Changes to the Way We Make Changes

Tuesday, January 03, 2023

Welcome to 2023 everyone! With the Second Edition of Pathfinder now in its third year, the folks on the rules team are really thrilled to see how all of you are engaging with the game and telling thrilling stories of adventure with friends and family. Behind the scenes, we’re continuing to make the game as good as it possibly can be by creating brand new content and going back to make sure that our existing books are working the way we intended.

That means errata, and today we’re happy to announce several exciting changes to the Pathfinder Core Rulebook that make the game a little easier to play and bring certain aspects of it more in line with our current thoughts and sensibilities. But before I toss the blog over to Lead Designer Logan Bonner to walk you through some of the highlights, I want to take a moment to talk about some upcoming changes to the errata process itself!

In the past, our errata process has been tied to when we reprint books, so that you could make sure your print edition matched what was currently on store shelves. While this had its advantages, it often meant that changes were made quite infrequently. In addition, if a book didn’t see a reprint, it might mean that we never went in to apply a patch. The result was a process that just was not living up to our needs and desire to make sure you have a great game experience. So, we are changing the process.

Starting this year, we will release errata twice per year, once in the spring and once in the fall. Since errata will no longer be tied to reprints, it frees us up to cover errata issues from a wide range of products as well. We hope this will allow us to be a bit more responsive to your questions and any issues you might have spotted with the game, so keep posting your questions to Paizo.com. Your passion helps us make a better Pathfinder!

Alright, that’s enough process talk from me. I’m going to toss it over to Logan to take a look at some of the changes made to the Pathfinder Core Rulebook!


Pathfinder Second Edition Core Rulebook, featuring an image of the Iconics battling a red dragon breathing fire through a crumbling stone wall, on a red background


Core Rulebook Errata

Thanks, Jason! You might notice that Jason said spring and fall, and it’s not... either of those. This batch of errata is coming to coincide with the new fourth printing of the Core Rulebook. While typically any such errata will have already been covered under the new process, this one is playing catch-up. You’ll find all the errata on the FAQ page, but I want to give context and explanations for a few of the major changes.

First comes the most expansive change: alternate ancestry boosts. We’re implementing the option for you to choose two free ability boosts for a character of any ancestry. There have been many ongoing conversations in the gaming community and within Paizo about biological essentialism in RPGs. We think it’s time to address this issue and have added this universal option. This makes it clearer that ancestries aren’t a monolith, and adds more nuance to the world and a wider breadth of characters. To be clear: this is an alternative for all characters and campaigns, not a variant rule, since it’s expected to be in line with the power level of other options. If you have made or want to make a character using an ancestry’s printed options (such as a dwarf with a Con boost, Wisdom boost, free boost, and Charisma flaw), those options remain, and those characters still follow the updated rules. We started heading toward this adjustment in July and are very pleased to have this chance to implement it and bring it to the community!

The alchemist gets major changes to add more flexibility. This dovetails with new alchemy options coming in Treasure Vault, allowing more flexibility in choosing items for a research field instead of a narrow list. The largest number of changes are with the chirurgeon. An alchemist with this field can choose elixirs with the healing trait and can fully substitute Crafting for Medicine checks and proficiency prerequisites. Now that they can choose items that heal HP, we needed to add a limit for perpetual healing items to keep out-of-combat healing from careening out of control. As with alternate boosts, any alchemist you already made remains a valid character!

Most of the remaining changes are smaller improvements, like fixing an oversight on Simple Weapon Proficiency for clerics, making the horse animal companion work as intended, and having the soothe spell target “1 willing creature,” as suggested by Book of the Dead and the Blood Lords AP. We do, however, have one significant downgrade to talk about. The gnome flickmace was a bit overpowered. A one-handed reach weapon was stronger than we expected it to be, and it’s having more of an outsized reputation than a single weapon should usually have in the game. We’ve reduced its damage and added the sweep trait to bring it more in line with other flails. Its new stat line is Price 3 gp; Damage 1d6 B; Bulk 1; Hands 1; Group Flail; Weapon Traits Gnome, reach, sweep.

We look forward to seeing what new characters you make with these changes to the Core Rulebook!

Jason Bulmahn
Director of Game Design

Logan Bonner
Pathfinder Lead Designer

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Tags: Errata Pathfinder Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Pathfinder Second Edition
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QuiZZer wrote:
Now... I'll need to edit any game I start to avoid idiocy where 90cm tall halflings deal the same damage as a 2m tall orc with the same two-handed sword... Maybe I should just go back to GURPS...

Nope. These changes only apply to PF2.

Nothing needs to change in the games you GM.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
tstplsignr wrote:
And no one is trying to take anything away. Stop making s*$& up. People just want voluntary flaws back in the game.

The part of your post I was replying to wasn't the part about voluntary flaws.

Wayfinders Contributor

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Hello Everyone, can we all breathe a moment?

If you want voluntary flaws, use voluntary flaws. OPF is allowing them in Organized Play, and you can certainly discuss this matter with your GM if you are not in Organized Play.

Hmm


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Yeah, conversations you should have at your table are not necessarily conversations you need to have with a wider group, and it's furthermore traditional in this hobby to have a lot of different ways to generate character stats (the CRB has rules for rolling for stats, but I'm sure you know some alternative ways to do that too!)

But just because I was really fond of a PF1 stat generation method that involved dealing out cards doesn't mean it's really worth my time to evangelize for "this is how you should do it in your game" or it's worth anybody else's time to listen to me if I decide to do so for some reason.

Like if you straight up want to give an extra stat boost during chargen, if you limit it appropriately (i.e. so you can't grab an 19 or 2 18s.), then have fun. People who want the 18/14/14/14/8/8 array are probably happy with the 18/14/14/14/10/10 array (and you can still get those 8s if you want.)

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16

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Ravingdork wrote:
Cyrad wrote:

I'm extremely unhappy with the changes to Optional Flaws.

The two-boosts rule is great, but the change to Optional Flaws is a huge, unnecessary nerf to MAD characters...

This I don't get.

How does lowering two to raise one help MAD characters? Doesn't that make them worse?

It's great if your character needs three good ability scores and your ancestry only gets two boosts.


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Ezekieru wrote:
Darkvramp wrote:
Alex Speidel wrote:
Incorporating this new batch of errata into PFS play will be addressed in Thursday's OP Monthly update, so stay tuned for that!
The errata is going to need its own tab on the site, within the community tab, and it needs to be more presentable, just like the first errata was, rather than just block blog posts. It allows for people to cleanly print off a copy if they only use print to update their rulesets, or collect PDFS, like they already are.

The full errata for the 4th Printing can be found on the FAQ page, which is on its own tab on the site. Go to the top, under Pathfinder > FAQ. Then on the page, select whichever errata you wish to look at based on book and printing.

This blog post even links to the FAQ page so you can see all of the details people are talking about.

1. Burying something you want the community to access more often, at the bottom of a menu tab, is not good menu design nor is it nice to us because it is miss labeled when we are looking for something called an errata, and it's in a tab called the FAQ, which right now doesn't function as written it functions as the errata, so you might as well call it that.

2. Not everyone is going to use it as is. It does not take that much time, or effort to put it into a clean and simple PDF format for people to store for themselves or print out to keep with their own collection.


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Putting my two cents into the optional flaw rule:
I am assuming I read this correctly, especially given everyone's reactions, that the rule is now -2/-2 instead of +2/-2/-2?

It seems there is an argument about to what degree this makes your character better

There are a lot of possible arrays, but assuming we have an 18 in a stat always, which I am fairly sure there are no characters that don't want this, the normal arrays for +2/+2 are:
18/16/12/12/10/10
18/14/14/12/10/10
18/14/12/12/12/10
18/12/12/12/12/12
With flaws:
18/16/14/12/8/8
18/14/14/14/8/8
18/14/14/12/10/8
18/16/12/12/10/8
18/16/14/10/10/8
+ A variation that is worse than no flaws
18/14/12/12/10/10

I may have missed a possible stat array or two, but I want to know if anyone thinks any of these arrays are overpowered/imbalanced. To me it just looks like voluntary flaws allows for more stat diversity compared to not using it. None of these arrays seem flat out better than others. Personally I like 18/16/14/12/8/8 and 18/14/14/14/8/8 because I can do something like dump str and Cha to sure up defenses on a wizard in order to stay alive in order to help keep my party safe with spells and also further disincentivize rolling checks I should be letting other people at the table do

I don't see a reason this should be taken away mechanically and complaints about people roleplaying poorly, being ableist or what have you, don't make sense to me. I may not be understanding the complaint, but isn't that a problem you solve by talking to the problem player or by removing them from the group if they can't behave?


AestheticDialectic wrote:

Putting my two cents into the optional flaw rule:

I am assuming I read this correctly, especially given everyone's reactions, that the rule is now -2/-2 instead of +2/-2/-2?

It seems there is an argument about to what degree this makes your character better

There are a lot of possible arrays, but assuming we have an 18 in a stat always, which I am fairly sure there are no characters that don't want this, the normal arrays for +2/+2 are:
18/16/12/12/10/10
18/14/14/12/10/10
18/14/12/12/12/10
18/12/12/12/12/12
With flaws:
18/16/14/12/8/8
18/14/14/14/8/8
18/14/14/12/10/8
18/16/12/12/10/8
18/16/14/10/10/8
+ A variation that is worse than no flaws
18/14/12/12/10/10

I may have missed a possible stat array or two, but I want to know if anyone thinks any of these arrays are overpowered/imbalanced. To me it just looks like voluntary flaws allows for more stat diversity compared to not using it. None of these arrays seem flat out better than others. Personally, I like 18/16/14/12/8/8 and 18/14/14/14/8/8 because I can do something like dump str and Cha to sure up defenses on a wizard in order to stay alive in order to help keep my party safe with spells and also further disincentivize rolling checks I should be letting other people at the table do

I'll add to this. As pointed out, voluntary flaws were the only way to achieve certain arrays like 18/14/14/14/8/8 or a number of other ones presented above. +2/+2 simply can't do it. Now the only way to achieve something like that is to play any of the handful of ancestries left with +2/+2/+2/-2.

So while it might be nice to see everyone get the same stat versatility as a human (even if I think it's a big middle finger to the human who is supposed to represent versatility and that's why they were the only ones that had that), there are now a handful of ancestries that have a clear advantage in the stats that can be generated because they can choose the +2/+2 OR keep their +2/+2/+2/-2. That's a design decision that doesn't make sense to me.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I think it is pretty clear that decision to remove voluntary flaws was not done as a mechanical balancing issue. I think the original purpose of them was to help overcome static ancestry flaws, and the new option pretty squarely covers that. I think there was probably some observation of the same attributes always getting flaws and a conversation about where it was good for the game for the “superior” martial build to deliberately flaw either intelligence or charisma, or both, and how that represented the game.

I totally understand why that feels personal if you have a character you really enjoy playing at your table, but if it is a very common trend across tables, it could just be the case that the new floating attribute variant just felt like a better way to get players to functional builds. The old optional flaw variant might very well have been decreasing actual build variance in a way that was leaving character less skills and less ability to interact socially with the game world in favor of combat specialization, and I think it is understandable to see that as an undesired consequence.


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Unicore wrote:

I think it is pretty clear that decision to remove voluntary flaws was not done as a mechanical balancing issue. I think the original purpose of them was to help overcome static ancestry flaws, and the new option pretty squarely covers that. I think there was probably some observation of the same attributes always getting flaws and a conversation about where it was good for the game for the “superior” martial build to deliberately flaw either intelligence or charisma, or both, and how that represented the game.

I totally understand why that feels personal if you have a character you really enjoy playing at your table, but if it is a very common trend across tables, it could just be the case that the new floating attribute variant just felt like a better way to get players to functional builds. The old optional flaw variant might very well have been decreasing actual build variance in a way that was leaving character less skills and less ability to interact socially with the game world in favor of combat specialization, and I think it is understandable to see that as an undesired consequence.

TFW a company makes a change to force it's player base to better reflect the image of what the gaming table should look like to said company.

If you try to say this isn't what for saying I'm going likely not going to believe you. Because this is what all that amounts to. And I don't much like it


I think it was explicitly a balancing change. They said something along the lines of the previous voluntary flaws system being too good with the new system of ancestry boosts.


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AestheticDialectic wrote:

There are a lot of possible arrays, but assuming we have an 18 in a stat always, which I am fairly sure there are no characters that don't want this, the normal arrays for +2/+2 are:

18/16/12/12/10/10
18/14/14/12/10/10
18/14/12/12/12/10
18/12/12/12/12/12
With flaws:
18/16/14/12/8/8
18/14/14/14/8/8
18/14/14/12/10/8
18/16/12/12/10/8
18/16/14/10/10/8
+ A variation that is worse than no flaws
18/14/12/12/10/10

And if you focus on those with an 18 and that raise only 4 attributes, you have:

18/16/12/12/10/10
18/14/14/12/10/10
With flaws:
18/16/14/12/8/8
18/14/14/14/8/8
18/16/14/10/10/8

2 stat arrays to cover 80% of the Human characters. Humans, the most versatile ancestry, will all have the same attributes!


aobst128 wrote:
I think it was explicitly a balancing change. They said something along the lines of the previous voluntary flaws system being too good with the new system of ancestry boosts.

Copyfit might also be a factor here. Adding the lines about 2 free boosts always being possible takes up space that needs to be freed up from somewhere else. Of course, the specific choice of what to remove is influenced by other factors, so I think they did want to remove voluntary flaws on some level. But it might have been more of a "what do we feel lukewarm about that can be removed" deal than a "this was done with much deliberation for balancing reasons" deal.


SuperBidi wrote:
AestheticDialectic wrote:

There are a lot of possible arrays, but assuming we have an 18 in a stat always, which I am fairly sure there are no characters that don't want this, the normal arrays for +2/+2 are:

18/16/12/12/10/10
18/14/14/12/10/10
18/14/12/12/12/10
18/12/12/12/12/12
With flaws:
18/16/14/12/8/8
18/14/14/14/8/8
18/14/14/12/10/8
18/16/12/12/10/8
18/16/14/10/10/8
+ A variation that is worse than no flaws
18/14/12/12/10/10

And if you focus on those with an 18 and that raise only 4 attributes, you have:

18/16/12/12/10/10
18/14/14/12/10/10
With flaws:
18/16/14/12/8/8
18/14/14/14/8/8
18/16/14/10/10/8

2 stat arrays to cover 80% of the Human characters. Humans, the most versatile ancestry, will all have the same attributes!

Yep the PF2 attributes system is the most complex way I have seen of coming up with a standard array. It is farcical how complex it is for very little actual difference.


Darkvramp wrote:
Ezekieru wrote:
Darkvramp wrote:
Alex Speidel wrote:
Incorporating this new batch of errata into PFS play will be addressed in Thursday's OP Monthly update, so stay tuned for that!
The errata is going to need its own tab on the site, within the community tab, and it needs to be more presentable, just like the first errata was, rather than just block blog posts. It allows for people to cleanly print off a copy if they only use print to update their rulesets, or collect PDFS, like they already are.

The full errata for the 4th Printing can be found on the FAQ page, which is on its own tab on the site. Go to the top, under Pathfinder > FAQ. Then on the page, select whichever errata you wish to look at based on book and printing.

This blog post even links to the FAQ page so you can see all of the details people are talking about.

1. Burying something you want the community to access more often, at the bottom of a menu tab, is not good menu design nor is it nice to us because it is miss labeled when we are looking for something called an errata, and it's in a tab called the FAQ, which right now doesn't function as written it functions as the errata, so you might as well call it that.

2. Not everyone is going to use it as is. It does not take that much time, or effort to put it into a clean and simple PDF format for people to store for themselves or print out to keep with their own collection.

1. I agree with your point about mislabeling and Paizo's website being overall a mess of UI design. The FAQ page is now (finally) including both errata and clarifications, so I would rename the tab as "FAQ/Errata".

As to the order of tabs, that's a little less clear. Anything they're wanting to sell to people will want to take priority over non-sales, so every tab aside from Organized Play would take higher priority over the FAQ tab. Putting it in Community might work, but that'd also mean moving the Starfinder FAQ page there, whereas the way it is now separates the two systems. There would also be people who'd complain the errata tabs aren't under the game system tabs. It's certainly something to think about.

2. Anytime someone says "it doesn't take much time or effort" to do X thing, I have my doubts. To layout out any written work to make it easy to read and comprehend, easy to update frequently, and choosing which staff members they'd need to pull aside to make said .PDF every 6 months would be a lot of considerations for Paizo to do that might make the new errata process difficult to pull off. Paizo is a company, sure, but I'm not sure they're at the size to do all of that.

They made the FAQ page apparently to make the process of posting updates to it much faster, and being able to queue future changes via the website developer would theoretically be easier than to make a new version of a .PDF every time and then ALSO get the website developer to post said .PDF up.

The .PDF format would be nice, that's for sure. But for me, the most important thing is for the community to get more errata more consistently than we are right now. We've been waiting years for this to happen, and if Paizo's solution is to do so via site updates rather than through .PDFs, I'd rather deal with the inconvenience of their site so that some books will finally get addressed (I'm looking at YOU, Bestiary 1 and Secrets of Magic).


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Out of characters I have played for more than 5 levels, probably only about 25% started with an 18. Almost all of thise have been wizards. Clerics, rogues, fighters, bards, champions, I have all built and played many levels with with a 16 starting KAS and have been fine with/the character felt like a fully contributing party member. My investigator started with a 18 INT, and more and more that is feeling like it was a mistake.

If you are only making one single check per turn (or just targeting 1 creature with a saving throw spell/power) with that ability or less, then the “must 18 KAS” analysis can be very misleading to players. Removing all stat arrays that only go to 16 in KAS is far more limiting to build diversity than adopting the new +2/+2 option and changing the voluntary flaw system.


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Gortle wrote:
SuperBidi wrote:
AestheticDialectic wrote:

There are a lot of possible arrays, but assuming we have an 18 in a stat always, which I am fairly sure there are no characters that don't want this, the normal arrays for +2/+2 are:

18/16/12/12/10/10
18/14/14/12/10/10
18/14/12/12/12/10
18/12/12/12/12/12
With flaws:
18/16/14/12/8/8
18/14/14/14/8/8
18/14/14/12/10/8
18/16/12/12/10/8
18/16/14/10/10/8
+ A variation that is worse than no flaws
18/14/12/12/10/10

And if you focus on those with an 18 and that raise only 4 attributes, you have:

18/16/12/12/10/10
18/14/14/12/10/10
With flaws:
18/16/14/12/8/8
18/14/14/14/8/8
18/16/14/10/10/8

2 stat arrays to cover 80% of the Human characters. Humans, the most versatile ancestry, will all have the same attributes!

Yep the PF2 attributes system is the most complex way I have seen of coming up with a standard array. It is farcical how complex it is for very little actual difference.

I agree with you if you analyze the system deeply. But if you follow the 4 steps of stat attribution it's quite simple, actually.


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Yeah, the entire premise of the stat generation system is that you can say "I'm a Dwarf Cleric who trained as a blacksmith" and most of your stat generation is done. You just have a free choice from your ancestry and background, a binary choice from your background, and 4 free boosts from the last step.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

What if you don't start with an 18?


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Darkvramp wrote:

1. Burying something you want the community to access more often, at the bottom of a menu tab, is not good menu design nor is it nice to us because it is miss labeled when we are looking for something called an errata, and it's in a tab called the FAQ, which right now doesn't function as written it functions as the errata, so you might as well call it that.

2. Not everyone is going to use it as is. It does not take that much time, or effort to put it into a clean and simple PDF format for people to store for themselves or print out to keep with their own collection.

This is why I maintain a mirror of the Paizo Errata and FaQs on a website where every FaQ item is linkable, etc. The site also has the PFS FaQ with CRB 4 errata, copied from the blog post. The ideal solution is of course a better Paizo webpage… but at least this unofficial source is searchable, structured, mobile friendly, and cross reference-able against the official if needed.

I made a PDF of the FaQs in case people find it useful.

There is also a word doc linked on the page here.

These docs are 76 pages long… not really sure how practical they actually are, but there you go.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Martialmasters wrote:

TFW a company makes a change to force it's player base to better reflect the image of what the gaming table should look like to said company.

If you try to say this isn't what for saying I'm going likely not going to believe you. Because this is what all that amounts to. And I don't much like it

Isn't every change made in every errata, by definition, a change designed to make the game better in their opinion?

Actually that's just the system in general, the whole of Pathfinder is the developers trying to make a game to better reflect what they think is the best experience. It's why they added an alternative stat distribution, it's why they buffed the alchemist, it's why they nerfed the flickmace.

Like, idk that seems pretty basic.


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Squiggit wrote:
Martialmasters wrote:

TFW a company makes a change to force it's player base to better reflect the image of what the gaming table should look like to said company.

If you try to say this isn't what for saying I'm going likely not going to believe you. Because this is what all that amounts to. And I don't much like it

Isn't every change made in every errata, by definition, a change designed to make the game better in their opinion?

Actually that's just the system in general, the whole of Pathfinder is the developers trying to make a game to better reflect what they think is the best experience. It's why they added an alternative stat distribution, it's why they buffed the alchemist, it's why they nerfed the flickmace.

Like, idk that seems pretty basic.

And to sell books. Because Paizo is a business.

Those howling for more "bio realism" might consider that perhaps most of Paizo's customers don't want that stuff in their games these days. Maybe they're the ones going extinct in the larger, evolving gaming community.


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Squiggit wrote:
Martialmasters wrote:

TFW a company makes a change to force it's player base to better reflect the image of what the gaming table should look like to said company.

If you try to say this isn't what for saying I'm going likely not going to believe you. Because this is what all that amounts to. And I don't much like it

Isn't every change made in every errata, by definition, a change designed to make the game better in their opinion?

Actually that's just the system in general, the whole of Pathfinder is the developers trying to make a game to better reflect what they think is the best experience. It's why they added an alternative stat distribution, it's why they buffed the alchemist, it's why they nerfed the flickmace.

Like, idk that seems pretty basic.

Just sounds like a case of bad wrong fun


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Martialmasters wrote:
Just sounds like a case of bad wrong fun

I mean if you want to play with the old flickmace no one is stopping you at your own tables.


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TriOmegaZero wrote:
What if you don't start with an 18?

You have much more freedom if you don't.

But it will strongly depends on players. Personally, out of a dozen of characters, only one started with a 16, and I quickly stopped playing it as it was far too convoluted for a build.
And it's not just for optimization (even if sometimes it's the case) but also often because I like my character to be excellent at at least something.

Radiant Oath

Haven't gotten far enough with my cleric to see if the stat spread hurts too much, especially with the changes to combat from 1E. Maybe I'll find some problems that my PFS teammates can't cover eventually.


Depends on the class/subclass too. Warpriests can start with as little as 14 wisdom if you just care about healing font and support/utility spells. Mutagenists don't need too much intelligence since they can stretch their resources out longer. Thaumaturge doesn't need that much charisma for its core features to work. Basically anything that isn't directly attacking with their key stat can get away with it.


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Unicore wrote:

I think it is pretty clear that decision to remove voluntary flaws was not done as a mechanical balancing issue. I think the original purpose of them was to help overcome static ancestry flaws, and the new option pretty squarely covers that. I think there was probably some observation of the same attributes always getting flaws and a conversation about where it was good for the game for the “superior” martial build to deliberately flaw either intelligence or charisma, or both, and how that represented the game.

I totally understand why that feels personal if you have a character you really enjoy playing at your table, but if it is a very common trend across tables, it could just be the case that the new floating attribute variant just felt like a better way to get players to functional builds. The old optional flaw variant might very well have been decreasing actual build variance in a way that was leaving character less skills and less ability to interact socially with the game world in favor of combat specialization, and I think it is understandable to see that as an undesired consequence.

It isn't clear to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If the problem is that voluntary flaws are always being put in int and/or cha for warriors (or str and Cha for wizards ig) then I'm not sure anything has changed here since they will just be the 10 stats every time too. Problem of the same stats being dumped remains doesn't it?


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SuperBidi wrote:
TriOmegaZero wrote:
What if you don't start with an 18?

You have much more freedom if you don't.

But it will strongly depends on players. Personally, out of a dozen of characters, only one started with a 16, and I quickly stopped playing it as it was far too convoluted for a build.
And it's not just for optimization (even if sometimes it's the case) but also often because I like my character to be excellent at at least something.

I think one of the reasons most of the post-CRB martials have had a non-STR/DEX stat as their KAS is in part to wean people off the idea of "you must have an 18 at level 1." The Barbarian with 16 Str, the Cleric with 16 Wis, and the Bard with 16 Cha feel weak in a way that the Inventor with 16 Int or the Thaumaturge with 16 Cha really don't.

Obviously sometimes you want 18 Int/Cha on an Inventor/Thaumaturge but it's entirely viable to start with less.


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PossibleCabbage wrote:
SuperBidi wrote:
TriOmegaZero wrote:
What if you don't start with an 18?

You have much more freedom if you don't.

But it will strongly depends on players. Personally, out of a dozen of characters, only one started with a 16, and I quickly stopped playing it as it was far too convoluted for a build.
And it's not just for optimization (even if sometimes it's the case) but also often because I like my character to be excellent at at least something.

I think one of the reasons most of the post-CRB martials have had a non-STR/DEX stat as their KAS is in part to wean people off the idea of "you must have an 18 at level 1." The Barbarian with 16 Str, the Cleric with 16 Wis, and the Bard with 16 Cha feel weak in a way that the Inventor with 16 Int or the Thaumaturge with 16 Cha really don't.

Obviously sometimes you want 18 Int/Cha on an Inventor/Thaumaturge but it's entirely viable to start with less.

Yes there are several classes that really feel like they are dual attribute, and they suffer much less from not having. But the way the DCs scales even so they really really should still have an 18.

There are a few particular builds that can totally give up on their primary attribute. It was possible to build a 16,16,14,12,10,10 from the 8 hitpoint casting classes with total of 10 in their casting stat due to a flaw and it is viable for certain spell choices if you focus your feats on martial abilities. You can build a Battle Cleric like this but you could also build a Wild Druid, an Alchemist, and perhaps losing the most would be a depressed Warrior Bard who never tries to linger.
Every spell list has options that ignore spell DC. It just feels like you are cutting off your right hand and getting very minor compensation for it.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

My goblin cloistered cleric, built to the old rules had a 16 dex and 16 wisdom. Using a bow (favored weapon), I would be taking a shot more often than I would be casting an offensive spell for most early levels. By the time I really started casting more than shooting, we were probably level 8 or 9. Then at level 10, my spell DC was 1 behind the wizards, but most of my offensive spell casting was AoE against lower level enemies (shadow blast is a pretty fun spell, even when you know you are never going against a weak save. The variability of the area of effect means almost always getting an extra enemy or two with the spell, and weakness triggering helps mitigate the number of successful saves. Our campaign is on hiatus for a while, but we are already level 13 and it hasn’t felt punishing these last three levels. I have landed critical failures on casting darkened eyes on 2 boss enemies out of maybe 7 or 8 that we have faced. I wait until they are pretty debuffed, having already cast greater darkness for my dark vision, blind-fighting party to fight out of. It is usually an instant battle ender and a turn stealer even on a successful save. At level 15, my save DC will be the same as the wizard’s again for most of the rest of the game. My character is also a bell flower tiller, so there is a lot of aiding going on with my turns.

I think the challenge of starting with 16s is largely that the “most optimal” thing for your character to do will change often and not just based on the tactics of the current encounter.


I remember playtesting a Warpriest with 12 Wisdom (16 Dex and 16 Cha though). It seemed fine.


I built a Half-Orc Mutagenist with Int 12, Str 16 & Cha 16. He's been a lot of fun to play. He's 8t level now, and regularly demoralizing all his foes before tripping them and slicing them up. :-P


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

My optimizer brain sometimes has trouble starting with 16s but in practice it's not too bad starting one point down. Like, genuinely, it just feels fine in play, you'll miss a little bit more but it's not the most glaring thing in the world.

Though I still do miss how it was in PF1, where point buy meant dropping a top level stat would give you more total stats to put elsewhere.

Being able to go from 18 in one stat to 16/14/12 for the same total point cost made it feel like there was a real incentive to diversify your stats, whereas going from 18/10 to 16/12 usually feels like a bad trade, even if it's sometimes justifiable for other reasons.

For classes that don't get their class boost in their offensive stat I can't really imagine dipping, though. A 14 strength weapon inventor with a greatsword doesn't sound like it would feel good.

Scarab Sages

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Gortle wrote:

Yes there are several classes that really feel like they are dual attribute, and they suffer much less from not having. But the way the DCs scales even so they really really should still have an 18.

There are a few particular builds that can totally give up on their primary attribute. It was possible to build a 16,16,14,12,10,10 from the 8 hitpoint casting classes with total of 10 in their casting stat due to a flaw and it is viable for certain spell choices if you focus your feats on martial abilities. You can build a Battle Cleric like this but you could also build a Wild Druid, an Alchemist, and perhaps losing the most would be a depressed Warrior Bard who never tries to linger.
Every spell list has options that ignore spell DC. It just feels like you are cutting off your right hand and getting very minor compensation for it.

I use the Gradual Ability Boosts system just so that all my players can get their ability scores where they need to be as soon as possible.


What I find interesting is that they fixed some of the "Gaining and Losing actions"/"You can't act" stuff without addressing the "getting stunned on your turn" problem. Admittedly it isn't a huge deal, as most people seem to agree that the RAW is terrible, but a clarification would have been nice.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Karmagator wrote:
What I find interesting is that they fixed some of the "Gaining and Losing actions"/"You can't act" stuff without addressing the "getting stunned on your turn" problem. Admittedly it isn't a huge deal, as most people seem to agree that the RAW is terrible, but a clarification would have been nice.

Sort of disagree. They fixed the part everyone agreed was bad RAW, but I've seen some heated discussions on how many actions someone should forfeit when stunned and significant disagreement over what's fair or reasonable.

The "you're stunned forever because you can't regain actions" was the part nobody really had any issue with since it was so obviously broken.


Will the PDFs be updated with the 4th printing errata and the new bi-anually erratas? I would like to use the PDF rather going through a list of erratas.


tagnullde wrote:
Will the PDFs be updated with the 4th printing errata and the new bi-anually erratas? I would like to use the PDF rather going through a list of erratas.

With new printings yes, only with bi-annual erratas no, too much typographical work. (There was a post from the Paizo employee somewhere...)


Glad errata is happening more often. I'm not sure if the community at large will be watching, use it, or want to use it, but it's good for any future iterations of the game. Bottom line: The game needs to be ready to go on the 1st printing.

Not sure how I feel about the ancestry changes, I'll have to look into it more. I don't think a character with a 16 in the prime stat ever made then "non-viable", I always thought it made them more interesting.


Jason S wrote:

Glad errata is happening more often. I'm not sure if the community at large will be watching, use it, or want to use it, but it's good for any future iterations of the game. Bottom line: The game needs to be ready to go on the 1st printing.

Not sure how I feel about the ancestry changes, I'll have to look into it more. I don't think a character with a 16 in the prime stat ever made then "non-viable", I always thought it made them more interesting.

Well, such changes probably won't be wildly used. But oh well.


doesn't remember this forum was ever this toxic for the last three years

really?

these are the change cause all the obsessed and belligerent to come out of the woodwork

can never understand what trigger them


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25speedforseaweedleshy wrote:

doesn't remember this forum was ever this toxic for the last three years

really?

these are the change cause all the obsessed and belligerent to come out of the woodwork

can never understand what trigger them

Who was toxic? Didn't notice tbh.

Anyway: Should Paizo Staff read this, the first chapter in the PDF seem to have not the correct font or font-thickness. Looks like everything is written in "bold". It seems to be correct starting wit chapter 2. This was also the case in the 3rd printing.


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PossibleCabbage wrote:
SuperBidi wrote:
TriOmegaZero wrote:
What if you don't start with an 18?

You have much more freedom if you don't.

But it will strongly depends on players. Personally, out of a dozen of characters, only one started with a 16, and I quickly stopped playing it as it was far too convoluted for a build.
And it's not just for optimization (even if sometimes it's the case) but also often because I like my character to be excellent at at least something.

I think one of the reasons most of the post-CRB martials have had a non-STR/DEX stat as their KAS is in part to wean people off the idea of "you must have an 18 at level 1." The Barbarian with 16 Str, the Cleric with 16 Wis, and the Bard with 16 Cha feel weak in a way that the Inventor with 16 Int or the Thaumaturge with 16 Cha really don't.

Obviously sometimes you want 18 Int/Cha on an Inventor/Thaumaturge but it's entirely viable to start with less.

agree 16 feels weird even for non minmaxer

have to disagree on the thaumaturge and inventor doesn't feels bad part

dc attack separation was a obvious mistake at the start of 2e when alchemist cannot throw bomb properly

paizo still go on to repeat the same mistake with inventor and thaumaturge anyway

while didn't make this mistake at the same time with investigator and magus

even kineticist playtest have the same dc attack separate problem

what is happening

why are paizo doing this

Liberty's Edge

Totally Not Gorbacz wrote:
Less incentive to minmax is a feature, not a bug, at least to me.

Well, the free +2/+2 being available to 2 fixed bonuses / 1 free bonus / 1 fixed malus ancestries actually opens MORE options for minmaxing ...

Which is yet another reason why I think those will be a thing of the past.


gesalt wrote:
LordeAlvenaharr wrote:
Could you give me a quick glimpse of how good an elf would be a thaumaturge with these new rules?

** spoiler omitted **

And so at 1 you have heavy armor, universal knowledge, and 35 base speed. At 4, you have lay on hands and can drain your familiar for a second one (psuedo chalice implement) at 6 you have champion reaction (psuedo amulet implement). At 7 you have base 40 move speed boosted to 50 if you have a longstrider wand. By 9 you have scaling heavy armor and a utility focus spell. The rest is casting, extra reaction and flight.

If your gm lets you use ignore access to asp coil, use that instead, swap adopted ancestry and fleet, and take ageless patience for +2 circumstance bonus to skill checks when time doesn't matter (offsets the diverse lore penalty too).

Sorry to ask this, but I don't understand very well why get Psychic? Would this be a support build? I'm working on it with some changes, for example, scorpion whip instead of flickmace and the talents of human, I also think about using feats of scrolls, and instead of getting Champion, get Sentry, maybe even the Psychic, although this one, I didn't really understand in the build. Psychic with Ancient Elf.


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Martialmasters wrote:

{. . .}

TFW a company makes a change to force it's player base to better reflect the image of what the gaming table should look like to said company.

If you try to say this isn't what for saying I'm going likely not going to believe you. Because this is what all that amounts to. And I don't much like it

Are you trying to tell us Paizo is going to force their player base to exercise more and curtail their excessive pizza consumption?


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Ezekieru wrote:
Darkvramp wrote:
Ezekieru wrote:
Darkvramp wrote:
Alex Speidel wrote:
Incorporating this new batch of errata into PFS play will be addressed in Thursday's OP Monthly update, so stay tuned for that!
The errata is going to need its own tab on the site, within the community tab, and it needs to be more presentable, just like the first errata was, rather than just block blog posts. It allows for people to cleanly print off a copy if they only use print to update their rulesets, or collect PDFS, like they already are.

The full errata for the 4th Printing can be found on the FAQ page, which is on its own tab on the site. Go to the top, under Pathfinder > FAQ. Then on the page, select whichever errata you wish to look at based on book and printing.

This blog post even links to the FAQ page so you can see all of the details people are talking about.

1. Burying something you want the community to access more often, at the bottom of a menu tab, is not good menu design nor is it nice to us because it is miss labeled when we are looking for something called an errata, and it's in a tab called the FAQ, which right now doesn't function as written it functions as the errata, so you might as well call it that.

2. Not everyone is going to use it as is. It does not take that much time, or effort to put it into a clean and simple PDF format for people to store for themselves or print out to keep with their own collection.

1. I agree with your point about mislabeling and Paizo's website being overall a mess of UI design. The FAQ page is now (finally) including both errata and clarifications, so I would rename the tab as "FAQ/Errata".

As to the order of tabs, that's a little less clear. Anything they're wanting to sell to people will want to take priority over non-sales, so every tab aside from Organized Play would take higher priority over the FAQ tab. Putting it in Community might work, but that'd also mean moving the Starfinder FAQ page there, whereas the way...

Since each different printing needs it's own different pdf, it would probably not work to just keep updating one pdf.

No, it's not hard to format block posts like you have been, and then just export them as a pdf. The work is either making them look nice with color,(nice but not nessisary) andany other flair like bookendings spaces and other stuff you have standardized into your book formats.
It doesn't have to look perfect it just has to be printable potentially and storeable with our collection. And if your going to go through the effort of updating your rules go through the effort of giving it to us, don't rely on the community to do it for you.


Ezekieru wrote:
The .PDF format would be nice, that's for sure. But for me, the most important thing is for the community to get more errata more consistently than we are right now. We've been waiting years for this to happen, and if Paizo's solution is to do so via site updates rather than through .PDFs, I'd rather deal with the inconvenience of their site so that some books will finally get addressed (I'm looking at YOU, Bestiary 1 and Secrets of Magic).

Also if the plan is to update the errata with something, twice a year, it should hopefully not take that long to format it for both the errata page, the blog page, and then potentially a pdf format(which needs no color flair or picture, just that it be readable and not illegible or so tiny no-one can read it.)


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Since the current conversation is about the editing of the errata/FAQ maybe someone can answer a question I have had for a while. What was so wrong with the old FAQ pages that they decided to change it? Or was it changed because of a style change?

The reason why I asked is because the old FAQ page had everything listed clearly with each book having their own exclusive page and each FAQ response having its own individualized link making it easy to reference.

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