Pathfinder / Tropes Q to Z

Tropes A-F | Tropes G-P | Tropes Q-Z

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Q-R

• Quieting the Unquiet Dead: Ghosts will rejuvenate if destroyed normally, even if by the most powerful spells. To permanently get rid of them, it's needed to find the reason it's persisting and to fix what was made wrong.
• Rage Against the Heavens: Primary motive of the asuras, constantly reincarnating beings born from divine mistakes. They're actually quite Affably Evil, possessing little in the way of greed and quite sagely about reality. Doesn't mean they don't fight dirty-these guys are next-door neighbors to devils.
• Raijū: Raijus are creatures native to lightning-wracked regions of the Plane of Air, but are often flung to the material world by the elemental fury of the storms they live in. They naturally resemble small, foxlike creatures crackling with electricity, but are actually born as spheres of living electricity and, when in the material plane, they usually take the forms of small, common mammals from their new home area so as not to stand out. They return to their true forms during the fits of furious activity that lightning storms engender in them, and are constantly seeking to return to their home plane. There are also kaenjus, rarer relatives of raijus that come from the Plane of Fire instead.
• Rasputinian Death: In the Reign of Winter Adventure Path, you have to fight the man himself. And kill him three times before he finally kicks off.
• Reconstruction: In 2nd Edition, firearms no longer pierce armor. Long story short, the justification as to why is that if armor can be made to protect against a dragon's horn, it can protect against a bullet.
• Read the Fine Print: Under pressure due to numerous slave rebellions in other nations, Cheliax abruptly freed all of its slaves in 4722 AR. House Thrune then offered the newly-freed slaves a contract allowing them to receive a stipend, supposedly to help get them on their feet. This is House Thrune we're talking about. In reality, the contract has an absurd amount of deliberately hard-to-understand fine print with clauses that demand payments back on the stipend with high amounts of interest, essentially turning signatories into indentured servants for life, who can be drafted into military service at any time, for any reason.
• Red Right Hand: Rakshasas in human form always have one feature that faces the wrong way, traditionally their hands.
• Reimagining the Artifact: The whole idea behind some of the Bestiaries; in particular, "Misfit Monsters Redeemed" reimagines some of the most bizarre creatures of the Gygax-era bestiaries.
• Religion of Evil: The Church of Asmodeus, the Church of Zon-Kuthon, cultists of Ghlaunder, Lamashtu, Norgorber, Rovagug, Urgathoa, various demon lords, archdevils, and the Four Horsemen. As well as the Whispering Way, which preaches that all life should be extinguished to be replaced by eternal undeath, and theOld Cults, who worship the Great Old Ones.
• The Republic: Andoran, bastion of enlightenment, democracy, and liberty.
• La Résistance: The sub-theme of the Council of Thieves Adventure Path. In a Venice-analogue, no less.
• Resistant to Magic: Characters and monsters with Spell Resistance (SR) have a chance of No Selling any spell (except for a select few) cast against them. Specifically, the caster needs to make a 1d20 + spellcaster level check against the target's SR value, otherwise the spell just bounces off — and even if it doesn't, the target is still entitled to any regular saving throws the spell allows afterwards. Enemy SR can completely shut down low-level casters, because it usually starts in the high teens and there are very few ways to improve your rolls to overcome SR beyond simply leveling up, forcing casters to focus on indirect damage, like manipulating the environment or buffing their non-magical party members.
• Resourceful Rodent: The Ratfolk are humanoid rats with a particular knack for tinkering, which grants them bonuses related to alchemy and operating magical devices. In Starfinder, they instead have a racial bonus to the Engineering and Survival skills.
• Ret-Canon: The Player Party in the 2018 Pathfinder: Kingmaker video game, adapted from the tabletop Kingmaker Adventure Path by Owlcat Games, included two characters from the tabletop game (Amiri and Jubilost Narthropple) and eleven original characters. In 2022, Paizo released an add-on for the Second Edition remake of the Kingmaker Adventure Path, the Kingmaker Companion Guide, which adapted Owlcat's implementation of all thirteen characters back into tabletop format, along with personal sidequests for seven of them. The contemporary Kingmaker Bestiary re-stats Amiri, Ekundayo and his dog, Jubilost, Linzi, Nok-Nok, Tristian, Valerie, and many NPCs for use in First Edition runs.
• Retcon:
  • Seltyiel was originally a fighter/wizard/eldritch knight. As of the release of Ultimate Magic, he's now a (presumably single-class) magus.
  • The Second Darkness Adventure Path stated(and showed) that an Elf that descended too far into Evil could spontaneously transform into a Drow. They have since backed away from that concept.
  • In the first edition of the campaign setting guidebook, the world map showed Golarion's polar ice cap bordering the entire northern expanse. Later on, the dev team realized that unless Golarion was in an ice age, the ice cap was way too far south, and changed it so that the only large bit of ice on Avistan's northern border was a single large glacier.
  • Likewise, the Five Kings Mountains (the dwarven homeland) were originally listed as belonging to the human nation of Druma until the third edition of the campaign setting book gave it a separate entry as a sovereign land.
  • Paladins of Asmodeus do not happen. Forget you ever read that. Antipaladins of Asmodeus however, are allowed with the Insinuator and Tyrant archetypes (the latter even requires you being Lawful Evil).
  • Inner Sea Gods compiles all articles written about the twenty core gods from Gods & Magic, Faiths of Purity, Faiths of Balance, Faiths of Corruption, and various adventure path modules. But Inner Sea Gods also changes many details from these articles that the developers have backpedalled on; for instance, in Gorum's article in War of the River Kings, there is mention of growing tensions between him and Pharasma, who is otherwise stated to be the one god that none of the other gods cross. In Inner Sea Gods, this is changed to growing tensions between Gorum and Urgothoa.
  • There was a period during which only nobles being allowed beards and Sarenrae being banned in Taldor was outright retconned out by Word of God, although between Inner Sea Races and Taldor, the First Empire they were brought back as things that had been the case once, but have not been true for some time (and Taldor have a habit of 'forgetting' embarrassing things like that in its histories).
  • There is no evil counterpart to the Pathfinder Society in Cheliax called the Darklight Sisterhood.
  • Queen Abrogail being a Royal Brat has been quietly retconned, since it was decided that it didn't fit with the developers' vision of Cheliax.
  • Beastiary 1 said that Satyrs were also called Fauns. Beastiary 3 established Fauns as a separate but related creature, and furthermore stated that both Satyrs and Fauns were annoyed by the confusion.
  • Second Edition's bestiary mentions that Ratfolk's own ethnonym is "Ysoki". The previous edition and Starfinder repeatedly state that's (at the time of Pathfinder) only the name of the Ratfolk on Akiton, who may not even be directly related to the ones on Golarion.
• Ret-Gone: In-Universe, the result of using the capstone ability of a Monk of the Healing Hand — the target is restored to life, but the monk themselves is so removed from existence that even the most powerful magics in the game (wish, miracle, and outright divine intervention) cannot bring the monk back, and said monk's name is completely removed from any record in existence — it cannot be spoken by anyone, and it's erased from any written record.
• Reincarnation: Inherited random reincarnation spells from D&D 3.5. In 2nd Edition Reincarnate is a ritual that brings one back as a common ancestry for the region where the ritual is performed on a d20 roll of 1-14, but an uncommon or rare ancestry on 15-20, which can include living dolls, shapeshifting spiders, or fragments of cosmic energy that have accumulated shells of mineral or plant matter.
• Revenge Is Not Justice: While Shelyn, goddess of beauty and romantic love, and Sarenrae, goddess of healing and the sun, are on cordial terms with Calistria, goddess of lust, one source of disagreement between them is that Calistria is also the Goddess of revenge. Shelyn and Sarenrae, in contrast, command their followers to spare the lives of enemies who are willing to repent. The alignment systeminvoked seems to side with Shelyn and Sarenrae: Calistria is Chaotic Neutral (meaning she can sponsor Chaotic Evil divine spellcasters), while Shelyn and Sarenrae are both Neutral Good.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Galt has been stuck in the "Reign of Terror" phase of its revolution for about half a century now, with no end in sight. Lynch mobs surrounding the mysterious, and politically powerful, Grey Gardeners crop up monthly to make a bloody example of whomever has fallen out of the crowd's favor. To add insult to injury, the souls of those executed remain imprisoned in their guillotine blades.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified:
  • Unlike Galt's Red Revolution, Andoran's People's Revolt went through with the minimum possible amount of bloodshed: it was influenced by the same ideals but its founders didn't want a repeat of Galt's failed state status. The result was the first large representative democracy in the Inner Sea Region, and one that has become quite prosperous and which abolished slavery at its inception.
  • The Hell's Rebels AP has the players leading an uprising against the Thrice-Damned House of Thrune after it starts a crackdown on the northwestern Archduchy of Ravounel, previously known as an oasis for free-thinkers in Infernal Cheliax. A core part of the AP is managing the uprising and giving freedom to those oppressed by House Thrune in Kintargo.
• Riddle for the Ages: How did Aroden die? Per the developers, that question will never receive an official answer.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: The spell pup form from Ultimate Combat invokes this trope, by turning an animal into a small, adorable version that prevents others from attacking it out of guilt. The spell leaves an exception: evil creatures are not affected and "in fact, some particularly heinous creatures might go out their way to do the target harm." Naturally, the accompanying artwork shows the spell in effect on Lini's snow leopard partner. The druid just looks confused as little Droogami chases a butterfly.
• Ring of Power: Any magic ring, and there are many.
• Romani: Varisians are the Fantasy Counterpart Culture version. They've been luckier than their Real Life counterparts, though, as they tend to be fairly easily accepted (usually), and there are quite a few settled lands where they're an important minority or even the majority human group.
• Roguish Romani: The Varisians, the Fantasy Counterpart Culture of the Romani, are often unfairly stereotyped in-universe as thieving vagabonds — however, there is a very good reason for this: a decentralized international network of ethnic Varisian smuggler and thief gangs collectively known as the "Sczarni". So while not all Varisians are rogues, the vast majority of Sczarni rogues are Varisian.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something:
  • The kingdom campaign rules in the Ultimate Campaign book allow player characters to rule territory. The timescale of "kingdom turns" runs to a month, but a character's attention is only required for seven days, allowing regular adventuring between the action of government; the book suggests that such adventures could concern directly confronting threats to the characters' lands.
  • The Kingmaker adventure path was this trope for five books, and could be seen as the beta version of the Ultimate Campaign kingdom ruleset.
  • Curse of the Crimson Throne could be subtitled God Save Us from Queen Ileosa of Varisia.
  • Queen Galfrey of Mendev is The Paladin and a Lady of War who has a large role to play in Wrath of the Righteous. Additionally, in Wrath of the Righteous, the players will meet the non-human rulers of whole other dimensions, with active encounters with the Demon Lords Nocticula, Baphomet, and Deskari.
  • In War for the Crown, Princess Eutropia Stavian of Taldor is a Politically-Active Princess who is trying to become an Internal Reformist monarch.
  • Hell's Vengeance writes Queen Abrogail II of Cheliax as a villainous example of this who has finally managed to drag her country out of its complacency towards the fact that its provinces keep declaring independence.
• The Rule of First Adopters: The same creative team that made The Book of Erotic Fantasy for 3.5E made a version for Pathfinder 1E called The Book of Passion.

S-Z

• Sacrificial Revival Spell: There is a monk archetype that focuses on using one's own ki energy to fuel healing magics, harming oneself in the process. At 20th level, said monk can sacrifice his own life to revive all his allies as per the True Resurrection spell. And no, it is not a resurrectable death: the monk is so Deader than Dead even his name is obliterated.
• Samurai: Introduced in Ultimate Combat, the samurai is a cavalier sub-class. Rather than forcing the player to play a Dual Wielding Screaming Warrior like the 3.5 samurai, the Pathfinder samurai can choose its focus (mounted combat, archery, or, yes, katana).
• Satanic Archetype: Asmodeus, Lord of Hell, differs from previous D&D interpretations in that he is not a fallen angel, but has always been a god in his own right, having a distinctly Cain and Abel-style relationship with his now-murdered brother, Ihys.
• Saintly Church: Most of the churches of good-aligned deities qualify, but Sarenrae and Iomedae really stand out as examples.
• Scaled Up: The Form of the Dragon spell lets it's users take the form of a dragon. It's only available to high level wizards and sorcerers, making it the kind of thing that might be given to a main antagonist. But there's nothing actually stopping the PCs from doing this as well, especially draconic bloodline sorcerers who get the spell for free, making it ideal for a climax.
• Scaling the Summit: The Organized Play scenario #0-16 "To Scale the Dragon" sees the party scale the highest mountain in the region (nicknamed "The Dragon") to retrieve an ancient artifact hidden on its peak... then haul ass pronto, as they are chased by literally every yeti living in those mountains.
• Scarab Power: The Scarab Sages are an Ancient Tradition of Egyptian-inspired priests and wizards who seek the ancient secrets to create a better future. They picked the scarab as their symbol to invoke wisdom and ancient power.
• Science Fantasy: Strongly on the fantasy end of things, but some species of aberration are creatures from outer space.
  • The illustrations, by-and-large, have a more Renaissance feel to them than Medieval, and some look outright like early Steampunk. For obvious reasons, no one has complained about this.
  • The economy of Numeria (featured in the "Iron Gods" adventure path) revolves entirely around plunder extracted from mountain-sized chunks of a crashed starship, with robots, cybernetic implants, powered armor, pharmaceuticals, and laser guns all found there. The reason this technology hasn't spread is due to the surrounding inhabitants — the justifiably superstitious Kellid barbarians, who consider the alien ruins taboo after suffering some spectacular disasters among them, and the power-hungry Technic League, who jealously hoard all the scientific secrets they can find. The Technology Guide, which features many of these gadgets, also includes feats and rules that allow characters to tinker with alien tech like they would with magic items, even converting magical energy for technological use and vice versa.
  • One issue of the Pathfinder Adventure Paths gives brief descriptions of the other planets in Golarion's solar system. Out of the three most heavily-populated worlds, Castrovel is pure fantasy-themed (but with Psychic Powers instead of magic), Akiton has a "science fantasy" Planetary Romance theme, and Verces is futuristic sci-fi (though presumably still aware of magic).
  • The Alkenstar/Mana Wastes region, due to its inherent magic-screwing properties, meanwhile, has developed the first firearms to compensate. They're mostly seen as noisy, impractical and onerous curios elsewhere.
  • "Reign of Winter" actually has the PCs travel to two alien planets. One of them being Earth
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: The Final Blades of Galt were intended as a way to defy the trope. They are guillotines designed to trap the souls of people beheaded on them to prevent the rich and powerful from escaping their fate by arranging to be resurrected.
• Seadog Peg Leg: "Peg Leg" is a selectable character Trait in the pirate-themed Skulls & Shackles Adventure Path. A PC who takes it has had his leg chewed off by a shark as a child, but they suffer no normal penalties for using a prosthetic and instead gain a bonus on damage rolls against sharks and other aquatic predators.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: All over the place. The biggest evil, in the biggest can, is the apocalypse god Rovagug the Rough Beast, sealed into the molten core of Golarion by all the gods who survived his initial rampage. His release would spell the potential end of the world.
• Seal the Breach: Golarion suffers from the Worldwound, a nation-spanning Hellgate and demon-infested Reality Bleed. Five crusades are mobilized to fight back its advance, and in the climax of the Wrath of the Righteous adventure path, the Player Party can kill the Demon Lord responsible and ritually seal the Worldwound forever, which is what canonically happens.
• Secret Art: The Uncommon, Rare, and Unique rarity traits from Second Edition denote increasing levels of obscurity—something with the Uncommon trait requires special training or comes from a particular part of the world, something with the Rare trait is very difficult to find (and is only included through either in-game discovery or allowed to by taken through GM fiat), and something with the Unique trait is one of a kind. Notably, Recall Knowledge checks become increasingly difficult the more "secret" the thing you're recalling is.
  • In Pathfinder Society games, the PFS Limited tag functions similarly to Rare, requiring a boon to gain access.
• Semi-Divine: Aasimar are the descendants of mortal humanoids (normally humans) and good-aligned Outsiders, and they've got the unearthly beauty, longevity, and light- and good- powers to go along with it. Celestial bloodline sorcerers can be any race, and either have a good-aligned Outsider ancestor, or were blessed by a god at their birth. They get Holy Hand Grenade powers and flight with angelic, feathery wings, among other things.
• Sense-Impaired Monster:
  • Creatures with the "blindsight" special ability use non-visual senses such as smell or hearing to compensate for loss of vision to perceive their surroundings within the specified range. This negates penalties for being blind, as well as other creatures' invisibility or concealment (including miss chance from spells like displacement or blur); however, a creature with blindsight can't make out visual or color contrast, meaning for example that they can't read. The "blindsense" ability is a weaker form of blindsight with more penalties.
  • Creatures with the "tremorsense" special ability are able to detect other creatures out to a specified range by the vibrations they give off when they move, including such things as the somatic components of spells. Normally this functions through transmission of the vibrations through the ground; however, aquatic creatures with tremorsense are able to detect vibrations through the surrounding water.
• Setting Update: With the change from 1st Edition to 2nd Edition in 2019, the Golarion setting was updated, moving the calendar for the setting forward a few years and declaring canonical endings for several of its adventure paths, with those endings influencing the new setting.
• Seven Deadly Sins:
  • Originated as the seven virtues (rewards) of rulership for Ancient Thassilon, formulated by its ancient emperor. His seven subordinates promptly twisted them into the more familiar sins, creating Sin Magic that the Runelords would use well into the modern time period.
  • Some (but not all) of the sins are represented in the archdevils. Mammon embodies greed; Belial is extremely lustful; Moloch is a being of seething wrath; Baalzebul represents envy; Mephistopheles is famous for his great pride.
  • Furthermore, there is a corresponding species of demon for each of the seven deadly sins: Dretches (sloth), shadow demons (envy), succubi (lust), nabasus as well as vrolikai (gluttony), vrocks (wrath), nalfeshnees (greed), and mariliths (pride).
• Sham Supernatural: Razmir, the God-Emperor of Razmiran, is an ordinary, though very powerful wizard who uses a God Guise to run a Scam Religion. Razmiran "priests" therefore have no actual divinely granted powers nor levels in the cleric class: the game implements them as a sorcerer archetype and a Prestige Class that use various ritualistic tricks to imitate the class features of a cleric. His classification as a deity is almost entirely flavor.
• Share the Sickness:
  • In contrast to The Paladin's Ideal Illness Immunity, their Evil Counterpart the Antipaladin becomes immune to the symptoms of all diseases, helping them spread plague as part of their mission to cause chaos and destruction.
  • Ghlaunder is the god of parasites, infection, and stagnation who desires to spread diseases to as many people as he can. His priests possess a unique form of healing magic that makes people immune to diseases while not actually removing them, which they use on themselves in order to secretly spread their own diseases to other people.
• Shout-Out: Has its own page.
• Silver Has Mystic Powers: Silver weapons bypass the Damage Reduction of werewolves and some extraplanar creatures, including devils and Agathions.
• Sinister Deer Skull: Siabrae are a sort of druidic counterpart to liches, the result of Druids and other primal spellcasters taking The Corruption of the land into themselves in order to fight it off. Sometimes, this works, and so the ritual is still used, but more often instead of purifying the land they become preservers of their own twisted counterpart to nature. They don't have deer skulls per se, but they have antlers made of stone, which is clearly meant to reflect their identity as corrupted protectors of the natural world.
• Snake People: The serpent folk are one part an expy of Faerun's Yuan-ti and one part a Shout-Out to the serpentfolk of Conan the Barbarian and Kull.
• Specifically Numbered Group: The Magocracy of ancient Thassilon was founded on principles of Runic Magic and philosophy, including a leadership of seven Runelords, one for each of the Seven Virtues of Rule. As Thassilon fell into decadence, the Runelords came to represent the Seven Deadly Sins instead.
• Spell Blade:
  • Magi, as well as paladins who took the divine weapon bond feature instead of a mount, are able to imbue their weapons with additional magical properties a few times per day.
    • Second Edition magi can use both their Arcane Cascade stance and Spellstrikes—the former uses lingering energy from a spellcast to charge all their melee Strikes, while the latter imbues a spell that requires an attack roll into a melee Strike, applying its effects to the target on a hit.
  • The spell-storing property allows a magic weapon or armor to store a spell with touch range, which can then be cast as an immediate action when the weapon hits the enemy or the armor is hit by an attack.
• Spell Book: Wizards and magi can't cast spells without them. Witches use their familiars as this.
• Space Whale: Oma are about as spacey and whaley as they come without getting too literal on the latter half.
• Standard Fantasy Races: Pathfinder largely inherits the pattern developed in D&D, with humans who rule most nations and civilizations, reclusive dwarves and elves who remain in scattered holdouts of their ancient, fallen empires, halflings and fey gnomes who live in other races' lands, and half-elves and half-orcs often left as outcasts. Monster races include the goblins, hobgoblins and orcs, whose long histories of war against the other races have left them distrusted and despised, but have begun to attempt to integrate better in global politics while forming closer ties with each other, as well as ancient and powerful dragons, reclusive treants and fey who distrust anyone intruding in their forests, and a variety of Snake People and Lizard Folk whose empires were ancient before any warm-blooded nation arose. That being said, there are also a number of setting-specific peoples that avert the trope.
• Standard Fantasy Setting: For the most part, Golarion is a pseudo-medieval world inhabited by the Standard Fantasy Races, menaced by the traditional lineup of necromancers, barbarian hordes and demon lords, populated by the usual Fantasy Counterpart Cultures and flavored with a few pseudo-Asian, -African and -American areas. The setting diverges in some areas, which include elements drawn from pulp and horror fiction instead.
• Start My Own: Pathfinder got started when a group of big-name D&D 3.5 fans and writers, unhappy with the drastic changes made to D&D in 4th Edition and the more restrictive licensing policy that came with it, got together and decided to keep the old game going under a new name.
• Stay in the Kitchen:
  • Downplayed with Erastil, the Lawful Good god of hunting, agriculture, family, and rural communities. One of the most ancient deities of the pantheon, he actually has no problem with strong women or even female warriors, he just thinks they should at some point get married to equally strong partners and start families with them. He's mildly baffled by fellow Lawful Good goddess Iomedae's^note goddess of justice, valor, and duty, essentially the Patron God of paladinhood disinterest in marriage, but at the same time has an Odd Friendship with Neutral Good Love Goddess Shelyn, due to her own support for marriage and families (Shelyn herself is part of a thruple with Desna and Sarenrae). Many of his older views on family dynamics were gradually toned down by Paizo.
  • Taldor, the local Fantasy Counterpart Culture for the Roman Empire, enforced strictly patriarchal gender roles. These have softened over time, especially after the loss of their foreign territories, but are still somewhat present: one of the sticking points in the War for the Crown Adventure Path is the proposal to handle the looming Succession Crisis in Taldor by allowing women, specifically Princess Eutropia, to inherit titles.
• Steampunk: Details for steampunk elements are included in the Gamemastery Guide along with a lot of other, more unusual aspects for DMs to use in their campaigns at their own discretion.
• Stellar Station: A few magically shielded outposts float within Golarion's sun, such as the metropolis of the Burning Archipelago and the tower of a reclusive archmage who really doesn't want visitors.
• Sticky Situation: Aside from the webs of giant spiders, the Adherants are covered in extremely sticky fibers that can potentially trap any melee weapon used on it, and any barehanded attack risks leaving the attacker stuck to the monster. The Flail Snail can also leave a trail of glue-like mucus behind it.
• Story-Breaker Power: All of the same things that apply in D&D do here as well, but Second Edition has been praised for making high-level gameplay work by toning down many spells that had been this trope and making it explicit that others can only be used with GM discretion. For example, scrying and teleport are both uncommon spells, which means that players cannot cast them without finding some sort of teaching aid first. The image you receive through scrying alone is not distinct enough for you to teleport there, and even if you can through other means precise long-distance teleportation to a specific location is now nearly impossible. Other spells with a large scope have become rituals, which are almost always uncommon and require that several characters make checks of above average difficulty for the ritual's level, with the consequences for failure ranging from significant to catastrophic. It's still possible to possible to break the story using magic, but it's much more preventable.
• Stripperiffic: Seoni the sorceress (in her slinky red dress), Alahazra◊ the oracle (who appears to be wearing an open kaftan and a low-slung sarong over a bikini), and Feiya◊ the witch (who's mostly bare-legged and about to fall out of her bodice) stand out in particular.
• Stuck Items: Cursed magical items in general are examples of these, as they will return to you and in some cases, like the Rod of Arson, will force you to use them even if they have been physically destroyed. It takes specific spells or combinations of spells to get rid of them.
• Stuff Blowing Up:
  • The Goblin Fire Bomber archetype for alchemists specializes in unleashing the wrath of Michael Bay on the battlefields of Golarion.
  • Alchemists in general tend to blow things up as a primary form of offense/defense when they're not Hulking Out.
• Succubus in Love:
  • Nocticula, a Demon Lord and the first succubus, became lovers and rivals with the succubus Shamira after Shamira infiltrated her bedchamber. Their relationship was extraordinarily unusual for Chaotic Evil demons, all the more so when Nocticula became a Chaotic Neutral goddess yet remained Amicable Exes with Shamira.
  • In "Wrath of the Righteous", the player characters meet the currently working on being redeemed succubus Arushulae, who the AP sets up as a love interest if the players are interested.
• Sudden Name Change: In Second Edition, most monsters taken from Dungeons & Dragons were either given completely new names (like phase spiders becoming ether spiders), are now being referred to by their common names instead of their proper names (sea devils instead of sahuagin, brain collectors instead of neh-thalggus), or vice versa (xulgaths instead of troglodytes). This was done to distance Pathfinder from D&D and facilitate building a multi-media franchise, as the OGL 1.0a only covers Tabletop RPG products, so any names invented by Wizards of the Coast cannot be legally used in anything that is not a RPG book.
• Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome: In the Second Edition Adventure Path "Age Of Ashes," Mengkare has gone from Lawful Neutral to Lawful Evil, as he has started sacrificing his own subjects in order to stop Dahak. He's still a Well-Intentioned Extremist, meaning the players can possibly talk him down and redeem him.
• Suffer the Slings: The bizarrely weak slings from 3rd edition D&D are carried over. The range and damage are so low that it's usually better to just throw the rock.
• Summon Binding:
  • First Edition: The spell magic circle against alignment can be used in combination with the planar binding and dimensional anchor spells to imprison a summoned extraplanar being ("Outsider") of the specified alignment within the location for as long as the circle of powdered silver making up the magic circle remains unbroken (though the spells have to be renewed periodically).
  • Second Edition's version of planar binding is a ritual that incorporates the magic circle as an optional step that requires a crafting skill check rather than a separate spell. If the summoners neglect to include it, or fail the skill check, the called creature can attack the summoners or leave without making a bargain.
• Summon Magic: Conjurers are a school of Wizards who specialize in conjuration, magic that creates matter from nothing or summons creatures. The Summoner is a base class that forgoes all magic but conjuration. Summoners also summon "Eidolons" from the realms beyond the material plane in arcane rituals lasting a minute or so, a la Final Fantasy.
• Summoning Ritual: Represented by the Planar Binding spells. Summoners must usually give the summoned creature rare or valuable offerings in order to gain its services.
• Super Gullible: Characters with low Wisdom and Sense Motive/Insight modifiers tend to have trouble discerning truth from lies, and therefore often fall under this trope.
• Supernaturally-Validated Trans Person: Shardra Geltl, the iconic Shaman, came out as a trans woman after she developed her spiritual powers (which only manifest in dwarven women).
• Super Wheelchair: In addition to regular wheelchairs, Grand Bazaar and Guns & Gears include stats for chairs for adventurers that fit this trope. The basic example is a Downplayed version, as it provides the ability to traverse stairs and adventuring environments without difficulty but lacks any magical effects. Higher level versions like the Minotaur Chair will make those with able legs a bit jealous.
• Talking in Your Dreams: The spell dream enables a wizard or sorcerer to do this, although the communication is only one-way from the caster to the recipient.
• Take That!: The 2E bestiary notes that the fact that Cave Bears live in caves should be obvious from the name, doubtless a shot at the infamous "Bear lore".=
• Tall Is Intimidating: you gain a +4 bonus on your Intimidate check for every size category that you are larger than your target.
• Teleporter's Visualization Clause:
  • 1st Edition copies the mechanics from D&D 3E verbatim. The teleport spell has a percentage chance of failing—meaning anything from landing off-target to suffering a Teleporter Accident, also decided by percentile dice—that increases the less familiar the caster is with their target location. Greater teleport removes the chance of damage but still requires at least a good description of the destination: if the description you have isn't good enough, you simply reappear back where you started.
  • 2nd Edition combines teleport and greater teleport into a single teleport spell that requires the caster to know both the appearance and position of their target relative to them.
• Terminal Transformation:
  • The spell "baleful polymorph" can be used to transform the target into an animal that can't survive its current environment, such as a fish on land, but the target gains a bonus on the saving throw to resist it.
  • The spell "stone to flesh" restores a petrified creature to normal, but has a chance to kill them from the shock of the transformation.
  • Devils are formed from the souls of the damned. What many Hell Seekers don't know is that the process first inflicts Death of Personality through torture, destroying any hint of memory or individuality, and then reshapes what's left into a mindless lemure.
• Threads of Fate:
  • The Norns from Norse Mythology are envisioned as potent fey with abilities related to prophecy, fortune, and curses. They can manifest the golden thread of a nearby creature's life, rendering the target Deader than Dead if they successfully sever it with their magical shears.
  • Grandmother Spider's job was to weave the web of fate, but she rebelled against this role and became a Trickster God. She still has the Fate domain.
• Thunder Hammer: The minor artifact Hammer of Thunderbolts is essentially a lesser version of Mjölnir (and is also featured in Dungeons & Dragons). It requires other magic items (based on Thor's belt and gloves) to be worn to be used at full power.
• Thread of Prophecy, Severed: Aroden, the patron god of humanity, was prophesied to descend from the heavens to rule mankind as a God-Emperor in a new golden age in 4606 AR. On the prophesied date, worldwide natural disasters wracked Golarion: Aroden had instead died of unknown causes. In the century-plus since, no prophecy has come to pass anywhere, which has caused problems for Pharasma's priesthood since she's the goddess of prophecy in addition to life and death. Ironically, Pharasma supposedly knows why, or at least knew in advanced, Aroden would die.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: The Return Of The Runelords Adventure Paths involves extensive time travel, especially in the latter half. The rules are never really made clear, but, in addition to historical events changing, there's also things like a library frozen in time (which the PCs can unfreeze) and an entire city state caught in a "Groundhog Day" Loop (which the players can also fix). Preventing the Big Bad from using time travel to win is a big part of the later stages.
• Too Many Halves: Mechanically possible via abuse of the various "half-x" templates. Using only first-party material, it is theoretically possible (though any sensible GM would veto it for a player character) to have a creature that is half-fiend (there are actually ten subvarieties), half-celestial, half-dragon, half-janni, and half-serpent, for a creature two-and-a-half times as big as you'd expect. Averted in Second Edition, where you can only have one Versatile Heritage.
• Torture Cellar: Black dragons are such hateful creatures that they consider torture victims to be their most prized "treasure", and hoard tormented captives in their lairs. Dripping acidic spittle on chained-up prisoners — beautiful ones especially — is a black dragon's idea of great entertainment.
• Tortured Monster: Fleshwarps, Broken Souls, Taninivers, Yao-guai, most undead. etc.
• Total Eclipse of the Plot: In Tian Xia, solar eclipses are considered a sacred time of celebration in the cults of the gods Shizuru and Tsukiyo. According to mythology, the two, respectively the goddess of the sun and the god of the moon, are Star-Crossed Lovers who can only be together during an eclipse.
• Touch the Intangible:
  • Magical attacks inherently interact with normally-intangible targets, but only deal 50% damage.
  • Umbral dragons have the ability to interact with spectral undead as if they were corporeal creatures — a useful trait for them, as ghosts, specters, shadows and the like are their favorite source of food.
  • All Psychopomps' attacks naturally affect incorporeal beings, as do those of crypt dragons, helping them with their tasks of corralling restless spirits and watching over the souls of the dead.
  • Unicorn horns innately function as ghost touch weapons in this manner, allowing them to directly interact with spiritual entities.
  • The Amulet of Grasping Souls from Tears at Bitter Manor zig-zags the trope. A corporeal wearer can physically interact with incorporeal creatures like ghosts; an incorporeal wearer can interact with their surroundings as if they were corporeal.
• Transplant: Baba Yaga and the Great Old Ones are imported straight from their original settings. Even Cthulhu himself is mentioned as "slumbering on a distant planet".
• Transplanted Aliens: The land of Numeria is home to numerous aliens, alien animals, and rogue robots as a result of a spaceship crashing there a millennia ago.
• Treetop Town: Selona, a city in the First World, is built entirely in the canopy of Usu, a single tree of immense size. Its university district is built within a massive hollow-out bole, while a formerly posh district was turned to ruins when a lightning strike set a part of the tree aflame.
• Trick Bomb: One of the Alchemist's trademark abilities. Alchemist discoveries allow them to switch the standard explosive bomb (which does fire damage, to which many outsiders are resistant or immune) with bombs that do everything from cover an area in sticky substances to doing holy damage.
• Turn Undead: By default, Pathfinder replaces the 3E class feature with one called Channel Energy, which can be used to heal living allies or damage undead (unless the PC gets Channel Negative Energy due to Character Alignmentinvoked restrictions, in which case it harms living and heals undead). Turn Undead is instead available as a feat, reduced to a simple Will save to not flee from the overly complicated math that 3E used.
• Überwald: The Immortal Principalities of Ustalav, officially described as a "fog-shrouded land of Gothic Horror". Culturally based on Eastern Europe, primarily Romania, it's regularly menaced by hordes of undead and even when it's not there's a Decadent Court feuding with each other. The sole exception is Versex, which, as mentioned above, is Lovecraft Country instead.
• The Undead: There's even a Sorcerer Lineage, Undead Sorcerer, who had a Lich or Vampire ancestor, or was a stillbirth who spontaneously resurrected.
• Undead Child: Attic whispers (which are formed from the spirits of children who died of neglect) and drekavacs (formed from children who died of disease).
• The Underworld:
  • The Boneyard is a sprawling graveyard where all mortal souls, no matter who or what they were in life, come to stand before Pharasma, be judged and determine their place within the Great Beyond. Most of those who are judged fit to remain within the Boneyard are those who are unclaimed by any gods and unaligned with any particular ethos in life, making them free game for those seeking souls or power.
  • Axis is a realm of pure, absolute law, unhindered by the moral concerns of good or evil.
  • The Maelstrom is a realm of boundless chaos, a churning void of everything that can or could exist between land and sea.
• Unequal Rites: As with 3.5, Pathfinder 1st Edition has various ways in which this can manifest, and now has more feats that further differentiate between each type.
• Unholy Matrimony:
  • The Neutral Evilinvoked church of Urgathoa also encourages this, to a point: divorce is forbidden, but killing your spouse and raising them as undead is fair game.
  • In the Giantslayer adventure path, the villain of the first part has a lover that will attempt to get vengeance on the party in the second part if said villain is killed (which is quite likely as written).
• Unholy Nuke: The Talisman of Ultimate Evil. In the hands of an Evil High Priest, it could be used to open a flaming crack at the feet of a Good priest and send them to the center of the planet.
• Updated Re-release: The Rise of the Runelords, Curse of the Crimson Throne and Kingmaker Adventure Paths were remastered a few years after the original release. All three rereleased versions compiled each AP's six softcover adventures into one hardcover and converted the adventures from their original edition to the then-current edition (from D&D 3.5E to PF1 for the former two, and from First Edition to Second Edition for Kingmaker). The Kingmaker hardcover also added three whole new chapters (two adapted from the Pathfinder: Kingmaker video game, one brand new), incorporated the video game's companions as NPCs with their own quests, and rule conversions for those that play Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition or have sticked with 1st Edition. The Crown of the Kobold King hardcover, which was released for 2nd Edition, provided the same treatment to three classic 3.5 Edition adventures Crown of the Kobold King, Hollow's Last Hope and Hungry Are the Dead.
• Vancian Magic: How all magic is cast. Some classes in both editions play with the trope, though, such as having different restrictions than normal on how they use their spell slots, and cantrips in Second Edition (which can be cast at will and automatically scale with your level) avert the trope much in the same way they do in Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.
• Vestigial Empire:
  • Taldor once controlled the entire northern coast of the Inner Sea, but following the civil war that broke off Cheliax, centuries of declining fortunes, war with Kelesh, and an increasingly decadent culture, it is now a shadow of its former glory. Unsurprisingly, it was inspired by the real-world Eastern Roman Empire.
  • Cheliax itself has fallen on hard times. After Aroden's death, the empire was taken over by devil-worshippers, prompting massive revolts that led several nations to split off from it: Korvosa, Isger, Molthune, Nirmathas, Andoran, and Galt are all former Chelish imperial provinces. The Hell's Rebels Adventure Path revolves around another such revolution in the northwestern province of Ravounel, while Hell's Vengeance deals with Queen Abrogail II finally realizing that if this keeps up she's not going to have a country left, especially after paladins of Iomedae declared a crusade.
  • The dwarven Five Kings Mountains have been in a state of slow but steady decay for centuries, splintering into several city-states.
  • Osirion has recently managed to start turning its fortunes around, but it's still a very long way from its heyday millenia ago, due in large part to having been occupied by Kelesh for a while.
• Vikings In America: Ulfen explorers from the Land of the Linnorm Kings are believed to have been the first explorers from Avistan — the setting's equivalent of medieval Europe — to have reached Arcadia — the equivalent of pre-Columbian America — and maintain the hardscrabble settlement of Port Valen on its shores.
• Villain Protagonist:
  • The main selling point of the Hell's Vengeance AP is that you're playing as villains instead of heroes. At the start it does note most groups will have a Token non-evil teammate, as most gods (including Asmodeus) allow neutral clerics in 1st Edition.
  • In the We Be Goblins! modules, the players play as goblins invading a human town to steal fireworks. Considering how pathetic goblins are, they are more likely to be viewed as Ineffectual Sympathetic Villains than anything else. (At one point, they have to fight an ordinary horse which can easily kill them in one hit if it gets a critical.)
  • The Blood Lords AP is made for non-good PCs, as you start out as troubleshooters for Geb and later become part of its aristocracy. The book notes that Geb is a Lawful Evil land In-Universe and the further away you are from that alignment the more difficult of a time you'll have fitting in. As a consequence, if you aren't evil, you have to be willing work with those who are.
• Vow of Celibacy: In First Edition:
  • Paladins can take an Oath of Chastity, which works like an archetype (i.e. subclass): the paladin adds a ban on engaging in romantic activities or sexual acts to their code of conduct, and gains resistance to charm effects and critical hits, and additional spells.
  • Monks can take a Vow of Celibacy, which gives an increased ki pool in exchange for not being able to touch another person ever except to attack them.
• Was Once a Man: Several examples, including the unfortunate victims of drow fleshwarping, as well as a number of demon lords.
• Weapons-Grade Vocabulary: The blistering invective spell can give your rants the ability to actually set people on fire!
• Weaponized Stench: The stinking cloud spell conjures a horrible-smelling fog that nauseates anybody who fails the save.
• We Are as Mayflies:
  • Goblins, between a short natural lifespan and a reckless disregard for tactics and fire safety, tend to clock out of life around twenty years in.
  • Compared to the elves, dragons (and possibly gnomes depending on how entertained they are), almost everyone else is this.
• Wendigo: Very powerful evil spirits in the setting, straight from the most terrifying native myths.
• What Did I Do Last Night?: Cayden Cailean, an adventurer who woke up after a drunken binge in Absalom to discover that he had taken the Test of the Starstone and BECOME A GOD.
• What Is Evil?: Ostiarius kytons will tell those who who ask that condemning the kytons' sadomasochism as evil is simplistic.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: While not actually immortal (only very long-lived), the Forlorn elves have this problem. They grow up amongst humans and reach adulthood at age 110 (equivalent to a 15-year-old human), meaning a usual elven young adult has seen roughly two to three generations of "childhood friends" become adults, marry, have children of their own, grow infirm and finally die of old age. When they themselves die between the age of 350 and 750, many more shorter-lived companions will have come and gone. It is perhaps not entirely surprising that many of these elves are rather cynical and insular.
• Wicked Witch: The Witch character class doesn't have to be one of these, but if they want to, they have access to all the tools needed, including a wide range of curses, an annoying cackling laugh, the ability to smell small children, and being able to cook people in a cauldron to make magical foods. Of course, Baba Yaga and her daughters play it completely straight.
• Wind-Up Key: Clockwork constructs are introduced in Bestiary 3, and last a number of days per winding. Also of note is that some of these constructs can be given a copy of their own key, so that they can wind themselves up.
• Wizarding School: Many of these: the Arcanamirum in Absalom, the Acadamae in Varisia, the Ebon Mausoleum in Geb, and the various arcane colleges in the Magocracy of Nex. The oldest and arguably most prestigious is the Magaambya in the Mwangi Expanse, the setting of Strength of Thousands.
• Wizards' War: The nations of Geb and Nex suffered a brutal Forever War under their namesake Archmages, including multiple Fantastic Nukes, huge waves of undead, and armies of mechanical and biological constructs. 4000 years later, most of Geb is undead, much of Nex is desolate, and the no man's land between them is a magically depleted wasteland. Neither nation is at war technically in the present, but only because Geb (the man) became inactive for a time, and Nex (the man) has not been seen in a long time, who some of the more influential people of both nations hope don't become active or return to avoid war.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds:
  • Bodaks (also featured in D&D), zombie-like, smoke-weeping undead created from people who witnessed such horrifying scenes of evil that it permanently wounded their souls. They are misanthropic husks driven by anger and sorrow to release their pain they only way they know how-by making people look into their eyes, forcing them to witness what happened to them-which quite possibly creates another bodak. The fluff outright states that survivors often have nightmares for years simply from the fragments of the bodak's memory.
  • Attic whisperers are the ghosts of little children animating a body formed from the detritus found in attics or basements. They formed from children left to die forgotten and alone. Their single drive in undeath is to find a friend to play with. Forever and ever and ever.
• World of Snark: Going by the flavor text alone, one could be forgiven for concluding that almost every single iconic character is a borderline Heroic Comedic Sociopath who speaks entirely in snarky one-liners. With the possible exceptions of Seelah and Sajan, they're sarcastic, bloodthirsty, indifferent to one another's injuries and casually consider either leaving their companions behind or actively killing them out of annoyance.
• World of Technicolor Hair: Gnomes are close kin to fey and often have brightly-colored hair — scarlet, blue, purple, green, yellow, white, and so on — as a result; mundane shades are almost entirely unknown. Elves also have more diverse coloring than humans but tend to match their surroundings, so their primary unusual color is green for forest-dwelling elves.
• The Worm That Walks: Hive Minded piles of vermin formed when a particularly evil spellcaster clings to life by possessing the scavenging creatures — usually worms or maggots — eating its corpse.
• Wretched Hive: Kaer Maga. And Riddleport. And Bloodcove. And Ilizmagorti. And Daggermark. And Zirnakaynin. And almost every settlement in the Shackles. And... let's just say there's a lot of scum and villainy in Golarion.
• Writing Around Trademarks: Since the phrase Dungeons & Dragons is trademarked by Wizards of the Coast, Paizo has to refer to it as "the world's oldest fantasy roleplaying game".
• Written by the Winners: Ask an average dwarf about their ancestral Quest for the Sky, and they'll describe a glorious time when the dwarven people united as one, heroically fought their way out of the Darklands, and found their way to the surface of Golarion. Ask your average orc, whose ancestors were brutally attacked and displaced by the dwarves with near-genocidal tactics during the Quest, and you'll get a very different perspective.
• You All Meet in a Cell: The Strange Aeons Adventure Path starts with the PCs waking up in adjacent cells in a mental asylum, with no memories of who they are or how they got there, while their jailor is torturing a man to death on a table right next to them. Since this is a crossover AP with Call of Cthulhu, things somehow manage to get worse from there!
• You Are Already Dead: In a possible Shout-Out to the Trope Namer. 15th-level monks can cause this with their Quivering Palm ability.
• You Have Researched Breathing: Retroactive example. In Pathfinder Second Edition's Core Rulebook, there's an Acrobat background meant for tumblers that performed in the circus. They receive a feat that allows them to balance more easily. This made sense at the time, but if the background was added after the Advanced Players Guide was released they'd almost certainly receive the feat that allows the character to use the Acrobatics skill to Perform instead, as they've been doing that their entire lives.
• Youkai: Lots. As per Paizo's love for obscure mythical creatures, Bestiaries 3 and 4 as well as the Jade Regent campaign detail many obscure ones like jimenju, sagari, umibozu, and aoandon.
• Your Head A-Splode:
  • There's a spell in Occult Adventures called Explode Head. It does what you'd expect.
  • Psychics in Second Edition can take the Cranial Detonation feat at Level 18, which allows them to chain detonate people's heads when they use a spell to defeat a non-mindless creature.

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