Furdinand's page

Valamuur wrote:

I know that part of this is related to the Achievement Point system not being fully up and running, but I feel like Starfinder Society has spoiled me on getting pretty easy access to playable races fairly easily. So having things like Tengu locked away feels very restrictive, in comparison. I was looking forward to reviving my Tengu Hellknight from 1E PFS, and it seems that I'll be waiting at least as long as one of my friends has been for the Lizardfolk.

On the other hand, all of Starfinder Society's decisions are ones I'm happy with. Someday, I hope to get a starship boon to add a ram to our ship.

I admit I personally would have *far* preferred for the Tengu to be the available race and the kobold to be the one behind ACP. YMMV.

I would have preferred they just let people play any of the ancestries found in a book they paid $50 for, but I'm just a starry eyed dreamer.

Fortunately, what some would call "bloat" in 1st Edition others would call a plethora of options and enough adventures to last years or decades. There's no need to rush to a new edition that only offering some mechanical tweaks and no new races or classes.

Depends on what (if anything) you think is wrong with PF1.

Speaking for myself, I think PF1 is drowning under the weight of all the supplements, player companions and subsystems introduced over a 10 year run so I'm looking forward to running PF2.

I think it is but time will tell.

I recognize there is no accounting for taste but I don't really get the broad complaint that 1E published too much material. "Oh no! This game has so many options, I can make characters I've never seen in any other RPG! How will I cope if a party isn't a dwarf fighter, elf ranger, halfling rogue, and human wizard?"

If there are specific options that a person don't like, that's fair, don't use them. But I refuse to accept then idea that every product after the Core Rulebook incrementally broke Pathfinder. Is every product after Core 2E making 3E neccessary?

I can buy an argument that releases after 1E Core (by both Paizo and other RPG publisher) have illustrated weaknesses with 1E Core. But those weaknesses would exist even if 1E Core was the only 1E book ever created.

A fair comparison between the editions would probably show that the 2E Core/Bestiary books are marginally better than their 1E counterparts.

The comparison that exists in reality is that 1E has 10 years of material available, has many, many more character options, enough published adventures to keep a game group going for decades, and most of the print material can be found for half off the cover price.

Wake me up when 2E lets me make a Dhamphir Occultist.

J-Bone wrote:

I need to know why this decision was made

you've been informed multiple times. It was take a gamble on ND, or a 100% chance of no minis at all.

Are CMON minis being drawn from the ether? ND was not the only possible option, it was the one that was chosen. "It was this or nothing" is giving a free pass to someone(s) who made a poor decision at the expense of actually learning from the mistake.

I was not sure about the chimera, but Marco made a good observation that it is a new chromatic head. Now I kind of want one more to get a blue dragon head version.

Every mini set is someone's entry into miniatures, so I get the need to rotate in commonly used creatures. But every mini set is in addition to every set I've bought before, so I really need to see new things to stay interested.

I think the chimera is a good compromise. It's a returning creature with a twist. I still need to see creatures and class/race/gender combinations I haven't seen before and I need them to make up a hefty chunk of any set.

Dragon Turtle, nice!

Between the Iconic set and this, I'm getting the same feeling from the 2E minis that I got from the 2E RPG: They're trying to sell me the same thing twice.

The renders look neat, and the female orc is new but overall it still feels like a retread of a retread. If the first full set isn't at least half stuff that's never been in PPM, I'll probably take a break. There's no way to sculpt a goblin mook that will make me forget that I have almost 20 years of PPM goblin mooks, including "We Be Goblins".

And I don't have a high standard for new. A Goblin Paladin or a Kitsune bard would count!

So the Playtest's default, straight of the box, assumption is that European is normal and Asian is exotic? A new edition is an opportunity to change anything and Paizo is choosing to keep its Orientalism.

2E: New mechanics, same colonialism.

It's my understanding that the "exotic" designation in PF2 is exclusively a question of weapon power.

From the What's your Weapon? blog

Quote:

In Pathfinder Second Edition, we have a different way of talking about whether a weapon is likely to be found in a particular region, and so a weapon's type instead describes a weapon's mix of power and flexibility. Simple weapons usually have a smaller damage die than similar martial weapons (d6 rather than d8, for instance), and exotic weapons usually use the same damage die as a martial weapon but include additional abilities that make the weapon more complex.

So I figure the "monastic weapons" are simply the sorts of weapons that one would learn to master in a monastery. Possibly because they are inexpensive to produce and maintain, that one can carry them without attracting attention or being threatening, or because their study is relevant to deeper truths, or something else.

Until the actual weapon rules are released, I'm not going to just assume that Paizo understands what the problem is and has fixed it.

If East Asian weapons are still "exotic", it is still Orientalism. Giving a kama, a weapon that is functionally identical to a sickle, special powers doesn't ameliorate anything. In fact it solidifies it.

Saying they are weapons that just coincidentally happen to be the ones taught at monasteries is thin lampshading. Like saps and throwing axes attract more attention and are more expensive to produce?

First edition asks players to accept that a noble that never worked a day in their life can use a sickle as a weapon better than a farmer can use a kama. To accept that a wizard can throw a dagger (that may not have been designed for that purpose) more accurately than they could throw a shuriken, a weapon designed to be thrown. To accept that every fighter can handle a trident, a short sword, and a dagger but will be at sea with a sai without taking a feat. Finally, it expects players to accept that these are all quirks of designing a balanced game and not a function of the designers unconscious biases.

Even talking about whether a weapon is "likely to be found in a particular region" leaves me really apprehensive. The game designers chose to make different parts of Golarian analogs for real world regions and chose to put the East Asia analog in a place that isn't even on the map. They also chose to make the European analogs the center of most of the APs, modules, and scenarios. So making weapons regional isn't inclusive of players of color. Any Caucasian Pathfinder player can create characters that look like them, use the weapons their ancestors used, fight the creatures from their folklore, in settings that evoke their roots/history and never have to justify the existence of that character. For players of color to do the same (in most APs), they have to explain why they are so far from home. They have to justify their existence. This has to change.

As far as I'm concerned, they can just get rid of "monk weapons" if the list is like as the old one. Calling the kama, a farming implement used in Asia, "exotic" while calling the sickle, a farming implement used in Europe, "simple" is textbook Orientalism and needs to go.

Just dump the Monk from core and replace it with a Brawler. It'd be a lot easier to explain to new players that a Brawler is a Wizard to the Fighter's Sorcerer than it is to explain to them how a concept as plainly racist as "monk weapons are really just Asian weapons" actually makes sense in the game world. Paizo needs to take time and work on the whole concept of the Monk character, not just fiddle with the math.

2E: Everyone gets three actions a turn. Well the monk gets 4 attacks, but it still counts as three actions. But they have to take a penalty to attack if using the second action to attack. Which is the third attack. But don't worry! Their fists are "agile", so the monk's penalty is different than the penalty for other classes that take 4 attacks in three actions.

It's almost _too_ simple.

*Looks at two pages of questions/arguments about how 2E conditions work*

Ah yes, this will be much simpler.

I would imagine that any anniversary edition AP in the near future would be one that isn't overly reliant on non-core material. So, for example, Jade Regent is probably out given the heavy reliance on Asia-inspired material (e.g. kami, multiple types of oni, imperial dragons, a bunch of archetypes and stuff). This would likely mean one of the earlier ones, given that the APs often "show off" the new and shiny stuff (or, the stuff needed for an AP is seeded in material published just before it).

One thing I hope 2E will work on is not treating material inspired by Asia, the most populous and largest continent, as exotic and niche. Asian immigrants brought their myths and history to the US, just like European immigrants did. For a Seattle area company to exclude so much of it is a failure of creativity.

Well, until that 163 pages are reproduced with new artwork for pf2e's version of Planar Adventures.

I'm not going to hold off getting a planes book until 2028 when the 2E version releases (Just before 3E playtesting starts).

For me, one way to help in this is by carving a niche for yourself, and given that Pathfinder shares a lot with D&D it should strive to make itself as different as possible from 5e. What would that imply? Well, for me, more crunchiness, more available customization options, gonzo style + Golarion (seriously those APs are the best), and a higher power level overall.

It doesn't help that when someone new to Pathfinder opens the 2E Corebook they will see the pretty much the same races that are in the Player's Guide and nearly identical classes.

The crunchiness and options aren't going to matter if the first impression of Pathfinder is that it is Hydrox to D&D's Oreos.

Rogue hasn't been anything approaching a sub-class for a very, very, long time. It also epitomizes a fantasy archetype no other Class really works for very well. Removing it would be a really bad idea from a game design perspective.

Paladin is much easier to justify the removal of from a game design perspective, since it overlaps so much with Cleric thematically.

However, from a marketing perspective, removing either is an utterly awful idea. People enjoy both Classes immensely and will react with great anger at their removal. The popularity of the game will take a steep nosedive if two of the 10 most popular Classes are removed.

The idea that removing the paladins is bad from a marketing perspective hinges on the idea that there is no class replacing the paladin could create enough anticipation/happiness to offset the anger the removal causes.

2E is effectively removing 27 or so classes from the game. Each has players that enjoy them and will be angry at their removal. I find it very unlikely that, among the players familiar with these class, the paladin is more popular than every one of them. If the Inquisitor was in 2E core book, by the time the 3E playtest comes around it would just be assumed that the Inquisitor would be in it. Sometimes players don't know what they want until the get it.

I think the most likely new edition books are one or more Class Books (possibly themed) and an Ancestry Book converting a lot of PF1 races.

I hope so, I'm not even going to consider 2nd Edition until I can "play the character I want to play". Hopefully with existing classes and ancestries brought forward in two or three hardback.

To me, the "core" classes and races aren't Pathfinder, it's just the stuff they took from D&D and refurbished. Pathfinder is all the original material they created afterwards.

No one could have predicted ND minis would ship late... except for literally everyone who had dealt with them in the past.

Because the don't need to.

Kings/Rulers/Tyrants are driven by a fear of death and are trying to achieve immortality by creating a legacy that lasts after they are gone.

Wizards achieve immortality by not dying.

Undine Bard (Sound Striker), Ooze Breath alternate racial trait:

Sid Viscous.

Furdinand wrote:

Malefactor wrote:

Snip

Sounds like you want: http://paizo.com/products/btpy9b9t

It has rules for expanding summon tables. It takes feats, but that makes sense because it they make the spells more powerful.

The other Summon Spells you are fine as spells on their own. If folks are dying to summon those creatures they can add the appropriate spell to their spellbook/spells known.

Adding more selections to SM/SA, at no cost, just because more Bestiaries have been added makes no sense. Should Magic Missile get new optional effects every time a 1st level spell has been added to the game? "I cast magic missile!" "ok, roll d4." "No, it's a creature vulnerable to cold so this magic missile is a Ranged Touch Attack that does d6 Cold because the Snowball spell exists!"

I am aware of those feats, but I addressed the problems I had with them in my previous post, so I do not believe that I need to go into that again. As for your example using Magic Missile, that something of a false equivalence. You see, Magic Missile is well, exactly what it says on the tin, a spell for shooting an arcane blast of energy at an opponent, represented by force damage because that is an energy type that very few things are immune to and not readily associated with anything else. That is all it is supposed to be. Summon Monster on the other hand, is an entirely different can of worms. As the point of Summon Monster is to summon monsters, that means that not being able to summon iconic monsters that are on level CR with the existing one is a bigger deal. Magic Missle does everything that you would expect from a 1st level spell bearing that name, but the Summon Monster list (and by extension the Summon Nature's Ally list) comes across as lacking when you cannot do what the spell seems to advertise (namely, Summon anything not in Bestiary 1 unless you worship a certain god or take a feat whose options were limited by what was released at the time)....

Summon Monster summons monsters. I don't know why you think it should be expanded if other spells aren't. It's not "Summon Any Monster of the same CR".

Build a bank around it. Then use some of the gold to make unique coins, creating commodity money. Use it to provide loans.

As the circulation spreads create paper currency based on the value of the circulating coins backed by some of the remaining gold sphere.

When any of the coins circulate back to bank, take them out of circulation.

Start to establish the bank as a regional authority. Have a militia, police force, and legal system. Provide preferential interest rates to entrepreneurs that plan to build around the bank as long as it fits the development guidelines the bank creates. Eventually the land around the orb becomes a city-state. Tax anything in your sphere of influence.

Offer fractional shares of the bank and associated enterprises in exchange for the gold-back paper currency. Issue new paper currency that is basically stocks. Make sure you still have majority ownership.

As needed, issue new currency evenly split between yourself and what is put into circulation. Eventually the currency is not backed by gold, only the promise of the bank with the value set by the bank.

Expand until you control Golarian and beyond.

Praise Abadar!

New Tengu! And it looks like a PC, not a mook! This is great. Excited to get my case.

Whelp, now that it is funded and I can't be accused of trying to keep people from hitting stretch goals I've decided to cancel my pledge. It was a tough call, and I've waffled, but it came down to a few things.

Personal:
Starfinder hasn't really taken off with my home game and I've only done one SFS scenario. I'm not sure I'd get much use out of the figures.
Money is tight coming on the heels of Bones 4 and just before Maze is shipped.
I'm afraid resin won't stand up to actual play/transport. Maybe put them in the cases/tubes dice come in?
I'm still holding out hope for a plastic line in the future.

Ninja Division:
Despite assurances from Paizo, I can't really trust a company with so many unhappy customers. Even if they deliver on this, it would be at the expense of people that have waited years for their other pledges to be fulfilled. I would be uncomfortable doing that to other gamers.
The slot system resulted in weird inconsistencies and bad incentives. The back half of the campaign had no freebies in order to appeal to the All-In crowd and they still didn't have enough planned stretch gials to make All-In as good per figure as adventure or campaign. I found this distasteful.
They set the campaign to end before the Iconics shipped to stores. I didn't go to Gencon so I have no idea what the actually look like in person.

For avid Starfinder fans that love very detailed minis, this will probably turn out to be a great bargain. It's just not for me.

The kickstarter has reached $300K.

But Ninja Division has now switched from one stretch goal every $5K to one stretch goal every $10K - why?

Also the five presented SGs are all optional: no freebies, no additional creatures in encounter packs

And still no Shirren fleet...

At this steep price increase, i wonder if we´ll see these minis being made...

Reaper did this with all their Bones campaigns. As the numbers got higher the amount between stretch goals increased. I assume it is to take into account the increase in backers and the increased number of figures to be made/shipped per stretch goal that goes with them.

The lack of freebies is probably to make the All-In pledge look better, since every freebie made it even less of a deal compared to Campaign or Adventure. But that reason can't feel great to anyone not "all-in". Reaper never stopped adding to core sets as the campaigns went on, even if they started to focus on optional pieces more. Bones 4 even went so far as to add on some freebies to an expansion after the campaign closed.

Seem like the smarter play would have been to set the All-In price lower to make it a better bargain than the lower pledge amounts from the start (or at least low enough that the break even point hit earlier in the campaign). Right now it looks like it will a toss up right until the end. Hard not to go back and try to see if "everything" is really what I want or if I would be content really focusing on the mini that I definitely want/will use.

If I had ND's reputation, I don't know that I'd be playing silly games with price points/pledges (Their audience is gamers, we min/max, we'll notice stuff like this). If someone wants to give them more money upfront, ND should be giving them bigger and bigger discounts. Even if they end up being loss leaders. Because anyone making high pledges isn't just giving ND money, they are giving them the capital they need to make the future retail line and, more importantly, they are giving ND an opportunity to repair their reputation.

Large, unpainted figures going for $70+...not uncommon at all these days.

I don't know about that.

This is what $75 gets you from Reaper http://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/dragon/price/77381

Their KS had it as a $35 pledge, about as much as the Bloodbrother by itself. Getting just the dragon was a $15 option (2.5 ND Monster slots).

I know, I know: Resin is more expensive than plastic. But honestly, the benefits of resin are only accessible to the handful of professional level painters. The painted figures that ND is using as examples will not be what most backers will experience in practice. I want minis to push around a mat, not to put in a display case.

We'll have to see what "everything" ends up being with stretch goals, but I don't know if All-In is better than the $180 option and buying the extra slots. Even if it is, it isn't as good a deal per mini as $180 and $180 isn't as good a deal as $100. It's kind of odd that the higher the pledge amount the less bang there is for the buck. (Especially given the unique risk involved)

I really like the alternate coloring, Dark green and yellow, on the Mireborn. It was something I didn't know I wanted. It would be awesome to see lizardfolk in future sets with coloring/shapes as varied as their real life animal counterparts.

The Core Book doesn't explicitly say it, but the "Good Versus Evil" paragraphs lay out examples from which people should infer that "Good" includes respecting Bodily Integrity and "Evil" doesn't respect Bodily Integrity.

I guess it could have been laid out more clearly, but it's depressing that a game company has to explain that getting consent is good an not getting consent is evil.

I'm holding out hope that Wizkids or Reaper gets a crack at making Starfinder minis.

I like starting at the "call to adventure" and then progressing through the journey.

I'm really glad to get ranged and caster ratfolk. They sub pretty easy with wererats so I feel like melee ratfolk have been covered somewhat.

I'd really like to see more types of PFS (non-boon) races. I don't think there are any pre-painted wayang or kitsune minis. Plus some more featured and uncommon player races for home games would be nice.

It is disappointing that there haven't been more previews. I'm sure the set overall will be good. The previews have been good and they've been following themes so I don't think duds are being hidden. That said, it would be nice to know what is going to be in the set before it ships.

The only APs that really need a hardcover updated treatment are the ones that are 3.5. The rest of them are OK the way they are.

Why is 3.5 such a big deal? Going from 3.5 to Core is less of a jump than going from Core to Pathfinder circa September 2017. Might as well say that Unchained should be the dividing line.

Most of what I'd want would probably fall into a hypothetical Monster Codex 2.

Is anyone else bothered that the description of the Fallout game implies that Bethesda created Fallout from the beginning?

I think that is reading into it too much. Bethesda made the most recent entry, Fallout 4 and restarted the franchise with Fallout 3. To the degree that it exists in popular conscience today, it is due to Bethesda (and Obsidian).

Saying that Fallout is made by Bethesda is no different than saying D&D is made by WOTC or saying Blue Beetle is a DC comics character. It doesn't capture the entire history of the property, but it is accurate enough as a description.

But every time i look at picking up HL to help out with character creation i balk at the extreme cost of getting all the packs to match my hard copies. i get that they need to make money to keep going but the cost just isnt worth it to me. I know a few players that use it and they are resigned to dropping down more money every time they want to make a new character... its just not for me. I will subscribe to all the Starfinder products but will be skipping out on HL again for this one.

I jumped into HL when the had a big data set sale. I'd keep an eye out for one.

That said, the packs that match your hard copies took work to create, if you have a lot of books then the packs took a lot of work to create. People should be paid for their work.

There are "free" products out there but you "pay" for them with reduced functionality, more work on your end, and development that happens at the speed of altruism.

To keep it succinct, stuff like the full attack paradigm for martials, vancian spellcasting (more specifically prepared casting), all the fiddly and obtuse subsystems like grappling/mounted combat, general caster/martial disparity, and the general style of combining a legion of small, disparate bonuses (or penalties) together for character construction/combat.

I'm being slightly glib with the whole "BURN IT ALL" thing, but I'd much rather the system be overhauled (or at a minimum trim off a lot of the fat the system has) rather than just bolting on more content to an already rickety system.

There are fantasy games out there that have none of the things you don't like about Pathfinder. There's no need to destroy Pathfinder in order to make it something that already exists elsewhere.

If you don't like the option of Vancian spellcasting existing, maybe Pathfinder isn't for you? It's kind of like being mad that Monopoly has Railroads and demanding a new edition that doesn't have them.

No thanks, any new system is going to have to strip away so much content just to fit into one book. I like my Brawler, I like the Occult classes, I like combat styles, I like six Hardcovers worth of monsters. Pathfinder 2, even with a streamlined system, would take years to bring back all the classes and good stuff that could fit with a new system but wouldn't be able to fit in a single book.

If people want something like Unchained 2, something that adds to the game, I'd be all for that.

Otherwise, just play Core or your home game version that excludes whatever you want to exclude. If the number of options is overwhelming to you, limit the options you present to yourself.

New players are probably doing this already, if unintentionally. Who is going into their hobby shop and grabbing every hardcover, player companion, and campaign setting on Day 1? Most likely they are just grabbing the Core book, which doesn't have 3000 feats, it just has the core feats. A new player that doesn't have a vet hovering over them blasting out a litany of every possible option isn't going to be overwhelmed. They're going to be able to thumb through one book and be able to make a functional character. The other stuff comes later when they see what is out there and what other player do.

I loved FR in 3/3.5. The Campaign Setting hardcover is one of my favorite books.

24,000 gp to make more than 6000 gp a year? That's a bonkers-high RoI in any realistic setting.

In a modern day setting with regulated markets and lots of analysts watching any given stock it is high, I don't know about a fantasy setting.

In the real world drow don't pour out of a quarry that's been dug too deep, dragons won't claim one as its new lair, and there's no chance that a couple of upstart necromancers will disrupt the quarry industry by replacing living miners with mindless undead, using the lower labor costs to price out all other competitors.

The risks are pretty high. Eight years to double your money isn't that out of line for the risks involved and the effort required to manage the quarry.

Finally, a Snoopy mini! :)

I'm not overly fond of that colour wagon. I think I'll have to paint that wagon.

You should get Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin to help!

I don't think anyone is in favor of a "nuke & start over" new edition, but I for sure would like a Pathfinder 1.5, where all the errata had been taken in, where some of the feats are dropped or amended, where there is perhaps not 40+ base classes with 10+ archetypes per class, etc.

Yeah, it's like this time I went into an ice cream shop and they had more flavors than I wanted. I told them that I don't like Ube or Mexican Chocolate, so they should set fire to their store and rebuild it without those flavors.

Maybe I'm weird or skittish, I'm actually relieved to see that the rewards aren't in-game, but are more concrete instead. At $50 I'd have only spent slightly more than a regular RPG book. A lot of the other levels look the same way.

The deal closer for me was the RPG wall in the video. It's cool to see so many editions of D&D and other games in Ryan's office. I think he gets "it".