On Outsider Clans

[Hydraggon]

Now, throughout my readings of the various bestiaries, I began to notice a pattern.

A new planar faction would be introduced and given some lore, which is all well and good, but then they rarely get mentioned again, and usually only in passing. Not only that, additions to the small number of subraces that the clan starts of with rarely tends to be added onto. Asura were introduced, then they only got one new kind of subspecies that I know of, plus I don't think they've had a major part in Amy AP (to my knowledge). Same thing with Div, Qlippoth, Kytons, Demodands, and perhaps even the Sikhal and Manasaputra if the pattern continues.

What do you think? Should Paizo stick with what they have in future bestiaries and splatbooks?

[Nox Aeterna]

Personally i would prefer to have more on the existing types than having new types made, but im biased since i greatly favor having more azatas at every turn.

With that said , i can understand from a dev point of view , it makes more sense to make new types , since it expands on the lore in general and the DM can just make creatures for a type anyway.

[Luthorne]

I think no, they shouldn't stick with what they have. Even if the new ones don't get expanded on as much, it can still be valuable for allowing new kinds of settings for games where it's less a war between angels and demons in the background, and more of oni versus kami for a more Japanese-inspired setting, or Asura vs. Manasaputra vs. other lesser divine entities (perhaps empyreal lords in general), divs and genies and peris, etc. In short, they're useful to have in the toolboxes of DMs to shake things up and try alternate kinds of settings. Perhaps a DM wants to run a cosmology where demons and angels don't even exist.

Of course, I would like more support for these outsider races myself, there are a huge number of demons for example, expanding on these toolboxes for DMs, but I would still rather have them than not, and if they can come up with interesting and new outsider races, well, I'm still interested to see what they come up with, though I would personally prefer more that are Chaotic Neutral and Lawful Neutral.

[Mechagamera]

I have mixed feelings on this. On one hand, it would be nice to have some more good/neutral outsider clans to justify having some more unchained summoner eidolon types (I suspect the reason there were 4 good/4 neutral/4 evil was because there are only 4 significant good outsider types and Paizo didn't want to make a class that was pro-evil [although given the options for the eidolons, evil unchained summoners are better off than good ones.]).

On the other hand, it would be nice to have something like a new Salim Ghadafar novel by James Sutter to give some more detail on how all these outsiders interact. Or at least a throw away line somewhere like "div? I thought that was a type of daemon" followed by some exposition about how they used to be rare, but now they have increased in number so scholars have encountered enough to figure out they are their own thing (or the gods have finally bothered telling clerics about them).

[VargrBoartusk]

Hydraggon wrote:

Now, throughout my readings of the various bestiaries, I began to notice a pattern.

A new planar faction would be introduced and given some lore, which is all well and good, but then they rarely get mentioned again, and usually only in passing. Not only that, additions to the small number of subraces that the clan starts of with rarely tends to be added onto. Asura were introduced, then they only got one new kind of subspecies that I know of, plus I don't think they've had a major part in Amy AP (to my knowledge). Same thing with Div, Qlippoth, Kytons, Demodands, and perhaps even the Sikhal and Manasaputra if the pattern continues.

What do you think? Should Paizo stick with what they have in future bestiaries and splatbooks?

Quips and Demodands are both from older D&D.. The 3.5 abyss books have stuff for Quips and 2nd edition Planescape somewhere for Demodands though IIRC they used to only ever have three types period.