Pathfinder Is Still Bad

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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik »

MGuy wrote:What conversation are you reading?
The one where he deliberatly refuses to read the parts where I criticize 3e polymorph and instead relies 100% on the dumb as shit idea that Pathfinder is the only possible alternative.
rasmuswagner wrote:So what you want is magic that meets your arbitrary treshold of "is transformation magic", and like a neckbearded grognard, you demand stupid shit that has been proven repeatedly not to work, shit that is in fact obviously broken from first principles, except, you know, you want it fixed and working.
No I want something that is transformation magic, and I want it to not suck. There are lots of ways you can do that. For example, if the Cryo Hydra had level appropriate breath weapon instead of an absurd nonsense one that kills you or does no damage depending on your Resistances, then the polymorph spell is already not broken on it's own.

Or if Alter Self didn't grant Natural Armor, it could be already not broken on it's own.

Now, there are tons of other things you could do, you could make stat changes limited based on all sorts of things, you could even limit abilities too like defenses (such as from type). You could completely rewrite polymorph in the search for actually balanced transformation, like you could literally make it just a size and shape and movement mode and natural attack spell and nothing else.

All of those things would be better than "You can only turn into a Medium Dragon, and even then only at level 11, and then you get a shitty breath weapon that is nothing like a Dragons and a fly speed that is literally nothing like an actual dragons fly speed, look, basically you aren't a Dragon okay, you just got 3 level 2 spells cast on you at the same time okay, Bull's Strength, a shittier Bear's Endurance, and a shittier version of fly."

If your transformation magic doesn't allow someone to turn into a goddam Dragon and carry the fighter around on your back, it's not worth my time to pretend that's a Dragon transformation spell.
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Post by Ice9 »

I think that menu-based transformation (like Metamorphosis, and the direction that the PF polymorph series is leaning) is a valid way to handle things, but at that point it should just let you decide any appearance within the spell's limits, not pretend that you're duplicating a specific creature when stat-wise you obviously aren't.
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Post by Kaelik »

Ice9 wrote:I think that menu-based transformation (like Metamorphosis, and the direction that the PF polymorph series is leaning) is a valid way to handle things, but at that point it should just let you decide any appearance within the spell's limits, not pretend that you're duplicating a specific creature when stat-wise you obviously aren't.
Menu based can also be balanced, but for god sakes the menu needs to be like... 5000 times more varied than Pathfinders, and also be one spell.

Like... I can't help but be offended by literally the existence of Form of the Dragon. It literally hurts my brain that such a pathetic waste of words was even written.
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Post by maglag »

Kaelik wrote:
Ice9 wrote:I think that menu-based transformation (like Metamorphosis, and the direction that the PF polymorph series is leaning) is a valid way to handle things, but at that point it should just let you decide any appearance within the spell's limits, not pretend that you're duplicating a specific creature when stat-wise you obviously aren't.
Menu based can also be balanced, but for god sakes the menu needs to be like... 5000 times more varied than Pathfinders, and also be one spell.
Wouldn't that basically be impossible to balance? Thousands of options in just one spell, it would basically be a must-have.

Heck, you would basically need to design your own "create any monster from scratch" table. Multiple tables more probably.

Having a spell for each kind of creature would be both easier to balance and more thematic. Like, druids in 3.5 had Wildshape, which was basically "polymorph, but animals only, and limited by size". And wildshape was still powerful/varied enough to rival whole other classes. Then you could unlock other types of creatures with feats and prcs and whatnot.

There is clearly design room for a dragon shape spell that turns you into a massive super tough flying lizard that breathes energy and sharp fangs/claws. That would clearly be worth a spell known in my humble opinion. If however the same spell also allows you to turn into a tiny fey or a ethereal ghost or a earthmelding elemental or a sexy succubus or a healing angel, then fuck, why ever bother casting anything else?
Last edited by maglag on Fri Feb 26, 2016 3:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Slade »

Kaelik wrote:
MGuy wrote:What conversation are you reading?
The one where he deliberatly refuses to read the parts where I criticize 3e polymorph and instead relies 100% on the dumb as shit idea that Pathfinder is the only possible alternative.
rasmuswagner wrote:So what you want is magic that meets your arbitrary treshold of "is transformation magic", and like a neckbearded grognard, you demand stupid shit that has been proven repeatedly not to work, shit that is in fact obviously broken from first principles, except, you know, you want it fixed and working.
No I want something that is transformation magic, and I want it to not suck. There are lots of ways you can do that. For example, if the Cryo Hydra had level appropriate breath weapon instead of an absurd nonsense one that kills you or does no damage depending on your Resistances, then the polymorph spell is already not broken on it's own.

Or if Alter Self didn't grant Natural Armor, it could be already not broken on it's own.

Now, there are tons of other things you could do, you could make stat changes limited based on all sorts of things, you could even limit abilities too like defenses (such as from type). You could completely rewrite polymorph in the search for actually balanced transformation, like you could literally make it just a size and shape and movement mode and natural attack spell and nothing else.

All of those things would be better than "You can only turn into a Medium Dragon, and even then only at level 11, and then you get a shitty breath weapon that is nothing like a Dragons and a fly speed that is literally nothing like an actual dragons fly speed, look, basically you aren't a Dragon okay, you just got 3 level 2 spells cast on you at the same time okay, Bull's Strength, a shittier Bear's Endurance, and a shittier version of fly."

If your transformation magic doesn't allow someone to turn into a goddam Dragon and carry the fighter around on your back, it's not worth my time to pretend that's a Dragon transformation spell.
Lesser Red Dragonshape in 3.5 turns you into a large dragon young red Dragon as a 6th level spell (so 1th) or a Dragonne as a 5th (9th) granted they don't get breath weapons but they do grant pounce.
Honestly, I wish 3.5 did more Shape spells. They were a decent compromise to Polymorph.

Pathdinder's polymorph isn't as good when emulating creatures.
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Post by virgil »

I personally think that the Shape spells would've worked great if they offered a list of options akin to the Summon Monster line. Dragonshape was still arguably acceptable because of the [Awesome] subtype
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Post by ishy »

On a completely different note, Paizo does have this offer currently. Lots of PDFs for a low price. While I think they are incompetent at writing rules, I really do like that they do stuff like this:
[url=https://www.humblebundle.com/books/paizo-pathfinder-bundle wrote:Humble Bundle[/url]]Pay $1 or more for Pathfinder Roleplaying Game GM Screen, Player Character Folio, Digital Beginner Box, GameMastery Guide, Core Rulebook, Advanced Class Guide, and Pathfinder Adventure Path: In Hell's Bright Shadow (Hell’s Rebels 1 of 6).

Pay $15 or more to also receive Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Ultimate Magic, Ultimate Campaign, Ultimate Combat, Game Bestiary 2, Pathfinder Adventure Path: Dance of the Damned (Hell’s Rebels 3 of 6), Pathfinder Society: Year of the Sky Key Scenario Mega-Pack (23 Adventures!), and Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Inner Sea Poster Map Folio.

Pay more than the average price to for all of the above plus, Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Advanced Player's Guide, Ultimate Equipment, Bestiary, Strategy Guide, Pathfinder Adventure Path: Turn of the Torrent (Hell’s Rebels 2 of 6), Pathfinder Society Scenario 7-01: Between the Lines, and Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Inner Sea World Guide.

That's not all! Anyone who pays $25 or more gets the entire bundle plus the physical edition of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Beginner Box (price does not include shipping).
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Post by ScottS »

PF Animate Object has a build point menu (in the monster entry, not the spell description). Not sure why they used it to "fix" that spell rather than poly/summon but technically it exists (and I've seen them use it in other contexts including building "balanced" robots in Iron Gods).
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Post by Kaelik »

ScottS wrote:PF Animate Object has a build point menu (in the monster entry, not the spell description). Not sure why they used it to "fix" that spell rather than poly/summon but technically it exists (and I've seen them use it in other contexts including building "balanced" robots in Iron Gods).
Doesn't seem right for a polymorph spell, to my mind, since the point should be turning into monsters that exist.

But it could work for a transformation "class" like Master of Many Forms type class.
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Post by GâtFromKI »

ScottS wrote:PF Animate Object has a build point menu (in the monster entry, not the spell description). Not sure why they used it to "fix" that spell rather than poly/summon but technically it exists (and I've seen them use it in other contexts including building "balanced" robots in Iron Gods).
Except you can use as many build points as you want. Those build points increase the CR of the monster, but the spell doesn't give any limit to that CR.

It's typical of Pathfinder's fix: a half-fix in one part of the game, but the other writers didn't care so the players have to invent the other half of the fix.
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Post by Kaelik »

GâtFromKI wrote:
ScottS wrote:PF Animate Object has a build point menu (in the monster entry, not the spell description). Not sure why they used it to "fix" that spell rather than poly/summon but technically it exists (and I've seen them use it in other contexts including building "balanced" robots in Iron Gods).
Except you can use as many build points as you want. Those build points increase the CR of the monster, but the spell doesn't give any limit to that CR.

It's typical of Pathfinder's fix: a half-fix in one part of the game, but the other writers didn't care so the players have to invent the other half of the fix.
Oh wow... goddam that's pathetic.
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Post by Eikre »

It's not even like people don't want to play Pygmalion and marshal around a little cadre of golems and animate creatures. That was apparently one of the niches that the 3.5 Artificer was meant to get into, except the Artificer is the most bullshit class possible and the list of creatures that you could make was completely joyless. A menu of selectable features is a great way to model artificial creatures, so they totally could have brought it home and seen significant player satisfaction.
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Post by saidoro »

I recently looked through pathfinder's Outsider creature list and found a few things that you people might "enjoy".

Lacridaemon
Among the least powerful of Abaddon’s daemons, though still exceedingly dangerous, lacridaemons personify death by neglect or exposure to the elements, such as that suffered by those who become lost in the wilderness and die far from help, or are trapped in an enclosed space (like a collapsed mine) and left to slowly expire. Sadly, children are more likely to become lacridaemons than any other type of daemon, and while it’s rare for children to be truly evil, those unfortunate children who die from neglect and abuse, or who are abandoned by their parents, are at risk of being twisted and made savage by the experience. Lacridaemons’ misery is in stark contrast to their savage nature, and given the opportunity, they viciously lash out, furiously attacking their mortal victims. Burning tears of acid and horrific powers used to strand mortals in perilous conditions make lacridaemons effective combatants against unwary enemies, and their abilities are compounded when the daemons are encountered as a wailing, weeping group.

Ecology

Pitiful creatures, most lacridaemons suffer in death as their mortal incarnations did in life, consumed by feelings of abandonment, self-pity, and a gnawing sense of loneliness. They often spawn from the souls of evil mortals who died alone and abandoned—exiled criminals, reclusive and corrupt nobles, or those who died from intense exposure to the natural elements, such as by freezing to death or dying of thirst. They are thus often servants of the Horseman of Famine, who makes use of their skills in luring mortals well beyond the edges of civilization, where they ultimately perish due to lack of nourishment.
The way Daemons work is that when a neutral evil mortal dies they go to Abaddon and then get hunted by existing daemons for a while and then if they survive that they get turned into a Daemon of a type based on how they died. Which is dumb, since it means that there are far more CR 14 Temerdaemons(created from people killed by some sort of accident) than there are CR 4 Vulnadaemons(Created from people who were murdered). This one in particular is created from evil people who have died of neglect or exposure.


Hezrou
These monstrous and bestial creatures form from the souls of evil mortals who poisoned themselves, their kin, or their surroundings, such as drug addicts, assassins, and alchemists who cared not how their experiments polluted the environment.
"Drug addicts are evil and poison themselves, their kin and their surroundings."
-Some Paizo writer


Kithangian
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 12th; concentration +15)
Constant—speak with animals
At will—hold animal (DC 15), greater teleport (self plus 50 lbs. of objects only), unnatural lust (DC 14)
3/day—air walk, quickened unnatural lust (DC 14)
1/day—baleful polymorph (DC 18), summon (level 3, 1 kithangian 35%)
...
Rasping Tongues (Su)
The faces between a kithangian's claws have long rasping tongues covered with tiny teeth.
Whenever a kithangian successfully grapples a foe with its claws, a rasping tongue slithers out from the face within and burrows into the creature's body. Each round that the creature is grappled, it takes 1d6 points of damage and 1d4 points of Charisma damage as its sense of self-identity is warped and twisted. A successful DC 18 Will save negates the Charisma damage. The save DC is Charisma-based.
...
Kithangians, also known as beast demons, are reprehensible monstrosities born from the souls of those who abused and tormented animals in life. Universally male, the sudden spread of fiendish elements through within an area's fauna is a sure indication of a kithangian's presence in a region. The fact that most creatures that birth litters of young with the half-fiendish template die in the process is of little concern to the kithangian, for it merely moves on to new hunting grounds when uncorrupted animal victims grow too rare.
It's nice when you can look at a monster entry and adventure hooks just jump off the page at you. It's less nice when those adventures make everyone at the table feel deeply unclean when they're finished.


Apostate Devil
Regal, fearsome, and unfeeling, deimaviggas seek to turn the faithful from their gods, using cold logic to proselytize the path of atheism, the freedom of the mortal spirit, and the order offered by Hell. Their ever-shifting masks speak envenomed words and give their hollow lies the ring of truth. Speaking out against all deities—except for Asmodeus, whom they subtly tout as a bringer of discipline even as they downplay his divinity—these deadly intellectuals know that those who turn from their deities are more likely to succumb to the temptations of diabolism.

Rather than attempting to sway the souls of individual mortals, these cunning fiends take on the roles of prophets of reason, disguising themselves beneath layers of illusion to evangelize the virtues and freedoms of lives unshackled by the demands of egotistical deities. Occasionally one might focus its arguments on a soul of particular piety, delighting in throwing a deity's most devoted servant into an inescapable crisis of faith. Deimaviggas care little for what gods their depredations affect, disenfranchising the worshipers of the pure and the profane alike.

In their natural shapes, deimaviggas stand 7 feet tall and weigh a mere 120 pounds. When disguised, though, they typically take the forms of wise elders who have lived long enough to understand fundamental truths about the universe, priests who have “realized their folly” and rejected their former dogma, or even “angels” of truth. Though they prefer to fight with words rather than with physical means, deimaviggas attack those who attempt to strip away their disguises and illusions, or who can argue as eloquently as they—though if possible, they prefer to do so discreetly and dispose of the bodies secretly.

Deimaviggas prefer to spend most of their time upon the Material Plane, swaying the weak and corruptible souls of mortals.

There they seek out either vast mortal cities, where their heresy might reach many ears, or small communities where the isolated might fall to their blasphemous philosophizing. When in Hell, though, they linger in Caina, tormenting the souls of those trapped upon its lonely islands, developing and testing complicated and often confusing arguments.

Preferring to operate alone, these poison-tongued devils rarely work with others of their kind, even though their status affords them control over their lesser brethren.

They find that their arguments benefit from a single voice, and that their endeavors are complicated by even the most obedient minions. They bow to Hell's hierarchy, however, and serve if compelled to do so. Pit fiends and infernal dukes sometimes utilize deimaviggas as personal majordomos, spies, and spreaders of dissension, though even among devilkind these enigmatic fiends are considered particularly unnerving.
Atheists are devils, got it.
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Post by Koumei »

saidoro wrote: "Drug addicts are evil and poison themselves, their kin and their surroundings."
-Some Paizo writer
Honestly, if it meant turning into a Hezrou after death, even with the ugly giant frog features, I'd totally rush out to smack myself up. I mean, you temporarily suffer a loss in money, a loss in senses and a loss in life, then you become a CR 11 creature that can kill people with bad language, teleport, turn into a gas cloud, swim*, communicate telepathically and cause people to gag just by putting them in a headlock.

The bit where you very quickly lose your social life, other than amongst other badass creatures that don't mind the appearance and smell, isn't THAT big a deal.

*That might not sound miraculous but it's something I can't do despite various lessons and stuff. My body just sort of... moves downwards in water.
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik »

Koumei wrote:
saidoro wrote: "Drug addicts are evil and poison themselves, their kin and their surroundings."
-Some Paizo writer
Honestly, if it meant turning into a Hezrou after death, even with the ugly giant frog features, I'd totally rush out to smack myself up. I mean, you temporarily suffer a loss in money, a loss in senses and a loss in life, then you become a CR 11 creature that can kill people with bad language, teleport, turn into a gas cloud, swim*, communicate telepathically and cause people to gag just by putting them in a headlock.

The bit where you very quickly lose your social life, other than amongst other badass creatures that don't mind the appearance and smell, isn't THAT big a deal.

*That might not sound miraculous but it's something I can't do despite various lessons and stuff. My body just sort of... moves downwards in water.
That all sounds good in theory, but you forget, just being an Atheist lets you be a CR 17 that have magical regeneration, can fly, shapeshift, teleport, create images, dominate people, convince people to do pretty much anything just by talking to them, and punch Donald Trump in the face whenever he goes on TV from anyone that they can see a TV.

I'm just saying, if this is supposed to convince me to stop being an atheist, it ain't working.
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Post by Mechalich »

The D&D morality system - basically alignment - has a real broad-scale problem with pretty much everything that we would classify as 'mental illness' today. Essentially most mental illnesses make you either chaotic or evil and this crashes hard into the idea that alignment is a moral choice and that characters are responsible for their own destiny. I mean, if you're a classic psychopath you pretty much are neutral evil and there's really nothing that can be done about that.

The whole D&D afterlife just makes it weirder because you don't actually get punished for your sins so much as filed according to your moral label and this carries a wide variety of consequences that are just plain strange. Planescape, which was forced to try and tackle this stuff more or less had on, went into all sorts of weird circumlocutions mostly to try and hide that fact that it ultimately couldn't make any real sense and was going to be deeply offensive to someone by burying it beneath funky verbiage.
saidoro wrote:Atheists are devils, got it.
This is actually a useful test example to display the weirdness. Being an atheist in D&D doesn't mean the same thing as in the real world. The gods manifestly exist. You can go and talk to them (with enough magic) if you really work at it. You can even kill them (though this may or may not actually do anything depending on the viewpoints of a given GM). So being an atheist either means you're an idiot, or it means you view the gods simply as very powerful beings who are unworthy of worship for whatever reason, and that still doesn't stop you from doing something like worshipping 'goodness' and becoming a 20th level cleric who can raise the dead and cast miracle.

So Apostate devils aren't trying to produce atheists, they're trying to produce Hell-worshippers who don't actually worship some other god (including lawful evil gods, cause Asmodeus doesn't get much out of Tiamat-worshippers).

Copious amounts of mind caulk are needed for this sort of thing to make any sense at all and generally its difficult even for very experienced D&D cosmologists to agree on a reference frame, never mind the particulars. Pathfinder makes it even worse because while it utilizes material that was produced for 3.X and was implicitly based in the Planescape-formed consensus about how this stuff worked (such as it was) it can't directly reference a lot of that stuff because it's all 2e Product Identity that wasn't included in the SRD. So if you try to take a deep look at any of it, everything just implodes.
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Post by Prak »

Mechalich wrote:This is actually a useful test example to display the weirdness. Being an atheist in D&D doesn't mean the same thing as in the real world. The gods manifestly exist. You can go and talk to them (with enough magic) if you really work at it. You can even kill them (though this may or may not actually do anything depending on the viewpoints of a given GM). So being an atheist either means you're an idiot, or it means you view the gods simply as very powerful beings who are unworthy of worship for whatever reason, and that still doesn't stop you from doing something like worshipping 'goodness' and becoming a 20th level cleric who can raise the dead and cast miracle.
*ahem*

So, I'm looking at running a Pathfinder game for my coworkers, but there's only four of us, so I'm bringing in my queermate as the fourth player. They're interested in playing a librarian character, and I was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of some class that particularly lends itself to that if they can't find anything in a cursory lookover of the SRD.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
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Post by spongeknight »

Prak wrote:
Mechalich wrote:This is actually a useful test example to display the weirdness. Being an atheist in D&D doesn't mean the same thing as in the real world. The gods manifestly exist. You can go and talk to them (with enough magic) if you really work at it. You can even kill them (though this may or may not actually do anything depending on the viewpoints of a given GM). So being an atheist either means you're an idiot, or it means you view the gods simply as very powerful beings who are unworthy of worship for whatever reason, and that still doesn't stop you from doing something like worshipping 'goodness' and becoming a 20th level cleric who can raise the dead and cast miracle.
*ahem*

So, I'm looking at running a Pathfinder game for my coworkers, but there's only four of us, so I'm bringing in my queermate as the fourth player. They're interested in playing a librarian character, and I was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of some class that particularly lends itself to that if they can't find anything in a cursory lookover of the SRD.
Pathfinder is "3.5 compatible," so of course the 3.5 archivist is the first choice here. It's literally a librarian who adventures in order to find divine scrolls and shit.
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Post by Schleiermacher »

Well, it depends, being a librarian is basically just a background choice. A friend of mine played a really nifty Rogue who was a librarian, he was basically a a more cerebral Indiana Jones.

Of course, if you want to go with the typical "nerds are magic" D&D trope, there are wizards, Knowledge clerics and probably a couple of appropriate Bard archetypes.
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Post by Prak »

Yeah, I pointed out to them that a librarian could really be any class and it's more a question of what they want their character to be skilled in outside the Dewey Decimal system. They kind of like the idea of a Barbarian Librarian.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
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FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by Mechalich »

There is a actually a 'Skald' class in the Advanced Class Guide that is a combo barbarian/bard class.
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Post by maglag »

Mechalich wrote:The D&D morality system - basically alignment - has a real broad-scale problem with pretty much everything that we would classify as 'mental illness' today. Essentially most mental illnesses make you either chaotic or evil and this crashes hard into the idea that alignment is a moral choice and that characters are responsible for their own destiny. I mean, if you're a classic psychopath you pretty much are neutral evil and there's really nothing that can be done about that.

The whole D&D afterlife just makes it weirder because you don't actually get punished for your sins so much as filed according to your moral label and this carries a wide variety of consequences that are just plain strange. Planescape, which was forced to try and tackle this stuff more or less had on, went into all sorts of weird circumlocutions mostly to try and hide that fact that it ultimately couldn't make any real sense and was going to be deeply offensive to someone by burying it beneath funky verbiage.
Fiendish Codex presents a more sensible and simple evil afterlife.

Evil people get turned into soul-worms that are used as fuel, money and food by devils. Eventually soul worms get combined into new stronger devils, but the original memories/personalities will be greatly changed if not completely destroyed.

Sometimes, very rarely, if you were specially evil and Asmodeus was in a good mood, an evil soul may be promoted directly into a bigger devil, even a pit fiend. But it's still pretty rare. Resulting in that you get thousands of evil cultitsts trying to outdo each other in evil deeds, although only one will get their "promotion".

After all, there has to be some kind of reward for devil worshipers.
Warhammer also does it. The ultimate dream of every chaos follower is please the dark gods so that they're ascended to a daemon prince.

Now where 3.5 really screws up is in undead, where people seem to have an high chance of spontaneously coming back as some kind of super undead monstruosity when they kick the bucket.
FrankTrollman wrote: Actually, our blood banking system is set up exactly the way you'd want it to be if you were a secret vampire conspiracy.
violence in the media
Duke
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Post by violence in the media »

maglag wrote:
Now where 3.5 really screws up is in undead, where people seem to have an high chance of spontaneously coming back as some kind of super undead monstruosity when they kick the bucket.
That's a good question. Why didn't D&D ever have a default table to roll on to see if a creature comes back from the dead and, if so, as what type? Leaving it up to MC storytelling fiat or burying the relevant information in individual monster descriptions is fine and all, but it'd be interesting if there was a chance that any given goblin, orc, or manticore you killed could come back as a vengeance-hungry revenant or something.
Slade
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Post by Slade »

Wait, so drug users/addicts have a higher chance of becoming hezrou?

Do evil people know this? Was this why that guy had blue lips in the D&D movie, he wanted to be a Hezrou in the afterlife?
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Ferret
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Post by Ferret »

Prak wrote: So, I'm looking at running a Pathfinder game for my coworkers, but there's only four of us, so I'm bringing in my queermate as the fourth player. They're interested in playing a librarian character, and I was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of some class that particularly lends itself to that if they can't find anything in a cursory lookover of the SRD.
Has Queermate watched The Librarian movies? Like Indiana Jones?

Check out the Pathfinder Bard Archaeologist archetype for an Indy feel, or the Archivist archetype for a more cerebral/scholarly type.
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