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To answer your "question" regarding the sarissa, James, it was just statted up in the Giant Hunter's Handbook that was recently released.
And now a question for you:
Is the Dragon Horse of Bestiary 2 based on the Longma of Chinese mythology? If so, why is it illustrated like a regular horse that's just a little shinier? Was there a miscommunication or something? Not criticizing it, I mean, a GM can say they look different, but I'm curious.
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Will there ever be Gem Dragons in Pathfinder?
If no Gem Dragons, why not?
If no 'classic' Gem dragons (i.e. dragons with psionics), will there ever be psychic dragons of some other variety? Maybe in the Occult Adventures book?
Why is the Kirin only CR 7 ? From what I read, it's on par with Eastern Dragons and the Phoenix in the actual mythology.
In Japan, the Kirin's actually above the Phoenix and the Dragon in some circles, which made me imagine it as being at least CR 14...
Hey James,
Thanks for taking all the time that you do to help us make Golarion really come alive! For a question, how is pyschic magic viewed in Rahadoum? I know that Occult Adventures isn't out yet, but I know y'all at Paizo are thinking about these things well before we mere mortals even hear about them going to print.
Creative Director
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Is the Dragon Horse of Bestiary 2 based on the Longma of Chinese mythology? If so, why is it illustrated like a regular horse that's just a little shinier? Was there a miscommunication or something? Not criticizing it, I mean, a GM can say they look different, but I'm curious.
It's partially based on that, yes. Sometimes art comes in and isn't quite what was envisioned, and in some cases it's too late to make changes. Other times we deliberately veer away from an established look to try to define a new look for a creature, for whatever reason. Not sure which of these two took place, or if it were both, or if it were a third reason.
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Will there ever be Gem Dragons in Pathfinder?
If no Gem Dragons, why not?
If no 'classic' Gem dragons (i.e. dragons with psionics), will there ever be psychic dragons of some other variety? Maybe in the Occult Adventures book?
We'll see.
But the main reason we've not just updated D&D's gem dragons directly is because they're not open content; they're in the same category as the grell or the hook horror or the bullywug—monsters that you'd think would be part of the OGL but didn't get into 3rd edition D&D's Monster Manual and were instead pushed into the first monster accessory book WotC published: Monsters of Faerun. At the time, that early in the game's cycle, it was unclear if 3rd edition would be a success or what, and the designers didn't know if they'd ever be able to do a Monster Manual II, and so several classic D&D monsters (like the gem dragons, hook horror, grell, bullywug, leucrotta, and several more) got put into that book so that at least if 3rd edition died, these monsters (many of whom were likely favorites of staff) would at least seen the light of day.
As it happened, 3rd edition was very successful, and WotC got to put out lots of Monster Manuals. But they never really expanded the OGL to include these additions, which made more sense later on when the later Monster Manuals had an increasing number of brand new creations.
But yeah. The gem dragons are not open content.
Could we do a different version of gem dragons with a different theme? Perhaps. But my personal preference is to avoid "overwriting" things for the game. That's why we don't have a different version of Demogorgon. Why we call it psychic instead of psionic. Why we didn't call the magus a warlock. By not "overwriting" concepts we can't use, we allow home games to keep using them without being confused.
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Why is the Kirin only CR 7 ? From what I read, it's on par with Eastern Dragons and the Phoenix in the actual mythology.
In Japan, the Kirin's actually above the Phoenix and the Dragon in some circles, which made me imagine it as being at least CR 14...
Because we chose to have it fill a lower CR than in mythology. When we design a monster from mythology, we often have to make choices for it that are more important for game reasons, and I suspect the designer/developer chose CR 7 partially to fill a CR niche for its creature type, but also in hopes of keeping the creature in a place where it could serve as a cohort or ally to PCs earlier than the end game.
Why we didn't call the magus a warlock.
You mean that isn't so that we can call male witches that?
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If Unity and Lissala ever encountered each other (by faithful or in person), what would they think of each other?
If Hellion and Ose ever encountered each other (by faithful or in person), what would they think of each other?
The Iron Gods have much in common with those deities.
They'd be enemies.
THey'd be enemies.
When you have crazy evil deities who get pushed up against possible competitors, they tend not to be friends.
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Hey James,
Thanks for taking all the time that you do to help us make Golarion really come alive! For a question, how is pyschic magic viewed in Rahadoum? I know that Occult Adventures isn't out yet, but I know y'all at Paizo are thinking about these things well before we mere mortals even hear about them going to print.
Rahadoum is anti divine magic. They'd view psychic magic in the same way as they view arcane magic.
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Is there any 3.5 module you think might benefit from being updated to current rules? I know that is unlikely to ever happen, but some of them, like Carnival of Tears, sound interesting to me.
Yes, but there's no way for me to say so without folks reading into that comment "proof" that we're doing something to update said adventure, and I don't want to either set false expectations or scoop anything we might have planned.
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Creative Director
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Why we didn't call the magus a warlock.You mean that isn't so that we can call male witches that?
No.
A warlock is not a male witch. A male witch is a witch. We don't call male witches warlocks because that's an incorrect connotation that's relatively recent, and one I'd like to see fade away.
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James, what happens if you use wish to bring aroden back from the dead or to find nex?
Also, what happens if you use wish to duplicate the effects of prestigation?
Your GM gets to make up what happens. If you're looking for an "official answer," that is "those wishes are beyond the scope of mortals and mortal magic to wish for."
If you duplicate the effects of prestidigitation, it acts like prestidigitation heightened to a 9th level spell, more or less. Not all wishes are equally good at realizing their full potential.
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Unfortunately you've got shows like Bewitched! and Charmed who do a very good job of keeping it in play.
Is there a way that a witch can wind up breaking their covenant? (as I recall the original meaning of warlock was "oathbreaker". Is there a "code" or "pact" they are required to live up to?
That's hardly an excuse to cave in. Especially since Bewitched! is hardly a champion of modern sensibilities anyway.
"Covenant" isn't a specific game term, and doesn't have specific game applications. It's something we use in-game as a synonym for contract or agreement. Whether or not a witch enters a covenant and what happens if the witch breaks it depends on the nature of the covenant and has no real intrinsic connection to the class.
The closest thing witches have to a code would be their patron, but that doesn't really function as a code or pact as much as it does a field of study. It's more like your major in college than it is your religion, I suppose. There's currently no way for a witch to change her patron in-game, similarly to how there's no way, really, for a wizard to change his school specialization. Barring rebuilding the character, of course.
Almighty dinosaur, did you eat Gary Teter? Haven't seen him in forever.
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Anyways, what is your cats name?
What would happen if you woke up one morning and found that you were immune to traffic?
Shimmy.
Not much. I live less than a mile from work, and on days I drive to work instead of walking, I don't have to endure much traffic. I suppose I'd be more willing to go into Seattle for stuff, though, since being immune to traffic would generally cut a commute time from Redmond to Seattle down to a quarter of the time it usually takes during rush hour.
James, do you like Warforged?
Thank you for prompting me to go read up on a subject I was clearly misinformed on!
Your analogy of comparing a witch changing their patron to a wizard changing their specialty school seemed a bit odd though. Wouldn't it be more akin to a cleric changing their deity? Still much the same process, but one that would be very different in terms of how common it should be and how to roleplay it.
On a related note, how common would it be for a witch to be aware of the identity of their patron, and how much would that change with level? (ie, would most high-level witches with any desire to know be aware of the identity of their patron, or would that be difficult to learn without 9th level magic, divine interference, etc?)
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Thank you for prompting me to go read up on a subject I was clearly misinformed on!
Your analogy of comparing a witch changing their patron to a wizard changing their specialty school seemed a bit odd though. Wouldn't it be more akin to a cleric changing their deity? Still much the same process, but one that would be very different in terms of how common it should be and how to roleplay it.
On a related note, how common would it be for a witch to be aware of the identity of their patron, and how much would that change with level? (ie, would most high-level witches with any desire to know be aware of the identity of their patron, or would that be difficult to learn without 9th level magic, divine interference, etc?)
No worries!
And no... a witch's patron isn't a creature or a deity. It's an area of study/topic, in the same way wizard schools are. Admittedly, the language for the class gets a little hazy and fuzzy on the topic, but since there are no rules for "ex-witches" or what happens to a witch's spellcasting if she "loses her patron," then it seems obvious to me that patrons aren't actually things that can be destroyed. Any more than you can destroy an idea.
Now... the idea of a witch having a mentor or something she worships is pretty cool... but that's separate from the mechanics of the class. Had I a time machine, I would have pushed harder to give more details on patrons, to actually have them linked to in-world things like demigods or angels or demons or liches or famous spellcasters or whatever, but that ship sailed years ago.
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And no... a witch's patron isn't a creature or a deity. It's an area of study/topic, in the same way wizard schools are. Admittedly, the language for the class gets a little hazy and fuzzy on the topic, but since there are no rules for "ex-witches" or what happens to a witch's spellcasting if she "loses her patron," then it seems obvious to me that patrons aren't actually things that can be destroyed. Any more than you can destroy an idea.
Now... the idea of a witch having a mentor or something she worships is pretty cool... but that's separate from the mechanics of the class. Had I a time machine, I would have pushed harder to give more details on patrons, to actually have them linked to in-world things like demigods or angels or demons or liches or famous spellcasters or whatever, but that ship sailed years ago.
Oh. I had assumed that witch patrons fell into the same category of powerful extraplanar beings as those who grant powers to oracles, which aren't described in the Advanced Class Guide, but then the Inner Sea Gods book came out and said that those beings are typically empyreal lords, infernal dukes, etc... but being different in that witches seek out a patron to gain power from, whereas an oracle is granted that power whether they want it or not.
Can I at least take your statement of an endorsement of linking witch patrons to in-world beings as a thematic house rule for home campaigns set in Golarion?
Also, would you similarly use that time machine to address the RAW issue of witches losing all their spells known if they upgrade their familiar through the Improved Familiar feat?
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Which AP would you say best captures the idea that a wicked, selfish person can't comprehend why someone else might not think and act the way they do? That, part of the reason the PCs can defeat them is because it never occurs to them that the PCs might act out of altruism or willingly abandon power because it's the right thing to do?
Is the Dragon Horse of Bestiary 2 based on the Longma of Chinese mythology? If so, why is it illustrated like a regular horse that's just a little shinier? Was there a miscommunication or something? Not criticizing it, I mean, a GM can say they look different, but I'm curious.It's partially based on that, yes. Sometimes art comes in and isn't quite what was envisioned, and in some cases it's too late to make changes. Other times we deliberately veer away from an established look to try to define a new look for a creature, for whatever reason. Not sure which of these two took place, or if it were both, or if it were a third reason.
And here I thought it was the Pathfinder version of the Asperi ...
Staying on topic: How's Shimmy doing?
And thanks for continuing with this thread for so long!
--C.
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Ever think about a classes of the inner sea book/of golarion?
That might allow you to dig deeper into each class with more lore focused stuff.
Just, don't lump them all into one book, have like a bi monthly class of the inner sea.
Nope, haven't thought of it. There's about 500 other hardcover books about Golarion I'd want to do more, in fact, than a book about classes.
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Oh. I had assumed that witch patrons fell into the same category of powerful extraplanar beings as those who grant powers to oracles, which aren't described in the Advanced Class Guide, but then the Inner Sea Gods book came out and said that those beings are typically empyreal lords, infernal dukes, etc... but being different in that witches seek out a patron to gain power from, whereas an oracle is granted that power whether they want it or not.
Can I at least take your statement of an endorsement of linking witch patrons to in-world beings as a thematic house rule for home campaigns set in Golarion?
Also, would you similarly use that time machine to address the RAW issue of witches losing all their spells known if they upgrade their familiar through the Improved Familiar feat?
Witch patrons are unfortunately ill-defined. I suspect that's because of the fact that we've equally unintentionally hamstrung ourselves by not allowing ourselves to present world content in the rulebooks, and by the fact that the Advanced Player's Guide was our first book not directly updating OGL content. There were some mis-steps there, in my opinion, and the way we failed to really define the witch patron (or that we used the word "patron" at all) is frustrating to me.
Witch patrons can be anything, in other words. Be they empyreal lords or famous kings or powerful princesses or personifications of emotion or whatever.
And to me... it's common sense that if a witch changes/upgrades her familiar on purpose she should be able to carry on her spells. SO yes... if that's unclear, I would use the time machine to fix that too.
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Which AP would you say best captures the idea that a wicked, selfish person can't comprehend why someone else might not think and act the way they do? That, part of the reason the PCs can defeat them is because it never occurs to them that the PCs might act out of altruism or willingly abandon power because it's the right thing to do?
None of the APs really use that theme.
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Hey James sorry if this has been asked elsewhere but I wanted to get a Developers opinion on something that will be coming up in a homegame I'm running shortly.
I have a player that was to play a Slayer but wants to first Dip into Rogue(Knife Master) to get sneak attack at level 1 and change out the standard d6 for the d8/d4. Would the d8 sneak attack with a knife carry over when they start doing slayer sneak attack?
More generally will dipping into a Parent Class allow an advanced class guide class access to parent archetype abilities?
I know I could house rule it but what would you do in your games, or what was intended when Paizo made the "blended" advanced class guide classes?
The d8 sneak attack would not carry over to the slayer's sneak attack, since the knife master change only applies to the rogue class. Archetypes specifically adjust single classes, and as such they tend to work best on a single-classed character. Furthermore, archetypes help to personalize and specialize and focus and adjust a character from the established norm... in a different but parallel way that multiclassing (including prestige classes) do. They're two different tools to accomplish a similar end goal, and those tools don't always work well together, and the resulting "flavor" is sometimes a tangle and a mess.
You as the GM can of course houserule things to allow the slayer sneak attack to get grandfathered in under the knife master change, but that opens a can of worms if all your players want to start doing that type of thing.
THAT SAID.
I don't have the rules before me, but if all the things the kinfe master swaps out are things that the slayer also has, it'd be an easy thing to just assume that the knife master archetype has a duplicate called a "slayer knife master" that you could take when you take slayer levels. A good band-aid for the problem, since there simply aren't as many slayer archetype options.
THAT THAT SAID.
Slayers are brand new classes, and I don't really think they're aged enough yet to benefit from a glut of archetypes.
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Thanks for the answers! Another (hopefully smaller) batch of questions...
1.) From a world design standpoint, do you think its a wise or foolish idea to institute different values of currency or different bases of exchange? Stuff like paper money, arbitrage, making holding precious metals by certain people illegal, etc. What about societies that don't use currency at all, and instead have their exchanges in cows and favors like the Orlanthi from Runequest?
2.) If the elemental princes of evil defeated their counterparts, why do we not see a commensurate increase in the evilness of elements? Or was their conquering solely over territory? That seems a bit small scale for beings on their level.
3.) You stated earlier that you prefer campaign settings where the primary movers/shakers are the PCs as opposed to environments where the PCs are one set of heroes amongst many. How do you handle this in situations where the same group of players (or several player groups) play in the same campaign setting repeatedly? After a few passes, wouldn't there be quite a few heroic types around just from accruing high level PCs?
4. You repeatedly use Forgotten Realms as what you don't want Golarian to end up as. Can you provide examples of what you didn't like about Realms and what you did to avoid ending up like it when you developed the Inner Sea Campaign setting?
I've noticed a definite trend with the more recent hardcovers to release Golarion-specific content immediately after, such as Advanced Class Origins right after the Advanced Class Guide. Was that a direct response to the limitations of keeping the rulebooks setting-agnostic? Do you think an 'Advanced Player Origins' would have remedied some of the problems with the Advanced Player's Guide?
What would be your top 3 depictions of really scary fae creatures in fantasy literature?
What about in movies? (If you include Pan's Labyrinth, go to 4 please.:) )
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Thanks for the answers! Another (hopefully smaller) batch of questions...
1.) From a world design standpoint, do you think its a wise or foolish idea to institute different values of currency or different bases of exchange? Stuff like paper money, arbitrage, making holding precious metals by certain people illegal, etc. What about societies that don't use currency at all, and instead have their exchanges in cows and favors like the Orlanthi from Runequest?
2.) If the elemental princes of evil defeated their counterparts, why do we not see a commensurate increase in the evilness of elements? Or was their conquering solely over territory? That seems a bit small scale for beings on their level.
3.) You stated earlier that you prefer campaign settings where the primary movers/shakers are the PCs as opposed to environments where the PCs are one set of heroes amongst many. How do you handle this in situations where the same group of players (or several player groups) play in the same campaign setting repeatedly? After a few passes, wouldn't there be quite a few heroic types around just from accruing high level PCs?
4. You repeatedly use Forgotten Realms as what you don't want Golarian to end up as. Can you provide examples of what you didn't like about Realms and what you did to avoid ending up like it when you developed the Inner Sea Campaign setting?
1) For a world being built to feature in only novels or movies or other traditional media, it's a great way to add verisimilitude. For a game like a tabletop RPG, it's interesting but almost always needless clutter, since the majority of players simply aren't interested in that level of world detail. For better or worse.
2) They don't run the elements. They're just manifestations of it. If they were true deities that might be a different story, but they're not. They're just demigods. They're top-tier products of the elements. They're not the controllers of the elements.
3) I generally avoid doing campaigns where there are multiple parties acting simultaneously; that model of GMing is very unpleasent to me. When I do it, I always try to ensure that the two groups are in different parts of the world on different adventures and don't really interact.
4) Do I repeatedly do that? There's a LOT in the Forgotten Realms that is admirable. I would LOVE Golarion to be as widely known of as the Forgotten Realms, for example. What I don't really like about the Forgotten Realms is how often the setting's been "reset." It's not one setting, its like a half-dozen different incarnations of it. I also wish that the fiction elements and the game elements got along better.
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Do you feel it would be game breaking to allow the slayer sneak attack to get grandfathered in under the knife master change? I'm thinking about doing this but I don't want to create unbalance with in the rules or unrest amongst the players of the slayer us suddenly groundbreakingly more powerful.
On an unrelated note is there anything you're working on now that you are really happy about how its turning out?
For all of these types of things, the right answer is to go ahead and try it out. What's game breaking for table A isn't for table B. If it works in your game, great! If not, switch it back. Just go in eyes open (and that means the player too) that if it doesn't work, you'll switch it back.
Usually.
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I've noticed a definite trend with the more recent hardcovers to release Golarion-specific content immediately after, such as Advanced Class Origins right after the Advanced Class Guide. Was that a direct response to the limitations of keeping the rulebooks setting-agnostic? Do you think an 'Advanced Player Origins' would have remedied some of the problems with the Advanced Player's Guide?
It's absolutely and positively a response to the limitations of keeping the rulebooks setting agnostic. I think an Advanced Player Origins or something like that would have ABSOLUTELY helped codifying those problems but we didn't hit upon that in time.
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James, do you by any chance know what breed shimmy is?
Also, what happens if you place cosmo near shimmy, or ross?
Shimmy is a Bombay.
Dunno. She's not a "take to work" cat, and neither Cosmo nor Ross are "take to home" people.
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Which AP would you say best captures the idea that a wicked, selfish person can't comprehend why someone else might not think and act the way they do? That, part of the reason the PCs can defeat them is because it never occurs to them that the PCs might act out of altruism or willingly abandon power because it's the right thing to do?None of the APs really use that theme.
Okay, thanks! :)
What people in the Inner Sea would be the ones who'd have a "British accent?"
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Those are the best! I used to have one. We had to get rid of him, but all he would do is snuggle and purr when I was trying to play baldurs gate two on the PS2.
Well, shes definitely the right breed to bring to work, it might even make lambertz smile.
If that happens, you are to take as many pictures as possible and make sure she isn't broken. Robots do not smile at all.
What about Golarion do you think would be most different if it had been created as a literary setting first, and a role-playing setting second instead of vice versa?
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Which AP would you say best captures the idea that a wicked, selfish person can't comprehend why someone else might not think and act the way they do? That, part of the reason the PCs can defeat them is because it never occurs to them that the PCs might act out of altruism or willingly abandon power because it's the right thing to do?None of the APs really use that theme.Okay, thanks! :)
What people in the Inner Sea would be the ones who'd have a "British accent?"
Taldor, and all that spreads out from there, I suppose. We went through all this with the Big Finish audio dramas, and I believe that's what we decided for Taldor, but I could be misremembering.