Creative Director
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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?
It wouldn't have been as big, nor would it have had NEAR the amount of variety. It would likely have chosen one of the 40+ regions in the Inner Sea to be the focus and the others would be ignored and/or added in organically as the story needs. As a result, relationships between nations would be a lot more realistic, and there'd be a lot fewer nations overall.
AKA: It would be a much smaller world.
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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.:) )
(Figured since you moved on to later questions it got missed in the shuffle.)
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Creative Director
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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.:) )
(Figured since you moved on to later questions it got missed in the shuffle.)
I missed it because it required more thought than I had at the time to give to answering it, since Pan's Labyrinth IS my number one example of scary fay creatures. So, I'll leave it out of the lists below since you specifically requested that it be excluded.
Now that the work day is 5 seconds from being over, I have time to answer a bit before I head home. And since the definition of "fey/fay/fae" or however you spell it varies so widely, I'm going to define it here as being a "supernatural creature associated with the wilderness or abandoned areas of the world."
LITERATURE
1: The White People from Arthur Machen's story, "The White People"
2: The creepy denizens of the wood in Ramsey Campbell's novel, "The Darkest Part of the Woods"
3: The sinister entity from T.E.D. Klein's novel, "The Ceremonies"
FILM
1: Slenderman (from various you-tube videos and independent horror movies)
2: The Blair Witch
3: The monster from Absentia (this is more of an urban fey thing than nature, I guess)
Should Taldor be read as a sort of mix of the British and Roman empires then?
Contributor
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Finally asking my first question! I'm kinda nervous...
While we're on the subject of real-world inspirations for Taldor, I've been delving into Westcrown for Council of Thieves, and I like the city's aesthetic very much. Would you say that the city is more Roman, or Renaissance-era Italian? (Thinking particularly of Venice.) What about Cheliax as a whole? And were there any other major real-world influences?
Also, since I'm about to start running it... which parts of the Infernal Syndrome did you write? Can you give any insights into Liebdaga's personality?
Finally (not a question), I introduced the character of Avahzi early on, in the guise of a particularly avaricious new Archbanker for the city's decaying temple of Abadar. It's gone spectacularly, and one of the PCs is even pondering marriage. Of course, she has a role to play in these events. So whether she was yours or Mr. Boomer's, she's been great!
Thank you! :)
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When Pathfinder's Great Beyond was designed, why were the sixteen-plus outer planes of D&D's cosmology replaced with the eight plus the boneyard?
Are there any plans to introduce new PC races specifically geared toward casting psychic magic? Similar to how 3.X had the Dromites, Elans, Half-Giants, Maenads, Xephs, etc.?
What do you think of the idea of dropping Limited Wish, Wish, and Miracle from the spell lists and remaking them into capstone powers for the Wizard and Cleric classes? Their broad utilitarian value and lack of specificity just makes them seem "out of place" relative to spells of the same level, and relative to other spells in general. They're a "we can just just about anything now!" type of effect which can't really be said for all the other high-level spells, even 9th-level ones, which remain confined in what they can and can't do, even though the magnitude of what they CAN do is so very great. Wish and Miracle at least are for all practical purposes 10th-level spells. I feel like I would appreciate these uber-spells more if one had to take a prestige class just to be able to gain access to spells like that. Loremaster, Mystic Theurge, Archmage?
Are there any Golarion deities, living or dead, that began out-of-game existence as actual PCs, and not NPCs/GMPCs?
And what's the real story behind the golem and goblin mascots? :)
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.
Would you ever make an AP with that theme?
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.:) )
(Figured since you moved on to later questions it got missed in the shuffle.)
I missed it because it required more thought than I had at the time to give to answering it, since Pan's Labyrinth IS my number one example of scary fay creatures. So, I'll leave it out of the lists below since you specifically requested that it be excluded.
Now that the work day is 5 seconds from being over, I have time to answer a bit before I head home. And since the definition of "fey/fay/fae" or however you spell it varies so widely, I'm going to define it here as being a "supernatural creature associated with the wilderness or abandoned areas of the world."
LITERATURE
1: The White People from Arthur Machen's story, "The White People"
2: The creepy denizens of the wood in Ramsey Campbell's novel, "The Darkest Part of the Woods"
3: The sinister entity from T.E.D. Klein's novel, "The Ceremonies"FILM
1: Slenderman (from various you-tube videos and independent horror movies)
2: The Blair Witch
3: The monster from Absentia (this is more of an urban fey thing than nature, I guess)
:) Pan's Labyrinth is my favorite too. Such an awesome movie. Other than Blair Witch (and a passing familiarity with Slenderman), I'm actually familiar with none of these, so I'm going to have to check them out. Thanks James!
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Creative Director
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May I post a funny quote from my recent pathfinder game?
Its more of a small story, but it all makes sense after you read it.
Also, how much catnip is too much?
I'd prefer you to post it to a different thread; let's keep this one to questions.
When the cat's ability to drive cars suddenly improves to human level... that's too much catnip.
Okay if Taldor sounds like it has a British accent, then what type of accent do people from these countries have?
Andoran (If American, Which region?)
Cheliax
River Kingdoms
Brevoy
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Creative Director
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Finally asking my first question! I'm kinda nervous...
While we're on the subject of real-world inspirations for Taldor, I've been delving into Westcrown for Council of Thieves, and I like the city's aesthetic very much. Would you say that the city is more Roman, or Renaissance-era Italian? (Thinking particularly of Venice.) What about Cheliax as a whole? And were there any other major real-world influences?
Also, since I'm about to start running it... which parts of the Infernal Syndrome did you write? Can you give any insights into Liebdaga's personality?
Finally (not a question), I introduced the character of Avahzi early on, in the guise of a particularly avaricious new Archbanker for the city's decaying temple of Abadar. It's gone spectacularly, and one of the PCs is even pondering marriage. Of course, she has a role to play in these events. So whether she was yours or Mr. Boomer's, she's been great!
Thank you! :)
Yay! Welcome to the thread!
When we were building Council of Thieves, we really did take renaissance Italy as a primary inspiration, much more so than ancient Rome. Of course, that inspiration was used mostly to lay the substructure of Westcrown; we then layered a heavy dose of Cheliax (aka devils and shadow beasts and Hellknights and the like) on top of it all.
I ended up writing the vast majority of Infernal Syndrome... I wrote about 75% or so of the final product, building off of Boomer's robust outline and several encounters (most of the encounters between areas F25 and F30 were Boomer's ideas, for example, but he also contributed a bit to the final encounter and some of the stage-setting stuff in the city streets).
Liebdaga should be played as an incredibly powerful personality who's been imprisoned so long that he's desperate. Take some cues from Anthony Hopkins's portrayal of Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, but make the devil FAR more prone to sudden outrageous fits of anger and violence. He's a lot less patient than Lecter.
Avahzi was my creation; glad you're having fun with her!
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Creative Director
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What sort of chances are in the cards for the redemption of Azlanti if a group tries to save her?
We've got a game set in Geb and through a mix of luring Geb himself off with the eternal egg, political turmoil and unleashing a huge undead dragon zeitergiest of the spirit of the tainted land the party is going to probably bring Geb to its knees soon, or at least the current political system in it.But they have one last hurdle left, the Harlot Queen herself, who is obviously powerful enough to undo everything they do (Well except getting Geb to wander off into the planar pocket with the eternal egg in it and stay there forever hoping Nex will show up), but they can easily get to her thanks to the necromancer committing grand theft Graveknight on her entire body guard harem one at a time behind the scenes when they've left the palace. She is accessible.
The problem is, the party is pretty heavily split on how to deal with her though, assassination by trap the soul and personally presenting her to Pharasma (Priestess of Pharasma) or an obscenely powerful mythic command undead in an attempt to wrest power over her from Geb, thus giving a chance at semi-forced redemption (The necromancer and surprisingly the Paladin of Lastwall, those two haven't agreed on anything else so far, but this they think is a good idea)
You've said in the past that by this point she's a willing party in all this; but she was turned half heart by Geb in the first place.
And my PCs are intelligent enough to research ways to bring her back, or to know its impossible and shucking her off the mortal realm would be a better idea.Any opinions?
Redemption of Azlanti? I'm not sure what you're talking about here, honestly... what does Azlanti need to be redeemed from?
OH. Wait. Are you asking about Arazni? That'd make more sense now that I've read the rest of your post.
Redeeming/rescuing Arazni is indeed one of the implied storylines that we've set up about Geb, but that shouldn't be something that idly happens. Redeeming her should be a SIGNIFICANT quest... a campaign-length adventure path, with her redemption being the final goal of the entire campaign. It's not something that should be easy to do or deserves to be a side quest, in my opinion.
So if you've got the time and energy to include another big adventure in your campaign, I'd go with that. Simply killing her should be a much easier solution, in any event... and she's pretty tough, so killing her won't be easy!
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Hey, I was actually wondering if there was a way to get a full version of the plot of the adventure paths, I want to read them, sort of as a book.
The ones that have to do with evil outsiders are my favorites.
Also, why doesn't ragathiel and a buttload of other LG empyreal lords have paladin codes?
I need some help with my custom world, could you lend me your magical awesome james jacobs T-rex vision?
Anyways, I took the bits of golarion I managed to scavenge off the internet and form them into my own world, I combined the idea of the sodden lands with nidals goverment, with the eye of abendgo and ustalav and added in lepidstat for good measure. The gray gardeners work here as well
This land has no name.
taldor and absalom are now one, but as a collection of cities.
Cheliax is now a citystate, belkzen, varisia, averka and andoren are now one entire area, with no laws at all. Just people, orcs and a lot of stuff.
I was wondering if I missed anything important and thematic.
Also, I made you the king of the generic fantasty kingdom. The kings name is jacob lionbeard, he has that name because he strangled a lion to death with his beard.
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Creative Director
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When Pathfinder's Great Beyond was designed, why were the sixteen-plus outer planes of D&D's cosmology replaced with the eight plus the boneyard?
Are there any plans to introduce new PC races specifically geared toward casting psychic magic? Similar to how 3.X had the Dromites, Elans, Half-Giants, Maenads, Xephs, etc.?
What do you think of the idea of dropping Limited Wish, Wish, and Miracle from the spell lists and remaking them into capstone powers for the Wizard and Cleric classes? Their broad utilitarian value and lack of specificity just makes them seem "out of place" relative to spells of the same level, and relative to other spells in general. They're a "we can just just about anything now!" type of effect which can't really be said for all the other high-level spells, even 9th-level ones, which remain confined in what they can and can't do, even though the magnitude of what they CAN do is so very great. Wish and Miracle at least are for all practical purposes 10th-level spells. I feel like I would appreciate these uber-spells more if one had to take a prestige class just to be able to gain access to spells like that. Loremaster, Mystic Theurge, Archmage?
Are there any Golarion deities, living or dead, that began out-of-game existence as actual PCs, and not NPCs/GMPCs?
And what's the real story behind the golem and goblin mascots? :)
Since the Great Wheel of D&D is WotC's intellectual property, we couldn't use it as is. We had to at the minimum change the names of places they'd made up, such as "Mechanus." So instead of that, I basically "sold" my homebrew's outer planes to Paizo, which was itself heavilly inspired by D&D's Great Wheel and classical representation of the spheres and the universe, etc.
We reduced the number of outer planes down to 9 to match the fact that there are 9 alignments. That's really all that's needed to cover the concept of the Outer Sphere—one region for each of the 9 philosophical categories of soul/personality. That said, the Great Beyond is VAST, and there is absolutely room out there between the 9 outer planes we've included in Golarion for anything else you want.
No plans to suddenly introduce new races into the world just to support psychic magic. We've actually got several that work great for it already—Lashunta, Duergar, and Samsarans would all work quite well, thematically. No need for new races. I'm not a fan of inventing new races like that at all... it seems ridiculous to suddenly have a huge amount of new zero-HD societies pop up in a world we've already spent years exploring. New races, at this point, need to be introduced carefully and subtly, and indeed kinda need to be "quarantined" in some way to explain why they've not been mentioned before that as having a role in the Inner Sea region. Which is why you see us limiting androids to Numeria, ghorans to remote corners of Nex, kasathas to a distant planet, etc.
Making wish and miracle into capstone spell-like abilities is an interesting idea.
Nope.
Which golem are you talking about?
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Creative Director
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Would you ever make an AP with that theme?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.
Possibly. Although that'd be difficult, since it'd limit player options during character creation. It'd kind of be like saying "You have to make neutral good characters for this game, and must make characters who have altruistic personality traits." We've tinkered before with some elements like this, such as "you have to be pirates" or "you have to be rebels," so it's possible.
The more you limit character options, though, the trickier it gets. We don't wanna make an AP that only one in four players wants to play, after all, since you need all 4 of those players.
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Oh, by the way, Would a few more dex penalty races be too much? Or some errata to change some races to have one?
Also, ever think about instead of weapon familiarity, why not armor familiarity?
I have ruled that all dwarves are proficent in stoneplate. Unless they take saltbeard, then they get a free hookhand.
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Creative Director
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Okay if Taldor sounds like it has a British accent, then what type of accent do people from these countries have?
Andoran (If American, Which region?)
Cheliax
River Kingdoms
Brevoy
Andoran; American (no strong accent in mind)
Cheliax: A mix between Itallian and British.River Kingdoms: Varies; this region is a melting pot of cultures from around the region.
Brevoy: Faintly Russian/eastern European/German.
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Creative Director
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Hey, I was actually wondering if there was a way to get a full version of the plot of the adventure paths, I want to read them, sort of as a book.
The ones that have to do with evil outsiders are my favorites.
Also, why doesn't ragathiel and a buttload of other LG empyreal lords have paladin codes?
I need some help with my custom world, could you lend me your magical awesome james jacobs T-rex vision?
Anyways, I took the bits of golarion I managed to scavenge off the internet and form them into my own world, I combined the idea of the sodden lands with nidals goverment, with the eye of abendgo and ustalav and added in lepidstat for good measure. The gray gardeners work here as well
This land has no name.
taldor and absalom are now one, but as a collection of cities.
Cheliax is now a citystate, belkzen, varisia, averka and andoren are now one entire area, with no laws at all. Just people, orcs and a lot of stuff.
I was wondering if I missed anything important and thematic.
Also, I made you the king of the generic fantasty kingdom. The kings name is jacob lionbeard, he has that name because he strangled a lion to death with his beard.
The only real option we offer along these lines so far would be the Rise of the Runelords audio drama, from Big Finish Productions. We don't have a print-version of a novelized adventure path in the works, nor any plans to do so.
We don't give all the LG empyreal lords their own paladin codes because that'd take up a LOT of space that only one class can use. It's a matter of logistics. We might find a place to give them codes some day, but it's tricky figuring out where that space might be.
Just sent you some T-rex vision. If that doesn't work, my advice is to read a lot, focusing on the genre of horror and authors like H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen King,Ramsey Campbell, TED Klein, Robert E Howard, Clive Barker, Clark Ashton Smith, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Robert Chambers, F. Paul Wilson, Michael Shea, Dan Simmons, Tim Lebbon, and Thomas Ligotti. To start with. Decades spent reading these authors is more or less what inspired me.
Lionbeard, huh? Nice!
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Creative Director
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Oh, by the way, Would a few more dex penalty races be too much? Or some errata to change some races to have one?
Also, ever think about instead of weapon familiarity, why not armor familiarity?
I have ruled that all dwarves are proficent in stoneplate. Unless they take saltbeard, then they get a free hookhand.
There's not really a quota we aim for in assigning ability score penalties, so more races with Dex penalties is possible... but with each new zero HD race we invent, the space for them to exist in the same game shrinks. We won't be changing any existing races; their penalties and bonuses are what they need to and should be already.
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Yeah, hes a rather grumpy old man though, mostly paranoid.
No one, other than an elf, human or gnome can live freely in the city, the rest are exiles or slaves.
So while yes, he can kill feline predators with his facial hair, hes a jerk and he tends to show it by ordering people to be beaten to death with shovels.
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What caused Ustalavic Varisians to break off from more traditional wandering Varisians, to the point where they became conquerors and a settled aristocracy? They're the dominant human ethnicity in Ustalav, but they seem more like Taldans or Chelaxians in their behavior. Just curious. Ustalav is such a fascinating anomaly. It's one reason why Carrion Crown is one of my favorite APs. :)
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James Jacobs, I was wondering how often you use natural weather or disasters during your games and gaming experience. For example, having a fight at the base of or near the middle of an erupting volcano? Kind of like the end scene of Return of the King. More examples of natural weather would be I guess in the middle of a hurricane, but not necessarily the eye or fighting with an approaching tornado. Thunderstorms/rainstorms also fall into this category.
If you have used these natural whether or phenomenon during a game how have they worked out? Did it feel cheesy?
My last question (and if you want you can just tell me the best resource available where I could find this info) is there a "tornado alley" in the Inner Sea and also are they any currently active volcanoes that could be on the brink of eruption?
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Creative Director
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What caused Ustalavic Varisians to break off from more traditional wandering Varisians, to the point where they became conquerors and a settled aristocracy? They're the dominant human ethnicity in Ustalav, but they seem more like Taldans or Chelaxians in their behavior. Just curious. Ustalav is such a fascinating anomaly. It's one reason why Carrion Crown is one of my favorite APs. :)
That's mostly unrevealed, but it has something to do, I suspect, with post-Thassilon and post-Earthfall schisms.
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Creative Director
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James Jacobs, I was wondering how often you use natural weather or disasters during your games and gaming experience. For example, having a fight at the base of or near the middle of an erupting volcano? Kind of like the end scene of Return of the King. More examples of natural weather would be I guess in the middle of a hurricane, but not necessarily the eye or fighting with an approaching tornado. Thunderstorms/rainstorms also fall into this category.
If you have used these natural whether or phenomenon during a game how have they worked out? Did it feel cheesy?
My last question (and if you want you can just tell me the best resource available where I could find this info) is there a "tornado alley" in the Inner Sea and also are they any currently active volcanoes that could be on the brink of eruption?
I use weather relatively often to add to an adventure. Of all sorts. I don't think it ever felt cheesy; in fact, it added to the adventure by making it more realistic. It's not always sunny.
There's not really a "tornado alley" type area in the Inner Sea region. Tornados DO happen, but not nearly as often as they do in the central USA.
There's plenty of active volcanos in the Brazen Peaks, the Barrier Wall, and in the Shackles; indeed, there's some in the Shackles that are constantly in a state of eruption. There's dormant but could-erupt-at-any-time volcanoes in the Kodars, the Mindspins, and the Five Kings Mountains.
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Stuff I asked about weather.Stuff you answered about weather and GMing.
Thank you for responding so quickly. This was really helpful and was exactly the answers I was hoping to receive. I have been making a push to try and improve my GMing and using weather was a subject I came upon recently and had some questions about, so again thank you.
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Creative Director
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Also, james, whats the weather like were the paizo HQ is located? We keep getting snow, snow and more motherf+~*ing snow! I have missed roughly two weeks of school from this stuff, I am tired of it!
Also, what does shimmy think of snow?
It's overcast mostly these days, with on and off rain showers. AKA: normal for the Pacific northwest. No snow to speak of this year in the lower elevations.
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Why the heck are my teachers, knowing I am an avid computer geek, allowing me to handle an acer netbook without checking to see if the thing has working internet and then leave me alone with it for almost two whole months?
I ask for the mighty dinosaur god to grant me insight apon these incompetent fools
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Creative Director
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Why the heck are my teachers, knowing I am an avid computer geek, allowing me to handle an acer netbook without checking to see if the thing has working internet and then leave me alone with it for almost two whole months?
I ask for the mighty dinosaur god to grant me insight apon these incompetent fools
My powers do not extend to that arena, alas. I can't help.
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Why the heck are my teachers, knowing I am an avid computer geek, allowing me to handle an acer netbook without checking to see if the thing has working internet and then leave me alone with it for almost two whole months?
I ask for the mighty dinosaur god to grant me insight apon these incompetent fools
The school nurse is writing a thesis paper on self control among students as part of her further education and set it up as an experiment. Do not ask how I know this, you will not like the answer.
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I wanted to pop in and mention how awesome it is that you grace us with your dinosauric awesomeness over in the Kingmaker sub-forum, thanks! Since a lot of APs, Kingmaker included, have material suggesting what might happen if certain pivotal villains survive their initial encounter with the party, I would like to ask:
Which villain(s) from the first five books of Kingmaker do you think would make the most fun/interesting recurring villain through the remainder of the AP?
Which golem are you talking about?
Well, I mean this one:
http://static4.paizo.com/image/navigation/branding/paizo.gif
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Creative Director
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Which golem are you talking about?Well, I mean this one:
http://static4.paizo.com/image/navigation/branding/paizo.gif
OH! The PAIZO golem.
It was just a critter that Kyle Hunter created back at the start for us to have a mascot/logo. It's a golem that looks sort of like a "π". Pi-zo. Get it? Hah.
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Creative Director
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I wanted to pop in and mention how awesome it is that you grace us with your dinosauric awesomeness over in the Kingmaker sub-forum, thanks! Since a lot of APs, Kingmaker included, have material suggesting what might happen if certain pivotal villains survive their initial encounter with the party, I would like to ask:
Which villain(s) from the first five books of Kingmaker do you think would make the most fun/interesting recurring villain through the remainder of the AP?
Hmmmmmmm... The Stag Lord, probably. Because you meet him first, he'd have the most time to recur.
Do demigods have any control over the things in there Divine Portfolio?Yes. How they choose is unrevealed.
And what about Mythic Characters with the Divine Source ability?
As a GM in a Mythic campaign I have mine players planning to take it for some of their PCs soon. Would you allow them to choose their Own Portfolio according to their domains, or what else?| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
How do you reach the keyboard with those tiny little T-Rex arms?
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So something I started to wonder about stuff I learned in biology lessons long time ago(I admit I might remember things horribly wrong X-x;):
We know that half-race hybrids aren't infertile, since aasimars and tieflings and such exist, so how does half race x half race pairings work?
I mean, like, if two half-celestials humans have kids, is it like 25% kid inherits only human genes, 50% the kids are half celestials as well and 25% that kid only inherits celestial genes and so is "full" celestial? Or is last option completely impossible?
Also, from people of stars, so some extremely rare kasatha tribes descended from ship crash survivors still live in Numeria? Do other alien races have small numbers on Golarion or at least individuals who have visited Golarion?
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Creative Director
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Do demigods have any control over the things in there Divine Portfolio?Yes. How they choose is unrevealed.And what about Mythic Characters with the Divine Source ability?
As a GM in a Mythic campaign I have mine players planning to take it for some of their PCs soon. Would you allow them to choose their Own Portfolio according to their domains, or what else?
Mythic characters with Divine Source aren't yet demigods. They're quasi deities. And yes, I'd allow them to choose their own areas of concern (we don't actually use "portfolio" in that sense in Pathfinder, remember), but I'd say the GM has veto power and would suggest the player choose very specific narrow things. For example, rather than oceans and wind, I might suggest such a character choose waves and shoreline storms. Rather than cities and humans, perhaps just Korvosa and Korvosans (or whatever city the PC is about). Furthermore, most deities have 3 or 4 areas of concern, and I like the idea that a quasi deity only gets one or two.
In the end, areas of concern provide no one any set-in-stone game benefits; they're just flavor—a few words that allow an indication of a deity's personality and interests in a short format that fits on a table where we often don't have the wordcount or space to go into any more detail about that deity. Note that often domains and areas of concern somewhat match, but they don't HAVE to and, indeed, having some areas of concern and domains that seem off or even clash can make for very interesting mythologies.
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Creative Director
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So something I started to wonder about stuff I learned in biology lessons long time ago(I admit I might remember things horribly wrong X-x;):
We know that half-race hybrids aren't infertile, since aasimars and tieflings and such exist, so how does half race x half race pairings work?
I mean, like, if two half-celestials humans have kids, is it like 25% kid inherits only human genes, 50% the kids are half celestials as well and 25% that kid only inherits celestial genes and so is "full" celestial? Or is last option completely impossible?
Also, from people of stars, so some extremely rare kasatha tribes descended from ship crash survivors still live in Numeria? Do other alien races have small numbers on Golarion or at least individuals who have visited Golarion?
One thing I really don't want to do with Pathfinder is make templates or new races for every possible pairing of every possible race. If we were going that route, a far more efficient method of presenting races would be to not present them at all and instead just use the race builder rules from Advanced Race Guide to let everyone build the race they want as they need it... and that's a terrible way to build a world. So, as a general rule, for most races who decide to have sex with each other, I generally prefer to say either that they're not cross-fertile OR they tend to have children equivalent to one of their two parents. Furthermore, once you include supernatural elements in it (as is the case for aasimars and tieflings), you get to throw science out the window if you want. In other words, feel free to run it how you want.
There's unlikely to be enough kasatha to form tribes in Numeria, actually. So few of them survived that transition that those who DO exist are generally ones who were released recently from stasis on a one or two or three person basis. It's possible that over time a group of these kasatha might band together and form a tribe, I suppose—and if that's what People of the Stars claims, then I guess it's true (even if I would have rather, as Creative Director, kept the kasatha even rarer on Golarion—see Iron Gods for my take).
There are plenty of other alien races, in any case, who have small numbers on Golarion or have visited it, but until we have someone write an adventure or the like involving those aliens, I'm not gonna say who they are, because I don't want to limit future ideas.
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Ah. To be exact, People of the stars doesn't comment on their origin on Golarion besides it being a mystery like other stuff in Numeria(People of the stars doesn't reveal that it was a spaceship that crashed on Numeria, it just calls it huge piece of metal if I recall right), since apparently Kasatha clans lack cultural memory, but it does say that kasatha clans of Golarion specifically have "traditions of exploration" so...
Does this happen often where different teams make different decisions on setting stuff without the other teams learning it until way later on?
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Ah. To be exact, People of the stars doesn't comment on their origin on Golarion besides it being a mystery like other stuff in Numeria(People of the stars doesn't reveal that it was a spaceship that crashed on Numeria, it just calls it huge piece of metal if I recall right), since apparently Kasatha clans lack cultural memory, but it does say that kasatha clans of Golarion specifically have "traditions of exploration" so...
Does this happen often where different teams make different decisions on setting stuff without the other teams learning it until way later on?
Yes. As Creative Director, my job is to set the tone and ground rules, more or less, for Golarion and Pathfinder, and then the developers and designers do their best to follow that direction in developing the products we produce, which far exceed the amount I can read and provide direct input on, ESPECIALLY given the breakneck pace at which we produce products. For the vast majority, it works great, but now and then things do slip through that I would have liked to be handled differently. When it doesn't work, fortunately the end result is usually not a big deal, as in this case. A bad result would have been if People of the Stars indicated that there were large tribes of kasathas numbering in the hundreds or thousands, or listed significant kasatha populations in established cities. That type of miscommunication almost never happens here, fortunately. In large part because everyone here is pretty much on the same wavelength.
In related news... that's one of the primary reasons we don't allow telecommuting for designers and developers, and why if you get a job at Paizo doing design or developing you need to be in-house.
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Wouldn't it be better for slayers to START with sneak attack?
also, I asked adam this, but I trust a talking dinosaur more, whats up with druids and the strange weapon proficiences? Scimitars, farming tools and daggers are not very druidlike to use.
Those are more or less the proficiencies druids have had since 1st edition, and the game's always kept them as druid proficiencies out of nostalgia and backwards compatibility. In 1st edition AD&D, a druid's weapon proficiencies were limited to club, dagger, dart, hammer, scimitar, sling, spear, and staff. I can't say why that exact mix was chosen, other than to give druids a slightly larger selection than clerics (who were limited to club, flail, hammer, mace and staff only).
The scythe and sickle weren't introduced into the game until later editions, but I suspect they were added BECAUSE of their association with farming, but also perhaps because the blades look like crescent moons, and on top of that because the later editions expanded the weapon choices significantly, and thus it made sense to expand the weapon options for the classes.
In other words... it's a relatively arbitrary choice that may not have initially said "druid" but after 30+ years of that tradition, in my opinion, they DO say druid.