Kitsune Knight's page

Doodledibob wrote:

I really hope this doesn't mean that the Drow on Apostae will be erased like they were in 2e.

I still take issue with the characterization that they are little more than sexist & racist tropes that needed to be completely removed from the game.

That is not why drow were removed. It was because they are a WotC IP whose use in Pathfinder was reliant on the ogl.

I was openly critical of how Paizo handled the actual process of their removal, and I stand by what I said back then, but keeping them around 100% unchanged with the serial numbers still on was never an option, and none of Paizo's decisions there were motivated by wokeness.

Not saying Drow didn't have bad things about them that could and should have been further altered. But rather than try to salvage anything from them, Paizo just turned around and completely erased them from existence. Nevermind that the whole idea of "dark elves" is something that exists in other media - whether we are talking about the Dumner, the Drukhari, or Kaldorei, there have been plenty of high-profile non-D&D dark elves over the past 20 years.

Rather than renaming the Drow to something else, Paizo just threw them out. Other than concerns about the OGL, the only reason Paizo gave was the excuses about there being problems with their lore. Which you can say about pretty much everything in Pathfinder at one point or another - that doesn't mean those things should be thrown out completely. Hell, take the current PF2E Beginner Box adventure, where you are tasked with wiping out the 'primitive/savage' Kobolds who are causing problems for the human settlement after the humans drove them out and away. That's some pretty awful colonialist framing right there, but that doesn't mean we should wipe Kobolds, humans, or Otari off the map - it means we should rework these things to better show the nuance of the situation.

In the same vein, the lore regarding Drow could have been reworked, possibly leveraging their presence on Apostae in Starfinder to expand their lore in Pathfinder.

As it stands, I have little faith in Paizo's commitment to existing lore and the previous stories that were told in the setting.

I really hope this doesn't mean that the Drow on Apostae will be erased like they were in 2e.

I still take issue with the characterization that they are little more than sexist & racist tropes that needed to be completely removed from the game.

I'm not sure why Kasathas are going to be nerfed. The three-action economy already limits the total number of actions available to them. It seems that there should be some other minor drawback instead for the lowered opportunity cost they face. Switching weapons etc. isn't something that happens all that much in PF2e anyways - making the extra set of hands a situational benefit.

I'm worried about what this approach to balance ("nerf it until it plays the same as all other races") will do to the other plethora of species in Starfinder.

After the continued insisting that there weren't any immediate plans for a Starfinder 2e, I'm wary of any promises or claims made by Paizo. I get that the Enhanced book was probably already locked in by the beginning of the year, but this seems intentionally misleading.

I love Starfinder. I would have bought Starfinder materials in good faith up until the 2e release if the 2e announcement had been made in good faith in turn. This feels much like the remaster announcement: a rug-pull to cut off continued support for books that people just bought a few months ago.

I get that there are many good reasons for wanting to distance yourselves from the OGL, and I'm sure some of the changes to both rules and lore will be for the better. Getting Mark Seifter to do the dragons after the Battlezoo Dragon Ancestry book is sure to result in something great.

But for so many people, the expectation that you built up over years (PDFs purchased for Paizo's website will continue to be updated) were thrown out the window. Hell, Paizo continues to sell the current pre-remaster PDFs at full price, despite the value proposition of what that is actually worth being lower with the dropped support.

The bad communication and obfuscation regarding both the remaster and now Starfinder 2e make it hard for me to get excited about any further projects.

Alignment going the way of the Dodo is fine, since it's largely a vestigial limb from older versions of D&D. Other game systems have shown you can have better ways of dealing with the idea of alignment. But it will change how some classes work, as well as how some spells function.

One big benefit is that content is going to be less spaced out between several books, and instead be unified in one place. As a Starfinder fan, I'm especially aware of what a hassle it is to have vital systems, class features, and more spread out over every hardcover release.

That said: They are not going to update any of the existing PDFs with rule changes or new rules going forward.

That seriously stings, seeing as having continued up-to-date rules in PDF form was one of the big reasons for buying a PDF version of the books in addition to the printed version.

Continuing to have that information on Archives of Nethys doesn't really offset that, since there are key use-cases (and just general preference) for having PDFs.

I can understand that there is significant legwork involved in terms of editing & layout, and that having old books incorporate new text would add work.

I can also understand why Paizo is doing this. Again, as a Starfinder player, it's a significant barrier to entry to new folks, to have to tell them that the Starfinder CRB is not fully feature complete , as key things (such as Starship rules) are locked behind separate books.

For PF2E the APG is pretty much mandatory, as is Bestiary 1.

But I can't help but feel nickeled & dimed from this change, especially since I (like many folks) just got a 2E CRB earlier this year.

I purchased these books in part directly from Paizo, as part of a good faith effort to support a different game system.

I can't help but feel shortchanged, as significant rule changes are not going to be made available to me, despite having paid money for PDFs of all the affected books.

At a minimum, what I would like to see is for people who own the PDF versions of the CRB, APG, Gamemastery Guide, and Bestiary 1 to be given some kind of discount on the new versions of these books.

Ideally I would like to see them being given for free, but I recognize that editing and layout takes labor, and I don't expect the people working on these books to have to do so without pay.

The unexpected announcement to structural changes to how 2E sells books makes me incredibly wary of getting the Starfinder Enhanced book that's coming out later this year.

Because I can see 6 months down the line, Paizo announces "Starfinder Remaster", where they do the exact same thing they just did here.

Are these cards standard playing-card sized, like the other Face Cards?

Assuming these are like the "Deck of Many Worlds" and "Starship Combat Reference Cards", yes, they are standard playing card size, take regular card sleeves, and fit regular deck boxes.