One reason for me choosing to leave Paizo was they made it really hard to start working on projects they had already approved.
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… we have more or less a good idea when the development of PF2 started. Wayne Reynolds got heads-up that a new edition is coming (and his skills will be needed) in late 2015. 5e took 3-4 years to make (first playtest doc in 2012, release in 2014), 4e took 3 years, PF1 took 2-3 years (decision in 2006 when 4e came out, full product in 2009) so it's safe to assume that in 2014, PF2 wasn't even in the plans and Starfinder was likely at very early stages - and done by a separate team. FYI, in August 2011 we were already planning for a PF2 Beta release in the middle of 2014, with the PF2 launch in the middle of 2015. Obviously, those plans changed. When I left in Feb 2014, we hadn't started working on PF2. (Nor was Starfinder even a thing.) I was thinking they *might* try to get a PF2 Beta done for Gen Con 2015, or (more realistically) 2016, but that didn't happen.
Thank you, James. You're a good guy and I know you're dealing with hard stuff at work. Looking forward to gaming in person with you again someday. :)
Ooh, can I ask a question? Is "Explicit Romance" referring to, like, on-screen romantic scenes, or sexual scenes? I'd consider "explicit romance" to be on-screen expressions of love and romantic interest between two characters, whether that's reading love poems, kissing, expressing undying affection, and so on. "Sex" is a separate category from "Romance." (Some people aren't comfortable being in the presence of romantic expression, even if it doesn't involve their character.)
By the way, that consent form is from a PDF called Consent in Gaming, written by me and Shanna Germain. It's free to download at the MCG Shop and DriveThruRPG. It gives a lot of advice about dealing with sensitive topics at the game table and/or making sure certain topics aren't included in the game.
This makes a lot of sense. Congrats! :)
Heya, folks! If you don't know me, I'm Sean K Reynolds, designer on 2E D&D, 3E D&D, 3E Forgotten Realms, in-house developer/designer on Pathfinder and Golarion for six years, and now I'm a developer/designer at Monte Cook Games. MCG is making a book full of advice about playing and running RPGs. It doesn't matter what system you're using, this book is not about game mechanics, it's about the people at the table (or online), ways to be a better player and better GM, and ways to make that awesome remember-it-years-later game experience happen more often. I made a little vid about it, which you can find here. Make note of the different shirts I'm wearing! No matter what RPG is your favorite, no matter whether you're a player or a GM, a newbie or a veteran, you'll learn from this book. If you want to skip the video and get right to the Kickstarter (which only has two hours left), go here. Thanks, and good gaming!
Sorry for the thread necro, someone pointed me at this today. I didn't write the thundercaller archetype. I believe it was printed in Varisia, Birthplace of Legends, and I wasn't a designer or developer on that book. I did say (in a discussion about the sound striker archetype for... Ultimate Magic?) that I felt the thundercaller was broken, and that people shouldn't use the thundercaller as a baseline for what a bard archetype should be able to do. Good gaming!
Congrats and good luck on your new plans, James! You're gonna be great. :)
Liz!
I'll be at PaizoCon this year! I'm working on a silly little card game that I'll be kickstarting in July, and I'll be bringing the prototype to the con to playtest/demo it. Where? Wherever we can find some reasonable seating. I haven't tried to put this on the event schedule, (1) because I wasn't sure if the game would be in a workable state by the time the con started, and (2) I'd like to keep my schedule at the con very casual. So once we're closer to the actual con, I'll have figured out what days I'm attending and what times I'll be demoing the game. If you're available at those times, track me down and sit in on a game or two, I'd love to hear your feedback. :)
SKR: 11,072 posts (11,086 including aliases) I've been gone two years and some of you still have a long ways to catch up. ;) Heyooooo!
Yes! I actually joined a carpool about a month ago, which freed up a lot more of my personal time (cutting my commute by about 90 minutes each day). So things with Five Moons is rolling forward again. The playtest document is about 100 pages right now (and the core book is going to be 128 pages, so that's mostly done). Thanks for asking! :)
I'm part of the D&D team, but my focus is... hard to explain at this time. :)
Thanks, Marv. For ISG, I actually only wrote the god entries (which come from the various AP god articles I wrote), the heralds, the servitors, the magic items that appeared in the pre-PF Gods and Magic, and any spells from the AP god articles. So if you liked any of the other stuff in the book, credit goes to the other authors as well. :)
Yeah, there's another 16 pages of stretch goal content I need to add to it. :)
So many irons in the fire right now, gotta get the time-sensitive ones (like the Five Moons RPG playtest and finishing Goody White) done first before I can get to things like that gunslinger archetype. :/
Thanks! :)
I don't know at this time, but if I get news about it I'll be sure to mention it on my Facebook page and Twitter.
Excuse me, friend. It may be a bit boorish, but I had no idea when I would make contact with you, and I was just speaking about you when I saw this thread. You're not being boorish at all. :) What conventions do you think you will be at in the future? I would very much love to buy you a drink and perhaps beg an indulgence. I'll be at PaizoCon 2015 tomorrow (Sunday), and I'll probably be at GenCon 2015 for at least a couple of days.
I certainly don't know what it's like to work for either company, but I would surmise that burnout is a potential issue.His god articles were becoming increasingly stale - just compare the early ones with the more recent. You could tell he was getting bored with them, instead of something inspired they read more like a word-count chore. True, I was getting bored with them... and it didn't help that 69 is a demon lord, 71 is a horseman of the apocalpyse, 77 is a demon lord, and 78 is a demon lord, all of which are very similar in their philosophy of "we accept worship from anyone, without any restrictions on what you can do with your power, so long as you are evil evil evil." (Adam could tell I was getting tired of the repetition.) But Brigh and Zyphus were definitely fun to write. :)
I do wonder as to what, exactly, happened with the ACG. It seems to be a pretty major low point. I'm guessing it was a combination of SKR leaving part way through development, a rush to get it read in time for the convention where it was being premièred and bad luck, but it seems whatever it was got fixed. I actually stuck around until the end of development. My last week was the week it went over to editing.
From the intro to that section of the book:
For rare or unique items, or in certain casesmightinfrequentshould happen only when it's important to the story
(I'm not sure if we've ever had a freelancer request to be credited under a pen name, but someone else on staff might be able to answer that). Yep, frex, Anson Caralya is a pen name.
Relevant story: When I started at TSR, Jeff Grubb and Roger Moore were both there, and they had both worked on 1E AD&D stuff. Most of the rest of the staff started in the 2E days, and I hadn't played much 2E, so I didn't know them. But when I met Jeff, I was agog and said, "Holy crap, you're Jeff Grubb!!!" And when I met Rogue, I was likewise agog and said, "Holy crap, you're Roger Moore!!!" Eventually I got over it, but for this then-24-year old, it was a pretty awesome day. :) Anyway, looking forward to the voting results tomorrow. Good luck, everyone!!! :)
Are you referring to my Polymorph Rewritten book? If so, it has been sidetracked by my work on the Five Moons RPG. Sorry about that!
I've certainly seen teamwork feats that I would have thought were aimed at other classes, but perhaps I've been fooled? Or perhaps this info was so stealthy that it was never communicated to freelancers, who may have just been told, "write some more teamwork feats," without the understanding that "blah blah blah intended as supplementary class features for cav/hunt/inq" was implied. *shrug*
And that's why there's this:
and this
and this
It's never explicitly called out in the rules, but teamwork feats are actually a stealthy way of giving more options specifically to the cavalier, hunter, and inquisitor classes, which are three classes that can automatically grant teamwork feats to allies or can operate as if their allies had the teamwork feat. If it's hard for other classes to get those feats, well, not everything can be equally easy for every class, and the main point is to make those feats easily accessible to the cavalier, hunter, and inquisitor by marking them as teamwork feats. I agree that Combat Expertise's Int 13 prerequisite is pretty harsh, and that having Combat Expertise as a prerequisite is also pretty harsh. But you really shouldn't complain about being "double charged" for a teamwork feat, as teamwork feats are primarily intended for the three classes that can bypass or override the "doubled" cost of the feat (i.e., requiring someone else in your group to have the feat for you to be able to use it).
Correct. I wasn't there for last week's decision, I have no unrevealed information about it, and I won't speculate about it. But I like cake.
Honestly. I'd be happy if they actually gave us the reason it was change.My guess is it was something a previous dev member pushed to do and now he is gone no one is defending SLA counting as pre reqs. No. All three of us thought it was an interesting idea.
This is looking good. I think we did a good job with this book. Kudos to my former teammates. :)
Folks, I put together a long advice PDF about monster design, you can get it here, if you think my advice is worth anything. Hopefully you'll find it useful whether you're writing for RPG Superstar, for Adam, for a third-party publisher, or for your own campaign. :) And now... I sleep. :)
Be that as it may, it's still certainly possible for said players to feel as though the option has become bad or undesirable, leading to frustration and causing said players to wonder why the design team chose to balance that option accordingly. Oh, I'm not defending the warpriest design at all. I had very little to do with it, much of what I did was a temporary fix to get it ready for the playtest, and probably much of my temporary text was replaced after the playtest, or even after I left Paizo. I honestly haven't even read the final version of the class because I was more interested in the final versions of the four classes I did write (which basically didn't change at all). I have given zero though to evaluating the final version of the warpriest. My point is, there is a difference between stating a complaint, and blowing something out of proportion. "I feel that this is yet another thing that makes the warpriest a weak class" is a complaint. "The devs hate the warpriest and it's clear they always have" is blowing something out of proportion.
Me? I'm not a dev any more. And I'm clearly so dumb that I'll spend my own free time refuting false statements about a class I didn't work on. I also have a long history (during- and post-Paizo) of trying to explain to people that how they say something is just as important as what they're saying, because the Paizo staff are people, and they have a choice about what threads they reply to, or if they reply to any at all. I get that you're unhappy with the class. I have no horse in this race—I didn't write the class, I don't work for Paizo anymore, and I don't know you... but I'm still trying to help you, so maybe you should believe me when I say that the devs don't hate the warpriest? Anyway, the point is: the devs don't hate any of the classes. If they did, we would have left them out of the book and included other material instead. Suggesting otherwise is just... silly.
Indeed, unfortunately that sort of kills my character for our home game =/ since I was a reach WP. Unfortunately the design/devs hate the WP. It's been pretty clear since play tests so this is of no shock to me. I think you need to take a step back and look again at what you're saying. Because what you're saying is,
And I say that as a designer who had very little to do with the warpriest design (as I had finished the playtest drafts of my four classes, Jason had me round out some of the warpriest domain-like abilities for the playtest so he could finish up the other two classes he was working on). I certainly don't hate the warpriest. I don't even dislike it. And I certainly didn't go out of my way to try to make it bad or undesirable for players. So it's silly to say "the devs hate this."
If you're looking for pro tips about magic item design and a pro review of your magic item, this blog post by me might be of interest to you.
Good luck to everyone! Congrats to those who make it into the Top 32! And for those of you who don't make it into the Top 32, this might be of interest to you. 1 hour and 47 minutes to go!
sorry, prev post deleted, self-censoring
But what if I have no idea what is bothering someone? If the GM says we open a door to a room where a vampire sits by the fire, with a viper on his shoulders and a dark wolf with red eyes and a glass of blood in his hand, and then someone shows me an X-card, how the hell am I supposed to know what is troubling that person? Is it the blood? The fire? The viper? The wolf? A combination of these? Should the GM throw the whole scene out? From the X-Card rules: Ta da. (And why would someone allergic to peanuts care if someone else eats peanut butter? Does the smell of peanuts cause some sort of allergic reaction? Honest question here. I never met anyone who is allergic to peanuts... Or at least, the subject never came up) Although they've recently determined that this specific risk has been exaggerated, peanut allergies can be serious enough (especially in children) that airborne particles (such as on your breath) or secondary skin exposure (like you get peanut oil on your hand, then you touch the battlemap, and the allergic person touches the battlemap) can trigger a dangerous allergic reaction.
As it turns out, if your group
then you have the option to leave the game. Because in a social game where the point is to get together and have fun, you're supposed to be accommodating to others' needs. If someone at the table is allergic to peanuts, you don't bring a peanut butter sandwitch and say, "if you have a problem with this, deal with it, or justify to me why it's a problem." They don't have to explain, "if you eat peanuts, you'll kill me," it should be enough to say, "please don't eat that around me." If someone at the table has asthma, you don't smoke at the table and say, "if you have a problem with this, deal with it, or justify to me why it's a problem." They don't have to explain, "if you smoke around me, I'll have an asthma attack," it should be enough to say, "please don't smoke around me." If someone at the table is a rape survivor, you don't make rape jokes or make rape an element of the campaign, and say "if you have a problem with this, deal with it, or justify to me why it's a problem." They don't have to explain, "I was raped, and you treating it so casually is making me have a panic attack," it should be enough to say, "please don't bring up that subject." They don't have to tell you why. You don't deserve an explanation. You don't need an explanation. It should be enough that if you're in a social situation and someone asks you not to do something, you don't do it. Because we're supposed to treat each other decently. Show some courtesy. You already know to not crap your pants at the game table.
And if you aren't enough of a decent human being to do that, maybe you could "roleplay" a version of yourself who is just like you, except who is a decent human being.
From the "making your gaming group more safe and comfortable for women gamers" department, here is a relevant blog I wrote a while back.
Actually, that's not a theory--the 3E designers deliberately used "+5 on an ability score = twice as good" as a concept when working on the game.
BTW that action point system is something I wrote on my own, and I have no idea if what they're doing for Unchained is anything like it (I didn't work on Unchained at all).
You're not seeing any progression for levels 1–3 because a level 3 Five Moons character is basically a level 1.5 PF character. This is because Five Moons focuses on the "sweet spot" of 3E levels 1–13, and stretches that band of levels to 1–25 so your character can level twice as often, but only half as much each time (rewarding you more frequently for playing, like paying you every week instead of every two weeks). I explain it all in this blog about the leveling "sweet spot".
Woo, thanks! :)
BTW, there's a short Five Moons RPG "pre-alpha playtest" document (really a couple of variant chapters for 3E) that you can take a look at right now, here is the blog post with the link. Thanks!
BTW, there's a short Five Moons RPG "pre-alpha playtest" document (really a couple of variant chapters for 3E) that you can take a look at right now, here is the blog post with the link. Thanks!
Any chance of Errata to fix this? The archetype is interesting, and even as it is now I could see having some fun with a Geisha/Sound Striker Bard. For there to be errata, you'd have to convince the responsible someone that the duration should be longer than 10 minutes.
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So my pathfinder group recently decided to make some 2e characters so we can maybe give the new system a go. I decided I’d like to see play a dwarf barbarian with dragon instinct but have run into a wall with where I want to go with the build. Any thoughts? I’m pretty open to whatever suggestions you guys have. I’m pretty new to 2e and really just want to make sure I have an effective build that’s good at dealing damage and taking punishment. My original ideas were to either use the fighter multi class archetype to combine things like combat grab and thrash and take advantage of combat maneuvers, or to go with dual weapon warrior. Those were just ideas though, so if you think of something better, I’m all for it. I really would like to stick with dragon instinct though. I might be open to giant or animal if there were some really good reasons to switch but dragon has the most flavor in my opinion. As always, thanks for the help
Hey all, my group and I have been running the Strange Aeons AP for a few weeks now and it's been pretty awesome. We're currently level 4 and our group consists of: A halfing cleric focused on tanking and healing
And myself, a CN human empiricist investigator. I've really loved playing the character so far. Currently, he has a high strength and intelligence, uses a longspear when he isn't polymorphed, and is an excellent skill monkey. His feats and talents right now are: Power Attack
The idea behind the character is that he was a former doctor with an illicit drug business on the side before ending up in Briarstone Asylum at the start of the campaign. Anyway, there are a few things I'm thinking of doing with him and I'd to get some thoughts and feedback. I think as I get more polymorph extracts, I'd like to focus more on natural attacks in combat. I have an amulet of mighty fists +1 and so far using bite/claw/claw as a Troglodyte using Alter Self has been really cool and pretty effective. Next, I was thinking taking the feats Healers Hands and Signature Skill (Heal) (and maybe some traits like clockwork surgeon or friendless) to be able to actually put my high heal skill to use. We do have a cleric, but we routinely take enough damage that all of their spell slots are being spent healing. So, in addition to the feat chain being super flavorful for my character, I'm hoping it'll take some of the load off the cleric. Finally, after finding what was basically a drug den in the AP, I did some research into other drugs in pathfinder and some, like Zerk and Oblivion, seem pretty useful. If I took master alchemist, I'd be able to craft them quickly in our downtime and use them to buff the party members, primarily the barbarian, who has a high fortitude save. Signature Skill and Healers Hands will let me heal the ability damage and treat disease will help if anyone fails an addiction save. Again, I think its super flavorful but could also be useful. I know investigators don't have a lot of feats, but I think everything I really need will come from my extracts and talents (such as polymorph and mutagen), or from other class abilities (such as studied combat, which is a great scaling bonus). Sorry for the long post. Thanks for sticking through it. I know its not necessarily an optimal build, but it seems useful enough to be fun and viable in our current campaign. What do you guys think?
In light of the pandemic, I decided I’d like to start a pathfinder campaign on roll20. I’ve had some experience DMing, with my last AP being rise of the runelords (which was fantastic). Anyway, my group is generally pretty inexperienced. Some have played a bit of DND 5th edition here and there and only one of the five has actually ever played pathfinder. I was wondering what APs you’d recommend? I’m leaning towards skulls and shackles and might modify the ship combat if need be. It seems like something this group would like but I’d love to hear some feedback. The ones I can’t do (or more accurately would rather not do bc I’ve run them or played them) are:
Thanks!
Hey all. My group is currently gearing up to start Second Darkness. It’s a five person group and so far the only character I know we have for sure is a cleric, but I told the group I’d take the rogue-type role.
So my group and I have been playing Wrath of the Righteous for about a year now. We’re all 14th level and 6th tier, and the path will probably end us at level 20 and tier 6. My character is a fighter/champion/guardian, and the other three party members are an arcanist/archmage, paladin/marshal, and warpriest/hierophant. My character is a twf power turtle with a longsword and heavy shield. He focuses on on locking his enemies in place (with the pin down feat), tanking their attacks, and then beating them to a pulp. I know tank builds aren’t typically viable because of their low damage output but with mythic tiers I’ve been able to stay one of the highest damage dealers in the party. As we go up in level and tier I’ve been running out of ideas on what take for feats and ties and was hoping to get some advice on high level play vs mythic evil outsiders and other nastys. Also happy to take critiques on the build. Current stats
Feats (Can’t think of them all off the top of my head)
Mythic Powers
Thanks for the help. This is my first forum post so I’m sorry if it isn’t great. |