Dark Midian's page

Still not sure what I make of this being the GenCon release in lieu of something more substantial like the Character Operations Manual.

On the whole redemption thing, don't forget that one of the potential after-campaign subplots for Wrath of the Righteous was attempting to redeem a Runelord lich.

Pretty sure it was established in AP #100 that Aroden was flat out murdered, but who knows if that'll get retconned in PF2.

I recall that various Paizo devs have stated that they regret giving Pathfinder era golarion such a long history spanning so many thousands of years before the "current" era where the game's being played. The pathfinder game mastery guide even advises GM's who create their own setting to keep the time scale considerably shorter than what the paizo devs did.

In addition to preventing them from having to establish a hard canon for how certain adventures turned out make decisions that leave pathfinder players feeling dejecting in a 'well it was all for nothing' way if their favorite country got conquered or the planet got blown up, which get avoided in a 'it still exists & is safe but it's just isolated' scenario, the Gap also means that they don't have to worry about covering the thousands of years of history between Pathfinder & Starfinder for the other worlds, either. History for Starfinder extends back 300 years and that's all they have to worry about.

James Jacobs mentioned in his thread that if he had the chance to do it all over again, he'd cut the expanses of time by a factor of 10, considering 10,000 years between the fall of Azlant/Thassilon and the current day (Give or take) is a LONG time especially in real life terms. Like, 10,000 years ago we were cave dwellers just getting the hang of pottery and people were really starting to get into agriculture and animal domestication.

What page is that info on? I tend to only read the information that applies to my currant playthrough or for future pc creations. So i have not come across that info.

Page 158, under Appendix 10.

Xenocrat wrote:

I'd like a FAQ update.

Me too.

It's very near the top of my list.

Thirding this.

gustavo iglesias wrote:

Locotomo wrote:

Yes, why don‘t you take 30 mins of your time and update your core rulebook pdf, especially starship combat dc‘s?

That would be awesome, thank you very much

Don't think that's done in 30m

I'm a graphic designer and so have some idea of the process it would require. If given access to their systems, I could have it done in 5. The only thing holding it back is company policy.

^ This. They could easily make an errata PDF like they do when a book goes into a new printing, put it on the product page, and say, "This document will be added to the official book once we run into a new printing, for now people can print it out." The only thing stopping them is their errata policy and the time/money investment of the team doing more errata and someone whipping up such a PDF.

I kind of feel this way, but mostly for errata and such. It would be great if we could get some of the SF team to sit down and do another round of FAQs for the Core Rulebook and the Armory.

That's surely a must have!

Again, what's a Monad?

Mentioned up above. New name for Aeons.

I honestly thought Mark stopped checking this thread, since the last reply was almost five months ago.

Something something designed for PFS, something something no evil characters.

It seems to me this is a problem for organized play but in any home game or in the system in general, you can just make the consumable items much harder to find. Though economical from a GP perspective healing a level 10 barbarian twice take a whole wand and game time.

This article seems to be missing key aspects of game design. Does this make the game more fun, more immersive, or more easily adopted. I would say from the tone of the article the answer is no. The most frequent 1st ed complaint about items was that some were mandatory and filled slots that can be used for more fun and interesting items. It is the reason the company wrote the automatic bonus progression, which became a highly utilized rule system.

This is an answer to a problem very few people had. Look at the success of Borderlands and Diablo people love loot and magic items make them fun and helpful but not mandatory that is how you fix the problem.

Ding ding ding. Resonance sounds completely devised for PFS play.

I just kind of hope we get the stats for the other rods of rule. So far we've gotten two.

Dark Midian wrote:

Still feels weird that they're willing to kill off such a major character. Didn't they say that when PF2 comes out proper there'll be a shortlist of APs that are more or less canon to the new story?

It doesn't feel weird to me, but then again I know the whole story. AKA: Once the whole AP is out, hopefully it won't feel weird to you either.

ALL of the Adventure Paths will be made canonical to the world with 2nd edition, in any event. For some that'll have world-defining elements, but for others they'll almost be non-events since they don't have particularly wide-reaching implications.

And all will assume PC success. I'm not comfortable canonizing results that a group might feel makes their play through an AP obsolete, and canonizing an AP as a PC failure, as tempting as that is to set up some unexpected new twists to the world history and lore, isn't worth it.

Naturally, some of the successful outcomes are guaranteed as they contribute heavily to PF's overall world and possibly SF's world (The Runelords trilogy, Curse of the Crimson Throne, Second Darkness, Council of Thieves, Iron Gods, Hell's Rebels/Vengeance) but some of the other stories being canon like Reign of Winter, assuming Anastasia is the new ruler, and Wrath of the Righteous where Baphomet and Deskari are dead and the Worldwound is sealed, is pretty nuts.

Still feels weird that they're willing to kill off such a major character. Didn't they say that when PF2 comes out proper there'll be a shortlist of APs that are more or less canon to the new story?

Now that that's all settled, let's get back to some mild spoilers.

Marco Massoudi wrote:

Skeld, which Runelords survived how?

** spoiler omitted **

Marco Massoudi wrote:

Which RLs are fought in which books?

** spoiler omitted **

-Skeld

We need to get our resident numbers junkie Mark Seifter in here.

Maybe it will turn out Xanderghul doesn't actually exist or something so he doesn't have stats :D I'm trying to guess what would be biggest plot twist related to master illusionist

Xanderghul and Sorshen will likely be taken out either offscreen or through McGuffins considering this isn't a mythic AP and both of them have considerable mythic tiers, so I honestly doubt they'll have hard stats. Alaznist makes the most sense to fight since she's just barely scraping mythic.

I just want to see the stats of the remaining five weapons of rule.

Echoing someone else's post that they should just rebrand Gorum as CE and rename him not-Erythnul, considering that's what they seem to be going for.

Dark Midian wrote:

I have to say, I'm definitely more than a little disappointed that hand cannons are single shot only, although I understand it's to balance out the high damage small arm.

That's only true of the first one. The later level models have increasingly higher capacities.

I don't know how I missed that. Thank you, booze birb.

I have to say, I'm definitely more than a little disappointed that hand cannons are single shot only, although I understand it's to balance out the high damage small arm.

James Krolak wrote:

Man, the editing on this book really fell short. I'm less than 1/2 way through it and I've found so many typos and mistakes in terminology.

Editing is a dying, if not dead, art. :-(

To be completely honest, Paizo's GenCon books generally have this problem: They have to be shoved out the door in order to make the convention, and a lot of the time they don't get the quality checks that they need. The fact that a Pathfinder-only term like sneak attack made its way into Starfinder is really, really sloppy.

But don't worry, you can get the updated version if everyone pays them enough money and they sell out this printing. ;)

Out of curiosity, how many hand cannons are there, and do they have any neat effects?

Don't we already have a magus guide that's basically the guideline for magus guides?

Kurald Galain's Magus Guide

I'll be blunt: This playtest is not an alpha, not by a longshot. It's barely even a beta. This is more like an interactive sneak peek of their new system, with the chance for us to help tweak a few minor numbers. I would estimate that unless there is some very, very strong universal feedback on certain mechanics like say resonance, nearly all of the major mechanics are set in stone.

Sounds neat, looking forward to seeing the new and clarified rules for them!

... cant shake the feeling though, that stagstep suit looks oftely familiar somehow. Destiny maybe?

Other than the huge stag horns, it actually does look like an armor set a Titan from Destiny would wear. There is actually a Warlock helmet that has horns like that; appropriately, it's called "The Stag". :P

Those hand cannons are bringing my operative one step closer to living out my Destiny-style Hunter fantasies.

1. By RAW, no. You can choose to touch a creature while holding the spell or to strike them with a weapon, but not both.

2. Yes, it would extend to the next attack you make, and you can hold the charge. Remember that touching another creature, friend or foe, makes you discharge it onto whoever you touch.

Damn, that was super fast. Good job.

AnimatedPaper wrote:

Gisher wrote:

Are the Lantern Style feats related to Lantern Archons, lantern staffs, standard lanterns, or something else?

The what? Do you have a page #?

Oops! Those are from Distant Realms. Somehow I got two plane-focused books released on the same day confused with each other. ;)

Well, Distant Realms is the Golarion supplement to Planar Adventures, so you're not wrong... ;)

That's pretty solidly evil. Cannibal or not, you're intentionally making this (Mostly) sentient human your living trap detector heedless of what happens to them. Killing them in combat defending yourself is one thing, this is another.

magnuskn wrote:

Honestly, the magic item crafting rules are one of the first things I will look up in the playtest book. They have vexed me for the entirety of 3.X/PF's existance and I hope that the devs have made them less prone to break campaigns.

The designers have made them less prone to break campaigns (and simultaneously less likely to be useless in the way Excaliburproxy noted while I was typing this post).

Honestly, they were one of the first things my group had to houserule in PF1, and one of the only rules I can think of where the PF1 rule wasn't an improvement over the 3.5 rule (removing XP cost as a thing was a good idea, but replacing it with no cost for magic item crafting was not). I feel like maybe you and I have talked about this from before I worked at Paizo, but that may have been someone else in the Paizo board community.

Let me guess, it will likely be like SF where it's practically useless unless you want something customized or need to make something that you can't get at the moment?

Hopefully the Starfinder Armory book will address this.

Out of combat and in an abstract sense the tier of the computer determines how powerful it is. Last session one of the people in my group had an argument with the GM because the GM said that the basic comm unit, something analogous to a modern tablet with vid-com capabilities, didn't have a forward-facing camera to take some pictures for data preservation because it was tier 0.

In reality, the dueling sword is basically a futuristic rapier and should be an operative weapon if a sword cane is, but I'm holding out hope that Starfinder Armory will add more operative weapons.

Thankfully, aside from the APs there aren't a lot of books to get behind on in SF. Once you've got the framework for AA down I'm sure adding the APs and Pact Worlds will be a breeze.

For literal years my group got by with a game mat that we all pitched in on and beer bottle caps with numbers and letters written on them with Sharpies for "minis", glass stones for tokens, and any lid we could find for bigger enemies.

If I were going to protect a building that I live in, I'd prefer something less toxic than lead . . . .

But I like the original post recommended solution to scry and fry.

Why do you think most casters go mad? It's the lead in the walls. ;)

Skeld wrote:

And a lot of that went back to Paizo's orginal request of the gaming community (the same request they've made in every playest since and the one they're running for PF2): they wanted playest feedback, not theorycraft. "I created a DPR spreadheet of this attack option mechanic and found it to be mathematically inferior to this other attack action mechanic" will always get less designer attention than "I played this and I had fun." It's baked into the DNA of the playtest: play it and give us feedback.

Saying "that's what Paizo asked for" is just kicking the can down the road. And can we dispense with the pseudo-wisdom that "mere theorycraft" is somehow less valuable than the results of what we can assume are not rigorous tests? Theorycrafting is the result of a playtest with an infinitely large sample size. You don't need to run experiments to find out what the rules of the world are when it's a simulated world whose rules are readily available.

"My Rogue has no trouble hitting" is fairly meaningless for testing purposes. Maybe you did have trouble hitting and don't remember it, or your rolls happened to be mostly good, or the GM used lower AC enemies than usual, or, or, or.

Lots of people have fun playing RIFTS or WoD, partly because playing games with your friends is fun in general, and partly because the settings of those systems are fun for many people even though mechanically the systems are tire fires. "It's not fun" is often a good indication that something's wrong, but "it's fun" is not necessarily an indication that nothing's wrong.

You. I like you.

While the devs can say that "theorycrafting takes a backseat to in-game data" all they like, a group of several hundred players doing number-crunching is much more likely to find errors in the system's basic math than the roughly dozen people they have working on this book, assuming everyone is devoted to the crunchy number bits. Sure, you're going to get people who are going to use theorycrafting to try and say a class is over-or-underpowered, but that's a good chance for someone like Mark Seifter to pop up and explain a class's math and why the previous claim is either correct or incorrect.

We basically already have a de facto errata thread, even if it's a bit old.

Um, which spells exactly? A cursory search of my core PDF says that there is no blanket entry for material components for SF's spells. I'd guess that it's specific trumps general, and then just read the spell and guess whether or not the materials are consumed.

These seem to be a proficiency category. I have a few questions about these two

1: If someone is proficient in long arms but not sniper weapons, would they take a -4 to all attacks with a shirren-eye rifle or would it be better to just have it lose the Sniper property?

2: Do the special weapons need proficiency each or just a blanket Weapon Proficiency(Special)?

1. Shirren-eye rifles are sniper rifles and require the Sniper Weapon Proficiency feat to not take the -4 penalty for nonproficiency. Sniper rifles are not longarms in this setting.

2. The Special Weapon Proficiency feat literally states that you select one type of weapon with this and only gain proficiency with that type, although you gain proficiency with different models of the same weapon. It's basically exactly like Exotic Weapon Proficiency from Pathfinder.

Remember, now that in SF lore is core, you don't really have to have player companions be a separate thing. That was all the original player companions were, just lore supplements to the setting-neutral system rules.

Are there any plans to make printable errata? It would be nice to have printable errata to stick in my hard copies.

Errata is usually released in three forms: A separate PDF that you can print at your leisure, an updated version of the book's PDF with the errata incorporated, and a reprint of the physical book with the errata incorporated.

The trouble is, the physical book selling out is required for a reprint. I believe the SF core rulebook already sold out once and is on its second printing with no errata, so who knows how long a third printing will take.

The first one. It is oddly-worded, but the "against agents of House Thrune and so on" part is supposed to apply to both of the previous bits.

Paizo did the right thing by making single-classing attractive over the 3.x Frankenstein's monster builds of yesteryear.

I'm legit hoping the final AP has the PCs building up to fight a rampaging Tarrasque, and PF1 ends with the entirety of the Inner Sea region devastated and rebuilding.

Given that we have both the d20srd and Archives of Nethys, is the Paizo PRD really all that important any more?

I know people say its "official" but it seems to have at least as many bugs in it as the other two sites

Yes, technically. It's basically the resource document for PFS; if it's up there, you don't need to bring a book for it.

Charabdos, The Tidal King wrote:

Madclaw wrote:

Charabdos, The Tidal King wrote:

NetoD20 wrote:

They are changing small aspects of their costumes. I would absolutely love if Ezren were to get a pointy-hat.

Assuming he's not too old to adventure now.

Are you kidding? Ezren may be getting older but he still keeps in shape. I mean have you seen mythic Ezren? Dude is swole! His adventuring days aren't done yet.

It's been 10 years since PF1, and he was already really old by then, he could've died of old age by now.

I figure his age is kind of fixed in time. Like how Batman has been in his 30s since the 1930s.

Batman is at the youngest in his late 30s, if not early 40s. Dick Grayson and Jason Todd are both in their early-mid 20s.

None of these are basic, common or sense to me. They're more of "a history buff is mad because they want a simulation of medieval Europe and what they get is some Gygax guy throwing names at things at random" frankly.

Hey, I'd love to do away with "studded leather", rename it "brigandine", and make it obvious that the metal plates are the main protective component and not the leather. :v

The other ones really are kind of pedantic, especially the dagger one; what, did you want the dagger to be 2d6, x4 crit just because people used to finish others off with it?