Gorbacz's page

Considering that Distant Worlds was one of the best selling non-hardcover Pathfinder books and that Numeria AP is currently one of the most requested ones, I believe that the science-fiction/fantasy mix has its' large share of fans that wish for Paizo to expand these tangents.

Yeah, I was wrong on that, Turns out my GM has been using that spell wrong since 3.5 and I didn't look into until you pointed it out.

But hey, I didn't publish Prone Shooter, either.

Sure, no probs. But, that means designers are perfectly qualified to make the same mistakes that you do, eg. writing the original Prone Shooter. And those mistakes shouldn't really surprise or rile you, because you're making them yourself.

Steve Geddes wrote:

sunbeam wrote:

Oh for god's sake. You guys act like it takes some kind of talent for rpg design.

It doesn't. It's probably for the best that they understand the rudiments of probabilityand statistics, but I believe there have been successful game designers that haven't.

MOST of the people who post on this site, or any gaming site have the chops to be successful game designers. It just takes getting the gig and getting to to it every day. Being around others doing the same thing will improve your expertise at it. Having somewhere where it is no problem to find people to be in your game, and being able to try out what you have just created with other people helps too.

Tell me something. Do you think being a game designer takes more "talent" than being an insurance adjuster? Do you think game designers have shown more command of statistics than actuaries?

RPG designers are better at designing RPGs than insurance adjusters. They are worse statisticians than actuaries are.

And who's to say the insurance adjuster isn't also a RPG designer? I'm sorry but the reality is that RPG design doesn't require significant investment of time or effort (compared to say, engineering or medicine). The Bar isn't set very high. That isn't a knock on RPGs or their designers, it is simply a reflection of the fact that games designers are not experts (because the field rarely displays the depth necessary for there to be "experts" in the sense you are using the term in), or at least very few of them are.

I wouldn't presume to tell an astrophysicist his business, He's an expert after all, and I'm not qualified in that field. However, I and many others on this forum are perfectly qualified to discuss pen & paper RPGs on equal footing with Paizo (and WotC for that matter) staff.

You are? Back a few threads ago you displayed that you don't know how the shatter spell works.

I'd change that from "perfectly" to "almost perfectly with a few minor bumps along the road". :)

I'm the guy who's always serious and always kidding :)

Actually I believe he was quite clear it's about *people*, not *characters*.

Streamofthesky's group - 4 guys nervously looking at each other, afraid that one of them will be called out as The One That Didn't Contribute Enough And Will Not Be Invited Again. No wonder it becomes rocket tag. :)

Also, some folks constantly need to remind themselves that they see The Real Truth while everybody else is living in the Paizo-induced Matrix.

I guess that the resulting feeling of being smarter than all those Ciretoses and Shallowsoulsl is something that makes their life happier.

Jim, please don't pollute this pristine theorycraft discussion with your so-called practical experience. ;)

Gary didn't think so, and Gary was right, son! Actually, we should be stickin' to 4 classes, all these ninjas and whatazits confuse the hell outta me!

Tome of Battle? We don't that anime wuxia crap round these parts, gentlemen!

No. They're completely useless apart from the "oooh ahhh he/she is thaaat powerful ohmigosh ohmigosh that's gonna be so cool if I could get them to fight Batman and Chuck Norris and maybe also Optimus Prime" reactions which I left behind a good dozen years ago.

Let's discuss why the tier system should exist in the place. Oh, wait, ninja'd by Icy.

I wonder what Paizo staff members think when they read threads like this.

"I really don't envy the Web Team folks who get to wrangle with all those argumentative troublemakers on the forum" is likely the most common thought.

I've slightly expanded my Typical Paizo Forums Balance Thread Matrix above. And yes Ashiel and Ciretose, I love you both to bits.

Ashiel: casters were nerfed!

Beckett/DA: no, only clerics were nerfed!

AvH: no, only druids were nerfed!

Shallowsoul: casters were always worse than martials anyway!

Anbody from The Den: PATHFAILURE = CASTER EDITION!

Ciretose: Since it's all Schroedinger, we will never know if those are nerfs or buffs.

3.5 Gitarist: Casters are fine, as long as you require the player to learn spells/pray/meditate 8h per day in real time, like we do. Honestly, does anybody even play this game in some other way?

TOZ: LOLWUT?

Kirth Gersen: My 235 pg PDF fixes everything.

Piccolo: Casters are fine, after all they need to rest 8h after casting each spell. What, that's not how it works? Really? Oh, must have been some obscure errata I missed.

Kthulhu: If you only reverted to 0E, all your problems would be gone. But no, you persist, mindless slaves of Monte Cook...

Gorbacz: American fascists! Errr ... wrong thread!

Pathfinder samurai are based more on historical tropes (such as the samurai art of yabusame and characters such as Seven Spears of Victory) and less on the popcultural/anime portrayal of barely-armored swordmasters, which had little in common with the historical developments up until late Tokugawa. Until XVI century, samurai were almost exclusively fighting from horseback, and infantry was considered a "lesser" form of warfare. The most famous stories of samurai battles are stories of cavalry charges and mounted warfare.

I'd read the Core Rulebook and Bestiary first. Rogues being able to sneak attack undead is one of major Pathfinder changes, and if you didn't know of it until this thread, there might be more surprises there for you, and you'd rather catch them before the game, not during.

That's me, speaking from my worthless 22 years of experience as a GM ;)

That's why those are human wax candles!

Considering that some of the most prominent groups in Kaer Maga are golem crafting casters, bloatmages and shady criminal organizations of all sorts, I believe a Kobold might find lots of opportunities where brains > brawn. It's not a "brutal pit fighter" city, it's a "weird outcast" city.

Say, a Kobold who works for troll augurs to ensure that they regenerate properly after each "vision", or as a "maintenance manager" for one of unead brothels.

3.5L just has a 7 Cha is all. :)

Actually, his profile says Cha 5. Guy sure knows how to dump stats for optimization! ;)

Gorbacz wrote:

You're looking at the game purely from design perspective. That's neat, but a publisher must also look from business perspective.

I understand that, but don't have to like it! And, really, with a robust multiclassing system, Paizo could still publish "50 Awesome Multiclass Combinations" and make a huge profit from it -- even if the whole thing would, from a crunch standpoint, be redundant.

Oh, I feel you. There are dozens of publisher-side things I'd love to be done my way (say, a Numeria AP right now instead of having good guys vs. demons, or maybe a bigger book on Cheliax, or perhaps NPC Codex 2 instead of Bestiary 4, yadda yadda). But overall, I've gotten so much bang for my bucks here that I can live with some things that don't float my boat. Especially if I can always mine fan-based/3PP material for solutions. And as long as I can get my players' character concepts realized, I care little if they're running a Cleric/Rogue, some 3.5 PrC, or Inquisitors. Whatever you need to get the job done. If I'm fixing my car I don't care if I'm using Producer's Official Replacement kit or WD40 and duct tape as long as it drives.

Tangentially: is there any 3PP multiclassing alternative out there?

Mikaze, I want your morphgendered tentacled Celestial slashfic so badly.

Gorbacz wrote:

What "focus"? The only "focus" I can see is that recently we found out who is the homosexual iconic. That's about as much "focus" as that we recently found out what the real fate of Baba Yaga's daughters is. Or where the Elves really come from. Or what's the next AP.

Count the pages of "homosexuality in golarion" now how many treads combined talk about any other major facet of character like race or religion. do the combined THREADS compare well to the PAGES on gay characters?

Ah, I see what your actual issue is. Your problem is that people enjoy debating sexuality. Well, sorry, no way you're going to thought police people around here, folks like talking about it, folks will talk about it. But that's nothing that Paizo is responsible for, unless your argument is "Paizo should exclude sexuality because including it makes people discuss it and I don't like seeing it discussed".

Good luck with that. Closing your eyes does not make things go away.

Gorbacz wrote:

Hey Andrew R, why aren't you offended by the fact that so many iconics are religious? I mean, by your logic one religious person among iconics is enough to cover all those christianislamjewsihwhatever out there, why shove religion down our throats? :)

If a large number of them were of one real religion i might start to wonder what they were pushing, same if the vast bulk were very anti religion. Instead they are a variety. And you may notice but not one is taking on a real life religion....

So, variety in religion is fine, variety in sexual orientation is bad?

Hey Andrew R, why aren't you offended by the fact that so many iconics are religious? I mean, by your logic one religious person among iconics is enough to cover all those christianislamjewsihwhatever out there, why shove religion down our throats? :)

Also, by the way.

Obese heroes? Bloatmages.

Furry fans? Lini has this covered on the "wildshapes into a big cat to snuggle her best friend big cat" level.

People with physical disabilities? Alahazra, the iconic Oracle, is blind.

Maybe because being obese or dressing in furry suits isn't a crime or target for hatred or discrimination round the world while race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and religiob most certainly are?

The forums are populated by a vocal minority of hyper-charged, passionate, obnoxius, knowledgeable and turbo-argumentative people who love to argue, such as myself. Most of the problems discussed here is pure theory brought up so that we can fight among ourselves. I wouldn't pay us much attention.

I hope it was me!

Look at it this way: in the very first Pathfinder adventure, Paizo wrote a LGBT paladin.

Not only was that against the "no icky sexual orientation stuff" unwritten policy of most D&D material, it also was a potential grenade into a gas tank full of "Paladins = Christianity therefore Paladins can't be homosexual as it's against their code" people.

Ever since, they printed dozens of LGBT iconics/NPCs/heroes/villains.

And if really the majority of gamers were against having this stuff in gaming material, Paizo wouldn't be the industry leader. It's capitalism. People vote with their money. If something is on the top, then it means that majority of the market embraces or doesn't give a flip.

Wohooo touchy touchy. Well, if you're calling the description of their LGBT attributes as "PC BS" that kind of constitutes your "coming out" as to what you really are despite all these refined words you're using.

I believe that 1E with it's 4 classes and lack of modern game design might be right up your alley.

Except for Cavalier (which isn't poor design, but just a bit ... meh) all the APG classes are neat and fill much needed niches (divine skill monkey? arcane-divine caster that doesn't require the pains of Mystic Theurge? Alchemist trope? Spontaneous divine caster? Pokemon trainer?).

My question is... why? What possible reason do the developers have for including transgender or sexual orientation in the back story? Considering pure statistics - out of 21 (or whatever) iconics it's most likely that at most only 1 (assuming golarion society reflects USA) are gay and none of them are transgender.

From another thread, it's pretty clear the consensus of gamers do not protray sex in their games (it's a fade to black moment even if it does occur).

James - I would love a real explanantion of why you would throw this out there? The majority of your gamers clearly don't need this for their games, and the rest smacks of PC running stupid.

Maybe because there's more to the world than just American rednecks and their narrow-minded view on things, perhaps.

Optimizers vs 3.5 Loyalist: Unstoppable Force vs Immovable Object

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is a very serious show with political, sexual, mortal and moral issues. Sometimes, it makes GoT look silly.

I blame Cosmo for the fact that insofar I wasn't able to complain that any package from Paizo arrived at my place damaged or mispacked*. In fact, that one time he was cool enough to confuse me with some guy in Greece and send me his order of a Pound'o'Dice.

* one shipment was delayed so badly that Cosmo sent me a replacement. The original one eventually arrived 6 months later, with strange burn marks and a faint whiff of brimstone.

I believe the term "minions" in question refers to avatars, heralds, helpers and underlings.

Also, being Good does not mean you can't be condescending ;-)

Gorbacz wrote:

I'm not seeing mistakes

Not our fault.

My second thesis: armchair theorycrafters go all this length just so that at the end of the day they can say "Well, I'm one of the few who can see the truth. All those unwashed masses, they are blind. But I have pierced the veil and learned the ways. I know what balance is. Now, why am I not working as a game designer? Ah, because I'm TOO GOOD AT IT."

;-)

Ah, Sincy, but at least having most of the topic about Cthulhu & Co. is a break from having most of the topic about what you like/don't like ;-)

With the US Presidents routinely forgetting about Poland, we need all the help we can get.

That's why 4E is now where it is (on the way out). It tried to change the paradigm and failed at oh so many levels. Turns out, folks don't want absolute balance. They mostly don't care for it. I strongly believe (that's my opinion, not statement of a fact, before somebody flips out) that 90% of D&D/PF player base doesn't give a flip about the things we're nerdraging here about. If an average D&D customer would mind the difference between axes and swords as much as we do, the game would die in a year and we wouldn't even be having this convo, because D&D would be a faint memory of past.

Yes, this makes us special snowflakes, I guess that's a consolation of sorts.

I wouldn't touch that campaign with a 10-foot pole.

Also, I advise you to purchase a 10-foot pole. Useful for probing pits, flagstones, murky liquids, and inevitable traps from a safe distance.

I really don't get this whole obsession D&D players have with abnormally tall citizens of Poland. Is this some Gary Gygax thing? Did some huge fellow called Zbigniew save Gary's life in a back alley of Chicago, and Gary felt obliged to immortalize that? I'll never cease to wonder.

Personally, I blame anime. Folks watch wuxia over-the-top fighting, come back to D&D and are amazed that Monks can't teleport across universes and throw punches that conjure meteors of death from 999th Hell or whatever. They want to go Ninja Scroll or Tekken and ooops, the system doesn't support that right out of the box.

I think that expectation of anime fans is one of the major drives of "D&D martials suck" movement. Of course, WotC didn't really help with throwing them a bone with ToB:Bo9s...

Eric Belisle wins the universe, as usual.

Taking Gary Gygax seriously is quite hard because he hardly ever took himself, his game or his rules too seriously.