Lord Bowser's page

I've just done the same, I'm hoping I get the PDF automatically with no trouble.

On a side note, did I just miss something or did this compilation kind of fly under the radar? I'll admit I don't religiously check new product announcements since I get most of them by subscription anyway, but I didn't hear anything about this product until I got my weekly Paizo newsletter. I'd hate to think you guys are missing out on sales due to lack of marketing.

Just bought the bundle, and yes, as usual you get the digital product here on Paizo, same as if you had bought it directly from the site.

Love these bundles, please keep 'em coming! Looking forward to filling out my 1e collection.

This is awesome to see! My only complaint is now I have to decide if I want to splurge on preordering all the spell cards instead of picking them up piecemeal over the next few months like I intended to make it easier on the budget.

Then again, it is a quiet month with only the next AP volume shipping... Who needs impulse control anyway?

I'm probably an outlier here, but I've just ignored hero points in my games so far. Partly because I want to avoid the possible appearance of GM favoritism, partly because they feel like a narrative RPG mechanic that feels a little out of place in my group's more tactical approach to Pathfinder, and mostly because they're just one less thing for me to keep track of as GM.

Same goes for Inspiration in 5e. I've never cared for it, and only had one GM ever make frequent use of it.

Scenario A is happening in encounter mode throughout. It starts in encounter mode and doesn't leave it. How is that the incorrect way to run it? It has obviously entered encounter mode some time before, likely at the start of combat, but that's not the relevant phase for the action we're talking about.

Scenario A is there to contrast scenario B which starts in exploration mode and switches to encounter mode in a similar setting.

That switch is where the root cause of the problem lies. In scenario A, the surprising action happens in one of several rounds in initiative order, while in scenario B the surprising action happens at the start of the initiative order. You asked for an example of such a case, I've provided one.

With circumstances being otherwise extremely similar, I don't see why in one case we should assume the possibility of some form of precognition, while in the other we don't.

I would argue that a correct adjudication wouldn't involve precognition in either scenario.

Scenario A: combat has already been going on for one or more turns with an established initiative up to this point. The fighter/sorcerer casts Dimension Door on his turn to close the distance and (presumably) attack. Sucks to be the Arena Master since his turn was just beforehand and he now has to wait a full round to respond, but he had every opportunity to target the fighter during his previous action if he wanted. No precognition.

Scenario B: combat has yet to start when the fighter/sorcerer begins casting a spell. Dimension door costs two actions and requires both verbal and somatic components. A round is six seconds, so assuming each action is a third of that he's spending four seconds doing nothing but waving his arms around and chanting an incantation. Arena Master has every right to presume hostile intent and an opportunity to respond in kind, but should his attack or manipulation of the arena resolve before or after the Dimension Door finishes? Roll initiative to find out. Arena Master wins and can respond to a spell beginning to be cast. However, the spell hasn't finished, the fighter is still down below, and the Arena Master has no idea what the spell in question will actually do since he hasn't heard enough of it yet to be able to identify it. All he knows is the fighter is up to something and he has a chance to try to interfere with it. Again, no precognition necessary.

Long story short a group of well educated (we all have PHDs) fantasy nerds want to try this RPG thing and these are our expectations:

1. Interesting decisions, high decision density and the decisions have to matter. (This is a necessity for all our games)
2. No artificial boundaries due to game mechanics. (This is The selling point for RPGs for us and for us the main difference to board games)
3. Robust fantasy framework and world building. (The world has to make sense, given the new fantasy elements. It should feel organic and should have a closed intrinsic logic.)

So, if I'm reading this right, it sounds like you want your tabletop RPG to

1. be structured like a board game so that every decision made has a chance to make or break whether you "win" (whatever that means for a game of Pathfinder),
2. not be structured like a board game so that you can create whatever character and make whatever decisions you want, and
3. in addition to the above, also have a narratively rich and consistent setting in the world.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure any product could live up to those expectations. Your three criteria are, if not directly contradictory, at least making competing demands that will require compromises to achieve. Game mechanics by their very definition are going to place limits on what characters can do, and without limits it's hard to create a situation where interesting decisions can be made.

As for a "robust fantasy framework" with internal logic, well, as has been pointed out that's highly subjective. But going with your dragon example, if you want a realistic depiction of how many Level 15+ apex predators a world can support, there aren't going to be enough to actually build an adventure for a high-level party. Both the quality of the gameplay and the narrative are going to suffer if that level of internal consistency is demanded.

It sounds to me like you and your friends were pitched the idea that Pathfinder is a perfect fusion of deep strategy board game, extended fantasy series, and freeform narrative creation. It certainly draws elements from all those, but it can't possibly beat all of them at once. Tabletop RPGs don't replace board games or novels; they're an entirely different medium that offers their own experience and a unique set of strengths and limitations. As long as you keep that in mind I don't see why you and your friends can't find a way to have some fun with it.

And now for some numbers!

I made a spreadsheet to calculate every possible outcome for rolling a DC 20 check with modifiers ranging from +0 to +19. 20 rolls each with 20 potential outcomes - 400 combined outcomes. Here's the results:

64 critical fail (16%)
127 non-critical fail (31.75%)
144 non-critical success (36%)
65 critical success (16.25%)

So, this idea that if we interpret "fails by 10 or more" as "DC-10 or worse", we will make critical failures more likely than critical successes? I completely reject that.

If anyone would like to check the spreadsheet for errors or to make a copy to play with, here's a link. You can adjust the DC by changing cell A1. Red 1's are crit failures, yellow 2's are failures, etc.

(Note that the reason I used a DC 20 check with a scaling modifier, instead of a flat check with a scaling DC, was to prevent the rules regarding flat checks with DCs <= 1 and >= 21 from skewing the results)

Alright, first of all: that's actually a nice tool! Thanks for putting that together. I might hang on to a copy of that in the future if you don't mind...

However, we need some edits for this particular application. As it stands now, you're using a biased selection pool. If we were to use only the bottom half of your table we would erroneously conclude that it was nearly impossible to crit fail, but that's clearly not the case. Notice how in the bottom row it's impossible to crit fail? You need one more at the top where it's impossible to crit succeed.

To accomplish this, I've made a version where I've added an extra row with a +20 modifier and upped the DC to 21 to compensate. Now, ignoring crits, this scenario runs the full range from impossible to reach the DC (20+0) to impossible to miss (1+20). If we total up results now, we have 210 each of general successes and failures, but ten more crit failures than failures!

I've also made a second sheet in the same workbook that repeats the calculations but using DC-11 and below as crit fails. In this case, we again have 210 each of general successes and failures, but the crits are also equal at 65 apiece. This is what I mean when I say that crit fails are more likely under the current rules.

I'll concede that it would take a little more effort in play to remember, and since this rule applies to all parties it's "balanced" in the sense that it hurts everyone equally. It isn't something that necessarily needs to be changed (though I'll certainly be house ruling it). But it is a mathematical fact that these rules favor crit fails over crit successes on an even distribution over various DCs.

The centre for success/failure and the centre for crits cannot be the same. So they mirror each other differently.

Well, right there you've hit upon the underlying issue of this thread: why shouldn't they be the same? That would seem like the most natural design choice. But for that to be accomplished, we need to have DC-10 still be a failure, and DC-11 be the first crit fail. Then, starting from the dividing line between success and failure, there are ten numbers in either direction before we hit either crit range. Having one side be ten numbers to crit and the other only nine just doesn't make as much sense.

You have no bonus and the dc is 15. You roll there are only 6 steps between failure and critical success here. According to OPs logic crit success should be more likely but it obviously isn't.

This is only true after accounting for the nat 1/20 rules, which shift degrees of success rather than defining success/failure ranges. That really doesn't say anything one way or the other about the relative likelihood of critical successes and failures.

I think part of the problem is the OP and I aren't quite getting across what we mean when we say it's "easier" to crit fail than crit succeed. As long as we're doing examples, here's the simplest one I can think of to illustrate my point: a DC 11 flat check, ignoring nat 1/20 rules (for now). At the most basic level, this check is "balanced" in the sense that there is an equal probability of achieving a good or bad result (11-20 passes, 1-10 does not). However, rules as written, a 1 is a critical failure, while a 20 is not a critical success. In a situation where good and bad outcomes should be equally likely, it is possible to critically fail but not critically succeed. This is what the OP and I mean when we say it's "easier" to critically fail than critically succeed.

Now, for those who would like to argue that adding in the nat 1/20 rules resolves this problem... well, not quite. Yes, for this particular roll we would now have balanced outcomes (1 crit fails and 20 crit succeeds). However, if we shift the DC up or down, the mismatch returns. Increasing the DC to 12 causes a result of 2 to now be a critical failure, while lowering the DC to 10 does not cause 19 to become a critical success. Put another way, starting from the balanced DC 11 check, a +1 bonus to your roll does not improve your odds of achieving a critical success, while a -1 penalty does increase the chances of a critical failure. The critical failure is thus "easier" to achieve through negative modifiers than a crit success is through positive ones.

As for those who have pointed out this is an awful lot of effort put into a very minor "problem"... alright, you've got me there. At the end of the day it's easy enough for anyone who feels strongly about it to house rule one way or the other, regardless of any official ruling. Whether this should even be viewed as a problem at all is certainly debatable. But the fundamental point is that a strict interpretation of the rules really does result in critical failures being easier to achieve than critical successes in the sense described above.

I think the best way to have the proper (equitable) math and have the easy DC +/-10 calculations is to do as Unicore suggests and treat the DC-10 value as a 'failure DC' where if you meet that DC, you have a standard failure (instead of a critical failure as is described in the current rules).

I also agree with this. The way I think of it is each DC actually comes in triplets. The base DC is the typical DC for success, with a "crit DC" equal to base+10 and a "failure DC" at base-10. Then, with the example DC 15 task, you have a clear ladder of "I need a 5 to avoid a crit failure, 15 to actually succeed, and 25 to get a crit success." A 6-15-25 progression just doesn't make sense to me. I'll concede that a strict reading of the rules leads to the latter interpretation, but the point being argued for is that the former is a more logical approach that balances success and failure ranges.

I don't see how asymmetry is inherently bad, but changing the rule to be DC-11 for a Crit failure doesn't actually accomplish a symmetrical system, and it's a BAD idea, please don't do it.

I'm curious as to what you think is bad about it, why should we favor one result over the other?

To implement it you need to start saying things like rolling a 14 on a DC 15 check is Failing the check by 0, if rolling a 13 is Failing by 1.

I don't think that's true. Multiple alternative wordings have been proposed that would result in equal failure/success ranges. Speaking in terms of a "failure DC" at DC-10, as well as "If adding 10 to your total would still result in a failure, you instead achieve a critical failure" both accomplish this without redefining what "fail by 1" means.

Outriders charts are very misleading in how they arbitrarily have a bigger section for Crit Fails and Crit Successes, they don't depict a valid representation of the spectrum. If we are going on pure theoretical numbers it should be infinite in both directions, not stop at 4 and 25. He is right in showing a bigger range for Normal Success than Normal Failure, but that does not actually mean anything about the likelyhood of crits.

That's slightly disingenuous. Yes, Outrider is choosing to show more crit failure results than crit successes despite both having an infinite number of values to achieve either. The point they're trying to illustrate though is that if we start at the breakpoint between failure and success, and advance in both directions at an equal rate, we reach crit failure range sooner than crit success (after only nine numbers rather than ten). Thus, if we compare the first eleven "bad" results to the left of the breakpoint, we end up with two critical fails to nine regular, while the first eleven "good" results contain one crit success to ten regular. Such an imbalance makes it (admittedly only slightly) easier to reach the critical failure range with penalties and higher DCs than to reach crit success with bonuses and lower DCs. Now, it's possible that this was the intent, but it could also be an oversight that at least deserves consideration for correction.

I think this conversation would benefit from moving away from discussions of probability involving specific die rolls, and just look at the ranges for each outcome, which is what Outrider appears to be going for.

If we assume a task with DC 15, I think we're all in agreement that results of 15-24 are a success (ten possible), and 25+ is a critical success (infinite possible). Similarly, anything less than 5 is certainly a critical failure (infinite possible). The question at hand then boils down to which of two options is intended:

a) A check crit fails if you fail by ten or more, meaning 5 is a critical failure as well, and only 6-14 result in a simple failure (nine possible). The CRB phrasing would seem support this view, but it results in an asymmetry between the size of the failure and success ranges (nine and ten, respectively).

b) A check crit fails if adding ten to your result would still result in a failure. A 5 would then be merely a failure (5+10=15 -> pass DC 15), resulting in a range of failure values of 5-14. Standard failure and success would then have an equal number of possible results (ten each), suggesting this might be the intended design despite the wording of the rules.

Note that I'm disregarding the nat 1/20 rules, as these shift the degree of success after determining which outcome range the roll falls in.

Definitely a good candidate for errata. Something like "You immediately move your initiative position to directly before the creature or effect that reduced you turn in which you are reduced to 0 HP" would bring the wording of the rule more in line with its intent. Clarification may need to be added that reactions are considered part of the turns they interrupt, and maybe even spell out that going down on your own turn due to reactions or environmental damage or the like simply causes your turn to end without affecting the initiative order.

Anyway, there's a lot of non-temperature goodies in the blog too, and thanks to everyone for reading and responding. Every week, Logan wonders which thing in the blog will become the big side discussion, and I sometimes guess right, but this time I thought it would be the Pathfinder baseline, not temperature. :D

Man, I just wanted to ask a quick question about RPG units around the world. I come back a day later and find I've helped derail the conversation faster than a natural 1 on a Diplomacy check. Oops...

For the actual subject matter, I think my favorite thing is the simplest: monster descriptions come before the stat blocks. As someone who likes to read Bestiaries cover-to-cover, going straight from the name to the text flows so much smoother than skipping down or to the side past the stats. Helps make it feel more like an actual book without detracting from its use as an in-game reference.

Lord Bowser wrote:

Ok, now that you mention it I'm honestly curious... what does the rest of the world do about creature speeds and the expected 5-foot square battle mats? Do people convert to meters or is that just a fight you've given up on?

I think 2-meter squares (with diagonals costing 3 meters) could be cool.

I can get behind this. Think you can overhaul the entire CRB and Bestiary in a week? :P

Ok, now that you mention it I'm honestly curious... what does the rest of the world do about creature speeds and the expected 5-foot square battle mats? Do people convert to meters or is that just a fight you've given up on?