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Do you drink wine? If so, what is your favourite varietal?
I'm pretty ambivalent toward wine. Most of it is too bitter for my tastes, although now and then I accidentally end up in a situation where a wine matches a food so well that they compliment each other and raise each other up a notch. Typically in the context of some sort of restaurant type experience involving a celebration, of which I haven't done anything like that for coming up on two years now.
I much prefer desert wines or ports as far as grape/berry drinks are concerned, but I think my favorite booze of the moment is sake.
Have you seen the trailer for Black Friday? I suspect that, very much like me, you'd be interested in a Bruce Campbell-led zombie-themed horror comedy. It takes place in what is definitely not S-Mart.I haven't watched it yet.
Have you seen any of the Team StarKid Musicals? If so, what do you think?
In particular, since you like horror, The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals?
(I'm not entirely sure what Fumarole is asking about, but StarKid Productions also has a "Black Friday" musical black comedy, which is what made me think to ask the question in the first place.)
EDIT: Huh. Though very different, it's interesting how much overlap the two things have.
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Have you seen the trailer for Black Friday? I suspect that, very much like me, you'd be interested in a Bruce Campbell-led zombie-themed horror comedy. It takes place in what is definitely not S-Mart.I haven't watched it yet.Have you seen any of the Team StarKid Musicals? If so, what do you think?
In particular, since you like horror, The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals?
(I'm not entirely sure what Fumarole is asking about, but StarKid Productions also has a "Black Friday" musical black comedy, which is what made me think to ask the question in the first place.)
EDIT: Huh. Though very different, it's interesting how much overlap the two things have.
Haven't seen any of them, nor have I even heard of them before. I've tried to watch a lot of musicals over the years and while many of them have great songs that I don't mind listening to... the musical format is actively unappealing to me for a lot of reasons. Doesn't mean they're not great movies, but not everything is equally great to every person.
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Did you watch The Mandalorian? What did you think? Have you seen the new Book of Boba Fett trailer?
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Did you watch The Mandalorian? What did you think? Have you seen the new Book of Boba Fett trailer?
At this point, my streaming service budget goes toward Amazon Prime, Shudder, Netflix, Epix, Paramount+, Hulu, and HBO. Subbed to Peacock for 1 month to get "Halloween Kills." All of that adds up to a monthly price tag that's still NOT quite equal to how much I was paying for cable+HBO a few years back before I cut that off, so in my mind, I could in theory add one or maybe two more streaming services to the mix.
Apple TV is PROBABLY closer to being the next thing I add, but after that, I guess Disney+ might finally make the cut.
Never say never. The Moon Knight series will probably get me to join up when it launches; not because I have a vested interest in that character (I barely know who or what a Moon Knight is), but because they have some of my favorite indie horror directors working on several episodes.
TL; DR: Nope, haven't watched the Mandalorian yet, nor have I watched the Boba Fett trailer.
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You talked about sake earlier. Any good recommendations?
And, do you prefer Hot or Cold sake?
My favorite sake right now is Snow Maiden. I do like kurosawa sake too though.
I prefer cold sake in summer, hot sake in winter, and flipping a coin in between. That said, it also depends on the sake in question. Snow Maiden, for example, is best served cold. (I assume that using the word "Snow" in its name is a reflection of this.)
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How long would it take a ship to sail from Sandpoint to Absalom?
[Assume good weather, no pirates, no sea beasts, no angry gods, etc]
I don't know off the top of my head... but assuming no trouble along the way... to figure that out I would measure the distance between those two points roughly following the coastline with a string laid out on a flat map, then cut that string to length, then compare that string to the scale printed on that map to find out the distance in miles, then use that distance against the speed of the ship in question to determine how long it would take.
Instead of a string, you could also use a very thin gauge wire to trace the coastline and then straighten out; this is what I generally use instead when I need to do this sort of measurement for work in the office, but I haven't had to do so in a LONG time, and I don't know where my measuring wire went.
I just did a VERY rough estimation; looks like the coastal route from Sandpoint to Absalom somewhere between 4,000 miles and 5,000 miles. Let's say 4,500 as an average rough guestimation, and then assume you're sailing in a ship that can go 45 miles or so in a day to keep the map simple. In that version, it takes 100 days to make the journey.
So, without the context of needing this number for a game or an adventure, I'd say that a sailing ship trip from Sandpoint to Absalom with no dangers and good weather and minimal short stops along the way would take 3 and a half months.
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Hey James, i have a question regarding the shadow spells like shadow conjuration, shadow evocation, etc.
Are the Casting Time and Components always a standard action and V,S or are those just the starting line? For example a spell with a casting time of 1 immediate action mimicked with one of the shadow spells would still be cast as a standard action but a spell with 1 minute casting time would be casted in a minute.
The casting time and components for those spells are as they are listed for those spells. They don't change to match those of spells being duplicated. Shadow conjuration and shadow evocation are strong because they allow for a HUGE amount of last-minute adjustment to tune the spell to the situation at hand; they're not meant to fully replace the spells they emulate.
Since I am highly interested in tracking the passage of time during a campaign, I would like to ask: why would you measure the distance between two port cities based on the coastline and not on the shortest sailing distance? Also, although I know it is just an example, is there any reason behind the 45 miles of travelled distance per day? I checked and it seems that the average speed of a sail ship was 5-8 knots, which (roughly) translates to 138-221 (statute) miles per day (or 120-192 nautical miles per day).
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Since I am highly interested in tracking the passage of time during a campaign, I would like to ask: why would you measure the distance between two port cities based on the coastline and not on the shortest sailing distance? Also, although I know it is just an example, is there any reason behind the 45 miles of travelled distance per day? I checked and it seems that the average speed of a sail ship was 5-8 knots, which (roughly) translates to 138-221 (statute) miles per day (or 120-192 nautical miles per day).
Because I was trying to answer the question quickly and simply, which is what I interpreted was desired by adding in all of the qualifications of "no bad weather, no sea monsters, etc."
If the whole point of the adventure was to focus on things that occurred during the voyage, I'd go into MUCH deeper detail, but if the point of the adventure was that it took place in Absalom, I'd just gloss over things.
I plucked the "45 miles of travelled distance per day" from page 174 of the 1st edition Pathfinder Core Rulebook, which lists a sailing ship at 48 miles per day. I dropped it down to 45 to make the math easier. And I looked up that number in the 1st edition book because I knew right where it was, and got frustrated that I couldn't quickly find rules for long-distance vehicle-based travel in a 2nd edition book as quickly as I could in the 1st edition book.
All of which is to say I was giving a quick reply to the question, not a fully-researched answer.
It's also a question that doesn't really requrie my expertise, frankly, since we've published maps that allow anyone to measure the distance, and there's plenty of both in-game and real-world information about the speed of sailing ships. Whether you choose to use the versions published in a game ruleboook written by game designers or more accurate versions of real world speeds written by sailors I guess is up to you.
Personally, as the son of a fisherman and as someone who grew up on the coast with a fondness for boats, I'd prefer defer to real world sailing numbers, but as an employee of Paizo, I'm kinda stuck with the numbers we publish in our books... sort of a damned-if you do, damned if you don't choice for me. I can either pick a number that makes me look like I don't know about real-world ship speeds, or a number that makes me look like I don't know or care about the rules we publish. For your game, you have the advantage of being able to choose which one you prefer without having to justify it to everyone. ;-)
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Hi James,
When it's said that Sorshen "seduced and betrayed all of her fellow runelords", is that LITERALLY all of them, throughout all of Thassilon's history? Or just the final ones? Or just at least one of each school/sin?
I'm asking because I'm rather interested in what Alaznist's sexual/romantic orientation was, and if she ever had any partners, affairs, or romantic friendships. So I was curious to know if she and Sorshen ever had any such attachments.
She seduced some of them, betrayed others, and seduced and betrayed a few others over the course of the thousands of years.
Alaznist, in my mind, didn't have much of an interest in romance at all, and so I mostly avoided that topic. The way her sin, wrath, interfaces with romance and sexuality means that an exploration of her preferences in print would be impossible to publish information on if we wanted to stay true to her chaotic evil nature, since that sort of content isn't appropriate for publication in a Paizo Pathfinder product. Alaznist is the most violent and sadistic and cruel of all 7 runelords. That's wrath for ya.
Alaznist and Sorshen never had friendly relations. But Sorshen certainly betrays Alaznist, most notably in her role in Return of the Runelords in how she...
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Ah, gotcha. Thanks, I really appreciate the information about the personalities of such iconic villains! And I definitely see the thorny implications...
That being said-philosophically, is it possible for a chaotic evil person to truly, selflessly love someone else, and be chaotic evil because of that, perhaps to protect and support their beloved regardless of any laws or morality? Or would you classify love as an emotion separate from alignment?
I feel like true, selfless love for someone else is a fundamentally good act. Thus, a creature that does this will, in time, become good, since alignment is reactive to your actions, not a source of your actions.
Emotions are separate from alignment, but they can compel behavior that will impact your alignment. Perform enough acts of love and you become good. Perform enough acts of hate and you become evil.
The more good something is, the less hatred it performs, and the more evil something is, the less love it performs.
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Hmm, thanks!
Would you say the alignment distribution of the universe (especially Golarion) is uniform? Or is it tilted towards certain alignments? I hear a lot about straight Neutral being the most common alignment, but would you say that Lawful Good is more common than Neutral Evil? Lawful Neutral over Chaotic Evil? Chaotic Evil over Chaotic Good?
I guess neutral would be the most common, since that includes all nonsapient life, and some sapient creatures are still neutral, but I've not really given this question much thought overall.
Thank you James for your thorough answer (and also sorry if I sounded like a "smartass" for mentioning real-world numbers :-/ , I just hadn't noticed any rule concerning the speed of a sailing ship similar to, for example, the one in hexploration subsystem which mentions a typical 12 miles/day travel speed, that's why I got curious about the 45 miles/day speed).
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Thank you James for your thorough answer (and also sorry if I sounded like a "smartass" for mentioning real-world numbers :-/ , I just hadn't noticed any rule concerning the speed of a sailing ship similar to, for example, the one in hexploration subsystem which mentions a typical 12 miles/day travel speed, that's why I got curious about the 45 miles/day speed).
No worries. Let's make sure to limit posts to this thread to questions though for my own time-management reasons; thanks!
Ah, gotcha. Thanks, I really appreciate the information about the personalities of such iconic villains! And I definitely see the thorny implications...
That being said-philosophically, is it possible for a chaotic evil person to truly, selflessly love someone else, and be chaotic evil because of that, perhaps to protect and support their beloved regardless of any laws or morality? Or would you classify love as an emotion separate from alignment?
I feel like true, selfless love for someone else is a fundamentally good act. Thus, a creature that does this will, in time, become good, since alignment is reactive to your actions, not a source of your actions.
Emotions are separate from alignment, but they can compel behavior that will impact your alignment. Perform enough acts of love and you become good. Perform enough acts of hate and you become evil.
The more good something is, the less hatred it performs, and the more evil something is, the less love it performs.
So on Golarion/in Pathfinder, In the end the love you take is equal to the love you make?
So on Golarion/in Pathfinder, In the end the love you take is equal to the love you make?That sounds like the type of thing that'd get us hit with a copyright claim!
Ooops!
Good catch, didn't even *think* about that.
Brain just went to odd spot -- is Zon-Kuthon's path filled with love, or hatred?
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So on Golarion/in Pathfinder, In the end the love you take is equal to the love you make?That sounds like the type of thing that'd get us hit with a copyright claim!Ooops!
Good catch, didn't even *think* about that.
Brain just went to odd spot -- is Zon-Kuthon's path filled with love, or hatred?
Hatred. For sure, hatred.
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Hi James,
When it's said that Sorshen "seduced and betrayed all of her fellow runelords", is that LITERALLY all of them, throughout all of Thassilon's history? Or just the final ones? Or just at least one of each school/sin?
I'm asking because I'm rather interested in what Alaznist's sexual/romantic orientation was, and if she ever had any partners, affairs, or romantic friendships. So I was curious to know if she and Sorshen ever had any such attachments.
She seduced some of them, betrayed others, and seduced and betrayed a few others over the course of the thousands of years.
Alaznist, in my mind, didn't have much of an interest in romance at all, and so I mostly avoided that topic. The way her sin, wrath, interfaces with romance and sexuality means that an exploration of her preferences in print would be impossible to publish information on if we wanted to stay true to her chaotic evil nature, since that sort of content isn't appropriate for publication in a Paizo Pathfinder product. Alaznist is the most violent and sadistic and cruel of all 7 runelords. That's wrath for ya.
Alaznist and Sorshen never had friendly relations. But Sorshen certainly betrays Alaznist, most notably in her role in Return of the Runelords in how she...
** spoiler omitted **
So, you could say she is bi-furious?
Humbly,
Yawar
PD: sorry, I couldn't resist =(
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Creative Director
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Hi James,
When it's said that Sorshen "seduced and betrayed all of her fellow runelords", is that LITERALLY all of them, throughout all of Thassilon's history? Or just the final ones? Or just at least one of each school/sin?
I'm asking because I'm rather interested in what Alaznist's sexual/romantic orientation was, and if she ever had any partners, affairs, or romantic friendships. So I was curious to know if she and Sorshen ever had any such attachments.
She seduced some of them, betrayed others, and seduced and betrayed a few others over the course of the thousands of years.
Alaznist, in my mind, didn't have much of an interest in romance at all, and so I mostly avoided that topic. The way her sin, wrath, interfaces with romance and sexuality means that an exploration of her preferences in print would be impossible to publish information on if we wanted to stay true to her chaotic evil nature, since that sort of content isn't appropriate for publication in a Paizo Pathfinder product. Alaznist is the most violent and sadistic and cruel of all 7 runelords. That's wrath for ya.
Alaznist and Sorshen never had friendly relations. But Sorshen certainly betrays Alaznist, most notably in her role in Return of the Runelords in how she...
** spoiler omitted **
So, you could say she is bi-furious?
Humbly,
YawarPD: sorry, I couldn't resist =(
I suppose I could say that, but I wouldn't.
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Who's your favorite character on The Expanse?
They're all pretty amazing. Really hard to choose one, although ... I suppose if I had to... it'd be Avasarala or Amos or Naomi or Drummer or Holden or Bobbie or Miller or Julie or ...
Yeah, hard to pick. Usually, its whoever's on screen at the time. The characters are my favorite part of the story.
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No doubt. I'm always thrilled whenever Bobbie is doing anything, but Drummer and Naomi absolutely killed it this last season.
Here's another question that might be even harder: favorite tiefling ancestry feat?
That one's MUCH easier. Anything that gets me a tail.
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Question concerning demon lord causes of death:
Canonically, 20+ for Nocticula, 2 due to good aligned deities (iirc Desna and Aroden), 2 due to Hell (iirc Moloch and Dispater each got one), up to 2 due to adventurers (I believe only Deskari or Baphomet can actually be truely killed, and only Deskari was killed by adventurers canonically).
Which seems like, kind of lopsided.Is it actually that rare/unherd off for demon lord who arent Nocticula /daemonic harbingers/ Qlippoths to kill Demon Lords?
Or is this just the "tip of the abyssal murder iceberg", we know about Nocticulas kill count because she basically advertizes it, and demon lord/Qlippoth lords etc. kill each other all the time and we just dont know about it, with the current crop of major demon lords like Orcus etc. each having some of their own demon lord kills?
The fact that it's lopsided is intentional. Folks misinterpret that Nocticula suddenly changed from demon lord to non-evil deity overnight because that's how it happened in our books—one day she was a CE demon lord and then we published a book and she wasn't.
The path to her rising from demon lord to non-evil deity took a LONG time in-game, and one of the ways that transition manifested was in how many demon lords she managed to take out.
Nocticula is a significant exception as far as demon lord deaths go.
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To my understanding, in Earthfall, the Veiled Masters called forth the Starstone and orbital struck at Azlant. In doing so, they shattered the continent of Azlant. If Azlant was the target, how did the Starstone end up thousands of miles to the east and create the Inner Sea? Big bounce?
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To my understanding, in Earthfall, the Veiled Masters called forth the Starstone and orbital struck at Azlant. In doing so, they shattered the continent of Azlant. If Azlant was the target, how did the Starstone end up thousands of miles to the east and create the Inner Sea? Big bounce?
Becasue gods intervened and blocked the shot that would have destroyed everything, causing the big rock to split into lots of little ones. Turning a cannonball strike into a shotgun strike. Azalant still took a direct hit, and nearby continents like Avistan and Garund and Arcadia took scatter spray damage, but the world recovered. It would not have if the gods didn't deflect most of the blow.
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To my understanding, in Earthfall, the Veiled Masters called forth the Starstone and orbital struck at Azlant. In doing so, they shattered the continent of Azlant. If Azlant was the target, how did the Starstone end up thousands of miles to the east and create the Inner Sea? Big bounce?Becasue gods intervened and blocked the shot that would have destroyed everything, causing the big rock to split into lots of little ones. Turning a cannonball strike into a shotgun strike. Azalant still took a direct hit, and nearby continents like Avistan and Garund and Arcadia took scatter spray damage, but the world recovered. It would not have if the gods didn't deflect most of the blow.
So, the Starstone itself presumably hit basically where Absalom is now? And there were larger pieces which shattered Azlant itself and made the big "holes" where the Inner Sea ended up?
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Hm. If the "big rock" hadn't been broken up, would Earthfall have let Rovagug loose?
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Hm. If the "big rock" hadn't been broken up, would Earthfall have let Rovagug loose?
Nope. The aboleths are smart. They calculated their rock to smash Azlant and extinct all surface life, but don't want deities to have any fun because they're anti-faith, and so their work would not have freed Rovagug. His prison is as more supernatural than physical in any case.
Think of it as the aboleths attempting to "reset" life on the surface so they could try to start over with creations of their own that would be more compliant, and that would never get the chance to learn about faith. Letting Rovagug out would hamper that.
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What would Ragathiel think of:
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What would Ragathiel think of:
** spoiler omitted **
I suspect he'd be a mix of wary and jealous and temperamental and judgmental and demanding. Of all the empyreal lords, he's the one I see being the least friendly and least understanding of them all.
That said, I played through that game as an azata and don't know much at all about the angel path.
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How much of the lore we're given in the Wrath of the Righteous video game is canon, ignoring path specific events and things that directly contradict the lore from the actual AP? Things like there being a Pathfinder Society lodge in the Midnight Isles, etc. Just curious how closely the game makers worked with your lore team when writing the game.
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How much of the lore we're given in the Wrath of the Righteous video game is canon, ignoring path specific events and things that directly contradict the lore from the actual AP? Things like there being a Pathfinder Society lodge in the Midnight Isles, etc. Just curious how closely the game makers worked with your lore team when writing the game.
It's canon for the video game, and canon for the Owlcat line of games, but it's not canon for the tabletop RPG.
The Owlcat game is more akin to a super-high-production-value game run by a GM with lots of GM additions and enhancements to expand the storline, but just as we don't adopt any one specific GM's home game to our published content as canon, we don't do the same for computer games based on our adventures.
For the basic plot of the game and the basic stories of the companion NPCs, Owlcat worked with us to get approvals on outlines, but the vast majority of the writing for the game did not go through a line-by-line approval process by anyone at Paizo.
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Does 2e have aberrations similar to executioner's hood, lurking ray and trapper besides roper and cloaker? I like wide variety of "aberrations that drop down from ceiling" but need them for variety of levels x'D
Pretty much everything we published for 1st edition still has a place in 2nd edition, but since we had a decade or so to publish 1st edition content and only a few years for 2nd edition, AND we want to do new things so we don't bore ourselves, some 1st edition stuff will never see a published transition to 2nd edition.
This includes the things you mention. But those things are mostly D&D exports, and increasingly, we've been more interested in charting our own path and embracing more of OUR creations instead. That said, I did just update several old classic critters from 3rd edition D&D for an unannounced thing coming out next year, including at least one (1) thing that drops down from the ceiling. I don't know when we plan to announce said thing, but I wouldn't expect it for several months.
What would Ragathiel think of:
** spoiler omitted **I suspect he'd be a mix of wary and jealous and temperamental and judgmental and demanding. Of all the empyreal lords, he's the one I see being the least friendly and least understanding of them all.
That said, I played through that game as an azata and don't know much at all about the angel path.
... Having a little trouble there. He'd be the least understanding,
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What would Ragathiel think of:
** spoiler omitted **I suspect he'd be a mix of wary and jealous and temperamental and judgmental and demanding. Of all the empyreal lords, he's the one I see being the least friendly and least understanding of them all.
That said, I played through that game as an azata and don't know much at all about the angel path.
... Having a little trouble there. He'd be the least understanding,
** spoiler omitted **
Being the least understanding of the empyreal lords about the situation is not the same as not being understanding at all. He just strikes me as being the least friendly of them all and the most prone to not being forgiving or cutting someone slack. But again, I'm not familiar with the non Azata storyline so I can't say for sure how he'd react.