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Ok I have a shart combat scenario for you and was wondering how you would run it as GM.
First combatant is a whip user with a 15' reach and likes to trip.
Second combatant is a great sword user who just saw his ally get tripped.
Great sword user decides to ready an action to make a sunder attempt on the whip when its within reach of him.
Lets assume that the whip user didnt see his target ready an action, or doesnt care, and attacks the great sword user.
How would this play out?
Now lets put in a twist. The great sword user doesnt have improved sunder.
Now how would it play out?
Thanks for your input.
2) Are there plans for an AP based on material from the Distant Worlds sourcebook?2) Already done; Reign of Winter draws heavily on Distant Worlds in its 4th adventure. As for an entire AP that's a "planet hopping" campaign... we haven't made any announcements of such yet.
Not an outright denial, not a "possible future product"--but that they "haven't made any announcements of such yet." Must not get hopes up, must not get hopes up....
{fails Will save} SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Quick to the Mikaze Signal!
1) Hi! How are you?
2) what fraction of the Golarion's population do lycanthropes represent.
3) In your opinion/words, how would you describe a world with more lycanthropes?
3.a) 1%
3.b) 5%
3.c) 10%
3.d) 25%
4) passed that it would probably be "why not make everyone a lycanthropes?"
5) thanks!
After years of playing D&D and pathfinder, I am totally burned out on dungeon crawls to the point where I fell asleep during a session of Shattered Star. We have played all the adventure paths up to this. Are there going to be any not-dungeon crawl heavy APs coming? They're well written and all but there are only so many times I can spend an entire month (one game a week) or month and a half of game sessions searching a monster filled mansion, temple, cave system, etc...Sounds like you might need to consider playing a different game for a while, honestly. Dungeons are a core part of Pathfinder, be they set underground or in derelict ships or old castles or whatever—the gameplay element of exploring a series of rooms with monsters and traps and tricks is not something we'll ever completely ignore in our adventures, because the game is BUILT for this type of play.
That said, Shattered Star is specifically intended to be a dungeon-heavy AP. It is, without a doubt, THE most dungeon-heavy AP we've ever published. By design, for a lot of reasons.
If you're looking for an AP with smaller dungeons/fewer dungeons, consider Curse of the Crimson Throne, Kingmaker, or Skull & Shackles. Note that there are STILL dungeons in those—in fact, each of them has one adventure that's a significant dungeon crawl.
I am not James Jacobs, but Reign of Winter and Wrath of the Righteous so far don't feel super dungeon heavy compared to Shattered Start. or at the least, yes you are invading bad guy fortresses in places, but it's directed at killing the bad guys and not searching for artifacts in catacombs, etc. And both have relatively unique elements that differentiate them from previous APs
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Can Norgorber steal his own pants without even noticing?He doesn't wear pants. So maybe he already did!
JUST AS I SUSPECTED!
Will there be APs in the future that have world-changing results for Golarion, similar to the ones in Kingmaker (a new kingdom emerges on Golarion), Skull and Shackles (there's a new Hurricane King in town) or Wrath of the Righteous (pretty sure the final module's going to have something to do with killing Deskari and closing the Worldwound for good)? I'd love to see an AP that fully explores a war and ends with PCs potentially shifting the borders of Golarion's nations.
Might you know any sites where an aspiring writer could speak with peers about how to go about making their story and such?
Do you think Golarion alchemists make use of various symbols for elements and concepts like the real-world ones did?
(The one for iron, incidentally, shows up in the coat of arms of many municipalities in Sweden's mining areas which is what made me wonder.)
And another thought on alchemists - considering that the use of metals and alloys is a common thing in alchemy, do you think the class is more common among dwarves than in many other races?
(Could be one way to make Golarion-dwarves a bit different from traditional D&D ones without deviating from what we already know, is what I'm saying.)
Creative Director
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Will there at least be gods we have not seen beforeThe island of Jalmeray is in the Inner SeaIs the Vudra deity (Vineshvakhi) in the Inner Sea Gods HardcoverI have no idea, but if I had to guess... no. Because Vudra deities aren't Inner Sea deities.Doesn't change a thing.
Gods from other parts of the world, and indeed gods from other worlds are worshiped in the Inner Sea region... but that doesn't make them "Inner Sea Gods."
AKA: The book is big, but not big enough to include everything.
That's not the focus of the book. This book is meant to be the go-to reference book fro the deities we DO know about, after all. There will perhaps be name drops and other mentions of other deities, but that's not the book's purpose.
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Creative Director
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Would a kaiju dragon be an awesome monster, or would it be weird and clunky? Do the two categories not complement each other well?
I'd say King Ghidorah from the Godzilla movies would be a dragon kaiju. There's been plenty of other examples in kaiju movies too. I think it'd be fine but you'd want to keep in mind that it should be a low intelligence dragon if it's a kaiju.
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Creative Director
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Ok I have a shart combat scenario for you and was wondering how you would run it as GM.
First combatant is a whip user with a 15' reach and likes to trip.
Second combatant is a great sword user who just saw his ally get tripped.
Great sword user decides to ready an action to make a sunder attempt on the whip when its within reach of him.
Lets assume that the whip user didnt see his target ready an action, or doesnt care, and attacks the great sword user.
How would this play out?
Now lets put in a twist. The great sword user doesnt have improved sunder.
Now how would it play out?
Thanks for your input.
Normally, you have to be adjacent to the weapon user to sunder a weapon, and if I were to try to have the dude sunder a whip when he wasn't in the right position, I'd tell the user of the whip, "This guy readies to sunder your weapon if it attempts to trip someone he's adjacent to—as long as you're all cool with me introducing that as a house rule. Feel free to sunder my NPCs' weapons at range like that if you want."
Best case scenario, I'd let the players know that before hand... as in before the campaign starts. It's kinda cheesy to change the rules on players in the middle of a game, especially since the rules are what the players had to obey in order to make their characters.
A much better solution would be just to have the greatsword wielder move up next to the whip user, or perhaps ready an action to attack the whip user if he does so.
The use of improved sunder doesn't make a difference on this situation; you can take the same actions with or without that feat.
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Creative Director
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2) Are there plans for an AP based on material from the Distant Worlds sourcebook?2) Already done; Reign of Winter draws heavily on Distant Worlds in its 4th adventure. As for an entire AP that's a "planet hopping" campaign... we haven't made any announcements of such yet.Not an outright denial, not a "possible future product"--but that they "haven't made any announcements of such yet." Must not get hopes up, must not get hopes up....
{fails Will save} SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Quick to the Mikaze Signal!
Don't read too much into that. That's basically me saying "no, but I can't predict the future, so I'm not gonna say no since my word carries to much weight around her to be issuing ultimatums like that, so I'll couch the answer a bit."
Furthermore, we don't publicly talk about our future plans beyond the next 6 to 12 months, and we're on record all the way through January 2015 for our current APs. So don't expect ANY answers about what's beyond that until, at the very earliest, Paizocon 2014.
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Creative Director
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1) Hi! How are you?
2) what fraction of the Golarion's population do lycanthropes represent.
3) In your opinion/words, how would you describe a world with more lycanthropes?
3.a) 1%
3.b) 5%
3.c) 10%
3.d) 25%
4) passed that it would probably be "why not make everyone a lycanthropes?"
5) thanks!
1) Fine; a little groggy. Coffee's not yet kicked in.
2) Unknown. Especially since we've only really detailed 3 of the 8 continents on the planet, and have barely touched the oceans or the Darklands overall.
3) I don't get this question, really. Once a world is so full of lycanthropes that I'm describing the world as "this world is filled with lycanthropes" then that percentage needs to be above 50%. If it's below, it's just 'there are lycanthropes on this world, but they're not everywhere." It's better and more informative to be able to say "Lycanthropes are quite common in this town/city/region/whatever."
4) Because of personal preference. In my opinion, lycanthropes work MUCH better when they are a vast minority. They're best as monsters, and best when they're treated as rarities. Even in a movie like Underworld or the Twilight series or George Martin's excellent "The Skin Trade" the lycanthropes aren't everywhere.
5) No prob!
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Creative Director
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Can Norgorber steal his own pants without even noticing?He doesn't wear pants. So maybe he already did!JUST AS I SUSPECTED!
Will there be APs in the future that have world-changing results for Golarion, similar to the ones in Kingmaker (a new kingdom emerges on Golarion), Skull and Shackles (there's a new Hurricane King in town) or Wrath of the Righteous (pretty sure the final module's going to have something to do with killing Deskari and closing the Worldwound for good)? I'd love to see an AP that fully explores a war and ends with PCs potentially shifting the borders of Golarion's nations.
All of the APs have the potential for world-changing results. Some much more so than others, but they all have this possibility. We don't "hard code" expected changes into our setting though—that's left to each GM to do as best fits the situation in his personal game.
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Creative Director
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Might you know any sites where an aspiring writer could speak with peers about how to go about making their story and such?
Our forums here are a great place to start, frankly. There are lots of others out there, but that's a better question for James Sutter or Chris Carey than for me.
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Creative Director
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Do you think Golarion alchemists make use of various symbols for elements and concepts like the real-world ones did?
(The one for iron, incidentally, shows up in the coat of arms of many municipalities in Sweden's mining areas which is what made me wonder.)
Yes.
In fact, we've got some similar symbols of our own for the planets in the system. But using those classic real-world symbols for alchemy is a great idea, especially since history has done the hard work of designing it all for us already.
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Creative Director
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And another thought on alchemists - considering that the use of metals and alloys is a common thing in alchemy, do you think the class is more common among dwarves than in many other races?
(Could be one way to make Golarion-dwarves a bit different from traditional D&D ones without deviating from what we already know, is what I'm saying.)
Nope; if the class is more common among any race, it'd be gnomes, since they have a racial bonus to the skill Craft (alchemy).
Howdy again,
1) So, vishkanya's... are their fine scales and snake eyes from the mithridatism using mutagenic snake venom? Or do they also have some ophidian ancestors?
2) Since nagas are found in (East) Indian myths, would nagaji also be found in Vudra? Or are they pretty much a Dragon Empires-only race?
3) Is there anything we out here can do to nudge you at Paizo to visit completely new places like Nurvatchta and Averaka as oneshots in the new expanded quarterly modules, or as guest locations in an AP volume?
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Creative Director
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James, I've been thinking of the level distribution in Pathfinder from a population perspective (meaning how large a percentage are a certain level).
This is the possible distribution I came up with:
L1-5: 80%
L6-10: 15%
L11-15: 4.5%
L16-20: 0.49%
L21+: 0.01%21+ would be anyone with sufficient mythic tiers to push them over the normal limit I suppose, if you aren't using epic level rules.
Actually, I'd expect mythic tiers to be more singular and unique in nature. You don't become mythic simply by clocking in time in an adventuring class, you become mythic through your exposure and participation in mythic campaign changing events.
And you'd have to tune this by world. In Golarion, the folks that are in the 16 and higher range are a short enough list that the staff probably has names for them all. Would that be close to a fair assumption?
Mythic tiers are indeed singular and unique. They defy categorization.
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Creative Director
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A couple of multi-part (possibly) questions on mythic power "in context" with Golarion's setting:
1) A mythic individual might have a fount of mythic power within them, sure, but what is it? Generic "magic energy" that they call on? Unique to each individual? Are they just aware that they're "more capable" than others and can do otherwise-impossible things instinctively?
2) In line with the above, does Starstone mythic power, for example, feel different to Cenotaph mythic power? Or Mana Waste mythic power?
3) What sort of names does "mythic power" have in-setting? Do they actually call it "mythic power" and/or a person with it a "mythic individual" or can names vary? Do people in-setting even really understand it at all?
4) When a player picks Divine Source, is the character choosing to direct their "mythic power" towards attaining godhood? Or do they just "find out" one day that they've become a god and can grant spells because some hero-worshipper (heh) is praying to them? Is it a natural evolution, or something that they have to work towards becoming/ascending into?
1) It's different. In some cases it might be raw magic power left over from the creation of the world. In others it might be a god's blood. In others it might be weird interstellar radiation. In others it might be primal planar energies seeping into their bodies. In others it might just be an excess of soul. It's left entirely undefined so that the creator of a mythic character can make up something in character and suitably personalized. Until one actually becomes mythic, whether or not they know they have the potential depends on the creature. And on the needs of the story you want to tell about them.
2) Yes. They all have their different sensations and outward effects, mostly shown in how those who become mythic by them manifest their abilities. From a game standpoint, that sounds like I'm implying that each source of mythic power should have its own custom list of powers it can grant, but that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that from an in-game perspective—someone who became mythic from the Mana Wastes and gained Hierophant powers can build the exact same character from any other mythic power source, but it's up to the player and GM to incorporate the power source into the character's description.
3) Depends on the source. See #1 above—things like raw magic power, god's blood, planar seepage, old souls, and whatever.
4) Why a character takes Divine Source is up to them. It could be the first step toward becoming a true demigod and eventually beyond that a deity. It could just be a grab for power or a salve for that character's ego. That said, just as with any mythic power, they could well just find out they have the power one day after completing their trials.
For most of these, you'll note a recurring theme of "make it fit the story you want to tell with the character." That's very much the point of mythic adventures—this is a way to craft a unique and powerful story for a character that lets you bend and break rules now and then and here and there. And by keeping a lot of the details open like this, we don't hedge in every possible mythic NPC and PC into having to pick from the same pool of adjectives.
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Ok I have a shart combat scenario for you and was wondering how you would run it as GM.
First combatant is a whip user with a 15' reach and likes to trip.
Second combatant is a great sword user who just saw his ally get tripped.
Great sword user decides to ready an action to make a sunder attempt on the whip when its within reach of him.
Lets assume that the whip user didnt see his target ready an action, or doesnt care, and attacks the great sword user.
How would this play out?
Now lets put in a twist. The great sword user doesnt have improved sunder.
Now how would it play out?
Thanks for your input.
Normally, you have to be adjacent to the weapon user to sunder a weapon, and if I were to try to have the dude sunder a whip when he wasn't in the right position, I'd tell the user of the whip, "This guy readies to sunder your weapon if it attempts to trip someone he's adjacent to—as long as you're all cool with me introducing that as a house rule. Feel free to sunder my NPCs' weapons at range like that if you want."
Best case scenario, I'd let the players know that before hand... as in before the campaign starts. It's kinda cheesy to change the rules on players in the middle of a game, especially since the rules are what the players had to obey in order to make their characters.
A much better solution would be just to have the greatsword wielder move up next to the whip user, or perhaps ready an action to attack the whip user if he does so.
The use of improved sunder doesn't make a difference on this situation; you can take the same actions with or without that feat.
Thanks for the reply. I wasn't aware you had to be adjacent to your opponent to use sunder.
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Creative Director
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In your games, what limits the possible abuse of simulacra by your NPCs? Please note that I'm asking this question differently than from how it's usually posed.does the the simulacrum of a creature act like that creatureNot perfectly; it has incomplete skills of the original and no real memories of the original, and is under the complete control of its creator. It's personality is, therefore, decided by its creator.
Two things.
1) I've not yet had a player spellcaster take an interest in using the spell, due to it being only available to a select few classes, and due to it being a higher level and relatively expensive spell.
2) Me. I get to decide how it works. I generally also keep in a previous element of the spell from D&D, which is that you need a small portion of the creature you want to create, and you can only have one simulacrum of that creature active at one time.
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Creative Director
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Howdy again,
1) So, vishkanya's... are their fine scales and snake eyes from the mithridatism using mutagenic snake venom? Or do they also have some ophidian ancestors?
2) Since nagas are found in (East) Indian myths, would nagaji also be found in Vudra? Or are they pretty much a Dragon Empires-only race?
3) Is there anything we out here can do to nudge you at Paizo to visit completely new places like Nurvatchta and Averaka as oneshots in the new expanded quarterly modules, or as guest locations in an AP volume?
1) Unrevealed, but I'd say that it's probably a combination of both.
2) They'd be found in Vudra, yes.
3) By letting us know you want us to explore those places; by buying and giving good reveiews to products where we do go exotic places, and by convincing those you know to think the same way! :-P But perhaps most importantly, by just being patient. We'll get there eventually, but we have lots of other things we need to do as well.
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Creative Director
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So i can create artificial life anyway i wantdoes the the simulacrum of a creature act like that creatureNot perfectly; it has incomplete skills of the original and no real memories of the original, and is under the complete control of its creator. It's personality is, therefore, decided by its creator.
If you're the GM or a mad scientist? Yeah.
If you're a player character, no.
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Creative Director
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1) Do you think that elves would tend to practice something like forest gardening over normal farming when the terrain is amenable, especially since they come from a jungle planet?
2) Given that dwarves and elves seem to have both evolved their respective civilizations in isolation from humanity, would you say that when the dwarves reached the surface and elves began to colonize Golarion that they brought with them various technologies like building techniques, magic items, spells, alchemical items, and other such that are now commonplace among humans despite their origins?
3) Have you decided anything about the origins and nature of doppelgangers in the Golarion setting? I think they're pretty interesting, given that they're not generally malevolent, but tend to be alien and distant, and seem to lack their own society, preferring to act as social parasites in humanoid societies...but one can't help but wonder why they do so (are they hiding? investigating? just part of their instincts for a viable survival mechanism?), how they find other doppelgangers to reproduce with, if they can reproduce with the species of the society they parasitize, and if so, what the nature of those children are, given that several other races (medusas, jorogumos, hags, skums, and harpies off the top of my head) also parasitize the reproduction of other humanoid races in order to reproduce...
1) Sure! They're also more likely to use magic in their gathering as well.
2) I think that would probably be inevitable.
3) Not really. We haven't done much with doppelgangers yet.
I really enjoy playing games where I get Lifesteal abilities or self healing from dealing damage. Is there a reason why those mechanics seem so rare?
And why do they generally give Temporary HP rather than regular HP?
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Creative Director
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Would a kaiju dragon be an awesome monster, or would it be weird and clunky? Do the two categories not complement each other well?I'd say King Ghidorah from the Godzilla movies would be a dragon kaiju. There's been plenty of other examples in kaiju movies too. I think it'd be fine but you'd want to keep in mind that it should be a low intelligence dragon if it's a kaiju.Thank you James!
Have you listened to any good music recently?
Always! I have EXCELLENT taste in music! :-P
(And by "excellent" I mean "eccentric". Dead Can Dance, Pink Floyd, NIN, classical/soundtrack, Cake, the Beatles, Philip Glass, etc.)
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Creative Director
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I really enjoy playing games where I get Lifesteal abilities or self healing from dealing damage. Is there a reason why those mechanics seem so rare?
And why do they generally give Temporary HP rather than regular HP?
I believe that they're rare because of a perception that healing and damage at the same time is too powerful of an ability for player characters. It's why we abandoned allowing channeled energy the ability to heal allies and harm undead simultaneously. That's a better question for the design team for a more detailed answer though.
Giving temporary hp helps to prevent hp bloat, since they overlap.
In your games, what limits the possible abuse of simulacra by your NPCs? Please note that I'm asking this question differently than from how it's usually posed.does the the simulacrum of a creature act like that creatureNot perfectly; it has incomplete skills of the original and no real memories of the original, and is under the complete control of its creator. It's personality is, therefore, decided by its creator.Two things.
1) I've not yet had a player spellcaster take an interest in using the spell, due to it being only available to a select few classes, and due to it being a higher level and relatively expensive spell.
2) Me. I get to decide how it works. I generally also keep in a previous element of the spell from D&D, which is that you need a small portion of the creature you want to create, and you can only have one simulacrum of that creature active at one time.
So, if a character learned a considerable bit about one of his ancestors, would you allow him to use his own blood (IOW, genetic material of the creature to be duplicated) to satisfy your material component requirement?
Where might one find Kaiju scholars?
How aware is the population of the Inner Sea that kaiju exist?
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2) Are there plans for an AP based on material from the Distant Worlds sourcebook?2) Already done; Reign of Winter draws heavily on Distant Worlds in its 4th adventure. As for an entire AP that's a "planet hopping" campaign... we haven't made any announcements of such yet.Not an outright denial, not a "possible future product"--but that they "haven't made any announcements of such yet." Must not get hopes up, must not get hopes up....
{fails Will save} SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Quick to the Mikaze Signal!
Don't read too much into that. That's basically me saying "no, but I can't predict the future, so I'm not gonna say no since my word carries to much weight around her to be issuing ultimatums like that, so I'll couch the answer a bit."
Furthermore, we don't publicly talk about our future plans beyond the next 6 to 12 months, and we're on record all the way through January 2015 for our current APs. So don't expect ANY answers about what's beyond that until, at the very earliest, Paizocon 2014.
Too late! EVERYBODY ABOARD THE HYPE TRAIN!
I CAN BUCKLE MY SWASH WITH A KATANA! I CAN BUCKLE MY SWASH WITH A KATANA!
I might just sacrifice a small animal to the Development Team in thanks. What sort of victims do Jason, Sean, and Stephen prefer?