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Is there a bank in Otari? If so, how trustworthy is it?
Otari has a pretty extensively detailed entry in Abomination Vaults. You'll note that the word "bank" does not appear in the article I wrote for the first volume of that book, except for a few times when I'm talking about the shore of a pond in area A3.
There is no bank in Otari.
If you want a loan in Otari, you'd need to approach one of its rich citizens to arrange that, and how trustworthy that loan would be would depend on who you chose.
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I wasn't asking because of interest in getting a loan, but because I was trying to figure out where to store all this gold that Herolab Online tells me is so heavy I can't move. But thanks, anyway. :-)
Obligatory question: this Halfling I'm building uses a longbow. Is it the same size as the longbow a human would use? Does it have the same range?
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Obligatory question: this Halfling I'm building uses a longbow. Is it the same size as the longbow a human would use? Does it have the same range?
A longbow wielded by a halfling has the same stats as a longbow wielded by a human in 2nd edition. Same goes for any weapon.
If you want to preserve the idea that a weapon must be sized for its wielder, check out the brief rules for items and size on page 295 of the Core Rulebook.
Short version: If you use a weapon that's sized for a different size category, you are clumsy 1 when you use it because it's unwieldy.
It's so much less annoying to just let Small and Medium creatures share their weapons without worrying about it.
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Are Golarion, Earth, and Androffa all in the same galaxy?
I'm relatively sure we haven't revealed that in print. The Milky Way is certainly large enough to contain all three of them though.
My reticence to imply that humanity is the norm for all worlds makes me prefer to say that they're all found in the Milky Way, so that all the other galaxies can have actual aliens in them. ;-)
As I understand it elves don't age in the traditional, wrinkles kind of way. How exactly do they express aging? Past adulthood is it even possible to guess an elves age by looking at them?
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As I understand it elves don't age in the traditional, wrinkles kind of way. How exactly do they express aging? Past adulthood is it even possible to guess an elves age by looking at them?
Yes, but you need contextual clues like the way that the elf speaks, moves, how they dress, how they comport themselves, etc. An older elf is more refined than a younger one. Generally speaking.
In my head canon, an elf that ages long enough doesn't die, but becomes part of the environment. That's not something we've explored in print, but to me, that's a big part of why elves are so environmentally conscious. They understand that when they age and die, they BECOME the enivronment.
It's the same thing as when a human dies and decays and eventually turns to soil or becomes fertilizer or meat for other creatures and is recycled into the environment, but the process is slower and more gradual, without actual death and decay getting in the middle of the process.
Of course, for most elves, they die long before then from violence or sickness or accident or whatever. The longer you live, the more unexpected fatal events you are exposed to, after all. And since it takes SO LONG for an elf to live to the point where they settle down and transition into a tree or a brook or a rose or whatever, and when it does happen it tends to happen in the wilderness, that non-elves generally aren't around to see it, or by the time they WOULD, they're already long dead from old age themselves.
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Hi James. First, just wanted to thank you so much for your work and the work of the incredible people at Paizo. It's inspiring.
Second, I was curious about how daemons relate to the Cycle of Souls. Normally, someone's soul is born out of positive energy, they live, and then they die. The soul then goes to the Boneyard to be judged before being sent to the Outer sphere to become a petitioner or outsider. Eventually the outsider or petitioner is destroyed, and it fuses with its home plane. Which in turn is eroded by the maelstrom, breaking off soul chunks which then drain into the positive energy plane to provide soulstuff for future mortals.
Daemons eat and "destroy" souls, though. Do they just add the soulstuff to themselves, and when they're destroyed it fuses with Abaddon before getting eroded and going back into the Cycle of Souls, or is it just gone? And if the latter, doesn't that mean that since soulstuff (not souls themselves, I get that) exists in a cycle and daemons irreversibly remove soulstuff from that cycle that eventually the universe will inevitably die? And if the former, what's the point of eating souls for a daemon, if the soulstuff will eventually just get dumped back into the multiverse?
All souls come from positive energy. That's not just normal, that's one of the underlying rules of how Golarion's metaverse works.
When a daemon eats a raw soul, they digest it and add some of it to their own bodies and (I suspect but we haven't gone into details in print for obvious reasons) excrete or shed or abandon the "waste". In either case, the soul itself thus bypasses the "get to the Boneyard and get judged and get sent on to the next stage of being" stage and skips directly to the "become one with the quintessence of the Great Beyond.
Daemons and other soul eating things are certainly not favorites of Pharasma's faith as a result, but unlike undead, which make a soul go backwards, daemons just rob a soul of its chance to achieve its full potential. The soul ends up in the Great Beyond and, eventually, gets recycled back into the cycle of things just like those that are judged, but they don't get a chance to make the Great Beyond a better place.
To use an overly simplified analogy:
If you're undead, you never graduate and instead move away from a career where you better yourself and society, and you never unlock a new "slot" for anyone else. You clog that process, both by diminishing the opportunities for newcomers to come to school and also by diminishing the opportunities for society to benefit from what you would have brought to it after graduating.
In this analogy, a daemon eating your soul would be akin to someone eating you while you were in school, after you joined the school but before you graduated. The daemon then wanders off, and eventually it'll die or digest you or deposit the waste of what's left of you out in the world, at which point what was you returns to the earth and helps to continue the cycle of life/death/decay/birth. But you didn't better society or get to enjoy your career.
TL;DR: Daemons are parasites who make the cycle less graceful and do so in a way that increases pain and negativity.
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Thanks! That makes a lot of sense.
As a follow-up, what about the Graveyard of Souls in the Boneyard, where the souls of people who reject the whole idea of a cycle go? While it seems very rare that someone is consigned to it, the Graveyard seems to similarly take souls out of "circulation," so over the course of eons as given souls continue to reject the cycle, would everyone eventually end up in the Graveyard? Or at least a greater and greater fraction of the souls in the cycle? Would the final such soul to be buried be the final judgment that Pharasma knows will eventually happen in your (very cool!) "Three Fears of Pharasma" article?
Those souls aren't taken out of circulation at all. THey're judged and sent on to their afterlife as with any other soul... but in this case, they're not sent to another plane, but to another spot on the same plane where they got judged. There's nothing about the Graveyard of Souls that sets its rate of quintessence erosion slower or faster than any other particular location in the multiverse, so the average rate of a soul "eroding" back into the cycle from the Graveyard of Souls is equal to the average anywhere else.
Of course, for most elves, they die long before then from violence or sickness or accident or whatever. The longer you live, the more unexpected fatal events you are exposed to, after all. And since it takes SO LONG for an elf to live to the point where they settle down and transition into a tree or a brook or a rose or whatever, and when it does happen it tends to happen in the wilderness, that non-elves generally aren't around to see it, or by the time they WOULD, they're already long dead from old age themselves.
Just want to say that I absolutely love this concept for how an elf "dies" of old age. Beautiful concept with a nice touch of whimsy.
Let's see, I need to ask a question here...what video games have you been playing recently?
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Ah, got it.
Another daemon question: since the ultimate goal of the daemons is apocalypse and the extinction of mortal life, and the ultimate goal of the qlippoth is the extinction of sinful mortal life, what exactly is the daemonic opinion on Rovagug and the qlippoth in general? (I assume the qlippoth perspective on daemons is something along the line of "get off my lawn you darned sinful kids" but with more tentacles). Apart from regret for feeding one of them a mortal soul and creating the first demon, of course.
If, for example, Szuriel was handed the keys to the Dead Vault (and wasn't immediately torn to pieces by a vengeful Asmodeus/Sarenrae/any other number of powerful figures) and she could actually use them, what would she do?
Daemons don't really have a lot of interactions on a macro scale with qlippoth, but I can't imagine that they'd get along if they did.
In the specific case of Szuriel getting the key to Rovagug's prison, I suspect she wouldn't open it but WOULD use her ownership to foster wars on a grand scale. As the patron of war, Szuriel is less "one note" about extincting all mortal life, because without life, you can't have war, and is more about stringing out that warfare as long and as painfully as possible.
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Have you seen Godzilla vs Kong yet?
Yup; stayed up to watch it at midnight a few days ago the instant it went live on HBO Max.
Of the three Legendary Godzilla movies, it's my least favorite. I enjoyed it, but it's the only one of the three movies I'll never see more than once, and the only one of the three movies for which I won't be buying a personal copy on Blu Ray, and the only one of the three movies to which I won't buy the soundtrack.
Glad to hear it's such a financial success though, but even more glad to know that now that the Legendary deal is done, Toho's gonna start doing more Godzilla movies.
Just keep Kong out of them, please. Every time he shows up, the movie has to spend too much time powering Kong up so he can actually maybe have a chance against his superior.
In the "Three fears of Pharasma" article, it seems as Rovagug is there from the very beginning of creation (either as one of the original gods or as an already existing, unexplained devouring fear). Doesn't this contradict his origin as a qlippoth? If yes, is it on purpose?
I always preferred his origin to be as vague as possible, since such a horrific menace must have something very special to be able to challenge the mightiest of the gods. I like to think Rovagug as an Outer God.
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In the "Three fears of Pharasma" article, it seems as Rovagug is there from the very beginning of creation (either as one of the original gods or as an already existing, unexplained devouring fear). Doesn't this contradict his origin as a qlippoth? If yes, is it on purpose?
I always preferred his origin to be as vague as possible, since such a horrific menace must have something very special to be able to challenge the mightiest of the gods. I like to think Rovagug as an Outer God.
It doesn't contradict his origin as a qlippoth if you think of him as the first qlippoth. And also, I took care to be pretty vague about what exactly it is that causes Pharasma's first fear. Certainly that niche ended up in the end being occupied by Rovagug, but whether it was him at the start or that starting mysterious thing ended up turning into him or getting killed by and replaced by him is up in the air.
Rovagug is not an Outer God. Neither is Desna. They can certainly fit into that category if you want, of course, but the way we've got the Great Beyond set up, Outer Gods are dimensional beings or Material Plane beings. I've deliberately kept Outer Gods out of the outer planes, so that the outer planes can be places for other themes and ideas to grow and flourish.
And remember that the whole point of the Windsong Testaments is that they're in-world myths. They are only true if the GM wants them to be.
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Question about gods and the elemental planes. There don't seem to be any entities of even quasi-deity status on the Negative Energy Plane, even though there isn't a cosmic ban on it like the Positive. Why is that? What was the design/story reason for not placing any deity apart from the elemental lords on the elemental planes in general?
Similarly, what would happen if, for example, Droskar decided to leave the Abyss and set up shop on the Elemental Plane of Earth? It doesn't seem like any of the inhabitants would be remotely strong enough to tell him "no"...
There's no divinities on the Negative Energy Plane because we want that plane to feel truly dangerous and alien and strange, and that's one of several tools we used to portray it as being fundamentally different to all other planes.
If Droskar moved to the Elemental Plane of Earth, there'd be adjustments and changes and his previous realm would get snatched up and he'd probably displace something on the Elemental Plane and there'd be wars on both planes as either things fought for the abandoned realm or fought against Droskar moving in... but the Elemental Planes are each quite large enough that there's certainly room for as many deities to live there or not. The Elemental Planes certainly don't have anything in a position of control over the whole thing that has the power to deny entry.
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Thanks! And the Negative Energy Plane definitely feels quite spooky and terrifying!
To continue with the Droskar line of thought, if he moved to Abaddon without the Horsemen's consent, could THEY (or Urgathoa and Zyphus, though they don't seem the types to help defend their neighbors) stop him? I'm remembering what happened to Aolar the last time a demigod tried messing with a god, even if that was an exceptional circumstance... would four demigods be much of a deterrent for something truly divine like Droskar?
Ditto moving to Hell. It seems like Asmodeus, as a much older and more powerful god backed up by eight demigods could bar Droskar from moving there, but what if Droskar whacked (well, more stepped on) an archduke and just asked Asmodeus to take its place?
The Horsemen could only stop him if the story that the writer wanted to tell was that story. Remember, the Horsemen are powerful, but they're just demigods, and thus they have stats. Even if those stats are for level 27–30 creatuers. Droskar is a deity. He doesn't have stats. He does what he wants. AKA: does what the writer of his story wants.
The whole Desna/Aolar thing is a good example of a story I wanted to tell. "Rules" don't matter for something like this, but the story itself can absolutely (and did) inspire rules to come out of it.
I know you're not really on social media, but do you know of any means to follow Payton Smith's current work now that he has moved on from Paizo? I miss listening to you two talk on Twitch and I haven't been able to find any accounts of his to follow.
Wow, it's been a while. I even forgot to wish us a Happy Birthday. Sorry about that.
Anyway, Sorshen question, because of course.
From what I've read, she made a lot of backup clones of herself. How far afield did she stash them? Asking for an origin story.
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I know you're not really on social media, but do you know of any means to follow Payton Smith's current work now that he has moved on from Paizo? I miss listening to you two talk on Twitch and I haven't been able to find any accounts of his to follow.
He uses Zoran the Bear for most of his social stuff I think, but I don't know if I spelled it right or where he hangs out; sorry!
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Wow, it's been a while. I even forgot to wish us a Happy Birthday. Sorry about that.
Anyway, Sorshen question, because of course.
From what I've read, she made a lot of backup clones of herself. How far afield did she stash them? Asking for an origin story.
Welcome back, and no worries!
All the ones we've mentioned were within Thassilon's borders.
Wow, it's been a while. I even forgot to wish us a Happy Birthday. Sorry about that.
Anyway, Sorshen question, because of course.
From what I've read, she made a lot of backup clones of herself. How far afield did she stash them? Asking for an origin story.
Welcome back, and no worries!
All the ones we've mentioned were within Thassilon's borders.
I suppose it would make sense she wouldn't stash any beyond Eurythnia (though she did like to go as far up to her borders as possible; i.e., that nice lighthouse of hers). Have to rethink my idea some then.
A more abstract question now. Suppose a character wants to get from Point A to Point Z, but they're both active port cities. What motivation would there be to walk? Not sure what adventures one can have while waiting for the next ship, mainly.
And thank you for welcoming me back. : )
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I suppose it would make sense she wouldn't stash any beyond Eurythnia (though she did like to go as far up to her borders as possible; i.e., that nice lighthouse of hers). Have to rethink my idea some then.
A more abstract question now. Suppose a character wants to get from Point A to Point Z, but they're both active port cities. What motivation would there be to walk? Not sure what adventures one can have while waiting for the next ship, mainly.
And thank you for welcoming me back. : )
When you're building story content for your own game, be it as a GM or as a player, expanding on the published content is a great way to explore things that we don't, so my comment that Sorshen didn't have clones stashed outside of Thassilon was in no way meant to say no one can have her stash clones elsewhere. Taking stories in different directions than the ones published in a game for your own game is a great way to personalize the setting for your table.
But to actually answer your question: The motivation to walk would be the same that motivates us to walk when we make that choice in real life, and it could be a number of things.
1) You might enjoy the aspect of walking, or want to take your time getting to the locaiton; the journey might be more important to you than the destination.
2) You can't afford to travel on a ship.
3) It's not safe to travel on a ship.
4) There are no spots available for you on the ship in the timeline you need to travel.
5) You have to make a stop along the way that the ship's route bypasses.
6) You're transporting something that you couldn't transport on a ship.
Etc.
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More a meta question, but for an archfiend (or just powerful fiend generally) with mortal followers, what benefits apart from not exposing yourself to rivals are there to using fancy summoning rituals, of the kind climactic adventures so frequently revolve around? I.e. can't you just ask a cultist to cast *plane shift* and take you with them? Or hire an amoral wizard or fiend with spellcasting to do so? Rather than extensive human sacrifice and ominous rites. Surely someone has thought to monetize the diabolic transit industry...
It just seems strange that any bored, entrepreneurial, or unhinged spellcaster with access to an uncommon item can functionally retrieve as many horrors from a given plane as are willing to come along and don't want to kill their golden ticket to Golarion.
You can ask anyone to plane shift you with them, but that doesn't mean everyone will agree to the request, and it certainly doesn't mean that everyone has your best interests in mind will take you somewhere safe. Also, keep in mind that plane shift is super inaccurate. You can travel to the plane, but you arrive many miles away from the destination, and that arrival point may be very dangerous; it's an unpredictable way to travel. Also, it's a 7th level Uncommon spell, so it's a hard one to find on top of all that.
It's easier and safer to use something like planar ally or planar binding than it is to go there yourself, track down something to work for you, recruit it, not get killed by it, transport it back, deal with the inaccuracy of the spell, etc. But you could absolutely still do it. Choices are a part of the game, and NPCs doing different things every time helps keep the stories from stagnation.
What is your formal education, if any?
Also, how old are you?
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Been wondering about this for awhile now: Dragons creation myth is very different from others, and involves Tiamat quite heavily.
Apsu went to Golarion to handle Dahak, leaving Tiamat focused elsewhere along with all those other DnD-centric beings. Would a mortal follower of Apsu, perhaps a draconic sorcerer/cleric, have any knowledge of Tiamat? Are there followers of her on Golarion, or do they follow Dahak instead? Do Dahaks followers even KNOW the original myth involving his mother?
Going to be starting up an AoA campaign so I was sort of curious as to how far that knowledge goes.
Do you think Magic vs Technology or Magic and Technology is better for storytelling? Why? Why not?
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Do you think Magic vs Technology or Magic and Technology is better for storytelling? Why? Why not?
Depends 100% on the story. And it's not a story I'm really all that interested in telling these days. Not nearly as much as stories about magic and technology working together, and even then, meh. Got other things I'd like to explore.
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Been wondering about this for awhile now: Dragons creation myth is very different from others, and involves Tiamat quite heavily.
Apsu went to Golarion to handle Dahak, leaving Tiamat focused elsewhere along with all those other DnD-centric beings. Would a mortal follower of Apsu, perhaps a draconic sorcerer/cleric, have any knowledge of Tiamat? Are there followers of her on Golarion, or do they follow Dahak instead? Do Dahaks followers even KNOW the original myth involving his mother?
Going to be starting up an AoA campaign so I was sort of curious as to how far that knowledge goes.
Tiamat is not a part of Golarion with the edition switch (Honestly, she never should have been in Pathfinder in the first place), so that myth is retconned away. She's a D&D character, not a Pathfinder character. Age of Ashes doesn't mention her at all for this reason.
If you want to keep that myth in your game, go for it, but you'll need to make your decisions for how that might impact your game. It's not part of Age of Ashes as written.
(Tiamat is of course, a real-world myth, but the concept of Tiamat as a boss-dragon with five heads, etc., is D&D lore and not part of the OGL. Her inclusion in 1st edition Pathfinder lore in that context was a mistake.)
Do you think Magic vs Technology or Magic and Technology is better for storytelling? Why? Why not?Depends 100% on the story. And it's not a story I'm really all that interested in telling these days. Not nearly as much as stories about magic and technology working together, and even then, meh. Got other things I'd like to explore.
But why do you prefer one over the other?
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(Tiamat is of course, a real-world myth, but the concept of Tiamat as a boss-dragon with five heads, etc., is D&D lore and not part of the OGL. Her inclusion in 1st edition Pathfinder lore in that context was a mistake.)
Is the Tarrasque in a similar situation?
In their plane of existence, do deities have corporeal-like forms like the Olympian Gods?
For example, Acavna and Amaznen were a couple and Sarenrae is in a polyamorous relationship with Shelyn and Desna. Does that mean they possess bodies of humanoid characteristics, engage in sexual intercourse and derive sexual pleasure? Did Ihys and Asmodeus have a melee battle where Asmodeus pierced him with an actual, physical spear? Did Sarenrae descend from the heavens as a humanoid angelic being and smote Gormuz with an actual scimitar?
Or perhaps, deities are something closer to the idea of Yahweh/Trinity/Allah found in abrahamic religions (minus the omniscience) and people just try to explain their interactions and interventions via anthropomorphic terms?
Hi and good Spring to you James!
The last of the (insert vile insanities) damn snow is finally melting over here and so, it would seem, the RPG part of my brain!
The previous questions piqued my curiosity so much that I'll shelf my initial inquiry and ask you this :
What are Souls? I mean, a Soul is Quintessence fueled to the Positive Energy Plane... Since this Outer Sphere "fondamental-stuff" becomes part of the Inner Sphere it must either transform into something native to the plane or join with something there. Right?
In the past (pre 2nd edition) there was this garden where the residents of the plane cared for the trees bearing nascent souls, is there still such a place?
Regardless, I hope you're in good health and in good spirits also.
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But why do you prefer one over the other?Do you think Magic vs Technology or Magic and Technology is better for storytelling? Why? Why not?Depends 100% on the story. And it's not a story I'm really all that interested in telling these days. Not nearly as much as stories about magic and technology working together, and even then, meh. Got other things I'd like to explore.
Just because you seem to prefer one over the other doesn't mean I do. I don't prefer one over the other.
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Thanks! To clarify my question, I was wondering more from a demon lord's perspective if just asking a cultist for transit via plane shift rather than rituals.
It's been several days and posts since the original question and I lost track of what you were asking, but demon lords, being chaotic evil, generally have pretty selfish and awful reasons for thinking what they think.
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(Tiamat is of course, a real-world myth, but the concept of Tiamat as a boss-dragon with five heads, etc., is D&D lore and not part of the OGL. Her inclusion in 1st edition Pathfinder lore in that context was a mistake.)Is the Tarrasque in a similar situation?
No, because unlike Tiamat, stats for Tarrasque are in the OGL, so if we use the OGL we can use a version of that creature as it's been built up by D&D in a way that deviates from its mythological source as a starting point for our own stories.
But that said, you'll also note that in 2nd edition we don't include Tarrasque in our core monster book.
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What are Souls? I mean, a Soul is Quintessence fueled to the Positive Energy Plane... Since this Outer Sphere "fondamental-stuff" becomes part of the Inner Sphere it must either transform into something native to the plane or join with something there. Right?
In the past (pre 2nd edition) there was this garden where the residents of the plane cared for the trees bearing nascent souls, is there still such a place?
A soul is a ghost wearing a meat suit. AKA: The part of you that makes you "you" and not someone or something else.
That metaphor probably remains mostly accurate.