I’m still not Gortle's page

I demand cake.

The cake is still a lie.

I feel like the complete removal of slavery as a concept from the setting does real damage to the …

No.

All the removal of slavery [based on concepts taken from how slavery has been practice in our real world in the last few centuries] does is eliminate white supremacy talking points from Golarion.

That is it.

It does nothing else.
It doesn’t diminish anything.
It doesn’t remove the reasons that groups or organizations or individuals that fight against injustice exist or behave the way they do.
It doesn’t [take your pick].

It just doesn’t.

Anyone who thinks the elimination of slavery eliminates reasons to be fighting for a more egalitarian society isn’t paying much attention to current events.

Similarly for anyone who thinks elimination of slavery doesn’t allow oppression or subjugation on a mass scale.

The main - if not only - thing this change in how Paizo will conduct itself going forward does is pull a chair out from under some crazies who wished they were able to deny rights which they have to people they unjustly deem unworthy of those same rights.
That is it.
Such biased individuals won’t be able to find support for their lunacy here (or at least find less support, and none in future products).

"You should only be prepared to silence the intolerant when they renounce rational argument."

Bigotry isn't rational to begin with.

Rysky and I don’t often agree.

That is, this is the crux of the biscuit:
Saying that adult should have these right but this adult should not have those same rights …
that ain’t right

Not relativistically, but universally.

The intolerant are not interested in definitions, or good faith discussions, or the like type of open, honest, rational discourse & exchange of ideas.
By definition the intolerant are, well, intolerant.
Someone who has an open mind and is willing to change if they acquire knowledge which conflicts with the conclusions they made … such a person may appear intolerant, yet such an individual is simply misinformed, not intolerant.

After all, years ago, criticism of the crown or church was what would be considered offensive, or intolerant, speech.

this isn’t a comment about an open, free, tolerant society but of one about forms of authoritarianism

rolling for stats has a lot of variance
for many, too much to maintain a balanced game
that is, while stat differences may be less important for some, it is very possible to end up with the difference between best rolled stats and worse rolled stats characters averaging +1 across the board (or = here, +1 there, +2 in that!)

and PF2e specifically suggests
“It’s recommended that you keep all the player characters at the same XP total.”
because a level difference is essentially a +1 (or so) difference, all around (depending on which specific levels are being discussed)

EDIT addition:
there was more implied in those phrases than I was capable of inferring (sorry)
some ideas:
- have a choice of fixed arrays, roll where each stat goes
- have a bag of 6 chits, each with a +#; draw one chit for each stat
- some other variation of ‘specified total, randomize how it’s distributed’

my prior post can be more succinctly stated/summarized as:

rules should be rules - clear, unambiguous

otherwise it’s jus prose with pretensions

is this a thread for when one has a legitimate criticism of PF2e?
or is this thread for replying to such posts?
I thought the former yet … ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’ve been debating tossing in my two cents

that is, would like to comment in this thread yet feel I really cannot
why not?
because I don’t know what PF2e is
what!?! how can that be?!?

I don’t know because there is so much that is
- vague and ambiguous (battleforms anyone?)
or
- simply completely missing (how **exactly** does the Nightmare Rider ability of a Night Hag work? [Bestiary pp202-3])
or
- (you all know what I mean)
that I truly don’t feel like I know what the design intent is

so for each such instance, I have to guess which of the various possible interpretations is what the designers meant

even if I’m right one time, I cannot be correct every ruddy time, so I’m not playing PF2e, I’m playing a game that is kinda PF2e-adjacent
which means any criticisms I have might not really be about PF2e, but about how I (when I GM) or my companions (when one of them GMs) decided to interpret/implement it

I believe the designers knew what they intended for every rule they wrote;
that is, I do not believe there was ever even a single instance of

you know, not really sure how many, if any, hands should be needed for Battle Medicine, so gonna write it in a deliberately weasel wordy way and let the buyers of our product figure it out

yet the CRB itself (let alone all the ensuing products) is so riddled with such ambiguous writing that I haven’t been in a session which did not encounter multiple instances where the GM had to make a rules call - not a ‘how will this NPC react?’, nor a ‘who will the ettin attack?’, nor even a ‘what is the name of the ship they’re trying to book passage on?’ but an actual honest to the gawds gawd-be-damned-basic game mechanics question!

and that makes bb Merisiel cry

wasn’t this discussed aeons ago?

as for the curse …
this one time at original D&D camp, you had to find a level 17 healer to remove the clay golem curse; it was that or never heal again

so is this an homage to the past, to the origins of Pathfinder?
a typo?
strong arguments can be made either way

play your table as you’d like
at ours? played as written, everyone hid while the mage cast fly, said “I’ll be back in a minute or so” then flew out of reach and Ray of Frosted the thing; took 14 rounds of attacks before it was done

Divided We Beg.

United We Bargain.

transphobia needs to go the way of apartheid
oppressive, discriminatory conduct has no place in civilized society

sadly, many often show our society is less civilized than we want to believe or hope it is