Aziraya's page

Aziraya Zhwan wrote:

Alcohol: My group has now run into two creatures that is weakened in some way by strong alcohol and we didn't have any, almost leading to two player deaths. I mean, come on. What kind of adventurer doesn't have an extra bottle of booze for the road? Our group now officially considers a bottle of alcohol official adventuring gear.

Blood pudding? We were an all-dwarf party. We had alcohol. :)

Alcohol: My group has now run into two creatures that is weakened in some way by strong alcohol and we didn't have any, almost leading to two player deaths. I mean, come on. What kind of adventurer doesn't have an extra bottle of booze for the road? Our group now officially considers a bottle of alcohol official adventuring gear.

For me personally, I've gone many years going through the underdog stories where characters pull seemingly-impossible victories out of nowhere so seeing the main character win for actual reasons other than "They're the main character so they have to win" appeals to me greatly now. Really the only "OP main character" anime I didn't like was Danmachi, but that was turned around in the last one or two episodes of the first season. Although he honestly isn't that intensely overpowered due to his lack of experience. Either way though I couldn't seem to get past the idea of his ability.

Others like Overlord or One Punch Man who are so intensely overpowered still have something else going for them. Overlord, as was described, has other things going through his head and it's still interesting to see exactly what OP thing he does to win. One Punch Man has the humor aspect to go along with the moment he wins. Danmachi though? I know that's the only overpowered thing he does so I know that's exactly what's going to happen to win and it doesn't have any humor in that action to make it interesting in my opinion.

Ah, I see. Kind of an annoying mislabeling to someone who hasn't seen much of the game itself (like myself), but I can appreciate a tongue-in-cheek joke for the ones who know what they're looking for.

By the way, does anyone have any recommendations for series with the main protagonist being tastefully and/or playfully overpowered? Things like One Punch Man, Boku no Hero Academia, or Problem Children are Coming From Another World?

Just did a quick google search and I can't find any anime adaptations for Asura's Wrath, although there are a couple links of playthroughs of the game that people are calling the "anime" of it for some reason.

I'm one of those people who binge watch entire seasons at a time after the season ends, so right now a lot of things on my watch-list are annoying me a bit with their non-standard season lengths. Things like the latest season of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Rakshasa Street, and Re:Zero are throwing me for a loop.

I'm also waiting for the latest season of D.Gray-Man, Mob Psycho 100, and Tales of Zestiria to finish up.

As this is my first post in here I guess I'll post a couple things that I consider hidden gems that I haven't heard talk of much at all.

My favorite? Prestidigitation. While not powerful in it's own regard, so much fun can be done with this spell and its wide range of "minor effects".

*pokes head in*
Yep, thread still going strong.
*ducks back out*

It wouldn't surprise me to see many of the armors in Starfinder to be treated to protect against laser damage as well as kinetic damage, with maybe a give/take between them. I could see higher base damage for laser weapons but many armors simply subtracting some of the base damage kind of like Energy Resistance but for lasers. An enemy may have a lot of laser resistance but not much kinetic resistance. This means that weapons that have more physical "oomph" to them such as arrows fired from futuristic bows may very well be advantageous to use over laser weaponry in some situations.

I love the class. Flat out love it.

I don't think I can ever play it, as it seems by 7th level I'm behind the curve on attack and damage no matter what I do.

What am I missing?

I honestly don't see where people are coming from when they say that the Kineticist severely lags behind in accuracy/damage. Sure, there's not many options to optimize the Kineticist to the point of what some other classes could reach, but the floor is high enough that you really don't need to put much into optimizing to do well.

I second the idea that the race shouldn't get a bonus in Dexterity since I don't see wolf races being particularly dextrous. Almost all of the animal races already currently have bonuses to Dexterity too so giving them something different would be nice. Either Con or Str would be a good physical bonus to have.

For Enlarged Canines, getting a -2 Cha but a +2 to Intimidate ends up being only a +1 to intimidate because Intimidate is a Cha-based skill, just to make sure you're aware. I would just say to have it replace Keen Ears, Strong Nose or Expert Rider instead of giving a -2 to Cha.

General thoughts on Natural Attacks: Natural Attacks are extremely strong when built around them so I would be careful of letting a player stack them. You should also specify whether the claws and bite are primary or secondary natural attacks. My recommendation would be that if they replace the same trait then make them primary attacks. If they replace two separate traits then make one of them a secondary attack.

Considering you're using the name of a city from Final Fantasy, you could always try to look at lifting some Final Fantasy plots. It looks like you have a decent way to plug in some Final Fantasy 7, 8, and 10.

7 could be ripped from with the whole dual-tiered city and magical energies of the world. It just so happens that the biggest sources of this energy is being guarded by the dragons. Make the elite use this energy to make their lives easier, uncaring that it's making the world slowly die. Since it's essentially a pocket-dimension created by a wizard it's easy to say that it only has a limited amount of magical energy that's being used up. Midgard is also basically the most developed city technology-wise than any other in that world so you can use it in order to kind of develop the idea of the mega-corporation having a central seat of power and having its influence lessen as you go further out.

8 could be ripped from by having your players part of a private military academy (the equivalent of S.E.E.D.) that is commonly hired by these higher-ups. They get hired to do some mission where they find out some kind of secret that pits them against the government/other supernatural things.

10 because it does the whole "find out a secret that the government has been hiding and so now it's time to fight the power" transition rather well. Maybe have very specific members of the elite cast know that this powerful wizard is manipulating the top members of the government, or maybe they know of a way to get back to the material plane which is why they're milking this plane of existence for all it's worth before getting ready to just jump ship.

I can actually see a bit of the plot coming along from this. The players are part of the military academy. Take very heavy dystopian vibes from FF7. They get sent on a few missions to kill monsters/put down rebellions and secure these special sites where large quantities of this energy can be extracted from. They find out somehow that these energies are limited which the government has been hiding from the world. At this point they have two choices: continue on helping the government (Choice A), going full anti-establishment on their asses (Choice B), or act as spies/inside men that try and sabotage the government (Choice C). Either way they find out that the plane can be left at any time. It's just that the gate for doing so is extremely well-guarded. If the government is stopped then the plane can sustain itself for a very, VERY long time (aka, the world is saved). If the elites aren't stopped then the world has a couple-thousand years of energy left.

Choice A:
They continue to be sent on missions similar to what they've been having, eventually ending the campaign with killing the dragons to harvest the last of the world's energies. The players are now rich and can live a life of luxury.

Choice B:
They are tasked by these dragons themselves or maybe come across a group of people who are in-tune with the "feelings" of the plane and can either rally the people against the elites (Kingmaker could possibly be a nice pre-written thing for this) or do more terrorist-style strikes before eventually killing the current leaders of the elites who are running the show to stop the world from dying.

Choice C:
This one would be a bit harder to come up with things correctly but could end up being a lot of fun. Have them continue doing jobs for the government but only to build their trust. While doing these jobs and building the trust of the people in charge they're gaining intel to tell the rebels discussed in Choice B and doing things to sabotage major reactors/power extractors. This one culminates in a coup d'etat of the current government while the players place a less corrupt group on the seat of power.

The problem with this though is that you would have to get the players to agree to have characters that would all have reasons to go down one of these main paths together. It would kind of leave bad feelings if one or two players had to bench characters they had become attached to because the characters can't agree on what to do. A good way to do this is to create a ring of six circles. A is the top circle, B is the lower right, and C is the lower left (but don't mark them as such). Instead label them 1-6 and fill them with these phrases, starting at the top and going clockwise: 1."Absolute loyalty to the government" 2."Stability in the region must be achieved" 3."People shouldn't mess with the natural order" 4."I just want to help the most amount of people" 5."I don't mind getting my hands a bit dirty" 6."I'll just do whatever earns me money". Tell them that their characters don't have to be entirely based around those ideals, but they must at least be important concepts to them. Each character must be no more than two steps away from another and will help steer the story. This means that if one person is on Circle 1, everyone would have to be on Circles 6, 1, or 2.

This is my thought process for this: 1 is the main embodiment of A, 3 is the main embodiment of B, and 5 is the main embodiment of C. If the players remain within these steps of each other then you should be able to steer the campaign to one direction or another without completely leaving a player in the cold.

As an example: the players are on circles 1, 2, and 3. Oh no, we have some heavily leaning toward A and B! Well here's the thing: all of those could see the merits of siding with the government. "Absolute loyalty" would go with the government (duh), "Stability in the region" could want these rebels to stop so that chaos doesn't keep going on and "Don't fight the natural order" would see that the elites have been in power all this time and so that shouldn't change. In that same token, circles 2, 3, and 4 could all be pulled to Choice B. Stopping the plane's collapse would obviously be important to "I just want to save people", "Don't fight the natural order" could think that using the plane's energy to live in luxury is a perversion of that energy and should be stopped, and if they help the rebels become a kind alternative government then rebel attacks would stop meaning more stability in the long run.

I was talking to the GM about a hypothetical character that revolved around being stationary but making up for it in large damage, kind of like stationary artillery. There is some iconography in fantasy of this (in Dark Souls we have the Silver Knight archers with their greatbows). Since there's nothing like that in official materials I decided to think one up and I was hoping for input from the community about it.

Some conceptual starting points:
-It's heavy and has a large draw strength, so a minimum Str should be needed so not every archer could use it.
-It's not a mobile weapon.
-It should have a decent range increment as well as pretty good damage.
-It should be scary to see someone pointing this thing at you.

I originally looked into the weapon creation guidelines but it seems like a very commonly used weapon, the Composite Longbow, already kind of blows past the weapon creation guidelines so I decided to just use the Composite Longbow as a starting point. I initially erred on the side of caution to make sure it didn't get over-powered before getting input.

So, here's the stats and features I brainstormed:

My main concern is that, as it is now, there isn't much use for the Greatbow over the Composite Longbow at all. Consider if you had the base 14 Strength needed. At 14 Strength a Composite Longbow would be doing 1d8+2 for an average of 6.5 damage with the Greatbow doing an average of 7 damage. Considering the enhanced weight and needing a feat in order to bypass the normal "less movement" restrictions, a difference of .5 damage on average just doesn't seem to cut it.

Ideas:
1. The Double Hackbut firearm has 2d12 on the damage with a somewhat similar premise of lower mobility for more firepower. Should I just increase the damage? If so, to what? 2d8 gives an average of 9, 2d10 gives 11, and 2d12 gives 13.

2. Much of the inspiration for this weapon comes from Dark Souls, and one of the main things about the Greatbow in Dark Souls is that it knocks you right on your ass because of the force of the bow. Should I make the user of the Greatbow get some kind of free CMB check to knock a target prone that it hits? I wouldn't want it to just use a Trip attempt because I feel like something like a mermaid that doesn't have any legs would still have a good chance of being knocked over. Should I put in a generic CMB vs CMD check (max 1 size category larger using Dex or Str, whichever higher) to knock the target prone?

3. How about some cover-piercing properties? My initial thought would be the cover would have to be an inch thick or less with a maximum hardness of 5 (aka wood) for the Greatbow to pierce through, with each +1 magical enhancement allowing it to bypass an extra 2 hardness. This might also have the side-effect of allowing the Greatbow to ignore Shield Bonuses to AC of wooden shields of equal or lesser enhancement bonus, very hard to bypass AC of metal shields, and never through adamantine (unless also using adamantine arrows). I'm much more reluctant about this one than the other two ideas because it basically has all the headaches of a Sunder character for the GM, having to keep track of Hardness and keeping in mind different armor stats just because I'm attacking but it's fairly flavorful.

What do people think? If I add only one of the ideas above, my gut is to say to 2d12 damage or the prone idea. If both, go with 2d8 damage + potential prone.

From how I understand it, when you do a regular move, you're actively breaking away from the other person and focusing on moving a large distance. This can be seen as either turning your back and high-tailing it or back-peddling very fast to put as much distance as possible which would naturally put you a bit off-balance leaving you open to an AoO. Considering each round is equivalent to 6 seconds and a normal movement speed is 30 feet, that means you're going 5 ft/s. That's actually fairly fast so a character is having to really commit to the movement which would compromise their defenses in one way or another.

A 5-foot step is more akin to the natural flow of combat while remaining engaged and wary of your foe(s). To answer the original question, the Giant Crab is fully intelligent enough to take a 5-foot step because the only intelligence such a movement needs is a basic sense of self-preservation. After all, a Giant Crab doesn't move around with both claws wide to the side. If engaged in combat it would be probably be holding one or both claws somewhat protectively in front of itself unless it was moving a fair distance to attack someone, in which case it would probably do something akin to a charge with holding it's claws up and at the ready to hit at the end of movement. It may not be smart enough to 5-foot step with the intent to flank with another unless it's specifically written in their tactics, but it can certainly 5-foot step for whatever reason to not provoke an AoO.

Edit:
If you want to see how a crab doing a 5-foot step looks like, take a look at this video. If you ignore the crazy flipping of the character to get behind the crab, the crab is always trying to circle and pivot at an optimal distance with a claw usually held in front in order to protect itself. During this pivoting/shuffling movement the player never attacks because he knows that the crab could attack at any moment/is protecting itself, meaning he isn't getting any AoOs because it would leave him too open to attack. When they're both circling/strafing each other is a perfect example of two enemies in combat with each other both taking 5-foot steps in a round since in the mind's theater both combatants should be doing their actions at roughly the same time during the 6 seconds (turns are only an abstraction needed to make the combat system work).

Follow the link Fromper provided and scroll down to the "General Character Building" section to find the guide that Java Man mentioned.

Keep in mind though that some people have found that the guide is a little on the min-maxed side of "basic benchmarks" unless the author has tweaked some things after getting feedback. It's called "Bench Pressing: Character Creation by the Numbers".

Undercommon is to common like the Underdark is to the surface: Darker, scarier, and if you're encountering it you're probably surrounded by a heap more trouble than if you weren't. Much like Drow in general now that I think about it.

If this turns into another "Succubus in a Grapple" thread because of a single pun... I'm going to be a very happy man.

Dotting in case more things that are interesting are said...

Long Answer: Normal horses (and animals in general) usually don't have an actual language to communicate with. You can argue that animals have a "language" even if it's very rudimentary communication through pheromones such as ants, but I would hardly consider that a conversation and is more like acting on natural instinct.

Unless someone is under the effects of Speak with Animals there's:
1. No shared language to communicate with (in fact, there is no language at all).
2. The animal is too stupid to have a real conversation with you.

The first point seems to be circumnavigated by the fact that the horse used to be a horse and should know how to communicate with horses, but it falls into the pit of "there is no language to communicate in". The spell says you make them sentient and gives them some bonuses. That means you would treat them just like a normal person walking around but with the nifty abilities written in their bestiary entry. Can a normal sentient person communicate with an animal to that extent? Nope, so the awakened animal can't either.

Short Answer: It doesn't say anywhere in the Awakened Animal spell that it allows awakened animals to communicate with their unawakened brethren, so they can't.

So now with new information, I have some questions and warnings regarding the use of 3.5 material.

The main question is "Did you tell them 3.5 material was ok in advance?" If so, the player was well within his right to be a bit upset that you were telling him that he couldn't do something that you (basically) told him in advance would be ok, and you should probably stick to your word and allow the 3.5 version. If not though, I would explain to him that the game you're playing is Pathfinder, not DnD 3.5, and every source that pertains to 3.5 has zero relevancy to the rules and workings of your campaign. If you want to allow some 3.5 stuff that's perfectly fine and there are a lot of really good options in there that didn't get ported over to Pathfinder. However, make it very clear to him that if he wants to use something from 3.5 then he needs to discuss it with you beforehand. Especially as a new GM you don't want your players to just be grabbing at whatever source tickles their fancy that you then have no way to keep track of.

Yes, they're very compatible, but there will certainly be some things that simply don't mesh well between the two systems and it may become very tedious keeping track if a player is using a 3.5 version of something or the Pathfinder version of something.

Just some tips when it comes to GMing:

1. You're the GM. You literally have the final say in anything and everything. Now, I'm certainly not saying you should become power-hungry, but as the GM you do have the right to veto anything. There are many people who outright ban classes/races from their games for various reasons, and they're within their rights to do so. There are many people who completely change certain rules for various reasons, and they're within their rights to do so. The point I guess I'm trying to make is that you can put your foot down. In fact I would argue it is part of your job description as GM to tell your players that they are doing something unreasonable, so don't feel bad about doing so if you feel like you're truly in the right. A good point I've heard from various spots on the boards is "I like to tell my players 'Yes, you can do/attempt that, but____'". In this case though, you were fully within your rights as a GM to say "No, sorry, that's too good for Prestidigation".

2. As some others have already mentioned here, the burden of proof is on the players in situations like this. The player may say "I have sources claiming this" but until they produce them they have zero evidence. It would be like this situation in a court room:

-"We found the murder weapon covered in the victim's blood with the defendant's fingerprints all over it!"
-"Alright, bring forth this evidence with the lab results."
-"Er... it's not with us right now. It's... er... somewhere else I think."
-"Then you have no evidence. Stop wasting our time".

However, like in point 1, you don't want to become a tyrant. Let your player have a chance to make their fair case. However, this may sometimes cause a lot of wasted time with the player searching online for that one source while everyone twiddles their fingers if it's being resolved at that very moment. An extremely fair way I've seen these situations adjudicated is "If it's in the Core Rulebook or you have it handy at this moment (no, the internet does not count), we can look at it right now. If not, I'm saying for now that it doesn't work. If you provide the source sometime after this session but before the next one then I'm more than happy to discuss it further and allow it in further situations". And then if they do provide compelling evidence (in this case, I can guarantee you that they won't) but you still feel it really interferes with things, you still have the final say in whether it works or not.

3. Be watchful of that player in the future. They sound like they may be one of those things called a "munchkin". Players like that will be ever mindful of power-gaming exploits and loopholes that they can take advantage of and will argue tooth and nail to get their way. Now I'm not saying this player is actually like that. They may have been legitimately confused by something they read online or misconstrued some text somewhere. However, be wary of that player in the future as this seems like an extremely deliberate misinterpretation of the rules written for the spell.

There's also a character that could be seen as annoying but the people in my group love him. His name is Darrius Von Barry, the berry merchant. Our low-level druid happened across him looking to buy some berries to cast Goodberry on (we were in the middle of a desert area, not many berries to find). Darrius Von Barry is... an interesting man. He has all the pompousness of Xerxes from the movie 300 and talks in third person. The druid rolled on his Knowledge: Nature check to determine if this berry merchant's berries were as high quality as Darrius said they were, and of course the roll promptly showed a big glaring "1" so the druid takes Darrius' word wholeheartedly (without rolling Sense Motive) and thinks these berries must be the best berries in the world. Turns out, they pretty much are. There's been talk of basically turning him into the Cabbage Salesmen from Avatar to keep showing up. Famous quotes: "My berries are great but I think my wife is getting tired of them" and "Want to know what's great? These berries. Want to know what's not great? Darrius' wife".

Although he's a pompous ass, he gave us a quest so we're cool with him.

In the campaign I'm currently playing in, there's a recurring villain named the "Bistro Bastard". He just kind of shows up whenever he feels like it. He's an orc that wears nothing but a chef apron and chef hat, doesn't really say anything, and uses kitchen-ware as weapons (a pan, rolling pins as a thrown weapon, etc). He has disarmed almost every martial in our party using his "pan-fu", some of them twice. One person got disarmed twice in one combat (they started with a weapon in each hand, and by the end of the fight they had both weapons laying on the floor). The only reason he hasn't been able to disarm me is that I'm a monk. What's worse is that it seems 75% of our 1s that we roll are against this one person. He always gets away from the fight when he's the last one alive and we all hate this guy.

We hear the words "You see a chef hat" and we all groan. We all have plans about what to do to his body to make sure he never comes back if we ever manage to take him down. Such is the legacy of the Bistro Bastard.

To actually post something halfway constructive to this thread, I can certainly see the logic of both sides. The way I see it both sides are having to use anecdotal evidence to at least some degree to prove their points over the other side. One side is using the Tail Terror FAQ as anecdotal evidence that the fluff of the feat is still important to the functioning of the feat, while the other is using anecdotal evidence that you are able to fill in missing information.

However, it is my personal opinion that the evidence supplied by the "pro" side has been much better presented, breaks less systems than the evidence given by the other side, and is simply more compelling as a whole. As such, I would currently say that RAW would allow you to use the ability as a human with the correct feats.

1) I would say yes. The target of magic vestment is "armor or shield touched", and the shroud functions as armor or a shield. If all else fails, just know that there are rules for creating armor and weapons made of ice and there is no reason you can't cast magic vestment on those. My understanding is thus: just because something has been temporarily created by magic doesn't mean it can't be targeted by other spells.

Just generally curious: if you consider it as armor for the purpose of Magic Vestment, would you also consider it "wearing armor" in regards to interacting with a Monk's AC Bonus? I feel like it was (at least somewhat) concluded that it wouldn't interfere with the Monk's ability in a separate thread and I'm thinking people are ruling it inconsistently to have their cake and eat it too. I feel if you rule it as armor for the sake of being a target for spells then you also need to rule it as armor (and therefore wearing armor) for all other reasons.

Personally, since it doesn't have the stats or anything that a piece of armor needs to be armor (light, medium, heavy? Skill penalty? etc) then I don't think it's actually armor in terms of game rules and therefore is not a valid target for Magic Vestment.

I've been watching this thread like a hawk for a few days now. The biggest changes I want to support (that haven't been more-or-less confirmed) would be Combat Styles that give a free feat or two based on Unarmed, Weapon or Blast, moving up the BAB and HD a notch, and provide more options outside of combat.

As it is now you need to dump a lot of feats to get it ready to compete against other classes, the hit chance doesn't feel quite right as an "all-or-nothing" single attack (way too easy to go multiple rounds without dealing any damage. Makes things frustrating) and outside of combat they can't seem to do much.

I just want to point to the Ranger class for a quick moment: full BAB (with other free stuff to give it a bonus), a plethora of bonus feats for just about any style, an animal companion, TONS of skill points and a nice grab-bag of utility spells. So far the Kineticist isn't full BAB (with the bonus coming at a price), is given no bonus feats for its attack pattern, and little to no utility at all. Although to be fair the Ranger is a pretty amazing class to begin with so it isn't the power level to shoot for, but something close would be a good idea to get to.

I just want to say how cool it would be thematically to use a broken hilt and use Kinetic Blade to turn it into a sword or other such weapon.

Under the Rageshaper archetype for Bloodrager, there is an ability called Bestial Aspect.

My question is this: how is the damage increased? "One die" could mean a few things in this case and I'm not experienced enough to know any precedent supporting one or the other. Let's assume for simplicity that you only have the two claw natural attacks from either Draconic or Abyssal bloodlines. Here are the possibilities I see:

1. Both claws get increased by "one die" meaning each claw now does 2d6 damage. Seems plausible, but almost too good to be true. Maybe martials can get something nice? Damage becomes 2d6+str/2d6+str

2. One claw gets increased by "one die". This is taken from the singular "gains a natural attack" from the first sentence.

3. "Increased by one die" means "increased by one step" like from Improved Natural Attack, and is applied to both claws. This seems the most likely to me, but if it meant "increased by one step" then shouldn't it have said that? Damage becomes 1d8+str/1d8+str.

4. It means one step up from before and only one claw. Damage becomes 1d8+str/1d6+str.

#1 is my hope and it seems plausible with the wording, but it almost seems too good to be true. Any light someone can shed would be wonderful.

I assume Clan of the Raccoon will explicitly mention gunslingers. :)

Or maybe even thievius rogues...

My home group is no longer allowed to storm a castle until we ask to talk to the reigning lord first.

As a corollary, one person in particular is no longer allowed to seduce the royal inquisitor in the middle of a combat grapple after storming the castle became the obvious wrong course of action.

I posted this in the other thread that Jiggy linked but I figured I should copy/paste over to here since this thread is more meant for it:

Please keep in mind that this post isn't in regards to the Brass Knuckle thing specifically, but rulings in general. I apologize for the long post but I feel it is necessary to fully flesh out my feelings on this matter.

No, and this is one of the points I want to make. Messageboard posts on a subjects made by the design and development team are not "official rulings" on the games. Clarifications in FAQ posts and errata are official rulings.

This serves a couple of purposes.
First, it allows the design and development team to interact with fans, and have rules discussions with fans, in an exploratory, argumentative (and I mean that in a construct sense) and even sometimes a playful manner without the fear of taking such comments out of context. This is good for everyone.
Second, it does not force anyone playing the game to participate in or wade through message board threads (some of which can be a thousand or more posts long) in order to find official rulings. Many of us enjoy doing such things, but not everyone, and it should not be seen as a requirement for playing Pathfinder.

The intention of that post is rather clear. It's to allow for dialogue between developers and customers in an open and constructive manner as much as possible. If any postings such as those pointed out by Stephen (all design/dev team posts) start being taken as rules, then that foundation begins to erode because even if it may not apply to a moment, it paints the background that the team should not be questioned in regards to opinions and/or decisions made on this board.

After all, in the ensuing discussion during and afterwards, the team may actually decide to change their minds and go with something different than what they said their plan is in a forum post. If this were to happen there would be people using a rule (albeit until the errata/FAQ actually happens) where people are using the wrong rule. Then we have another category of people who see the post about "the plan" but don't actually have that source material. They would have no way of knowing that the change actually didn't happen and would start using a rule that never actually existed. This can also be applied to people who have the material but didn't look in the reprinted source to check if the change actually went through because they assumed the dev post was as good as law.

Don't get me wrong, I think people should absolutely place a lot of weight behind posts made by who are (or used to be part of) the team. I think it's phenomenal that players and devs have this much interaction and any reasonable player would see a post made by one of these people and go "I should really think about this".

There is an important question here. It isn't really about people trying to delay having to follow rules because their character is (in the words of Chester Cheeto) dangerously cheesy in PFS, or any rulings how specific rules work. It is "what is reasonable and not reasonable for the average player to keep track of, and what is reasonable for a consumer of a product to assume upon purchasing that product"? I personally find it wholly unreasonable/unrealistic to expect a player to know about a post in some random thread from a team member that hasn't been given an official errata or FAQ. I hate to use the "pull on their heartstrings" card, but there is a very real 13 year old who spent a good portion of their hard-saved allowance money on a product that had to be told that their money might not have given them what they expected. All because people use obscure points buried in the internet that hasn't even been given official acknowledgment in a setting specifically made to be as standardized as possible.

However, it is not unreasonable for someone to know the contents of their book or at least not throw a fit if shown the (officially changed) product is a little out of date and that it's been put in a very obvious place to see. If it is both unrealistic and unreasonable to expect someone to know the rule, then there is absolutely no reason to rule it as such in PFS. If there hasn't been an official FAQ or errata made about the ruling then PFS GMs shouldn't enforce the rule in a "used to work this way, now it doesn't" scenario. A person buys a product with the expectation that it is correct with the exception of changes glaringly made through an official channel. Dev team posts on forums aren't (as given by the above quote if read in a fittingly-for-the-subject-matter RAW manner) and shouldn't be (reasons given throughout this post) considered official rulings until given through a true official channel in the form of an errata or officially published FAQ.

This also means, and I loathe to put more on the shoulders of the team at Paizo, that they have to keep very careful track of what things were meant to be official FAQs and what were meant as general conversation when said. And if they were meant to be FAQ/errata they need to be added as soon as possible because if general posts are not law then hot-fixes need to be put in place immediately for all to see.

Best Regards,
Aziraya

snip

Please keep in mind that this post isn't in regards to the Brass Knuckle thing specifically, but rulings in general. I apologize for the long post but I feel it is necessary to fully flesh out my feelings on this matter.

I would have to agree with Samasboy1 in an "overall idea" kind of way on this. The intention of that post is rather clear. It's to allow for dialogue between developers and customers in an open and constructive manner as much as possible. If any postings such as those pointed out by Stephen (all design/dev team posts) start being taken as rules, then that foundation begins to erode because even if it may not apply to a moment, it paints the background that the team should not be questioned in regards to opinions and/or decisions made on this board.

After all, in the ensuing discussion during and afterwards, the team may actually decide to change their minds and go with something different than what they said their plan is in a forum post. If this were to happen there would be people using a rule (albeit until the errata/FAQ actually happens) where people are using the wrong rule. Then we have another category of people who see the post about "the plan" but don't actually have that source material. They would have no way of knowing that the change actually didn't happen and would start using a rule that never actually existed. This can also be applied to people who have the material but didn't look in the reprinted source to check if the change actually went through because they assumed the dev post was as good as law.

Don't get me wrong, I think people should absolutely place a lot of weight behind posts made by who are (or used to be part of) the team. I think it's phenomenal that players and devs have this much interaction and any reasonable player would see a post made by one of these people and go "I should really think about this".

We all have to keep in mind that a very important discussion is going on under the surface of this rules thread and spurned by another. It isn't really about people trying to delay having to follow rules because their character is (in the words of Chester Cheeto) dangerously cheesy in PFS, or any rulings how specific rules work. It is "what is reasonable and not reasonable for the average player to keep track of, and what is reasonable for a consumer of a product to assume upon purchasing that product"? I personally find it wholly unreasonable/unrealistic to expect a player to know about a post in some random thread from a team member that hasn't been given an official errata or FAQ. I hate to use the "pull on their heartstrings" card, but there is a very real 13 year old who spent a good portion of their hard-saved allowance money on a product that had to be told that their money might not have given them what they expected. All because people use obscure points buried in the internet that hasn't even been given official acknowledgment in a setting specifically made to be as standardized as possible.

However, it is not unreasonable for someone to know the contents of their book or at least not throw a fit if shown the (officially changed) product is a little out of date and that it's been put in a very obvious place to see. If it is both unrealistic and unreasonable to expect someone to know the rule, then there is absolutely no reason to rule it as such in PFS. If there hasn't been an official FAQ or errata made about the ruling then PFS GMs shouldn't enforce the rule in a "used to work this way, now it doesn't" scenario. A person buys a product with the expectation that it is correct with the exception of changes glaringly made through an official channel. Dev team posts on forums aren't (as given by the above quote if read in a fittingly-for-the-subject-matter RAW manner) and shouldn't be (reasons given throughout this post) considered official rulings until given through a true official channel in the form of an errata or officially published FAQ.

This also means, and I loathe to put more on the shoulders of the team at Paizo, that they have to keep very careful track of what things were meant to be official FAQs and what were meant as general conversation when said. And if they were meant to be FAQ/errata they need to be added as soon as possible because if general posts are not law then hot-fixes need to be put in place immediately for all to see.

Best Regards,
Aziraya

This makes me think of the Vigoorian Flail from Ninja Gaiden. Warning: lots of video game blood in that link!

PFS is about fun. I would look at the situation like this: is it their fault they couldn't complete it? Nope. Is it fun for them to be barred from ever completing that game? Nope.

Since it's not their fault and it's not fun for anyone involved to penalize them in any way, shape or form I see no reason to punish them in any way. Either pretend it never happened and let them run it again (either with you or someone else, whatever is most convenient and/or fun) or just pick it up where it left off to the best of your knowledge.

GM: Congratulations, your druid just got eaten by a lion.
PC: Was I eaten whole?
GM: Yes, you got eaten who-
PC: I turn into a bear!

Why R. A. Salvatore plays tabletop games - His famous Wubba Wubba story

We start at level 1. I expect us to clip through a few levels in a few weeks. I am the patient sort. I want to let the destruction rip out of the blue one day.

Take a look at the Monktopus. Put that in the search bar. It may take a little to get there, but at level 12 that thing as a monster.