I found them very useful. I am a novice player and I need sometimes a guide to advance my character.
Also they help me to imagine better the adventure. I don't conceive now adventures like ROTRL without Seoni and Kingmaker without Harsk pairing with Amiri.
Please, bring them back.
And add some of the new iconics from the Advanced player's guide.
The iconics are available for download I believe.
Which two pages from the AP would you like to cut, to make room?
Also, they were objects of countless "WTF TWF FIGHTARD PAIZO FAILS AT DESIGN" farcical arguments from the "optimize or die" crowd.
*chuckles*
Creative Director
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Also, they were objects of countless "WTF TWF FIGHTARD PAIZO FAILS AT DESIGN" farcical arguments from the "optimize or die" crowd.
And constantly bringing that back up sure does help it to remain countless...
The ACTUAL reason why we quit running the iconics in each volume actually had nothing to do with that. Folks will complain about things no matter what, after all, and the iconics were never intended to be a place for us Paizo designers to show off our design skills at making unstoppable, perfectly optimized characters. (The fact that such characters are, frankly, super boring and not suited at all for characters who also have personalities and quirks that make them interesting is a topic for a thousand other threads.)
The reason we stopped doing the iconics is because removing them from Pathifnder makes it easier for us to put an AP volume together. We're constantly looking for ways to refine Pathfinder AP to make the production of this monthly product easier and more efficient. By removing the iconics and absorbing those 2 pages into other articles, that not only gets us more room for those other articles, but it doesn't disrupt work flow by having one more thing to switch gears into. It's easier to edit and develop one 50 page adventure than it is to edit and develop one 48 page adventure and 2 pages of iconics, in other words. Not ENORMOUSLY easier, but noticeably easier.
And also; we didn't do this on a whim. We talked with folks on these boards to sound out reactions, and the majority of people agreed that they would not be sorry to see the iconics go if they allowed us to expand other content in the adventure.
Of course, if you have the iconics we statted up in earlier volumes... you can still use those today.
And also, as mentioned above, we're getting their stats up online in the PFS area.
And also as mentioned above, we do still pick 4 iconics to illustrate the adventure paths; they still show up in the context of the covers and the illustrations in the adventure.
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The fact that such characters are, frankly, super boring and not suited at all for characters who also have personalities and quirks that make them interesting is a topic for a thousand other threads.If you don't want this argument, why are you arguing about it? With no one in particular, in fact? Especially when it has nothing to do with the actual reason they were cut?
We have an expression that goes "hit the table and the scissors will make sound" in Polish, I'm not sure what's the correct English equivalent, but this is it ;-)
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The fact that such characters are, frankly, super boring and not suited at all for characters who also have personalities and quirks that make them interesting is a topic for a thousand other threads.If you don't want this argument, why are you arguing about it? With no one in particular, in fact? Especially when it has nothing to do with the actual reason they were cut?
Because every now and then, the cumulative negativity of the internet pushes me to push back.
As one of the optimizers, I was less concerned about, say, subpar feat selection and ability scores then not even obeying their own basic advice for advancing a character. Sure, it's simpler to have a Ring of Prot+4 instead of Amulet and Ring +2 and advancing your armor and shield another +1, which helps your AC nicely.
:P
I understood the flavor behind Valeros, the wizard having crappy Dex and Meierel having a 10 int (8 in 3.5).
Having a level 15 wizard blow zounds of money on Bracers+6 and no Dex booster, Ring or Amulet? When he still memorizes mage armor? What?
That's the kind of stuff that annoyed me most, going against their own character build advice.
===Aelryinth
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Because every now and then, the cumulative negativity of the internet pushes me to push back.Okay then.
Anyway, where can you download them? Free NPCs are always useful.
They're over in the PFS section: Clicky.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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They're over in the PFS section: Clicky.Much appreciated. When were the UC iconics posted? Were there any plans to do APG/Magus iconics?
What's the real-world story behind them? Are these characters created specifically for example characters, after the class is designed, or characters that someone playtested in-house? Kind of an involved set of questions, but it might make an interesting blog entry.
There are blog entries for all of the classic iconics and I believe they are working their way through the newer classes.
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They're over in the PFS section: Clicky.Much appreciated. When were the UC iconics posted? Were there any plans to do APG/Magus iconics?
What's the real-world story behind them? Are these characters created specifically for example characters, after the class is designed, or characters that someone playtested in-house? Kind of an involved set of questions, but it might make an interesting blog entry.
I'm not sure, but I suspect they were posted just before Gen Con.
The actual real-world story about the iconics is that we use them as art reference for artists. The vast majority of the artists we use don't actually game. If we ask a typical artist to paint a picture of a wizard, we could we get a picture of a wizard with a big sword or wearing armor. And while the game does allow that... it's not the way we generally want to show wizards. So on one level, we can simply say "paint this character" rather than re-explain every single time to an artist what they can and can't have the character do. And since artists are visual people and not as much word people, giving them a visual model to base art on is much better. It's certainly more efficient.
Also, the iconics help us build a brand for the game. If you see those characters over and over and over, then you start to associate them with Pathfinder. Eventually, when you see one of those characters, you'll know that it's a Paizo product even if there's no other clue about the image. In that way, they serve the same marketing purpose, really, that the golden arches do for McDonalds, or that Tinkerbell does for Disney.
The fact that they have stats and stories at all is 100% due to customer demand. We did iconics for Dungeon Magazine as well several years ago, but never did names or backgrounds for them (one of them ended up being the model for a cleric I played in Erik Mona's Age of Worms game, though, so she, the cleric, ended up with a name and stats sort of accidentally). We knew from those Dungeon iconics that our customers would want more information about our Pathfinder Iconics, and so we started with their histories and stats pretty much from the first day.
Since that day, though, we've gone from doing 1 96 page book and 1 32 page book a month to doing additional 32 page books, a monthly line of 64 page books, 3 huge hardcovers a year (plus, usually, a "bonus" fourth hardcover), a novel line, 2 Org Play scenarios a month, the org play program itself, the Beginner Box, the new minis line, and a lot more that's still in the pipe. As a result, we've just got a lot less time to devote to our iconics' stats and stories, but hopefully we'll get to a point where our capacity to hire new folks to help out will prove to have caught up with our desire to branch out into new types of products. At which point we'll be able to do more info about them all!
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I seem to remember seeing it posted somewhere by James that the iconics were built based on their character art, and not the other way around.
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What's the real-world story behind them? Are these characters created specifically for example characters, after the class is designed, or characters that someone playtested in-house? Kind of an involved set of questions, but it might make an interesting blog entry.
Correct.
For an iconic, we'd send an art order to Wayne that might look something like this:
"Iconic Sorcerer: She should be a human female with lots of exotic tattoos."
And what we get back from him is Seoni. Pretty much ALL of an iconic's look is generated by Wayne. And he has his own stories about every single one of their items and quirks, it seems.
They're over in the PFS section: Clicky.Okay then.
Anyway, where can you download them? Free NPCs are always useful.
Thanks for this link.
The actual real-world story about the iconics is that we use them as art reference for artists. The vast majority of the artists we use don't actually game. If we ask a typical artist to paint a picture of a wizard, we could we get a picture of a wizard with a big sword or wearing armor. And while the game does allow that... it's not the way we generally want to show wizards. So on one level, we can simply say "paint this character" rather than re-explain every single time to an artist what they can and can't have the character do. And since artists are visual people and not as much word people, giving them a visual model to base art on is much better. It's certainly more efficient.
This just makes me ask one thing: What were the parameters for the super-cool dual-wielding hippy/native american garb wearing half-elf Gunslinger, from Ultimate Combat on page 242? :D
( And what's with the art preference for dual-wielding gunslingers, while the rules very much don't support that type of play, with the "need one free hand to reload" caveat? ^^ ).
And what's with the art preference for dual-wielding gunslingers, while the rules very much don't support that type of play, with the "need one free hand to reload" caveat? ^^ .
That's true! Take the spell "Reloading hand". It only reloads once per round, but the art for that spell is reloading two guns at the same time.
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Creative Director
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The actual real-world story about the iconics is that we use them as art reference for artists. The vast majority of the artists we use don't actually game. If we ask a typical artist to paint a picture of a wizard, we could we get a picture of a wizard with a big sword or wearing armor. And while the game does allow that... it's not the way we generally want to show wizards. So on one level, we can simply say "paint this character" rather than re-explain every single time to an artist what they can and can't have the character do. And since artists are visual people and not as much word people, giving them a visual model to base art on is much better. It's certainly more efficient.This just makes me ask one thing: What were the parameters for the super-cool dual-wielding hippy/native american garb wearing half-elf Gunslinger, from Ultimate Combat on page 242? :D
( And what's with the art preference for dual-wielding gunslingers, while the rules very much don't support that type of play, with the "need one free hand to reload" caveat? ^^ ).
Artists don't usually read the rules for the game, and designers often don't base design decisions on what's going on in the art.
The art on page 242 was likely ordered as, "This is a half elf gunslinger who's casting a spell to reload her gun." Note the ghostly hands putting bullets into her gun, and that she appears on the same page as the spell "reloading hands."
That the art is reloading 2 guns while the spell allows for only 1 to be reloaded is a result of a designer/developer not bothering to mesh the rules up to the art, which is unfortunate, but hardly game breaking.
The fact that Carolina (the artist) put her in that neat costume was her decision, and it was a great decision, and it's why we use her artwork relatively frequently—because she's REALLY good at depicting neat costumes and cool characters in dynamic poses.
Artists don't usually read the rules for the game, and designers often don't base design decisions on what's going on in the art.
The art on page 242 was likely ordered as, "This is a half elf gunslinger who's casting a spell to reload her gun." Note the ghostly hands putting bullets into her gun, and that she appears on the same page as the spell "reloading hands."
That the art is reloading 2 guns while the spell allows for only 1 to be reloaded is a result of a designer/developer not bothering to mesh the rules up to the art, which is unfortunate, but hardly game breaking.
The fact that Carolina (the artist) put her in that neat costume was her decision, and it was a great decision, and it's why we use her artwork relatively frequently—because she's REALLY good at depicting neat costumes and cool characters in dynamic poses.
Thanks for the answer! :) Although I am having one hell of a time trying to make a two guns wielding Gunslinger viable for a player who wants to play one... it really is a bit strange that the rules don't support fighting with two one-handed guns very well, when even the iconic Gunslinger is dual-wielding. ^^