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I'm curious what this class will do that the Marshall archetype doesn't, but I haven't played the battle lord or whatever Michael Sayre called his 3rd party class. But Path of War rocked so I'm optimistic. Wait did he actually cite the Warlord from Path of War as a inspiration? I wasn't able to catch the stream when it happened.
I am not sure "lot" is the right word there. To my eyes only about 3 posters really have potentially political focuses in their divine focus. Some of them could be political if you stretched what was said though for sure. To be completely fair though, this was going to be the natural course of the exercise. It's what "you" would be like as a deity, which means people are going to look at their own values, their beliefs, and their drives, passions, flaws, etc and make them into a deity. Which means, if you're here engaging with pathfinder and the myriad of changes that have come about, you're likely not going to be the kind of person whose edicts and anathemas are gonna read like the biggest and loudest self report ever. If the question was "You get to make the next Starstone god", the answers would be radically different because people would be looking at interesting characters to elevate, not their actual selves. Like, I myself tried to look at my positive and negative traits. I'm tolerant of others and often am used as a person to give advice to others when asked, because I feel it's my duty to help others with that. I'm also very much someone who pursues entertainment and fun to my own detriment, I wouldn't have issues with time management and weight if that weren't the case. Stuff like nationalism, cultural supremacy, and the like just never came up because they aren't important to me, and in fact tend to annoy me enough to get me into a foul mood when I see people spouting about it. The only reason I didn't include family and stuff is like, if I were to include all aspects of myself as a deity there'd be like 15 domains and 10s of edicts and anathemas. And when trying to fit into the confines of what Paizo does when printing a god, and sticking to that format as part of this mental exercise, you tend to prioritize what you care about the most. Which is what makes it fun in the first place, imo.
Crouza, The Ruinous Revelry Areas of Concern: Pursuits of happiness, seeking joy in difficult situations, taking pleasure in others misfortune, tearing down those who oppose you. Edicts: Find joy and fulfillment in living and help others do the same, help people to express themselves, fight those who would oppress others, make mockery of those who stand in your way. Anathema: Dwell on topics of sadness or pain, Allow an insult to go unanswered, Stop another from pursuing fun unless it is harmful to others, Dismiss someone's expression of themselves. Sanctification: Holy or Unholy Domains: Introspection, Dreams, Freedom, Destruction, Zeal, Indulgence Divine Font: Harm Spells: 1st: Liberating Command, 2nd: Enhance Victuals, 3rd; Firework Blast Divine Skill: Diplomacy Favored Weapon: Machete I am not that good of a person, I wish I was better but I know who I am, and I know that as a god it would take my best and worst tendencies and only make them worse. I myself have been known to pursue those things that make me happy to the determent of other things in my life, be it staying up a little too late playing games, scheduling too many pathfinder games in my life, eating a little too much, or spending more than I should have on dice and minis. Additionally, my own post history should show I am more than willing to fight others and die on hills in internet spats, especially if its to stand up or defend things I like, and make passive aggressive quips at those I don't like. Combining all of this into a divine being would not make a good god. It'd make a god who can have good aspects, but taken to the extreme with nothing to ground me back own to reality. And the fact I know all of this about myself I feel would be incorporate as well, hence the desire to be true to who you are and be genuine, even if who you are is a genuine piece of s&%&. This was a fun mental exercise, thank you for posting this prompt.
In this installment of Godsrain prophecies, Razmir seethes, copes, and malds, as cayden the lair does what he couldn't.
To me it's not even a debate, the character that killed the bandit did an evil act, full stop. Because if you've already managed to subdue the enemy enough to where all they can do is lay there and answer questions, the encounter is over. The threat this person poses is done, and it doesn't seem like there's any kind of pressing time limit. You should have killed them when you were fighting if you didn't want to be evil, instead of ending the fight and then killing them anyway.
A DM of ours did this for 2 players when they had to make new characters, they started 1 level lower than us and cause we did milestone, after they completed an adventure with us, they'd level up. It was surprisingly okay, but I definitely do not recommend it. It caused way more issues than it was worth, and those tended due to a combination of poor tactics and lower level ended up going down more often than the rest of us.
I love this. I love the idea that the doomsday prophecy can't come true as is, because all prophecies ceased to work when Aroden died. But, that whatever force was aiming for this end of the world scenario is instead trying to manifest itself in a different way.
It makes sense in this system since bombs are just a martial item anyone can pick up and use. There's no point in treating them like any other weapon and excluding them from consideration for weapon familiarity.
You realize they aren't getting rid of combat, right? You still roll dice and resolve issues via those dice rolls. You people talk like Paizo staff came here and say "Violence is bad. No more combat in any APs" like a bunch of weirdos hyperbolizing when the Ogre's don't *check notes* sexually assault people as a joke. Yeah real "endeavors to be art" there, making a reference to The Hills Have Eyes and Deliverance. The reason I harp on this specifically is I'm sick and tired of stuff like this being used as some kind of rallying cry to "fighting against censorship" that grips certain fandom communities. You for example use a ton of flowery language to frame this as a great loss of art and creativity and "Sanding down the edges" but what we're talking about is Ogre's violating people against their will and engaging in non-consensual sex. You still face unspeakable darkness, you still face off against world ending evil, you still face off against monstrous people. The difference being is that Paizo is endeavoring to not just go for an easy shock value shlock for their players. Like f!@~ing Christ, they literally just got done releasing an entire horror themed AP and you're like "Mass Market censorship has killed the dark themes of pathfinder". If the only dark themes that matter to you are SA and Slavery, that speaks more to you than it does to the setting at hand.
What you're seeing in Pathfinder, Aenigma, is a reflection of how society has grown and matured and become more open-minded and welcoming to their fellow person in the past 20 years...I just don't see it. People in the last 20 years seem to have become FAR more closed-minded and defensive then they've ever been in my lifetime. So, so many people today are just too terrified of even talking to others for fear that they will say the wrong thing and end up with a mob putting a target on their back. 20 years ago you could casually just call other people slurs and that was seen as peak comedy. That was the entire joke as well, someone did something stupid and you called them R****d, or someone did something slightly effeminate and got called a F****t. SA against a woman was not a monstrous trait that should only be tackled seriously but a joke to play up for laughs about how a character was "Just a bit of a touchy guy" with a laugh-track to accompany it. For me, I do not get the mindset of someone who wants to return to those times. As someone who was both the out-group receiving the negative behavior, and as someone who committed those vile acts on others, it was a horrid time that is better off remaining dead and gone. As for Ogres, I don't want to open up an AP and read "The Orge r**es the female NPC" as a plot point. There is nothing about it that services the plot than to make the Ogres seem more reviled. And if you're encountering Orgres they're already likely looking to kill and eat you, or possibly kill you by eating you. That's already vile enough for the PC's to want to fight them, without adding an element of sexual violence into the mix serve as meaningless edgy flavoring.
I think the fanbase and Paizo's bottom line both prefer books with mixed player-GM usage, rather than books only a GM would ever buy. You can sell one Bestiary per Pathfinder group... but *everyone* in it might grab a book that also has new classes! You know sometimes, even when something is free, people willingly give their money to the maker of that product as a way of thanking them for the product that they get to enjoy. There are also those who enjoy the lore and stories those books have inside of them, the expanded descriptions that the Apps/Nethys do not post, and the art inside said books. I want them to organize their book better than Dark Archieve, but the way you describe the process of getting this content makes it sound so...utilitarian.
I love the idea of changing directions of some monsters to be closer to their mythological counterparts, even if I do love the more pop culture versions of them. I also enjoy the transparency. Funnily enough, the Mummy's abilities remind me of the 1999 mummy for some reason. I think it's the taking away abilities from creatures and sharing pain just for some reason strikes a familiar cord with me on it.
On the topic at hand, it is a little disheartening to see how long it's taking to implement the content. I've given to the patreon because they honestly deserve it, but it's starting to cause issues. I've had players who are used to using nethys citing the outdated rules for things, and it's definitely caused some confusion in our foundry game. "What the hell is Courageous March" type moments where they don't realize it's just the new term for Inspire Courage. Sometimes I think the ambition to make a toggle may have simply been too much compared to creating a new tab for the Remaster. I can see why they might be hesitant to do that though, as its a ton of repeated content if they do. I really hope the manage to make a breakthrough and this doesn't end up becoming a major delay for the site.
IMO, Paizo could seriously help them out by handing them a copy of the manuscripts going to the printers so that the AoN devs can get a jump on encoding all of the changes. But the changes are so major that the workload is much greater than standing up AoN in the first place. (And speaking from experience, I might have simply rebuilt the whole thing from scratch since I think that might actually have been less work. Data and information are tricky this way.) I enjoy the way they format their content over both Nethys and Pathbuilder. That and the ability to get the PDF's when I want to from Paizo is also an added security to me should something happen to nexus. The normal PDF's feel a bit cramped for me compared to Nexus. I enjoy having links like Nethys does but formatted in a way more similar to the PDF, with the accompanying imagery and descriptive text not normally in Nethys. The only real reason I use Pathbuilder 2e is because the mobile option is hands down the best way to play at my IRL games. If I am playing at my computer, I'm likely going to end up playing with Nexus because the layout for the sheet is more appealing to me, and I have the capital to give it while being happy knowing that the money I pay also goes to Paizo.
Interesting. I'm the opposite if I'm completely honest. To me it's like imitation meat. I'd rather eat the beans, tofu, or veggies prepared in a nice way that makes them taste good, then to see them pressed, contorted, and mashed into a "close enough approximation" of something else. I don't like being sold 1 thing being making it look like it's something else that I actually like. Much the same way, if I want something that looks like the physical sheet, I'd rather just use the physical sheet for the full experience. The lead smears from erasing and rewriting my ammo and hp. The feeling of the paper, the actual look of it changes depending on the light you have available. Comparable, digital paper copies just don't feel good to me. If it's digital, I want the interface to be a good digital interface that takes advantage of what makes digital interfaces good. Sleek design, collapsible tabs, easy navigation, links that can jump you to other sections or open up book entries, etc.
I will say that a full on rework of Fury would be greatly appreciated, as it does feel like it's lackluster compared to the other instincts. Perhaps make it's gimmick getting damage resistances earlier, or higher than other barbarians, in exchange for the lower damage. Would be nice to have something beyond Animal Instinct for those defensive barbarians. Also the proposal for making rage just give Clumsy 1 is intriguing. Making it something that's likely to stack with other sources of -1 but also making it lower your saves could have some pretty interesting gameplay implications.
I don't think people really think things through when they ask paizo to get rid of the drawback to rage. The entire balancing point of giving you such large static damage bonuses and allowing you to use them the entire fight is because of that -1. Without that, Rage damage and potentially Barbarian HP is going to be reduced. Or, Rage is potentially going to become an on/off state for the barbarian that is lost after 1 attack, and then has to be regained in combat. This brings a non-penalty rage in line with other abilities like Finishers, Spellstrike, and Unleash Psyche. Unleash Psyche is actually probably a good indicator of how Rage would be balanced, get a big bonus that lasts a fixed number of rounds, and then gain a negative condition that lasts a number of rounds. Personally, I'd prefer rage remain as is. It's a risk/reward that works for the simplistic mechanic it is, and there's no reason to take apart a fence that's serving its job just fine as is.
They don't have ownership of a common dictionary term being utilized for its understanding of a common dictionary term.Yeah, Hasbro would never sue for saying "Humans, Vesk, and Shirren are different species" any more than they would sue a Star Trek RPG for saying "Humans, Romulans, and Klingons are different species" or a Babylon 5 RPG for saying "Humans, Minbari, and Centauri are different species." Hasbro would never, except for early 2023, when they tried exactly that to leverage their market dominance over the TTRPG space. I never say that people would "never" do something once they've already proven they would.
I want to just say that I love expanding ancestries to include more details about them. I enjoy learning about their cultures, beliefs, and expectations because I love to play my characters either leaning into or going against those as the basis of my rping. Just more details are always appreciated and I personally think the strategy of making sure there are more ancestries in every release is a good way to approach the volume that existed in SF 1e.
There's also another fact to consider. 5e changed their terminology from "race" to "species". So yeah, can't have that in the ORC.
That's so much extra bookkeeping and so much more homogenization for extremely little return. For myself, I already have a somewhat hard time remembering all the feats I've taken. Now I'm going to be adding 25 to 50 feats that I need to write down on my sheet, just because my character has a couple of proficencies in skills. Playing a Rogue or Investigator with your rules would be an absolute pain because now every decision is going to need to be looked at thinking of every possible skill feat in the entire game and how it applies, all because some people didn't like this extra step in customizing their character. IF you had this house rule at a table, I would legit request the ability to opt out of it. No thank you, I have enough choice paralysis leveling up than to have to deal with this horse s&%#.
I was going to say, is it any different from the 2 room adventuring days that you'd get in pathfinder 1e where once your healer hits their limit for the day, you pack it up and try again tomorrow, even if it means the dungeon turns into like 7 in game days despite it being 1 session of time.
My least favorite as of this moment is Lay On Hands because it feels like a must-pick option for any caster via blessed one. The bang for your buck return on a reliable 6 hp per spell rank every 10 minutes is just way too good not to snag, and I wish there were like, 3 different lay on hands style heal focus spells to make a bit of variety to this choice. Casters get easier, built in focus points. It means you can use lay on hands more often, and regain more of your focus spells. The new remaster rules for refocusing means casters get slightly better benefits from focus spells. Granted however, Monk does get the same benefit. So yeah, it's good for all classes. I just wish there were more healing focus spells to make Blessed One/Champion not be so frequently picked.
Healing options are very strong in PF 2e, and sometimes border on too strong. Not because of their healing output, but rather simply because compared to other non-damage options, healing well and truly shines above both other skills and other spells when it comes to utility. But yes, healing is in a amazing space, S tier no questions. Fresh Produce will never not be funny to just make a fruit or vegetable appear in someones hand. My least favorite as of this moment is Lay On Hands because it feels like a must-pick option for any caster via blessed one. The bang for your buck return on a reliable 6 hp per spell rank every 10 minutes is just way too good not to snag, and I wish there were like, 3 different lay on hands style heal focus spells to make a bit of variety to this choice.
I hope that Operative will be able to get a Trick Attack ability as like, a feat that you can optionally take. Similar to how with Monk in 2e, you can opt into having Ki or not. I don't know, it's something I'd like to see with them not lose entirely like how grit was dropped from Gunslinger. Even though without the extra damage, I don't know what purpose it'd serve.
You know, I was going to say that letting you sell spellbooks for 1/2 cost of each learned spell was going to be too much, because it breaks the economy and make spellbooks too lucrative an item, but doing the math I'm not sure. Let's say you find a 5th level wizards book. Thats 10 cantrips, 7 1st rank, 4 2nd rank, and 2 3rd rank spells. All together that's 90 gp, halved to 45, which overall isn't that much gp.
The only thing I've seen so far that SF2 for sure will not replicate is extreme character-internal synergies. Sometimes I miss the combing through PFSRD or Nethys for every feat, looking up info on forums or reddit, cross referencing bonuses and what stacks with what, trying to backtrack through splatbooks to find out the wording on specific archetype abilities. I remember the first time I discovered stupid combination of things like Crane Stance and Swashbuckler nonsense because Dodge bonuses all stack, or when I found out the Power Attack + Furious Focus and trying to get Vital Strike to work with it on a Unchained Barbarian. I've had other friends who made absolute beasts with stuff like grappling enemies or absolutely cracking magics, and it is fun...at first, for me. But the novelty has worn off as I have aged. Perhaps it's because I work as an accountant, or perhaps just having a job vs having more free time from when I was a full time college student. I have found my love of combing through all this infromation to build a character has turned from joy to dread, and turns a hobby I use to relax into one of tedium that I dread. Even now I still get a lump in my stomatch when I realize I need to bust out the Excel spreadsheet to calculate what's happening with my character in PF 1e. Starfinder 1e doesn't have as much bloat, but I can see it now that I've played a more streamlined experience. I can see how Starfinder was written to be easier than Pathfinder in terms of what you need to make a good character. But it was done in the lense of someone whose favorite program is excel and who loves nothing but to dedicate a weekend to researching and theory crafting the highest bonuses one can get for a character to succeed. It's not surprising, that audience was the cornerstone for pathfinder 1e, why wouldn't that audience also eventually move over to try starfinder out and bring that same energy with them. But building and trying to find out if I'm building a good character has dredged up those old negative feelings of needing to comb through Nethys to find out what I need to not make my character fall behind an invisible curve of game expectation, while also trying to not over-shoot it so that I end up overly dominating the game and cause the difficulty to raise for my less optimized party members. I do not enjoy this tightrope and it is why I am looking forward to SF 2e, so I can just pick up the game, make my character in 15 minutes, and be ready to just go knowing whatever I pick, as long as my stats are decent and I'm playing what my class is designed to do, that I'm going to be a-okay no matter what I pick.
I definitely am looking forward to a retooled CR system. Getting to experience old school CR has given me a reinvigorated appreciation to how good the PL XP based system for PF 2e is.
I'll sure hope so. I don't know if the beginning adventure is just particularly rough or if our GM is just not running it right, but it has been a very deadly and not-encouraging AP. Like, we flew out to a derelict ship and had to fight like 5 asteroid louses who damn near killed us, and then got told "I removed the other 10 that were supposed to be on the other floors" cause of our near tpk. It's been...rough, to say the least. And it hasn't given me a lot of glowing praise for Starfinder as a system. Like, not even Age of Ashes was this rough at level 1, and that ones notoriously rough.
Your statement, word for word, "Starfinder lets characters do things at lower levels , ie, the levels you will get to AND the levels where you will spend most of your time even if you DO get the higher levels. Ysoki can have scurry and swift action cheekpouches right our of the gate whereas you need to be level 10 as a ratfolk and still don't have all the goodies that come with those feats." I'm at lower levels. I'm at the lowest of the levels you can be. I ain't seeing what the you mean when you talk about this. Maybe you can help me out here. What is it at lower levels that I should be doing to experience this wonderful bredth of variety that puts Pathfinder 2e to shame? Like, what lower levels is lower levels to you, so perhaps I know when I should expect to encounter this amazing time of expression that is currently lacking in my playthrough?
As someone currently playing Starfinder and starting at level 1, I do not see this mystical wheee factor that's being talked about. We've almost died 3 times during our playing of the beginner box. I've made a Rogue for SoT and an Operative for the BB, and I feel like my Rogue has had a tremendously more expressive start. I made them with a 16 in their attack stat in PF 2e, and I have felt less punished than I do in SF 1e playing a 17 in my dex. I have all these skills but nothing feels like it matters right now because I literally have nothing to do with them outside of Acrobatics. Trick attack lands 25% of the time I use it because I either fail the DC 21 checks or I fail to land the hit with my +3 to hit against KC. Our engineer seems to be having a ton of fun hacking cause they've done stuff like shut off gravity or vent areas into space, but for the rest of us the enemies hit so hard and moving is so punishing, our only real engagement has been make an attack, miss, and than wait to get hit. In PF 2e my Rogue was a Ruffian Rogue, so they focus on strength. I've felt like I'm able to actually rp my character in more inventive ways in PF 2e. My character got Survey Wildlife at level 1, and I feel like i've been able to rp with that and my strength to make a Steve Irwin esque person whose thrilled to wrestle and learn about dangerous animals. I've felt my character develop more and more into a vetrenarian who also applies their healing arts to their comrades by focusing on medicine. So I guess from my POV, I feel like SF 1e doesn't have this facilitating freedom that I see priased as a selling point above PF 2e. To me it feels like the opposite, where I didn't pick the correct flavor of Operative, or didn't build them right, and now I get punished for it in-game vs PF 2e where I can make a less optimal build but still feel like I'm contributing to the game and having fun.
Operative being legendary was a mistake, sadly. It has the normal martial progression. I'll wait for the actual preview for the Operative like we got with the Solider to see if that's the case. It's all in the air till we have something approaching concrete to actually see.
I think my biggest concern is that they make some of the SF2s classes worse so they don't step too much on the PF2 classes toes. Like the inventor shares a lot of design space with the most hypothetical mechanic classes, however it is mostly (curranty) unusable similarities, as the inventor does not work very well in a sci-fi setting, being firmly grounded in steampunkesk fantasy. Hopefully, they either ignore the inventor and make a great mechanic, or they reinvent the inventor to make it work in space. However, the worst case scenario is they don't want to change a PF2 class in SF2, nor do they want to step on any toes, and so leave a pretty big hole in SF2 that can only be filled with extensive reflavoring. From what we've seen so far, not stepping on a PF classes' toes seems to be a factor in the devs design, but that could just be for the CRB/early books. So hopefully that changes, or they are fully comfortable taking PF content and making it fully theirs. Or they use the fact that the inventor is OGL and ignore its existence, negating this particular example, but not other examples. Considering we know the Operative has Legendary in Firearms, I would say the fear that they aren't going to make classes with similar niches to PF 2e is definitely not the case. The devs statement regarding the PF classes is "We don't want starfinder to be beholden to the idea that we need a "Fighter in Space" or a "Rogue in Space" like there was with Solider to Fighter, Operative to Rogue, etc. They seem to want to do their own thing. So IMO, they want to make their own classes that do their own things, and if they happen to cross paths with other classes, so be it.
I look at it as more of a "moving on" rather than a "burning down," myself.That's a fair assessment for now, but I also foresee it as the obliteration of a fun game as it's assimilated into a larger game that is differently focused. All of these universal game systems (GURPS, HERO, etc) have their place but I've found a real comfort in Stardfinder being a unique world / system (even one based on Golarion's history). You can always bring in more PF elements as you wish but the universe of SF is so much greater. I especially like third party content that could be set in nearly any Science Fantasy universe. Grimmerspace had so much potential. I really wish it had gotten off the ground. It's wild to me as well to claim that PF 2e is a universal game system akin to Gurps or HERO because Paizo only makes the two games, and they make them with a ton of pre-established lore to boot. Universal game systems don't usually come with any lore, because they know the lore changes between the tens or hundreds of splat books. Paizo isn't publishing like a ton of different settings and then just having PF 2e do back flips and loop-de-loops to fit into whatever setting it has. It's got Golorion, and then Post-Golorion, and that's it. That's your two settings, or arguably their one setting. Feels a lot like just doomposting if I'm perfectly honest.
Leaving aside the critique of their personal character, even if what you’re saying is true, doesn’t that all the more emphasize their point that AI has little utility to them, personally? I mean, I took it as them saying things like character art and bios have no use for anyone, period. It very obviously will hold no value to them personally just as a new ferrari holds little value to me. I who get nervous if going faster than 60 MPH/97 KPH and who can't drive a stick shift have literally 0 purpose in this pure stick shift racing car. Character portraits and writing prompts are the only thing the AI does competently besides voice mimicking, which would take way too much time to process to be pragmatic to a game. If you don't value character portraits or writing prompts, AI is more worthless than Cortana on Windows.
I'm going to be brutally honest, it feels less like this is a shortcoming of AI art as much as it is that you as a person simply do not have interest in certain kinds of creative expression. Not caring what your character looks like and seeing biography as irrelevant doesn't seem like it's something exclusive to AI art, at least from my pov.
The problem is the tech has no guard rails against abusive actors. Example, in the vtubing space an artist vtuber angered a group of people by simply saying she didn't wish her art to be used for AI. This group had their AI draw exclusively from her social media accounts so it was trained to specifically imitate her style, and then had it draw porn of her model in her art style and flooded said social media with that. And there's nothing you can really do about that. Since so many places use algorithms to detect stuff, people reporting the porn got her own accounts punished for it alongside the harassers. It took the actual devs stepping in and manually banning the offending accounts IP address and tracking their IRL info down((this occured in china)) for it to stop, and even then the damage was already more or less done. Such a thing can be done to anyone. Anyone can have their art specifically targeted as a narrowed training model. Until there is like, any kind of recourse at all besides "Grow adamantine skin and power through the harassment", I don't blame anyone for feeling intense fear at AI when it's already shown to be a powerful tool of targetted harrassment.
1. Character Development: I personally find that most AI's tend to be super generic in what they come up with character-wise, unless you find a way to like, trick them into thinking they're someone else? Like telling the AI "Pretend you are a famous horror author, who is making a character with these traits". Just telling it to generate a character with traits you want often turns out incredibly bland regurgitation of what you typed. Personally, I find it more trouble than it's worth. The time it takes to finely craft and narrow down on a description means it's not good for creating stuff on a time crunch that a simple RNG prompt generator couldn't replicate. And without the time crunch, I already have enough time to write a flavorful idea without needing the AI. 2. Artistic Endevours: Yeah this is basically a great boon for anyone without art skills. I personally rarely need this due to my massive hoarding of character art scrounged from all over the internet over the course of like, 15 years I've been into TTRPGs and creative writing. But on those rare occasions you need something like "Elf whose skin is made of wood with vine dreadlock hair" it cane save me time to create than then trying to find it in my massive collection or find something similar on google. 3. Game Mechanics and Rules: Do not do this. The AI is very dumb and will lie all the time. My friend has ended up making wrong rulings or giving out treasure that doesn't exist because he used AI as if it were google to "Find me interesting treasure for a level 3 pathfinder 2e party." or "Tell me the pathfinder 2e rules for using a rope to cross a river." It has generated loot from 5e and 3.5, loot with 0 rules on how they work, said once than a Moderate Healing Elixer heals 2d12+12, and that monsters can use an extra action at the end of initiative if they are a higher level than the party. The AI is f#*#ing stupid and a pathological lair. Do not rely on it for rules.
Look, I'm not going to pretend like I've never gone on pintrest or google images, searched out a image that matched my character idea close enough, and than grabbed it to use as a token in a game. Hell, that has been the majority of how I've visualized my characters, as I do not have 50 to 100 dollars to spend on every single character I've ever played, especially when the one time I did spend 76$ on a commissioned art piece for a character, they died 2 sessions later from blind bad luck. AI art is basically that same methodology but done by an algorithm instead of manually. It's definitely not an okay thing to do in a professional setting, and for home games it's iffy. The iffiness comes from a need for moral consistency, and the idea that if you start carving out exceptions to when AI is okay and not okay, than it becomes a downward spiral to all your favorite artists and writers being replaced by a corporate-run and trademarked line of code. Personally, I think using AI to create character portraits is fine, because 90% of all TTRPG players were going to just go ahead and use stolen art from a google search, deviantart, twitter, pintrest, tumblr, or wherever else they see cool art of a character, if not just straight up lifting it from other commercial art like concept art, video games, anime, films, and character design sheets posted online. You will always be a bigger person and more respected for commissioning a character, but I don't think people deserve shame for using a free tool to make character art for personal use in a homebrew game.
There is also a pretty sizeable contingent of people who believe vehemently that Dinosaurs should be as they have always been portrayed, as giant scaly lizards essentially, and reject the idea of feathered dinosaurs. As it is a rather niche issue, people who believe this can proliferate all areas of society, including the art world. It's possible one of Paizo's artists felt this way when drawing the art, and there simply wasn't any time to care enough to get a new piece done from this artists. I don't want that art as Iguanadon, but I do want that art as a fantasy beast in the game. That wrong construction of an Iguanadon is absolutely adorable in an ugly dog kind of way.
There is also a pretty sizeable contingent of people who believe vehemently that Dinosaurs should be as they have always been portrayed, as giant scaly lizards essentially, and reject the idea of feathered dinosaurs. As it is a rather niche issue, people who believe this can proliferate all areas of society, including the art world. It's possible one of Paizo's artists felt this way when drawing the art, and there simply wasn't any time to care enough to get a new piece done from this artists.
Harm font on a cloistered cleric, tbh, feels a bit like you have a bunch more focus spells. Like, harm has bad scaling for damage in a lot of ways. A single 1d8 per spell rank means that at rank 3, it does the damage of a acid arrow, which is a 2 rank 2 spell, and woefully behind the curve. However, it is basically Elemental Toss but with a saving throw instead of an attack roll. Viewed in that lense, getting 4 and eventually 6 of these for free with the remaster means you have damage that is higher on the damage curve than cantrips, but can't be replenished like a focus spell. So it's a bit awkward of a design space. But hey, Harming hands can make your damage a d10 instead of d8, which does help punch up the damage a tad if you don't mind sacrificing one of the many very good other feats to get it. Honestly I think that Warpriests are better able to utilize a harm font better than a cloistered cleric. Channel Smite helps you really get a lot out of a harm font by letting you stack accuracy buffs on yourself, and possibly true strike if you pick the right deity to get it, without needing to worry about dealing with fort saves on tanky creatures. On a cloistered though, I'd say its a little disappointing but there is absolutely an argument to be made for having some free damage that does more than cantrips on hand.
And here is the big one, The DM can modify non-combat situations as needed or wave them off if the player comes up with a better solution. You know what? The majority of players enjoy a DM that let's a creative player solution work in non-combat scenarios.If I can just ignore the rules completely, why am I playing the game? You absolutely can just ignore combat rules in the same way you ignore social or exploration rules. Hell, I've done that in my own game via an adhoc'd fisticuff duel my barbarian initiated when he punched someone in a bar for no reason and started a fight. I just smashed together the victory point system and a hard DC with the players Athletics checks to do a bar fight. It was 3 hours, 42 minutes into a 4 hour session and I did not have a statblock so I took a combat and turned it into a social rp where at the end of the brawl, they were buying each other drinks and he'd earned a reputation in the town as a good brawler. Combat, Social, and Exploration all function the same way. And you can adhere to or disregard rules as you and your table desire. There's nothing that really elevates combat or lowers social/explorations importance other than a GM's preferences and parties habits.
That's amazing, thanks for sharing.
I think given the information, perhaps a mixed media approach would work better. Dndbeyond will sometimes upload YouTube videos where Jeremy Crawford talks about design philosophy or developer intent for upcoming releases. Perhaps paizo would benefit from doing this, since they have a channel mostly used to release AP trailers and such, they could use this and make videos covering the iconic and perhaps going through a level 1 through 20 character leveling. It may prove not just more cost efficient, but more up to date with how a modern audience might want to consume such content.
[J]ustifying their build choices just seems really power tripping.If the Iconic characters are meant to help new players understand how to build a PF2 character these annotations would be extremely helpful. It's a bit of work but not an unreasonable request. I think if they were meant as mechanical guides, I would agree. But that doesn't feel like what the Iconics are supposed to be. I always felt they were more roleplay examples than they were mechanical examples. Like a player may go "What kind of person is a thaumaturge" and look to Mios to understand "person exposed to spooky events that researched their way to fighting it." I don't know if they're supposed to have mechanics attached to them as like a Pf 1e thing that I'm not aware of, but I was under the impression they're not meant to serve as a mechanical guideline, and the actual classes themselves posses example characters with their own artwork in the side margins for you to use mechanics wise.
I'd be completely down for suggests 1 through 3, that seems like a fun little project and I would enjoy learning more about the iconics. 4 and 5 seems a bit odd, especially for the explanation of it, since icnonics can sometimes change what they're doing based on the AP. Like, do we need to give Lini some archetypes for her preforming given her act on the cover of Extinction Curse? 6 and 7 just seem completely unreasonable to me, the devs should not be expected to release content for a 3rd party APP that they don't officially acknowledge. Paizo is very friendly to what other would describe as piracy to their benefit, but asking them utilize pathbuilder to make a character and include annotations justifying their build choices just seems really power tripping.
Takes a lot to admit when one's been wrong. For what it's worth, I hope you find success.
I'm blown away by the assertion that int is the worse stat when it gives you more skill proficiencies, which is massive in my book given how useful skills are in this edition. As it stands now, Intelligence for Magus is in the same boat as Wisdom is for Ranger and Monk. If you want it, it's there for you to make use of it. If you don't, you don't need to. That's not a bad place for intelligence to be in, in all honesty. Also, perhaps this is just a weird take, but you seem oddly fixated with optimization, to the point it seems like it's directly impacting your ability to have fun with the Magus class. Buffing up your spell DC is a choice but you always have spells you can cast. They're called cantrips, and you have the ability to spellstrike with them just as you do with your normal spells. Keeping a saving throw cantrip for AOE's isn't a bad idea to cover your bases. Hell, even as someone playing a Magus, 16 int and a fireball have done wonders when we had to deal with a long ranged group of enemies. Additionally, having a little bit for blazing dive when the enemy is far away is a good way to get into the action vs just "I shoot ray of frost and walk 25 ft up" for 3 turns if the enemy is far away enough. Would it be neat to see a few new class features for magus? Sure, that's always fun. Is magus in this state where if you aren't picking Psychic Dedication and getting Imaginary weapon than you can't play the class? No it isn't.
The issue really is that previous editions never gave a crap about debuffs unless they were like, massive debuffs. The hierarchery was like, encounter ending debuff > damage > regular debuffs. Or in another way to put it, Remove opponent from fight entirely > kill them > make them kinda bad at fighting. PF 2e wants you to do more of the last two and doesn't want the first one to happen as much. It wants you to buff and debuff, which is why it gives you so many different consumables and spells and such to get to that goal. The big issue is that if you make a it so that you can essentially brute force your way through any problem, then it becomes pointless to even bother writing other solutions since you have 1 damage spell that can just force success no matter what. It's why kineiticist works, it's a self contained weirdo that can just brute force its way through things, just like how it was a self contained weirdo brute force class in PF 1e.
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