Souls At War's page

My headcanon is ~snip~

I think you posted that in the wrong thread.

I will admit, I have quite a negative view on the classic pirates, given I have readen up on how gruesome that got. So I do appriciate this

Many works of fictions depict them in darker light, especially when they are up against armies/navies depicted as knights in shining armors type. Granted, some Pirates were just that bad.

To be honest, many Neutral Deities feel/felt closer to Evil than actual neutrality.

Claxon wrote:

The "take what you want" but "be loyal to your crew" part I think is what keeps Besmaran adherents from going full murder hobo.

Also, if you look at history, pirates usually didn't want to kill their targets. Because if you became notorious for killing your prey, they would fight harder and to the death (if they thought their only way out alive was to kill you). Ideally pirates just want their prey to surrender and give over their stuff.

And stealing is bad, but like, not as bad as murder.

You hit the nail on the head

I completly aggree with you

My question is not, can there be non-evil pirates, that I aggree with
I am talking specifically Holy (good aligned) Clerics of a Goddess of PIracy. Someone who has good intentions but will only raid and plunder as their lifes work. How would THAT work

Jack is a fun guy, but I wouldn't call him a really morally upstanding person.

While Good vs Evil is one thing, it can be useful to remember the whole Law vs Chaos part, and maybe avoid conflating Good with Law and Evil with Chaos.

Also, Robin Hood as a "good thief"

Yeah, that's one of the few who does suffer from changes in editions, rules, terms, etc.

Worked well with Positive Energy / Heal vs Negative Energy / Harm, but not that well with the connotations of the Holy/Unholy terminology.

Also, what Claxon pointed out.

For what it's worth, Abadar's been associated with monkeys as a sacred animal since around the early 90s when I first created him for my homebrew campaign.

A less cheeky reply is to note that for the best and most accurate canonical answers to things like this, print products are the place to go to first. When there's discrepancies, skew toward the most recent printed products for accuracy.

We don't know how Abadar was in your homebrew, so hard to judge.

But I kind of agree with OP that monkey is an odd choice, even among other primates.

I would also like to point out that Casmaron should absolutely give us the ability to create harpies. We already have similar flying peoples, and it would be completely wrong to deprive us of such capabilities with harpies, especially considering that they are one of the first things that come to mind when we think of flying creatures in fantasy.

Curious how those get balanced compared to others.

id prefer age of ashes or agents of edgewatch, SoG is really good as is

AoE is an interesting case, it wasn't well received, which would normally DQ it from a compilation/remaster, yet it is one AP that could gain a lot from a remaster.

GM Cthulhu wrote:

My party is slowly working their way to Gallowspire.

Some fights were childishly easy: The Pallis Sunrise had a feeble AC of 20 and lasted about two rounds after the party used the Wand of Communal Protection from Energy (fire). The Tempest Guards were sitting ducks to area effect spells. Otto Canrivash was wiped out after someone used invisibilty purge early on. The various graveknights encountered haven't been much of a challenge either.

Next week they'll encounter Tycha Ghuzmaar. He could be nasty if he can use his death attack in, but his stealth is such that he will probably be seen before he can get his three rounds of study in. I think I'll give him a potion of invisibility to give him a boost. If I don't, I think that fight will be too easy as well.

Tycha's not going to stand and fight to second death. He's gonna run. I also gave him the same out [invisibility] so that he could show up w/ Amaretos [and negotiated his escape by showing them how to turn off the portal thingys... just to return and betray the party when they finally left the dungeon, along w/ one of the other Council Libertine [the mounted one from the surface] had resurrected [lucky me! I rolled a 2 for the # of days for her to return!]]

One GK is a pushover. But two of them make for a great challenge, w/ the different energy damages and their unique immunities and attacks. We even got to a point w/ the Tycha / Amaretos fight where they were back to back against the party, and got to yell, "Just like the old days!" to give them some characterization.

[was missing your updates! hoped you hadn't dropped your campaign!]

Main challenge with GraveKnights is that they are hard to permanently get rid of... they are also supposed to be leaders of armies of undeads, but this rarely get used.

For some things, the degree of success of failure is known, but perhaps not what the effect is. Is Unrest or Ruin going to increase by some amount? Is a hostile army going to get a bonus? etc.

This is pretty much what JJ, Tridus and I are talking about, it would be after the "you succeed/fail", but before describing what it means/does and any extra roll(s).

Souls At War wrote:

Magic Butterfly wrote:

I was reading through the LO: Tian Xia book and noticed that, canonically, Ameiko has not used the seals to rebuild the other four Imperial Families of Minkai. I know that this is likely because the assumption is that the PCs of Jade Regent would take on those roles, and that this can't be in canon, but I also think that could be a cool adventure.

Isn't the canon reason being the the PCs were already made backup scions?

I think there is a different concern. I think it is about having Minkaian characters.

Someone was asking why the PC don't become scions of the other families, if I remember correctly, characters can't be scions of more than one family, and the PCs were already made scions of one.

Thank you, so basically it's an optional reroll with a +2 circumstance bonus, but the GM is not allowed to tell you the outcome (most likely only applies to events then)

the GM is allowed to tell the outcome of the second roll.

I think the concept of levels, especially in PF2, is a larger marker of superiority than stat boosts. A level 2 person performs similarly to a level 1 person w/ +1 (+2 in PF1) in some stats; +1 across the board in all trained activities vs. +1 in the activities based off stats the other person didn't boost, maybe an extra skill or language.

And w/ PF2's NPC build mindset where one's spectrum of performance is based only on level, that's even more true.

So to determine whether Azlanti are superior one would have to look at the levels of their commoners in one sense and exemplars in another. And I'm unsure they outperform the folk in combat zones, much less Hermea.

Your post point out one of the issues with full blooded Azlanti, The +2 to all stats was one thing, but all the stated ones were 20-25 PB and Level 15-20 in PC classes which did make them feel even more broken.

Not only can you! I did do this.

Once my players had settled into rulership of the Stolen Lands, I had each of them build a secondary character at 1 level below the 1st character as an Agent of the Kingdom.

So when players needed a group of adventurers to go exploring, it was a group that didn't consist of the ruling body of their burgeoning nation. The main characters would still show up when there were explorations or events tied more specifically to their own characters or the main narrative of each book, but it meant that the party had a lot more flexibility in how they tackled the challenges of the AP.

Would definitely recommend.

Hell, could have a Rulership + intrigue group, an exploration group and a general troubleshooters group.

Admittedly, the roll to result thing might not work well with things like play by post.

I was reading through the LO: Tian Xia book and noticed that, canonically, Ameiko has not used the seals to rebuild the other four Imperial Families of Minkai. I know that this is likely because the assumption is that the PCs of Jade Regent would take on those roles, and that this can't be in canon, but I also think that could be a cool adventure.

Isn't the canon reason being the the PCs were already made backup scions?

The Raven Black wrote:

The death of Gorum unleashed violence and a taste for war everywhere. Wanting peace is likely to become a rare trait, even in those who were that wise before.

And what Gorum would want from his death would be for people to finally throw down and solve that problem that has been hanging over their heads for a while. So he'd want Andoran and Cheliax to have it out instead of endlessly preparing for war, he'd like Nex and Geb to get back at it, etc.

Might require Nex (the person) to show his mug again.

zimmerwald1915 wrote:

That said, anyone whose takeaway from World War I is limited to its inciting incident (and who makes that inciting incident the assassination of Franz and Sophie rather than the German blank check to Austria and the subsequent Austrian ultimatum to Serbia!) is Doing It Wrong.

This is the problem with history. The 'inciting incident' of WWI could easily be said to the last King of France convening the 3 estates to discuss tax reform.

*snip*

Can be useful to make distinctions between events that add fuel/powder-kegs and events that spark conflicts, and of those, which kind/scale of conflicts, like Civil War vs ("normal") War vs World War, escalation can also happen, and some sparks lit slow burning fuses.

Souls At War wrote:

Kavlor wrote:

I think we will have this sides:

Cheliax, Ravounel, Nidal, Isger, Katapesh goverment, Mzali, Shackles, Korvosa, Molthune, Oprak

vs

Andoran, Nimrathas, Katapesh Firebrands, Senghor, Vidrian, Nimrathans, Kraggodan, Five King Mountains

I don't see the Shackles teaming up with Cheliax.

Also, many nations and groups would probably stay neutral until their opposite take sides, with some "play/trade with all sides" types in between.

This is also asuming A vs B, not some A vs B vs C thing.

For the Shackles, maybe Cheliax doesn't do a full alliance but instead offers the pirate lords letters of marque that lets their ships through the Arch of Aroden so they can prey on Andoran shipping? Privateering like that was pretty common back in the 1700s, so it would make sense that nations might do it in Golarion as well. Would make for some fun mini adventures as well, where the PCs can engage in ship combat!

Would still be weird for the Shackles to side with Cheliax... and Cheliax probably wouldn't be the only one using privateers and mercenaries.

have to ask, where does the "forged by Aroden" part come from?

I reminded myself today that the Tower of Slant Shadows had a strange syncretic religion pop up around it a few Golarion-decades ago - cultists of Desna and of Rovagug who originally named together simply to protect the Star Tower from a group of demodands (shaggy and tarry, iirc). One interesting dimension which probably has a slight (but prolly no more than) influence on their religious understanding is that both are opposed to Zonny K but are now defending his works or one of them, at least... So there is a TINY chance that he might end up being worshiped by the cult as well? Mostly, I imagine it would just be Desna and Rovagug.

Complicating the question is that James Jacobs has said that they wouldn't be doing anything with demodands in 2e XD

Wondering if anyone has any ideas about what that syncretism might look like and how it has evolved in the time gap between 1e and 2e (both from a world building POV and mechanically as a 2e pantheon)?

I don't see Rovagug being interested in protecting the Star Towers, especially since he gain from them being destroyed.

I think we will have this sides:

Cheliax, Ravounel, Nidal, Isger, Katapesh goverment, Mzali, Shackles, Korvosa, Molthune, Oprak

vs

Andoran, Nimrathas, Katapesh Firebrands, Senghor, Vidrian, Nimrathans, Kraggodan, Five King Mountains

I don't see the Shackles teaming up with Cheliax.

Also, many nations and groups would probably stay neutral until their opposite take sides, with some "play/trade with all sides" types in between.

This is also asuming A vs B, not some A vs B vs C thing.

Lord Fyre wrote:

Mathmuse wrote:

Real-world armies are thousands and tens of thousands rather than hundreds, but fantasy nations, both in literature and in games, tend to have tiny populations. I calculated that the entire Ironfang Legion could have at most ten thousand individuals.

Actually, real world armies in the Middle Ages tend to be a lot smaller then most people realize. 500-1,000 men would have been considered a large force.

Larger set piece battles did occur (The Siege of Antioch (1097 C.E.) had a Crusader force of 40,000 men!), but they were quite rare, and usually ruinous for both sides.

Not to mention most action was not the big pitched battles but skirmishes and raids.

Moreover narratively even in battles with thousands of forces on both sides, you don't need to focus on what all the actors are doing, you focus on your PCs. Are they part of the cavalry who are going to charge the enemy or pull the enemy cavalry away to avoid that happening to their side? are they in the front line holding the line so that the enemy can't get to the mages and healers? Are they commanders doing the inspiring speech and giving orders? Are they the bannermen holding their sides banners so that morale remains even in the toughest moments? That is far more important to how battles in games like pathfinder goes.

Might still need a way to tell how each forces are doing, as it can help or hinder the PCs in a similar way that the PCs' actions can help or hinder their forces.

You're not having them earn income every week?

Even without earning income, my party (I'm the GM) has more than WBL tables suggest anyway. I did find Quest for the Frozen Flame to be lacking, but that was more about the type of AP it is (survival, really).

There are APs where rolls can wildly influence wealth.

I did suggest they earn income, but all but 1 pc scoffed at the idea. /shrug.

More and more it sounds like the AP simply isn't for them.

Edit: reading some of your other posts/threads, their issues could be with PF2e.

Thread kind of reminds me of the issues people had with Bastards of Golarion, and to a lesser extent, Blood of the Beast.

Souls At War wrote:

Sibelius Eos Owm wrote:

Souls At War wrote:

Thanks and goodwill only go so far, especially when being a one way thing, gratitude won't put food on the table most of the time.

Well that's... that's actually kind of exactly how it worked in premodern villages and small towns. I get what you're saying, but as it happens, the network of gratitude and reciprocity is what put food on the table when you had a bad harvest. You banqueted your neighbours when you had surplus and they returned the favour.

Yeah, but in most RPGs, reciprocity isn't always there.

Can be a problem if the PCs are paid in thanks, but have to pay stuff in money, granted, non-monetary rewards could also be used. Barter is something else than just gratitude.

I get what you are saying, but none of the activities (like getting crops, fixing the teahouse, etc.) cost the PCs anything. The most anything costs the PCs is if they want to be a 4gp or 40gp teaset - which the inventor they have in the party can actually make. And even this is optional.

Not the part I was thinking about in that particular post, was more talking about buying things; food, healing, spellcasting, other services... so if they are paid in thanks, but they have to pay with money.

Also, it can be useful to be open about the whole "resources" thing this AP has with the players.

Souls At War wrote:

Thanks and goodwill only go so far, especially when being a one way thing, gratitude won't put food on the table most of the time.

Well that's... that's actually kind of exactly how it worked in premodern villages and small towns. I get what you're saying, but as it happens, the network of gratitude and reciprocity is what put food on the table when you had a bad harvest. You banqueted your neighbours when you had surplus and they returned the favour.

Yeah, but in most RPGs, reciprocity isn't always there.

Can be a problem if the PCs are paid in thanks, but have to pay stuff in money, granted, non-monetary rewards could also be used. Barter is something else than just gratitude.

Thanks and goodwill only go so far, especially when being a one way thing, gratitude won't put food on the table most of the time.

There is also the risk vs reward part, if doing something cost more resources for the PCs than they get in return, they might be bothered by this. Part of this might be bad luck with dice rolls.

It can also be useful to tell the players ahead of time that they are expected to spend a lot of resources, and as a GM to remember they will need said resources.

There is also a possibility that this AP simply isn't for them.

Souls At War wrote:

Kinda reminds me, I would like a good explanation on how the Lumber Consortium has that much power.

I am curious to hear Paizo's explanation. But my explanation is simple, they have a monopoly over lumber products. This includes firewood and charcoal from wood. So if someone wants to heat their home, they buy lumber from the consortium, if someone wants to cook, they buy lumber from the consortium, if someone wants a hot bath, they buy lumber from the consortium, if they want to rebuild anything from their wood home, they buy lumber from the consortium.

So this grants them a whole lot of power, even if people don't like them and are corrupt and greedy and do vile stuff, politicians going against them have to deal with the fact that they have levegered this into power.

The Lumber Consortium is a holdover from Old Cheliax, when some amount of corruption was de rigeur, IIRC they were on the outs with the old Government so they prolonged their power by throwing their weight behind the new Independent Andoran Government, so that the latter felt like they owed the former a favor or two.

That and the fact that Andoran's foreign policy is predicated by "we're a naval power" so they need a lot of wood for a lot of ships. Since they've been preparing for a new war with Cheliax for a while, any action that resulted in "less access to ships, shipbuilding, and lumber" would be disfavored by the Andoran state as it would make them temporarily less ready for that war.

That would help explain quite a few things, including how they can keep powerful beings and organizations at bay.

For Andoran I would love to see more of the political factions and organizaitons. Major guilds have a seat in the People's Council. Also how council districts are drawn and chosen. The Lumber consortium is a big one but there should be others.

Kinda reminds me, I would like a good explanation on how the Lumber Consortium has that much power.

We need a proper villains campaign where we actually fight angels, heralds of good deities and their champions, not villain vs villain again

And being proactive instead of being on the defensive.

The point is that Paizo does not know where the boundaries and/or comfort level for specific types of actions lie with your (and every other) group.

Even Hell's Vengeance is fairly well "sanitized" from what it could be.

Aside from the Chelish curse, HV suffered from inverting the roles of heroes and villains, one of the reasons it didn't feel like an Evil AP.

I'm more interested in being in service to evil powers for my own reasons than actually being evil.

Going by old rules, this is pretty much the same thing, especially for PCs.

How will you handle the Caravan stuff?

And you can have a discussion thread in Online Campaingns/Play by Post Discussion, it can automatically(?) be created by selecting the "Discussion" tab at the top of this page.

Edit: ninja'ed

Shay: If I get trampled in the crowds I just want everyone to know: Josh isn’t allowed to have my legos

Josh: Not even the cool spaceship ones?!

Why do I imagine the following would be: "Shay: Especially the cool spaceship ones." ?

I think Ragathiel "swapping" is now more unlikely than ever. Even if Ragathiel as "good" was kinda debatable, he was a bit too extreme and I can see how it felt weird for one like him to be considered "cosmically good", he absolutely picked a side in the war between holy and unholy, and it sure wasn't the unholy side. I feel like Ragathiel is an incarnation of the "angel going overboard in their crusade to smite all evil" trope, and that despite the edge and possible moral dubiousnes of such character, they can't not be holy.

it's one of the case where I feel like calling these side "holy and unholy" instead of good and evil actually enrich the world, because it allow for less than ideal divinity or character to be holy as long as they stand against the "unholy" side, and for unholy divinity or character to still show some amount of virtue or moral backbone, as long as they stand against the "holy" side. While before, having a "good" god that was morally not that great felt like a complete oxymoron.

For me I feel the subtle, but critical difference is between the label meaning you are Good, and the label meaning you devote yourself to Good.

Holy still means Good, but if a person who screws up and does something bad has the label meaning "is Good", it creates weird implications/expectations for their actions, but a person who screws up while having the label meaning "devoted to Good", it only means that they didn't quite meet their own standards.

Like, "Good" on the alignment has never really meant "every single action they do is Good", but people tend to expect deities to be held to a higher standard. What's different is not so much that the standards of who does good and who does evil have changed, it's that the way we talk about them has shifted the emphasis away from whether or not they are judged Good to whether or not they're trying to do good.

Or I guess another way of saying it is that Holy is not less than Good, but Good excuses (or seems to) any flaws they have as being also Good unless pointed out (and authorial intent is difficult for some people to read in a 50,000 word novel never mind a 200-word deity description), where Holy only means that they try to be good and if they have flaws, then that just means to err is only divine.

Pretty much what many "Good vs Evil" and Angels vs Demons fictions do, which tend to be a bit more nuanced than some attempts at "objective" good and evil can be.

And related quote:
"Where is your Halo?"
"I'm an Angel, not a Saint."

Yes. The one thing I DON'T want is for the war to kick off and end in the same adventure. Things must change, but a war should take 3+ years to resolve. And Paizo can get feedback from the community before deciding where to go to resolve the war. I feel strongly that Geb is the more interesting faction to ally with, because I want to fight the horrors and mages of Nex more than more undead again.

Let the good vs. evil fight against undead campaign be against Tar-Baphon. And in Geb we can be the group of adventurers that joins undead.

Useful to remember that some undeads are against Tar-Baphon's plans, especially those who feed on the living, and this is quite divisive in Geb, just not brutally... yet.

Souls At War wrote:

One thing to keep in mind with Civil War AP/Adventure is the question: "which side?", something that might not be easy to answer.

Didn't Paizo pull this off with aplomb in War for the Crown? Moreso than they did with Hell's Rebels/Hell's Vengeance anyway (where they chose to print a whole AP for each "side").

Rebels and Vengeance weren't exactly each other opposite side.

War for the Crown forced the players in a specific faction.

One thing to keep in mind with Civil War AP/Adventure is the question: "which side?", something that might not be easy to answer.

Guessing it isn't a fun time for the Hellknights either, especially for the Pyre, and to a lesser degree, the Rack.

There can also be a question of "want vs need" to a certain degree, Skull & Shackles was made with the PCs needing crews in mind, Jade Regent had the caravan thing, other APs will point out extra hands are more a want, and unfortunately, some APs are not consistent with the question/possibility/intent.

CastleDour wrote:

I would love a full on morally grey or evil AP. Let us work once again for Geb! Or Cheliax. Or Norgorber!

There already was an AP where the party worked for Cheliax, it wasn't very well received. Altho I think the main problem wasn't the fact that it was an evil AP, but rather the fact that the party were minions always taking orders from higher ups and following someone else's will.

The party being henchmen of an NPC is already a hard sell in general, as most player prefer to play independant characters, who may ponctually work for someone but isn't anyone's "employee", but coupled with the evil part, it didn't appeal to a lot of people. I think it's because the peoples interested by the prospect of "playing evil characters" are more interested with the "I get to do whatever I want" aspect of it, which isn't really possible when you're someone else's minion. I think for an evil AP, the party being thieves, bandits, pirate or ruthless treasure hunters (with the motivation of the AP being a big pile of money) would appeal to more people.

Well, the dumb henchmen thing, lots of contradicting / internal consistency issues, something common to many APs with Chelish focus, pretty much inverting the roles of the good and bad guys in the story, etc... the Law vs Law part probably didn't help either.

On another note, it did show some of the issues a Human vs Human war/conflict AP can face

Pfff, while I am, personally, in favour of paying my taxes to the benefit of all those social services above mentioned, it still strikes me as a somewhat funny take that Milani of all deities should care about things like the ability of a state to fund police or military forces or really function. Milani, the (formerly) chaotic good goddess of resisting oppressive, unjust rule.

(I also feel it's a bit weird to assume that guards wouldn't exist without state funding--the people who have the money that needs guarding have the money to fund guards to protect that money, and the people who don't have the money, don't historically benefit all that much from guards existing at all... but the job of the fantasy guard is a lot closer to modern cop than would be good for avoiding political discussion, and I'm not sure a strictly historical discussion of guards is very pertinent to this thread)

The riches having their own private guards and/or army has fantasy and historical precedents.

Hmm, Milani might be the type that ask for transparency on how money is spent before going "screw taxes"

Well, we could always discuss the AP where the PC city guards were not on state salary and were expected to self-fund out of their exploits, would that be better?

Didn't we already (almost) get that one?

Hmm, on topic; evil AP where the PCs are tax/debt collectors. sorry

Kinda interesting that Razmirans' "pretend Arcane/Occult/Primal magic is Divine" thing is kind of the opposite of the "pretend Divine magic is Arcane/Occult/Primal" thing done in Rahadoum.

Which now makes me wonder if a Rahadoumi would fall for a Razmiran's tricks...

Archpaladin Zousha wrote:

I've thought a lot about it, and I think it's about time Pathfinder did an AP about the one of the oldest traditions of RPG characters and fantasy protagonists as a whole: committing tax evasion. (Yes, I follow Dave Prokopetz on Tumblr, why do you ask?)

Milani should add Tax Evasion to her portfolio, to the extreme delight of my visionary players.

Taxes are pure oppression. Tax evasion is an act of hope and resistance. Spread the message. Long live Milani

This should be enough to get her a seat in the Core 20.

And now many governments are unable to do anything due to the lack of money.

or in some cases:
"The people of X stopped paying their taxes."
"Hmm, due to, erm, 'budget cuts' we will have stop posting guards and fixing things there."

The problem for players wanting to overthrowing the power of House Thrune in Westcrown in Council of Thieves is that if they succeed in doing so, it will be only extremely temporary, because then Hell's Vengeance just starts early. And from observing a Council of Thieves PbP on these messageboards, I got the impression that this is actually clear even if only implicit.

It is mentioned as a possible course of actions for the post campaign.

GM Cthulhu wrote:

Is it just me or is this module too top heavy with magic loot?

I think the same.

This is pure conjecture...but when this AP was being written most of the Paizo people were deep in the development of PF2. So I suspect that this AP got substandard editing, including matching loot to level.

I'm finding errors in game mechanics, plot holes, etc. all over the place!

Allen

This is one a few APs that assume that the PCs won't have much time/opportunities to go shopping in certain parts, this AP also sort of assume the PCs won't have much time/opportunities to rest during certain parts.

Still a point about resource-intensive classes, granted that some of it can be mitigated by a warning beforehand.

There are also differences between resting to help with fatigue/exhaustion and resting to get dailies back.

keftiu wrote:

This is the appeal of the Stolen Lands in Kingmaker!

It's also something of a polite fiction, as the Sootscales and Hargulka might protest.

In a word, OP, "no." There are many lands of non-state peoples, but there is no such thing as unoccupied land.

The few "unoccupied" ones are that for a reason or two.

Also depends if one want a place for a full nation or something like a city state.

Personally, I actually knew very little about Golarion lore before the event. Like, I knew some about very specific areas and topics, and about a couple major events (like a certain two powerful beings escaping their respective prisons and changing the literal map), but I learned a lot assembling my conspiracy boards. So much effort to be completely wrong. XD

At least you can admit it and not go: "I'm not wrong, it's the Paizo writers who are wrong".