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I'm kinda wondering whats point of aeons and proteans now since preview pdf seems to admit that law vs chaos conflict was irrelevant, are they just random outsider monsters for encounters now without really grand relevance in cosmology or stories?
(I'm mostly over it by now, but that did kinda hurt that text directly says it wasn't important x'D Like whats point of keeping axis and maelstrom around if the main themes of them are stated to be unimportant?)
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Irrelevant in what sense? A bandit on a random road isn't relevant to the politics of the inner sea, but if he decides to kill you and take your stuff it'll be pretty relevant to you.
Monitors still have their own interests and motivations. They never had as strong a reason as fiends/celestials to interact with PCs before, and they won't now.
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Yeah kind of stinks I liked axis and how Paizo did the whole Law vs. Chaos, sad to see it go. Interested to see how it's handled now though.
Maybe they got a glimpse of the end, i.e Heat Death of the Universe.
Chaos/Entropy wins but in the end everything is uniform and cold and Orderly!? So Chaos winning means Order wins, meaning being Ordered is the ultimate expression of Chaos. etc. etc.
Realizing your whole existence is a zero sum game can hit pretty hard. Maybe they are all just real depressed atm. XD
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I'm kinda wondering whats point of aeons and proteans now since preview pdf seems to admit that law vs chaos conflict was irrelevant, are they just random outsider monsters for encounters now without really grand relevance in cosmology or stories?
(I'm mostly over it by now, but that did kinda hurt that text directly says it wasn't important x'D Like whats point of keeping axis and maelstrom around if the main themes of them are stated to be unimportant?)
Do you mean this : "You’ll note chaos, law, and neutrality don’t have equivalents as their scope was far more limited and they matter much less in the game world. " ?
It is about PC-facing options and stories. Not about the cosmic forces or the planes. It's just the same they have said before : on a PC-scale, only Holy and Unholy have a mesurable game-mechanic impact.
The setting does not change.
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If the mechanics changed the setting changed
But potentially not in an especially appreciable way.
Like this protean not taking 5 extra damage from lawful attacks matters but how much does it actually matter if I want to write a story with proteans in it?
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I'm kinda wondering whats point of aeons and proteans now since preview pdf seems to admit that law vs chaos conflict was irrelevant, are they just random outsider monsters for encounters now without really grand relevance in cosmology or stories?
(I'm mostly over it by now, but that did kinda hurt that text directly says it wasn't important x'D Like whats point of keeping axis and maelstrom around if the main themes of them are stated to be unimportant?)
I don't think the status quo as far as cosmology is concerns changes, other than some renames (and most of the monitors are Paizo originals, so even that is going to be minor)
It's mostly that APs, modules, and so forth mostly have characters dealing with evil forces. Chaos and Law might flavor evil, but usually the reason that characters are opposing them is the evil part, not so much the law or chaos part.
Although I do wish Paizo would do more with non-evil outsiders (or whatever the new term is?) The vast majority of souls going to the Great Beyond are probably some flavor of neutral, yet neutral outsiders are the least diverse group. And they became LESS diverse when Paizo merged the Aeons, inevitables, and axiomites together.
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To be fair, gameplay wise, yeah, Law / Chaos did do very little, and as much as I love proteans, aeons, and axomites, I have to admit they're really the only outsiders that care about Law v Chaos. Like, even if celestials might have some disagreements they're still pretty chill with each other, and even the archetypal "demons v devils" thing isn't a super big deal in Pathfinder, with any hate they have for each other just being "they're different evil factions", plus in fact almost none of the outsiders actually having Law / Chaos weaknesses (so you would just be getting the same amount of spiritual damage anyway). The only real outsider family that's not neutral which has such a weakness I can think of are qlippoth (what funnily enough their three biggest enemies in-lore are CN, CE, and NE).
Through all of this, I think it is fair to say that "The Law / Chaos conflict is much narrower" can be explained as either it really just applies to axomites and proteans (what isn't to say that's not a fun set, but they're not full "celestials vs fiends". Plus, they honestly don't have that much conflict with each other? Sure, they might dislike each other, but neither are super interested in actively going after the other), or a much more grounded "security vs freedom" type story which the damages don't really matter anyway in that case.
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It sounds like all outsiders are going to have a weakness to spirit damage now, so we just have to wait and see how difficult that kind of damage is to do.
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If the mechanics changed the setting changedBut potentially not in an especially appreciable way.
Like this protean not taking 5 extra damage from lawful attacks matters but how much does it actually matter if I want to write a story with proteans in it?
Isn't it this same board that says how good alchemist is because it deals weakness damage? Or how casters should be glad to deal less damage because they can deal with weakness?
So yes it does matter that if you are facing a creature that has X weakness that you can prepare for it. Removing the weakness does not make it more fun, not does it serve the story.
That's not really a story example.
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It sounds like all outsiders are going to have a weakness to spirit damage now, so we just have to wait and see how difficult that kind of damage is to do.Hmm, really? I'd expect holy/unholy weaknesses, but is it confirmed whether or not it's a blanket spirit weakness? Since that would mean unholy spells could deal bonus damage to unholy tagged monsters.
For that matter do we know if unholy tagged spells can damage unholy tagged creatures generally? I was a little confused by the preview on that. I assume generic spirit damage can but can sanctified damage do it?
The thought occured to me, but there's no support for it in the preview text and thematically evil fights evil all the time and should be able to hurt each other.
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My impression was that spirit damage is still spirit damage, but holy/unholy provide benefits under the right circumstances, specifically so it's not like alignment damage where there's massive amounts of immunity.
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Divine Lance being spirit damage now means it's usable by clerics of Ng (and maybe even some oracles, witches, summoners, and sorcerers who don't have a patron god.)
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I really like the proteans and their paradoxical behaviors and lore. Sad to see them not get the remaster treatment
Proteans are getting carried over to the remaster (they're even one of the creature families specifically mentioned in the product page for Monster Core), just not Law/Chaos damage.
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Divine Lance being spirit damage now means it's usable by clerics of Ng (and maybe even some oracles, witches, summoners, and sorcerers who don't have a patron god.)Actually, this brings up another question - can non-spirit damage be holy? I assume divine wrath, divine lance, and co will just be pure spirit damage - but looking at divine immolation...is there ever a scenario where you could be dealing holy fire damage? And would that matter against something weak to both anyway?
I'm looking at the generic weakness rules:
"If more than one weakness would apply to the same instance of damage, use only the highest applicable weakness value. This usually happens only when a monster is weak to both a type of physical damage and a given material."
Which imply that holy fire damage only triggers the highest applicable weakness. But I'm not even sure if fire damage can be holy - did this come up in any remaster discussions?
I think it would be a missed opportunity if Fire damage or Piercing damage cannot be Holy or Unholy.
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If the mechanics changed the setting changedBut potentially not in an especially appreciable way.
Like this protean not taking 5 extra damage from lawful attacks matters but how much does it actually matter if I want to write a story with proteans in it?
Maybe the Protean still takes 5 extra damage from the lawful attacks of the Inevitable. It just happens in the background because lawful attacks are not a PC thing anymore.
Aligned damage for PCs was an awful mess however you looked at it.
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Divine Lance being spirit damage now means it's usable by clerics of Ng (and maybe even some oracles, witches, summoners, and sorcerers who don't have a patron god.)Actually, this brings up another question - can non-spirit damage be holy? I assume divine wrath, divine lance, and co will just be pure spirit damage - but looking at divine immolation...is there ever a scenario where you could be dealing holy fire damage? And would that matter against something weak to both anyway?
I'm looking at the generic weakness rules:
"If more than one weakness would apply to the same instance of damage, use only the highest applicable weakness value. This usually happens only when a monster is weak to both a type of physical damage and a given material."
Which imply that holy fire damage only triggers the highest applicable weakness. But I'm not even sure if fire damage can be holy - did this come up in any remaster discussions?
I think we can expect those weakness/instance of damage rules to get some revision. The various hints I've seen dropped is that the whole system will be made a lot clearer when it comes to "this is mainly X damage, but it has Y traits as well, so it'll trigger the greatest weakness against X or Y".
It's just that spirit damage is probably be the main damage type that'll most often get a holy/unholy trait added.
If I understood right spirit damage is also a bit of a merger of old alignment damage and old force damage. So:
- it works on bears, because bears have a spirit, even if it's "neutral"
- it works on demons, and if it's holy it would probably trigger a weakness
- it works on ghosts because ghosts are spirits
- it doesn't work on constructs because they don't have a spirit to hurt
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I'm not really sad to see law/chaos damage go. It was not really something people would build around; in most campaigns your enemies are mostly evil, sometimes chaotic and sometimes lawful. Team evil seems to recruit from either side mostly to get some variation in what you're fighting, not because they're particularly aligned to chaos or law. So building your character to mechanically care about them was not worth your time.
Except then you have that one encounter in an AP in book five with a creature with regeneration that's only shut down by law or chaos damage and everyone is going "why would I have that, that's so ridiculously niche".
So the mechanics of law/chaos either had to become much more significant (so that you can and should really take it into account in your build), or we're better off without those mechanics.
That's fairly separate from whether we care about the story side of them. I think the story side of law/chaos was always a bit nebulous. There's a lot of ways to do them - natural cycle vs unnatural lifespan, civilization vs wild nature, war and peace, justice and freedom and so forth. It's a bit like trying to group a lot of pretty varied concepts under just two headings.
Maybe monitors with interesting things they cared about, actually got their style cramped by having to be sorted into law/chaos?
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I’ll enjoy a Monitors book whenever they decide to make one.
I’ll enjoy a Monitors book whenever they decide to make one.It's a 1E book, but all the lore in Concordance of Rivals is still applicable.
Yup! That’s what gives me hope for something vaguely equivalent in 2e someday.
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With Rage of Elements giving a whole rulebook to the Elemental Planes, I’m not worried about the Outer Planes getting their own turn in time. I love Aeons and Proteans, and want to see more of them, but I bet the spotlight will find them eventually.
I keep reading the title of this thread and thinking that we are talking about lizards.