But what about the players who retrieved the deed to the citadel in Hellknight Hill?Apparently they get eaten by a diabolic dragon in the convention event! :D
Oh, the irony! After all that, Dahak has the last laugh in the end!
Search Posts
The neothelids of Denebrum also need to get replaced—but there we've got seugathis and it's easy to replace them with GIANT seugathis.Wait, are neothelids OGL? I thought they were Paizo originals that were the Golarion equivelant of Mind Flayers. Neothelids are in OGL lore under the same name and design as an aberrant state of the Mind Flayer lifecycle -- a tadpole that consumed its brood and grew to enormous size rather than being implanted in a humanoid host. Pathfinder lore revamped them as an independent species of aberration loosely tied to the Cthulhu mythos and created the Seugathi as a servitor race. I guess that specific IP wasn't as litigiously protected as the Mind Flayers proper, thus putting them in the same gray area as Drow and Ropers and the like, but now a lot more of that has to go.
Honestly I have at times pondered a full Frank Frazetta adventuring party: loincloths at most, a breastplate and no pants if absolutely necessary. Monks, casters, plus any dex-based class once they get to +5 at level 10. Honestly, one of the only things I think 5e still has over Pathfinder: unarmored Barbarians. What do you mean the only option where I can be shirtless I also can't weild weapons?!
Fortunately the description for most heavy armor does specify that it comes with an underlayer of padded armor, as wearing plate with nothing underneath is… ill advised.
Shame we didn't have Faun or Nymph published when Mythspeaker came out! From the cover (what record of it exists at this point) it looks like at a minimum we can know a few monster stats getting remastered: the Kishi, Baobhan Sith (which is pronounced "bah-vahn shee" for anyone curious), and the Nuglub from bestiaries 1 & 2, along with the Cat Sith (again, "shee", no red lightsabers) from an AP. The little red bird lady in the lower left seems to be a Kikimora, another slavic House Spirit that had stats in 1e Bestiary 5. The only figures on the cover I can't make heads or tails of are the blue-skinned cloud-haired lady who looks like Cloudia from I Hate Fairyland drinking with the satyr, and the ghastly figure in the suit standing behind the Gnome Queen. I'd also bet this is where the Nymph Sorcerer bloodline will get remastered. By my question is, if the "Ride a unicorn!" in the listing is implying a Unicorn animal companion… will the rules specify your character has to be a virgin???
On top of that, Isger's gaining independence (I think we all assumed that was where Hellbreakers was going) and presumably the Chitterwood is becoming its own nation as Scorchhome (maybe this is where we finally get playable Bugbears?). I'm a little surprised to see them presumably cannonizing the endings to both those APs so soon after they come out, they're getting more and more willing to do that lately. I'm also curious how this and Hellfire Dispatches will break up character options: Who gets Hellknight?
Curious if anyone's tried Proficiency Without Level on a large party. My instinct is this would simplify things somewhat, more allow for higher-level enemies that could function as a solo boss even to 5+ parties, since the math doesn't become so extreme. Basically moves things a little closer to 5e's "bounded accuracy" or whatever it's called. But, I haven't tested it and can't be sure. Glad to see this discussion, the level-based proficiency scaling implicitly locking people in to the assumed four-person party was something I noticed way back when the 2e playtest first came out.
Definitely glad to get on the hype train with you. Obviously they need some work, it's a playtest, that's what its for. But I'm genuinely jazzed about the opportunities these classes present and I can't wait to see what sort of book they come out in (my money's on a dungeoneering/darklands theme, but I could also see urban intrigue). Daredevil fills out the narrative space between Monk and Swashbuckler nicely, for all those concepts that weren't performative or charismatic enough for the latter or too Jackie Chan for the former. A play cycle that centers athleticism and rapid-fire, frantic maneuvers sounds so much fun in a way no class has quite emulated mechanically yet. I could see it as a confident, parkouring combattant or a bumbling lout crashing through their environment and taking out the monster practically by accident, or a dozen things inbetween. Slayer, my main complaint is that a lot of its options feel too prescriptive, like you can see exactly which features are supposed to make you Geralt and which are supposed to make you a Belmont, and they do exctly those things. Like Chymist's Vials feels like it should be a more versitile option than it is. Smooth those out a bit and you've got a really solid class fantasy here that interacts with a lot of fringe rules in specific and fun ways. Both are admittedly situational -- a Daredevil isn't gonna have much to bounce off of in a desert exploration campaign -- but that true of any class. If you bring a combat-minmaxed fighter to what you were told was a courtly intrigue game, that's on you!
Honestly it should just allow to use Quarry vs any creature. Restrict for non-humanoids just makes the class almost useless in most games due most of them are full of humanoids enemies. Quarry is a against any creature, this is just about the Monster Lore auto-skill.
Huh? Where are you getting that rule from? Many feats do that for skill training, but there's a reason they have to spell it out every time.We look forward to seeing what everyone puts together!Crunchier than I usually go, but when I saw Daredevil gets Diehard at level one I initially thought "Well it's redundant with a Grimspawn Nephilim then," but actually you can just swap it like usual for anythign that doubles a feature, so now you've got a free general feat at level one, on any base ancestry! Normally reserved for humans! Gives Death Defying a new meaning! Dang, is that not official? I thought that was at least implied with an "as usual" in a few places. Kind of a knock on a whole Lineage if multiple classes get the benefits baseline.
We look forward to seeing what everyone puts together! Crunchier than I usually go, but when I saw Daredevil gets Diehard at level one I initially thought "Well it's redundant with a Grimspawn Nephilim then," but actually you can just swap it like usual for anythign that doubles a feature, so now you've got a free general feat at level one, on any base ancestry! Normally reserved for humans! Gives Death Defying a new meaning! Meanwhile on the Slayer side I really want to combine Warded Mail with the Hellknight archetypes. It's not so much that I like Hellknights, the restriction to the Armiger archetype on being already proficient in Heavy armor just fascinates me -- you can take this archetype, wizard, after you take three general feats! (We'll see if that holds true post remaster, hopefully in Hellfire Dispatches) But this guy, ooh, he can take it right off the bat and the funky spiky spooky armor is his whole schtick! Complete with little 40K medals and charms pinned on it for all the monsters you've killed in the name of THE LAW.
I sort of read it as like, a Vampire Hunter's bandolier of holy symbols and wooden stakes. I do agree its benefits are a bit restrictive and specific.
I feel like you've just made your own counterargument? Players have been wanting to do exactly the core premises of these classes forever, and relying on flavor and homebrew to allow it. Now there's an explicit game build niche for that. Back in D&D 1e days there were people who wanted to play the Aragorn woodland tracker archetype and could easily contort the Fighting Man into that shape -- then the Ranger became a thing. At an Org play game I went to last year there was a kid around whose dad built him an elf fighter. First fight, the kid immediately declares that he backflips around the giant spider, does a handstand and THEN stabs it, and GM had to inform him that doesn't actually do anything. Now it does something. Even for a level one! No archetypes, homebrew, or GM buy-in needed!
Well done! Henceforth the classes shall be renamed (checks a thesaurus) Exhibitionist and Murderess (gendered).
Had the exact same thought. Giant-Slayer seems like an obvious premise for the class, but RAW most giants are excluded from the core knowledge feature.
From Tian Xia Character Guide: "The Tian people widely use the Dragon Empires Zodiac to mark the progression of years, months, and hours with one of its 12 constellations, though each nation can have a variation of the Zodiac and its relation to their calendar and fortune." The constelations are, in order, Underworld Dragon, Swordswoman, Sea Dragon, Swallow, Ox, Sovereign Dragon, Ogre, Forest Dragon, Blossom, Dog, Sky Dragon, and Archer. No speicific indication of when that cycle starts, but the description of Zi Ha in Tian Xia Word Guide implies the sixth through ninth lunar months (Sovereign Dragon to Blossom) are Summer, when the blazing light reflects off the mountains and the population retreats underground (this solstice would be in the middle of this range). This probably places the Underworld Dragon as the start of winter, equivalent to November/Neth or December/Kuthona. Associating the first in the cycle with November would be consistent with the historical chinese calendar. Weeks there's less indication on, the Zi Ha sections mention them measuring time by weeks but also desribes them marking time within the month via the lunar cycle. If you'd like, you can also use the Zodiac to mark hours -- again, going off historical chinese timekeeping, you'd divide the day into twelve two-hour blocks, with the Underworld Dragon marking 11pm to 1am. So you might wake up in the Swallow Hour and have lunch in the Ogre Hour.
I like that you mention Castlevania and Bloodborne, because Castlevania and Bloodborne are more urban than natural, which is sort of what I mean. And that's what Slayer invokes to me, urban monster fighting. Going into castles, or through dingy urban sprawls. Maybe it has those connotations to you, some of us are Buffy fans!
I think everyone should keep in mind, Swashbuckler itself was originally pitched as "Rogue meets Gunslinger," in a whole book of "X crossed with Y" hybrid classes. Now, admittedly, fully half of those did not have a distinct enough identity -- which I think is bound to happen when you publish ten brand new classes at once -- but several became fan favorites and two of them (three if you count Warpriest) became Core classes in 2e. "This fills out the narrative space between Swashbuckler and Monk" or "…between Ranger and Thaumaturge" is not in and of itself a bad thing. Hell, lean into it! "My character was left at a monastery as an orphanned baby, but while on a pilgrimage in their youth their ship was accosted by pirates. Wowed by the buccaneers' daring and freedom, the young accolyte demanded to join their crew, and over the years has merged their disparate martial influences to devastating effect neither could replicate."
If it has ANY support for reload ranged weapons, Slayer is the perfect thematic base for a Beast Gunner. A mystic huntsman constantly grafting new monster parts onto his freaky biomechanical rifle. Also I CANNOT WAIT for the Wayne Reynolds Iconic art. A class whose whole schtick is "signature equipment begreebled with the trophies of past hunts" plays so cleanly into his artistic strengths its comical.
Ooh! A Skeleton Slayer who combines their trophy-taking with their undead compulsion to collect new bones. Or a Pearl Daragonette Daredevil who literally bounces around the battlefield like a rubber ball!
I dunno man, as somebody who actually watched the stream they just put on, the devlopers seemed to have a lot of fun playing these wacky specific characters and talking about all the cool stuff they designed them to do. They haven't been shy about rolling concepts into existing classes where they fit, even when they're much-demanded by players. Maybe if they've bothered to work out a whole playtest for these guys they might just have a good idea of how they could fill their own niche? And we have an incomplete picture from a couple three-sentence descriptions and an hour and a half of actual play? Anyway, without knowing anything else, monster prize-hunter sounds like fun for Slayer, maybe an upstart from the Lands of the Linnorm Kings looking to earn his kingdom. Daredevil seems to lean so much into playing with the environment, I like the idea of a back-alley brawler that a Monk is a little too structured and spiritual to replicate.
Question answered! The current Paizo Live has revealed the upcoming playtest: The Daredevil and the Slayer. From what we know so far, Daredevil is an in-your-face combattant, while Slayer, not precisely based on the 1e Slayer, is a single-target monster hunter that can mark foes and then incorporate pieces of their bodies into their equipment. As for the book they're in, I'm now kind of hoping for a Darklands-focussed exploration book.
That's a bit of a tricky proposition, given how much of BotD has either been already reprinted (The Darvakka, Unrisen, Hungry Ghost, and some Skeletons all appear in Monster Core 2, peachwood in Tian Xia Character Guide) OR is an OGL no-go (Orcus, the outdated Ghoul lore and Lacedons, the "Zombie Owlbear"). It already required the most significant reworking to bring it up to remaster, but given they've already started canibalizing from it for Core books, it feels like BotD's getting left in the Premaster. It's possible they're just clearing a few things out to make room for the bigger structural changes necessary, but were I a betting man, I think it's more likely the essential stuff will get shuffled into Impossible Magic.
Alternatively, Threatening (and mildly homoerotic) correspondence between Geb and Nex as they set the stage for the next active phase of their conflict. Geb hires Seltyiel and the Necromancer to run some errands, meanwhile Nex approaches Ija for the same and conscripts the Runesmith out of Alkenstar to help her. The two parties converge in the scene on the cover with the Totum Font and pool their information to figure out what both Wizard Kings are really after, and decide they'll play no role in their Foemance.
TLDR: What if Nex is the narrator? Each of the Non-Core rulebooks have some in-world narrative framing mechanism, despite putting some effort into being more setting agnostic than the outright Lost Omens line: The Logs of the Zoetrope, the journalism of Arianna Dreth, an accounting of Samo and Nahoa's journeys across Avistan. Book of the Dead is framed as a collection of writings from throughout the life (and undeath) of the Ghost King Geb of Geb, a copy of which has been smuggled out of his kingdom. Impossible Magic, from what little we know so far, is centered to some degree around the Impossible Lands, the region which includes both Geb and its/his rival Nex. They've been hinting at the possible return of Nex (the guy) since at least the start of second edition. Imagine Impossible Magic is a returned Nex's accounting of both Magic and the World, bringing forth both his expertise -- from his history of conquest and his travels since vanishing alike -- as well as his exploration of Golarion as it has become in his absence. A preposterously ancient and powerful Wizard's various musings on the discipline of his greatest rival, the base power of magical symbology, a novel martial extrapolation of his own discipline, and a comparable martial/magical hybrid with importance to several cultures. The Iconics might be framed as a group he hires to go out and retrieve information he's curious about in the world as it's become, to fill in the gaps in his knowledge left in his long absence.
You can duplicate certain weapon Ikons with Twin Stars. But if you're asking if you can have two different Eye-Catching Spots and swap between them, there doesn't seem to be any language in the rules that says you can't, much as it doesn't specify that you have to have a Weapon, just suggests that you should since its what the class is balanced around.
I could see a Tech Spell List working a bit like PF's Elementalist class archetype, a variation on maybe the combined Arcane and Occult lists available to anyone who could normally access either -- though that might in and of itself step on the Technomancer's toes.
Clowns tripping on clowns out here!
Eh, I can understand Paizo being reticent to start printing the smaller pawn sets again. The sheer fact that they're still running sales every so often to clear 12-year-old AP sets out of their warehouse for pocket change is a pretty good indicator that they didn't have the economy of scale to justify themselves. That's not to say I disagree with you… (except the guy using chat gpt) I got PDFs of all the 1e Bestiary Boxes, which fills some gaps. I'd love a Lost Omens Compilation, or a Non-Core Rulebook set (though some of BotD got cribbed by MC2). (Don't suppose anyone who's gotten the Battlecy Box would like to share the list for it???)
Starfinder 1e was not built in a day either, in case you forgot. Checking just now, 1e's first batch of new classes came out over two years after the Core Rulebook, in Character Operations Manual. What could possibly make you think they'd churn out all 13 1e classes -- origianlly published over the course of five years -- at once? 2e is not "60% of a game" because Mechanic and Technomancer are "Missing", any more that 1e was *Incomplete* without the Biohacker, or Pathfinder 2e lesser for going almost three years without a Gunslinger. It's a complete system that happens to not have published support for your favorite thing yet.
I've been curious about this since the original came out, the Player's Guide makes a few overtures toward Avistani ancestries being present in the town on the premise that they could have immigrated from Amanandar… But the story is set in 7108/4608, Amanandar was only founded like a year ago? There can't have been more than a few boatfuls of Taldan marines in the entire continent at this point, most of which would probably still be establishing order in the new colony. I can understand there being a few merchants who followed the new colonial supply lines and branched outwards, or maybe a scout got left behind on the Sea of Ghosts and wandered in through the Specterwood… fell in love with the local who nursed them back to health and taught them the language; they're planning to head north, at least for a while, once the baby's born. Anyway. It seems silly to imply there'd already be a significant enough diaspora as to reach such a small community, beyond isolated incidents.
Little update I noticed: I was curious about the Pacts Witch and Time Oracle, both of which were already Remastered in Divine Mysteries, and while The Unseen Broker seems to be the same, the Time Oracle has been re-remastered, now with a new Cursebound feat instead of PC2's Oracular Warning: Trance of Celerity. Basically you get a status bonus to speeds equal to five times your Cursebound value -- restores a bit of the premaster utility and technically available to all Oracles.
Also they kept the same art for "Rumored Owlbear" and just made it "Rumored Bear" lol.
We know the actual purpose of Mengkare's Glorious Endeavor. We have a pretty good idea what was under Gorum's armor. If we assume the Godsrain novel is cannon, we know what caused the Eye of Abendego. That's just from the few things I've read.
Maybe I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but I feel like the sheer fact that this many people were this invested in this particular cantrip exclusive to this subclass of this class -- to the point that it's completely dominated a forum ostensibly about a completely different book -- might just be a good indicator that it was dominating the meta and there was a good reason to knock it down a peg. Seriously, were all of you actually playing this exact same build?
As time goes on, I'm increasingly curious about the writeup on post-AoA and post-WoI Hermea. It was pretty pointedly left out of the High Seas descriptions in Player Core and GM Core to not put a cannon ending on the AP right away, and War of Immortals only gives a brief update, namely that A) The Godsrain messed with Mengkare's stuff to spontaneously generate what's probably one of the largest Dragonblood minorities of any nation in the world, in a population that probably had a fair degree of human chauvinism beforehand, given it was effectively one big eugenics program, and B) Age of Ashes Spoiler: Established that the official story is that Mengkare got dragged off by Otilazian authorities, which feels like it's deliberately attempting to leave narrative room for either option at the end of the AP: either your AoA party redeemed Mengkare, and this was him willingly facing the concequences of his actions; or you killed him and this was the story you sold the populace on, which is hilarious.
"Noble adventurers, what has become of our great leader Mengkare?" "He… Got arrested." "…Arrested?" "That's right. Nobody would say why but he just got dragged off." "…By whom?" "…Dragon Cops?" "…" "…" "Draconic Emissaries of Otilaz, dragon god of death and justice?" "Yeah, those are the ones. They definitely mentioned Oat and Less." "Otilaz." "That's what I said."
The Townsend: yeah, the validation would be nice, good to know I'm not the only person thinking in these terms, but I do disagree that all of these topics are disparate and separate things. They are intertwined. It doesn't make sense, and it parallels religious villanization (which also doesn't make sense) and it's often justified with political compartmentalization. I would not say I'm thinking in the same terms as you, more that that was me trying to prompt you to look inward and seriously question if "Blindly fishing for someone to agree with me on an issue I haven't bothered to unpack my own thoughts on" is a healthy or even reasonable perpective on which to enter an Internet Forum full of Technically Minded Nerds. I'm not going to continue debating you here, since -- seeing as you've cycled entirely back to querying the Watsonian justification that we've been trying to answer for three days -- you don't seem to actually be looking for answers to your questions.
I feel like you might not have the clearest idea of what you're trying to accomplish or what point you're trying to make with this thread. You started it with a fairly direct question of "How do capital-E Evil deities with significant followings make sense?" And as people have explored that question from various angles, it feels like you've danced around the dialogue we're engaging with to air more and more abstract Doylist concerns. "It parallels real world religious villainizaton… No, political compartmentalization." None of us are unaware of the problematic history and potential of the tropes and ideas baked into this sort of game. We're all adults with at least some grasp of the genre. Yes, fiction and life reflect one another, but as adults we're able to distinguish between the two. No mentally healthy person is going to hear about Urgathoa and think, "Cool, so I can eat people in real life!" That's some Satanic Panic b&&@%~&&. Fiction, fantasy especially, is a way to explore abstract ideas in a concrete way; even a black and white depiction of good vs evil fundamentally prompts the question: What is Evil to you? You're not "disrespecting" anyone, you're just being kind of stubborn and evasive in a way that's not actually conducive to dialogue. Is it possible that you're just reflexively uncomfortable with something and looking for someone to validate you in that beyond the "yeah, dude, you do you," that you're getting?
I don't think you're so much "making a mountain out of a molehill," as coming at this from the wrong angle. "I'm uncomfortable with this, so I'm not going to personally engage with it" is, again, not only a perfectly resonable course of action, it's the basis of a healthy relationship with fiction. "I'm uncomfortable with this, so I would like people to stop making or engaging with it" is just censorship. It's an understandable emotional reflex, but it's one we're all responsible for examining critically and curtailing in ourselves. Yes, there are no real world nihilistic doomsday cultists. There are also no real world elves or centaurs or velstracs. Even if the trope were derived exclusively from Christian fearmongering (I would argue it's not that simple) it is not in and of itself morally suspect to look at that concept and ask, through fiction, "what would that actually look like?" or "what material conditions would result in this?" or even to just use it more-or-less unironically because this is a fighting game that requires a certain quantity of people worth stabbing. Your Pathfinder game is not political praxis. Just as the multiple attack penalty is a very rough abstraction of how swordfighting works, the cosmology of a fantasy setting need not -- in fact cannot -- reflect the full diversity of real world morality.
I think it would be fair to define Undead less as "mortal life persisting past death" than as "being animated by Void energy which posesses an echo of the living" the last clause effectively to distinguish outright Void creatures like Sceaduinar and Sumbreiva. After all, a Ghost and a Skeleton are both undead but are completely separate parts of a once-living person, so there's no particular Piece of a Guy needed to make an Undead. If a ghost doesn't need any flesh, and a skeleton doesn't need any soul -- or even to be made all of pieces of the same person -- then all that's actually needed of a living thing to make an undead is a memory. A lich's soul cage can reconstitute its body from nothing at all, so if you've got the quintessential part of a living thing that makes an undead -- which is nothing -- why can't you as a Necromancer bring into being a one hit point zombie?
I feel like we're talking past each other because a lot of people, myself included are going at this from a very Watsonian perspective (what is the in-universe explanation?) while you're trying to hone in on a very Doylist conversation (why was it written this way?). I think it's an entirely fair critique of Pathfinder's worlbuilding to call it eurocentric in many of its base assumptions -- those were established by Americans in 2007, set predominantly in and around the Fantasy Mediterranean, and building off tropes established by, again, a weird evangelical dweeb from the 70s. But if you're expecting the folks at Paizo to up and rewrite the interconnected mythology they've been building on for almost twenty years, I'm sorry, but you're shouting into the void here. Even in the Remaster they did their damnest to preserve the spirit of the lore wherever possible, partly for their own ease and partly because that's the paradigm under which thousands of people have played games and lived adventures. Yes, characters like Urgathoa evoke the demonization of foreign religions that occurred many times throughout history (not at all exclusive to Christianity or Europe; Journey to the West depicts a very specific interaction between Buddhism and Taoism)--hell, I think some demon lords explicity have the names of Mesopotamian or Semitic deities that were demonized as Judaism transitioned toward monotheism. But that's not a thing that's actually supposed to have happened to those characters. This is not a setting in which the gods are ephemeral social constructs subject to reinterpretation, not even in the Discworld "Gods Need Prayer Badly" sense (with a few exceptions). They're actual real sapient figures as much as kings and paupers and capable of expressing displeasure when their followers mischaracterize them. I also disagree with your impication that a mythological trope or idea is invalid simply because it's not "Original," mainly because there IS NO Original; these ideas and characterizations were in constant flux for generations before the examples you're cherrypicking. Yeah, it's entirely possible the Eddas made up Loki, but at this point that character has existed in a fairly fixed form for almost a thousand years, longer than any aspect of that mythology was ever static previously! Egyptian religion varied massively across both the bredth of their empire and its duration--Osirus was probably adopted from a Lybian pantheon millenia before any Greek conquest; to consider the Last narrative shift alone flasehood is ultimately perposterous. The entire concept of the Fey comes from post-Christian bastardization of Celtic religion, how many tentpoles of this genre are we expected to dig up? Now, the beauty of the TTRPG Medium is that you can build out your games to your liking! You are free to run your games in a homebrew setting or a version of Golarion free of any of these theological constructions that irritate you, you will get no judgement from me on that account. But by the same token, the people at Paizo are writing their own world, and there are no fundamnetally invalid fantasy tropes, just matters of execution.
The question of Undeath you've raised is interesting, because to look at it from the outside, it has a cyclical quality. Pharasma fundamentally values the cycle of life and death, the "water cycle" of the River of Souls. Is this an actual fundamental good, or simply one powerful individual's perspective? Pharasma is pointedly Neutral, to again evoke Premaster Alignment, pointedly disconcerned with "good" or "evil"--she is invested in the Status Quo she set up at the onset of this multiverse. Urgathoa established a deviation from Pharasma's cycle--souls variously tucked away where the river can't reach them--evidently out of a refusal to let something as plain as Death stop a good party. Pharasma violently opposes this--again, is this an actual ontological good, or simply one person's conviction? You cite the broadness of Pharasma's following as a validation of Urgathoa's villainization. One could easily argue the opposite--the greatest concentration of Pharasmins are in places under constant threat by undead. Urgathoa's gluttony and hedonism are reflected in the ravenousness of a plurality of beings who follow her path, and living people seek the god who offers the most stringent defense against that. But again we see that this characterization is personal, rather than cosmological or ontological--had Urgathoa shunned the river of souls out of an abiding sense of charity for those she'd left behind, or personal love, simply curiosity, would the broad temperment of the Undead be different? And then would worship of Pharasma--defined not by kindness or community or courage but by intangible balances--be so in-demand? The Undead, in this sense, are condemmed not by pure abstract nature but by the predelections under which their clade was founded. Those who shirk Urgathoa's temperment remain--in the eyes of Pharasma--guilty by association. This is why I've been hoping, ever since the Remaster started, for a ruleset, a blurb, a sidebar, anything, about alternate Sanctification systems. Even setting aside that Fiends and Undead (or, hell, fiends and other fiends) exist on entirely different axes of so-called "Unholiness", what if I want to create a setting with a little more moral nuance? Where sanctification merely refers to the untimately fallible divine backing of mortal factions?
"Evil" as a definable cosmological construction is a whole can of worms that the culture of D&D-and-similar-properties aren't really equipped to dissect. Gygax was an evangelical christian and a lot of the early seeds of worlbuilding we're still stuck with are reflective of that. Asmodeus worshippers in this sort of setting are not so much based on any cult of a polytheistic deity, but on modern american mythology of "Satanists" taken to its logical extreme, and other Evil deities follow the same lines. On a cosmological sense you could argue that the unholy afterlives are not strictly meant as a punishment, just realms defined by a particular moral perspective--one of self-interest. Much of Abrahamic thought defines hell as sort of "the place of greatest distance from God," but Abbadon has gods down there to be very close to. Hell in this fantasy is not defined as a realm where sinners are tormented--that sinners go there and that they are tormented is largely incidental. Its core premise is the afterlife for people whose lives were defined by an ordered or legalistic perspective on their abiding self-interest; in which they (eventually) become devils and are able to exert that self-interest on a hierarchy of cosmological scale. To someone who genuinely deserves to go to the Outer Rifts, the Outer Rifts may well be a paradise of uninhibited violence and depravity--assuming they can grow out of the Larva stage. What goodly folk would define as "punishment" in these realms is not some god penalizing them, it's just the degree to which the damned experience the fruits of their own ethical outlook taken to an extreme and reflected back on them. Sartre was right in this case, the Hell of it is "other people." Otherwise, many evil deities specifically promise rewards in the living Universe. To cite your own examples, Urgathoa's whole schtick is dodging the afterlife entirely; and Lamashtu for all her mayhem is fundamentally a social god, she promises community outside of the strictures of society that reject you. Norgorber is prayed to in the search for riches and power, Zon-Kuthon because the state will torture you if you don't. None of this QUITE synchs up in an interally logical way, and the disconnect you're seeing is absolutely there, the product of a weird mismatch of evangelical bias, misunderstood polytheism, Michael Moorcock references, and fifty years of retcons. I just like figuring out justifications for things. Put me on the Lore team, Paizo!
I wonder what regions will get details. Obviously the shackles are one and I imagine Minata also will be there. would be interested in seeing some stuff about Arcadia and the Linorm kingdoms and Vudra. Sorry to dissapoint, but "High Seas" is not broadly the oceanic regions of Golarion, but a specific meta-region of the Inner Sea Region. You can find a more bare-bones summary in World Guide, which descibes Hermea, Mediogatli Island, The Shackles, and the Mordant Spire, along with Azlanti Ruins, the Eye of Abendego, and various "Undersea Realms" all in and around the Inner Sea. Still, a genuine question which will get the most detailed writeups in a full-book expansion, and how much detail will be put into relevant nearby areas like the Ironbound.
Everyone was hoping for the Necromancer to be a Leshy, and here I was picturing a world where Nyctessa from Hell's Vengeance makes a return and the Runesmith was a Leshy! Little potato guy in scribbled-on armor, their undeniable cuteness the only thing that can break through the dhampir's ingrained evil.
Seconding the greater selection of ships and naval warfare rules. The cover art seems to show Ezren casting a magical boarding plank, which makes me pretty sure we'll get a few new spells if not a pirate-themed Arcane School! Honestly, this is an unexpected instant buy for me, even though I'm perpetually without an actual group to play with (not that that's stopped me wasting my money before--hope springs eternal), since I've had a Pirate Campaign ticking away in my head for a couple years now. I want them Pirate Rules!
The book comes out in like eight months! Consider this a teaser trailer, same as that Marvel spot that was just Chris Evans holding a baby. "Seltyiel will Return"
I'm hoping for a bestiary with some classic naval monsters. Scylla has a really cool design from 1e I'd love to see updated, Sirens, and Selkie that hopefully hew a little closer to the legends than in 1e (not sure why I specifically picked three female monsters that start with S, but I'm blaming sailors).
Now I'm looking at the mention of "240 Spells," because there were only 205 in Secrets of Magic, 178 if you don't count Focus spells! Probably the Geb-themed spells from the Bloodlords AP will get updated--a couple need to be added to the Occult spell list so Necromancers can use them.
I'm wondering if that Runesmith is an Automoton per se. They're obviously some kind of construct, but their design is so radically different from the Jistkan ones from G&G and Monster Core 2. It's entirely possible they're just from a different origin, but could it be like in Battlecry! that one of the new iconics in this book is repping a New Ancestry described therein? Clockwork? Cogsfolk? Love the Lizardfolk, with the pointy-hooded cloak and the bone armor, Iruxi Necromancer really fits the lore. Was I kinda hoping Hell's Vengeance's Nyctessa would make a comeback? A little, but maybe she'll be a sample build. (Also that Sketch Edition is CHAOS)
"Tar Baphon, what is best in life?"
Wait, does that make Aroden Thulsa Doom??? |