DeltaPangaea's page

Anyone else notice the deep irony that the caster meant to have access to all its spells at all times, the Sorcerer...

Now has a class feature that they need to swap per day, which changes what spells they can cast?

DeltaPangaea wrote:

I'd be cool with this, although I feel like Sorcerer should have a BIT more than just an extra 4-5 points.

And letting wizards cast any spell they have in their book feels like a bit much. Maybe leave their preparation thing in place, but harshly limit the amount they can have prepared at once? Like X points worth of spell level. I dunno. Mostly just yeah, an extra 4-5 points isn't enough, that's not even one cast of higher level spells.

So, those 4-5 extra points over the wizard in actual play really feel like a huge difference. I mean, think about level 1, wizard has at most, 5 spell points, which means 5 1st level casts, while the sorcerer is chucking out 9. That would really make you feel the difference between the two styles of caster. At higher levels, say 5 for example, your wizard has 9 spell points now, but the sorcerer has 13, which doesn't sound as big of a gap, but that's at least 1 extra 3rd level spell the sorcerer could cast over the wizard and way more 2nd and 1st level spells if they don't need their highest level one.

Having the wizard being able to cast any spell in their book, but perhaps taking an extra action to consult their book to cast the spell, seems totally fine. They have to have a free hand and take an extra action, but the upside is they should just about always have the perfect spell for the job this way, making them the real "swiss army knife" of a caster, just like they should be.

I'd also suggest that we keep the current idea that some feats also increase your spell point pool and apply it to this magic system. For example, if you are a conjuration wizard and focus heavily on your school feats, you should get rewarded with more spell points as well as the new school powers.

That's really heckin' imbalanced dude. A wizard having access to all their spells, even at a slower pace, is way stronger than sorcerer not even getting one extra cast of his higher level spells.

Friendlyfish wrote:

Wizards don't quite have the versatility that one might be led to expect from last edition. Look at how much it costs to learn additional spells outside of leveling. You might learn an additional 2 spells of each level by draining all your wealth by level currency.

Please remember than learning a spell in 2nd edition has a lot more value. You do not have to learn summon monster 1 to 9, learning a single spell gives you that.

I think that the increased value to learn spell is a direct consequence of the new spell structure, where individual spell have a lot more value than in 1st ed.

Unless you're a sorcerer of course. Then you need to learn each individual level.

I mean honestly, I feel like wizards shouldn't even be able to just buy new spells. From a balance point, not an in-world point. In world it makes perfect sense but...

Mechanically, they're just buying new class abilities. And can have as many of those class features as they want with enough money.

Hell, Clerics are even worse, just getting everything right off the bat. Or at least they were in PF1, I'm not entirely in the mood to crack open the pdf to check if that's still the case in PF2.

But yeah, can Fighters just shell out cash for more feats? Nah m8.

Just to voice an opinion for paizo to see, I would love for 2e to break free from vancian magic. I mean, we've got spell points and "powers" already now, take it a step further and make all spells use a spell point system.

You gain a pool if spell points equal to your level plus casting score. First level spells cost 1pt, 2nd level spells cost 2, ect. At level 3 you could have 7 spell points just by having 18 INT, this leads to the ability to cast 2 2nd level spells and 3 1st level ones, just like the current system.

Wizards can cast any spells in their spellbooks while sorcerers have limited known spells but receive 2x their CHA modifier as bonus spell points from their increased ability to draw the magic out of their bloodline with raw force of will. This makes wizards far more flexible than a sorcerer, but the sorcerer can cast what few spells it knows far more often, hopefully useful to the encounter.

I'd be cool with this, although I feel like Sorcerer should have a BIT more than just an extra 4-5 points.

And letting wizards cast any spell they have in their book feels like a bit much. Maybe leave their preparation thing in place, but harshly limit the amount they can have prepared at once? Like X points worth of spell level. I dunno. Mostly just yeah, an extra 4-5 points isn't enough, that's not even one cast of higher level spells.

As we got older, our tolerance for "fiddliness" and "radical systems" changed.

Honestly I've gone the reverse. While it doesn't sound like I've played as long as you, I played spontaneous casters, could never STAND prepared ones, and now I'm well and truly spoiled by Spheres of Power.

I can't go back now. It's too late for me.

They are flexible in pinch situations. The problem is that with the super-short spell durations there is little incentive for parties not to retire to a safe distance and let the Wizard use Quick Preparation to change out his spells as he needs. Most AP encounters as written allow the party to do that. In PF1E longer running buffs meant that a party had an incentive to do as many encounters in a row as possible and hence the Sorcerer's flexibility was more noticeable.

That's a problem which only has appeared with this new edition, so talk about unintended consequences. At this rate, maybe it would really be a good idea to give Sorcerers Spontaneous Heightening for all their spells. Overall, I feel much less incentive to play a Sorcerer over a Wizard so far, and Sorcerer was BY FAR my favorite class through all 3.X iterations.

Also sorcerers flexibility in a pinch is always going to be limited by their spells known. You can't pick up all those niche utility spells for the one or two times you'd use them, while a wizard can. Sorcerers want the most broadly applicable spells possible.

I'm always a bit surprised to see people railing against "Vancian magic" by saying that's not how magic works in fiction. Really we rarely see the same spell or effect repeated in multiple instances in most works. How do we know that Vancian magic is not at work? We don't. It's just an assumption that smart players make because they don't like the term for whatever reason. How many spells does Gandolph cast? How many are cast in infinite progression? Doctor Strange? Harry Dresden?

First off, since none of these characters ever say 'darn if only I had prepared X spell today', claiming that it IS vancian is more outrageous than saying it isn't. If you wanna say they're vancian, you'll have to present some proof of that. Also, Dresden I know specifically is explained as NOT being vancian.

"I didn't prepare this today" doesn't come up anywhere in most examples of fiction, and the ones it does are Vance, derivatives, or D&D.

"Well it COULD be vancian!" is reaching so hard you might as well be stretch armstrong.

I'd like to chime in here too that Vancian casting, especially PREPARED vancian casting like wizards, is such a barrier for entry. The number of times I've had people ask if they really had to prepare a spell more than once to cast it more than once.

It's archaic, clunky, and doesn't resemble magic from anything these days except itself. It's called Vancian, but it's really just D&D magic at this point. Except even D&D itself has loosened it up in 5e.

I hardly expect this to CHANGE, but vancian casting is the biggest blessed bovine in the game at this point.

Also, Undercasting for spontaneous classes was turned down apparently due to decision paralysis, but prepared casting, where you need to prepare each and every spell you want to use each and every day in the right amounts gets to stay? But I guess wizards have that quick preparing feat now, so that's nice. Pity about people who can't get it.

oh hey level 14, isnt that like, a level after most pathfinder adventures end?

It's almost like being able to summon a strong, expendable mook no matter where you are with no downsides is a powerful ability.

Snip

I mean to be fair, should a cleric be able to turn on a super mode that turns him from a caster into being better at fighting than a guy whose class is ABOUT fighting? I wouldn't think so.

Save or Dies are also honestly poor design in the first place.

>Still

I mean you could sneak and then attack in PF1. You only lost stealth at the end of your turn or after you attacked.

Or do you mean 'still' in reference to a previous version of the playtest?

Yeah I agree with Mark, we won't see lot of high Charisma Wizards.

We won't, but Resonance difference from stats is only really going to matter as much in the earlier game. 4-5 points more is big at level 2, but less so at say, level 16. It's still significant, but by no means worldshattering.

You got a copy of the playtest already? Cuz the wizard blog specifically mentioned that feat in the context of "the highest level of power." Which is not level 4.

I mean, some people have them by now, so maybe you are one.

Not personally, but c'mon man, it's 2018. We're getting screencaps already.

DeltaPangaea wrote:

Especially since wizards can just ditch a prepared spell to replace it with another with one feat now, so they don't even need to leave slots open to be able to respond to things on the fly anymore.

That's probably a highish level feat, and we don't know that Wizards can leave slots empty anymore.

It's a level 4 feat. And takes 10 minutes to use, and can do it as many times a day as you want.

Uh yeah, I'm gonna weigh in and say that decision paralysis is a non-answer.

Undercasting worked fine for psychic magic in 1e, and now it's good in Starfinder too. Why is it suddenly bad civilization now we're in 2e?

Seriously, a sorcerer having to learn his favorite spell at every level he wants to cast it at sounds like a tremendous pain in the rear. They already have limited spell selection compared to a wizard, so this feels even more restrictive.

Especially since wizards can just ditch a prepared spell to replace it with another with one feat now, so they don't even need to leave slots open to be able to respond to things on the fly anymore.

Spontaneous Heightening feels like a bandaid, and undercasting not being a base part of the magic system will make future spontaneous casters more of a pain to play, since they won't have it. Or if they WILL have it, then why is it a class feature?

I feel like it could be clarified a bit on things like the cloak which things are from investing and which from activating. Like the 'pull hood up for bonus' thing is listed the same as the invisibility, but only the invisibility costs a point, the other doesn't.

I feel like it should be made more clear.

Like you've got a heading for each that specifies what each gets you.

Say...

Invest: Something something stealth bonus and ghost sound

Active: Something something invis

Clearly delineate what you get for investing in the item, and what requires a point to be spent.

Also as a secondary point, I feel like... staves might have a BIT much going on with them? Not with their benefits, but with their limitations.

Like you need to invest in it, and then STILL spend more RP to use the spells in it... but doing so also costs the staff charges? Why do staves still have charges anyway? It sounds like wands don't anymore, and you can just use them until you're out of RP.

Charges look like just a daily limit, except it's a daily limit that fluctuates depending on how much you used it. And you did talk about how you've removed a lot of daily limits due to RP removing the need for them. If charges are there to act as a limiter on more powerful spells that you don't want to be as equal in cost as other spells on a staff, you could just make them cost more RP instead of more charges.

TL;DR is that I don't feel like charges are necessary anymore on staves, given that RP exists. It's just another daily limit, and one you need to keep track of since it keeps changing.

Exactly JiCi, that's the point. They don't want huge numbers of iterative attacks. They didn't like how it impacted Pathfinder, especially at higher levels. So they made the max you can get very limited, and made it harder to get more attacks.

The 4-arms racial bonus has a benefit, and it's in line with the benefits other races get. Letting you get a ton of extra attacks just for being a race not only drastically unbalances the race, but also breaks the whole point of limiting attacks per round.

One of the issues with it though is that using those hands is impractical.

There's material for a combat style, and said combat style is not only not good, but actually BAD because it takes so long to draw all your weapons.

Y'know what makes Fusillade even worse?

The four pistols need to be identical.

So it's not just drawing and using all the different pistols you normally keep for different damage types.

Heck, not even different grades of the same base weapon type. You trade in one of your level 1 laser pistols for the next grade up, Fusillade doesn't work anymore.

Aha! That's a good eye! You can ONLY have Enhanced Resistance vs. one type of damage! There's no special addendum saying that you can take it multiple times for different types. Somehow I skimmed right over that.

Also, this means that you can only have Weapon Focus in one type of weapon. Your skills are, as they say, 'focused', and your enhanced resistance is indeed, "training your body to resist a PARTICULAR type of damage" [emphasis mine].

Also worth noting that lasers penetrate force fields, so Enhanced Resistance could be a good way to protect from them, while letting a force field help out against other attacks.

You can only take Weapon Focus once yeah, but once you have Weapon Focus, you qualify for Versatile Focus, so it doesn't really matter.

Basically, if you're going to spend more than one feat on weapon focus, you just get it for everything. Ditto with off-class weapon specialization with Versatile Specialization.

away from books to look up drawing weapons so I will just answer the obvious one.

It would be best to drop the empty guns.

Move Action to draw a weapon. Swift action if you have Quick Draw.

It would be fine if you could draw all your things in the one action, but you apparently can't use more than one arm at a time.

So yeah.

I've just run into how long it still takes to draw your weapons. Like for instance you were a Kasatha (Or person with extra cyber arms) wanting to try and use the Fusillade feat, or otherwise use four pistols at once because it's cool, it takes over an entire round to draw them all, even with Quick Draw. And two rounds to put them all away.

Am I missing something or is this straight-up as good as it gets? Even for a two-armed person, drawing two weapons eats up an unpleasant amount of time, I can't imagine actually trying to USE Fusillade.

Draw three guns round one.
Draw a fourth round two.
Wait until round three because you used your swift on round 2 and Full Attacks need that too. Fusillade.
Now your guns are empty and need reloading. All your hands are also full. Stow weapon as a move action...

The thing is that an Immediate action is your Swift action from your next turn. So once you've used it, you don't have any more, because you're already used that swift action.

This is the weakness of the Swash, too many abilities that all compete for their Swift actions.

Thing is, that I don't think that there's anything in Advanced Weapon Training that would in any way make Archetypes like Brawler overpowered. Even overpowered by martial standards.

Hell, Upon looking closer, Dragoons have a BETTER damage bonus than Brawlers do, since despite Brawlers' starting at 3, a Dragoon's increases by 2 at every iteration, so you can't even point at Trained Grace and say we don't want them having that.

Correct.

The thing to understand is that Two Weapon Fighting is a separate thing you can do WHILE wielding two weapons.

You can dual wield anything you like, you only take penalties if you want the extra attack/s

This is not a new issue. There have been complaints about this since gloves of dueling came out and the ruling was made. AWT just makes the issue more frustrating.

Has anyone actually weighed in on this at all, or are they just ignoring it and hoping people forget about it?

I feel most archetypes are all right. Brawler is a lockdown monster, and a lot of archetypes still have their niche, like Mobile Fighter for ranged/archery builds or Two Weapons. Fighter for consistent use of two, more accurate blades. Not to mention there is the Armor Master's Handbook which might serve as an equalizer for those with Armor Training.

Remember, these books, more than anything when it comes to a Fighter, want to make the Core Fighter just as good an option, if not better in certain circumstances, than archetypes, which in my opinion, is how it should be. The Fighter and its archetypes will finally be in the same position as most classes and their archetypes: different, varying is strengths and weaknesses, but ultimately not (hugely) superior to the core class.

The thought that Archetypes should leave a class largely similar in power to where it began is a valid one, but in no way actually existent in the game. Brawlers already being alright isn't really relevant, since they aren't cut out by design, just clumsy wording.

And what about the Archer archetype, which is the butt of every joke from here to Taldor, and even more so now it can't even take AWT?

With the release of the Weapon Master's Handbook, a Fighter having Weapon Training or not is far more important and relevant than it was prior.

And so we have the problem of this FAQ.

http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fm#v5748eaic9qto

This mostly impacts Fighter archetypes such as the Brawler. Their Close Combatant ability is in almost all ways identical to weapon training, but due to this FAQ, they miss out, while Dragoons (Who also have a higher damage than attack bonus) are happy campers. Even Archers, whose Expert Archer ability is mechanically identical to Weapon Training lose out.

Considering that these archetypes were released before Weapon Master's was even a twinkle in someone's eye, it's not reasonable to expect them to be designed with it in mind, but minor difference in wording arbitrarily cutting some archetypes off from Advanced Weapon Training just won't do.

Considering the FAQ itself even, it seems to have been written by someone interpreting the words of the abilities themselves, without considering the intent behind them.

With the release of the Weapon Master's Handbook, having 'weapon training' as a class feature, is a LOT more relevant now.

According to http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fm#v5748eaic9qto archetypes, while a Dragoon's Spear Training counts as Weapon Training, thus allowing them to take Advanced Weapon Training with the feats, an Archer's Expert Archer and a Brawler's Close Combatant does not.

This deprives them completely of access to Advanced Weapon Training due to slightly different wording, despite the abilities themselves being otherwise functionally identical.

Is this the sort of thing that could be fixed or revised, or is this, for whatever odd reason, intended?

DeltaPangaea wrote:

You seem to be of the opinion that people can change their beliefs at will. That they can just stop thinking something.

If the gods have any connection at all to living mentality (Which they do, or they'd be c'thonian in their dealings), then they can't necessarily easily change how they think either.

I am not, but understand how I could seem that way.

I do think a person can be introspective, and examine their beliefs, and work to change them. Or that they can be changed by the beliefs of others around them, consciously or unconsciously.

But I also think like, things that live for centuries, millennia, or longer, have such a vastly different time scale than humans, that they DO have the time to grow and work through their mistakes. And they have the presence to see mistakes in action or thought.

The ones that don't, are like, neutral. They have the power, wisdom, and influence to make sure their actions promote goodness, and aren't. They aren't actively promoting self gain or harming others, so they aren't evil, those are Neutral Gods.

To be honest, non-ascended Good Gods, likely didn't need such introspection. They were formed knowing right from wrong, and doing what's right to the best of their knowledge and ability. Any change in belief would come from the same thing as it does for humans, increased power and responsibilities giving them a broader, more informed view of the world, and the planes that surround it.

Evelyn Jones wrote:

Except that they aren't. Aroden was slain less than 100 years ago, Asmodeus claims to have killed his brother-god in the ancient times, and at least 4 humans have risen to the position of Deity in recorded Golarion history. So the idea that they are "ancient and undying" is wrong by objective evidence.

As best I can tell, the youngest god (Cayden Cailean) is nearly 2000 years old. I'm not sure how you define ancient, but when a guy is that old, I'm willing to give him the title. And gods being killed is such a...

Here's a question for you then.

"Do they have to have already reached that point?"

Do they have to have finished changing and becoming politically correct? What's wrong with them being on the road to overcoming their prejudices? Hell, we could have an AP where the actions of the party set a god on the path to changing. Imagine if the party was intended to defy Iomedae in the WotR encounter? What if them defying her and her own overblown reaction set her on the road to not being so darn stuck-up?

If everyone's already all hunky-dory, then there's so much less you can do with them.

DeltaPangaea wrote:

Berik wrote:

I get some people not liking it, but D&D has fundamentally always dealt with Good and Evil as objectively true things. This means that anybody using those rule systems to create a game needs to at some point attempt to define what sort of action may be Good and what sort of action may be Evil. Since people are different these definitions will never be universally agreed with and that's okay.

This is confusing enough for companies to get across to people without also adding in substantial flaws into the deity. I mean, if Good is objective, but we can't assume that what a Good deity of family stands for in regards to family life is Good, then where does that leave things? If objective Good isn't meant to be judged from the teachings of a deity where is it meant to be judged?

Obviously everybody is going to draw a different line on where a particular action fits on a Good --> Evil scale. But if you're going to work with an objective alignment system then things do belong on that line somewhere. Nobody is going to come around to your house and slap you if you draw that line at a different place from Paizo. But Paizo need to at some point mention what they consider to be objectively Good for their own work to make sense.

That's the thing though.

The gods aren't 100% infallible. They're STILL people. To assume otherwise implies a terrifying level of personality-death. There's Gods who became gods after being mortals (Like Iomedae and Cayden) who are still portrayed as very human. Iomedae's a petty... person, and Cayden argues with his favoured-prostitute-turned-Herald and apparently made his dog immortal.

The gods are already shown to be sentient beings with their own wants and personality quirks, so they don't get to be 1-dimensional non-characters, existing only to show 'this is good' and 'this is bad'

In an objective alignment system, how is Paizo meant to portray that though? Say a deity has positions A, B & C. A is a clearly Good (capital...

Well how many people with differing views follow the same real-world religion? Hell, I don't even know how many variants of christianity there are.

Kobold Cleaver wrote:

Malficus wrote:

If a good Ranger starts going "All the giants I see are evil, I will destory all giants!" that ranger is straying from good.

Is he straying from good if he says, "I don't like giants, so I leave them be and try to avoid dealing with them. There are some giants that are credits to their species, and I'm friends with them, but they are the exception." ?

Is he straying from good if he says, "I have great respect for the noble savages, the giants. They aren't as smart as humans, mind you, but we should treat them well and leave them alone." ?

Is he straying from good if he says, "I like giants, and willingly work alongside them, but I think they're inherently better-suited to the wilderness. I don't think it's a great idea for a giant to try to assimilate into smaller humanoid society, and would vocally express my disquiet if one made the attempt." ?

If these beliefs were translated into real-life minorities, we'd certainly regard them as prejudiced. They are prejudiced. But they can still be good. A dwarf paladin can make "offensive" elf jokes and try to avoid working with elves and still be Lawful Good as long as he still acts to help and save elves in times of trouble.

I am not trying to avoid this, I think they are all great questions to ask. Like, take the time to look into and question what boundaries an individual, well meaning person has. Explore the other side too, maybe with different characters.

"I know good giants and am friends with them, and I know many bad ones. What is the norm for giants? Why is it that way?"

"Why is giant culture different from ours? Is it right to try and change giants to be more like us? Do giants want that?"

"I know a giant who likes working with us, and wants to join out society. What issues do we need to address to allow that, what compromises need to be made (Like how it'd be hard for him to enter buildings)? Why does he want to leave giant society?"

A lot of these...

You seem to be of the opinion that people can change their beliefs at will. That they can just stop thinking something.

If the gods have any connection at all to living mentality (Which they do, or they'd be c'thonian in their dealings), then they can't necessarily easily change how they think either.

I get some people not liking it, but D&D has fundamentally always dealt with Good and Evil as objectively true things. This means that anybody using those rule systems to create a game needs to at some point attempt to define what sort of action may be Good and what sort of action may be Evil. Since people are different these definitions will never be universally agreed with and that's okay.

This is confusing enough for companies to get across to people without also adding in substantial flaws into the deity. I mean, if Good is objective, but we can't assume that what a Good deity of family stands for in regards to family life is Good, then where does that leave things? If objective Good isn't meant to be judged from the teachings of a deity where is it meant to be judged?

Obviously everybody is going to draw a different line on where a particular action fits on a Good --> Evil scale. But if you're going to work with an objective alignment system then things do belong on that line somewhere. Nobody is going to come around to your house and slap you if you draw that line at a different place from Paizo. But Paizo need to at some point mention what they consider to be objectively Good for their own work to make sense.

That's the thing though.

The gods aren't 100% infallible. They're STILL people. To assume otherwise implies a terrifying level of personality-death. There's Gods who became gods after being mortals (Like Iomedae and Cayden) who are still portrayed as very human. Iomedae's a petty... person, and Cayden argues with his favoured-prostitute-turned-Herald and apparently made his dog immortal.

The gods are already shown to be sentient beings with their own wants and personality quirks, so they don't get to be 1-dimensional non-characters, existing only to show 'this is good' and 'this is bad'

Kobold Cleaver wrote:

Berik wrote:

I'm not a fan of some of the Torag bigotry myself and wouldn't have a paladin code like that. Having said that however, bigotry against fantasy races is pretty different from bigotry against something that really exists. I can feel more comfortable saying that a race that doesn't exist shouldn't exist, than I would be in saying that about something which is actually real. Maybe orcs are objectively things that deserve to die, I've never met one so couldn't say... (though in my Golarion they aren't automatically...)

And I think it's that need to ignore basic verisimilitude to keep Golarion "comfortable" that is leading to the complaints. It's the same deal with the claim that patriarchy just didn't develop in Golarion's cultures.

In what way does what I said break verisimilitude? I'm saying that wanting to persecute members of an objectively always evil group within the context of the game makes some sense for a 'good' person, while wanting to persecute a group that isn't objectively always evil is a different kettle of fish.

Lets look at two possible statements from an author:
1) "It's okay to kill orcs in my game world because they're always evil."
2) "It's okay to kill blacks in my game world because they're always evil."

My point is only that those two statements would not equally influence how I viewed that author.

The issue is that these races AREN'T always evil in this setting. Iomedae triple-hates Tieflings, but they aren't always evil. Orcs and Goblins aren't always evil. Hell, even Evil Outsiders don't technically HAVE to be evil, even if they usually are 99.9% of the time.

Halae wrote:

Malficus wrote:

Is it ok? Is there a Good god who promotes hatred or oppression of certain races for being that race?

Yes. As was discussed earlier, Torag supports the hatred of goblins, orcs, and other classical enemies of dwarfkind.

Dang. I feel like that should be addressed more than like, trying to say "Being a bigot is compatible with being good".

Halae wrote:

Malficus wrote:

-rest of the post-

Well, I agree with the essence of your post, but I think you're missing the crucial bit that I addressed; this is a double-standard, and any feminist can tell you those are bad. I do feel that any Good god worth flying spit will help guide and deal with a 'monstrous' race that turns out to be not so monstrous, but in many cases the general mood is "it's okay to kill them because members of this race are generally evil". Otherwise many more priests would refuse service to adventurers due to their vocation of killing things indiscriminately for loot, glory, and the greater good.

I'm sorry, I didn't intend to over look any double standard. I agree that it's not cool for "Mysogynist/transphobe" to be outside the domain of goodness, but not 'Racist". You seem to be taking this to mean "Let mysogyny/transphobia also be traits of good people" and I'm taking it to mean "Eradicate racism from good gods. Either make them not racist, or not good."

Promote the idea that good gods and their religions preach fighting evil, which is wholly different from fighting 'evil races'. Orcs, goblins, drow, etc are not things to be fought and killed, unless they're aggressors disrupting the peace and lives of innocents.

Treat adventurers who kill indiscriminately as NOT GOOD. Because being a racist indiscriminate mass murderer is NOT A GOOD THING. People who kill others purely for money and glory, who say they serve a greater good, without working to make sure they are actually fighting evil and harmful elements of the world are NOT GOOD PEOPLE.

Do not promote...

People aren't saying it's 'cool' for bigotry to be a flaw for someone to have, but that HAVING said flaw doesn't intrinsically make them Evil.

It doesn't have to be accepted in-world as a good thing, it just needs to be accepted that people aren't perfect, and morality isn't black and white.

I'm not a fan of some of the Torag bigotry myself and wouldn't have a paladin code like that. Having said that however, bigotry against fantasy races is pretty different from bigotry against something that really exists. I can feel more comfortable saying that a race that doesn't exist shouldn't exist, than I would be in saying that about something which is actually real. Maybe orcs are objectively things that deserve to die, I've never met one so couldn't say... (though in my Golarion they aren't automatically...)

That's the issue though. It ain't internally consistent.

It's wrong for a god to say that women should maybe have a baby at some point, but genocide is A-okay so long as it's another race?

I think it's also worth noting that Erastil could just be slightly against homosexual relationships from a sheer 'doing it wrong' point of view.

Two gay lads can't 'settle down and have kids'. They can adopt for sure, and I think Erastil'd be pretty happy with that, but despite what PC Backstories might tell you, not every village has an orphanage they could adopt from. And if gender-changing magic isn't common enough for everyone to be the gender they want to be, then it can't be common enough for every gay couple to swap their gender to have a kid, if they even considered that an option.

And if you're not having kids, then for one, if you're a farmer, then you're at a big disadvantage. You'd have to work harder and be more frugal, which leads to less time available for interacting with your community. You can't help your community out as much when needs must... And when you die of old age, you didn't leave living people as part of that community.

There's plenty of practical, logical reasons for Erastil to be a little unhappy with homosexual relationships without stuffing him into a wife-beater.

Will anything come from the questionnaire we answered to Chris Lambertz on that one thread? Like, most importantly more input from the forum for solutions of pieces that are in need of errata (and I still argue it should not be called errata, but rather revision or something). And possibility of including non-errataed versions of things somewhere in the SRD?

From the looks of this, it's actually not a bad errata.

It looks like that's started to be implemented on the SRD. Like, if you look on the Divine Protection page, it has the old version crossed out (But legible) under the highlighted-in-yellow new text.

Which is the best thing, because then it still serves as a resource for people who preferred older versions.

Genuine question: How many of these problems come from inadequate game-testing? Could Paizo do a soft release in PDF form only, and then sell print editions only after the chief problems have been revealed and (hopefully) solved in play? I know that you already do this to an extent when you release early versions of new classes and rulesets for playtesting and player feedback, but would it be impossible to make the PDF publication of new texts another round of playtesting to make sure you get it right?

Also, how many of the problems arise from the simple fact that, the more feats, classes, spells, magic items, rulesets you create, the more combinations of such become possible, the more complicated the game becomes, and the more corner cases multiply? I certainly remember that happening to 3/3.5. Is the solution then perhaps to just *stop releasing new class collections and new rulesets*, and instead concentrate on all your other lines? (i.e. adventures, campaign setting expansions, game supports like flipmats, cards, minis, etc.?) In the short term it may not produce as much revenue as pushing out a new big rulebook every year, but in the longterm it may generate more revenue because the core game is viewed as stable and dependable, and new players constantly get drawn in to the proven, reliable experience.

All I actually hear about the playtests is that no feedback ever gets taken on board and they're only used to generate hype.

Which, y'know. Ain't a good thing if it's true. The Kineticist would probably be less awful if they did, and the Medium might well have more spirits...

Zwordsman wrote:

Question.

Are the online resources kept up to date with alterations? While we tend to get the books.. more often than not we use a quick search on the paizo prd.

It appears that the PRD has been updated (from the couple items I have looked up).

DeltaPangaea: An additional reason for clarifying the Urban barbarian is because without the "modifies rage" text, technically the ability didn't count as the Rage ability at all (for purposes of other things, like Rage powers).

Bravo btw, oh mighty PDT.

See now, I can understand that. That's sort of what Errata should be. But they should have looked at how the ability was potentially being used based on its wording and decided on whether that was actually valid or not rather than just stomping on it and going 'NO. NO FUN PERMITTED.'

I've got a character right now who's an Urban Barbarian, and I was really excited for the point when she'd be pushed enough emotionally to go into a full berserk rage as opposed to just using her anger to boost her ability. Which I could do by the rules.

DeltaPangaea wrote:

Okay.

I'm gonna put my hand up and ask why Urban Barbarians lost the option to make a normal rage if they wanted.

They already lost Medium Armor Proficiency, and traded out Fast Movement for something arguably less useful. Having the option to still make a full-ham rage was great, and definitely didn't make them more powerful.

It was an option, not an imbalance.

Urban Barbarians did not have the ability to use both types of rage in any of the three printings, but the wording was misleading in that regard, leading to an ambiguity that made it seem like maybe they did. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons that we have been more recently trying to avoid the use of the word "may" in rules text if at all possible.

Regardless of intent, I fail to see what was so gamebreaking about being able to use either rage that necessitated an errata. It's not like you could use both at once, so I don't see what the issue with letting them use either actually was, especially considering the other things they give up.

Okay.

I'm gonna put my hand up and ask why Urban Barbarians lost the option to make a normal rage if they wanted.

They already lost Medium Armor Proficiency, and traded out Fast Movement for something arguably less useful. Having the option to still make a full-ham rage was great, and definitely didn't make them more powerful.

It was an option, not an imbalance.