#pathfinder smash

[2minutetabletop]

The Fighting Pit Battle Map

Step into our new Fighting Pit battle map and test your skills! You can grab it now from our website. Tell me GM, what's the name of the reigning champion? 💪

→ Download the full map today!

[ttrpg-smash-pass-vs]

Yeah it took me until like the 3rd time I saw one of these to realize it's Goblin backwards. What is it? Why it's a goblin, around that 3-4 ft (0.9-1.2 m) tall range. Happy, mirthful, great sense of humor, it has mage hand and can even magically make you laugh, because that's a god. Straight up divine possession. Don't try to hurt it, it'll just heal from the pain and charm you into singing its praises. and if you do kill it it'll just instantly go into the next goblin so there's no point. You see, when Maglubiyet killed most goblinoid gods, the god of Trickery and Mischief simply broke itself into pieces and ran. The goblins wiped their name from history and memory so they could never be found. Now in every goblinoid warband there is a jester, who gets to do whatever they want. If they're stopped, or the uptight hobgoblins don't allow a jester, BOOM! It's an endless wave of trickster mode goblins! So what you're fucking is a nameless mischief god who escaped death to annoy the usurping war god in the funniest way possible. Because wherever that usurpe's domain is being honored, this god who defied him MUST be given free reign or the entire army will be dismantled.

[oc-smashorpass]

The raddest lad, the coolest dude, hot stuff, it's your bro, Brad. A salamander descent ifrit with a sprinkling of dragon, his 2 brain cells is made up for by his slick shades and bravado.

OC by @twiggies-draws !

Art by @ghoulgeists / @foreveryeta !

[jean-dieu]

Smash or Pass: OC Edition!

Tagged by @arendaes & @dragonologist-phd !

And of course, here's Raphaël! Hellspawn tiefling, he/him, bisexual, Sarenite Inquisitor (or Ranger with a Cleric dedication in 2e)

Bad anger issues but trying to improve

Devouted his life to Sarenrae

Not very vocal, act of services > all

GREEN FLAGS : Invested in his relationships, caring, kind, an excellent listener, sincere, really trying his best to make it work, protective, passionate, soft and furry uwu

RED FLAGS : Terrible temper, impatient, cold and distant, judgemental, a zealot, need to heal and get better before allowing physical touch, needs CONSTANT reassurance

[charactersmashorpass-2]

"Literally the goddess of monster fucking; eternally pregnant MILF has to be someone's fetish; furries might like her"

[crossf15]

Honestly really get the impression that the people making those smug "5e is a bad game actually, and you're a stupid little baby for not dropping it and playing Fish-Blade instead 😏" posts, are all people who secretly resented that their ttrpg group weren't interested in playing whatever obscure ttrpg that only they like, in favor of systems the entire group likes, and they air it all out when there's any discourse about 5e because it's an easy way to frame it as a deep moral issue instead of just like, a differing taste thing.

[missdurianne]

what if you take the pcs in your pathfinder game and you smashed them together fusion style. isnt that fun

Oberon = Marjory x Oisin (@lesbianesques)

Despite their stony (lol) demeanor they do laugh and smile a lot

Talks to themselves constantly. Sometimes will just laugh out loud at a joke they said to themselves.

Marjory's white marking seem to be replaced by some sort of stone.

Oberon pretty much floats everywhere. Her wings can move and articulate but they’re all made of stone. She moves them with ▇▇▇▇.

Little flowers bud and bloom in the gaps of Oberon’s stone parts. It’s cute until they get crushed, but this makes her smell very floral

Perdix = Marjory x Deirbhile (@combatcrocs)

surprisingly quiet and steely

constantly taking notes in cipher

Marjory's white markings are replaced with alchemial pools.

can produce appendages from any of her alchemial pools on her body but the scale seems to be tied to location [her tail pool can really only make another tiny tail. Or I guess a little hand to wave]

smells like cinnamon

Strix = Deirbhile x Leofwine

Viktory = Vitya x Nico

Imogen = (Marjory x Luckypants (@oleandy)

sort of creepy

can’t tell what they’re looking at at any time

nobody really likes talking to them

quietly helpful (“where’s my water b-AHHHH oh. Imogen. Thank you”)

Marjory's white markings seem to be replaced by flowers and negative space.

you couldn’t design a better daughter

[lexsnotdead]

oc smash or pass game + mahiri!

tagged by @probablylilly, thanks!!

my pathfinder wotr oc, as always:

• tiefling, she/her pronouns, lesbian, 165cm or 5'5". doesn't know her actual age but tells everyone she's 25 (she's def older than 25)

each pro is also a con so idk judge for yourself:

• brings the 'unruly stray dog that you have to befriend before it will listen to your commands' vibe to the function. probably will die for you if she likes you

• will work on all of your issues and solve all of your problems to avoid working on her own. and oh boy does she have a Lot

• struggles with verbal affection, but will always make you laugh and smile :)

• confrontational, but not violent; has a short temper, but cools off quicky and rarely holds a grudge

• very competitive! but likes people who can kick her ass without being a jerk about it

• a lot of her problems would be gone if she were to think before acting, but she has negative wis. and too much energy

tagging ppl who didn't do this already, afaik: @kelean @faneposting-my-beloved @thedarkstrategist @lapinneok @honeywafflez1 @icedjuiceboxes @saronchan (i also made a tag game masterpost today for future reference. like/unlike whenever u want)

[ladyshinga]

"There's an unspoken third option when it comes to Smash or Pass which is 'I mean I dunno, let's grab dinner and see what happens, maybe we'd vibe well' and in that case yeah sure, I dunno, could be a Smash"

- Me, when we ran into a weird monster to fight in our Pathfinder game

[monstersdownthepath]

Monster Spotlight: Hyakume

CR 15

Neutral Evil Large Aberration

Bestiary 4, pg. 153 (pic from 2nd Edition's Bestiary 3, pg. 139)

These wicked beasts haunt libraries, temples, ruins, and anywhere else that vast collections of knowledge may steadily accumulate in, protecting these locales from intruders until they've thoroughly studied and committed to memory every single book, scroll, grimoire, carving, and relief. And then destroy them so no one else can have the knowledge they've gained. Yes, far from guardians of knowledge or protectors of forbidden secrets, the Hyakume are jealous hoarders of information both mundane and fantastic, poring over hundreds of even thousands of books ranging from common poetry to door-stopping spellbooks in their lifetime before hurling the books into a fire to prevent anyone else from learning what they have. They smash apart carvings, rip scrolls to shreds, and go out of their way to hide whatever they cannot destroy in a manner it is unlikely to ever be recovered from, all out of a petty need to be the only one who knows a specific fact.

They rarely ever share their secrets and, even when they do, it's always at a terrible price. Sometimes, though, they settle for an exchange of memory; they can use Share Memory at-will to gift someone with what they know, or copy memories from a victim into their own mind. The memories a Hyakume demands as payment are varied as the creatures themselves, but luckily Share Memory merely copies them, it doesn't remove them altogether! That's what Drain Memories is for, this cruel 1/day ability allowing the Hyakume to simply take everything from its victim at once if the victim fails a DC 28 Will save. Such a victim is stripped of experience and identity, becoming an amnesiac that's permanently charmed by the knowledge-hoarder, barely able to remember whatever they could do before and now subservient to the horror that stole their mind. A Hyakume's body is a vast repository for information, but they can only store so many collected minds; 4 at a time to be exact, and they can only 'make room' for a new memory hoard by begrudgingly using Transfer Memories on a willing creature 1/day... But it doesn't have to be the original victim, leaving the poor soul stuck with amnesia and the new guy bombarded with a second identity until Modify Memory or similar is cast on them to undo the damage.

Why they do this, where they come from, and how they've come to be this way are all mysteries. The complexity of their kits and the lovely art pieces accompanying their entries have left precious little room for actual lore across both editions of Pathfinder, and it was only in 2nd Edition (eight years after they first showed up in Bestiary 4!) that we got the tidbit that they're jealous collectors of information. They share much in common with the Earth-born yokai from which they draw their inspiration, so perhaps Hyakume merely manifest in areas with high concentrations of information, or are drawn to such locations in a manner similar to cockroaches being drawn to unprotected storerooms. Perhaps they're the result of lore-hungry maniacs learning a secret so horrible and so world-shaking that their body must twist and churn into a vessel capable of containing it... or perhaps they're small pieces of something else, reaching into the universe.

Maybe they're this, maybe they're that, but you know what isn't a maybe? That they're incredibly dangerous. The mythical Hyakume relies on its terrifying appearance to scare away would-be invaders of their sacred libraries, but in Pathfinder, where just being an eye-covered blob is alarming but not mortally terrifying enough to deter would-be scroll thieves, they need a little more punch. And punch they HAVE; two of them, in fact, which deal 3d6+4 damage each! Not especially dangerous on their own thanks to the low flat damage, but here's where the spice comes in: A Hyakume has Monk Abilities, allowing it to swiftly incapacitate any creature that enters its 10ft melee reach AND use various spells from the Quinggong Monk list 3/day each: Cold Ice Strike, which deals 15d6 Cold damage in a 30ft line; Discordant Blast, which deals 3d6 Sonic damage in either a 10ft burst or 30ft cone and knocks back everyone inside as if they were bull-rushed; and Sonic Thrust, which allows it to hurl up to 370 pounds of objects or creatures directly away from itself.

Here's something weird, though: Monk Abilities says that the creature is considered a 15th level Monk for its slam attack damage and its Stunning Palm feat, and the Stunning Palm feat directly states "may be used a number of times per day equal to his Monk level," but on the Hyakume's stat sheet, it can only use Stunning Palm 4/day. This may be in the interest of fairness, but it is a little weird that Monk Abilities goes out of its way to state that the Hyakume is treated as a 15th level Monk, only to not treat it as a 15th level Monk in the most important way it has on its sheet, nor does it grant the knowledge-seekers anything else useful like Flurry of Blows or additional movement speed. Without the ability to make a bunch of Stunning Palm attacks to give it time to actually work, a Hyakume surrounded by a party is swiftly done for (Discordant Burst can give them SOME breathing room, but not enough); they have no DR or any particularly potent elemental defenses aside from immunity to Cold and some meager resistance to Electricity and Fire, so they rely wholly on their 32 AC and being able to stun anyone trying to attack them to let them actually keep up with a 10~12th-level melee character's damage output. At the very least, their obvious All-Around Vision negates flanking and sneak attacks.

Of course, the best way to avoid being peeled by a Barbarian is to avoid ever being in melee with one, and a Hyakume is shockingly good at that. They have Clairvoyance/Clairaudience at will to let them keep an invisible eye on the world around them, and Divination at 5/day to peer into the future and get a glimpse of anyone who may interrupt their ravenous research. If they sense danger in a given day, they can send out upwards to six Eye Probes to scout the area in a mile around them. These Fine-sized, extremely swift (50ft) probes are all but impossible to spot flying around in the darkness, and the Hyakume can see perfectly through all of them at any time, its own darkvision and low-light vision functioning through the probes. There's no listed action associated with commanding its Eye Probes, so I'm assuming that unless it takes a particular action to do so, commanding them is a free action it can take 1/round, and they autonomously fulfill these commands ("go here," "come back," etc) if given no orders otherwise.

It is thus next to impossible to catch a Hyakume off-guard, assuring it'll be prepared to get the surprise round... and it'll be real surprising, because at least one of you might not even remember why you're there. Remember Drain Memory? Because Hyakume can use it through their Eye Probes, too. The horrors might not even HAVE to fight the party if they have no way to undo the memory loss, as the horror can hold the identity of their former ally hostage and force them to comply with its wishes, all the while the party member who's mind got stolen has a new best friend to fight along with if it comes to it. If it's feeling especially sadistic, the hoarder may strike its hostage (or someone else it's caught off guard) with Quivering Palm, potentially killing them outright at any time within the next 15 days if they don't do exactly as it says.

They're not exactly extreme threats in straight-up combat, but a Hyakume is excellent as a plot hook nonetheless with its ability to pilfer a lifetime from a victim with a single touch. Slaying the creature doesn't free the trapped memories, only magic (or the Aberration's will) does, so a party confronting a Hyakume with an especially precious mind held within it will have to find another way to get it back!

You can read more about them here.

[spyridonya]

How the Drow Became Problematic Faves - a Badly Written Meta History of D&D

Oh, hey. It feels like newcomers to D&D via BG3 fandom have discovered the Problematic Nature of Drow via Halsin vs Minthara conflict. 

Cut because of talk of racism and it being fucking long.

Let's talk about meta, first. So, the very first usage of 'drow' came from a dialetc of Scots as a term for troll, which was used to talk about all sorts of evil spirits. When Gary Gygax had to make a war game, he decided he'd make evil elves. They were based on 'black elves' in the Prose Edda and saw the word 'Drow' in a dictionary that claimed it was a term for underground elves who were skilled workers in metal. Being a white guy in the late 70s, he saw no issues in making evil elves actually black. For the next decade or so, they were canon fodder for modules and novels and always evil and repugnant. 

In the late 80s and early 90s, R. A. Salavotre and Ed Greenwood slapped on the concept of drow society being an evil dystopian society run by dominatrixes who emasculate men, in the Forgotten Realms setting. There were a few token dark elves, namely the super popular Drizzt Do'Urden, who were good but the majority were not. Like Gary, RA and Ed were white guys who did not see the problem of black elves and putting their kink into deep lore. Not all settings went by this, Dragonlance for example had drow just be ‘evil assholes elves who got kicked out of their society’ and look like just any other elves.  

(Quick note on Drizzt, he became iconic not because of his race but so much as being an outsider to two cultures while being a badass. I might not be a fan personally, but I know the appeal of the character.) 

The 90s came along and by the end of the decade, TSR was bought by Wizards of he Coast who proceeded to make the Drow even Grim Darker during 3rd edition  to go along with the times. Yet, too, didn’t stop to think about the problematic issues that were being brought up by more thoughtful fans - WotC hired another module company who wrote about  drow women being so fucking evil, they an orgasm like reaction when embryo killed each other in the womb. 

4th Edition came and went. No one talks about those times. Drow existed as evil. 

2014, 5e comes along and drow are so fucking popular, they’re included in the Player’s Handbook, rather in errata based books, as ‘humanoid’. In fact other evil races were introduced under the label of ‘humanoid’, indicating orcs and goblinkin. About a year later, Matt Mercer switched up his TTRPG to 5e because it was an easier system for his friends to understand, and they began to show their games online under Critical Role while a year after that Stranger Things came out and became a smash hit. 

Between these two, D&D explodes in popularity with an entirely new demographic group that began to outnumber the old guard. This larger and more diverse popular saw drow and other ‘evil races’ and went ‘wtf’. They didn’t exactly like the concept of ‘an always evil race’ and discovered the problematic issues that collected over the last several decades not with just drow, but with ‘monstrous’ races. 

WotC wanting money began to listen - just really slowly, and not so much in Forgotten Realms.They dropped the ‘always evil’ from the stat block but refused to change anything else to their older settings. 

(Incidentally, the company that made Grim Dark Drow really disliked 4e. They decided to make their own take of 3.5e with Hookers and Blackjack and made Pathfinder, which was supposed to be Edgier Game than D&D. However, a lot of people they hired were quick to notice the nature of the game and say, ‘nah, this shit is stupid’. As of now, Pazio is retconning drow from their lore. - That my friends, is called a character arc.)

During this 46 year span, drow have been fucking evil because their goddess made them do it as justification of their evilness - and not because they were black or born into it. In fact, Lloth, Gruumsh and Maglubiyet are the reasons why the Drow, Orc, and Goblinkin society is so evil and they’re also why they can function as a society when in truth, they all should have fallen apart. And no one has bothered to change this lore. In fact they avoid mentioning this lore rather than changing it to avoid conflict with older fans and newer fans. 

Then BG3 hits and hits harder than anyone expected. A lot of new fans come on aboard and really begin to like Drow, who are super sexy evil elves, not knowing the lore and kicking the problematic issues down the road. Larian was a bit quicker than TSR/WotC to realize ‘wow, this is fucking yikes’ and decided to make Seldarine drow. I’ve been playing since I was young teen, in the last years of 3.xe. I saw a lot of wanna-be Drizzt and Good Aligned Drow that were played variably, but there were a lot of people who loved the concept. While Seldarine aren’t a concept in TTRPG canon proper, the idea of Seldarine drow has existed for decades at tables, and Larian acknowledging that is something I love.

But they made Llothsworn Drow as the ‘lore compliant drow’ because WotC hasn’t changed drow in decades. 

The thing is, Drow being Problematic Faves isn’t because WotC is wildly racist on purpose, it’s just that during the majority of Drow being A Thing in D&D, they have been Sexy and Evil Villains and play the role of Misunderstood Outsider (though this recently has been taken over by tieflings).

In fact, I’m seeing a lot of new fans getting kicked in the teeth when characters react to a Llothsworn drow as flat out evil and not being judged by their actions, because they don’t know it’s been a thing in D&D for years with narrative excuses to justify in-universe racism. And then there are some players who make an evil Llothsworn drow and still get upset despite playing into in-universe reasons for the excuses of racism.

We’re seeing it as a reaction to datamined information with little context other than an abused white guy feels uncomfortable with an abused black woman - and it’s super hard to justify in-universe reasons for this because in the real world, a white guy is going to be listened to and believed regardless of it being true or not.

Essentially, the drow are a fucking mess due to D&D ignoring the racial implications of drow in the real world for nearly 50 years. The only way to fix it is making major lore changes, which is something they’re reluctant to do because they’re making their errata books so damn light on lore as to avoid conflict and the model sells.

Will this change with BG3? I don’t know. But I kinda hope so. 

[mantisgodiveblog]

Twenty whole posts! Wow! The big two-oh! That is A Lot of posts for a liveblog that's still on Act Two Of Six and only on Loop Two! Let's call this a milestone. Our backup document for the text of this liveblog currently logs at around 30k words, and we ain't getting any less wordy. Now, let's get back to it, shall we?

(Part 19 is here)

We are, of course, starting with this beautiful piece of flavor text. Considering how many times we double back on ourself and have multiple characters occupying the same space, we kind of wonder how that looks in-universe. Less overlapping, we assume. It's probably less pathfinding work to do it this way but the fact that this, too, is more literal than originally assumed, is... very good.

We're walking in file. Organized. It seems strategically unsound to do this instead of grouping up so we can have things like actual battle positions that are not a line vulnerable to attack in almost any direction but it is funny to imagine.

Dialogue for selecting "creepy" - same exact spy dialogue as every other Sadness in this particular set. This one reminds us of a turtle.

...skipping straight from III to Alpha V? Seems odd to us, but okay.

And - well, we've been running into these destroyed statues enough that we feel we have to ask. Did the King just go through the House and smash every single Change God statue in here? That seems like a lot of effort for apocryphal depictions. Do you have some sort of superstition thing going on or something? Are you afraid that having a Change God watching will disrupt your unchanging time stop? Surely, there are better ways to do this.

...then again, we're talking to the guy who chose to set up his unchanging, time-stopped reign in a House Of Change, so maybe he just has some religious problems going on. Doesn't seem very fond of the Change God, regardless.

Is it a crime to steal from the House if everyone inside is frozen? We say no. They're not using it. When they get unfrozen, it might count, though. For more steaming hot takes on morality, follow our BandCamp.

Intended for us, clearly. We can find no reason that we would be any less romantically viable than the intended recipient. Besides the fact that we're aro, of course. We're always open to love confessions, we just don't have enough romance in us to love you back the same. Or enough general allo-ness, actually. You know how it is.

[ttrpg-smash-pass-vs]

Astradaemon, also known as the void daemon. Daemons represent death and seek to destroy life, the Astradaemon representing violence directly on your soul. These are soulmongers, stealthily snatching them from paths to the afterlife. They take souls to thier masters, but also just eat souls outright. They're also like 15 ft (4.6 m) tall, like these things are BIG. Also, they bend light around themselves to make them always appear slightly off from where you are, like when you put a finger into water and the angle or size looks wrong. Which I just think is neat :3

[oc-smashorpass]

a tailor and thief who started its business up mostly "donations". Passionate about its work, any clothes it wears is likely made by its own hands and it WILL be pissed if said clothes are ruined in any manner. It's only set of morals seems to be squarely in the "does it benefit me at all?" zone, friends coming second and allies/clients coming third. Loves to keep secrets and look for loopholes on whatever it can. For fun

oc by @dragabond !

[jean-dieu]

*smash announcer voice* EVERYONE IS HERE

Friends, mutuals and peoples' Pathfinder OCs, mostly their Knight Commander from Wrath of The Righteous! (and a lil bit of Kingmaker too I believe).

It was fun to draw!! I hope I didn't make too much mistakes in their design.

Who belongs to who:

-Raphaël : me lol

-Ariadne : @arendaes @alterdaes

-Ekaterina : @three-of-crows

-Vio : @mountainashfae

-Mahiri : @lexsnotdead

-Cascade : @eurekq

-Sparrow : @cassynite

-Emery : @knight-commander

-Layla : @amatres

-Salvadore : @dmagedgoods

-Hilde : @rollofleaf

-Len : @undyingembers

-Knave : @iwoszareba

-Aria : @bearvanhelsing

-Eddi : @molochka-koshka

-Rimrock : @arrow90-art

-Yunessa : @yunessa

-Gillys : @offsidekineticist

[charactersmashorpass-2]

"its just a "being" made entirely out of bugs or insects. nothing human is left of it, literally just a controlled swarm that consumes everything in its path. all it knows is hatred, madness and HUNGER. you cant actually fuck it bcs its just bugs and it will literally eat you alive but a girl (non-gendered) can dream 🥴"