The PCs’ actions might even open up a trade route between the Ekujae elves and Isger, if the Leopard Clan had a friendly or better attitude toward the PCs. Though the Ekujae will not venture through Huntergate, fearing Dahak’s wrath, a small envoy of elves traveling over land arrives in Breachill a few weeks later, including any friends the PCs may have made among the Ekujae.
Bolded for emphasis. This is my favourite blooper to date, and had me literally crying. For context: It is roughly 1,500 miles as the crow flies from north-western Mwangi to Breachill, and that includes a mountain range and crossing the inner sea. 'tis a hell of a walk.
That aside, while a bit combat-heavy, we're loving this adventure path so far, even if I have been tinkering with it along the way (e.g. throwing out the Ruling Citadel Altaerein section and replacing it with a rebalanced-for-PF2 version of MCDM's Strongholds & Followers)
Other news that came out yesterday and knowing Hasbro, probably had way more to do with their OGL decision than their survey failing to provide the PR counter they wanted.
The TL;DR version is that Hasbro shareholders are not happy with the company leadership.
Nothing is final until it's a legal document... but it looks like they have ears.
Kyle Brink wrote:
We are leaving OGL 1.0a in place, as is. Untouched.
We are also making the entire SRD 5.1 available under a Creative Commons license.
You choose which you prefer to use.
They've also closed the survey. I suspect they were hoping that the survey would show that the universal condemnation they've been hearing would just be "a vocal minority" and that putting a survey on their system would encourage their fanbase to show popular support for them doing what they wanted.
Which mostly just goes to reinforce that the people making the decisions about this have literally no idea about what their product is or who plays it.
Gonna be honest, I struggle to understand the difficulty of a PF1 enthusiast to adapt to PF2.
There is no way you can convince me that someone with multiple years of experience playing Pathfinder 1e struggles with the mechanics of an objectively less-complicated game, which is still d20 based.
Not gonna go into a huge post about it, but there are several available on the PF2 general and advice forums.
But to summarize, it isn't the mechanics - it is the fundamental design change and rebalancing.
First is the great PF2 level rebalancing. A CR +1 is a boss fight and a CR +3 is a TPK threat. Seriously.
Full attacking doesn't work well and is actively punished. You need to spend some of your actions on either defense or party member assisting.
Your character build alone is a marginal difference to your personal effectiveness. Teamwork and party synergy is key.
The great Wizard nerf. Spell accuracy is based on caster level and power is based on spell slot level - which is reversed from PF1. This means that only your highest two or three spell levels are combat worthy - the rest are utility slots. There is also the Incapacitation trait that makes save or suck spells regularly not work against those CR +1 boss enemies.
So players and GMs that aren't aware of these subtle changes end up going through a meat grinder experience as the players get chewed up and spit out by enemies that stomp them in a couple rounds.
That's a good summary, though I may expand on it a bit.
The first issue is that claiming PF2 is objectively less complex than PF1 is a bit of a stretch. Building a character is less complex because the game limits the number of feats to choose from any step (i.e. at most dozens instead of thousands). Playing a character is a much more complex process:
1) More Options. In Pathfinder 1, most actions in combat were gated behind feats, which made building a character complex but playing them simple - you could only do what you built for. Pathfinder 2 throws that out and grants access to a myriad of in combat and out of combat actions.
2) More Actions. Pathfinder 1 action economy generally let you do one thing a round, and in 98% of cases, that one thing is going to be "I attack as much as possible", "I use a feat" or "I cast a spell". Pathfinder 2 doesn't just give you more options, it gives you more actions to USE those options, and incentive to do so.
3) Changed Fundamentals: In Pathfinder 1, healing came from spell slots, potions, wands and generally just "magic", just as it did in 3.5, 3.0, 2nd and 1st edition. In Pathfinder 2... that is no longer the case, and if you haven't stopped and read how the Medicine skill works in PF2 you are going to die.
No seriously, this probably seems obvious to veterans of PF2, but when coming from PF1 we read the low level class feats and descriptions, the combat rules, the rest and recovery rules, the spell descriptions etc, but no one stopped to see if Medicine was functionally different to the Heal skill we were familiar with. The end result was a game where you could go maybe 2 moderate encounters between long rests, sometimes needed to spend a day or two recovering before returning to the dungeon, and attempting to push a third encounter resulted in a TPK more often than not.
4) Sweep and Forceful and Deadly, Oh My: PF2 weapon properties are far more complex in play than PF1. In PF1 you picked the damage and crit properties you liked (and maybe finesse if you were Dex based), but that was largely it. In PF2, you have a bunch of weapon properties which apply various situational bonuses, requiring you to crunch numbers on the fly. In a VTT this is likely not an issue, but at the table with literal pen, paper and no electronic aids? It's extra mental load.
I don't play 2e but I never swore off Paizo for it, I just haven't found any threads that I want to put any significant time into.
EtG
We're in a similar camp. PF2 has a very steep learning curve, and the experience of said curve on our tables was that of an unfun meatgrinder. So our groups have mostly either played a heavily homebrewed PF1 or 5th Edition for our games.
That being said, a lot of those games were Paizo adventures, just not using the new system.
Several years on, there's a wealth of material online about how to actually play PF2, and we're giving it another go and it's going much better.
Regardless of topic, there will always be vocal people who are like "DOING ANYTHING IS POINTLESS, DON'T EVEN TRY". Advocating for apathy is common regardless of whether topic is politics or entertainment x'D
"Their third capitulation and backpedal is definitely going to be the last, no point in continuing to push despite the fact that we've been winning for two straight weeks now."
They can't actually be being paid to suppress dissent, right?
It's not about getting paid. It's about rationalizing their apathy by convincing others to do nothing.
After all, if other people got up, inconvenienced themselves by ditching D&D Beyond, fought for a better future for the hobby and won... then they'd feel bad. They don't want to feel bad, so they go the less-effort option of trying to convince others to give up too.
Done. They won't read it, but did it anyway just so that if they publish the results it will actually be representative.
Eeveegirl1206 wrote:
The mortality clause is pretty insidious as it’s Hasbro who decides what counts as bigoted.
They were the same ones who published Curse of Strahd 5E which turned the Vistani back into racist caricatures of the Roma after earlier editions moved away from that characterization.
But they get to decide what counts as hateful.
The irony is palpable, yes.
My key points:
1) OGL 1.0a doesn't need to be revoked and the justification used is, frankly, a lie. OGL 1.0a still allowed avenues for removing offensive content, it just required more work from Wizards to enforce (which is a good thing).
2) Clause 6(f) must be deleted. It grants Wizards unilateral authority to terminate the license of anyone they deem offensive with no legal recourse.
3) Clause 9(d) cannot be left as-is, as it grants Wizards the right to void the entire license if any part of it cannot be enforced for any reason. Given this is a worldwide license, differences in law will occur, and this is simply an escape clause for WotC.
4) Restricting license to TTPRG, limited VTTs and SRD 5.1 is unacceptable. If WotC wishes to be a "good steward of the game", stop trying to destroy legacy edition content, and people's creativity with how they play D&D.
5) The VTT policy is vague and abusive. Allowing Wizards the sole purview to decide what can and cannot be considered a "VTT" based on whether they feel like it 'emulates the table' is a Damocles sword no one needs hanging over their heads.
Today it may be "don't show spell animations", tomorrow it could be "don't have special effects or sounds".
Not a lawyer and I may have missed something, but those are the big ones I could see
And I recall seeing a video from Treantmonk where he gave evidence that one of those insiders is unreliable, so DnD Shorts probably wants to get confirmation of his info from multiple sources that are more likely to be reliable.
The issue is people presenting things as a black and white issue, when it reality is far more nuanced.
Wizards of the Coast has been putting up Unearthed Arcana with an attached survey for years, but as it's typically just playtesting some ideas the uptake on the survey has always been rather modest. Past employees have come out to say that huge parts of their job was reading said feedback, and using it to guide development.
Very recently, they've been using that format to post playtest material for "One DND", but the level of responses has been dramatically higher. Someone from in the team leaked to DnD Shorts that while the aggregate numbers from the multiple choice was counted, no one was reading the text responses, as well as their opinion on the reasons.
When Wizards announced they would be "playtesting" the OGL in the same format, DnD Shorts ran a PSA letting people know the limitations of that system, and that - frankly - it was mostly a move by Wizards to get the conversation out of public discourse and somewhere they could control (a sentiment echoed simultaneously by many lawyer-tubers).
... and then twitter exploded with past and present Wizards employees stating that they absolutely did read UA survey responses in full.
To DnD Shorts' credit, he went back to his source to clarify, and their response was:
Past UA surveys had sufficiently few responses that they could be read in full by the team. So people stating that they do read UA surveys are being truthful in that regard.
Comments: While the feedback from employees is honest, there is also some slight of hand here. Reading survey results in detail when there are hundreds or thousands of responses is radically different to promising to read to tens of thousands of responses from some very, very motivated customers. It's an attack on DnD Shorts' creditability rather than addressing his argument: That the OGL "playtest" is going to be a complete farce.
One DND playtest surveys are beyond the capacity of the team to read, and they knew they would be, so for the most part they're not bothering
Comments: Credit where it is due, as I pointed out above it would be a ton of work and you'd need to actually change your workforce to manage it. BUT as the source pointed out it would be very possible to structure the surveys so that people could give easier-to-process feedback, but Wizards has chosen not to. Or in fewer words - the surveys are intentionally not built to let people give good feedback. Treantmonk did an entire video on why the survey format is terrible. And if they do this for the game, why would they do better for the OGL?
Jeremy Crawford (I name him only as the source does) isn't too interested in the text responses anyway, only in aggregate approval rates. The text responses just go into the void from, from what they can see.
Comments: Credit where it is due, if you designed classes exclusively by popular vote on player-written options, you'd likely see fighters getting vorpal strikes at 1st level, or sailing ships renamed to "Boaty McBoatface". So it's always going to be the designers doing the work, guided by audience response. BUT putting open fields into a survey when you have virtually no intention to read them is disingenuous, and doubly so when the survey is basically a lazy "Rate satsifaction on each class option". Given the playtest material in each packet, it would take me maybe a day to build a set of discrete, targeted surveys that not only let people give feedback on whether they like something, but on what they might actually like more, and why.
TL;DR: DnD Shorts' point is spot on, even if there is more nuance to the inner workings of an enormous company over many years than can be easily expressed in one sentence.
Putting the OGL into a "playtest survey" is a PR stunt to try and quell public debate. That is all.
OGL 1.0a is still being pulled going forward and they still assert they have the right to do so, but do not consider existing 1.0a content as being retroactively in violation
They're discussing CC licenses, but there are CC licenses that don't allow modification so who cares.
Even if 1.0a was permitted, they still control the SRD materials and they could rugpull on that later on, so why take the risk?
Paizo's method of detailed responses going into the specifics of a playtest and feedback is the only way to show transparency.
Even that isn't perfect. Survey results - especially multiple choice questions - can be misinterpreted. And having one or two people reading through thousands of free-form response fields is not practical.
I think that is part of what happened with the PF2 Witch class and why it currently isn't well received.
It's worth noting a few things, first of which is that WotC isn't a small company, and wouldn't have 1-2 people reading responses if they genuinely wanted feedback.
Some math on reading:
If they consistently got 35,000 respondents who each wrote a 1200 word essay every time, to have people carefully read each and every response at 500wpm (not out loud, obviously) in an arbitrary two weeks would take about 17 full time staff staff. But reading every response in full is unnecessary as there will be a ton of repetition - once you see the tenth or hundredth person making the same point, you can skim ahead for anything new.
Getting 5-6 full time staff - ideally interns to keep costs down - to wade through and compile responses would probably handle it.
I've participated in the One D&D surveys, and I've listened to their explanation of how they respond, and even before the leaks was not impressed.
The Cleric survey, for example, just throws every class feature into a list and says "Rate your satisfaction". There are no targeted questions about design choices. There is no "What level would you prefer subclasses to be granted" or "Do you like splitting out Holy Order from Domain?", or "What level would you prefer Holy Order?" etc
And when the responses come back, they look at aggregate satisfaction ratings, and construe a meaning from it:
40% and under - everyone hates it, delete!
41% to 59% people don't really like it, probably scrap it
60%-69% salvageable but we need to reconsider aspects of the design
70%-79% community giving a thumbs up, but some tinkering needed
80% + community wants exactly that!
The combination of obtuse questions and arbitrary interpretation just seems... disingenuous.
In the first playtest, they announced the highest scoring option was getting a feat at 1st level from your background - a feature that increased complexity at 1st level. Yet they also explain that they're pushing all the subclass choices to 3rd level because (at least in part) they don't want to overwhelm new players with choices. And no, there isn't a survey option to say "no we don't want this".
Edit: There is now some discussion online regarding the leak and exactly what it was attempting to portray. From the sounds of things... some of the comments are read - especially the outliers in all likelihood. That being said, my overall dissatisfaction with the surveys themselves (and I am not alone in this) still stands.
Surveys:
I'm not a data analyst, but in theory outsourcing the reading of millions of words of text would be the better option. And you do this by breaking up the testing material into small, specific surveys*, with a series of multiple choice questions**, and a comments section*** that is publically visible and players can upvote/like on****.
* I.e. don't lump the cleric, ardling, dragonborn, rules errata and revised spells into one big survey, because you'll get a lot of junk data from people clicking through.
** Typically with tallies hidden until you complete the survey
*** Comments would be publically visible at all times.
**** Having your audience be able to simply upvote an existing comment rather than type it themselves saves you and them a bunch of time and effort.
There does seem to be some confusion about the whole “survey reality” at WotC i.e DnDShorts claim that no-one reads them.
Further comments and reading in from that post and from a former employee, they were talking about two different types of surveys, which caused the confusion.
Does that mean there's one type of survey they do read and one that they don't?
I could be mistaken, but my take-away from the commentary was that the multiple choice options were aggregated and used, but any text field for the public to type a response in their own words was a placebo and largely deleted.
The issue with the multiple choice selections is that while it allows easy processing of a lot of data... it falls int the "Garbage In - Garbage Out" problem.
Rant about playtesting and data:
WotC:"What is your satisfaction with the new cleric 2nd level holy order ability?" Me: It's the only improvement over the 2014 cleric, and while blatantly lifted from PF2, it is still a good move. BUT it should be at 1st level as having to reinvent/re-equip your character at 2nd level is a giant PITA.
WotC:: "Your text will be ignored. Please click one of the four options" Me: "Fine. I am satisfied overall." Click.
WotC:: "Thank you. We will now blindly aggregate your response and misconstrue its meaning at the next blog. Satisfaction was high, so everyone clearly wants this exactly how it is presented."
OR
Me: "Fine. I am unsatisfied overall." Click.
WotC:: "Thank you. We will now blindly aggregate your response and misconstrue its meaning at the next blog. Satisfaction was low. We believe that was because people are too stupid to handle a meaningful choice three levels in a row, so we have moved it to 5th."
It is possible to playtest and elicit feedback in a manner that is open, honest and gives the best opportunity for positive change to the game (Paizo's method works pretty well). Blind surveys that lazily throw up a list of class features and ask for satisfaction ratings, and yield no information back to the user aren't how you do it. That's just how to make it look like you're playtesting without having to actually engage with or listen to your audience...
... which by all accounts is exactly what happened with the 4E playtest.
They can make any concession they want, the only thing that is acceptable at this point is if they acknowledge the 1.0a OGL can not be revoked or "deauthorized"
Roll for Combat have already covered a bunch of it, a quick summary is:
This is a PR piece.. Don't know the details of who the D&D team is, but Kyle Brink is a new name, and a new account on their forums.
It's a much better PR piece than their last post
Until it's text in a license agreement, any concession means nothing
They have not conceded to leave 1.0a alone, though their wording is careful enough to fool a casual reader.
The statement completely omits any mention of the abominable termination and revision clauses that made the OGL 1.1 and 2.0 effectively unusable.
OGL 1.1 wrote:
X. TERMINATION. This agreement may be modified or terminated.
A. Modification: This agreement is, along with the OGL: Non-Commercial, an update to the previously available OGL
1.0(a), which is no longer an authorized license agreement. We can modify or terminate this agreement for any reason
whatsoever, provided We give thirty (30) days’ notice. We will provide notice of any such changes by posting the
revisions on Our website, and by making public announcements through Our social media channels. B. Termination:
If the released version of the OGL has anything like this in it, every other concession is worthless because it gives Wizards the right to change it later, with a limited notice period and no recourse.
Kyle Brink wrote:
Your OGL 1.0a content. Nothing will impact any content you have published under OGL 1.0a. That will always be licensed under OGL 1.0a.
Bolded for emphasis. Tense is important. This statement translates to: "We are willing to leave the past in the past. We make no promises about your ability to operate commercially in the future."
Marc Radle wrote:
Statement from Kobold Press:
Project Black Flag Update: Sticking To Our Principles
We want to start by saying thank you for all the outpouring of love and support this last week. Project Black Flag is sailing new waters toward its next destination, and we aim to continue to update you weekly.
It might interesting playing a dungeon crawl with an AI GM just as a curiosity, but I suspect it would be more like a standard video game RPG at best. Anything outside that is way...
It's been around for a while - to the point where it has issues on newer machines - but is actually pretty fun (and has deviated from it's 3.5E origins significantly by now).
It doesn't feature AI GMs or anything, but the game is presented as adventures where the GM narrates events and voices most characters as you explore Xen'drik (and Cormyr via planar travel), or go through classic modules like Keep on the Borderlands. It's still a computer game, but it remembers its origins.
Noting that while it has a standard staff of people who narrate adventures, they've had a bunch of guest narrators including Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, Ed Greenwood, Keith Baker, Travis Willingham, Wil Wheaton, Satine Phoenix and so on. There is something special about going through Delara's Tomb with Gygax himself doing the narration.
It's old, it's clanky, almost every male character except half-elves looks atrocious... but I recommend it anyway.
I'm aware this wasn't a response to me directly... and for the most part I'm not even disagreeing, but...
Koldoon wrote:
I'm allowed to like Wizards releases and not buy into the idea that just because WotC management is acting against the interests of the community that the game is bad. It's not.
Like all systems, it has its flaws. But ultimately it is popular because it is fun and easy to learn. I find it useful for short games and teaching my 8yo daughter to play, because it is intentionally very lightweight.
I'm not burning my 5E books, I'm just not giving anymore money to WotC until/unless I see a massive course correction from them.... which I sincerely doubt will ever happen... but hey, I'm an optimist.
Koldoon wrote:
When I look at Yawning Portal or Ghosts of Saltmarsh, I see both nostalgia for adventures that were touchstones for an era: Sunless Citadel, Lost Shrine of Tamochan, Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh - but also a roadmap for converting adventures from first edition, from second edition, from 3rd edition into 5e.
I was considering adding a section in my earlier post about the two sides to the reprinting coin, and you hit the counterpoint perfectly: Some people will see old gems given a new lease on life as a celebration of history and a chance to share the experiences they treasured with a new crowd.
Others will more cynically see the fact that updating an old adventure to the new system is way faster (and more importantly, cheaper) than developing an original idea, and if sold at the same price point just means bigger profit margins on what is typically not a big earner (adventures).
And both are actually correct. The bigger point of contention is I think "What was the motivation driving its publication?", which I suspect depends on which level of WotC's corporate structure you ask. It's only natural that people - especially now - will be sceptical of WotC's motivations.
Koldoon wrote:
As a game master that's enormously helpful - to see how the developers did it rather than guess based on some conversion rules.
That nostalgia is strong for me, but that roadmap helps me more when I'm doing things like converting Ruins of Azlant to 5e for a game I play with my nephews.
My take-away was very different on this one, as when I did a side-by-side comparison between some of adventures in the $65 AUD Ghosts of Saltmarsh and the original, I... didn't see where I was getting the value for money.
My wife & I own the original and hardcover versions of both Rise of the Runelords and Curse of the Crimson Throne, and in both cases it wasn't simply a quick update to monster stat blocks, magic items and maybe some skill checks, but both added a significant chunk of extra value to the product: New art, additional content, updated scenes to better build tension/drama, rebalanced encounters where some didn't play out as intended in the original, and so on.
I would make the same comment about the 3.5E Expedition to Castle Ravenloft: It took the old adventure, and not only updated but expanded upon it to give GMs the tools to do something new and even more engaging with their players. The value for money was clear.
Also, apropos of nothing, there's nothing wrong with liking 5e, nor with liking their latest content. The writers at WotC are not our enemies. They're amazing creators just like those at Paizo, and many are themselves from Paizo originally.
This I agree with wholeheartedly. There's a lot of passionate people creating the different systems, and a lot of good ideas stemming from their work.
Hell, in recent years I've gained an appreciation for 4E, as even though it's my least favourite edition of the game, it has some amazing design innovations within it that deserve respect.
Kobold Catgirl wrote:
Bashing WotC content has a lot of collateral damage versus simply continuing to support the boycott and criticizing WotC practices.
Criticism of the content produced shouldn't be construed as an attack on the people involved. Indeed, my impression from very early on was that WotC had decided on a business strategy of throttling way back on development/production to roll out only a trickle of books for maximum profit margins, as opposed to 3E and 4E which churned out books to try and maximise revenue.
Or in layman terms: My impression was that 5E has good people, but from the start* suffered from not enough time and money from Wizards/Hasbro to develop and produce the best content.
From first hand experience (as an engineer): You can have the best people in the world. If you don't have the time or budget for them to actually do their jobs, you're going to get something rushed and below their usual quality.
* The decision to stagger the release of the PHB, MM and DMG was claimed as a move to improve quality. I would strongly argue the opposite - It was a move to reduce costs associated with increasing team size. My evidence? The fact that 5E encounter building rules and challenge ratings have become an internet meme, because while they playtested and tinkered with character mechanics, the GM tools were practically retroactive. The bounded accuracy was a huge change and needed time to properly develop as a coherent system - for players and most especially for GM's, to encourage more people to get behind the screen. The people making the system have proven they have the ability... leaving me to believe that they likely just didn't have the time.
@vallum12100 - Dreamscarred Press are functionally…absent. Their Starfinder Kickstarter is either failed or so massively delayed by the creator’s personal problems that it amounts to same.
That I was not aware of, and is a true shame.
I must confess to having stopped following their work of late, but Path of War has consistently been a big hit in our PF1 games for years.
Against the Giants, Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, Tomb of Horrors and later Red Hand of Doom are all commonly considered masterpieces in their own way among the various people I've gamed with all over the planet.
I think I've heard "Tomb of Horrors is the worst module ever written" more frequently than any positive sentiment about it.
To paraphrase Obi-Wan, it depends on your point of view.
It you are wanting/expecting a module that is fun, thrilling, has a strong narrative and a satisfying conclusion. It's astoundingly terrible.
If you are expecting a jaded, spiteful mess that requires players to claw every victory from pretty much certain death? Then it is a masterpiece. You just need to enter into it with the right expectations, and treat it like the pinnacle of Adversarial GM design it is.
While I've never run Ghosts of Saltmarsh and can't comment on its quality, the fact that most 1st party content coming out of Wizards of the Coast is just a "Greatest Hits" compilation is pretty valid criticism.
Using Ghosts of Saltmarsh as a clarion call here seems silly. The Saltmarsh adventures are widely regarded as some of the best ever made. Several of the others were from Dungeon magazines that may be familiar to the fan base here, but many in the larger 5e community had probably never seen. They were well done updates, and one of the best gifts I've ever gotten was the spontaneous gift of the Beadles and Grim Silver box of that adventure from my brother - it was a favorite when we were kids.
Context:
I think that's a very subjective argument. I've been playing this game for twenty-odd years through pretty much every edition, with various groups, and this is the first time I've heard that sentiment expressed. Against the Giants, Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, Tomb of Horrors and later Red Hand of Doom are all commonly considered masterpieces in their own way among the various people I've gamed with all over the planet. But Saltmarsh has quite literally never had a mention.
The disparity I think boils down mostly to a mixture of exposure (most people who play 5E haven't heard of Curse of the Crimson Throne etc), and the fact that different people play for different reasons, and in effect we aren't all playing the same game.
On a personal level, I play for the drama and collaborative story - I want my characters actions to feel like they're striving to accomplish something great. When I'm GMing I want a published adventure to help me build the drama and a plot that gives conflict, tension and helps give players a personal stake in the outcome - that makes them care about what happens.
Vaguely themed but disconnected little adventures which are in theory motivated by "Do X, get paid" bore me to tears. And I freely admit, I don't play the game Gygax made. Other people do. And that's okay.
And this is for context for the below statement
Putting aside the topic of player preferences, I also took Saltmarsh (and Yawning Portal) not as positives for D&D. Here is why:
Probably unnecessary wall of text:
2014-08/11: Tyranny of Dragons
2015-04: Princes of the Apocalypse (5 months later)
2015-09: Out of the Abyss (5 months later)
2016-03: Curse of Strahd (6 months later)
2016-09: Storm King's Thunder (6 months later)
2016-04: Tales from the Yawning Portal (7 months later)
2017-09: Tomb of Annihilation (5 months later)
2018-09: Waterdeep: Dragonheist (12 months later. No heist included)
2018-11: Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad mage (2 months later)
2019-05: Ghosts of Saltmarsh (6 months later)
2019-09: Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus (4 months later)
2020-09: Rime of the Frost Maiden (12 months later)
[ooc]And at this point I stopped paying attention[/i]
Their release schedule is roughly one adventure book every 6 months (except when they skip a slot and it's a 12 month wait). Bolded are the books that are basically reprints with adapted mechanics.
My criticism is that adapting old modules, while work, is dramatically less work/cost than developing something original (e.g. Descent into Avernus) or taking an old adventure as inspiration and building something new (e.g. Tomb of Annihilation). Which is fine, except the anthologies started replacing the original adventures in the schedule and coming with the same price tag... and it just feels like a lazy cash grab rather than an earnest attempt to maintain and grow the hobby.
I don't like the idea of any governing body having the right to decide who is or is not a bad actor. That's what the power of our wallets is for :P
And I’m not sure I like the idea of the power of wallets deciding who is or isn’t a bad actor. Sure, the cancellation pf DnD Beyond subscriptions could be seem as a “wallet-powered” exploit, but similarly I see bank-rolled bad actors are legion. It feels like “let the market decide” all over again. And over and over again, the market has decided in favor of investors, slavers, polluters and other assorted captains of industry.
To throw my 2c in here: In the larger ecosystem of human endeavour you have fair concerns. Within the niche of TTRPGs, I'd much prefer people be able to freely articulate their values and ideas, and enable others to judge the content of their character easily. For example, if I went to a meet-up for a new group and FATAL was on the shelf behind the GM, I would know that I'm probably in the wrong place. Gagging a troll doesn't stop them being a troll, it just means you need to waste more of your time finding out. But this is a segue.
Personally I think Ryan is being a little generous, but then, he has way more experience with executives, lawyers and PR doublespeak, so was probably less bothered by the sheer quantity of BS within their announcement, and more focused on what concessions they were making.
So they may walk some things back. They may scrub royalties (dumb idea in the first place). They may remove the insane change/termination notice. They may even promise not leave any historical publications under 1.0a alone (e.g. PF1) and let them continue to be sold without challenge.
Scrubbing royalties, they're already doing according to their latest announcement:
...
I am reminded that text is still a very difficult medium when it comes to clearly articulating ideas. I think we're mostly just agreeing with each other here - I was more speculating that regardless of how much they walk back (already announced/implied), there are certain things I don't think they will be willing to even consider.
One of those is letting Roll20, Foundry etc compete with them unchallenged in 2024. The amount they've invested in cornering the digital gaming ecosystem in 2024 dramatically outweighs the legal costs of trying to obliterate the rival VTTs.
Hence, while WotC's effort to remove all competition has been thwarted and forced them to retreat and regroup, they will launch a new offensive within the next 18 months, aimed at removing 3rd party VTT's ability to support 5E.
The only question in my mind is whether they'll narrow the focus to just the VTT's and 5E, or once again be overly ambitious and try to take out all their rivals in one fell swoop. The smart (if still being a "total pasta" as my daughter likes to say) choice is the former... but that doesn't mean its the one they'll take.
Even if they walked back all the way and said they considered OGL 1.0a holy writ until the end of time, how could anyone trust their word on that after all they tried to do?
Their word, no.
A slight revision to the OGL (an OGL 1.0b) that adds legally-binding text that declares that authorization is irrevocable, the license offer is irrevocable, the rights granted are irrevocable, and the license can only be terminated for breach, followed by releasing the SRD (3rd), MSRD (d20 Modern), RSRD (3.5), and SRD5 (5th) under this slight revision?
Well, then I don't have to trust their word.
"Walking things back" is accordingly something that requires action.
I liked the point Ryan Dancey made: Wizards could absolutely corner the market and get everyone on their new VTT and under newer and royalty-based license agreements. All they need to do is make a new edition of D&D that is so good that everyone voluntarily stops playing 5th Edition.
But that is hard, and takes a lot of time and money to develop, and they haven't even really started.
But they have dropped $146M on D&D Beyond and hired 350+ programmers to build them a VTT. But no matter how pretty their VTT tools are, if it's all just 5E and their (brand new, likely bug riddled) VTT costs everyone a bunch of money, while a bunch of established VTTs are far cheaper or even free... That isn't going to sound like a safe bet to a shareholder.
So they may walk some things back. They may scrub royalties (dumb idea in the first place). They may remove the insane change/termination notice. They may even promise not leave any historical publications under 1.0a alone (e.g. PF1) and let them continue to be sold without challenge.
But I bet they're going to be gunning for getting 5E off the competing VTT's. I suspect they're going to take their time, hope the internet forgets aaaaaalll about it, and then make their play (if they're smart, with less collateral damage to avoid a repeat of their botched 1.1 rollout) closer to One D&D's release.
And hey, the guy does a lot of good PF2 content and could use some more clicks.
The one point I disagree with is with regards to the license back clause discussion. I think Wizards is actually being honest - I genuinely think it did never cross their minds that they might use it to steal community-developed work...
... because that would require them to believe that 'amateur/customer' content could in any way rival 'official content' in quality or creativity. And I have seen nothing that convinces me that they have that degree of humility as a company. Individuals within Wizards probably do - there are a lot of Good people there, but when combined together into a troop stat block, it has the NE alignment.
Something of a tangential rant:
Tabletop games aren't like most other media - your customers don't simply consume product for entertainment, they use it to create the entertainment themselves. TTPRG products are just the toolkits to a DIY entertainment genre.
5E has a few fundamental problems, with the largest being that while WotC playtested and tinkered with the Player Tools a whole bunch and have managed to make it extremely popular... the GM Tools are largely an afterthought, and one of the main results is a lot more people wanting to play than there are people running games. The system is simply not new-GM friendly from simply running the game with its mechanics.
The second issue is in how simplified the game has gotten in 5th Edition, where it not only pushes for players to have as few decisions as possible to make both in combat and when levelling up, but also as few decisions as possible for the GM to make as most monsters are stripped down to the minimum number of actions possible.
Making combat 'fun' when published adventures typically just throw encounters of "here's a bunch of identical monsters with a pile of hp and one one action to take in combat" requires experience that takes time to learn, and the published books don't help. Indeed, the most common advice online for making 5E combat fun (once the novelty of D&D wears off) typically involves a lot of homebrewing to give creatures more things to do.
When WotC announced One D&D, I was initially optimistic they would address these flaws in the system and try to revamp the system to be similar in mechanics (so as to be familiar), but friendlier to new GMs and have a bit more depth. I was mistaken.
One D&D so far has fewer changes from 5th edition than 3.5 did from 3.0 - and most of those changes involve even further simplification aka dumbing down of already oversimplified mechanics. Indeed, their reaction to "there's not enough GM's" seems to be to try and make monsters even simpler and more boring.
I sincerely believe it is possible to do a better version of 5E that would help the hobby grow. But One D&D to me looks like the exact opposite direction of where they should be heading.
For anyone interested in a 5E-like game, I'm going to plug EN Publishing's "Level Up" product line, as while I don't think it is perfect, it is a huge step in the right direction. It just doesn't have the brand name on the cover.
When we initially conceived of revising the OGL, it was with three major goals in mind. First, we wanted the ability to prevent the use of D&D content from being included in hateful and discriminatory products. Second, we wanted to address those attempting to use D&D in web3, blockchain games, and NFTs by making clear that OGL content is limited to tabletop roleplaying content like campaigns, modules, and supplements. And third, we wanted to ensure that the OGL is for the content creator, the homebrewer, the aspiring designer, our players, and the community—not major corporations to use for their own commercial and promotional purpose.
What Wizards seem adamantly determined to never say, is that the third point there is a complete 180 on the entire purpose of the OGL.
The OGL was written specifically for major corporations to use the SRD and D&D system for their commercial and promotional purposes. The existence of popular and profitable OGL-based products isn't "companies exploiting WotC's good will", it was the entire point of the OGL.
Is it just me or does WoTC's response sound very condescending?
The modern day aloof aristocracy are addressing the unwashed peasantry - heed your betters!
(Arrogance within the executive levels of corporations is nothing new)
pixierose wrote:
And also the whole thing about them always planning to get feedback from the community feeling like a total lie since if the leaks are to be true they planned to release it as is.
It's a statement with just enough truth in it that they can likely dodge legal trouble. They sent it out in a form they were happy with a few weeks ahead of its rollout date, knowing they would get feedback from those they sent it to.
... there was neither any time or intention to CHANGE anything based on that feedback, but they were expecting/intending to get it. They just probably hoped the feedback went "Oh noes! My Business! I must run away and spoil Wizard's bountiful pastures with my unwashed presence no more!"
If I understand it a lot of contract law relies on reasonable intent and good faith negotiations, and there seems to a lot of evidence in written form over the years that WoTC at the time and the writers that wrote up original OGL meant for it to last forever.
After listening to Ryan and taking a bit of time to digest, I've come to realise two things:
1) WotC have gone all-in on attempt 2 at their VTT, and the primary target of the OGL 1.1 is not even the 3rd party community - they're just targets of opportunity WotC are swiping at in passing .
The main goal is to backtrack and purge 5E from 3rd party digital tools so that WotC can roll out the Sauron Edition with a single option, controlled by them, for playing and managing it (and 5E which it still basically is) online. Because if they want to heavily monetize digital SE, the last thing they want is competition offering cheaper (or *gasp* FREE!) alternatives.
2) I'm not a lawyer... but seriously, revoking 1.0(a) feels like a huge gamble on WotC's part, hanging everything on "well it doesn't explicitly say we can't revoke it" and "it says any 'authorised' version... so what if we unauthorize 1.0(a)?".
As purely a layman in these matters, it looks like a very weak argument. Outside of getting their hands on a Tardis, they cannot go back in time and make 1.0(a) not an authorised version of the license, because it has been for nearly 23 years.
Furthermore, 1.0(a) explicitly calls out that it permits any authorised version of the license to be used, and WotC's statement that 1.0(a) is no longer authorised is part of v1.1.... which if you're not using because 1.0(a) explicitly says you don't have to - then 1.0(a) is still authorised. If the intent was that the 1.0a could be revoked, then Clause 9 would never have been included, because short of time travel it stops (by design) WotC-of-the-Future from undoing the work of WotC-of-the-Past.
Yes, WotC could try nuclear lawfare to prevent this from being ruled on through sheer legal costs of going to trial... but I suspect Ryan Dancey is probably correct in his conclusion that you can probably get a ruling on whether they can revoke 1.0a pretty darn quickly as it is a fairly simple legal question (not even taking 'intent' into account).
While the idea of having an independent, no-one-party-controls-this license and SRD for the community to use may sound nice, I'm not sure how practical this is.
I suspect that for such a document and license to have any legal standing, it's going to need to be owned by someone. Maybe Paizo, Kobold Press and a bunch of other publishers could form some kind of joint legal entity in order to do so...
I'm not sure why. Licenses are just text. If two companies make a more traditional licensing agreement, we wouldn't say one of them owns the license, would we?
If a company releases its content with a license like the OGL 1.0a (but not actually Wizard's OGL and with improvements to block revocation), that content is released on those terms. Someone only needs to own it if they want to change it later (for good reasons or less good ones.)
To quote Ryan Dancey: "The value of the open gaming license is that it licenses D&D, not that it is a good license".
Basically, a license without a system - and most notably an extremely popular system/brand is of little value to the industry. Which is also why people are watching Paizo for their response, because while PF2 is dwarfed by 5E, it is bigger than anything else in the fantasy TTRPG field.
While the idea of having an independent, no-one-party-controls-this license and SRD for the community to use may sound nice, I'm not sure how practical this is.
I suspect that for such a document and license to have any legal standing, it's going to need to be owned by someone. Maybe Paizo, Kobold Press and a bunch of other publishers could form some kind of joint legal entity in order to do so...
So, a non-profit entity like the Free Software Foundation. Only for games.
Exactly.
But with the timeframe between publishers getting to know what the OGL 1.1 contains, and the date it takes effect, and the need for publishers to bring in revenue in order to keep the lights on... I doubt the practicality of that happening anytime soon.
If Paizo is going the route of its own Open license, I will be a Pathfinder player forever and never again go back to ANY Wizards product.
The lesson is "don't rely on any private company to do good long-term, especially in a position of market dominance." The lesson shouldn't be "find a new private company to be loyal to."
And there are certainly better and worse ways they could build a license. Build it with community input as an open license that explicitly states no single entity can claim dominance over it? Probably better. Build it with Paizo as the sole caretakers based on the hope that this business will be better? Maybe less good.
A lot of Paizo people rule, but businesses gonna business.
A tangent on business models:
This is a bit of a tangent, but it is worth pointing out that while both are in the private (i.e. non-government) sector: Paizo is a private company, but Hasbro/WotC is publically traded. This may not seem like much of a distinction, but it has a profound effect on the behaviour of a business.
A publically traded company is typically forced to focus on short term gains and share price over virtually all other considerations. The horizon for how far ahead you can look as a publically traded company is short, because regardless of how good your 5 year plan is, if three months in your share price tanks, you may well see the company out of business, bought out by a rival, or have its leadership replaced by people more focused on short term gains because that is what shareholders want.
Privately owned companies do not operate in the same way. They have a limited number of owners, and said owners are typically much more knowledgeable and engaged with the business than with public companies. A privately owned company can take a long-term view much more easily, and tend to much more stable fashion.
TL;DR: Publically traded companies tend to be short-sighted, fickle and frequently ruthless beasts. Private companies aren't automatically more altruistic (but they can be), but what they can be is more stable and able to operate on long-term goals.
While the idea of having an independent, no-one-party-controls-this license and SRD for the community to use may sound nice, I'm not sure how practical this is.
I suspect that for such a document and license to have any legal standing, it's going to need to be owned by someone. Maybe Paizo, Kobold Press and a bunch of other publishers could form some kind of joint legal entity in order to do so... but forming anything by committee is slow and expensive, and right now I doubt anyone really has the time or money to do so.
When it comes to Paizo: 20 years of consistent behaviour and integrity matters. Sure, we can't predict the future - maybe a giant legal battle with WotC will nuke their finances and force them to sell, and the new owner is a tyrannical maniac. Or a comet could land on the office. All of these could happen. But they aren't likely. If in the short term we had to put our money on one party to take over the role of custodian of the Open Gaming movement... Paizo would be a good candidate.
Everyone jumped on the 5e train to profit from its popularity and make cash, thanks to WotC's property. Only that it did not cost them anything based on the current version of the OGL.
I would argue that is a misrepresentation of the situation.
5E was released as a new edition of the game, streamlined and simplified (a bit too much so IMHO) to make it as accessible as possible for new players (horrible for new GMs, but that is a separate topic).
Problem is: Wizards of the Coast basically did precious little with it. Their release schedule has been positively glacial, and what they release is very light in actual content compared to the standards of previous editions. For those very new to the hobby or playing very infrequently, this likely isn't an issue. But for those who play regularly, it doesn't come close to satisfying the demand for new content.
Once there was 5E SRD, there was always going to be third party publications, but I would argue that a large part of why the third party scene has grown so much recently, is because there was a huge demand that WotC wasn't satisfying.
The Raven Black wrote:
WotC wants the cash to keep on flowing. They just want to also profit from the cash made on 5e by others.
I wouldn't add "just" in that. Most third party material is barely profitable at all. No one is getting rich publishing 5E supplements, and WotC largely has itself to blame if it is unhappy with it's D&D revenue:
They chose to forgo digital distribution and go hardcopy only, likely on the mistaken belief it would reduce piracy (spoiler, it didn't), despite there being a great market for it.
They chose to develop and publish fewer books. Less product = less revenue.
They chose to cut costs on product quality - less content, less new (and more recycled) content, less actual design work, and cheaper binding. The latter actually caused a lot of our gaming groups to stop buying their books, simply because they rarely lasted more than a few months before you had to break out the stickytape to hold them together.
The Raven Black wrote:
Will WotC try to profit from 3.x-based products ? They will likely try as long as it costs them little. But if they need to sue someone on these, they will drop it : not worth the time and money. Because 5e is where the real cash is.
Actually, they've already made their stance clear within the OGL 1.1 itself. Nothing except SRD 5.1 is licensed content. Anything 3.X based that relies on the SRD (e.g. Pathfinder 1) cannot be sold under the OGL 1.1.
The Raven Black wrote:
I hope other companies such as Paizo took the time from the beginning to really consider the risks of using the OGL and have their battle plan ready.
Paizo have. They're wise and do not trust the Thassilonians.
Most others, when explicitly told by the creators of the OGL 1.0(a) that it cannot be legally undone and will last forever... one can't really fault them for thinking the claim is legit. Presently, even IP specialised lawyers can't actually agree on whether or not it is revokable.
The Raven Black wrote:
Yes, it threatens the whole ecosystem that was based on free sharing. But really, the zeitgeist these days is completely about going back to basics, protecting your own and not caring about others.
Free trade / sharing, mutual benefits for everyone and caring about others beyond your own is a thing of the past. And also of the future because it's really a cycle.
I'm going to respectfully disagree with you on that one. Accepting bad situations as "that's how things are" is how you get bad situations. The more people who act with honesty and integrity, the easier it is for others to act accordingly - we're a social animal. Also, I'm an optimist.
With the announcement from Kobold Press today, I wonder how much longer it will be before we have an announcement of some kind from Paizo?
From what I have heard, WotC sent out a few contracts with OGL 1.1 attached to various parties, but only if said party first signed an NDA. This could be simple rumour/hearsay, but it would compel any such company to refrain from any public announcements/discussion until Jan 13th (or whenever the NDA expires) if true.
I am pretty sure a lot of people are very, very keen to hear what Paizo has to say on the topic (when they can). I know I am.
^If your revenue is $1,500,000 and your expenses are $,250,000 (including paying federal and state and maybe even local taxes), you aren't going to be earning income under the OGL 1.1 -- you're going to be losing $50,000 each year (or $75,000 if you didn't sign onto their corrupt bargain with Kickstarter).
Meanwhile, WotC/Hasbro has the right to make any amount of income from what they so dishonestly say that you "own", and they don't owe anything to anybody except federal and state and maybe local governments (assuming that they can't figure out how to worm their way out of those obligations as so many big businesses do).
Also, note (in what purports to be the full document linked well above) that when you sign onto OGL 1.1, you waive your right to a jury trial.
Math is off. WotC is only taking their cut on the revenue above 750,000.
If expenses were Only 250,000 that person would profit over 1 million before taxes.
But an 84% profit margin is unheard of in this industry lol
EDIT: Not that the math actually matters given a license that can be changed on a whim with 30 days notice
I may be being a pedant here, but I need to crunch numbers. Yes, Kryt-Ryder is correct in that WotC's current royalty model is 25% of every dollar over $750,000 gross annual revenue.
UAE's Hypothetical: If your gross revenue is $1.5M, and your expenses were $1.25M leaving $250K of profit for the business... well, a 16.5% profit margin is probably pretty damn good. I'd have expected closer to 10%.
Applying OGL 1.1: WotC are now owed $187,500 in royalties (1.5M - 750K x 25%), reducing your profit from $250,000 down to $62,500, or a profit margin of 4.2%. So you'd make money, but only barely.
Another hypothetical example If instead you're a larger (but still tiny compared to WotC) publisher with a few books in your catalogue and run a couple of successful kickstarters in one year for... let's say $1.2M and $2M respectively, plus maybe $1M in other sales after Drivethru RPG take their cut.
Let's say WotC allows us to liberally apply the 750K royalty-free threshold to our non-Kickstarter sales to reduce our costs. Let us also assume that "Gross Revenue" refers to the gross amount of money that reaches the publisher (i.e. after Kickstarter and Drivethru take their cuts) as that is typically how these things work.
That means we owe them:
25% of $250K (1M - 750K threshold) = $62,500
20% of $1.2M - 7% kickstarter = $223,200
20% of the $2M kickstarter = $372,000
Total royalties = $657,700
So of the gross revenue of $3.976M (after Kickstarter's cut), about $657.7K (about 16.5%) goes to WotC, and said publisher has $3.3M left to pay for art, salaries, printing, shipping, warehousing, marketing, tax and so on.
This may seem like a lot, but that money comes with the obligation to develop, print and deliver a lot of books. With WotC's royalties added on, said publisher would need to have been running a minimum of 20% to 25% profit margins for this to be even remotely financially viable.... and I don't think it's a stretch to say: No one in this industry is making that kind of profitexcept maybe WotC
Put simply, the royalties are set where they are intentionally to punish anyone finding success in third party publications.
I'm not a lawyer, but whether it is an omission or deliberate, the limitation to only the 5.1 SRD being licensed content implicitly excludes all commercial 3rd party material using the 3.5 SRD, even if the publisher agreed to OGL 1.1.
Uh, that might actually be true.
But what does PF2 use that is in the SRD? Basically, all that is left is names. Names of creatures, spells, and items – the implementations are all different from the SRD, I think.
I honestly don't think it needs to go that far. Paizo has already removed all proprietary names (Mordenkainen, Bigby etc) from Pathfinder 1 and 2, and it is debateable whether any attempt by WotC to claim they hold copyright on "Magic Missile" would actually fly.
On generic names. TSR actually won a case against the Tolkien estate that even though the elves and dwarves of D&D are absolutely taken wholesale from Lord of the Rings, the fact that the concept of elves and dwarfs exist in mythology and real life means that Tolkien cannot hold copyright on them. Noting that D&D continues to use "Dwarves", Tolkien's plural for his fantasy race, not "dwarfs" which is the actual plural for the real thing.
So things like "magic missile", "acid arrow", "fireball" etc. would be impractical to try an enforce a copyright on.
On created names: In an incredible sense of irony, I believe WotC do hold copyright on "Treant" - a word they invented to get around the copyright of "Ent" by the Tolkien estate. As copyright holds only within the given medium, this means that while Blizzard and others can merrily use the term, likely Paizo will need to rename them.
On Repurposed Names: The same almost certainly applies to any invented names, but not to repurposed names. E.g. "Drow" is a mythological creature (derived from troll), making it public domain, and given the Pathfinder lore for the drow is completely different to that published under the D&D trademark, I'd imagine any copyright claim would be an uphill battle for WotC.
I'd imagine Paizo has already had this discussion internally, and it may well be why a number of iconic creatures changed names in PF2 (e.g. "Bloodseeker").
Battlezoo has gained access to the whole license, and they have published it here: ogl.battlezoo.com.
I think it is interesting to note that the document only talks about the SRD v5.1, not v3.0 or v3.5 or d20 Modern.
It sort of does, just not in a way anyone likes (bolding mine)
OGL 1.1 Commercial wrote:
ii. Not Usable D&D Content (“Unlicensed Content”) – This is Dungeons & Dragons content that has been or later will be produced as “official” – that is, released by Wizards of the Coast or any of its predecessors or successors – and is not present in the SRD v. 5.1. Unlicensed Content includes things like the most famous Dungeons & Dragons monsters, characters, magic spells, and things relating to the various settings used in Dungeons & Dragons official content over the years – what the old Open Game License referred to as “Product Identity.” Unlicensed Content is NOT covered by this agreement, and You agree not to use Unlicensed Content unless Your use is specifically authorized by a separate agreement with Us. If You want to include that content in Your work, You must go through the Dungeon Masters Guild or other official channels.
I'm not a lawyer, but whether it is an omission or deliberate, the limitation to only the 5.1 SRD being licensed content implicitly excludes all commercial 3rd party material using the 3.5 SRD, even if the publisher agreed to OGL 1.1.
The above, coupled with statements regarding PF2 including the OGL as a nicety is making me revisit some of my previous assumptions. I still don't think anyone (including WotC/Hasbro) has any certainty for what is coming down the line, but:
A) IF the OGL is only required for publications that replicate text from the SRD (which is the understanding of many people, including several significant publishers from what I can see), then regardless of what WotC/Hasbro do with OGL 1.1, Pathfinder 2 and the myriad of other spinoff systems that don't use anything from the SRD can continue business as usual.
Given that said RPGs don't use any material actually copyrighted by WotC, it should also permit any VTT to continue working with those systems at least.
B) IF the OGL 1.0(a) can be legally revoked (or at least, doing so cannot be remedied in the courts due to the extreme expense involved), then anything that relies on the SRD must immediately cease being sold unless the publisher wants to comply with OGL 1.1 - notably including Pathfinder 1 as last I checked it had big chunks of text pulled from the SRD.I'm not sure where Starfinder sits with regard to the SRD, as I haven't scrutinised it in that much detail
Assuming point A) is true, the more brutal - and likely desired by WotC - outcome is the impact on VTTs. Namely they immediately remove the ability to support 5E (and 3.5) from all but Roll20 and FG, then in 2024 give the last 2 the 30 days notice, leaving only the Hasbro VTT as the sole VTT that "official" D&D can be played on. It would be nice to dream that people will switch systems to protect their favourite VTT... But the more likely outcome is that a lot of VTTs are going to go out of business.
C) If the OGL 1.0(a) can't be legally revoked and this is upheld in court... then given the body of work around the discussion of the OGL at the time of its creation, WotC/Hasbro just nuked their reputation and good will for not much of anything, as people can continue to make material for 5E and earlier and play them on VTTs?
I saw an interesting post from Michael Sayre about PF2 and the OGL (it was made 9 months ago so not a comment on the leak).
...
Now that is interesting.
If Pathfinder 2 can be legally published without the OGL due to significant differences as a game (I'd still expect WotC/Hasbro to challenge it), then while it means taking PF1 products off the store (and likely Starfinder), they could potentially continue to sell and produce products for PF2, without getting plundered by Hasbro.
It also means that if Paizo were inclined*, they could replace the OGL text with a pathfinder game license and allow third parties to continue to develop products for PF2, completely independent of the WotC shenanigans.
*Given Paizo is a company made up of and run by people with a deep love and respect for the hobby, my guess would be on them being so inclined. But legal matters are tricky, so I wouldn't begrudge them moving cautiously in these times.
Looking at the way WOTC/Hasbro has been doing to the MTG game its no surprise that this was going to happen. WOTC has been off its medication for a while. Maybe its time for everyone to switch back to Pathfinder 1E and all 3rd party content creators do the same. Let WOTC implode.
IF WotC/Hasbro go the nuclear option, and their effort to revoke OGL 1.0a is upheld, then my understanding is that:
Paizo cannot sell any derivative product except under the OGL 1.1, which would not only oblige them to pay 25% royalties of gross revenue from all subsequent sales.
Wizards of the Coast gain a permanent, royalty-free and irrevocable license to use or reproduce everything in those publications. Sell a PDF of Inner Sea World Guide? WotC can now use Golarion and everything in it in their future works.
The risk to Paizo to sell anything once OGL 1.1 drops is ridiculous - Pathfinder 1 or 2. Even if they fight it, the court case would likely take years, and if they want to keep the lights on they need to sell products.
To my understanding, the only 'safe' option is to move completely away from anything D&D derived, such as Savage Worlds. But that is a lot of work, and my guess is that Hasbro/WotC management are banking on players being too lazy/complacent to do so, and publishers not having the cash to fund the change.
As far as boycotting goes, I've been boycotting WotC since 4th edition Forgotten Realms came out. So I guess welcome to my world!
Bring your own cookies.
I went back to WotC for 5th edition. Stupid me, once the One D&D garbage started to come out, (now referred to as D&Done by me), came back to give Pathfinder 2E a look. Stupid me. Will have to buy up what I want quick it seems.
Sounds hauntingly familiar - we were getting bored of the 5E due to lack of depth, glacial release of anaemic content and horrible GM toolkit years before... but it was the reprint of "same mechanics but even more dumbed down" and expectation that people will buy it all again that really turned us off.
As to the future... it really depends on how far WotC/Hasbro wants to push this, and given that a lot of the people making the decisions don't appear to actually understand what D&D is or why it is presently popular, I struggle to be optimistic.
If they go the less-horrible-PR route of insisting that OGL 1.0a cannot be used for 6th Edition (or whatever they want to call it), then the fact that it almost identical to 5th Edition still puts anyone trying to work on 5E material under 1.0a at risk. It'll still hurt the industry as it will push third parties away from the D&D brand - including those they outsource to to write their adventures - and a lot of people have products too far in production to back out before 1.1 kicks in.
If they go the nuclear option of trying to revoke the OGL 1.0a, there's going to be a legal battle, as it basically nukes every product derived from 3.5 onwards, including Pathfinder 2 - the OGL 1.0a is just inside the cover for a reason. From what I can glean from a few hours of reading/watching lawyers debate it, there's a case either way and the result is basically going to be a drawn out and expensive legal suit, whose legal outcome is up in the air, and quashes the industry while it is in progress.
Either way, it stinks for WotC/Hasbro PR even more than their antics around 4th Edition, but apparently that lesson has been forgotten. And which sucks as the people actually making the game seem to genuinely love the hobby.
Disclaimer: While I am weighing in on the topic of Pathfinder 2 math and design philosophies, if nigh on two decades (oh god, already?) of professional engineering has taught me anything, it’s that there’s a big difference between “How I would do it” and whether or not something is “wrong”. Yes, there are some aspects of the playtest rules that I have strong concerns about, and do not believe the pros outweigh the cons, but I am not going to indulge in hyperbole. Instead, I will simply present how I would have preferred it.
Ray’s Critical Hits Short Version: I would simply remove the +10/-10 rule from combat rolls altogether, and have crits on a nat-20 only (providing it would still hit). The concept sort-of-existed in Pathfinder 1 for skills, and it is still workable in that regard, but I sincerely do not believe that applying it to combat adds more than it detracts.
Long Version:
Critical Hit Frequency:In most editions of the game, critical hits are a big deal, and Pathfinder2 is no exception; doubling (or more) the damage of an attack has that effect. Indeed, at the right (or wrong, depending on your perspective) time, a crit can tip the balance of an encounter. The power was offset by the odds of them occurring – needing to roll within the critical threat range of the weapon, and then roll to confirm, ensuring that a single lucky die roll was usually not enough by itself. Even the 3.0 shift to make critical hits much more common due to weapons like the scimitar and rapier still required a confirmation roll, and rarely had broad crit threat ranges on monsters, who were usually 20 or 19-20, with exceptions being fairly rare.
In Pathfinder 2, generating critical hits is primarily a function of your attack bonus, and in that monsters really shine, often boasting numbers no PC could rival. This has the simple effect of making monsters not only crit a lot more than they used to, but having them crit even more than the PCs (at least in my experience).
Given that the basic assumption of almost every encounter that is considered “appropriate” is that the PCs will win, having the random damage spikes of critical hits be more common against the PCs rather than for them seems rather backwards. If the premise of appropriate encounters has changed to be something closer to, say, Shadowrun 4E (which assumes you’ll lose a PC every 3-4 sessions, or so) then the game is really, really not going to feel like Pathfinder. D&D 1st Edition, maybe, but not Pathfinder.
I would prefer that critical hits occur on a natural 20, with the proviso that the attack would still need to hit the target’s AC. This puts critical hits as being rare, but dramatic and notable. In other words, remove the +10/-10 rule from combat roll.
Broadening the Math: Without the +10/-10 critical range on attacks, there is the potential to broaden the math without obliterating the world with critical hits. The multiple attack penalty ensures relevance of AC and attack values significantly off from the median at a given level, and so there is room for more player freedom in character design. To me, a good thing.
Ray’s Weapon Damage Short Version: I would actually prefer to go back to PF1 style damage calculations of scaling flat bonus and scrap the multiple weapon dice paradigm altogether – the value of weapons being driven by their properties, damage die (it still matters a bit) and critical specializations. It puts the focus on the character and their choices of class, feat, ability etc, rather than on the weapon base damage dice.
Long Version:
Potency Runes:Putting the lion’s share of weapon damage in the potency rune does work in terms of raw numbers, but I must admit to really disliking it. I like my PCs, and my players’ PCs, to be awesome. I want choices to matter, and what a character can do be driven by the abilities of the character and the current incarnation of the potency rune does the exact opposite.
It also mandates that I need to hand out potency runes regularly to ensure the PCs keep on track, as the assumption of weapon runes is built into the math. Noting that the front-line fighter in one of my campaigns (which started at 2nd level) only replaced the masterwork greatsword he started with at 12th level. And yes, he was still awesome the whole way. It also has some wording issues, as the rules are a tad confusing with the insistence on using “weapon damage die”, when, in truth, the 4th Edition [W] terminology would actually be a closer representation of the intent – at least going by some discussion I’ve seen the design team involved with on the forums.
In brief, I’d much rather weapon damage be a character-driven thing, not a potency rune thing.
Dice vs Flat Bonus:As far as I can tell, the numbers tally up reasonably well between Pathfinder 1 and 2 in terms of damage per hit – the difference is in how those numbers come about. In PF1, they were generated primarily from flat bonuses based on stats, feats, class features, buffs, magic items and so forth, and your choice of weapon was driven more about what properties (crit, reach, finesse etc) than what the damage die was. In PF2, the damage comes from multiples of weapon damage dice, with only a token amount from everything else (e.g. your Strength).
Now, the PF2 system does make the damage die more valuable (perhaps too valuable), but it also introduces a pile of interesting weapon properties to help differentiate weapons and make the choice not simply about crit properties, making me question whether the weapon die needed to be hyper-emphasized. Indeed, I find the concept of weapon properties to be a much more elegant and satisfying motivation behind choosing a weapon for a character, and having the damage die being such a massive contributor to combat effectiveness actually detracts from awesomeness that is the new weapon properties.
I would much rather go back to PF1 style math, with bonus Strength on two-handed weapons*, class and feat based flat bonuses, and no bonus damage dice except maybe when using the reskinned Vital Strike (and maybe have it scale up, much like the Vital Strike chain did?)…. But then I’d suggest it be a fixed die size – like maybe xd6, with x starting at 1 and scaling with level.
*The math actually works out okay, given that two-handed weapons deal more damage to hit, but light weapons (and Double Slice like effects) make a character more likely to hit with subsequent attacks, with the damage not being dramatically different between them when doing 3 attacks.
Ray’s Number Scaling Short Version: I’d suggest allowing for broader numbers, with proficiency ranks granting +0/+2/+4/+6 for T/E/M/L, and Untrained not adding level at all (no penalty, just no level bonus); ability score boosts not reducing to +1 per boost over 16; and magic items giving less bonuses to skills, and not applying to AC and attack rolls for armor and weapons respectively (quality bonuses still do), but only saves and damage.
The point being to put greater emphasis on the abilities and choices of the character – especially compared with level bonuses - and less on their gear. And give people the choice of actually being untrained (i.e. ‘not improving’) at a skill. I would, in truth, keep the +Level otherwise – as long as other modifiers could make a significant impact next to it.
Long Version:
Taken by itself, I am actually ambivalent about the +level to everything concept, with the exception that I would much prefer untrained should not add level and be simply Stat + Other modifiers (e.g. armor check penalty) (and Perception be a skill again). What I dislike is the minimal numerical benefits that proficiency rank give; For most classes the difference between a “good” save and a “poor” save is a whopping… +1 (barring stat differences), and the fireball aimed at the party has its effectiveness determined not by choices and abilities of the individual, unique and lovingly crafted PCs it is targeting… but by their level, mostly.
I want characters to be able to push the numbers a bit further apart. It doesn’t need to be the gulf of PF1*, but I believe it a more satisfying if it wasn’t the point or two it currently is.
To this end, I would suggest:
Double (at least) the proficiency rank bonus from +1/+2/+3 to +2/+4/+6, to increase the impact these choices have on the game.
Make increased weapon and armor proficiencies at least partially available by general feat. Not everyone needs to be legendary with everything, but expert should be up for grabs at low levels, and mastery at high levels (though typically after certain classes grant it for free). A variant of this would be to include the old 2nd Edition AD&D concept of gaining “weapon proficiencies” you level, in addition to skill increases, allowing a character every few levels to pick a weapon group or armor category to increase their proficiency rank (with level caps, obviously) Possibly including schools of magic in that too.
Change Untrained to be “you never add your level”. No penalty, just no level bonus. It’s untrained, thus, you haven’t trained in it.
Scrap the attack bonus from potency runes and have them deal +1-5 damage per hit (and maybe some other stuff), leaving attack bonuses to weapon quality.
Remove the “ability score boosts grant 1 point if above X” and simply have it be +2 to a score per ability boost. Yes this makes bigger numbers, that is intentional.
Nerf skill boosting items to be +3 at best. Character > Gear, IMHO.
Grant proficiency boosts to magic earlier and more frequently for casters, and without costing a class feat (which weapon proficiencies don’t).
Alternatively, if the base +level bonus was toned back to +1/2 level, and instead ability score bonuses and rank bonuses were allowed to increase further, you could probably wrangle a system generating similar numbers, but with greater real variability between characters. That said, this is more work. Dropping +level altogether would push the game much closer to the 5E paradigm, where groups of ‘lowbie’ monsters are usually more dangerous than a single powerful monster. You can do it, but it does change the entire feel of the game.
*The Number Chasms of PF1: D&D has a weird system of increasing the differences between characters as you level. A wizard starts with 1 levels BAB at 1st level, but ends up 10 less by 20th. And so on. This inevitably meant that as characters reached the higher levels, the GM had the problem that a DC could be set that would be effortless for one character and virtually impossible for another, simply because their numbers had diverged to such an extent by that point. It was one of the things that made the game cumbersome at high levels (though not as much as full attacks).
Narrowing that gap is important for high level play, but I’d argue there needs to be some gap, and it should be based on skill and ability – hence the suggestion to increase the numerical effect of proficiency rank as a starter, and reduce the effectiveness of magic items.
So I don't think I can convince you to like this approach, but I'd like to point out that deciding to give a character challenge appropriate individual skills isn't arbitrary. Or at the very least doesn't have to be. You as a GM can add narrative justification quite easily.
Hmm. I see two immediate issues with this:
The first is that justification is a slippery slope. I've been at the table as a player and GM with people who habitually see how far they can push things. The phrase "it's reasonable..." actually provokes an instant desire to kick someone these days. For example, if it is narratively justified that a 300 year old elf sage NPC has 12hp and a +20 in Arcana, then it is reasonable (or would be, according to some of the folks I have gamed with) that a 300 year old elf sage/1st level wizard PC have a +20 in Arcana too.
The second is the perception of fairness. Many players will be content for the GM to simply allocate the skills and abilities they deem appropriate. Many others will feel cheated that their bonuses and abilities have to be worked for and earned, while the NPC can simply 'have' what they want. This is especially true of the bonus weapon damage dice - many players can quickly reverse engineer numbers, and will be decidedly displeased with the NPCs lack of a potency rune as treasure, while still gaining all the benefits.
Captain Morgan wrote:
On the flip side, having NPCs follow the same level progression as PCs despite vastly different life styles is no less arbitrary and gamey. Why should one's improvement as a basket weaver be proportionate to their BAB, saves, and HP? Because that's how it works at PF1. You can only be so good at a thing without increasing your level, and that carries a bunch of other powers ups that don't make sense outside of Adventuring.
I'd disagree with you on this. NPC classes served the purpose reasonably well. Indeed, a 1st level human commoner 1 village blacksmith could comfortably be at a +9 in Craft (Int 10, 1 rank, 3 class skill, 3 skill focus, 2 prodigy), if that is what he spent his feats on (or higher if given an elite stat array). A 1st level PC can get similar numbers, but are very unlikely to as they have other priorities. Similarly a 10th level commoner blacksmith can hit a +24 while still having the combat capabilities roughly on par with the average town guard.
Don't get me wrong, I won't claim the NPC classes were without flaw, but the basic functionality of the system was sound, and I would advocate something like them being rolled out for Pathfinder 2. Inevitably, I find when people encounter a character with a particular ability, they are curious about where it comes from, at least in part as potential ideas for future characters. The system of feats, class levels and NPC class levels allows unique NPCs to be made from the same rulebook as the PCs.
Currently I find the idea that a Mercenary Scout gets to deal 2 x weapon damage with his non-magical kukri and shortbow, while a PC needs a potency rune to achieve the same to be... dubious. I will withhold judgement until I see the creation rules, however.
Which is a fair criticism as far as verisimilitude goes, and also speaks to an issue with having so much damage tied to PCs magic weapons while not wanting to let every NPC be a treasure trove that breaks WBL.
But that's the system as it currently exists. You can not like it, but you can't deny that it exists, or simply ignore that it allows for stuff like NPCs with vastly better skills than combat abilities or vice-versa.
I never said the system doesn't exist, simply that the code that generates an NPC hasn't been published yet, and while we can attempt to reverse engineer it from some finished (playtest) examples, I would much prefer to see the rules by which they were created. To be fair, yes, some conclusions are easy to draw - that Pathfinder 2nd Edition cleaves much closer to 5E* in NPC design than it does to Pathfinder 1st Edition, but I'd argue we're still only seeing snippets of a larger picture.
*I despised the 5E approach to NPCs so much I wrote homebrew NPC class levels (and corresponding "challenge" chart) specifically to get around it.
Captain Morgan wrote:
[paraphrasing for brevity, as the full text is only a few posts back]On NPCs simply being granted the skill levels they need to present the appropriate challenge numbers, due to "lifestyle".
You make a good argument, and it may well be the case that NPCs are expected to simply 'have' the appropriate skills in order to produce the Table 10-2 DCs, which would alleviate the "does every con artist have to match the PCs level" concern.
That being said, I am genuinely not sure if the arbitrary assignment of numbers is actually a preferable approach. For monsters, where their stats represent natural abilities - keen senses of smell, massive hulking frames, supernatural reflexes etc - simply assigning the numbers is actually sensible. For NPCs whose abilities are primarily learned, it feels somewhat cheap.
The argument of lifestyle has a problem: It assumes that all PCs are young whippersnappers who haven't done anything with their lives before they become adventurers (or taking a PC level grants amnesia?).
If you write a background for a middle-aged 1st level PC that they've spent the last two decades working as a smith in a village and raising their children... only to have the village burned to the ground by goblins, and now they've hefted their old smithing hammer and are out to enact vengeance... cool character, but because they're now a 1st level fighter with the Blacksmith background, they're going to suck at Craft. Especially compared to any NPC with two decades of smithing work under their belt, even if they have the combat statistics of a kitten.
Taking the example further, perhaps the 1st level PC party attempted to stop the village being burned down, and one of them died in the battle, saving the established-NPC-smith's life in the process. The player decides that the events would make an awesome character background, and asks whether they can play the smith from hereon, knowing them to be less combat capable than their old PC. As the GM... what do you do? You may not have intended the smith to live or PC to die, but that is the situation at hand, and an awesome story moment has arrived: Do you refuse, on the grounds that the Smith is built as an NPC; Do you accept, and either rebuild the NPC into a PC fighter (or get the player to do it), nerfing their skills to the ground in the process? Do you accept and hand over the stat block as-is, and suggest they 'count as 1st level', and can add class levels thereafter? In Pathfinder 1 said Smith could well simply be a 2nd level commoner with Skill Focus - easy to rebuild into a fighter without too much difference, or even hand it over and let the PC essentially retrain the levels over time, losing a bit of XP in the process to keep them on par with the rest of the party.
In short, because NPCs represent people, and their abilities represent what they have learned, I am dubious about a system where the rules extensively differ, depending on whether or not a player is currently in control of a character.
an NPC who has minimal combat threat can prove a challenging orator for the PCs to go up against, and conversely an NPC that would be overwhelming to face in combat (at that level) is a viable social challenge for a lower level party. Pathfinder 2nd Edition shackles all the numbers together, limiting the range of scenes I can run. I understand why, and the motivation behind the Great Unification of Numbers, but I don't think it adds to the game as much as it detracts, personally.
That isn't actually true. NPCs don't follow the same rules as PCs. Even within Doomsday Dawn we have NPCs whose skills far outmatch their level or combat ability.
I had noticed that NPC numbers diverged somewhat from what you'd expect from the level + stat + proficiency rank method, though without a published ruleset to creating NPCs*, it is hard to argue conclusively either way.
*And given the number (at least from my experience) of former PCs that become NPCs, or NPCs that become adventuring companions, cohorts, partners or even PCs, a solid system for creating NPCs and converting NPCs is needed.
Currently I find the idea that a Mercenary Scout gets to deal 2 x weapon damage with his non-magical kukri and shortbow, while a PC needs a potency rune to achieve the same to be... dubious. I will withhold judgement until I see the creation rules, however.
Captain Morgan wrote:
You can still have NPCs who are bad any given thing, just don't build them using PC rules. PCs are meant to be exceptions in their world, not the norm.
While I don't believe monsters need to be built using PC rules (it does odd things to math and balance, especially at high levels), I would argue that if a PC has an identical twin sibling who is an NPC, they should, out of a sense of fairness be capable of achieving roughly the same numbers if they make the same choices. If the NPC twin is able to do thing a PC is not, I am curious as to why the heroic protagonist is more restricted than the bystander.
Again, the NPC creation rules (and monster creation rules, for that matter) need to be published to better understand the intent of the system.
I have the same fighter as you do, although the attack bonus is +17 (your breakdown is correct; the sum's just off), and faced him up against a Treant (AC 25, CR 8) for benchmarking
Fun Math Time:
Hypothetical fighter:
Str 19, Dex 16, Con 16, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 10
+1 greatsword, +1 breastplate*
Attack +17/+12/+7 3d12+4
AC 27 (Touch 25); HP 117; Fort +13, Ref +13, Will +11
Speed 20ft; Perception +13
* Breastplate because there is no sense in using heavy armor and eating the extra bulk, ACP and speed reduction if Dex is easily accumulated, and Heavy Armor expert doesn't happen till 11th.
Against the treant (average 23.5 damage per hit, 47 per crit)
50% chance of hit + 15% chance of crit [Av 18.8]
35% chance of hit + 5% chance of crit [Av 10.6]
10% chance of hit + 5% chance of crit [Av 4.7]
Average damage per round of full swinging: 34.1 (23.5% of its hp). Adding the efforts of the rest of the party, the treant is likely to go down in 2-3 rounds.
Treant vs Fighter (averaging 20 per hit and 40 per crit)
50% chance to hit + 10% chance to crit [Av 14]
30% chance to hit + 5% chance to crit [Av 8]
5% chance to hit + 5% chance to crit [Av 3]
Average damage per round of full swinging: 25 (21.3% of his hp)
In the 2-3 rounds the treant gets to live, it will likely bludgeon away about half the fighter's max hit points. That seems a bit brutal for an APL-1 encounter, but arguably fair with Treat Wounds being a thing... until we give up the last attack and have him command his two animated trees to flank.
Treant branch 50% chance to hit + 20% chance to crit [Av 18]
Treant branch 40% chance to hit + 5% chance to crit [Av 10]
Tree branch 50% chance to hit + 5% chance to crit [Av 10.2]
Tree branch 25% chance to hit + 5% chance to crit [Av 6]
Tree branch 0% chance to hit + 5% chance to crit [Av 1.7]
Tree branch 50% chance to hit + 5% chance to crit [Av 10.2]
Tree branch 25% chance to hit + 5% chance to crit [Av 6]
Tree branch 0% chance to hit + 5% chance to crit [Av 1.7]
Average damage: 63.7 (54% of his hp).
And that's average. If I could be bothered running a statistical analysis on the odds of rolling sufficiently high to get extra crits and hits, I could come up with a probability of fighter annihilation within one round... I suspect I wouldn't much like the number.
It feels like an APL-1 encounter in Pathfinder 2nd Edition doesn't quite mean the same thing it did in 1st.
But this was said in the context of OP saying +level drowned out build choices in effectiveness. Everything gets +level, so if you're comparing what kind of character you make and how your build choices affect that, it doesn't matter.
As the Original Poster, I will disagree with you slightly on this: I acknowledged that + level is a scaling factor, my concern is that between it, magic item bonuses and the d20 roll, the overall impact of the character is extremely limited. Indeed, the single largest impact is the Untrained penalty (which never applies to Perception/Sense Motive).
Also, it should be noted that while a +1 is a +5% on the d20 roll, how that works in the probability of outcome isn't exactly the same. E.g. if two characters at the same level and ability score, but one is trained and the other is legendary in a skill, the difference is +3, which translates to the legendary character rolling better than his companion 62% of the time. You could argue that is appropriate... but I think 'legendary' is overstating the benefit slightly.
You are correct in that at-level encounters cancel out the level scaling effect, however I would argue that, especially in social encounters that at-level is a poor assumption. Deception and Diplomacy have all uses available to the untrained, and all characters are trained in Perception (which doubles for Sense Motive). Because high level characters aren't permitted to be truly bad at anything, and low level characters aren't permitted to break the bounded-for-combat-accuracy curve, social skills challenges essentially become level checks.
As a GM, dramatic social scenes - testimony before parliament, trials, exposing-of-traitorous-viziers etc - are among my favourite scenes to run, and usually loved by my players. Part of running such scenes is being able to moderate social skill levels separately to combat ability - an NPC who has minimal combat threat can prove a challenging orator for the PCs to go up against, and conversely an NPC that would be overwhelming to face in combat (at that level) is a viable social challenge for a lower level party. Pathfinder 2nd Edition shackles all the numbers together, limiting the range of scenes I can run. I understand why, and the motivation behind the Great Unification of Numbers, but I don't think it adds to the game as much as it detracts, personally.
RazarTuk wrote:
I actually did the math as part of my analysis of TWF, and Power Attack is nearly always a trap. Once potency runes start entering the equation, a second attack will always be more useful.
As I read it, the potency rune increases your weapon damage, (borrowing from 4E) thus causing [W] for a greatsword to be 1d12, 2d12 for a +1 greatsword or 3d12 for a +2 greatsword. Power Attack I read as being basically +1[W] damage, which seemed consistent with some of Mark Seifter's early comments on the forums... though I could be mistaken.
It does literally read as "you deal an extra weapon damage die", which is very definitely singular.
RazarTuk wrote:
I have the same fighter as you do, although the attack bonus is +17 (your breakdown is correct; the sum's just off), and faced him up against a Treant (AC 25, CR 8) for benchmarking.
Apparently basic summation gives me troubles when in transit >_<
