What is your opinion on Retrofuturism? Is it fascinating, humorous, or just stupid? Do you like works with a retrofuturistic feel such as parts of Fallout 3?
Creative Director
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A question for James, to redeem at least a bit my post.
I have seen that there is a new version of several PDF for Jade Regent.
A quick check of the Jade Regent subforum don't show anything about what has been changed.
So, have you a list of the changes, or can you show me a thread about them?
You'll need to ask more questions than that for trying to turn the thread into "Ask James Jacobs questions so Diego Rossi can answer them for him," of course! :-P
I don't have a list of changes, because as far as I know NO changes were made to the text of the adventure at all. I suspect these "changes" are just changes to the interactive maps, or maybe to the bookmarks..
Hey James, I just wanted to get your opinion on this. ;) I've been getting interested in using the 'Qinggong Monk', but the progression of abilities that it gets seems odd. For example, there is a list of 8th level Qinggong Monk abilities, but the way things are worded it seems that you don't get a monk ability to switch out for one of those abilities until 11th level (at which point you also have access to 10th level Qinggong Monk abilities).
Was the intent of this archetype that a monk would be able to give up say, a 7th level monk ability to gain a 8th level Qinggong Monk power? (at 8th level of course, not 7th) It just seems odd that the Qinggong ability progression doesn't match the monk progression at all. If this wasn't the intent, do you think it would be unbalancing as a house rule?
Great JJ,
One simple WildShape question:
using Beast Shape II, I could shapeshift into Large Deinonychus?
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Creative Director
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I would think you guys are almost to the point where you could set up your own printer. Hell CatFancy magazine prints its own stuff.
We're not even CLOSE to the market saturation and resource levels that Cat Fancy has. I doubt Wizards of the Coast is close to that level of resources.
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Creative Director
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Would it be correct to assume that this announcement reflects an important aspect of the "in-house changes" you guys have made to rectify the AP line's scheduling issues?In fact, that's a PRIMARY aspect of the "in-house changes" I've been alluding to to help get the AP back on schedule.Does this increase, or decrease the chances of us seeing more div in future products?
*casts summon Pairaka cheer-leading squad*
It probably increases it.
Would you LIKE to see one like that?James,
Will we ever see an AP (or, perhaps a mutli-part module series) that deals heavily with the Plane of Shadows?
The idea of shadow Absalom seems really cool. If we were to see another city-focused AP, it would be pretty cool if it involved doing things both in Absalom and its shadow city.
To add a question...I only know of the idea of shadow Absalom from a campaign setting book. Is it actually described anywhere beyond a passing mention?
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Would you LIKE to see one like that?James,
Will we ever see an AP (or, perhaps a mutli-part module series) that deals heavily with the Plane of Shadows?
Oh yes. Much like Drumlord said, something on Shadow Absalom would be cool.
I'd also like to see more on the Shae and the Fetchlings. Will there be more? Please, pretty please.
I echo drumlord and Aberzombie.
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Chief Technical Officer
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A question for James, to redeem at least a bit my post.
I have seen that there is a new version of several PDF for Jade Regent.
A quick check of the Jade Regent subforum don't show anything about what has been changed.
So, have you a list of the changes, or can you show me a thread about them?You'll need to ask more questions than that for trying to turn the thread into "Ask James Jacobs questions so Diego Rossi can answer them for him," of course! :-P
I don't have a list of changes, because as far as I know NO changes were made to the text of the adventure at all. I suspect these "changes" are just changes to the interactive maps, or maybe to the bookmarks..
The revisions to the PDFs for Pathfinder APs 51 through 53 were purely to solve display issues with Apple's iBooks and Preview apps. Those same changes were made to 54, and the interactive maps were also updated in that one to update a player/GM toggle. No textual changes were made to any of those files.
(You should check your email from Feb 21 through 23—whenever we update a PDF, we also send an email to the people who have access to the files that explains the changes we made.)
No, it does not. You can put ghost touch on a bow or arrow if your GM's cool with that. I wouldn't have problem with it. The fact that ghost touch can't go onto a ranged weapon is a remnant we inherited from 3.5, and honestly one that I wish we'd not kept around, but when we were creating Pathfinder we erred on the side of NOT changing things because we didn't know at the time how willing folks would be to let us do that.You are always a font of useful information. Here are a few questions for you.
1. Does a dagger with the Ghost Touch enhancement lose its abilities if thrown? If not, why can't I put Ghost Touch on a bow or arrow?
Um. I don't have it in front of me, but I'm pretty sure AP #43 features ghost touch ammo (either bolts or arrows) in a treasure stash found early in the adventure, because I remember the halfling rogue in my game getting some very lucky shots off with them in Harrowstone Prison. Did 3.5 prohibit that, too, or did it just disallow putting the property on actual bows and crossbows so as to transfer to any missiles fired?
There was a cool adventure path/3 part module mini-campagin proposal involving Absalom and Shadow Abasalom a couple of years ago in the final round of the RPG superstar. I always wanted to see something done with that or along similar lines.
Thank you Caedwyr! That was 'Doom of the Dream Thieves'. My flawed RPG Superstar pitch.
Doom was far too long to be a single module, and in my inexperience I didn't realize that. I also had the misfortune of being attracted to an element from the campaign setting that was destined to be retconned into obscurity.
Nevertheless, I loved parts of it.
It was never meant to be three parts, but Todd Stewart and I discussed how cool it would be to do the story-arc justice by doing the plot in three modules. Many of the ideas in the pitch were based directly upon Todd's work in The Great Beyond.
Customarily Paizo decides what they would like to see written; but I appreciate you remembering it.
@ James Jacobs, sorry for the interruption! I just wanted to put it in historical context.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Um. I don't have it in front of me, but I'm pretty sure AP #43 features ghost touch ammo (either bolts or arrows) in a treasure stash found early in the adventure, because I remember the halfling rogue in my game getting some very lucky shots off with them in Harrowstone Prison. Did 3.5 prohibit that, too, or did it just disallow putting the property on actual bows and crossbows so as to transfer to any missiles fired?No, it does not. You can put ghost touch on a bow or arrow if your GM's cool with that. I wouldn't have problem with it. The fact that ghost touch can't go onto a ranged weapon is a remnant we inherited from 3.5, and honestly one that I wish we'd not kept around, but when we were creating Pathfinder we erred on the side of NOT changing things because we didn't know at the time how willing folks would be to let us do that.You are always a font of useful information. Here are a few questions for you.
1. Does a dagger with the Ghost Touch enhancement lose its abilities if thrown? If not, why can't I put Ghost Touch on a bow or arrow?
Could they have been blanched with ghost salt? It's a weapon blanch from the Pathfinder Society Field Guide that allows a weapon (or batch of ammunition) to fully affect incorporeal creatures - once.
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Creative Director
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Dear James Jacobs,
The Book of the Damned series is probably some of my favorite Campaign Settings stuff that I've read so far. I know that many fans have been clamoring on you guys to start working on the Good-aligned races, but are there any plans to go and add volumes for some of the other, possibility "newer" fiends? I ask in particular about my favorite outsider race, the qlipploths.
I would love to do more books of the damned.
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Creative Director
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James, do you ever have days where you feel like you enjoy the game itself more than you enjoy actually PLAYING the game? I do sometimes. It makes me wonder if I just don't play enough, or if I'm playing with the wrong group, or in the wrong adventures. Your two cents?
Sometimes, yeah. In such cases, it's almost always due to group dynamic issues, though.
We're not even CLOSE to the market saturation and resource levels that Cat Fancy has. I doubt Wizards of the Coast is close to that level of resources.I would think you guys are almost to the point where you could set up your own printer. Hell CatFancy magazine prints its own stuff.
I had a friend who worked on Reptiles magazine for many years (same company as Cat Fancy). Those magazines get to be in near every Pet store in America. Anyone in America who owns a pet is a possible customer. There are far, far more pet owners than role-players. There are an estimated 72.9 millions homes with pets. I wish there were 10 million homes that role-played.
The pet industry is estimated at something like $50 billion annually in the US. I can't find an estimate for the RPG industry, nobody in finance cares enough.
Aren't you glad you got out of the magazine industry?
I wouldn't be surprised if in ten years you manage to have your own printing though.
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Creative Director
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Oh Benevolent Dinosaur,
The Sword Saint archetype for the samurai has an ability (Brutal Slash), which appears to replace a non-existent ability. Was that a typo of some sort? Is it supposed to be replacing something else?
It's a typo, I suspect. It should probably replace mounted archer. Which also means it should probably switch to a 4th level ability.
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Creative Director
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Hey James, I just wanted to get your opinion on this. ;) I've been getting interested in using the 'Qinggong Monk', but the progression of abilities that it gets seems odd. For example, there is a list of 8th level Qinggong Monk abilities, but the way things are worded it seems that you don't get a monk ability to switch out for one of those abilities until 11th level (at which point you also have access to 10th level Qinggong Monk abilities).
Was the intent of this archetype that a monk would be able to give up say, a 7th level monk ability to gain a 8th level Qinggong Monk power? (at 8th level of course, not 7th) It just seems odd that the Qinggong ability progression doesn't match the monk progression at all. If this wasn't the intent, do you think it would be unbalancing as a house rule?
That's a Jason question. I've actually never read the Quinggong monk, so I can't really say one way or the other what the intent was.
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Creative Director
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Great JJ,
One simple WildShape question:
using Beast Shape II, I could shapeshift into Large Deinonychus?
Technically... no, because there's no such thing as a Large deinonychus (that'd be a different dinosaur, like perhaps a megaraptor). Your GM might be willing to handwave that though.
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Creative Director
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Would you LIKE to see one like that?James,
Will we ever see an AP (or, perhaps a mutli-part module series) that deals heavily with the Plane of Shadows?
The idea of shadow Absalom seems really cool. If we were to see another city-focused AP, it would be pretty cool if it involved doing things both in Absalom and its shadow city.
To add a question...I only know of the idea of shadow Absalom from a campaign setting book. Is it actually described anywhere beyond a passing mention?
If we did an Absalom AP, it would focus entirely on Absalom and wouldn't touch shadow Abslaom at all. I'm actually pretty ambivalent about Shadow Absalom, frankly, since I'd rather develop Absalom in all ways more than develop its shadow version. It gets mentioned a few more times in a few Pathfinder Society scenarios though.
If we did a plane of Shadow themed AP, we would set it in Nidal.
And actually... we've already done one AP that has lots of plane of shadow themes—Council of Thieves (although you never actually GO to that plane).
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Have you ever played a necromancery-oriented character?
What was that character like?
Did you enjoy it, and did you enjoy the campaing?
Who designed the cleric archetype: undead lord?
If you had to recommend an AP/other ready made campaing for a group and a DM who wants an evil/extremely selfish party conquering the world, what would you recommend?
What's your favorite AP?
Thanks!
I must add that I'm DM'ing Carrion Crown, and play in Serpent's Skull, and I love them both ^.^
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Creative Director
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Um. I don't have it in front of me, but I'm pretty sure AP #43 features ghost touch ammo (either bolts or arrows) in a treasure stash found early in the adventure, because I remember the halfling rogue in my game getting some very lucky shots off with them in Harrowstone Prison. Did 3.5 prohibit that, too, or did it just disallow putting the property on actual bows and crossbows so as to transfer to any missiles fired?
In which case, my preference for letting such items exist is on record and in print. Frankly... I like that. Not letting ammo be able to be ghost touch unnecessarily hampers archer builds. It was indeed 3rd edition D&D that was all prohibitive.
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Creative Director
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Have you ever played a necromancery-oriented character?
What was that character like?
Did you enjoy it, and did you enjoy the campaing?
Who designed the cleric archetype: undead lord?If you had to recommend an AP/other ready made campaing for a group and a DM who wants an evil/extremely selfish party conquering the world, what would you recommend?
What's your favorite AP?
Thanks!
I must add that I'm DM'ing Carrion Crown, and play in Serpent's Skull, and I love them both ^.^
Yes.
Fun.Yes.
Dunno.
The upcoming Skull & Shackles AP, and instead of "conquering the world" I would make them settle for "conquering the Shackles."
I like them all equally.
That's a Jason question. I've actually never read the Quinggong monk, so I can't really say one way or the other what the intent was.
Ahh, alright. Sorry, I figured I'd see if you knew since I haven't seen the answer in the rules forum(even though it has been brought up a few times), but I'll see if anything will come up with a new topic on it.
Could they have been blanched with ghost salt? It's a weapon blanch from the Pathfinder Society Field Guide that allows a weapon (or batch of ammunition) to fully affect incorporeal creatures - once.Um. I don't have it in front of me, but I'm pretty sure AP #43 features ghost touch ammo (either bolts or arrows) in a treasure stash found early in the adventure, because I remember the halfling rogue in my game getting some very lucky shots off with them in Harrowstone Prison. Did 3.5 prohibit that, too, or did it just disallow putting the property on actual bows and crossbows so as to transfer to any missiles fired?No, it does not. You can put ghost touch on a bow or arrow if your GM's cool with that. I wouldn't have problem with it. The fact that ghost touch can't go onto a ranged weapon is a remnant we inherited from 3.5, and honestly one that I wish we'd not kept around, but when we were creating Pathfinder we erred on the side of NOT changing things because we didn't know at the time how willing folks would be to let us do that.You are always a font of useful information. Here are a few questions for you.
1. Does a dagger with the Ghost Touch enhancement lose its abilities if thrown? If not, why can't I put Ghost Touch on a bow or arrow?
Nope. I just looked it up. The cache includes five +1 ghost touch arrows. James, the player of the halfling cannot thank you enough.
The Splatter Man, however, vehemently disagrees with this evolution of the rules. =]
I'm actually pretty ambivalent about Shadow Absalom, frankly, since I'd rather develop Absalom in all ways more than develop its shadow version. It gets mentioned a few more times in a few Pathfinder Society scenarios though.
If we did a plane of Shadow themed AP, we would set it in Nidal.
And actually... we've already done one AP that has lots of plane of shadow themes—Council of Thieves (although you never actually GO to that plane).
I'm ambivalent about it as well, I suppose. What I'm more interested in is the idea of a nice place on the material plane that has dark version on the shadow plane. That was more what I meant a cool shadow AP would be, where Shadow Absalom is the only example I had to go off of. I'm sure there are many places on Golarion where it would work. Nidal, of course, seems shadowy and scary without ever setting foot on the shadow plane ;)
I don't have a question to redeem this post with. Does that make me a bad person?
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If a First Worlder takes sunlight summons, moonlight summons, and/or starlight summons, would the feat apply to the Eidolon?I don't think it would, no. No more than Augment Summoning would.Would it apply if summoned through the "summon Eidolon" spell?
In a related question, does a First Worlder lose the "Summon Monster" spells from his list? The description does not say it, but I would like a confirmation...
(Also, sorry to dredge up an old question, just looking for an answer on the msg boards...)
Nope.
In a related answer, no, the First Worlder does not lose summon monster spells from the list. But if he wants those spells, he has to select them normally, and doesn't get to summon them fast—he casts summon monster spells as a wizard or sorcerer would, in other words.
Thank you much sir, I now really want to play a 1st worlder :)
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A question for James, to redeem at least a bit my post.
I have seen that there is a new version of several PDF for Jade Regent.
A quick check of the Jade Regent subforum don't show anything about what has been changed.
So, have you a list of the changes, or can you show me a thread about them?You'll need to ask more questions than that for trying to turn the thread into "Ask James Jacobs questions so Diego Rossi can answer them for him," of course! :-P
I don't have a list of changes, because as far as I know NO changes were made to the text of the adventure at all. I suspect these "changes" are just changes to the interactive maps, or maybe to the bookmarks..
The revisions to the PDFs for Pathfinder APs 51 through 53 were purely to solve display issues with Apple's iBooks and Preview apps. Those same changes were made to 54, and the interactive maps were also updated in that one to update a player/GM toggle. No textual changes were made to any of those files.
(You should check your email from Feb 21 through 23—whenever we update a PDF, we also send an email to the people who have access to the files that explains the changes we made.)
Thanks, I had only skimmed the e-mails as I had read them at work.
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I would love to do more books of the damned.Dear James Jacobs,
The Book of the Damned series is probably some of my favorite Campaign Settings stuff that I've read so far. I know that many fans have been clamoring on you guys to start working on the Good-aligned races, but are there any plans to go and add volumes for some of the other, possibility "newer" fiends? I ask in particular about my favorite outsider race, the qlipploths.
Are you considering the idea of doing some book for the neutral outsiders?
I have always loved to hate the modrons in the older editions of the game. A in deep description of the LN-N-CN outsiders will have a lot of gaming potentials. For most groups the evil outsiders fall in the "always enemies" category, with the good outsiders the tendency is to always think that the good part of the alignment is predominant, so generally the possible conflicts linked to the law/chaos axis are downplayed.
The neutral outsiders give an interesting third option, as meeting them don't mean immediate battle but there are possible conflicts between the players goals and the outsiders goals.
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Um. I don't have it in front of me, but I'm pretty sure AP #43 features ghost touch ammo (either bolts or arrows) in a treasure stash found early in the adventure, because I remember the halfling rogue in my game getting some very lucky shots off with them in Harrowstone Prison. Did 3.5 prohibit that, too, or did it just disallow putting the property on actual bows and crossbows so as to transfer to any missiles fired?In which case, my preference for letting such items exist is on record and in print. Frankly... I like that. Not letting ammo be able to be ghost touch unnecessarily hampers archer builds. It was indeed 3rd edition D&D that was all prohibitive.
What will happen if a incorporeal creature was trying to use a ghost touch bow? He would need ghost touch arrows to be able to use it?
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We're not even CLOSE to the market saturation and resource levels that Cat Fancy has. I doubt Wizards of the Coast is close to that level of resources.I would think you guys are almost to the point where you could set up your own printer. Hell CatFancy magazine prints its own stuff.
I had a job interview with them two years ago. They arent doing so well. Less than two dozen employees and their printer was one old dude running an equally old machine
Favorite Snack?
I had a job interview with them two years ago. They arent doing so well. Less than two dozen employees and their printer was one old dude running an equally old machineWe're not even CLOSE to the market saturation and resource levels that Cat Fancy has. I doubt Wizards of the Coast is close to that level of resources.I would think you guys are almost to the point where you could set up your own printer. Hell CatFancy magazine prints its own stuff.
That's because all the Lolcats with real moxy left, and are all now working at the Caturday Evening Scratching Post.
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Creative Director
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I had a job interview with them two years ago. They arent doing so well. Less than two dozen employees and their printer was one old dude running an equally old machineWe're not even CLOSE to the market saturation and resource levels that Cat Fancy has. I doubt Wizards of the Coast is close to that level of resources.I would think you guys are almost to the point where you could set up your own printer. Hell CatFancy magazine prints its own stuff.
Very few magazines are doing well these days.
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Creative Director
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If you would do psionics rules, can you tell us - in broadest strokes - how would you do it? What classes, how many of them, would you return to sciences and disciplines, or would you try to something with chakras?
I would start by presenting classes with names like:
Telepath
Kinetic
Mesmerist
Fakir
Seer
Medium
These would all be full or partial spellcasters, and they would probably cast spells spontaneously, like bards or sorcerers or oracles... but not necessarily.
They would cast psychic magic (which would become a third category of magic that would then exist alongside of arcane magic and divine magic).
I would invent several "psychic weapons" that would be statted up similarly to how we stat up ranged weapons—these would be what a psychic character would use in combat (in earlier editions, these attacks would have names like "id insinuation" and "psychic crush"); they would do various forms of nonlethal and lethal damage. You could select feats to add "riders" to them similar to how the Critical Hit feats add things like blindness, staggering, bleed, etc.
When you attack with a psychic weapon, you make an attack roll equal to your BAB plus your Charisma modifier (plus any buff effects). The target's AC = his will save should he "take 10" on the save. Certain feats and effects would bolster this AC.
I would present spell lists for these classes that would draw VERY heavily from existing spells, and then I would invent a bunch of new spells to fill in the gaps.
That'd be it.
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Creative Director
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Are you considering the idea of doing some book for the neutral outsiders?
I have always loved to hate the modrons in the older editions of the game. A in deep description of the LN-N-CN outsiders will have a lot of gaming potentials. For most groups the evil outsiders fall in the "always enemies" category, with the good outsiders the tendency is to always think that the good part of the alignment is predominant, so generally the possible conflicts linked to the law/chaos axis are downplayed.
The neutral outsiders give an interesting third option, as meeting them don't mean immediate battle but there are possible conflicts between the players goals and the outsiders goals.
One of the things that makes the Book of the Damned (and tieflings, for that matter) so compelling is that whether you go Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil, or Chaotic Evil, there are a wealth of outsider races that, thematically, look pretty similar. Show a picture of a devil or a div or a daemon or a demodand or an asura or an oni or any of the others to an average person on the street and they'll tell you it's a picture of a devil or a demon or a monster—the actual features that we've decided make one be of one race and not the other are VERY "inside pool." As a result, you can take ALL these races as a whole and call them "fiends" and do fun stuff with them... like a line of books.
The neutral outsiders? They don't have that. They look SO different that they don't have any shared features in common. As a result... a big book of Neutral outsiders that included inevitables, proteans, aeons, and psychopomps would not have a strong central theme at all beyond the word "neutral" and that's not good enough in my opinion to build a book on. Because "neutral" isn't something you can brand in the same way as you can brand "fiends" (or "celestials" for that matter).
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Creative Director
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Something to add to my purchase list. Did you ever think you'd be so good at sales, James?I echo drumlord and Aberzombie.The upcoming "The Midnight Mirror" module will have LOTS of shadow stuff in it.
Well... I worked in the sales department at Wizards of the coast for about 5 years... so, yeah!
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Creative Director
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What will happen if a incorporeal creature was trying to use a ghost touch bow? He would need ghost touch arrows to be able to use it?
Yes; he'd need a ghost touch bow AND ghost touch arrows. It's harder for incorporeal creatures to use bows than corporeal creatures. Turns out... it's not ALWAYS better to be incorporeal, I guess.
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Creative Director
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If we did a plane of Shadow themed AP, we would set it in Nidal.Interesting. Are there any other plans currently underway and/or percolating in someone's head about Nidal?
The aforementioed "The Midnight Mirror" takes place in Nidal.
"Cities of Golarion" has a chapter about a city in Nidal.
Council of Thieves doesn't go to Nidal, but several NPCs and events in the Adventure Path are linked pretty strongly to Nidal.
Curse of the Crimson Throne doesn't go to Nidal, but 2 key NPCs are from Nidal and they play pretty big roles in the AP (particularly in parts 3, 4, and 5).
The upcoming novel "Nightglass" has lots of Nidal elements in it.
There's more, those are just the ones off the top of my head.