I really love the Pathfinder lore and artwork for the Oni in 1e,despite being a paizo newcomer for 2e, any thoughts on whether we'll see them make a return soon?
The Pit in particular is NOT too dangerous for 1st level. It's Sandpoint's local megadungeon. As long as the PCs start at the top and don't go too deep too fast, they should be fine.
Is there an adventure where the Pit is detailed?
What kinds of Planescape characters did you play (classes, factions, etc.)?
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I really love the Pathfinder lore and artwork for the Oni in 1e,despite being a paizo newcomer for 2e, any thoughts on whether we'll see them make a return soon?
I do have thoughts. Oni are great. They'll return to the game at some point... stay tuned!
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The Pit in particular is NOT too dangerous for 1st level. It's Sandpoint's local megadungeon. As long as the PCs start at the top and don't go too deep too fast, they should be fine.Is there an adventure where the Pit is detailed?
Not yet. I put a fair amount of detail about it into the Sandpoint book, and some day I would LOVE to put the Pit out as an adventure. I already ran an office campaign through the Pit over the course of a year some time back, so I've already got a lot of notes about the encounters in there.
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Uh, judging by art in Tomorrow Must Burn, are osyluths and gelugons both now permanently quadruped in 2e?
I'm bit weirded out by this new direction since not all D&D demons have new designs separate from their D&D counterparts ._.;
Having them separate designs from their D&D counterparts is the whole point of why we did this. The physical appearance of a thing is as protectable intellectual property as its words and flavor text, after all. For these two devils, giving them a quadruped look helps them to be very distinctive from just being copy-pasted from D&D.
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A question about world design: why did you decide to make Golarion's history as long as it is? 10,000 years (Earthfall-present) is way longer than the gap between even ancient hardly-known civilisations like the early Egyptians and the present, and it seems to cause difficulties in places (e.g., Thassilonian/Azlanti ruins all need to have some kind of magic that's prevented them from decaying; Divinity's tech needs some background work to explain why it lay there for so many millenia without being touched). And while Golarion's history is really rich, it's not obvious (to me at any rate) that it couldn't have been compressed into a third the length.
Because we were ambitious and wanted to have a very wide range of dates to play with as we continued to move forward through the real-world years. In hindsight, it's probably too many years, and it could have certainly stood to only be about 5000, but ... live and learn, I guess.
As it stands, having a 10,000 year recorded history (it's longer than that, but Earthfall smashed a lot of those records) does help us to step AWAY from the "it's like Earth but not" mode we use for so much of the world design philosophy.
And the result of having Thassilonian preservative magic and Divinity's tech having strange and unusual elements I feel kind of makes those things feel MORE interesting than if they were just "real world old."
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What kinds of Planescape characters did you play (classes, factions, etc.)?
My roommate who had plans to run that Planescape campaign didn't get it off the ground until the late 90s, alas, and so it's been a while... but I had three characters in that one.
1: I started with a halfing/tiefling who had a quasit father. He was named Myrmyxicus, and I think he was a bard... don't remember exactly other than that he acted a lot like our goblins act; crazy and capricious and kinda evil. He got killed 1/3 of the way through the campaign.
2: I replaced Myrmixicus with a halfling paladin named Thistle Ambermead. He got killed within two sessions, squashed by a pit fiend that he unwisely attacked when he was just 6th level or thereabouts (Planescape enjoyed throwing way too powerful monsters at you).
3: I replaced Thistle Ambermead with Lavinia Ameiko, an Aasimar from Kara-Tur. She was a rogue/master spy, and had a cohort named Chupo, a kobold samurai bodyguard. A lot of Lavinia Ameiko's character and some of her personality ended up transplanting into Pathfinder into Ameiko Kaijitsu of Sandpoint. She was a sensate. I don't remember what the other two's factions were.
The Pit in particular is NOT too dangerous for 1st level. It's Sandpoint's local megadungeon. As long as the PCs start at the top and don't go too deep too fast, they should be fine.
Hm. Did I miss a published adventure module?
Edit: never mind, I see you already answered this. I look forward to seeing the module... some day. :-)
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The Pit in particular is NOT too dangerous for 1st level. It's Sandpoint's local megadungeon. As long as the PCs start at the top and don't go too deep too fast, they should be fine.Hm. Did I miss a published adventure module?
Edit: never mind, I see you already answered this. I look forward to seeing the module... some day. :-)
My original proposal for the Sandpoint book would have been a 320 page hardcover that would have, among other things, included the Pit as a megadungeon, fully mapped out. Other books happened instead.
What? A 320 page hardcover that would be solely dedicated to a megadungeon? I'm really sad it didn't happen. If the Pit would take 320 pages, does that mean it is much bigger than any other megadungeons in the world, including the Candlestone Cavern, Hollow Mountain, Gallowspire and the Emerald Spire?
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What? A 320 page hardcover that would be solely dedicated to a megadungeon? I'm really sad it didn't happen. If the Pit would take 320 pages, does that mean it is much bigger than any other megadungeons in the world, including the Candlestone Cavern, Hollow Mountain, Gallowspire and the Emerald Spire?
Not what I said.
The outline I created for the 320 page version of Sandpoint spent about a hundred pages on the town and the hinterlands, about 100 pages on smaller encounter areas and plots and adventures in the town and region, and about 100 pages on the Pit. Even then, fitting all that I wanted in there was tough, and the final version had it skewed more toward 150 pages for the Pit and 50 pages for side encounters.
In the end, the first hundred pages or so ended up what saw print, in a somewhat abbreviated format. Originally the hinterlands had larger entries with rumors and intros like all of the locations in the town itself, but since I had to squeeze sites like the Old Light and whatnot into smaller sections in town, there was some compression.
An adventure set in the Pit would, in theory, have the PCs going back and forth between that megadungeon and Sandpoint and would take folks from 1st to about 10th level or thereabouts. I could do that in 320 pages pretty easily. Or in half that space wiht a bit more squeezing.
Right now the main thing keeping this from becoming a thing that's officially on the schedule is the schedule itself. We've got a lot of other things we're trying to handle, and so far, a Pit adventure isn't something that's been officially put on any lists.
A 320 page Pit adventure wouldn't necessarily make it physically bigger that, say, Hollow Mountain (it's not), but it would make it more detailed. It's CERTAINLY larger than Emerald Spire though, which is really the only megadungeon we've published yet.
The ancestral home of the Aztec peoples are called Aztlan. It is strangely similar to Azlant. Is it a coincidence?
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With the absurdly high amount of deific entities in the Pathfinder setting will we ever see more books like Inner Sea Gods, Inner Sea Faiths, Faiths of Golarion, or Book of the Damned that properly expand and flesh out these minor deifics?
People widely make use of BotD pages 8-108. I don't know a single player that would ever pick the minor deifics from pages 110 to 133 in that book due to how little information there actually is to go on.
It's a part of the setting that saw a lot of teasing and not a lot of delivery despite there being a significant amount of players and GMs that would love that kind of content.
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With the absurdly high amount of deific entities in the Pathfinder setting will we ever see more books like Inner Sea Gods, Inner Sea Faiths, Faiths of Golarion, or Book of the Damned that properly expand and flesh out these minor deifics?
People widely make use of BotD pages 8-108. I don't know a single player that would ever pick the minor deifics from pages 110 to 133 in that book due to how little information there actually is to go on.
It's a part of the setting that saw a lot of teasing and not a lot of delivery despite there being a significant amount of players and GMs that would love that kind of content.
I wouldn't call them absurdly high. More deity options means more options for clerics, in the same way more weapons mean more options for fighters or more animals mean more options for druid companions, etc.
We'll continue to expand information on all the deities going forward—with Lost Omens: Gods and Magic being the next place coming down the pipe.
One of my philosophies of game design is that for every bit of lore I expand upon and detail, I want to introduce two more paths going forward for new lore. In the same way a lumberjack plants 2 trees for every one they cut down, this way I constantly ensure that no matter how much I detail in the game, there's more to expand into than when I started.
That's why, in a book like Book of the Damned, I made sure to introduce a lot more fiendish demigods and their ilk beyond the ones who got a two page entry.
My original proposal for the Sandpoint book would have been a 320 page hardcover that would have, among other things, included the Pit as a megadungeon, fully mapped out. Other books happened instead.The Pit in particular is NOT too dangerous for 1st level. It's Sandpoint's local megadungeon. As long as the PCs start at the top and don't go too deep too fast, they should be fine.Hm. Did I miss a published adventure module?
Edit: never mind, I see you already answered this. I look forward to seeing the module... some day. :-)
You should have thrown a tantrum and insisted on that thing. I've been dreaming for a box set like this for a while. In general, how much freedom do you feel you guys have at Paizo to try out of the norm fun stuff like this?
The ancestral home of the Aztec peoples are called Aztlan. It is strangely similar to Azlant. Is it a coincidence?It is a coincidence.
Isn't Azlant some kind a place in the Narnia world? or the name of that lion or something?
Right now the main thing keeping this from becoming a thing that's officially on the schedule is the schedule itself. We've got a lot of other things we're trying to handle, and so far, a Pit adventure isn't something that's been officially put on any lists.
Why don't you yell "HOLD MY CALLS!" and storm the CEO's office already? :)
What kinds of Planescape characters did you play (classes, factions, etc.)?My roommate who had plans to run that Planescape campaign didn't get it off the ground until the late 90s, alas, and so it's been a while... but I had three characters in that one.
1: I started with a halfing/tiefling who had a quasit father. He was named Myrmyxicus, and I think he was a bard... don't remember exactly other than that he acted a lot like our goblins act; crazy and capricious and kinda evil. He got killed 1/3 of the way through the campaign.
2: I replaced Myrmixicus with a halfling paladin named Thistle Ambermead. He got killed within two sessions, squashed by a pit fiend that he unwisely attacked when he was just 6th level or thereabouts (Planescape enjoyed throwing way too powerful monsters at you).
3: I replaced Thistle Ambermead with Lavinia Ameiko, an Aasimar from Kara-Tur. She was a rogue/master spy, and had a cohort named Chupo, a kobold samurai bodyguard. A lot of Lavinia Ameiko's character and some of her personality ended up transplanting into Pathfinder into Ameiko Kaijitsu of Sandpoint. She was a sensate. I don't remember what the other two's factions were.
These characters sound like a lot of fun. Matter of fact, I find (at this point) the Pathfinder outer planes lore to be equally rich if not richer than Planescape was towards the end. The only thing we need to make a cool Golarion plane game is some kind of box set containing adventure and some kind of source book. Somehow, magic happens when you put things in a box (no pun intended towards the Samberg/Timberlake masterpiece here...)
An AP set entirely in the planes, while cool, wouldn't get the same vibe... a framework for GMs to run their own stories is needed, and a cool home base for PCs in the planes need to be described (I don't think Axis works as a PC hangout... I'd love to see the domain of Cayden Cailean explored, and some kind of Adventurers' Guild based close to his favorite tavern, or something...)
Any chance for a non-standard crazy fun thing like that to happen at some point? :)
Dear James Jacobs,
If Gallowspire is pretty much toast, does that mean it is no longer a mega dungeon?
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1: I started with a halfing/tiefling who had a quasit father. He was named Myrmyxicus, and I think he was a bard... don't remember exactly other than that he acted a lot like our goblins act; crazy and capricious and kinda evil. He got killed 1/3 of the way through the campaign.
That name sounds familiar... did an NPC with that name (presumably of your design) appear somewhere in Dungeon magazine?
Thank you! ^_^
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In general, how much freedom do you feel you guys have at Paizo to try out of the norm fun stuff like this?
More often lately than before. A big part of the problem before was that the subscription model really hampered our ability to change formats for books that were locked in to 64 pages. That restriction is relaxing now that we're doing fewer and larger books.
But also, another part of the problem is that books about feats and spells and classes and magic items simply sell better than adventures overall, because everyone at the table buys PC facing books while only the GM buys adventures, so if it comes down to doing a 320 page book about PC rules OR a 320 page book that's mostly adventure and world lore... we generally go with the one that will sell more.
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Isn't Azlant some kind a place in the Narnia world? or the name of that lion or something?The ancestral home of the Aztec peoples are called Aztlan. It is strangely similar to Azlant. Is it a coincidence?It is a coincidence.
Turns out that with an alphabet that contains a limited number of letters and a language that has rules for how things are spelled, there's a limited number of words you can make up. Over the course of centuries, there will be word combinations that have similar sounds or spellings.
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Right now the main thing keeping this from becoming a thing that's officially on the schedule is the schedule itself. We've got a lot of other things we're trying to handle, and so far, a Pit adventure isn't something that's been officially put on any lists.Why don't you yell "HOLD MY CALLS!" and storm the CEO's office already? :)
1) Because I don't get phone calls pretty much ever.
2) And I think you overestimate my power at Paizo to get things done.
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Dear James Jacobs,
If Gallowspire is pretty much toast, does that mean it is no longer a mega dungeon?
It's just a dungeon now. And since it was originally built to be a mega-dungeon for mythic characters, and we don't know if or how that power level of stuff plays out in 2nd edition yet anyway, it's fine for it to be depowered, sized down, and all that.
Doesn't mean that wherever Tar-Baphon ends up next won't be more dangerous than Gallowspire, of course.
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These characters sound like a lot of fun. Matter of fact, I find (at this point) the Pathfinder outer planes lore to be equally rich if not richer than Planescape was towards the end. The only thing we need to make a cool Golarion plane game is some kind of box set containing adventure and some kind of source book. Somehow, magic happens when you put things in a box (no pun intended towards the Samberg/Timberlake masterpiece here...)
An AP set entirely in the planes, while cool, wouldn't get the same vibe... a framework for GMs to run their own stories is needed, and a cool home base for PCs in the planes need to be described (I don't think Axis works as a PC hangout... I'd love to see the domain of Cayden Cailean explored, and some kind of Adventurers' Guild based close to his favorite tavern, or something...)
Any chance for a non-standard crazy fun thing like that to happen at some point? :)
Since the site truncates quoted threads if they get too long, please try not to write walls of text when you ask questions or quote long rambling blatherings I make. When I answer questions here I try to zip through them fast so I can keep up with the thread but still get work/life handled. And then here I am spending some of that question answering time not answering a question as a result.
Anyway.
We've gone to the planes a few times before in our adventures, and have visited deity domains now and then, and will continue to do so as the adventure makes sense.
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1: I started with a halfing/tiefling who had a quasit father. He was named Myrmyxicus, and I think he was a bard... don't remember exactly other than that he acted a lot like our goblins act; crazy and capricious and kinda evil. He got killed 1/3 of the way through the campaign.That name sounds familiar... did an NPC with that name (presumably of your design) appear somewhere in Dungeon magazine?
Thank you! ^_^
I really wish to see two campaign setting books(hopefully both 320 pages long!) for Azlant: one for the current, desolate ruins of Azlant, the other for the past, splendid Azlant. Will we be able to see these books eventually?
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I really wish to see two campaign setting books(hopefully both 320 pages long!) for Azlant: one for the current, desolate ruins of Azlant, the other for the past, splendid Azlant. Will we be able to see these books eventually?
Anything is possible.
Considering the length of this thread this may have been asked before but with PF2 out and using it as sort of a "reset" for some design ideas:
I always thought the Misfit Monsters Redeemed was an interesting take on some of D&Ds...more unusual monsters. And often PF1 Bestiaries barely got to use a paragraph or two for an entry due to the stat-block and artwork. So are there any PF1 creatures (original or still hold-overs from D&D history) that you'd love to give a flavor makeover?
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Considering the length of this thread this may have been asked before but with PF2 out and using it as sort of a "reset" for some design ideas:
I always thought the Misfit Monsters Redeemed was an interesting take on some of D&Ds...more unusual monsters. And often PF1 Bestiaries barely got to use a paragraph or two for an entry due to the stat-block and artwork. So are there any PF1 creatures (original or still hold-overs from D&D history) that you'd love to give a flavor makeover?
Yes. Lots. If I had to pick one at this point, it'd probably be urdefhans. They're from my hombrew setting and I've a LOT of lore about them, but their appearance and where we went with the lore after I introduced them in Into the Darklands took them in some strange directions.
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So now that good elemental lords are free, are there any notable effects related to elements noticeable in elemental planes or material planes? Like do elements or elementals behave different or feel different or anything similar like that.
Nope. No change, really, on a planar scale at all.
In First Edition, I was able to receive bonus spell slots with high Intelligence(if you were a sorcerer, then with high Charisma). But Second Edition Core Rulebook doesn't tell me whether I would receive bonus spell slots according to my ability score or not. Am I not be able to receive such bonus spell slots in Second Edition? Sorcerer is my favorite class, thus I really wish this particular rule stays.
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Hey, JJ,
In the CRB it is briefly talked about the possibilities of having gnomes or halflings half-elves (instead of human-based ones), goblin, halfling and dwarven half-orcs, and other, even less frequent possibilities. It does say, though, that by default, barring GM intervention, half-elves and half-orcs descend from humans.
In Golarion, is it possible, or even somewhat frequent, to meet these kinds of half-elves and half-orcs? Or the setting doesn't work like that and you'll only ever encounter these heritages in the human ancestry, and never in others?
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In First Edition, I was able to receive bonus spell slots with high Intelligence(if you were a sorcerer, then with high Charisma). But Second Edition Core Rulebook doesn't tell me whether I would receive bonus spell slots according to my ability score or not. Am I not be able to receive such bonus spell slots in Second Edition? Sorcerer is my favorite class, thus I really wish this particular rule stays.
There are no such things in 2nd edition. You don't get more spells for high ability scores, but also there aren't minimum scores required for higher level spells either.
The math and rules economics of the game are different—there's not a NEED for overfilling your spellcaster spell bucket. Especially now that cantrips are at will spells that grow more powerful automatically.
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Hey, JJ,
In the CRB it is briefly talked about the possibilities of having gnomes or halflings half-elves (instead of human-based ones), goblin, halfling and dwarven half-orcs, and other, even less frequent possibilities. It does say, though, that by default, barring GM intervention, half-elves and half-orcs descend from humans.
In Golarion, is it possible, or even somewhat frequent, to meet these kinds of half-elves and half-orcs? Or the setting doesn't work like that and you'll only ever encounter these heritages in the human ancestry, and never in others?
In 2nd edition, the rules and the setting are much more in sync. There's not a case of "This is how it works in the core rules, but it works differently in Golarion." If it's in the core, that's the baseline assumption for Golarion.
Thus, it's possible to have those rare ancestries in Golarion, but it's VERY rare. It's the type of thing that makes for a really interesting PC ancestry to help set that character apart from the norm, but it's not even CLOSE to "somewhat frequent." Look back at the 150+ adventure paths we've done so far for examples of how often these NPCs show up. I can't think of it happening even once, off the top of my head.
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Yes. Lots. If I had to pick one at this point, it'd probably be urdefhans. They're from my hombrew setting and I've a LOT of lore about them, but their appearance and where we went with the lore after I introduced them in Into the Darklands took them in some strange directions.Considering the length of this thread this may have been asked before but with PF2 out and using it as sort of a "reset" for some design ideas:
I always thought the Misfit Monsters Redeemed was an interesting take on some of D&Ds...more unusual monsters. And often PF1 Bestiaries barely got to use a paragraph or two for an entry due to the stat-block and artwork. So are there any PF1 creatures (original or still hold-overs from D&D history) that you'd love to give a flavor makeover?
Ooo i like them, they creepy.
What would be some changes, if you’re willing to share? The Rhoka is one thing I’m guessing.
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Yes. Lots. If I had to pick one at this point, it'd probably be urdefhans. They're from my hombrew setting and I've a LOT of lore about them, but their appearance and where we went with the lore after I introduced them in Into the Darklands took them in some strange directions.Considering the length of this thread this may have been asked before but with PF2 out and using it as sort of a "reset" for some design ideas:
I always thought the Misfit Monsters Redeemed was an interesting take on some of D&Ds...more unusual monsters. And often PF1 Bestiaries barely got to use a paragraph or two for an entry due to the stat-block and artwork. So are there any PF1 creatures (original or still hold-overs from D&D history) that you'd love to give a flavor makeover?
Ooo i like them, they creepy.
What would be some changes, if you’re willing to share? The Rhoka is one thing I’m guessing.
The Rhoka sword is one of the things that made it through unscathed, more or less. I'd just like them to not be dreessed like leather mummies so we can see that they have transparent skin. And they don't have eyes in their throats. For starters.
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The Rhoka sword is one of the things that made it through unscathed, more or less. I'd just like them to not be dreessed like leather mummies so we can see that they have transparent skin. And they don't have eyes in their throats. For starters.Yes. Lots. If I had to pick one at this point, it'd probably be urdefhans. They're from my hombrew setting and I've a LOT of lore about them, but their appearance and where we went with the lore after I introduced them in Into the Darklands took them in some strange directions.Considering the length of this thread this may have been asked before but with PF2 out and using it as sort of a "reset" for some design ideas:
I always thought the Misfit Monsters Redeemed was an interesting take on some of D&Ds...more unusual monsters. And often PF1 Bestiaries barely got to use a paragraph or two for an entry due to the stat-block and artwork. So are there any PF1 creatures (original or still hold-overs from D&D history) that you'd love to give a flavor makeover?
Ooo i like them, they creepy.
What would be some changes, if you’re willing to share? The Rhoka is one thing I’m guessing.
Wait, what eyes in throats? O_o; I've never seen picture of them with eye in throat and...
Ah, okay, darklands revisited says that besides the functional eyes in their eyeholes(that they often cover), they have additional one in throat? Okay that is news to me
But yeah, definitely true that you can't almost ever see their bones or internal organs in any of the pictures despite them being translucent...
How did these changes happen anyway?
In 2nd edition, the rules and the setting are much more in sync. There's not a case of "This is how it works in the core rules, but it works differently in Golarion." If it's in the core, that's the baseline assumption for Golarion.
Thus, it's possible to have those rare ancestries in Golarion, but it's VERY rare. It's the type of thing that makes for a really interesting PC ancestry to help set that character apart from the norm, but it's not even CLOSE to "somewhat frequent." Look back at the 150+ adventure paths we've done so far for examples of how often these NPCs show up. I can't think of it happening even once, off the top of my head.
Thank you JJ, so, they're extremely rare, okay.
Follow up question - in Varisia the main ancestries/ethnicities we can play are humans (Varisian, Shoanti, Taldan/Chelaxian) and goblins. These are the most numerous, afaik. Then you have the gnomes of Whistledown and the Sanos Forest, the aiudeen elves of Crying Leaf and Arsmeril, the orcs and half-orcs of Urglin, the dwarves of Janderhoff, and halflings both living in permanent settlements and travelling with Varisian caravans.
Am I getting something wrong, or forgetting something? What ancestry/ethnicity among the ones we have available in the CRB and in the upcoming Characters Guide would you say is the most widespread in the region? And the most characteristic, the one that's most emblematic of Varisia, other than the usual suspects?
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How did these changes happen anyway?
Darklands Revisited got assigned at the last minute on a VERY rushed schedule when we were overburdened with a bunch of stuff. I wasn't able to give any input on the outline beyond helping to pick the 10 topics, and we were fortunate to have an author who was able to write it in about 1/4 the amount of time we normally allow authors to write it. The development and editing was likewise pretty tight. Given the restrictions on that book, it's a miracle we got it out—it's got a LOT of great stuff in there, but there's some stuff that I would have liked to have had a chance to develop before we sent it to print is all, particularly regarding gugs and urdefhans (two of which I was , in the first version of the story, going to write up but had to bail on due to the fact that I had a lot of other projects going on at the same time that were also in dire straits, schedule-wise).
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Follow up question - in Varisia the main ancestries/ethnicities we can play are humans (Varisian, Shoanti, Taldan/Chelaxian) and goblins. These are the most numerous, afaik. Then you have the gnomes of Whistledown and the Sanos Forest, the aiudeen elves of Crying Leaf and Arsmeril, the orcs and half-orcs of Urglin, the dwarves of Janderhoff, and halflings both living in permanent settlements and travelling with Varisian caravans.
Am I getting something wrong, or forgetting something? What ancestry/ethnicity among the ones we have available in the CRB and in the upcoming Characters Guide would you say is the most widespread in the region? And the most characteristic, the one that's most emblematic of Varisia, other than the usual suspects?
Varisia was the first region of Golarion to really get fully detailed and explored, and as part of that we pushed hard to make sure ALL of the ancestries are options. ANY human ethnicity works there, but Varisians, Taldans, Ulfens, Shoanti, and Tiens are a bit more common than the others, I suppose—but no one would be surprised or confused by the presence of a Kellid or Keleshite or Mwangi or Vudrani character. Sandpoint, for example, has people of ALL human ethnicities represented therein.
Same goes for the other ancestries. There's plenty of elves in the region, with a small elven homeland region in Celwynvian. There's the sky citadel of Janderhoff not far from Korvosa. Gnomes have lots of small villages and regions in and around Sanos Forest, where there's some heavy fey stuff going on, but there's also the gnome village of Whistledown as well. Half-orcs have plenty of history in the Cinderlands, particularly around Urglin and along the eastern border. Halflings are pretty common all over the place in Varisia.
Varisia is supposed to be a diverse melting pot where any and every core PC option or human ethnicity is a good thematic choice to play. It's a frontier that's attracted people from throughout the inner sea. It's a "mini campaign setting," if you will... a bite-sized version of the Inner Sea Region as a whole.