Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber. Organized Play Member. 729 posts. No reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 6 Organized Play characters.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Drone rules seem to have several errors/things to clarify. They basically say "use animal companion rules" but then invent new names for things anyway.
- 4th level has Tactical Drone, which makes it a mature companion
- 8th level has Refined Chassis, which lets it become "a graceful or burly companion" (let's pretend it says nimble/savage since graceful/burly aren't defined anywhere)
- 14th level has Advanced Drone, pictured above, (which we can pretend says it requires Refined Chassis and grants specialization like the druid/beastmaster feats at this level since advanced companion isn't defined anywhere)
- 18th level has Elite Drone, which requires Superior Drone (which doesn't exist, but is also a prereq for a level 16 feat that gives more options), which let's it become specialized (!!!) way later than equivalent other companions and makes the point of the 14th feat even less clear
Also 3rd-level mechanics with drones get an ability called Synchronized Step which is a flourish single action that allows both the mechanic and drone to stride. How that interacts with the normal companion action rules is completely unclear, so the safest thing to do is assume it doesn't and it's basically just an easy way to further break enhance the action economy of drone companions. Also there's a feat that gives drone companions (and turrets) a reactive shot, which is cool, though it presumably uses your reaction and not the companion's (which doesn't have one).
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
For some reason, the PDF for this is enormous - it's 192 MB. By contrast, the core rulebook is about 80 MB. The entire Kingmaker AP + the Companion Guide together weigh in at about 160 MB.
Most individual AP volumes weigh in between about 20-50 MB.
Can someone please fix the PDF? It's large enough that it's actually inconvenient - it looks like Gatewalkers 3 has a similar (but not as bad) issue, as does the new Starfinder Drift Hackers volume (109 MB). Starfinder Adventure Path PDFs have had similar issues in the past, too.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Also, the mod team has had a significant amount of changes in the last 18 months or so. Any events prior to that aren't necessarily reflective of the current mod team's sensibilities. While I'm not familiar with the post in question, it would, at least, surprise me if no action would be taken by the current team if we saw something like that reported. As described, it would likely at least be a violation of rule 2: Be Kind and Respectful.
That said, we also don't get into specifics on moderation actions taken with other users. If you see objectionable content, please report it.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Snake0202 wrote:
Corey White 200 wrote:
Snake0202 wrote:
Swiftbrook wrote:
Roboconn wrote:
I cant find the west wing in the interactive maps. Am I blind?
If you are, so am I. No west wing.
I emailed support about the west wing. I was told they are fixing it and we should get an update soon.
any updates on this? also noticed issues with map labels not showing up on the maps but under them.
I think Support must have been mistaken when the emailed me. They told me it’s already been updated to include the west wing but it clearly has not.
I can confirm that it has been, now. The "Date Download Last Updated" shows it was updated October 25th. You may need to click the Problems downloading this file? Click here link to regenerate it.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
emky wrote:
Paizo really needs to stop being the outlier on "buying the book doesn't get you the PDF". Even if just through your own store and not universally like through Bits and Mortar.
They offer this as part of their subscription benefits, and they have for...13 years or so? I got my launch PF1 core rulebook with a free PDF and kept that subscription active through all but 2 rulebooks, I think.
My Kingmaker 1e books came with PDFs with the subscription, too.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
I plan to change the proficiency bonus of Untrained Kingdom skills from a flat 0 (at all levels) to Level -2 instead.
In the early game, this will have almost no impact, but at higher levels this will prevent scaling Control DCs from making a substantial percentage of checks effectively impossible.
some of the factors that make this a helpful approach:
Kingdom rules are kind of like an alternate PF2e universe where:
- There were only 4 attributes
- Each one tied to 4 skills, for a total of 16 skills
- Every check uses one of the skills
- Almost every important check was tied to a DC based on the PC's level (almost, but not exactly the table in PF2e's default level-based DCs)
- There was only a single PC in the party, so no way to get someone else to cover the skills
- The single PC got 6 trained skills, but could give up feat slots or skill increases (gets 9 of each) to become trained in more
And as a result:
- Untrained skills gradually become catastrophically bad, and at higher levels gradually become guaranteed fail/crit-fails. The PC is forced to become trained in those skills, giving up feats or other proficiency increases, or accept terrible results on 10 of 16 skills.
I did some quick math, assuming the use of control DC, that size bonuses to those DCs increase (at levels 5, 10, 14, and 18), with the maximum attribute bonus (+4 to +6 at 20), with full status bonuses from leaders, with maximum item bonus for level (often not even possible, since they tend to be for specific uses of a skill), with no circumstance bonus, and with no penalties of any kind.
- The required roll to succeed on an untrained check goes from 8 to 32 (at levels 1 and 20, and again, this is mostly best case scenario). At level 10 you only succeed (with a crit) on a nat 20 (and you crit fail on a 10), from levels 11 to 17 a nat 20 only gets a success (crit fail from 12 to 18), and from 18 to 20 a nat 20 is the only way to not crit fail.
- The impact of this is that things that were pretty possible untrained (like Establish Farmland or Go Fishing) gradually become impossible (and you usually trigger the crit fails for a Crop Failure or lost fishers to tragic accidents).
I would strongly recommend GMs tackle this in one of a few ways:
- The simplest to implement (and what I plan to do) is to change Untrained to scale with level, e.g., "level -2." DCs scale faster than level, so untrained skills will still gradually get harder to succeed with but generally still be possible under good conditions. They'll still lag behind trained (effectively at a -4), and will still be unable to do anything that requires trained. It's also very slightly worse at level 1 versus the base rules (proficiency gives -1 total instead of 0), but that's very minor.
- A harder approach would be to manually determine which specific kingdom skill use cases should use non-scaling DCs (there are a few in the story, but really the only thing in the kingdom rules that doesn't is construction of specific buildings). This would also have an impact that higher-level kingdoms basically autosucceed at stuff that was possible for low-level kingdoms.
- Somewhere in the middle is granting extra trained skills (maybe one for each leader role filled simultaneously), which still has catastrophic outcomes for some skills later, but just those specific skills (I'm not really a fan of this).
- Add an alternate use for fame/infamy points, maybe for a guaranteed success
- Add ways for the party to deal with the problems outside of the kingdom turns (which is called out for on a bunch of events as areas where the GM could add a quest)
Some side effects of level -2 to untrained skills:
- The players are less likely to spend kingdom feats/skill increases on new trained skills. This seems fine, generally. It's still going to be tempting as the jump from untrained to trained is still +4.
- The players might want more feats to pick from - they get 1 free, can pick 9, and there are only 17 in the book, so I might homebrew up a few more.
- The kingdom is more likely to have a couple of skills it's just great at, as the players can spend them boosting skills up to legendary if they want. This mostly just keeps them at the same spot on the treadmill they were at level 1 if they were trained in the skill, anyway, due to the increased scaling for DCs.
There are also a few mitigations possible for the party to tackle through optimization:
– They could spend a bunch of kingdom feats/skill increases on getting skills trained, but it feels almost forced. Probably mostly burning feats is the smarter call (even if it takes nearly all of them); since DCs scale, the only way to keep your top skills as easy at endgame as they were at the beginning is by boosting them up toward Legendary. There's also a bunch of buildings that require trained/expert/master to build at all.
- They can do a lot of "Focused Attention" to get +2 circumstance bonuses. This is basically "aid" without penalty for failing the initial aid roll. The DC stays at 20 so it can become very reliable for trained skills. The Cooperative Leadership feat makes the benfit a +3, and when the kingdom reaches level 11 you can't crit fail at the aided check.
- They could get a few other feats that make dealing with bad skills easier, like Practical Magic (making it cheaper to hire adventurers to solve problems + letting you roll magic for engineering) or Pull Together (flat check to turn critical failure into failure, not quite as effective when you're critically failing checks often).
- They could embrace Magic and Supernatural Solution as the cure to all issues, prepping those in advance for skills that you know you'll roll, and trading Resource Points for competence elsewhere. This is still really good with non-catastrophic Untrained proficiency, but not as necessary.
Some related challenges with skills:
- Feats tend to give status bonuses of +1, despite it being trivial to start even your first Kingdom turn with +1 status bonuses to all skills (from 4 invested leaders across one role for each attribute). So for a lot of feats the math increase is useless out of the gate; it's probably worth changing those to circumstance bonuses
- Kingdom size DC increases mostly negate the automatic increases in status bonuses from invested leaders
- Assurance mostly won't succeed against control DCs due to DCs outscaling trained proficiency and size DC increases affecting the DC, not the roll
- Kingdom events almost exclusively require a single skill to resolve (there are basically two story ones that have alternatives)
- For random events, they're basically not going to benefit from item bonuses (from structures) because they won't be the specific skill use
- Random events are also harder to plan for, since you didn't know they were going to come up so you probably didn't use Focused Attention or Supernatural Solution for the skill earlier in the kingdom turn.
- Event DC modifiers range from -1 to +2 for random events, but are almost all +0 or +1
- Story events change the Event DC modifier range to -2 to +4 (!!!) but are more likely to have alternate resolutions (like "go do a thing")
- Even a single point of unrest gives you a -1 penalty to every kingdom skill check; if you're at war, for instance, you get these every turn
- Bad things that happen tend to give unrest/ruin, making further bad things more likely, so presumably kingdom roll penalty death spirals are a real possibility
- Random events can give circumstance bonuses if a specific leader is a PC - for a party of 4, it can be a little better/worse than 50/50 depending on which 4 roles are filled by PCs
- A bunch of buildings require trained/expert/master to build (none require legendary), so spending skill increases on just "trained" can cut off some options
- Skills aren't created equal, but some of this is hidden from players (for example, 4 of the 16 skills are not used by random or story events)
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Aaron Shanks wrote:
willfromamerica wrote:
Will Adventure Path subscribers be able to get a PDF included with their purchase of the physical book? I'm guessing the answer is no, but you know, wishful thinking!
While it is our normal for us to offer subscribers a complimentary PDF if they preorder, we are not doing that this time due to the crowdfunding origin of this product line.
I'll just say that, as a crowdfunding backer who has received both my books and my PDFs (who also has a lot of subscriptions):
It neither benefits me nor takes anything away from what I have to give non-backer subscribers PDFs for pre-order.
Just like it didn't take anything away from me when Paizo gave the crowdfunding backers PDFs for the original Kingmaker AP issues, despite doing nothing for me due to the fact I already had both physical and PDF copies from my subscription during the original run a decade + ago.
I'd encourage your decision-maker on that point to reconsider.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
I am also a big fan of Sumatra Reader on PC, and the only thing I don't like about Xodo on Android is the subscription pricing model for the full features and the inability to set a fully black background without it.
But yeah, inconsistent compression and the Starfinder AP issues being weirdly huge really needs to be fixed. They eat storage on portable devices in a really unpleasant way.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Ly'ualdre wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe the developer behind the Kineticist has stated at one point that they have every intention of bringing the Kineticist over as a Full Class in 2e. That may not be what happens, but the intention seems to be there. Between that and fan desire, I'd be surprised to see it as anything less.
Two points:
- The folks who build new rules (and particular classes) are the designers at Paizo, not developers. The developers largely "develop" those rules and whatnot into adventures.
- As I recall, Mark Seifter did the main design on the original kineticist for Paizo. He's also someone who is very careful not to speak in absolutes about future plans that aren't announced and cleared. I would be very surprised if there was a statement along the lines of "every intention of bringing the kineticist over as a full class in 2e."
That said, there's certainly been commentary from Paizo staffers (including from Mark, during his time there) that it is a frequently requested class, and that if there's an opportunity where it makes sense it's entirely possible it reappears.
Sadly, as Mark Seifter has left Paizo, it's much less likely that he leads the design effort in particular. Classes aren't something that Paizo is going to generally use a freelancer for, but maybe it would be a nice exception for at least the initial pass. The PF2e design team is still great and would do a nice job, but having the original PF1 class designer would be a nice touch for kineticist fans.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Tonya Woldridge wrote:
We absolutely missed our deadline, I am so sorry. I had to do emergency dental work that took me out of the office Mon and yesterday. We've been working to pull things together today, but didn't make it.
At this time, we don't have any tickets to sell. Given our reduced capacity of 500 people and that we rolled tickets from 2020 to 2022, we've been processing returns to see what space we would have. I'm working to contact ticketholders now and we are going to extend the date for returns. I hope that we will have tickets to offer and will keep the group updated.
I'm working on a blog for next week that will have the hotel information and the new dates for returns, as well as some other show news. To those of our community who were looking for ticket sales today, I am very sorry for not updating earlier!
It's been 3 full weeks since this post. Are there any updates? I don't wan to buy plane tickets if there's a decent chance my convention ticket won't be usable because you've oversold and there's a lottery or something to decide who can attend.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Note that I think it's super neat when you go to a museum or something and see people actually cleaning fossilized dinosaur bones or whatever, but *man* I would hate that if it were me trying to do my regular job with randos watching.
I remember going to the Smithsonian Zoo and going in the panda building where there was a room with several zoo folks watching monitors and pointing at it while talking. I have zero ideas what they possibly could have been talking about. All the pandas were in full-on sleep mode. I swung by again before I left the zoo and the pandas were still sleeping but the panda zookeeper "exhibit" was also empty.
Anyway, pandas are hugely disappointing. The CS team is not, even if we no longer get to watch them work.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
The other thing that was super weird about posting issues in the forum was that their order was changed if someone posted a thing in response. So when the CS team started on oldest to newest, some random other person could set a post back to the "end of the line" just by adding a comment like "I am also curious about this." It also meant friendly posters could answer the question if it wasn't something that CS specifically needed to address, but that was mostly useful when there was a huge backlog and sadly the person who often did that in a helpful way requested their account be deactivated (which I only know because it was public, on the forums - just an "interesting" observation).
Anyway, I think it's clear that there were many good reasons for consolidating communications channels and funneling them to a ticketing system. Duplicate issues like that must have been such a nightmare. Whatever community effect is lost by not seeing the tickets worked in real-time like we're watching the CS team work behind a big glass window is worth the reduction in workload by having to correlate issues across multiple systems.
I also agree that customers getting an automatic notice that the ticket exists is a no-brainer, and am surprised it wasn't set up that way already.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Any way that oft-requested image could be posted to the GM forum for the AP or something? It would be immediately helpful for those of us actively running the existing volumes of the campaign.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Hey, xNellynelx, there's a pretty easy way to get images out of Paizo's PDFs, which also solves the weird transparency issues that sometimes occur with the "save as" method.
Big thing there is use TokenTool, which has been updated to include exporting to webp format and to export all the images at once.
I can confirm it reads the Night of Gray Death map image on page 9 just fine, and because the text isn't actually part of the image, that is not included in the extract, just like you want.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Hey, there's a pretty easy way to get images out of Paizo's PDFs, which also solves the weird transparency issues that sometimes occur with the "save as" method.
Big thing there is use TokenTool, which has been updated to include exporting to webp format and to export all the images at once.
I can confirm it reads the Night of Gray Death map image on page 9 just fine, and because the text isn't actually part of the image, that is not included in the extract, just like you want.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
EpicBookWorm wrote:
Sorry, I didn't realize that the question was unfriendly. My English is poor. Please forgive it.
Your English is fine, and there is nothing to forgive. You just had the misfortune of asking the same question as a bunch of trolls for whom kindness is a second language. Those folks like to start with supposedly innocent questions and then use out-of-context answers in arguments.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
EpicBookWorm wrote:
Hello James. Does the reply here represent the official attitude of Paizo or your personal opinion?
I'm going to assume this is being asked in good faith. James answers a lot of questions on a lot of topics. I doubt Paizo will ever have an official position on Mario movie casting.
I'd encourage you to take a look through the history of this thread to get a sense of this, but James offers his personal opinions and does not try to speak for Paizo as a whole. There is rarely an "official attitude of Paizo" even for Paizo content, since Paizo's work is made by people with diverse viewpoints.
For questions aimed at James, your best bets are stuff that align to his role as creative director and things he's personally worked on. Even things like the lore of Golarion, for which he is and has been a driving force since the beginning, is built from contributions of many different people. Sometimes he has final say on Pathfinder lore stuff, sometimes not.
Additionally, the answer to a lot of questions is and will be expected to vary in home games, because a lot is left to the GMs.
Beyond that, he is a source of good gaming advice generally.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
The parts that I think are really important:
- An actual HR person again. This is a dumb vacancy. If they empower this person to protect upper management from themselves, it can help a lot (eventually). Although it's also not a magic bullet or anything. Dedicated HR staff aren't going to magically change the company culture, and most of their day-to-day job shouldn't have anything to do with escalating complaints to leadership and dealing with toxic managers.
- No longer mandatory to share hotel rooms (directly addresses one of the complaints)
- Work from home through at least the rest of the year (the least they can do, but still)
- The continued effort to put more management in Creative (and elsewhere). Bear in mind that, over the last couple of years, some really kind, dedicated people have been promoted to manager roles. This is the kind of change that makes a real impact to the organization. Tragically, one of them leaving was actually part of the catalyst for this whole mess. Still, they're not universally selecting for ruthless toadies or anything. And at least one of those managers has implemented pipeline development to reduce the instances of conflicting critical-path deadlines and the resulting crunch.
Whether that does anything to address the specific situation that led to the CS team departures is beyond my capacity to evaluate.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Azih wrote:
This is a thought experiment more than anything else. Really what I'm pointing out is that I care far more about talented, creative, and dedicated people than companies.
Basically I would follow what someone like a Louis Loza, or Eleanor Ferron, or Logan Bonner would do in the future with far more interest than Paizo Inc.
Both Luis and Logan have released ancestries as PDFs. Logan's pnoll and Luis's rabbitfolk are both inexpensive and available immediately.
Most people aren't aware of them, because, frankly, it's really hard to beat the marketing of a sizeable company with dedicated staff for it, with subscriptions, a web team, etc.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
David knott 242 wrote:
I have noticed that Diego has received many recommendations from Paizo folks for future employment, but I have seen no such recommendations for Sara Marie. On the other hand, I cannot imagine Sara Marie doing anything that would justify that treatment of her.
Also, Mark Moreland did in his tweet on the topic. Most Paizo staffers haven't tweeted anything outside of responses to Diego’s tweet, as pointed out by Steve.
If it were me, it would probably take a few days to put my thoughts together. But I don't even have a Twitter account, so I'm more inclined to write a recommendation on LinkedIn or offer to be a reference.
I think calling them a whistleblower is really exaggerating. They say there's tension between staff and management/executives, and there has been for some time. They don't confirm anything specific, just the general morale hit this is adding to that tension.
That said, I think it's generally a well written post and rings true.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
dirtypool wrote:
I do think it's a bit odd to be more willing to accept an anonymous insider denying the Twitter threads claims while claiming that there are serious alternate problems beyond just the firing and walk-out than to accept the public facing claims that are co-signed by other former employees.
I agree, with a heavy caveat. When you get really specific to which claims are explicitly being retweeted or responded to by both current and former staff, they don't cover some of the bigger things.
Since Twitter is a nightmare to follow, it's actually really hard to do that. I think a few folks here are creating a "this was corroborated" viewpoint for every claim simply through lack of specificity then others reading that and taking it at face value.
I think generally speaking, the main thing is that no one has a bad word to say about Sara Marie, Diego, or Lu. And there are varying degrees of bad things about executive management and the current structure above customer service, specifically, that have been corroborated but nothing super specific to Sara Marie.
Your central point is really correct, so it bears repeating. An anonymous redditor should be looked at with at least as much skepticism as any of the claims.
But, frankly, I doubt we'll ever get the full story just because that's not how things work. You can't distill years of experiences, good and bad, into a narration of the culminating event. An argument about returning to the office, if indeed that's what it was, isn't in isolation. It's in the context of existing work relationships and whatever level of trust previously existed in both directions. And in the context of trying to stay employed/employable in an industry where everyone knows each other (or at least of each other) because there just aren't many big players.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Andy Brown wrote:
Cyouni wrote:
Mark Moreland (and technically Logan Bonner, by like proxy) said this in response
Man says "I never saw the problems", so they never happened.
Really?
That's not the same thing.
And in my experience, if you are an ethical and forthright person, a lot of the shady stuff and abuse will always be hearsay because people won't do it around you.
Even as hearsay, if you're in a leadership position a lot of people won't tell you because they'll assume you know and are complicit or they just don't know you well enough because they don't work with you directly.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
The flip side, from a manager's perspective, is that once a working relationship has deteriorated to the point of termination, it's probably best for all parties to have it happen sooner rather than later.
I would probably be more upset if the story were that Sara Marie and team had worked a bunch of extra hours to get through Gen Con and then she was fired anyway once her immediate usefulness was gone.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
dirtypool wrote:
RicoTheBold wrote:
Ctrl-F "royalties"
It's a throwaway line in the fourth paragraph of your unsolicited attempt to use your expertise to educate us about IT issues to... I guess let Paizo off the hook for that charge?
If you bury the lede in your communications, don't expect everyone to go on a fishing expedition to find it.
The post I was replying to didn't even mention it at all, and I narrowed my quotation to just the specific IT issue, which only had one contentious issue to potentially take with a grain of salt. The context was in the Twitter thread, and while obviously I didn't go out of my way to write a full explanation for anyone not currently aware of the context, I didn't think it was needed.
I'm sorry for not spelling it out more, for what it's worth.
I don't really have anything else to say on this, and would encourage the topic to get back to the real issues.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
dirtypool wrote:
They weren't talking about the long held claims of it being cost prohibitive. They were talking about the alleged revelation in the Tweet thread that one of the lead Paizo programmers receives royalties for remaining with this iteration of the forum/website.
I addressed that specifically, and the post was written with that context.
An objective cost analysis, irrespective of any potential conflicts of interest, is still more likely than not to have "big transformative project" cost more than "keep this one chugging along" particularly if it involves buying a new product or entering a new recurring licensing model.
It might not, I'm just saying the royalty thing should be taken with a grain of salt.
(note: I quote, sell, and manage big transformative IT projects for a living)
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
This is dumb relative to the importance of the issue, but: rebuttal is a noun. The topic should ask Paizo if they care to rebut, or if they care to provide a rebuttal.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Mergy wrote:
Also, the stuff about why the janky forums were never upgraded makes a lot of things make more sense now.
That's one of the claims that should be taken with a grain of salt. Big IT projects are expensive and replacing legacy systems is always a complex decision.
Imagine, for a moment, that the perfect forum existed tomorrow - but all of the historical posts couldn't be imported.
That's customer service stuff gone, play by post games abruptly ended, a decade of advice on running specific adventure paths gone, etc.
The current software guy gave a really good answer on why replacing the webstore with some new commercial off-the-shelf product is hard for Paizo, and similar answers are going to exist whether or not someone gets royalties.
Even without the sunk cost fallacy, implementing new stuff is expensive, and you still end up with some new set of bugs and quirks to replace the old ones.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Knowing that whatever is said by people (particularly in Twitter rants) tends to lack context or be the most extreme version of events, the inflammatory version of anything, and tempering reactions accordingly: this still looks bad on Paizo.
Every customer who has logged into the forums and checked on the customer service threads for subscription or other related info knows this has been a ridiculously tough year for Paizo's customer service team. And literally the only complaint of substance I've seen is that they were slow to respond while working through a huge backlog.
If I knew nothing else, the fact that two of her team members quit in support of Sara Marie is sufficient for me to suspect who is in the wrong. I've worked at small companies and very large ones, and seen a lot of little things get blown out of proportion, and other things get misinterpreted by those without the details. This could be one of those, but I doubt it. I certainly don't presume to know the quality of Sara Marie's non-public-facing work, but it says a lot that Diego and Lulu left, too.
To the Paizo leadership team being called out directly for specific actions: You can be a competent, effective boss 99% of the time and a problematic boss 1% of the time and still be toxic as hell. If multiple people are quitting solely to not work for you anymore, you're toxic.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
CrimsonKnight wrote:
what stings is when the FLGS has the book on the shelf and as a subscriber I don't have even the PDF. some times for months "waiting to ship". It is hard not to see malice. there is a lot it wont carry and I like my Special Editions
Yeah, looking at your post history - your GMG shipping late was clearly an error and customer service corrected it the same day you posted about it. (That, frankly, is a minor miracle - for much of those eight months they had a huge backlog.)
Part of the point of the customer service threads is to create a place where people can see the status of the shipping to confirm if something is wrong. If they say they've completed the orders and yours is stuck somewhere, let them know ASAP.
It's dumb that it happened, though, and unfortunate that you had to specifically request help to get it resolved.
Paizo's website, including the purchasing system as a whole, definitely isn't their strong suit. But IT, like international shipping logistics, is hard. I'd much rather Paizo spend money on more artists/designers/developers/editors to make their products than revamping their website/distribution processes where they are currently "good enough." (I can't fully make that determination because I don't know what pain points they have on the back end.)
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Old_Man_Robot wrote:
TriOmegaZero wrote:
Yes, unfounded customer expectations are a part of business.
People literally have their copies right now. It’s not unfounded, yes it’s not guaranteed, but actually happens with every single release.
If it happens for some, it should happen for all or no one. We pay the same money for the same product. There should not be uneven fulfilment of the digital side of the order.
Ah. So from my earlier post, you actually would prefer that people lose early PDF access if you can't get it. Got it.
That is disappointingly spiteful.
It's also silly, because - those people will often still get the books earlier, just the physical copy, and it will still be dependent on order of shipping, just adding in transit time (which is still mostly dependent on proximity to Seattle). And those at the back of the queue are even more likely to get PDFs after street date. That feels...worse? Like, it's exactly the same except that those who are further away have to wait even longer to access their books most months (where shipping happens before street date).
I'm assuming that substantial compression of Paizo's shipping timeframe cannot be done without undue cost, because - there are physical limits to how many things they can move at once and it's reasonable to assume they've looked at that before.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Old_Man_Robot wrote:
Another possible option is a “donate” feature. Where by some method I could donate my copy of the physical book to some US based underprivileged gaming society, or added as inventory for something like a humble bundle, but with the condition that I get digital fulfilment at the US rate than my own.
I like the idea of a donate option, though, and the fact that you would like your physical copies to someone more needing reflects well on you. That said, it also undermines much of your point.
Why not just buy the PDF at street date? If donating the physical copy is a "solution" then this all boils down to street date. Frankly, the "fairest" thing for Paizo to do would be to release access to PDFs to everyone on the street date - which they sometimes do, mostly for GenCon releases.
As someone who is usually (but not always) fortunate enough to get earlier shipping than street date, that'd be a net negative for me. But it also wouldn't impact my choice to subscribe, because subscribing makes sense for me largely regardless of timeline. It definitely feels bad to get access to my PDF later than street date on a highly-anticipated book, though. It's happened to me. I don't begrudge the people who happened to luck out on the shipping lottery, though.
Would you prefer if Paizo stopped granting early access to PDFs for everyone when their order shipped? That's potentially useful feedback for them, but also doesn't accomplish earlier access for you. It only hurts other subscribers.
But to your stated goals:
If all I wanted, 100%, was the digital copy - I'd pick it up by itself at or after street date. I do that for Starfinder rulebooks. It's slightly more inconvenient that I have to log in and make the purchase, but frankly I have to do a bunch of that to download it anyway, so it's not much more of a hassle.
If all I wanted was the earliest possible access to the digital asset, regardless of the cost: I'd accept that it's largely out of my control. If I lived somewhere that typically shipped earlier, I'd subscribe. If I lived somewhere that typically shipped later, I'd buy the PDF at street date.
"Regardless of the cost" is a significant consideration, though, when the physical book+shipping will more than double the cost. Paying a ton for access 0-15 days early (which is about the earliest I've gotten an item, which actually was the physical copy of PF2e at launch because they start shipping even earlier for that launch) doesn't make sense to me. Paying a ton for early access when it's not guaranteed because it's not actually the point of a subscription makes even less sense to me.
Personally, I'm not surprised when international shipping directly from a product supplier is more expensive/a worse experience than buying from a retailer. That's a big part of why retailers exist. I take that into consideration when determining how I buy things, along with other factors like whether I want to pay for the retailer's cut or have it go directly to the supplier.
It sounds like subscriptions aren't a great deal for you, but as much as anything else it sounds like the shipping date is the big issue, and several Paizo folks have replied directly to that concern.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Poboy wrote:
What I do, to make it easier for me - as someone who exclusivley used milestone leveling his whole life - is to use the Goblin Figh Club Encounter creator:
https://pathfinder.bulik.dev/
I just set the level of the PCs then add the appropiate level of monsters, even if the library doesn't have all the module specific monsters I just use a different one of the same level, and it does the math for me. Super easy and helps me a lot :)
As a general rule (i.e., it seems to hold up but I didn't do an exhaustive analysis to prove it) the earned XP totals for encounters are easy to adjust on the fly.
The baseline from the encounter budget table is:
Trivial: 40 or less
Low: 60
Moderate: 80
Severe: 120
Extreme: 160
In the adventures, the planned level of the encounter is included, so it will say something like "Moderate 3" and you know that it should be worth 80 XP to a level 3 party.
But wait - what if they're not level 3?
Conveniently enough, you can just change the difficulty of the encounter up or down. The totals should work out the same, which is a nice design feature since they're all built relative to party level anyway.
If they're level 2, it's suddenly a severe encounter and they should get 120 xp. If they're level 4, it's a low encounter and they'll get 60.
Again, there may be some edge cases where the math doesn't work out like that exactly, but if the encounters are built to the encounter budgets, you'll find that this should generally hold up. The biggest spots that are guaranteed to fall off are when the adjustments would push you above extreme or below trivial. But considering the former's a likely TPK and the latter may not result in a single resource expenditure by your players, it's probably not worth running as-is.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
There is a tool called TokenTool that (aside from being a great way to make tokens) does a great job of extracting images from Paizo's PDFs. It does a cleaner job than other PDF tools on Paizo's art with transparency (avoiding the weird white/black backgrounds you get with most exporters), but I also use it to extract map images. I wrote a post about this last March. You can open the PDF in the tool and just drag/drop the image out to a folder.
Note that it will never include the PDF text overlaid on top of the image, which (for things like region maps where you want the labels) is occasionally annoying.
