Steven Schend 940's page

And since I'm at it, mind if I recommend Mike Ashley as a good scholar and writer for an introduction to one of your future Planet Stories collections? He's one of the best pulps scholars I can think of and I'd love to hear his comments on Kuttner or somesuch.

Steven

While I know his publishing history far predates the pulps in the classic sense, any chance you'd ever consider some Algernon Blackwood? I'd love to have some readable copies of Pan's Garden or the John Silence stories in my collection.

The first favored class for the half orc is Barbarian. I think halforc are humanoid close to nature and wild. So why Cleric ? I'd prefere druid favored class, like in the eberon/warcraft ... : orc are very close to nature, so they have shaman and so...

Cleric are more for civilised nation
Druid are more for wild nation

Alternately, cleric is for those half-orcs trying to deny their brutish, nasty side. Druid is for those who embrace their harsher nature closer to the green.

One potential world-build problem is this--if you state that half-orcs are closer to nature than humans, this suggests that orcs might be better druids than humans as well. Unless this is the case to be made (and I've not read the Classic Monsters redo book yet), it's a tightrope that must be carefully traveled....

Steven

Steven Schend wrote:

Any chance there'll be a note/list in Alpha 3 on the holy symbols of the 20 primary gods of Golarion?

Hey, Steven! I wondered the same thing when designing a cleric of Pharasma awhile back. After searching around, I remembered they posted a description of the holy symbols for each of the 20 primary deities to the main Paizo blog a few months ago. So I saved it off. Here's the complete rundown for you...

Thanks very much, Neil!

Now if only we didn't have to wait until October for the Gods & Magic Chronicles release to get more info....

Steven
who guesses he'll have to come up with his own monastic sect of Nethys worshipers to work into his character background to tide over the campaign until the canonical info comes to light....

Prime Evil wrote:

Unknown wrote:

Well, he's written the novel Blackstaff, has another FR novel called Blackstaff Tower coming out, and is posting on these very boards about playtesting his half-orc cleric/sorcerer with the Pathfinder rules . . .

Well draft him into writing something, dammit!

Don't let him get out of here without turning in a manuscript or three....

I guess that might fall under working for Wizards, and so he would not be allowed to write for PF if he wanted to.

No, I'm my own boss at present. While I have written two novels for Wizards, I left WotC a little more than eight years ago and am now a mercenary scribe for hire. As Andrew noted, I'm teaching classes on adventure game design and world building here in Grand Rapids, Michigan, but I'm always looking for more freelance work.

Steven
who was very lucky indeed to have worked with Roger Moore and William W. Connors and many others noted in this thread at TSR, Inc.

In preparation for our playtest and my cleric, I took a look at the gods and their domains. I'm most likely to focus on Nethys but took a hard look at Gozreh...and found a slight headache.

If I took the god of nature as my primary deity, three of his domains (Air, Weather, Water) all have the exact same 2nd level domain power: Obscuring Mist.

Now, if this means I could take two of those domains and double my uses per day to 4 instead of the written 2/day, that's okay (though dull from a variety standpoint and potentially abusive).

If the uses don't stack, then I'm highly unlikely to take the god Gozreh as my patron because I'm penalized for the duplication of powers.

I guess I'll go put my head down and see if there are other gods of Golarion who have such redundant powers and whether or not that will affect their use by clerics.

Steven

While all the discussions above have been fascinating and thought-provoking, I didn't run across this other idea for differentiating sorcerers from wizards---spellcasting with reduced armor penalties.

If the sorcerer is pulling the energy and such for spells from inside his/her self, an argument can be made that the casting ritual is less complex and certainly more intuitive than the way a wizard casts, replacing gut instinct and the flow of magic for intellectual study and willpower. That said, there's less problem with armor inhibiting either the movements or tapping into the power of a spell.

So lemme toss out this suggestion: Why not halve the arcane armor penalties for the sorcerer? You still have the option to go unarmored, but if you choose to wear armor, you're only half as hindered by it as the wizard.

Is that too much of a gimmee for the sorcerer or does it help balance out the wizard's spell progression AND still make those new bloodline abilities (that might force a PC into melee) useful?

Steven

One of my players has a bonded staff that he chose at first level. During game last night everyone made 2nd level and had some extra coin to spend. He was looking into enchanting the staff. We ran into the problem that his staff isn't masterwork as he couldn't afford one at 1st level.

My question is this: as the rules are written, is it intended that he should have to rebond with a new masterwork staff in order to enchant it? OR is there a way to spend gp (300 gp) to make the staff masterwork in this specific instance? OR is the staff made masterwork in the process of becoming his Arcane bonded object?

I'm playing a cleric/sorcerer and am hoping that the very fact of arcanely bonding with an item (in my case, a morningstar) sort of bypasses the masterwork issue and makes it capable of storing magic.

Granted, I'd love to hear an official point made on this, as it's an assumptive grey area where arguments can be made on either side (i.e. either you assume the previous rules of masterwork only, etc. or you rule on the side of player/game freedom).

In one respect, it's prohibitive and penalizing to a sorcerer or wizard to have arcane bond yet be unable to use that power at 1st level if you can't afford the item that's needed to utilize said ability. It'd be like giving a fighter the beginning ability to use plate armor as a smashing weapon charge (or something similar) yet very few fighters can afford plate armor at 1st level.

Alternatively, what about the idea that an arcanely-bonded item slowly becomes more purified/stronger/harder/powerful as the spellcaster to which it is bonded grows in power? Even if no other magics are pumped into it, a staff that has been bonded to a wizard for 10 levels ought to be more than just a long sanded branch....

Steven