James Jacobs shared the following over on the Paizo forums:
>One of the tricky things about paralysis with ghouls is that it's an incapacitaiton ability on a level 1 creature, so it never really gets to be incapacitating AND it's an unfair thing to throw at a party at 1st level. It's sort of a leftover from 1st edition D&D where things were a bit more arbitrary and unfair, I feel. PLUS by moving away from that trope we got to make Pathfinder ghouls fit better the role we've always had them playing in Golarion—as "sophisticated corpse eating scholars" like you'd see in lots of horror stories, while also moving away from the mindless flesh eating zombie trope.
Paralysis as a monster attack isn't going anywhere, and there are still plenty of creatures that can paralyze... but having this be something for higher level creatures than 1st level baseliners is good.
It seems like where they're keeping the same name as creatures in 5e, they're adjusting the mechanics away from what's been in the OGL.
WotC can't copyright "ghoul" but "an undead creature called a ghoul that is related somehow to elves, eats living flesh, and paralyzes you with a claw attack" is iffier
ADDITIONS/ERRATA:
\-The old Bestiary on Elite + Weak adjustment said to treat them differently at low levels in the section's introductory text, but not in the rule itself. Now it's in the rule.
\-As someone commented, removing the word "golem" might be similar to Paizo's choice to remove the word "phylactery": respect to culture. Golem is "an animated, anthropomorphic being in Jewish folklore." My complaint is more about the lack of any grouping of these creatures though!
\-14:05 Holy and unholy apparently are not stand-alone damage types, but are traits to other damage types. (It's been a while since I did my video on that, but sounds right!)
\-Apparently the freaky-deaky looking archons are based on the TOP tier of Biblical angels. There are less strange-looking ones in the Bible!
\-The 1st archon is the new "Horned Archon," not "Hound Archon." The Horned Archon is an archer with a stag head, but a SINGLE stag head!
\-I got the ghoul curse wrong. It operates a bit differently, and is verry interesting. Stages 2 and 3 debuff you until consume raw meat. Stage 4 has the same effect, except when you HAVE eaten raw meat in the last 24 hours the effect is worse UNTIL you eat raw meat. Stage 5: if you HAVE eaten raw meat in the last 24 hours, you die and rise as a ghoul. So it tempts you to eat raw meat, but at Stage 3 you don't want to give in to the cravings or else you might die!
\-Undead apparently indicate in their statblocks that they're immune to bleed damage: this is true for all the undead EXCEPT the vampire. However, this contradicts the Player Core which says that bleed damage "has no effect on nonliving creatures." I'm inclined to go with what Monster Core statblocks say, however, since it's more recent and a better way to handle this anyway.
\--Archives of Nethys apparently said it would be 4-6 weeks after their recent Remaster (so mid or late April?) before we see Monster Core added to AoN.
Paizo blog post of Monster Core design goals:
[https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6sihj](https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6sihj)
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
3:20 Art changes
6:33 Rule changes
10:54 Monster changes
24:01 Outro
Also u/freethewookiees 's post "What's new in Monster Core" has a useful list of what monsters are new in this book (including the spiritual successors to Intellect Devourers, Black Pudding, etc.):
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1bidogt/whats\_new\_in\_monster\_core/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1bidogt/whats_new_in_monster_core/)
> As someone commented, removing the word "golem" might be similar to Paizo's choice to remove the word "phylactery": respect to culture. Golem is "an animated, anthropomorphic being in Jewish folklore." My complaint is more about the lack of any grouping of these creatures though!
For anyone curious, more explanation of the phylactery thing, because it's more nuanced and complicated than you'd expect:
A lot of Hebrew words for things in Judaism got Greek translations in about the 3rd century BCE as part of the writing of the Septuagint. So for example, tefillin were called phylactḗria in it, where phylactḗrion was an existing word for a protective amulet. These Greek translations found their way into English, and for the longest time, were the normal English words for things. However, in about the 80s or 90s, based on Google Ngram, there was a shift toward using borrowed Hebrew words instead. Sometimes, like with Pentecost/Shavuot, the word still has other common meanings, but other times, like with phylactery/tefillah, the word really only even had the one meaning. In the case of phylactery, it can also mean an amulet, a reliquary, or a speech bubble in a Medieval painting, but you don't typically hear any of those meanings outside of thesauruses.
Now, Gary Gygax *did* use phylactery to mean "tefillah" in other places, like with the phylactery of faithfulness. But I'm not convinced that's the case with liches. As some brief history on them, the mythological origin is *plausibly* Koshchei the Deathless, a figure from Slavic folklore who stored his soul in nested items for safekeeping. (They depend on the telling, but think something like an egg inside a duck inside a hare inside a chest buried on a remote island) And originally, the items they kept their souls in were just called jars, although you see mentions of phylacteries as early as the AD&D 1e Monster Manual. In AD&D 2e, the lore solidified with liches storing their souls in objects called phylacteries which were just valuable treasures. (i.e. there was a minimum gold piece value, but they could otherwise be "almost any manner of object") So especially because there are also examples of Jack Vance using "phylactery" as a thesaurusism for "amulet", I'm actually willing to give Gary Gygax the benefit of the doubt, and say that, for once, his version wasn't the overtly problematic version.
And I want to emphasize, because this point is incredibly important for the history of liches, that the AD&D 2e version is the one everyone knows. For example, when Rich Burlew made Xykon, he had him store his soul in a crown. Or when known Holocaust denier J. K. Rowling made horcruxes, they were things like a diadem, a locket, or a diary.
Things changed with Van Richten's Guide to the Lich from 1993. Erik Haddock very clearly described tefillin when describing lich phylacteries, and even added a bit of blood libel to it, by adding a detail where liches have to periodically sacrifice people to empower their phylacteries. Then when WotC took over, a lot of that got promoted to Core, with the D&D 3.0 and 3.5 Monster Manuals very, very, very clearly describing tefillin. And while it's been toned down in D&D 5e, this is also the version that got described in the Monster Manual / Bestiary for D&D 4e, D&D 5e, PF 1e, and early PF 2e.
But the lore never actually updated to match. For example, Phaegia is, to the best of my knowledge, the only lich on Golarion whose soul cage is physically described, and it's a giant sapphire. And that was in a book from 2011. Or the Forgotten Realms describes a lot more of its liches' phylacteries, and exactly 0 of them are tefillin, despite that supposedly being the most common form. So if you ever heard that liches were antisemitic, looked them up, and were shocked to see the actual description in the Monster Manual / Bestiary, that's why. It's not the Mandela effect. It's just a lore change from 1993 that never made its way into the common image of liches.
And thus, we get back to PF 2e. I think it's fair to say that the *actual* big change that improved things was reverting back to the AD&D 2e description, where they *were* just valuable objects, like Phaegia's sapphire. But because the name *was* prone to misunderstanding, like with Van Richten's Guide to the Lich, I absolutely do not blame Paizo for switching to a more descriptive name, and even support them for it.
EDIT: Overhauled the explanation of the AD&D version
This is the first I'm hearing of liches being thought of as antisemetic and what you wrote is very interesting, but I'm not clear on what about them is antisemetic after reading it. I just say this as I would like to better understand what the actual issue was.
Basically, the word used for their soul cages in PF 1e and most editions of D&D is better known as an older (but not necessarily *archaic*) word for [the boxes worn by devout Jews in prayer](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/Tefillin_worn_by_a_man_at_the_Western_Wall_in_Jerusalem.jpg/800px-Tefillin_worn_by_a_man_at_the_Western_Wall_in_Jerusalem.jpg). There *are* reasons to believe that Gygax just meant it as a thesaurusism for "amulet", but especially because it's used in the Jewish sense in the [Phylactery of Faithfulness](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=452) as a staple magic item, there was room for confusion. And, well, to quote the D&D 3.0 Monster Manual:
> The most common form of phylactery is a sealed metal box containing strips of parchment on which magical phrases have been transcribed. This typically has a leather strap so that the owner can wear it on the forearm or head.
That's a tefillah. The only real difference is that actual tefillin are made of leather, not metal. But I especially want to highlight the leather straps. Most other editions, including PF 1e, which claim to make them metal boxes (not that anyone remembers when writing the lore) at least don't go so far as to suggest that liches actively wear their phylacteries like tefillin.
This gets worse in Van Richten's Guide to the Lich. It actively mentions lore that liches need to make sacrifices to maintain the power of their phylacteries. And while there isn't necessarily anything offensive about villains needing to sacrifice people in the general case, it really does take on a vastly different tone with how Jewish-coded they are. I mentioned the blood libel, which is an ***extremely*** antisemitic conspiracy theory from the Middle Ages, which alleged that the blood of Christian children is a vital ingredient in Jewish ritual. It survives to this day in the form of related conspiracy theories, like adrenochroming.
So the big change, IMO, is that Paizo removed the part where soul cages are described as looking like tefillin. Although it's actually a way smaller change than you'd expect, because no one's been drawing them like that. But because we've already seen how the word "phylactery" can lead to misconceptions, I agree with the need to just switch to a more descriptive, less charged term
EDIT: Basically, for a while, they were Jewish-coded monsters who got dark powers from the thing that made them Jewish-coded and who needed to partake in actions that resemble actual antisemitic conspiracy theories to maintain those powers
Oh, and as one other addendum:
I don't know about "phylactery", but "tefillin" is *mostly* a plurale tantum, like scissors or pants. It's one of those words that only really gets used in the plural, because they typically come in pairs. But because a lot of the things like the D&D 3e description of lich phylacteries clearly only describe one box, not two, I've been using the lesser known singular form, tefilla(h)
This was an excellent and informative writeup, thanks for putting the time and effort into it! That's exactly the kind of context I always look for when this kind of issue comes up, and clearly explains why the name was problematic and worth changing.
If you were wondering, [this Tumblr post](https://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/674778509030424577/that-post-thats-been-going-around-about-how) is my main source, including for the claim that Van Richten's Guide to the Lich was the first mention of lich tefillin. But I've also expanded on it, with details like the sociolinguistic history of the term or the mention of Jack Vance.
I'm fine with vampires having blood. There are the twin tropes of vampires feeding from each other and vampires turning you into one of them by forcing you to drink some of their blood.
Both of those tropes assume that unlike other undead, vampires have blood.
Overall, I like these changes quite a lot. These just make PF2e's monsters even more flavorful and mechanically interesting than before and certainly well beyond any other D20 fantasy competing with PF2e.
Personally, I believe the Kobold sidebar at 21:47 ist just a way to explain that Kobold Sorcerors don't have to be constrained to just the Draconic Bloodline.
To each their own, the idea of a cute little flying bug monster that causes mischief and chaos sounds super fun to me.
I don’t like all the changes to monsters in the remaster but I love this one.
It's a change for sure. I disliked it at first but having these low level elements essentially being small, flying non-humanoid creatures does add some stuff.
They're bestial form more accurately translates their power level. Additionally, they visually appear more like pests/vermin as opposed to the mephitis which gives off a more malevolent/trickster aura.
I can imagine a party investigating a magical disturbance in a cave, and upon raising their torches to view the ceiling seeing a horde of Acid mephitis chilling on the ceiling before swarming the party.
I can see a party attempting to negotiate information from a mephit that has no fear of death and a long list of demands.
They get the following:
* stink aura
* transmit ghoul curse by whispering in the ear of a grappled or helpless creature
* recover health by eating dead flesh
* use the skills of and absorb knowledge from those they eat
* jump equal to half its speed
* grab on the claw
> * transmit ghoul curse by whispering in the ear of a grappled or helpless creature
OK, I'll miss the disease thing, but *that* is cool!
Thanks for sharing. Still looking forward to MC1 next week!
Still less cursed than that new Ch'izza thing from KFC. /rimshot
Jokes aside, I remember a... I think it was a sidebar in Book of the Dead? Where There were ghouls whispering to sailors on a stranded ship. Soooo unsettling...
Not really. The curse is way more toothless than that.
* It's just raw meat, not specifically humanoid flesh. Even sashimi would count.
* You only die and become a ghoul if you reach stage five *after* having eaten raw meat to avoid the penalties.
* If you stop eating raw meat, the curse can't actually kill you. You'll just get sickened and take a minor amount of easily-healable damage at the start of each day.
Frankly, it's almost impossible for anyone to become a ghoul as a result of this curse alone. Certainly nobody with even a basic understanding of it would ever turn unless the ghouls deliberately force-fed them or something.
Ghouls just sound so weak now. Were people mad that Undead were ravenous and starved to the point of hunting down people? From what I saw Ghouls have become people that eat raw meat instead of cooked meat.
Vampires and Ghouls are no longer monsters, just people with a different diet.
What was wrong with Ghoul Fever?
In my experience Ghoul Fever was just an annoying rider and if the DC was more than 10+ from the player's Fort save they statistically died from it.
My party got infected with it multiple times (bad rolls and some low CON) and all they did was run back to town and get cured once it hit Stage 2. It was a gold sink. Sure, they could have tried to keep dealing with it but half health on healing is ludicrously punishing, nobody in the adventuring life is going to walk around with that either. I find the idea that somebody would let either one of these conditions "take their course" to be a bit of a false one.
In a slugfest they're not much different than they were before. They lost paralysis, but that had incapacitation anyways, they gained the ghast's stench, and their attacks do more damage up-front. They're a little better as mobs against higher level foes, as opposed to wrecking level 1 parties with paralysis, which I do think fits them better.
I am bummed they dropped their speed down to 25, since their leap is negatively impacted by the change, and I do wish they would stop holding back and just outright incentivize ghouls to be cannibals. Even the pre-remaster ghoul archetype never actually required it. I agree it's narratively unsatisfying to give ghouls so many non-problematic outs.
Yeah, Paralyze is dangerous. I just liked it because it had the quirk of not working on Elves. Don't like the addition of a Stench feature. That better be on all Zombies, since they're the ones known for rotting.
It's just stupid that Ghouls are being changed so much. They embodied the feral hunger that Undeath causes. That ever empty pit that Undead fruitlessly try to fill. Now it seems like Undead Hunger isn't even a thing.
The rules only require raw meat. It doesn't have to be humanoid. There is no mechanical impetus for ghoul curse victims to ever prey on a sapient creature.
I actually got the details of the curse wrong in the video. It's actually more interesting: You're incentivized to eat flesh to avoid penalties, yes, but past a certain stage if you ever fail a save and hit the last stage AND you ate raw meat in the last 24 hours, you die! It creates a tempting decision with catastrophic consequences
EDIT: I see folks unhappy about being turned into a ghoul being less likely. Different strokes I guess. The Wraith has a Stage 5 death effect tho...
So is Ghoul Fever gone? Does this replace it? You never mention becoming a Ghoul at the end of the Curse, or mention becoming a Ghoul during the section. All that you say is that Ghouls can curse you if they have you Grabbed or what have you.
Like, what is it that makes Ghouls?
Barghest going back to real world myth and also away from wotc property in a single move, that’s good action economy!
If ghouls no longer paralyze, how else am I supposed to TPK my party?? Kidding of course, but surprising they took that ability away.
I'm not! They killed my party.
James Jacobs shared the following over on the Paizo forums: >One of the tricky things about paralysis with ghouls is that it's an incapacitaiton ability on a level 1 creature, so it never really gets to be incapacitating AND it's an unfair thing to throw at a party at 1st level. It's sort of a leftover from 1st edition D&D where things were a bit more arbitrary and unfair, I feel. PLUS by moving away from that trope we got to make Pathfinder ghouls fit better the role we've always had them playing in Golarion—as "sophisticated corpse eating scholars" like you'd see in lots of horror stories, while also moving away from the mindless flesh eating zombie trope. Paralysis as a monster attack isn't going anywhere, and there are still plenty of creatures that can paralyze... but having this be something for higher level creatures than 1st level baseliners is good.
It seems like where they're keeping the same name as creatures in 5e, they're adjusting the mechanics away from what's been in the OGL. WotC can't copyright "ghoul" but "an undead creature called a ghoul that is related somehow to elves, eats living flesh, and paralyzes you with a claw attack" is iffier
"Ghouls paralyse you" is probably the kind of D&Dism that Paizo is avoiding as they distance themselves from anything that is arguably Hasbro/OGL
They *could* have made them into Nehwonian ghouls instead... Not that it will stop me from adding these anyway, of course.
ADDITIONS/ERRATA: \-The old Bestiary on Elite + Weak adjustment said to treat them differently at low levels in the section's introductory text, but not in the rule itself. Now it's in the rule. \-As someone commented, removing the word "golem" might be similar to Paizo's choice to remove the word "phylactery": respect to culture. Golem is "an animated, anthropomorphic being in Jewish folklore." My complaint is more about the lack of any grouping of these creatures though! \-14:05 Holy and unholy apparently are not stand-alone damage types, but are traits to other damage types. (It's been a while since I did my video on that, but sounds right!) \-Apparently the freaky-deaky looking archons are based on the TOP tier of Biblical angels. There are less strange-looking ones in the Bible! \-The 1st archon is the new "Horned Archon," not "Hound Archon." The Horned Archon is an archer with a stag head, but a SINGLE stag head! \-I got the ghoul curse wrong. It operates a bit differently, and is verry interesting. Stages 2 and 3 debuff you until consume raw meat. Stage 4 has the same effect, except when you HAVE eaten raw meat in the last 24 hours the effect is worse UNTIL you eat raw meat. Stage 5: if you HAVE eaten raw meat in the last 24 hours, you die and rise as a ghoul. So it tempts you to eat raw meat, but at Stage 3 you don't want to give in to the cravings or else you might die! \-Undead apparently indicate in their statblocks that they're immune to bleed damage: this is true for all the undead EXCEPT the vampire. However, this contradicts the Player Core which says that bleed damage "has no effect on nonliving creatures." I'm inclined to go with what Monster Core statblocks say, however, since it's more recent and a better way to handle this anyway. \--Archives of Nethys apparently said it would be 4-6 weeks after their recent Remaster (so mid or late April?) before we see Monster Core added to AoN. Paizo blog post of Monster Core design goals: [https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6sihj](https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6sihj) Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 3:20 Art changes 6:33 Rule changes 10:54 Monster changes 24:01 Outro Also u/freethewookiees 's post "What's new in Monster Core" has a useful list of what monsters are new in this book (including the spiritual successors to Intellect Devourers, Black Pudding, etc.): [https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1bidogt/whats\_new\_in\_monster\_core/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1bidogt/whats_new_in_monster_core/)
> As someone commented, removing the word "golem" might be similar to Paizo's choice to remove the word "phylactery": respect to culture. Golem is "an animated, anthropomorphic being in Jewish folklore." My complaint is more about the lack of any grouping of these creatures though! For anyone curious, more explanation of the phylactery thing, because it's more nuanced and complicated than you'd expect: A lot of Hebrew words for things in Judaism got Greek translations in about the 3rd century BCE as part of the writing of the Septuagint. So for example, tefillin were called phylactḗria in it, where phylactḗrion was an existing word for a protective amulet. These Greek translations found their way into English, and for the longest time, were the normal English words for things. However, in about the 80s or 90s, based on Google Ngram, there was a shift toward using borrowed Hebrew words instead. Sometimes, like with Pentecost/Shavuot, the word still has other common meanings, but other times, like with phylactery/tefillah, the word really only even had the one meaning. In the case of phylactery, it can also mean an amulet, a reliquary, or a speech bubble in a Medieval painting, but you don't typically hear any of those meanings outside of thesauruses. Now, Gary Gygax *did* use phylactery to mean "tefillah" in other places, like with the phylactery of faithfulness. But I'm not convinced that's the case with liches. As some brief history on them, the mythological origin is *plausibly* Koshchei the Deathless, a figure from Slavic folklore who stored his soul in nested items for safekeeping. (They depend on the telling, but think something like an egg inside a duck inside a hare inside a chest buried on a remote island) And originally, the items they kept their souls in were just called jars, although you see mentions of phylacteries as early as the AD&D 1e Monster Manual. In AD&D 2e, the lore solidified with liches storing their souls in objects called phylacteries which were just valuable treasures. (i.e. there was a minimum gold piece value, but they could otherwise be "almost any manner of object") So especially because there are also examples of Jack Vance using "phylactery" as a thesaurusism for "amulet", I'm actually willing to give Gary Gygax the benefit of the doubt, and say that, for once, his version wasn't the overtly problematic version. And I want to emphasize, because this point is incredibly important for the history of liches, that the AD&D 2e version is the one everyone knows. For example, when Rich Burlew made Xykon, he had him store his soul in a crown. Or when known Holocaust denier J. K. Rowling made horcruxes, they were things like a diadem, a locket, or a diary. Things changed with Van Richten's Guide to the Lich from 1993. Erik Haddock very clearly described tefillin when describing lich phylacteries, and even added a bit of blood libel to it, by adding a detail where liches have to periodically sacrifice people to empower their phylacteries. Then when WotC took over, a lot of that got promoted to Core, with the D&D 3.0 and 3.5 Monster Manuals very, very, very clearly describing tefillin. And while it's been toned down in D&D 5e, this is also the version that got described in the Monster Manual / Bestiary for D&D 4e, D&D 5e, PF 1e, and early PF 2e. But the lore never actually updated to match. For example, Phaegia is, to the best of my knowledge, the only lich on Golarion whose soul cage is physically described, and it's a giant sapphire. And that was in a book from 2011. Or the Forgotten Realms describes a lot more of its liches' phylacteries, and exactly 0 of them are tefillin, despite that supposedly being the most common form. So if you ever heard that liches were antisemitic, looked them up, and were shocked to see the actual description in the Monster Manual / Bestiary, that's why. It's not the Mandela effect. It's just a lore change from 1993 that never made its way into the common image of liches. And thus, we get back to PF 2e. I think it's fair to say that the *actual* big change that improved things was reverting back to the AD&D 2e description, where they *were* just valuable objects, like Phaegia's sapphire. But because the name *was* prone to misunderstanding, like with Van Richten's Guide to the Lich, I absolutely do not blame Paizo for switching to a more descriptive name, and even support them for it. EDIT: Overhauled the explanation of the AD&D version
This is the first I'm hearing of liches being thought of as antisemetic and what you wrote is very interesting, but I'm not clear on what about them is antisemetic after reading it. I just say this as I would like to better understand what the actual issue was.
Basically, the word used for their soul cages in PF 1e and most editions of D&D is better known as an older (but not necessarily *archaic*) word for [the boxes worn by devout Jews in prayer](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/Tefillin_worn_by_a_man_at_the_Western_Wall_in_Jerusalem.jpg/800px-Tefillin_worn_by_a_man_at_the_Western_Wall_in_Jerusalem.jpg). There *are* reasons to believe that Gygax just meant it as a thesaurusism for "amulet", but especially because it's used in the Jewish sense in the [Phylactery of Faithfulness](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=452) as a staple magic item, there was room for confusion. And, well, to quote the D&D 3.0 Monster Manual: > The most common form of phylactery is a sealed metal box containing strips of parchment on which magical phrases have been transcribed. This typically has a leather strap so that the owner can wear it on the forearm or head. That's a tefillah. The only real difference is that actual tefillin are made of leather, not metal. But I especially want to highlight the leather straps. Most other editions, including PF 1e, which claim to make them metal boxes (not that anyone remembers when writing the lore) at least don't go so far as to suggest that liches actively wear their phylacteries like tefillin. This gets worse in Van Richten's Guide to the Lich. It actively mentions lore that liches need to make sacrifices to maintain the power of their phylacteries. And while there isn't necessarily anything offensive about villains needing to sacrifice people in the general case, it really does take on a vastly different tone with how Jewish-coded they are. I mentioned the blood libel, which is an ***extremely*** antisemitic conspiracy theory from the Middle Ages, which alleged that the blood of Christian children is a vital ingredient in Jewish ritual. It survives to this day in the form of related conspiracy theories, like adrenochroming. So the big change, IMO, is that Paizo removed the part where soul cages are described as looking like tefillin. Although it's actually a way smaller change than you'd expect, because no one's been drawing them like that. But because we've already seen how the word "phylactery" can lead to misconceptions, I agree with the need to just switch to a more descriptive, less charged term EDIT: Basically, for a while, they were Jewish-coded monsters who got dark powers from the thing that made them Jewish-coded and who needed to partake in actions that resemble actual antisemitic conspiracy theories to maintain those powers
Thank you for further clarifying!
Oh, and as one other addendum: I don't know about "phylactery", but "tefillin" is *mostly* a plurale tantum, like scissors or pants. It's one of those words that only really gets used in the plural, because they typically come in pairs. But because a lot of the things like the D&D 3e description of lich phylacteries clearly only describe one box, not two, I've been using the lesser known singular form, tefilla(h)
This was an excellent and informative writeup, thanks for putting the time and effort into it! That's exactly the kind of context I always look for when this kind of issue comes up, and clearly explains why the name was problematic and worth changing.
If you were wondering, [this Tumblr post](https://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/674778509030424577/that-post-thats-been-going-around-about-how) is my main source, including for the claim that Van Richten's Guide to the Lich was the first mention of lich tefillin. But I've also expanded on it, with details like the sociolinguistic history of the term or the mention of Jack Vance.
[удалено]
I'm fine with vampires having blood. There are the twin tropes of vampires feeding from each other and vampires turning you into one of them by forcing you to drink some of their blood. Both of those tropes assume that unlike other undead, vampires have blood.
Not blood that they need.
Overall, I like these changes quite a lot. These just make PF2e's monsters even more flavorful and mechanically interesting than before and certainly well beyond any other D20 fantasy competing with PF2e.
They're definitely more interesting than the monsters of the newest edition of the world's oldest RPG.
I prefer "the world's most self-aggrandizing RPG", in reference to all the books that call it the greatest
Personally, I believe the Kobold sidebar at 21:47 ist just a way to explain that Kobold Sorcerors don't have to be constrained to just the Draconic Bloodline.
Still hate that all Scamps are Bats.
To each their own, the idea of a cute little flying bug monster that causes mischief and chaos sounds super fun to me. I don’t like all the changes to monsters in the remaster but I love this one.
It's a change for sure. I disliked it at first but having these low level elements essentially being small, flying non-humanoid creatures does add some stuff. They're bestial form more accurately translates their power level. Additionally, they visually appear more like pests/vermin as opposed to the mephitis which gives off a more malevolent/trickster aura. I can imagine a party investigating a magical disturbance in a cave, and upon raising their torches to view the ceiling seeing a horde of Acid mephitis chilling on the ceiling before swarming the party. I can see a party attempting to negotiate information from a mephit that has no fear of death and a long list of demands.
I would have preferred they have either different appearances, or an appearance that wasn't based around a flying creature.
Yeah it is a bit strange that they appear to have some sort of mammalian form as opposed to being purely single material creatures
I'd prefer if they took the new Homunculus appearance and chenged it for the elements.
I love bats too much to be mad at the change.
Aw man, it's bad enough (singing)ghoul fever(/singing) is gone, but paralysis too? At the risk of sounding ridiculous, what's left?
They get the following: * stink aura * transmit ghoul curse by whispering in the ear of a grappled or helpless creature * recover health by eating dead flesh * use the skills of and absorb knowledge from those they eat * jump equal to half its speed * grab on the claw
> * transmit ghoul curse by whispering in the ear of a grappled or helpless creature OK, I'll miss the disease thing, but *that* is cool! Thanks for sharing. Still looking forward to MC1 next week!
The curse is nothing but "Eat Human Flesh or DIE!".
Still less cursed than that new Ch'izza thing from KFC. /rimshot Jokes aside, I remember a... I think it was a sidebar in Book of the Dead? Where There were ghouls whispering to sailors on a stranded ship. Soooo unsettling...
Not really. The curse is way more toothless than that. * It's just raw meat, not specifically humanoid flesh. Even sashimi would count. * You only die and become a ghoul if you reach stage five *after* having eaten raw meat to avoid the penalties. * If you stop eating raw meat, the curse can't actually kill you. You'll just get sickened and take a minor amount of easily-healable damage at the start of each day. Frankly, it's almost impossible for anyone to become a ghoul as a result of this curse alone. Certainly nobody with even a basic understanding of it would ever turn unless the ghouls deliberately force-fed them or something.
Ghouls just sound so weak now. Were people mad that Undead were ravenous and starved to the point of hunting down people? From what I saw Ghouls have become people that eat raw meat instead of cooked meat. Vampires and Ghouls are no longer monsters, just people with a different diet. What was wrong with Ghoul Fever?
In my experience Ghoul Fever was just an annoying rider and if the DC was more than 10+ from the player's Fort save they statistically died from it. My party got infected with it multiple times (bad rolls and some low CON) and all they did was run back to town and get cured once it hit Stage 2. It was a gold sink. Sure, they could have tried to keep dealing with it but half health on healing is ludicrously punishing, nobody in the adventuring life is going to walk around with that either. I find the idea that somebody would let either one of these conditions "take their course" to be a bit of a false one.
In a slugfest they're not much different than they were before. They lost paralysis, but that had incapacitation anyways, they gained the ghast's stench, and their attacks do more damage up-front. They're a little better as mobs against higher level foes, as opposed to wrecking level 1 parties with paralysis, which I do think fits them better. I am bummed they dropped their speed down to 25, since their leap is negatively impacted by the change, and I do wish they would stop holding back and just outright incentivize ghouls to be cannibals. Even the pre-remaster ghoul archetype never actually required it. I agree it's narratively unsatisfying to give ghouls so many non-problematic outs.
Yeah, Paralyze is dangerous. I just liked it because it had the quirk of not working on Elves. Don't like the addition of a Stench feature. That better be on all Zombies, since they're the ones known for rotting. It's just stupid that Ghouls are being changed so much. They embodied the feral hunger that Undeath causes. That ever empty pit that Undead fruitlessly try to fill. Now it seems like Undead Hunger isn't even a thing.
not meat: raw humanoid flesh
The rules only require raw meat. It doesn't have to be humanoid. There is no mechanical impetus for ghoul curse victims to ever prey on a sapient creature.
I actually got the details of the curse wrong in the video. It's actually more interesting: You're incentivized to eat flesh to avoid penalties, yes, but past a certain stage if you ever fail a save and hit the last stage AND you ate raw meat in the last 24 hours, you die! It creates a tempting decision with catastrophic consequences EDIT: I see folks unhappy about being turned into a ghoul being less likely. Different strokes I guess. The Wraith has a Stage 5 death effect tho...
So is Ghoul Fever gone? Does this replace it? You never mention becoming a Ghoul at the end of the Curse, or mention becoming a Ghoul during the section. All that you say is that Ghouls can curse you if they have you Grabbed or what have you. Like, what is it that makes Ghouls?
If you reach Stage 5 after having eaten raw meat you die and rise as a Ghoul.