Search Posts
Book of the dead I think would be a pretty easy remaster I don't recall a ton of stuff that would be a big problem to change from OGL. Aside from the Lacedons and the entire two page spread and archetype on Ghoul lore, the Zombie Owlbear, Orcus, Hallowed Necromancer having multiple prerequisites that don't exist any more, and potential adjustments to the undead benefits rules to work with the new Sanctification system…
Now I'm picturing a whole party of multiclass Necros scrambling to find identifiable miniss/tokens/pawns to distinguish whose thralls are whose. "For the third time, the blue mancala beads are my zombies, your ghosts are the clear mancala beads!" Presumably the Grim Fascination bonuses to thralls won't be included, which leaves it a bit of an open question how to flavor multiclass thralls -- can you really say these are spirits if they don't get any benefits to being spirits?
If it retains the lore from the playtest that you prepare your spells from a "Dirge", a dark song of deathly power that resonates with your soul, I do think there's some fun idea potential in how you conceptualize that tune. Are there dramatic classical strings and organ to score your gothic Dhampir master of spirits? Jangling xylophone for a Dance of Skeletons? Thundering heavy metal for a leather-clad Talos punk attacking people with arcs of blood? Or an ill-tuned banjo for your too-clever swampland hick and their band of bog bodies?
Not sure this one's ever happening, unfortunately, given that a handful of monsters from the bestiary have already been remastered in Monster Core 2. The remasters have tried to keep as close as possible to the page count of the original and that's 10 pages of content or so that's already printed elsewhere. The lore changes meant it was gonna be one of the biggest revisions for the Remaster, so maybe they're just clearing up space for other revisions, but the fact that it's already being cannibalized for Core books makes me think it may be going the route of Secrets of Magic. Maybe some of this stuff will get into Impossible Magic, which would make a certain amount of sense in conjuntion with the Necromancer, but I think whatever is getting remastered is getting divvied up between other books.
To put things in context, just glancing at the timeline in World Guide… Pallemi might not know what Elves are. They mostly left Golarion during Earthfall, over 5,000 years before his birth, and didn't return until about 2,000 years after his mortal body died. Other things Pallemi would not know about:
Ooh, I love the Fleshwarp full body horror idea. Could go for the Frankenstein/Charnel Creation look, flicking off fingers and body parts that grow into full facsimilies of their component corpses. Or the Fleshcrafted goopy horror angle that pairs well with some of their weirder ancestry feats.
Remaster also adds the Hellknight-Errant option, so there's support for a character who has the training but has become disillusioned with the orders themselves. I'll admit I've also been itching for a little published guidance on alternate sanctification systems for homegames, though that does seem like one of those things where the printed guidance would be pretty much exactly what you'd probably figure out on your own.
I do like a fish out of water character, a four thousand year old fisherman/hermit researcher from eastern Garund probably has some faulty ideas about the modern state of the world! Can't wait to see how he interacts with the motley crew of Impossible Iconics.
Your bloody skeleton idea immediately made me think of the skeleton of a mighty sorcerer, killed stripped and reanimated by a rival mage, but some stain of their old bloodline-driven magic remained and eventually grew into a different kind of power the undead can barely control. My first thought when I read about the blood subclass was an Orc sworn to the cult of Nulgreth, the Blood God, Orc god of rage. When Orc gods started getting replaced left and right in the lead up to Godsrain, he realized he had been hoping his own god would get got, and abandoned the church to explore the wider world beyond mindless bloodshed, and what part his sanguine magic could play in it. I also think it's fun to play with different cultrually-specific undead. A Golden Road/Fantasy Arabic Necromancer with Ghoul-like thralls and minions. An Osirian embalmer who conjures pseudo mummies drawn from the memories of his long career. A minatan jangling with jars of blood to contain their myriad polongs. Once again I lament the lack of a Fantasy Ireland in Golarion, but I suppose a dullahan conjurer could turn up anywhere (maybe Andoran for the Ichabod Crane vibe). Fun fact, some historical Korean kingdoms conceptualized royal heridity as a factor not of blood, but of bone -- perhaps a Tian Hwan noble exhibiting the might of their legacy? A Samsaran who's gone and dug up their own former bodies for bones, figuring who could be a more consenting donor than themselves? An Awakened Parrot or Tidepool Dragonet who's become the fulcrum of a crew of ghostly pirates to which she was a pet in life. A Holy Nagagi who weaves the shed skins of great Naga overlords into Hollow Serpent-like servants.
Can we please all take a deep breath and maybe also take the necromancy ethics debate to its own thread? It's moved well past discussing Impossible Magic at this point. This damn thread has barely been about the book in the title since that errata dropped months ago. Much as Necro is my favorite of the two, I'm curious how the Runecarver shook out. I don't remember the playtest for that one as well but it seemed a little strained on hands and action economy. I suspect a pretty big overhaul is coming and I'm fascinated to see what shape it takes.
I feel like this is a problem for you to decide in your homebrew setting/version of Golarion. In the official setting, fiends and undead are and going going to continue being treated as "typically sinister barring unique exceptions" because it smoothes over some moral quandaries in regard to the four or five physical fights the rules of the game expect you to engage in a day, and makes the storytelling easier. Littering a dungeon with murderable Qlippoth gets complicated very quickly if we have to interrogate the personal moral dilemmas of every single horror from beyond the veil. The justifications the folks at Paizo have jury-rigged together over the years may or may not be satisfying to you, but at the end of the day they are just narrative justifications some writer came up with. You are no more beholden to them in your home game than Paizo is beholden to your opinion on the stuff they made up. Relitigating this topic on the forums once a month as though it actually means anything accomplishes very little. I'd be more interested to hear about your setting's more nuanced cosmology of undeath, or your homebrew Sanctification variant. Why don't we all try to exhibit a little creativity rather than just going back and forth with the same talking points about a work of fiction again? Personally, I've been tinkering with a concept I'm calling "The Black Gnosis," the idea that undeath is one of several paths toward a kind of enlightenment, of tapping into some deeper cosmic Truth. Hence the ubiquity of the Necril language, something woven into reality that those on the path can access regardless of precise method or location. The common forms of predatory undead are effectively failed states of elightenment, those who gave in to the temptations of the boons of its earliest stages.
Draconic Codex's Otilaz seems like a good pick, a god of death weirdly at odds with Pharasma -- itself a sort of quasi-undead godly stillborn reanimated by its own will. Allows holy and harm, divine skill is occultism, and all its cleric spells are on the occult list. It demands you accept the inevitable and prohibits seeking immortality and stagnacy, but offers no specific anathema towards creating undead. Also lends an immediate aesthetic: draconic, neotenous thralls in the image of your master.
I love scifi stuff that takes a cool idea from real science and just pushes it further.The opposite is fun too. Sometimes I find something in Starfinder that sounds kind of crazy, then try to find the science to back it up, or at least what inspired it. Doing that for the star in the Libration of Locus 1, lead to some interesting finds. My favorite is a real 2-sided star where its hydrogen and helium have separated to create 2 separate faces of the star. Well that's a fascinating tidbit, thanks for pointing it out. It's been appropriately dubbed "Janus," for anyone curious.
My first thought with the blood subclass was an Orc Acolyte of Nulgreth, "The Blood God." Probably Reaper so I can swing around his signature greataxe alongside my bloody orcish horde. A Holy Necromancer is interesting, the sample case is presumably that art in the article of a dwarf conjuring her ghostly ancestor, but it'd be fun to work out how to flavor that with the other subclasses. Gilded skeletons modeled on saintly reliquaries, sanctified mummies instead of vulgar zombies?
…Okay you didn't need to specifically go in and add [sic] to all my spelling errors, the post is two up, people can see it for themselves.
Yeah, I'm a little dissapointed too because I thought this might be a sign there was a new construct ancestry in this book, similar to how Grimmyr/Jotunborn shook out. Doesn't sound like we're getting any new ancestries in this one, but some official openning up of Automaton lore is welcome. The "Jistkan Soul Cage" flavor is fun but might feel a little restrictive to some players, official recognition that the same technology has arrisen with different origins and designs gives people more licence to be creative with it.
Also - if I'm not mistaken this is our first rare iconic! Truly exciting possibilities moving forwards if this keeps going.By Ancestry, yes! Though technically Nahoa was the first Rare Iconic because of Exemplars being a Rare class ;P Actually, Jotunborn are also rare, so alas that distinction goes to Grimmyr. Love Pallemi! Robots so often get used for allegory for neurodivergence, it's fun to see a character who's clearly implied to actually as much going back to when he was still human!
Counter-evidence to Iruxi being endothermic, their writeup in 1e's Monster Codex explicitly contrasts them to "wambloods," meaning other, non reptillian humanoids outcompeting them.
Conrasu are by the most WEIRDEST playable race. In Pathfinder, absolutely, but I dare say Starfinder has set the goal to one up them, what with the tiny vainglorious suns-with-a-face and fire-breathing crabfolk and four-eyed stony land-squid.
Rival Academies implied there might be a new Rakshasa heritage, a character describes themselves as a "Janavata," a rakshasa who's given up their evil nature and been reincarnated as a mortal with animalian traits. Whether this exists alongside a new Beastbrood Nephilim lineage or replaces it I can't say. The latter might be defunct with Rakshasa being spirits instead of fiends now, but the same is true for Asura and faultspawn have been remastered (thought Asura being spirits seems to have been a last minute decision, given WoI explicitly refers to them as fiends and Battlecry! includes them in the army of fiends Incarnate spell, even using the legacy name for the specific creature that got changed in MC2 only four months later).
Huh. The idea that iruxi are from the endothermic branch of reptiles, much like Dinosaurs, is... interesting. Oh that makes sense actually, their lore does strongly emphasize the "Legacy of Ancient Beasts" angle, plus Droon being all full of dinosaurs. That does lead to the question of why so many of their heritages are direct references to species of modern lizard like chameleon and frilled lizards.
From a comment I made when I first noticed it, the preview pages of High Seas went up on or before April 21. That's about ten weeks prior to release. Even if we're going by the street date rather than the GenCon early release, if Impossible Magic were following the same pattern, its previews would already have been up for a while. Which is a very drawn out way of saying: I'unno. When somebody at Paizo feels like it, I guess. Might be they're holding back spoilers, might be they're more willing to put out previews for Lost Omens books because there aren't the sketch and pocket covers to fill out the docket. Incidentally, this prompted me to discover Bastion of Blasphemies has preview pages out! There's new Sahkils!
Bit of new info in yesterday's Paizo Live: We're getting ship combat rules! I wonder if they'll use any of the same ideas as the starship rules due out in Tech Core, might be a preview. Other reveals, "Dashing" class feats, good for Swashbucklers but available to other classes -- the sort of cut a rope and swing across the battlefield, slashing as you go antics you expect of high flying naval adventures, but specifically designed to still be useful if you have to head inland. We're also confirmed getting some new familiars or animal companions, with the example being given of a "golden ermine" -- some kind of white stoat with a golden tail? The rest was mainly stuff we already knew -- gushing about the writeups on Mediogalti and the Mordant Spire. Ivis was also deliberately quiet during the Q&A about who or what the seaweed creature on the table of contents page was, there's apparently some spoilers there! One more month everybody!
Yeah, they specifically started talking about Necromancer as a wholistic class just after anouncing the Remaster because "Necromancy Wizard" had to stop being a thing.
I was hoping Nyctessa would get to shine as the iconic, especially after Wake the Dead, but I do like Usharak and his story. He's a refreshing take on a necromancer, and it works well with how integrated it is into iruxi traditional practices. Ditto. I'd put money down she'll be one of the Sample Builds though, and I could see her turning up in the narrative of IM.
I thought there was a difference in the "bug" in the upper left corner of Lost Omens covers that reads "Second Edition" -- that Remastered ones were green and Legacy were parchment, but it seems that's not universal as the Tian Xia books and Divine Mysteries all have the paper texture despite being Remaster books. I may have been thinking of how the Rulebook line all has the same green bug post-remaster.
I saw a post somewhere a long time ago that suggested reflavoring PF Bugbears as brood parasites -- like cuckoos, they sneak their young into the…litters(?) of goblins and hobgoblins, who then use their greater strength and ruthlessness to outcompete their "siblings" until they get all hairy and sneak away.
Oh all that green material is glass! From the bookcover I assumed it was jade. Love the backstory, and love the design! He's so wiry and lean, I feel like lizardfolk designs tend to lean more stocky and muscular, Usharak feels so gaunt in a way that's both very "dark spellcaster" and totally reptillian.
Eh, goblins are the only ones with that manic edge, though. Firestarters, bad singers, hates animals seemingly just for being trappings of organized society. They're the ones with the strongest link to Lamashtu. Bugbears as described are antisocial, yes, but they're not driven my mayhem in the same way, just an enjoyment of fear and pain.
I remember when one of the microfiction blogs in the lead up to Tian Xia World Guide came out, the author showed up in the blog comments (RIP) to talk about their love of Gong'an, chinese mystery fiction about Holmesy government magistrates. Seems like we're getting a whole AP in that vein! Sounds like the main action of the "present" timeline will be your lawyer arguing on your behalf, which the PCs will have some influence over while observing their right to remain silent. Presumably casting mid-rank spells in court will be frowned upon.
Divs are still fiends as of MC2, but otherwise I'm hoping for a little of all of the above. The excerpt Eleanor read in that livestream seemed to be a bit of golden-road folk religion, which is always fun flavor. There's a lot of ambiguity around Spirits in the setting. A couple states in Tian Xia World Guide list "Spirit worship" among their religions, but little detail is given on that aside from a brief blurb on "The Way of Spirits" under Philosophies. We've got monster stats for Kami, but how does that integrate with culture? What the hell is the deal with "Spirit Guides" and how specifically do they relate to Sarkoris and God Callers, or with other regions? I'm really looking forward to this one. Fantasy tends to deal with religion in a very top down manner; these are the big psudo-Abrahamic capital-g Gods. But all those Venerated Ancestors and River Gods and Folk under the Hills give a setting a much more lived-in feel.
To actually answer your question, take whatever bonuses to athletics you can, use Runic Weapon your first round to get into your stance, at least until you get handwraps. The item bonus from the spell will also boost your disarm, trip, and (as long as you're in stance) grapple actions with the fabric due to its traits. Deal bursts of spellstrike damage where you can, but keep in mind, your niche is control. Swipe out your enemies' feet, steal their gear, bind them up with Home Among Mulberry Leaves; every action you steal from your enemies is invaluable, be it to stand, draw a new weapon, or escape. Keep in mind which of those has the move or manipulate trait and if any of your allies have Reactive Strike. Use your imagination as you describe your maneuvers, the cooler your description the more fun it will be for you and the rest of your table. There's also always utility in bumping your Int for recall knowledge (as well as spellcasting), or your Cha for other skill actions. Important: talk to your GM about homebrewing a basic Class DC for the Magus, RAW it's still from the premaster before they even gave those to casters, the critical specialization effect you get from Mauler won't technically have a DC to roll against otherwise. This will almost certainly get fixed in Impossible Magic -- for now you can either use your spell DC (a couple level one feats allow this with specific weapons) or come up with independent scaling (maybe look at Starfinder Classes for inspo). Frankly, unless you guys level up like crazy, IM will probably be out before it's a problem if you're starting at level one. Be prepared for larger enemies -- Those athletics maneuvers need to target something not too much bigger than you. To start out you should think about being a large ancestry, a Hungerseed with Oni Form, and/or just having Titan Wrestler, which you could get as a Pitborn Nephilim to start but should pick up later otherwise. You should also grab Enlarge later on (another good option to start out combat with once you get handwraps better than your current Runic Weapon rank). Don't let these guys discourage you from leaning into the fun character you want to play just because it might not live up to some Big Big Damage Number that exists in their heads. Have fun whacking people with the curtains!
They also slipped in that the narrative angle of the book will be "The Search for Nex." It was specified that some feature that Summoner and Magus both had would see an improvement, which has left a lot of people speculating it's a change to wave casting.
That is kind of the central conceit of Golarion, Gods of a cosmological scale all have a vested interest in it. Normally that also means they can't exert too much direct influence on it -- meddling could mean fights and fights could mean destruction and destruction means release. It seems Asmo is testing the limits of that.
I hope we will see the sorcerer bloodlines that were not updated/reprinted: genie, shadow, psychopomp. Maybe even the two from APs (phoenix and harrow). While I think the nymph one could be in Feybound. This was also my thought, though I could also see Shadow coming in the Nidal section of LO Infernal Inheritance (and not a minute too soon either way, it's one of the subclasses most in need of remastering)
To be fair, Azaersi was herself a Goblinblood Wars veteran before fleeing into the mountains of Molthune, very possibly these two revolutions stem from the same tradition of goblinoid patriotism, one branch of which just had to travel a bit before finding fertile ground. Oprak also sounds like it's more inviting toward a variety of "monstrous" peoples from across the Inner Sea, a pointed "come one come all, here you can be normal" Statue of Liberty kind of message. Meanwhile from the sound of it Scorchome is more the goblinoids of the Chitterwood declaring themselves to the world, a bit more ethnocentric. Different national vibes.
I have to imagine "moving out of Cheliax" is going to be significantly more popular than it has been. What's Varian Jeggare up to anyway? I've got a pitch, free to use: the coloquial term for Chelaxian Expats and Refugees, "Bats." As in, "out of Hell."
I was gonna say, the Archetypes section is failry general, and there's no column for it in the table. A basic blurb on incorportating Pure Legion Enforcer, Twilight Talon, Steel Falcon, even a Hellknight-Errant seems relevant.
No mention of what elements are thematically most appropriate.The sidebar about Devils strongly suggests "not fire" at least. Water seems like a fairly strong choice, given the Aura Junction would protect any troop you're commanding from hellfire. Good choice for the Embargo Survivor background, a waterbending sailor who happened to stop in the wrong port at the wrong time and just wants their ship back, dammit!
Definitely seconding exploration and archaeology with Kaiju thundering overhead, we're overdue for an open-world, venturing into the wilds campaign. Plus I could play Nagaji-Daniel Jackson From Stargate and that delights me suddenly.
Yeah, Unfurling Brocade specifically feels more combat maneuver focussed. The Magus' damage output is gonna come mostly from spellstrike, not the weapon itself anyway, the versatility of your qi infused fabric gives you control options on the turns in between spellstriking. So after initially getting into your stance, it's one turn of move, spellstrike with reach; then next turn move, recharge or cast Home Among the Mulberry Leaves, and either trip, grapple, or disarm in whatever order. Repeat and fill out with awesome descriptions of your magical sleeves messing people up like the Wuxia villain you are.
Fire giants are also large, but there I think the problem isn't their size, it's their immunities. Them and frost giants, I worry knocking them down to the standard 1/2 level resistance would be unsatisfying, though a few ancestries do evoke being a somehow changed example of their kind to lose their iconic abilities (e.g. Dragonet). As far as Ogres go, I could see there being a growing population of more stable Ogres, between Oprak and the handful who get goaded into joining smallfolks' armies over the years. Plus, with Oni no longer associated with giants and the "Ogre Mage" title dead, there's an open niche for the Puss in Boots-style smart (possibly-shapeshifter) Ogre. Maybe some sort of evolutionary holdout from before Ghol-Gan's collapse and the broader population turned to barbarism or something?
An invasive species refers specifically to one that harms its new environment, typically by being over-adapted to a region without the predators that evolved alongside it or the harsh conditions it developed around, resulting in overpopulation and/or depletion of native resources. If the skunks are running rampant because Avistani wolves are completely unadapted to their defensive spray and they're overhunting certain small animals, they're invasive. Otherwise its just an introduced species.
It has occured to me how much a PF Battledancer Swashbuckler would benefit from being paired up with this class. You need to Perform to get your panache? Here, now it also does one of eight other things!
I think it's the nature of Occult magic to be a bit more ambiguous in its origins, and the Psychic feels the most centrally occult of all the classes. Are Psychics born? Cultivated? Created? Some combination of the above? Yes. No. Maybe so. The nature of being so occult in its origins is that we do not and can not know with certainty.
Well this is unexpected, I'd failed to notice Hell's Destiny got moved up a month. Makes sense to have a shiny new release out for Free RPG Day.
I mean, they've said outright that dungeon crawls sell well, but if you're complaining that they don't ever stretch creatively I'll remind you there's a whole high-level campaign about producing an opera.
See, I feel like we shouldn't necessarily conflate Charisma with confidence -- it is by far the stat with the most narrative nuance. A "mousey and shy" person might still be beautiful, and compelling, and have a subtle grasp of how to influence people, even if they're disinclined to force their presence on to others. And on the flip side, a loud and brash person is not necessarily pleasant to be around.
Even in those narrative rolls, in context this feels more like it's centered on force of personality and wit, rather than some kind of strategic intellect -- the rolls mechanic emphasizes that the class is an improvisational storyteller, weaving circumstance into spectacle. It's not like the commander, drilling your allies in practical maenuvers they have to execute, your potent occult will clads people in narrative archetypes -- whether they like it or not. Also, this is coming off the heels of two Int-based SF classes, and they can't very well make the whole game brainiacs.
Every loyal Hellknight in a hundred mile radius of your approximate location, recieving a simultaneous Sending: "Find these infidels wherever they hide and -- oh, Prince of Darkness, it's everywhere! Scrub harder you peasants! -- kill them with extreme prejudice, whatever it takes!"
|
