spectrevk wrote:
Why does it matter? It matters because PFS is a major aspect of Pathfinder gameplay, and if Goblins are in Core, it will be difficult or impossible to keep them out of PFS. Goblins have no business being regularly available as PCs, but if they're in Core GMs won't be allowed to ban them from the table.PC Goblins are a deal-breaker for a lot of players and GMs alike. Shoving them down our throats is one of the things making people hesitant about 2e.
GameDesignerDM wrote: I welcome all the nerfing. It's more in line with 5E and other recent trends of getting away from all the absurdly ridiculous high power nonsense that is from a dated age of design ..... But.... if I wanted to play 5E, I'd play 5E. It already exists, and is lovely in its own way. Maybe I should have expected this, but I didn't. Pathfinder 1E was effectively D&D 3.75. But somehow I didn't expect that Pathfinder 2E would be D&D 5.5. I guess I'll try to change my expectations and start going over it again....
IceniQueen wrote:
I also got an email from Amazon, saying that the books had shipped (July 16th, in my case). At this point, I think Paizo should press Amazon for free expedited shipping. I appreciate Paizo stepping up and keeping us updated, but I expected much better from Amazon.....
Marco Massoudi wrote:
It would be nice if these actually come out at GenCon, but considering that they're already a year late as well as being woefully overpriced, I'm not holding my breath. I know WizKids isn't an option, but surely there must be some other company, somewhere, that can actually deliver products on-time and with tolerable customer service. I don't know how Ninja Division is even still in business. (I actually have a pretty good idea, but don't want to be ruder than I already have been.) Like a lot of other folks, I'll believe these minis are available when they're actually in my hand with cash on the counter. And if I didn't think I owed my players the best possible experience when they play pregens, I would refuse to buy any NJ products ever, just based on all these issues.
Harold Ervin wrote: The game goes by so much quicker and smoother when you can file the first 33-50% of the game session off and get to the good stuff. ... I recommend it - if only for the look on everyones face when your wizard doesnt even roll a die when the knowledge planes check comes up. While I'm not going to get involved in a #WrongBadFun argument here, please don't encourage other people to follow your example of ignoring a large portion of what being a Pathfinder is all about. The in-game Pathfinder Society is a group of people who, ultimately are seekers of knowledge. To purposefully not only ignore but utterly dismiss a significant portion of that mandate does a disservice to the other players, the GM, the developers, the campaign coordinators, and ultimately the game itself.
BretI wrote:
Also, for those of us wanting to find/make special minis, do these vehicles have representation in the Core pawn set (It seems unlikely)? Can you share the basic structure of the vehicles, as well as their size: map squares? Motorcycle frame perhaps? Dune buggys? Minivans? Forklifts?:-)
Kalindlara wrote: I can't speak for MadSci, but I know that I felt extremely uncomfortable at my store when they hosted The City of Strangers scenarios, both because of the scenario's content and the players' reactions. I'm sorry that happened to you. It's amazing how differently those scenarios are portrayed. When I was first exposed to Miss Feathers, I didn't interpret her as trans at all! Nor was there anything offensive or silly in how she was portrayed. I just assumed she was a female impersonator/performance artist- no different than Lady Chablis or RuPaul. I thought it was pretty great that Paizo had put in a character that was willing to do their thing without fear or censure. I viewed Miss Feathers as one of the earliest attempts by Paizo to be inclusive. I still do, in fact, regardless of people's online reactions. I realize that many/most people don't view Miss Feathers that way, and I respect that my experience doesn't invalidate yours (nor yours, mine). I just wanted to point out that Miss Feathers isn't universally despised. I realize that with all the hate she's drawn, she won't be showing up any more, but I'll miss 'seeing' her in Kaer Maga. Also, only 1 time have I ever had a situation where a player reacted in a phobic way to Miss Feathers. I shut him down hard, and the session continued. That instance was the only time I've encountered any Miss Feathers hate- outside of these forums.
John Compton wrote: The Additional Resources and Campaign Clarifications updates are now live, and we have numerous FAQs that should also be appearing shortly. These updates include all of the November products, including Pathfinder RPG Ultimate Wilderness, for which you should also see the Ultimate Wilderness FAQs. Most notably, though, these updates address two prevalent character options: the ring of seven lovely colors and the spell snowball. Thank you so much for this!!!!! For all of this! You've made my night! No, my week! No, my month!
Mahcahn, the Labradorite Sage Spoiler:
Name: Mahcahn
Alignment: Neutral Race: Wayang Class: Psychic (Pain) 9/Fighter 1 Description: Macahn is a spidery-thin, pale wayang with fever-bright eyes. She rarely makes eye contact, but her gaze gives the impression that she's cataloging points of physical or mental vulnerability. She is constantly making jokes, but no one else seems to notice. Or find them funny. Despite her devotion to psychic magic, Mahcahn enjoys a good fight,
Mahcahn is supporting a family of half-orcs in Absalom by regularly hiring the patriarch, Zarq the Not-So-Tall, to serve as her mount. She pays him a decent wage, covers his medical expenses, and doesn't require that he identify a joke when he hears it. He mainly communicates in long-suffering sighs. When the inscrutable beings that run the world she lives in lack a sense of humor, she sends Zarq home and rides her dog, Badger instead. Incidentally, this is what labradorite looks like:
Jorsalheim wrote: It's out. ** spoiler omitted ** Spoiler:
Oh! Oh, my. This might be the happiest I've been since being unable to successfully beg a skittermander boon. This might even be better than a skittermander. Maybe. It's definitely bigger than a skittermander. Or even 2-3 skittermanders stuffed into a walrus costume. Well done, O Purveyor Of The PC Space Walrus!!! I can't wait to run this, so I can post a proper review!
Kadasbrass Loreweaver wrote:
I really want to see this played live over twitch, with John as GM and (ideally) Thursty as a player. And I want actual people watching the livestream to be able to act as the reality TV orbiting audience in some way. You've got several weeks. MAKE THIS HAPPEN!!!!!
pH unbalanced wrote:
Really, don't spoil some 'needed' pre-Salvation player prep: You asked for it. If you haven't played it already on this PC, play S06-04 Beacon Below (7-11) before you play Salvation. You'll be glad you did. Really.
kevin_video wrote:
CT: You know that 4-5 hours per session that you currently spend playing PFS? And how (according to you) that's the only time and opportunity you have to play at all? Then you've solved your own problem. You have 4-5 hours at a time which you can use to design your own campaign. And when you've designed your own campaign, then you have 4-5 hours per session to recruit other players and/or GMs to play the campaign you've designed. And once you've recruited those players and/or GMs, you have 4-5 hours per session to play the campaign that you've designed, exactly the way you want it to be. At least until those other players/GMs decide they don't want what you want and outvote you, democratically. When they do, you'll have that 4-5 hours per session to recruit new players/GMs. It'll be a lot of work, but since you'll be breaking it down into 4-5 hour work sessions, it shouldn't be too onerous. In fact, if I were in your place, I would be excited by the new opportunities stretching out before me! Designing something new is an amazing experience. I envy you, a little. Or, maybe you don't want to do all that work. Maybe you don't feel up to it. That's understandable. With PFS, almost all of the work is done for you, already. But all this time that you're spending on these forums, making demands that we've been patiently explaining are as undesirable as they are impossible- well, that's time you could have been using to design your own campaign. Because I'm sorry, but the changes that you want PFS to make aren't going to happen. Not during the current campaign, and probably not ever. Frankly, the developers have years more collective game experience than you do, and they have more experience with organized play specifically. (Even just a few of the developers have upwards of 50 years development experience between them, and your posting habits and syntax suggest that you're relatively young- nothing personal, just an observation.) They know what works for a large campaign like PFS better than you do, and their wisdom will carry the day. So, to be blunt, you have some combination of three choices:
Personally, I hope you choose either #1 or #2- either way you'll be happier.
Fromper wrote:
I think we'd need an AR update or something similar to worship her with mechanical benefits (like Cleric/Paladin spells, etc). But there's nothing to prevent a non-Deity-dependent PC from worshiping her (with no mechanical bennies). My Rahadoumi Spiritualist has actively converted to her worship after this exposure. Roidira is her kind of Goddess! ;-)
ChaosTicket wrote:
Well, it sounds like you've decided that PFS isn't for you, and that's ok. People change. What works for them at one point in their life isn't what works at another point. If you prefer videogames to PFS, that's fine. There's room enough for all kinds of gamers in the world. I wish you all happiness in your future endeavors.
JohnF wrote: A quick look at the comment section for the kickstarter does seem to suggest that delays are pretty much what folks have come to expect from Ninja Division. There's certainly enough doubts raised to make me want to take a closer look before putting any of my money on the line. Truth. Soda Pop/Ninja Division's history of poor communication, delayed fulfillment, and non-fulfillment means that I'll be staying far away from that kickstarter. Hopefully Paizo added some kind of penalty clause into their license agreement with NJ to try and keep those problems to a minimum.... Hoping I'm wrong about this.
Bob Jonquet wrote:
I really enjoyed my first GenCon! * Being at the same table as much as possible was a huge help! *The use of the overhead projector for general messages was helpful. *Mustering under this or that Iconic is great, but when the banners and standees are all Iconics, and the banner doesn't match the standee, it breeds confusion. Please either make sure that the standees are under their Iconic banner, or move the standees outside the main room. Being told 'muster at Sajan' doesn't help when the Sajan banner is in the center of the room on the right, while the Sajan standee is in the far left corner. When I asked various HQ staff 'Does the mustering mean under the banner or the standee?' I invariably got a deer-in-the-headlights look from the poor volunteer. *I would have appreciated being able to volunteer for more than just one part of the experience. Maybe instead of only being able to select one of PFS, SFS, ACG, PSA, or HQ, enable the form to record multiple selections? I would have happily volunteered for PFS, SFS, and HQ (but not ACG or PSA) if I could; but chose PFS since the form only allowed a single option. Thanks again for making my first GenCon great!
thzero wrote:
Sooo..... I've begun to prep this scenario for this weekend. So far, I am really impressed by this. So looking forward to running it! If this is what Season 9 is going to be, we are in for a season-long treat!!! I think I will be providing my players with a slightly spoiler-ish warning. This is not a scenario for murderhobos (thank goodness!). I'll be giving them a 'heads up' warning, advising them to bring PCs with strong skills and RP options, rather than the usual combat wombats. I gave similar warnings for Ungrounded But Unbroken and Bid For Alabastrine, and I think it helped to set expectations, which otherwise might be a problem with these non-standard adventures. Suggestion for other GMs running this:
Instead of simply reading/paraphrasing the visions at the end, consider printing them out, and sharing each vision only with the PC who views it. That way, during the final debriefing there's more RP as PCs share the visions they saw with the other PCs, as well as the NPCs. That way, players will be less likely to skip the RP by just saying, "yeah, we tell her what we saw". Just a thought. It's a shame that this scenario doesn't have a higher rating (right now). I look forward to giving it a very positive review after I've actually run it! I suppose that any scenario that steps outside the box like this one does risks polarizing ratings, though. This is the first time that Katherine Cross's name has come to my attention, but after this, I'll definitely be watching for her work! I love her style!
Rambone wrote: Seeing that it is not chained vs. unchained LW there probably will be no grandfathering. There is only one Lore Warden and history is they always use the latest printed version. There are two Ringleader Bard archetypes (one in UI and one in AG), and they've gone out of their way to make both of them PFS legal per Additional Resources. That's what I want for Lore Warden. If folks want the new one, great! Let them have it. But keep the old one as well. Rambone wrote: I have a feeling some didn't like that it outshined the Brawler as the master of maneuvers. I too detected an undercurrent of someone didn't like the LW and had the opportunity to 'fix' it. But if it's difficult to read tone in email and forum posts, it must be doubly difficult to read it in actual published material. So I could easily be misreading the tone.
Tyler Reid wrote:
Exactly. My LW was a person, not a collection of combat maneuvers and attacks. And the person that she was can't exist under the new LW rules. I'd be better off retraining into Slayer, but again, that's not who she is. Adoption of the new LW is effectively murdering one of the people I most enjoyed pretending to be. And that makes me sad. And angry. Not angry at John and the development team. It makes me angry at the Problem Players who have once again made us unable to have nice things. More and more, when I see changes made to mechanics, especially in PFS, they come as a result of Problem Players abusing rules, exploiting loopholes, etc. The problem isn't (usually) in the rules. The problem is the Problem Players who exploit and twist the rules. Changing rules and nerfing beloved options doesn't actually solve anything, since the underlying problem is still in place: the Problem Players who caused the problem in the first place. When a Problem Player's current abuse gets nerfed, he posts a nasty comment on the forums, then promptly moves on to abuse some other mechanic, triggering more complaints about 'broken' mechanics- and the cycle begins again. But all the non-Problem Players have been punished for what the Problem Players have done. The only ones who don't suffer are the ones who caused the problems in the first place. TL;DR
Mimo Tomblebur wrote: My seeker is a 14th level Lore Warden/Duelist. He will probably only get to play in one scenario a year. How can that be worth the effort of a total rebuilding? He certainly isn't stealing the spotlight from the other seekers. Exactly. My 13.2 LW rarely even makes full attacks or combat maneuvers because I'd rather spend my combat time helping other players do cool things. The old LW was flexible enough that I could do a lot of useful things other than lay out ridiculous amounts of damage every round. If I retrain into the new LW, I lose the entire flavor and flexibility of the character. But I'd be able to lay down even more ridiculous amounts of damage every round. I just don't want to. By making the LW 'less powerful', you have actually increased my damage output while making me unable to do anything but damage. Forcing the change to the LW harms any player who chose the archetype for its flavor and RP, while making it even easier to powergame- which seems to be exactly what the update was trying to avoid. In 20+ years of gaming, I have never requested grandfathering, as I find the process extremely distasteful. I'm asking for grandfathering now.
Folks have given a lot of good advice for handling this issue both IC and OOC. I was going to suggest that instead of asking the problem player what they want done with their PC (since they respond badly to that), instead ask the other players- but the posting of the Other Player somewhat answered that. Somewhat. It seems like the rest of the group is willing to accept or at least tolerate the continued presence of the Problem Player, but it still might be worthwhile to ask the rest of the group specifically how they would like to handle the missing character (not the player). The other thing I'd like to suggest is a book. Stop Walking On Eggshells by Paul Mason and Randi Kreger. It's intended not for people with Borderline Personality Disorder, but for the non-Borderlines who regularly interact with them. Your friend's psychological complications are none of our business, but this book is an excellent read for anyone who regularly deals with... complicated people. Not just Borderlines. Here it is: link.
The Toaster wrote: they hand out business cards with a list of alchemical items created on them, with spots to check off the items as they are used. Players that game with me have started calling them "party favors". Players give me the cards back at games end and I have a list of what items got used. That is an amazing idea. I am *so* stealing that.
Rysky wrote: It's a responsibility of the Society of they force you to work with Necromancers. If I join the Silver Crusade and want to go help people I'm not under the impression that I would be working with people who outside of PFS I would be killing on sight for creating Undead. Not all Necromancers are evil. Not all Necromancers create undead. And even if they were, simply 'being evil' isn't a good enough reason by itself for killing someone. In every non-PFS game I have ever run, a Paladin killing someone simply because they 'pinged' to Detect Evil would result in instant loss of Paladinhood. Even in a PFS game, if a Paladin killed someone who had 'pinged' but had taken no evil action that the Paladin had witnessed I would warn the player (as required by PFS) that this will be considered an evil act. If they did it anyway, *poof* your Paladin is now an ex-Paladin.I have never seen a PFS scenario where a Paladin's fall was 100% unavoidable. I have never seen a PFS scenario where the mission was impossible to complete successfully without compromising a Paladin. I have seen a (very) few where a Paladin's code might cause them to lose the 2nd prestige, but even those are extremely rare. The PFS developers have been really good about building options for creative responses into the scenarios. It may be more difficult to succeed without the Paladin falling, but it is never impossible. If a Paladin falls from grace during a scenario, it's because s/he either chose the expedient option over the good option, didn't examine all the angles of the situation, or simply wasn't paying attention. It's part of the roleplay of a Paladin. Paladins are 'varsity level RP' for a reason- playing one successfully is playing the game on 'hard mode', but that doesn't mean the Paladin is any less responsible for his consequences. The Society has no more business paying for a Paladin's atonement than it does in raising its members from the dead when they can't afford it, and their party can't/won't help pay for it. Bob is right. Part of the atonement process is owning your own consequences. If anything, I would argue that expecting the Society to cover the cost of Atonement would indicate that the Paladin isn't truly remorseful, and therefore the Atonement would auto-fail.
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