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Vic Wertz wrote:
carborundum wrote:
If you spot any more updates concerning the Netherlands, would you mind sharing?
About a third of them are schedule to arrive on August 6 or 7. The other two thirds are scheduled to arrive on September 6 or 7, with a couple stragglers on September 10. (There's literally none scheduled for delivery between 8/7 and 9/6.)

That's quite a large range. Could you maybe look which batch order 5009058 is in? If you don't want to do that because that might set a precedent, that's completely understandable. Just a bit nervous about not knowing.


Vic, any indication for the Benelux area?


Mechalibur wrote:
Deadmanwalking wrote:
Malk_Content wrote:
One thing to note, with the way PF2 does stat ups especially in relation to race, +2,+2 physical isn't that big of a bonus (anyone can do that right now, so long as we aren't counting specific stats) and doesn't particularly typecast them as any given class.

This isn't quite true. See, with +Str, +Con, the Orc can select Dex as their floating bonus and have +2 to all three physical stats, making them an 'ultimate warrior' of sorts.

Personally, I don't have a huge issue with Orcs or Hobgoblins being able to do precisely that, but I can definitely see the arguments against it.

I see your point, but this seems more of an issue of Dexterity being an all-around useful stat, while intelligence is more specific. For example, it wouldn't really be overpowered if a wizard, cleric, druid (or whatever spellcasting class) had +2 intelligence, +2 wisdom, and +2 charisma.

No, but that's mostly because for most casters, raising a non-primary mental stat doesn't do anymore for them than it does for a martial character. To a wizard, wisdom only increases Will, Perception and a few skills. Meanwhile, all martial characters have some benefit from all physical attributes; more AC, more HP, higher damage, they're all good.


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ChibiNyan wrote:
CHA Halflings were just a leftover from 3E. The much more grim Halflings of Golarion have developed their survival instincts a lot and became more socially reclusive. They are still commonly liars, but WIS is for sure their main thing seeing how much the Halfling lore talks about their perception.

Wait, what? No. Halflings used to be -Str +Dex. We didn't have these fancy schmancy "second ability boost" back in our days. If you were playing a Half-Orc, you even got a second -2. Those were the days.

All of that was in jest, but Halflings didn't get a boost to Charisma in 3rd edition. That's a Pathfinder thing.


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Let's say you're playing a 10th lvl Fighter with a +19 Attack Bonus* and you're fighting a 7th lvl monster, let's say a Bulette, with 29 AC*. You have a 45% chance to miss, a 50% chance to hit, and a 5% chance to crit. Meanwhile, the monster has a +15 to hit*, and your Fighter has an AC of 27*. The monster has a 55% to miss, a 40% chance to hit and a 5% chance to crit.

Now let's say we remove +lvl from everything, so your Fighter has a +9 Attack Bonus*, and the Bulette has 22 AC*. You now have a 60% chance to miss, a 35% chance to hit and a 5% chance to crit. Conversely, the monster with its +8 to hit* now attacks your Fighter with 17 AC*, and it has 40% chance to miss, 50% chance to hit and 10% chance to crit.

You have altered the hit chances.
Your party is now more likely to wipe, compared to a game where +lvl is a thing.
Your result that your party wiped is now no longer relevant to the playtest, because all your odds are different.

The only way to lose the aesthetic of high numbers in your player characters, but keep the odds the same is by lowering all DCs, ACs and Attack Modifiers by the Party's level, not the Challenge's level. This makes it so that DCs scale negatively with the party's level, meaning that, for instance, a beginner lock's DC lowers, and eventually goes into the negatives. If you're okay with that, that's your prerogative, but that's not a nice aesthetic to me.

*These numbers have no meaning; they might not be close to what they are in the game, but I don't care. They still serve as an adequate example.


It's not so much that I refuse to give details, it's more that my players don't think the stats are relevant when buying an animal. They trust that Paizo, and WotC before them, designed the animal in such a way that the stat block could basically function like what people imagine a guard dog to be like. It's got good perception, mediocre combat ability, but can't pull a wagon or be ridden by the fighter. All else is just a bit nit-picky when buying a dog. "Oh, it's only got a +3 to hit? Don't think I'll buy it then"; "Don't you have an animal with +10 on perception instead of +8?"


Chief Cook and Bottlewasher wrote:
I think the idea is that lore(religion) would be broad knowledge and lore(your god) will be specialisation. A cleric with acolyte background might not bother with broad knowledge(religion)

This. I don't know why we expect imams to tell us about Hinduism, or rabbis to know a lot about Shinto.


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Slim Jim wrote:
Beercifer wrote:
Slim Jim, I advise using a laptop or phone while engaged in play. We use Hero Labs at my table, and I use Realm Works between sessions.
When a 3rd party is making money massaging the database, it means that Paizo is forfeiting a revenue stream to middlemen. When the game increasingly becomes a PITA to play without the middleman's software, then the game developer needs to step it up a notch.

I've been running variations of this game for the better part of two decades, and I don't think it's been a pain in any way since the switch to PF1, due to a few subtle rules changes. In fact, I still occasionally call for Use Rope checks. Anyway, that's beside the point... in my experience, a large part of being able to run this game smoothly is to only care about specifics when they actually matter.

Besides, the way it looks, I won't need 3rd party software anymore to make my PF2 characters. That's a plus in my book.

Slim Jim wrote:
Malachandra wrote:
I try to have my players keep electronics off at the table, because they are distracting.

Space-hogging laptops I consider distracting. Tablets that lay flat and which a player typically just has his character-sheet showing, and maybe a die-rolling app are fine (and those certainly save time counting when you're rolling over a dozen of the things).

Quote:
I don't find it all difficult to flip through books, even during the game. In fact, I find it enjoyable. I like reading the books, especially the physical copies.
Everybody likes reading when they have time to kill; they don't like it when the cadence of play comes to a screeching halt when something needs to be looked up and no one can remember what book it's in or when and where and who-said-what-in-a-FAQ (then out come the horrible electric devices).

Instead of a tablet with character sheet and a dice rolling app, I tend to play with printed out character sheets and dice. Even less distractions in front of the players! It's not even a rule I put down or anything, we just play that way. As for looking up rules questions, we tend to handle them in one of four ways.

* If it's an obscure feat or skill challenge that's part of an adventure, it's the GM's job to look up how it works during preparation (or occasionally during intense RP moments where there's no adjudication needed and I'm reading ahead and see that I forgot to look up whatever is needed).
* If it's an obscure feat or spell or whatever that's part of a character, I fully expect that player to either know what it does, have it written down, or know where to find it and have it ready whenever it comes up. I mean, you should know what your character can do.
* If it's a miscellaneous rules question that I know is in the CRB - which I tend to know, because I've leafed through the damn thing so many times - we look it up. In a book. That I carry with me.
* All other things I adjudicate with what makes sense, or a close approximation of a similar rule.

Slim Jim wrote:
That's a straw-man fallacy, as no one has argued for "having every possible rule in the game in a single book." --We certainly don't need the stats for pit fiends in the CRB. We should have the stats for mundane gear. Basically, anything listed in Goods and Services should have an entry just as if it were a weapon. Horses, dogs, and cart-pulling donkeys are very commonly-purchased goods by low-level PCs of all classes, and deserve a few inches of space.
Quote:
Heck, I don't think there needs to be stats for a guard dog.
20gp is big percentage of starting cash for a 1st-level PC. That melee-averse character buying protection will want to know what he's getting for his money.

That's easy. He's getting a guard dog. Something like a Rottweiler or Doberman. When he decides to use it to keep guard, I'll look up its Perception score on the one laptop at our table, which is behind the GM screen; when he brings it into combat, I'll look up its attacks, AC, hit points and speed. If he wants to know its Strength, I'll ask if he wants to arm wrestle it.

After that one session, I'll expect him to print out the stats of a guard dog, or write them down in his notebook (a paper one, not a bleepy bloopy one). A guard dog in Pathfinder isn't a stat block with a picture of dog attached, it's a mental image of a dog, quite a big one at that, that you occasionally need stats for.

And that's a guard dog, I can't even begin to fathom why you'd need any of the stats of a cart-pulling donkey.


So I've been hearing a lot of talk about a schedule for the playtest. Something about three weeks for the first chapter and two weeks for each subsequent chapter. However, one thing is entirely unclear to me; namely, are those the dates until which we can report our feedback, or from which we can report. Are those the dates the surveys are released to public, or they deadlines after which the surveys won't be accepted anymore?


Mathmuse wrote:
As KingOfAnything said in comment #40, the PF1 alchemist infusing his aura into extracts and bombs appeared to be an inspiration for resonance. Yet if the PF2 alchemist does not use resonance for bombs, then half that inspiration is gone.

The way I read it, the Alchemist still uses Resonance to quickly create bombs.

Quick Bomber tells us:

Fumbus, goblin alchemist sheet wrote:

Quick Bomber

----
Alchemist
----
You place your bombs in easy-to-reach pouches and learn how to draw them almost without thinking. When you use the Interact action to draw an alchemical item with the bomb trait, you can draw two bombs instead. When using your Quick Alchemy to create a bomb, you can also draw one other bomb as part of the Quick Alchemy action.

Now this tells me that you can either carry around some bombs to throw around whenever you like, and/or you can craft some of them on the fly when you don't have the right bombs on hand. This doesn't tell us anything about whether bombs use Resonance though.

However, when we look at Quick Alchemy:

Fumbus, goblin alchemist sheet wrote:

[[A]] Quick Alchemy

----
Alchemical, Bomb, Consumable, Fire, Splash
Cost 1 Resonance Point
Requirements You must have alchemist's tools, the formula of the alchemical item you're creating, and a free hand.
----
You create a single common alchemical item that is of your level or lower without having to spend the normal monetary cost in alchemical reagents or needing to attempt a Crafting check. This item has the infused trait, meaning you can Activate it without spending Resonance, but it remains potent only until the start of your next turn, at which point it becomes inert.

So you definitely still need Resonance to create a spontaneous bomb. Whether or not conventionally crafted bombs require Resonance when crafting is, as far as I know, still unknown.


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Wultram wrote:
I do not belive I have ever said that my way is somehow the only way to enjoy pen and paper.

No, you didn't. But people don't tend to respond well when you're telling them that your way of playing the game is better than theirs.


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Malk_Content wrote:
Funnily enough the older I get the more I use AP material. I suspect a lot of people migrate towards "the kids table" as they take on more responsibility and have less time.

Very much this. Adventure paths are a godsend to me and my group. Ever since I got a job, preparing a whole adventure just isn't in the books for me anymore.


Roswynn wrote:
NimbleW wrote:
Roswynn, if you're more into a narrative style of play, and don't mind a lack of built-in flavour, I've been reading the Genesys rulebook for the past few days. It's tremendously easy to customize to any setting and includes some example settings and themes (including a superpower theme). I haven't played it yet, and the character options do feel a bit generic sometimes (due to it trying to design for everything between fantasy, steam-punk and sci-fi), but Fantasy Flights Star Wars RPG, which uses basically the same system, played really well with my group. Besides, there's rules to generate everything from custom items, to custom monsters, to custom talents, so in a way there's as much flavour there as you're willing to put in.

Huh... Genesys... I had a glance at it, but perhaps hurriedly came to the conclusion it wasn't for me. Built in flavor is not a problem at all, as you say there's as much flavor as you're willing to put in - and generic systems usually are very poor in flavor anyways.

I didn't know you could customize it so easily, and that you can create all that stuff!

Thank you, NimbleW - I'm gonna give it a good look this time. Tip of the hat.

I particularly enjoy the two axes of success, giving a total of 6 ways to succeed or fail at a task; the formalized rules for social "combat"; the complete lack of it feeling like a miniatures wargame, due to the narrative dice; and the amount of time the designers take to explain why they made the design decisions they did (especially in the GM section).


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Roswynn, if you're more into a narrative style of play, and don't mind a lack of built-in flavour, I've been reading the Genesys rulebook for the past few days. It's tremendously easy to customize to any setting and includes some example settings and themes (including a superpower theme). I haven't played it yet, and the character options do feel a bit generic sometimes (due to it trying to design for everything between fantasy, steam-punk and sci-fi), but Fantasy Flights Star Wars RPG, which uses basically the same system, played really well with my group. Besides, there's rules to generate everything from custom items, to custom monsters, to custom talents, so in a way there's as much flavour there as you're willing to put in.


So, like the title says, I'd like to change the credit card number on Order 5009058, as I lost that card and just got a new one. Is this still possible?


Roswynn wrote:
Malk_Content wrote:

Seeing how Orcs don't have a unified culture. They've been represented in multiple lights. No I don't see anything offensive towards native cultures. They have had some tribal structures that look like real world ones (because, well I challenge you to come up with a fictional culture that someone can't link to some melding of real world cultures) but they've also had more feudal structures, warlord led structures, norse raiding based cultures etc. Orcs are not some monolith.

And yes, you can be racist to white people.

EDIT: To be clear I am totally against the use of alignment tags for sapient humanoid species. But I don't think we should be stripping out anything that might be offensive if you look to hard because then we end up with a setting with nothing in it.

If we portray orcs these ways but don't label them all CE, I'm with you. I only want playable orcs, I don't want Paizo to completely remake all their various cultures (I didn't even know on Golarion they had more than a couple!). I just want orcs like in WoW and in TES. Real people, with real cultures, some good, some wicked, some aggressive, some peaceful. If orcs must be generally violent, prone to rage, tribal... it doesn't matter one bit to me as long as all that isn't labeled Evil.

If we can portray orcs in a slightly more positive light, like Ulfen are portrayed, or Kellids, or Shoanti, maybe heavier on demonic worship and slavery but making up for it somewhere else, even better! Just... please... no more "Usually CE" orcs.

I'd be a lot more sympathetic to your argument if you didn't portray anyone who doesn't fully agree with you as a blatant racist. I generally play with alignment on the backseat, if there at all, which is also how I run my Orcs, Goblins and Kobolds. No 'Usually CE' if there's no such thing as CE. I just don't particularly like being called an uninformed racist because I generally cast them as my low-level villains.

As an aside, I'd say that TES Orsimer also tend towards chaotic evil, and that Warcraft orcs have been slowly run into the ground over the last decade or so due to being too prominent in their series. Then again, I played Alliance, so what do I know?


Roswynn wrote:
AnimatedPaper wrote:
Since we're talking about East-Asian inspired elements in a game written by Americans, "oriental" sounds like it's the correct word here. I agree that people do take it as a pejorative even when it's technically the correct term, so why ruffle feathers needlessly?

It's not the technically correct term. The correct term for samurai is Japanese, or even just East-Asian. Oriental is a word that has never meant anything but the way westerners imagined and warped other cultures (which later they proceeded to conquer). Originally it referred only to the Middle East and North Africa (different cultures and ethnicities), then it became India and part of China (again different cultures) and in the 20th century it was East Asia, Southeast Asia, the eastern part of Central Asia... but North Africa too, somehow.

The words we use matter. Oriental is derogatory, doesn't describe ethnic origin, background or even "race" - to the contrary it generalizes many discreet cultures and ethnicities into a big mess we can exoticize and oversimplify to our heart's content. It's racist and Asian American people have fought long and hard to discourage its use.

Wanting to play a samurai isn't the same as being racist. Let's just use the right words, folks.

You do realise that Oriental just means Eastern right? As in the place where the sun rises, - oritur in Latin. It never referred to North Africa, nor did it originally refer to the Middle East. Originally, it meant the eastern half of the Roman Empire - basically anything east of Italy.

I can't see how it's derogatory to group people by the direction they are in. Grouping people in this way is in no way saying that they're the same culture, much in the same way that saying that Germans, Italians and Americans are all part of the Western World (or Occident) isn't oversimplifying their culture. The word just doesn't have anything to do with culture, but with regions of the world.

Incidentally, do you think it's okay to describe people from Syria, Jordan, Israel and Palestine as Levantine (from the French lever - to rise), or the Turks as Anatolian (from Greek ανατέλλω - to rise)?


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Fuzzypaws wrote:
Tholomyes wrote:
PossibleCabbage wrote:

I feel like the best reason for icons is how much space it potentially buys you in future book, since it allows you to replace instances of "As a standard action, you may do [foo]" with "[A]: [Foo]". Or "As a full found action, you may [bar]" with "[A][A][A]: [bar]."

So I don't think it's going to go away as it will make formatting future books (particularly really space limited ones like player companions) a lot easier.

It's also good for in game use, at least at my games, because we have a ruling that in order to make use of a feat, class feature or similar thing, you need the full text of that ability at hand. If the full text is just [[A]]: [One or maybe two sentences], that's a lot less to write, and a lot clearer to read, even if it's scribbled on an index card, as I tend to do.
You still don't need actual icons to save all that space though. It could literally just be a black bar with white text that says "Action:" or "3 Actions:" or "Reaction:" with the rest of the text following inline. That is still immediately easy to see in a large block of text, it copies directly from PDF to a forum post, and it is visible to screen readers with no extra labor required.

While visually striking, that option uses a lot more real estate. Using an entire line instead of a single character also means you can't use it inline. Certainly not a problem without a solution, but I'm just trying to say that there is no perfect solution to this, or most UX problems (which this basically is).

I think this decision is pretty comparable to the 'Tap' symbol in Magic: the Gathering. It's also a short-hand for a cost to activate an effect, in both cases the cost being expending an action. Originally, Magic wrote out the word, later followed by a tilted 'T', before finally settling on the current 'Tap' symbol. Out of all of these, I think the last one is the clearest. Incidentally, this is also why I'm not a huge fan of the 'circled A' suggestion I've seen floating around.

I'll admit I'm mostly pro-symbol here, so I'm absolutely not neutral, but I get where the other side is coming from. As long as the visually impaired are not completely ignored, and have some way to access the information encoded in the symbols, I think it's a pretty elegant way to convey costs for abilities.


Weather Report wrote:
Fuzzypaws wrote:
Ugh, those symbols sound terrible. Is it so much to ask for the action symbol to just be a circle with a number in it (circle-3 if it takes all three actions on your turn, for instance), and for the reaction symbol to just be a circle with an R in it?

Yeah, no daft, semi "universal" symbols", please: "...say, honey, is that a dog humping a frisbee?"

That's me, with my eye conditions.

How do you read? Not trying to be an a!~+#*+ here, but if you can't make out symbols, which are generally a bit larger and more distinctive than Latin letters, how do you actually read words?