I have an idea for a cool Astomoi character, the travels around in a full length, raggedy coat with a hood. They would worship Desna, and would enjoy travelling the world being a little bit of distant guardian Angel type person.
It occurred to me that the power to speak to anyone telepathically from 100 ft away really would allow a person to just give people a little positive nudge every now and then without having to introduce yourself. Be the good Samaritan.
Someone about to step into a busy road? just whisper watch out for the rode.
See someone struggling? whisper you can do it
Being pick pocketed? check your pockets
being followed? look behind you
See a traveller on the road looking thirsty? plant the idea of where a nearby water source is
I really like that idea :) and I was thinking of making them a Traquility Dicipline Psychic so she could act as a kind of leveller for the party in times of stress. Like a pillar they can lean on.
Only trouble is, I can't think of a name!
For one thing, I think unless I'm mistaken, that they're genderless?
I'm not sure - does their telepathy still need language, or can they communicate concepts and meaning directly?
The later would open up names like "The smell of earth after rain" - between their Scent ability, their vulnerability to inhaled poisons, and the "absorbing nutrients by smelling the food" flavour, having a reference to a smell in their name seems appropriate.
Travelling the world alone is a problem for an astomoi. Being unable to see beyond 60' means they can't see landmarks and if they go too far from the road can easily not be able to find their way back. They really need non-astomoi friends to travel.
Anyway, the name astomoi itself looks greek to me and their names might match. Alternately since they have full telepathy (within 100') and no native language (just common) it's very possible they have concepts for names as Pan suggests.
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Plenty of people in real life travel just fine without being able to see anything but a blur past a certain distance. Astomoi can still smell--better than humans, in fact. They can still hear. As far as I am aware, they still have tactile sensations, can feel heat and cold, have a sense of balance, and can feel the wind on their, er, skin. Their world does not end beyond their pseudovisual bubble any more than my grandfather's world ended when he took off his trifocals.
Re: telepathy, the universal monster ability works on any creature with a language. It does not require knowing or being able to understand said language, only that the other creature has at least one.
Forgot this was about names, though. Um. Hmm. Have there been any astomoi published in Paizo adventures?
I like Pan's idea of nonverbal names fitting the astomoi's particular nature. It's good to emphasize just how different some creatures (dragons, for another instance!) are from humans and their near-ish relatives. Astomoi are both more and less different in their own ways.
@Pan - I would say thats probably a discussion with my GM.
I love your naming convention idea.
@avr - I can see how it might seem difficult on the face, but I don't think its actually all that hard. He can see 60ft in front of him and read a map. What more do you need to be able to do? Going off the beaten path can be tough, but there are easy ways around it. One that occurred to me was leaving a scent marker if he did want to go off path.
Also he can cast Know Direction as a Knack, meaning he should find it pretty f%$*ing hard to get lost.
As an aside I'm planning to get a figment butterfly familiar to use share senses with once he hits 6th level. Also I think it leans into his Desna vibes. Tis gonna be a blue one with little white flecks, cause her colours are blue and white :). After that he's gonna go deific obedience :)
Regarding naming, yeah I'm really feeling Pans naming idea, its very clever. Just gonna think of one that suits. I'm thinking perhaps something that works into the curiosity/traveller vibe.
@blahphers - Regarding language, I'm planning for him to start with 18int, he could easily know, Elvish, Dwarfish, Gnomish, Halfling and Orc. With just one rank in Linguistics.
Meaning they could communicate with all the most common races in their common tongue.
Also do any of y'all have any idea if Astomoi are genderless? cause I'm struggling lol.
Between what I remember of their art, and that their description apparently says that they are made of darkness and don't like to wear clothes - yeah, they're probably genderless?
It's never stated officially, as far as I can tell, but from what I remember they look like naked fashion mannequins made out of night sky.
That description though, naked mannequin of the night!
I live!
Edit: also pan where did you get the word petrichor from? Did you just know it?
Cause I’m thinking a similar vibe but to do with the road/travelling but don’t know where to start.
Edit: also pan where did you get the word petrichor from? Did you just know it?
Cause I’m thinking a similar vibe but to do with the road/travelling but don’t know where to start.
I have it from the show Doctor Who. It's pretty much just random trivia from a running "answering questions before they're asked" joke in one episode (and part of a telepathic password were you didn't have to use the words, but remember appropriate memories, which was what reminded me of it), and stuff like that sticks in my memory. Like, apparently there's a French term translating to "the wit of the staircase" for when you came up with the perfect reply, but it was to late.
Sadly, I don't really have a comprehensive list for terms like that.
Holy s~$% I remember that episode now!
EDIT: luckily I found this list, think I might name him Moonwake
Hmm.
Well, I'd feel weird giving a name based on something visual to a race so clearly focused on smell…
Astomoi are blind to everything past 60 feet. They don't even see the moon - and not just in the "hehe, distance modifiers to Perception make it impossible to see the sun, hehe"-sense, their statblock actually says "An astomoi can’t see anything beyond 60 feet." And being able to see reflections would open up just carrying a mirror to bypass that 60 ft visual range.
(It does make it easier to see something new each day, though.)
It explicitly calls out that they can read though, so I don’t see how they couldn’t see a reflection.
My thinking was that as a child he used to marvel at the reflection of a moon in a still lake
Also have you ever seen a moonbeam in the woods? It’s really an amazing thing to witness and I figure it would be more crazy with dark vision.
I did also consider Ammil and Petrichor but he’d tell people to call him pet :)
EDIT: Ooo what if he had a given and a chosen name!
Given Petrichor
Chosen Moonwake
It explicitly calls out that they can read though, so I don’t see how they couldn’t see a reflection.
A reflection is, well, reflected light. Darkvision somehow tells how much light would be reflected if an object was hit by light (how light/dark a surface is) while ignoring the presence or absence of actual light.
And then stops working in supernatural darkness, just because.Normally, this isn't an issue because everyone else also can see light, but Astomoi explicitly can't - they just have Darkvision, and the effects of that are poorly thought through in my eyes.
Besides, as I said, if reflections are allowed, what's stopping them from carrying a mirror and looking into the distance through that?
If reflections were allowed to bypass their 60ft visual distance limit, it seems significant enough for them to mention it.
It explicitly calls out that they can read though, so I don’t see how they couldn’t see a reflection.A reflection is, well, reflected light. Darkvision somehow tells how much light would be reflected if an object was hit by light (how light/dark a surface is) while ignoring the presence or absence of actual light.
And then stops working in supernatural darkness, just because.Normally, this isn't an issue because everyone else also can see light, but Astomoi explicitly can't - they just have Darkvision, and the effects of that are poorly thought through in my eyes.
Besides, as I said, if reflections are allowed, what's stopping them from carrying a mirror and looking into the distance through that?
If reflections were allowed to bypass their 60ft visual distance limit, it seems significant enough for them to mention it.
Eh I think it could be easily overlooked
Literally all vision relies on reflection
There’s no physical difference between looking at a reflection in a lake and looking at words on a page. As far as I know anyway
So I feel like if a DM wanted to have a problem with that I’d call bull on grounds of arbitrary nonsense.
Also I don’t see how them being able to use a mirror to awkwardly see the reflections of things further away brakes anything really. It makes sense if a creature has physical limitations it figures out ways around em.
Humans can’t kick down trees to we made toothed saw blades. Or whatever.
Well, Darkvision does work in the absence of light, and explaining it away with different light frequencies just opens up even more cans of worms. (Amongst them: Even if it were some kind of infrared (as infravision used to explain it), why is it capped at a fixed distance?)
But I'll concede that it mainly depends on what particular aspects of Darkvision's unrealism is the easiest to suspend disbelief for. To me, 'vision without light' makes more sense than 'light that somehow ignores most other lighting conditions and always reaches a certain distance'.
That creates other issues (mostly how does that work), but to me, that's easier to accept than light that can only be seen if it is emitted or reflected by something within 60ft.
So, in short it may be arbitrary nonsense, but that's just because Darkvision itself is arbitrary nonsense.
I mean sure but their ability only works like darkvision
It isn’t literally darkvision and explicitly calls out that they can read which means they can see a picture on a page.
If I can see a picture on a page I can see a reflection in a mirror. That’s my opinion on it anyway.
I don’t think we will get to the bottom of that one though
Lol
I mean sure but their ability only works like darkvision
It isn’t literally darkvision and explicitly calls out that they can read which means they can see a picture on a page.If I can see a picture on a page I can see a reflection in a mirror. That’s my opinion on it anyway.
I don’t think we will get to the bottom of that one though
Lol
Darkvision is greyscale. You can read with Darkvision, too. And there is, in fact, a significant difference between a reflection and a picture, but that needs some more explanation.
But while Darkvision can't tell colors apart, it can tell the difference between a grey wall in white light and a white wall in dim light.
It can also somehow tell the difference between white paper that's black because no light touches it, and paper that's actually black due to ink, no matter what light. (Reading with Darkvision is nothing special.)
But in all these cases, what Darkvision shows is an inherent property of the surface seen. It shows you the "true shade independent of light".
Meanwhile, the only property of a reflective surface is "being reflective".
There is no inherent difference between the various spots on the surface of the mirror, the same way that "white wall in a shadow" and "white wall in sunlight" are both white, no matter what light falls on it. And, in fact, to Darkvision, "a white wall in darkness" and "a white wall in red/green/blue/white light" would all look exactly the same, because it doesn't care about incoming light. But this "incoming light" is the only thing making up a reflection.
But, I think the most damning example:
A short-sighted person that looks into a mirror can't see any further than normally. Yes, the mirror might be right in front of them, but in the end, there's no "image in the mirror" - just bend light that came from somewhere else, while a normal picture filters incoming light to create a picture. That's also why reflections in the mirror are 3d, while an image on paper is 2d.
Oh damn that’s a shame, i guess I’ll have to go with plan B.
The butterfly figment shows him the moon in his dreams
I mean, as I said, Darkvision doesn't really make sense either way (mostly because "being able to tell how reflective a surface is without having it reflect light" makes no sense either, it's just easier for me to accept), and if your GM is fine with it then that's okay.
But yeah, dreaming of the (to him, invisible) moon and stars seems like another fitting choice.
(If it's any consolation, I am just as pedantic when making my own Chars, needing to justify stuff for me that my GM would just handwave as acceptable.)