Pathfinder Lost Omens: Tian Xia World Guide

So what Minkai related stuff is detailed? I'm curious of Jade Regent aftermath

So what Minkai related stuff is detailed? I'm curious of Jade Regent aftermath

Why is this showing as "print edition unavailable"?

Why is this showing as "print edition unavailable"?

This often happens during the transition between the "preorder" period and the "street date release" period.

Lady Nanbyo’s entry has some interesting connotations regarding one of the playable Ancestries come in the Character Guide.

I saw this review! I cried a lot reading it, but it's very heartfelt, explore a LOT the dangers and omnipresence of "orientalism", and ultimately gives GREAT PRAISES for the book. :3
Lost Omens: Tian Xia World Guide Review on reddit

I would also like to see the PDF updated with the poster map, please.

I saw this review! I cried a lot reading it, but it's very heartfelt, explore a LOT the dangers and omnipresence of "orientalism", and ultimately gives GREAT PRAISES for the book. :3

Lost Omens: Tian Xia World Guide Review on reddit

Heartfelt thank you for sharing this.

Love the book, but I genuinely wonder why the population numbers were removed.

Massively needed and really appreciated, it was nice to see the aspects of my own culture in the book. Though I'm quite sad there were no parts of "boons & curses" for the gods. I know some were given in a supplement for Gods & Magic book but still. I hope they include them in the upcoming divine mysteries. I found it very fulfilling myself as a DM to bless my players who practiced their worship in my games, and it brought many of my players to act more in line with the world. Also questioning why population count was removed?

Love the book! The pdf version seems a bit hefty at nearly 350 MB. It also doesn’t include the poster map currently. Any chance of a new download?

Been reading through the book since I got it last night, really happy with the vast majority I've ready and skimmed over, been looking forward to this since the announcement.

I am a bit bothered that there's no settlement stat blocks for any of the locations, the stat blocks are something I found incredibly interesting and useful and gave a concise overview of a settlement. I hope we see them published somewhere else.

As LilyTrotter said, no Boons & Curses is a weird choice, Tian Xia citizens having small personal shrines to gods but no way of receiving benefits is another thing I'd love to see going forward, hopefully in Divine Mysteries. The new gods (Baekho, The Lady of the North Star, Mugura and Nrithu, Phi Deva, Srikalis, Sritaming, and Sribaril) all seem awesome and I can't wait to read their entries properly. PRONUNCIATION GUIDES are one of my absolutely favourite additions and something I'd been hoping for since the announcement. No more worrying that I've butchered a name.

The expansion on different belief systems and the introduction of Tests of Virtue is fantastic, I hope we see many more in the Character Guide.

All of the art is fantastic and everything I've read so far just screams that the authors knew and loved what they were writing about.

This has only increased my desire and need to get my hands on the Character Guide in August.

Oh right I can buy this book finally :O

But yeah, I do have to say alignment being replaced with short descriptor can be really mouthful at time. Like "detail-oriented" both says a lot and not much without further context.

But yeah, realized that with the better less orientalist approach that means we likely don't have factions like Kusarigama which had weirdly random japanese word name for "training warriors for apocalyptic war" cult. I'm curious to see if they still exist in book or get renamed or just retconnect completely

Love the book, but I genuinely wonder why the population numbers were removed.

Sounds odd, but might honestly be for better because paizo never really had believable sounding population numbers? at least iirc

Hmm oki, yeah, there are few things in minkai section that give me bit of headache in unexpecting ways, would have been nice to know before finishing running Jade Regent yeah x'D Nothing too unmanageable and it is cool to see writers doing something with npcs, but yeah definitely stuff I wasn't expecting them to do since lot of time paizo is pretty hands off with ap npcs post adventure.

(the thing that gives me headache is revelation that eldest daughter of npc from Jade Regent is advisor to Ameiko. Reason why this gives me headache that nothing implied in Jade Regent that said character has children or any family in general because they really seemed like loner x'D Guess it doesn't help that its sometimes hard to tell age of characters)

Is something wrong with the PDF?
That file size (350MB) is slightly nettlesome.

This book has helped me to realize my own biases: Additional reason I like alignment is that without it, I'm too optimistic/idealistic about all npcs unless text is explicit about their villainy :'D

Like, even with npcs who were evil in 1e sometimes in this book gives me pause where I'm like "sounds like they are misguided" :'D Its surprisingly hard for me to read npc as potential campaign villain without it being mentioned they are actively doing something tyrannical, violent, horrific or etc

Ah, so the game is now more realistic with antagonists appearing far more reasonable and with understandable motivations that can excuse all but the most egregious of villainy?

I'm naturally pacifistic and I have tendency to assume everyone is reasonable when that isn't the case :'D So easy for me to read everyone like "they are reasonable people you can convince with diplomacy check, no need to get violent at all or have villainous machinations" xD

But yeah, I don't think the nuance present is from removal of alignment specifically, but from interpretation of text without the alignment. Like, even previous PF2e books could write evil characters who didn't sound moustache swirling evil, but the presence of capital E made you think "ah, they have potential to be even worse". Removal of it means its hard to tell difference between "neutral antagonist" and "evil antagonist" without something to spell it out, so personal bias will come, and it turns out in my case that bias is "towards good" xD

(tldr: paizo writing often has more nuance that people give it credit for and its still present here)

Any updates on the seemingly excessively large file size on the PDF? I've been holding off on downloading hoping it will be reigned in a bit. Seems to be happening more and more often where we end up with 300+MB PDFs.

IS there any reason specifically that they didn't do settlement stat blocks in this? Is that a remaster thing?

IS there any reason specifically that they didn't do settlement stat blocks in this? Is that a remaster thing?

I think the pronounciation guides took their places in the sidebars. And really, they were needed a lot. I don't know a lot of people that know how to read romanizations of many of the Asian languages. I know how to read the Japanese-inspired names, but it helped me a LOT with all the other ones (the only one I have been able to memorize before was the "C" in the name of some Chinese people, like in Cao Cao, that is actually closer to "ts-" than "k-".) I'm still working hard to learn the others, but until then, it's been VERY helpful. (TBF, I have trouble with prnounciations with my first language too, and English too sometimes... AND TBF, pronounciation guides have been asked A LOT in general for Pathfinder books.)

It's also one of the biggest continent they have treated with a book yet (Casmaron being bigger, but unpublished yet), and there would have been a LOT of settlements.

They definitely had a bunch of very hard choices to make to fit the page count.

So, I'm reading, and...

Is it saying something about me that a complete backstory for a Tianjinese mad scientist came into being? One who started as a benign abbot but upon experiencing the horror of the qlippoth directly was traumatized into this line of logic:

"Qlippoth are the worst thing in the world. When demons were created by polluting the Outer Rifts with sin, they turned the qlippoth from a cosmic-scale threat to dire one fighting for their own existence. Demons are better than qlippoth by default, ergo their creation was the benign will of the universe, and mortal sin can more easily fight alien evil directly. The seals are failing, and the idiots in charge refuse to notice. Ergo, learn to summon demons and engineer the creation of an army of demonblood cambions into being to serve as the ultimate line of defense for Tianjing and the world."

Had it that he's still an extremely pleasant, spiritual individual who is very empathetic and forgiving of darker emotions...he just sees more purpose in weaponizing those emotions, and what care he has for his "children" also comes with the suffocating expectation that they are his super soldiers - not his children.

Hell, he could even have found some Valashai tech caches earlier in his life to grow some clones and do Fun Things With Genetics, it's not incredibly far away.

KaiBlob1 wrote:

IS there any reason specifically that they didn't do settlement stat blocks in this? Is that a remaster thing?

I think the pronounciation guides took their places in the sidebars. And really, they were needed a lot. I don't know a lot of people that know how to read romanizations of many of the Asian languages. I know how to read the Japanese-inspired names, but it helped me a LOT with all the other ones (the only one I have been able to memorize before was the "C" in the name of some Chinese people, like in Cao Cao, that is actually closer to "ts-" than "k-".) I'm still working hard to learn the others, but until then, it's been VERY helpful. (TBF, I have trouble with prnounciations with my first language too, and English too sometimes... AND TBF, pronounciation guides have been asked A LOT in general for Pathfinder books.)

It's also one of the biggest continent they have treated with a book yet (Casmaron being bigger, but unpublished yet), and there would have been a LOT of settlements.

They definitely had a bunch of very hard choices to make to fit the page count.

I mean I personally would have been fine with a number for the populations listed next to the capitals.

IS there any reason specifically that they didn't do settlement stat blocks in this? Is that a remaster thing?

The Lost Omens World Guide didn't have settlement stat blocks either, so there's some precedent.

Elfteiroh wrote:

KaiBlob1 wrote:

IS there any reason specifically that they didn't do settlement stat blocks in this? Is that a remaster thing?

I think the pronounciation guides took their places in the sidebars. And really, they were needed a lot. I don't know a lot of people that know how to read romanizations of many of the Asian languages. I know how to read the Japanese-inspired names, but it helped me a LOT with all the other ones (the only one I have been able to memorize before was the "C" in the name of some Chinese people, like in Cao Cao, that is actually closer to "ts-" than "k-".) I'm still working hard to learn the others, but until then, it's been VERY helpful. (TBF, I have trouble with prnounciations with my first language too, and English too sometimes... AND TBF, pronounciation guides have been asked A LOT in general for Pathfinder books.)

It's also one of the biggest continent they have treated with a book yet (Casmaron being bigger, but unpublished yet), and there would have been a LOT of settlements.

They definitely had a bunch of very hard choices to make to fit the page count.

I mean I personally would have been fine with a number for the populations listed next to the capitals.

Personally, I feel like population numbers are specifically a "trap". They will probably ALWAYS feel wrong for someone, and I'm not sure they are THAT useful in play. I personally rarely look at them, because as soon as they get higher than 3 numbers, I can't really understand what it means. xD

VerBeeker wrote:

Elfteiroh wrote:

KaiBlob1 wrote:

IS there any reason specifically that they didn't do settlement stat blocks in this? Is that a remaster thing?

I think the pronounciation guides took their places in the sidebars. And really, they were needed a lot. I don't know a lot of people that know how to read romanizations of many of the Asian languages. I know how to read the Japanese-inspired names, but it helped me a LOT with all the other ones (the only one I have been able to memorize before was the "C" in the name of some Chinese people, like in Cao Cao, that is actually closer to "ts-" than "k-".) I'm still working hard to learn the others, but until then, it's been VERY helpful. (TBF, I have trouble with prnounciations with my first language too, and English too sometimes... AND TBF, pronounciation guides have been asked A LOT in general for Pathfinder books.)

It's also one of the biggest continent they have treated with a book yet (Casmaron being bigger, but unpublished yet), and there would have been a LOT of settlements.

They definitely had a bunch of very hard choices to make to fit the page count.

I mean I personally would have been fine with a number for the populations listed next to the capitals.

Yeah, that's my feeling too. Population numbers never make sense for various reasons. I'd rather have pronunciations than that.

Personally, I feel like population numbers are specifically a "trap". They will probably ALWAYS feel wrong for someone, and I'm not sure they are THAT useful in play. I personally rarely look at them, because as soon as they get higher than 3 numbers, I can't really understand what it means. xD

It honestly gave me a good clue at least in the general sense how big a nation actually is.

I'd rather see percentages of population makeup instead of total numbers.

I'd rather see percentages of population makeup instead of total numbers.

That too! Honestly, I’d prefer that if not a combo!

Like look at Songbai, I know there is tensions amongst the majorities and minority populations but how vast of a split in population between the new majority and the original natives is there?

Populations numbers are super useful to me in understanding a settlement/nation. I understand they are not always realistic to everyone, but it's great to have a good place to start. Lost Omens World Guide at least had them for the capitals of each country.

That said, if anyone is looking for population figures for the settlements of Tian Xia, they are available Dragon Empires Gazetteer (and the populations for capitals only in the Dragon Empires Primer), both for PF1 (even if those sources are otherwise not up to the standards of the new book).

Populations numbers are super useful to me in understanding a settlement/nation. I understand they are not always realistic to everyone, but it's great to have a good place to start. Lost Omens World Guide at least had them for the capitals of each country.

That said, if anyone is looking for population figures for the settlements of Tian Xia, they are available Dragon Empires Gazetteer (and the populations for capitals only in the Dragon Empires Primer), both for PF1 (even if those sources are otherwise not up to the standards of the new book).

So did the Mwangi Expanse and Impossible Kingdom Books, that all I’m really looking for, though as I agreed with above a population breakdown would also have been pretty helpful.

I think the art for two of the leaders for Tang Mai might have accidentally gotten swapped.

Also, I know this isn't the case but part of me could see a workable way to connect the Valashai Empire in some fashion to the Vesk.

Is it me or did the price for a book this size jump like $20? It's not even close to the size of the Absalom book yet it's about $20 more...

Is it me or did the price for a book this size jump like $20? It's not even close to the size of the Absalom book yet it's about $20 more...

Pricing update from October of last year.