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well he was going off of the 3.0 rule that didn't have that line, he didn't realize that 3.5 had added that into there, so.... you know... yeah...
Plus it makes other rules work, like this section,
"You must have a clear path toward the opponent, and nothing can hinder your movement (such as difficult terrain or obstacles). You must move to the closest space from which you can attack the opponent. If this space is occupied or otherwise blocked, you can't charge. If any line from your starting space to the ending space passes through a square that blocks movement, slows movement, or contains a creature (even an ally), you can't charge. Helpless creatures don't stop a charge."
Kinda breaks down to nothing when you can have 5 different legal charge lanes to pick from. "Oh all the closest squares I can attack from are blocked, but if I obliquely charge then 'the first square I can attack from' on that path is free.
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Mostly because the wording was identical:
You must move before your attack, not after. You must move at least 10 feet (2 squares) and may move up to double your speed directly toward the designated opponent.You must move before your attack, not after. You must move at least 10 feet (2 squares) and may move up to double your speed directly toward the designated opponent.
Nope. it was a 3.0 to 3.5 tibit that he didn't know about, even when it was copy pasted to a pathfinder tidbit.
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You should follow any SKR ruling from before the Pathfinder Design Team account was created. As those are 'official'. Also, you must follow any post by the Pathfinder Design Team, those are as official as FAQs. Though, that account is usually used to declare a FAQ was posted.So, I still confusd.
I "should" follow SKR, jason...'s word.
OR
I make the rule more "clear" by their word.Different between them are "Should or not"
If in PF, I can ask my GM.
But in PFS, GM "should" follow the rule, no matter personal will.
This is incorrect. Only follow SKR if it became an actual FAQ. However, using what SKR posted as very weighty in determining your interpretation is suggested.
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Is this the SRMcF post that y'all are saying is so terrible? If so, I don't understand. What he describes is exactly what I think the standard SHOULD be, for one of the reasons he states. It's a nightmare to have the official rules of the game scattered haphazardly across obscure message board posts. Having to remember to check FAQ and campaign clarification pages instead of just reading the books is bad enough. I hate that message board posts are considered official, especially when they don't just clarify, but *change* the rules. It's untenable.
Also, rules questions are often punted out of PFS saying it's not a PFS-specific problem, but a general game problem. I disagree. In a home game, the GM can just make a ruling, and players can adapt. In PFS, GMs are restricted from making rulings that contradict RAW (even if RAI is clearly different). What's more, when things are ambiguous and a GM ruling is needed, players can find themselves in a mess where they don't know if their character works or not, as each GM tells the player a different thing. Home games can survive ambiguity in a way PFS games cannot. The designers are probably aware of this, which reduces their need to clarify stuff. It really is a PFS problem.
I know that bunches of message board posts ARE official, although as has been pointed out, even which ones count is in dispute. I strongly believe that NONE of them should be until they get enshrined in a FAQ. This game is complicated enough without having to know about scattered message board postings.
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Is this the SRMcF post that y'all are saying is so terrible? If so, I don't understand. What he describes is exactly what I think the standard SHOULD be, for one of the reasons he states.
If we had a rules faq or process with a faster throughput I'd agree with you, but as it is there's a slow faq that shuts off faster than a rogues sneak attack in season 8. This leaves a lot of folks hanging in the wind when the dm makes a weird call that invalidates their character or an even slightly gray area makes an expensive train out neccesary.
Home games can survive ambiguity in a way PFS games cannot. The designers are probably aware of this, which reduces their need to clarify stuff. It really is a PFS problem.
Home games survive but not always with the best feelings when players and dms can't get on the same page.
Owner - D20 Hobbies
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Is this the SRMcF post that y'all are saying is so terrible?
Yes
Your "standard" is our nightmare.
Having a ruling exist helps those that need it and doesn't impair those that don't. You are not required to know all the rulings to GM or play.
Also no ruling *change* the rules, if you read the rules and interpreted the rules differently it's often the interpretation that changed not the rules.
They are general game rules problems when the rules are incorrectly interpreted. Your home GM is still free to change any rule they like.
You are repeating a slant about PFS that has been rebutted many times. PFS cares about not changing encounters, not adding monsters, not saying "I don't like fox shape so you can't use it at my table" and the like. So PFS GM can use RAI, forum posts, and logic to interpret a rule as there is no such thing as "RAW" that can only be one way.
Making all forum posts unofficial makes for more issues with ambiguous rules, so his post makes a mess by having people's characters work or not at different tables. Before his post you could use official posts.
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well, there IS raw that can be only one way it's just a LOT less common than people think..
I believe that a strong case can be made that there is absolutely NO 100% clear RAW rule. None whatsoever.
1) Look at various linguistics texts talking about the issue
2) For a more pragmatic argument, look at the rules forums. On a regular basis people there support readings of the rules that are very, very, very far from what almost everybody else believes the rules to be. Some of the official Paizo rules "clarifications" fall into this category.
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Having a ruling exist helps those that need it and doesn't impair those that don't. You are not required to know all the rulings to GM or play.
Also no ruling *change* the rules, if you read the rules and interpreted the rules differently it's often the interpretation that changed not the rules.
This is said a lot: you aren't required to know all the rulings to GM or play. But, in practice, it's not so simple.
Also, the rulings do sometimes change the rules. See the charge example above. I had a player -- a player who is very reliable and trustworthy -- tell me that charge didn't work the way it is explicitly described in the CRB because of a forum post from several years previously. I let him do it, but I find these sorts of things immensely frustrating.
From a player side, you can think you know how to do things, but you're never sure which forum rulings any given GM knows about and is going to go along with.
The solution, of course, is to have all the rules available so we can all agree on what they are, and can see what has been clarified and what has not.
With the rulebooks and a small number of extra documents (FAQ, campaign clarifications), you know where to look to figure out if you've looked everywhere. But when posts are scattered haphazardly across the forums, you're screwed if you want to find out what the actual answer is, unless you just happen to run across somebody who happens to remember a post by a developer from several years ago.
It's just not tenable. It's chaotic. It's a mess. It is one of the things that I the most incredibly unfun and stressful about PFS as a whole.
Sure, you may have a favorite forum ruling you don't want to let go of-- but requiring that all of us cope with an uncertain and depends-on-who-happens-to-have-read-what-forum ruleset that is spread all over the place is asking way too much. Lean on the Paizo developers to get their FAQs and clarifications updated more often. Don't make us beholden to the chaos that is the forums.
It's my nightmare. It's the nightmare of anybody who doesn't have a comprehensive list of forum posts but wants to at least in principle be able to read everything that's available on a subject so they can figure out if they know what the rules are.
Right now, we're in a situation where practically speaking it's impossible to find all the things that might address a given rule. Again, consider the charge ruling. Without a mention anywhere in the FAQ or the campaign clarification document that the charge rules in the CRB have been superceded , how the hell are we supposed to know that they might be? Even if the forum search tool were more function, how should we know to search in the first place? The CRB is very clear about the charge rules... and yet given the current situation, you can make a case that they're wrong. What are we supposed to do?
I'll take everybody having the same ambiguity over (effectively) secret and hidden resolutions to the ambiguity that only a small number of people happen to see.
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Owner - D20 Hobbies
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It would help a lot of people wouldn't try to take raw as such a sacred document that they can and will override a clarification on some really weird rules parsing and technicalities.
+1
I GM a lot (several hundred sessions at this point) and I've played almost 200 pfs sessions.
I simply don't have trouble with rules at tables. I play my characters. I take the GM rulings as they come. I only supply rules FAQ, clarification forum posts, etc when it matters. I also don't use debated rules (overrun etc) as they often have high table variance.
So I don't have the issues rknop experiences. So I don't share his view on forum posts being detrimental in any material way.
I also don't use debated rules (overrun etc) as they often have high table variance.
This is a good solution, but it's also super frustrating to have to say to yourself "I can't play that because no one's sure how it works".
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So I don't have the issues rknop experiences. So I don't share his view on forum posts being detrimental in any material way.
and on the DM side, "i followed raw i got this answer totally different than the dev" or "I followed raw, everyone else are idiots, i'm the only genius that knows how this really works!" should really be avoided in pfs as much as possible
It doesn't help that some people hold pfs as "its pfs i have to go with THE RAW!" as an ideal rather than the entire point of the raw to be getting everyone on the same page so you DON"T get wild table variance.
Organized Play Coordinator
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Addressing several points found in the thread...
For PFS games, the rulings of prior management stand unless revoked by newer posts. Current decisions are made by the entire PFS team (John, Linda, and myself) with assistance from others in the office as needed. These rulings are for PFS only. We are in no way setting parameters for the Pathfinder RPG as a whole. Think of PFS as the game and the PFS leadership as the GM. We make rulings based on what is best for our campaign. When running PFS scenarios as part of an organized play campaign, you need to follow the rulings set out in the A/R, Campaign Clarifications, and FAQ.
Which brings me to another point raised in the thread. No, Linda is not the keeper of the Golarion FAQ. Once the PFS team decides in a direction, Linda writes the text to include on the Campaign Clarifications doc. FAQ updaters refer to the PFS Campaign Clarifications and sometimes adopt an answer, since there is no need to re-invent the wheel. But that doesn't put Linda, or anyone on the PFS team, involved in making Golarion wide decisions.
Finally designer versus developer. Both have their spheres of influence and both are important to the Pathfinder RPG. Please don't let a person's job tag take away or add weight to a discussion. Instead, look to the question at hand and take all opinions, weigh them, then make your decision as GM. Designers and developers make the framework on which you hang your story. Don't sweat if your story varies from another GMs. As long as the players know what to expect, proceed to maximum fun. Of course, this is referring to the rules and a home game. For PFS games see paragraph one :P )
Finally, we are working on an update to the PFS FAQ, along with all other tasks. It will get done, but must be juggled with all other PFS related activity. This is a fine balancing act, like an acrobat juggling plates, and gets reassessed on a frequent basis so that we keep everything in motion. Have hope, just look at how much progress we made on outstanding issues last year!
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Venture-Lieutenant, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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Is this the SRMcF post that y'all are saying is so terrible? If so, I don't understand. What he describes is exactly what I think the standard SHOULD be, for one of the reasons he states.If we had a rules faq or process with a faster throughput I'd agree with you, but as it is there's a slow faq that shuts off faster than a rogues sneak attack in season 8. This leaves a lot of folks hanging in the wind when the dm makes a weird call that invalidates their character or an even slightly gray area makes an expensive train out neccesary.
You do realize that post comes from a time period where devs were making arbitrary rulings that invalidated large amounts of content which really isn't a viable alternative either. People were legimately angry at some of those rulings.
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Owner - D20 Hobbies
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You do realize that post comes from a time period where devs were making arbitrary rulings that invalidated large amounts of content which really isn't a viable alternative either. People were legitimately angry at some of those rulings.
More like "giving us clarifications that were valid, reasonable, and useful" instead of "arbitrary rulings that invalidate" and you are closer to the truth. Or, you and I might have a different perspective.
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Thank you very much for the feedback, Tonya and a lot of other folks on this thread.
I've learned a bunch of things in the past few days, including that I know even less than I did before I started reading this thread.
This being said, I am thankful for the educational experience, because it was a question that I wanted to ask for a long time myself, and by understanding some of the history, it puts things in a much better perspective of understanding.
As contrasted with a few other campaigns I've been involved with, this is nearly transparent. Sure, some archival archaeological skills may be required, but it's not 'inside one GM's mind' or 'editorial staffer's mind' and not documented.
I will do my best to adhere to such things, but as there is a *lot* of material that will be missed due to the scope of the beast please bear with me if one is at a table I run and I don't have it *perfect*.
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You do realize that post comes from a time period where devs were making arbitrary rulings that invalidated large amounts of content which really isn't a viable alternative either. People were legimately angry at some of those rulings.
Just because people have a feeling does not make that feeling justified. The vast majority of what they were doing were the same way most people were doing it and the way most people read it. No matter how finely you think you can dissect one statement in the rules and extrapolate that through a perfect series of logic to a conclusion it simply. does. not. work. that way.
Figure out what something says
Figure out what it MIGHT say: recognize that language is imprecise.
Compare the options based on all the available evidence without considering any one piece of evidence absolute, keeping in mind game balance, the big picture/intent of the ability, the raw, and general sanity. It doesn't ALWAYS get you the right answer but it has a much, much better track record than insisting that the raw is all.
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For PFS games, the rulings of prior management stand unless revoked by newer posts. Current decisions are made by the entire PFS team (John, Linda, and myself) with assistance from others in the office as needed. These rulings are for PFS only.
Would it be possible to get all of these collected together into the campaign clarifications? I'm pretty sure there are still some out there (some from years ago) that are not in the campaign clarifications document. What we really need is one place to go to find all of these things.
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rknop, that's the idea behind the Sticky at the top of the Forum now.
If you have found something that is not in that thread, post it there.
Each time the Campaign Clarifications document is updated it includes more rulings from that very location.
Let's save Leadership their valuable time and do the legwork for them. One thread is easier to peruse than every post that every previous Coordinator has made =)
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Venture-Lieutenant, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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Just because people have a feeling does not make that feeling justified. The vast majority of what they were doing were the same way most people were doing it and the way most people read it. No matter how finely you think you can dissect one statement in the rules and extrapolate that through a perfect series of logic to a conclusion it simply. does. not. work. that way.
Actually taken on the whole most of what they've been doing has been causing serious grousing and confusing in the player base. In fact you've been one of the biggest proponents of ignoring the developers that I know of.
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Actually taken on the whole most of what they've been doing has been causing serious grousing and confusing in the player base. In fact you've been one of the biggest proponents of ignoring the developers that I know of.
Got any examples? Besides the reach issue (which so many people ignored they moved it back)
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Owner - D20 Hobbies
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I was going to say. I don't see BNW as a "proponent" of overly literal interpretations of text. He just acknowledges that some people think that way.
+1
Also, apart from a small vocal minority on the forums, I find very "in person" grousing. I wish we had more developer input.
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well, there IS raw that can be only one way it's just a LOT less common than people think..No one calls unambiguous stuff RAW. No one says long swords deal 1d8 on medium humans RAW.
That's absolutely RAW. And they do 1d12 to size large creatures.
In all seriousness, it was months before I realized that listed weapon damage referred to the size of the wielder, not the size of the target, since that's how it worked in first edition and I never played third edition.
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Actually taken on the whole most of what they've been doing has been causing serious grousing and confusing in the player base. In fact you've been one of the biggest proponents of ignoring the developers that I know of.Got any examples? Besides the reach issue (which so many people ignored they moved it back)
...wait. What happened to the reach issue? Is this the 10-foot diagonals exception?
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...wait. What happened to the reach issue? Is this the 10-foot diagonals exception?
Actually taken on the whole most of what they've been doing has been causing serious grousing and confusing in the player base. In fact you've been one of the biggest proponents of ignoring the developers that I know of.Got any examples? Besides the reach issue (which so many people ignored they moved it back)
3.0 I don't think specifically decided what happened on the second diagonal. So folks were left to work it out together on whether 10' reach worked on the 2nd diagonal or not.
3.5 specifically clarified that 10' reach worked on the 2nd diagonal.
Pathfinder shortened the language of 3.5 in this instance, like they have in many other instances, leaving things somewhat ambiguous in certain areas by using old language and removing the part of the language that clarified it in another part of the book. As such, we were back to 3.0 where nobody knew whether 10' reach could hit the 2nd diagonal. SKR discussed this at length and basically came up with a 10' invisible circle around a creature. While 10' reach could not reach the 2nd diagonal, you could not exploit that hole and move into adjacency without provoking an AoO because they moved through the 10' invisible circle around the creature.
This caused many issues. What happens if you trip someone in the 2nd Diagonal? Normally you get an AoO if they try to stand up, but not this time, because you couldn't attack that square and did not threaten it. Same with Disarm if you drop the weapon in that square. And the God's of Golarion forbid a polearm fighter had to deal with a 5' wide diagonal corridor. They literally could not attack anything.
So they clarified (errata or the FAQ I don't recall) that the 2nd Diagonal is reachable by 10' reach.
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...wait. What happened to the reach issue? Is this the 10-foot diagonals exception?
Actually taken on the whole most of what they've been doing has been causing serious grousing and confusing in the player base. In fact you've been one of the biggest proponents of ignoring the developers that I know of.Got any examples? Besides the reach issue (which so many people ignored they moved it back)
In 3.5 a medium humanoid character with a reach weapon could attack and threaten diagonals two spaces away with that weapon. In pathfinder originally, they could not as the spaces were 15 feet away. A ruling was made that an attack of opportunity could be taken when an opponent moved from those 15 foot away diagonals directly towards the character with a reach weapon, because it -was- longer than normal reach. Those previous definitions and rulings had much discussion and it got heated at times.
Now, they have just made it simpler and included the diagonals at 15 feet within the threatened area of the reach weapon wielder.
edit: ninja'd
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OH. OK. I read "moved it back", and thought that the second diagonal was no longer accessible with a 10ft reach.
I never played a lot of 3.0 or 3.5, so I don't view those as the base or default way. I don't really know the systems very well either. To my mind, the original way was that the 2nd diagonal was not accessible, and the change was making it accessible. Hence my confusion about moving it back; I hadn't heard about anything undoing the change to Pathfinder....
(Personally, I actually prefer the second diagonal not being accessible to a 10ft reach. It makes square-counting for reach always work. Now, there's this one exception to it. Really, everything (except for ease of map drawing) would be better if we just used hexes rather than squares.)
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crop dusters always reach into the extra square when going North by Northwest... it's an old carried grant <grin>
