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Yes, because cold real world realism is best applied to magic in a fantasy setting.

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Vancian spellcasting is by now iconic to Pathfinder/D&D and needs to stay within any new edition for me to even recognize it as being part of the D&D tradition.

That being said, I think there needs to be some thinking on making rest periods between spell/ability recovery shorter. The 15 minute workday remains a problem which Pathfinder actually excerbated with their new classes, due to the focus on limited use powers. I'd really like to see that partys can do more in a day than spend their powers and have to rest for a full day to recover. But that's a topic of a future thread of its own.

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I don't think I'd agree with that assessment. On one hand, it teaches him to listen to the advice of people he trusts. Scotty balks over the torpedoes - Kirk comes to realize he's right. Spock badgers him into rethinking the morality of the mission - Kirk agrees which leads to the exposure of the main plot. In both of those cases, failure to listen leads to or would lead to trouble.

I'd say a lot of people learn that authority and power clearly don't make anyone trustworthy and it's good to have a surprise play at hand.

Also, it shows right at the beginning that actions do have consequences. Kirk chooses to completely disregard the prime directive to save Spock and promptly gets his ship yanked out from under him and sent back to the academy. From where he is rescued by his personal friend into being first officer on the Enterprise and then gets back command of the ship by, um, "luck", but aside from the power of nepotism ( and intrigue ), it is shown that his being super gung-ho and trying to be not accountable to the rules simply doesn't work out well for him.

Spoony did a Vlog for the movie here, if anyone is interested.

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What I would like to see with a Pathfinder 2.0:

- A serious look by the developers at what the most constant complaints on the forum are about bad classes ( Monks, Rogues, Summoners, Gunslingers, IMO ) and a revision of them into something more appealing.
- Trying to make the math work at the higher levels
- An alternative way to deal with the magic item inflation ( Christmas tree effect, big six, etc. )
- A look at the core philosophies for some of the game systems, in the sense of "Why are these things working in this particular way?", in regards to magic item crafting and the "rest system - 15 minute work day" problem.

And that is just a bad summary of topics which would need to be expanded much more to make real sense, but which all should be examined in more detail when the time for a new edition comes.

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- Vancian Casting -

The magic mechanics needs to get away from this tired and annoying concept.

No, it does not. Seriously, this is one of the iconic things of D&D. 4E tried to get rid of it, and where are they now?

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magnuskn wrote:

I know that. But, OTOH, if you fear change that much, I think that this will negatively impact on the costumer base, too, if not now, then in a few years when people want something new. I just think that you are underestimating the adaptability of your costumers on this issue.

I've been watching reactions to changes to campaign settings/timeline advances for a long time... both as a customer and as an industry professional. And my observations of how such changes have gone have informed my decisions about timeline advances—it's not something I just decided on a lark. And the same goes for the publisher and owners of Paizo. Timeline advances/drastic campaign setting changes are very risky, and making them when the setting is still gaining popularity is not the best move. When you're doing something right, as evidenced by Pathfinder's continued growth, changing things drastically is a fundamental risk.

I'm certainly watching reviews, feedback, and post counts for Shattered Star, since that's one of the biggest timeline advancement things we've done. And while the AP has been pretty well received... it's not looking like it's a game-changer as far as our existing policy on timeline advancing so far.

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.

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Saren wanted to be subservient to the Reapers. I don't think you can say that is synthesis.

Really? You just agreed with the Reapers that their viewpoint is the correct one and that you can't stop the singularity. You'd rather non-consensually change creation as we know it, rather than taking your chance at fighting another way, so that you can co-exist with the Reapers. That is pretty much everything Saren was trying to do, only that he didn't have the option to force Synthesis on all of creation in the galaxy, so he tried to be subservient to be useful.

Not to mention that you are being manipulated by the Catalyst, who is a fricking Reaper, into believing that Synthesis is the best option. That alone should ring a ton of warning bells.

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How so? It seems like a good blending of rogue and fighter. It's a little heavy on the damage imho but it seems like it'd work just fine.

Personally, I find Sneak Attack on a swashbuckler type character completely wrong. It may work as a real-life analogue for one-on-one fight, but in the world of Pathfinder group combat it means that you need to flank constantly with other characters ( feinting is a pretty horrible method in PF for reliable damage output, anyway ).

As a full BAB frontline class, the Swashbuckler should be able to take on an opponent alone and expect to be competitive in his damage output with other full BAB classes.

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Thanks, it went through a lot of revisions to get there. :)

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Eh, I'll reserve judgement when anything controversial actually happens.

Given how I'm in "Wait until it is clear what they will do with the current EU canon" holding mode with Star Wars, anyway, it is hard for me to get worked up over the whole deal.

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Well, though I plan to give up on this thread, as neither side is budging on what makes sense or not. But in looking at that map, it seems the distance between Avistan and Tian Xia drawn as a straight line, and not hugging the coasts is far shorter than any trip around the northern route - I'm sure my geographic distances aren't mixed up (I am a cartographer, I know how to read map distances.)

<sigh> Your whole approach to how to travel to the actual destination ( which is Minkai, not just Tian Xia ) is wrong. You don't seem to know the actual starting point ( Brinewall in Varisia ), nor the actual destination ( Kasai in Minkai ). Your approach would deposit the group on the far side of Minkai, where they would have to cross at least three nations full of potentially hostile people to get to Minkai. Sailing around the southern edge of Tian Xia also is highly dangerous, as the southernmost part of the continent is pretty much inhabited by giant monsters ( incorrectly colored as being part of Sarusan on that map, by the way ).

I have no idea how you get to the idea of drawing a straight line towards Tian Xia ( I thought the point here was for a ship journey, and that one is at least 1 1/2 times longer than the land route over the pass of Aganhei ), but that also would be a completely different journey, involving traveling through such cozy countries like the Hold of Belkzen ( orcs aplenty ), Ustalav ( undead and other Hammer Film monsters ), Numeria ( actual space robots and a drugged out Mage/Barbarian dictatorship ) and Brevoy ( Game of Thrones in Poland ). And THEN you get to Casmaron, a continent we know basically nothing about yet. And when you arrive in Tian Xia with your straight line, you need to cross the Wall of Heaven ( basically the Himalaya mountain range ) and will enter directly into a giant desert.

So, yeah, maybe taking the trade path which has worked for hundreds of years is not that bad an idea, even if it is not geographically closer than drawing a straight line between two locations, without taking into account what actually is happening on that line.

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Okay, so what I'm really hearing from all of you is that ALL of my fears are hugely confirmed.

Rogues/Ninjas are collectively seen as completely fungible, mostly useless in combat and therefore unwanted, and nobody likes a character with a well-rounded set of abilities because apparently min/maxing is the only way to go.

This does not sound like a tabletop RPG I would enjoy.

Which is a pity, this game sounded like it would be awesome.

Stormwind Fallacy, my good man. Having a well-built character doesn't make your roleplaying worse. That a lot of people here are able to recognize that the Rogue/Ninja ( and, yes, the Monk ) are mechanically worse built than the other classes doesn't make them worse roleplayers nor the game less capable of delivering interesting roleplaying challenges.

Mechanical concerns over those classes mostly come from people who like those classes and want to love to play them, but feel that they are not contributing enough to party advancement when they do. After all, if your party dies because your character failed on his job, the campaign is over. And adventure paths can be pretty brutal when played as they should be ( 15 pts buy, 4 characters ).

Quite honestly, as of this moment you sound more like you are actively seeking reasons to not play Pathfinder, rather than coming at this with an open mind. If you think we are collectively unable of roleplaying, I'd invite you to peruse, say, some of the frequent alignment threads, where you will see a lot of discussion of the roleplaying aspects of the game.

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To be totally honest, I am somewhat against bringing out such a book for evil characters, especially since I fear that the writers would take a look at the classic Star Wars quote from Yoda and write a bunch of overpowered abilities in there.

It is already hard enough to keep player wanting to play good characters without having a book which mechanically incentivices them to want to play evil characters even more. Given how APs are written ( generally for good characters ), I'd think that Paizo would want to avoid that, too.

Totally fine with the other alignments, though.

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Yay, Loki returns! :D I love how he is portrayed by his actor.

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and samurai (this one is the worst of all the 21 classes/subclasses in the wholy game)

What are you smoking? ^^

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"So now we will raise 40 unholy undead abominations, which will instantly make an enemy of every good-aligned person we meet on the way. OUCH, Koya, stop hitting me with your feeble hands, stop it!"

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Well, here I disagree. The magic-medieval stasis is necessary to preserve the feel of the setting. When everybody and their mother gets firearms, this gets very much into steampunk territory. Which is an interesting setting, but would risk splitting the fanbase much more than just advancing the setting storyline a bit.

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I know James doesn't like me declaring that advancing the timeline for Pathfinder 2.0 (many years down the line, etc.,etc., you know the drill) is the right way to go. But I really believe that it would be a disservice to the setting as a whole if it were to always remain static. And for multiple reasons:

1.) The world keeps getting smaller. Let's be realistic, there is a limited amount of nations which make for an attractive setting for an AP for the prime audience of Paizo. With the expectation that AP results can not be canonized, every AP cuts down the number of potential adventure sites by one. And that means that a few years down the line you can't have an adventure path in most of the popular places on the map of Avistan and I don't see Paizo beginning to write AP's exclusively for Tian Xia or Casmaron.

2.) In the same vein, even if the writers have an excellent idea for another AP which would fit perfectly in, say, Korvosa, the current canon house policy prevents them from selecting the city again for said adventure. That means static settings kill stories.

3.) And as for that last sentence in point two, a completely static setting will prevent Paizo novels from ever attaining the popularity even Forgotten Realms novels enjoyed. If you write stories where the protagonists actions can never be felt in the world, then you'll never be able to build up an iconic character/group of characters, which will have a long series of novels. Maybe that isn't even the plan, but I'm pretty sure nobody at the Paizo office would be too sad if they had their own Drizzt or Elminster or Raistlin, i.e. a character which immediately is recognized by every fantasy RPG fan.

And, before that counterargument crops up, I don't want constant RSE ("Realm Shaking Events", trademark of the Forgotten Realms novels), but I would love characters with a supporting cast and appearances over multiple novels/APs. Although a bit movement on the politic map of Avistan would be lovely, too.

And Geraint, Pathfinder 2.0 will happen in some years. That's a given. When the current edition has reached a certain point in the development cycle, Paizo will be faced with the decision to either stop producing new rules material and lay off a good number of their employees or get to producing a new edition of Pathfinder.

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Seriously, that some people seem to get personally offended if a GM is asking for a more detailed setting is disturbing.

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Well, that would be one of the problems with FR. It was chock full of Mary Sue NPCs. I mean, Shadowdale. If you were below 9th level there, you were probably a butler or something for the rest of the villagers, who were all 15th+.

Another problem was the bloat of canonical detail. I don't need to know that building 5c in Sandpoint belongs to Farmer Jacobs and is a chicken coop containing 1 red rooster, 6 hens, and 6d6 eggs on any given morning.

In fact, I much prefer the current level of detail for Golarion locations. Settlement stat block plus flavor text, like what you have in books like Rule of Fear, is just right IMO. A higher level of detail would constrain GMs and players in customizing the setting to their own PCs and campaigns.

Yeah, well, I totally disagree with everything you said here.

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In other news, the OP made me buy my first Forgotten Realms book since 4E came out. Not because I still care what happens in the Forgotten Realms ( still too much heartbreak for that after the disaster of the Spellplague and all the other insulting nonsense it entailed ), but because the book sounds like it has fantastical material on daily life in a medieval fantasy world.

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magnuskn wrote:

This whole "Wah, wah, why isn't Elminster on this?" sentiment is just people being b#@$#y that their characters ain't at a level themselves where they can slap around other people at will.

Claiming to determine the intents behind people's comments or complaints without actually asking them if that's what they meant is a dark road we should avoid going down, sir. Tread lightly.

I happen to speak from close to a decade of observing people complain about Elminster, so I'm not exactly just making things up. Of course I am not saying that *all* people have this particular attitude, but there are a lot who just can't deal with NPCs running around who can't be just intimidated and pushed around.

magnuskn wrote:

Turin the Mad wrote:

Not to far along into 2e my circles began calling it the Forgettable Realms. Elminster became Elmonster. The Seven Sisters became the Seven Babysitters. It was ridiculous.

I really dislike this sentiment. Those are in total eight mages ( not even that, some of the Seven Sisters were heavily multiclassed or not arcane casters at all ). Sure, they are powerful, but they can only do so much.

Of course, if your GM uses them in every game to fix problems while the PCs watch from the sidelines, that much becomes everything.

That is a GM problem, not a setting problem. God NPC's have been a problem forever, which can be easily seen when perusing some of the "My GM sucks!" threads which can be found also on this messageboard.

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Not to far along into 2e my circles began calling it the Forgettable Realms. Elminster became Elmonster. The Seven Sisters became the Seven Babysitters. It was ridiculous.

I really dislike this sentiment. Those are in total eight mages ( not even that, some of the Seven Sisters were heavily multiclassed or not arcane casters at all ). Sure, they are powerful, but they can only do so much.

This whole "Wah, wah, why isn't Elminster on this?" sentiment is just people being b#~!&y that their characters ain't at a level themselves where they can slap around other people at will.

I've seen few people complain that most really high-level casters in Golarion are evil and only there to be killed by the party when they reach the last module of an AP. More consistency in your b#!#&ing, people!

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Desna's Avatar wrote:

For the Love of Desna, please, PLEASE stop releasing an endless stream of additional spells, races, classes, feats, archetypes, etc. Talk about BLOAT!

No.

Oh my gods, did your regular avatars eat too much hamburgers or what happened?

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Team Dextro, all the way.

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Well, aside from the AP collapsing in on itself in the middle, as noted in many of the reviews for the middle modules.

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That awkward moment when your arch-nemisis doesn't remember you. You don't remember me? We disagreed... on the internet!

For you it was the defining moment of your life. For him... it was Tuesday.

;)

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Yes, they should be a class, as should be the other spontaneous caster classes.

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So, it wouldn't bother you if one of your players would, anonymously, misrepresent a personal conflict in your game to this board, which makes you (although still anonymous) look like a total creepy douche?

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Wow, Shifty is actively changing gears from "wanting the GM to be the bad guy" to "making stuff up to make him look worse".

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I hate to bring up my own topic again, but it appears from the FAQ button at the top that the question was answered in the FAQ.

Um, where? I looked at the CRB FAQ, at the Bestiary FAQ and at the CRB and Bestiary errata. I downloaded the last version of the CRB. Nowhere is this topic addressed.

Could a developer clarify, please?

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Some people really seem to be invested in wanting to blame the GM.

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Personally, I'd like to see full rule support. System agnostic VTTs are already pretty common, after all. If Paizo wants us to spend money on their support material for their VTT, its better if it offers some advantage of just going with another already established VTT.

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As always, actually seeing the other side of the argument is illuminating.

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Look, guys, if your enjoyment is so hung up with playing just this particular class, maybe complaining about "lack of flexibility" is not really something you should do.

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It wasn't an adversarial tone

Yes, it was. And you are continueing to use it, so I'll refrain from continueing this discussion.

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Good points all. If I ever GM Curse again ( which could happen ), I'll refer back to this post to integrate some of those things.

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This is relevant to this discussion.

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GET OFF MY LAWN YOU YOUNG WHIPPERSNAPPERS! YEE-HAAWWWW!

That being said, having that Paladin fall was the right call.

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Still, if there is one old AP which deserves to be re-released ( after RotRL is now out ), it's Curse of the Crimson Throne. IMO the best AP Paizo has released so far.

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Yeah, I am not feeling at all the motivation to join another MMO. I still am hoping that they will give us a single player RPG in Golarion some day.

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You might want to look into the animal companion feats like Narrow Frame and Lithe Attacker. Those deal with a lot of problems mounts have in dungeons.

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magnuskn wrote:

Since I perceive that the main problem was that the player wanted to play a character who was actively disruptive to the campaign,

I will point out that the DM wanted her to play that character that way too. Part of his plan.

Also completely true. The campaign was kind of borked right from the start. Not to forget that the group is apparently all about letting everybody play whatever they want, but then the disruptive player is not ready to deal with the consequences.

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For sure it also was the GMs fault for not making it clear to the player what really was happening, but the problem is for me the aftermath, reaction and general lack of caring about having killed scores of innocent people of the character.

As for "preverting a player's character", it's not your character anymore at this point. And that was a clear agreement at the campaign't start, which I state normally multiple times when players are making characters. I don't mind morally ambiguous characters too much, but I won't countenance evil characters at my table.

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The character has definitely slid into Evil, but its not for the killing of innocents. Tragedy and mistakes happen. Its terrible, but its true. Someone makes a bad call, misjudges what is going on, and innocent people pay the price. A mistake does not make someone evil. What makes the character evil is the fact that the character doesn't really seem to care about it.

A good aligned character would have something of a mental breakdown if they just fried a room full of children, maybe even going so far as to swear off magic from then on (maybe symbolize this by taking fighter levels from now on) and do whatever they could to make amends.

A neutral character would still be racked with guilt and would probably change their ways, maybe even shifting to a Good alignment, in order to make up for this tragedy.

An evil, non-sociopathic character would just go "Whoops!" and go on their way, as this character has seemed to do given they've done this twice now.

Definitely this. The character is, in my assessment, a sociopath and therefore neutral evil. Utterly incapable of feeling empathy and remorse.