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This ending was trash. I cannot begin to imagine the rage my players would feel if I sprung that on them at the end of this campaign. Sure, there's an excerpt about "oh but if that's too harsh you can X" but that's baloney. There's one ending in mind.

PF needs to do an announcement about APs "not being for everyone." I am fine with just about anything, but the laziness of endless dungeon crawls, pages of bio for npcs the pcs have literally no reason not to instantly kill - seriously, they're undead monsters who serve the Tyrant, why are they chatting them up - and then to top it off with the Magical McGuffin Magically McGuffining ad infinitum is about the least imaginative end to the PF1e run I can think of. Good thing there are no consequences, Absalom is perfectly fine, and they don't even have to worry about any heroes to recognize in the future!

I would have opted out of this without a second thought.

The new formatting is really ugly.

This looks like a 4e book or a videogame manual with random font-size changes, and sometimes the font itself is different?

I really can't underscore how much the stat blocks in particular look like PF trading card excerpts stuck into the middle of pages. I don't follow the PF card game for a reason. While I generally like the APs, having such a large portion of them look like cheap Dragon Age RPG knock-offs or something makes me less interested in seeing more.

Sorry that I brought up a lot in my post. I feel that there are times that the message 'oh you can house rule that' or 'oh there is home brew for that' when the reality is that, if paizo content isn't produced, I don't get to use it. I honestly don't care if the shifter is terrible or the book is poorly edited; what I care about is that poorly made material that is clearly divisive takes up design space, at the expense of things like the following:

Cernunnos, empeyreal lord of the wilderness not getting any material in six years.

As one reviewer pointed out, no additions or corrections to mounted combat.

As another reviewer pointed out, magical plants significantly more expensive and less viable then the creation of a magic item equivalent.

Zero expansion of campaign, build points, wilderness buildings, etc, despite bandits and settlement building being a big and popular deal.

Details of how the 20 core deities, the other emperyeal lords, demon lords, or green faith ,interact with the eldest.

The Green Faith getting any updates at all.

Monster settlements.

Yes, I can house rule and home brew whatever I want. However, as evidenced by the people waiting for this to hit PFS, if I am NOT in a home brew game, I don't get to use this material. I don't get answers, and it will be another three to six years before something else comes out.

In short, a deeply divisive, poorly edited starter class meant to be a "quick pick up" for people who don't understand druids and don't want to read a basic guide stole design space in a book that was - based on previous editions of the ultimate series - meant to be a go to quick guide for "title"-related material. This is in addition to wilderness related reprints, which anyone interested in wilderness material already had, either in part or in full. Like... As I said, the design decisions seem less than informed by paizo material and more to just be some stuff thrown together to create a poorly edited, poorly received, clearly divisive book. One person said they thought the book would be fine if the shifter didn't exist; I think people would still be less than enthused, but simply have less objectively contentious targets.

Anyways tldr i think some broader questions could be asked on other fronts earlier on to prevent a great deal of irritation and headaches on the back end

what was the reasoning behind including a "basic" or "starter" class in a $50 niche book?

I ask because, of the 6-8 people in the twice monthly DnD group I play with, I am 1 of 2 that buys Pathfinder (or any DnD) material. the people who want/need "simple" classes (like the magus who, after 2 years of play, still does not understand that she can cast spells and attack at the same time, despite patient, repeated explanations to her) would never, ever pay $50 dollars for a book full of stuff they don't understand, nor would they ever even look.

I, as someone who loves this stuff, find it insulting that a $50 book contains a dumbed-down version of the Druid that's way less imaginative or useful than any archetype, and is the exact opposite of what all the player base wanted (either a great pseudo-lycanthrope class or a great shapechanger class). what makes this more ridiculous is that this comes after making the "un"Chained Summoner, which utterly failed to address the issue that everyone hated it for (the summon monster SLA) and smashed utility/spellcaster eidolons into the ground - like even if the playtests in the past have been "toxic garbage fires" - why not at least shop the idea to people outside of the dev team to see what might be actually wanted by the community?

$50 dollars for a poorly-edited book (which nobody can refute), with %50 filler feats (which absolutely is true, they're bloat that nobody will take and most DMs will ignore - I don't even see DMs waste people's time with Handle Animal checks in PFS) and a class that is clearly for an audience that is not going to buy the book in the first place... Like is this going to be the quality level of PF "Ultimate" books from now on? Books that used to be staples are now just "eh we threw some stuff together, whatever, the community won't know any better, they're toxic anyways, don't like? just tell them to go 3pp"?

I don't actually care that the shifter is a lackluster, forgettable class that (as people point out) is objectively worse than existing stuff; that's fine. some people like boring stuff. sometimes I'm one of those people! what I AM disappointed with is the decision to dedicate design space in a niche book to material for newbies, apparently not put much investment into what the community is looking for, and then on top of it all, not even do a good job with the final product. I mean come on the class is made for people who "want a quick pick-up class" (i.e. meaning they don't understand wildshape), but you call it Shifter (guaranteeing confusion with the shifter race, which actually has negative synergy with it), and expect these people who don't get PF rules to instead buy a book about Wilderness instead of just looking up a basic guide to druids online (which is free)?

come on. at this point I don't know if I'm more irritated at the low quality of this book or the response to perfectly justified criticism of dev responses to this thread. a quarter of the negative reviews were from people who explicitly stated here, in April and May, almost 6-8 months prior to the book's release, that they were reasonably led to believe they were getting X and then were disappointed to see that the book gave Y. it really wasn't possible to just state that the shifter was going to be "an entry level wildshape class" before the book came out?

I dunno. long time Paizo fan who normally does not care about power level and whatever, but still really really disappointed in a lot of the design decisions and then responses with this book here. it just seems like a slight bit of effort could have gone to making this thing perfectly palatable instead vying with Ultimate Magic for most divisive paizo book.

I would save my wish and instead offer it to the naive apprentice when the master leaves. The only demand I would have for the apprentice is that they leave an item at the start of what will inevitably be a rube goldberg series of events that ultimately cause a drip of wax to fall on the circle and free me. Then I would take my revenge on the mortal that dared to summon me in the first place, sparing the apprentice that they might start on an epic quest to avenge their master and ultimately defeat me before my plans can reach fruition.

Kobold Cleaver wrote:

Lashunta are the exact same deal—hot women because "sex sells", ugly men because nobody wants to see attractive men. This is why I don't take the "sex sells" defense super seriously—most of the time, it's a one-way street.

Supposedly no one (From the demographic you're talking about) wants to see attractive men... And yet, when we do see them, it's because of male power fantasy. It's... Funny.

There's two different points here:

One is to your first part, about the demographic Kobold Cleaver refers to, which is true: they don't care to see attractive men, they don't make effort to include them, and those times that they do it's accidental.

Here is a thread I made a while ago where I just went through the Pathfinder bestiary and tallied the number of female-only creatures that are explicitly stated to mate with human males. Included are the number of male-only creatures that have their sexual activity referenced. Of the men, 3 might be considered attractive while the third is a frog/fishman. Some, specifically in Pathfinder material alone, are used inappropriately//poorly, such as incubi (which one might assume would be great infiltrators, seducers, or masterminds) which to date have only been used in Pathfinder material as cannon-fodder guards or gladiator champions.

There are more than 10 times as many female creatures that are explicitly stated to have sex with or seduce human males, with some 44+ entries. to be clear, 44 > 4 by an exceptionally large margin.

There is also a sub-point about the 21 core deities (I included Aroden, as he is mentioned so much) and how, of the 8 female deities, 5 are depicted in extremely revealing clothing (or no clothing at all), and 3 of them are explicitly stated to have sex as a significant part of their portfolio or identity, while zero male deities are depicted in anything revealing (much less fully nude) and only Cayden Caliean is stated to have sex (and that is done in the context of being a shameless womanizer).

When we actually take inventory of Pathfinder (and DnD material as a whole), the evidence is very not in favor of your first point. Material for people who appreciate attractive males very rarely gets created.

Your second point is that, when it does appear, people (i.e. the ones that you think that it is targeted at) dismiss it as a "male power fantasy", which is often true; those people (me being one of them) do dismiss it, because it it wasn't designed for us. The shirtless male barbarian raising his great axe above his head while fighting a shirtless male orc is in no way meant for those who appreciate attractive men, and it's certainly not the equivalent of opening a book to see an attractive demoness wearing very little clothing casting a spell at a priest. That the artist might have the talent and skill to draw barbarian and orc as attractive is incidental - the point is that the original intent of the people who commissioned both pieces was to appeal to one section of their audience's personal preferences, to the exclusion of another part of said audience.

I just hope we don't have 50 books on different human nations in space, the way we do with current Golarion material. I can pretty easily create a new human character of any identity - if I'm going to pay for new material, it needs to be something more interesting than "here have twenty different types of human ethnicities, but this time in space!'

whatever the non-human races, I would like room to have their own ethnic variants...

To be fair, some of the ways the Lashunta are most visible can seem sexist. One example is that most/all of the lashunta NPCs thus-far are female (to my memory right now) and the lashunta themselves are based off the pulpy sci-fi "space babes on dinosaurs" of the 60s and 70s. Kind of naturally lends itself to questions of that nature, but there is a post on the forums by one of the guys that put them in pathfinder about how they're supposed to be a very not-problematic race.

One thing that I'm surprised no one has mentioned about the Drow (in Golarion specifically) is that the male drow, when turned into driders, are explicitly stated to turn monstrous and have bug faces, while the females remain beautiful from the waist up. This is stated in whatever book has the hideous driders on the cover, for those who like to look stuff up. Imo that rather tips the scale towards the "drow are explicitly something" route, whether misandry or otherwise.

Any time a character kills a bird creature (harpy, roc, dire corbi) with a fire spell, its corpse automatically turns into a delicious stuffed turkey that they can eat to regain health.

"the Curse of Zuan" is referenced every single time someone rolls a nat20 followed by a critfail. this is because Zuan's player manages to be both spectacular and terrible, often with the same action. The very first example of this was the ranger, Zuan, catching the alchemist's firebomb thrown to him and applying it mid-battle (with an acrobatics nat20), followed by him rolling a critfail when he turned to fire it at the boss. The arrow left the bow, but the bomb dropped at his feet. Since then he has managed to fall off a cliff but land with grace, be dropped to 0 by a reefclaw but dodge the death frenzy ability (while prone!), and shoot himself with his own arrows many, many times - all while also beheading dragons with single swipes, backflipping up walls, and being the all-around DPS, tank, and skillmonkey. It's high or low, no inebetween, no matter what character this guy plays.

Whenever we fight goblins, they always hit each other on critfails. Any time a goblin dies, they have a 50/50 chance of either farting or catching fire as they hit the ground, regardless of what else is happening in the battle. One time this prompted the paladin//unicorn player to cry out "Why are they so flammable!" in in-character horror, and her voice was so perfect at the time that it's just become a permanent feature.

What bothers me is the comments I've read elsewhere about the scene in question. The degree of apologetics at play is disappointing. While in any other form of media, bi erasure is the norm, in most discussions of this scene, bi imposition is instead occurring. In other explanations they review the dialog from the Japanese version, and say that since the drugged character seems okay with it later, it's alright, which sounds an awful lot like saying that arousal equals consent.

I can see keeping it in or leaving it, but it's the amount of people justifying the scene or saying "it's okay, love is love!" disturbs me. Nothing about this is okay, and then to use GLBT-affirmative quotes to cover up the fact that a hetero dude just magically turned a lesbian "straight" without her consent??

As anti-censorship as I am, part of me just doesn't even want to give those people space to comment on it simply because of how much it makes my skin crawl.

I honestly did not think I'd like this book. I dragged my feet on ordering it and the prequel was interesting but didn't do a lot towards selling me; I was in this phase of having finished reading a lot of disappointingly... well, cliched stories that upheld very stereotypical american, heterosexual, patriarchal values. not gonna lie, the thought of trudging through yet another story where - even if the main character is female - that stuff manages to still shine through was very tough. I really, really did not want to do it.

but then this book had Jiri deal with a break-up by not moping about it, or her mentor's death by not sobbing for thirty pages, or have an extreme emotional impact due to her village's reaction. also she was not hung up on the romance she had been enjoying, and didn't blame herself for the villagers not listening. like, there was just so much that was so very refreshing about her attitude and how wonderful it was that she wasn't crippled by any of this.

similarly, the characters - by the end - actually liked each other. it wasn't like other baloney adventuring parties where, somehow, despite having risked life and limb and traveled together for months, everyone will gleefully slit each others' throats. in fact, even the Aspis adventuring crew - Patima's crew, that went into the Gorilla King's city - sounded as though it was a crew of normal, well-adjusted people who aren't emotionally crippled or otherwise broken in some way. everyone was able to function as a human being which just... I don't know, I feel that it added miles to the material. having Sera bend and be humorous, or Morvius go out of his way to share his wisdom (and some needed life lessons) make them feel like there is far more to life than simply hoping to find another questgiver before they get too hungry. more than anything, I wanted to see them actually tackle another adventure (instead of just hoping that they all retire from the adventuring life because I'm so tired of them sniping at each other).

there was just a lot to this book that kept me going because it was just so different. Jiri is a young (16?) girl who wasn't shamed for having a sexual experience prior to marriage. Morvius and Linnara have an open relationship (for one partner at least) and they are both open and accepting of it - and even more amazing, it's one where she is A) fully informed and B) it's not the man getting to have a million ladies on the side. he's bi, he's okay with it, and SHE is also okay with it. it was just a mature understanding of relationships that seemed to inform this and I have to say once again that it's these little details that make this easily one of my top three Pathfinder Tales books.

thanks for recc'ing this, DB, and thanks Mr. Kloster for writing it. sorry for being a putz with the book club discussion of it!

I didn't get time during the week to post. Just doing it now because I'm late to everything!

Obviously I'd like to see Akina and Ondorum doing some more adventuring together. The dire events in Forge of Ashes will surely have brought them closer together than any of their adventures prior put together, so before they go back out into the Darklands it would be interesting to see how they help rebuild the defenses in the aftermath of the duergar war (which will likely need a name) and during the ordeal perhaps they will serve to dissuade the negative feelings the dwarves have about oreads. As progressive as we know Pathfinder to be, this could be an opportunity to enlighten another race rigid in their ways about interracial relationships, or maybe it would even be interspecies in their case. So I guess I'm going to stick with what I said awhile back about wanting to see offspring with the Dwarf Blooded oread feat.

Haha, you know, I feel that Akina would only be mad at Ondorum and blame him 100% for her getting pregnant. "You were there too" he might say, but that probably wouldn't help anything because him talking never solves anything. ever!

They'd probably look like infant versions of a certain member of the Fantastic Four at first, then start growing crystalline beards...

Even the girls? :P

No I kid. I like the idea. In fact, I guess I wouldn't be surprised if the next book jumps ahead, the way the online piece did, past the fairly traveled territory that Belabras mentioned of new relationships and the Vogt sank his teeth into the heart of the matter again. Sky's the limit, I guess (or the cavern ceiling, whichever a dwarf will hit first).

My final thoughts were similar to Belabras's - more exploration of underground races (I so badly want to see more of the darkfolk and expansion of them as characters), more elementals, maybe even some of the underdark fey (like the lampads!). The return of Garrulous - and this time he's even more talkative than ever! Even drow would be fun, so long as it's in the context of them adding to the dwarf/dark folk/whatever story... I mean I'm not going to lie, I do enjoy a good, evil dark elf. And it's also old news when it's like "bleh I'm a dark elf, bleh I'm evil what a surprise!"

Forge of Ashes hit a really fun itch and scratched it perfectly. The underdark/Darklands is so wide open, and I do hope Paizo continues with Vogt's presentation of it - it does a lot of make the world come to life. I have to say, I didn't want to put the book down because I was always excited to see what strange things they might interact with/encounter next (and I aws really really hoping for some base building action!).

In terms of what I liked less... I guess I didn't get the best feel for Akina and Ondorum. That's partly why I checked in with you guys. It feels like there's still a lot of room open to see what matters to them, and while they served well enough to get through this one short quest I am curious to know where they'll grow as people (since, relatively, we've seen so very little of them). I'm pretty open to another novel, I guess is what I'm saying.

Thanks for delurking Belabras, welcome to the PTBC! Thanks to you too for answering some questions, Mr. Vogt!

yeah it's probably worth commenting on: Whoever did the art order for this bestiary very much took some threads on the board seriously, which complained of the lack of attractive male figures compared to all the sexy succubus style fey/outsiders/etc. There are many more revealingly dressed lithe male figures in this bestiary compared to similarly attired male individuals

I was wondering about exactly this, thanks for posting your observation!

For those of who didn't see some of those threads, it's not just that the female creatures were "too pretty" but that there are some 48+ female-only creatures that either use their beauty against men or are explicit in that they copulate with (male) adventurers, as opposed to the 4 male-only creatures that are either stated to be physically appealing or have their sex lives mentioned. Part of it was the art, part of it was the creatures themselves. It's really awesome to hear there's some movement towards a middle ground. This might be the first bestiary I buy.

having just recently joined PFS, I feel I might point out that my two worst experiences (one of which was the first time I ever wanted to leave a table) weren't because of cold readings but just atrocious time management. one was a GM running a module at a con, and he was moving so slow, taking so long to resolve "did the attack hit" that we ran an hour over-time, eating up the entire dinner break before the next session; no one called him on it, at the table or any of the organizers. being brand new and not wanting to potentially alienate the entire local group by forcing the issue, I was stuck.

to be fair, a secondary major issue was that the pregen I was given was utterly ineffectual against the boss (by which i mean the enemy had a DR/10 that was insurmountable to my character and fast healing 5, as well as being in impaassible terrain for my pregen PC. the DM was surprised, checked my sheet, then just shrugged and was like "yeah that's too bad"). my pregen at one point just gave up and sat against the wall for the last 25 minutes of the boss fight because I couldn't believe that I'd just lost my entire dinner break and I didn't want to keep saying "pass" every time my turn came up. if it weren't for the rampant cheating by the ninja (who was miraculously getting sneak attack damage on every single thing he did, including chucking a rock), we would have still ran into the next event. not going to lie - I was resolved that if the next game went even close to that, I was never going to come back to PFS.

the next game was unbelievably awesome and the DM rocked my world, so I decided to stay, but keeping the ball rolling is something I've found seems to be a much greater struggle for some of the GMs I've played with.

I read the last Wheel of Time book (by Sanderson) in part to get closure because, like Lord Snow, these were something I grew up with, but also because I'd read that, after a debate on Reddit, he decided to include some gay men to rectify that utter lack of them in the rest of the series. I was not at all invested and had bottom-of-the-barrel expectations, but afterwords I was genuinely surprised by the fact that Sanderson took Jordan's characters and made them like each other again. I was actually disappointed that he hadn't taken over the series sooner, since that might have salvaged some of the material from the aforementioned books 3-11...

For me a big problem with the UnSummoner is that it was in theory going to fix "problems with the summoner" - and fixed some problems that a few people had, while completely ignoring frustrations other people, people who actually LIKED the APG summoner, had. The terrible evolution costs for garbage 1/day magical abilities (I mean holy cow I cast web at a -2 caster-level-for-my-character, and all the goblins beat the 11 dc reflex save! guess I used my 1/day ability! hope we don't have a second encounter today!!) are extremely frustrating. The fact that First Worlder trades a fair share of stuff for... basically very little, or the fact that at a very similar time, we got a second wild caller archetype, which just boggles my mind. The Pathfinder SRD takes like 30 seconds to get to - does nobody even glance at the classes they write for?

The whole thing feels a bunch of people who actively don't like summoners got their hands on it and decided to do some shoddy patching of stuff a vocal group with little understanding of the mechanics hated (like the eidolon), while leaving everything that the people who liked the class hated, AND also leaving the turn bloat that was the most widespread problem that everyone across all camps had in the first place. Sure people can be like "oh don't like it? Don't play it!" but this is the content that's PFS legal, this is the content that was released, and I think it's perfectly within reason to say "look while there were some neat ideas that could have been really cool, the entire thing was sloppy and bad." more importantly, this wasn't some supplementary manual? This was "the Unchained" book, and supposedly supposed to hold great things.

But no. Inside was only tears and sadness. *drowns in puddle of own saltiness*

Maybe she’s not a hero. You’re right, she sure doesn’t seem like one at times, but maybe that’s the point because she doesn’t necessarily think she’s one either.

I also wanted to highlight this because this set me back and thought about it from another perspective. Assuming that she's actively NOT a hero, it says something about her that she steps forward to face all these dangers when no one else seems to be able to. It's interesting to think about, especially with the Pathfinder Tales plethora of "reluctant hero" characters - who are often still fairly unequivocally heroic. Elyana imo stands a bit apart in having a strong undertone of perhaps actually not only being reluctant but genuinely not wanting to be the one that all the focus is on. Unfortunately, her long life and experience amongst all these short-lived races means that she is often turned to as the elder, as the gifted leader, and, without exaggeration, none of those things appeal to her in any way (when at least most of the other characters we've read so far have some sort of ego to appeal towards). Elyana just straight-up walks away from even that stuff too. Huh.

I think I can stand behind that as a character trait. Thanks for responding, DB, that adds a lot of food for thought.

edit: oh yeah also the text implies that Arcil's soul "fractured" and is leaking out - the phylactery is a receptacle for the lich's soul. If the soul itself is damaged, it doesn't matter - there's nothing left to regenerate. Arcil is D-E-D dead (according to those rules, of course).

I recently got into PFS and am struggling with making a character that I find interesting and still fits into the narrow window of PFS material (material that I also have to physically own). In the process I decided on some class combos that I'd like feedback on from other people more familiar with what PFS rulings are on the matter.

First, a Sage-bloodline sorcerer (X) with a single level of witch (1) at first level, just so I can get access to hexes as an extra hex feat if I choose. I really enjoy the ability to not worry so much about spells per day, and also I find the concept really interesting. I would like to use the Familiar Folio ability to replace my first level bloodline ability with gaining a familiar. Since I already have a familiar from being a witch, does that mean my sorcerer levels stack for my familiar (for the purposes of PFS play)?

A follow up to this is the specifics of RAW versus RAI on wording of hexes (and by extension, other things like oracle revelations or patron familiars). As a DM, I rule that - unless it is explicit that it is per (class) level - it means (character) level. For the purposes of PFS play, when a witch hex like Evil Eye says that it advances "at 8th level", does PFS require that be at witch level 8 or character level 8?

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The second question I have is in the same vein, and perhaps requires more adjudication: I'm also thinking about a treesinger druid (elf archetype) for the plant companion. Grab the sorcerer (verdant) bloodline for plant powers and RP that one of my character's parents was a dryad. Now, I'd like to play an oracle for 2nd+, and the oracle (nature) and (lunar) mysteries both have revelations that grant animal companions. The treesinger druid archetype states that the plant is an animal companion; do other classes that grant animal companions grant new companions, or is there one companion and those levels now just stack with the first one? Also, part of the problem is that the oracle revelations name specific types of creatures, none of which are plants. Again, I have my own opinions on what I'd do were I adjudicating this myself, but I want this to be PFS legal completely and I'd appreciate some help.

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Third question I have: I want to make a pirate. Specifically, a half-elf gunslinger, totally normal gunslinger stuff, with a dodo familiar from the online "pirate familiars" piece and using eldritch heritage to get the first level arcane bloodline power. What do I have to present as proof for using that as my source when I am in PFS?

I really am at something of a loss for words! I didn't know about the Walkers in the Crypt E-pub, and probably even more strangely have taken the complete reverse to reading it, having started Elyana's story with Stalking the Beast, reading about the Verduran Forest in Crusader's Road, then reading Plague of Shadows and finally coming to the e-pub here. I had a looooot of bits or lore sliding around in my head as I read this; at the end when they all clicked into place I sat there just had to think for a while. It was pretty exciting!

First off, I guess I have to come out and say that I really enjoyed Walkers in the Crypt and it's something that makes me sad to see the e-pub stuff getting the axe. If I haven't said it in the past, DB, I want to say it now; thanks for setting up and doing the Pathfinder Book Club every week. I guarantee that I would not have dug through the archives in the hopes of finding something linked to one of the Pathfinder Tales I'd picked up. This was such fantastic material as well, for many of the reasons you listed above: it's a balanced party, with individually unique characters, and they all have their own agendas. And are also of varying degrees of power, and faced with situations that pull on all of their strengths. It makes for a great set-up and keeps the story interesting in a way that has me reading every page of each battle scene, instead of yawning and skipping to the end (which can happen with other books where I am not the least bit concerned about the characters surviving)(or interested in their very, very loose interpretations of the system's rules).

I guess I am also curious as to how people react to the book itself, as some things will be immediately apparent after the opening chapters. I don't mind that I have read things out of order, but I also recognize that it's created a very different experience for me where I saw Elyana at, imo, her most BA self and then worked backwards through her character development, as opposed to moving forward through it and seeing her change from this e-pub into what she becomes later on.

Something else that amused me about Elyana in Walkers from the Crpyt is that she continues to demonstrate here her extremely unfortunate habit of leaving monstrous and depraved enemies alive after she defeats them. It is something that plagues her in both books I've read of her and now I find myself hoping that this Galtan necromancer shows up at some point in the future to bite her in the ass, just like every other person she (undeservedly) spares has done. As much as I like her as one of my favoritest ranger characters in a long time, the gal's gotta learn st some point to finish the job!

The empyreal lords are all written loosely for people to apply them however they want in their settings, just like all of paizo's materials. You want to make Desna a blithering airhead? sure! You want to make her the architect of the Space Between Worlds and the sole force keeping the horrorterrors of Lovecraft from Golarion? go ahead! But keep in mind the need for the claim to match in-text material supporting your stance (implicit or explicit, w/e), because otherwise you won't win the debate.

Ragathiel does not "slaughter" anyone or anything in the material world itself. It doesn't even say whether he concerns himself with mortals, beyond his stance of "they should join the crusade against evil" - as in the literal, unequivocal evil of the Hells. It doesn't even say he speciest against devils, or what he things of the creatures from the Hells, beyond his "tainted heritage" that has left him with a "constant struggle to master his baser impulses in service to the light" (ragathiel's entry, p. 21).

Ragathiel isn't supposed to be a perfect archon, crafted from the material of the heavens and perfect from his immaculate birth; he is the son of an archduke, i.e. one of Asmodeus's right-hand men, and as such is pretty far from perfect. That fact, along with the fact that he was born rather than created makes him more akin to any mortal than it does to the creatures of either the heavens or the hells.

He is also the epitome of Sarenrae's redemption attempts and it would be hilariously lulzical if the unnamed "fire goddess" that is his mother ends up being her. As such his story is about someone who tries, actively, to be good and live up to the ideals espoused by an LG alignment (and the L there can very, very often be quite evil). To a mortal who isn't used to facing hordes of demons and devils - which are, without exaggeration, literal incarnations of evil - tirelessly fighting against them might seem crazy. Maybe it is, it's probably how he copes. But the point is that he tries to be good, which is why he would not ever get an LE alignment. And once again, I mean, you can totally do whatever you want with him in your campaign setting - maybe he falls! maybe he was LE all along! - but there isn't any material in his entry itself that would support or suggest that in a strong way. Just because some players (who sound like they play murderhobos to begin with) use his obedience as an excuse to exploit some mechanics doesn't mean that there's anything in his entry in and of itself that reflects that.

Anyways, on another note, the empyreal lords are all meant to serve niches that the main deities do not fill themselves. Azata and fey go hand in hand, so deities like Chadali and Chucaro are perfect for people who want something fey-themed and less enigmatic than the Eldest (also there is no deific material for the Eldest so they are decent substitutes). Similarly, there are many empyreal lords that are literal copies of existing gods and goddesses, such as the Black Butterfly (a space fairy that fights naked and in space and even lives in Desna's shadow). What they offer mechanically is a way for someone to differentiate themselves from a "mainstream" or more widespread faith and keep a deeper element of mystery to their beliefs - either on the part of the player or the DM with an NPC.

Ragathiel is analogous to Iomedae, yes, but he offers a very specific side of some of the things she espouses; yeah we see her get a bit peeved in Wrath of the Righteous, but she isn't an inter-planar creature that is focused on the overarching fight against evil. She is from Golarion, she cares primarily about humans on Golarion, she is a human goddess, and inherited the mantle of Aroden, the human god. If someone is like "well I'm not human, why would I care about her" then Ragathiel is an alternative option.

Focenspeil wrote:

I'll start it out.

Ouch.

ahaha aha! I can't stop laughing!

Hero in the Streets.

Villain in the Sheets.

I take it there's a lot of monologuing, nefarious mustache twirling, then a complete collapse all your grandest plans followed by diving out the escape hatch?

In talking about the aspects of prejudice, one of the issues with a blanket stance of "all glbt activity would cause prejudice" is that those also isn't very accurate. Or true. Or even shown in the same way at different times in history. When applying it to a fantasy world (or even just a not-historical earth world), a typical reaction is to do something the glbt prejudice in "The Steel Remains" that someone mentioned earlier, where gay men are tortured to death in unbelievably horrific ways while the townsfolk gather and cheer. Okay, that's a rather low-hanging fruit, but homophobic prejudice goes a lot further than that; sometimes certain acts, even sex acts, between same genders are acceptable or the norm (ranging from men being allowed to kiss men as a greeting in some cultures to sharing certain activities in others). Sometimes only one gender is allowed to engage in glbt activity, or another big one is cultural values that use homophobia to restrict activity across all areas of one gender's role.

One quintessential fantasy trope is the "effete" male (typically a bard, noble, or rogue) who gets made fun of/killed because they're not the hypermasculine broody/dark/serious/whatever melee-type character. Or the too-common storyline where the male main character never once has an emotional connection with any male companions and doesn't bat an eye when a male character he'd been adventuring with for years gets hurt or killed, because then he wouldn't be a "real man" (since real men don't have emotions). We're talking about the prejudice that glbt individuals experience, but it's not recognized that prejudice that negatively impacts them negatively impacts all members of that culture. If role-playing through prejudice is going to be an aspect of the game, then the hetero characters are impacted just as much - whether that means that the warrior was forbidden from following his dream of being a bard because it's not manly enough, whether the characters are hypervigilant of being too close to members of their own gender, or even enemies using it as slander against the player characters.

The other effect of this is that certain genders don't get to see the things they want to see, particularly if there's more power on one gender than another. The most obvious one of these is, for example, in a fantasy world where there are no stat differences between male and females, where there are in theory equal numbers of female and male adventurers (and humans), where attracting females to their doom (or simply taking advantage of them the way sirens, pathfinder changelings, yuki-ona, etc. do for men) should be just as advantageous as it is to lure males... ends up having 4 all-male races (with questionable degrees of "lure" status), while there are 46 all-female races that seek out mortal men to breed with.

Because men are a dominant aspect in our culture, and because homophobia is a dominant aspect of our culture, it doesn't matter that we are playing a game in a made-up world where characters can be any gender, mix of genders at different points in their lives, orientations, etc. - everyone is impacted by it. Yes, some characters and players might not care that they can't take that option or do that thing, but they are still prevented from doing so. Similarly, if a game is being played where glbt prejudice is a prevailing issue, it absolutely should impact all players, just like it impacts what women get to see, what men are allowed to do, in real life.

I dunno, just some thoughts that I'd had while reading this thread. One thing that I'd like to add too is that I try really hard now to just let the gals in my group get as much eyecandy and other fodder that appeals to them just as often as the guys do. Not that it happens that often, but there are times with certain APs, like the starting one for the Serpent's Skull campaign where the PCs are stranded with two conventionally attractive, athletic young women and three unconventional, questionably attractive men of varying age. Balancing that out a bit more fairly imo is part and parcel of balancing out the game for glbt reasons as well.

I'm not sure about the villain statistics right off the bat, but I can't remember that many LGBTetc characters who are actual villains. Queen Ileosa, the two from The Half-Dead City... can you refresh my memory on others? LGBTetc allies seem more prevalent.

I think that the issue with overly-detailed lives of complete, irredeemable villains (or, at best, villains that would be VERY hard even for a reasonable adventure group to redeem) is common to both hetero couples and GLBT couples in the paizo-verse, so it's easier to be more irritated with the subject. One of the more egregious examples (imo) is the relationship between two dudes on the "rival" adventuring party from the Forgotten Pharaoh AP; I am normally someone who encourages redemption of NPCs, and even for me it's very hard to believe that even a goodly-inclined party would spare the lives of these individuals if the script provided by the AP were adhered to.

Interestingly, there are are actually quite a significant number of NPC villains with active sex lives in the Paizo-verse:

in Jade Regent, Jarl Agnaar and his wife are being "entertained" by two thralls (who are stated to be both male or female elsewhere so the language is deliberately open).

similarly, in the Skull and Shackles, one of the pirate lords hassles a concubine (again, male or female depending on DM/player preference).

in The Curse of the White Lady (or whatever, one of the Rise of the Runelord books) the succubus Sorsheen has a number of relationships with various members of her servants (all female) - most recently the implied sexual relationship with an army of Grey Ladies or whatever

in the second to last Rise of the Runelord book a bunch of trapped succubi have mildly detailed sexual relationships with each other and their charmed minions

in the Fire Giant book of Giantslayer AP there is a half-fiend giantess and a guard that have taken a liking to each each other (the guard is stated to be female i believe).

in the 5th book of the Iron Gods, the barbarian king of Numeria explicitly has 2 sets for 4 concubines - one male and one female - to visit "depending on his mood that day"

Incidentally, there are waaaaaaay way more hetero examples of the above, both in APs and supplementary material, so I am sort of hesitant to say that there is a problem in the existence of them in and of itself - much less at least in the cases I listed above, all of them are things the players discover immediately upon entering the room. The example that Aubrey the Malformed gave is, like above, more of a longer-running issue with page space devoted to the personal lives of these villains with material that the players are extremely unlikely to ever encounter. Again, this happens way more frequently with heterosexual couples amongst the villains, simply because there are more of them period.

Moreover, as I said above, when Paizo did it the first time, I was totally down with it then too. But it has morphed over time and repetition into simply a bland assumption about a lack of prejudice, or indeed any view, positive or negative, at all. It's not really an examination of attitudes to homosexuality, it's a denial that there might be any issues at all. So there is no "cultural" aspect to it at all, which might make the issue interesting from a dramatic perspective or give it some sort of link into the broader world. So when it gets mentioned it is free of cultural context.

So that just leaves you with sex (homosexual and heterosexual) as some sort of character motivation in his or her interpersonal relationships. There's nothing wrong with that as far as it goes, but it is done generally for minor NPCs where the actual impact on play of their sexual orientation is negligible. Which leads me to the conclusion about tokenism. I guess you'd expect some NPCs to be gay, just by statistical chance. With most, it won't matter.

I won't argue that sometimes it's irrelevant, and I actually agree that at times it feels like an issue is completely whitewashed when my own personal inclination is "no, no let me see the controversy between Erastil and the GLBT community! go ahead, I DO want to see their sexuality matter and be relevant to more than just the bedroom scenes outside of the pages!" I know that territory can be fraught with landmines, however; I am just agreeing that I sometimes would appreciate a bit more information on certain matters. And like other people in the thread have said, sometimes it's fun to play against adversity.

At the same time I do feel that it can be very, very important to have glbt individual be portrayed as readily, as casually, as any hetero person. The barbarian king of Numeria, for example, a huge, stereotypical Conan-type, just having a harem of both men and women - while also having a political marriage with a barbarian queen - is, to me, about as far from tokenism as one can possibly get. Yes, it's minor, yes, it can be edited out with ease, yes many people might never get to see it or experience that content, but for me personally it's exceptionally heartening. It breaks stereotypes, it's not in the context of "oh here are two side-npcs in a committed relationship", and, most importantly imo, it's not presented as a big deal. It's just dropped, never picked up, and not viewed as an issue - which in this case is more profound than if it WERE an issue.

I'd challenge your comment (just slightly!0, DM Under the Bridge, about orcs being "so hetero it hurts" with the fact that they can have huge reproduction rates and an intense focus on reproducing and still be GLBT. A monogamous culture might insist on a gay person living with their partner, but one that's less so might have a GLBT person ecstatic about participating in reproductive mating while still personally preferring their same-sex partners. Personally for me, that stuff makes me far more interested in the character than the more typical presentation (though I do agree definitely that at times inclusion smacks of tokenism and don't disparage your overall commentary at all. I also SINCERELY don't mean to be condescending, I just love to talk about glbt stuff intersecting with cultural issues in fantasy settings!).

More related to the thread topic as a whole, one of my first Pathfinder experiences was in a game run by my friend's brother. At one point he had a flamboyant (but straight) and slightly crazy half-elf silk merchant grab my halfling oracle and kiss him in what was obviously supposed to be a "haha ewww!" moment for the table. Seeing how uncomfortable the DM got when I just shrugged and said "okay the halfling slips him some tongue" was the weirdest part: he just looked away and changed the subject completely. I realized that he'd never even considered that I might be okay with not-hetero activity, and it got increasingly weird to play with him from that point on because of how carefully he and the people he brought to the table completely avoided any and all "serious" (i.e. RP stuff) mention of any sort of romantic inclinations at all (and I mean unquestionably innocent stuff like "the barmaid winks at you in typical barmaid fashion, does your character appreciate the attention"). This extended to their out-of-game dynamics and it was pretty clear that they had a lot of interpersonal issues going on too, but more to the point; for me it was more strange to just not talk about it at all, more uncomfortable, because it was clearly this big crazy elephant in the room no one would acknowledge or talk about (unless it was in the context of either a gay joke, hot lesbians, or an ugly chick macking on a dude that was "out of her league").

So now I just make a point of addressing and normalizing whatever a player wants to do. If they're playing a randy paladin, power to them, if they want to have anything remotely romance-oriented removed from their character completely, I respect that and make it clear to the rest of the table that grief about that sort of stuff isn't allowed.

I even let them interpret events how they want to. It ends up in some hilarious splits in the table; in one of the Jade Regent APs, a viking jarl and his wife are being "entertained" by two thralls in their bedroom when the PCs storm the place. Half the table decided that they were doing adult-oriented things while the other half decided they were just putting on a puppet show. In the end they split the difference and agreed that nothing "untoward" was happening, but they were "really really sexy puppets".

These are a lot of really awesome ideas for how to keep the drow in check or fix the gaping holes in their society, but there's still a pretty big disconnect between what's stated in the material and how they actually act in lore.

In lore, nearly 99% of the time the drow are crazy backstabbers who never, EVER honor a single deal they make. In Salvatore's books they murder with impunity, somehow surprising every black market contact or spy or smuggler or whatever they're meeting with by murdering them because they want to keep things hush-hush (so death is always their first choice when dealing with anyone not themselves). In the more recent "War for the Spider Queen" series, every single priestess of Lolth failed or refused to honor their bargains - whether it was with a poisoned jungle elf one priestess promised to cure if he guided her to a temple, demons summoned for protection and/or transport, or even bargains made with each other (amongst the priesthood) in order to try and reach the end goal. This isn't even like, limited to one author or anything either. 100% of the time, every single drow priestess of Lolth deliberately stabbed every creature she made a bargain with in the back for no other reason than that she felt like it.

For me, it's really hard to believe that anyone would bother to do anything other than just kill a drow on sight. Based on the way they're depicted, they're not like orcs where you can reasonably expect that they might be satisfied with a fine bargain, or like goblins where they're easily corralled, or the duergar who do have their own sort of honor. Keeping in mind that there are many outsiders, survivors, and escaped slaves who can spread the word of how drow betray everyone and everything at whim, how could the drow ever be considered even remotely trustworthy? And I don't just mean to honor the bargain, but I mean trustworthy enough to not do some crazy scheme that involves murder of everyone and everything "because they can"?

Granted, a lot of this comes from stuff that's not pathfinder material, but of the pathfinder material we've seen, drow don't seem to be all that different. I think that these are easy holes to fix, I'd just like something tangible.

Also @Joanna, TY for necroing this thread because I had to keep reminding myself to share and credit Pathfinder for some GREAT success since last year/two years ago or whenever this was started. Imo Paizo is so lovely and awesome and you can really see that there was genuine impact from so many people talking about it!

The Feral Hunter from the Advanced Class Guide: pretty awesome. I have to say *I* think it's rad as all get out that this dude's armor is what it is.

the next two are from Iron Gods, which was said somewhere last year that they hoped to use to address some of the concerns from the crowd: well, they definitely did!

Magus Technomancer Ozmyn Zaidow, the unnecessarily gorgeous and un-armored wizardly leader of the Technic League, a guild of brainiacs and int-based characters. yep. his underlings wear normal outfits, not him though.

Kevoth Kul The Black Soveriegn is the leader of Numeria, and has a harem of 4 male rogues and 4 female rogues because basically he does what he feels like.

They could have gone a lot of ways with some of these pics. A lot of ways that don't involve being awesome. But they didn't and this makes my day every day :D

Part of the problem is that while the drow are different than 3.5 (as stated above), there hasn't been anything to show how they are any different in Golarion. I know it's said that "they unite in the face of enemies" but the entire Second Darkness campaign was about drow who gleefully stabbed each other in the backs even in the face of the party wiping all their plans out. At one point, an overseer orders all surviving members of the household executed for "allowing" the PCs to escape (when in fact she was the source of this in the first place). If this happens even once a decade, that's a huge number of a slow-to-mature race being destroyed. The callousness of the action (as portrayed in the AP at least) makes it sound like such actions are fairly routine, however, and it's very hard to reconcile how the whole "they unite in the face of danger" actually unites them when all the evidence we see seems to be the continuous "drow stab each other in the back and dance on the corpse even as they're about to be slain themselves".

I mean, I'm not arguing for or against it, or for not having them as villains, just that I've thought about it too and would like some greater explanation as well.

Snowblind wrote:

DM Under The Bridge wrote:

I could be angry at my players expressing free will and agency, or I could just adapt.

Rolling with the surprises they give me is one of the personal joys of dming for me. One of the reasons I don't think "being put on the spot" is a wholly negative thing.

Be the water my friend... and the dungeons, monsters, traps and obstacles, both knight and bandit and much more.

I think the issue is that when you are "put on the spot" and you don't have a firm idea of the background behind the events you are GMing it is difficult to create an internally consistent story.

Lets have an example: a group of plot relevant bandits ambushing the PCs.

Scenario 1: The bandits do so out of the blue and the GM hasn't put any more forethought into the encounter

Scenario 2: The bandits followed the PCs out of town after some paid informants warned them and they trailed them with the help of a tracker and hustled through the wilderness to get ahead of them for the ambush (the tracker can be one of the thugs with some skill points in Survival).

Now, the ambush will go the same regardless of which of the two it is.

However, here is where it gets unpleasant for the GM.

One of the PCs says "My wolf has Scent can track - where did these bandits come from".

Now, in all likelihood the GM will go "...S***, I completely forgot that was a thing" regardless of the scenario. However, in scenario two the GM can describe the trail leading through the wilderness before leading back to the road they traveled on. Any further investigative actions by the PCs can be handled on the spot because the GM knows what actually happened and just has to reveal it to the PCs at the appropriate time, with a little filling in of minor details. In scenario 2...the GM has to make it up on the spot. If the trail leads back to civilization, there will be implications, like that people would have seen them. If the trail leads back to wilderness, then there should

...

I have tremendous respect for people who can either run free-flow adventures and meld to let the PCs go/do whatever they want or else do that much meticulous planning beforehand. I can read the AP, I have a phenomenal mental rule encyclopedia and I can RP the pre-built NPCs well enough, but the moment a player hits on one I'm like "... um, he falls in love with you" or if they are running down the wrong path I'm like "um... one of you roll a wis check - okay was it not a 1? good - you get the idea that maybe you should be doing something else."

fortunately the play group are all long-time friends that roll with the APs, but I'd often be at a complete loss for what to do without the DMPC or whatever questgiver NPC the AP has accompanying the PCs to remind them about what they're supposed to be doing.

I've been meaning to ask: are there any suggestions for how a DM might reorient players "in character" without one of those NPC/DMPCs present? assuming the players MEAN to explore the published adventure, of course, and this isn't blocking their desire to do something else.

Steve Geddes wrote:

xeose4 wrote:

I confess I'm always surprised when someone who says they hate Pathfinder and prefer another system posts on the Paizo boards. I mean, *I* think the boards are awesome but I enjoy the system too? I don't understand.

Perhaps they like paizo but not pathfinder? Perhaps they like Golarion or adapt paizo's adventures to another system? Perhaps they posted here before pathfinder existed and are comfortable with the forum and part of the community?

Lots of reasons to post here, even if you do hate pathfinder.

Bingo! I like Paizo, I'd like to someday play or run a Paizo AP, and I've been here since the 3.5 days.

I don't even hate PF. There are things I hate about PF -- no level-based AC bonus, wizards being incapable of the humble cure light wounds spell, along with a lot of minor thematic and mechanical inconsistencies -- but these are things I also hated about 3.0-.5. Which was my favorite rpg for eight years.

So I actually like PF; I just don't run or seek out PF campaigns.

thanks for explaining - i really was genuinely curious. like, was it the system, paizo, or both? or none? that answers the questions i always have when seeing someone post they don't like PF on the PF forums.

xeose4 wrote:

The Alkenstarian wrote:

Ashiel wrote:

KenderKin wrote:

DM Under The Bridge wrote:

Just as some people can play kender and some can/should not.

No, let's be real here. GMPCs are one thing, but nobody should play kender. They exist as a food source for more highly evolved species, albeit as junk food.

Nahh, too high on the cholestorol. Same as halflings or gnomes. Too much cuteness packed into a tiny package=insane cholestorol-count.

Eat elf, the other sweat meat.

Ew. That is quite possibly the grossest thing I've ever heard about elves. (but I believe it)

I'm still trying to determine the entendres, if any.

Maybe it means they give you the meat sweats? I don't actually know what those are because I'm a hippie vegetarian but I learned of them recently!

Ashiel wrote:

KenderKin wrote:

DM Under The Bridge wrote:

Just as some people can play kender and some can/should not.

No, let's be real here. GMPCs are one thing, but nobody should play kender. They exist as a food source for more highly evolved species, albeit as junk food.

Nahh, too high on the cholestorol. Same as halflings or gnomes. Too much cuteness packed into a tiny package=insane cholestorol-count.

Eat elf, the other sweat meat.

Ew. That is quite possibly the grossest thing I've ever heard about elves. (but I believe it)

haha that sounds like Lem is going to get smacked!

all your characters were the young whippersnappers though. in reality, the real party would be:

Balazar (summoner - tank)
Ezren (wizard - mage)
Harsk (ranger - offtank and emergency heals)
Quin (investigator - melee/skillmonkey)

they're all old men on a serious quest for mustache wax and prune juice. also they're all dissatisfied with the state of the world these days and grouse constantly about their arthritis and either "they're too old for this" or "one day away from retirement!" the quest they're on is only suitable for the hardest and most grizzled of characters but fortunately a plucky young rookie NPC is there to inspire their faith in humanity and the world again after a series of bonding events. the hundreds of years of experience between these ancient men is really what's needed to get the job done!

Book of Exalted Deeds imo is still pretty amazing for flavor and fun. I too offer the cloistered cleric, and any of the magic items from the magic item compendium.

The longer time goes on, the more I actually have come to love almost everything in Dragon Magazine as well. Yeah a lot of it's goofy and way too underpowered, but now I just cut out dead levels of old PrCs completely and just let people take truncated versions if I want. Unfortunately my players are all super boring and just okay with 20 levels of X base class :'(

I also want to second again how awesome the magic item compendium is for offering magic items that are unique and variant without overlapping all the time (much less just being will/stat/attack +X). total lifesaver for my sanity many times over while still feeling like I'm genuinely rewarding the players.

I don't reflavour that much as a player, but as a GM I turned a swarm of crows into a swarm of animate bone shards, skeletal hands, and skulls.

This idea is SO FANTASTIC! I am totally going to think more about these kinds of possibilities, thank you!

My own favorite reflavor was turning a First Worlder summoner's skilldolon into his twin brother while he himself had the fey heritage feats. I just play it up that they are inseparable, uncanny twins that looks more like I am playing two half-fey bards instead of one summoner.

I'm not posting this to invalidate your concern, but I have to say that we do try really hard to manage expectations. To use one of your examples, Iron Gods wasn't supposed to be "the spaceship AP." It was designed to be an Adventure Path that explored Numeria and dealt with the idea of how technology and faith interplay, and I think we hit that mark.

One thing I can't control is when people read X and want Y, then are upset that X wasn't Y. That said, we will continue to manage expectations and give as clear a vision for the Adventure Path as possible (without giving too many spoilers up front).

Thanks for explaining that it was supposed to be focused on Numeria - I actually had been wondering. Thanks for the opening bit too, that's really nice of you.

As a subscriber though, I get the APs regardless. I keep my subscription up because I like what Paizo does and I want to support you guys. I get that a lot of flak can be given for being misled or willfully misinterpreting things - and I was actually going to say I felt more warmly about the Iron Gods after knowing it was supposed to just be about Numeria earlier in the week (when I first meant to post) - but having had some time to reflect, I feel like my frustration still stands. Using Iron Gods, I'm not saying that it needs to be on a spaceship or interplanetary travel - but it's pretty much the one chance to show off how cool and unique this section of Golarion could be. I mean, I could easily picture Dune or Mad Max shenanigans going on, with medieval barbarians living in dilapidated colonist housing, or roving bands desperately competing for dwindling supplies of space-fuel to keep their nomad vehicles going. The campaign could have made use of finding cryopods with millennia-old NPC companions in them, or included wandering into towns where aliens were the norm. That way, it would have actually been remarkable to go to a place where all of that stuff was suddenly (and perhaps, suspiciously!!) missing. Yes, as the DM I could add this stuff myself if I feel like Numeria is too mundane, but I also don't get these books because I want to create my own material. Or, I should say, I don't want to be the person that has to do all the heavy lifting just to spruce something up to what it could have been.

More importantly: realistically, these are the only places, only times we might get a chance to see these things from a Paizo AP. The Mummy's Mask was the only place that there would be an opportunity for some hardcore, classic egyptian tomb delving, the Wrath of the Rightous was the only time we'd get to see a real, epic crusade against Abyssal forces, and Jade Regent was the only time we'd get to see Tian (although I hope I'm wrong on all those accounts). Similarly, Iron Gods - in Numeria - was the only place we might get to see this stuff in the Golarion universe, and it feels like the chance was... not taken. Or at least, the desire on the part of some people who might really enjoy it didn't get fulfilled when it could have been sated without going out of the way or detracting from the main story.

I hope I'm being clear in what I'm trying express, and I don't mean to suggest that Paizo "do or I quit" or anything. It's just how I've been reacting to the last few APs and I think it's something that there's room for accommodating.

One big thing I'd like for new APs is greater attention to the flow of the adventure. I like to keep my mind open, but there are a many times in that it seems like the idea is "oh this will be the spaceship AP" and then the story derps around not in spaceships. Or it's like "here, lead a crusade against demons!" and then you don't lead crusades, you go on friendly missions to planar cities. To often it makes me ends up feeling like the original premise half-heartedly met at best in favor of really generic adventures. As much as I want to like the APs (or even as much as I like particular APs), too often, lately, I find myself just getting irritated with the lack of APs hitting their target premise.

non-humans! let's have way more non-human main characters!

NOT-rogue halflings as main characters. elves that are actually hardcore nature-lovers or crazy mystics. aasimar that are all about crusades and redemption or something would be way, waay cool.

my favorite characters have always been the outliers that "break the mold" in these books. Radovan the funny and charismatic tiefling, Opharl the lonely and forlorn elf paladin, Eliara(sp?) the motherly elf ranger from Stalking the Beast and her righteous, lawful half-orc charge are all excellent examples. Celeste, the lunar naga love interest from Pirate's Promise was also unbelievably refreshing. Reading that book merely whetted my appetite for more monstrous main characters, rather than sating it.

After reading a Pirate's Promise I want more...

also maybe a book with just Vreva Jhafae as the main character...have to say the book put her on my top ten favorite fictional character list.

Vreva Jhafae is the best character in that whole story! She totally deserves her own novel, all to herself.

a novel with an android protoganist.

a novel about how a ghoran lives and survives in nex

a book with a protagonist intentionally trying to be heroic, as opposed to be paid, or obligation to a god or organization, or out for vengence. (ophral was a good start, but she was really only 1/3 of the king of chaos)

more books by ellen guon, time pratt and james strutter.

oh my gosh lets combine a bunch of ideas and have a book about how a ghoran and an android investigator survive on another planet!!

but also I want to bold this, a book with a protagonist intentionally trying to be heroic, as opposed to be paid, or obligation to a god or organization, or out for vengence; because, yeah, it does wear a little thin after a while...

Wrath of the Righteous has a few... strange spots.

The Midnight Isles (book 4) isn't bad, but it's weird, given the context of the rest of the campaign. After slaying demons and building a holy stronghold in the middle of a ruined landscape, the players go and treat with an exceptionally cosmopolitan demon city. It's not the worst, it's just... irrelevant to the plot. As a story, it would have fit far better with being a corrupted Sarkoris city IN the Worldwound itself - not some strange planar area completely unrelated to the main plot.

City of Locusts (book 6) is atrocious. As endings go, it is hands-down the worst of any AP. You don't fight Deskari (the demon lord who rules the worldwound) because it's "beyond the scope of this adventure"; you don't actually do anything with the City of Locusts, i.e. the conquered capitol of old Sarkoris; the only things you do is faff about in a demon brothel with some inexplicably mythic-level, murderous succubi-prostitutes (who are also drug dealers!), followed by solving the "mystery" of the origins of the worldwound (which isn't a mystery because everyone already knows how it originated; this subquest just fills in some of the particulars like "it wasn't just in may, but may FIFTH that the worldwound formed! wow!). It ends with fighting some succubus queens, then another BIGGER succubus queen, after fighting some other succubus queens.

Considering that The Ivory Labyrinth (book 5) ends on the incredible high note of slaughtering a demon lord in the middle of his own stronghold, City of Locusts is unbelievable in... just how much of a let-down it is. It's been almost a year and I'm still very bitter about it :(

Let the planar road trip begin! (I must say I miss Neila being around this time.)

So Arathuziel…
…from the cover of the novel I thought it may be a corrupted Ceyanan, and when the contract devil was introduced early on in Chapter Three my wheels started turning and I started thinking Hezechor tricked Ceyanan somehow and all of this was a plot to manipulate Salim somehow. But I was wrong.

Haha, Darkborn, dude! Ceyanan is androgynous, while Arathuziel is like, explicitly male! While Salim refers to Ceyanan as a he (I believe), I think in Death's Heretic it was implied that Salim actually had no idea as to Ceyanan's gender (if the angel even has chosen one).

Speaking of Ceyanan, the subtle difference in the angel's interactions with Salim in Kaer Morga - versus his interactions with Salim in Death's Heretic - were another thing that made me fall in love with how much... for lack of a better term, "better" Sutter's writing is in Redemption Engine. It's another nitpicky thing that I'm sure isn't that big of a deal, but I feel it has an element of "mastery" about it and I just want to bring it up in discussion!

In Death's Heretic, Ceyanan is a needling presence in Salim's life. Throughout the book, one gets the impression that the angel goads him by pinpricks and drawing blood, in much the way one gets a stubborn mule to start walking. While the reader, if they choose, can read it as Ceyanan's interactions with Salim specifically that causes the angel to use that method (meaning that there is intelligent choice behind the angel's actions versus the angel just being a jerk), it's not in the text itself.

In Redemption Engine, that missing piece - a very, very subtle thing - is actually made explicit, and this is another one of those savory, meaty little pieces that made me enjoy this book so much. Because we the reader are shown a slightly more objective view of the angel - one where we see him poke holes in Salim's self-righteousness, alongside the occasional moment of tenderness and care - there's evidence on the page itself to let us infer, accurately, that Ceyanon truly is damn good at his job (his job being getting mules to move :P). It's not blind zeal, or a lack of understanding on his part, that makes his interactions with Salim go the way they do. If anything, it's him assuming whatever role he has judged Salim to need him to be in that moment - whether that role is that of a target for criticism, an enemy to goad him into action, or, rarely, and if he knows Salim will hear it, a source of support. Ironically, in a story about divine angels/archons interacting with mortals, it is the "atypical" angels that have the greatest understanding of mortal life (Ceyanan, an angel of death, and Arathuziel, a redeemed devil, of all things!).

I can see why your interest has been piqued by the holy/unholy outsiders in this book, DB! Even in responding to your comments here I've had to reassess that final point (about how Sutter has the "least holy" angels be the most caring/relatable of them all). That's such a great point! I know you pop in here occasionally, Mr. Sutter - was that intentional from the start, or an organic piece of the writing? The more I think about it, the more even the simple appearances of the most relatable outsiders - Maede, Arathuziel, the hound archon, Ceyanan - also have the most "humanity". Arathuziel and the hound archon are gendered and unique; in contrast, Ceyanan, while ambiguous in gender, is "soft" and careful with his touch. Even Maede, when she tears off her dress and taunts Salim, shows an understanding of mortals. A crude understanding, to be sure, but something that's there nonetheless. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the holiest and most righteous of the archons - even the crazy librarians and whatnot - are just so far removed from any understanding outside the plane of law that it's easy to see how they really, truly struggle. Moreover, we know that it's not just because they're powerful - the orca-agathion was able to cow the entire party with just a hint of the impossible wisdom in her eyes! When stepping back and looking at the book as a whole, this is a really interesting design choice!

This makes me think that the author has done the same at some point, because it is a monumental task to touch so many planes and have them become so real for the readers in so little time. It’s hard enough to capture the feel of different cities in the same country like Magnimar and Korvosa in Varisia, but to capture the feel of the planes - which are comparably different worlds, let alone countries or cities - makes the task of differentiating human civilizations seem a meager task.

I think this is Mr. Sutter's greatest talent. The fact that his two novels involve plane-hopping and popping between wildly different locales without seeming to completely lose the thread of the main plot is a major talent. Other authors attempt it, some successfully and some less so, but if it's not done well it can really interfere with the story.

I think another reason that a d6 divine caster is of interest to people - and the reason it's talked about at all - is that it's not like there aren't already redundant classes out there. I mean, Paizo just released the warcaster or warcleric or whatever, which is literally a more battle-oriented cleric when the cleric is already battle-oriented! If it's a question of "well are we sure we want to commit resources to something that you could finagle into fitting already existing mechanics" then I would say Paizo (through the writers and community interaction) already is squandering space. There is literally nothing the warpriest does that can't already be done with the base cleric. So why shouldn't I be able to ask that some of that space is wasted on something I like too? I mean, I don't begrudge the warpriest, because I will freely admit that there might be a class that caters to my specific tastes, one day down the road, and I'll be happy to use it.

The other side of it is that I would personally like it to be a brand new class, with original mechanics; i.e. no domains, no mysteries, and (heh) no wildshape! A druid-witch hybrid could be a great step and fix a lot of it. Alternatively, having the room for it to be an original class allows more variability and new ideas, instead of doing this stuff here where the first things people leap to are just "well let's mash in the same stuff from the existing classes and end up with the exact same choices as before." Don't get me wrong, I enjoy all the existing classes; the oracle, druid, and cleric are all great, fun to play, and have a lot of flavor. and none of them fill that role I'm looking for : \

My party was sent to rescue a noble merchant woman, an animal trainer who had been captured by drow who were then using her animals to terrorize the streets. During the battle in her mansion, the barbarian got targetd with a rage spell and - with some RP - managed to not take it out on the party by diving at a rabbit hutch and attacking that instead. The DM just said "the rabbits lose."

Following that, they rescued the noble, who was sickened and starved. The inquisitor decided to make her some stew. She said it was good and asked what was in it, to which the barbarian just said "I killed a bunch of rabbits outside. It's mostly that." The DM was just like "... ... she pales slightly and just says "Oh." in a very small voice before setting the bowl aside."

I forgot to say thanks, Mr. Sutter, for elaborating on the process behind the story. It's always fascinating to hear about what went into the story taking shape.

I really like what you've pointed out, Darkborn, about NPCs Salim encounters having a certain depth of character to them. It's not easy to dismiss them; whether it's the sleazy necromancer that - for some reason - was first smart enough to figure out a vampire exists and then smarty enough to convince the vampire to allow him exist or if it's a seemingly one-off character like the innkeeper, they have... this air about them that just makes the reader want to know more. I would have been down to read about Qali, Jbade, Gad, or Cobaru as the stars of their own novels!

Cobaru, especially, fascinates me. His personal story was pretty intriguing, and it really speaks to his character that he's such a stand-up guy after Sutter illustrates the type of society he came from. A first glance it seems like "oh okay he's a vampire noble that's the cliche Lestat-type character" and that he only practices restraint due to fear of reprisal either from the church or from the... um, thought-eater things. Once we're shown the vampire society that he came from, however, rife with corruption, sloth, gluttony - we see that Cobaru was actually able to leave all that behind and genuinely start a "new life" entirely. The more I thought about the arc of his life, the deeper his character got!

Full disclosure, I love bromances (across any gender, actually, but bros for the purposes here), and I have to say that Salim and Cobaru's meeting was the first time was genuinely impressed with Salim as a character. I know I commented before, on Death's Heretic, that I didn't see him as that... "deep" (so to speak): at least, not shown in his actions with any of the other characters.

When I read him meeting with Cobaru, I was enthralled with how different the two dudes seemed to act with each other, compared to how Salim has interacted with other characters he has needed information from. In Death's Heretic, Jbade and Qali were both oppositional in nature, and Salim seemed to approach them from an almost "supplicant" position; in turn, both of them demonstrated their clear superiority and broadsided him without fear. Similarly, in Redemption Engine, Salim has thus-far only antagonized or lectured, either from willful defiance of Maede, superiority (in a sense) to A'kaan, or inquisitor-style with the necromancer. With Cobaru, however, Salim is far... connected, almost? It's hard to articulate it clearly. I think a large part of it stems from the fact that Salim does not show either the supplicant status that he showed to Qali or Jbade (despite Cobaru ostensibly being far more powerful than either), nor does he show the same reckless defiance he shows Maede, nor does he treat Cobaru with the disdain he shows to the necromancer - or even the distance that he gives Gad. In turn, Cobaru seems to respond to Salim's inquiry from a place of genuine helpfulness; I mean this is an ancient vampire who outwitted an entire city of immortals. I am reasonably certain he could have just brain-wiped Salim and had him murdered in the streets an hour later. Despite the risk of sending a man away with his lintel stone, he seems to actually want to see Salim succeed.

When I read it, there was just this sense of both men appearing to try and reach out to each other from their mutual positions of isolation. By the end of it, it almost gives the impression that this conversation about Salim's job was the most open either man has been in years - and this was done to this total stranger, whose very presence was dangerous (to both parties!). When Salim parts with "I won't forget this", yes on the one hand it allows Cobaru a smart-aleck remark, but on the other it seems to really speak to how important his brief, shadowed connection with the vampire was.

maybe I'm just reading overmuch into it, but since this is a discussion I just wanted to comment on how meaty and fun this scene was. I love the moments where Salim shows his humanity, and I really admire that it was shown here in this wildly unconventional place of two lonely dudes. I have so much respect for that.

I would include Aroden as a core deity since he does have a lot of depictions, lore, and inclusion in material. Rovagug is typically referred to as male, with "sire" and references to impregnating other creatures. Gozreh has one side as an old and angry bearded man of destruction while the other is a nubile young woman of gentleness. I would not consider him to really be that freed of gender norms.

I'm not saying that Paizo hasn't done a better job than most; they have done a better job than anyone, and the fact that this thread is even able to talk about these things reflects that.

I also think that xavier c's prompt isn't unwarranted, because of the reasons I mentioned above. Shelyn and Calistria are both nubile young women with very sexualized outfits and they're both associated with love. Lamashtu is a naked shapely pregnant woman. Urgothoa - whose depiction I love because to me it's reminiscent of a radial bra-burning feminist fighting against the establishment - is still a skeleton with a pair of breasts. If she were male and we inverted it, what would people think of a dude with a skeleton that just has a shapely, muscular rump attached to its pelvis?

I don't think that there's anything wrong with any of them or that even having these depictions is wrong; I do think it's a little goofy that there is this disparity when it shouldn't even really matter. When the equation is "well this shirtless guy getting ready for a martial arts battle is equivalent to this woman standing there in a corset with a whip", it feels a little one-sided - more so when pointing it out is met with the response of "well it's not porn!"

Sure, I mean, yeah, it's not - and for those people who enjoy hot babes in their lore, it is. In a thread that's talking about sexuality in Golarion, I think it's totally fair to point out that the most prominent deities have... well, a particular pattern that could, in theory, have some impact on the world.

Ms. Pleiades wrote:

xavier c wrote:

In pathfinder(and real life) most gods of lust or love or Beauty are female. Do you think the pathfinder setting needs or should have a male god of lust, love or Beauty? or other things usually associated with female gods.

Lymnieris, an empyreal lord who is focuses on ensuring that emphatic and wholly understood consent is exercised with regards to sex. Deals mainly with the avowed chaste, prostitutes, adolescents and unwillingly married couples, all groups for which consent can be a difficult to pin issue. Perhaps that is a bit more legalistic than what you had in mind, but personally I quite like the fact that this deity exists in the campaign setting.

Agreed, and the minor deities are the most interesting and innovative deities in the setting. Thanks to their makers.

I very much agree that some of the empyreal lords are way more exciting than the core deities. I also think that xavier c's prompt isn't... inappropriate, considering the attention those same core deities tend to get. after all, of the 8 female deities, 5 of them are naked or wearing revealing outfits, and tying some of the earlier comments in this thread back into it, are (romantically) pursued by each other and/or other deities/creatures in the world.

None of the 13 or so core male deities appear naked, no matter if they're originally an ancient stone giant deity like Erastil or a Dr. Manhattan like Nethys. I think maybe Iori is shirtless? Aside from Cayden being a lech and Torag being married, are there lore-snippets of any of the male gods having interest in anything?

I feel like there was one thing that wasn't getting mentioned; there were lots of examples of why the dryad shouldn't be "chaotic good" and defending why one wouldn't be good. to me, that's the same logic as "why wouldn't all humans just be classified as evil, since there are no demon/devil-worshiping dwarf or elf nations" or "of the core races, only humans are portrayed as having slaves". the answers are A) "well that's only a small sample size of limited population" since there's only one elf nation and... 2 dwarf ones? and the B) there's plenty of examples of humans being good in other ways.

you've pretty much strictly cited negative appearances of dryads, the worst of which has ambiguous wording that you've equated to rape when "for pleasure" is specifically chosen because it can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. for all we know, "for pleasure" is literally the "pleasure" of teaching mean-spirited forest-harmers to live in harmony with nature. yeah, I totally agree that the intent was meant one way, but if you're going to be strict and literal then you have to allow all legal interpretations of the wording, and I'm going to insist that it's the pleasure of redeeming prisoners that Absalom dumps there for reformation.

interpretation of intentionally vague terminology aside, earlier you asked why they're chaotic GOOD and not just chaotic neutral. part of it is legacy, part of it is damsel in distress, and part of it is that they're allied with other CG creatures more often than not in many, many APs and lore, both from 3.5 and from Pathfinder. sometimes they're described as allies of druids and lumberjacks, acting as ambassadors for the forest and shepherds or wardens for the lost. sometimes they're described as fond and protective of human children, or aides to the children of any races that end up in the woods. sometimes it's that they actively oppose evil when it pops up (or just threatens the wilds).

in "The Fellnight Queen" (or whatever), like 12 dryads burn to death because they stood in the way of an evil faerie queen trying to destroy a human town. in that encounter, an enormous number of woodland and fey creatures die in defense of a human village that loses like, one woodsman 3 months earlier. in the Skull and Shackles AP, an island dryad acts as the local healer, sage, and warden for the nature on the island, including tasking the players with defeating the remnants of a corrupted seedpod left from a demon lord. in the Shudderwood, the dryads are described as wary guardians against the taint of the Worldwound, or in the Azata realms they're referred to as light-hearted party-goers that just dance around in sacred groves. in many presentations of dryads, unicorns freely associate with them, and unicorns are pretty explicitly only friends with creatures they deem to be pure and good.

a simpler way of breaking it down might be this: taken in isolation, without threats to their home (like a scytheclaw tree nearly mortally wounding her husband because it wants to devour her) or lumberjacks like the ones mentioned in Andoran (some of the lore for which has those same "innocent" lumberjacks that "just want to help their village" brutally nailing live pixies to trees because 'rumor has it their blood turns to gold'), ask the following question - "is this creature going to react positively, neutrally, or negatively to the player popping up?"

the dryad, in the larger percentage of incarnations, is going to be happy, chatty, helpful, and interested in the player. more often than not, they're portrayed as the light-hearted, innocent, protector of the forest/nature type of fey. protectors of anything "pure' are usually considered higher on the morality scale, as is innocence, joviality, and beauty, and that's why many people consider them to be the "good" in chaotic good.

I could see a cultural component to it too - a culture that places great value on elders and titles might have a cleric that strictly refers to the deity by title, while another worshiper of the same deity insists on using a familiar term. It could actually be a great source of sectarian tension!

I have an etiquette question as well - when a cleric is bent one taking down the alter to another deity, what is "proper"? I actually bumped into a player who felt that defiling an alter in any way was sacrilegious (since it's counter to the basic tenant of respecting deities period). Defilement of the alters of the good gods in very horrible ways is pretty common though, while the desecration of the alters of evil gods seems rare (and if it does happen, the desecrator is usually horribly punished). I was really thrown by the idea that a cleric should respect the alter of any god, but it also does make sense on some level? I'm torn on the idea, I guess.

More sample NPC eidolons would be appreciated, so we know whether we're building them right.

I would GREATLY appreciate this. there are so many times that I feel a magically-linked creature+guard would fit the adventure, but I don't want to go through the effort of running one up myself. a quick-glance set of "this is an evil demonic eidolon, this is a holy eidolon, this is a shadow rift eidolon, this is an undead eidolon" would be insanely helpful for introducing summoners as more common material than simply the odd boss fight.

i remember reading about a pirate summoner whose eidolon was a minature pirate ship that flew beside him.

he had breath weapon (cannons) he had claw attacks (a host of mini-pirates slashing through from the masts and the deck at nearby oppoenents) and etc.

it was a beautiful sight, and something that cannot be recreated if they go with standarizing summoner "packets"

this is just the coolest and most amazing thing! and exactly why I enjoy the summoner class so much. right now my First World summoner's skilldolon is his fey twin brother (summoner himself has fey-blood eldritch heritages), with slight moderation of the "eidolons can't look like specific people" (the DM knows that it's just for flavor purposes). I also grouped one time with a tiefling summoner whose eidolon was his demonic shadow, acting on his subconscious desires. I just love the incredibly original ideas people come up with for the eidolon. it would really be a shame to lose this sheer wonder and imagination that can shine through with the eidolon class feature.

for the other debate going on in the thread, I'm a little confused as to how the "sleep is a level 1 spell" doesn't end the debate about power? sleep immediately banishes the eidolon (unless using 3rd party summoner stuff), and it's a very ubiquitous spell. I mean, it's on the bard, wizard/sorc, witch, and even adept spell lists. witches even get it as a hex that has no HD cap. even a magic-talented rogue (who for some reason chose to take terrible, terrible talents) could cast it 2/day without having to rely on Use Magic Device. is there something I don't understand or am missing?

Gods of Golarion
Same as my stance on the bestiary, nothing about any of the gods, individually, is wrong. It is just a trend amongst the gods that turns things off slightly and I think is, again, just something that happened not out of any one goal or desire, but simply because there’s never been an opportunity to take a step back and see where things turned out.

I’m going to base the bulk of this post off of material from the Inner Sea Gods for the sake of simplicity; same as before, nothing is wrong with any of the material, save for the imbalance between guys and gals.

Starting with the simplest thing, outfit and appearance, I’d like to point out the following:
There are 21 gods listed in the bestiary. 13 boys (Aroden, Iori, Nethys, Torag, Erastil, Gorum, Cayden Cailean, Norberger, Abadar, and Asmodeus), and 8 girls (Sarenrae, Urogthoa, Dsena, Lammatsu, Calistrae, and Shelyn).

Of those gods, 2 appear completely naked. 3 appear in revealing clothing that is either very, very flimsy, especially compared to what is worn by male counterparts, or outright-sexually suggestive. All 5 of those gods are female. 5 of the 8 female gods have deliberate attention called to their bodies. This is internally consistent with how these goddesses have been portrayed in the past and that’s fine. Ex:
Desna
Shelyn
Calistria
Lamashtu
Urgothoa
3 of these goddesses are explicitly linked to sex (Sheyln, Lammashtu, Callistria). No male god has sex as a part of their deity status/stance/core identity/whatever. No male god appears naked, or even in moderately revealing clothing. No male god has his physical attractiveness emphasized or called attention to, either in text or in art.

Sometimes it’s stated that a god like Asmodeus is “darkly handsome” in passing, but his art is always that of a not-particularly attractive devil, and this is similar for other male gods, such as Abadar or Aroden, whose physical appearances are described as “handsome” and are not talked about beyond that. Similarly, all of their appearances across all pathfinder material has them in full-plate armor, despite Abadar being a god of civilization and perhaps simply appearing in classy evening wear, or Erastil being an ancient stone-giant deity that helped guide primitive men out of the wilderness. Erastil doesn’t appear in a leather thong and moccasins though, he wears full-leather from head to toe.

This is the same for all the male gods. Caydan Cailean is a dashing rogue archetype, but doesn’t even have the “unbuttoned shirt” thing going on (in fact his belts go up to his ribs). Gorum is a dude encased head to toe in full-plate armor that shows nothing of his form, because he’s a battle-dude while battle-gals like the Steward of the Skein, or the Valkyries I mentioned earlier, wear form-fitting and revealing armor. Nethys is a master of all magic and could be shown in the enchantment/charm aspect of that, but is not. Iori is supposed to be physical perfection incarnate, but is just sort of an Asian-y guy. Yeah he’s shown shirtless, but the iconic monk Sajan better exemplifies physical perfection than Iori does. Also, just to note, that Iori’s text does not state that he is handsome – just “flawless”, which can be read as you want. Regardless, a shirtless dude with literally zero attention called to his body is not equivalent in any way to women in sexy poses, wearing sexy negligees. He is, at best, equivalent to Sarenrae's marvelously deep cleavage (whom I did not mention as one of the 5, and even then I will still fight tooth and nail to say that they're not at all equivalent).

Norberger, Torag, Zon-Kouthon and Rovagug are not sexualized in any way and the three humanoid ones are clad head to toe again. I realize that the Kyton, Ostarius was developed way later than Zon-Kouthon, but as a god of beauty, why isn’t his form more like that? That would actually explain a lot more about how his religion is able to garner new followers. Gozreh is supposed to be a dual-gendered deity, but the fact that the angry side is an old bearded dude – specifically described as “old” – while the nicer side is a young, attractive female part – specifically described as young – makes me frown and lump it onto this side. It’s a nature deity, what does it care what people think of its two sides? Shouldn’t the nice side be an old kindly grandmother, while the angry side is a brash and tempestuous young man? That would certainly be far more in line with reality… the fact that it is portrayed along that dichotomy does not make me inclined to give it leeway here.

5 of the 8 female gods have attention called to their bodies. 0 of the 13 male gods have attention called to their bodies in any way. Sometimes female desires are even touched on, such as Urgothoa’s desire to “taste Iori’s perfection” or Callistria’s affection for attractive individuals. Those are awesome aspects of these goddesses that flesh them out fantastically. Urgothoa’s alone can be read in any number of ways, and I’m not opposed to any of it. I just think there’s a definite and real imbalance here, when male gods are neutered, armor-wearing guys whose physical appearance is mentioned only in passing – or completely ignored – and don’t have sexual desires or specified taste in any sort of physical beauty, while female deities have that touched on in, relative to zero, great detail.

That’s not to say that Paizo doesn’t do great things. There are exceptions, such as Cayden Cailean, and I want to pull him aside and specifically mention how fantastic and awesome I think he is. He is mentioned to enjoy ‘plowing the furrow’ and expresses lust and other very human traits. His herald is a prostitute friend he’s explicitly stated to have next slept with. I’ve seen commented reflecting positively on his sexuality, even going so far as to say they liked his new gender-neutral language. At the same time, I’ve seen people complain about essentially gay-washing ‘heterosezual characters’ and to me that’s just an incredibly depressing thing to hear. The character is changing and evolving over time, just as Paizo and their material does. Just as real human sexuality is not static, so too does Cayden’s change as language and goals change. More importantly, as a bisexual dude who knows first-hand how easy it is for someone to assume and try to force a category on you – such as gay or straight when I am absolutely neither – I really appreciate the fact that Cayden is just such an extreme departure from all the other male gods.

Again, the fact that the female gods have lives, have lusts, have bodies that they love and are proud of is not a bad thing. I think it makes them way more appealing, way more interesting, and way more compelling than the male gods. I can totally see why they get more attention, why they would be featured on more products, and why they’re so popular. A giant naked star-fairy is way more interesting than “oh another armored dude”. However, this is a genre where the female body has been exploited for attentional purposes for decades, and there are two pieces of fall-out from that;
1) I love Paizo, so I can look hard and think about reasons why Urgothoa’s nudity is an awesome feminist statement and why she’s such a rad character. I totally understand why another person, particularly a person with female parts who is used to male gaze attention, who might be very tired of it at this point, would be absolutely sick and tired of not seeing things she wants to see, even from a very progressive company like Paizo.
2) There’s no immediate and clear counterpoint to this material. I mean the fantasy genre is massive, and people are coming from places that still have bikini chainmail for girls and full-plate for men (which might be the least of the offenses). When looking through important aspects of the Golarion universe – such as the core deities – they’re exposed to some similar stuff. Not to the same level by any means, because Paizo is awesome and I do believe they work hard and ending certain tropes, but they’re not completely inured to more subtle aspects, like this stuff I listed above.

Wow you sure talk a lot. What’s your point already?
Personally, I think there is a TON of room for discussion. Iori's form being so perfect that his appearance can stun - what do people think about that? What about the clearly salient aspects of Nethys's magic - destruction and healing - being as apparent as his charm and enchantment powers? Abadar and Erastil getting pulled away from their warlike appearances, and shifted into more "true to text" outfits - which Paizo has shown they're willing to do with other creatures (such as the Herald of Adoration, who was turned from a plain marble statue to a an amazing herald in the Inner Sea Gods). Where could discussion of this go? Some following topics that I am just intensely curious about:

- There is a LOT of room for new mono-gendered male creatures with a strong, clear emphasis on their physical appearance. The 5 varieties of nymph alone should make that clear!
- Like the seductress creatures I listed, they can be fey, celestial, abyssal, internal, above-ground, underground, magical beast, undead, powerful – weak – anything!
- They don’t have to be ‘seducer’ creatures, just as not all of the creatures I mentioned are seductresses. They can be any creatures whose physical appearance is significant to their interactions. What would people do with that? Where do they think these creatures need to go?
- Post these creatures! Let's talk about them, I'm really eager to see what people come up with and/or where they want to go with things. Similar to the build a beefcake thread, but more race-based rather than specific character! I have a few ideas of my own, but I'm mad curious to see what people do with the sexy dracula idea put forth before...
- My points about the male gods: where should they go? What might be done with them? Is there room for more male gods (there are 5 more than the female gods, already). Do there need to be more gods? Are empyreal lords the answer?
- Suggest your own talking point, what do I know, I'm just a yapping mouth!

addendum: no discussion of rape, please. That topic was nixed in the last thread, and for good reason imo. If you wish to discuss it, please start a thread elsewhere where mods can work more freely. I am not willing to take on that battle and don't want to get caught in a crossfire. there are infinitely more directions to take sexy dudes than rape, so please refrain from that one place.