moosher12's page

The actual reason is that Rage of Elements is not actually a Remastered book. Wood and Metal geniekin are OGL, not ORC, therefore they are still Legacy ancestries. There are NO remastered geniekin at all. It's an OGL book written with early Remastered writing style in mind, but it is not actually a Remastered book. It only needed two geniekin because the other 5 already existed in OGL. But yeah, none of the Rage of Elements content is ORC, therefore none of the Rage of Elements content is actually Remastered content, until the book either gets reprinted under ORC, or until a newer book publishes content scraped from it. (For example, if I wrote an ORC book, I cannot write material for the Kineticist, because the Kineticist is not a remastered class. I'd instead need to write Kineticist material in an OGL book. Though, because Paizo is 1st party, they can legally write supplemental material for their own OGL books in their own ORC books without needing to port the OGL content to ORC, which is why Impossible Magic includes Kineticist options while Kineticist is still OGL).

But on the bright side, this means that eventually, geniekin will be remastered, and because wood and metal geniekin are legacy, that means there's a good chance all 7 subtypes can be included in the same book when it comes time. It just won't be rage of elements. A direct remaster of an existing book keeps pagination, so there is no way to add the remaining 5 geniekin to that book in the event of such a remaster. It'd either be in a new element-themed book, a new race book to the tune of Galactic Ancestries and Ancestry Guide, a combination of one of the earlier including the remaining 5 geniekin and a remaster of Rage of Elements, and lastly, I have an unlikely hope that because Impossible Magic shows an elemental on its cover, I think a magic themed book would be a good fit to include the geniekin if it includes new ancestry options at all. Either way, Paizo has been doing a good job rolling out Legacy ancestry options with each core and lost omens book, so I'm sure they'll come in time.

A street sports class (skating/biking) that incorporates portable vehicles (such as hoverboards, hopefully expanded to bikes, skates, normal skateboards, and the like) for enhanced mobility and incorporating the vehicle as a weapon replacement.

All I could do was mutter 'pobrecito' after reading his story.

It sounds like this will be a book a lot of folks like. Is this going to be a full on rule book? Or a lost omen book with some crafting and equipment rules in it?

From what I can tell, I think it'd be a main rulebook. From looking at the cover, it does not mention Lost Omens. so I imagine it'd be a similar size to Treasure Trove, though it's just my guess. I think it's safe to assume at least 200 pages.

I'm a starting GM, going to use the "Tales From the Vast" book, and two party members have made characters already married to each other. How does a beginning GM go about this?

If you want a benefit, I'd recommend using the Heartbond Ritual Pathfinder-side. The rules would be the same thanks to compatibility. One thing I do as a home rule is allow pre-married characters to have a successful, but not critically successful ritual as a free benefit at game start.

Otherwise if you don't want a benefit, you can just say they are married and be done with it.

Galaxy Guide Map

In the Galaxy Guide Map, the Prosperiola Drift Lane is incorrectly aligned. Instead of Verces, it connects to a random space in the Pact Worlds. Instead of Vesk 3, it connects to a random space in the Veskarium,

Seconded, building a tangible dream psychic mine as a Starfinder character for this exact premise. Had a lot of fun with characters like Naruto's Sai and One Piece's Raizo, as well as the mines from Expedition 33. and while Tangible Dream psychic somewhat works, a more dedicated class to the concpts of creative creation would be interesting.

Though, while I would not mind these concepts being retroactively built into the luminary, I feel they would be a bit awkward coinciding with the luminary's role mechanics. Some implimentations work, but not always. It feels like trying to carve a new peg to stuff into luminary's square hole while the lady looks on in horror.

As another fear-based ancestry, my boys the Dromada are entirely about the pragmatism of being cowards due to being a prey species. Hope they come to 2E, they were a fun ancestry to read.

As for the thought on Ogres going good, the way I see it, that's why the rarity system exists. Some evil parties will be cool with a more evil monster race being there as a pragmatic inclusion, while for others, even the most evil monsters tend to have the occasional exception to the rule. Trolls for example are also a brutal and usually evil ancestry, but... There is an official short story of the iconic monk sparring with and being friends with a troll, as well as a troll NPC who was raised by a druid who could have come out good if it was not for the fact people tried to kill her on sight, turning her back toward evil. If GMs don't want players assuming they can play an ogre, just don't make the Ogre common, solved.

In the end, roleplaying games are about playing roles and telling stories, and sometimes a creature from an evil race turning coat towards the good guys is a story some players wanna tell.

Over time, goblins shifted from what they were to a genuinely acceptable race as their good sides were highlighted (While Goblins were technically playable in the Bestiary, one should be aware that Pathfinder Bestiary races were less intended for player use, and more intended for GM use to make NPCs, the first player-facing goblin entry would actually be Advanced Race Guide), and then it happened to hobgoblins. Now that bugbears are becoming playable, I wonder what their good side will be. And if bugbears can find a good side, just who knows what can be figured out for hill giants, trolls, and ogres. In the end, I just see it as options for people who wanna tell certain stories.

I know I've mentioned it, but glad to see if mentioned again. 1E vehicle creation rules were great! (Plus, I can use custom vehicles in most campaigns while custom mechs only get used in a few, so I hope vehicles come at the same time, or before mechs).

Kalaam wrote:

Lowkey scared lol

Especially with how people in the community are being heavily critical of how inventor and psychic got touched up or not in their own remastered books.

The big thing to remember is that both Guns & Gears and Dark Archive were reprints with some small tweaks to bring them in line with the Remaster.

Impossible Magic is a brand new book. They have a lot more flexibility to make changes with a brand new book.

Yeah, there's more room for optimism to anticipate changes along the lines of Player Core 1 and 2 over Dark Archive and Guns and Gears.

Also not all PDF readers would even be able to deal with that. I use Sumatra, which for example, does not work with the toggles for interactive maps.

Phobias will always be a messy subject I think. There are many common traps to fall into that will upset someone. Especially when you leave the realm of common phobias and enter the realm of specific phobias, you never know what seemingly innocuous thing could be a landmine that leads to a panicked player.

Best I think can be done is to let GMs curate for their players which adventures are fitting or not. One thing I always do is advice my players to privately tell me if they have any sensitivities to avoid, so I can quietly remove them from any adventures, or propose a different adventure if a surgical removal is not possible.

As someone with their own set of common and specific phobias, this is the sort of thing I know I'd appreciate player side.

captaingamer wrote:

- Make the hardlight constructs do something. Maybe you can generate a shield/consumable every so often. In fact, I think that the focus spells you get should allow you to generate more interesting hardlight constructs. Feats like "Guest Cameo" are awesome and should be the standard for all focus spells.

Hardlight props should definetly have language making it clear you can use them like kinetict's flashforge. I don't see the point of denying them all function when there's plenty of ways to get basic tools for free already in the game.

This raises a good point. I'd like to amend my suggestion for Contest from being a weapon to a range of basic tools.

But anyways. The effects need names for reference and I feel "genre" could be a problematic word to use for some people? They also could just rename the roles to better fit the name of a role, like "action hero", "comic relief", "drama queen", etc. Overall a very minor and inconsequential critique.

Out of curiosity, how is "genre" problematic? I legitimately didn't know there was a negative connotation for the term in modern vernacular.

That aside, I like your proposed name changes. Action hero works, same for comic relief, I'd probably swap out drama queen for dramatic in general to sound more gender neutral.

Aye, though as I said, a more clear cut approach would be the strengthening of Will through adversity.

Which would make sense, without just making bard in space, the closest we could probably do for Luminary would be either prepared caster or bounded caster.

It feels like it's because the Luminary gets Kineticist Impulse accuracy. Unlike, say, a Champion, which can start with a +4 to Dex, Luminary being a Cha class can only start with a +3 at best. Despite being a mastery class, it'll be a point behind a paladin. Though its accuracy should be in line with that of a Kineticist.

The 8th level feat Trope Deconstruction gives you action compression (1a to Cast Role and Set Spotlight) and also reverses buffs/penalties for all roles.

I'm aware, but I don't think it's done properly. As I already said, reversing penalties into bonuses is not always thematic. It could work for comedy, for example, but not really for tragedy. As I said, Booster/Inhibitor was not a simple reversal of roles, it was a seperate nerf, and a seperate buff, appropriate to the theme. Because a role in a friendly sense, and a role in an unfriendly sense, do not always correspond to the same effect.

Also, waiting until level 8 for even that is a long time when that sort of thing should be a default. Also, the feat does not affect all roles. If you did, say give an enemy a horror role, that feat issues no penalty reversal because there is no inversion that can be made, as it only affects status penalties and bonuses, which Horror and Epic do not grant. So yes, even with that feat, Horror ONLY works for friendlies, which makes it an odd choice outside of a villain party.

So unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to run the test this time as my players are hounding me to get my butt in gear for Guilt of the Grave World. But I'll drop my thoughts on one and a half readings.

To start, I like the concept of the class. The Luminary being to the Bard as the Champion is to the cleric is frankly, a very unexpected move, but for the most part, I like it, and I think this class has a lot of promise. Unfortunately, I think some of its concepts need a bit work.

I'd say I'll start with my biggest gripe, and that's the initial roles (Action, Comedy, Drama, Epic, Horror, Irony, Romance, Tragedy). I like these roles, but they feel that these starting roles could be so much more. I think it's disappointing that the roles only do one thing, no matter who you place it on, being a buff, or a debuff. And I find that such a waste of potential. What if you want to make your allies comedic, or your enemies horrific? You can do it, but for the most part, it's only penalizing you. I think the Starfriends should add to this system, by harkening back to the Biohacker with it's booster/inhibitor dynamic. For example, Comedy might apply either a penalty or a bonus to Reflex, but Tragedy might apply a penalty to Fortitude, or a bonus to Will, to represent the struggle. Epic and Horror granting an ally a bonus on critical hits makes sense for an enemy, but what if you made an enemy, especially an enemy boss, more interesting by accentuating their state as an epic or horrific villain, that might issue a reward when they are critically hit to be a significant blow to represent stumping a great enemy? What if an Enemy Romance could become fascinated with an allied Romance? There is a lot of room to make the rolecasting so much more interesting by playing with these potential dynamics, and adding that second facet to each will do a lot.

Secondly, I feel that if Luminary is gonna give you mastery in Performance, I feel it should go all the way toward giving you Legendary Performance.

Thirdly, some Hardlight props are simply better than others. Contest I feel is too vague to be useful for much, and perhaps letting you treat them like an improvised weapon like Sport would be a help. Alike, I think Sport should have a scaling damage, it already does low damage, even for low level, and is quickly trivialized before long. I'd also be tempted to suggest in the same vain that Music props at a higher level could give music quality on par with a virtuoso instrument, as per the Summon Instrument cantrip.

Now that I've got to read the new class, I'm liking it a lot. Feels like the champion to the bard's cleric.

Not quite sure how I feel about bard in space, but I've yet to read it, let's see if it can carve it's own distinct niche.

On an amusing side note: someone pointed out that the cleric time domain focus spell, delay consequence, can be cast on enemies, which means you can do the delayed sheath cut as a bit.

Reminds me of an old request I've had for Kineticist, where I wished there was a feat where you could channel your kineticism through an implement, rather than only being able to create a weapon of kinetic energy. The character concept at the time, for example, was using a pair of fighting fans to generate wind from. But unfortunately you can only carry one fan if you wanna produce kineticism, but if you have two fans, you are incapable of doing it.

Which is to say, two-handed katana cut-kineticist does not work, because both hands are taken. Only one-handed works.

Oh definitely, when trying to build a ninja for players, I often recommend Thief Rogue with archetype into either Witch or Wizard, with the main determining factor being whether or not they want to swap a cantrip with a familiar.

As for enchantments being gross, yeah they are, but that's more of a social limitation than a mechanical or systematic limitation. If the only thing stopping a player from doing dubious stuff with such powers is a GM saying, "Please don't, you're being weird." while that other table with the GM who fully allows that stuff is seeing mechanically legal characters go ham with atrocities, then the game rules themselves are not discouraging it. Granted, a reminder to anyone reading this, please always default to the Path/Starfinder Baseline unless you're in a table where all players consent to go beyond those limits. Express verbal consent in these matters among all players involved, alongside agreeing on borders of the new limits, is mandatory.

Remember the reason that Magic in Pathfinder became extremely flashy was people's ethical/worldbuilding concerns about characters using mind-affecting magic with nobody noticing. If you could just mind-control the merchant at the market, why pay for anything? If people regularly get away with this stuff, why aren't Wizards kept in cages so that other people can live their lives?

Magic in Pathfinder never became flashy. It was always flashy. If anything, it's become easier to ensorcel NPCs as the years went on.

1E didn't get a feat to do it until Ultimate Intrigue, 7 years in. Aside from that, you had to become an Arcane Trickster. 2E saw the ability co conceal spell from day 1. And witches and wizards can do it with relative ease. (Even easier in Remaster than Legacy due to the increation of the Subtle trait)

So if Paizo is discouraging it, there isn't much mechanical case for that, because I don't see wizards and witches experiencing such a discouragement.

I know it's 1E, but the advice is relatively system agnostic, and might provide some help here.

Power Gamer

The power gamer focuses on maximizing her character’s strengths while minimizing her weaknesses. She focuses all her character choices to enable her to be highly effective in certain areas, without being correspondingly weak in others. She knows exactly which combinations work best for her character type, thrives under home rules that haven’t been thoroughly balanced, and can easily wreak havoc on a GM who is less experienced with rules, seeks to appease all players, or emphasizes roleplaying over statistics.

The power gamer tends to focus on combat, expertly manipulating the rules to create engines of destruction that few of her companions (or enemies) can match. The standard monsters from various rules supplements stand no chance against her unless they’re many levels higher than the rest of the group. While the power gamer likely sees her actions as merely playing the game to the best of her ability, her proficiency makes creating challenging encounters for the entire party very difficult; monsters introduced to challenge the power gamer might well kill the other characters.

In such situations, the first thing to do is to take a look at the rules in question. As a GM, you should reserve the right to vet new rules content from any source before it’s allowed into your game, and if some of the power gamer’s abilities are based on rules you don’t approve of or house rules you hadn’t thought through entirely, you can change them at the end of an adventure—provided players impacted by the change are allowed to go back and rebuild their characters.

The most important thing when dealing with a power gamer is avoiding an adversarial relationship. Instead, try to learn from her, filing away her tactics for use by future villains. If a player is so effective in combat that it’s ruining your game, take her aside and ask for her assistance. Congratulate her honestly on her prowess—she spent a lot of time devising those strategies—then explain the situation. Maybe she can help your other players maximize their characters—a group of all power gamers is easier to deal with than a mixed batch. If that doesn’t work, perhaps she or another player can help you devise effective counter strategies, or maybe she’d enjoy the challenge of playing a character a few levels lower than everyone else. In the end, it’s possible she may need to retire or redesign the character, but the more transparency you can have about this process, and the less it feels like punishment, the better. And if the character is only slightly too powerful, or the other players prefer to focus on roleplaying, there are always noncombat encounters to help give other players the chance to shine.

Overpowered PCs

Characters naturally accumulate power over time. And in a game that relies on random resolutions of complex interactions, that power accumulation isn’t always smooth. If one PC—or all the PCs—at your table makes a quantum leap in power, it’s worth taking a good, hard look at whether that power is disruptive to the ongoing narrative and sense of fun.

Consider the Cooperative Dynamic: The Pathfinder RPG differs from most games in that it’s fundamentally cooperative. Because you aren’t playing “against” anyone in a meaningful sense, it might not matter that the PCs suddenly became much more powerful. You aren’t likely to run out of powerful monsters. You might have to alter encounters to compensate, but once you’ve done so, your game continues unimpeded.

When You Need to Rein It In: By the same token, the cooperative nature of the game is why you sometimes need to “nerf” a character’s power. Do so when one PC is too powerful relative to everyone else at the table. Before you take action, though, consider the following steps:

Provide early warning. Say a player comes up with a devastating combo—something that takes a monster out of a fight with a high success rate and no countermeasure. Let it happen the first few times, but tell the player, “I’ll let you know when that combo gets tired.” The player can still feel clever, but you’ve delivered notice and the whole table knows you take the balance of power seriously. Sometimes the problem power doesn’t emerge at the table anymore—and you’ve got time to plan further. And the player might volunteer to be part of the solution, a “negotiated settlement” you can work out at the end of the session.

Know what you’re nerfing, and why. After the session where something overpowered emerges, it’s time to hit the books. Read everything relevant, even if you think you know the rules backward and forward. Think like a player and explore the problematic power, then put your Game Master hat back on and search for countermeasures. A complex game system has lots of moving pieces, and it takes effort to isolate which components and combinations are actually overpowered.

Nerf it to the ground, but make it a surgical strike. Once you’ve isolated the problematic element, bring it back into line with similar powers available at that level. Do your homework in terms of rules study and arithmetic; you want to make sure that the overall technique is no longer overpowered, not just the specific application you saw at the table. But make sure the PC still has viable options—and that the player still has interesting choices to make during an encounter.

Explain it outside the game. It’s tempting to solve a balance issue on the spot, but consider the other players at the table. They might be bored by a rules discussion about somebody else’s character. They might leap to the player’s defense, or recommend a harsher nerf because they’re tired of being second banana. Talk to that player away from the table before the next session begins, so that everyone’s got time to pore over rulebooks and consider alternatives. It’s also a good time to tell the player that you’re acting for the good of the table, not to save your monsters. Most players respond better to a nerf when they realize they’re diminishing others’ fun and the change isn’t driven by Game Master competitiveness.

What you break, rebuild. Overpowered situations rarely emerge overnight. They’re often an intentional or serendipitous collection of smaller elements acquired over time. Spell x, magic item y, and feat z are fine by themselves, but you’ve got a problem once a player has all three. When you change the rules to make something less powerful, it’s only fair—and certainly doesn’t hurt anyone at the table—to let the player retroactively make different character advancement choices to compensate, so they haven’t wasted half the game achieving a build that’s no longer viable.

It's worth a lot. If you live in France and attest that the local French are not aware of them, then that holds weight.

I think it's fine if a class implies an organization. Clerics imply that you belong to an organized religion, but there is a number of cleric characters, especially ones for restricted deities, who are played as self taught.

But you are right that there will be no change to viking at this point. And as I said earlier, I don't personally mind the use of the word viking. It's still evocative. It's only being tied to this thread to make this point:

Viking is a term that works. And you can make a roman-style marinus using the viking archetype. The same way if in an alternate universe, if it was named marinus instead, you could make a viking with the marine archetype. Viking works, because it quickly and easily brings the point across of what kind of warrior it is. We are lucky that we have alternate terms like trickster or beguiler that can be used for a folkloric ninja-like entry. But, a ninja works as a name that can be applied to trickster characters, too, and vice versa. The way you think of the super hero daredevil instead of a stuntsman, the way some folks think of a modern US marine instead of a roman soldier on a boat ready to mount on land, some folks hear ninja and think of a certain fantasy. If viking is fine, is ninja really so bad in comparison? It can still be called a trickster instead, I get it. But if viking is fine, is ninja really that big a problem?

In the end, people reduce and fetishize things. In fact, the Pathfinder book, Winter Witch, calls out that vikings are also just an assumption.

It was also a rugged land, but even across its stony hills, bright patches of lichen and brilliant wildflowers made it appear more like a faerie land than the forbidding territory of the dreaded Ulfen raiders. In just a few days he had come to realize the Ulfen were far more diverse than the reputation of their pillagers would suggest. Since their narrow escape at Brinewall, the surviving members of the caravan had passed farms tended by men and women who, while big and hardy, resembled the seafaring marauders of their country as much as Korvosan stable boys resemble Hellknights.

I am someone who does not read comic books, and only watch the occasional movie. When I think daredevil in any super hero context, I ironically think more of Ghost Rider than Daredevil, because Ghost Rider was a daredevil before he died. So I guess I'm a minority if the first thing I think of is a guy doing bike stunts over a blind guy. Ghost Rider happened to be the movie I saw as a kid.

As for Marine sounding like it belonged to a navy. That's kind of the point. They always belonged to the navy, just that they belonged to the Roman navy.

Also, Marines are not exclusively a US term. Do the Royal Marines of Britain not exist? The Italian Marina Militare? The Fusiliers Marins of France? The Spanish Infantería de Marina? So now you're just ignoring European marines because you do not think of them as an American? As if America popularized the term when it did not? Bare in mind America is relatively recent on the naval warfare scene, if you were not aware. Where the Spanish and British marine corps are actually older organizations than that of the US Marine corps that exist to this day.

Teridax said it right when he brought up the golem. I didn't know about the Golem of Prague before Monster Core 2. I only knew about the golems of D&D. that was an opportunity to go to the root of the concept and learn about it, instead of staying stuck in the modern perception. It was a similar case learning about what an actual folkloric changeling was instead of just being a reskinned doppelganger many years back. The answer to "This term is not what I thought it was" should be "I should take this opportunity to learn about it," not "I'll stick with my conceptions of the term, thanks." Because if we're on the subject of problematics, that, would be problematic.

That's a problem of lack of education on the matter and falling for common media conceptions. Which I feel is an ironic thing in this thread where people actively are against the simplification of our preconceptions of a cultural warrior, exerting that a culture with a particularly famous/infamous group should not be put on a pedestal in favor of other similar types of warriors, simply because it's the one we'd think of first.

Also, historical marines precede vikings by about a thousand years, plus or minus a few hundred. Does it also help the part where marine corps were used in the 1200s, well within the middle ages?

Granted, I should add the context: I don't actually mind if viking is used. It works well enough. But some folks are against ninja, and fine with viking. And consistency should be exercised. Someone asked if there was a neutral name for viking, historically, it was marine. If they choose to willfully drop it because they prefer viking, I put those people in the same category as the people who say that it "has to be called a ninja or a samurai," despite there being a clear road. Because to be honest, for samurai and historical ninja, there are clear roads to make them. (I only clamor for some clearer roads for folkloric ninja, but trickster/beguiler is the answer, not ninja).

moosher12 wrote:

Marine works as a culturally agnostic term to describe boat-riding warriors who specialize in fighting on foreign soil with more limited logistical support.

"Marine" just strikes me as a little too modern/SF for a fantasy setting. Like how we do "ancestry" instead of "species" even though "species" is entirely descriptive (species having the same etymology as "special" just means "what kind?")

It would be fine though, but I get why they didn't go for it- if it was called "Marine" then it wouldn't have been about axes, and people would expect familiarity with guns.

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia: The term marinus has been used as far back as the principate period of the Roman Empire which began in 27 B.C. You're running into the daredevil problem, concepts that existed back then, sound modern, but are actually old concepts because your personal perceptions of what is new and what is old is skewed by media that highlights certain exoticisms while (more optimistically, glossing over, and less optimistically, suppressing) the less interesting.

And frankly, because of personal perceptions, it's simply easy to imagine a blue-eyed, blond, bearded viking with a horned helmet on a longboat because that's what modern media makes for the easiest fodder to the concept. Why imagine an Italian? Because your media leads you to subconsciously prefer vikings. It doesn't need to be called a viking, you just prefer it be called a viking because of these preconceived perceptions. Through no fault of your own, media simply has that affect; we think things are the truth when in reality they aren't, because the media we grew up in influences us. How many people grow up thinking pirates are cool adventurers?... Or that ninja make handsigns and blow fire?

Side note: This was an interesting wikidive, now I know where the name Ultramarines was inspired from.

In the early days of naval warfare, there was little distinction between sailors and soldiers on a warship. The oarsmen of Ancient Greek and Ancient Roman ships had to be capable of fighting the rowers of opposing ships hand-to-hand,[1] though hoplites began appearing on Greek ships specifically for the boarding of enemy ships.[2][3]

The Roman Republic was the first to understand the importance of professional soldiers dedicated to melee combat onboard ships. During the First Punic War, Roman crews were inferior in naval experience to the Carthaginians and could not match them in naval tactics, which required great fleet maneuverability. The Romans therefore employed a novel weapon — the corvus, a long, pivoting plank with a beak-like spike on the underside for hooking onto enemy ships. This was possibly developed earlier by the Syracusans against the Athenians during the Sicilian Expedition of the Peloponnesian War. Using it as a boarding bridge, Roman infantrymen invaded enemy ships, transforming sea combat into a version of land combat, where the Roman legionaries had the upper hand.[4] During the early Principate, a ship's crew, regardless of its size, was organized as a centuria. Crewmen could sign on as naval infantry (called Marinus), rowers/seamen, craftsmen and various other jobs, though all personnel serving in the imperial fleet were classed as milites ("soldiers"), regardless of their function; only when differentiation with the army was required, were the adjectives classiarius or classicus added. The Roman Navy's two fleet legions, I Adiutrix and II Adiutrix, were among the first distinct naval infantry units.[5][6]

The first organized marine corps was created in Venice by the Doge Enrico Dandolo when he created a regiment of ten companies across several ships. That corps participated in the conquest of Byzantium (1203–1204), later officially called "Fanti da Mar" (sea infantry) in 1550., Venice also had dedicated naval expeditionary corps of naval infantry, recruited primarily from Dalmatia, called the Oltremarini (overseas troops).[7]

To me it sounds like what people want from a ninja is a stealthy magical trickster, which could just be called the Trickster. I would be all for a Trickster class tbh, since that sounds fun. Samurai are just knights with different hats so idk, that's just a fighter to me. The iaijutsu stuff I think could just be part of like a Ronin archetype, especially since real aristocratic samurai valued and practiced marksmanship more than melee combat.

I recall spending much of the last time these threads came on simply asking for a trickster class. The mechanical hole is easily filled by either a trickster class, or an eldritch trickster rogue class archetype, rather than racket.

I mean, the thing about the "Viking" archetype is that this represents "how a lot of different people were in raiding parties" since your raiding party was populated by people in the community and the fact that we can explain "what Vikings are about" just through - boats, shields + axes, and sudden violence. Lots of different cultures potentially would have developed "boat raiders" we're just using the word for that job from one particular culture since it's pithier than "boat raider" (and pirate is more "ship bandit" anyway.)

So you can bolt boats, shield/axe, and sudden violence onto any character you want with the archetype.

If anybody has a suggestion for a similar culturally inspired archetype that is basically three things with a couple of short feats for each, I'm all ears.

Marine works as a culturally agnostic term to describe boat-riding warriors who specialize in fighting on foreign soil with more limited logistical support.

In this case, Quick Swap would be a trap option. 2e does not have universal reactive strikes, and not a lot of enemies get reactive strikes, even rarer than Pathfinder. There is little incentive to switch to melee in melee range unless you have a melee weapon that does more damage than your ranged weapon, which becomes less likely at higher levels once you have an upgraded ranged weapon, but a base melee weapon. Most enemies won't be able to stop you from using your gun unless they disarm or grapple you. The only reason you have to switch to melee is if your melee weapon does better average damage than your primary ranged weapon.

Quick Swap is more useful in the hands of a melee main soldier who is using their ranged weapon to get by until they get in range.

Only way I can see a ranged soldier making use of it is if they are using a volley weapon, which would be an odd choice as soldier isn't much of a sniper class. Otherwise, they won't be getting much use out of a side melee weapon like a knife or a sword unless they upgraded the weapon and invested the strength to give it competitive damage output with their gun.

I very much want Mech rules because I'd rather run Mechageddon in 2e than 1e!

In the meantime, I'd recommend looking at the Remote War Machine statblocks from Alien Core. I strongly believe these are a preview of how mechs will operate, where mech rules would then be building guides. But for now, you can probably use the Creature Creation Rules to make custom Remote War Machines as mechs.

https://2e.aonsrd.com/creatures/families/46-remote-war-machine

I think it was something the devs accidentally overlooked. This happens frequently enough, especially with Starfinder 2E. But as it is, there is not much fix until Paizo comes out with more feats.

In the meantime, if you have no plans to engage with melee mechanics, what I'd probably recommend is to let Ready Reload be an encouragement to take a reload 2 weapon instead of a reload 1 weapon as your primary, as that's the most useful feat you'd get access to. Right now the pickings are small, being Autotarget Rifle, Blockthrower, and Machine Gun, but with Tech Core coming out in about two months, I'm pretty sure the options will expand.

The specific niche that's missing (and that probably needs a whole class to accomodate) is 'I cast magic to breathe fire/turn into a giant/summon a frog behind you/create illusions/teleport and you're so distracted by that I stab you extra good' which is arguably what the folklore ninja is at the core. That's genuinely unreplicable ATM; of the three classes that want to strike and magic, Magus and Summoner want to do it simultaneously to add the damage together and Warpriest/battle harbinger are entirely about buffing.

Pretty much this. More folks need to try to actually build out a folkloric ninja from levels 1-20. Helped a player try to build one up to level 9. It barely made it, and that was with a very generous version of free archetype where archetypes don't require you to buy 3 archetypes before getting a new archetype. But folks should challenge themselves to build a ninja without any optional or home rules by actually building the character on a character sheet. You'll find that you're making significant concessions on large swathes of the fantasy no matter what you do.

Honestly, we don't even need an archetype, we just need the feats. The duelist archetype feels like the perfect place for iaido-themed feats.

That's a good point, and Paizo has added to existing archetypes before.

For the case of Vindicator, only having focus spells doesn't really feel like being a spellcaster.

While I'm holding out hope for Impossible Magic, I think there is a glimmer of hope for next years book. Lower chance, but not infeasible. The next book, judging by the latest blog post, hints that the book will be about dungeon delving. And hiring an eldritch trickster to do things like 1E's ranged legerdemain could apply to such a book. But it is certainly a longer shot than Impossible Magic.

I feel like for ninja at least, the best result would be either a class or a class archetype. But a normal archetype would struggle.

The reason is because, if someone wants to play a ninja, sneak attack is iconic. That's why Laughing Shadow Magus sort of gets scoffed at. Laughing Shadow magus can do trickster stuff, yes, but it simply lacks that assassination feel. And the closest you'll get to it is archetyping into rogue, but the core rogue stuff is heavily nerfed that way. And the reliance on using arcane cascade isn't really part of the fantasy. Too much magic, not enough assassination. It's a balancing act.

I think the answer is to buff Eldritch Trickster from a racket to a class archetype racket, like the vindicator. Let it change some fundamentals of how the rogue works (nerf some of its physical capability, while giving it spellcasting prowess, while overall keeping access to the rogue feat set), give it bespoke feats that support the fantasy of being a setting agnostic spellcasting assassin or thief

The reason that Eldritch Trickster has yet to come back as it is is because it simply does not grant enough benefit over Thief Racket plus archetyping into Wizard, which is why it should be buffed into a class archetype, so that it can fulfill its class fantasy.

Also, we want a setting agnostic class, class archetype, or archetype, for this for one reason. We already have an archetype within the world that works as a ninja. The problem is, we can rarely use it. That's the Red Mantis Assassin. Because its requirements require you be a worshipper of achaekek and use sawtooth sabers. And not everyone wants to be a Red Mantis Assassin, while not every GM is gonna be willing to let the Red Mantis Assassin work with just any weapon. Essentially it's the Automaton problem, everyone who uses the archetype within the Lost Omens campaign setting has to tie their lore to the Red Mantis Assassins, who attack anyone who is caught using their equipment without being one. As all automatons have to tie their lore back to the Jistka Imperium.

Plus we don't have a dedicated occult bounded caster anyway. (Not gonna count summoner because it's a flexible class like a sorcerer; Nor for nature, which could be a fun candidate for Shifter as a side note).

I think part of the issue is that Paizo is pretty clear that people with full casting potential shouldn't be that capable in melee combat, just for niche protection for fighters etc. So a Wizard-Ninja runs into that issue, and I'm wondering if you couldn't just do this with a Magus or specifically "what tools would we need to give the Magus for this to work."

Now there's certainly room for wave-casters in Occult, Primal, and Divine but I'm not sure if any of those dip too much into the ninja fantasy.

I honestly think bounded casting would be fine. Basically, take a magus, remove spellstrike, and swap it out for some utility stuff and perhaps a variant on sneak attack, possibly with a slower growth than a pure rogue. Magus as it is works front and center, but changing its feat kit and core kit to better enable intrigue, poison, and the like instead of being a spellsword.

Like the basic problem with "Ninja" and "Samurai" as classes is that there are whole corners of fiction where everybody is a Ninja and you can break them into types like "Fighter-Ninja", "Rogue-Ninja", and "Wizard-Ninja".

I agree here, we fortunately have 2 of the three well executed, I feel. Fighter Ninja is well done by the Monk and Swashbuckler. Rogue Ninja of course by the rogue. Wizard ninja I think is the missing link, but that can be done with an Arcane Trickster as a class, or as was brought up by Keftiu, the Beguiler, though I'm not familiar with how exactly it works.

Thanks for the extra context, the Discord version of the moderater apology didn't clarify things well enough, so I assumed it was unrelated to that statement. I don't hang out reddit side, so I missed this part of it. But if the official channels distanced themselves from that statement, it's relieving.

Granted, I in a small part agree that seeking a culturally agnostic approach is probably a good idea where possible, but those statements were just too extreme of a way.

Why are you quoting somebody from an unofficial Discord server as if it's Paizo...?

That would be because I thought it was an official Discord server, since it hosts the official interaction with Paizo's official 2E SRD, being Archives of Nethys. Periodically hosts Q&As with some Paizo staff, and the like. Second party Discord server at the farthest. Wouldn't call it unofficial.

Part of the argument the devs made was that there's no singular "class fantasy" encompasing everything someone might expect from those titles. Is a ninja a hyper-skilled agility combatant? Or a gishy illusionist? Or a comically stealthy striker? Ask three nerds, you'll get three answers. By comparison a Viking is fairly narratively straightforward: nautical raiders with axes and seaxes.

This would be a good argument, but Paizo didn't use this argument at all in that announcement. The argument was not based on the fulfillment of class fantasy, but that the existence of those classes as culturally loaded concepts was problematic in and of itself. For example, the post mentions monk as being similarly problematic and implies that the monk as it is should also be removed from the game. (Whether removed altogether or replaced with a more culturally neutral concept, time will tell, but there is a legitimate chance PF3E may not have a monk).

Though I do agree it is possible to make a culturally agnostic equivalent. As for class fantasy itself, samurai I feel is already pretty well covered by existing classes (Commander, Fighter, Guardian, Soldier, and Swashbuckler each contribute to different aspects). Magical ninja I feel can be covered by simply taking the Arcane Trickster and turning it into a class. (I mean, Magus was originally a prestige class turned to a class, originally the Eldritch Knight back in 1E, so it's certainly possible to do something bespoke for arcane trickster), while mundane ninja stays rogue. The main problem for me, I've always felt, was that while Samurai and mundane ninja are easily fulfilled. Magical ninja lacks a class that it easily slots into without sacrificing some core aspects of the fantasy. (Rogue lacks satisfying magic due to using archetype progression and feat tax, magus lacks utility and the stealth reward while Spellstrike isn't really a common part of the class fantasy anyway, kineticist I always felt was a stretch in the first place).

The Tian Xia World Guide is now officially available for purchase!

With this book’s release and the discourse surrounding it, we need to make clear the discord's rules and principles to make sure that the community is safe from harm. Especially recently, the discord has seen too many arguments that show how poorly people understand the severe prevalence of racism against Asian people, a phenomenon so deep-rooted that people simply do not notice its presence. It isn't as simple as someone saying a slur or judging based on skin colour—it’s easy to be confident in one’s ability to spot commonly-taught and overt racist tropes—but beyond that surface level, there are worlds of nuance and harms that many don’t know how to see or understand.

In the early 2000s, a book called Oriental Adventures was rewritten and expanded for D&D 3e. It is one of WotC's best-selling books of all time. It is also one of the most concentrated collections of Asian-based racist tropes in TTRPG space at the wide reach that Wizards has in the hobby. Paizo is no stranger to bigoted tropes either, found throughout PF1e books such as the Jade Regent AP and still carrying into PF2e in the monk class, which boxes Asians into the “Magical Asian” stereotype: rather than representing the fact that Asian fighters or Asian clerics exist (because Asian people are people), this racially-coded class stifles Asian representation into a caricature of 1970s kung fu exploitation movies. While we can move forward and learn from the past if we recognise the need to confront it, nothing will be accomplished if the reaction to that need is defensiveness or denial. Taking responsibility and taking real steps to improve is the entire philosophy of the Tian Xia World Guide: Paizo has given the reins to Asian authors who have made this book an honest conversation that addresses past mistakes and respects Tian Xia not as an exoticised locale, but as a legitimate, lived-in home.

Stereotypes and biases influence the ways that a book is written, the ways that a movie is edited, the ways that we speak to each person we meet in a day, and even unconsciously influence the ways that we think. Media exposes us to ideas that can normalise distorted perceptions and draw lines that make minorities “othered”, portraying them as if they’re different from “normal” people. AAPI activist Jenn Fang writes on how biases and norms feed into orientalism, making it all too easy to treat the stereotypical “West” as “normal” while a fantasised “East” is filtered through stereotypes:

Orientalism… draws upon exaggerations of both Occidental and Oriental traits in order to create an Orientalist fantasy that is a fictional recapitulation of both East and West. Western men are reimagined as universally Godly, good, moral, virile, and powerful — but ultimately innately human. By contrast, those traits that best serve as a counter-point to the Occidental West are emphasised in the West’s imagined construct of the East: strange religions and martial arts, bright colours and barbaric practices, unusual foods and incomprehensible languages, mysticism and magic, ninjas and kung fu. Asia becomes innately unusual, alien, and beastly. In Orientalism, Asia is not defined by what Asia is; rather, Asia becomes an “Otherized” fiction of everything the West is not, and one that primarily serves to reinforce the West’s own moral conception of itself.

Some fans often talk about wanting a dedicated “ninja” or “samurai” character option. However common these tropes have been, they’re a very blurry subject because of the exclusive focus on Japanese media stereotypes fueled by anime and samurai movies being the main exposure to Asian culture that westerners ever have. It goes beyond just "liking something" or "just a fantasy". Putting stereotypes on a pedestal excludes the hundreds of ethnic groups that exist in Asia and tells them that, when Asians get represented, they just get homogenised into a Japanese person—this is racism through exclusion towards Asian people who aren’t specifically Japanese. It’s the overwriting and exclusion of ethnicities that falls into the racist stereotyping of “you all look the same”. It creates a racist trope where Asian people are either the “karate master” or “honourable samurai warrior”, defined by the history of Japanese imperialism that billions of people in Asia are still grappling with. In the words of the Tian Xia World Guide:

“Tian Xia can’t be summed up in a single book; no land can. The following pages offer an outline of the cities, cultures, peoples, places, creatures, flora, and history of what can be found here. It might seem different, but no more different than the nations of the Inner Sea are from one another. Look with a willingness to learn, and you might find as many things in common as there are differences.”

Moving forward, we will do our best to improve our understanding of these harmful stereotypes and how to address them. We will always strictly enforce Rule #1, as we want everyone to feel safe and respected in this space, and we thank you for your understanding and care in making this a more accepting community for all Pathfinders.

If you would like to learn more, we recommend https://reappropriate.co/2014/04/what-is-orientalism-and-how-is-it-also-rac ism as well as a few more sources:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/orientalism
https://theconversation.com/orientalism-edward-saids-groundbreaking-book-ex plained-197429
https://jamesmendezhodes.com/blog/2019/10/31/asian-representation-and-the-m artial-arts - This link in particular hones in on the TTRPG space.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotypes_of_East_Asians_in_the_United_Stat es

My second spoiler. Last year we did the Player's Guide at the start of the new season. We are doing a Player's Guide again this season... This year we are giving out one new ancestry in that file. I am not gonna tell you what that ancestry is, but I am gonna give you some clues. So you guys can guess. So they are originally form Castovel, but they travel widely. They have a large population on Absalom Station. Particularly in a topside central location. They have playable stats in first edition, but they came in the last portion of the edition. So they are a bit more obscure than some of our other early ancestries. And we have met them in some of oujr Starfinder Society Scenarios before...

I'm thinking the Vulkarisu?

That is a good point, why wouldn't viking be a problem when ninja is?