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Noir le Lotus's page

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Rysky wrote:
Noir le Lotus wrote:
The thing I don't like is Droogami, she looks so much like a plush toy now, rather than a fierce animal ...
Have you seen a snow leopard?

Yes it's a leopard with a thick fur, not a plush toy.

And the pictures for your link are showing leopard cubs.

I must say the tendency to make several creatures look cute in PF2 is starting to worry me. If it keeps on like this, I fear the future PF2 books will look like more Ponyfinder or Playground Adventures than a general D&Desque fantasy RPG ...


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Lini is not bad, I prefer the older proportions but her new armor and clothings look really nice.

The thing I don't like is Droogami, she looks so much like a plush toy now, rather than a fierce animal ...


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Art seems ok but it is me or the colors are way more flashy on this picture ??

I'm not a great fan of the robe replace by Hammer pants and the pants, mostly because it reveals even more how Kyra-'s boots are ugly or very badly drawn ...


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I like the art mostly but I must say that I don't like this dwarvish weapon design !!

I know the need to have cool weapons featured in the pictures, and I can forgive the fact that several iconics have weapons that are way too thick or too broad to be pratical (like PF1 Valeros swords).

But the axe in Harsk's right hand is totally unpratical to use : the flat cutting edge is less effficient and very hard to use with this strange angle compared to the pole ; moreover, the lower part of the head has a good chance of stabbing yourself in the thigh if you are not careful.

Make a quick google search on a tomahawk, a franscica and a viking axe. Save for the size, only a few details on the head will differ, because when people make weapons, their first goal is effciency, and that means you end up with weapons that can be very similar even from different cultures.

And when those cultures want to put some fancy features on their weapons, they will make some engravings on the metal or light decorations on the pole, nobody is crazy enough to double the weight of his weapon just to make it look cool.

So why not just put some dwarvish runes/symbols on weapons to give them a less generic look while keeping it usable ??


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There are a few points of Golarion that I don't like :
- the overabundance of deities/demigods/empyreal lords etc that bloated the universe after all these years. We ended up with the same thing that I hated on the FR : each race or region has its own pantheon, making it hard to believe that major gods are universal faiths. I would have greatly prefered to have universal gods with local cults who adapt to their region (just like christian churches have depictions of a brown Jesus or a black virgin Mary in South America or Africa)

- the Pathfinder Society ! Reading the different articles about it, it's hard to decide if it's an analogy of the National Geographic Society or the Justice League and then I find it hard to do anything with it in games.


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Ulrich-Alexander Schmidt wrote:
Amiri looks sicks... quick, somebody give her some chickensoup!

Exactly my thought when I first the picture !! But I would rather call a doctor as she is clearly suffering from a severe food deprivation ...


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As long as a creature is not on its home plane, it gains the extraplanar creature template and thus becomes a valide target for Dismissal and Banishment.


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Didn't Dragons Revisited say that there was some collaboration between some chromatic and metallic dragons ?

IIRC, there was the case of green and copper dragons having a tendency to cooperate in their common quest for knowledge ? I would totally see a pair of those sharing their lair in an antique library (with a tribe of librarian kobolds) ... Imagine the face of PCs when they arrive in the lair and realize the dragons hoard is just a ton of ancients tomes ...


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Why searching for something complicated ?? Nethys, the mad god of Magic, is the perfect fit for a mad wizard trying some crazy things with science ...


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The Rogue is just the illustration that the new skill system is wonky.

In 3.X, skills work exactly the same for everyone, you just roll a D20 and add your bonus, the DM gives you a DC, you pass or fail, that's all.

In PF2, skills are a nightmare : you have proficiency levels and skill feats, both modify how skills work. that means that now the DM gives a DC for an action but he doesn't know anymore what the PCs can do. On the Pc side, it's awfully complicated as you have to keep track of all the specific skill talents you get through skill proficiencies and skill feats. As the rogue gets a ton of them, I'm not even sure that an additionnal page to your character sheet is enough.

And even like that, the skills are not even clear on how they work. I read the rules on pickpocket and between the skill description, the proficiency modifications and the skill feats dedicated to this action, I still can't understand what my PC can pickpocket depending on what feats and proficiencies he has ...

I can't imagine what the debate will be at the table when a rogue will try to pickpocket the key of the prison guards.


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I didn't play yet the game with this new version but I agree with the OP : this rulebook is a mess.

The different informations for one thing are dispersed in several chapers, it's gonna be awful to keep things fast during a combat.

The rules about damage are in the Playing the game chapter, pages away from the Encounter chapter, where are the infomations about attacks.

Guess what ? The rule about non-lethal damage (which states the penlty to your attack when you want to spare your enemy) is in the damage section, not the attack section.

A friend of mine looked at the rules for Counterspell, he must go in 4 différent chapters to understand the rules (aand he didn't yet know how it works).


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I really anticipate the hard encounter in the playtest : one of the Pcs is inconscious, you go to wake him up with a potion of cure and ... he has no resonance left ...

I really liked the magic properties in runes, allowing you to recycle some interesting magic items looted on BBEG. But I was not expecting an awfully complex system which basically forces any martial character to change his weapon every other level (to ger an improved quality, to change the metal eetc ...).

I was not expected that Paizo wanted to kill the "family heirloom cliché" ...

Seriously devs, a weapon is not legendary ecause you put a "legendary quality "seal on it, a weapon becomes legendary when it is used in an epic fight ...


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The more I read about this 2nd edition, the less I like it.

Resonance is first too gamey for my taste but it just makes things more complicated.

Well to be honest everything in this preview seems way more complicated : seeing the block about Cloak of Elvenkind was such a disappointment. I want PF2 to simplify tedious things and I only see more tedious things added ...

I don't understand the point of trinkets : Why should a martial character need to pay for a consumable to get better effects in a combat ? Can't they just be better by themselves ?

Seriously Paizo devs, the problem is not that martial characters are less powerful than spellcasters. The problem is that it is too easy to be a spellcaster to be extremely powerful without any real cost. Just make magic rarer or more costly (look at Midnight where magic drain constitution from casters that use too much magic) and things will be better !!

And I have a last point to complain : it's not about the rules, it's about your PR, Paizo ...

When you tell me that using wands of CLW in PF1 is bad-wrong-fun (I know I'm exagerating a bit, that's not how exactly you said it), I'm finding a bit paradoxal to read now that you advice to use a wand of CLW, but a bigger one as a good way to play.


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I didn't read alll the thread, just the blog post.

I really love Golarion goblins and have no problem having one in the party from time to time, but I realy think Paizo shouldn't include them in the core races of the game.

When D&D4 arrived, 2 new races were added (Tiefling and Drow) and one was removed (Gnome). And that toally changed the way you see the world where the PCs are evolving : now there were tiefling and drow NPCs everywhere and gnomes totally disappeared.

And even if Paizo tells us that Golarion will not suffer a world-shaking event with the new edition, adding a new core race IS changing the world. You go from "goblins are evil little nuisances but there are some exceptions that can adapt to civilization" to "goblins are people like anyone else". This is changing the world !!

I would greatly prefer that Paizo put the goblins in the Monster Manual, with a sidebar to play goblin PCs, or include them in a supplement book about races.

Another point that I really don't like is the ability bonuses of goblins : I'm ok with +2 Dex, but +2 Charisma for a race that always had -2 ? Not only it is surprizing to see a race unable to socialize become better than anyone to this, but the +2 dex/cha small race was always the Halfling, so why change that ? I'd rather see globins with +2 dex/con to help them survive all the bad situations they are putting themselves in ...


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I totally agree with the OP. Paizo told us that a 2nd edition is coming.

Fine !!

But now either they remain silent because they need to work on it or to collect suggestions, or if things are ready they give us a real first look at how it works.

Having previews that reveal nothing precise 2 or 3 times a week for 5 MONTHS are going to put me in a real bad mood for when the playtest finally arrives.

Nothing can live up the expectations built up on 5 months of previews ...


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I once read that for magic to be good in a roleplaying game, it had to be :
- with a chance of failure
- rare
- limited in power

Pick only 2 of the list.

And if you check Pathfinder or any D&D edition, you have magic where you are sure to cast your spells (save for the few times you must roll for concentration, but you ca almost always avoid that roll), spells are very powerful (you can decide the ending of a fight with 1 spell often) and save for the early levels, it's not very rare.

In all D20 games I saw, the best magic system was the one in Midnight : casters use a spell point system, but with a very limited pool and could spend more points than they have, but each point above the limit cause 1 pt of Constitution drain (it's a special drain that goes off after a good night of sleep). Yes, in this system a caster thaat goes too far can kill himself witht magic !!

As they are limited in their magic, caster classes are more similar to the 6-level-spell caster class in PRPG (Magus, Summoner, Bard, etc ...)

With such a system, you can always do wonders with magic but you must pay a price as if you cast your highest level spell, you have expended all your normal points and now will take Con-drain at any further spell cast, or put their life in danger.


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You don't need your spellbook to prepare Read Magic.

The Spell Mastery feat allows you to prepare a small number of spells without your spellbook.

So yes it is possible.


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This preview worries me a bit.

The fighter is typically the entry class of lots of new players, as you can build an efficient character with only feats that give a numerical advantages (Improved Init, Weapon Focus etc ...), so the new player has only very few things to know and can learn the basics of the game easily.

This preview shows a lot of things to master, I fear new players will be a bit overhelmed by all these notions ...


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JRutterbush wrote:
Noir le Lotus wrote:

So Paizo thinks that in a system based on D20, the diffrence between being untrained and legendary at a skill is +4 ??

Seriously ??

No, the difference is +5 (-2 to +3), and also the ability to make certain checks that you can only make if Trained, and the ability to use incredibly powerful Skill Feats. Skill mastery in PF2 won't be about raw numbers, it'll be about what you can do with the numbers you have.

Cool ...

So instead on having to just check if I pass a DC, now I will have to check if I pass the DC and if my proficiencies give me the appropriate perks for my actions ...


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So Paizo thinks that in a system based on D20, the diffrence between being untrained and legendary at a skill is +4 ??

Seriously ??


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Albatoonoe wrote:
I like the sound of this. It sounds like it has a good dramatic weight to it.

D&D 5 has the same kind of rules and it's quite the contrary in fact. Players know they have 3 rounds to stabilize you so they usually take their time as they feel no stress ...

And sometimes you fumble your stabilization check and you die at the 2nd round.

Absolutely anti-heroic !!


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I hate this kind of thing !!

Resonance is just a gamist rule that will push people to optimize and ruin immersion.

If you want to limit magic items, then do it to the max : improve the system so that PCs don't need +X bonus to AC, ST or characteristics, remove the magical shop and the item creation, reduce the number of slots to a handful, make heal spells that can restore most HP of a PC but can't be use in combat.

I can't to see a game where the paladin will say that the group can't attacck the demon lord because his resonance is off today so he can't use his holy avenger ...


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My wishlist :
- a magic system that doesn't bypass the skills
- less bonus types, if only all spells could have bonus type called magic
- no archetype that make a class irrelevant, there was too many archetypes that made the rogue irrelevant


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As a solo player, I think your priority is to build the team that will help you rule your future kingdom. So you should spare as much NPCs that you can and try to recruit them if possible.

Finding a wife is clearly nt your priority in the 1st volume, it will become something to do once you settled.


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Mengkare in Hermea ?

In the River Kingdoms, the actual ruler is an half-orc (even if technically, he was first a human) and Riverton is ruled by an elf.

Moreover, Shenmen is ruled by a jorogumo, Tianjing by an aasimar, Xa Hoi by a dragon, Zi Ha by a samsaran and in Minkai, I heard that the Jade Regent is not human.


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Darigaaz the Igniter wrote:
Well, the one line about using monsters as pcs in the bestiary says treat CR as character level. So I'd use that as the basis.

Yeah but some monsters have more HD than their CR. Look at Valkyrie (CR 12, 16 HD) and tell me it is balanced as a lvl 12 cohort ...


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Azten wrote:
The more I think about it the more the higher of CR or HD working as the base cohort level makes sense to me. This could give a 7th level paladn(for example) a Pegasus with a level in something else, likely Fighter or Cleric, as a cohort. It would actually have a little more use and a slight better chance to survive.

That's exactly the house rule I use for monstruous cohorts. But you must remember that some monsters don't work with it : erynie or avoral, with their constant True Seeing, are way too powerful cohorts in that case.


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Nobody mentionned the ring of counterspells ? It's a decent defense against a specified threat.


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The OP should try to look at Midnight Setting. It's a 3.X setting where the big bad evil god won and forbid all arcane magic and all divine magic not coming from him.

So casters must remain hidden but another difference with standard 3.X is that the magic system is also quite different.

Casters can only cast normally a handful of spells per day. If they try to cast more, they suffer Con drain (so casting too much can kill you). This Con drain is special as it completely disappears after a good night of sleep.


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Undeads for me too.

Not only do they kill you with nasty attacks, but most often after your deqth, you join them. And some, like vampires, can do much more than just kill you.

Oh and some templates too, like Worm that walks ...


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240. While the party is travelling in a plain, they must go through a cloud of fog. After they entered it, they end up realizing that they are somewhere completely out of place for this region (like a tian village or a jungle forest). When they get out of the fog, they are still in a plain. If the party ask to people living in the neibourghood, they are told taht there are only plains where they went.


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I quite like Golarion's goblins.

They make me think of Raving Rabbids applied to a realistic world : at first they seem silly and funny but when you look more sriously, you realize that they can very dangerous for ordinary people (and themselves).


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My martial characters always have a spare weapon in cas of thief, sunder or anything else. The yare prepared in case of things turning bad but none of them rely only on their specific weapon

My only characters that are paranoid about their stuff are wizards !! Becasue wehn you lose your spellbook, you are just a walking wand ...


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When I played Kingmaker, my first character died so I took an old character, who was the leader of a mercenary company. So I took the Leadership feat and decided to use the iconics as followers.


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OneTrueBaldo wrote:
Since then, I noticed that Paizo keeps (ab)using this 'Shawl Cliche', and I hoped this thread was helpful in *changing* this creative laziness...

To be honest, the creature is built to allow the shawl cliché (I'm French so I insist : never write cliché without é please !!), so I don't mind GM using it, as it's less morbid than other cliches on feys (like the someone-chumped-my-tree,-watch-me-dying dryad) and gives more opportunity for roleplay.

As I said, I didn't play all the adventures listed by the OP, but in the example I gave, the plot was really slim and nothing in the behaviour of the nereid suggested she felt a danger for her life or most importantly her mission ; 5 minutes after being freed and asking the PCs to recover her shawl, Evindra only cared for finding some quiet place where she could draw my character for a little kinky pause ...

The problem is not using the cliché, it's using it in a lazy way. If you put a nereid in an andventure, make it so for a dramatic scene, where the nereid really feels the threat on her life, not for just another fed-ex quest.

But as I said, if you do the math, nereids are hardly damsels in distress when their shawl is stolen.


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Rysky wrote:
My point was once luck is involved statistics take a back seat.

So I supposed your PC only engage in combat when he has zero chances of failure, and then absolutely no challenge at all ??

Of all the nereids listed in the OP, I only encountered one of them :

War of the River Kings:
In Kingmaker, Evindra is the guardian of the artefact needed to defeat the final big bad evil lass. And Irovetti has stolen her shawl and the artefact.

And when our group found her, she was kept prisoner but once freed, well she does nothing else but asking the PCs to recover her shawl (and the artefact). To be honest, for the eternal guardian of a powerful artefact, that was rather disappointing ...


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Rysky wrote:

... you might want to look again at how losing the Shawl works.

Shawl (Ex) wrote:
A nereid’s shawl (hardness 2, hp 6) contains a portion of her life force. If the shawl is ever destroyed, the nereid takes 1d6 points of Constitution drain per hour until she dies. A nereid can craft a new shawl from water by making a DC 25 Will save, but each attempt takes 1d4 hours to complete. Attempts to destroy or steal a nereid’s shawl require the sunder or disarm attempts.

Nereid has +14 Will ST, so she has 50% chances to success, and in average, she can almost make 3 tries before dying, and only 1 only if she rolls the maximum on the 4 drains and the craft (0.02% chances of happening)...

If she had to wait for the destruction of her shawl, she can just tell the thief that she won't obey and simply telle him to destroy the shawl while she runs away to craft a new one in a safe place.

So, Nereid without a shawl = not a damsel in distress !!


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OneTrueBaldo wrote:

Have you noticed that War of the River Kings, Island of Empty Eyes, The Frozen Stars, Breaking the Bones of Hell and Tombs of Golarion (and maybe more, I don't know... ) have something in common?

A very careless NEREID blackmailed into compliance (or otherwise imperiled) by the BBEG because of her *SHAWL*!
My dear developer(s), what were you thinking...? Does anyone here know WHY a nereid can't fit her soul inside her own body and needs a shawl to live? And WHY she's stuck with a hardness 2, hp 6 shawl instead of an iceberg, a 2-tons statue of Kelizandri or even just a mithral full plate of speed?

OK Paizo, please have a word with the writers and just say NO to shawl abuse.

Fey are linked to nature and some parts of nature are dependant of some things that are delicate and fragile, so it's sometimes very easy to kill them and break the blaance of nature. Nereids are simply a peersonnification of such a thing !!

What annoys me more is the fact that, as written, the nereid has more consitution than charisma, so if her shawl is stolen, a nereid could simply create a new one and never bother about the lost one ...

I would gladly fall for such a DM trick if Nereid had a constitution of 10, because in that case a stolen shawl would really be a life threatening risk ...


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IIRC, James Jacobs stated somewhere that a succubus can't avoid draining levels if she has sex with someone in its normal shape.

So she must change shape for safe sex.


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Where to go when high level ?

Hmm let me think about it :
- Treerazer's lair in Kyonin
- Hermea : let's see how PCs would behave when they realize what is exactly Mengkare perfect society and how to leave this place without harming innocent people who were told to chase them, and how to deal with a really powerful and smart dragon.
- I second Eye of Adebango
- Mechitar in Geb
- Mordant Spire
- Sovyrian


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I'm surprised that nobody proposed :
- Ghaele as Disco Ball
- Bralani as vaccum cleaner
- Silvanshee as Nyan Cat


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For me it is simply this :

Quote:
1) Mengkare is really convinced that what it is doing is good... but to be convinced to do good does not necessarily mean being really good. So, he isn't LG. Maybe he is LN... or LE?


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28. A powerful Ogre has killed a bandit lord and then claimed to be the new ruler of the land. He wants the villages he is now ruling to pay him tribute with children. So each village is now stealing children to the others in order to avoid giving theirs.


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Why don't you use one of the NPCs to be the 4th ? Shalelu would proove useful in this group.


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I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:


719. Gorum is NOT voiced by Vin Diesel.

Of course, every one knows that Gorum is voiced by Ron "War-will-always-be-the-same" Pearlman !

I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:

725. Cayden Cailean is NOT voiced by Johnny Depp, or Orlando Bloom, or Owen Wilson, or Jeff Bridges.

But he should. Seriously, Cayden, with the voice of the Dude !!


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With a +3 intelligence, a smart succubus would use her telepathy thourgh the gift to tell you that now she is the boss and your wizard'd better obey or punishment will come !!


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Goblin hate for dogs & horses is not so ancestral that most of you think.

In 3702 AR, the ruler of Taldor and his court were very fond of Fox Hunting to the point that foxes were about to disappear from this part of the world.

The Green Faith druids protested and ordered to the taldan nobility to stop this sport. First, they refused but after some accidental deaths in the woods (some treants were suspected but their alibi could never be broken), they negociated with the druids : they could keep on their sport but the only creture that they could hunt without threatening the natural balance was the goblin.


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He got sick or badly wounded in the last game and needs some time to recover.

If the party rescued some NPCs, he escorted them to a safe place.

He needs to do some research (for a spell, or for intelligence) to gain advantage on the BBEG.

He was kidnapped by some female fey who wanted some company for a few days.

He was kindnapped in a mysterious way (nor him or the the party knows what exactly happened) byt the BBEG and will be freed at the end of your game.


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Constantine & Hulk are CG, being grumpy is not enough to make you CN when you spend your life saving people ...

Lestat is certainly CE, not only does he predate on humans but he has fun doing it.

Tyler Durden is the ultimate anarchist, so CN is ok for him.

other CN model : Jack Sparrow


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At low levels, wolf is great with its free Trip attack => it's not too dangerous but puts the PCs in a bad situation, so that's a great introduction. Lion with Grab and Rake can be very dangerous. Stirges are a bit of a nuisance if they are not too numerous (consider one per PC).

At higher levels, Succubus is fun if the "act of passion" doesn't last too long => with drained levels, escaping is harder and harder so this is more frustratous than anything else.

For unarmed combat, make them fight some good monster (bralani or hound archon) as a challenge to test their value.