Tender Tendrils's page

I had high hopes that action was being taken to protect trans people on these forums when the blog post about not tolerating transphobia was made.

Months later, I can see that it was mostly just talk and a token effort. Users who constantly make thinly veiled dog whistles about issues affecting vulnerable communities, and who are constantly antagonistic towards trans people, including making threatening lists of most of the major active openly trans people on the forums on their profile pages, are still here, and their hate speech has not been reigned in - they just have to thinly veil it.

People are still permitted to turn the thread attached to every "day of visibility" blog post into a debate on whether the relevant group of people deserve to be visible.

The list user I mention had their list removed by moderation (after I complained via email), but has re-added the list to their profile, just with my username and the context removed.

They will probably claim that it is a coincidence that the list of people they don't like overlaps almost completely with the active openly trans users on these forums.

Users that where banned for being openly transphobic or other reasons keep returning with dummy accounts, some of which are allowed to operate despite being pretty obvious about who they are.

Other users have been permitted to spend weeks fiercely debating the de-emphasis of slavery in the game, because apparently slavery being de-emphasized is something that is actually a deal-breaker for them.

Multiple trans users, and users from (or who are supportive of) various vulnerable communities have left these forums because of the toxic environment here. I am following suit. I probably won't be back, and I definitely won't be participating in pathfinder infinite (which I had been planning on releasing content on). I had thought about raising this privately in an email, but I have reason to believe anything posted privately will just be buried, because any trust I had is gone. We were told that the new Director of Community would protect certain users from moderation, and it seems that those warnings where correct.

When any minority feels like it is unsafe to be in a space, that space loses irreplaceable voices, and when bigots are permitted to get away with making one minority feel unsafe, all bigots are emboldened to make everyone else unsafe.

As a trans person, I just can't be on these forums anymore. I used to love it here, as I love talking about the game that I am so passionate about and found the discussions on how to play the game very useful. But now it is a massive drain on my energy and harmful to my mental health. Now the forums are a place that causes me anxiety attacks, and writing this final post has me on the verge of a panic attack*.

I have to fight the urge to end this with an apology for making a fuss or being dramatic - the fuss is justified, the feelings I am having valid. So instead I will just say that I hope that people at Paizo take notice of what I am trying to say, so that they can maybe stem the flight of LGBT people from the forums (and the company itself) by making the forums (and the company itself) a safer place, which can only be beneficial to Paizo and the community they claim to care about.

*Don't worry about me, I will be fine, I am resilient and have gotten very good at dealing with my mental health. Unfortunately, dealing with my mental health at this point means leaving these forums, which used to be a boon to my mental health.

If the players asked you to show your dice rolls, I think that indicates a concern that they might have that the danger to their characters in encounters isn't authentic because you might fudge things to save their characters.

At the end of the day, combat uses hit points and dying rules and dice rolls because the risk of a character dying is what gives combat dramatic tension.

As a player, I don't want to bother playing through a combat if there isn't any dramatic tension. The risk of losing a character if things go bad is what makes the whole thing exciting, and I actually explicitly tell anyone who GMs for me that I don't want them to fudge anything or pull their punches in combat - I personally don't ask them to make their rolls public, as I feel that if I can't trust my GM enough that they don't need that transparency then there isn't any point playing with them , but if players are asking for that, it could indicate that they want to avoid fudging (or they think their gm might be cheating, but that is a different issue).

If the action is detrimental to the party, but not something actively harmful to the players (like roleplaying stuff that makes people uncomfortable) then there is a pretty natural in-built mechanism to deal with it - they do the stupid thing, the consequences happen, then in-character the other members of the party can work it out with them.

Trust that your players can deal with it, and also understand that doing dumb stuff and dealing with the challenging consequences can actually be really fun for players. You should only step in if it is a pattern that the other players are complaining about out of character or is obviously really obnoxious.

Also, there is a fine line between telling a player what their character knows (x activity might result in injury) and telling a player what their character's opinion is - whether something is a good or bad idea is an opinion, and it isn't the GMs purview to dictate the character's beliefs.

This has been discussed elsewhere, but to reiterate some of my thoughts;

Goblins - fill out the roster of various goblins/hobgoblins/bugbears, add playable bugbears, details on the goblin hero gods, various hobgoblin weapons/war machines/war beasts, etc.

Giants - Fill out the rosters for different giants (when I say fill out rosters, I mean stuff like making sure each of that particular creature has leader/caster/ranged/etc variants at different levels). Add rules for using magic items forged by giants (like, a giant makes a magic ring, so you wear it as a magic crown and it has modified effects because it was made for something bigger than you) and rules for climbing on larger enemies (for the shadow of the colossus style fights). Probably add some kind of trollkin ancestry.

Mad Science - add rules for doing weird experiments, various monsters that are the results of science gone too far, rules for modifiying alchemical or magic items in hazardous ways to give them weird quirks, more options for alchemists and inventors, various golems, mutants, etc.

A long jump is explicitly a jump with a run up, I don't see the issue here.

Doing a run up and then trying to jump backwards at the end of it obviously wouldn't work or give you the benefit that the run up confers to a jump.

The whole point of a long jumps run up is to build momentum for the jump by first running in the same direction you intend to jump.

The Raven Black wrote:

CorvusMask wrote:

It's that funny thing of "Graveknight is actually paizo original undead that isn't from D&D" that makes me think its pretty likely that if they do undead archetypes that we get that one eventually after the "basic ones" are out

Lord Soth, the Deathknight, would like a word with you about this "Paizo original" you mention.

I loved the Deathknight right from its Fiend Folio beginnings and came right then with the idea of a cursed armor for Paladins that would slowly change the wearer into one of them.

Isn't death knight just a powerful undead paladin/warrior? Like how would graveknight overlap with death knight more than a fext unless its just the similar name?

Well, Graveknights are pathfinders "martial equivalent of a lich", and as far as I can tell death knights have filled that role for a while, though they didn't explicitly get something equivalent to a phylactery until 3.5.

Eventually 3.5 added the detail where their swords act like a phylactery (it's a pretty impressive show of confidence to hit your enemies with the object that contains your soul), and 4e gave those swords a name (the rather unimaginative "soulsword").

Pathfinder changed things up by making them reform from their armour instead of weapons, and only if someone wears the armour, which is pretty awesome.

It's pretty likely that the Graveknight is Paizo's interpretation of the Death Knight, though as usual they massively improved on 3.5s version of the concept.

We have 5 (shortbow, longbow, composite shortbow, composite longbow, Hongali Hornbow) all martial.

The split between crossbows being simple and bows being martial makes sense - proper bows take a lot of training to use effectively, while crossbows really upset the apple cart by being effective in the hands of a peasant with 30 minutes of training.

With basic shortbows being martial, the design space to squeeze in a simple bow that isn't a crossbow is pretty narrow. Maybe some kind of improvised bow where someone just got a springy stick and tied some string on it?

For martial bows - maybe a horsebow? It is pretty niche, but bows specifically designed for use from horseback where a pretty big thing historically (PF2s shortbows already mention that they are favoured by mounted archers, because longbows specifically mention that they can't be used while mounted, but a bow with some kind of other horse archery adjacent feature could work)

Some kind of "Greatbow" - even bigger and more powerful than a longbow, but has a ridiculous draw weight - not really something that was popular historically, because longbows are already ridiculous, but in a setting with orcs and ogres and so on, greatbows would have a bigger niche. Probably have volley, a bigger damage die than longbows, but some kind of drawback and have a minimum strength requirement.

Being a fantasy setting, we can also have dumb stuff like bows (and crossbows) with more than 2 arms, weird energy bows, bows made from parts of magical creatures, bows that shoot a whole rack of arrows, bows with extra strings, etc.

With shortbows being martial, I think the only way we could get a simple bow is if it was some kind of improvised bow (where someone just got a suitable stick and put a string on it).

Famous battles and battlefield hazards are a great thought!

As for mass combat - looking at what MCDM has gone through with Kingdoms and Warfare, I'd rather use an agnostic system like that and plug it to Pathfinder 2. It requires a dedicated product, and honestly the group is here for RPG not wargaming.

Focus on troops, and perhaps a smaller unit in a Squad could be fun. It could also help with the eternal "what do NPCs do", but that's secondary at best.

I much prefer to focus on what the PCs can do as a small "special forces" unit to influence a battle - give them a mission like "destroy the trebuchet" or "defeat the big monster" and they just have to navigate the chaos to get there (treated as hazards/skill checks/etc - they don't have to fight there way through the entire battlefield) then do a few regular encounters to reach their target - if they succeed at enough of their missions/objectives, it sways the overall battle in their favour.

Another thing I want from a warfare book is military traditions - maybe a bunch of backgrounds to represent coming from different militaries that represent the different traditions of those militaries.

Lost Omens: Armies of Golarion

A breakdown of different organised forces in Golarion. Who are they under, what hierarchies they have, what titles they use, how do they operate and why, who are they are odds with or in active conflict.
Emphasis on:
- NPC stat blocks for Recruit, Soldier, Veteran, Officer, Etc. Casters and beasts sprinkled in.
- Troops! Perfect place for this.
- Beasts of war.
- Counter measures to usual war tactics. I.e. what are these guys doing about a guy that has a fireball scroll from far away. Just some cool tactics, not covering every detail.
- Equipment they use and are known for.
- Terrains they operate in and how they are adapted to it. Nirmathan rangers, Dwarfs in mountains, with subparagraph on Mbeke dwarfs with drakes (mwange), also Drow in the underdark, elves in kyonin, hobgoblins in Oprak, Runelord forces, Taldorian Houses troops, Molthunian army, Andorans etc...so many to pick.
- Who is behind these forces? A bit like the Legends book but couple steps down.

This is something I really have been wanting to, with the addition of stuff about famous battles, and advice on how to run battlefields as being hazardous environments for the party to navigate, and suggestions for encounters/adventures run against the backdrop of a war.

It is also really refreshing to see someone request this kind of book without asking for mass combat rules.

Before they recently started handing out permanent suspensions to transphobes, myself and other trans people where literally fleeing the forums because it was so unsafe here.

RAW, is there a minimum amount of known knowledge PCs have when they encounter a creature before they they attempt to identify it or no?

I don't think there is a RAW for this, though it is more or less assumed that the GM will describe what the creature looks like if the PCs see it, which will usually be pretty revealing (for example, assuming something described as a skeleton is undead is pretty safe, though in weird cases a high roll on lore might reveal that the skeleton is actually a bone golem, which is a construct)

Multiple Paizo staff and moderators have explicitly stated that they want people to stop arguing against their decision on these forums. The distinction between arguing against the decision because you are pro-slavery and arguing against the decision for whatever obscure reasons that aren't pro-slavery is irrelevant at this point.

If you don't support Paizo's decision to stop writing about slavery, please respect the instructions given by Paizo that crusading against it or questioning it in any way is no longer welcome on these forums. Go rail against it on reddit or to your personal friends or wherever else.

Don't expect those of us who support Paizo's decision to give you the benefit of the doubt about whether you are racist or not when you are acting in bad faith by defying instructions from those who run these forums.

Oh! I found something by searching "Sahuagin" on the 2e AoN;

Dagon is primarily worshipped by boggards, sahuagin, skum, and marsh giants, though desperate or depraved coastal villages have been known to pledge themselves to the demon lord.

Additionally, I found this in the entry for Brine Dragons, who like to rule over and impose law and order upon various aquatic communities;

A settlement seeded by a brine dragon can be made of members of almost any ancestry, but the most common inhabitants are humans, merfolk, tengus, or sahuagin.

edit: I don't think any one deity is for all Sahuagin though - different Sahuagin groups probably worship different deities.

I have tried looking on 1es AoN, but the Sahuagin high priestess and Sahuagin underpriestess don't specify a deity despite being clerics. The only clues you get from them are the domains and languages;

The Underpriestess has destruction and water as domains, and knows Aklo in addition to the usual Sahuagin languages.

The High Priestess (who is a higher level) has destruction and travel as domains, and knows Elven and Infernal in addition to the usual Sahuagin languages.

I'm not sure who (if anyone) they are supposed to be worshipping from that information. It is likely they are just generic clerics who the GM can just decide who they worship, or that they are meant to be part of some obscure cult that might not actually worship a specific known deity.

edit: It is mentioned somewhere that a bunch of sahuagin live in the plane of water, led there by a "prophet", and that the plane of water sahuagin have fractured into various separate groups, many of which are led by various cults. Some of those groups would probably worship Kelizandri, and the prophet in question could either have been connected to Kelizandri or just an oracle (which are often divine magic users with a connection to some vague concept rather than a specific deity).

Another possibility, despite Sahuagin hating them, is an Aboleth (a Veiled Master in this case) could masquerade as a deity to control a tribe of Sahuagin.

It is definitely an oversight - many ancestries do specify the weapon group of their unarmed attack, and the lizardfolk do get a feat (Iruxi unarmed cunning) which grants their unarmed attacks access to the critical specialization effects, so them having a weapon group is required for that feat to work.

As far as I can tell, there isn't a general "unarmed attacks are brawling" rule, instead it is usually specified with each unarmed attack that they are brawling (or sling for ranged attacks).

But, no GM in their right mind would tell a player that they don't get the brawling critical specialization from Iruxi Unarmed Cunning and a lizardfolk's unarmed attacks. It is one of those ambiguities/oversights in the rules where the correct GM ruling/RAI is glaringly obvious.

So, to give a cliff notes version - a literal interpretation says that there isn't a default weapon group for unarmed attacks, so the lack of a specified weapon group means the attack has no weapon group, but that is definitely an oversight and the RAI is that you should use the brawling weapon group for those attacks.

A lot of Pathfinder AP's fall kind of into the horror genre already or at least into the resident evil 4 style campy guns blazing horror.

Pathfinder sometimes has horror themes/aesthetics, but because Pathfinder and D&D are about being powerful, they do a poor job of actually being scary. Horror is about feelings of powerlessness and fear.

For a good look at the difference here - look at the video games based on Aliens and the one video game based on Alien.

Alien Isolation does horror well because you are just a mechanic and a regular frail human - you can't kill the alien, your handgun barely even bothers it, and even other humans are incredibly scary because of the harm they can deal you. You spend the entire game in constant terror of every ceiling vent and every time you use your handgun against other humans you are in dread of attracting the alien.

Contrast this to Alien vs Predator or Aliens: Colonial Marines, where occasionally things are a bit creepy and you get startled by jump scares, but at the end of the day you are a marine who mows down hundreds of aliens.

This isn't too say that you shouldn't try to do horror in Pathfinder, just that actually achieving it is going to be very difficult and rare in a system where characters are so incredibly powerful. The best you can usually hope for is a horror themed game (akin to Alien: Colonial Marines or Left 4 Dead or Resident Evil) rather than a "true" horror (like Alien Isolation or Amnesia or that one recent Resident Evil game that was actually scary because it bore no resemblance to other Resident Evil games)

Norade wrote:

Just slather your cartridges in lard or any other sealant and go to town. The game doesn't have rules for fouling or misfires so by RAW you get to keep the water out and have an underwater rifle.

Well, there are rules for Misfires. Just not very historically accurate ones.

Generally players don't really want (they might think they do, but they actually don't) historically accurate firearms, especially flintlock era ones where it literally takes an entire minute to reload and are so inaccurate that you need people to line up and fire in volleys to be effective.

Yeah, when you look at the problem that underwater firing mechanisms actually solves, it makes sense - the underwater firing mechanism enables a weapon to fire despite the powder inside it being exposed to water - when in the process the powder gets wet (either in the gun or when reloading) doesn't really matter.

The carrying case won't work though, it is more along the lines of soldiers putting their gun in a plastic bag to keep them dry while making amphibious landings - it is for transportation through water, so that you can still use the gun after leaving the water, not for actually using the gun while underwater.

Yeah, things like trauma and PTSD and mental illness don't generally work as game mechanics - it's been tried many times and has never really worked out.

It generally involves taking away player agency and forcing them to roleplay stuff they might not want to roleplay or have as a theme for their character.

It is better to just leave it up to them. You can put them through the ringer by subjecting them to difficult encounters and various bad stuff happening around them, but how much it affects their character emotionally should be up to the player. If the player wants to roleplay it, they generally will without having it imposed on them.

I've played systems with mechanics for these things (such as Unhallowed Metropolis) and it wasn't fun to play those characters.

You can pretty easily create your war as hell theme just by how you represent NPCs and the environment and encounters and etc.

Yeah, in a broad sense the medieval custom of ransom served a larger societal goal by incentivizing medieval armies to keep captives taken in battle alive, by giving a financial incentive to return them to their families.

Of course, this didn't apply to peasant soldiers, only nobility, who could actually pay a ransom.

Not to say that the practice was great, just that it had its role and definitely isn't comparable to slavery. It is more comparable to say, paying bail to get out of prison.

While I’ve tried to follow this issue of unsavory topics being sidelined, in particular slavery, I’m still a bit fuzzy as to what the actual issue is. Were freelancers and PFS organizers uncomfortable with slavery being focused on? Was the issue that it was not explicitly made to be “evil” to own slaves? Or were the stories told about slavery just not well done? I don’t particularly care that Paizo is opting to not focus on slavery, but completely excising it from the canon seems rather difficult as a number of fleshed out societies like Cheliax have significant ties to the institution.

All of these things have been explained, numerous times, in this thread and others - it is getting exhausting to answer again and again.

For the umpteenth time;

- The decision to stop focusing on slavery was made internally at Paizo, in response to the writers at paizo and freelancers who write for Paizo not wanting to write about it anymore.
- Multiple non-evil kingdoms had slavery being legal, despite having various neutral alignments. Slavery as a legal practice is one of those things (along with concentration camps, eating babies, genocide, etc) that are so corrosive and horrible that a nation that permits them is evil, full stop.
- The stories about slavery were very poorly done, Erik Mona has admitted this.
-It isn't being excised from the setting or retconned. Paizo just aren't writing about it anymore. Much like how storm giants still exist in the setting, even if Paizo don't publish more storm giant statblocks or feature them in any adventures, so goes for slavery.

Paizo have made this decision, many of their writers and staff have publicly stated that they are relieved this decision has been made, and have been begging that people stop crusading against the decision.

The time has come for people to just accept Paizo's decision - if you have questions, read what has already been posted about it. If you disagree, go talk about it somewhere other than these forums. James Jacobs and the moderation team and others at Paizo have made it clear that this isn't up for debate and that they don't want people questioning their decision or railing against it anymore on the forums.

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.

Yeah, the whole original problem with the absalom thing wasn't that it was something like Cheliax where it was an explicitly evil nation having slaves, it was a neutral aligned nation that is literally designed to be "home" for most player characters somehow having legal slavery.

Is Ayrzul (the elemental lord of earth) supposed to be a tyrannosaurus? I remember the few pieces of art I have seen of him being a fossilized tyrannosaur, and his symbol being a dinosaur tooth and his sacred animal being a tyrannosaur, but 2es Gods & Magic doesn't mention any of that (instead saying that his form is mysterious, but maybe an undead crystal dragon or genie).

Apologies if this is elaborated on in Planar Adventures (I no longer have my copy of it).

By the way, I love the designs of the elemental lords from planar adventures (I am at least able to still google those pieces of art). I love that Ayrzul, Kelizandri, and Ymeri aren't just really big traditional elementals, and that Hshurha is a traditional elemental, but in a way that breaks the symmetry of the other elemental lords.

I do not know if it is happening here as I have no insight into the inner workings of Paizo but artist, writers, musicians and the like are very much getting strong armed into either censoring their work or changing it all together because some people disagree with it.

That isn't what is happening here, many of the first public complaints about the content of the absalom book was by freelancers and in-house writers who where unhappy that they worked on a book and then got blindsided by the final product so heavily featuring slavery. Erik Mona writing so much about slavery in the book was a (poorly handled) attempt to handle how Absalom transitioned away from slavery by trying to explain it in-universe, which he later admitted that it would have been better to just move on from it entirely.

No one is pressuring paizo to remove slavery, on the contrary those of us who are against slavery being a big feature are being supportive of the wishes of the writers themselves, who made this decision in the first place.

It is the people demanding that paizo keep writing slavery content who are trying to pressure and control the writers.

Trees are also... pretty varied in scale, especially in a fantasy setting. PF2 doesn't have a colossal category (gargantuan is just "anything this big and up"), and only really defines sizes by how many spaces a creature occupy, but starfinder defines colossal as roughly 64 feet long or tall, and the biggest trees in the real world can grow to in excess of 300 foot tall.

PF2 also isn't necessarily beholden to PF1s scale - sometimes the scale of things in old editions is a bit silly, and a new edition is a great opportunity to redesign things.

(I actually wish that PF2 had taken the opportunity to upgrade true giants from large to huge, as it differentiates them from ogres and trolls a lot more, and matches most of the miniatures currently available for them).

I don't think that everyone is just going to suddenly change their vocabulary and stop using swears just because someone on the forum suggests it.

A forum rule is necessary, because you have to mandate it from the top down rather than just vaguely suggest that everyone expand their vocabulary, and you need a filter because people are human and slip up on following the rule to not swear.

The problem is the way the current filter works is pretty pointless, because you still know exactly what the word is (even if you are a kid, kids generally learn all of these words pretty early on).

Honestly the best filter is either;
- A fixed amount of symbols (like, no matter what you type, it gets replaced with 5 symbols) replacing the entire word.
- A random amount of symbols replacing the entire word.

Human brains are pretty good at translating words that have letters omitted or the order of the letters changed, so filters shouldn't really retain any elements of the original word.

I think calling Andy a chud is extremely uncalled for, but I also think the comparison was enormously inappropriate to the point of being disrespectful.

Every single website I've ever been to labels posters who've been banned. It's not for bullying purposes (trust me, I'm more than happy to bully chuds who haven't been banned), it's for simple site functionality so we know that toxic posters are no longer here. Hell, once someone has been banned is usually when I stop calling them out, since I'm no longer worried they'll show up to harass people again.

How could a simple "banned" marker possibly lead to toxicity towards an unpleasant poster? They're literally gone. We can't hurt them anymore. It's just a way to save us time, clarify something that is useful and valuable to know, and help their targets feel safe again.

Yeah, there is literally a user who hasn't posted in like a week, and I have been stress-checking the posts portion of their profile because I am afraid they are just busy instead of banned and that they will come back. Not knowing if they are gone or not means I can't let out a sigh of relief and fully relax.

Tender Tendrils wrote:

Adding and indicator requires no changes to the software, just adding a label to an account which the existing forum software is very capable of doing (this already happens with people with subscriptions and mods/staff/contributors).

Hiding accounts isn't something the current software can do and would require upgrading to new software which is very expensive and time consuming.

You obviously know more about the current software than I do

Quote:

Deleting accounts would cut these people off from products they have purchased and their ability to purchase future products, which has been deemed too punitive (people are being kicked off the forums for the safety of others, not as a punishment).

I disagree with that decision too; I see it as putting company profits ahead of forum safety

Not just company profits - people paid for those digital products, so there are legal issues with cutting off access to the downloads for them once the person has purchased them.

Tender Tendrils wrote:

{. . .}

The reason it all looks fascist to us now is that fascism was heavily inspired by the Roman Empire (the word literally comes from the latin word "Fasces" which describes a badge of office carried by roman lictors), and pretty much every empire (and many regular nations) that have existed since the roman empire have modeled themselves in some way (sometimes structurally, almost always cosmetically) on the roman empire.
{. . .}

"Inspired by" does not equal "Modeled after", even if that was the goal the founders had in mind. From everything I've read, while the Holy Roman Empire claimed to be the successor of the Roman Empire, to paraphrase Voltaire, it is debatable just how holy it was (the Papal States took the cake there), and it wasn't very Roman, and it wasn't a very cohesive empire.

Unless/until we get some kind of mythic system, there isn't really any point to giving level 26+ creatures stats, and doing so would potentially lead GMs into the trap of trying to actually run them in combat against the party.

You definitely don't want to risk players having to go through the ordeal of playing a proper initiative combat session (which tend to go on for a pretty long time compared to the GM just narrating things) against an enemy where their dice rolls and spells and etc literally just don't matter, just because the GM saw the statblock and made the mistake of running a futile combat.

Smart GMs will usually look at the thing and just narrate "it utterly destroys all of you in moments*" but enough GMs wouldn't think to do that that it could cause a lot of bad experiences for players.

*not necessarily fun, but quicker and less tedious than getting utterly destroyed in slow motion over an hour long combat session.

Adding and indicator requires no changes to the software, just adding a label to an account which the existing forum software is very capable of doing (this already happens with people with subscriptions and mods/staff/contributors).

Hiding accounts isn't something the current software can do and would require upgrading to new software which is very expensive and time consuming.

Deleting accounts can't work because Paizo's "bans" are technically permanent suspensions (they can't participate in the forums ever again, but can still access their downloads and use the store). Deleting accounts would cut these people off from products they have purchased and their ability to purchase future products, which has been deemed too punitive (people are being kicked off the forums for the safety of others, not as a punishment).

Most forums are generally based of some kind of software package that they purchase or subscribe to, rather than coded from scratch, so sometimes certain features are just unavailable to the people running the forums unless they upgrade to a more premium version of the product or upgrade to a new product. Adding a "banned" title that can be applied to users is probably just a case of going into a menu and adding it.

I mean, it is a class that primarily uses smoothbore flintlock gunpowder weapons, which where prone to inflicting powder burn or straight up exploding.

Having a feat that gives them a small amount of resistance to splash damage (developed from repeated powder burn and blowback mishaps) is pretty thematic for the class, so it can be thematically about that while stealthily being there to enable the use of scatter weapons.

Even Gorum is a great choice for hobgoblins who want to keep going with the martial traditions without worshipping a deity that is expressly evil - Gorum is pretty indifferent to why or who or how you fight, so long as you fight and don't "cheat" by negotiating or using tricksy magic, and hobgoblins don't care that much about whether they get granted spells by a deity (as they don't care much for magic), so the follower alignments for Gorum being CN/CE doesn't really matter that much for hobgoblins.

Eh, I think that it generally has made things better, we are just more aware of the bad stuff because we have access to, well everyone and everything now, and we have higher standards than people used to have.
My point wasn't information=bad, just that people who want to stay ignorant won't be cured by access to information.

For those of us who actually want to learn, having access to experts and the internet is fantastic. Heck, I wouldn't even have had the language to describe my identities as a trans and asexual person without the internet, because school and libraries and the media generally didn't talk about trans people except as a punchline to gross jokes, and still don't seem to be aware that asexuals are even a thing.

(I've still literally only seen one piece of non-internet media where a person was explicitly described as asexual, which is Bojack Horseman - I had to find out that there was a word for my sexuality other than "frigid" or "repressed" or "broken" from Tumblr).

Cheliax would absolutely get a net-benefit from having the internet, it just wouldn't necessarily eliminate racism against tieflings entirely. Tieflings would gain online communities where they can talk about what they are going through with each other, and non-tieflings would be able to actually read stuff written by an actual tiefling instead of all of their information coming from other humans (just many of them would choose to disregard it, but at least it would be there for those of them with open minds).

The thing is that the closer you get to being an empire, the more you converge towards a single style of rulership. Nations generally don't submit to being ruled over by other nations because they asked politely, and the formula for how to build and maintain an empire is well... a formula.

Most of the differences between different empires are just tied to how well they followed that formula (and how successful they where), with the other differences being largely cosmetic.

The reason it all looks fascist to us now is that fascism was heavily inspired by the Roman Empire (the word literally comes from the latin word "Fasces" which describes a badge of office carried by roman lictors), and pretty much every empire (and many regular nations) that have existed since the roman empire have modeled themselves in some way (sometimes structurally, almost always cosmetically) on the roman empire.

Heck, it is really difficult to find a famous post-roman emperor who didn't openly compare themselves to Julius Caesar (a comparison that all of the fascist heads of state have also deliberately invited).

Empires are just... generally bad. People generally don't want to be subject to a dictator living halfway across the world from them, and they generally range from unwieldy to impossible to effectively manage. The only really important differences between different empires is how big they got and how long they managed to hold it all together for.

Yeah, you don't need the experts to remain silent on what they know or any kind of conspiracy for society to remain ignorant of the facts. The experts can scream it from the rooftops and wave graphs and 5,000 page reports summarizing decades of research in your face and many people still won't believe them.

Honestly I was pretty happy to see this thread go off-topic, the original topic was pretty silly.

I'm not super keen on this class being a caster at all, aside from focus spells. Something more like a ranger or champion, where they just get some focus spells but are otherwise a martial with some divine magic themed mechanics (like judgement).

I don't want to be running around casting heal or bless or whatever on this character, I want to mark a demon with some kind of mechanic similar to hunt prey, track it through the city to its hiding place, apply a judgement to it that gives it some kind of nasty debuff, then shoot it with my crossbow. The guy who actually casts spells is the cleric, and he tells me that they suspect there might be a demon in the village, and gives me some holy water and blesses me before I go of to hunt down my quarry, and the champion is the muscle who normally would deal with it but doesn't have the expertise, cunning and street smarts I do, so I get called in instead.

There's a big move towards not doing physical christmas cards in general, because most people just read them once (and check them for money) and then throw them in the bin, which ends up creating more landfill.

I'm a big fan of physical media, especially handwritten stuff, but some customs involving that are just creating way more waste than the value they contribute to peoples lives really justifies.

I think the thing I resent most about the arguments that one-note, planet of the hats style ancestries are somehow more interesting than ones with variety and nuance, is that it forces me into choosing between two insulting viewpoints towards the person making it, and there is no rational way to respond that the person isn't going to be offended by.

Either they are arguing in good faith, and are just really that bad at reasoning, or they are arguing in bad faith, and are using it as a flimsy argument to defend racism because they can't think of a better one.

I will repeat this however, for like the hundredth time - if we can tell the difference between human bandits and human townspeople, we can tell the difference between goblins who are just minding their own business and ones who are... well, bandits.

We have gotten through pretty much the whole of human history, where we could usually figure out that the people raiding our villages or waving axes and banners we don't recognize where the enemy without the benefit of them being a different species to us.

Generally splitting a game into two different flavours causes a lot of problems - you potentially split the playerbase, in this case you would need to create a second set of guidelines/etc for the flavour (as it's edgier content wouldn't fit with existing guidelines), would have to find writers who want to write this stuff, and you would probably need some kind of tagging system in places like AoN to separate this stuff out.

Its a good idea for independent/pathfinder infinite type stuff, not great for the company itself.

It’s not censorship if they weren’t going to do it in the first place.

Random person: hey I see your commissions are open, do you do Non-con or underage art?

Artist: no.

Random person: CENSORSHIP!

See how silly that argument looks? This wasn’t some case of a rabid mob forcing the poor Paizo writers to give up their beloved slavery stories they yearned for, though the Forums would have you think otherwise, it was the writers themselves that were sick and tired of these stories, the letter Owen published was from a Freelancer.

Again, the writers THEMSELVES were tired of dealing with slavery constantly in their Paizo ordered work.

This whole rigamarole is the first time I have seen pretty much all of the writers and freelancers and creatives at Paizo say "we don't want to write about this anymore" and people in the community respond with "we can't enjoy the game without this one element, this is censorship and we demand that you keep writing about it!"

Like, when I asked James Jacobs if flumphs* where going to be a thing in 2e (because I love them), and he said he didn't think so because he really didn't like them, I respected that, because I can enjoy the game fine without Flumphs, and because I think it is pretty awful to demand that a creative include things they don't want to write about.

I can enjoy the game fine without flumphs, and can easily add them in myself. Same goes if the writers don't want to write much about large scale wars or whatever, despite me being really interested in war as a backdrop for adventures.

If you not only can't enjoy the game without slavery (and some people have more or less stated that the lack of slavery IS a dealbreaker for them), but can't enjoy it without slavery being a core part of the game rather than just something you are free to add yourself, then I think you really need to take a good hard look at why you play this game, because that is pretty weird.

*They later on actually did make it into the game in Bestiary 3, so I guess other people at Paizo wanted to add them, but I would have been absolutely fine with continuing to support PF2 if they never got added.

On a side note, censorship isn't a concept that really applies here - censorship is when a government or other similar body redacts information or pressures the media to cover up the truth, and things in a similar vein to that.

A private company that produces fiction having editorial control over its own works is not censorship, especially when that editorial decision is in line with the wishes of the writers themselves.

The Raven Black wrote:

Just a reminder : shock value is no great writing. It is rather lazy actually and can easily be disgusting to other people, even those you think you know well.

If that's the kind of stuff you're looking for, it's hardly shocking. And like people keep telling me: just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's bad.

Like I learned back in highschool, some people play Tau, some people play Dark Eldar. There's enough room on the board for both of us.

As for a darker take on pathfinder, I'd definitely check it out if something was made. Nidal is my kind of place. There's a market, if they're ever in the mood to make it.

W40K is an entire setting where being edgy is the main theme - even the Tau (usually considered the least edgy faction) are warmongering expansionists with a creepy orwellian/communist vibe who enforce a rigid caste system and use mind control helmets to enslave an entire species (the vespids).

W40k is a terrible example in this case - Pathfinder is not part of the Grimdark genre - with 40k Grimdark is what you signed up for, with Pathfinder Grimdark is only a thing that exists in small doses and isn't something you implicitly agree to be subjected to just by engaging with the game.

I find the expectation that I have to be courteous (especially when people define courteous as "don't call me on my hate speech") and to respect people's "right to an opinion" (you don't have a right to express your opinion on a privately owned forum, or when it harms people - freedom of speech only applies to the government and public spaces, and doesn't apply to hate speech, and expressly doesn't apply to social media or most of the internet) when they are saying that they don't believe I should be allowed to exist or are trying to demand that paizo cater to their slavery fetish.

They bring discourtesy (discourtesy is a massive understatement) into the conversation by spewing hateful nonsense, and then demand their definition of courtesy (which is to assume that their bad faith dog whistles are actually innocent and not call them on it) from those who are harmed by their speech.

The validity of my gender and my right to feel safe isn't up for discussion. It isn't up for you to "weigh the evidence". If I tell you I am a woman, yes, you do have to take it on faith that I know who I am. You aren't entitled to your own independent opinion on that or to explanations or evidence on that.

They both give item bonuses, so as such they don't stack - when you roll you just apply whichever item bonus is highest.

Related to the poison thing - for a really fun read, look up Mithridates VI of Pontus, also known as The Poison King.

The short version of his story is that his father was killed by poison, then he spent 7 years in the wilderness becoming really tough and regularly microdosing on poisons to develop an immunity, then made his return, poisoned all of his rivals, became a natural philosopher and the world's leading expert on poisons, and a pretty big military threat to Rome itself. He also learned all 22 of the languages of the people he governed, because of course he did.

Azaersi gets a replacement for slaves, such as undead laborers or golems.

Honestly the moment she stops fighting everyone (which is what is supposed to happen between ironfang invasion and PF2s part of the timeline) she would end up with most of her massive army not having much else to do than public works and agriculture (historically most nations tended to massively scale back their armies during peacetime anyway).

All of those soldiers are going to need jobs other than fighting to keep them occupied, so they can probably fill most of the void created by repatriating slaves.

Keep in mind that every hobgoblin is part of the military - civilian tasks are just carried out by different parts of the army. It is just a matter of re-assigning surplus parts of the fighting arm of the military to the engineering/logistics/etc parts of the military (Ancient Romes famous system of roads was almost entirely built by the Roman Legions, which kept them busy and out of trouble when not on campaign and prepared the empire to better mobilize the legions in times of crisis, in addition to all of the nice economic benefits of building roads)

Additionally, many slaves would probably stay, having no place to go and as such being available as paid laborers - the economic cost of suddenly having to pay former slave laborers actually isn't that bad and is very short term, as they immediately start boosting the economy by buying things that slave owners generally didn't purchase for their slaves, and unskilled laborers in medieval times where not paid much anyway.

Tender - We were talking about the fact I had the Alan Dean Foster Spellsinger series on my book shelf. Mudge one of the main characters in the series happens to be a otter in a world where most animals are sentient.

Couple of weeks until our next session, so some time to nut it all out. Thinking Otter is similar to Badger or Wolverine , but with swim speed , not burrow or climb.
Ancestry on the other hand is animal . So maybe just physical attributes with natural weapon skills ? Low light vision.

But I'm thinking my Halfling will try and find a way back to "normal" without resorting to another Reincarnation situation.

Aaaah, so it was a case of having a specific otter-related fantasy for the character, gotcha.

Probably small, swim speed, decent dex? Natural weapon (probably claws), low light vision, ability to hold your breath for longer... wait, aside from the size and dex and vision, this is starting to look a lot like a lizardfolk with the wetlander lizardfolk heritage.