Madhippy3's page

But flight is an extremely powerful adventuring ability. The reasoning falls apart when we remember how useful in exploration and combat flight is. Even if a level 1 Strix adventurer has a max to hit of +3, they would ultimately be doing better than other level 1 adventurers.

I still run legacy wizard in a home game and never remade my legacy wizard to remaster in PFS. I don't care if the new schools are fun to read they aren't fun to play. Any player could have written about their school in a backstory. Paizo didn't actually add anything but ideas.

Wizards needed feats, not schools. Some new thesis ideas would be interesting, but at this point I just want all the thesises (thesi?) as part of the wizard chassis. I want them to have more skills with extra improvements (less than rogue/investigator, bet more than everyone else), I want a lot of things I am not going to get. What I never wanted was a restrictive like of school spells with a theme.

At this point I just want the magical schools back with the freedom to take anything from a big list. At least I can still have that in my home games, and the next time a level 7-10 or 9-12 PFS scenario is being run.

And to be clear: curses providing both benefits and drawbacks made each stage of those curses really messy and difficult for many players to parse. I can fully understand why Paizo wanted to rework that and make curses purely detrimental as their name would suggest. However, I also think the designers gave us the solution to that problem when they baked curse scaling into cursebound feats: by making those feats scale based on how cursed you are, you get to draw benefits from your curse in a manner that is not only much easier to understand, but also easier to mold onto the mechanics of each feat.

I never understood why people didn't like a class from the Advanced Players Guide was more complex. This was kind of the point. Swash was also more difficult to play for needing to juggle your Panache, Finisher, and applicable skill. It was nice this wasn't removed just made easier with Bravado.

Why did Oracle have to have its complexity neutered? I never thought these were classes for first time players. I didn't try Oracle till I had some game experience under my belt. And I loved it. It wasn't stronger for being complex, but it was different and gave me a lot to think about when I wanted that as a player. I would have loved some extra attention to the Legacy Oracle in the remaster so the weaknesses were addressed and brought into parity with the stronger parts.

Teridax, your ideas in the next paragraph are great. I would have been happy with the curses benefit being put on steroids is the curse negatives were as debilitating like Ancestry. If they wanted to add more spell slots, thats nice too.

Having binged all of this just now my favorite suggestion has been to take the Amp and focus point away from Psychic Dedication. Pick one of the Psi Cantrips, this alone is pretty powerful but we can't fix everything.

If we could we would fix all the other archs so they would be less generic, but thats a lot of houseruling and not something we should expect from Paizo. So we have to hope they will tone down what is to strong, though without making it generic. I don't think anyone wants it to be generic just for equality with the other deds we just need some kind of equity with the others so they are "budgeted" the same on power. Trading two cantrips for one psi cantrip might not be perfect but it works imo.

Never give Amp, thats to much of the Psychic identity, and has been the cause of a lot of frustration related to easy power.

Fixing magus is a different topic. Yes removing Amped IW will just encourage different focus spell hunting, but at least for this thread thats not the concern.

I just like this as a thought exercise and a little socializing.

Whatever Paizo decides for Impossible is fine, even if it isn't what I am advocating here. I don't mind I am disagreed with here because I am enjoying reading thoughtful posts and considering counter arguments. I don't even expect to change minds.

I am just having fun.

I got to be critical, that vorpal dragon is just to damn edgey. Tone it down.

Also, DMs of home games should be able to know what the rules are. What good is buying a rulebook that gives you unclear rules and says "I dunno, figure it out for yourself?"

Which is not an insignificant reason some players swapped to PF2e from dnd5e. That game is so full of holes and minimal options my swap to PF2e is pretty which and complete. Haven't played a game of 5e in 3 years and don't miss it.

So the release of the newer wizard subclass and schools isn't addressing what people feel the class was lacking?

I also consider this to be a Paizo level mistake. Instead of fixing the core problem they try to "patch" the problem with a fix only in subclass. We saw this with Sorcerer options in the dnd5e book Tasha's Cauldron. The new options are objectively better mechanically than the older options. Its a great fix to what Sorcerer was missing, but it wasn't retroactive and thus is just power creep.

And yes it has been 53 days since the first complaint on the changes on this thread and the most we have heard from them is Mr. Jacob's reassurance that they are discussing our feedback. While I appreciate Mr. Jacob's speaking to us, the longer the silence the less contented I am about it.

Have they been in talks for 50 days? Have they made a decision? Are they going to tell us if they did? Or can we expect 7-09 to land without any more acknowledgement.

It was probably always to late, 7-09 and later scenarios were probably to far along to do a major rewrite for normal level bands from the day the announcement was made. Paizo made their decision, and there wasn't anything more to say, because they waited to late for feedback to matter.

Madhippy3 wrote:

Unicore wrote:

It just seems like it will be harder to get the numbers to run those except at large conventions.

Maybe in person, but these will fill up fast on Warhorn.

... great? I sure hope "this is fine for online play so it doesn't matter what happens in person" isn't a decision point.

I am willing to say, not great. I brought up in my first post on this thread that the decisions seem made with online play in mind. I am almost exclusively online PFS2 and things seem to fill up with at least 5 players very quickly no matter what scenario it is. As long as it is at a reasonable time and on Foundry, I've never seen problems with tables firing. This is why I think Paizo are committing to the narrow level bands so hard. Without even waiting to see how well it works in SFS2 Year 1 they are bringing it to PFS2 because I can only imagine that their internal data shows these changes won't be significantly harming the online space.

I have from testimony like yours that this will hurt the local con scene and so I am afraid that this very well might be a decision point for them. That they are discounting the local scene knowing Gen Con will survive and Paizo Con is almost all exclusively online anyways.

PFS lore becoming default in PFS has been among the changes I have been most pleased with to my own surprise. It just makes sense and it comes up a lot. IDK how it works in Starfinder Society, but all but the Legacy Field Promotions spent 3 years in Pathfinder College before their initiation. It just made sense.

I am so sick of 1-4s. There is enough level 1-4s which aren't even repeatable to take someone to level 5. The foundation of the level band pyramid is to damn wide! And now they want to waste our time with 1-2s! We don't need these levels. We need more 5-8, 7-10, and 9-12. We need to build the pyramid to be better proportioned.

On top of the great posts from Tridus and Talgeron about what smaller level bands are actually going to do to tables in practice. My own petty contribution is that a few people I know and myself are very tired of the low level focus and want more opportunities to flex the cool builds we earned with actual play and to show off our game mastery. In short we want variety and opportunity. Not a reset to more 1-2.

Referring back to the announcement of changes coming to SFS for 2e. It is clear whatever picture Paizo is getting from reporting, it is distorted or their analysts need another go at it because their stated conclusions are empirically wrong. To refresh anyone who cares, we were told that high level content was unpopular so they weren't even going to try (thus the lower level cap for SFS2e).
It was pointed out to blind eyes and deaf ears that the obvious reason PFS2e high level play don't get scheduled as often is there are less scenarios in the range, no repeatables of that range, and fewer players with characters in that range. Not that people were avoiding high level play. (In personal experience even high level scenarios which are badly reviewed get filled because people want to play their high level PCs that got retired for lack of scenarios). People point out that the level cap is unnecessary because Paizo already fixed the above problems with their other changes, more repeatables, and makings new PCs at level 7 will make more characters available for those scenarios. Paizo only needs to sell us scenarios which can get us there (or allow us to make up characters higher than 7, but this is probably a bad idea as Talgeron has already stressed).

My point is that Paizo's data and analysis suck and they are coming to faulty conclusions. We have to hope they are reading these posts because they are missing very real and lived experience which contradict their stated policy.

I am sorry for your lose. I hope you are doing okay.

I think the Book of the Dead did a pretty good job of why necromancy doesn't ever really get a good reputation.

It's easy to imagine what sort of things could create normalization of undead: the business incentives could make undead labor commonplace, or charitable necromancers could use undead labor to repair natural disaster damage or protect towns. Book of the Dead covers why that doesn't work: even controlled mindless undead work worse around the living and cause more accidents. Between that and undead slipping free of control and killing or injuring people, enough attempts at using undead in a pro-social way would be marred by deaths and injuries that it would never be able to turn its reputation around. The businesses would always be breaking reasonable safety laws for an advantage over their competition, not just following normal practices. The undead helping do repairs would cause accidents, or a natural undead would come along in the disaster aftermath and nobody would believe it hadn't just gotten loose from the work crew.

Except this isn't true. Kaer Maga has a large mindless undead menial workforce. There are dangers, but aren't there always. Is there a significant difference between a necromancer losing control of a zombie vs a living employee just "going postal"? I don't see evidence that losing control of the dead is any more common than a living person flying into a deadly rage. At least in the former case we know who is responsible and can exact vengeance. Kaer Maga is proof it can work. In a more ordered society than Kaer Maga it might even be safer.

Appeal to authority's only a fallacy when one's authority is merely a social position or one's scholarly work/authority lies outside the topic, i.e. quoting Einstein outside of physics. Until Nethys and similar deities develop an evidence-based consensus that disagrees with her (or you develop a way us players can investigate Golarion metaphysics), Pharasma IS the authority based on her actually knowing.

Yes, we as players might consider she's mistaken, but in world there's no reason to suspect that. She's as objective as one can get barring James Jacobs giving a definitive answer (unlikely until it serves a narrative purpose in some adventure).

I disagree here for the reason that you have already explained. Why would we use Einstein as an expert of non-physics and why should was ask Pharasma about about universal truths? In Three Fears she seems to be figuring this out for herself too. She doesn't have the answers you think she does. Interestingly it seems to be Yog-Sothoth in his role as the watcher who knows but will not tell. Pharasma doesn't know how this will end and we know Prophesies are borked now anyways.

I disagree that there "are a lot of (dangerous) things in Golarion that aren't treated with near this level of stigmatism". Undead (and the medical issues around corpses) are ubiquitous threats with emotional gravitas.

Here too. You cannot call something ubiquitous when you have good PCs and NPC around that are Undead. The undead aren't even required to prey on the living as we see tombs of forgotten undead survive for centuries or even millennia. I think when we think critically about the topic we see that there is nothing inherently evil or predatory about the mindful undead. So why do we perceive them as such? Probably because those are the stories we are told, and it isn't like there isn't a power structure in place which has a vested interested in maintaining that status. You are ready to draw earth parallel and so am I. There are lots of underprivileged groups that are demonized like this IRL for the purpose of power. With the exception of the mindless undead I think there is a possibility of undead as lifeforms which are predators by nature like many other animals, beasts, and humanoids, but can make their own decisions to not act like predators and still exist without starving.

The Three Fears is beautiful writing. I note though it doesn't mention the undead or damage to the cycle. It gets the mind racing of "if there is undead then who is ultimately the survivor at then end" and referring back to the last fear, maybe she fears it will be forced to be her if no one is born, and no one dies, but existence continues at the end of it all.

All that is to say that it is thought provoking on the implications, but light on facts. Or even guarantees of its truth. Being official doesn't automatically make it true. For writing like this that doesn't really have an answer, not taking everything to be unquestionable is safest. It is certainly canon, but does that mean it is true?

Circling back to my first post, the prophecies of Pharasma are compelling, but not proven fact. It seems reasonable for scholars to question this truth, and once faith is shaken new traditions can grow. Such as necroethics and the application of undeath as a tool shunned by one goddess in a sea of gods and goddesses.

Thank you for the update, Mr. Jacobs.

Bugbears I guess. Overall I am fine, but I want to run PF2e in Eberron some day and if Paizo saves me the work on making an ancestry that would be pretty great.

I am not dying for anything though. I don't think we have any horrendous missing pieces from ancestries. A little off topic but an oozemorph heritage might be nice. The way we have Beastkin and Werecreature Archetypes both accessible I would like to see for oozes, but off topic.

Sorry Mr. Jacobs but seeing is believing and this was just posted.
https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo71fj6?September-2025-Organized-Pla y-Monthly-Update

The opinion is practically one sided on the PFS2 changes, but we are being ignored. Its worse they read, no one could be bothered to respond, and ignore feedback to continue unaltered. Not even acknowledging there has been feedback.

This is getting absurd.

Christopher#2411504 wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

Better to leave this "Why?" for GMs to decide. Just like for Undead PCs.

What would the GM have to do with a purely player facing question?

Setting lore belongs to the GM first and foremost IMO.

The setting by default is Golarion. The devs can write for that setting that like they do when they write for the Society and Religion entries.

I personally don't think finding lore justifications for game balance imposed by the devs is a GMs jobs. As always a GM is more than welcome to change/add/remove anything, but not everything needs to be made with the "GM fills the holes" in mind. That's why a lot of people left dnd5e for fuller pastures.

I believe the idea behind holy and unholy is the cosmic war of "good" and "evil" which is why it replaced alignments and why Pharasma is still cosmically above it all. While some Evil spells were related to undead and negative energy, the trend was more about hurting the good physically or spiritually. So with exceptions I believe the opposite of undeath isn't holiness, only 4 Undead have a weakness to Holy/Good according to AoN. So the question of an inherent immorality to Undeath on a cosmic level seems irrelevant to me.

Her judgement is also irrelevant, she has been an impartial judge of souls for a long time and while she might give your soul a sneer for being disgusting in her eyes, your soul goes to where it is supposed to go. If you did it knowing and not caring about the destruction to the universe you probably belong in Abaddon where your existence will continue to act on harming creation. Maybe you only Talking Corpse'd to solve murder mysteries. Then Pharasma sends your soul to Heaven with a sneer.

The destruction of the universe is often brought up but never elaborated on. It seems reasonable to me that there might be some debate on how true this is and if it matters when threats like the Spawn of Rovagug exist and threaten the security of the Dead Vault and the threat to the universe that is. The fundamentals of Necroethics probably is to question this very notion. Attempting to disprove it in the theoretical or minimalizing its impact. Essentially called Pharasma (or just her church if you can really trust them when they say Pharasma is talking to them) a liar, or at best exaggerating the problem. A moral Necromancer could be quite conspiracy minded seeing Pharasma as a manipulative deity everyone just kind of took her word for that this was a problem (and wouldn't it be just like a church of grave diggers to discourage people not needing graves???)

Consider also while generally dangerous Undead are not inherently "evil". They are allowed in the Pathfinder Society which in 2e is pretty strict about not being "evil". Undead PCs have no character features which compel them to be "evil" either.
Yes, the mindless undead without control are definitely destructive, which is a weakness of this argument, and lots of Intelligent Undead aren't "good" either, but there is an argument to be made we just aren't telling the stories of good undead enough. Geb is certainly a place where it has gone wrong, but is that inevitable for an undead nation or can we point to the influence of Geb who was like Nex, evil all their own.
Its a weaker argument but I believe it is worth asking. After all even the evil dead cannot completely predatory to living. in Blood Lords at least one Blood Lord is a Quick, and a Quick PC is trying to become one.. I just don't think it is as cut and dry.

It might also be prejudicial (in game) to say just because something has to kill the living to survive it is "evil". Hyenas are obligate carnivores and we might assume the Kholo are too. Both might have a necessity to eat meat (or bone or blood etc), but the Kholo isn't a monster like a Ghoul. Why? The only difference I see is the undead have the potential to exist longer. Which could be an ecological problem if there isn't something to prey on the Undead (release the Giant Vultures and let the gods decide!), but I think undead can prey on each other so its probably self correcting.

In conclusion I think the immorality of necromancy comes from the "its icky to see grandma puppetted like that" and the destructiveness of the mindless and uncontrolled undead. The first rule of Necroethics as mentioned above is to question the power structures that enforce proscriptions on using dead bodies and souls. Asking if they don't have reasons to lie and enforce a status quo.
The second rule is to be discrete, respectful, and responsible. Don't do it where you'll make innocent people upset, don't treat a body like a toy, and for the love of the gods don't let it off the leash!

Madhippy3 wrote:

I serious think your group is an outlier. You are telling me the group cannot complete Swordlord's Challenge, Elsewhere Feast, Footsteps of Horror, or Winter Queen's Dollhouse in less than 2 hours. It staggers rationality. Surely you jest.

Not sure we did those, but I recall quite vividly that, when playing my first Quests, I was a bit upset at having devoted my evening to PFS for half the usual XPs.

I didn't list them all, but those are a few, including the first of series 2 which got a lot of attention. I am assuming you played series 2 because you have been consistent about 2xp. I haven't played all those, and two I have played I only played once, so I can't speak for all of them, but you are saying you could count on one hand how many end at time, and from my experience thats just hard to fathom. For at least Swordlord's Challenge, Elsewhere Feast, Footsteps of Horror, or Winter Queen's Dollhouse, and Escort a Mirage I know these are fast. I have limited experience with Tanuki Troubles, but we kept it under. To the best of my knowledge, only Lacking Respect has time problems, and thats three hours, not four, which is still overtime, but not a whole scenario bad. Just regular bad.

All that is to say I don't know what is happening at your tables, but it smells like an outlier.

I serious think your group is an outlier. You are telling me the group cannot complete Swordlord's Challenge, Elsewhere Feast, Footsteps of Horror, or Winter Queen's Dollhouse in less than 2 hours. It staggers rationality. Surely you jest.

Madhippy3 wrote:

Boosting? If we are lucky they won't lower the level cap.

Bad jokes aside there is no level cap is PFS. The limit is what is playable. Like there are no scenarios for level 15. We could call this a level cap but that wouldn't be entirely correct. You can, if the madness takes you, put AP credits on a character till they are level 20.

No there has been no word about lots of repeatables.

The highest-level current adventure is What Walks Again (6-19, level 11-14). That one takes a solid 5-6 hours and would be impossible to schedule on a weekday night (to be fair, even before the current age of "everything rolls up their sidewalks between nine and ten," nothing was open till midnight on a weekday but diners and pizza delivery).

If I can schedule high-level adventures on weekdays, that's a win for me. And I am nowhere NEAR the only weekday VA.

I admit my group was critting like crazy in this scenario, but it wasn't even 4 hours for us.

Madhippy3 wrote:

Boosting? If we are lucky they won't lower the level cap.

Bad jokes aside there is no level cap is PFS. The limit is what is playable. Like there are no scenarios for level 15. We could call this a level cap but that wouldn't be entirely correct. You can, if the madness takes you, put AP credits on a character till they are level 20.

I mean, we're in what...year 7, and if I'm not mistaken I think there is one scenario for above level 12?

I'm fairly certain level 20 just isn't in the cards (but I'd love to be wrong; maybe a 2E seeker arc?).

Which is why I called it "if the madness takes you"

Boosting? If we are lucky they won't lower the level cap.

Bad jokes aside there is no level cap is PFS. The limit is what is playable. Like there are no scenarios for level 15. We could call this a level cap but that wouldn't be entirely correct. You can, if the madness takes you, put AP credits on a character till they are level 20.

No there has been no word about lots of repeatables.

bugleyman wrote:

But seriously, with respect to PFS course-correcting, let's look at the $9 PFS scenario.

I recently bought Claws of the Tyrant for $20. 128 pages of AAA RPG adventures. Tons of great art, great custom trade dress, great editing. Custom maps. Very often a cool backstory, custom plot hooks, adventure tool box full of supporting material.

Meanwhile, look at your typical PFS scenario. $9 for ~20 pages. Consistently bad editing. Recycled mediocre trade dress. Probably a flip mat, lots of recycled art. Often a threadbare story. No supporting material.

So you do know Paizo severely undercharges for certain PDFs and quite honestly all you have done is point out that they really should charge more for the $20.00 one.

Or that's what we should expect for 20 dollars, so everything missing for about half stands out as a bad deal.

And I'll agree with Sanwah and Bugleyman that is the price was 6 dollars for 3 hours and questionable editing it would be an easier pill to swallow. But at Bugleyman noted, if that was going to happen here it is a very important thing to have forgotten to tell us.

Shorter, tighter scenarios ? Yes, please. I have been playing PFS almost exclusively since PF2 started. I think I can count on a single hand the times when we did not exceed the famed 4 hours, sometimes by a wide margin.

One hand? This might be a group problem. I can count on one hand the number of times we went over. My FLGS closes at our 4 hour mark. If the game is running over we have to end it early. This is not an issue we have had consistently. We don't speed through things, we do light RP, and we aren't better than anyone else in combat.

And if this change ends up being a wrong move, as so many predict, I am sure PFS will quickly see the light and adapt.

I too want to believe this, but there is some grave examples to the contrary. The irregular and too infrequent erratas, Korakai still being broken, and STILL not hearing from corporate about any of our concerns. Paizo is not engaging with its community more than some surveys (Excluding Jacobs).

Madhippy3 wrote:

And @MadScientistWorking, you say "assuming still four hours", but is that really realistic? You tell people its a 2-3 hour and plenty of people are going to expect it to wrap up by hour 3. Not everyone is there for an hour of RP. This is not a positive every table is going to care about. What tables will care about is if they fire and as has been said ad nauseum, to grow the community we want as many tables to fire, even if there is some problematic elements like the level 4 doing all the work for the level 1s.

Actually the funny and sad part is that despite all the complaining and whining this will actually accomplish its goal as it makes my life easier as an organizer.

And no. Having the level 4's doing the work for level 1s will not grow the community. That is a really stupid mentality and quite honestly I know that has pushed away people from organized play.

It isn’t worse than people showing up to a game to find there is no place for them! I cannot stress how wrong you are about how narrower level bands will hurt organizing and limit player inclusion into the space. And I don’t have to, nearly three pages of people have done it for me. Just read up.

I am joining the dogpile. AP side of this announcement is fine. I too benefitted from spacing out my purchases, but it if the story consistency is better it is a change I will live with. I bothers me slightly our 1-20s are being turned into 2 parters which means less other stories in the year. I do understand this should be better for the writers editors as well that if their is a 1-20 there isn't also 3 other 1-10s coming out, but its something that's just nagging at me anyways. I'll get over it.

PFS though. What a doozy... I play a lot of PFS, GM a little. This is not a good change. I don't have anything more to say that has already been said but to give my support to those ideas I will list them briefly. Shorter sessions is less bang for buck. Please just reduce the use of subsystems and spongey enemies instead. Your level bands are to narrow, this makes organizing a problem. Assuming tables will be 6 strong is very Warhorn minded. As is removing stat blocks from PDFs. You've got tunnel vision for the online-VTT user experience and are making a mess of the in person experience for GMs, players, and organizers in one post.
And @MadScientistWorking, you say "assuming still four hours", but is that really realistic? You tell people its a 2-3 hour and plenty of people are going to expect it to wrap up by hour 3. Not everyone is there for an hour of RP. This is not a positive every table is going to care about. What tables will care about is if they fire and as has been said ad nauseum, to grow the community we want as many tables to fire, even if there is some problematic elements like the level 4 doing all the work for the level 1s.

"I’ll be lurking around in the comments for this blog and will be eager to answer additional questions folks have" -James Jacobs
Let me get salty here for a moment. I praise Jacobs for keeping his word and being here to answer questions about the AP changes which is his area of focus. It makes me all the more irate we can't seem to expect the same from the rest. The CEO, Butler, jumped in the answer a question about the subscription service. No one, is here to answer questions or give reassurances about issues we are having with the PFS side of this. Compared to Jacob the rest of the company doesn't even seem to care. They have made their decree and now we have to live with it. If it wasn't a question about the business no one else could be bothered to be in here with us. We have long time players, organizers, and GMs in here being highly consistent in their feedback and there isn't a sign anyone at Paizo is listening. I can't speak for people outside of my community, (though there are almost 130 other comments who are speaking for their own) but this will push people away from the game and you will lose business. Don't ignore this Paizo. Please say something! Even if it is just "Get over it".

Not thrilled for what this means for the canon ending of Age of Ashes, but oh well I will take the wait and see approach with but this one note of alarm.

More I am sad that my Cheliaxian characters aren't going to be welcome parts of this year. I like being the affable "evil" member of the team, but my hellknight characters are explicitly going to be put in an impossible position here. That saddens me most.

Buying stuff with real money to affect the game world!?! This is a very bad idea, like a capitalist’s fever dream.

I just can’t imagine anyone thought calling an incentive program “RIP”, that promotes the concept of “paying to win” wasn’t absurd or ghastly.

While there might be a sense of "pay to win" in the concept, remember what it really is. You aren't paying Paizo or the GM for special favor. You are supporting the store which is giving you a space to play and in thanks Paizo gives you a small boon.

Let me also repeat that you (Paizo devs) already addressed the problem of drop off with high level tables by giving us shorter repeatable scenarios. These 11+ tables will fill in these new conditions. If this is just about not wanting to make scenarios complicated for levels 11+, might I suggest you just keep the high level challenges simple? Maybe let the fantastically nature of the threats and locals befitting high level play do the heavy lifting. Maybe slow the release schedule so we can get the same quality without burning out the writers.

I think people really don't want to be held back more than they already are. I really hope you reconsider.

I held off on posting the following for 24 hours, because I was convinced that I was misunderstanding something fundamental and didn't want to have an emotional knee-jerk reaction without the full picture. If what others are telling me is true, I now feel that it is justified outrage.

Pirate Rob wrote:

I'm concerned with new players in the last 9 months who have gotten above level 1, from whom AcP is still a very limited resource who happened to build an alchemist or Oracle as their first character etc.

Guess where some of my players fell in this debacle?

Alex Speidel wrote:

We made it very clear when we first posted the Remaster Guidelines that characters would not be granted a second rebuild. Players who elected to build characters using classes slated for a remaster should have been aware that they would not be granted a rebuild.

Level 1 characters may still freely rebuild as usual. Higher-level characters will require a purchased rebuild.

After years of trying to get my friends to try out Society, I finally got them to give it a go a short while ago.

Now I'm going to lose them all because of this ridiculousness. I'm going to send you guys the number to our new oracle player and YOU can explain to him the reasoning why he's getting shafted. Said player is pretty influential with the others too. This is going to kill our entire play group! And I'm not going to be the villain that breaks the news to them. If the Society team isn't going to be at all reasonable about this, then they can be the ones to tell them.

Why on earth would Paizo allow free rebuilds for Player Core 1 characters, but not Player Core 2 characters? Absurd!

No matter how much Paizo devs are adamant that they gave amble warning to everyone to use your Remaster rebuilds responsibly, there is a very real danger that they could make a hostile environment at a table which is one of the few things they absolutely must avoid for the health of the community. It is only reasonable every class gets the privilege to have their mechanics preserved in the legacy version. The only decisions which are truly unacceptable are ones which hurt the community and I agree with Ravingdork that this risks that. Alex acknowledges the remaster for Alchemists and Oracles is highly recommended because features will stop working as intended. Paizo is saying clear enough the class will being technically playable but is being broken. Paizo is potentially putting players in a difficult position which might make more toxic table. Even the chance of that must be avoided.

No happy about that, because whatever these articles are they aren't worth buying the adventures again for me, but whatever...

Thanks for letting me know.

Archives of Nethys says there are "setting articles" in the books, and I would like to read them but I cannot find them.
From Hands of the Devil I have been looking for "Among the Will O Wisps" and "Warpers of Flesh". Also it reports there are four Will O Wisp monster Variants I cannot find in the book either, though I suspect they exist in the lost Among the Will O Wisps.
Are these in the Hardcover version?

Unless I missed something Hasbro/ WOTC aren't forcing the Paizo to drop the SRD, its just Paizo and many others no longer trust Hasbro/WOTC to keep the SRD content free to use. Paizo is choosing to make the ORC because of the OGL which a lot of businesses have used in their own work could not longer be trusted to stay available.
The backlash to the OGL change was massive and Hasbro/WOTC rolled back the changes but the damage is done.

Just my two cents. This ruling is really annoying in Foundry VTT. You can turn off if players learn their success or failure automatically but it really defeats the point of how useful the automation is. It might not be an illegal ruling but it is an irritating ruling and I wouldn’t play at that table anymore.

Except that isn't how being permanently blind in PFS or the base game works. There are liberties given to building PCs with permanent disabilities so they can also be represented in out high magic epic fantasy story game.

A able visioned character suddenly losing sight because of the blind condition is treated differently to a character who has had long term blindness well before adventuring. This is not using semantics to wriggle out of consequences. This is the rules. This is the efforts made for inclusivity.

Thank you for running, and getting me started on PBP.

And thanks to the players for setting a good example.

Devices aren't really her forte at all. Such things are better left to machinists, or random goblins if you are looking a little fun. Though somewhat beneath her station to be fidgeting with a bomb on a rat's corpse, she made a promise and that meant something. The experience would at least be noteworthy.

As instinct as her guide she makes work of dexterous fingers not used to this kind of manipulation to stop that grating ticking.

••Interact with Device
Thievery: 1d10 + 9 ⇒ (6) + 9 = 15

If not the above ^ I'll pass on my third action.

A packing error!? Aspis should be spending their money on better packers and labellers, not mercs. I would tell them this, but that is bad for job security.

Iskra runs her handkerchief over some of the blue residue. Bringing it up for a closer inspection she tries to remember anything about the smell, texture or color to jog her memory.

Medicine: 1d20 + 1 ⇒ (11) + 1 = 12

"I agree with Wysteriaa, I don't see anything. That said if Rickle, is so nervous about it maybe he should open it, and we can back him up if he was right." she adds backing up behind his waving and giving a look to Wysteriaa which might be interpreted as waiting for cues from her, but might also be interpreted as that look you get when you don't remember if you've left your inn room unlocked when you left in the morning.

Iskra pivots on the balls of her feet to face the lizard which is still actively biting out at her and the rest of the team. Keepings a look out for a sudden change in behavior from the last lizard she shifts priorities to a foe she can see instead of playing a guessing game. If the first lizard wants more it can ask for it!

As her toes finish their turn her heel slams down to the ground, a slide from the leading foot out towards the monster making her profile low in the reach of her sword. Yet it is yet another feint. The last never learned and this second one will regret its persistence!

* Feint
Deception: 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (4) + 10 = 14

*Nonlethal Shortsword vs Red: 1d20 + 10 - 2 ⇒ (1) + 10 - 2 = 9
Failed

* Confident Finisher Nonlethal Shortsword vs Red: 1d20 + 10 - 2 - 5 ⇒ (20) + 10 - 2 - 5 = 23
Critical Damage: 2d6 + 4d6 ⇒ (6, 6) + (4, 6, 3, 4) = 29

Hope I did that right.

Slipping free she still feels the sweat running down her neck from the bite. She twirls from the slip maneuver into a finishing flourish and then seemlessly into another feint to really send the foe reeling in the blitz of practiced swordplay. When done with her combo she bends her knees ever so slightly ready to dodge.

Confident Finisher and Goading Feint

Shortsword: 1d20 + 10 - 5 ⇒ (4) + 10 - 5 = 9
Failure Effect "You deal half your precise strike damage to the target." (2d6/2)
Damage: 2d6 ⇒ (6, 2) = 8 Couldn't figure out the /2 so 8/2= 4 damage

Feint: 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (5) + 10 = 15

Reaction: The first attack coming at me I will use Nimble Dodge feat and make my AC 22. All following attacks are at my normal AC of 20

"I am surprised Aspis doesn't use its own agents for this, but if you want to outsource I am not going to object extra coin."

She turns herself completely towards Aayah like a seasoned negotiator.

"What hazards and traps have the Consortium seen in the past, and what are you paying us so you don't have to do this yourself?"

Her stare is intense.

"Iskra ir'Decythwen of Taldor" says a young woman pulling up another chair. She is a young and confident in a finely tailored but older dress and an imperious look in her eyes as she looks over those in the tavern and the table.

"I am a duelist these days and like you answer requests from the notice boards.

She crosses her legs and the shortsword and main-gauche at her side shift noticeably. With a tilt of the head she gives a small smile.

The pleasure is yours.