^This.
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What does "This save DC is Charisma based" mean?
Particularly I saw this a few hours ago in the Wendigo entry of PF#6...
It means the save DC is 10 + 1/2 racial HD + a creature's Cha modifier, as opposed to Con-based like poisons or most breath weapons, so if the monster takes enough Cha damage that its Cha modifier decreases, the save DC of the particular ability will decrease accordingly.
* * * *
James, when will the titles for Jade Regent be released? Any ideas as to the level range on the volumes, either?
Chief Technical Officer
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Does this annoy you, flatter you, don't care?Don't care. Pathfinder's been the name of a novel for a LOT longer than that. It's also the name of a SUV. It's also the name of a movie that came out almost at the same time as our first Adventure Path launched.
Now, if Orson Scott Card released an RPG called Pathfinder... THAT would be a different story.
In 1997–1998, Orson Scott Card and his son Geoff pitched a bunch of TV series to several producers and networks. One of them was a one-hour drama they called Lost:
Survivors of the crash of an L.A.-to-New York flight soon realize that they are not where they ought to be—maybe not even on Earth... they want only to go home, but it's the one place they can't find. Robinson Crusoe in Oz.
This idea is dangerous—it could easily degenerate into Gilligan's Island or Lost in Space. But if properly developed, this story would allow an ensemble of characters to grow, develop relationships with each other, and face important moral dilemmas as they struggle to understand where they are each week and how to get back to reality.
So, what I'm saying is, what goes around comes around (but not necessarily in that order).
(Actually, it sounds like his Pathfinder has way less in common with our Pathfinder than his Lost had in common with J.J. Abrams' Lost.)
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Creative Director
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Why do you hate Feiya? :)
Or rather... when are we likely to see her "meet the iconics" entry?
Soon. We had to abandon a fair amount of the blogs that required a lot of work (and coming up with iconic backstories counts; it's a lot harder to write those than just blurbs about products, which also limits who can actually write them) while we were scrambling with getting all our Holiday releases off to the printer. Now, as the holiday season looms upon us, we're getting some time back... although some of that time will be spent by us being on vacation, we'll get back to those last three "Meet the Iconics" posts soon. HOPEFULLY we'll have the next one up by the end of the year!
Hello James, will you be going to Seattle's Science Fiction + Fantasy Short Film Festival in January...
Hey, why not try the Necronomicon? is one of the short films that will be showing.
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I have not. I have actually only seen the first Narnia movie, and I didn't see the second because I'm allergic to most talking animals. (The animals in "Babe" are the only exception I can think of off the top of my head.)Have you had a chance to watch the new Chronicles of Narnia movie yet?
I saw it yesterday and thought it was awesome.
Surely you like Watership Down?
Reading recent posts here about Scott Orsen Card and Lost..heh..well makes me think of the supposed kerfuffle about Sliders and GRR Martins "doorways" Pilot.
Anyway JJ, that leads me into asking did you watch Sliders, and if so, were you disgusted as I was when they relocated production to LA in Season 3 and the story telling suffered from cast desertions and studio interference?
Why do studios always mess things up? Case in point - Greatest American hero (season 2-3), A-Team (season 5), Firefly (season1 )..sigh
How do these "professionals" manage to screw up so often in regards to programming?
Lol..rant over
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Creative Director
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If Rovagug is more powerful than regular deities, and seems to follow different rules/concerns to some extent, is Rovagug actually a deity or something else altogether like an incredibly old primal force of the universe? Whilst Rovagug has worshippers and grants clerics spells/powers as if he were a deity, there are other things already established in canon (archdevils and empyreal lords for example) capable of doing just that despite their lack of deific-ness.
From a pragmatic point of view, if Rovagug is something other than a deity, it would save on the headaches of establishing some sort of greater/lesser/demi deity scheme that the 'vastly more powerful' invites, and the inevitable arguements/flamewars somewhere down the road by posters over why their personal favourite deity has been assigned a lower rank than they think that their deity merits... ;)
Edit:
Hmm, the really wild/outrageous idea just occured to me of is Rovagug a member/aspect of a group lovecraftian mythos entities????
Before we can accurately map out how powerful deities are in relation to each other, we need rules to map out deity powers and stats. And before we can do THAT, we need rules for how things work between that and the core game—rules, in other words, for epic level content (level 21st to whatever).
We're at LEAST 2 years away from an epic level book, and probably more than that. And that means that I have no idea how far away we are from a deity-level book—6 years? A decade?
Until then, we can't responsibly rank the deities, and we don't WANT to. Think of deities as galaxies. Some galaxies dwarf other galaxies, but when compared to a human, they're all so immense that it really doesn't make a difference to us how big they are.
So while some deities are more powerful than others, it's really not all that important to actually sit down and rank them. Especially since, if we do, that could very well limit our options in the future once we know more about what we're talking about.
Also: Archdevils and empyreal lords and the like are demigods, which is a subcategory of deity. The only REAL difference between the two is that if and when we do epic level rules, those of the demigod level are the ones we'd stat up. The others, not so much.
In any case, Rovagug isn't one of Lovecraft's Great Old Ones. He's more likely to be a really REALLY powerful qlippoth lord.
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Creative Director
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Hello James, will you be going to Seattle's Science Fiction + Fantasy Short Film Festival in January...
Hey, why not try the Necronomicon? is one of the short films that will be showing.
I probably won't be going. I always forget about it.
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Creative Director
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Surely you like Watership Down?I have not. I have actually only seen the first Narnia movie, and I didn't see the second because I'm allergic to most talking animals. (The animals in "Babe" are the only exception I can think of off the top of my head.)Have you had a chance to watch the new Chronicles of Narnia movie yet?
I saw it yesterday and thought it was awesome.
I've never read it. Nor have I seen the movie... but the movie's animated, yes? Talking animals in an animated movie are usually pretty cool. It's when they venture into the uncanny valley and are presented as real-life animals that can talk that my "This is goofy" warning light flashes.
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Creative Director
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Anyway JJ, that leads me into asking did you watch Sliders, and if so, were you disgusted as I was when they relocated production to LA in Season 3 and the story telling suffered from cast desertions and studio interference?
Why do studios always mess things up? Case in point - Greatest American hero (season 2-3), A-Team (season 5), Firefly (season1 )..sigh
How do these "professionals" manage to screw up so often in regards to programming?
Lol..rant over
I did not watch Sliders.
That said, I'm awfully familiar with how TV shows can be screwed up by those kind of changes. Usually, it's because the people with the vision or the creative talent behind the show end up being replaced or told by their bosses to, essentially, stop being so creative, I would guess.
Basically, the world is filled with a lot of people who make poor decisions, and the law of averages means that the longer a TV show goes on, the more people you'll have involved in making decisions about the show, and thus your chances of having an idiot blunder into the mix and ruin things just goes up.
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Creative Director
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My 360 red ringed for the second time this year. :'(
Should I beg and grovel before my wife to get.....I mean man up and just buy a new one???
My honest advice: Buy a new one. The newest model has a much bigger hard drive (which, as downloading entire games becomes more standard, will be handy), runs more quietly, has better engineering re: the red ring of death, and has an HDMI port built in to the thing.
My xbox 360 red ringed a year or so ago, and although I got it fixed, the fact that I just bought a new TV that wants HDMI from my Xbox AND the fact that I've been straggling along the barrier of my hard drive means I'm probably just gonna buy a new one anyway. If mine were to red ring on me today, I'd throw it in the garbage and go buy a new one immediately.
Not that I really need rules for this but to your knowledge are there rules in Pathfinder for Demon/Devil Possession? If so, which of your fine products would it be in?
Did you know that Pathfinder is the offical rpg of Commissioned webcomic?
http://www.commissionedcomic.com/?p=1998
Very cool.
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Creative Director
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Not that I really need rules for this but to your knowledge are there rules in Pathfinder for Demon/Devil Possession? If so, which of your fine products would it be in?
Pathfinder AP #28 has a big article about this exact topic.
There are also some rules about the topic in both Books of the Damned, but the main thing you want, I suspect, is Pathfinder #28.
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Creative Director
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So does pathfinder have huge dead deity bodies floating in the astral just like regular D&D? Say could I go find arodens dead body in the astral?
Nope. There are dead deity bodies in the multiverse, but they're not just located in the Astral Plane. They can be anywhere. Aroden's body, if it still exists, is not anywhere that anyone knows about though.
Not that I really need rules for this but to your knowledge are there rules in Pathfinder for Demon/Devil Possession? If so, which of your fine products would it be in?Pathfinder AP #28 has a big article about this exact topic.
There are also some rules about the topic in both Books of the Damned, but the main thing you want, I suspect, is Pathfinder #28.
Thank you James.
If I were to pick my 20 favorite foreign films off the top of my head, that list would be (in no particular order, save that the first one is my FAVORITE foreign film, and excluding foreign films that are in English, like Mad Max or The Descent or 28 Days Later):
17: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
postnomancy!
crouching tiger is one of my favorite movies, period. why do you think it didn't win best picture (losing to gladiator)?
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Creative Director
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If I were to pick my 20 favorite foreign films off the top of my head, that list would be (in no particular order, save that the first one is my FAVORITE foreign film, and excluding foreign films that are in English, like Mad Max or The Descent or 28 Days Later):
17: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
postnomancy!
crouching tiger is one of my favorite movies, period. why do you think it didn't win best picture (losing to gladiator)?
Because it wasn't in English.
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So does pathfinder have huge dead deity bodies floating in the astral just like regular D&D? Say could I go find arodens dead body in the astral?Nope. There are dead deity bodies in the multiverse, but they're not just located in the Astral Plane. They can be anywhere. Aroden's body, if it still exists, is not anywhere that anyone knows about though.
Can you point us in the direction, or give us a description of one (not Arodens)?
I notice that the new elementals in bestiary 2, seem to be combos earth and water equals mud. Is lightning a combo of fire and air?
Is lightning a combo of fire and air?
Yes.
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Creative Director
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Can you point us in the direction, or give us a description of one (not Arodens)?So does pathfinder have huge dead deity bodies floating in the astral just like regular D&D? Say could I go find arodens dead body in the astral?Nope. There are dead deity bodies in the multiverse, but they're not just located in the Astral Plane. They can be anywhere. Aroden's body, if it still exists, is not anywhere that anyone knows about though.
There's a big dead deity body, I believe, in Abaddon. Not sure if we've said who it is. There's multiple dead demon lords hanging from the walls of the Rift of Repose in the Abyss, including Aolar, Ibdurengian, Mharah, Vyriavaxus, and Xar-Azmak.
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Creative Director
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I notice that the new elementals in bestiary 2, seem to be combos earth and water equals mud. Is lightning a combo of fire and air?
Not really. The concept of new elementals being formed by mixing two existing elementals is what created D&D's paraelementals. That's not what the four new elementals in Bestiary 2 are. They're just elementals vaguely based on variant forms of energy and elements and stuff. You could say that lightning equals fire and air, though, I suppose.
If I cast invisibility on the only light source in a sealed room, does the room go dark?Nope. It just makes the room weirdly lit by something no one can see. Like you might see in most movies with scenes that supposedly take place in the dark of night or in a lightless cavern.
I hate that phenomenon. Major respect for films that make darkness dark. Fight club was good on that. Know any others, James?
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Creative Director
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I hate that phenomenon. Major respect for films that make darkness dark. Fight club was good on that. Know any others, James?If I cast invisibility on the only light source in a sealed room, does the room go dark?Nope. It just makes the room weirdly lit by something no one can see. Like you might see in most movies with scenes that supposedly take place in the dark of night or in a lightless cavern.
There's a lot of films who use night-vision as a way to show us what's going on in utter darkness:
Silence of the Lambs
Rec
Rec 2
Cloverfield
The Descent
28 Weeks Later
As for films that actually use real darkness as an element in the film, the following come to mind:
Rec 2
The Descent
The Resurrected
Blair Witch Project
I feel like there's a really GREAT example that I just saw this year that uses darkness really well, but that I'm forgetting. I MIGHT be thinking of Rec 2, but still...
It's a tough thing to pull off, because a lot of chuckleheads in most audiences quickly interpret extended periods of darkness as a good excuse to start goofing off or yelling out inane or stupid comments.
If I cast invisibility on the only light source in a sealed room, does the room go dark?Nope. It just makes the room weirdly lit by something no one can see. Like you might see in most movies with scenes that supposedly take place in the dark of night or in a lightless cavern.
YOINK!
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There's a lot of films who use night-vision as a way to show us what's going on in utter darkness:I hate that phenomenon. Major respect for films that make darkness dark. Fight club was good on that. Know any others, James?If I cast invisibility on the only light source in a sealed room, does the room go dark?Nope. It just makes the room weirdly lit by something no one can see. Like you might see in most movies with scenes that supposedly take place in the dark of night or in a lightless cavern.
Apparently Tron:Legacy will be very good on this score. They've managed to make self illuminating suits, so in dark bits, the suit lights are the only lights in the room...
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If I were to pick my 20 favorite foreign films off the top of my headDo you consider British films (28 days later, slum-dog millionaire, dogma) to be foreign films, or do you, like most people, assume they are US made, never noticing the difference, because they are completely in English?
Dogma is an American film, perhaps James can mentally swap in This Is England.
I do indeed consider British films to be foreign films, since they were made in another country. As evidince, I cite the white-trash chucklehead idiots who, on my 2nd viewing of "28 Days Later" in the theaters, got up after 20 minutes and walked out on the movie, loudly proclaiming "THIS $&*@#& MOVIE WAS MADE IN EUROPE!"
We have those idiots in Australia.... you can often tell who they are because they will have a tattoo of the Southern Cross on their arms or will be draping themselves in the flag. I used to come across them at music festivals. Their usual chant is "go back to where you came from" or "kiss the flag or I will punch your face in".. Thankfully they are a minority and most people think that they are a joke.
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Dogma is an American film, perhaps James can mentally swap in This Is England.If I were to pick my 20 favorite foreign films off the top of my headDo you consider British films (28 days later, slum-dog millionaire, dogma) to be foreign films, or do you, like most people, assume they are US made, never noticing the difference, because they are completely in English?
Dogma was probably a bad example. I just took a few from the Film4 productions listing on Wikipedia The Dogma page certainly cites it as a US film with no mention of Film4, and the Film4 productions listing could indeed be incorrect.
The others I'm sure about though ;)
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Creative Director
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Will there be a new base class in Ultimate Combat?
Do you think that Book of Nine Swords classes are overpowered/broken compared to the PFRPG fighter?
How would you change them if you would have to do it?
We haven't made any real announcements about what's going into Ultimate Combat yet. Probably won't until next year.
I've actually never really sat down to read Book of Nine Swords. The flavor of the art and the text I did read was just not my cup of tea at all. It struck me as too wahoo and over the top. Furthermore, it overcomplicated combat too much. And lots of other things. Bleh. Pass.
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Dogma was probably a bad example. I just took a few from the Film4 productions listing on Wikipedia The Dogma page certainly cites it as a US film with no mention of Film4, and the Film4 productions listing could indeed be incorrect.
The others I'm sure about though ;)
James, if I played a Pseudodragon character in CotCT, would I be able o call on my brethren for aid? And how would I defeat those nasty imps?
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Creative Director
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James, if I played a Pseudodragon character in CotCT, would I be able o call on my brethren for aid? And how would I defeat those nasty imps?
Your GM has the answer to the first question. As for the second—get creative! You might have trouble getting through their DR, but that doesn't mean you can't get creative in other ways. After all, those nasty imps are TWICE your CR... they're not supposed to be a fair fight against you!