Do you think that the unchained rogue's finesse training should apply to damage from thrown weapons? Considering how much Merisiel loves her knively knives, it would make sense for her agility to apply to both melee and ranged damage with them.
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Have you finished Dark Souls 3 yet?Yup; finished a few weeks ago. With enough time to start and finish Doom before Paizocon, but not enough to start the Fallout 4 DLC.Ooo, what did you think of the Untended Graves?
What about the Final Boss?
What ending did you pick?
The untended graves were spooky and interesting but too short. Paled in comparasion to Archdragon Peak, which was my FAVORITE area in the game.
I found the final boss to be kind of underwhelming.
I picked the
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Do you think that the unchained rogue's finesse training should apply to damage from thrown weapons? Considering how much Merisiel loves her knively knives, it would make sense for her agility to apply to both melee and ranged damage with them.
I do think exactly this.
Is another Mythic adventure on the list of ideas for a future AP?
Would you say that the answers given in this thread are good summaries for the various Adventure Paths?
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Would you say that the answers given in this thread are good summaries for the various Adventure Paths?
Not really. I'd suggest our official summaries instead if someone were to ask me for summaries of our Adventure Paths.
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I was thinking of running the PFS scenario Returned to Sky in between Lords of Rust and The Choking Tower. Not sure how much you have to do with the making of PFS Scenarios, but Returned to Sky has an AI in it and is near Chesed, so it's close enough to Scrapwall for a pitstop.
Anyways, instead of the whole Sky Key plotline I was thinking of using the AI Phalanx in that scenario as the key plot point, namely that it might have been encountered by Casandalee at some point.
What kind of information might such an AI know about her or Unity without her telling him anything? Given Casandalee was fleeing from the AI Unity how would she have reacted to this other AI and would she have passed on any information about Unity or herself? Or would this be a case of "Sorry PCs, your useful info is in another castle dungeon?"
Would Kulgara and Hellion know about some random AI? If not, it's a little harder to motivate this side quest. I was thinking something along the lines of Kulgara considering taking out Phalanx as practice for when they were plotting to take on Unity.
Is there any relationship between the Vanderborens and the Vancaskerkins?
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Have you finished Dark Souls 3 yet?Yup; finished a few weeks ago. With enough time to start and finish Doom before Paizocon, but not enough to start the Fallout 4 DLC.Ooo, what did you think of the Untended Graves?
What about the Final Boss?
What ending did you pick?
The untended graves were spooky and interesting but too short. Paled in comparasion to Archdragon Peak, which was my FAVORITE area in the game.
I found the final boss to be kind of underwhelming.
I picked the ** spoiler omitted ** ending, as it was more or less the only one available, due to me screwing up some NPC quests and the like.
I'm at the Peak right now! Ugh, stupid summoners...
I'm sorry you didn't like the Final Boss, what bosses did you like from the game?
Yeah, I've screwed up a few questline as well ;_;
Was really tempted to start over after I found out.
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I was thinking of running the PFS scenario Returned to Sky in between Lords of Rust and The Choking Tower. Not sure how much you have to do with the making of PFS Scenarios, but Returned to Sky has an AI in it and is near Chesed, so it's close enough to Scrapwall for a pitstop.
Spoiler:Anyways, instead of the whole Sky Key plotline I was thinking of using the AI Phalanx in that scenario as the key plot point, namely that it might have been encountered by Casandalee at some point.
What kind of information might such an AI know about her or Unity without her telling him anything? Given Casandalee was fleeing from the AI Unity how would she have reacted to this other AI and would she have passed on any information about Unity or herself? Or would this be a case of "Sorry PCs, your useful info is in another castle dungeon?"Would Kulgara and Hellion know about some random AI? If not, it's a little harder to motivate this side quest. I was thinking something along the lines of Kulgara considering taking out Phalanx as practice for when they were plotting to take on Unity.
Beyond approving the general outlines of scenarios and overall season plots for PFS, I really don't have a lot of interaction with those adventures at all, and as such I can't really say whether introducing a scenario from that campaign into Iron Gods is a good idea or a bad one. It would depend entirely on the GM's preference.
The AI elements in Iron Gods are pretty intertwined, and adding another to the mix would, in my opinion, complicate and muddy the plot. I wouldn't do it.
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I'm sorry you didn't like the Final Boss, what bosses did you like from the game?
My favorite 3 bosses (to pick an arbitrary number) are...
How would you go about designing a gigantic-but-immobile monster?
Something like Mother Brain from Metroid, or C'thun from WoW, or the thing in the Vault from Borderlands. A great big fountain/mountain/pillar of death type of enemy.
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I'm sorry you didn't like the Final Boss, what bosses did you like from the game?
My favorite 3 bosses (to pick an arbitrary number) are...
** spoiler omitted **
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I'm sorry you didn't like the Final Boss, what bosses did you like from the game?
My favorite 3 bosses (to pick an arbitrary number) are...
** spoiler omitted **
Hmm, just went back and checked and while there's fewer humanoid bosses than in 2 (which while having more monstrous bosses than the other two games also has more bosses altogether at nearly 30!), but still more than 1, which basically only had two.
We'll just have to wait and see what all goodies the expansion brings :3
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I'm sorry you didn't like the Final Boss, what bosses did you like from the game?
My favorite 3 bosses (to pick an arbitrary number) are...
** spoiler omitted **
Hmm, just went back and checked and while there's fewer humanoid bosses than in 2 (which while having more monstrous bosses than the other two games also has more bosses altogether at nearly 30!), but still more than 1, which basically only had two.
We'll just have to wait and see what all goodies the expansion brings :3
By "humanoid" bosses in this case, I mean "bosses who look like humans dressed in armor." Dark Souls 3 had far too many "people in armor" bosses for my likes.
I'm asking for your opinion, JJ, not a rules interpretation.
How would you rewrite the spell, Celestial Healing?
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/c/celestial-healing
Link there. It's not on the Paizo site yet.
It's counterpart, Infernal Healing, is here:
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/i/infernal-healing
Differences: At level 1, the default Caster level for scrolls, wands and potions of level 1 spells, Celestial Healing heals NO damage.
At level 20, Celestial Healing finally heals exactly the same amount of damage as Infernal Healing does at level 1.
A healing spell powered by diabolic sources is effectively 10x better then a spell powered by celestial energies who have a BIAS to healing.
I'd really like this pointed out to someone who edits spells for balance, but how would YOU rewrite this? Or simply not use it?
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I'm asking for your opinion, JJ, not a rules interpretation.
How would you rewrite the spell, Celestial Healing?
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/c/celestial-healing
Link there. It's not on the Paizo site yet.
It's counterpart, Infernal Healing, is here:
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/i/infernal-healing
Differences: At level 1, the default Caster level for scrolls, wands and potions of level 1 spells, Celestial Healing heals NO damage.
At level 20, Celestial Healing finally heals exactly the same amount of damage as Infernal Healing does at level 1.
A healing spell powered by diabolic sources is effectively 10x better then a spell powered by celestial energies who have a BIAS to healing.
I'd really like this pointed out to someone who edits spells for balance, but how would YOU rewrite this? Or simply not use it?
I would remove it from the game.
Infernal healing is as much about temptation to utilize evil as it is about providing healing for a category of creatures that have more difficulty getting magic healing than most others (since evil clerics can't generally channel to heal). Furthermore, I'm a big fan of asymmetry in design. Infernal healing is more interesting if there's NOT an "opposite" spell.
A spell that has a duration of 1 round/2 levels should have a minimum duration of 1 round, in other news.
I'm asking for your opinion, JJ, not a rules interpretation.
How would you rewrite the spell, Celestial Healing?
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/c/celestial-healing
Link there. It's not on the Paizo site yet.
It's counterpart, Infernal Healing, is here:
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/i/infernal-healing
Differences: At level 1, the default Caster level for scrolls, wands and potions of level 1 spells, Celestial Healing heals NO damage.
At level 20, Celestial Healing finally heals exactly the same amount of damage as Infernal Healing does at level 1.
A healing spell powered by diabolic sources is effectively 10x better then a spell powered by celestial energies who have a BIAS to healing.
I'd really like this pointed out to someone who edits spells for balance, but how would YOU rewrite this? Or simply not use it?
I would remove it from the game.
Infernal healing is as much about temptation to utilize evil as it is about providing healing for a category of creatures that have more difficulty getting magic healing than most others (since evil clerics can't generally channel to heal). Furthermore, I'm a big fan of asymmetry in design. Infernal healing is more interesting if there's NOT an "opposite" spell.
A spell that has a duration of 1 round/2 levels should have a minimum duration of 1 round, in other news.
What about healing for those evil clerics who aren't quite into devils? A demon-worshipper using infernal healing doesn't feel right.
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Any thoughts on the fan-theory that residents of Golarion don't go nuts upon encountering Lovecraftian monstrosities because they're more desensitized to such things than a person from Earth would? The rationale is that the horror Lovecraft often writes about is that of one's worldview being shattered, that you've been wrong your whole life about what's "normal," and that to the Golarion resident, crazy-reality-bending stuff happens all the time, and that horrific monsters lurk in the dark places is pretty common knowledge, so encountering something like a mi-go or Yithian isn't as scary. Of course towering monstrosities like the Great Old Ones and Elder Gods are still scary, they're above the average adventurer's pay grade. What do you think?
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Any thoughts on the fan-theory that residents of Golarion don't go nuts upon encountering Lovecraftian monstrosities because they're more desensitized to such things than a person from Earth would? The rationale is that the horror Lovecraft often writes about is that of one's worldview being shattered, that you've been wrong your whole life about what's "normal," and that to the Golarion resident, crazy-reality-bending stuff happens all the time, and that horrific monsters lurk in the dark places is pretty common knowledge, so encountering something like a mi-go or Yithian isn't as scary. Of course towering monstrosities like the Great Old Ones and Elder Gods are still scary, they're above the average adventurer's pay grade. What do you think?
I think that fan-theory is 100% wrong and misinformed.
There are plenty of ways for Lovecraftian monsters to drive those who encounter them insane. All Great Old Ones have an unspeakable presence and an insanity defensive abilty, for example. Shoggoths surround themselves with maddening cacophony that causes confusion and inflicts Wisdom damage. Yithians cause amnesia. Hounds of Tindalos cause damage and confusion to anyone trying to read its mind. Leng spiders can use insanity as a spell-like ability and use poison that causes confusion. The colour out of space creates a weird sort of mental illness with its aura of lassitude. Flying polyps exude overwhelming fear with their frightful presences. Mi-gos can inflict Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma damage by doing sneak attack with their evisceration ability—and damage to your mental scores is one way you can contract ANY form of lasting madness. And so on.
If none of that is enough to justify Lovecraftian monsters having abilities that drive you crazy, then I guess you'll just have to wait for Horror Adventures' optional sanity rules for something more akin to Call of Cthulhu's sanity damage rules.
Any thoughts on the fan-theory that residents of Golarion don't go nuts upon encountering Lovecraftian monstrosities because they're more desensitized to such things than a person from Earth would? The rationale is that the horror Lovecraft often writes about is that of one's worldview being shattered, that you've been wrong your whole life about what's "normal," and that to the Golarion resident, crazy-reality-bending stuff happens all the time, and that horrific monsters lurk in the dark places is pretty common knowledge, so encountering something like a mi-go or Yithian isn't as scary. Of course towering monstrosities like the Great Old Ones and Elder Gods are still scary, they're above the average adventurer's pay grade. What do you think?I think that fan-theory is 100% wrong and misinformed.
There are plenty of ways for Lovecraftian monsters to drive those who encounter them insane. All Great Old Ones have an unspeakable presence and an insanity defensive abilty, for example. Shoggoths surround themselves with maddening cacophony that causes confusion and inflicts Wisdom damage. Yithians cause amnesia. Hounds of Tindalos cause damage and confusion to anyone trying to read its mind. Leng spiders can use insanity as a spell-like ability and use poison that causes confusion. The colour out of space creates a weird sort of mental illness with its aura of lassitude. Flying polyps exude overwhelming fear with their frightful presences. Mi-gos can inflict Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma damage by doing sneak attack with their evisceration ability—and damage to your mental scores is one way you can contract ANY form of lasting madness. And so on.
If none of that is enough to justify Lovecraftian monsters having abilities that drive you crazy, then I guess you'll just have to wait for Horror Adventures' optional sanity rules for something more akin to Call of Cthulhu's sanity damage rules.
But aren't the natives of Golarion more accustomed to the idea that monsters and magic, particurlarly of the crazy nasty type, do exist?
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But aren't the natives of Golarion more accustomed to the idea that monsters and magic, particurlarly of the crazy nasty type, do exist?
Doesn't mean they're not afraid of them. Us folks are accustomed to the fact that serial killers and spiders and sharks and ebola exist, but that doesn't mean you're not afraid of them.
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I was thinking of running the PFS scenario Returned to Sky in between Lords of Rust and The Choking Tower. Not sure how much you have to do with the making of PFS Scenarios, but Returned to Sky has an AI in it and is near Chesed, so it's close enough to Scrapwall for a pitstop.
** spoiler omitted **
Beyond approving the general outlines of scenarios and overall season plots for PFS, I really don't have a lot of interaction with those adventures at all, and as such I can't really say whether introducing a scenario from that campaign into Iron Gods is a good idea or a bad one. It would depend entirely on the GM's preference.
The AI elements in Iron Gods are pretty intertwined, and adding another to the mix would, in my opinion, complicate and muddy the plot. I wouldn't do it.
That only makes me want to do it more ;). Partly because when someone says something isn't a good idea that makes you want to do it more. I guess the simplest thing to do is just make it a red herring as I prefer there to be at least some red herrings in a long campaign.
Since the topic of Infernal Healing has come up: how many times would you let someone use that spell before their alignment was affected? Would using a wand of it count the same as casting the spell yourself for effects on your alignment?
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But aren't the natives of Golarion more accustomed to the idea that monsters and magic, particurlarly of the crazy nasty type, do exist?Doesn't mean they're not afraid of them. Us folks are accustomed to the fact that serial killers and spiders and sharks and ebola exist, but that doesn't mean you're not afraid of them.
I'm not afraid of spiders! They're cute!
If a flumph were to take class levels, what class would they most likely gravitate towards?
What are some good, mundane ways to justify someone being an active combatant for years yet still somehow being first level (particularly an elf)?
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Since the topic of Infernal Healing has come up: how many times would you let someone use that spell before their alignment was affected? Would using a wand of it count the same as casting the spell yourself for effects on your alignment?
Would depend on circumstances and how the caster behaved when they cast the spell. If they seemed ashamed about it and regretful about having to do it, it'd take more castings than if they were blase or eager about casting the spell. But not MANY more. A blase/eager spellcaster might switch alignments with only 1 or 2 castings, but a regretful one would probably take 3 or 4.
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If a flumph were to take class levels, what class would they most likely gravitate towards?
What are some good, mundane ways to justify someone being an active combatant for years yet still somehow being first level (particularly an elf)?
Flumphs are goofy. I wouldn't use them at all, let alone give them class levels. They'd probably avoid classes that have abilities that require you to use hands... aka all of them, more or less. Goofy monsters. Do Not Like.
If you're talking about an NPC (and I assume you are) then the GM decides when they level up. The VAST majority of folks who remain 1st level do so simply because they do not have the destiny/fate to be anything more than 1st level. Not everyone is equally capable of achieving greatness.
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Since the topic of Infernal Healing has come up: how many times would you let someone use that spell before their alignment was affected? Would using a wand of it count the same as casting the spell yourself for effects on your alignment?Would depend on circumstances and how the caster behaved when they cast the spell. If they seemed ashamed about it and regretful about having to do it, it'd take more castings than if they were blase or eager about casting the spell. But not MANY more. A blase/eager spellcaster might switch alignments with only 1 or 2 castings, but a regretful one would probably take 3 or 4.
Would using a wand affect this any? If not, then a huge chunk of characters in PFS would have shifted to evil.
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Do you have problems with goofy stuff in general or just goofy monsters? Like, are goofy characters and animals okay?
Also, my players are about to start the Misgivings part of the Skinsaw Murders. So I'm planning ahead for the Xanesha since that is most dangerous encounter in the book. How much stuff Ironbriar knows exactly about Xanesha and lamia matriarchs? Like does he know specific spelllike abilities she has, or just that she can do enchantment and illusion magic and that her touch causes wisdom damage?
You mentioned several times that one of the reason TSR got into financial trouble was because they fragmented the player base with so many settings (Mystara, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Spelljammer, Dark Sun, Planescape, Birthright, some others I'm forgetting). While having two settings (Pathfinder and Starfinder) isn't quite so many, are you worried about fragmentation happening again? Why or why not?
What do you think of this set of variant feats?
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Would using a wand affect this any? If not, then a huge chunk of characters in PFS would have shifted to evil.Since the topic of Infernal Healing has come up: how many times would you let someone use that spell before their alignment was affected? Would using a wand of it count the same as casting the spell yourself for effects on your alignment?Would depend on circumstances and how the caster behaved when they cast the spell. If they seemed ashamed about it and regretful about having to do it, it'd take more castings than if they were blase or eager about casting the spell. But not MANY more. A blase/eager spellcaster might switch alignments with only 1 or 2 castings, but a regretful one would probably take 3 or 4.
Using a wand is no different. If I were in charge of PFS (and I'm obviously not) then yes, there would have been a huge chunk of characters in PFS shifting to evil. Which, if folks really ARE blasé about using an evil spell, is accurate.
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Do you have problems with goofy stuff in general or just goofy monsters? Like, are goofy characters and animals okay?
Also, my players are about to start the Misgivings part of the Skinsaw Murders. So I'm planning ahead for the Xanesha since that is most dangerous encounter in the book. How much stuff Ironbriar knows exactly about Xanesha and lamia matriarchs? Like does he know specific spelllike abilities she has, or just that she can do enchantment and illusion magic and that her touch causes wisdom damage?
Look at the way goblins behave in Burnt Offerings. Obviously, I have no problem with goofy behavior in monsters. But goofy design is not something I'm as fond of. For the flumph, the combination of it being so much about diarrhea jokes AND being lawful good is too much for me to take seriously.
As for Ironbriar, as detailed at the end of the column on page 118 of the Hardcover edition of Runelourds, he can indeed provide the PCs a brief description of the lamia matriarch's abilities (in addition to details on her minions and their locations in the clocktower).
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You mentioned several times that one of the reason TSR got into financial trouble was because they fragmented the player base with so many settings (Mystara, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Spelljammer, Dark Sun, Planescape, Birthright, some others I'm forgetting). While having two settings (Pathfinder and Starfinder) isn't quite so many, are you worried about fragmentation happening again? Why or why not?
I'm not too worried. Starfinder is more than a different setting—it's a different game. It uses the same rules, but it's still a different game. A better comparasion would be to compare it to the relationship between D&D and Star Frontiers or D&D and Alternity. And even then, the campaign setting for Starfinder is VERY compatible with Golarion—it's set in a very similar (perhaps even parallel) universe, mostly separated from Golarion by time, not location, and if things work out the way I hope they will, you'll be able to use a bunch of content from each setting interchangeably to a certain extent to create a game like what we did with Iron Gods, or to have your Starfinder characters land on a planet with medieval technology but more magic and have adventures.
Whether or not it does cause fragmentation, I suppose we'll see in a few years, but still, taking it slowly and taking a decade to convince customers we're in it for the long run in supporting their setting rather than coming up with new settings every year or every six months is a pretty important distinction.
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What do you think of this set of variant feats?
I don't think of them at all. As a rule, I avoid doing public reviews or critiques of homebrew content or 3rd party content, both to avoid hurting feelings or fostering implications of favoritism but also for legal reasons and for time managment reasons.
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What if you had a rifle and a clear shot?Since I see you're a fan of bigfoot/sasquatch gotta ask what you'd do if you came across one?HOPEFULLY I'd be quick enough to take a video or at least a picture of it... but I suspect I might also run away in fear. Might do both!
Follow up: do you think one bullet would be enough to kill Chewbacca?
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What if you had a rifle and a clear shot?Since I see you're a fan of bigfoot/sasquatch gotta ask what you'd do if you came across one?HOPEFULLY I'd be quick enough to take a video or at least a picture of it... but I suspect I might also run away in fear. Might do both!
I would not take the shot. I would rather be known as one more person who says they saw Bigfoot than the one who killed a sasquatch and got famous on its corpse.
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Follow up: do you think one bullet would be enough to kill Chewbacca?What if you had a rifle and a clear shot?Since I see you're a fan of bigfoot/sasquatch gotta ask what you'd do if you came across one?HOPEFULLY I'd be quick enough to take a video or at least a picture of it... but I suspect I might also run away in fear. Might do both!
Chewbacca < bigfoot.
So... yes. I do.
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Are you familiar with the term Samsquanch?
Unrelated: I assume the disappearance of Golarion in Starfinder is its big mystery equivalent of Aroden's death. Are those big mysteries related? Ie. if we understood how Aroden died would that then make it clear why the gods whisked away the planet in Starfinder?
James I'm a GM and I discourage my PCs from picking certain monster races as PCs by telling them that society is likely to take issue with them. For example Sure you might be a nice drow but all the drow that have been heard of have been demon worshipping psychopaths. You enter that village and you're going to attract the attention of the guards. Who are constantly going to watch your every move at best and try and kill you at worst. I mean in a fantasy setting people generally don't care if your a good troll if every other troll they've heard of eats people. Is this fair?
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Are you familiar with the term Samsquanch?
Unrelated: I assume the disappearance of Golarion in Starfinder is its big mystery equivalent of Aroden's death. Are those big mysteries related? Ie. if we understood how Aroden died would that then make it clear why the gods whisked away the planet in Starfinder?
Nope.
I'm not really involved with Starfinder, but I would really REALLY prefer that the Starfinder team NOT tie Golarion's disappearance to Aroden at all.
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James I'm a GM and I discourage my PCs from picking certain monster races as PCs by telling them that society is likely to take issue with them. For example Sure you might be a nice drow but all the drow that have been heard of have been demon worshipping psychopaths. You enter that village and you're going to attract the attention of the guards. Who are constantly going to watch your every move at best and try and kill you at worst. I mean in a fantasy setting people generally don't care if your a good troll if every other troll they've heard of eats people. Is this fair?
It's ABSOLUTELY fair. The game works best when it's in a setting the GM is passionate about.