Matthew Trent's page

I think its fine. It hardly invalidates strength build by allowing dex builds to be possible. Two feet investments is hardly free IMO. I run have a similar feet that I call Improved Weapon Finesse that doesn't require mythic status in my home game and have found that it great reduces the cookie cutter nature of combatants. Its defiantly preferable to everyone using a scimitar.

It's not D&D Next, it's 5E. No matter what WotC Brand Management says.

By the same logic its not PFRPG but D&D3.75 that I've been running for a couple years. A statement I adamantly refute.

I don't think its a huge stretch to let a company name their own product vice letting blotters and message board trolls control the zeitgeist.

Unfortunately, that doesn't mean anything. This is a pretty common problem with people. They submit feedback on something, and when their suggested change isn't implemented, they throw up their hands and claim they were ignored. Well, maybe. But it's often the case that they weren't ignored, that their opinions were considered, but that the designers chose not to implement the suggested change based on any number of reasons (maybe the change wasn't feasible, or maybe they received feedback from many more groups that it was working fine as-is). It's easy to criticize the process from the outside (including as a tester), but that's sort of a myopic way of looking at it.

Or you know... sometimes its true.

Our feedback was summarily ignored, and Mearls admitted that was essentially true of all the feedback Wizards received from the 4th edition play test.

Full article is here.

It strikes me that it's much more difficult to get away with marketing flim-flam when people are actively testing your product out pre-release in the public sphere, as we'll soon see them doing.

Yes it's all good and well to test a product with the general public but that dosn't mean that they'll take any of the comments to heart. Many of my friends were involved in the RPGA playtests of 4E and they claim their concerns were completly ignored.

Then there is the ugly baby mentality where a desiner refuses to accept that his ideas are bad.

It takes more than just a public playtest to be good.

I kinda get the feeling that everything that we're being told right now (and it isn't much) is marketing flim-flam. Though I am jaded.

@Joel847 seems unlikely in that WotC currently sells 0 pdfs.

So, its been 5 years now has it friends?

I so fondly recall the excitement at the new 4E announcement back in the day. Ah those glorious rumors from GenCon and the excitingly looking forward to all the glory the new dawn of gaming would provide. Ooohing and Ahhhing at the idea of a fully supported electronic tabletop and a freedom from grapple checks. Such exciting times.

Sadly in 5 years I've played in zero 4E campaigns and only a handfull of one-shot adventures. Perhaps I should have worked harder to convince my friends that it was as amazing as I wanted it to be, but their counterpoints that the adventures were just dreadful (and they were - both LFR and the published line started off weak at best).

Then the electronic table top died a quiet death.

Then it rapidly became clear that the material printed in the core books was to be rapidly outstripped in power by supplements available first (and sometimes for years) only though the subscription model with the character creator software making those of us who bothered to buy books look like chumps.

That said I do like most of Monte Cook and Mike Mearls' work and so will be paying the new edition a fair bit of attention. It will honestly not have the same hooks in me that 4E did.

One significant note is that the announcement came not from any of the industry events (not even their own D&D experience) but via mainstream journalism. The jaded part of me wonders if this means that they no longer think the RPG customer is deserving of attention or if marketing at WotC is so terrified by their sales numbers that they don't think we're out here anymore.

Yup. Or frankly, as oracle or witch or wizard or cleric or bard archytpes as well.

I feel like I have seen witchcraft presented as psychic powers somewhere in genre fiction before. Does this ring any bells to you? Perhaps in Prachett's Discworld or Armstrong's more modern fantasy Otherworld series?

I do have a question for Ryan. If I start a hypothetical character and achieve the first three paladin merit badges then decided that smiting evil isn't all its cracked up to be and start progressing along the barbarian path is it now possible for me to get the barbarian capstone?

If this is the case and I can now work toward the barbarian capstone it does reduce some of the angst of actually wanting to be an alchemist in that I would be able to abandon the previous build and shift into the new one when APG classes / archetypes become available.

Similarly it might not be the worst idea in the world to have an anual refocusing ceremony such that a character who made unfortunately bad choices can recover and resume progressing toward an earlier capstone.

Most people won't play for 2.5 years. The class I want to specialize in won't even be available at launch.

Do you really think that a Fighter 5/ Bard 5/ Paladin 5/ Ranger 5 is equal to a Paladin 20?

Do you think that all characters in eve with 20 million skill points are equally good?

And for the record I am still against it.

Its easy to confuse a handfull of people feeding of each others bad ideas as consensus though.

note that in Pathfinder Online, skill system will be open-ended. so, in 2.5 years, i become Ranger 10/Fighter 10, and you become Fighter 20. you get cap-stone ability. 2.5 years later, i become Ranger 10/Fighter 20, and you become Ranger 10/Fighter 20. i don't get cap-stone ability.

doesn't that strike you as odd?

In eve each skill has five levels (designated in roman numerals I - V). Your character gains a set number of skill points per unit time biased on attributes.

Training a skill to level I costs 250 skill points. For our example lets assume this takes an hour.

Training a skill to level II costs 1414 skill points. This would take 4.6 hours (your skill points don't reset so you already had 250). 5.6 hours total.

Training a skill to level III costs 8000 skill points. This would take 26.3 hours or just over 1 day. 36 hours total.

Training a skill to level IV costs 45255 skill points. This takes 149 hours or just over six more days. 181 hours total.

Training a skill to level V costs 25600 skill points. In our example thats 843 more hours or 35 additional days. 1024 hours total (42.6 days).

IF training to the acquisition of merit badges that represent class levels follows a simular pattern then achieving Fighter 10 could be approximately as long as level III of a skill in eve compared to the level V skill of a level 20 fighter. This is a gross simplification and only a bit of a straw man since neither of know the details of how things will turn out.

IF that is true then the 2.5 year number that Ryan tossed out would give the whole system I outlined a multiplier of ~20. I do think that the effort of focusing your craft for 2.5 years is significantly greater than achieving level III in two skills (which would take approximately two months) and deserving of significantly greater recognition.

+1, especially if I can alt+tab out and do other things, like check my email or read a wiki.

And people want me to play in the dark for greater immersion. Sigh.

Or they could just let you gather materials offline. That way you wouldn't have to be bothered logging in to gather your stuff.

Now there's an idea with actual merit. SWTOR manages to do this well thought it usually winds up being more of a supplement to easy harvesting nodes.

I think Enemies of the Empire for 4th edition is possibly my favorite monster book of all time. Of course I love it not for the monsters but for the frank discussions on how to use different types of adversaries in the setting.

One thing that I didn't like in there though was how the capstone would be handled. Two characters with all the fighter badges both have one cleric skill, but one of them gets a capstone because one took the cleric skill early on and the second only took it after achieving the capstone. It doesn't really sit nice and good with me.

Rewarding players for sticking with it and staying focused in their class is one of the core points of distinction between pathfinder and D&D. Your exact unhappiness is the same that a George a Fighter 19/ Cleric 1 feels when he looks over at his Fighter 20 friend named Elmer.

Gorge: "Hey man, need a hit from my Cure Light Wounds wand?"
Elmer: "Nah. Got two crits on the first round and killed the monster before it could make a full attack."

My concern is that EVE required players to have multiple accounts if they wanted to train multiple characters to any level of competence (yes I know all about limited use hauler alts and stuff but that's not what I'm talking about). I do want to train up a Figer and a Mage and possibly an Alchemist when it gets implemented. And I don't really want to wait two and a half years to hit level 20 fighting before I get in the mood to toss around a magic missile. It would be especially silly to make me get several free accounts just to train up multiple combat worthy guys.

I'd hate to see PFO become a "raise all your attributes first before doing anything else" game.

Currently in EVE stats do effect your speed of learning skills. The skills that raise stats ('learning skills') were removed and those points refunded. You can still remap skills once after character creation and then once each year for free.

Its highly doubtful 'learning skills' will make a reappearance in PFO as their removal was much lauded.

one thing i have problem with:

Cap-stone ability exclusivity
as it's proposed, it's "now or never". you either go for it, or it's gone forever. i know myself, i'm jack-of-all-trades, which means i'm at disadvantage in such system. if i don't go for cap-stone, i can never get there. if i go for cap-stone, i'm not enjoying myself because of being forced to play certain way.

Do you also feel bad when you've made a Fighter 5/ Monk 5/ Wizard 5/ Bard 5 and playing Pathfinder? Every time you multiclass you choose to make yourself less good at what your original class was doing. No one is saying you can't play a character like that. But you should be aware that the first time you take a level outside of your first class you are giving up the ability to ever get the capstone ability for your any class. Sometimes that trade is worth it - A friend of mine just became a Ranger 15 / Fighter 1 in the game I run and that says to me that the ranger capstone probably isn't good enough.

I see the Homosexuality in Golarian thread is over a thousand posts long now and apparently still going. Which leads me back to my old unanswered question: just who are the gay iconics? Did they ever get outed? If not, shouldn't somebody do so before they run out of air?

As a gaymer I have to suggest that a reveal of some publicly LGBT iconics could give Paizo some good rep. In gaymer blogs and sites anyway.

EDIT: fixed dislexic fit (GLBT? whats dat?)

I maintain that playing a mini game is always more fun than standing in front of a tree and attacking it until your carrying capacity is maxed.

Why would you do that? Making a PC is the only part of a game the PCs have control over... even if you're going to increase things, it's better to tell the players before hand so they don't feel like you're just changing things willy-nilly.

I'm not exactly sure. I like to use APs with as little on the wing modification as possible. And I like my players to feel like they are awesome. At the same time I want to be able to provide 'good' fights for them to feel challenged by. I think that perhaps I thought that by me applying the extra points they would be more awesome but not necessarily have maximally optimized abilities.

I should probably just relax and let them build with more points.

Does that make sense?

@PDK - Now thats what I'm talking about! Well done sir.

Total agreement about staff prices.

On the thought point buy build would it be a jerk move of me to have my players make 15 point PCs and then when they show 'm to me raise the stats by 5 points?

I've been enjoying SWTOR the last week or so and the single most inovative aspect of design in that game is the companions with whom you experience the game. For those who don't wish to try it yourself every single class has a group of companions that hang out with them and at any time they can choose one to travel with them on the planets.

Every class is a pet class. At least outside of full groups. Its more akin to everyone taking the leadership feat or Diablo II minions than more traditional MMO pet implementation.

The Pathfinder rule set is, hands down, the best P&P RPG rule set out there. This is not true for the Campaign Setting.

In fact, I would use your description of the rule set to describe the Campaign Setting: "very good but (...) by no means perfect".

While the Campaign Setting has many good points - I especially like its overall mature feel - it is by no means as good as many older or contemporary settings.

I'm afraid we'll have to agree to disagree. The'res no shortage of people willing to defend the Pathfinder Campaign Setting as the best thing since sliced bread on more relevant areas of these broads.

Well, for my part, I'm not insisting on a 100% total implementation of the rules. My wish would be that the mechanics implemented are as close as possible to the rule set, while taking into account that it is a real time game. Just like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights adapted their respective editions to fit the computer game environement.

I find both those games severely lacking compared to equivalent systems developed for use in video games at the same time such as Deus Ex and Fallout.

The Temple of Elemental Evil is the only reasonably satisfactory implementation of D&D mechanics into a computer game that I have experienced and its fairly clear that adapting that style of play to an MMO would be disastrously bad.

Edit: I take that back. Planescape: Torment was also a lot of fun. It played so fast and loose with the rules as to be a bit silly at times. It still managed to tell a compelling story though.

The point is that even if you didn't want to play the minigame to gather resources or manufacture gear you could still pay cash to those who do wish to do so.

This would in my mind only help the games economy. When one person is skilled at the weponscrafting game that person can easily make high quality weapons and have fund doing so. When another person is skilled at the potion brewing mini game that person has easy access to high quality consumables. When these two players both interact with the third player who enjoys the finances of buying low and selling high you suddenly have a working economy.

Just be careful the minigames truly ARE optional. If you can get a signficant damage bonus, for example, everyone will have to play the game when making weapons for use or take a DPS hit.

Why would everyone make weapons?

That would be seriously odd.

Many tasks in a high economy game are often dull. The classic example of this would be player vs rock combat that is mining in eve. It is aproxamatly as exciting as watching paint dry.

Some games have however made what are in reality tedious and unfun tasks into exciting mini-games that challenge and reward those who excel in them. One of the best examples of this is Puzzle Pirates specifically the bilge pumping minigame. I served on a ship in the USN and there are few jobs more unfun than bilge pumping. In Puzzle Pirates is an exciting game of matching like things with escalating challenge as you become proficient.

Now Puzzle Pirates possibly went a bit far in making the entirety of the game about mini-games. That is clearly not called for in PFO. I do however think that some tasks could be made both more fun and more legitimate by creating minigames. The example brought up in another thread was chopping wood. I think a simple mechanic where you had to time the swings of your axe to either maintain a rhythm or hit a precise zone would add an aspect of gathering that simple player vs tree combat would be lacking.

We could extrapolate it further and perhaps accelerate crafting jobs by scoring critical success in a matching game or a tetris-like fit the pieces game for manufacturing or enchanting more refined goods.

Downsides to this idea would be the difficulty of implementing quality minigames (thats a whole separate field of game design and would probably require their own team). The other major flaw in the system is that it tests player skill vs character skill. For example no matter how good a set of boxing gloves or bonuses I get in Puzzle Pirates I will never be a good brawler that minigame just doesn't click for me. Therefore I think it essencial that these minigames only be noncombat in nature.

Technically you are right. But most people equate "Pathfinder" with the 3.75 ruleset Paizo developed and "Golarion" with the campaign setting.

I know A LOT of people (me included) that use the "Pathfinder" RPG rules to play other campaign settings. This can be homebrew or defunct/"butchered by 4th Edition" campaign settings.
In my case for example, I am an avid player of the 3.5 Forgotten Realms setting with Pathfinder rules.

The Pathfiner System is very good but it is by no means perfect and the fine folks at Paizo would probably be among the first to admit it. What is however very excellent and well done is the Pathfinder Campaign Setting. I won't presume to speak for anyone else by claiming that a lot of people share my belief that its a great setting. I know many of my friends like it quite a lot - to the point where they don't want to play other settings.

For me the game is Pathfinder I can be a monk who performs a Flury of Blows attack or an evoker who launches Force Missiles at his foes.

Incidentally "3.75" is never used in any marketing by Paizo.

We could also mention the absolute impossibility of implementing the Pathfinder System into a persistant single server non-instanced world that is the stated design goal but that would only be rehashing what's already been said.

Step 1: Install the paizo board ignore app.

Step 2: Put three people on the ignore list

Step 3: Watch Scott appear to argue with himself.

Step 4: Enjoy the message board experience again

I think it's very possible (and perhaps even necessary) to make a game that appeals to both groups. I also think that calling one of the groups "entitled" is perhaps a bit derogatory. Go with "casual" or the like.

A bit? I burned with rage.

I think you could award all player max ranks in every skill and the system would not be any more broken. I don't really think the skill system works either though.

I don't need a game to beat me up and exhaust me mentally to have fun. I think challenge can be good, but in the end it matters less to me than the social interaction, visual aesthetics, and core mechanics.

Actually, I take it back. I don't want get my ass kicked. I got enough of that growing up. I want to be a Hellknight warrior in their bad ass armor who doesn't take s+#+ from minions of chaos.

To return to the wood chopping discussion a few posts back, may seemingly monotonous tasks can be enlivened via mini-games. A simple reflex push CHOP! at the correct time game can add a lot of fun to tedious tasks.

Furthermore players who wished to be champion woodcutters could train skills to unlock powerups and increase yield or even be able to play the higher level games (choop the ironwood).

The RAW hate classes that aren't casters and don't want them to ever fly.

As DM I have no problem granting a paladin a pegasus (or a ranger a giant eagle for that matter). Your DMs millage may vary. If its in reference to PFS you're SOL.

I hate level-dipping with a loathing that will stand the test of time.

Its a clear signal that the player is playing a build not a character.

If the character is initially presented as as a sort of dual-class concept then I defiantly do not require my players to wait or justify their first level in a class.

If the character (or player) has a realization that he should pursue a new life path then its fine to take levels in a new class. If they just 'want more skills' its not cool to just pick up a rogue level, but I'll probably allow it when they give me some sort of justification.

Well, you and Erik know better than I do, but I had just finished reading the section on the Knights of Ozem in Faiths of Purity before making the post, and while they're most focused on Lastwall and guarding Gallowspire, the 2nd paragraph there mentions that one of their other missions is "to cast back the demons of the Worldwound." That's why I figured the Knights of Ozem would be the ones involved on the Crusader Road.

I think what would be best is actually a new order of Iomadan Knights that would be analogous to the historical Knights Templar guarding the road to the crusade.

Its perfectly understandable that such a group hasn't been outlined yet.

Similarly I'm left wondering which order of Hellknights will be in the region. I don't recall any of the previously described orders being active in this part of the world. I'm sure the creative team will give us something juicy there too.

I want to cast fireball and lighting bolt if I create a wizardly type character in PFO.

Therefore I am against implementing friendly fire. If friendly fire is not off then I cannot use these abilities. I will be kicked from my group and declared a noob. And I will have deserved it.

Its possible a limited form of friendly fire could be implemented such that only my group/raid is excluded. Perhaps even a setting in the options menu beside autoloot (which is always off by default for some reason) so if I do go rogue I can put in my two weeks notice with a bang.

I understand what you are saying....but the reality is that you can't satisfy all audiences with one product.

<clipped false metaphor>

Thing is that there are already tons of AAA titles out there that do fast travel, non-meaningfull day/night cycles and emphasize convenience over virtual world..... there are almost none that offer the reverse.

I never actually spoke against slow travel. What irks me is that some people don't realize how debilitating combining 'features' can be. For example slow travel is perhaps necessary if the goal is to create different markets. I probably won't pay much more for a sword at the hellknight fort if I can teleport over to the Knights of Iomadae center and buy it cheaper there. If on the other hand it would take 40 minutes to get over to the Iomadan center then I'll probably buy the sword at a significant premium. I honestly expect travel to be slow with the stated goals of creating a robust economy it almost has to be.

Now if the sun sets while I've headed out to go fight and oops I have to go back to town and its going to be an extra half an hour before I get to do anything - that's just not fun.

If this game offers mostly the same sort of experience that the other AAA titles out there do....then the folks that have been looking are looking for a very different play experience aren't going to have any reason to be interested in playing it.... and it can go ahead and fight the other AAA titles for the same audience that are interested in the same style of gameplay experience that they pretty much all offer.

It's fine if the Developers want to take it that direction....but I'd kinda like to know now so that I can pretty much write it off now and stop wasting my time.

I do love the false dichotomy you are striving to create. Its as if no one had ever made a rom-com that also had elements of action movies. Such a thing is after all impossible.

Or here : http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/r-z/runes tone-of-power

Indeed. Big Bad Evil Guys are fun to kill. I know that an interesting fight is bar none my favorite thing in any game.

Honestly, I don't believe in griefing. Harassment is a separate issue and should be squashed hard.

Let's talk about me for a minuite. I have a maximum of three hours a day for gaming (I have a problem). If I want to head in to Thousandbreah Forrest and hunt fey for a bit but upon logging in realize that it's night and I can't play because some neck beard on the Internet thinks I should wade my time slogging back to town to get torches (that guy also opposes fast travel) it's honestly unliky I'll download the 'able to play the game' patch. What I will do is not subscribe or play the game.

A game is about having fun not simulating reality.

@The White: Precision is not a type of damage.

Well if you think sneak attack is a reliable source of damage then sure. I will respectfully disagree that this is the case. Some sad areas where this will not work that you'd expect it to are when dealing with incorporeal creatures (a ghost touch dagger would IIRC allow sneak attack while simple force damage does not).

Most of the time I think you'd be better off with two levels of rogue than a two level dip in magus, and I never advocate levels of rogue due to hating the class.

I actually think its genius. I'm intentionally avoiding the launch of SW:TOR because I don't want to deal with a hundred million players choking the login servers and newbie zones. With this model I won't hesitate to pre-order. Even without a guarantee of being in the initial group.

That may be so but personally, I think that if they can code NPC citizenry and soldiers for castle they should be able to reskin them as undead at least.

Has this actually been announced or are people's immaginatins running away with them?

Do you think it's unusual that my entire 16th level group can fly all day? I see a lot of encounters that I wind up moding because of this and wondered if my players were an anomaly.

I know that having fought swarms with well over 200 HP at level 10, if I didn't have two fireballs and a lightning bolt prepped (and a handy lesser Empower rod) my party would've had to run. I was the only person with sufficient AoE to get the job done and the only person who could have the AoE to get the job done. A haste or dispel magic or stinking cloud or black tentacles or anything that doesn't do AoE damage would have been useless.

Hey, I helped too. Flamestrike looks really weak if your all busy hating on fireball (I think I've caught multiple targets... zero times) but its never wrong vs a swarm.

I do wonder how flying will be handled in game. Its hardly utility magic in my Kingmaker game but a basic requirement of combat mobility - everyone flies.

Ah. I see I had misunderstood you.

Do you need to track your renowun across the land though? Won't most senior characters have some amount of fame due to being highly skilled at the varied arts of killing things and taking their stuff?

Seems kind of like the general alliance / horde rep in wow. Perhaps a bigger problem is that a bonus of genral discount is either irrelevant (because there is nothing to buy from nps - unlikely) or seen as a penalty applied to new players rather than a bonus gained by famous ones.

It's interesting. I hate to bring pen and paper mechanics to the discussion (since as we all know a new medium requires a new message), but I feel that the factons in Pathfinder Society Field Guide are worth examining.

Essentially as you perform side tasks to benifit a faction you gain an equal number of fame and Prestiege points. Fame represents your status within the faction and unlocks benifits at key points. Prestiege is spent to aquire favors like spellcasting services, gear, or personal housing. Some benifits are specific to a faction (like the Silver Crusades shiny wayfinder), and some can be provIded from any faction (like a townhouse). The kicker is that you can only be a member of a single faction at a time and switching teams normally carries a penalty. There is also the assumption that all players are Pathfinders which may or may not be true (I think it likely won't but am speculating). I do like having both a total favor vale and points to spend on shinies though.

As for you proposed reputation system, it seems okay, but honest I want to specifically work for the Pathfinders or the Red Mantis Assassians or the Daughers of Babba Yagga and gain their favor.

I'm presonally shocked that so many groups want to get on a boat. My characters usually have to be dragged kicking and screaming by the plot. I would latch on to a land route like the literal life preserver it is. Sadly I've volentiered to run it, but I have faith my players will feel the same.

This is excellent. Paizo art direction has inspired more than one character I play at the table.

This is probably a sufficiently large topic to merit its own post on the goblinworks blog, but I can't help but wonder what direction the team is planning to go artistically.

I would love some hints please. :)