Creative Director
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As a related process question, if you ever develop a 2e version of Distant Worlds or People of the Stars would you incorporate names and changes which debuted in starfinder such as the changes to Lashunta sexual dimorphism and gender or the fact that the species inhabiting many of the planets now have names for their species rather than being named foe their planet of origin?
Yes. We've already done that by calling the ratfolk ysoki in the Pathfinder Bestiary, for example.
Whether or not we'll do something like Distant Worlds for 2nd edition remains to be seen—in a way, the fact that Starfinder exists means it might make more sense to devote company resources for a product like that to Starfinder rather than Pathfinder.
What kind of music would you use to represent Magnimar?
Also, what kind of transportation exists around the city? Going up or down the seacleft always sounded exhausting.
For things like music for regions, I generally prefer to default to video game or movie soundtracks. Preferably ones that your players aren't super familiar with. If you use a soundtrack that's iconic and recognizable, like Jaws or Halloween or Conan the Barbarian, the music will take over and turn whatever you're trying to do into that movie.
Magnimar is a bustling city that has a LOT of impressive monuments in it, so something sweeping and grandiose would work best. No specific music comes to mind, but I'd start my search by looking into soundtracks for games like The Witcher 3, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, or Dragon Age and check out the background music that plays in large cities of games like that as a potential background music for the city. Or, for that matter, I'd look through Syrinscape's music! There's some stuff in there that's actually MADE for Magnimar/Varisia if I recall correctly!
As for transportation... mostly walking or horseback. While it's a city, it's not as enormous as you might think; you could walk from one end to the other in an hour or two, depending on traffic. Richer folks use carriages. As for going up and down the seacleft... that's not something everyone has to do every day, and for most of the citizens they might not need to make that trip often at all. Those who DO have to make it daily use horses or carriages.
Does Golarion have any funicular railways? There are several in the UK. The one in Folkestone is powered by water and gravity. Maps of mines seem to have rails and minecarts, so it doesn't seem much of a leap
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In the process of making this thing, I have come across a few questions about languages.
1. Is Ysoki a common or uncommon language? AoN lists it as common, but this seems odd as all other non-core ancestry languages (tengu, amurrun, iruxi, etc) are listed as uncommon in bestiary 1, where they appear for the first time (Tengu is actually not listed in the language table for Bestiary 1, despite appearing for the first time in a monster in that book).
2. How would one learn ancient osiriani, for the purposes of Living Monolith Dedication? is it an uncommon language one can just learn through multilingual, or is it closer to a secret language, seeing as it's probably not spoken at all anymore?
3. Is there a reason Leshies can't learn arboreal? I get why their "native" language is sylvan, but it seems like arboreal should at least be on the list of languages they can learn
In the future, please limit it to one question per post. I'm fine if that means someone posts three or five or ten or whatever number of posts in a row; it's just easier for me to answer questions that way rather than do list responses.
1) For whatever reason we didn't give the ratfolk their own language in the Bestiary. That was probably a typo. The simplest answer is that it should be in the same category as the other languages we introduced in the Bestiary: Uncommon. If only because these languages existed first in a GM book and not a player book. As with all commonalities, they'll change according to region and GM preference.
2) For all uncommon, rare, or unique options you talk with your GM. Some GMs will be cool with you just picking the option. Some will ask you to provide in-character lore and history to explain why your character should be granted access. Some will require you to RP out discovering it. We may or may not publish a feat or archetype or something some day that autogrants access, but we haven't yet. It's not a secret language. It's just not one that's in very common use today among the commonfolk.
3) Leshies can learn Arboreal just like any other race who seeks to learn a new language, but they don't auto learn it or treat it as common because they're not arboreals; they're leshies. Plants have as wide a range of categories as animals. That would be like letting humans auto learn or have automatic access to a language like gnoll or amurrun, simply because they're all animals.
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Does Golarion have any funicular railways? There are several in the UK. The one in Folkestone is powered by water and gravity. Maps of mines seem to have rails and minecarts, so it doesn't seem much of a leap
For things like this, my general first rule is to look up when the thing was invented in the real world. For funicular railways, wikepedia says they started popping up in the early 19th century; that's deep into what I think of as the "anachronism zone" but not in the "modern zone." It shares this spot with things like pianos and syringes, both of which are in Golarion, as well as trains with locomotives, which aren't so much.
In cases like this, I make a judgment call based entirely on personal preference and the aesthetics of the thing in question and for what sort of story it lets us tell. Note that just being able to tell a "good story" doesn't automatically mean it belongs in the setting.
At this point, I'd probably say that if there are any funicular railways, they'd be very small scale and in isolated areas. For minecarts, they're mostly powered by people or draft animals.
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The scene you're referring to where Iomedae "wrecks your face" is an error in our writing, not in her personality. We mistakingly leaned into the idea that PCs would be antagonistic toward her, and should have focused instead on how she can help you. It's the one thing I wish I could go back in time and fix about the storyline of that adventure path, because it's flat out wrong in how it presents Iomedae. I've said this before on these boards, but our lack of a process by getting story errata out means that this clarification and admission of error gets lost soon after each time I point it out or admit to it.
Are you keeping (or have you kept, if that part of the development is already over) an eye on how Owlcat are handling that scene to try and update how this encounter plays out?
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Creative Director
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The scene you're referring to where Iomedae "wrecks your face" is an error in our writing, not in her personality. We mistakingly leaned into the idea that PCs would be antagonistic toward her, and should have focused instead on how she can help you. It's the one thing I wish I could go back in time and fix about the storyline of that adventure path, because it's flat out wrong in how it presents Iomedae. I've said this before on these boards, but our lack of a process by getting story errata out means that this clarification and admission of error gets lost soon after each time I point it out or admit to it.Are you keeping (or have you kept, if that part of the development is already over) an eye on how Owlcat are handling that scene to try and update how this encounter plays out?
I've chatted with them about it, but their version of the game is not a point-by-point recreation of the tabletop experience. Neither was Kingmaker. The realities of how you play a single player computer game verses a group dynamic in a tabletop game are VERY different. I honestly think that a scene like this will play out much better in a computer game, since the creators have much more control over the situation and Iomedae only has to react to one human rather than a whole party of them.
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Do we know all of the new ancestries in the Lost Omens Ancestry Guide, or will there be some surprises when it releases?
"We" at Paizo do.
I haven't kept track of what we've revealed about the contents of the Ancestry Guide but typically we don't reveal all of a book's contents until much closer to its release date. There's still about a half year left before Ancestry Guide comes out. I suspect there's a lot more in there that folks don't know about yet unless they work at Paizo.
The APG mentions that the Tengu are COMMON in the Shackles, I am assuming more exceptions like these will pop-up as the regions are being fleshed out again and updated for the edition. If so, is any region consider "default"?
besides elves and half-anythings, what's the most common other race humans tend to happily settle down with?
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The APG mentions that the Tengu are COMMON in the Shackles, I am assuming more exceptions like these will pop-up as the regions are being fleshed out again and updated for the edition. If so, is any region consider "default"?
The whole point of the rarity system is so that we can present variations in the default. For the Inner Sea as a whole, the rules in the Core Rulebook are the default starting point, but the more we expand the setting into 2nd edition, the more that "default" is going to be the "start," with every region having their own different baseline that builds from there.
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Creative Director
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besides elves and half-anythings, what's the most common other race humans tend to happily settle down with?
Humans. Beyond that, humans being as varied and diverse as they are, you can't say what a "most common other [ancestry] that they'd happily settle down with" would be. That'd change region to region, nation to nation, city to city.
The other core ancestries are the most common of those choices though, overall. That's why they're core ancestries.
What is your favorite dungeon that you have written?
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What is your favorite dungeon that you have written?
I'm the most proud of Burnt Offerings overall.
The one I'm writing now, though, "Malevolence," is a LOT of fun. I'm not quite in the "I hate it and I'm an awful writer" phase of working on it (that usually comes near the end), but it's a lot of fun to do a full-on haunted house horror adventure. And a lot of fun writing a stand-alone adventure for Pathfinder... which I've never done, which kinda weirds me out. Unless I'm forgetting one, which would weird me out a little less...
I know you didn't write either of these other ones, but how does Malevolence compare to other haunt dungeons like Harrowstone from Carrion Crown #1 or Foxglove Manor from Rise of the Runelords #2?
Yes. The fleshwarp ancestry is something new. It's linked to the monster fleshwarps, but it's not a thing that's appeared in the game before.Aww.
Are there completely new ancestries that weren't in 1e or in 2e bestiaries?
Will fleshwarp be an ancestry or a versatile heritage? It would seem to make more sense as the latter, unless fleshwarping removes all traces of its victim's original ancestry.
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I know you didn't write either of these other ones, but how does Malevolence compare to other haunt dungeons like Harrowstone from Carrion Crown #1 or Foxglove Manor from Rise of the Runelords #2?
It doesn't really spend any time anywhere BUT the haunted house.
If you take the actual encounters in Foxglove Manor and Harrowstone and put them together, they won't equal the length of Malevloelnce.
Malevolence also leans MUCH harder into the element of researching the history of the haunting, so that your PCs will be learning more about WHY the house is haunted and not just who's haunting it.
While I didn't write Harrowstone or Skinsaw Murders, I did a VERY heavy development pass on them, which included a fair amount of rewriting, redrawing maps, and expanding the lore and story.
But in the case of Malevolence, it's 100% me.
It's also probably a bit more on the mature content/R-rated side than either Skinsaw or Harrowstone were.
Hi James! Are we getting another episode of Band of Bravos this week, or is everyone too exhausted after gencon? :)
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Hi James! Are we getting another episode of Band of Bravos this week, or is everyone too exhausted after gencon? :)
I believe the plan is to have an episode tomorrow. Payton's the one who runs the show, and is on vacation this week, but I think he's coming back a few hours early to run an episode... but we won't know for sure until tomorrow, I suppose.
What is your opinion on anime or stories in general in which the the character are aware they operate under RPG mechanics as opposed to standard fantasy? (Order of the Stick/Erfworld/Goblins/Konosuba vs Record of Lodoss War/Goblin Slayer/Vampire Hunter D)
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Creative Director
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What is your opinion on anime or stories in general in which the the character are aware they operate under RPG mechanics as opposed to standard fantasy? (Order of the Stick/Erfworld/Goblins/Konosuba vs Record of Lodoss War/Goblin Slayer/Vampire Hunter D)
I've not watched many of those, and the two I did try to watch (Lodoss War and Vampire Hunter D) didn't hook me, so I guess my opinion of this style of story is "No thanks; not for me, but I'm glad that they entertain others!"
Kinda the same as my opinion on Star Wars or musicals, I guess.
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And a lot of fun writing a stand-alone adventure for Pathfinder... which I've never done, which kinda weirds me out. Unless I'm forgetting one, which would weird me out a little less...Didn't you write Dawn of the Scarlet Sun?
I did, but that's also the adventure I'm least fond of and least proud of. It's too short, and it had to serve so many masters (support an Adventure Path, the Magnimar book, a flip-mat, Free RPG day, miniatures, and a few other things) that the experience of writing it was unpleasant enough that I kinda scrubbed it from my memory. I don't think of it as a stand-alone adventure because I don't feel like it can stand alone—it was never MEANT to stand alone, but instead get propped up by over a half-dozen other things going on at the same time.
AKA: I wrote it, yes, but it had so many other hands in there that it didn't feel like they were my words.
Technically yes, it's a stand alone adventure, but it felt like writing an advertisement, so I don't really count it in my head. It certainly wasn't an adventure whose plot was one I came up with or whose storyline I wanted to use to explore and tell something new in Golarion.
I AM happy if some folks enjoyed playing it, but if I were interviewing for a writing job it wouldn't be on my portfolio.
It certainly doesn't surprise me that I forgot I wrote it. It probably wasn't the LEAST fun thing I've had to write for a game (that dubious honor probably goes to my section of Elder Evils for 3.5 D&D or perhaps the Graz'zt Demonomicon article I wrote for Dragon after it went away from Paizo and went digital), but it isnt' nearly as fun as writing an adventure like Burnt Offerings or Song of Silver or Souls for Smuggler's Shiv or Brinewall Legacy or, in this case, Malevolence.
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Creative Director
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So is it decided yet what is status of Jazradan and Synchrony Device in 2e? :3 Ruins of Azlant spoilers if you want to avoid them!
My guess is no, since I don't know what these are off the top of my head. Ruins of Azlant was an Adam Daigle Adventure Path, and there's pretty much been no additional talk about these things in the office since then that I've been involved in. Doesn't mean folks HAVEN'T talked about them at the office... but it does mean none of them have talked to the creative director about them.
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What (assuming there is any) is the Golarion equivalent of Viagra?
Can you name any of Golarion's great satirists (whether living, dead, or undead, past, present, or future, NPC or adventurer)?
Changing topic a bit: Are you familiar with Atlas Games's Northern Crown setting, or Green Ronin's Testament? I've been looking over my copy of the former recently, and both had some really cool and innovative ideas and material that could easily fit in completely different settings!
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Creative Director
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What (assuming there is any) is the Golarion equivalent of Viagra?
Can you name any of Golarion's great satirists (whether living, dead, or undead, past, present, or future, NPC or adventurer)?
Changing topic a bit: Are you familiar with Atlas Games's Northern Crown setting, or Green Ronin's Testament? I've been looking over my copy of the former recently, and both had some really cool and innovative ideas and material that could easily fit in completely different settings!
Erectile Disfunction isn't something we do mechanics for. Talk to your GM.
Merivesta Olinchi of Nex.
I've looked through Testament, but haven't heard of Northern Crown.
Please post questions in their own posts rather than lists going forward; makes it easier for me to reply. Thanks! :-)
I've chatted with them about it, but their version of the game is not a point-by-point recreation of the tabletop experience. Neither was Kingmaker. The realities of how you play a single player computer game verses a group dynamic in a tabletop game are VERY different. I honestly think that a scene like this will play out much better in a computer game, since the creators have much more control over the situation and Iomedae only has to react to one human rather than a whole party of them.The scene you're referring to where Iomedae "wrecks your face" is an error in our writing, not in her personality. We mistakingly leaned into the idea that PCs would be antagonistic toward her, and should have focused instead on how she can help you. It's the one thing I wish I could go back in time and fix about the storyline of that adventure path, because it's flat out wrong in how it presents Iomedae. I've said this before on these boards, but our lack of a process by getting story errata out means that this clarification and admission of error gets lost soon after each time I point it out or admit to it.Are you keeping (or have you kept, if that part of the development is already over) an eye on how Owlcat are handling that scene to try and update how this encounter plays out?
That's good to know! : D
But...why did you lean into the idea that PCs'd be antagonistic towards her? Just because she's a paladin? Something else?
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Creative Director
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But...why did you lean into the idea that PCs'd be antagonistic towards her? Just because she's a paladin? Something else?
The author presented that information. I believe I adjusted it from the original turnover, but obviously didn't adjust it enough. That said... PCs are often unexpectedly antagonistic toward NPCs, for whatever reasons...
It's meant to be in there as a "What if the players are arrogant and disrespectful; how does Iomeday react to them?" In hindshight, I should have developed the text from an "Iomedae admires the PCs for how much they've accomplished" baseline and then spent less words entirely on what happens if the PCs are antagonistic. A better solution would have probably been to have her just shake her head sadly, disappointed in that PC(s), and potentially just leave to let the PCs handle things on their own.
It was a meta case of me being a bit more concerned with players thinking that this was their big chance to be standoffish, I guess, and wanting to give the GM the tools they need to portray a deity as something that you shouldn't be standoffish to.
Or at the VERY least, put in a paragraph saying "Remember, Iomedae is lawful good, but she's also a deity, and she doesn't have to take a PC badmouthing her."
Honestly in full hindsight, knowing what I know now, I probably would have cut the encounter entirely and had the PCs talking with a solar or something instead, so that if they DO attack or whatever, there's stats to handle the fight and I wouldn't have had to build rules for something we don't normally do rules for in a "just in case" possibility.
TL; DR: Because I made a mistake during development. Reason #640 why I wish we had a better way to publish errata and clarifications for non-hardcover rulebooks.
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Honestly in full hindsight, knowing what I know now, I probably would have cut the encounter entirely and had the PCs talking with a solar or something instead, so that if they DO attack or whatever, there's stats to handle the fight and I wouldn't have had to build rules for something we don't normally do rules for in a "just in case" possibility.
Or, since you often mention that deities are beyond stats then have her stop them by pure divine fiat to demonstrate this; no new rules required. I like talking to deities, and don't want to lose that opportunity because of players out of r/rpghorrorstories.
Anyway, what I originally came back to this thread for: given your (and Pharasma's) views of the undead, how do you feel about this article (first entry, about the zombies)? Best (only, really) counterargument I've seen to anyone who just wants to use zombies as labor-saving devices rather than Evil™.
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Creative Director
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Anyway, what I originally came back to this thread for: given your (and Pharasma's) views of the undead, how do you feel about this article (first entry, about the zombies)? Best (only, really) counterargument I've seen to anyone who just wants to use zombies as labor-saving devices rather than Evil™.
The fact that "zombies" are slaves is kind of the whole point of what makes them evil. That said, I don't have the energy these days to continue to argue with folks about things like this. I'll make decisions as needed for the creative direction of the game but I don't have the spoons to justify those decisions online.
And to be pedantic, the flesh-eating undead folks call zombies these days are more properly called ghouls. Especially given that George Romero never used the word zombie in one of his movies until the fourth one, Land of the Dead.
What is your opinion on anime or stories in general in which the the character are aware they operate under RPG mechanics as opposed to standard fantasy? (Order of the Stick/Erfworld/Goblins/Konosuba vs Record of Lodoss War/Goblin Slayer/Vampire Hunter D)I've not watched many of those, and the two I did try to watch (Lodoss War and Vampire Hunter D) didn't hook me, so I guess my opinion of this style of story is "No thanks; not for me, but I'm glad that they entertain others!"
Kinda the same as my opinion on Star Wars or musicals, I guess.
Which fantasy shows or comics do you like? And which do you follow?
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Creative Director
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Which fantasy shows or comics do you like? And which do you follow?What is your opinion on anime or stories in general in which the the character are aware they operate under RPG mechanics as opposed to standard fantasy? (Order of the Stick/Erfworld/Goblins/Konosuba vs Record of Lodoss War/Goblin Slayer/Vampire Hunter D)I've not watched many of those, and the two I did try to watch (Lodoss War and Vampire Hunter D) didn't hook me, so I guess my opinion of this style of story is "No thanks; not for me, but I'm glad that they entertain others!"
Kinda the same as my opinion on Star Wars or musicals, I guess.
Horror is my favorite genre. As far as fantasy shows, my favorite is Game of Thrones. Which is in a lot of ways as much (if not more) horror than fantasy. I very much enjoyed Picard, and Discovery's pretty good. The Handmaid's Tale and The Twilight Zone are the two shows I'm alternating at the moment, and I'm looking forward to Lovecraft Country and Raised by Wolves soon.
I don't read a lot of comics. Sandman is my favorite. As for modern ones... Saga, Wayward, and Rat Kings are the ones I've read recently in graphic novel editions.
Good day, Mr Jacobs,
Does Kyonin have any embassies in foreign countries, despite being an isolationist country?
If not, what methods would you think suitable for them to coordinate their efforts abroad, that affect elven interests?
(say for example, the recovery of stolen elven relics/documents)
JJ,
I have a self-proclaimed "follower" of Aroden who is fairly devoted to his tenets and sees him as an example to follow, but is fully aware that Aroden has been dead for over 100 years. They weren't alive when he died or anything, but his ideas of progress for the good of (human) civilization resonated strongly with them as a scholar.
So, if a secular Arodenite, with their deity unavailable for prayer, were to instead direct their prayers to Iomedae despite not keeping to her specific teachings, what would her stance on that be?
If it matters, the person in question is Lawful Neutral, and strives to act in accordance with their own views on Law and Good but is probably too flawed to properly make the grade at the moment.
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Creative Director
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Good day, Mr Jacobs,
Does Kyonin have any embassies in foreign countries, despite being an isolationist country?
If not, what methods would you think suitable for them to coordinate their efforts abroad, that affect elven interests?
(say for example, the recovery of stolen elven relics/documents)
Kyonin being an isolationist country is a misdirection that rose from a lack of creative directing back in the day when Paizo didn't have a creative director. The idea of an elf nation being isolationist is VERY much a Tolkien trope that D&D has often leaned into, and it's something that I'm encouraging our writers to abandon. Kyonin is an elven nation, but they're not isolationists. They engage in trade and don't freak out of they have visitors. As such, they ABSOLUTELY have embassies in other nations.
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Creative Director
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JJ,
I have a self-proclaimed "follower" of Aroden who is fairly devoted to his tenets and sees him as an example to follow, but is fully aware that Aroden has been dead for over 100 years. They weren't alive when he died or anything, but his ideas of progress for the good of (human) civilization resonated strongly with them as a scholar.
So, if a secular Arodenite, with their deity unavailable for prayer, were to instead direct their prayers to Iomedae despite not keeping to her specific teachings, what would her stance on that be?
If it matters, the person in question is Lawful Neutral, and strives to act in accordance with their own views on Law and Good but is probably too flawed to properly make the grade at the moment.
She'd need them to worship her and follow her edicts and anathema, which are different than Aroden's, especially since she's good, not neutral. More to the point, since Iomedae does not allow lawful netural clerics, the character would have to change alignment. Following Aroden's tenets, by definition, means you're not following a different deity's tenets.
In short, that wouldn't work if the character wants to be a cleric. Further, if a lawful neutral character strives to act in accordance with views on Law and Good... guess what? They become lawful good. What constitutes law and good is decided by the GM, not by the players.
If you have someone who wants to be a divine caster who follows Aroden's teachings, the best options for them would be to have them play a divine sorcerer, a divine witch, or perhaps best of all, an oracle.
Or house rule how clerics rule in your game, I guess. But since you're here asking me, and I'm an expert on Golarion and NOT on your setting, I can't give you advice there.
Kyonin being an isolationist country is a misdirection that rose from a lack of creative directing back in the day when Paizo didn't have a creative director. The idea of an elf nation being isolationist is VERY much a Tolkien trope that D&D has often leaned into, and it's something that I'm encouraging our writers to abandon. Kyonin is an elven nation, but they're not isolationists. They engage in trade and don't freak out of they have visitors. As such, they ABSOLUTELY have embassies in other nations.
I often visit the pathfinder wiki, it was there that they were mentioned such.
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Creative Director
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Kyonin being an isolationist country is a misdirection that rose from a lack of creative directing back in the day when Paizo didn't have a creative director. The idea of an elf nation being isolationist is VERY much a Tolkien trope that D&D has often leaned into, and it's something that I'm encouraging our writers to abandon. Kyonin is an elven nation, but they're not isolationists. They engage in trade and don't freak out of they have visitors. As such, they ABSOLUTELY have embassies in other nations.I often visit the pathfinder wiki, it was there that they were mentioned such.
Thank you for the answer.
Pathfinder Wiki, as with any wiki, is a good place to start research, but it's not always the best place to finish it, since our methods of providing errata for lore stuff is (traditionally) pretty awful and we don't have much of a way to indicate to people when we make errors in the lore, and as a result those errors often get into the wiki without being noted as such.
In going over The Slithering I noticed that all of the pre-generated characters for this module speak Common, but none explicitly speak Mwangi. I figured that for that part of the world, Mwangi probably is the common tongue, so no problem. But then, in the adventure itself, all of the NPCs except one (the Ahvothian, a dinosaur-like fiend from the Abyss) speak Common and Mwangi. The Ahvothian speaks Common, but not Mwangi. A minor oopsie, or am I missing something?
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Creative Director
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In going over The Slithering I noticed that all of the pre-generated characters for this module speak Common, but none explicitly speak Mwangi. I figured that for that part of the world, Mwangi probably is the common tongue, so no problem. But then, in the adventure itself, all of the NPCs except one (the Ahvothian, a dinosaur-like fiend from the Abyss) speak Common and Mwangi. The Ahvothian speaks Common, but not Mwangi. A minor oopsie, or am I missing something?
Either a minor oopsie, or a deliberate choice to make it so that language barriers aren't a big deal in the adventure. I didn't develop or write it so I can't say what the intent was.
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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Have you ever played Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones?
It's on sale on Steam so I picked it up, hoping its good. As the resident Lovecraft expert here, wondered what you thought of it.
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Creative Director
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Have you ever played Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones?
It's on sale on Steam so I picked it up, hoping its good. As the resident Lovecraft expert here, wondered what you thought of it.
I'm one of the Kickstarter backers for it. I've played it a little, but haven't had the chance to work it into the full video game rotation yet. I really do like the aesthetic of what I've seen so far for it though.
JJ,
I have a self-proclaimed "follower" of Aroden who is fairly devoted to his tenets and sees him as an example to follow, but is fully aware that Aroden has been dead for over 100 years. They weren't alive when he died or anything, but his ideas of progress for the good of (human) civilization resonated strongly with them as a scholar.
So, if a secular Arodenite, with their deity unavailable for prayer, were to instead direct their prayers to Iomedae despite not keeping to her specific teachings, what would her stance on that be?
If it matters, the person in question is Lawful Neutral, and strives to act in accordance with their own views on Law and Good but is probably too flawed to properly make the grade at the moment.
She'd need them to worship her and follow her edicts and anathema, which are different than Aroden's, especially since she's good, not neutral. More to the point, since Iomedae does not allow lawful netural clerics, the character would have to change alignment. Following Aroden's tenets, by definition, means you're not following a different deity's tenets.
In short, that wouldn't work if the character wants to be a cleric. Further, if a lawful neutral character strives to act in accordance with views on Law and Good... guess what? They become lawful good. What constitutes law and good is decided by the GM, not by the players.
If you have someone who wants to be a divine caster who follows Aroden's teachings, the best options for them would be to have them play a divine sorcerer, a divine witch, or perhaps best of all, an oracle.
Or house rule how clerics rule in your game, I guess. But since you're here asking me, and I'm an expert on Golarion and NOT on your setting, I can't give you advice there.
Sorry, I missed a vital point: the character is a wizard, not a divine caster of any kind. I agree that having Iomedae grant cleric powers to an Arodenite misses both the point of Aroden's clerics running dry and the point of clerics. It's the situation of a lay person I'm having trouble figuring out.
The question I meant to ask was how comfortable Iomedae would be with a layman Arodenite (fully aware he's gone) praying to her in the modern day, keeping Aroden's tenets but directing their prayers ("Give us this day our daily bread", etc) to Iomedae, treating her as a sort of representative of the deceased. Would she be accepting? Try to (gently? sternly?) nudge them to properly assimilate into her faith, or to at least keep her tenets? Consider them presumptuous? That kind of thing. Basically, I'm just not sure to what extents this Inheritor thing goes.
(Sidenote: I feel our words aren't getting through to each other about alignment, but since it's not the main point of the question and with alignment discussions being as they are, I get the feeling that it's better I leave that topic be so as to not waste excessive amounts of time on a nonessential point.)
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Creative Director
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Sorry, I missed a vital point: the character is a wizard, not a divine caster of any kind. I agree that having Iomedae grant cleric powers to an Arodenite misses both the point of Aroden's clerics running dry and the point of clerics. It's the situation of a lay person I'm having trouble figuring out.
The question I meant to ask was how comfortable Iomedae would be with a layman Arodenite (fully aware he's gone) praying to her in the modern day, keeping Aroden's tenets but directing their prayers ("Give us this day our daily bread", etc) to Iomedae, treating her as a sort of representative of the deceased. Would she be accepting? Try to (gently? sternly?) nudge them to properly assimilate into her faith, or to at least keep her tenets? Consider them presumptuous? That kind of thing. Basically, I'm just not sure to what extents this Inheritor thing goes.
(Sidenote: I feel our words aren't getting through to each other about alignment, but since it's not the main point of the question and with alignment discussions being as they are, I get the feeling that it's better I leave that topic be so as to not waste excessive amounts of time on a nonessential point.)
The alignments allowed by a deity, as listed for their clerics, is an excellent indication of the types of alignments worshipers who worship that deity in a non-heretical, devout way will be. Alignment is reactive, after all. It changes to match what a creature does, and if a creature follows the edicts and anathemas of a deity and does their best to worship them well... they'll end up one of that deity's alignments.
Iomedae would hope that an Arodenite would learn from Aroden's mistakes and not simply blindly follow his teachings, because she was that person once and realized that, for her, Aroden's teachings were not correct. That said, it's not the deity a character will need to deal with, but the deity's church, since the faithful of a deity are what directly impacts the world at large.
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How many people live in Sember Cove?
It's described in Shimali Maunx's section in Lost Omens Legends as being near the border between Ravounel and Cheliax, which, given its name, means there's really only one place it can be: at the head of the inlet between Cape Dis and Hellcoast.
Is it the seat of the "small county" mentioned here?
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Creative Director
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How many people live in Sember Cove?
It's described in Shimali Maunx's section in Lost Omens Legends as being near the border between Ravounel and Cheliax, which, given its name, means there's really only one place it can be: at the head of the inlet between Cape Dis and Hellcoast.
Is it the seat of the "small county" mentioned here?
Huh... interesting. Wall of text incoming!
My office campaign is set in the Ravounel county of Ilverness, which is right on the coast with its southern side being the border between Ravounel and Hellcoast. In order to maintain the fact that the safest and quickest route from the rest of Cheliax to Ravounel is via the mountain pass through Menador (this is a KEY element of Hell's Rebels), the coastal route up from Hellcoast has to be remote, rugged, and dangerous so that overland travel is not viable (and if you're sailing... you're already taking a longer route and it's best to just keep on going to Kintargo or Vyre). That also means that Sember Cove needs to be not a huge port either. Especially since it never got name dropped in Hell's Rebels, which included a map of Ravounel.
To model this, I've got one road leading from Kintargo down the river and then across to the west to the only settlement of note in Ilverness—Crookcove. The Order of the Gate Hellknights founded Crookcove (then calling it Crooked Cove) as a staging area to start work on their citadel 75 miles inland in the mountains and then left it more or less to run itself once they got going and no longer needed it (turns out, if you're the Order of the Gate, you have lots of gate-based methods of travel that don't require roads once you get your citadel all set up!).
Since then, Ilverness and Crookcove have pretty much fallen into obscurity, forgotten by many in Cheliax. The county's the last one that Ravounel is getting around to helping recover from years of Chelish rule, due to its remoteness and low population, and that plays a key part in my office game and in "Malevloence" (in that adventure, Crooked Cove never survived long enough to evolve into Crookcove and is an abandoned, ruined ghost town, and the county of Ilverness is pretty much abandoned as well).
So when it comes to the town of Sember Cove, it has to be north of Ilverness. I'll make sure to note it in "Malevolence" (since at this point, it'd more or less escaped my notice—I'm not sure the "Mission of Mercy" sidebar was in there when I did my pre-layout read through of the book a year or so ago, but if it was, I'd forgotten) as being the "largest nearby town with actual people living in it" and place it several miles up the coast, in the next county up from Ilverness.
That means that Sember Cove is located in an unnamed county... even more unnamed than Ilverness, which until this post, only existed in "Malevolence's" still being written draft and in my office campaign.
Given all this, and given the fact that Sember Cove needs to be pretty tiny to justify having not been called out in Hell's Rebels' Ravounel map, and needs to be one county north of Ilverness. I'd say its population is not more than a few hundred, certainly not more than 400 and probably closer to 200.