Perpdepog's page

Seconding what Finoan said. This sounds more related to setting and narrative than the rules, as such. I mean, even your suggestion that not all priests of a deity serve as clerics is already true in the universe; some NPC priests are other classes, and many have no real class at all. Clerics just get put front-and-center for a deity in the minds of players because of gaming tradition.

IIRC the RPG rulebooks are loss leaders as far as Paizo is concerned. I heard the print ones were at least. I'm not so sure about the PDFs given the smaller amount of overhead with a digital product.

Monks and I think rangers would love this, fill up on loads of focus spells they'd otherwise need to pick between. I think commanders would also be big fans, though it's been a minute since I saw their feats.

Out of curiosity, what would making Fleshwarp into a versatile heritage accomplish that giving them a heritage, call it Ancestral Echo Fleshwarp, wouldn't? As in, a heritage whose primary benefit is that it gives you ancestry feats from another ancestry. I suppose it might cause you to miss out on special senses or other ribbons that ancestries get at level 1, but I'm not sure what past that.

I'm asking because, while I do think there needs to be an option for lesser and greater degrees of fleshwarpery on a character, that was an issue I had with the Premaster fFleshwarp ancestry, I think it could also be confusing to make an ancestry both a full ancestry and a versatile heritage. Including the versatile heritage's benefits into a heritage in the ancestry feels a bit neater, and I suspect would also take up less page space.

Swarm Lore sounds like a reasonable category of lore to me. Lores are meant to be shorthand for grabbags of knowledge anyway, like all the ancillary skills and facts required to practice a trade, so focusing on stuff like the behaviors of creatures when they swarm, how swarms move, and specific creatures known for swarming either through a hivemind or other means all sound reasonable to me.

I do think it's a little funny that this character could be stumped on what to do with a single rat, but give them a bunch of rats in a sack and they're suddenly brilliant, but that's also a degree of silly I'm comfortable with in my games and fiction in general.

I'm hoping so, so desperatly that we get power armor rules in Tech Core.

I'm going to guess reworked, but not yet with an ancestry. I don't think there's enough room from what we've seen to introduce any large number of new ancestries, though I'll happily be proven wrong when the book comes out.

Crouza wrote:

OP really did the equivalent of setting down two towers mid-read to write "Whose replacing aragorn now that he fell off a cliff and died?"

Aragon dies!!??

It's OK; he gets better.

Perpdepog wrote:

Gaulin wrote:

Due to a variety of factors, according to the announcement of there being no paizocon. If we do get some good spoilers from paizo lives, that would help, it's just nice to have a known time that we would get the goods.

Agreed. Also still bummed about the lack of Paizocon this year; I finally had a schedule line up so I could participate.

So that’s why they cancelled it.

How did I not see before; it all makes sense now.

Due to a variety of factors, according to the announcement of there being no paizocon. If we do get some good spoilers from paizo lives, that would help, it's just nice to have a known time that we would get the goods.

Agreed. Also still bummed about the lack of Paizocon this year; I finally had a schedule line up so I could participate.

Was any reason ever given for the lack of a Paizocon this year?

Just checked the page. Now I'm really curious what that seaweed-looking creature with the starfish is. New playable ancestry?

Do you have any sense of scale from the pic? It could be a seaweed leshy, and the focus is more meant to be on the lil starfish as a new companion?

Thirding for shabti as a versatile heritage. That just makes a lot of sense to me.

moosher12 wrote:

Absalom, essentially the metropolis of the world, where people congregate from every continent to trade, from every plane, even. The most obligatory cantina location in Golarion.

Population: 306,900

That's not a bad population for a pseudo-medieval city. Small compared to some of the great centers, but an understandable underestimation.

The problem being that Golarion stopped being pseudo-medieval a long time ago (if it ever was).

World designers need to stop working off old D&D books.

What makes it even funnier is the fact that number, to my knowledge, has grown by, at most, around three thousand people in the fifteen-ish years since Golarion became a setting and started advancing with our own timeline.

Makes you wonder how grim things are there if they haven't even cracked a 5% population increase in almost two decades' time.

My main (probably futile) hope is that Eidolons get a little more comprehensive. I think the suggestions on the Summoner Multiclass Archetype specifically mention a Devil Eidolon that doesn't exist. Which category of Fiend do you think is more likely to end up bound to a mortal's service? The manic, anti-social sin lunatics, or the guys whose whole schtick is making deals with people???

I think having a general Fiend Eidolon with the different clades being an internal option might work, similar to how the Elemental Eidolon works to select an element. Although that might overgeneralize things.

I'd honestly love that. Give us general templates for celestial and fiend eidolons, and then list out what specifics agathions, angels, archons, azatas, daemons, demons, devils, and divs give us. I think it'd require more space than the remastered summoner is going to get, but I can dream.

I'm mostly left wondering why you don't just alter those weapons in your games to not need an Interact action after each shot. As in, why create a magic item when what it sounds like you want to do is change how the reloading rules work for those weapons? Such an item, at such a low level, would be such a no-brainer for anyone using one of those weapons to pick up that it feels a bit unnecessary over just changing how the weapons' rules work to better align with your vision.

You may want to consider downgrading the Repeating Hand Crossbow to a martial weapon, as well, as a sort of mid-point between those two bows.

Fresno nightcrawlers are FAR too niche to ever be a heritage for that ancestry, especially since Golarion doesn't HAVE a Fresno...

I think that most worlds have a Fresno. It's just that the nightcrawlers are better at hiding those other ones than they are at hiding ours. It's why you keep hearing about schools of phrenology in fantasy worlds; they're supposed to be schools of fresnology, but the mind-muddling power of Fresno makes them come out wrong, and then everyone starts touching skulls or whatever.

You kids and your fancy ancestries... pah! In my day we had humans, dwarves, elves, gnomes, and halflings, and by thunder, that was more than enough! Now get off my lawn before I hit you with my +5 vorpal cane of "back when games were simple."

Canes aren't swords, or deal slashing damage. They aren't eligible to be vorpal weapons. Your argument is therefore invalid; CHECK AND MATE, OLD MAN!

Yeah, who IS doing all the fleshwarping?!

It's probably me.

I mean it could also be the Alghollthu, long-buried members of the Dominion of the Black, cultists of the Great Old Ones and Outer Gods, the Derro, or whatever family of aberrations the neothelid will belong to when they're re-introduced ... but it's probably me.

I'm aware they'd have to be SIGNIFICANTLY watered down to be playable a la Battlezoo, but I'd love to have a swarm ancestry. I'm aware that Battlezoo has an ancestry that is a swarm in a skinsuit, and I love them, but I'd also like something official closer to a Swarm Strider. I adore the concept of the Spathinae from Starfinder 1e, and keep hoping they'll come back for second edition.

I don't have a specific concept or request in mind, but I always adore aberration ancestries, and would always love more!

This 1,000%! The Swarmblood is very cool, but it doesn't quite scratch the itch for me.

I think I'd prefer a Swarm Strider to be an archetype rather than an ancestry, mostly because class feats have a higher power budget than ancestry feats, but I'd also love if that archetype interacted with your ancestry in some way.

It is annoying in books to have a generic class feat section but also have each class have unique ones that are listed elsewhere where. Choosing class feats without being able to see all of them in one place is less than ideal.

I feel you, and this is where I think resources like AoN really come in handy. By and large I'm not a fan of "you can solve this issue digitally, so it's not a problem" arguments, but the fact is that unless Paizo reprints all the feats for each class in later supplements as they are printed you're going to have this issue no matter what you do. New books are going to come out over a game's lifecycle, and some of those books are going to print new feats for extant classes. Cross-referencing book pages is just part and parsel of dealing with print media.

I'd love to see an unchained-style book try its hand at the "Words of Power" magic subsystem from PF1. That one kinda flopped, quicker summons and cheese with the "Wrack" word aside, but I think you could do some cool things with it in PF2's three action system.

It's a big reason why I'm excited for the Runesmith; if it goes over well then it should open the doors for possibly seeing such a subsystem in future.

I actually like the different names for the features for each class. They provide a little extra flavor for each class that I appreciate, even if it does come with a cognitive load.

Edit: Come to think, that is the downside to the standardized feats that is a bit of a bummer, but is also unavoidable. You lose a little bit of the flavor baked into the ancestry's or class's feats because they're not being described in full and lack the flavorful preamble that each feat tends to get.

moosher12 wrote:

As for the attribute conversation, I've got something to ask, but I'm not sure if it has already been said, so I'll ask, with apologies if it's been explained before.

Out of curiosity, are there any Player Character-facing games that do not use attributes (or an attribute equivalent) that are well tuned for both roleplay and combat that we can make reference to to gauge feasibility? (I know technically Lancer didn't have attributes, but PCs aren't the main focus, and they are played super fast and loose as they are secondary to the mechs, so I would not count those, but I mean one where you're expected to play a character as your default unit)

So as not to reinvent the wheel, I'm curious who else has experimented with no attribute to relative success.

I earlier mentioned Call of Cthulhu as a half-example because, while it certainly does have attributes (or characteristics, as they are called in that system), they don't contribute to skills but are used to calculate other statistics. That's really the only example I can think of since other systems I could use as an example have stats but don't have skills, like Fabula Ultima and (AFAIK) Draw Steel, though IMO these should count because they effectively solved the problem but in the opposite direction.

Also, I feel most combat-heavy TTRPGs tend to draw heavily from D&D 5e in that they prefer to keep the numbers as low as possible, so for those systems it makes more sense to keep attributes since there a +3 or +4 is huge at every level, unlike PF2e where the numbers can skyrocket into the 30s and 40s late game.

Draw Steel has been on my mind as well because it solves some of an issue folks are talking about here with attributes; it removes the perceived false choice of not maxing your core ability all the time. Your character is going to wind up with a +5 in the stat you want at the end of the game, and will get bumped at pre-defined points in the game, so you instead focus on raising the attributes you care about for other reasons. I believe that your stats also don't contribute to things like passive defenses, though they are each connected to a possible save a` la 5e, so while there is pressure to raise your attributes, it's at least distributed across all the abilities more or less evenly.

As for games that go attribute-less, the main one that comes to mind for me is Fate. You can hack Fate into whatever shape you feel like, and fractally dig down more and more to introduce as much complexity as you desire, but the baseline game uses no attributes and instead treats everything like a skill, including things like the amount of damage you can take in combat. I suspect that this is because combat is not the default assumption of Fate's gameplay loop.

Note: I'm talking about classic Fate here, not Fate Accelerated, which effectively takes the six D&D attributes, calls them "approaches," and has a character rank how good they are at each in a sliding scale. Even then attributes are really de-emphasized for the purposes of mechanics because they don't inform how hard your character is to hit, or how much damage they can take, or anything like that.

There's still space for a class who really messes around with Fortune and Misfortune effects. Not sure of the theming, maybe a probability manipulator of some kind, but that hiche is still open.

(I got reminded because there is a 3p take on the gunslinger someone did called the Wanderer.)

I would love, love, love lists of standardized class feats. I get why they weren't there initially, it's hard to guess which feats classes are going to share until you're pretty far into the game and can look back and see patterns. It saves so much space for the Starfinder 2e ancestries though, and like others have said it'd give the designers so much more room to create new feats for new classes, even if they're functionally similar to earlier feats but with small tweaks. They also help save on page space for those feats and features that may need more text to explain them, which IIRC is one reason why some feats or character options look a bit strange or feel incomplete; it's because the page space required a squishening.

I'd be super down for a Super Sentai-style class, just on general principle. I could see it getting fun mech-facing feats and such once mech rules come to Sf2, which is cool to think about.

Honestly I suspect that the new concepts they make classes for are going to be something pretty specific to Starfinder's setting. I don't know what they'd be, but that seems like a way to try building out new classes that don't so overtly touch on niches already explored; just make the niche up by tying it to the setting. I'm thinking of something like a beefy archetype, like PF2's Red Mantis Assassin, tooled up into becoming a full class. A fairly narrow niche, just broad enough for multiple feats at each level, and heavily tied to the setting.

I think I'm fine with the fact that Paizo is still slowly releasing Cantrips on a regular basis.

Though if there is one cantrip I want, I sort of want an equivalent to D&D5E's updated True Strike cantrip, which I suppose Pathfinder's equivalent would be a 2 action cantrip to perform a Strike, but letting you use your spell attack modifier instead of your ranged or melee attack modifiers. doubt it'd add spell attack modifier to damage for melee, but applying spell proficiency to accuracy would be a nice bonus for the extra action spent.

I think you'd need to limit that another way as well, such as making it melee only or something, otherwise it'd be stepping on the wizard's Hand of the Apprentice. I mean, yeah, Hand of the Apprentice has a hilarious range ... and not much else going for it, but it would be stepping on its toes regardless.

And count me in the camp of wanting more Will save cantrips. Some that deal Spirit damage, which is less frequently resisted, or maybe another Vitality/Void cantrip.

I could even see a spell that deals physical damage but still goes off Will, call it "Clash of Wills" and flavor it like a brief psychic contest resulting in a telekinetic blast, but that may be a bit much for a cantrip.

Thanks I will give that a try. My hope was there would be something that addresses the outer planes and what differences there are regarding the fact that we no longer use alignment. Are Angels and Azatas all just part of the Heavens. What is the difference between Elysium and Heaven if it is not the Chaos / Law spectrum.

I am assuming they will eventually have to make the outer planes for Golorian work in line with edicts and anathema as opposed to Chaos / Law or Good / Evil. That might be a major project that is down the road I guess. The 1e stuff is useful but to get away from the alignment system I imagine changes will be made. Who knows?

Ah, if that's what you're wanting I suggest checking out Monster Core and Monster Core 2. Most--I think maybe all--of the major families of celestials, fiends, and monitors were re-introduced and given some setting lore and discussions on their relationships with other outsiders.

By and large, no, there wasn't all that much need for any rejiggering of the planes. They're not overtly referred to as lawful good or the like anymore, but the goodly planes are still goodly, and the fiendish planes are still fiendish. Celestials and fiends are still along a lawful-chaotic spectrum, though it's not as explicit and it's not in the mechanics, and they still fight each other with monitors doing their own thing in the middle.

A few outsiders had some lore changes to fit with the Remaster and breaking away from the OGL though. Inevitables no longer exist, at least by that name, though there are new aeons that look very similar and fulfill similar functions. A few fiendish outsider families, like the assura and the oni, were re-imagined as spirits instead so they'd better fit their cultural inspirations. (I think assuras are especially cool now, seemingly able to flip between Holy and Unholy.)
Oh, and archons were changed to look much stranger, more like what people mean when they use the term "biblically accurate angel." Their new lore is that they are essentially the counterparts to qlippoth, predating the other kinds of outsider formed from mortal souls, but unlike qlippoth and demons, when angels and the rest made contact with archons things went pretty great for everyone involved.

I think the intention is that you're tying them up with the chain of your weapon, but it's not really communicated in the feat. If it ever comes up in one of my games that's how I think I'll run it; basically guaranteeing a Restrained enemy in exchange for your primary mode of attack makes sense in my head.

Don't forget to "turn off" the feats your de-leveled PC wouldn't have access to, either, unless you want to keep them to represent the symbiotic partner retaining skills they've learned from the intelligent weapon.

THE biggest media example of this "symbiotic intelligent weapon" paradigm is "Reincarnated as a Sword" (Tensei S#+$ara Ken Deshita), but the fact that the ancestry doesn't allow for the wielder to grow is a pretty grave failing in fantasy.

I'd have gone with Elrick and Stormbringer, or perhaps Soul Edge and Soul Calibur, myself; never heard of this before. I'm a sucker for stories about intelligent weapons though so I'll need to see if there's a version I can get into.

Hi,

Just wandering about material that can help me understand what is out there for the planes. My focus is on the Outer Planes but I am interested in the inner planes as well.

I have the GM Core and have read the sections on the planes there. Is there other source material that has been published which could be useful either in further expanding the planes scape in its entirety or individual planes themselves.

Just wondering. IF not is there a book/books on this that will be coming out in the future.

While it covers inner planes rather than outer ones, 2e's Rage of Elements is a real good primer on the Elemental Planes, including the two new ones, Metal and Wood.

Past that you'll probably need to look back at 1e material; 2e seems more focused on fleshing out the various cultural zones of Golarion itself.
I'd suggest checking out the books Chronicle of the Righteous, Concordance of Rivals, and Book of the Damned for info on the goodly, neutral, and fiendish planes, respectively. There's also the 1e book Planar Adventures which may have some useful material in it for you, as well.

And never underestimate the power of the Pathfinder wiki, either! Lots of handy stuff there collated from across multiple products and releases.

Ascalaphus wrote:

Well Detect Magic doesn't really help very much in figuring out if a pile of defeated enemies contains any magic loot. The best you can get at rank 4 is saying which 5ft square has the most powerful magic in it.

Read Aura is then the fastest way of sorting the magic from the mundane.

Detect magic can easily triangulate magical loot.

Yeah. And it takes about as much time as using Read Aura does. I remember being confused at how those effects were split into two spells when 2e came out, and I'm still a bit confused about it now, tbh.

Unicore wrote:

WatersLethe wrote:

10. Enshrine "Automatic Rune Progression" into text

11. Adjust wealth chart to make sure players have enough money to spend on fun items and sidearms.

Since you made the OP and I am still a little confused about what we are talking about in this thread, I wanted to ask about number 10 especially:

My understanding of an unchained book is that it is a book of variant rules. Are you asking for a different version of ABP or more like an AP where it was fully built in, with considerations for how to not have ABP penalize casters who don’t want to use a weapon and would otherwise use that wealth on spell casting items like scrolls and staves?

I ask because I am not a fan of the ABP variant rule myself because it takes choice away from players on how to spend their gold and what to prioritize. I love casters and typically don’t spend any gold on weapons at all and will use spells to cover item bonuses to armor until pretty high level so ABP is pretty punishing to my play style.

Automatic Rune Progression (ARP) is a variant of ABP that gained popularity when a Foundry module implemented it. IIRC, it grants fundamental runes automatically and does nothing else.

So unlike ABP, it doesn't break large swaths of Alchemy and doesn't grant all the skill boosts and such. It has a much smaller effect on the game but does remove the need to keep upgrading fundamental runes on weapons & armor.

I'm thinking of implementing a varient of this varient of a varient in my next game, or maybe my current one. My players like shopping for and buying stuff, and some of them like saving up their gold and then getting to spend it on a fundamental rune, so I'm thinking of having them pay for runes, but then having those runes automatically applied across any weapon or suit of armor they put on. I think a couple of my players had also expressed interest in getting to switch up their weapons, and that feels like a good way to do that while still letting them have those big spender moments, and also saves me the headache of having to recalculate treasure in the AP we're playing.

Moldfolk (formerly known as Vegepygmies). I find their Golarion lore fascinating. And a mold based Ancestry is such a fun idea.

How are Golarion vegepygmies different from the D&D sort? I never looked into them much in either edition.

I don't find Deep Breath that useful, because the primary case for it is also covered by Air Bubble, which is cast as a reaction and thus doesn't require spending an action before it happens. Could come in handy in some cases, but it's not that essential.

The obvious one to me is Light. If you don't pick up Darkvision, you're using that the entire campaign. It's simple and effective. Detect Magic and Read Aura (if you're identifying anything) are also always useful.

I tend to end up with those and a smattering of offense options depending on the character.

Light is useful if you're going against enemies who like to create darkness, otherwise I'd probably go with a torch or, if I was a bit more seasoned and had a little more cash, an everlight crystal.

We've been dealing with counteracting for I wanna say the first time in my Strength of Thousands game, and we ran into precisely those headaches. It took me way longer than it felt like it should to figure out the DCs my party were supposed to shoot for.

And I'm not even sure I used the counteracting table for that anyway; I think I just used the "Level-Based DCs" chart. If I have a favorite table in PF2, it's got to be that chart.

I'm also confused. I might have an inkling of what the OP is referring to if it is Amiri they're talking about, but I'm still very uncertain because... well,

** spoiler omitted **

The only other possibility I can think of is that there might be art in Hellbreakers that shows her badly injured or temporarily slain, but the iconics' apperances in APs aren't definitively canon (They don't constantly jump up and down in level over the years, and they didn't briefly become evil dor Blood Lords, after all)

This is what I assumed OP was referring to as well, to be honest.

Of cantrips that haven't been mentioned yet I'm quite a fan of Warp Step. More movement is always nice to have in a pinch. Also glad someone mentioned telekinetic hand; that's a real handy one.

I'm just so tired of electric arc and spamming it at lv1 because it's obviously the best choice. Even just a few elemental arc variations with different damage types would be a gigantic improvement.

I'm not so convinced it would be, myself. That'd functionally be doing exactly what we do now, just with different colors of arc. It definitely wouldn't make cantrip loadouts feel more interesting or bespoke to a given caster; the new strategy would be to take two or three of those cantrips for a breadth of damage types, making the picks feel more homogenous.

The Jistka Imperium

There's also The Azlanti Empire with the mezlan, at least I believe it used to be more explicitly the Azlanti and was then broadened out. There are also Hell engines which animates a construct with the power of a hellish contract, and arguably the mortal's own soul.

So I have a player who loves D&D changelings. But Astrazoans are not quite their jam, and I just learned about Endiffians, which fit their ways pretty well. Those sound fun to bring back at some point.

There's also Battlezoo's doppelgangers from Classic Creatures if you're open to 3P in the meantime.

I'm down for more cantrips, especially utility ones. I don't think we necessarily *need* them, but they'll be coming out anyway, which is great in my books.

Not so sure on a cantrip-building system, though. Those kinds of systems tend to homogenize very quickly once people identify the most effective way to deliver the spell.
Like, if you make it possible to affect two targets with a cantrip then suddenly all you're going to see are Burning Arc, Chilling Arc, and Corrosive Arc in addition to Electric Arc. That's an obvious example, but the same rule applies for pretty much whatever options you make available for cantrips. It may not be one option that dominates, it could be two or three if we're lucky and the system is especially robust, but it'll effectively be printing one-to-three cantrips rather than a system come the finish.

graystone wrote:

WatersLethe wrote:

Bulk is vastly preferable to whatever nitty gritty weights and measures systems most armchair game devs have got cooking up.

I wind it worse in just about any metric. If I'm with people that care about tracking all equipment it's vastly preferable to track weight. if I'm with people that don't care about tracking, we just don't do anything unless it's clearly out of bounds. Bulk is a 1/2 measure that doesn't really meet either sides needs IMO.

WatersLethe wrote:

Also, I am super happy to no longer have to google the weights of random crap in-world all the time.

Given that doing so takes very little time, I can't see where it takes much longer than trying to guesstimate what you think the bulk of an unknown item is. It's FAR easier to just ignore bulk and just say 'you can move it' or 'it's too heavy to lug around'.

Just going to have to respectfully disagree. I have actually used bulk in PF2 when in PF1 I wholly ignored weight, and everything was wishy washy, hand-wavy, and any mechanic referencing weight was pretty much useless because I couldn't be bothered. The proof is in the pudding for my games.

Same here. I mean we don't put a lot of emphasis on weight in my games, as a general rule, so we don't need to use bulk much ... but we pay more attention to it now than back in PF1 when you had to look up specific charts and weight limits. We just go off general size and vibes now, with most handheld stuff being one or two bulk, stuff that's larger than that but not person size being three or four, and then person-sized stuff being around five or six.

It doesn't bother me, either. IMO it's actually helpful to let players take their free archetype feats as class feats sometimes, say if they want to play a member of an organization with lots of feat support. If someone feels like being the Reddest Mantis or the Hellknightiest Hellknight, then more power to them; those come with fun hooks we can do stuff with.

It's also helpful for facilitating builds with archetypes that require a bit more feat buy-in to work, such as wanting to play a Hellknight Signifer as a cloth caster, which is what FA is meant to do in my opinion.

It's worth noting that in PF2 Create Demiplane was not mythic until War of Immortals changed it. My answer there amounts to "mythic rituals are bad design and I'm reverting it."

The PF2 ritual version of it is still too difficult DC wise relative to the PF1 version without further adjustment, but at least its possible to do it.

Create Demiplane, when looked at across the Premaster and Remaster, is how I wish they'd done mythic rituals. By that I mean that you've got a version of the ritual that non-mythic characters can perform, and then you have a mythic version that is better than the non-mythic one. Create Demiplane's area is both larger and more shapable if it's cast as a mythic ritual.

It'd also mean that the rituals fall in line with the design philosophy behind making the mythic destinies usable as both mythic and non-mythic archetypes, which is one of the major strengths of PF2's mythic system in my opinion.

Do we want it written from the POV of the citizens, much like more current books such as for Mwangi & Tian Xia? I'd like some of that, maybe at the top levels w/ sociable races, but not for the more hellish, aberrant levels where shining a light too bright spoils the mystery. How then to illuminate those while retaining the sense of dread & dark depths? Hmm.

"Down below stretch the depths of Orv. We don't travel to Orv, we don't explore Orv. I hear that those who live on the surface look to the skies, sometimes in awe, sometimes in fear, wondering what could reach down from the vaults of the heavens to pluck them up. We do not need to wonder, because we have our legends. Stories of hungry things left abandoned by those who ruled this world before we had crawled out of the mud. Stories of monstrous worms possessed of terrible wills that eat your mind along with your body. Stories of great vaults filled with burning light and terrible life where even the plants will make a meal of you. Stories of the spiteful dead who live in a poisonous desert and scheme and plot ways to bring all life into undeath's embrace. It is not to the heavens that surface-dwellers should be looking, but beneath their feet, because that is where Orve waits to swallow them."

I don't believe it would be good to force Pathfinder and Starfinder together in one book that way, I think game systems that try to be too generic often end up becoming a bit bland. Systems that pick a good middle between some specialization and some generalization can turn out really well though. *finder right now has a core rules engine that's easily shared between Starfinder and Pathfinder and makes it easy to adopt the other game as well as a player. Great. White Wolf used 90% the same engine for Vampire and Werewolf - great. Makes it easy to jump into a new game. But the specific stuff - vampires really care about being home before sunrise and getting enough blood to drink - matters a whole lot.

Agreed. What I think is really important for a gaming system framework that's intended to work in multiple genres is really drilling down on those points of divergence and highlighting them mechanically.

I had a big ol' section here talking about systems in the various AGE games, because I think they're a pretty great example of a generic system that adapts its core framework to work in different genres fairly well, but it got long and rambly so I cut it.

Some things I want from a possible book?

1. Darklands ancestries, especially Caligni, and heritages to darklands-ify some ancestries from the surface. I really like the opportunity to play a native of the place we're learning about, so I feel like ancestries are a must here, one way or another.

2. Darklands archetypes. No idea what these would be, but I'm eager to see what Paizo folks could cook up here. I guess I'd also use this point to mention the obligatory Darklands-themed items or magic ... and especially animal companions. There are loads of weird animals and creatures down there and it'd be great to befriend some.

3. Some hot spots for travel in the Darklands. I know we likely need adventuring sites, so they'd likely be formatted that way, but I'd really, really love something closer to Mwangi Expanse or the Tian Xia books, with cultural zones written out more as places where people live than places for adventuring parties to visit. How are their cultures going to be shaped by living underground? Have they got any special farming techniques, ways of living or building, special holidays or unique forms of worship? That kind of thing.

4. An overview of some of the major movers and shakers in the Darklands. I imagine this is where most of the adventure hooks would go because Golarion, as a planet, tends to get more dangerous the further you get from just above sea level. I'd really like overviews of some of the major factions or players in the Darklands. What does the Black Desert and its city look like now? Are there any especially notable sekmin or urdefhan settlements? What about down in Orv; are there any especially neat vaults, alghollthu enclaves, or giant worm-haunted deeps that would make good adventuring fodder? What're the derro doing? That kind of stuff.

Copaxi's Armored Shell:

Ignoring the weirdness about upgrades being split into another feat, this is not given an armor category and thus you never can get this better than trained.

It's also really bad as starting armor, granting a maximum of a +4 to AC rather than the typical +5. I don't know if that improves, I've just started reading through Copaxi, but even if it does ... that's weird, right? Pretty much all ancestry armor feats give you some equivalent of medium armor, not chunkier padded armor that'll be outclassed by wearing anything heavier.

It also feels weird that you can't etch runes on the shell from the jump given the cpaxi lore about being able to reshape their bodies and having connections to mystical forces.

I love standardized ancestry feats so much!

Just wanted to voice my desire for Paizo making this scenario publicly available for purchase. As all my games are digital I have no desire to pay $60 for a set of miniatures, but I'd love to run this scenario for my group as an introduction to Hellbreakers.

Not to mention, some of us literally cannot read physical print; I either have to find a digital copy somewhere, or that content is just entirely inaccessible to me.