Hi James!
Our group is planning on starting Shattered Star soon. One of our players is interested in playing a Paladin but is unsure how he would fit in with the AP's theme. Without getting into spoilers, could you recommend a good deity or patron for him that would help give his character some motivation?
Thanks!
So when will we head to Arcadia? I'm really hankering for all the cool things that can be derived from Latin American folklore. The thought of fighting an Alebrije is really tantalizing.
i.e. This is my formal request for an Inca/Olmec/Maya/Aztec and/or luchador buddies adventure.
You can check out this thread here for some brainstorming we've been doing for Arcadia. Throw in that link too. I think it'd be awesome!
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Which thing? The Daemon Carnival thing? The Abyssal Rebirth thing? Or The Assault on Hell thing?We'll be heading them later, after that other thing happens.So when will we head to Arcadia? I'm really hankering for all the cool things that can be derived from Latin American folklore. The thought of fighting an Alebrije is really tantalizing.
i.e. This is my formal request for an Inca/Olmec/Maya/Aztec and/or luchador buddies adventure.
None of those.
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Hi James!
Our group is planning on starting Shattered Star soon. One of our players is interested in playing a Paladin but is unsure how he would fit in with the AP's theme. Without getting into spoilers, could you recommend a good deity or patron for him that would help give his character some motivation?
Thanks!
Shattered Star is very much a standard dungeon-crawl type adventure. There's not a lot in there that would make paladin a tough RP choice at all.
Any paladin deity works fine. Since the adventure path is set in Varisia, it probably makes the most sense to be a paladin of Abadar or Sarenrae or Shelyn, since of the paladin deities, those three are the most widespread in Varisia.
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Have you seen the trailers for RWBY, the new series Rooster Teeth is doing?
Each trailer introduces one of the four protagonists:
Ruby
Weiss Schnee
Blake BelladonnaNo trailer for the fourth protagonist yet, probably won't hit til May or so.
haven't seen them
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What are chances of getting a " Mendevian Crusader" archetype for paladins in the near future?
There's a Mendevian Priest cleric archetype in Inner Sea Magic. A paladin archetype would be cool... might show up in a player's guide, but it won't be showing up in the Worldwound book or the Adventure Path itself.
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Thankies for the answers :3
What do you think of playing a character with Prosopagnosia ?
Basically someone who has no facial recognition capability.
A question about oils.
1) The feat doesn't specifically say, but can you use Brew Potion to create an oil? Where are the oil rules from, anyway?
2) If I'm understanding the oil rules correctly, I can make an oil of a spell like borrow skill (in the Spoiler Below), rub it on an ally, and then resolve the spell with my freshly massaged ally as the target and myself as the effective caster, meaning that I get to borrow one of my ally's skills?
3) Same as above, except I could make an oil of cure light wounds, then
smear it on an ally like a paste to heal them?
Borrow Skill
School transmutation; Level bard 1
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components S
Range touch
Targets creature touched
Duration up to 1 round/level (see description)
Saving Throw Will negates (harmless); Spell Resistance yes (harmless)
You borrow one of the target's known skills. After touching the subject, you can make a single check with the chosen skill using the subject's skill ranks, but modified by your own key ability.
If you take longer than the spell's duration to make the check or the check requires more time, then it fails and you must use your own skill ranks (if any). If the borrowed skill is a class skill for you, you gain the +3 bonus on checks using that skill.
James Sir;
What do blind people in Golarion read? Is there some equivalent to Braille? I have a blind spell caster in my upcoming game and I didn't think about his spell book until now, was thinking of mahjong tiles, but if you have something somewhere I would dearly love to hear it.
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Thankies for the answers :3
What do you think of playing a character with Prosopagnosia ?
Basically someone who has no facial recognition capability.
I think that'd be a pretty crippling disadvantage that would overwhelm pretty much everything else in the game for that character; he'd have trouble keeping track of his friends, after all.
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A question about oils.
1) The feat doesn't specifically say, but can you use Brew Potion to create an oil? Where are the oil rules from, anyway?
2) If I'm understanding the oil rules correctly, I can make an oil of a spell like borrow skill (in the Spoiler Below), rub it on an ally, and then resolve the spell with my freshly massaged ally as the target and myself as the effective caster, meaning that I get to borrow one of my ally's skills?
3) Same as above, except I could make an oil of cure light wounds, then
smear it on an ally like a paste to heal them?** spoiler omitted **
1) Yes; that's where oils come from.
2) Yup.
3) That's no different than a potion of cure light wounds.
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James Sir;
What do blind people in Golarion read? Is there some equivalent to Braille? I have a blind spell caster in my upcoming game and I didn't think about his spell book until now, was thinking of mahjong tiles, but if you have something somewhere I would dearly love to hear it.
There'd probably be some sort of equivalent to braille, I suppose... but remove blindness is a pretty low level spell...
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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3) That's no different than a potion of cure light wounds.A question about oils.
3) Same as above, except I could make an oil of cure light wounds, then
smear it on an ally like a paste to heal them?
If I was to create a massuese cleric, which god would he most likely serve? Calistria?
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If I was to create a massuese cleric, which god would he most likely serve? Calistria?3) That's no different than a potion of cure light wounds.A question about oils.
3) Same as above, except I could make an oil of cure light wounds, then
smear it on an ally like a paste to heal them?
Or Shelyn or Arshea?
I think that'd be a pretty crippling disadvantage that would overwhelm pretty much everything else in the game for that character; he'd have trouble keeping track of his friends, after all.Thankies for the answers :3
What do you think of playing a character with Prosopagnosia ?
Basically someone who has no facial recognition capability.
I don't normally jump in and answer questions on the "Ask James Jacobs" thread, but I have a mild case of prosopagnosia and thought I should chime in. It's a wierd disorder. Until I learned about it in my 30s, and realized that other people had it too, I thought I was just really bad with names. Turns out I'm just fine with names-- I have a hard time recognizing people by their faces.
Unlike people with very bad cases of prosopagnosia, I can learn people's faces if I spend a great deal of time around them (like my family and close friends), or if I make a conscious effort to study a face. I actually do this with new co-workers: I take a photo with my smartphone, add the person's name, and spend a few minutes a few times a day for a couple of weeks. One person that was hard to learn by sight was, of all people, my daughter, especially when she was little and growing rapidly. There were a few embarrassing moments on the playground when I mistook someone else's kid for my own. (Now that she's a teenager, I don't have trouble recognizing her.)
You learn shortcuts with casual acquaintances. Many were tricks I'd picked up unconsciously over the years. First of all, I've been told that my ability to recognize people by their voice is uncanny. You also pick up other clues: typical hairstyle, glasses, distinctive clothing, distinctive gait or motions. But a change like a very different hairstyle can throw me off. There was one time when I was five or six that I didn't recognize my own mother when she came back from the hairdresser. (She went from having shoulder-length light brown hair to a short style and also dyed it blonde.) It was very upsetting for both of us!
I also use expectations of where you see the same person. (i.e. I know that the short middle-aged woman who waits tables at the diner I frequent is Jackie. If I bump into her at the grocery store, I don't recognize her unless she says something.) I basically smile and wave back at anyone who does so at me-- it's only polite, even if I have absolutely no idea who they are.
The tricks don't always work. There were two women that used to work in my building that were of similar stature and build, about the same age, had hair the same color and of similar style, and were the same race. They even wore similar-styled glasses. Their voices were also very similar-- both were from the same region of the country and had a similar non-local accent, so it took a couple of sentences before I could distinguish their voices. I was NEVER able tell Roberta from Sharon by sight-- and these were people I'd worked with causally for more than five years!
It can also makes watching military or police movies tough: if the characters all wear the same uniform and have the same hairstyle, I have a hard time keeping track of who's who.
And, the one time I got mugged, despite getting a direct look at my assailant's face, I couldn't describe anything about his face to the police. I also told them that I would be unable to pick him out of a line-up. (It was very difficult to explain my inability to the police-- the detective had never heard of prosopagnosia and thought I was making it up because I was afraid of retialiation.)
For the most part, though, it doesn't really impact my life all that much, aside from an occasional embarassing moment. It's easier to feign recognition and engage in conversation to see if I recognize the person's voice (or can tease out other cues to identity). Or just say that I'm bad with names.
So, take that as you will for role-playing guidance.
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I don't normally jump in and answer questions on the "Ask James Jacobs" thread, but I have a mild case of prosopagnosia and thought I should chime in.
Thanks for sharing!
I find it easiest to recognize people by their stance, posture, the way that they walk, etc. sometimes, and I've noticed that it gets more extreme in my dreams (where no one has faces at all).
I too did not know this was a 'thing' until recently, and have all my life run into people I didn't recognize who seemed to know me, only to be embarrassed to find out I'd worked with them for years or whatever. I spent a long time thinking that it was just that I was a tremendously self-absorbed twit.
Of course the one does not preclude the other. :)
None of those.Which thing? The Daemon Carnival thing? The Abyssal Rebirth thing? Or The Assault on Hell thing?We'll be heading them later, after that other thing happens.So when will we head to Arcadia? I'm really hankering for all the cool things that can be derived from Latin American folklore. The thought of fighting an Alebrije is really tantalizing.
i.e. This is my formal request for an Inca/Olmec/Maya/Aztec and/or luchador buddies adventure.
The psychic magic thing?
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Creative Director
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If I was to create a massuese cleric, which god would he most likely serve? Calistria?3) That's no different than a potion of cure light wounds.A question about oils.
3) Same as above, except I could make an oil of cure light wounds, then
smear it on an ally like a paste to heal them?
Either Calistria or Irori or Shelyn.
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Creative Director
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The psychic magic thing?None of those.Which thing? The Daemon Carnival thing? The Abyssal Rebirth thing? Or The Assault on Hell thing?We'll be heading them later, after that other thing happens.So when will we head to Arcadia? I'm really hankering for all the cool things that can be derived from Latin American folklore. The thought of fighting an Alebrije is really tantalizing.
i.e. This is my formal request for an Inca/Olmec/Maya/Aztec and/or luchador buddies adventure.
Nope.
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James,
The Black Blade archetype in the Ultimate Magic book is not clear what materials a black blade is made out of that is ia a masterwork weapon.
Does this mean is is a regular steel material or could it be make out of any other special material? Or would that be a GM call?
It's a regular weapon made of regular material.
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While the new materials in Ultimate Equipment were nice, and I especially liked all the sky metals explained in Shattered Star, are there any plans or the like of adding Planar materials or Planar altered materials?
No plans at this point, but we're always adding new content like that to our adventure paths and books as we go.
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While the new materials in Ultimate Equipment were nice, and I especially liked all the sky metals explained in Shattered Star, are there any plans or the like of adding Planar materials or Planar altered materials?No plans at this point, but we're always adding new content like that to our adventure paths and books as we go.
I can wait :3
James, in some of the earlier APs several of the bad guys used war razors. How widespread is their use, and what was the inspiration for this weapon over say a regular dagger.
Do you have any insights as to why dragons have lower CR's in pathfinder compared to 3.5?
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James, I'm looking for an opinion / reasonable way to handle this: a player has a bronze griffon figurine of wonderous power which can be used twice per week for up to 6 hours per use. If a player takes his figurine to a wizard with the appropriate craft feat, what is a realistic cost to change the number of times per week the griffon can be used? The total number of hours per week (12) would not change, just the number of hours per use (so the player could, for example use the griffon for an hour and then return it to figurine form, leaving him with 11 hours of use left in that week)?
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James, in some of the earlier APs several of the bad guys used war razors. How widespread is their use, and what was the inspiration for this weapon over say a regular dagger.
There's a war-razor wielding bad guy coming up in Wrath of the Righteous, in fact.
Their use is not super widespread. It's mostly something that the Skinsaw Cult uses.
I originally gave the worshipers of Norgorber war razors as a big theme weapon in my homebrew game back in the 90s after I'd read Ramsey Campbel's excellent novel, "The Face that must Die." That book's about a serial killer, but there's a fair amount of inspiration in that story for me for the Skinsaw Cult. The killer in that story used a straight razor, and I liked the idea of something like that but BIGGER being a weapon of choice for a murder cult.
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Do you have any insights as to why dragons have lower CR's in pathfinder compared to 3.5?
In 3.5, the design philosophy was that dragons should be REALLY TOUGH FIGHTS. And so they gave them lower CRs than they should have—a dragon that in 3.5, by the numbers, should be about CR 12, for example, would instead be rated at CR 10.
Essentially, they were tricking GMs into using monsters that were too powerful to be used in a fair battle against PCs.
For Pahtfinder... dragons are still tough, but their numbers are MUCH closer to what their CR expects them to be. The idea being that if you want to have the PCs face a REALLY TOUGH FIGHT, then they should go up against an APL +4 encounter or something like that. Doesn't matter if it's a dragon or not.
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James, I'm looking for an opinion / reasonable way to handle this: a player has a bronze griffon figurine of wonderous power which can be used twice per week for up to 6 hours per use. If a player takes his figurine to a wizard with the appropriate craft feat, what is a realistic cost to change the number of times per week the griffon can be used? The total number of hours per week (12) would not change, just the number of hours per use (so the player could, for example use the griffon for an hour and then return it to figurine form, leaving him with 11 hours of use left in that week)?
Well... if the player just bought a second griffon, that'd essentially double the hours per week he can have a griffon. Whether or not it's more or less advantageous to have 2 items instead of one is subject to debate, but I would use that as a baseline—doubling the hours available should double the price.
Fiddling with the other values should have correspondingly less drastic price changes.
Just finished reading about the Winter Wolves in The Shackled Hut, outside of the two towns/cities listed in the book are there any other settlements other than the Redtooth and Whitethrone where Winter Wolves can shapeshift? For that matter given their level of intelligence is it too far fetch to think that there might be communities of winter wolves that have formed their own towns or cities, seems like they like to emmulate humanoids to a degree and it wouldn't necessarily be that difficult for the ones that could shapeshift.
@James Jacobs: Any idea why the Paizo Forums don't support HTML Coding? Or even just the Campaign Info Tab of a PBP Grouping doesn't support it?
There'd probably be some sort of equivalent to braille, I suppose... but remove blindness is a pretty low level spell...James Sir;
What do blind people in Golarion read? Is there some equivalent to Braille? I have a blind spell caster in my upcoming game and I didn't think about his spell book until now, was thinking of mahjong tiles, but if you have something somewhere I would dearly love to hear it.
would remove blindness remove genetic blindness then?
"The spell does not restore ears or eyes that have been lost, but it repairs them if they are damaged."
If someone was born blind they would be considered damaged?
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There'd probably be some sort of equivalent to braille, I suppose... but remove blindness is a pretty low level spell...James Sir;
What do blind people in Golarion read? Is there some equivalent to Braille? I have a blind spell caster in my upcoming game and I didn't think about his spell book until now, was thinking of mahjong tiles, but if you have something somewhere I would dearly love to hear it.
would remove blindness remove genetic blindness then?
"The spell does not restore ears or eyes that have been lost, but it repairs them if they are damaged."
If someone was born blind they would be considered damaged?
That'd be a GM call.
I would say that would probably take regeneration, same as if your eyes were destroyed, say, by a balor's whip.
@James Jacobs: Any idea why the Paizo Forums don't support HTML Coding? Or even just the Campaign Info Tab of a PBP Grouping doesn't support it?Nope; no idea. That's a Gary question.
Figured as much. Thanks all the same.
Also if a Pathfinder HBO Series was to be created if they cast Sean Bean as Valeros do you think him getting Maimed or Killed then healed by Kyra become a recurring gag?
In most of the modules and APs I have read electrum pieces seem to be nearly absent. And Platinum pieces seem to be rarer in later APs. What is the relative frequency of these types of currency in Varisia?
James, what are your thoughts on the spell blood money, do you use it in your games ?
Did Pharasma participate in the original battle against Rovagug?
You (or was it someone else) mentioned a book coming out with a Lich-esque transformation specifically for Druids here a while back (in the Vampire Druid thread, I believe).
I seem to have completely forgotten what you called it, since I'm pretty sure you said the name as well.
Would you mind reminding me what the name was so I can look out for it, and some kind of ETA on its arrival (if there is one)? It sounded really cool.