I pity the wolf that encounters a flock of longsword-wielding intelligent sheep!
As a rule of thumb, if the aesthetics seem silly you probably shouldn't do it.
I don’t really like that rule of thumb, because how silly something seems is entirely how it is presented.
For instance:
You see an awakened kitten riding on the head of a red dragon, commanding it with a squeeky voice to destroy all the puppies.
Vs
You see a kitten riding on the head of a red dragon, but something seems off. It is almost as if your eyes are trying to tell you it is heavier than you think. It opens its mouth and starts to speak. The dragon trembles at the sound, terrified of its master, and is quick to follow the commands given to it.
One of those is silly, the other serious, but they are the same situation.
I think you need to define "Silly" as your not getting his argument. (I can't believe I'm about to say this) The Disney film makes sense (HRRRRNG) BECAUSE it is a quadrupedal horse. If you get polymorphed into a dog, you still retain your intelligence, yes? But you do NOT retain your thumbs, and you've spent your entire life moving (presumably) as a bipedal organism. Ever try to walk around on all fours? It's DAMNED difficult because of our bipedal body structure. If you do, however, find yourself polymorphed into a dog, and a sword is lying around... Yeah you could pick it up and try to stab someone with it. BUT in that same vein, you'd likely take massive penalties, due to not having any idea how to fight with something held in your mouth like that. Even assuming you've had a lifetime of training, that training was to fight sword in hand, standing up right, and potentially how to defend yourself if knocked down and trying to get back up... not sword in teeth and on all fours.
"Silly" in this context is closer to "unrealistic" in meaning, rather than "goofy".
Because, lowly freelancer though I may be, I need to be like all of the cool kids with one of these threads all my own!
...and my brain needs a break from planning horrors and wonders to throw at my players in a campaign I'm starting soon, so consider the floor open for any questions.
:D
Oh thank you sir! I'll just copy and paste the initial post I made in the wrong thread.
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So I'm getting ready to run a one shot campaign that I hope to make into a 3 part, or more. I've got some of the stuff down, but I'm running into an issue with some of the locations and stat blocks.
Campaign setting is basically a small party of evil PC's have been tasked by Garyon to infiltrate Nirvana and place "The Great Lie" in the heart of Eritrice's domain. I've expanded on her lore so that she's secretly and unknowingly a rogue avatar of Garyon, possessing a sizable chunk of his power, and he wants to reclaim it now that he's aware of it. To do this, he has the PC's plant the great lie, which is in the form of a black rose, in her Garden of Truth.
Problem is there's very little information on most of the sub area's in Elysium and Nirvana, and I want to give some life to the zone. I'm avoiding the whole "bust down the wall and slaughter the villagers" stereotype but I want the party to have opportunities to commit acts that will please Garyon. I've got an alarm level system built for it, where each act they do can gain favor with the arch devil, lose favor if they fail, and raise the level of awareness that the denizens of the planes have. To make this work though, I really need some more information on the areas within the zone. I've been drawing most of my info from Inner Sea God's, Chronicles of the Righteous and Pathfinder Chronicles: The Great Beyond, but you'd be surprised at how little there is.
Can anyone give me some details on any of the locations on the map in Elysium/Nirvana, or just the ones listed on the wiki? I've got a few months before I want to run it.
The empyreal lord Ragathiel is a LG redeemed devil.
Just want to correct this, Ragathiel isn't a "redeemed" devil. His story is more or less a "sin's of the father" thing as he's the son of Dispater, who is a fallen angel, and a fire goddess who afaik is only mentioned as his mother. By all accounts, he's an angel. Possibly half fire elemental I guess, his mom's only info is that she is a fire goddess who was "native to the plane of fire". He's probably influenced by this corruption though, since his lore says he fights against his baser urges constantly, and is always supremely pissed off.
Devil's that are "created" are pretty much elusively devil's, but the ones who were originally angels are basically super corrupt angels, but still technically angels.
He's been explicitly called an Ascended Devil.
Where, and by whom? Especially given that he's officially been stated in Bestiary 6, where his stats including no infernal, abyssal, daemonic or otherwise. He's got "Fire", "Extraplanar" and "Angel" which only further supports that he's half angel half fire elemental. It is still said that he's "More violent than the other celestial would like" and the such, which may owe to either him being born and spending a few hundred years in Hell, or to him being the direct son of one of the most powerful Arch Devil's. But again, his dad is explicitly stated to be a fallen angel. He's fundamentally different from any being created as a Devil.
And his dad is explicitly a Devil in his statblock.
I could have sworn James Jacobs said he was but I can't find the post now, and the next closest thing is a post from over 2 years ago where he says he doesn't count Ragathiel as a Redeemed Fiend. I'll keep looking though, that's gonna bug me.
Also Divine Anthology calls out that he turned away from evil to become what he is.
Sigh. Listen to what I am saying, step by step.
1 - Yes, his dad is a devil, and his dad's lore specifically states that he was an Angel, and is one of exactly four former Celestials who "Fell from heaven with Asmodeas" We know that Barbatos was a celestial of some kind BUT did not fall with Asmodeas, only appearing after the original Lord of the First (Typhon) was killed by Ragathiel. We also know that Moloch was an Archon, while the identities of the other two fallen angels are unknown afaik. I believe one of the Whore Queens was also mentioned as being a former angel, but I can't find anything to confirm that so I'm going to assume it's just speculation.
2 - The existence of a FALLEN CELESTIAL is extremely unique and quite different from other "devils" who were created or born in hell as Devils. Especially the particularly powerful angels/celestials like Dispater and Moloch.
3 - Ragathiels lore explicitly states that his mother is a fire goddess from the fire elemental plane. It also says he fled hell after Dispater ripped off his 6th wing, and that this occurred only several hundred years into his life. It then goes on to state that it took him thousands of years of service to EARN THE TRUST OF THE CELESTIAL FORCES, but now they trust him completely, and their only issue with him is that he's more violent and angry than they would like. As far as his lore and profile are concerned, he has inherited angelic powers from his father, and fire elemental powers from his mother.
This means that Ragathiel is HALF FIRE ELEMENTAL, HALF ANGEL. Dispater is a UNIQUE EXISTENCE, unlike ANY other devil in the entirety of the game. He is a FALLEN ANGEL. Pragmatically it makes sense that he would be typed as a "Devil" and not a "Fallen Angel", since he's been corrupted to a simply unimaginable degree, but that does not change the nature of his existence. It also does not change that while he conceived Ragathiel well after he became a devil, that Ragithial being born as a half breed Fire Elemental Angel proves that fundamentally, Dispater is STILL an angel. A fallen angel is STILL an angel, just a super corrupt one. Ragathiel never had to "redeem" himself because he never "Fell". He had to PROVE himself, because he's the direct son of the Lord of the Second Hell, and was BORN AND RAISED in Hell. That's significantly different from being redeemed and changed from being a devil. It is also shown that Ragathiel is far more violent and angry than other angels, and that is likely because his father is a fallen angel/devil. But that means that Ragathiel is not an example of any redeemed angel or devil.
Finally, I wouldn't trust the third party stuff in the first place,and that includes novels. Third party sources have literally given us Lucifer as a CR 40 stated monster, and tend to play hard and fast with established lore to the point of making mary sue type characters. Functionally, we know for an absolute fact that angels and other celestial beings can be corrupted into devils and demons since that happened to Barbatos, Moloch and Dispater. Therefor, it makes perfect logical sense that Devil's and Demons can also be "purified" into Celestials. It must be damn hard to do, because it's damn hard to "Fall" in the first place. Like I said, we only know of 4 Celestials who fell along with Asmodeus, and we only know two of them, and the only other example that I know of is Barbatos. That makes 5 examples of fallen celestials total. It's fine to play around with the idea, but the evidence suggests pretty heavily that it would be at least twice as hard to purify oneself from infernal corruption as it is to fall to it in the first place.
And for sources, I'm drawing off "Chronicles of the Righteous", "Inner Sea Gods", "The Great Beyond: A Guide to the Multiverse", and "Bestiary 6", where Ragathiel AND Dispater have both been officially given stat blocks as CR26 and CR27 creatures.
The empyreal lord Ragathiel is a LG redeemed devil.
Just want to correct this, Ragathiel isn't a "redeemed" devil. His story is more or less a "sin's of the father" thing as he's the son of Dispater, who is a fallen angel, and a fire goddess who afaik is only mentioned as his mother. By all accounts, he's an angel. Possibly half fire elemental I guess, his mom's only info is that she is a fire goddess who was "native to the plane of fire". He's probably influenced by this corruption though, since his lore says he fights against his baser urges constantly, and is always supremely pissed off.
Devil's that are "created" are pretty much elusively devil's, but the ones who were originally angels are basically super corrupt angels, but still technically angels.
He's been explicitly called an Ascended Devil.
Where, and by whom? Especially given that he's officially been stated in Bestiary 6, where his stats including no infernal, abyssal, daemonic or otherwise. He's got "Fire", "Extraplanar" and "Angel" which only further supports that he's half angel half fire elemental. It is still said that he's "More violent than the other celestial would like" and the such, which may owe to either him being born and spending a few hundred years in Hell, or to him being the direct son of one of the most powerful Arch Devil's. But again, his dad is explicitly stated to be a fallen angel. He's fundamentally different from any being created as a Devil.
Nope. For starters, I've not gotten to really try it myself, but after looking over it I can say I'm really not a fan of anything it's bringing to the table. I'm not a fan of the whole "dumbing down the game for dummies" approach, and I actually enjoy the combat and leveling in pathfinder. I absolutely LOATHE systems like milestone leveling, and these inspiration point things, and the changes they are making overall.
Like. I have a friend who genuinely hates combat and exp in pathfinder, he thinks it takes away from the game, but he likes inspiration points because "They make the game interesting". A game where you can role play an adventuring wielder of reality warping magic, and an inter-dimensional corpse bamfing into your dimension to grab a random peasant and pull him to the negative energy plane to chase him like a horror movie slasher villain out of it's sheer hatred of the living is not only accepted as a possibility, but a fairly normal occurrence... Is not interesting to this man. That's not a problem Paizo needs to address, that's a problem with the player, as I can tell you he does not make characters that mesh well with the world (his current character is a wizard, who worships zon kuthon, and is a "emo goth poser". Which to him, translates into only preparing pit, grease, invisibility and enlarge person, and sitting in the back whining about how the universe is pain while invisible.) and honestly, it only creates real problems when the developer tries to cater to this mindset.
Our DM has been using this system called "Drama Points" which is functionally inspiration, where he makes something "Dramatic" happen and will give you a drama point to spend later, which have been used to save the party members from death or trade in for feats. We're in the mummy's mask module, just finished book
And in the room right before the final boss of the book, our level 6 party (Fighter, Paladin, Wizard affected by Blindness, and Medic) finds a crypt thing that guards the door. The fighter failed his will save when the Crypt Thing tried to teleport us away at the start of combat. Normally it sends you 100 feet in any direction. BUT because the player accepted 4 drama points, the teleport ended up putting him 88,903 feet IN THE AIR. He had a ring of slow fall, so he'd survive, but it would take him 17 minutes in game to reach the ground again, assuming he took the ring off for most of that fall. Trust me, we did the math. And the rest of us had no way of knowing this, as far as we knew, he was warped 100 feet in any direction since we knew how the Crypt Thing worked, and was either going to run back to us in about 30 seconds, or be stuck on the other side of the door where my pally sensed great evil. So, we quickly busted into the room and engaged the boss fight, a mummy, a greater mummy, and a wizard with a wand of enervation and a major artifact mask. And our wizard was blind, and played by the guy that hates combat. He cast enlarge person on me then cast invisibility on himself and tried to leave the room, wandering blindly in random directions. I had to fight this boss functionally alone until the fighter used SEVEN drama points to smash through the ceiling into the boss room. Medic died. I dropped to below 0 at 5 separate instances during that fight. Used all my lay on hands, both prepared spells, even my bonded mount. The only reason we won is because the DM got tired by this point, got bored, and purposefully played the boss like a literal moron. I mean literally, he didn't use hardly any of the spells that the guy had or the wand and spent the 9 rounds that I was stuck in the pit with a pair of mummies that the emo wizard stuck under me chasing the medic, who was afflicted with 6 rounds of fear, MONOLOGUING AT HIM. The fighter landed in the pit, immediately got dropped by the greater mummy, and I was at 3 hp by this point with one lay on hands left. I managed to kill the greater mummy with the fighter at -9, and we were still in the pit for 3 rounds. 5 rounds later, the wizard finally attacks the medic, and then landed on the ground in front of me to taunt the medic. Only reason we killed him, the DM let us kill him.
And honestly, all I see in 5e is this horror story becoming the norm. I have no interest in that, because 5e from what I have seen, rewards bad DM'ing and bad play. It rewards players who are too lazy to write a decent backstory for a character, or who want to play a lawful stupid paladin, or a chaotic stupid rogue, who thinks being actively detrimental to his team is funny or who simply don't like how the rules work. That's dumb. A beer and chips campaign is a beer and chips campaign, but even then there's etiquette. You can expect people to be more crazy, with weird concepts, but at it's core any pathfinder or DnD game is about adventurers, going on adventures. There's a point and a limit for everything, and 5e absolutely caters to the worst kinds of players who aren't interested in adventures. If they think the game is boring, or not interesting, then that's their problem, and I don't want the game to change specifically to suit them.
The empyreal lord Ragathiel is a LG redeemed devil.
Just want to correct this, Ragathiel isn't a "redeemed" devil. His story is more or less a "sin's of the father" thing as he's the son of Dispater, who is a fallen angel, and a fire goddess who afaik is only mentioned as his mother. By all accounts, he's an angel. Possibly half fire elemental I guess, his mom's only info is that she is a fire goddess who was "native to the plane of fire". He's probably influenced by this corruption though, since his lore says he fights against his baser urges constantly, and is always supremely pissed off.
Devil's that are "created" are pretty much elusively devil's, but the ones who were originally angels are basically super corrupt angels, but still technically angels.
