Dave Setty's page

.....and I don't want PFS1 to change once PFS2 is released. I want it to maintain the same rules and structure it always has.

That structure is based on regular releases of new content, so for PFS1 not to change is simply impossible.

Something to finally vindicate Torch and justify his sometimes shady actions.

Sure.

Something with Ledford.

Ledford's dead, baby. Ledford's dead.

Going by the years, season 13 should have another Ruby Phoenix tournament...

Every 10 years, so something to think about for season 3 of the new game. I hope they can think of another prize that can drive as many stories as the Hao Jin Tapestry.

A bashing shield "deals damage as if it were a bashing weapon of two size categories larger". I read that as replacing the base damage of the weapon. So it'll do it's own damage or your Close Weapon Mastery damage, whichever is greater, but they won't stack with each other.

About to play a Confirmation. My -33 has a [rolls dice, consults Ultimate Equipment] guisarme!

David Setty wrote:

.....

-32 Broomstick

Wait! I thought I was unique with this one!

What do you use for the mechanics?

Just a club.

Except it doesn't exist, yet. Let's leave this thread for actual clarifications, and not prophecies.

Something in a book that's actually been published is hardly "prophecy". We know the PFS team must be considering the details of sanctioning Ultimate Wilderness for PFS, so introducing these questions to that process is perfectly appropriate (so they can be considered as part of that process.)

If you can cast Summon Monster or Summon Nature's Ally 2+, be sure to get Aquan, Terran, Auran and maybe Ignan, in about that order. Summoned elementals can do all kinds of useful stuff if you can communicate.

David Setty wrote:

PRD: "A horse is suitable as a mount for a human, dwarf, elf, half-elf, or half-orc. A pony is smaller than a horse and is a suitable mount for a gnome or halfling."

Dwarves riding ponies was only a thing in 3.0, not even 3.5.

Ponies are smaller breeds of horses better suited to halflings, gnomes, and dwarves, but they also make fond pets for humans as well. They stand 3 to 4 feet tall and weigh about 600 pounds. Linky

Ah, so we're at Paizo's rules writing being inconsistent. In other news, scientists succeed in synthesizing hydrogen hydroxide; new substance described as "wet".

Empirical evidence shows me that this is not true.

Fascinating! I'd love to see the numerical data you've recorded.

I'm guessing Between the Lines, which is an exaggeration, but still a fair point.

No, not a fair point at all. All you need to know is if a class has full BAB, casts arcane, casts divine, or does precision damage, and then maybe decide which modifier to use if more than one (or none). This can be figured out in maybe 2 minutes if every player at the table has an unfamiliar class.

As I said, my tipping point was the adventure that required the GM to know every class in the game,

.....what?

EDIT: I think I've figured out what you're grotesquely exaggerating here. That just required knowing a very basic idea of what a class does, to pick from a menu of a handful of minor effects. Which you can just ask the player of any unfamiliar class for.

I hadn't heard about this until today, and I'd like to extend a big thank you to the PFS team for not allowing it. It reminds me a bit of my experience with a player who used the Crusader's Flurry feat to totally destroy a low-tier running of #8-07: From the Tome.. He'd taken one level of cleric worshiping Gorum and then two levels of barbarian, and he was flurrying with his greatsword, essentially getting iterative attacks with 2-handed Str and Power Attack bonuses at level 3.

So they invested a level of cleric with 0 BAB, had to stick with non-UC monk (for martial artist, since they're clearly not lawful) and 2 feats to get 2.5 more average damage than just doing the same thing with a temple sword? That's actually a pretty anemic return on investment, just the -1 to hit vs. 2.5 damage is worse than power attack.

It would be dishonest of me to phrase this any less strenuously:

If you would rule at the table that it is impossible to charge on horseback with a lance, do not GM in Pathfinder Society.

Any people saying to ignore the rules of the game and to just "houserule" working mounted combat shouldn't GM PFS since that needs to follow the rules and official clarifications of those rules, which we have for mounted combat.

That since they were going so strongly in stating that all or nothing view that I responded likewise to try and prove a point that his view and comment seemed rather silly and clearly not a true comment.

Sure, tu quoque is fair play or whatever, but the difference between my claim that ruling lance charges are impossible shows poor judgement and your apparent claim that the opposite does is that literally[1] everyone but you rules that lance charges are possible.

If anyone wants to try explaining via rules how it's legal to mounted charge with mismatched reach I'm willing to hear it and discuss via PM. Like I've said, my view is just how I feel the rules work with my understanding and that can change.

Tallow's got a good one in the middle of the first page of this thread.

1) I'll retract the "literally" based on evidence that anyone else rules this way, but I've not seen any.

Thomas has a valid but extreme interpretation.

No, it is not valid. Both making it and then comparing the opposite to "just ignore the rules for cover and concealment for no reason" are not within the bounds of what I can take as being argued in good faith.

It would be dishonest of me to phrase this any less strenuously:

If you would rule at the table that it is impossible to charge on horseback with a lance, do not GM in Pathfinder Society.

There are things about CMB builds that rub me the wrong way;

To be effective you need to specialize so hard that you tend to become a one-trick pony. On the one had this leads to one trick being used to shut down any encounter. On the other it can lead to strained attempts to apply the trick to situations it really shouldn't ("I want to reposition the evil fog monster with my longspear").

Lorewardens used to not have this problem....

PFS NPCs often can't cope with maneuvers. They don't have a backup weapon, holy symbol or spell component pouch. Any somewhat experienced player knows to spend the 20gp, but NPCs are also on a word count budget. So for very meta reasons, they're laughably weak against maneuvers.

In my experience you're lucky if the average wizard or cleric NPC in a PFS scenario has even one holy symbol/component pouch (that they need to cast the spells their tactics say they cast), much less a backup.

"We're locked in the moon's gravitational pull! What do we do?"

Rolling a "1" IS knowing the result regardless of whether or not the GM chimes in.

Not really - the player does not know, for example, if there is some kind of effect causing unusual results on a natural 1 or 20. (This is something that does in fact occur, in PFS scenarios.)

Does a rose by any other name not smell as sweet?

In a recent session we used speak with plants to question several rose bushes and discovered that "Florinda", "Horatio", and "Steve" had very similar fragrance profiles overall.

A '-' isn't the same as a 0 attribute - the creature doesn't have that ability at all. So you can't add to it.

perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the in-Golarion form of thralldom practiced in the Lands of the Linnorm Kings.

A) Enslaving POWs is evil. B) "Criminals might have to work as punishment, therefore slavery isn't wrong!" Sheesh.

and can even file complaints against cruel or unfair masters.

But they rarely do because they'll be punished for it. Seriously, that's right in the page you linked, which is all of three lines long.

So far, yes. Just take the dayjob roll and don't ask questions.

Of course, since a day job roll is assumed to happen over an extended period, expect the usual consequences for multiple wantonly evil acts. Though to be fair the GM should warn you of that first.

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

Treating humans and other sentient races as chattel, especially participating in the kidnapping them into slavery, is evil... period, end of story.

This is not fair and needlessly antagonistic.

This is absolutely fair. None of the slaver nations in Golarion is in any way like this, and the idea of "nice" forms of slavery in real history is at best highly exaggerated.

("Treated like family"? Are you serious?)

David Setty wrote:

No, we've ha multiple rulings on equivalent things (rapist, torturer, etc.) It's not legal.

I disagree. Slavery is not evil in Golarion. Therefore it's totally legal.

Where does this nonsensical idea come from? Slavery is legal in certain countries in Golarion, but the idea it's not evil is ridiculous.

First, let's start with the CRB definitions of good and evil. (This shouldn't be necessary, but some people seem to think they're just team names in the game and not actual words that mean things.) "Good implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings," which is in no way compatible with slavery. On the other hand, evil characters "debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit." Evil implies "hurting" or "oppressing" others. Debasing, hurting, and oppressing others - generally for profit - is as good a descripton of slavery as I can think of.

"Slavery in Golarion isn't that bad." While there are things like indentured servitude and time-limited enslavement for crimes, all of the places that have them also have full on chattel slavery as well. And while not exclusively racist, there is a racial component - halflings are generally enslaved everywhere slavery exists.

"Sarenrae is good, and also the main religion of Qadira, where there's lots of slavery." No. Most obviously, if Qadira's overall morality was the same as Sarenrae's, they'd have the same alignment - but Qadira is not good-aligned. The section about Sarenrae in Faiths of Purity also states, "Though slavery might exist in your culture, it is an abomination to you." For a more thorough takedown of this, see this post from James Jacobs - to summarize, the church of Sarenrae does not run Qadira, and the church in Qadira has itself slipped quite far from Sarenrae's actual teachings.

There's also the fact that all the anti-slavery groups in the setting are good-aligned. There are exactly three good-aligned human nations in the setting - LG Lastwall, with the major goal of fighting the CE orcs of Belzken; LG Mendev, fights CE demons; and NG Andoran. The Eagle Knights, as an organization, are LG. The Bellflower Network, from the Faction Guide: "Freeing halfling slaves and moving them to countries without slavery, like Andoran, puts the faction firmly on the good side of the spectrum." If opposing something is defined as good, it can not be seriously argued that that thing is not evil.

I completely and utterly disagree that having two builds for the same character based on GM decision on gray areas is legit.

It's actually inevitable. For character options that can't be changed after selection (and are of legitimately arguable legality):

This outcome is, of course, ridiculous. Table variation on legality of options that can't be changed if they are legal just doesn't work. If there's a legitimate gray area on that sort of thing, I don't feel the GM has the authority to force a change that can't be undone. Just run with it and wait for the leadership to make a ruling.

(Test for "legitimate gray area": you think the player is actually arguing in bad faith. But I emphasize this is only for rulings that can't be reversed - if the ruling won't apply at the next GM's table then just rule as you see fit.)

As an example, when someone plays a pre-generated character at above the level of their current character and holds the chronicle.

Kind of curious - anyone from the Omaha crowd want to explain how you handle this situation?

Interesting that the GenCon call for volunteers is coming before the PaizoCon call for volunteers, given that P is two months earlier than G. (Or did I miss the PaizoCon call?)

Seems like they pushed it forward so GMs getting comped badges but not hotel rooms can get into the Gencon housing lottery.

This is quite the tricky conundrum.

...
2.1) The entire effect ends, but the PC still has to clear the permanent negative levels.
...
To me, #2.1 feels like the best option. It's not especially punitive, and it doesn't open up weird character design loopholes. Thoughts or concerns?

2.1 all the way. Fair and unambiguous.

Finlanderboy wrote:

nosig wrote:

Muser wrote:

The diplomat in question rolled 1 on their die. A bonus of 12 just did not cut it. It happens.

And people wonder why I like to Take 10....

Well ten is below average on the roll and 22 might not have worked either.

But 22 is much more then 13...

22 is a complete failure in the lower subtier of the scenario in question.

Hah, I just ran this yesterday and kind of tripped over myself because I forgot what was in the last handout, used the Harbingers for the final ambush, and made a bunch of references to The Sky Key Solution. The effort to make this one more timely is much appreciated!

Wouldn't mind seeing First Steps 2 back, it's a decent dungeon crawl. OTOH, the series overall (part 1 especially) spends too much focus on the factions which mostly don't exist as described anymore. (And can't be as easily "patched" as you have here with Wounded Wisp.)

1) Nohwear is the original poster.
2) Despite the passion, we've been mostly constructive, attempting to find common ground and solutions. I'm really proud of that.

1) Oh, missed that.

Now my last reason is a bit tongue and cheek, but it is what I am hearing being said by people clamoring for race boons. This may not be what you are saying, but this is what I am hearing.

Not tongue-in-cheek at all, just old-fashioned hostile and insulting.

I will have GMed at 7 cons this year, 6 of which I volunteered for in advance. I paid to get into zero of these cons, because I volunteered to GM. Only Origins and GenCon required more than 1-2 slots, and Origins was just 4 to get into a 5-day con with 13 slots. Frankly, GenCon's the only one where the extra effort of GMing is substantial compared to the reward of getting into the rest of the con for free.

Also, at many cons I've gone to I've GMed less than I volunteered for because they had more GMs than needed. This year's GenCon was my first where I didn't have at least 2 tables not make. OTOH, getting GMs week in, week out, to keep local game days going is like pulling teeth - so to me it's clearly not the cons that need more incentive.

Jayson MF Kip wrote:

D] GM. CORE or Standard doesn't affect your side of the screen.

Oh, but it does.

It really does.

Sometimes it's nice to play a game where everyone knows what everyone else is capable of doing.

PC builds are only trouble if you go looking for trouble with them. Generally, you tell the players what the NPCs do, they tell you what the PCs do. And if they tell you "237 damage", so be it. You don't really need to know more about how the PCs work in advance than the players do about the NPCs - less so actually. The consequences are less significant.

I tend not to take 3-7 Tier and up chronicles anymore, as it just prevents me from playing my higher level characters.

Best use is to push level 6s up to 7 IMO.

Misplaced animosity is the only thing I would expect.

Still, I have gotten a few "Well, I prefer a real gamer's game. Most of those who prefer Classic are just min-maxing rollplayers anyways." types of comments.

This is in no way a common thing. It does seriously give me a "dafuq?" reaction when it does happen.

Not common? It started immediately in the first thread where core was announced. Several VOs who knew about it in advance came out swinging right away. I recall making one comment about how the Tien regional languages were necessary to represent characters from those countries and was promptly yelled at - by a venture officer - for trying to destroy Core by forcing in the entire Dragon Empires Primer, the ISWG, the Advanced Player's Guide, the Technology Guide, all the other sourcebooks, and probably the synthesist summoner as well (I lost track).

So this thread's started up again.

So the "lol u mad anoran bro?" slave-owning PC types are one thing. Jerks gonna jerk, after all. I can't take them seriously. The problem I'm having, that bothers me more the more I think about it, is with the Shiny Happy Slave PC types.

I want to first say that I do not believe that any of this is the intent of the players in question. It is, however, the effect that results.

Slavery has /never/ not been awful. Anywhere it's existed, in any time it's existed. And trying to pretend that slavery isn't one of the worst crimes a human can commit has an ugly history that continues to this day.

Then, we have characters presenting "slavery" as a state that can be super wonderful, such that the slave would be 100% against freedom even if achieving such was completely in their grasp. And this is bad, because they're presenting a terrible terrible institution in a way far more benign than it has /ever/ been in real history. (Or - correct me if I'm wrong - any canonical place on Golarion. Though I'm well past in-character objections at this point.)

All this makes me extremely uncomfortable. It's as if, in the middle of a session, another player narrated his character's wife showing up, him telling her he's too busy/not in the mood, and then she drops a /dominate person/ and drags him off. And before you object to the analogy, realize that slavery has /always/, wherever and whenever it has existed, come with lots and lots of rape.

And I don't know what to do about it. I mean, "don't play with those characters", sure, but I go to lots of cons. Probably 8 this year. I GM at cons. So if I'm ready to run a table at Gen Con, and one of the players introduces their character as Jane the Knife or 8255 or whatever? It's a legal character, and I owe that player the game they paid for - to say nothing of the other 5 players who are here to have fun. But I can't just brush this off anymore. What do I do?

Ugh. I've resisted quitting PFS over much more severe, and personal, BS, but this is just eating at me for some reason.

Yep. In a world where you have people empowered by the gods able to raise the dead, heal any wounds, call down miracles and level towns with earthquakes it doesn't seem like there's much space for atheism at all.

Indeed. Consider - magic missile never misses. Never. Who, upon witnessing such perfection, could ever doubt the power of Ballisticus, God of Projectiles? (Praise to Him be unending as He is unerring!)

I have a friend (perhaps he'll post) that plays a Halfling named "8255", which is the identification number tattooed on her when she was born.

(Dave Setty here.) This is my favorite character by far. A freed former slave is a great background for a Pathfinder.

So I've been meaning to get this post together for a while and this thread is as good a place for it as any:

Yes, slavery is evil in Golarion.

First, let's start with the CRB definitions of good and evil. (This shouldn't be necessary, but some people seem to think they're just team names in the game and not actual words that mean things.) "Good implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings," which is in no way compatible with slavery. On the other hand, evil characters "debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit." Evil implies "hurting" or "oppressing" others. Debasing, hurting, and oppressing others - generally for profit - is as good a descripton of slavery as I can think of.

"Slavery in Golarion isn't that bad." While there are things like indentured servitude and time-limited enslavement for crimes, all of the places that have them also have full on chattel slavery as well. And while not exclusively racist, there is a racial component - halflings are generally enslaved everywhere slavery exists.

"Sarenrae is good, and also the main religion of Qadira, where there's lots of slavery." No. Most obviously, if Qadira's overall morality was the same as Sarenrae's, they'd have the same alignment - but Qadira is not good-aligned. The section about Sarenrae in Faiths of Purity also states, "Though slavery might exist in your culture, it is an abomination to you." For a more thorough takedown of this, see this post from James Jacobs - to summarize, the church of Sarenrae does not run Qadira, and the church in Qadira has itself slipped quite far from Sarenrae's actual teachings.

There's also the fact that all the anti-slavery groups in the setting are good-aligned. There are exactly three good-aligned human nations in the setting - LG Lastwall, with the major goal of fighting the CE orcs of Belzken; LG Mendev, fights CE demons; and NG Andoran. The Eagle Knights, as an organization, are LG. The Bellflower Network, from the Faction Guide: "Freeing halfling slaves and moving them to countries without slavery, like Andoran, puts the faction firmly on the good side of the spectrum." If opposing something is defined as good, it can not be seriously argued that that thing is not evil.

To some extent, I agree. Rank-and-file Pathfinder agents probably don't know what's going on in the Repositiry, but (a) this is an organization founded on uncovering secrets, so it's a fair bet that many agents have found out what's in that big above-ground building out in the back yard, (b) the slavers who sell them to the Society know, and the people they tell, and ... (c) there are a lot of elements of the Society that the book says are secret, and then does not reveal. The Repository isn't that kind of clandestine knowledge.

Heh. How to enter the building is "presumably known only to the Decemverate itself." It's "purported [by who?] to house the only complete set of the Chronicles still in existence, complete with 'lost' volumes..." Contents of those lost and suppressed volumes are the kind of secret knowledge you're talking about.

But... there's 66 guys in there all the time, writing? Do Snidely Whiplash and his Nine Magic Idiots, being the only ones who know the way in, personally go in there to serve meals, supply paper, and haul out the chamberpots? Or at least drag out the corpses when they die of old age or eating the products of Murlynd's Spoon all the time or whatever? In fact, does any part of this make any damn sense whatsoever?

So yeah. That one paragraph in Seekers of Secrets might constitute the single most ludicrous bit of canon in the whole setting.

Chris Mortika wrote:

Two reminders:

1) The Grand Lodge Scriptorium uses slave labor to pen the Pathfinder Chronicles. (Indeed, we remove the tongues of the people we purchase on the slave blocks and then we place them under a life-long gaes to copy any printed material set before them.) So long as your PC is a Pathfinder, and he hasn't freed the Society's own slaves back there, you shouldn't get your knickers in too much of a twist.

Yes, there are in fact certain parts of canon that must be ignored to justify non-evil characters in the Pathfinder Society.

Ya know, I've been thinking about this and while I have no idea where it comes from, this has got to be one of the worst things in the whole setting. First, it's just pointlessly evil for evil's sake.

Second, it's stupid. Just completely idiotic. Like "who gave Snidely Whiplash a Decemverate Helm?" dumb. One, "lifelong geas?" Geas/quest is a sixth level spell lasting up to one day/level, so they've either got an 11th level spellcaster spending all their spell slots recasting this on these guys, or an even higher level one who researched up a custom spell to do this instead of like inventing a writing golem or something.

Two, "I know! We'll cut out their tongues so these guys who spend all their time writing stuff down can't blab our secrets!" "Great idea Snidely!"

Three, to quote the Inner Sea World Guide, pg. 257:

It's all just so stupid.

Whats The point of owning a Slave then?? if they have no stats and you get no mini for the board why spend the gp?? seems like a waste to me. I would want a slave to carry my pack, hold a torch, stand watch at night and warn of danger, possibly pick locks and or send them forward as a way to search for traps. The last one being if I was evil.

Otherwise there is no point to owning a slave other than to say "Hey look I own a slave"....

1) To show off how much you'd like to play an evil character if only the rules allowed it.

2) To rub other players' noses in their inability to stop you from doing things they (and their characters) find abhorrent.

Same reason people keep wanting to take profession: rapist or torturer really.

So after a post-game conversation Sunday I was pleased to find this line in the ranger class description:

Planes (pick one, other than Material Plane)

So if your dream of taking Favored Enemy: Aspis Consortium doesn't work out, you can console yourself with Favored Terrain: Hao Jin Tapestry. :)

Korvosa. The Guide to Korvosa is some of Paizo's best setting material. A vigilante character would be perfect for the Curse of the Crimson Throne AP too.