Desna seems the only one who actively antagonize the force of the Cthulhu Mythos among the non-villain gods and goddesses. Why no other gods considers the threat of the Mythos seriously? Is it because Desna is the wisest among gods? That other gods refused to believe that the force of the Cthulhu Mythos is the most urgent and gravest threat that the Material Plane and, by extension, the whole multiverse has ever faced?
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Desna seems the only one who actively antagonize the force of the Cthulhu Mythos among the non-villain gods and goddesses. Why no other gods considers the threat of the Mythos seriously? Is it because Desna is the wisest among gods? That other gods refused to believe that the force of the Cthulhu Mythos is the most urgent and gravest threat that the Material Plane and, by extension, the whole multiverse has ever faced?
That's hyperbole. Desna's cult is absolutely active against the cults of the elder mythos, possibly the most active of them all, but other faiths do fight against them as well.
As for deity-on-deity fights, that's simply not a thing that happens all the time. When it does, legends happen. Such as Asmodeus vs. Ihys, or Desna vs. Aolar, or Rovagug vs. Everyone. The deities generally leave their worshipers to clash because when they do, big things happen.
Just because we've talked about Desna and her worshipers as fighting against the Elder Mythos doesn't mean every other deity doesn't care.
And all that said, the Elder Mythos is not the most urgent and gravest threat that the Material Plane/Multiverse faces. The Elder Mythos are downright impartial, or even LAZY when it comes to doing things compared to other deities. One of their core themes is that they Just Don't Care about their worshipers, for example.
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A player in my AoA campaign had the spell Fly on. While 10 feet up, he was dropped to Dying 2 on a critical hit.
Would he get a chance to use the reaction Arrest a Fall before going unconscious?
If not, the falling damage would move him to Dying 3, correct?
Arrest a Fall is a reaction, and reactions happen pretty instantly. In this case, the PC would get a chance to Arrest a Fall in the instant they took the critical hit and began their fall. The action gives you the option to increase the DC above 15 for "other circumstances" of course, which being swatted out of the air probably counts for. One good rule of thumb for setting this DC is to use the average DC set by level for the creature that landed the critical hit, so that taking a critical hit from a forest drake would be easier to Arrest the Fall than one from an ancient red dragon.
Mi-go in First Edition were plants. It seemed strange to me because they look like vermin. Are they actually plants instead of animals?
What has wowed you the most from Paizo staff in terms of game design? Something that really made you open your mouth and said "WOW".
And about art. Who among Paizo's artists has impressed you?
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Mi-go in First Edition were plants. It seemed strange to me because they look like vermin. Are they actually plants instead of animals?
They've always been plants. Fungi, to be precise, which wasn't a category per-se in 1st edition, but in 2nd edition's Bestiary 3, we were able to list them properly as fungi.
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What has wowed you the most from Paizo staff in terms of game design? Something that really made you open your mouth and said "WOW".
And about art. Who among Paizo's artists has impressed you?
I certainly do have a LOT of "wow" moments from fellow employees and artists we've published. They know who they are, but I'm not going to reveal who they are here while I'm also an employee at Paizo, because that's kinda weird to me, since by listing some of them I can't avoid the implication that the ones I didn't list DON'T wow me.
In The Hobbit movie, I found out that Smaug the Golden has lips, which is strange because real world reptiles don't have lips. Do dragons, drakes, and kobolds in the world of Lost Omens have lips?
There are dragons on Triaxus. I'm not sure. Are the dragons on Golarion and the dragons on Triaxus belong to the same species? Are they biologically same? If they are, then it seems the ancestors of the dragons on Triaxus must have come from Golarion, I guess.
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Mirage arcana specifically says that it can alter the appearance of structures. It can't vanish their appearance; that's a different spell effect entirely. The spell can let you make your ship look like any other vehicle (or structure, for that matter, but a house floating along the ocean waves would not be that believable), but you can't make it invisible.James, from the same player's guide, we have the following:
Mirage Arcana: Ships are considered structures for the purposes of this spell.Q: can one use Mirage Arcana to 'disappear' the ship, like some Klingon cloaking device?
Alright, so can your puny dingy rowed by two exhausted survivors now look like a full-blown Chelish armada? :P
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What was the reasoning behind having all "heal" type of spells moved into the school of necromancy?
With PF1 necromancy was kind of the "evil" school with all the bad and live draining stuff, now it's much more "muddled".
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What was the reasoning behind having all "heal" type of spells moved into the school of necromancy?
With PF1 necromancy was kind of the "evil" school with all the bad and live draining stuff, now it's much more "muddled".
Originally, back in the AD&D days, healing magic was necromancy; it got changed to conjuration in 3rd edition, I believe, because the designers of that game felt it was too "positive" to be in the same category as the spells that cause death and undeath and the like.
We didn't change that in 1st edition Pathfinder because we were too timid about making too many changes to the game rules our customers were already used to.
We changed it in 2nd edition because it makes more sense as necromancy, with necromancy being all about magic that affects the flesh to a certain extent. And to give a shout out to the way it used to be. But mostly because we wanted to give necromancy a bit more to do, and to support players who want to play non-evil necromancers.
James, you forgot to answer my question. Can you please answer it now?
Hi James, i am now doing Extinction Curse for my players, one of them is a Barbarian (Giant Instinct) and he has the No Escape feat.
A question arised in our last session, can he while doing the no escape reaction pass through the space of another enemy (not the one he is following)?, this happened in book 1 in a certain room with some certain bridges, where that other enemy was stoping.
I searched the forum and found nothing about it (maybe i failed my Perception check?), i ruled he could not pass through.
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James, you forgot to answer my question. Can you please answer it now?
In cases where I miss a question, please copy the question into the repost rather than post it as a link.
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There are dragons on Triaxus. I'm not sure. Are the dragons on Golarion and the dragons on Triaxus belong to the same species? Are they biologically same? If they are, then it seems the ancestors of the dragons on Triaxus must have come from Golarion, I guess.
They are the same species. Whether those dragons came from Golarion to Triaxus, from Triaxus to Golarion, or from some other world to both, we haven't revealed and aren't likely to reveal.
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Hi James, i am now doing Extinction Curse for my players, one of them is a Barbarian (Giant Instinct) and he has the No Escape feat.
A question arised in our last session, can he while doing the no escape reaction pass through the space of another enemy (not the one he is following)?, this happened in book 1 in a certain room with some certain bridges, where that other enemy was stoping.
I searched the forum and found nothing about it (maybe i failed my Perception check?), i ruled he could not pass through.
Sounds good to me; this is precisely how the game should go when a corner case pops up: The GM makes a ruling and goes from there. No need to "get permission" from anyone at Paizo is required, and if the play of the ruling in your game went well and seemed logical and balanced and you let the PCs use the same potential tactic themselves, then it's all working perfectly.
Are all the iconics members of the Pathfinder Society?
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Ah, ok ... thank you. I thought Mirage Arcana could add structures to the area. Are ships structures?Alright, so can your puny dingy rowed by two exhausted survivors now look like a full-blown Chelish armada? :PYou can make your dingy look like a larger ship, but not a fleet of ships.
They're treated as structures for the purposes of this spell. You can add additional structures with the spell, but you can't disguise existing structures to look like multiple structures.
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"Blinded
The creature cannot see. It takes a –2 penalty to Armor Class, loses its Dexterity bonus to AC (if any), and takes a –4 penalty on most Strength– and Dexterity-based skill checks and on opposed Perception skill checks. All checks and activities that rely on vision (such as reading and Perception checks based on sight) automatically fail. All opponents are considered to have total concealment (50% miss chance) against the blinded character. Blind creatures must make a DC 10 Acrobatics skill check to move faster than half speed. Creatures that fail this check fall prone. Characters who remain blinded for a long time grow accustomed to these drawbacks and can overcome some of them."
"Invisible
Invisible creatures are visually undetectable. An invisible creature gains a +2 bonus on attack rolls against sighted opponents, and ignores its opponents’ Dexterity bonuses to AC (if any). See the invisibility special ability."
"Starting at 4th level, a rogue can react to danger before her senses would normally allow her to do so. She cannot be caught flat-footed, nor does she lose her Dex bonus to AC if the attacker is invisible. She still loses her Dexterity bonus to AC if immobilized. A rogue with this ability can still lose her Dexterity bonus to AC if an opponent successfully uses the feint action (see Combat) against her.
If a rogue already has uncanny dodge from a different class, she automatically gains improved uncanny dodge (see below) instead."
My question pertains to the interaction of Uncanny Dodge vs Blinded, I had been informed by a Gamemaster of a game I'm running that creatures maintained their Dex to AC if fighting while blinded as the Blind Status treated enemies as effectively invisible to them.
Looking to get a clarification from you if possible, just to try and see if maybe its possible they were right or wrong?
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"Blinded
The creature cannot see. It takes a –2 penalty to Armor Class, loses its Dexterity bonus to AC (if any), and takes a –4 penalty on most Strength– and Dexterity-based skill checks and on opposed Perception skill checks. All checks and activities that rely on vision (such as reading and Perception checks based on sight) automatically fail. All opponents are considered to have total concealment (50% miss chance) against the blinded character. Blind creatures must make a DC 10 Acrobatics skill check to move faster than half speed. Creatures that fail this check fall prone. Characters who remain blinded for a long time grow accustomed to these drawbacks and can overcome some of them."
"Invisible
Invisible creatures are visually undetectable. An invisible creature gains a +2 bonus on attack rolls against sighted opponents, and ignores its opponents’ Dexterity bonuses to AC (if any). See the invisibility special ability."
"Starting at 4th level, a rogue can react to danger before her senses would normally allow her to do so. She cannot be caught flat-footed, nor does she lose her Dex bonus to AC if the attacker is invisible. She still loses her Dexterity bonus to AC if immobilized. A rogue with this ability can still lose her Dexterity bonus to AC if an opponent successfully uses the feint action (see Combat) against her.If a rogue already has uncanny dodge from a different class, she automatically gains improved uncanny dodge (see below) instead."
My question pertains to the interaction of Uncanny Dodge vs Blinded, I had been informed by a Gamemaster of a game I'm running that creatures maintained their Dex to AC if fighting while blinded as the Blind Status treated enemies as effectively invisible to them.
Looking to get a clarification from you if possible, just to try and see if maybe its possible they were right or wrong?
I generally avoid getting into rules discussions and interpretations like this, since the right call isn't always the same for every table. Furthermore, rules questions tend to backfire when I answer them here. Sorry.
Furthermore, I'm having a tough time parsing what it is you're actually asking here—the way you've cut and pasted rules elements together and then worded the question is confusing.
And this is for 1st edition rules, yes? My headspace is not really in those rules anymore anyway.
Since it's for an edition of the rules we no longer directly support, I'm less worried about providing answers, but I need you to try to restate the question in more simple terms, without copy/pasting rules text out of context. I'll then answer how I'd rule this in MY game, which may or may not be appropriate for you and your GM's game.
Something like: "Does Uncanny Dodge work against a blind creature?", for example. I THINK that's what you're asking me to answer, but I can't tell for sure.
(And in many cases like this, my preferred answer is "I play 2nd edition these days instead, which takes that previously confusing rules element and makes it more elegant and easy to run," so be prepared fore that sort of answer, anyone, if you ask me to give you 1st edition rules rulings here...)
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Alrighty, my apologies then, yes this is a 1st edition question, didn't mean to mess with your headspace about this sort of question but I believe the question I'm trying to ask is...
"Is there an interaction with Uncanny Dodge on a Blind Creature?"
A Barbarian or Rogue is Blinded, do they still retain DEX to AC in that sorta situation?
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Alrighty, my apologies then, yes this is a 1st edition question, didn't mean to mess with your headspace about this sort of question but I believe the question I'm trying to ask is...
"Is there an interaction with Uncanny Dodge on a Blind Creature?"
A Barbarian or Rogue is Blinded, do they still retain DEX to AC in that sorta situation?
Ah, thanks! That's much clearer.
Uncanny dodge allows for the ability to react to danger before your senses would normally allow you to do so. Vision is a sense. The blinded condition says that all activities that rely on vision automatically fail.
Given those two statements, I'd say that if a barbarian's primary sense is vision, then yes, their uncanny dodge ability gets "turned off" if they're blinded.
A barbarian who doesn't rely on sight as their primary sense wouldn't be impacted in this way, but might have uncanny dodge deactivated if a different sense that they use as their primary one got negated.
In the end, it's the GM's call to make based on a case-by-case basis for each character, but in the vast majority of cases I agree that blindness would negate the benefits of uncanny dodge, SPECIFICALLY because uncanny dodge spells out that it's the character's senses that grant the ability to dodge uncannily.
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I have started writing some (short) Pathfinder fan fiction. I would like to share my stories with the community and possibly get some feedback (though english is not my mother tongue, but I'm trying to catch up...). But I am not sure how to do this properly. Do you have any advice or suggestions to offer? Would Paizo ever be interested in having a "share your Pathfinder fan fiction" section under the Fiction category on the website?
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I have started writing some (short) Pathfinder fan fiction. I would like to share my stories with the community and possibly get some feedback (though english is not my mother tongue, but I'm trying to catch up...). But I am not sure how to do this properly. Do you have any advice or suggestions to offer? Would Paizo ever be interested in having a "share your Pathfinder fan fiction" section under the Fiction category on the website?
I absolutely love that folks are writing fan fiction for Pathfinder, but I generally try not to get too directly involved in it publicly. I might read some of it but I don't provide feedback for many reasons ranging from time management, legal, and personal.
We don't have a specific fan-fiction devoted section of our forums here, as far as I know, but maybe post for feedback or share it in the Homebrew or maybe one of the subcategories in the general Entertainment section, perhaps? Or maybe in some of the play-by-posts areas? Sorry I don't have any specific advice, but hopefully if you cross post your request in other parts of the site here someone will help out. I'm sure there's plenty of others out there writing fan-fiction for Pathfinder!
Within the Pathfinder mythos, is it conceivable that:
1) A pair of metallic dragons remain together as a bonded pair
2) If so, would they raise their wyrmlings together as a familial unit in an ancient "family lair"?
I'm sure the answers to these questions would vary depending on the type of metallic dragon considered.
If you stat up Vastatosaurus rex and King Kong from King Kong (2005 film) and Smaug the Golden from The Hobbit (film series), what would be their size and level? Colossal(There is no colossal size in Second Edition, but let's pretend there is)? Over 20?
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Within the Pathfinder mythos, is it conceivable that:
1) A pair of metallic dragons remain together as a bonded pair
2) If so, would they raise their wyrmlings together as a familial unit in an ancient "family lair"?I'm sure the answers to these questions would vary depending on the type of metallic dragon considered.
It's absolutely possible. In fact, that's a core setup for the whole plot of the Age of Ashes Adventure Path.
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If you stat up Vastatosaurus rex and King Kong from King Kong (2005 film) and Smaug the Golden from The Hobbit (film series), what would be their size and level? Colossal(There is no colossal size in Second Edition, but let's pretend there is)? Over 20?
Why should we pretend that there's a Colossal if there's not? Why not invent entirely new categories for things? Nah, let's stick with the rules.
Both would be Gargantuan.The V. Rex would probably be level 12... not much tougher than the T. Rex in the Bestiary. Smaug, as one of the most iconic of all dragons, would probably be somewhere in the range of level 20 to 24, depending on what level party I wanted to design him for so that he'd be an extreme threat.
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In 3.5, tyrannosauruses are huge. But in Pathfinder(both First and Second Edition), tyrannosauruses are gargantuan. I'm not sure. Are real world tyrannosauruses big enough to be considered as gargantuan? I thought they should be classified as huge.
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In 3.5, tyrannosauruses are huge. But in Pathfinder(both First and Second Edition), tyrannosauruses are gargantuan. I'm not sure. Are real world tyrannosauruses big enough to be considered as gargantuan? I thought they should be classified as huge.
They're different games with different setups. The size categories in 1st and 2nd edition don't work the same.
If you stat up Vastatosaurus rex and King Kong from King Kong (2005 film) and Smaug the Golden from The Hobbit (film series), what would be their size and level? Colossal(There is no colossal size in Second Edition, but let's pretend there is)? Over 20?Why should we pretend that there's a Colossal if there's not? Why not invent entirely new categories for things? Nah, let's stick with the rules.
Both would be Gargantuan.The V. Rex would probably be level 12... not much tougher than the T. Rex in the Bestiary. Smaug, as one of the most iconic of all dragons, would probably be somewhere in the range of level 20 to 24, depending on what level party I wanted to design him for so that he'd be an extreme threat.
Oops. You missed the part regarding King Kong. So I ask again. If you stat up King Kong from King Kong (2005 film) using Pathfinder Second Edition, what would be its size and level? Considering it defeated three V. Rex pretty easily, it should be bigger and more powerful than a V. Rex, right?
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Oops. You missed the part regarding King Kong. So I ask again. If you stat up King Kong from King Kong (2005 film) using Pathfinder Second Edition, what would be its size and level? Considering it defeated three V. Rex pretty easily, it should be bigger and more powerful than a V. Rex, right?
I guess I'd put that King Kong at Gargantuan and level 14 or so; just above the V. Rex so that the fight works out about the same when three gang up on him. So, not bigger, but a little tougher.
How do you pronounce draugr, kuo-toa, locathah, sahuagin, and scylla?
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I don't have a scenario for it but could an non-devil outsider sell their soul to a devil?
Nope. Becuase when an outsider dies, their soul doesn't go to an afterlife. It reintegrates with the quintessence of the outer planes. It can be resurrected, and its soul could be trapped, and so on, but it doesn't get funneled into Hell to become a petitioner. You could in theory have a variant form of contract I guess, but it'd work differently.
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How do you pronounce draugr, kuo-toa, locathah, sahuagin, and scylla?
Some of these are from real-world mythology, while others were invented by Gary Gygax and others for D&D decades ago.
For the two real world words, the answer is easy:
For the other three made-up words, I've always pronounced them as:
KOO-oh TOE-uh
LOW-ka-tha
saw-WHO-a-gin
I know you've been incredibly excited to get Malevolence out to ask of us. So with the apparent shipping delays, can I ask... Are you just steaming right now? How are you doing?
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I know you've been incredibly excited to get Malevolence out to ask of us. So with the apparent shipping delays, can I ask... Are you just steaming right now? How are you doing?
I'm fine. I hope that folks enjoy Malevolence when it comes out, and I hope there's an appetite for grim horror stuff still with Pathfinder, and I hope that the adventure lives up to any expectations it might have, because this is the type of adventure content I'm most interested in creating these days. Hopefully the feedback will be more about the adventure and less about folks complaining about their VTT of choice, though...
Imagine how much more frustrating things would be if we didn't have an industry standard like PDFs for electronic text or for files to ship to printers? Thats's sort of where we're at with VTTs these days, with each one kind of requiring their own staff of employees to generate all the various non-compatible elements and formats needed for each one, especially given the volume of content we produce makes it tough for some to keep up.
Shipping delays are part of the business. No point getting frustrated about them when they happen, especially considering the curveballs the past 18 months have thrown at us.
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I know you've been incredibly excited to get Malevolence out to ask of us. So with the apparent shipping delays, can I ask... Are you just steaming right now? How are you doing?
BONUS ANSWER: That said, it is frustrating that delays in customs and the like can cause releases to overlap, and thus kind of removes the spotlight from some products since they tend to get overshadowed by the newer releases.
So yeah, not steaming, but increasingly annoyed.
Why hasn't Absalom, City of Lost Omens not been released yet? It was supposed to be released on March 30, 2021. Surely it would have been finished a long time ago, right?
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Um... will there official rule for "Monsters as PCs", especially mix of Ancestry PC and Monster PC?
The rules for ancestries in 2nd edition are pretty involved and follow a different path entirely than those used to present monsters as creatures you encounter.
That said, we've done a LOT of ancestries so far. They generally take 4 to 6 pages to set up right though.
I assume you've seen the Advanced Player's Guide, the Lost Omens Character Guide, and the Lost Omens Ancestry Guide, all of which have lots of ancestries to choose from.
All of those have been quite successful for us and I can guarantee we'll continue to do more ancestries... but they'll generally be for things that are relatively close to human shape and size on average, because so much of the game and the setting assume those things.
We won't be doing a book that lets you play any monster in the Bestiary as a PC though. The game rules simply don't work that way, since monsters are not created using the same rules as are characters.
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Why hasn't Absalom, City of Lost Omens not been released yet? It was supposed to be released on March 30, 2021. Surely it would have been finished a long time ago, right?
If we could have finished it a long time ago, trust me, we would have.
Since we also didn't drastically increase the number of employees, that meant production on the book slowed down.
Oh, and then a once in a century pandemic happened. Not only did that throw our production for ALL of our books into chaos, but it made us realize that, being a company that publishes games that people play in groups and thus wouldn't be able to safely play for who knew how long, we needed to shift those already stretched-thin employee resources toward producing more books of smaller size than tying up our finances in one enormous book.
That all said, work proceeds on this book. The art is amazing. Just yesterday I wrote up some more cool characters and lore to fill up areas where copyfitting fell a page short, and helped to fill up some sidebars of bonus text.
It'll eventually release; I suspect we'll have more to say about it at Paizocon.
TL;DR: It's taking longer because we want you to have a perfect and big book instead of an imperfect little one.
Is there any significance to the symbol on Valeros' shield? When I look at it I think "heraldry", but that doesn't really seem to be a thing in Avistan.