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I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, but I can't find the answer (if there is one) anywhere. What are "Iron Rations"?

Iron rations effectively are trail rations; the term is a real one that describes "a basic amount of food for a person to live on", which IIRC was more commonly-used in the 3.5 days as well.

PCs can't dedicate the time, but what about the magistrates of, say, Magnimar or other cities? (And re: eye for eye, "provided they've only done things that could be undone or repaired"). EDIT: For clarity, I'm talking about, just turning the villains over to the magistrates.

That has the problem of, well - firstly the worldbuilding question of "does this ~medieval/Renaissance-esque society even have institutions devoted to this?", but assuming that's the case, will they listen to random adventurers who march in and say "hi, this guy is an evil cultist, please lock him up for a while and maybe teach him to stop being evil, thanks!"?

Especially for adventures that happen outside of the obvious reach of the law of whatever place they're being brought.

I'd guess that this information is genuinely lost on a lot of Chelaxians, but a fair number of the better-studied clergy and arcanists are almost certainly aware of it, but either assume it doesn't apply to them and theirs because of good old fashioned doublethink or keep mum about the information so it can be used as a tool of propaganda and oppression.

I don't think there really needs to be an explanation for why the information doesn't just disseminate and remove racism.

Look at our world. With the greatest level of access to information and education that has ever been achieved by humanity, there are still massive amounts of completely wrong "common knowledge" floating about. There are still many, many things that only relative experts know, and many fields where the 'lies to children' of simplified explanations create broad groups of people who think they know more than they do.

If we, with all our advantages, can't manage to dispel many of the myths that still hold in our society - things we just flat-out know are nonsense - then I don't see it as in any way odd that a tiny elite who are largely isolated from the majority of the population (how many well-educated nobles, clergymen, arcanists, etc. do you think the average farmer meets?) would be unable to dispel similar myths in their own society. Even if they did know, and want to spread the truth...would any of them care to start that upmountain battle?

I think that issues with finding different sorts of non-fascist-coded evil states and whatnot largely emerge from it being the part 2 of "I will have my cake and eat it too". If one has a setting with Neutral or even Good-aligned feudal or otherwise aristocratic states, then it becomes necessary to either sanitize, ignore or endorse the measures these states would need to take to remain as they are; usually, sanitization is the route taken, because it lets you keep the castles, knights, nobility and so on without having to do the whole 'wait, those peasants are next to starving and these guys are having a banquet? Are...are they the bad guys? Can we hang out with them?' thing.

The problem, though, is that this means the setting has basically pushed a lot of the easiest routes for Evil state-based antagonists out of the way. If you're agreeing that the peasants get plenty to eat, and actually are totally cool with the nobility, and the nobles (at least mostly) live up to the whole noblesse oblige ideal...then, sure, you can run a 'this guy is an Evil Noble who taxes extra hard, resulting in starving peasants!'-type plot, but that's hardly an Evil Empire. And if you put an Evil Empire next to a Neutral or Good aristocratic state, you have to differentiate the two - without making the N/G one seem nonsensical (by, for instance, having the Evil Empire just do all of the historical evils an aristocratic elite would do to stay on top, with the exact same outcome as the N/G country in terms of status quo).

So you naturally develop towards a situation where the Evil Empire is defined by doing a great deal of oppressive, violent evil that is more based on modern perceptions of what Evil Tyranny looks like (which is for good reasons tied to popular perception of fascism specifically and authoritarianism more generally), thus giving birth to the fascist-coded Evil Empire, because they are one of the few things you can easily paint as Definitely The Bad Guy Here, standing right next to a place which has to be carefully scrubbed clean of its own institutional evils to not be evil as well.

In a nutshell: the problem is that most kingdoms, etc. of the past were what we would consider evil, what the rules would classify as Evil, and in order to avoid every game becoming either an eternal holy war against an endless line of evil kingdoms or trading in the entire fantasy aesthetic one must remove said evil from the setting, which naturally becomes an issue when one wishes to have an Evil Empire in the same setting - so you add different evil to that place, to make it distinctive and obviously bad.

A good sidequest can tell your players more about the world. It can give opportunities to develop their characters. To my mind, if players are worrying about what the plot is and where they are relative to it at a meta-level, they're already out of immersion in their characters and their characters' perspective in ways that can lead to problems.

I would say that a potential pitfall of sidequest-heavy design is precisely this kind of immersion-break, but from the other direction: you end up with players who say "alright, this is obviously the hook we're meant to follow. I don't know why we're doing this, though", because in their mind the main plot and its most recent developments should be demanding the PCs' attention. The break emerges from the disconnect of knowing that one's character really should be focusing on this more important thing, but gathering from meta context that the GM (either on their own, or via the AP) is expecting the party now go do something else, creating the "why would my character do this? *I* want to go on this adventure, but they have no reason to" issue.

I've personally run into a similar issue, in Hell's Rebels actually, where I do like the idea of building support for an overthrow...but at the same time, some of the things we ended up doing?

Personally, I feel that the best design fuses the positives of plot-centric and sidequest-heavy designs by making "side"quests influence the main plot. Either directly (for instance, if the central theme of the AP is "build a rebellion, overthrow Barzillai" it could be something which targets a pillar of his ability to exert control over the city) or indirectly, simply via the world being interconnected - like a decision to help a nearby village naturally leading to them informing you of plot-events near them, or sending word that some antagonist is in the area.

To my mind this can be a feature, rather than a bug. Player groups can get tired of "you are starting this AP fully aware of a looming menace that you're going to have to wait sixteen levels to be able to address".

Isn't there another option, though? Namely, to fuse the two approaches - the looming menace is visible, but distant, and early on one focuses on the knock-on effects of their actions. Then one gradually moves from reacting to securing a safe zone, then becoming more proactive, until at the end it's the menace which is on the back foot, defending itself in its sanctum.

This is helped a lot by plots which feature a threat that grows in power over the course of the AP, and has a plan which requires its full focus: you avoid the "why doesn't the villain just nuke the PCs when they first become an issue?" problem, and can form a parallel arc. The party grows stronger as they protect their home, then move out to make safe areas ravaged by the villain, while the villain delves into sources of power that strengthen them at the cost of these effects.

Alternatively, an organization can be the villain from the get-go, without being a distant thing: they are messing with you right now, and you have to stop them! That you can't wipe them out immediately doesn't mean you can't score wins along the way. Kick them out of your village, secure allies so that when they come back you have friends to beat them, fight off their next attempt, then take the fight to them.

Regarding XP

Personally, I've found it quite useful for structuring encounters and so on, but I do feel that it is also a mechanic which can be troublesome in different ways based on the group's level of optimization. If Group A needs a fight worth about 500 XP to challenge them, and Group B at the same level, with the same number of PCs, needs 1,500 XP to challenge them, one can run into opposing problems.

I can't tell you how many times I've written an adventure, sat back and thought "This has every encounter that is necessary to make this story complete", and then realized that it needs like 8 more encounters to fit the word count and XP progression.

Where one group has this kind of problem, another can have the opposite one: if the story demands, for instance, a difficult struggle to fight through several rooms of enemies - to establish a group as a legitimate threat, or explain how they could do things they did (like defeat another group of competent fighters), a Group A could end up at the end of that part of the story with 1,500 XP out of the 2,500 XP they need to level. Meanwhile, a Group B has their GM struggling to cram in more challenge for the same XP, in order to only give them 2,500 by the end of it.

(I'm aware that this thread is old enough that this will hardly be relevant to the OP, but I think it's an interesting bit of discussion I'd like to comment on.)

Assuming that the PCs aren't starting with level 3 WBL (which doesn't change much, honestly), XP scaling will mean that, unless you pump fights, the long-term consequences will melt away by book 3 or 4; they can even just be entirely removed by book 3, simply by removing or downgrading a random encounter or two. Even if you don't, though - at level 10, the PCs have 105,000 XP; to get to level 11 they need 50,000. Having started at level 3 means they only need 45,000; but at level 10, 20k XP (enough for the whole party to get that 5k) isn't a huge deal. With 20k XP you can make a tough fight for a level 10 party.

By the time the PCs hit level 12, though? By that level, a single on-CR opponent gives 19,200 XP. So almost all of the XP they gained from starting at level 3 can be removed just by deleting a single easy fight. And by the time Book 5 rolls around, 5k XP per person is pocket change.

So after the start, you'll have one book where it's fairly relevant (book 2), one book where it makes a small difference (book 3), then one book where it's irrelevant (book 4) - and two books where it's a rounding error.

If you are cranking up fights, then you will need to adjust the entire rest of the AP, yes - so the effective effort cost would be highly variable, depending on just how many changes you would be making otherwise.

In case you're still running the game and may be able to use this for later books - or, worst-case, for anyone else finding this - I've found a bit of a roundabout way to do this.

If you get the program Inkscape, you can open PDFs with it, and then if you select the page, ungroup (default shortcut Ctrl+Shift+G), deselect and then click on the art, you can drag it out to the side, then export it (default shortcut Ctrl+E) as a PNG with a transparent background.

I use this both for NPC are and for making tokens, since I play via VTT, but this is a good way to get clean art in general.

But if it's "the Northern nations play nicely with the Garundi nations in our universe" then that suggests that what happened in Earth history is purely down to individual people being bad, and side-steps the notion that systems, such as colonialism, empire, commerce and religion can all inexorably drive terrible outcomes which is political comment I would disagree with, even if it is said by accident.

Normally, I would agree with you - but keep in mind that this would be in the greater context of Golarion. Golarion is a place, by and large, where systems are downplayed, institutions have an understated influence and the individual or small group reigns supreme. From a historical perspective, it's a place where Great Man Theory is broadly correct, mixed in with very idealist (specifically meaning it as the opposite of materialist, here) forms of historical interpretation. Xin founded Thassilon, which turned evil because a handful of individuals were corrupted, etc.

In that context, saying "Avistani nations didn't do evil things in their relations with Garundi ones because they weren't evil" isn't making a statement on its own, merely repeating what it present elsewhere.

I'd also see the material situation in the setting to run counter to any sort of 'this is the legacy of the Avistani empires' relations with Garund' situation, as the kind of imperialist-colonialist dynamic that emerged historically wouldn't make sense in it. One could comment on the results of states crashing against one another, certainly, but Garund is broadly speaking too strong to simply be the target of imperial/colonial ambition, both in terms of its states and environment (which historically limited colonial/imperial expansion from Europe into Africa massively, even as European empires grew strong enough to create the power imbalance necessary for them to be theoretically able to - and in Golarion would be present in the form of "you sent your colonists into the jungle and then the CR 8 wildlife obliterated them" even if things like malaria aren't).

It doesn’t illustrate it, it misses it point blank. We were talking about farm magic. I haven’t had any players go “I demand access to the NPCs super farm magic powers!”, because they’re not farmers, so not that relevant.

The specific thing you were replying to was:

Sure, Golarion has magic, but the core books are very clear what magic is capable off unless you go superhigh mythic NPC level

So even with 'farm magic' is the origin point, there's two degrees of expansion here - first into 'magic', then into 'rules', at which point the principle of whether NPCs are bound by the same or highly similar rules to the PCs (including e.g. what magic they can do) is coming into play.

And, personally, while the specific example of farm magic hasn't come up, vague plot-powered Mage Handwave magic is something that bothers me, both as a GM and a player, because it puts pressure on the illusion of the game world being, well, a world. At the end of the day we all know that none of it's real, but I like to make as robust an agreed-on false reality as I reasonably can. It's not everyone's cup of tea, of course, and when things are on the chopping block it is sometimes a question between something more fantastical and evocative or something that adheres more to the illusion, but it's what I prefer.

So when I read "NPCs don't have the same rules as PCs", my mind goes to the kind of problems I'd see in that idea taken to its extreme.

I did not. I flat out disagree that creating elements restrict a story, the opposite even.

It seems counterproductive to say "it's fantasy, everything is made up" when you mean "the ability to make things up in service of the story is one of fantasy's strengths, and curtailing it in service of what's at best a lesser good is nonsensical", to me. It's almost like you're strawmanning yourself, when your actual position is a lot stronger.

My response was cromulent. Ixal treats their opinion as fact, when they are usually wrong, on lots of things.

I mean, so does everyone? Despite the effort I put into doing so in my post, "this is just my view and I see how one could have a different one" is not my default method of communication, because it's a lot of energy expended into an implication which should always be there: obviously, I believe what I'm saying is correct, so I will act as though it is.

In your own replies, you do the same. It'd be pointless and silly, but I could go after you for saying my example missed the point, because after all that's just your subjective assessment of the situation. Except, of course, that my own position is the exact same thing, making the exercise pointless aside from creating "gotcha!"s and making people spend more time saying "...but that's just my opinion, of course".

Can the restrictions they want make plot hooks? Sure? Make better plot hooks? Purely opinion, not fact, and not something people agree with.

Part of what brought me to reply in the first place was my beef with what seems to be the underlying mindset of a lot of the "ah, but that's just your opinion!"-type responses I've seen, and with the result of them being brought to bear: a suffocation (to be dramatic) of the kind of discussion I find very interesting. Yes, it's opinion vs opinion on whether a setting that adheres closely to an internal logic based on analogous periods in history (with allowances made for specific changes due to fantastical elements) is better, or if a more fantastical world that cuts away the baggage of history and our world in order to better immerse itself in the things you couldn't get on Earth is actually superior.

But people talking about those, and why they prefer whichever thing they do, is more interesting and more productive than simply chalking everything up to taste and leaving it. At least, that's how I see it - and of course you won't always get the ideal situation (and AFAICT at least some of the 'it's just opinions!' response is in reaction to past experiences of continued discussion going badly), but to me, the idea of learning why people like things I don't like, as well as having to formulate why I like the things I like, is one worth pursuing.

2) NPCs don't have the same rules as PCs.

But you do want them to usually run along the same lines, though. If you toss the rules the moment the PCs aren't involved, you create weird situations in the moment ("wait, how did this level 2 Aristocrat with no connections, no wealth, no divine patron, etc. just resurrect spontaneously, teleport across the continent and incinerate this city?" - an over-the-top example to illustrate the point) as well as lasting changes in how the world is viewed by the players. I assume it's a playstyle difference, but I wouldn't want to play a game where the moment things are out of initiative order or out of line of sight, no rules apply; at least not unless I was specifically only there for a gauntlet of fights with nothing else attached.

We're playing a fantasy game, everything is made up.

Yes, and? I think you misread the argument you're responding to with this.

Just because YOU can't come up with plot hooks in a fantasy setting regarding this doesn't mean they don't exist, your option just has different plot hooks.

This just comes across as pointlessly aggressive. How is this a reasonable response to "this will produce cool new plot hooks"? Ixal having a different view on what would be good for the setting doesn't give you a carte blanche for this kind of 'well, technically, it's not an insult' type of response.

So, I'm currently one of the players of a game of Hell's Rebels that started back in early May; we're currently in the early part of Book 5, and after some talks with my GM I've realized that there are some major differences between how we've been doing things and what the AP seems to expect.

So I thought - hey, let's make a thread about it, and maybe some folks'll be interested? As you can probably guess, this will be spoiling a bunch of stuff up to where we've reached, which is most of the AP by this point.

To start with, our party was odd from the get-go, as we've got:

• A LN Unchained Rogue Ravounel nationalist, played by me.
  
• A CN Kraken Caller Druid who hates Thrune but mostly just likes that she gets to stab people.
  
• A CG1 Alchemist, a Tiefling adopted by the Jarvis family and mostly interested in architectural reform. Had to leave in mid-September - explained it by his family ties forcing him to come along when his whole family left for Egorian.
  
• A...probably CG Brawler, who was involved because his family's boat full of wool had been seized by the Dottari ; had to leave after a few sessions, in book 1.
  
• A LN dwarven Brawler/Fighter who was made to replace the player who left in book 1. Not much of a personality beyond very blunt in-fight banter. Technically a GMPC, but played by me during sessions.
  
• A TN Medium (IIRC) who replaced the Alchemist. He throws starknives and is, despite having the highest Charisma of the PCs, mostly quiet and awkward.

1: On paper. But the player did say "it's ok, I'm Chaotic Good" when the question of executing prisoners came up, so I think in practice he was more CN.

The first thing I noticed was that my PC was the most directly linked to the idea of a rebellion - the others were happy to join in, but mostly seemed like allies of convenience. It didn't really cause problems, because everyone was happy to come along, though. I ended up the leader due to being the most proactive player, so I could keep us moving.

Secondly was how we did things. Seeing Cheliax as a sort of fascist Italy-esque place, I put a premium on secrecy that I later learned the AP didn't seem to expect at all. The documents we found early on were kept either hidden in a library at the Alabaster Academy (where Rexus would work on decoding them) or, for the one bit with a magical aura, hidden in my PC's house (based on the idea of 'if it's dangerous, it's probably better if I'm nearby than if it's just hidden somewhere in the city' and 'we don't want unknown magic in our base').

This continued when we started going on missions - when we hit the Saltworks, we ended up having a slight dilemma after we got one of the Dottari to surrender, because at that point we weren't disguising ourselves...and were accompanied by the singular noble Tiefling in Kintargo. So we killed the prisoner, made it look like he died in the fighting, and from then on went on every mission in cloaks and masks.

In order to be able to take credit for our less illegal actions, we formed an organization called the Silver Doves, which just so happened to be led by my PC (the others were involved, but largely left it to me, and we didn't want everyone to be tied to it, if we were discovered). It sort of fit into the niche emptied by the fall of the Cloven Hoof Society into inactivity after its leader vanished, being a reformist but very vocally non-violent, anti-crime organization. It let us take credit for things like the capture of Varl Wex without outing ourselves as rebels.

All of the illegal things we did, we marked with the symbol of the Silver Ravens, using the Ring of Brand Recognition Ring of Arcane Signets we got early on. It became part of the modus operandi we developed by the time we were going under the Fantasmagorium to take down the redactors stationed there: either disguise ourselves using the raven masks and cloaks, or as relevant Thrune agents, then either sneak or bluff our way in before killing everyone.

In book 2, the GM made some changes to the search for Octavio (mostly reworking it so the most likely outcome wouldn't be us fighting them - he added a fight with a Sarini our Alchemist knew, plus a couple assistants of his, who were harassing the seers) and we had a fun moment with Luculla when we were able to get a peek into the room before they were properly playing the 'damsel in distress' scene. Unfortunately, she beat the Bluff to realize that if she stayed put, my PC was planning on less saving and more Sneak Attacking before she got off the altar.

Moving into book 3, we were stepping up our efforts to start quietly preparing for a larger uprising. We set up a hidden forge in the Lucky Bones, began to organize a militia in the Devil's Nursery, and so on. There was a meeting with our allies, but it didn't accomplish much; the AP-planned alliance with the city's nobles ended up not happening, mostly because we wanted to delay it until allying with them wouldn't be unequal in their favor (i.e. we had enough supporters and had made enough progress with building up forces to be sure we could, if need be, turn on them once they'd served their purpose).

The alliance with Vyre went swimmingly, as did the aquatic stuff (it was after this that our druid realized she could just be a giant octopus on land as well, but at first this was a welcome opportunity for her to unleash her pile of natural attacks for once). Menador Keep caused us some trouble when we ended up caught in a room between several devils, after killing Lucian there (we, as usual, bluffed our way in - we had secret orders, straight from General Shibtek and for Lucian's ears only, to search for a self-destruct mechanism that the rebels might want to use to destroy the keep!), but managed to wriggle out of it with a lucky bluff.

I don't actually remember when we got the magical gifts from Barzillai, but he presented them to the leadership of the Silver Doves due to our use of that group to pin all our legal good deeds on. Being very suspicious (and not having enough knowledge, IC, to know whether or not you could just make a magic item that automatically scries on the wearer), I put forward the idea of immediately auctioning them off as prized gifts from the oh-so-generous Lord Mayor, using the proceeds to fund the charitable activities of the Silver Doves. We did, and later I learned that the original idea of the scene is for the PCs to show up as themselves, in their public-rebel personas.

Our GM reworked the Ruby Masquerade to not use Masque Points, though we did stick to the 'avoid suspicion to keep the initiative' paradigm. After we killed the bone devil in the basement, we jumped the gun a bit by floating up from the orchestra pit to deliver a speech about how Barzillai was planning to kill all the guests (expecting Barzillai, who we noticed looking strange, to be an illusion just like the orchestra had been). Then he proceeded to reveal that his plan was actually to kill all the guests, which surprised us, and we fought our way out of it.

At this point, having the Silver Doves was rather useful, as it meant that all of the goodwill people had for them could be connected to the support we'd built up for the Silver Ravens. This was also, in hindsight, a rather clever move from the personal perspective of my PC - while for OOC reasons I don't expect any kind of competition for leadership from the other party members (ok, for IC reasons, too, varying from personal relationships to 'they are very much not interested in leading'), this does also concentrate a lot of power into her hands, being the one with, effectively, two organizations under her control right as we're toppling the old regime.

This was when our Alchemist left, so the first thing we did when open rebellion erupted was to hit Castle Kintargo, freeing the new PC after we received word he had been part of a failed mission by one of our teams. It was a pretty quick thing to take control of Kintargo, given our preparations and our ability to rip through 1-2 missions per session (each session being a day, Barzillai barely got to do any reprisals) at this point. The nobility, having not been allied to earlier, basically stayed off to the side, and we let them be for the time being, focusing on finishing off Barzillai's loyalists and then clearing the Temple of Asmodeus.

As we took over parts of Kintargo, we used a mixture of pre-existing structures we'd built up in our underground phase (in Redroof and the Devil's Nursery, mostly) and the Ravens/Doves to keep the peace, though it was less necessary than I'd originally worried about. Turns out, Barzillai's supporters were pretty much all dead or fled by the time we only had the Temple left.

After finishing off the Temple (we killed or captured every named NPC in there, plus a few non-named ones), we made plans to call together a council to form a Provisional Government, calling up representatives of as many groups in Kintargo as we could think of, essentially. Due to real-life concerns (the GM has been sick for a while, and once he realized the 'guest list' was going to be 10+ people, he knew he'd need more time to prep it) the meeting was pushed to two weeks in the future, which rather conveniently led to us learning about the Kintargo Contract before making any official decisions about the constitution or organization of Kintargo/Ravounel.

We've just finished contacting and gaining the support of the members of the Board of Governors, planning to elect my PC as Lord-Mayor (which is apparently another major change - I have no idea why the AP expects you to resurrect the vampire you kill under the Opera House and put her back in charge, honestly; especially as the PCs will inherently undermine her authority by existing and being the rebel leaders the Ravens answer to) and use the unanimous support of the Board to rework the Kintargan Constitution.

Given the current situation, it seems like the largest departures of the game from the AP will be just ahead, as we're going to go wading into the politics of revolutionary Kintargo.

Ironically, Jade Regent is from after Serpent's Skull, so as a pair those data points would suggest a growing size of Player's Guides, followed by a shrinking later on. But I decided to go through them all and check. Were the older Player's Guides longer than the newer ones?

Checking PDFs (these page counts include front and back covers, map pages, and all that, so may be slightly off from a count done differently):
- Rise of the Runelords: 20
- Curse of the Crimson Throne: 20
- Second Darkness: 36
- Legacy of Fire: 36
- Council of Thieves: 42
- Kingmaker: 16 (!)
- Serpent's Skull: 12
- Carrion Crown: 15
- Jade Regent: 28
- Skull&Shackles: 30
- Shattered Star: 12
- Reign of Winter: 14
- Wrath of the Righteous: 14
- Mummy's Mask: 14
- Iron Gods: 12
- Giantslayer: 17
- Hell's Rebels: 34
- Hell's Vengeance: 20
- Strange Aeons: 12
- Ironfang Invasion: 12
- Ruins of Azlant: 16
- War for the Crown: 18
- Return of the Runelords: 14
- Tyrant's Grasp: 9
- Age of Ashes: 11
- Extinction Curse: 8
- Agents of Edgewatch: 14

The average length is actually 18.7 pages per Player's Guide.

Based on these numbers, it seems like there isn't much of a Golden Age / downward trend divide; there were some APs which were clumped together and had longer Player's Guides, but unless you count everything from Kingmaker on to be a departure from the norm or an exception to the trend, it seems more like it's fluctuated up and down throughout the years. Which makes sense, as it seems to me like PGs will vary based on the availability of time/energy to put into them, the necessity of the sort of information one would put into it, and so on.

This is clearly the argument of a demonic infiltrator advising weakness and acceptance of lax discipline in the forces of good.

You're right, it'd be far better for the forces of Good to be spearheaded by warriors of righteousness who, the moment they cross into an evil country, immediately butcher their own allies in accordance with local law!

Yqatuba wrote:

Agreed, this attitude makes me want to puke: that whoever's in charge can just do anything they want and no rules apply. As the saying goes: good leaders lead by example. Expecting people to do good and then doing horrible things to anyone who annoys you is NOT LG behavior.

Why do you think there's not a rule/law against being insulting to superiors/hosts/gods (Iomedae is all three) in her own realm? I'd be surprised if there weren't. She's competent to be judge, jury, and enforcer on the spot for violations of the law of her realm. If you're a disrespectful peasant maybe you get three lashes; if you're mythic tier 6, you get a bunch of sonic damage that won't kill you.

Imagine you have a party of PCs arrive in town to speak to a noble about something. They get a meeting, and while waiting in another room of his manor, hear noise from the other room. Investigating, they find the man beating a clearly helpless guest.

Does this sound like the introduction to an LG ally to you?

Besides, as anyone who plays a Paladin in an Evil realm should be ready to argue, a law that clearly serves to beat down the weak for the benefit of an undeserving ruler is no law at all.

I that the easiest alternative is to put a PC on the throne.

I really like this summation of a Paladin. That's exactly how I feel. But funny enough, I differ with most of you on the whole don't need a deity thing...
It has never made any sense to me for a Paladin to get his powers from an "Ideal" or from a generic Lawful Goodness domain. The Paladin needs a "sponsor" for his DIVINE powers in my mind. (I could see Angels doing it for the whole Lawful Goodness domain thing tho...) He needs to tap into some particular type of power source.

I take it you're also nod a fan of deity-less divine casters?

I personally prefer Paladins to be directly empowered by Good, but that may partly be colored by the fact that so many settings seem to go with the "oh but the Good deities have also done evil" or "the True Ancient Secrets You Should Not Know reveal that all divinities are or were actually evil" routes, making a divine-tied character then reliant on, effectively, a corrupt system.

What GRuzom said in the 2nd post.

Backing up doomsaying about the thread going poorly by trying to drag it down away from good discussion is bad form.

In D&D 3.5, a character was not defined until they were able to get prestige classes.

I disagree.

Firstly in terms of definition as a whole - for me, mechanical character definition is not overtly important in the way it's described here.

Secondly, in my experience having played and still playing 3.5, characters are generally defined far before entering a PrC, which is generally used as a part of rather than as the entirety of their identity.

That means my character concept wouldn't be functional between levels 1-5 and MOST GAMES that are played happened to be low level games from levels 1-5.

I don't agree that a concept is non-functional due to not being in a PrC, but I agree that some concepts aren't playable from level 1. Which is, IMO, not a problem.

I'm also not sure if 'most' games are played levels 1-5. The only times I've started games at level 1 in recent memory are PF games, and that's due to Adventure Paths starting there. But there's no data (AFAIK) to back up either point, so...

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In the end I think it's a playstyle difference; some folks prefer to have significant mechanical differences between characters to separate them, while people like me don't think it's necessary to have every concept playable from level 1.

He's described as not wanting to push things from the current shaky state of "so, uh, who's in charge?" into a civil war - it's entirely possible that him seizing the throne would result in the areas of Taldor supporting other claimants to build their own forces (assuming they haven't already) and plunge the whole nation into bloody conflict.

So instead, he wants to gain enough support (and eliminate his main rival) so that, when he moves to take the throne, there's no one to oppose him - or at least, no one said people can look to for leadership. A few splintered nobles will likely just grumble and go along with him, whereas a whole region standing behind a charismatic leader could resist even if he has all the advantages.

Given his plans, he has quite a good reason to not want the nation to exhaust itself in internal conflict, so it makes sense that he's moving slowly. He may also fear that, if he doesn't thoroughly consolidate his power, things could turn against him after he starts his war. And the only thing worse than a civil war is one that starts while your army is invading someone else.

In fact, parts of WftC feel so similar to Dance of the Damned in some places that I can't help but feel that the latter was Paizo testing the waters for the former.

While I can't be sure just how the causal relationship goes, Richard Pett was the writer for Dance of the Damned as well as Scion, Songbird, Saboteur, and AP chapters with big, RP-focused social events seem to be his specialty (see: The Sixfold Trial, Forest of Spirits). I can't say whether he's picked to write AP chapters that are expected to have these, due to his adeptness at writing them, or if he manages to work them into those he's given.

In short: Turns out a lot of these similar-seeming adventures are all written by the same guy.

What I'm curious about is the insistence that books are being "invalidated" or similar. Maybe it's just that I've spent the overwhelming majority of my gaming "career" playing a dead edition, but unless you only do society play, it seems like there's nothing about a PF2e that would do that.