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Vinland Forever wrote:


It was originally to be called Trailblazer, but I changed the name to Voyager. A 3.5 pdf called Trailblazer already exists.

Trailblazer is another D&D 3.75 Version. The name is a reference to Pathfinder.

Looking forward to your supplement.

@ James Jacobs: Whats your favourite archetype?

Grand Lodge

-Do you have a favourite fantasy genre comic/manga?

-Is there ever a chance that some immensely wealthy Golarion NPC would pour his/her funds into creating a 'Tyrant Lizards!' tourism park ala Jurassic Park in the hopes of attracting noble tourists who go 'on safari'? If so, could this ever be a PFS module?

-Can my Gunslinger Wizard mount a double hackbut on a summoned Floating Disk so I have a mobile artillery platform?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

White Widow wrote:
@ James Jacobs: Whats your favourite archetype?

Currently, the bard version of the Dawnflower Dervish.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

KestlerGunner wrote:

-Do you have a favourite fantasy genre comic/manga?

-Is there ever a chance that some immensely wealthy Golarion NPC would pour his/her funds into creating a 'Tyrant Lizards!' tourism park ala Jurassic Park in the hopes of attracting noble tourists who go 'on safari'? If so, could this ever be a PFS module?

-Can my Gunslinger Wizard mount a double hackbut on a summoned Floating Disk so I have a mobile artillery platform?

1) I don't read a lot of comics or manga... but I'd probably say that Uzumaki is my favorite manga. Favorite comic of all time is Turok: Son of Stone (the old version, before the dang robots and cyborgs got in there... grrr!)

2) There's dinosaurs alive in the wild. You don't have to be rich to make a dinosaur park in Golarion. You just need some ranks in Handle Animal or some charm animal spells!

3) Ask your GM.


James Jacobs wrote:
LazarX wrote:
Such has how Arcane Mark has finally found a use?... Giving free extra attacks to Magi using spellstrike. I consider it a cheese move but the RAW Lawyers have me over a barrel on that one.

That's a great example. And if you're the GM in that case, and you've got players who are being pills, maybe you need to kick those players out of your game.

I don't have a lot of patience for players who don't respect GM calls and decisions. After all, a player who doesn't agree with the way a GM runs the game can leave the game as well... that street should run both ways.

Although there is a move that is less cheesy is that Hexcrafter magi get access to the brand spell as it has the curse descriptor and can cast that all day. It does do damage.

Is having all wizard graduates of a college have a wall they make arcane marks on once they graduate from wizards college been done before? It does seem to be unique tradition.


James Jacobs wrote:
Marshall Fundaburk wrote:
Thanks james. Is Malleus Monstrorum worth getting? It kinda seems exactly what I've been looking for, which is like a comprehensive collection of all the monsters and gods in the game. it'd probably take ages to track them down through all the books they've released over the past 30 years, right? so I should probably just get it if it's worth getting.

Malleus Monstrorum is a really interesting book; they've illustrated it not with pictures of the actual monsters, but with artifacts and the like as if the monsters were real-world, and they used those artifacts as evidence of the monster's existence. Things like cave paintings, ancient carvings, blurry photos, and the like. It's a really unusual and interesting way to illustrate a monster book.

And yes, the book's definitely worth getting. It's not 100% comprehensive, but it DOES have a lot of critters.

As for tracking down all the books released over the past 30 years... that'd get expensive really quickly. A fair amount of them are long-since out of print, and command prices in excess of several hundred bucks in some cases on e-bay...

Alright, thanks, I'll be sure to check it out then. Yeah, I assumed getting every one would be a costly and ridiculous venture, at least for me. Are there any CoC bestiaries more comprehensive than Malleus Monstrorum? Or what would I also need to get to have what Malleus is missing?


1. Will pathfinder have a science fiction variant of its core rules complete with aliens, energy blasters, star-drives and dinosaur inhabited worlds.

2, Do you allow players to use non-traditional aliens as PCs in your games like say something from the Star Wars Ultimate Alien Anthology, especially dinosaur men or some such.

3. How cool would it be if a lich used a dinosaurs incisor, (tooth) fossilized or not as its phylactery.

4. Would you use time travel as a plot devise if it meant getting your characters into a dinosaur age be it past or present?

Grand Lodge

James Jacobs wrote:


1) I don't read a lot of comics or manga... but I'd probably say that Uzumaki is my favorite manga.

-SNAIL PEOPLE in the Bestiary 3? I hear they're delicious.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4100/4892528163_68fe32b50e.jpg


Not sure if this has been asked before(might have been by me, lol),

But if you could somehow reacquire 3 IPs that you created that now belong to WotC, what would they be??

Paizo Employee Creative Director

doctor_wu wrote:
Is having all wizard graduates of a college have a wall they make arcane marks on once they graduate from wizards college been done before? It does seem to be unique tradition.

I can't think of any such incidents.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Marshall Fundaburk wrote:
Alright, thanks, I'll be sure to check it out then. Yeah, I assumed getting every one would be a costly and ridiculous venture, at least for me. Are there any CoC bestiaries more comprehensive than Malleus Monstrorum? Or what would I also need to get to have what Malleus is missing?

Malleus is pretty complete, and it's also, I believe, the only bestiary for the game that's currently in print anyway. The previous ones were a fraction of the size, in any case.

What Malleus is missing is pretty much spread throughout all of the various books and adventures, in any case. And on top of that, most CoC adventures give you full stat blocks for any monsters in the adventure anyway...

Paizo Employee Creative Director

BluePigeon wrote:

1. Will pathfinder have a science fiction variant of its core rules complete with aliens, energy blasters, star-drives and dinosaur inhabited worlds.

2, Do you allow players to use non-traditional aliens as PCs in your games like say something from the Star Wars Ultimate Alien Anthology, especially dinosaur men or some such.

3. How cool would it be if a lich used a dinosaurs incisor, (tooth) fossilized or not as its phylactery.

4. Would you use time travel as a plot devise if it meant getting your characters into a dinosaur age be it past or present?

1) Not anytime soon... not officially, at least. (Probably not ever... but we'll see what the future brings!)

2) Depends on the campaign I'm running, but usually I like PCs to stay close to human.

3) HA! Very cool! Especially if said dinosaur skeleton was a powerful undead monster.

4) Nope. I put dinosaurs in the modern age (as they are in Golarion). Time travel is a can of worms that ruins campaigns faster than anything else... unless the campaign is ABOUT time travel, of course, and not much else.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Monkeygod wrote:

Not sure if this has been asked before(might have been by me, lol),

But if you could somehow reacquire 3 IPs that you created that now belong to WotC, what would they be??

None, honestly. All the ones I would have perhaps wanted back have been replaced.


Mr. Jacobsaur,

Recently I've noticed that there aren't any special rules for elf sleep in the game.

I just did a quick search in the forums and found several different explanations for that, such as:

1) it was left out because strangely enough the elf meditating thing is not part of the SRD.

2) Paizo decided to leave it out so dms can decide what they want in their own game.

3) was a deliberate attempt to distance pathfinder elves from the WotC elves.

Would you mind commenting on that?

Specifically,
do elves in golarion sleep? (I'm aware that elves of golarion says they meditate for 4 hours, but since it's a 3.5 source it may be outdated.)

Thank you so much.

Liberty's Edge

doctor_wu wrote:
Is having all wizard graduates of a college have a wall they make arcane marks on once they graduate from wizards college been done before? It does seem to be unique tradition.

Something like the first image here?

Those are the coats of arms of the faculty members and students of the University of Padua.
There are way better images but I haven't found one to link.


1)Are there any Linnorm species(not unigue) that are more powerful than the Tarn?

2)Favorite type of cake? Pie? Ice cream?

3)Favorite type of Ooze(other then the Shoggoths)?

4)Do creatures from the First world have an ability to find there way around or sense when there environment is going to change?

5)How would you feel about some holiday themed Modules? ex: magical masks/costumes that grant abilities based on the creature or person it looks like or elves, gnomes, or halfling slaves forced to make toys.

6)I like the idea of magical foods from Elves of Golarion, is there any chance of expanding on this?

7)How about a low level murder mystery module set in an old mansion?

8)Any moth like monsters in the Beastairy 3?

9)If Paizo does a book(s) on the first world what are the odds of getting some Fey/first world themed spells? magic items? feats?

10)Why is there such a big gap between 3rd and 9th level for sorcerer bloodline powers? Why were the levels 1st, 3rd, 9th, 15th, and 20th chosen for the bloodline powers?


James Jacobs wrote:
BluePigeon wrote:

3. How cool would it be if a lich used a dinosaurs incisor, (tooth) fossilized or not as its phylactery.

4. Would you use time travel as a plot devise if it meant getting your characters into a dinosaur age be it past or present?

3) HA! Very cool! Especially if said dinosaur skeleton was a powerful undead monster.

4) Nope. I put dinosaurs in the modern age (as they are in Golarion). Time travel is a can of worms that ruins campaigns faster than anything else... unless the campaign is ABOUT time travel, of course, and not much else.

3. A power lich with an undead dinosaur guardian. I am getting ideas right now.

4. In regards to your answer, how about unidirectional time travel. A spell that "yanks" dinosaurs and other extinct species out of the past and into the present? Mmmm, Starting to get an idea from a high level magical spell/ritual spell.

5. Do you have a copy of GURPS Dinosaur. If you don't buy one. It is a good resource book. Click Here

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Ral' Yareth wrote:

Mr. Jacobsaur,

Recently I've noticed that there aren't any special rules for elf sleep in the game.

I just did a quick search in the forums and found several different explanations for that, such as:

1) it was left out because strangely enough the elf meditating thing is not part of the SRD.

2) Paizo decided to leave it out so dms can decide what they want in their own game.

3) was a deliberate attempt to distance pathfinder elves from the WotC elves.

Would you mind commenting on that?

Specifically,
do elves in golarion sleep? (I'm aware that elves of golarion says they meditate for 4 hours, but since it's a 3.5 source it may be outdated.)

Thank you so much.

Elves on Golarion sleep. Elves of Golarion was written in the early days before we fully had our heads wrapped around Golarion... or the fact that we'd be doing our OWN rules, for that matter. And as a result, that bit about elves only meditating has been inflicted with fire cancer (aka it's been retconned away).

Elves sleep just like any other race. They're just immune to effects that FORCE them to fall asleep.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

BluePigeon wrote:

5. Do you have a copy of GURPS Dinosaur. If you don't buy one. It is a good resource book. Click Here

I don't have that book. I'm actually not all that big a fan of GURPS. Partially because the name sounds silly to me, but mostly because the one time I tried to play it, I really didn't care for the way character creation worked.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Dragon78 wrote:

1)Are there any Linnorm species(not unigue) that are more powerful than the Tarn?

2)Favorite type of cake? Pie? Ice cream?

3)Favorite type of Ooze(other then the Shoggoths)?

4)Do creatures from the First world have an ability to find there way around or sense when there environment is going to change?

5)How would you feel about some holiday themed Modules? ex: magical masks/costumes that grant abilities based on the creature or person it looks like or elves, gnomes, or halfling slaves forced to make toys.

6)I like the idea of magical foods from Elves of Golarion, is there any chance of expanding on this?

7)How about a low level murder mystery module set in an old mansion?

8)Any moth like monsters in the Beastairy 3?

9)If Paizo does a book(s) on the first world what are the odds of getting some Fey/first world themed spells? magic items? feats?

10)Why is there such a big gap between 3rd and 9th level for sorcerer bloodline powers? Why were the levels 1st, 3rd, 9th, 15th, and 20th chosen for the bloodline powers?

1) Yes.

2) Cake: Boston Creme. Pie: pumpkin. Ice Cream: coffee.

3) Shoggoths! I like them so much I break your rules!

4) Generally, no.

5) If you mean an adventure set during a holiday in Golarion... I like it. In fact, we've done some already: "Acadamy of Secrets" being the most recent. If you mean adventures based on real-world holidays... not so much, since real-world holidays aren't universal and it gets increasingly easy to unintentionally estrange some customers by your choice of holiday. And on top of that, most real-world holidays feel as out of place to me in Golarion as would putting a real-world city into Golarion.

6) Sure. We've done magical foods here and there already, but an entire book on magic foods is unlikely to ever happen.

7) Like CLUE? Heh. "It was Belor Hemlock in the torture chamber with the bead of force!"

8) I don't think there were, but there's 300 or so monsters in there, and I don't have them all memorized yet.

9) If we do a First World book, chances of us doing spells and magic items and monsters for that book are VERY high. Feats... not as high. We're getting quite close to "that's enough feats" in my opinion.

10) That's more of a Jason Bulmahn question... to a certain extent, though, the gaps are semi arbitrary.


James Jacobs wrote:
Ral' Yareth wrote:

Mr. Jacobsaur,

Recently I've noticed that there aren't any special rules for elf sleep in the game.

I just did a quick search in the forums and found several different explanations for that, such as:

1) it was left out because strangely enough the elf meditating thing is not part of the SRD.

2) Paizo decided to leave it out so dms can decide what they want in their own game.

3) was a deliberate attempt to distance pathfinder elves from the WotC elves.

Would you mind commenting on that?

Specifically,
do elves in golarion sleep? (I'm aware that elves of golarion says they meditate for 4 hours, but since it's a 3.5 source it may be outdated.)

Thank you so much.

Elves on Golarion sleep. Elves of Golarion was written in the early days before we fully had our heads wrapped around Golarion... or the fact that we'd be doing our OWN rules, for that matter. And as a result, that bit about elves only meditating has been inflicted with fire cancer (aka it's been retconned away).

Elves sleep just like any other race. They're just immune to effects that FORCE them to fall asleep.

Elvish coffee? Tea? It has something to do with caffeine, I think; hence the enlarged pupils.

Or am I way off?


Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens Subscriber

I don't have a question, I just felt obliged to share a link to this Scientific American article on Tyrannosaurs.


Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens Subscriber
James Jacobs wrote:
BluePigeon wrote:

5. Do you have a copy of GURPS Dinosaur. If you don't buy one. It is a good resource book. Click Here

I don't have that book. I'm actually not all that big a fan of GURPS. Partially because the name sounds silly to me, but mostly because the one time I tried to play it, I really didn't care for the way character creation worked.

I actually highly recommend you check out some of the old GURPS sourcebooks. While the name may be silly, and the rules not to your tastes, most sourcebooks are 90% ideas and 10% rules. I mine them for campaign ideas for other games all the time. I particularly like the alternate timeline books. I will admit the dinosaur book is mostly an encyclopedia of dinosaurs, so if you have a comprehensive book like that already it probably isn't worth it for you.

But I still recommend checking out some GURPS sourcebooks on subjects that interest you.


1)Does Golarion have any holidays similar to Halloween? or similar to any real world holidays?

2)Love the cover for dragon empire Gazetter, would you guys be against reusing it if you did a hard cover book for Tian Xia?

3)Yes like Clue, Murder on the orient express, many Sherlock Holmes books, in otherwords would you guys do a murder mystery that doesn't involve undead, evil outsiders,etc. but humans(and/or humaniods) involved? in a mansion would be nice(1st-4th level range).

4)How about magical and or cursed costumes/masks that grant abilities related to the creature, class, person, etc. that they emulate. would you use that as theme for a module?

5)Is there anyway to give a witch magehand, disrupt undead, or ray of frost?

6)Too many feats, never, but still what about feats that are more specialized like racial feats, class related feats, skill based feats(bonuses to skills, adding skills as class skills, etc.)? I would still like to see bloodline feats but even if you only had 3 feats per bloodline that would still take up a small book.

7)Why didn't the Sorcerer bloodlines, Oracle mysteries, Witch patrons grant them a bonus cantrip as well as 1st-9th level spells?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

deinol wrote:
I don't have a question, I just felt obliged to share a link to this Scientific American article on Tyrannosaurs.

Oooh! Very interesting! Thanks for the link!

Paizo Employee Creative Director

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Dragon78 wrote:

1)Does Golarion have any holidays similar to Halloween? or similar to any real world holidays?

2)Love the cover for dragon empire Gazetter, would you guys be against reusing it if you did a hard cover book for Tian Xia?

3)Yes like Clue, Murder on the orient express, many Sherlock Holmes books, in otherwords would you guys do a murder mystery that doesn't involve undead, evil outsiders,etc. but humans(and/or humaniods) involved? in a mansion would be nice(1st-4th level range).

4)How about magical and or cursed costumes/masks that grant abilities related to the creature, class, person, etc. that they emulate. would you use that as theme for a module?

5)Is there anyway to give a witch magehand, disrupt undead, or ray of frost?

6)Too many feats, never, but still what about feats that are more specialized like racial feats, class related feats, skill based feats(bonuses to skills, adding skills as class skills, etc.)? I would still like to see bloodline feats but even if you only had 3 feats per bloodline that would still take up a small book.

7)Why didn't the Sorcerer bloodlines, Oracle mysteries, Witch patrons grant them a bonus cantrip as well as 1st-9th level spells?

1) Yup. Jestercap's kinda like the "trick" part of trick or treat. Pages 248–249 of the Inner Sea World Guide list quite a few holidays, in fact.

2) If we do a hardcover book, we'll absolutely have different art on the cover.

3) Murder mysteries are among the hardest adventures to create—we've done a few before, but doing a new one in a mansion is certainly a high possibility.

4) Sure; as long as whoever wrote it did so well!

5) Not currently, unless your GM moves the spells onto the witch list.

6) We also generally don't put a lot of feats into books aimed at GMs, since they're so much a Player Character resource. The main problem with feat bloat is that any one PC only has a VERY limited number of feats he can ever use. That's not the case with spells and magic items; you can swap and change and switch them around all you want, replacing old stuff with new things. Can't really do that with feats, which makes it less attractive to me to keep doing new feats.

7) Because they didn't. Cantrips aren't actually spells, and as such don't have to follow the rules for spells.


I'd like to point out that the Winter Witch from Inner Sea Magic (I think) has Ray of Frost on her list of cantrips.

Also, Cantrips are spells but they are just never used up. I infer that the reason that the bloodlines / mysteries etc don't give cantrips is due to the lack of cantrips. You can find spells that fit a theme for other spell levels. But there are so few cantrips that you can't really do it without really stretching.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Cheapy wrote:

I'd like to point out that the Winter Witch from Inner Sea Magic (I think) has Ray of Frost on her list of cantrips.

Also, Cantrips are spells but they are just never used up. I infer that the reason that the bloodlines / mysteries etc don't give cantrips is due to the lack of cantrips. You can find spells that fit a theme for other spell levels. But there are so few cantrips that you can't really do it without really stretching.

There ya go! (Turns out I don't have everything in the game memorized, even the bits that I actually develop or write for it!)

Dark Archive

James Jacobs wrote:
6) We also generally don't put a lot of feats into books aimed at GMs, since they're so much a Player Character resource. The main problem with feat bloat is that any one PC only has a VERY limited number of feats he can ever use. That's not the case with spells and magic items; you can swap and...

On that note, what do you think of 'retraining' options, to allow someone to retire a feat that's no longer relevant to them, at some sort of monetary or opportunity cost? (Obviously, using it to get rid of prerequisite feats without also losing the feats it opened up wouldn't be an option!)

I'm less fond of retraining skill ranks, since it doesn't feel quite right thematically, but feats seem to represent training in specialized maneuvers / procedures / etc. that could be more easily abandoned to focus on new styles or techniques.

In a similar vein, in the 'old days' of 1st and 2nd edition, we used to use limited wish spells to organize spell books. (Yes, terrible use of such powerful magic, to make one's spell book orderly and indexed...) In 3.0, it became the go-to spell for a sorcerer who wanted to change his spells known, and get rid of lower-level spells that didn't 'age well' and replace them with spells that were more relevant to a mid to high level spellcaster. Would you consider this a viable use of the spell?


James Jacobs wrote:
Cheapy wrote:

I'd like to point out that the Winter Witch from Inner Sea Magic (I think) has Ray of Frost on her list of cantrips.

Also, Cantrips are spells but they are just never used up. I infer that the reason that the bloodlines / mysteries etc don't give cantrips is due to the lack of cantrips. You can find spells that fit a theme for other spell levels. But there are so few cantrips that you can't really do it without really stretching.

There ya go! (Turns out I don't have everything in the game memorized, even the bits that I actually develop or write for it!)

Hell, if someone asks me to recall the obscure details of stuff I've written, I couldn't do it.

And I just wrote one book!

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Set wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
6) We also generally don't put a lot of feats into books aimed at GMs, since they're so much a Player Character resource. The main problem with feat bloat is that any one PC only has a VERY limited number of feats he can ever use. That's not the case with spells and magic items; you can swap and...

On that note, what do you think of 'retraining' options, to allow someone to retire a feat that's no longer relevant to them, at some sort of monetary or opportunity cost? (Obviously, using it to get rid of prerequisite feats without also losing the feats it opened up wouldn't be an option!)

I'm less fond of retraining skill ranks, since it doesn't feel quite right thematically, but feats seem to represent training in specialized maneuvers / procedures / etc. that could be more easily abandoned to focus on new styles or techniques.

In a similar vein, in the 'old days' of 1st and 2nd edition, we used to use limited wish spells to organize spell books. (Yes, terrible use of such powerful magic, to make one's spell book orderly and indexed...) In 3.0, it became the go-to spell for a sorcerer who wanted to change his spells known, and get rid of lower-level spells that didn't 'age well' and replace them with spells that were more relevant to a mid to high level spellcaster. Would you consider this a viable use of the spell?

Honestly... I wholly embrace full-on rebuild your character retraining in games, for two reasons—a personal one and a business one.

PERSONAL: Being able to rebuild your character after a new book comes out is handy if your character is of a type that would greatly benefit from the new rules. If I started a campaign back when the Core Rulebook came out and a player decided to build a wizard who specializes in alchemy, I'd ABSOLUTELY let him rebuild his character from the ground up once the Advanced Player's Guide (and the alchemist class) came out. As long as the rebuilt character is essentially the same character in-world theme-wise and all that... I could really care less how the rules work to make that character a reality. On a purely logistical basis, I'd ask the player to rebuild his character between sessions, of course!

BUSINESS: Letting players rebuild their characters more often can only increase interest in our products, since that gives players more and more opportunities to use content from our books.


Is it weird that I consider you a role model?

...Is it odd that I have 14 aliases?


Other then the Beholder, Mindflare, Githyanki, Githzeri, and the Displacer Beast what monsters from the 3.5 base monster manual are intellectual properties?


1. Sorcerers, how frequently do you play them in your games?

2. Favorite Bloodline?

3. Second Favorite Bloodline?

4. Third Favorite Bloodline?

5. As background, how do you weave an undead bloodline into a character's development?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Vinland Forever wrote:

Is it weird that I consider you a role model?

...Is it odd that I have 14 aliases?

Maybe, and no!

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Dragon78 wrote:
Other then the Beholder, Mind flayer, Githyanki, Githzeri, and the Displacer Beast what monsters from the 3.5 base monster manual are intellectual properties?

Carrion crawler, umber hulk, kuo-toa, yuan-ti, and the slaadi pretty much rounds the list out, I believe, but I seem to usually forget some of them.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

BluePigeon wrote:

1. Sorcerers, how frequently do you play them in your games?

2. Favorite Bloodline?

3. Second Favorite Bloodline?

4. Third Favorite Bloodline?

5. As background, how do you weave an undead bloodline into a character's development?

1) Haven't yet played a sorcerer, in fact. Not that I can remember, at least.

2-4) Haven't really looked at them enough to make a list of favorites, honestly.

5) A few possibilities that come to mind: your character died as a child or baby but was resurrected; you were born from a mother who was already dead; you infused yourself with undead energy accidentally while messing with necromancy, or you were attacked by an undead that drains ability scores as a child and it drained you to 1 point and you grew up with that until finally getting it cured. I often think of sorcerers as superheroes... so any superhero genesis story works well for most sorcerers in my mind as well.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
James Jacobs wrote:
Set wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
6) We also generally don't put a lot of feats into books aimed at GMs, since they're so much a Player Character resource. The main problem with feat bloat is that any one PC only has a VERY limited number of feats he can ever use. That's not the case with spells and magic items; you can swap and...

On that note, what do you think of 'retraining' options, to allow someone to retire a feat that's no longer relevant to them, at some sort of monetary or opportunity cost? (Obviously, using it to get rid of prerequisite feats without also losing the feats it opened up wouldn't be an option!)

I'm less fond of retraining skill ranks, since it doesn't feel quite right thematically, but feats seem to represent training in specialized maneuvers / procedures / etc. that could be more easily abandoned to focus on new styles or techniques.

In a similar vein, in the 'old days' of 1st and 2nd edition, we used to use limited wish spells to organize spell books. (Yes, terrible use of such powerful magic, to make one's spell book orderly and indexed...) In 3.0, it became the go-to spell for a sorcerer who wanted to change his spells known, and get rid of lower-level spells that didn't 'age well' and replace them with spells that were more relevant to a mid to high level spellcaster. Would you consider this a viable use of the spell?

Honestly... I wholly embrace full-on rebuild your character retraining in games, for two reasons—a personal one and a business one.

PERSONAL: Being able to rebuild your character after a new book comes out is handy if your character is of a type that would greatly benefit from the new rules. If I started a campaign back when the Core Rulebook came out and a player decided to build a wizard who specializes in alchemy, I'd ABSOLUTELY let him rebuild his character from the ground up once the Advanced Player's Guide (and the alchemist class) came out. As long as the rebuilt character is essentially the same character...

Maybe you should tell that to the folks who run PFS. They're generally pretty hostile to rebuilds.


Dear James Jacobs:

#1 - I think my favorite creature ever published by Paizo is the Colour Out of Space. Not only is it super flavorful and fun for the campaign world that I run, but it also happened to have presented a real challenge to my players when I used it upon them. That being said, will I be excited when Bestiary 3 comes out?

#2 - Going back to my love of the Colour Out of Space, will we see any new oozes in Bestiary 3? How about incorporeal creatures?

#3 - Have you ever been tempted to make a Prestige Class that symbolizes an Order of warriors who specialize in mounted combat, specifically the riding of Tyrannosaurs?

#4 - Let's say you (or another creative writer for Paizo) comes up with an idea for Golarion's mythos. What's the process of getting said idea made canon? Do you all have a big round table discussion, or do people drop sealed envelopes on your desk, praying to one of the gods that you like their idea?

#5 - Have you ever been outvoted on a creative decision for Golarion? (Not necessarily the Core Rulebook line.)

#6 - Skyrim? Y [ ] N [ ]

#7 - When designing new content, what's your golden rule?

#8 - Do you eat bread with the butter-side up or the butter-side down?

#9 - Who would win in a fight to the death: Cthulhu or Asmodeus? (both Golarion versions)

#10 - Is it weird that I like scented candles? Particularly my newest candle, which makes my living quarters smell like delicious, fresh-baked cupcakes?

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
James Jacobs wrote:
BluePigeon wrote:

1. Sorcerers, how frequently do you play them in your games?

2. Favorite Bloodline?

3. Second Favorite Bloodline?

4. Third Favorite Bloodline?

5. As background, how do you weave an undead bloodline into a character's development?

1) Haven't yet played a sorcerer, in fact. Not that I can remember, at least.

2-4) Haven't really looked at them enough to make a list of favorites, honestly.

5) A few possibilities that come to mind: your character died as a child or baby but was resurrected; you were born from a mother who was already dead; you infused yourself with undead energy accidentally while messing with necromancy, or you were attacked by an undead that drains ability scores as a child and it drained you to 1 point and you grew up with that until finally getting it cured. I often think of sorcerers as superheroes... so any superhero genesis story works well for most sorcerers in my mind as well.

BITTEN BY A RADIOACTIVE ZOMBIE!

My GM just ran my party through Feast of Ravenmoor. I had a blast playing Kyra in the adventure.

I think the major plot point of

Spoiler:
Ghalaunder (sp?)
being the being that inspired the events of the town was great.

Is our spoilered friend due for a return?


DM_aka_Dudemeister wrote:
BITTEN BY A RADIOACTIVE ZOMBIE!

And thus the Great Zombie Apocolypse of Dudemeister's Campaign hath begun ....

In all seriousness, a particularly easy thing you can do is use the existence of a dhampir or a half-undead (from the upcoming Advanced Race Guide) as the "taint" that resulted in your bloodline powers. That, of course, is if you want to be boring.

If you want to NOT be boring, however, you could say that your character was a Lich and upon killing you, a druid uses some sort of epic reincarnation on you that changed you into your current race, abet as a cleaned-slate infant, and your bloodline is those powers trying to remanifest themselves. Seems like a pretty good GM hook to me ....

Dark Archive

Golden-Esque wrote:
If you want to NOT be boring, however, you could say that your character was a Lich and upon killing you, a druid uses some sort of epic reincarnation on you that changed you into your current race, abet as a cleaned-slate infant, and your bloodline is those powers trying to remanifest themselves. Seems like a pretty good GM hook to me ....

Any sort of previous undead existence could be an option. As a child, a shadow ran amok in your town, and you were killed. The village priest or a wandering saint or even some sort of angelic/celestial intervention destroyed the flock of shadows forming (including the one made out of you), and raised as many of the slain as he could. Substitute shadows for ghouls, or wights, or even zombies, and it works.

You came back a bit different, warped by your time as an undead creature, despite being otherwise a normal human child again.

All sorts of options. As a child, you had just been seized by a wight, and at that very moment, the priestess slammed open the door and blasted it to dust with holy power. But, where you had felt your life being torn from you, where the wight had gripped your arm, you felt something different, as if the wight was trying to reverse the process, and escape destruction by pouring itself into you! You still feel the darkness slithering around in your insides, a cold spot that moves like a night-slick serpent in your gut and whispers dark secrets and forbidden knowledge in your haunted dreams. You keep that a secret, because you know all too well what your kinsfolk would do if they thought that the evil undead had crawled into you and was lurking within, awaiting a chance for revenge...

Dark Archive

what are the costal regions of Andoran like? and do Andorans have cannons?


Dragon78 wrote:
Other then the Beholder, Mindflare, Githyanki, Githzeri, and the Displacer Beast what monsters from the 3.5 base monster manual are intellectual properties?

The WotC-released SRD file Legal.rtf lists beholder, gauth, carrion crawler, tanar’ri, baatezu, displacer beast, githyanki, githzerai, mind flayer, illithid, umber hulk, and yuan-ti as Product Identity. You absolutely may not use them in an OGL product. (The demons and devils were released in the SRD without the tanar’ri/baatezu designations.)

Slaadi were not included in the SRD, but weren't declared Product Identity there. You can't use the slaadi as presented in the 3.5 Monster Manual in an OGL product because of ordinary copyright law, not because of any specific declaration in the SRD (the same as most monsters released in the later Monster Manuals).

Slaadi were declared Product Identity in Unearthed Arcana, but only after the Slaad Lords were released under that name in the original Tome of Horrors. It is as a result not unambiguously clear as to whether you can invent your own race of slaadi and publish them in products that derive from the Tome of Horrors but do not derive from Unearthed Arcana—but it'd be pretty stupid to come up with a whole new race different in appearance, behavior, and stats from WotC's slaadi, and just call them slaadi anyway.

So, for all practical purposes, beholder, gauth, carrion crawler, tanar’ri, baatezu, displacer beast, githyanki, githzerai, mind flayer, illithid, umber hulk, yuan-ti, and slaadi.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Golden-Esque wrote:

Dear James Jacobs:

#1 - I think my favorite creature ever published by Paizo is the Colour Out of Space. Not only is it super flavorful and fun for the campaign world that I run, but it also happened to have presented a real challenge to my players when I used it upon them. That being said, will I be excited when Bestiary 3 comes out?

#2 - Going back to my love of the Colour Out of Space, will we see any new oozes in Bestiary 3? How about incorporeal creatures?

#3 - Have you ever been tempted to make a Prestige Class that symbolizes an Order of warriors who specialize in mounted combat, specifically the riding of Tyrannosaurs?

#4 - Let's say you (or another creative writer for Paizo) comes up with an idea for Golarion's mythos. What's the process of getting said idea made canon? Do you all have a big round table discussion, or do people drop sealed envelopes on your desk, praying to one of the gods that you like their idea?

#5 - Have you ever been outvoted on a creative decision for Golarion? (Not necessarily the Core Rulebook line.)

#6 - Skyrim? Y [ ] N [ ]

#7 - When designing new content, what's your golden rule?

#8 - Do you eat bread with the butter-side up or the butter-side down?

#9 - Who would win in a fight to the death: Cthulhu or Asmodeus? (both Golarion versions)

#10 - Is it weird that I like scented candles? Particularly my newest candle, which makes my living quarters smell like delicious, fresh-baked cupcakes?

1) If you liked the colour out of space because Lovecraft invented it, you'll be excited when Bestiary 3 arrives. If you liked the colour out of space because it presents a real challenge... you'll be excited when Bestiary 3 arrives as well. (NOTE: The colour out of space is NOT in the Bestiary 3...)

2) Yes. Both.

3) Nope, although I HAVE engineered bad guys riding on Rexes before. They were even BODAK Rexes!

4) Generally, all big major ideas for Golarion have to be run by me, and I get to decide if it's in or not. Erik, Vic, and Lisa are the only ones who has veto power over those decisions. That generally includes approval of all books (and outline generation of most). Wes Schneider and James Sutter and Rob McCreary and Mark Moreland also help with that decision making process, usually making the decisions on their own with the knowledge of what I'd like to see happen for the better good of Golarion.

5) Yup. Outvoted and/or convinced to change my decision after a well-reasoned argument. I'm the creative director, but Golarion isn't just for me. Compromising and adjusting is part of the job.

6) OMG Y!!!! CAN'T WAIT!!!

7) Make it interesting!

8) UP!

9) Cthulhu! Cause I like him better.

10) Nope; scented candles smell good! Except for the gross ones.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

DM_aka_Dudemeister wrote:

BITTEN BY A RADIOACTIVE ZOMBIE!

My GM just ran my party through Feast of Ravenmoor. I had a blast playing Kyra in the adventure.

I think the major plot point of ** spoiler omitted ** being the being that inspired the events of the town was great.

Is our spoilered friend due for a return?

Since "Feast of Ravenmoor" is based on a short story I wrote back during my college days, and said "spoilered friend" as been part of my game for well over a decade as a result... yeah, we'll be seeing more of him.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

ulgulanoth wrote:
what are the costal regions of Andoran like? and do Andorans have cannons?

The coastal regions are similar to the northern Mediterranean... maybe a little less warm, though, since the Inner Sea is more north of the Mediterranean.

No cannons, though. There are cannons in Alkenstar, and a some of them on the Filthy Lucre (the Hurricane King's ship) and perhaps a couple more elsewhere in the Shackles under the Hurricane King's control, and one in the Mwangi Expanse (stolen from Alkenstar by the Gorilla King)... but that's pretty much it for cannons in Golarion.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

see wrote:
So, for all practical purposes, beholder, gauth, carrion crawler, tanar’ri, baatezu, displacer beast, githyanki, githzerai, mind flayer, illithid, umber hulk, yuan-ti, and slaadi.

Actaully, add to that list the words "Guardinal" and "Eladrin," which is why Paizo has Azatas and Agathions.


Hi, i've read FAQ, but i've yet a small problem. If i wielding 2 weapon (withh or without TWF feats) do i apply my full str bonus or only half of it with the second one?
Example: Fighter +6+1 with Longsword and a torch. reading faq, if he has TWF feat he can strike with any combination of them at +6+1 if he make only 2 attacks, but if he want use 3 attack he must declare it and take proper malus. This fighter strike with the longsword +6 (adding full STR damage bonus), but the second one? He can add full STR bonus also if he strike with weapon in the secon hand (or off hand)?
Tnx

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