Search Posts
That is super cool. Kudos to everyone at the company who championed that as well as those who allowed it.
'd like to close by circling back... if Paizo is still doing business on Twitter - and encouraging customers to do so - that's a bad thing in my opinion and shame on them. If the profit from that exposure is the difference between solvency (ie. paying their staff's wages) and insolvency well... I'd like to think if I was business-owner I'd do the right thing, no matter how hard that decision was.I don't know if Paizo has a Twitter account. I don't care. You say that if Paizo "doing business on Twitter" (I don't know what that means) is the difference between solvency and insolvency Paizo should "do the right thing" which means they should dissolve the company. Seems to me that's cutting off your nose to spite your face. IOW, stupid. I don't see Paizo as stupid. This is getting a bit off-topic but I think that's overly reductive and this might be worth discussing. Can we accept the baseline truth that to many people, Twitter's policies over the last few years have leaned evil? It doesn't matter if you personally believe freedom of expression outweighs expectation of protection from abuse, just that we're on the same page that many people invert those two in importance. Twitter has stopped moderating against racism, phobia and religious persecution. You might be okay with that without being racist, 'phobic and the like because of how much you value freedom of expression. I am not accusing you of endorsing nasty behaviour. But. To many people Twitter explicitly allowing, enabling and to a degree encouraging evil, hurtful behaviour is unacceptably evil. The question of dissolving a company over it is entirely a question of how much evil you are willing to overlook to keep from having to get a job that doesn't involve overlooking it. I grant none of us are paladins, so tolerating some little evils is probably par for the course. But for some people, Twitter's policies aren't little evils. They're big, existential evils. What is stupid - in my opinion - is accepting the big evils because opposing them is hard. Oh, and "doing business on Twitter" includes such things as announcing products, events, and in general using it to interact with customers.
When the rewards are tied to going on media platforms that one reasonably does not feel safe on and could actively imperil one's existence to get some e-coin, that's a problem. I hate to disagree with someone twice in the same week let alone the same thread but once again I think I may have something worth contributing. The rewards are not tied to social media. A reward is. Know that I am one of those rare people who hasn't closed their social media accounts because I've never had any. I am seriously disappointed by anyone who still does anything to do with Twitter in particular. I am on your side, in a large part for the same reason you are even though it doesn't impact me personally. I don't know if Paizo is endorsing that platform or not but I hope not. So... disregard that reward. Some things aren't for me. Some aren't for you. Paizo is adding ways customers can save money. To get a flat 10% discount, you need to spend $250 in twelve months. Looking at subscriptions (it's been a while for me so bear with me), the adventure path subscription is 12x $30. Unless I'm misunderstanding something here, that single subscription gets you a flat 10% after less than a year. To get the flat 15% discount, you need to spend triple. Okay, well, the core rulebook subscription looks to be about $200/yr. Lost Omens... not sure how often they release but it looks like another couple hundred dollars a year isn't far-fetched. Done. Point is... I think nobody's losing anything with this. You don't need to accumulate every possible point. Don't succumb to the fear of missing out. When one has a subscription, one can cancel it if finances aren't looking so hot, the product line does not draw interest, or access means change. I don't see how that has changed. Cancelling a subscription loses access to discounts today. In the future, you don't necessarily because as long as you spend enough in a year on almost anything. Don't like a rulebook? Don't buy it. But hey... if you happen to top up on some minis instead, that might keep you in the tier you want to target. That's a thing you can't do today. When one is signed onto this new program it forces a situation of expected participation that could cause dramatic concern for some. This I disagree with. You are forced into nothing. You are expected to do nothing. You are in control of your wallet. Do not buy anything you do not want to buy. If you don't want to review products, don't review products. You are in control.
I hear you. I look around myself every day and notice I've accumulated a lot of stuff. Stuff I don't need. Stuff that will mostly be turfed the day I die. Okay. So I'm hearing you're looking to buy less stuff, and are kind of coming to terms with that. Fair enough. Good news. If you're buying less stuff moving forward, you have less need of a discount. If you buy one book a year at full price, you're financially better off than buying two and getting 15% off. Again, maybe I'm misunderstanding how this program works. But as far as I can tell, Paizo has offered more people more ways to get more stuff for less money. I am cognizant that's no doubt being done to encourage more overall spending. But you sound like an adult. Don't spend your lunch money on comic books. I'd like to close by circling back... if Paizo is still doing business on Twitter - and encouraging customers to do so - that's a bad thing in my opinion and shame on them. If the profit from that exposure is the difference between solvency (ie. paying their staff's wages) and insolvency well... I'd like to think if I was business-owner I'd do the right thing, no matter how hard that decision was.
Just throwing this out there that they darned well better be requiring MFA. I understand your position with regards to a smartphone. I do. But single-factor authentication to any account that can store payment information is an unacceptable risk in 2025. You - individually - might have decent IT practices such as never re-using a password, but the moment you oppose MFA you're probably in the more-at-risk category. There are ways to do MFA that don't involve a smartphone in any way. If Paizo uses a TOTP system, you can use any of a number of free code-generator programs that run on desktop PCs, for instance. E-mail code isn't hugely secure, but it's not completely unreasonable and again, doesn't require a smartphone. The only thing that does is text messaging. I know you think you're not a target for account compromise and you're probably right, but money is money, and any customer service time spent explaining to you that a thousand dollars worth of minis have been shipped to some random address on your dime is wasted time. Even if you pull "I'll just get my credit card processor to reverse the charges" you're screwing someone. Paizo, everyone who has your type of card... someone. Security is no joke and it's not optional anymore. But there are ways to do it that don't mean you adopt a different lifestyle.
We tried some PF2 in its early days. Two things made it a fail for us. One: insufficient material. When it was first released there was basically no content unless you were playing the first AP. We burned through the first module and then... what? None of us had the time to create playable content. Experiment ended. Two: the experience. Part of the whole point with PF2 was a realignment of the math. To this day the mantra is that "the math makes it so you can't 'win' during character creation by optimizing". True. But the moment you make a character and find it underwhelming and post to the forum, you get told "you chose wrong". Point being that while you can't make a character that is more than mediocre, you sure as heck can make a character that is a failburger. Personally I don't find a lot of joy in doing a bunch of research to avoid all the trap options that are flavorful but definitely the wrong choice.
John Wick. Both to myself and to my players when DMing, I think of hitpoints not unlike what the character John Wick goes through in a movie. No single blow is fatal. There's just this relentless accumulation of exhaustion and wounds that will - if not addressed properly - result in death. Mostly I refer to injuries that involve blood. In-game non-lethal is more like the punches and little falls he takes. They won't kill him but they'll eventually incapacitate him. The two interact nicely.
Smaller companies do it with 3P warehouse and distribution. While that may not have made sense in the past for Paizo, with >100% tariffs, it is a no brainer. It's interesting. The proposal is to shift shipping and storage for non-US customers to a non-US facility. Labour and money that would have been enjoyed by US employees of Paizo would be shifted to non-US workers. This will also make shipping easier for many destinations - for the customer. Which again means at least some of the first-mile shipping that would have gone through US courier employees' hands would no longer. In this scenario Paizo has split logistics, having to handle multiple locations and supply-chains. Costs go up in many ways. Manufacturing of the actual product in the US has been - I recall - looked at many times and has been impractical due to pricing being astronomically higher in the US. Given inflation and increased costs all around, it's highly unlikely that US manufacture will suddenly become cheaper than it is today. Tariffs on Chinese print runs make them more expensive, not US print runs cheaper. I don't know how this whole thing works out better for anyone except - maybe - non-US customers. As a Canadian and someone who maintained subscriptions for a long, long time until the PF2 cutoff, I'd just like to wish Paizo, it's staff, and its freelance contributors the best in this turbulent time.
Certainly performing a swift in place of a move action is potentially broken. Take the case of two Quickened spells as a swift and a move, then a normal spell as a standard. Definitely not intended.Oddly enough there is already a specific restriction on that:A spell with a casting time of 1 swift action doesn't count against your normal limit of one spell per round. However, you may cast such a spell only once per round Damnit. I thought there was such a clause but didn't take the time to double-check. 100% mea-culpa. That said, the specific case doesn't change my opinion. And I'm a very lenient GM.
Here's a way of looking at it...
Odds are good that you'd want to perform a swift action in place of a move/standard action because it's better for you. Which means it's better. Which means it's power-creep. There are relatively powerful magic items and class abilities that are explicitly written with the balancing assumption that only one of them can happen in any given turn. Certainly performing a swift in place of a move action is potentially broken. Take the case of two Quickened spells as a swift and a move, then a normal spell as a standard. Definitely not intended. While I don't have any specifics off the top of my head where a swift in the place of a standard to allow two swifts is nearly as broken, I expect there are. Basically I return to "if you want to do it, there's a probably a reason, and that reason is it's better for you in a way the rules intended to not be permitted."
I'm DMing Legendary Planet. Players are at 16th level. This one goes to 20. It's fun. That said, it's slightly less polished than a Paizo AP. For instance there's no actual documentation for the timeline that the historic events took place in. Thousand years ago? Ten thousand? A million? Dunno. The second-last book just... starts, without really any transition from the previous. It's up to the DM to go "um, you hear about this thing you can do, somehow, and here are the details I figure you need." But overall it's very, very playable. I don't mean to turn you off of it, just let you know that where Paizo tends to include large blocks of text the PCs will never know about, this doesn't.
I've now got three PF1 campaigns. I'm DMing Legendary Planet. Players are at 16th level. This one goes to 20. I'm playing Tyrant's Grasp. We're 11th level. I'm playing Wrath of the Righteous. Just started. This is a new, small group. One player is also in Tyrant's Grasp, as is the DM. Total unique human count: 14.
I'll have to caution you that in PF "tanking" is not really a role as there are no good ways in PF to really force your enemies to attack you. I'm just going to repeat my mention that the Guardian sphere in Spheres of Might really, really elegantly handles this. Basically, you challenge your foe(s) and they get bonuses to attack you and penalties attacking your allies. You also get a "delayed damage pool" that helps you survive being the focus of the baddies' ire. It's much more DM-friendly.
I am playing an incredible tank character in our Tyrant's Grasp campaign. Spheres, my friend. If you're not familiar, just Google "pathfinder spheres" and there's a wiki full of what you need. My character is a prodigy (class), and the two key ingredients are the berserker and guardian spheres. Berserker gives an ability similar to rage, which generates temporary hit points every round. There's your durability. Guardian gives an ability called "challenge", which incentivizes but does not force enemies to attack her instead of her allies. Go deeper into those two spheres and the survivability goes up while the incentives to focus on her do also. If you take a gander and are interested, I'll try and offer some explanations and suggestions.
Disrupt silence will still have a verbal component when cast by a bard. But the spell has a duration of 1 round per level. That means that a bard would need to cast it outside the silence, but after that would be able to ignore the silence. I'd disagree with that. Yes, the bard rules say "every bard spell has a verbal component (singing, reciting, or music)." But this spell does not. You know as well as I that in Pathfinder, the specific overrides the general. Even if that general is the word "every". Until and unless that spell gets errata, it works. I get it that different GMs will rule differently here, but one who applies the general bard wording over the specific spell text is a} willfully screwing their player and b} disregarding a decade of precedent on how rules are supposed to be parsed. We play at our GMs' whim but that doesn't mean they're right, or should be encouraged to disregard how the system works.
It depends on what you think mythic's purpose is. If you think of it as "more rules, especially for high-level play, like 3.5e epic", oh yes, it's so very, very broken. But if you think of it as "more rules, for telling the tales of legendary characters whose deeds will be told for centuries", they're very functional. Challenging mythic PCs or making them feel threatened is difficult, yes. But if you're okay with the interesting bit being using interesting over-the-top abilities, without the constant threat of character death... it's fun.
Likely nobody's doing anything yet. Tariffs have to be legislated, meaning very carefully worded and designed. That takes time. During which, some people will point out it's not as easy as "let's just do this"; there will be retaliatory economic action coming right back. Basically... this is likely to be a bunch of sabre-rattling and negotiation. Simply put, protectionism is understandable, but doing what's been promised as-is will destroy US citizens' buying power and the jobs it's supposed to encourage will take decades to build, and by definition they'll be poor-paying jobs (else they wouldn't be off-shore). People who understand economics will point that out. From there... we'll see if it's another Mexican wall situation where a fraction of what was promised happens, or if... well... bad things happen. But likely right now... it's wait and see.
Advancing Your Character
All the language in Core follows this. You character advances in level at the moment they accumulate sufficient XP. It does not say that they have a particular level while they have the appropriate XP. It doesn't say anything about reducing levels, in any way. Now, I totally understand the sentiment here. I know how 3.5e worked, and there was mechanism for both level loss and catching back up with the rest of the party. Pathfinder has neither, because it's not intended. If your DM wants to play RAW - literally as written - then your character loses XP, and draws again. That's it. That's all. RAW, reduce your XP count by 10,000 and draw a card. There are no rules saying there are consequences to that XP loss, so there aren't. I do agree that there are RAI rulings that are completely different, and I'd probably do some of them at my table, but... RAW is RAW. The book says what the book says.
My Friday group (I DM for 5 players) has probably another year or two in our Legendary Planet campaign and will likely stay PF1 when it's done. My Saturday group (I play in a group that has grown to seven players) is just under half finished Tyrant's Grasp. We've got a couple PF1 campaigns planned when that wraps. We're starting up a second Friday group (currently 3 players) that's an experiment bringing in (yet another) new player. All told, in the last year or so the table I host has gained four new players. That said, mostly I visit here a few times a week just kind of waiting. There's a lot of PF1 money just lurking in wallets and it's not impossible someone will decide they want it after all. Unlikely, unprecedented, but not impossible. So yeah, nostalgia.
Sorry, but I can't take you seriously when you throw "Ha$bro" in there. Not once, but multiple times. Businesses are businesses, in the business of making money. That is not an unusual trait; it is the central purpose for a business. That you feel it is necessary - or helpful - point out the money-centric nature of Hasbro strongly suggests you think other businesses are not money-centric. If you want to pitch a business model, be professional about it. Cutesy monikers like "Micro$oft" have never gotten anyone taken seriously. I mean this in a friendly and helpful manner.
Immortality feels more like a means than an ends. What are you trying to achieve by becoming immortal? Maybe you want to build a civilization. Or maybe you want to become a god. Maybe you just want to gather all the worlds knowledge. I my case, my character didn't pick this; I did. Wroth Liv (angered life) is a valkyrie. She died once. Now she's better. Better able to protect the weak. Better able to defend the vulnerable. Better able to defeat the evil. Death would be... inconvenient. Mechanically she's been picking up ever-increasing durability. A delayed-damage-pool. Regenerating temporary hit points. Spell-sundering. Stuff that basically makes her get back up after you knock her down. Regenerating a body seems just the next step in such a mythic character's bag of tricks. That said, I agree with the point that it isn't for everyone, and I wouldn't pick it for every character, or even many. But the OP's question is interesting.
My current character in fact just did something similar this level. In her case, it's also a mythic ability. The caveat is that to properly kill her, you need to destroy her bonded weapon. That's not as easy as it might seem because it's a summoned / dismissed weapon, so if she has any warning that it's being targeted she can dismiss it as a free action. And it's intelligent. Soon it'll be able to move, and ideally eventually teleport itself to friendlies. Her race already doesn't age. Basically, turn her into stone, or a bunny if you want her out of the way. (And neither of those are easy either.) I've done this deliberately because her party role is the damage-soak, so she's taking damage and spells all the time. You don't walk into a battle with (functional) AC 5 without some kind of backup plan. Soul Safe
An item must have the eternal bond legendary ability and be a minor or major artifact to have this ability. This is a persistent ability.
I didn't think they were malicious -- I thought they were doing this at legal gunpoint. As it happens, WotC backed down on the OGL changes that spawned any sort of legal gunpoint concept. That's noteworthy because "what if they try again?" Well... They tried another unwanted change, got negative feedback, and backed down. And much faster than last time. It's almost like they've learned not to alienate players.
I think that's a bit of an apocalyptic stance to take. People are still mentioning it. You're still mentioning it. I simply think Paizo is rolling out the responses piecemeal, which definitely seems like a wise move to me after dumping multiple controversial ones at the same time turned out... Well, quite badly. I have faith they'll at the very least put out a written response to the OGL question, even if in the end they decide to go through with that change.This is a great move, but what about 1e content on infinite?Today's announcement and action relate to the Community Use Policy and Fan Content Policy. We are continuing to monitor community feedback to changes to our other licenses and will share what information we can when it is available. Thanks for your patience and dedication to the Pathfinder and Starfinder communities. Per Mark's comments, let's break down how this plays out. 1} The community - us - accept this and move on. This is the most likely scenario. The current level of complaint has been achieved and rendered no retraction of the changes that impact PF1/SF1 on Infinite. Less complaint stands realistically no chance of impelling future change. 2} The community - us - maintain the same level of complaint. This is unlikely, but possible... though I'm sure it'll get those complaining written off as cranks if it hasn't already. Thing is... the current level of complaint is still unlikely to impel future change. 3} The community - us - suddenly start complaining a lot more. This is... highly unlikely, but who knows. Maybe there's a pocket of PF1/SF1 writers out there who just haven't heard the word or are standing by to see if miracles happen. This scenario could impel change, but again... is super unlikely to ever happen. So yeah. Apocalyptic. PF1/SF1 on Infinite are extinct, or at the very least unable to breed. There's no reason given Mark's "we're going to monitor community feedback" comment to think that means "and then suddenly do some more stuff that we just don't want to do at the same time as re-enabling CUP because... oh... reasons." I don't pretend I'm a writer directly impacted by this. The closest I come is being a purchaser of some content that was going to be made available to me via Infinite and that author had to scramble to make alternate plans because surprise! license change announcement. But again, this does impact future purchasing plans.
Paizo's expenses have very likely risen quite a bit in the last few years. There really isn't much room for reducing expenses either. They likely were already using the cheapest print shop that produces acceptable quality, for instance. Let's not forget that their staff just recently unionized. Improved working conditions don't reduce costs. We haven't seen a bunch of terminations, so payroll is likely on the rise. I vaguely think I saw something about them eliminating the office and being down to warehouse space, but even if that did happen, that's a drop in the bucket. I'm sure the changes in product lines and frequency is about all they can do for "efficiency". I've never had the impression that Paizo has been raking in undeserved YPMs (yachts-per-month). They're not gouging, I'm confident. That doesn't make products more affordable to more people, but ultimately these are the dollars required to a} pay the wonderful people who make the products and b} actually print and ship the products.
This is a great move, but what about 1e content on infinite?Today's announcement and action relate to the Community Use Policy and Fan Content Policy. We are continuing to monitor community feedback to changes to our other licenses and will share what information we can when it is available. Thanks for your patience and dedication to the Pathfinder and Starfinder communities. So... still extinguished? I mean, I don't know what further feedback from the community there could possibly be for Paizo to continue to monitor so, this pretty much sounds like a dead topic. I mean... kudos for walking back the CUP changes. But fooey on sticking to your guns on accelerating the death of the things that aren't the new shiny.
Folks, talking to lawyers about revising language takes time. Not making unwanted changes doesn't take talking to lawyers. Yes, yes, I realize that's overly reductive but at the heart of it if they wanted to just not revoke CUP, they could by the simple act of saying so. Well. I mean... it would've been if they'd a} not said "effective immediately" and b} no, there is no 'b'.
I just don’t think the endless cycle of negativity is helping anyone when right now waiting is all you can do, but again, you do you, I’m just a stranger I'd disagree. The continued expression of dissatisfaction underlines that this isn't an issue which will quietly go away. "We'll think about it." If the community lets Paizo get away with that statement and just... quiets down, it can easily turn into "we thought about it and well, don't feel like doing anything about it." If the voices - and more importantly the word - continue to spread and speak and complain, the scope of the impact grows and continues. Paizo is doing this because Paizo wants to do this. Because this has been determined to be the most beneficial (read: profitable) path to them. Until they are disabused of that notion, nothing will change, and the only way that happens is if it's clear to them the profit-impact of this move outweighs the benefits to them. Don't trust. What would've happened if everyone had trusted WotC to just... back down? Nope. It took sustained bad PR to trigger that move. And that is why I personally think this is all overblown. I just don't see WotC risking that happening again in the next decade or two when they know what will happen, and yet Paizo is urgently forcing license deprecation - committing a WotC - because WotC. My groups were mulling over trying PF2 again once we run out of PF1 material we want to run but this event has us revisiting that. Because how Paizo behaves matters to us.
Respectfully, I'd suggest that the best option to add is the one where you don't remove options. An immediate solution: the announced changes are hereby paused until we can rethink this. Zero effort required. Just don't do it until you're back from GenCon. Nobody's out here going "no, no, you MUST do this thing nobody knew was coming on the very abrupt date you've announced." That said, Jonathan, you've been stellar in this thread. Genuinely.
I hear you BUT... no. They wouldn't have had entanglements with OGL. The people putting out the material would. If WotC were to about-face again - highly unlikely given the massive backlash from the last time - it's the publishers who would have product out of compliance. Worst that happens would be Paizo would pull OGL product from their storefront. That's something this move doesn't prevent. In the long term this would be a very bad descission as WotC (or better Hasbro) has shown that they don't really respect the customers. I disagree. They've shown that they do respect the customers. When the customers say "we're done supporting you because you're evil", they backed down. The bean-counter who decided "hey, let's use a license change to extinguish product we don't want to exist" was overruled and it all came to an end. There's really no reason to think that the OGL drama will repeat itself. The lesson has been learned. Or has it? Because that's what's happening here. Paizo is extinguishing OGL-compliant product. It's literally the same result as if WotC hadn't backtracked, except historic product isn't being pulled. Yet. Paizo has allways been more open with their licences and the fact that AoN exists - and as Mark has posted is in now way affected - shows that they continue that way. Yeah, that's not my take. They could happily continue to allow OGL-compliant PF1 and SF1 material to be produced. Excuse me... to be put on Pathfinder Infinite. In theory OGL-compliant material could be produced and sold on DriveThruRPG still, but a} Paizo is taking their marbles home in terms of their setting and b} Paizo is taking their marbles home in terms of them being the most obvious place to get Pathfinder/Starfinder material. Yes, it will be bumpy for a few month for sure, but this not so good decisssion seems to be better then the alternative. The alternative is: leave legacy licenses alone. << Literally the lesson WotC successfully learned. Sure, if you want to simplify things, offer improvements. But saying "no, man, you can't produce SF1 material with rules" is... not cool. I bought a PF2 product this week. Despite being a PF1 player/DM, I'm still occasionally a customer, just not a subscriber. This does not have me wanting to support Paizo anymore. This is pretty clearly "we only want to allow the latest shiny thing", same as WotC. And claim that the intent is different faces the uncomfortable truth that the result is the same. And they're okay with that.
I remember a different company playing games with licenses not so long ago and being declared The Bad Guy. You don't make more restrictions and get to be The Good Guy.
I think Melkiador is mostly there. The shaman ability is a supernatural (Su), and there's established rules saying those are a standard to activate unless stated otherwise. But... I think the reading of the (Ex) extraordinary ability is off, though you may get table variance. I take "in a reactive fashion" as including the PC reacting to a situation and deciding to use their ability. Take the barbarian fast movement ability. It's an (Ex). Nothing says anything about actions to activate it and I've never even almost heard of a DM making a player spend any action of activating it if the barbarian wakes up or regains consciousness. It's on if you want it to be on. And not a word suggests it's a reaction to anything except the barbarian's desire. I would rule that (Ex) works the opposite of (Su). It's always available unless a specific ability says that there's an action cost to activate it. I think this is pretty consistent with the spirit of these abilities as well. The shaman is summoning up magical ability to become able to fly. The alchemist has wings; they can just use them, like legs... until they get too tired to get off the ground, having run out of rounds per day.
Would you allow someone who is grappling to perform another free action before they make the grapple check when it is their turn? I have always assumed that when your turn comes you need to make the grapple check before doing anything else. Would you allow a player to use a free action to have their PC taunt the foe they're about to grapple, before doing the grapple? Would you allow a player to use a swift action to have their PC activate some ability they've got that would increase their grapple bonus... such as an inquisitor's judgement? Nothing in grapple says "at the start of your turn" or otherwise indicates it has to happen before any other actions. Legally, a PC could take their move action prior to the grapple attempt. Perhaps drawing a one-handed weapon or retrieving some magical bauble that gives you a bonus to your grapple attempt.
Careful. Path of War isn't spheres content. That's Spheres of Might. PoW is full of martial maneuvers and stances.
These forums are an outlier - don't know of any other forums not having email notifications, so if they can do it, why not Paizo? Spam explanation doesn't ring true. Labour costs money. Code changes require labour. The Paizo forum and store are an integrated codebase that is - according to their own explanations - complicated and difficult to work with. That makes even simple changes difficult. There's a whole pile of QoL improvements that have been suggested through the last decade plus, but the complexity drives the cost, and it's just not worth doing. I'm pretty sure I read something about a total store/forum rewrite maybe a year (or two now) ago, but I haven't seen anything recent so I could be incorrect or it could be scrapped or it could be around the corner. But this isn't just some vBulletin stock forum where enabling this stuff just involves turning it on.
Just to be clear... I didn't mean my comment to be critical or snarky. Just literal. Sometimes tone doesn't translate well.
Anyway, that doesn't change the point I made some posts ago that more experimental AP formats make getting characters from 1 to 20 harder for GM's, who already have a lot of work on their plate. Your point is interesting but... "Feedback so far from all sorts of angles (financials, customer feedback, internal process, ease of compilation, ease of licensing issues, etc.) has been pretty universally great for this switch." Financials, customer feedback you're trying to disagree with, financials, financials, financials etc. James is awesome, but he's telling you why things are the way they are. Those are the things you need to change if you want change.
ProTip: If that's your workflow, your best option is to middle-click the Reply link to open it in a new tab. Compose your reply, post it, and close the tab. Poof. You're back to where you were.
Very cool.
With 3.5e WotC effectively declared character advancement outside the OGL, so it couldn't be reproduced. If you wanted (know when) to level you character, you had to buy the physical books or eventually PDF to know. When Paizo produced Pathfinder, they created their own math for XP scaling and PC leveling. I recognize that doesn't answer your question because I don't genuinely know if that particular content was published by Paizo under the OGL or is considered PI. But this might at least be interesting.
Rule of thumb: if you want to do it to an enemy, it's almost certainly going to break invisibility. Cast cure light wounds on an ally because they're hurt? No problem. Cast fly on yourself so you can get away? No problem. Cast flesh to stone on your target so they're screwed? Not allowed. Cast black tentacles around your target so they're screwed? Not allowed. The closest thing to allowed is stuff like casting wall of stone between them and you. Yes, you made it so they have to around it to get to you but you didn't do anything to them.
Ouch. Departures are always sad here and this one is too. Best wishes, Aaron.
Total so far fatalities: 1. May your bounty flourish.
Glad you at least tried it so you could put that nagging doubt aside. Don't let the results stress you too much. Let's face it... PF1 was fun. PF2 is fun. D&D 3.5 was fun. Any game is better than no game, and liking or preferring one system over another isn't a crime. Even if it's irrational, I'm a Burger King person not a McDonald's person. My group tried PF2 in the early days and there were some things that were nice and some things that were annoying. Our experiment mainly failed because Paizo hadn't put out enough playable material so when we burned what existed, we... resumed consuming the human lifetime of PF1 material we have. Maybe someday we'll try PF2 again but given the recent release Pathfinder Second Edition Second Edition, it'll probably be PF3 by then. PF2 is a good system and it would've been fine if you shifted to it, but sticking with PF1 isn't the end of the world as long as you're having fun.
there's very real data that suggests lower level Adventure Paths simply sell better than higher level ones... but a part of me wonders if that's a self-fufilling prophecy by not publishing as many high-level Adventure Paths as low-level ones. Sales figures can be misleading, which may be part of what you're alluding to here. Let's take some isolated hypothetical situations. 1} You publish two 1st-level adventures. You sell 10 copies each.
If you just look at the sales numbers for either scenario, they tell you to publish 1st-level adventures. But the second hypothetical is hiding a (mostly speculative) possibility... that high-level adventures increase low-level adventure sales. Disregarding that high-level material is harder to write than low-level, both of those two scenarios net identical product sales but you'd easily conclude high-level adventures are a bad choice. I can tell you that my module purchases in the past... I only bought the glut of low-level material because it meshed with the higher-level material. If you hadn't published the level-10-plus stuff you did, I wouldn't have kept my modules and adventure path subscriptions running as I did. I bought 100% of what you offered. But only because it was diverse. Full disclosure: my groups didn't follow y'all on the PF2 fork in the road. After the first two adventures, we went back to PF1. So I'm not really your target market anymore. Fuller disclosure: but I bought the Fists of the Ruby Phoenix hardcover. Because it's high-level material. Despite it being for an edition we don't play. So... real-world experience with me: you've made more money off me by publishing high-level material than low. And I'm telling you that if I was playing PF2, you'd only be selling me low-level material to support high-level material. That's something the sales figure can't ever tell you.
No, you could write three core books worth of rules that *need* clarifications and FAQs that never got one despite being also clearly in the perception of the devs.Does the lack of any FAQ or errata implemented throughout the entirety of PF1 imply that the rules team considered and rejected JB’s position in this spell? This. The FAQ/errata/support team was understaffed, underresourced, and did the best they could with basically no time allocated to anything already printed.
Every game evolves and I like the way this team has decided to do it. Aaron, I was thinking to myself, "Aaron Shanks, Director of Marketing... of course he'd say that." Then I parsed it a little differently. Aaron Shanks, Director of Marketing. You've been a highly visible voice of honesty and reason here for a while now so I wanted to let you know that while I normally believe marketing is an evil, evil undertaking not unlike electro-shock therapy, your integrity is so consistent and conspicuous and you're such a genuinely invested and helpful guy that... well... maybe you're just a sleeper agent in the ranks of Hell, making changes from the inside. Just wanted to take a compliment you on being such a stand-up guy. When I have respect for the dude whose job is - at least in part - to convince me to buy stuff I don't otherwise want to buy, well, that says something.
Yeah, thank :D, sorry it was obvious the way to find quikcer my answer ^^'. They said that it's not possible to add this feature by now. Guess I'm going to arm myself with patience... Really, you need to arm yourself with a credit card. While anything can change at any time, the payment methods haven't changed basically ever. Patience will very likely continue to get you no access to the products you want to pay for. Just a heads-up.
Announce they're reverting to PF1 and melt the forum servers. Bonus points for actually releasing a PDF and seeing what the sales would be like.
This game is many things to many people. Some people are casual and want to treat it not unlike a video game where destroying pixels of a certain colour is the point. Some people are looking to simulate realistic scenarios with realistic people in a fantasy period where things are dark, brooding, and violent. Some people are looking to tell a story where their inner hero shines. Every table, every campaign, every group is a little different. And that's good. We're just about to wrap up a War for the Crown campaign where we have never killed a living creature. Destroyed undead and constructs? Sure. But everything alive has been subdued and imprisoned or relocated. Our opening line is "we accept surrender." Next campaign? My character literally won't accept surrender. If you start a lethal fight with her and aren't compelled to do so unwillingly, well, you made a mistake and that mistake will be met with like response. Different stories. It's okay. It's... more than okay... it's great.
It's an idea that's been proposed for years. Problem is that it would undercut their partnership with WizKids. Even if WizKids themselves were to produce and release those models, they'd be undercutting their own prepainted mini sales. Even if the two offerings together netted a market increase, dividing that market into two products wouldn't be worth it. It's an undertaking that Paizo themselves don't have the expertise to handle, so it'd be another licensed product, which isn't their primary focus. Worse, STL files don't have DRM, so whoever did this wouldn't have a real way to prevent their product from immediately being widely distributed without pay. Good idea but reality doesn't allow it. |
