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Have you been to Belkzen recently? The entire place is one big sea. No land animals at all any more. Controlled by tribes of killer whales.
An aquatic nation run by awakened cetaceans? That could be hot. Better than Outsea, really.
Whether or not the existence of celestial and fiendish template killer whales on the summon monster list is a point in favor of orcas having souls I leave up to the Jesuits.
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Have you been to Belkzen recently? The entire place is one big sea. No land animals at all any more. Controlled by tribes of killer whales.An aquatic nation run by awakened cetaceans? That could be hot. Better than Outsea, really.
Whether or not the existence of celestial and fiendish template killer whales on the summon monster list is a point in favor of orcas having souls I leave up to the Jesuits.
These posts are just shameless Mikaze bait. I heartily approve. :)
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"Orcas". Was that a result of spell-checker tyranny? :)
It's more of a tic.
And now I'm all for the land of awakened cetaceans. Because a sperm whale with ten levels of blood rager sounds pretty good.
OK, wandering back to the topic here...
To me, the 'iconic' android would be Rudy Roughknight or Jet Enduro. And Rudy, at least, seemed to have the ability to grow.
Great throwing in the original Wild Arms reference there. Given the AP's location and the presence of androids, it appears quite appropriate.
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Just to add to the topic:
I am also waiting for Iron Gods more than for anything else cause since i first read about Numeria i would REALLY to like what everything there is all about (and since the Annihilator is one of my favorite golarion monster).
That said, my addition:
I am currently running an Kingmaker campaign, currently at the start of the second book, and when i was setting up the campaign months ago i came across the Android from Inner Sea Bestiary and, with my fascination for numeria, gave the option to one of my most experienced players(and biggest friend who i knew would help to make the campaign better and not try to take advantage) to make an Android refugee from Numeria who would go to Restov in search for a new place to live.
She (my friend created an female air elemental sorceress se we could change all elemental spells to electricity) didnt know about her past or what she EXACTLY is... she imagines she isnt truly human, but she doesnt know exactly what she is.
As part of the plot, i told the player he has different racial traits. He is still immune to emotion spells(cause of alien neurology) but she doesnt get the usual -4 to sense motive... actually she is MORE emotional than a common human! When she is subject to a TRUE emotion(not created by spell) she is more prompt to feel it intensely.
I changed the atributes to +2 Dex, -2 Con, +2 Cha and gave her the same vulnerability robots have (+50% electricity damage that past over any resistances) and that helped people dont suspect she is an android (despite she having the same body tatoos as a common android). Her skin is much more humanlike, just the blood is very artificial-like (like all common androids).
The plot behind this is:
She is an experiment from a numerian factory to make contacts with the natives, she is the most sucessful creation capable of feeling emotions much like the natives of this strange world, but she is still learning how to deal with them (so the greater intensity she feels) and she was created to be far more communicable, and in truth, to feel the need of people around her, like most human(so the +2 Cha).
As a disadvantage, her inner circuits are MUCH more fragile than of a common "alien" android and her excess sensitivity makes pain a little more harsh to deal with(so the -2 Con and electricity vulnerability).
Since the party dont have a good trapfinder, i encouraged him to take a level of rougue and proceed to take the Arcane Trickster prestige... i had some plot ideas. The factory she came from is very well hidden in easten numeria, but as soon as she gets the first level on arcane trickster she will have a memory unlocking, allowing her to know where the factory is and the only way to get in: Using the trickster ability to disable device at range to trigger a device that is otherwise hidden inside a solid metal wall... only someone with that ability and KNOWING where the device is can open the entrance to the factory and discover what lies inside.
I hope that gives a hint to the players that whoever created that place also had that ability...
I am still building the character personal plotline and what she(and the party) will discover once they get inside... That should probably happen around level 9, so i hope that happens after Iron Gods release so i can get more ideas from the AP.
I would be awesomely pleased if i discover they have the same idea to make factories that make diferent purpose androids... like variant traits from races.
What you people think of this plot?
PS: i am not native english speaker, so sorry for bad grammar.
Sounds like you've got a good game going. I do like the idea of different androids built for different purposes. But to an extent, the android race is just one race, and they're kind of already a new race and not just a body choice from Eclipse Phase.
Having had the spring festival to think about this, I'm not sure what Paizo is going to do with it but I suspect it won't be too similar to our home games. On the other hand, I'll mostly just grab what I want from the whole.
I'll go back to the original question, now that the article's been written I assume, and add in, do androids have a culture? Are they trying to build one? Do they want one? How important is the mystery of their origin? Would they care if a bunch of space whales showed up and said "We built you to explore the land masses of this planet." Would they feel compelled to do what their creators told them?
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I am currently running an Kingmaker campaign, currently at the start of the second book, and when i was setting up the campaign months ago i came across the Android from Inner Sea Bestiary and, with my fascination for numeria, gave the option to one of my most experienced players(and biggest friend who i knew would help to make the campaign better and not try to take advantage) to make an Android refugee from Numeria who would go to Restov in search for a new place to live.
That's a great hook. Kingmaker is a great place to play a member of an obscure or non-traditional race looking for a homeland, on a continent that otherwise doesn't have a specific place just for them (even gnomes and halflings, or half-elves and half-orcs, but also tieflings, androids, goblins, etc.). Or a culture or faith or whatever (Kalistrocracy looking to expand beyond Druma, Razmirites looking to expand beyond Razmir, etc.). Androids (or Razmiri...) are extra appropriate for this, because of how close they are to the Stolen Lands.
An android looking for a new land where they (and perhaps eventually, their people) can set up shop free of the Black Sovereign and his thugs, could be totally cool.
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I am currently running an Kingmaker campaign, currently at the start of the second book, and when i was setting up the campaign months ago i came across the Android from Inner Sea Bestiary and, with my fascination for numeria, gave the option to one of my most experienced players(and biggest friend who i knew would help to make the campaign better and not try to take advantage) to make an Android refugee from Numeria who would go to Restov in search for a new place to live.That's a great hook. Kingmaker is a great place to play a member of an obscure or non-traditional race looking for a homeland, on a continent that otherwise doesn't have a specific place just for them (even gnomes and halflings, or half-elves and half-orcs, but also tieflings, androids, goblins, etc.). Or a culture or faith or whatever (Kalistrocracy looking to expand beyond Druma, Razmirites looking to expand beyond Razmir, etc.). Androids (or Razmiri...) are extra appropriate for this, because of how close they are to the Stolen Lands.
An android looking for a new land where they (and perhaps eventually, their people) can set up shop free of the Black Sovereign and his thugs, could be totally cool.
And there's already a prescedent for such "refugee nations" with that one River Kingdom serving as the home of Galt's surviving nobility. :)
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There's nothing to prevent that. In fact, androids die of old age just like every other humanoid (though they don't appear any older, i.e. they don't get wrinkles and gray hair).
I do have a question though: are they immune to age effects?
can they age magically, or prematurely. or even naturally?
My android has no termination date.
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I've toyed around with androids before in Golarion, and I always run them as the eyes/ears/scouts of the Silver Mount's AI/Master Computer/Mainframe, trying to learn more about this strange new land that they've found themselves in.
I also view android wizards as extremely viable.
"So if I just do this... with this material... and I say this... this effect happens?"
Sounds pretty close to the Scientific Method to me. Do X properly and you reliably get Y result.
I intend to play as a white haired Android Brawler based on Roy Batty from Blade Runner.
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe...
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I take it you subscribe to the "magic is just science we don't understand yet" view, then.
It is completely incapable of being otherwise, in this, Golarion's, or any other imaginable universe.
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To try to explain my high-handed statement there:
"Science" isn't a thing. It isn't a block of laws of physics that you can compare and contrast to a block of laws of magic.
Science is the process of learning how things work, and of learning how to use the way things work to make new stuff.
The wizard in her tower, poring over books of lore, conducting strange experiments, using new applications of the laws of sympathy and contagion to create a spell no one has ever seen before? That wizard is a scientist.
The wizard using knowledge gathered over the course of generations to embed a series of spells into a mastercrafted object, creating a wondrous item? That wizard is an engineer.
These are just... inescapable. Even when a cleric casts a spell... some god somewhere either figured out how the spell worked, or figured out how to arrange reality so that the spell worked, and in either case the process of figuring out was a god doing science.
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To try to explain my high-handed statement there:
"Science" isn't a thing. It isn't a block of laws of physics that you can compare and contrast to a block of laws of magic.
Science is the process of learning how things work, and of learning how to use the way things work to make new stuff.
The wizard in her tower, poring over books of lore, conducting strange experiments, using new applications of the laws of sympathy and contagion to create a spell no one has ever seen before? That wizard is a scientist.
The wizard using knowledge gathered over the course of generations to embed a series of spells into a mastercrafted object, creating a wondrous item? That wizard is an engineer.
These are just... inescapable. Even when a cleric casts a spell... some god somewhere either figured out how the spell worked, or figured out how to arrange reality so that the spell worked, and in either case the process of figuring out was a god doing science.
Very Cool Put evil lurker :-). I think for me, that there is a touch of final fantasy, when it comes to androids. Looking forward to see the awsome pazio artwork and to read some magic android experiments.
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I take it you subscribe to the "magic is just science we don't understand yet" view, then.It is completely incapable of being otherwise, in this, Golarion's, or any other imaginable universe.
I disagree. IMO, reproducibility is essential to science. If person B repeats person A's actions exactly, with the same materials and same environment, they should get the same results. If the exact same circumstances don't produce the exact same result, then IMO it cannot qualify as science, it's just randomness. And magic can do that. (Note that I'm not saying *all* magic behaves like that -- I'm sure there's plenty of magic that can be worked like science -- but it is possible for certain kinds of magic to behave more randomly, which invalidates your "incapable of being otherwise in any imaginable universe" argument.)
Fine, disagree, but I think science has to follow rules, and not all magic follows rules.
Or maybe magic has rules, too, just that they aren't always understood?
Well clearly not everyone can do wizardly magic. You have to be this smart to ride this ride. Having a perfect mimic mime a wizard's everything won't result in a spell being cast.
I think the original intent behind the class is that it is an occultist, not a scientist. The ability to perform, and craft rituals and adhere to taboos isn't science.
That would just make it science that isn't understood yet. And while there can doubtless be magic like that, I unwaveringly feel that not all magic is like that.
If you have something with absolutely no rules or laws, something that's complete chaos that doesn't make any sense... well, there you go, but good luck doing anything with it, because it won't reliably do anything you want it to, ever. You might get "magical phenomena" out of something like that, but you wouldn't get any system of magic or people who used it to their benefit, because chaos. And once you slap even the slightest hint of probability on it, even so much as "we've determined that 35% of the time, doing this silly dance will cause a pink plush bear to materialize and explode," congratulations, you've just done a scientific study.
Well clearly not everyone can do wizardly magic. You have to be this smart to ride this ride. Having a perfect mimic mime a wizard's everything won't result in a spell being cast.
I think the original intent behind the class is that it is an occultist, not a scientist. The ability to perform, and craft rituals and adhere to taboos isn't science.
Crudely mimicking a cargo plane and airport won't make John Frum bring the cargo, but airplanes are still the products of real science and engineering. Similarly, a "perfect" mimic of a wizard would... study for years, train one's brain to accept spell patterns, and memorize the spell before casting it, and hence be an actual wizard. Just because person A doesn't know how to do it right, or doesn't have the tools to be able to do it right, doesn't make it not science.
The "taboos" and "rituals" a wizard performs are based on empirical study and observation, somewhere down the line, or nothing would happen. Someone discovered that these rituals worked. Someone worked out the principles of metamagic. NEW SPELLS CAN BE RESEARCHED THAT NO ONE HAS EVER CAST BEFORE. YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID. ...and I am going to sleep before I start banging my head against the wall in despair for humankind, sorry for shouting.
Whether androids sleep or not is something I'm interested in. Or needing to rest from forced march for that matter, such as if they're still stuck taking non-lethal damage from forced march (which I personally hope not) while being immune to fatigue. It's a cool visual for a character that relentlessly moves after its quarry.
An arm blaster/gun would be a cool implant (crossing fingers for something like that in upcoming Tech Guide). Want to build a Megaman/Protoman character.
What I'd like to know is, will we be getting info on how long androids live, where their thresholds for Middle Age/Old Age/Venerable/Maximum Lifespan are, how old is appropriate for a PC, is there a range of height/weight or are all androids just clones of a single male or female form...
Basically, the stuff that would get printed in an ARG appendix or the CRB's description section.
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What I'd like to know is, will we be getting info on how long androids live, where their thresholds for Middle Age/Old Age/Venerable/Maximum Lifespan are, how old is appropriate for a PC, is there a range of height/weight or are all androids just clones of a single male or female form...
Basically, the stuff that would get printed in an ARG appendix or the CRB's description section.
Graeme, in the Numeria book, it talks how there are two factions of Androids and how the Androids go through renewal sorta like artificial lifeforms version of the Samsaran or a Time Lord regeneration. Anyway, in the first volume of Iron Gods there is an Ecology of the Androids, so here is to hoping it will have additional information.
Really? I didn't see it in there... D'you have a page number?
There are offhand references to renewal all through the portions of the book that talk about android communities, but it never goes into any sort of detail. It sounds like an android body can last far longer than the life of the mind inhabiting it, so they reboot the "dead" as new people.
Creative Director
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As a teaser:
Androids don't rot when they die; being synthetic, their material decays differently and takes a LOT longer. An android killed by violence is dead and the body stops working, but it doesn't rot out like true biological flesh.
But when an android dies of old age, that's a different story!
Dammit, now I'm wishing it were already August 19th (because then I don't have to skip my birthday but the release date is very close).
