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Old 12-27-2020, 10:18 PM   #1
WhiteLily
 
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Default Hidden Lore (Extra Planar Creatures)?

The Banish spell is particularly powerful for dealing with nasty beasts brought in from other realms. But how can the caster be certain that the target is indeed a extra planar creature.

The Pathfinder Golarion world has many different extra planar alignment paragon races such as: angels, devil, demons, daemons, etc.

Should each alignment extra-planar race of sentinels requires it's own Hidden Lore skill, or should a single skill cover knowledge of all extra planar creatures?
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Old 12-28-2020, 05:58 AM   #2
InexplicableVic
 
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Default Re: Hidden Lore (Extra Planar Creatures)?

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Originally Posted by WhiteLily View Post
The Banish spell is particularly powerful for dealing with nasty beasts brought in from other realms. But how can the caster be certain that the target is indeed a extra planar creature.

The Pathfinder Golarion world has many different extra planar alignment paragon races such as: angels, devil, demons, daemons, etc.

Should each alignment extra-planar race of sentinels requires it's own Hidden Lore skill, or should a single skill cover knowledge of all extra planar creatures?
I would include Devils, Demons, and Daemons as "Demons" for Hidden Lore purposes. Angels are canonically "Divine Servitors" (see DFRPG Monsters 2), and that would be its own Hidden Lore speciality. You might have some things be "Elder Things," if they are not necessarily "evil" but decidedly super weird and uncaring toward the fate of humans and other folk (treating them like insects, I suppose). I'm not familiar with Pathfinder or Golarion, but perhaps things like Proteans might fall within that category. Daemons--depending upon how weird they are--might also fall within Elder Things.
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Old 12-28-2020, 09:43 AM   #3
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Default Re: Hidden Lore (Extra Planar Creatures)?

I feel like HL (Spirits) would be redundant with HL (Undead) since P. 59 of Spells says that, "and those that interact with dead or undead bodies work on all formerly living beings."

So Spirits seems to be a subset of Undead, and the HL's would have too much overlap to be considered it's own skills.

Now that I'm looking at it, Pathfinder condenses a lot of stuff into one skill: Knowledge (Religion): gods and goddesses, mythic history, ecclesiastic tradition, holy symbols, undead.

So, in the DFRPG RAW, should there be a HL (Religion) that covers both undead, demons, angels, daemons, and religious history?

Or should it be broken into: Undead (which would include spirits), Demons, Elder Things, and Divine Servitors?
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Old 12-28-2020, 11:27 AM   #4
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Default Re: Hidden Lore (Extra Planar Creatures)?

Quote:
Originally Posted by WhiteLily View Post
I feel like HL (Spirits) would be redundant with HL (Undead) since P. 59 of Spells says that, "and those that interact with dead or undead bodies work on all formerly living beings."

So Spirits seems to be a subset of Undead, and the HL's would have too much overlap to be considered it's own skills.

Now that I'm looking at it, Pathfinder condenses a lot of stuff into one skill: Knowledge (Religion): gods and goddesses, mythic history, ecclesiastic tradition, holy symbols, undead.

So, in the DFRPG RAW, should there be a HL (Religion) that covers both undead, demons, angels, daemons, and religious history?

Or should it be broken into: Undead (which would include spirits), Demons, Elder Things, and Divine Servitors?
Right now, it is #2. See Exploits, p. 78. Hidden Lore applies to:
  • Demons
  • Divine Servitors
  • Elder Things
  • Elementals
  • Faeries
  • Lost Civilizations
  • Magic Items
  • Magical Writings
  • Nature Spirits
  • Spirits
  • Undead

In your campaign, you certainly could include Spirits as a subset of Undead, although DFRPG and GURPS canonically treat them separately. There are a number of things that can certainly be condensed. For example, in Peter Dell'Orto's Felltower campaign, he's condensed various spells (all Explosive missile spells are consolidated into the missile spell itself; no need for a separate spell; all of the "Instant" healing versions of spells, like Restoration, Neutralize Poison, etc., are just a more costly version of the same spell, and so on).

But RAW is as above.
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Old 12-28-2020, 02:16 PM   #5
WhiteLily
 
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Default Re: Hidden Lore (Extra Planar Creatures)?

I think for Pathfinder I would combine a few and have:
- Occultism be all inclusive of Demons, Elementals, Elder Things, and Divine Servitors
- HL (Faeries and Nature Spirits)
- HL (Undead and Spirits)
- HL (Lost Civilizations)
- HL (Magical Items and Writings)

5 seems like a decent number of areas.

Last edited by WhiteLily; 12-28-2020 at 02:35 PM.
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Old 12-28-2020, 10:31 PM   #6
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Default Re: Hidden Lore (Extra Planar Creatures)?

[QUOTE=WhiteLily;2360037So Spirits seems to be a subset of Undead, and the HL's would have too much overlap to be considered it's own skills.
[/QUOTE]

Nature spirits, spirits of place, and household guardians make appearances in DF9. There's no reason a spirit has to have been previously alive.
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Old 12-29-2020, 06:32 AM   #7
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Default Re: Hidden Lore (Extra Planar Creatures)?

The main thing is that spirits are much broader category than undead spirits. Spirits are any incorporeal entity. That can be a ghost or banshee, but it also covers things that were never alive like a hearth spirit, a spirit of a place, or the nature spirits that shamans revere. You can have some overlap, where HL spirits covers the incorporeal undead like ghosts, but not the physical ones like vampires. Likewise HL undead would cover ghosts, but not a nature spirit guarding a Druid grove.

Of it’s your game and your cosmology, so you can edit the skills as you see fit, but DFRPG sees them as separate.
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