Master E's page

Shisumo wrote:

This would be a substantially more compelling argument if there weren't an entire rest of the planet they could have picked to set this scenario at where this problem didn't arise.

Well by your logic not the whole planet, because anywhere that has already been featured wouldn't be suitable.

That would still leave pretty much the whole damn planet.

More relevantly, even most other APs don't specifically give the PCs a base to operate from in the first book and then devote significant page count in the later books to downtime activities the PCs can take to rebuild, personalize, and fortify their base to make it even more their own. Most of the first half of the AP contains substantial "give the players and their characters a sense of ownership over this space" content that few other APs can match. Seeing all that work ignored and getting frustrated about it is not an unreasonable reaction.

there’s absolutely no way for Paizo to account for what hundreds of different groups might have done.

This would be a substantially more compelling argument if there weren't an entire rest of the planet they could have picked to set this scenario at where this problem didn't arise.

I just shared this blog with the group I ran AOA for and every single one of them got angry about it.

I only have one thing I would like from this book and that's a way to be a rondelero duelist in 2E without either a) being just kinda bad at it or b) being a fighter.

a security robot of some kind

It was an elite Observer-Class security robot, for the record.

In Pathfinder, Hardness 6 isn't that big a deal because most of your martials will be rolling a minimum of 1d6+3 (1d8+4 or higher being more realistic) for damage, meaning most non-crits have a decent chance of doing at least a little damage. In SF, though, only melee specialists - and that's probably just gonna be your solarian, if you have one - get static bonuses to damage, meaning the majority of the party is going to be limited to a flat 1d4, 1d6, or 1d8 damage. That's a huge problem when you have to deal at least 7 damage to do anything at all.

Fun fact: since the class always makes sure you are trained in Acrobatics at 1st level, if you have a +7 Dex at 20th level and make no other effort to increase your Acrobatics score in any way, you will still only crit fail - and thus, fail to acquire panache - an Acrobatics check against a level 20 DC (that is, DC 40) on a natural 1.

No, you really don't need auto-scaling Acrobatics on this class.

EDIT: to be clear, I would love to see auto-scaling, I just disagree that it's necessary for builds that want to do something else with their skill-ups.

Prisms cast rainbows, and this month above all, when I read things like

their struggles, from the personal queries of identity and belonging to the endless communal work toward justice and liberation

I am reminded at once of the long road it has been since Stonewall - not to mention all the individual roads walked before then - and how far we yet have to go. I too have been this traveler, weary and facing despair.

But reading this did, at least, help me remember that there are so many of us out there on the same road, and it was a good thing to remember. Maybe Shelyn's onto something there.

Just to be thorough, "affected by the aura" does mean a little bit more than just "within 30 feet." Creatures immune to mental or emotional effects or that are blind are not affected by the aura even if they are within 30 feet.

Qlippoth still exist? I thought they are created by D&D. Turns out they are purely Paizo's creation?

No.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qlippoth

Honestly, I think the model for how the swashbuckler should handle panache is the magus. There are lots of really good reasons to compare recharging spellstrike and gaining panache and, while the action economy can be kind of tricky sometimes, the magus's version of the system works pretty well, all in all. If all it takes is spending an action to get panache, and each subclass gets a different kind of action they can combine with getting panache, then you've solved most of the inherent problems with how panache is gained and used.

I still make them roll a new RK on all monsters, even ones they've met. However if it's one they've been successful against with RK in the past I have a lower DC for them to meet as a "reminder" DC. If they meet that (which generally only requires the D20 to get a 5 or better before modifiers) then I remind them they've faced X before and they know it does Y and Z. If they roll high enough they uncover any additional info they may have missed in the past, if any.

I like this and am gonna steal it. Thanks!

Honestly, all I want from the new ruffian is Str +4 at chargen and a main-hand flail, particularly now that Disarm is pretty damn good. You know how many agile or finesse weapons there are with both Disarm and Trip? 7, only 1 of which is common and it's a d4 nonlethal weapon. Without the die cap, I could possibly use a bladed scarf or a spiked chain, but those are two-handed weapons and that would lock me out of an off-hand agile attack. As things stand now, though, I've got d6 lethal damage, both traits I want, and I can follow up a successful trip with an agile strike to increase my chances of actually getting those sneak attack dice to roll.

All in all, I'm pretty happy.

Because it's not evil? It's unholy, i.e., that which is opposed to holiness. Or, potentially, that which is opposed by holiness.

Holy and Unholy are traits.

Not really? Because you have to remember different parts of the world have different rarities. Its up to your GM to decide whether its different rarity in your part of the of the world, but I can't imagine a GM deciding that a katana is still uncommon in Minkai.

No, that's exactly the problem. I didn't say "gain access to," I said "become proficient with." A weapon that is uncommon where you are (for this example, Absalom) that is common in another culture (in this example, Minkai) is the only valid choice for the feat (except for ancestry traits, which I am not talking about here) - and the feat allows a character with simple weapon proficiency (like a sorcerer) to treat a martial weapon (like a katana) as a simple weapon. So a sorcerer from Absalom can use Unconventional Weaponry to become proficient with a katana but a sorcerer from Minkai cannot.

The changes to Martial Weapon Proficiency have reduced the impact of this distinction, but Unconventional Weaponry is an ancestry feat, which everyone gets at 1st level, and Martial Weapon Proficiency is a general feat, which aren't available until 3rd. You can take General Training or Versatile Heritage to get around that, but that either means you can't use General Training for something else later or you have to give up your heritage choice, both of which are higher opportunity costs than just taking a single ancestry feat and being done with it.

Riddlyn wrote:

pH unbalanced wrote:

The Expertise feat is *also* rolled into the base feat now.

Out of curiosity did they do something similar to unconventional weaponry?

Yes

Unconventional Weaponry wrote:

You’ve familiarized yourself with a particular weapon, potentially from another ancestry or culture. Choose an uncommon simple or martial weapon with a trait corresponding to an ancestry (such as dwarf, goblin, or orc) or that is common in another culture. You gain access to that weapon, and for the purpose of proficiency, you treat it as a simple weapon.
If you are trained in all martial weapons, you can instead choose an uncommon advanced weapon that has an ancestry’s trait or is common in another culture. You gain access to that weapon and have familiarity with that weapon. For the purpose of proficiency, you treat it as a martial weapon.

Which means, although the opportunity cost has gotten smaller, it's still easier for a sorcerer from Absalom to become proficient with a katana than a sorcerer from Minkai. Sigh.

It feels the remaster was super rushed

That's because it was, for reasons entirely out of Paizo's control.

You generally cannot sustain more than once per round unless the spell says so.

The RAW does not support that idea in any way. Other rules interactions restrict the value of sustaining a lot of effects more than once, but nothing whatsoever actually prevents you from doing so.

This one even specifies that you only get the benefit the first time you sustain each round which I suspect is the new standard for the Remaster.

This is the exact kind of rules interaction that provides a limit, and it's not new for the Remaster, there are several spells in the original core that contain the same wording.

I'd give the wizard the 1E version of arcane bond back. That 1/day "pull anything from your entire spellbook" ability did so much to make wizards feel like the ultimate toolbox casters.

Calliope5431 wrote:

Blave wrote:

There's at least 6 new schools that have been shown or mentioned, plus the universalist one. If there's only two more unannounced, we'd already be back to where we started.

What's the list? I only know about Boundaries, Ars Grammatica, Battle Magic, and Civic Engineering (plus Universalist).

We've also heard of Mentalism and Protean Form I believe. They were name dropped sometime a month back and are in the first couple pages of this thread alongside Battle and Civic

Mentalism is in the preview doc.

As long as they didn't significantly change staff nexus, I plan to just eat any spell slots I can't fill with something I care about to get more uses of something I do.

I think Technomancer has a great chance of making it in! I think its important to keep a spellcaster that's tuned into technology, and I can think of half a dozen ways to make them distinct from wizards off the top of my head. While I didn't personally care for their mechanical incarnation in SF1, I would hate to see them drop off for PF2.

Conversely, "tech-focused caster" feels like it would be an excellent archetype...

I think from a logistical perspective, this was not just inevitable, but necessary to move forward as a company.

From a legal one, too. Paizo needs to shed the OGL as quickly as possible and simply does not have the time to spin up an entirely new system from scratch. Even if they had wanted to keep the game lines separate, WotC forced their hand on this too.

Okay, genuine question re: wizard flexibility. Does this feature ever actually come up in play? I'm being serious here - I don't think I've ever really seen it be an actual thing at the table. Every prepared caster I've ever played and every prepared caster I've ever played alongside used basically the same prepared spell list every day, with very occasional swap outs of one or maybe two spells on extremely specific occasions, like needing a given specific-use spell (stone to flesh, for example) that they had to wait until a new set of preparations to cast - but then they just went right back to what they had before. Even that is less common the more your group invests in scrolls, in my experience. I mean, as a theoretical white-room construct, sure, the loss of the potential spells for your school slot is a nerf, but as a practical matter? I highly doubt it's going to prove to be at my tables, at least.

You know, I really do wonder if what we're seeing here is an artifact of the Preview doc being largely focused on making Rage of Elements playable on release. Specifically the idea that monster cantrip use is problematic because monster stat mods aren't balanced against PC mods and the stat block doesn't actually say what to use in the first place.

It would make a great deal of sense if the baseline spells were printed as XdX damage but then caster classes had a core class feature that was something to the effect of, "You may reduce the number of dice on any damaging cantrip you cast by one to instead add your key attribute modifier to the total damage" - that would provide parity with existing characters but resolve the weirdness around the monsters...

I'll wait until I actually play with it to make any final decisions, but if I turn out to find it more annoying than it's worth, then I will be houseruling 1-to-1 attribute boosts with a cap of +4 until 10th level, when you key attribute can go to +5, 15th level when any attribute can go to +5, and 20th level, when your key attribute can go to +6.

This may or may not help, but for those who are saying "Paizo's lore is different enough that it wouldn't run afoul of the OGL thing," consider the following thought experiment. (This actually works as a decent rule of thumb for "maybe we have a problem" when it comes to pretty much anything involving copyright, plagiarism, etc.) Imagine the thing you're talking about didn't exist. Instead, someone has come to you with their "new idea" and begins to explain it to you.

How likely are you to go, "But that's just [IP of some other company]?"

So if someone came along and said, "I'm going to introduce a variant ancestry of elves for Golarion. They are dark-skinned (and are called "dark elves" as part of that), live exclusively underground, have darkvision, many of them are evil (they worship chaotic and evil deities as part of that), they organize themselves into scheming political factions that are ruled matriarchally, favor the use of poison and hand crossbows, and have a tradition of warping humanoids into monstrous abominations, some of which are spider/drow centaur-kinda things called 'driders,'" at what point in there, if any, would you have said, "But that's just D&D drow with some tweaks here and there?"

And how far back up the chain of those descriptors would you have to go before "this is clearly not D&D drow" would seem reasonable to say?

I see the new schools of magic as your major in universities. Not as the universities themselves.

A center of magical learning might support only one school of magic (maybe even one they created) like the Kung-fu schools in many movies.

A bigger one might support several, akin to the Shaolin temple providing training in different styles.

I think the comparison to martial arts is a particularly apt metaphor.

Martial arts can be defined as "the formal study of personal combat," just as wizardry can be defined as "the formal study of arcane magic." Within that overarching definition, though, there are literally hundreds of subdivisions. Some are based on philosophies, some based on the weapons a particular group of people had readily available, some based purely on ruthless efficiency in making people unalive. Those subdivisions can be quite small or quite widespread, they can be localized into one particular institution or organization or they can be taught the world over, and they can be learned through formal instruction or self-taught via documentation and practice.

I have extremely fond memories of the half-orc greataxe rogue I made up for PF1 back in the day...

Been thinking about the possible issues around future proofing of school curricula, and I think I've come up with a perspective that makes me fairly comfortable with the idea that the "known spells" lists for each core school are probably going to be fixed in the PC1 and won't be added to in the future, even as new spells are released.

This is based on a couple of premises; if you don't agree with them, you're probably not going to agree with my conclusions either. Disclaimer over.

The premises are these: first, that the PC1* spells represent the most well-known, widespread, and fundamental spells in all of wizardry, the Commonest of the Common, if you will. And second, that the schools themselves are likewise the most well-known, widespread, and fundamental schools of thought/formalizations of arcane study. Consequently, having the baseline schools teaching and making primary use of the baseline spells makes sense. Conversely, new schools released in later books will teach some spells released in later books, because they and their magics are more specialized, even if they aren't necessarily Uncommon.

It's not perfect, but I think it's a compromise I can live with for my headcanon if that's how things play out.

*and maybe PC2? - it seems unlikely but not impossible that the PC1 wizard schools will include some PC2 spells

And Ayindilar are well boring rando elves who decided to live underground for no reason.

"For no reason" is an odd way to spell "in order to survive Earthfall and the aftermath, just the way the drow did," but you do you, I suppose.

From where I'm at, I think a Cavern Elf, Elf Tiefling, a reskinned Vishkanya, or even a bog-standard Fleshwarp can all act as a satisfying PC Drow.

I mean, an entire small society of nephilim elves who live in the Darklands could serve as drow stand-ins, especially if you want them to be morally ambiguous so the exact nature of their extraplanar links (fiends? proteans? something we don't even know about yet?) isn't clear. They don't have to be a Sekamina-spanning culture or empire, but adding something like that into the background of your particular take on Golarion would be incredibly simple to do.

Pure speculation, but given the changes to Refocus in general, 6th level feels about right.

The only piece of the spell schools I'm going to miss is my too-smart-for-their-own-good wizards refusing to use the word "spell" as being too imprecise for technical clarity and therefore calling every spell by its class name instead. "She's preparing a transmutation!" kind of thing.

Of course, all that means is that now I can figure out my own, even more arcane (pun intended) classification system(s) and use that instead...

I really hope all the edge cases go away and the rule just becomes a straight-up "you have one Focus Point for every non-cantrip Focus Spell you know, up to a maximum of 3" because the random, awkward spaces where that's not true are deeply aggravating.

Unicore wrote:

The ranger thing is mostly about feats where some other class has the same feat, but was less restrictive because it didn’t have that hunt prey requirement. It is not all ranger feats. Just ones where another class did the same thing.

I'm think this is about some of the Ranger archery feats. Maybe Disrupting Prey as it is a bad verion of the Champion and Barbarian equivalent Attack of Opportunity.

As a sidenote, this is in my experience entirely untrue. Disrupt Prey is fantastic, because it can disrupt any triggering action, most notably move actions. Rangers are the only characters that can actually force an enemy to stay prone after tripping them, even if it's just for one more action.

There are also more than a few PFS modules where the PCs are given one (1) 10 minute break between each wave of attacks or other action scenes.

To be honest, I would have loved it if Battlezoo's options had been published under Paizo, but they were not. What I would love more than anything is a Paizo half-dragon versatile heritage.

It's almost certainly too much to hope for, but PC2 is going to have a brand new versatile heritage, and it's the same book where the other dragon-focused material is showing up...

a Supernatural trait for mystical abilities that aren't explicitly magical (such as Barbarian Rage)

I, um, don't think rage is supposed to be inherently magical though. Some versions are (animal, draconic, spirit) but those do have magical traits associated with them. Plain, ordinary rage is just... rage. You get angry enough to hit things harder. That's it.

Starfinder even has a single point stat bonus in character creation.

And beyond a tiny handful of feat prereqs, that vestigial stat bonus is completely irrelevant. A character that begins with Str 10 and a character that begins with Str 11 will play absolutely identically throughout the entirety of gameplay from 1st level to 20th unless they take one of those feats - and PF2 uses even fewer that Starfinder; in fact, none at all that aren't even scores (i.e., would function the same just using the modifiers rather than the scores).

I don't think it's going to change anything at all. If you're, say, a plumekith aasimar now, under Remastered rules you'd be a plumekith nephilim.

Very excited for all of this, but I would like to take the opportunity to beg the design team to take a look at Unconventional Weaponry and Additional Lore so that they don't incentivize making your characters "backwards." It should not be easier for a fighter from Goka to use a falcata than a fighter from Taldor, and it shouldn't make more sense for a legendary card sharp to not take a background offering Gambling Lore. I know these are minor things but they have been my personal bugbears since the edition first released!

Since the ORC will not be owned by any particular publisher, and will not be tied to any particular publisher or game system, there isn't even an authority who could judge what would or would not be acceptable content on a license wide basis

CR's chat will be filled with nothing else tonight, unless the chat mods specifically ban the topic - which will, in and of itself, constitute a statement. Even if all they say is, "We can't talk about it," they'd be very wise to say something.

LOL. Normally when a web site goes down like that it is called a DDOS attack. Not sure what to call it when it is legitimate traffic.

A grave error in judgment.

Coridan wrote:

I think accepting the idea of "corpos being corpos" is the path that leads us to Cyberpunk dystopian nightmare.

At the risk of sounding defeatist, I'm pretty sure that ship sailed decades ago. :-(

Death: NO. YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?

Shisumo wrote:

Unfortunately, this whole debacle has also proven that "we promise to forever play nice" is not something that can be relied on.

Well, not really. The GPL has been doing that for longer than the OGL has been around.

The difference being that the GPL says that you must use the same version of the license the original work used or, optionally*, a later version.

*optionally because the copyright holder of that original work gets to decide if later versions of the GPL license are allowed or not.

That's not quite my point. I'm not saying that every such promise won't hold; just that there are some that will not, and you can't know in advance which will be which. That kind of uncertainty is extremely bad for business, and savvy publishers will be looking for ways to minimize that kind of uncertainty. The easiest way to do that is to just make your own system so the whole problem goes away.

I really believe all the big developers like Paizo, Kobold, AAW, etc need to get together and build a new generic game system that anyone can use. And so they can divorce themselves from the SRD.

Unfortunately, this whole debacle has also proven that "we promise to forever play nice" is not something that can be relied on. That's going to lead basically every publisher with the means to do so to turn to solely rely on stuff that is already entirely under their control, like a proprietary game system. I don't think this is going to mean the end of open gaming in general, but to say that it's had a chilling effect on the concept is to commit grave understatement (Monte Cook has already commented on this element with regard to the Cypher open license).

Dave2 wrote:

The thing is Hasbro will not be able to revoke 1.0 or 1.0a.

IP attorney who specializes in table top games says you're wrong.

Quote:

The OGL 1.0a is a perpetual (but not irrevocable) Open License that allowed Third Party Creators to build a thriving tabletop industry that we have all enjoyed,

emphasis added

1.0a isn't irrevocable. It can absolutely be revoked. The problem that WotC has is that the circumstances under which it can be revoked are given in the terms of the 1.0a itself:

13. Termination: This License will terminate automatically if You fail to comply with all terms herein and fail to cure such breach within 30 days of becoming aware of the breach. All sublicenses shall survive the termination of this License.

Unless a licensee violates the terms of the 1.0a license, then it remains in effect. "Because we don't want it to be legal anymore" is not among the listed circumstances that will revoke the license.