Mark Seifter's page

Hello to all the new people (and some familiar faces from Paizo's past as well)! I can't wait to see what amazing content you bring.

The more I've read about Jewel of the Indigo Isles, the more interested I've become in running it. It's cool to see there's going to be more content that integrates with that and I already know one of my players is going to love some of those ancestries.

I hope you enjoy it! If people like Indigo Isles enough, we could do other World of Battlezoo books down the line too, and I think that would be amazing. We have so many ideas to share, and also a lot of great authors we want to bring in to help us generate even more great ideas!

Thanks for getting us through two stretch goals already, and let me know if you have any questions!

If you have any questions about Jewel of the Indigo Isles, let me know!

Even if you're not sure, I suggest you take the plunge and enter RPG Superstar! The due date is the Sunday of PaizoCon (the 28th), so there's still enough time to enter a monster or three, especially since the website has tools to help you with the process.

CaptainRelyk wrote:

I asked Mark Reifter and he said ......

Making up conversations with former Paizo employees isn't going to give your arguments any weight. Unless you can link to an actual post where we can see exactly what he said, no one is going to believe that you aren't just creating a story to make yourself sound authoritative.

Your demonstrated inability to read and interpret printed rules and to differentiate between rules and flavor makes you a totally unreliable narrator, especially when interpreting a private conversation that no one else was privy to.

[Like the last time a staff member had to publicly correct your overblown claims]

It is true that Captain Relyk messaged me about alignment, but also the paraphrasing misrepresented me, as you expected. Captain Relyk was sending me numerous messages complaining about alignment and various corner cases/issues he was experiencing, and asking why alignment damage exists, so I tried to give him a suggestion of how to avoid the problem in his game:

"Alignment damage exists because aligned damage has been a thing in previous editions. Alignment has lots of weird issues like that, so I would recommend if you run into them and want to avoid it, use the rules for removing alignment in the GMG."

That said, Captain Relyk, you were warned multiple times to stop trying to use my words to score points in online debates and arguments, and you clearly have not done so.

It's over 200, so it maxed out for those who are interested!

Mark Seifter wrote:

Let me know if you have any questions!

I'm thinking about buying this with some friends. Could we share the 21 digital assets and Pathbuilder ancesry files or not? I assume the Foundry module generates a unique code per purchase?

While the pdfs and foundry code will be just yours, I think the Pathbuilder files will be freely distributable period, and if I recall the digital assets are for you to use as you need at your table (other than weird things like commercial uses, etc, etc) so if you wanted to use them in a shared environment, I think that would be fine. I can check with Stephen.

Gonna buy this when our next paycheck comes in. :3

So many options for us!

Also the blog post is accidently dated for last year.

edit: Also does anyone know how long the sale on battlezoo is?

The pdf-only pledge is until some point in the first week of February when Doppelgangers launch.

Are these books only available buying the complete set, or will I be able to buy specific ones I want when they release?

I know we at least don't currently have any plans to sell them separately. For one thing, the Foundry module is all one module that auto-updates as each ancestry is added, so there would be complications with splitting things up.

Never realized I wanted to play as a dungeon until now!

You can get the unexpanded dungeons for free here!

Let me know if you have any questions!

Go go Narrative Team! I'm looking forward to seeing more adventures to come.

I would love to see a versatile heritage that makes everyone tiny.

Try this one!

Minimaker (Versatile Heritage)

Legends speak of a creature so tiny that its mere existence causes everything else to be tiny as well. You are one such creature. Starting from the moment you select this versatile heritage, everyone and everything is now Tiny. This doesn't affect anyone else's reach except yours, though; somehow they still reach comically far away while your reach is reduced to 0 feet. As an added bonus, it's much easier to use all those maps from published adventures with rooms that don't really fit all the monsters, without needing to make each square 10 feet instead of 5. You gain the minimaker trait, in addition to the traits of your ancestry. You can choose from minimaker feats and feats from your ancestry whenever you gain an ancestry feat.

Awesome! I'm really excited about all of these too. If you are getting those two hardcovers starting from the Year of Monsters pdf tier, I could be wrong but I think the "All Hardcover Books" will also get you the Eldamon pdf, the Battlezoo Bestiary pdf and hardcover, and more of the digital assets, for about the same price you are currently pledging (I think it is only $10 more). The All Hardcover tier is a really good deal.

I believe so, just somewhere generic. It should give you credit on Backerkit which you could use to get the $30 add-on. The reason for Backerkit is that it can handle the conditional of "$30 add-on but only for those who had the pdfs" better.

Instant pledge for me!

That said - I'm trying to get the Year of Monsters Hardcover after pledging for the PDF. The site says to use the pledge manager to add it on for $30. However, when I try to select it as an add-on, it wants to charge me an extra $130.

How do I do this?

Huh, I'm not sure, I was told it was a $30 add just like you were trying to do. I've asked Stephen, the publisher, and I'll get back to you if he has any ideas.

EDIT: Update-it's in the Backerkit. So what you can do if you still want to help earn stretch goals is pledge the $30 now and use it in the Backerkit later. Or you can wait and add the money in the Backerkit afterwards.

Thanks so much Opsylum! :o

Cool, what would be the diference between demon and oni ancestries ?

Good question! The lore and abilities are pretty different, in keeping with demons and oni in the game. Check out a bit of oni lore and demon lore in these reddit posts!

We're rolling through stretch goals now too! In addition to the ones mentioned on the blog, we also added light and darkness elements and double-sized oni, and there's more coming up as well, like a nymphborn versatile heritage, mind element, and (to my chagrin) a stretch goal where I'll be forced to perform a terrible Eldarap. Plus centaurs!

You could do it via add-ons, but the tiers are so discounted that you still save on them. For instance Eldamon + Bestiary pdf tier is $49 with some extras, while the individual pdfs would a few dollars cost more.

DarkOne the Drow wrote:

Really don't want a screw up, so can you provide me with instructions to get:

- Battlezoo Eldamon PDF
- Battlezoo Ancestries: Year of Monsters PDF
- Battlezoo Bestiary Strange & Unusual PDF
- All the FoundryVTT packs for all 3 PDFs

That is, the full digital solution PF2.

Like some of the physical items, yet they never arrive by me. We don't have postal service (stopped like 15 years ago).

Looks like best option would be PDF everything tier, with the Bestiary and Eldamon Vtt add-on ($50).

I agree, that's the way to go. If you want hardcover version of that, the new $249 tier + VTT add-on will do it too.

Also... we funded in only just a bit over 24 hours. Huzzah!

Will the Eldamon/Bestiary books have Foundry support at any point? I'll probably buy the whole set of PDFs either way, but if they don't then things other than the ancestries will likely see significantly less play in my group.

Absolutely! All three have premium modules, but only the Year of Monsters has the premium foundry module already included (and factored into the price at a big discount since it's mandatory in the tier and tiers are all heavily discounted). You can get the premium foundry modules for both of the other two, from top PF2 foundry volunteer dev Ians (Spartan and tikael) as add-ons.

I'm amused because I've had the idea floating around my head for years of having a magic item develop sapience and hijack the spare clone of a character. Hopefully the intelligent magic item will work for the idea!

I'll admit that I'm stoked for about half of the ancestries... the only one I really want that's missing is the ability to play an angel.

Using someone's spare clone is pretty much square on for one of the heritages (where you found a body missing its mind for some reason, a clone is perfect for that). Angel was very close to making it in too! It would have been very needy on the stretch goals, though, I wanted to not have too many of them that I felt really needed to beat a stretch goal to breathe. I'm still interested in doing angels some day somehow!

Was really mostly looking forward to the 12 Ancestries. Though I wasn't expecting them to be so expensive. Ended up pledging for PDFs for all 3 since it wasn't much more than just the 12 Ancestries.

No idea how to get the free dice case mentioned, hopefully didn't have to select one as an add on.

I am curious about how viable the Eldamon will be, or how much a character may change by being an Avatar for an Eldamon.

Now if only I could get into a game to play these options, or the Dragon.

Or possibly any game at all that doesn't die within the first few weeks.

We're trying something very experimental with the 12 ancestries where they are part of a deluxe experience that includes the premium foundry module, the pdf, a monthly chat with the designers where you help to make design decisions and decide how to spend the extra pages in the compilation book, and a compilation book at the end. We were interested to see what people thought about that compared to the normal way of interacting with material. If it's popular, we might consider adding premium foundry modules automatically with future content as well (the other books don't have it automatically, you have to add it as an add-on).

Woo! So happy that this is live. I have an AMA active on the PF2 subreddit today too!

I believe Mark said there are like 7 or either stretch goals that will be known and several hidden, including the Centaur as one of them. Some others were things like extra Heritage options for each.

Can't wait to pitch in on this one. Looking forward to it greatly.

Yep, 7 are visible including the "We're funded" for the initial amount, the light element, and more. Many more (including centaurs) are ready to go if we can beat those first stretch goals though!

Thanks everyone! I'm glad you enjoyed. Thaumaturge really benefited from playtest feedback and from everyone on the design team giving strong iterative advice.

Ah, gotcha! I didn't even realize anything other than the free Dungeons ancestry was on DTRPG (which takes a 35% cut off the top). All the books, including PF2 versions are on battlezoo.com!

You might be looking at the 5e version based on the terminology you are mentioning?

if admittedly one with 20+ heritages

45 even, I may have gone overboard! (in my defense on overboardness, I intended to release it with only 10, but it got expanded a lot of time)

Not that 20+ is incorrect at all, but when you hear 20+ you might not be expecting 45! :D

Karmagator wrote:

Battlezoo are really doing the work. In addition to all the rest we'll get Doppelgänger, Stheno (yay for derpy head-snakes) and they just announced mimics. The Morningwood extented family will be huge XD

2023 will be fire for 2e!

Where!? I've literally been checking the PF2 and Mark's Reddit for days. D:

The newsletter gets a sneak peek of everything before I put it up on reddit and such!

A glabrezu is rough, but Mios in the story is well prepared, and they aren't kidding that they were one of the worst possible matchups for the demon to face, including starting off the fight with 3d6 mental damage before Mios even did anything from the lantern due to its truth vulnerability (you can see the glabrezu flinching back in the art), plus the cold iron sword is going to add 20 damage per hit from weakness, and possibly more if it was able to deal good damage. A prepared thaumaturge is a dangerous foe.

I also notice that they're leveraging that Charisma in another way, too - from the sounds of things, their investigations involved a lot of "Go around and talk to people and ask questions.

That's definitely something I wanted to get across using as few words as possible (so like not writing out those pre-investigations, going straight to the action of checking the lodge, but instead presenting the info they had dredged up in a way that I hoped you could feel came from those kinds of interactions). Glad to see you picked up on that!

That seems fun to me!

I just want to shout out the idea of Thaleon viewing colors as emotions and channeling that. That's almost certainly not inherent to the class, and is both a fantastic way to show who he is as a character and also the kind of roleplay I love, where you take "I cast Invisbility" and really make it your own.

Great story, Linda!

Looking at them more closely, many of those colors also seem to match the ones Erik Mona wrote into emotional auras back in PF1 Occult Adventures.

Great story! I really got a sense of how Thaleon operates from the imagery and the colors.

I'm glad people are enjoying free archetype. I was pretty sure, though not certain, that it would be this popular when writing it up in the GMG variants. I just love variants in general, modding the game makes the game that's best for a given group or theme.

One cool usage: You can also use free archetype as a carrot attached to something else rather than automatic, I've been seeing it in homebrew content too. Like in the Hell's Rebels game I'm playing right now, the GM is giving us archetype feats for raising our rebellion level. Or in the dungeon ancestry, one of the options is that you can unlock free archetype feats for challenging the floors of the dungeon PC.

So far I've only managed to find one major error: The Spore Breath table lists "Bewildering Breath" as one of the possibilities, but as far as I can tell nothing in the book matches that.

Thanks, we saw it too! We have that marked for an errata update soon and it will be fixed in time for the 1st printing hardcover, and we passed it on to Pathbuilder and Foundry so they will have the right version.

Thanks so much everyone! The art is by Firat Solhan, who also does art for Paizo. He is fantastic. I'm glad you're enjoying it.

There's also lunar dragons now! Actually havoc dragons are out too, I have a link to them and the rules for silver dragons in the lunar dragon entry.

Oh wow, farewell and best of luck to both Heather and Keith!

Well maybe you aren't too late... I put up another chance for people to explain which true dragon is best and why on reddit at this link!

Mark Seifter wrote:

Battlezoo and I made sure my new job wouldn't have a noncompete and would explicitly allow freelancing and independent projects, so I'll definitely stick around and keep writing for Paizo too! But this lets me pursue some really exciting projects with more creative control to try some more unusual ideas (like PC dragons, that's totally a thing we're doing!) and like Kobold Catgirl said, the compensation is also better with less crunch. All around an amazing opportunity and team-up, but I'll be sad to leave my friends at Paizo at the same time.

Your amazing writing was surpassed only by how amazing of a person you are. Bust of luck in your future endeavors.

:o Thanks Dale!

Dale published one of my earliest 3rd party products, Book of Heroic Races Reapers (a psychopomp planar scion back before the duskwalker after I had thought Paizo had said psychopomp planar scions weren't a possibility). Still have fond memories of that project!

You are responsible for my favorite Pathfinder classes and content of both editions. I have a close friend who feels the same way as we frequently nerd out about the many cool concepts your work has enabled.

I still have a fond memory of Pathfinder 2E's Gen Con launch. When my dimwitted barbarian dwarf "punched the universe back together" and caused such an uproar of laughter at the table that you strode over and said "I was about to ask if you guys were having fun, but..."

I'm excited for the awesome stuff you're working on for Battlezoo, and I can't wait to see what you will surprise us with next!

I think I still remember that from among the tables I visited that year, since it reminded me of the time during my playtest stream where they wound up beating up math :D

Thanks so much everyone! Today was my last day at Paizo and we had a send-off call. Lots of memories over 8 years. I hope to keep working with my friends at Paizo on plenty of more books in the future as a freelancer, and I am extremely excited about what I have coming up for Battlezoo (I mean I'm already excited about the dragons, but there's more that's possibly even more exciting)!

I won't say goodbye because I'll be sticking around on the paizo.com community, just not as a golem any more. In some ways, not being at Paizo might mean I can speculate alongside all of you more often!

May the road rise to meet you, Mark.

The first time I met Mark and Linda was my first PaizoCon. I was the GM for the beta test of Siege of the Diamond City for both and a few others. The night went well and I enjoyed meeting them*.

A day or two later, I was walking to the PFS room when I spied Mark talking with Thurston Hillman, author of Siege. Back then, I was still pretty shy and apprehensive regarding talking to strangers and social interactions. But because a player from my table was talking with Thursty about the scenario, I felt confident I could give constructive feedback about the scenario. More importantly it was I could overcome my social anxiety because of Mark**.

I will miss talking with you, Mark, about any and every topic no matter how tangential to Pathfinder the topic was. I am positive you will be successful in your new endeavor.

** spoiler omitted **
** spoiler omitted **

It is always a pleasure! And I want to point out to everyone that Jon not only ran that table incredibly well back with just-a-fan Mark and Linda, he did so despite the fact that he was running a highly-complicated special (with interactive elements where siege shots were coming from some other tables and more) while I was playing my summoning oracle and Linda was playing her preservationist. So he had to deal with like six earth elementals during the final infinite waves of demons fight. Linda and I had mentioned what PCs we had and our friendly pick up group asked us to play our two summoners to get more bodies, and Jon just rolled right along and didn't just run, he ran it quickly and efficiently and got us through all the encounters.

You won't have to miss talking with me; I'll still be here, working on Battlezoo. If anything, I think Battlezoo might be more likely to send me over to a convention than Paizo (once it becomes responsible to do so healthwise) because I'm one of the only few staffers, so it might even up the chances of seeing you!

When I heard the news, all I could say in chat was, ":O", because I was genuinely stunned. I'm super happy for Mark, and I'm super happy we had him working on Pathfinder for so long. I hope we still get to see him on the forums, because I've really, really appreciated Mark as a wonderful communicator with brilliant and really well-phrased insights about RPG design. When I joined the Arcane Mark Discord server, I couldn't stop peppering him with questions, and he fielded them all so patiently and I learned so much... which only made me want to ask him more questions.

Mark, you've been a wonderful part of Paizo for many years, and the fact that you're moving to Roll For Combat means I'm definitely going to look into Roll For Combat ASAP. That's no surprise, of course--he's also the reason I finally went and checked out PF2.

Thanks, and no worries about those questions. We were all reeling during that time when you joined, and your enthusiasm and positivity were really helpful to folks I think. Thanks to you we made the unmitigated-praise channel that's still going!

Battlezoo and I made sure my new job wouldn't have a noncompete and would explicitly allow freelancing and independent projects, so I'll definitely stick around and keep writing for Paizo too! But this lets me pursue some really exciting projects with more creative control to try some more unusual ideas (like PC dragons, that's totally a thing we're doing!) and like Kobold Catgirl said, the compensation is also better with less crunch. All around an amazing opportunity and team-up, but I'll be sad to leave my friends at Paizo at the same time.

I'm really excited about this book—I got to write some really cool sections for it!

Can confirm that Brian wrote awesome stuff, including at least one of the things folks have heard about already and seemed excited for.