And it's kind of a catch-22 that if EVERYONE "waits" for the reprint to come along, we won't sell through our current stock and thus won't NEED to reprint it.
Because when I play just the fighter, everybody expects me to be a meatshield. In a new group with bad players and DMs, with their wizards taking down everything with spells, and I can't do anything, it's annoying.
Oh look, we're fighting our 20th giant. I'm so glad I get to do something except to be healed back above 0.
Well... to a certain extent, the fighter's role IS to be a "meatshield." He can do damage, but he can withstand a lot of damage, and that allows other classes (not just the wizard and sorcerer, but also the rogue) who can do lots of damage to actually do what they do best. Which is dish out the hurt. Even the barbarian's got a pretty bad AC. The fighter's kinda supposed to be as much a defensive character as he is offensive.
If you want to play the character who's unleashing the damage, the fighter is, ironically, not always the best choice.
Whatever happened to the idea that one player's the fighter and one player's the wizard and they work together to fight dragons? Why the need to have one class that does everything?
A class like this works MUCH better in a game where there's one or maybe two players. But in a group of four to six players... I'm not so sure...
I'm not trying to jerk, and my patronage to Paizo has been rock solid since PF AP#1. It's just to maintain that level of patronage, James, I need to tell you want I can and can't do. Replacing that book before it's two years old is just too much. If y'all can sweat it out till Autumn 2010 and I won't have such a problem with it.
Well... honestly, the thing that's REALLY going to tell us when to get this book out is when we sell out of the current printing of the campaign setting hardcover. Which is coming up faster than anyone here at Paizo thought (probably because of the success of the RPG)... which is why I'm starting to kick the notion around here on the boards to gauge reactions to the various options. Having our core campaign setting out of print for more than a couple of months is not good, and if we sell out well before Gen Con 2010 (which is looking VERY likely)... the book'll probably be out sooner than even I think.
+1, While the Poster map is nice, it isn't practical to use for quick reference. There isn't a smaller version of that map anywhere in the book, which makes it hard to determine things like country locations in relation to each other.
This is a really good idea.
How about showing a rough guide to prevailing winds and climate on it?
This is also a good idea, but far less likely to manifest. it'd be great to have maps that show prevailing winds and climates, trade routs, continental plates and fault lines, longitude and latitude, ethnicity spreads, migration patterns, resources, and a whole lot more. There won't be enough room for that many maps though. We're gonna have to pick and chose the best and most useful ones. And there's a pretty good chance we'll only be able to pick and choose the BEST one.
I guess I'm happy that the community is blessed with enough abundance right now to call for a revision of a book that is now roughly 15 months old.
I'd still like to see the book make to at least two years, before it's updated with new content.
Same here. In fact, i would have liked to see the book make it to FIVE years. But honestly... the book was rushed, has a lot of embarrassing errors, didn't get the time it needed in development, and is written for a now out-of-print rules set. We don't really have a choice but to rebuild it, I think.
Of course... by the time the next version of the book is on shelves... it might well be over 2 years old...
All of the editorial staff uses Microsoft Word to read and edit and write and develop stuff. Furthermore, using a text, doc, or RTF file prevents you from getting too fancy. We're interested ONLY in words at this stage, and PDFs in my experience tempt authors to get too fancy with layout and fonts and treatments. That stuff just gets in the way.
We also use Macs at Paizo, so keeping the file document formats narrow helps to avoid PC vs. Mac conflicts.
+1, While the Poster map is nice, it isn't practical to use for quick reference. There isn't a smaller version of that map anywhere in the book, which makes it hard to determine things like country locations in relation to each other.
Just a question... is 68 pages a magic number from nowhere (other than size of Bestiary) or are there standard pages that a book must be?.
It kind of is a magic number; the way printing works, books are made in signatures of a specific number of pages and going off of those numbers causes all sorts of problems. Increasing the size to match the Bestiary is a good idea not only because we know it can be done but because having standardized sizes for books is good as well.
So can a player request the DM use his perform ranks for skill challenges?
ei. If BingoBard has no ranks in Sense Motive and someone tries to Bluff Bingo, can bingo expect the DM will use his Oratory Perform skill for the challenge? Or is he just out of luck?
Also can we come up with a mechanic to move skill points out of skills made obsolete? How bout:
In the level you activate the versatile performance in question you may move your skill points out of the duplicated skills into other skills, subject to level and other game limitations.
Playing with big holes in your skillset for 12 levels to avoid waste is hard and no fun.
Sigurd
The whole POINT of Versatile Performance is to free up the bard's skill ranks to let him get more bang for his buck. If you have a Versatile Performance that lets you Bluff, then ANY time your character needs to make a Bluff check he can instead make the appropriate Perform check. A GM that doesn't let a bard do so should have a reason and should let the players know that... same as how if a GM decides that wizards can't use ANY weapon or barbarians can't wear ANY armor, he should tell the players.
What I do want to see is support for the APG material. If an epic level handbook comes out, I want to see support for the 6 classes in the APG in it, if there is a book of spells, or savage species kind of book, again i want to see (where applicable) the APG classes get treatment in there too.
Same here. And cutting the APG pipe off at one book is a great reason for this: we don't want to overwhelm US either with too many new rules. We want to be able to expand upon and use the new classes and options, after all, and doing too many of these types of books will outpace our ability to support them.
Oh thought of something else:
Para-Elementals, Quasi-Elementals and "Energy" Elementals (Zagyi & Yizag). I second 8th Dwarf's idea if the Mega-Fauna. James I appreciate that your company is also going to concentrate on "real world" mythologies and cryptids. Hopefully you will include "Anthro-Cryptids" (ala Saquatch et al.)
We've already got a LOT of megafauna in the Bestairy. We won't be stopping at the smilodon or the mammoth, though, I guarentee that.
As for various flavors of elementals... we'll probably do a few more, but I don't really want to waste TOO much space on differently-flavored elementals because flavor-wise they're kind of boring. Needless to say the concepts start to creep into non-open content here and there (such as with the xeg-ya and xag-yi).
Nilbogs (c'mon. Are you telling me Paizo can't kick seven kinds of ass with Nilbogs based on YOUR goblins?).
Perhaps... but the fact that their game mechanic is little more than a "let's trick the players ha ha won't that be funny ha ha" and that petty and goofy attitude is carried over in the monster's very name, "ha ha isn't this witty nilbog is goblin spelled backwards ha ha get it ha ha this game isn't worth taking seriously so let's just make a big joke of it all ha ha ha." AKA: Nilbogs represent a disrespectful approach to the game that I'm not interested in perpetuating in Pathfinder. I'd rather take the creative energy we'd expend on "fixing" nilbogs and use that energy on something I think is worth the effort. (Which is pretty much ANYthing else. Wolves-in-sheep's-clothing and flail snails and dire corbies and flumphs included.)
Yeah... it's a lot easier to say a city is lawful neutral than to say a city is populated by citizens who adhere to the law and there is not a lot of crime because the laws are strictly enforced and the rulers are more interested in maintaining these laws than they are in doing what's best for the people, but they DO make a safe place to live for the people.
Giving a city an alignment is a fancy, convenient, two-letter way to summarize that city's personality. It doesn't REPLACE details, but it does let the reader know what he's gonna be getting.
K, so now I'm getting sort of interested myself. Could this be something like a sticked thread or something along that lines, so people notice it (a lot of the time threads get lost)? And, would it be a bother to say, have someone a Pazio's consider it after a period of time, like if the community agrees on a final design lets say around the time the APG comes out. Then state if they'll adopt it or not based class suitable for PS on the a glance over at that time? Or am I asking for too much? Sorry for putting you on the spot.
We reserve the "sticky" power for threads that truly need to be on everyone's radar. And a thread like this one isn't something that we think needs to be stickied; too many sticky threads ruin the whole point of sticky threads, after all, and there's nothing about this one that I think puts it above every other thread here. Feel free to continue with the discussion, but since the EARLIEST Paizo'd be able to actually move on releasing a base class like this at this point (assuming we'd want to do so, of course) is in 2011; we've got our schedule for 2010 already more or less nailed down and THAT (and the last bit of 2009) is what we're focusing our design and development and editing on right now.
Folks have made their desires for an arcane warrior type class pretty clear, and it's certainly something we'll be talking about on and off at Paizo for some time to come, but we're not going to drop what we're doing now with APG and the Adventure Path and the other book lines to switch gears to start working or seriously considering this new base class for some time.
One place that MIGHT be an interesting place to approach for this material, though, would be Kobold Quarterly. If I recall correctly, Wolfgang's always looking for new Pathfinder articles.
If WotC doesn't put something into open content, it belongs to them. I'm not a lawyer so maybe Paizo could find a loophole in that given it seems to be an issue with layout, but then there's the possibility of legal action, and Hasbro/WotC has far deeper pockets for lawyer's fees, whatever the actual legal merits of the dispute. Paizo is far better off working to avoid the whole issue.
Maybe we'll get an update to the book as of such time as the people at Paizo are happy with their own style of layout and information.
Presenting city stat blocks and rules like that is not something we can easily squeeze into an update of the Pathfinder RPG. It'd take a few pages; it does in the 3.5 DMG after all. There's just no room in the core RPG for it without, say removing something equally significant.
The Gamemastery Guide is the best place for it, and if we build the rules so that they're self-explanatory in the stat block itself we don't have to worry about reprinting those rules when we use them in other products after all.
Might I lend a suggestion then. (Directed at Benn)
Why not start an open project, right here on the message boards, for an unofficial, to hopefully be adopted as official base gish-like class, fo pathfinder.
It would not be one persons idea per-say, but a collection of ideas and design philosophies from multiple individuals. The goal would be to develop it to the point that Paizo's adopts it as a full on class, releasing a free pdf made up of a cleaned up finalized version as a design, and of course released as fully pathfinder society compatible.
What do you say (Liza, Eric, Jason) would you all support a community project like that.
A class-by-committee is a fine idea. I'm skeptical that design-by-committee can actual work, though, and would be more interested in seeing how a project like this pans out than I would be in seeing the final results of the design process, actually.
In any event, this isn't really a design route that Paizo's interested in taking. We made the Pathfinder rules completely open so that anyone could do just this if they wanted, and could create expansions that they wanted to see created and even sell them for profit. If someone creates something truly awesome we might adapt it/adopt it into a book, but we don't have time to dedicate much participation in such a project or review/approve final results.
Feel free to try out a project like this, is what I'm saying, but beyond maybe some idle feedback on the boards from a Paizo staffer we don't really have the resources or the desire to take part in this officially. After all... if/when we DO decide to do a class like this we're more likely to build it completely in house and then put it up for playtesting like we're doing with the new base classes. That's what we pay folks to do, after all.
And yet everyone including James Jacobs is only hearing(or reading) FUll MAGIC AND FULL FIGHTER. Which is not what has ever been asked for. Just a good combo class that fits the mold and is different then the Bard who for several reasons already pointed out doesn't work. I don't want to have to take UMD to cast combat spells.
Actually, this is completely incorrect. I came in here thinking folks wanted a full magic/full combat class but when some folks said they basically wanted something like an arcane ranger, I agreed that'd be a good class but that we don't have any plans for a class like that yet. getting defesnive and panicking won't help anything. Rest assured that I do indeed understand that some folks on this thread are asking for something less over-the-top than a full magic/full combat class. I hear you.
Although everytime someone calls the concept a "gish" it becomes harder and harder to hear you... that word sucks. :-P
In it's defense, the arcane archer was a great reflection on the attunement of elven blood to the practise of magic. On the flip side, I never saw any complaints about the fact that Dwarven Defender was restricted to dwarves, because the class concept and execution was so "dwarflike"
Instead of removing the unique qualities of this class, consider creating other race-themed classes which exemplify the unique racial qualities the way Arcane Archer and Dwarven Defender did.
That's more of a campaign specific thing though... elves being good at archery. Dwarven defender should probably not be limited to dwarves either, to tell the truth. Anyway, removing the race restrictions doesn't meany you CAN'T have elven arcane archers... and there can certainly be text in the prestige class writeup that says "most arcane archers are elves." But it's unnecessary limiting a requirement otherwise.
Advanced Player's Guide II: To include extra classes like Warlock, Blackguard, Ninja; and an alternate Divine Spellcasting System (I dislike that arcane and divine magic are basically the same...I think they should be very different).
Actually... if all goes according to our current plan, there won't be a need for Advanced Player's Guide II. We hope to be able to say all we need to say in one book, and don't WANT to set a precedent of doing a new one of these every year.
why are elves the sole arcane archers? i beleive the "Elf" requirment should be dropped. is it a typo? possibly a copy pasta error? what if somebody wanted a human, dwarven or halfling arcane archer? a gnomish or orcish one? or even a Tiefling or Aasimaar one? that needs to be errataed. the other "X Race only" classes were dropped or had thier racist requirements removed.
It's actually a holdover from the 3.5 version of the game. And I agree... it SHOULD be removed. Limiting arcane archer to elves only is kind of frustrating, and I suspect that we'll be errating that so that any race can qualify for the class. In the meantime... feel free to make orc and halfling and nixie and succubus arcane archers!
I think it goes without saying that I would jump all over an expanded Campaign Setting. The canon lawyer in me is a little afraid of drastic retcons that mess with setting continuity, but if it means getting an extra 60+ pages of new content, I guess I can deal with that.
Well... we'd certainly do our damndest to avoid having to retcon anything in this case. I'd LOVE to try to do this without having to lose ANYthing. Which is certainly possible. (Despite my half-serious bashing of Alkenstar and dwarves and the Goop and the like, when it comes to revisions I'll try hard to rebuild stuff so that it works better with the whole setting rather than cut stuff wholesale.)
James my only big problem with monsters in Campaign books or really any other books is, well hunting around for them. Remember which book had which monsters in them. Thats why my hope is to eventually see all the monsters from the AP's and other books eventually end up in bestiaries. I would like to be able to just have a few books full of monsters so I can easily find them.
Don't get me wrong I love the monsters in the AP's and other places but it is already starting to get to be a bit of a pain to remember what book they are all in. i am just thinking what it will be like in another year or two years and trying to remember which AP had the monster I wanted to use. Know what I mean?
I do. Which is why putting the specifically Golarion monsters in the Golaarion hardcover makes sense.
That said, I think an online index of all our monsters, spells, magic items, and what not would be a good thing for us to get put together before that list of monsters becomes too hard to manage.
The only thing I'd be trepidatious about is adding monsters, unless their really Golarion specific or iconic, I don't see the need for them in the Campaign Setting book, they suit just fine in the AP and Bestiaries.
I really would LOVE there to be a monster section in the Campaign Setting book... but the monsters we'd pick up from other books if we did something like this would by necessity be monsters that are DEEPLY tied into Golarion's history and world. Treerazer's an excellent example of something we might put in a monster section of this book, as is the mother of oblivion, the runeslave, the daughter of Urgathoa, the witchwyrd, the emkrah, Xotani the Firebleeder, and the strix. Basically, monsters that more or less can't exist as well if we strip out their ties to Golarion elements, or monsters that have a pretty large role in Golarion that we'd need to see in print ASAP in the PFRPG format.
There's really not a lot of them, if my quick perusal of Pathfinders #1–#27 is any indication. We could probably get away with doing only 16 pages of monsters, in fact.
BUT that said, I've always been fan of seeing new monsters in Campaign Settings, and I know I can't be the only gamer out there who bought entire campaign settings just to get access to a handful of new monsters! :P
The class substitutions are very likely to go away entirely, actually, since several of them were worked into the Pathfinder class redesigns, a few are no longer necessary, and some are going to be incorporated into the Advanced Player's Guide. In fact, the classes section in an "expanded" reprint would be quite likely to shrink drastically in size, down to advice on how these classes function in Golarion and with different art.
I have to agree with this, though I did like the 3.5 MM that had the basic versions of the monsters and then some of them had beefed up versions alongside them.
We won't be doing that either; I'd rather fill higher CR slots with new monsters.
Folks looking for monsters with class levels, actually, need look no further than our modules and adventure paths. Using those as sources for stat blocks for your home games is a GREAT way to get use out of a module or adventure you don't intend on running, and it's an often-overlooked aspect and value of adventures.
I have a request for stuff NOT to show up. Please do not create Bestiary entries that are just existing monsters with class levels, like a lot of MM IV and V were...
A book of creatures with class levels, or simply a book of NPC humanoids with class levels, is a really good idea. We'll have a LOT of this stuff in the Gamemastery Guide and in the NPC guide. This type of content is NOT appropriate for a Bestairy, and it won't be showing up in our monster books. The closest you'll see it come will be cases like goblins and orcs (creatures without racial HD who HAVE to have a level in a class... and in these cases we'll never have more than one level on that creature) and templates (like the lich, ghost, and vampire, in which case we'll use the class that most closely fits the standard archetype of the monster template in question).
Dragon Age's graphics aren't cutting edge... it's true. But then, neither are the special effects in Jaws these days... it's still one of the best movies ever made.
AKA: Gameplay and story and immersion, in my opinion, can always trump graphics if they're good enough. Likewise, great graphics can make a game that's otherwise dull and cliche fun. It's really hard to get a situation where EVERYthing in a game functions at full awesome, especially since getting the gameplay and story and immersion in a game like Dragon Age takes so long to perfect that by the time it's done, the fast moving world of graphics presentation has already moved on.
Charles's brings up an interesting notion in my mind.
Demons are overwhelming emotion fueled by evil.
Devils are overwhelming logic fueled by evil.
Following this, when you roleplay a demon or devil, get all logical with the devils (like an evil vulcan or a messageboard poster who uses the tactic of point-by-point rebuttals of an argument to prove his point), and all emotional with demons (like an evil klingon or a messageboard poster who violently and passionately clings to his opinions without bothering to look at other posts).
Not that I'm saying messageboards are like Hell and the Abyss. At least, I don't THINK that's what I'm saying. :-P
LoL.
So does that make the Mods Angels, Azatas or Agathons?
Or worse still are they Daemons?
Mods are, of course, deities. Some of them can be devils or demons (like Asmodeus or Lamashtu), but at that point they transcend petty demonic and devilish squabbles and have their own deal.
This is the ideal updated edition. What I would ask is that it's kept as a separate sku on the pathfinder store so those of us wanting to order it (and not the original) can get it.
If we go this route, it will indeed be a separate SKU. Since it's a separate book at this point, after all.
One thing though, please don't pare down the Hellknight. I know it takes extra pages, but your adding many, and having two Hellknight PrC's is just the beginning of a slide into repetition and redundancy in PrC's and rules bloat. Not to mention confusion over which Hellknight prestige class is being used.
But I was on the fence, yet would absolutely buy that, maybe even through in a paragraph each on how the APG base classes fit into Golarion (no need for the full two page treatment, but it'd be a nice touch, and you said in another thread you'd like to put it somewhere, where better than this?).
If we expand the book to 328 pages or whatever, we won't NEED to pare down the Hellknight. Reason #23 why it's better to do that than simply reprint the book as-is, I say!
I've been reading through Book of the Damned Vol. I: Princes of Darkness (Hell is cool again!) and there's one thing I've been wondering about throughout the book - unique devils. Now, the book mentions somewhere that the infernal nobility (such as the Infernal Dukes and the Whore Queens) are unique devils and it seems to be implied (to me at least) that the only unique devils in Hell are either dukes, whore queens, or archfiends.
Is that a correct interpretation?
For the most part, yes. There's probably additional unique devils under the CR 20 range, but they are, well, unique. If and when they show up in adventures, we'll stat 'em up, but they're pretty fantastically rare. For the most part, if a devil is unique and worth calling out, they're pretty powerful.
Another option is, of course, available. We could just do a straight up reprint of the book. Update the rules to work more fluidly with Pathfinder but not make any adjustments to the actual contents of the book except where ABSOLUTELY necessary (this would probably result in replacing the domains on page 159 with the big table of deity information from the inside front cover of Gods & Magic, and replacing the Pathfinder Chronicler prestige class with a pared-down-from Pathfinder #27 Hellknight class), and then just release that as a reprint. The resulting book would be close to identical to the current hardcover, with errata and typos fixed, and since this book would be pretty much the same it'd be treated as a mere reprint—no special treatment at all to subscribers (with the possible exception of granting access to the updated PDF).
Frankly, this route, while probably the "safest" in regards to annoying customers who don't want to feel like we're trying to "trick" them into buying a new version, feels hollow to me. We have a MUCH better grip on our world now, and we have a hearty and healthy rulesset to attach to it—I think that a version with an additional 68 pages (bringing it up to about Bestiary size) with its information reorganized (placing all feats into a "Feats" chapter rather than scattering them throughout the book, for example), would result in a MUCH stronger book. Of course, that extra 68 pages wouldn't all be new material—much of it would probably be reprinted and updated to the new rules from older sources (I suspect about half of those pages would be Golarion-specific monsters taken from the first 24 volumes of Pathfinder, updated to work with the PRPG rules, for example) but some would be brand new content.
That WOULD, I suspect, annoy some customers who already bought the Hardcover, even though the new version of the book wouldn't really contradict anything in the first printing—it'd just add more details and more options. This is, in any event, the route I vastly prefer to take with the book—I certainly hope that we'd be able to swing some sort of discounted PDF or something to folks who bought the original but I'm not sure that's possible, and even if it weren't I'd probably decide that the advantages of having a more definitive Campaign book in print that works with the world as we know it now and the rules we currently have outweigh the backlash from disappointed customers. I wouldn't feel GREAT about that decision, of course, but making hard decisions like that is part of what I get paid to do.
Anyway, thanks for all your feedback, folks! Keep it coming, and I'll do what I can to make the transition to the reprinted book as painless as possible while making sure that the reprinted book is something that we (and I) at Paizo can be proud of serving as the core book for our core campaign setting.
In the first adventure of Curse of the Crimson Throne, one of the initial bad guys the PCs go up against is one of the Vancaskerkin brothers, a man who isn't quite gone so far as to be irredeemable.
There are elements of Runelord activity in all three of the first adventure paths. Rise of the Runelords is obvious, but in Curse of the Crimson Throne, the city of Korvosa is built on the site that once held the capital of Xin-Eurythnia and the main villain of that AP (Queen Illeosa) is using magic perfected long ago by Runelord Sorshen to gain immortality and eternal youth. And in Second Darkness, much of the drow plans revolve around investigating and mastering ancient Thassilonian magic left behind by Runelord Karzoug.
The magical disease that strikes Korvosa in the second adventure of Curse of the Crimson Throne was created from the hideous contagion that came to be in the depths of Foxglove Manor, explored by the PCs in "Skinsaw Murders."
Ameiko Kaijitsu's cousin Amaya has a cameo role in "Bastards of Erebus" (not one of the first three adventures, of course, but still a connection).
The mayor of Westcrown (again, from Council of Thieves) is the uncle of Queen Illeosa, the main villainess of Curse of the Crimson Throne.
Foxglove has a sister living in Korvosa, although she doesn't play a role really in Curse of the Crimson Throne.
Shalelu the elven ranger has an important role in both Rise of the Runelords and in Second Darkness.
The Thassilonian technique of imprisoning evil outsiders in a structure to provide long-lasting power for the structure, as revealed in "Hook Mountain Massacre," plays an important role in Council of Thieves.
There's more, but those are the big ones that come to mind for me.
Charles's brings up an interesting notion in my mind.
Demons are overwhelming emotion fueled by evil.
Devils are overwhelming logic fueled by evil.
Following this, when you roleplay a demon or devil, get all logical with the devils (like an evil vulcan or a messageboard poster who uses the tactic of point-by-point rebuttals of an argument to prove his point), and all emotional with demons (like an evil klingon or a messageboard poster who violently and passionately clings to his opinions without bothering to look at other posts).
Not that I'm saying messageboards are like Hell and the Abyss. At least, I don't THINK that's what I'm saying. :-P
Blech, Bards. No singing and/or dancing crap, please.
ALSO: Some of us (particularly editors in chief) really really like bards, and get bristly when folks call them "Crap" and the like. Just sayin'. :P
I'm just troll...er, pushing buttons with comments along those lines. I actually very much like what you've done with the Bard class; it is an awesome support class and buffing beast, and I mourn mine that perished in our game 2 or 3 sessions ago.
However I feel that trying to fit the idea of the good old Fighter/Mage archetype into a Bard character is like trying to squeeze the proverbial square peg into the round hole.
I obviously disagree. If you said, "a fighter/mage who specializes in flashy fireball type spells or a fighter/necromancer," then yeah. But a fighter/mage who specializes in illusions or enchantments? The bard fits the bill quite well. And if all it takes to make the bard fit the bill even better is to do some variants to the spell list... that's an attractive option as well.
But yeah; a bard who focuses on spells like confusion and domination and charm and mirror image and invisibility and the like makes for a pretty good combat menace. They don't HAVE to sit in the background buffing their allies and supporting their friends.
I see what you are saying, and I can see how the Bard can be fashioned to fit that niche, but as I said above (in an edit, I apologize) I, and I would imagine many of the others who are constantly asking for this type of class, would be perfectly happy with a class that has Bard-style progression options, but some flavorful extras that fit more of the classic Fighter/Mage theme.
Well then! I suspect that they'll probably be pretty happy with some of the variant bard class abilities and stuff we'll be doing in Advanced Player's Guide. I can't say much about them now, of course... but stay tuned!
Blech, Bards. No singing and/or dancing crap, please.
So make a bard who's a storyteller or a military commander who enables his bardic performances via Perform (oratory). Problem solved.
If folks are indeed asking for an arcane ranger or something like that, then I think that it's only a matter of time before we build a base class along those lines. In my experience, though, this is NOT what folks are asking for. They're looking back at how multiclassing worked in 1st or 2nd edition and wanting something like that, which works more like how Unearthed Arcana's gestalt classes worked. And that option is so cheesy and invalidates so much of the balance and design work we've done and the 3rd edition designers have done that I'm just very very very opposed to the idea, really.
But yeah, the concept of an "arcane ranger" is pretty compelling.
ALSO: Some of us (particularly editors in chief) really really like bards, and get bristly when folks call them "Crap" and the like. Just sayin'. :P
Instead, if you want to be a fighter/wizard, you have to sacrifice something. And that something is basically a delay to your abilities.
I wholeheartedly agree on this concept, I just disagree with your thought that the Bard, Eldritch Knight, Dragon Disciple, or Arcane Archer cover the entirety of the Fighter/mage concept in the same manner as the Paladin or Ranger cover the old Fighter/Cleric theme.
I think that the bard, eldritch knight, etc. give their associated multiclass options MORE power and options than a paladin or ranger does for a fighter/cleric or fighter/druid. The spells that paladins and rangers get are more akin to flavor and minor class abilities. Their spellcasting doesn't DEFINE the class the way a truly multiclassed spellcaster's powers are defined by a combination of spellcasting and fighting.
So it's okay to create a "fighter/cleric" hybrid, but not a "fighter/mage"? Paladins are okay, but duskblades are overpowered? That makes sense how? What I would like to see is an Arcane version of a Paladin that I can take as a base class.
Actually... the Pathfinder game supports a figher/wizard or fighter/sorcerer option a LOT better than a fighter/cleric option, as there's not really an "eldritch knight" or "arcane archer" type class for divine spellcasters.
The point is that a paladin is a fighter/cleric, and that you can totally take "martial class with divine flavor" and make it a separate and unique base class.
Ah, I agree. But a paladin doesn't get all of the cleric spells; she gets a relatively small fraction of them. We could certainly build some sort of "arcane fighter" that follows the paladin or ranger's use of spells, but such a class would, like those classes, not get much in the way of spells, and if I'm understanding the point of this discussion, that'd be a major disappointment for folks looking for a class that can excel at fighting and casting high level stuff like chain lightning.
Not to speak for stuart, but I *think* he might be referring to the city stat block where population, government form, max gold, important NPCs, and other pertinent information is contained.
That IS, unfortunately, a place where the Pathfinder RPG isn't that robust yet. The rules for full city stat blocks from the 3.5 DMG are, as far as I can tell, not open content—they're not in the SRD, and thus we can't really make use of them. We CAN build new rules, but there wasn't enough room in the Pathfinder RPG to do that. This is something I hope that the Gamemastery Guide will address and fix by providing new guidelines and rules for things like that. We've tinkered with several variants on the city stat block in the meantime (such as the ones on the inside front cover of Cities of Golarion), but I'm not yet happy with one yet to say "This is the way it should be" for all city stat blocks.
In short; yeah, we know, and we're working on fixing it.
So it's okay to create a "fighter/cleric" hybrid, but not a "fighter/mage"? Paladins are okay, but duskblades are overpowered? That makes sense how? What I would like to see is an Arcane version of a Paladin that I can take as a base class.
Actually... the Pathfinder game supports a figher/wizard or fighter/sorcerer option a LOT better than a fighter/cleric option, as there's not really an "eldritch knight" or "arcane archer" type class for divine spellcasters.
But since a cleric's combat power is already pretty good, there's less of a need for it. A fighter/cleric only needs one or two or a few levels of fighter overall; they do quite well without making it an even split between levels.
And I probably spoke in haste... some day we might take a stab at doing a duskblade style class, but it won't be equal in power to a gestalt fighter/wizard will be. And in the short run, I'm more interested in exploring the bard and developing it via new spells and feats to allow it to fit this role.
Why not release an updated hardcover with 20% new like you mentioned, and an errata file or pdf update available for current owners to download? I guess you'd have to work out how, but without knowing what you have planned, it'd be hard to be specific.
Because 20% new content goes FAR AND ABOVE mere errata. That's a new book.
James Jacobs
(Editor-in-Chief, Pathfinder),
