drumlord's page

Lots of great discussion here. It makes me hopeful people outside and inside Paizo want things to get better. Fingers crossed.

There seem to be some assumptions made regarding history and morality. History does not show that the further back in time you go, the less moral and more savage everybody was. It's nice to think the older human civilization gets, the more progressive and good to ourselves we are. In general, I think that's slowly happening, but that's not a straight line nor is it guaranteed. There are many bumps in the road and massive setbacks.

For example, people generally consider the Holocaust to be one of the most evil events ever and that was less than a century ago. The Atlantic slave trade was particularly devastating. We've had several genocidal wars in the last few decades. The list goes on.

Slavery in particular has a complicated history. From the different types to the various reasons slaves were used, to race or religion being a factor, etc. When going for history authenticity/realism/accuracy, what is even the target for fantasy RPGs? Medieval Europe? Good luck capturing the nuance just from this barely-scratches-the-surface wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_medieval_Europe.

What it comes down to for me is this: have you ever experienced a fantasy story and thought, "You know what this needs? More slavery."

And the idea that people have had bad experiences with assault/murder so maybe those should be out of the game as well doesn't fly. Unlike slavery, these have existed in every society in human history and have affected everybody. More importantly though, slavery has a horrible history in Paizo's home country and we are all even today benefiting from the suffering of slaves of our nation's past.

But if you really are concerned with non-slavery topics, this is exactly where lines and veils, x-card, and Monte Cook's Consent in Gaming forms shine. Everyone should use at least one of them.

Irori only stops living creatures from remembering you. Your golems and intelligent undead will still know you.

Egyptian gods have a history of existing in various D&D settings like Ravenloft and Forgotten Realms. Since no TTRPG decisions are made in a vacuum, I assume that was a factor for their inclusion in Golarion.

Some religions can't be integrated well because they are still actively worshiped. Others, like Norse and Greek/Roman, have much of their mythology already integrated. We just don't have beings named Thor or Zeus walking around as well.

Scrapped the Sand Kraken in Shifting sands. It just doesn't work. If I understand correctly, it *may* have worked in D&D3.5, but the changes to the Grapple rules and the monster Grab ability means it just doesn't work.

And that is not even starting on the stupidity of a creature with tremorsense and no blind fight that is trying to attack from below ground.

I just ran the sand kraken encounter in my game. It went quite well. I kept it submerged and rolled a 50% miss chance for all its attacks. It still hit quite often. I represented it on the board with a tentacle mini for each tentacle. Once the PCs eliminated all but one or two, it disappeared into the sand.

These accusations are concerning. I believe the victims and those that witness harassment. I was a victim myself when I was a teenager. I didn't say anything. Silence is not consent. Not wanting to involve police is not consent.

There's nothing stopping this Return including Runelords that weren't the last ones. Could be undead, traveled through time, or some other mysterious reason for their prior absence. Ancient empire of wizards leaves a lot of options open.

Not every Adventure Path is going to be the best Adventure Path for everyone...

Count me as excited and must buy. It will be a while before I can play it because I'll be running Starfinder and Crimson Throne next, but we'll get there eventually!

Strangely enough, this may be the only adventure path where I'm looking forward to the sidebars. I'm interested in seeing the ideas for encounters with previous parties and for how surviving NPCs can be involved, like Shalelu, Vancaskerkins, Brodert Quink, etc.

If Pathfinder was going gangbusters and Starfinder was doing well, they could hire more creative staff. If they are shifting resources from PF to SF it could be indicative of the drop in demand.

I don't claim that it's definitely true though - I know Paizo have been historically leery of growing beyond a certain size, so perhaps they are deliberately crimping PF production in spite of demand to diversify.

Without being in the staff meetings, it's hard to know. To give a counterpoint to the drop in demand theory, it might also be that Paizo believes Pathfinder is so healthy they can afford to shift some resources away temporarily without harming their customer base. Then they can spend a few months post-Starfinder release and evaluate what would be the best plan to go forward (more/less Pathfinder, more/less Starfinder, staffing, release schedule, etc.)

With max int at 1st lvl, favored class, level ability score bonuses, 5 from wishes, headband +6, cunning, human skilled, plus the rogue's 8 gets you to 24 per level.

There are probably some obscure ways of getting more, but I don't have time to look for them at the moment.

Both of the quotes from the Creative Director in this thread are about whether or not undead are evil and how many of them aren't evil. They're very interesting points, but they don't address why the spells would have lost their evil descriptors. Since the "shift" hasn't been explained in-game, it seems we won't get the answer yet.

My guess is all items come with the smallest possible battery and that there is supposed to be a 10 charge battery for flashlights, but they didn't include it on the ammunition table because no weapons take it. Just an oversight.

But as per raw, it seems the flashlight trick works. The question then becomes which merchant is giving you free money?

101 Starfinder character concepts

Wow, I searched and everything. Shame on me :P Thanks

I'm putting together a one-shot for friends and giving them some pre-gens to choose from in case they don't have the time to make their own. They include some common knowledge because some players are new. Below are their mini-backgrounds (forgive my corny but totally serious names).

Please share your ideas. I can provide stats for any/all of these if desired.

Ripachip, Ysoki Spacefarer Operative
Ripachip didn’t fit in with the rest of his kin. He believed in justice, faith, and righteousness, leading him to follow Iomedae. Unfortunately, outside of working for the church, there aren’t many jobs that reflect his beliefs. So he joined up with a crew of odd job bounty hunters he made friends with along the way. They may not have much in common, but they share a special bond, and Ripachip hopes he can rub off on them.

Alex, Half-elf Ace Pilot Envoy
Alex grew up in a family of pilots. Boring pilots who flew freighters for corporations from point A to point B and back again. As soon as she was old enough, she entered into as many racing contests as she could. As good at social manipulation outside of the races as she is at piloting, she managed to save enough credits, and curry enough favors, to get her own ship. She takes no nonsense from anyone and knows how to get things done, though her adrenaline junkie side occasionally takes over and she throws caution to the wind.

Lee Getties, Human Icon Technomancer
From a young age, Lee knew he was destined to be a star. His parents didn’t see things the same way. They forced him to focus on his studies and enrolled him in only the best schools. His teachers recognized his talented mind and taught him about computers, creatures, engineering, and technomancy. But he put all his spare time into his music. He stayed up late every night practicing, skipping dinner by telling his parents he needed to study. At the age of 7, he began streaming under the name Arclight42. Upon reaching adulthood, he got his own place, half of which is just a lab. He built his crowning achievement, the Starcaster Mk 1, a combination electric guitar and laser blaster that lets him use music to focus his technomancy. He seeks adventure and any chance to show off his talents.

Note: there is no righteous guitar in the rules; it's just a laser blaster with the guitar added for flavor

Selith, Lashunta Mercenary Solarion
Selith took a vow of silence in recent years. After a decade as a hired gun, often for the wrong sorts of people, he decided to make amends for his past actions by sacrificing his own voice. Upon doing so, he realized some of the cosmic truths of the universe and his solarion powers manifested. He now serves as a bodyguard for his trusted friend, someone else in the group.

Bolts, Android Outlaw Mechanic
Bolts awoke in their android body in an apartment on Absalom Station. Unfortunately for them, the body’s previous soul was an outlaw, and they almost immediately had to run. They barely had time to learn about society before it was their enemy. So they took to the outlaw life. They became good at hiding, and traded their machine and computer skills for food and shelter. They eventually came upon their preferred illegal activity, hacking and rigging vidgames. This put an even larger bounty on their head once they were discovered, but they had amassed a wealth of information and contacts, and blackmailed a high ranking security official that spent his spare time gambling on vidgames and cheating on his wife. Now all but their smallest charges have been dismissed and they are more careful than ever. They spend their spare time augmenting themselves and making a living as a bounty hunter. They resent the society that once made androids their slaves, and that made them a criminal from birth. They don’t identify with any culture or gender or organization and they are grumpy to a fault, never having anything positive to say and making no friends. Despite this seeming lack of empathy and devotion, they spend all their time with a close group of companions and have no plans of leaving them.

I realized halfway through I was writing close to the iconic android but went with it anyway

Pak’Sha’Th’Tak, Shirren Priest Mystic
Pak grew up in the traditional Shirren ways. Order, discipline, and loyalty were important. Upon reaching adulthood, she chose to become a female member of society, and she quickly became addicted to choices, as many Shirren do. She left home, and journeyed to multiple worlds. Upon learned of the faith of Desna, she realized her true calling. Her love of travel, adventure, and the stars were a perfect match. And her faith was rewarded with the powers of a mystic. She is unusually exuberant about new experiences and always has a positive attitude, even with the odds stacked against her.

Rem, Kasatha Bounty Hunter Soldier
Rem, short for Remu Taldaloka Fansari of Clan Ketl, House Bandalin, Scourge of the Beast, is a large Kasatha out in the universe for his Tempering, the phase of all Kasatha’s lives where they leave their families and traditions to explore other cultures and worlds. Rem was never great at his studies, but he appreciated the balance that Kasathas see in the universe and the peace that brings. But he lost his appreciation for that the moment he began studying some of the barbaric fighting styles of old Golarion. Now he lives for the spirit of battle, the joys of victory, and the thrill of the hunt. Fiercely dedicated to his friends, he sometimes takes offense on their behalf unnecessarily.

“Voidwhip”, Vesk Xenoseeker Solarion
Voidwhip, once known by a more traditional Vesk name, was one of the cultural elites that shirked off the Vesk militant nature. He and his siblings sought to understand other races better, to search for peace, and to expand their horizons. It was on a trip to Absalom Station where it all went wrong. Their ship was attacked by void wraiths, incorporeal undead that pierced through all of their defenses. The crew’s energy weapons only did so much, and Voidwhip was unarmed, at least at first. Hiding in an escape pod, preparing to flee for his life as soon as one of his siblings joined him, he looked out into the void of space. The stars really were beautiful, and the space between them equally so. His Solarion path was laid out before him. His vision blurred and a bladed whip of pure black darkness emerged from his left arm. Without thinking, he rejoined the crew and fought back the wraiths. Nowadays, he still seeks peace, but he knows he has a purpose on the battlefield, and with his Vesk might and Solarion abilities, he knows he is nearly unstoppable.

It doesn't mention it in the monk variant multiclass so no. If that's important to you, you could take a level of warpriest, sacred fist archetype. I'm not sure if you can do normal multiclass and variant on the same character though.

Someone recently suggested variant multiclassing into monk from vigilante as my main. Class, doesn't that still give me unarmed strike damage of a monk only 2 levels bellow me? If that's the case it might end up being my very best bet.

Yup, and you could just use gauntlets for the first two levels

So if you're looking for vigilante class features outside of dual identity, how far into the class do you need to go? Something like this might work for you:

1: Vigilante (start off using a gauntlet, perhaps flavor: "I'm holding back my true power")
2: Monk (ditch the gauntlet and punch for 1d6)
3+: Vigilante

At some point buy Monk's Robes (aka, an upgrade to a better super hero suit), bringing your punch to 1d8. Optionally, add two more levels of monk somewhere in there to get evasion, a bonus feat, fast movement, and up your punch to 1d10 (with monk's robes). You don't get up to the 2d10 monk dream, but you hit hard enough and in pathfinder it's the modifier that tends to do the most efficient high damage.

For another idea, depending on your character concept and how much you're willing to multiclass, inquisitor, paladin, and ranger are all great ways to get surprisingly high bonus damage.

Can't. Character concept at my table always has to have things that back it up. I want be a super hero, I need dual identity for it.

You couldn't play someone with a secret identity before Ultimate Intrigue came out a year ago? That seems unnecessarily restrictive.

Some non-vigilante secret identity options: master of disguise rogue, masked performer bard, master spy prestige class (which any class can go into). Additionally, literally any character with the disguise skill can have a secret identity. Even the vigilante uses that skill, but it gets bonuses and oddly magical class features that are marked (ex).

Note that I'm not saying your group is BadWrongFun, but that you should take a step back and see that you don't need to take swashbuckler to be a "swashbuckler"; nor take medium to be a "medium"; heck, you don't need to take rogue to be a "rogue." So it shouldn't apply to vigilante either.

I was hoping to never reveal to the party, my characters actual identity unless forced to.

In this case, I'd say vigilante and dual identity are not what you want anyway. Just always play your character in hero mode and just don't tell anyone who you are.

Paizo makes the most money from selling books. I'm not sure the value proposition works out for hiring a full time game balance person. In other words, how many people will stop playing the game because of not enough FAQs? I agree that it's possible unanswered questions can hurt the game, but does that affect most tables out there?

This is essentially what brought about the "Paizo needs to get its house in order" thing that happened a few years back. After that, they adjusted how they do things and how their people speak publicly about rulings, which may be why you don't see many "unofficial" answers on rules.

Pathfinder is now a massive game. That's a gift and a curse. It's a lot of moving parts and interactions.

I don't think there is an easy answer to your concerns, unfortunately. Let's say you did have a full time game balance person answering questions and writing errata. Since this person is dealing with all the hotly contested and controversial aspects of the game, you'd probably want your best person doing this job. You don't throw your rules intern at that or you risk making things far worse. Except, wouldn't you want your best rules person designing new parts of the game? It's a tough problem.

(side note: I also suspect creating Starfinder has probably meant everyone is busier than usual)

The default assumption for all creatures is that they see with the functional equivalent of a human eye except where otherwise noted.

While this may not make sense for many creatures, like skeletons who have no eyes or organs of any kind, it's a useful baseline and helps with table variation.

That said, for home games, I can see a lot of reasons to change that assumption to fit your campaign. Like maybe zombies only get around via sense of smell. Maybe constructs sense vibrations in the ground and/or air. Maybe demons can sense people with innocent blood.

The rules keep things fairly simple though, probably so you don't get bogged down with exceptions.

I would make as many of the enemies not be undead as possible. Make a new descriptor, subtype, or template called cursed. Reason being in Pathfinder there are many ways to be absolutely devastating to undead, but in the Souls games no such abilities exist.

I wouldn't worry too much about the CRs scaling with party level. You end up with challenges that don't necessarily match the game. For example, the Capra demon is a huge pain in the butt. At low power levels, the easiest way to fight him involves exploiting the terrain (similar to fighting black knights if you aren't used to them). But you have the titanite demon as much higher CR. He's imposing for sure, especially you're first time. But he can be beaten with the standard Souls strategy of sticking as close to his body and strafing, on top of other ways to beat him.

This is just my interpretation since I've thought of this before. The standard routes through the Souls games are based on a variety of factors: your skill level, what weapon you want to rush, speed running, etc. I wouldn't enforce any of those in determining CR. Just think about when you played through those and get a rough estimate. If the CR is out of whack, make sure there are alternative routes or that the bosses have exploitable weaknesses. Pathfinder would be very video gamey if it had things like exploitable terrain, but you can always have something like elemental weaknesses that are much stronger than the normal vulnerability. That matches up the souls games quite well. Then your players can find say 10 black firebombs on the way to a boss...and hopefully take the hint.

Good job on the stats so far!

Oh and even though it may seem unbalancing, I would include the summons from the game too. That's half the fun ;)

CoeusFreeze wrote:

I wonder what sense-dependent will mean. Is it the replacement for mind-affecting?

It is not.

I thought it was more like the equivalent of bardic performance being audible or visible. For the clever feint to work, something has to be able to "sense" you, rather than listing the various ways one can sense.

If that's the case, it seems like an elegant way of handling it.

The real question is how do swords used by medium creatures even do significant damage to colossal creatures anyway.

This is something that can be fixed without even changing the ruleset. Just give ever-increasing DR to size categories.

You know, I was too lazy to look that up, assuming that would not be the case since they tag most enchantment spells with mind-affecting. Good to know!

I guess my next character will be a plant ranger

Not really, the spell affects a single target, and the target is now vulnerable to your FE bonuses and abilities. Probably why it's an Enchantment spell.

If you have FE: Human and you cast IE on a Elf you don't all of a sudden have Favored Enemy: Elf, you just get to use your FE: H bonuses on it.

I agree that that's how the spell reads. I'm just saying to me, it seems like an error (or just not thought out thoroughly). There are some unusual interactions the way it works now:

- It doesn't work on Taiga giants (though this could easily be considered more of a problem with Taiga giants having enchantment immunity)
- It doesn't go through globe of invulnerability or anti-magic field
- My favorite: if you use it on an enemy with spell turning or a reflecting shield, you now get your favored enemy bonus against yourself. You are your own worst enemy

I agree with the above. Also, this spell should really be a personal spell. The way it's written you are enchanting a creature to act like your favored enemy but in reality you are just learning how to better fight an enemy as if you had trained on it. Seems like an error to me.

It is odd, to be sure. @drumlord: I pointed them to the website link like you suggested. Unfortunately, it didn't even faze them. They said I needed actual written permission. An e-mail would suffice.

That being the case, do I need an e-mail from Paizo Publishing, or the author(s) of the AP, the illustrator, or a combination of the three?

That's certainly odd, but they just don't want to be sued. I've had a lot of good experiences with Paizo customer service. While it should be unnecessary, I'd try emailing them: customer.service@paizo.com

And mention the specific PDFs you want to print int he email, just so they can't counter that you didn't get specific permission.

Side note: I'm not a lawyer, but even if the authors or illustrators retain some rights to their work (for example, many have permission to print their work on their sites/deviantart), you should only need Paizo's permission to print their publications, hence the FAQ being enough permission. If you aren't lazy like me, it may be worth telling the store manager that their employees are ignoring perfectly legal guidelines.

You can do it. This link is all you need to show them: http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fl#v5748eaic9r2z

It's worth noting that if you can cast stoneskin, you can likely cast blur, displacement, or mirror image, which all help against precision damage by negating attacks entirely. Mathematically, those spells are superior if you expect to get very hard. If you expect to get hit often but not so hard, stoneskin is better.

That's a lot of extra stuff, especially to implement all at once. And there are some builds that need almost no feats. Full casters for example. Or two-handed weapon builds that just need power attack. You may find more success by fixing the feat issue from the other direction. Then see if players still want extra feats. Some suggestions I've seen on these forums:

- free combat expertise for everyone
- spending one feat for a feat chain. As nitro stated, they unlock would you quality for them.
- let characters pick flaws or drawbacks to get bonus feats or traits
- let characters get a "campaign trait" from the campaign's player's guide for free on top of the usual two
- removing feat prerequisites that you don't like

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Everybody is agreed that Haste *should* work with Kinetic Blade/Mystic Bolts right? So it shouldn't be controversial in the least to run it this way?

Correct. But for Pedantic GMs or PFS...

I occasionally browse the PFS threads with rules discussions and I'm always surprised to see an overwhelming consensus to how a rule works and then a 5-star GM or venture-person say something like, "I disagree and will never run it that way at my table."

I'd guess that's probably the main reason people push so hard for answers to relatively simple FAQs.

The Starstone is not something that the average person can see or interact with. As far as most people could say, it might not even exist. His largest church in Absolom is now an Chellish embassy, and Chelliax is overwriting his history on a daily basis with "Alternative History".

See or interact with directly? No. But it's not exactly hidden either. It has a temple that mysteriously grew (and still grows I believe) around it right in the heart of the city. Anyone can go look for it if they like and many have tried. I think there is a shrine nearby that names all the failed attempts at godhood.

You may be right about most people not being sure of its existence around the whole of Golarion, but the Inner Sea region around Absalom doesn't leave much question. Its existence is part of 3 of the 20 core religions. Faiths and followers can certainly be wrong, but I think the Starstone's existence is accepted knowledge. No guarantees. I haven't read everything either ;)

But Aroden actually wanted to advance Humanity and yet very little stands as a testament to his work. Yet the Runelords have dams and crumbling bridges and arcs that still stand.

I'm all for learning more about Aroden and how his death shaped Golarion. But it's not fair to say very little of his work remains. He raised the Starstone. The existence of multiple gods is a direct result of Aroden's actions, as is the existence of the largest city in the Inner Sea. Additionally, there are plenty of churches, monuments, art, and other miscellany in Cheliax [at least] from Aroden's time.

Meh, it's page 8.

Do you have a specific thing you felt 3.5 did better than PF to help us bring it back?

I mean, anything is better than arguing semantics.

I skipped most of 3.x. I use this thread to discover rules I can adapt for my own house rules. Or unpublished 3pp rules, if you prefer ;)

It's probably worth getting the thread back to what 3.x did better than Pathfinder instead of arguing what is or isn't 3pp, no?

If you think your creation is perfect, and anyone that questions it should turn away as opposed to you listening to them, you're missing out on (maybe!) improving it. But sure, that's maybe not what they think and it might just have sounded like that in my head, and then I apologize for making that mistake.

The suggestion I saw in this thread from James was more akin to a waiter at a restaurant. Don't like the chicken parm? We have many other dishes as well. Try the beef stew. That's the whole point of Golarion being a "kitchen sink" setting after all. Most regions are enclosed enough that you can do glorious adventures without worrying about the rest.

And Paizo does listen to fans. That doesn't mean their responses make everyone happy but they clearly try. For example, Pathfinder Unchained is basically a response to years of feedback and shows a lot more consideration than the optional systems in the Ultimate books.

Group hug?

Group hug!

I put forth the theory that Aroden wasn't really dead, and had actually done the Metro Man thing (see Megamind).

THAT got shot down by James Jacobs himself, but NOT as a response to my post (wierd, huh?).

Aroden's dead, but what does that mean for his soul? Did he become a petitioner somewhere? An angel? Get absorbed into the cosmos? I believe Pharasma judged him, so he had to be sent off somewhere, right?

Golarion still has prophecy. The Harrow deck is more than many settings have, too.

Golarion has divination, but not prophecy. With the harrow deck, you have folks faking it, and folks making fairly strong guesses based on magic's prediction of the future (like augery, divination, etc.). Prophecy is, "On the third day of 4785, a plague of demons will scour the land, destroying all in their path. Only a boy born that same day with golden eyes will be able to stop them." That's two parts and if prophecies are correct, both will happen exactly as described. In Golarion, you might get something like that from a divination spell or a chit chat with the gods, but maybe the date is wrong. Maybe just knowing it causes something else to happen. Maybe the hero has silver eyes and is 600 years old. Maybe you can stop the demons from coming. That's what they mean by prophecy being broken. You can't make that firm a prediction and know for sure it will happen.

...when an author shows this sort of "Nuh-uh" attitude towards theories, it hurts that sense of real mystery.

Maybe I missed it, but I don't recall seeing anyone from Paizo shooting down theories. The situation seems complex enough that it's unlikely someone solved the mystery exactly, but there used to be a ton of theories about Aroden's demise years ago and I bet someone came pretty close. It's most important that your theory works for you.

A mystery, like any story, is as strong as your emotional investment in it. I added Aroden stuff to my first years-long Pathfinder game. Ironically, the real investment my players had was with some servants/allies of Pharasma, who they were allied with, and some villains, all of whom I designed. It didn't really feel like an Aroden story until the end, but that's alright.

Like James said, the Aroden mystery is probably not the right story for some. I am in favor of this particular mystery being solved. Partially because we know there is an answer, and partially because hints continue to be dropped here and there, so it's like a bread crumb trail that just loops back on itself. Hansel and Gretel remain lost in the woods forever.

But ultimately, even though setting books hyped it up a lot, it doesn't have much impact on campaigns. At least the published APs I've read (note: haven't read all of them). Even the elves, dwarves, gnomes, and other critters that lived through Aroden's death don't bring it up and it isn't noted in their backstories. My Mummy's Mask game is about mummy stuff and that's awesome and doesn't need any non-mummy mysteries to be solved.

I think the disconnect some are having (including me, depending on my mood) is that the event should have great importance if only because of how much Paizo emphasized it in early books. But in practice, this one dead god only comes up in play as often as the gods that died protecting Golarion from the Starstone (Acavna, Amaznen). Lost/forgotten deities come up multiple times (peacock spirit, Lissala) and most definitely can have an active impact in play. But Paizo making Aroden have real impacts on published adventures would likely just make more people request the solution to the mystery, so it's a catch-22.

Except it's not a thread about LGBT Gaming issues. It's an Community thread "where members of the LGBT community who are also gamers could come and share their life stories, experiences as gamers, and struggles (whether in dealing with their sexuality in relation to our society or not)." (To quote the first post.)

There have certainly been posts about gaming, but there's been a lot more supportive community & life story kind of posts and a fair amount of "political bs", depending on what you mean by that. But you really can't have "healthy discussion" about LGBTQ issues without at least political overtones. How do you avoid politics when they're passing laws against you?

The reason some folks have a hard time seeing LGBTQ issues as political is that they are right. They shouldn't be political. To oversimplify things, progressives see LGBTQ people as deserving equal rights and privileges as everyone else.

Social conservatives see essentially any progress on the LGBTQ front as inherently political, an agenda being pushed by someone. If that weren't the case, we wouldn't still have politicians argue about where people can go to the bathroom. Heck, some politicians still don't want LGBTQ to see their loved ones when they are in the hospital.

My understanding with Arazni is she was written into Golarion's history before a "herald" was fully defined. I think it was closer to the transition to Pathfinder ruleset that Paizo decided they wanted every god to have a herald that could be called by a cleric.

I don't know. Seems to me the reaction has been more "We understand the problems in the current environment, but we would like the ban lifted" than "Wah! Paizo's mean!"

Wanting to talk politics here is not entitlement. Raging at Paizo over it would be, but I haven't seen much of that.

I mean for a permanent ban. Sorry for the confusion. Temporary ban is provoking discussion. Also, when I say "upset," I don't mean "Wah! Paizo's mean!" though that's an entertaining visual

This is a difficult proposition as folks already mentioned. If you take too long, you risk the party dying to the enemies that aren't slow burn enemies.

The best slow burn I can think of would be a campaign, preferably within the first 10ish levels of the game, built around it. An intrigue campaign with swashbuckling and debuff magic, etc. It would work especially well if the PCs are really "good guys" and prefer not to kill. That means you're doing more debuffing, knocking folks out, holding/fearing them, etc. In any normal campaign though? When two hill giants come calling, you better take them out first or they will beat you to a pulp.

Also, while it's generally considered a lame way to give advice, I bet there are other game systems that have more of a slow burn style combat. If we assume Pathfinder combats take 30 minutes to do 3-5 round combat, you probably don't want to take 60 minutes just to slow burn. You'd want a system that moves faster so you can get more actions in the same 30 minutes.

I guess? I'm not sure where the anger comes from though, other than Internet Entitlement. I tend to believe in the "My House" rule: This is Paizo's house. They've asked us to not do X thing, and I respect that. If I have a problem with it, I can do X thing at Bob or Sally or Fred's house rather than being upset that Paizo doesn't like X thing (politics, bringing my gun to the gaming table, calling people names, drinking all their milk, etc.)

Getting upset about it is an alien idea to me.

Oh it's totally entitlement. I didn't mean to imply I took a side one way or another on this part. Only that my experience shows people get upset when you take away things. I think it's perfectly reasonable to say "no politics please," but it's hard to enforce and at first people will be upset.

Except no one is being silenced. This site doesn't have a section on survival preps, backpacking, gardening, Thai cooking, photography, scrapbooking, collecting rocks, basket weaving and so on and yet no one is saying that the Powers That Be are silencing anyone.

I think you know what I meant. When people have the privilege of doing something (talking politics in this case) and you remove it, they get angry. It's a 100% certainly. It happens on sites, in software development, in schools, all over really. That was the point I was trying to make, not that they are literally silencing people.

As someone who doesn't participate in political threads, my opinion may not mean much. But as someone who previously ran nerdy websites for over a decade, maybe that gives it some weight.

The way I see it, if it was alright to have political threads a year ago, it ought to be alright to have them now. Discussions may be heated, and the threads may be difficult to moderate, but that's politics. There's a reason it is taboo in regular conversation (or was, at any rate). I think these are questions worthy of being asked by Paizo's forum decision makers:

1) Were Paizo around during the heart of the civil rights movement, would political discussions be taken offline because many got angry about the idea of minorities getting whites-only rights and privileges?

2) Do you believe discussing politics on paizo.com has value beyond just venting or arguing? If so, recall Kennedy's famous moon speech: "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win." To paraphrase, if it has value, do it, even if it's a pain in the butt.

3) Even if taking down the political discussions is the right decision for the site, do you believe doing so is allowing the bad elements of society to win? (note: bad elements doesn't mean a political party, but rather people who choose not to have civil discourse)

I was not a great site runner. If I was, I would just offer you the right answer, something I don't have. But I do know attempts at silencing your fans rarely goes well. And silencing will have to happen often since many topics relate to politics, especially since the new president is planning on removing many things we took for granted the past several decades.

Some topics that are by default banned simply by disallowing political discussion:

- Funding for the arts
- Climate change
- NASA
- Education
- Mortgages
- Protections for animals and the great outdoors
- Civil rights
- Guns
- Video games
- LGBTQ and women's rights and equality
- The list goes on...

Good luck. I don't envy this position

So, weird idea for a setting:

What if all of the Major Gods were dead? The only beings who could grant divine characters power would have been called Demigods, at best. What would that setting be like?

Reminds of Dark Souls. Obviously the setting wouldn't have to be that dark. But the gods of Dark Souls either may not exist or can be fought and defeated.

He was just as much a god back in the 3.5 days as he is now, with domains and everything. Not to mention he isn't a "god" god, he's a lesser deity, and if we can stat Pazuzu and Hastur and Nocticula then by golly we can convert ol' Achy. Who's with me?!

He is a "god" god. All the gods are in Golarion. It doesn't have the split of different levels of gods. The next step down from gods are demigods and we have stats for those. There is an implication that the older the god, the more powerful, but even that's not true in all cases, especially where there is disagreement on how old a god is. We just know for sure gods don't get their power from worshipers like some campaigns.

I think the only rule that actually specifies different levels of gods is Contact Other Plane, and James Jacobs suggested using the intermediate level row of that chart for all Golarion gods.

Just to play Devil's Advocate, he does Dual Wield Sword and Improvised Weapon (Torch) once in the movie at Weathertop. But no clue if he's using TWF Feat or just eating the attack penalties. He certainly couldn't hit crap till he took the standard action to throw the torch!

He can switch between the two on his iterative attacks without taking penalties. We'll have to rewatch and time his attacks over 6 seconds ;)

Contrary to my original post, I'm now hoping the design team does have to look at this, if only so they have to read this awesome thread.

It damn sure isn't for me. I have yet to see a 20th level character in Pathfinder.

I've had two groups, one I played, the other DM'd. The passive capstones were used (monk, barbarian), but the active ones didn't see much play, discounting 9th level spells and grand hexes.

That said, I like the idea of capstones. I also like the house rule that James Jacobs mentioned in his thread a while ago: if your campaign ends at 17th level, give your characters their capstones then. It might not work for a campaign ending below 11th level, but your standard adventure path ends around 17. I'll probably try that for my Mummy's Mask campaign.