What is wrong with a 20th level barbarian being able to sing? Nothing is broken you just don't understand what high levels means. High level pathfinder characters are friggan bad asses. Something that was hard for a 1st level character shouldn't be hard for them, regardless if they specialize in that thing anymore. A 20th level character inst Aragorn, he's batman, or superman, or the hulk. And I can think of one scene in particular from a dc animated film that explains my feelings on your issue. Search for batman sings in the old justice league cartoon.
This fixes way more problems then it caused. Such as for instance a 20th level wizard being more afraid of falling into a pond, then facing down a red dragon.
Not at all broad. I started exactly what I ment. The focus of this game seems to have shifted from role-playing into the realms of number-crunch-o-mania where everything is min-maxing your characters combat abilities. They attempted to streamline skills (and failed in my opinion) and bloated feats beyond comprehension. They cut down arcane casters, killed class abilities that use to be awesome and focused on bringing in new players. No awesome sideline classes made it into the book, just Alchemist (rolling eyes)
I stated exactly what I ment.
All my favorite things from PF1, ARE GONE.
Did you play a different version of pf1? There is not any more focus on crunch in pf2 then pf1, and if you think you couldnt minmax pf1 you clearly didnt visit the forums. Again, rather then being general please point out specifics. What elements are too crunchy that used to be flavorful. What feats are too 'bloated'. How are class abilities no good. Its not useful to speak so generally when your objective is to explain your position. List the feats, say why they are bad, give us a comparison of class abilities that were good and are not good now. That is literally what a playtest is for.
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Moving on...
No skill points
The old system at least made it possible for degrees of success and error and margins of sills to be more than 5... freaking... points...
There is a method to this madness. They are bounding the math. That is among one of the most popular aspects of 5e. And while you dont like it, it makes a lot of sense in terms of system design. Also, no the old system didnt allo for degrees of success. It was purely binary, you fail or you succeed. This is the first introduction of degrees of success (where succeeding or failing most checks by 10 changes the effect). Your complaint isn't based in reality or you mean something other then what you said. Also, the difference isnt 5 points. Because you are ingoring all the ways you can alter that number. You are taking it in isolation because its different and you liked what came before. Its fine you liked skill points. But the difference between a high level rogues acrobatics check and a bumbling fighter in full plate of the same level wont be 5. It will be far higher. Stats, equipment and other abilities will divide people who focus on a thing and those who dont by far more then 5.
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And what is wrong with hyper-speculation of a skill? If a player wants to dump that many resources into a skill, or multiple, LET THEM. What I find day more detrimental to a game isn't having players auto-succeed in a silly balance check, but is incentivizing them to choose background stories by giving them in-game rewards!
Then why do you like pathfinder? Abilities that come from character background are a staple of paizos work. Its how they tie pcs into their adventure path line. Its literally key to their flagship product. Traits are a big part of pf1. So....whats your point here?
I can tell you in my experience traits did WAY more for encouraging backgrounds and character development then they hurt it. Players who are inclined to roleplay still roleplayed, and those that struggle with it used it as a basis to do a little roleplaying and eventually get used to it.
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The concept of 'eventually there is going to be a list of special actions that you can take for being skilled in this!' Is ridiculous. Nuts. If I want to hyper customize my skills, then that's what I want to do with PF1. At least that's more of an RP element, and mechanically more balanced than the stuff in PF2. Seriously? You throw stones at PF1 for balance when talking about PF2? Are yo blind?
I have YET to see a single thing in the new ed that actually encourages RP above crunch.
What rule in pf1 does this? I think you have blinders on. There is basically nothing in the pathfinder rulebook or any dnd book that has really does this. Roleplaying has always been something you do around the rules, and with the right dm and group, no amount of codification interferes with that. Literally none. PF is crunchy as hell, it always has been, and i have played with roleplay groups, and with groups that play it like a board game. And the system had little to do with it. The latter would play fate like a board game too.
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4. Your just a caster hater I see. Why is it that people can't appreciate that caters have their own checks and balances? I had this argument out years ago with a friend that boldly stated that a lvl 20 wizard (3.5 D&D) could kill any non-caster. It took me about a week to prove him wrong. If you would like I'm sure I can rebuild the character for you to see.
This argument is as old as time at this point, but usually people are arguing past eachother. Being able to kill someone has nothing to do with the martial caster disparity. Narrative power is the issue. Not ability to do harm to things.
In regards to your original point. Have you playtest this? Do you actually have evidence the power levels are off? Show evidence, again that is something provable. Play an encounter with a barbarian turns into a dinosaur. What problems did it cause? How was that character superior in an unreasonable way to the rest of his party.
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5... Okay then. Not worth the time. The RP element seems to be lost on you.
So is your problem the terminology? That what used to be bardic performance is now a spell that requires the bard to perform? Because thats all it is. In PF1, inspire courage was for all intents and purposes magic. Heck it could be used to counterspell. It just came from a different source then the bards actual spells. Now its just called a spell that doesnt draw from the bards spell slots. This doesnt change the rp at all if you actually sit down and think about it.
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6. Now is where you offend me. I am MOSTLY a DM sir. My concern with my players feeling that they must build their character background from a list of pre-determined, run-of-the-mill, old soup CRUD is my concern. Keeping up with the Jones's, or simple competitiveness can lead players into bad character building methods. Good games start with good players. Good players make good characters. New players will be tempted as always to focus on the mechanics, being inexperienced with role-playing, building bad habits and bad future games. And if your players are given the option of being handed free candy, you think they won't opt for it?
So again, why did you like pf1? This isn't new. It has been a staple of pathfinder since before it was a game system. Background traits and campaign traits have ALWAYS been a thing for pathfinder. And they have been important. And there are some that have always been strictly better then others. So if this ruins character building and roleplaying how have you been having fun for the last 10 years?
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REWARDING players for good RP is the JOB of the DM and should not be arbitrarily handled by a broken system made to reward cookie cutter characters that all choose the same background characteristics to make their characters crunchie.
How does getting a feat from a background mean you as the dm cannot reward players for good roleplay? What exactly is stoping you? Because I choose Acrobat as my background does that mean i cant spend time and energy on fleshing out who my character is besides a circus performer? Is Dick Grayson JUST an acrobat? And you are again ignoring the fact that for lots of groups this will encourage more character development then they would have done. Groups that are not yours exist. Things like this help them. And nothing is stoping a 'good dm' from having players create their backgrounds and then creating new backgrounds or adapting existing ones to fit the characters. Again in pf1 i did this all the time, creating new traits for people if one didnt suit the character they had in mind. This isnt new, handle it like you have been for the last decade or more.
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I understand that Paizo is not purposefully trying to De-RP it's system. I know that they want to produce a good product that is balanced and appealing. My only problem is that in MY OPINION, that would require them cutting about 70% of the current book.
Since you havent mentioned 70% of the book, please mention it. There are lots of places for the game to be improved, participate rather then throwing your hands in the air. The reality is this version of the game is no more crunchy or anti rp then pf1. It is possible you had been ignoring elements of the original pathfinder. Which may be an issue for you, but that doesnt mean this is actually a change in focus. Pathfinder and 3.x in general has ALWAYS been crunchy as heck, and basically never had a single rule in the book that was about rp directly. Not one. Its always been up to us at our table to make that happen. That hasnt changed. You can rp a literal board game if you want to, and it can be fun. You can do the same with this.
Goblins aren't monsters anymore, they're an icon of the game now, just as much as anything else, the popularity of the We Be Goblins line is proof enough of that.
So, it's about time, if you ask me.
So the popularity of Drow, Kobolds, and Tieflings mean they should also be core then?
Would be fine by me.
Goblins being a pc race is only as much of a problem as you and your players make it. Heck ultimately if its a problem dont allow it. People disallow things in the core rules all the time. Or have we forgotten that Leadership was in the core pathfinder book, I know tons of dms who dont allow that, specific core spells, all sorts of stuff.
Paizo made a choice because though they originally portrayed them as psychopaths in Runelords, they morphed into something different over the years. Are people going to honestly try to sit here and tell me they didnt have fun playing we be golbins? Did everyone play that game as if the goblins were baby eating evil? I know my group didnt, and I love the idea of one of the weirder races being core. I am tired of it always being the same halfing, elf, human, halforc, dwarf gnome list. Something fresh is fantastic, and there isnt a paizo race more iconic then their takes on Goblins. And while yes there needs to be a little handwavium to get them sorted out, what game is lacking in handwavium? Does everyone play their heroes as having severe ptsd by 6th level? Because given the literal horrors parties deal with on a regular basis, they would be a mess mentally a fraction of the way through a typical adventure path.
Are we really going to have an edition war with ourselves people? There are lots of reasons for a new edition, and they are giving us a ton of lead time, as much as I didnt want to personally see a new edition, I think its fair to say it's time. They have done about as much as they could have with the 3.x ruleset. Its time to break the chains and start fresh. They have given us a literal decade of stories and fun, it boggles my mind that fans would loose faith now. Will pathfinder 2 be perfect? No obviously not, I don't think a perfect roleplaying game exists theres way too much that is subjective in there. But I bet it will be fun, and there will be cool adventures, and great art, and all sorts of fun support products. Which ultimately is what i want from paizo.
There are plenty of ways that you can fail if you don't optimize properly.
• Attack bonus is too low to hit high ACs.
• Damage is too low to effectively reduce high HP values.
• Save DCs are too low to reliably affect enemies.
• Saving throw values are too low to reliably resist enemy attacks.
• Inability to meaningfully impact combat in another way (buffs/debuffs, for instance).
While this can be a problem, it doesn't have to. If the players don't optimize (assuming they know what they are doing), they do it probably because they want to have a harder challenge. Or they do so because they are not interested in a game where those opponents who would pose such problems play a large role. I'm sure there are other reasons.
Take, just as an example, any of the official APs: None of them needs much optimization on the player characters' side to be played through successfully. On the contrary, too much optimization might take the challenge out of the AP (and thereby force the GM to adapt the Encounters).
On the other hand, the GM has every tool he needs to tone down encounters if they would be to difficult for a given group. It's basically the same as changing the encounters for an optimized group of PCs, just in the other direction.
And that's the whole thing. You don't need to optimize to have a competent character able to play through most official adventures. Optimizing might be fun for those who are inclined to do so, and as long as everyone is on the same page, there's nothing harmful in it.
But the system is flexible enough that you don't need to optimize for the system to function. In the end it's a matter of taste and not of doing it right or wrong.
I would say its always harder to scale down then it is to scale up as a GM. Scaling up can literally be a simple as adding 2 of everything in an encounter. Scaling down is never that simple.
Income inequality is a fact of life... I find it bizarre that people always rage about it. And this is coming from someone that will in all probability never be a millionaire!
The problem is not, never has been, about inequality itself. It's the LEVELS of inequality that we haven't seen since before the end of the Gilded Age, and the creation of the modern middle class.
And as in most things, there's probably a desirable Goldilocks zone. (This chair is too hard, this chair is too soft, but this one is just right....) If your body temperature is too high, you will die of heat stroke, but if your body temperature is too low, you will die of hypothermia. If you have too much potassium in your blood (hyperkalemia), bad things happen -- but hypokalemia isn't good for you, either. Too much inflation will destroy the economy, but so will too little.
... and similarly, too little inequality is a problem, but so is too much inequality. But when someone is rolled into the emergency room with the classic symptoms of heat stroke, I'm not going to waste a lot of time worrying about them freezing to death. Similarly, I'm not actually worried about too little income inequality in the modern United States.
If you want the correct example you only have to look at the united states. In the 60s and early 70s. There was no shortage of wealthy people in that time. The difference is, the burdon of the funding of the nation was far more heavily skewed towards those that were benefiting the most of it. Since about 1920 the US has collected roughly the same percentage of its GDP in taxes. The difference is, since the 1980s, where that money has been coming from is from the lower and middle classes more and more.
The reason this is a problem is because we are a consumer economy. The economy grows when people spend. By definition, people who are wealth, and corporations that make heavy profits SAVE their money. They wouldn't be wealthy if they spent it all. Normal people spend their money, and save less. By shifting the burdeon of tax to the middle and lower class, you effectively reduce spending which is what fuels our economy. The greater the income inequality, though, the less overall spending there is. Because as mentioned, wealthy people by definition, spend less of the money they earn then average people.
50 years ago, this sort of wasn't an issue. If a wealthy person wanted to make money, usually they either had to invest in a business, or loan money to someone for either a business or to purchase something. With the cluster that the financial market has become, that's no longer actually the case. You can make money without ever giving any of it to someone who is trying to make something, do something, or buy something.
So short of literally setting fire to the financial system (which in and of itself would be really volatile and probably as catastrophic as America trying to 'renegotiate' its debt), your choices are limited. Do nothing, and what the wheel spin down, or actively fight income inequality with tax policy, that deliberately takes from those who have benefited most from society, to pay for all the things that keep it moving.
So true Kolokotroni. I personally have never really seen the Caster/Martial disparity people tout. I mean, sure casters can get really powerful at high levels. But then so are martial types if you think about it. And as a game master there's something to remember... You DO actually control what spells the player gets access to over the course of the campaign. Don't want the wizard teleporting everywhere? Then they just don't find a copy of the teleport spell. Want things like Wish and Limited Wish to be rare and valuable? Then make it so.
That doesn't work for divine casters. And all casters get at least some spells they choose (and for those with spells known that's all of them.
That said it isn't really a matter of specific spells. It is the nature of them. And many people will go through gaming for years without seeing direct evidence of the disparity because it isn't actually about power. Not in the traditional sense. Both martial characters and casters can contribute to ending encounters within their area of expertise. But only magical characters (it isn't just spells that do this) can change the nature of that encounter. That's what magic does differently and its narrative power. Many people would rather toss fireballs then exercise narrative power. Which is of course completely ok, but it means you aren't using the thing that most people either know directly or know instinctively that color their opinion about the whole martial/caster thing.
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But yes, as I mentioned. The bar for what's needed to be effective isn't that high. The average encounter in a given adventure will be CR=APL. The 'boss' type encounters may be APL+2 or +3. But those are the fights which are suppose to be difficult. And it's been my experience that the party wipe caused by one person getting Dominated tends to happen because someone felt the need to push things as far as they can when building their character.
APL and CR are hardly perfect measures. There is waaay too much variation to simply say X 4th level characters have Y power, and the loose grouping of monsters of roughly similar power that make up a CR add up to a threat to them of the same value.
What actually matters is 'Is the GM satisfied with the encounters difficulty'. The most optimized party possible with all the 'perfect' choices, and you wont have more power then the GM. He or she will keep adding to the difficulty until they feel satisfied. Baring the few that play published adventures purely by the book with no alterations, its really a matter of meeting expectations, not of hiting some kind of universal bar.
Which is why I always say play with your actual friends, who like you, and want to have fun. In my group, we know, Jon is a free wheeling seat of the pants kind of gm. Pull out your crazy and maybe not so effective character ideas. Matt is the one who really wants to get into his homebrew world, and ever so often throws a threat at the party he totally didn't realize was as dangerous as it is. Make a character that fits the world neatly and is survivable. Its all about matching player and gm expectations to be 'effective enough'.
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The guy who gleefully brags about how he has a +12 attack and deals 15-20 damage with each attack at level one is also the same guy who kills the party because he failed a will save. Not the person who does 1d8+3 damage with a +3 or +4 attack bonus at level 1.
Not all optimization is minmaxing. I generally optimize, but I usually optimize towards well rounded characters. Which often requires a level of optimization to have strengths in multiple areas without being superman in any one.
Also if its actually a trope in your group for the dm to throw save or lose spells at the party, you probably need to talk with the gm. Someone is unhappy about something. Maybe he is tired of the level of optimization so he feels he needs to exploit weaknesses, or what have you but something is up if that happens regularly enough to be your general impression of things.
Ultimately this isn't a game question, this is a people question. The game works best when you sit at a table of your friends, (presumably people you already get along with) who not only are looking to have fun, but enjoy having fun together. If that isn't the case, you don't have the foundation of a good table.
Optimization, power gaming whatever you want to call it is only bad if its disruptive. There are lots of ways to be disruptive at the table, including ways that have nothing to do with how much damage your character does.
Unfortunately a lot of people have created opinions on this and many subjects that have little foundation in reality. But again, that's them, the people. A book from paizo isn't going to resolve this conflict, people at a table have that opportunity (though they may well not succeed).
People who have different opinions on what is best in an area like optimization can in fact co-exist. I know because I have seen it happen. But it can only come from a place of understanding and actual communication. And it works because we all genuinely liked each other. If you have that, whether or not the druid or the rogue is better at perception is sort of silly. And usually, you aren't walking around with bruised egos over how encounters went. Mostly we are just telling stories about the amusing times when encounters went spectacularly wrong.
After the release of the Advanced Players guide, pathfinder was its own game, and far more then a single creative step away form 3.5. In the intervening years, particularly with things like the Mythic rules, occult adventures, and Pathfinder Unchained, it would be silly to say its just 3.75.
And its sort of insane to say Pathfinder was doomed from the start. It has been wildly successful by basically any measure. Even if their sales fall off a cliff in the near future (which is unlikely) they have had a huge amount of success for 7+ years.
3rd parties are totally viable as dozens of foreign countries have already proven. Enough with the fear-mongering because all these parties trying to do is prop up this broken binary party system.
These two establishment parties are just trying to lock people into believing that if you don't cast a vote for the big two that your somehow wasting your vote or empowering the "other party".
Standard fear mongering rhetoric that ensures nothing changes and power stays exactly where its at (with the big 2 parties). It's a broken system that only exists to maintain the status quo of existing power.
The only way to beat the game is not to play it. And don't try and say these two candidates aren't the establishment status quo.
Other countries have very different structures of the government. This has literally nothing to do with fearmongering. I am not advocating FOR anyone. I am not advocating for any party, policy or anything else. I am telling you, fundamentally, objectively, until we change the way we elect and run our government, 'not playing the game' can literally only hurt you.
One foreign country (one that rather closely lines up with the US in terms of divides and is closest but still parliamentary instead of having a president and a congress) is the UK. Their last election was literally the most unrepresentative (meaning the division of parliament did not represent the way the individual voters voted) election in the history of modern representative democracies specifically because people continued to vote for 3rd parties despite having a first past the post system. This literally, gave complete control of the parliament to the Conservative party (great if you are conservative, bad for basically everyone else) because they aligned themselves with the UKIP party and became a single entity.
I don't disagree with you that the system is broken, and needs to be changed. But to ignore the reality of it while its still there is flat out stupid.
I want change, I want the status quo to be altered. But that doesn't happen by literally giving complete control to people you most don't want to have it without accomplishing any actual change. This goes regardless of your beliefs.
By all means advocate for change. But our system of government is designed to require consensus. You need to get people together to make changes before you try to buck the system or else you just end up screwing yourself and not making any change.
The reason I tell you our system OBJECTIVELY pushes to 2 parties and FORCES people to pick among those 2 parties is not because I want you to be afraid and vote for 'my guy'. I don't have 'my guy'. What I want is for you and others to be INFORMED. And for that you have to understand how the system actually works and why what I am saying isn't my opinion or my belief but the literal, factual, objective truth. I'll gladly explain it to you though a guy on youtube called CGP grey does it way better (and funnier) then I ever could. Look up his videos on 'the problem with first past the post voting'. Then if you are free look up his video on the electoral college. He gives a rather solid explanation of the problem you are facing when you walk into that ballot box.
What actually needs to happens is there needs to be a bipartisan effort, among ALL Americans to push for a change to the voting system. And this has to happen OUTSIDE of an election year. For instance, you need in December of this year, after the election, gather a massive letter writing campaign, and get everyone to write to their congressman and say if you do not push for change to a system that actually works, we wont vote for you in the next election. Then hold them to it if they don't. I guarantee with popular support specific leaders in congress will push the legislation. And then every single representative who votes against it (because they will) has to be voted out in the next 2 elections.
That's what you need to do. Its a monumental task, but its literally your only option if you want change. And it will require a lot of people who have spent years spewing venom at each other from a far while sitting in their own echo chambers and soaking up spin media to work together. Its not a great chance, but its what we got.
Okay, okay, I want all of you to stop what you're doing and realize that this is a passionate argument on a forum that has gone on for at least three days...about backpacks.
Are you somehow implying we cannot have extended passionate arguments about innocuous minute details in the rules? Because if so, welcome to the internet, and this forum.
Now what if we put spikes on the masterwork backpack and use it for an extra attack?
So I am guessing most people are not familiar with what a good, structured backpack can do. If it is set up right, an item doesn't actually have to go IN the backpack to benefit from it. If for instance, your belt that your weapons are connected to is also hooked to the backpack, or anything strapped to it on the outside, or really anything you are carrying is connected to it in some way, it makes a significant difference in how much you can carry because of the way it balances and spreads out the load. Obviously we can all think of cases where its silly, but they aren't as extreme as you might think. And lets just say thank goodness the rules don't require that kind of detail tracking of materials to for instance decide which pouch on which side of the pack, your belt or pouches you have things in to keep track of encumbrance.
Lets just be honest and say our packs of murder hobos are not short on body count. The world of the fantasy rpg is outrageously violent... I was watching a video the other day on youtube that talked about the escalation of violence in rpgs and he mentioned that almost all rpg characters are the pyscopath that goes from name calling to a murder in zero seconds. Theres never any actual escalation that sane real human beings would have to an altercation. You don't shout, posture, maybe push and shove, you almost always skip straight to your most lethal means of engagement immediately.
I always allow oddball races, and by far I prefer to play them.
As a player I generally find some inspiration in the mechanical side of my character for their roleplay. Class often plays a big role in this, but race definitely does. And one of the biggest things in my mind and especially in my group that has been playing dnd together for more then 2 decades now (wow hard to believe that), is that the nature and flavor of the core races is really well established. We have a strong inclination for dwarves to be a certain way, elves to be another, etc etc. Humans are more of a blank slate, but blank slates don't work for me. If you give me a blank canvas I stare blankly.
Less common races give me more room to try out new ideas. They also give me an opportunity to establish things in Table cannon that were not there before. For instance one of my all time favorite characters was a wayang witch I played in a friends campaign. Because no one had any set ideas of how wayang should be and there was no established practice with them I felt free to go wild with both the character and the background information on the wayang themselves. It was a ton of fun.
Ive had similar experiences with things like changelings, gripplis, and other 'odd ball' races. They inspire me to put more life in my characters and give me a framework to do something fun and interesting. When I play a core race I often struggle to make them anything but dull and 'normal'.
If you roleplay out going to different shops, haggling with merchants, and then picking out specific goods that the GM randomly determines if are in or are not in stock. Absolutely. It can definitely take that long.
That is among the reasons why all 'shopping' is handled away from the table via email in my games. Because it can take up a huge amount of time. And while I like roleplaying out situations like that, the trade off just isn't worth it. I would rather roleplay plot relevant moments then encounters with shop owners for insignificant purchases. But this is just my feelings on the matter.
As others have stated, talk to your GM and the rest of the players and figure out something that works for everyone. Its ok to handwave the purchasing of mundane gear to save time at the table. At the very least have players show up to the table with a pre gm approved list of things they are going to buy and their cost and roleplay it immediately without people needing to look up prices and such.
So a couple feats and say less than five percent of the content changing renders the books worthless? I still don't see it.
You don't need to see it. The value proposition for me as a consumer simply isn't there. So, I only buy the PDFs. With content subject to change as it is, that's about all I value Pathfinder's content to be worth.
So then what is the problem? You are given an option as a consumer to purchase something that suits your tastes and values? Heck you literally don't have to buy them and get most of their value by using the prd or srd. So where exactly is paizo screwing over their consumers? Like I said, the fact that they might errata away certain options has been there since literally the second printing of the core rulebook years ago.
I'm not spending money to buy feat x only to have it fundamentally changed. It takes the hardbacks and turns them into, essentially, an admissions fee of sorts that just keeps the club named Pathfinder going. They have little value in and of themselves since they're not portable to other games. This makes them, by definition, useless. I'm not dropping $40 on a book that I might not get a good long bit of usage out of it. That's a s+@+ty deal for the consumer.
How is it that an errata that affects at most like a single page of materal of your hardcover book makes it useless? In addition to that, excepting pfs, why does it matter at all? Keep using your book. I am reasonably confident paizo does not recall every copy of the book to white out feat x that you love so much.
Your book is not ruined. Even if you are playing in a game that uses the latest updates, you can do what everyone else does as far back as 3.5. Print out the errata, fold it and slip it into the back of your book. You book is now just fine because unlike your implication, the errata changes a tiny fraction of the actual content in your book, the overwhelming majority is just fine.
This also isn't new. Paizo has been providing errata that has altered their material since the game began. If having errata is a deal breaker for you, how is it you have not already picked up on the practice and changed your consumer practices?
If you include material from the more prominent 3rd party publishers, I am pretty sure there literally isn't anything you cant to. Certainly no fantasy tropes I can think of.
Just to avoid confusion from the above sarcastic comment
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A summoner can summon his eidolon in a ritual that takes 1 minute to perform. When summoned in this way, the eidolon hit points are unchanged from the last time it was summoned. The only exception to this is if the eidolon was slain, in which case it returns with half its normal hit points.
If the eidolon didn't get taken out, it will have exactly as many hit points when re-summoned as it did when it was sent back to its home plane regardless of how long you wait.
That said as mentioned normal magic works on eidolons unless you are a synthesist.
My only complaint would be you have now removed the 2d6 2handed martial weapon from the game. The warsword doesn't take the place of the greatsword, it is a downgrade of it. That 2d6 is actually fairly important in maintaining the balance between 2 weapon and 2handed styles. Other then that its fine, I just personally don't care enough to make the change.
This is among the reasons why every table should use the automatic progression system or something similar. The mathematical need for the big six items is a massive deterrent for interesting ideas. If you used the magic item progression system you don't need to keep the belt slot for stat boosts. Unfortunately the one paizo set up still sort of doesn't help because weapon attunement is to a specific weapon, but that can easily be fixed to just be towards a weapon IE javalins, or throwing stars or what have you.
Or you can allow more wealth and custom items. Either way accomplishes the same power creep.
Note that while I'm sassing I'm not saying anything here is "badwrongfun". All in all I feel the entire thing is just an argument for bound systems instead of unbound systems for role playing games. But that's game theory for another day/thread.
If you actually handle it correctly there is no power creep. You obviously don't have something like the automatic progresson system AND normal wealth. If you do that theres no power creep, you are just replacing a portion of player wealth that normally goes into +x items and instead just giving them plus x to stats weapons AC and saves as a part of leveling up.
By definition, players roleplay PCs. GMs roleplay NPCs. If an enchanter charms a goblin, the GM still roleplays him. They may not think of fire as a threat, and that could be of weal or woe.
That's not strictly true. I often let my players control NPCs that accompany the party. I only intervene when they state the character will do something that they wouldn't do. I've even let them level NPCs though I set some guidelines, such as maxing out a particular skill or defining an area of focus eg archery.
Many gms do this sort of thing. It makes sense particularly in the case of hirelings or other charcters under the authority of the players or just to lighten the gms load. The issue is that the op is asking for a RULE somewhere to make this happen. And no such rule exists. Even something like leadership where a rule grants you an npc cohort and an army of npc minions, they are (by rules) still under the control of the gm. The fact that most gms simply let a player control their cohorts is an extremely common house rule, but its still a house rule and wont ever appear in any book.
Having played MANY games sci fi rpgs that had varied amounts of integration of Star ship combat, particularly in a certain galaxy far far away a long time ago, I would say that the approach they are taking is an excellent one.
WAAAAY too often you get situations where space ship combat is only interesting for 'the pilot' and everyone else is either making an uninteresting dice roll each turn, or actually doing nothing. Its next to impossible to have ground characters perfectly transition into space unless they have a whole second set of abilities, which is generally an issue, because not every game or story emphasizes space combat.
This is particularly important in a class based system. IE pathfinder. If your class has space combat abilities, then they are wasted when on the ground, and better then everyone else when you are in space. If your class doesn't have space combat abilities, you are SOL in spaceship encounters and subjected to a sideshow.
For example star wars saga edition was basically a d20 system with star wars stapled on. Unless you specifically take space combat options, you don't have them. And they only applied in space.
The solution? In the space ship book they gave alternate forms for lots of abilities that functioned in space. The also added feats that let people do cool space ship stuff on par with force powers (spells). It worked ok, but if you were say, an axe swinging wookie warrior. This didn't help you much and you were still relegated to hanging out during space combat, and the pilots still had lots of unused abilities during the ground scenes.
In my group we decided eventually that everyone would literally have 2 characters built separately, one for the ground, and one for space, just so everyone could actually participate all of the time.
I would be absolutely stunned if I ever saw a class based rpg that had unified rules for ground and space combat that actually worked well and kept everyone engaged in both situations.
The gist he gave me, was find a way to make an NPC and we'll go from there. now obviously here is the tricky part. making the darn thing. I'm just wondering if there is a way to create life like a sort of Frankenstein thing but to where i can adjust the creature depending on my materials, caster level, and gold amount. I basically wanna make a person in the campaign if we were disregarding the terms PC and NPC, an at least somewhat customizable person. Now from what people have been telling me i have a couple options
A I make a construct
B I change class to either summoner or some other creature customizing class
C I have a 1on1 talk with my GM
now obviously i did C, and my GM doesn't like class changes so that leaves me with A, but im looking for more options. I understand that there arent that many I'm just asking if there is an option i haven't heard about.
The game doesn't work that way. If the gm wants to go strictly by the rules, a 1 on 1 game isn't going to work very well. I would do C again. There are ways to make 1 on 1 games very rewarding, but they involve house rules. Because the game isn't actually meant to function that way. If you want I have a very solid set of house rules I can provide that have worked extremely well for me in one on one games, even allowing us to go through published material (meant for 4 players) pretty neatly. But the first step is to get the gm to understand that adjustments need to be made to make it work. Without that you are pretty much out of luck.
A player never 'makes' an npc. At least not without the GM just saying yea sure go ahead and make them. You will not find any rules that say 'Take this option, then you can design a npc from the ground up to accompany you on adventures'. Even Leadership the closest to this leaves it open to the gm to decide if they will make the npcs, or let the players customize them.
A room in a dungeon that says "All shadows cast in this room are infinitely deep holes" (from Blue Medusa, below) become problematic because the PF system makes us feel like we need to know what plane those holes to go; what spell that references; how those shadows interact with every spell, are they magic and how to dispel, why are these shadows inconsistent with how shadows are described in the Shadow Planes Players Companion (or whatever) etc. The DM can't just roll with what players throw at the room, and players are less willing to throw ideas at a room because "what about rules"?
So there's another way that I think the rules restrict "free-flowing" games.
I do love this system though. I'm just saying it makes some things a challenge.
Check out the award-winning Maze of the Blue Medusa system-agnostic adventure. That is a crazy crazy open-ended dungeon that I would love to try with Pathfinder sometime. But a lot of the rooms require player creativity, and not a Skill Check to work out a solution to.
Similarly, I'm playing Caverns of Thracia with a group using Pathfinder. A large part of that classic (and amazing) module is figuring out the rich history of the caverns. Non PF players are invested in piecing the puzzle together using their wits. A few trained-in-PF players aren't thinking that way at all, and want to roll the dice for more information using Knowledge checks.
So Free-Flowing maybe isn't the best term. Creative? Sounds condescending. I dunno.
I think you are equating your personal experience with a general truth.
In several groups I have played pathfinder (or similarly heavily codified games in) we have had plenty of creative and off the wall ideas and solutions to problems/challenges.
I think it depends on the PEOPLE more then the game. That said, I do think a certain kind of PERSON is drawn to heavily codified rulesets and others are drawn to more narrative driven or abstract rulesets with less codification.
I think this is a matter of correlation, not causation. If someone is naturally creative and witty, they will be creative and witty in whatever system they are playing. If someone is the kind of person that needs a set of rules and guidelines in order to address a problem, they too will need and follow such a path regardless of the system. Its about the people and the group, not the system. I have many times had my group shake off inconsistencies in rules in favor of rule of cool in games like pathfinder. The only difference being it was out of a sense of fun, not out of a sense of opposition.
In my group, no one would bat an eye about crazy portals that don't make sense within rules outside of the gms notes. They would bat an eye at the 'your abilities don't work in the desert because I don't want them to'. The difference is the oppositional nature of the latter example.
The big issue is that the less codification you have in a ruleset, the better the gm has to be. There are FAR more bad gms out there then there are good ones. The reason you get all the aggressive reactions from people on the boards or anywhere with the "Why cant I make create water not work in the dessert comments" is that most of those people have experiences with GMS would actively try to shut down their solutions to problems for their own more or less petty power fantasies.
MOST gms (IE most people) will struggle to make consistent and 'fair' (read satisfying for all parties invovled) on the fly interpretations of complex rules. Most people don't have an instinctual understanding of statistics, and have significant confirmation bias. That means their 'feelings' about how things are going and what they expected are often way off and so they overcompensate. And those average to bad gms do a terrible job of 'free flowing, on the fly' games.
Just about anyone can run a dungeon crawl and get some monster smashing fun out of it. It takes a particular talent to get in a free wheeling creative inventive open ended game going. Since MOST people will not be good at such a thing, most people have experience of a bad example of playing such a thing. And they will instinctively react to any deviation in that direction based on said experience. That's why heavily codified games like pathfinder are popular in the first place. The experience is far more consistent.
I started in AD+D in 1980 so I know how the OP feels to an extent. I recently tried doing some First Edition only to find out that I was so spoiled for the improvements to the game since, that I could barely sit through one session of it. I"m fairly confidant that I'll never play First Edition again.
You have to remember a lot of people look back with rose colored glasses. Not all, there are people who still prefer the mechanics of older editions. But mostly it was the experience you are looking for. I think its hard to argue that pathfinder is not an objectively better written and designed rpg then ADnD. But I play pathfinder as an adult, amidst a busy life. I played Adnd as a child with a simple life, and a lot of fun. I look back fondly on those older campaigns with my cousin dming ridiculous story lines with poorly thought out rules, and house rules layered on top of misunderstandings. And it was fun, because life was more fun then.
Personally I think with the options afforded to me with the internet age and pathfinder combined, I am more then ever able to create a character that feels the way I want it to. I don't get the feel of 'THE paladin' but instead, MY paladin, the way I envision him, because I am given the freedom to adjust what is there to the character I want to create.
Trump isn't the problem. Rather, the Republican party has descended into collective insanity. Trump is just another symptom. Like Palin... Cruz... even Reagan in the early days. Slowly but surely an entire political party has become divorced from reality. If anything, what comes after Trump may be much worse.
...Given that Trump seems to be behind the whole Birther thing, wouldn't it be more accurate to say he is the problem with their party right now? Or at least part of it?
The problem is that actual conservatives made a deal with the devil and attached themselves to a group of people embodied by trump in order to win elections. Trump didn't cause this problem, he is a consequence of it. For years the republican party stopped being a party focusing on conservative economics and restrained government and focused on courting people who were angry, afraid, and ignorant.
Heck, the last republican president had one of the least conservative (in the traditional sense) administrations in our history. And he was able to get away with it because the base of his party no longer cared about the details of policy, but instead wanted buzzwords and rhetoric.
He signed the defense of marriage act, while drastically expanding federal power (patriot act) and took a budget surplus and turned it into a massive deficit (hardly a fiscal conservative).
Trump didn't cause this problem. The republican party rolled out the carpet for him. It started in the 60's and is coming to a head now. Turns out when you constantly stir up fear, bigotry and ignorance, eventually you lose control of it.
I don't think purging dead people should have a insidious impact on elections. I certainly can't disagree with stopping caging, "fraudulent" roll purge, needing an appropriate amount of polling booths, in appropriate locations, with enough ballots, ect.
The problem is how many mistakes are made. Both with malicious intent and just with mistakes. The issue is how close to the actual voting that people propose these things. You should never have calls to do ANYTHING regarding voting in an election year. And for instance, it should be super easy to check and make sure you are properly registered to vote. But none of these people proposing 'fixing fraud' have any interest in for instance, spending tax money to set up a website to confirm you are registered to vote, where you polling station will be and what you need to bring with you. Even though that should be a universal thing for all citizens by any reasonable measure.
I have no idea, this hasn't happened before that I'm aware of. I'm just asking the question. While I think she's horrible, there's no bias in the question, just asking about a potential candidate getting screwed by the other side completely changing things up with only a few months left, and if there's and guidelines or rules about it.
The method by which parties pick their nominee is actually exceptionally free of regulation. They are after all private clubs. It wasn't long ago that that the conventions were actually where party big wigs got together and just decided. All the primary process is just something the parties accepted by way of public pressure. As far as I know there are no laws that demand they stick to them. I would assume that technically the only requirement is that the nominee sign up to run whenever the deadline is for everyone.
I highly doubt Hilary or any candidate would have legal recourse. They would have plenty of fodder in the public eye though. I am pretty sure The republicans backing out NOW would be glorious for the Hilary campaign, even if they somehow found the perfect conservative candidate (hint: at this point I don't think there such a person) she could easily tought the fact that they spent weeks and weeks talking up friggan Donald trump as their candidate and then are not turning tail. That would be a public disgrace for the GOP the likes of which I cant even fathom.
For obvious reasons I'm accustomed to where I live. Getting an ID is very easy, to the point that very, very few persons should have any problem getting one in short order. The only stumbling block here is self-inflicted.
For a middle class person living in an area well served, sure. For me its a minor hastle. I have a job I can take time off of, or I can travel to one of the dmv offices that hold late hours that are slightly out of the way.
For others, the story is very different. If you look up John Olivers video, theres one county that the office wasn't even open once a month.
That and for people who cant take time off you might be asking them to choose for their family to miss a meal so they can go get the ID. Because they literally cant afford to miss work to go to the office that only operates during working hours, and as mentioned often not even many of those. Those are the people that are affected by this. And the politicians pushing the ID laws KNOW THIS. They want those people to struggle to vote. That's the gross truth of this.
Edit: All this to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist. There is literally no justification for it.
I the small town I used to live in the county DMV office was only open every other Tuesday.
Good luck getting an I.D. with those hours.
And there are many towns where its actually significantly worse. But even in this example. I bet it was open like 10-3 or something on that Tuesday. If you work an hourly wage without the ability to take time off, it can be effectively impossible to get there.
Voter ID laws are basically a new attempt at a poll tax. A way to put barriers to voting in front of certain people. Its a bigger injustice to democracy and civil rights then the 3 cases of voter fraud of this type (yes 3, not 3000, not 300, 3) Texas has had in the last few years.
I'm not sure of the logic that requiring identification when voting is a big deal.
33 states already have some form of voter identification requirement, varying as to whether or not a given state's restrictions are considered 'strict' or not. All of these states have to have some form of provisional voting in order to receive any federal funding pursuant to the 2002 HAVA. There is absentee balloting and mail-in balloting. There are a plethora of non-drivers license identifications. Every state issues (or has their counties issue, such as Hawaii's practice of leaving motor vehicle practices to the counties) such identification as far as I am aware.
A 2011 article from Politifact Ohio examines the argument with interesting conclusions.
As far as I can tell, the only persons that are outright denied the right to vote are non-citizens, citizens under the age of 18 and convicted felons that have not had their voting privileges restored by the state. i.e., persons who should not be voting to begin with.
Here is a summary of voter ID laws currently in effect across the country.
It seems that the remaining prohibitor is a lack of effort by the voter or deliberate intent to operate 'outside the system'.
The push for voter id laws is a blantant attempt to disenfranchise certain voters. It is a solution for a problem that doesn't actually exist. The only thing it prevents is people showing up to polling stations to pretend to be someone else. In which you have to actually to the place and stand in line often for hours in order to vote. Its an impractical way to influence an election because it would take a huge number of people with a coordinated effort to actually accomplish anything. And consequently the amount of cases for this actual thing is statistically zero.
What isn't statistically zero is the PHOTO ID laws disproportionately affect the poor and minorities. Many of whom live in places where its actually very difficult to get a government id, particularly since often counties that issue the ids operate during times when normal people are working if they have descent hours at all and they cost money to obtain. If you dont know where your next rent payment is coming from paying money for an ID isn't an option.
This isn't a lack of effort by the voter, there are counties where you can go once a month to get an id, during working hours only. For someone who for instance works on a clocked wage job, that's often not an option. The republicans that have pushed this know this, and they have even let it slip a few times that voter id laws have brought down democratic numbers in certain areas. Which is the actual object. (You can look up john olivers voter id video for actual video of them saying that very thing when asked about voter id laws).
So, its a 'solution' to a non-problem, that doesn't actually effect elections, that disenfranchises specific groups of people for political motivations. And while in your life, getting a government id might not seem like a big deal understand that millions of americans in this country dont share your experience. For many, this is too much of a burdeon, and one they cannot actually achieve with a reasonable amount of effort. That's fine for things that are not civil rights. But its not fine when it stands in the way of someones right to vote.
*Albeit a compound answer, it is one with itself and therefore true in it's unity.
Neither is really factual though, only an opinion.
1. They are not anymore conceptually redundant then a bard is or a sorcerer. All of them offer new mechanical ways to express a slight variation on the original 4 or some combination there in. They have slightly different themes but mostly they are meant to give a different way to express those themes.
For many, the entire value of pathfinder is that the rules are not dissociative. Namely that they 'feel' like what they are meant to represent. A monk feels distinct form playing a fighter or ranger. That is important for many. And the new classes give a (completely optional) way to express differences in concept mechanically.
2. Actually compared to most other ways to add options, they REDUCE complexity. Feats, archetypes, prestige classes etc, things that add to the existing classes. Choose a wizard archetype and you still have all the complexity of a wizard, plus the archetype. Everything that is added to it, adds complexity to the whole. Feats have to interact with everything that has ever been written. Archetypes have to interact with everything that has ever been written for that class.
Classes though, particularly since pathfinder has deincentivised multiclassing are self contained. If you want to add options to express a new concept to the game the BEST way to do it in terms of reduced complexity is to do so with a new class. Because that class doesn't have to interact with everything ever written. Its a new, self contained thing.
Heres an example. We have the core rulebook. We want to give players a better way to create a 'swashbuckler'.
1. You could, create a chain of swashbuckler feats. Those feats would have to interact with literally everything in the core rulebook, since feats are something everyone can take.
2. You could create an archetype for the rogue or the fighter, which would interact with everything the rogue or fighter class has access to (which is more complex then just the fighter or just the rogue.
3. You can create a swashbuckler class. It is around equal in complexity to any single class. And is by straight up mathematics less complex then option 1 and 2.
You can say you don't like new classes. You can say you prefer other ways to give options for whatever reason. But it is objectively false that a new class is more complex then any other way to add rules to a system.
They are also far easier for new players to manage. If a new player wants to create a swashbuckler its way easier to hand them 5 pages of class to read over, then to have them look at a core class, an archetype from anther book, 3 feats from 2 other books, etc. This is another way new classes are less complex then others. They reduce the amount of books, and the amount of pages you need to look through to make a given character.
And aside from organized play (which is its own entity) they are easier for dms to manage. Why? Because once someone chooses that new class, it REDUCES the amount of rules you need to keep track of. You only need to keep track of what your party is going to actually use. If you constantly expand on the core classes, the mount of options a character can take as they level continues to expand. If you expand with new classes, once your player chooses the class, it reduces the amount of rules they can then choose. Keeping track of a single classed swashbuckler is not any more difficult then keeping track of any core class. But if your player instead needed to take the core rogue, an archtype from one book, a pair of feats from another, and a replacement feature from a third, added to all the things a rogue can take, that is actually more difficult to keep track of as a dm.
Are new classes less familiar then the classics? Sure, but so are ALL new rules. But it is objectively false to say they add complexity to any individual party or character. And in fact compared to any other way to make new concepts options, they are LESS complex.
Its not really a matter of which ideas any one person thinks are 'good'. Its about getting representation. There obviously people who are super left or super right.
So you can only be represented by someone who has the exact same views as you?
That's unworkable. There are only so many seats in Parliament. There are only so many candidates running for that seat. Unless you yourself are running, none of them will match your ideals perfectly. You are then afforded the opportunity to choose among several imperfect options -- one of the factors that makes a candidate imperfect is that she doesn't match your view on all points, but another factor might be that she is an unelectable fruitbat who wouldn't win if she were running unopposed. You are not only allowed, but encouraged, to take both of those factors into account.
... or you can wait until a perfect candidate can both run and win more than an extremely marginal share of the vote.
Bring a LONG book if you choose the second option.
Obviously perfect representation is unlikely. But satisfactory representation is not. And while there only so many seats in a parlimant or the US house of representatives, there is certainly room for more then 2 ideaologies. And that is what we get in a pure first past the post system. Its worst in the US but its effects can be felt elsewhere too. A liberatarian voting in the US is a relatively concrete set of views, but he or she will basically never get solid representation because they have to share their party with economic conservatives, Evangelical Christians and Tea Partiers. And at least in recent years both parties have more or less walked in lock step because of how polarized they are.
Right now, 'Extremely Marginal' can equate to millions of people. Because each District, or constituency or whatever you want to call the local area of voters that picks a representative sends one and only one representative to the legislature, that means that most of the time, 40-50% of the population wont be represented by their 'local' representative. Literally Millions of voters in the US (and elsewhere) get their votes overridden by the local majority (or sometimes the largest minority) on a regular basis. That's not acceptable in a democratic system. And that is exclusively the fault of the voting system we have in place.
And don't get me started on the US presidential election system. Any system that could allow someone to win with somewhere like 22% of the vote while their opponent gets 88% of the vote (and yes this can happen, even if it is unlikely) is literally insane.
The concept of maneuvers (even if you don't love the specific implementation) from paths of war/tome of battle is the answer here. You wouldn't even need to remove full attacks from the equation, you just need to add a viable alternative.
Maneuvers have all the right elements: They are standard actions, they offer a variety of effects and impacts besides simply MOAR DAMAGW, choosing one is not a huge investment of character resources (akin to a sorcerer picking a spell known) and they are usable resources so they can be balanced again other finite resource abilities in the game.
The truth of the matter is 3rd parties will never work unless we change our voting system. The raw mathematics of first past the post voting makes 3rd parties a non-starter. That isn't because people are ignorant or because they are lazy, its because our actual system that we use to elect executive and representatives is fundamentally bad, and by its very nature drives us to 2 parties. Its possible one party will be replaced with another, but you ultimately will only ever have 2.
Initially I had thought I would just ignore gyms. However, I found as an item hoarder who cannot just trash/delete items, I quickly reached the point where my inventory was full of healing potions and I had to use some in order to store more pokeballs. The only reason to use healing potions is if you've been doing gym battles and so I started. I find it quite fun learning all the strategy involved. Looking at the team you're going to fight, figuring out which of your pokemon will do best against it and seeing if you can win. I also enjoy the animations of the special powers.
And its got me going out for walks and runs again which in turn makes me feel less stressed and happier. Win/Win!
This is probably the biggest positive effect, people are actually getting out and moving around. I have been literally stunned with how my mood has changed, I am excited to get up for work in the morning. I cant remember the last time I got ready and out the door so quickly happy to be on my way to work.
1. Better pokeballs are unlocked as you level up, I get great balls and ultra balls from pokestops at level 21.
2. Character level is king. You want to focus on leveling your character not your pokemon. Just leveling your character will give you better pokemon and more rare/uncommon pokemon.
3. Learn to throw the curve ball. It gives more xp, and has a better chance of catching the target.
4. Don't power up your first bunch of pokemon. Save the candy for evolutions and as you get multiple copies drop your weaker ones with transfers for extra candy (keep an eye on the attacks though those vary and you might want different types of attacks when you start going after gyms).
5. Disney is LOADED with poke stops and gyms. Its comparable to the best locations in manhattan, which since the game bases pokestops off cultural locations and landmarks and spawns off of cell traffic density you can imagine is friggan high.
6. Focus on Poke stops. You will find pokemon around the stops. The stops give you items. Items let you keep playing longer.
7. Find a dense 5-10 minute pokestop loop. Pokestops reset every 5 minutes or so. If you find a dense loop that takes 5-10 minutes to walk you can get a ton of poke stops (and xp) quickly.
8. Save your evolutions for when you have lucky eggs running. You will get some lucky eggs just from leveling up. Use one before you do evolutions and do them in groups to maximize xp gain.
9. Put your 2km eggs in your infinite egg incubator and your 5 or 10km eggs in limited use ones. You want to get the most out of each incubator that is limited use. Put the longer duration eggs in there when the option presents itself.
10. Work on hatching your eggs. Eggs give you really good shots at great pokemon and significantly more candy then catching one gives you. And you can only hold 9 at a time. So get walking (or slowly biking) and get your eggs hatched to make room for more.
11. Bring water, Sunscreen, comfortable shoes, more water, some granola bars (or other transportable non-heavy snacks), and maybe a first aid kit. This is an outdoor activity, be reasonably prepared.
12. If taking a pet for a walk, pay attention to them, its summer in many places the game released. Make sure they are well watered and keep an eye on them.
13. PAY ATTENTION TO WHERE YOU ARE GOING. Don't walk into traffic or wander into a gated community. Stay out of private property, poke stops should only be on public property. If there is one that is on private property, report it with the bug link in the app. Alsp be as alert as you normally would going out into the world. If going out at night make reasonable judgement calls about safety. Traveling in groups is not only fun, its also a good idea to avoid issues that can pop up when traveling through parks and other secluded locations at night.
14. Be respectful of other pokemon trainers. Its dead obvious who else is out there playing. Super obvious. That does not inherently give you the right to someone elses time or space. If they are looking around for others and giving signals they are looking to socialize say hi. If they are not, consider leaving them alone. We don't need the game to turn into a tool/excuse for harassment. Also, though team rivalry is all in good fun, remember its just a game. If someone takes your gym, take it back that's it.
15. Did I mention pay attention to where you are walking?
16. Cars will struggle to hatch eggs. The apparent limit is about 12mph for registering the distance (this can vary slightly depending on how good/bad your phones gps is). Go faster then that and eggs wont hatch and pokemon spawn less frequently (has to do with how the game determines your location). Even a moderate pace on a bike can go faster then that. Keep that in mind when choosing modes of travel. Foot is best, but a bike can also work if you take it slow.
Edit:
17. Don't ignore friendly controlled gyms. Parking your own pokemon to defend them (Maybe after leveling it to get a new spot there) can get you gold every 21 hours. Training at a friendly gym increases its prestige which makes it harder to take away. Also gives descent xp.
18. You don't have to hold a gym long, just long enough. If there are a couple gyms close by, grab them then go to the shop and claim your reward. You can only claim it once every 21 hours. So you don't need to be holding your gym all the time to reap the rewards. But if you take a gym after you have already taking the rewards from the shop you have to wait until the 21 hour timer finishes. Time this well if possible.
I have had several successful long adventures in one on one campaigns including published APs. First and foremost I strongly recommend against the player running multiple characters. The best part of a one on one game is the amount of time you get to work on character relationships and really roleplay out the player character. If the player is playing multiple characters you lose a big portion of that.
Second the important thing to consider when running published adventures is covering the 'usual' abilities an AP expects you to have and to cover the action economy loss of a small party. "Power" can be adjusted. You can always raise the level or stats to accommodate party. But a fighter cant cast spells, and a they cant act more then once in a round. Action economy is super important in the game and it needs to be accounted for in a small party.
With those things in mind, here is what I do.
1. Run a single player and 1 dmpc. They are the heroes of this story with the focus on the player character.
2. Gestalt characters with a generous stat generation method. The stats help compensate for a lack of party power and the gestalt allows 2 players to 'cover the bases' of 4.
3. Strongly encourage character classes that are flexible/cross traditional character boundaries (the classic figher/cleric/wizard/rogue tropes) and give an action economy bonus. This one is absolutely vital.
The best choices are characters that come with powerful 'pets'. Summoner, druid, hunter are the best options here. Their pets make up for the action economy and they have a mix of abilities themselves.
Next best are flexible classes that give action economy bonuses. Bard, Magus, Inquisitor, Paladin, Warpriest, classes that make good use of swift actions.
Next best are classes that cover more then a single job, that don't fit in the above categories. Ranger, Bloodrager, Shaman, Witch, Slayer, Alchemist, Investigator etc.
Next best are the strong classes have a singlular focus in the classic 4 person party. Wizard, Cleric, Sorceror Barbarian, Gunslinger, Unchained monk, ninja etc, unchained rogue.
I would strongly avoid classes that have difficulty pulling their weight or are very limited in their abilities, not-unchained rogue or monk, or the fighter are the key examples here.
Remember your goal here is to maintain good use of action economy and to make sure you have all your bases covered with just the 2 people in the party. A gestalt druid/inquisitor and Summoner/Ninja with good stats can take on a normal adventure path with basically no modification (I have done it).
Its based on the code of ingress. Greater the traffic of players the greater the spawns. And for obvious reasons traffic near poke stops.
Edit: The premise of ingress and the subsequent game design HEAVILY favors urban areas with lots of landarks/cultural centers. Obviously that sort of sucks for Rural pokemon go players, but I am not certain if there is a fix in the works or not. Its sort of the point to get people to congregate. Hard to do that is less populated areas.
Also please note that when traveling if you are going over around 12mph (I believe it is 20kmph you will see fewer (but not zero) spawns. That has to do with the way the game maps out your geometry via gps. You also don't get credit for distance traveled for incubating eggs if you go over that speed.
Best story so far, I woke up early this morning to catch some poke stops in the city. I was walking around city hall park, when I notice 5 other adults all clearly dressed for work, all equally clearly walking the same route I was for poke stops, stopping randomly when they spot pokemon. We start chating and notice that 5 of us were all on team Valar. We all sort of glance over to the Instinct held city hall gym, and start walking almost simultaneously. We took it for Team Red this morning. Granted someone else took it about 20 minutes after I left for work. But who honestly cares right?
I am enjoying this tremendously, even with the server room fires we are apparently causing. And the approximately 12km extra I have walked in the last 2 days because of it isn't exactly a bad thing.
Realistically we got most of our prestige classes unchained. Unchained means what would paizo do if not constrained with backwards compatability. They have mostly given us their own version of the classic prestige classes as base classes or archetypes.
Arcane Archer - Eldritch Archer Magus
Arcane Trickster - Any number of bard archetypes that are roguey
Assassin - Ninja
Dragon Disciple - Blood Rager
Duelist - Swashbuckler
Eldritch Knight - Magus
Mystic Theruge - Witch or the Shaman
I never said anything about "putting the genie back in the bottle," merely an increasing number of people becoming fatigued and realizing that maybe it's healthy to step away periodically.
While it may very well be healthy to step away, its also not going to happen. Literally. People use it to work, play, communicate and basically do everything else in their day to day life. Most people do this. Since the rise of the smart phone, the internet is part of the core of modern society. As mentioned, it would be like asking you to take a break from using your legs.
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Also, machines DO break down, things DO happen, the unexpected is to be expected, so a total Apocalypse is actually NOT necessary for the Internet to be, just like any other basket, one you don't want to put all your eggs in.
Given the amount of commerce and communication done by the internet, no, if the internet stops, that itself would be apocalyptic. All of our eggs are already in the basket whether we want them there or not. If the internet suddenly stopped markets (including the values of national currencies) would literally drop to zero effectively instantly. And given the sheer number of redundant machines that would have to break down to make the internet stop, that in and of itself would cause an apocalypse.
Our dams, our aircraft control towers, our power and water supply, our communication networks, basically all our infrastructure relies on the internet. Many such places no longer have engineers at each location of importance but instead staff single remote monitoring stations that, as you might see the patter, use the internet. Between that and the massive lost commerce, there is literally no way there is no apocalypse there.
This isn't a bunch of kids using their facebook and google maps (though of course that would go to) its most of what allows modern society to function.
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I'm not anti-Internet. At all. The coolest thing about it for me is how I can meet (and even make friends with!) people from countries I've never been to. I just don't want to be trapped without alternatives.
Its sort of like saying you don't want to be trapped without alternatives to the internal combustion engine. Sure you could technically still own horses. But that's a very limited solution for a very select group of people in the western world.
I think the real problem (and certainly one reason I'm so concerned about the ability to find surprise gems) is that most of the game series I've always cared about most are dead/driven into a ditch/totally astray from their roots/don't look like they're going anywhere anytime soon/owned by a different company that Doesn't Get them. All the game references I see now are games that I frankly don't give a damn about. They all look the same, they all sound the same...and it's a look and sound I don't like. The present 'boom' in gaming people have already referred to appears illusory to me - there's more games and it's easier to make them, sure, but there appears to have been a severe drain in, shall we call it, memetic diversity. I suspect the Internet may have something to do with it, and that's all the more reason not to welcome all the game stores being online.
Long Spiel on the State of Gaming today:
I think you are conflating the AAA (top tier) game industry with the entire industry. There are a number of both positive and negative effects of the move to digital distribution. And these have been particularly strong in the PC game market because its a more open and adaptable gaming platform then consoles.
Triple A games (the ones that get all the hype and you see adds for and such) are in my opinion at an all time low point. They have inflated their budgets to such a degree that publishers are terrified of failure and thus stick to what they view as 'safe' options. Even when they are proven wrong, they are generally slow to shift away from what has made them money in the past. So we get lots of Call of Duty and a lot less MetroidVania.
Its also easier then ever to publish games. Small developers can put something on steam with previously inconceivably limited work. This is both good and bad as small talented developers can put out some amazing games, but we also have to wade through tons of crap published by hack devs looking to make a few quick bucks.
Its easier then ever to obtain games. I can literally go to my computer and in a few minutes buy and download a dozen games from steam or GoG. That's pretty amazing all things considered. I don't have to worry about stock, or keeping track of my physical disk. In fact there are games I have on my steam account from years ago that I long ago have lost my physical copies (never winter nights 2 and portal are examples) that I still pick up from time to time and play, only because steam lets me redownload them and play them. I can even digitally loan games im not currently playing to my friends.
Part and parcel to all of this, an entire new industry has popped up around games. Traditional gaming magazines are more or less dead, but thousands of people now make a living reviewing, discussing and even just playing video games (and especially pc games) for the general public. While there is a massive glut of games to sift through, there are also a whole host of tools to help you sift through it.
For those with patience and a little extra cash, there is also kick starter. Many developers of past classics are turning to crowd funding to create new projects free of the shackles of the AAA industry. I consider this a massive gain, and it literally wouldn't be possible without the revolution of digital distribution and the internet's effect on pc gaming. If you aren't seeing a lot of the kinds of games you used to like being published by normal routes, check out kick starter and other crowdfunding projects. You obviously have to wait for them to be completed but its a new source of genres of games that have long been abandoned by top tier publishers.
Its certainly not all roses and daisies. There are downsides to digital release platforms. Obviously the experience of wandering through a store looking for a gem is more or less gone (through finding a gem on steam can be satisfying, particularly when you consider this game literally wouldn't exist
The moment I realized physical pc game sales where dead was a few weeks ago. I wanted to buy a physical copy of a game for my girlfriend because it was part of some promotion with final fantasy online. I bought Civ V from amazon. Got the disk. Put it in my computer, and you know what happened? The whole package was little more then a glorified steam code. Even if you buy a physical package its likely to be the same thing as just buying the game code digitally. I couldn't install the game absent of steam.
All that said, its really unlikely the clock will be turned back on digital distribution. The only thing we can hope for is that we keep consumer friendly distribution areas like steam and GOG, because the individual publishers want to create their own (Microsoft with the windows 10 store, ubisoft with uplay, EA with Origin etc) and none of those are any good for us as consumers. Steam and GoG actually give us something in exchange for the loss of physical products (a community to discuss the game, automatic installation of patches, and the rather extensive steam sales as examples). The publishers wont give us anything at all.
My biggest piece of advice is to find a lets player (twitch or youtube personality) or reviewer whose tastes are similar to yours. They will do a lot of the sifting through the glut of games for you and help you find the gems. In fact lets play videos are superb for this because they let you actually watch the game being played. Which gives you as good an idea as you could whether or not you would like it.
What sort of games that you liked can you no longer find? Perhaps we can help turn you towards some similar games?
It depends on the campaign. There are some stories where it makes sense for the players to start out from meager beginnings, there are others where it ends up being really contrived as to why such relatively weak beings can interfere with the plans of powerful beings without being simply erased.
My personal preference is to start between 4 and 6. I feel like that is where characters sort of reach the thing they are going for but are still not all powerful.
