Pathfinder Lost Omens: Legends

Fortunately I got it out of my system before we had kids, I definitely can't imagine tripping these days.

"There's a time and place for everything and it's called college" - Chef (RIP)

I also like how there are other post campaign articles without confirming they happened ;D Such as Choral the dragon theory and certain three headed raven from War for the Crown.

I think this was a case of convergent evolution. One of the directives of the book was definitely 'make some plot hooks' for the people in question, and you have these APs with handy dandy post-campaign plot hooks as is...

Also one of my favorite lines in book:

"I am gravely disappointed in the quality of assassination in this country.
No one stays dead."

Maleagant has standards.

Whoever did the artwork for Irabeth Tirabade should definitely get more work thrown their way, easily my favorite art for a Half Orc AND a Paladin. She is definitely not someone to be f*++ed with.

Also, Baba Yaga gets scarier with every new update.
Even her rooster looks like he could be perfectly happy wiping out an entire city on his own.

CorvusMask wrote:

Also one of my favorite lines in book:

"I am gravely disappointed in the quality of assassination in this country.
No one stays dead."

Maleagant has standards.

Those’re real red flags if you ask me.

I absolutely love Geb's tower.

I'm glad they went with more writing and less game content though I was a bit disappointed there wasn't any game stuff for Geb.

Just my personal preference, I do like the game content there is however so no complaints.

So for anyone interested in something altogether sillier, we've whipped up a, uh, "supplement." For the more socially-minded roleplayers :)

OH MY GOD. That picture of ARTOKUS KIRRAN!

This! This!

Andrew Mullen, I blame you for the damage I took when I fell off my couch reading this. Okay, I blame Micah too. This is marvelous. And now I am feeling that I am going to need to contribute Artokus Kirran filk sung by Tukalo, of course. Because you know that would have been who put him up to this.

But I am still trying to prep the Starfinder Special for tomorrow. Gah, how dare you distract me at this time! I will have to wait to filk Artokus Kirran and Tukalo after GenCon.

The agony!

Hmm

On sidenote, has anybody noticed that vast majority of rulers in Inner Sea appear to be singles and subsection of the ruler explicitly aren't interested in romance?

I mean on some level it makes sense, even if they aren't single their hypothetical spouse might not be important enough to be mentioned, but I realized upon reading book that Kevoth-Kul & Kul-Inkit and Qadira's leader's spouse are very rare exceptions xD

And reviewed :3 I do wish I was better storyteller myself, would make it easier to explain what is great about the book xD

Andrew Mullen, I blame you for the damage I took when I fell off my couch reading this. Okay, I blame Micah too. This is marvelous. And now I am feeling that I am going to need to contribute Artokus Kirran filk sung by Tukalo, of course. Because you know that would have been who put him up to this.

But I am still trying to prep the Starfinder Special for tomorrow. Gah, how dare you distract me at this time! I will have to wait to filk Artokus Kirran and Tukalo after GenCon.

The agony!

Hmm

[is not blamed] Marvelous, I escape unscathed!

On sidenote, has anybody noticed that vast majority of rulers in Inner Sea appear to be singles and subsection of the ruler explicitly aren't interested in romance?

I mean on some level it makes sense, even if they aren't single their hypothetical spouse might not be important enough to be mentioned, but I realized upon reading book that Kevoth-Kul & Kul-Inkit and Qadira's leader's spouse are very rare exceptions xD

The real reason is probably just conservation of detail. But hey, it opens the field to the PCs, as the Unofficial Lost Omens Dating Guide demonstrates. :B

The real reason is probably just conservation of detail. But hey, it opens the field to the PCs, as the Unofficial Lost Omens Dating Guide demonstrates. :B

I wouldn't be shocked if it was in part intentional to open the field to PCs to have so many singles, but it was just so high. Deena came about as the result of a convo of how high it was.

Mikhail Rekun wrote:

The real reason is probably just conservation of detail. But hey, it opens the field to the PCs, as the Unofficial Lost Omens Dating Guide demonstrates. :B

I wouldn't be shocked if it was in part intentional to open the field to PCs to have so many singles, but it was just so high. Deena came about as the result of a convo of how high it was.

Okay I'm glad I wasn't only one who thought it was weirdly noticeable xD

I'm kinda curious now though if that is also part of why its mentioned that Abrogail II has used romance for her own benefits and why queen of Kyonin is looking for consort?

(btw Deena is awesome new addition to Qadira's political shenanigans :D I already loved the thing with vizier being good and satrap being the one who wants war, but this makes the dynamic even more intriguing)

So for anyone interested in something altogether sillier, we've whipped up a, uh, "supplement." For the more socially-minded roleplayers :)

I am not interested, I'm sure you worked hard on it and it's well written but I don't care for detailing this area of the setting.

I do appreciate that other people do, but it's definitely not my cup of tea.

There are no stat blocks in this book.

I am baffled.

There are no stat blocks in this book.

I am baffled.

This has been indicated to be the case for months now lmao it's so that they don't assign them a power level which conflicts with a later ap that wants to use them

This has been indicated to be the case for months now lmao it's so that they don't assign them a power level which conflicts with a later ap that wants to use them

Not to mention GMs who want to run a long campaign using one or some of these folks without an AP. If the NPCs are locked in a specific "canon" stat block, it can seem like a limitation on the options a GM might have to use them as they see fit.

Some of those big NPCs - Baba Yaga, Sorshen, etc, have stat blocks in 1e; you'd just have to translate them into 2e.

There are no stat blocks in this book.

I am baffled.

Makes more sense to wait until they're needed for an adventure, to be honest.

For example, I wrote Hao Jin's entry. In PF1, she was a Phoenix Bloodline sorcerer, but currently that option doesn't exist in Pathfinder 2E AFAIK. So, what do I do? Do I use my word count designing a new bloodline (which takes a minimum of three focus spells and probably a full page of content altogether) and a smattering of feats (all sorcerer bloodlines have three or four), or do I use an option that's currently available but doesn't actually fit her well, like the elemental bloodline? If the answer is, "Just add more pages to Hao Jin's section," then which Inner Sea NPCs do we cut for it? Realistically, cutting one NPC would probably open up two pages for two others. You can see how the book's purpose (to provide information about the Inner Sea's Legends) would get lost and diluted REALLY quickly!

In my opinion, it's better that we kept stat blocks out of this book. That way the stats can be presented when they're relevant with any adjustments that need to be made for the adventure instead of adding a "canon trap" for future authors to tumble into. But your mileage may vary!

There is also that some of the npcs don't really make sense as combat npcs.

Like I'm sure that Artokus Kirran as level 20 mythic alchemist could nuke most people in combat but uh... It doesn't really fit them?

Andrew Mullen wrote:

So for anyone interested in something altogether sillier, we've whipped up a, uh, "supplement." For the more socially-minded roleplayers :)

I am not interested, I'm sure you worked hard on it and it's well written but I don't care for detailing this area of the setting.

I do appreciate that other people do, but it's definitely not my cup of tea.

Did you click on the link? Because if you haven't I think you should at least give it a quick skim

Ah, Mikhail, I was remiss. I blame you now too.

Thank you for that little bit of silliness. As I just said on Facebook, you know you did well on a project when less than 24 hours after its release there is already a parody out.

Hugs,
Hmm

No offense to anyone involved, but this product contains some of the laziest work I've seen in a long time in RPG products.

Remember when Pegasus Spiele's Call of Cthulhu books lifted entire texts on certain real-world locales or historic personalities from Wikipedia? One "Find and Replace" later, and those texts could be paraded as RPG-specific content in pricy hardcovers.

Well, say hello, because we've reached that rock-bottom in Pathfinder 2. Case in point, see page 11. The author copy-pasted an existing services agreements template, word by word, from here: https://www.lexisnexis.com/terms/offline/professional-services-agreement.as px And then simply inserted "infernal party" and "mortal party". See e.g. the severance clause.

Look, if that's how you generate content, you may as well write a 3-line sentence in a book, direct us to the template, and instruct us to do "Find+Replace" in Word. Any GM can do that. Takes me 3 minutes.

But don't fill entire pages in your books with content that I can self-generate in a sec., and then charge premium hardcover dollars on things that didn't take any effort to write-up. I mean geez, at least you'd think diabolic contracts on Golarion have at least SOME differences to real-world professional services contracts of the variety that Paizo gives its freelancers.

Sorry, I'm a long time fan but I find this is not the conduct of a company I've long admired for its creative content.

Hyperbole much?

1 page has a couple thousand words of an infernal contract that’s based on an actual legal document, and?

But don't fill entire pages in your books with content that I can self-generate in a sec., and then charge premium hardcover dollars on things that didn't take any effort to write-up. I mean geez, at least you'd think diabolic contracts on Golarion have at least SOME differences to real-world professional services contracts of the variety that Paizo gives its freelancers.

Oh, my friend, you have not read that contract very closely. At all. This dismissive hand-waving is just what the infernal lawyers are counting on you doing. If it's so standard, feel free to sign it...

Would you say... the devil's in the details?

No offense to anyone involved, but this product contains some of the laziest work I've seen in a long time in RPG products.

Remember when Pegasus Spiele's Call of Cthulhu books lifted entire texts on certain real-world locales or historic personalities from Wikipedia? One "Find and Replace" later, and those texts could be paraded as RPG-specific content in pricy hardcovers.

Well, say hello, because we've reached that rock-bottom in Pathfinder 2. Case in point, see page 11. The author copy-pasted an existing services agreements template, word by word, from here: https://www.lexisnexis.com/terms/offline/professional-services-agreement.as px And then simply inserted "infernal party" and "mortal party". See e.g. the severance clause.

Look, if that's how you generate content, you may as well write a 3-line sentence in a book, direct us to the template, and instruct us to do "Find+Replace" in Word. Any GM can do that. Takes me 3 minutes.

But don't fill entire pages in your books with content that I can self-generate in a sec., and then charge premium hardcover dollars on things that didn't take any effort to write-up. I mean geez, at least you'd think diabolic contracts on Golarion have at least SOME differences to real-world professional services contracts of the variety that Paizo gives its freelancers.

Sorry, I'm a long time fan but I find this is not the conduct of a company I've long admired for its creative content.

My bad! Sorry, it's been super busy lately and I was trying to save time.

You're absolutely right, I'll try to spice things up a bit from now on!

I'm bit confused if that is joke post or not.

I mean umm. You are angry that they didn't write one page of in character infernal legal text without using an actual contract text as a template?

This kerfuffle reminds me of a lawyer friend talking about reading old case law in school, in particular a case called "Trover to wit two horses," and how, apparently, in older legal documents (at least in my state), they didn't bother with such formalities as punctuation. The text just goes and goes.

So I suppose we can thank Ron for at least using modern legalese, which is at least as legible as the End User License Agreements few of us bother to read.

Windjammer wrote:

But don't fill entire pages in your books with content that I can self-generate in a sec., and then charge premium hardcover dollars on things that didn't take any effort to write-up. I mean geez, at least you'd think diabolic contracts on Golarion have at least SOME differences to real-world professional services contracts of the variety that Paizo gives its freelancers.

Oh, my friend, you have not read that contract very closely. At all. This dismissive hand-waving is just what the infernal lawyers are counting on you doing. If it's so standard, feel free to sign it...

That might be my FAVORITE page of the whole book. The last two provisions are GENIUS. This is legit the worst contract to sign ever. Love it.

No offense to anyone involved, but this product contains some of the laziest work I've seen in a long time in RPG products.

No offense to anyone involved, but this response contains some of the laziest work I've seen in a long time in RPG responses.

The creative value of the infernal contract is not in the boilerplate legal wording. Paizo probably shouldn't be paying a lawyer thousands of dollars to draft up a legal document from scratch. The value is in the added loopholes, which are pretty good. The contract is self-modifying, with one part at the end changing a protection from earlier into a trap. The loopholes are also all very artfully done, too; they're set up so that the infernal party can easily act in good faith for years at a time. If the mortal party ever tries to wiggle out of it or the infernal party wants something more, though… suddenly, the infernal party gets to determine what enforceable replacements are for unenforceable sections, can go from delivering notices to the mortal party to delivering notices anywhere on the planet, and can retroactively insert entire sections into the contract without showing them to the mortal party.

That's a lot more than just find/replace.

And just think.... this cool infernal contract is just one of the many subtle options in this fantastic book!

Hmm

Windjammer wrote:

No offense to anyone involved, but this product contains some of the laziest work I've seen in a long time in RPG products.

No offense to anyone involved, but this response contains some of the laziest work I've seen in a long time in RPG responses.

Not really; you looked up where the base of the contract was from, which is more than I did. But, you didn't check for any differences.

The creative value of the infernal contract is not in the boilerplate legal wording. Paizo probably shouldn't be paying a lawyer thousands of dollars to draft up a legal document from scratch. The value is in the added loopholes, which are pretty good. The contract is self-modifying, with one part at the end changing a protection from earlier into a trap. The loopholes are also all very artfully done, too; they're set up so that the infernal party can easily act in good faith for years at a time. If the mortal party ever tries to wiggle out of it or the infernal party wants something more, though… suddenly, the infernal party gets to determine what enforceable replacements are for unenforceable sections, can go from delivering notices to the mortal party to delivering notices anywhere on the planet, and can retroactively insert entire sections into the contract without showing them to the mortal party.

That's a lot more than just find/replace.

Have you looked at a license contract lately? Are you 100% sure those aren’t in the original?

This is the original. Can you see those clauses?

This is the original. Can you see those clauses?

Was meant to be a joke about the impenetrable legalese of EULAs. Clearly I wasn’t over the top enough. Damn Poe’s Law!

I'd say an alias specifically for such posts would help, but no one can tell when I'm not being sarcastic regardless of alias, so that's obviously untrue.

Announced for July! Product image and description are not final and may be subject to change.

Could you do us and Paizo a favor and update the "Legends" cover to the real one? It would make everyone's job to promote the book even easier.

Katina Davis wrote:

Announced for July! Product image and description are not final and may be subject to change.

Could you do us and Paizo a favor and update the "Legends" cover to the real one? It would make everyone's job to promote the book even easier.

Thats the real cover.

ProjektMyra wrote:

Katina Davis wrote:

Announced for July! Product image and description are not final and may be subject to change.

Could you do us and Paizo a favor and update the "Legends" cover to the real one? It would make everyone's job to promote the book even easier.

Thats the real cover.

*looks at my copy on the shelf*

Can confirm.

Thats the real cover.

Sorry, my bad. For some reason 0:-) my pdf starts with the internal cover and my mind had that idea of Baba Yaga and Jatembe (and the chicken) on the external cover. No idea how. But given that my brain first made me write "infernal copy" instead of "internal cover", it doesn't seem to be a reliable witness. ;-)

But given that my brain first made me write "infernal copy" instead of "internal cover", it doesn't seem to be a reliable witness. ;-)

...You signed the contract, didn't you? I told Ron that drafting a legally binding document for this was a bad idea!

Ulthun II, page 114, looks like he's been skipping LEG DAY!

Well, say hello, because we've reached that rock-bottom in Pathfinder 2. Case in point, see page 11. The author copy-pasted an existing services agreements template, word by word, from here: https://www.lexisnexis.com/terms/offline/professional-services-agreement.as px And then simply inserted "infernal party" and "mortal party". See e.g. the severance clause.

Wanna know a dirty little secret? This is how many IRL legal documents are drafted too.

Windjammer wrote:

Well, say hello, because we've reached that rock-bottom in Pathfinder 2. Case in point, see page 11. The author copy-pasted an existing services agreements template, word by word, from here: https://www.lexisnexis.com/terms/offline/professional-services-agreement.as px And then simply inserted "infernal party" and "mortal party". See e.g. the severance clause.

Wanna know a dirty little secret? This is how many IRL legal documents are drafted too.

Most amusing to me is that when perusing such a document that legally binds 2 companies you can easily see if it was originally written (who knows when and by whom) by a client or a supplier.

It is always refreshing, when you are a client, to find clauses in your supplier's contract that are more protective of your interests than your own contract. And vice versa of course.

I now think we are missing the key component of Heaven lawyers in the setting. No reason that they would not be as top-notch as the Hellish ones in Legalese.

See The man without a past (Finnish movie from 2002) for what I rate the best legalese duel in movies :-D

My first PF2 character is a clever, good-aligned lawyer. I agree that Heaven should have its own lawyers!

Hmm

Everyone is in here talking about a contract and I'm just sitting here thinking about how Anatasia stuck her tongue out at her grandmother, and was apparently crowned before Valeros, Imrijka, and Feiya.

I now think we are missing the key component of Heaven lawyers in the setting. No reason that they would not be as top-notch as the Hellish ones in Legalese.

Who runs the court where Heavenly and Hellish lawyers face off? Pharasma? Or maybe Abadar?

Gotta say, so far, the Baba Yaga portion was well worth the price. <3

A couple or three of this people are dead in my Golarion, and I'm not really sure I like the Sapphire Butterfly having such a prominent role in Kintargo or the entries told as stories, but on the whole this is a good lore book.

A couple or three of this people are dead in my Golarion, and I'm not really sure I like the Sapphire Butterfly having such a prominent role in Kintargo or the entries told as stories, but on the whole this is a good lore book.

A little meerkat in professor's robes peers at Amaranthine Witch. "If you killed off Artokus, we are having WORDS. Just sayin'."

Gah, how dare you distract me at this time! I will have to wait to filk* Artokus Kirran and Tukalo after GenCon.

The agony!

Hmm

Hello Readers!

Are you a Legends fan who has not reviewed this book? Can I tempt you to review this book? I'd like to do the filk of Artokus Kirran and Tukalo. But I'm shameless, and want some more reviews of this great book. If five of you can review Legends, I'll post the filk!

____
* What is a filk, you say? It's a song parody! It's fun! Think of Weird Al Yankovic, and you'll have an idea of what I'm talking about.