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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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.