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I do hear that folks are eager for a PC snake themed ancestry, and that will probably push nagaji closer to the top of the to-do list. While we do weigh customer feedback and requests when deciding what content we wish to produce, though, it's not the only factor that helps us make decisions. For serpentfolk, the 9 reasons above also come into play, for example.

As for drow, they are different for a few reasons.

1) Drow are very similar in appearance to humans, and even closer to elves, both already core ancestries.

2) There's a multi-decade tradition of non-evil drow; like it or not, Driz'zt has done more than any one other thing to popularize PC drow as options.

3) Serpentfolk have a long tradition in literature as being evil and antagonistic monsters.

4) Serpentfolk history and culture still has a lot of mysteries to explore in the context of adventures that feature them as adversaries.

5) The creative director of the campaign setting prefers serpentfolk as one of many types of creatures to be reserved as monsters rather than to "normalize" them by granting them PC ancestry status.

6) Nagaji are already our serpent-themed PC race, and I'd rather continue to explore them in that role rather than skip them over for something less appropriate. Note that this includes potentially reworking or standardizing their appearance, which we were kinda all over the place on in 1st edition, like catfolk.

7) If we made serpentfolk a PC ancestry, we'd have to soften their themes as villains, and we've done that enough already with numerous other ancestries in 2nd edition; for a game that focuses mostly on combat, it's important to maintain combat targets for heroes to fight against, and the less human in appearance things get, the easier it is to maintain the creatures as monsters.

8) Golarion's (and thus Pathfinder's) thematic focus on ancestries is on humanocentric creatures. The further one drifts from a human, the less likely it is that we'll open that one up to being an ancestry as a...

Ok, I'll play a Nagaji, but use a Serpentfolk mini and art on my character sheet.

Forget darkvision, I want an ancestry with echolocation! Let me scream to create a mental image of the room around me!

No need to scream, just tongue-click like real world echolocating humans do.

I kind of hope the CE champion isn't called the antipaladin. I've never liked the name, and now that the class is the champion it wouldn't quite feel appropriate. Especially if the LE and NE causes aren't called "antiredeemer" and "antiliberator".

Suggested Antipaladin names as per alignment:

Lawful Evil -- Blackguard
Neutral Evil -- Scourge
Chaotic Evil -- Reaver
Chaotic Neutral -- Anarchist

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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? :)

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.