Gorbacz's page

They're copy-pastes from 1E, not 3.5E. And the "let's get rid of nostalgia" argument doesn't hold much water with Paizo.

Gorbacz wrote:

archetypes cover that.

Like the archmage? :)

Archmage abilities were broken down into feats in APG.

They both do the same thing: swap out stuff from base class. Except that PrCs begin giving you the good stuff at level 6 at earliest, force you into specific builds for prerequisites and aren't nearly as universal as some think (if you're playing a sneak attack class you want a sneak attack PrC), and if you take them at any later level than 6, you're actually shooting yourself in the foot, since their class abilities were designed to match base classes at equivalent levels.

The only reason for their insane proliferation during the 3.5 era was that the core 3.5 classes were dull, devoid of options and full of dead levels. WotC decided to fix that by printing a zillion of PrCs, most of which were no-brainers for anybody with half a working brain cell (Frenzied Berserker! Abjurant Cheesecake! Ur-Priest!).

Paizo keeps PrCs to what they were actually intended to, meaning representation of membership in some groups (Hellknight, RMA) or some very specific, focused path (eg. the multiclass combo PrCs such as Battle Herald). But they're no longer a font for class variety, archetypes cover that.

Gorbacz wrote:

OK, I can roll with that. But now, at risk of following an annoying trend: JAMES JACOBS! Can I haz an Irori Paladin code cheezburger? 'Cause that leaves them as the only Paladins without their code spelled out as per Faiths of ... books.

Irori's paladins don't have an organized "knighthood," which is the main reason they're rare. They're individuals. That said... I thought that we put an Irori paladin code into the Dragon Empires Primer... I know I requested one to be in there...

I've triple-checked the Primer and no code there, alas. I'd be super-happy if you guys could whip one up and post it here or even better ... blogify it for all to see!

Gorbacz wrote:

So... first Faiths of Balance tells us that the only Neutral deity to have paladin followers is Abadar. We get the code and stuff.

Then we have Tide of Honor which gives us SKR's article on Irori (no paladins mentioned, monks, clerics and druids mentioned as clergy) and the adventure itself gives us... a paladin of Irori.

Is this an oversight in axing out the adventure writer's inconsistency with canon, OR are there any paladins of Irori after all?

Oversight on Sean's part, I suspect. There ARE paladins of Irori. Not a lot. Very few, in fact. But they exist.

OK, I can roll with that. But now, at risk of following an annoying trend: JAMES JACOBS! Can I haz an Irori Paladin code cheezburger? 'Cause that leaves them as the only Paladins without their code spelled out as per Faiths of ... books.

Prestige Classes suck.

Archetypes rock.

I'm on a horse.

*sigh* June. Oh well, more time to build up money for this!

The problem with a hardcover book of villains would be that it wouldn't be of much use for anybody who doesn't run Golarion... and making such a book setting-neutral makes little sense for Paizo.

One thing that could help flesh out a Code of Conduct and flavor for Irori paladins is seeing how they would differentiate from paladins of the Empyreal Lord Korada.

As for going non-canon, when canon gets in the way of fun for you and your group, break it. Campaign settings are like untouched music tracks and sound samples. GMs and players are remixers. They can make some awesome and fresh material with those tracks.

Not me, I take perverse joy in making sure that the games I run are going by the letter according to the written canon, and any contradictions/deviations I find in it drives me nutty. It goes by the book, or it gets the hose again.

Yes, I am a lawyer. It's a professional thing.

Yes, that's why I groan at you so often, Mik ;-P

What you are looking for is the Rival Guide.

I'm sure that those of Aretas-esque mentality will be overjoyed to know that the money from their purchases here (heck, even not just purchases - website traffic boosts page rankings etc) will help fund the champagne on wedding parties of Paizo's non-heterosexual employees (yep, there are quite a few of them). It will be the ultimate in poetic justice.

Just make sure you let me know when that happens folks, I'll be ready to cover myself in peanut butter and roll around in all my commie liberal pinko glory.

No thanks, looks like you need them more than I (for all that drool coming off your fangs).

Kleenex doesn't cut it any more, I need somebody with a suction tube around me at all times...

Of course, it's been my experience that, in general, liberals are MUCH quicker to enter "Attack Mode".

We're also quick to eat babies and violate puppies.

Houstonderek and Scott Betts side by side. AND they're both making sense, too! What Mike Mearls couldn't do, marriage equality achieved. The walls are coming down, they truly are.

If it has racial hit dice, then it gains all of the features of its creature type. The only reason tieflings and aasimar came under discussion at all, is because they have no racial hit dice (taking class levels instead) and people were concerned that it would be overpowered for them to have martial weapon proficiencies as wizards (which is ridiculous).

Sadly, the game developers sided with those who thought they shouldn't have such things.

The lines of what 0 HD certain outsiders did and didn't get suddenly became blurred. I complained about this, citing it would cause problems in the future but the developers brushed me off saying something or less like "we've made out ruling in regards to aasimar and tieflings, which is all that matters right now; should we make other 0 HD outsiders, well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

You want a kleenex to wipe those tears away?

Actually, Irori's faith is very selfish - it's all about becoming the perfect you, everything else around is relevant only if it relates to one's quest of self-improving. So there's not much to protect, defend and selflessly sacrifice oneself to - Abadar gets Paladins because shielding the civilization against danger is something quite in line with Paladin ethos...oh snap, this is becoming... *A PALADIN THREAD*!!!! Run, before Kelsey finds us!

Yeah, it's not a paradigm-shattering as PoA's, but still, I have a player looking after a "funky paladin" idea, currently he's on Shelyn, but if he hears of Irorian Pals he'll be all over it and I do hate running a non-canon Golarion. It makes me feel dirrrrty.

Crypt of Everflame is an "intro" module written with introducing new people in mind.

No.

So... first Faiths of Balance tells us that the only Neutral deity to have paladin followers is Abadar. We get the code and stuff.

Then we have Tide of Honor which gives us SKR's article on Irori (no paladins mentioned, monks, clerics and druids mentioned as clergy) and the adventure itself gives us... a paladin of Irori.

Is this an oversight in axing out the adventure writer's inconsistency with canon, OR are there any paladins of Irori after all?

Oh, and I was wondering when the "Male Witches Are/Aren't Warlocks!" will make a comeback...

I, for one, am happy that Paizo's resources will be diverted to product lines I am more interested in.

Nah, it's just, there's a rhythm to this, and it throws off my groove when things get twisted.

Fighters Suck
Monks are OP
Smite Evil is Evil
Rogues are Useless
Paladin Alignment
PF 2E
Roll-play vs. Role-play
Point-buy or Rolling
Edition War
etc etc.

It's like forum feng shui, things got to be aligned right, y'know?

You forgot:

James Jacobs, is this true: 2+2=4? ANSWER NOW!

No.

Remember guys, the fact that WotC let Dario float with his Pact Magic books does not mean that Paizo wouldn't get a cease & desist the moment anything remotely near closed content would pop up in a Pathfinder book.

I'm not just addicted. I'm just a rabid, unapologetic, loud-mouthed fanboy. Sic me at 'em, be them Fans of Former Industry Leader, Denists, 3.5 Loyalists or American Fascists.

Nyan nyan!

Laithoron wrote:

Also, if you redo the exploration part, for the love of all that is holy, double-check your math for hex sizes! :P

In Paizo's defense, its really easy for errors to creep in and go unnoticed, regardless of how much editing you do. The Book of Beasts: Monsters of the Shadow Plane is a prime example. While I was the only writer on the project, I had NINE crunch editors. Some were among the best crunch converters at d20PFSRD.com and one goes to MIT. No one caught every mistake. Infact, the game is so rules heavy, we had discussions about is A correct or is B correct. Both were seemingly right according to the rules at first glance. It was more of a question of which was more right for this exact instance. Despite all that editing, I know the book isn't perfect. And that's a 48 page book. Blow that up to 256 pages and ... you get the idea.

Short of the long: errors happen, no matter how much editing you do.

Yeah, and then people rate books 1/5 due to "zillions of errors" and bash companies for poor editing. Figures.

-Christmas lay-offs? Seriously? O_o

Yeah, WotC has a sanctified tradition of firing random employees every December without prior warning. Recently that hit folks such as Jonathan Tweet and Bill Slaviscek. Severance packages are, of course, generous.

It's part of their corporate identity at this point.

That's because there are no rules for all the ways guns would wreck their users faces with magic in the picture.

Just like there are no rules for all the ways magic would wreck everybody's faces if there wasn't a considerable amount of suspension of disbelief on all accountable sides of the discussion.

Physics are not compatible with high fantasy. Please stop using gravity in your games.

Edit: GAH! Pathfinder Online forum?! Gorb, warn me next time!

Achievement Unlocked: Got TOZ To Post in PFO Forum.

Great blog.

I think the OP has a party of 9 levl 10 chars, in which case a CR 90 threat is somewhat over the top ;)

A party of nine level 10 characters is APL...say...12, so a CR 15-16 encounter is going to make them sweat already.

You know what do inches conjure with me? The talk about the size of a man's, erm, "hammer". Now how's that for immersion breaking?

Small subsystems are OK, but campaign-spanning ones seldom work, due to the sheer amount of variables that the players can bring to a table.

The caravan rules in JR were really misplaced. For all the buzz and space taken in player's guide we got:

Adventure 1: Not really much use of them, but that's understandable.
Adventure 2: So yeah you get from point A to B and that's it.
Adventure 3: The Great Caravan Rules Story
Adventure 4: See adventure 2, and even less so.
Adventure 5: "Well this is about time you should forget about the caravan altogether".

"Mini-games" are great if they're about things such as earning respect from hostile locals, surviving stranded on an island, running a play/trial, chasing across rooftops or playing a game of wicked bloodsports, all tied to one specific adventure but open-ended enough for an enterprising GM to use in his own games. In all above examples, those mini-systems worked great.

The real problem with SS is that it's boring, especially from adventure 3 on.

My feelings? It's vaporware, and all those Monte/Mike columns are a smokescreen set up so that they can frantically prepare a ruleset that gives them any sliver of hope for competing against the Industry Leader.

I've considered that, but then I've had a nightmare of Mike Mearls eating a hamburger while wearing a t-shirt with "it's from your money, sucker".

If Pathfinder is so popular an RPG

FTFY.

Thanks for the reply. I understand how businesses work (all too well for some) it was just something about the "steps that we can't talk about yet" that seemed odd to me. Usually companies don't make announcements about their internal processes at all and that sounds like what you were talking about, announcing new "steps" in the AP development process. It seemed odd to me that you would be talking about that ever let alone at a specific time in the future is all, but I probably just misunderstood something.

At risk of igniting an edition war, imagine it's 2010 and WotC shouts out "hey you all 4E players, we've just decided we're working on a new edition!". Not the best business move possible :)

Nerf Loladins, buff Warlocks.

Yeah I was thinking the same. The plot of TWL is just too funky to let that lie around.

Here's the thread that started it all.

And here's a blog of a gaijin encountering Pathfinder at Japanese conventions.

My nerdy friends who live in Japan say that with 4E making a non-show in Japan and Paizo's gratuitous use of OGL for the entire crunch, Pathfinder hit it really high over there, owing to the fact that not exactly many Western RPGs get translated.

It's a wonderfully great thing to see gamers coming together to help a fellow gamer. You guys are awesome!

Well, the Japanese Pathfinder community is super cool/creepy. They have translated *every* bit of open content for PF and maintain at a special webpage.

Turns out that Pathfinder is super popular in Japan as a result, and leads to wonderful/scary stuff such as this.

Gorbacz wrote:

"Furanfu" sounds even better than "Flumph"... :)

how to do pronounce "Gorbacz"?

GOR-bah-CH

"Furanfu" sounds even better than "Flumph"... :)

Vampires: see Classic Horrors Revisited
Liches: see Undead Revisited

Sean K Reynolds wrote:

What I really need is...

...Pathfinder 2.0 in which you all can have the freedom to actually fix things right instead of layering band-aid on top of band-aid on top of gauze on top of dirty old layers of other bandages.

Where "to actually fix things right" means "do what I would do, cause I'm a pr0 designer and stuff and my ideas are the best".

Yawn.

Is that even possible?

Well yeah, I should have phrased that "less page per snark".