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What if the target(creature) is already within 60 feet of the chosen object when casting Aversion?
AversionOccult Adventures pg. 158
School enchantment (compulsion) [mind-affecting]; Level arcanist 3, bard 2, druid 3, hunter 3, mesmerist 2, occultist 2, psychic 2, skald 2, sorcerer 3, witch 3, wizard 3
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S
Range close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target one creature
Duration 1 day/level
Saving Throw Will partial; Spell Resistance yesYou plant a revulsion in the mind of the subject, causing her to avoid an object or location. You must choose a specific object or place. A location chosen in this way can be no larger than a cube measuring 50 feet on a side. The aversion is entirely in the target’s mind, so the chosen object or location itself isn’t subject to any magical effect. If the target fails her saving throw, she can’t come within 60 feet of the chosen object or place. She makes every reasonable effort to avoid the object of the aversion, but will not put herself in danger in order to maintain the aversion. For example, if the object of the aversion is a bridge but a forest fire is closing in and will likely kill the target, she ignores the aversion and crosses the bridge to save herself. If the target must ignore the conditions of the aversion, she is nauseated until she is no longer violating the aversion.
If the target succeeds at her saving throw, she is instead sickened while within 60 feet of the object or place, but isn’t compelled to stay away from it.
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Even if the opposite choice is innocent people dying?
A good person in a situation where there are no good positions needs to make a tough choice as to what's best for the overall good. A GM who constantly puts a paladin PC into that position where every session they need to make a decision like this is a bad GM.
Obviously there will be tough choices, and atonement or making things right after being forced to choose a lesser evil (even if that evil itself is great) matter, but those sorts of situations shouldn't be common in a game where you have a player of a good character. That's not fun. The real world already has enough of those choices.
In any event, I consider this line of questioning resolved. I can't just keep adjusting my answers by tiny increments over and over and over when you just re-ask the same question with a "but what if" adjustment every time I try to help.
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What if the target(creature) is already within 60 feet of the chosen object when casting Aversion?
Either your GM will allow your paladin to weather the tough choice, or the player of the paladin will quit the campaign where this sort of "what if" thing happens so often that they need to come to the game's Creative Director in a last-ditch attempt to find some viable way to keep playing in that campaign.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't problems aren't things you should inflict on your players all the time, if ever. If your particular players have fun with those things and can handle the repercussions maturely without antagonizing each other, you're lucky and have fun, but most groups I've played with don't have that "luxury."
If you're in a game where you're facing these decisions often, or you know your GM is an antagonistic force that likes to force players to play against their character's types, and you don't want to find a less toxic game, then I suggest playing characters where alignment doesn't impact their abilities and just let the GM tell you what your alignment is each time they force you into a situation where you have to change it.
To start folks speculating though, it's set in a city we've set adventures in before.
Is it set in Sandpoint? My guess is Sandpoint.
Given that she's got a reptilian theme and loves traps, how common is the worship of Andirifkhu among evil communities of kobolds? It seems like some might have a natural affinity for her.Not that common at all. In my head, I think of kobolds more as devil worshipers, because they, like devils, are mostly lawful evil. The whole take of kobolds being dragons and worshiping dragons isn't super interesting to me although that seems to be a trope that most other folks DO find interesting, and so that's an example of one of many things in Pathfinder where I pretty much let go of my preference as creative director of the game and work to support the overwhelming preference.
But as for Andirifkhu? Maybe some here and there, but no more so than any other ancestry.
Just want to ask, is this your personal preference or related to a change in the lore of Kobolds in the 2e? Because in the book Kobolds of Golarion Anfirifkhu was listed as a somewhat common deity for kobolds.
Really not trying to get into the "the lore by JJ vs. the lore in the books" canon debate, but I've yet to read 2e thoroughly as I wanted, and I simply want to know if the 2e lore updates are related to your answer.
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Given that she's got a reptilian theme and loves traps, how common is the worship of Andirifkhu among evil communities of kobolds? It seems like some might have a natural affinity for her.Not that common at all. In my head, I think of kobolds more as devil worshipers, because they, like devils, are mostly lawful evil. The whole take of kobolds being dragons and worshiping dragons isn't super interesting to me although that seems to be a trope that most other folks DO find interesting, and so that's an example of one of many things in Pathfinder where I pretty much let go of my preference as creative director of the game and work to support the overwhelming preference.
But as for Andirifkhu? Maybe some here and there, but no more so than any other ancestry.
Just want to ask, is this your personal preference or related to a change in the lore of Kobolds in the 2e? Because in the book Kobolds of Golarion Anfirifkhu was listed as a somewhat common deity for kobolds.
Really not trying to get into the "the lore by JJ vs. the lore in the books" canon debate, but I've yet to read 2e thoroughly as I wanted, and I simply want to know if the 2e lore updates are related to your answer.
It's my personal preference, and as a result of me being Creative Director for Pathfinder, it has somewhat influenced kobolds in the game. There's certainly a fair amount of devil worshiping kobolds in Golarion, but it's not really the baseline for them.
Kobolds of Golarion isn't a product I had much input on at all—I would have suggested they don't do that since kobolds are more lawful and having them be demon worshipers is kinda against the grain for that, but it works I guess since they're all into traps.
I'm certainly not the only person who creates lore for Pathfinder, and the difference today when we have nearly a hundred folks working at Paizo versus when we all started and the number was closer to 20 means that there's been a LOT of changes over the past 20 years there as well.
What's it like mentally being a cleric of a deity (Arshea, for example) in contrast to being a lay worshipper (i.e., not a divine spellcaster)?
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What's it like mentally being a cleric of a deity (Arshea, for example) in contrast to being a lay worshipper (i.e., not a divine spellcaster)?
The cleric is more focused on the worship, whereas the lay worshiper is not, as a general term.
If instead of a deity it was a muse, then the cleric would be akin to an artist who is seized by inspiration and puts aside the rest of their duties to create art when it strikes them, whereas the analogy in that art world for a lay worshiper would be someone who appreciates art a lot but isn't particularly artistic themselves.
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Do the magical runes around a hand when a spell is cast function like normal light? Can you see it from as far away as you could see a candle, for example?
That's up to your GM, but I'd caution against saying they do because then you start down the path of having to micromanage what spells and effects cause what levels of light. Far easier to, as intended by the rules, say that only spells that have the Light trait actually create illumination.
The idea that spells make runes around hands or the like is not a traditionalpart of the rules, but part of the art that Wayne came up with to show that a character is casting a spell and not just drama posing, since it's tough to illustrate spellcasting components like talking or making complex moving hand gestures.
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So the alchemist (1e) infusion "change alignment, greater" seems to function a lot like a certain infamous 3.5 era spell...what would be the alignment repercussions for someone good aligned who is *using* this ability to "save" evil people (or even evil outsiders)?
And as a corollary, as a DM, how would you roleplay someone who had their alignment switched against their will? Trauma? It seems quite hideous, but I may also be misreading it and "is forced to love puppies where before you had a tendency to kick them" is actually a fine and decent thing that makes you feel better about yourself.
That's up to your GM really.
If I were your GM, I'd interpret the "let's use magic to force alignment changes and thus make things all conform to our desires" is not a good act. To me, that sort of thing, which is essentially a form of brainwashing and mind control, is at best a lawful neutral act. With a constantly looming threat of it drifting into lawful evil. A classic example of best intentions creating discord and unhappiness and frustration and revolution.
For me, a forced alignment change on an NPC is something I'll adjust as needed, but in most cases it plays out as a traumatic invasion of free will.
Instead, I let the players choose their character alignments, and then if they end up playing those characters in ways that I don't feel conform to those alignments, I'll chat with the player and work with them—it may be that their alignment is wrong and a change would fix it, or maybe it's a case of a player not realizing the way their actions play out, and in some unfortunate cases its a player being disruptive and that's never fun.
I also often put tough choices in adventures, where the PCs of their own free will can choose options that they know will have alignment repercussions. I present these not as traps or gotchas, though, but as opportunities for a player to embrace a change to their character's personality. A great example is the classic Faustian style temptation from a fiend who offers help when things look grim. A player can make that bargain and be saved at a cost, or resist the temptation and power through and feel more empowerd when (if!) they survive without the fiend's aid. I ended up putting one of these situations that happened in a game I was running into "Demons Revisited," with the glabrezu character of Bezilak. (BONUS POINTS: It was Mark Moreland's character who feel into Bezilak's clutches, and he ended up being a developer on this book so when he got to the glabrezu chapter, he got a fun little surprise!)
TL;DR I think forcing a PC's alignment to change is bad for the game.
Greetings James.
I'm building a Treerazer campaign that also serves as a "spiritual sequel" to the Second Darkness AP. It's a wee bit heavily researched at this point, but no bother. I wish to respect the lore. With the newly established Tar-Baphon concerns, open-borders policy, and marriage proposal/negotiations, the Lord of the Blasted Tarn has an opportunity to finish what he started.
What are your thoughts:
+ Has the Dark Fate been publicly disclosed?
+ Is the Witchbole a twelve-story dungeon? If this is the case, and Treerazer can fit comfortably inside of this thing, then it has to be massive and visible for miles and miles, right?
+ Have you folks defined Lethaquel, yet?
As it turns out, we've never said what Lethaquel is in public! It was described in my original writeup of Kyonin way back in Pathfinder 17, but the description got cut for space, we just forgot to remove it from the map. Which we didn't realize until just now. :)
I'm sure we'll detail it at some point--perhaps with my original concept, perhaps with something else entirely--but for the time being, it's left up to GMs. Which actually makes me really happy--I like knowing there's some mystery left in even the most detailed sections of our world!
For now, I'm going to write it as a gargantuan black monolith (with puzzle dungeon) that predates elven historical records and contains entrances to the Land of Black Blood, as well as an artifact described in the Book of Serpents, Ash, and Acorns. Sort of an easter-egg seed for a "Lost God Paradox" campaign involving Aroden. Aroden Lives!
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Greetings James.
I'm building a Treerazer campaign that also serves as a "spiritual sequel" to the Second Darkness AP. It's a wee bit heavily researched at this point, but no bother. I wish to respect the lore. With the newly established Tar-Baphon concerns, open-borders policy, and marriage proposal/negotiations, the Lord of the Blasted Tarn has an opportunity to finish what he started.What are your thoughts:
+ Has the Dark Fate been publicly disclosed? ** spoiler omitted **
+ Is the Witchbole a twelve-story dungeon? If this is the case, and Treerazer can fit comfortably inside of this thing, then it has to be massive and visible for miles and miles, right?
+ Have you folks defined Lethaquel, yet?
For now, I'm going to write it as a gargantuan black monolith (with puzzle dungeon) that predates elven historical records and contains entrances to the Land of Black Blood, as well as an artifact described in the Book of Serpents, Ash, and Acorns. Sort of an easter-egg seed for a "Lost God Paradox" campaign involving Aroden. Aroden Lives!As it turns out, we've never said what Lethaquel is in public! It was described in my original writeup of Kyonin way back in Pathfinder 17, but the description got cut for space, we just forgot to remove it from the map. Which we didn't realize until just now. :)
I'm sure we'll detail it at some point--perhaps with my original concept, perhaps with something else entirely--but for the time being, it's left up to GMs. Which actually makes me really happy--I like knowing there's some mystery left in even the most detailed sections of our world!
Wow... there's a lot going on there, and there's no way for me to answer it without doing a LOT of free writing that'll kinda just get lost in this giant thread. Furthermore... it's YOUR game, and the excitement there should be for you in how you take what we started with and run from there.
In full disclosure, I'm sure that at some point we'll publish more about these topics. I've been itching to do a Kyonin Vs. Tanglebriar Adventure Path from the start of Pathfinder, in fact, but so far it's not come to pass. May never come to pass.
But in the meantime, where you go with the story at your table should be YOUR story, not mine. It sounds like you've done a lot of work on it already, in fact. And maybe start up a thread up in the homebrew section of the forum if you wanna croudsource ideas or brainstorm thing with others here?
I can't be a part of that process though, alas, for legal reasons, for time management reasons, and out of respect to you, since it's impossible for me to "spitball" ideas here without folks assuming that I'm revealing canon for the setting...
SO! Have fun exploring Tanglebriar, mapping out the Witchbole, and confronting your PCs with good old Treerazer! :)
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+ Has the Dark Fate been publicly disclosed? ** spoiler omitted **
I do want to single this out though. This is an element that hasn't aged well.
The original idea:
The problem with that is that it reduces to "If you are an elf, a creature traditionally represented in fantasy as being a white person with pointed ears, who goes evil, you turn black." There's some undeniable and awful racist connotations to the whole trope of "dark elves being evil" that I wish we had the bravery and wisdom to do something about back in the day, but we didn't.
With the edition change, we're making those changes—it's probably too little, too late, but we're doing what we can. Drow still exist in Golarion, and there are still plenty of them who are evil and worship demons... but those are mostly just the drow of one major Darklands city. There are LOTS of others of lots of different alignments. Abomination Vaults is one place where we start to explore on non-evil drow society.
And we've also adjusted their skintone to be a strange lavender color to escape the comparison to them being black.
At some point, I hope we can do a book or an Adventure Path or something that focuses on the Darklands and gives us a chance to fully present the new version of drow as a more complex ancestry and not "evil black elves," and as part of that, we might throw out the whole dark fate entirely. That's a lot of work that we're still doing behind the scenes and preparing for.
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how easy do you think it will be to make mythic rules & enemies like the whispering tyrant & the 4 horsemen ? what did you like about the 1e mythic system?
I think that the underlying math of 2nd Edition means that I could stat up creatures up to level 30 (or above, even, but I'll still cap it there because that's our traditional cap and we have to cap it somewhere) right now.
The problem isn't that. The problem is that our current game only lets players go to 20th level, and once you get beyond a level 24 foe, you have to start doing some tricky stuff to make the encounter even be fun, let alone survivable.
So while creating stats for creatures that powerful is doable right this instant, creating characters capable of meeting those challenges would be one of the most difficult things we've asked the Design team to do since we asked them to build 2nd edition in the first place.
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will mythic be a thing eventually?
If folks want us to do something like a 2nd edition Mythic Adventures, or an expansion book that brings characters from 21st level to 30th level... let us know! Won't guarantee a book like that, but knowing there's a market for those books will help.
Seeing stronger sales for high level adventures, be they standalone adventures or parts of Adventure Paths would also tell us that this sort of content is a viable place to explore.
Personally, I adore high level play and I love statting up powerful monsters and writing adventures where you do really over-the-top "epic" stuff like defeat demigods or create worlds, so telling me you'd like this sort of support isn't as important as requesting it elsewhere on the internet, or requesting it at conventions, or giving good reviews to high level content (or even just buying the high level content).
In any event, it's not something we've announced, and I don't announce things in this thread... so for now, I guess just wait and see.
OR pick up a copy of the "Wrath of the Righteous" computer game when it comes out in a few weeks! :D
What are the odds of a hypothetical Kyonin AP touching on Castrovel/Sovyrian? One of my favorite bits of Pathfinder lore is that the elves are from another world, but I struggle to make that relevant.
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What are the odds of a hypothetical Kyonin AP touching on Castrovel/Sovyrian? One of my favorite bits of Pathfinder lore is that the elves are from another world, but I struggle to make that relevant.
I've wanted to do a Kyonin vs. Tanglebriar AP for ages, and something like that could well have ties to Castrovel, especially in a "we need to go to the homeland to gather resources for this fight" sort of way. So I'd say the odds are probably favorable, but at this point I'm not running Adventure Paths, so they're not as favorable as they could be, since Ron and Patrick have their own things that they're eager to explore and I don't think that Kyonin is on their short lists.
Elves being from another world is something I exported from my homebrew setting, and was itself inspired by Elfquest (which inspired a lot more than just elves are aliens to me—it's the initial inspiration for Shensen's name, sorta as well, since there's a character in Elfquest named Shenshen), which also had elves being from a different world. Maybe check those old graphic novels out for some more inspiration?
I've recently purchased the Malevolence adventure and I'm also thinking of getting the flip-mats. However, as far as I can tell, only the flip-mats for the mansion's floors are included. Is that correct and, if yes, what about the other maps which are depicted in the adventure book? :-/ Do I have to manually erase the markers in order to show them to the players? Sorry for the potentially silly question, I'm babystepping into the GM territory.
P.S. I LOVE what I am reading so far! I really hope to run this adventure in the foreseeable future and write a thorough review afterwards.
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I've recently purchased the Malevolence adventure and I'm also thinking of getting the flip-mats. However, as far as I can tell, only the flip-mats for the mansion's floors are included. Is that correct and, if yes, what about the other maps which are depicted in the adventure book? :-/ Do I have to manually erase the markers in order to show them to the players? Sorry for the potentially silly question, I'm babystepping into the GM territory.
P.S. I LOVE what I am reading so far! I really hope to run this adventure in the foreseeable future and write a thorough review afterwards.
** spoiler omitted **
Yay! Glad you're enjoying the adventure!
And we can't always fit all the maps for an adventure into a flip mat format, unfortunately, so we do the best we can. In this adventure's case, the flip mats cover only the first and second floors of Xarwin Manor and nothing else. If you want to use the other maps from the adventure then yeah, you'll need to manually adjust the markers if you don't wanna just draw them out by hand. If you purchased the PDF version, then there might be interactive maps that come along with it... but to be honest, I don't know how any of that stuff works since I'm spoiled and can just grab the original maps off our servers when I need them.
Looking forward to the review, and hope it's as fun to play as it was to write!
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I've recently purchased the Malevolence adventure and I'm also thinking of getting the flip-mats. However, as far as I can tell, only the flip-mats for the mansion's floors are included. Is that correct and, if yes, what about the other maps which are depicted in the adventure book? :-/ Do I have to manually erase the markers in order to show them to the players? Sorry for the potentially silly question, I'm babystepping into the GM territory.
P.S. I LOVE what I am reading so far! I really hope to run this adventure in the foreseeable future and write a thorough review afterwards.
** spoiler omitted **
Yay! Glad you're enjoying the adventure!
And we can't always fit all the maps for an adventure into a flip mat format, unfortunately, so we do the best we can. In this adventure's case, the flip mats cover only the first and second floors of Xarwin Manor and nothing else. If you want to use the other maps from the adventure then yeah, you'll need to manually adjust the markers if you don't wanna just draw them out by hand. If you purchased the PDF version, then there might be interactive maps that come along with it... but to be honest, I don't know how any of that stuff works since I'm spoiled and can just grab the original maps off our servers when I need them.
Looking forward to the review, and hope it's as fun to play as it was to write!
There's no map pack, but if you select the images of the maps in the PDF and copy then paste them, the only thing you'll need to clean off them is the secret doors, as all the room numbers don't come with the image layer.
And so as not to break the rules of the thread- James,
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what happened to Mark's character with the Silken Fang?
The party was in a series of "fight for your life in a gladiator arena after a shadow dragon caught them" series of encounters, and in order to impress the cult leader who ran the arena, they had to win four back-to-back fights of escalating difficulty. The first two were pushover fights. The third was against a pair of leveled-up ogres with cages on their heads atop which were chained gremlins who kept whipping the ogres into battle frenzy; that fight was kinda tough. And then the last one was against a few recurring NPCs who had been foreshadowed, along with a glabrezu. When that fight started turning south due to a combination of bad luck die rolls and a few poor PC tactic choices resulted in all of the PCs being unconscious and dying but for Mark and one other PC, the glabrezu offered Mark's character (who recently got an illustration; check out page 170 of the Advanced Player's Guide) that he'd offer Mark a wish in return for "payment to be taken later." Mark accepted, and worded the wish to restore everyone in the fight to full health IIRC. They won the fight, and for the rest of the campaign the glabrezu kept manipulating Mark's character (in truth, whenever Mark saw something weird happen he started getting paranoid so I let HIM decide a fair amount of the manipulations subconsciously) until finally the character's "payment" came due with a voluntary alignment switch to evil, after which Mark had the character start taking assassin levels.
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Earth has argentite/acanthite and native silver, but is that counted in natural substance?
And is there natural substance version of Precious materials?(Excluding warpglass)
We don't get into that level of detail for silver in Pathfinder; the materials would likely all work the same as silver in the game.
Some precious materials have naturally occurring instances; others don't. Depends on the substance.
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Is it a missed opportunity not having established Milani as the patron deity of Ravounel?
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Was there a particular reason in P2 the "flavor text" for monsters was removed? What about the terrain entry?
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Is it a missed opportunity not having established Milani as the patron deity of Ravounel?
Nope. Not every revolution needs Milani to be in charge. She's certainly heavily worshiped there, but not to the exclusion of several other deities. Ravounel just escaped from being part of a nation where the government and religion were largely indivisible, and at this point the freedom to worship who you want, or not to worship at all, is more important.
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Was there a particular reason in P2 the "flavor text" for monsters was removed? What about the terrain entry?
By removing those hard-coded elements, we loosened up the page a bit to let us have more room to just do anything we want with the monster's flavor text at the top of the page.
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How does Asmodeus's misogyny manifest?
The Queens of the Night are said to have faced abuse, but in the end they seem to be welcomed as an addition to Hell's power along with all the Erinyes. His mortal worshippers also seem to ignore it, having plenty of female characters in power (including the Queen of Cheliax herself).
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How does Asmodeus's misogyny manifest?
The Queens of the Night are said to have faced abuse, but in the end they seem to be welcomed as an addition to Hell's power along with all the Erinyes. His mortal worshippers also seem to ignore it, having plenty of female characters in power (including the Queen of Cheliax herself).
That's something we often skirt the topic of in print, because it's difficult to present evil characters in an interactive RPG without folks interpreting our work as endorsing those acts—especially in cases where we give rules options to interact with that character, even if those rules options aren't themselves involved with misogyny, it's still an optic that folks can read into as "Paizo is okay with anyone making characters who worship and believe in a misogynistic faith."
As such, for things like this, or racisim, or homophobia, or transphobia, or any element of real-world evil behavior from humans, we usually keep what we print to vague details, so that individual tables can decide for themselves what to expand upon.
An example of this vague detail is the simple fact that none of the rulers of Hell are women, and that when we first introduced the Queens of the Night, they were saddled with a very derisive term that was given to them by the Archdevils and used by thier faithful. That's a great example of how difficult it is for us to present this content without making it look like we endorse it, and it's why we changed their group to the "Queens of the Night." When we present a character or group, we are increasingly trying to do so from as positive a light and how they self-identify rather than as other groups define them. Not only because that's the RIGHT way to do it, but it helps to make it more obvious that when we write about an evil awful person or deity or group, we aren't saying we're supporting that group.
Another example, it just occurs to me, of how the misogyny manifests is that devils are all evil, and that we limit the alignments of their worshipers to evil.
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Which of the "lesser" fiendish races (outside the daemons, demons, and devils, that is) has the biggest influence on Golarion currently? The Book of the Damned discussed rakshasa and oni holdings, there are qlippoths beneath Hollow Mountain, and obviously Nidal has a population of kytons, but who's got the biggest influence overall?
I wouldn't call things like asuras, divs, and qlippoth "lesser." They're just as powerful as daemons, demons, and devils. But I get where you're coming from.
Beyond those three, the category of fiend that probably has the largest influence on Golarion is, I would hazard a guess, velstracs. If only because their boss, Zon-Kuthon, is one of the core 20 deities and as such is a lot more widespread than, say, a "boss" like Ahriman over on the div side.
Qlippoths are probably second, since their "boss" is Rovagug, also a core 20 deity, but since Rovagug is less "active" in the world (he's imprisoned, whereas Zon-Kuthon runs a nation), qlippoth are less active as well.
And that's just looking at the planet overall, of course. When you zoom in to continents or nations or cities, that all changes.
James, I am so psyched for Wrath of the Righteous right now. Two questions: (1) how involved were you in writing this game (particularly for Nocticula), and (2) now that the "is Nocticula going to be redeemed" mystery has been resolved, is that going to inform the way she is portrayed in this story? Is there any hope of seeing her redemption and ascension "onscreen," as it were?
Hoping for Hell's Rebels someday for some Shensen action!
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James, I am so psyched for Wrath of the Righteous right now. Two questions: (1) how involved were you in writing this game (particularly for Nocticula), and (2) now that the "is Nocticula going to be redeemed" mystery has been resolved, is that going to inform the way she is portrayed in this story? Is there any hope of seeing her redemption and ascension "onscreen," as it were?
Hoping for Hell's Rebels someday for some Shensen action!
1) I wrote most of the Nocticula content for the original Adventure Path, but I wasn't involved at all in any of the writing for the video game itself. I gave Owlcat a lot of feedback on their initial outline for the whole game and helped them with the way they were expanding and revising the story, particularly in pushing them toward presenting Nocticula as less evil and more opportunistic since she's on the cusp of her big change during this thing, but I've not seen ANY of the actual text for the game at all yet.
2) That's my hope, yes, but I'm not sure how far down that path they took her story. I doubt her redemption/ascencion will happen on screen. It MIGHT, but canonically it didn't happen during that story—it happened years later during "Return of the Runelords." One thing I've been cautioning Owlcat against is from "poaching" storylines and characters from other adventures and adventure paths, because who knows what their 3rd or 5th or 10th game might be? So, my preference is that Nocticula in this game plays a role of "the lesser evil" that is still risky to ally with but that if you do so, you're less likely to regret it than if you team up with, say, any other demon lord. But that she still comes across as EVIL. Just not an evil that's particularly aimed at hurting you, the player, directly. I see her as more of an antihero in the Wrath story, not a hero. She's a villain, but her actions help the heroes nonetheless.
But Wrath isn't Nocticula's story. It's Deskari's. The redemption angle for her really STARTED getting its significant foreshadowing played out in this Adventure Path, but it's not where that event is meant to take place. You don't reveal that info about Darth Vadar's family tree in the first movie. You have to give the viewers time to understand what a Darth Vadar is before you start putting in the plot twists.
You said Paizo has adjusted the skintone of dark elves to lavender to escape the comparison to them being black, which confused me a lot. Not only I have never seen a single person who relate the skin color of drows and black people together, but also I have always thought that the First Edition drows have dark blue or purple skintone. I have never seen a single drow that has black or brown skin, clearly unlike the real world black people. What I'm trying to say is, in First Edition their skin color already looked supernatural and was very different from that of real world black people. So why did you have to lighten their skin color?
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Creative Director
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You said Paizo has adjusted the skintone of dark elves to lavender to escape the comparison to them being black, which confused me a lot. Not only I have never seen a single person who relate the skin color of drows and black people together, but also I have always thought that the First Edition drows have dark blue or purple skintone. I have never seen a single drow that has black or brown skin, clearly unlike the real world black people. What I'm trying to say is, in First Edition their skin color already looked supernatural and was very different from that of real world black people. So why did you have to lighten their skin color?
We didn't have to. We chose to, because it was the right choice. Because it did read as racist coding... particularly to those who have faced racism their whole lives.
Pathfinder First Edition have 5 mythic paths: archmage, champion, guardian, hierophant, marshall, and trickster. But I found out that in Wrath of the Righteous PC game we instead have aeon, angel, azata, demon, legend, lich, and trickster. I'm not sure whether Paizo agreed to it or not, but what happened to the good old mythic paths? Why did Owlcat Games decide to remove them and make their own?
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Creative Director
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If I might ask a question about Wrath of the Righteous (the Adventure Path), I know it's not mentioned anywhere in any of the modules, but how do you see demonic alternatives to allying with Nocticula playing out? For instance, would Mazmezz be interested in stealing portions of his portfolio and/or abyssal realm?
(obviously this glosses over the whole "good-aligned crusaders" aspect, and goes more in the "Enemy of My Enemy" direction a la Savage Tide)
Nocticula's role in that campaign, and in the setting overall, is hers; it's not a role every demon lord should take. If you want to swap that role to another, that's all good, but that should remove that role from Nocticula.
That said... the concept of "stealing portions of a portfolio" is mostly a D&D thing. It creeps into Pathfinder now and then, particularly in much earlier products where the divisions between Pathfinder and D&D were blurrier.
Mazmezz in particular to me doesn't strike me as a particularly energetic demon when it comes to expansion ambitions, in any event.
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Creative Director
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Pathfinder First Edition have 5 mythic paths: archmage, champion, guardian, hierophant, marshall, and trickster. But I found out that in Wrath of the Righteous PC game we instead have aeon, angel, azata, demon, legend, lich, and trickster. I'm not sure whether Paizo agreed to it or not, but what happened to the good old mythic paths? Why did Owlcat Games decide to remove them and make their own?
Because when we built the Mythic book, we had a philosophy that it was better to keep the Rulebook line separate from the setting. So we built the mythic paths to be "generic" so that any setting could use them.
In 2nd edition, we've abandoned that (much to my relief and delight) and don't separate the rulebooks from the setting.
Owlcat's change to the mythic paths was thus a great idea and something I very much approved of and encouraged them to explore when they came up with it. It's more interesting to me to tie to things in the world like dragons and demons and azatas, rather than generic ideas like "archmage" or "hierophant." It makes for a more flavorful story, and gives players far more options in the end.
Actually I suspected that, since so many people criticized the mythic rules, Owlcat Games had to make whole new mythic rules to maintain the balance of the game (so that the game is not broken). Your answer seems to imply that this is not the reason for the change. Then aside from the name of the mythic paths, the mythic rules in Wrath of the Righteous PC game largely stay the same?
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Creative Director
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Actually I suspected that, since so many people criticized the mythic rules, Owlcat Games had to make whole new mythic rules to maintain the balance of the game (so that the game is not broken). Your answer seems to imply that this is not the reason for the change. Then aside from the name of the mythic paths, the mythic rules in Wrath of the Righteous PC game largely stay the same?
The primary criticism of the mythic rules wasn't the flavor of the paths. It was how when you mesh high level play and mythic, the result is a character who's WAY more powerful than we expected, but also a character that's super complicated and causes the 1st edition action economy to strain to its breaking point.
Owlcat adjusts the rules of Pathfinder to make a better computer game, be it mythic rules or standard. Kingmaker had plenty of changes; flanking, for example, only required multiple allies to attack the same target. They didn't have to be opposite each other.
We built a game for a pen and paper experience, and not all of those rules work well or are fun in a video game. Likewise, there are things that are fun in a video game that are impossible or obnoxious to track in a tabletop game.
The mythic rules in the Wrath PC game are different in flavor AND in how they function. It's not a tabletop game. It's not a VTT. It's an adaptation. It's different. You'll have to play the game (or wait for others to play and ask them/watch their let'splays/read their reviews) to find out how. I don't know the details myself yet, since I'm not deeply involved in creating the game, and am in fact eagerly anticipating playing it.