Do you find yourself getting bored now the AP, campaign setting, player companion lines (and so forth) are established and ticking along fairly smoothly? Any chance we'll see a few more "exception products" like the RotRL compilation making a semi regular appearance?
(I don't mean more AP compilations, just more one-offs which don't fit so neatly into the established product lines).
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No questions at this time. I think you've answered enough. In fact, we're considering an intervention. "Have you tried... not answering questions?"
I like how you say "no questions" and then ask a question.
In fact, there are MANY questions on this thread I didn't bother to answer. Mostly toward the start, where folks were not actually asking questions, but just typing single words followed by question marks, or asking stupid questions, or the like. I just ignore them. And if the OP calls me out for ignoring them, I tell them why and invite them to ask a REAL question.
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Have you seen "Pan's Labyrinth" or "Don't be afraid of the Dark"?
What do you think of Guillermo Del Torro?
Pan's Labyrinth was my favorite movie of that year.
I liked "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark," but it would have been better if del Toro had a bigger hand in it than he did, I suspect.
In any event, he's one of my top ten directors. I'm VERY excited to see what he does with "Pacific Rim." Almost excited enough to feel a little less sad that he wasn't able to get funding for "At the Mountains of Madness."
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Do you find yourself getting bored now the AP, campaign setting, player companion lines (and so forth) are established and ticking along fairly smoothly? Any chance we'll see a few more "exception products" like the RotRL compilation making a semi regular appearance?
(I don't mean more AP compilations, just more one-offs which don't fit so neatly into the established product lines).
Bored? Oh god no!
And "ticking along fairly smoothly" isn't a phrase I'd use—they continue to be super tough to pull off and take a LOT of work. If the outward appearance is that things are going smoothly, though... I'll take that as a compliment.
The "exception products" you mention will continue to happen now and then. I'd quantify "Inner Sea World Guide" as such a product, and also the "Beginner Box."
Ever had a chance to play Mouse Guard? Or Burning Wheel I guess, but the former seems way more polished and just generally better.
I've been really impressed by it, especially the way it handles skill-roll failure to keep the story moving forward. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts if you've been exposed to it.
Also, the comic Mouse Guard is great and a good read for people who love monster-fighting. You should read it if you have not already. Have you?
James Jacobs, just a few questions i would like to ask you.
1. What was your favorite character out of all the ones you played?
2. What is your least favorite class?
3. If you could go back and change three things in the Core Rule Book, what would they be?
4. Can casting "Evil" spells be overcome by doing good deeds?
5. What time of the day would you say is the most busy on the Paizo forms?
5B. What time of the year would you say is the most busy on the Paizo forms?
Thanks for answering.
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1. What was your favorite character out of all the ones you played?
2. What is your least favorite class?
3. If you could go back and change three things in the Core Rule Book, what would they be?
4. Can casting "Evil" spells be overcome by doing good deeds?
5. What time of the day would you say is the most busy on the Paizo forms?
5B. What time of the year would you say is the most busy on the Paizo forms?
Thanks for answering.
1) Shensen.
2) Paladin.
3a) Breath of life would be renamed cure deadly wounds.
3b) Versatile performance would allow you to reallocate skill points when you gain the ability to use a Perform check to duplicate a different skill.
3c) Rogues would be able to sneak attack foes with concealment.
4) Yes. The amount of good deeds and the type would vary.
5) 10 minutes after a new playtest goes up and folks have had a chance to skim the playtest and jump to conclusions.
5B) Convention season, but that might just be because EVERYTHING is busier at Paizo then.
O.O WOW that was quick thanks. :)
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1) If you could work with any person, living or dead (not only people from the rpg-industry) on a book on some aspect or region of Golarion, who would that person be and what would that book be?
2) Did you see the movie The Fall, if so, what do you think of it?
3) What are the most 'Lovecraftian' movies you have seen?
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1) If you could work with any person, living or dead (not only people from the rpg-industry) on a book on some aspect or region of Golarion, who would that person be and what would that book be?
2) Did you see the movie The Fall, if so, what do you think of it?
3) What are the most 'Lovecraftian' movies you have seen?
1) H. P. Lovecraft. Doesn't matter what the book would be. If living, then Stephen King to build a Dark Tower campaign setting.
2) I did; it's a very impressive movie. I liked "The Cell" better though.
3) I've seen a LOT of Lovecraftian movies. The BEST of them are Alien, The Thing, The Mist, and 2001, and of course any movie actually inspired by Lovecraft (such as "Re-Animator" or "Call of Cthulhu" or "Whisperer in the Darkness").
If a character is a Dwarven rogue with the trap spotter rogue talent, do they get two separate checks against a stone trap?
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Why is paladin your least favorite class? Based on your banning of the summoner in your games, I was expecting you to say summoner was your least favorite.
Summoner's my second least favorite.
Paladin's my least favorite because I personally enjoy playing more free-spirited chaotic characters, so being a lawful character isn't as fun for me. But the MAIN reason is that over the past 30 years or so, I've just gotten tired of players who see in the paladin a rules-excuse to be a disruptive player. Evil assassins disrupt games less often than paladins do, it seems.
Summoners, done right, can be really cool. (By "right" I mean a summoner who builds his eidolon specifically to be a demon or an angel or something like that, and doesn't seize upon the chance to make something that specifically undoes the hard work the GM put into creating the setting by building a creature that fundamentally doesn't fit into the world OR is deliberately silly, like a three eyed acid spitting marshmallow with a parrot beak.)
Bored? Oh god no!
I'm glad to hear it.
And "ticking along fairly smoothly" isn't a phrase I'd use—they continue to be super tough to pull off and take a LOT of work. If the outward appearance is that things are going smoothly, though... I'll take that as a compliment.
It is - I'm continually impressed at Paizo's ability to churn out exceptionally high level content. I would have expected to have lost interest in my monthly subscriptions by now - I still spend the fortnight after my shipping email leaving work early 'just in case it's arrived'.
I didnt mean to belittle the scope of what you do (especially given the amount of innovation in each) - Are they getting easier though?
The "exception products" you mention will continue to happen now and then. I'd quantify "Inner Sea World Guide" as such a product, and also the "Beginner Box."
I'll continue to cross everything and hope that a megadungeon boxed set under Kaer Maga grabs someone important's imagination at Paizo. :)
Was the Gunslinger class inspired by the Dark Tower series?
I have perused the playtest of the advanced races, and I came to an interesting thought that came up in my group's last play session. You see, my players have a tendency to die...a few times. The Druid keeps at least one Reincarnate with the material components ready in case one of them should fall.
Now, our Half-Elf Paladin fell in battle last game, and we spun the wheel of fate. Turns up Orc, which absolutely thrilled the Dwarf :P
Now, we were quickly converting the character, and Str, Dex, and Con depend on the new body. Racial stat adjustments change to affect the physical stats, but there is no mention of the mental stats other than the player still has all knowledge/skills from his previous life. Despite the spell stating the racial adjustments change, my players fought me on that technicality that the Paladin's mental stats shouldn't change, and thus the paladin keeps his mental scores and adds a +4 str to his character. I wasn't fully alright with this and decided I would ask on the boards about this, and we continued with the Paladin having a +4 bonus to his Str.
However, we ran into another problem when we were trying to decide what racial traits should change. It doesn't make sense that he keeps his Half-Elf abilities, and we roughly decided to use 3.5's system of genetic and culture traits.
Low-Light vs Darkvision: Obviously Darkvision (Genetic)
Light-Sensitivity: Obviously Genetic so he should have
Orc-Languages and Weapon Famliarity: Cultural so no
Ferocity: Toss-Up sounds similar to both...and I can't remember what we chose
Half-Elf Adaptability: Didn't make sense for the Paladin to lose his Skill Focus (Knowledge Religion) unless the mental stats can change...
Elven Immunities: Gone
Elf Blood: Gone
Keen Senses: Gone
Multitalented: Kept since the Paladin is multiclassed with Oracle (nice GM)
Elf Languages: Kept
I know this has been long coming, but this is a 2 part question. Will there be a distinction between cultural and genetic racial traits in the Advanced Race Guide? Also, does the Paladin's mental stats get adjusted accordingly with the full Orc adjustment (+4 str, -2 int, -2 wis, -2 cha)?
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Creative Director
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I didnt mean to belittle the scope of what you do (especially given the amount of innovation in each) - Are they getting easier though?
In that we're constantly getting better at it due to practice practice practice, yah! Although we're also getting better at coming up with increasingly complex things to try to pull off...
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Creative Director
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Was the Gunslinger class inspired by the Dark Tower series?
Yes.
More details: I have a post-apocalyptic d20-based RPG that I've been writing for a decade or so now: it's a combination of "what happens if Lovecraft's mythos comes back and takes over the earth?" mixed with a huge dose of Fallout, Road Warrior, and the Dark Tower books. I've got a LOT of base classes in that game that are built to fit to the setting—classes like scavengers and snipers and espers and mercenaries and what-not. One of those base classes is the gunslinger, which was VERY much inspired by the Dark Tower AND by old westerns.
When I mentioned the possibility of doing a gunslinger for Ultimate Combat and Erik freaked out and said YEAH DO IT!, I went ahead and sent my version of the Gunslinger from my homebrew game to Stephen as a possible starting point for the class, and he really ran with it—the grit concept was all him, for example.
But yeah, in a trickle down way, the gunslinger was inspired by the Dark Tower series. Not sure if Stephen was inspired by that in the same way I was, though.
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...wrote about the Advanced Race Guide playtest...
First of all... the Advanced Race Guide content is still in its beta phase it's GOING to change, so if you incorporate the current rules into your game, you're going to have to change things again in half a year or whenever the book comes out. As such, I'm not really comfortable telling you what parts will change, what parts will stay the same, and so on... because I just don't know yet. That work happens later this month.
Moving on simply to reincarnate... that spell is super complex, and it REQUIRES a fair amount of GM work each time it comes up. There's just no escaping it. If your players aren't willing to work with you and the way you want to handle the spell, I recommend you just cut the spell from the game, honestly. Players NEED to respect the GM's calls on this spell and others like it (such as simulacrum, which ALSO requires a lot of GM help).
Deciding what abilities to keep and change when you reincarnate is kinda tough, but you're going about it the right way. Reincarnate does NOT guarantee an equal change. You can come out of a reincarnation more powerful OR less powerful... it depends on how your new body interacts with your class. There's ABSOLUTELY no guarantee that, say, a half elf coming back as an orc would be as powerful as he used to be; he could be tougher or he could be weaker. Players who aren't willing to risk having their character's power diluted should not agree to be reincarnated, frankly.
In this case, though, I actually agree with your players reincarnate specifically does NOT alter your mental stats, so whatever those were in your previous life, even if you gained racial bonuses, should not change. Thus, the paladin should absolutely keep his mental stats AND gain a +4 to Strength. Is that "fair and balanced" with the other characters? Probably not... but the player of the half-elf paladin could have rolled a kobold or an elf or a goblin or something like that which would have hurt his paladin a lot more (since bonuses to Dexterity are generally not all that important for paladins, but losing Strength and Constitution is bad!).
As for what racial traits should change... I'd say he should...
Lose these half elf traits but gain identical traits from becoming an orc: Medium size, normal speed
Lose these half elf traits entirely: low-light vision, elf blood, elven immunities, keen senses
Gain these orc traits entirely: darkvision, ferocity, light sensitivity
3c) Rogues would be able to sneak attack foes with concealment.
This made me smile. I'm glad to have a T-Rex fighting for the cause. :)
(Note, the explanation for this question is long, but I think its necessary)
So one of my friends decided that he wants to run his own campaign every other week compared to my own (they're worried that I'll get burned out if I GM every week for a long time :-3) and I agreed to play. I built myself a Halfling Fighter 1 / Oracle 1. Made my build, picked my feats, picked my mystery, picked the Dual Cursed Archetype, came up with my traits, and made the following backstory to supplement it:
My character is from a village skill at gambling is considered something of a sport (not too different from the professional gambling you see on TV sometimes today). He would always brag about his skill and about never needing any luck because of how exceedingly good he was at what he did; reading people's emotions and throwing down his chips.
One day, he had an encounter with some sort of extraplanar creature (I haven't picked what or come up with the nature of the encounter yet) and when it was over, he found that he was 'cursed,' so to say. Whenever anything left his hands, it would fling far away from him; usually knocking stuff over in the process. This made gambling difficult, as whenever he would put his chips down, they would be supernaturally brushed from the table, flying in every which way. To make matters worse, whenever he is placed in stressful situations, he began to speak in tongues without realizing it. Because of the oddities he now presented, he was basically forced to quit the gambling business and became a wanderer.
Now, I think it's pretty easy to figure out where all of this is coming from, so I'll skip to my problem. My traits are Magical Knack and Sacred Touch. Both work well for my character; I have the Mystery of Life, which is all about healing / positive energy, my touch stabilizes creatures because of my contact with positive energy, and because of close contact with outsiders, I've developed a knack at the Oracle class. The place I'm having a problem with is in picking an outsider! As far as I can find, there's only ONE outsider in print right now that is native to the Positive Energy Plane (the Jyoti). I'm not crazy about the Jyoti; I was kind of hoping for something a little less ... birdy and a little more alien.
So basically, I'm looking for an extraplanar creature that could theoretically be harassing my character by knocking things he drops around and disappearing before anyone has a chance to know it was there. Since I'm a halfling, Tiny size or smaller is preferred. Associates with either positive energy or some kind of healing force that would make sense is a huge deal-breaker. Also, it should have a language associated with it for me to babble in (such as Fey or Celestial).
Do you have any suggestions?
How well would a group running a Rise of the Runelords game be able to segue into the new 5th Anniversary Edition?
Would there be major difficulties or changes to the plot (besides Xanesha not serving the players their collective rears on a plate)?
How well would a group running a Rise of the Runelords game be able to segue into the new 5th Anniversary Edition?
Would there be major difficulties or changes to the plot (besides Xanesha not serving the players their collective rears on a plate)?
Not according to this post by James; you should be able to switch from one to the other without much difficulty.
5. What time of the day would you say is the most busy on the Paizo forms?5) 10 minutes after a new playtest goes up and folks have had a chance to skim the playtest and jump to conclusions.
I LOLd. Mostly cos it's true.
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Creative Director
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Since you mentioned Call of Cthulhu and Whisperer in the Drakness (which I haven't seen yet, sadly), do you know their "Dark Adventure Radio Theatre"?
I do. I have all of them.
I've also bought things like mugs and movie props from them (the box of maps + news clippings + the clay carving + the dagbook + all of the other stuff from Call of Cthulhu is AWESOME!)
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Creative Director
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How well would a group running a Rise of the Runelords game be able to segue into the new 5th Anniversary Edition?
Would there be major difficulties or changes to the plot (besides Xanesha not serving the players their collective rears on a plate)?
No major differences in plot; you will be able to pick up the RotR Hardcover and pick up your game without the PCs even noticing.
No major differences in plot; you will be able to pick up the RotR Hardcover and pick up your game without the PCs even noticing.How well would a group running a Rise of the Runelords game be able to segue into the new 5th Anniversary Edition?
Would there be major difficulties or changes to the plot (besides Xanesha not serving the players their collective rears on a plate)?
I expect they'll notice the shiny new book you're holding. It is, after all, shiny.
Actually, that's a good question. Is the Rise of the Runelords hardcover shiny?
Do you think a hold portal trap will be effective with monsters if teh door slams shut after a party member comes through or could it end up being too powerful?
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Creative Director
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make it chrome shiny!
and question, now that monks and paladins have vows and oaths respectively, will we be seeing the same for inquisitors?
Probably not. Paladins and monks are intrinsically lawful; it's part of their alignment requirement. Inquisitors are not auto-lawful, and therefore oaths and vows aren't really appropriate for all of them. They get inquisitions instead.
What do you have to say about this?
You must respond in haiku. :)
make it chrome shiny!
and question, now that monks and paladins have vows and oaths respectively, will we be seeing the same for inquisitors?
Bah. A matte finish is a lot classier.
Bah. A matte finish is a lot classier.make it chrome shiny!
and question, now that monks and paladins have vows and oaths respectively, will we be seeing the same for inquisitors?
Or maybe matte with a few shiny accents. It's more work to pull off but it's pretty.
Although given what it is it could be a brown cardboard cover with goblin crayon drawings and it would be pretty.
::thinks about crayon goblin drawings:: Saaaayyy.....
3) I've seen a LOT of Lovecraftian movies. The BEST of them are Alien, The Thing, The Mist, and 2001, and of course any movie actually inspired by Lovecraft (such as "Re-Animator" or "Call of Cthulhu" or "Whisperer in the Darkness").
Have you seen Dagon? I liked it sorta, although it annoyed me that it seemed like 90% of it was in like Italian or whatever and it wasn't subtitled (at least when I saw it on Sci-Fi Channel it wasn't). While I understand the main characters didn't speak Italian so therefore maybe it added to the mystery, 90% of a movie being unintelligible was kinda breaking for me.
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Creative Director
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What do you have to say about this?
You must respond in haiku. :)
A perfect hunger—
It's your fault you taste so good.Tyrannosaurus.