Creative Director
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Any feedback thoughts on my homebrew ideas yet Mr Jacobs?
They're not that bad are they?!
I don't do feedback on homebrew ideas, nor do I offer advice or feedback on unsolicited adventures or content. For time management reasons, because that's my job and I'm not comfortable providing services for free, and because I want to protect myself and Paizo from even the remotest possibility of a future lawsuit—if I read your homebrew, and then 10 years from now I do something for Golarion that's similar or even the same (likely due to parallel development or because in those 10 years I'd completely forgotten your homebrew but still came up with a similar idea), I'd rather not put us all in an awkward position where someone could sue Paizo for infringement.
By simply avoiding looking at homebrew or unsolicited material, I protect myself and the company from that. It's one of the big reasons novelists avoid doing the same thing for aspiring writers, and why our boards have legal text that protects us from anything that's discussed here from appearing in a similar nature in print.
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Where does the finest/best/most renowned bacon come from on Golarion?
If you can please narrow it down to a region, and a particular animal please.
Dunno. We've really not done much work at all nailing down regional resources for Golarion. It's something that I want to do some day since it helps to inform plots and stories, but also because there's always folks who seem to be weirdly interested in what area has the best rye or silver or salt or tuna or bacon.
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What would happen to the PCs if the Big Bad of the campaign followed the Evil Overlord List to a T?
We'd have some cranky customers complaining about us doing to much cliches and their complaints would depress me and I'd quit the industry to go live in a cottage in an undisclosed location to make chainsaw art and drink myself to oblivion.
So. I'd rather avoid it.
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I asked this elsewhere, and I just wanted to get your take on it:
I was reading the Giantslayer AP, and I had some thoughts: When giants are defeated and potions are found amongst the treasure, and these potions were manufactured by the giants, are these "giant potions"? Do they have multiple doses? Depending upon the size of the giant and the dose, do you have to carry it around in a barrel instead of a flask? Am I being too literal or trying too hard to apply reality to this concept?
They're normal sized potions, unless you as the GM are eager for the additional paperwork of tracking size categories for every single item in the game. That doesn't sound like fun to me, so potions and wands and scrolls and as MUCH else as possible is all standard sized.
I'd quit the industry to go live in a cottage in an undisclosed location to make chainsaw art and drink myself to oblivion.
You'd move to Alaska? Yay!
I don't do feedback on homebrew ideas, nor do I offer advice or feedback on unsolicited adventures or content. For time management reasons, because that's my job and I'm not comfortable providing services for free, and because I want to protect myself and Paizo from even the remotest possibility of a future lawsuit—if I read your homebrew, and then 10 years from now I do something for Golarion that's similar or even the same (likely due to parallel development or because in those 10 years I'd completely forgotten your homebrew but still came up with a similar idea), I'd rather not put us all in an awkward position where someone could sue Paizo for infringement.By simply avoiding looking at homebrew or unsolicited material, I protect myself and the company from that. It's one of the big reasons novelists avoid doing the same thing for aspiring writers, and why our boards have legal text that protects us from anything that's discussed here from appearing in a similar nature in print.
Fair enough!
No place or exception in the Prime Material where Magic tells Science to go take a hike? No flat worlds supported by four elephants riding the back of a colossal turtle?Same as the periodic table of Earth. Science is science, regardless of the planet.What does the periodic table of Golarion look like?
Perhaps the closer you get to Outer God territory, the more reality as we'd understand it breaks down?
Though Discworld's a bit too nice for the sectors of reality where the Outer Gods are winning...
Must have gotten missed on the last page.
At the time WotC was accepting submissions for what eventually became Eberron, did you submit a concept?
If so, can you elaborate?
Thank you!!
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No place or exception in the Prime Material where Magic tells Science to go take a hike? No flat worlds supported by four elephants riding the back of a colossal turtle?Same as the periodic table of Earth. Science is science, regardless of the planet.What does the periodic table of Golarion look like?
Not on the Material Plane to a degree significant enough to be anything other than highly localized, no. The type of thing you're looking at is outer planes stuff.
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Must have gotten missed on the last page.
At the time WotC was accepting submissions for what eventually became Eberron, did you submit a concept?
If so, can you elaborate?
Thank you!!
I did. My submission was a frozen world, with a focus on ships that ran on razor runners and a conflict between a native tribal society and a more civilized bad guy society. It was based on a part of my homebrew campaign setting that was the home land of the Shoanti.
It didn't win, obviously, but then I got to write the majority of Frostburn, so a fair amount of the ideas for that got put into there.
With the exception of things like pugwampi and the Shoanti and several of the deities and other elements that now live in Golarion, which I held to myself until I essentially ended up giving them to Paizo.
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2 Questions, how does talk to animals work? as Talking to animals implies sentience, or does it translate in a way that makes the concepts primitive and understandable to non sentient animals,
Also Could one kill a great old one permanently by destroying the place they respawn at in the case of bokrug?
Speak with animals doesn't grant the animal more intelligence, but it does allow you to talk to the animal nonetheless. Note that the spell is a personal spell that targets you, not the animal. It lets YOU understand the animal and communicate with it, but doesn't let anyone else understand the animal. And since animals are pretty low-intelligence, they can't answer complex questions and can be confused or misinterpret things.
As written, Great Old Ones cannot be killed. Destroying the place they respawn at would only result in them respawning somewhere else. So... same as before, except now you lose out on knowing where they come back.
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1) The combination of shapeshifting and mind reading and all that tends to wreak havoc on a LOT of storylines, particularly mystery or infiltration type adventures. But also, having a PC who can be anyone tends to make them feel like no one—it's more interesting if a PC is the same physically session after session so that you can get to know them. A constantly changing doppelganger is only one step away from a player playing an entirely new PC every session, and that's kinda lame.1. How would shapeshifting break plotlines?
This is totally true. I have a PC urban druid in my current game. That archetype gets A Thousand Faces at 6th level, which is alter self at will. I won't go so far as to say the player is abusing this ability, but it's getting annoying to keep track of what form the character is in during any given moment, and he's certainly metagaming his choice of form depending on the situation. ("Invisible opponent? I become a bugbear and gain the Scent ability!") I'm starting to think that this ability is greatly overpowered at 6th level-- it's normally not granted until 13th level!
James, what do you do when you encounter a player who's not exactly abusing a legal power, but is using it in a way that's undercutting the GM's enjoyment of the game?
Am I the only one who thinks the Essence Kickstarter isn't getting the love it deserves?
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1) The combination of shapeshifting and mind reading and all that tends to wreak havoc on a LOT of storylines, particularly mystery or infiltration type adventures. But also, having a PC who can be anyone tends to make them feel like no one—it's more interesting if a PC is the same physically session after session so that you can get to know them. A constantly changing doppelganger is only one step away from a player playing an entirely new PC every session, and that's kinda lame.1. How would shapeshifting break plotlines?
This is totally true. I have a PC urban druid in my current game. That archetype gets A Thousand Faces at 6th level, which is alter self at will. I won't go so far as to say the player is abusing this ability, but it's getting annoying to keep track of what form the character is in during any given moment, and he's certainly metagaming his choice of form depending on the situation. ("Invisible opponent? I become a bugbear and gain the Scent ability!") I'm starting to think that this ability is greatly overpowered at 6th level-- it's normally not granted until 13th level!
James, what do you do when you encounter a player who's not exactly abusing a legal power, but is using it in a way that's undercutting the GM's enjoyment of the game?
If it's only minor undercutting, I grit my teeth and just let it continue, because the player is having fun and I can just adapt and adjust as I go. If the build is legitimately breaking adventures or significantly reducing my fun and/or the other players' fun, I ask the player to retire the character and let them rebuild a new character. I've had to do this twice, both times with characters who focused on summoning monsters in groups with lots of players, and both times the players were pretty cool about understanding the need to do a different character.
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Just had a thought, Since Earth exists, does that mean HP lovecraft the author was genuinely inspired by the great old ones in Pathfinder? and i don't have the monster manual on me but does Hastur get summoned by saying his name in Pathfinder?
There's certainly a LOT of stories already out there with that exact plot—that's been something that authors have written about for decades, in fact.
The concept that Hastur can be summoned by saying his name is something, I believe, that D&D introduced into the mythos in Deities & Demigods back in the day. I'm pretty sure it's not something that was in a story by Derleth, and I know it was never part of Lovecraft.
It's not something Hastur can do in Pathfinder; his method of getting in your head is via the yellow sign. If you see it, he sees you, essentially.
Pazuzu has this ability though. If you want to give Hastur this power, just borrow the rules from Pazuzu.
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Am I the only one who thinks the Essence Kickstarter isn't getting the love it deserves?
It has 87 backers, so you're not the only one, I would hope.
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Also what happens to souls again in the various afterlives do they just stay there forever or what? Because if they don't get a choice of whether they want to be absorbed into the plane or not kinda sucks.
Souls either become outsiders and live very long lives on the outer planes, and when they die they "decay" into that plane's quintessence... or they bypass that life bit and just add to the plane's quintessence.
They DO get a choice as to what happens to them, though... but that choice is something they make via all of their decisions and actions in life as a mortal.
Recently, I got sick of the powergaming of my players. Every fight-even in pre-mythic WotR-could be curbstomped in two, maybe three rounds, with almost no damage to the players to themselves. When I start up a new campaign, I restrict the rulebooks a little bit more-last time was only Core and APG. But still, every time they manage to find some way to annihilate my encounters. I've asked them multiple times to try to tone down their characters, and they nod and smile and then come to the game without still over-powered characters.
So, finally, when they all brought their characters to the table and I took a look, I just said, "No, point it up again." And they started yelling at me for being restricting, railroading, not letting them do what they want, I thought this game was about freedom...
This group was kind of a charity case-they didn't have anybody to GM, so I obliged. But now I'm wondering if I should leave. What are your thoughts?
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Recently, I got sick of the powergaming of my players. Every fight-even in pre-mythic WotR-could be curbstomped in two, maybe three rounds, with almost no damage to the players to themselves. When I start up a new campaign, I restrict the rulebooks a little bit more-last time was only Core and APG. But still, every time they manage to find some way to annihilate my encounters. I've asked them multiple times to try to tone down their characters, and they nod and smile and then come to the game without still over-powered characters.
So, finally, when they all brought their characters to the table and I took a look, I just said, "No, point it up again." And they started yelling at me for being restricting, railroading, not letting them do what they want, I thought this game was about freedom...
This group was kind of a charity case-they didn't have anybody to GM, so I obliged. But now I'm wondering if I should leave. What are your thoughts?
Sounds like maybe you might be suffering GM burnout to a certain degree. If your players have become that masterful with the rules, perhaps it's time for one of them to take up the GM reins?
Alternately, since they're so good at building powerful characters, challenge them. Tell them they are NOT beginners; they're experts at the game, and as such they should try playing on "hard mode." Hard mode being 10 point buy for their characters using only the core rulebook, then as they adventure, reward them with access to other options you know they want from other books. Make them WORK for their combos.
But you can't GM every game every day all the time, even for a super fun group. You WILL get worn out after a time, and that will happen faster with an aggressive group like it sounds like you have, so if they don't go for "hard mode" the best option might be to ask one of them to GM so you can play, or even to just take a 6 month hiatus to recharge your GM batteries.
Thanks, Mr. Jacobs! Yeah, I might consider that. To be honest, I'm experiencing a fair amount of player burnout as well, so a full-on hiatus might be good.
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So basically what you're saying is that the Material Plane is run by science save for the obvious exceptions that science would make impossible, i.e. dragons and giants, etc. Which is a major departure from TSR/WOTC. Is that because you're looking to incorporate Golarian as part of a future Pathfinder expansion that's primarily future/sf based?Not on the Material Plane to a degree significant enough to be anything other than highly localized, no. The type of thing you're looking at is outer planes stuff.No place or exception in the Prime Material where Magic tells Science to go take a hike? No flat worlds supported by four elephants riding the back of a colossal turtle?Same as the periodic table of Earth. Science is science, regardless of the planet.What does the periodic table of Golarion look like?
It's not the only way we've departed from TSR/WotC. It's not because we're looking to incorporate a sci-fi campaign setting at all (we already have some of that with Numeria); it's merely one of the core design philosophies of the setting, which is that science works basically the same way in Golarion as it does in the real world, except when we don't want it to for story reasons.
But also, diverging from setting decisions that TSR/WotC make helps us to be our own thing.
Have you seen the T.V. show Fargo?
Hello James,
A quick question. What does being a masterwork weapon mean, aside from +1 to attack. Is it plausible to assume that a masterwork dagger/longsword/mace would probably be covered in incrustations and have some minor gems and precious metals worked into it? Or does this +300 to cost simply cover high quality of steel and workmanship?
Same for magic enchantment, how much of it goes towards beautification? All questions asked out of curiosity with regard to the trait "extremely fashionable".
Was anything ever supposed to come of Kizarvidexus? He was first mentioned in Age of Worms and had another appearance in Savage Tide.
They do not. As a general rule, only full-on deities have heralds. Not sure why they didn't give Zursvaater a herald; he SHOULD have one, being a full deity, but whatever. Sometimes thinks slip through the cracks.Do the Old Ones and Outer Gods have Heralds like most of the rest of the Golarion Gods and, if so, any chance we will see any in Strange Aeons?
Also, does Zursvaater have a Herald? One didn't appear in the Bestiary for Anvil of Fire, even though the previous two Giant Gods spotlighted were given Heralds.
Cool, thank you. Related question, when a deity loses a herald for whatever reason, how do they get a new one? Would that new herald be a unique being or would it take on the same characteristics as the previous herald?
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So what happens to the consciousness of the soul when it becomes one with the planes quintessence? and could one give the soul form again with a wish spell or through some divine power?Also what happens to souls again in the various afterlives do they just stay there forever or what? Because if they don't get a choice of whether they want to be absorbed into the plane or not kinda sucks.Souls either become outsiders and live very long lives on the outer planes, and when they die they "decay" into that plane's quintessence... or they bypass that life bit and just add to the plane's quintessence.
They DO get a choice as to what happens to them, though... but that choice is something they make via all of their decisions and actions in life as a mortal.
The creature ceases to be, pretty much, and merges with the infinite. AKA: Nothing lasts forever.
Wish wouldn't fix it. A deity could undo it, I guess.
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Hello James,
A quick question. What does being a masterwork weapon mean, aside from +1 to attack. Is it plausible to assume that a masterwork dagger/longsword/mace would probably be covered in incrustations and have some minor gems and precious metals worked into it? Or does this +300 to cost simply cover high quality of steel and workmanship?
Same for magic enchantment, how much of it goes towards beautification? All questions asked out of curiosity with regard to the trait "extremely fashionable".
It means more or less exactly what the word "Masterwork" means—it's a HIGH quality weapon that is more valuable and was created by a very skilled crafter; it's a sign of prestige to own one. They would LOOK nicer too... and note that the 300 gp boost is the minimum. If you want a bejewled dagger or whatever, adding more bling to it to up the value to whatever you can afford is fine.
The actual look of a masterwork or magic item is left to the GM or the item's creator to decide though.
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Was anything ever supposed to come of Kizarvidexus? He was first mentioned in Age of Worms and had another appearance in Savage Tide.
]
One of my design philosophies is that whenever I peel back the curtain and reveal more about a topic, I try to seed in two more mysteries to replace the one I'm taking away. I did this a LOT with my Demonomicon articles. All the secrets I reveal about one demon lord get replaced by several new name drops and mysterious proper nouns that then, thereafter, can be revealed in due time and then seed even more name drops. I took the same approach in the adventures I developed and wrote for Dungeon Magazine.
In the end, the result (and a very much intentional one) was that by the time my stewardship over Dungeon came to a close, I left more mysteries and undeveloped plot threads in my wake than I picked up from other sources and expanded upon.
Kizarvidexus is one of those. I never did get to do much with the name, and by the time we got to the Wells of Darkness in Dungeon, I knew that I wouldn't ever have a chance to do more with it since there was only a few more volumes to go before I was essentially going to be cut off from creating more content for D&D, and so I threw Kizarvidexus into one of the wells. And that's pretty much all there is to say about that. Feel free to pick up those threads and run with them as you wish!
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Cool, thank you. Related question, when a deity loses a herald for whatever reason, how do they get a new one? Would that new herald be a unique being or would it take on the same characteristics as the previous herald?They do not. As a general rule, only full-on deities have heralds. Not sure why they didn't give Zursvaater a herald; he SHOULD have one, being a full deity, but whatever. Sometimes thinks slip through the cracks.Do the Old Ones and Outer Gods have Heralds like most of the rest of the Golarion Gods and, if so, any chance we will see any in Strange Aeons?
Also, does Zursvaater have a Herald? One didn't appear in the Bestiary for Anvil of Fire, even though the previous two Giant Gods spotlighted were given Heralds.
See Wrath of the Righteous #5; that question is in fact a HUGE plot point for that adventure.
Huh. So would I be correct in thinking that Aroden having a quasi-goddess followed by a demi-goddess as his heralds was extremely abnormal?
Could Arazni have conceivably become a "standard" herald if Geb hadn't reanimated her?
From what I remember, Asmodeus custom-built his current Herald after going through a bunch, but most other heralds simply get resurrected when they die. For example, the entries for the Great White Stag and Courage Heart indicate that both have given their lives many times in service to their respective deities. So a herald getting outright replaced would be an unusual event.
Huh. Does having a herald require a divine realm? No realm means no place for your followers to come to you, which means normally not having souls to work with.
Or perhaps, that's a restriction on demigods, and real gods don't have to care about that?
Hi James,
What plane in Golarion would work best for a story like Orpheus and Eurydice story?
(I'm sure you remember, but in case you don't, it's the Greek Myth where after Eurydice was bitten by a viper, Orpheus journeyed to the Underworld to bring her spirit back from Hades realm.)
Thanks!
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Huh. So would I be correct in thinking that Aroden having a quasi-goddess followed by a demi-goddess as his heralds was extremely abnormal?
Could Arazni have conceivably become a "standard" herald if Geb hadn't reanimated her?
From what I remember, Asmodeus custom-built his current Herald after going through a bunch, but most other heralds simply get resurrected when they die. For example, the entries for the Great White Stag and Courage Heart indicate that both have given their lives many times in service to their respective deities. So a herald getting outright replaced would be an unusual event.
Huh. Does having a herald require a divine realm? No realm means no place for your followers to come to you, which means normally not having souls to work with.
Or perhaps, that's a restriction on demigods, and real gods don't have to care about that?
A deity switching up heralds that often is the abnormal part.
I doubt they were quasi-deities or demigods at the time they were his herald in any event. That is more likely a result of their growing power AFTER they've become his herald.
Having a herald requires you be a full-on deity. You can be a demigod with a divine realm (all the archdevils and demon lords have realms, for example), but barring weird and unusual circumstances, a demigod won't have a herald.
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Hi James,
What plane in Golarion would work best for a story like Orpheus and Eurydice story?
(I'm sure you remember, but in case you don't, it's the Greek Myth where after Eurydice was bitten by a viper, Orpheus journeyed to the Underworld to bring her spirit back from Hades realm.)
Thanks!
Hell, Abaddon, or the Abyss. Your choice.
Hell, Abaddon, or the Abyss. Your choice.Hi James,
What plane in Golarion would work best for a story like Orpheus and Eurydice story?
(I'm sure you remember, but in case you don't, it's the Greek Myth where after Eurydice was bitten by a viper, Orpheus journeyed to the Underworld to bring her spirit back from Hades realm.)
Thanks!
Thanks James.
Do you think there's one that works better thematically of the three?