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Does Druma (and the Followers of Kalistrade) have a particular origin in some obscure real-world history, or another work of fiction? It's a pretty unique (and very cool!) nation, but one that's a pretty novel sight among the other nations of Avistan.
I have no idea. I didn't create them and have done very little work to explore or expand on them. I believe Erik Mona invented them, and John Compton and Thurston Hillman have done the most work on developing them, I think?
I've always seen them as a "puritanical capitalism cult" type thing, and in my head, that makes them villains. I'm not sure that's the intent of Erik or John or Thurston though... but if I were to do an adventure with them for a home game, they'd be the bad guys.
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I just wanted to say how much fun and joy I am able to get out of this fantastic game that you have been such a big part of.
Did you know that?
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Are there any old campaign stories you'd like to share you haven't before?
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Are there any old campaign stories you'd like to share you haven't before?
I've a lot of them. Some of my more favorite aren't really appropriate to share on these forums though since my games tend to go hard-R rating. Others are more appropriate, but yeah, over the 40-some-years I've been gaming, I've built up a lot of stories. I also don't remember which ones I've shared or not, though, so at the moment none come to mind. The urge to share a story like this is stronger if there's a more focused topic at hand for me as a result, since it helps narrow down the scope so I don't have to mentally sift through decades of memories. ;-)
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Can you tell me when Kingmaker Anniversary Edition, Kingmaker Bestiary, and Kingmaker Companion Guide will be released? Perhaps it's not decided yet?
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Can you tell me when Kingmaker Anniversary Edition, Kingmaker Bestiary, and Kingmaker Companion Guide will be released? Perhaps it's not decided yet?
We're deep in the final rounds of approvals right now, and hope to be done with them in a week or two. At this point, we're hopeful for it all to come out in September... but that assumes we don't have another complication. Like, say, the moon crashing into the Earth.
EDIT: I'm really hopeful we can hit this deadline. I've been living under the looming specter of Kingmaker since before 2nd edition Pathfinder was released, and I'm eager to be able to take a vacation where I won't have some sort of underlying nervous fear that I might have to interrupt the vacation to handle some sort of Kingmaker-themed emergency.
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I'll bite. Do you have a (non R rated) story about a time that a succubus successfully corrupted a PC? Or, failing that, an amusing story about that most fabulous of all fiends?
(I know you're a fan of succubi, so I figured there'd be plenty of stories)
I did manage to convince a player in a long-term game back in college to abandon the party, become chaotic evil, and join a demon cult. That player's PC got retired from the campaign and he built a brand new PC to finish out the campaign, and he and the rest of the party ended up fighting the retired PC as one of the demon cult's big villains later on. I THINK that it was a succubus that pushed the character over the edge, but I'm not 100% sure... that was about 30 years ago, after all.
That campaign's main plot was "Obox-ob has taken over the Abyss and is preparing to merge the world into the Abyss to make a new layer of the Abyss and the four most powerful demon lords are working for him to make this happen, and the nexus where this whole thing will go down is in the heart of the main city of the campaign setting." The four demon lords were loosely based on the idea of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, but instead were focused on stuff like temptation, anger, death, and pain or something like that. The Temptation demon lord was the one in charge of the faction that corrupted that player's PC. When the time came to fight that demon lord (there was a sort of boss rush marathon game near the end of the campaign where the PCs had to defeat all four demon lords in one night), a different player managed to get through her magic resistance and then she rolled a 1 on her saving throw which was the only way she could have failed her save against polymorph any object. Also, he went first in the fight. It was pretty memorable, after two edge of the seat fights against two previous demon lords, for this one against one that had been a particular thorn in the party's side for many real-world months, to get defeated in the very first few seconds of combat before anyone else got to go. She got turned into a brick, which the party then smashed.
As a further side note, at the start of this massive epic against-the-demons campaign, the same character who turned that demon lord into a brick got curious in a dungeon and is the one who released Xanderghul and Karzoug from an eons long prison in a deep dungeon in Sekamina. Those two would then go on to play stronger villain roles in sequel campaigns I ran. And eventually found their way into Golarion.
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Oh my. That's a lot.
So Obox-ob is all the way back from college... was he an obyrith or something equivalent then too?
I got the name Obox-ob from AD&D's Monster Manual II, which had a very intriguing set of names for other demon lords beyond those already given stats for the game. As far as I have been able to discern, the name is entirely created by Gygax and not (as with many of the names on the list) from real world mythology.
That always intrigued me, so from very early on in the very start of my homebrew setting, back in 7th grade or thereabouts in the late 80s, I picked up that name as the "main bad guy demon" for what would be my first big adventure written for D&D. Over time, as that set of adventures transformed into a full-fledged homebrew setting, Obox-Ob ended up being the "main bad guy deity" for my setting.
Eventually, when I was working on D&D decades later, I paid back all that fun that I got from a D&D name by giving a more fully-fledged Obox-ob (along with the obyriths, which I invented after being inspired equally by Lovecraft's great old ones and the work Erik Mona did on qlippoth in Armies of the Abyss for Green Ronin and my own ideas for what demons would be like from a time before the human shape existed) back to the game in the pages of Dungeon Magazine and Fiendish Codex I.
In my homebrew, before then, Obox-ob was a full-fledged god and the most powerful of demon lords... but he was still a demon. One who had been imprisoned by Sarenrae and who's return was heralded by his four demon lords and cults and all that, and that the PCs had to prevent.
The vast majority of the lore I did for Obox-ob in my homebrew ended up becoming all the lore folks know today about Rovagug.
Rovagug himself was also in my homebrew, alongside Obox-ob, but HIS role in the game was the god of nightmares and the dark places below and monsters... a role served in Golarion by Lamashtu.
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I'm in a group that's almost done with Curse of the Crimson Throne. The druid from our group included in his background story that he's from the Ashwood Forest and after the campaign his character would like to return to the forest to rid it of the werewolf scourge. Unbeknownst to him, I'm planning a one-shot to provide him the opportunity to do just that since the campaign will be over and the DM deserves some rest. Is there any more background information you can give about Loper? I want to try to be as true to the material as possible.
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I'm in a group that's almost done with Curse of the Crimson Throne. The druid from our group included in his background story that he's from the Ashwood Forest and after the campaign his character would like to return to the forest to rid it of the werewolf scourge. Unbeknownst to him, I'm planning a one-shot to provide him the opportunity to do just that since the campaign will be over and the DM deserves some rest. Is there any more background information you can give about Loper? I want to try to be as true to the material as possible.
Loper and Ashwood are exports from my homebrew, but Loper's story there is a lot more grisly and gritty and horrific than is appropriate to get into here.
This is the exact kind of adventure hook we put into print though to get a GM's creativity going... so have fun with Loper and making a memorable, customized encounter. (And honestly, in this case, since it's tailored to a PC, you're the expert here anyway, not me!)
In Second Edition, will there be more Bestiary? Or is Bestiary 3 the final book?
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In Second Edition, will there be more Bestiary? Or is Bestiary 3 the final book?
We'll continue to publish monsters in hardcover books; the next one coming up is Book of the Dead which has a lot of undead monsters in there. Whether or not we do a Bestiary 4 is not something I'll confirm or deny though. If folks want a Bestiary 4 though, let us know in places other than this thread.
I'm not sure who created bebiliths (perhaps you?) but I think you would know this: are bebiliths demons or qlippoth?
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I'm not sure who created bebiliths (perhaps you?) but I think you would know this: are bebiliths demons or qlippoth?
They were created late in 2nd edition by the Planescape team, I believe, at the tail end of the era for D&D where they were still timid and afraid to use the word "demon" in the game because of the Satanic Panic of the mid 80s.
In any event, they're neither demon nor qlippoth, but are just monsters that live on the Abyss.
I have no idea who created them, but it wasn't me.
By 2nd edition, do you mean Pathfinder Second Edition?
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What about Amber?By 2nd edition, do you mean Pathfinder Second Edition?No. 2nd edition D&D. There is no Planescape team for Pathfinder Second Edition. ;)
Planescape is a D&D setting. There's some shared DNA between it and Pathfinder, but just as I like to think of Golarion as similar but different to Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms (since they were both inspired by the same sources), I like to think that the Great Beyond of Pathifnder is its own thing separate and different from D&D's outer planes, Planescape included. I like the Great Beyond better, frankly. Planescape is interesting, but it also normalizes the strange too much for my taste.
I don't know if that answers your question or not, but to me, Planescape should stay a part of D&D, and the Great Beyond should be allowed to chart its own similar in some ways but very different in many others path.
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What about Amber?By 2nd edition, do you mean Pathfinder Second Edition?No. 2nd edition D&D. There is no Planescape team for Pathfinder Second Edition. ;)Planescape is a D&D setting. There's some shared DNA between it and Pathfinder, but just as I like to think of Golarion as similar but different to Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms (since they were both inspired by the same sources), I like to think that the Great Beyond of Pathifnder is its own thing separate and different from D&D's outer planes, Planescape included. I like the Great Beyond better, frankly. Planescape is interesting, but it also normalizes the strange too much for my taste.
I don't know if that answers your question or not, but to me, Planescape should stay a part of D&D, and the Great Beyond should be allowed to chart its own similar in some ways but very different in many others path.
I was more making a lighthearted comment on "Planescape team" than Planescape in general :3
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I found out that dragons don't have swallow whole ability, while some monsters like froghemoths, jotund trolls, and ogre gluttons who are smaller than dragons have that ability. Shouldn't dragons also have swallow whole ability as well? They are very big. So logically it would be child's play to them to swallow something whole, right?
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I found out that dragons don't have swallow whole ability, while some monsters like froghemoths, jotund trolls, and ogre gluttons who are smaller than dragons have that ability. Shouldn't dragons also have swallow whole ability as well? They are very big. So logically it would be child's play to them to swallow something whole, right?
Dragons have enough already without extra complications for things. Size doesn't auto-grant swallow whole. If it did, it'd be part of the size category rules, and that makes them too complicated to be fun.
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Hello Mr. Jacobs!
I have a person who really wants to get into designing and crafting new firearms and whatnot over the course of a campaign to try and eventually end with something that resembles Caitlyn's rifle from Arcane, if you've watched that. My question is, since you worked on Iron Gods and I think Reign of Winter, what kind of rules or thought process did you all go down in regards to how to design / balance / make firearms like the ones found in later books of RoW.
Is there something besides the weapon craft rules I could use, since they seem kind of limited in what they can produce, or is this a situation where I have to do some legwork on my own?
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Hello Mr. Jacobs!
I have a person who really wants to get into designing and crafting new firearms and whatnot over the course of a campaign to try and eventually end with something that resembles Caitlyn's rifle from Arcane, if you've watched that. My question is, since you worked on Iron Gods and I think Reign of Winter, what kind of rules or thought process did you all go down in regards to how to design / balance / make firearms like the ones found in later books of RoW.
Is there something besides the weapon craft rules I could use, since they seem kind of limited in what they can produce, or is this a situation where I have to do some legwork on my own?
Assuming you're asking about 1st edition Pathfinder...
I've not watched Arcane, but back in 1st edition, when I wrote the Technology Guide, I built all those high-tech weapons like they were magic items. I tried to pick a similar spell as a baseline and then balanced them in that way. So, like a laser pistol started out as a magic item that let you cast scorching ray, and then started going from there until finally got to a set of baselines for those devices. It was a pretty complex process, so my suggestion there would be to look at the Tech Guide for something that's close to what you want it to do and start from there. It might even be easiest to just pick one of those tech rifles and just change it's damage type to piercing or whatever.
I wasn't on Reign of Winter though, so I don't have much insights there, alas.
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I found out that dragons don't have swallow whole ability, while some monsters like froghemoths, jotund trolls, and ogre gluttons who are smaller than dragons have that ability. Shouldn't dragons also have swallow whole ability as well? They are very big. So logically it would be child's play to them to swallow something whole, right?Dragons have enough already without extra complications for things. Size doesn't auto-grant swallow whole. If it did, it'd be part of the size category rules, and that makes them too complicated to be fun.
Hmm. I got it. I want to ask one more question. If I give swallow whole to all dragons who are huge or larger, should I increase the dragons' level? Or I don't have to, because it wouldn't enhance the dragons' combat power significantly?
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Hmm. I got it. I want to ask one more question. If I give swallow whole to all dragons who are huge or larger, should I increase the dragons' level? Or I don't have to, because it wouldn't enhance the dragons' combat power significantly?
The only thing giving a monster more abilities does is make it more complicated to run. Something like that doesn't particularly make it more powerful, since there's always a trade-off. For a dragon, taking the time to bite and swallow a target could even be a suboptimal choice, because they could use powerful magic or use a breath weapon instead.
I found out that while an ogre glutton have swallow whole ability, an ogre boss, an ogre hunter, and an ogre warrior don't. Is it a typo? I mean, they are members of the same species. An ogre glutton and other ogres are biologically identical, right? Then how come only an ogre glutton have swallow whole ability? Likewise, while a jotund troll and a two-headed troll have swallow whole ability, a normal troll, a cavern troll, and a frost troll don't. Not sure whether it's a typo or not.
I am reading Into the Nightmare Rift and noticed the story of Xaivanshee Rasivrein, a drow who tried to become a vampire through an artifact. Is it possible that she still appears in other adventures, or is she thought to have died after the encounter with the PCs?
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I found out that while an ogre glutton have swallow whole ability, an ogre boss, an ogre hunter, and an ogre warrior don't. Is it a typo? I mean, they are members of the same species. An ogre glutton and other ogres are biologically identical, right? Then how come only an ogre glutton have swallow whole ability? Likewise, while a jotund troll and a two-headed troll have swallow whole ability, a normal troll, a cavern troll, and a frost troll don't. Not sure whether it's a typo or not.
Those aren't typos. One thing we do in 2nd edition is give bespoke abilities to creatures that are variants, so that they're more interesting than just "more hit points."
If they were "biologically identical" they would have the same stats and thus there would be no need for two stat blocks.
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I am reading Into the Nightmare Rift and noticed the story of Xaivanshee Rasivrein, a drow who tried to become a vampire through an artifact. Is it possible that she still appears in other adventures, or is she thought to have died after the encounter with the PCs?
As far as I know, she only appears in that adventure. For the vast majority of NPCs in an adventure, we assume their fate beyond what's chronicled in that adventure is up to events in play. We give our NPCs more extensive backstories like this because that helps a GM roleplay them, particularly since we can't predict which NPC will be befriended or charmed or redeemed or interrogated or escape to become a recurring foe.
I have always thought that hippocampi are aquatic creatures and thus can breathe in water and in air. But I found out that they have aquatic trait instead of amphibious trait. Does that mean hippocampi cannot breathe in air?
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I have always thought that hippocampi are aquatic creatures and thus can breathe in water and in air. But I found out that they have aquatic trait instead of amphibious trait. Does that mean hippocampi cannot breathe in air?
Yup. That's spelled out in the rules for the aquatic trait.
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Hey James, in one my games (an evil-ish campaign) one player got the True Name of a young Bebilith (it was inscribed in runes- part demonic and part qlippoth- inside the caccoon it spawned from in Khavak-Vog). Now that he wishes to bind the creature to his service, I wonder how will a creature like bebilith react to someone using it's true name. To add on that, the Bebilith was spawned pretty recently to existence, so I wonder- does it have a natural instinct to fear someone using the true name, or does the Bebilith need to "learn" that it has a true name and this true name has power over it?
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Hey James, in one my games (an evil-ish campaign) one player got the True Name of a young Bebilith (it was inscribed in runes- part demonic and part qlippoth- inside the caccoon it spawned from in Khavak-Vog). Now that he wishes to bind the creature to his service, I wonder how will a creature like bebilith react to someone using it's true name. To add on that, the Bebilith was spawned pretty recently to existence, so I wonder- does it have a natural instinct to fear someone using the true name, or does the Bebilith need to "learn" that it has a true name and this true name has power over it?
I've always considered fiends, be they demons or specific things like bebiliths, to form completely when they manifest on the Outer Plane, with no childhood or period of being young or learning or anything. They are manifestations of what they are, not biological creatures that need to develop. They can certainly learn and grow more powerful over time, but the stats in the book, to me, represent their starting point.
So a bebilith in this case would function the same as any other. How that works in your game is up to you, since I've not really looked at how true name stuff works in 2nd edition... but if it were my game, said bebilith would be furious and angry and looking for a chance to escape and eat the PC every chance it could.
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I see! Personally I loved the idea that the Bebilith need to hunt some demons before it grows to a full sized demon-predator, that's why I used the young template, but your answer was helpful nonetheless!
And a small follow up question- do Bebiliths pay attention to demon lords at large? I'm sure they don't mind eating their servants, but would a Bebilith notice who's the lord of the layer they live in? And if someone is showing the Bebilith a symbol of demon lord, could they recognize it?
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And a small follow up question- do Bebiliths pay attention to demon lords at large? I'm sure they don't mind eating their servants, but would a Bebilith notice who's the lord of the layer they live in? And if someone is showing the Bebilith a symbol of demon lord, could they recognize it?
They'd avoid them. They hunt demons, after all, and are smart enough to know to stay away from the demons that would squash them. Whether or not a bebilith knows more about demon lords and the like depends on how good they are at things like Abyss Lore or Demon Lore or Religion... just like anything else.
A sorcerer gains his spell slots and the spells in his spell repertoire at the same rate. But the rulebook also said that "If a feat or other ability adds a spell to your spell repertoire, it wouldn't give you another spell slot, and vice versa." So can I assume that, while the sorcerer can add nine bloodline spells to his spell repertoire for free, he would not receive nine free spell slots (one for each spell level) at all?
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A sorcerer gains his spell slots and the spells in his spell repertoire at the same rate. But the rulebook also said that "If a feat or other ability adds a spell to your spell repertoire, it wouldn't give you another spell slot, and vice versa." So can I assume that, while the sorcerer can add nine bloodline spells to his spell repertoire for free, he would not receive nine free spell slots (one for each spell level) at all?
That's exactly what that means.
Good elemental lords were defeated and sealed by evil elemental lords long ago. Does that mean the good elemental lords have not been able to grant spells to their clerics, paladins, and oracles? I personally doubt it because Rovagug can grant spells to his clerics freely despite hit imprisonment.
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Good elemental lords were defeated and sealed by evil elemental lords long ago. Does that mean the good elemental lords have not been able to grant spells to their clerics, paladins, and oracles? I personally doubt it because Rovagug can grant spells to his clerics freely despite hit imprisonment.
It doesn't mean that.
Good elemental lords were defeated and sealed by evil elemental lords long ago. Does that mean the good elemental lords have not been able to grant spells to their clerics, paladins, and oracles? I personally doubt it because Rovagug can grant spells to his clerics freely despite hit imprisonment.It doesn't mean that.
After Sairazul was imprisoned, all xiomorns abandoned her almost immediately and started worshiping Ayrzul very willingly. So I thought the good elemental lords were not able to grant spells or even communicate with their worshipers during the imprisonment. Can I assume that I was wrong, and the imprisoned elemental lords could grant spells to their worshipers, just like Rovagug did?
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After Sairazul was imprisoned, all xiomorns abandoned her almost immediately and started worshiping Ayrzul very willingly. So I thought the good elemental lords were not able to grant spells or even communicate with their worshipers during the imprisonment. Can I assume that I was wrong, and the imprisoned elemental lords could grant spells to their worshipers, just like Rovagug did?
The xiomorns abandoned her becasue they felt that if she got imprisoned, she wasn't worth worshiping. They could still have stuck by her side and their clerics would have still received spells, but they abandoned her and turned to her enemy because they wanted to worship a divinity that didn't seem weak to them. Their switch had nothing to do with whether or not their clerics could cast spells.
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Hey James,
So I noticed that a lot of the archdevils are ex-celestials, and likewise that ragathiel (a risen devil) is a celestial. Does this imply that long-term alignment changes on, for lack of an all-encompassing word in 2e, "outsiders" eventually results in a type change?
Ie over the eons, would Arushalae become an azata/other type of celestial rather than "just" a redeemed succubus? Or is each outsider different in that regard?
It's handled on a case-by-case basis as needed. There are no rules or strict guidelines for this sort of lore creation.
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Cool!
In that case I do have another question. Are dispater, mammon, moloch and baalzebul all ex archons? Or are some of them former angels or other types of celestial?
They aren't. At least, as far as I know they aren't. Diversity is a good thing, even when your'e talking about where devils come from.