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I just had a thread moved out of the PFS forum. I have been on this board for quite a while and have well over 1000 posts. I know the rules, help enforce them, and am quite sure that when I post a thread that is where it should be.
The post in example was on Riffle Scrolls. This item is absolutely redundant in a typical game since you can craft scrolls/buy them however you like, at whatever caster level you want, with what ever metamagic you want. This is not the case in PFS however.
In PFS we are restricted to minimal caster level and as such Riffle Scrolls actually mean something....an extra 2 caster levels and some metamagic. These are things we can't get otherwise on a scroll and as such I wanted a PFS perspective on usefulness and to spread that usefulness among other PFS players.
I would appreciate it if you all were not so quick to move anything about an item or rule out of PFS so quickly.
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For the thread in question I would have to agree. The debate quickly turned to how riffle scrolls are activated with PFS folks in disagreement over the mechanics of this item. As PFS does require everything to follow RAW, a clarification in that thread would be a good thing (as well as moving the thread back to the PFSGD section since the questions raised were primarily impacting PFS use of the item).
For the thread in question I would have to agree. The debate quickly turned to how riffle scrolls are activated with PFS folks in disagreement over the mechanics of this item. As PFS does require everything to follow RAW, a clarification in that thread would be a good thing (as well as moving the thread back to the PFSGD section since the questions raised were primarily impacting PFS use of the item).
It seems from this summary even that what was desired was a RAW reading of how the item worked, which makes me think that being in the rules question with an FAQ will get the desired result faster.
This seems to happen a lot. I had a thread about proposed potential scenarios for PFS inspired by film and videogaming and it ended up getting thrown into homebrew. Why?
Probably the discussion of turning movie and videogame situations into Pathfinder Society scenarios is easily confused as a discussion in which fans present their own personal ideas for how to create/represent their own favorite worlds using the PF rules system, which sounds like home-brew.
These are just my guesses though :)
Actually the thread's original topic was looking at other spells that might be beneficial to PFS players on a Riffle Scroll. The RAW argument over how to use Riffle Scrolls is just a derail that really should be a seperate rules forum question. Unfortunately I can't control derailment.
How it works, what spells go on it, and whats best to put on it- are really generic questions not PFS specific.
I'm not a Mod nor do I work for Paizo, but I'd think a PFS specific question would be:
Does it work.
is it worth the PP/Fame.
Is the PP/Fame correct for its purchase.
Or so on.
General questions about it though aren't really about PFS but about the item generally and as such don't belong there.
I don't work for them or pretend to speak for them, but it seems to be a likely rationale.
-S
I think the point is that the OP wanted to discuss the item in a PFS context. He didn't feel the need to spell that out because he posted in a PFS forum. He is not happy about being second guessed when he posted exactly what he wanted exactly where it should go.
Often threads wander from their original purpose. From Lab_Rat's follow up post it sounds like the conversation drifted away from PFS specifics and into a more general discussion.
I guess it's a matter of social convention but (to me at least) I don't think the OP has any special status or rank within a thread. I can sympathise with him, since I understand how that could be annoying. But maybe that's what's going on here - it started out a PFS discussion and evolved into a broader rules discussion.
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I don't play PFS or read their forums, but I know I'm damn tired of seeing posts that ask questions within a PFS context that are posted in and get moved to Advice, Rules Questions, or Suggestions/Homebrew. One of the biggest problems is that people then read those, miss the PFS context, and further derail the discussion.
If the thread is going off topic, that's a signal to the moderator to ask the posters to stop going off topic, not to move the whole thread.
I can see how the film one would have been moved to the last and maybe some other specific instances where things go off topic, but otherwise I feel sorry for both PFS players who seem to have trouble having a conversation amongst themselves and for non-PFS players who get sucked into a PFS discussion and then don't know why the OP gets mad when they're posting what they think is a perfectly reasonable response (but has nothing to do with the PFS context in which the question was asked).
Maybe one think we can do is if we see a post that brings up PFS that is NOT in a PFS forum--even if it was originally--is to flag it for being in the wrong forum.
I think this is Lab Rat's point--
In any normal home game, characters can load up on scrolls at whichever caster level they can find or scribe themselves. For instance, communal resist energy, which is his thread starter, you can just get at CL7 for 525 gp (probably half that if you scribe it yourself). This gives 20 resistance to all, whereas the basic scroll of communal resist energy gives only 10 resistance for 375 gp. Now, in PFS, you can't buy a CL7 scroll of communal resist energy, but you can use the riffle scroll as sort of a little loophole--since the minimum CL is 7 for a riffle scroll of communal resist, you can now buy one that gives 20 resist (albeit for 700 instead of 525, but that's still 2 prestige), so you might buy this in PFS without even caring that it's silent: just to double the resistance. He wanted to know what other spells had similar advantage for being exactly 2 CL above minimum, which only matters in PFS, as this little trick is unnecessary in home games.
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I don't play PFS or read their forums, but I know I'm damn tired of seeing posts that ask questions within a PFS context that are posted in and get moved to Advice, Rules Questions, or Suggestions/Homebrew. One of the biggest problems is that people then read those, miss the PFS context, and further derail the discussion.
If the thread is going off topic, that's a signal to the moderator to ask the posters to stop going off topic, not to move the whole thread.
I can see how the film one would have been moved to the last and maybe some other specific instances where things go off topic, but otherwise I feel sorry for both PFS players who seem to have trouble having a conversation amongst themselves and for non-PFS players who get sucked into a PFS discussion and then don't know why the OP gets mad when they're posting what they think is a perfectly reasonable response (but has nothing to do with the PFS context in which the question was asked).
Maybe one think we can do is if we see a post that brings up PFS that is NOT in a PFS forum--even if it was originally--is to flag it for being in the wrong forum.
I could not agree more! I think people need to be much more conscious of where they post their PFS questions. I'd also like to see threads that are clearly PFS questions yet are posted in the wrong place get moved more quickly into the PFS section - I often see obvious PFS threads posted in non-PFS forums (Advice etc) which strangely don't get moved.
There are obviously plenty of idiosyncrasies and specific rules in PFS which do not apply to non-PFS games - PFS questions need to go in the PFS forums and they need to be kept out of the other forums.
By the same token, people need to stop replying to PFS questions, posted in the correct PFS forums, with things like, "well, it's your game, you can just house rule it."
I think part of the problem is that there's a bizarrely narrow definition of what constitutes a PFS-specific question used to make the determination. Specifically, if the question is not about
1) The rules laid out in the Organized Play Guide or Additional Resources.
2) Something printed in a scenario.
3) A PFS-specific blog posted by the people in charge of Organized Play at the time of the forum post...then it's not PFS specific, regardless of context. Questions about RAW never qualify under these criteria.
I think if the poster is a member of PFS and asking because of a PFS game and MOREOEVER, are looking for PFS-legal solutions, then it should constitute a PFS post and the forum rules should allow for that. If they don't, then the forum rules are established poorly and need to be changed, in my opinion.
Again, the problem is if a question like that gets moved into general Advice or Rules Questions, often the solutions people offer are ones that are not allowed in PFS, which does not help the poster at all, and clutters the forum generally with unnecessary discussion and arguments.
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I think one of the problems might be that many people don't know there IS a PFS area to post in. Unless you scroll pretty far down, they just don't see it. Maybe a partial solution is to move the PFS forum higher up toward the top of the page in the message board hierarchy?
Here is a perfect example:
Maybe if the OP includes the fact that it is PFS, rather than relying on the context of the forum. That way, it is clear even if it does get moved, that non PFS answers are useless. However, it still requires people to read the whole first post...
I think one of the problems might be that many people don't know there IS a PFS area to post in. Unless you scroll pretty far down, they just don't see it. Maybe a partial solution is to move the PFS forum higher up toward the top of the page in the message board hierarchy?
Here is a perfect example:
I actually think that thread is where it should be. The OP will get much more advice with their build in the advice forum.
This just goes to show that what is PFS and what isn't is hard to judge. A lot of times people are just looking for general advice on this class or that feat, and it just so happens they play PFS. That type opf thread doesn't need to be in the PFS section. However, sometimes people are discussing specific topics which do require a PFS like response to be relevent. For example: How useful is Item X?; How do judges rule the use of feat Y? Help me find feats/items/tricks to improve my survival in PFS? These are topics which need responses from PFS players and judges. They know best what is and isn't legal, what types of situations are common in PFS (Humanoids, swarms, etc), and thus they can give more relevent advice to the OP.
One of the main reasons I don't like threads being moved so quickly is that it kills the thread. You get a good conversation going and then next time you look for the thread it's gone. I have seen a lot of threads loose momentum, discussion, and some people never put in the time to hunt down the thread or never even see it before it's moved.
Maybe if the OP includes the fact that it is PFS, rather than relying on the context of the forum. That way, it is clear even if it does get moved, that non PFS answers are useless. However, it still requires people to read the whole first post...
Isn't it ridiculous to expect someone to essentially flag their own post as "in the correct forum?"
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I could not agree more! I think people need to be much more conscious of where they post their PFS questions. I'd also like to see threads that are clearly PFS questions yet are posted in the wrong place get moved more quickly into the PFS section - I often see obvious PFS threads posted in non-PFS forums (Advice etc) which strangely don't get moved...
Actually i always post for PFS build advice in the general advice forum. But that is mostly because I always see them moved there if they were started anywhere else.
If you think a thread got moved to the wrong forum, feel free to flag it or PM a moderator. We're human and sometimes can make mistakes. There's no ill intent behind moving a thread. :)