Mimski's page

As a person who liked starfinder, finding out it's going to just be a supplement line for PF2e is abit disappointing. Since 1 to 1 compatibility just means the game will have loads of things from Pathfinder that don't mesh with the game's pitch, just because it is in Pathfinder.

At least the old books wont be going anywhere, but I was hoping when a SF 2e happened that it'd be an evolution of Starfinder.

That is a fair point, though from taking a look at the Soldier playtest the team seems to be willing to take a look at design spaces outside of what PF2E did thus far. The introduction of new conditions also bodes well for making the system work.

I do think Paizo's decision is healthier from a company standpoint though, and as someone who likes Starfinder for the setting and the writing that has been done for it, I am glad that this opens up more resources for that.

so where does this put "Starfinder Enhanced"? redundant? duplicated? out-moded?

Is there any point still being excited about Enhanced when Second is coming.

It's Pathfinder-compatible but not Starfinder-compatible?

We're mid-campaign, 3/6 of Fly Free Or Die... not sure the rework will help that campaign.

Starfinder Enhanced seems to be a mixture of a "last hurrah" for SF1E and "Pathfinder Unchained", introduced some streamlines, fixes and alternate rules the Starfinder team wanted to test... partially in preparation for this, I am guessing.

Oh, this is delightful. Mixing and matching PF and SF stuff is something I was always hoping to do. Also increases the likelihood of me getting to GM some Science-Fantasy goodness - my player's just prefer the PF2e system.

The tease about Zon-Shelyn is fun, though I had my own ideas what Shelyn's absence could lead to...

Updating the system to a "fair" one, also has another option:
Since the PDF is a bonus, and early access is not contractually guaranteed nor promised, they could also just unlock the PDFs for subscribers on release day, no matter when it actually ships :)

I appreciated the Pawns line as an alternative to minis, which I never was into due to cost and space.

But I can see how the cancellation of the line came to be, with increased shipping and printing cost, cardboard not being as readily available anymore, and probably lower demand.

I can say for myself that I haven't bought a pawns set in over 2 years due to a shift to online gaming.

Though, admittedly, I'd still appreciate at least digital character/monster art packs, for printing or use in VTTs as needed, of character and monster artwork.

I also think Drift Crisis is a good book and inspired a few adventure ideas in me.
I like the metaplot format where it is easy to add, remove and use in a campaign depending on what you want. I can easily set adventures in the Drift Crisis or before, without much mucking about. If I decide on a canon resolution (or play through it), after would be an option too. Though, I play loosely with time between different adventures/groups etc. which other GMs might not.

:) These are the people that I like supporting and keep me buying Paizo, Path- and Starfinder products with their contributions (among others, but significantly).

Hello Paizo Team,

I have sent several CS inquires per e-mail (Tickets 153785, 156739 and 157104) and am waiting for replies for between 2 and 8 weeks. My subscription cancellation was done timely, which I appreciate.
If there is a backlog that CS has to work through and response times are affected, I would appreciate a thread like we've had previously about the size of the backlog/expected response times. Generally I would appreciate open communication if there are waiting times involved, in any form, really.
Thank you for your hard work.

Dawn of the last day...

I also messaged Paizo about this, from Austria here. I have not yet gotten a reply.
Our post office informed me that the payment of the tax should be registered digitally before the package arrives and is scanned here, and if the scan comes up empty on customs' information they just process it locally. So something seems to be up or too slow with the IOSS registration?
I would have liked to see this fixed before this month's subscription shipment, but I'll be going all digital after that anyway.

Speculation on my reaction to the content of this book: First, disappointment when a species I particularly enjoy is not one of the ones chosen for this book. Then reading and being blown away what the writers did with the species in it, ha. Looking forward to it.

Oh, and I do hope species is wholesale replacing race in Starfinder. Including reprints of previous books, honestly. I just wonder what the adjective "racial" could be changed into, I guess species as an attributive noun instead still works. Species modifier. Yeah.

I saw a very good post today on another site how TDOV changed from the need of being seen to being more about the need of the struggles and problems being seen. I do really hope that improvements will continue, despite reactionary backslashes, for all of you in the now and soon.

(Uh, hello everyone. I'm Mimski, a gay man, cis [I, uh, have some what I call 'gender thoughts', but those are complicated] using he/they pronouns. I tend to mostly lurk in online spaces, because I have the tendency to get obsessed with "keeping up" to my detriment. I wish everyone the best though!)

Thank you Maggie! This is an excellent post. I hope more and more people will step up to protect trans people.

Thank you for your reply.

My order is now also on its way :)

I wish you both the best, and thank you for your hard work.

Also waiting, and delighted that the ("new") EU import fees are paid upfront now. Which means I immediately pay the full price and the local post office does not get another handling fee. With that I do not mind the dealys on SoT and the Starfinder APs, because I think this shipment will be overall cheaper than if I had gottem them monthly, with the previous setup. (Where the post office had to look into the import tax and then I had to pay that plus a handling fee on pickup.)

Oh, exciting!

I agree that the LO book line is very fun too read. I am always excited for new LO offerings currently. Haven't been disappointed yet.

Happy New Year and thank you for making these fun magic items.

Oh, thank you. I must've missed the one in DoF.

I liked the god art in the book, and I agree that Oras is a standout. I also got a good chuckle out of Weydan's art. It's very in character.

On Eloritu's runes: Have all 6 been revealed yet? I thought we were up to 5. Did I miss one?

Everyone did a great job on the book, I agree! And I find it pretty cool that James Jacobs got to retool his creations for Starfinder. In general, the Gods section was a highlight for me.

Thank you for your contributions. I wish everyone here plenty of good days.

Disability visibility is one of the things I became invested in quite early into adulthood (due to some experiences showing me how deep ableism runs and how badly people are affected by it) and continue being passionate about (due to being vocal about my own health issues and motivating and helping friends and acquaintances that they should make themselves heard and get the support they need. Which unfortunately nowadays is still stigmatised and often just difficult and unwieldy for a lot of people.)
Even if you don't want to be open about all your diagnoses/disabilities/health problems with everyone/strangers/at a gaming table:
Know that you still deserve support and should be able to ask for accomodations.

I hope to see more in the vein of Grand Bazaar from Paizo, since the disability aides and how these things were handled was a great hit with my players :)

Everything I see here looks great and I am very much looking forward to Dark Archives, and the expanded Thaumathurge options. One of my players is already having a blast with his Thaumathurge in Malevolence (with a little bit of home-brewing how to handle the Recall Knowledge stuff).

Thank you for the playtest, and those interesting teases :)
DA is shaping up to be a very cool book, I feel.

I am glad that Paizo is making a clear statement against transphobia on the boards here and already put some work in.

Otherwise I think a lot of important stuff has been said in the comments, and, as always, listen to trans folks about what is transphobic or not.

I do hope the union will be involved in the processes mentioned.

And I agree that the language used with regards to the transphobic policy is very weak and a non-apology.

Congratulations, and I hope this is the beginning of Paizo taking some more steps to improve working conditions.

I am currently preparing to GM Malevolence, and I wanted to thank you for the content warnings in the book. That made it easy for my group to discuss in advance what tone and content we want to go for. Now everyone is excited to build their characters. As well as delving into a haunted house.

Onto the question! Is there a dish that you find unexpectedly amazing? Something you made or someone talked you into trying, and you just did not expect to enjoy that food as much as you did?

I support this and hope the company will recognise the Union.

I appreciate this coming out before the playtest and containing concrete actions Paizo is taking.

The earnings at Paizo make academia and civil society look like banger places where money is infinite and it's champagne showers every other week, and that's not the best place to be.

Well, at least in academia the champagne is paid for with university money/taxes :P

I am in the "wait and see how further responses by management" camp, because I did not expect more than we got by Friday on GenCon weekend.
But I do hope for significantly more.

I am bewildered by the people here who maintain that a job... should not pay people enough to survive? I guess the difference in values is staggering to me.

And Paizo did increase some of its prices semi-recently, with the increased PDF prices since PF2e. And I welcomed that, because yeah, the old prices were dirt cheap and based on calculations ages ago. So I do think they deserved more. I am still surprised they did not update new Starfindre products to have increased PDF prices as well.

I would like to point out that people saying that customers won't pay more if they could... are patently wrong? There are products that are produced locally and/or sustainably that seem to be doing well enough. A lot of people value the ethics that went into making their product, if they have a choice.

Every interaction with Sara Marie I had was professional and a delight. I wish her, and Diego, the best in future endeavors.

I will absolutely think twice now about getting any Paizo product now. At least the efforts of many lower level employees did go somewhere, and I know a bunch of authors now whose work I want to support.
The current management? Not so much, with what we've now heard. I also hope for some actionable efforts to improve the situation. Though, I must say, anything short of establishing an union for the workers might ring pretty hollow.

And I was curious why some of the authors I enjoyed at Paizo were rather quite about their time after leaving. This made quite a few things fall into place.

Kekkres wrote:

So have Andrew White and Liane Merciel decided to reject pronouns entirely?

We list contributors' pronouns when they are provided to us. If someone didn't volunteer such information, we neither seek it out, nor make assumptions.

I want to also point out that at least a pronoun Liane Merciel uses is confirmed implicitely in the text, since "She lives (...)".

As usual I am very happy about these author spotlights, both to see what familiar faces contributed and to learn about new people in the business!

Hello!

I just noticed that on the Homepage, under Upcoming releases, several already available products are listed:

Pathfinder Adventure Path #146: Cult of Cinders (Age of Ashes 2 of 6)
Pathfinder Bestiary Pocket Edition
Pathfinder Core Rulebook Pocket Edition
Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide Pocket Edition
Pathfinder Adventure Path #163: Ruins of Gauntlight (Abomination Vaults 1 of 3)
Pathfinder Battles—Darklands Rising
Pathfinder Battles: Darklands Rising: Premium Set - Mengkare, Great Wyrm

Hope that this is the right forum for this.

Have a nice day!

The Mwangi Expanse is probably even better than all the praise can communicate. Also considering the year it had to be written in... just wow.

I always enjoy these creator spotlight blog posts, and checking out what else everyone has done!

Hello Customer Service!

First I have a question: Is it possible to delay shipping of a subscription item, so that more items are shipped together the month after?
I am guessing, with how subscriptions work, that I'd also only be billed and get the PDF the following month, when the volume(s) are shipped, right?

I am asking because of the new EU and Austrian VAT rules, which mean that I'll have to pay VAT on all Paizo packages now. In addition, the Austrian Post Office collects a handling fee per package for collecting the tax, which is what I'd like to minimise.

Therefore I'd also like you to forward, to whomever it concerns at Paizo:
If Paizo set up a scheme that allows EU customers to pay VAT directly when ordering from you (I think this is called IOSS/IMPORT ONE-STOP SHOP.), I'll be more likely in the long term to continue ordering physical Paizo products. (Because then I just pay the 20% VAT, which I am fine with, but no handling fees to the Post Office.)
Otherwise I'll probably go digital only after the current Star- and Pathfinder APs (Horizons and Strength of Thousands).

I know this might not be easy or possible, but I wanted to mention this.

Thanks in advance and have a nice day!

Oh, my payment was authorised!
The order is still pending, but I hope that means that my order will be on its way when it is safe for Paizo to ship again.

I am excited to check out Fists and Horizon.

I want to point out here:
Paizo has repeatedly stated that getting the PDFs early is not a subscriber perk and nowhere listed as such.
It is a consequence of their shipping system and they are happy to keep it that way for customers. But noone is guaranteed to get the PDF early.

And thanks for the updates. Phew, 5 AP volumes next month. Quite an order.
But I am happy to grab the Galaxy Exploration Manual PDF end of the month. With my Iron Gods campaign going towards the finish line, I can start looking into what to GM next.

I did also put in Half-Orcs and Orcs, in addition to Kasatha, some of the new stuff that excites me, and more on the species within the Azlanti Empire as a write-in.

Hello Customer Service,
Since the last volume of Agents of Edgewatch has been shipped, I'd now like to cancel my Pathfinder Adventure Path subscription. I was only interested in the AoE AP for now.
Thanks in advance!

My orders well all fine except for the April subscription I had.
Shipped out on April 14th and arrived today, August 24th.
In pristine condition even. I wonder where it has been.
(Austrian here.)

Very interesting, and this makes me curious how my players will deal with the mech fights I prepared. Those will be mechs vs. many enemies (Troops I built) and 2 mechs vs. 2 mechs (built using the Alien Archive rules + mech changes. PC mechs vs. PC rules mechs is looking too punishing/uninteresting. The lower attack bonuses and higher AC would make fights pretty uneventful from what I calculated...)

I don't think their attacks count, and should count, as magic. But it makes sense to introduce mechanic options to make it so. Or explicitely make all mechs part magic. But they should also get abilities to get through other DRs, like alignment.

And your ruling on the line of effect is correct:

A mech blocks line of effect to and from its operators.

I agree that building mechs/calculating the cost isn't very fun.

So I made an Excel spreadsheet for myself to build mechs.
It doesn't use 100% official terminology, it isn't perfect (I noted things that are "off"), and the layout is very lazily done, but if anyone else wants to use it:
Here it is on Dropbox.

Just enter the tier you want to build, choose the parts from the dropdown menus, and there you go.

I think any clarification on swift actions should also make clear if they interact with mech full actions. Which might be not at all, but then the difference to PC full actions should be highlighted.

I also think it is not supposed to be quadratic advancement or advancement over the sum of levels.

Michael Smith, it could be that the text is mentioning the tier twice, wrongly. Then the HP would just be 33 + 13*11 = 173, which seems much more reasonable (and in line with mech weapon damage scaling).