Mavrickindigo's page

So, it seems Paizo has decided to do a blanket-ban on slavery, but it is my understanding that Lost Omens/Golarion is a rather dark setting and slavery is a big part of the darkness of the setting.

It seems to me that such a blanket ban/change would change a lot, so what exactly is affected and how shall we see the setting moving forward?

Some friends and I are interested in publishing a campaign and 3rd party rules for Pathfinder 1E and we're wondering just what we can and cannot reference in our own stuff. Particularly, we're looking at monsters from the bestiary. For example, can we use the Thriae? Are they OGL or is the fact that they are very different from the mythological Thriae make them Paizo copyright?

If anyone has a list of things we cannot use from books in OGL material, that would be quite helpful.

I haven't gotten too into the 2nd edition stuff, but there seems to be enough of a change that 2nd edition Golarion and beyond is a bit more "all ages" than 1E. That got me thinking about the 3.5 adventures and sourcebooks, which all had this sort of terror and horror and overall "edginess" that wasn't available in 1E. 3.5 felt like a setting where Folca could conceivably exist.

What are some darker aspects you liked about the old-school days?

Heyo, everyone. I just found out that Paizo has said that if they reprint "Book of the Damned" that they would be removing some content.

I haven't yet purchased a copy, but when I actually do go to add it to my collection, I need to know if I need to search for first editions, or if it's safe to just buy any particular copy.

(Yes, I know why Paizo wants to edit it upon reprinting, and no, I'm not interested in a book with less content. I'm a fan of obscure stuff that is technically in the lore but isn't touched upon anymore. I won't say any more, because I don't want to make this a thread about that content.)

Will this game be built to not punish players for picking something. I know retraining is a core rule now, but will Paizo make it so there are inherently inferior choices for feats/class abilities that characters will be forced to retrain when they find out?

I certainly hope not.

Every option should be fun and effective. I want to avoid water balloons.

Earlier, I had asked if there was any information on what date Aroden actually died. I assumed when he died, crap went down everywhere, the worldwound opened, the eye of Abendego formed, a similar storm formed on a distant planet, the angels had a concordance with one another.... yet, no publication and no character has made reference on what date on the calendar it was.

That got me thinking: was the death of Aroden and all the surrounding unpleasantness something that happened over a period of time? If the hurricane formed at a different day that the wound opened up and a different day Aroden was set to return to Cheliax, that would make the date itself seem less noticable for people. I ask about this because there are player character races since the very beginning of pathfinder who could be old enough to have been alive when all this went down, yet we don't have information on what day on the calendar it happened on.

Okay, so after one Bestiary, Pathfinder seems to have completely dropped the Race Builder system. That doesn't mean that the idea of overpowered races messing with party CR has to be over. It would be nice if Paizo or someone were to organize all the races by the race levels (standard, advanced, and monstrous). There are so many possible races, I'd love to be able to just take any that don't have race points and give them an average RP value based on what category they are in. (For instance, I'm fairly certain that Green Martians from Worldscape are Monstrous races, considering one green martian alone will knock the party up 2 levels at lower levels)

Has anyone already done this, and if not, would anyone like to hazard a guess or an educated assumption on what non-pointed races are?

In the "Clash of the Kingslayers" Adventure, the first encounter is against a group of female dwarves mounted on hellish steeds known as "Doomguides." They show up throughout the adventure, but there doesn't seem to be much to them, except they show up to mess with the party and attack the city that is under siege by divine agents, but otherwise, we know little about them, except the following.

1. They are all dwarves
2. They are all female
3. They are orphans who swear fealty to the order
4. They are half-fiends with a modified template
5. They take souls and send them to hell
6. They have "mysterious infernal mistresses"
7. "They appear as harbingers of war, famine, and disease.

Any devils or other hellish leaders that these doomguides would follow? Does there exist any other information on them?

Early Golarion material makes a lot of references to thi gs that are either never picked up again or contradicted in later works. For example, some books mention psionics and psionic characters, and i use that to justify using psionic characters.

one retconned element is Dragonfall, the dragon graveyard where all Dragona go to die

what are some of the weird and crazy things from those old books that you like?

So, with the Shory being a civilization that flew all over the world (there's a city in Tian-Xa, after all), I have to wonder what their people actualy look like. The only images we have of Shory, that I'm aware of, are three undead sorcerers from "Crucible of Chaos." Stitching together what the people of a city/country look like from three corpses isn't exactly the best though. So, is there anthing that shows what the Shory people actually looked like?

My guess is that they are mostly Mwangi/Garundi, with elements of other ethnicities sprinkled in there as they picked up people (after all, one element in "Crucible" says that there are names of people from other parts of the world listed in one part)

According to the "Monster Lore" Section of "Knowledge" checks:

In general, the DC of such a check equals 10 + the monster’s CR. For common monsters, such as goblins, the DC of this check equals 5 + the monster’s CR. For particularly rare monsters, such as the tarrasque, the DC of this check equals 15 + the monster’s CR or more. A successful check allows you to remember a bit of useful information about that monster. For every 5 points by which your check result exceeds the DC, you recall another piece of useful information.

I became intrigued at what is considered a "particularly rare" monster in the setting, because of something that happened in one of the "Pathfinder Tales" novels.

In one scene, two characters, who I assume are at least 6th level, if not more, since their training seems to imply they gained level in a prestige class, come across a CR 2 outsider. They look over the thing and have no idea what it is. Now, their jobs are all about outsiders, so they should have pretty high Knowledge (planes) ranks. I find it hard to believe they both couldn't make a DC 12 check to identify the creature when they go around throwing Demon names like its nobody's business.

This has led me to believe that the entire subtype of outsiders is "Particularly rare," if they couldn't identify what it is.

So, that makes me wonder: What sort of creatures we as players would take for granted should GMs be putting in the "particularly rare" category to emulate the feeling of not knowing what a weak monster is. We can already assume the Tarrasque is on this list, despite being Rovagug's Herald. What other creatures would be hard to know things about, despite level 1 parties being able to take them on in a fair fight?

So, a couple things have made me question how the world of the Pathfinder campaign setting works.

1.) During one of my campaigns, I had to create a 17th level caster to justify how a character could buy a scroll of such high power as he did. I made this character a CN guy who just was into spellcasting for the money and had multiple business ventures throughout the multiverse. Being a 17th level wizard, he used his abilities to be a one man army and basically a god, pal-ing around with extradimensional beings, kidnapping people for business ventures, creating infinite factories of time-distortion demiplanes to ramp up production of cheap, but wanted, magical items to support his wealth...

2.) Reading "Lost Treasures," the book talks about specific magic items that are not artifacts, and have creation rules tied to them, meaning any wizard who can think of a need for a "planes compass" or a "strip of wood that turns you into a beast man" would be able to recreate such treasure, and at a reduced price, because they're crafters.

So, my question is: where are all of the HIgh level shenanigans in Golarion? Where are the people who game the fundamentally broken economy to pump out thousands of gold pieces a day? Why isn't the pathfinder society, an organization created for the purpose of kicking down the door and looting treasure, filled with munchkiny "power gamers"

I once had a player use his ability to make and sell poisons to start an empire that involved him making clones of himself, setting up Wall-mart style super centers in every metropolis, building a ship larger than any preset ship in fleet rules, and eventually craft a magic item of infinite wish granting, and all of this follows RAW.

I can really only think of a couple examples of characters who are like this in the canon. Razmir uses his high level sorcerer abilities to convince people he's a god.

There's that one castle that came into being when a bunch of people decided to draw from the Deck of many things and hope for the keep card.

And, I guess, Baba Yaga.

But really, that seems to be such a pitifiul amount of characters. It just seems with all the adventure there is to have on Golarion, that there would be more people who will "game the system" than just 2 characters

I always figured that monsters whose stat blocks inckude "common" soeak Taldane when playing in the inmer sea region. The problem with that comes from Undead revisited. It states that Nightshades are created knowing abyssal infernal and Common and that the languages they know may be based on the first nightshade ever created.
So, if a nightshade is created knowing taldane, is it going to sttack the inner sea at some point? If it knows tian, it will attack the dragon empires, and if it knows russian, it swill attack siberia?

Just a wonder on the intention of the person(s) who came up with the idea for "Conference Z," the secret organization within the Aspis Consortium

Would Chelaxians pronounce it as "Zee" or "Zed"?

So, I have a player who is a pistelero who wipes the floor with pretty much everything I make. He has an itchy trigger finger and freely uses the gun crafting rules for a gunslinger to make himself a bunch of throwaway weapons. His plan for every fight is to quick draw his two double barrelled pistols, fire them off at the enemies, drop them, and pull the next. He usually kills anything in the first round. He's a 4th level gunslinger with quick draw and two-weapon fighting. I've been going over my various players abilities recently as encounters seem to be going over too easily, and his build perplexes me, because some sources say that one can only fire a double-barrelled pistol as a standard action, while other sources say nothing of that, and just seem to assume one could fire them both off as a single attack.

I just picked up a copy of "Classic Monsters Revisited," and I'm curious why the trolls in that look like lanky dudes with pointed ears and long hooked noses, yet the trolls that Paizo eventually went with have that distinct look that has a weird beast face. When I look at the trolls in this book, I see a Humanoid (Giant), but the ones in the actual game look much more like a monstrous humanoid, to me. Where did the idea for the first design come from? And what was the design process to change it?

Hello, I just skimmed through my new copy of "Curse of the Crimson Throne," and discovered that there's a book out there called "Book of Fiends," that it references. I noticed that it was created in 2004 for the 3.5 rules. Does there exist any kind of official pathfinder update to this product? If not, has anyone already altered the stats to fit?

In Dragons unleashed, there is a ghost copper dragon who is good and is stated to have been tasked with a duty by Desna.

But wait a minute... isnt the creation of undead always an evil act because it brings more negative energy into the world and prevents the soul from going its natural course? Why would a good deity choose to have her servant take an evil form to do a good deed? Yes, maghara is good, but undead are evil.

So, there is a hole in the cage of the god that will destroy everything if released. This hole is spilling forth an endless army of destructive creatures liable to destroy said cage, and the cr 20+ lawful and good outsiders of the multiverse are not going down there personally to fix it?

What else is out there that the biggest inevitables and most powerful archons arent doing a thing about the worldwound?

I am currently developing a timeline for personal use in campaigns i run. Part of that is making sure characters are the proper age in he different time periods my campaigns take place. However, i see an issue with how the books present stats for characters. They almost never make mention of what age grouping a character is in
For example in towns of the inner sea, the stat block for Diobel lists Alvalda Marguel as "NG female human aristocrat 3/bard 10." All well and good. I would think that because there is no age prefix, Alvalda is actually 34 or younger. However, in the "The Kortos Consortium" sidebar, she is described as being in her "late 40s." If that is the case, her stat block ahould actually be "NG female middle-aged human aristocrat 3/bard 10. This is hardly the only time such distinctions are made. I would say that paizo just doesnt give their characters age effect stats, but there are instances in the books where the age category is listed!

Tldr. Why is paizo inconsistent with putting in a character's age category in their stats in their campaign setting books?

In "Guide to Darkmoon Vale," there is an adventuring group known as the Azure Guard, who seem to be important with the Vale's recent history. Is there any more information on them outside of that original publication?

I'm interested in building timelines and understanding how the setting works. Since Pathfinder borrows HEAVILY from HP Lovecraft, i was wondering... is that stuff canonical? Certainly, because of Reign of Winter proving we're currently in CE 1921, a lot of Lovecraft's stories haven't happened yet, which means Earth is in for a lot of pain in the coming years in the Pathfinder setting, if, of course Lovecraft's works are canonical.

I am especially curious about the history presented in "At the Mountains of Madness," where it is determined that humanity came around through evolution on Earth after the Elder Things messed with the genetics of single celled organisms and let life do its own thing. If humans came from Earth, where they somehow transported to Golarion in some way?

Just want to know what is and isn't canon to the Pathfinder setting.

So, I've once had a thread up asking who the "Witch Queen" referenced in the module "Carnival of Tears" and the Chronicles book "Guide to Darkmoon Vale" was. In it, I found out about how much of the early work was retconned and changed.

Knowing what we know now about Irrisen and the number of queens who showed up in there, can we assume that one of Elvanna's predecessors was powerful enough to create artifacts and transform Fey Princes into horrific servants of her cold domain?

Looking at the Pathfinder Wiki, there doesn't seem to be much information on any of the characters, so I personally would probably put that witch queen with Jadwiga and let the stuff she made be tied to the throne, so that it was Elvanna who sent the Cold Riders to Darkmoon Vale, for whatever reason.

Anyone know any obscure lore about any of the Witch Queens that would make for a more compelling explanation?

I've been listening to creepy stories recently,and one monster/cryptid that comes up a lot are the Skinwalkers, yet Pathfinder's own race is nothing like them. What do you think would be the closest monster from pathfindder to use that is close to the monstrous skinwalkers.

Here are some traits
They know when you talk about them
They transform into animals, but do it incorrectly (walking upright, mangled limbs, no tails, humanoid eyes)
They will hunt you down (unless you're blessed by Navajo protective things)
Weak to some sort of ash
method of hunting tends to be mimicry. They sound like either their victims or someone the victim knows and tries to lure them out into the woods alone. Like their appearance, there's something "wrong" with the voice.

Is there anything like this in Pathfinder already?

I don't know if this is correct or not, but I'm looking at the scale in "Mythic Realms" for the Black Desert, and according to my calculations, the place is over 7000 miles from one end to the other, that's much bigger than the land of black blood, which is below 400 miles from one side to the other. The book says that the land of Black Blood. The book describes the Black Desert as having "Miles" of sand and being under Osirion, but at the scale I calculated, the thing would be underneath most of northern Garund. Is the scale off? Did I do something incorrect in my calculations, perhaps?

So, I'm looking at the SRD for how to determine the CR of a magical trap, and it seems like the CR is either equal to 1+Spell Level of the highest spell or 1+1 for every 10 points of damage it does on average.

I'm wondering, then, how to make spells have a higher CR than the spell would allow. I mean, mechanical traps have a ton of modifiers that could be applied to them, but magical traps only allow a choice of 2 modifiers?

According to the SRD, when it comes to equipping monsters with class levels:

"A monster with class levels always possesses treasure equal to an NPC of a level equal to the monster's final CR"

I've statted up a monster and came to the conclusion that the CR should be around 21. Of course, that puts it above the table available on the NPC GEAR table. Is there a rule made up for what happens beyond 20th level?

I've been putting together a Golarion Timeline, mostly for my own personal use, but I might release it. Anyway, I know that things have been retconned, or some things aren't stated and need to be fudged, but I came across something in "Hell Unleashed" that generally bothered me.

According to the "Infernal Apostles" section, the Lords of Mold were discovered in the "bogs of the Sodden Lands' Blackflow River over 200 years ago. Surrounding Detritus suggests the devils have been there since the fall of Lirgen."

The problem with this is that the fall of Lirgen was 110 years ago (109 years ago as of the date the book was published), so the devils were discovered before they showed up where they were discovered?

So, Aroden's death was a big deal, or rather, the day he died was pretty important. Storms started in multiplr planets, the celestial host had a conference, and wounds opened up in the material plane, among other things. We know a lot about what happened on that day, but one thing that bugs me is that there doesn't seem to be an actual date for it.

When in 4606 did aroden die? Or rather, when was he supposed to show up that people notice he was gone? You would think that would be common knowledge, right?

I've been reading/listening to the Pathfinder Tales novels, and I think it would be really cool to see stat blocks for a lot of the concepts that are in them. That being said, I don't want to take a crack at it myself if someone has already beaten me to it. So, have any of you tried your hand at it yet? If not, what items/monsters/characters would you like to see?

So, I enjoy reading through the lore of Pathfinder, and I have come to wonder just how "Good" the alignment of "Good" really is. Throughout the history of Golarion, there are some points where the alignment doesn't seem as shiny as it should be, and this is mostly evident when it comes to Good outsiders.

1. Torag breaks a chip off of Rovagug's prison to punish people with it
2. Iomedae pretty much kills PCs if they don't do what she says
3. The Celestial host wants to kill the guy who wrote the Book of the Damned because he did what they told him to do.
4. Angels have stolen souls to create new angelic soldiers

I'm sure there are more examples of the "Goodest" of "Good" deciding to use not so good tactics to do what they think is right. In an objectively moral universe, it seems weird that they would dip into subjective gray areas.

So, I was going to make a tread specifically for this one little hiccup I thought about, but I figured if it would be fun if other people share somethings they thought about based on how the Pathfinder rules and Golarion's lore/special rules work together.

I present to you: How to kill a ghost for 25gp/HD

In Golarion, undead hold the souls of the beings they once were, which explains why animating dead is an evil act. Meanwhile, ghosts, which are undead creatures, do not use the body. You can take their corpse and turn it into a zombie, and since the zombie holds the soul in it, the ghost will be sucked into its corpse and lose its rejuvenation ability. You can then kill the zombie and send the soul on to the afterlife!

This works, doesn't it? Either way, what other interesting little things can you come up with base don the rules meshing well/not well with the Golarion lore?

I really like the idea of having a magical girl-based class, but really the thing has nothing to do with the magical girl genre. I would love to see a different archetype that is more thematically similar. The Summoner's spell list doesn't really make sense, as magical girls don't really summon things, in general. Most of their abilities come from implements they use, or elements or themes that they represent. I can't really think of a magical girl that uses their animal familiar as a combatant or summons creatures and stuff.

EDIT: I know I could just homebrew it, but I'd love to have something official.

So, now that we have the magical child archetype, I'm now intrigued what sort of "magical girls" exist on Golarion, canonically. I doubt that there's anything out there right now, but I'm interested in where they might come from and what themes they may have

So, Galt has guillotines that will store the souls of those they kill inside of them. What defenses does Galt have in place to stop things like Inevitables, Psychopomps, and clerics of Pharasma from kicking their butts and taking the souls back? I mean, it's not like they have a stable government or anything, so would they really be able to organize a good enough defense against such gross violations of the Death Goddess?

I can't really think how the practice of basically stealing the souls of almost everyone in their country has gone unpunished for so long.

I've been reading through the pathfinder comics and just got to Hollow Mountain #1. One thing I noticed was that some of the storylines were taken from modules and other scenarios. I was wondering if there's a complete list somewhere of the modules and the like that the comics adapt?

I just want a clarification on what they're called in the setting. In "The Devil's Heretic," Inevitables are referred to exclusively as automatons, yet in the Emerald Spire Superdungeon and Skull & Shackles, they are called Inevitables. Is there a reason for the "automaton" name?

So, I'm wondering if there's a way to make something like the Pillar Men from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. What do you think would be good for that? They might make for good high level monsters.

So, crossbows are like... the most pathetic weapon in Pathfinder, which is kinda sad, especially now that Hyrule Warriors Legends has come out and Linkle has a really cool moveset using crossbows

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86WGmxwxovk
is it possible to make a character who does all these cool things as a martial ranged character?

Been reading through "Death's Heretic, and it mentions, as I recall from a first meeting, that each major city in Thuvia takes turn hosting the auctions, but I don't think there's a mention of when the auction takes place or if it takes place the same time of year each year.

Is there a specific time that the auction takes place?

I have been reading Beyond the Vault of Souls and I noticed that it says an atheist Soul will crystallize and become part of the Vault of Souls. now I was reading one of the Pathfinder tales and it described how The Souls of atheists go into a great graveyard in the Boneyard . are these both true?

You know, a lot of people like to bring up the fact that Asmodeus is apparently a misogynist (yet its never really elaborated upon). Are there any villains/evil deities who are explicitly labeled as being misandrist? I could see the Drow not quite being misandrist, as they could probably see the use of men as breeding stock and soldiers, but what about some kind of demon lord or something that wants to wipe out all men or a class of demons specifically made to kill men? Is there anything like that?

Now that the Red Raven's full backstory has been set up, what changes need to be made to "Flight of the Red Raven" to make sure it fits the current backstory and personality of the character?

It has always been my impression that none of the modules or adventure paths actually happen in the perspective of the various campaign setting books. Even in older modules, there are examples of things to do if certain adventure paths have happened in the campaign. (For example, Academy of Secerts has suggestions on who the royal visitor should be, depending on the played status of Curse of the Crimson Throne in your campaign)

However, "The House on Hook Street" seems to throw a wrench in this, as it seems to indirectly imply that CotCT actually happened. I haven't actually read the path, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the plague mentioned in the backstory of "Hook Street" one that was part of the plot of that second adventure path?

On a similar related note, I see various references to modules in "The Inner Sea World Guide" Particularly, "Conquest of the Bloodsworn Vale."

It just seems to me that the stance I see here is that the books never reference the adventure paths as happening, yet in these cases, it seems they are being referenced by the books.

Hello, everyone. I've decided for fun to create a timeline of events that happen in Golarion, including all adventure paths and modules. It'll take me awhile to go through everything, but its a fun little adventure all the same. Right now Its mostly just a personal project, and I'm using the Aeon Timeline free trial to organize stuff, but I digress.

I've come across a strange discrepancy, and I'm sure I'll find more, but what makes me curious about this first one is that it comes not only from the same book, but from the same chapter.

In the "Inner Sea World Guide," the chapter on Belkzan mentions in the history section:

"The Hordeline, when it was grimly constructed in 4515 AR by demoralized soldiers and desperate farmers, was a sad affair."

Later, in the section on Trunau, it says this

"When the Hordeline was breached 200 years ago..."

Now, the weird thing here is that, according to the chapter, the Hordeline was constructed 196 years ago, considering the "current year" is clearly stated to be 4711 AR in the earlier chapter of the book. I could see that maybe the Hordeline didn't last for very long, but the book, and they rounded up to 200 from 196, but I can't be certain because the book never explains anything about the Hordeline's destruction. It just says that it was a "sad affair" and then immediately goes on to talk about the next line of defense after it (which has no erection date, and isn't even named)

So, from face value alone, the Hordeline was so crappy that it was destroyed before it was even finished. I'm going to assume that it was pretty much almost immediaely knocked down. Is there any official word on what happened to the Hordeline and when?

I am working on increasing the CR of some encounters, and am now trying my hand at buildilng stronger traps for my party to go through. I have a Shocking Grasp trap that is CR 2, and so I'm deciding to use a higher-level spell to make it a more powerful electricity trap.

Problem is that looking at the rules on this srd http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/traps-hazards-and-special-terrains/tr aps there seems to be no rules for determining the CR of a magical trap based on perception DCs and the like. Do the DCs and Disable Device checks not affect magical traps like they do mechanical traps?

So, Hanspur, the river rat, is a patron deity of the river kingdoms, and has a morally neutral alignment that seems to fit well with the six river freedoms. However, there's one tenet in his faith in which a faithful travels the river with someone else, only to drown them when they least expect it.

That sounds pretty evil to me, so why isn't Hanspur evil?

I always found the numbers provided by the "NPC Gear" table to be annoying to work with, however, I would like to keep equipment around there. Is there a quick way to assign equipment for simple NPCs, like ones I make for random encounters? I don't want to spend forever on mooks and the like