Izmo's page

Hey there folks,

Just to be clear, we are all over the boards reading and talking about threads (even if we are allowing some of them to brew without our direct input), this is one that I felt was important to talk about.

Of course it is important for us to know that you don't find our game exciting enough to play.

There just isn't a lot of direction we can take from that other than "make it more exciting". Which is, of course, something we are always striving to do anyway. Later on in this process we are going to be releasing a swarm of surveys that are not directly tied to the playtest. While many of those will be about specific game systems and engines, there will be one about our layout and information design. This too is important to us, even though I do not suspect we will get too many answers on it, as survey about user design interface is probably not too interesting to most, but that wont stop us from trying.

Just thought I would toss that out there. I hate to see enthusiasts so distraught that they cannot even bring themselves to play. Rest assured that we will be looking into that once we have things rolling here.

This is super encouraging to hear!

My group's on the verge of walking away because while they love the ideas of the game, they find deciphering the rules to be tedious. Most of them have asked if we can switch back to our other game, but we're still going to give it a try tonight. Most of us were worried that the book's layout and wording are fairly finalized. The group went over to the surveys but when they didn't ask about character creation or readability they assumed that that part of the book was fairly complete and got discouraged.

I'll let them know!

Shroud wrote:

I don't get the problem people are having. I read the book cover to cover. Character creation takes maybe 30 minutes maximum for any class. Where is the confusion? I can understand it if you are coming at it from a min-max munchkin style but if you just want to build a decent character, it's extremely quick.

Its the cross referncing. For ewxample we're doing Session 0.1 now and the wife is looking at bards and druids. She has to go read cantrips and figure out what they do, then she wants to find out what a level 10 spell is, then she is trying to figure out why Bards don;t seem to get a level 10 spell (maybe they do she is still looking).

She has not tread the action economy section yet, she has to go and find out what expert, mater, legendary+ signature stuff is etc.

My printer is also out of ink the 270 odd pages I did print killed it and I am reading the PDF more.

Its also very dry to read (hard, boring etc) its like reading the 3.5 Spell Compendium or 4E PHB again. Sometimes I translate stuff into 5E terms for her like the level 20 stuff is capstone abilities like 5E but you can pick what you want such as level 10 spell or use your wild shape to shapechange (and then she has to go read wild shape and shapechange).

If you are used to it from late Pathfinder books in general or Starfinder it might be easier but we stopped playing Pathfinder in 2012 (as DM) last played 2014 (as player).We also did not go that deep down the warren of splat books mostly just using the core book+ advanced player guide and Ultimate Magic/Combat so maybe missed some evolution there in later PF books IDK.

Ultimate Campaign and Skull and Shackles/Kingmaker was the last time I paid much attention to Pathfinder. And I barely read Ultimate Campaign being honest.

Also complexity look at Calculate the Result pg 291), that is potentially 10 steps to resolve something.

For what it's worth I'm in the same situation. My players and I have been trying to get through the book and it's just so dry. This is the first Rulebook I've come across where I actually dislike pouring through it, and I've been a GM for over 20 years.

Just about all of my players have run out of fuel on this book. Most aren't bothering to read it anymore, hoping the other members in the group figure it out. We're still going to give it a go, hoping the actual game is so fun that it'll inspire us to keep going.

We all love the customization and options, but none of us like the actual book's wording. It reads like it's written by an engineer. And it bothers me that, as best I can tell, there are no Surveys for the book's wording, layout, or character creation. That's fine for people like me who will go to the forums, but there are plenty who will just move on, and it seems like a missed opportunity.

Or maybe they're happy with the way the book is written and laid out, and as some have suggested, the game isn't meant for people like our group. Which I can totally accept; I don't need every game to be changed just for me. But I hope that's not the case, because the underlying game seems to have some really fun material.

That's fairly vague given the language we use here on the boards. Was it an alignment trap by the DM? Did the character have REASON to kill the creature, even if it was just self-defense? What I have from you so far is not enough to comment on.

I was the GM in question, so I can answer your question. I hope this isn't off-topic too much. I think the conversation is about the strictness of the Paladin code and why the wording differs from 3.5 to Pathfinder, and whether Paizo did this consciously.

After leading out a group of monsters from an old lady's basement and then dispatching them, the group's paladin went downstairs to find out if there were any more of these creatures left. There was one left, nestled in a hole, sleeping.

The paladin raised his hammer, screamed the equivalent of "They're coming right for us!" and brought the hammer down, killing the sleeping creature. The creature wasn't evil, and the act wasn't in self defense. The player and the table laughed at the events, even after he was told he lost his powers for that. He had no problem with that.

The problem came when we re-read the rules and realized that the little bit of lying he did in the attack, and before when he and the group lied to an old lady, would have caused him to lose his powers, according to the book.

My friend Kevin, the OP, thought there was more leeway, but discovered that leeway only exists in the text from 3.5 and the cleric, not the paladin.