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If you'd been able to use material from the 3.5 Tome of Magic (which I for one dearly love) in Pathfinder, how might you have altered/upped it for the Pathfinder system, and how might Pact Magic/Binders, Shadow Magic/Shadowcasters, and Truename Magic/Truenamers have shown up in the Golarion setting?By rebuilding the classes entirely with more options that clove more closely to tradition rather than making stuff up out of the blue I guess. Not gonna go into exact design mechanics though. That's way too much work.
Fun factoid: Almost all of the "weird vestiges" in the pact magic section of Tome of Magic are actually based on the 72 demons of theLesser Keys of Solmen the Wise.
What sort of entities on Golarion do you think would make good vestiges?
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1) Did you know about these?
2) Can you imagine the devastation a Large sized one would wreak?
3) Can you build a Large sized mantis shrimp using Pathfinder rules?
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Do you know if it's a conscious effect of the art orders that Jirelle looks like she's having the time of her life in every depiction of her published so far?
Part of her personality. Her original illustration carries that expression and joy in it, and so our other artists pick up on it.
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If you'd been able to use material from the 3.5 Tome of Magic (which I for one dearly love) in Pathfinder, how might you have altered/upped it for the Pathfinder system, and how might Pact Magic/Binders, Shadow Magic/Shadowcasters, and Truename Magic/Truenamers have shown up in the Golarion setting?By rebuilding the classes entirely with more options that clove more closely to tradition rather than making stuff up out of the blue I guess. Not gonna go into exact design mechanics though. That's way too much work.Fun factoid: Almost all of the "weird vestiges" in the pact magic section of Tome of Magic are actually based on the 72 demons of theLesser Keys of Solmen the Wise.
What sort of entities on Golarion do you think would make good vestiges?
I understand that. In fact... one of them, Chupleclops, was from one of my own nightmares.
It's no coincidence that the binder was one of my favorite classes as a result due to the fact that it pulled from both real-world mythology and from in-game mythology. My problem there was that it did so with such a scattershot way. I think it would have been a stronger class if they'd tied it to specific game worlds, in the same way clerics are tied to specific game world pantheons.
Aroden would, of course, be the obvious vestige, as would any of the various dead gods in the setting. So would ancient heroes like Savith, ancient villains like some of the runelords, or even dead monsters like Kazavon or Ulunat.
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1) Did you know about these?
2) Can you imagine the devastation a Large sized one would wreak?
3) Can you build a Large sized mantis shrimp using Pathfinder rules?
1) Of course I know about them! How could I not? ;-P
2) Yes.
3) I can. Will I? No plans yet, but it's been bandied about dozens of times...
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Are there any inevitables who combine, voltron-style, into a single large creature, similar to the Gestalt ability of Lantern Archons, but more mechanical?
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Are there any inevitables who combine, voltron-style, into a single large creature, similar to the Gestalt ability of Lantern Archons, but more mechanical?
Oooh, same question, but with any race, period!
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Should there be?
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I'm a bit confused about skulks. In RotR AP it's said, that the surviving citizens of Xin-Shalast evolved in them. So, are other skulks in Golarion descendants of people, caught in similar situations after fall of the Starstone?
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Azlanti have a shockingly high rate of mutation.
Considering the Azlanti were designed by the aboleths - is that high rate of mutation a glitch or a feature?
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I'm a bit confused about skulks. In RotR AP it's said, that the surviving citizens of Xin-Shalast evolved in them. So, are other skulks in Golarion descendants of people, caught in similar situations after fall of the Starstone?
Xin-Shalast has been around 10,000 or so years. That's PLENTY of time for skulks to spread out across the Inner Sea region and to forget their shared history and now be isolated pockets scattered throughout the land.
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Azlanti have a shockingly high rate of mutation.
Considering the Azlanti were designed by the aboleths - is that high rate of mutation a glitch or a feature?
I'm not sure we've ever actually said "Azlanti were designed by aboleths." I think that's something a lot of people just assume.
In any event, the aboleths themselves are certainly all about mutating and transforming things to serve them better. The fact that the Azlanti have been around for thousands of years more than most other ethnicities only means they've had that much longer to evolve and mutate. It's not a factor so much of their ethnicity as it is just a sheer factor of time.
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I'll assume you've played some 1st Edition in your time - did you ever manage to successfully roll psionic powers? If so, who was/were the character(s) and what did they get?
Do you have any noteworthy opinions on psionics (which edition's vision of them you liked best, your appraisal of the Dreamscarred psionics that seem to be so popular, what significant differences you might take in your approach were you to design your own psionics system, etc.)?
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1) What's the most evil thing a character of yours has done in a game? And what (if anything) were the repercussions?
2) What's the biggest thing a character of yours did that should have had big repercussions for them, but they managed to successfully either cover up or pin the blame on someone else so they got away with it almost completely?
3) What's the biggest sacrifice a character of yours has made in a game? And why did they make it?
1) My Way of the Wicked character, Bezlarue, is in the process of corrupting a nun of Mitra, and plans on sending her back to her convent to ruin it from within, but that's a long-term goal that hasn't yet seen fruition. Most of my characters are NOT evil, and so there's not a lot of good choices here for me.
2) My character Shensen managed to subvert an entire Thayvian enclave in the middle of Thay, and more or less became the "power behind the throne" for the enclave and was moving on to set her sights on Thay's government next before I had to finally bow out of the campaign.
3) I had a bard character whose name I now forget who basically left the party and the campaign rather than continue to associate with a group of PCs who were shady and mostly evil. He pretty much had to sacrifice his safety to do so, since him leaving the party filled them with anger and suspicion such that they tried to track him down to kill him. He did manage to get away though in the end. My replacement character was a sour-faced ranger whose favored enemy was human... which happened to be what most of the other PCs' races were... although I don't think the other players ever picked up on that...
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I'll assume you've played some 1st Edition in your time - did you ever manage to successfully roll psionic powers? If so, who was/were the character(s) and what did they get?
Do you have any noteworthy opinions on psionics (which edition's vision of them you liked best, your appraisal of the Dreamscarred psionics that seem to be so popular, what significant differences you might take in your approach were you to design your own psionics system, etc.)?
I started playing the game in 1981 or thereabouts, and so yes, played 1st edition for nearly a decade. I was the DM for those games about 95% of the time, and never really had a character who played through more than a few sessions though. One or two of them likely had psionics, but again... I never played them enough for any of the characters to remain lodged in my head.
With the exception, I guess, of Claude Shazziprux, a gnome with a Wisdom of 3 who carried around an arquebus and made a LOT of spur-of-the moment and unwise decisions that seemed to always end up working out weirdly well in the end. He wasn't psionic though.
I've ALWAYS loved the flavor of psionics, and as a kid I loved the random element of psionics and how they felt like superpowers. AKA: I loved how unbalanced and over-the-top they were in 1st edition. As I grew older, I grew increasingly to not enjoy the way they worked, particularly in how they did the same basic things that spells did but used an entirely different system. I played a cleric/psionicist halfling worshiper of Eilistraee in a Forgotten Realms campaign in college, which used the 2nd edition psionics rules... and it was VERY frustrating juggling two different game systems, essentially, with the cleric spells and psionic powers clashing in resource management and all that. She was a really cool character, but the game mechanics got increasingly cumbersome.
With 3rd edition's take on psionics, I'd finally more or less grown tired of the power point mechanic, particularly in how it changed the way the game was played and encouraged the dreaded 15-minute adventuring day trope, since psionic characters were encouraged to nova and use ALL of their resources up in one encounter to achieve things that other characters simply could not. Every 3rd edition game I was in where there was a psionic character, INVARIABLY the psionic character was played by a very skilled optimizer player who proceeded to dominate the game and essentially ruined the play experience for me, whether I was a player or a GM.
All of which is why I'm so delighted with what we've come up with for psychic magic in the upcoming Occult Adventures!
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Is there any 3.0/3.5 stuff you wished was not closed content and could have made it to PF?
Did you miss my question about rules lawyers, or just skip it because it was a little silly?
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Is there any 3.0/3.5 stuff you wished was not closed content and could have made it to PF?
Did you miss my question about rules lawyers, or just skip it because it was a little silly?
Yes, but it's not gonna happen, so I don't worry about it.
And I did indeed miss the rules lawyer question, I suppose.
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James, what is your favored bit of awesome from Unchained? I like the consolidated skill list + background skills the most. The redone classes are a close second.
I like the redone rogue... and that's actually the only part of Unchained I've really read yet. Haven't had the opportunity to look into it much more. Been pretty busy with Adventure Path stuff, to the extent lately that when I do get time to do something else... it's not Pathfinder stuff I wanna do, unless it's actually PLAYING the game or RUNNING the game, neither of which is a great time to sit down and read a book...
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Question regarding the Antipaladin class.
It says in the touch of corruption class feature that the ability is modified by any feat, spell, or effect that specifically works with the lay on hands paladin class feature and then sites Extra Lay On Hands as an example of one such thing.
Some of them like Extra Lay On Hands, Extra Mercy, and Radiant Charge are simple enough. Extra Uses of Touch of Corruption, an extra Cruelty for which I qualify, and burn all my remaining Touch of Corruption uses for extra unholy damage.
However, some are... difficult to translate into antipaladin language and some GMs might prefer to read the feats as written, only replacing certain class feature names with the antipaladin counterparts, saying that they only function if i heal undead or some such nonsense.
My question to you is this:
How exactly do some of those Lay on Hands feats actually work with the Antipaladin's Touch of Corruption?
The ones I'm specifically asking about are as follows:Greater Mercy - http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/greater-mercy
Ultimate Mercy - http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/ultimate-mercy
Reactive Healing - http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/reactive-healing
Reward of Life - http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/reward-of-life
Word of Healing - http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/word-of-healingAll of these have to do with healing others and harming undead. As the Antipaladin's whole thing is to harm others and heal undead, should all instances of heal be replaced with harm and vice versa and what language should be changed to fit with what the Antipaladin does - kill stuff dead?
Answering these questions would really and truly help me in my antipaladinness and maybe help me decided if i should pick up some of these feats.
Your GM is the one you'd need to talk to in order to see how all that interacts, actually, not me. And if you're looking for "official rules clarifications," it's best to post to the product page or the rules forums so the question can be FAQed and everyone can see the answer and it won't get buried in this thread and folks won't use my reply as ammunition to argue.
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Thank you for your answers.
Why haven't you tried to publish some of your unpublished work? Do you even intend to publish some of them one day?
If you were to give an antipaladin code for Nocticula what would be the main tenets?
How do Demodands and Qlippoth see one another? Do the latter hate them just as much as demons or do they simply ignore them?
If a mythic character dies and is turned into an outsider, does he becomes a mythic version of that same outsider? Or does he becomes a completely unique being like an empyreal lord or something?
Finally, speaking of Way of the Wicked, may I ask where are with the story? I've purchased it and it looks quite fun.
James, have you ever used awakened animals in important NPC or Enemy roles? Do you know if they have been in any adventure paths or Modules? I had an idea of one I want to use in a game I'm running, and I was hoping to compare notes to some existing examples, and I'm curious if your thoughts on the benefits and drawbacks of them as NPCs and rival/enemy characters.
Did you miss my question about rules lawyers, or just skip it because it was a little silly?I did indeed miss the rules lawyer question, I suppose.
No problem. This is a busy thread, it happens. Here ya go:
Do you ever use your corporate rank at Paizo to frustrate rules lawyers? Basically, you're at a table, you do something against the rules that you forgot about, lawyer jumps down your throat with, "you can't do that, it's a rule!" And you casually reply, "Creative Director. It isn't a rule if I say it's not."
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Did you miss my question about rules lawyers, or just skip it because it was a little silly?I did indeed miss the rules lawyer question, I suppose.No problem. This is a busy thread, it happens. Here ya go:
Do you ever use your corporate rank at Paizo to frustrate rules lawyers? Basically, you're at a table, you do something against the rules that you forgot about, lawyer jumps down your throat with, "you can't do that, it's a rule!" And you casually reply, "Creative Director. It isn't a rule if I say it's not."
Hmmm.
In light of who your players actually are...
What's the most interesting game-related rules argument you've had with Jason Bulmahn?
Probably after a game, since I can't picture either of you stopping a game for a rules dispute.
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What the weather like in Numeria in the winter months? How cold does it get? Does it get much snow? Is there a place on Earth that I could use as a comparison for thematically appropriate weather?
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Thank you for your answers.
1) Why haven't you tried to publish some of your unpublished work? Do you even intend to publish some of them one day?
2) If you were to give an antipaladin code for Nocticula what would be the main tenets?
3) How do Demodands and Qlippoth see one another? Do the latter hate them just as much as demons or do they simply ignore them?
4) If a mythic character dies and is turned into an outsider, does he becomes a mythic version of that same outsider? Or does he becomes a completely unique being like an empyreal lord or something?
5) Finally, speaking of Way of the Wicked, may I ask where are with the story? I've purchased it and it looks quite fun.
1) Self-publishing is a full time job, as far as I'm concerned, because if I do this, I want to do it right. That includes hiring folks to handle the parts of the job I'm not as good at, such as the logistics and printing and layout and some of the art. I don't have the time or financials to do that at this point. Kickstarter could probably help with the money side of things, but that's a relatively recent development in the big bag of options. And furthermore... it doesn't help the time resource—managing a Kickstarter actually hurts time resources. BUT. We shall see what the future brings, I guess!
2) I'm not gonna build the whole code, but it would focus on being stealthy, not letting others know who you really are, assassinating, and reveling in your lusts.
3) They don't have a lot of reason to interact; both are relatively uncommon and their realms don't often put them in contact, but when they do encounter each other, they pretty much always end up fighting.
4) Up to the GM.
5) In the game I'm playing, we're about 75% of the way through the 2nd adventure, is my best guess.
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James, have you ever used awakened animals in important NPC or Enemy roles? Do you know if they have been in any adventure paths or Modules? I had an idea of one I want to use in a game I'm running, and I was hoping to compare notes to some existing examples, and I'm curious if your thoughts on the benefits and drawbacks of them as NPCs and rival/enemy characters.
Yes, many times. I played an awakened deinonychus in my first Paizo after-work game, and in Dungeon Magazine #92 I wrote an adventure called "The Razing of Redshore" that featured a VERY high level awakened sperm whale druid as an important NPC. They're fun, especially if used in moderation so that the players don't get used to them.
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Would an android that became immortal (by, say, becoming a 20th level alchemist or wizard and selecting the appropriate discovery) be immune to renewal? What about an android lich or vampire?
Do you think that an intelligent construct who wanted to reproduce and wanted to kidnap someone to make them into a half-construct using parts of its own body to simulate creating a new life with part of itself and part of someone else make for a good villain, or merely be rather tragic? Or does it all depend on handling?
You've been enjoying Bloodborne from what I've seen; are there any other games on the Playstation 4 that you think are worth getting the system for?
Renewal is what happens when an android dies of old age, basically. And that's the ONLY time it happens. So if an android gets something that prevents him from dying of old age... he's not "immune" to renewal so much as renewal simply doesn't happen for him. An android lich or vampire essentially "died" before it got to the renewal, and so it loses out on that.
That'd make for a good villain OR a tragic character, depending on how you set it up... but it also runs the risk of being an offensive villain as well in some group dynamics. Handle with care, and know your audience.
Bloodborne is hands-down the single best game for the PS4 at this point. Pretty much all my other games lately have been Xbox One games; I just prefer that console overall, but if you don't have it, then Dragon Age Inquisition is incredible as well.
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Did you miss my question about rules lawyers, or just skip it because it was a little silly?I did indeed miss the rules lawyer question, I suppose.No problem. This is a busy thread, it happens. Here ya go:
Do you ever use your corporate rank at Paizo to frustrate rules lawyers? Basically, you're at a table, you do something against the rules that you forgot about, lawyer jumps down your throat with, "you can't do that, it's a rule!" And you casually reply, "Creative Director. It isn't a rule if I say it's not."
I haven't been in a situation where I've even had to do that. Partially because I generally don't play with antagonistic rules lawyers if I can help it, but also because the folks I game with all respect the position of GM. It's not that I'm Creative Director, it's that I'm the GM. Likewise, when I'm in a game run by, say, Erik, it's that he's the GM and not that he's my boss that I"ll defer to his rulings.
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What's the most interesting game-related rules argument you've had with Jason Bulmahn?
Probably after a game, since I can't picture either of you stopping a game for a rules dispute.
I actually haven't had rules arguments with Jason in the context of gaming—he's actually INCREDIBLY respectful of how I choose to run the game and how I interpret the rules when he's a player, and I try to be the same when I'm his player in a game he runs.
There are plenty of game-related rules arguments we've had outside of a game that come up during the regular work day, but that's a very different situation and it's not something I'm interested in making public for various reasons.
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What the weather like in Numeria in the winter months? How cold does it get? Does it get much snow? Is there a place on Earth that I could use as a comparison for thematically appropriate weather?
I'd look at Montana, I suppose, for winter inspiration.
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What's the climate/weather of Sarkoris and the Worldwound? Would it be similar to Numeria's except maybe hotter due to the demonic rifts?
There is no weather in Sarkoris, 'cause Sarkoris is gone. Weather in the Worldwound is super mutable and can be whatever you need, due to the influence of the Abyss.
Are there competing RPGs that you admire? Are there any that you could name? (I understand if you can't, given your official capacity as a Paizo rep it may be counterproductive to praise competitors.)
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What's the climate/weather of Sarkoris and the Worldwound? Would it be similar to Numeria's except maybe hotter due to the demonic rifts?There is no weather in Sarkoris, 'cause Sarkoris is gone. Weather in the Worldwound is super mutable and can be whatever you need, due to the influence of the Abyss.
Including raining lolipops made out of frozen acid! Lick the lolipop and lose your tongue!
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Who's the most beautiful male character in Golarion?
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Are there competing RPGs that you admire? Are there any that you could name? (I understand if you can't, given your official capacity as a Paizo rep it may be counterproductive to praise competitors.)
Call of Cthulhu. Whether or not it's my favorite RPG or Pathfinder is kinda depends on the day.
I quite like what WotC's done with 5th edition D&D.
I really admire Dread's elegance in simplicity.
I've got a lot of nostalgia for 1st edition D&D, Star Frontiers, and Gamma World.