Doug Hahn's page

Looking for content to tun at a con, similar in scope to a pfs scenario. (A pfs scenario would be perfect but there isn’t really that kind of theme in org play). Head shot to the rot almost works but perhaps not quite so I’m wonyif there’s anything else out there.

Any 3-PP products focused on tech or steampunk? Looking to potentially run a couple of games at a steampunk con in a standard 4-hour slot.

No, the volunteer GMs/organizers are not interested in Starfinder :(

Me too.

The Advice section seems to have the most builds. You could start a thread there and share, and update as you add more.

Reddit's Pathfinder 2e community has lots of builds, and some users do "full build fridays" and such. I suspect they get a lot more traffic and engagement than the Paizo forums as well.

Well with no HMM, here are my recommendations. All of these can be humorous and many contain less combat than normal.

1-4 2e scenarios

- Mosquito Witch (sandbox with goofy mystery/horror vibes)
- Flooded King's Court (Goblin THEATER!)
- Blooming Catastrophe (Tim-Burtonesque setting with cute leshies)
- Trailblazer's Bounty (Outdoor exploration)
- Burden of Envy (open-ended intrigue caper in a dangerous urban setting)
- Tarnbreakers Trail (an iditarod-style race through the tundra)
- Seven Secrets of Dacilane Academy (a lighthearted schoolyard ghost story that takes place inside grade school)
- Dacilane Academy's Delightful Disaster (a field trip with the students from the academy)
- Foundation's Price (help prevent a dinner party from getting sabotaged)
- The Arclord Woo Never Was (Take a talking, wisecracking skull on a tour of a magical city)

I have found that it's often very difficult to get free artwork that truly matches my PCs. Hiring an artist is expensive. I also game in person and on VTT with a few visually disabled players so I tend to lean more toward literary description.

This is triple true in Paizo play-by-post, a written medium where forum art is super limited.

Temperans wrote:

Same with Art.

Your RC example is nice, but the art example is one I'd be cautious to use. I don't want to get obliterated by a crowd of angry artists. The art industry is in a very weird spot right now and chances are high (because AIs are cheap and governments slow) that it will massively crumble to a fraction of what it is.

And when photography was popularized it put art in the hands of the common person. This helped lead to and influence art movements like Impressionism. New deeper ways to make art and think about the world.

When digital tools were popularized they again democratized art by making the tools more accessible to more people. We have this whole character drawing industry that never could have existed before, and it has greatly enhanced the lives of many people around the world.

We should fret a little less about the technology itself and lot more about the ultra-capitalist, anti-democratic billionaires who fund this new technology. Take a peek at who's funding OpenAI.

AI gm sounds like a really cool video game, as others have said.

I’d love to play a tactical Baldur’s Gate style game against an intelligence that adapts to my party, spells, and tactics.

I’d love to explore how AI could enhance my GMing. Anyone who thinks an AI could replace the skills of even a mediocre GM is not someone I want to play with. Bring the technology on.

I have created Beginners Box Character Creation guides on Google Slides that could be used for making PCs following the BB rules.

I also made a Beginner Box GM deck on slides, which can be used for play-by-post (a great way to learn the system especially if you don't have time for a live game!).

In fact there is a free play-by-post con happening soon — there will likely be several BB tables. It's a perfect opportunity to learn 2e in a friendly, slower environment.

Illusory creature doesn’t have the restriction, in fact it outright allows you to imitate a specific person when used along with the Deception or Performance skill:

The image can't speak, but you can use your actions to speak through the creature, with the spell disguising your voice as appropriate. You might need to attempt a Deception or Performance check to mimic the creature, as determined by the GM. This is especially likely if you're trying to imitate a specific person and engage with someone that person knows.

— Illusory Creature

Following up on this post. The new Paizo FaQs have highlighted the problems some users experience with these pages.

______
SUBJECTIVE ISSUES

Page Names

"The FAQ page is now (finally) including both errata and clarifications, so I would rename the tab as "FAQ/Errata".

— Citation

"…it is miss labeled when we are looking for something called an errata, and it's in a tab called the FAQ, which right now doesn't function as written it functions as the errata, so you might as well call it that."

— Citation

Formats

Several users mentioned wanting PDF versions of the FaQs they could print or store on their devices.

In the meantime I have made these myself.

Usability

Usability just means how easy an interface is to use. Some people on the forums have found the FAQ pages difficult to navigate. I believe this NNG article sums up the core issues at stake (as well as why accordion menus may be an acceptable use case for some). Here is a collection of feedback gathered from elsewhere:

"Burying something you want the community to access more often, at the bottom of a menu tab, is not good menu design…"

— Citation

"I don't like the new drop down per question thing, which always breaks and is terrible to search"

— Citation

Pirate Rob]"As a perfectly normal and average Pirate Rob, despite not getting mobile scrolling frozen I find the page nearly unusable on mobile and an unwieldily pain to use on desktop."

— Citation

Note that some users don't find this a problem:

"You can have the best of both worlds by just clicking every dropdown when you want the long list so you can ctrl f for what you're looking for."

— Citation

"No... I JUST did this to find something and it was quick to find what I was looking for. You start at the bottom dropdown and work your way up and that took maybe a second or two. Ctrl f and shifting through took another few seconds. So maybe 10-15 seconds to find what I waned. If that's too long, I don' know what to tell you."

— Citation

______

Some users have pointed out issues with the code. These are not always replicable for all users.

Graystone wrote:

"No... I JUST did this to find something and it was quick to find what I was looking for. You start at the bottom dropdown and work your way up and that took maybe a second or two."

"Tried this. Click Interstellar species no problem. Click An actual FAQ question and open it, the screen breaks.

Firefox broke after one FAQ. Chrome broke after 4 ish."

— Citation

"Yep, it's completely broken on (my) Firefox: when you open one list, it doesn't allow you to scroll up or down anymore at all, even if you close the list. Only reloading helps."

— Citation

"There's something weird going on with pages that have collapsible menus. At a certain point, everything locks up and you can't scroll up or down, preventing you from reading everything on the page.

The phenomenon seems to be rather prevalent with the PFS pages, which have a lot of collapsible menus.

I've tried it on both my desktop and on my phone, in Chrome, and it happens on both devices. I've heard other people having similar issues as well, so it's not just me."

— Citation

______

Screen Readers

I personally have a really hard time navigating the page with a screen reader (while I am not visually disabled I do try to test things as a blind user at times). The accordion menus on the Org Play FaQ pages seem excessive whereas the Pathfinder FaQs hide mountains of text in unordered lists behind single accordion buttons.

Graystone wrote:

"AGAIN, my point is that there is virtually no difference between no hidden content and hidden content that can be unhidden in seconds"

"This is only true if it can truly be unhidden in seconds for everyone, which I highly doubt is the case here. For instance, I suspect the current setup is more challenging if you're searching for something on that page using a screen reader."

— Citation

Aria Elements

A Lighthouse audit found accordion button aria attributes do not match their roles. Screenshot. In addition, multiple navigation landmarks with the same parent region are not distinguished from one another because they have the same "" label.

Semantics

Heading elements are not always in a sequentially-descending order.

I also personally wonder if placing FaQ section titles inside paragraph tags inside `faq__category-title` spans that style them to look like title headings is good semantics.

Visually Hidden Content is Picked up by Assistive Devices

The PFS/SFS FaQs contain hidden sharing buttons. They are set to transparent color with CSS, meaning they are visually hidden but picked up by screen readers.

I can't help but wonder why these elements have been obfuscated. If they were meant to be removed they should also be flagged as aria-hidden. That said, direct-linking a FAQ item would be a super useful feature!

Search Results

Results UX

The search expands accordions and then fades out the rest of the text to leave the results highlighted in the foreground. This means you have to scroll around a lot on the page to locate your result (gif example).

This makes it really difficult to locate what you want, especially if there are multiple results in multiple FaQs.

Fuzzy search or autocomplete may also be useful as a search for "flick" yields no results but "flickmace" gets you to the errata 4 entry. Many users may not know the exact keyword they want (I suspect most users would not know their exact keyword).

Color Contrast

Search highlights relevant key words but the `match` css is red (#ff0000), which is too low contrast for small text on a white background (3.69:1; WCAG 2.0 level AA requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for small text like this). Adding simple CSS to highlight that class with a yellow background-color would help.

Red is also a problem color for red/green colorblind people such as myself. This is an issue I have on play-by-post as well because the dice roller is a small green font on white background.

______
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

I have intentionally left my own opinions or ideas for solutions out of the conversation for now. Usability is about more than one person's subjective opinion or even a small sample size of one person or group. Accessibility is much more than just passing an automated checker.

It would be amazing if more people need to share their experiences, so we can better understand one another. Hopefully, the Paizo team would be interested in hearing about this stuff.

I use Adobe CS at work and have always found multi-column tricky; they never seem to come out the way I want even when using consistent styles, like export tags, and content order. It's definitely a fair bit of extra work (and testing).

In lieu of that best-case scenario, a plain text version like keftiu says might be the most viable option.

You're right HMM I deleted my other post.

My personal efforts for accessibility and usability in the Pathfinder community speak volumes more than anything I can say further.

Larger than one, as I hadn't heard of any issue from people I play with and in fact didn't know anyone had issues until I heard of it here. So, I have the opposite experience from you: I'm only looking at/playing PF2 though.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Your group and people in your circle may not be using the faq, or they may be using it and just not telling you they're having a difficult time. Regardless, many people here and elsewhere on the forums are saying (and have been saying) they have issues accessing the FaQs. This is why people have identified it as a problem.

An accessible FaQ should be usable for all people, not some people in some groups.

I don't pretend to know what it's like to use that accessibility device every day, so I DON'T KNOW what's better for them. It's not dismissing to admit that and not reply as if I knew. That's why I asked the question I did and pointed out that some of it, to a layman, seemed to be a coding issue.

What is any of this but a coding issue? Perhaps this is a more accurate way to phrase your question?

"Do you think a blind user might get find the page more accessible with an 'open all' button?"

instead of

"Would an 'open all spoilers' button a the top of the screen solve what you don't like."

I hope you can see how one of these is not like the other.

I didn't refute 'evidence': your link gives cases where either format is better and I disagree on how onerous it is for those without accessibility issues.

Great! There are use cases for all kinds of patterns. I'm glad you read the article.

I personally think something in the middle is better: a robust navigation for people who can hone in quickly, search, and exposed longer text. For example a ToC in a sidebar. As I said above. Maybe that can be a starting point for another thread in an appropriate forum.

Doug Hahn wrote:

You will see the web in general is pretty bad, but it's a little extra sad to see accessibility framed here as a personal problem and not something we should try to do better with as a community.

Dude, not cool. I SPECIFICALLY said I wasn't talking about people with accessibility issue. I asked an honest question as you mentioned how hard it was to use the accessibility options to open multiple tabs. Please be truthful when posting.

In response to the section about testing. with Voicover you wrote:

"This seems like an website issue partly [sharing_widget] and I'm not sure opening each heading is a pro or con, as it depends on how they search: if you're looking for dark archives errata, it'd seem to me it'd be better. Would an 'open all spoilers' button a the top of the screen solve what you don't like?"

I saw a disclaimer at the beginning of your post, but your response to the specific screen reader issue is to be rather dismissive of a problem UI element that appears in screen readers but has been purposefully and visually obfuscated by the devs. Followed by an ask that frames it as my own personal problem and not one I discovered while testing as a blind user.

Sorry if I misread your intent, but paired with your insistence that your own personal experience should be the baseline for what constitutes "average" or "easy" for web users, and refusal to acknowledge the evidence others have given here, can you blame me?

Edit: this conversation is not productive, so I am muting the thread. Accessibility is a challenging topic and I don't think getting heated helps have a good discussion. I will keep an eye on the website feedback forums should it come up later.

Would an 'open all spoilers' button a the top of the screen solve what you don't like?

You're framing it like a subjective opinion when myself and many others here have given you examples, discussed personal experience, screen reader tests, linked examples to the web forums, and provided references from reliable sources with case studies.

I would recommend you avoid using your own experience as a baseline for the "average user" or to define what constitutes difficulty.

Again, try walking in someone else's shoes. Use a screen reader with your eyes closed. See how it is for yourself.

You will see the web in general is pretty bad, but it's a little extra sad to see accessibility framed here as a personal problem and not something we should try to do better with as a community.

______

My own opinion is something that combines the best of both worlds, a long page with no hidden text and robust and structured navigation as well as good search. Dare to dream.

I don't see an issue for the average user

Gray how are you defining "average user?" I'd love to hear that.

______

You should read the article I linked as it also discusses the general points you tried to refute, in addition to refuting the myth of long pages being less accessible — something else you bring up. By the way the article is founded on user research, not individual opinions. I thought it would be helpful to bring in a citable source, and it was interesting how its points lined up with comments people brought up here.

______

BTW the FaQ is tough to use with voiceover too. So, now you are hearing from a real user about that issue as well.

This is because the user has to open each heading manually and then each item separately using ctrl-option-space just to get to the text. It's really difficult to navigate, and I cannot imagine opening all the items being anything but cumbersome.

In addition, there are four hidden buttons on each FAQ item in a hidden "sharing_widget" div that the screen reader picks up, increasing the difficulty to navigate as the screen reader foces you to cycle through each of them on each item.

Anyone who wishes to better understand usability or to build empathy with vision-disabled users can and SHOULD try to use a screen reader out for themselves. Both macOS and Windows have them installed already. Give it a spin for yourself.

Gray, you're mixing up your own individual experience with a need to address the broader experiences of a global community of diverse users.

Here is an NNG article about accordion menus. It's from 2014 but discusses a use case similar to Paizo's and its core concepts are relevant.[/url]. NNG is a respected and authoritative source on usability because they do lots of measuring and case studies. It's not just some random person's website.

Summary: Longer pages can benefit users. Accordions shorten pages and reduce scrolling, but they increase the interaction cost by requiring people to decide on topic headings.

…

• Forcing people to click on headings one at a time to display full content can be cumbersome.
• Accordions increase interaction cost.
• Hiding content behind navigation diminishes people’s awareness of it.
• Accessibility is an important consideration.
• Printing is another consideration.

From accessibility to printing to interaction cost, this article's 5 key issues above have all been corroborated by users in this thread… in addition to the legitimate technical issues brought to light both here and on the website feedback forums.

In other words, we've already heard from many people.

Doug Hahn wrote:

Is this sarcasm?

It's not impossible to find things on the page, it's just [I]difficult.[I]. e.g. not usable. If you think clicking 14 dropdowns and then searching is a viable option… then I guess you have more patience at the table than I do!

No... I JUST did this to find something and it was quick to find what I was looking for. You start at the bottom dropdown and work your way up and that took maybe a second or two. Ctrl f and shifting through took another few seconds. So maybe 10-15 seconds to find what I waned. If that's too long, I don' know what to tell you.

Doug Hahn wrote:

Also note, for many users the dropdowns don't even work on mobile. This has been reported numerous times on the website feedback forum.

This may be an issue as I haven't tried looking with mobile. Let me try... Nope, my phone worked the same [and my phone is about as basic as an android smart phone can be]: the only wrinkle was having to reload the page to get rid of the drop down menu I took to get to he FAQ. So I can't help you if others are having issues with mobile.

I'm glad it works on your particular device and you're satisfied having to reload the page in addition to opening the dropdowns manually; perhaps you can help all the people on the website feedback forum with their own specific devices and situations. People certainly have documented issues there.

"It took me 10-15 seconds to click 14 links then search" is not an example of good usability. Again, what takes YOU a short amount of time, or is easy, is not universally true for all or even most people.

Again, a single page with no hidden content would be easier to use.

BTW I don't personally have an issue with the Paizo FaQ page for a variety of reasons, but I can still advocate for the people who do have issues. After all, the goal here is to disseminate information and make it useful to the most people possible, right?

Doug Hahn wrote:

They could just get rid of the dropdowns and have a long, simple page. Not as aesthetically pleasing but I would much rather be able to Ctrl-F items on a long page than hunt through mystery meat dropdowns.

It's a legitimate usability issue. For example, I would bet you less than 5% of players even know which errata Battle Medicine Handeddness is in, or which errata nerfed finesse weapons + trip. Where would most people even begin to look?

You can have the best of both worlds by just clicking every dropdown when you want the long list so you can ctrl f for what you're looking for.

Is this sarcasm?

It's not impossible to find things on the page, it's just difficult.. e.g. not very usable. If you think clicking 14 dropdowns and then searching is a viable option… then I guess you have more patience at the table than I do!

Also note, for many users the dropdowns don't even work on mobile. This has been reported numerous times on the website feedback forum.

They could just get rid of the dropdowns and have a long, simple page. Not as aesthetically pleasing but I would much rather be able to Ctrl-F items on a long page than hunt through mystery meat dropdowns.

It's a legitimate usability issue. For example, I would bet you less than 10% of players even know which CRB errata Battle Medicine Handeddness is in, or which version nerfed finesse weapons + trip.

Dear Paizo designers,

The two-column layout is a stable of TTRPG publications, but it often makes using a screen reader or extracting text difficult because columns are not consistently recognized by software. here is an example from a recent publication demonstrating this. This is an extremely common issue I've come across, and it's one applicable in all gaming environments.

In addition, the watermark that appears on every page on Paizo PDFs gets picked up by screen readers and text-to-speech programs, but it should be flagged as decorative just like you would a running head in a textbook.

I would love to be able to download simple, one-column, accessible, PDFs. I'm not even disabled, I just want to copy text for handouts or use a text-to-speech program while prepping games. I cannot imagine how difficult this must be for those who truly depend on screen readers. Maybe there is some other solution I don't see.

That said, my own experience is that two-column, structured documents are very difficult to create as readers are often inconsistent, and building accessible and structured PDFs takes effort, time, and testing. Things I am sure many users here will inform me that Paizo devs don't have the time or budget for.

However, I wanted to discuss this here and see if others would find value in this.

— Doug

Martialmasters wrote:

TFW a company makes a change to force it's player base to better reflect the image of what the gaming table should look like to said company.

If you try to say this isn't what for saying I'm going likely not going to believe you. Because this is what all that amounts to. And I don't much like it

Isn't every change made in every errata, by definition, a change designed to make the game better in their opinion?

Actually that's just the system in general, the whole of Pathfinder is the developers trying to make a game to better reflect what they think is the best experience. It's why they added an alternative stat distribution, it's why they buffed the alchemist, it's why they nerfed the flickmace.

Like, idk that seems pretty basic.

And to sell books. Because Paizo is a business.

Those howling for more "bio realism" might consider that perhaps most of Paizo's customers don't want that stuff in their games these days. Maybe they're the ones going extinct in the larger, evolving gaming community.

1. Burying something you want the community to access more often, at the bottom of a menu tab, is not good menu design nor is it nice to us because it is miss labeled when we are looking for something called an errata, and it's in a tab called the FAQ, which right now doesn't function as written it functions as the errata, so you might as well call it that.

2. Not everyone is going to use it as is. It does not take that much time, or effort to put it into a clean and simple PDF format for people to store for themselves or print out to keep with their own collection.

This is why I maintain a mirror of the Paizo Errata and FaQs on a website where every FaQ item is linkable, etc. The site also has the PFS FaQ with CRB 4 errata, copied from the blog post. The ideal solution is of course a better Paizo webpage… but at least this unofficial source is searchable, structured, mobile friendly, and cross reference-able against the official if needed.

I made a PDF of the FaQs in case people find it useful.

There is also a word doc linked on the page here.

These docs are 76 pages long… not really sure how practical they actually are, but there you go.

Alternate Formats

I generated a PDF and Word Doc of the 2E Faqs and Errata for those interested — PDF and Word.

direct link to PDF.

The documents are 76 pages long. The word doc in case someone wants to do their own formatting or layout.

PFS FaQ

Added CRB 4 errata, copied from the blog post with the addendum from Alex on ability generation.

If you are straight up bad at your job you are not a flawed hero. You are at best making the game harder for everyone else just because, and at worse you are a straight up liability because the game straight up does not support this type of character.

Wow you're "straight up bad at your job" and "straight up a liability" as an adventurer if you have a 1 lower secondary/tertiary stat?

Please.

Also, they literally said they are "addressing the issue". This is literally their response to that, and the response was to remove fixed/free as a stat array and making voluntary flaws an outright punishment.

"Addressing the issue" does not necessarily mean "totally solve." It can mean directing attention to it or be a component (or potential component) of an ongoing goal. "We're addressing the flooding problem by placing sandbags where it'll be really bad to mitigate property damage"; "let's address this conflict at work with an open team discussion to learn more"; etc.

The blog points out that these are ongoing conversations. I fail to see how you are inferring that Paizo says this change solves the problem. Not only would that be a ludicrous claim but it isn't even what the words on the page mean. It is a response to the problem.

The irrational hyperbole in your post ("outright punishment"!) only serves to further undermine your point.

No one at Paizo is here to "punish" you or anyone else. They want to make a better game and sell books.

OPTIONAL: VOLUNTARY FLAWS

Sometimes, it’s fun to play a character with a major flaw regardless of your ancestry.
You can elect to take additional ability flaws when applying the ability boosts and ability flaws from your ancestry. This is purely for roleplaying a highly flawed character, and you should consult with the rest of your group if you plan to do this! You can’t apply more than one flaw to any single ability score.

What's stopping anyone from playing their flawed hero?

Seems the core issue here is players mad about losing a +1 to a secondary or tertiary stat.

As for bioessentialism, this is a game of fantasy designed around PCs being exceptional/heroic talents. Do note that the blog post says it's an ongoing conversation. These topics are challenging to confront but the needle can move in increments as discussions evolve. Those of you acting as if Paizo claimed to have solved the issue altogether are propping up a straw man.

If you don't like the new rule in your games, nothing is stopping you from keeping the old system. In fact, it's still going to be used in PFS IN TANDEM with the new ability array option, so there is semi-official precedent from Paizo that gives even more options than before.

Voluntary Flaws give worse stat arrays, always.

"Always" is a powerful contention.

"Better" and "worse" are subjective and defined by the build, player, and context of the table.

Doug Hahn wrote:

You make "poaching feats" sound super simple but Adopted Ancestry is a general feat, a significant price to pay, and one where the desired ancestry feats come online a bit later.

If you use Deep Backgrounds, you can get Adopted Ancestry with your background. There are also heritages that grant it and some have 5th level ancestry feats that grant it and a 1st level ancestry feat and 1st level ancestry feats that grant it.

So? There are often many ways and optional variants (like the one you mentioned) to achieve goals in PF2e; it's a strength of the system. Nonetheless, it's disingenuous to act like "poaching" is easy/simple to the level that human ancestry is no longer viable.

The overall point is more important. Humans are still really damn good.

TOZ wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

Exactly. There's little to no point in playing humans anymore.

Sounds like a lack of imagination.

Humans were already a minority at many gaming tables (at least at all the ones I frequent); this will make them all but extinct.

And it makes sense; why play a human when you can play any other race with more free abilities (such as darkvision or increased speed), and then poach the occasional human feat that you might have wanted anyways?

Ridiculous. Do you understand how incredible Human feats are?

- Adapted cantrip
- Cooperative nature + Soul
- Natural ambition
- General training
- Unconventional Weaponry
- Clever improvisor
- Multitalented

Versatile Heritage is a solid and unique heritage as well, which many use to enable builds or qualify for an archetype that wouldn't normally be able to at level 2 (for example Bastion bards).

You make "poaching feats" sound super simple but Adopted Ancestry is a general feat, a significant price to pay, and one where the desired ancestry feats come online a bit later.

Not only are there mechanically sound reasons to play a human, but they are still one of the stronger ancestries in the game.

I kind of wonder if Paizo is doing this, at least in part, to boost sales of new books with exotic ancestries.

Uncommon is a thing for a reason. No one is forcing your GM to allow any of these ancestries in their games.

Thanks!

Following up on this now.

Thanks for asking. Would appreciate word from Alex, an edit to the blog, or some other official source.

Doug Hahn wrote:

Blog wrote:

• The Core Rulebook now allows all characters to take two free ability boosts instead of the printed options for their ancestry. Newly created characters in Pathfinder Society may use this rule; previously built characters may not unless they rebuild the character from scratch with a boon.

• However, to retain the legality of numerous existing characters, the Pathfinder Society campaign will continue to offer the Voluntary Flaws optional ruleset and retain the text within the Guide to Organized Play.

OK. So we have THREE options for new PCs:

1. Vanilla ability boosts as printed
2. 2 free boosts and no flaws, any ancestry
3. Old optional flaw system

Is this correct?

Four Options (at least as I understand it.)

1. Vanilla ability boosts as printed
2. 2 free boosts and no flaws, any ancestry
3. Vanilla ability boosts + Old Optional Flaw System
4. 2 free boosts + Old Optional Flaw System, any ancestry

Hrrrrmmm. Seems like that's not quite right.

This is conjecture, but I doubt the OPF devs intend for us to combine deprecated Optional Flaws with new Alternate Ancestry Boosts. I say this because the updated Optional Flaws section as published in the CRB does not give boosts, only flaws.

It's an interesting corner case arising from how Org Play is moving away from the core rules; maybe Alex can confirm.

• The Core Rulebook now allows all characters to take two free ability boosts instead of the printed options for their ancestry. Newly created characters in Pathfinder Society may use this rule; previously built characters may not unless they rebuild the character from scratch with a boon.

• However, to retain the legality of numerous existing characters, the Pathfinder Society campaign will continue to offer the Voluntary Flaws optional ruleset and retain the text within the Guide to Organized Play.

OK. So we have THREE options for new PCs:

1. Vanilla ability boosts as printed
2. 2 free boosts and no flaws, any ancestry
3. Old optional flaw system

Is this correct?

Looks like the Stormwind fallacy. Yes, I do care of both the mechanical part and roleplay part of my characters. And I don't take flaws to minimize them or make fun of it. You may have missed this moment, but Nalah's encounter with the Ekujaes was an excellent roleplay opportunity for me to illustrate her low Charisma.

You can just lower any ability you want, meaning the net/net is -1 in a secondary or tertiary ability.

I used optional flaws frequently but this change makes means it's easier to build characters with any class & ancestry.

______

Edit: By the way few are talking about the needless complexity of the old optional flaw rule. I like this change because it's simpler for new players to leverage.

That seems to be born out of the assumption that if you don't have an 18 your primary stat that the character isn't any good. And that is simply not true; it's an assumption that comes from ignorance. It's a sign of a lack of understanding about what actually makes characters effective.

What an unfortunate mindset, that you MUST have an 18 in your primary stat to be a good caster, or an 18 str to be a good barbarian or whatever. The difference between a 16 and an 18 is a +1 modifier, which will become less and less important over the span of that character's career.

So, to me, if feels like Paizo is essentially capitulating to power-gamers and minmaxers and that toxic crowd that tells off anyone that doesn't have an 18 in a primary stat.

"I want to play a dwarf sorcerer, but I can't do it with a 16 charisma whaa whaa whaa."

Please.

Different groups have different paradigms for what is powerful and what isn't.

If you want others to respect your contention that 16 in stat is fine, then on the flipside you may want to respect other gaming styles.

Edit: I support these new changes.

This feels like a party problem, and not a system problem. A single skill feat unlocking a whole path doesn't make a lot of sense, and there really isn't a good way to build a druid as only a healer. The alchemist subclass of Chirurgeon is taking a class feature to build this out. Short of them adding another subclass under druid, I'm not sure how this would make sense.

My point is that Medicine feats take up a majority of a PC's feats before it's reliable/good. I also play a lot in the org play setting with multiple medicine-based PCS and it feels like a tax. A path for Natural medicine would be really nice and as it is now it's fundamentally useless.

I fail to see why using a feat to qualify for further feats in a parallel chain would be problematic. (e.g. Ward Medic: Requirements: Expert in Medicine, or Expert in Nature with Natural Medicine). Better yet maybe they will add new equivalent feats within a Natural medicine feat path.

If anything it's another feat tax to get there. I will flavor medicine feats as natural medicine on this PC anyway.

The new San Francisco VA is running Fistful of Flowers as an intro module to great success; people love cute leshies! I advised this person not to run Beginner Box for the reasons Hmm listed above, as well as the following:

⠀⠀1. It expects PCs to wipe out a whole tribe of kobolds with cold-blooded efficiency just for stealing some fish.
⠀⠀2. The last encounter is a TPK machine.

Not the best intro to Pathfinder, or even TTRPGS. When I run I tailor it a bit more based on the PCs wanting to interact with the kobolds in ways other than murderizing them, and running the final encounter in a way that is challenging rather than maliciously overpowering. Need to be cautious about who your GM is, especially with new players.

I do like that it has the higher DC options, which is a great help. I'm curious why getting continual recovery is so hard for an Herbalist. As it is, you'd be doing Nature for treat wounds, but then would need to get Medicine up to make it any good, at which point you may as well have not done Natural Medicine since you're now just as high on Medic but spent a feat to use a different skill that is likely at the same modifier. At least that's how it feels to me.

Suppose it is just me wanting more, but a man can dream.

SERIOUSLY. I'm building a druid for an AP and no one wants to heal except me. All of this character's skill feats and increases are taken up by Medicine to level 8. They feel less like an outdoorsey druid and more like a medical school grad student.

Allowing another path to qualify for these feats (or adding an equivalent within a path, such as a Natural medicine feat chain) would help mitigate this bad feeling.

I would not call that an RIP to the Flickmace. It's still a one-handed reach weapon. Yeah, it was reduced to a 1d6 from a 1d8, but I still think it's worth getting for strong gnomes!

I'm being silly :p I just like to re-demonstrate that people can link directly to a FaQ item on these guides, which you cannot do on the Paizo FaQ page.

My level 12 PFS gnome agrees it's still strong, still amazing, and needed the change!

- Organized the FaQ page with more clear headers (a little editorializing on the heading titles but perhaps clearer than just page numbers), improved readability of FaQ text, and fixed some typographical errors.

Example (RIP x2 Flickmace).

⠀⠀• Added CRB Errata Part 4
⠀⠀• Added Core Rulebook Clarifications 4th printing

— RIP Flickmace

Right. My question was about the fact that it says it's more effective, but the only difference I see is that it's harder.

More or less I understand, but that looks like a contradiction so I wanted to see if I was overlooking something.

I don't think it actually says it's more effective than the other options.

"For the Greater Good: Just like his grandmother, Jalal is saddened to see genies reduced to tools for the rich. If the PCs speak of Safa’s plight or mention the chain can be used to free the imprisoned Pathfinders, and the PCs succeed at a DC 16 Diplomacy check (DC 19 for levels 3–4), increase his attitude by one step. He is more willing to trade the silver chain if he knows it is for a good cause."

The scenario is just giving the GM a reason why this particular flavor of Make an Impression to increase Attitude works.

That's how I read it, at least. He's a good person so appealing to the greater good can work, but also has a very deep love for stories that resonates with him on a more personal level.

Some confusion about persuading Jalal...

So the PCs can use Diplomacy to Make an Impression as normal, or they can try a few other things. One of the things they can try is to make an appeal "For the Greater Good," which still calls for a Diplomacy check but he's more willing to go with it.

Except the DC is higher (15/18 for Make an Impression vs 16/19 For the Greater Good). Am I missing something that makes this easier than just Making an Impression?
Lack of a critical failure possibility?

Sometimes, different tactics using the same skill will be more or less effective against NPCs.

"A PC who succeeds at a DC 15 Society or Performance check can improve his attitude by one step by sharing an interesting story."

"If the PCs speak of Safa’s plight or mention the chain can be used to free the imprisoned Pathfinders, and the PCs succeed at a DC 16 Diplomacy check…"

Friendship specifies that you're sharing a story, a choice that greatly appeals to this NPC. The For the greater good option is basically improving his attitude by appealing to his sense of justice and charity.

Looking at the background for inspiration, but with a certain character in mind, I feel it's a bit sad that powers are so linked with the vision / motivation of your character. Because some powers definitely do not have the same worth depending on your build.

So, either I go with the original motivation of my character and get a rarely useful power, or I aim for getting a valuable power and I have to twist my original concept. Or, worse of all as far as playing a character concept IMO, I go for optimized build and choose a power and a build with great synergy even if it is not at all a character I envisioned playing.

My original idea : an outcast caster motivated by a lust for power.

But the most relevant power would go with motivated by riches, which does not fit my original concept at all :-(

I don't know how any decent GM would have a problem with a reflavoring "wishes for riches" as "wishes for power." I can see several obvious ways these are thematically similar and how power might manifest in a vision as material comfort or wealth or a PC might define "riches" in more subjective terms.

After finishing C2:Ward Failure, the scenario says the players receive a +1 striking scalpel.. I can't find any stats for a scalpel anywhere. Is this just a dagger?

Basically. Same stats as a dagger but versatile P instead of S and no Thrown trait. I've always considered it a reflavored dagger, and I have a cahracter in PFS who has a scalpel which is a reflavored dagger.

Bumping this again the the hope that Alex or someone else can answer. I have GM credit on Threshold of Knowledge but when I try to access the "Across the Threshold" boon, it says the character does not qualify.

When will this be fixed?

I am getting the same error on the PC I assigned credit to.

The answer is in the FaQ; Champs & Cavaliers only have access to mount-trait companions unless they have a boon that says otherwise:

Steed Ally / Cavaliers & Mount

Can champions with a Steed Ally or cavaliers choose an animal companion without the mount special ability?

By default, champions and cavaliers do not have access to animal companions without the mount special ability. However, boons may grant access to other options in the future.

— Unofficial Guides direct link to FaQ item

I also read Bloodseekers "This is similar to Grabbing the creature" as giving them the Grabbed condition, and only change the explicitly mentioned details (no Immobilized, creature flat-footed and can move with the PC, the Dig-wiget can only make drill strikes).

Looking around, it seems like this is something people have sought clarification on a few times on forums such as Reddit 2e.

With Bloodseekers it's not a huge deal, but with a Fatal attack and Sneak it's quite important to the Dig.