What curses, other than the ones listed in the Core Rules, have you made with the Bestow Curse spell?
Creative Director
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What curses, other than the ones listed in the Core Rules, have you made with the Bestow Curse spell?
They're mostly scattered throughout the various Adventure Paths, issues of Dungeon, and adventures I've written, and I've not really kept track of them. (And I should mention that the curses in the Core Rules were created by Jason Bulmahn, who's obsession and delight in curses is unusually passionate.)
James did you know gnomes are the only PC race without souls?
Hence another reason I dislike them.
Has Pazio considered hiring Voice Actors for MP3s of the flavor text for APs, Modules, or Scenarios (at least the intros)?
As well as selling MP3s of "background music"? I would love to here what music from Golarion would sound like.
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The chances of reward and punishment are equal wether or not you worship a deity, actually. The main difference being that if you worship a deity, your reward is more tightly focused on that deity's area of influence—by worshiping a deity devoutly and doing well, you're essentially putting in a "request" as to where you want to be "sent" in the afterlife. If you don't worship a deity, you're increasingly leaving that choice up to Pharasma, who will pick your final reward/punishment based on other factors of your life.
If you do as you say and live a life parallel to the gods, you still do things in your life that advance divine agendas. Murders, for example, make society better for evil deities like Norgorber and Shax, while saving small towns from goblin raids make society better for good deities like Erastil and Desna.
AKA: Not worshiping a deity is not an automatic "get out of Hell" card. You can still end up there if you were a bad person.
1) if not worshiping a deity still allows you to go to the various aligned planes...then how do you end up in the graveyard of souls surrounding pharasma's court?
also a couple unrelated questions about alchemists:
2) an alchemist applies their int modifier to damage with splash weapons...in the case of alchemist's fire where it does damage on multiple rounds is the int damage applied on both rounds or just the first?
3) is the int damage multiplied on a crit like str damage?...is the splash damage?
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James did you know gnomes are the only PC race without souls?
Hence another reason I dislike them.
What happens when you have a ginger gnome? Do you apply the lack of soul from being ginger or being a gnome first? Does the non-soul-ness stack (a soul vacuum, and possible danger to those possessing souls)? Or are ginger gnomes actually made of gingerbread, which would explain their scarcity to predation by cookie monsters?
(Note: Soulless comment intended, success or fail, for humorous effect. No real insult intended to actual gingers of friends & family of gingers.)
Also, is Peter Dinklage so irresistibly awesome, could his portrayal of a gnome redeem gnomes in Minis Maniac's immovable heart? Would Dinklage Awesomeness cause Minis Maniac's head to explode? Would surrounding PCs have to roll for splash damage?
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Creative Director
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The chances of reward and punishment are equal wether or not you worship a deity, actually. The main difference being that if you worship a deity, your reward is more tightly focused on that deity's area of influence—by worshiping a deity devoutly and doing well, you're essentially putting in a "request" as to where you want to be "sent" in the afterlife. If you don't worship a deity, you're increasingly leaving that choice up to Pharasma, who will pick your final reward/punishment based on other factors of your life.
If you do as you say and live a life parallel to the gods, you still do things in your life that advance divine agendas. Murders, for example, make society better for evil deities like Norgorber and Shax, while saving small towns from goblin raids make society better for good deities like Erastil and Desna.
AKA: Not worshiping a deity is not an automatic "get out of Hell" card. You can still end up there if you were a bad person.
1) if not worshiping a deity still allows you to go to the various aligned planes...then how do you end up in the graveyard of souls surrounding pharasma's court?
also a couple unrelated questions about alchemists:
2) an alchemist applies their int modifier to damage with splash weapons...in the case of alchemist's fire where it does damage on multiple rounds is the int damage applied on both rounds or just the first?
3) is the int damage multiplied on a crit like str damage?...is the splash damage?
1) By being an atheist who fails at his/her life.
2) Just the first round. The multiple rounds of fire are no longer splash damage. It's just regular burning to death damage.
3) The int damage is multiplied on a crit. The splash damage is not, since splash damage is not direct attack stuff but area attack stuff.
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The chances of reward and punishment are equal wether or not you worship a deity, actually. The main difference being that if you worship a deity, your reward is more tightly focused on that deity's area of influence—by worshiping a deity devoutly and doing well, you're essentially putting in a "request" as to where you want to be "sent" in the afterlife. If you don't worship a deity, you're increasingly leaving that choice up to Pharasma, who will pick your final reward/punishment based on other factors of your life.
If you do as you say and live a life parallel to the gods, you still do things in your life that advance divine agendas. Murders, for example, make society better for evil deities like Norgorber and Shax, while saving small towns from goblin raids make society better for good deities like Erastil and Desna.
AKA: Not worshiping a deity is not an automatic "get out of Hell" card. You can still end up there if you were a bad person.
1) if not worshiping a deity still allows you to go to the various aligned planes...then how do you end up in the graveyard of souls surrounding pharasma's court?
1) By being an atheist who fails at his/her life.
could you be a bit more specific?...failing at life seems a bit subjective even for pharasma...in the multiverse book it says just being an atheist was a "corruption" that sentences them to the graveyard of souls...there are many different definitions of atheist in real life and i'm curious as to which the text is implying...not believing the gods really exist? actively being anti-deity? or simply choosing to ignore the gods' significance in their life and thinking they can make their own destiny? how would one fail at this?
to be clear i am not trying to start a debate on real-life atheism...only how it applies on golarion...
I'm not sure where this comes from, but it sounds wrong. Gnomes have souls. If they didn't they would be outsiders and wouldn't be able to be raised from the dead all that easily.James did you know gnomes are the only PC race without souls?
Hence another reason I dislike them.
In the First World article in AP 36, it was stated that fey don't have souls. Since gnomes originated from the First World, some would think that gnomes themselves don't have souls.
Maybe the change the gnomes underwent was that they found a soul?
Correct me if I'm wrong, as I can't seem to remember where I read it, but I thought Gnomes traveled from the First World because they were curious about mortal souls. They knew that those born on the Material Plane, would be born with a soul, and so chose to stay and see what happened. Then something happened the Gnomes were forced out of First World and their connection largely severed. Since then, Gnomes born to Golarion have a soul, but also suffer the effects of the Bleaching if they don't keep experiencing new and vibrant things.
Of course, I could be totally wrong, but I could swear I read this in a PF book somewhere.
Has Pazio considered ...
Pizzow!
EDIT: Er... um... James, Pizzow?
Furious Finish
You channel all of your rage into one massive blow to crush your enemy.
Prerequisites: Rage class feature, Vital Strike, base attack bonus +6.
Benefit: While raging, when you use the Vital Strike feat, you can choose not to roll your damage dice and instead deal damage equal to the maximum roll possible on those damage dice. If you do, your rage immediately ends, and you are fatigued (even if you would not normally be).. (bold highlight mine)
This came up in another thread, so the question is: would an Oracle's lame curse offset the fatigue in this case or not? How about the Terrain Dominance:Desert ability of the Horizon Walker?
The confusing phrase I think was the parenthetical bit "even if you would not normally be".
Thanks again for taking the time to answer the bevy of questions that are thrown at you!
The souls question had me thinking about Galt and their Final Blades:
How do the outsiders (and I guess the Gods) feel about the imprisonment of potential souls within the blades? I'm guessing Pharasma is probably not happy with them, but was wondering about the other deities. (Looking at the entry in the Inner Sea World Guide, there seems to a very wide range of gods worshiped in the country.)
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Creative Director
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could you be a bit more specific?...failing at life seems a bit subjective even for pharasma...in the multiverse book it says just being an atheist was a "corruption" that sentences them to the graveyard of souls...there are many different definitions of atheist in real life and i'm curious as to which the text is implying...not believing the gods really exist? actively being anti-deity? or simply choosing to ignore the gods' significance in their life and thinking they can make their own destiny? how would one fail at this?
to be clear i am not trying to start a debate on real-life atheism...only how it applies on golarion...
I can try, but unlike made-up religions like Desna or Gorum... there are atheists in the real world, and in my experience, the more you go into how that works in the fantasy realm, the more you run a chance of insulting folks. As much as atheists like to present themselves as being rational... they're as quick to take insult when someone interprets their beliefs in ways they don't agree with as any religious person is. So if I'm vague... it's on purpose. There is some language in a few of our earliest books that treads WAY too close to being insulting for my taste—calling atheists a "corruption" is going too far. It'd be like putting Christians into the game and calling them a corruption because they don't worship the made-up pantheon of Golarion deities. I'm hoping that if we do reprint or expand upon the Great Beyond book I'll be able to step in and fix the insulting parts, but for now, I'm hoping instead to keep the whole topic of atheism in the game low key and under the radar. Which isn't really possible, given how the topic seems to come up all the time.
And so!
Let's say Jorak the atheist is a soldier. He goes through his life, climbing the ladder and becoming a great and powerful general. He saves his nation, prevents three attempts at assassinating his king, gets married, has a family, and eventually retires to run a popular tavern. He comes out of retirement and helps defeat one of the Spawn of Rovagug but in doing so is slain in battle. He was an atheist to the day he died, but he led a successful life in many regards. He might just have earned himself a reward in the afterlife as a result—whether or not he did is up to Pharasma, who's MUCH better at making those judgements than I or any other mere mortal is.
But over in the parallel world, Jaurak the atheist is also a soldier. He never advances far beyond the lower ranks, because he's more interested in using his contacts at being a soldier to womanize and rob money and drink. He has 6 failed marriages, a dozen children he doesn't know, and when the spawn of Rovagug comes along, he gets killed because he's passed out drunk in a house the spawn knocks down. He certainly won't get a reward in the afterlife because he led an inconsequential life and failed at what his "destiny" had laid out for him. Whether or not he failed hard enough to be sent to the graveyard in Pharasma's court is again up to her to decide.
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Creative Director
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In the First World article in AP 36, it was stated that fey don't have souls. Since gnomes originated from the First World, some would think that gnomes themselves don't have souls.I'm not sure where this comes from, but it sounds wrong. Gnomes have souls. If they didn't they would be outsiders and wouldn't be able to be raised from the dead all that easily.James did you know gnomes are the only PC race without souls?
Hence another reason I dislike them.
Gnomes are humanoids, not fey. Therefore it's not a problem.
That said, we have no in-game mechanic that says you can't resurrect a fey, so the idea of them not having souls is bunk due to the way the game works. Which is frustrating, especially considering we DO have a type of monster (outsiders) who don't really have souls (their bodies and souls are merged into one unit) and as such it's harder to bring them back from death. If this were the case for fey, then they'd have the same mechanic.
They don't, which is frustrating. Which also means to me that while they might not have souls... they have SOMETHING (call it a life-force or spirit or animus or whatever) that does the exact same thing that a soul does... at which point whatever that is becomes nothing more than a synonym for soul, at which point I have to wonder what was the whole point in changing things in the first place. It's certainly interesting flavor for a creature to not have a soul... but it's not supported by the rules of the game. Flavor text sometimes thinks it can supersede rules text (and vice versa) but all that does is weaken the game as a whole.
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Creative Director
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Furious Finish
You channel all of your rage into one massive blow to crush your enemy.
Prerequisites: Rage class feature, Vital Strike, base attack bonus +6.
Benefit: While raging, when you use the Vital Strike feat, you can choose not to roll your damage dice and instead deal damage equal to the maximum roll possible on those damage dice. If you do, your rage immediately ends, and you are fatigued (even if you would not normally be).. (bold highlight mine)This came up in another thread, so the question is: would an Oracle's lame curse offset the fatigue in this case or not? How about the Terrain Dominance:Desert ability of the Horizon Walker?
The confusing phrase I think was the parenthetical bit "even if you would not normally be".
"Even if you would not normally be" only talks about how some barbarians who are high level do not become fatigued after raging. If such a barbarian is used Furious Finish, he becomes fatigued even though he normally doesn't as a result from raging for being high level.
If you're immune to fatigue for whatever reason... you don't become fatigued. Regardless of what's causing you to become fatigued. If we'd wanted Furious Finish to be able to fatigue creatures immune to fatigue, we would have phrased the bold highlight above like this:
If you do, your rage immediately ends, and you are fatigued (even if you are normally immune to fatigue).
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Thanks again for taking the time to answer the bevy of questions that are thrown at you!
The souls question had me thinking about Galt and their Final Blades:
How do the outsiders (and I guess the Gods) feel about the imprisonment of potential souls within the blades? I'm guessing Pharasma is probably not happy with them, but was wondering about the other deities. (Looking at the entry in the Inner Sea World Guide, there seems to a very wide range of gods worshiped in the country.)
Most outsiders don't care. Some, especially things like Psychopomps and perhaps Daemons, who are closely tied to mortal souls, probably do not like the Final Blades at all—if they even know about them. Pharasma herself is NOT a fan of them, but she knows that they're not much more than a blip on the timeline of existence and while she might encourage her faith to oppose their use, she's not going to smite Galt from existence.
As for other deities... if a person whose soul was so important that "stealing it" from the afterlife with something like a final blade would anger a deity, that person's execution would likely also cause equally immense and huge events and would have massive repercussions on such a scale that they'd need an Adventure Path to cover them.
Oh great OCD-Rex, what would you like the cover of Pathfinder Adventure Path #69 to look like?
The OCD-Rex part is because of this:
1
0
0Instead of
100
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That's no good. Hurts my OCD to have the numbers suddenly shift to reading down instead of across after doing 91 volumes that read across instead of down.
We'll figure it out. It'll probably just be a factor of resizing the font or tightening the kerning or both.
And, you know, why not just write it side-way like everything else?
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Creative Director
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I suspect it's a holdover from Pre-Paizo Best of Dragon text which was carry over from 1st Edition where Elves could not be brought back from raise dead because they had spirits instead of souls. Which in and of itself I suspect was drawn from medieval lore about faerie in general. Since Gnomes are now the new fay, some may have transposed it on to them.That said, we have no in-game mechanic that says you can't resurrect a fey, so the idea of them not having souls is bunk due to the way the game works. Which is frustrating, especially considering we DO have a type of monster (outsiders) who don't really have souls (their bodies and souls are merged into one unit) and as such it's harder to bring them back from death. If this were the case for fey, then they'd have the same mechanic.
They don't, which is frustrating. Which also means to me that while they might not have souls... they have SOMETHING (call it a life-force or spirit or animus or whatever) that does the exact same thing that a soul does... at which point whatever that is becomes nothing more than a synonym for soul, at which point I have to wonder what was the whole point in changing things in the first place. It's certainly interesting flavor for a creature to not have a soul... but it's not supported by the rules of the game. Flavor text sometimes thinks it can supersede rules text (and vice versa) but all that does is weaken the game as a whole.
Nope; it's more along the lines of the writer came up with a really cool idea but didn't 100% think through the ramifications of how that idea would fit with the rules. I'm 99.9999% sure it has nothing to do with the 1st edition version of elves, for several reasons:
1) The author doesn't know that fact about elves from 1st edition; that's a very obscure piece of old-timey lore.
2) Gnomes are humans, not fey (although they have links to fey tens of thousands of years back in time).
3) Elves in Golarion are specifically NOT associated with fey (they just happen to live in similar areas).
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Creative Director
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The OCD-Rex part is because of this:
And, you know, why not just write it side-way like everything else?1
0
0Instead of
100
?
That's no good. Hurts my OCD to have the numbers suddenly shift to reading down instead of across after doing 91 volumes that read across instead of down.
We'll figure it out. It'll probably just be a factor of resizing the font or tightening the kerning or both.
Same reason. It's not how we did it for volumes #1 to #99.
Is your new intern a homunculus?
James, thoughts on this?
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could you be a bit more specific?...failing at life seems a bit subjective even for pharasma...in the multiverse book it says just being an atheist was a "corruption" that sentences them to the graveyard of souls...there are many different definitions of atheist in real life and i'm curious as to which the text is implying...not believing the gods really exist? actively being anti-deity? or simply choosing to ignore the gods' significance in their life and thinking they can make their own destiny? how would one fail at this?
to be clear i am not trying to start a debate on real-life atheism...only how it applies on golarion...
I can try, but unlike made-up religions like Desna or Gorum... there are atheists in the real world, and in my experience, the more you go into how that works in the fantasy realm, the more you run a chance of insulting folks. As much as atheists like to present themselves as being rational... they're as quick to take insult when someone interprets their beliefs in ways they don't agree with as any religious person is. So if I'm vague... it's on purpose. There is some language in a few of our earliest books that treads WAY too close to being insulting for my taste—calling atheists a "corruption" is going too far. It'd be like putting Christians into the game and calling them a corruption because they don't worship the made-up pantheon of Golarion deities. I'm hoping that if we do reprint or expand upon the Great Beyond book I'll be able to step in and fix the insulting parts, but for now, I'm hoping instead to keep the whole topic of atheism in the game low key and under the radar. Which isn't really possible, given how the topic seems to come up all the time.
And so!
Let's say Jorak the atheist is a soldier. He goes through his life, climbing the ladder and becoming a great and powerful general. He saves his nation, prevents three attempts at assassinating his king, gets married, has a family, and eventually retires to run a popular tavern. He comes out...
thanks for the answer...i know it can be a touchy subject for some which is why i almost didnt ask...also at the risk of "outing myself" hehe i am an atheist (and also a bit of a philosophy nerd which i always find myself explaining why that's not a contradiction) and i assure you your comments are not insulting at all...i really enjoy playing characters who worship deities and find it hard not to worship them since in that world they obviously exist...i'm thinking of making a character from rahadoum...and i was curious as to the afterlife ramifications of simply being born and raised in a country that had abandoned all gods without denying their existance...
so essentially it just comes down to whatever alignment you were "born" to be and whether you live up to that ideal? or is it just a matter of good vs. evil?...would a neutral character find it harder to escape the graveyard of souls if he believed he lived a life true to him/herself?
this is a bit of a tangent but your reply got me thinking...since it seems like the earliest life in the multiverse began in the abyss and therefore inherently evil...judgements by pharasma seem to be biased towards rewarding good and punishing evil...being truly neutral i would think she would not use descriptors like reward and punish...if a mortal exceeded at being evil it could be seen by them as a reward to be judged and sent to an evil-aligned outer plane...even though once they got there they'd probably quickly change their tune hehe
once again thank you for taking the time to answer all of my silly questions...also really looking forward to your dungeon level in the upcoming thornkeep book
The OCD-Rex part is because of this:
And, you know, why not just write it side-way like everything else?1
0
0Instead of
100
?
That's no good. Hurts my OCD to have the numbers suddenly shift to reading down instead of across after doing 91 volumes that read across instead of down.
We'll figure it out. It'll probably just be a factor of resizing the font or tightening the kerning or both.
Same reason. It's not how we did it for volumes #1 to #99.
Double the size of the books, make 3 parts APs (each being the equivalent of two), release every other months?
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Creative Director
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The OCD-Rex part is because of this:
And, you know, why not just write it side-way like everything else?1
0
0Instead of
100
?
That's no good. Hurts my OCD to have the numbers suddenly shift to reading down instead of across after doing 91 volumes that read across instead of down.
We'll figure it out. It'll probably just be a factor of resizing the font or tightening the kerning or both.
Same reason. It's not how we did it for volumes #1 to #99.
Double the size of the books, make 3 parts APs (each being the equivalent of two), release every other months?
Bimonthly schedules kill subscriptions.
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Creative Director
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so essentially it just comes down to whatever alignment you were "born" to be and whether you live up to that ideal? or is it just a matter of good vs. evil?...would a neutral character find it harder to escape the graveyard of souls if he believed he lived a life true to him/herself?
this is a bit of a tangent but your reply got me thinking...since it seems like the earliest life in the multiverse began in the abyss and therefore inherently evil...judgements by pharasma seem to be biased towards rewarding good and punishing evil...being truly neutral i would think she would not use descriptors like reward and punish...if a mortal exceeded at being evil it could be seen by them as a reward to be judged and sent to an evil-aligned outer plane...even though once they got there they'd probably quickly change their tune hehe
once again thank you for taking the time to answer all of my silly questions...also really looking forward to your dungeon level in the upcoming thornkeep book
One needs good in order to be evil. The qlippoth existed in a time where there were no "good things" and therefore they were not evil. They were chaotic because order existed (you can't exist without order, since without order you can't have solidity), but they weren't really "evil" until the first good outsiders showed up. So in a way, the good guys are responsible for creating and allowing evil to exist.
ANYway... saying that Pharasma rewards good and punishes evil isn't accurate at all, since if you're evil, doing great evil would get you a reward. Pharasma rewards you if you deserve it and punishes you if you don't. And that all varies on a soul by soul basis. It'd be easier to count all the molecules in all the stars in the sky than it would be to categorize exact details on how Pharasma decides what happens to each soul.
Okay I just bought a glass display counter from a retail store that is shutting down to put my Pathfinder Battles minis in since I bought 2 cases of Heroes & Monsters and am getting 3 Cases of ROTRL. Does this make my Gaming room look more awesome? Or kinda silly?
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Okay I just bought a glass display counter from a retail store that is shutting down to put my Pathfinder Battles minis in since I bought 2 cases of Heroes & Monsters and am getting 3 Cases of ROTRL. Does this make my Gaming room look more awesome? Or kinda silly?
Will need a photo to determine this.
Ooh you should totally start a game room photo thread in Gamer Life.
There are many examples of Fallen Good, Shadow Angels or Erinyes being the main examples. But there are no general examples of Risen Good as in a being that was once EVIL but has some how become redeemed or converted to good.
I know that any one can come up with a unique creature and make a story for them, but I am wondering why no such general creature exists.
A quick example of what I am talking about would be something like this.
Hollow Angel (CR1 N/G outsider): Though rare it occurs from time to time that an evil being such as a demon or devil becomes redeemed either through some form of epiphany or as a result of an overwhelming effort by the forces of good. The result of such a transformation purges the being of almost every aspect of its existence and it spend hundreds of years as a kind of ethereal shadow, gradually reforming itself into an angelic entitiy with little or no memory of its former self. In truth those who have any memory of their former existence become the most fanatical in their efforts to oppose that which they once were.
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Do you think Arayam Bismut from the Adventurers Armory would have levels in the actual alchemist class if he was rewritten in our post APG world and if so do you feel like he would still fit his lore seeing as he was supposed to have no real magical talent and was working to find a scientific cure for the plague killing his family?
I'm working on a couple characters for Skull & Shackles and I came across something perplexing about the Hurricane Savvy Trait from Pirates of the Inner Sea. It says it reduces the severity of a storm for purposes of captaining or steering s ship, but I can't seem to find any rules on the effect of storms on captaining or steering a ship. Is that hidden away somewhere I haven't looked?
Thanks for the Furious Focus clarification, James!
Okay I just bought a glass display counter from a retail store that is shutting down to put my Pathfinder Battles minis in since I bought 2 cases of Heroes & Monsters and am getting 3 Cases of ROTRL. Does this make my Gaming room look more awesome? Or kinda silly?
Kinda AWESOME, I'd say,