Robert De Luca's page

Hello everyone and Paizo staff.

Following the great announcement from Jim Butler and having worked in IT Companies for a while I thought it could be useful to gather some user feedback and recommendations in anticipation of the website rework.

The following list is my own personal take in regards to the Organized Play section from which Starfinder and Pathfinder Society players typically manage their character, buy boons and GM records their events and report their sessions.

I am a player and GMd for 10+ years and I am quite accustomed to this section and experienced already its improvements. I mainly played live or by online vtt so I will not give my feedback for whatever supports today the PbP community.

I do not pretend to have the perfect knowledge and have the best ideas so feel free to give your take about the following and to share your ideas as well, hoping the staff will consider this post useful.
Thank you for maintaining the conversation constructive, I believe Paizo can really benefit from the hive mind and with all they have made so far any help I think it's useful.

I will limit my recommendations on functional requirements and not aesthetics... you are the artist paizo ;)
Feel free to comment yours while maintaining a similar format if possible.

N.B. Excuse my English (not my native language and all).

Session Report
This is where a lot of nice-to-have can really improve the user experience in my opinion and could enable other functionalities that will be mentioned later.
We are already reporting Prestige(/Rep) and sessions outcome (A/B/C/D) so why not:
-> Include XP and Gold (just additional database columns)
-> Infamy
-> (Automated from A/B/C/D) Possible access to certain items/spells/feats or whatever depending on the outcome of the scenario. This could enable more variety on table experience. Replayability of the scenario still would grant the possibility of an unhappy player to chase again that boon if he/she really wants that access.

Scenario Outcome Visibility
One of the interesting values that new players by experience get really interest to play Society sessions instead of home-brew is the message of "by participating at these tables you can contribute the outcome of the story" (Which is today only technically enabled by the A/B/C/D I assume).
-> Scenario Dashboard: A simple tracker that anyone can follow to see if the majority of the tables around the world "managed to save that dragon" or "discovered that interesting piece of clue" for the story to continue that way. This can have an expiry date on which upon a certain date a snapshot will determine the outcome of the story that will then become Canon.
-> Have I played it?: Under that report the user can see which of its character have played or GMd such scenario for easy track. You can make even the previous report visible only if the user have participated to that table or not.
-> [EXTRA] Cool world Visualization: Map of the world with all tables that have played the scenario. Reinforcing the global community effort to advance the story. (This is arguably OP/Useless)

Character tracking
We are already showing under the character the sessions in which participated so wha not:
-> Having Max Gold and XP track. (You may want why not to give the ability to subtract gold between sessions and record even by hand the purchases in a txt box, nothing fancy)
-> The chronicle is digital: The content of the chronicle could be easily accessed by and expandable window which can just contain the summary of the outcome and access. XP and Gold following the previous point would already be shown like Reputation today. You can still maintain the existing pdf for less digital and table oriented low tech games.
-> Chronicle Automated generation: I am just going to mention rpgchronicles here. I mean... I do not want to make them "useless" but there is an advantage to have everything in the same website without pushing new players across multiple web tools and platforms.
-> Level Tag: A small tag showing the level of the character without having the player counting chronicles in case he is not sure everything is in order. When you have multiple characters at the same time it would become easy to quickly check “oh, with which character I can play this 3-6”
-> Boons: list of boons that the character has obtained or purchased. If you have too many boons it becomes cumbersome to navigate through them in the Boons section.
-> Reputation level: can just be visual through colors, instead of remembering the threshold of the reputation by number.
-> [EXTRA] Death and Infamy: an indication if the character is currently dead or has infamy. Could just be an icon of a skull for the first one for example.
-> COMPLIANCE: (joking) but it would be nice in case a GM wants to verify a character has the proper boon that a player can just share a link to the character profile showing the sessions in which it participated and boon acquired (no need to show all session info like who GMd and date of the event for more privacy I guess), its XP, reputation etc.. Being a link it can also be a QR code so at the physical table I can share just that instead of rummaging through my dozens of printed chronicles.

Boon Section
This is already a big improvement from “the endless chronicle scrolling to see which boon I have from when”, but why not:
-> Ability to filter them (type, cost, etc..)
-> Proper content preview instead of having it in the FAQ
-> Automatic filter based on character selection eligibility. This character is not Liked by the Envoy’s Alliance? The boon is grayed out or just doesn’t appear. This player does not have a chronicle from an AP? He cannot buy this boon. Etc..
-> [EXTRA]Functional Boons: Resurrection and Untarnished Reputation possibly having automatic effects linked to the character tracking from before.
-> Automated Refund: You bought the wrong boon or you made a poor choice? You don't need to contact Mr. Speidel to counteract your life choices. (@Alex: are you really doing this by hand today? You madman :D )

User Profile
-> New gamified user section showing its characters and achievements like number of tables played and GMd, badges for having participated or organized certain conventions.
-> You could also have visibility to owned official material and have a choice with whom you want to share that detail (you know... privacy).
-> This section can also have a list of GMd and Played scenario. This would improve for GM and organizers what today is a struggle: identify if my community which scenario still need to be played. It is easy when you have a couple of GMs in a community, geographical area but it degenerates pretty quickly when you have more GMs around and the community also partake to online events.

If you made it this far: thank you for the attention and... respect.

SO, just realized this while creating a character.
I was creating a goblin sorcerer with a background of entertainer (fire breather style).

Picking Entertainer background gives you training in Lore (Entertainment) + the feat "Fascinating Performance".

Fascinating Performance
Prerequisites trained in Performance
When you use the Perform action, compare yourcheck result to the Will DC of one observer. If you succeed, the target is fascinated with you for 1 round; if the observer is in a situation that demands immediate attention, such as combat, you must critically succeed to fascinate the target. You must choose which creature you’re attempting to fascinate before you roll your check, and regardless of your result, the target is
bolstered against your Fascinating Performance.
If you’re an expert in Performance, you can compare your
check result to the Will DCs of up to four observers and fascinate
any number of them. If you’re a master in Performance you can
fascinate up to 10 observers with a single check, and if you’re
legendary in Performance you can try to fascinate any number
of observers at the same time.

The thing is weird because the background is NOT giving me training in performance and the bonus feat lack the classic "even if you do not meet the requirements". So in this case I am obliged to take a training in performance to make this viable if I am not a bard.
Gladiator background has the identical weird behaviour and other backgrounds too (Scout->Forager)

Maybe is expected to work like this... but it's just ...weird.
Instead of Entertainment Lore skill it would have made much more sense to have Performance. You can still make the classic "if you already have a training in performance due to (class, background, whatever) you are trained in Lore (Entertainment).

Here's my opinions on different aspects of this version of the game by subject

Artwork:
keep it going, evocative and just good

General structure of the game:
more "organized" which v1 was kind of chaotic but it was done at cost of creativity for players

Action economy:
good vibes on here, organize better the actions in combat. Let's be honest... in v1 those different actions type combinations were just a mess.

Feat and Spell descriptor boxes:[/b]
good organization here, more readable. Due to its paper nature, navigating through feat and spells it's still a pain though, but hey... no ideas how to resolve this

HP:
those seems to be a lot of HP right ahead of lvl 1. Everything hits harder so I can understand but I'll miss the HP rolling for characters. Only constitution makes a difference overtime here (dwarf warriors HP will always looks the same you see)

Proficiency:
I like the logic but not how it was developed.
I like the structure of these proficiencies but the scaling (-2,0,1,2,3) doesn't justify any investment other than trained as values will be always too close.
+level for everything?????? O gosh... horrible, bland idea.
You can do better than dnd guyz, c'mon.

Initiative:
the change from dex to wis? make sense to me I am sorry for the haters.
It feels actually more logical and adding the GM interpretation to use other skills for initiative is a good contribution on creativity.

Skills Feats and General Feats:
you just separated two type of feats which before were under the Feat chapter but forcing which one of the two types to take. Less creativity for the players here it seems but time will tell.

Ancestry Feats:
this is replacing racial traits ok but... how I am learning a new skill at level 5 because of my race? Why I wasn't able to do that before if it comes from my race? Roleplay logic kinda difficult to find here

Item Costs:
Scaled down... good. V1 gold was really depreciated XD.

Weight and carrying:
...no issues here. good for me

Multiclassing and multiclass archetype:
...what? I think I have to read that part 3 or 4 times again to really understand.

Other stuff:
spells, combat, classes in specific, etc I'll share my thoughts after experiencing some scenarios

So, I created a character (Society conformed) 2-3 years ago and I'm taking it back for use (Ninja) . Since then Pathfinder Unchained introduced the "new" rogue and his way better Finesse Training. I took with my ninja character weapon finesse as a trait at the time of his lvl 1.
My question is: Is it possible to replace my old weapon finesse feat considering that i'm getting it again for free?