Mastering Pathfinder

I think the thing about the temperature chart is that the second column is kind of superfluous.

Only time I could see referring to it is if I say "It is extremely cold" and a player responds with "how cold is it" and I don't have a punchline handy.

That is one of reasons I like Monte Cook's cypher system's games, they include both metrics for pretty much everything (also why I'm skeptical about it taking too much space to include them considering I've seen it in practice and it really doesn't)

I don't know if they've gotten better at it in later products, but I remember being annoyed at excess precision in the metric conversion in some Numenera books. For example, there's one power that lets you control weather in a "1,000 feet (305 m)" radius, which strikes me as a bit dumb. It ought to have been 300 m.

Rysky wrote:

DarkOne the Drow wrote:

In this day and age, why is temperatures is listed only in the broken antiquated F scale?

That's not really doing your argument any favors since, Pathfinder is made in the US which predominantly uses F. It's also an aesthetic thing, since as pointed out no one brings up switching feet with meters.

Not to say having them both would be bad though.

That is one of reasons I like Monte Cook's cypher system's games, they include both metrics for pretty much everything (also why I'm skeptical about it taking too much space to include them considering I've seen it in practice and it really doesn't)

Well the feet is easy to deal with. Most of us use square grids of 5 by 5 feet for combat and exploring, which medium size miniatures occupies 1 square. Almost all movement speeds, reach, etc are in multiples of 5 feet (which equates to 1 square), thus dividing by 5 gives nice integer numbers representing squares.

Overland is little less clean as a typical map has a scale of a hex being 12 miles across (corner to corner), and speed needs to be divided by 12, which often does not give nice integers.

I think the thing about the temperature chart is that the second column is kind of superfluous.

Only time I could see referring to it is if I say "It is extremely cold" and a player responds with "how cold is it" and I don't have a punchline handy.

I disagree. Putting a concrete value on the temperature of any given category means you don't have to argue about how cold cold is. I mean, if you tell someone from Kiruna that it's "severely cold" outside, they'll likely get a different idea than if you tell someone from Madrid. But if they know it means somewhere between -10 and -30 degrees, we're all on the same page.

It would have been nice to include Celsius in the temperature table, as it's used in almost every single country in the world except the United States.

Bah. As someone from the country that invented the Celsius temperature scale, it is decidedly inferior to temperature measured in Kelvin (note: not degrees Kelvin. Just Kelvin).

CorvusMask wrote:

That is one of reasons I like Monte Cook's cypher system's games, they include both metrics for pretty much everything (also why I'm skeptical about it taking too much space to include them considering I've seen it in practice and it really doesn't)

I don't know if they've gotten better at it in later products, but I remember being annoyed at excess precision in the metric conversion in some Numenera books. For example, there's one power that lets you control weather in a "1,000 feet (305 m)" radius, which strikes me as a bit dumb. It ought to have been 300 m.

I think that this is a lot of the reason why the American attempt to convert to the metric system failed. Too precise conversions along with attempting to convert everything rather than gain an intuitive grasp of the quantities that the metric units represented made the metric system seem unnecessarily difficult and unintuitive to most people.

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I think the thing about the temperature chart is that the second column is kind of superfluous.

Only time I could see referring to it is if I say "It is extremely cold" and a player responds with "how cold is it" and I don't have a punchline handy.

I disagree. Putting a concrete value on the temperature of any given category means you don't have to argue about how cold cold is. I mean, if you tell someone from Kiruna that it's "severely cold" outside, they'll likely get a different idea than if you tell someone from Madrid. But if they know it means somewhere between -10 and -30 degrees, we're all on the same page.

On the opposite end of this the issue is "oh its 13 degrees, not 12, we don't need cold weather gear for another degree" and then also tracking exact degrees doesn't seem appealing to me as a GM.

Asgetrion wrote:

Heh, having lived most of my life close to the Arctic Circle I'd say that -11 C or even -20 C is hardly "severe cold" in my books. Then again I *love* cold, and +20-25 C is severe heat for me. :)

I also live somewhere where temperatures way below -11 C are fairly commonplace, and I'm willing to bet that the table only seems goofy when it's presented out of context like this.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that wearing appropriate winter gear will allow you to ignore the effects of "severe cold". Imagine going outside in -11 C in a t-shirt and jeans and attempting to hike through the wilderness for several hours at a stretch. It might get a bit uncomfortable.

Yes, appropriate gear will help you against cold. Just don't stay outside in extreme cold for too many hours, even with cold weather gear!

While the table is simplified to make it easy for you to use, the underlying numbers were based on a little research into survival times with exposure to various temperatures (and adjusting that to HP damage somehow). It varies fairly widely based on the person, so even using averages and giving a +/-15-degree window isn't going to cover everybody's bodies perfectly. The only way to know for sure about yourself is something that I'll ask you all to please not attempt!

But I think everyone can agree that 91 degrees F and 39 degrees F doing damage were very weird; in fact, the research showed that both were in the range where you could survive pretty much indefinitely.

Anyway, there's a lot of non-temperature goodies in the blog too, and thanks to everyone for reading and responding. Every week, Logan wonders which thing in the blog will become the big side discussion, and I sometimes guess right, but this time I thought it would be the Pathfinder baseline, not temperature. :D

Heh, having lived most of my life close to the Arctic Circle I'd say that -11 C or even -20 C is hardly "severe cold" in my books. Then again I *love* cold, and +20-25 C is severe heat for me. :)

Here is a wonderful example. People from different regions of the world have different norms of comfort with regards to temperatures. 25+ C is passing out temperature for me, and many others, yet at -14 C is no hassle to be outdoors. There you go to other regions of the world 40 C is the normal and comfortable for those native to the region, yet are freezing (almost going into shock when temperature drop below 25 C).

If the actual temperature is of no importance, why then include a temperature scale in the first place. Though if a temperature scale is to be included, include both scales. Players really don't want to be forced go to the internet during game play just to do conversions in order to under stand what the temperature condition actually means.

I disagree. Putting a concrete value on the temperature of any given category means you don't have to argue about how cold cold is. I mean, if you tell someone from Kiruna that it's "severely cold" outside, they'll likely get a different idea than if you tell someone from Madrid. But if they know it means somewhere between -10 and -30 degrees, we're all on the same page.

I figure since player characters are unlikely to be carrying around a thermometer, I don't need to give them numbers. If they want more clarification on "how cold is it?" I can give details like "your nosehairs curl up before you even inhale, your spit freezes before it hits the ground, you hear cracking and groaning as the sap in the nearby trees freezes, and when you exhale you can hear a faint tinkling as the moisture in your breath turns to ice."

Plus, if I just stick with the heuristics, I don't need to actually worry about what temperature all that stuff happens at, I just need to get the point across that it is dangerously cold.

Anyway, there's a lot of non-temperature goodies in the blog too, and thanks to everyone for reading and responding. Every week, Logan wonders which thing in the blog will become the big side discussion, and I sometimes guess right, but this time I thought it would be the Pathfinder baseline, not temperature. :D

Unfortunately, I believe we have selected for an audience accustomed to following every tangent to the point of exhaustion/absurdity.

I actually agree that there doesn't need to be precise degrees in same way there doesn't need to be precise weights, but it is handy for sake of flavor and reference.

Like, to lot of people "cold" and "warm" is relative to where they live. So its good to know objectively what game thinks is "cold" or "warm"

And hey, I thought temperature and metrics was important enough thing to make a thread about :p To some people its really serious deal!

(on side note, all the stuff in blog was cool)

Asgetrion wrote:

Heh, having lived most of my life close to the Arctic Circle I'd say that -11 C or even -20 C is hardly "severe cold" in my books. Then again I *love* cold, and +20-25 C is severe heat for me. :)

Here is a wonderful example. People from different regions of the world have different norms of comfort with regards to temperatures. 25+ C is passing out temperature for me, and many others, yet at -14 C is no hassle to be outdoors. There you go to other regions of the world 40 C is the normal and comfortable for those native to the region, yet are freezing (almost going into shock when temperature drop below 25 C).

If the actual temperature is of no importance, why then include a temperature scale in the first place. Though if a temperature scale is to be included, include both scales. Players really don't want to be forced go to the internet during game play just to do conversions in order to under stand what the temperature condition actually means.

Because mechanically people who live in intense heat/cold are exceptions to the baseline assumption of the world and are best represented by Heritages like Desert Dwarf/Artic Elf which grant fire/cold resistance and the ability to ignore extreme heat or cold. It isn't significantly different than some people being better runners (Fleet) or hardier (Toughness.)

Meanwhile, they need a baseline assumption for how people without those Heritages withstand extreme weather. Id' guess the Inner Sea Region seems to be that baseline, and Varisia has weather comparable to the Seattle area.

This doesn't really address the Fahrenheit vs Celsius debate

I lived in Arizona for 26 years, and still have a few friends there.

Every single summer, I see a "meanwhile, in Arizona" meme, highlighting the people who are uncomfortable with 90 F summers an their complaints, while Arizonans are out in 115 F and are perfectly fine.

I mean, it IS a meme, but it's based in hard experience.

So, yeah, "hot" and "cold" are fairly relative, depending on the environment you're accustomed to.

I lived in Arizona for 26 years, and still have a few friends there.

Every single summer, I see a "meanwhile, in Arizona" meme, highlighting the people who are uncomfortable with 90 F summers an their complaints, while Arizonans are out in 115 F and are perfectly fine.

I mean, it IS a meme, but it's based in hard experience.

So, yeah, "hot" and "cold" are fairly relative, depending on the environment you're accustomed to.

And as the table suggests, how we experience heat is also highly dependant on humidity. I find 42 C (108 F) heat in a nice, dry place like Arizona to be fairly pleasant, but 26 degrees C (81 F) in an extremely humid place like Toronto can be absolutely brutal.

I think variations in heat/cold tolerance between regions are more about acclimatization than heritage. Like the reason you will see people in shorts in 0 degree weather in Minnesota or working in the sun in 106 degree weather in Arizona is pretty much because they've gotten used to the range of temperatures they live in. I've known people who moved from my arctic wonderland to the desert who can no longer really tolerate the cold when they come back, and I'm sure it works the other way too.

I think variations in heat/cold tolerance between regions are more about acclimatization than heritage. Like the reason you will see people in shorts in 0 degree weather in Minnesota or working in the sun in 106 degree weather in Arizona is pretty much because they've gotten used to the range of temperatures they live in. I've known people who moved from my arctic wonderland to the desert who can no longer really tolerate the cold when they come back, and I'm sure it works the other way too.

That's true. A friend of mine has been living in Hong Kong/Singapore for numerous years, where it never goes much below 22 C (72 F). When he comes back to Canada to visit, he can't handle 0 C (32 F) anymore even though he grew up here.

People from different regions of the world have different norms of comfort

Its not just where you're from. When it is in the year matters a lot.

In the fall, when it gets down to <insert arbitrary temperature> then it feels COLD, people put on their sweaters and jackets, etc.

In the spring, when it gets UP to <identical arbitrary temperature as above> then it is WARM or even HOT, people go out in shorts and T shirts.

Same place, same people. The direction the temperature is moving makes a huge difference.

By the way -- Is Endure Elements still a 2nd level spell as it was in the Playtest?

And as the table suggests, how we experience heat is also highly dependant on humidity. I find 42 C (108 F) heat in a nice, dry place like Arizona to be very pleasant, but 26 degrees C (81 F) in an extremely humid place like Toronto can be absolutely brutal.

Indeed. I have vacationed in Florida during late spring/early summer a handful of times. I definitely prefer a dry heat 20 F higher to a humid heat 20 F lower.

My spouse is exactly the opposite, finding Florida summers much more comfortable.

It all leads me to figure that ascribing mechanics to such minutiae is fairly irrelevant. I agree that celsius should be represented in the book, though. Fahrenheit actually makes almost no sense as a system of measurement.

Yeah, you can't claim there is universal baseline where only pcs of specific ancestries are comfortable in extremes. Its good to know the specifics because it can be hard to determine it otherwise what players are supposed to imagine

[Paizo HQ]

"Wow, Mark, great blog. GM advice, skill DC tips, the much demanded knowledge skill to creature type concordance, and a shockingly generous number of bestiary pages. How is the community reacting?"

"Apparently it's so boring that people just want to talk about the weather."

[Paizo HQ]

"Wow, Mark, great blog. GM advice, skill DC tips, the much demanded knowledge skill to creature type concordance, and a shockingly generous number of bestiary pages. How is the community reacting?"

"Apparently it's so boring that people just want to talk about the weather."

LOL!

By the way -- Is Endure Elements still a 2nd level spell as it was in the Playtest?

Yes.

I liked the whole blog, but revised temperature rules have been almost 20 years in coming (since the version in PF1 dates to D&D 3.0).

We're collectively excited about them.

[Paizo HQ]

"Wow, Mark, great blog. GM advice, skill DC tips, the much demanded knowledge skill to creature type concordance, and a shockingly generous number of bestiary pages. How is the community reacting?"

"Apparently it's so boring that people just want to talk about the weather."

Nah, it's the other way around; all/most of us probably agree that it's great and there is virtually nothing to criticize about it. After praising the blog we're finally ready to talk about the weather, and if we didn't talk about the weather at least I'd probably explode from sheer excitement! ;)

Xenocrat wrote:

[Paizo HQ]

"Wow, Mark, great blog. GM advice, skill DC tips, the much demanded knowledge skill to creature type concordance, and a shockingly generous number of bestiary pages. How is the community reacting?"

"Apparently it's so boring that people just want to talk about the weather."

Nah, it's the other way around; all/most of us probably agree that it's great and there is virtually nothing to criticize about it. After praising the blog we're finally ready to talk about the weather, and if we didn't talk about the weather at least I'd probably explode from sheer excitement! ;)

It's all so good. I just got to reading the rituals last night, and they seem basically perfect. It's like that throughout the book; there are all these new mechanics and it looks like the PF2 team just nailed them.

Anyway, there's a lot of non-temperature goodies in the blog too, and thanks to everyone for reading and responding. Every week, Logan wonders which thing in the blog will become the big side discussion, and I sometimes guess right, but this time I thought it would be the Pathfinder baseline, not temperature. :D

People are going to talk about their reaction to temperature, and about the importance of using their preferred measurement scale, because those topics are about them. Likewise, the Pathfinder baseline is a topic related to people's identities, so it's got great potential for generating a long, heated thread. But you didn't provide any details about it, so it's a bit of an abstraction at this point, and harder to comment on. (Yes, this is a shameless bait to get you to say more about it).

Anyway, the blog has plenty of great stuff for us to remark on. For example, I love the idea of the ghaele as an embodiment of freedom to bear arms against oppression, while the lillend is all about freedom of expression: A pretty clever concept, and great flavor.

DarkOne the Drow wrote:

People from different regions of the world have different norms of comfort

Its not just where you're from. When it is in the year matters a lot.

In the fall, when it gets down to <insert arbitrary temperature> then it feels COLD, people put on their sweaters and jackets, etc.

In the spring, when it gets UP to <identical arbitrary temperature as above> then it is WARM or even HOT, people go out in shorts and T shirts.

Same place, same people. The direction the temperature is moving makes a huge difference.

Yeah, living in Wisconsin, 40 degrees F in early fall is really cold. 40 degrees F in winter is T-shirt weather.

It's going to be weird thinking of dryads as a type of nymph.

I dig the last part of the adjudicating tips and spelling out the "fail forward". The biggest circumstance I can think to relate to it is key clues or story information requiring a successful Perception check to obtain and nobody in the party succeeds. This has lead to at least a few stalled moments that take longer out of game to conclude rather than simply taking more time in-game to discover for the sake of progression.

Failed the check to find loot? They just don't get the loot.

Failed the check to find the note from Big Bad to Little Bad that details why the party should care to go find Big Bad? Takes longer to find, giving Big Bad more time to prepare for the encounter.

Oh yeah, that reminds me that I'm honestly surprised the discussion of the week wasn't about that fail forward line, considering it already generated a whole thread...

So are naiads replacing the D&D-style (blinding beauty/stunning glance) nymphs completely? If so that's a shame, I always thought their abilities made for really interesting encounters.

Oh yeah, that reminds me that I'm honestly surprised the discussion of the week wasn't about that fail forward line, considering it already generated a whole thread...

Max.

No.

Oh yeah, that reminds me that I'm honestly surprised the discussion of the week wasn't about that fail forward line, considering it already generated a whole thread...

The temperature table is the low-hanging fruit. It's way too easy to chime in with "the table says x about y temperature but my experience with y is z. Lol!". We all did it :)

On the naiad queens bit, you're missing the next page that spells out what their abilities are. I was wondering about the missing information myself when I read the page. ^^

Should the Gogiteth's "Carry Off Prey" ability have an action symbol associated with it?

Should the Gogiteth's "Carry Off Prey" ability have an action symbol associated with it?

Nope. That's just something the Gogiteth can do whenever it does move, whether it's Striding or Stepping or whatever.

Should the Gogiteth's "Carry Off Prey" ability have an action symbol associated with it?

I think it's basically a passive that enables them to carry off already grappled prey while using their normal movement action

As for how big a square should be. My vote is 1/11th of a chain. That's a nice easy number to remember and work with. Gives a bit more space for those overweight dwarves to stand in too.

3 light-(femto-fortnights).

I also live somewhere where temperatures way below -11 C are fairly commonplace, and I'm willing to bet that the table only seems goofy when it's presented out of context like this.

I've lived in Montreal for some time, so came to a temperature range of +40 to -40 C from growing up in a climate of much milder variation, and the oddest thing to me about this set of temperature bands is that they don't all feel a good match with where how cold it is feels like a qualitative change; I would have thought that the -17C or so "this is where the inside of your nose freezes" level would be an intuitive distinction for adventurers without thermometers, for example.

AJ_Neuro wrote:

It would have been nice to include Celsius in the temperature table, as it's used in almost every single country in the world except the United States.

Bah. As someone from the country that invented the Celsius temperature scale, it is decidedly inferior to temperature measured in Kelvin (note: not degrees Kelvin. Just Kelvin).

Yep. 300 K = optimal temperature for a comfortable me; 0 K = absolute zero; intuitive endpoints split into a nice round number for easy maths.

Thanks Mark for the exciting write up! I'm doing something mad and Giving my Players 3 hours to build a world together without my input and then running in that universe. The monsters are going to be really important to supporting whatever madness comes out of it and I am very pleased to see so many interesting beasties all along the level spectrum!

Since we now have the temperature chart, will we see charts showing the mean, minimum, and maximum summer and winter temperatures around the Inner Sea? How cold is Andor in winter? How warm does Brevoy get in summer?

This all looks amazing. SO excited for this to come out.

If you aren't happy with the numbers (cause you think it's not extreme enough or isn't in Celsius), then just use the descriptions as a baseline.

Your party is in Irrisen? Determine where they are and how much you want the cold to be a challenge. Maybe if they are in the southern part of Irrisen it's normal because you don't want survival to be a big part of the campaign so you only take minor cold in the most northern parts. Maybe you do in which case the southern part is minor cold and the farther north you go it gets colder.

It isn't rocket science. Truthfully though as someone who lives in a temperate area with cold winters and hot summers, this seems pretty accurate.

So, are there good rules for creating custom monsters?

So, are there good rules for creating custom monsters?

Nope. Those were explicitly going to be in a Game Mastery Guide, which is slated for January, I believe.

Jesikah Morning's Dew wrote:

So, are there good rules for creating custom monsters?

Nope. Those were explicitly going to be in a Game Mastery Guide, which is slated for January, I believe.

Thanks. That's what I was afraid of. Long time to wait! I suppose I can get a good enough feel for it to just wing it until then, but I am really looking forward to having something to tinker with!

Cydeth wrote:

Jesikah Morning's Dew wrote:

So, are there good rules for creating custom monsters?

Nope. Those were explicitly going to be in a Game Mastery Guide, which is slated for January, I believe.

Thanks. That's what I was afraid of. Long time to wait! I suppose I can get a good enough feel for it to just wing it until then, but I am really looking forward to having something to tinker with!

I completely agree, though I also agree with their reasoning. Making the first bestiary more expensive or have fewer monsters would be bad, as would them putting the monster creation rules in every bestiary down the line. I'd rather them put them where it makes sense, even if I'm champing at the bit to create some of my homebrew monsters.

Anyway, there's a lot of non-temperature goodies in the blog too, and thanks to everyone for reading and responding. Every week, Logan wonders which thing in the blog will become the big side discussion, and I sometimes guess right, but this time I thought it would be the Pathfinder baseline, not temperature. :D

Man, I just wanted to ask a quick question about RPG units around the world. I come back a day later and find I've helped derail the conversation faster than a natural 1 on a Diplomacy check. Oops...

For the actual subject matter, I think my favorite thing is the simplest: monster descriptions come before the stat blocks. As someone who likes to read Bestiaries cover-to-cover, going straight from the name to the text flows so much smoother than skipping down or to the side past the stats. Helps make it feel more like an actual book without detracting from its use as an in-game reference.

Jesikah Morning's Dew wrote:

Thanks. That's what I was afraid of. Long time to wait! I suppose I can get a good enough feel for it to just wing it until then, but I am really looking forward to having something to tinker with!

I completely agree, though I also agree with their reasoning. Making the first bestiary more expensive or have fewer monsters would be bad, as would them putting the monster creation rules in every bestiary down the line. I'd rather them put them where it makes sense, even if I'm champing at the bit to create some of my homebrew monsters.

Agree that I'd like to see the custom monster rules sooner, but I've been creating my own monsters for the Playtest for a few months now, and it's actually quite easy in the new system. I just choose a similar monster of the same CR, keep the AC and attack/damage bonuses the same, and swap out the special abilities. Everything seems to have shaken out OK so far, and everything's felt about the right level of challenge.

My only annoyance with the Bestiary is that all the humanoid creatures are very low level. I'd rather have seen some traditionally tougher humanoids, like Drow, to have examples higher than CR 5 or 6. It means that, until we get monster and NPC creation rules in the GMG, my party will only be fighting big monsters, rather than well trained humanoids.