magnuskn's page

Dang, someone really wanted Merisiel to step on them.

There's the circuitous route to get the pre-remastered dragon bloodline powers with the pre-remaster Dragon Disciple archetype onto another bloodline. You just need to play the right race, i.e. a Kobold with the correct heritage.

Seems the dedicated "But what about Nocticula, huh?" thread went places tonight, since it's gone now. I miss all the stuff here in Germany while I'm sleeping...

Yeah, okay, I am going to do some pushback here. I like the concept of redemption, so I've always felt drawn to Sarenrae.

Nocticula's redemption, though, is something different from the redemption Sarenrae teaches. Sarenrae's concept of redemption obviously focuses on the concept of penance for ones misdeeds, i.e. "work for your happy ending". Nocticula is not like that. The article in this AP volume did not focus on it (James has mentioned multiple times that Nocticula is not primarily about redemption), but her entry in Divine Mysteries made it pretty clear that she knows that she cannot redress all the ills she has caused in the millenia she was a demon lord. So she just stopped doing evil and started doing good (although she was chaotic neutral when alignment still was a thing, her faith offering exiles a safe haven is something I personally would categorize as good).

Her faith is not about redemption, but her example still offers demons and other fiends a way to stop doing evil, by just walking away from it.

Honestly, leaving reviews to buying customers feels fine to me. We already got very few reviews per AP volume but we always get the one from the dude who just leaves one star without a comment, because he's on his third (or higher) account doing this, because he hates 2E on the principle that it isn't 1E.

That being said, migrating old reviews from verified customers seems like a good idea to me.

Evan Tarlton wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

Interesting, can you also share the Mythic Destinies if you don't mind?

Yes! It has shipped. :)

I'm surprised to see Xanderghul again, given the events of the previous campaign. Will there be an explanation for his return?

Tempest Keep Having his soul roasted was just a setback.

He did. And then he went into a bit more detail why it's not that much of a good idea to change the theme of the campaign, unless you are the GM and are willing to put in the work (which is a lot).

Yeah, same. But I am so much looking forward to the first volume of Revenge of the Runelords. Nocticula article, yes yes!

I just hope Sorshen survives.

What I hope is that we get high-level SF adventure paths. The developers were very gunshy about publishing high-level content for SF1E, I hope this changes with the more balanced 2E system.

Yeah, there's a whole other topic of Paizo's lack of responsiveness to player feedback there. I know the RPG business is not as the same as the computer gaming business, but they are related in theme at the very least. And most computer gaming companies have a much better feedback model, especially the small or mid-size ones, where they take negative feedback from their customers into account and interact with them.

Paizo developers, outside of James and just a little bit of interaction from the others (except Maya, who is doing a very good job) have a very strange model of customer interaction, responding seldomly to player concerns (two errata cycles per years with indeterminate dates to boot) and erratic communication (this forum gets very little outside of James and Maya, Reddit gets more and then there is some on social media which most people don't even see). It has a very "put the train tracks before the running train" feel to it and doesn't seem well planned out.

That being said, James and Maya are heroes for their presence here and goodwill to us. I just wish the rest of the developers would follow their example.

Though I'm curious about how the PF Remaster stands out from 2.0. Is there a good summary to read that anyone can recommend?

Generally it cleaned up some rules and class issues, removed all the OGL stuff, including alignment (which incidentally made Champions of different stripes much more playable) and generally buffed most classes which needed buffing (Wizard players may feel different ^^). It's still the same basic game, though.

Ravingdork wrote:

Individual responses to everyone

To be honest man, if you can argue against everyone in the entire thread at once like this, I don't really know what anyone is supposed to do to change your mind. Do you, like, WANT to argue about it? Or do you think someone has an answer that will satisfy you, and it just hasn't been said yet?

Making controversial topics and then argueing them to death seems to be one of RD's favorite pasttimes.

The smart design is to make the weapon able to teleport back to the creatures hand for low cost in those cases.

Alas, that's not the case for many officially statted NPC's/monsters. Always a nice houserule to have, though.

OTOH, some boss encounters rely on the boss using his weapon to make most of his abilities. Like with a dullahan.

PF2E. I was very resistant to 2E during the playtest and when it came out and didn't touch the system for four years, hoping to "sit it out" and that Paizo would publish a more 1E-like third edition.

I was simply not ready at the time to abandon the principles of 1E I liked, but the more years passed, the less enamored I became with them, since I am mostly a GM and have to deal a lot with the inherent problems 1E has in high-level campaigns. My own games became more and more filled with houserules to prevent the "stack as many bonuses as you can" gameplay. And when the Remaster was announced and I took a good first look at the published 2E rules, I found that the developers had basically adopted all the idea I had accumulated for myself during the intervening years, which made adopting 2E much easier for me this time around. I am also a bit happy that I skipped the less good versions of some classes by going late into the new edition (especially Swashbuckler, my favorite class archetype).

I've been GM'ing 2E for three quarters of a year by now (running Abomination Vaults, group is at level 5 and starting book 2 this Sunday) and I am loving it so far. I hope the promises of continued balance at the higher level holds up, but by reading this forum and Reddit, it seems that it isn't an empty promise.

The AP hardcover solution is good and I fully support it, be it for reasons of cohesion of story and also better shipping costs.

As for PFS, I am playing a bit of it and this new approach sounds problematic in many ways, which has already been expounded upon by many other people upthread. I hope the developers take the (so far uniformly negative) feedback to these changes into account.

What's the price point of an AP in the new format? I'm guessing $75ish?

-Skeld

I think somebody said USD 79.99?

I'm still quite new to GM'ing PF2E, but this has bothered me as well. I don't know if I want to houserule this for my first campaign. The thing is, even if DC's scale, the effects should not. So if an item has several upgrade stages (like many of them do), the player should still be incentivized to get the upgrade, because he'll get a better effect out of it. Or maybe replace the item with another one which just has a better effect altogether.

Huh. That should make it a bit easier on my shipping costs as well, although the ones for the big shipments will obviously be higher now.

The Lost Omens Travel Guide has some stuff on Thassilon. Apparently they like see-through fabric and ziggurats.

I object to the idea that it is somehow unique or special and required Sorshen's unique or special intervention to bring it into being or Sorshen's unique or special qualities to preserve it against the slings and arrows of the world. Because that would be what is necessary to justify her continuing to rule her own realm instead of settling down somewhere similar where she was not the absolute autocrat.

Okay, then. I guess her new realm would have spontaneously appeared then in one of the most inhospitable areas of the world, perfectly suitable to human life and a haven to people who need a refuge. <shrug> Sorry, I don't share this viewpoint at all. Absolute autocrats are there all over the world on Golarion and most of the few places which have some sort of other government are deeply flawed as well from a modern democractic viewpoint (as are our current governments, but there you go).

I have not seen Sorshen repent her past ways, which is why it does not feel like redemption to me. More like a self-serving move to stop being a target to anti-Runelords "heroes".

And it's true that "don't ask about the atrocities I did to get to my current power, just look at all the non-evil / good things I'm doing now with it" feels more like an easy way out than a real attempt to cope with the consequences of her evil acts.

Finally, if power corrupts, she should definitely get as far from it as possible. Which is not what she's doing.

Alright, a valid point, but one which I don't share. Yeah, it's an easier way of redeeming oneself than the standard one, but it works on people who otherwise would have stayed evil and continued harming innocents. It's all nice to have a lofty moral perch to moralize from, but if one demon follows Nocticula's example and just stops doing evil, that's hundreds or thousands of souls who will not go to the Abyss, erm, Outer Rifts in the future.

And people who have so much power as Sorshen can do more good if they use it from a position where they can exert influence, i.e. as a ruler of a realm. It's, for example, why I preferred the Empress ending to Witcher 3 to the Witcher ending.

magnuskn wrote:

I personally say that with great power comes great opportunity to do good and Sorshen setting up a kingdom where exiles and artists are welcome to live safely from people who persecute them is something someone of lesser power could not have done in the first place.

In fact these are dime a dozen in the Lost Omens Campaign Setting. Magnimar and Kaer Maga are two such, and they're even in the Saga Lands. Others include Nantambu, Lamasara, Kintargo, Vyre, and Pitax. There is little substantial difference in hospitality or freedom of expression as between them, or between them on the one hand and modern Xin-Shalast on the other; the most substantial difference is that Xin-Shalast is ruled by Sorshen and the others are not.

So, you object to another kingdom which does good for people and exists as a counterbalance for the more conqueror-like rulers in the area (including Belimarius and some Linnorm Kings) coming into existance? "There are other decent places in the world, somewhere else" is not really a good argument, IMO. Also Kaer Maga does have some vampires secretly ruling over it, IIRC.

Of the three 'hot babes get redeemed' stories, Sorshen's doesn't feel terribly redeem-y, and also feels more real to me than Noticula's. She's supposed to be super-intelligent, and a pivot to 'totes not the big bad at the end of the AP! don't kill me, bros!' makes sense.

It falls squarely in line with Nocticula's ethos, which is "I can't possibly atone for a millenium (or many multiple millenia in case of Nocticula) of bloodshed, but I can stop doing evil and start helping people instead". Which is a concept many people can't really grok, who are used to redemption as a concept where the person who atones first humbles her/himself into a lesser station than s/he used to hold, which is why Sorshen's redemption probably feels unearned to them.

I personally say that with great power comes great opportunity to do good and Sorshen setting up a kingdom where exiles and artists are welcome to live safely from people who persecute them is something someone of lesser power could not have done in the first place.

However, I did not run the 2018 adventure path Return of the Runelords. I read the entry on Belimarius and Sorshen in Lost Omens: Legends, but that does not tell give me enough information about their personalities for their encounter with the 20th-level Rise of the Runelords PCs in my incarnation of Golarion. I mostly need to tell the tale of whether the ancient runelords fought or cooperated. And I remembered seeing this thread about Sorshen, so I am here to learn.

If you have the books and don't want to spoil yourself because of the eventuality that you might run this AP as a player someday, I recommend looking into book 3 of Return of the Runelords, Runeplague. It has an extended section where the party deals with Sorshen in person (so to speak) and gives a good insight into her current personality.

Ectar wrote:

Teridax wrote:

Ectar wrote:

Accuracy buff?

Ancestral Memories.

Oooookay. Imperial, not Arcane.

Poor poor Arcane Draconic bloodline.

So talking about blasting, draconic sorcerers actually have it pretty good. I'm really enjoying the focus spells;

- the wings are just a very good fly speed, nice if you need it, or just another focus point in the tank
- the claws are pretty solid damage
- the breath weapon is the real winner though. Damage is comparable to a fireball, but this is a focus spell so it auto-heightens and you can do it throughout the day.

And in the case of the arcane draconic sorcerer: repeatable Force blast in a decently big cone. Not bad at all.

On top of that, solid bloodline spells too.

Yeah, I was about to point out the same. In terms of DPR, Elemental wins. In terms of accuracy, Imperial. But the Draconic bloodline wins in terms of throughput throughout the day, can have a force damage breath weapon and has good bloodline spells, including a very good blast with Howling Blizzard.

Turns out, Arazni is the weakest of the three for me, especially with her (undeserved, IMO) elevation to one of the top 20 deities of the Inner Sea.

Thanks, James. :)

Here's the text passage from Runeplague:

Important part bolded.

If someone has retconned some of those vampires to be still un-alive, that should have no weight on the original intent of the author, i.e. Sorshen releasing her army of vampires to go to the great beyond being a redemptive act.

Virellius wrote:

Gods forbid a girl try new things.

I quite agree. But going from being the absolute autocrat of a nation who wants for nothing, with the power to decide who lives and who dies, to the absolute autocrat of a nation who wants for nothing, with the power to decide who lives and who dies, doesn't strike me as much of a change. If she'd kept living in obscurity in Korvosa, or retreated to an ascetic existence, or placed her power and knowledge at the disposal of others, I'd find her rather more sympathetic and earnest.

God forbid she use her vast power to open up a realm for exiles and artists to escape to from oppressors. Not everybody has to live in sack and ash to repent for past misdeeds, doing enough good also counts.

vyshan wrote:

What was the issue with Sorshen to begin with?

Being a Runelord entailed a lot of mass murder and enslavement as a matter of course. Sorshen decided to avoid starting up with that again not out of any realization that her actions were wrong but largely out of fear of the sticky ends her fellows met. And she was spectacularly successful in avoiding that outcome for herself, going above and beyond evading any negative consequences for her past deeds (not having to give anything up in reparation or as an earnest of her good faith) to maintaining or increasing her lavish lifestyle, personal and political power, and status. It comes across, at least to me, as a blatant exercise in narrative favor.

She spent 10.000 years in conscious stasis, I think that counts enough of a punishment. And actually the idea of imprisoning people is (at least in the civilized countries) to reform them, so I think her self-inflicted stasis absolutely counts as being successful in her case.

Oh also unleashing a small army of vampires upon the world once she woke up. that and the whole baving in the blood of people to become immortal so she could have that 'revelation' to begin with.

She did not "unleash an army of vampires". She released them to die and go to the great beyond. Source: Runeplage, page 67, bio of the Sorshen simulacrum.

Still doing three (or in total four) 1E campaigns.

Strange Aeons: I am playing my favorite character of the lot, Doctor Ogol, a chaotic neutral elf Alchemist (think Doctor Insano from the Spoony Experiment). The GM is a first-time Pathfinder GM and has modified a good lot of the campaign, which turns out under him is very combat heavy and RP-lite. He seems to see the horror element in beating up the party with stacked encounters. We are currently still in the early stages of module three.

Iron Gods: Also in module three and, aside from the technological aspect, a pretty much standard Pathfinder campaign in terms of combat and roleplay. The technological items are really underwhelming so far and my character, a lawful good Monk named Lucien Kell, can't use them anyway. But it's pretty fun. :)

Ironfang Invasion: Currently on hold, I am playing a Sylvan Sorcerer named Barnabas Khaine with his lynx companion Mauler. We finished the second module and have now begun the first module of Hell's Rebels, where I am the GM. We'll return to the campaign after I finish the first module of that campaign. The story is good, but the lack of opportunities to sell equipment and get something appropiate for ones character is grating at this point.

Hell's Rebels: We have just begun this adventure path where I am the GM. I started with a prologue where I detailed what happened to the characters in the Night of Ashes. And we will just this coming Friday finish the official "prologue", i.e. the part where the players are on a set path of fixed encounters and now the sandbox of the city will open. I got some of the official stuff planned to pop up soon enough and I will also add some character specific events. Also, we'll see what the players come up by themselves. The rebellion system is running in the background for this campaign, since in my first Hell's Rebels campaign the other group found it to be too mechanic and this group decided before starting the campaign to focus more on the story and character stories. In any case, the prep time for the next sessions after the one coming next week will increase dramatically, but since I put in a lot of time to prep in the year before, it all should be pretty manageable.

I am also running every second week a 2E Abomination Vaults campaign, going into Fists of the Ruby Phoenix some day, where we are just finishing the first module in one week. And one day, when the Strange Aeons campaign is done, I'll start with a 2E Return of the Runelords conversion. Really looking forward to that!

Since Sorshen (by her own words) likes to work through agents, I suspect she would be delighted to make the aquaintaince of more capable heroes and be on her best behaviour.

A lot of classes can access the arcane list now with better class features. Imperial sorcerer is arguably the new wizard for PF2. Which I'm fine with as I greatly prefer spontaneous casting.

I keep hearing that, but I kinda want to know why? Yep, it has a great new focus spell, but it also does not have the skill monkey capability the bloodline had pre-remaster, due to its old level one focus spell not being there anymore. Being kind of a skill monkey has always been one of the corner stones of playing a Wizard and the imperial Sorcerer still lacks that, unlike, say, the sage Sorcerer in PF1E (which just had to struggle with a miserable base class skill list).

Can we not bloat up the system with a base class which can be expressed perfectly fine with the current skill system and the existing classes? Or maybe a one-page archetype in an adventure path?

Champions got Expand Aura at lvl 6 with expanded benefits later on, Defensive Advance and you can play their causes for a lot more deities than before. I think they came out very well, although their base chassis already was strong pre-Remaster.

Swashbucklers got really functional with the Remaster and are one of my favorite classes in 2E. Which is why I wrote a guide for them.

Golarion as a setting already resembles the 'zoo' folks are complaining about, though. It's never really been a low-fantasy "humans and one dwarf" kinda world, especially now that Orcs and Leshies are Common.

I think what Castiliano means is that Starfinder 1E just threw tons of races at you with each Bestiary, each with very little personality outside of its assigned gimmick. I personally would prefer more depth for each ancestry in SF2E.

I think there are two pain points with Pathfinder 2E which are not served well with the focus on new base classes but would benefit from releasing more optiz for existing classes.

The first is getting out the main character options of 1E into 2E. I'm talking about the most popular options like the Skald. This particular often requested class option could better be done with a class archetype for the Bard, rather than a full new base class.

The second one are classes like the Kineticist, which do not interact well with the main chassis of Pathfinder 2E, but are popular and versatile enough to merit expanding on, be it through more impulses for existing elements or new elements altogether.

But also existing classes like the Wizard would get much benefit out of more variety in their class feat choices. Sure, some min-maxers might not see the point, since they are set in their "optimal build" mindset, but you always see off-the-wall builds popping up on Reddit.

magnuskn wrote:

Yes, please, some slowdown for new classes and more options for existing classes, especially some of the newer ones with unique mechanics like Kineticist. More class archetypes as well, those help porting over old 1E character concepts.

I honestly think this glut of something like six new base classes per year is very quickly going to lead to burnout. I remember very well that by Occult Adventures in 1E many of my players were just done with the constant churn of new base classes.

... Six? I'm really not following the math there, unless you're counting Starfinder's core classes. It's generally been two classes.

Apologies, time really passes more quickly as you get older (I'm turning 50 on Monday, oy very). The release of War of Immortals seems just like it happened a few weeks ago.

I'm pretty sure, though, that the Necromancer and Runesmith might still come out this year, which would make it four new base classes this year, independent of Starfinder.

Yes, please, some slowdown for new classes and more options for existing classes, especially some of the newer ones with unique mechanics like Kineticist. More class archetypes as well, those help porting over old 1E character concepts.

I honestly think this glut of something like six new base classes per year is very quickly going to lead to burnout. I remember very well that by Occult Adventures in 1E many of my players were just done with the constant churn of new base classes.

Longer-term, we are looking to have distribution partners in Europe and Australia that will be able to fulfill Paizo products. We haven't yet scoped that integration work, nor have we secured such an agreement with a partner that can do B2C fulfillment. Warehousing products in Europe and Australia would allow us to ship them there...

While I really look forward to this (shipping this month was USD 61.39 and that is after the USD 10.00 discount), please, please, please try to add tracking to international shipments as soon as possible.

Having high shipping costs and high shipping times and sometimes additional customs costs is all aggravating but bearable to me, but not knowing where the shipment is and not being able to contact the transport service in case of a hold-up somewhere (or to reschedule the delivery date, since I let things be shipped to my work address) is what is really grating on me.

I don't know if you have a long-term contract with some transport service which does not offer tracking, but the vast majority of them do nowadays. If I can get a T-Shirt or art print from China with functional international tracking from some random Chinese seller on Amazon, I really don't get why this is so difficult (or vastly more expensive, for using the higher cost shipping options) with Paizo.

That does make it sound as if it will in the future be IMPOSSIBLE to write reviews for products you don't own? So far I thought I just wouldn't get gold for it. If it is as you say, I sincerely ask you to reconsider! That would prevent players from reviewing scenarios they have played, which would be a very bad idea. It should NOT be only the GMs that are able to write reviews.

To be fair, this would also prevent malicious trolls from leaving bad reviews because of some agenda, like, say, hating Pathfinder 2E because you think Paizo should have continued with Pathfinder 1E. Of which there have been dozens of reviews like this by the same person under different consecutive user names.

Kzuld Krer wrote:

How is this going to effect Subscriptions? Will it auto apply gold to PFS/SFS? I'm not liking this.

Subscriptions will be covered in a future blog, but your subscription purchases will also apply to Paizo Plus.

-Jim

I'm sorry, but this is not well timed, then. Unless the other blog comes out very soon, this will just lead to rampant speculation and doomposting for weeks.

That's going to be an expensive month. Probably doubly, because the customs office in Germany will see the price tag and add their own amount to it. ^^

I assume you guys are in contact with companies like Penguin Random House for your European distribution, because it's certain that they are also left scrambling in the wake of this event.

Luckily I get all the stuff I want from my suscriptions. Except the novels, because you guys don't have a novel suscription yet.

Please add a novel suscription. :p

magnuskn wrote:

Huh, when I saw the thread title I thought of the Fantasy Fiction Formula by Deborah Chester.

Interesting! I'm not familiar with that. I know it from descriptions of improvisational techniques, I think.

She's a fantasy writer, has over 40 published novels including the above-referenced book about the craft of writing (not limited to fantasy books). She also teached writing classes at college, one of her students, who mentions her often, was Jim Butcher, the writer of the Dresden Files.

The titular "Yea, and..." is something out of the book I mentioned, in regards to how to set up consequences for your protagonists actions, although in The Fantasy Fiction Formula it was more laid out in the sense of "Yes, but..." or "No, and...", i.e. having your hero succeed at this big task without something going wrong will often come off as boring, so it is better if things do go wrong in some way.