MadamReshi's page

Wouldn't one of the best ways that Paizo could address trans rights and LGBTQIA+ issues would be to engage with organisations like Stonewall, etc.?

It's interesting how radically different different players' PF2 experiences are.

It is pretty cool to see. Makes me really interested in running the game with people who haven't kept up with this conversations like I have.

And there's also the question of average VS optimized. As Fighters can be either Strength or Dexterity based, and Dexterity based Fighters are quite bad, do you consider the class strong because of its best builds or average because it has both good and bad builds?

Why are Dexterity Fighers bad in PF2e? Just unable to take account of the correct feats etc? Could they not be great archers?

Reading this thread has been interesting, as I had been wonderign about Aid and aiding attacks, and whether the DC should be set to the AC of the creature, as that sounded like what would be appropriate following the rules.

But I think staying to DC20 to encourage its use and distinguish between success and critical success is important.

MadamReshi wrote:

My proposals for Warpriest would be:

Fourth Doctrine: you would also gain expert in all martial weapons.

Fifth Doctrine. you gain master weapon profiency with your diety's favoured weapon.

Final Doctrine: you would also gain master weapon profiency with martial weapons.

How do people feel this would land with how Warpriests are right now? Too good?

Question: what does Magus then have to offer if Warpriest brings their proficiencies, but also 3 spells/level and divine font?

I don't think spellstrike and hybrid study would even come close in that comparison.

That is a good point and criticise. It is difficult to balance; though the Magus is a lot more offense minded and a better striker, since the Divine spell list is typically pretty restricted outside of what spells you get from following particular gods.

I haven't played or ran the system yet (as much as I want to!), so I haven't seen if there are any problems with the Warpriest versus Cloister in terms of balance or how good it feels; though I would guess that Cloister is better in more parties, while Warpriests might require specific combinations of party classes.

For those who have ran and played through the adventure; how well would this adapt to being used as an intro before going into Strenght of Thousands with similar or different characters?

MadamReshi wrote:

My proposals for Warpriest would be:

Fourth Doctrine: you would also gain expert in all martial weapons.

Fifth Doctrine. you gain master weapon profiency with your diety's favoured weapon.

Final Doctrine: you would also gain master weapon profiency with martial weapons.

How do people feel this would land with how Warpriests are right now? Too good?

A problem is the lack of armor proficiency and, to a lesser extent, greater weapon specialization. Also never increasing your spell DCs also cuts into how effective your crits are.

My first try at giving a fully martial chassis (or as close as the doctrine system allows) was to never increase spell dc and attack rolls to make room for the armor and greater weapon. Then I changed it to still giving spell dcs but not spell attack rolls, but that’s almost a meaningless distinction with the divine spell list.

So yeah, can be done, but not without breaking stuff and having your character be oddly weak in several places.

To clarify, everything I was suggesting is in addition to what it also gives you. Not having greater weapon specialsation and more armor profiency is unfortunate, but I feel that those might push warpriest over too being too much. Perhaps maybe giving better armmor proficiency instead for Final Doctrine?

My proposals for Warpriest would be:

Fourth Doctrine: you would also gain expert in all martial weapons.

Fifth Doctrine. you gain master weapon profiency with your diety's favoured weapon.

Final Doctrine: you would also gain master weapon profiency with martial weapons.

How do people feel this would land with how Warpriests are right now? Too good?

I t hink it all depends on the approach the author takes in their post.

Personally, I take an approach that Subjectivity is Implied when talking about things like this. Nothing I am trying to put across in my arguments is meant to be taken as 100% objective besides the facts themselves. Where I to say what I think is the best class, I would say "x is the best class", but I would mean it from my perspective... without having to put in all the qualifiers for it.

It is obviously fine and useful to sprinkle in terms such as "from my point of view" or "in my opinion", but otherwise it can bog down the point if you constantly have to qualify where you're coming from; or it dilutes the point and makes it too weak for what you want to come across with.

So while postulating the conclusion you have in the form of a question as a potential means of bait is wrong, I don't think it's problematic if you're not pretending to be objective on anything and you're willing to argue your case.

For anyone who is male or masculine, please remember that you are not alone and that your mental health is important; opening up, particularly emotionally can be quite difficult, but talking and reaching out does help. You are valid.

If you can't see how religion (particularly organised religion) can be used to harm and hurt people; that it is okay to criticise that harm and hurt without spreading religious hatred / hatred of anyone of a particular religion (which is often tied to racism); and that those criticisms are different from the transphobia faced by trans people...

I don't know how else to explain it.

Thanks for this. This is making more positive that Paizo as a whole can turn the corner - but it's clear the workers and staff themselves are good peeps.

Wildly off topic, I know, but at this stage someone has to PM me the lore behind Gorbacz.

But seconding Cori's comment.

I am glad there is a mechanism to properly deal with bigotry and other awful users.

I think making claims about incidents without some sort of verification or proof of discussion, whether on or off site, is off-topic and does muddy the water somewhat, and increases moderator stress (there are like... what, three at the moment? Let's try not to increase their work).

Everyone is replaceable in a business.

Except, as clear as it seems, the main community managers who proved themselves time and time again, and were rewarded with being dropped suddenly.

Diego Valdez wrote:

To clarify, Tonya lobbied for and was given the Director of Customer Service and Community position. This was in effect a demotion for Sara. A few weeks later Sara was fired by Tonya. I quit when she was fired.

...well whoop me with a Lincoln Log...thank you for that informative bit Diego.

A lot of things are starting to make a lot more sense now.

Pretty disheartening, even with the small steps forward.

Let's see how the negotiations with the union go. Something tells me that they won't be particularly happy with this statement.

Might be off-topic, but it is it a bad idea to not boost all three of CON, WIS and DEX when leveling up, or is it okay to have one weaker save?

If it is a bad idea, that does reinforce in my head that perhaps Pathfinder 2e should have used the 4e save system to consolidate how saves work.

I find people's attitudes to moderation and forums strange here.

I have become somewhat active on forums such as enworld and rpg.net. Those places are both well moderated and warn users of infractions, publically, with quotes and without deleting posts. In addition, users are banned, sometimes permanently, if they break the rules.

I understand right now that the Paizo team is quite small and that they are under a lot of pressure and work to try and deal with current incidents. Removing posts to try and deal with incidents is logical in that situation and somewhat admirable; they have been some truly digusting things removed recently, that I can imagine have been upsetting to people.

However.

If users are not being banned for blatantly breaking community guidelines, and then their posts are being removed... then their behaviour is going to continue, as their intention is often to hurt specific people at specific times - which tehy wil lget away with if there is no longer term issue.

I have heard there are significant issues with Pazio accounts being linked to purchases, which I can see being an issue; I am not sure how viable it is to refactor how accounts work to separate user accounts and purchase accounts.

But this needs to be done, along with hiring more moderators and properly dealing with abusive and rude users. Otherwise, the forum's viasblility as a place to discuss Paizo and its products will be reduced.

This is not directly related to Gods and Magic, but I am curious why Red Mantis Dedication is restricted to lawful evil characters, when Achaekek has LN and NE followers; I could imagine a LN follower potentially engaging with Red Mantis work in assassinations that are... not as morally questionable (someone like say Agent 47 from Hitmman - that type of character).

I tried to create a Rogue character with Free Archetype to live up to this type of concept but found I was better off using a combination of Human ancestory feats and Cleric multi-class dedication to reach this idea.

I'm guessing I'm missing a lot when it comes to alignment for why this restriction is here.

At this point I'm almost content to leave the forums behind and just stick to the discords of my favorite actual play podcasts, as those spaces have been actively welcoming.

Off topic but any recommendations, particularly for a community point of view? With Critical Role vods being delayed to Monday and being live-streamed at really unfriendly times for me, I could use another TTRPG podcast / actual play to listen to.

Perhaps marginalised people (in particular members of the LGBTQIA+ community) wouldn't be so abrasive and 'rude' if we had the backing of more straight and cis people who would call out homophobic, biphobic and transphobic behaviour when they see it, and got rid of repeat offenders whos goals are to make us unsafe and unwelcome.

I certainly know, from my experience, so called 'abrasive' trans people tend to be, well, not be abrasive when they're around people who accept them. Almost as if coming under attack for existing is exhausting and draining.

Paizo, please hire a moderator team, or get vetted volunteers. This place is becoming pretty distressing to come to, in the way the subreddit of all things isn't.

To be honest IMO Alchemist and Magus, as far as I can tell from reading (not playing), both only need one change made to them to make them more viable;

Alchemist should get master simple and alchemical profiencies;

Spellstrike should be special and not trigger Attack of Opportunity.

I feel those changes would go a long way to address balance concerns with those two classes.

There is no path for career advancement at Paizo. Jim’s VP position was created for him, it was not something anyone was able to apply for. Staff didn’t even know it existed until we were informed he was hired. Likewise the position Mike is in was not one anyone was able to apply for, it was created for him when he was hired.

And as far as promoting upwards in the company, well after nearly 5 and a half years and still having an entry level title despite doing things like managing the satellite booths at GenCon, and training new hires (all of the CSRs currently at the company weren’t only trained by me, I was also the one who went through their applications, and set up interviews, likewise for some that are no longer with the company) I asked for a promotion in December 2019. After 3 months of leading me on, in March 2020 I was informed I didn’t NEED a promotion. I did finally get one a year later in January 2021, but that was because they had to, not because they wanted to. Incidentally before Paizo I was the front end manager at a Harbor Freight Tools for 2 and a half years, and before that the warehouse manager at a Borders for several years until the company liquidated. So it’s not even that I was unqualified for a leadership position.

There is no getting promoted up through the ranks at Paizo. Either you’re a friend or contact of Lisa or Jeff’s and you get hired straight into leadership positions, or you’re not and you have no career advancement options.

That's pretty horrifying. I'm hoping this is something that the union negotiations can discuss and solve, and that the new executives keep thise very much at the back of their minds that this has to change.

Thank you for speaking up Diego. Having this out in the open is important. Solidarity the whole way.

I hope that Butler and Webb both understand the importance of working with the union and workers, and they help to address the continuing concerns (as can be seen in other threads) about Paizo's exective team (particularly Jeff).

I would hope they help Paizo apologise for transphobic practices that occured in the past.

I personally rpefer Soul Vessal.

However I would suggest that each lich, based on who they are, would choose a shape, name and reference for their individual 'Soul Cage', and the term only be used as a generic reference.

Imagine, if you will, that the lich ytou're facing has a Waffle Iron of Soul Binding... how much flavour and stories can you great out of that?

Unsure about Magus, but for me for Gunslinger and very specifically anyone who wants to dual wield, it does feel awkward being unable to use your Way reload while having the Dual Wield feat from the Gunslinger itself. IMO, it'd make sense to mek to errata the Gunslinger version of that feat so that you can use it to reload a weapon without having to have a hand free, so that you can at-least use it when required. That doesn't save on action economy necessarily, but it would at-least make Pistolero or Sniper as safe paths for anyone who's going down that class fantasy.

Granted, I'm saying this without playing - it might be a different situation in actual play.

History being written by the victors is a myth. History is written by those who have the means and ability to do so, but also by what people leave behind and what spreads as cultural ideas or opinions.

Consider the fact that in Irish history, there were plenty of various different rebellions against the English and British administration on the island, all of which failed until the War of Independence. Yet, it is extremely clear that each one of these rebellions, despite their failure, continued to inspire future rebellions and inform Irish culture. This could not exactly have happened if the adage was always true, no?

... apologies, we're getting quite serious here.

While I generally prefer not to have alignment systems (though if I were to run Pathfinder, I would probably stick with it unless I had a compelling reason not to), I do agree capital G good gods should... well, not be outright bigots or engage in horrible things. While modern morality can be quite different fromn the past, history is not linger; it's not as simple as believing a medevial society, especially one where gods exist, would have misogny as a mainline view, to use the example brought up here.

UnArcaneElection wrote:

Archpaladin Zousha wrote:

Late to the party on this thread, but I'd definitely like to see more going on in Galt. Night of the Gray Death is GOOD, don't get me wrong, but it feels to me like the climax of an AP without the five or so books of build-up and getting to know Galt and its people. {. . .}

Really? It felt to me like just the beginning.

keftiu wrote:

A political AP about rebuilding a traumatized nation in the aftermath of one final revolution would be /so/ much fun.

And the beauty of it is, five years later, it's ready to rinse and repeat . . . Galt has one final revolution every five years or so.

Night of the Grey Death seems to mark a pretty definitive turning point. I won’t say more, but the future of Galt should look fairly different from its recent past.

I'm curious then - does Pathfinder 2e have a metanarrative, i.e., the results and endings of past APs will definitely tie into and become canon in future APs and lore books? I know the year advances to match the current year of our world in each material released.

Just because rights are enshrined in law doesn't mean those laws are enforced properly or correctly - or indeed, that people will have access to practical ways to take advantage of their rights.

Ask several trans people here about what rights they have on paper in the law of their country and what, actually, is practically available for them to help them.

Ask employees in many, *many* companies what their rights are according to the law of the land, and how much power and access to those rights they actually have.

You will for a significant amount of people, the de-jure and de-facto situation are very, very different.

Fantastic news. The work begins, but this should help make it much easier.

The union has come out in support of trans rights.

The union has come out in support of trans rights.

That announcement of a union is a great step. It makes me a lot more confident that the issues raised will be addressed properly.

It's really funny people are trying to find imaginary transphobic laws to minimise the more-than-likely transphobic actions of someone in Paizo in regards to a trans WOMAN and a cis WOMAN sharing a room together when they want to.

It would change nothing about how horrible an act like that would be. It wouldn't chage anything about what anybody is saying here. It says a lot about some posters views when they keep bringing it up and implying that people are being tricked or mislead. Wonder what that reminds me of.

Trans and non-binary people here have raised valid concerns and want them addressed by Paizo - whether vague or not, they need to at-least show, through action, that they support their transgender and non-binary staff and that those people are welcome and cherished at Paizo, and as customers.

Right now, that hasn't been shown.

I would rather think it would be pretty invasive to publish a screengrab of someone's private Twitter; she kept it private for a reason, and it may not have been the best idea for people with access to that Twitter to publish a summary of what she said (unless she herself confirmed that it was okay for people to do that).

A few others with access to the Twitter have confirmed what she said in the thread considering the president's reply.

Can we have an actual source where Sara Marie wrote this?

I'm new but I'm just going to be concise. This doesn't address anything and doesn't help anyone. Take actual action. Or at-least show how you are going to listen to your employees, particularly non-management, and fix things.

I had recently bought three of the core rulebooks for Pathfinder 2e and had been hoping to find people to see if I could run an Adventure Path.

Now after all this news, I cannot decide whether I should just run free adventures or homebrew, or whether to run the system at all.

I had been hoping that Paizo would be significantly better than WoTC in terms of the actions they take as a company, but it seems to me Paizo's management is holding that possibility back.

Gambling isn't tactical, rewarding or intellectual?

Professional poker players who consistently win would love a word with you.

Poker is as much about deception and bluffing as it is about gambling. There is a much bigger skill element to it than most gambling.

While there is obviously a large skill element here too, you can't force the dice to roll a certain way. Just like poker players can't force the dealer to give them certain cards.

EDIT: as well as that I wonder how many professional poker players lose a lot of money (my base outside impression is that as professionals, they don't just keep playing to increase wealth, but also to keep going financially.)