Ravien999's page

Can we say Hello Solar Crystal Flare Solarians and Flare being a proper weapon instead of the weird pseudo-blast it is?

This seems rather sparse if I'm being honest. I agree with Ravien here, do people actually get to make 1e content when we don't even know whether basic mechanics of the game are fair play or not?

IMO, I think the biggest thing to take here is this line from mark:

Please note that this FAQ does not constitute legal advice, and publishers are each responsible for using the content in their products legally. We recommend you consult with an intellectual property attorney if you have any questions about this.

This, to me, reads as "If WotC sues you its on you" and as Paizo is authorizing you to use anything that they've written through the Infinite license, I don't think they'll be the enforcing agency if someone legally comes down on you. What that means to you is up to interpretation, but I take it to mean that they're not going to be rifling through every Infinite product and making sure they're using every single game mechanic properly to validate if its violating the OGL/CC-BY or not.

If DTRPG/OneBookShelf/Roll20 is going to be a nuisance about it is a different story. I don't trust that "partner" as far as I can throw them, they're a necessary evil.

I hope other posts/discussion will continue being made in this thread!

Does anyone have the link to the CC-BY and SRD 5.1?

The SRD 5.1 is https://media.wizards.com/2023/downloads/dnd/SRD_CC_v5.1.pdf

CC-BY 4.0 (Which is what SRD 5.1 is under) is https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en

So because this FAQ response is worded in the most cryptic matter possible, this is what I'm taking from this:

Rules-based content for SF1e and PF1e can continue to be put on infinite but cannot use the OGL license. However, we can use the CC-BY license in an Infinite product to borrow D&D SRD 5.1 ideas, but not ideas that are purely in OGL territory, except all Paizo content that is non-OGL is allowable through the Infinite license. But we can put SF1e/PF1e rules content on Infinite, just not with the OGL license anymore.

The confusing question to me is if that even permits us create anything that isn't just referential. Being that the SRD 5.1 does not use the same Action types as PF1e/SF1e, can we even create new mechanics? For Starfinder at least, Swift actions are safe, but would move/standard/full/free actions even be permissible to reference to, as those are derived from the OGL concept and aren't part of the SRD 5.1? Or would those be a sufficiently generic concept that we would be permitted as part of the Paizo core rules to use as part of the Infinite License?

I can see using a lot of concepts directly through SRD 5.1, but Action Types, Base Attack Bonus, and Fort/Ref/Will saves are three major elements I can think of that don't seem to have any 5.1 analogue which would be necessary for even basic concepts. I'm not sure how to interpret "Game Term" in this aspect. The examples Mark gives are creatures, spells, and lore elements, but the basic mechanics seem to be where I have question of if we can even use those elements at all. I'm thinking the usage of the saves in PF2e without OGL would be a good argument for all of those concepts to be permitted using just the Infinite license though

Is there any hope of having them not lock a bunch of stuff for SF2e playtest behind ownership of PF2 PC1? Like i know its stuff that's cross referenced and not reprinted but it seems detrimental to the playtest success

I'm glad to see that this has been postponed further while further investigations are being had.

I hope to see that this becomes something amenable for the 1e communities.

Ravien999 wrote:

This is a great move, but what about 1e content on infinite?

If you're asking about OGL content on Infinite, that's not Paizo. You have to go fight WotC if you want to publish something they own on Paizo's store. If you're asking about Paizo-owned 1e content, that was never disallowed. (IANAL tho so if somebody contradicts me on this, they might just know better than I)

Well it's weird then that *checks notes* Paizo is still doing that.

But also, I'm talking about Paizo owned 1e content.

Like all of starfinder.

We were told that "until SF2E comes out, all starfinder content must be entirely rules free" because you cannot write anything OGL, including Paizo OGL or OGL styled rules.

This is a great move, but what about 1e content on infinite?

I’d also add that funneling all free content through Infinite is bad for the creators trying to sell products there because it inundates the storefront with free small supplements that reduce the visibility of paid premium efforts.

It would be a significant financial blow to the existing creators on the platform when their work is much harder to find amidst a sea of content that wasn’t intended for what is fundamentally a storefront to begin with.

This is somewhat of a side piece, but this "be our partner or you can't exist" license that the revocation of the CUP creates really just makes it obvious how bad some of the Paizo partners are.

PFI/SFI would be a much more amenable system if OneBookshelf wasn't a terrible storefront and absolutely atrocious content discovery system, and so restrictive of content types. The Paizo Store looks like a modern product in comparison. AoN is a great resource, but other non-partner products are so much more usable and quick. (The PFI licenses were always atrocious and predatory, but as the only option for *paid* content, this was acceptable. As the only option for *free* content, its unacceptable)

If the partners aren't forced to a certain quality, their partners are doing them a disservice. The CUP permitted for the partners to not be as painful of an experience for the customer, because we had community alternatives.

nursestationick wrote:

Hi if I want to start a website were people can share homebrew AP and onshots they have written with a possibility of selling them as long as the material is within the regulations with the licenses is that okay?

If they are using the Pathfinder and Starfinder settings or other material that isn't licensed via the OGL or ORC, then such APs and one-shots need to be released on Pathfinder or Starfinder Infinite. If they're using a different setting or no setting, then they can function as you describe under the OGL/ORC and (if you so choose) the Paizo Compatibility License.

But these policies are meant to apply to published content, not general discussion, so if it's a forum where people are just tossing around ideas for campaigns or homebrew material, that's not something we're interested in policing.

You do realize how "Not interested in policing" is just asking for us to hope for Paizo's goodwill and while you're still operating on it for now, in just a few years and a bit of turnover, that stance can change.

The community just wants to be protected from lawsuits for passion projects. The community wants to be able to continue to benefit you as a company. AoN would not exist if not for the CUP. Arguably your most important partner. Hephaistos reinvigorated the SF1e community, and was only possible because of the CUP. Wanderer's Guide is a superior tool for PF2e than pathbuilder and herolab and demiplane by far, and they only existed due to the CUP. PF2Easy is a superior reference tool to AoN who consistently refuses to innovate their site for usability, and only enabled by CUP. You at paizo still refuse to provide form fillable PDFs and auto-calc sheets in the year 2024 and without CUP, we can't provide those legally. None of these are possible via the FCP, nor ORC.

You're telling the entire community "trust me" with the idea that they won't eat a lawsuit for making good tools for the community to use. For getting new people interested in creating content in the setting. For fostering the idea of people becoming authors. For fostering the idea of people making tools that eventually become your partners and make your company greater. Your game and community was better for the CUP, and "trust me we won't sue you" isn't inspiring of creators and community.

Infinite and 3PP doesn't cater to people who are trying to get started. Its a tool that invites interest from people already entrenched in the creator sphere. Tools like pf2.tools that give people an easy way to make new monsters and share them with the community, or write something with the scribe tool to expand upon a part of an adventure cut for pagecount, turn it into a PDF, and host it out of their google drive - that creator is what becomes a resource for Paizo later on.

The community shouldn't need to read legalese to be safe. The community shouldn't have to rely on the trust of a publisher not to pull a nintendo on them and C&D their fan project, which is exactly what you've made with the move to the FCP. "Trust me bro" isn't a way to foster a community.

Has that FAQ been made yet? I understand it might take a while to work adjustments to the language, but it seems like a pretty straightforward thing to post an FAQ highlighting the clear way forward after something like this was dropped on the community so abruptly.

This is value that you're directly benefiting from when you post stuff about Desna on your hypothetical...

Oh I absolutely agree that if you make money off of it, they should too. The problem I have is they're cracking down on free efforts. They're cracking down on the community expanding upon systems they've abandoned by making doing so illegal, even for free.

The Lost Omens setting I find tragically boring, but Desna's Path is fantastically amazing. And most importantly - is built in a way that everyone's homebrew fits into the setting without modification. And now Paizo is saying that they're no longer allowing the original intent of the system to exist.

That's the real crime here.

Ultimately, Paizo won't be able to blame WotC for every decision they make. Don't get me wrong, a lot falls on WotC's shoulders here, but that isn't a limitless get out of Gallowspire card.

This is the big element. As Kobold Catgirl said - its different than WotC's move. WotC's move enabled creators to monetize and produce more clearly (identical to the change in the FCP) but it also tried to steal profit from all the creators using the OGL for monetary gain. This was an a pro-WotC, anti-publisher, pro-"fan" move one from their previous stance that technically didn't impact their community - it only impacted the communities downstream of the OGL, like Paizo's, because it disabled Paizo's ability to stay in business if they continued using the OGL with the monetary changes that WotC was trying to put in place. But it didn't impact their own community because their own community was already hilariously restricted and the vast majority of D&D community sites are illegal and under the radar or play whack-a-mole with C&Ds.

Paizo's move, on the converse, is to enable further monetization of their brand by non-RPG creator "fans" at no benefit to anyone but their own wallet, while creators producing RPG content to benefit the community are grossly restrained, and those who use OGL-derived product are entirely prohibited unless they jump through a whole bunch of legal hoops. It was a Pro-Paizo, Publisher-agnostic, Pro-"Fan" but actually Anti-Creator and HUGELY Anti-community move. It basically forces every member of the community to learn legalese and go through their enrollment process, and don't realize that they're breaking the law by publishing statblocks for their ideas on their personal blogs for download.

Don't forget on infinite is the only place you can publish Paizo IP related works - Where they own the ability to use your work in their works with no payment, don't forget about that caveat of the infinite license. If they force everyone into their walled garden, they could even stop paying freelancers and just use SFI/PFI supplements to fill out their books - but they've assured us they're not going to do that, its just in the license in case of an accidental inclusion or overlap!

And by-the-by, "a Fan is defined as an individual or small collective of individuals creating content primarily out of the love of Paizo Material rather than for financial gain." - meaning artists and crafters and creators who create work as even a part-time job are not permitted to use this policy. And if you love the material and want to publish your work for free in any way that actually encourages love of the material? Nah, that's banned unless you wanna jump through their storefront of very limited options. How few people can actually use the FCP? Per the clarifications, it says you can do limited runs of product, but the main header of the FCP page says it has to be not mass produced/handmade, so the FAQ clarification of getting 100 prints or 50 shirts to sell on etsy seems contradictory there, even. Better make sure your etsy doesn't support your livelihood though! If so, you cease being a fan! Same with that social media following, or your youtube channel! Rules Lawyer, looks like you need a commercial license, unless you can make Paizo believe you're not living off your youtube/patreon/related revenue!

I guess in that aspect, this might even be worse than the CUP for media content creators too, as much like living off of Disability in America, the moment you can afford to live through your efforts, the carpet is yanked out from under your feet. With the CUP they could take as much money in as you want, so long as you don't paywall the content.

So much of these changes have nothing to do with WotC. This is a huge, sweeping, incredible change that impacts so much and has very little to do with the OGL. If it had anything to do with WotC threats, they'd be taking down all OGL content immediately too, including from their partners.

I’m still really struggling to understand the reasoning behind the jarring differences in the licences and policies. Why the ban on RPG terms in….rpg products? Why the ban on using proprietary imagery by fans when the proprietary imagery is what the fans love?

As to the effects on fan-run and utilised builders, wikis etc, it seems passing strange that there are a few that have special permissions, while others are left out in the cold to navigate what seems like Cheliax-level infernal contractery.

Yeah, theres really no way to spin the ban on tools that can't fit inside OneBookshelfs absolutely antiquated systems of use as anything other than a firm ban on anything that isn't one of their partner products. And when a majority of their partner products started as fan projects... Its definitely a bad look.

All of which seems to point to a massive derailing of the fan-support of the game, the setting and the actual community of both internal and external stakeholders of Paizo - staff, players, fans, organisers. ... And the value of fan-created databases, infospots and all the accumulated goodwill cannot be quantified in strict monetary terms but it is inexorably linked to the value of the game/products in the consumer’s mind. Want to buy into a new game system? Maybe. What if I told you it had awesome support, an engaged and engaging community with a healthy respect for the company and awesome free tools to make creating characters, adventures and other resources? Yes please!!! Free community support is not to be trifled with in the scramble for greater “control” or “protection”. There are other, kinder ways. Even in the harsh world of business, because ultimately businesses are inextricably linked with their communities.

But for those of you who are subscribers and who do care about the community, then TOZ’s cancellation example is definitely an option. Pretty sure it got results at least one time before…

This is where I'm at. I've been a subscriber for longer than I care to remember, and I championed Paizo during OGHell. But that list of titles on my profile is going to shrink pretty quickly if Paizo's decision of "let's attack our community creators and kill off 1e fanbases in favor of getting free marketing dollars by *checks notes* not getting licensing royalties from products using our IP for money" doesn't change

The free community projects *are* your free advertising dollars. Being able to sell your custom embroidered dice bag is awesome for etsy-ers but you know what also would've improved that? Just appending to the existing CUP, or making a very clear and open document on rules for monetizing fan merch... not cracking down on the tools that make those people interested in the system enough to make said merch.

On the note of PDF importers for foundry or other future projects, my understanding is that these are nothing more than highly specialized PDF readers and as a result do not need to rely on licensing/agreements/policies. It would be very hard for Paizo to ever restrict the PDF importers without also restricting everyone's ability to read one of their PDFs for "normal" use. And they'd be fools to try it since the PDF importers are undoubtedly selling lots of PDFs.

This might be a conversation for another thread but my understanding was that they had a PDF reader component to find your watermark for verification, but they were very much a repository of data on the adventures that were locked beyond that watermark verification. That they either hold the data for all the journals and maps directly, or that they hold all the data that is able to scrape from all the information with particular parsing, which would need to include major RPG terms for recognition and digestion into NPC blocks and skill check automation and such.

With the fact that Dedril's adds in AI Art for the modules he imports, its very clear that it at least has programming that knows what actors are in which modules, which could constitute enough information to be acted against by paizo here. The lengthy delay in supporting new scenarios makes me believe its all manual journal creation unlocked by the PDF watermark read, though.

Yes, it matters a lot that they are shoving people into the walled garden of Infinite. Paizo gets a cut of it. An unearned, unnecessary, undue cut. Plenty of us saw this coming from miles away when they announced Infinite originally.

I miss the "founders in charge" era... Paizo used to be such a wonderful company by and for gamers that cared about community, actually cared about open gaming, and operated at a human scale. Heck, now there's not even a "who works here" page anymore!

AND this whole thread and debacle are filled with misconceptions. Like the "sell your creations" thing in the original post: you always could. They were your own creations. And Paizo couldn't prohibit them before. But now they "graciously" allow you to do something you always could. (And you couldn't before, and still can't, directly use their own images, etc.) To deny fan art, wow... That's Margaret Weis levels of delusion to think that fanworks must be licensed. (I pick her name explicitly because she's the grandmother of the whole false idea that you need a license to make a compatible product or say, "This works with that.")

Okay, as one of the other negative voices on this thread I have to say that this is too far. Infinite is great, and the fact that Paizo gets a cut is perfectly fine. If you're using their IP and making money off of it, giving them their "royalties" in place of appropriate licensing which would arrange for such makes perfect sense.

Which is super weird because the FCP gives away that profit stream for merchandizing that isn't an RPG product. Not sure why their idea was to choke out RPG products for more money but completely ignore profits from merchandisers now.

I do think that you're right on the fanworks - and even if we build RPG content, and give it for free using their IP, I'd be surprised if they could even give us a nintendo-style C&D or do anything litigious to us, because fanfiction has been legally defensible for a long time, and all we're doing is creating playable fanfics. But that's exactly what the FCP is setting up for - the ability to litigate against all of the fans. This isn't about protecting them from Hasbro and OGL, its about giving them more ability to sue the fans who don't act the way they want us to.

There's as lot of folks in the PF2 world that don't see this as a huge deal because it doesn't really impact them - after all, why not just move to PF2 and get all your rights back? But eventually it will come for them too. This is just the first step in rolling back the community goodwill.

As far as the era of the founders? I wasn't here for that and I'm glad I wasn't. The Paizo of that era developed a metric ton of bigoted, prejudiced content and pushed out shovelware to make sales every month to their audience of reactionaries. I understand why they did it, but I do not understand anyone who found charm in early PF1 era.

But that doesn't mean I want you to not be able to work on products derived from it. Its not my cup of tea, but its still a cup of tea that many people love to make variants from harvesting the tea leaves and making new mixtures. And that shouldn't be illegal.

The volunteer Foundry PF2E dev team is pretty much the best thing to ever happen to Paizo in terms of an outside force boosting the growth and retention of their fan and customer base. And while today that effort has a custom license, it was originally developed under CUP. It could not have been developed under this new policy.

This change is shortsighted because by removing the CUP, you’re pre-emptively killing the “pf2e on foundry”s of tomorrow, fan projects that will deeply benefit your own bottom line. This won’t just hurt fans Mark, it will wind up hurting Paizo too.

Exactly, when pf3e comes around, or the finder verse system or whatever it's going to be, there will be no community tools.

All it will be is an empty corporate husk. There won't be a community to contribute and volunteer hundreds of hours, because the only legal option is to start as a corporate entity now.

Redeux has the right of it. Just like WotC looked the gift horse of the 00s in the mouth by attempting to monetize the OGL, having forgot how it made them relevant, Paizo, by purging the CUP in this way, has made it clear they forgot what made them great.

D&D5e has a considerable amount of market significance and embedded D&D Beyond users, but it's their market supremacy, not the fact that they're license restricts community tools that makes them strong.

The best D&D tools are illegal, because the official ones always miss something important.

If so, I guess I’m trying to work out why folks are decrying the “end of PF1 and SF1” third party content creation when…it is still just as possible as it was before, only less “available” because of the walling away of Infinite.

See above - the issue is that nobody can maintain tools anymore, nor can they expand on things in the setting in ways that fit well.

SFI was big for multiple reasons, one of which is that it centralized the audience for third party content. Paizo realizes this, which is why they made it illegal for anyone to release outside of it even for free - its a market strategy ploy (and kind of a scummy one, at that, but an understandable one). The second was that it allowed people to produce paid content in-setting for the system without being a full-tilt publisher, the same thing the FCP allowed for free.

Now the only way to do it is to do malicious compliance like 3PP used to back in the day and have "NAbadar and Shaylynn" as dieties worshipped by the Vesk living on the "third planet of their homeworld system" in "an area that is more easily accessible in hyperspace". And we have to strip all mentions of Paizo IP from homebrew tools in any way that Paizo refuses to define (which again, I get, defining what is and is not your IP opens you up to other issues).

So since the Starfinder community is very much focused around the setting, and even in homebrew settings they almost always acknowledge the core setting as the main setting, just usually established as a system in Near Space or The Vast, nobody can publish their homebrews anymore for the community to profit off of unless they go through a bunch of legal malfeasance ahead of time.

That's why what they're doing is effectively killing off the 1e community and forcing us into a sneakernet kind of distribution outside of Paizo's view otherwise we all get sued.

Even though we're all just trying to share our passions of the game and add to a system that Paizo designed years ago to be extremely expandable upon by the community.

There's also the fact that literally 70%+ of equipment and options in the system use Paizo IP names, because Starfinder is a corporate dystopia where everything is branded. We can't even use mechanical terms like the Drift, Near Space, or the Vast, so major elements of the rules have to be retconned as well.

It's an attack on the community to consolidate the market disguised as legal protection. I also understand the aspect of it being a little funky for 2e, with being half OGL and half ORC. But it would've been easy enough to block OGL from 2e in infinite and permit the 1e communities to persist.

Maurizio Liparesi wrote:

Hi i'm actually managing a website similar to aon+ pathfinderwiki, but in italian, if i understood correctly till 31 August 2024, content can still be done with the Cup licenze and will not be subjected to be deleted after.

First, nothing released under the CUP has to be deleted. It's grandfathered in.

Second, we're going to be looking at the license and how it can better serve our international community in ways the CUP allowed. That will take time, and we appreciate everyone's understanding and patience. As long as you're operating in good faith as we make these adjustments, no one is going to come after you to delete anything.

Now I'm really confused. You just told Hephaistos that they have to remove all the OGL content. But now they're grandfathered?

The fact that this is all so confusing and is taking down the ability for community resources to provide free tools is incredibly disheartening, and even more so that it kills the ability for anyone in the 1e space to expand on adventures with "epilogues" and distribute them to the community without fear of reprisal. Despite the fact that anything they'd do is non-canon, its somehow a threat to Paizo to allow those creators to exist?

hephaistos_official wrote:

The CUP doesn't exist anymore, and Hephaistos is an RPG product as defined by the Fan Content Policy so that doesn't apply either. This means that Hephaistos must now rely upon the OGL for Starfinder 1E content, and so existing content on the website must be sanitized to remove any Product Identity (as defined by the OGL). Is that correct? If so, is there a "grace period" for these changes to be made?

Yes, you have the basic understanding of it. There's no defined grace period, per se, but we also understand that changes of this nature take time, especially for community projects run by volunteers in their spare time. If you're making a good faith effort to scrub setting material from the resource, then that's good enough. If it's still there after months of no progress toward the end goal of compliance, that's a different issue.

So the answer really is "we want the 1e community to stop existing."

Infinite products get to keep existing but nobody can expand on them, so the 1e community that wants to keep going inside the setting has to die. AoN gets to keep existing because they have an official partnership. But all the excellent tools that the community has made over the years have to scrub all the Paizo IP out of it.

Hephaistos is the best tool for SF1e that exists, and forcing it to shift to exclusively OGL when as it stands its a better resource than AoN ever was is such a disservice to the community at large as well as Paizo themselves.

If there was any sense here, Paizo should have reached out to Hephaistos and offered them a partnership.

The fact that as it stands, the only way to get a character creator that actually supports Orgplay properly is to pay Demiplane for PF2e and impossible for SF1e is downright comical.

You say you've been going back and forth about this with Counsel for a year, but for so much of this to be a surprise to everyone and done in such a way that is so negative to the creators that love the systems and in a way that seems to have no perspective on what made the CUP so great, and what attracted people to Paizo in the first place...

This isn't the Paizo that earned my respect and my loyalty.

I also wonder if a lot of this could be avoided if the Pathfinder/Starfinder rules were *not* setting specific. Were the rulesets scrubbed of Golarion or the Pact Worlds etc, could this not all be much much simpler?

That therein is why the rules for the system are so good. They feel like part of the setting, and make it feel well done.

But Paizo doesn't want people to enjoy that anymore, apparently. Only if you're a licensed partner, a 2e creator, or a commercial fan product designer do you matter to them anymore.

No longer are community tools and homebrewers something they desire to exist.

MrVauxs wrote:

With CUP gone, this seems to have killed any and all web-based databases and tools that don't have a private agreement with Paizo.

Is CUP still in effect or being terminated?

The Community Use Policy has been replaced by the Fan Content Policy. New or ongoing projects will need to comply with the FCP instead of the CUP, but an existing CUP project does not need to shut down or cease operation so long as they aren't adding new content to it.

A web-based database may still use the game rules released via the OGL and/or ORC but can not use any additional trademarks or copyrights of Paizo's such as logos, artwork, proper nouns, etc. that might have been previously allowed via the CUP. They can get access to limited trademarks via the Compatibility License, but that's really just the logo(s) and Pathfinder-icons font.

So... You effectively killed any ability for SF1e character creators to bugfix and add homebrew? Cool, glad to know Paizo really does want to lose customers.

We can't even back convert content from 2e to 1e.

This is aggressively antagonistic to the fanbase.

Wait, what the hell?

Are we actually saying that the community is not allowed to keep first edition Star finder alive through infinite? Or am I misreading this?

QuidEst wrote:

Ancestry feats from another reality? Heck yeah. This all sounds great! Int-based will take some adjustment, of course, but all the stuff here sounds amazing.

I'm with you on that, I kind of wish they were like the 2e psychic and had a choice between Int or Cha.

Honestly, feel the same on this with both Witchy, but also Solarian and Operative. Operative seems to be the new 1e soldier from the previews we've got, and Solarian Flare/Shield/Armor/Lunar outside of the beatstick DPR meta all tended to focus opposite of what we've seen their key stat to be. I feel both of those two should be STR/DEX if tied to a physical stat at all.

Speaking from the Org Play perspective... having a pregen with a weapon that they can't innately use in their class is _tricky_. Zemir's sword was always a huge drawback from the overall feel of the class and we wanted to evolve that in this new version!

If only Zemir could get Weapon Proficiency as a level 1 feat...

Will this adventure come with a player's guide? Don't know if Starfinder modules are the same structurally as Pathfinder

This is a standalone, and must like PF standalones, they don't usually have full players guides like APs do. That said, they are structurally similar usually, the only difference is we get less pagecount so our plots are more condensed, which is good for them, usually.

GameDemon wrote:

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

I however wish the Solarian could choose Dex or Str as their Key-ability score. That'd make the Solar Flare a little bit more interesting to use if you ask me but that's just because i like having 18 in my primary attack stat since I often find Barbarians hitting more often then my Thaumaturge even if it is 1 point of difference. There's been so many times that +1 has made such a difference.

This makes me wonder if the Solar Flare is ignorable since you don't need dex....we will see.

I bet solar flare uses STR to hit. Don't picture Solarian as a martial class, it's more like a STR based caster IMO.

I really hope so because I read it as Advanced Thrown weapon so I am very worried. I might just be worried for not because this is just a playtest and I know we as the testers can always point out where it feels weird. I only hope Balance like one guy said is not at higher levels accidentally forced into optimizing Graviton or Photon attunement.

Yeah this is a big concern to me as well. Flare should be something that can be your focus, not something forced to the backline. A Str/Dex switchable key (Something Operative should have as well tbh) would allow those who want to play backline control like Armor and Flare do in 1e to excel and not be hamstrung by everything being keyed off strength.

Very excited to see how this plays out in the end. The previews we've gotten from playtests so far make this a very melee-centric beatstick class, especially with the focus on Strength.

As a lover of the Flare and Armor Solarians, Strength has always been antithetical to the vibe of all of my Solarian characters, so switching them away from the thematic mental key stat from their lore to a Strength key stat feels like encouraging the bad meta solarian stereotype from 1e over the theme.

So I'm very excited to see how that battlefield control vibe goes down. I do love my Agile Wavelengths!

Not only do I love getting to share what our community is working on and give them a platform for their stories, but I also love getting to ask our designers and developers "Can you recommend some LGBT!+ characters for me to grab art for the blog?" and getting dozens of answers!

In our communities, I similarly love when someone comes in and (sometimes derogatorily, unfortunately) expresses a lack of knowledge of just how much queer s%!% Paizo products have, only to be flooded with a torrent of knowledge of just how gay *Finder is!

Its just wonderful seeing just how much pride we all have in how much Pride exists inside the product, the community, and the creators!

Omg, this boon option sounds metal af. Love it!

Ah so the big change that Luis teased about them was that the Prismatic Ray was getting renamed to Radiant Prism. Sneaky little Luis

So many people were doomering over Sheyln because of that tease and the entire time I was like "folks, its an OGL rename. That's 100% a red herring." and I'm so happy to have been proven right!

This was a delightful read, simple and serene. I really like that Desna, Sarenrae, and Shelyn have a sort of mini-pantheon together known as the Radiant Prism! (A chance that Lost Omens: Divine Mysteries would feature something along the lines of a feat or something similar for being a follower/worshipper of the Radiant Prism?

They used to be known as the Prismatic Ray (OGL)! As a discrete pantheon, they have already have stats here and can be picked for a valid character choice and options already. I imagine LO:DM might revamp this a bit, but they're already eligible for all the normal divine feats through this.

Yeah, I think we definitely could use a dev guidance here, especially since the robots and zombies have different triggers. Being that the tactica says "fight to their destruction" Its unclear if it should be an HP 10 trigger and rush the party to utilize it or just an HP 0, or if it should be disarmable, etc.

I'm probably just going to use the azlanti battle robots for the CR6 version, and nerf it down to an appropriate CR, since its not from AA1 like the cybernetic zombie is.

Lore question: In the article, it says "many" pahtra are agender. Was this codified before (or is this a "many" just like "Many people are LGBT" and not a statement of a species trend?)?

I know that they're codified as primarily asexual and primarily reproduce through a small amount of breeding pairs in SF1 lore, but being both typically agender and asexual really presses in just how much of an important imperative that is for those breeding pairs.

Dae the nyanbinary influencer, neat! Also love that they're besties with Chk Chk.

I also love that bit so much. Also, as much as I don't want to make someone's identity a token for a joke, I'm disappointed in my self that I didn't think to make my nyanocyte nyanbinary.

Chk Chk having a bestie is top notch character development for the little emo baby tho.

Let's defeat the Daimalkan menace!

My understanding is that those traits weren't removed from old content: Old spells continue to exist as they were, Unless they were reprinted with the same name in which case the new version is treated like an errata.

remaster changes wrote:

Any previous item or ability which relies on the existence of spell schools to function (such as the staff of transmutation) may still be purchased or chosen. However, as spells printed after the Remaster do not have spell schools, the utility of these options will diminish over time.

Bolding is mine. New spells do not have spell schools, utility diminishes over time... Seems to imply that old spells still have spell schools, and you can continue to use them but as spells get reprinted ( = errata'd) and new spells lack those traits, the item/ability will grow weaker and weaker as time passes, unlike new options which grow stronger and stronger with added content.

I believe this falls under the same purview as legacy wizards - they're permitted to still use spells as if they had spell schools, even if said schools have been dropped in a reprint. Its just that their list will never expand, not that it will shrink.

Ravien999 wrote:

I'd like to double down on hephaistos' question - Is the two pages including OGL/ORC langauge and title card, or is it in addition to them?

Small note: Because it's on Infinite, you actually can't use the ORC license. You can reference ORC rules without any problem, because Paizo give you the license to on Infinite, but you can't publish your stuff under the ORC license on Infinite, cause you're publishing it under the Infinite license, which is more restrictive (that's part of the "price" to "pay" for releasing something that can let you make money while using the Paizo IP without the hassles of getting the "traditional" full license).

The only reason you NEED to reference OGL when making stuff that reference OGL elements on Infinite is because so many things that Paizo published under the OGL are not original stuff, and might be hard for us to know all of them, it was simpler to have us all publish them under the OGL license too.
Because all outside references have been removed with the transition to ORC, this double licensing isn't needed anymore.

Okay the note about ORC is fair.

But for Starfinder, your note about OGL is very important - and basically required for damn near everything. So I return back to Hephaistos' question - should it be included as an additional page, or does it have to be incorporated in the 2-sheet limit?

I'd like to double down on hephaistos' question - Is the two pages including OGL/ORC langauge and title card, or is it in addition to them?

Ravien999 wrote:

Someone forgot to link the Store page, I need to buy this now!

the Gap ate the link but don't worry we've got it back!

#TypicalGapThings

Someone forgot to link the Store page, I need to buy this now!

I love that paragraph about Shelyn and Sarenrae. Not only is it incredibly evocative, and Sheyln's tribute in the dissonance of music is just absolutely HAUNTING in vibe as much as I love it so much. And Sarenrae? That Bit about Daring Sheyln to climb the walls around her heart? Ugh, I'm dying.

You're getting a standing ovation from me for this one, Erin.

Aesthetically the sketch reminds me of D&D Blue Dragons a bit, but the vibes are nice.

"horned dragon" feels unevocative though, is that the final name? Feels kinda... vague.

"I SAW A HORNED DRAGON ON THE MOUNTAINTOPS"
"John, all dragons have horns."
"NO IT WAS A HORNED DRAGON, NOT A DRAGON WITH HORNS!"
"What's the difference?"

Ravien999 wrote:

AceofMoxen wrote:

Arachnofiend wrote:

Shelyn definitely goes into the "more interesting alive than dead" category. Zon Kuthon is just an edgelord without her.

Unless Shelyn's death sets Zon-Kuthton back on the path of light. That creates lots of interesting stories.

There's an old segement from Paizo where they talk about how ZK never really was Dou-Bral, Shelyn's brother, but rather that Dou-Bral was a vessel for ZK's evil self to inhabit like a incubation chamber from himself in another multiverse altogether.

That is to say, if we go by the dev team's old intent, there never was a "Light" option for ZK.

Do you have a link? That sounds fascinating!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85dKiL51pGE&t=876s&ab_channel=Paizo timestamped to the relevant period - It was meant to be part of an AP but according to James Jacobs here, this is the intent/canon.

Arachnofiend wrote:

Shelyn definitely goes into the "more interesting alive than dead" category. Zon Kuthon is just an edgelord without her.

Unless Shelyn's death sets Zon-Kuthton back on the path of light. That creates lots of interesting stories.

There's an old segement from Paizo where they talk about how ZK never really was Dou-Bral, Shelyn's brother, but rather that Dou-Bral was a vessel for ZK's evil self to inhabit like a incubation chamber from himself in another multiverse altogether.

That is to say, if we go by the dev team's old intent, there never was a "Light" option for ZK.

I had Cayden as living but I also had him being held back for the final reveal because he's one of the most popular gods in the setting. I'm pleasantly surprised, now I'm reshuffling my "who gets revealed, who gets held back, who actually dies" deck again.

You've got your logic backwards. The ones are going to get written about are going to be the most popular or interesting ones that aren't going to die. Like if its not Sarenrae dying, I guarantee we're getting a Sarenrae narrative.

The 9 kept back for the reveal are the ones nobody cares about or who are uninteresting. coughiroricough

Even PF2e started has started to branch out, the underlying mechanics of the Kineticist represent a massive change in how they're built, one that a lot of classes like the evolutionist and Nanocyte could iterate on.

I highly agree. Psychic and Kineticist i've joked multiple times are "Starfinder Class Design." I've never enjoyed PF/D&D class design and they both give me hope we can actually have versatile, interesting classes in SF2e.

Give me breadth every day of the week over the super specific niche that most fantasy classes occupy

This was a fun little way to depict seemingly mundane powers.

Is "Nn" meant as a term of address, a sound, or what? I feel ignorant here.

Why is there a cap at level 4 when the campaign is ending and nobody is making low level characters anymore? This is the time to let the level 10s shine.

poretty sure we'll have a 7-99 that'll be the capstone

Ravien999 wrote:

...

It could be a red herring.

It is not a red herring.

A red herring is a piece of information that leads you to incorrect conclusions.

All Luis has said is "this thing here is not actually information".

So yes, it absolutely could go either way.

Ahhh, I slightly misunderstood the definition of a red herring. So "the Prismatic Ray is changing" is potentially a red herring, as you could easily presume that means one of the three is dying, but the Starfinder comment is just "this is not information"

Perhaps, but the staff have stressed that Starfinder lore is NOT an indication of what's to come. Further, if it were, Brigh (along with Epoch and Casandaleee) is part of the active collective consciousness of Triune, so in such a case wouldn't be "dead" even if her vessel were destroyed.

BUT, I'm hoping they keep the two as intact individuals for Pathfinder xP

Luis has stated that a god's presence in starfinder has no bearing on whats to come.

He hasn't stated that its not relevant, or that it is a Starfinder god who is dying.

It could be a red herring.

...

Sarenrae, though? I absolutely agree her death would be powerful. I also kind of agree with a previous poster that I'm not sure Paizo would kill off the goddess linked to their iconic cleric. I'm not wedded to that, but I think I can bet on it with at least some comfort. I think other gods are more likely. She's probably more likely than Erastil and Gozreh, though.

I'm somewhat against any of the Prismatic Ray being chosen because of the "Bury your Gays" trope, but Desna and Sarenrae have such incredibly far reaching consequences on the setting itself disregarding their narrative impact I can't imagine that either is chosen to die.