SatiricalBard's page

Cingen01 wrote:

About how many sessions / hours of play is each the short adventures intended to last individually?

Hey there! This is meant to be played with each adventure taking up one whole session, so three sessions total at the very least. The lengths also vary! The second is the shortest, and the third is the longest! We don't have a specific length for each, but we believe you'll get more game sessions out of this adventure if you play all three than you will an Adventure Path volume, since this one has close to double the number of pages of adventure than a standard adventure path. Hopefully this helps!

Hi Maya, this must be an accidental mistake, right? Unless you like really long sessions! The first adventure covers 2 full levels of play.

Fantastic work, thanks!

I remember reading through your 2021 guide and choosing to run Hell's Rebels (in 2e) partly based off of the top-tier ranking and comments it had. It's the most fun I've ever had as a GM. So thanks for pointing me to it!

Hey there, SatiricalBard! Thanks for all the kind words and understanding here! I had actually intended to do so, but all my tasks just got away from me at my end of day. Here I am at the start of my next one to say yeah, they let me know it was intentional and not a mistake! Sorry I didn't get to post it sooner. I just have lots to do! But, I appreciate your patience in this! I made sure to get that answer yesterday, and I was excited since it seemed like a lot of people have been wondering about this for a long time. It may not be the answer everyone wanted, and there may also still be a lot of people who just straight up don't like it, but at least they know it's not a mistake. I'm also hoping this is just the start of a line of communication here on out that works better for everyone. Please just give me time to post stuff as your Community Team is just one Leshy, me! ^_^

Thanks Maya! Really appreciate all you're doing - tell your GM you get a Hero Point on us!

Swearing at people aside (I have removed the comment), thank you guys for making this thread here! Making threads like this is part of our new system where the dev team will see them over time and potentially address issues, if able, in future errata. Since it's been less than 24 hours since we started this method concretely, and since the errata was already posted yesterday, please give this some time to actually go into effect. But again, thank you! I asked you to do the thing, and you totally didn't have to do the thing if you didn't want to, but you DID do the thing, and for that, I thank you!

Hi Maya, firstly thanks for your responsiveness, enthusiasm, and commitment to increasing responsiveness about issues like this one. I hope we can collectively behave ourselves in return!

I see via this Reddit post that you have replied via email to another person, confirming that Rogue Resilience "is, in fact, intentional."

Thank you for securing this clarification from the game devs. However each of us may feel about that design decision (and as we can see here and on Reddit, there are a mix of views), having this clarity is extremely helpful, and will save all of us from wasting time and energy on endless debates about whether it was a simple mistake or not! People can now stick with the rule or house rule it away as they prefer, but do so in full knowledge of what the devs intended.

Having said that, if I may: a private email to an individual player is the wrong place to communicate rules clarifications like this. Clarifications of rules intent should be done here, on the Paizo website forums. That (a) makes it official, and (b) means everyone can point to the one spot - including you in the email back to that person.

I waited a while to write this, assuming you were about to also post the same response here. But I now see you have actually replied to the follow-up email from that person, who sent you a link back here, but still haven't posted the clarification here, and indeed did not indicate to them that you intend to do so.

With the greatest respect to you and your colleagues, I cannot understand why you would engage in rules clarifications via private emails, but not on your own website.

I actually had something similar happen with one of your predecessors, who emailed me back about the now well-known Guldredge map errors in Sky Kings Tomb (one of only 2 errata to APs on the FAQ website). I had to repeatedly push them to actually publicly post the same information they had sent me in a private email.

Once again, I really want to thank you for your responsiveness to the community, and encourage you and your colleagues in this regard. And clarifying that what many in the community assume is an "apparent error" is in fact intentional is hugely valuable! I genuinely hope this is just the first of many such clarifications of 'possible errors' that are indeed intentional. I just respectfully urge you to do so here, on the Paizo website forums - the best place for official rules information.

So I have reached out to the dev team actually today about general rules questions like this since I saw several from over the weekend! I'm working on streamlining both our communication with all of you as well as how they receive and take feedback. We're still ironing the best path out as I've only been here just over two weeks, so I appreciate your patience since you've been waiting all this time! For now, what we think will work best is to please create a thread for this under Rules Questions. From here on out, those questions might be picked up and answered in the next round of FAQs/errata, but while you wait, you can discuss together as a community since there's a lot of helpful people around I've seen besides me who aren't even our staff! Hopefully with me also here with you guys, fewer things will fall through the cracks this way!

This would be amazing Maya.

To clarify the purpose of this, I propose this could be a post where the community flags longstanding 'apparent errors', for clarification by the devs about whether these are actually intentional (and we should stop expecting errata for them) or if they are something the devs will look at as potential errors for the next errata pass. For example, the unusual rogue fortitude save success upgrade, the blade ally rune question, amped shatter mind AOE choices both being cones, previously this would perhaps have included Live Wire damage scaling and Arcane Cascade's stance contradiction; but IMHO this should NOT just be a post where people note anything and everything we personally wish was different.

As well as the Rogue's saving throws, I see that Amped Shatter Mind's apparent AOE misprint ("your choice of a 30-foot cone or 60-foot cone" (sic)) survives a second Errata pass, preserving it as almost certainly the most OP spell in the entire game.

I guess this means it's intentional too?

(In both cases, I humbly submit that it would take Paizo 30 seconds to clarify that yes, these are indeed intentional, if that is the case).

I know you know this, but you lost a ton of money yesterday because your website is broken. I was among many people who actively and repeatedly tried to buy something on sale, but was unable to, because the website had crashed.

Hmm, does this seem like an odd choice of skill and skill feat for this background to others too?

EMPTY HAND LOYALIST [BACKGROUND] The orcs have had a long history of violence that brings some orcs pride, but for you it’s a mark of shame. You see the path of reconciliation that Ardax is paving and find hope in the chance to transform your people’s ways into one that moves away from stereotypes of brutality ... You’re trained in the Intimidation skill and the Belkzen Lore skill. You gain the Quick Coercion skill feat.

"Violence bad, but Coercion good"?

Assuming 2 strikes/round for DPR is the ultimate in problematic white room math IMHO.

In my actual play experience, swashbucklers only have the *opportunity* to make 2 strikes in a round 50% of the time or less. Even fighters only do it maybe 67%-75% of the time.

Here's an incomplete list of known buffs to swashbucklers in PC2 so far:

* the huge buff to gaining panache even on a failure for actions with the bravado trait
* de-facto auto scaling acrobatics or style skill
* +1 circ bonus to any skill action with bravado trait when done in combat (+2 from level 9)
* Precise Strike is now a passive +2 damage buff (with same scaling as before)
* The buckler expertise feat gives you panache on a crit miss
* Swaggering Initiative now grants panache if you act first in combat
* Lots of feats open to any style (eg. Vexing Tumble, The Bigger They Fall, etc) now have the bravado trait, enabling you to gain panache with them, as well as the +1/+2 circ bonus to pull them off.
* A cool new 12th level feat (which also has the bravado trait) called "Get Used to Disappointment" with a free action Demoralise on a creature who failed an attack roll or skill check against you on its last turn - a Hero Point to whoever at Paizo wrote that one, for the fabulous Princess Bride reference!

According to Swing Ripper,

"Dirty Trick is a skill feat for Thievery that can make enemies Clumsy 1 (roll vs reflex DC) for 1 round or until they interact to clean up their distraction with an interact on a critical success... You also fall prone on a crit fail!

Dirty Trick IS an attack trait action so it works very similarly to disarm the more I think of it... Doesn't require the opponent to have a weapon though AND is a status penalty to AC that is repeatable."

SatiricalBard wrote:

On page 18 the Hellknight Order of the Torrent is described as "a mercenary group". Even with the ensuing explanation that "rumors abound that they’re considering abandoning their affiliation with the decidedly Chelaxian order to embrace an entirely new set of virtues", that doesn't seem like an accurate description of them to me?

To a certain extent, Hellknights are all mercenaries. They're not an official part of any government.

I suspect Lictor Sabinus would have a few stern words for you about such a sledge! :-)

With respect that is a very strange use of the word 'mercenary', defined in the dictionary as "one that serves merely for wages" or "hired for service in the army of a foreign country". I would have said that orders of knights bound by sacred oaths are the very opposite of mercenaries.

Something I haven't seen anyone pick up yet:

Our primary aim with the swashbuckler’s remaster was therefore to increase the consistency of the class to allow for more stylish moments. One way we’ve done this is through the new bravado trait...

(Emphasis added)

I am looking forward to seeing what other ways they will do this!

Obviously this could be via auto-scaling the style skill, but there are lots of other possibilities. eg. I've long thought that After You should become a free class feature.

Separately, I really hope swashbucklers get access to the new rogue disarm-with-thievery feat, or better yet, get their own version using acrobatics. Because if anything is core to the class fantasy of a swashbuckler, it is disarming your opponent!

Huh ._. I learn new things about english language, I thought that was prophet

It normally is! As a native speaker with nearly 50 years of life in the church including five years in ministry, I do not recall ever coming across the word prophesier. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it was in popular use in the early 19th century, but is very rarely used today.

In my humble opinion, Sky King’s Tomb is a nearly great story-focused AP. It also does a better job than most APs at connecting the 3 books together, especially at seeding key information and secrets early in book 1 that will pay off at the end of book 3.

But it still suffers somewhat from book 2 feeling very disconnected to books 1 & 3, and it misses opportunities to fully set up the 4 key story & adventure beats of the AP early on in the adventure, during book 1.

Below are some suggestions for things GMs can do fairly easily to tie together the 3 books more closely together, and seize those missed opportunities to set up the story beats right from the beginning.

Book 1

What about Torag? Perhaps in a rage, the New Orc Goddess kills him for what he did to her people, inadvertently kicking off a war. But that would go against Torag's development in the last AP.

Yeah, I really don't think it will be Torag. On one hand, he was one of the gods whose edicts and anethema felt most tied to legacy ideas about alignment and ontologically evil orcs, etc. But that 'lawful genocide' anathema just got edited in the Remaster, and SKT developed Torag (or perhaps better put, Toragdan theology) somewhat, especially on (spoilers for Sky King's Tomb AP)

Lastly, his death would surely have to have a massive impact on dwarves, one of the most common peoples on Golarion, just after we had a Lost Omens book and an AP about their history, religion and culture. Killing him just after SKT would be weird timing.

GorionGolarion. wrote:

Is it any clue about this coming to FoundryVTT ?

Yes a Foundry module has been confirmed. Shouldn't be too far back in this thread.

Looks like the Foundry module is now available!

SatiricalBard wrote:

Holy moly, this will be the PERFECT sequel to my current Hell's Rebels (shortened to 4 books, ending at level 11 or 12) campaign!!!

Not least because we literally have a bard whose background was that they worked in stage management at the Kintargo Opera, before a certain villain turned up and shut it down!

If you ended your Hell's Rebels game at the end of book 4, then 100% that is the all time perfect choice, guaranteed! My suggestion would be to aim at ending it at level 12—the first chapter of Curtain Call, where the PCs are 11th level, are mostly about setting the stage and rolling right in from the end of Book 4 of Hell's Rebels (with a "your party spent several years relaxing in retirement" interlude to give Ravounel time to recover) would be a pretty elegant match. I'll have to remember that when I create the Player's Guide for Curtain Call. Good point!

Thanks for the response! I think we're likely to finish around when book 3 comes out, which is the best time to make a proper assessment of the AP, so that timing is perfect too :-)

xroot wrote:

Is this set in a particular area of Golarion, or meant to be flexible on location?

It's mostly set in Ravounel, but has excursions elsewhere.

Holy moly, this will be the PERFECT sequel to my current Hell's Rebels (shortened to 4 books, ending at level 11 or 12) campaign!!!

Not least because we literally have a bard whose background was that they worked in stage management at the Kintargo Opera, before a certain villain turned up and shut it down!

LOVE the holiday card by Kent Hamilton!

Good catch with the map scale! That would also solve the problem of the basilisk being within petrification range of the xulgath camp.

I imagine the error is forgetting the potency rune. That’s certainly how the foundry module devs treated the discrepancy.

As to why a level 5 item is being handed out at level 1 …

Pages 411: The text for the wounded condition was changed for consistency, but became consistent with the wrong piece of text. This would lead to much deadlier encounters! The following changes should ensure that death and dying works the way we intended.

In the Recovery Checks degrees of success, remove all instances of "(plus your wounded condition, if any)"; that's both in the failure and critical failure entries.
Under Taking Damage, remove the final sentence that reads, "If you have the wounded condition, remember to add the value of your wounded condition to your dying value." This reminder should only apply to when you gain the dying condition after getting knocked out.

I am glad this got a day 1 errata. I am additionally glad about the direction that errata took :-)

I know the temptation is there for those of us on the 'less deadly' side of the argument that has raged for the past 2-3 weeks to be as smug as some "it was always clearly RAW" posters were before, but I would like to back in what Mark Seifer said on the Reddit post he made about this, hoping this can "bring about a peaceful conclusion to the discourse on that topic." It's enough that we have the rules completely clarified once and for all, and in a way that locks in the 'less deadly' rules. Let's get on with actually enjoying the game now :-)

My only lingering comment and concern is about how this mistake happened. I don't buy the emerging conspiracy theory that Paizo panicked at all the backlash and is now lying about why they have added this day 1 errata. I don't think conspiracy theories are helpful or productive. They are also pretty disrespectful of Paizo staff who produce the game we all love.

Taking their comments at face value though, leads to a concern that the proof-reading of the Remaster documents was, well, not up to the standards Paizo would set for themselves. It took the community about 10 seconds to find the added text in the new rules, and immediately see it as a big change. How did Paizo's editors miss it? Were not enough sets of eyes engaged in the final proofing?

This comes on the back of what seems to be an increasing number of significant editing mistakes/lapses in recent publications (Sky King's Tomb being quite poor in this regard), which the community has spotted and reported within days. Again, I'm not here to throw shade on the Paizo team. I bet they are far more disappointed about these issues than any of us.

In the spirit of being constructive rather than unhelpfully critical, I think a very limited and brief 'playtest' release to a group of volunteer proof readers, editors and testers, would almost certainly have helped avoid some embarrassment, and a whole lot of unecessary arguments. It's not like the community is short of people who would willingly proof-read final drafts for typos and errors, with a 3 day turnaround, for free. Heck, a lot of big RPG kickstarters have successfully used their own paying backers as proof readers! (I remember being one with Level Up Advanced 5e.) As a proud unionist, I want to note this is not suggesting replacing paid work with volunteers, but rather adding additional volunteer eyes in a limited and controlled way under the supervision of said paid staff, to help catch more 'significant but quickly correctable' mistakes before things go to print. I wonder if that is something Paizo would consider for future releases?

Simpler and not a change for most this way.

I am tempted to use the deadlier version for my home games to make yoyoing back into combat a real high risk choice and increase the value of defenses.

We had a lot of interesting, if sometimes heated, debates on this. Thanks a lot to all who contributed.

I think the always clear clarified but always RAW changed why Paizo why 'deadlier' rules would make for an excellent official variant rule, for those groups wanting a 'grittier' game.

(Struckthrough text added for some light humour about the huge arguments we've all engaged in for the past few weeks - I am solidly behind Mark Seifter's probably over-optimistic hope on Reddit for this to bring about a "peaceful conclusion to the discourse")

It doesn't even reduce your Perception, unlike in that other game.

Something I'll say about swashbuckler is that I think Panache is too specific flavor-wise.

Swashbuckler and rogue are really the only frontline martials that are designed with DEX-based melee combat in mind, and since rogue is so reliant on Sneak Attack, swashbuckler is your main option if you just want to focus on fighting your foes head-on with a finesse melee weapon. The problem is that swashbuckler also kind of expects you to act like an intentionally flashy show-off, and Panache's mechanics reflect that in a few ways (gaining Panache from non-style-related skill checks to do something flashy, for example). This is perfect for the "typical" swashbuckler that *does* want to go out of their way to look cool in fights, but it makes the class kind of clash with characters whose personalities are more serious and practical-minded.

That's not to say I don't like the classic, show-offy swashbuckler aesthetic, of course, but I think the class could benefit from *not* having that be the sole default flavor. It would be nice to have room for other character concepts, like a tribal skirmisher or a cold-and-methodical fencer. (Though an alternative solution might just be to leave Panache as-is and instead give fighter more support for DEX-based melee builds somehow.)

Fighters make excellent fencers though. They have lots of great feats, plus that sweet +2 to hit. You can just as easily build a Fighter with Charisma and Deception for Feinting as you can a Swashbuckler.

In fact, part of the core problem many have with Swashbucklers is that Fighters can make so much better fencers than they do.

hypercognition exist

so crit on any d20 may not be a good idea

If someone wants to burn a 3rd level spell on 6 RK checks by a swashbuckler, just so they can crit-fish for panache ... that's a pretty steep price to pay for 'abusing' rules interactions!

Also, Opportune Riposte feels like it should be more important as a class feature. First, we allow it trigger on a failure if you have panache. Second, we should allow all Swashbucklers the ability to Disarm with Acrobatics as a class feature. Disarming Flair is pretty much does nothing in the remaster anyway.

Riposte on a failure if you are in Panache does sound very cool, and would be a huge reason to stay in panache rather than spending it on a finisher. Despite having proposed more flat bonuses earlier, I like the idea of panache unlocking flashy actions even better!

The original 'attack roll to disarm with a finesse weapon with the disarm trait' is better than acrobatics IMHO, because the latter scales faster than the former. Acro would be too strong, now that the success condition for Disarm is not nothing.

The more I think about this, the more I think expanding the +1 circumstance bonus from Panache to ALL skill checks, attack rolls and saving throws is a good idea. Succeed through sheer bravado!

From all the discussions here and elsewhere, I don't think it would be TOO strong either (depending on what other buffs one was giving the class). But I would defer to others who are better at diving into the maths to answer that question.

I think it would be interesting to explore +DPR buffs via giving a circumstance bonus to attack rolls rather than increasing the precision damage. IMHO this would feel more in line with what Panache should be doing for you in combat. You're basically succeeding more often through sheer bravado and confidence.

What would happen if Panache's +1 circumstance bonus applied to attack rolls? That would be roughly a ~15% DPR increase, yeah?

On the expectation that a smaller tweak to the existing design is far more likely for the Remaster, my priorities would be:
1. Auto-scaling Acrobatics, or better yet, the subclass skill.
2. Easier access to Panache: After You should be a core class feature, as mentioned above; perhaps you could gain Panache any time you Critically Succeed any d20 check; the aforementioned clarifications around mindless creatures and the like; changing the level-based DC for creative flair actions and One for All from Very Hard to Standard; things like that.
3. Reasons to stay in Panache: perhaps up the damage bonus to +3, grant +1 to saving throws as well as relevant skill checks, a (limited use) roll with advantage or re-roll a failed save to capture the idea of succeeding through sheer bravado, things like that. New Feats could offer these or expanded options.
4. Fixing the maths around DPR, but I will leave that to others (noting that IMHO the correct relevant reference should be a 1H finesse martial, not a 2H Str martial which is what I usually see)
5. Give them the old pre-errata disarm & trip with finesse weapons ability, or their own version of the new rogue 'disarm with thievery' ability. Swashies should be the #1 disarm class in the game, but right now they are the worst out of all martials at it.

YuriP wrote:

I don't catch your idea. It's remove the finisher and make the Panache allow a constant mechanic?

- Remove finishers as a concept. Tie the swashbuckler special sauce to flourishes instead. Tweak it in such a way that they aren't all immediately rushing to Monk to grab FoB.

- Don't "spend" panache. Once you get panache, you have it until you lose it. You lose it if you hit a bunch of fail all at once, and then you need to grab it again.
- Various suggestions for ways to get panache and what it means to fail hard enough to lose it.
- Some tangible immediate benefit for doing things that would gain you panache while you already have panache, to encourage you to keep doing the awesome things. In this particular case, a free action immediate-use flourish ability that lets you make a strike - thus both opening up your action economy a bit and giving you the built-in flourish that the class needs to make its flourish abilities actually go.

I LOVE the idea of starting with Panache but having to Do Cool Things to maintain it! Never thought of that idea before, but it works so well. I think what excites people about the class in 2e is the 'risk/reward' design idea, which mechanically rewards you for doing flashy things. It is a perfect example of 2e's design principle of "using mechanics to support roleplay". They got it half right, but as people have noted in this and other threads, the gain panache - spend it on a finisher loop doesn't quite nail it, even leaving aside the maths balancing. And as people have noted above, if anything we want mechanics that encourage sawshbucklers to stay in panache.

The remastered Warrior Bard can maintain Courageous Anthem (aka Inspire Courage) for an additional round by doing damage with a Strike. We could take that extremely well-received design and apply it here, by ONLY maintaining Panache by doing damage with a Strike, succeeding at Tumble through or the subclass skill action (Bon Mot, Demoralise, etc), or by "succeeding at a check to perform a particularly daring action, such as swinging on a chandelier or sliding down a drapery" (as per the existing rules for gaining panache).

Next, I think you'd want to increase the benefits of staying in panache. I'm not one for digging into the maths minutiae so others are better placed to think about balance, but perhaps up the damage bonus to +3, grant +1 to saving throws as well as relevant skill checks, a (limited use) roll with advantage or re-roll a failed save to capture the idea of succeeding through sheer bravado, things like that. New Feats could offer these or expanded options.

Lastly, I think After You should simply be a core class feature. It's great, thematic, and gives a guaranteed access to panache.

(On a lesser side note, one of the weird quirks of current panache generation is that it pushes you to target a minion for your panache-generating power, before attacking the boss with your finisher. That breaks the fantasy. As others have said, we want the swashbuckler to be targeting the boss, not the mooks. I don't know the best way to do that without allowing panache even on failed checks against +level targets).

That said, I think some of the discussion here and in the previous thread is a great case study in the human brain's drive and capacity to reject or qualify new information that conflicts with our pre-existing worldviews. Or, less politely, refusing to accept straightforward facts that contradict our beliefs, and tying ourselves up in knots with increasingly convoluted mental gymnastics to try to find a way to disbelieve the evidence before our very eyes. This is an extremely well known and researched 'cognitive bias', itself an unfortunate downside of the extraordinary capacity of our brains to make sense of an incredibly complex world. Importantly for what I'm about to say, all of us do this, all the time. It's easier to see it our oppoenents, but it's how all our brains are wired. In fact, research has shown that smart people are even 'better' at rejecting unpleasant facts, likely because their brains are able to more quickly find arguments in defence of their worldview that might undermine the new, conflicting, information.

I don't like the new wording on wounded and dying. I don't intend to use it. I don't know why Paizo added it, and I don't know why or like the fact they did so without any communication before or since. I agree that the new rules are clumsily written, and the 'remember to' phrase is somewhere between redundant and confusing. I agree with the gentleman from How it's Played that it is a great way to lose new players and reinforce prejudices about it being overcomplicated. I agree that Paizo should come out and confirm the new rules and especially why they changed them.

But the new wording on recovery checks is absolutely crystal clear.

In my humble opinion, denying this reality is not constructive to a healthy conversation.

Far better, IMHO, to ask Paizo to release a statement about all of this, decide in our groups whether we are going to try it out or keep playing they way we played before, and for those inclined, to politely lobby that the rules be changed back. Each of these are much more practical and productive uses of our time.

medtec28 wrote:

I think this would go over better if they simply admitted it is a change, it's not a clarification or an errata, they made multiple rounds of errata and it never was clarified. Admit that y'all made a change.

A thing that's gotten lost in all this discussion: Has any (current) dev made any comment at all on the "new" Death/Dying Rules since they were revealed? Before we ask that the devs recant whether the change in wording counts as a change or clarification, we can wait for somebody to say something?

Like Mark Seifter is cool and all, but did he work on the remaster books? Does it matter whether he says it's a clarification, not a change? In fact, does it matter at all whether it was a change or clarification? I can see arguing about what the "new" rules actually say, but aside from trivia, does it really matter if the remaster is officially a change or not?

No Paizo staff have said a word about this in public, verbally or in writing, unless they did so in the last 12 hours.

Mark Seifter has claimed this was always RAI, and furthermore that it was always a consensus among the devs back in 2019. However this would appear to be contradicted by (a) the fact that his submitted errata was never published across 4 errata passes, (b) nobody knowing of another dev saying the same or agreeing with him, and (c) perhaps even more significantly, Jason Bulmahn's combat rules explainer video on Youtube from about 9 months ago not saying anything about adding the wounded value on increases to dying values when failing recovery checks, when he walked through that process step by step. So with the greatest respect to a brilliant man whom we all have to thank for the 4 degrees of success and so much else about pf2e, I do believe that claim needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

At this point I'm getting increasingly surprised that Paizo is saying nothing about it, much as I'm aware they try to limit their commentary on rules arguments.

Ravingdork wrote:

SatiricalBard wrote:

To those suggesting new players house rule away the new dying/wounded rules, the absolute #1 piece of advice given to those new to 2e, sometimes delivered politely but othertimes with more than a little aggression, is to play the game RAW for many months before even thinking about house rules.

House Rules are for veterans, not newbies.

Normally I'd agree with this sentiment, but a lot of new players are going to rage quit the system before they get past the first couple of games on account of this not-a-rules-change, much less a few months of games.

Which is why it needs to not be a house rule. It needs to be official. House rules aren't something a new player should be worrying about, and they shouldn't need to repair a busted game. Pretty sure that's what SatiricalBard was going for.

Exactly. I think Ravingdork, you and I are all in agreement here.

SatiricalBard wrote:

To those suggesting new players house rule away the new dying/wounded rules, the absolute #1 piece of advice given to those new to 2e, sometimes delivered politely but othertimes with more than a little aggression, is to play the game RAW for many months before even thinking about house rules.

House Rules are for veterans, not newbies.

I think the reason to say "you can house rule the dying rules" over and over again is to make new players understand that the only thing that fiddling with this part of the game would actually affect is "game feel" which is a dial you're going to want to turn one way or the other at times.

Like if new players want to play "if you hit dying 4, you're out of this fight, but not dead, you'll wake up later" that won't cause any problems at all.

I think at that point we're entering Oberoni Fallacy territory.

To those suggesting new players house rule away the new dying/wounded rules, the absolute #1 piece of advice given to those new to 2e, sometimes delivered politely but othertimes with more than a little aggression, is to play the game RAW for many months before even thinking about house rules.

House Rules are for veterans, not newbies.

I like a ton of things in the Remaster, but some things I dislike:

1. The change to the dying & wounded interaction rules. I also dislike that there has been no advance discussion, no player surveys, and no explanations about why they have done this.

2. They didn't fix the well-known mastermind rogue RK issue (which I'd go as far as to call a 'bug'), given they did go in and make changes to other rogue subclasses.

3. The better-clarified RK rules are still far too stingy with how much information they give out IMHO.

Here's Combat in Pathfinder 2E | How does it work? | Jason Bulmahn, posted on his personal youtube channel in February. He talks about Death and Dying at 1:04:32 and the wounded condition at 1:08:18. Interestingly, in the dying section, he doesn't mention the fact that on a failure, dying increases by 1 plus your wounded value, and in the wounded section, he only ever says that wounded increases the value of the initial dying.

That ... really does seem to completely contradict Mark Seifter's comment about designer consensus on how the rules are meant to work, and all the "it was always clear you fools" garbage here and on Reddit, hey.

His exact words (timestamp 1:06:01) are "If you get a failure [on a recovery check], your dying value increases by 1". Zero mention of adding the wounded value on top.

EDIT: this is all pre-Remaster, for clarity!

That statement isn't any clearer.

I read it differently than most of you I guess. To me it looks like the same rule with the clear clarification to add the wounded condition to your dying value when you get it, not each time it increases for a failed recovery check.

Until I hear from a designer with absolute certainty that is what they intend as in a clearly spelled out example, then I'm running it as I was before.

When a character falls and has the dying condition, then you add the wounded condition to the dying...

This is a screenshot of the Remaster Recovery check rules. You will see there the text for Failure is "You dying value increases by 1 (plus your wounded value, if any)".

I'm seeing a lot of revisionist history today to pretend this new rule was always the case.

People quoting out a former writer's claim that "I meant to do that", yet it was a "meant to" that didn't actually make the cut of the 2.0 book.

Even the PF2E code for Foundry didn't use this "was always that way" method when applying dying values.

That's a LOT of eyes on something that occurs very often in games that somehow the entire community failed to notice until today?

Yup. Plus the 4 erratas to the Core Rulebook that didn't clarify this 'intent'.

I think they wanted to clarify the original ruling.

The way some of you are reading it is nutso ... Maybe some designer will clarify and it will be that deadly. I don't know. I know I'm going to keep running it as I was and this seems like the same rule I was using.

I'm afraid it is now 100% clear that if you have dying 2 and wounded 1, on a failed save or you take any damage you go straight from dying 2 to dying 4 (because you add 1 + your wounded value).

Apparently this was always the designers' intent, but for some unknown reason they went through 4 erratas without clarifying some ambiguous (at best) language.

A recent Reddit poll found that 75% of people either didn't know this was how it was meant to be played, or chose to ignore it, so you're in good company as for your understanding up til now. But the Remaster has clarified the wording such that the intent is now absolutely clear.

Even more than the increased deadliness of this clarification/change for me is that this incentivises Stabliising dying PCs over healing them. Which means more players spending more time sitting the game out.

I'm playing this game to have fun with my friends. I see this as a very definite reduction in fun.

Torag's complicated alignment and ethos have been a talking point in Pathfinder circles for most of a decade, as he's always pushed the envelope (or perhaps blurred the line) on what it means to be or redefine "Good"—certainly as it regards fighting the enemies of one's people. When I joined the Adventure Path team and took over the Sky King's Tomb project, I made a conscious effort to have the Adventure Path explore more of Torag's faith, especially the ramifications of his violent edict on the past and present. I made sure the Adventure Path calls attention to these quandaries, presenting the dilemma(s) to the PCs and exploring the ideas while leaving it open to the players to judge what's right and potentially challenge old dogma.

Hi John, I've just finished reading book 3, and I have a lot of thoughts about what you've attempted here, which I am deeply appreciative of. But before I respond with the care that your efforts deserve, I have a Golarion Lore meta-question: does the Golarion setting allow for the concept of clerics and theologians doing things their deities would not approve of?

Are the gods removed enough from affairs that clerics can be wrong? Or does the daily granting of spells and class features fundamentally require that we say that if someone like Ferghaz was a powerful cleric, they are axiomatically correct in their theology and anything they say is ordained by their deity, must in fact have been ordained by said deity?

I'm thinking about how most Christians today consider the Crusades and associated Papal-sanctified massacres to not, in fact, have been ‘ordained by God’; or how some Christians and Jews now have a critical reading of the so-called 'texts of terror' in the Hebrew Scriptures, in which they are not considered to be genuinely reflective of YHWH's will so much as people claiming divine mandate for their own deeds; and countless other examples from those and other religions. And wondering how that might inform our approach to rethinking Toragdan theology, especially the edict against "showing mercy to the enemies of your people".

As book 3 asks, "was Torag ... wrong?" I am wondering what established space is available to add "... or was it his High Priests?"

(Leaving aside questions about whether Ferghaz was entirely wrong, which I will return to in another posts)

There is an errata out now for these maps. See this post on the product page.

There are more map issues in this book, following the big mix-up in book 1:

1. The Darklands map in book 2 has Rolgrimmdur completely in the wrong location. It's supposed to be about 50 miles southwest of Highhelm. On the map it's about 20 miles NW, and somewhere the PCs go right past!

2. The City of the Snake Queen map has two areas marked H11, and none marked H9. The larger room should be H9, while the H11 on the stairs should be at the entry to the tunnel exit to the south.

3. Some of the location descriptions in the text are missing their map markers or 'event' notation. 'Crossroads' should be 'I. Crossroads', while 'All that Glitters' is presumably an Event that GMs can place anywhere, since it has no map marker (though I have a suspicion it's meant to be at F on the Darklands map, and the Ghoulish Gourmands are meant to be somewhere further along the way...).

We're looking into this issue, but it seems to be more complex of an issue than it first appears. Rest assured that it is now on the relevant folks' radar and we'll post here when we've come to a resolution.

I was emailed by someone in customer service about the errata 3 days ago and immediately replied asking them (again) to also post the information here. Could you please post the corrections here? I mean, I can do it, but I think people would prefer such information coming directly from Paizo.

SatiricalBard wrote:

Can someone at Paizo please escalate the map issue and get back to us with a timeline for errata?

Please let us know at customer.service@paizo.com.

I did, and got a reply that "After discussing the Mantle of Gold issue with our Art Team, they confirmed the maps are indeed correct."

With the greatest respect to them, this is ridiculously false.

I am replying to customer service with an extremely detailed listing of the problems. But this is really basic stuff, that we should not need to do. I cannot imagine how the very talented people at Paizo could look at this section and claim, as was done in the reply from customer service to me, that "we can assure you that the adventure and maps are correct."

Appreciate everything you do Aaron. I understand the desire to push folks to customer service, but that ultimately results in a 1 on 1 conversation with whomever submitted the ticket, leaving the rest of the community wondering what's happening.

Would it possible for Customer Service or a Social Media person to be tagged in the forums or have a CS/SM rep keeping an eye on the product threads so that the community at large can be informed of things instead of specific individuals?

I actually asked Customer Service to have a response posted right here, for that reason.

Can someone at Paizo please escalate the map issue and get back to us with a timeline for errata?

What I like to do in these situations is merge a standard background with a campaign background.

So they get the ability boosts, skills, etc from the regular background, and the connection to the story, NPCs, and (for this AP) reputation points from the campaign background.

Adding to the above comments about the upper and lower Guldredge maps being reversed, but not in a simple way where we can just swap F and G every time - eg. I think the Hunger Stone marked as G1 in the book is meant to be F4 on the map, while locations marked on the map as F5-F7 are entirely undescribed, as are the two buildings marked as G2 on the map, as Jarvis125 notes.

It is also left completely unclear HOW one moves between Workshop Heights and Lower Guldredge.

Incidentally, the Foundry module maker said on discord that they spoke to Paizo and got it fixed for the module, so Paizo is aware of the problem. Hopefully they can let us all know the corrections soon :-)