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1 skill rank getting you 11 skill points was a little nuts in pfs where knowledge skills are a little more important than most home games.
In a home game, the bard probably wouldn't overshadow the wizard or lore warden fighter by being better at knowledge skills than they are. In the mixed nuts table selection of pfs that stopgap is completely gone.
It also obviated bardic knowledge: archetypes could drop it like a bad habbit because once you pick up peacock you'd never use it again.
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I just imagine that someone who builds a Wizard, or other Knowledge monkey, who likes their character, and feels useful, who sits down with a Bard who's using one skill roll and always coming out on top, wouldn't have a very fun time playing their character anymore.
But I've never encountered anyone with this Masterpiece in person before, so I could be wrong.
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If I can't say anything nice I shouldn't say anything right?
Its not what you say its how you say it. This feat should have stayed legal because bards need the boost, knowledge is what bards do, it uses up a limited resources etc. are all probably allowed, I just don't think they're going to be very effective. PFS is incredibly open, and things don't get banned for no reason or on a whim so if something got considered at length discussed, and was deemed so far beyond the pale that it needed to be banned I don't think you're going to come up with anything to the contrary.
Implying emotional states, drug use, incompetence, altitude sickness, native language, or alcohol consumption while the decision was made or personal dislikes of the people making the decisions will probably get the post deleted. Save those comments for your fellow posters.
*ow ow ow ow kidding ow ow ow ow* fine don't make them at all *ow ow ow ow ow*
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From an underground bunker nowhere near you, the top 5 reasons Pageant of the Peacock was banned in PFS:
5. PFS GMs thought it summoned a horde of peacocks, and it would slow game play down too much. That, and no felt like looking up the stats for a peacock.
4. People mistook it for a more gaudy version of color spray and thought we didn't need another one of those.
3. Some players insisted that the GM place an Official Paizo Peacock Pageant Winner Tiara on their head when they used the masterpiece. Unfortunately, the Paizo store's been sold out of these for months.
2. It made god wizards feel inferior to bards, and everyone knows we can't have that. Seriously, can you see a bard being more knowledgeable than a god wizard? Totally unrealistic.
1. Collectively, all PFS Bards blew their Bluff check to convince Mike Brock that Pageant of the Peacock wasn't overpowered. His Sense Motive is pretty dang high...
YHMMV (Your Humor Mileage May Vary)
Link to that post?
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As one who uses Pageant of the Peacock on his (Once again mentioned) Fighter/Bard, I can't blame them for wanting to ban use of it. The Pageant is absolutely bananas.
Just jack up your bluff and know EVERYTHING! I was getting near 40 on average for my knowledge checks. Although, I was under the impression that GMs could throw curve-balls in the information given because the player is using bluff instead of actually knowing the information, I don't think such an accommodation would be fair in PFS.
Overall, yes, I'm a little perturbed by it, but only because I bought the Dragonslayer's Handbook specifically for the Pageant. But as one who also plays organized Magic: The Gathering, sometimes you just have to take it for what it is so everyone can enjoy the game.
*Pulls up Level 2 Bard Spell List* Support spell....support spell...
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Although, I was under the impression that GMs could throw curve-balls in the information given because the player is using bluff instead of actually knowing the information, I don't think such an accommodation would be fair in PFS.
I think THIS is the real problem. I did read the discussion and there was a sizeable number of posters that convinced me that it doesn't work in every situation and that it allows GM discretion.
But GM discretion and PFS don't mix. And if people insist it always work then they shoot themselve in the foot as it leaves Mike with only one option - the one he used.
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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I'm glad it was banned. Partly because of power level, but mostly because it turned out to be the kind of thing that people felt strongly enough about that even very experienced GMs were able to convince themselves that completely made-up ideas that didn't follow from the text at all were somehow legitimate interpretations. Any option which produces that kind of behavior on that scale needs to be banned for the sake of campaign coherence.
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Link to that post?
In case you were talking about the threads about Pageant of the Peacock, they are here, here, and here.
Though I'm not usually excited about content being banned, short of an errata, I think banning it was the best solution for this confusing and overpowered ability. There was an alarming number of GMs who disliked this ability to the point of imposing arbitrary rule interpretations to limit it.
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When the writer of the ability clarified that it only works for one skill check per round (by taking a standard action to use bluff in place of an INT skill), all while burning a bardic performance that round... I had become ok with it from a game balance perspective.
That's what I expected Mike to put in the FAQ. I was a little surprised to see it banned outright. But, que sera sera. I won't complain about it just being completely gone from PFS, either.
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Aside from knowledges being the rightful domain of Int-based scholars far more than Cha-based entertainersQuite right. I mean, it's not like Bards have a class feature based entirely on boosting their knowledge...wait.
Yeah, the whole purpose of the bard is to gather lore, stories, and rumors, and then tell those stories in an entertaining way. By gathering, he should, theoretically, be able to access the knowledge. I would say bards may be Cha-based, but they're knowledge-dependent. After all, they can't very well tell stories about the great city of Absalom if they don't have access to local knowledge, can they?
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I've been formulating my thoughts on this for awhile. As someone who built a Bard to be as effective as possible in preparation for some of the harder scenarios, and who used Pageant of the Peacock to this end, I cannot say it was an ability that was so powerful it needed to be banned. I don't believe it was banned due to power relative to other allowed spells/abilities. I'm fairly certain that it was removed from additional resources because of the polarizing opinions on it on the boards, as some here have postulated. And as a customer who buys his books strictly for use in PFS that makes me very leery of purchasing anything not in the core line of books, if it gets removed from play just because people don't like it, what's to stop other cool/useful splat material from getting banned. I love my Cheliax companion booklet for a lot of its useful tidbits, but I've seen quite a few people complain about certain things in that book. (Cough *Emergency Force Sphere* cough) I can say with certainty that unless I get to play a sanctioned Dragon's Demand game around here I will almost certainly never open my Dragonslayer's Handbook after today. And that is truly unfortunate, as I enjoy going through my splat books from time to time, but when they truly have nothing of interest mechanically, it isn't as fun for me. Or rather, it depresses me to know that my PFRPG book is really just filled with words and pretty pictures.
But on to the actual banning. While I can't say I'm at all surprised, I am a bit piqued by the nonchalant way it was introduced. I know that not making a big deal of things is leaderships go to, particularly this close to GenCon, but as someone who built a Bard around this ability to be effective for the enjoyable content on the more difficult side that Paizo has released, it is a bit annoying to lose it due to many people's dislike of it. I wont disagree that sometimes it outshone other players at the table, but in my local gaming area knowledge heavy pcs are unusual, and I frequently felt very useful, and communicated things about the scenario we wouldn't have gotten otherwise to the entire table. As long as you exercise restraint in a group where others want their knowledge checks to matter, I see no reason as to why this ability had to be let go. I suppose that's likely not the first time in the campaign a few players hogging the spotlight with an ability has ruined it for many GMs and players. But honestly I don't see very high skill checks as being imbalanced, basically ever. There are tons of ways to pump skills on any character, Pageant just happened to make a class that was already very good at it even better. But skills have diminishing returns, and being good at them rarely ruins the narrative of the story. I question whether or not this ability truly negatively impacts game health, although by this point I suppose it's so polarized it doesn't matter.
With that I'll say goodbye sweet prince to Pageant of the Peacock. No second level spell known could ever replace you.
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Yeah, the whole purpose of the bard is to gather lore, stories, and rumors, and then tell those stories in an entertaining way. By gathering, he should, theoretically, be able to access the knowledge. I would say bards may be Cha-based, but they're knowledge-dependent. After all, they can't very well tell stories about the great city of Absalom if they don't have access to local knowledge, can they?Aside from knowledges being the rightful domain of Int-based scholars far more than Cha-based entertainersQuite right. I mean, it's not like Bards have a class feature based entirely on boosting their knowledge...wait.
Absolutely. And bardic lore does a FINE job of representing this. They know a little bit about everything which is exactly what one would expect from gathering info in bars. But they know far less than does a scholar in the subject.
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With that I'll say goodbye sweet prince to Pageant of the Peacock. No second level spell known could ever replace you.
And that right there might have had something to do with it's removal. When something is so good that "nothing compares", then there may be an issue.
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Absolutely. And bardic lore does a FINE job of representing this. They know a little bit about everything which is exactly what one would expect from gathering info in bars. But they know far less than does a scholar in the subject.Yeah, the whole purpose of the bard is to gather lore, stories, and rumors, and then tell those stories in an entertaining way. By gathering, he should, theoretically, be able to access the knowledge. I would say bards may be Cha-based, but they're knowledge-dependent. After all, they can't very well tell stories about the great city of Absalom if they don't have access to local knowledge, can they?Aside from knowledges being the rightful domain of Int-based scholars far more than Cha-based entertainersQuite right. I mean, it's not like Bards have a class feature based entirely on boosting their knowledge...wait.
Okay, that's a good point. It's easy to forget just how much variance a bonus of one or two is actually giving. Most physicists in the real world would have a bonus of +10 on their associated fields of study. A bard should never have that.
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With that I'll say goodbye sweet prince to Pageant of the Peacock. No second level spell known could ever replace you.And that right there might have had something to do with it's removal. When something is so good that "nothing compares", then there may be an issue.
That is frequently true with spells, particularly when you get to higher levels. I see no reason why Bard abilities should be treated so differently.
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That is frequently true with spells, particularly when you get to higher levels. I see no reason why Bard abilities should be treated so differently.With that I'll say goodbye sweet prince to Pageant of the Peacock. No second level spell known could ever replace you.And that right there might have had something to do with it's removal. When something is so good that "nothing compares", then there may be an issue.
Second level spells are not high level though. The ability was so good as it was interpreted that it was the absolute best choice for an entire levels worth of spells from an already limited number of total choices.
If this had been a higher level ability it would have been one thing, but it did too much and it did it in such a way that the description of how it worked just didn't sit right with a lot of people.
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If you look at it from the perspective of "now I can use 1 skill check to do 15 different things" then yeah it's pretty strong. But they're skill checks... so it was probably not that big of a deal other than just seeming oddly potent. Spotlight hogging is a social issue, not a rules issue. And really what's the problem if someone is super good at learning stuff about creatures or is good at identifying spells or doing appraisals?
The real problem was that people were so stuck on a bluff check being used to get information per an int check that people were trying to reconcile that weirdness by making up rules to limit the feat.
EDIT: It seems the post I was responding to was deleted.
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I recently helped a player build a Bard for a game I am running. Because it's a for-fun one-shot, I decided to let her take Pageant and run with it, see how crazy it can get.
As a 9th level character, she has a +38 in every knowledge skill. That's pretty impressive - I don't think I've ever seen a wizard of that level with knowledge that high. However, that's not what I think is most silly about the skill. People focus on its application to knowledge skills and forget that it applies to all Int-based skills.
What really breaks it for me is that Pageant means she has +34 in every Craft skill.
Craft (alchemy)? +34. Craft (siege engine)? +34. Craft (underwater basket weaving)? +34.
I can kinda understand the argument that Bards are supposed to be really good at Knowledge. But are they also supposed to be really good at appraise, linguistics, spellcraft, and every single craft skill, all for the price of one skill?
For that matter, a Bard doesn't even have to invest in Bluff to abuse this. My PC's bard has zero ranks in Bluff - she has Perform (Sing) with Versatile Performance instead, along with enough ranks of Dance to meet the requirement for Pageant. Since Sing also applies to Sense Motive, that means that she gets to apply her total bonus in one skill to:
Sing, Bluff, Sense Motive, Appraise, Linguistics, Spellcraft, every Knowledge skill, and every Craft skill.
That means a magic item that gives a +5 bonus to Perform (Sing) is giving her a +5 bonus to 16+ skills; Skill Focus (Sing) is also effectively giving her skill focus in all those skills. She ended up going with an Int of 7 because she couldn't think of any skills she needed other than sing and dance.
Are you sure that's not broken?
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That is frequently true with spells, particularly when you get to higher levels. I see no reason why Bard abilities should be treated so differently.With that I'll say goodbye sweet prince to Pageant of the Peacock. No second level spell known could ever replace you.And that right there might have had something to do with it's removal. When something is so good that "nothing compares", then there may be an issue.Second level spells are not high level though. The ability was so good as it was interpreted that it was the absolute best choice for an entire levels worth of spells from an already limited number of total choices.
If this had been a higher level ability it would have been one thing, but it did too much and it did it in such a way that the description of how it worked just didn't sit right with a lot of people.
There are spells I would take over Pageant, Heroism and Bladed Dash are more important to me in combat than Pageant is. And I'm in agreement with Acedio. Skills are basically never broken. I am aware that the reason the ability was looked down upon by so many does in part have to do with its fluff, which is unfortunate.
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If you look at it from the perspective of "now I can use 1 skill check to do 15 different things" then yeah it's pretty strong. But they're skill checks... so it was probably not that big of a deal other than just seeming oddly potent. Spotlight hogging is a social issue, not a rules issue. And really what's the problem if someone is super good at learning stuff about creatures or is good at identifying spells or doing appraisals?
The real problem was that people were so stuck on a bluff check being used to get information per an int check that people were trying to reconcile that weirdness by making up rules to limit the feat.
EDIT: It seems the post I was responding to was deleted.
sorry for deleting my post but ty for agreeing with me
and not to leave you high and dry here it is
well it is obviously apparent that bards are broken and needed to be "toned" down so the wizards may become relevant in gameplay :/(sarcasm)
in all seriousness in a world of dragons and dungeons I think that a successful knowledge check "which benefits the whole party not just the individual" is hardly over powered or stretching things also as for the physics guy argument will a physics proficient person be receiving a equal bonus for medical or marine bio I think not but a specifically schooled wizard / lore oracle will be.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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One skill going to 15 others was ridiculous and good riddance. It is fairly hard to get characters to even be reasonable at knowledges unless you are intelligence based and willing to throw quite a few skill points, unless you happen to have used this.
Forget 15 skills.
Someone demonstrated that for the cost of 2 traits + peacock, you could get all the int skills + diplomacy + sense motive + UMD to run off bluff. (and you would probably have enough skill points left over to max every other social skill too.)
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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When the writer of the ability clarified that it only works for one skill check per round (by taking a standard action to use bluff in place of an INT skill), all while burning a bardic performance that round... I had become ok with it from a game balance perspective.
That's what I expected Mike to put in the FAQ. I was a little surprised to see it banned outright. But, que sera sera. I won't complain about it just being completely gone from PFS, either.
Actually, if you read the transcript of the chat, the guy talking to the creator kept pushing the 1 per performance interpretation, and the creator eventually conceded that it could be read that way but that wasn't what he meant.
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As long as you exercise restraint in a group where others want their knowledge checks to matter, I see no reason as to why this ability had to be let go.
1) not everybody even tries to exercise restraint
2) Exercising restraint without appearing condescending (unless you choose to just not use the ability) is somewhere between difficult and impossible. Once you succeed at a check that my highly knowledgeable character failed I'll know that your character is just letting me try in order to be nice. While I DO appreciate the effort it just doesn't work for me.