Have you noticed that War of the River Kings, Island of Empty Eyes, The Frozen Stars, Breaking the Bones of Hell and Tombs of Golarion (and maybe more, I don't know... ) have something in common?
A very careless NEREID blackmailed into compliance (or otherwise imperiled) by the BBEG because of her *SHAWL*!
My dear developer(s), what were you thinking...? Does anyone here know WHY a nereid can't fit her soul inside her own body and needs a shawl to live? And WHY she's stuck with a hardness 2, hp 6 shawl instead of an iceberg, a 2-tons statue of Kelizandri or even just a mithral full plate of speed?
OK Paizo, please have a word with the writers and just say NO to shawl abuse.
one thing the Fey seem to have a definite aversion, or even downright allergy to iron, especially "cold iron"... so yeah, they'd need full plate of alchemical silver or mithral... there ARE warrior fey who'd wear armor, they are just not typical of what fey are seen as, and closer to elves (just think of the Tuatha dé Danann of Irish legend)
Another, their presence is not natural in our world, and for some reason, they seem to have to put their souls in an item, whoever controls the item then controls the fey it is tied to... don't try to understand, that's an old meme that goes back to fairy tales... I've seen the selkies and their seal skin, the swanmay and their feather cape, mermaids or assimilable beings tied to a seashell or comb... it's always the same when somebody else acquires the item, he can control the Fey being or extract favors from it.
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The fairy with a magical cloth that can be used to coerce her (almost always "her," for some reason that gender theorists no doubt have had fun with) is a standard fantasy trope all over the world and goes back to prehistory.
You might as well ask why werewolves are always vulnerable to silver and not to, say, tin, or sharpened breadsticks.
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Werewolves are and have always been vulnerable to sharpened breadsticks, it's simply that it's extremely difficult to make a breadstick sharp and silver isn't that hard to get your hands on.
But the thing about tropes is that at some point they get tired and for novelty alone one should do something else (or at least subvert it or do something else unexpected with the familiar formula.) The clever nereid who puts her (or his for once? Fae should probably not conform to mortal notions of gender anyway) soul into something fairly durable but still cultivates the impression that the shawl is extremely important to them would suffice.
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I wonder how the playable Nereid race in Bestiary 6 will deal with this issue?
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The nereid has had this shawl-related issue since 2nd Edition; Paizo didn't add it themselves.
I wonder how the playable Nereid race in Bestiary 6 will deal with this issue?
The naiad (different spelling, closer to dryad) probably won't have this at all. ^_^
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Werewolves are and have always been vulnerable to sharpened breadsticks, it's simply that it's extremely difficult to make a breadstick sharp and silver isn't that hard to get your hands on.
It's true. You never hear of werewolves attacking an Olive Garden restaurant. With their copious use of garlic, it's also safe from vampiric predation.
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Have you noticed that War of the River Kings, Island of Empty Eyes, The Frozen Stars, Breaking the Bones of Hell and Tombs of Golarion (and maybe more, I don't know... ) have something in common?
A very careless NEREID blackmailed into compliance (or otherwise imperiled) by the BBEG because of her *SHAWL*!
My dear developer(s), what were you thinking...? Does anyone here know WHY a nereid can't fit her soul inside her own body and needs a shawl to live? And WHY she's stuck with a hardness 2, hp 6 shawl instead of an iceberg, a 2-tons statue of Kelizandri or even just a mithral full plate of speed?OK Paizo, please have a word with the writers and just say NO to shawl abuse.
Because the nereid follows mythology that was written by authors the better part of a millennium ago, who apparently should be shamed for not consulting charop boards first. Lots of fey were built on this tradition, including swanmays as well.
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And Selkies, and...
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The nereid has had this shawl-related issue since 2nd Edition; Paizo didn't add it themselves.
I wonder how the playable Nereid race in Bestiary 6 will deal with this issue?The naiad (different spelling, closer to dryad) probably won't have this at all. ^_^
Dryads are prone to having tree problems... won't naiads have river or spring probems?
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Because the nereid follows mythology that was written by authors the better part of a millennium ago, who apparently should be shamed for not consulting charop boards first. Lots of fey were built on this tradition, including swanmays as well.
I love the idea of ancient storytellers getting into a little room to discuss their mythological creatures:
"You took a vulnerability on a fey? A piece of cloth? Isn't that just asking for some adventurer or evil overlord to steal it?"
"Well, maybe, but at least I didn't take Dependence: Tree proximity like you did for your 'dryad'. How's she ever going to go anywhere?"
"Guys, guys! Look at THIS! If you take sunlight vulnerability, aversion to garlic, no reflection, and weakness: running water, look at what you can make!"
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Because the nereid follows mythology that was written by authors the better part of a millennium ago, who apparently should be shamed for not consulting charop boards first. Lots of fey were built on this tradition, including swanmays as well.I love the idea of ancient storytellers getting into a little room to discuss their mythological creatures:
"You took a vulnerability on a fey? A piece of cloth? Isn't that just asking for some adventurer or evil overlord to steal it?"
"Well, maybe, but at least I didn't take Dependence: Tree proximity like you did for your 'dryad'. How's she ever going to go anywhere?"
"Guys, guys! Look at THIS! If you take sunlight vulnerability, aversion to garlic, no reflection, and weakness: running water, look at what you can make!"
Oh gods and goddesses above and below, WHY DID YOU GIVE ME THIS IMAGE?!?!
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It'd *really* suck to be the storyteller at that competition.
Okay, someone dependent to water. Crud, done.
Tree... DANGIT!
Not quite sure WTF that was with the water and garlic and all that..
"A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."
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Thetis (the mother of Achilles) must have found some way around this weakness. The only time she was ever defeated in combat was when Zeus helped a mortal subdue her. The technique used seemed to consist of maintaining a grapple until she ran out of uses of Wild Shape or some similar ability.
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Dryads are prone to having tree problems... won't naiads have river or spring probems?The nereid has had this shawl-related issue since 2nd Edition; Paizo didn't add it themselves.
I wonder how the playable Nereid race in Bestiary 6 will deal with this issue?The naiad (different spelling, closer to dryad) probably won't have this at all. ^_^
""But how do you kill a river? Maybe stab it in the mouth."- Glory, JQ
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""But how do you kill a river? Maybe stab it in the mouth."- Glory, JQDryads are prone to having tree problems... won't naiads have river or spring probems?The nereid has had this shawl-related issue since 2nd Edition; Paizo didn't add it themselves.
I wonder how the playable Nereid race in Bestiary 6 will deal with this issue?The naiad (different spelling, closer to dryad) probably won't have this at all. ^_^
start with installing steelworks, tanneries and dyeing shops nearby... THEN dam it at the mouth.
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Does anyone here know WHY a nereid can't fit her soul inside her own body and needs a shawl to live?.
Ino and Odysseus.
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Thetis (the mother of Achilles) must have found some way around this weakness. The only time she was ever defeated in combat was when Zeus helped a mortal subdue her. The technique used seemed to consist of maintaining a grapple until she ran out of uses of Wild Shape or some similar ability.
Greek tales are generally based on unique encounters rather than generic species of creatures. And given the variety of authors, bestiary-level of consistency generally occurred only by accident.
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The water in a kappa's head...
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Greek tales are generally based on unique encounters rather than generic species of creatures. And given the variety of authors, bestiary-level of consistency generally occurred only by accident.Thetis (the mother of Achilles) must have found some way around this weakness. The only time she was ever defeated in combat was when Zeus helped a mortal subdue her. The technique used seemed to consist of maintaining a grapple until she ran out of uses of Wild Shape or some similar ability.
But what Greek tales described as unique monsters (Chimera, Medusa, I must be forgetting a few) became monster species in D&D, and stil are in PF.
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Have you noticed that War of the River Kings, Island of Empty Eyes, The Frozen Stars, Breaking the Bones of Hell and Tombs of Golarion (and maybe more, I don't know... ) have something in common?
A very careless NEREID blackmailed into compliance (or otherwise imperiled) by the BBEG because of her *SHAWL*!
My dear developer(s), what were you thinking...? Does anyone here know WHY a nereid can't fit her soul inside her own body and needs a shawl to live? And WHY she's stuck with a hardness 2, hp 6 shawl instead of an iceberg, a 2-tons statue of Kelizandri or even just a mithral full plate of speed?OK Paizo, please have a word with the writers and just say NO to shawl abuse.
Fey are linked to nature and some parts of nature are dependant of some things that are delicate and fragile, so it's sometimes very easy to kill them and break the blaance of nature. Nereids are simply a peersonnification of such a thing !!
What annoys me more is the fact that, as written, the nereid has more consitution than charisma, so if her shawl is stolen, a nereid could simply create a new one and never bother about the lost one ...
I would gladly fall for such a DM trick if Nereid had a constitution of 10, because in that case a stolen shawl would really be a life threatening risk ...
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What annoys me more is the fact that, as written, the nereid has more consitution than charisma, so if her shawl is stolen, a nereid could simply create a new one and never bother about the lost one ...
I would gladly fall for such a DM trick if Nereid had a constitution of 10, because in that case a stolen shawl would really be a life threatening risk ...
... you might want to look again at how losing the Shawl works.
A nereid’s shawl (hardness 2, hp 6) contains a portion of her life force. If the shawl is ever destroyed, the nereid takes 1d6 points of Constitution drain per hour until she dies. A nereid can craft a new shawl from water by making a DC 25 Will save, but each attempt takes 1d4 hours to complete. Attempts to destroy or steal a nereid’s shawl require the sunder or disarm attempts.
There's also nothing to suggest a Nereid can make a new one if the old one is still intact.
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Does anyone here know WHY a nereid can't fit her soul inside her own body and needs a shawl to live?
Because when the ancients of our world were passing the stories down from their forebears about the wild things of the woods there were no RPG's, science as we know it or message boards to ask these questions.
The creatures are based on their multiple centuries old stories from our own world and in those stories making the most efficient bad guy for the game system was not a consideration.
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But in translating those ancient stories into antagonists for roleplaying games, the authors of those games have to pick and choose about what aspects of those mythological beings should be adapted to the game and which should be ignored.
I mean, you're not going to have your RPG vampires be vulnerable to stakes, sunlight, decapitation, drowning, fire, silver, holy symbols, garlic, running water, counting, invitations,, aspen, oak, ash, maple, dogrose, wild rose, holly, juniper, millet, linden, mayflower, roses, lemon, rowan, wolfsbane, charcoal, werewolves, smashing mirrors, blood of dead things, blood of bats or rats or cats or snakes, starvation, the wrong emotions, sardine heads, soybeans, pumpkins, salt, and black dogs.
Even though you can find at least one story for each of those things where the undoing of a vampire is accomplished through those means. If you're setting up a game or a story then you need to pick and choose which aspects from folklore we want to use. So the question is "why have we chosen this one to be so central to this particular aspect of the nereid" or conversely "are there any other stories we can tell about nereids."
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... you might want to look again at how losing the Shawl works.
A nereid’s shawl (hardness 2, hp 6) contains a portion of her life force. If the shawl is ever destroyed, the nereid takes 1d6 points of Constitution drain per hour until she dies. A nereid can craft a new shawl from water by making a DC 25 Will save, but each attempt takes 1d4 hours to complete. Attempts to destroy or steal a nereid’s shawl require the sunder or disarm attempts.
Nereid has +14 Will ST, so she has 50% chances to success, and in average, she can almost make 3 tries before dying, and only 1 only if she rolls the maximum on the 4 drains and the craft (0.02% chances of happening)...
If she had to wait for the destruction of her shawl, she can just tell the thief that she won't obey and simply telle him to destroy the shawl while she runs away to craft a new one in a safe place.
So, Nereid without a shawl = not a damsel in distress !!
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But in translating those ancient stories into antagonists for roleplaying games, the authors of those games have to pick and choose about what aspects of those mythological beings should be adapted to the game and which should be ignored.
I mean, you're not going to have your RPG vampires be vulnerable to stakes, sunlight, decapitation, drowning, fire, silver, holy symbols, garlic, running water, counting, invitations,, aspen, oak, ash, maple, dogrose, wild rose, holly, juniper, millet, linden, mayflower, roses, lemon, rowan, wolfsbane, charcoal, werewolves, smashing mirrors, blood of dead things, blood of bats or rats or cats or snakes, starvation, the wrong emotions, sardine heads, soybeans, pumpkins, salt, and black dogs.
Even though you can find at least one story for each of those things where the undoing of a vampire is accomplished through those means. If you're setting up a game or a story then you need to pick and choose which aspects from folklore we want to use. So the question is "why have we chosen this one to be so central to this particular aspect of the nereid" or conversely "are there any other stories we can tell about nereids."
And the answer to that is, of course, "because the author and publisher want to sell the stories." Or, if you like a somewhat less sarcastic answer, "because the author and publisher want to tell vampire stories that will resonate with the prospective audience [and that will therefore entice them to buy the stories]." Most members of the prospective audience couldn't actually tell a rowan from a Venus fly trap, and, while your laundry list of folklore items is impressive, only about four or five of those are actually things that I'd expect people to be familiar with without a specialization in vampire folklore.
For 99% of the RPG playing (and buying) public, a vampire with a vulnerability to sardine heads would not be interesting, cool, or novel, but merely lame. I'd apply the same to a nereid swimming around in plate armor.
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... you might want to look again at how losing the Shawl works.
A nereid’s shawl (hardness 2, hp 6) contains a portion of her life force. If the shawl is ever destroyed, the nereid takes 1d6 points of Constitution drain per hour until she dies. A nereid can craft a new shawl from water by making a DC 25 Will save, but each attempt takes 1d4 hours to complete. Attempts to destroy or steal a nereid’s shawl require the sunder or disarm attempts.Nereid has +14 Will ST, so she has 50% chances to success, and in average, she can almost make 3 tries before dying, and only 1 only if she rolls the maximum on the 4 drains and the craft (0.02% chances of happening)...
If she had to wait for the destruction of her shawl, she can just tell the thief that she won't obey and simply telle him to destroy the shawl while she runs away to craft a new one in a safe place.
So, Nereid without a shawl = not a damsel in distress !!
50% chance of dying is a very big cause of concern and not something to simply brush aside.
"50% chance of success" and "average" are not assurances. They're not even "good" chances.
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Can I ask—is the title of this thread a reference to something? It's giving me deja vu every time I see it.
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Also, it really depends on how bold and independently-minded the nereid in question is. Some might be too frightened of death to take the risk, while others might be more reckless.
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Okay, so the nereid has to find, like, probably at least ten people, chain them up, generate water from their lungs and drain it into a vat...
...Man, a nereid in a post-apocalyptic desert wasteland could get creepy.
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Depending on what the person who has their shawl wants them to do yes, it might be preferable to gamble with dying. It might not. The problem with statistics here is you're assuming favorable conditions and the fact that dice are involved.Unless you have a different definition for "making a DC 25 Will save", "1d6 Con drain", and "1d4 hours", of course dice are involved. If you're saying the dice don't have an equal chance of generating any result, those are called "loaded dice" and you probably shouldn't use them. My results weren't based on "average rolls". They were made by simulating and summing all possible rolls and assuming they were equally likely.
The only "favorable conditions" are that the Nereid has access to water. That's the only requirement for making a shawl. It's not like making a magic item. And since the Nereid can literally generate water in something's lungs, she can probably get access to water very easily.
My point was once luck is involved statistics take a back seat.
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My point was once luck is involved statistics take a back seat.
So I supposed your PC only engage in combat when he has zero chances of failure, and then absolutely no challenge at all ??
Of all the nereids listed in the OP, I only encountered one of them :
And when our group found her, she was kept prisoner but once freed, well she does nothing else but asking the PCs to recover her shawl (and the artefact). To be honest, for the eternal guardian of a powerful artefact, that was rather disappointing ...
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My point was once luck is involved statistics take a back seat.So I supposed your PC only engage in combat when he has zero chances of failure, and then absolutely no challenge at all ??
Of all the nereids listed in the OP, I only encountered one of them :
** spoiler omitted **
No, but we're extremely wary if we knew we all had a 50% chance of dying.
50% chance of success also means 50% chance of failure.
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Put it another way...
if someone flips a coins and tells you to call it, but you'll die if you're wrong... would you stake your life on "heads"?
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They can probably try more than once, but not that many, as was pointed out they don't really have a way to heal the Con Drain. Whether they're successful or not they're going to take at the minimum 1d6 con drain.
I'm also not saying there would never be a time when they would rather risk death than face the alternative, but just flippantly disregarding the high risk of death as negligible is absurd.
And there's also the fact that they need a source of water in order to make the new shawl from too.
For example:
failure
success
Hey look at that, after 2 tries and 5 hours the Nereid succeeded, but she only has 2 CON now. And that's under optimal conditions, what if she had been hurt and had less health or had already attempted to make another Shawl? What if it took more than an hour to get to some water? Or if anyone interrupts her? If someone destroys her shawl do ya think they're just gonna leave her alone for that long?
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Can I ask—is the title of this thread a reference to something? It's giving me deja vu every time I see it.
Not sure, I just wrote the first thing that came to mind.
However thanks to you all for your input, maybe we'll see an 'official' explanation from Paizo someday, here or elsewhere.
Of all the nereids listed in the OP, I only encountered one of them :
** spoiler omitted **
To say the truth, I posted this thread after re-reading Island of Empty Eyes... Ah, nostalgia! We too played Kingmaker, and when our new party of merry pirates encountered the nereid Sefina in Island of Empty Eyes, we smelled *THE PLOT SAYS THE BBEG STEALS THE SHAWL!* right away.
Our solution? We still had the sovereign glue and the Salve of Slipperiness from Tempest Rising (and lots of alarm spells), and *THE PLOT SAYS* this nereid is automatically friendly (always a bad sign!) and "lacks any sense of modesty, preferring to swim and tan in the nude unless someone suggests she wrap herself in her shawl" (this means she never uses her shawl!). So, after some easy Diplomacy and Bluff rolls, Sefina allowed us to hide, ward and glue-to-an-hard-and-heavy-surface her shawl... The GM *WAS* amused (and changed the plot, of course)!Since then, I noticed that Paizo keeps (ab)using this 'Shawl Cliche', and I hoped this thread was helpful in *changing* this creative laziness...
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Honestly, after some recent inquiry, I did notice that the "someone stole her shawl and is controlling her" thing comes up pretty much every time.
I'd like to see a variation. Maybe she just got it back and is now paranoid and hostile towards everyone who comes by (like PCs). Or maybe it's just there... you know, in case the PCs are tempted.
If I ever get the chance, I might do that myself. ^_^