IIRC, in Byrne's Man of Steel, Lara expressed some unease at humans for being 'savages' and wondered aloud to Jor-El if their son would 'teach them proper Kryptonian values,' and Jor-El seemed less concerned about such things. (In her defense, she was seeing humans for the first time, in the context of 'these people are going to be raising my baby,' and Jor-El had been studying and acclimating himself to Earth and humanity for weeks, if not months. Plus Byrne can be wildly misogynistic at times, so there's also that.)
I could see this message as a shout-out to this story beat.
It would hardly be the first Superman treatment to present Krypton as far from idyllic. The last run of movies had a caste system where the 'leader caste' seemed stone-cold terrible at leadership, the 'military caste' seemed completely bugnuts crazy, and the 'science caste' seemed to be, if Jor-El's scene in the beginning was any indication, way better at fighty stuff than half the military caste!
I'm personally more interested in Lex having faked the message, but I'm willing to see what Gunn has in mind if it's genuine, since we've always had unpleasant Kryptonian factions, like General Zod's people, and we've always had a version of Krypton that is, one way or another, more or less responsible for their own genocide (whether they caused it, in some versions, or simply ignored warnings and let it happen, in others).
A 'Vitalist' that manipulates life-force to damage others (by draining their life force), heals allies (by infusing them with their own life force), buffs allies (more vitality!), debuffs foes (fatigue, etc.) and enhances themselves (burn that excess vitality for Rage like benefits) could be interesting.
Somewhat more adjacent abilities could allow them to manipulate people's or animals feelings (depress or energize them), or cause plants to grow or wither, or food to decay or freshen. A bit of 'psychic vampire' on the side, perhaps, able to bring down a room, or get a crowd pumped.
That's one reason why I wanted to discuss this, frankly: it feels like there's a disconnect between Pathfinder and Starfinder's opinions on undeath, Starfinder treating undead as morally neutral while Pathfinder implies they're not.
While yes, the devs have stated one game's canon doesn't impact the other, I feel like this is something that could cause problems for writers of both games in the future, as they have different ideas on the fundamental metaphysics of the game world and the intended moral and ethical dynamics of their respective narratives.
** spoiler omitted **
It is possible that something can change, metaphysically or cosmologically, and that there *weren't* any 'morally neutral' forms of undeath, until, in the Starfinder era, yes, there was *now* one.
Either that specific form of undeath was special, perhaps even specifically designed in such a way as to avoid the cosmologically bad thing (much how liches or mummies pump so much magical energy into their creation process that they can exist for millenia that it slows most forms of entropic decay and get away from the sorts of hunger / degeneration faced by ghouls or vampires) *or* the entire universe has changed in such a way that the process itself is no longer hurtful to the river of souls.
So it doesn't *have* to mean that Gray Lady was wrong. Just that this is A) a specific exception that just came into existence recently or B) she was right *then*, but things are different *now.*
Admittedly, my preference, as always, is to find a reason why both things can be true. I prefer offering solutions to just pointing out problems!
And I prefer not to be part of the problem, when I can be *the entire problem!* :)
Eagly remains the best thing I never knew I wanted.
Wow, that was the least sexy orgy, ever. (And, clearly, deliberately so?)
Economos walking next to his boss makes him look like a fricking bear in a people suit. He's gigantic! (And / or the actor playing Flagg Sr. was shot in such a way to make him look tiny!)
175. Ring of Animal Fiendship This cold iron band resembles a creature with the head of a cat, lower body of a snake, and folded wings of a bat, coiled around one's finger. Once worn, it cannot be removed, and any familiar, animal companion or summoned animal gains the fiendish template, an evil alignment and does not respond to your commands (although it does not *automatically* attack you exclusively)...
176. Cloak of Arachnids This fine spider-silk cloak has a web motif and appears to be decorated with hundreds of barely visible spiders crafted of metal and stone. Once donned, if you try to remove it, or if it suffers any damage (from being specifically targeted, or the wearer being affected by AoE damage), it immediately transforms into a spider swarm and attacks the wearer.
177. Defunding weapon This magical weapon was intended to steal coin from the target struck, and transfer it to the user. But, no. It steals coin from the user, equal to 1 gp / hit point of damage inflicted, and that money goes straight to Mammon's vault, because he's like that.
If you run out of gold, damage inflicted is reduced appropriately, and if you have not a single gold worth of coinage, you can whale away all day and inflict zero damage. (A small saving grace, the weapon only consumes coinage, and will not devour jewelry or gemstones or valuable equipment to cover the expense of doing damage.)
This was the impression I got, yes, along with the fact that undead constantly need to feed on life to keep from deteriorating, and that does similar damage to the souls of their victims, especially with undead whose feeding habits produce more of their kind, such as shadows, wraiths and ghouls.
I have long disliked the notion from earlier editions of D&D, that creatures animated by negative energy are somehow 'free.' IMO, negative energy should be a hungry void, devouring constantly to survive. Instead, we've had a system where one could be a living creature, subject to aging, death and decay, constantly needing to kill and devour other living creatures to survive (even if some choose to only kill and devour plants), while a mindless skeleton can keep trucking for all eternity, and never *needs* to kill anything to sustain itself.
A more on-theme form of undead, IMO, would *lose* hit points every day, when a living creature instead gains them, as negative energy cannot 'grow more of itself' the way a person or animal can. Those undead capable of draining energy, shadows, wraiths, wights, would have to do so *just to continue existing*, while a few, such as ghouls and vampires, can do so by devouring flesh and blood. Only the vary rarest of undead, like liches, might get around this constant 'hunger' and daily loss of hit points, by some ridiculously hard-to-achieve input and assimilation of magical energy, in place of stolen vitality.
Negative energy would not be infinite free energy, it would be endless hunger, forced to kill and devour even more so than living creatures (who can, if they choose, sustain themselves on products like honey or milk or fruit or vegetables that do not require killing any creature to consume, although *some* undead, like vampires, could similarly feed 'sustainably' by not killing those whose blood they drink. What would make the vast majority of them evil with a capital E is that *they choose not to do so*).
Obviously this would impact stories. One could not, under this paradigm, expect to open a crypt that's been sealed + buried for centuries, or even days!, and expect to find functional undead, as they would have 'starved to death' within a week or so! A workaround would be that undead only 'burn life' when they are active, and can go dormant and lie around motionless and all-but-insensate, perhaps even for millenia, without suffering this deterioration. (But gosh, they will be desperate for new life energy when they do awaken, since if they don't feed, they are just taking time off their clock / draining their battery!)
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From what we've seen, we can extrapolate that undeath is, at the end of the day, an unsustainable state: the undead need to feed on life will result in one of two ends: either they will overhunt in their territory and end up deteriorating into nonsentience and frailty, or their predations draw the attention of adventuring parties that will destroy them.
Agreed, it should be this way.
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This deterioration can only be STALLED, not overcome, and it's why intelligent undead tend to form underground societies in urban locations, to facilitate their feeding needs with people that "no one will miss" and ensure their own personal comfort. This is also the role the Church of Urgathoa fulfills: acting as a middleman to the undead in procuring food and helping people who want to be undead become that. The logical endpoint of these systems is Geb, where the undead have reached critical mass and subjugated the living, making them into a slave and livestock class. But despite Geb's rosy language, it's a situation that happened largely without him, as the Blood Lords organized under him to keep their own gravy trains going while he moped over Nex. And the general impression one gets of Geb (the nation) is that it's very invested in maintaining its status quo (the whole point of the Blood Lords AP, as has been discussed) and regards both the possibility that Nex (the wizard) is returning and the increased enthusiasm this has stirred in Geb (the wizard) and in Nex (the nation) with kind of an "ohhhhhh s$!&..." vibe, because they understand the house of cards their nation is, and any disruption to the supply of Quick coming in to supply the hungers of the undead, and the supply of cheap food going out that makes their neighbors tolerate them could make the whole thing come crashing down.
The contrast between Geb and Tar-Baphon is striking. As a ghost and a lich, neither of them *personally* has any need for the living, at all, but Geb has surrounded himself with an aristocracy of undead like ghouls and vampires *who cannot survive without mortals to feed off of.*
Tar-Baphon also has some vampire followers, who are, one assumes, short sighted idiots or complete nutjobs who drank the kool-aid, because if the Whispering Way gets it's 'way' and all life is ended and only the undead remain, vampires are pretty much toast. (Reminding me of those dumb-but-pretty/cool vampires from the first Blade movie, who wanted to summon their 'Blood God' and turn everyone on the planet into vampires, leaving them... nothing to eat, and doomed to madness and death (as we saw happens with vampires who starve) within a matter of months...)
It would be the weirdest war front on all of Golarion, if Geb had to bring forces to bear against Tar-Baphon, because Geb (and his Blood Lord aristocracy) *doesn't want all life to end*, leaving the forces of good to say, 'Uh, who are we supposed to be rooting for again?'
"You realize they are just fighting on our behalf because they want to eat us later, right? They are ranchers, protecting their cattle, and we are the cattle..."
[caveat] This is not meant, *at all,* to be some sort of argument about whether or not a god has an appropriate alignment, whether or not alignment belongs in the game or not, blah, blah, blah, but, the internet, so, I'm probably saying nothing useful here. :) [/caveat]
I am intrigued by how the 'one step rule' for Clerics of various gods creates for some fairly distinctive sub-sects of their churches.
Norgorber seems the the most clear cut, and even then, it's not spelled out or even intuitive if his four facets lean towards one of the four alignment choices his clerics can follow. Father Skinsaw seems to lean towards CE, certainly (but has plenty of room for LE obsessive serial killer sorts, and NE folk who are less OCD about following procedure, but also less wanton and whacky about their killing than the crazy murderclown cult). The Reaper of Reputation seems a good fit for Neutral Evil. All about using language (slander and libel) to ruin the reputations of people, but even there, is a teensy bit of wiggle room for a Neutal (non-evil) destroyer of reputations, someone who has lost family or friends or loved ones to a beloved or popular figure that they know to be a villain, and who has dedicated their life to unmasking those villains who hide under a guise of being benevolent or beloved public figures. Assorted bits of modern fiction deal with heroes being forced to unmask the perfidy of a popular person who is secretly a terrible person and is themselves manipulating public opinion. (This would, obviously, be an outlier among the Reapers of Reputation's followers. I expect most of them are terrible people themselves. The politics of personal destruction rarely leave someone's hands unstained...) Either Blackfingers or the Gray Master could be the safest havens for the non-evil clergy (and worshippers) of Norgorber. Figures like Robin Hood, or movies like Ocean's Eleven, even glamorize 'gentleman thieves,' at times. And poison, particularly in our modern world, is *far* more commonly used to eliminate disease and famine-causing pests, or even eliminate tumors, than by power-mad Medici's trying to control Italian city-states (and not all alchemically minded Blackfingers folk are even guaranteed to be all that into poison, specifically, of their many class abilities, since it is, IMO, not as fun as chucking fiery explosions or 'hulking out' with a mutagen).
So many alignment based splinters kind of make sense to me.
A CN sect of Caydenites could be more about the drunken state itself, and perhaps a little less concerned with stuff that happens *while* they are drunk. A NG sect of Caydenites sometimes roll their eyes at the focus on 'getting drunk' and could be more focused on orphanages and abolitionism (and, yes, responsible use of intoxicants). The mainstream church perhaps regards the irresponsible CN'frat boys' as a good recruiting ground for those who can learn responsibility, while still being able to cut loose.
NG Pharasmins, which I'd love to see more of, could be all about midwifery, family planning advice, medicine (particularly of the very young, and very old), end of life care, and, yeah, funerals. NE Pharasmins could be actively fighting those who defy her will by extending their lives unnaturally, or trying to 'get around' death in various ways, not just undeath, such as abusing the reincarnation spell. The only branch I actually don't immediately see a niche for are the CN Pharasmins. (I'm sure someone has put more thought into this than I, and has an idea here!)
The only *god* of the big twenty who doesn't really 'speak' to me, in any of his alignment options, would be Rovagug. I could see why someone would follow the tenets (or at least *some* of the tenets) of just about everyone else. I could see how a LN priest of Zon-Kuthon could be all about cutting away weakness and strengthening the body and the mind, or a NE Nethyn could be an arcane supremacist, convinced that non-spellcasters should *never* command or rule over 'their betters,' anyone can cast spells, and have a complicated heirarchy of *which* spellcasters are 'superior' which might start with wizards (or sorcerers!), and end with clerics of any god other than Nethys, or those mediochre dabblers called Adepts that everyone pretends don't even exist. But clerics of Rovagug are a mystery to me. I do not get them at all. :)
There might be a CN faction of Lamashtans, with their own clerics, focused on providing nurturing communities for those that modern society calls 'neurodivergent' or 'differently-abled,' and teaches them to regard their differences (in appearance, 'acceptable' behavior, or both) as gifts and opportunities, not defects to be shunned, or hidden away, or surgically or magically 'corrected.' Being that the core faith is Chaotic EVIL, I could also see the more orthodox clerics stoking resentment in these folk, leading to frightening or even dangerous behaviors that 100% inflame the exact sort of prejudice that their flock already face, and perpetuating the cycle that keeps this faction flush with new potential recruits, as they encourage the afflicted to lash out at societies that shun them, 'proving' that society was 'right' to do so in the first place! (Telling those with socially unacceptable behaviors that their violent or disturbing traits are somehow 'gifts from the goddess' that shouldn't be restrained or managed could also lead to disruptions that 'prove' that they should be driven away, or killed! Which would serve the purposes of the greater CE church of Lamashtu.)
What might seem, to us in the modern day, an organization / support group for the 'differently abled' or neurodivergent, could have members who are all about that stated purpose, and an entirely sinister underbelly that is stoking resentment and fear both among their flock, and among the rest of society *against* their flock, given them nowhere else to go, but the safety of 'their own kind' against a world out to get them. Perfect cult or gang recruitment tactic. Give them nowhere else to go. Make them burn all their bridges, or perform acts that will result in a dire fate if leave, not from the cult itself, but from everyone else.
- It's environmentally bad, just on a cosmic scale rather than a local one. This is why Pharasma herself is against it. The other reasons are much more useful arguments for her church to make, because people don't even care too much about stuff that affects the planet they live on, let alone 'reality as a whole long after all life on the planet is long dead anyway'. I'm going to lump in "it's just wrong (Pharasma says so)" into here.
I feel like there's an actual reason other than 'Grey Lady dun like it', like all souls are kinda recycled, even if some ka or khaibit-like bit of them goes on to become a Petitioner or whatever, some other vital bit of them swirls down the big drain at the bottom of creation (the 'Negative' plane) and spat back out all shiny and new at the big spigot at the top of creation (the 'Positive' plane), and that there's a finite amount of 'soul' out there. Every bit of it siphoned off to form a shadow, spectre, wraith, or still inhabiting a fleshy undead like a vampire, ghoul or lich, is subtracting from the soul-river, and making either A) less people to be born, or B) just as many people to be born, but with *less soul*, making them hollow empty people...
I could see it as a faux cosmological version of the old sci-fi / fantasy trope about societies run by immortals (via body-swapping tech, or just vampires or whatever) being stagnant and having zero upward mobility because the 'old boy's club' in charge *never actually dies* and ends up clinging to power and the title of Prince being an eternal sentence, since the King will never pass on his crown.
Those who cling to existence aren't just metaphorically stealing from future generations (by hanging on to power, property, wealth, opportunities, rather than allow the next generations to ever have any), but if some element of souls are indeed recycled (and we do know that not *every* element of a person goes on to any new Petitioner existence, as at least some lose memories of life and, more or less, become entirely new faceless strangers anyway, often also changing entirely in appearance or form, to giant maggots, or fluffy bunnies, or whatever), then any sort of intelligent undead is 'stealing' from future generations quite literally, by reducing the quantity (or quality?) of newly arriving souls pouring down from the Positive plane.
I have no idea if anything like that has been written to be canon (or if I'm even stretching it terribly with the black hole drain / white hole faucet metaphor for the Negative and Positive planes), but it certainly feels compelling to me.
Funny, you'd think there would be stuff written in any of the numerous books about Pharasma holding contempt over all forms of created life...
Does the fact that it's considered life rather than unlife have anything to do with it?
I feel like there's an attempt at snark here, but a salient point, that I already made, was that bodies are being desecrated to make these flesh golems, which is itself a violation of her tenets, and yeah, it has been mentioned in books before that she doesn't like corpses to be desecrated.
(She probably cares a whole heck of a lot less about any living plants harvested to make the base forms of leshies, I'll admit. She may prioritize animal lives and deaths over plant lives and deaths.)
So, if that was intended as snark, and I'm not reading into it (and if so, I apologize for misreading your tone), it kind of misses the point entirely.
In theory, when alignment was part of the game, Phrasma should have been an opposing force to the party just as much percent of her appearances as Abadar, right? That is, if you took a random 30 appearances of each or their followers across the pre-remaster period, you would find them opposed to the party vs. aligned with the party at the same ratio? I doubt it. The only time I remember her opposing the party is at the beginning of Tyrant's Grasp.
There was an AP set in Ustalav where the party ended meeting an awakened flesh golem, and there was some assumption that they might not end up immediately attempting to destroy it or even talk to it, which was just, IMO, so far outside of anything the recommended 'cleric of Pharasma' for the AP would tolerate that it made me laugh. Here's some creature made of stitched together desecrated corpses (anathema!) that was never even born, but created by some nut (also seems like a huge no-no to the *goddess of birth* even if it gets zero mention, compared to her 'goddess of hating undead' label).
I really expected the church of Pharasma (particularly those Penitents) to straight up be adversaries at *several* points in that AP.
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In 1e, she allowed NE clerics, but I'm absolutely confused about what they would do.
Pharasma is the most dogmatically lawful of the not-Lawful gods out there. :)
I can't even imagine what a *Chaotic* Neutral cleric of Pharasma would be like, but a NE one seems like they'd be a perfect assassin for the goddess. The NG Pharasmin might go after undead for defying her (even if many, if not most, of them, do not do so of their own volition), while the NE Pharasmin goes after the *living* who defy her will.
Creating 'unborn' life like leshies or ghoran? That's a stabbin.'
Attempting to live forever by bidding for the Sun Orchid Elixir? Stab.
Teach or just work at a place like the Academae that has an entire section dedicated to pumping out arcane necromancers? Stabby-foo!
Being resurrected, or, worse, using reincarnation to get around aging? Stab-stab-stab for you.
The less stabby might agitate for laws and traditions to forbid this sort of nonsense, and the less immediately powerful-enough-to-kill-Sun-Orchid-bidders might resort to undermining the Sun Orchid trade (by hunting and killing Sun Orchid hunters and guides in the deserts of Thuvia, or even by just stirring up resentment and envy in the lower classes against those who can afford to 'defy the gods with their blasphemy).
Plenty of stuff for the NE church of Pharasma to get up to.
She's not real big on attempts to nail down the workings of fate, for instance, so one priest might get a bug up his butt about Harrowers, and end up persecuting local fortune-tellers, whipping up public sentiment against them, 'prove' them to be charlatans, etc. (and, accidentally or not, generate some anti-Varisian sentiments, which could be doubly ironic if half of the local church are, in fact, Varisian...).
Anywho, any of these living folks who break her laws get stabbed and sent to Pharasma for premature judgement. The NE cleric even makes it clear that *they* are not judging the sinner, it's what Pharasma will do when the sinner arrives. They are just... expediting the meeting...
Maybe they are even *helping* the sinner, by stopping them from doing any more necromancy or fortune-telling or whatever it is that would increase the burden of sin for which they are about to be judged!
Barnacles form on the bottom side of the cyphergate outside of Riddleport. Known to be nothing more than normal barnacles, altered by the magical leakage from the structure they adhere to, these 'spark barnacles' are stunted in size, rarely larger than a plump blueberry, and glow with a soft blue radiance if disturbed, for a few moments, a gentle warning to their danger. If damaged, and they have but a single hit point, if their hard shell is penetrated, they burst open and release a miniscule burst of electrical energy that does a single hit point of damage to their killer, and causes it to be staggered and sickened by disorientation. The damaged creature must also make a Fortitude save, DC 12, or be stunned for 1 round (and, if it is holding it's breath, immediately ceases to do so and begins drowning!). Each round, it can make another DC 12 Fortitude save to end the staggered + sickened conditions, but until it does so, it is easy prey for any surrounding threats, which in the waters surrounding Riddleport, are plentiful and include reefclaws, swamp barracuda, jigsaw sharks and even bunyips. (While no one not immediately touching the spark barnacle when it dies is damaged or debilitated, but the tingly shock can be felt many yards away through the salty waters of the bay, and some creatures, like reefclaws in particular, can sense such an electrical discharge much farther.)
But this wasn't supposed to be about spark barnacles. They are sought after for spell research by cyphermage apprentices, but are inedible, even mildly corrosive and resulting in unpleasant gastric distress, and, obviously, quite dangerous to harvest.
It was meant to be about cypherbeaks, a cold water relative of the parrotfish that feeds on spark barnacles (and other crustaceans, more commonly). With their powerful beak, able to sever a finger as easily as that of a snapping turtle, these lazy fish spend most of their time eating sea grass and tiny crustaceans off of the sea floor, but also eat at least one spark barnacle each day, trusting to their single point of electrical resistance to protect them from the consequences of this dangerous diet. They not only resist the damage, but absorb, internalize and store it, and for 24 hours after eating a spark barnacle, the cypherbeak can release as an immediate action an identical electrical burst as the death-burst of a spark barnacle, punishing any creature that bites it, or that it slaps with it's elongated eel-like tail (as a swift action) when turning to disengage from a predator. It can store only a single such burst, but can immediately return to the cyphergate to eat another spark barnacle and 'recharge.' Cypherbeaks, unlike spark barnacles, are edible, if somewhat tart, and said to be 'tingly on the tongue' and a popular dish for the adventurous diner.
They are not terribly common, and hard to catch without suffering a shock (which would normally not be a threat, but, again, these are dangerous waters in which to be stunned and flash out a 'dinner!' signal to surrounding predators), making a cypherbeak fillet a pricy dinner (and, not surprisingly, far more likely to be mundane fish with some bitter seasoning and unfamiliar coloring, for unsuspecting visiting gourmands). Genuine cypherbeak flesh is darker orange than salmon, and, best to say, piquant. Fake cypherbeak fillets, sold to unsuspecting tourists, is usually salmon marinated in cranberry pulp, to make it both darker and more tart to the taste.
Cypherbeak roe, extremely dangerous to harvest as the fish defend their nests in pairs, as they are quite tasty treats for reefclaws, are salty and tingly and sell for ridiculous amounts to the few that know of them, but few outside of Riddleport are even aware of this delicacy, and they do not transport well.
What the game is missing, is a Lore explanation for the discrepancy between adventurers without flight and "normal" members of the ancestry.
Something like "For unknown reasons, some get their flight only late into adulthood or never at all. As they have issues fitting into a society build around flying movement, many of them become adventurers".
And that could be kind of neat, leaning into mindsets of those who prioritize flight above all other things, and those who either cannot, or do not want to, devote years of their lives to strengthening their wings and take flight like their pre-sapient ancestors, and would rather focus on learning a craft, studying magic or leading their people.
There could be positive interpretations and groups that get along and value each others different contributions, and groups that do not understand or approve of each others choices, and see 'not able to fly' as some sort of disability or sign of failure (such as comparing flightless avians to some sort of 'degenerate' race like the flightless dire corbies of earlier editions, or conversely seeing avians who spend all their time on 'flying like birds' as trying to turn the clock back to the days before they had language and culture and society, when they were just animals).
There could even be more mechanical reasons for the different abilities, with one winged race not being naturally able to fly with any amount of training and exercise, but a series of magical transformations, or alchemical 'evolutions' (represented in-game by buying the appropriate feats!) could artificially give them this ability. And some might not want to embrace, or have access to, these transformations, leaving entire populations and communities of these winged folk, flightless, some by choice, some by circumstance.
168. Eye-on Stone. This cat's eye agate sphere looks like an actual cat's eye, thanks to it's diagonal inclusion like a cat's eye. When it is equipped, the bearer is staggered by the new perspective, as they can see through it like a living eye. Unfortunately, this is very disorienting, as it zips around the head like a typical ioun stone, fairly quickly, and is actively resistant to being seized and 'stowed away' (attempting to sneak free and resume orbiting), being as hard to grab for the wearer as if they were an unwelcome thief. As long as it is active, the wearer suffers the Sickened condition, from the disorientation, although they can make a Will save each round as a swift action to attempt to focus, and reduce the penalty to the Dazzled condition for that round.
If the stone can be seized, and stowed in a tightly sealed pouch or box, as long as the interior remains dark and the stone can't move around too much, the bearer suffers no penalties as the eye 'can't see' in the dark.
A remove curse will end the cursed sensory link normally, but if the stone is destroyed before the link is broken, the former bearer must make a Fortitude save or experience searing pain as if one of their eyes was just crushed, leaving them stunned for one round, and blind in one eye permanently (permanent Dazzled condition until cured with Cure Blindness, Regenerate or similar magic).
Thinking on how various fey would cross-pollinate into the elemental planes, with earth fey (pech, korreds?), water fey (nymphs, nixies) and wood/plant fey (dryads), it occurred to me that there weren't enough fire fey!
648. Grumbles 'Grumbles' is a slang term for a type of fey that do not appear to have, or want, any more accurate name for their people. Despite the nickname, grumbles are more capricious and whimsical by nature, more 'fey' and fickle and flighty, then grouchy or curmudgeonly (at least, for long, as their moods burn hot and are fast forgotten).
Diminutive to Tiny domestic hearth-fey that live in ovens, campfires or hearths (they don’t like forges or watchfires), grumbles enjoy the smells of cooking food, and fragrant woods or oils to burn, and mineral salts that cause their fires to burn in bright unexpected colors like green, blue and violet. Gifts of any of these things can earn their fickle favor, and they are easily distracted by such things, even when otherwise displeased, making them perhaps a bit predictable, and safer than one would expect for tiny pyromaniacs living in one's kitchen.
Grumbles sometimes cause fires, if unhappy, and do not like their fires to go out, which may cause them to sneak out (leaving sooty tiny footprints) to visit other hearths, where they canoodle with (or squabble with, or try to evict!) neighboring hearth fey. Naturally chaotic, if not generally good or evil, being both petulant and nurturing, as the whim takes them, grumbles are widely known to have no real attention span (known to everyone but themselves, it seems).
Relatively short lived, by fey standards, grumbles usually fade away (to reappear elsewhere, as 'death' does not mean the same thing to a fey) if their fire goes cold. When not dancing in the fires, they appear as twisted burned stick figures smaller and scrawnier than most gremlins, and utterly black and charred, leaving warm sooty prints wherever they go, and on anything they touch, when outside of their hearth.
They appreciate sung or spoken art, or people dancing around their fires, and some might be moved to dance or even sing along (in terrible speechy voices, they never seem to have any talent for these things). One thing they do not like near their fires are cats, sometimes tossing tiny sparks at them to discourage them from sleeping next to their hearth. (They do not seem to have a similar problem with dogs, oddly.) If caught outside of their protective fire, a cat might repay the favor by killing one, as a simple housecat is quite able to overpower the diminutive fey, and seem to share their disregard.
The only time grumbles are truly a menace is when a town is on fire, as they somewhat short-sightedly dance and celebrate the fires springing up everywhere, helping to spread them with their minute gift for generating sparks and fanning tinders, not really able to recognize that this will result in the families and bakers whose hearths they have lived in for years being cold forever in a few days...
Grumbles generally do not like the stink of forges, and are not tolerated 'infesting' dwarven forges, a mutual lack of appreciation for each other making them a rare sight in a dwarven forge (if somewhat less rare in a dwarven bakery).
A grumble living in a dwarven brewery is a disaster waiting to happen, as they have no head for alcohol, and dwarves remove them as expediently as feasible!
646. Sapra Vines In pre-demon-taint Sarkoris, the sapra vine was a minor nuisance, and sometimes selectively pruned, at other times encouraged to grow on otherwise unproductive (non-fruiting) trees. The slender parasitic vine drew nutrients from the ground, through it's roots, the tree it clung to, and even the small animals that would sometimes fall afoul of it's thin needle like thorns, more like the spines of a cactus, that would grow directly under each leaf. Under that spine, a single tart red berry would grow, and the locals enjoyed the flavor of them as a treat, or to ferment into a potent drink, although pickers would have to exercise care to avoid many painful pricks while harvesting enough of the small berries to be worthwhile. As the vine tended to weaken the trees it grew upon, such that fruiting trees in particular produced notably less of their own, far more significant, fruit (or nuts), than the vine itself, Sarkorians hacked away any vines that began to grow upon trees whose fruit was more useful to them, and only allowed, or even encouraged, the vine to grow on trees that were otherwise 'useless' to them as a food source.
Sapra vines also had the somewhat grim tendency to sprout tiny rootlets quickly around any small birds or animals that died at their base, often the victim of flying or springing into one or more of their spines, which sometimes gave them a sinister reputation, but this was merely opportunistic feeding on this brief rush of nutrients.
At least, before Sarkoris became the Worldwound.
The sapra vine was one of the few plants that adapted well to the demon-taint, and tainted sapra vines are more resistant to attempts to hack or burn them away, or use any sort of natural 'weed killer,' having weaker resistances common to demonkind, and having grown tougher stalks, like knotty wood. Their spines carry a weak toxin that causes itching and inflammation, little more than a painful irritant to a full grown person, but quite debilitating to a tiny bird or mammal (which is then quickly entangled in rootlets and stripped of resources). They cannot truly move, but can shake their leaves around, increasing the chance that their spines draw blood (and envenom those they strike), and their berries have become quite inedible to any creature not immune to that same toxin. (Demons find them quite tasty. A human might find their tongue itches and burns, swell up and they then die of asphyxiation. So, not good.) Tainted sapra vine burns fitfully, at best, and seems more resistant to most forces (acid, cold and fire resistance 2, electrical resistance 5), requiring cold iron sickles to slice through it's weak damage resistance (2), making it's removal a chore for those lacking more magical solutions.
Sarkorian reclaimers are kept busy trying to find ways to 'untaint' sapra vines, but, until they do, are left trying to tediously hack away the thick dangerous vines, and search for untainted specimens to reintroduce, at a later date. The search continues.
Plants have always been good at putting corpses to good use.
And the spirit part is there too.
Evokes memories of classic D&D stuff like yellow musk creepers and their yellow musk zombies as well, or myconid kings using spores to animate animal and humanoid corpses to defend their communities.
While I'm always up for some better and more thematic domains, I'm a little iffy on the selection here. That's a hard disagree on Healing from me with the "provide comfort to someone suffering" anathema.
Admittedly, I don't have 2E, so I had no idea about this anathema thing. I suppose I can look it up on Archives of Nethys, but I was thinking from a 1E standpoint, hence not criticizing the stone cold terrible Domain choices of Law and Evil, which were mandated (and, IMO, garbage-fire trash) in 1st edition. :)
Even with that anathema, I did specify that Kuthite surgery was 'without painkillers and not always elective....', so a focus on healing/medicine/surgery wouldn't go against that dictat.
Anywho, I wanted to consider some Domains that A) felt on theme, more so than Death and Destruction, IMO, B) pick some Domains that felt less common, and C) pick some domains that felt less commonly represented in evil gods. There aren't a lot of evil gods with Artifice or Healing (or Glory, Sun, Nobility, Protection, etc.), just as there aren't a lot of good gods with Trickery, Death, Destruction, Darkness, Madness, etc. (One of the reasons I like Tsukiyomi so much! He breaks unspoken rules willy-nilly!)
I'm less fussed about Zon-Kuthon's ties to Law and Evil than some of his domain choices. Darkness, yeah, all over that one.
But I could see arguments for;
Strength (cut away weakness! Pain is weakness leaving the body!),
Healing (an evil healing god? One all about surgery and body modification (without painkillers, and not always elective...), oh yeah),
Artifice (former god of arts/crafts, credited with crafting the Star Towers that helped bind Rovagug, followers include people who cover themselves in fine metal ornaments and piercings),
Void (space ghost!)
All four of those Domains, IMO, fit better than Death or Destruction, both of which are well represented among other gods (Urgathoa, Pharasma and Norgorber for Death, Rovagug, Nethys and Gorum for Destruction), while Artifice (just Torag) and Void (nobody in the big 20) are pretty thin on the ground.
It would be interesting if Dou-Bral's domains were more like that. More about physical health and beauty and self-enhancement/body-sculpting (Healing, Strength) and less artsy and more crafty than his sister (Artifice)?
I like the more old school magic feel of schools being actual schools and traditions and not semi-sciencey break downs of magic.
I love a lot of what was done with the old schools of magic, but gosh, I will not miss some of their wonkier bits.
Some schools seemed pretty solidly on-theme. Most evocation spells threw energy around, for instance.
But affecting emotions? Love, hate, rage, confusion, all Enchantment, unless it's fear, that's Necromancy?
Using fire, electricity, sound or cold to kill someone? Evocation! Using negative energy to kill someone? Necromancy!
Some schools just seemed cobbled together from bits chopped out of the school they felt like they more logically belonged to. I'm picking on Necromancy, but Illusion also has a lot of that.
Create light? Evocation. Create sound? Evocation. Create light that *looks* like something? Sounds like a mix of evocation to create the light and transmutation to shape the light, although there's no reason it couldn't *just* be evocation, but instead, it's Illusion? Create a mind-affecting effect using colored light? Welp, no longer Enchantment, you had to use colors, so it's Illusion! Conjuring up forces from the Elemental or 'Outer' planes? Conjuration! Conjuring up forces from the Plane of Shadow? Conjure-lusion?
Abjuration is another one. Obvious evocation spells like Fire Shield and Fire Trap get shoved there. Other spells that feel pretty abjure-y like Mage Armor, do not?
(Thematically, Abjuration and Necromancy seem like peas in a pod. I could see a 'void' or 'negation' school that included spells to drain or disperse energy, either from living creatures through the use of negative energy (negating life), from magical forces by using dispel magic or anti-magic shell (negating magic), or even from the environment, creating areas of cold (negating heat), darkness (negating light), or causing matter to fall apart as if subject to an acid effect (by dispersing the energies that bind them together on the molecular level). It's be the 'subtraction' school, it takes away and gives nothing back. No animating bones or creating disease or summoning bugs, nor any abjurative effect that creates fire or light or a substance.)
I definitely love some of the old classic D&D uses of the schools, like the Abjurant Champion, or various Evokers or Illusionists I've played over the years, but I will not miss the many (IMO) weird loopholes and kludges.
159. Leroy's Reckless Breastplate This fine breastplate of mithril emblazoned with a golden sideview of a stylized lean running man with wings sprouting from his ankles is a +2 agile mithril breastplate that negates the penalty to your armor class if you take the charge action. This is handy, as whenever an enemy is in sight, but combat has inexplicably not begun immediately, there is a 50% chance every round that you will scream and charge into the fray (taking the charge action, if terrain and circumstances permit).
This may inconvenience allies who are still planning, or buffing, or readying their gear. It, fortunately, does not happen in the case of potential foes that you have not actually chosen to attack, only those you have decided to fight, but have, for whatever reason, not charged yet of your own volition.
160. (Rubber) Banded Armor This +1 silent banded mail is wrapped in countless thin bands of rubber, which cancels out noise penalties and gives the armor the silent property, but makes it moderately more cumbersome, so that the armor is not treated as Masterwork, and has the full Armor Check Penalty of non-magical banded armor.
Unfortunately, this rubber outer layer, which cannot be removed, also causes you to recoil violently from any forceful impact. For every 5 hit points of Bludgeoning damage you take, you fly back 1 space, and if you fly back more spaces than half your movement rate (2 spaces for the average armored individual), you must make a DC 15 Reflex save or fall prone. The DC of this save increases by 2 for every additional space you are knocked back.
A small upside to this property is that you take no damage from the first 10 ft. of any fall (but must make a DC 15 Reflex save or fall prone), and additional damage for distances over this are halved (and the DC to avoid falling prone increases by 2 per 5 additional feet, as with a knockback effect).
161. Goblin Pickle Spear This pole has a pickle on the end of it. Oddly enough, the warty bumps on this pickle are sharp, and can cut a fool, as if it was the pointy end of a spear. The spear itself, and it's bearer, soon enough, reek of pickle juice, which tends to ooze out of the pickle 'spearhead' regularly and drip down the shaft, getting on everything. The spear has no magical enhancement to hit or damage, and the pickle part is not edible, nor even chewable, not even by a goblin's sturdy teeth, being as hard as stone. Attempts to track or identify the bearer of this weapon have a +5 bonus to their DC, due to it's trademark stench, and the trail of pickle juice left behind.
Goblins, of course, care nothing for this downside, or the pickle spears lack of benefits over any other spear. It's a pickle! That stabs like a spear! Or it's a spear! That looks like a pickle! How are you not amazed by this? Have you no soul?
Golarion as a setting already resembles the 'zoo' folks are complaining about, though. It's never really been a low-fantasy "humans and one dwarf" kinda world, especially now that Orcs and Leshies are Common.
I think what Castiliano means is that Starfinder 1E just threw tons of races at you with each Bestiary, each with very little personality outside of its assigned gimmick. I personally would prefer more depth for each ancestry in SF2E.
Yeah, I don't like rubber forehead aliens.*
For those unfamiliar, it's a trope and doesn't necessarily mean aliens only. It's a complaint of having a lot "exotic" races that look different from humans, but the difference is superficial (think some makeup on your forehead) and the culture doesn't have much depth.
I'd rather have 5 races with a lot of depth, than 40 shallow ones.
An old complaint about race design for both fantasy and sci-fi was the notion that so many different cultures were all about *one trait* dialed up to 11. This is the race that's all about logic. This one's all about honor and conflict. This one's all about commerce, greed and capitalism.
Not just a human with pointy ears or bumpy ridges on their forehead, but an entire culture based around a single trait. Which can be dull, when multiple people's are designed with this sort of broad brush.
The same is also weird for environments. This entire world is a desert. This one's all ice. This one's a big swamp. Gosh, somehow, on Earth, we have *all three of those things!* :)
Similarly, many races in sci-fi and fantasy have a single culture, a single god (or pantheon of gods), a single language, a single government, etc. Kinda limiting. I like how the elves and dwarves of Golarion have several distinct groups, very different in governance, religion, etc. A Pahmet and M'Beke dwarf might come across as very alien to one from the Five Kings Mountains. Same with elves fresh off the boat from Castrovel, living in Kyonin, discovering how the Alijae or Snowcaster elven societies have greatly branched off since their long separation.
That's cool to me!
And with the radical differences between the Matanje orcs and those of Belkzen, or the Kholo of the Expanse, or the Lamashtu-worshippers of Katapesh, there's some neat differentiation there among traditionally monocultural 'generic bad guys' folk.
Will they have horses in Arcadia? Considering raccoons and skunks exist in the Inner Sea.
That is an interesting question, since there's a ton of American continent vegetables (and some critters) in Avistan, so it's equally likely that there might be some transplanted plants and animals in the other direction.
I suspect the Azlanti are just one explanation for how things got moved around, but also the existence of an elemental plane of Wood, or a First World, as well as other means of transport, like elven Aidura, could explain why a lot of plants have managed to proliferate on greatly separated continents.
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I’d love to have a god based on or even just straight up have Tezcatlipoca in Golarion.
Despite Tezcatlipoca‘a profilo seeming like it would be evil he was one of the most popular gods in Nahua and a Patreon of enslaved persons
Man, the Smoking Mirror is one of my favorite gods, after Set. I have a type. :)
I actually feel like Szuriel is a really bad fit. She's got some very superficially similar vibes to Gorum, but her tenets are purely destructive. War is a means by which to darken the universe.
Gorum's on the other hand is all about the thrill of battle itself. Gorum wants people to fight the good fight forevermore, while Szuriel wants to end everything through War. There's even some competing anathema (Gorum forbids killing those who surrender, Szuriel forbids showing mercy).
So in some respects, despite the surface level commonalities, in many respects Szuriel represents a fundamental perversion of what Gorum represents. His most devoted should be leading the charge against her, not signing up.
Yeah, Gorum seems to be about 'war to feel alive!' and Szuriel is all about 'war to make people dead!'
Totally diff vibes, IMO.
(Weirdly, Urgathoa had War in PF1, and her whole schtick seemed to be 'leave me alone to eat and party and be a complete hedonist,' and even read like she found Pharasma hating her to be not really terribly interesting enough to 'hate her back.' Just too darn selfish and self-centered to take seriously or give serious thought to gods who thought they were her nemeses! Seems to be a theme for the necro clique. Geb was kind of same way, at times. "The Knights of Ozem? Never heard of them. But they attacked me, I guess I will punish them *spectacularly,* and then, never give them another thought...")
I could definitely see Lamashtu taking that ball and running with it. She's already got gnolls, minotaurs and hobgoblins (as well as goblins and bugbears) among her more fighty followers, and probably a fair number of ogres as well.
And then there's Moloch. He's totally ripe for being a guiding principle behind legions of soldiers in places like Molthune, Isger, Cheliax and even Oprak or Druma! Sort of a 'god of the army man' like Anhur was in Egypt, or Mithras in Rome, super-popular with the military, with priests marching with the troops, practically unknown to the urban civilian who doesn't have military experience or close kin in the army.
More a god of professional soldiers than screaming bloodthirsty barbarians, tho.
Reminiscent of the 1st ed Monster Manual's Giant Gar and Giant Pike;
643. Giant Sturgeon While a population exists in Glacier Lake, in Irrisen, these enormous fish are thought to have been introduced to the lake, with the parent population having arisen in the Lake of Mists and Veils, in Brevoy. Growing up to 10 meters in length, these fish are generally placid bottom feeders, and during their breeding season can be 'milked' for thousands of eggs (or simply cut open and the eggs harvested, in a far less sustainable method of extraction), which are a delicacy as far south as Taldor, and are common in the decadent banquets of the winter witches in Thronehold.
In certain areas, salmon and trout, of more regular sizes, are similarly milked for their eggs, in areas like Varisia or the Mwangi Expanse, or simply cut open and the eggs serving as a secondary source of revenue, for fishermen who were catching salmon or trout anyway as a food source, regarding the presence of an egg-laden female among their catch as a nice bonus, similar to finding a low-grade pearl while gathering oysters for dinner.
Rumors that dwarven 'cave caviar' consists of giant centipede eggs, some as large as melons, have neither been confirmed nor denied.
Note that giant sturgeon tend to appear in the same bodies of water that also hold giant gar and giant pikes, two much more dangerous fish, able to, in extreme cases, swallow a grown man whole!
Sometimes you get the fish. Sometimes the fish gets you.
It seems James Gunn is now being accused of being racist against the people of India. Just over a week before the premier of the first movie in his "Gunnverse".
I watched the interview were he supposedly uttered the offensive phrase. I didn't really see it as racist. Just him making an example. I mean, personally, I do see him as just another, typically Hollywood scumbag. Doesn't make him racist. In this case, I just think it's folk making a mountain out of a molehill.
Still, not the kind of publicity you want with just over a week until the big premier.
It seems like the Snyder fans really, really hate him, and are constantly amping anything he says (or said *years ago*, in the last case where he got fired from Marvel for saying some offensive thing online a decade previous) to make him seem like a villain for committing the heinous unforgiveable effrontery of being more successful at putting butts in seats than their guy.
I can't stand his interpretations of Drax and Mantis, in particular, in the GotG movies, and he's had some ugly takes on stuff, but the movies themselves were popular, and setting aside one or two choices I didn't care for, I enjoyed them immensely, and that's where the rubber meets the road, in that industry.
I've never been a huge Superman fan, but that's actually usually a plus for me with comic book movies, as I am *far* more forgiving of changes to characters I am not 100% in love with anyway (and more able to recognize that A) some changes are necessary moving between mediums, B) some original didn't age well and needs to die in a fire, and C) there have been *dozens* of writers with wildly different interpretations of these characters over a half century or more of publication, so it's impossible for any adaptation to be 'accurate' to all, or even most, of those, often contradictory, versions!).
OTOH, the fact that these toxic fans are constantly pulling this stuff makes it easier for Gunn to get away with *actually* offensive stuff, since he's got these 'Gunn Control' prats providing cover for him, with their teapot tempests, conditioning the rest of us to just ignore the latest 'Gunn said what?' scandal.
I wonder how many genuinely bad people just run around posting crazy rumors about their latest 'offense' to get people numbed to any revelation of their *actual* offenses?
Uskwood Thornapple The Uskwood forest has the advantage of fertile soil, enriched by the constant presence of volcanic ash drifting down from smoking vents in the Menador mountains to the south and Mindspin mountains to the east and north. The disadvantage of this constant source of volcanic ash, is that it keeps the area of western Nidal under a constant pall, almost an eternal twilight, even when the sun is high in the sky, exacerbated by the closed in nature of the Nidalese basin, so that ash circles the area of the Uskwood, but does not ever truly disperse out to sea, being blown back to settle on this shrouded nation.
The Uskwood Thornapple is one of several local trees that have adjusted over untold centuries to use a form of chemosynthesis, like life in the deep sea, far from the light of the sun, to draw additional energy from the chemical-laden ash, as well as leaves so dark green as to appear nearly black in color, and white bark, like a birch tree, to reflect back any light 'wasted' by hitting the bark to give it a second chance to be intercepted by the dark and hungry light-starved leaves.
Small but sharp thorns protect these dark leaves from hungry herbivores, while the 'apples' are small and bitter, perfectly round like oversized cherries, and used in some jams or preserves, but rarely eaten fresh off the tree, as they taste even more bitter than crabapples. (The fermentation of them is paradoxically sweeter, and quite popular as an export, being considered 'too sweet' for Nidali palettes.)
The wood of the thornapple is more sturdy than many hardwoods, if sometimes difficult to work, and some of the wood sold as 'darkwood' indeed comes from Nidalese thornapple trees, which used to be the primary source of 'darkwood' before new sources were found in other locations, such as imported from Sargava (and harvested in the Mwangi expanse). It was quite a blow to the Nidalese 'darkwood monopoly' when Sargavan darkwood entered the market...
Nidalese darkwood is almost always treated with a coating that gives it a distinctive coloration, with black dye being preferred for wood used in Nidal itself, and a dark reddish stain being popular in allied Cheliax. Other customers seem to prefer a more natural brown shade, rich like mahogany, but treatments exist to create a dark green or deep purple hue. These colors are rarely ordered, and never made without a -pre-existing order, although a large order of purple-stained wood was recently sold to a factor from Absalom, who was discovered (by the Umbral Court agent assigned to find out of this was going to be a potential regular customer) to have promptly shipped it to an unknown customer in Jalmeray, causing the agent to 'lose the trail.'
The high cost of the wood, less now that alternate sources exist, and Nidal can no longer set the price or control the market, stemmed originally from the challenges harvesting the wood, as the druids of the Uskwood consider the tree holy to the god of darkness, thriving as it does in the low-light environment of the Uskwood, and even proving impossible to grow in soil that is less volcanically and chemically enriched, or in stronger light levels, where the nigh-black leaves actually wilt under the intensity of direct sunlight! The druids require that for every Uskwood tree felled, the cutters must plant *two* new trees! And so the Uskwood remains, if anything, *larger* than it did, when harvesting of the trees for 'darkwood' began!
One final unusual benefit of the trees unusual form of chemosynthesis, is that the normally slightly acidic ashen soil is depleted of these chemicals in these stands of trees, which makes the soil less nutritious to the trees themselves (fortunately constantly being replaced by fresh ash-fall), but *more* hospitable to other plants. And so the druids of the Uskwood allow farmers to come by every ten years and take away cartsful of 'spent' soil from around these trees, replacing them with cartsful of fresh ash swept from the streets and roadways of the nation, so that the thornapples always have fresh ash-soil, and the farmers have soil for their own crops that lacks the acidity of the sometimes harsh ash itself. So while the trees produce little edible, themselves, they deplete the ash over time and render it far more welcoming to the sorts of crops that do not thrive in the unprocessed ash itself.
I've never been terribly clear on whether or not the 'land of shadow' is literally in shadow, or metaphorically. There are references that support both views (one city has buildings so close together that the streets below are almost always in shadow, on the one hand, there's special water that helps plants grow despite the absence of light). So I made stuff up, to fit a country surrounded by mountains like the smog-trap LA basin, and with volcanic-sounding places like Brimstone Springs and Ash Hollow in those mountains, and left room for both interpretations to be true, with more light near the coast, where the sea-winds diffuse some of the ash-fall, and less light near the capital and Uskwood to the west, closer to the volcanic mountains themselves.
If you think too hard on magic you can find all of it not making sense.
Like how does charisma actually play into casting power?
IMO, Charisma would be great for a character who has to bargain or negotiate (or propitiate a deity or something) to maintain or advance their power, like a witch who has a patron they have to bargain (or a familiar that represents a connection to that patron that they have to convince to both grant them their daily bread, but also that they are ready for the next grander course). This was not the case in PF1, the witch and their patron were generally more of an abstraction and just sort of a name attached to a selection of bonus spells added to their list, not an actual entity that they had to make a pact with or follow some sort of taboos or anathema or doctrines to bargain with.
Charisma feels less like 'willpower' to me, than ability to interact with others and sense of self-worth.
Willpower would, IMO, map to Wisdom, with it's bonus to Will saves. And also fit with the use in PF1, where dwarves had a wisdom bonus, but a charisma penalty, and yet were stubborn as heck!
As for Sorcerer's training, 'use it or ya lose it.' Just as exercising muscles can grow bigger muscles, just as exercising your mind can grow your memory and critical thinking skills, perhaps exercising the magic in your blood can make you better at drawing on that magic, able to access deeper wells of that magic.
It's obviously not a real world thing, but it can follow real world precedents. Use it or lose it. Keep using it, find new ways to use it, keep getting incrementally better at using it.
And all Danes and Swedes are insulted at 'Scandinavian' being equated with 'Norwegian'. And all Norwegians are insulted for the same reason. And Finns are insulted at being considered part of Scandinavia in the first place.
[tangent] Always compliment Australians on how their English is really good, and ask them about Arnold Schwarzenegger, as if you've mistaken them for Austrians. [/tangent]
Well I appreciate the offer, and expect to see you both at the Zinda Blake Fan Club. ;) (In seriousness, should I start a "share your favorite b and c listers here!" thread?)
Only if you want to hear a lot of rambling about Multiple Man.
Oh goodness, Madrox is one of my favorite mutants, and definitely one of my favorite 'lower tier' mutants, along with folks like Frenzy, Diamond Lil, Dust, Hellion, Wind-Dancer, Wiz Kid, Sunspot, etc. (Nightcrawler and Cyclops being two of my favorite 'popular' mutants.)
Thomas Seitz wrote:
My lesser Avengers are Wonder Man, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and Vision.
Though Thor still ranks high.
Love old school Scarlet Witch, her circa Marvel Handbook power of 'bad luck bolts, only *I choose* the bad luck that's going to happen to you!' was *amazing!* "Hawkeye? Bowstring snapped. And now you've had a muscle cramp and can't use your arm anyway. Iron Man? Armor shorted out, oops. Thor? Lost your balance while swinging your hammer and clocked yourself in the back of the head. Hercules? Huh. Wardrobe malfunction? No, you'd like that. Have a stroke. You're a god, you'll be fine, just useless for a few hours."
Quicksilver had a great ascerbic personality, which made him fun to see causing trouble and being a putz to everyone.
It interests me how Marvel and DC focus on different archetypes. DC owns that speedster niche with a whole Flash family. Marvel totally rules the psychics roost, with more telepaths (mostly mutants) and telekinetics than I can list.
I kind of like that, instead of each company having a bunch of clones of each others successful IPs. (Which leads back to topicality, not liking the Sentry much in the comics, 'cause his 'super-power' is pretty much, 'Marvel's Superman.' Meh.)
And then there's characters whose powers don't seem to have anything to do with each other, but *feel* similar, thematically. Firestorm at DC and Nova at Marvel felt very similar to me, despite being vastly different in all sorts of ways.
641. Caldera Cod At least a half-dozen charted caldera lakes exist in the mountains of Avistan (and undoubtedly on other continents as well), primarily in the Kodar and Mindspin mountains, but possibly in other ranges as well (such as the Aspodell and Menador mountains), tucked away in areas travelled only by giant-kin, yeti and denizens of Leng.
These lakes are often a dark blue in shade, such that even on a sunny day, the water appears to be in shadow, due to a high mineral content, and would seem ill-suited to life, because of this limitation on the amount of sunlight penetrating the depths, and yet some aquatic plantlife has learned to flourish on the rich chemical content of these water, replacing their more natural photosynthesis, with a form of chemosynthesis, like some sea life clustered around 'black smoker' vents in the deep ocean. Where plant life can find a way to thrive, crustaceans and molluscs to feed upon them can also live, and larger fish to prey on them in turn.
And so it is with the misnamed 'caldera cod' (who are in no way related to cod). This fish are fantastically ugly, with a primitive prehistoric pugnacity, with a smooth carapaced head that is effectively armored, spiney fins and a thick coating of protective mucus like a hagfish, they are unlovely by any measure, although at least pleasantly colored, either dark blue entirely, or countershaded with a dark blue upper body and a light seafoam green underside (these two color variations only appear in separate caldera lakes). The waters they swim in are rich with minerals, including dissolved metals, and the flesh of the fish is mildly toxic, leaving most consumers wracked with cramps (sickened for hours, until a Fort save is made to shake the condition, nauseated instead on a natural 1 on a Fort save!), but the toxic nature of the minerals is 'mild' enough that some species, with particularly robust tolerances for such things, chiefly dwarves, giants and yeti, appear to be mostly immune. Indeed, dwarves consider caldera cod something of a spicy adventurous meal, although most are not malicious enough not to 'accidentally' serve it to a human guest.
Several caldera lakes are far warmer, heated by the geothermal activity far beneath them, than the chilly mountainous regions in which they are found, sometimes so warm that the steam visibly in areas normally above the snowline, and serve as a sort of oasis of warmth in these cold climates. One such lake is indeed so hot as to be scalding to most life, and exists within fire giant territory, where it is used as a sort of spa by this fire-resistant people, but most are merely 'pleasantly warm' or even not at all (in those cases where the caldera has been quiet and cool for centuries). At least three such lakes are known to have an extra hazard, in that the fresh ejections of chemicals at their base sometimes raise the acidity of the water to dangerous levels, with the local life are at least someone resistant to (caldera cod have Acid Resistance 5, unless their protective mucus coat is cleaned away), and at the edges, this acidity could rise to 1 hp of acid damage / minute of exposure, and 1d3 pts of acid damage / minute at the center of the eruption (which can be recognized as bubbles of sulfurous gas that reek of rotten eggs float up to the surface, and the dark blue water in that area turns a lighter green for a time). At first, the effects or an acid bloom will only sting slightly, and cause redness, like from a sunburn, or blistering, as from a rash, but it can rise to damaging levels in minutes!
During this time, the caldera cod flock to the edges of the lake, where the acidity is lowest, and are in a frenzy, attacking anything in the water with them with the ferocity of a swarm of piranha, while the chemical-loving plantlife in the center of the lake blooms with new vigor, and produces a feast for the fish to consume when the acidity levels drop, which can take hours, or even days, in the case of a major 'eruption.'
A single caldera cod will eat almost anything it can either fit into it's mouth (and has been known to crush snails and spit out the broken bits of shell, or bite off a finger or toe...), but is not significantly more dangerous than a snapping turtle or really angry parrotfish, while a swarm, well, get out of the water when it starts to turn green and smells like rotten eggs!
Exactly how this fairly specific ecosystem developed in lakes separated in some cases by hundreds or even thousands of miles, with no water connection between them, was always a mystery, until a similar species was found in caldera lakes within the Vault of Onyx. Mountains within the Tempered Peaks and Dustbed regions have both been discovered to have caldera lakes, and caldera cod, and the hobgoblin explorers now taming those lands have also found them to be edible, if, occasionally, 'challenging.' And so a theoretical answer to the mystery of the caldera ecosystem would be seeding by the enigmatic Vault Builders, who must have had some inscrutable reason for seeding these otherwise inhospitable regions with a source of protein not dependent on the light of the sun, and yet resistant to the chemical-laden waters of caldera lakes.
While the meat is (barely) edible, and the scales, which often contain a higher than expected mineral content and can be alchemically treated to make colorful leather armor, the ecosystem contains little else of value. The plant-life, for instance, far from being a good source of acid-resistant fibers, dries out and becomes useless and fragile when it dies, and even alive has the consistency of slimy fronds. The small crustaceans and molluscs, if anything, are even *more* toxic (and bitterly unpleasant to the taste, to boot), than the caldera cod that prey upon them. The molluscs do, at least, have a higher-than-expected concentration of metallic minerals in their fanciful shells, and these can make interesting curios, as they grow into phantasmagorical multi-colored Fibonacci spirals, if nothing else (if they can be salvaged before some caldera cod cracks them open to get at the juicy treat within...).
Always a fun day when a post on the Paizo boards makes me look up the mountain ranges of Avistan, the mountain ranges of the Vault of the Onyx Citadel, and the spelling for 'Fibonacci sequence.'
There was a no-win scenario there for Marvel. I never imagined that Taskmaster had a fandom, like, at all, other than as the inspiration for, IIRC, the much MUCH more successful Deathstroke, introduced 10 months later over at DC, but the fact that he apparently *does* means that his fans are going to be upset that he was gender-swapped, and, IMO, made much more relevant to the MCU continuity as 'Dreykov's Daughter' than he's ever been in the comics, where he's, AFAIK, related to nobody, and nobody's archnemesis, and his actual *job description* is 'the guy who trains mooks.' (His big role in Civil War, for instance, was getting hospitalized with third degree burns all over his body from a blast by Dr. Doom for *interrupting him.* Before that meeting he'd been boasting to a friend how he was not just as the 'big table,' he was gonna sit with the owners, and then, bam, not quite ready for the prime time...)
As for those of us who wanted to really see the MCU Taskmaster's evolution from a single line about Dreykov's Daughter in Avengers, to the horribly abused child-turned-cyberzombie-assassin-by-daddy in Black Widow, to, hopefully, something more human?, well, we too are disappointed that she got so casually killed off.
As mentioned, it feels like she had an arc there. Certainly more to flesh out than with Bucky, IMO, who is awesome, but has already gotten quite a bit of play, and a pair of movies where he's pretty darn central to the plot (Winter Soldier and Civil War).
I do kind of like the emptiness of Ghost and Yelena's exchange afterwards. "Who was that I killed?" "Antonia. She had a hard life. And now she's dead." Kind of a gut punch how much that said about Yelena, who has spent a percentage of her life trying to rescue women from the sorts of fates as disposable soldiers that Dreykov had made of them, to just sort of shrug, because she can't allow losing another one to kill any more of her soul than she's already lost.
OTOH, with such a badass team of really effective killers, it was a bit of a surprise to see Ghost be the one to make a kill, taking advantage of being one of the only ones with a surprisingly effective superpower (other than, as Yelena points out, 'just able to punch and shoot things.'
Andostre wrote:
However, if you want to gripe about or praise any obscure character, I'll listen! And I'll respond if I know who you're talking about! *fist bump*
+1 to this. As someone whose favorite Avengers are people like Stingray, Black Knight, Living Lightning, Moondragon and Monica Rambeau, I've a deep neurotic love for the lesser-seen Avengers!
Heck, I'd love a Justice League lineup that used the 'bottom half' of the Satellite League. No 'big seven.' Just Green Arrow, Black Canary, Elongated Man (and Sue), the Atom, Red Tornado, Hawkwoman, Zatanna. Maybe a few of my favorites from later, like Vixen, Booster Gold or Black Lightning. A team where Green Arrow, not Bruce, is the team money-man. Where Ralph and Sue are the team detective, and Ray Palmer the team sciencer, and Dinah the street-savvy melee specialist, and *Red Tornado* the team powerhouse!
Fey are everywhere! Shunning the worlds of life and warmth to bring light, color and whimsy to the silent spaces between the stars, these Tiny fey appear similar to common sprites, but made of colorful light, and aglow with a dazzling radiance, appearing as stars, to a distant viewer, until they swoop and whirl with impossible agility to surround a spacebound figure. Each tiny fey carries it's own tiny bubble of warm atmosphere that replenishes itself regardless of the surrounding environment (and results in the fey being unwilling, or unable?, to spend more than an hour in a natural or artificial atmosphere), and someone adrift in the void, air running out, might welcome the sight of many tiny colorful 'stars' spinning towards them, so long as they have something to amuse the tiny fey, and keep them interested long enough to replenish their air supply, or even give them a push towards a safe haven.
Space pixies are unpredictable, in that respect, and some love music, others sweet foods or alcoholic drinks, but the one thing they all share in common is a fascination with aeon stones, and some spacers carry a few dull gray stones enhanced with continual flame, to 'trade' to space pixies in exchange for a second chance at life, if adrift in the void. Space pixies appear to be able to sense aeon stones they are not already familiar with a great distances, so that this is not an entirely vain hope. Only the leaders of space pixie packs have functional aeon stones, while the majority of them have to settle for burned out stones, enhanced, if possible with continual flame (in colors that hopefully synergize well with their own, as space pixies most often occur in yellow, red, orange, white, blue and blue-white, much like the stars they resemble at a distance).
Most Imperial Azlanti regard them as pests and thieves of any unattended or unsecured aeon stone, but a few are clever enough to supply them with burned out stones and use them as bloodhounds to locate much more valuable stones...
What I have always wanted most in a FF project was a Modern Family style sitcom where all of their big action pieces happen at the end or beginning of each episode. What makes them special isn't their powers, it is the fact that they are a family in a way that no other super team is.
One thing I liked about the first FF movie (with Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Chikilis, etc.) was how all four of them worked together for that combat stunt that defeated Doom at the end. After years of reading comics in which the Fantastic Four are described as functioning like a well-oiled machine, as a team, as a family, it was nice to see on screen.
And then the sequel had everyone's powers loaded up on Johnny so he could solo the Surfer with all their powers combined? Le sigh. Missed the point, completely, for me.
I always felt like Sue was the practical and kind of *useful* one around the business end of things, while Reed could spend three days in the lab and totally not pay the bills, or feed the kids, or bother to file a patent on something, and then end up like Tesla, wondering why his life has fallen apart if he's so darn smart...
So her being his (and the teams) 'manager' who kind of keeps everything on track and running smoothly fits my view of how their dynamic always seemed, since Reed was (inconsistently, I'll admit**) often shown as a bit of an 'absent-minded professor' stereotype.
**Given the long publishing history, there have been like *forty* characterizations for Reed and Sue over the years, and some have him totally the absent minded professor, and Sue the hypercompetent 'team Mom' who keeps it all together, and others have Reed being just amazing at *everything* (he's a scientist, he's Mr. Action, he's a celebrity, he was a soldier in WW2 and yet mysteriously not eighty years old, he's got a Nobel Peace Prize, he's not afraid to slap his wife when she's speaking out of turn!) and Sue a silly flighty girl who likes clothes and gets captured because the bad-guy owns a dog that sniffed her out while she was invisible. :/ Obviously, I'm leaning towards the first version of Sue (and there's even a recent-isg development in the comics of her having been an agent of SHIELD for years, behind the scenes, which, I'm not sure I'm completely adjusted to, quite yet...).
With all the characterizations, it's almost impossible to tag them for 'not getting canon right' since canon is all over the friggin' place. :)
Heck, there were *three* different retcons of why Reed supported the Registration Act! (It was the Brute, pretending to be Reed, Dr. Doom even kidnapped Sue *to protect her from the villain pretending to be her husband!* He was a Skrull imposter! (The famous Bendis retcon for every sketchy thing heroes had done for the last decade or so, except Hank Pym, because screw that guy in particular!) He was mindjobbed by the Mad Thinker who convinced him of some BS psychohistory thing using his superhuman intelligence! There, three different reasons why fans are not supposed to blame Reed for sending supervillain 'capekillers' to 'arrest' his wife and best friend and brother in law over a law *that hadn't actually passed yet!*)
It could be both, and it doesn't help I came to this one straight off Tanith Lee, whose prose is anything but clumsy.
There are a few writers who I feel like are halfway between writing prose and poetry, and Tanith Lee is one of them. (Edgar Allen Poe's non-poetry fiction, for instance, can still feel pretty poetic. For a slightly more modern take, some books by Roger Zelazny, like Lord of Light and Creatures of Light & Darkness, can feel that way to me.)
I LOVED the way Thor was portrayed in earlier MCU movies but I absolutely HATE the more recent goofy comedy version of Thor.
I get that Hemsworth is a funny guy and that’s awesome, but that doesn’t mean Thor should be a wacky joker.
I prefer my Thor to be more Shakespearian with some gravitas, not a quippy joke machine …
Same. I don't care for the MCU Thor for the exact reason that I *love* comic book Thor. Comic-Thor is portentous and larger than life and a little bit scary, even to his allies. He's not the funny drunk in the fat suit. He doesn't get tasered or backed into by a car by his girlfriend (in one of his better movies, where he wasn't entirely a joke, even!).
As a bit of a comic snob, I'm often surprised by how much I love MCU characters whose comic-book version I cannot stand (like Bob/the Sentry), and how much characters I really love from the comics, leave me cold in the MCU (Clint/Hawkeye, who, IMO, is deadly dull compared to the wisecracking pain-in-Caps-ass he is in the comics).
And that's something I do love about the MCU in general, is that some characters that in the comics never really seemed to click for me (like Natasha or Yelena) have really blossomed in the MCU, under different writing / interpretations (and with actors bringing them to life).
The differences are often very cool for characters that I didn't already love, but are jarring and unwelcome in cases like Thor, whom I liked as he already was, and do not like the MCU interpretation of. So, yes, total hypocrisy. I own that. :)
I think some of the complaints about Magus might go away if it was A fighter/mage class instead of THE fighter mage class.
A thought I had back in 3.5 with the Duskblade, and again with the Magus was that the Fighter/Wizard was a Fighter first, and a Wizard second. I kind of want to see a Wizard/Fighter, no armor, but magical defenses, no martial weapons, but able to do some *amazing* stuff with twin daggers, a staff or thrown daggers/darts (or maybe other simple weapons, like the spear). More of a War Wizard, with a martial feel, who gets all up in someone's face with magic, but still uses the weapons and armor associated with wizards (or sorcerers). The PF 1e Staff Magus flirted with that desire, but not as much as I'd hoped.
A horn idol of three billy goats could be a fun item, even as a non-cursed idea. To go with the 'idol' notion, they might grant a 1st level clerical spell to someone who presents them an offering once / day (but this act flies in the face of active worship of almost any deity, which makes them oddly popular with people who are, purportedly, atheists, who keep them hidden away in basements or attics, and only make an offering to them in secrecy). The nature of the offering could depend on who you want to be the secret patron of these idols, and could involve self-sacrifice (a con point worth of your own blood), self-harm (Zon-Kuthon says bleed for me!), live sacrifice (1 HD worth of critters, chickens are the unlucky recipients of this 'honor,' or maybe the neighbors cat...), a potentially harmful secret whispered to the idol (which becomes known to the unknown creator of said idol...), gold, food, drinks, an artistic creation made by the supplicant, something *stolen* by the supplicant, etc.
Somewhere in Rahadoum, there's one of these tucked away in a basement, handing out the occasional cure light wounds, in exchange for there being less stray dogs in the neighborhood. And they thought getting rid of worship of the gods was going to clean up their country?
I like the idea that a dwarven 'keyboard' instead of a single long row like we have on a piano, might be a pair of smaller round keyboards, with the users hands sitting in the center, able to reach the keys arrayed around their palm without much movement of the hand from a central position. A form of xylophone designed along this, with bars of different sizes, or even different alloys, would be operated by a dwarf who wears metal caps over their fingertips, so that, instead of rapping them with a bar, they'd be tapping each bar with a metal-tipped finger to produce the tone.
The notion of different metals giving off different tones might carry through to both smithing and jewelrycraft, as metalworkers might 'sound' various metals and listen to the sound they produce to appraise the purity / content of a metal sample (or coin, etc.), which could look unusual to a non-dwarf, to see a moneychanger tap a silver coin with a tiny steel hammer and listen to the tone to determine if it's counterfeit or pure.
145. Bag of Folding This bag neatly folds in half or thirds any item placed within it. When this is sheets of parchment, or clothing, this isn't so bad, but the bag folds *everything.* Coins? Bent in half. Weapons? Bent in half (which results in breakage for wooden weapons, and makes metal ones unusable until repaired). Spellbooks? Well, that's ruined...
It thankfully doesn't affect living things, so if your familiar ends up inside it, no harm (other than possible suffocation), but everything else is fair game. Some things just don't fold well. Gemstones, in particular, shatter under the pressure of an attempt to 'fold' them. Most art objects are similarly destroyed.
But it's great on laundry day! Just shove all the freshly washed and dried clothing in the bag, close it and wait a few seconds, and pull them out neatly folded!
so much that the mechanics like 'per encounter abilities' or whatnot weren't constantly snapping you out of the immersion/experience/fantasy adventure story like a stagehand caught on stage midperformance.
And early 3e had very little of this, and when it did it was mostly per day stuff, not per encounter. Later 3.5 and then especially Pathfinder added a lot of the "dissociated" mechanics.
3e (and previous editions) had facing. The 360° sight is one of the things is one of the things that always feel a bit off, together with the "6 seconds round" that allows you to do more than the old 1 minute round of AD&D.
I feel like every edition has stuff I liked, and stuff that I tried very hard to forget, like weapon speed factors and those weird armor class adjustments based on weapon type, or whatever (which I'm not describing well, because we never used them!). Ug. 1st edition had some real nit-picky pain baked into it!
Adjusting your initiative count based on what spell you were casting, and being able to be interrupted if someone had a fast weapon speed weapon capable of reaching and interrupting you, like a thrown dart? Yeah, fun. NOT.
Slowly but surely, these things have fallen away. Some of them, like Vancian casting and alignment, I never thought were going to die, but hey, the future slowly slouches towards Bethlehem, it seems.
I don't see it as 'realistic' so much as 'internally consistent,' which gave a *sense* of versimilitude, even if some of the more gamist aspects, like hit points, or how poison worked, did not seem even slightly meant to be 'realistic.'
To an audience who grew up with modern media, and expected a certain level of suspension of disbelief from even NON-fantastical/speculative movies, TV, books, etc. (of course someone can get shot in the shoulder and keep on fighting, with no lingering effects, ever! Of course cars explode when you shoot them, and you can jump faster than the explosion to get to safety!), I feel like 3.5/PF at least *felt* realistic *enough* to scratch that itch, without feeling a bit too obviously gamist, so much that the mechanics like 'per encounter abilities' or whatnot weren't constantly snapping you out of the immersion/experience/fantasy adventure story like a stagehand caught on stage midperformance.
I wasn't keen on Hawk Girl's costume, though I hope her presence means Hawk Man and Thangarians are something we can hope for one day. And though I like Nathan Fillion, and think he'll do a magnificent job, I thought he looked a little sillier than Guy should.
I liked Firefly as much as the next geek, but I wonder sometimes if a comic book movie will ever cast an actual redhead to play a red haired hero?
Either Daredevil? Nope. Arsenal/Roy Harper? Nope. Poison Ivy in that terrible Batman movie? Nope. Mera? Black Widow? Johnny Blaze? Batwoman? Medusa and Crystal? Pepper Potts? Mystique? Kid Flash? Starfox? Guy Gardner? N-n-nopers!
I think the latest Jean Grey (if not the first one) and one of the three Mary-Janes are about the only ones!
A toxic dragon that could spritz venom like a spitting cobra, but was more likely to inject it through a bite, be surrounded by a toxic funk of it, or spray it onto anyone who stabbed or cut it, could be fun.
No 'clouds of chlorine gas' or anything that smells like D&D IP, but more like ye olde dragons that were occasionally described as so toxic that knights had to kill them with a long lance, to avoid getting killed in return by their toxic blood.
A 'mist' or 'cloud' dragon that actually took the form of a gargantuan cloud in the sky to travel at a stately pace, and then coalesced only at night into a much smaller (but still large!) serpentine gray-white-silvery form, leaving a thick fog behind it as it traveled (through which it could see just fine, but blinding most anyone attempting to fight it). A dragon hissing and slithering through the all-concealing fog, lunging out to bite or rake or tail-smack people, could be a fun horror-y sort of encounter, since they'd barely ever see more than a flash of the creature that is toying with them.
I do like the idea of coming up with dragons not to fit some arbitrary scheme, like colors or metals or gemstones or planes or 'one for every terrain category,' but based on traits that would make for compelling encounters. (I also like the original format, just like my own 'not gemstone!' dragons of pearl, coral, amber, ivory, etc.) but hey, vive la difference!)
As for vampires of folklore vs. D&D, if the post-D&D vampires have nothing at all to do with level drain, I'll be very happy. That never really 'felt right' for me. Sort of a rules-mechanical 'gamist' kludge.
Turn to mist? Crawl up walls? Control weather, wolves, bats, etc.? Turn into animals? All fine, with folklore precedent. But level drain just felt weird. (An unnaturally cold and strong grasp that leaves you weakened and too feeble/overcome to marshal your strength, like a permanent chill touch or touch of fatigue effect? Sure!)
The plethora of weaknesses are also, IMO, a bit much. It's like, let's just heap on every single vampire weakness we've ever heard of and lump them onto the same dude! Something like the mutant template, where as the vampire progresses, they get access to more and more powers (they don't all start with mind control and animal shapeshifting and weather control!), but also can buy extra powers at the cost of some of the more uncommon weaknesses like running water or skeered of mirrors or die super-fast in sunlight (a fair number of folkloric vamps could function during the day, although some were at reduced power, or even fully human, like some sort of 'werewolf' that didn't know they were a monster at night!), could be funky.
133. Wand of Sage Armor This wand has 50 charges of Sage Armor, which is like Mage Armor, but requires you to make a Knowledge check (as an immediate action, if attacked, or a swift action, normally) sufficient to gain a bit of knowledge about a creature before the AC bonus applies versus that creature (you do not additionally gain information about the creature, from this check, just an understanding of how to avoid it's attacks).
If attacked by a trap, Knowledge (engineering) is the default, or by an environmental effect, such as a landslide or falling tree, Knowledge (nature) or (geography).
If attacked by something by surprise, you have no reaction time, and do not gain the AC bonus from Sage Armor (although you may on later rounds).
Green Ronin's Freeport Trilogy would be fun to tweak into a Shackles (or Mediogalti?) campaign. I used it in Greyhawk, myself, but this was with some Greyhawk-loving friends who preferred that setting to Pathfinder, and I'd totally have thrown it into Golarion, which already has some of that flavor (mythos/Cthulhu-flavor, serpentfolk, a pirate city, etc.).
(That said... I'd *love* to see us finally get back to Mzali. Strength of Thousands all but outright said "hey, we'll get to this story for real someday, just not right now," and that's been a tough wait!)
There are tons of little nuggets of goodness sprinkled around the setting that I'd love to see what's going on with.
Are Choral (and his cohorts in 'House Rorgavia') all locked up inside Skywatch in northern Brevoy, waiting to burst free and go all fiery dragon rampage on those treacherous Surtova bastards that locked him up and usurped control of his country?
Will PCs ever get a chance to repair and use a Hellfire Plume against a big threat? (Say, an undead horde from the Gravelands.) Will Sorshen or Belimarius help? Will the angry ghost of Alaznist need to be cajoled into 'helping' even if her idea of 'helping' is cackling madly while incinerating legions of (mutual) foes, one last chance from beyond the grave to demonstrate her wrath, protect 'her' territory, show off the superiority of her arcane power and work fiery destruction on masses of foes in the process?
Will the native population of Mendev rise up and displace the foreign occupiers who have been ruling their country in both fact and name for decades, while the worst among the foreign crusaders have been ruthlessly oppressing the natives and their culture? And will this 'native reconquista' be secretly fanned on by demon cultists, looking to punish the crusaders who shattered their dark dreams by sealing the Worldwound?
There's still plenty of stuff out there, like Mzali's situation, that could warrant some big adventuring fun.
Like the (inevitable?) return of Nex, and the ages-old cold war with Geb turning hot again...
129. Amulet of Natural Ardor This amulet is carved of ivory in the form of a floppy bunny, and the wearer finds themself unnaturally sympathetic to the plight of natural plants and animals. They must roll a will save to attack a natural plant or animal (even a dire animal, but this does not apply to 'unnatural' creatures of those types, like assassin vines or griffons) as if they all benefited from a Sanctuary spell at CL 10. As much as possible, if there is a non-confrontational option to get around inconvenient foliage, or to discourage hungry scavengers or predators, the wearer will encourage those options before choosing combat, resorting to taking the Total Defense option, if attacked by a natural animal.
130. Ring of Projection Created for a Chelish diva whose voice had begun to falter with age, it triples the volume of the wearers voice, making them three times as easy to hear at a range, and really able to project and 'reach the cheap seats.' It also was later enchanted to be unremovable by the wearer, as they kept losing it. (Fortunately, any other person can remove it, but this may not be immediately obvious...)
That you could use a number of offensive alchemical items equal to your base number attacks.
That you could use slings for more then one attack each round(based on number of attacks) without feats.
Because it takes exactly one Martial Weapon proficiency to be able to use a projectile weapon in a full attack (the shortbow or longbow), I feel that for both crossbows and slings, it should only take exactly 1 feat to 'catch up' for these Simple weapons, and either do full attacks, or make more powerful attacks (to roughly balance them with the Martial bows) or something.
The notion that you need multiple feats to make a Simple weapon like the sling still not quite as good as a Martial weapon is out of the box, when that Martial weapon itself costs only a single feat, feels weird and flavor-restrictive to me.
But I've always had quibbles with some stuff about weapons. Why is it so hard to use a spear and shield combo? Why do chakram do so much damage compared to hunga-munga/congo throwing irons, which *look* like they should do way more damage than a sharpened frisbee...
And oh, starknives. How do they even starknife? :)
Clerics, as well, IMO, should get favored weapons that aren't simple weapons they already have. Abadar? *Repeating* crossbow. Pharasma? Cordcutter, an exotic dagger with a notch in the blade (for cutting umbilical cords!) that has a higher crit multiplier, the deadly property and can be used as a MW Heal tool! Have fun with it!
