Borissimo's page

The change was accidental. Weapon proficiency is desired.

Thanks for the official answer, Vic! It is greatly appreciated. :)

+1 to Longshot. Since Impaler is a loot card (and thus guaranteed to show up in every game), it's pretty important that we hear an official response to this at some point. For the digital game, the Impaler will lose the proficiency requirement and that's great, but for the physical game, the issue is unresolved. I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting to know whether I can ignore the proficiency requirement in my home game and still be playing by the rules. I don't know if loot cards show up in organized games, but if they do, then it's obviously REALLY important to have a clear answer for that.

As of now, the ONLY comment from a Paizo source is Vic quoting Mike saying, "I have no problem with some Spears requiring proficiency and others not requiring it. This one has thorns!" It's been said second-hand on the Obsidian forums that Paizo greenlighted the change for the digital version, but we still need to know whether Mike officially recanted his words for the physical game. :) If so, the change to the Impaler should be added to the FAQ or errata list.

The exact method used in the PACG would require players to be prompted on whether to keep or ditch cards far too often, but they've come up with a suitable alternative.

I don't suppose you're allowed to tell us what that alternative might be? :)

I am guite sure that some one asked this and there was different ansver...

You're right -- people did ask, and there was a different answer. It was different than what you thought it was. ;)

Here it is right from the official FAQ:

http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1gk#v5748eaic9ral

Toward the lower middle:

"Attempt the check. If the card is a boon, you may try to acquire it for your deck."

Emphasis mine. Case closed!

I don't think making boon checks mandatory would actually speed up the digital game. You'd still have to pause to give the player the opportunity to choose the type of check, play cards to help, etc -- simply having a "forfeit" button here wouldn't cost any time. Prohibiting players from passing on boons wouldn't raise the difficulty that much, but it would add a significant "feels bad" mechanism to the game.

Suppose Ezren banishes his crappy old Frost Ray to close a location in AD 5, hoping to pick up that Lightning Bolt he missed from AD 3 after the scenario ends. If Seelah stumbles into an Inflict or some dumb crap, Ezren would kindly ask her not to roll for it. In general, if anybody finds an Inflict at that point, they'd usually rather it be permanently banished than continue bouncing around the box. Does being forced to roll for it make the game significantly harder? Not really. But it does feel annoying. So forcing players to roll for boons is a lose-lose: you piss off players AND you don't even achieve any substantive effect on the balance of the game. It would be a glaring violation of Game Design 101 on Obsidian's part to force boon rolls, and I hope they don't do it.

Borissimo wrote:

but the time has come for everyone to accept that the experiment was a failure.

Respectfully disagree...

My whole group enjoyed it ...

Respectfully point out that your post does not disprove my claim. :)

I claimed that the experiment was a failure. An experiment in game design does not need to create a bad experience for literally 100% of the players who play the game in order to be called a failure. An overwhelming majority is good enough, so the fact that some groups (such as yours) enjoyed the poorly balanced experience does not serve as a valid counterexample.

The other problem with your post, in the context of this discussion, is that your evidence is actually off topic. You said that your group enjoyed the higher difficulty, but I wasn't talking about the designers making the game harder just to make it harder. I was talking about the designers deliberately making the game too hard or too easy in certain parts of the AP in order to fulfill the "difficulty curve" philosophy described in Chad's original post. This is a topic that your gaming group's enjoyment and conquest of greater challenges does not speak to. :)

And in any case, it's pretty clear that just as your group enjoyed the scenarios that were overly hard, you guys must have hated the adventures that came later and were, out of adherence to difficulty curves, too easy. So even a group such as yours, following your own logic, should have a beef with the difficulty curve approach to balancing PACG.

Great article!

I think the biggest problem with PACG right now is the "difficulty curve" philosophy that Chad wrote about. It was an ineresting experiment, and I'm glad that the team undertook it because it taught us a lot about game design, but the time has come for everyone to accept that the experiment was a failure.

"Curving" the difficulty of the AP to match the story in the RPG just plumb makes for an inferior game. For one thing, as the OP's article notes, the mechanics of PACG are pretty far divorced from the story, so the players can never possibly appreciate what the designers are doing -- all they can see is that the balance stinks. Ridiculously frustrating here, ridiculously easy there -- it's just not good design.

And that's the other thing: even if the players DID appreciate the "difficulty curves" on a narrative level, I think we can all agree that the overwhelming majority of players would rather have a properly balanced game than a thematically accurate homage to the story. Let's be real: how many players do think go, "Well, we had to play B2 5 times to beat it, and winning was entirely out of our hands and depended almost solely on getting perfect luck of the draw, but that's how it was in the AP, so WHOOOOOOO! SWEEEEET!!!!"

The longer the designers cling to the philosophical appeal of "difficulty curves," the longer it will take for PACG to reach its full potential. Each iteration of the PACG should certainly keep the narrative flavor of the AP its based on, but that's all it should be: flavor. The designers' focus should be on creating a game that's balanced and appropriately challenging from start to finish.

A likely critique of this argument is that balancing a game like PACG to be "appropriately challenging" all the way through is extremely hard. There are so many variables -- player skill, group size, party composition, role choices, what cards the party finds or doesn't find and when -- that it may even be impossible.

And I agree. Which is why it's essential that the designers not make things even harder by deliberately making poor balance decisions in the name of some higher philosophy. Perfect difficulty balance may be unattainable, but it should still be strived for. If the crappy B scenarios in Wrath were an accident, then that's fine -- the designers will learn a lesson and get it right next time. But if these scenarios turned out the way they did due to a conscious choice to follow Wrath's "difficulty curve" -- which is exactly what Chad's article suggests -- then that's troubling, because it means that the designers will repeat the same mistake again and again.

I agree completely. Awesome suggestion!

When I first got RotR, it was a little frustrating that all of the discussion on the forums was about S&S. Now that I'm playing S&S, every thread is about Wrath. I have a feeling things won't be any different when MM comes out.

The forums would be a lot more inclusive to new players of PACG if someone trying Rise for the first time wasn't overwhelmed by posts exclusively about stuff 3 adventure paths from now.

Oh, I see! Sorry for my misunderstanding. I'd still prefer there to be 5 scenarios even if their main purpose is introductory, but I can see where you're coming from.

And just to make life difficult for PACG developers seeking feedback, I strongly and respectfully disagree with the suggestion to have only 3 B scenarios. :) When I saw that S&S had 5 B scenarios over Runelords' 3, my heart leapt with delight. This is a straight-up upgrade.

To respond to what Klandestine is saying:

It's true that the B scenarios of RotR are more distinctly memorable than the ones in S&S. However, to generalize from this that 3 scenarios are better than 5 is an exercise in flawed logic. I would have an easier time remembering the contents of each AD if it had only 1 scenario in it as opposed to 5; does this mean having 1 scenario in each AD is better than having 5?

Another reason why the Runelords B scenarios may be easier to remember is that they follow a simple story arc: arrive in place, encounter problem, try to solve it. In S&S, the players are just gallavanting around, doing pirate-y things. The human mind has an easier time memorizing things that are connected than things that are unrelated.

And finally, most of us probably played the Runelords B scenarios more times than the S&S ones, which of course would explain why we remember them better. All of these considerations point to the fact that "ease of memorability" is an irrelevant standard that should not be considered in deciding how many B scenarios to have.

Next: "Weaker boons?" Were we playing the same game? S&S has RIDICULOUS boons in its base set! Excepting the loss of Augury and Holy Candle, the boons in S&S are generally stronger across every single category than their counterparts in Runelords. Items and allies stand out the most as having some real knockouts, but the influx of superior blessings, weapons, spells (besides Augury) and even armors is keenly felt. Never once in the S&S B scenarios did I feel tired of playing the game for lack of quality boons to find.

If anything, the abundance of "this s*%#'s about to get way harder" veteran barriers made me glad I was still in B.

Finally, PACG is very, very, very expensive for a board game. The MSRP for an adventure path veritably dwarfs that of even the most expensive board games. For example, Agricola, one of the most expensive popular board games around, comes in at $70. A PACG base set is $60. And that's before you add $100 for the 5 adventures to complete the path. The only thing I can think of that rivals PACG in price is Dominion *if* you buy all the expansions, but that game is fully playable with just one box; the rest are extra. With PACG, what you get for $60 is nowhere close to the complete experience of the game. So adding value to the product by including 2 additional scenarios to the base set is a GOOD thing.

I'm not complaining about the price. The game is amazing, unique, and huge in scope, and I'd gladly pay double if I had to. But not every consumer is like me, and when what you're selling is the most expensive board game on the market, adding value is good. Taking it away after you've added it is bad.

Looking at it another way: it's much easier for someone who doesn't want to play extra scenarios to skip them than it is for someone who wants to play extra scenarios to add them. If players successfully persuade the designers to cut the number of B scenarios back down to 3, that will hurt players like me. But if the number of B scenarios stays at 5, it won't have any effect on players like you.

For these reasons, I respectfully disagree with Klandestine and hope intensely that the number of B scenarios stays at 5!

Wait, now I'm curious: how is Sajan supposed to work?

1) Does he roll his dex DIE or his dex SKILL in place of strength or melee?

2) If it's dex skill, does that mean he can't use e.g. a soldier to add to his combat check?

3) If the Sajan card were updated, what would it say?

Aha! Ryric, your use of the word "replaying" was different than Chad's. Chad was talking about playing the scenarios more than once with the same characters. You're talking about playing the scenarios each time you start a new campaign. There is of course nothing wrong with doing the latter.

In the spirit of providing feedback, I wanted to second a few opinions raised above.

First, Chad, thank you for posting your candid thoughts. It's refreshing to see a designer openly discuss the rationale behind controversial decisions and admit the possibility that their execution may not have been perfect. And overall, the team behind this game has done an amazing job, and I'm eternally grateful that you made this game exist.

Second, I agree strongly with Longshot that weakening boons to thwart grinders seems like backward thinking. Replaying a scenario is thematically senseless: Jubrayl Vhiski & Friends are already dead. Really, it is no different than just taking whatever boons you want from the box. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with changing the rules to make the game more fun for yourself, whether that means making the game easier or harder. This is a cooperative game and the overriding rule is always "do what's most fun for you and your group."

But then what I don't understand is why the designers should diminish the game experience for normal players by accommodating a certain subset of players who defy the spirit of the game. It is the players who play abnormally who should suffer the consequences of violating the rules and/or spirit of the game, not the players who don't.

It's like in the old shooters, where you could type in a cheat to turn on God Mode. Sure, you can become invulnerable and have infinite ammo, but if the game gets boring after 5 minutes, that's your problem. The designers' job is to make the game fun for the players who play the game normally, not the ones who turn on God Mode.

They did show their current build at PaizoCon, and it was quite a bit more advanced than what they showed at Gen Con.

Whoa, that's great news! Thanks for sharing, Vic. I'm happy to be wrong. :)

I was INSANELY excited when this game was announced. I have a gaming channel on YouTube and was chomping at the bit to record 5- and 6-player runthroughs of RotR and spread my love for one of my favorite games of all time.

By now, though, it's pretty obvious that the game is suffering a tortured development.

The game was announced almost 10 months ago. We were told it would be released in Q1 of this year. Then, total silence. No updates, no trailers, no preview videos, nothing. Q1 of 2015 came and went without a word. Obsidian finally broke the silence with a blog post in April filled primarily with information and even pictures recycled from the original (by then 8-month-old) Gen Con announcement.

And of course, in the 2 months since then, we've had more silence.

When a gaming studio says a game is nearly done and over half a year later they can't even come up with a new screenshot, something's clearly going wrong.

Obsidian is an incredibly talented studio. Pillars of Eternity was wildly ambitious, yet Obsidian amazingly delivered on every promise and produced a game that rivaled one of the top masterpieces of gaming history. Clearly, "announce a game and then miss your deadline while saying nothing for a year" is not a marketing strategy that a talented studio like Obsidian would choose deliberately. You can bet that if Obsidian knew a year ago what they know now, they would never have announced the game at Gen Con 2014. What we're seeing with the marketing of Obsidian's PACG is the kind of thing that happens only when a game's development runs into major unexpected problems.

PACG has a lot of finicky parts and complicated rule interactions, and turning it into a video game is nothing short of a major challenge. But the hardest part of RPG creation -- the game mechanics and balance -- has of course been taken care of, so the game should be relatively easy to develop compared to something like Pillars of Eternity, which required mountains of art, animation, story, class, item, and spell design, among other things. My guess is that Obsidian made a prototype, underestimated the difficulty of completing it, announced the game, and then discovered some (or a bunch of) fundamental design errors that turned out to cost a lot of time to correct.

I want to be clear that I'm not in any way angry with Obsidian. They are undertaking the creation of a digital version of one of my favorite games, one which begs for a digital version, and one which I will spend an unlimited amount of money on and play for hours if they successfully release it. And if they don't successfully release it, then I'll still be grateful to them that they even tried. I just think that they announced the game way too prematurely and ran up against some difficulties -- difficulties that I hope they overcome, however long the overcoming may take.

But to those who are (like me) super excited for this game and can't wait for it to come, I suggest you try to forget about it and distract yourself because it isn't coming for a long, long time. Expect many more months of silence. Expect the game to arrive no later than the second half 2016, if we're lucky. If anyone has evidence to the contrary, oh god please prove me wrong. I just can't fathom what that evidence would be.

Changing the original Seelah's Divine: Wisdom +2 to Divine: Charisma +1 seems like a great idea. It would hardly affect the overall strength of the character at all.

This is a very interesting question! The answer depends on which Seelah you're talking about: the new one for Wrath of the Righteous or the original from Rise of the Runelords.

Here's the original Seelah:

http://static1.paizo.com/image/content/PathfinderACG/PZO6001-Seelah1.jpg

If you make Divine based off charisma, then the obvious perk is that her divine skill rolls a d10 instead of a d8. This means that you boost her divine rolls by an average of +1 generally, and by an additional +1 for each blessing played. In the long run, that's a nontrivial buff.

The not-as-obvious downside is that wisdom is a better stat than charisma. There are a lot more cases of "Roll a hard check, if you fail b!@&!@!~ happens" for wisdom than for charisma. Thus, a Seelah putting points in wisdom to boost her divine skill, as compared to a Seelah putting points into charisma to boost her divine skill, will be slightly better off.

All in all, the benefit outweighs the drawback, but not by much.

Here's the new Seelah:

http://static1.paizo.com/image/content/PathfinderACG/PZO6020-Seelah1.jpg

For this one, moving divine over to charisma represents a much more clear cut case of simply making the character noticeably stronger. As it stands, Seelah has to choose between buffing charisma to boost her hero power and diplomacy, or buffing wisdom to boost divine. If you put divine under the same heading as the others, you add +1 to her divine rolls AND increase the value of putting skill feats into charisma.

The usual disclaimer applies: this is a cooperative game, so you should play it however you want. That said, it's worth noting that the new Seelah will be substantially buffed by putting Divine under charisma, so if that's something that concerns you, then don't do it. For the original Seelah, it's not as big of a deal.

Some background:

My 6-player group (Amiri, Lem, Sajan, Merisiel, Lini, and me with Ezren) just finished the second scenario of the 3rd adventure, the reward for which is a card feat. We didn't find any spells in the scenario, so choosing a spell, I can grab something from the box. I already have one copy of Invisibility, and I'm not sure whether to take the other copy.

The Illusionist role has a feat that lets you put a monster you evade on the bottom of the deck. Has anyone ever used this role through the end of the adventure path? If so, how many copies of Invisibility did you have, and did you think it was better to have 1 or 2? I don't mind if anyone replies with theorycraft, but I'm really hoping to hear from someone who actually played with that feat through the whole campaign.

Advantages to having a second copy of invisibility:

- Can "kill" monsters that are immune to spells
- Can guarantee a "Kill" on monsters I might otherwise fail a check against
- Provides extra utility with Stealth checks
- Don't have to use "real" combat spells when fighting something not from a location deck ("horde" barriers, extra monster copies, etc)

Disadvantages:

- Obviously leaves me high and dry against villains and henchmen
- "Killed" monster prevents Augury from being used on that location (Lem, Ezren, and Lini each have a copy)
- "Killed" monster comes "back to life" if deck is shuffled due to a failed combat, running villain, or a few other random effects

This may be my last chance to pick up that copy of Invisibility, so I'm gonna have to live with this decision for the rest of the campaign. If anyone could share their actual experience using that feat from the Illusionist role through Adventures 4-6 I'd be much obliged!