CultClown's page

I am glad you didn't see that as a justification, as I had clearly stated I wasn't trying to justify anything. But, then again, you decided to edit that part out of your response.

What I was trying to do was explain why things in a volunteer situation don't necessarily work like they do in a normal employment position. So comparisons between the two are not 100% accurate. And just because I sympathize with a desire does not mean I agree with a decision.

Bill,

I apologize if my use of the word justification was unclear. I was questioning your premises, because I don't think they support your conclusion. What you are in essence saying, is that a volunteer workplace should be able to treat their workers worse than a paid place of employment. You may not view it that way, but when I read your post, that's what I see.
My post is not in relation to your previous comments about this exact situation, and I agree, there are a number of unknown factors. I'm not accusing you of not taking sides here, I'm simply stating that your conclusion is faulty.

[...]Volunteers, especially those with actual authority, are hard to come by and because of that, I can sympathize with the RVC's desire to keep you both on board and hope you can work together.

Honestly, I don't see how your point justifies your reasoning. If a volunteer feels threatened, disparaged, or otherwise harassed, telling them to continue working with the person who has caused this hardship is frankly unethical. Sure: Paizo has a lack of volunteers, but people are much less likely to volunteer if this is how they are treated. Furthermore, that does not justify being complicit in damaging a person's social standing and emotional well being.

[...]I’m not going to sacrifice my sanity or self-respect for a game. And I’m certainly not going to keep giving my time and energy to an organization that has just told me, effectively, that it doesn’t give a s*!% about my feelings.

Stirring this cauldron is the last time and effort I’m going to give to Organized Play. And I’m sure as hell not going to spend any more money on Paizo products.

I can honestly say that you have my sympathy here. It sounds like you're in a bad situation, and I definitely support your decision to step back from Paizo and organized play (events in the SE region have made me contemplate doing the same, and they have not affected me directly). That said, I really do hope that Paizo will come around to solve this sort of issue. My experiences with Paizo have been predominately good, but years of running smoothly has left a lot of waste to fester.

I sincerely hope that the raft of issues coming to light at this point will catch somebody's notice.

If the intent really is to discuss the ingame decemvirate, than let’s do that. The duality of this thread is irritating.

While I agree, the duality of this thread definitely makes it difficult to read and somewhat irritating, I think that there is an interesting regional point to make (even if an entirely different one from the Original Poster's).

As someone in the NC region, there is a lot of love for the Shadow Lodge as an organization (which I haven't heard when talking to people from other areas). While some of this stems from a certain set of scenarios and their... less than flattering portrayal of the Ten, and some doubtlessly comes from great local GMs putting a lot of care into core NPCs, I think a lot of it comes from the comparisons between the in game events and their real life counterparts. It's an easy place to project discontent, and NC (and, judging by a lot of posts the South-East as a whole) has had a lot of that for a long time.

As was mentioned on other threads, issues like the current ones don't brew over night. In my opinion, the reason that five years after being disbanded as a faction the Shadow Lodge is so popular in the NC region is that exact duality, as it offers and easy frame of reference and analog.

Honestly, I really like this idea. If you don't want to over complicate the stat block, it could even go in the description (like the text for improved familiars, etc., goes now). Having summons simply be added to the spell as they're released is far superior to waiting for occasional updates when the monster source material has already been out for a while.

With summons only getting 2 of the 3 actions available to a normal creatures, I think PF2 will be resolving some of the major issues people have with conjurers. Though T-rex v. Glabrezu skirmishes will always be a highlight from PF1 I think that we should have less to worry about massive summoned monsters wrecking encounters while everyone stands around and has drinks, and hopefully it can put the focus on utility. Expanding the list with new releases of bestiaries (as mentioned above) and focusing on adding things that bring utility casting and the likes to the list rather than direct damage would solve a lot of people's problems with the spell chain while still empowering controllers and utility casters.