Creative Director
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Who would Serpentfolk worship besides Ydersius?
Would they be inclined to ally with a member of another race, if that individual was telepathic and had similar outlooks on life?
Beyond Ydersius, there's not really any one obvious choice. Serpentfolk are themselves neutral evil, so Urgathoa and Norgorber are both good choices. They aren't really about daemons or apocalypse stuff and wouldn't normally worship the Horsemen. I could see some of them worshiping arch devils or demon lords though. The version of Yig we've incorporated into the setting is, unlike the version of Yig in other games, NOT likely to have serpentfolk worshipers, for Yig and Ydersius are enemies, not allies. The rare few serpenfolk who would worship Yig would be chaotic neutral and traitors to their nation and kind.
Serpentfolk are control freaks, and while they'd certainly not be above allying with other races that share their outlooks, they'd want to stay the ones in charge. To a serpentfolk, a slave is MUCH better than a friend.
Mr. James Jacobs,
In your estimation if one of the common races (Elf, Human, etc.) were to have 70-80% of their body replaced with draconic grafts and were then subjected to the fleshwarping procedure described in Magic of Golarion (Large vat filled with alchemical fluids) would the resulting creature be of the draconic, monstrous humanoid, or aberration creature type?
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Hey James! How is your Autumn going so far?
Do you and your friends/loved ones enjoy any fun fall stuff, like haunted attractions, decorating for halloween or even ghost hunting?
A few other Q's:
1) Speaking of Serpent Folk - do they view Yig, in comparison to Ydersius, like humans might few Ithaqua vs. Aroden - as in something that mocks the form but is inherently alien and horrific or evil?
2) How do the main deities view Yog-Sothoth specifically? If a character in your game used Commune is Contact Other Plane for deeper information, what would some insight be into Its greater nature from their point of view?
3) What's a good modern day Mythos compilation by newer authors you would recommend? I saw the Shadow Over Innsmouth takes you posted, and I'm currently looking for some stories to read!
4) How would a Runelord interact politically and personally with some of the modern Golarion powers, like Queen Abrogail, Geb, Queen Elvanna, or Mengkare?
5) If the Whispering Tyrant became active again, how would he and Geb interact?
Thanks for some insight. As usual, not necessarily looking for official canon rulings, just your personal.
Am I right in assuming that the most common sorcerer bloodlines among deep one hybrids would be aquatic and aberrant? I know sorcerers can have any bloodline, but I also know that certain ones are more common within certain racial/ethnic groups.
1. You said that the Runelords including Karzoug were looking for ways to transform the Cyphergate into a time portal. But the Cyphergate was in Cyrusian, the realm of Xanderghul. So how can Karzoug study the Cyphergate? Were both of them good friends and thus Xanderghul gladly let Kazzoug visit Cyrusian and study the Cyphergate?
2. Who built the Cyphergate? Xandergul? At leat before the death of Xin, there was no Cyphergate, right?
3. You said Dungeons of Golarion should be retconned. I don't understand. So did Alaznist worship Yamasoth, instead of demon lords? Or did Alaznist not worship Yamasoth at all?
4. Paths of Prestige page 4 shows an Aldori swordlord. His sword looks like a Japanese sword, and his armor looks like a Chinese or Japanese armor. Does that mean Sirian Aldori traveled to Tian Xia and learned eastern sword art? Or a Tian swordman traveled to Avistan and taught Sirian?? I thought before the rediscovery of the map of Amatatsu Aganhei around 4300 AR, no Tian visited Avistan via land.
5. Lawful evil, neutral, and chaotic good are all two steps away from lawful good. Does that mean a typical Iomedaean crusader hates these three alignments equally?
6. If a Iomedaean paladin stumbles upon a Calistrian cleric in Mendev, would he think she is in league with the demons(because chaotic neutral is just one step away from chaotic evil, but three steps away from lawful good) and kill her on sight, or at least suspect and arrest her?
7. In The Worldwound Incursion, there is a chaotic evil cavalier named Chaleb Sazomal, who joined the crusade for fame and money. After the demons attacked Kenabres, he decided to be on the winning side and went on the rampage. I was surprised that the Iomedaeans let this man join the crusade in the first place. Why did no one realize that casting detect evil to every applicant is a good idea?
8. A blackfire adept's alignment requirement is 'any non-good'. Which means there certainly can be neutral, non-evil blackfire adepts. But the primary ability of a blackfire adept is summoning evil outsiders. So, should I assume that, although technically possible, there's very little, or maybe no non-evil blackfire adept in the world?
9. Devils and demons have appeared in D&D since the beginning. But the daemons and the qlippoth are newcomers in Pathfinder. I have a hard time understanding them. According to my knowledge:
Devils want to dominate everything.
Daemons want to kill everything.
Demons want to destroy everything.
Qlippoth want to destroy everything.
Am I right? Looks like daemons, demons, and qlippoth have same goal. I didn't know these three fiend races are so similar in nature.
10. A deity is the one who has five domains and six subdomains. A demigod is the one who has four domains and four subdomains. Mythic Adventures doesn't say that I can only learn divine osurce three times. Then, if I learn divine source four times, which gives me five domains and six subdomains, I will automatically become a deity. I think it's perfectly logical, is it?
11. A demigod ignores antimagic field. And in this page you said that merely learning divine source three times doesn't make you a demigod, nor it makes you ignore antimaigc field. Does that mean
1)To be a demigod, I have to undergo a kind of divine transformation and become a unique outsider and become an immortal, and cease to be a mortal?
2)If I do not undergo this transformation, then even if I learn divine source three times and have four domains, I'm still a mortal and merely a quasi-deity?
12. According to this page, CR 21-25 is quasi-deity, CR 26-30 is demigod, CR 31- onward is deity. Then what if a creature with racial hit dice gains class levels? Is a 20th level serpentfolk fighter, whose CR is 24, a quasi-deity even though he has no mythic tier and has no access to divine source? And, if a very young red dragon gains class levels and becomes 20th level fighter and 1,000 years passes and he becomes a 20th level fighter great wyrm red dragon, whose CR is 42, then logically he automatically becomes a deity because his CR passed the upper limit of demigod level?
13. You said that you want to delete the outsider subdomains(like demon, devil, azata, etc) entirely. Then what about the alignment domains? Lawful good gods have to possess Law and Good domains, which limits their domain selection. Do you think removing the alignment domains would be a good idea? Or do you think alignment domains are so essential part of a god that they shouldn't be removed? I personally think the gods-must-have-appropriate-alignment-domains rule is favorable to neutral gods because they have more diverse domain selection.
14. Do elohim in Bestiary 4 somehow related to the god of Christianity?
What Beastiaries will I need for the new Curse of the Crimson Throne?
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Creative Director
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The Zuggtmoy stuff happens tonight. My Golarion stand-in for Iuz is Lamashtu.That's intriguing. Had Zuggtmoy been part of Golarion, would she be a sometime ally of Lamashtu?
Kindly share tonight's game finale here James.
She probably wouldn't be ally or enemy; she's not really an ally or enemy in this game.
And the finale didn't happen; the group instead decided to go back and explore a few rooms on level 2 that they hadn't yet cleared out.
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Creative Director
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Mr. James Jacobs,
In your estimation if one of the common races (Elf, Human, etc.) were to have 70-80% of their body replaced with draconic grafts and were then subjected to the fleshwarping procedure described in Magic of Golarion (Large vat filled with alchemical fluids) would the resulting creature be of the draconic, monstrous humanoid, or aberration creature type?
Aberration.
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Creative Director
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Hey James! How is your Autumn going so far?
Do you and your friends/loved ones enjoy any fun fall stuff, like haunted attractions, decorating for halloween or even ghost hunting?
A few other Q's:
1) Speaking of Serpent Folk - do they view Yig, in comparison to Ydersius, like humans might few Ithaqua vs. Aroden - as in something that mocks the form but is inherently alien and horrific or evil?
2) How do the main deities view Yog-Sothoth specifically? If a character in your game used Commune is Contact Other Plane for deeper information, what would some insight be into Its greater nature from their point of view?
3) What's a good modern day Mythos compilation by newer authors you would recommend? I saw the Shadow Over Innsmouth takes you posted, and I'm currently looking for some stories to read!
4) How would a Runelord interact politically and personally with some of the modern Golarion powers, like Queen Abrogail, Geb, Queen Elvanna, or Mengkare?
5) If the Whispering Tyrant became active again, how would he and Geb interact?
Thanks for some insight. As usual, not necessarily looking for official canon rulings, just your personal.
My Autumn's pretty mediocre so far. Hopefully something fun happens though!
1) They view Yig as an enemy but not as something alien or horrific.
2) They don't really have much to do with Yog-Sothoth at all, apart from Desna, who views him as a dangerous enemy. You can't use contact other plane to speak to an outer god since they're on the Material Plane (there's a different method to do this coming soon in Strange Aeons). If someone used commune with them, I'd probably run the spell normally but give the spellcaster some form of insanity.
3) The "Black Wings" books have some great stuff in them, as does "A Mountain Walked."
4) Via warfare.
5) Via eventual warfare.
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Creative Director
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Am I right in assuming that the most common sorcerer bloodlines among deep one hybrids would be aquatic and aberrant? I know sorcerers can have any bloodline, but I also know that certain ones are more common within certain racial/ethnic groups.
That certainly seems thematic to me.
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Creative Director
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1. You said that the Runelords including Karzoug were looking for ways to transform the Cyphergate into a time portal. But the Cyphergate was in Cyrusian, the realm of Xanderghul. So how can Karzoug study the Cyphergate? Were both of them good friends and thus Xanderghul gladly let Kazzoug visit Cyrusian and study the Cyphergate?
2. Who built the Cyphergate? Xandergul? At leat before the death of Xin, there was no Cyphergate, right?
3. You said Dungeons of Golarion should be retconned. I don't understand. So did Alaznist worship Yamasoth, instead of demon lords? Or did Alaznist not worship Yamasoth at all?
4. Paths of Prestige page 4 shows an Aldori swordlord. His sword looks like a Japanese sword, and his armor looks like a Chinese or Japanese armor. Does that mean Sirian Aldori traveled to Tian Xia and learned eastern sword art? Or a Tian swordman traveled to Avistan and taught Sirian?? I thought before the rediscovery of the map of Amatatsu Aganhei around 4300 AR, no Tian visited Avistan via land.
5. Lawful evil, neutral, and chaotic good are all two steps away from lawful good. Does that mean a typical Iomedaean crusader hates these three alignments equally?
6. If a Iomedaean paladin stumbles upon a Calistrian cleric in Mendev, would he think she is in league with the demons(because chaotic neutral is just one step away from chaotic evil, but three steps away from lawful good) and kill her on sight, or at least suspect and arrest her?
7. In The Worldwound Incursion, there is a chaotic evil cavalier named Chaleb Sazomal, who joined the crusade for fame and money. After the demons attacked Kenabres, he decided to be on the winning side and went on the rampage. I was surprised that the Iomedaeans let this man join the crusade in the first place. Why did no one realize that casting detect evil to every applicant is a good idea?
1) That's not something we've really explored, but a combination of bribery and trickery and favors and stealth is likely the way it worked.
2) Unrevealed. On purpose. Maybe some day we'll say more.
3) Yamasoth is a qlippoth lord, but as mentioned in the article about him and the qlippoth lords in Pathfinder #64, "some scholars mistake him for a demon lord." No retcon needed.
4) More likely, travelers from Tian Xian visited and inspired Aldori.
5) No.
6) Not unless the Iomedean crusader were somewhat unbalanced, unhinged, and broken in the head. Those who are truly faithful to the church and their alignment understand that Calistria is not a demon, and that her faith is not evil.
7) The sheer number of soldiers and crusaders and the like who join the crusade FAR outstrips any one group's ability to "screen" each person for potential evil, and if they DID spend time doing this, that'd eat up a lot of time and resources that are better put to use helping people or fighting demons. Furthermore, if you're evil and you want to sneak into a good guy organization to wreak havoc, you'll understand that there are ways for the good guys to figure you out, and you'll do what you can to hide. There are LOTS of ways to do this.
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8. A blackfire adept's alignment requirement is 'any non-good'. Which means there certainly can be neutral, non-evil blackfire adepts. But the primary ability of a blackfire adept is summoning evil outsiders. So, should I assume that, although technically possible, there's very little, or maybe no non-evil blackfire adept in the world?
9. Devils and demons have appeared in D&D since the beginning. But the daemons and the qlippoth are newcomers in Pathfinder. I have a hard time understanding them. According to my knowledge:
Devils want to dominate everything.
Daemons want to kill everything.
Demons want to destroy everything.
Qlippoth want to destroy everything.Am I right? Looks like daemons, demons, and qlippoth have same goal. I didn't know these three fiend races are so similar in nature.
10. A deity is the one who has five domains and six subdomains. A demigod is the one who has four domains and four subdomains. Mythic Adventures doesn't say that I can only learn divine osurce three times. Then, if I learn divine source four times, which gives me five domains and six subdomains, I will automatically become a deity. I think it's perfectly logical, is it?
11. A demigod ignores antimagic field. And in this page you said that merely learning divine source three times doesn't make you a demigod, nor it makes you ignore antimaigc field. Does that mean
1)To be a demigod, I have to undergo a kind of divine transformation and become a unique outsider and become an immortal, and cease to be a mortal?2)If I do not undergo this transformation, then even if I learn divine source three times and have four domains, I'm still a mortal and merely a quasi-deity?
12. According to this page, CR 21-25 is quasi-deity, CR 26-30 is demigod, CR 31- onward is deity. Then what if a creature with racial hit dice gains class levels? Is a 20th level serpentfolk fighter, whose CR is 24, a quasi-deity even though he has no mythic tier and has no access to divine source? And, if a very young red dragon gains class levels and becomes 20th level fighter and 1,000 years passes and he becomes a 20th level fighter great wyrm red dragon, whose CR is 42, then logically he automatically becomes a deity because his CR passed the upper limit of demigod level?
13. You said that you want to delete the outsider subdomains(like demon, devil, azata, etc) entirely. Then what about the alignment domains? Lawful good gods have to possess Law and Good domains, which limits their domain selection. Do you think removing the alignment domains would be a good idea? Or do you think alignment domains are so essential part of a god that they shouldn't be removed? I personally think the gods-must-have-appropriate-alignment-domains rule is favorable to neutral gods because they have more diverse domain selection.
14. Do elohim in Bestiary 4 somehow related to the god of Christianity?
8) You should indeed assume that.
9) Daemons have been part of D&D since 1st edition. Qlippoth were first introduced in the game in 3rd edition in Green Ronin's Armies of the Abyss by Erik Mona. Neither is "new" to Pathfinder, any more than demons or devils are. We've used them in our products since before we had the Pathfinder RPG.
Devls want to trick mortals into being evil so that when they die, they come serve as slaves in Hell; they want to make us into them.
Daemons want to consume all life via eating souls.
Demons want mortals to sin so that they become demons in the afterlife, and want to destroy things mortals hold dear at the same time (be it destroying society, destroying lives, destroying relationships, destroying faith, destroying buildings, or whatever.)
Qlippoth want to rule the Abyss again like they did at the dawn of creation, and they can't do that when demons are so fecund, so they want to destroy the "fuel" that allows demons to live: Mortal souls.
To a mortal, when you're dead from a fiend attack, you're dead, so it does indeed look similar from that vantage point. The fiends wouldn't agree.
10) No. That's rules abuse.
11-1) To become a demigod you have to do something beyond the rules, which requires your GM's permission. That "beyond the rules" could be to pass the Test of the Starstone, to kill 100 demigods, to drink from a legendary fountain at the heart of an outer plane, to reincarnate 999 times, or anything else that your GM thinks might work.
11-2) Correct, more or less.
12) There is no CR 31 onward, officially. If we produce something that goes beyond CR 30, then we fix it so it stops at CR 30 or is something lower. There's not really a POINT to do something beyond CR 30 in Pathfinder in my opinion. And just being above CR 25 doesn't automatically make you a demigod. Look at the kaiju for an example of a non-demigod creature above CR 25.
13) I think that the alignment domains are clutter, but they were part of D&D's 3.5 system and when we created Pathfinder we were not willing to risk backwards compatibility by rebuilding the domains (which would also disrupt existing deity stuff from a cleric's viewpoint); we didn't want to rock our boat in that way because we were VERY afraid of taking any step that potential customers could see and use as an excuse to stop playing our game.
14) No.
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Creative Director
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Are there witch patrons that use alternate methods to Faustian bargaining to work with their witch? If so, how's that work?
No. The mechanics for witch patrons are fuzzy and ill-defined, and do not actually function in the same way a deity does for a cleric. The word "patron" is something of a misnomer, and isn't really the right word to use for how their spells work, in fact. A better word would have been "focus" or "area of study" or "specialization."
A witch can absolutely enter a Fausitan bargain with something, but that would be handled outside of her class features.
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As a T-Rex, it is my sworn duty to correct you and point out I'm from the Cretaceous, not Jurassic.
Ouch; my mistake. I may have known that at some point and forgotten it....
The Playtest PDF Medium went away. One of the whole points of a playtest is to test how these things work, and the playtest revealed to us that the initial version of the Medium was not the right version and it was riddled with design errors or false starts or we simply came up with better ideas as a result of the playtest. I do know that linking it to the Harrow deck
made the class ridiculously enormous to the extent that it was unpublishable, so the decision to ramp it back and rebuild the class so it was at least closer to the complexity and size of most other classes was a no-brainer. Furthermore, the Harrow is a Golarion continuity element, and we have traditionally shied away from including too much Golarion continuity in the hardcover rules. The "playtest PDF medium" was an experiment—a rough draft, and it's gone, replaced by the final version.
I can understand the publishing Spirits for every card of the Harrow deck would be too much to put in a book like Occult Adventures - but why restrict the Medium to a measly 6 spirits? "Orthodox" spellcasters regularly get anywhere from 1/6-1/4 of the book to detailing their powers, and the list just keeps growing. I can also understand wanting to keep the class setting-agnostic (although I've grown to suspect aspirations toward setting-agnosticism of being the root of a variety of evils we see argued about on these forums) - but why can't the Medium's options be expanded beyond 6 Spirits? Yes, there have been a few slightly-altered Spirits printed since then, but in the form of Archetypes that keep the Medium's options restricted and lead to the usual problems Archetypes have of "you can't have this if you take that" - and I don't see why that should be in this case. Why can't Spirits be modular like spells? Like I said, I can understand not wanting to print all 54 cards of the Harrow deck as Spirits within the bounds of Occult Adventures, but now that it's out, might we hope for a future softcover supplement that brings back the Spirits we saw in the Playest and more?
On a lesser note, while I don't particularly mind how you wound up managing the Medium's spellcasting, I liked the way it was done in the Playtest better - different spell suites depending on the Spirit you hosted. Maybe Spirits could grant bonus spells known in the same fashion as Domains/Bloodlines/Mysteries/Patrons/etc?
6. If a Iomedaean paladin stumbles upon a Calistrian cleric in Mendev, would he think she is in league with the demons(because chaotic neutral is just one step away from chaotic evil, but three steps away from lawful good) and kill her on sight, or at least suspect and arrest her?6) Not unless the Iomedean crusader were somewhat unbalanced, unhinged, and broken in the head. Those who are truly faithful to the church and their alignment understand that Calistria is not a demon, and that her faith is not evil.
The Calistrian faith however is not good, and is very chaotic. Doesn't that impact on how an Iomedan and Calistrian might interact?
Is there are reason (and what is it) D&D's Phane (the time controlling black panther-centaur thingy from the Epic Level Handbook) isn't used in Pathfinder?
Is the creature too D&D?
Don't you (or others) like it?
Doesn't it suit in the pathfinder world?
Another reason?
1. Did Yamasoth trick Alaznist into believing him as a demon lord? I'm surprised, because distinguishing a qlippoth from a demon seems to be an easy thing for a runelord. Then if Alaznist found out Yamasoth was a qlippoth after all, would she get furious and kill Yamasoth?
2. Did Alaznist, other runelords and Xin know about qlippoth? Or at the time of Azlant and Thassilon no human knew the existence of qlippoth?
3. If you can take a time machine and go back to 2011, would you delete Yamasoth from Dungeons of Golarion enitrely and instead make Alaznist worship Lamashtu? Or would you make sure the book refers to him as a qlippoth lord?
4. Then what if a great wyrm gains class levels? I know normally monsters don't gain class levels but what if a young red dragon gains 20 levels in fighter and then become a great wyrm? Would his CR be 42? Or would his class levels decrease as he grows old, so that no matter how hard he try, his CR would still be 30 at best? If that's the case, being a high CR monster is not a good thing after all, because those monsters cannot gain high class levels, so they would be weaker than the same CR human villains.
5. Then if a particularly diligent and meddlesome paladin whose hobby is casting detect evil to those strangers he meets happened to meet Chaleb and found out he's chaotic evil, what would happen? Will he be arrested or ousted from Mendev just because he's chaotic evil and thus a potential demon worshipper? Or will he be allowed to stay and instead the troublesome paladin will be scolded for judging a person by his alignment only and not to giving Chaleb a chance of redemption?
6. Really? I didn't know there were daemons in 3.5. While playing 3.5, I thought demons want to destroy everything. But you said that demons want to corrupt, not destroy. Was their goal changed in Pathfinder? Or Paizo changed nothing, and their goal and nature are as same as their goal and nature in 3.5?
7. Pathfinder has no epic rules. But can a human gain 20 levels in fighter, and then gain other class levels like fighter 20/stalwart defender 5?
8. You already said that the Mendevian Crusade would gladly accept the hellknights who want to join the crusade. Does that mean, if a devil worshipper, a daemon worshipper, or a qlippoth worshipper want to join the crusade and fight the demons, would the crusade accept them?
9. Sihedron's caster level is 25th. This means the crafter of Sihedron must be a 25th level mage. But Xin, the crafter of this item, is a 20th level wizard. Why? Is that becauase there were no epic level rules in Pathfinder when you published the Shattered Star, and at that time Paizo was not sure if it will publish epic rules or not? In other words, if epic pathfinder rules are published, Xin's level will be changed into 25th?
10. Also, according to Reign of Winter, Baba Yaga is a 20th level witch. But the caster level of Baba Yaga's Dancing Hut, which was made by herself, is 30th. How can this be possible? If a character wants to make an item, his caster level should be as same as or higher than the item's caster levels. So logically, Baba Yaga should be 30th level witch. Is it because there's still no epic rules in Pathfinder? That means, if there ever be epic rules in pathfinder, will Baba Yaga be changed into 30th lever witch/10th tier archmage who has 40 CR?
11. In this page you said that Groetus was once a human. But his articles in Beyond the Doomsday Door and Inner Sea Faiths said that his origin is a mystery. Does that mean you accidentally revealed Groetus' origin by mistake?
12. There is a subdomain called deception uner trickery domain. I'm curious, because trickery and deception are synonyms. Is it an error that you want to correct if you can take a time machine and go back to past?
Is there any Golarion-specific information on astomois, reptoids, and orang-pendaks?
Do you think 3 hours would be enough time to run the first part of Burnt Offerings?
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Creative Director
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As a T-Rex, it is my sworn duty to correct you and point out I'm from the Cretaceous, not Jurassic.
Ouch; my mistake. I may have known that at some point and forgotten it....
I can understand the publishing Spirits for every card of the Harrow deck would be too much to put in a book like Occult Adventures - but why restrict the Medium to a measly 6 spirits? "Orthodox" spellcasters regularly get anywhere from 1/6-1/4 of the book to detailing their powers, and the list just keeps growing. I can also understand wanting to keep the class setting-agnostic (although I've grown to suspect aspirations toward setting-agnosticism of being the root of a variety of evils we see argued about on these forums) - but why can't the Medium's options be expanded beyond 6 Spirits? Yes, there have been a few slightly-altered Spirits printed since then, but in the form of Archetypes that keep the Medium's options restricted and lead to the usual problems Archetypes have of "you can't have this if you take that" - and I don't see why that should be in this case. Why can't Spirits be modular like spells?...
The Playtest PDF Medium went away. One of the whole points of a playtest is to test how these things work, and the playtest revealed to us that the initial version of the Medium was not the right version and it was riddled with design errors or false starts or we simply came up with better ideas as a result of the playtest. I do know that linking it to the Harrow deck
made the class ridiculously enormous to the extent that it was unpublishable, so the decision to ramp it back and rebuild the class so it was at least closer to the complexity and size of most other classes was a no-brainer. Furthermore, the Harrow is a Golarion continuity element, and we have traditionally shied away from including too much Golarion continuity in the hardcover rules. The "playtest PDF medium" was an experiment—a rough draft, and it's gone, replaced by the final version.
Because by restricting it to 6 spirits it fits in the book.
You'll need to talk to the design team to get insights into the class, though. I've not read the class... the playtest version OR the print version.
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The Calistrian faith however is not good, and is very chaotic. Doesn't that impact on how an Iomedan and Calistrian might interact?
6. If a Iomedaean paladin stumbles upon a Calistrian cleric in Mendev, would he think she is in league with the demons(because chaotic neutral is just one step away from chaotic evil, but three steps away from lawful good) and kill her on sight, or at least suspect and arrest her?6) Not unless the Iomedean crusader were somewhat unbalanced, unhinged, and broken in the head. Those who are truly faithful to the church and their alignment understand that Calistria is not a demon, and that her faith is not evil.
Yes, but part of being "lawful" and "good" is not seizing upon any and every flimsy excuse to attack someone.
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Creative Director
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Is there are reason (and what is it) D&D's Phane (the time controlling black panther-centaur thingy from the Epic Level Handbook) isn't used in Pathfinder?
Is the creature too D&D?
Don't you (or others) like it?
Doesn't it suit in the pathfinder world?
Another reason?
Being something that was created specifically for Epic Level Handbook, the phane (along with many other creatures in that book) have no touchstones in culture or mythology or history, nor any nostalgia power, and as such it's not really all that appealing to import to Pathfinder. I'd rather spend the energy building something new that would be all Pathfinder, or spend the energy "importing" something that has more tradition behind it.
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Creative Director
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1. Did Yamasoth trick Alaznist into believing him as a demon lord? I'm surprised, because distinguishing a qlippoth from a demon seems to be an easy thing for a runelord. Then if Alaznist found out Yamasoth was a qlippoth after all, would she get furious and kill Yamasoth?
2. Did Alaznist, other runelords and Xin know about qlippoth? Or at the time of Azlant and Thassilon no human knew the existence of qlippoth?
3. If you can take a time machine and go back to 2011, would you delete Yamasoth from Dungeons of Golarion enitrely and instead make Alaznist worship Lamashtu? Or would you make sure the book refers to him as a qlippoth lord?
4. Then what if a great wyrm gains class levels? I know normally monsters don't gain class levels but what if a young red dragon gains 20 levels in fighter and then become a great wyrm? Would his CR be 42? Or would his class levels decrease as he grows old, so that no matter how hard he try, his CR would still be 30 at best? If that's the case, being a high CR monster is not a good thing after all, because those monsters cannot gain high class levels, so they would be weaker than the same CR human villains.
5. Then if a particularly diligent and meddlesome paladin whose hobby is casting detect evil to those strangers he meets happened to meet Chaleb and found out he's chaotic evil, what would happen? Will he be arrested or ousted from Mendev just because he's chaotic evil and thus a potential demon worshipper? Or will he be allowed to stay and instead the troublesome paladin will be scolded for judging a person by his alignment only and not to giving Chaleb a chance of redemption?
6. Really? I didn't know there were daemons in 3.5. While playing 3.5, I thought demons want to destroy everything. But you said that demons want to corrupt, not destroy. Was their goal changed in Pathfinder? Or Paizo changed nothing, and their goal and nature are as same as their goal and nature in 3.5?
1) No. Alaznist knew/knows what Yamasoth is. She worships more than just Yamasoth, by the way; she's more or less an Abyssal pantheist. The game itself is an organic and constantly evolving thing. We make decisions, then change our mind or take things in a different direction. When we first revealed Yamasoth in Dungeons of Golarion, we didn't have Qlippoth Lords in the game. Now we do, and I decided that Yamasoth is more akin to a Qlippoth Lord later in the context of the Qlippoth article in Shattered Star. You can safely assume that all phrases that said "Yamasoth is a demon lord" SHOULD SAY "Yamasoth is a qlippoth lord," but that is not a big enough deal to make us as a company expend the time and effort to issue an errata for a book, much less reprinting a book with one word changed.
2) Yes, they knew.
3) I'd make Yamasoth's reference refer to him as a Qlippoth lord and make no other changes.
4) It's silly for a high CR monster to gain class levels on one hand, because it's kinda a weird mental disconnect to say "This great wyrm red dragon is a 1st level fighter." Sure, stats wise he's tougher than a non-classed great wyrm, but it sounds really silly. I prefer giving dragons and other high CR creatures more HD or templates overall as a result. In any event, I would never publish something whose numbers exceed those listed for a CR 30 threat because that's the cap.
5) Depends 100% on the story and all sorts of variables. The paladin could be the catalyst that starts a crusade-wide reform that sees the expunging of all evil within it, or the paladin could get in over his head in the very first confrontation and get himself murdered in alley. All up to the GM and the actions of the players, or up to the storyteller if you're writing a story.
6) Daemons have been in D&D since 1st edition. They first showed up in the drow adventures, then got into Fiend Folio, and then fianlly got officialized as a category of fiend in Monster Manual 2 in the early 80s. When 2nd edition came along, the publisher was afraid of presenting demons and devils and the like in the game due to a VERY vocal minority that crusaded against D&D as being Satanic, and they removed all demons/devils/etc. (including daemons) from the game. Late in 2nd edition, they brought the fiends back under made-up names like tanar'ri and yugoloth and baatezu. It wasn't until 3rd edition came along that the game (now published by WotC) brought these creatures back as demons and devils, but as with 1st edition D&D (and as with Pathfinder) it would be a few years before they brought back daemons in the rules. It's been sort of a tradition that the neutral evil fiends have to wait their turn to get into print. In any event, the goal of fiends in D&D is different than the goal in Pathfinder. One thing we try to do with ALL our monsters is to give them a different spin than they had in D&D, be it a tiny change or a big one, so that we can be our own game rather than continue to lurk in D&D's shadow.
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Creative Director
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7. Pathfinder has no epic rules. But can a human gain 20 levels in fighter, and then gain other class levels like fighter 20/stalwart defender 5?
8. You already said that the Mendevian Crusade would gladly accept the hellknights who want to join the crusade. Does that mean, if a devil worshipper, a daemon worshipper, or a qlippoth worshipper want to join the crusade and fight the demons, would the crusade accept them?
9. Sihedron's caster level is 25th. This means the crafter of Sihedron must be a 25th level mage. But Xin, the crafter of this item, is a 20th level wizard. Why? Is that becauase there were no epic level rules in Pathfinder when you published the Shattered Star, and at that time Paizo was not sure if it will publish epic rules or not? In other words, if epic pathfinder rules are published, Xin's level will be changed into 25th?
10. Also, according to Reign of Winter, Baba Yaga is a 20th level witch. But the caster level of Baba Yaga's Dancing Hut, which was made by herself, is 30th. How can this be possible? If a character wants to make an item, his caster level should be as same as or higher than the item's caster levels. So logically, Baba Yaga should be 30th level witch. Is it because there's still no epic rules in Pathfinder? That means, if there ever be epic rules in pathfinder, will Baba Yaga be changed into 30th lever witch/10th tier archmage who has 40 CR?
11. In this page you said that Groetus was once a human. But his articles in Beyond the Doomsday Door and Inner Sea Faiths said that his origin is a mystery. Does that mean you accidentally revealed Groetus' origin by mistake?
12. There is a subdomain called deception uner trickery domain. I'm curious, because trickery and deception are synonyms. Is it an error that you want to correct if you can take a time machine and go back to past?
7) Not legally/officially. Your GM can use houserules to let that happen. The game's compatible with 3.5 after all, so it's not that complicated a thing to houserule in Epic Level rules if your table wants. But if you're playing "by the rules" Pathfinder, once you hit level 20 in ANY combination, your character can't gain more levels.
8) Unlikely. The Hellknights aren't fiend worshipers, and the Mendevian crusade knows that. Knowingly letting an outright fiend worshiper join your crusade against fiend worshipers is kinda stupid.
9) Because it's an artifact, and artifacts break the rules. In this case, one of the rules it broke is manifesting power at a higher caster level than its creator's caster level. It's 100% an ad-hoc decision and design choice I made, and when it comes to artifacts and other story elements, the designer of an adventure gets to do that. Players don't.
10) Same reason as 9 above. It's an ad-hoc design choice. In world, in both cases, it's because the creators of those artifacts either used something beyond mortal capacity to help create the artifact, had the help of a deity or demigod, or something like that.
11) What is correct for Groetus in my homebrew campaign is not guaranteed to be correct for Pathfinder. When I "sold" Groetus to Paizo by including him in the setting, that created a different version than the one I've had in my home campaign for a few decades. And when authors other than myself write about him (or anything I sell to Paizo), they take them in different directions. In most cases, I don't have the time to read all this extra material. I haven't "accidentally revealed" anything about Groetus' origin in Pathfinder, unless I did. Until we say something about the matter in print either way, consider that tidbit as something akin to a "director's cut" of the deity that never saw print.
12) No. We often use synonyms to branch out and expand game rules.
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Creative Director
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Do you think 3 hours would be enough time to run the first part of Burnt Offerings?
Not unless you have the right combination of players who don't get distracted by things AND who know the rules AND have a GM who's willing to cut content to make it fit.
I'm not a fan of letting the game time determine the plot. I much prefer playing to fill the game time and then when you run out of time, putting the story on "pause" so you pick up there at the next session.
That's the second reason why I'm not a fan of convention gaming. (The first reason is that I'm not fond of gaming with strangers.)
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I'm aware that Deities are a supposed to be beyond rules but I have some questions for how you like to think of them. Is the standard deity:
1. Able to focus all it's attention on more than one thing at once, committing all it's resources to multiple tasks?
2. Able to manifest in more than one place at once?
3. A source of their portfolio or just it's strongest champion? (For example if every Fire deity from Sarenrae and Asmodeus down to Ymeri was absent could Fire disappear with them?)
4. Closer to a Greek Pantheon deity of an Immortal being with mortal failings or closer to a Christian deity as part of everything and difficult to understand due to it's nature?
Hi James. Big fan of your work here. I want your opinion/advice regarding this:
I am making a home-brew world for my future campaigns. In the cosmology I want to use some ideas of D&D 3.5 and previous editions as well as pathfinder. I want to use the Draedens, Obyriths, Qlippoth, Great Old Ones and Outer Gods, also I want to implement the ideas of the Dark Tapestry and the Far Realm.
1. Do you see any way to implement all of these ideas and creatures/entities together? or some of them overlap roles and are to similar? I could see the Obyriths and Qlippoth being kind of the same race and roles. And if the Great Old Ones lives in the Dark Tapestry is there any need for a "Far Realm"?
2. What is the biggest difference between D&D Obyriths and PF Qlippoths.
3. Do all the Great Old Ones and Outer Gods lives in the material plane?
4. How do these creatures/entities mentioned before interact with each other if there is any interaction.
5. Which ones of these creatures/entities came into existence first?
6. Which ones of these creatures/entities is the more powerful, and which ones are the less powerful?
7. If you wanted to implement the Draedens into the pathfinder cosmology should they be some kind of Great Old Ones? Or a complete different specie?
Thanks in advance. And I know that maybe some of the question may sound repetitive, or the wording weird. But sorry for that, a non native english speaker here.
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Creative Director
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I'm aware that Deities are a supposed to be beyond rules but I have some questions for how you like to think of them. Is the standard deity:
1. Able to focus all it's attention on more than one thing at once, committing all it's resources to multiple tasks?
2. Able to manifest in more than one place at once?
3. A source of their portfolio or just it's strongest champion? (For example if every Fire deity from Sarenrae and Asmodeus down to Ymeri was absent could Fire disappear with them?)
4. Closer to a Greek Pantheon deity of an Immortal being with mortal failings or closer to a Christian deity as part of everything and difficult to understand due to it's nature?
All of those are possible if you want them to be in your game. If we ever need any of those things to be possible in an adventure or story we publish, then we'll make the decision then.
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Creative Director
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Hi James. Big fan of your work here. I want your opinion/advice regarding this:
I am making a home-brew world for my future campaigns. In the cosmology I want to use some ideas of D&D 3.5 and previous editions as well as pathfinder. I want to use the Draedens, Obyriths, Qlippoth, Great Old Ones and Outer Gods, also I want to implement the ideas of the Dark Tapestry and the Far Realm.
1. Do you see any way to implement all of these ideas and creatures/entities together? or some of them overlap roles and are to similar? I could see the Obyriths and Qlippoth being kind of the same race and roles. And if the Great Old Ones lives in the Dark Tapestry is there any need for a "Far Realm"?
2. What is the biggest difference between D&D Obyriths and PF Qlippoths.
3. Do all the Great Old Ones and Outer Gods lives in the material plane?
4. How do these creatures/entities mentioned before interact with each other if there is any interaction.
5. Which ones of these creatures/entities came into existence first?
6. Which ones of these creatures/entities is the more powerful, and which ones are the less powerful?
7. If you wanted to implement the Draedens into the pathfinder cosmology should they be some kind of Great Old Ones? Or a complete different specie?
Thanks in advance. And I know that maybe some of the question may sound repetitive, or the wording weird. But sorry for that, a non native english speaker here.
1) Well, in a lot of ways, several of those things are the same. Obyriths and qlippoth are absolutely the same—I invented obyriths for D&D because I loved what Erik did with the idea of the qlippoth in Green Ronin's Armies of the Abyss, and built the obyrith as a D&D version of a "proto demon" (of course, the idea of a proto demon goes far back beyond WotC and Green Ronin to early D&D and, of course, to mythology). The best way to make them all work together is to probably pick which one of them all you want to be "the truth" for your game and then simply have the rest of the elements all fall into line.
2) Qlippoth are somewhat inspired by real-world mythology, while obyriths are 100% fictional/made up. But they're similar enough that you can swap them out for each other and no one will notice.
3) No. Most do. Some dwell in other dimensions (not the outer planes).
4) However you want. They can feud (we have our Dominion agents and the Mythos stuff at war, for example) or you can have them all be extensions of the same thing (my recommendation for obyriths and qlippoth).
5) Up to you. My preference is the Mythos, since it came into existence first in this world (discounting the qlippoth, since their real-world incarnation is VERY different than the game version).
6) Also up to you. My preference again is the Outer Gods of the mythos.
7) I wouldn't implement them. I never really got into them, and the name always kinda felt a little silly anyway.
1. You said that a human can only gain 20 levels no matter what. I'm curious, because in 3.5 any human can gain as many levels as they want if they have enough XP. What would be the appropriate in-world reason for this? Maybe there is a certain capacity that every mortals possess? For example, a one terabyte file cannot be stored in a 900 gigabyte hard disk. Like this, the limit of advancement is 20th level and thus no matter how hard one tries, how many monsters one kills, he cannot reach the 21st level because that would exceed his own advancement capacity?
2. Is CR 30 the uppermost limitation of mortals? What if a creature with racial hit dice gains levels? For example, if a veiled master gains wizard levels, no matter how hard it tries, it cannot gain the 17th wizard level because that would make its CR 31 and thus exceed the limit of a mortal creature?
3. And, if this CR 30 wizard 16 veiled master somehow gains mythic tiers, what woud happen? Because 10 tiers equal 5 CR and thus 5 levels, if it gains 10 mythic tiers, its levels would decrease accordingly and thus it would become a 11th level wizard so that its final CR would not exceed 30, right?
4. Then, if a young red dragon becomes a 20th level fighter and 1,000 years pass, what would happen? He cannot possess all 20 levels because that would make his CR 42. Should I assume that as he grows old, no matter how hard he tries his levels would continuously decrease so that his CR wouldn't exceed 30, because no mortal can become more powerful than CR 30?
5. I think the CR 30 cap is too low. Well, maybe it's not that low for a pc, but I think a demigod's power cap should be CR 35 or 40. What do you think? In other words, if you can take a time machine and go back to 2013, would you make sure the uppermost CR a mortal can possess would be 40 and thus increase CR of the various demon lords accordingly?
6. Does that mean, though Groetus was once a human in your homebrew campaign, in Golarion that is not canon anymore?
7. I thought the caster levels of Sihedron and Dancing Hut are 25 and 30 because the authors didn't know Paizo will never publish epic rules. Anyway, it seems that no mortal can rach the 21st elvel. So if you can take a time machine and go back to 2012, would you make sure the caster level of these two items would be 20th?
8. If a wizard 20/archmage 10 character makes a magic item, would its caster level still be 20?
9. I really wished Paizo include epic spell like rules for mythic characters. Looks like Paizo doesn't want to that. What do you think about epic spells? Do you think the epic spells in 3.5 were too powerful that it would break the balance of the game seriously? In other words, do you think epic spells are too powerful for mythic archmages to use? Even for super powerful mythic characters or demigods?
10. I personally thought that the population of several countries of the Inner Sea region would be:
Cheliax: 15,000,000
Taldor: 10,000,000
Andoran 5,000,000
Galt 2,000,000
Are my estimations too high? Or too low?
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Creative Director
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Am I a loony for wanting an Inner Sea Cuisine book?
No. I wish there were more Pathfinder customers like you so we could justifiably do more content-heavy non-rules-heavy products like this without (unfortunately legitimately) worrying that a lack of new player options would make such a product a slow seller.
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Am I a loony for wanting an Inner Sea Cuisine book?No. I wish there were more Pathfinder customers like you so we could justifiably do more content-heavy non-rules-heavy products like this without (unfortunately legitimately) worrying that a lack of new player options would make such a product a slow seller.
I would be interested in an Inner Sea Cuisine book, but only if there are recipes included.
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1. You said that a human can only gain 20 levels no matter what. I'm curious, because in 3.5 any human can gain as many levels as they want if they have enough XP. What would be the appropriate in-world reason for this? Maybe there is a certain capacity that every mortals possess? For example, a one terabyte file cannot be stored in a 900 gigabyte hard disk. Like this, the limit of advancement is 20th level and thus no matter how hard one tries, how many monsters one kills, he cannot reach the 21st level because that would exceed his own advancement capacity?
2. Is CR 30 the uppermost limitation of mortals? What if a creature with racial hit dice gains levels? For example, if a veiled master gains wizard levels, no matter how hard it tries, it cannot gain the 17th wizard level because that would make its CR 31 and thus exceed the limit of a mortal creature?
3. And, if this CR 30 wizard 16 veiled master somehow gains mythic tiers, what woud happen? Because 10 tiers equal 5 CR and thus 5 levels, if it gains 10 mythic tiers, its levels would decrease accordingly and thus it would become a 11th level wizard so that its final CR would not exceed 30, right?
4. Then, if a young red dragon becomes a 20th level fighter and 1,000 years pass, what would happen? He cannot possess all 20 levels because that would make his CR 42. Should I assume that as he grows old, no matter how hard he tries his levels would continuously decrease so that his CR wouldn't exceed 30, because no mortal can become more powerful than CR 30?
5. I think the CR 30 cap is too low. Well, maybe it's not that low for a pc, but I think a demigod's power cap should be CR 35 or 40. What do you think? In other words, if you can take a time machine and go back to 2013, would you make sure the uppermost CR a mortal can possess would be 40 and thus increase CR of the various demon lords accordingly?
1) 3.5 is a different game. It's not a game we directly support anymore, and we've gone in different directions. If you prefer that model of game, where there IS no level cap, feel free to play 3.5 or use some of those products to add on to your Pathfinder game, but that is SO not the type of game I want to play or run or create. The appropriate in world reason for this is that this represents the limit of what a mortal mind and body can achieve. Once you hit 20th level, you need to look to other ways to improve your character, mostly limited to magic item accumulation or gaining templates or earning special GM awards. A better option would be to retire your character and start a new one at first level, and perhaps use the slow XP track to spread out how long you play your character.
2) CR 30 is the cap for things with statistics. Mortals need statistics. So, yes, that's the uppermost limitation. And since an NPC doesn't "gain levels" by earning XP (that's STRICTLY a PC thing, to be used in tracking game progress), it's not a worry. The GM decides when an NPC earns a level or grows more powerful as needed for the story. If you want to let your monsters and NPCs exceed CR 30, you can do so, but you're playing an increasingly different game than the one we publish at that point, and that's not a game I am interested in providing advice for or answering questions for.
3) Regardless of how you reach CR 30, that's the end. Beyond that is your GM's territory.
4) Same thing. Asking the same question over and over and over with different examples won't get me to change my answer.
5) I think it's just fine, hence why I pushed for it to be the cap. Regardless of anyone's opinion, a game NEEDS a cap so as to be able to present stories logically. We chose CR 30. Choosing CR 35 or CR 40 or CR 43 or CR 430 or CR 9492384 is just as arbitrary, but the larger that number gets, the more diluted your foes get, and the more complicated and prone to breaking under its own weight the rules get. Think of the game engine as a car engine. Level 20 is akin to the speed limit. That's the "cap" for what society is designed for. The car's engine DOES allow you to go faster, but there's also a point at which the car's performance can't keep up with the speed and it begins to shake and shudder and damage itself when you push it into those higher numbers. And there's a point where you can't go faster no matter what, but in most cases, your car's wrecked and you might be dead from a crash before you get there.
If I took a time machine and went back to to 2013, I would keep the CR cap at 30.