Eludrian's page

I hate to be a naysayer, but I there are some aspects of this that I find fun-diminishing. For the record, I'm ok with Friendly Fire. It's an effective tactical choice. But there's the rub: it's a choice. It should be used judiciously and for maximum effect. Here's what I mean:

(Apologies in advance for the Wall of Words)
1. By using the diminishing returns mechanism (which I hate), you are forcing certain tactical choices rather than allowing or even rewarding creative tactical choices from the players. In the TT game, fireball is a powerful spell, but its power grows with caster level. It'll scorch a big bunch of folks, but is unlikely to outright kill anything of equivalent level. Two, three, four of them dropped on a group will kill...but it should. If wizards are going to cluster as artillery, stealthed rogues will form hunting parties to kill them. That's part of smart tactics. Cavalry causes infantry to bunch up for protection, while artillery causes them to spread out for the same reason.

2. Reconnaissance by fire is also a valid tactic. Can't see the sniper? Blast the area where you think he is hiding. I'm ok with AoE flagging the caster as attacker. He made a conscious choice to drop boom somewhere without (completely) knowing what was there. I'm also ok with hidden players staying in stealth, subject to damage effects or amount of damage (loss of concealing foliage, smell of burning hair, screams of agony, etc.).

3. Magical Turbulence is making the issue more complicated than it ought to be. I suspect that following that path will also utilize dev resources that could be utilized elsewhere. IMHO, the system should reward players for smart choices, rather than protect them from stupid ones. There are other ways to balance that don't even leave the issue to the players: make AoEs scale with level and start with lower damage, use longer refresh time or fewer uses, have magical armor debuffs against AoE, etc.

4. While I appreciate the devs striving for game balance and "doing something cool", the less PFO looks like Pathfinder, the less many fans, myself included, will be interested.

To summarize: Friendly Fire=good; Diminishing Returns=bad.

Completely unsolicited suggestions, many of which echo other posters:

While casting an AoE, a special animation procs. Those with high Spellcraft will see a specific glyph they know to be an AoE, like fireball.

While casting, caster sees the area of effect (ball, cone, etc.) that he can aim and place. The area of the aim turns yellow if NPCs are in the effect. Caster can still choose to cast.

AoE procs the attacker flag against unseen PCs, but there is no rep hit until follow-up actions. There is rep hit for damage to NPCs, regardless of visibility.

The spell also states that the teleportation movement does not provoke attacks of opportunity. However, does initiation of the ability, itself, provoke? We had an instance where this was in question. A cleric with the travel domain attempted to use the Dimensional Hop to pull a comrade out of combat. Both the cleric and the comrade where within the enemy's threatening space (it had reach).

To restate, it is understood that the movement is "dimensional" and does not provoke, but does activation of the ability provoke if done within a threatened square?

Apologies if this shows up as a double post. I'm having technical difficulties.

Jason Mayberry 20 wrote:

I don't really see this as a heavy burden for the art department. I could be wrong, but haven't they already done the work? It has presumably been saved or archived, so it is more of a production issue than new art issue. Just sayin'. For clarification, I am referring to those maps in the scenarios that are not flip maps or map packs that are already separately published.

When we order new maps, we order then at the resolution they'll be printed at. Thus, if something is intended to be a half-page map, we get a half-page illustration. To blow that up to cover the space of even two or three pages worth of area would severely pixelate the image and wouldn't be up to Paizo's quality standards. The only way to do this would be to order the art at full flip-mat scale, but that becomes much more expensive, because the artist must create a much more detailed map.

Pathfinder Society scenarios simply don't have the budget for that. We can't even viably produce these for our flagship product line—Adventure Paths—in a way that we wouldn't lose money, so Pathfinder Society scenarios are even more impossible. If we suddenly saw that we were selling orders of magnitude more PFS scenarios and turning a huge profit on them, maybe it would be something to consider for especially unique scenarios or special events, but still probably nothing we could produce at two or more a month.

We do try to use existing mini-scale map products when appropriate, and I think you'll find that a lot of scenarios can either be run entirely with flip mats and map packs or require only one new map beyond preprinted ones.

That makes sense. Question answered...and in a very informative and non-judgmental way. Thanks.

I don't really see this as a heavy burden for the art department. I could be wrong, but haven't they already done the work? It has presumably been saved or archived, so it is more of a production issue than new art issue. Just sayin'. For clarification, I am referring to those maps in the scenarios that are not flip maps or map packs that are already separately published.

This may be a more appropriate question/idea for Published Products, but I was wondering if it would be possible to release the maps contained in any given PFS adventure in a Flip Map form...kind of the way you've released some map folios for certain Adventure Paths. They are visually cool and add alot to the game, but the players don't often get to see them.

I realize there are certain issues associated with that (PFS adventures are primarily downloaded, smaller print runs, fewer economies of scale, etc.), but I certainly would be willing to pay a little extra for a hardcopy map to include when I'm running an adventure. To create the same scaled encounter map requires finagling with Photoshop and print out at a place like Kinko's...which is expensive and has some intellectual property issues involved. I certainly don't want to violate Paizo's IP and would love to give you guys some extra money for your original maps. I know you put alot of work into them, so I'd like a handy GM aid to make it easier for us and something visually nifty for the players to see.

Just a thought.

Jason Mayberry