On the Ecology of Elementals

"The earth itself stood against us. Fire walked. What can we do against such enormity?" -Cadrene Sergeant Allanso Illon, shortly before his execution.

Nomenclature: Elementals, Mephits, Primordials, Weirds, Furies, atronaches, Daedra, Genie, Reactionals, Eternals

Description: Raw motive elemental energy

Things that are known:

They are made entirely of their elemental material
Except when they are not
When summoned they may turn on their creators
They are immune to their own element and resistant to all but enchanted weapons
They may be kept at bay using magical circles of protections
They do not eat, sleep, or breath; or not at least as we understand it

Rumors and other whispers in the dark:

There are core planes. They are Wood, Water, Fire, Metal, and Earth. The para-elemental planes are Flowers, Mirrors, Liquor, and Paper.
That isn't true. The core planes are obviously Earth, Water, Air, Fire, with para-elemental planes of Mud, Dust, Smoke, and Magma, and the quasi-elemental planes of Lightning, Steam, Radiance, Mineral, Vacuum, Salts, Ash, and Dust
The elemental realms are far-off and inhospitable places in the material world
Elementals come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and types, from animal forms to alien dukes, princes and kings.
Elemental spirits can be summoned to bring the elements in question to motive life. They are bound by ancient pacts they long to be free from
Elementals can control the substance of their element. Fire can be cool or many different colors, or it can be solid. Earth can be transparent or liquid.

The elements are suits that extra-dimensional spirits wear
Elements are before us, and remember themselves from that time. It is matter that is enlightened and understands itself
All elementals come from a single contiguous source that touches our plane in different places, but it all comes to our realm from the same place
Fire and Earth are allied. Earth shelters fire and fire allows earth to move
Water and air are allied, creating weather. They only allied in response to the alliance between air and earth
Gnomes are actually the element of earth that has decided to live, walking the earth as wizened stooped things
Salamanders are the form fire takes when it wishes to live
Sylphs are the spirits of wind and Undines are the spirits of water
Air and water were stymied, unable to take form due to how fluid they were. Until they stole dust from the earth and heat from fire and together crafted flesh
Elementals affect your humors, making you sanguine (Air or Blood), choleric (Fire or Yellow Bile), melancholic (Earth, or Black Bile) or phlegmatic (Water or Phlegm)
The 4 planes are integrated in some byzantine complex cycle of renewal linking them all together. Although incomprehensible, it does mean that each elemental plane is not purely made up of only its element
Earthquakes, volcanoes tornadoes and tsunamis are actually powerful elemental creatures that come to the material plane to retrieve what they need to reproduce.
They are aliens from another planet known as elementron. They have visited our planet and taken the form of the elements that they found. Now they battle for an esoteric energy source known as elementergon that only they can understand and use. They only desire to collect it, return to elementron and continue the only thing they care about, their endless war
Aliens from elementron are sometimes known as deceptimentals and autorocks.
Planes overlap. Under certain circumstances, you might find yourself shifted between them
The elements create certain feelings in people. Fire generates all consuming hunger; Water is fatigue, exhaustion and a wearing away; Earth feels like growth, tingling crystalline growth; Air feels like a chaotic place of sound and motion
The elementals personify those characteristics
They are alien and their motivations are impossible to parse
Elemental planes don't exist. Magical energy is invisible and casters clothe them in an elemental to provide functionality. Like a prisim splits light, they take the energy of magic and split out an element
Djinn and efreet are adventurers from elemental planes exploring ours
The planes are the divine cosmic energy, split from the world by the gods. They were expelled in all directions, if the world were healed the prime would again be whole
The elementals are "hired" out to spellcasters, because each elemental on the prime material plane serves as an anchor. If enough of a certain type of elementals existed on the prime, perhaps a single elemental realm could remerge
A single elemental realm re-merging would be a disaster of incalculable proportions
Elementals are actually animus spirits that inhabit all objects
The gods before were slain by trickster demons. The current gods are quite vigilant against their return. To avoid their pogom, the trickster demons split themselves among many small shards at a time, placing a tiny sliver inside an elemental. Every time an elemental is summoned or used a small piece is left behind. The tricksters are smuggling their way into the prime, one small shard at a time
The elementals are physical manifestation of the unraveling in the world
Elementals are the ghosts of dragons
Elementals are the pure creative divine energy of a dead god
Upon death, your soul diffuses into the world. Casters strip out slips of your soul and animate them ahead of schedule
Proto-creatures unable to wait until the world was finished entered it too early. Spell-casters attempt to snatch them up and re-purpose them until the lazy gods finish the leftovers. This may damage the overall pattern.
Elements vary on local culture, based on what people believe the world consists of. They are made of various conflicting groups.

Mutare (Change/Birth/Rebirth)
Continuitas (Tradition/Unlife/Death)
Mentem (Dark/Mind/Knowledge)
Puera (Feminine/Cunning/Beauty)
Lumen (Light/Joy/Physicality)
Vir (Masculine/Directness/Utility)

Elementals are the spirits of men who have died from those elements, suffocation, burning, drowning or being buried
Real elementals take a shape and stick to it, Hellhounds, Djinn, Mephits. Those elementals that wizards summon are just unformed raw material known as hipster elementals, who were raw material before it was cool.
Mages thin the boundary. Firmament, raw creation, enters our realm and lives. This creates both elementals and undead
Elementals are from certain types more frequently because pure sources are easier to draw magic from
Weak mages who thin the boundary indiscriminately create trash, sewer, or blade elementals. Rural sorcerers might conjure ents or shambling mounds.
Necromancers do this intentionally to raise the dead, however few are as skilled as they believe. They downplay the numbers slain by uncontrolled undead.
Strange elementals formed from the space between what is and could-be are sometimes formed, being smarter and more unique then their siblings
Dragons will kill all those who weaken boundaries between worlds
Elementals are the organs of dead gods. Air comes from lungs, stone comes from bone, water comes from blood and fire comes from nerves
Elementals that retain their form eventually grow in sentience
Elemental planes are actually just demi-planes created by creative pseudo-mortal gods who were masters of wizardry What you summon may not be what you expect, a horned snake with bark scales with eyes that beam moonlight or an organic mechanical hybrid that shudders in its movements and bleeds oily black ichor
They have no souls, its soul and body form one singular unit
There are also elemental planes of good and evil, meaning that demons and angles are nothing more then elementals of those planes
This means that there are no fewer than 16 different combinations, good and evil interacting with each plane. (Fire, earth, air, and water; cold, mud, magma and dust; barren, pain, darkness and endings; light, pleasure, fertility and beginnings
Elemental planes are just like material planes but rich in material and magic
Elementals are the foundations of the universe, the building blocks of reality itself
Elementals only exist for what states matter can take. Earth is solid, water liquid, air gas, and fire plasma
Elementals are the constraints on infinity itself. Without elementals home planes belonging to the inner, infinity becomes troublesome, loses definition and you find yourself simply one among uncountable billions of billions
Known alignments are not the only kinds. There are elemental alignments, held by animals and raw elementals

Air alignments travel, leaving when things no longer suit. Herd animals are examples
Earth alignments wait, patiently out-waiting whatever trial assults them. Hibernating animals and animals that trap or ambush their prey are examples
Fire alignments consume, devouring and using all they can reach. Lions and wolves are examples. They are also prone to anger and rage
Water alignments hoard and steal. Rats, crows, and small monkeys are examples of creatures with a water alignment

They have a hankering for currency, but not of the material sort. . .
The plane of air is said to be filled with a Djinn Sultinate, huge airships, and piracy among the floating isles
The plane of earth is filled with slaves who endlessly toil in mines for their masters. These factions are in constant, endless war. In these lawless lands, coin is to be made among old mining towns, forgotten cathedrals, or lawless freeholds
An endless desert filled with sultanates of brass, fire, sand and steel, the plane of fire is a realm filled with obsidian planes, silt seas, and the deadly forces of the sultanate
The undersea city of glass is a mecca in which all that matters in the plane of water transpires. Guilds, factions, whole cities and betrayals lie within its walls
There are archomentals, known as the princes of evil

Cryonax, Ice
Imix, Fire
Ogrémoch, Earth
Olhydra, Water
Yan-C-Bin, Air
Uzrith, Earth
Alyolvoy, Water
Behn-Hadar, Water
Chan, Air
Entemoch, Earth
Sunnis, Earth
Zaaman Rul, Fire
Bwimb, Ooze
Chlimbia, Magma
Ehkahk, Smoke

Extremely powerful wizards can summon swarms of elementals
Some elementals are amalgamates, mixtures of two types a burning tornado, or a freezing earthen beast
In fact, the basic types are only the basic ones in the broadest types. There are actually thousands of different types.

Air: Blizzard, zephyr, storm, south wind, pestilence, fog, howling, gust
Earth: Plains, dirt, desert, mud, graveyard, dungeon, sand, mountain, crystal, metal
Fire: cinder, lava, forge, pyre, tinder, hearth, flare
Water: ice, bog, river, sweetwater, blood, whirlpool, sewer, geyser, bile
Wood: thorn, forest, fungal, rose, gallows, moss, vine, rot

There are four classes of elementals

Lesser (Summoned by Staff): 8HD, AC 2, 1d8 damage
Greater (Summoned by Devices): 12 HD, AC 0, 2d8 damage
True (Summoned by Spells): 16 HD, AC -2, 3d8 damage
Legendary (Summoned by Ritual): 20 HD, AC -4, 4d8 damage

If you like posts like this, support me on Patreon!

Hack & Slash

Follow, Twitch, Newsletter, Supp ort, Donate to end Cancer (5 Star Rating)

On the Ecology of the Doppelganger

"But you see, I'm not the Duke of southern Ostland at all." -Last words heard by the knight Fineous, as replayed by the crypt necropticon

Nomenclature: double goer, doppelgänger, etiäinen, vardøger, Ankou, Ka, metamorph, skin-walker, mimic, therianthrope
Description: metamorphs

Things that are known:

They are shapeshifters that infiltrate humanoid societies.
They are bipedal, probably.
They can read minds

Rumors and other whispers in the dark:

They derive ecstasy from the emotions of fear and confusion. They thrive on disrupting intimate relationships
They start their lives by taking over tribes of small dumb humanoids, before moving on to larger more complicated power structures
They are humans who receive training from a rare akashic clan. They are trained from birth, given strange potions all in service to their clan. They are the ultimate ninja
Prestige among their races is dictated by the complexity of their schemes. The most powerful of them simultaneously impersonate dozens of separate individuals
Master doppelgangers can emulate any forms: fire, fog, any organic or non-organic substance
There are no doppelgangers. They are actually you, located in another place or time
They dwell in a place called the black lodge, where they are trapped, until released by a demon, or the entrance of a naïve humanoid
They have no shadow or reflection
They are actually born of rare human children, having no race or culture of their own
They are actually elven children switched with human children. There is no such thing as an elf, just a face the doppelganger chooses to show us
In combat, they can change in a dazzling burst, making the opponents uncertain which is the dopple and which is real
Doppelgangers all suffer from amnesia, they don't know who they are or what they are doing. They are just doing what comes instinctually and seems like a good idea at the time
They are actually extraplanar, and are summoned and bound by wizards
That isn't true, the wizards create them like homunculi, and claim they are from the outer plains
They bargain with states and other socio-political entities, asking for strange deliveries and indebting themselves to work as spies for short periods
All rulers of men have been replaced by doppelgangers. They live among us
They have a compulsion to impersonate and believe they are who they impersonate. They will become hostile and kill anyone who attempts to make them confront their delusion
No doppelganger ever dies. When killed their consciousness is reborn in a new body
They can't actually survive in civilization for very long because they are just too alien. They lose their forms both mentally and physically
They detest others of their own kind
Doppelgangers are actually very timid creatures having no sense of worth, believing themselves to be a non-entity. They take other forms in a desperate attempt to please others and escape their emotional turmoil
A long time ago, they made an ancient pact with an otherworldly intelligence. They serve this great outer power in exchange for their abilities
Doppelgangers may come from any place at any time. They all exist as transient, detached, driftwood through the corridors of time
The outer intelligence that controls them stores all their souls in an ever changing box
Doppelgangers are actually magical plants created by wizards. They grow in pods that hang from vines where they ripen like fruit
They are social parasites, stealing identities to give themselves purpose and meaning
Doppelgangers gain more pleasure from mental pursuits then physical ones
Doppelgangers view humanoids with contempt, seeing them as agressive and egocentric creatures who will never truly know each other
They are stunted elemental creatures. They steal forms and identities to experience life. In their own form the world is grey and lifeless
Doppelgangers follow certain people, watching their thoughts like television. They get caught up in their lives and make sure to follow all their favorite characters
Shapeshifting is their religion and they will ascend once they have assumed every perfect shape
Doppelgangers often live in the wilds as animals
They all live in a great link, a giant pool where they all exist together in liquid form
They can only hold their shape for 18 hours before they must revert to liquid form
Doppelgangers are mentally unstable. They quickly adopt any odd habits or beliefs picked up by anyone they contact, which then quickly spread back to their conclave
In fact, doppelgangers that infiltrate non-doppelganger society for a long time eventually adopt the culture and mannerisms of the locals, they forget they're a doppelganger. They either are the subject of a raid from a doppelganger clan or have an emotional breakdown when they discover they are a monster
Some of these doppelgangers see the mental instability as a mirror to their physical malleability. They isolate living aesthetic lives trying to quell their inner turmoil by rejecting their ability to shape shift
What is beauty to the formless? They only find beauty in their own form, when they are isolated from all other races. They wear their disguises with disgust. With no home to go to, they have to wander, disgusted by their forms, terrified by exposure
When they mate with each other, they produce a doppelganger. When they mate with humans they produce changelings
They are thought forms made from concentrated hate and frustrated desires of one or more people, and aimed at an individual which is an object of loathing, fear, unrequited lust or one that you wish to subjugate
They are the double of this person in particular (or more rarely a tribe, corporation, or idea), the master of its face. It is created with the sole purpose of destroying, humiliating, or replacing that master
But the doppelganger is filled with complexity and incoherence. It creates a double that is self-directed and strongly willed. It borrows features from its hate-donors, shifting faces freely on the way to meeting its master. It pursues its own bizarre agendas as long as they don't conflict with the inevitable showdown
Once the master is destroyed and its mission complete? The funny thing about hate and lust and loathing is that they don't just disappear. It is now free to explore the meaning of its existence. Very often, it seeks out those who created it, its wrathful parents
They are actually from elsewhere, visiting humanoids and capturing them for study
Doppelgangers are like honeybees, led by a queen. The personality of the hive is based on the personalities the queen has copied
They were originally humans, modified by wizards to be concubines and spies. At some point, the goose got away from the gander
Doppelgangers are actually an advanced ooze that has recently picked itself up and left the dungeon. They just can't seem to maintain their humanoid form, so they borrow it from others to prevent returning to an ooze like state
This has caused a rift in doppelganger society, some wish to pursue a hedonistic lifestyle, while others become morose and philosophical, becoming violent and loving to inflict pain on those weaker then themselves
They are a strongly secretly religious culture. They perform rituals in private to help remind them of who they truly are
They are not just men. Werewolves, mimics, trappers, cloakers, all are doppelgangers in different stages of their life cycle
They stole the source of true names and fled where only the damned go. They have returned, paying another price; their own visage. They imprinted the book on each of their souls, allowing them to take any form. You may have them do a task for you, but you must give your name to the book, allowing them the right to use your own face
They are violently territorial sociopaths. They do not experience guilt or remorse. They are driven to succeed and control everything, driven by their utter solitude
Doppelgangers don't burn
They pool them memories in clansmen who become memory wells
These memory wells allow doppelgangers to take on the skills and knowledge of those people's minds contained within
When unconscious they revert back to their natural form
Certain elder doppelgangers can consume the brain of a creature, gaining access to the memories and personality of the victim
Doppelgangers believe that the world and everything in it is alive and all existence is a competition, a test of physical and mental superiority
They are failed alchemical creations, the detritus of attempts to create artificial life
Their origin is human, undeniably. Altered by magic, alchemy, or surgery in some bizarre fashion
Blood from a doppelganger exhibits life-like traits. It ripples and avoids hazards, oozing away from them
Doppelgangers eventually replace every building, person, and object in a city with one of their kind
They do not sweat or produce other skin excretions
They are the liquid sea-formed soldiers of chaos, walking among the stone of the land to destroy law and all its stable forms. That war never ended
They often collect rubbish. Small rocks, bits of string, screws, pieces of metal
Their natural skin appears greasy, but is actually dry to the touch and feels leathery
Doppelgangers are able to alter their voice to reproduce any sound
They are immune to charm and their ability to detect thoughts operates constantly
After death, their natural form quickly petrifies
They evolved in a dungeon environment to take advantage of large groups of unorganized men. A party with more hirelings then it can keep its eye on at once is particularly prone to a doppelganger infestation
They lust and desire the wealth of humans, wealth they are unable or unwilling to create themselves
They can only reproduce with the aid of humans and leave their children among human children as the cuckoo does
Part of their superiority in combat comes from their mental abilities. Against opponents with protected minds (psionics, etc.) they are considered to have a much lower armor class and fight much worse, hitting much less often and doing reduced damage
They do not sleep
They form their clothing and weapons from their own mass
They are the stuff of life that first came forth, protean and ever-shifting. Originally it took on the many varied forms, learning to be born, hold a shape, and die. Now it has appeared again, perhaps to herald the end of the race of men
Doppelganger society if founded on honesty and truth, being unable to lie to each other
Doppelgangers actually avoid each other because they are the only race they can't read, leading to severe distrust
When they age, the take the form of large structures, forest glens, or other giant permanent structures and become powerful psionic beacons containing repositories of memories
This large structure then will birth new doppelgangers
They respond to their targets, always displaying what each expects to see
They are each born without a face of their own. They either break off and worship their own lack of identity, or as is more often the case, just steal one
They are creatures without a conscious. They just kill and replace people on a whim, not from malice, but simply from habit and temperament
Their natural form is non-viable. They must change form to breed
The doppelganger isn't a separate creature, but your own dark side, released. It kills your mind, in a very real sense taking over your body and becoming the evil that lurks inside you manifest
Doppelgangers exist only as a curse. They do and accomplish what the original desires, yet cannot accomplish himself
They are creatures of balance. When a creature, perhaps descended from the divine, drifts from its nature, a doppelganger appears and reasserts the balance by their actions. This always ends in misery and the balancing creature can only be killed by destroying the original creature
A religious order is the source of all doppelgangers. Once sought, the god curses the joiner. They must seek out, defeat, and re-assimilate the doppelganger to be inducted. Often they die or fail. Once a great many had, they bound together and brought down the order that created them. They now seek to bring down the god himself
They are robotic killers from the future to kill those who will disadvantage their creator
They are servants of the gods who kill those who interfere with worship and their god's divine supremacy
They are dreams that survive their dreamer's death

Thus it appeared, I say, but it was not. It was my antagonist - it was Wilson, who then stood before me in the agonies of his dissolution. His mask and cloak lay, where he had thrown then, upon the floor. Not a thread in all his raiment - not a line in all the marked and singular lineaments of his face which was not, even in the most absolute identity, mine own!- Edgar Allan Poe, “William Wilson”

If you like posts like this, support me on Patreon!

Hack & Slash

Follow, Twitch, Newsletter, Supp ort, Donate to end Cancer (5 Star Rating)

On Pathfinder: Kingmaker, the CRPG

This is the best computer role-playing game. This is the worst computer role-playing game.

Do you want your decisions to matter? Do you want a challenge, with a real risk of loss? Do you want ambiguity? Do you want adventure?

Do you want to spend a lot of time reloading saves?

The Game

Pathfinder Kingmaker is a computer role-playing game based on a series of adventure paths written for pathfinder. An adventure path is designed as a series of scenes preceding planned combat encounters, until the characters reach the end of the path. From "Stolen Land" the first adventure path in the kingmaker series:

". . .these things are called “Adventure Paths” and not “Adventure Lots Of Little Paths,” . . . an Adventure Path is first and foremost a story. While your players will have plenty of opportunities to help shape such a story’s development, on a certain level the story’s going to happen one way or another."

This is, perhaps, useful for very busy people who enjoy building characters to overcome challenges, but seems to limit agency, adventure, and the possibility of wonder, but I'm not throwing stones—many people like this style of play.

Kingmaker was their attempt to not do this. Is this why it's one of the best selling adventure paths they have published AND the one neophyte company Owlcat decided to turn into a massive digital role-playing games? Who can say?

Me. Yes. Adventure paths are interminable compared to player-driven play. But not everyone can have an above average IQ and people who have trouble with abstraction should get to play D&D too.

The reality of this can be quite upsetting. In the computer game, you can find and run into hydras and manticores and more at level 1 and 2. The correct option here is to flee, and return later (or find specific ways to manipulate the pathfinder system to target the one weakness of the creature). The downside is that the appropriate way to play is save-scumming (reloading constantly for better results), because there is no way for a player to know ahead of playing when they are going to get smote by a monster at level 1.

This continues onto the rules themselves. Pathfinder is a very rigid design, with certain mathematical expectations. For balanced encounters, it's expected that players will die during combat around level 7, which is why clerics get access to spells that bring the recently deceased back to life. It's been baked into the math since early 3rd edition. Skill checks are the same way, difficulties are in the mid 40's by the end of the game, which means unless you've specialized to hit them, you are unlikely to succeed.

But if you're playing Kingmaker, you're already all in on this. It does implement the rules (for the most part) in a correct way. For example, if you are over-encumbered, your speed decreases on the world map. And on the battle maps. Take off your armor if you get the chance before making athletic checks. You might not roll a high enough perception check to locate an adventure site, and then you fail.

Finally, there's the time limit. After the first chapter a clock starts (1600 days), and doesn't stop. Events happen, and it's best to address them directly, opposed to the usual video game technique of "do all the sidequests first and save the main quest for last". When quests pop up, like "Rescue my child" or "Stop the troll invasion" you have to address them quickly or things will go badly. You do the main quests first, and then split the remining time between Kingdom management and exploration and side-questing.

To wit: There is a camping screen, where everyone in the party has a job. This camping screen was a draw to the game. During my game, I let my hunter hunt for rations. This can extend the camp time past 8 hours for a poor roll. 18 hour camp here, 12 hour camp there. These extra hours over the course of the game added up to enough time that I wasn't able to completely develop my kingdom for the 'best' ending. I lost so much time, that I wasn't able to completely raise the secondary stats of my Kingdom to 10. I ended with Divine, Arcane, Stability at 7, Culture at 9, and Espionage at 6. I walked places when I should have teleported. I explored. Once I left the screen on and was in other apps for a few hours, and time passes in the game, so I lost several days there.

The Grind

All of this is very cool, right? Weather happens and affects the maps. Your choices matter, not just in conversation, but in what you choose to address and what you let go.

But the endless tedium—You're always poor on gold, but encumbering yourself with loot will add hours to your trip. You do this for every quest, you lose weeks of time over the course of the game. Here's a piece of advice for the game written by reddit user u/YogoshKeks

"The only thing that affects the time you have in act 2 is the time of day you speak to Oleg to close act 1. Do it at 16:00:01 after having fully rested. That starts act 2 just after midnight, so you get the full use of that first day.
With that full day, you can claim Outskirts, run to Oleg to recruit Bokken, claim the resources just north of the capitol, rank up counselor and have about 40 minutes left to start that first bald hilltop 1 day event card."

There is no point in the game where these things cease to matter. Every time your characters level, you need to know what you're going to need in the future to insure you don't 'screw up the build'. (what favored enemy should you pick?) The pathfinder ruleset is incredibly brutal, and unless you are engaging in significant min/maxing, it's unlikely you will win most combats easily. Combine that with needing to rest and recuperate more often if your system mastery isn't there. . .

The game simultaneous pulls in three separate directions. You need to devote lots of time and money to kingdom management, you need to take time to go around and explore various areas, and you need to be prepared to complete the main events when they occur. These three goals conflict with each other, and create a stressful experience. There are a couple of sections where you have some time to work on your kingdom, where you might spend three or four hours just dealing with kingdom cards and solving kingdom problems. Out of my (strangely enough) exactly 100 hour playthrough to beat the game, 20-25 hours of that was spent in kingdom management. It's relevant to note that this was far from my first playthrough—many ended when I had a problem with a build. This was the run where I decided I needed to beat the game. I would expect a first playthrough to take upwards of 150 hours of real time, using help to avoid getting stuck and considering reloads

Even in the definitive edition, years after release, the game is full of weird non-game breaking bugs. My robe stuck out on either side of the doll like waterwings. Sometimes you'd fail a roll that shows you succeeded. Feats work in unique ways (crane feat being active even when wielding weapons and shields in both hands). Once I enchanted a belt that didn't give a bonus. The game is almost impossible to complete on console due to technical difficulties, but this is not really a factor on the PC version.

The above seems negative, and there's more. The last dungeon (The House at the End of Time) is possibly one of the most frustrating and tedious dungeons ever made. Pathfinder design makes it both difficult and necessary to cover all the bases you need to handle different monster types (swarms, fey, gaze attacks). Tactics on higher difficulties result in tedious and repetitive tactics often requiring reloading to get the roll you need. The load times are long. There's weirdness with some abilities and turn-based play. There are several events that require you meet someone somewhere on a certain day or time, and there is no in-game calendar available for reference. The system and game is by FAR the most punishing to low level characters, making the beginning a arduous ordeal for new players who must have familiarly with the pathfinder system to avoid problems. (You can't hit because you didn't take precise shot and you're firing into melee. Do you have a way to deal with swarms? et. al.)

The Gold

All that said, this game is brilliant. It's a working real-time with pause/turn-based engine that implements the pathfinder ruleset in a true way. It doesn't consider 'good video game design' and instead only considers honesty to the 'rules as physics' as a primary design goal. There's a roguelike dungeon you can take on with created parties over and over. You can fill your party with characters you designed yourself. The voice work and writing is pretty good, and greatly expands on the original Adventure Path material with exactly the kinds of things you would expect.

There are a ton of puzzles, that are really sharp. You can solve them different ways. An early puzzle has you manipulate sword arms on statues. Once you get them all facing the same way, you get access to a secret room and treasure. Most people then move on, not knowing that if you make them all face the other way, you will open a different secret room with different treasure. There are puzzles and they aren't terribly difficult to figure out, but the game has no problem letting you move on, none the wiser. Many, nearly all of the puzzles in the game are like this.

Also, you can solve them in different ways in a traditional sense. You can talk your way to a solution, or fight your way there, or sometimes even avoid the problem. The majority of the game is optional, as evidenced by the sub-four hour speedrun.

And ultimately, your kingdom represents your choices. I've played a Chaotic Neutral psychic, a Lawful Good Dragon Paladin (who walks around in huge dragon form all the time), a party filled with just dragon people and pets, a Lawful Evil hellknight, and more. Each campaign had the world and situation react to my choices. Events, commentary, people's opinions, who's even in the game and around, are all up to choices you make. It's an amazing amount of replayability for a game with a 100 hour playtime.

And that is indeed its greatest strength and its biggest weakness. Do you want to replay a 100 hour game? Do you want to live in a world where you have to gain an ability and then take a feat for the ability to work? Do you want to enter a brutal world where monsters threaten humanity, and even when giving your best effort you may still fail?

Pages