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I mean, because after well over, what, ten thousand years, there is certainly no way that any Serpentfolk would be capable of discarding the fetters of their clearly failed empire of evil to maybe, idk, just exist?
Also, I feel word of God defiently trumps any pre-existing restrictions that may be prevent such a change in social structure.
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The Aapoph has an unremarkable stat spread, a basic weapon attack, and a decent bite with an okay poison. The Zyss is the same, albeit with better stats and some occult casting.
I don’t know that there’s any sort of earth-shattering mechanical power fantasy for player Serpentfolk to fail to live up to. They’re on-par humanoid enemies.
I disagree with the first paragraph. An Aapoph has extraordinary telepathy and a poison I doubt a PC would get until many levels later, both of which I see as part of the essence of being a Serpentfolk. Plus the bonus to Will saves and auto-Knockdown (w/ an AoO to go with it).
The Zyss's stats are like a 5th level PC's, but at level 2, and with an even higher bonus to mental attacks and again the telepathy. Those and "some occult casting" are key to what a Serpentfolk is, and the PC wouldn't match those until quite high in level (if ever, since a PC wouldn't have the lack of hit points either that those unlimited Mirror Images are protecting). And there's the poison, again part of the package, and again not within PC reach, if they could ever get unlimited poison arrows.As for the hyperbole of the second paragraph, sure, if you phrase it so strongly. But if a player were familiar with Serpentfolk, say having fought many, and then their GM later handed them a Serpentfolk PC made from PC-compatible rules, would that character have all the abilities the player thought were cool about Serpentfolk? Or that made them frightening? No, because many of those become too strong coupled with a PC's class, equipment, teamwork, etc. And that'd be sad IMO.
Not saying they're imbalanced as villains or for their level, but that their distinct aspects wouldn't fit into PF2's PC power curve so wouldn't be available until late game if ever. And stripped of that, what's left? Are their RPing opportunities particularly interesting? (Real question, Serpent's Skull & the lore I know of don't make it seem so.) I see this as a worse issue than the Strix or Pixie had, and those both have richer backstories & potential IMO.
On the flip side, if we do see a Darklands lore book (yay!), then they'd be obligatory, but we'd also hopefully see their society (especially it's non-Ydersius aspects) fleshed out.
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The Aapoph has an unremarkable stat spread, a basic weapon attack, and a decent bite with an okay poison. The Zyss is the same, albeit with better stats and some occult casting.
I don’t know that there’s any sort of earth-shattering mechanical power fantasy for player Serpentfolk to fail to live up to. They’re on-par humanoid enemies.
I disagree with the first paragraph. An Aapoph has extraordinary telepathy and a poison I doubt a PC would get until many levels later, both of which I see as part of the essence of being a Serpentfolk. Plus the bonus to Will saves and auto-Knockdown (w/ an AoO to go with it).
The Zyss's stats are like a 5th level PC's, but at level 2, and with an even higher bonus to mental attacks and again the telepathy. Those and "some occult casting" are key to what a Serpentfolk is, and the PC wouldn't match those until quite high in level (if ever, since a PC wouldn't have the lack of hit points either that those unlimited Mirror Images are protecting). And there's the poison, again part of the package, and again not within PC reach, if they could ever get unlimited poison arrows.As for the hyperbole of the second paragraph, sure, if you phrase it so strongly. But if a player were familiar with Serpentfolk, say having fought many, and then their GM later handed them a Serpentfolk PC made from PC-compatible rules, would that character have all the abilities the player thought were cool about Serpentfolk? Or that made them frightening? No, because many of those become too strong coupled with a PC's class, equipment, teamwork, etc. And that'd be sad IMO.
Not saying they're imbalanced as villains or for their level, but that their distinct aspects wouldn't fit into PF2's PC power curve so wouldn't be available until late game if ever. And stripped of that, what's left? Are their RPing opportunities particularly interesting? (Real question, Serpent's Skull & the lore I know of don't make it seem so.) I see this as a worse issue than the Strix or Pixie...
The problematic stuff would be changed then....the same way undead immunities and strix flying were changed for pf2. Very little is sacred when something is being converted to balanced player use (which is a good thing). This means people have the characters they want AND they play nice with the group
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I mean, the Ancestry Guide was nothing but a big bomb of new Ancestries, and it was incredibly well received. A sequel sounds plenty reasonable to me, and gets Ancestries people want to them sooner than they can expect a book on Vudra, Arcadia, or the Darklands. We’d still be waiting for Androids otherwise.
I can't site this for you right now but after the release of the Ancestry guide I remember the lead saying the book was all hands on deck for rules and lore and that it was unlikely such a book would be created again.
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Has literally anything prior established that the Serpentfolk are like that? The Shirren’s former existence as part of a hive mind is a foundation backstory detail for them, but it would firmly be a retcon for the Sekmin, who we know are well aware of having individuality and desires.
My basic idea to flesh this out was that we know that Sekmin come in two common varieties, the "low, brutish" Aapoph and the "high, magical" Zyss. We also know that their culture is based on "the weak dominate the strong" and they are fond of using overt or subtle mind control in order to maintain their dominance.
But there are also rumors of a "highest caste" of Serpentfolk who are even more magically adept than the Zyss. So if the Zyss were willing to magically control anyone and everyone they see, who's to say there's not a highest caste Serpentfolk controlling the Zyss?
Like part of my reticence to embrace Sekmin PCs is that the whole premise of these people appears to be that they live underground, have a fallen empire, did a lot of genocides (mostly for fun), kept a lot of slaves, mind control others for fun and profit, and they eat humans and other sapient life. I want there to be more of a story here about how they break this cycle than "they just decided one day to get along with everybody else." Like Hobgoblins as one of the first ancestries added to PF2 wouldn't have gone over as well without Ironfang Invasion setting it up.
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I think the main argument for sekmin PCs isn't that sekmins as a people should just get along with everybody suddenly. It seems to me from both James' post and several others is that there is a strong desire to play the Drizzt of the sekmin, or at least to acknowledge that even in an ancient evil slaving empire not every single individual of that society is an evil monster. This seems true even for the sekmin given that the moral free will of all humanoids is practically spelled out in the description of humanoids.
Whether they are accepted by the surface societies is pretty much irrelevant. We have undead PCs now, I can't imagine limiting new ancestries to peoples which get along with the 'typical' player societies. Previously sekmin weren't restricted from player options because they needed to do something to become good or even be accepted as good, but because narratively the creative team still wanted to play with their potential as villains which works better if we simply haven't met the nonevil (or at least non hegemonic) members of their society as a 4th wall distinction before now.
So it would seem to me, anyway.
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The thing about "Drizzt of the Sekmin" is that Sekmin aren't the analogues to the Drow in the darklands anyway (the Drow are the analogues to the Drow). The Sekmin are the analogues to the Illithids, which Paizo doesn't have the license for but wanted something to fill the same niche as, and I'd be pretty iffy about playable Illithids.
Now it's probable that the Sekmin had something going for them that makes them suitable for a PC that Illithids lack, but a hypothetical Illithid PC is a lot like a hypothetical Allgolthu PC from where I sit. Though I do think I'd like a Ugothol ancestry, come to think of it, since they were clearly created as pawns/tools of the Aboleths and could follow roughly the same trajectory as the Azarketi.
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If a species doing genocides and slavery bars them from play, then Humans shouldn’t be an option, either.
Orcs have plenty of messy history, as do Hobgoblins and Goblins, but we got all of them. I’m still not hearing a super convincing argument for why Sekmin are any different, other than “retcon that they’re a hive mind,” which is not really moving the needle for me.
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I do not think it is necessary for a Drizzt archetype to be a drow, or even a Darklands people. It feels like it is sufficient to play against type of your evil empire by not participating in that evil empire and join the side of the heroes, whether you are yourself actually good or not.
The sekmin are hardly an alien elder evil. They're an ancient humanoid species who dominated the planet in days long long past. It would be strange to me of they were the equivalent of illithids. Rather I see a reptilian civilization from an earlier age of the world, not unlike the lizardfolk empire I vaguely recall from Neverwinter Nights.
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My concept of a Sekmin PC is not a Drizzt clone, pushing back against their nightmarish society; they’re a person from a culture older than humanity, with a dead god and almost nothing left in this world to call their own. I’m not here for a heroic rebel, I’m here for a bitter mutant snake with telepathy and a lot of history to draw on.
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If a species doing genocides and slavery bars them from play, then Humans shouldn’t be an option, either.
Orcs have plenty of messy history, as do Hobgoblins and Goblins, but we got all of them. I’m still not hearing a super convincing argument for why Sekmin are any different, other than “retcon that they’re a hive mind,” which is not really moving the needle for me.
This feels like a vast oversimplification to me. First off, it's obvious why we can't bar humans from the game so I'll just ignore that.
But it feels like the big difference is that the Sekmin literally used invasive mind-control to enslave "lesser races" which is a deeply more disturbing way to go about it than violence. We see positive aspects of Orc culture- that it values directness, honesty, immediacy, and persistence, and goblin culture - that it values survival, creativity, cleverness, and humor. While there are specific evil instances of orc societies and goblin societies it's also easy to see the seeds of a hero out of those positive aspects of those cultures.
We haven't really seen any positive aspects of Sekmin culture period, so is it too much to ask that we explore some of that before we make them playable? Since the player who signs up to play "genocidal, human-eating, mind-controlling, slaver person- that sounds like a good time" sounds like a red flag to me? Just "it's an ancient culture, even if it's broken in ways that hurt people both inside and outside of it" doesn't really move the needle for me, since I don't tend to play characters from Nidal.
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They’ve had 10,000 years to realize that living the way they did got Ydersius killed, their empire shattered, and the survivors of their kind driven into wherever they could hide in the Darklands. That time frame is /the entirety of human civilization/ in the real world; I’m willing to believe that’s enough time to do some rethinking.
If I’m a Sekmin, and my day-to-day consists of trying not to be eaten by Gugs in the broken ruins built by my ancient ancestors, there’s a decent chance I think following my local leaders is bogus - and doubly so if I’m a cunning, selfish Zyss, or one of those Aapoph developing a smidge of class consciousness mentioned in their Bestiary entry.
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class consciousness
Serpentfolk become playable after the socialist revolution AP, where a coalition of serpentfolk and like minded darklanders strike back against established hierarchies, break away from their obsessive overlords and establish a new society not trapped in the shadow of some long forgotten golden age...
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class consciousnessSerpentfolk become playable after the socialist revolution AP, where a coalition of serpentfolk and like minded darklanders strike back against established hierarchies, break away from their obsessive overlords and establish a new society not trapped in the shadow of some long forgotten golden age...
You joke. I'd play the hell out of that AP. That is precisely my jam.
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class consciousnessSerpentfolk become playable after the socialist revolution AP, where a coalition of serpentfolk and like minded darklanders strike back against established hierarchies, break away from their obsessive overlords and establish a new society not trapped in the shadow of some long forgotten golden age...
That...sounds amazing
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You joke. I'd play the hell out of that AP. That is precisely my jam.class consciousnessSerpentfolk become playable after the socialist revolution AP, where a coalition of serpentfolk and like minded darklanders strike back against established hierarchies, break away from their obsessive overlords and establish a new society not trapped in the shadow of some long forgotten golden age...
Really, as long as whatever makes the Serpentfolk understandable enough to be player characters happens on screen instead of just handwaving in the background, I'm okay with it.
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They’ve had 10,000 years to realize that living the way they did got Ydersius killed, their empire shattered, and the survivors of their kind driven into wherever they could hide in the Darklands. That time frame is /the entirety of human civilization/ in the real world; I’m willing to believe that’s enough time to do some rethinking.
If I’m a Sekmin, and my day-to-day consists of trying not to be eaten by Gugs in the broken ruins built by my ancient ancestors, there’s a decent chance I think following my local leaders is bogus - and doubly so if I’m a cunning, selfish Zyss, or one of those Aapoph developing a smidge of class consciousness mentioned in their Bestiary entry.
Can they really be said to have had 10000 years if they spent most of that unconscious? And if I recall correctly, Ydersius is still able to mentally contact them, so brainwashing, or at least frequent reinforcement through dreams while they hibernated away the millennia, was quite possible. Especially if James is guiding that particular bit of lore.
Whatever alignment spread serpantfolk had prior to the endless whisper-dreams of rage, that is certainly enough explanation for me as to why the current generation might be entirely evil.
All that said, I’m reminded of Cuckoos in Seanan McGuire’s Incryptid series. Like Sekmin, they have weaponized telepathy, specifically with memory modification, and almost every adult member of the species is an amoral murderer due to the constant mental influence from the rest of their species and a data packet tucked into their brains that floods and overrides their personality about when they hit puberty. Which is not far off what I’m proposing for Sekmin; the exceptions to this would be members of the species that are biologically less capable of telepathy, and those that are raised by them (they’re able to excise the data packet somehow; even the less capable are REALLY good telepaths).
So if telepathy is a problem for a PC, and that constant mental reinforcement is also a problem, I could see these two problems solving each other. Our PCs are innately less capable than most Sekmin, but that in a way shields them and grants them enough freedom to be a PC.
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The Serpent's Skull AP certainly indicates that the cities of serpentfolk in stasis are very evil and still fanatically loyal to Ydersius, and the few still living in the ruins of their cities are the same.
I'm with PossibleCabbage on this one - I'd like to see something "on screen" that opens the door for non-evil serpentfolk, since when last we left them they were an existential threat to Golarion.
My home campaign Golarion has non-evil serpentfolk, but it had exactly those kind of "on screen" events I'm talking about, and the serpentfolk are more at the "rein in their excesses so that their stronger neighbors don't murder them" stage rather than anything approaching actual redemption.
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But again, we have precedent - there was a Sekmin member of the Ten Magic Warriors. If they’re good enough for Jatembe thousands of years ago, surely they’re good enough to be playable now?
I’m not asking that they greet the surface world with hugs and kisses, but I will refuse to see them as a monolith of mindlessly evil brutes.
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"One heroic Sekmin every ten thousand years" doesn't seem like a great basis on which to redeem the whole lot though. It's not impossible, I would just like to see a second data point.
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This is 100% off topic, but since someone mentioned Illithid; can we collectively band together to petition Paizo to make a true Mindflayer counterpart, in the form of cuttlefish-headed humanoids? Like, it's almost criminal this hasn't ever been done, considering the cuttlefishes ability to hypnotize prey. Cute and deadly. Just a thought. Lol.
More on topic, I'm not opposed to something on-screen honestly. Any excuse to run through an adventure is fine by me. Although, not sure it is wholly necessary. I have faith in whatever James Jacobs has in mind to make them a playable option.
Is there any chance this could happen in organized play? I don't follow society too deeply, but I feel like they've suggested that this year's season is going to end with something fairly big. I have no idea what the meta plot is, so I really couldn't speak on it.
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I don’t believe JJ is involved in Society at all, but don’t quote me on that.
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But again, we have precedent - there was a Sekmin member of the Ten Magic Warriors. If they’re good enough for Jatembe thousands of years ago, surely they’re good enough to be playable now?
I’m not asking that they greet the surface world with hugs and kisses, but I will refuse to see them as a monolith of mindlessly evil brutes.
Hugs and kisses? More like thugs and hisses!
I'll go now...
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I don't feel strongly either way if Serpentfolk becomes a playable ancestry. This seems like a weird hill to die on considering all the other possible ancestries that haven't hit the game yet and don't carry the same baggage.
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Not really. I don't think anyone is concerned about whether we will see the likes of the Drow, Merfolk, or any other option from 1e. Those options will inevitably come. And even some of the potential new ones, like Stheno or Kovintus, have either been straight up confirmed to be coming at some point, or follow such an obvious design trend in the Bestiary that it seems all but Than-.. inevitable that they'll show up at some point.
Sekmin/Serpentfolk are an option people have wanted for a very long time. So it make sense for people to be vocal about their inclusion; similar to how there are people who are vocal about Minotaur or Centaur. Their potential has been largely left ambiguous, at best, or outright unknown. So now that JJ, who was previously wholly against Serpentfolk being an Ancestry, has stated he has ideas to make them playable; it gives people a reason to be more vocal on the matter.
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I don't feel strongly either way if Serpentfolk becomes a playable ancestry. This seems like a weird hill to die on considering all the other possible ancestries that haven't hit the game yet and don't carry the same baggage.
No one is "dying on this hill". No one has said they won't play PF2 going forward if they don't get Serpentfolk. Come on.
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I don't feel strongly either way if Serpentfolk becomes a playable ancestry. This seems like a weird hill to die on considering all the other possible ancestries that haven't hit the game yet and don't carry the same baggage.No one is "dying on this hill". No one has said they won't play PF2 going forward if they don't get Serpentfolk. Come on.
There are definitely people dying on a hill in this thread. As in there is nothing that will sway them from their position. That statement has nothing to do with quitting PF2e.
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My concept of a Sekmin PC is not a Drizzt clone, pushing back against their nightmarish society; they’re a person from a culture older than humanity, with a dead god and almost nothing left in this world to call their own. I’m not here for a heroic rebel, I’m here for a bitter mutant snake with telepathy and a lot of history to draw on.
I see nothing here that prevents the PC from being Evil. Rather the opposite actually.
Evil does not mean non-PC.
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The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of most Sekmin being psychically influenced by their dead god while they hibernated, and a few breakaway factions, either as individuals or in small groups, being able to resist that influence and become PC ready.
It even makes for a semi-tragic narrative for Sekmin as a whole; even those that were already evil might have been profoundly altered by Ydersius's anguish and rage.
It fits so well with the kind of stories JJ has told over the years, like we saw in Malevolence, that I'm not entirely certain that I'm actually making this up and not simply remembering something he wrote.
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My concept of a Sekmin PC is not a Drizzt clone, pushing back against their nightmarish society; they’re a person from a culture older than humanity, with a dead god and almost nothing left in this world to call their own. I’m not here for a heroic rebel, I’m here for a bitter mutant snake with telepathy and a lot of history to draw on.I see nothing here that prevents the PC from being Evil. Rather the opposite actually.
Evil does not mean non-PC.
Very true. There is an evil Iconic after all, in the form of Seltyiel (and Meligaster, but we don't discuss him).
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"One heroic Sekmin every ten thousand years" doesn't seem like a great basis on which to redeem the whole lot though. It's not impossible, I would just like to see a second data point.And then a third?
Well, first edition showed us a bunch of goblins in heroic or at least non-antagonistic light. We've heard about exactly one serpentfolk in a heroic or non-antagonistic light.
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Seltyiel is evil, but otherwise a generally decent and pleasant person; aside from the habitual backstabbing. He and Seelah are actually very close, friends even. He is largely self-serving in his endeavors and has little problem with doing whatever is needed to accomplish his goals.
Part of why I enjoy Pathfinder's take on alignment. Evil doesn't have to mean being absolutely malevolent and vile.
Melingaster on the other hand is an absolute bastard. One whom I would never invite to dinner. Lol.
My favorite kind of evil is the "justified" evil. An inquisitor in 40k might glass an entire planet during a demon invasion to save the wider sector, but such a callous lack of empathy in service to utilitarian aims is (to me) unquestionably evil....while also being more engaging than typical mustache twirling evil.
Sorry if it was already said, but what about the Nagajis? They're close to snake people, so I could see them with both naga and ophidian ancestries, including a viper's fangs, a boa's strength, a rattlesnake's tail or a cobra's hood.
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For the Serpentfolk, I like the idea that they are all connected to a kind of hivemind, with Ydersius' mind influencing all the others with Evil. And that some mutant Serpentfolks are less connected (or even not at all) so that they can develop non-Evil mentality if they wish.
A bit like Elric feeling out of place in Melniboné and slowly choosing to reject Chaos over the years.
Sorry if it was already said, but what about the Nagajis? They're close to snake people, so I could see them with both naga and ophidian ancestries, including a viper's fangs, a boa's strength, a rattlesnake's tail or a cobra's hood.
There's two separate issues here:
1) I want to play a snake-themed PC.
2) Basically anything humanoid and intelligent should be playable.
Nagaji handle #1 just fine, particularly if they look different in 2e. But #2 is a thornier issue, since there's all sort of things that could be made into a PC ancestry but book space is finite.
Like Impossible Lands has 5 ancestries in it, and if we do a big Darklands book there are several people who are better options for PC ancestries than Serpentfolk (Caligni, Xulgaths, Drow are apparently an ancestry not a heritage for Elves so the same is probably true of Dueregar and Svirfneblin, etc.)
James Jacobs has stated in the past that the likely means by which they will handle divergent people is to make them a Heritage option for the primary Ancestry, instead of their own Ancestry as a whole. So the Drow, who were the main topic of the conversation at the time, would be an Elf Heritage, alongside Aquatic Elves. Maybe that stance has changed since that conversation; but that leaves plenty of room to not alienate any potential options by including Serpentfolk.
Imo, the Darklands introducing the Caligni, Munavri, Trox, Xulgath, and Sekmin as Ancestries; as well as the Drow (Elf), Duergar (Dwarves), Svirfneblin (Gnomes), Mongrelmen (Versatile), and Deep One Hybrids (Versatile) as Heritages doesn't seem all that crazy.
Plus, I'm not sure we should be too worried about page space for a LO: Darklands book anyways. I'd be very surprised if such a book were any less than 400 pages, like Absolom was. To reasonablely cover all three layers and the various people and creatures that call it home? It'll have to be beefy imo.
I wouldn't be opposed. There is likely enough for each layer to do it. But I'd be very surprised if that happened. Would love to be VERY wrong on that front. The benefits to doing three books likely outweight the opportunity cost of doing so. The Bestiary of each layer alone would be worth it, imo. Then, Serpentfolk can be introduced specifically in the Sekamina book, since that entire layer is named after them.
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Is there that much interest in the Darklands that they could publish three books? I'm not opposed, but these are fairly low on the list of Lost Omens books I'd want to read.
Like give me books on the Golden Road, Eye of Dread, High Seas, and Saga Lands meta-regions, give me books on Arcadia, Tien Xia, and Casmaron, give me faction books on the Firebrands, Magaambya, and Hellknights, and Lost Omens Legends 2 before the first Darklands book. But maybe that's just me.
Don't get me wrong, the Darklands are mildly interesting, but the sorts of stories you can set there are more limited than the sorts of stories you can tell in like Vudra or Vidrian or anywhere else on the surface. It feels like "an AP" is a better next step towards the Darklands than a full-on setting book.
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I would also like a Southern Garund book and a First World book a la "Book of the Dead" (title it "Masters of the First" please.) There's just more stuff that would be fascinating to read about and fun to use in games than they can realistically put out.
There are definitely several parts of the surface world I want to see in the LO line before the Darklands (Arcadia, Tian Xia, Southern Garund, the Golden Road, the Broken Lands), but I wouldn’t be opposed to one good book on it. Three would never happen.
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Yeah, something like Lost Omens Legends 2 & 3 are a thing I could see happening, because "individuals who are interesting and important"is a thing you will not ever run out of, but if we're going to keep revisiting a place over and over again that's better done in adventures than in setting books.
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I mean, idk how fair it is to say the Darklands aren't interesting enough considering they've done next to nothing with it. Even what we do know is largely vague at best. Once you get down to Sekmina, the Darklands literally spans the entire planet. And that's not even taking into consideration what the Vaults of Orv have to offer. Each of them is literally large enough to house entire nations and self containing ecosystems.
I for one want to see Darklands content more than anything. Probably more than Tian-Xia, which is by far my most favorite region in the entire setting.