Crystal Frasier's page

Take an example like Valeros. It's not even Char Op at this point, but everyone knows two weapon fighting only makes sense if you use the same weapon in both hands, so you can get maximum use from your feats. Everyone knows you have to stack as many damage modifiers as you can on that weapon.

Everyone also knows about will saves and fighters and 3.5/Pathfinder. Iron Will and probably Improved Iron Will HAVE to be in every build, along with those Gloves of Dueling.

So if I have a player in my game that has a Fighter without Iron Will and GoD am I to ram forks into their eyes, set them on fire and throw them out of the window because they duh, don't deserve to breathe or something? Hint: I have 2 such players in different groups I run.

Look, it's your "everyone" argument flying away. :)

Optimization ruins more than just games, it seems. ;)

This is why we can't have nice things.

As the topic is talking about iconics, I have a question for James :

I'm playing the Kingmaker and after the death of my previous character, I'm now playing an elven fighter/rogue who is the leader of a mercenray company and is hired as marshal by the other PCs. To buid my mercenary company, I decided to take the Leadership feat without a cohort for the moment. My company is composed of hirelings and my followers. To ease the things, I took the iconics as followers.

A few days ago, I tried to get stat blocks for each of them and I searched their characters sheets in the pathfinders I own plus on the website and I noticed one thing : in each case, they never have the same stat blocks : feats, abilities, spells are slightly different.

So James, does each of you give his own version of an iconic when you write in a pathfinder ?

The iconics have different stat blocks because they were built differently each time for several reasons...

1) We switched game systems

2) The levels required were different

3) We switched layout programs and had to rebuild things

4) They were almost always things we whipped together at the last minute, usually on the day we were shipping the volume

5) Deliberate change so that we'd drive home the fact that there's NOT "one true stat block" for any iconic—the fact that they can change and DO change is a strength, because that way if, Heavens forbid, Paizo makes one not good enough, we or someone else can perhaps some day print one that's better without it being that big a deal

In any event, the primary reason we put their stats in there for as long as we did was because people saw the cool art and wanted to know what the numbers were. Once that started turning into some sort of annoying "Paizo can't create characters for their own game" thing... the decision was to drop the stat blocks rather than to spend the time it would take to make them better. Mostly because we have 100 units of time to make a month's volume of Pathfinder, and the 2 time units we were using on those iconics go a lot longer when they're used on any other part of the book.

And yes... it's a sore subject.

Part of the reason we quit putting the pregenerated iconics in there is precisely because of this reaction.

I'm actually not at all interested in trying to make the most over-the-top numbercrunched optimized characters... be it in a game I'm running or as sample PCs. Partially because it's kind of soul-numbing, but also because it's pretty hard to sift through every possible spell option and try to perfect a stat block that, in the case of those sample PCs, is being done at the last minute anyway.

In fact, we often picked spells for the PCs based ENTIRELY on the length of the spell, since too many long-named spells would make the spells prepared not fit in the space we had available. In other cases, we'd pick spells (and feats and the like) that might not be "optimized" for a specific build, but are the perfect feats for that particular character.

For example as well... Merisiel is wearing studded leather armor because that's what she's wearing in her artwork.

The iconic stat blocks had FAR more masters to serve than the "Optimization Master." to the extent that serving the "Optimization Master" was never on the to-do list in the first place.

AKA: Those pregenerated characters are NOT intended to be optimized, but folks who want or expect them to be get worked up and therefore threads like these start up. So we quit doing it.

If you're looking for a better representation to how we build high-level wizards, a better place to look than the prebuilt PCs is to any high-level wizard NPCs in the adventure. Of course... those are built as NPCs with specific story goals and requirements their stats must serve first before any other master... and they've got worse stats than most PCs most of the time, so maybe not.

The effort to show diversity in artwork is more than just to try to replicate a specific real-world spread of various races in a given location. It's to provide people who may not identify with a particular gender or race to have a better chance of seeing art with which they can identify with in a given product.

I'm a straight white male, so I can't relate to not seeing something I can relate to in, well, just about everything from movies to books to gaming materials. But for women, folks with a non-heterosexual identity, or people of color, seeing an aspect of one's self represented in a non-stereotypical or non-patronizing way in media can add a connection to that material. And that's what we want to do as a brand and as a community: be welcoming, accepting, and affirming of diversity so that everyone can see this as a game and a community that they can join and call their own.

One of my best friends used to run a table every summer for a group of young girls, about 8-11 of them, at her gaming store which she co-owned with her then husband. She called them her sandpipers and they encompassed a large spectrum of play styles including but not limited to, "Megan, SMASH!" to "Can I have a unicorn for a pet?" So lets not paint all women with a single brush please.

(why am I always at work when the linking starts)

All I know is that while I don't mind Seoni, I'd be irritated if there weren't any Seelahs, Kyras, or Imrijkas present as well. Paizo has a good range going. Do want more badasses like Dragoon lady from Ultimate Combat though...she has the scars I wish my FemShep in Mass Effect had.

@Jess: Your edited version does look better. And honestly, for another angle on the matter, more appealing from a fanservice perspective. Sometimes less is more!

Y'know what's funny Jess, as I remember there was a letter from a guy in a later issue of Dragon (don't have the wherewithal to dig it out and check the number, sorry) saying that he couldn't buy the issue with the greco-roman beefcake on the cover because people would think he was gay. The male readership rallied in defense of Dragon, but no one pointed out that you had a simillar female depiction on the cover 3-6 times a year.

That is still one of my all time favorite illustrations of double standards in our hobby. Well, favorite in that it illustrates it well...it actually makes me kind of sad.

crystal: Also: The Watch Guard and the Watch Officer... which is which?

sara marie: one has a lunch box!

sara marie: his wife packed it for him

sara marie: she even cut the crusts off like he likes

ross: ...now I can't see a lantern any more. Only a boxed lunch

liz: What sammich did he get today?

crystal: His wife really loves him, and worries about his dangerous job

crystal: Every time adventurers roll into town, she has nightmares

It seems pretty obvious to me... Lissa!

Neither the puppy nor Crystal would let her drive. :P

Youch. :-/ Sorry to hear. I confess I'm surprised; you've hid your bitterness well...

Actually, no. I'll beg to differ on that one. Charles generally doesn't hide his bitterness well. Every year around this time he comes up with a post along these lines as a cautionary tale to counter the messages of optimism offered by Clark. It's become a tradition as much as anything else related to the contest now. :-)

My primary concern is that people who listen to his advice defeat themselves long before the contest even gets underway. And then they miss out on a unique experience and a golden opportunity as a result. It's the difference between optimism and pessimism.

One other thing:

It's true that I'm not on the design team. But I did design the alchemist, and that design work is available for anyone to look at-it was basically the first playtest incarnation of the class, more or less. It then went through the same playtest feedback/development process as the other base classes-a process I was NOT involved in. Furthermore, I was not involved in the design of the chirurgeon archetype...

...but that said, I do have a LOT of experience with the Pathfinder rules. And I've worked with Jason for nearly a decade. I feel pretty confident that the majority of rulings I would make on the game would be the same as his rulings-with a few exceptions where our fundamental philosophy on gaming differs. And where those philosophical differences cause different takes on rules elements, I cede the ruling to Jason and the design team (but only after stating my case so that they've got another take on the ruling to consider before making their decision).

Folks are free to treat my advice and rulings and help on these boards as "unofficial" or "optional" or even "untrustworthy" if they want, and I try not to let that bother me... but I've seen that attitude pop up enough on these boards that I generally don't answer rules-based questions on the rules forums.

And since I'm one of the most active Paizo employees on these boards, that means that folks have more or less "scared off" what could be a pretty handy resource for them to resolve questions and conflicts in their own game. Which is kind of sad. So... hopefully folks take my previous post in the way it was intended: as helpful advice and a look behind the philosophy of my own game design and interpretations of the rules.

In fact... I think the community could benefit a LOT from embracing the philosophy of "It's okay to play the rules via a different interpretation than someone else-EVEN if that someone else is Jason Bulmahn or someone from Paizo."

Erato wrote:

Really? Even though I didn't mention porn at all, let alone said it was bad? And even though I was not discussing explicit sex vs. no sex, but rather the implications of willing slavery vs. unwilling slavery? And this from a guy who's so uptight and conservative that he considers bare female breasts to be enough to almost push something into porn? Your prejudice is showing.

In answer to your first question, yes, really.

That you didn't mention the word "porn" is a semantic distinction. Your point can be boiled down to saying that there's a kind of sexual fantasy which, when indulged in, promotes bad thinking in people. That's simply not true.

Alzrius, whether we are talking about porn or "titillating fan service," there are sexual fantasies that promote thinking which is harmful to others. While not every man who has a rape fantasy is inherently a rapist, the fact that he has that fantasy suggests that he views women as objects to be dominated. And Erato's main argument here is that a "willing rape" fantasy is particularly harmful to views of women because it glosses over the issue. Moreover, these fantasies have a realistic impact on women's lives. Rape victims are often portrayed as wanting it and later changing their minds, which is enough to get a defendant off in a jury system.

A slightly more concrete example we can look at is slavery. Most of us should be able to agree fairly easily that slavery is wrong. It might occur in our games, but we are usually the ones breaking up the slave rings. There are monsters portrayed as slavers, but they are of an evil alignment. However, if we look back at the real world examples, most portrayals of blacks in America had them as happy slaves. They wanted to serve whites because they weren't smart enough or motivated enough to want anything more. We can talk about slavery just fine, but when images like the Mammy and Sambo are tossed about it is particularly damaging to blacks because they make it seem as if all the pain and suffering involved in their history never was.

Basically, this idea of a woman (or a man for that matter) whose sole purpose is complete devotion and a desire to serve another is an excuse for rape (and slavery). Same as the happy slave is an excuse for slavery. I don't think these things need to be left out of every game, but I think they need to be handled maturely. And the "race" you've presented here as written (and portrayed through the images) is harmful to views of women.

*sigh* I was wondering when someone would bring up this old chestnut again.

This is another variant of the old "porn promotes bad thoughts in people" argument.

Really? Even though I didn't mention porn at all, let alone said it was bad? And even though I was not discussing explicit sex vs. no sex, but rather the implications of willing slavery vs. unwilling slavery? And this from a guy who's so uptight and conservative that he considers bare female breasts to be enough to almost push something into porn? Your prejudice is showing.

It's been around since there was porn, and it's never been proven - such "studies" that claim they do prove it are either poorly conducted, trying to twist the facts to suit a preexisting conclusion, or just don't exist.

You do not understand what I'm talking about. You have a very specific perspective and it doesn't occur to you that anyone else doesn't share it. You distinguish between sex/sexiness and lack of sex/sexiness, and measures it according to how explicit it is. Please try to understand that not only is it not my focus, it is not even a priority.

The studies I refer to did not measure the effects of explicit sex, or porn if you will, they measured the difference in reaction between people exposed to descriptions of consensual sex/romance, forced sex/romance in which the victim is clearly distraught, and the “NO!, NO, no, yes, YES!” dynamic. I even recall one of them specifically used a romance movie that was rated suitable for children. I would be interested in some studies measuring the effect of portrayals of willing and enjoyable BDSM too, to get a more nuanced picture, but regardless of that, it's still a completely different phenomenon than the effect of wanking material in general.

Also, I wasn't even talking about your wanking material to begin with, I was answering the argument that portrayals of willing slavery are inherently less problematic or insulting than portrayals of unwilling slavery, because it's an area I happen to some experience in. That's it.

I don't particularly want to retreat this particular topic, but I did feel the point had to be addressed. For what is probably the best debate on this particular topic you're going to find on the internet, I refer you to Zak Sabbath vs. Greg Christopher.

I'm not interested in your particular topic either. I don't know if you're from the USA, but generally, I don't like talking porn with American progressives because few of them appear to have any perspective beyond “Sexual services directed at (straight) men=good, everybody who dislikes anything which includes fanservice for (straight) men for any reason=nasty prudes who need to be put in their place by being told how stupid they are.”

It might just be that conservative censorship has made them all defensive, but describe a (fictive) harem filled with women who're lorded over by a patriarch and covered up completely because of modesty issues, and US progressives will fall over themselves to condemn it as misogynist. Describe the same harem, but give the women tiny metal bikinis and make it clear they have a lot of sex, and many of the same progressives praise it for being edgy and sexy (as long as the women are young and pretty, otherwise it's suddenly not edgy but disgusting), and assume that everybody who has a problem with it must have an issue with sex or porn. It's like the amount of asscheeks shown is what gets to decide what's progressive and not, and the “lorded over by a patriarch” part doesn't enter into it.

So really, I can't relate to your perspective at all (and a good thing I can't, believing my own breasts to be genitals and perceiving every instance of me not hiding them as tantamount to porn would probably drive me crazy), and until you're willing to discuss something other than nudity and perceived porn, I'm not going to consider you as having addressed any point I made at all.

A slave is forced to do things against his/her will, as far as I can tell this 'sekirei' folk enjoy being like pets, they feel love for their master, much like a dog would feel about it's owner, you wouldn't call a dog a slave.

This shows a profound lack of understanding about basic sexual implications. Many rape fantasy stories, perhaps even most, portray the victim as enjoying the act. It's a matter of the rapist giving the victim what she (and it's almost always a she) really wanted all along, so it's not really a violation at all. Perhaps not even rape (e.g. “it's not rape if they enjoy it/you can't rape the willing”).

While these fantasies are not wrong per se (assuming the fantasiser knows it's fantasy), the implications of it are far more damaging (and insulting) than portrayals of 'actual' rape. Many studies show that exposure to the “NO!, NO, no, no...... yes, YES!”-dynamic increases rape myth acceptance, tolerance of interpersonal violence, and hostility towards women far more than exposure to rape scenes where the victim is clearly not happy about the outcome.

In regards to willing slavery (which, as you say, isn't really slavery), the same dynamic appears to hold true. Many people find it far more hurtful and insulting when slavery is described as something the victims want, and the unfortunate implications are much stronger when we're talking about an entire race meant to be slaves, as opposed to individuals choosing, or being appointed, to serve someone (which is the usual method of gaining companions). And that's not taking into account that people have willingly submitted themselves to slavery in the real world, which doesn't make it any more right. Also, Gor.

From what I can gather this is a different race, they are not human, they are 'sekirei', they are closer to augmented animal companions or paladin mounts. They just so happen to be humanoid and somewhat attractive, so sex is not off the table.

They don't happen to be humanoid, they're made to look completely human except for a pink crest between their shoulder blades. And sex is not “not off the table” it's their main purpose.

I see how this could offend some people, but come on, this is something akin to what you would find in Book of Erotic Fantasy and the like. It's harmless words on a paper that some people find funny/fun. Different strokes for different folks and all that.

I agree with TryOmegaZero in the sense that a bunch of sweaty dudes playing romance with each other is not my idea of a good game night, but hey, it must be someone's cup of tea or else books like Erotic Fantasy and the like wouldn't exist, so what's wrong with them having their fun? Why can't they?

Keep in mind that female gamers do exist, and that some couples play one on one, so this kind of material could be of their interest.

Actually, Book of Erotic Fantasy is miles above this. It was just as mechanically wonky, and in some places just as immature and needlessly graphic, but it had one redeeming quality which easily puts it in the top when it comes to RPG material: It didn't treat sex as the act of men and women coming together to work on the common goal of satisfying the man. Most male gamers (and perhaps even most people in general), and thereby most RPG material, seem to have severe difficulties comprehending that women have a sexuality which goes beyond a need for men to like them. Not surprising given how our society treats female sexuality (i.e. it hardly ever mentions it), but still just as frustrating.

Our culture centres around men to such an extreme degree that sexuality often comes to be synonymous with male desire, and sexiness synonymous with whatever men desire. RPGs are worse. Open a D&D book, any of them, and you can be almost certain to see a majority of male characters, male pronouns, and assumptions of maleness, and be even more certain that the images of female characters that are represented will be more humanoid, more physically attractive, more scantily dressed (especially in a sexy way), and more likely to pose in a way that draws attention to their sexiness (if specific female characters are referred to, they will not only be less numerous than the male ones, but also be more likely to be of lower level and even have lower ability scores, and for some reason be less likely to be of an evil alignment – at least this holds true for the books I looked in). The Pathfinder core book is the first d20 book I've seen with more female than male iconics. It still fails miserably when it comes to balance in sexiness, but a good deal of that is probably just that Wayne Reynolds seems to be incapable of making sexy men.

Anyway, the above is not meant to be this giant rant about the evils of mainstream society, but just to explain that as a female gamer who don't mind sexuality in RPGs at all, the vast majority of 'sexy' material is not made with people like me in mind, and doesn't hold a lot of appeal. On the other hand, I've experienced more than my fair share of having it directed at me in a less than friendly way – male characters committing rape without the players asking anyone if it was an element they wanted in their game, having my character impregnated against my will, having my character indirectly threatened with sexual slavery (again, without the DM asking if it was an element I was comfortable with), and being told that since the D&D world was 'medieval', it meant that aggressive and insulting sexual slurs was just something I had to live with if I wanted to play a female character.

And precisely because I actually like when elements of sex and romance are included, the last thing I want is something like what the OP described. It's not only mechanically unsound, but the whole concept is just the tired old fantasy of beautiful women being submissive so that a guy can get off. There's the theoretical possibility that the object of desire can be male, and the subject female, but the source material is male-centred, the gendered pronoun used in the article is female (even though it's grammatically incorrect), the example character is female (bonded to a male master), and there are three images featuring a total of seven girls and no guys. It's cliché, and so far, I have heard of exactly zero female gamers who're interested in this kind of stuff.

And I used the term Pokemon loosely to mean "generic bonded creature under your control", I might as well call them "Humanoid Eidolons".

I think making them a humanoid race of primarily women who're made to be sexually submissive is well beyond what's otherwise described in the rules. The summoner in my group explained his eidolon as an extraplanetary creature who wants to experience the material plane but can't leave by itself, and has made a deal with the summoner to assist him in return for him calling it there. That's possible because the descriptions are vague enough to let people make up their own story. Even companions who're more specifically explained don't come with the same unfortunate implications. Paladins receive their mounts to aid them in their crusade against evil, and druids' animal companions are animals, not intelligent creatures.

This, in contrast, is just a bunch of programmed sex slaves who have no other purpose than serving someone for no reason at all. It's wanking material, plain and simple. And the OP seems to acknowledge this, which is nice. It's less nice that some people seem to have trouble understanding that something like this is only usable in very specific situations, mostly when a certain type of guys want to wank together with other guys but for some reason don't want to look at porn. In that context, it's not particularly sexist or otherwise problematic, but take it out of that specific context, and it almost certainly will be.

Gorbacz wrote:

Oh, I get that in my job as well.

"Several hours to read and analyze a legal document, really? I could probably read that during one toilet break! Are you guys lazy or what, it's just a few pages of bloody text!"

This.

You all need to get some serious perspective. Take a public offering of securities. Those documents are reviewed by the highest caliber lawyers and bankers, and a series of regulators. The process is adversarial in that each party involved has their own team of lawyers looking for mistakes in order to protect (and show off to) their client. These offerings can be for hundreds of millions of dollars and a mistake in these documents can result in significant financial and, potentially, criminal liability.

They are very, very, very close to perfect. But not 100% perfect; they will have typos. Plus, they cost well over a million dollars to draft.

That's what perfection looks like - it takes two to three dozen people, six months of time, and over a million dollars. And it's still not perfect.

Welcome to the real world folks. I'm sure you could also throw touchdown worthy passes every time you tried, but, your perfect abilities and position of authority from the comfort of your armchair, are unimpressive and egotistical.

Making an RPG rulebook is kind of like preparing due diligence reports:

- it has several authors,
- not all of them are mavericks of the written word,
- some of them are overworked with other duties, meaning they have too little time for proofreading/editing,
- some of them are "I will do it my way" freelancers who cause problems due to missing deadlines or being stuffy experts who can afford to be a PITA,
- there are a lot of numbers and tables,
- the deadlines are always fugly,
- there's sometimes disconnect between the original draft author, the editor, and The Boss who gets his final say on what's in,
- there's a lot of things to triple-check, from the law itself to making sure the document conforms to your corporate identity standards,
- the customer is always b%~&*ing about the result.

Oh, I get that in my job as well.

"Several hours to read and analyze a legal document, really? I could probably read that during one toilet break! Are you guys lazy or what, it's just a few pages of bloody text!"

This.

You all need to get some serious perspective. Take a public offering of securities. Those documents are reviewed by the highest caliber lawyers and bankers, and a series of regulators. The process is adversarial in that each party involved has their own team of lawyers looking for mistakes in order to protect (and show off to) their client. These offerings can be for hundreds of millions of dollars and a mistake in these documents can result in significant financial and, potentially, criminal liability.

They are very, very, very close to perfect. But not 100% perfect; they will have typos. Plus, they cost well over a million dollars to draft.

That's what perfection looks like - it takes two to three dozen people, six months of time, and over a million dollars. And it's still not perfect.

Welcome to the real world folks. I'm sure you could also throw touchdown worthy passes every time you tried, but your perfect abilities and position of authority from the comfort of your armchair are unimpressive and egotistical.

I'm guessing the announcement will be that all Paizo employees get a month-long, all expenses paid trip to Tahiti and overtime rate for all days spent out of the office on such a sabbatical.

What?

Either way, the point was more market share than sales. How many people play the game? I won't have any numbers more than anyone else would, but all you need to do is walk through the Pathfinder vs. D&D gaming areas at a neutral con to get an idea.

Uh, you do know that Lisa is not some rube who fell off the turnip truck and wandered in here to share anecdotal evidence about sales at her local gaming store, right?

Also, the plural of anecdote is not data. Walking into a "neutral" con (whatever that is) and seeing who's playing what is about as useful as going to your neighborhood bar, asking who everyone will vote for, and claiming you conducted a presidential poll. Further, given that revenue for Paizo and WotC is generated through books/products sold, and not per game played, I have diffculty believing that market share is the more appropriate measure, particularly if you can't tie it back to purchases. At least insofar as you're concerned with the ability of the game to continue existing because it generates sufficient revenue.