Cloakofwinter's page

Maybe. I have yet to see a Free game that was truly worth playing. Most of them end up very WoW oriented to me and become all about "how do we get to level 50 and raid constantly for gear?" PFO is very different from that. Free also attracts idiots by the horde. I'd prefer not to have those folks about. Birthing this game is painful, but it should be.

Also, in an almost entirely unrelated note, Bellows McGurk has the best character name in the game.

Thanks! You have yet to meet another of our EL members, Twomugg Aleslosh.

Alright,

I have been informed of the situation and what happened. No one was bullied, as a matter of fact it sounds like Decius tried to help the guy until he turned into a Jerk and Decius walked away from the situation. So, I am just going to walk away from another Thod propaganda piece, good job in being neutral Thod, and trying to maintain that neutrality, it really really shows.

I truly appreciate you, Cheatle, for all the work you have done for PFO. It's fascinating to me, though, that you made a big deal in another post about "investigating," even citing one investigation over an incident that took more than a week, and yet in your investigations, you didn't speak to the other person involved in the interaction. I assume that by "being informed," you mean that you spoke to one person who was there - Decius - and formed your opinion from that single conversation. Since no one else was present when all of this went down other than Decius and myself, one would think you would reserve judgement until you had questioned both parties. And yet you are blasting Thod for simply trying to defend one of his own, something you, I assume, would do for any one of your TEO members.

Since there were only two players present, it becomes a "he said, he said" situation and you can naturally choose what you want to believe. But for what it's worth, Decius offered no help of any kind. He simply took stuff and ran. I am surprised he would say otherwise because he seemed pretty unashamed of the behavior.

I did call him out, using words like Thief, Coward, and others IN PLAY.

I would like to be careful about calling this "bullying." As the wizard behind the curtain of my character, I'm fine with Decius' actions as a player. He played the game. My character abhors what happened, as would any injured party. But that's where it stops - in game. Unless someone starts spreading rumors of what happened OOC that are untrue.

Now, to discuss the matter of honor:
You Have What You Hold: Once it falls from your cold dead fingers, you don't hold it anymore; once you pick it back up again, you do. Trying to lay a claim to goods which you don't hold is in direct contravention of the River Freedoms.

Which is fine. The thing that concerns me throughout this thread is what I am hearing from various players is tales of you saying "you tried to help the victim until the victim (myself) started being a jerk." If this is some rumor you are trying to spread in roleplaying terms throughout your settlement and the world, that's fine. But it seems like you are spreading this out of play, and both you and I know exactly what happened - it's pretty simple. You found my corpse, looted it and bailed without saying a word.

When we talked later in whispers, you said you ran because you would have decimated me in combat and I'd just be dead again.

I'd like to keep things clear.

Which means Thod wasn't trying to extort anyone. He was simply asking for me to be made whole, and you refused. A valid choice. But lets not poison player's ears with OOC rhetoric.

FROM THE ACTUAL VICTIMIZED PARTY:

So, for those of you speculating about the encounter, I relate both the truth of it and options for how it is handled in roleplay. The merchant in question was Bellows McGurk. I was carrying a rather large shipment of goods from EL to Marchmont which included a nice haul for any thief. There were a couple of +3 items, some T2 resources and other goodies.

I wasn't paying the best of attention to my direction and ended up running directly into a group of monsters. Instead of running, I chose to fight, not noticing the yellow critter in the middle of the fray. I got hosed as the group of monsters was pretty large.

Anyway, upon returning to my corpse, I noticed it being looted by Decius. As I approached, Decius stopped looting and ran. No helping. No conversation. No "I tried to help this character and he was a douche." He just ran.

It was my bad. My fault. He's responsible for his part and I mine, but let's be clear. It was a loot and run. It was not a "Hey, sorry you died and I took your stuff, so let me help you out."

I decided to keep it in play and spoke up over general, assuming that general was still Hex chat. I called Decius out over General and accused him in play of being a thieving coward. He chose to take it out of play and suggested that he petition GW to abate the "whining coming from General." I gave him a couple of more shouts and then engaged him in a direct conversation. We chatted, he was unrepentant. That's fine - that's his choice. He did not see that he did anything wrong, which is a valid viewpoint. That ended our conversation. He did not offer reparations or apology and I didn't expect either.

I don't expect him to face any kind of out of game retribution, nor should Thod for role-playing this through to whatever end. I'm actually glad this came about because it's helping to shore up how settlements will deal with this and why a system of nobles might be a good idea. As a player, I'm not bitter about what Decius did. He made a role-playing choice that fits with his seemingly True Neutral character. I did as well. I should also note that Thod has not called out Phaeros in this, but rather Decius himself.

Bellows McGurk

Playing in EE as a Cleric:

Leveling is slow, as it probably should be. It's not that hard to gain focus levels, especially only using a focus. It is, however, grindy as hell. Grouping doesn't give you the focus levels. Killing mobs on your own does. Just depends what you want to dedicate time to doing.

Cleric Orisons:

"Holy Damage" doesn't do additional damage to undead. This confuses me as I believe it should do double damage, or at least 1.5x.

Minor Cure doesn't seem to scale up at all. It didn't in Alpha and I'd be surprised if that's been addressed. I've been using rank 2 with a +1 focus and +1 implement equipped and it still only does 50 hp. It crits, every now and then for 100, it appears. But if you want us to fill the role of constant healer, you're going to either need to up our mana pools or up the healing, especially when its only touch-based and my fighters, rogues and mages can't sit still. Some range on these spells would be nice.

Also, a focus should be usable with a shield, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Please let me know if I am wrong on this.

What I would really like is a persistent radiant AI populated world in a dnd/pathfinder setting combining the procedural generation and evolving world aspects of no mans sky with the graphics and lore of skyrim. I want to play dnd with the server as the dungeon master. I want to be able to do ALL the crazy things I think of doing at a table top session simulated for me and all the other players in the game world. This is what I have dreamed of for 26 years as a PC online rpg. I am still waiting.

We all are. I'm not sure a small shop can do that. I think you would need a WoW-sized development operation and a re-thinking of the MMO in general to even get halfway to that goal.

For instance in Star Citizen I do not believe the racing would be nearly as enjoyable without how great the graphics are. You almost feel like you really are flying the ship at those kind of breakneck speeds.

Or in Archeage, their characters are so beautifully detailed I was actually able to make my avatar look a lot like me by going line by line and through my facial details and having...

Archeage is not anywhere near a competitor for PFO. It never was and never will be. I've played the game for some time, have dropped too much cash in it and find it to be simply a more grindy version of WoW. It's gorgeous, don't get me wrong. But the mechanics are very simplistic and its a simple point-and-shoot game. It's nothing that's really going to hold the long-term attention of anyone who's older than 25 and has played an MMO before. It's a pretty standard Trion Worlds Pay-to-Win game.

You really need to back off the comparisons with a lot of the games you brought up because they are really very different in character and creation. I'm sorry you are down on PFO because I do think it's a diamond in the rough.

Personally, the fact that the NPCs in Archeage still speak Korean drives me nuts and throws me out of whatever immersion I had every time. But that's just me.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The state of the game:
Before I make my post, I want to say that I understand and appreciate the amount of work that has gone into this game. I think it is important to remember this is a low-budget, small-team operation that is largely being created by folks who are not long-time video game developers. There's a huge braintrust of creatives associated with this and the Pathfinder brand in general, and sadly, we're not seeing that come through. What do do have is a complex combat and character advancement system paired with an equally laborious crafting system with the overall goal of kingdom building. There's a PVP element to the game that is rich, but it seems to have been the focus from Day 1 and it really shouldn't have been. PVP has its place in the Pathfinder world, but I think we need to keep in mind that the reason most of us played Pathfinder in the first place was the heroic aspect. I don't think we started campaigns so we could specifically slaughter other players, and I think that most of us who have DM'd campaigns have run into intra-party intrigue and confrontations with other NPCs, but those were not the focus of our adventuring. Yet that aspect of the game seems to have overshadowed development. There's advanced concepts in this game, such as the keywords, but I think this concept is really a "behind-the-scenes" idea that other games have really done better. While keywords make sense, I shouldn't be spending an hour worrying about whether this piece of armor is going to correctly jive with my other equipment and the 47 feats I have. We want a thinking game, but we don't want something that becomes work. Reality sucks. We're looking for intelligent escape.

The direction of the game:

I'm not sure I see where the game is headed at this point. Right now, there's just a lot of fires to be fought. Within the larger picture of PVP squabbles, resource management and settlement building, we seem to be missing the magical, whimsical world of Pathfinder. While the game is loosely based on the Pathfinder system, I see little in the direction we're headed that would associate this game with the rich history, geography and heroic fun of Pathfinder.

How you feel about the process of Alpha to EE:

I'm going to take this one out of turn. I feel like we have truly been in an Alpha. In fact, I think we have really been in the testing stage that pre-dates even an Alpha. As for EE, I feel that even though the team is looking at November, April seems like a more realistic goal. As a casual solo player, I've grouped only once and I have not relied heavily on my friends at Emerald Lodge or TEO, though I did join TEO in the game to be able to train appropriately. I can slaughter groups of mobs that are white or maybe have a yellow in the mix and I'm a 6/6 Ftr/Cleric. However, the basic pathing and responses of the groups are heavily broken. In groups with even a single caster, I've yet to see that caster not target its own team. Every time, unless I have killed them, those injured monsters go back and slaughter the caster. In multiple caster groups, they often kill the front line of their team. In cases where casters are not present, within 20 seconds of engaging the group, half of the combatants will disengage and run back to their starting positions. Since there are no wandering monsters, this broken system of combat is our only system of combat. It's not ready for prime time. The list of problems goes on. If the game needs to move into EE for cash reasons, GW should let us know. Otherwise, it should be postponed indefinitely.

What you feel are positives and negatives of the game:

Positives:
Complexity - I don't want this to be a system like most MMOs
Economy - I think the player economy is going to be good for the game and will keep out goldsellers
Some adherence to Pathfinder lore and gameplay
Leveling is not the point of the game

Negatives:
Spells - drop rarely and are difficult to use and many have durations that make them pointless to use in pre-combat or actual combat encounters. For example - Blessing - You get two rounds out of this spell. If you cast it before combat, it's pointless. If you cast it in combat, it's good for two swings of your weapon at best.
Crafting - system is so complex and interdependent upon gathering skills and other professions that it becomes too cumbersome to craft and adventure on the same character
Lack of mobs - we have what? a couple of bandit models, a couple of ogre models, a few undead and some goblins. That's not going to cut it when pathfinder pulls from 4 different bestiaries.
Leveling - in the zeal to make leveling not matter exclusively, you've lost some of the power of that pursuit. For example, it's been really hard to find Foci with plusses - so at 6th level cleric I still heal the same amount I did as 1st level cleric, even though I have bought the next rank of the healing. (Actually, I may be rank 3 in this feat now). There's no real impetus for me to advance. Buying higher-level feats but having them completely attuned to your weapon is sad. At the very least, I should be healing at an advanced rate - maybe not 5 pts per level, but something close to show that I have actually leveled.
Lack of player race choices

Suggestions for the game, pressing issues:

I think I have made a few suggestions above, but here's a distillation:

- Crafting needs to be simplified from where it is. I am not sure that the XP costs need to come down, but I find it very hard to pursue the crafting profession I chose. It could be that professions like Armorer and Weaponsmith are easier to handle.
- Spells need to drop more often and be more useful. The durations are way too low, especially given the regen rate of power.
- Bosses should drop random loot other than just recipes, spells or maneuvers.Perhaps crafting items that already have a plus to them.
- Add wandering monsters.
- Add more lore from the Pathfinder universe
- Add a reason to play other than to support your settlement, or what you have is really a MOBA with a world attached.
- Combat animations are weak. Most of the time, they don't show. And I'm running on a pretty stout Alienware rig, so it's not me and likely not my internet connection.
- Combat in general is broken.

I know I'm a bit early in this, and I do realize that there is an expected interdependency on resources and other crafting skills. But it seems to me that just to be useful as an iconographer requires significant resource gathering and pursuing levels in not just one crafting skill, but several. And with the increases in the XP cost for these levels, we have ventured into a serious concern.

It's clear that anyone engaging in crafting will not be able to advance a character very far, so almost everyone who is going to be doing any sort of crafting is going to have to either a) utilize the Destiny Twin perk of Kickstarter or b) maintain a second account. I do not believe you can be an effective crafter and adventurer all on one character. At about 6th level for a character, the cost of advancement becomes quite significant, whereas a crafting alt will hit significant xp costs when just trying to advance to 3rd rank.

It could be me, and likely is, but I finally made my first +1 item after four weeks. Granted, others could have helped, but I was trying to see what would happen if I wanted to excel in a single crafting field as an adventurer. I feel that you can't. I'm a rank 3 iconographer, a rank 3 sage, rank 1 in two other crafting/refining skills and have made some +3 components, but am a bit stymied in iconographer. Which makes the required weapons and implements for my class. For example, to be able to make certain 0-level implements, a Golden Crystal is required. That requires Sage 3 to make. Sage 4 if I want a simple +1 crystal. That same implement also requires refined parts from a smelter. So Iconographer 3 + smelter 2 + sage 3 to make a single item that's really of minimal power. Not to mention needing dowsing & mining gathering skills. And we haven't even hit the big time yet. Thats literally THOUSANDS of xp funneled into these skills to make, putting this in carpentry terms, a baseball bat.

Am I alone in thinking this crafting skill needs work?

Stephen Cheney addressed this very well in Goblinworks Blog: Some Good Reason for Your Little Black Backpack - Post #300.

Thanks. This made a couple of really good points about controls in the marketplace. Do you have any additional posts where the Devs talk about advancement and application of skills, feats, etc?

Cloakofwinter wrote:

... some of us have jobs and can't sit online for 47 straight hours leveling up to the point we won't be immediately assassinated on our first ore run.

You seem to be forgetting that it isn't how much time you spend actively racking up experience but time elapsed that 'levels' your character. You do not have to be grinding experience. The game is player-life friendly.

I really hope that's the case. I haven't found that to be the cas in many PVP-heavy environments. Perhaps I just remember the days where you could spend hours gathering or gaining experience only to lose it all through (gear and goodies, not the Xp, unless you count EQ) a single attack or action.

There will almost always be many more low-level characters than high-level characters, and consequently there will need to be more low-level Harvest Nodes than high-level. The low-level characters simply can't work on higher-level Nodes (e.g. Adamantine). The high-level characters COULD work on low-level nodes, and they could "dry up" the Hex's resources faster with their higher skill, but doing so just isn't really a good use of their time, they're just being an even more efficient harvester of lower-grade mass-market resources, rather than spending their time extracting what they 'exclusively' (or more exclusively) can apply their higher-level skill to.

Based on what we have seen in other player economies, this is pretty unsupported by facts. First, name an MMO that, within 1 year of opening, has fewer low-levels than high. Just thinking of Guild Wars 2, a fairly young MMO, and World of Warcraft, an older MMO, venturing through lower-level areas is much like walking through a ghost town.

Second, what resources end up being the most expensive? The basic ones. Anyone notice how in MMOs, copper ore ends up 10x more expensive than gold or mithral or whatever the high-level ore of the day is? Why is this? Because your second character will always be better off than your first, and savvy marketers know that you'll drop more gold on character number two.

I'm not sure there's a work around for an artificial economy. None have ever worked. All are stilted on some way, and that makes sense because you just don't have leveled areas in real economies.

Maybe it's just me, but the developers seem to be spending an awful lot of time crafting a system that rewards ganking other players far more than exploration and adventure. This seems a bit odd when the basis of Pathfinder has always been "players v. Environment" rather than fostering intra-party squabbles. Granted, the move to MMO seems to require a degree of PVP, but that seems to be the emphasis here. The last RPG that I recall doing this was Ultima Online, and they tanked harder than that "teach a goblin to read" program I tried to set up.

And I don't think I fall into the "carebear" set - it's just that some of us have jobs and can't sit online for 47 straight hours leveling up to the point we won't be immediately assassinated on our first ore run.

Awesome. Thanks!

How do we receive boons and Chronicle sheets for online play? Emailed PDF?

New to PFS play, and certainly new to doing it online. Can you point me to the web sites needed? I do have a PFS number and am finishing out a character begun at a convention this weekend. Also, if you have another event down the line (I do shift work, so I can get called in easily), please let me know.

If one of the concerns about "friendly fire" is reputation/bounty, perhaps players should be allowed to negate some bounties. By "player," I mean the injured party. So if you drop a fireball and that generates 50 bounty (or whatever) for player X who cast the spell, Player W has the ability to issue a negation for that bounty. This way, you could allow for friendly fire, a party member could still attack another party member with purpose and gain negative notoriety for doing so, but you have a way out if the act was not malicious.

Most people don't multiclass their Summoners, because everything the Summoner is good at is based on their Summoner level (Eidolon, spellcasting, Summon Monster, etc.).

Heh...doesn't that apply to all classes?

Have a class in mind to pair with it, but curious about suggestions/experiences from the community.

Advancing two spell casting classes is already quite potent. I don't see the need to tack on more features. Also, not all theurges will channel.

Granted, not all will channel.

However, I do think, even with gaining spells in each class that missing out on the special features of each class will significantly lessen combat effectiveness. And, even though you are gaining the extra spells, you are doing so at a great cost of level effectiveness.

Mystic Theurge

All of this remains the same:

Alignment: The motivations of a mystic theurge rarely stem from a sense of altruism or philanthropy, so most tend to be neutral, neutral good, or neutral evil. Lawful mystic theurges, whether good, neutral, or evil, are rarer, and often use their powers for either the benefit—or control—of society. Chaotic mystic theurges are rarer still, as the calling generally requires great personal discipline.

Hit Die: d6.

Requirements
To qualify to become a mystic theurge, a character must fulfill all the following criteria.

Skills: Knowledge (arcana) 3 ranks, Knowledge (religion) 3 ranks.

Spells: Able to cast 2nd-level divine spells and 2nd-level arcane spells.

Class Skills
The mystic theurge's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Knowledge (arcana) (Int), Knowledge (religion) (Int), Sense Motive (Wis), and Spellcraft (Int).

Skill Ranks at Each Level: 2 + Int modifier.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: SAME as current

Spells per Day: SAME as current

Combined Spells (Su): SAME as current

Spell Synthesis (Su): SAME as current

Mystic Discovery (Su): At 1st, 3rd, 6th and 9th levels, the MT adopts a single ability from one of her arcane or divine bloodlines, specialization schools or domains. The MT may also choose one of the following discoveries:

Advanced Channeling: The MT may increase her channeling ability by one step. For example, an MT with 5 levels of cleric can channel at 3d6. This would advance her ability to 4d6.

Practiced Spellcaster: The MT's ability to combine divine and arcane power has manifested in the ability to power her spells above the level restriction of her class. When casting a spell, the spell's effective level is considered four levels higher (not to exceed total HD of the caster) for determining its effects. Thus, 4th Wiz/4th Cleric/3rd MT would cast her 4th level spells as an 11th-level caster.

Theurgical Alteration:Mystic Theurge

All of this remains the same:

Alignment: The motivations of a mystic theurge rarely stem from a sense of altruism or philanthropy, so most tend to be neutral, neutral good, or neutral evil. Lawful mystic theurges, whether good, neutral, or evil, are rarer, and often use their powers for either the benefit—or control—of society. Chaotic mystic theurges are rarer still, as the calling generally requires great personal discipline.

Hit Die: d6.

Requirements
To qualify to become a mystic theurge, a character must fulfill all the following criteria.

Skills: Knowledge (arcana) 3 ranks, Knowledge (religion) 3 ranks.

Spells: Able to cast 2nd-level divine spells and 2nd-level arcane spells.

Class Skills
The mystic theurge's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Knowledge (arcana) (Int), Knowledge (religion) (Int), Sense Motive (Wis), and Spellcraft (Int).

Skill Ranks at Each Level: 2 + Int modifier.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: SAME as current

Spells per Day: SAME as current

Combined Spells (Su): SAME as current

Spell Synthesis (Su): SAME as current

Mystic Discovery (Su): At 1st, 3rd, 6th and 9th levels, the MT adopts a single ability from one of her arcane or divine bloodlines, specialization schools or domains. The MT may also choose one of the following discoveries:

Advanced Channeling: The MT may increase her channeling ability by one step. For example, an MT with 5 levels of cleric can channel at 3d6. This would advance her ability to 4d6.

Practiced Spellcaster: The MT's ability to combine divine and arcane power has manifested in the ability to power her spells above the level restriction of her class. When casting a spell, the spell's effective level is considered four levels higher (not to exceed total HD of the caster) for determining its effects. Thus, 4th Wiz/4th Cleric/3rd MT would cast her 4th level spells as an 11th-level caster.

Theurgical AlterationMystic Theurge

All of this remains the same:

Alignment: The motivations of a mystic theurge rarely stem from a sense of altruism or philanthropy, so most tend to be neutral, neutral good, or neutral evil. Lawful mystic theurges, whether good, neutral, or evil, are rarer, and often use their powers for either the benefit—or control—of society. Chaotic mystic theurges are rarer still, as the calling generally requires great personal discipline.

Hit Die: d6.

Requirements
To qualify to become a mystic theurge, a character must fulfill all the following criteria.

Skills: Knowledge (arcana) 3 ranks, Knowledge (religion) 3 ranks.

Spells: Able to cast 2nd-level divine spells and 2nd-level arcane spells.

Class Skills
The mystic theurge's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Knowledge (arcana) (Int), Knowledge (religion) (Int), Sense Motive (Wis), and Spellcraft (Int).

Skill Ranks at Each Level: 2 + Int modifier.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: SAME as current

Spells per Day: SAME as current

Combined Spells (Su): SAME as current

Spell Synthesis (Su): SAME as current

Mystic Discovery (Su): At 1st, 3rd, 6th and 9th levels, the MT adopts a single ability from one of her arcane or divine bloodlines, specialization schools, domains or metamagic (including divine metamagic) feats. The MT may also choose one of the following discoveries:

Advanced Channeling: The MT may increase her channeling ability by one step. For example, an MT with 5 levels of cleric can channel at 3d6. This would advance her ability to 4d6.

Practiced Spellcaster: The MT's ability to combine divine and arcane power has manifested in the ability to power her spells above the level restriction of her class. When casting a spell, the spell's effective level is considered four levels higher (not to exceed total HD of the caster) for determining its effects. Thus, 4th Wiz/4th Cleric/3rd MT would cast her 4th level spells as an 11th-level caster.

Theurgical Alteration: The MT may alter the energy descriptor of a spell in order to overcome an opponent's resistances. An MT facing off against an Efreet which has an immunity to fire, could alter the energy type of a fireball spell to "divine," bypassing the Efreet's natural resistance. This ability is usable 3/day.

An MT - or any multi-class character - is not going to be the Uber Blaster in a party. But Multi-class characters were never meant to be - a 6/6 Wizard/Cleric doesn't have the offensive power of a 12th level Wizard. That seems balanced, because the cleric levels add versatility to the equation and give the multi-classer multiple roles to play. This is especially useful in parties that have less than 5 members. I think this variant gives you the ability to be a more effective spellcaster and allows one to fine-tune their MT along the lines of a divine or arcane specialization.

Thoughts?

Nicos wrote:

For start It violated the paizo´s own guidelines about spells resistance. And when you compare it to shocking graps it is not dificult to realize it is way better thatn the existing spells, anohter violation of paizo´s own guidelins about spell creation "comparethe new spells with the old ones".

Well, guidelines are just that guidelines. They are an outdated means of balancing the current atmosphere, and serve no purpose now that the game has been out for this long. We should not use the guidelines as a means to keep an inferior play style inferior. Not that the general idea of those guidelines is bad, but they assume too much, which has been proven wrong (specifically that all spells in the CRB are balanced).

You are also assuming shocking grasp is a balanced spell: it's not. It's just another example of a weak-sauce spell and it falls squarely into why blasting is not good. Comparing "good" to "crap" does not make the "good" OP.

It really strikes me that tabletop RPG has be severely tainted by the mindset of video game RPG calculations. For my part, this is one of the reasons I fled from DnD 4.0 - the variety of spells and their capability is not necessary in a video game, but situational usefulness in an RPG where the environment really shouldn't be: encounter, drop highest level damage or insta-incapacitate spell, fire again - encounter over. Granted, I think some spells should bypass SR. I'm not sure why this one would - there's no good discussion as to why, just some whining about which school it should be in. But I also see that there's a lot of hatred toward spells that just do limited damage that really doesn't make sense to me. Sure, Magic Missile isn't the be all, end all spell, but it was never meant to be. Taking out 25 points of damage on a critter is a good thing, especially since it never misses. It should be useful, even against higher-ECL monsters.