Chakat Firepaw's page

The only people you really need to get rid of somehow are the WotR PCs, who are just an order of magnitude more powerful than all the rest.

While they are by far the most powerful, that power is itself a way of putting them "on a leash." I treat Mythic as being a low grade of divine power and thus something that can generate active divine responses to proactive activities.

They do get a pass on things which are in their 'mortal concerns'. So the WotR PCs can deal with the leftover problems of the Worldwound, but if they head off to stomp an issue flat in Taldor then some demon lord might just play an "I'm just responding in kind," card and send forces to counter them. This also gives Mythic characters a reason to head out from the material plane to places where they will have more freedom of action.

Tar-Baphon gets away with things partly because "restore my empire, seek godhood and continue my fight against Aroden and his legacy," are his mortal concerns. He also likely doesn't really care if he sets off a spiral of ever increasing interventions, (he might even want the resultant chaos).

Something to remember about pre-Thrune Cheliax is that it wasn't solidly good. Consider the "Six Trials of Larazod" from the Council of Thieves AP. This murderplay predates Thrune by a century and clearly shows that Asmodeans were solid enough a part of Cheliaxian society to be the heroes.

Yes, it was banned and caused uproar at the time but the clear implication I got from the adventure was that this was due to its unprecedented lethality: The PCs are the first cast to ever survive the play and, IIRC, it was dangerous just to attend.

You're probably right, but dammit, they should just really put hard-line wording if they plan for a feature to be like... one thing only. Unless there's some other class or archetype that gets "Riposte" as a class feature, why not just say the prerequisite is a level x Duelist?

It's a rules writing standard they adopted ages ago for futureproofing. Yes, it's a bit silly seeing it used in one of the final PF1 products but it still allows for some third-party product or house rule giving a non-Duelist access to Riposte.

In D&D 1st Edition, for some reason Orcs were officially labeled as being Lawful Evil, and weren't very smart. Not sure when this changed to the current Chaotic Evil.

It was a 3.x switch, likely due to influence from things like Warhammer.

I think multiple checks for picking locks makes sense if we're talking about pin an tumbler locks, since you have to set all the pins to the correct height in order to pick the lock.

Given that pin tumbler locks are a 19th century invention, (and the kind you are probably thinking of mid-19th century), you probably aren't going to be encountering them on Golarion.

The best you are likely to encounter are lever tumbler, (TBH even those are pushing it a bit), but even a basic warded lock can justify multiple checks, (as you maneuver the pick around the wards). Another reason for requiring multiple successes would be locks with hidden and/or false keyholes, (something that was done before the various types of tumbler lock were invented).

More complicated warded lock setups can even justify having setbacks in the rules: Consider a lock with two keyholes where unlocking #1 will re-lock #2. A critical failure there can represent doing #2 first then discovering that you have to do it again.

Her backup plan? Can rogues have contingencies now perhaps? Kyra and a whole host of other clerics sound a bit too much even for such a mechanic...

While the whole thing might be a bit too much, I could see an ability that allows for some details 'to be determined later'. That she smuggled in the godbotherers and got them concealed in one of the tomb chambers was already set, but exactly which one was left open until she 'led' the vamps there.

It's similar to what I sometimes do with highly intelligent and/or tactically skilled NPCs: I allow them to cheat a bit because they are far smarter/more skilled than I am. Of course The Immortal Warlord™ ended up at his escape hatch while you are on the far side of a barrier field, it's not like he doesn't have a couple thousand years of fighting experience and the smarts to predict exactly how you would move during the fight.

PS: I just realized, Chakat Firepaw, are you on NAR also? Small world, you are the second person I have "met" both on these forums and elsewhere.

Yes, that is almost certainly me, (while there is another chakat named Firepaw, shi isn't someone's fursona).

YMMV, but for my money the old kobolds were cuter. *shrug*

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TBH, I've never really been a fan of that set of proportions. It works for comedic and it works for being creepy but outside of that I have almost never come across it working.

You are assuming single-path monodimensional time. It's common to use at least bidemensional time in fiction involving time travel.

Think of there being a 'history' dimension and a 'perception' dimension. Normally, people's lives trace a straight diagonal¹, but time travel changes that. When you travel into the past, your line of existence jumps along the history axis but stays at the same point in the perception axis.

So, if a time traveler causes a change to history at p=n₁ and another reverses it at p=n₂, the 'graph of history' will have three bands: Two bands with the 'original' history when looking below p=n₁ or above p=n₂ and one band between those two lines with the changed history.

With this sort of setup, all you have to assume is that time travel, (or at least the relevant forms of it), grants the ability to remember lines of history from earlier points in your perception.

1: If you were to account for relativity, there would be curvature but it would always remain positive in both dimensions.

Chakat Firepaw wrote:

There is a difference between "if you want to be a dick, this fits," and "this is written in a way that some players will read it as being told to be a dick." The worry on some of out parts is that goblins are going to be the latter, the same way that kender were.

Goblins are not written that way, though. Not in the PF2 playtest, and presumably not in the final version.

You've obviously never dealt with a character who has a prankster complex.

Chakat Firepaw wrote:

Which will matter for the minority of players who ever actually see that character description.

The same could be said for the "minority" of people who look into other Golarion Goblin lore. And since he's an Iconic he's probably gonna be seen by more than a few.

No, he'll just be seen by the few that read the blog. Most players aren't going to see anything that isn't in the actual rule and setting books.

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and "this is written in a way that some players will read it as being told to be a dick." The worry on some of out parts is that goblins are going to be the latter, the same way that kender were.

It most likely won't and even if it did that's a player issue that you as a GM have the full ability to resolve.

That it was possible for a GM to deal with the results did not change the fact that the way kender were described caused problems.

It's also a common sense thing. I can spend all my starting gold buying pizza ingredients and make pizza rather than adventure with everyone else trying to play, but that doesn't mean I should.

You clearly didn't understand the distinction I was making there. For the analogy to work, it would have to involve something that implies (character type) has a constant desire for fresh pizza.

Chakat Firepaw wrote:

One: They did, they subscribed to something that said it was for PF1 products and that's what they were paying to get.

That's one way of looking at it, I view as getting Paizo products in that line.

And PF2 is a _NEW LINE_.

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Two: The cable companies around here made the _exact same argument_ when they were trying to keep negative-option billing from being banned. Note that those arguments failed.

"Around here" is rather nebulous so just going off guessing, it's not the same thing. You're subscribed to rulebooks, you're getting rulebooks.

If you need to know: Ontario

And you are _still_ making the same arguments the cable TV companies did when they were doing all the negative-option stuff. People were subscribed to cable TV and they were getting cable TV, just new channels that they never said they wanted and that they had to cancel if they didn't want to pay for them.

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It would be just as easy to send emails that, instead of requiring those who don't want PF2 stuff to take properly timed action, offer a quick way of subscribing to the PF2 stuff that matches the existing PF1 subscriptions.

Writing the email probably wouldn't but canceling every single Pathfinder subscription adn then forcing their customers to sign back up would be a total nightmare for both parties.

A nightmare?

You let the existing ones come to an end and you give a single link to say "subscribe to the PF2 equivalents."

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Requiring people say no to not get something they don't want comes across as wanting to grab some money from people who don't want it. IOW, you will have people who see it as 'picking their pocket'.

That's on them, those people have had to do the same thing a supplemental or a new AP they're not interested in has come out.

You are confusing one-offs with switching to an entirely new product line.

The same thing here, you're not getting a line of toner ink from Paizo, you're getting rulebooks and Adventures. The same as when they switched from 3.5 to Pathfinder.

PF1 was fully compatible with 3.5 in a way that PF2 isn't with PF1.

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Requiring people to say yes to get the new line of products proactively says to people "we want to do this the right way" and only creates a very mild inconvenience.

To you maybe, to me and plenty of others it's an enormous and unneeded headache.

I'm sorry that you find something that could be done with a single link in an email to be an enormous headache.

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It's not "who gets inconvenienced" it's "inconvenience v. appearing to be dishonest money-grubbers."

No it's just an inconvenience thing.

It's oh so nice of you to tell me what I think, do you also do card tricks?

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The difference being that this is a permanent switch to a new product line as opposed to an oddball singular unwanted item. For an analogy, think a computer gaming magazine issue focused on flight simulators v. that magazine switching from covering PC games to covering Playstation games.

Not remotely close to what's happening. We're getting a new edition, that's it.

Congratulations, you just discovered that no analogy is perfect. Now, are you claiming that this isn't a permanent change in the game they are going to be sending out products for?

Also, I'm finding the changes in PF2 to be enough that I have been evaluating it as a new game, not a revision, so that makes my analogy exactly on point.

Requiring people to cancel their existing PF1 subs if they don't want to continue with PF2 is inconvenient for those people.

You totally missed my point: It's not about it being inconvienent, it's about it coming across as dishonest. Plus there will be people who are going to be "WTF is this thing? This isn't the kind of thing I wanted to buy, they're ripping me off!"

Requiring people to start new PF2 subs (while automatically cancelling their existing PF1 subs) is inconvenient for those people. IOW, whichever way you do it, someone will be inconvenienced.

It's not "who gets inconvenienced" it's "inconvenience v. appearing to be dishonest money-grubbers."

Since if there were to be no transition to PF2 the situation would be the same as it has been since subs were first started (if you don't want to continue to get sub materials, you have to cancel the sub(s))

The difference being that this is a permanent switch to a new product line as opposed to an oddball singular unwanted item. For an analogy, think a computer gaming magazine issue focused on flight simulators v. that magazine switching from covering PC games to covering Playstation games.

and since it seems likely there will be more people wanting to continue than to quit, it seems most reasonable to me to require people to cancel if they don't want to continue. Of course, I do want to continue, which I suppose means I'm biased. But then I'm pretty sure everybody else taking sides on this is also biased one way or t'other.

An important thing here:

Requiring action to cancel is not just going to burn goodwill with those people, but also people they talk to about it. That burn is also not just going to be over an inconvenience but over a business practice that edges into territory that gets people mad enough to take it to the government.

I suppose, then, that it's good thing the iconic goblin is presented as a guy who... ISN'T a toxic party-wrecker, then.

Which will matter for the minority of players who ever actually see that character description.

"but the rulebook says" requires the rulebook to actually say things, after all.

Which is why I premised my position on "as presented in the playtest rules". If the PF2 CRB presents goblins the way they were in the playtest, they are going to be solidly in GM permission territory at my table.

If they are presented differently, then things are likely going to be different.

Gnomes are already pretty easy to play as kender/the most annoying and disruptive PC possible. If Goblins are not available peeople inclined to do this will just play a Gnome.

There is a difference between "if you want to be a dick, this fits," and "this is written in a way that some players will read it as being told to be a dick." The worry on some of out parts is that goblins are going to be the latter, the same way that kender were.

Really, having something not be core because 'some players will use this as an excuse to be a dick' is a profoundly dumb idea.

It's also a strawman.

I think it's sad that some GMs have such low expectations of their players as to assume from the get-go that they will use goblins as an excuse to play kenders.

It's a combination of knowing what kinds of players are out there and that there are also a lot that will look at how the race is described and end up party slime without any intentional malice. There were a lot of very annoying kender players who were all "why are you all mad at me? I'm just playing him the way the book says to."

I also think it's strange that those same GMs don't realize that players will do that anyway.

Trust me, there are plenty of players out there who are going to be all "but the rulebook says..." as an excuse¹. That includes players who otherwise wouldn't be a problem.

Are there people who are no problem when they take options that are serious party slime bait? Certainly, I even know a couple that I would trust to play kenders as originally written. That does not mean it is a good idea to give all the ones who will be a problem a RAW license to do it.

1: And even more who will implicitly support them with that (EXP.DEL.) vastly overbroad misunderstanding of the "don't say no" advice.

Amanda Plageman wrote:

PC Goblins are a deal-breaker for a lot of players and GMs alike. Shoving them down our throats is one of the things making people hesitant about 2e.

So having Goblins as core (they've always been playable) is "shoving them-"... why do I feel like I've had this conversation before?

Placing an option in core means you get players who are going to react even worse to being told "goblins are GM permission only". When something is in a core rulebook you get a lot of people who assume that means it is an option which can simply be taken.

TBH, as described in the playtest rules, goblins are solidly party slime bait. I also don't see much in the way of reasonable routes to fix this, all of which are likely to be badly received by the very people who are going "goblins in core? GREAT!" Perhaps Paizo has something really cool under their hats, but as it stands they would hold the distinction of being the first core option in a game that I declared¹ GM permission² at my table.

1: As opposed to the rules themselves calling it out. Such as anything marked STOP in Hero.

2: I use five levels: Permitted, GM consultation, (you have to talk to me about it), GM permission, (you have to ask and justify the choice), Special permission, (you have to ask and should expect a no), Banned, (don't even bother asking).

the Haunted Jester wrote:

I noticed that Book 6 of Tyrants Grasp and Book 1 of Age of Ashes are both slated for July on their product pages. Will both of these APs come out in July? Will there be a time to cancel an AP subscription after Tyrants Grasp but before Age of Ashes?

They are both slated to come out in July (technically August 1, but practically they will be part of the July sub shipments).

That's a good question re: cancelling between the two volumes. We'll get back to you on that once we've had a few more conversations in-house.

As a note on this point: Just continuing subscriptions on into PF2 is going to come across as something like negative-option billing for people who have decided PF2 isn't for them. So you probably want to be a bit proactive in asking people and perhaps assuming "yes" isn't the best choice.

I would expect that your subscription will carry over as the AP subscription from 3.5 to pathfinder carried over seamlessly.

Well, except that the shift isn't going to be as seamless as it was between Legacy of Fire and Council of Thieves.

Personally, I think it would be a good idea to at least send out a wave of notifications asking people to confirm that they want subscriptions to continue. Simply continuing without asking would needlessly burn goodwill with people who don't want to follow them into PF2. (It might also cross the line into negative-option billing, which could mean legal problems as they sell in places that ban it.)

Better, IMHO, would be to create new subscriptions with the notifications being more: "These PF2 subscriptions are the equivalent of the PF1 subscriptions you have. Here's a quick way to subscribe to all of them...."

So i just read this article: https://theangrygm.com/theorycrafting-an-unsummary/ and it made me think about buying, selling, crafting and economics in general. I just looked briefly in the index in how to sell items, and there isn't anything there. First edition i know you sell things for half price. And apparently D&D 5th is the same except you can't sell magic items, and if you do, well you lose.

If that's the case, who in their right mind would ever make a magical item, except one that they needed???

You are making a classic error here: The "sell stuff for half price" rule is no more and no less than a game convention for how to quickly handle non-businesspeople who want to quickly convert valuable items into spendable cash. It's the discount the merchant gets for reducing liquidity and/or needing to transport it to where he can sell it. People who make things to order or who are able to have it sit in their stock for a year aren't covered by the "half price selling" rule.

If you have players who want more, and you are all willing to add the detail and work to the game, nothing is stopping you from doing things like making a 'demand' roll to see if there is someone who wants to buy their magical whatsit. Or rather, at what price will someone buy it.

Seriously, how did the inhabitants of Golarion come to name the trompe l'oeils as "trompe l'oeils"? French doesn't exist on Golarion, does it? Sure, Common might be the Golarion version of English, but that's Translation Convention, isn't it?

I assume "trompe l'oeil" is itself just translation convention: Its English meaning, (an art technique that uses realistic imagery to create the illusion of a 3D object), directly matches the creature.

(Insert oft-misattributed James Nicoll quote here.)

And if I'm wrong and Common essentially *is* English on Golarion, then which language does French become on Golarion? Taldan? If Galt is essentially Revolutionary France, then is Hallit (which is the other language besides Common spoken in Galt) essentially French but just spoken on Golarion?

Taldane/Common would probably be the French equivalent, given how it is spoken in all five of the "Frances", (Andoran, Chelax, Galt, Isger and Taldor¹). And, TBH, why shouldn't the lingua franca be the French equivalent?

1: The Revolution truly successful, First Empire but diabolic, The Terrors unending, Vichy, and First Kingdom's twilight.

I like Rovagug as a partial solution to the problem of scale in Pathfinder and the number of outsiders in the outer planes.

My assumption is that the outer planes as a whole are simply incredibly large. Not, "man that's big" large or even "infinitely large" large but at least as large as the continuum¹. The outer planes we see in the Pathfinder setting are just a tiny fraction of what's out there which makes the population density very low over all.

Why aren't people finding those other outer planes? Because travel through the astral involves directions that are as much conceptual as anything else, you get to Heaven by going half-way between honour and justice then taking a turn towards caring. It's kind of hard to get somewhere out blortways if you don't have the idea of blortness.

There are probably enough travelers who manage to get sufficiently lost that they go from one 'cluster' of outer planers to another that an outside observer would notice the occasional out of place bit, (e.g. a religion on one world using the names of some evil (near-)gods from a distant cluster as the 'many names of evil' in their dithiestic faith).

This is close to "separate outer planes for each galaxy," but combined with what you get with a random start in Risk.

1: That's the number of irrational numbers, which may or may not be the next larger number after infinity.

You might be on to something, but I think you are looking at the wrong conversion point:

I doubt the goal is to make converting published adventures easy, but rather to make converting _campaigns_ easy. Aim at the people whose campaigns are pushing the limits of 5e with a "this conversion isn't hard, you can do it on the fly without really breaking anything."

- Magic item dependence. I know the big six were reduced to like... the big two? But I'd rather see the big zero, and people getting magical items because they do cool stuff, and not because they are useless without them.

To be honest, I don't think that this is a problem that even can be fixed on the rules side of things¹. I think it is, at its root, a setting problem: There will always be ideal sets of magic items and if the setting allows people to have whatever items they want within some resource limits, then there will be a push for everyone to have the appropriate set. This will result in "characters have the sets" becoming more of an adventure design assumption, which feeds back into people being encouraged to get those sets.

Go around that loop a few times and "you are best off getting these" becomes "if you don't have those, you will be a boat anchor."

1: At least short of making magic items all but irrelevant across the board.

"Every second 5' square of diagonal movement costs 5' extra" is convoluted?

Vic Ferrari wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Like hit points sort of imply that a high level character can be pierced by a dozen spears and then do a tap routine every bit as good as they could if they did not have sharp metal and wood stuck in their body.

That is not how hit points work, what they represent, this was all explained over 40 years ago.

I daresay some people playing this game, and probably even some in this thread, weren't even born then. So they're probably unaware of this explanation. And I'm too old to remember it. Can you enlighten us?

While the 1ed DMG isn't quite that old, (1979):

It is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels of ability in his or her class that a corresponding gain in actual ability to sustain physical damage takes place. It is preposterous to state such an assumption, for if we are to assume that a man is killed by a sword thrust which does 4 hit points of damage, we must similarly assume that a hero could, on the average, withstand five such thrusts before being slain! Why then the increase in hit points? Because these reflect both the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage—as indicated by constitution bonuses—and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in combat and similar life-or-death situations, the “sixth sense” which warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen events, sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine protection.

To give some examples, allow me to introduce Grok. Grok is quite good with a spear, more importantly he is very consistent and always does exactly 10 points of damage.

Let us begin with the lamentably named Unfortunate Exemplar, a peasant with 3HP.

"What do you mean lam-URK!"

As we can see, Mr. Exemplar has a spear clear through him and is rapidly bleeding out. Next we have Bob the warrior, with 20HP. Notice how Bob takes a fairly nasty leg wound because he knew to jump back when Grok lunged at him.

Mandrake here, as you might expect, is a wizard but he's been around the block more than a few times and has 50HP. He is less able to dodge the blow than Bob, but he does have a number of minor protective magics that slow and deflect it resulting in it just putting a gash in his arm.

Finally we have Balka, a priestess of Gorum. She is highly experienced and rather tough with 120HP. Notice how the battle senses granted to her by her Lord in Iron allow her to react even before Grok begins his thrust, deflecting it so that it merely draws a scar across her cheek. Which is why Grok can now be seen leaving the forum at a fairly rapid pace.

In general, the more HP you have the less damage you are actually taking.

Oh, don't worry about Grok: They know each other and this is foreplay for them.

Timed missions? Boo.

Never mind timed missions, I have seriously run into people who are adamantly against even having "the bad guys" react to your attack yesterday by being on alert for another one today.

IMHO, 'time pressure'¹ is the #1 thing to use against the 15 minute adventuring day. It doesn't even always need to be in play, just something the players automatically consider.

1: Broadly defined. Not just deadlines, but also things like increased levels of alertness, reinforcements, securing now revealed back doors or even packing up and fleeing in the night.

1) Worn items and consumables use the same Resonance pool, creating the problem where magical gear somehow limits your ability to use consumables. This feels awful, doesn't make much narrative sense, and punishes non-magical classes who have to rely on magical gear to make up for not having magical effects to handle high level threats.

This is exactly what I pretty much instantly saw as a potential problem with Resonance, trying to fix two different problems with one solution.

Now, setting a limit that says "you can only have this much enchanted gear that works" and using it to replace most of the slot system? That's a great idea and I'll probably steal it even if I don't end up using PF2¹. Using the same limited resource for limiting consumable use... yahno.

Now, the "Wand of CLW" hasn't been a big issue in my games, (I will admit that a huge part of that is player personality), but if I were to implement a fix on that sort of thing I would probably lean on my not minding a bit of record-keeping. For cure spells specifically, a first thought is that characters build 'resistance' to them from constant casting, (e.g, -1 to the roll for every previous cure spell that day²).

1: Not stealing it would probably involve things like "switching to non-fantasy games for a while," (which would moot point the issue), or "dusting off my Fantasy Hero notes," (Hero already covers that ground).

2: Just a first pass spitballing that makes spamming a basic CLW Wand, (avg. 20.5 HP over 9 castings), only barely better than a single use of Cure Serious Wounds, (avg. 18.5HP).

I think PFS balance has more of an impact on this edition than people realize. It is in this medium that balance concerns and silly builds become the most dramatic since GMs are told they can't improvise anything or change any rules in order to accomodate strange characters. With heavy homgenization and super tight math, that means the quests will always be appropiate and nobody will be able to break the game.

PF2 being "PFS, the RPG rules" has been my core worry pretty much from the get-go. As you note, organized play has particular concerns and lacks key tools for dealing with many problems¹.

Worse, the high value for system imposed balance that results is going to be focused on whatever tends to be the norm in adventure design for the organized play system². Even if there is an active effort to 'mix it up', you are still going to run into the impacts of event time restrictions. A large amount of the adventures are going to need to be playable in a fixed time slot with no ability to say things like "this is a good place to stop, we'll pick up next week after your characters have had a good night's rest."

1: The big one being the ability to say things like "no, you are not playing The Landlord³ in my game."

2: I suspect design feedback loops are in play, pushing players to builds aimed at the most common adventure conditions and the adventures to things fun for the more common builds.

3: A stock Champions example of a by-the-rules but totally broken character. He has a base with grounds that cover the entire Earth and 7.6 billion followers.

So one of my favorite types of campaigns to run are Survival campaigns.

Combining a full-up survival game with food conjuration does tend to be a problem and it probably does require some house ruling from a more general set of rules. One thing I used in Skull & Shackles to explain why sailors would put into islands to get water was the belief that too much "faerie water" would leave you vulnerable to magic¹. Adding some penalty for relying on constantly conjuring food leaves it as an option for emergencies while making the finding of 'real food' still vital.

1: The truth was that you would build up a saving throw penalty against most fay magic if most of your food/water was conjured. IIRC, it was something like -1/week and you needed to go 100% 'real' to recover at about the same rate.

While PF2 isn't saying things like "trees get harder to climb", as was the common misinterpretation of things in 4e it is shading into the actual issue 4e had with skill DCs:

An encouragement of 'backwards' design, where you start with the DC you need to have an appropriate challenge then figure out what would give that DC. So if the characters are, say, 10th level there simply won't be a tree anywhere useful for getting over a wall or into a window¹ and the wall will generally be hard to climb. As opposed to 'forwards' design where you start with what is right for the adventure from a plot and setting perspective and then deal with things that are too hard/too easy, (too hard might mean 'this probably isn't an option' and too easy may have something else attached to it² or simply be assumed as something the party can just do).

N.B. Encourage and require are not synonyms.

1: If one wanted to be silly about it a GM could say "you advance to sixth level, in 'totally unrelated' news a new landscaping fad for short bushes is sweeping the nation."

2: e.g. The guards know about how easy it is to climb in that window and thus include the lord's childhood room in their rounds.

Sure!

PFS is a poison that's killing the base system for home games.

I actually think there is a fair amount of truth in that: Any organized play system is going to have a particular set of concerns, applied to adventures that tend to follow a particular style and set of constraints, and the people involved are likely to have a disproportionate voice when communicating with devs¹.

If your home game doesn't have those concerns and uses an adventuring style that doesn't match those in the organized play system, developments to fix problems in organized play are likely to cause problems for you. (e.g. If the assumption in organized play is 2-3 strong combat encounters per 'adventuring day' and you play with 6-7 generally weaker encounters/day, efforts to balance "few uses/more power" with "unlimited uses/less power" will actively unbalance your game in favour of the unlimited uses.)

1: A combination of more avenues of communication, some of which are more direct, and a more unified voice.

Chakat Firepaw wrote:

This is from the received wisdom that "falling off the RNG is evil and must be avoided as much as possible." It's part of the same thing that freaks out over the brawny warrior completely ignoring the poison that the frail mage has to worry about.

This is a more interesting problem, but one potential solution

IMHO, the "solution" is realizing that in (semi-)high fantasy it isn't a problem in the first place¹.

Sure there are things that, for instance, the Rogue can climb easily that the Fighter can't ever. So what? This is one of the reasons you are playing an adventuring party and not Doc Savage and his team of the second best². The big irony about the fix for it is that it comes with a system that brings the exact same "Bob can do it every time, Joe can't do it ever" effect just through a means other than "the DC is too high for Joe to hit."

One thing to remember about "received wisdom" is that it often isn't really true.

1: Sure there are genres where it is a bad thing, D&D/PF have never really tried to do those genres and have always been bad choices for them.

2: Doc Savage being better than his aides at their own specialties.

I have an idea as to what's behind a couple of these:

2. Resonance solves a problem that never had to exist.

From what I can gather, the Resonance system was created to prevent magic item spam/abuse. I take great issue with this reasoning, as it has always been ultimately up to the GM to decide what and how many magic items the players get. In other words, it's solving a problem that a clever GM could easily sidestep, while simultaneously putting hard limits on what PCs are able to do, especially high level martials.
You're putting new rules into the game in order to keep the GM from making a decision that the designers think is bad. I don't think it's wrong to put warnings for GMs before historically problem magic items, but this is limiting on both players and GMs. It doesn't add anything to the game on its own, only takes away from the possibility space.

This seems to be something where "we want a solution that works for Pathfinder Society," is impacting the general design. With an organized play system, you can't assume that something can be fixed, (or determined to not be a problem), by the GM because you need the problem fixed even for people who have never been at a table before and never will again.

It's also a manifestation of the high priority given to power balance, (which is in many ways itself "solving things for PFS").

3. Proficiencies in skills & saves are silly.

Thog the Barbarian has trained his whole life to hit stuff. He is a level 10 Barbarian, who smash really good. Suddenly, he's put in a situation where he has to sing, despite literally having never done so in his life. He at least is getting a +8 modifier to that check from proficiency. What?
I don't see what was wrong with static base save progressions and skill points. They were actually somewhat easier to explain/more self-evident than proficiencies, and required you to actually put in training to be good at something, rather than just becoming passively good at everything(and having to update every. single. skill. every time you level up).

This is from the received wisdom that "falling off the RNG is evil and must be avoided as much as possible." It's part of the same thing that freaks out over the brawny warrior completely ignoring the poison that the frail mage has to worry about.

Fuzzypaws wrote:

[...]This can also be seen as an alternate side of the Summon Monster coin, where the lists were never updated even five bestiaries later.

Is this particular aspect of core vs later content being kept in mind this time?

I think that with the summon monster spells, that's more "feature" than "bug". If the summon spells get expanded alongside every bestiary that gets dropped, their power grows exponentially as you increase the combinations of abilities that you can access using the spell. Arguably, certain spells really shouldn't automatically expand with later materials, and any expansion that does happen should be very deliberate.

I simply used a "you (mostly) get to pick your summons" house rule:

You get two when you learn a "Summon X" spell that have to be summonable with that spell, (with a restricted list if you are learning from another caster¹), one more when you gain a level and it is possible to learn more, (either as a reward² or through research). These picks are subject to GM vetting³ but are wider in scope, (you want to summon Entropic creatures rather than Celestial? sure). You also get any faith-based summons as bonus selections, (although those are subject to divine approval).

This way you aren't stuck with a short list of Bestiary 1 creatures but a new Bestiary coming out isn't a power jump.

1: i.e. You can't learn how to summon a fire elemental from someone who doesn't know how.

2: Either a mundane reward of "you found his summoning notes and can learn how to demand the service of a..." or a more direct one of "thank you for freeing me from that binding, I grant you the service of some of my pets in battle."

3: I am very much not of the school that says players should be able to pick whatever they want just because it happens to be in the rulebook. Cue someone freaking out over the possibility of a player ever being told "no".

Not bad in general, but it does need the info for when creatures that use equipment don't have that equipment¹. At the least we would need to easily determine AC without armour &c., what their unarmed attacks are and what weapons are adding to as a base.

I do share the concern WRT alignment being stuck into the subtypes. This would be even more important in my games due to the house rule I use for Detect (Alignment) effects, (I use a calculated value rather than the table).

1: Almost all of the people I have played with have had no qualms about attacking monsters while they are taking a bath and I have no qualms with having "I did not need to think about that," being a player reaction to what they encountered sneaking in a window.

A note for when the adventure reaches Paris, especially for those GMs who are trying to not make it obvious: Remember that the Eiffel tower was not painted the current brown until 1968, in the adventure it should be a yellow-orange.

An entire world made up of clockwork gears. Each a different biome. Each only connected to each other at the teeth of the gears. Even the seas themselves are but vast cogs.

This actually sounds like it could make for an interesting setting. Depending on the size and speed of the various gears you get massive impacts on how trade and warfare takes place.

With slow gears that take centuries per revolution you have plenty of time to do things with your current neighbours but once they are gone they are gone for generations, (and you end up with a wall for decades). So you better hope that your economy isn't dependant on selling the output of your mines to those on the other side of the teeth. If you invade, can your forces keep conquering anti-spinward fast enough to maintain contact?

With fast gears that only take a year or two, trade becomes easier, (especially long-distance trade, just keep switching gears¹). Warfare, OTOH, becomes strange as your supply lines are constantly cut by the arrival of new forts.

We could even add to that the stacking of gears, with cities on lower gears having to deal with the dark times that come when they pass under other gears.

1: A pair of gears with convenient ratios might even see a lot of back and forth trading. If it takes two years to cross your gear but there is a neighbouring gear with half your one year revolution time, that lets someone get to the opposite side and back four times by the time someone does it the direct way.

I'd sooner play magic talking ponies on an eternal quest to prove how awesome having friends is.

http://friendshipisdragons.com/

SilvercatMoonpaw wrote:

Incidentally what would be the correct plural if we were to go by the Greek system?

Pegasoi.

Yep, as in "Pêgasoi Aithiopikoi", ("Pegasi Aethiopici" in Latin or "Ethiopian Pegasi" in English). Which was an actual type of mythical creature described at least as far back as the 1st century CE, (by Pliny the Elder).

Yes, the expansion of Pegasus from a unique being to a race is not the fault of modern writers.

6: Have them see you putting the Grimtooth books away while designing next week's adventure.

But that's many, many leagues from Varisia!

One of the great things about someone signing up to a geographically widespread organization to restart his life/begin again/forget his past/etc. is that there are built in excuses for being sent a long way away. Since he's coming in with some levels already under his belt, this gets even easier, (the move could have been something that happened after he was fully a paladin).

There is the obvious bit of "I will go where you send me but I humbly ask it not be here." Varisia just happened to be the place that needed some warm bodies.

Better, IMHO, would be to have had him be a squire whose mentor got transferred. Perhaps an older paladin who was promoted and now holds a significant post at the temple. This less active role for the mentor allowed him to send the PC off to "gain some practical experience" and "be more useful to the Dawnflower that just delivering missives and reminding me it is time to eat."

Being from Galt also gives another excuse for moving: He's gotten himself branded an "enemy of the revolution" and the church sees no reason to pointlessly risk one of their own becoming fodder for a Final Blade.

I'm a fan of the flip-a-coin method, making sure to sprinkle in the occasional nonbinary person.

A trick for doing a random "sometimes A, sometimes B and rarely C" decision is to roll a pair of dice:

White die high - A
Black die high - B
Tie - C

Pick the dice to give you the odds that are right, (e.g. using 2d20 will give you an equal amount or men and women and 5% nonbinary).

Daw may have intended his as a joke, but that might just be the way to go: The dwarves are simply not there, there is no apparent reason for them to be gone and they only left a handful of cryptic clues that are impossible to decipher.

When even appealing to otherworldly or divine information sources simply results in more unintelligible 'clues', your players will scare themselves trying to figure it out.