FAQ System


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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I don't know if it's "broken down" so much as it never really got going in the first place. Earlier in the year it seemed as if Paizo was ready to take the much neglected FAQ system off the back-burner and finally put some steady effort into updating it. Things were looking good at first, especially when the stealth playtest was started, but all too soon the updates slowed down and then all but stopped once more. Now we're back to where we were before; with an FAQ system that Paizo doesn't consider a priority.

I hate to type these sort of posts since I'm otherwise a big fan of the work Paizo puts into their products. But the floundering FAQ system is a big sticking point for me.


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I've noticed that the 'Last updated' date isn't always updated when the FAQ is. Granted, I haven't checked the FAQs in a while.

The Exchange

Volaran wrote:
I've noticed that the 'Last updated' date isn't always updated when the FAQ is. Granted, I haven't checked the FAQs in a while.

I've seen that also, which is frustrating when you check it almost every day and then find out somehow something slipped in when you weren't looking but you actually were.


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You're not missing it. There's been one or two updates in the last 3 months, but not many. The last big bunch was in August. Since then a trickle, and that trickle dried to nothing over the holidays.

*sigh*

I'm hoping they put someone back on it now that the holidays are overwith.


Actually, Sean was doing a bunch there. Then a bunch of guys jumped all over him, really lambasted him & attacked him, so he stopped doing it. They seemed to really hate the "TWF "Monk attacks and the no range/lance/pounce rulings.

So they spoiled it for everybody.


DrDeth wrote:

Actually, Sean was doing a bunch there. Then a bunch of guys jumped all over him, really lambasted him & attacked him, so he stopped doing it. They seemed to really hate the "TWF "Monk attacks and the no range/lance/pounce rulings.

So they spoiled it for everybody.

A) You necromancy'd a thread that's been dead for almost four months.

B) SKR does not make the FAQ's by himself, it's him, Jason Buhlman, and several other staff. SKR is the one tasked with putting them out once they're decided on.
C) They aren't commenting on the monk ruling because they acknowledge (Jason Buhlman specifically) that it needed to be seriously looked into given that none of their published material matched the ruling.
D) SKR has a LOT thicker skin than you give him credit for, he is not someone who takes his ball and goes home whining.


http://paizo.com/forums/dmtz5drg?Attacking-with-a-weapon#44


Let's not necro a thread just to place a comment that does not apply to the original conversation (mdt's post was well before any of the recent clarification rage).

Contributor

mdt wrote:
B) SKR does not make the FAQ's by himself, it's him, Jason Buhlman, and several other staff. SKR is the one tasked with putting them out once they're decided on.

Bold text is false, BTW.


I would also like to point out that rulings are not simple things in a game as complex as Pathfinder, and FAQ issues do not easily come up when pushing for the next release. After all, the goal of any release is to leave as few questions as reasonably possible.

Grand Lodge

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Hi Folks!

I checked the FAQ and didn't see an answer for a question that I have.

When a post is flagged as a FAQ, does the specific message flagged get, uh, flagged? Or does the thread get flagged?

Thanks!

Maredudd

Designer, RPG Superstar Judge

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The specific post is flagged, not the entire thread. If you flag the wrong post, we often have to read the entire conversation to see where the true question is.


Jason Bulmahn wrote:
- Use the FAQ flagging system responsibly. This is a tool that will benefit us all if used correctly to identify issues with the rules that are unclear.

I think you made a mistake by calling this FAQ ...

There are some genuine FAQs such as vital strike combos which are ruleable but which are genuinely frequently asked. For the most part the intent and use of the FAQ system seems to be guidance on issues which probably should be ruleable but aren't though.

The predecessor of this system from your competitor had a better name in Sage Advice, I think you should look for something similar.


There are two problems with Paizo's FAQ system from the perspective of the people using it. Only one is a problem in reality.

First, Paizo has approximately 1.000000001 times as many developers as they need in order to publish the products they intend to publish in any given time period. The number of idle hands approaches zero asymptotically. As such, there is effectively almost no capacity to analyze and answer FAQs. This is a situation which shows no sign of changing as whenever staff come on board at Paizo, new products and product lines are immediately announced, absorbing excess capacity. This is natural and understandable but from customer perspective, a problem.

Secondly - and this is not a problem - it is intended that many rules remain ambiguous. It is by design that DM adjudication is required in this game. Much of the clarification people seek is not desired by the game developers. Still, human time is required to determine if clarity is desired or not, for which please see the first problem. This is why the answer "deliberately vague" doesn't get filed as an answer to FAQs.

Of course, there are stealth FAQs. Animal companions/familiars... should the PC run them or should the DM run them? Well, this months' Animal Archive finally answers this age-old question in a cute little side-bar. There is verbiage to the effect that "you should ask your DM how they run their game". There it is, in print, that the game intentionally does not clarify this particular aspect.


It's a pity they gave up on magazines ... as a page filler Sage Advice always had an inherent value to justify putting in effort.


Pinky's Brain wrote:
It's a pity they gave up on magazines ... as a page filler Sage Advice always had an inherent value to justify putting in effort.

Gave up? Paizo didn't give up on the magazines. The license to print them was taken away from them.

Shadow Lodge

I think they where saying decided against doing their own afterwards, so gave up more on the idea than literally gave up on Dragon and Dungeon specifically.


1 person marked this as FAQ candidate.

Hi
I'm not 100% this is where I need to be but you guys are great with helping so I'm sorry if I'm in the wrong place. That said.

Is there a ruling on "powerful build"? I have the advanced race builders guide (which is brilliant) and it is not in there. I'm about a third of the way into creating a campaign setting (it would be far there but I'm redoing it for pathfinder) and was wanting to use the ability on a creature I had created. I know it was from 3.5 and therefore probably a bit overpowered. I have seen it in an open sourced book "psionics unleashed" for the half giant but didn't know how it was balanced with the core pathfinder books. Please if I could get a ruling I would be super grateful

Thank you
Brandon.


Havoc404 wrote:

Hi

I'm not 100% this is where I need to be but you guys are great with helping so I'm sorry if I'm in the wrong place. That said.

Is there a ruling on "powerful build"? I have the advanced race builders guide (which is brilliant) and it is not in there. I'm about a third of the way into creating a campaign setting (it would be far there but I'm redoing it for pathfinder) and was wanting to use the ability on a creature I had created. I know it was from 3.5 and therefore probably a bit overpowered. I have seen it in an open sourced book "psionics unleashed" for the half giant but didn't know how it was balanced with the core pathfinder books. Please if I could get a ruling I would be super grateful

Thank you
Brandon.

No, this is the wrong place.

You should gp to the Advice section and create a thread.

Link to Advice section

http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/pathfinder/pathfinderR PG/advice


Zark wrote:
Havoc404 wrote:

Hi

I'm not 100% this is where I need to be but you guys are great with helping so I'm sorry if I'm in the wrong place. That said.

Is there a ruling on "powerful build"? I have the advanced race builders guide (which is brilliant) and it is not in there. I'm about a third of the way into creating a campaign setting (it would be far there but I'm redoing it for pathfinder) and was wanting to use the ability on a creature I had created. I know it was from 3.5 and therefore probably a bit overpowered. I have seen it in an open sourced book "psionics unleashed" for the half giant but didn't know how it was balanced with the core pathfinder books. Please if I could get a ruling I would be super grateful

Thank you
Brandon.

No, this is the wrong place.

You should gp to the Advice section and create a thread.

Link to Advice section

http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/pathfinder/pathfinderR PG/advice

Thank you Zark

Much appreciated


Hum...

Where's the FAQ page?

One of my topics had the main post "Answered in the FAQ"... but I can't find the link anywhere.

Where's the official FAQ link on these boards?

Silver Crusade

Here's the FAQ


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Joe M. wrote:
Here's the FAQ

Oh, thank you ^_^

Although... I still can't find the answer to my question.

On my topic, it says "Answered in the FAQ", but it doesn't tell me where is the answer.

May I suggest that everytime "Answered in the FAQ" is added, a link should be provided to quick reference?

Y'know, "Answered in the FAQ, click here for the answer."


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It seams like the entire FAQ System is "Out of Order". FAQs are not answered any more.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

What leads you to that conclusion?

Hint: any answer must account for two FAQ updates in the last month and at least 7 since the start of the year.


Do "Free-Actions-During-an-Attack-of-Opportunity" meet these requirements ?

.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
PDT wrote:

My question hasn't been answered yet. Is my question being ignored?

Regardless of how long it takes to get a FAQ posted, the design team is never ignoring FAQ issues. The team spends time each week looking at the queue and prioritizing which questions should be addressed sooner rather than later.
Sometimes other work duties interfere with answering FAQ questions, such as conventions or deadlines. Sometimes one member of the design team is out sick or on vacation (remember that FAQ posts require a consensus).
Sometimes answering a question takes longer because the post is formatted poorly, or it’s about a weird corner case of the rules that the design team needs to read up on before answering, or because there are more important questions--despite having fewer clicks--that the team wants to answer first.

Nope.


It seams like there is a big deadline and all are on vacation.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

There's always a big deadline, then there's bringing Mark up to speed on the FAQ process, and deciding on how various responsibilities in the team now play out, and writing for the next hardcovers, and... basically, FAQs aren't top of the priority list. Given Mark's dedication to the rules, I think we can expect good things a little further down the road, but it'll take a bit of time.


How can I call a decision regarding locking a thread I made into question? To my understanding, It was essentially locked because the title admitted that I suspected it would end in an edition war, but if my understanding was correct, why can't I work with the moderators to simply change the name of the thread? I would have contacted said mod myself except they appear to have private messages turned off.

Paizo Glitterati Robot

The Indescribable wrote:
How can I call a decision regarding locking a thread I made into question? To my understanding, It was essentially locked because the title admitted that I suspected it would end in an edition war, but if my understanding was correct, why can't I work with the moderators to simply change the name of the thread? I would have contacted said mod myself except they appear to have private messages turned off.

In the future, if you have this kind of question, it would be more appropriate to post in our Website Feedback forum, or email community@paizo.com. As for why the thread was locked, please take a look at our Community Guidelines.


I couldn't find a place that seemed appropriate, and this does seem like something that should be answered in the FAQs. I would think from my first post that my meaning for it was clear, but I understand I screwed up, and I would be happy to change the title of the thread if that's possible.


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Jason Bulmahn wrote:


- The FAQ will be viewable through the product page.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing

Could you link the answeres to the FAQ requests? It's not always clear which would be the right product, leading to more searching through the FAQs.


Christopk-K wrote:
Jason Bulmahn wrote:


- The FAQ will be viewable through the product page.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing

Could you link the answeres to the FAQ requests? It's not always clear which would be the right product, leading to more searching through the FAQs.

Bump


Chris I dont understand your request. I bring this up because I dont know if they do either.


In threads that were flagged for a FAQ and have it actually answered it says "answered in FAQ" right at the start.
Quite often this leads to a new search. At least for me it is not evident which book(s) the FAQed rule(s) came from so I start my next search.
Would it be possible to link the "answered in FAQ" line to the relevant FAQ? When one of you guys puts "answered in FAQ" there they know excatly which FAQ they refer to so it would seem to be rather simple to do so.

In the meantime I also put this into website feedback, since I was quite alone for the last two years in this thread :-)


wraithstrike wrote:

Chris I dont understand your request. I bring this up because I dont know if they do either.

Thanks for pointing that out. Perhaps that's why there was no answer


Ok, I get it.

Some of those were falsely flagged, and they never actually got an answer. I remember this coming up in a conversation with one of the devs on the boards.

Now all "answered in FAQ" flags that have actually been answered should link directly to the FAQ, but there was a time when the system had errors, and some of those never got fixed.

This is one that does not link to the FAQ, but it should because it got answered

Dev comentary on the code that automatically connects to the FAQ page not working

Note that both of these are around the same time in 2012.
It happened again about a year later.


That's actually supprising. I don't remember ever seeing a linked FAQ. Might just be my luck though. Perhaps the posts I was looking at were from the no link time.


Christopk-K wrote:
That's actually supprising. I don't remember ever seeing a linked FAQ. Might just be my luck though. Perhaps the posts I was looking at were from the no link time.

You are right. They don't link. What happens is the PDT post in the thread, and that links to the FAQ. For some reason I thought it happened in both places.

Yeah it would be nice if the "answered in FAQ" text linked directly to the FAQ.

I dont think they are still following this conversation so you may want to start another one to see if it can be done. I would expect for it to take a while to fix all the old ones, but they might change things moving forward.


Most propably not. The last official post is >3 years old

I also made a thread in website feedback

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2uo1b?Linking-FAQs#1


Want to send a FAQ request there :-)


Christopk-K wrote:

Most propably not. The last official post is >3 years old

I also made a thread in website feedback

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2uo1b?Linking-FAQs#1

linkified


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Thanks, linkifying is so bad from the phone


Can an arcane caster, except a wizzard copy spellbooks or add a spell to a spellbook? If not, how could bards to perpare spellbooks, for the purpose to use Arrowsong’s Lament (Arcane Anthology)?

Shadow Lodge

This is a thread to discuss the FAQ system, not a thread to ask questions in.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

So.... they're just not doing this anymore?

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