Creative Director
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James, any plans to have some art of the iconics wearing something different? Say, Valeros in a tux, Kyra in a dress, or Seoni in something more gypsy-like? Seems odd they only have one change of clothes, considering they have to walk around town at times without armour and stuff. Not to mention the picture of Alahazra swabbing the decks in her oracle gown!
I was kind of hoping Skull & Shackles might have, say, pirate versions of the well-known characters...
Now and then, yes, but not often.
Because the value of those characters IS their appearance and outfit. Just as it would look weird to see Batman dressed as a lumberjack or a dogsledder or a ballerina (and in fact without his costume it'd be tough for someone to recognize him as Batman or even Bruce Wayne at all in the first place), it's weird to dress our iconics strangely.
Still... we do this now and then in adventures. We've illustrated Seelah in a dress in an adventure before, and we've illustrated Amiri as a futuristic barbarian and Harsk as a steampunk character in the Gamemastery Guide. We've got a REALLY cool picture of Seoni dressed as Valeros coming in a few months.
But for the most part, we'll be illustrating them in their normal outfits.
(In hindsight, putting the iconics in shabby rags for that opening scene from Skull & Shackles would have been a good idea, but we didn't think of it. And honestly... getting your stuff back is going to be your first goal in that adventure anyway...)
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Creative Director
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Reign of Winter got its outline finalized a month or more ago, so we do indeed know who the iconics are. And no, now's not the time to reveal that. Be excited about Shattered Star for now! :-)So, it we're to get excited about it... can you tell us who the AP cover stars are going to be, apart from the lovely Shiela H?
Sure...
#3: The Dark Rider
#4: Koriah Azmeren
#5: Cadrilkasta
#6: Still secret!
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Creative Director
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James,
Would you please give the following thread a quick read and provide some feedback?
Thanks.
http://paizo.com/forums/dmtz67s2?Is-masterwork-sufficient-to-add-magical#1
That's cheating!
This is the ask James questions here, not over there.
But yeah... before you can add ANY weapon qualities to a weapon, it has to at least be a +1 weapon first. There are no examples I can think of in the game at all where we've published a magic weapon that doesn't at the very least have a +1 enhancement bonus.
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Creative Director
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One more question regarding Shamira, if I may...
If I understood correctly, each of the Midnight Isles is ruled by a unique succubus or incubus... of course, all of them under Nocticula; with the exception of her personal residence island, Alinythia.
Now, under 'Shamira', you state 'Realm: Alinythia'.
Which would imply that Shamira, despite being the most powerful unique succubus serving Nocticula, has no island to claim as her own.
DId I go wrong somewhere?
Shamira runs Alinythia, but she still works for Nocticula.
So, think of Shamira as Nocticula's major-domo or butler, I guess.
Another way to look at it: Shamira rules Alinythia, which happens to be the island that Nocticula lives on. Nocticula rules ALL of the islands, so really, ALL of the island's individual rulers share that rule with the boss lady.
Just looking for your opinion on something real fast.
An upcoming game I'm running takes place in a world that is, while remaining wholly in the realm of fantasy, highly influenced by 1950s sci-fi and horror films (tons of giant monsters running around, aliens, robots, etc., while all of the human elements will tend to have strong cold war themes running through them).
Do you think that it would be more effective in general to tell my players that they're playing in a 1950s sci-fi setting so that they can make characters that more easily fit into the tropes of those stories? Or would it be best to just have them make characters and let them discover the setting entirely in character?
This is a question I've struggled with in just about every campaign I've run (how much information do you give the players before starting a campaign), and I'm curious about what your opinion is.
Thanks! Another poster was able to find a quotation that makes it very clear. Always a great time when you get dev feedback, though.
Oh, and sorry about cheating. Haha
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Creative Director
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Just looking for your opinion on something real fast.
An upcoming game I'm running takes place in a world that is, while remaining wholly in the realm of fantasy, highly influenced by 1950s sci-fi and horror films (tons of giant monsters running around, aliens, robots, etc., while all of the human elements will tend to have strong cold war themes running through them).
Do you think that it would be more effective in general to tell my players that they're playing in a 1950s sci-fi setting so that they can make characters that more easily fit into the tropes of those stories? Or would it be best to just have them make characters and let them discover the setting entirely in character?
This is a question I've struggled with in just about every campaign I've run (how much information do you give the players before starting a campaign), and I'm curious about what your opinion is.
I would print out the post you just posted and give THAT to the players, basically.
In other words, tell them: "An upcoming game I'm running takes place in a world that is, while remaining wholly in the realm of fantasy, highly influenced by 1950s sci-fi and horror films (tons of giant monsters running around, aliens, robots, etc., while all of the human elements will tend to have strong cold war themes running through them)."
If you tell them nothing, they'll likely assume you're running a standard game and get frustrated when they haven't built characters that come from the world they're gaming in.
Remember, while your players are seeing the world for the first time when you start the 1st session... their characters have lived there all their life.
UNLESS you're doing a game where the player characters start from, say, Golarion or Greyhawk or wherever and get pulled through a portal and get deposited on this new world with no frame of reference. But that's REALLY dangerous and has a really good chance of bait-and-switching one or all of your players out of their characters and annoying them enough to quit the game. So handle with care if you go that route.
Thank you. :)
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Creative Director
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So here's a question about Dungeon magazine. The issues up to #139 are available as pdfs. Issues #140 through 150 are not, though they're still available has hard copies for $8 each. As it happens, issue #139 has the first episode of the Savage Tide AP (written by, hey, James Jacobs); the other 11 episodes are found, one apiece, in the eleven issues from #140 to #150.
The question: what's the reason those 11 issues aren't available as pdfs? Is it just "we never got around to it", or are there copyright issues or some such?
I ask because, if they never become pdfs, then Savage Tide will eventually become unavailable as the hard copy issues are sold out. (A Savage Tide HC is pretty unlikely IIUC.)
Building PDF versions of our magazines for sale followed a different path than building the PDFs we sent to the printer—the printer PDFs were ENORMOUS in size and were not really workable as for-sale products. So, when we wanted to sell a PDF of one of the magazines, we had to rebuild the PDF from the ground up, and that brought with it a host of difficulties. In other words, it wasn't a simple push of a button to convert. Each one took time to create.
And time wasn't something we had a lot of.
When we found out that Wizards of the Coast wasn't going to renew our license, we were VERY FAR behind in keeping up with the PDF versions of the magazines, simply because they were a pretty low priority in the grand scheme of things—getting the print magazines out every month pretty much took up most of our capacity, leaving relatively little for other stuff. Like PDFs.
Which put us in a tough position, because once the license ended, we also lost the ability to create PDFs of the magazines. Not just because we lost the license, but because those files had to be returned to Wizards of the Coast. At that point, creating PDFs for sale of magazines became Wizards' responsibility.
So, in the time we had to us between learning about the loss of the license and the actual end of the license, we kicked the PDF production into high gear. We were a LOT farther behind than issue #140 at the time. We hired a contractor to help us finish as many as we could... but by the time the license ended... we'd only gotten up to #139.
So... that's the story. As things worked out, Wizards wasn't all that interested in PDFs, and as a result, the last 11 issues of Dungeon are indeed eventually going to fade away entirely once the hardcopies sell out. And since a Savage Tide HC is very very very unlikely... yeah, it's kind of frustrating.
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Creative Director
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UNLESS you're doing a game where the player characters start from, say, Golarion or Greyhawk or wherever and get pulled through a portal and get deposited on this new world with no frame of reference. But that's REALLY dangerous and has a really good chance of bait-and-switching one or all of your players out of their characters and annoying them enough to quit the game. So handle with care if you go that route.On the other hand, if you do this with characters that have already been established in play in a conventional setting, it can be an exciting and amusing break from normal flow such as the search for the Mace of Cuthbert in Dragon 100. But in that scenario the characters are going through his portal volountarily on quest and at least have some warning that where they're going through is going to be quite different from the Greyhawk version of "Kansas".
On a one-adventure case, it can, in theory, be amusing.
What's not amusing is building a character that, say, is all about killing undead only to find out you're going on an adventure where there are no undead. It's even less fun to find out you're in a campaign with no undead at all.
Players HAVE to know about the campaign they'll be playing in, otherwise they run a good chance of building and investing their interests in a character that doesn't work. That's no good.
So here's a question about Dungeon magazine. The issues up to #139 are available as pdfs. Issues #140 through 150 are not, though they're still available has hard copies for $8 each. As it happens, issue #139 has the first episode of the Savage Tide AP (written by, hey, James Jacobs); the other 11 episodes are found, one apiece, in the eleven issues from #140 to #150.
The question: what's the reason those 11 issues aren't available as pdfs? Is it just "we never got around to it", or are there copyright issues or some such?
I ask because, if they never become pdfs, then Savage Tide will eventually become unavailable as the hard copy issues are sold out. (A Savage Tide HC is pretty unlikely IIUC.)
Building PDF versions of our magazines for sale followed a different path than building the PDFs we sent to the printer—the printer PDFs were ENORMOUS in size and were not really workable as for-sale products. So, when we wanted to sell a PDF of one of the magazines, we had to rebuild the PDF from the ground up, and that brought with it a host of difficulties. In other words, it wasn't a simple push of a button to convert. Each one took time to create.
And time wasn't something we had a lot of.
When we found out that Wizards of the Coast wasn't going to renew our license, we were VERY FAR behind in keeping up with the PDF versions of the magazines, simply because they were a pretty low priority in the grand scheme of things—getting the print magazines out every month pretty much took up most of our capacity, leaving relatively little for other stuff. Like PDFs.
Which put us in a tough position, because once the license ended, we also lost the ability to create PDFs of the magazines. Not just because we lost the license, but because those files had to be returned to Wizards of the Coast. At that point, creating PDFs for sale of magazines became Wizards' responsibility.
So, in the time we had to us between learning about the loss of the license and the actual end...
I know this isn't legal, but eventually (if not already), this issues will be available via illegal downloads. Someone, somewhere, will scan the magazine and upload it into a 'Dungeons Magazine collection' of PDFs.
In this day and age of cyber technology and cloud storage, nothing ever vanishes forever.
Tels, while I am not all that interested in the Dungeon magazines myself I do know of people who have scanned in the entire collection. So, yes...somewhere out there they are probably already floating around.
- Gauss
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Chief Technical Officer
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So, in the time we had to us between learning about the loss of the license and the actual end of the license, we kicked the PDF production into high gear. We were a LOT farther behind than issue #140 at the time. We hired a contractor to help us finish as many as we could... but by the time the license ended... we'd only gotten up to #139.
James is mistaken here. Our license with Wizards of the Coast stipulated that we couldn't sell a PDF of a given issue until a year after its release, and since our ability to create new PDFs for sale ended upon release of the last print issues, that meant that we never had the right to introduce PDFs of the last 11 issues. Believe me, if we could have, we *certainly* would have!
Making PDFs of the issues Paizo had produced was actually pretty easy, as we had all the files and all of the paperwork to tell us what articles had electronic publishing rights. Things that predated Paizo were much more complicated, as we had to locate files (and for older ones, convert them from defunct applications and file formats, which often necessitated some rebuilding as James described) and also figure out rights issues for anything that wasn't clearly owned by Wizards, such as fiction, comic strips, and anything that itself involved a third-party license.
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Creative Director
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So, in the time we had to us between learning about the loss of the license and the actual end of the license, we kicked the PDF production into high gear. We were a LOT farther behind than issue #140 at the time. We hired a contractor to help us finish as many as we could... but by the time the license ended... we'd only gotten up to #139.This isn't correct. Our license with Wizards of the Coast stipulated that we couldn't sell a PDF of a given issue until a year after its release, and since our ability to create new PDFs for sale ended upon release of the last print issues, that meant that we never had the right to introduce PDFs of the last 11 issues. Believe me, if we could have, we *certainly* would have!
Ah; right. Thanks for the clarification!
Forgot about the "can't sell within a year" stipulation. Makes a lot more sense in hindsight! :)
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Hello James,
Ninja is an alternate class for rogue. Can a human ninja select the alternate favored class bonus, and gain 1/6th of a ninja trick every level? If not, can they get 1/6th of a rogue trick every level?
Thanks!
Nope. That only grants rogue tricks, not ninja tricks.
Your GM may be more lenient though. I would be in games I run. Good luck!
So, by the rules, could a human ninja take this alternate favored class bonus and gain 1/6th of a rogue trick?
Thanks!
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Creative Director
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Hello James,
Ninja is an alternate class for rogue. Can a human ninja select the alternate favored class bonus, and gain 1/6th of a ninja trick every level? If not, can they get 1/6th of a rogue trick every level?
Thanks!
Nope. That only grants rogue tricks, not ninja tricks.
Your GM may be more lenient though. I would be in games I run. Good luck!
So, by the rules, could a human ninja take this alternate favored class bonus and gain 1/6th of a rogue trick?
Thanks!
If your GM lets you.
But since you're a ninja and not a rogue, your GM is well within her/his rights to say no.
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Creative Director
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is there any chance of fficially getting the extra rogue talent feet requirement changed so that a ninja can take it, and ahve a special added: a ninja must take the ninja trick rogue trick??
That's not really all that high on our to do list. There's a chance, I guess. Your GM has my permission to do this though.
Some curiosity about the upcoming Paths of Prestige: is the Arclord class wizards only, or can there be sorcerer or witch arclords?
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Creative Director
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We've got a REALLY cool picture of Seoni dressed as Valeros coming in a few months.For the love of Cayden; tell me you're not planning to do the reverse of this! There are some things man was not meant to know and how Valeros would look in a skimpy red dress is one of those things!
We'll see.
Which Ridley Scott sequel are you excited the most for- The untitled Blade Runner project or Prometheus 2 (which was just announced the other day)? I love Blade Runner and I like Prometheus but I think Prometheus 2 has the potential to be a better sequel since my expectations might be too high with another Blade Runner. Still would like to see a sequel to his Robin Hood movie but probably not going to happen.
We've got a REALLY cool picture of Seoni dressed as Valeros coming in a few months.For the love of Cayden; tell me you're not planning to do the reverse of this! There are some things man was not meant to know and how Valeros would look in a skimpy red dress is one of those things!
I don't know, I think he's got the legs for it.
Hey James, what's the strangest multiclass combination you or a co-player has tried out? Did it end well?
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Creative Director
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Which Ridley Scott sequel are you excited the most for- The untitled Blade Runner project or Prometheus 2 (which was just announced the other day)? I love Blade Runner and I like Prometheus but I think Prometheus 2 has the potential to be a better sequel since my expectations might be too high with another Blade Runner. Still would like to see a sequel to his Robin Hood movie but probably not going to happen.
The Prometheus sequel, no contest.
I like Blade Runner fine... but Prometheus and Alien are MUCH better.
The Divine Hunter archetype has no mention of a Divine Mount for Divine Bond. I assume that means there is no choice, and the paladin MUST choose to bond with their ranged/thrown weapon. Is this assumption correct? If so, what was the general design decision for it?
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Creative Director
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Hey James, what's the strangest multiclass combination you or a co-player has tried out? Did it end well?
Well... I had a player at Paizocon play Billiver Billiven from Magnimar. He's a gnome who is a...
CN male gnome alchemist 2/bard 1/cleric of Sivanah 1/sorcerer 1/wizard 2
It ended with Billiver catching the Sandpoint Devil inside of a bead of force bubble, so yeah, ended well for Billiver!
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Creative Director
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The Divine Hunter archetype has no mention of a Divine Mount for Divine Bond. I assume that means there is no choice, and the paladin MUST choose to bond with their ranged/thrown weapon. Is this assumption correct? If so, what was the general design decision for it?
I wasn't involved in that archetype's design, so I can't say if there was a general design decision at all. Part of the fact that the divine hunter is all about ranged weapons makes me think that forcing them to choose divine bond with the ranged weapon only helps to cement the fact that they're ranged attack paladins, not normal paladins.
Well... I had a player at Paizocon play Billiver Billiven from Magnimar. He's a gnome who is a...
CN male gnome alchemist 2/bard 1/cleric of Sivanah 1/sorcerer 1/wizard 2
It ended with Billiver catching the Sandpoint Devil inside of a bead of force bubble, so yeah, ended well for Billiver!
Isn't that the gnome with the potion shop in Magnimar? :)
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P.s.: sorry, I know I have a tendency to ramble when given the occasion and this is the "Ask James Jacobs all your questions tread", not the "ramble about his reply" thread, but I wanted to explain my point of view. I haven't tested this item in game, so if there is a error in my line of thought please point it to me.
No worries. My advice is to turn some of that tactical examination of what someone can do with those goggles around to building tactics to fight AGAINST them with your PCs. Obscuring mist, for example, can be a great equalizer...
Or keep in mind that whatever the PCs can do, the GM can do too.
I am (almost exclusively, sigh) the GM, so playing to nullify a player strength seem wrong, especially as it something he would have acquired either in a treasure I was putting in game or from a shop with hard earned money.
While targeting the player weaknesses or nullifying their know strengths when the adversary is a canny creature that know his targets is right and reasonable if done well, having most NPC run around with the right counters isn't the way to run a good game.
When the players characters are preparing counters to possible special attacks I feel rewarded as they are treating my NPC as thinking persons that try to use their strengths but the GM NPC have potentially infinite resources and god like knowledge, so I feel that it is better to limit their access to counters (unless I am depicting someone with god like knowledge and infinite resources).
@ Tels: the googlies allow sneak attacks. Even a modern sniper has problems taking a bead on a random moving target. When a arrow spend a few seconds travelling it lose the pinpoint accuracy needed for a sneak attack if the target is aware he is under attack.
Still rambling. :(
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We'll see.We've got a REALLY cool picture of Seoni dressed as Valeros coming in a few months.For the love of Cayden; tell me you're not planning to do the reverse of this! There are some things man was not meant to know and how Valeros would look in a skimpy red dress is one of those things!
Maybe there are women that would love to see that. Equal opportunities. ;-)
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Creative Director
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Isn't that the gnome with the potion shop in Magnimar? :)Well... I had a player at Paizocon play Billiver Billiven from Magnimar. He's a gnome who is a...
CN male gnome alchemist 2/bard 1/cleric of Sivanah 1/sorcerer 1/wizard 2
It ended with Billiver catching the Sandpoint Devil inside of a bead of force bubble, so yeah, ended well for Billiver!
That's the one!
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Creative Director
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P.s.: sorry, I know I have a tendency to ramble when given the occasion and this is the "Ask James Jacobs all your questions tread", not the "ramble about his reply" thread, but I wanted to explain my point of view. I haven't tested this item in game, so if there is a error in my line of thought please point it to me.
No worries. My advice is to turn some of that tactical examination of what someone can do with those goggles around to building tactics to fight AGAINST them with your PCs. Obscuring mist, for example, can be a great equalizer...
Or keep in mind that whatever the PCs can do, the GM can do too.
I am (almost exclusively, sigh) the GM, so playing to nullify a player strength seem wrong, especially as it something he would have acquired either in a treasure I was putting in game or from a shop with hard earned money.
While targeting the player weaknesses or nullifying their know strengths when the adversary is a canny creature that know his targets is right and reasonable if done well, having most NPC run around with the right counters isn't the way to run a good game.
When the players characters are preparing counters to possible special attacks I feel rewarded as they are treating my NPC as thinking persons that try to use their strengths but the GM NPC have potentially infinite resources and god like knowledge, so I feel that it is better to limit their access to counters (unless I am depicting someone with god like knowledge and infinite resources).
@ Tels: the googlies allow sneak attacks. Even a modern sniper has problems taking a bead on a random moving target. When a arrow spend a few seconds travelling it lose the pinpoint accuracy needed for a sneak attack if the target is aware he is under attack.
Still rambling. :(
Well in that case, you as the GM get to decide what is and isn't in the game. I do this all the time. For example: No summoners in my games. Just because it's in the rules doesn't mean it's right for your game. If these things cause too many problems for your game, just don't let them exist in your game.
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Creative Director
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Maybe there are women that would love to see that. Equal opportunities. ;-)We'll see.We've got a REALLY cool picture of Seoni dressed as Valeros coming in a few months.For the love of Cayden; tell me you're not planning to do the reverse of this! There are some things man was not meant to know and how Valeros would look in a skimpy red dress is one of those things!
Or men.
For example: No summoners in my games. Just because it's in the rules doesn't mean it's right for your game. If these things cause too many problems for your game, just don't let them exist in your game.
Oh gosh this is so absolutely true. I've got a friend that's been playing roleplaying for some 35 years. With all that time in playing games, he sometimes mixes up various editions, games, and rules which is understandable. So he relies on me for Pathfinder Rules because I'm regarded as one of the experts at my local hobby store. A lot of this is because I habitually find ways to 'break' the game, so I can warn the other GMs so it doesn't happen in their games. The forums here (which I'm the only one that reads from my town) is a great help in that regard.
Or men.
Agree :-)
A question on a group of outsiders near and dear to your heart
For Qlippoth, if you had the time and the go-ahead to do a Book of the Damned 4 on the demon predecessors, how would you go ahead and set it up? One of things I kind of like about them is that, other than being incredibly ancient, we don't know a lot about them or their origins (compared to say Demons or Daemons). Would the origins of the Qlippoth be left vague in such a book, and would it more concentrate on their more "recent" doings.
Do elves in Pathfinder/Golarion trance or sleep?
Do elves in Pathfinder/Golarion trance or sleep?
Answered here.
Mr. Jacobsaur,
Recently I've noticed that there aren't any special rules for elf sleep in the game.
I just did a quick search in the forums and found several different explanations for that, such as:
1) it was left out because strangely enough the elf meditating thing is not part of the SRD.
2) Paizo decided to leave it out so dms can decide what they want in their own game.
3) was a deliberate attempt to distance pathfinder elves from the WotC elves.
Would you mind commenting on that?
Specifically,
do elves in golarion sleep? (I'm aware that elves of golarion says they meditate for 4 hours, but since it's a 3.5 source it may be outdated.)Thank you so much.
Elves on Golarion sleep. Elves of Golarion was written in the early days before we fully had our heads wrapped around Golarion... or the fact that we'd be doing our OWN rules, for that matter. And as a result, that bit about elves only meditating has been inflicted with fire cancer (aka it's been retconned away).
Elves sleep just like any other race. They're just immune to effects that FORCE them to fall asleep.
Then again players like that tend to bump up their Bluff skills. The problem is that skill ranks and pluses can quickly out pace the modifiers by attributes.
So take that same player in the example above and assume he's pimped his Bluff modifier to the same extent as his Diplomacy. Does that change your interpretation?
Interesting point. I think fundamentally the issue is that the skills diplomacy and bluff are way too widely worded, certainly far more widely than say swim, or disable device. Basically players seem to believe that if you have diplomacy or bluff ranks suddenly a low or average charisma character becomes a silver tongued orator. My belief is that they do BUT their general likability does not increase. Pathfinders lack of henchman, dominion or large scale army rules doesn't add much to the clarity here. Low charisma characters are less "magnetic" and I believe that interactions with the masses would be highly dependent on this, but your diplomacy and bluff can overcome it in one on one interactions. After you had "wooed" them with your words a few hours later your base likability returns.
I "think" that's what James was talking about In his response to me. Did I get it basically right James?