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That's a kind of spell that would likely be invented as part of a big "Mythos on Golarion" type book we may someday do...
Oooh. That sounds awesome. I know that Mythos stuff isn't everybody's cup of tea, but I loved the use of the Yellow Sign stuff in the Freeport adventures.
Which parts of Golarion would lend themselves best to a heavier Mythos flavor, do you think? Alkenstar? Thuvia/Osirion/Rahadoum? Ustalav? The Sodden Lands? Numeria? The Crown of the World (mountains of madness!)?
In Golarion, is there any sort of public air transport system anywhere? (be it airships, tamed flying creatures, or even flying creatures that simply offer transport as a service themselves)
James,
Where should I mail my money to make a Mythos on Golarion companion happen?
Creative Director
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As a tangentially related question to gods, IIRC you've mentioned that when books are released, you try to make sure that they match up with the actual reason for Aroden's death you devised, although you/Paizo don't plan to reveal it. Do you think there have been enough clues scattered in what's been published that might relate to it, for somebody to actually come to the correct answer, or build a relatively accurate, albeit incomplete, picture of what happened and how?
I don't think that we've released enough clues yet, no. But that doesn't mean someone won't figure it out anyway—the internet hivemind can be staggeringly insightful.
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That's a kind of spell that would likely be invented as part of a big "Mythos on Golarion" type book we may someday do...Oooh. That sounds awesome. I know that Mythos stuff isn't everybody's cup of tea, but I loved the use of the Yellow Sign stuff in the Freeport adventures.
Which parts of Golarion would lend themselves best to a heavier Mythos flavor, do you think? Alkenstar? Thuvia/Osirion/Rahadoum? Ustalav? The Sodden Lands? Numeria? The Crown of the World (mountains of madness!)?
It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it seems to be a LOT of cups, since mythos-heavy products tend to do pretty well.
The areas that have the most mythos stuff going on are: Varisia, Darklands, Ustalav, Crown of the World, Wall of Heaven, a certain lake in southern Garund, and Osirion.
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In Golarion, is there any sort of public air transport system anywhere? (be it airships, tamed flying creatures, or even flying creatures that simply offer transport as a service themselves)
Nope. Not really. There are some airships in Alkenstar, and some flying mounted organziations here and there (like in Korvosa) but nothing that's close to a public transit system.
When we eventually get the Mythos Revisited, Mythos of Golarion, and Aberration Hunters Handbook what are the chances of getting things similar to the Aberrant Blood feat tree from Lords of Madness?23%
curses.
There are some airships in Alkenstar...
ohmygoodnessyes
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That's a kind of spell that would likely be invented as part of a big "Mythos on Golarion" type book we may someday do...Oooh. That sounds awesome. I know that Mythos stuff isn't everybody's cup of tea, but I loved the use of the Yellow Sign stuff in the Freeport adventures.
Which parts of Golarion would lend themselves best to a heavier Mythos flavor, do you think? Alkenstar? Thuvia/Osirion/Rahadoum? Ustalav? The Sodden Lands? Numeria? The Crown of the World (mountains of madness!)?
places with mythos:
Crown of the World, Wall of Heaven
1) What is the Wall of Heaven?
2) Mythos presence in the pole, eh? What mountains up there in the crown of the world will you say are especialy filled with madness?3) What monstrous species are most likely to worship Great Old Ones or other Mythos creatures?
4) So we know that the Lovecraftian pantehon is present both in our Earth and in Golarion, which I guess means they can pretty much get wherever they want in the Material plane. How about other planes though? Are myhtos creatues to be found in the Abyss? ethereal plane?
5) How much does the Pathfinder society actualy knows about the Mythos? Recently they seem to be mostly occupied with the archelogical treasure cove that Varisia proved to be, so I guess investigating occurences of the Mythos is not on the Pathfinder's top ten "to do list" items, right?
6) How would Drow regard Mythos worship?
In Golarion, is there any sort of public air transport system anywhere? (be it airships, tamed flying creatures, or even flying creatures that simply offer transport as a service themselves)Nope. Not really. There are some airships in Alkenstar, and some flying mounted organziations here and there (like in Korvosa) but nothing that's close to a public transit system.
Would any of those transport a paying passenger anyway, if they happened to head in the same direction?
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1) What is the Wall of Heaven?
2) Mythos presence in the pole, eh? What mountains up there in the crown of the world will you say are especialy filled with madness?
3) What monstrous species are most likely to worship Great Old Ones or other Mythos creatures?
4) So we know that the Lovecraftian pantehon is present both in our Earth and in Golarion, which I guess means they can pretty much get wherever they want in the Material plane. How about other planes though? Are myhtos creatues to be found in the Abyss? ethereal plane?
5) How much does the Pathfinder society actualy knows about the Mythos? Recently they seem to be mostly occupied with the archelogical treasure cove that Varisia proved to be, so I guess investigating occurences of the Mythos is not on the Pathfinder's top ten "to do list" items, right?
6) How would Drow regard Mythos worship?
1) The Wall of Heaven is the highest, most significant, largest mountain range on the planet. It runs along the west coast of much of Tian Xia, and is why trade routes to the continent focus more on the overland route from the top of Avistan to the top of Tian Xia via the Crown of the World rather than via ship.
2) There's quite a lot up there, in fact, that have mythos elements. No "Mountains of Madness," but certainly lots of other stuff.
3) That's covered in Pathfinder #46 in pretty extensive detail on page 62:
Servitors: Chuuls, colours out of space, dark young, diminsional shamblers, gugs, hounds of Tindalos, mu spores, qlippoth, shantaks, shining children, shoggoths.
Cultists: Boggards, cloakers, derros, ghouls, marsh giants, mi-gos, morlocks, serpentfolk, seugathis, skums, troglodytes.
Cult Leaders: Aboleths, denizens of Leng, elder things, gnoph-kehs, Leng spiders, liches, mothmen, neh-thalggus, neothelids, star spawn of Cthulhu, wendigos, and worms that walk.
4) The mythos creatures are mostly a product of the Material Plane, but there are some from other dimensions. They can certainly travel to other dimensions and planes if they want. And some planes, like the Dreamlands or Leng, are particularly of note in housing great old ones or outer gods.
5) They know about the Mythos, but it doesn't concern them much more than any of the other dozens of ancient cultures/cults/mythologies/things they deal with all the time.
6) Probably with curiosity and a bit of intolerisim.
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Would any of those transport a paying passenger anyway, if they happened to head in the same direction?In Golarion, is there any sort of public air transport system anywhere? (be it airships, tamed flying creatures, or even flying creatures that simply offer transport as a service themselves)Nope. Not really. There are some airships in Alkenstar, and some flying mounted organziations here and there (like in Korvosa) but nothing that's close to a public transit system.
All of those would. They're not public, but if you have enough money or contacts or whatever, I suspect that they'd agree to transport you in the same way regular ships work. They don't really go that far out of the immediate Alkenstar region though, I don't think. They don't go to other cities outside of the Mana Wastes; they're mostly for in-Duchy transport of stuff.
With the Mythic rules coming out do you have an interest in an adventure or AP involving the Pit of Gormuz?
Would you ever do an "Ultimate Grimoire" to compile all the spells, refine existing ones, make new ones, etc.? I think there's probably a market for it...
Of all the stuff that has been invented or reinvented for Pathfinder, which ones do you hope to have a lasting legacy in tabletop games?
Are there anymore "pure"/"true" elementals (Water/fire/lightning and so on) besides the 8 in the bestiaries?
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With the Mythic rules coming out do you have an interest in an adventure or AP involving the Pit of Gormuz?
Not that much. We kinda did the "Spawn of Rovagug" AP already. The next time we do something like that, I'd probably like to involve the tarrasque, which isn't in the pit of Gormuz.
That said... there ARE some plans afoot for the pit. Not AP related though...
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Would you ever do an "Ultimate Grimoire" to compile all the spells, refine existing ones, make new ones, etc.? I think there's probably a market for it...
Of all the stuff that has been invented or reinvented for Pathfinder, which ones do you hope to have a lasting legacy in tabletop games?
Are there anymore "pure"/"true" elementals (Water/fire/lightning and so on) besides the 8 in the bestiaries?
I suppose an "Ultimate Spells" book is inevitable... but that kind of book kinda bores me. I'm 100% certain there's a market for a book like this.
The adventure paths and Golarion.
Probably not. And I wouldn't call the elementals in Bestiary 2 pure elementals either, but "mixed" elementals. That sounds weirdly racist.
Would you like to see more elementals like the salamander and invisible stalker?
And would we ever see the arrowhawk? It holds a special place in my heart since it was our mascot in a game a long time ago.
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Would you like to see more elementals like the salamander and invisible stalker?
And would we ever see the arrowhawk? It holds a special place in my heart since it was our mascot in a game a long time ago.
There's always going to be more elemental monsters.
I wouldn't hold your breath for the arrowhawk though. It doesn't really have any fans here at Paizo.
Would you like to see more elementals like the salamander and invisible stalker?
And would we ever see the arrowhawk? It holds a special place in my heart since it was our mascot in a game a long time ago.
There's always going to be more elemental monsters.
I wouldn't hold your breath for the arrowhawk though. It doesn't really have any fans here at Paizo.
Glad to always see more elementals, although why no arrowhawk? Those things are awesome!
So, in some future book (like the aforementioned, hypothetical environment book), will we see rules on how elemental energies (and other such things) interact with different materials? Like how electricity interacts with metal or water?
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Glad to always see more elementals, although why no arrowhawk? Those things are awesome!Would you like to see more elementals like the salamander and invisible stalker?
And would we ever see the arrowhawk? It holds a special place in my heart since it was our mascot in a game a long time ago.
There's always going to be more elemental monsters.
I wouldn't hold your breath for the arrowhawk though. It doesn't really have any fans here at Paizo.
A classic case of differing opinions. I don't like arrowhawks at all. They exist only because of a 3rd edition philosophy that there needed to be four elemental creatures of 3 different stat block versions—the other three being the salamander, the toijanada, and the xorn. In previous editions, the xorn and salamanders weren't presented in this manner, and I never liked how 3rd edition did that to them. The tjoijinada was the silliest of the four (it and the arrowhawk having been invented wholecloth for 3rd edition), enough so that we decided to put it into "Misfit Monsters Redeemed."
So... the arrowhawk falls into a sort of gulf of mediocrity; not cool enough for me to want to pick it up for Pathfinder, but not misfit enough to need to be redeemed.
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So, in some future book (like the aforementioned, hypothetical environment book), will we see rules on how elemental energies (and other such things) interact with different materials? Like how electricity interacts with metal or water?
No plans to do that. And frankly, that overcomplicates the game already. There's too many spell effects and supernatural abilities in the game that are balanced under the understanding that they work in a certain way. Adding additional "rules riders" to these types of energies has like a 98% chance of breaking the game. And a 100% chance of needlessly overcomplicating the game.
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As a tangentially related question to gods, IIRC you've mentioned that when books are released, you try to make sure that they match up with the actual reason for Aroden's death you devised, although you/Paizo don't plan to reveal it. Do you think there have been enough clues scattered in what's been published that might relate to it, for somebody to actually come to the correct answer, or build a relatively accurate, albeit incomplete, picture of what happened and how?I don't think that we've released enough clues yet, no. But that doesn't mean someone won't figure it out anyway—the internet hivemind can be staggeringly insightful.
I've got information man! New stuff has come to light! And... Aroden, he kidnapped himself.
Well sure, man. Look at it... A young trophy deity, in the parlance of our times, you know, and he, uh, uh, owes money all over the world, including to known pornographers, and that's cool... That's, that's cool, I'm, I'm saying, he needs money, man. And of course they're going to say that they didn't get it, because... he wants more, man! He's gotta feed the monkey...
With the Mythic rules coming out do you have an interest in an adventure or AP involving the Pit of Gormuz?Not that much. We kinda did the "Spawn of Rovagug" AP already. The next time we do something like that, I'd probably like to involve the tarrasque, which isn't in the pit of Gormuz.
That said... there ARE some plans afoot for the pit. Not AP related though...
Well now I am intrigued.
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You mentioned that swarms can be affected by rays in a blog post here (the blog entry was not initially about swarms, but nevertheless)
http://paizo.com/paizo/blog/v5748dyo5lbjmI was wondering if what you were saying here was that you interpret RAW to mean that swarms are affected by rays, or that you meant that by RAW they do not, but that you house rule that they do.
The acronym "RAW" is a good indicator that the question should head on over to the rules forum.
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How would you envision folding Demogorgon and his position in Abyssal hierarchy into the Golarion Abyssal scheme? While Demogorgon does seem to exist in Pathfinder (e.g. reference to his existence but focusing his attention on different worlds than Golarion), I would imagine that taking the title of Prince of Demons would be... problematic, for demon lords that have reached godhood like Lamashtu. He does seem to share some visual imagery with Angazhan.
Malcanthet's Queen of the Succubi title would probably be offensive to Nocticula (who is supposedly the "first succubus" in the Lords of Chaos supplement), and vice versa, but Nocticula as another of those primal succubi referred to in Malcanthet's origin (along with Shami-Amourae, Lynkhab and Xinivrae) makes quite a lot of sense to me, leaving them rivals. Orcus' realm of Uligor sounds so much like Thanatos that I suspect you could change the name without any problem.
Demogorgon as "Prince of Demons" and Lamashtu as "Demon Queen" seems to imply definite conflict, though. Or could Lamashtu be equated with the Queen of Chaos, who went to war against obyriths/qlippoths?
I suppose my query is more asking how you'd go about incorporating him, if you got permission from WotC to use the full Demogorgon (history and all).
Some elements of the D&D Abyss simply don't play well with Golarion's version.
If you want to include Demogorgon in your game, I would suggest either replacing Lamashtu with him, or simply having him be one of her minions.
To be honest... I pretty much scratched my personal Demogorgon itch with Savage Tide. I don't really feel the need to continue scratching at this point.
Is the name "Thassilon" derived from the the book of Thessalonians?
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I suspect it has more to do with this guy than a somewhat similarly named book of the Bible, but even then, it's probably just because Thassilon sounds cool.
I don't think James is a fan of Doctor Who.
Have you read Razor Coast yet?
I don't think James is a fan of Doctor Who.
He is not and has stated several times.
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Is the name "Thassilon" derived from the the book of Thessalonians?
Nope.
Its one of several ancient empires from my homebrew world. It's original name was inspired by the name Thasaidon, the ruler of Hell and an evil deity in Clark Ashton Smith's stories.
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I suspect it has more to do with this guy than a somewhat similarly named book of the Bible, but even then, it's probably just because Thassilon sounds cool.
Also nope. I've never heard of Rassilon until just now, in fact. I don't watch Doctor Who.
It has been awhile since we've asked this...
Have you gotten a chance to work more on your post apocalyptic game? I'm still itching to hear more about it!
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Are any of the "Epic Poems of Gorumskagat" actually written anywhere for my viewing?
James,
I'm looking to get into the editing industry. I'm going back to college next year, and I'm thinking that communications with a minor in English would be a useful degree to use to that end.
What are some tips for someone seeking a career in editing?
Perhaps this was already asked and answered but I missed it.
I am getting ready to start playing the skull and shackles adventure path and I am strongly considering playing an alchemist.
1.Will an alchemist's bomb do structural damage when a structure is not targeted or determined to become the target of a missed thrown bomb?
IOW, will the splash damage affect a ship's deck in the spaces surrounding the target? Will it affect a wall/bulkhead that is adjacent to the target (i.e. the target is standing next to a wall and gets hit...)?
2. Will the direct hit bomb damage affect the deck in the square where the target is hit?
Note: I'm thinking there is something somewhere about instantaneous fire effects not doing structural damage but I can't place it. Of course, this would preclude lingering effects gained from discoveries...
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i have not seen any response from paizo about the missing information int the ultimate combat. specifically the missing arcana that are mentined in the recommended for kensai pg. 56 "deadly
follow-up, precise prowess" are not defined. is paizo going to release an update with the missing information or was is supposed to be removed and was missed in editing?
Those powers were likely cut either for space or quality issues, but then alas not cut from the follow-up powers. I suspect that the next round of errata for the book will simply finish that job by deleting the mention of the cut powers from page 56. I'm not sure, though, since I'm not part of the team that tracks and implements the errata for the rulebooks.