barnabyssjones's page

Hey all, I’m looking for a way to integrate one of my PC’s backgrounds into my game, and I thought I’d ask for any advice people can think of.

I have a PC who is a Catfolk Mastermind Rogue drug smuggler who smuggled Ice Tears (actual drug in lore, check it out on pathfinder wiki) to Hinji in Cheliax from the Shackles. The Sons of the Tear handled distribution there and he didn’t make a whole lot of money. He heard the cartel was talking about expanding into Varisia using Sczarni connections for distribution. It turns out his “friend” who came with him on his voyage is one of the few people who knew how to make Ice Tears (normally need to be shipped from Garund) and he died making them in an explosion (an ice explosion), and the PC was the first to find his body and formulas/notes, some of which had been frozen in the explosion. He took what he could find and took rubbings of the frozen formulas and then smashed them so nobody else could read them.

At which point he abandoned the Sons of the Tear and took a boat to Magnimar, now the only person in the northern hemisphere with Ice Tear making knowledge (albeit it incomplete).

He now has the partial formula/process for making Ice Tears and he wants to find a partner (like an alchemist to actually make them and figure out the missing parts of the recipe) and maybe get some Sczarni connections to help with distribution. He’s starting in Sandpoint to lay low because he’s scared the larger Sczarni gang in Magnimar has the resources to perhaps figure out a way to make him obsolete.

I’ll include the whole background below in the comments for anyone who wants to read it (I was fairly happy I was able to cobble together a reason justifying Catfolk in Varisia + drug smuggling ), as it includes some details I’ve left out.

So obviously he’s going to need to establish himself with Jubrayl, so that will be an ongoing project, as are his attempts to find a partner. I was thinking having the Sons of the Tear somehow find out that he has the partial Ice Tear recipe and send people after him later in the campaign.

An additional idea is how this will get him a ton of greed points, which I’m pretty excited about.

Any pointers?

Does a subscriber get the pdf today? I don't see it available in my digital content so maybe I got that wrong?

So I’m GMing an upcoming RotR campaign that I’m very excited about and could use some advice. Hopefully people don't find this post too long, but I'd certainly appreciate those who can stay to the end. I have a player who is looking to play a half-Tian-Min half-elf Aasimar Thaumaturge wielding an Asp Coil weapon implement. Gives him a cool ranged reaction and some “battlefield controller” type abilities. This can be be represented mechanically by having him choose elf or human ancestry with the Adopted Ancestry feat for the non-chosen ancestry and the Aasimar heritage. Now normally I put a limit on 1 each of Uncommon heritages, ancestries, and backgrounds/archetypes to my games for lore and thematic reasons. In this case Aasimar and a Tian-Min in Varisia are both Uncommon.

In this case however, the overlap with Book 1 characters/themes, especially the Kaijitsus /Tsuto and Nualia is too great to ignore. So much role play potential there, from his mere existence enraging Lonjiku who is reminded of Tsuto to a jealous Tsuto being enraged seeing a version of him that would relate even better to his lover (crush?) than he could. It’s also exciting because my friend is half-Japanese and has always played a half-elf because of the unique feelings of alienation and fetishization a lot of mixed race people feel. So this whole thing lands in an awesome way where I can tie facets of the campaign not only to his character, but even to his personal experience, hopefully tastefully.

So the question is how do so justify this character being in Varisia?
Here’s the recap: Half Tian Min half-elf Aasimar with an Asp Coil. Below I’m going to add these components together and by process of elimination try to reason through his possible origins, and I’d like to see what you all think.

Tian Min + Aasimar:
The two most troubling components. At first this was a no go for me until I remembered something: the existence of the nation of Tianjing in Tian Xia. The only canon nation of Aasimars, interestingly enough, is located right next to Minkai. It’s hard to say how this nation remains populated. Either Aasimar need to be able to give birth to other Aasimar, there are a disproportionate number of Aasimar births surrounding the region for other reasons, or Aasimar the world over know of its existence and move there. The latter the three seems highly unlikely, leaving the former two. If either of these are true it leads to the interesting conclusion that the Tian have more Aasimar than any other ethnicity, and that the Tian ethnicities near Tianjing are even better represented than other Tian. Consequently, Tian Min Aasimar should be more common than the sum of its Uncommon features suggests.

How does he get to the Inner Sea?
If we settle on the idea that an Aasimar is more likely to have an Aasimar child (many people disagree with this assertion and I’m interested in here what you all have to say about that here), then his having a single parent move from Tianjing to perhaps Absalom (perhaps as one of the diplomats that the nation is famous for having?) brings one parent (and potentially him) to the Inner Sea region.

Half-Elf:
This part isn’t too hard. We could just say his parent meets and falls in love with an elf in Absolom. It’s quite the cosmopolitan city so that’s not too troubling.

Asp Coil:
Hey, whaddya know? The Asp Coil is sold in the Grand Bazaar. He could have easily picked it up and learned to use it at some point in his life.

How does he get to Varisia?
So my player has expressed interest in the Archaeologist background (with Thassilon Lore), so I’m thinking he somehow got in good with the Pathfinder Grand Lodge in Absalom. They have a lot of records, so he could cultivate his skills and learn a great deal there. Perhaps his unique heritage and his parent’s background helped with getting him access, but given that the Age of Lost Omens has just started and the Pathfinders are scrambling to scrap together records of the changing age, perhaps he was sent to do a little digging or record gathering on Thassilon as well? Perhaps to rendezvous with Quink?

Anyways, this is what I have and I’d love some input or advice on how to make this hold together. The three other party members are a goblin of some kind (undecided), a Wildwood halfling, and someone who is entirely undecided. Thanks for getting to the end.

barnabyssjones wrote:

Hmm well if the comments are being read and input is being taken, I would request or suggest that older AP’s where half or more than half of the parts are out of print be POD as compendiums or grouped together like Wrath of the Runelords or Curse of the Crimson Throne (not totally rewritten like these two, just compiled together.) This way people can get a physical copy and the people that have spent a lot of time and money trying to track down this stuff can have a little something collectible that is identical in function, with only a difference in aesthetic. I would think everybody wins with this. Carrion Crown, Kingmaker, Skull & Shackles, Legacy of Fire, Jade Regent, and Wrath of the Righteous come to mind. Those were/are all rather expensive and hard to track down, and it’s not like they have a “single hole” that people need to patch, so grouping them together would make sense. It wouldn’t require people to spend a lot on a whole AP to just get a missing part. Examples of good AP’s to sell piece by piece would be Iron Gods, Mummy’s Mask, and Shattered Star (Serpent’s Skull?). Reign of Winter, Council of Thieves, and Return of the Runelords were good plays in this regard. All you have to do with these is start printing the first part again. I’m interested in feedback from the community too on this. Would there be a difference to most of you all if this route was taken? It’s not like AP’s part by part are easier to read or something. This solution seems like it takes everyone’s circumstances into account.

Do you use these books for gaming, or are you just paying too much to have something look nice on your shelf?

I use pdf’s personally. A lot of these SEEMED kind of collectible. Which I suppose they’re not now. Also whether or not I’m paying too much is reliant on whether paizo prints more, which actually seemed rather unlikely…so they only cost too much in hindsight. I’m assuming that you would find it super annoying if they printed, say, Legacy of Fire as a single book?

I'm probably not the right person to answer this since I am probably not going to get them either way.

But to clarify, are you wanting to buy them to play? Or are you wanting to buy them to show to other people that you have the original set?

If you just want to play them, wouldn't the PDF versions do the job? Maybe a half-decent PC printer too if you don't want to do your prep work from just your computer screen.

To clarify I sort of have them just to have them. I don’t really have anyone to show lol.

So I posted in the comments in response to Paizo’s decision to print out-of-print adventure paths on demand, and thought I’d try to take the community’s temperature on something as somebody who is out a lot of time and money after collecting them. My thought was this:

I would suggest that older AP’s where half or more than half of the parts are out of print be POD as compendiums or grouped together like Wrath of the Runelords or Curse of the Crimson Throne (not totally rewritten like these two, just compiled together.) This way people can get a physical copy and the people that have spent a lot of time and money trying to track down this stuff can have a little something collectible that is identical in function, with only a difference in aesthetic. I would think everybody wins with this. Carrion Crown, Kingmaker, Skull & Shackles, Legacy of Fire, Jade Regent, and Wrath of the Righteous come to mind. Those were/are all rather expensive and hard to track down, and it’s not like they have a “single hole” that people need to patch, so grouping them together would make sense. It wouldn’t require people to spend a lot on a whole AP to just get a missing part. Examples of good AP’s to start reprinting piece by piece would be Iron Gods, Mummy’s Mask, and Shattered Star (Serpent’s Skull?). Reign of Winter, Council of Thieves, and Return of the Runelords were good plays by Paizo in this regard. All you have to do with these is start printing the first part again. So I wanted some community feedback on this. Would there be a difference to most of you all if this route was taken? It’s not like AP’s part by part are easier to read or something. This solution seems like it takes everyone’s circumstances into account.

I personally have spent probably upwards of $1300 dollars on out of print adventure paths of the past few years, and I’m not exactly rolling in it. These are like THE thing that I collect. These AP’s haven’t really been mentioned by Paizo in a long time, and the shift in focus to 2e makes their decision to suddenly start reprinting them surprising honestly. I’d love to go back in time and not buy them, and just wait for a POD option for everything. It was one of those things where, because they’re softcover, they are going to deteriorate over time, so if you wait and Paizo doesn’t do a POD (which seemed to be the case) then for all I know their gonna is cost double and I’ll just never get a physical copy.

But yeah, thoughts? It’s sort of creating (more like allowing for) collectible versions of Paizo’s products.

Hmm well if the comments are being read and input is being taken, I would request or suggest that older AP’s where half or more than half of the parts are out of print be POD as compendiums or grouped together like Wrath of the Runelords or Curse of the Crimson Throne (not totally rewritten like these two, just compiled together.) This way people can get a physical copy and the people that have spent a lot of time and money trying to track down this stuff can have a little something collectible that is identical in function, with only a difference in aesthetic. I would think everybody wins with this. Carrion Crown, Kingmaker, Skull & Shackles, Legacy of Fire, Jade Regent, and Wrath of the Righteous come to mind. Those were/are all rather expensive and hard to track down, and it’s not like they have a “single hole” that people need to patch, so grouping them together would make sense. It wouldn’t require people to spend a lot on a whole AP to just get a missing part. Examples of good AP’s to sell piece by piece would be Iron Gods, Mummy’s Mask, and Shattered Star (Serpent’s Skull?). Reign of Winter, Council of Thieves, and Return of the Runelords were good plays in this regard. All you have to do with these is start printing the first part again. I’m interested in feedback from the community too on this. Would there be a difference to most of you all if this route was taken? It’s not like AP’s part by part are easier to read or something. This solution seems like it takes everyone’s circumstances into account.

I think I would have placed money on Carrion Crown or Reign of Winter becoming a collected 2e conversion before POD, but the problems of Kingmaker may make them unwilling to do a conversion right now (the collected AV being a different beast with a much lower amount of development needed).

My thoughts on Kingmaker in particular would be that they wouldn’t bother with a 1e POD because they were working on a conversion.

Did they, a company that prints books, sometimes multiple printings, ever say they were never ever gonna print these books again? No.

They did not mention it explicitly. They simply didn’t print them or mention them again or at all for 6-10 years before moving on to 2e and removing all focus from 1e. It’s still my fault for assuming, but them starting to print these again I think we can at least agree is unexpected. Unexpected is the right word. Not unprecedented. I wasn’t careful enough here.

On the one hand this is nice, but as a collector, I actually spent a lot of money on out of print books (Carrion Crown and Kingmaker cost me a TON of money.) I have every single out of print AP and have probably spent close to $1300 on amassing them over time. Knowing that was futile or might become more futile if you print certain ones has me totally gutted. It feels like I got conned kinda… like I feel super dumb. I could have done so much else with that money. It’s great other people without skin in the game can get them now..I just wish I knew this was a possibility because I never would have started collecting them, and would have just waited. I wasn’t exactly stoked to need to pay what I paid, but I love the company and don’t collect anything else.

EDIT: . I want to clarify that when I say I feel I got conned, I’m not talking about feeling like Paizo in particular conned me. As a matter of fact the sellers didn’t con me either. This is all just highly unexpected, and I severely misread the likelihood of an event like this. As I mentioned in another post, these AP’s haven’t even been mentioned in 6-10 years, and with 2e as the focus I thought it was safe to assume that these would stay PDF’s.

So given that Bunyips can shapeshift, I'm really surprised that they're just considered animals. They were considered magical beasts in 1E. Do you all think this is a mistake?

Do we have any information on the ethnicity of the dwarves of Dongun Hold? Or is there even a core ethnic group in the area of Alkenstar? Nhalmika looks fairly distinct from any dwarves that we've seen so far in any source material, so I'm pretty interested. That being said, I can imagine her being a Pahmet, as Osirion isn't too far away.

So as we know Paizo doesn’t continue printing old adventure paths, but I’ve noticed a trend of the first parts always being listed as out of print in the store, whereas many other parts are listed as “unavailable” or for sale. This isn’t always the case of course but it’s common. Does anyone know why that is? What makes the first parts so scarce? Is it just people wanting to start a path and not as many finishing it so more get purchased?

Ezekieru wrote:

keftiu wrote:

barnabyssjones wrote:

So I don’t know how much work this would take, and it would probably not be a good idea if the amount was super significant, but official conversions of 1E AP’s to 2E I would buy in a heartbeat. My dream is to have all that stuff readily available on a VTT, but that entire process is a lot of work for them I think. There’s sooo many 1E AP’s I still want to run.

I think that Paizo has indicated they have the manpower to either so conversion work or make new content, not both. I can’t also think of how things have gone with the Kingmaker update.

Yeah. James Jacobs basically worked on nothing but Kingmaker for almost a whole year, with some freelancing room for Malevolence. I wouldn't want to wish that on him or anyone else again, especially while we're still dealing with COVID.

I'm sure those over at Legendary Games are happy they're done with that project and they can focus their efforts on their own new content for PF2E, PF1E and D&D 5E.

Note: My freelance work, which over the last year and a half was mostly focused on "Malevolence" and on "Ruins of Gauntlight," but also a few smaller projects here and there, was not "on the clock." It's off the clock, on personal time, when I'm specifically NOT doing the on-the clock job. AKA: Being able to freelance doesn't really impact my ability to work on my day job, or vice-versa, any more so than it should for any of our freelancers—the trick there is knowing your own schedule and capability and being realistic with your own limitations as to what you can accomplish in a given amount of time.

That said, Kingmaker is the fourth "Update an adventure path to hardcover" project I've done (Shackled City, Rise of the Runelords, and Curse of the Crimson Throne being the other three), and I can guarentee you that the job is not one that can be done quickly. I see no future in which we ever update every 1st edition Adventure Path to 2nd edition. Even if we quit producing 2nd...

Thanks for the input! Super cool to see you active in the forums. I sort of suspected that this was the case, so for now 1E to 2E conversion will be community-sourced. Fortunately there are resources and communities focused on these projects, so it’s not the end of the world. Creatively speaking I can certainly understand not wanting to spend a lot of time rehashing old content. I can think of certain AP’s (some from before Paizo really hit their groove) that would probably be a nightmare to rewrite because of certain flawed or particularly underwhelming sections. Serpent’s Skull, Council of Thieves, Second Darkness, and I guess maybe Jade Regent seem like they would need to have a bunch of additional story things added or parts rewritten if this route was actually taken.

So I don’t know how much work this would take, and it would probably not be a good idea if the amount was super significant, but official conversions of 1E AP’s to 2E I would buy in a heartbeat. My dream is to have all that stuff readily available on a VTT, but that entire process is a lot of work for them I think. There’s sooo many 1E AP’s I still want to run.

I have a conversion that was done by someone else here in Fanland. If you give me your e-mail I can look for it and forward it on to you.

If you would be so kind as to send that to me also, I would be very grateful. spncr.morris@gmail.com