Will there be an adventure path where there will be a greater emphasis on psychic magic? I only ask because some times I think Golorian could use a little Marvel Comics...
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Will there be an adventure path where there will be a greater emphasis on psychic magic? I only ask because some times I think Golorian could use a little Marvel Comics...
If you want superhero stuff, check Wrath of the Righteous. Mythic Adventures actually works pretty good in transitioning from the classic fantasy genre to a more superhero infused one.
That said, while there are certainly elements of Occult Adventuers in all of the Adventure Paths we have going forward, there's not one that I'd call a "psychic path" in the works before the next edition hits.
Right but I meant something like "Powerful psychics decide to run the world." or something like that...
Has Paizo ever considered a companion book that focused on areas and nations with large focuses on magic such as Nex, Geb, and the Mana Wastes?
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Has Paizo ever considered a companion book that focused on areas and nations with large focuses on magic such as Nex, Geb, and the Mana Wastes?
We've pretty much considered books on ALL of the nations and regions in the setting, including Nex and Geb and the Mana Wastes. We can't do them all at once, and have been producing them pretty much as fast as we can while sticking to topics that also support Adventure Paths where needed.
Eventually we'll get there.
Have you seen Castle Rock yet?Yes. Love it!
It being on Hulu was also the spur in my side that I needed to finally get rid of cable TV and switch entirely over to just using internet for my entertainment. And in so doing, saving myself about $160.00 a month in payments to Comcast. WOO HOO!
Congrats. I need to do that myself. Is Comcast your ISP, or do you use another?
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Congrats. I need to do that myself. Is Comcast your ISP, or do you use another?Have you seen Castle Rock yet?Yes. Love it!
It being on Hulu was also the spur in my side that I needed to finally get rid of cable TV and switch entirely over to just using internet for my entertainment. And in so doing, saving myself about $160.00 a month in payments to Comcast. WOO HOO!
Comcast is my ISP. I'd like to use another but I don't really have that option.
Hi James,
What’s the vibe been around the office since the release of the playtest?
Also, what route are you guys taking toward NPCs that have their classes no longer existing in the new edition? The example I originally thought of were the winter witches of Irrisen. A lot of their flavour is tied to the fact that they are “witches”. If I wanted one to show up in my home game of second edition should I just make an ice themed wizard or sorcerer and flavour them as a “witch”?
Hey, James! I have a couple questions:
I noticed that 2nd Ed goblins are listed as CE, but 1st Ed and Starfinder have them listed as NE. Now I know you can't speak to Starfinder, but why did their alignment shift for Second Edition? Additionally, I noticed that bugbears also changed (in fact, it looks like they swapped alignments with goblins); why is this?
Also, with the Sandpoint book being released soon(ish) I was curious if a resident of the Hinterlands will be in it. When I ran Rise of the Runelords for my gaming group I had a character who was a bronze dragon-blooded sorcerer and who was very interested in Tiruvinn, the Rusty Dragon's namesake. Will Tiruvinn be included in the Sandpoint book?
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Hi James,
What’s the vibe been around the office since the release of the playtest?
Also, what route are you guys taking toward NPCs that have their classes no longer existing in the new edition? The example I originally thought of were the winter witches of Irrisen. A lot of their flavour is tied to the fact that they are “witches”. If I wanted one to show up in my home game of second edition should I just make an ice themed wizard or sorcerer and flavour them as a “witch”?
The vibe is a mix of exhaustion, excitement, nervousness, stress, and hope, I guess?
At this point, with the way monsters and NPCs are constructed being their own rules rather than following PC rules, this not only lets us stat up things like Witch NPCs without needing a full class build, but lets us do a lot more creative elements with NPCs; we can give them unique abilities to make them hit their expected numbers for a desired challenge, for example, without having to load them down with ability score enhancing stuff, rings of protection, amulets of natural armor, and other "clogging" items that only further support the so-called "Christmas tree effect." This lets us give out more interesting treasure as items carried by NPCs that result in a more varied mix of treasure for PCs to discover, but also decouples things from us so that we have full freedom of how we want to stat up the NPCs.
Of course, you can also stat up NPCs using the PC rules, and when/if we do something like a witch NPC who may some day be done up as a PC class, we'll want to do so smartly and think forward so that whatever abilities we might want a PC to have access to, but that shouldn't be too hard since we can just look at the 1st edition witch for ideas.
That all said, if we roll back this method of creating monsters and NPCs to something else, it might get more complicated, and we'll have to do something like we did in 1st edition Pathfinder. There, we mentioned things like witches and alchemists and oracles a year or more before we ever did up the classes in Advanced Player's Guide, but we weren't able to give those characters stats until the book was done. So in that case, we'd just not be able to use these characters in adventures for a while, which is a shame.
In the meantime, if you want to make one for your game, you can just call it a witch in-game and the PCs won't know the difference. (Alas, the monster/NPC creation guidelines are not part of the playtest so you'll need to either wing for now.)
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How do goblins, which hardly seem able to construct basic buildings, do their metalworking?
I'm particularly curious about how such an uncivilized folk could "drill" holes in their dogslicers with what looks like a variable ~1" radius without... you know... power tools.
Goblins can do metalworking the same way any other creature can—by making Craft checks in the appropriate skill. If they wanna do it better, they take ranks or feats to bolster the Craft skill.
Most goblins do not bother with this, though, because it's a lot easier to go out and raid or scavenge for the metal stuff you want.
As for their dogslicers, they don't "drill" holes in them as much as they punch holes in them using a spike and a hammer or something along those lines.
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Hey, James! I have a couple questions:
I noticed that 2nd Ed goblins are listed as CE, but 1st Ed and Starfinder have them listed as NE. Now I know you can't speak to Starfinder, but why did their alignment shift for Second Edition? Additionally, I noticed that bugbears also changed (in fact, it looks like they swapped alignments with goblins); why is this?
Also, with the Sandpoint book being released soon(ish) I was curious if a resident of the Hinterlands will be in it. When I ran Rise of the Runelords for my gaming group I had a character who was a bronze dragon-blooded sorcerer and who was very interested in Tiruvinn, the Rusty Dragon's namesake. Will Tiruvinn be included in the Sandpoint book?
Because goblins, as we've presented them over the course of over a decade in Pathfinder, act more chaotic than neutral. And because they tend to worship Lamashtu, who is chaotic. And for bugbears, their role is and always has been that of the sinister loner, the boogeyman, the monster serial killer who lurks in the shadows, doesn't really form into groups, and enjoys evil for the sake of evil—this mindset is closest to some parallels to Norgorber and the daemons, and represents a desire to simply do evil without having it be influenced by law or chaos.
Hobgoblins have always been pretty solid at lawful evil, in any event, so no change there.
Tiruvinn is indeed a part of the Sandpoint book. Not in a big way, but... you'll see!
Dear James Jacobs,
I heard a rumor that Todd Stewart is doing another planar book. Is that true?
...
At this point, with the way monsters and NPCs are constructed being their own rules rather than following PC rules, this not only lets us stat up things like Witch NPCs without needing a full class build, but lets us do a lot more creative elements with NPCs; we can give them unique abilities to make them hit their expected numbers for a desired challenge, for example, without having to load them down with ability score enhancing stuff, rings of protection, amulets of natural armor, and other "clogging" items that only further support the so-called "Christmas tree effect."
...
But why this solution?
The Christmas tree effect needs to be removed from pcs, ergo, npcs built on the pc paradigm shouldn't be subject to the effect either. So, what need is there to avoid the pc method of chargen? Certainly, the unreleased classes is an issue, but I'm not sure why it would matter that much. A witch for example can easily be a wizard with a few class feats, which work just fine as pc options. Once new classes come out, you can restat the characters to better resemble the desired powers of the character. PCs even have an option that can be exploited for explaining this effect if you really felt it needed in-game explaining, it is called retraining.
There is not a lot of things worse than being told you can't learn to do something the bad guys do for reasons that don't exist in-game.
So I'm not sure what benefit there could be other than dropping any pretense of making abilities "balanced," but since balance is a pointless, worth-little, and unobtainable goal for an rpg, I'm not sure I count that as a loss really.
So, why make seperate rules for building npcs?
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So, why make seperate rules for building npcs?
Because it makes building NPCs and monsters easier, and because the needs of an NPC/Monster in play are very different from a PC in play, and therefore they benefit from having different rules.
Because it's simultaneously easier for the GM to use this method to create NPC and monsters AND opens up things for the GM to be more creative and puts less restraints on GM imagination and story needs for those NPCs and monsters.
The GM can ALREADY do a lot of things with the game that the PCs can't. Why should creating NPCs and monsters be any different? This doesn't mean we won't stop creating player options, after all.
Of course, it's a playtest so we might go back to a prior monster/NPC build philosophy if that's what makes sense... but for now I really hope folks warm to this new system, which is more like Starfinder's method. Having used both systems now to create monsters for the two games (Pathfinder 1st and Starfinder), I found the monster creation for Starfinder to be quicker and more enjoyable, especially since I built the same monsters in each in a few cases.
AKA: In Starfinder, I did the creation by hand with little problem. In Pathfinder I need a massive excel spreadsheet.
... because the needs of an NPC/Monster in play are very different from a PC in play,...
Uh, what? The idea of pcs and npcs having different mechanical needs is antithetical to the purpose of the rules and even the entire concept of roleplaying.
What do you think a roleplaying game is?
... In Pathfinder I need a massive excel spreadsheet.
Why do you need an excel sheet? I've never had such need with 3.x/pf and I've been gming for nearly 20 years. I've even been using pathfinder 1 since it's playtest.
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Why not convert all the existing classes right away instead of pacing them out?
If it's a money thing, I understand, but why not do it anyway now, keep the class rules internal for Paizo's eyes only, and use those secret rules for NPCs when you need them in mods/products?
IMO this would achieve the same result, provide 'sneak peaks' of those upcoming classes to the GMs running the games, and would not alienate those who want to understand how the car engine works.
By chance do you have any idea what the Deamon in Dave Gross' Kings of Chaos was that was hanging with the other baddies was? He was described as spiderlike and would suck blood but once again I'm apparently really bad at identifying Abbadon's natives
Hi James,
One of the PCs in the campaign I'm running is a lawful good cleric of Abadar, and unbeknownst to him, an upcoming plot arc will feature members of a lawful evil sect of Abadar (including clerics, inquisitors, and an antipaladin) in a majorly-antagonistic role.
I know my player and I think he'll do just fine in roleplaying this, I'm not personally sure how to frame the interactions between the morally-opposed sects of the same deity, and I also don't know how Abadar would view this kind of (likely armed and deadly) conflict.
Any tips on how to handle this?
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... because the needs of an NPC/Monster in play are very different from a PC in play,...Uh, what? The idea of pcs and npcs having different mechanical needs is antithetical to the purpose of the rules and even the entire concept of roleplaying.
What do you think a roleplaying game is?
Why do you need an excel sheet? I've never had such need with 3.x/pf and I've been gming for nearly 20 years. I've even been using pathfinder 1 since it's playtest.
... In Pathfinder I need a massive excel spreadsheet.
I'm not getting into an argument here about this. You need to voice your concerns about playtest elements in the playtest forums. And I hope you do so in a more calm and reasonable manner that isn't so argumentative.
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Why not convert all the existing classes right away instead of pacing them out?
If it's a money thing, I understand, but why not do it anyway now, keep the class rules internal for Paizo's eyes only, and use those secret rules for NPCs when you need them in mods/products?
IMO this would achieve the same result, provide 'sneak peaks' of those upcoming classes to the GMs running the games, and would not alienate those who want to understand how the car engine works.
Again, this is now playtest feedback and doesn't belong in this thread.
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By chance do you have any idea what the Deamon in Dave Gross' Kings of Chaos was that was hanging with the other baddies was? He was described as spiderlike and would suck blood but once again I'm apparently really bad at identifying Abbadon's natives
Probably a sanguidaemon.
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Hi James,
One of the PCs in the campaign I'm running is a lawful good cleric of Abadar, and unbeknownst to him, an upcoming plot arc will feature members of a lawful evil sect of Abadar (including clerics, inquisitors, and an antipaladin) in a majorly-antagonistic role.
I know my player and I think he'll do just fine in roleplaying this, I'm not personally sure how to frame the interactions between the morally-opposed sects of the same deity, and I also don't know how Abadar would view this kind of (likely armed and deadly) conflict.
Any tips on how to handle this?
Tip 1: When the campaign begins, you should know big unusual events like this, and should warn players that "Playing a worshiper of Abadar might be unusaully challenging in this campaign, so keep that in mind." That's a slight spoiler that something weird will be coming up, but that's fine; it's more important to let players know that the norm will not be the norm. One good potential option here would be to design a set of campaign traits and have one of them be "Enemy of the Faith" or the like and have the PC have a history clashing with lawful evil Abadar worshipers, so that by reading that trait (whether or not anyone takes it) all the players know that lawful evil Abadar worshipers are a thing in your game.
Tip 2: How Abadar views conflict is up to you, but chances are better than good he'd view the lawful evil sect as heretics, and if their actions started to directly harm other things of importance to his faith, such as city stability or the lawful neutral side of the church on a large scale, the lawful evil worshipers would find themselves to be ex-clerics very soon. And perhaps ripe for worshiping Asmodeus. As for how it interacts with your Abadar worshiping PC... that's gonna be some challenging but quite fun roleplaying... and if the goal there becomes the PC helping to wipe out a troublesome heretical group of the faith to restore the church's name, that's cool.
Do you have any advice for my daughter about to embark into 9th grade.
Dear Mister Jacobs,
I was recently re-watching Deadpool (great movie btw), and I had a thought strike me (ouch); What would you say would be each of the Iconics theme songs?
I am calm, and I'm sorry for making you think otherwise. I'm autistic, human communication is sometimes beyond me, especially in a medium that captures a maximum of 7% of what would be communicated face to face.
The questions are not about the playtest. I asked them to better understand you and your way of thinking, both to better deal with players who think like you (to recognize such thinking and to mesh them with the rest of the group more smoothly, and to head off problems where such thinking would lead to troublesome expectations), and to better refine my model of the different playstyles, not to mention the additional context for your answers to other questions.
The excel sheet question matters for all the above reasons but also would give me insight to better design, arrange, and present rules and options.
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Dear Mister Jacobs,
I was recently re-watching Deadpool (great movie btw), and I had a thought strike me (ouch); What would you say would be each of the Iconics theme songs?
No idea. Also, with 40 or so iconics... I can't really answer this question in anything approximating a short amount of time. If you want ONE iconic's theme song... maybe. But you'll have to ask for a specific iconic.
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I am calm, and I'm sorry for making you think otherwise. I'm autistic, human communication is sometimes beyond me, especially in a medium that captures a maximum of 7% of what would be communicated face to face.
The questions are not about the playtest. I asked them to better understand you and your way of thinking, both to better deal with players who think like you (to recognize such thinking and to mesh them with the rest of the group more smoothly, and to head off problems where such thinking would lead to troublesome expectations), and to better refine my model of the different playstyles, not to mention the additional context for your answers to other questions.
The excel sheet question matters for all the above reasons but also would give me insight to better design, arrange, and present rules and options.
Then rephrase the questions in ways that don't reference the playtest, and keep in mind I'm here to answer questions, not to get into long discussions. Ask and when I answer, accept my answer as best you can. If there are follow-up questions, feel free to ask those, but don't ask me to justify my answers.
And if they're playtest related, I'll STILL ask you to move those comments and questions to the playtest forums.
Alright one iconic in particular; Seelah's theme song?
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No idea. Also, with 40 or so iconics... I can't really answer this question in anything approximating a short amount of time. If you want ONE iconic's theme song... maybe. But you'll have to ask for a specific iconic.Dear Mister Jacobs,
I was recently re-watching Deadpool (great movie btw), and I had a thought strike me (ouch); What would you say would be each of the Iconics theme songs?
Let's go with the Silver Stabber, the Lady of a Thousand (picked) Locks, Merisel- what's her theme song?
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Let's go with the Silver Stabber, the Lady of a Thousand (picked) Locks, Merisel- what's her theme song?No idea. Also, with 40 or so iconics... I can't really answer this question in anything approximating a short amount of time. If you want ONE iconic's theme song... maybe. But you'll have to ask for a specific iconic.Dear Mister Jacobs,
I was recently re-watching Deadpool (great movie btw), and I had a thought strike me (ouch); What would you say would be each of the Iconics theme songs?
Hmmm... maybe... "Razors.out"
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Your insight please Mr. Jacobs
1. Admittedly not the most efficient use of a 1rst and 2nd lvl spell but is there anything interfering with the idea of daisy chaining Poisoned Egg and Alchemical Tinkering so that you gain access to all alchemical items 90 gp and below?
2. Would you say the effects of the transmuted item remain after the spells' minute timer is completed as long as they have been used beforehand (ie create Duskeye to give low-light vision for 4 hours or antitoxin/antiplague bonuses for 1 hour)?
The effects gained aren't exactly game breaking for the spell levels but they do add a lot of useful utility.
First, please ask one question per post; this helps me to manage my time here and prevents folks from starting to make walls of text where they ask 10 or 20 or more questions at once.
Second, I don't answer rules questions here; those need to be asked on the rules forum so the design team will see them and so folks can flag them for FAQ posts and thus so everyone can benefit from the answers and discussion, not just those who manage to keep up with this thread. The same goes for Playtest-related questions, except they should be asked in the appropriate playtest forum.
I am calm, and I'm sorry for making you think otherwise. I'm autistic, human communication is sometimes beyond me, especially in a medium that captures a maximum of 7% of what would be communicated face to face.
The questions are not about the playtest. I asked them to better understand you and your way of thinking, both to better deal with players who think like you (to recognize such thinking and to mesh them with the rest of the group more smoothly, and to head off problems where such thinking would lead to troublesome expectations), and to better refine my model of the different playstyles, not to mention the additional context for your answers to other questions.
The excel sheet question matters for all the above reasons but also would give me insight to better design, arrange, and present rules and options.
Then rephrase the questions in ways that don't reference the playtest, and keep in mind I'm here to answer questions, not to get into long discussions. Ask and when I answer, accept my answer as best you can. If there are follow-up questions, feel free to ask those, but don't ask me to justify my answers.
And if they're playtest related, I'll STILL ask you to move those comments and questions to the playtest forums.
What do you consider to be a roleplaying game? As in what makes it an rpg instead of something else, and is that something exclusively different to being a boardgame/cardgame, or something that can also be those other types? Or is it even a worthwhile distinction for you?
Who named the Iconics?
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What do you consider to be a roleplaying game? As in what makes it an rpg instead of something else, and is that something exclusively different to being a boardgame/cardgame, or something that can also be those other types? Or is it even a worthwhile distinction for you?
Any game in which you assume the persona of a character who isn't you and you immerse yourself in that character to make choices to influence the direction of the story is a roleplaying game, where the end of the story does not mean the end of the game.
A boardgame is a game where you don't do this, and there's specific rules for a win or loss and an end game.
A cardgame is a game played with cards.
There can be crossover between them all, of course.
And of course it is a worthwhile distinction for me. But again, there can be crossover. You can have a roleplaing game that's also a boardgame, for example.
I would say, as examples:
Pathfinder is an RPG.
Poker is a card game
Pathfinder Adventure Card Game is an RPG/card game.
Monopoly is a board game.
Zombicide is an RPG/board game.
Kingdom Death is an RPG/card/board game.
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Who named the Iconics?
That's different for all of them. I named Merisiel, Seoni, Kyra, and several others. Our art director at the time, Sean Glenn, named Valeros. James Sutter named Seelah. And so on... after that it gets murky though as to who named whom.
Did you have any involvement in the development of the playtest rules? I know you had previously expressed that you would have rather done Clerics very differently in Pathfinder and at least some of that appears to have found its way into the playtest.
Can you clarify the responsibilities in Korvosa of the various law enforcement sects that are active? I'm pretty clear on the role of the Gray Maidens and I suspect the Korvosan guard is essentially the police force. I'm most curious as to the principles responsibilities of the Sable Company Marines and Hellknight order and how/if these organizations view their roles, especially before/after Curse of the Crimson Throne.
Thanks as always for your generosity with your time and insights.
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So when outsiders die for real, their bodies don't fade away right? Bit confused after reading one sentence in Doomsday Dawn in "Wait that can't be right" manner
Summoned creatures, which are often outsiders, fade away after they're slain.
Called outsider, or outsiders that have physically traveled via portal to the Material Plane, just drop dead like anything else.
There are a few exceptions. Balors, for example, explode when they die, regardless.
I'm not sure what sentence in Doomsday Dawn you're talking about, but it could be a typo or an error, or it could be that whatever creature it's talking about does normally fade away when it dies.
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Did you have any involvement in the development of the playtest rules? I know you had previously expressed that you would have rather done Clerics very differently in Pathfinder and at least some of that appears to have found its way into the playtest.
I gave a HUGE amount of feedback for the rules during multiple stages, but I didn't actually do any of the development work on it. The cleric changes are indeed something I wanted to have happen, for example.
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Can you clarify the responsibilities in Korvosa of the various law enforcement sects that are active? I'm pretty clear on the role of the Gray Maidens and I suspect the Korvosan guard is essentially the police force. I'm most curious as to the principles responsibilities of the Sable Company Marines and Hellknight order and how/if these organizations view their roles, especially before/after Curse of the Crimson Throne.
Thanks as always for your generosity with your time and insights.
There are several groups of law enforcers in Korvosa. They break down like this:
Sable Company: An elite, hippogriff company of marines who report to the castle seneschal; they're like special forces... SWAT team types who are called in for particularly dangerous missions. They also patrol the skies above the city... but not the city streets itself. During the Curse of the Crimson Throne they are disbanded. After... we haven't said much but there's not much going on with them any more. They haven't yet really recovered.
Korvosan Guard: The standard city guard—Korvosa's police. Their role is largely unchanged but marginalized during Curse of the Crimson Throne, and by the end of the campaign those who remain have largely transitioned over to an almost freedom fighter/rebel role. After the AP, they return to their standard role as the city guard.
Gray Maidens: These came about during the Curse of the Crimson Throne adventure path. Think of them as stormtroopers. They're what the queen uses to replace the Sable Company and Korvosan Guard and Hellknights entirely. After the AP, they break up into multiple smaller mercenary units with no real political power in Korvosa.
Hellknights: These were hired by a prior queen several years ago to, in theory, help her rule. But it soon became apparent that the Hellknights of the Nail weren't interested in the queen's interpretation of law, and became their own self-governing group who keeps their fortress well outside of the city walls. They serve as an impartial force for law, a militaristic merceneary but not for hire order who don't have any official law enforcement role in Korvosa, but whose presence helps to curtail criminals nonetheless. During Curse of the Crimson Throne, the hellknights abandon the city. Their role in the region after the AP is not yet really detailed, but I overall they're no longer that welcome in Korvosa.
Dear Mister Jacobs,
I know there are several Arbiters at work in Korovsa, but only three are ever named. Are there others that might show up or be filled in later or is that something a clever GM can do?
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Dear Mister Jacobs,
I know there are several Arbiters at work in Korovsa, but only three are ever named. Are there others that might show up or be filled in later or is that something a clever GM can do?
If we didn't name them in Curse of the Crimson Throne or in Guide to Korvosa, chances of us naming the rest are very remote. Name them as you wish!