Silver Crow's page

I think something inspired by path of war could be wonderful.

There's just something about martials with particular techniques, or balancing their resources and actions to have more flavour than simply hitting with chosen weapon.

Using Warder as example (personal favourite), I know they'd lose their Defensive Focus + Aegis due to relying on multiple AoOs and +AC boosting respectively. Whether they get to have AoO to start like Fighter is open question, but acquiring it via Class Feat like other martials is easy to see. Perhaps Warder could be the non-divine Defender type class, giving options outside Champion? Armiger's Mark is essentially a taunt/challenge ability.

Admittedly not too sure how to approach Manoeuvres outside of using framework of spells as a reference point. Especially with finding that line between being useful Strikes or such, without risking making them too good compared to regular martial options at level. Manoeuvre recovery could be recharged via a certain action, or maybe Focus Ability ala Magus?

Apologies to ramble, in any case. Do like Path of War's flavour and options, but not sure how to adapt it in a suitable way.

As an aside, curious if have any favoured disciplines from Path of War? Partial to Eternal Guardian, Scarlet Throne, Silver Crane and Golden Lion, personally.

Personally would like to see something akin to the Path of War classes, though how the various Manoeuvres would work in the bounds of the 3 Action economy is a question.

Thematically a Warder isn't that far off Champion, though won't be able to keep the +AC aura or the AoO relating abilities it has. Harbinger is also an interesting one, playing off of using Curse abilities to hamper foes. Warlord isn't that far from Swashbuckler in spirit, so could be archetype maybe.

Otherwise, could see the Manoeuvre list becoming streamlined by taking advantage of the Heightened framework given by spells. Sticking point might be the Stances as 2E would want those kept in Feats, but perhaps chance for some more Focus Point Stances like the Monk has?

Tender Tendrils wrote:

Eh, I like tieflings/aasimars/etc being versatile heritages - it means I can have an ifrit leshy or a tiefling dwarf or aasimar elf which I think is great.

edit: and it was really silly anyway that for some bizarre reason humans where the only ancestry capable of being changed by devil pacts or by being descended from a genie or whatever.

Weren't there rules for being descended from other ancestries? I vaguely remember some very soft rules being somewhere, but they weren't really enforced.

"By default, half-elves and half-orcs descend from humans, but your GM might allow you to be the offspring of an elf, orc, or different ancestry. In these cases, the GM will let you select the half-elf or half-orc heritage as the heritage for this other ancestry. The most likely other parent of a half-elf are gnomes and halflings, and the most likely parents of a half-orc are goblins, halflings, and dwarves."

Nethys page

I think this is what you're referring to?

As to prior point, recall having that experience trying to make a Tengu Aasimar in 1E, which was more "Human but aesthetically Tengu" compared to 2E where picking ancestry feats gets closer to the idea.

And funnily enough one of my others is a Fleshwarp Tiefling, brought about when the attempts to use it on her, ended up making the latent fiendish traits to assert themselves.

Honestly the character building options are just neat to tinker around with for concepts, even if not able to put to use for time being.

Apologies to ramble, any event.

We need a kobold iconic at some point. Have they done an iconic with an uncommon ancestry yet?

Tengu Oracle

No edge. At all.

Also, I have made this comparison so often I feel silly about it, but it's the best example of "big head small eyes cute" I have. Mouse Guard's approach would be really nice for kobolds.

With regards Cactus Leshy, true enough. Suppose more spiky than edged, at least.

As for the Mouse Guard angle, can see where coming from. Especially if expand out to some of the more odd dragons for Exemplars.

Leshies literally have no edge. They're little soft round flower babies.

Even the Cactus Leshies?

Personally, I would prefer kobolds get a slight art update to make them a little cuter before they become a PC race. I mean, they're cute now, but I think they'd be cuter if they had rounder bodies and huge pupils. Maybe a little fluff/feathers on a heritage.

Perhaps Kobolds with Coatl as their Draconic Exemplar for the feather angle? Otherwise guess some of the Planar or Imperial dragons might work perhaps.

As for the rounder with big eyes, bit like some of the middle ones?. Old doodles, sorry for quality, but guessing general idea.

You mean you're not an amazingly artistic person? That was the primary association of being left-handed when I was growing up. If you were left-handed, you were more likely to be creative and an artist.

Other than that, no one much cared. That was back in the 1970s.

I'm aware of the word sinistral and the word sinister being associated with being left-handed. But it has nothing to do with the drow and their creation.

School during the 90s and 2000s in UK, mostly managed to avoid the main baggage. Teachers mostly kept it to grumbling over occasional smudging which getting a more suited pen helped fix. Pain getting a decent pair of scissors though. Fencers also get grouchy if you're left handed, but true of anyone who's facing an uncommon situation in sport I'd figure.

Whilst I do draw or what not, I'm...leery of saying more than that considering skill levels. Personally suspect it's more a result of having a creative parent than handedness and associated brain hemisphere.

As for the rest, more of a general interest thing than necessarily saying "this is why x".

In some circles, the innate ambidexterity of drow was a coded message about the inherent 'shiftiness' of the race.

'Ya can't even trust them to use the right hand.'

Before anyone jumps on me, this bugged me more than the skin pigmentation, as up until very recently left-handed people were treated like they were untrustworthy and unreliable.

Still happens in some places.

Not even 100 years for America at that.

In turn, whilst we do have tropes such as "A Sinister Clue" for when a character's immorality or potential deviousness is supposedly hinted by their being left handed, it's...kind of interesting how little it comes up as an aspect of various fictional settings, despite all the other things transplanted from the real world on some level. Would it break people's suspension of disbelief, I wonder, or would portraying such practices negatively impact sales in places that still have such attitudes?

Apologies to natter, any event. Being lefty myself, always been somewhat interesting navigating the silly associations that come with it.

Inquisitor is probably fine given how historically removed the inquisitions are from any living person's actual experience, might as well axe the viking archetype, although I'll admit Intercessor is a really fun name just because it feels like a euphemism.

"Its my job to... intercede, wherever Pharasma deems it necessary"

Makes them sound like cleaners and it has such a brutal ring to it, try saying it with an evil british accent.

Admittedly not far off how it played out in a friend's (sadly short lived) gestalt 1E campaign; party were members of group known as Intercessors, to investigate and "resolve" matters concerning corruption of some necromantic nature. Lot of leeway to do "what's necessary" as you'd figure.

Granted, Romance of Three Kingdoms leaning setting for that.

Though with the British "cleaner" angle...Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Giles, perhaps? Or consider the lady who voices Diana in the Hitman games.

Either way, could be Intimidation fodder if they're seemingly immaculately dressed, then start pulling on heavy gloves during conversation if suspicions are sufficiently aroused.

Toss on "Polite, Professional, Pious" mantra and probably off to races concept wise.

Sorry to natter, any way.

Intercessor sounds nice but I'm not sure of the context.

Quick Google states that an intercessor is "Someone who intervenes on behalf of another, especially by prayer".

Admittedly I should have included that in the first place, apologies.

Other idea may be Arbiter, though that's more "general judgement" than necessarily divine. Zealot is somewhat unlikely to work as that tends to be viewed as a negative quality or descriptor. Using one of the angel hierarchies probably too specific (eg Powers, Thrones, Virtues etc) and narrow.

Not sure if it'd entirely fit, or be too specific, but could Intercessor work as possible alternative?

Grankless wrote:

It's one of those things that's basically just "DnD tradition" despite most characters of that type in fiction being just the regular priest guy.

(Same with druids, who are probably only still in the game because of inertia. I think druids are so relatively uncommon because there just are 0 fictional touchstones to pull from.)

I think Merlin is implied to be a druid in one of the various King Arthur movies out there? The one where King Arthur and his knights are all romans?

To some degree, Merlin's druidic motifs are likely drawing on the Welsh Arthurian legends and stories, which naturally brings in some Celtic aspects. The Welsh town Carmarthen even claims their name is due to Merlin first appearing near there, which is fun.

The Welsh stories are also where we get Caladbolg, Carnwennan, Caledfylch, too.

Which really only compounds the lack of clarity over time, as those Celtic traditions are filtered through Roman, and then later Christian, perspectives. So whatever Merlin is by the end of it is...malleable at best.

Maybe he's an eccentric, archetypical Wizard (Disney's Sword in the Stone), maybe he's one of the last Druids (BBC's Merlin series).

Apologies to go on, any event. Just somewhat interesting really.

the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh wrote:

MaxAstro wrote:

Which, to restate, is that it's harder to be good than evil because to be good you have to be consistently good, while to be evil you really only need a few horrible acts.

The existence of the balisse angel, explicitly specified as being formed from the souls of people who commited Evil acts and were redeemed, seems to me to make it fairly clear that Good and Evil in Golarion do not work that way.

I do not believe their intention was to imply that redemption after committing acts of evil was impossible. Rather, I would suggest they were speaking in the short-term of what behaviours were likely to cause one to become either good or evil, not define good as 'never having done evil'. In this light, the balisse is not a counter example, since an evil creature can indeed choose to commit to performing consistent acts of good. The point seems to be about illustrating that goodness requires more dedication than evil, not reinforce any manner of purity culture.

There are the Peri, too, who're related to fallen celestials which influences their efforts to not fall themselves. Can personally see the two coming up if you're taking a shot at redeeming a fiend that's receptive to the possibility, at least; certainly thematic for a Redeemer champion rather than going straight to slaying, though likely much harder to accomplish.

That there's an entire class of celestial that arises from redeemed evil souls shows that it's not impossible. Sure, it won't necessarily be easy either but it at least balances out that some of the nastiest fiends were once celestials themselves, after all...which opens up the notion of intrigue playing its part in the great game as it were.

I don't think it's a bad thing that Good gods are held to higher standards than Evil ones, nor do I think we should expect symmetry there - it's the nature of good and evil. It's hard to be good and easy to be evil.

If someone spends their whole life as an upstanding citizen, donates to charity, does volunteer work, etc, and then one time murders a person in cold blood, we don't characterize them as "mostly good".

I would also like to restate that for a deity especially there's a big difference between their actions and their tenets. I think you could have a Good deity who personally mistrusts dwarves, but not one who extolls their followers to hate dwarves. The difficult part, of course, is that this is a god and a religion we are talking about, so it can be very hard to separate a deity's character from their tenets - after all, aren't the followers of a god typically going to try to emulate that god to some degree?

The ease aspect reminds me of something I read in MtG stuff: "a thimble of wine in a barrel of sewage is still sewage, a thimble of sewage in a barrel of wine becomes sewage." To despoil or ruin is a lot easier than raising something above what it starts as.

So for the "seemingly pleasant person" example...that one act makes their situation going forward drastically different. Sure, there'll be those they've helped in the past saying how they seemed so nice, but that in itself is kind of part of it; the prior actions can be doubted as a long term ruse to get an opportunity than the end in itself.

As for the line between a deity's personal matters and what they espouse, it could be the tenets represent their own aspirations despite their nature...otherwise, it's somewhat hollow or hypocritical. Likely very pertinent to ascended mortals who recognise their own failings, but it can be the case for higher order outsiders perhaps.

Maybe that's why they'd grant favour to those upholding the tenets than simply trying to emulate them as an individual, as it'd encourage the former over the latter. Being a better person tends to require confronting own shortcomings, and there's only so far pushing it under the proverbial rug is going to get.

Though now wonder if a deity could have something akin to Impostor Syndrome. Doubt and uncertainty of being good enough certainly could apply to any that strive to not give into their failings. Granted, tricky to do well but...still, personally find it interesting.

One of the thoughts that I have had on various good gods that have a bad rep: my thought was that (in addition to occasional bouts of writer-created lore inconsistency) we could actually be seeing the effects of gods being interpreted by their followers in the wrong way.

For example: The misogynistic view of Erastil could have come not from the god himself, but from some of his stodgy clergy.

Of course, this begs the question of how much bad press does it take for a god to decide that it is time to clear their reputation with direct visions, appearances and the appointing of a new set of champions to retell their story.

I think some nudging of their lay followers, priests and the like seems a good initial step. If things start getting really out of hand, perhaps servitors are put on the case and so forth. So as an example...at first it's dreams of a particular subject, and if that doesn't work may need Celestials to go be unsubtle.

Though it may be a scale thing as well; more established deities can likely afford to delegate unless something's going drastically awry, but a newer deity likely needs to be relatively pro-active getting the word out due a relative lack of influence perhaps.

Personally can see it as a good hook for a follower of Nocticula, especially if they run afoul of those who worshipped her before she became the Redeemer Queen.