avatarless's page

The problem is that the word "Occult" has lots of cultural expectations that are contrary to the cultural expectations associated with the word "Bard". Although occult works swimmingly with all those classes in the "Occult Adventures" book.

Mystic/Mysticism would have worked better for the fourth source of magic. The Bard, the classes in Occult Adventures and even a big pile of not yet released psionic classes would make sense with a Mystic magic source.

Good to see at least one goblinoid/stereotypical evil bipedal humanoid race as a core race, although now I'm shipping for orcs, hobgoblins, gnolls, lizardfolk, ratfolk and kobolds too -- perhaps in the first World Guide.

Moar options is betters!

Orcs, Ratfolk, Revenants, Neanderthals, Gorillas, Lizardfolk and Utahraptors (medium size Velociraptors).

Give me a couple more minutes and I'll give you a few hundred more requests. :)

I'd like to see Performance, as well as Deception, Diplomacy, Intimidation, as attack modes in a social combat system. Defenses would be opposed checks of Discipline (opposes Performance), Intuition (opposes Deception),
Judgement (opposes Diplomacy) and Spirit (opposes Intimidation).

Discipline, Intuition, Judgement and Spirit would be Wisdom skills.
Examine, Notice, Search and Survival would be Perception skills.

Things I'd like to see for the Ancestry feats:

1) Front load characters with Ancestry feats, dialing back the number of class/general feats if needed.

2) Split Ancestry feats into Biology based feats and Cultural based feats. Biology based feats would only be selectable at 1st level.

3) Increase the number of Ancestry feats at 1st level to at least three Ancestry feats.

4) Increase the number of Ancestry feat choices available.

5) Add ancestries for Orcs, Gnolls, Kobolds, Hobgoblins, Drow, Tengu, Tiefling, Aasimar, Neanderthals, Lizardfolk, Kitsune, Tanuki, Gorillas, Orangutans, Constructs, Gremlins, Revenants, Ratfolk, Lycans, Dhampirs, Svirfnebelins and Utahraptors.

I suspect it's to discourage the silliness of a character using a longbow indoors or in a dungeon without giving the weapon such a significant Bulk that characters would be reluctant to carry one at all.

If they want to discourage bow usage in a dungeon, all they need to do is take the ceiling into account. What if when using a bow indoors, you have a maximum range of one range increment per 10' ceiling height, otherwise you are bouncing arrows off of the ceiling.*

*Actual numbers subject to change based on someone less lazy than me running the muzzle velocity of a bow and the arc of the arrow's flight vs. gravitational drop.

What if Ancestries and Background conferred signature skills? That would allow for some customization of skill lists.

What about the Monster Hunter feat?

The Monster Hunter feat chain is pretty much the only Ranger class feats which work for a two-handed melee ambush monster.

Granted this is a playtest and thus options are restricted for more thorough testing, but the Ranger either needs more class options to enable a two-handed wilderness melee special forces sort of ranger or archetype support or else a cross class dip via the fighter dedication.

Hopefully more class feat options will be added for all classes.

I wish they would have jettisoned the ancestry specific ridiculous "weapons" like Gnome hooked hammer and Orc knuckle dagger.

Replace that noise with actual, historically used weapons such as the estoc, the exotic polearms (bec de corbin, bill, bill-guisarme, lucerne hammer), testubo, naginata, sansetsukon and other Asian feudal weapons.

At the very least mention Arming Sword, Side Sword and cultural variations of the swords in the descriptions for shortsword, longsword, bastard sword, greatsword, falchion and scimitar.

Paladin could use a Crusader archetype conferring smites, enhanced abilities versus Oath targets and a nearly reckless offensive skew.

I'd suggest promoting Perception to full Ability Score status with associated skills of Examine (identify item, appraise item, detect forgery), Search (locate object/items, find tracks, find traps, find hidden/secret doors), and Notice (passive perception).

That way Perception could be increased like any other ability score.

Is there anything to substitute a general feat for Ancestry or Class specific feats? Can class dedication archetypes replace a class feat?

For example, I'm theorycrafting a ranger build emphasizing two handed melee weapons (i.e. The Justicar) and I don't want any of the animal companion, two weapon fighting or ranged weapon because they don't fit my character concept. Sure I can pick something useless with regards to my character concept, but I'd rather not waste the feat slot.

Ideas?

+1 to allowing a Dexterity or Strength key score choice.

A key ability score of Strength would be useful if you want to build a switch hitter like Aragorn -- equally adept with Longbow for ranged combat and Andúril for melee.

And a key ability score of Strength is almost required to emulate The Justicar from the Paul Kidd D&D novels -- laying waste with righteous fury with Benelux (a prissy, lawful good, intelligent two handed sword forged from Positive Material Plane matter).

Hey there all,

Interesting to see many of the same debates we had internally playing out here on this issue. I want to point out that humans have a few mechanical benefits that are not shared by any other ancestry. Two floating ability score boosts with no flaw is the best in the game when it comes to build flexibility (compared to the two set boosts, one floating boost, and one flaw of the others). When you look at a feat that gives you other perks on top of that (better speed, languages, vision, or skill use), the costing really does start to even out.

As for orcs, there are a handful of Orc feats in the book to make half-orc perfectly viable. I am not sure that there is much value in debating the presentation at the moment (they are an addendum at the end of the human entry) as that is all going to change quite a bit in the final book. We will certainly be asking a number of questions during the playtest about this presentation and the way these half-ancestries are included in Pathfinder.

If Human ancestry wasn't mechanically superior to other ancestries you would not have to hobble the half-* races for balance. Humans are more flexible than the other ancestries, but in my opinion should not be objectively better than the other ancestries.

If you limit Humans to CON+2 (they are tough compared to the other animals on spaceship Earth), CHA+2 (they are relentlessly social), WIS-2 (they are pretty foolish too -- just check the news) and a floating +2 and dial back the bonus feats to match the other races. Then Half-Orcs should be able to select any ancestry feat from the Human, Half-Orc and Orc lists, excepting any feats which say Human only or Orc only. Half-Elves would work similarly.

Spell classes seeming to break the game again. Because of course they will.

If casting a spell ate into the resonance budget that would balance the bugbears out of the caster/martial disparity.

Doktor Weasel wrote:

Although I wonder if all (non-human) ancestries are going to use the +2 to one physical, one mental and -2 to one stat formula.

The system is strongly predicated on the stat mods for Ancestries being +,+,-, and then a floating +. I'd bet good money that won't change, pretty much ever.

The one physical/one mental thing, though, that might be more variable. I could easily see Hobgoblins as +Dex, +Con, and then maybe -Wis, for example.

I see Hobs as CON+2, CHA+2, WIS-2 -- the same way I see Humans.

Issues and comments about Resonance:

1) I see the desire to make Charisma not a dump stat by tying it to Resonance and I agree with the ends, but not the means.

A better way to make players not dump Charisma would be to make it more useful via in choices and game effects that expand player agency. What about adding a social combat system to Pathfinder that is as flexible and nuanced as the mundane combat system? With different attacks, defenses and options with varying resource costs, such a social combat system would be rewarding to play.

2) I agree that there needs to be some boundaries on how much magic a player can use to rein in the absurdity of 12 cloaks, 11 helms, 10 belts ... and a Phoenix in a Treant sort of equipment loadouts and the monstrous complexity and degenerate emergent effects that much swag brings to combat.

Players do deserve options, but when the game table is sagging under the weight of their amended character sheets and everyone suffers from analysis paralysis, it's too much. Yes, the complexity pain point here is very player and table dependent so there should be some guideline in the GM Handbook allowing for house rule Resonance calibration, like the ability score starting point buy limits can be adjusted game reasons.

3) I like the idea of some sort of mechanical limit to the magic equipment and gold piece limits are not getting the job done. However, Resonance is very Gamist in feel which I don't like -- I prefer Simulationism respecting Narrativism as long as Gamism doesn't suffer. But the Resonance Limit will need a boatload of game play, analysis and feedback to dial in, so please don't deploy it half-baked.

To that end, because it will take considerable effort to calibrate Resonance, I hope the designers have understudy game rules to deploy if the new starring rules flub it.

4) But the thing that really irritates me as a Purple Prose encrusted Wordsmith of Lovecraftian non-Euclidian perspective is that the word Resonance is a semantically bad word choice to describe the magic item limit. Resonance means positively reinforcing, but the rule concept is inherently a negative feedback loop! A better word would be Dissonance.

Secane wrote:

Emeric Tusan wrote:

LeesusFreak wrote:

KitsuneWarlock wrote:

LeesusFreak wrote:

What happened to sense motive? What umbrella is it under?

If I had to guess, I'd say Deception.

Unless your Intimidation is your resistance to being intimidated, that doesn't seem continuous...

It is rolled in to perception or at least it was at Paizo con.

Perception is gone from the list above?

So the question is where does Sense Motive and Perception fall into now?

Perception isn't a skill, it is just something every character has.

IMO, Perception should be promoted to Ability Score with associated skills of Search, Notice and Examine.

So I'm not interested in alignment issues or mechanical issues (though some mechanics will come up) - this is purely about thematics within Golarion with the information we know.

A Paladin has been described as:

Paladin Blog wrote:

divine champions of a deity

How does this not equally describe a Cleric?

So the traditional response (I would guess) to this is that Clerics are the "spell-casters" to the Paladins "warrior."
The issue I see with this is that Clerics have always been warriors. There is no "wizard-like robed priest" class; there is only the "wears armor and wields their deity's favored weapon in battle" class (Archetypes aside).
(I'd even say that the only reason we ever saw the Warpriest come into existence is that the Cleric was simply bad at doing it's job, through no fault of it's own, because of combat mechanics; ie, the buffing took too long in actual combat because PF combat is extremely quick. Were it not for that particular unfortunate circumstance, the Cleric would fill it's role just fine and Warpriest would have been unnecessary.)

And now, with BAB being replaced with Proficiency, the gap closes even more!

I understand that mechanically they work differently and Paladins have an extra code they must follow, but thematically, in-world, they seem to serve the exact same purpose; champion the cause of their deity. And they do it in essentially the same way; a combination of spells and fighting.

What I'd like to see for the divine powered character classes:

Paragon as the heavy armored martial with a bunch of extraordinary, supernatural divine abilities and little to no spell casting. Paragons would be a Deity's elite troops. The current Paladin would be a LG aligned Paragon. Paragons of other alignments for non-LG aligned Deities would work similar to the Paladin.

Cleric would be a Divine "gish" class mixing martial ability and spells (Vancian casting, not spontaneous) with good abilities in both power silos -- more of a Warpriest than the conventional Cleric. While Clerics would be good martial combatants and effective spellcasters, Paragons would be better in pure martial combat ability. Similarly, while Clerics would be effective spell casters, but not as powerful as a Deity's Oracles and Priests.

Inquisitor would be the Divine "expert" class mixing effective martial combat skills with exploration, investigation and utility skills. Inquisitors would be a Deity's troubleshooters and investigators with limited extraordinary abilities and spells. Inquisitors would be spontaneous casters.

Oracles and Priests would be a Deities primary spellcasters with moderate exploration skills and limited martial abilities. Oracles would have more supernatural Deity granted boons while Priests would be primarily spell casters. Oracles would be spontaneous casters, while Priests would use Vancian casting.

avatarless wrote:

Deranged Stabby-Man wrote:

And Yeah, Paladins shouldn't gain Legendary Armor INSTEAD OF The Fighter. If it was the case where Fighter gained Legendary Weapons AND Armor, I'd be fine with it, but this just feels weird.

I'd like to see the Fighter get:

Best Armor abilities
Best Weapon abilities
Some usefulness in the exploration, problem solving and social combat silos.

I'd like to see the Paladin get:

Second Best Armor abilities, situationally bolstered by divine abilities (heals and protections)
Second Best Weapon abilities, situationally bolstered by divine abilities (smites and and enemy challenge/aggro abilities)
Some usefulness in the exploration, problem solving and social combat silos.

This goes along with some other ideas I have liked, but I do think paladins / warpriests thematically work as being super good at armor. I think ultimately a good setup would be:

• Fighter gets legendary armor and (multiple) legendary weapon groups. They are good all around at nonmagical combat.
  
• Paladin / Warpriest gets legendary armor and (one) master weapon group, bolstered by their abilities. So when "turned on" they can still be better at tanking than a fighter.
  
• Ranger gets (one) legendary weapon group and master armor (but not heavy armor), bolstered by their abilities, so when doing "their thing" they can be better at offense. But the fighter is still better all-around at non-magical combat when the ranger isn't "turned on."
  
• Berserker (because feh to the increasingly out of place name "barbarian") gets master weapon and their choice of either master armor (Viking) or master unarmored (Conan). These are bolstered by their rage so when "turned on" they are amazingly tough and powerful, but in a way orthogonal to how Fighters operate.
  
• Monk gets legendary unarmed and legendary unarmored, so they approach the Fighter but in an orthogonal way more dependent on their unique talents.

And of course, all of them should be decent...

You said it much better than I did, kudos! Also, renaming Barbarian to Berserker is long overdue.

Perhaps the Paladin/Warpriest of varying, but Deity respecting, alignments could be renamed to Paragon (as someone suggested earlier in the thread). If we get this suggested Paragon class into the playtest soonish, maybe it can make the PF2 GA release.

With respect to tradition and those who believe Paladins must be Lawful Good, we should exclusively refer to Lawful Good Paragons as Paladins. Hopefully everyone can live with that idea.

And Yeah, Paladins shouldn't gain Legendary Armor INSTEAD OF The Fighter. If it was the case where Fighter gained Legendary Weapons AND Armor, I'd be fine with it, but this just feels weird.

I'd like to see the Fighter get:

Best Armor abilities
Best Weapon abilities
Some usefulness in the exploration, problem solving and social combat silos.

I'd like to see the Paladin get:

Second Best Armor abilities, situationally bolstered by divine abilities (heals and protections)
Second Best Weapon abilities, situationally bolstered by divine abilities (smites and and enemy challenge/aggro abilities)
Some usefulness in the exploration, problem solving and social combat silos.

Interesting i guess. The kind of blog i cant judge really without numbers and the rest of the system to compare things.

The concept of more customizable armor is nice, but if they are really so different we wont all just pick the one who gives the highest bonus of the category only time will tell.

Im also wondering which skill is now based on CON.

Perhaps some sort of Health/Resistance or Endurance/Fitness skill, used to resist disease and recover vitality.

Hopefully not the Concentration skill.

The Ranger now means so many different things to so many different people, at this point it should maybe be represented through subclasses/archetypes.

Aragorn and Faramir were the templates, but Minsc and Boo, The Justicar, Halt, Gilan and Will have broken the ranger clean out of the Middle-Earth form factor.

Link to Pathfinder playtest forums goes to Pathfinder Playtest splash page, not the forums!

Didn't see the podcast, but Jekyll is a nice name for an alchemist. ;)

From a lore perspective, each and every stereotypically evil, traditional PC adversary Orc and Goblinoid could use some love. Outside of the pyrotic, hangry, vandalistic Goblins, the Pathfinder Goblinoids have been largely stamped out with AD&D 1st edition hand me down cookie cutters.

I want Goblinoid lore to be more PC Ancestry friendly in Pathfinder 2. Sure, PCs need NPC antagonists and the Goblinoids excel at this, but a world where Humanoid == stereotypically good and Goblinoid == stereotypically evil, doesn't excite me. Gimme shades of grey and even colorful and non-dysfunctional societies please.

Ideally, all the Goblinoids would have playable ancestries in campaigns that aren't one shots ala "We be Goblins!" or exclusively fodder for passive aggressive players attempting to troll and grief their game tables. At the very least, I'd like to be able to kit out a party of Orcish and Goblinoid PCs that had believably greater aspirations than "burn it down".

Retain the existing lore for some of Golarian's Orcs and Goblinoids, of course, but give us some new Orc and Goblinoid societies. Golarian is a huge place with many unexplored areas. Pathfinder 2 could flesh out an entire continent of new lore Orcs and Goblinoids!

And from a pie in the sky wish list, I'd like a no ECL adjustment, current Ancestry power level equivalent PC playable Undead ancestry. Gimme a World of Warcraft Forsaken or Kobold Press Darakhul Ghoul inspired Undead Ancestry pretty please. Call them Revenants, style them Zombies with intact and functional Brainz and park them in Nex, Geb and/or Golarian's polar regions (perhaps styled as Song of Ice and Fire White Walker knockoffs).

I hope that Paizo will give any complaints about overpowered, underpowered or outright broken rules from a statistics point of view careful analysis.

IIRC, there were numerous complaints in the PF1 playtest regarding race/class/feat balance from a purely arithmetic view, which were brushed off in the playtest only to be borne out by subsequent gaming.

Lore and worldbuilding are purely subjective, niche protection/exclusivity and character ability/power siloing is a system design decision, but game system math behavior is objectively provable and in my opinion, there's no excuse for badly broken game system math.

Mistakes happen, things are overlooked and the schedule crunch is a PITA, but if a sizable group of playtesters carp about systemic brokenness, I'd recommend taking their complaints seriously.

Love me some more classes.

First buy/rent/steal these classes from their respective owners.
All of Dreamscarred Press's Psionic Classes
Rite Publishing's Luckbringer
TPK Publishing's Malefactor
A World of Warcraft style Death Knight/Anti-paladin

Then stat me up some of these classes:
A no-spells Ranger
A Shaman class that lets me play Fool Wolf
An Apothecary -- non-spellcasting mundane healer/buffer
A Medieval-punk Engineer
Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster style core classes
A courtier/diplomat class that was better at the fast talk than the head bashing

Although the OP is leg pulling a bit, a wheelman/zoomer logistics/quartermaster class might be interesting. Give it some fixer connections like The Wolf in Pulp Fiction, a bunch of merchant/scrounging abilities like Crapgame in Kelly's Heroes and a solid skill background in the explorer leg of <insert your favorite adventuring game here> and it would be playable at a table that wasn't purely Murderhobo.

The Raven Black wrote:

{. . .}

On another note, I dislike that Necromancy (literally magic of death) is used for healing people freely. But it seems I'm in the minority here

It doesn't have to be necessarily just magic of death causation. It can also be magic of death prevention or even rollback.

I have no issue with the Necromancy school expanding to encompass healing and life magic. Putting the life and death magic in a single school make cohesive sense.

Perhaps Physiomancy could work as a magic school name. The death and debilitation spells would still be Necromancy subschool spells. Also, with a name like Physiomancy, the Polymorph spells could be relocated here too.

Arming Sword, Side Sword, Coat of Plates and any other historic weapon or armor not even available as alternative descriptions attached to existing items.

And get rid of the silly <Ancestry> pseudo-weapons (Orcish Double Axe, Gnome Hook Hammer, etc.) added only to give each <Ancestry> a cultural weapon.

"It also does imply an aspect of rapeyness that is well out of date"

It's not out of date. Orcs are an evil race. Rape is evil. Orcs are fecund and love rape. That's clearly one of many evils that they are all about. There's nothing "out of date" about having an evil race do evil things. Orcs should make you uncomfortable, they are vile.

That's Orcs as their flavor text is currently written. But this is Pathfinder 2 -- we can update the lore!

It'd be nice to have Orcs aren't 100% pure evil traditional tropes. Sure, have some Orcish tribes reminiscent of Tolkien's Uruk-hai, Games Workshop's Orks, and AD&D Chaotic-Evil experience point containers. But some "Noble Savage" Orcs spiritually akin to the World of Warcraft Orcs would be a nice change. How about a tribe of Orcs with Gengis Khan's Horde cultural trappings? Fierce warriors, yes, but also culturally sophisticated with complex mores and a robust set of laws.

Similarly, keep a few tribes of Pathfinder eating machine pyro vandal Goblins around as foils and comic relief. However, there's room in the setting for less jokey/cartoony Goblins. What about Goblin mercenaries in the vein of the Galloglasses or even cheap knock-offs of World of Warcraft's Ferengi/Jersey Shore Goblins?

Bonus points for socially acceptable Hobgoblin, Bugbear, Kobold and even Gnoll cultures. Perhaps Persian Immortal/Spartan-esque Hobs, Laplander/Finnish Arctic Pastoralist Bugbears, Industrial Revolution/Dickensian era Londoner Kobolds and Bantu/Bedouin/Berber infused Gnolls.

I see humans as CON +2, CHA +2, WIS -2, Bonus +2.

The Human Charisma bonus is pretty well established in lore, as humans are everybody else's second best friend. They're gregarious, party animals with forceful personalities.

As to justifying the CON bonus, real world humans have awesome endurance:

Some humans run ultra marathons with fast finishing times measured in days. Sure wolves and other canids can run for days, but Humans do it for fun!

Mountaineers climb into thin air for the sheer challenge. They swim for miles, recreationally. Some people have literally walked around the world.

What other animals compare to us in regards to endurance, stamina and constitution?

For a stat penalty, I'd suggest WIS -2, as we are fairly foolish as a species. We do lots of dumb things we really should know better about.

Finally, throw in an Bonus +2, to either buy off the Wisdom penalty or bump up one of the other stats.

Gregg Reece wrote:

I actually feel that we're going to end up with an AP that frees the Goblins. Erik Mona has hinted that the last AP of PF1e is going to change a lot of things.

I've jokingly said that Aroden was going to come back, but it could be something where a non-evil deity for Goblins arises or some other major shift in how goblins are acting in the world.

Maybe it is discovered that Aroden was really 3 goblins in a trenchcoat, and his death was really just him going into a cave and eating so many rare mushrooms that the resulting high made prophecies trippy and unreliable. He emerges and now humans, the most populous species, feel an obligation to protect goblins. Wars are waged for 10 years, new setting begins when unstable armistices and peace treaties are setup protecting goblins.

Solved goblins and what happened to Aroden!

Jokes aside though, a goblin hero-god changing the culture of goblins and society alike is a solid idea.

IIRC, there's a long standing rumor that Norgorber is really a four Halfling adventuring crew who infiltrated the Starstone for phat lewts. What if a literate, demi-civilized goblin alchemist did the same?

Wultram wrote:

Paladins? It is a loaded term and as such the class should have a more generic name. Paladin would remain as a in world term.

As I've said elsewhere, the issue could be resolved by having a class mechanically similar to Paladin, and having them choose a specialization requiring one of the four corner alignments with Paladin being the specialization for LG and Antipaladin being the one for CE. There would need tweaking to give them each different abilities, but it wouldn't be that hard and Seelah could remain a core iconic despite Paladin not technically being a class.

"Agreed, with the proviso that Anti-Paladin is renamed to Reaver! :) My depravities as a Unholy Chaos warrior can not be measured in inverse by the yardstick of the traditional Paladin!"

Kisses of the Mother's Lash, Depravity -- 20th level Reaver of Loviatar and First among her Nine Diseases. :)

P.S. Paladin archetypes for the other alignments and Deities would also be acceptable -- Avatarless

MidsouthGuy wrote:

Please tell me we can still roll for stats and don't just get them based entirely on ancestry, background, or class. Don't give me another game with that stupid 'Standard Array' mechanic. By the Rough Beast I hate that in 5e!

Rolling your stats is an optional rule in the Playtest book. Because we want to get the playtest results from a more stable dataset, we prefer people use the default ability system for characters they'll be giving playtest feedback on, but we did want to show how it could work.

What you really need is my randomized stats with static average ability score "rolling" method:

Grab a deck of playing cards and make a mini-deck of 12 cards consisting two of each of these values: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Shuffle and deal two cards for each ability score. All scores will be random in the range 8 and 18, but each character's average score will be 13.

By varying the card values in the mini-deck, you can skew the average ability score up or down as you like.

The nice thing about this method is it keeps the "I like random stats" crowd happy and everyone at the table starts off with similarly powered ability scores.

Spiral_Ninja wrote:

OK, so there's also this from Unchained:

Consolidated Skills:
Finesse - Disable Device, Sleight of Hand

or

Grouped Skills:
Thieving - Disable Device, Disguise, Sleight of Hand, Stealth, Use Magic Device

Of the two, I prefer Finesse.

Well, name aside, we know it's not actually the second one because Stealth is still a separate skill.

I like the split skill concept with these names:

Legerdemain covering Sleight of Hand, Palm Item, Pick Pockets, Stage Magic, Juggling and Dosing Someone's Food or Drink with extra "Spices".

Finesse Device covering Pick Locks, Disable Traps, Set Traps, Escape Artist, Use Rope and "Grabbin' the gaol cell keys off the sleeping Sheriff's belt with a bent spoon on a string" sort of Shenanigans.

Simple Solution James Jacobs.......Clones!

Bad idea, Cloning a T-Rex. Have you not seen Jurassic Park? :)

Announced! Product image and description are not final.

This is great news. One of the few drawbacks to the Pathfinder setting is that the kitchen sink world building approach used for the Inner Sea region results in a maelstrom of cultures and micro-settings washing up on the shore like so much driftwood. An opportunity to create an official Pathfinder setting with a more cohesive style should not be squandered.

I.e. it would be nice if the Arcadia, Iblydos, Southern Garund, and Vudra aren't created by stuffing every fictional genre, TV trope, Human culture and societal more into a Blend-tec and hitting frappe'.

Please make the micro-regions in new regions internally consistent with regards to each other from a setting style point of view. Furthermore, please apply this philosophy of setting cohesiveness the Pantheon of Deities for the new regions, because the list of Inner Sea Gods look like it was generated by stuffing all the Deities from the Paizo's founders' homebrew campaigns into a bucket and drawing lots.

If this proposed setting cohesiveness results in particular creative itches remaining unscratched, then apply those unrealized creative ideas to the currently undiscovered parts of Golarion!

Original post goes here.

I find it hard to believe that Paizo and Tor could not successfully negotiate e-book availability on both Paizo's and Tor's websites, allowing Paizo to continue bundling a physical copy and an electronic copy in a single subscription option.

Note, I'm not expecting a same price as before deal, even if the physical books were not changed to a more expensive format, as access to Tor's market and the Kindlespace has an opportunity cost. Still, I'm seriously surprised that electronic format Pathfinder Tales will no longer available from Paizo, at least initially.

This smells of marketing/sales deliberately destroying the existing purchasing options, forcing electronic format Pathfinder Tales readers to look elsewhere for their e-books so they see new products sidebar advertised in parallel with the desired products.

This kinda galls.

An Onispawn Tiefling Brawler follower of Sun Wukong seems a fun choice.

Dear Paizo, for a future adventure path I would like to see one with lots of dwarfs in it doing dwarfy stuff with a dwarf themed storyline. There could be lots of fun, fallen holds to reclaim, rushing out to drag back some stubborn old codger who's intent on returning to Belkzen to reclaim some long lost family heirloom.

The dwarfs are horribly under represented in Golarion and it's about time we had some more dwarf themed content. Oh yes, dwarfs. A dwarf themed adventure path would be very nice.

A Dwarvish Delve to the Centre of Golarion AP would be cool, rampaging throughout the Darklands battling troglodytes, drow, undefham, umbral dragons, Lovecraftian abominations and worse. At the end of the AP, with the aid of the players the dwarven people would reclaim their lost Sky Citadels by with rediscoverd traditional dwarvish magic and once lost deep dwarf clansfolk now reunited with their surface cousins.

But, it's not just the dwarves who are underrepresented. All the demihumans get short shift (no pun intended) as far as presence in Golarion goes. What about using the AP's to address some of the regional settings requested above AND moving the demihuman cultures up in the world?

Halflings:
Revolution in Galt/Kingmaker II/Halflings throw off their Cheliaxian shackles: Andoran finances a team of freedom fighters to throw down the Galtan Robes-Pierres and break the daemons behind them.

Players then rebuild the power structure in Galt with Andoran busybodies, Druman theocratic carpetbaggers and Bellflower Network firebrands pushing their own agendas. Allow the players to shape a region to their own ends, but give a majority of the New Galt Republic over to a new halfling nation state.

Elves:
Distant Worlds/Second Wave of Elvish Recolonization: Before Earthfall, most of the elves fled to Sovyrian on Castrovel, however a splinter faction of elves had relocated to one of Liavara's moons: Osoro. Paint the Castrovel Elves as traditional foresty rangers, fighters, mages and druids and the Osoron Elves as alienists (occultist/diabolists), crystal-tech engineers, bio-alchemists and mind mages.

Long ago, the poisonous part of Osoro's atmosphere was much smaller, but between the time of Earthfall and the Castrovel Elves return to Golarion, the toxic vapors from the lowlands suddenly expanded, forcing the Osoron Elves to evacuate from their refuge and denying them access to the portal back to Golarion.

Using a remote controlled Fumediver (i.e. submarine), the Osoron Elves have regained access to the barely functional portal back to Golarion and have sent through The Emissary, a Voyager-ish probe requesting aid, since the toxic soup of Osoro's lowland is expanding again and threaten to push out the last of the breathable atmosphere.

The Emissary aids the players in jaunts across Golarion, Castrovel, Akiton, Triaxus, Verces and Eox searching for the knowledge and materials needed to build a new portal back to Golarion from Osoro. Once the portal is ready, the Osoron Elves return to Golarion, reclaiming their ancestral homeland in Central Garund located in the region between Sargava and the Mana Wastes.

Gnomes:
The Fey Wars spill over from the First World to Golarion. While the players intrigue with the Seelie and Unseelie Courts, they discover the history behind the gnomes' exile from the First World. The players negotiate an armistice between the Fey Courts and Golarion, establishing a feytouched DMZ. Proximity to the First World fey energies in this border region cures the Bleaching, so most gnomes emigrate to this new Gnomeland.

and because of investigators maybe a noir AP taking place in ustalav with the PCs as members of the sleepless agency

(also I am a huge ustalav fan)

Kind of a Cthulhu by Gaslight feel?

The Vizier class is cool and I look forward to the rest of the Akashic Mysteries subscription and the subsequent Essensia powered classes.

However, is there any chance of picking a different name for the Pharaoh class? The word "Pharaoh" is particular to an Egyptian/Osiran setting and not generic to Silk Road settings like the class names of Vizier, Guru, Daevic, Veda and Tatvist.

Perhaps a word that describes how the Pharaoh class summons, invokes and shaps Essensia like Exalt, Exult, Augment, Incarnate, Envelop or Educe would work. Or a word encapsulating the concept of "One who is a Wellspring" or "One who brings forth" would fit, like Eruptive or Initiate. Or maybe a word describing one who is skilled and dominative -- i.e. Adept.

Although these names don't really fit the Pharaoh class concept, they are Silk Road evocative and might be used in a pinch: Yogi, Bodhi, Fakir and Mystic. Of course those names could be used for new Akashic Mysteries themed classes (hint, hint) that haven't yet been discussed. ;)

Anyway just a rambling thought from the fanbase.

Order 3390732 shipment box missing this item: Pathfinder Tales: Pirate's Promise. All other items were in the box.

Feel free to add it to next month's subscription items or send it out separately, whichever is most convienent.

Largely, these ten classes are a hit.

First, we get some nice game patches: Brawler (non-mystic Monk, perhaps with a pit fighting gladiator archetype?), Slayer (spell-less Ranger, skirmisher and scout) and Warpriest (Lawful Good not required Paladin).

Second, we get support for missing or undersupported fantasy genre archetypes: Hunter (Beastmaster), Shaman (Witch Doctor and Animist), Swashbuckler and Bloodrager (Bezerker would be a more Metal name, errata it please!).

Third, we get some niche-y RP spice stirred into the stew: Skald (non-poncy Bard variant), Arcanist (gimme an archtype that lets me play a D&D and/or WoW Warlock please) and Investigator (another expert type, yea!).

That said what I really want is a Trickster base class! While I can portmaneu a Rogue/Magus multiclass into a Beguiler sort of character, it requires alot of system mastery and character optimization to be effective. A base class trickster would allow more flexibility.

Imagine a Trickster class with Rogue skill points, light armor, limited weapons and Int based spontaneous arcane spell casting of predominately illusion, enchantment and possibly polymorph subschool arcane spells. Witch hexes could be added by feats or archetype.

Limit the Trickster with d6 hit dice and none of the Rogue's dodge, evasion, rogue talents. The trickster wouldn't get sneak attack damage dice, instead Tricksters would get a diversion/misdirection ability allowing a Trickster or an ally to sneak in another action -- single attack, quickened spell, etc.

I guess I gotta wait for the Ultimate Class Guide (hint, hint) for my Trickster. When you release the Ultimate Class Guide in 2016, complete with a social combat module to handle negotiation, seduction and haggling which enables Aristocrat, Fixer, Merchant, Diplomat PC classes, don't forget to file the serial numbers off of the WOTC 3rd edition rules for Artificer (call it an Engineer) and Warlock (call it a Cabalist, perhaps) and buy the IP rights for Rite Publishing's Luckbringer, TPK Press's Malfactor and Dreamscarred Press's entire Psionics catalog -- get cracking Paizo. :)

My problem with rolling stats has been that I have a fairly large group (6 players) and when we roll, someone comes up with Mr. Perfect (and when I say someone, I mean the same player every time so far, regardless of who's dice he's used), while someone else gets, at best, Joe Average. Usually 2-3 people are 'alright' at their roles, and the other 2-3 become what 'Mr. Perfect' termed 'Cheerleaders' (ie they aren't there to play, they're there to cheer as the team/Mr. Perfect smash into the end zone of victory.) If the foe challenges Mr. Perfect, they're there to...well, die. And while Mr. Perfect may have loved that game/character, Joe Average hated it, and the Cheerleaders were, at best, bored, frustrated and annoyed.

That's why I like a point-buy even playing field to start. Luck already has enough of a role (roll?) in the game, without it kneecapping you right at the start.

Player 1: I want random stats.

Player 2: I want predictable stats.

Player 3: I want my character to be the same power level as the other player charcters.

Game Master: Where's my bottle of asprin?

Magic Mouth: Ok, here are some randomized ability score generation methods using playing cards which result in statistical variance more in line with point buy.

* Basic Deck: From a deck of playing cards draw two each of these cards: 4's, 5's, 6's, 7's, 8's and 9's. Shuffle the basic deck and deal two cards per ability score, scoring as per Blackjack. This method tends to have balanced stats around 13-14, but a larger variance is possible, ranging from 8-18 at the extreme.

* Aces High: Put two Aces in the shuffled deck and deal the cards out normally. An Ace adds 1 to a stat, but doesn't count towards the two cards per stat. Stats range from 8-20

* Aces High, Dealer Choice: Don't shuffle the Aces into the deck but let the player decide where to apply the Ace bonuses. Stats range from 8-20.

* Jokers Wild: Put two Jokers in the shuffled deck and deal the cards out normally. A joker subtracts 1 from a stat, but doesn't count towards the two cards per stat. Stats range from 6-18.

* Low powered deck: Use four 5's, four 6's and 4 7's instead. Stats range from 10-14 (10-16 with Aces, 8-14 with Jokers).

* Medium powered deck: Use four 6's, four 7's and 4 8's instead. Stats range from 12-16 (12-18 with Aces, 10-16 with Jokers).

* High powered deck: Use four 7's, four 8's and 4 9's instead. Stats range from 14-18 (14-20 with Aces, 12-18 with Jokers).

Many other randomizers are possible, of course -- arrogant teacher leaves this as exercise for the reader. ;)

The major benefit with the card draw stat generation methods are:

* Due to the identical variance on ability scores between the players, no player will have garbage stats or amazingly overpowered stats relative to the other players.
* Players who like random stats can randomize their ability scores.
* Players who like point buy can just arrange the cards as they like to generate their ability scores.
* The GM can more easily judge the power level of the players and tune the scenario for the desired result: cakewalk, challenge or Welcome to TPK, population: you.