Malefactor |
Well how many planes are there pathfinder?
Does the first world count as a plane or dimension?
20 major planes by my count (10 in the inner sphere, The prime material plane, the shadow plane, the first world, the ethereal plane, the positive and negative energy planes and the four elementals, and 10 in the outer sphere, the 9 aligned planes and the astral plane.)
Link to your second questionDale McCoy Jr Jon Brazer Enterprises |
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I wonder how much the 0-HD Boneyard race will compare to the Reaper race, considering they are a half psychopomp race written by Mark Seifter, before he joined Paizo.
James Jacobs Creative Director |
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I hope there are maps for the planes like the one we got in the First World campaign setting book or at least something close to that.
I'm really interested in the setting/lore/flavor part of the book, especially anything related to the neutral planes of Axis, Boneyard and the Maelstrom.
There are maps for all the planes, but since all the planes are so incredibly large and in many cases (FIrst World in particular—we're opting for a map of that realm that captures the fact that the First World is a place where things can change and attempts to map things and think of them as permanent fixtures run against the plane's ideals) NOT places that take well to being mapped... the route we're taking on the planar maps is to provide context and a plane's theme. Scale bars and compass roses, to be specific, are pretty useless for planar maps.
Berselius |
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Berselius wrote:...Advanced NPC CodexEh?!! Why do we need Advanced NPCs?!
Not "advanced" NPC's, NPC's of different "classes". The "Advanced" part of the title is just flavor as I don't know what other title such a manual might be called.
As a DM I'd very much appreciate already generated statblocks for different level NPC's of the base, alternate, hybrid, unchained, and occult classes.
Samy |
Scale bars and compass roses, to be specific, are pretty useless for planar maps.
I can understand the reason for compass roses, but why are scale bars useless? Not everyone adventuring in the planes can always just teleport everywhere at will, they're going to need to travel and it'd be really useful to know if moving from place A to place B is an eight hour journey or three month journey...
James Jacobs Creative Director |
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James Jacobs wrote:Scale bars and compass roses, to be specific, are pretty useless for planar maps.I can understand the reason for compass roses, but why are scale bars useless? Not everyone adventuring in the planes can always just teleport everywhere at will, they're going to need to travel and it'd be really useful to know if moving from place A to place B is an eight hour journey or three month journey...
Because in order to fit enough points of significance on a planar map, the scale bar would often end up being something like "1 inch = 100,000,000 miles or the like. Remember, the universe itself is the Material Plane, and it's physically contained within all the rest. A map of the universe can show a star-field, for example and one white dot can be labeled "Earth" and one "Golarion" and that'd show their relative positions, but the distance between them? It's a long walk.
Samy |
I see what you mean... I hope there will be some overland maps of subsections of planes then, at least... Otherwise the planes will just feel like singular cities... you teleport into Dis, but can't go outside it, so you have to spend the entire adventure just constrained to Dis... suddenly a place as vast as a plane is reduced to a single city because there's nothing outside... just "universe-scale" mapping for which everything is too small to be perceptible...
The First World Campaign Setting book had an overland map...
A map of Golarion is much more useful for adventuring than a map of the entire universe...why doesn't the same apply to planes? A map of the whole Prime Material plane is so big it's useless...nobody adventures on that scale... You have small slivers of the Prime Material Plane, like Golarion, or Avistan, and you map them...then people can actually adventure... It seems to me like the same paradigm should work for planes too...
James Jacobs Creative Director |
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I see what you mean... I hope there will be some overland maps of subsections of planes then, at least... Otherwise the planes will just feel like singular cities... you teleport into Dis, but can't go outside it, so you have to spend the entire adventure just constrained to Dis... suddenly a place as vast as a plane is reduced to a single city because there's nothing outside... just "universe-scale" mapping for which everything is too small to be perceptible...
The First World Campaign Setting book had an overland map...
A map of Golarion is much more useful for adventuring than a map of the entire universe...why doesn't the same apply to planes? A map of the whole Prime Material plane is so big it's useless...nobody adventures on that scale... You have small slivers of the Prime Material Plane, like Golarion, or Avistan, and you map them...then people can actually adventure... It seems to me like the same paradigm should work for planes too...
This book isn't the place to drill that far down on the planes—it's the bird's eye view from a bazillion miles up, pretty much. That said, once the book is out it'll create a nice and solid foundation for us to get more into each of the planes, as makes sense for adventures or supplements or whatever.
The planes won't feel like singular cities, though... never fear.
And yeah, the First World book does have a map, but for a plane that shifts and changes... maps are tricky.
The PRIMARY purpose of these maps, in any event, is to give a visual feel for the plane. An artist's eye view, if you will.
If you've seen the pictoral map of the Abyss we did back in Wrath of the Righteous's map folio... that's what we're going for (although each is just a half-page map so we can't fit NEARLY as much info on them as we do on a map 16 times that size...)
MMCJawa |
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This is good but I'm still hoping beyond hope we'll be getting the following:
Chronicle of the Righteous
Concordance of Rivals
Advanced NPC Codex
I know this is one of your pet wishes, but it seems really unlikely we will get a Concordance of Rivals when we have yet to get a CS book focused on proteans/psychopomps/inevitables/etc. At most, all we have gotten is maybe a few relevant bits and bobs in the hardcover bestiaries and the occasional AP volume.
Book of the Damned happened in large part I suspect because there were at least 4 existing CS books to compile, plus decent amounts of back matter from APs. Concordance of Rivals would almost entirely have to be written from scratch, from the ground up. That's a lot more work with an uncertain pay off.
Gorbacz |
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So is this an update to the 3E Manual of the Planes? If it is, huzzah! If not, why? While I don't think Pathfinder needs a Deities & Demigods equivalent...I think it is high time that the Manual of the Planes OGC got updated to Pathfinder.
Let's start with the fact that the Manual of the Planes is not open content.
QuidEst |
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So is this an update to the 3E Manual of the Planes? If it is, huzzah! If not, why? While I don't think Pathfinder needs a Deities & Demigods equivalent...I think it is high time that the Manual of the Planes OGC got updated to Pathfinder.
Pathfinder has its own versions of the planes that it’s been using for the past decade or so. That’s what’s getting fleshed out or summarized here, depending on how much attention the plane has gotten in the past. But you’re getting nine aligned planes, ethereal, astral, and elemental planes, and a few others, so it should cover a lot of what you want.
Berselius |
I know this is one of your pet wishes, but it seems really unlikely we will get a Concordance of Rivals when we have yet to get a CS book focused on proteans/psychopomps/inevitables/etc. At most, all we have gotten is maybe a few relevant bits and bobs in the hardcover bestiaries and the occasional AP volume.
Book of the Damned happened in large part I suspect because there were at least 4 existing CS books to compile, plus decent amounts of back matter from APs. Concordance of Rivals would almost entirely have to be written from scratch, from the ground up. That's a lot more work with an uncertain pay off.
The greater the risk, the bigger the possible pay off. ;)
You know MMCJawa, you don't need to tell us the odds of us getting such products, we already know the odds are very very low. But we can dream and hope and maybe with a little bit of magic(and a lot of money) that one day are hopes and dreams can come true;)
Thankies a bunchies Dragon. :D
psychie |
I think it'd be kind of amusing to find out what happens if/when plane touched races of opposing alignment origins reproduce. So like an Asimar and a Tiefling mate and have a kid, what comes out? It could be a Human (not getting any of the divine genetics of either parent), one or the other (the divine genetics of one over-rules the other), one of the new neutral races (which one would probably depend on the particular subraces of Asimar and Tiefling the parents were, so like an asimar from one of the lawful-good outsiders and a tiefling from one of the lawful-evil outsiders would make the new lawful-neutral plane-touched race, chaotic-good and chaotic-evil would make a ganzi, one lawful and one chaotic would make the new true neutral race, and one neutral-good/evil parent and one lawful/chaotic-good/evil parent would produce offspring of the race for where the non-neutral parent falls on the law/chaos axis; essentially heritages of opposing alignments cancel out but still produces something weird), or something else entirely.
I know that this is rather outside the scope this book, but really it would be outside the scope for practically anything with broad enough appeal to be published, and this is just fun to think about stuff for possible character concepts, like an extension of the fun of a tiefling paladin or an asimar antipaladin, y'know subverting the usual expectations based on parentage, creating interesting backstories, or having a lineage of characters over the course of several campaigns.
(there's a couple guys in my play group that have several generations of characters worked out and play some of them in various campaigns, and one time a campaign ended with two characters getting married, and so they decided what the offspring would be like in terms of class, alignment, demeanor, etc. So having options that say what happens when two plane touched characters of opposing parentage hook up might actually be relevant to groups like mine)
And as far as out of scope lore stuff like this, I think it would be a neat application of the blog to occasionally expand lore stuff like this when it isn't going to be directly discussed in a book because it isn't as relevant as stuff that is more broadly applicable but it is still a fun discussion to have. So like expanding on the lore with brief topics that can be thoroughly covered in a few paragraphs or less, but are too specific to easily find their way into the published materials like the hard covers and splat books.
psychie |
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Stuff about planetouched race's children sounds more like for a product like "blood of the planes" or similar product.
I know, that was part of what I was saying, that it was way out of scope for something like this, and frankly it would be out of scope for something like that as well. This is why I was suggesting that the weird but fun niche stuff that is unlikely to ever make it into the final cut of anything because it is so absurdly specific and edge case-ish could be put out in blog form or something. Y'know, expanding on the lore for things highly unlikely to ever come up in one of the published source books, but interesting enough to actually come up in home games.
And despite there already being plane touched player companions, now that there are gonna be races for all the alignment planes it offers an opportunity to discuss what actually happens when people touched by opposing alignment planes reproduce. I think it'd be kinda amusing to have a ganzi character who's dad's dad was an azata and his mom's mom was a succubus, dad's an aasimar, mom's a tiefling, and because good and evil heritage cancel out, I'm left with the chaotic heritage of both sides, hence ganzi. Unfortunately whether or not it works that way in this setting is unlikely to be addressed in anything published, and while until it is officially addressed it can be houseruled whichever way your table likes, but I still like answers for things like that as far as setting goes, and if I'm playing in Golarion, that means getting an official answer, and even when such an answer is supplied if someone doesn't like it or their home games have already supplied another solution, they can still go with that other solution in their home game.
Also, I was more thinking of dreamland "I want an official discussion for weird topics like these from an official source, and there is unlikely to be another book that gets closer to having this be relevant so it'd be awesome if it could be here." I would never expect anything like that out of any paizo products unless and until the writers explicitly state something along those lines is gonna be there.
psychie |
I think that would depend on how being plane touched affects or is affected by you genes. I mean, do outsiders have a genetic code, or do they just simulate one for the purposes of reproducing with mortals? Or are plane touched people like demi-gods in percy jackson in that they only have half a genetic code (which doesn't actually work scientifically, but, hey, magic)? Are the effects of being plane touched the result of actual genes from the outsider parent, or are they genetically the same as any other human but have special outsider powers because they have some magical energy inside them passed on from their outsider parent?
If being plane touched is in fact part of the genetic code (thus two plane touched people having an human offspring would be possible, but really unlikely), would having opposing alignment components cancel out, one would over power the other, etc? How does this generalize to the elemental plane touched? What would this mean for, say, an aasimar and an ifrit hooking up, would such a pairing result in some kinda holy-fire dude?
I think it'd be funny if the offspring for a ganzi could be anything, like a ganzi and an human hook up, and out pops a goblin, next kid is a ghoran, then an halfling, then a kasatha!
Todd Stewart Contributor |
David knott 242 |