Okay you have done it, just upgraded to the physical copy, this is going to be to good to miss, and the Hero Lab integration is just awesome (I use it a lot!)
Lone Wolf thinks that increasing the bonus to rage is too overpowered, so they do not think that it's the intention to do so.
I see. That doesn't really seem like an FAQ required thread. More like someone making an assumption about a rule, instead of a lack of clarity.
For the record, I don't think it's overpowered.
I remember quite well, when people started to receive their ultimate equipment and postet the first spoilers. An amulet of mighty fists with courageous was one of the first powerfull ideas posted.
It might be a quite a bit of work to implement this, after all a barbarian with a bard in the party and heroism. would get quite a bit of power from his +2 furious courageous greatsword (+2 on pretty much everything).
For what it's woth getting a simple "yes, it increases every moral bonus" from someone at paizo might be enough.
This should not trouble me all that much, but when I started to prepare NPCs with while raging... well it's a bit untidy to add the bonus manually.
I started trying to use the Hero Lab editor to build "our" version of Courageous. I quickly realized that it was going to be pretty complicated.
My read on this is that, whether intended or not, the RAW is that it works for any morale bonus. Paizo feels no need to change the RAW and is not obligated to correct any misinterpretations made by Lone Wolf. Lone Wolf is (understandably) waiting until their hands are forced to make a laborious fix to the item ability.
So I don't see this getting any resolution anytime soon.
Well I postet in the ask Jason Bulmahn thread after all, and asked how to resolve this issue, maybe we will get a response on how to handle this.
I actually understand the Lone Wolf guys, not to invest all that work, if the issue is unclear.
Hello Mr. Bulmahn, I was wondering how to get clarification if, if a faq requests gets answered with the Staff response "no reply required"?
Redward asked the developer of hero lab (in January), why the courageous weapon enhancement didn't improve the bonus from rage.
He got this reply:
Quote:
Increasing the effectiveness of every other morale bonus on the character would be an incredibly large benefit, and would be worth far more than a +1 enhancement. My reading of this ability is that if anything else grants a morale bonus to saves vs. fear, that specific bonus gets improved, which keeps this enhancement useful when someone casts bless.
I send another ticked some days ago, and asked for a reevaluation of the issue and got this reply:
Lone Wolf Development Support wrote:
I'm sorry, but we're still hoping that Paizo clarifies the way this power is intended to work. Before we spend many hours finding every ability in Pathfinder that grants a morale bonus, and altering it to change the amount of its bonus if the courageous power is active on an equipped weapon, we'd like to be certain that we're implementing what will be the final rules for this power, and we won't have to undo all that work when this item is errata-ed.
So my question is, what is the correct way to resolve this issue (considering that the first faq request didn't resolve the issue)? Should we try to faq it again?
To end on a happier note, I am very exited for the mystic rules and hope that gen con won't delay my subscription shipment this time. ^^
The courageous weapon enhancement doesn't increase the bonus from
spells like heroism (which gives a moral bonus).
I checked in the paizo.com forum, and it seems that my interpretation
of the ability (that it increases every moral bonus) is used by pretty
much everyone. It seems, to be regarded as a highly effective weapon
enhancement for barbarians and groups with bards, maybe even to good
for a +1, but that seems to be the RAW.
It would be nice, if this issue could be re-evaluated. Thank you very
much, otherwise I am a very happy customer.
I received a very nice answer:
Lone Wolf Development Support wrote:
I'm sorry, but we're still hoping that Paizo clarifies the way this power is intended to work. Before we spend many hours finding every ability in Pathfinder that grants a morale bonus, and altering it to change the amount of its bonus if the courageous power is active on an equipped weapon, we'd like to be certain that we're implementing what will be the final rules for this power, and we won't have to undo all that work when this item is errata-ed.
So what now? I maybe post this in the "ask Jason Bulmahn" thread? He isn't all to keen on rules questions, but a clear yay or nay would be very usuefull.
I have ordered non-mint products before, and the damage is usually only cosmetic (cutting errors, cover dented) and I guess the most non-mint books will be readable. Other than that, it is usually not possible to get detailed information for every non-mint product (it takes quite a lot of time I guess). For what it is worth, the Core rules can get a lot of wear and tear, based on the size of the book, so they wont look mint for a long time.
4) You've mentioned before that in a hypothetical 2nd Edition, you think iterative attacks should be replaced by everyone getting the Vital Strike chain automatically. Do you think that, unlike the Vital Strike chain, bonus damage would get multiplied if this were implemented?
Actually, a question related to this... would it be that you get a choice to make one attack with more damage dice or a series of separate attacks, or would it be vital strike only base, with maybe a series of iterative attack feats?
Also, in pathfinder as it is, thoughts on houseruling vital strike to be one scaling feat instead of a series?
No choice. Iterative attacks slow the game down and trick/force fighters and other martial characters into bad tactics and/or make combat boring AND overly complex.
Hello Mr. Jacobs, I have been thinking about your comments, regarding iterative attacks and how vital strike could help in that area. I really like the idea, and just gave everyone in my current campaign (Kingmaker part 6) the vital strike feat chain for free (as soon as they fulfill the requirements). The change was mostly well received, of course the ninja (with two weapon fighting) and the ranger (bow) always try everything, to get the maximum number of attacks (even buying boots of speed, for that one action before the summoner can cast haste) but that gets old rather fast, and calculating damage takes quite some time.
I noticed that giving monster vital strike (everyone gets the feats) improved their damage output considerably, since my players have managed to stack their AC pretty high (the eidolon is usually the worst offender with a huge armor class and terrible touch AC) unfortunately touch attacks are rather rare. So I actually welcome the change to have one good chance to deal serious damage, instead of having to roll multiple attacks, just for the chance to roll a natural 20.
I am very exited, to get my hands on the mythic rules and the new adventure path, and wanted to ask when we can expect previews (the itch is staring again, I need a new fix of mythic goodness, I have been playing the mythic playtest in hero lab for months).
Now some questions:
1. Is there any chance of Paizo publishing something like a book of houserules and alternative systems, like removing iterative attacks, no spell memorization for any class ….. ? (I ask, since I love making NPCs and PC with hero lab, and once you print it, there is a pretty good chance to get it integrated I guess)
2. In your opinion, how much are players responsible for the way they invest their loot ? (This came up in my kingmaker game, where the my players repeatedly had serious trouble dealing with invisible enemies. They almost died towards the end of War of the River Kings when they had no reliable ways to deal with the spells of two bards.) I guess my question is, is it my fault as GM that they prefer to invest their wealth in the next +1 on their weapon, instead of investing in some consumables (scrolls of of see invisible, fly, lesser restoration) or is it part of the their freedom to make mistakes?
3. How much preparation should you reasonably expect from your players? These days my (beloved collection) of rulebooks usually stays off the table, and I prefer to look up things in the SRD, since it is quicker for me to find, but I have come to the conclusion that my players should have as much material for their character with them, preferably in print. Hero lab has a huge help in this area, since it allows me to print pretty much everything with all the rules text(feats, magic items, spells, class abilities).
Is this level of preparation reasonable, or a bit overkill? (I try my best to minimize the time each turn takes, since all the other players waiting).
4. The Gamemastery combat pad is the single best gaming aid, I have every purchased, and I love the various decks. Can we expect more gaming aids like that in the future?
Thank you very much for taking the time to answer all our questions, this thread is always an entertaining read.
I have already started my preparations for this AP, and was wondering how to enhance the experience. I have already planned to pick up all those I haven't bought yet, but I could always use more flip mats.
Since RotR used some of them in the AP, I was wondering which ones would be usefull for this one .
A new edition could be fun, some time down the road. Of course, I would expect a massive playstest on that one. That could very well take longer than a year.
Just send a friendly bug report, with the suggestion to re-evaluate the topic, considering, that most people seemed to agree with the common interpretation.
I considered a bug report, but as you postet this seemed to be intentional. I would open a post, but I haven't been able to find a source for our interpretation.
Wow, that is really, really disappointing. By his own words when I spoke with him at GenCon, Sean indicated that the section would clarify the rules on magic item creation, including detailing what you can and can’t use an additional +5 DC.
That question (like many that arose from the "any questions about magic item crafting" thread I started) is important enough that it belonged in the FAQ where everyone could read it, not in a book of campaign options that many people wouldn't know was the place to find rulings on how the default crafting system is supposed to work.
Point taken.
I guess I was just hoping for something in a little more in depth with the book than the short statement in the FAQ.
But thanks for the response.
Alexander Augunas wrote:
The Magic Item explanation is pretty sweet. There is a section that describes how to craft cooperatively, and thank goodness it allows you to have another character supply spells that you don't possess when crafting magic items! However, only the person who actually has the item creation feat makes the Spellcraft check to finish the item.
It has a section describing the considerations one should take when creating a new magic item (such as why you should be paying more than 2,000 gp for a mace with a constant truestrike effect.
There are rules for upgrading existing magic items; it is basically a printed version of what the various developers have been saying for years; subtract current price from finished price and pay the difference.
The "arcane components" section is basically a set of alternate rules that a GM can use to add additional flavor to making magic items. It doesn't really give much guidelines and its probably the weakest piece of the Magic Items section. As someone else said, this one section reads very much as, "Dear GMs, use these rules if you want to place limits
...
Sorry, but I assumed, that the contend of that particular bit were well known, if course I coulnd´t quote a source right now. To repeat myself, the section has good advice and some examples, but it contains nothing really new (but I guess the bit about upgrading might have been somewhat common knowledge on the boards, but now it is in print).
Couple of areas seem pretty lack luster though. The Magic item creation section for example seems to be mostly about "these are the reasons your DM is going to tell you NO"
Oh please don’t say that, one if the biggest things I’ve been looking forward to is a more descriptive and clarified section on magic item creation.
I hope there is a more detailed list on what you can take a +5 DC on and more detailed explanation on how cooperative crafting works.
Instead of just “yes, you can work with another person to craft a magic item.”
Pages 170 to 175 cover magic item crafting and advice how to handel some cases, like a use activated true strike weapon, upgrading magic items and other cases. They showcase the idea of talismanic components, like dragon heartblood to craft a flaming weapon.
This isn't a more descriptive and clarified section on magic item creation. IIRC the GMG had something like that, or maybe it was UM.
Got access to my pdf today, it seems that they have fixed all my problems with the kingdom and mass combat rules from Kingmaker.
Care to elaborate :)
Well Jason Nelson explained what why the changed the magic item economy, I don't really have anything to add here. What the book adds is some new buildings, and they even added additional pictures for them (to represent them on the city grid). I have to read the whole rules again, but since they fixed the most annoying part....
The changed the mass combat rules a bit, added battlefield conditions (like fog, darkness or a sandstorm) and boons (special abilities based on the commander of your army). Army resources (healing potions, magic weapons...) no scale based on the size of your army, so equipping your 1 golem army with a magic weapon is cheaper, than equipping 2000 human soldiers.
Armies can now have a lot more special abilities, a monk army could have a Ki Pool and a paladin army could use smite evil.
Hm, are you saying that the AP did just as good as other APs or that it did worse? Because if you are saying the former, you essentially are confirming for me that the timeline advance has not impacted sales negatively at all.
If you are saying that sales were down for Shattered Star compared to other APs, there is a possibility that its timeline advance did indeed impact sales, although other factors ( it being a dungeon-heavy AP ) might have factored into that.
And I understand that you are conservative with changing things up, because so much depends on the AP line. However, you certainly haven't been so conservative about other aspects of the APs, like setting, sub-systems and other new concepts. Wrath of the Righteous will present its own set of new rules which can turn off costumers.
And what I have observed over the last decade or so of fiction/game development, as a player and GM, is that fans get turned off a setting when the writers/developers rip up that setting and change it into something barely recognizable. i.e. the Spellplague, Third Age Dragonlance or Dark Age BattleTech. Or one of the many reboots of the DC Universe. Fans do not mind if the story progresses, but they mind if the setting is not recognizable afterwards to what it was before. Fans of a franchise like evolution, not revolution.
I'm not talking about sales at all. We don't talk about sales publicly.
I'm specifically talking about how its post count seems low on the boards; that's all.
I don't think the dungeon heavy element was a turn-off. People have been asking for a dungeon-heavy adventure path quite a lot.
Actually, even if the heavy use of dungeons wasn't a problem with my players, I actually prefer waiting, until I have had the chance to run rise of the runelords with them. Of course I currently have 4 unused adventure paths and scores of adventures read and waiting.
My players are really exited for this one though, half of them have already made their characters ^^
Hi there seems to be some problem with my current order. Before I asked customer service to unsuspend my subscriptions, I bought and added a gift certificate to my account. (My debit card (visa) sometimes gets declinedfor some reason, so these days, I purchase a gift certificate and redeem it before my payment gets authorized).
Today I received and email, that my pending order could not be processed (the debit card is pretty much empty) but only the old ammount of store credit was applied to the order.
Thank you so much for you help, I am very sorry for the inconvenience.
- Auction houses will suit PvP players who just want a quick way to sell stolen goods and trade up to better weapons and armor before dashing out to kill someone else.
Broad incorrect generalisation, PvE players like to do their shopping as quick and convenient as possible too. I am not saying, that there is something wrong with players wanting to own and operate their own store, but even with an auction house there are pleny of options for them.
I actually like the system as proposed by Mr Dancey.
The situation where everybody has a shop and wants to interact with others might be fun for the shopkeeper, but I just want to get that longsword.
In other circumstanced I would just pay someone to direct me to a good store.
I have been watching the thread about Destiny's Twin, and noticing that most of us plan to have our Twin be a crafter, so our main character can train adventuring skills full time. While I think that is cool for those of us with the Twin benefit, the majority of players will come from the general public that weren't part of the Kickstarter.
I would like to discuss the possibility of separating gathering/processing/crafting skills from class skills. I believe that "professions" should be on their own timer, distinct from your normal character abilities. This would allow all characters to craft, but it wouldn't take away from those people that choose to focus on crafting, if designed well. The required "merit badges" to get the higher end crafting abilities would need to require some intense work on the part of the crafter, and show the kind of dedication that most casual crafters wouldn't be interested in. I trust that the designers at GW could come up with a system that would not make us sacrifice class advancement, in order to be involved in the market place.
What does the community think of this?
I appreciate the topic you want to adress, especially considering the Destiny's Twin benefit, but considering what I have read about the game, and hear from the community, I don't think that this will be a problem.
Apparently there are quite a number of players willing to play crafters who aren't all that interested in the other parts of the game. The reason that so many plan to use their twin for crafting is that we don't quite know how they will handle crafting - and do not want to miss something.
I am very much in favor of sticking closely to the original Pathfinder alignment system.
The "dumbing down" of alignments and complete removal of alignments that the target market(12 year olds and WoW/SWG/etc players) would struggle with was one of the many factors that killed 4th edition. (I will not go into a detailed discussion of the failure of 4th edition here it is way off topic).
The issue for the 4th ed devs seemed to be the Gygax alignments required an open minded approach to thinking about law and morality. Alignments are something old school D&D players love arguing about ad-infinitum, but many younger players, especially from the FPS world, have a very limitied simplistic view.
That is kind of insulting to a lot of players, and while I am an “old school D&D” player arguing about alignments is one of the most annoying things about this hobby.
Neadenil Edam wrote:
What does not help is the Hollywood tendency to present the world in a very black and white simplistic Manicean almost Gnostic worldview with the cosmos being a massive battle between good and evil with the heroes champions of good and the villian of the particular movie all that is evil. The Matrix trilogy tried to play on this with the first movie presenting the traditional Hollywood good/bad view and the following two movies undermining that. Needless to say many people just decided the first movie was awesome and the other two were rubbish as a result :D
Yeah, that must be the reason all those people disliked the other Matrix movies.... not the huge mass of plot holes.
Neadenil Edam wrote:
The difficulty of a roleplay only enrolment system is:
1. Many people do not really understand even the morality/alignments of the real world. Democracies are neutral for example and modern corporations float between true neutral and lawful evil. The closest to lawful good is likely to be a hypothetical benign dictatorship under some form of religious welfare/socialism. Another significant difference to the real world is there is no doctrine of "one god" or "one true religion" no equivalent of the real world muslim/christian/judaic belief in one omnipotent god. All the gods are real.
Arguing about the alignments and the real word is a very bad idea and very useful if you want to insult people. Since this is a forum about a completely fictional world, I would suggest not to use those arguments.
Neadenil Edam wrote:
Personally I would like to see the game enforce enrolments in an even stronger way than proposed by the devs. I would like to see certain actions impossible for certain alignments and possibly even give them an alignment hit for even trying.
In the D&D world your alignment actually makes you behave a certain way, you never have true freewill.
Hence the super lawful cannot tresspass even if they want to, but they are welcome to try and they will get a chaotic alignment hit simply for attempting too.
Sorry, but that really makes no sense. Characters aren't restricted by their alignment, they are free to chose their actions. Of course those actions could cause their alignment to change over time.
What you suggest would make it impossible for a lawful character to enter another nation to save some kidnapped kids...
LG characters does not infiltrate because that is aginst their A-L-I-G-N-M-E-N-T.
Looks like I won the discussion by default.
Please provide a quote from any Pathfinder RPG source, and if possible prove that this situaition is not expected or suggested in any Pathfinder RGP adventure path.
The SEALs or SAS are no more nor less lawful and good for infiltrating an enemy camp. Your disbelief should be directed rather at an overly narrow prediction of what alignment permits.
I sure am glad I didn't have to suffer with an unimaginative DM.
I understand, that in order to argue about the infiltation argument (which could apply to "honorable" characters, but thats not the same as LG), using examples from the real world seems like a good idea.
Considering the backgrouns and views of vaious members on these boards, it might be a good idea not to use real life examples.
I think Alignment has a place in Pathfinder and Pathfinder Online – even if Alignment and to poke into the hornets nest, Paladins – have been the reason for countless debates.
What you have to consider, it what kind ob abilities are chained to Alignment.
So lets look at an evil class – the Assassin. Now the only reason this class requires you to be evil, are the requirements, killing someone for not other reason than to enter the class is evil.
Death attack, sneak attack and poison use aren't evil or even chaotic abilities. Ninjas get them, and they can be LG. The other abilities aren't steeped in evil either, they make it easier for characters to kill and keep them dead.
While this applies to the evil Assassin that just killed the LG King, it does apply equally well to the CG freedom fighter that killed a vile tyrant.
In 3.5 WotC addressed this issue in a variety of way. Book of exalted deeds had some kind of exalted assassin (Slayer of Ragathiel (sp?) IIRC), on their website they had a lawful variant of the assassin that kill for his country. IIRC 3.5 had paladins in a variety of flavors including LG, CG, CE and LE.
We will see how Goblinworks will tackle this issue.
I really do not mind what buildings so long as each settlement can set a standard "look" for its buildings and possibly NPC's.
I want to be able to tell I have just entered the Settlement of the Chartered Company of Chaotic Evil Naked Elven Sorcerors by the funky black and purple elven looking buildings with all the naked NPCs wandering about.
Would all the naked people give you kind of a hint?
You kill someone and get X amount of loot, get attack and murder flag and drop on the rep, good, and Law axes.
OR
you KO someone, get 40% of the lootable gear, attacker and thief flag, and a smaller ding to rep/good/law cause you didn't murder someone
- They can get up later don't loose their gear and get a "robbed" flag.
If someone kills them, even you, all penalties of murder apply in full, but you only get 60% of the gear you coyld have gotten.
The only reason you would Rob, then murder someone is to get even more Evil and Chaos and loose more Rep.
The "robbed" flag should last long enough for a player to get to a town and get back to 100%
So there's no incentive to commit both crimes, and there's a way to get healed from unconciousness, not be too evil a bandit, keep items.
So with that in mind what other problems are there?
Could work, but the number might need to be changed a bit. The fact that your gear doesn't get destroyed if they only rob you, could be interesting for both parties.
I don't really see much value in a bounty if it is a single kill quest. I like what EVE has done, when you kill a player with a bounty, you get a reward proportional to how much money the target lost.
When players issue a bounty, it shouldn't be a single quest, it should stay open for a week, and re-issue until the contract is finished. For the contract to finish, the target player must lose an amount of money specified by the contract. If you have the contract, and kill the target, you get an amount proportional to the reward money based on what they lost. So if the contract is 1000 coin, and the target must lose 100 coin, you get 10 coin for every 1 coin you make the target lose.
The value of the kill is determined by the regional average market value of what they lost.
If a contract isn't taken, or is not emptied, after a week, the player can collect their money, minus the posting fee.
No, I really can't see how this would be better, other than give bounty hunters an excuse to kill poor players again and again.
Looting other characters is is kind of weird too, after all real life bounty hunters don't get to keep the the equipment of those they hunt.
Almost forgot to mention this, I like the blog and the proposed ideas. Obviously they are only part of a bigger system, but I have confidence in Goblinworks.
Sebastian Hirsch
