Spiralbound's page

I'd use PF apps on my Gateway netbook, my Android smartphone (Samsung Galaxy Fascinate), & my soon to own Android Nexus tablet.

I don't think I'll ever understand the all-pervasive compulsion for catfolk... I do understand peoples' love of their pet cats and all that entails. I just don't understand the payoff for roleplaying a humanoid that has a cat's face. The vast majority of catfolk I've seen created over the years seem to focus on things like improved agility and heightened senses. These two groups of bonuses are easily acquired without also mandating that one be descended from felines. So... what else motivates so many people so strongly to want to play a catfolk? Is it the furry ears? The fluffy tail? The whiskers? What? I'm also surprised that we don't see even a tiny fraction of a demand for dogfolk - aren't they just as popular and beloved a pet as cats?

Can anyone actually explain this gamer fetish for catfolk? Please? All I've ever gotten in response in the past are people claiming I hate cats (I don't) or that I'm trolling (I'm not).

Thanks Darkholme! You've saved me some effort as I specifically needed an Illithid and was going to convert it myself when I found your post. Any plans to continue these conversions? Some of the Illithid variants and the Beholderkin could use some love too! ;-)

"Whaah, Whaaah, Whaaaah... My book has errors, I wanted a perfect book!"

Geez guys, I know that a LOT of errors is bad, but aside from a couple of well noted books, Paizo has a very good track record! Not only is their error rate low, but they also listen to customers who point out errata, respond to all of the unhelpful complaining (like this entire thread), reprint their books with errata fixes, AND even publish free errata pdfs! Yet people are still slamming them and accusing them of being unprofessional! For all of you complainers out there, both the mild and polite ones as well as the angry and demanding ones, try this experiment:

All of you get together and with about 20 people spend several months writing, editing, coordinating your group efforts, revising content, posting playtest editions, evaluating/revising as per user suggestions, typesetting, graphic design, and then do all the back and forth needed with printers. Got all that done? Good. Now release your masterpiece to the public and host (at your own expense) a forum so that every armchair wannabe publisher can critique your efforts and see how many errors they find in your multi-hundred page publication. Having fun yet? Now, respond to their accusations that you're unprofessional and incompetent, sloppy, doomed to fail, etc, etc. and make sure that you stay professional and friendly on the forum while everyone rips into your efforts.

I'm not saying that errors don't happen. I'm not saying that we should be happy with books with errors. I'm not saying that Paizo shouldn't have their errors pointed out, but c'mon everyone - this thread alone has 68 posts in it discussing and bemoaning the presence of errors, and this isn't the only such thread here.

Every time Paizo puts out a book that isn't 100% free of errors, a bunch of people (sadly I see many of the same posters) jump down their throats because that modifier was wrong, this word was misspelt, that stat block (out of dozens or more) had an error, this page reference is wrong, blah, blah, blah. It's a wonder that Paizo doesn't just say "f*ck this noise, who needs the headache? I'll go defuse bombs instead, it's lower stress!" Who among you would like to see them pack it in? Which of you will take their place - and do a better job to boot?

If their products are that unsavoury to you then don't buy them, but do you actually believe that endlessly complaining over EVERY frickin' book they put out is somehow helping them? Just what is it about belittling their efforts do you think is going to improve their future efforts? Do you magically perform better after groups of people attack and insult you?

Instead of just complaining about errors, contribute to threads that list errata. If you've already done so, then how about posting fewer complaint filled posts too. Just because you've posted a few errata doesn't justify pages of unhelpful complaining. I'm sure that all the people at Paizo beat themselves up over errors enough as it is without everyone else joining in for a free smack. Imagine their disappointment when they work really hard to make sure that this book has fewer errors than the last one, and then there is an errata thread with dozens of errors found. Then on top of it are threads like this one which aren't actually providing solutions or even helpfully discussing the presence of errors - no, this is a "slam paizo for not being good enough" thread. How nice. Yep, that would make me feel good to come to work, yes siree!

I'd like a world in which the gods aren't known to exist - a world in which either Clerics don't cast Divine Magic or there is some other explanation for Divine Magic (such as the community's pure faith). Also, any church can have priests of every alignment (even if, by 'every alignment', some alignments must be in hiding). So, you can have evil Cardinal Richelieu in a good church.

I'd like a world in which outsiders aren't strongly aligned, but are highly _alien_ in nature.

I want a world with few magic items, but magic items can gain power the longer you own them.

A conjunction of these three ideas inspired the following:

Imagine a world where Outsiders are very powerful and truly bizarre creatures/forces of nature which for the most part defy all reason, logic, or understanding. Furthermore, imagine that these Outsiders are also the only source of the really powerful, Artifact level magical items. Items that are so powerful that they can sometimes give off magical energies. Items that increase in power as they age. Items that for whatever indecipherable reasons of the inscrutable Outsiders, are sometimes (albeit rarely) left abandoned and unguarded on the Prime Material Plane.

If Deities don't exist, but these extremely powerful Artifacts do, I could see people in the past worshipping these items. They would be as unknowable as their creators, and in some cases may be capable of responding to the ministrations of their devotees. Over time, churches would develop around the Artifacts. Differences between the various religions could be explained by a combination of the character and history of a particular Artifact's worshippers, as well as the properties and behaviours of the Artifact itself.

If the radiated energies of the Artifacts are Divine energies, then there is your source of Clerical magics. Since these are (mostly) inanimate objects, they wouldn't necessarily care about the alignment of their worshippers (or care about anything else for that matter). If some of the Artifacts are small, then there is the possibility of Holy Wars with people fighting over possession of the Holy Relic (and source of Clerical power let's not forget...). If some of the Artifacts are massive, then you have all the same holy war potential, but the battles revolve around possession of the Holy Lands of the Artifact. Lastly, there is always the possibility that eventually one or more of those super-powerful Outsiders will return to reclaim their discarded item(s)... :-)

From a logistics standpoint, I recommend you map out the temple complex, even if it's only in an outline form, and then mark in the zones of collapse with notes on various hazards, both by location and by round. You might also benefit from a per round listing of the sequence of events of the collapse for quick reference. All of the above should make running the collapse event much smoother for you.

This is assuming that for the most part, the PCs will spend all the rounds of the collapse event scrabbling to escape its effects, not performing actions which could radically alter the event. For example, if your magic casters are able to somehow shore up sections of the temple, negate some hazards, or even halt the collapse, then obviously your ability to plan the event will become much more complicated, requiring several contingency branches to the per round sequences along the lines of "if they do X, then Y occurs instead of Z"...

@Tom: Don't take this comment too seriously, but I did find it amusing that you ask for suggestions of race locations, and then point for point disagree with the first respondent's suggestions. Judging by your second post, it seems like you have already given some thought to the locations of your world's races... If so, then why ask for suggestions if you have already decided things? Again, I'm not seriously criticizing you, it's just that the sequence of the first three posts struck me as odd is all. Perhaps there is a different question that you actually meant to ask that the wording of your OP didn't convey fully?

Definitely cultural info. What makes the Farwestrians different from the Leftcoastias? Why do the High Reach Tribes hate the Mountain Peak Clan? What style of dress is common among the Hidden Pass People? Why are the Bards of Foggy Isles so sought after across the lands? How does one properly eat the woven snail kebabs of Shorecanar in accordance with local etiquette? How many varieties of popular Dwarven Ales are there and what are they like? Such flavourful things make a setting stand out from the many, many, MANY generic "Forgotten Realms my way" homebrews out there.

I know that one can restore a shrunken object to normal size. This is not what I'm asking about. Why is there is no spell to allow one to Enlarge an object beyond it's original size? Am I just missing it in the books? Surely the game designers couldn't have overlooked this idea, especially considering such a spell did exist in 2nd Edition AD&D.

I could simply houserule in a reversed wording of the Shrink Item spell, but I wanted to know if I had somehow missed an existing spell or if there actually was a valid intentional reason for omitting this spell concept.

I think that it would be fair to assume that once you know the BB well enough to recognise the tactical distinctions between playing with AoO and without, then you're more than ready to graduate to the full rules! :-D

My understanding of the purpose of the BB is that it is the rpg system equivalent of training wheels on a bicycle. You're not supposed to use the BB long-term, only just long enough to become ready to stop using it.

Under this reasoning, I doubt there'll be further BB expansions. In fact, it would be detrimental to produce more than a handful of BB oriented adventures either. The more support material BB has, the longer new players will stay with it instead of moving up to the 'big kids' rules. ;-) It would be the equivalent of if Pampers created a line of diapers for kids ages 3-6 years, then 7-12, 13-17, 18 and older, etc. :-)

But the rulebooks are used for far more game worlds than just Golarion, and the more they support ALL possible play styles, the stronger they''ll be overall. That's the theory, at least.

If they just supported Golarion and that's it, then the rulebooks wouldn't be presented as world neutral books.

THANK YOU!! I've nothing against Golarion, I'm sure that with all the talented people it has writing for it, it must be filled with awesome, but it's not the world I GM. About a year before D&D D20 3.0 came out I began running and crafting a fantasy campaign setting of my own and while I have played loads of other games/settings during the intervening years, I have GMed this world throughout those years. When D20 came out, my players and I migrated from 2nd Ed to 3E, then to 3.5E, and I'm now running my fifth long term campaign in my homebrew, this time using Pathfinder.

With every evolution of my setting, I've been VERY selective in what elements from the rules we're currently using gets incorporated into my game. After all, I'm steering the direction of my setting and every inclusion can potentially change the character of that world. I expect that I'll continue to use my setting for years to come with no guarantee that in 10 years time I'll be running it under Pathfinder, thus I GREATLY value the non-setting specific material in the base books.

Leave the world-specific material where it belongs, in the world books. One of the (few) nitpicks I had against the APG was that the Campaign Character Traits were presented in such a Golarion-specific manner, making them unusable in my campaign. I of course have been creating campaign traits for my setting, but a more setting-neutral approach in a setting-neutral book would have been preferred. I hope that the designers continue to remember that any RPG system must be usable in many settings, both homebrew'd and commercial, not just as the rules for its own house setting. Please continue to support those who enjoy worldbuilding as much as roleplaying.

I knew that Paizo/Pathfinder was ascending in popularity and sales. I saw Paizo promoting their 3pp in their newsletter, but I didn't realize just how well they treated their 3pp nor how many of them there were until reading the original thank you open letter and this thread. I am even more impressed than before, and I started out feeling positive towards Paizo!

I also have a confession to make. I've been playing D20 since it came out and when PF was in development I was interested, and when 4E came out I didn't like it (I tried it too btw) and continued playing 3.5E... not PFRPG. Even after my wife bought the core PFRPG rulebook for me for Xmas 2009(!) I still haven't played it! Why didn't I make the switch?

I don't know. I guess it was momentum. I already have a sizeable library of 3.5 books and the 3 PFRPG books I now own are kinda just sitting there unloved. As of now though I am changing things. Just this weekend, I ended a long running 3.5E campaign and I'm taking a break for a while before starting up my next one. Based on the overwhelmingly positive comments I've read from all the 3pps on this thread, and even the "proving their point" offers from Lisa, I have decided to finally switch over to Pathfinder for my next campaign.

I'll be using the time between campaigns to brush up on the differences between 3.5 and PFRPG so that I can run it for my players. It's time to join this party in action instead of just showing interest from the sidelines. Thanks to everyone for showing me that Paizo is truly deserving of my FULL attention as a player of their game. Also, you can be sure that I'll be checking out all of the 3pp via Paizo's master list to see what extra products will suit my game.