I'm starting to think pathfinder 2.0 should happen


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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Yeah I don't use Golarion setting at all. My S.O. does like crazy and buys all that stuff where I avoid it for my games. I just use the system to run and make up my own stuff. Its how I've always done it. So I think there is a market both for people who do use it and people who do not. I probably would not of bought PF in the first place if the core rules were setting specific.


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WormysQueue wrote:

to me it's more that setting neutrality = bland, boring stuff.

And I've yet to see a rulebook that proves me otherwise.

*Looks at Occult Adventures/Horror Adventures/Ultimate Intrigue/Bestiaries*

Wow... That's.... a rather alien perspective to me.

I mean god, how could someone see incutilis, devolutionist, vilderavn, eyebiters, zeitgeist binders, reanimated mediums, sahkil, life channelers, kineticists, sha'ir, manasuptra, death druid, etc. as bland or boring.

Silver Crusade

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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Milo v3 wrote:
WormysQueue wrote:

to me it's more that setting neutrality = bland, boring stuff.

And I've yet to see a rulebook that proves me otherwise.

*Looks at Occult Adventures/Horror Adventures/Ultimate Intrigue/Bestiaries*

Wow... That's.... a rather alien perspective to me.

I mean god, how could someone see incutilis, devolutionist, vilderavn, eyebiters, zeitgeist binders, reanimated mediums, sahkil, life channelers, kineticists, sha'ir, manasuptra, death druid, etc. as bland or boring.

Oh, sure, they're interesting, but having to wrestle them into the setting isn't something I enjoy paying my money for.

Shadow Lodge

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Vidmaster7 wrote:
Yeah I don't use Golarion setting at all. My S.O. does like crazy and buys all that stuff where I avoid it for my games. I just use the system to run and make up my own stuff. Its how I've always done it. So I think there is a market both for people who do use it and people who do not. I probably would not of bought PF in the first place if the core rules were setting specific.

I agree. While I do play in Golarion, it's only because it's mandatory for Pathfinder Society, and generally speaking it's one of my least favorite settings. I also tend to hate a lot of the ways the setting diverges from the core system, because whatever the intent, the effect is that it stifles creativity, fun concepts, and for players to do things they want, mainly because different folks didn't want it in their game.

I generally don't care for the setting deities, and it seems like every effort to make them more interesting has been systematically removed from "canon". On the other hand, we have extremely weird concepts like followers of Ragthiel needing to do an hour long torture/execution rituals to kill evil victims to get their powers for the day, which is antithetical to literally everything else about the deity/faith and makes no sense, but remains.

Given the choice, I'd divorce the system from the setting 100%, and honestly I think PFS would be a great deal more interesting across the board if it wasn't tied to Golarion, allowing (and requiring) a lot more personalization and creativity on everyone's part. That doesn't mean you can't use some of the setting's elements, storylines, or events. Just that no one is bound to use them in exactly the same way, or even expects the same outcome in how they might play out.


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Yeah as an example: I'm used to allowing whatever pantheon of deities my players want so a lot of times especially for clerics I have to re-flavor a lot of options.


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While I do play Golarion, I also like to create my own settings. It has always annoyed me that even though the rule books are setting neutral, they refuse to put stuff in them that they will not use in their own setting. I would love to see rules for planes, trains, and automobiles. I would love setting rules for steampunk, modern day setting(and other earth timelines), rules for deities from earth mythology(I love the Egyptian stuff but want more real world cultures). I have been wanting human blooded races based on fey, dragons, and giants for a long time but if they wanted them they would have done them a long ago. I do not think that just because it is a rule book that it has to be in the Golarion setting as well. I just want the tools to help me create a variety of settings.

Also it would nice to have stats on mundane and magical versions of items like umbrellas, yo-yos, toy soldiers, jack in the boxes, walking canes, skateboards, roller skates, jump ropes, hula hoops, watches, sunglasses, bubblegum, soda, skis, alarm clocks, radios, cameras, etc.

Shadow Lodge

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Something I find interesting is there seems to be a assumption that reducing the amount of crossover between the setting and the universal rules somehow <significantly> reduces the amount of work is required fore the DM to utilize material. I disagree. If you look at basically any published adventure, (Module, AP, or PFS Scenario), that uses "setting generic" material like the "Corrupt guard of a city", that adventure literally gives you the information you need and then says to go to whatever book it's from for the stats.

So basically, the only difference is that if everything is tied to the setting, we would need to spend a hell of a lot more money on products to have "Corrupt guard of a city <Cheliax>" instead of "Corrupt guard of a city <Osirion>", rather than "Corrupt guard of a city <Ustalav>", who all use 99% the exact same stats. You are still going to ignore all of the flavor from the stat block of the book they came from, (and for PFS might need to rebuild them anyway because certain options just don't exist in PFS).


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For me it's mostly ease of reading. I don't have a problem reading bestiaries which are setting neutral, or the monster codex, because the monster information is usually, even without "this monster is from X region", still pretty interesting. I think the villain codex turns me off because all the use of generic names just makes it so much more a slog to read. If you were going to go "generic", I would much prefer them not being a specific generic organization, but rather just a bunch of NPC stats meant to emulate an assassin guild, etc, with a wide array of stats and CRs

Shadow Lodge

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So really, for you, it's more the way it was handled is this last book than anything? I can see that. I don't have it, but from what I've heard, the various organizations where very poor choices throughout the book.

The Exchange

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Milo v3 wrote:
WormysQueue wrote:

to me it's more that setting neutrality = bland, boring stuff.

And I've yet to see a rulebook that proves me otherwise.

*Looks at Occult Adventures/Horror Adventures/Ultimate Intrigue/Bestiaries*

Wow... That's.... a rather alien perspective to me.

First I'm a Setting guy and not much of a Rules guy. I came here to Paizo because of the quality of the Dungeon and Dragon mags, I stayed here for the excellence of their adventure paths and because I like a lot about their setting Golarion. But I never really cared for their own version of the 3.5 rules specifically. I support their decision to do so because I understand the reasons, I applaud them for the wild success they had with them, but to be perfectly honest, I wouldn't miss them for one second if they weren't here. Not because they are bad rules, but because they are "just" rules" and I was and would still be happy with 3.5 without them.

Second, I didn't want to say that the rules are bland and boring. What I wanted to say is that setting-neutral stuff in rules books is very much so. It's generic which to me is a very synonym for those terms. A very notable exception might be monster books, but to be honest, that's just because of the artwork most of the time. You bring up the incutilis as an example. It's not one of my favorite monsters but as it first appeared in AP #55 it's well suited to make the point I try to make. Because the difference between the article in the adventure path in the entry in the bestiary #4 is mainly that they threw mostly anything away for the bestiary I might have been interested in. Ecology-style write-ups of a monster are very inspiring to me even if they are of a generic nature. Monster stats with a tiny little bit of generic fluff added aren't (most of the time) . And still, I'd prefer to have more of a setting connection to them. You are right that all you need is just a coast. But it would be much more interesting to me to include them in my game if there were legends about them, anything Golarion specific that add to the setting's atmosphere instead of just being another more or less interesting encounter option.

And third, and that may be what's most important to me, I'm generally interested in how the designers of a class, monster or any other option envisioned those options to be used within their setting. I'm not terribly interested in, let's say the CRB's gnome race. I loved the gnomes of the Realms, of Eberron or of Golarion though and if I think about how to use gnomes in my own setting, you can bet that I won't look at the CRB but at the respective sources of those settings. Because with those setting variants of this race, I see what I like and what I don't, so I know what i can steal for my own game and what I might have to change about them. The Gnome entry in the CRB only informs me that there are gnomes, so well yeah, I already knew that before I knew about D&D and to me it's very much harder to get inspired by that.

Don't get me wrong though. I just spent a lot of money for third party options by Dreamscarred, Raging Swann Drop Dead studios and especially Legendary Games. And I certainly didn't do that because I don't appreciate those rule options they crank out. But while they might get me ideas about how to use them in my setting, it's often harder to do so because I have nothing to start with.

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I mean god, how could someone see incutilis, devolutionist, vilderavn, eyebiters, zeitgeist binders, reanimated mediums, sahkil, life channelers, kineticists, sha'ir, manasuptra, death druid, etc. as bland or boring.

I admit that some of those things I had to look up before commenting on them because I obviously couldn't bring myself to read the book they come from. I commented on the incutilis above but to be honest, from those other options the only ones that immediately clicked with me are the kineticist and the sha'ir, first because I'm a big fan of the Avatar series, second while I'm an equally big fan of the Al-Qadim setting. I'd prefer to know the designers' vision of how those options fit into Golarion, but to use them in my own setting, I know where I can get my inspiration from.

DM Beckett wrote:
Something I find interesting is there seems to be a assumption that reducing the amount of crossover between the setting and the universal rules somehow <significantly> reduces the amount of work is required fore the DM to utilize material.

I wouldn't necessarily say that it reduces the amount of work overall. It certainly increases my motivation to work with the option at all. Also I'm better at adding or changing details than to come up with something original by myself.

Quote:
we would need to spend a hell of a lot more money on products to have "Corrupt guard of a city <Cheliax>" instead of "Corrupt guard of a city <Osirion>", rather than "Corrupt guard of a city <Ustalav>", who all use 99% the exact same stats.

That's actually one of the problems I have with the generic stuff. Why would guards from such different localities use 99% of the same stats?

Apart from that it's a matter of how detailed you wanna go. I can see a reason for not making your setting too complex, but if you're looking at Milo v3's list, those are quite specific rules options not nearly as prevalent than city guards.

You could also do something like Paizo did with Classic Monsters Revisited and similar products. Add a paragraph "XXX in Golarion" to add setting-specific information and at the same time separate the generic from the setting-related information. Don't think that would necessarily translate into spending a lot more money on products.


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I want to underline a point I made earlier:

If "corrrupt guard of Cheliax" and "corrupt guard of Osiron" are exactly the same, what value is there in putting the "of [city]" after "corrupt guard"? If you're not going to tie the character into where he or she is from, what value is there in even specifying where he or she is from?

If seems like "Corrupt Guard of nowhere-in-particular" could be dropped into either Cheliax or Osiron no problem, with the DM adding local ties as needed, whereas the "Corrupt guard of Cheliax" would need to have whatever Chellish details went into their write-up removed and replaced by Osironian ones in case the game were set in Osiron and not Cheliax.

So from where I sit, outlining specifically where the NPC is from is a benefit in one case (the game is taking place exactly where that guy's from, or sufficiently nearby that cultural details are the same) and a detriment in all other cases. So if you have a book chock full of great Chellish NPCs, how is that more useful to you than a book full of great not-setting-specific NPCs in case your game happens to take place in Qadira or the River Kingdoms?

The Exchange

PossibleCabbage wrote:
If "corrrupt guard of Cheliax" and "corrupt guard of Osiron" are exactly the same, what value is there in putting the "of [city]" after "corrupt guard"? If you're not going to tie the character into where he or she is from, what value is there in even specifying where he or she is from?

You're right, but then I think that guard of Chelix and guard of Osirion are very different things and actually should also be presented as such. I probably would be very willing to spend money at a 64 page Campaign Setting book "Guards of Golarion", which expands on this topic. As I said in my last post, that's probably not the biggest issue for quite some time, but as I really like to showcase the difference between two settings with such details, I'd appreciate such a product.

Quote:
So from where I sit, outlining specifically where the NPC is from is a benefit in one case (the game is taking place exactly where that guy's from, or sufficiently nearby that cultural details are the same) and a detriment in all other cases. So if you have a book chock full of great Chellish NPCs, how is that more useful to you than a book full of great not-setting-specific NPCs in case your game happens to take place in Qadira or the River Kingdoms?

Well from where I sit, that's not a choice I have. Because what makes NPCs great to me is exactly those little details you don't have in a non-setting specific book. Look at Paizo's NPC codex. A lot of interesting stat blocks for sure, but interesting NPCs? Not without a lot of additional work. Compare that to the NPC Gallery feature in the APs.

Though I admit that's not really a setting vs generic option in this case. Ulver Zandalus from "In search of Sanity" would be still interesting if you cut off the connection to this specific setting. On the other hand, those NPCs from the NPC Codex wouldn't suddenly get more interesting by adding an location's name to them. You would still need to expand on them quite a bit.


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DM Beckett wrote:
So really, for you, it's more the way it was handled is this last book than anything? I can see that. I don't have it, but from what I've heard, the various organizations where very poor choices throughout the book.

Yeah. Contrast say with the Monster Codex, which I love.

In Monster Codex, we get a generic intro that introduces the psychology and culture of a given band of monsters. We then get a two page spread of specific rule options, than the various NPCs and a related monster

We don't get...like a specific setting neutral tribe. There meant to be representative NPCs you could find in almost any group of members of that monster's race you might find

In Villain Codex, we get a set of NPCs that could be found in any royal court or city guard, we also get a specific generic organization with a hierarchy and specific goals and interactions. Now some of those are generic enough that you could probably put them anywhere (the corrupt guard is a good example). Others are more specialized, and almost go against the Golarion setting (The Musketeers and Demon Knights being the too biggest off the top of my head).

If we were going to have organizations that were very specific, I would have much rather have seen Alkenstar militia, or Worldwound cultists. Or just revamp the book so it's more like the NPC codex or Monster Codex, and just divide the groups by theme.


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Quote:
I think the villain codex turns me off because all the use of generic names just makes it so much more a slog to read. If you were going to go "generic", I would much prefer them not being a specific generic organization, but rather just a bunch of NPC stats meant to emulate an assassin guild, etc, with a wide array of stats and CRs

Thing is, those generic names are not the group's name. Generic organizations like slayers guide, thieves guild, slavers names are just placeholders so you can put in whatever group name would be fitting, since there will be billions of generic organizations like them (so you know, exactly what you just asked for), but the actual non-generic specific organisations do have flavourful names "Cruel Musketeers", "Fang Monastery", "Merry Outlaws", "Nature's Scourge" (you can tell whether one is a specific organization by either just looking at which ones are generic and which ones are specific or by looking at whether the book capitalises their name)... so the generic organizations are just NPC stats meant to emulate an assassin guild, etc. and the non-generic organizations have non-generic names... So... whats the issue?

WormysQueue wrote:
Second, I didn't want to say that the rules are bland and boring. What I wanted to say is that setting-neutral stuff in rules books is very much so.

Thats what I thought you were saying... I just severely disagree.

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You bring up the incutilis as an example. It's not one of my favorite monsters but as it first appeared in AP #55 it's well suited to make the point I try to make. Because the difference between the article in the adventure path in the entry in the bestiary #4 is mainly that they threw mostly anything away for the bestiary I might have been interested in. Ecology-style write-ups of a monster are very inspiring to me even if they are of a generic nature. Monster stats with a tiny little bit of generic fluff added aren't (most of the time) . And still, I'd prefer to have more of a setting connection to them. You are right that all you need is just a coast. But it would be much more interesting to me to include them in my game if there were legends about them, anything Golarion specific that add to the setting's atmosphere instead of just being another more or less interesting encounter option.

That's nothing to do with setting-neutrality or setting-centrality(?), that's to do with how much page count paizo can spare in their books. If they gave multiple pages to every non-earth creature then you'd only get a tiny number of creatures in the book. If the bestiary was setting specific, it wouldn't magically get more page space.

Shadow Lodge

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PossibleCabbage wrote:

I want to underline a point I made earlier:

If "corrrupt guard of Cheliax" and "corrupt guard of Osiron" are exactly the same, what value is there in putting the "of [city]" after "corrupt guard"? If you're not going to tie the character into where he or she is from, what value is there in even specifying where he or she is from?

Either I'm missing something from the original few times it was mentioned, or you are not understanding what I mean. So, I will explain what I'm referring to. As it stand right now, recent (within the last yearish) Pathfinder adventures utilizing stat blocks from other books, (say the NPC Codex) offer a little bit of flavor and tactics based around that particular encounter in that particular adventure, but otherwise use something like NE Half-elf Warrior CR 1, see page __ of the NPC Codex, "Corrupt City Guard"

There is no Corrupt Cheliaxian City Guard. Or Osirion, or Ustalavian, etc. . . It's just a stat block. The adventure may offer a few more particulars, but otherwise points to the exact same stat block that another adventure might use for a completely different area, (or even race/alignment, etc). I don't mean to say that every single adventure does this, but that was part of the point of the various "Codex" books, to offer generic, plug-and-play NPC's. It helps them to save more room in the adventure's as well by simply giving a page number to another book instead of placing the stat block there, (although PFS puts all the other non-Core book stat blocks in the appendix at the end).

It's somewhat similar to how 4th (and 5th ?) ED D&D had "mooks", statless NPCs there to die in one or two good hits, though I think the intent was more to offer more room for extra rules systems instead of enemy stat blocks.

So, the point I was trying to make is that by mashing up the setting material and the setting neutral material, all you are really doing (as far as this goes), is requiring people to buy more products so that they can have "Corrupt Taldan Guard variant 14" for just the right time you need to have an anti-Qadiran border guard. Personally, I just don't see that as saving any more time or effort on the DM's part than how it already works, taking more money, and possibly even increasing the amount of prep it takes as we would need even more books like this to cover everything. Even if they did something like Strange Aeons Codex, it just seems like it's a book that would be of limited usefulness, or would still be used to draw random statblocks from when Return to the Rise of the Runelords comes out, which kind of defeats the purpose, in my opinion.

The Exchange

Milo v3 wrote:
Thats what I thought you were saying... I just severely disagree.

Well, I'm not pretending to speak for anyone else besides me. :)

Quote:
That's nothing to do with setting-neutrality or setting-centrality(?), that's to do with how much page count paizo can spare in their books. If they gave multiple pages to every non-earth creature then you'd only get a tiny number of creatures in the book. If the bestiary was setting specific, it wouldn't magically get more page space.

I know. Still, I've personally gotten more use out of Classical Monsters Revisited than out of all 5 Bestiaries published so far. I may be alone with this, but if the average bestiary would only have a third of the monsters contained and the space for each monster accordingly expanded and used for fluff, they would be immensely more useful for me.

It's a matter of approach I guess. I would have no problems winging all those AP encounters without actually haveing a single stat block. (Purists would probably cry foul and that that's nothing to do with Pathfinder anymore but I couldn't care less about such statements). What I'm not good at winging is creating detailed, athmospheric fluff fitting into a specific setting. So that's what I have to prepeare and what takes me more time than I actually have. So here's also where I appreciate the designer's help.

Still love the monster books as they are just for being monster books but the setting neutrality is a big reason why the only rules hardcovers I have is those that I got for free for having been part of the german translation team and prefer to buy the others as pdfs, while spending my money on the AP hardcovers and kickstarters like the recent Blight kickstarter or the 7th Sea kickstarter.

Probably also a cultural thing. As a german, I grew up with "Das Schwarze Auge" (The Dark Eye) with started as a D&D rip-off but has lost any setting neutrality somewhere in the 80's. The rules might be even more dense (and clunky) than those of 3.5 but where it shines is with the setting books and the adventures, so it's kinda doing what Paizo does only for over 30 years now and without separating setting and crunch.

Well, and here in Germany it has ever been way more successful than D&D, so maybe it has something to do with that.


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Doesn't setting being split from RPG-line help with that sort of mind set, means you don't need to waste money on books mainly about rules and that you can just buy the campaign setting books which only have a small amount of rules?

Get the most bang for you buck, rather than ending up spending money on a book your only going to use for the small amounts of fluff. That's the reason why I don't buy Campaign Setting books, since even if they have some rules text that I could use outside golarion, most of it is golarion stuff.

The Exchange

Milo v3 wrote:
Doesn't setting being split from RPG-line help with that sort of mind set, means you don't need to waste money on books mainly about rules and that you can just buy the campaign setting books which only have a small amount of rules?

Partly. I mean, with the campaign line and the player companions line, I already get more fluff than I can absorb and the player companions generally do a great job in pointing at useful rules options to a given topic.

On the other hand those rules options aren't necessarily written with Golarion in mind (I'm not sure if that's actually true, but if the designers have a specific vision for how to include an option into the setting, they don't tell us in the rules books). So you look at Occult Adventures, see the Kineticist (and if you're me, you're very intrigued by that), but have basically no information where to integrate this class into the setting. If you're lucky, you'll find this information a bit later in some of the setting books (in this case, Occult Realms) but it might also be that it's nothing more than a link to the rules' source.

And it's not that I mind having to do the integration work for such cases myself (in fact I have a lot of fun with that), it's just that to me, it's bascially never just plug and play, so it's also not very easy either. Which is why I would gladly do without some of the kineticist's wild talents and instead got some paragraphs on "Kineticists in Golarion", just so I get some pointers for the direction I should go for.


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WormysQueue wrote:

{. . .}

Probably also a cultural thing. As a german, I grew up with "Das Schwarze Auge" (The Dark Eye) with started as a D&D rip-off but has lost any setting neutrality somewhere in the 80's. The rules might be even more dense (and clunky) than those of 3.5 but where it shines is with the setting books and the adventures, so it's kinda doing what Paizo does only for over 30 years now and without separating setting and crunch.
{. . .}

Well, I was wondering what RPG they play in Germany -- now I know. Even has an English translation, and just got its own 5th Edition last year.


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Milo v3 wrote:

Doesn't setting being split from RPG-line help with that sort of mind set, means you don't need to waste money on books mainly about rules and that you can just buy the campaign setting books which only have a small amount of rules?

Get the most bang for you buck, rather than ending up spending money on a book your only going to use for the small amounts of fluff. That's the reason why I don't buy Campaign Setting books, since even if they have some rules text that I could use outside golarion, most of it is golarion stuff.

Agreed.

I have seen variations on this comment on other message boards all the time.

"I'll never use the rules, but I buy all the setting material, I love Golarion - they do a great job with that setting"

The Exchange

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UnArcaneElection wrote:
Well, I was wondering what RPG they play in Germany -- now I know. Even has an English translation, and just got its own 5th Edition last year.

Yeah, and if any of you played through the Realms of Arkania series. you already know the setting. It has much more of a "medieval" vibe than D&D/PF, is kind of low fantasy (though that has changed over the years) and takes a lot of influence from the northern and middle-european mythology. You don't necessarily start out as a hero but simply as belonging to a certain profession. The game has an extensive skill and talent system and is much more on the simulationist side than D&D is.

But it's also a prime example of us Germans' love to make things unnecessarily complicated :D

Lord Mhoram" wrote:
I'll never use the rules, but I buy all the setting material, I love Golarion - they do a great job with that setting"

]

Yeah but I generally like the rules, I just would like them more if they had more connection to Paizo's own setting.


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I like the setting, but for me a detailed and well-crafted setting makes me happier to play in a game set there, but much less happy to run a game set there. To me, that's the designers doing the work I enjoy doing for a game leaving me mostly the work I enjoy doing less.

The more difficult it is to separate the rules for the game from the default setting, the more work it will be for me when I invariably run the game somewhere else, the less likely I am to actually want to run a game set there.


So when people say "it feels like a video game" are they talking about

"I want to do X"

"Do you have the feat Y and the prerequisite Z?"

"No"

"DENIED"

Liberty's Edge

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Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

The whole point with the Vancian casting is the overall limitation of firing off one spell slot at a time and not being able to choose what you cast at the time of casting. (the Memorization aspect) This is what needs cut out, not the spellbook itself or being able to change out spells from the spellbook.

The best example is the Arcanist in the current system. Without the limited spell slots and level gains for spells, it could be the next version's "Wizard" with very little adjustment.

The next iteration of PF needs to start with the Spontaneous caster mechanic and go from there, combining some classes, having the other mechanic exclusive classes (Oracle, for example) be folded into the base class or be changed up to expand on their potential.

The other pressing matter is to make multi-classing have some effects that will do more with the interaction between classes while having some scaling back when more classes are taken.

Fire and forget need to go the way of the dodo.


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Vancian really doesn't need to be removed it simply needs to stop being better than the alternatives.

Stop screwing the sorcerer and oracle with inferior spellcasting and penalized metamagic.

The Exchange

PossibleCabbage wrote:
I like the setting, but for me a detailed and well-crafted setting makes me happier to play in a game set there, but much less happy to run a game set there. To me, that's the designers doing the work I enjoy doing for a game leaving me mostly the work I enjoy doing less.

I totally understand that, but the problem is that I hardly have the time to craft a setting by myself that has the level of detail I would expect it to have. so it's easier to me to adapt already existing fluff to my own gameworld and adding details where I need them. Or to run a game in the Realms, Golarion or another setting and adding/changing details there.

And for some reason I actually like doing things like adapting Pathfinder APs to other settings. Probably started with the setting conversions done by Eric Boyd and Keith Baker for the Age of Worms AP. That concept immediately clicked with me and (contrary to my slowly simmering homebrew) I seem actually able to get things done this way.


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magnuskn wrote:
Yeah, I'm for PF 2.0, have been for years. But it should have public playtesting with a longer development cycle than this edition. There's a lot to be done for high level play, so that it doesn't derail so often.

Any grognards here? I was wondering about this in regards to the BECMI tier of OD&D. Did they do a good job of scaling the game up to "Immortals"?

As for the OP, I think that if Starfinder (being "space fantasy" more than "hard scifi") doesn't fill the need for Pathfinder 2.0, then only a complete editing job on the CRB will do. Maybe splitting the CRB into two volumes, or three, as needed to cover all the errata and other issues that have come up. Maybe also include an updated Intro to PF Box Set.

Take a look at what's happening with 5E in the market place and you'll see the last place Paizo should go is head-to-head with 5E.


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thaX wrote:

The whole point with the Vancian casting is the overall limitation of firing off one spell slot at a time and not being able to choose what you cast at the time of casting. (the Memorization aspect) This is what needs cut out, not the spellbook itself or being able to change out spells from the spellbook.

The best example is the Arcanist in the current system. Without the limited spell slots and level gains for spells, it could be the next version's "Wizard" with very little adjustment.

The next iteration of PF needs to start with the Spontaneous caster mechanic and go from there, combining some classes, having the other mechanic exclusive classes (Oracle, for example) be folded into the base class or be changed up to expand on their potential.

Fire and forget need to go the way of the dodo.

Spell/Magic Points?

The Exchange

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Quark Blast wrote:
Any grognards here? I was wondering about this in regards to the BECMI tier of OD&D. Did they do a good job of scaling the game up to "Immortals"?

I would say no, but the presentation over different books made it very easy to simply ignore everything starting from 'C'. :D


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So my sense is that PF 2.0 is unnecessary because PF 1.0 is not what Paizo is selling. Paizo is selling Adventure Paths (that's why the game is called Pathfinder rather than e.g. Crypts & Conquistadors).

There is an urban legend in the games industry that "adventures don't sell." The argument is that only GMs buy adventures, so adventures by definition only target ~20% of the potential RPG market. I think this view is misguided.

While it's true at some level that adventures only sell to GMs, my impression is that the vast majority of tabletop RPG campaigns are run off published adventures, because most GMs don't have the time or the inclination to do their own adventure design. Therefore while adventures only sell to GMs, if you don't produce and sell adventures, you don't sell any core books either, because no one plays a game that doesn't have adequate supplement support. You can have all the coolest crunch books in the world, but without copious numbers of adventures to run the players through, you get nowhere,

This is why the greatest and most long-lasting RPGs are those with heavy adventure support rather than heavy rules support - D&D (all editions especially Holmes, Mentzer and AD&D 1E), Call of Cthulhu (all editions), Runequest 2E, Shadowrun, Traveller, and yes, Pathfinder, because of the APs.

Paizo doesn't need to do PF 2.0 because that's not the product. Paizo just needs to keep churning out top quality APs and stand-alone modules (as well as PFS scenarios) and all will be well.


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TigerTiger wrote:

So my sense is that PF 2.0 is unnecessary because PF 1.0 is not what Paizo is selling. Paizo is selling Adventure Paths (that's why the game is called Pathfinder rather than e.g. Crypts & Conquistadors).

There is an urban legend in the games industry that "adventures don't sell." The argument is that only GMs buy adventures, so adventures by definition only target ~20% of the potential RPG market. I think this view is misguided.

While it's true at some level that adventures only sell to GMs, my impression is that the vast majority of tabletop RPG campaigns are run off published adventures, because most GMs don't have the time or the inclination to do their own adventure design. Therefore while adventures only sell to GMs, if you don't produce and sell adventures, you don't sell any core books either, because no one plays a game that doesn't have adequate supplement support. You can have all the coolest crunch books in the world, but without copious numbers of adventures to run the players through, you get nowhere,

This is why the greatest and most long-lasting RPGs are those with heavy adventure support rather than heavy rules support - D&D (all editions especially Holmes, Mentzer and AD&D 1E), Call of Cthulhu (all editions), Runequest 2E, Shadowrun, Traveller, and yes, Pathfinder, because of the APs.

Paizo doesn't need to do PF 2.0 because that's not the product. Paizo just needs to keep churning out top quality APs and stand-alone modules (as well as PFS scenarios) and all will be well.

It's hard to know which way the causality goes though. The fact there is more support in the way of adventures for the long-running game systems could be the cause of the longevity or a symptom of it.

It's always been my belief that the problem with "only 20% of players are DMs" argument is that, besides the fact that many people are in both groups, DMs spend vastly more money on gaming goodies than players. So even if it's true population-wise, I'd hazard a guess that the-group-of-all-DMs actually spends more overall than the-group-of-all-players. (I fully acknowledge that's based on nothing more than anecdotal evidence).


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I'm not sure you can even really make a distinction between players and GMs, since (beyond a certain allowance for people who are still learning the ropes) don't most people alternate between the two roles?

Like when you GM for a group of people, it's generally understood that because you are enabling a game to happen for them to play in, you will eventually be allowed to play with those people while someone else GMs, right?

Like, sure, I GM more than I play, but I don't know if I would keep GMing if I never got to play.


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PossibleCabbage wrote:

I'm not sure you can even really make a distinction between players and GMs, since (beyond a certain allowance for people who are still learning the ropes) don't most people alternate between the two roles?

Like when you GM for a group of people, it's generally understood that because you are enabling a game to happen for them to play in, you will eventually be allowed to play with those people while someone else GMs, right?

Like, sure, I GM more than I play, but I don't know if I would keep GMing if I never got to play.

If that was generally true, then there wouldn't be a chronic shortage of GMs.


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PossibleCabbage wrote:

I'm not sure you can even really make a distinction between players and GMs, since (beyond a certain allowance for people who are still learning the ropes) don't most people alternate between the two roles?

Like when you GM for a group of people, it's generally understood that because you are enabling a game to happen for them to play in, you will eventually be allowed to play with those people while someone else GMs, right?

Like, sure, I GM more than I play, but I don't know if I would keep GMing if I never got to play.

Huh, I'm the exact opposite. I'm bored as a player and have a great time as a GM. The main reason I'm ever a player is to find other GMing techniques and styles I didn't think up.


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PossibleCabbage wrote:

I'm not sure you can even really make a distinction between players and GMs, since (beyond a certain allowance for people who are still learning the ropes) don't most people alternate between the two roles?

Like when you GM for a group of people, it's generally understood that because you are enabling a game to happen for them to play in, you will eventually be allowed to play with those people while someone else GMs, right?

Like, sure, I GM more than I play, but I don't know if I would keep GMing if I never got to play.

Like I said, it's very much anecdotal. Your experience isn't how it works in our groups though - there are one or two 'key DMs' and a bunch of others who DM a bit. When they do though, they tend to borrow my books or to make up their own stuff. They're very clearly less economically invested than I am. Most of my group have literally not bought anything since the first edition AD&D Player's Handbook.

It's pretty hard for anyone to really know what's "typical" though.


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thaX wrote:

The whole point with the Vancian casting is the overall limitation of firing off one spell slot at a time and not being able to choose what you cast at the time of casting. (the Memorization aspect) This is what needs cut out, not the spellbook itself or being able to change out spells from the spellbook.

The best example is the Arcanist in the current system. Without the limited spell slots and level gains for spells, it could be the next version's "Wizard" with very little adjustment.

The next iteration of PF needs to start with the Spontaneous caster mechanic and go from there, combining some classes, having the other mechanic exclusive classes (Oracle, for example) be folded into the base class or be changed up to expand on their potential.

The other pressing matter is to make multi-classing have some effects that will do more with the interaction between classes while having some scaling back when more classes are taken.

Fire and forget need to go the way of the dodo.

I'd be more fine with Vancian in Pathfinder if we actually saw it in play, quirks, consequences and all, in some of the source material. In all the Pathfinder Tales novels up through Pirate's Prophecy and all the comics up through the Hollow Mountain arc, we never see how the characters react to the limitations of Vancian spellcasting.

In Dagger of Trust, we see a character talk about preparing 95% of his spells in the morning, just awaiting a final mnemonic trigger to cast the spell. Close, but the character in question is a Bard, so why is he preparing anything?

The main protagonist in Nightglass and Nightblade is a Wizard and we see him talk about preparing some spells and not others. Also close, but there's never an instance where he laments having cast a spell once and being screwed because "Darn, oh darn, why didn't I prepare that spell TWICE today?".

Those two instances of Vancian-like quirks of spellcasting stick out in my mind so clearly because of their scarcity. Otherwise, practically every damned spellcaster in the entirety of Pathfinder media is either a spontaneous caster or an Arcanist (yes, Ezren included), or they're god-like omniscient in predicting what spells they anticipate needing each day.

It's hard to internalize this unique method of magic and roleplay as though it's an expected aspect of the world your character is in when literally no example character behaves that way.


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WormysQueue wrote:
Milo v3 wrote:
Doesn't setting being split from RPG-line help with that sort of mind set, means you don't need to waste money on books mainly about rules and that you can just buy the campaign setting books which only have a small amount of rules?

Partly. I mean, with the campaign line and the player companions line, I already get more fluff than I can absorb and the player companions generally do a great job in pointing at useful rules options to a given topic.

On the other hand those rules options aren't necessarily written with Golarion in mind (I'm not sure if that's actually true, but if the designers have a specific vision for how to include an option into the setting, they don't tell us in the rules books). So you look at Occult Adventures, see the Kineticist (and if you're me, you're very intrigued by that), but have basically no information where to integrate this class into the setting. If you're lucky, you'll find this information a bit later in some of the setting books (in this case, Occult Realms) but it might also be that it's nothing more than a link to the rules' source.

And it's not that I mind having to do the integration work for such cases myself (in fact I have a lot of fun with that), it's just that to me, it's bascially never just plug and play, so it's also not very easy either. Which is why I would gladly do without some of the kineticist's wild talents and instead got some paragraphs on "Kineticists in Golarion", just so I get some pointers for the direction I should go for.

See its funny cause I feel too many of options are flavored with Golarion. I guess its that you can please all of the people all of the time situation.


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Why not have a small sidebar for "{Whatever} in the Pathfinder Campaign Setting" for the few things that need it, like Clerics being absolutely deity-dependent? Then people playing in that setting (which is, after all, the dominant one) could get the linkage they need, while people playing in other settings could ignore this (unless they wanted to use it as an example for their own setting).


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But even people who run games in the official setting are free to ignore or change things as they like; no one at Paizo is going to check in on your homegames and get mad at you if you overrule the "no non-evil undead" thing or you gender-swap an NPC.

So if someone is running a game in Golarion and just invokes rule 0 to obliterate the "clerics must have one and only one deity" rule, what was the value of even having it in the book to begin with? I mean, far and away the easiest thing to change about any setting is the metaphysics.

If it were up to me, it would read something like "Clerics are generally devoted to a single deity, but other clerics are possible" and let people work out how "other clerics" would work on their own rather than just telling them outright it's not possible.

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32

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Quark Blast wrote:

Any grognards here? I was wondering about this in regards to the BECMI tier of OD&D. Did they do a good job of scaling the game up to "Immortals"?

BECMI was how I started playing D&D. Master level characters - level 26-36 - were pretty darn broken, and rocket tag was a much worse problem. Damage dealing spells capped at 20d6, but hit dice for PCs stopped at 9, so you could easily reach situations where a high level fireball would wipe out characters even if they made their save. That, and weapon mastery rules in the Master set suddenly boosted everyone's attacks, AC, and damage through the roof.

The one high level advantage that early editions had was that SoS/SoD spells were much less effective. Save DCs went down as your target got higher level, so your chances of landing that finger of death spell were like 3/20. It would be like playing PF where all save DCs are set to 18 and never change.

The Immortals set was just...weird. Your XP converted over to PP at a 1/10k rate, and you could spend 100 PP (which renewed daily) to have unlimited access to nearly all spells for the day. You lost basically all your mortal class features, and used the stats of a 15HD monster(to start). As you gained PP your physical stats got better, and you could spend permanent PP to do things like shape outer planes and such, or to permanently increase your ability scores, up to 100.

All in all, the Immortals set was an interesting read but it wasn't really clear on what you do with characters at that point.

The Exchange

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Zolanoteph wrote:

I've done a complete 180. For years I detested the idea of a 2.0 for pathfinder. After all, pathfinder was designed as a reverse compatible improvement over 3.5, which is likely the most highly regarded version of D&D. The very idea of pathfinder seemed like a repudiation of the notion that every 5 to 10 years you have to throw out your old tomes and buy Wizards of the Coast's shiny new pile of books. It seemed so eternal. 3.75 forever, the promised land. But more and more I notice that Paizo's ambitious attempts at reforming an iconic but wonky system have led to some real bloat and confusion.

To show what I mean, let's take a hypothetical character. Let's call him Rollagar. I want to make him a druid, variant multiclass barbarian (because turning into a raging bear is awesome). Then let's say down the line I want to take one level in rogue.

I'm left with a lot of questions. As an optional system, will the DM let me variant multiclass? Will he let me use the unchained Rage rules? I don't know, that's another optional system. Then can I traditionally multiclass that level in rogue after variant multiclassing? The rules say something to the idea of "I don't know, not such a great idea ask your dm". Can the rogue be unchained? Whattevs, ask your dm.

I think a lot of these new rule designs have been a lot of fun, but they need to be organized and codified to streamline the game. I think there should be one summoner that works, one barbarian that works, one rogue that works. I think that these reformed classes, combined with brilliant optional role systems like VMC and automatic bonus progression, show great promise and show us what a pathfinder 2nd edition could look like.

Sorry, but even if a "2.0" comes out, everything in it, just like everything you mention here, would still be up to the GM if they want to have it in their game.

A GM could say I've only got 4 books, so if it's not in CRB, UM, UE, Beastiary1. Then it's not going to be in my game. Then immediately after that He could add. I don't like Weapon Cords, False Manacles, or any Instant Kill/Charm effect spell, So those are not allowed.

Additionally at any given time you decide that you want to take your shiny new feat, or your next magic item, and the GM May not have read up on it fully and decides that they are going to ban that feat/item from their game as well. So you'll need to pick something else.


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"I'm left with a lot of questions. As an optional system, will the DM let me variant multiclass? Will he let me use the unchained Rage rules? I don't know, that's another optional system. Then can I traditionally multiclass that level in rogue after variant multiclassing? The rules say something to the idea of "I don't know, not such a great idea ask your dm". Can the rogue be unchained? Whattevs, ask your dm."

That is odd - to me that is part of character creation, you talk to DM get theme, tone and rules expectations from him, and his world before you even come up with a character concept, and mold the character to the existing world. Just like a adventure path player's guide gives advice to fit the adventure path.

Building a character in vacuum is alien to me.

Liberty's Edge

My top 5+1 to change about Pathfinder

1. Need Digital 1"=5' Scaled maps for Adventures for Digital Display. 2 versions...grid and No grid

2. Needs printed 1"=5' Scaled maps for encounters in adventures.

3. Need a Digital Atlas. Which is zoomable World to encounter (Think Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas..

4. City Directories....With Details like Leaders and Notable Citizens and of Portraits of those people, and of Cource Maps of those cities and Key locations get a 1"5' scale battle map. History of the city. History of People there (Such as in The Dragon's Demand story of Belhaim)

5. Histories and Legends.. people and places.

6. 3d printables of all monsters and personalities

Liberty's Edge

By the way...We just Use the Core Book..but homebrew alot of stuff...Like our World.

No Hot off the presses, this week add on Books...

No Pathfinder Society play here.

Character Creation is about the Role not the Roll....You develope the personality and the History.. If you need a book to make up a character concept you don't need to be playing a role playing game. Plenty of GAmes out there for you already.

The DM or GM or what ever you want to call them..decides the game mechanics..If you don't like how they play the game you either Start your own game or find another one...Our group has played together for over 30 years...We discuss game mechanics and we use what we like,

We still use "Weapon Proficencies". We have Blood Bonded Weapons...They grow stronger as The Characters grows stronger. Through Rituals the Character can add Magical properties to their Weapon..They design it, they keep it. No fighting over the Same Dead Guys stuff. No Fighting over the same old "Grave looted weapon."

Since our group has been Small for Many years. We have allowed "mental powers" such as a MU that can cast "cure light wounds x3 day", a Fighter who can Detect Magic.. a Rogue who can "Identify"..Those powers are kept secret from the Player until they reach key levels and are reveale to them. Those powers come from their background. When a Character is created the player gives a detailed background of their history and then the GM decides what they get, and at what level.

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