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Hi James,
Avistan has opera, but does it have ballet? If so does ballet costumes include tutus, which seem to date form the 1820s.
Running an extension of Strange Aeons which will include a return to Paris and the Opera Garnier. Wondering what sophisticated PCs from Taldor and Cheliax would recogise...
Thanks in advance
Ah, that makes more sense. My favorite is the ganzi kobold, but I'll need to wait until after the adventure's out to talk more about her or the rest of the adventure.
Recently had the chance to play this and despite nearly missing the game (due to work fatigue) still had the chance to enjoy it. Think it 'flowed' better even given certain player decisions during the course of the adventure.
It's inspired me, even!
However, I couldn't find Kellsti referenced in-thread other than the comment that you were going to wait until the adventure was out.
So the question is: Can you tell us a bit more about Kellsti than the brutalities of word-count would allow for?
Thank you very much for your time in advance!
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Greetings Mr. Jacobs,
To what extend do you think, that the followers of a deity know of their gods personal ambitions/general agenda?
Or those of other faiths, with a high knowledge religion result.For example, the Night Queen Eiseth wants to take over from Moloch as general of Hell's armies, to conquer heaven, is what i read.
That depends on the follower's skill in Religion. The higher, the more lore they'd know.
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Gotcha. In any case, really looking forward to seeing what you've done with Kingmaker (and Absalom, as I recall hearing you wrote a lot of content for that book alongside Erik?).
Are cut Legends characters supposed to be secret? If not, who would you have liked to see make it in the book?
The full list of NPCs is not a trade secret, but it's not something that we've published or made apparent, because that would detract from the book itself with people getting disappointed or frustrated. We typically have ideas for all SORTS of books and products several years in advance, and this list is one of those. We generally don't make public our plans that far in advance.
Of course, I wanted to see Shensen in the book, so there's one NPC that's on the list. Koriah Azmeren is another; she got onto the cover of the Pathfinder Society book but for whatever reason she also got left out of that book entirely. And Ameiko Kaijitsu would be fun to get into the book as well.
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Hi James,
Avistan has opera, but does it have ballet? If so does ballet costumes include tutus, which seem to date form the 1820s.
Running an extension of Strange Aeons which will include a return to Paris and the Opera Garnier. Wondering what sophisticated PCs from Taldor and Cheliax would recogise...
Thanks in advance
I don't believe we've put ballet into Golarion yet. The 1820s is pretty close to the anachronsim cut-off date, but that date keeps creeping more recent it seems. We'll see.
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Ah, that makes more sense. My favorite is the ganzi kobold, but I'll need to wait until after the adventure's out to talk more about her or the rest of the adventure.Recently had the chance to play this and despite nearly missing the game (due to work fatigue) still had the chance to enjoy it. Think it 'flowed' better even given certain player decisions during the course of the adventure.
It's inspired me, even!
However, I couldn't find Kellsti referenced in-thread other than the comment that you were going to wait until the adventure was out.
So the question is: Can you tell us a bit more about Kellsti than the brutalities of word-count would allow for?
Thank you very much for your time in advance!
This isn't a case of "the brutalities of word count." As you see in the adventure, there was a lot more space for more words as it turned out, but since I was writing this adventure in scramble mode and once it got laid out the format was a lot more roomy than I expected, I didn't get a chance to expand on any of that lore. Pretty much all of what I wrote is in there—there's no cut material. This wasn't a case of "the brutalities of word count" so much as "the brutalities of a too-compressed schedule making it impossible to add content in a timely manner where it could get properly edited before the product went live."
The primary goal I had for Kellsti though was to show off that clerics of Nocticula are super diverse and are from all ancestries. And not all kobolds want to trap you in a pit and feed the less appetizing parts of your meat to their pet weasels. Some of them are friendly!
Are Elementals and other inner sphere denizens like outsiders in that they’re made of quintessence/they’re bodies and souls are one? Or are the like humans and other material plane creatures?
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Are Elementals and other inner sphere denizens like outsiders in that they’re made of quintessence/they’re bodies and souls are one? Or are the like humans and other material plane creatures?
They are made of elements, not quintessence, but they do have bodies and souls that are one. So they're kinda in between the two.
And that's another way to differentiate between the two spheres. Things in the Inner Sphere are made of the 4 elements, while things in the Outer Sphere are made of quintessence.
Are Elementals and other inner sphere denizens like outsiders in that they’re made of quintessence/they’re bodies and souls are one? Or are the like humans and other material plane creatures?They are made of elements, not quintessence, but they do have bodies and souls that are one. So they're kinda in between the two.
And that's another way to differentiate between the two spheres. Things in the Inner Sphere are made of the 4 elements, while things in the Outer Sphere are made of quintessence.
Awesome thanks! What about the shadow plane and the ethereal plane (and I guess the positive and negative energy planes, not sure how those would work).
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Awesome thanks! What about the shadow plane and the ethereal plane (and I guess the positive and negative energy planes, not sure how those would work).Are Elementals and other inner sphere denizens like outsiders in that they’re made of quintessence/they’re bodies and souls are one? Or are the like humans and other material plane creatures?They are made of elements, not quintessence, but they do have bodies and souls that are one. So they're kinda in between the two.
And that's another way to differentiate between the two spheres. Things in the Inner Sphere are made of the 4 elements, while things in the Outer Sphere are made of quintessence.
Those are still in the inner sphere, so things there are made of elements. Or magic stuff like ectopolasm or shadow stuff or energy.
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Hey James! A friend of mine had a question about Exemplar traits and the Additional Traits feat. Specifically, does Additional Traits allow you to take traits from your Exemplar trait's category?
This confusion is caused by the line in Additional Traits which states 'These traits must be chosen from different lists, and cannot be chosen from lists from which you have already selected a character trait'. This rule, given the fact it's taken after the Exemplar trait, seems to supersede the 'a character with an exemplar trait is no longer restricted to a single trait of that category and can select any number of such traits when gaining further traits'. I believe that, if Exemplar traits were meant to allow Additional Traits to take multiple traits from the same category, Exemplar traits would have specifically said so. But at the same time, it feels strange that that'd be the intention, so I thought I'd ask.
I don't know. I've pretty much moved on to 2nd edition Pathfinder and haven't had my head in 1st edition much at all for the past few years, and as such, I don't remember what Exemplar traits are.
Your GM should be the primary source of answers like this, in any event, since they'll know what works for your table. My advice is to choose one, but keep open to the idea of switching to the other if it turns out that your choice made the game less fun to play.
This isn't a case of "the brutalities of word count." As you see in the adventure, there was a lot more space for more words as it turned out, but since I was writing this adventure in scramble mode and once it got laid out the format was a lot more roomy than I expected, I didn't get a chance to expand on any of that lore. Pretty much all of what I wrote is in there—there's no cut material. This wasn't a case of "the brutalities of word count" so much as "the brutalities of a too-compressed schedule making it impossible to add content in a timely manner where it could get properly edited before the product went live."
The primary goal I had for Kellsti though was to show off that clerics of Nocticula are super diverse and are from all ancestries. And not all kobolds want to trap you in a pit and feed the less appetizing parts of your meat to their pet weasels. Some of them are friendly!
Despite the significant issues as you noted, it was a fun and amazing adventure and I'm glad for the efforts and your efficiency in getting the idea for Kellsti across.
Half of my growing snarl of 'bolds has been definitely not holding me at knife point having escaped the Character Barracks to jump on and refute your baseless accusations...
The other half have been saying "Let it go, it's BETTER this way if we have that reputation!"
Thank you very much for your response!
As it is a question thread: What inspired the use of the Big Bad in the adventure?
If I wanted to have a Pathfinder character somehow be connected to black holes, what’s my best angle on that? Always looking to inject more weird space flavor into my fantasy.
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As it is a question thread: What inspired the use of the Big Bad in the adventure?
I wanted to...
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Even though I probably won't be running it reading Malevolence is a wonderful learning and inspiration source, what was some of your favourite parts in writing it?
That's tough to narrow down, to be honest. I had a lot of fun doing all of it, be it the quirky NPCs/monsters, or the way to get information about the history of the site to the PCs, or the inclusion of a big bad foe that I created for my own writing back in the late 80s. Maybe a little bittersweet, that last one, since including him in this adventure means I sold him off to Paizo, and can't really use him in my own writing for me should there ever come a time when I'm actually able to motivate myself to take the risk and write stories or novels or whatever for publication outside of Paizo, where I can really stretch my creativity into areas that aren't that appropriate for an increasingly mass-market fantasy RPG.
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If I wanted to have a Pathfinder character somehow be connected to black holes, what’s my best angle on that? Always looking to inject more weird space flavor into my fantasy.
Damn... I wrote a large reply to this and the site ate it. Bleh.
The short version is that black holes are pretty much the domian of the Dominion of the Black religion in Pathfinder, so unless you want to play an evil character who's allied with the Dominion, your best bet to include black holes in your character's history and themes would be to make a character who is fighting against them, and thus fighting against the Dominion.
Valley of the Brain Collectors has quite a bit more info about these themes, and I picked up a lot of those themes in Malevolence.
If you want a good character associated with weird space flavor, I'd suggest faiths like Desna, Pulura, and Black Butterfly. Things like shooting stars, constelations, the moon, and the aurora are more appropriate themes for non-evil stories.
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When you do "approval passes" on LO books is there ever anything you "disapprove" of/ask to have changed? If so do you have any examples of that from recent books?
Yes. I try to get those disapproval things done well before the final stage, so that they're less disruptive—hopefully those things get taken care of during the outline creation so the bad ideas never get written in the first place, but if they do, hopefully they get taken care of during the middle of the process review.
If something creeps through to the final product and I don't notice it until the last few days before it ships to the printer, part of my job is picking my battles; choosing what to pull the emergency break for and what to let go. If I let it go, I'll let folks know that "This isn't right for Pathfinder but there's nothing to be done about it and it's not worth delaying the product to fix, but let's not do this going forward."
Other times, there are things that I have to not approve, and that means that folks, myself usually included, have to drop everything and scramble to find a solution ASAP or, in the worst case, delay the shipping of the product to the printer which can cause the product to delay its release and thus potentially impact the company's cash flow. Obviously, I try to avoid that if at all possible, but we've had to do it before.
I'm not gonna name examples though. I don't see a value in airing dirty laundry in public, or giving any sort of public weight to errors. As we've seen when errors slip through into print plenty of times before, they end up lingering and causing a lot of negativity. Catching the mistakes and fixing them so that they never see the light of day is better all around.
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Hi James,
Is the qlippoth worldview more expansionist or isolationist? Since I believe it's stated that originally the Abyss wasn't connected with the rest of the multiverse and the proteans brought it into contact with the Maelstrom, if the Abyss were purged of demons and mortalkind went extinct, would the qlippoths be down with just sealing the Abyss off from the rest of reality, packing up their bags, and "going home"? Or would they want to ravage the rest of the Outer Sphere and drag it all into the Outer Rifts?
Originally, it was isolationist, but that was because there was nothing out there to be angry at. Now that they've seen that there's more, the qlippoth would turn their attentions toward everything else once mortals were out of the picture, and would push to have the Abyss be everything again. As far as they could tell, at least.
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In your latest adventure, I found the caul evocative of late 19th/early 20th century occultism's perception of ectoplasm. Was this your intent?
If so, did you have any concerns about how it would play with a modern audience? Ectoplasm seems to have fallen out of modern storytelling (could be my bad perception, though).
100% my intent, and pretty much the cue we've taken for ectoplasm for all of our books, more or less.
I don't have any concerns about it at all. Ectoplasm does still show up in movies and stories today. It's not in every single horror movie, but it never went away. And furthermore, bringing in possibly obscure real-world occult/myth stuff into the game is something we've been doing a lot from the start.
AKA: Lamashtu's pretty obscure these days, and I had no fears about how she'd play to a modern audience. And since we've featured her as one of our main evil deities, I've seen her show up as a villain in a movie. An unfortunately kind of mediocre one whose title I can't remember off the top of my head, but still.
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Is 'guardian beast' supposed to be the new 2E name for the 1E foo creature?
Not only "supposed" to be, but is. I believe because "foo" is an awkward and outdated transliteration, but also because we wanted to rely more on real world myth rather than D&D legacy.
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Can Urdefhan still see with their eyes closed?Since they have invisible eyelids, yup. Might be like looking through warped glass though.
So ... they are always cheating @ hide&seek?
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So ... they are always cheating @ hide&seek?Can Urdefhan still see with their eyes closed?Since they have invisible eyelids, yup. Might be like looking through warped glass though.
Nope. They don't play fun harmless games like that, so cheating never comes up. More like "Run and Eat," where we humans run until we're tired out and then they catch up and EAT.
Mr. James Jacobs,
Would someone trying to go beyond the outer limits of the planar sphere be a good basis for an campaign? Also would such an action get the attention of Zon-Kuthon?
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Mr. James Jacobs,
Would someone trying to go beyond the outer limits of the planar sphere be a good basis for an campaign? Also would such an action get the attention of Zon-Kuthon?
That could be a fun basis for a campaign but it'd be a lot of work since the creator of that campaing would need to create most of the content.
Zon-Kuthon likely wouldn't notice unless the whole point of the campaign was an attempt to follow in Dou-Bral's footsteps or something like that.
Hi again Mr. James Jacob! Long-ish time since I asked a question but I've got another one for you, I'll preface this with it being a first edition question.
In first edition there is a feat called Planar Heritage, its very similar to racial heritage where it has a line about meeting prerequisites for certain benefits: "You must have the requisite physical features to gain certain benefits, as determined by the GM (for example, you cannot gain feats that augment your tail’s abilities if you do not actually have a tail)."
My group in the world I run is currently at odds with how this ability works on (EX) abilities such as https://aonprd.com/FeatDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Aquatic%20Ancestry which gives you the Amphibious ability if you are an an Undine who takes this feat, does this mean that Undine have the ability to breath water 'Normally' but don't unlock it without this feat? In a similar manner if an Planar Heritage (Aasimar) went down the feat chain to get abilities could they get https://www.aonprd.com/FeatDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Angelic%20Blood
or https://www.aonprd.com/FeatDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Angel%20Wings?
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Hi again Mr. James Jacob! Long-ish time since I asked a question but I've got another one for you, I'll preface this with it being a first edition question.
In first edition there is a feat called Planar Heritage, its very similar to racial heritage where it has a line about meeting prerequisites for certain benefits: "You must have the requisite physical features to gain certain benefits, as determined by the GM (for example, you cannot gain feats that augment your tail’s abilities if you do not actually have a tail)."My group in the world I run is currently at odds with how this ability works on (EX) abilities such as https://aonprd.com/FeatDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Aquatic%20Ancestry which gives you the Amphibious ability if you are an an Undine who takes this feat, does this mean that Undine have the ability to breath water 'Normally' but don't unlock it without this feat? In a similar manner if an Planar Heritage (Aasimar) went down the feat chain to get abilities could they get https://www.aonprd.com/FeatDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Angelic%20Blood
or https://www.aonprd.com/FeatDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Angel%20Wings?
Go with what feels more fun in your game, I say. And if you're spending more time arguing about how a rule might work in your game than playing the game, I'd suggest looking at a different build for the character entirely. Sorry that's not a specific ruling on this, but I'm pretty much not in the 1st edition headspace these days, and even when I was I was always super hesitant to provide rules answers because they tended to cause more discord with people arguing over whether or not what I said was official or not, and whether or not me having different answers than the design team meant that Paizo didn't have its house in order.
So today, my go-to answer for questions that are basically "My gaming group is arguing about how this rule works, what is the right way?" is as I said above. What's most fun for your group is the right choice, and if no choice is fun for the group, it's not a good thing to include at your table.
Hello,
I read Malevolence and enjoyed it a lot, particularly some of your comments after the adventure how it came to be and how you GMed it.
I am thinking of it being my first foray into GMing PF2e (I am currently finishing up an, also very enjoyable, Iron Gods campaign.).
This led to some brainstorming and a minor question:
Since Crooked Cove is abandoned in the published adventure, how should buying/selling equipment be handled? Is there any noteable settlement nearby? I was thinking of maybe inventing a place 2 days worth of travel away. Or are the characters supposed to be able to work with what they find?
Thanks!
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Since Crooked Cove is abandoned in the published adventure, how should buying/selling equipment be handled? Is there any noteable settlement nearby? I was thinking of maybe inventing a place 2 days worth of travel away. Or are the characters supposed to be able to work with what they find?
Thanks!
There is no notable settlement nearby. The PCs would need to make the overland trip back to a village south of Kingargo along the river, or maybe to Kintargo itself. This is by design—the locaiton is meant to feel remote and almost wilderness, to "strand" the PCs in the area. The PCs are supposed to work with what they bring with them to the adventure and augment it with what they find. Certainly, the tools they'll need to defeat the adventure's villain are all baked into the adventure itself, giving a few different paths to victory depending on how well the PCs research and explore, though. The group shouldn't need to retreat, shop, and reoutfit, unless the group itself doesn't have much recovery/healing options. In that case, I'd consider putting a few more of those types of treasures into the adventure, or having a small town be a day's travel away.
Do you like this poem?
my lyre has a soul, my song an ideal.
My verse is not to be cradled and hung in the foliage
with the paused to-and-fro of a tropical hammock…
When I’m feeling Inca, I pledge my vassalage to the Sun,
who offers the scepter of his royal power;
when I feel Hispanic and evoke colonial yoke
my verses sound like crystal trumpets.
My fantasy hails from Moorish lineage:
the Andes are of silver, but the Lion – of gold,
and the two are alloyed with an epic roar.
The blood is Spanish and the pulse is Inca;
and if not a Poet, I might well have been
a white adventurer or an Indian emperor. "
- José Santos Chocano
What would remnant style petitioners (petitioners that get sent back to the material plane) look like, and where would one be likely to find them?
Have petitioners in general every appeared in an ap or other adventure?
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What would remnant style petitioners (petitioners that get sent back to the material plane) look like, and where would one be likely to find them?
They'd look like vague ghostly spirits without much in the way of physical features. If you play the Dark Souls games, they'd look like humanity, I suppose. Armless, legless blobs of energy with two glowing spots for eyes in a smaller blob of a head on top.
They're super rare. You'd find them in areas where a Material Plane deity lives though.
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Have petitioners in general every appeared in an ap or other adventure?
Not that I know of. They're not really great things to fight against, and since other-planar adventures tend to skew toward higher level because that works better for storytelling needs for Pathfinder (the more supernatural a place gets, the less real it is, and thus the less appropriate it is for new games I feel), by the time we do have adventures set on other planes, petitioners are kind of pointless to include in encounters anyway.
Does Gozreh visit Golarion often, and/or does he have a particular favorite place on Golarion?
They're super rare. You'd find them in areas where a Material Plane deity lives though.
Are there any examples of such a place on Golarion?
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Does Gozreh visit Golarion often, and/or does he have a particular favorite place on Golarion?
Gozreh is one of the few deities who lives on the Material Plane, but they don't have a specific home or domain. Nor do they have a favorite part of Golarion. Petitioners of Gozreh usually shift from remnants into plants or animals pretty quickly.