Freeport, actual plays and music

A number of updates, some personal, some just hobby:

First, we've had several months of family drama involving my oldest son and his wife. Despite years of probably denial on my part, it took a real catastrophe in his life for me to connect the dots and admit that the two of them probably have some kind of clinical personality disorder. In any case, not only have we had tons of stress and anxiety for the last several months, but I've also been worried about our house, which they've been living in, up in Michigan where we used to live. Now, we heard finally that they decided to get out, stop paying us rent, and we've got about two weeks notice. In July, we'll have to spend some time (and luckily we have some friends to help us with that) fixing up a few cosmetic things as cheaply and quickly as we can and putting the house on the market. Everything that we're hearing is that it's a seller's market right now, and we can hope to make off relatively well, sell very quickly, unload the burden and make enough over and above what we still owe that we can put a nice down payment on another house for us, finally. Although... we literally just signed another year lease on the house we're renting, so we won't be moving right away. But if we can get the house sold, and get our finances a little bit more organized, then we should be able to get into a house again about this time next year, with a hopefully significantly lower payment, much shorter term, and a plan to get completely out of debt entirely so that I can actually afford to retire when I'm old enough to do so. I mean, I'd love to retire now, while I'm still young and healthy enough to enjoy my retirement, but after the drama and worry that I've been through the last few years, this is a good outcome for me. Still have to actually manage to sell the house, of course, but every indicator I can see looks good on that front. With at least one significant long-term worry looking to be resolved in the near term, I'm looking good going into the second half of the year.

Second, I've been listening to a few actual play podcasts. The Red Moon Roleplaying rendition of The Enemy Within, the Hideous Laughter rendition of Carrion Crown, and alongside that one, there's The Zone of Truth; a kind of OOC supplement to Carrion Crown, and Evil Interlude, a kind of weird prequel mini campaign running alongside it as well. I try to alternate these, and then in between them, I listen to my hardtrance megamixes. However, those are too long. Those are all 20 songs long, which gives them an average length of about two hours or so. I'm thinking about redoing them and instead of ten mixes two hours long each, I'll have twenty mixes about an hour long each, with ten tracks each. This will be better as interludes between my podcasts, which are also about an hour to an hour fifteen or so in length (although I play them at 1.5x speed.) That will also give me the chance to clean up some of my older mixes, which are a little bit more clumsy, sometimes. If I do it quick and dirty, I just split the files and mix in the ends and beginnings of the tracks right in the middle, but I'd like to actually redo the mixes from scratch. I might even reshuffle a bit what tracks are in which mix. We'll see.

On that, though, I'm enjoying these podcasts. I tend to say that RPGs are not a spectator sport, and I simply could not get in to Critical Role. However, I think the combination of making them shorter (about an hour rather than four) and having them be audio so I mostly only listen to them when driving, when I'm not going to be distracted by my phone, my computer or something else sitting around close at hand works. When I try to watch video actual plays, I find that my mind wanders and I get really distracted by... well, really by pretty much anything else around me. Podcasts work much better than video actual plays, at least for me. Video actual plays rarely, rarely work out for me. The only exception, although I never finished this, was wasd20's Rime of the Frostmaiden actual play.

Third, I'm about to finish the big fat Freeport book. I've only got 25-30 pages left, and I'll finish it for sure tonight. In fact, I'll make sure that I do, even if I have to stay up late to do so. In any case, that means that I'm on page 512 or whatever exactly I'm on of 540 or whatever exactly it is, and I think that I can effectively review it, or at least make a comparison to earlier products that it kind of replaces. Compared to The Pirate's Guide to Freeport, it advances the timeline and makes a few changes. I like that they took the time to make these changes, but most of them I don't actually care for or at least care about. I'm not a fan of the fact that they 1) greatly increased the population of orcs and goblinoids and made them a kind of obvious metaphor for black people and/or immigrants. Although, because they're orcs and goblinoids, they inadvertently make the conservatives' case for them, on accident without realizing that they've done so. They also play right into the hands of the narrative that it's liberals who are racist trolls who think that black people are like orcs. The whole thing is a somewhat amusing charlie foxtrot on the allegory that they kind of obviously were trying to make. 2) created new races, like the island trolls, which I have no use for and don't know why they suddenly came to prominence out of nowhere, 3) created this odd Salt Curse thing, but then it's almost just an offhand kind of thing with no explanation, and it's easily (and probably prudently) ignored. I feel like the city sections are just a bit lighter, but I really need to compare them again to see if some of the details were changes or are missing.

The mechanics stuff was substantially updated from the Pathfinder Freeport Companion, and I'd say improved significantly. Every prestige class and some of the base classes were changed to archetypes, and the Freebooter base class is all new, and is honestly one of my favorite 3.x classes, serving as a great alt.swashbuckler.

Mostly the presentation is improved; it's all color, for instance, and most of the art is new. I do miss some of the old art... but then again, I also have the old book, so "miss" isn't really the right word. There's a new adventure module at the end of the book, which is what I'm finishing up right now. It's actually quite long; 50-60 pages worth, but it's curiously kind of poorly organized, and it's not at all my type of adventure, being a scavenger hunt where you go all over town solving puzzles. It's probably my least favorite, or close to, of the modules/adventures for Freeport that I've read as part of this trawl.

It's gratifying to be (almost) finished with this. I'll only have to read the Pathfinder Bestiary, and I may skim that because I imagine that much of the material has already covered in earlier products. Then there's the Shadow of the Demon Lord Freeport Companion, which I can probably skim because, again, the companions are all pretty repetitive. The only thing really to read is the combined Return to Freeport since I'll probably skim rather than read cover to cover the remaining two titles. I expect that mostly that's repeating material. 

Once I'm done with the Freeport trawl, I'll do a big wrap-up post and maybe a high level 5x5 adaptation of it into my Curse of the Corsair Coast. And then, I'll pivot, I think, to the Eberron and Forgotten Realms trawls—although first I'm trying to finish reading the SPCM second saga about Yig and time travel, and read the next Paizo adventure path, Second Darkness. I actually brought Races of Eberron with me to work in my backpack today, although I didn't end up getting it out at lunch because I was listening to a podcast instead. I've already read a fair bit into it, so it's been started. Getting whole trawls finished and taken off of my page list (although I won't delete the pages, just the link to them.)

UPDATE: Yeah, I finished the book early. The final adventure was disappointing. The adventure included with the companions is way better. Heck, most of the adventures in Tales of Freeport were way better. Actually, most adventures period are way better. There are some good Freeport adventures. A poorly conceived scavenger hunt who's main purpose is really just to give you excuses to go to a lot of the writer's favorite haunts in the setting isn't one, though. Maybe I'll do a palate cleanser and read a short 32-page module or something before diving into whatever is next. It's Races of Eberron in physical books, although I also added the next short Pathfinder Companion book, which is Taldor, Echoes of Glory. As with the Osirion book I recently read, there's a larger, more fleshed out Pathfinder Setting book that came out later, but y'know. It was nice to have something to start with in the meantime. I'll be honest with you, though—by far my favorite parts of Golarion are Varisia and Ustalav. Most of the rest of the setting could get bent as far as I care. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but I doubt I'd use it for much. I really need to start the next adventure path.

But not tonight. I'm tired.

Freeport Pathfinder and E6 Low Magic

I just finished the chapter on Freeport Classes, so I'm getting near the end of this monster book that's twice as big as most of my other books. I had thought that it would mostly just reprint two sources: 1) The Pirate's Guide to Freeport and 2) Pathfinder Freeport Companion. I was surprised—mostly pleasantly—to find that this was not the case. The Pirate's Guide stuff is largely intact, but there were many minor updates and changes. This wasn't necessarily good nor bad; why did the Union guy die and his widow is now taking his place, for example? I don't remember reading about him dying in one of the adventures, so I think that that's just meant to both advance minor details to make the setting "feel more alive" from a meta perspective, and I also suspect to eliminate another strong (albeit a liberal) male icon and replace him with a woman. Some of the other changes were more consequential. Why is there a new third crime lord competing with Finn and Mr. Wednesday? (None of whom are anywhere near as good as the four crime lords from Five Fingers still. Sadly.) Why are there now a lot more orcs and goblinoids than there were even in the Pirate's Guide, which is already a lot more than there were in the original Freeport sourcebook? There seems a concerted effort to make liberal themes more front and center, because in spite of the fact that they are orcs and goblins, this is clearly meant to be a morality tale of sorts around immigration, racism, etc.; although they haplessly kind of demonstrate the conservatives' point while doing so, even though they clearly expect you to take an NPC liberal perspective on it. As an aside, because of this, the Freebooter's seat on the council, which has a three year term limit and so needed to have a different NPC in it, now has Captain Scarbelly, a notoriously villainous orc captain from earlier in the game, shown prominently on the anniversary omnibus version of the original Freeport trilogy.

I was pleasantly surprised by these kinds of developments, you may ask? I suppose. It's pleasant to see that they actually took a look at the text and didn't just replicate it. Many of the changes that they made are not ones that I personally would have made, but others are interesting, and I applaud them for making the effort anyway.

The rules were also significantly changed, probably because of more things that had come out in Pathfinder since the original Pathfinder companion. There's a new base class, the Freebooter, that kind of combines the corsair and assassin into one flexible a la carte menu version. The corsair does still appear as an archetype instead of a class, as does the survivalist, and most of the prestige classes. I didn't notice too much different with the monster hunter class, but I didn't really check, and the noble seems to have been substantially restructured. The Freebooter is actually, as written, a great alt.swashbuckler class for use with the PF1e rules, and I'd highly recommend it as such. It has a more traditional feel than the swashbuckler too, which is kind of a fiddly-looking class to play, where you have a pool of points to spend, etc. This one just has a big menu of a la carte options to pick from, giving it a flavor somewhere between fighter and rogue, but with the fighters' BAB and hit die, and lots of ways to actually build it. 

In fact, they didn't do any prestige classes at all, converting all of the ones that they used to have into archetypes. I kind of think that's what Pathfinder should have done in the beginning; replace prestige classes with archetypes. I'd modify my E6 low magic rules to say that this is actually how you should do it; not use prestige classes at all, and just open up the use of archetypes. I'd also say, although not force, that players consider higher level (than 6) class abilities as your first option for feat selection; continue taking those class abilities, in order, as if they were feats for your post 6th level advancement. Sometimes you need to throw in a feat too, but I think a more "bounded accuracy" feel can be maintained by using E6 and continuing to gain class abilities.

Of course, this applies to non-magical classes. It remains the only way to cast higher level spells that you have to treat them as rituals/incantations. But hey, lower power and bounded accuracy isn't the only goal; lower magic was obviously always a goal too, right? Speaking of which, the noble offers an ability to become a minor spellcaster which I could take without skipping a level. It becomes another alternative to spellcasting where you can get some magic without having to use the spellcasting classes. Another plus. 

UPDATE: As another aside, I see the Pathfinder 1e rulebook at Half Price Books selling for $12.99 with $4.99 S&H in Very Good condition. I doubt I'll ever play it, and I wonder if I'll ever even really read it, yet I'm very tempted to buy it because having it as an actual book instead of a pdf seems much more solid. Sigh. I have enjoyed having this big Freeport book, for what it's worth. Even if I don't ever really need that either. I'm really motivated to try and finish the Freeport Trawl entirely since I'm so close to being there. I've only got about 100 pages left in the big 540+ page book, then the new(er) Freeport Bestiary then the big single book AP Return to Freeport, and then I can skim the Shadow of the Demon Lord Freeport Companion and be completely done with the trawl! Once that one's done, it'll presumably be easier for me to focus on some of my other trawls, many of which have many, many titles to read, but others of which are slightly more modest. I think I want to stick to my roots just a bit, though, and focus on Eberron 3e, Forgotten Realms 3e and the Paizo Adventure Paths before getting too involved in, say, the Paizo Companion Trawl, or the Goodman Games module trawl, both of which I'm not even very invested in doing; I just thought what the heck, why not track them too.

I do want to dig more into the Pathfinder 1e rules and Chronicles/Setting line. And, of course, the Adventure Paths and I'd like to read all of the modules eventually. Those are higher priority than Companion, Society Scenarios, or some of the others, but the Adventure Path is really the top priority from Paizo.

What would I play, PF1e edition

I added a new tag; WHAT WOULD I PLAY? where I noodle for a post about potential character concepts that I'd like to play. These aren't necessarily for any specific campaigns, I just look at character concepts in rulesets that I'm familiar with and have characters that I think are potentially interesting concepts that I'd like to play, if I get a chance. I'll probably do two per, but I don't know how often I'll come back to this series.

Many of these concepts are ones that could be readily adapted to other rulesets, but I'm looking specifically today at some classes and archetypes in Pathfinder 1e that I'd like to play. All of these would, most likely, be human males. Pathfinder 1e is, of course, very similar to D&D 3.5. I actually think either of these three character concepts that I'm looking at today could be used in 3.5 as is, just adjusting for the slightly consolidated skill list for Pathfinder 1e vs 3.5 (Listen and Spot combined into Perception, Move Silently and Hide consolidated into Stealth, Jump, Tumble and Balance combined into Acrobatics, etc.) Of course, I'd otherwise see them as perfect characters for a PF1e adventure path character, and if I could find adaptions, I'd love to see these in 5e, with the archetypes maybe converted into subclasses. I don't understand 5e as well as I do 3e and Pathfinder 1e, so I'll leave that to someone else, however...

Concept #1: Brawler. I've kind of tried to like the concept of the monk, but I simply don't, really. It's too mystical with too much supernatural crap. I really want a more "western", non-supernatural alternative rather than a character who feels like he belongs in a Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat game. The Brawler class does this quite well. I actually don't think I'd even want an archetype, although if I change my mind and use one, the Snakebite Striker is the one that I'd use, most likely. Using the Shield Champion as a kind of fantasy Captain America might be interesting. The Strangler would be an interesting one for a smaller group, especially if I can use him as a kind of murderer of sorts, although just as a UFC fighter who puts people into sleeper holds would be boring. And I don't know how often I'd be interested in playing a murderer. Maybe some kind of hit man of sorts? I dunno. The concept of the Strangler archetype isn't terrible and it kind of interests me, but I'm not sure where I'd use it.

I don't like Wayne Reynolds "Rhonda Roussey with short hair" illustration, but if it were a guy, it'd be perfect. The mixed martial arts headgear kind of thing that she has is kind of cool, though. Although it feels weird because in the fiction that characters like this are based on, we rarely see this kind of thing.

I used ChatGPT to generate a "Gaulish martial artist" and removed the tattoos, and got this image. It might be an interesting place to start. Although using metal MMA headgear might be interesting too.

It's interesting to me that this was done as a hybrid class between monk and fighter, but without much of the supernatural weirdness. Freeport did the same thing with their 3.5 and Pathfinder stuff. The Survivalist is another good western, non-supernatural fist-fighter, and in the Pathfinder version it's converted to an archetype rather than a new class. But I'd rather just use the Brawler class. Like I said, maybe with one of the archetypes mentioned, but if not, the base class as is looks interesting enough to me already.

Concept #2: I've always been a huge fan of alt.rangers, and the Slayer is a hybrid class that's like a ranger with some rogue-like abilities added too. It may be my current favorite alt.ranger, and trust me, I've played around with a lot of them! (The wildlander from the Midnight campaign setting was my previous go-to.) I like the slayer, again, as is, but the sniper is my preferred archetype if I pick one. Curiously, although I prefer more "jock" characters, and magic and supernatural abilities often are not my thing at all, the Stygian Slayer archetype is kind of a creepy alternative. Curiously, with some of these archetypes, the "ranger-ness" of the slayer is reduced. Without Track and a lot of wilderness kind of activity, is it even really a ranger, or just some kind of skirmisher? Ah, well; I'm on record as saying that I think the ranger is really more of a skirmisher than a "ranger" in most cases anyway, or at least that's how most people play them. 

I'm well and frequently on record as not being very interested in magic-using classes or spellcasters. But I also find the fighter to be, generally, too bland for my tastes. There's probably some archetypes in the Pathfinder 1e rules that make it workable for me, but I haven't looked in a long time, and I prefer these two hybrid base classes instead, if I were to actually make and play a Pathfinder 1e character anytime soon. 

I say all of that as I'm currently playing a 5e fire genasi sorcerer in my Tyranny of Dragons campaign, of course. There's always exceptions, I guess. Plus, we already had a rogue, a barbarian, a cleric, and a ranger in that campaign, so some kind of arcane magic seemed like what was needed when I joined. But again, martial with a twist non-magical "jock" characters are kind of my go-to.

Concept #3: The freebooter class in the big, fat Freeport Pathfinder setting book is a great option; another great alt.swashbuckler, kind of like a fighter with a lot of class abilities borrowed from the old assassin, the rogue and other similar classes. What would I do with this? Well, a pretty typical swashbuckling rogue, of course. Someone kind of like Captain Blood, or Andre-Louis Moreau (Scarmamouche) or D'Artagnan; a kind of flippant, merry duelist. As a friend of mine once opined on the classic 70s Three and Four Musketeers movie (absolutely brilliant movies, by the way) that as likeable and charismatic as the characters are, they are also kind of sociopathic, if not psychopathic, given how readily they'll kill someone for frivolous reasons, and take great pride in it. Mechanically, it may not be terribly different from the Slayer, but in terms of flavor, it's kind of a world apart. Although that depends, in the end, on which class abilities I end up selecting.

Now, I realize that none of these concepts; the brawler, the slayer or the freebooter, is a character concept in the traditional sense. It's a mechanics concept, i.e., what mechanics would I be interested in playing. I'd still need to come up with a character concept to back up the mechanics. But that's often how I like to build; either do the two in parallel, or come up with a mechanical concept that looks fun, and work from there on what exactly the character is like.

I'm also not a fan of over-developing backstories. I prefer brief and broad character concepts, and then I work on what the actual character is like in play. Think of characters like James Bond, for instance. He doesn't need backstory, and in fact, is probably a worse character if you try to saddle him with one. Conan too. Even Wolverine. Marvel were very reluctant to issue the Origin series back in the early 00s precisely because he was their most popular character (perhaps after Spider-man) and they were very worried that a backstory would actually make him less interesting rather than more. In the end, Origin was a success, but ultimately, it wasn't needed and I wonder if the character would have been better off if it hadn't been done.

Reading while flying

Work continues to suck. I had to travel to Hermosillo again, and not only is that kind of a dumpy little town at the best of times, but June is not the best of times. 106° highs every afternoon. I had no car. I went basically back and forth from the airport (via shuttle) to a hotel, to a supplier a block away from the hotel that was in crisis mode unable to adequately deliver parts. Travel to Hermosillo sucks; I had to spend a night in Phoenix, and then travel an entire day through DFW to get home... but thunderstorms in DFW got me stranded there another night. I'm really, really sick and tired of work completely eating into my personal life, and causing me a lot of stress and anxiety that I can't escape from in the evenings and on weekends. That said, being on site was, in some ways, less stressful than being here, even if days were longer and I had to spend my weekends traveling. And while I never really adjusted to the time zone, and didn't sleep super well, I did still have some reasonable amount of time and mental energy to read some, at least, while I was traveling. Not as much as I would have a year or two ago when I was much more relaxed while traveling. I finished three books, although one of them was short: the Pathfinder Companion version of Osirion (there's a bigger one on the Pathfinder Setting/Chronicles line, but I haven't gotten to that one yet, and it was published quite a bit later), the next book in the T. H. Lain 3e iconics character novels--this one was City of Fire and added Krusk and Alhandra, among others, the barbarian and paladin, as well as half of the next novel after that, and I finished Faiths & Pantheons, a crappy 3e Forgotten Realms sourcebook. 

I say crappy, but what I mostly mean is that it's not my type of book, I had little interest in it before I read it, little interest while reading it, and I have no idea what I'd do with a book like that anyway. I felt obligated to read it as part of the trawl, but I just wanted to get through it and move on to the next one. Which is the infamous Silver Marches, famous for the fluff vs crunch debate and drama caused by one of its main authors, Sean K. Reynolds, who comes across as a raging gamma. (It's interesting to note that he was laid off by Wizards shortly after this. Maybe getting in a public internet slap-fight with your upper management on the strategic direction is a bad move. Especially when you bet on an outcome that, as near as I can tell, doesn't come true.) In the next half dozen or so titles on my FR Trawl, I've got City of the Spider Queen, a somewhat lengthy adventure, Unapproachable East, Underdark and Serpent Kingdoms, all books that I've actually wanted to read for some time, but until I started this trawl, I never got around to. 

I also read a little more than half of the Pathfinder Freeport book on pdf, but then my hardcopy arrived while I was out, so I abandoned the pdf read, stuck a bookmark in the hard copy, and started reading it in physical form instead. I actually just read, last night, some of the early "Denizens of Freeport" chapter, where they added the character who's on the new, updated cover art. She's a terrible, terrible, unlikeable girlboss May Sue, but although they added her, I haven't seen (yet) that they've tied her to any plots or anything, so whatever. There's a lot of terrible girlboss Mary Sues in Freeport, sadly, including the Sea Lord herself. I had thought that I saw somewhere that she was going to be replaced in later products (the Return to Freeport AP maybe?) but I'm probably wrong. We'll see when I read that relatively shortly, but I doubt that such confirmed "male feminists" like Chris Pramas and his partner or wife or whatever he calls her Nicole Lindroos would ever take a powerful woman NPC off of her perch on an unmerited pedestal. (I presume that they're that kind of partnership. I don't actually know or care for sure. He could well be gay, and "she" could well be a he, for all I know.)

Luckily for me, when using any of this material from any of these woke mutants, I would necessarily need to modify all kinds of details; it would hardly resemble the original once I'm done. My reworking of some Freeport elements into Curse of the Corsair Coast will be a pretty brusque reworking, if not just new material altogether that has the same theme and tone, sorta. Changing the name and sex of an NPC that is important on paper but doesn't really matter in terms of any of the adventures, really, is super easy; barely an inconvenience.

Anyway, other than being slightly more woke and significantly more thicc, due to also incorporating all kinds of material from the Companions, this book clearly is meant to replace the older systemless Pirate's Guide, so I'm sure I'll shelve the older book in the archive section, and this will take its place. Although since I will have read both in the last three years when I finish it, I probably won't pick it up again for quite a while unless I run Curse of the Corsair Coast and need to reference it. I don't I'll actually read it cover to cover again for some time. 

As an aside, let me reiterate a point I've made before, although it's merely a minor pet peeve. Pramas and Lindroos pronounce Green Ronin like Green Roneen. That's clearly wrong. Ronin is already a word in the English language, and it's pronounced Ronin, so that's how I pronounce their company name. You don't get to establish artisan pronunciation of an existing word just because you want to, even if it's kinda sorta closer to the Japanese pronunciation where the word originally came from. 

Porhomok

Baix Pallars, more commonly called the Corsair Coast, is a relatively thin strip of heavily forested semi-tropical shading to tropical land south of Timischburg, home of the Pallaran ethnicity and various city-states dotting the coast, like Razina, St. Haspar, Alcassar, Segria, and most infamously Port Liure. These city-states cling to the coast, though, and the forests, swamps and even jungles to the interior are poorly known, and considered quite dangerous. On extremely clear days from high up on a tower or tree, the Pallarans can see many scores of miles to the east, however, that the forest doesn't last forever; distant mountains that look tiny march in a north-south line, visible from all of the of the city-states, regardless of latitude. While these mountains look tiny, and on most days can't be spied at all, in reality they are massive, and permanent snowfields and glaciers top many of their highest peaks and cirques. Beyond them is a vast rain shadow, and the rusty red deserts of Porhomok, the so-called Land of the Dead. Few except scholars of ancient history and/or the occult know much about this land, although it occasionally features in exotic fairy tales, but the reality is that long ago, before the rise of any of the modern kingdoms, before even the Kin Twilight and the kingdoms that combined to form Kinzassal, the kingdom of Taremu-Atum blossomed in this land. Massive cities of impressive architectural design were filled with splendid estates.

In ancient times, the engineers and mages of Taremu-Atum created vast dams and dikes in the mountains to the west, channeling snowmelt from them and diverting them to the east, where they formed vast reservoirs on the eastern slopes of the mountains, and continued down in massive stone-lined canals to the thirsty cities of Taremu-Atum; a lifeline in this otherwise parched desert, which is characterized by reddish sand so fine that vast clouds of it remain suspended high in the atmosphere, giving the sky itself a rusty color. This sand rarely crosses the mountains because of their extreme height and the prevailing winds that keep them to the east, but seasonally, fine, powdery rust-red dust will rain down on far-away Gunaakt even further to the east.

It is unclear exactly what disaster befell Taremu-Atum causing the collapse of its civilization and it being renamed Porhomok, the Dead Desert, or occasionally the Land of the Dead, but a good bet is that the Heresiarch Shimut the Fleasheater was involved, his name even being in the language of ancient Taremu-Atum, and his proclivity being one of foul necromancy. Vague rumors of his warring against and eventually cursing his entire people persist, and the reality is that today almost all of the land of Porhomok is, indeed, the Dead Desert, devoid of much life. But that doesn't mean that it is quiet. Stirring in ancient tombs, abandoned and half-buried cities still linger the dead of ancient Taremu-Atum, and they do not tolerate trespassers. What is less well known, but forbidden and fragmentary ancient books like the Chalyth Codex, the Nargoth Fragments, and the Annals of the Ashen Cycle suggest that the gigantic, mountain-sized Black Pyramid of Shimut still lurks deep in the desert. If so, none from the Three Realms+ have a reliable report of it.

Shimut as a young prince

A handful of the descendants of the ancient Taremese people still live as nomads in the desert, or in villages on the eastern slopes of the mountains, or even as savage barbarians feuding with the orclings far to the east on the borders of Gunaakt, but their culture is fallen and savage now, and they live only in small, primitive groups. A few remember the tales of their ancient ancestors, and claim that they wuz kangz, although in this case, they're entirely right. And, of course, that's just a joke; these people are nothing like American blacks trying to appropriate the culture of Egypt for themselves; they had copper-colored skin, long-faces like peoples far to the north, auburn hair and green or hazel eyes. Whatever happened to them, their genetics have wandered a bit from their ancient state and blended with a darker haired and darker eyed people, probably the ancestors of the Pallarans. But that blending must have gone both ways, as occasionally a 100% Pallaran is born with features not terribly unlike that of the the savages of Porhomok. Some, at least, must have wandered west of the mountains, but in doing so, they obviously lost all memory of who they had been, and now consider themselves nothing more than Pallarans. Even more occasionally; vanishingly rarely, in fact, an actual Porhomian exile will find his way to the Pallaran cities of the Corsair Coast and make a new life for himself, but to date, those few who have done so have declined to tell anyone much about their homeland to the east.

Of course in just the last generation or so, the genetics of Baix Pallars have been further enriched by increased trade, travel and intercourse with those from the north; Timischers, Tarushans, and even Humbrians and others. But still the evil report of whatever lies beyond the forests, swamps and distant mountains remains. But the bold occasionally attempt to map out the Dead Desert. Few return, and none with anything that significantly further expands the knowledge of what lies beyond. The savage tribes of Porhomok strongly and violently discourage anyone from exploring, plundering or even seeing the Dead Desert, and from those who manage to get past them come only vague reports of more undead than have been seen anywhere else in the Three Realms+, a truly horrifying realm given over almost completely to the dead. 

Undead

I was always a little bit disappointed that the following two images were only available to me in pretty low res. I'd I had hi res images I might even have made a nice printout and put it in a little frame. Anyway, I tried to upscale them using two different services, but both free, so it's not really super he res upscaling. Just better than the smaller versions that I did have. I suppose it's an improvement, if not exactly a home run. I can't really tell the difference between the two versions, and when shrunk on my phone, I can't tell the difference between them and the originals. But, if I need to use them, hey, I've got these upscaled versions!

The one guy's face looks a little weird, the one holding the red crystal knife or whatever it is, but I actually think that's an artifact of Wayne Reynolds art style sometimes rather than the AI upscaling. As much as I love the guy, he occasionally made really janky looking people.

3.x Hardcopy archive

I've been gradually over the last year, or maybe two, been going back and getting hardcopies of D&D 3.5 (mostly, but there's probably a 3e or two product in the list there too) products that I think that I want to have in hardcopy, but which I didn't buy when they were new for whatever reason, and I have to deal with pdfs. Some of them I don't care about, because I simply don't care about that book as much as others (Dungeonscape being the iconic example here, most of the Races of... titles. Of those, I bought Races of Eberron because I liked Eberron when it was new, and Races of Destiny because I found it dirt cheap somewhere. Never got the others in hardcopy, but I doubt that I have any interest in doing so either.) On the other hand, some are ones that I wanted for a long time and I was waiting forever for prices to come down at at least what they were when they were new. Heroes of Horror was one of these; I probably still paid too much for a somewhat beat-up copy.

What are the ones that are on my shortlist of titles to get?

1. More than anything else is Monster Manual IV. This is the only 3.x monster book that I don't have in hard copy, and it's bugged me for years. 

2. I jumped very quickly on the non-magical Complete books, and I have hardcopies of, say, Complete Warrior and Complete Adventurer that I bought when they were new. I even have Complete Psionic which is weird, and I bought it relatively new. (I've still never read it, though, lol. It's on my list.) I never got Complete Arcane, Mage or Divine because I was not very interested in D&D-style magic. I guess maybe that's why I liked psionics. It was magic, but different. 

3. I've had the DMG2 since forever, but somehow I never bought the PHB2. It's not super cheap, but you can get PODs from DriveThru.

There's a few other books that were more out there late books, like Book of Nine Swords or Magic of Incarnum, etc. that I probably wouldn't buy in hardcopy, because I don't care about that kind of stuff as much, but eh. Maybe. 

4. I'm also missing a few Eberron books that, if I could find them in hardcopy in decent shape at a reasonable price, I'd totally pick up, because I dropped out of collecting Eberron after a while, and had to get these later in pdf. City of Stormreach is the one I most want here, and probably the only one that I really regret not picking up in physical copy. It sells for... a lot of money, when you can even find a hardcopy available at all. Slightly less so, but I'd probably get them if I could find them cheap, Dragons of Eberron and Secrets of Xen'drik, so I've got more details on the continents that I'm missing. (I bought Secrets of Sarlona new, so I've always had that one.)

Paizo Iconics - (Nakayama) Hayato

The last iconic for today is the Samurai, another of the "new" classes. He's the fourth such, and the third to feature a last name; although because he's "Japanese" his last name is actually his first name, as indicated in the post title. Of course, he has to have a tragic yet epic backstory too; why can't 1st level character just be fresh-faced youths? Described as both "late thirties" and "est. 49-51 years old" simultaneously, he's also one of the few older characters. Of course, he's a ronin. Because he was a great warrior before he was a 1st level character, even, he had to have this honorable duel with the murderer of his prior lord, but because Minkai is steeped in dumb traditions, that meant he had to become a ronin. Actually, he became a ronin because his lords' widow forbade him from committing seppuku, so he had no choice but to come to the Golarion version of "Europe" where he appeared in .... well, in relatively few product art, because a samurai doesn't actually make much sense in this setting, and trying to fit him in was always a case of special pleading. 

Like many of these Wayne Reynolds iconics portraits, he's way too busy-looking. He's like a Warhammer 40k model turned to an acrylic or watercolor painting.

Even the Pathfinder wiki points out that the samurai is like a culturally slightly different variant on the Cavalier, which is already like an alignment variation on the paladin. Samurai seems like a very oddly specific and superfluous class. I can't imagine ever being interested in playing one myself.

The next four, which will be my next update whenever I get around to doing this tag again, include four more of the Pathfinder unique classes: Lirianne the Gunslinger, Reiko the Ninja, Feiya the Witch, and Imrijka the Inquisitor. A nice batch of girlbosses to look forward to. Sigh. Anyway, several of the classes would be potentially be interesting to me, nonetheless.

The Pathfinder wiki divides the classes up into various different categories. Maybe I should have done that instead of just going through them chronologically. The first batch are the so-called "core" classes, which are basically the same as the original 3e D&D classes. The second batch are the so-called "base" classes, which are different 1-20 level classes, not unlike the classes that appeared in 3.5 books like, say, the Complete series. Then there are the "hybrid" classes that kind of combine the territory of two core or base classes and blend them in a way. Then there are the "occult" classes which were kind of the Pathfinder take on psionics, although they weren't done very much like the 3x psionics were, unfortunately. (For that, however, there's a third party book called Ultimate Psionics that is well-regarded.) And finally, there are "alternate" classes, which it is presumed you would only use on rare occasions because they're kind of weird. The samurai above is one of those. Anyway, just to add a bit more text to this post and to keep it handy for when I want to refer to it, let me list each class by which category it calls in.

Core

• Barbarian
• Bard
• Cleric
• Druid
• Fighter
• Monk
• Paladin
• Ranger
• Rogue
• Sorcerer
• Wizard

Base

• Alchemist
• Cavalier
• Gunslinger
• Inquisitor
• Magus
• Oracle
• Shifter
• Summoner
• Vigilante
• Witch

Hybrid

• Arcanist
• Bloodrager
• Brawler
• Hunter
• Investigator
• Shaman
• Skald
• Slayer
• Swashbuckler
• Warpriest

Occult

• Kineticist
• Medium
• Mesmerist
• Occultist
• Psychic
• Spiritualist

Alternate

• Antipaladin
• Ninja
• Samurai

Of course, there's also NPC classes, but they don't have iconics, and you're not meant to use them. And there's also mythic paths, which are kind of like the equivalent to the old Epic Level Handbook, but there's no iconics of them either.

Paizo Iconics - Damiel (Morgethai)

The second character to feature a last name, and the third of the "new" Pathfinder classes, Alchemists like Damiel are kind of like an combination wizard who uses potions and stuff instead of spells and a drug dealer or mad scientist. Damiel certainly lives up to that promise; his backstory is that he got so involved in his alchemical mad scientists experiments—on himself—that he was kicked out of his home and had to become a wandering PC. (There seems to be a certain theme with the iconic character bios. Can't anyone just have had a regular, mostly happy upbringing?) Yeah, he's another James Sutter creation. Sigh. 

Damiel, like all of the new Pathfinder classes wasn't revised for 2e, or at least his artwork wasn't. In fact, he was replaced; the new 2e iconic alchemist is now a goblin named Fumbus or something. Which I'm a little bit surprised by, because he appeared in a lot of art, it seems. 

I'm not really a fan of the concept. I don't like magic-users of any kind, honestly, although a mad scientists who's "magic" actually comes from potions and the like is maybe something that I'd like better than a super traditionalist wizard or even a sorcerer. 

Paizo Iconics - Alain (Germande)

Yes, as far as I've noticed, Alain is the first iconic to be given a last name. Weird. His backstory is a study in the envy of gamma writers, who tried really hard to not make him too unlikeable, but just barely. Born into privilege and arrogance, and still possessed of it even after running away from home eventually to become a mercenary captain, or "rogue knight", he's described as little more than a charming sociopath. Which is what I believe most gammas believe alphas truly are.

Whatever. He's fine, although reading between the lines makes him seem.. eye-roll-worthy. Cavaliers are kind of like knights, and they belong to specific orders. Naturally, wokesters and other people of low social status and questionable moral outlook struggle with the very idea of the paladin, so they need a secular and less good alternative, and that's kind of what Alain and the Cavalier class represent. Maybe it's good that they made him lawful neutral, even as they described his behavior as mostly evil, just to separate him from the paladin. Of course, given that the iconic paladin is an African girlboss, it's also unfortunate that the Cavalier is a caricature of an alpha written by a gamma. 

I could play one. I wouldn't be clamoring to be the cavalier, but if someone gave me a cavalier to play, I wouldn't complain too much, I don't think. 

Paizo Iconics - Alahazra

I dislike this character more than most. The concept of the Oracle, which is what Alahazra is, is fine. I totally different and kind of mythic take, if you will, on the concept of the cleric. Where the cleric is heavily rooted in the Christian martial templar tradition, the oracle feels like ancient pagan priestess of Apollo at Delphi or something like that. Saddled with a curse that gives their class abilities a bit more flavor than most, the Oracle sounds interesting to play. I'm (slowly) going through an actual-play podcast of Carrion Crown, and one of the characters there is an oracle. It's a nice idea. In that case, the character plays not too unlike a cleric, but then again, I've only witnessed four levels of play so far, so who knows.

The Oracle is also the first uniquely Pathfinder class that wasn't just a slightly updated version of a D&D 3.5 class, and as such, it's an interesting concept there too. I actually like many of the new classes, and think that they did a good job creating them. But this backstory is a feminist grrlboss fantasy, and it's nasty. It doesn't help that Alahazra is from the militantly atheist nation of Rahadoum; possibly the worst country in the entire Golarion setting. As a teenager, she was bulled and cast out by her family, ironically for allegedly being religious (because apparently the iconic Oracle was the first oracle ever, and they thought she was a cleric) but now she wanders around northern Africa... her, Garund, highly respected, beautiful, and friends to all kinds of nobles and kings and all that crap. What a crock. That backstory is absurd.

Not on that, is she supposed to be an adventurer? Her outfit is more ridiculous than Padme's most ornate state dress. 

As normal, Wayne Reynolds did the artwork. As far as I know, there's only one, because this wave of iconics weren't revised, but he did feature her (and Seltyiel) on the cover for Ultimate Magic. And, of course, other artists have painted her. There's even one really dumb one where she's mopping the deck of a pirate ship in her ridiculous exotic princess dress and hat. 

Oh, well. Paizo is made up of idiot progressive mutants who live in Seattle. One shouldn't expect too much from them, even if they used to be able to produce pretty good products that were apolitical. Too much of it isn't, though. I think this bio was written by James Sutter who is one of the "newer" wave of younger, woker Paizonians.

Preview of Coming Attractions...

Sol Invictus

I made a brief list of gods that I would use if I wanted to create a typical D&D style fantasy heathen pantheon, like the old heathen pantheons of the ancient Greeks, Romans, Norse, etc. that are familiar to us from Bulfinch's Mythology and elsewhere. Nominally, my settings are not pagan, but y'know, sometimes you want to option. Lots of people (including past versions of me) considered pagan mythological pantheons as going hand in hand with D&D-like fantasy. Even Tolkien kinda sorta did it with the Valar. Other books I read in the 80s and 90s (Riftwar Cycle, Belgariad, Dragonlance Trilogy, Halfling Gem Trilogy, etc.) had the same assumptions as pretty core element and sometimes even a hugely important story hook associated with them. 

My pagan pantheon isn't going to be "original" per se, as it will include many names cribbed from actual pantheons of past mythological origin. Heck, what started me on the journey in the first place was the idea of using Sol Invictus as a D&D god instead of something like Pelor or Sarenrae or even Apollo, who appears in both versions of Deities & Demigods and therefore qualifies in a basic sense as a D&D sun-god. 

Here's the list, deliberately brief, that I'll be using to build this out. I'll probably have a 3.5 and a 5e version, with domains, etc. Just for the heckuvit. And I'll talk a little bit briefly about all of the characters, and generate ChatGPT images of all of them. Which is my bottleneck; I can only generate so many a day, because I have a free account and if I don't get a perfect image the first time, I have to use a few iterations to get even one of them. It limits my generation to 2-3 characters per day, mostly. 

Anyway, here's the list, and three images. I'll do each one as a separate post at some point shortly. Some of these might be slightly modified as I go through this exercise. 

Sol Invictus - sun god (as you'd expect) with a martial aspect. More like Pelor than like Apollo. Originally a Roman god.

Cernunnos, the Horned King - nature god from Gaulish/Celtic origin, with antlers. Not super friendly.

Cernunnos

Thunraz the Thunderer - the proto-Germanic asterisked form of Thor. I'm less likely to go with the "god of xxx" kind of thing; in real mythology, gods were just characters, and they didn't necessarily belong to domains and spheres of influence as much as we like to make them be. Thor, for instance, was never once called the God of Thunder, or even the Thunderer in any Norse text. He did have a hammer that thundered when he smote with it, but he was just an adventurer Norse god with a quick temper who was very strong, heroic, and featured in more stories than most. But I agree that for D&D there probably needs to be some element of that. 

Mithras - another late-appearing Roman god like Sol Invictus, famous for his mystery cult that was popular among the legions and the foederati, so he's often considered a martial god.

Chernavog, the Dark One - a Slavic god, although I've spelled it slightly differently than normal, who also happens to be the character from the "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence of Fantasia. I consider him a pretty typical dark lord style figure. 

Veles, the Sly Mage - both a trickster figure, and a god of magic of sorts; Veles is also a Slavic god originally.

Tellus, the Earth-Mother - an old Greek or Roman spelling of Terra. Pretty typical Mother Earth type of goddess.

The Gray Sisters: Wyrd, Verthand, and Skuld - The Gray Sisters is usually a literal translation of the Graeae, which were Greek (famous for their interaction with Perseus, if you've watched Clash of the Titans lately) but I've used names that are more similar to Anglo-Saxon versions of the Norse Norns. Obviously they are both old Indo-European reflections of the same idea anyway, since the Graeae and the Norns are almost identical. Goddesses of fate, divination, etc. but with a darker, edgier tone than some might have had otherwise. 

Nodens, the Silver-Handed; Lord of the Hunt - A Celtic British god, also known by his Irish name Nuada or Nuadha, although the name Nodens itself is familiar to many gamers from Lovecraft. A huntsman and fisherman, he's kind of like the iconic ranger, maybe.

Brigantia, the Mistress of Victory - a poorly attested Celtic goddess. Well, actually she's fairly well-attested in terms of figurines, but we know little about her. Not unlike Nike, the Greek Goddess of Victory, and also often conflated with the Romans with Minerva (Athena). I'd probably see her as the unlikeable girlboss of the gods that the other gods either are annoyed by, or are constantly putting in her place, although she's lacking in self-awareness enough to realize it.

Summanus

Epona - Gaulish goddess of horses. Maybe some elements of Artemis too; a weird, wandering loner of a girl who prefers the company of animals, especially horses, to anyone else.

Sirona, the Healer - another poorly known Celtic goddess (I'm using lots of them, if you didn't notice) but I'll call her the pretty stereotypical Florence Nightingale goddess that D&D pantheons seem to always have.

Tzovinar, Daughter of the Seas - an Armenian goddess. I just like the name and the title that came with her. I was thinking of using Thetis, a Greek chthonic goddess of the seas, and the bad guy from Clash of the Titans, but I like this name better. I need to mix up a few more goddesses, because I'm wont otherwise to ignore them and make the whole pantheon a big ole sausage party.

Mokosh, the Swamp Mother - I can't even remember where I got this name. But a hag goddess in a swamp sounded kind of cool.

Volturnus, the Father of the River - I thought about using Father Ren, or Father Rhine from the Germanic tribes, but I relented and went with this more "generic" Roman name. An aquatic god, obviously, and maybe someone who's frequently irritated by Mokosh and Tzovinar.

Ceres - a Roman goddess of the hearth, agriculture, marriage and domesticity in general, often equated with Demeter, and who picked up the same story of Demeter and Persephone and Hades, except the names were Ceres and Proserpina and Dis Pater in those roles to the Romans.

Dagon - a dark god of the ocean, who borrows more from the Lovecraft and D&D demon lord stuff than from mythology per se.

Orcus - another name for Pluto to the Romans, but of course, he's got a long history in D&D which I'll also be borrowing; a dark demon-god, associated with undeath. He may be more like Orcus as Tenebrous, though—an undead thing. Maybe like Nagash from Warhammer in fact.

Thanatos - another alternate name for either Hades or his realm to the Greeks, although in D&D of course, this is Orcus' layer of the Abyss. I'll call him a dark god of night and murder, maybe not too unlike Zon-Kuthon of Golarion; corrupted by the Dark Tapestry, or Far Realm, or Outer Darkness, or Void Beyond, or whatever I want to call it. Conceptually, they're all the same thing. This Lovecraftian corruption possibly places him in a similar role to Tharizdun from D&D.

Zaltys, the Serpent - a snake god. The name comes from Lithuanian, and refers to the home snakes that they used to keep for whatever reason. The Teutonic crusaders who brought Christianity with the sword to the Baltic peoples killed a lot of their snakes. Elements of Yig, Ydersius, Sertrous and more

Nwt, the Sky-mother - an Egyptian goddess of the night sky.

Ashtar of the Sacred Groves - A Semitic goddess, usually known as either Ishtar or Astarte depending on the language, but I've split the difference. Infamous for her sacred groves and temple heirodules, or "sacred prostitutes" in real life. 

The Old Men of the Sea; Manann, Thaumant, and Halios Geron - odd spellings of Greek gods and one Irish god of the Sea. I thought it'd be cool to have them be a trio rather than just one. 

Pathfinder Freeport

I'm a little over half way through the Freeport: City of Adventure book which came out for Pathfinder 1e a number of years ago. Although it has the same name as the older 3e book, it's two iterations beyond that; the old 3e book was updated to the system-less Pirates Guide to Freeport back in 2007 or so, and this Pathfinder update is the next iteration, advancement a bit in the timeline and some details, expansion, and merging with the Pathfinder Freeport Companion. I had the system-less guide on my reading list, but I decided to remove it both because I read it kind of recently—since I was tracking my reading, at least—and because I had essentially three versions of the same material on the list. It seemed overkill to read all three. This "new" one, which is at least seven years old now, I've had on PDF for a number of years but never got around to reading. I found out, after spot checking, that it was on sale from the Green Ronin store in hardcopy for about a third of it's normal ~$80 price; under $30, anyway. Even with nearly ~$11 in S&H fees, I could get it for less than half its normal cost, so I did. However, by the time it arrives, I will almost certainly have finished reading the PDF copy, so it'll just go on my shelf until... well, until next time I want to read it or refer to it, I suppose. 

As I've said, I'm quite excited to finish the Freeport Trawl. I'm almost done. Once I finish this book, which I was a little intimidated to start because it's so long but which I shouldn't have been, because I've been making good time through it, I've got the Freeport Bestiary, a Pathfinder update to the older Creatures of Freeport, which I expect to have lots of repeat text from that book, so I can probably skim it quickly, the Shadow of the Demon Lord companion, which I can also skim, because it's just the adaption of the Companion material to yet another system, and I've already gone through half a dozen variants of that already, and, of course, the Return to Freeport mega-adventure. Technically originally released as six chapters; separate adventure books, but I bought it as a compilation into a single ~225 page omnibus, so it'll be like reading one of the 5e campaigns, at least in terms of scope, scale and size. After that...

It'll be easier to go through my trawls with one less, right? I'll do a big ole summary of All of Ye Freeport Products when I'm done, but especially focused on the "adventure path" Return to Freeport. My Curse of the Corsair Coast campaign proposal, in fact, would be very loosely adapting Freeport material, although with all of the Freeport products and adventures that I've read, many of them side quests and unrelated one-shots, exactly how I loosely adapt it is TBD. I'm not actually a huge fan of the high fantasy tropes that Freeport uses, which are very D&Dish, but not very Freeportish, if that makes sense. I mean it is, but it seems to me that Freeport undercuts its own brand considerably by presenting itself as a low fantasy, picaresque pirate game mixed with Lovecraftian horror, and then actually just being yet another D&D setting with Talk Like a Pirate Day corny aesthetics tacked on kind of half-heartedly. As much as I've liked a lot of Freeport material, it really needs a pretty heavy-handed restructuring to even work as advertised. Freeport isn't really what it advertises to be, in my opinion. It's really just a D&D setting. In fact, as time has gone on, it's become more of a woke, modern D&D setting. The real gritty pirates and Lovecraft themes are more cosmetic rather than structural in most products. 

So Curse of the Corsair Coast, like I said, will no doubt take some ideas from the Freeport material, but it'll only have 20-25% of the Freeport material, and all of it will be "roughed up" to be considerably more edgy than it actually is in print.

I also got started on the next Forgotten Realms book in my Forgotten Realms trawl, just because I hadn't touched that trawl in a long time. Faiths & Pantheons was the book I started, which was one of the ones I was least interested in, in fact, but it was next, so I needed to read it. Luckily, it's got Deities & Demigods-style long-form god stat-blocks, which I can skip through, so I'm skimming nearly 50% of the content because it's stat-block content, which I don't need and wouldn't use. Next up is Silver Marches, which I believe was a relatively well-regarded product, although I'm not 100% sure that it's the kind of product that I need or not. City of the Spider Queen is next after that, a large adventure, and Races of Faerun, a probably workmanlike product that I just have to get through to move on. Then we finally start to hit products that I'm actually kind of excited to read, like Unapproachable East, Underdark, and Serpent Kingdoms, and after a few more products, finally City of Splendors: Waterdeep. I'm still a little on the fence about Forgotten Realms of any edition, but I've got pdfs of all of the 3e stuff, and it seemed a shame that I've been sitting on them for years, so I'm glad I'm trawling through it. I think that my impression of the setting will be the same when I'm done, though—there's some interesting stuff in it, sure, but overall the themes, tone and most of the details of the setting are simply not up my alley and I'm not that interested in them. 

But the exact same could easily be said for D&D as a whole, so, eh.

"Fake D&Ds"

This kind of made me laugh. Someone posted this meme in a discussion. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't mind fake D&Ds. If I were to play "B/X" I'd probably actually want to play Labyrinth Lord or Basic Fantasy. If I wanted an OSR experience, I'd probably actually look at ShadowDark, and I'm more excited about Deathbringer coming this year than any other rules systems. Pathfinder 1e carried the D&D torch for many years after WotC created 4e. But, sometimes, when you want a Dr. Pepper, you don't want to be asked if Mr. Pibb is OK.

These are not Dr. Pepper. And Tales of the Valiant or OSE is not D&D. That doesn't mean that they're bad. As a Dr. Pepper fan, I'm the first to admit that I drink fake Dr. Pepper all the time, because I can buy a freakin' 2-liter for $1. But sometimes, you just want Dr. Pepper.

D&D base classes, tier list

Using the 3e/3.5/Pathfinder 1e list, because that's a good one to start with. Actually, I believe the 5e list is the same except for the addition of the Warlock. But I'm not super familiar with the Warlock, and it's changed a bit from edition to edition. I'm also not sure that the warlock that I'm more familiar with (later 3e era—came out in Complete Arcane I believe?) is really all that similar to the 4e and 5e warlock. So I'll tier-rank the 3.5 base classes, of which there are eleven. Let me list them first in alphabetical order:

• Barbarian
• Bard
• Cleric
• Druid
• Fighter
• Monk
• Paladin
• Ranger
• Rogue
• Sorcerer
• Wizard

Sorcerer was a new class to 3e. Bard used to be something like a prestige class. Barbarian was a 1e Unearthed Arcana class, which is unusual given that Conan the Barbarian is often cited as one of the most foundational works of literature to the D&D milieu. Assassin is the only one missing from earlier D&D (Blackmoor supplement for OD&D, and 1e AD&D PHB), but it was a prestige class in the DMG. Freeport had a 1-20 level Assassin class, and Complete Scoundrel and Rokugan had complete 1-20 Ninja classes, so they kind of got in on the game. Pathfinder 1e also has a Ninja class. So, there's options for it, but not in the basic PHB.

My tier list is not based on how powerful they are, by the way, because CoDzilla is definitely a thing in d20 games. Rather, it's based on how likely I am to want to use the class, based on my own tastes. 

S-Tier:

I tend to start most characters, if I start with a core base class, as either Barbarian, Ranger or Rogue. I don't necessarily think that they're the most interesting classes on their own, but that's how I start them, giving them a normal, swashbuckling action-hero vibe.

A-Tier:

Although admittedly a little boring, Fighter is another one that I often give characters at least a few levels in. 

B-Tier:

While I'm not really a fan of spellcasters, if I were to play one, the sorcerer would fit here, as a relatively easy to use spellcaster. I'd probably also put Druid and Paladin here; although I don't necessarily play them, this is about where I would play them. 

C-Tier: These are the classes that I wouldn't necessarily avoid at all cost, but I also wouldn't be very interested in playing them. Here's where I think that I'd fit monk and wizard. I could create more tiers and get a finer gradation, but I think I'll add Cleric here too. In reality, Cleric is kind of at the bottom of this tier, maybe on the line between this one and the next.

D-Tier: My lowest tier: Bard. I've never liked bards. I think its a ridiculous class, and most people who like playing bards tend to be cringey. Can I imagine a scenario in which I'd be happy to have a bard supporting character in a party? I'm honestly not sure. I can at least imagine a scenario in which it wouldn't overly bother me, but I'd be plenty happy if the bard simply didn't exist as a class at all.

Maybe I should do a tier list of the base core 3.5 races too. Honestly, though... one of the things about 3.5, especially late in the era, was that we had so many options that the basic ones felt a little... tired, maybe. It was fun to do something else other than the basic stuff after a while. ChatGPT also always seems to want to add a half-orc and a tiefling when I just ask for a D&D party. I have to specify the races if I want a more "old school" classic feel. There are seven core races in the 3e/3.5 PHBs: human, dwarf, elf, half-elf, half-orc, halfling, gnome. 

Paizo Iconics - Seltyiel

The last iconic for the Second Darkness adventure path, and the only one who arguably shouldn't have been made, because he didn't even represent a regular character class until later, Seltyiel was always an odd fit. It's also the first one that had a really quite long and detailed backstory written; more so than the other characters before him, and of course, they made him a misunderstood edge-lord who'd been bullied as a kid but later came into magical power so he could... I dunno, get his revenge against the jocks who made fun of him and got the girls that he had a crush on all through high school, or whatever. 

At the time, Seltyiel was built as a fighter/wizard who took the Eldritch Knight prestige class, but he later was given the "martial wizard" (sometimes stupidly called a "gish" by D&D players) class of magus when that came out in Ultimate Magic, so his mechanics were revised and retconned. He really doesn't fit. I understand why they probably wanted an even number of twelve iconic characters to start with; four unique ones for each adventure path, but y'know, when you only have eleven core classes, that twelfth one simply isn't going to come across as very iconic. 

The next adventure path, Legacy of Fire, re-used iconics, which it should have done because having a limited number makes some sense. They use Kyra, Valeros, Ezren and Merisiel, probably the first time that they really actually had an iconic party, honestly. Seltyiel reappears in the next adventure path after that, Council of Thieves (along with Lem, Seelah and Seoni) which is the first Pathfinder 1e (instead of D&D 3.5) adventure path. By the time we got to the Carrion Crown adventure path, they weren't even included pregens anymore. But by that time, products like Advanced Players Guide and others had started to introduce additional 1-20 level "core" classes, so new iconics to represent them started to appear, which is where we'll be when I come back to this series. 

Seltyiel has two iconic Wayne Reynolds artworks, but curiously, it's not an update from 1e to 2e like the rest; he just has two artworks for whatever reason. One of them comes from the Ultimate Magic book, I believe, where he was retconned into being a "magus" class rather than an Eldritch Knight prestige class. In honor of the retcon, he got new art, I guess.

Original art 2008

Updated art 2010

Love the little Red Cross icon on the updated art. Lolwut?

Anyway, when I come back to this series, we'll be doing stuff like the "iconic" ninjas, samurai, oracles, alchemists, etc. Interesting characters, and I'm not sad that they made representative versions of them to, y'know, represent, but they no longer fit the definition of "iconic" in any reasonable sense.

Anyway, for the heckuvit; here's a list of the next few iconics, in groups of four:

1. Alahazra (Oracle)
2. Alain (Cavalier)
3. Damiel (Alchemist)
4. Hayato (Samurai)

<  †   >

1. Lirianne (Gunslinger)
2. Reiko (Ninja)
3. Feiya (Witch)
4. Imrijka (Inquisitor)

<  †  >

1. Balazar (Summoner)
2. Jirelle (Swashbuckler)
3. Quinn (Investigator)
4. Oloch (Warpriest)

There's more, but that'll keep me busy for a little while.

Paizo Iconics - Lini

Lini is the last of the "original" Paizo iconics, by which I mean, the last one that actually represents one of the original core, base classes. Of course, Paizo kind of did a number on the gnomes, and she's also the first gnome iconic character, so she's kinda weird. To be fair, gnomes were never really that iconic of a race in D&D. I know that they obviously existed, of course, but they just didn't seem to have a place the way the other races did, and TSR and later WotC couldn't quite decide what to do with them. Were they like nature-loving skinny dwarves? Sorta like halflings but different? Tinkerers and inventors? Tricksters and illusionists?

I have to at least give Paizo props for trying to make a fundamentally uninteresting race have some kind of unique spin on it so that it could be interesting. But I still have no use for gnomes. She looks, and acts, like a little kid. That's kinda the gnomes' thing in Golarion. Sigh.

There's a bio for her, but it reads less like a bio and more like a weird tiny little micro-short story of a single moment in time, when she met her snow leopard animal companion. Who, unfortunately, looks almost exactly like the bad guy in Kung Fu Panda instead of, y'know, like a real snow leopard. 

One thing that I'll say about Lini is at least she doesn't reek of DEI, wokeness and grrlbossiness. She's just not that great of a character, but she's not an offensively bad one, just a mediocre one that I have little interest in.

Somehow her 2e update in the art makes her look even more like a little kid and less like a weird little fairy girl. 

Sigh.

Paizo Iconics - Amiri

Amiri is the next iconic, and is included also in the Second Darkness adventure path. She's another one that I wish they hadn't made, but they seem to love her and have her all over the place. She's a grrlboss Conan, a barbarian from the Realm of the Mammoth Lords, who had to heroically overcome sexism because she was as good a warrior as any man! This pissed off the men in her tribe (and the women, for that matter) so they betrayed her and sold her out to some giants or something, but she escaped, found out that she'd been set up, "raged" (as per the barbarian class ability) and killed the people who'd sold her out. Whoops! Now she was forced into exile because it would be a death sentence to return home. Same as Sajan, as it turns out. Not the most creative, and actually really quite stupid in a mid 00s or 10s grrlboss narrative. 

To make things even worse, she's supposed to be prettier than most, arrogant of course, especially when interacting with Valeros, the punching bag of the gammas at Paizo, and she uses an oversized giant sword, which isn't actually appropriate according to the rules; they just fudge it in an attempt to make her even more appealing to low status gammas and to give he ran anime-style oversized sword kind of thing.

Although they also drew her with inappropriately skimpy armor, although not exactly sexy like 80s chain mail bikinis, just oddly feminine. And, of course, she has tattoos. And because she's a barbarian, she's gotta be like stronger than Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime, even though she's half his mass and not really all that muscular. 

In other words, she's a walking epitome of crappy DEI thinking translated into an anime character. Her whole concept just screams woke 00s nonsense. I have little use for her. Luckily, she wasn't in the radio plays, but she does seem to be a favorite in cover art, and you see quite a bit of her on modules and other products. Although she didn't appear in Curse of the Crimson Throne, she was on the cover of one of the original modules.

Paizo Iconics - Sajan

Many people, even of my generation, always thought that the addition of the Monk class seemed really weird in D&D. But I came into D&D in the early to mid-80s. The Monk was added in Dave Arneson's 1975 Blackmoor supplement. Arneson was always more of a genre bender than Gygax, who was a bit more of a Medieval military history buff, along with pretty traditional fantasy. In 1975, Enter the Dragon had been out for about two years, and Bruce Lee was kind of a faddish icon at the time. The wildly popular David Carradine Kung Fu TV show had just had or was still in its third and final season. I still saw reruns of that ten or so years later, so in a way I kind of get why there's a monk in D&D, but at the same time, it really feels like an artifact of the early to mid 70s that has aged poorly since. 

That said, Gygax included the monk, as well the assassin from Blackmoor when he released the AD&D Player's Handbook in 1977, and monks became, for better or for worse, an integral part of D&D because of that. Although I've never had much interest in playing one, I've seen them in play in campaigns that I've also been in, by other players. 

Paizo, for whatever reason, decided that Orientalist martial artist monks wouldn't necessarily be Chinese or Japanese, like you'd have expected in the 70s and 80s respectively given the faddish popularity of Hong Kong movies, Bruce Lee and Kung Fu in the 70s and the whole fascination with ninjas, samurai and Japanese pop culture through an 80s American pop culture lens that was a hallmark of the 80s. Rather, they seem to have mostly made them Vudran, which is kinda sorta their fake India... yet Vudra is off-screen from the main campaign setting, and I'm not sure that there's any product that actually details it; the closest we get is Jalmeray, the "Vudran island colony" that is geographically kinda sorta where Madagascar is, to the extent that you can align Golarion and real world geographies. 

Sajan, the iconic Bollywood martial artist (lol, people mostly make fun of Bollywood in America. It isn't like it has the same cultural cachet that Hong Kong movies did in America in the 70s) is kinda sorta like Kwai Chang Caine; an exile looking for his missing sibling who can't return home, so he's destined to wander the land interminably. Probably with a melancholic corny 70s TV show music playing in the background while he's a silhouette against he sunset crossing the desert. And maybe the flashbacks to his training in whatever an Indian equivalent to a Shaolin temple is.

I dunno. While I can at least imagine the cultural touchstones in the 70s that made an iconic monk character seem desirable in D&D, because I'm old enough to have memories of the aftershocks of the cultural touchstone; I saw Kung Fu reruns in the 80s, and Hong Kong movies were usually on TV on Saturday afternoons when I was a kid too, I still think it's kind of silly. And Indians aren't even as cool as Chinese monks. I've known way too many Indians to be impressed with them anymore. Whatever. Sajan is included as one of the pregens for the Second Darkness adventure path, and is next in the roll-out of the Paizo iconics.