Nah. You have it twisted. The complaint isn't that they hired someone to look out for their own best interests. The complaint is that they are claiming that they did it in the best interest of their employees.
No...that's what you want them to have said. Paizo said.
"We chose MH&H upon the recommendation of a consultant with expertise in matters of DEIB. MH&H has a team of attorneys that specialize in these issues, and we’re confident they’ll be able to provide an impartial analysis of the facts that we need to move forward with any corrective actions.
Because the results of these investigations are private personnel matters, Paizo will not be able to make them public. Corrective actions will be taken against any employee (including managers and executives) found to be guilty of these allegations. "
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Twisting the truth is what got us here in the first place. Feel free to add fuel to that fire and just increase the confirmation bias that those of us asking for clarity already have.
The lack of understanding of business in this tread is appalling. First it's complaining that Paizo (a privately held company) doesn't follow the same mandatory financial reporting requirements that public companies do. Then it's complaints that they DARE hire a law firm that represents their interests. I can hate late stage capitalism as much as the next guy, but guess what, representing their best interests is what companies do. In fact, if Paizo were publicly held, failing to do so would be considered a violation of their fiduciary responsibility. Is there anything that you dozen that constantly complain can't complain about next?
So let's address the elephant in the room. Did Paizo "actually" hire a DIEB law firm.
Yes the did. Under the recommendation of a DEIB specialist they picked a law firm specialized in...*gasp* EMPLOYMENT LAW!
That's right, MH&H specializes in Employment law and provided the following statement(from their website), "While our employment attorneys are experienced and aggressive litigators, they also recognize that employers often prefer to avoid litigation if possible. Accordingly, the firm regularly counsels clients on how to avoid problems and minimize risk with respect to such issues as employee discipline, alleged harassment, the protection of trade secrets, reductions in force, severance and other matters." DEIB, being issues of harassment are inherently employment law issues, ergo they specialize in this work. Stating they do not is simply finding the next thing to complain about because the last thing to complain about fell on deaf ears.
Yes, arguments can be made that this law firm clearly has Paizo's best interests in mind (not the employees); however, in the case of finding and weeding out harassment the employer and employees needs align (the employer doesn't get sued, the employee has the harasser dealt with). Futhermore, as I said before - companies act in their best interest - that's the reason Paizo employees are founding a Union. If they didn't do so I'd question their very desire to stay in business.
I've watched for weeks now and all I see are the same dozen or so people that have already stated that they're done with Paizo come and find yet another thing to complain about because the path to a solution isn't EXACTLY the path that they've told Paizo that they have to follow. Without Jeff's head on a literal pike sitting outside the office, I can say that no solution Paizo will come up with will meet your demands. It's not even worth it for them to put out statements, because there is no statement other than, "we have launched Jeff into the sun" that is going to satiate this crowd.
As someone that wants to see Paizo employees thrive and survive this, I wait for THEIR opinion on what is going on. If they're unhappy, I'm unhappy. If you all are unhappy though, at this point I just see the old man yelling at a cloud.
"Please point out how I regularly break the rules."
While not a straight out violation of the guidelines as written, only providing quotes of others in quotes (as I have done above) rather than using quote markup in an attempt to bypass post moderation when an original post is deleted due to moderation is probably the most obvious one.
And what are they going to do/say when the changes they're demanding don't come overnight? I've watched this exact situation unfold in other organizations (most recently a year and a half ago) - a situation often kicked off by an employee engagement survey . It can take years for the solutions to fully actualize.
I've watched it unfold too. Many times.
Usually it's vague promises and little or no action, often followed by more problems blowing up a few years later.
I've seen three main outcomes.
My last company made lasting actionable changes. It took them about a year and a half to get there and it took reinventing the entire corporate culture. The changes really took to heart employee requests; their roll-out was stellar and well received by the employees. Result - positive. (Note, Mid-cap growth company with about 600 employees)
My previous company to that attempted to make lasting actionable changes. After a year they fell short in pretty much every instance as they failed to truly identify the root cause. Employees never trusted the process in the first place and dismissed it outright. The whole thing was doomed to fail. Result - negative. (Note: privately held small company most like Paizo in size and structure).
I know somebody quite personally who's organization is about a year and two months into the process. The organization has made dramatic changes, all of which could be interpreted as positive and directly related to employee concerns. The employees though don't like the solutions, and won't even give them the time of day. This is the most interesting as it's a case of the employer making a good faith effort, and the employees - since it didn't match their exact expectations, not even willing to give those changes an opportunity. Chances are this will be a miserable failure, but not without a solid attempt. (Without giving it entirely up, large 400+ employee organization that's part of a much, much larger organization with deep resources)
The process works as well as everyone involved makes it work. It can (and does), but it's no guarantee. That said the main point is that even having the list of items to change is not going to appear tomorrow, or next week, or next month. If you're really committed to the process, it'll be months before the independent organization is done with their assessment.
Edit: Looks like (OPF) was a legal entity only and I was incorrect at Tonya being an actual employee of OPF vs Paizo. Feel free to drop the confusion aspects there as it relates to her!
Oh, the creation of the OPF? Yer welcome. I will neither confirm nor deny I was one of two people who were instrumental in pointing out WA state labor law in relation to volunteers for a for profit company.
I think I pointed that out about 10 years ago though. :-P
I love this list of "demands" and those like it. Does anyone even hear themselves over their pitchforks and torches? You've already made your decisions and these demands set forth the groundwork of "trial by the mob is complete".
* Paizo needs to hire a whistleblower/arbitration company.
A whistleblower/arbitration company you say? While it's clear, even by Paizo supporters, that there are management issues within, we've skipped the entire "hire a company to help investigate our corporate culture and have an external review of the concerns noted" and leaped right to "arbitration". Nothing says, "I have an opinion and it's right" then jumping past steps 1-9 and right to 10.
* Said company must investigate Sara Marie's wrongful termination.
It's clear that few here have had to actually let someone go. In my personal vacuum believe Sara's termination was a a poor decision; however, said termination being immediately classified as "wrongful" by a group of individuals who are not Sara or Paizo is ludicrous. Good people are terminated regularly for bad reasons. Good people are also terminated regularly for good reasons. Welcome to the real world of at will employment. Paizo owes us on both ethical and the legal front absolutely no commentary regarding Sara's firing - it is between Sara and Paizo. It may have been a good decision, it may have been a bad decision. And no, Diego's walk-out doesn't taint this, he is also a good employee that could have made a bad decision, or a good decision - we don't need to know which. Offer Sara solidarity over being fired because you like Sara, but that's where any of our involvement on the personnel issue should end.
* Executives need to be held accountable and investigated
Of course accountability in any organization is critical for the organizations function. Billion dollar industries exist to support this. As for investigation, for what? Are you going to be disappointed if the investigation doesn't include a bullet list of items from JP and Crystal? How about how? Do you need daily progress reports or is the demand going to get louder when an investigation (which can take years for some organizations) is quiet? How do you know that there isn't already an investigation underway? A lot of the claims involve personnel, are you asking for details on personnel records? What if the investigation is done and nothing happens because there's no wrongdoing found? If Jeff isn't immediately fired is everyone making these demands going to assume that the accountability investigation is flawed, or are you going to actually listen to somebody that comes in and doesn't say what you want them to say? Are you going to heft those pitchforks higher? You know what, why not simply ask for a seat on the board?
* Executives need to enter good faith negotiations with their employees
What does this mean? Negotiate for what? Salaries? Well that's the next point you make. Sounds like another open ended demand where you have the opportunity to move your goalpost when what you see isn't being done to me.
* Salaries need to be posted and raised; some employees live below the median living wage in Seattle
Aaah my favorite. We have a fundamental wage problem in America. Yelling loudly at a company clearly hasn't fixed it for decades, and isn't going to fix it here. Is underpaying your workers bad? Yes, but like all things the answer comes with an "it's complicated". I saw one person say "rehire Sara and Diego and give them more!" Okay, does that mean everybody else gets the more too? What about the need for more employees to cover the fact that it's clear Paizo has an under-staffing problem? Where does that money come from in what is universally known as a poor-profit industry? What about Paizo employees? How much of this should be put on them and the fact it's their job, or are you going to do all the negotiation for them? Do we get to figure out where the money for the investigation comes from before or after this? Every gamer loves to speak out of both sides of their mouths. "I need to cancel my subscription, it's become too expensive to maintain", followed by, "why don't you pay your employees enough." Living wage is a real and good goal, but a demand like this isn't simply going to move the boulder.
You might want to try backing up a step and looking at your own bias before jumping to your list of demanded solutions.
“Because it's a personnel issue that none of us have any business in butting our noses into.”
And you couldn’t be more wrong.
Awesome, because I think they're both great people let me know who asked you to be their voice in this discussion - was it Sara or Diego? I'd love to give them my support if they've asked for it.
Please, let me know when it's okay for me to start writing to my fired friend's boss to tell them, "you made the right call man."
You people are way too obsessed with Jessica Price, there’s more rants and froth in here about her because you all can’t let it go rather than focusing on Sara Marie abs Diego.
Let's look at Sara's firing in a vacuum shall we?
Sara Marie is fired, Diego resigns in protest with his short set of Tweets. JP and Crystal remain silent. People like Moreland simply comment, "somebody hire these great people." Nothing from Jeff; nothing from Erik or Jason.
We wake up Tuesday morning and there's a certain, "waaaa, why did Sara get fired and Diego resign in protest due to management activities?"
And it ends there. Because it's a personnel issue that none of us have any business in butting our noses into. Good people are fired regularly for bad reasons; conversely, good people are fired regularly for GOOD reasons. Many of us (myself included in this) suspect that some kind of major screw-up has occurred, but without being inside the room we have no idea what really happened. In fact, it's worth noting that other than a vague "this was bad management" by Diego, none of the people inside the room have commented and the circumstances are 100% in limbo. Paizo can't comment (it's both unethical AND illegal) and without comments from Diego and/or Sara there's nothing else to say.
We have none of the "oh man let me tell you about the people involved" from JP, so it ends there. Maybe there's yet another discussion of how Paizo management keeps screwing things up, but honestly it's not going to get the same vitriol. Eventually the story of Sara's firing is a blip on the "well that was dumb" radar. So the very idea that "we're getting sidetracked" is totally missing the situation. JP sidetracked this discussion and made it a thing.
With the addition of JP to the mix we get the Jeff Alvarez thread (after his absolutely awful tone-deaf response), an apology from Erik where he has to affirm that Nazis are bad, and Jason is suddenly in the mix as well. No, everything here comes DIRECTLY from the stirring the pot, not the original firing.
Those interested in helping more can find the hashtag #PaizoAccountability on Twitter, where several former Paizo staffers, freelancers and community members have put together a list of demands, which are:
* Paizo needs to hire a whistleblower/arbitration company.
* Said company must investigate Sara Marie's wrongful termination.
* Executives need to be held accountable and investigated
* Executives need to enter good faith negotiations with their employees
* Salaries need to be posted and raised; some employees live below the median living wage in Seattle
I love this list of "demands" and those like it. Does anyone even hear themselves over their pitchforks and torches? You've already made your decisions and these demands set forth the groundwork of "trial by the mob is complete".
* Paizo needs to hire a whistleblower/arbitration company.
A whistleblower/arbitration company you say? While it's clear, even by Paizo supporters, that there are management issues within, we've skipped the entire "hire a company to help investigate our corporate culture and have an external review of the concerns noted" and leaped right to "arbitration". Nothing says, "I have an opinion and it's right" then jumping past steps 1-9 and right to 10.
* Said company must investigate Sara Marie's wrongful termination.
It's clear that few here have had to actually let someone go. In my personal vacuum believe Sara's termination was a a poor decision; however, said termination being immediately classified as "wrongful" by a group of individuals who are not Sara or Paizo is ludicrous. Good people are terminated regularly for bad reasons. Good people are also terminated regularly for good reasons. Welcome to the real world of at will employment. Paizo owes us on both ethical and the legal front absolutely no commentary regarding Sara's firing - it is between Sara and Paizo. It may have been a good decision, it may have been a bad decision. And no, Diego's walk-out doesn't taint this, he is also a good employee that could have made a bad decision, or a good decision - we don't need to know which. Offer Sara solidarity over being fired because you like Sara, but that's where any of our involvement on the personnel issue should end.
* Executives need to be held accountable and investigated
Of course accountability in any organization is critical for the organizations function. Billion dollar industries exist to support this. As for investigation, for what? Are you going to be disappointed if the investigation doesn't include a bullet list of items from JP and Crystal? How about how? Do you need daily progress reports or is the demand going to get louder when an investigation (which can take years for some organizations) is quiet? How do you know that there isn't already an investigation underway? A lot of the claims involve personnel, are you asking for details on personnel records? What if the investigation is done and nothing happens because there's no wrongdoing found? If Jeff isn't immediately fired is everyone making these demands going to assume that the accountability investigation is flawed, or are you going to actually listen to somebody that comes in and doesn't say what you want them to say? Are you going to heft those pitchforks higher? You know what, why not simply ask for a seat on the board?
* Executives need to enter good faith negotiations with their employees
What does this mean? Negotiate for what? Salaries? Well that's the next point you make. Sounds like another open ended demand where you have the opportunity to move your goalpost when what you see isn't being done to me.
* Salaries need to be posted and raised; some employees live below the median living wage in Seattle
Aaah my favorite. We have a fundamental wage problem in America. Yelling loudly at a company clearly hasn't fixed it for decades, and isn't going to fix it here. Is underpaying your workers bad? Yes, but like all things the answer comes with an "it's complicated". I saw one person say "rehire Sara and Diego and give them more!" Okay, does that mean everybody else gets the more too? What about the need for more employees to cover the fact that it's clear Paizo has an under-staffing problem? Where does that money come from in what is universally known as a poor-profit industry? What about Paizo employees? How much of this should be put on them and the fact it's their job, or are you going to do all the negotiation for them? Do we get to figure out where the money for the investigation comes from before or after this? Every gamer loves to speak out of both sides of their mouths. "I need to cancel my subscription, it's become too expensive to maintain", followed by, "why don't you pay your employees enough." Living wage is a real and good goal, but a demand like this isn't simply going to move the boulder.
You might want to try backing up a step and looking at your own bias before jumping to your list of demanded solutions.
A quick skim of the first page shows 40-ish cancellations. Second page does have cancellations, but drilling into the individual posts indicates they aren't cancelling due to the "controversy" or don't leave a reason at all.
Out of how many active subscriptions exactly? Thousands? More?
40 subscriptions will no doubt raise an eyebrow but it's not going to sink Paizo. I mean hell I'm buying like $300 worth of Starfinder rulebooks/APs, both physical and PDFs in about a week.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. I was curious about this earlier today so I tracked it. Reliably you can only look at yesterday and today (though arguably Monday could be counted, and if you're really interested in those numbers I have them as well)..
Between yesterday and today there have been 24 cancellations that were either tied to the current situation or where no reason was given. Of those cancellations only 7 can be explicitly tracked back to the situation at hand. That's almost half the "40" quoted.
Keep in mind, during that same time there were 13 that explicitly gave reasons for cancellation such as "shipping is too much", were old posts that were simply resurrected, were duplicates of the same request or were just regular old customer service questions about orders.
Edit:
Further note, compared to a week ago there were 7 cancellations and 12 random other CS requests. Is 7 greater than 24? Yes. But for the initial outrage that comes from a situation like this, I'd hardly call that bank-breaking.
I am aware that Paizo management cannot speak to it directly (at least right away), but it is difficult for most of us to accept that the firing of a certain long time employee was justified, as everything we customers have seen and heard suggests that she has performed in an exemplary manner.
I might accept something like "We didn't see eye to eye on certain issues, so we regretfully had to part company", but at this point I think many of us are beginning to give credence to various rumors that did not originally seem well justified.
Why do we need any input on this? Why do we need to accept it? I mean I loved Sara as much of the next person and honestly believe her firing was a loss for Paizo, but I also believe that Paizo owes me nothing in regards to statements on personnel issues.
And why would a statement matter anyway? As has been discussed here to death, statements of this nature are boilerplate anyway. Nothing that would be said is going to satiate your desire for more information about her firing.
The reason could very well be that management sucks and made a bad call. It could be that Sara was insubordinate (and yes, refusing management orders that suck can be construed as insubordinate). Regardless, none of that matters because any issues of her employment are between Sara and Paizo. And I hope they keep it that way.
Like, if you're there for 11 years, and these problems are that much in the forefront, I'd probably expect that you'd notice.
Let's also not forget that Mark has been there from the literal ground up. He may be "management" now, but has not always been management. I trust Mark's opinion an awful lot, and his comments go a long way towards my personal decision to take a watchful waiting stance vs. the "burn the whole place to the ground" stance.
Which, if it is true, is extremely problematic and what they are referencing... Just making sure your response was encompassing that as well? Because some of those stories were corroborated back and forth.
This is really disrespectful to what people at activision blizzard have suffered and why the court casehas revealed.
It may be the case at Paizo, but we don't have evidence of that yet even in JP's incredibly biased and in many places intentionally misleading rant.
Also out of the woodwork to double up on this statement.
There is a vast difference between bad decisions that happen every day at every company in the world and the literal hell of Activision/Blizzard that required court involvement.
Good people are fired all the time for dumb reasons. Sara Marie was beloved, and it's pretty clear everyone here knows why. She was good at her job and every issue I had her deal with was dealt with appropriately. From that viewpoint I personally think this was dumb, but I also don't have any of the facts at hand other than a whole lot of airing of dirty laundry tweets from somebody with a personal agenda I absolutely don't respect (and a handful of less vitriolic tweets from the people I do respect).
Companies make terrible decisions all the time, and if one thinks that this is somehow "unusual", they really need to look around. But one thing is for sure, it's yet at the scale and scope of Activision/Blizzard. I don't have any subscriptions left to cancel, and I'm interested to see where this goes, but I'm not ready to pull out the torches and pitchforks yet.
Since this was an issue on the Paizo end which triggered reissuing cancelled subscriptions, and was about to charge me for products not ordered, I would like to know more about what happened.
How did two cancelled subscriptions reissue?
What preventative actions are being performed by Paizo to ensure this does not happen again?
Will Paizo ever give us the ability to add/remove payment options?
Will Paizo ever give us the ability to manage our subscriptions directly?
I had the same thing happen - something happened to their system and if you look you'll see you're now a SFS adventure path subscriber again (two of mine reactivated). Still no word from customer service on what happened. I'll be putting a hold on my card if I have to.
In July I requested cancellation of all subscription materials moving forward. This was implemented at that time and I have not received any Paizo material since that date.
Yesterday I received notice that my new subscriptions would be shipping soon and when I went into my account it appears that I have multiple subscriptions active again. Since I don't seem to have the capability of removing payment options to ensure that shipment does not occur, this is a notice to Paizo that I will put credit card disputes on these payments should shipment be made. I would advice Paizo to again cancel all my subscriptions and ensure that they do not re-enable in the future.
Mostly I like the idea of leaving Valerie at the Capital as my Regent...storywise there is no one I trust more than her to run the kingdom.....
Now this I get. I don't take any of my inner circle out in the field with me. Verisimilitude-wise it makes no sense that somebody is occupied with state business for 60 days, but out exploring some dungeon with me.
As an example, if I spend time helping an advisor for 15 days, time fast-forwards for me. Why doesn't it for them?
First off - I've yet to have her fail a con save. Between her enormous constitution, fighter levels, and liberal use of delay poison (which works for once!) poison can be a non-entity in this game.
Regarding her stats. First off her high CHA is fantastic for her build. As a 1-handed fighter it's nice to have other uses - and she is a debuff machine. Between Dazzling Display and Cornugon Smash there's hardly a person on the battlefield not taking large -2 buffs. That right there makes her CHA worth it. Sure, I'll give you the odd CON isn't ideal, but even discounting it to 16 she's at a 24 point build. And lastly I don't need her out of medium encumbrance penalties, since she's going to have them in heavy armor anyway.
She is literally the tip of my spear formation so I can get her into combat first, and her very being keeps the rest of my party alive by nature of not being who gets hit.
Not really true, she still tanks damage. Issue by chapter 3 is poison and negative level enemies since her having lot of hp helps nothing with those :p
Except her enormous constitution helps with both, as does her AC well into the 30's. Her touch AC is also much better than you'd expect due to the tower shield specialty.
So I redid my party. I dropped the shield fighter, the barbarian and the armorless cleric. Replaced them with a custom half-orc paladin, a crusader cleric and an alchemist. I play a wizard.
Funny, Valerie is actually well built (and has waaaaaay too many attribute points). As long as you can get the AI to target her, you should be fine.
I'll add a me too to Voss. I was trying to build five other characters besides the main one at Oleg. Even after a couple of random encounters, main character was 2500 or so, and the rest of them was at 250 or so.
Figured it out. I don't do the level 1 option, I do the level 2 option, and being at only roughly 2,300 or so XP when I create the character I never noticed the difference. If you're doing it at level 1, it's a huge difference.
There's also an odd bug that it says "this will cost you 2k gp" but it doesn't. I'm not sure how much it costs, but it's absolutely not 2k gold.
This...this is why I just save game edit this crap in the end.
If you hire them at level 1 for 500 gold, they start at level one. You already have XP to be level 2. They don't get that XP. Hence, a level behind.
That's not how it worked in my game. My player build NPCs are the same exact XP as my main character.
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What about haste?
Eh. Have it on Octavia, and have a big stack of haste scrolls (didn't even have to buy any, the game just hands 'em out). Didn't need it taking up level 3 slots on Linzi when she finally got access to it later on.
So you use your first action with Octavia to haste, which means you're losing out on action economy. Let Octavia lead with something bigger, let her large DCs come into play. Leave the buffing to Linzi, you'll be happy for it.
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Heroism a level before anybody else?
Heroism overlaps, doesn't stack with inspire courage.
Common misconception that something named "inspire" is a morale bonus. But as it's not, they stack 100%. This is why inspire courage stacks with bless (which is a morale bonus), but not aid (witch is a competence bonus).
You could be thinking about Good Hope, but that is 1) a 3rd level spell, and 2) a group vs. individual buff and 3) covers more bonuses than inspire courage does so it's STILL a benefit to the party.
Bards make exceptional group buffers, and by often having their spells a level earlier than the full casters, they can alleviate a lot of pressure off those full casters. That's the best way to use her.
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And as far as healing goes, it's usually enough for emergency in-combat use (I'd never use it out of combat).
Uh... I'm not sure how you're managing that. I've got 18 uses of channel and 10 lay on hands in my party and I still need to use spells for out of combat healing (and Harrim is currently channelling for 7d6 thanks to gear, and my paladin handles the rest). The monsters just dish out that much damage. The constant parade of templated magical beasts is quite ridiculous.[/url]
Copious use of things like fighting defensively, group buffs, and making sure to have the AI target those designed to take a pounding. Yes, the game is very tough, and not having wands of CLW is a tremendous drain, but it's usually not that bad. Don't think of Linzi as a healer, think of her as the one trying to prevent the heals in the first place.
The problem with Linzi as a buffer is she doesn't have many of the best /most usable buffs. Displacement is nice, but others overlap with bard song.
As a healer she burns through her spells far too quickly.
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I'm honestly not sure what you mean by 'buffed to the gills' with Harrim. Other than divine favor, divine power, and righteous might, most of his buffs would overlap with equipment bonuses.
We clearly are playing different games. Linzi not having the "most usable bufffs"? Um...inspire courage turns any 2/3 BAB class into a 1/1 BAB class. What about haste? Heroism a level before anybody else? And as far as healing goes, it's usually enough for emergency in-combat use (I'd never use it out of combat). I have a buff-centric bard for PFS that carries no weapon and he's a monster when it comes to enhancing the party, Linzi is no different.
As for Harrim, you know that you don't need to equip him with that gear (and can apply it to others)? The buffs last 1 minute of real-time per level. Unlike PnP that means several combats, and eventually entire rests. Divine Favor turns him from a 2/3 BAB to a 1/1 BAB and adds enough damage to cover the strength difference. Things like Shield of Faith and Magic Vestment let the better gear go to others (and he's still better than they are in most cases).
As an aside, tried it out and I'm not a fan of the paying 500 option. Bringing level 1 guys out into the wilds is... pretty rough, and they'll be stuck 2000 xp behind your party (and this game doesn't calculate XP the way PF does).
Nor am I, which is why I just trained the gold into my save file so I could play the game the way I preferred. You can call it cheating - I call it, "developing a feature the game promised to have in the first place". I also don't know where you get that they're a level behind - I play with party XP, so everybody is at the same level, regardless of who they are.
Perhaps the greatest frustration for me (In a game that's laden with frustrations) is that the difficulty is representative of what the OwlCats found fun, not the actual difficulty of the adventure path. Back in May I gave up on balance because I was told directly that the difficulty was where they wanted it. I liken the Owlcats to that DM that everybody's had, but everybody hates - the one that feels the only way to have fun is to repeatedly kick your behind while giggling behind the GM screen.
But lo! somebody went through the effort to find the correct settings to put the difficulty at core Pathfinder rules!LINK
Between a deliberate difficulty hike and an oddity in the code the poster identified the following settings (details of how he got there in the original link):
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Core Rules Set Enemy Difficulty to "weak" and Enemy Stat Adjustments to "normal" for mostly-accurate Pathfinder experience, in terms of encounter balance.
Enemy Stat Adjustment only seems to influence Regeneration and Immunity bypass (no or reduced damage from non-magical weapons), and from what I can find in the code, only when choosing "somewhat easier" (half regen) or "much easier" (no regen) options. Any other option, such as "much tougher enemies" doesn't appear to actually be used anywhere I've found in the code. Comically enough, this even means choosing the "moderately easier" option is exactly the same as "much tougher" when it comes to this (which is all I can see it actually getting called for).
Enemy Difficulty changes the modifier scores (but not the base values) of the main attributes, skills, AC, Attacks, and Saves, by -2, +0, +2, +4, for weak, normal, strengthened, insane options accordingly. I'll go into why below, but you might notice attacks and AC get double-dipped due to the way the math is handled. I'm not sure if that's intentional or not, but it results in a rather steep increase in certain key stat values.
If you're getting frustrated by difficulty the above changes WILL help!
Very differernt experiences here (I made it through book two in the beta)
Voss wrote:
I like my Valerie with rogue levels (she is effectively my main damage dealer and tank).
That's a way to make Valerie useful I guess. I always found her nice if (big if) the AI targeted her because she's neigh impossible to take down. She's also the absolute worst damage dealer I've seen in any game, PnP or cRPG as a straight fighter.
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Octavia works fine (and isn't any more behind than a sorcerer would be).
Different strokes for different folks I guess. Octatvia's build drives me nuts because the reason I think wizards are superior to sorcerers is gone in her build (her spell progression being set a level back). Add that up with the general unfavorable nature of wizards in a cRPG (which is largely due to the significantly overall reduced number of unique spells available) and I just don't like her at all (except personality-wise).
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Linzi... I don't use very well. She's fairly mediocre at everything, and the DC of her save or suck spells quickly becomes to low. I also don't use her songs enough.
Again unusual. The moment I see bard, unless I see an optimized bard I never think about save DCs on a 2/3 caster, and that includes PnP. I loaded my Linzi up with every available buff and curative I could and she's the one NPC I don't mind having in my group of 5 (bard song for the win).
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Harrim. I like him better than Tristian, but other than Amiri, he's often the first one down, and by far accomplishes the least until post battle cleanup.
Again weird, I usually have Harrim buffed to the gills so his durability reaches that of Valerie, and his output is much better too
(when buffed). I'd take him over Amiri any day (I consider her fine in concept and terrible in execution). I don't even put him into the same category of Tristian, the character I'm constantly frustrated with because when I don't have him in the party I feel like I have to have him, and when I do have him in the party he feels like dead weight unless he's healing.
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Amiri is made of soft squishy things. Making her a fighter helped a bit, but not enough. I'm not entirely convinced two handed weapons are worth sacrificing AC. (And no, Barbarian DR does not help with the kind of damage enemies put out).
We agree here. A friend of mine put it best, "it's too expensive to keep Amiri in the party". Yes it's nice to see that massive crit happen, but when it's not, she's usually lying dead on the ground.
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Ekun... once I finally found him... eh. His stats are fine for what he does. I just want more from an archer (like spells or sneak attack or something).
He shows up way too late, though he is a ranger and not a bad one. Jubilost was in the same boat for me (but I don't particularly like alchemists so that was an easy choice
This is exactly why I intend to run with 5, leaving the last spot open to experience the story with whatever of the "NPC yahoos" I feel like I have to haul around. This makes me sad as it's the first time I've played a game like this where I haven't considered the NPCs compelling enough to want to drag around.
So, what would you recommend? I'd like to see a full-fledged Unchained Rogue in action — maybe I could even replace Amiri with her, even if it's a bit of blasphemy. Or a full arcane caster who isn't so ridiculously squishy, or a competent archer Cleric...
All of the above - make a party of 5 and leave the last slot open for whatever NPC yahoo you want to see the story with.
IMHO, after playing several characters in the beta, I think one of the best is a solid multi-use front-liner. As it stands we have:
Spoilered list of NPCs:
Valerie - great and standing there, never getting hit, if she gets hit she stays standing, and pretty much doing absolutely NOTHING ELSE EVER.
Amiri - I think a friend of mine described Amiri best, she's too expensive to keep in the group - her low AC and penchant for being targeted all-the-damn-time makes her a resource hog
Harrim - I'll admit I like Harrim and he's a good combo of some damage, durability, and flexibility
Reg - While I never had the Amiri-level problems, he is a bit of a damage soak and he's really fiddly and more of a striker than a tank
If you're like me and want to have at least two front-liners you're stuck with these yahoos. Duelist is the one PrC that your companions can't obtain - therefore, the "best" character is a duelist that has the AC to survive, the HP to stay in battle, front-line damage output, and with a few levels of rogue or ranger, skills to fill whatever gap your party might have.
Here's a link to the Beta save game editor many of us used for testing. They changed how XP is stored, so that no longer works but you can edit your gold for enough to make your own party right off the bat.
As somebody that already experienced the NPCs (and I'm happy not to do so again - even though I'll give Kudos where Kudos are due and point out they really did fix them from the train wrecks they used to be), I can't wait to play a game with custom characters.
But it's two weeks and a bit from release, and the general PR campaign _really_ needs to get working. The audience largely seems to be just kickstarter backers and that isn't going to fly.
Especially when many of us Kickstarter Backers quickly discovered that while we really, really, really want to like the game, it's became harder and harder to do so.
Male Human, probably TPK Causer 4 / GM of Repute 6 / Troublemaker 2
I just played all three at SkalCon this last weekend - I'll sit down tomorrow and apply chrons. Since it sounds like we have casting covered, it'll be either:
Burngar - The Dwarven barbarian (8) of love and armor spikes
Davorin - The Brilliant Planning we'll just say "fighter" (8) (in actuality he could also fill the missing rogue role, and any other roles other than wizard that may be missing.
or if everybody wants to play fighters...
Rowlan (my -2 if you can believe it): Battle Herald bard (9) that does double duty on inspiring (yes it's possible)
Marzenek: The bard (9) with no weapon (except Gamin, that resents the fact that Marzenek calls himself the bard with no weapon).
Also, stop spreading to other outlets. Reddit is not a place to take grievances, ever...
Except when the place to talk isn't being open about allowing it.
Nature finds a way...
While I don't in any way agree with Sara Marie's reaction, I also am aware of the impossible position she's been put in and it's unfortunate it finally came to this. The timing was also difficult as it's unreasonable to assume that Tonya can respond immediately which makes things harder for her. But I also don't think that's really the problem, as was just stated, this has been brewing a long, long while.
Archers are already at best slightly underpowered in Pathfinder no matter how you build them (they really only do one thing, ranged damage, and there are better ways of doing it), but an archer that can't add an ability score to their damage is completely worthless as a damage dealer and better be able to do something else to contribute.
I fundamentally support the change that larger gear requires higher cost. So for that portion of the petition I am not in agreement and am glad to see the FAQ change.
I am though fundamentally opposed to the whole multiplier on masterwork costs problem that the FAQ started. That makes zero sense to me and as previously shown (below) is contrary to the rules from the CRB. Therefore am in support of its suspension simply because it's so poorly worded and thought through.
The cost of armor for non-humanoid creatures, as well as for creatures who are neither Small nor Medium, varies. The cost of the masterwork quality and any magical enhancement remains the same.
Weapons for Unusually Sized Creatures: wrote:
The cost of weapons for creatures that are neither Small nor Medium varies. The cost of the masterwork quality and any magical enhancement remains the same.
Great to see Minneapolis make the list of top backer cities!
We suspect the count could have been higher simply because Kickstarter keeps track of "St. Paul" and "Minneapolis" separately. There's no "Twin Cities Metro".
