Incomplete isn’t the word I would use.
Of course not.
Unicorn: Feel free to replace incomplete with “starter kits” then ;) 12 archetypes which are a “teaser” to whet the appetite to be properly fleshed out in a future product is something I expect from a free product, not a paid one.
Your insights are definitely interesting. Although at this point I’d be pretty disappointed if I’d bought this book.
Organized Play Developer
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The Hellknights have a full chapter in Lost Omens Character Guide that includes detailed information on the Hell Knights as an organization, passing the Hell Knight Test, all of the orders and their favored weapons, the titles of Hell Knights of various ranks, additional Hell Knight armiger feats, and more.
The Armiger needed to lay the groundwork for the next book and only had a page to do so, so I suspect that some of that information was originally intended to be included in LOWG but had to be punted to LOCG due to space concerns. The two books together will make Hellknights one of the most interesting and ridiculously deep character paths I think I've ever seen.
In the meantime, the orders and their weapons are:
Order of the Chain: The order’s favored weapon is the flail.
Order of the Gate: The order’s favored weapon is the dagger.
Order of the Godclaw: The order’s favored weapon is the morningstar.
Order of the Nail: The order’s favored weapons are the halberd and lance; Hellknights who travel on foot prefer the halberd, while mounted Hellknights fight with lances.
Order of the Pyre: The order’s favored weapon is the glaive.
Order of the Rack: The order’s favored weapons are the longsword and whip.
Order of the Scourge: The order’s favored weapons are the mace, scourge (page 80), and whip.
Likewise, are the appropriate reckonings going to be the same as PF1? Binding one's arms tightly enough to crush them with chains for Chain, carving yourself with a dagger for Gate, flagellating yourself with a 5-headed morningstar for the Godclaw, etc.?
The Armiger needed to lay the groundwork for the next book
You dont have to answer this, but I am completely flabbergasted by this logic. WHY did we need the Armiger in this book? All it means is anyone who wants to play one is going to need access to both books. Why couldn't it have been printed in the other book and this book maybe gave more room for flavour, or give more room to another archetype.
Based on 10 years of quality product I've grown to expect much more from Paizo. Hopefully this was just a jitter from releasing this so close to the launch of a new edition. Paizo has always been (and is) better than this.
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If I were to guess:
Including the baby archetypes in this one and then the branches in the next.
If they put it in that one they would have had to take something else out.
And I know everyone is tired of hearing this but you don’t need the LOCG to play just the Armiger.
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We understand that is your position Rysky. Unless you have another way of expressing the idea maybe accept it has convinced as many people as it will and no more?
I find it... surprising that Paizo couldn't have found a way to repackage the content between LOWCG and LOWG in such a way that would make more sense and make the content more fully detailed in the book it was produced in.
Frankly when you consider that both books are a combined size of 272 pages and the PF1e ISWG is 320 pages I would have expected these books to be combined. I am sure 99% of people would have happily waited 1 month and paid an extra $15. Unless Paizo truly thinks most customers wont buy both books (but if hat was their assumption it makes even more sense to put the armiger in the second book).
I'm guessing publishing realities have simply changed and this size at this price point is the most viable one going forward for setting material. Which is fine. But I'd still expect better organisation.
And if this sounds like I'm ragging on Paizo out of spitefulness, let me assure you its not.
WotC bundles content in the most asinine and insulting ways possible simply to pressure their fans to buy every product they slowly trickle out. I lost respect for WotC about 8 years ago, temporarily gave them a second chance and then finally gave up on them a year or two later.
I hold Paizo to any standard because they've proven themselves. There have been some stumbles, but they have always demonstrated they learn from their mistakes and genuinely work to put out the best product possible.
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We understand that is your position Rysky. Unless you have another way of expressing the idea maybe accept it has convinced as many people as it will and no more?
I find it... surprising that Paizo couldn't have found a way to repackage the content between LOWCG and LOWG in such a way that would make more sense and make the content more fully detailed in the book it was produced in.
Frankly when you consider that both books are a combined size of 272 pages and the PF1e ISWG is 320 pages I would have expected these books to be combined. I am sure 99% of people would have happily waited 1 month and paid an extra $15. Unless Paizo truly thinks most customers wont buy both books (but if hat was their assumption it makes even more sense to put the armiger in the second book).
I'm guessing publishing realities have simply changed and this size at this price point is the most viable one going forward for setting material. Which is fine. But I'd still expect better organisation.
And if this sounds like I'm ragging on Paizo out of spitefulness, let me assure you its not.
WotC bundles content in the most asinine and insulting ways possible simply to pressure their fans to buy every product they slowly trickle out. I lost respect for WotC about 8 years ago, temporarily gave them a second chance and then finally gave up on them a year or two later.
I hold Paizo to any standard because they've proven themselves. There have been some stumbles, but they have always demonstrated they learn from their mistakes and genuinely work to put out the best product possible.
I am very sympathetic to your concerns. I picked up the first of these campaign setting books (as I will pick up each of the 1st of each major product type to get a sense of the format, and what is being included in each book type, but I doubt I will continue to collect books that are going to send me to an increasing number of different places to understand my character's abilities. I will just wait until the information is released on a searchable database and use that for character options.
I do think the regional Lore in this book is interesting and will written. As a book it is pretty well indexed and easy to find different things in, but I am not a fan of having equipment and feats thrown in places that feel random at times and the Archetypes definitely feel more like a tease than a fully playable option.
I am interested to see the fully realized Hellknight archetypes and how they will build off of the Armiger. I hope the thematic reasons for being in each order outweigh the mechanical edge, or at least don't make it where no player would ever choose to be in the Order of the Gate, while the order of the rack gets some incredibly powerful but niche ability with the whip and suddenly every bard is taking heavy armor proficiency and signing up to torture prisoners.
How is it insulting how they bundle content? Looks good to me. Looks good to most people.
What mistake did they make?
Sounds like you are taking things way too personally. They are making the books for everyone. So relax a bit. Go out and find something fun and relaxing if your gaming hobby isn't fun for you anymore.
We understand that is your position Rysky. Unless you have another way of expressing the idea maybe accept it has convinced as many people as it will and no more?
I find it... surprising that Paizo couldn't have found a way to repackage the content between LOWCG and LOWG in such a way that would make more sense and make the content more fully detailed in the book it was produced in.
Frankly when you consider that both books are a combined size of 272 pages and the PF1e ISWG is 320 pages I would have expected these books to be combined. I am sure 99% of people would have happily waited 1 month and paid an extra $15. Unless Paizo truly thinks most customers wont buy both books (but if hat was their assumption it makes even more sense to put the armiger in the second book).
I'm guessing publishing realities have simply changed and this size at this price point is the most viable one going forward for setting material. Which is fine. But I'd still expect better organisation.
And if this sounds like I'm ragging on Paizo out of spitefulness, let me assure you its not.
WotC bundles content in the most asinine and insulting ways possible simply to pressure their fans to buy every product they slowly trickle out. I lost respect for WotC about 8 years ago, temporarily gave them a second chance and then finally gave up on them a year or two later.
I hold Paizo to any standard because they've proven themselves. There have been some stumbles, but they have always demonstrated they learn from their mistakes and genuinely work to put out the best product possible.
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I mean the long and short of it is that eventually the way a significant number of people are going to discover the hellknight archetypes is "clicking on the 'archetypes' tab" on AoN or D20" at which point it doesn't matter what books things are in.
The amount of time time one can play an Armiger when the Hellnight/Signifer archetypes are not yet available is approximately 2 months, and "playing a character and hitting level 6 inside of eight weeks" is a pretty brisk pace of play.
For the purposes of continued discussion about this and other archetypes, it looks like PF2 d20PFSRD has them up, sans lore content.
I mean the long and short of it is that eventually the way a significant number of people are going to discover the hellknight archetypes is "clicking on the 'archetypes' tab" on AoN or D20" at which point it doesn't matter what books things are in.
The amount of time time one can play an Armiger when the Hellnight/Signifer archetypes are not yet available is approximately 2 months, and "playing a character and hitting level 6 inside of eight weeks" is a pretty brisk pace of play.
I agree that character making will not be impacted by this product design decision as long as the options are in a digital database. I also think a lot of people (players in particular) will be pushed out of buying the books when they realize that no book they buy contains even enough information to realize one complete character concept.
Like if I was a player heading into a adventure path, planning on playing a Hell knight through an entire campaign. If the Hellknight character options and backstory information was all in once place, I'd probably buy that book to really build up my character's connection to Golarion. But instead I will have to buy 2 or more books to get the mechanics and lore together, I probably am not going to make that choice. That is why it seems like a curious choice to me, even as I understand that it doesn't change the different archetypes playability.
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I am assuming that one will not need to be an Armiger to become a Hellkngiht or a Signifer proper. The Armiger simply exits for characters who want to have come up through the Hellknights (as people in the diagesis do sometimes.) If you're just interested in playing a Hellknight, you can just take the level 6 feat and skip Armiger and all that will be in the LOCG.
The difference is that there are severe requirements to meet to become a Hellknight, while they let pretty much anyone be a signifer.
From a pure "I am primarily interested in optimization and character power" perspective, the only feats from Armiger I'd really want are Mortification and maybe Armiger's Mobility, but we'll see if the Hellknight proper has comparable feats (since Mobility is a Feat 8.)
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How is it insulting how they bundle content? Looks good to me. Looks good to most people.
Just to be clear: I was talking about WotC. If you think its impossible to have a negative opinion about a product and anyone who does needs to "settle down" then you can certainly take that stance. I (and lots of official reviewers for movies, books and most entertainment mediums) disagree.
The difference is that there are severe requirements to meet to become a Hellknight, while they let pretty much anyone be a signifer.
I meant Armiger here, not Signifer. Hellknights and Signifers are people with real power withing a given order, Armigers are people they trust to guard things of no real import, act as gofers, and take out the trash- you are essentially a Hellknight intern.
I have no idea why people are so vehemently opposed to the idea that there should be lore about the Hellknights in a book that has a Hellknight archetype in it.
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To be specific, there's about one paragraph on the Hellknights (and a few scattered references to a Hellknight or Order thereof doing something) in the book.
It's possible that "Hellknight Armiger" was thus not the best choice for the Old Cheliax archetype, but I'm not sure what else would come to mind for this particular region.
I'd say that perhaps the idea having 1 archetype per meta region "was thus not the best choice".
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All of the archetypes in the book are things that which can be very low level characters. Anything where you have to prove yourself to be trustworthy or competent beyond what a level 2 person can manage wouldn't have worked for the book.
The thing about the Bellflowers or the Firebrands or whoever is that they're fundamentally kind of clandestine organizations who aren't going to trust absolute nobodys who walk up from the street.
The Lion Blades are somewhat different here in that they have an actual formal (if secret) academy in which they train lower level people to do this kind of work.
The thing about the Bellflowers or the Firebrands or whoever is that they're fundamentally kind of clandestine organizations who aren't going to trust absolute nobodys who walk up from the street.
While you could certainly flavour the bellflower network like that, I expect most slaves they rescue would be low level and it would seem strange to me to discriminate against slaves you rescued and refuse to let them join your clandestine organisation until some arbitrary level.
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The thing about the Bellflowers or the Firebrands or whoever is that they're fundamentally kind of clandestine organizations who aren't going to trust absolute nobodys who walk up from the street.While you could certainly flavour the bellflower network like that, I expect most slaves they rescue would be low level and it would seem strange to me to discriminate against slaves you rescued and refuse to let them join your clandestine organisation until some arbitrary level.
They can join the organisation, but the specialised training to be a Tiller is rather more than just joining. You have to be able to lead a group of slaves to safety though deeply hostile territory, while keeping them alive, fighting off things trying to prevent that and not being detected and tracked. It's not a job for Level 1 people.
They can join the organisation, but the specialised training to be a Tiller is rather more than just joining. You have to be able to lead a group of slaves to safety though deeply hostile territory, while keeping them alive, fighting off things trying to prevent that and not being detected and tracked. It's not a job for Level 1 people.The thing about the Bellflowers or the Firebrands or whoever is that they're fundamentally kind of clandestine organizations who aren't going to trust absolute nobodys who walk up from the street.While you could certainly flavour the bellflower network like that, I expect most slaves they rescue would be low level and it would seem strange to me to discriminate against slaves you rescued and refuse to let them join your clandestine organisation until some arbitrary level.
Sure. But that wasn’t what Cabbage said. He said “they're fundamentally kind of clandestine organizations who aren't going to trust absolute nobodys who walk up from the street” as if to suggest they wouldn’t trust someone purely because they’re low level.
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Sure. But that wasn’t what Cabbage said. He said “they're fundamentally kind of clandestine organizations who aren't going to trust absolute nobodys who walk up from the street” as if to suggest they wouldn’t trust someone purely because they’re low level.They can join the organisation, but the specialised training to be a Tiller is rather more than just joining. You have to be able to lead a group of slaves to safety though deeply hostile territory, while keeping them alive, fighting off things trying to prevent that and not being detected and tracked. It's not a job for Level 1 people.The thing about the Bellflowers or the Firebrands or whoever is that they're fundamentally kind of clandestine organizations who aren't going to trust absolute nobodys who walk up from the street.While you could certainly flavour the bellflower network like that, I expect most slaves they rescue would be low level and it would seem strange to me to discriminate against slaves you rescued and refuse to let them join your clandestine organisation until some arbitrary level.
Doesn't mention low-level. They wouldn't trust ANYONE, no matter what level they are, as if they'd even know given it's a meta-currency.
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The thing about the Bellflowers or the Firebrands or whoever is that they're fundamentally kind of clandestine organizations who aren't going to trust absolute nobodys who walk up from the street.
IIRC, there is a "Bellflower Agent" Background in the book. So you can be a Bellflower agent at level 1.
Doesn't mention low-level. They wouldn't trust ANYONE, no matter what level they are, as if they'd even know given it's a meta-currency.
Reread the full post. If you still disagree with what Cabbage was saying I guess I’ll let him come back and clarify.
*shrug*
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Doesn't mention low-level. They wouldn't trust ANYONE, no matter what level they are, as if they'd even know given it's a meta-currency.Reread the full post. If you still disagree with what Cabbage was saying I guess I’ll let him come back and clarify.
*shrug*
Ok, I did.
Anything where you have to prove yourself to be trustworthy or competent beyond what a level 2 person can manage wouldn't have worked for the book.
And again, we are talking about the Bellflower Tiller. That is a position no one low-level is appropriate for. It's the expedition leader. There is the Bellflower background so you can be a member of the organisation at 1st level, but no one's going to trust you to lead slaves through hostile territory in secret at that level.
I think the thing is when you get the dedication for an organization, that means "this is a person we will trust to access training for the tasks we need someone in our organization to do" (hence access to higher level feats.)
Being a Bellflower Agent (per the background) basically just means "you are a contact". You might provide valuable intel, but you're not involved in the actual planning and execution of the things they do, since the laws they break as a matter of course carry penalties of death and worse.
But the Hellknights need people to get the coffee and sweep the floors, and there are people who see "getting into the Hellknights" as somehow aspirational or at least a job they can do, hence the Armiger.
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Gotcha!
How is it insulting how they bundle content? Looks good to me. Looks good to most people.Just to be clear: I was talking about WotC. If you think its impossible to have a negative opinion about a product and anyone who does needs to "settle down" then you can certainly take that stance. I (and lots of official reviewers for movies, books and most entertainment mediums) disagree.
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That is true. A different archetype may have been a bit better. Though I do think that if they pushed either of the upcoming Hellknight archetypes to a later book.. (assuming BOTH Hellknight and Signifer are both in the next one... to fit Armiger in it.. people would have been upset. Or if they published those two and did the Armiger later... people would be like "why are the major archetypes in this one but not the Armiger that starts it all off?"
Basically. This is one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't type things.
To be specific, there's about one paragraph on the Hellknights (and a few scattered references to a Hellknight or Order thereof doing something) in the book.
It's possible that "Hellknight Armiger" was thus not the best choice for the Old Cheliax archetype, but I'm not sure what else would come to mind for this particular region.
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If you want to know basically everything about Hellknights in PF2, you should get:
-The LO World Guide
-The LO Character Guide
-The Old Cheliax region book.
- APs as appropriate.
At issue is that the Character Guide is next month and the region specific books haven't been solicited yet (but I figure Old Cheliax might be high on the list.)
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I am currently subbed for all their 2e books and adventures.
I am already going to stop the adventures subs as cult of cinders has players actively working to get two males together for 120 XP for each player. And goes so far to have a para on if one of the players gets them into a group romantic encounter. What this is doing in an adventure that kids can play I have no idea! Last time I checked this was not PG-13.
Would you have this problem if it was a man and a woman?
Or is it just when children are exposed to those "icky gays"?
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I am currently subbed for all their 2e books and adventures.
I am already going to stop the adventures subs as cult of cinders has players actively working to get two males together for 120 XP for each player. And goes so far to have a para on if one of the players gets them into a group romantic encounter. What this is doing in an adventure that kids can play I have no idea! Last time I checked this was not PG-13.
Would you have this problem if it was a man and a woman?
Or is it just when children are exposed to those "icky gays"?
I’m all for Paizo including adult content, but does it really have a paragraph on how to handle group sex?
If it’s just getting two lovebirds/star crossed lovers together that’s just a common trope. Zelda: Breath of the Wild has a similar plot (although the people involved are of an opposite gender so maybe more palatable?). It has an E10+ rating which most definitely makes it 13 year old friendly.
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I am currently subbed for all their 2e books and adventures.
I am already going to stop the adventures subs as cult of cinders has players actively working to get two males together for 120 XP for each player. And goes so far to have a para on if one of the players gets them into a group romantic encounter. What this is doing in an adventure that kids can play I have no idea! Last time I checked this was not PG-13.
Would you have this problem if it was a man and a woman?
Or is it just when children are exposed to those "icky gays"?
I’m all for Paizo including adult content, but does it really have a paragraph on how to handle group sex?
If it’s just getting two lovebirds/star crossed lovers together that’s just a common trope. Zelda: Breath of the Wild has a similar plot (although the people involved are of an opposite gender so maybe more palatable?). It has an E10+ rating which most definitely makes it 13 year old friendly.
The latter, though not even that much.
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Pathfinder is a game you can run for literal children. If you are running it for literal children you will probably want to change some things. But it might not be what you think. Even very young kids take very naturally to "x and y love each other" sorts of stories whether x and y are a man and a woman, a man and a man, a robot and a houseplant, a kitten and an owl, or whatever. As long as you keep things PG, more or less any story like this is going to work for the kids.
What I have found children absolutely hate is "having to fight animals". So never run an encounter where it's like "a pack of wolves" or a "mother bear protecting her cubs" or anything like that. Kids are going to hate it even if you make it clear that it's you or them. So have them fight mutant spiders with wolf heads and rattlesnake tails or some other weird thing (just use the bestiary entry for the regular monster). If I'm running games for younger kids, most of what I'm doing is reflavoring stuff like that, though there is the occasional "recontextualizing the ogres in the 'grind your bones to make my bread' mileu" instead of what they are.
If I were running Age of Ashes for kids I would put more thought into "do I want to be saying 'Hellknight' over and over again?" than who is smooching whom.
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Lady and the Tramp, Beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid. All children’s stories. All have two people getting together as their main plot.
I don’t understand Justinian’s child friendly complaint.