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Not much has been published on the new Summoner Iconic - and maybe I'm posting this too late to influence anything. I have no idea when the new book goes to print. This new Summoner iconic appears to be a young girl with a pet dragon.
I'd like to ask that we not see child iconics. Pathfinder as a game involves combat against a variety of beasts and monsters. Art and fiction depicting a child iconic as either the target of violence or the instigator seems inappropriate.
Indeed, PFS has a ground rule that your character must be at least a young adult. Probably because they want to avoid just that situation at the table.
Maybe I'm mistaken, and this is an adult Halfling or Gnome. But the initial art did not seem to reflect that.
I recognize that there are plenty of ways to run home games and that we have child players playing Pathfinder. I'm sure all those GMs can handle that situation in a appropriate manner. I'm mainly concerned with the public image that iconic could present.
Just my thoughts. Open minded to other thoughts.
Ship has already sailed on this, the Kineticist iconic was a human child. I kinda agree though, half for the reasons you stated and half because not making the iconic a God Caller seems like a massive missed opportunity.
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Ship has already sailed on this, the Kineticist iconic was a human child. I kinda agree though, half for the reasons you stated and half because not making the iconic a God Caller seems like a massive missed opportunity.
Is she not a God Caller?
The Dragon eidolon suggests no, as most god-caller eidolons should be Beasts.
They might expand the lore of the God-Callers to include other kinds of Eidolons, though. It wouldn't be the first time Paizo tinkered around with Golarion lore.
The Dragon eidolon suggests no, as most god-caller eidolons should be Beasts.
Maybe it is a beast in the shape of a dragon.
I mean, would you be able to tell the difference between a giant winged lizard and a dragon?
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The Dragon eidolon suggests no, as most god-caller eidolons should be Beasts.
I admit that I'm not super familiar with god caller lore, but I took a look a look at the 1e god caller archetype and it didn't require a beast or animal eidolon (and in fact, beast wasn't even an option for the Unchained summoner but you could still play a god caller).
As I suggested the last time this came up, she might just be a God Caller who made friends with a dragon instead of a beast, for a reason that's relevant to whatever her story and transition to being an adventurer is. We probably won't know for a while.
I find children as Iconics a little worrisome too — it would be fine if they just had stories following them in their communities and were used as examples for mechanics, but they're also usually the basis for pregens, it seems. I was honestly expecting the other direction to be taken on this, with Yoon being replaced as Iconic Kineticist, but...¯\_(•.•)_/¯
My source is the playtest document, so no deep lore is required. I was actually surprised they would be primal casters instead of divine myself, but that's what we know about PF2 god callers.
The Dragon eidolon suggests no, as most god-caller eidolons should be Beasts.Maybe it is a beast in the shape of a dragon.
I mean, would you be able to tell the difference between a giant winged lizard and a dragon?
Yes
The Dragon eidolon suggests no, as most god-caller eidolons should be Beasts.Maybe it is a beast in the shape of a dragon.
I mean, would you be able to tell the difference between a giant winged lizard and a dragon?
In real life? Not possible, and if we are talking fiction, many universes depict dragons in different ways. One universe's dragon is another universe's drake, and so on.
In Golarion? Yes, because there are trait differences between them, meaning there are other mechanical distinctions, but also because the mechanics of the game support this being possible for the PCs to distinguish with the Recall Knowledge activity. Your question would be like asking if a Roc is no different than a Phoenix.
It really is too early to say that she is or isn't given that they could easily change the provided info for God Callers, itself, in the release version of Summoner. Just. Wait and see, seriously. (Admittedly, we're also assuming the character's age and gender and such. Nothing at all has been said about the new Iconic Summoner, to my knowledge, so everything I say below might turn out to be moot.)
I really don't want this thread to go too far off topic, because I'd like some reasoning as to why children are encouraged to not be portrayed as put into dangerous, mature situations in one side of PF2 (or cause said situations and their tone to be changed in a weird way), and are being portrayed thrust into that direction in another side of the system. Maybe that's more focused on in PFS, and I doubt that the system's writers are going to answer off the cuff on such a question, but, like, what do you do with that as the end audience with pregens being a thing later on? Just change them if the table isn't comfortable with it, I guess? Should there be another tack taken?
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Personally, while I do think not using a god caller would be a missed opportunity, I actually have a different take on teen/tween iconics and their suitability in the game world.
I had a lot of moments in my own childhood where things like constantly moving from one bad neighborhood to the next, never having the same friend group for more than a couple years, etc. was really hard for me. Depictions of people the same age as me overcoming hardships and obstacles that adults struggled with helped me out a lot. We live in a country and age now where most kids between the ages of 12 and 17 have metal detectors in their schools, active shooter drills, and classmates who didn't come back after a summer break because of a completely preventable disease. They live in a world where the last 4 generations of humanity have all failed to provide good stewardship of the environment, and many of them know that they will have the monumental task of cleaning up a world on the brink of ruin.
Kids aren't stupid, they just lack experience and context. Thousands of kids in this country have already lived through events that would break many adults. I, personally, think they deserve representation and opportunities to see people like them overcoming challenges too great for the people who look like the people that have failed them. Tweens/teens are already a massive portion of the market for this game anyways, it's strange to me for them not to see themselves in the game and for them not to be allowed to portray themselves in events like organized play.
Obviously some adventures have events that aren't appropriate for portrayals of tween/teen heroes, but in PF2 those adventures have pretty clear and concise content warnings on them about those issues.
She's on the cover, so it' probably too late.
Doesn't look like a child in the cover art. So I don't see where the complaints are coming from.
Doesn't look like a child in the cover art. So I don't see where the complaints are coming from.She's on the cover, so it' probably too late.
If that's not a child, then it must be a member of the Mwangi Pygmy.
Creative Director
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We're still working out her story, but she is indeed a human child. I suspect she's about the same age I was when my friends and I started playing D&D back in 5th grade, in fact. So... like 10 or 11, maybe?
A kid iconic is rad and helps to build inclusion and help young gamers identify with the idea that they can do adventures as kids just as plays out in so many popular other fantasy genre movies (be they family friendly like Harry Potter, or not so much like Game of Thrones, or anything in between).
In any event, we control where and when and how our iconics are portrayed and used in the art, and just as we did with our previous child iconic, Yoon the kineticist, you can expect us to do our best to be responsible in how her adventures are portrayed.
We'll have a Meet the Iconics blog and all the normal stuff going forward for her several months down the road when we get closer to the book's actual release, but for now, it's WAY too early in the process to share any more info about her.
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If that's not a child, then it must be a member of the Mwangi Pygmy.Doesn't look like a child in the cover art. So I don't see where the complaints are coming from.She's on the cover, so it' probably too late.
It could be. We don't know for sure.
Or rather, we didn't, until James Jacobs clarified that it is indeed a child.
Either way, I don't see a problem with it. I doubt Paizo will go down the Game of Thrones route with a child character, as probably the most gruesome involvement of children I have seen Paizo do, in terms of lacking abstraction, is in the first book of Rise of the Runelords. And most people were okay with that.
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We're still working out her story, but she is indeed a human child. I suspect she's about the same age I was when my friends and I started playing D&D back in 5th grade, in fact. So... like 10 or 11, maybe?
A kid iconic is rad and helps to build inclusion and help young gamers identify with the idea that they can do adventures as kids just as plays out in so many popular other fantasy genre movies (be they family friendly like Harry Potter, or not so much like Game of Thrones, or anything in between).
In any event, we control where and when and how our iconics are portrayed and used in the art, and just as we did with our previous child iconic, Yoon the kineticist, you can expect us to do our best to be responsible in how her adventures are portrayed.
We'll have a Meet the Iconics blog and all the normal stuff going forward for her several months down the road when we get closer to the book's actual release, but for now, it's WAY too early in the process to share any more info about her.
I appreciate you chiming in. While you can control how she is represented in your fiction and art, I will point out you can't control what happens to her once her pre-gen is released for PFS use. As happens with pre-gens, she will be put into many dangerous situations and at times be sacrificed to save other characters.
One alternative I wish had been pursued. Junia Dacilane (soon to appear in her third PFS scenario) would have been an exciting iconic and a new take on the iconic summoner.
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One alternative I wish had been pursued. Junia Dacilane (soon to appear in her third PFS scenario) would have been an exciting iconic and a new take on the iconic summoner.
Pre-existing NPCs never become iconics for a few reasons.
1) Iconics don't actually exist. They're stand ins for the players. This rule gets bent a bit for video games and the like since they need brand touchstones, but Valeros, Seoni, etc. won't ever appear in something like a scenario, because they're not "real" to the game world the way that characters like Avarneus or Kevoth-Kul are.
2) Iconics shouldn't be people you can meet in the game world, because the assumption is that an iconic is player-controlled. Using Junia Dacilane gets real weird if you're playing an adventure where Junia is also the key NPC.
3) Pre-existing NPCs often have storylines associated with them that players become invested in, which increases the likelihood of awkward table moments when someone tries to tell a player all about who their character is and what "the right" way to play them is, or that they have a feud with so-and-so from this adventure the person with the iconic has never played. These experiences are bad enough when the person butting in doesn't know more about your character than you do.
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And to add on one more point to Michael's already excellent points...
4) Kids seeing a kid in the role of a heroic adventure can inspire kids better to play the game than seeing grown-ups in that role. Our iconics were originally intended to serve only as art guidelines for class specifics for artists (It's easier to show a picture of, say, Ezren, than to list all the things that wizards can or can't do or wear, for example), but as time's gone on it's become apparent that an even more important role is to promote inclusion and to show as wide a range of players and GMs that they are represented in the game. No matter the age, ethnicity, appearance, gender, sexuality, religious beliefs, etc. Not having a younger iconic is a disservice to all of those who start gaming at a younger age.
5) We have never and likely will never "promote" an existing in-world NPC to the status of iconic.
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I wonder if the kid will count as a small creature, because RAW all human PCs are medium (I houserule that child character's are small and can choose the Harmlessly Cute feat as an ancestry feat regardless of ancestry).
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I wonder if the kid will count as a small creature, because RAW all human PCs are medium (I houserule that child character's are small and can choose the Harmlessly Cute feat as an ancestry feat regardless of ancestry).
Given that even the shortest 10 year old girls are usually over 4' tall, probably not going to be Small just as they weren't in 1st Ed, but I see no reason not to consider children as potentially Harmlessly Cute XD
Both kid iconics are human girls. I hope we will one day get a kid iconic who departs from this.
I don't really see why this is such a necessary desire. It's not like male youths need an incentive or an inclusionary character to help them feel like they are a part of the gaming community. That is, after all, where this hobby mostly started. (Which escalated into the stereotypical gamer most people viewed both today and in previous editions' publications, an unfortunate stereotype, but one that has inadvertently led us to this point in history.)
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The 80's would like to say hello. A land before time, Dragon slayer, Indiana Jones and the temple of doom, The never ending story, Poltergeist, etc. We used to have very dark stories involving children and teens as main characters or sidekicks.
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I know that as a kid I was most fascinated by even the benign fantasies of Alice in Wonderland or the Wizard of Oz--a kid being transported to a magical world where really the largest threat was whether or not they'd be able to get home. I also grew up in the aforementioned era of "children in peril" and also loved stories like The Goonies, Return to Oz, The Black Cauldron, and so forth, in which kids were put in real danger and rose to overcome it, often leading adults who would, on paper, seem to be the more qualified to deal with bad situations.
And to the points about us not having any control over how people play their adolescent pregen, we also can't control how they play their middle-aged pregens. Nor, for that matter, can we stop someone from using the wizard pregen and saying that their character is a 14-year-old girl. Or vice-versa. A character's age and gender have no bearing on how they play at the table, and players have always and will continue to file the serial numbers off their pregens and make them their own.
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And to the points about us not having any control over how people play their adolescent pregen, we also can't control how they play their middle-aged pregens. Nor, for that matter, can we stop someone from using the wizard pregen and saying that their character is a 14-year-old girl. Or vice-versa. A character's age and gender have no bearing on how they play at the table, and players have always and will continue to file the serial numbers off their pregens and make them their own.
So much this!
I myself played Yoon the Kineticist as an adult female dwarf (small person) fire witch precisely because I wanted to roleplay the character in a manner that wouldn't have been appropriate for a child.
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The 80's would like to say hello. A land before time, Dragon slayer, Indiana Jones and the temple of doom, The never ending story, Poltergeist, etc. We used to have very dark stories involving children and teens as main characters or sidekicks.
The 90's also wants to chime in with Goosebumps, Ghostwriter (yes, seriously, those kids had more than a few "adult fear" situations), and topping them all, the Animorphs.
A series of unfortunate events...in Narnia....
Personally when I was a child I actually kind of hated fiction that focused on kids & preferred watching shows & reading stories that focused on adults because even at a tender young age I always thought that grown men being beaten up by Robin didn't make Robin look impressive, it made the grown men look weak.
Then again I'm also self aware enough to recognize that I'm a minority in that regard & that everything doesn't need to be geared towards me, specifically. Aside from that I wouldn't play the game with a pre-generated character if a gun was put to my head so this doubly doesn't affect me.