The new alignment system and Rahadoum

[Temperans]

Jacob Jett wrote:

More on topic... I suppose I could use a little more clarification on why druids would be fighting the desert in Rahadoum. From what I've read on it, along with examining various maps, it looks like the dominant natural environment is, in fact, dry sandy desert or salt waste. Even here on Earth, those are natural environments. I'm also not seeing where something that's already a desert gets further desertified. Can someone explain what I'm missing?

Basically Rahadoum looks like a fantasy equivalent of Morocco + Algeria + Tunisia. Those are pretty arid locations. Rahadoum seems to traditionally be an arid place, so what have I missed that druids would be trying convert the natural landscape into something it isn't?

Desertification is a real concern and there are a lot of causes both natural, artificial, and magical. Even in our own world there have been issues with soil erosion and desertification in farm areas.

The issue with druids is that while many follow the green faith, that it not required. Not all druids are about being one with nature just like not all fighters are about conducting fights. The druids fighting desertification in Rahadoum is a mix of "we (Rahadoum) wont kill you (druids) as long as you work for us" and "we (druids) want to protect the habitats in these regions because of X reasons". But at the same time there would be druids creating and protecting said desert because "they (Rahadoum) killed our friend/family", "we (druids) like this environment", etc.

While the region is a desert overall, the cities themselves were built on places that were originally lush and green.

[Jacob Jett]

Probably if the cities were removed the desertification would cease. That's how it works in our world. Once you remove humans, things tend to quickly start to self-correct.

[Temperans]

Sanityfaerie wrote:

QuidEst wrote:

They're not fighting the desert so much as fighting desertification. A formerly non-desert area is becoming desert, and plenty of druids with a focus life or plants would consider stopping that to be promoting their aspect of nature in a way that doesn't violate anathema. If they wanted to rapidly magically terraform a long-standing desert into a lumber forest, there would probably be fewer takers.

Huh. Cross-referencing this with a different topic, it occurs to me that water kineticists are literally living portals to the elemental plain of water... and, by extension, should be able to just create water, pretty much without limit. That seems potentially pertinent to tasks such as this... and Rahadoum wouldn't have any real objection to kineticists in general. Of course, they might not really have any kineticists, but I wouldn't see them objecting.

That doesn't actually help as much as you would think. First of all hydro kineticist may have the ability to magically create water, but that does not make it useable water. Much like with other spells, that matter usually disapears after the effect of the spell ends.

Second, desertification is more than just a lack of water. It is also caused from the soil physically not being able to support itself. The usual causes are overgrazing, deforestation, and farmland. Adding water will create quicksand and sink holes before actually fixing the actual issues.

Finally, the whole thing could be further perpectuated from magical causes. Plenty of magic that could cause these type of issues. There are even Blighted Defiler Kineticists whose whole thing is sucking the life out of everything in an up to 5k ft radius.

[PossibleCabbage]

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

I don't get people assuming this is an alignment thread. It's clearly about how Rahadoum's lore interacts with the new mechanic,

I feel like I need to know exactly what the mechanic is before I can figure out how it jives with Rahadoum's lore. Like the change in 2e that Divine Sorcerers and Witches might be okay is a big change we haven't really resolved yet.

[Sanityfaerie]

Temperans wrote:

That doesn't actually help as much as you would think. First of all hydro kineticist may have the ability to magically create water, but that does not make it useable water. Much like with other spells, that matter usually disapears after the effect of the spell ends.

Second, desertification is more than just a lack of water. It is also caused from the soil physically not being able to support itself. The usual causes are overgrazing, deforestation, and farmland. Adding water will create quicksand and sink holes before actually fixing the actual issues.

Finally, the whole thing could be further perpectuated from magical causes. Plenty of magic that could cause these type of issues. There are even Blighted Defiler Kineticists whose whole thing is sucking the life out of everything in an up to 5k ft radius.

For the first point, in the playtest, the level 7 Adapt Terrain was pretty clearly generating stuff which would then just stick around indefinitely, as do at least a few of the powers. I think that the "and then it automatically just vanishes" thing is maybe not a feature of the kineticist - or at least not in every case. We'll have to see what it looks like when we get the final.

For everything else... fair.

[Temperans]

Sanityfaerie wrote:

Temperans wrote:

That doesn't actually help as much as you would think. First of all hydro kineticist may have the ability to magically create water, but that does not make it useable water. Much like with other spells, that matter usually disapears after the effect of the spell ends.

Second, desertification is more than just a lack of water. It is also caused from the soil physically not being able to support itself. The usual causes are overgrazing, deforestation, and farmland. Adding water will create quicksand and sink holes before actually fixing the actual issues.

Finally, the whole thing could be further perpectuated from magical causes. Plenty of magic that could cause these type of issues. There are even Blighted Defiler Kineticists whose whole thing is sucking the life out of everything in an up to 5k ft radius.

For the first point, in the playtest, the level 7 Adapt Terrain was pretty clearly generating stuff which would then just stick around indefinitely, as do at least a few of the powers. I think that the "and then it automatically just vanishes" thing is maybe not a feature of the kineticist - or at least not in every case. We'll have to see what it looks like when we get the final.

For everything else... fair.

I mean I did say,

Quote:

Much like with other spells, that matter usually disapears after the effect of the spell ends.

Yes some spells do it, but most spells don't. I assume that any such permanent changes are explicity spelled out in the spell.

[Trixleby]

I wonder how a PC who is a follower of the Whispering Way and has aspirations to Lichdom might be received by his fellow adventurers.

Used to be I'd probably have to label him evil, but adays perhaps, much like Rahadoum, those of us who would rather throw off the shackles of allegiances to gods, and imbrace ourselves as our higher power, people can go away with all that and leave us to our very important scientific and magical research and as we try to uncover the secrets of the universe and save everyone else from the fate of death.

Pls stop bullying us Necromancers, we've done nothing wrong.

[Sanityfaerie]

Temperans wrote:

I mean I did say,

Quote:

Much like with other spells, that matter usually disapears after the effect of the spell ends.

Yes some spells do it, but most spells don't. I assume that any such permanent changes are explicity spelled out in the spell.

So, first, kineticists don't do "spells". The things the do are different things.

Second, the thign Id' been referring to is even less of a spell, as it's actually a class feature that comes online at lvl 7.

It allows you to fill a square with your element (potentially creating difficult or hazardous terrain)... which then reacts as your element does, explicitly including (if water) things like splashing down and sinking into the ground. It also makes clear that it is possible to create multiple of these, and link them all together. No limits are places on your ability to do this (other than your willingness to spend time doing it) and no duration is given.

Those spells that create things that do magically disappear at the end of their duration tend to indicate that pretty clearly.

...but I acknowledge that I am dragging things wildly off-topic. (In my own thread, no less! Oh, the shame of it.) I do not claim that I have absolute knowledge of this thing, and I'll admit that it's entirely possible that this is just playtest weirdness, and the tyranny of "you may not make permanent creations with character powers under any circumstances" may yet return for the real thing.

[Jacob Jett]

Sanityfaerie wrote:

Temperans wrote:

I mean I did say,

Quote:

Much like with other spells, that matter usually disapears after the effect of the spell ends.

Yes some spells do it, but most spells don't. I assume that any such permanent changes are explicity spelled out in the spell.

So, first, kineticists don't do "spells". The things the do are different things.

Second, the thign Id' been referring to is even less of a spell, as it's actually a class feature that comes online at lvl 7.

It allows you to fill a square with your element (potentially creating difficult or hazardous terrain)... which then reacts as your element does, explicitly including (if water) things like splashing down and sinking into the ground. It also makes clear that it is possible to create multiple of these, and link them all together. No limits are places on your ability to do this (other than your willingness to spend time doing it) and no duration is given.

Those spells that create things that do magically disappear at the end of their duration tend to indicate that pretty clearly.

...but I acknowledge that I am dragging things wildly off-topic. (In my own thread, no less! Oh, the shame of it.) I do not claim that I have absolute knowledge of this thing, and I'll admit that it's entirely possible that this is just playtest weirdness, and the tyranny of "you may not make permanent creations with character powers under any circumstances" may yet return for the real thing.

Wow. That seems really strong. I'd bet there's a duration attached to it.

[Sanityfaerie]

Jacob Jett wrote:

Wow. That seems really strong. I'd bet there's a duration attached to it.

It has to be within 30 feet, there has to be a (potentially small) supply of the element to work with initially, it takes two actions, and you have to be 7th level. Under those conditions, "create one square of difficult terrain" isn't what I would describe as "really strong". No, there is no listed duration.

Still, this is the sort of minor power that's near-guaranteed to shift around at least some, so who knows what we'll actually get.

As far as Rahadoum... we haven't gotten any sort of in-depth look at it yet, and we know that they will be shifting. So yeah, this is all speculation, on both New Core and New Rahadoum.

[Jacob Jett]

I mean just think about it. If I had an elven character who spent every waking moment of every day (except for breaks) producing one of these elements, how many squares could I cover? For the sake of planetary cosmology this ability has to have some limits (like, think of the gravity of the situation). [It's a physics pun for those who miss it.]

[Temperans]

Sanityfaerie wrote:

Temperans wrote:

I mean I did say,

Quote:

Much like with other spells, that matter usually disapears after the effect of the spell ends.

Yes some spells do it, but most spells don't. I assume that any such permanent changes are explicity spelled out in the spell.

So, first, kineticists don't do "spells". The things the do are different things.

Second, the thign Id' been referring to is even less of a spell, as it's actually a class feature that comes online at lvl 7.

It allows you to fill a square with your element (potentially creating difficult or hazardous terrain)... which then reacts as your element does, explicitly including (if water) things like splashing down and sinking into the ground. It also makes clear that it is possible to create multiple of these, and link them all together. No limits are places on your ability to do this (other than your willingness to spend time doing it) and no duration is given.

Those spells that create things that do magically disappear at the end of their duration tend to indicate that pretty clearly.

...but I acknowledge that I am dragging things wildly off-topic. (In my own thread, no less! Oh, the shame of it.) I do not claim that I have absolute knowledge of this thing, and I'll admit that it's entirely possible that this is just playtest weirdness, and the tyranny of "you may not make permanent creations with character powers under any circumstances" may yet return for the real thing.

In interest of no further derail I'll just say this one last thing.

Kineticist abilities were "spell-like abilities". Now they are "spells" or "focus cantrips" or some variation thereof. There is no such things as an ability that creates matter that is also not a spell.

But yeah, as Jacob Jett implied, that's a whole lot of mass getting added to the planet because you bet geokineticist and metalallumkineticist would be adding a whole lot of free adamantine.

[QuidEst]

Jacob Jett wrote:

I mean just think about it. If I had an elven character who spent every waking moment of every day (except for breaks) producing one of these elements, how many squares could I cover? For the sake of planetary cosmology this ability has to have some limits (like, think of the gravity of the situation). [It's a physics pun for those who miss it.]

Not sure what elves have to do with it, but 5x5x1 (assuming a generous foot of water to make difficult terrain) x 10 rounds per minute x 60 minutes per hour x 8 hours per workday = 120,000 cubic feet = 900,000 gallons = 340 kL = 1 1/3 Olympic swimming pools. That's about four times a firehose, which seems pretty reasonable. However, that assumption of a foot of water is generous. If it's an inch of water for difficult terrain, then you're looking at a third the flow rate of a fire hose.

[Kobold Catgirl]

(Casual reminder, in case anyone's forgotten, that elves must rest for 8 hours like everyone else in Golarion!)

[Sanityfaerie]

Temperans wrote:

In interest of no further derail I'll just say this one last thing.

Kineticist abilities were "spell-like abilities". Now they are "spells" or "focus cantrips" or some variation thereof. There is no such things as an ability that creates matter that is also not a spell.

But yeah, as Jacob Jett implied, that's a whole lot of mass getting added to the planet because you bet geokineticist and metalallumkineticist would be adding a whole lot of free adamantine.

In interest of no further derail, you'll continue to derail?

Back during the playtest, they were not spells, they were impulses, and the specific power of Adapt Element wasn't even that. Primal, yes. Evocation, yes. Spell, no.

If they've made a declaration that the kineticist is going to run on spells now, I'd be very interested in hearing more about that. Where did you come across such a thing?

Jacob Jett wrote:

I mean just think about it. If I had an elven character who spent every waking moment of every day (except for breaks) producing one of these elements, how many squares could I cover? For the sake of planetary cosmology this ability has to have some limits (like, think of the gravity of the situation). [It's a physics pun for those who miss it.]

Why would they, though? I mean, you're positing someone who got all the way up to 7th level and then decides... that they want to try to break the world in the slowest and most mind-numbingly boring manner possible? You're making at most 125 cubic feet of material per casting (realistically significantly less). If you did this constantly without stop for anything, for a year, you'd have 7.5*10^10 cubic feet of stuff. If you somehow managed to gather together the physical and mental fortitude, the longevity, and the peace from your neighbors to keep doing it for 1000 years, you'd have 7.5*10^13 cubic feet. Golarion is canonically the same size as earth, at 3.8*10^22 cubic feet. The surface area of the earth is more manageable, at 5.5*10^15 square feet, but given that your "at most" cubes are 5 feet deep, you're still covering less than a hundredth of it... and at that point you're unlikely to find enough copacetic neighbors to let you finish your mad, slow plan unmolested.

So... not a concern, really.

/******************/

I'd write something about the alignment system and Rahadoum here, as a nod to being on-topic, but I feel like we've exhausted pretty much all of the non-toxic topic space there is to cover on it already, at least until new info comes out.

[Perpdepog]

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

(Casual reminder, in case anyone's forgotten, that elves must rest for 8 hours like everyone else in Golarion!)

And another casual reminder. The decanter of endless water is still a thing.

[PossibleCabbage]

I would assume that the elemental plane of water has auditors who, if you try to take out too much water via things like the decanter or create water spells, will either balance it out by confiscating some commensurate water from somewhere else, or will confront you directly.

Where the kineticist got out of hand in 1e (and goodness did I have fun doing this in Ironfang Invasion) is when you have like one week to prepare for a siege, and you had all the "move earth around" wild talents.

[Kobold Catgirl]

There's also no reason a GM can't just say that the water a kineticist generates from that "spell" isn't potable under any circumstances. This doesn't need to be a big "plothole" or whatever.

[Jacob Jett]

QuidEst wrote:

Jacob Jett wrote:

I mean just think about it. If I had an elven character who spent every waking moment of every day (except for breaks) producing one of these elements, how many squares could I cover? For the sake of planetary cosmology this ability has to have some limits (like, think of the gravity of the situation). [It's a physics pun for those who miss it.]

Not sure what elves have to do with it, but 5x5x1 (assuming a generous foot of water to make difficult terrain) x 10 rounds per minute x 60 minutes per hour x 8 hours per workday = 120,000 cubic feet = 900,000 gallons = 340 kL = 1 1/3 Olympic swimming pools. That's about four times a firehose, which seems pretty reasonable. However, that assumption of a foot of water is generous. If it's an inch of water for difficult terrain, then you're looking at a third the flow rate of a fire hose.

Longest lifespan. So now times by days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millennia. See the issue?

[Jacob Jett]

Perpdepog wrote:

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

(Casual reminder, in case anyone's forgotten, that elves must rest for 8 hours like everyone else in Golarion!)

And another casual reminder. The decanter of endless water is still a thing.

Lolz. I totally forgot about that thing. And folks insist that PF2 is balanced. This is the very picture of a broken item.

Ultimately it isn't about potability. It's about accumulation over time and ultimately abuse by bad actors. Like imagine if a daemon or for that matter a demon, gets a hold of the above magic item, sticks it somewhere super inconvenient, and leaves it running. How many millennia need to pass before it drowns Golarion?

And if I can think of this use, there's definitely other folks who will.

[Kobold Catgirl]

Even supposing that's a plausible end-of-days scenario, I don't really read most fantasy settings that way. It feels too CinemaSins for my tastes. It's magic. Presumably it would not be able to destroy the world because of other magic, if it's really an issue, but it's not. This isn't a setting like Eberron, where magic is fully integrated into the socio-economic reality of the world. Eberron's based on the question of, "wait, how would that magic actually affect the development of nations?" Golarion isn't.

[Jacob Jett]

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

Even supposing that's a plausible end-of-days scenario, I don't really read most fantasy settings that way. It feels too CinemaSins for my tastes. It's magic. Presumably it would not be able to destroy the world because of other magic, if it's really an issue, but it's not. This isn't a setting like Eberron, where magic is plentiful, casual, and fully integrated into the socio-economic reality of the world.

Well, you just haven't played this kind of game with the kind of reprobates that I have. (Like the kinds of players that worried Gygax.) Even in a fantasy setting there's only so much disbelief that one can suspend. General rule of thumb on my end is that magical matter never lasts more than one day or must be fashioned from some equal amount of previously existing non-magical matter.

Like imagine if every summon just walked off after the spell duration terminated instead of going back to wherever it came from. Some brutally dark maths begin to materialize.

Now if only we could round this back to edicts and anathema.

Maybe kineticists will have anathema that prevents them from permanently creating matter from thin air? Or an edict that requires they destroy every decanter of endless water they find (you know, for the safety and stability of the multiverse).

[Sibelius Eos Owm]

I don't feel like a decanter if endless water could even do very much on even a national scale before somebody took note and stopped it. Even more, I dint think we should assume only fiends have the power to do act--celestial so like to leave free will and choice in the hands of mortal's, but a fiend leaving a decanter on top of a mountain seems like the kind if thing that celestially might trivially thwart as often as they please.

[Kobold Catgirl]

Honestly, I don't like designing games based on the kinds of people I wouldn't want to play with. As for my "suspension of disbelief", if I can suspend it for a fairy tale, I can suspend it for some weird magical treasures.

I don't enjoy fantasy when it feels too insecure to be truly magical. Sometimes it's okay to let fantasy be fantasy. Eberron gets a pass because it's Eberron's whole thing, but if every setting was like that, I'd lose interest in the hobby pretty quickly.

[Jacob Jett]

Sibelius Eos Owm wrote:

I don't feel like a decanter if endless water could even do very much on even a national scale before somebody took note and stopped it. Even more, I dint think we should assume only fiends have the power to do act--celestial so like to leave free will and choice in the hands of mortal's, but a fiend leaving a decanter on top of a mountain seems like the kind if thing that celestially might trivially thwart as often as they please.

Try hiding it in the dark lands inside a pile rocks where it will look like a natural spring. It pays to be devious. Putting things on mountain tops is amateur hour.

Now if the old decanter had an extra rule like, doesn't work when submersed in a liquid, we'd be golden.

[Jacob Jett]

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

Honestly, I don't like designing games based on the kinds of people I wouldn't want to play with. As for my "suspension of disbelief", if I can suspend it for a fairy tale, I can suspend it for some weird magical treasures.

Unfortunately you don't get to choose how your friends play the game you DM for them. Gygax would have regularly killed their characters. I'm a soft touch though. I did get very adept at house ruling odd ball exploits like the decanter though.

[Ezekieru]

Also, it's only a level 7 item. So, it'd take, what, a 4th level/rank spell to counteract the effects? Given how many high level wizards there are in Golarion alone, not to mention other classes or intelligent and benevolent beings in the cosmos, it wouldn't really be THAT difficult to stop it.

[Kobold Catgirl]

I do get to choose who I play with, though. Like I said, I don't want a game that bases its mechanics around the assumption that its players are obnoxious. This is, incidentally, why I'm very glad our game doesn't base its mechanics around the kind of game Gygax would have wanted to play.

I think there would be a lot of holes in your decanter scenario if it ever actually played out, but I also find debating the logistics of an inherently nitpicky critique to be kind of self-defeating. In fantasy, my answer to "wait, why don't all these fireballs cause global warming?" is usually gonna be "because the ten-eyed carbon-eating wizards balance it out, obviously." Or, more curtly, "Because it doesn't. Do you want to play, or not?" I'm not here to argue fantasy physics, I'm here to kiss dragons and fight damsels.

It's not about "turning my brain off", by the way, before anyone suggests it is. I find fantasy fulfilling because it embraces the unknown, the mysterious, the dreamlike, and the wondrous. It means less and less to me the more I stress about "wait, do mermaids just poop in the ocean? Should an ice breath attack actually kill people that quickly? What are the physics behind a medusa's gaze???"

It feels really boring. Like we're too insecure to just unironically enjoy a magical world with magical logic.

[QuidEst]

Jacob Jett wrote:

Perpdepog wrote:

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

(Casual reminder, in case anyone's forgotten, that elves must rest for 8 hours like everyone else in Golarion!)

And another casual reminder. The decanter of endless water is still a thing.

Lolz. I totally forgot about that thing. And folks insist that PF2 is balanced. This is the very picture of a broken item.

Ultimately it isn't about potability. It's about accumulation over time and ultimately abuse by bad actors. Like imagine if a daemon or for that matter a demon, gets a hold of the above magic item, sticks it somewhere super inconvenient, and leaves it running. How many millennia need to pass before it drowns Golarion?

And if I can think of this use, there's definitely other folks who will.

It would take twelve million years to fill a very big lake. 15 gallons per round, ten rounds per minute, sixty minutes per hour, twenty-four hours per day, 365 days per year. That's insignificant next to even Lake Michigan's one quadrillion gallons, let alone an ocean. The rules don't have a reason to cover running a magic item for a century or more, let alone twelve thousand millennia.

... And that's four orders of magnitude away from an ocean.

Pretty sure Wish solves the problem if it starts getting anywhere.

[Kobold Catgirl]

This conversation reminds me of something similar.

(By the way, this article is about a breach ten meters in radius, and it takes hundreds of thousands of years. You can do the math, if you like. :P)

Oh, also, I just had to say--

Jacob Jett wrote:

(Like the kinds of players that worried Gygax.)

Ah, yes, women.

[Temperans]

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

Even supposing that's a plausible end-of-days scenario, I don't really read most fantasy settings that way. It feels too CinemaSins for my tastes. It's magic. Presumably it would not be able to destroy the world because of other magic, if it's really an issue, but it's not. This isn't a setting like Eberron, where magic is fully integrated into the socio-economic reality of the world. Eberron's based on the question of, "wait, how would that magic actually affect the development of nations?" Golarion isn't.

Last time I checked Golarion does take that stuff into account, just ignores it when it comes to PCs because its hard for a GM to manage it.

[Kobold Catgirl]

Considering that Golarion is a kitchen sink setting, I would think it depends on the region. Some regions probably fuss a lot more about the details, while others presumably fudge more details for the good of the story.

[Jacob Jett]

Ezekieru wrote:

Also, it's only a level 7 item. So, it'd take, what, a 4th level/rank spell to counteract the effects? Given how many high level wizards there are in Golarion alone, not to mention other classes or intelligent and benevolent beings in the cosmos, it wouldn't really be THAT difficult to stop it.

Assuming someone notices/figures out why the sea is steadily rising by 0.00001 inch every year. When your immortal the pay off can be a long time coming. Like maybe some Oracle or Diviner notices. Maybe. Esoteric doomsday is esoteric. You have to think that for every divinity that would be against this happening, there's another one who's doing the Mr. Burns finger steeple while murmuring, "excellent."

Honestly, while it doesn't take much to house rule a fix, I feel like this is the kind of thing a little QA could have caught and headed off at the pass. It's the cavalcade of tiny blemishes like this one that makes me say, PF2 is fussy and a pain to GM. I am ever vigilant for infinitely recursive exploits like this.

Back on topic. Are kineticists the kind of class that should even get edicts and anathema out of the gate? Or are we just considering how they interact with the ones given for The Laws of Mortality? And, if I live in Rahadoum do I have to practice the Laws of Mortality (i.e., like North Korea's brand of state atheism)?

[25speedforseaweedleshy]

rahadoum are a insult to atheism

they are just stupid

isn't there a rahadoum lich in 2e adventure path

[3-Body Problem]

Sanityfaerie wrote:

Temperans wrote:

In interest of no further derail I'll just say this one last thing.

Kineticist abilities were "spell-like abilities". Now they are "spells" or "focus cantrips" or some variation thereof. There is no such things as an ability that creates matter that is also not a spell.

But yeah, as Jacob Jett implied, that's a whole lot of mass getting added to the planet because you bet geokineticist and metalallumkineticist would be adding a whole lot of free adamantine.

In interest of no further derail, you'll continue to derail?

Back during the playtest, they were not spells, they were impulses, and the specific power of Adapt Element wasn't even that. Primal, yes. Evocation, yes. Spell, no.

If they've made a declaration that the kineticist is going to run on spells now, I'd be very interested in hearing more about that. Where did you come across such a thing?

Jacob Jett wrote:

I mean just think about it. If I had an elven character who spent every waking moment of every day (except for breaks) producing one of these elements, how many squares could I cover? For the sake of planetary cosmology this ability has to have some limits (like, think of the gravity of the situation). [It's a physics pun for those who miss it.]

Why would they, though? I mean, you're positing someone who got all the way up to 7th level and then decides... that they want to try to break the world in the slowest and most mind-numbingly boring manner possible? You're making at most 125 cubic feet of material per casting (realistically significantly less). If you did this constantly without stop for anything, for a year, you'd have 7.5*10^10 cubic feet of stuff. If you somehow managed to gather together the physical and mental fortitude, the longevity, and the peace from your neighbors to keep doing it for 1000 years, you'd have 7.5*10^13 cubic feet. Golarion is canonically the same size as earth, at 3.8*10^22 cubic feet. The surface area of the earth is more...

To further follow up on your math and with the assumption that Golarion is the same mass as Earth in addition to the same size. One year's worth of effort, at your worst-case calculation, will add 3.5510^-13 percent of Golarions math in water. 1000 years of that and you've changed the planet's mass by 1.26e-8 percent. This assumes none of the gasses created by your efforts evaporate and escape into space.

In short, you'd need a couple of million lunatics working over a thousand years making a 5ft cube of water every six seconds every usable hour of the day for a thousand years to add 1% to Golarion's mass.

[Kobold Catgirl]

Jacob Jett wrote:

It's the cavalcade of tiny blemishes like this one that makes me say, PF2 is fussy and a pain to GM. I am ever vigilant for infinitely recursive exploits like this.

I don't think I've ever run a campaign that crossed a span of millions of years, so I can't say it's ever come up for me.

This plot does give me big Horribly Slow Murderer vibes, though. CW: Gore, suicide and spoon imagery.

[Jacob Jett]

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

This conversation reminds me of something similar.

(By the way, this article is about a breach ten meters in radius, and it takes hundreds of thousands of years. You can do the math, if you like. :P)

Oh, also, I just had to say--

Jacob Jett wrote:

(Like the kinds of players that worried Gygax.)

Ah, yes, women.

Lolz. Yeah Mr. Misogyny certainly had a beef with them and anyone else who disagreed with him or whoever had a jib that he didn't like the cut of. That said the country folk I grew up with were not much better and were forever trying twist rules to their advantage. There are reasons I must frequently sound grouchy.

IMO, it costs little to add a few words to the effect of, "if left unattended for more than 1 round, the decanter stoppers itself."

Honestly, there's much worse things in PF2. There are sentences that shouldn't really exist and that I believe would never pass muster if they'd gone by a sensitivity reader. But that's a furball for another thread.

Oh, BTW, I get where you're coming from but not everyone plays with the same people or for the same reasons. Just because it isn't a problem in your game doesn't mean it isn't a problem in someone's game. Everyone's table is different. Much like everyone is different. The game itself has to big enough, broad enough, and flexible enough to admit multiple, often contradictory, visions of itself to truly work. This combination of factors is what allowed D&D to succeed despite Mr. Misogyny being one of it's parents. People could see it for what it offered them rather than the narrow vision he advised it be used by.

Edit: re: across a million years (obligatory Dr. Who joke)--it's all a bit of a wibbly wobbly timey wimey bit, isn't it.

Don't trouble your brow with the nits that concern me. Cultivating a vital imagination unhindered by too much life is much more important.

[Kobold Catgirl]

We should get back to talking about Rahadoum's interaction with Edicts, if there's anything left to be said on the matter.

[Eldritch Yodel]

Look, doing some quick math: 15 gallons a round is 9000 gallons a day or 3,287,250 gallons a year (accounting for leap years), or 3.7854e-12 cubic kilometers. Now, that sounds impressive but let's to the actual numbers on this. Lets say you straight up have one million Decanter of Endless Water running 24/7 for one million years straight (so nobody finds and deactivates any at all. Sure, hiding one is easy, but once you've gotta scatter a certain amount it becomes harder), as well as that the surface of Golarion is approximately that of Earth and has the same percentage of the surface being water (plus pretending that the % doesn't increase as the sea levels rise). This'd get you a total of about 34 meters. Now, increasing the global sea level by 34 meters is indeed incredibly bad, but on the other hand, this is over a million years what's long enough that it's really not going to impact anything. Plus, if you have access to 320 million gold pieces worth of magic items and a million years... I'm sure you can come up with ways of doing far more harm than "ha ha! I will subtly shift the course of evolution!".
Esoteric doomsday is esoteric and long pay offs are cool, but eventually if your plot requires 100 million years to work (what's about what you'd need to truly flood the world so there's only mountains are above the surface), you run into the problem of someone else beating you to the punch in ending the world before your plot can succeed (Oh, and sidenote: The effects of the change in gravity are so negligable that it'd take about two hundred trillion years for the million decanters to increase the mass of Earth/Golarion by 1%)

[Kobold Catgirl]

Luckily, a carefully-placed network of bottomless pits keeps the sea level steady with the equally-large network of carefully-placed decanters of endless water. But when a lich disrupts this balance by stealing and stoppering one of the decanters, can a team of brave heroes infiltrate the lich's foul vaults to retrieve the lost seventh-level item? Over five hundred pages of epic adventure for 15th to 17th-level parties.

[Person-Man]

Whoever said that agnostics didn't have a sense of humor, I don't know, and I won't pretend to have the correct answer.

[3-Body Problem]

Jacob Jett wrote:

Perpdepog wrote:

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

(Casual reminder, in case anyone's forgotten, that elves must rest for 8 hours like everyone else in Golarion!)

And another casual reminder. The decanter of endless water is still a thing.

Lolz. I totally forgot about that thing. And folks insist that PF2 is balanced. This is the very picture of a broken item.

Ultimately it isn't about potability. It's about accumulation over time and ultimately abuse by bad actors. Like imagine if a daemon or for that matter a demon, gets a hold of the above magic item, sticks it somewhere super inconvenient, and leaves it running. How many millennia need to pass before it drowns Golarion?

And if I can think of this use, there's definitely other folks who will.

It would take ~60 trillion years for one decanter to change Golarion's mass by 1%. You'd need trillions of them very well hidden to get this done in less than a century.

[Jacob Jett]

Eldritch Yodel wrote:

Look, doing some quick math: 15 gallons a round is 9000 gallons a day or 3,287,250 gallons a year (accounting for leap years), or 3.7854e-12 cubic kilometers. Now, that sounds impressive but let's to the actual numbers on this. Lets say you straight up have one million Decanter of Endless Water running 24/7 for one million years straight (so nobody finds and deactivates any at all. Sure, hiding one is easy, but once you've gotta scatter a certain amount it becomes harder), as well as that the surface of Golarion is approximately that of Earth and has the same percentage of the surface being water (plus pretending that the % doesn't increase as the sea levels rise). This'd get you a total of about 34 meters. Now, increasing the global sea level by 34 meters is indeed incredibly bad, but on the other hand, this is over a million years what's long enough that it's really not going to impact anything. Plus, if you have access to 320 million gold pieces worth of magic items and a million years... I'm sure you can come up with ways of doing far more harm than "ha ha! I will subtly shift the course of evolution!".

Esoteric doomsday is esoteric and long pay offs are cool, but eventually if your plot requires 100 million years to work (what's about what you'd need to truly flood the world so there's only mountains are above the surface), you run into the problem of someone else beating you to the punch in ending the world before your plot can succeed (Oh, and sidenote: The effects of the change in gravity are so negligable that it'd take about two hundred trillion years for the million decanters to increase the mass of Earth/Golarion by 1%)

Yes, I'm sure that's what our grandparents (or great grandparents in many of your cases) said about burning gas and coal and investing in every convenience companies like Dow could give them. And it isn't like any enterprising writers have ever made whole careers writing fantasy novel series about the consequences (John Wick like) of magic. It isn't such a bad thing to face a consequence every now and again in one's make believe. Of course it also isn't such a bad thing to have rule-breaking, impossible NPC's named "Not Tom Bombadil" roaming around to remind everyone it's all make believe.

At any rate, do you think Rahadoum's government forces everyone to take up the edicts and anathema of The Laws of Mortality?

[keftiu]

Y'know what I'd love to see?

Rahadoum's state hiring extraplanar contractors.

[Temperans]

Idk hiring extraplanar contractor sounds like the opposite of "lets not get involved with the divine" and "let us do what we can as mortals".

[Perpdepog]

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

Luckily, a carefully-placed network of bottomless pits keeps the sea level steady with the equally-large network of carefully-placed decanters of endless water. But when a lich disrupts this balance by stealing and stoppering one of the decanters, can a team of brave heroes infiltrate the lich's foul vaults to retrieve the lost seventh-level item? Over five hundred pages of epic adventure for 15th to 17th-level parties.

Shame that Auberon the Drowned already got got in an earlier AP; he sounds like the perfect baddie for this campaign. I guess we'll have to use the back-up lich, Dampdrench the Moistener.

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

Y'know what I'd love to see?

Rahadoum's state hiring extraplanar contractors.

I could see them making bargains with witchwyrds pretty easily. That'd be pretty cool

[bugleyman]

Well this thread took a bizarre turn.

The real problem with the Decanter of Endless Water has always been the ability to quickly and easily generate large amounts of potable water in extreme climes. The sociological and political effects are difficult to overstate. For instance, no more wars for water or arable land. Human settlements would no longer need to follow rivers, etc. And that isn't even considering the inevitable unforeseen consequences.

Of course this is only a problem if you insist that Pathfinder is simulationist. Which it isn't, but normally this sort of thing comes up in debates about why building monsters like characters was somehow "more realistic." But anyway...

Meanwhile, flooding the world is totally impractical.

[bugleyman]

25speedforseaweedleshy wrote:

rahadoum are a insult to atheism

I can't say that as a real-world atheist I've ever felt that way, as Rahadoum doesn't deny the existence of gods, merely that they are worthy of worship.

Of course, gods in Pathfinder aren't really gods in the modern western sense of the word. So there's that.

[Sanityfaerie]

So... I feel like we managed to avoid "all threads about alignment turn into toxic hellholes" by swerving hard into "any thread that mentions kineticists immediately becomes an argument about kineticists".

Then it got a bit weird.

Does that mean we get smurfs next?

One of the interesting things about Rahadoum is the difficulty in putting an AP there. In particular, you basically have to say "Yeah, don't play these classes, or you're going to have a bad time." That's a lot more restrictive than most APs.

[Themetricsystem]

Yep, the smurf collective must be behind this miraculous turn of events. I think that they must have secretly convened to backchannel an order to the shadow moderator cabal that they need to disregard non-toxic off-topic discussion on alignment threads.

I'm cautiously optimistic with the results thus far.