User:Oznogon/PaizoCon 2024 Exploring Tian Xia panel

JAMES CASE: Hello, hello, everybody. Welcome again to our next PaizoCon panel, this time, all about Tian Xia. I'm here with some of my wonderful coworkers and one of our freelancers on this project to talk all things Tian Xia.

So just to start things off, I'm James Case. I'm Senior Designer at Paizo on the Roles and Lore team, and I was the design lead for the Tian Xia project. With me here is my co-lead, Eleanor.

ELEANOR FERRON: Hello, I'm Eleanor Ferron, and I'm the Senior Developer on the Paizo Roles and Lore team, and I was the development lead on this project.

We also have our editing lead, Ianara.

IANARA NATIVIDAD: Hi, I'm Ianara Natividad. I was the editing lead for all of Tian Xia and Season of Ghosts before then, too. I've done a lot on it.

>> Oh, yeah. And we're also joined by one of our writers on the project, Ruvaid.

RUVAID VIRK: Hi, guys. I'm Ruvaid. I worked on both the Character Guide and the World Guide, and I'm just really happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

>> Yeah, so for those of you who don't know, the Tian Xia World Guide and the Tian Xia Character Guide are Paizo's big foray into all things Asian fantasy, folklore, and mythology. We've just come out with the Tian Xia World Guide, which was our big setting book. I think we have a picture of both of the covers here. And so that's gonna be our book, all about the setting of Tian Xia. There's this vast continent full of a bunch of different cultures, new deities, a bunch of monsters to maybe assail your players with, steal our gold, what have you, and all sorts of adventure hooks there.

Cover of Tian Xia World Guide.

Cover of Tian Xia Character Guide.

You can see we have on the cover, the left, we have these lovely dragon boats with actual dragons. And then on the right, we have the Character Guide, which will be all of our player options for building a character once you've sort of gotten inspired.

I know the World Guide was a really big project full of a lot of freelancers. It's a lot of locations. So I thought it might be fun to just go around and maybe just talk about like, what's one thing from the World Guide that kind of sticks down everyone's mind, or you remember that sort of thing. I know for me, I particularly really like the nation of Shenmen, where he did Season of Ghosts. It's full of spooky jorogumo, which are kind of spider demons. It's full of very incompetent ghosts of bureaucrats still trying to run the place, after into their afterlife, and good haunted horror fun.

I'm gonna pass things to Ianara.

IANARA NATIVIDAD: Well, I would have to say my favorite region is Minata. If my background is not in your background. Yeah, but every time someone talks to me about, "Oh, Tian Xia World Guide, I just got it," which I look at, I will always direct them to Quain and that one piece of art.

I mean, I kind of feel like this is very emblematic of what we are going for, as far as like the enthusiasm and really getting into it. And I can't remember the exact page number, but it's Quain, there's a farmer and there's like, I think it's a carabao, an oxen. Yeah, see for yourself if y'all have the guide.

>> Quain is our region of cultivators and high octane martial arts. I think the piece that Ianara is referring to is a farmer who is pulling his plow himself to train up with a ox strapped to his back. Good fun.

IANARA NATIVIDAD: Exactly.

>> Eleanor, what about you?

ELEANOR FERRON: Geez, what haven't I talked about already? I'm gonna go back to, I know a particular favorite of both you and mine, James, where we have an illustration of the creation myth where Hei Feng just got really mad at the air because it made him sneeze and just caused a fit until somebody threw him into the ocean. All right, cool down, mister.

>> The line, Hei Feng went to war with the air itself is a fantastic line. I love that deity. He's a mess.

ELEANOR FERRON: And obviously it's called season mode, hashtag mode. Hei Feng, you know, prayer for allergy sufferers.

>> Ruvaid, what about you?

RUVIAD VIRK: Well, would it be cheating to say, I really like Hongal because I wrote it.

>> You can do that, that's fair.

>> You can do that, it's fair.

>> But that aside, I'm a big fan of the Forest of Spirits and not just because there's an art of like the little pixie on the rabbit.

>> Oh yeah, I think I remember that one.

>> Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's super cute.

>> Yeah, the forest of spirits is our kind of very ancient Japanese folk tale region. It's got a lot of kind of nature. It has the Risuchō, which are these squirrels that run through the forest and tell messages, and also maybe form an intelligence network because they're the only thing that can navigate through the big forest like that.

The World Guide is out now. It is a big love letter to the region. It has so many different people writing on it and there's really something for everybody in it, whether that's court intrigue, whether that's horror, whether that's high-stakes adventure, high seas, what have you. So I really recommend checking it out.

But I thought today we'd take a look towards the future because we also have the Character Guide coming out this August.

Basically, once you've kind of found a region that really speaks to you that you think is interesting, you might want to play a character from there. And so the Character Guide coming out will have a bunch of new stuff. It will have six new ancestries, a bunch of expansions for existing ancestries to give them Tian Xia flavor. I know we had a sponsored live stream last night where somebody was playing a dokkaebi goblin, which is just one example of how of these heritages or other feats that will let you bring more of an Asian folk horror myth to your existing character. But we also have a lot of character options and we thought we would get started, talk about things you can do in combat.

That's gonna be our theme today. If you have any questions, we are keeping an eye on the Twitch chat and we'll try to get around to them at the end of the thing.

But without further ado, let's talk about martial arts. Ruvaid, what can you tell us about the martial artists in this book?

RUVAID VIRK: Yeah, so the martial arts are really, really cool. There's some really awesome character options that people are gonna be able to see here. There's a bit on the martial arts philosophy. And then there are, well, just the art that you see is one of the philosophies called Titanic Embodiment, which focuses on getting big, using really big weapons. And in the feats, there's three new monk stances, my favorite of which is Rushing Goat Stance, where you get to headbutt people and get bonuses if you ran before you hit them.

>> Love it.

>> I had to say when I read through that was, "Oh, this is brutal." Technically more brutal than punching them, but ooh.

>> I really like this kind of grandmother-type character here with just the big, heavy staff.

>> We always stand in a good murder, Grandma.

>> One of the things I like in Titanic Embodiment especially is, we talk about kaiju a lot in some of the regions like the Valash Raj, for instance. And there might be some options here.

>> There sure are. There's a higher level stance called Kaiju Stance, where you mimic seeing a kaiju and you get really, really big, and your attacks, if you do really, really good at them, can even break the ground underneath you and underneath the enemies that you hit.

>> I think we have a little bit of that theme in some of the kobolds as well. One of the things we've looked at is how kobolds gravitate towards powerful entities, and what's more powerful than a kaiju?

>> Do you scream, "Make my monster grow" before you do this?

>> Oh, there's a catchphrase associated with each of the kaiju. You have to say it before you get really nervous. Of course.

So I also really like, there's a sidebar here because martial arts is very broad and there's a lot of ways you can do it. And I really like approaching this not just from what are all the feats, but what are some ways you can put together abilities to evoke certain styles that might be are a little bit closer either to real life or to specific fantasy monsters, that kind of thing.

>> So that's a very, I mean, those are very solid about getting up in your face, but we also have things that are a little more fantastic and pull from like classical fantasy. So one of the more supernatural fighting styles we have here is a section all about Usha(?). Eleanor, what can you tell us about cultivation?

A cultivator.

>> Yeah, so we wanted to tap into that very, very classic Chinese martial art film that we, it stars things that are called cultivators or Xian Xia(?). I forget what it's called, but you've probably seen it if you watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Hero or any of the Chinese movies that came over to America like that. The idea of being so in tune with martial arts and so skilled that you can almost fly. It's like jumping off the water because you've made yourself so light or like gliding through the trees, that sort of thing. And we definitely wanted to have that kind of fantasy in our Pathfinder games.

So we have a bunch of stuff that is based on that. The cultivator is probably the most obvious one. That one's very focused on becoming perfect in body and seeking immortality.

>> Or about doing the exact opposite.

>> We're about going evil. When I was doing research for this project, I watched a lot of very cheesy kung fu movies on Twitch. And there was one where it was just like this guy who had this necklace of skulls that turned into a bunch of evil blood-sucking children and terrorized his foes. Anyway, I don't know if you can exactly do that, but you can definitely summon evil spirits if you go down that particular cultivation route.

>> One of the things I really like about the cultivator dedication, which is a rare archetype, just because cultivation is a very secret art, is that you can—moving into the terminology we have with the Remaster and some of the rules we have, which is now in the ORC environment with the Remastered Player Core and GM Core, we also have holy and unholy sanctification options.

And one of the things about the cultivator is, the cultivator can either take feats like Three Packs(?) of Dew or Immortal Attains the Summit, or they are following good cultivation, or they can take the Ghost Path epiphany or the Bitter Scholars promotion if they've given up on that and they just want to follow the sort of dark arts.

>> You know what they're saying?

>> Yeah, I know which one our players are gonna come from.

>> The whole option to go dark reminds me of that really silly scene in a Spider-Man comic where the guy turns himself into a dinosaur and Spider-Man's like, "You have the power to cure cancer. You know, why don't you cure cancer?" He's like, "I don't want to cure cancer. I want to turn everyone into dinosaurs."

>> I want to follow the ghost path.

>> Right, I don't care about being immortal and good. I want to have ghost friends.

>> I mean, people already make fun of elves and the cultivator powers like, "Ah, you subsist upon dew and vital essence. You no longer need to corrupt your body with earthly foods." Like, I know people are gonna make fun of that and immediately go to the dark side.

>> You're just a peak.(?) That's all that is, you're a peak.

>> Yeah, and it gives you the power to create undead, both some conventional undead, but also some of the new undead we have in the Tian Xia World Guide. You know, we have like, jiang-shi, gashadokuro, all that kind of fun stuff.

So this sort of, you know, one of the ways that we have in this section, other than the cultivator archetype, which is about sort of using these rituals, are also two new magus hybrid studies. One, Aloof Firmament, is kind of the one that Eleanor was referring to. You're very light, you can fly a lot, use one-handed weapons. But the other one is something a little more unusual called Unfurling Brocade. And this one is a lot of fun. Eleanor, what are we looking at here in this art?

ELEANOR FERRON: We are looking at somebody who is using threads. I don't think they need to be red, necessarily,, but I do think it's classic. This is not the trope from anime that you may know of called the Red Strings of Fate. These are more Red Strings of Murder.

I think people have seen it before in media outside of Asian media as well. The idea of strings being so sharp and thin and fine that they can just cut your head off or like slice up your arms or whatever. And this magus is doing that by infusing these threads with qi and other magic and manipulation like that. And basically covering the battlefield with these strings that can totally ruin your day.

>> Yeah, this is a very fun hybrid study for anybody who wants to do very tricky and kind of underhanded things, but in a very elegant way. You can put your qi into any sort of fabric thread, long sleeve of your robes that you're using, and then use them like a bladed scarf. This lets you do things like trip, grapple, disarm very effectively throughout the battlefield.

You can also use the aptly named Vermilion Threads ability to set up a web around you of threads that causes people to take damage. You can stand on the threads for some tactical advantage.

I really liked this section. This was done by Tan Shao Han, who really just put in a lot of very evocative ability names that are calling on all of these old stories and movies and that sort of thing. And I think it's a really nice way to just, who doesn't want to be elegant on the battlefield and cut everybody up with your sleeves and then walk away perfectly intact?

>> I'll make a note that the names are so good that anytime you use one of the feats you're contractually obligated to say the feat name out loud.

>> Agreed.

>> No, we have a cursed item for that. You don't need that.

(laughing)

>> Yeah.

>> I like to periodically remind GMs that this item exists.

>> What item is this?

>> That's true.

>> Oh, I remember this as one of the core.

>> I forget the exact name of it, but there is an item where you have to say what you are doing in a dramatic fashion or else you get a critical failure.

>> Of course, you need to narrate your own abilities. That really is a curse. And then, in addition to that, the Elut(?) firmament hybrid study allows you to, in addition to being very light, it also pulls on similar cultivation myths. You have the ability to strike with sword light, which is a thing that shows up often, which is images of your sword. So when you enter your arcane stance, or rather when you make a spell strike, you can have copies of your sword fly down to really ruin your enemy's day.

So these are both, these are two kind of very different ways, approaches to cultivation, wuxia, and all of those tropes. And so there really should be kind of something for anybody if that's what you want to do as a magus.

Next, we have another way in which you might, in a little more of a bit of a high fantasy way, to go into combat called the spirit warrior. So one of the many things that we've changed in the Remaster is the moving around of sort of some of the traditional damage types, the removing of alignment, all that sort of thing.

Eleanor, I know that one of the things that was a really big puzzle for us when we were first putting this book together, especially because this was written before the turn of the orc and then it was redeveloped, was the way in which sort of the idea of holy and unholy and spirit that kind of was presupposed in the OGL version of the game sort of didn't line up with a lot of the myths we wanted to tell.

ELEANOR FERRON: Yeah, there's a bit in the front of the Tian Xia World Guide where it says that celestials aren't always good. And that's because you have a lot of stereotypes about the drunken monk or the lecherous monk, and he will still blow up demons if you give him the chance. He is not at all affected by the fact that he's a total sack of crap.

That didn't really line up with how champions worked in our edition. And I know that you and I had some discussions on how we might solve that. And then, of course, the ORC came around and changed it all again. But this was some of our solution to changing, to make it all work with how things ought to play out in an Asian-inspired story without changing things too much in our game.

>> Yeah, one of the things that getting to put a completely new damage type spirit damage into the game was really helpful for was to have an ability to interface with ghosts or spirits or other kind of ethereal matters that wasn't immediately, didn't come with a moral judgment on it.

So the spirit warrior is a type of warrior that you see them a lot in places like the Forest of Spirits, the Chuyokai Forest, and the Valashmai Jungle, all places where there's a lot of ghosts or otherworldly entities. And they focus on essentially using their spirit both to protect and, of course, to cut apart monsters. They're very good at using melee weapons and melee weapons and unarmed attacks hand in hand.

So you have things like Overwhelming Combination that just lets you make two attacks very easily. And they also have abilities to say, set up a sheltering pulse of energy that gives everybody a little bit of a defensive bonus. So they have a lot of these ways to sort of interface with these entities leading up to things like Sword of Sealing, where you can make a melee strike to pin enemies in place with your spirit. That's a very traditional ability.

As well as some things that are certain types of oaths related to monsters that you'll see in these areas. We've talked about the kaiju and the Valashmai Jungle. So there is a Kaiju Defense Oath where you swear to protect people from Kaiju. But there's also one, there's a lot of shapeshifters in Tian Xia. It's one of the things I know we have in the beginning of the World Guide, and I think it's something almost every writer on the project kind of had to interface with at one point or another. So there's also things like the Tricksterbane Oath where you are swearing to ferret out evil shapeshifters and that sort of thing.

So this is one that's-

>> Oh, the tanuki turning into teakettles will face your wrath.

>> Oh, no.

>> Just go in ruining pots, no matter the house.

>> Well, I was going to say, but just like Link running into the thing and just-

>> Yes.

>> All the rupees that I hid in all the pots and the tall grass. But this is one that's a little less specifically inspired by kind of a historical or a narrative archetype and more just something that's a little equal parts from a lot of different myths and also one that ties into the specifics of Tian Xia and the Pathfinder setting. So that's something that's very spiritual that we've done with a lot of stuff that's using your energies and using magic.

>> And what if you don't want to do that at all? Ianara, what if you want to use technology like an inventor?

>> Innovated violence, I love it.

>> I think we have a slide here showing one of the new inventor options for this book.

IANARA NATIVIDAD: Yes, yes, yes. This is, I believe, the Guardian Dragon or Guardian Lion Roar, pardon the misspoke. Yeah, this one, it's just, you know, you put your arms together or however you want. I guess however you want to flavor it, and then you yell into it, and then it's a big boom that affects your enemies ahead of you.

And of course, being the inventor as is, you can make it more powerful with your unstable function. These are always fun, you know, thinking about technologies in these new areas because the essence of it is, wow, these are the technologies that we develop, you know, to fight certain creatures or address a certain problem in this setting, and then let's innovate it for violence. And that's what we're getting to here.

I actually have a favorite that I initially misunderstood when I was working on it before. We had, like, Elos(?), and I was just reading. He's like, "Oh, what is this?" And it turns out it's just, in a way, it could be the Kamen Rider kick, but with a duo, because it was a duo dragon kick. It's excellent. If you have a construct, you can get in a pose, prepare yourself, and simultaneously leap toward an enemy and do your strike. And for Kamen Rider fans out there, this is for you.

I, uh, I almost want to get an art of, like, Droven doing the kick, you know, with Whirp, his construct, and see if I can get that in. A bit of a distance between their legs, like, there. Well, that's just, Whirp has to go in first. That's why Whirp is going in first, so the kicks land at the same time. Yeah, exactly.

Honestly, short of, like, I guess some people would say, "You know, why reflavor?" This is actually probably one of the closer ones you can get, our options are coming with armor options, and you know how you can modify it with letting you drop bombs, letting you have the silk bracelet, lets you have the threads that lets you drop it around and cause immobilization and whatnot. It's kind of the closest thing I could think of to maybe a sentai or Kamen Rider suit, where it seems more tech-based, but also it still has that, in a way, fantasy flavor to it, where you can just kind of live out, like, "Oh, I'm just seeing people on fire now," or "I am just now making my weapon, you know, take on the ability of a certain legendary staff, extending as it will."

>> Yeah, we have, I think the one Ianara is referring to there is the wWkong extension ability, which lets you telescope your weapon out. Artifacts and items are a thing that is in this book. You know, one of them is the staff of Sun Wukong, as well as several others. I know, Ruvaid, I think you worked on a couple of these.

RUVAID VIRK: I sure did.

>> Are there any that you particularly like, or?

RUVAID VIRK: You know, from the ones that I wrote, the Xion(?) of Life's Duality is probably my favorite. You alternate between charges of light and dark, depending on how you use the weapon, how you interact with either your enemies or your allies. You get a dark charge when you deal a bunch of damage. You get light charges when you heal yourself or allies. And when you have enough charges, you can unleash them in a giant burst of energy that does either harm if you have dark charges or heals if you have light charges. And that one was really, really fun to make work in the space that I had. To me, if something modular, it can be. But yeah, no, I really like that. And I think it's a fun kind of fantasy first one there that I think people are going to really enjoy using.

Speaking of the Staff of Sun Wukong, that is one that I'm enjoying seeing a lot, both because, you know, obviously, Wukong is a character from our own mythology, but is also one that exists within Pathfinder and has done some things. And so I really like the staff here. Not only can you summon it and change its size, you can also use it to launch yourself great distances by shape-shifting it behind you. Like all divine artifacts, it is very difficult to destroy. I think you have to, I think it says you have to submerge it in a specific volcanic trench somewhere deep under the oceans, but nobody knows exactly which trench it is. So have fun with that. It's gonna have to keep trying different trenches.

>> Yeah, the destruction requirements on the artifacts are always really, really fun, fun to read.

>> Yeah, they're always very, they're kind of just, we have fun putting them together.

I think anytime anybody in this room works on an artifact, because it's just like, here is a pretty impossible quest seed. Have fun with it. We don't want you to do that, but you can. It's always fun to think about it. Under what circumstances have they been tasked with this and how do I get into that game?

So in addition to these character options, of course, this book comes with six brand-new ancestries.

These are the sarangay, which are caribou-headed people with magical gemstones.

>> The carabao.

>> Oh, yeah.

>> Caribou? Carabou? Water buffalo.

>> Okay.

A samsaran.

A wayang.

>> The samsarans, who reincarnate endlessly and have a number of abilities related to that. The wayangs, who have various shadow powers. The tanuki, who are based on the yokai and are shape-shifting pranksters. The yaksha, which have primordial vows that keep them immortal and give them power, although they are also very dangerous. And lastly, the yaoguai, which are shape-shifters.

Eleanor, is there anyone in here that you particularly like and want to maybe go into a little bit more?

ELEANOR FERRON: I'm going to be honest that I really love the heritage variants almost more than our ancestries. I really like the yaoguai, though, because it's sort of build-your-own critter, I guess.

I mean, a lot of people have said that it's basically the same as yokai from Japanese mythology. But that's such a wide range of characters and backstories and motives and everything in it. You can have your wolf-girl thing that might be playing off Princess Mononoke or whatever. Or you can have your cherry tree spirit, your plum tree spirit, the dragon that lived in the river before it got paved over. A lot of very classical.

I do really like the way that the yaoguai can change shape. And they may have a slightly more humanoid form, where they have bonuses to certain skills. But they also have their kind of true yaoguai form, where they get abilities related to whatever it was they were before they awakened.

>> You said you like the heritage variants, so why don't we go into it? We have a little bit of time.

>> Your mission, James? I don't want to monopolize things. Did anyone else in here like any of the ancestries? Yeah, we'll come back around to you then. Do you remember anything about any of the--

>> Oh yes, I love the yaksha, the yaksha, the yaksha so much. It's such a hard ancestry. I know you need to work with a GM to make it work. But essentially, their life is, I can live a long life. I'm obliged to not. Because they have an obligation. They have to seek out or act in such a way to defend why they're there on the plane in the first place. And that means often getting into constant violent interactions with typically not-so-good things.

And just the idea of what the player got into, it can in a way warp—not exactly warp, but it enhances the game in that there's always going to be mistakes. Because this person, this character, must abide by it. It's their obligation, and it's what drives them forward. And while I think the ancestry itself is very powerful, it matches what they're supposed to be. And it is, I think, in itself just a massive power fantasy.

I know at least one or two people that would love to play this. And if I'm ever in a game, I will try to get-- maybe it's a party of yakshas, quite frankly, and that would be epic. I think there's a great line, I think, here. It says, "The primal power of yaksha vows can sustain them for 1,000 years. Ironically, due to the perilous nature of their vows, a few yakshas live more than a century." Exactly that.

Yeah, it goes so hard. I love it. I love it so much. Yeah, there is an ability--

>> I think one of their capstones is called Transcend the Azimuth. I'm not going to explain what it does, but I will say that the art is of a woman with a giant eclipse mandala behind her, and it goes about that hard.

>> Yes. The yakshas also play into the new system of edicts and anathemas we have in the remaster. If you've seen Ancestry Now(?), you will see specific edicts and anathema, which are things that may be principles that guide your character and give you some sense of how to roleplay them.

Yakshas also have additional edicts based on their path. So you may have something like Deny Lady Nanbyo's Charity. She is our goddess of destruction, calamities, that sort of thing. And so the vow to Deny Lady Nanbyo's Charity says you have to do your utmost to aid or rescue those trapped or affected by natural disasters. So they give you this sort of thing to play into to base some of your roleplay off of as well.

>> We are taking some questions for some Q&A at the end. So if you have those, please feel free to pop those into the chat, and we'll try to get to them in the last bit.

Ruvaid, I think you wrote a little bit of ancestry for this book as well.

RUVAID VIRK: I did. I wrote a little bit on the vanara and the nagaji, including some new nagaji ancestry feats, considering the prevalence of nagaji in the--I believe it's the Valashmai Forest, or the Valashmai Jungle and whatnot. It was a good chance to expand on them a bit.

And one of the feats that I'm a big fan of is a feat called Throat Pocket, where you make, by manipulating your nagaji throat, you just make a little pocket of air and you can store stuff in there, much like the leshy's empty gourd head and other ancestry options that have something similar. You just put something in there, and you can take it out at a later time. Very importantly, your speech is a little bit hard to understand when you've got stuff sitting in your throat. But on the other hand, when you take it out, it will be clean.

I like their ability to put some poison into their mouth and then spit the poison at enemies. I think that's very rude, but definitely an effective way. I think anybody who takes that feat needs to go onto Google and look up the boomslang threat display. A boomslang is a very venomous snake, but it does not hood up like a cobra. Instead, it hoods up vertically, and it looks extremely silly, like its neck is completely puffed up and swollen. And that's what your character looks like when doing this. That was very much a piece of inspiration for the feat when I wrote it. It just-- you look really silly.

>> There's a question here about if there's any new healing options for people that like playing healers.

>> This section does-- this book does have an entire section on medicine in Tian Xia. We've talked about this a little bit earlier, but there is a section on how to use elemental medicine in your game. This is very much based on determining whether a character has maybe too much water in their body or like too little earth, and then creating specific medicines to sort of help them along here.

I think it has a very—it has a little bit of a different niche than the standard usage of something like battle medicine. This is more for like long-term conditions and afflictions, and it's very good at that. It has a wonderful bit of lore about Fumbus trying to diagnose Harsk with saying something it's like, "Well, sesame seeds are black and therefore associated with water, and therefore I'm going to use them to treat." And I think it's like, this is an example of a failure. This is an example of success. So if, like me, you don't actually know a lot about elemental medicine and left it to the trust of our wonderful and very knowledgeable freelancers and to kind of port into this game, it's a really good way to kind of understand how this might apply in Tian Xia.

And then, of course, it has various skill feats related to this, ways to, if you've had elemental medicine, sort of metabolize it for a little bit of an extra effect. That's good fun.

>> Somebody in chat would like to know a little bit about the hungerseed heritage. Eleanor, what's the hungerseed?

ELEANOR FERRON: Well, it was going to be a tiefling heritage, and then we got rid of tieflings, and also oni are no longer fiends. They are spirits.

So the hungerseed heritage, that is what was formerly the hungerseed tiefling variant that would have been descended from oni. But since that doesn't work with our cosmology anymore, even a little bit, they spun off into their own thing.

So you are partially descended from an oni. And it's not as weird as you think, depending on what anime you read. Maybe you read Urusei Yatsura when you were a kid or something like that. But yeah, it's going to look a lot like what you would expect. You get a horns unarmed attack. If you are a hungerseed, you have horns, even if they're little tiny nubs. It's based on the idea of having to hide those horns in Japanese myth. And you're going to be pretty good at smashing things up just due to your heritage, assuming you take those feats.

I remember there's one where I believe if you are below half your hit points, you move a heck of a lot faster.

>> It's Bloodsoaked Dash, is what it's called, yes.

>> Yes, something like that.

>> Yeah.

>> For Iannara, saying yaksha go hard, for me the one that is the, the brutal one for me is the hungerseed heritage.

>> Oh, that's true.

>> Yeah, we did some, you know, with the recasting of oni to not be fiends, it didn't make sense for them to be nephilim. So we gave them a lot of just very folklore abilities, like a third eye that can blast lightning out of it. Or, you know, the ability to just go on a rampage. It's good fun. I think that it will definitely appeal to characters who want to kind of get up in the thick of things.

>> If I'm remembering correctly, hungerseeds, they have like a relatively involved transformation as well, right? Is this the right answer I'm thinking of?

>> Yeah, they've got a capstone feat where they become more oni-ish.

>> Yeah, they have a feat called Kishin Rage. We've, I think they used to be, the demigod-level ones used to be called oni daimyo, and we've sort of, we've re-flavored, or renamed that to kishin just to kind of pick up on the existing term for, you know, what is a really powerful oni.

Yeah, they get bigger, they get a lot of buffs, and they get a precise blood sense within 60 feet. So they always, as long as you are wounded, they know exactly where you are.

>> Fi, fi, fo, fum.

>> That's scary, and I would prefer if they didn't know that.

>> Well, don't bleed.

>> Just don't get hit.

>> Just be a skeleton.

>> We have one question here about the starlit sentinel. I think we've already said a fair bit about the starlit sentinel. I will say that the starlit sentinel, which is kind of our adaptation of the magical girl, although it's themed after the Tian Xia zodiac, another section that you'll see a very nice and long creation myth. We kind of have our own take on the myth of the zodiac race here, although it takes a little bit of a different form.

>> Yeah, it's kind of our version of that myth, but in a very different way. They have two of, they can transform into a sentinel form, and they have two focus spells. They can only cast all in their sentinel form, and each one is a little bit different based on what constellation of the zodiac is kind of your constellation of the zodiac.

So for something like, say, you know, some of these zodiac creatures are dragons. So for something like, let me pull this up. I've lost myself in my document. So if you are something like the sea dragon, your shining starlight attack is a line of pressurized seawater. If it's the swordswoman, it's blades of light. Or if, talking about oni, if your constellation is the ogre, it creates a giant club made out of force that swings at your enemies. So this is a way where they're, because they're empowered by the zodiac, there are only 12 of them at a time, and each one has a little bit of a different thing.

And, you know, if you want to work with your GM to change it, it kind of gives you a chance for whatever your own setting is. It kind of gives you a little bit of a sense of where the lines are on that.

I see somebody asking why they're not always in sentinel form. And the answer is because they gotta go to school. They have things to do in a day. You gotta go hang out with their friends and go to the arcade. You have to have your day-to-day A plot that kind of thematically matches the B plot of what's going on at the same time. So when are we going to have a starlight sentinel?

Oh, I have already been asked by a couple of people. They go, it's like, we should do a game where everyone pre-artinates(?) into a starlight sentinel. But that sounds like a really, I mean, that sounds like a fun thing to do, honestly. That sounds good.

>> James, I accept.

>> Lots of workout scheduling.

>> Are there any new mundane weapons?

>> There are a couple. We've all, there aren't quite that many because we've actually published a fair number of weapons for Tian Xia. Already in places like, you know, the Ruby Phoenix and places like the Treasure Vault. We did centralize them all into the back of this book. So, you know, if you need kind of your one-stop shop for that, you won't have to go around looking around as much.

>> There are a couple new ones.

>> There are a couple new ones. You know, the tetsubo is one that I think people have noticed was in Monster Core originally because oni only have them. It is your large club. And there's a couple of these here as well.

And there's also information on how, you know, certain weapons are very mechanically unique. The Eagle Talon McCudgel(?) is a long grasping talon that has very specific traits, but you might have something like a geom is more or less a longsword in ways that you might be able to re-flavor some of the more basic weapons into what a regionally appropriate one or one that has a little bit more of a Tian flare will be.

You know, rather than adding in a bunch of, you know, here's a longsword and here's a longsword, but Tian. You know, we prefer to keep those for when the weapons really are doing very unusual things like the three-section staff or what have you.

I think, well, we've really blown through this. We're just really excited to talk about Tian shop, frankly.

>> I've seen some... - There's too many cool things.

>> That's a lot of cool things.

>> Oh, you want to... Yeah, Eleanor?

>> I see some questions about animal companions and a question about the Bakua(?) lizardfolk.

>> Why don't you take us on animal companions? That's a small, cute thing is always...

>> This person did not see when I ranted and raved about the durian crab, which turns itself into a spiky volleyball so that you can throw it at people and hit them in the head with it. But there are some other ones.

There's something called a hermit crate(?), which is like a tiny little hydra that hides inside of a seashell and pops all its heads out and will bite people or curl up into its shell.

There's something called a tsunde(?) flora, which is made out of flower petals and does little dances.

There is something called a tikar urchin pad(?). Tikar is, I believe, a type of weaving pattern. They kind of look like they're woven, but they're actually more like a cross between a lily pad and a jellyfish. Do not ask me how it walks on land. It just does. It's probably squishy and icky.

>> There are also some new familiars as well. One I really like is the kinars(?), I believe they're called, which are a pair of tiny little celestial musicians. It's a pair of, you know, one sings and dances and one plays a vina(?). And even though they are two creatures, they have a soul bond so they get to function as a single creature. And they have one ability where one of them plays their instrument and the one where the other puts on a dazzling show. And so it's very good if you want to have a little bit more of a celestial flavor or if you're playing somebody who has a lot of connection to the arts, like a bard or something.

>> Everyone's asking about kitsune. Yes, there's some more kitsune stuff. We're not going to talk about that by the book.

>> So we do have an expansion of a couple of the existing ones. You know, there's a little bit of kitsune, a little bit of nagaji. For some of the other ones that are already getting their kind of spotlight, like tengu are already getting their spotlight in Player Core too. So we wanted to use this space to more focus on the ones that hadn't had quite as much support over the years.

But there is quite a lot. There's a number of new sprite heritages. You say somebody wanted to ask about the bakula lizardfolk?

>> Yep.

>> I have to remember if they're the ones with the spirit coffin or if that was the makari(?).

> No, that's the one. That is the one with the spirit coffin, I believe.

>> I think that's the spirit coffin one.

>> Yeah. They're very common in Minata. They're based on, I want to say, a Filipino mythology. - They're based on the baku, the serpent who ate the moon. That's where they get the name, bakuwa. They do not eat the moon.

>> Are you sure?

>> I don't think we gave them a feat to eat the moon. And that is probably on us.

>> Are you forgetting about the 17th level feat moon eater?

>> Yeah, no, based on the legend of the serpent who ate the moon. So at level 17, we let them eat the moon. They can cast eclipse burst within an area. And also it causes all of the light to dim within a very, very, very large radius of them doing it.

>> This jerk's eating the moon again. This is like Dragonball Z.

>> We are almost at the end of our time. So why don't we just lightning round. Just one thing from this book that you're looking forward to either building onto your character or getting into players' hands. Let's start with you, Eleanor.

A tsukumogami poppet.

ELEANOR FERRON: Oh no, don't start with me. I am still in love with the tsukumogami poppets, especially because they get a lot of powers to scare the crap out of people, like you do. I think they get to cast a spell to cause fear. And they are specifically required to make a horrible face at people when they do that. And all the objects in the area also come to life and make a horrible face at the victim. Something like that. I do enjoy that.

>> Uh, Ianara?

IANARA NATIVIDAD: Initially, I was gonna say magical girl with Aksha(?). But I think I'm gonna change it to magical girl tanuki now. Because I think tanuki would just be so conducive to like, I have a normal life. Ha ha, and then, you know, B plot. Or whatever the A plot is. It's just, I think it'll be funny and also very fun.

>> James, now's the time to recommend that adorable tanuki show you keep showing us clips from.

A tanuki's pom poko.

JAMES CASE: Eccentric Family, yes. It's a wonderful family drama and everyone should watch it.

I was, well, now you've scooted me because I was gonna say tanuki.

I like, what's an ability we haven't talked about in tanuki? I like their ability to, they have one ability called pom poko. Which is not just the name of the movie. It is the sound specifically of patting on your belly, where they can use their stomach as a musical instrument. And it can upgrade into an ability that they can use to do a cone of sound. Either because they play very loudly or very poorly or both. It kind of doesn't matter.

There's a lot of stuff in tanuki about them not being very good at things. And how that's just kind of part of being a tanuki is losing a lot.

Ruvaid, why don't you take us home?

RUVAID VIRK: Well, I think I'm gonna highlight a feat that I didn't talk about earlier. 18th level feat called Echoing Violence. And I would love to get off that one point.

On a character, it is a feat with the death trait, and you hit somebody so hard and if they fail a save, their body just explodes.

>> Good fun.

>> I want to stay for anybody being skeptical here. That when I was watching all of those extremely bad kung fu movies. People exploded a lot more than you think they did.

>> It is a cornerstone of the genre in my opinion, right?

>> But yeah, that'll take us through the Character Guide.

So Tian Xia is really a very broad look into a lot of things. You know, you have regions that are very intrigued. You have regions that are very high-tech. You have regions that are on the desert. You have regions that are even underwater.

The World Guide is out now. So please go check it out. It is very much a passion project and a love letter from about 40 writers and creatives who all put it together. It is Asian American Pacific Islander here right now.

>> It is so much for us. So you are obligated to buy our book.

>> It's a fun time to be getting into it. And you can look forward to the character guide in August. Which will give you all of these tools. Whether you want to play of somebody who is a professional letter writer, or a lunchbox deliverer, or whether you want to play somebody who is a hungerseed who is on a bloody quest of vengeance.

>> Or somebody who was kicked out of Heaven for being bad.

>> Yes. Thank you for coming. Let's go around and see where we can find you if you wish to be perceived.

Ianara, who are you and where can people find you?

IANARA NATIVIDAD: That's me. I'm on the X site. I'm @imachinate if people decide. But really all I do is echo people who have worked on Tian Xia because I think it's amazing. It's gorgeous. It's a beautiful book. It's so inspiring. Please check it out. I love it so much. As someone has pretty much read all of it, it's excellent. It's wonderful. Check it out.

>> Eleanor, I know you don't like to be perceived. But Eleanor, who are you?

>> Oh, is that for me?

>> Yeah, I'll move over.

And last, Ruvaid?

RUVAID VIRK: Yeah, you can find me also on the X site @Darth_Ruvaider.

>> Great name.

RUVAID VIRK: Thank you. Yeah, you can find me by that name on pretty much anywhere. I'm also on Bluesky as DarthRuvaider. No underscore there. And yeah, I had a great panel, thanks. Thanks so much for having me here.

>> Thanks so much for helping me on the new project.

>> Yeah, you guys are going to love this. Love the book. A lot of really, really cool stuff. And everyone did such an amazing job on this.

>> We'll be in the Discord AMA for a little bit after this. We've already given you a lot of spoilers. So don't ask for too many more, but we'll see. Otherwise, enjoy the rest of your PaizoCon. Happy gaming. Go get a crit on somebody and make your GM sad. Bye, everyone.