# needs to get fixed.

Wow.

Talk to your GM if you're that frustrated and maybe they'll adjust things in your game.

Or instead look to Sarenrae as a redemption-themed character.

Nocticula was NEVER intended to be someone a neutral good champion should serve. Play a chaotic good champion and you're set.

The use of the word "redeemer" as the Neutral Good champion is not meant to imply that anyone who is redeemed has redeemers working for them.

Yeah, in building my own champion of Nocticula over the last couple days, I've gotten the impression she's the "goddess of the redeemed" not "goddess of redeemers".

That's a much better way to look at it.

Sarenrae has been and will be the primary goddess served by redeemers, and it's because of her that I suspect the name "redeemer" was given to Neutral Good champions in the first place.

Salamileg wrote:

Funny enough, Nocticula doesn't allow for NG followers, so no redeemers for the Redeemer Queen.

And just like that my redeemer champion vanishes in a puff of illogic.

This s~+# needs to get fixed.

Wow.

Talk to your GM if you're that frustrated and maybe they'll adjust things in your game.

Or instead look to Sarenrae as a redemption-themed character.

Nocticula was NEVER intended to be someone a neutral good champion should serve. Play a chaotic good champion and you're set.

The use of the word "redeemer" as the Neutral Good champion is not meant to imply that anyone who is redeemed has redeemers working for them.

How would you break popular assumptions/perceptions if they would be a problem for a game you want to run?

By talking with the players beforehand to let them know what I was interested in doing, and getting them to cooperate in the type of game I wanted to run. If they didn't want it, I'd shelve that idea for another group and do something else.

I'd also create a player's guide for that game that does the same thing our Adventure Path guides do—tell the players what is and isn't a good choice for the game that they're about to join.

I used "fluff" precisely because in a system, it is inconsequential. It has zero meaning. Only when conveying setting or narrative does it have any importance and that is unrelated to system, much like Hamlet is unrelated to the english language, no matter what language used Hamlet is the same story. That was part of my point in using it.

---
So you don't see any value or fun in stories about normal people in interesting situations? Is that why all the APs are about heroic adventurers and nothing else? You don't get bored from the samey-samey feeling all the time? 90% of all films are stories not fun enough to play as an rpg?

Fluff is a real world word with several real world meanings, but the one that specifically refers to writing is insulting. That's not something you can change, but you CAN change the habit of using it to refer to non-rules writing in RPGs. That's all I'm asking. If you're not interested in adapting to my request, then don't be surprised if I or other writers grow less interested in discourses with you.

Stories about normal people in interesting situations and in which those people achieve something worth noting are not "normal people" in my opinion. They are, by the fact of being the main characters in any story, worthy of telling a story about and are thus unique, not normal.

I do get bored with RPGs that aren't interesting, but that's because of a failure on the writer or GM's behalf, not the RPG itself.

You CAN do investigation plots or horror plots with Pathfinder. I've done so a lot. In fact, every campaign I've ever run has horror and investigation plots. I tailor them to require heroic characters, rather than try to build plots for different types of characters, and it works out well.

...wrote lots...

Please keep posts to this thread to questions for me; I want to avoid getting into back-and-forth discussions or long posts so as to keep the thread easier to manage, navigate, and read.

Furthermore, please keep in mind that I can't read unsolicited pitches for adventures or games for legal reasons.

Weird question regarding the Hunter Archetype Forester:

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/hybrid-classes/hunter/archetypes/paizo-hun ter-archetypes/forester-hunter-archetype wrote:

Animal Focus (Su)

As a forester has no animal companion, the aspects granted by this ability always apply to the forester herself, just as if a normal hunter’s companion were dead.

This alters animal focus.

Would this imply that the Hunter would have TWO Animal Foci, one 'permanent' and one that lasts for minutes per level?

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/hybrid-classes/hunter wrote:

If the hunter’s animal companion is dead, the hunter can apply her companion’s animal focus to herself instead of her animal companion. This is in addition to the normal one she can choose, and (as with a companion’s focus) remains in effect until the hunter changes it instead of counting against her minutes per day.

Rules questions should go to the Design team, and/or be asked in rules-adjacent forums such as the Core Rulebook's product page forum.

What kind of treats does Nocticula like?

Challenging works of art from people who have struggled or who have been persecuted for their artistic integrity by others, yet have not given in to fear and pressure and have stayed true to their vision and muse.

Have you ever considered doing an AP set in Golarion‘a mythic past, (before the gods started getting more hands off) as a chance to explore their personalities through more direct interactions, like the olden myths with meddling, politicking gods?

Part of the reason I enjoy Golarion is because of its relatability: it’s a bleak world sprinkled conservatively with hope and wonder. Encounters with the divine and triumph of good over evil, when they happen, really feel special. Which is really saying something for a genre that feels kind of inundated with that stuff sometimes.

Still, part of me wants to see an early, hopeful era of Golarion, before Aroden’s tragedy rocked the world, when there seemed to be no limit to what magic could accomplish (Jatembe and the Magaambya, Geb and Nex, the Starstone, the flying city of Kho, ancient Osirion, etc) and the future looked bright. An era of “humanity against the monsters in the dark” rather than a “humanity against itself” kind of setting.

Maybe when ya’ll get around to stuff after level 20.

Check out Return of the Runelords; that's about as far as we'll likely go with an AP set in the past.

The problem is that setting an AP in the distant past is the same as setting an AP in an entirely different setting. Because that's what it is. We'd have to support that AP with a brand new set of world books and rules and that's too much work to do to for a one-time exception. This sort of thing is much better handled by individual GMs who take what we publish as a starting point and then alter things as they wish to do what they want in their home game.

As a specific example, if we set an entire campaign in a pre-Earthfall era, your players wouldn't be able to play gnomes or worship Iomedae, and that means that anything we have printed that references or touches upon those things aren't available, and suddenly we've made our own products obsolete for that game and would have to either just be satisfied with an Adventure Path with built-in option gaps, or we'd have to do work to replace that content.

And I'd say that the era of Golarion we're in right now is the MOST hopeful. It's the only one where there's Player Characters active, and that means that even if we were to say in print something like "Rocks fall. Everyone dies," somewhere out there a GM and a group of PCs would say "NOT TODAY" and game away.

SO since building a well-supported AP is something we value, and building a non-supported one isn't, we'd have to build what is essentially a brand new setting. And personally, if I'm going to go into a "brand new setting" mode, I'd rather do that: build an honest-to-goodness new setting than a variant on Golarion.

So in reading one of the older adventure paths I noticed that Coeurl is in the bestiary of one, but not used in any scripted or random encounters. My understanding was that you needed to get permission to use the creature (maybe with payment). Do you remember the reason why the effort was made to get permission and then not using it in the adventure?

We wanted to honor the creator of the creature and present it in it's original format and respect the creator by securing permission to use it in an RPG rather than just change a few things and pass it off as our own or not change anything at all and just use it without permission. In the discussion with the rights-holder, they gave us a one-time license to use the creature once, and that meant it got specifically excluded from the OGL, and we wanted to respect their decision and never used it in our adventures. We did this a few other times too, such as with the Deep Crow.

Part of it is because we are fans of the creatures. Part of it is that we want to highlight others' talents. Part of it is we want to try to set an example of how to do RPG content based on properties others own without giving the stuff away for free.

My other question is about your characters. Are they normal people? There's a big difference between including elements of investigation vs characters that are ordinary people whose job is to investigate crimes, or even to simply be Scooby-doo characters.

Never. The WHOLE POINT for me when playing an RPG is to play someone else who is exceptional and memorable and someone who I might aspire to be but cannot be.

Even characters I play in Call of Cthulhu aren't what I would say is "ordinary." They're exceptional in at least one way, if only in the fact that they exist in a world where they can, in theory, do magic.

I play games to escape reality. Reality is ordinary. Games about ordinary people doing ordinary things aren't games to me.

James Jacobs wrote:

...

Try Call of Cthulhu for both.
...

Why would I want or need a different system? The best part of d20 is how capable it is of handling anything and everything if you don't mind fluffing things yourself (in this fluff is appropriate as it is the least important part of a system, it isn't even necessary for a system). Yet for some reason, discussion of purely flavor elements has people suggesting different systems as though system has anything to do narrative. Are people that afraid of handling flavor on their own?

Because different systems handle those things better. Think of an RPG as a tool to tell stories. And as with any tool, they work better at doing what they were built to do. You can put out a fire with a bomb, but using a fire extinguisher is better.

And because the type of game you play triggers different expectations from your players. If you tell a group that you're playing Pathfinder, most players will immediately start thinking of characters and plots that are more heroic and less passive/subtle.

And please use words like "flavor" instead of "fluff" since fluff means "writing of little consequence" and/or has connotations that are insulting or diminishing to the hard work writers do to make compelling, fun-to-read content.

James Jacobs wrote:

Enough that publishing what remains in my homebrew that hasn't been ported over to Paizo as a stand-alone fantasy setting is no longer viable, alas.

While I personally have no illusions about breaking into the industry (or really any desire to, happy to stay a consumer), a few comments like this have struck me at various times.

Do you have any advice for aspiring developers who come to work at any RPG company about bringing in or not bringing in elements of their setting to their employer's work? It seems that there are definite pros and cons to this if I'm not misunderstanding your experiences based the few times you've commented.

If you want to ever do something on your own with your ideas and own them and profit from them long term, don't do it. If you want to profit from them short-term and want to see your ideas expanded and enhanced by talent you don't have or resources you lack, go for it! But keep in mind that once you do, it's no longer yours.

What would a Succubus Investigator be like?

Distracting but effective I suppose.

Do you ever play campaigns where characters are something other than superhero adventurers? For example, many awesome movies have protagonists of many different types and styles even action films, yet I rarely see anything about people playing characters of different styles unless they change the whole genre to focus on that type. For example, I never see detectives in a Golarion/Greyhawk type setting, nor the horror film trope of normal people escaping terrifying monsters/killers.

Try Call of Cthulhu for both.

That said, the Pathfinder game I'm running at the office right now is focusing on the exploration of a haunted house, and it has elements of the PCs playing detectives AND running from terrifying foes. Both of those happened in the last two sessions, in fact.

So the answer to your question is: Yup! Those are two of the most common elements in games I run.

What would Nocticula's domains be in second edition if she was still a demon lord? I assume Darkness would stay, but the others I go back and forth on. I own both Wrath of the Righteous and Second Darkness APs, where she has significant exposure.

In cases like this I like to make as few changes as possible. The rules changing is not something I like to see as "time to upend things in established flavor."

In 1st edition, Nocticula's domains as a demon lord were Chaos, Charm, Darkness, and Evil. Her subdomians were Demons, Loss, Lust, and Night.

In 2nd edition, demon lord Nocticula would grant four domains, just like any other divinity, and I would set those as follows:
Passion (to cover for Charm and Lust)
Trickster (to cover for Chaos and play into her role as being something of a manipulator and trickster)
Darkness (a flat conversion)
Death (to cover for Evil and to play into her role as a demon lord of assassination)

What’s the moon like since Nocticula’s ascension?

Still creepy and alien. If you're talking about the Moonscar itself, then the assumption is PROBABLY that a group of heroes finished that adventure and left he place pretty much cleared out. And since we did an adventure set there already and it's not one that lit the world on fire, chances of a sequel (and thus us ever going back there) are minimal. If we DO go back to Somal, I'd rather visit somewhere else anyway.

How is the bladed scarf wielded as a weapon? Is it direct attacks where we convert angular momentum to linear momentum (like a rope dart or a meteor hammer) or do you swing it wide (which seems less effective to me)?

Like a rope dart or meteor hammer.

James Jacobs wrote:

Salamileg wrote:

There's definitely some confusion in-house on whether or not the bladed scarf should be finesse or not. I just saw that in Sivanah's Avatar stats, the bladed scarf attack is listed as finesse.

Further suggests to me that the info on the table is a typo. As mentioned upthread replacing sweep with finesse is an easy and elegant solution.

I don't know: sweep seems very thematic for a scarf dancing character. "This weapon makes wide sweeping or spinning attacks, making it easier to attack multiple enemies." I think I'd replace disarm as I think a scarf with "thin metal plates interwoven throughout" would have a harder time with Disarm than more flexable weapons like a whip or chain.

That works fine too.

Like does Nyquil Armor give a more restful nights sleep?

It would certainly give you weird dreams.

James Jacobs wrote:

Rysky wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

Rysky wrote:

Thankies for answering :3

Back to Noqual, what was its genesis?

I wanted an unusual weird material that could be mixed into walls to hamper teleportation and passwall type effects, and explained it via the use of noqual to block those effects. Sort of a mechanical way to duplicate something like dimensional lock, which the game didn't have at the time back in the 2nd edition D&D days. And from there it became a type of metal that could make antimagic-themed things, particularly as an element used to lace golems to explain their high resistance to magic.

Cool.

Was Mithril at any point on the table to become a sky metal?

Nope.

*nods*

Aside from Noqual have you made any other special materials?

I'm sure I've created more than I can remember off the top of my head, but a big one that comes to mind is the Nahyndrian Crystal, which got into Wrath of the Righteous. Those were from my homebrew too, where they were more of an "abyssal crystal that can be worked like iron and inflict extra damage to good targets".

There's definitely some confusion in-house on whether or not the bladed scarf should be finesse or not. I just saw that in Sivanah's Avatar stats, the bladed scarf attack is listed as finesse.

Further suggests to me that the info on the table is a typo. As mentioned upthread replacing sweep with finesse is an easy and elegant solution.

James Jacobs wrote:

Rysky wrote:

Thankies for answering :3

Back to Noqual, what was its genesis?

I wanted an unusual weird material that could be mixed into walls to hamper teleportation and passwall type effects, and explained it via the use of noqual to block those effects. Sort of a mechanical way to duplicate something like dimensional lock, which the game didn't have at the time back in the 2nd edition D&D days. And from there it became a type of metal that could make antimagic-themed things, particularly as an element used to lace golems to explain their high resistance to magic.

Cool.

Was Mithril at any point on the table to become a sky metal?

Nope.

Mr. James Jacobs,

Which deity would be the closest to a "God(dess) of Sass"?

Probably Calistria or Cayden.

Thankies for answering :3

Back to Noqual, what was its genesis?

I wanted an unusual weird material that could be mixed into walls to hamper teleportation and passwall type effects, and explained it via the use of noqual to block those effects. Sort of a mechanical way to duplicate something like dimensional lock, which the game didn't have at the time back in the 2nd edition D&D days. And from there it became a type of metal that could make antimagic-themed things, particularly as an element used to lace golems to explain their high resistance to magic.

With Nocticula changing from evil to her current position, do you think it plausible other deities/demigods change a moral course in the distant future?

It's always been possible and plausible, and will continue to be so.

Will they ever fix paizo forum's pm system? Or at least the notifications so we can tell when we have pms?

I'm not on the tech team so I can't answer this.

If the Golden Girls were transported to Golarion, which deities would they worship?

Rovagug.

James Jacobs wrote:

Rysky wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

Rysky wrote:

Are there specific areas in the Pathfinder universe where certain skymetals come from in large quantities or where they were created, or is there something in their nature of them being meteorites that causes them to form?

Yup, but we haven't revealed where. My take is that they get hurled into space when planets or starts explode and then eventually land on other planets though. I like to think adamantium is the most common on Golarion 'cause it's stuff left over from when the deities built the cage to imprison Rovagug; what us mortals value as a rare powerful or is basically slag from an ancient forge.

Ooooo, I had suspected something like that, nice to see similar thoughts :3

Do you have a favored Skymetal?

Noqual. It's the one I invented first, back in my homebrew 30 years ago or so, and as such the one I'm the most proud of.

Nice.

What other Skymetals did you create?

None of them. Admantium is mythological, and James Sutter made up the others, including the original spelling of horichalcum, which we reverted to the mythological word of orichalcum but kept its new Pathfinder properties.

Is it irresponsible to roleplay characters smoking, whether a pesh hookah or Taldan cigar in Pathfinder or a fancy e-cig machine or a hyperleaf joint in Starfinder? Part of me feels like it perpetuates the "smoking r cool" image that tobacco companies have used to prey on young people for decades (especially as in an RPG a character smoking is a deliberate choice on the part of the person roleplaying them), but part of me also feels like the average player or GM doesn't want to pause the game for a "drugs r bad" message in the style of an after-school special or stepping on a player's roleplaying by having an NPC say "Hey PC, could you please not smoke in here?".

It's only irresponsible if you use that character to try to get others hooked on smoking in the real life.

As with all potentially objectionable content, though, it's best to be familiar with your other players and GM's preferences, and if even one of them finds anything you do objectionable (be it smoking in character, being too violent, being too vulgar, using too many puns, playing a character that breaks verisimilitude, playing a character that clashes with the theme of the campaign, etc.) you should strongly consider changing/altering the objectionable element and putting that thing on the back burner for use in a different game with a different group.

What kin of planar creature would you be if somehow tossed in the setting? Aeon or maybe... Great Old One? XD

Azata.

Theodore Roosevelt or Sir Winston Churchill?

No preference.

Yeah, all issues of practicality aside, the scarf as described in PF1 is a performance piece or hidden weapon used by graceful and agile Varisian dancers.

While the bladed scarf as mechanically defined in PF2 is best wielded by 18 strength plate wearers.

There's nothing inherently wrong about Reach/Sweep, but there's definitely a bit of a disconnect between the flavor of the piece and its mechanics.

If that's the case/perception, then I really feel we need to errata it. The whole point of this weapon, as I've envisioned it from he start when I invented it for the setting, was that it was something used by dexterous characters who don't look like fighters and hide their weapon in plain sight, in part due to a deep tradition back in the day when Varisia was ruled by Thassilon and the resistance fighters (of which there weren't many) used weapons like this to be able to be armed without appearing to be armed.

James Jacobs wrote:

Rysky wrote:

Are there specific areas in the Pathfinder universe where certain skymetals come from in large quantities or where they were created, or is there something in their nature of them being meteorites that causes them to form?

Yup, but we haven't revealed where. My take is that they get hurled into space when planets or starts explode and then eventually land on other planets though. I like to think adamantium is the most common on Golarion 'cause it's stuff left over from when the deities built the cage to imprison Rovagug; what us mortals value as a rare powerful or is basically slag from an ancient forge.

Ooooo, I had suspected something like that, nice to see similar thoughts :3

Do you have a favored Skymetal?

Noqual. It's the one I invented first, back in my homebrew 30 years ago or so, and as such the one I'm the most proud of.

Are there specific areas in the Pathfinder universe where certain skymetals come from in large quantities or where they were created, or is there something in their nature of them being meteorites that causes them to form?

Yup, but we haven't revealed where. My take is that they get hurled into space when planets or starts explode and then eventually land on other planets though. I like to think adamantium is the most common on Golarion 'cause it's stuff left over from when the deities built the cage to imprison Rovagug; what us mortals value as a rare powerful or is basically slag from an ancient forge.

Do you have a faovrite Guillermo Del Toro film?

Pan's Labyrinth.

Hello mr Jacobs,

Have you ever watched epic rap battles of history?

I have not.

I'm going to be playing a changeling cleric of Nocticula in an upcoming campaign that's set before she makes her full transition from demon lord to deity (or, at least, before she reveals herself as such). Other than the fact that, to almost everyone at this point, she's considered to be incredibly evil, what are some things you think it would be good to keep in mind for me as a player?

That you're going to be viewed, in-world, as a heretic and should expect to have clashes with actual clerics of Nocticula who are afraid of you and wanna kill you.

But there's been worshipers of Nocticula as the Redeemer Queen in-world for many years already, and even before 2nd edition those worshipers counted clerics among them who got spells.

My advice would be to keep in mind that what she's presented as being in 2nd edition is still very much accurate from the viewpoint of a 1st edition heretic worshiper; you just won't have a lot of in-world support or understanding or patience from NPCs.

I have been reading this book and I have to say just glancing at the goddess of doorways/pathways/transitions her anathama is can't destroy a door or block a passage. That seems like it would be REALLY a bad choice as an adventuring cleric. Breaking open doors and blockading stuff is kinda what adventurers do.

Perhaps, but then again, if every deity was a great perfect choice for any sort of adventurer, they'd start to feel samey in that regard. I think it's good to have some out there who challenge the classic (or even cliched) adventuring habits.