Bagpuss's page

It is what it is. Even companies like Paizo do apply the America first principle …. it is just so ingrained in American thinking. Not much to be done about it.

US is their biggest market, I think, so it seems logical to serve them first if simultaneous doesn't work (and it appears from Aaron's comments that all the books were shipped to Paizo and then split up to international distributors, so it's not weird that US gets them first). Doesn't have to be "American thinking" at all, they were shipped to Paizo (to check them, I guess, and probably because it's cheaper to send one big batch to one place than to split it)

Kickstarters and the like doing this--not to mention distribution from most companies, pretty much--is just the norm. It is what it is, and it's not malicious but seems like it's a fairly natural sequence given the logistical constraints a mid-sized company has.

Catching up on the Drizzt series during the pandemic really emphasized how much I want more Pathfinder book darn it. Especially stuff less stand alone than the ones they were making.

Reading FR fiction makes me sad that Pathfinder Tales is still quiescent. They were nearly all significantly better than nearly all of the FR fiction (and also the Greyhawk and Dark Sun fiction)

For me, it made Golarion much more appealing as a world in which to play. Having some novels (not just short-form fiction) in the 2e era--where some of the 1e AP outcomes are now canon--would be super-cool.

Of course, me thinking something would be super-cool is not the same as it being commercially viable :(

Update 1.3 has actually encouraged me. Resonance I still don't really like, but the rest seems pretty good. I'm a bit bothered by the DC for Medicine used to Treat Wounds--yes, you get healing of hp in proportion to the healer's level so that's an argument for having the chance of success/the DC track the healer's level, but I do think the healer should be able to spend down the DC by trying to heal less damage, say (trying a simpler healing, will heal fewer hp but it'll be easier to succeed)--but otherwise I pretty much like all of this update.

In fact, I haven't disliked any of the three updates, and it feels to me like things are moving fast enough that we can get something pretty sweet out of the end of this process.

Multiclass Alchemists get bonus Resonance? Really? Alchemists don't get bonus Resonance. As it stands a Sorcerer multiclassed into Alchemist has more Resonance than a straight Alchemist.

I know Resonance is going away/changing, but this really just feels like a slap to the face of the Alchemist as it stands.

Leaving aside the question of whether it's "insulting"--it's only a rule, after all, for our pretend-elf-game--the sorcerer with the alchemist dedication is probably the main beneficiary because they already have their key ability in Cha; for just about every other class, this bonus just remedies the fact that their key ability, or likely secondary abilities, don't line up with the resonance-generating ability.

HWalsh wrote:

You know, right now, in PFS the gm can do private rolls right?

My experience has been that secret rolls in PF1 (PFS or not) were the exception rather than the norm, which is probably fine for me. Where I have issue is when 2/3 of the skill checks I attempt during a given session are rolled by someone else.

Is it likely that a player would lose 2/3 of their skill checks? I get that it could be fairly common in some circumstances; perception (other than initiative), knowing-stuff rolls and stealth, for example, but a bunch of other rolls won't be secret (including the soon-to-be-much-more-common medicine rolls under update 1.3). Additionally, as I mentioned earlier, I think it adds to the dramatic tension in a way that's typically a very fair trade for losing the fun of rolling dice and seeing the result.

The fairness of the trade is obviously a personal issue--we'll all have different opinions about it--but I think it's got a reasonably long heritage in RPGs; I remember a lot of us of my age doing it pretty soon after we started in the early 80s (although there were obviously also skill-based games around before that, like Runequest and Traveller) for precisely the reason mentioned by someone above, that the number on the dice gives you additional information over and above what the DM tells you, reducing the "do I succeed/fail?" excitement that comes with rolling dice in the first place. I like getting that excitement back through the unknown roll but I also can't see a better way of doing it, given the way most games (including PF and D&D) are set up, given that the DM has information players do not and controlling the reveal of that, in response to character actions is a big part of successful DMing in most games.

Sara Marie wrote:

Folks, this is not the thread to get into debating individual issues or rules or talking about individual rules or content that will prevent you from playing. The discussion raised here is about knowing the intent of the playtest or it's broader goals. You can get into discussions about the pros and cons of individual rules examples in other threads.

Do threads really need to be monitored like this? I can understand trying to eliminate bullying,abusive language etc but policing the forums like this seems heavy handed to say the least.

I think that if the playtest forums are to be much use, they have to be moderated like this, at least based on the previous playtest (the big one, for PF1e). If every thread moves from more focussed to a free-wheeling discussion of complaints outside of the initial focus, and disagreements inevitably start on those, the forums become much less usefil other than being a place for that, but why spread it over many threads?

For what it's worth, the overall design goals don't seem that opaque to me, but I do follow a few sources outside these forums. I don't blame Paizo folks for taking to other forums, WotC did the same sort of thing for 5e while they were playtesting.

Bagpuss wrote:

I think that "need to be said" is an unusually high bar to set before posting on an elfgame forum...

But not for communication in general.

I think conversations would be pretty stilted if people only said what they thought was needed; it's not a very natural way to converse.

Telecons and work meetings, on the other hand, could often do with better filters to make them shorter (but then, we don't have any choice about being in those). Also speeches at weddings.

1) Does this need to be said?

2) Is now the appropriate time to say it?
3) Am I the one who should say it?

Obviously, we disagree about some of those answers.

I think that "need to be said" is an unusually high bar to set before posting on an elfgame forum...

Paizo, thank you for getting the site back up. I can't imagine how stressful this week was for you. For me, it was quite frustrating but ultimately a minor inconvenience. If the worst thing happening in my life is that my favorite pretendy funtimes forum went down for a few days, my life is pretty f!*$ing good.

And I'm sure people pointing out the very obvious unfortunate business-loss implications of the crash while pretending to be "constructive" whilst in reality meanspiritedly rubbing salt in your wounds telling you things you already know in order to "punish" you beyond what you've already been through isn't making it any better. It's hilarious, we finally are able to post again, and all a number of folks are doing with the ability to post is b&~&% about being unable to post.

I trust repairs and analysis is ongoing, and if a public postmortem is warranted, you'll post it when you're damn good and ready. I hope this happening fairly early in this 6 month long play test means we'll have much smoother sailing from here. I do not care what the self-entitled and meanspirited think of you (or me). Thanks for your ongoing hard work.

While I don't doubt Paizo know how they feel about a sustained outage, I don't think they're in the business of telling their customers not to express disappointment, irritation or inconvenience as a result, either (so long, as Azih says, it's not profane, etc).

I don't know why the outage happened, but I know a lot of us here also code or run a variety of complex systems (including legacy systems) with uptime requirements and are entitled to professional opinions at the level of consumer even without knowing the exact cause (which Paizo can keep to themselves, of course; many companies don't broadcast the reason for IT failures). Non-professional consumers are also entirely entitled to their opinions, as well. It doesn't have to be "meanspirited" to offer those opinions expressing displeasure, and I didn't read anyone saying it was the "worst thing happening in my life", either, or other significant over-reaction.

For me, it was only really inconvenient and a little embarrassing; I was trying to get a new player into our playtest group and it looked a bit crummy that the site was down for so long (that person is in the computing business, actually, but it'd have been a bit painful whatever they did). If I were using the forums for a PBP game, or wanted some rules advice, etc, or was trying to order something from the webstore, then it would have been more irritating and might encourage me to go somewhere else with more stability, I guess, and those would be legitimate decisions to make, and to explain why.

Looks like the announcemnet hapepnd, so I can get a little more specific:

The AP we're launching NEXT Gen Con is "Return of the Runelords." It will indeed be a full 1st to 20th level adventure path that will indeed use Mythic rules for a few of the NPCs

It would be cool if there were a few suggested vignettes for Mythic PCs to gain their/more Mythic powers, though. I'm happy to deal with the mechanical side of the PCs getting Mythic ranks, but if the people who write or edit the story--and know what's coming next, for those of us who don't read the whole six instalments before starting--suggest how one can mesh Mythic PC advancement into the story, that'd be nice, and I don't think it'd detract from the AP for the people not having mythic PCs.

The monk's defining class feature is anime. This is the anime class. We must simply learn to deal with that (or celebrate it, as the case may be).

Flurrying has been around since the kung fu movies of the 1970s (and, for that matter, it's been around since the 1e monk, who got 4 attacks per round by the end). For Westerners, at least, I'd say that anime has followed on from the kung fu movies which also inspired the 1e monk (no monk in 2e at the beginning, but it came back, at least in Greyhawk, towards the end of 2e). When kids like the younger me were reading about the monk in the 1e PhB, it was about Bruce Lee's movies and David Carradine's monk in the TV series Kung Fu.

Feegle, the addition of the set pieces added extra development time (which was not good for the staff and production schedule) and customers at the time complained about the inclusion of them, so they got dropped after Legacy of Fire.

Hmmm, a book of just set pieces could be pretty cool, though...

A question for those who have the flip mat and have already read/played the module...

** spoiler omitted **

No and No and, as I recall, No.

"You said you wanted bubbles!"

EDIT: Ninjaed by Navdi by less than a second

Look, every class has its cons. What you are suggesting is that we remove the cons of the monk. You can do this in your own game, but it's unfair to other classes.

No, it's my opinion that the monk has too many cons. The lack of full BAB is compounded by the fact that they have to pay three times as much for to-hit enhancement for their unarmed attacks and combat manoeuvres are now harder than they were, the monk has the worst case of Multiple Attribute Dependence, and their damage doesn't go up fast enough. The also have the same problem that other meleers do that they can't move and make full attacks (so the monk's vaunted movement often means they get their faster before doing little even if they do hit, which they often won't). Really, though the MAD hurts them most, at root. They might be OK against wizards, but how many of your combats have an enemy wizard or sorc in? 10%? 15% I also don't think that "running around being a pain in the arse, sometimes" is that exciting a role.