I love UM, but I've got something that's really bothering me (and couldn't find it with a board search).
Why do they affect reptiles? Just to get pedantic about it, it should be avians as the dinosaurs had far more in common with their modern descendants in terms of known behavior.
The decision further perplexes me because I'm dead certain that the good folks at Paizo know this fact.
This is a fantasy world, where dinosaurs are 'terror lizards'.
This is a fantasy world, where dinosaurs are 'terror lizards'.
A fantasy game made by people who pride themselves on biological accuracy in their monsters. Sorry, but flippancy doesn't cut it on this one.
If it did, the electric eel would be sub-type (aquatic).
This is a fantasy world, where dinosaurs are 'terror lizards'.A fantasy game made by people who pride themselves on biological accuracy in their monsters. Sorry, but flippancy doesn't cut it on this one.
No actually, it does.
If that really, really doesn't work for you, then consider that they could've came about differently than their analogous creatures in the real world.
1) I said that it was a nitpick, which means that I can change it. I know this.
2) I'd like to know the reason behind the decision when there is precedent to not be radically wrong when dealing with real-world creatures.
Conclusion - Actually, it doesn't.
There's no point in telling people that they can change things if they don't like it, by they way. That's an obvious solution and I change things that I don't care for all the time. So please, no more posts that are tantamount to telling me that I'm a moron with no imagination.
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I'm not sure who told you that you could just change it, because I or Umbral Reaver didn't. But you're right. Of course you can change it.
But let me try again.
1) Thematic: You could summon dinosaurs and a cold blooded scaly creature, or you could summon dinosaurs and a chicken. This also invokes the Rule of Awesome.
2) At the time when Dinosaurs were around, they were a lot closer to lizards than birds, owing to the fact that birds really didn't come around until after dinosaurs were gone.
I'm sure the decision was made because of number one.
Also, I'm fairly certain that Pteranodons are listed under Dinosaurs, and mention that they're lizards.
It'd be weird if you have an affinity with all creatures listed under Dinosaurs but one. It should be all or bust.
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ha! Dinosaur anda chicken :p
Terrorbirds (axe beaks) are Avians, too. ;)
But excellent point on the pteranodons there. My solution is to just leave out the secondary type as there are plenty of dinosaurs either way.
Now we need a Megafauna Shaman.
Personally, I would have been happy with a side box explaining the decision. Maybe it's simply because I'm so interested in fauna-based biology but it rubs my fur the wrong way when real-world animals get misrepresented. Especially on this subject as it was a very recent bone of contention in the paleontological world.
I know that I'm being ridiculously pedantic with this, by the way. For that, I apologize.
2) At the time when Dinosaurs were around, they were a lot closer to lizards than birds, owing to the fact that birds really didn't come around until after dinosaurs were gone.
That statement is very, very incorrect. I'll leave it at that.
2) At the time when Dinosaurs were around, they were a lot closer to lizards than birds, owing to the fact that birds really didn't come around until after dinosaurs were gone.That statement is very, very incorrect. I'll leave it at that.
Yea, I got my eras mixed up.
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Magic isn't science.
It doesn't bother me if an aquatic summoning list for a Fish-Shaman includes dolphins and whales and giant crustaceans, since that's the sort of stuff that 'feel right' on a fish-dude's summoning list.
Similarly, if a 'dinosaur shaman' calls up a combination of prehistoric saurians, reptiles (therapsids, dimetrodon, pliesours, acheosaurs, pteradons) and fish (dunkleotis), I'm cool with that.
Isn't the realization that dinosaurs are closer to birds than lizards a fairly recent discovery?
The father of the theory, something, something Huxley, was arguing it back in the 19th century, so it's been around, just not always taken seriously.
I'm fairly certain that the lizard hipped dinosaurs were more analogous to lizards while the bird-hipped ones were like birds, so if you're grouping both types of dinosaurs together then you need to select one or the other or both. I think they chose just lizards instead of both for balance reasons.
And the fact most dinosaurs look more like lizards and reptiles than the birds we see outside, and the fact that birds only descend from a group of dinosaurs (theropods, which only makes up a fraction of the dinosaurs).
For reference, Wikipedia (hey, it is a handy source...) lists the following types:
theropods (mostly bipedal carnivores and birds)
ankylosaurians (armored herbivorous quadrupeds)
stegosaurians (plated herbivorous quadrupeds)
ceratopsians (herbivorous quadrupeds with horns and frills)
ornithopods (bipedal or quadrupedal herbivores including "duck-bills")
sauropodomorphs (mostly large herbivorous quadrupeds with long necks and tails)
And another interesting fact... birds are descended from the lizard-hipped dinosaurs, not the bird-hipped. Strange, I know.
Plus, look up saurian in the dictionary. It mentions lizards, but not birds.
Of course magic isn't science.
Dinosaurs aren't magic, though. :p
And simply because this is a magic setting doesn't mean that real-world knowledge should be completely discarded. (ref. Electric Eel again).
At the very least, avians should have been included rather than not.
Thomas Henry Huxley and the theory of bird evolution.
And to show how extremely useless and nerd-irky this thread is - I don't even USE dinosaurs in my gaming. :p
i was more bothered by the number of creatures affected by the saurian shaman's totemic summons ability ... it is a considerably longer list than any of the other shaman archetypes, and makes the saurian shaman's ability much more powerful with no other drawbacks. all the snakes, monitor lizards, crocodiles, and dinosaurs ... more than 10 creatures. once you start adding templates, that's more than 40 additional variants ...
consider the bear shaman, with only 2 applicable creatures and 8 template-variants.
Creative Director
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I love UM, but I've got something that's really bothering me (and couldn't find it with a board search).
Why do they affect reptiles? Just to get pedantic about it, it should be avians as the dinosaurs had far more in common with their modern descendants in terms of known behavior.
The decision further perplexes me because I'm dead certain that the good folks at Paizo know this fact.
Two reasons.
1) By allowing saurian shamans to affect reptiles as well as dinosaurs, that widens their versatility and allows them to continue doing some of their tricks in games where dinosaurs aren't as common but reptiles are. I guess the theory was that not all games embrace the presence of dinosaurs, so it'd be better if the saurian shaman can also do stuff with/to/for reptiles as well. Not sure, because see #2 below.
2) Paizo's big dinosaur nerd (me) didn't have anything to do with the rules or development behind the saurian shaman, beyond telling the design team "I wanna see a saurian shaman in the book!"
If, in the end, you think that the saurian shaman should work with avians instead of reptiles, change it in your game. In my game, I'd get even MORE pedantic, I suspect, and not let them work with reptiles OR avians, because dinosaurs are neither. But then, in my games, dinosaurs are often as common as reptiles and birds, so it's not like my saurian shaman PCs are gonna be lonely.
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but lots of other shamans have it worse. Bear shamans get way less to choose from. Saurians get the most, with a judicious use of the term Reptile. ( and Dragon shamans get Lizards, but not all reptiles? but never get to actually turn into dragons?? )
If there's a concern about not having dinosaurs everywhere, shouldn't that apply to Dragon shaman's lists too? without dinosaurs, their list is more sparse than the saurian shaman. Though ... really, i feel for the teddy bear shamans out there.
Dragon shamans don't get anything to do with dragons, so that's another case entirely.
Of course magic isn't science.
Dinosaurs aren't magic, though. :p
And simply because this is a magic setting doesn't mean that real-world knowledge should be completely discarded. (ref. Electric Eel again).
At the very least, avians should have been included rather than not.
Thomas Henry Huxley and the theory of bird evolution.
And to show how extremely useless and nerd-irky this thread is - I don't even USE dinosaurs in my gaming. :p
I'd reread that article again if I was you:
Huxley took this to mean that small carnivorous dinosaurs had evolved through time to become birds.
Plesiosaurs? Crocodiles? Both of these bear some similarity to "modern" marine reptiles.
While velociraptors are awesome and belong in your game in some kind of Jurassic Park scenario, there are quite a lot of dinos out there that don't fit that description.
Dragon shamans don't get anything to do with dragons, so that's another case entirely.Sure they do, Komodo ones. :P
Bearded ones too! :P
Of course magic isn't science.
Dinosaurs aren't magic, though. :p
And simply because this is a magic setting doesn't mean that real-world knowledge should be completely discarded. (ref. Electric Eel again).
At the very least, avians should have been included rather than not.
Thomas Henry Huxley and the theory of bird evolution.
And to show how extremely useless and nerd-irky this thread is - I don't even USE dinosaurs in my gaming. :p
I'd reread that article again if I was you:
Huxley took this to mean that small carnivorous dinosaurs had evolved through time to become birds.Plesiosaurs? Crocodiles? Both of these bear some similarity to "modern" marine reptiles.
While velociraptors are awesome and belong in your game in some kind of Jurassic Park scenario, there are quite a lot of dinos out there that don't fit that description.
I know it all quite well.
Even though birds are the descendants of a particular line of dinosaurs, they still aren't dinosaurs. That would be like saying Canines and Ursines are the same creature because they have a common ancestor.
There's also the confusion over the word "dinosaur" and exactly what it means because it covers a large group of unrelated creatures that happened to live in the same time period.
I know it all quite well.Even though birds are the descendants of a particular line of dinosaurs, they still aren't dinosaurs. That would be like saying Canines and Ursines are the same creature because they have a common ancestor.
There's also the confusion over the word "dinosaur" and exactly what it means because it covers a large group of unrelated creatures that happened to live in the same time period.
I wouldn't say that's an apt comparison, because modern bears did not evolve from modern dogs, nor vise-verse. It's more like saying that proto-bear and bear are from the same family in this case. Therefore anything you have that affects "bear" will affect "bear", which both things can be considered.
I would say I'd want it to affect both reptiles and birds, rather than only one or the other, since you can affect "proto-reptile" and "proto-bird" using your class ability.