DM Alistair's page

DM Alistair wrote:

Kill alignments.

That would be an evil action.

Sometimes one must do evil for the greater good.

DM Alistair wrote:

They killed alignment restrictions on every other class except Cleric though they hogtied the cleric even more by stating they MUST worship a god while in 1e it was stated you could choose not too.

I am all for that as I hated Clerics of "Concepts", messes with too much stuff. Normal Clerics got their powers bestowed upon them. Clerics of Concepts believed in something really strongly, no matter what it is, and they gave themselves superpowers out of it. Really bizarre dichotomy.

DM Alistair wrote:

Either all good or the four-corners.

I'd love Paladins to be any Good and Antipaladins to be any Evil.

"Concept" Clerics are no worse than any other concept in the game where you have characters running around bestowed with powers from gods, power from the fact their grandma got jiggy with a devil, people who rage so hard they become better swimmers, and any number of other things. But hey at least you're chill on the Paladins = any good. I kinda cut it short but yeah I am down with Anti-Paladins = any evil.

Though I would say kill alignments wholesale but I guess they refuse to do that for some reason that I honestly cannot fathom.

Kill alignments.

They killed alignment restrictions on every other class except Cleric though they hogtied the cleric even more by stating they MUST worship a god while in 1e it was stated you could choose not too. Listen, Paladins should be allowed more alignment leeway. Either all good or the four-corners. But what do I know, I'm like 2 inches away from dropping Pathfinder entirely because it seems like for every time they try to change the game for the better it fails and what I've seen of 2e I am not impressed at all. There is not one thing I have read or seen or heard of that makes me go "yeah, I want to play that/run that." Not one thing. And the paladin issue just goes straight to the fore of the list of issues I've had with the game since 1e's release.

Alright, new playtest document, let's give this a look over...

Half-Elves and Half-Orcs not being their own ancestry but things you buy into via human ancestry? That and base human not having a proper level 5 feat like all the other ancestries?

Now, let's check out the backgrounds...

Not the worst thing ever but I do wish there was more oomph to them, maybe a scaling thing for level like ancestry and class. And speaking of class!

Alchemist - No longer a pseudo-caster, I can get behind that. This doesn't seem too bad, at least with a first glance over.
Barbarian - No more alignment restriction but I'm also not too keen on the anathemas, they don't seem too well balanced against one another.
Bard - Is now a full caster? And rather than it be an arcane one it's an occultist? What? That's a pretty big departure. But if you're willing to make departure for everything so far, maybe there is hope down the line for one specific class in particular...
Cleric - Seems about right, though I still take offense to the "absolutely must worship a god" bit. I've always loved clerics who cast/fight with determination in a set of beliefs rather than simply being imbued by a deity.
Druid - Don't really see anything that stands out as "oh, that's neat" or "oh, that's silly." Again, this is just a first reaction so who knows, maybe I missed something.
Fighter - Seems to have a fairly restrictive skill list again, but moving on, it seems to be somehow even more straightjacketed than ever by actively pushing heavy armor, heavy weapons on the player. Like all of the classes, I really wish there was more variety to them, things not unlike archetypes again. Still, this does seem more fun to play than the 1e Fighter at least. I'll need to give it a try at some point.
Monk - Alright, not too shabby in my opinion. I'm not seeing an alignment restriction here. Let's give the rest a look... Skills seem slim like the Fighter again, but maybe that's the kind of goal Paizo is going for I guess? And the feats seem fun enough. Not bad, probably the best looking class so far.
Paladin - And now the big one, the one I've been looking forward to. Alright, let's see if... What? They still need to be LG?

And I've dropped the game. I'm sorry, there are so many things that were already starting to make me anxious (Occultist bards, half-elves and half-orcs not being their own thing, weird anathemas, and I skipped ahead and they don't even have weapon cords so yeah, let's just nerf people who use weapons more.

I'm not mad, I'm not surprised. I'm just... Disappointed. I'll still do the surveys but hot damn, I hope the people at Paizo wise up about a lot of this stuff.

Surely I'm not the only one who read the post and said "Why do these spells look like Powers from 4e?" Right? Not saying that's a bad thing (I loved 4e) but still, it reminds me a lot of that.

GIBZ ABSALOM PLZ K THNX

Jade Regent

I know one of my players is super excited for this. Me? Not so much. I've yet to even run a proper RotRL campaign...

I like curing wands since it lets the party keep going. What next? Nerf wands of magic missile?

Tarik Blackhands wrote:

Conversely

"Throw another fireball Gandalf!"

"Sorry, I only studied it once the night before, I can't do it again,"

"You wha-"
-Death by orcs

Doesn't happen in any fantasy novel either. Turns out that most RPG mechanics don't actually translate to other mediums. Weird that.

But those novels are what most groups are trying to recreate at their table.

I have never once met a group that tried to emulate Lord of the Rings, not even in the One Ring RPG. 70% of the time they become Monty Python and the Holy Grail knock-offs and the other 30% is something more akin to the Slayers anime.

Still not liking resonance...

DM Alistair wrote:

You'll have to forgive me if this has been covered elsewhere but there seems to be some confusion for me in this book for the Argent Dramaturge and it's Argent Performance ability. Reading the full write up, it states the following:

Quote:

At 13th level, an argent dramaturge can start an argent performance as a swift action if she chooses.

The only issue is that this prestige class only has 10 levels in it. That's fine is by level you mean "total levels of all classes" but this is a bit of a problem as in the prestige class's Class Features block it lists that they receive this ability at Argent Dramaturge level 7 specifically.

The wording assumes that a player will go into the class immediately at 7th level. While this could be true for 99% of the players who choose to do so, there may well be some people who do so at, say, level 9! The wording in the feature would then make it appear that they would be able to do the swift action part of the Argent performance ability at Argent Dramaturge level 5 even though the class features block clearly shows it at AD level 7.

Just thought I would bring this to your attention.

There's no errors. The Argent Performance ability works fine as is. The 13th level ability kicks in when the character is 13th level. Which means that if she only took the class after taking 12 levels in bard, then she gets this ability IMMEDIATELY upon taking her first level of argent dramaturge.

Well then, awesome!

Something to do with Absalom?

23) Will I finally be able to romance that ogre that's been eating my hogs?

Yeah, if this is going to limit things like what my character can wear for a day, it's not cool. I can see it being a thing to limit wands, staves and maybe rings but I will rage out (and I rarely do) if this is extended to cover other gear.

Signs point to - Maybe.

Classes should be as open as possible within reason, limited only by codes, oaths, divine anointment, etc. Archetypes can impose alignment, racial and even gender limitations within reason.

But I'm also all for chucking the alignment bits altogether, especially since it sounds like detect evil will be focused more on INTENT rather than ALIGNMENT now.

You'll have to forgive me if this has been covered elsewhere but there seems to be some confusion for me in this book for the Argent Dramaturge and it's Argent Performance ability. Reading the full write up, it states the following:

At 13th level, an argent dramaturge can start an argent performance as a swift action if she chooses.

The only issue is that this prestige class only has 10 levels in it. That's fine is by level you mean "total levels of all classes" but this is a bit of a problem as in the prestige class's Class Features block it lists that they receive this ability at Argent Dramaturge level 7 specifically.

The wording assumes that a player will go into the class immediately at 7th level. While this could be true for 99% of the players who choose to do so, there may well be some people who do so at, say, level 9! The wording in the feature would then make it appear that they would be able to do the swift action part of the Argent performance ability at Argent Dramaturge level 5 even though the class features block clearly shows it at AD level 7.

Just thought I would bring this to your attention.

And the more I hear the more I get excited! Looking forward to August and nabbing a playtest book!

Awesome! Thanks for making this!

Folks... let's take a breath here. We get that people are passionate about paladin, and we have an entire blog scheduled to look at the class.

I don't want to spoil it just yet, so please give us some time. I promise that we hazve looked into this deeply and I think we've come up with a pretty great solution.

*Holds breath in hope Paladins can be any alignment and are just renamed Warpriests*

I personally want to scrap alignments but that's me. If they do keep alignments, why not have the four-corners paladins (LG LE CG CE)? Choice isn't bad, is it?

Disregard grids, acquire theater of the mind

I would also like to see each creature get a special base ability and more difficult ones get their own reaction abilities as well like how 4e did it

I think I read somewhere that you can attack 3 times at 0/-5/-10 but if you have a special weapon property (agile I think? Don't quote me on that) it drops it to 0/-2/-4.

My question is why not make it just 0/-2/-4 core?

DM Alistair wrote:

KILL ALIGNMENTS PLEASE

Why?

Alignment is useful. It helps provide quick shorthand for characterization. From a DM perspective, it's useful for the many, many NPCs that get thrown our way. It can influence tactics and motivations without spending paragraphs detailing such.

More often than not it causes arguments, particularly where Paladins are involved (ie Orc Baby Dilemma or the "if your character ends up using an unholy weapon, even if they are unaware that it is unholy, does it make the paladin fall" or the dreaded "I burn the orphanage to the ground because I'm chaotic neutral, lol!")

And, having played plenty of systems without alignments, I can say that many of these arguments just never arise. Even in 5e, which kept alignments, by making them more or less unimportant except for a few extreme cases it has opened up the field to a whole lot more roleplay potential by making players not feel straight-jacketed into alignments and having to not only police their actions but also having the other players and the DM police them too.

I honestly hope they ditch alignments or at least downplay their significance. Then again I also hope they ditch most of the Paladin class and make it more-or-less the Warpriest but that's just me.

KILL ALIGNMENTS PLEASE

I am absolutely loving what I am hearing! Keep this up, Paizo!

DM Alistair wrote :I never understood the hate against 4e and 5e.

For me, it was because when WoTC hyped their upcoming 4.0 and told us : «in the meantime, keep playing and buying D&D 3.5.» Only to find out later thant the 500$ worth of stuff I bought from those dweebs, would not be useable with 4.0. So I stuck with Paizo and Pathfinder and never gave WoTC another dime.

And most of 3.5 was invalidated in Pathfinder except by GM fiat.

4e was a fun game, I honestly, truly wish people had given it a proper shot. 5e is also a fun game and appears to be just plain dominating the market in both sales and visibility with so many podcasts and such showing people playing it and discussing it.

I said it already but I'll say it again - Change is not bad and Paizo as a company needs to innovate to stay afloat. If they don't then their fan base will continue to shrink. The d20 system is nearly 20 years old and it's showing! What was once new and exciting (feats, the sorcerer class, skills) are now so worn down and trodden over that many people either balk at them or just try to find new and exciting other things (Why play a sorcerer when you can be a bloodrager? Why take that feat which requires 4 other feats to unlock when you could use this 3pp feat that does the same thing and is only 1 feat? Etc etc).

PF2E? Yes please!

Bloat is a pejorative term used by gamers to manipulate perceptions.

Pathfinder mechanics are more like battalions of an army moved into position as needed. There is no bloat.

I just plain have to disagree with you. There are tens of thousands of rules, many options that should not be tied down in certain ways (such as Power Attack being a feat and not just something anyone can do) and more. And the sheer amount of rules turns of many players (I had one prospective player balk and leave after seeing d20pfsrd and panicking that they would not be able to make a viable character even AFTER I and the other players stated we would help them build one).

I'm a bit of an oddity in that I have loved every game I've ever played. Basic D&D, AD&D 2e, 3(.5)e, 4e, 5e, Pathfinder, Strike!, LotFP, DCC RPG, White Wolf, WHFRP 2e, The One Ring, BCG/Z, BFRPG, Darker Dungeons and more!

I HATE edition wars. They are divisive and more often than not bring out the worst in the gaming community. I loved 4e and feel so slighted that so many people balked at it simply because it was different. I felt the same way when people balked at 3e when 2e was winding down. And, while it was not as pronounced, I know more than a few people who freaked when WotC announced 5e.

Pathfinder 2e is something long needed. the d20 system is being weighed down and becoming far too bloated to be healthy. It needs to slim down or die from it's own weight.

That does not mean I hate Pathfinder! I love Pathfinder! I fully intend to continue playing it just like I do so many other games! Change is not bad, change is needed lest system fatigue occurs.

So bring on P2E! I embrace it!

I never understood the hate against 4e and 5e. It just does not gel with me how people can rage so badly at a game. You don't like it? That's fine! At least acknowledge the game! "It doesn't feel like D&D!" What is D&D? Original was literally "dungeon crawl and try to rob monsters of loot," Basic much the same. But the game evolved and began to be more narrative-focused as the years went on because more people joined in and became invested in the game. Saying 4e (or 5e in some people's cases) isn't D&D just makes no sense because 3e certainly does NOT feel like Original or Basic or Advanced D&D! And I remember the massive RAGE people had at it because of that!

Change is not bad! I certainly wish more people had given 4e an actual chance because it was good! And 5e is just crushing it sales wise and play wise (look at the number of games people are looking for it/running it on Roll20 or in numerous gamefinder forums across the net)!

Pathfinder needs to innovate or it will die. Like others have said, the massive rules bloat can make making a character daunting and the massive power discrepancy between spellcasters and martials is just ridiculous! I've had players at my tables quit because the differences in power and I've had players back away from games after looking at the sheer mass of rules the game has. Check out the srd or any other site that has the rules listed and imagine if you were brand new to the hobby and people directed you towards Pathfinder only to see not only 10,000+ rules but errata buried deep in more errata, forums filled with players having to detail ways to make sure your character doesn't fail at what they are supposed to even do and how you NEED 3pp supplements to make certain builds even possible.

Streamline and cut the bloat. There is 0 reason why feats should be so deep just to do one thing, that wizards can make almost any other class useless (and yes, just for fun once I ran an all-wizard party and yes, they summoned in monsters that were better fighters than fights or healed better than a cleric, cast spells that made them sneak better than rogues and more!) and balance the issues that have been yelled about from one end of the internet to the next for the last 18 years!

Bring on Pathfinder 2e, I invite it! If it makes the game even remotely easier to run or play in, then it is both wanted and needed imho.

This is something I've been thinking they needed for a long time (since at least 2014) but never thought would happen. The massive rules bloat, trap options, feat trees and more turn off so many players! Indeed, I'm running a game irl and the session 0 I ran a few weeks back I had two players quit because they were pulling on info from d20pfsrd and didn't know how to make heads or tails of the rules and were beyond terrified of the sheer amount of rules they would have to deal with. Both of these players are still in my 5e and my newer Genesys games btw and have been playing longer than even I have (one player has been around since AD&D 1e was new)

Getting the system updated and hopefully making more of the classes on-par with one another and streamlining character generation will be a big step forward imho and could help provide even more choice for players.

I, for one, welcome our new 2e overlords.

1057: It's Princess Eutropia, not Princes Euphamism.

Still super ecstatic about this game!

If I do get to play this AP, I'm feeling like trying out a Bard and, as soon as possible, taking the prestige class Lion Blade.

I hope that the next hardcover, assuming they do make a proper AP hardcover, should either be Second Darkness or Kingmaker. Considering the love Kingmaker is getting (such as a video game set for release this August) I doubt it will be that. I personally hope it's Second Darkness so long as they tweak the story line some to not make so many of the elves just plain bad and tie the extra adventures in the back of each softcover into the actual story proper.

But chances are it will be Kingmaker because everyone loves it so very, very much!

I'd be down for an OotA game! Almost got into one irl a few months back.

How would you handle stats? Point buy, roll or the static array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10 & 8)?

The priest rises and looks at the 'young' child with a mix of curiosity and happiness. "And who might you be?"

Walking over he looks down at her and then at the others. "This is the Ebon Pixie one has heard so much about? Are they to join you in your journey to save Blaine and the town?"

Flu bug didn't get me down, my birthday did...

Oh wait! All it did was greatly distract me and my fiancee (and friends and family and one unlucky coworker) all weekend!

Hint: Never party hard unless you plan to party hard. Or play board games really late into the night when you have to be up super early to drive 5 hours round trip for a doctor's (well, specialist) appointment! Yay!

Sorry I missed the last few days, as the above states (indirectly I guess), last few days was spent mostly hanging with friends and family (and watching movies and playing games with said people) and dang I lost track of time MAJORLY.

Did see Deadpool finally though so there is that.

Anyway, checking on thread now and please no more "happy birthdays" (one can only take a ten hour loop of it so long in the background...)

@Alany - It's at the very beginning of the (quite large) post I made. It's in a click spoiler
The kindly old cleric grins at you all (sans Alany/Ebon Pixie). "I've little doubt you all will be victorious."

The priest walks over to the group and looks them over. "Indeed you are. Hopefully my prayers to the Clockwork Goddess are finally being answered." Touching his holy symbol he walks around the group and smiles.

"So, you all wish to go and save Torch and Baine then." Looking at Hiromi he gives the samurai a warm smile and lays his hand on her shoulder. A slight fuzzy sensation fills her. "Blessing of Brigh be upon you."

Turning towards Tristina he nods. "You're new here, I believe. I thank you for taking on this role where so many have come short. Blessing of Brigh be upon you." Lightly laying his hand on the Elf a similar sensation courses through her.

Arriving before Lucky he looks the man over. "Baine's son. I hope you the best on your mission. I would not like to see your sister become a complete orphan. Blessing of Brigh be upon you." Tapping the man's shoulder a sensation much like fizzy water fills him.

Approaching Van he looks at him in his eyes. "Van if I'm not mistaken. Well, my child, may Brigh's blessing be upon you." Laying his hand on the android the same feeling overwhelms him.

"I have blessed you with my hands, the hands of Brigh on Golarion. For the next few hours you have the ability to breathe water like a fish but also the air like any of the Gods chosen." Approaching his alter, which looked more like a workbench he kneels before it slowly, his age showing itself. "If you all need any assistance, I ask you come to me. I may be an old man, but I still have a fire in my soul to rival that of this town's namesake. Go, my children, Baine and Torch are in need of your skills."

Huh, apparently Paizo ate my post. Alright, reposting it now.

Val smiles a little before agreeing to it.

MEANWHILE, AT THE LEGION OF DOOM!

Wait... Sorry, wrong script...

After a short walk through town, the party (not including Alany/the Ebon Pixie) arrive before the town's sole temple. The main entrance is surrounded by small clockwork devices, bronze windchimes play in the wind. The smell of tanning leather, grease and other odd scents waft throughout.

As the party enters, a small side area is revealed holding small trinkets and other wares, but the main chamber ahead is where some commotion is going on.

"I have greater things to tend to than talk shop about the constructs Sanvil! Once Khonnir is back then we can talk." Ahead in the main worship hall an older human male in work leathers and a holy symbol to Brigh about his neck stands before a younger and rather handsome human dressed in fine clothes, a sword about his waist and a small clockwork bird in his hands.

The older man turns to the party and raises a hand. "My childs, unless you are from the Town Council, I'm a little busy at the moment."

The younger man turns and quickly walks past the party, pausing for a moment to look them over before turning back to the priest. "We'll talk soon, friend. And sorry for bothering you at this time."

Running a bit slow, huh? Would you all like to fast forward to meeting Joram Kyte, priest of the Clockwork Goddess Brigh?

My character = Lady Vibia Aulorian

Val smiles and nods at Van. "Thank you sir." Turning towards Hitomi, she looks at the smith a tad curiously before she wipes at amother tear. "I'll try. Now, you all should get going. If there are more of those things..." She points nervously towards the now decapitated robot. "Then dad and his team might be in a lot of danger."

Hugging Lucky she looks up at him. "Be careful, bro. And if things get too tough, get back here, Lucky..."