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Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Courage Mind wrote:
In Lost Omens Legends, the atheist healer Kassi Aziril from Rahadoum describes Sarenrae as "a bloody killer in the guise of a healer, willing to murder an entire city rather than deign to explain herself", apparently referring to the Gormuz incident. What would be a good counter argument from a cleric of Sarenrae against this accusation?

That Kassi should learn to forgive, and rather than paint an immortal creature on a mistake she realizes she made eons ago, to instead look at the VAST more amount of good she's done since then, and maybe look inside herself to realize that in her short lifespan she's made mistakes as well, and challenge her to not look at Sarenrae's ancient error (a mistake that rose from frustration and panic after being betrayed and realizing that one of the most dangerous threats to creation was about to be unleashed and deciding to do what she could to stop that from happening again) as the only thing worth defining her countless years of existence upon, but instead look at it as an example of how a good person isn't perfect and learned from their errors and to do the same herself.

Part of that realization might require her escaping the toxic culture of Rahadoum first, though.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Ly'ualdre wrote:

Random idea: Summon Icon (Incarnate Spell)

Summons the essense of one of the Pathfinder Iconics, who come in to mess things up and leave.

Question: Yes please? Lol

Nah. The iconics are player characters, not NPCs.

You're asking for a spell that would let you have the GM step in and play the adventure for you. I don't see the fun in that.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Laclale♪ wrote:

Also, wayfinder's submission rejecting my "Toppats". Any idea to adopt Toppats to Golarion? Don't cut their demiplane base.

In Wayfinder's thread, I wrote:

Here comes what I wanted to submit.

You can proofread and comment directly. And I'm out of ideas I think.

I'm not involved in Wayfinder, so I can't provide any insight into its contents or rejected submissions. The whole POINT of Wayfinder is that it's a fan-published, fan-written product, and as an employee of Paizo, it's inappropriate for me to be involved in something like that.

The Exchange

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James,

I love what you've done and I really appreciate all of your hard work. The stuff you (and by extension the rest of the team) create is consistently amazing. Thank you!

Two quick questions.

One of the coolest places in the Lore IMO is the Pit of Gormuz. I've been wanting to integrate the pit into a campaign for a long time. However, the rest of Casmaron doesn't seem to be fleshed out too much, (specifically Ninshabur and Kasskari), which makes that challenging. Is this an area that there is any interest in expanding upon or if not, what are some real-world analogues to help my world building?

Second question: Rahadoum is another one of my favorite conceptual nations in the inner sea, and I was wondering why it seems to get overlooked. Is this just one of those things where you can only do so much? Or is that a conscious choice?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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KefkaZ wrote:

James,

I love what you've done and I really appreciate all of your hard work. The stuff you (and by extension the rest of the team) create is consistently amazing. Thank you!

Two quick questions.

One of the coolest places in the Lore IMO is the Pit of Gormuz. I've been wanting to integrate the pit into a campaign for a long time. However, the rest of Casmaron doesn't seem to be fleshed out too much, (specifically Ninshabur and Kasskari), which makes that challenging. Is this an area that there is any interest in expanding upon or if not, what are some real-world analogues to help my world building?

Second question: Rahadoum is another one of my favorite conceptual nations in the inner sea, and I was wondering why it seems to get overlooked. Is this just one of those things where you can only do so much? Or is that a conscious choice?

Thanks for the kind words!

We'll get to Casmaron and Ninshabur and those locations eventually, I hope. In the meantime, one of the sources of inspiration for that particular region is ancient Mesopotamian mythology and the like.

As for Rahadoum... it gets overlooked because its core concept makes it one of the most difficult places to set extended adventures in. Since so many characters (starting with but not limited to clerics) in Pathfinder have religious elements to them, it's tough to do adventures there that also allow for characters like clerics, champions, and other deity-worshiping builds to play. To me, Rahadoum feels closer to somewhere like Razmiran or Tanglebriar or the Worldwound—a region that lends itself to a specific adventure but not so much one where typical adventures take place.

And the fact that we've got so many places to explore but have only been exploring them for not even 20 years means that some locations will have not yet been touched.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
James Jacobs wrote:
Ly'ualdre wrote:

Random idea: Summon Icon (Incarnate Spell)

Summons the essense of one of the Pathfinder Iconics, who come in to mess things up and leave.

Question: Yes please? Lol

Nah. The iconics are player characters, not NPCs.

You're asking for a spell that would let you have the GM step in and play the adventure for you. I don't see the fun in that.

I heard someone mention something about the likes of Nex coming in, blowing things up, and leaving. I was thinking more along those lines. But, I get the Iconics being PCs part. So, understandable.

James Jacobs wrote:
keftiu wrote:
Do you think there's an untapped niche for a planetouched heritage?

Planetouched is a D&D thing, so I can't speculate there.

Our version of them are the planar scions. As long as we keep creating "families" of outsiders, yes. In fact, I think there's room to deeper dive into things like planar scions for demons, devils, etc. (instead of just saying tiefling) and the same on the celestial side (with one for angels, azatas, etc.), but I don't see that dive happening in this edition since we already have them covered.

But as long as we keep creating other families of planar creatures, like proteans (ganzi), psychopomps (duskwalkers), etc. then yes.

Note that I don't see planar scions coming from one-shot creatures like jyotis or bebiliths or the like.

On the subject of this actually: will it ever be possible to see more unique forms of Ancestries/Heritage/Lineages descended from more specific kinds of creatures? Example: a Geniekin born from say a Jocta/Zhyen, those born of the Blightborn Genie, or even someone with a Black Jinn in their family? I have a character idea right now based on a Geniekin decendant of a Nisnas that I really want to work somehow.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Ly'ualdre wrote:
On the subject of this actually: will it ever be possible to see more unique forms of Ancestries/Heritage/Lineages descended from more specific kinds of creatures? Example: a Geniekin born from say a Jocta/Zhyen, those born of the Blightborn Genie, or even someone with a Black Jinn in their family? I have a character idea right now based on a Geniekin decendant of a Nisnas that I really want to work somehow.

It's possible, but not likely unless we do a product or adventure that specifically focuses on one specific type of ancestry like this. We try to spread things out in our books though. Not everyone, say, is interested in a Geniekin ancestry, so by doing a book only about that topic, we limit our customer base for that product.


James Jacobs wrote:
Laclale♪ wrote:

Also, wayfinder's submission rejecting my "Toppats". Any idea to adopt Toppats to Golarion? Don't cut their demiplane base.

In Wayfinder's thread, I wrote:

Here comes what I wanted to submit.

You can proofread and comment directly. And I'm out of ideas I think.

I'm not involved in Wayfinder, so I can't provide any insight into its contents or rejected submissions. The whole POINT of Wayfinder is that it's a fan-published, fan-written product, and as an employee of Paizo, it's inappropriate for me to be involved in something like that.

And my art that I didn't post before.

Half of PFOA's theme is "What if Burt is never seen Azata(Mentioned before in topic) and met same named clan exist in Pathfinder world?" I say.


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Since we're all vaccinated I'm going to be running a Call of Cthulhu game (7th edition) for my brother who loves the setting but is always the GM for games.

My question is do you have any advice for a beginning Keeper that you wished someone had imparted to you before your first Call of Cthulhu game.

Thanks for all your hard work and hopefully you're having a good June.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

So certain AP has this random corpse in one room connected to deeper darklands beyond scope of the adventure:

"humanoid of a strange appearance: two heads and a chitinous body"

Is that a creature type from Darklands we know about already or just neat weird room detail?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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captain yesterday wrote:

Since we're all vaccinated I'm going to be running a Call of Cthulhu game (7th edition) for my brother who loves the setting but is always the GM for games.

My question is do you have any advice for a beginning Keeper that you wished someone had imparted to you before your first Call of Cthulhu game.

Thanks for all your hard work and hopefully you're having a good June.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Let's see... here's a good one: If the players are stumped because their characters simply rolled too badly to learn clues, then it's good for the Keeper to give out a free clue to get them back on the trail.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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CorvusMask wrote:

So certain AP has this random corpse in one room connected to deeper darklands beyond scope of the adventure:

"humanoid of a strange appearance: two heads and a chitinous body"

Is that a creature type from Darklands we know about already or just neat weird room detail?

I have no idea what you're talking about. For things like this, rather than be vague, it's always better to cite specific sources. I don't read everything we publish—not even close—and what I do read I don't retain 100% recall. That includes material I develop and write, since I've been doing both for Paizo for nearly 20 years.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
James Jacobs wrote:
CorvusMask wrote:

So certain AP has this random corpse in one room connected to deeper darklands beyond scope of the adventure:

"humanoid of a strange appearance: two heads and a chitinous body"

Is that a creature type from Darklands we know about already or just neat weird room detail?

I have no idea what you're talking about. For things like this, rather than be vague, it's always better to cite specific sources. I don't read everything we publish—not even close—and what I do read I don't retain 100% recall. That includes material I develop and write, since I've been doing both for Paizo for nearly 20 years.

Ah oki. I'm referring to room C19. in Eyes of Empty Death

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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CorvusMask wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
CorvusMask wrote:

So certain AP has this random corpse in one room connected to deeper darklands beyond scope of the adventure:

"humanoid of a strange appearance: two heads and a chitinous body"

Is that a creature type from Darklands we know about already or just neat weird room detail?

I have no idea what you're talking about. For things like this, rather than be vague, it's always better to cite specific sources. I don't read everything we publish—not even close—and what I do read I don't retain 100% recall. That includes material I develop and write, since I've been doing both for Paizo for nearly 20 years.

Ah oki. I'm referring to room C19. in Eyes of Empty Death

Ah. I neither wrote nor developed that. I just drew the maps. You'd have to ask the author or Ron what they meant that thing to be.

Scarab Sages

What land animals do you associate with elves? I'm building an elf Animal Barbarian.


James Jacobs wrote:
Courage Mind wrote:
In Lost Omens Legends, the atheist healer Kassi Aziril from Rahadoum describes Sarenrae as "a bloody killer in the guise of a healer, willing to murder an entire city rather than deign to explain herself", apparently referring to the Gormuz incident. What would be a good counter argument from a cleric of Sarenrae against this accusation?

That Kassi should learn to forgive, and rather than paint an immortal creature on a mistake she realizes she made eons ago, to instead look at the VAST more amount of good she's done since then, and maybe look inside herself to realize that in her short lifespan she's made mistakes as well, and challenge her to not look at Sarenrae's ancient error (a mistake that rose from frustration and panic after being betrayed and realizing that one of the most dangerous threats to creation was about to be unleashed and deciding to do what she could to stop that from happening again) as the only thing worth defining her countless years of existence upon, but instead look at it as an example of how a good person isn't perfect and learned from their errors and to do the same herself.

Part of that realization might require her escaping the toxic culture of Rahadoum first, though.

Also, didn't Sarenrae send omen after omen and then her herald directly which they subsequently killed?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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NECR0G1ANT wrote:
What land animals do you associate with elves? I'm building an elf Animal Barbarian.

Wolves and owls, in a nostalgic way due to the Elfquest graphic novels, but also all sorts of forest life. And with the way Wayne designed Pathfinder's elf look, sometimes insects, due to their eyes and limber frames.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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The NPC wrote:
Also, didn't Sarenrae send omen after omen and then her herald directly which they subsequently killed?

And more. The folks who cite "Sarenrae destroyed a city; she's evil" always conveniently leave out the extensive atrocities that region was committing and how many warnings and requests to change from her faithful and herself were sent. More often than not, that reveals to me that folks who continue to push that take have their own agendas and aren't interested in the larger tales, and for whatever reason just enjoy tearing things down by ignoring the parts of the things they're tearing down that actually support the exception they've latched on to.

Sarenrae is NOT a war deity, but she does ask that her followers are trained for battle, becasue she also is not a passive deity. Against foes who cannot be redeemed, she urges swift resolutions. If a war gets drawn out, that's awful, because war causes more problems than a quick swift resolution.


Does the phrase "the naked truth" exist on Golarion (and the origin story where Truth and Falsehood go swimming)? If so, what do the deities of truth and lies think of it?

From the Inner Sea Gods category on Archives of Nethys

Truth: Sarenrae, Iomedae, Irori
Trickery: Asmodeus, Calistria, Lamashtu, Norgorber

Paizo Employee Creative Director

james014Aura wrote:

Does the phrase "the naked truth" exist on Golarion (and the origin story where Truth and Falsehood go swimming)? If so, what do the deities of truth and lies think of it?

From the Inner Sea Gods category on Archives of Nethys

Truth: Sarenrae, Iomedae, Irori
Trickery: Asmodeus, Calistria, Lamashtu, Norgorber

Unless the phrase is anachronistic, chances are good that the phrase exists on Golarion because that stuff is written and edited by us humans as well. Getting into the "can this word/phrase actually exist in a non-Earth setting" rabbit hole can rapidly turn into a mess.

So I'd say the phrase exists, but it's not tied to specific deities. Consider it part of the "translation" process when we do you the favor of translating in-world stuff from in-world languages like Elvish or Varisian or Aklo into real-world languages you can read and we can write, I guess! :-P

The Exchange

James Jacobs wrote:

As for Rahadoum... it gets overlooked because its core concept makes it one of the most difficult places to set extended adventures in. Since so many characters (starting with but not limited to clerics) in Pathfinder have religious elements to them, it's tough to do adventures there that also allow for characters like clerics, champions, and other deity-worshiping builds to play. To me, Rahadoum feels closer to somewhere like Razmiran or Tanglebriar or the Worldwound—a region that lends itself to a specific adventure but not so much one where typical adventures take place.

I get what you are saying, but I also think it is a way of having an underground “crime” like setting for good characters. I could see it being a Thieves Guild-like sandbox, but without all the requirements of doing evil.


Pathfinder LO Special Edition, Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, PF Special Edition Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber

How do you handle the passage of time during Exploration? Encounter is easy - a battle probably doesn't last ten rounds, which is a whole minute. But aside from that, how long should it take a party of four to explore, for example, the first floor of the Gauntlight? Hours? Days?


James Jacobs wrote:

And more. The folks who cite "Sarenrae destroyed a city; she's evil" always conveniently leave out the extensive atrocities that region was committing and how many warnings and requests to change from her faithful and herself were sent. More often than not, that reveals to me that folks who continue to push that take have their own agendas and aren't interested in the larger tales, and for whatever reason just enjoy tearing things down by ignoring the parts of the things they're tearing down that actually support the exception they've latched on to.

Sarenrae is NOT a war deity, but she does ask that her followers are trained for battle, becasue she also is not a passive deity. Against foes who cannot be redeemed, she urges swift resolutions. If a war gets drawn out, that's awful, because war causes more problems than a quick swift resolution.

What is the difference between what the people at the Pit of Gormuz were doing and the Cult of the Dawnflower?

Humbly,
yawar

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

So do goblins think that every other ancestry is soulless for reading or do they not think their worldview that far?


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Hi James, I hope your day is going good :)

A friend and I were wondering, the plane of shadow, does it have its own version of the dark tapestry, as in vast stretches of empty space between the “shadow” planets? neither of us were sure, but it sure sounded like a spooky concept.


Hi James, hope the summer is treating you well!

A question about Pulura and Golarion's Antarctic (and a general question about the interplanetary reach of Empyreal Lords, I suppose). It's mentioned, I think in Aquatic Adventures, that there is a huge ice sheet on the Antarkos Ocean, which frost trolls live on. They're said to worship auroras. First off, does Pulura have dominion over all aurora effects, whether northern or southern, on Golarion or not, or just those specifically in Golarion's northern hemisphere? And secondly I assume the degenerate ice trolls aren't actually worshipping her but just the natural phenomenon of the solar wind?


Pathfinder Adventure Subscriber

James,

Are there plans to have the Band of Bravos storyline put into an Adventure Path? From watching your adventures on line, it's something I'd love to run/play.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

KefkaZ wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:

As for Rahadoum... it gets overlooked because its core concept makes it one of the most difficult places to set extended adventures in. Since so many characters (starting with but not limited to clerics) in Pathfinder have religious elements to them, it's tough to do adventures there that also allow for characters like clerics, champions, and other deity-worshiping builds to play. To me, Rahadoum feels closer to somewhere like Razmiran or Tanglebriar or the Worldwound—a region that lends itself to a specific adventure but not so much one where typical adventures take place.

I get what you are saying, but I also think it is a way of having an underground “crime” like setting for good characters. I could see it being a Thieves Guild-like sandbox, but without all the requirements of doing evil.

Please keep posts here to questions for me; I don't have the bandwidth to turn this long-running thread into a discussion post. If a question I answer sparks more dialogue and discussion, great! Makes for an excellent new post to fire up to talk about elsewhere on the forum, and I'll pop in to chat there too if I see the post! :-)

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Ed Reppert wrote:
How do you handle the passage of time during Exploration? Encounter is easy - a battle probably doesn't last ten rounds, which is a whole minute. But aside from that, how long should it take a party of four to explore, for example, the first floor of the Gauntlight? Hours? Days?

Passage of time during Exploration and Downtime is deliberately variable. You can say one Exploration activity is a day's work, or an hour's work, or 8 hours of work, or whatever window of time is needed. For example, if you have a section of the adventure where the PCs have to overland travel from town to the dungeon, and you don't have much planned for the wilderness trip, you can say that the journey is one Exploration activity, regardless of how far the distance goes. But if you want to have several encounters and developments along the way, you can split that up for the story.

The upcoming Kingmaker revision has more details for how that works, but it's based on the Gamemastery Guide Hexploration rules, which a bit more framework to do this. The short version there is that the number of activities per day you get is based on the group's speed; see page 172 of the Gamemastery Guide.

For something like Gauntlight, when the party wants to use exploration activities to spend more time investigating areas and rooms, I generally default to a 1 hour per activity thing, but sometimes 10 minutes makes more sense. It's really up to GM preference.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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YawarFiesta wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:

And more. The folks who cite "Sarenrae destroyed a city; she's evil" always conveniently leave out the extensive atrocities that region was committing and how many warnings and requests to change from her faithful and herself were sent. More often than not, that reveals to me that folks who continue to push that take have their own agendas and aren't interested in the larger tales, and for whatever reason just enjoy tearing things down by ignoring the parts of the things they're tearing down that actually support the exception they've latched on to.

Sarenrae is NOT a war deity, but she does ask that her followers are trained for battle, becasue she also is not a passive deity. Against foes who cannot be redeemed, she urges swift resolutions. If a war gets drawn out, that's awful, because war causes more problems than a quick swift resolution.

What is the difference between what the people at the Pit of Gormuz were doing and the Cult of the Dawnflower?

Humbly,
yawar

The Cult of the Dawnflower claimed to worship Sarenrae while in fact they were just warmongers who paid lip-service to the goddess and in doing so damaged the faith's reputation. Also, this was a world element that shouldn't have been included in the setting in the first place; it's a writer error that won't be used going forward because of its racist undertones based on Qadirans being jihadists who threaten the nearby Eurocentric nation with their aggressive behavior." Gross.

The worshipers who were smote at the Pit of Gormuz were actually worshiping/corrupted by Rovagug while pretending to worship Sarenrae, and were corrupting the city from within with a combination of propaganda and lies and trickery and conspiracies that an increasing number of unfortunately gullible or impressionable citizens fell for and became corrupted as well. It's also an intentional design meant to showcase the combination of humanity's capacity to be corrupted and deluded and a deity's non-omniscience leading to them making emotional decisions that have lasting repercussions and allowf for character growth.

The wiki sums up the situation in Ninshabur pretty well:

PathfinderWiki wrote:
During the Age of Creation, an alliance of gods defeated Rovagug, imprisoning him within the Dead Vault far beneath Golarion's surface. The goddess Sarenrae repaired the gash in the earth into which the Rough Beast had been flung, and commanded her followers to avoid the smooth scar that remained. Her faithful living in nearby Ninshabur misinterpreted her instructions, however, and instead flocked to the area, eventually founding the settlement of Gormuz there. Believing Gormuz to be a holy city of Sarenrae, people from all over Casmaron flocked there for millennia, but were slowly corrupted by the imprisoned god Rovagug's dreams. Sarenrae continued sending portents and visions to her faithful in Gormuz during this period, but they were ignored or misinterpreted. She finally sent her herald Kohal to the people of Gormuz in -3923 AR, but they had been so corrupted that they destroyed him instead. In great wrath, Sarenrae smote Gormuz with her scimitar, destroying it completely, and created an enormous rent in the earth that eventually became known as the Pit of Gormuz.

I've always imagined that the true culprit of the story here was Rovagug, and that he knew that if he influenced worshipers via dreams like this that, eventually, he could get Sarenrae to lash out and potentially hack open a door to his prison. Fortunately, she didn't hit the metaphysical foundations of reality hard enough to do much more than put a dent in the Dead Vault, but it was enough to let out the Spawn of Rovagug.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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CorvusMask wrote:
So do goblins think that every other ancestry is soulless for reading or do they not think their worldview that far?

That's like saying "all humans love artichokes." Some do, some do not, some don't know what an artichoke is.

Goblins who fear words are largely intended to be NPCs, and it's one of many things that define goblin society—they're individually pretty weak, and thus have a lot to fear, and tend to react to fear by trying to be more ferocious than that what they fear, and are thus generaly awful chaotic evil violent monsters.

PC goblins are up to the PC to choose how they work. We've included more non-chaotic evil goblin NPCs in the setting in 2nd edition to help players and GMs understand how that can work, but that's hardly new.

The goal of Burnt Offerings was to take one of D&D's most boring and ignored monsters, the goblin, and make them fun again as enemies. That worked. As soon as Legacy of Fire, not quite 2 years later, we started exploring other more diverse goblin NPCs in the setting.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Mathota wrote:
A friend and I were wondering, the plane of shadow, does it have its own version of the dark tapestry, as in vast stretches of empty space between the “shadow” planets? neither of us were sure, but it sure sounded like a spooky concept.

The Shadow Plane is a metaphysically "smaller" version of the Material Plane, sort of an opposite of the First World, which is a metaphysically "larger" version of the Material Plane.

Not everything on the Material Plane "reflects" into the Shadow Plane, and those things that do tend to reflect much smaller than in the Material Plane. Thus, Shadow Absalom is smaller than Absalom, and the spell shadow walk works the way it does because distances between two like points on the two planes have a distortion.

All that suggests that yes, there's some sort of reflection of outer space in the Shadow Plane, but it's not really the Dark Tapestry.

The fun thing about the Shadow Plane is that it takes the familiar and distorts it in a spooky fun-house mirror sort of way and presents a scary distortion of the norm for adventures to be set in. This is the same exact sort of underlying trope you see in shows like "Stranger Things." As such, when you distort things in a fantasy setting that are already distorted and warped and spooky... like the Dark Tapestry... the end result isn't really all that different, and thus it's kind of boring to me, so a "Shadow Plane Dark Tapestry" thing is unlikely to be put into Golarion. If we wanna do more of one or the other (and we do) we'll do those things alone to build their already existing distortions and themes rather than muddy those waters.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Calliope785 wrote:
A question about Pulura and Golarion's Antarctic (and a general question about the interplanetary reach of Empyreal Lords, I suppose). It's mentioned, I think in Aquatic Adventures, that there is a huge ice sheet on the Antarkos Ocean, which frost trolls live on. They're said to worship auroras. First off, does Pulura have dominion over all aurora effects, whether northern or southern, on Golarion or not, or just those specifically in Golarion's northern hemisphere? And secondly I assume the degenerate ice trolls aren't actually worshipping her but just the natural phenomenon of the solar wind?

Pulura is associated with auroras, but she doesn't "control" them all in the sense that every aurora on every planet is her specific doing. Her worship is mostly limited to the north. We've done VERY little with the south pole in the setting. I wouldn't place any organized Pulura worship down there at all, but it might be fun if some of her faithful learned that there's evil frost trolls down there worshiping auroras and getting all scandalized and going down there to defeat them and then adventure seeds result.

Those trolls might be worshiping just an atmospheric effect, or they might be worshiping some other influence. They're specifically not worshiping Pulura though.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

UncleFroggy wrote:
Are there plans to have the Band of Bravos storyline put into an Adventure Path? From watching your adventures on line, it's something I'd love to run/play.

We have no plans at this time to turn Band of Bravos into a published adventure.

It was certainly a lot of fun to play, even if it did wreak a fair amount of havoc on our production schedule by having 5 employees stop working on their main jobs to work on entirely different jobs...

...but it was never really built to be an Adventure Path or module.

The one-shots we've started to publish are much more in line with our constantly evolving goals of having live-play events based on adventures we intend to publish.


With deities playing such a central role in the history of Golarion,
how comes that none of the prominent characters in Pathfinder Legends is a cleric?

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
James Jacobs wrote:
CorvusMask wrote:
So do goblins think that every other ancestry is soulless for reading or do they not think their worldview that far?

That's like saying "all humans love artichokes." Some do, some do not, some don't know what an artichoke is.

Goblins who fear words are largely intended to be NPCs, and it's one of many things that define goblin society—they're individually pretty weak, and thus have a lot to fear, and tend to react to fear by trying to be more ferocious than that what they fear, and are thus generaly awful chaotic evil violent monsters.

PC goblins are up to the PC to choose how they work. We've included more non-chaotic evil goblin NPCs in the setting in 2nd edition to help players and GMs understand how that can work, but that's hardly new.

The goal of Burnt Offerings was to take one of D&D's most boring and ignored monsters, the goblin, and make them fun again as enemies. That worked. As soon as Legacy of Fire, not quite 2 years later, we started exploring other more diverse goblin NPCs in the setting.

I'll rephrase the question then: the goblins who believe in that part, do they believe it applies to all creatures or just goblins? Or is it also dependent on group of goblins?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Courage Mind wrote:

With deities playing such a central role in the history of Golarion,

how comes that none of the prominent characters in Pathfinder Legends is a cleric?

Because I didn't have sole curation over what characters appeared in that book, I guess, and like one often sees in games played out at tables, not everyone involved wants to play the cleric. I certainly pushed to have several clerics in the book, but the initial list of NPCs to go in there would have filled a book three times its size, easily. I think the book came out really well, and I'd love to do a second or third one down the line... but whether or not that happens will continue to at least partially rely upon how management views the book's sales and reviews, and on whether or not we want to do other books that are mostly lore and have light amounts of rules content.

(Personally, I want to do LOTS more of these kind of books for Golarion...)

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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CorvusMask wrote:
I'll rephrase the question then: the goblins who believe in that part, do they believe it applies to all creatures or just goblins? Or is it also dependent on group of goblins?

I don't suspect many goblins spend much time philosophizing on what it means if something else reads. Instead of thinking of them as soulless for reading, they're more likely to think of them as stupid or foolish for reading and don't really bother to consider the philosophical ramifications of what might happen if you do get your soul taken away.

Radiant Oath

James Jacobs wrote:
UncleFroggy wrote:
Are there plans to have the Band of Bravos storyline put into an Adventure Path? From watching your adventures on line, it's something I'd love to run/play.

We have no plans at this time to turn Band of Bravos into a published adventure.

It was certainly a lot of fun to play, even if it did wreak a fair amount of havoc on our production schedule by having 5 employees stop working on their main jobs to work on entirely different jobs...

...but it was never really built to be an Adventure Path or module.

The one-shots we've started to publish are much more in line with our constantly evolving goals of having live-play events based on adventures we intend to publish.

Are the character sheets for your characters available anywhere? I'd be interested to see how they were built at 1st level. I'm curious as to how Ilana Thistlefoot was able to get Assurance in Medicine at Level 1.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Loong Laohu wrote:
Are the character sheets for your characters available anywhere? I'd be interested to see how they were built at 1st level. I'm curious as to how Ilana Thistlefoot was able to get Assurance in Medicine at Level 1.

They were never made public, apart from the super condensed versions at the bottom of the streams. And I'm happy for that to tell the truth. I do appreciate folks' honest curiosity about how we at Paizo build our characters, but too many other people online would pick apart our choices, pile on to "mistakes," and use the characters as "proof" for personal crusades that Paizo's employees don't know how to play their own game. It was stressful enough trying to not make rules mistakes on screen. Having something like personal and un-editied and un-developed character work out there online for the entire internet to pick apart does not sound very fun to me.


Is slavery legal in Rahadoum? If yes, how common is it?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Courage Mind wrote:
Is slavery legal in Rahadoum? If yes, how common is it?

You can safely assume that slavery is illegal in all nations that aren't evil. Rahadoum is lawful neutral, so nope, slavery is not legal there.

Note that even in evil nations, slavery isn't automatically legal.

Radiant Oath

James Jacobs wrote:
Loong Laohu wrote:
Are the character sheets for your characters available anywhere? I'd be interested to see how they were built at 1st level. I'm curious as to how Ilana Thistlefoot was able to get Assurance in Medicine at Level 1.
They were never made public, apart from the super condensed versions at the bottom of the streams. And I'm happy for that to tell the truth. I do appreciate folks' honest curiosity about how we at Paizo build our characters, but too many other people online would pick apart our choices, pile on to "mistakes," and use the characters as "proof" for personal crusades that Paizo's employees don't know how to play their own game. It was stressful enough trying to not make rules mistakes on screen. Having something like personal and un-editied and un-developed character work out there online for the entire internet to pick apart does not sound very fun to me.

Just my opinion -- it's unfortunate that some people would think that way (that the rules mistakes, etc. "proves" that Paizo employees don't know how to play their own game). While some of you are part of the creative process, short of playing on a regular basis, there's no way you could experience the entire product. Kinda sad, really, that people have gotten to this point... FWIW, it was a lot of fun to watch. I might even get a Shensen figure... :)

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Loong Laohu wrote:
Just my opinion -- it's unfortunate that some people would think that way (that the rules mistakes, etc. "proves" that Paizo employees don't know how to play their own game). While some of you are part of the creative process, short of playing on a regular basis, there's no way you could experience the entire product. Kinda sad, really, that people have gotten to this point... FWIW, it was a lot of fun to watch. I might even get a Shensen figure... :)

YAY Shensen figures!

Radiant Oath

James Jacobs wrote:
Loong Laohu wrote:
Just my opinion -- it's unfortunate that some people would think that way (that the rules mistakes, etc. "proves" that Paizo employees don't know how to play their own game). While some of you are part of the creative process, short of playing on a regular basis, there's no way you could experience the entire product. Kinda sad, really, that people have gotten to this point... FWIW, it was a lot of fun to watch. I might even get a Shensen figure... :)
YAY Shensen figures!

I knew you'd like that!

Is it true that Kobold "Mek mek mek" will be part of the canon or was that just part of the banter in Band of Bravos? I've been using it in my games (Beginner Box Menace Under Otari)...

Radiant Oath

James, will there be an NPC Guide for 2nd Edition as well? Basically, will Shensen's stats in the NPC guide be updated for P2e? :)


Hey James,

just one question this time. I'll ask a second and a third one later (feels chaotic).

Are genies outsiders in a sense that a mortal soul after death can turn into one?
Like a worshipper of Lysianassa sent to the Plane of Water and instead of reincarnating as a water elemental it is "rewarded" to become a marid.


How is the alignment of a nation defined? For example, why Rahadoum is Lawful Neutral but Andoran is Neutral Good? Bonus question: Why Qadira, a nation with Sarenrae as patron, is only Neutral?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Loong Laohu wrote:
Is it true that Kobold "Mek mek mek" will be part of the canon or was that just part of the banter in Band of Bravos? I've been using it in my games (Beginner Box Menace Under Otari)...

So, the origin of that whole thing comes from the first Kingmaker adventure, which I helped write (didn't take cover credit though, since Tim Hitchcock wrote about 2/3 of that adventure). In that adventure, there are kobolds engaged in a war with nearby gremlins. As part of my writing/development to tie the adventure together, I built in stronger links between the two groups so that they'd feel more like they're at "war," but also ended up renaming all of the kobolds to give them names that felt more like a kobold name.

I'd always roleplayed kobolds in my games as being chirpy and chatty and talking with high-pitched voices, speaking quickly with short syllables. Not in a way that sounds like they're dumb, mind you (that's for ogres), but in a way that makes them sound just the right mix of hyper, foolish, and nervous. I guess the 1st edition D&D kobold design that had them looking like scaly dogs was in my head more, so it was sort of a case of imagining what a tiny little yappy dog would sound like if it could talk.

And so, among the several names I came up with for kobolds in that first Kingmaker adventure for the parts I wrote (or heavily developed, which is pretty much the same thing), was a kobold prisoner named Mikmek. That was the first point I came up with those noises for kobold chatter, and in particular started using "Mik Mek" noises in the office whenever someone started talking about kobolds.

I guess it rubbed off onto Jason at some point!

In any case, "Mik Mek" has been part of kobold canon for well over a decade as a result.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Loong Laohu wrote:
James, will there be an NPC Guide for 2nd Edition as well? Basically, will Shensen's stats in the NPC guide be updated for P2e? :)

We recently published our version of that book for 2nd edition with Lost Omens Legends. The decision to not include stat blocks was made in part because it's easier to develop and edit fiction and flavor text and we needed a "faster" book on the schedule at the time, but also to experiment with customer appetite for big hardcover books with less rules and more lore.

It's possible we might do a new NPC Guide for 2nd edition, and I really kind of want to, since that book made some mis-steps in assuming that every NPC on the planet was like 6th level or lower. That was never meant to be the case. A 2nd edition version would provide NPC stats for all levels of play, but those at the higher end would skew more toward individuals rather than types of NPCs.

Whether or not that book would include a "Here are stats of Paizo employee characters" like Shensen, I'm not sure. We have a lot more employees today than we did back when we first published the NPC Guide, so that section would either have to be much larger, or we'd have to do some sort of lottery or something to determine which employee got to see their character in print and which one got to miss out. And then there's the whole factor of that being super self-indulgent—a high-tier "let me tell you about my character" thing that a lot of folks don't like or don't have the patience for.

More self-indulgence below...

Spoiler:
Shensen, though, in particular has been made into an official NPC in the game; she's part of the Firebrands now, based in Kintargo in Ravounel. She had a larger role to play in "Hell's Rebels." One of the perks of working at Paizo is that you can put your characters into adventures as NPCs, and as a sort of self-congratulatory reward to me for sticking things out and helping to keep the Adventure Path line going from volume one to volume 100, I wrote most of volume 100 and put Shensen on the cover. Knowing that Wayne was the artist, of course. And then I bought the original. So yeah, pretty self-indulgent.

I keep playing Shensen for the most part as my main character in any video game I play, but also periodically in Pathifnder games. I played her previously in Pathfinder several years back in Erik Mona's extensive playtest of his upcoming adventure, "Dead God's Hand." And of course, more recently, in "Band of Bravos," because that whole thing got thrown together at lightning speed after we all started working from home as a result of the pandemic. None of us were in the office and thus couldn't use the studio there, so Payton recruited several of us that he knew were comfortable gaming in public and that had microphone set ups. I got recruited because it was easy to set me up since I was already doing Kingmaker streams with him. And in the spirit of time saving, I decided to play Shensen becasue that would keep me from agonizing over what sort of character to play, PLUS she had official awesome art. And she's my favorite character to play too, so that was a plus.

I suppose I could drop Shensen's stats, as they were at the end of Band of Bravos, into this forum for folks to see if they're interested. It's kind of a pain to format things in these posts, though...

That said, she'll keep popping up in Golarion stuff now and then. She was, in fact, on the short list for NPCs to be included in Lost Omens Legends, but she didn't make the cut.

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