Sebastian Hirsch's page

Thanks for letting us know, this is a good reminder for me to go save my reviews since I was on vacation when the last blog went out.

Was there any resolution reached on migrating reviews and having 'verified'/unverifieid reviews as mentioned being discussed here?

Same question, though I also archived my reviews.

I managed to download it again, and the 60+ MB package worked for me, while a slightly higher resolution for the various artworks included in the pdf is a bit low/more compressed, I know where to find them online, or equally likely, a staggering amount of cool fan art, the Warframe community is pretty creative.

When it comes to the map, honestly, I like the choices here: you can buy the flip maps (slight variations like no ship on one), which is very convenient for those who want a physical map but struggle to print, or you can print them yourself or show them on a VTT/big screen on your table (the dream for many gamers).

I am pretty happy with the package and will use this opportunity to showcase SF2 and Warframe to more people.

(Need to write a review, but after looking over the protoframes, this is very much what I expected and hope for, and ... ... like many Warframe players, I am looking for versions for my own favorites ).

I was busy GMing, but having snatched parts of the Warframe Twitch stream... pretty cool to have more people exposed to this game.

Thought I had posted in favor of this already, but apparently not.

I am aware of no good reason not to do this, and frankly, this thread is full of good reasons to consider doing this.

I am not aware of a single argument against allowing slow track, particularly with the (somewhat controversial) option to create up to level 7 characters.

It would be nice if the new store prevented you from gifting a pdf to someone who already had it. That happened to me once a couple of years ago, and it still feels bad.

Purging all the old reviews is shocking news, and even more so to see that it was hidden on page 2 of a discussion.

Congratulations James, it was a pleasure to do your evaulation ^^

I am extremely excited for this, absolutely did not see this coming yet it's such a wonderful fit

Displaying "verified purchase" next to a review by someone who has actually purchased the product, potentially with a toggle a viewer has to press to actually see all the unverified reviews - sounds like a fair compromise here.

Related to that, over the years, I often had to purchase products for players without a credit card, or for my GMs, I am assuming that a gifted purchase, or someone redeeming a Humble Bundle code, also qualifies them to give a review? Anything else would be pretty silly.

At the end of the day, I fear that limiting the ability to give feedback via reviews is just going to cause people to voice that sentiment in other places, and thus far, "leave a review, they read those" was a good way to limit players from complaining while still at the table.

Not entirely sure if players starting a thread or several complaining about something in the org play section is going to make the forums more pleasant, though that is usually the area where GMs have to run things as written, and feedback tends to be rather direct.

I had the pleasure of evaluating Kishmo, absolutely one of the best SFS1 GMS out there, if you ever have the option of playing at his tables, I can very much recommend the experience.

I am anything but thrilled about rewarding people to follow Paizo on a lot of platforms, that feels more like something a free-to-play game would do.

There are other aspects I do not love but those get the strongest gut reaction right now.

It's a horrible story. I hope the many affected publishers make it out of this crisis. This really is the time to support them for those who can.

I struggle to really interact with the story as the art just screams troll to me, but to be honest, I prefer the artist's older pieces (like stuff done in 2007), the more recent works are not my cup of tea.

LiaElf76 wrote:

there’s absolutely no way for Paizo to account for what hundreds of different groups might have done.

This would be a substantially more compelling argument if there weren't an entire rest of the planet they could have picked to set this scenario at where this problem didn't arise.

I just shared this blog with the group I ran AOA for and every single one of them got angry about it.

Yeah, all my my AOA players were either confused or unhappy about it as well, really a peculiar choice.

Lovely to see that the team has gotten a great new addition, welcome Aras, I swear that we can be normal... sometimes ^^

I might be able to cancel my credit card, I only had it to buy stuff on Paizo.com.

Back in the old days when it was not completely nonsensical (shipping to he EU got real expensive and the local taxation setup changed), I liked having subscriptions, but these days getting the physical book at all might be a downside.

A lot of very promising changes, personally I fear that the Envoy change is a distinct power increase but in our playtesting we often had an operative that made enemies off-guard so I can see why they went into this direction.

As I am still running playtests, it would be nice to get a couple of these changes spelled out as rules, so the transition to the final rules is less jarring.

I was excited for an AP that lets people take on Tanglebriar, but the Razmiran character on the temp cover is giving me pause.

Congratulations to the campaign coin recipient and the 5 donut GMs, org play would be a shadow of itself without talented and motivated volunteers like you.

Special callout to Charlene, it has been a delight to see your GM skills improving over the last couple of years, and the recognition is more than deserved.

I agree, the network and especially the ability to to cheat action economy is what really elevates the mystic into a class I am excited to play - and I never really had quite that reaction to the cleric.

The frequency of skill challenges has really ramped up, and personally, I feel like overusing them makes them more unpalatable, particularly the influence system, as I tend to think that it makes the RP worse, as you are busier navigating the system, and focus less on the RP.

Those systems often devolve into a lot of dice-rolling, especially discovery checks.

In general, the right subsystem can make sense - though I have seen too many chases used in situations that did not call for them - unfortunately, the issues do seem to get worse if an adventure chooses to include 2-3 of them.

When they get used a lot they really mange to take up a lot of sessions time, and as a GM that runs a lot online... fights are super easy, but illustrating a subsystem that involves player choice and a lot of rolls is hard work.
In situations where the actual impact of succeeding or failing at those roles barely matters (for narrative and or mechanical reasons) it can feel like an unpleasant drain on the player's rerolls.

SuperBidi wrote:

If Paizo continues in this direction then I'll agree with the ranged meta. Map size is really the defining factor for the meta to be ranged or melee.

On my healer I can't work further away than 30 feet anyway, so I'm going to have to move along with the melee.

Did you see the update they made to mystic?

Page 82 (Mystic Feats): Add Network Connection as a 2nd level mystic feat with the same text as the ability from page 77. It has the mystic trait.

Yeah, that sounds like a good idea, unless the idea is for this one to update some less fighter builds a tiny bit.

I question that a lot of this is necessary, helpful or that it would add a lot, particularly once the word "realism" crops up.

While it is tempting to offer solutions, Paizo's playtests tend to work best when people post their problems and avoid offering specific solutions, after all the designers might already have their own, plans based on the feedback they have received.

Longarms used to be a good first step, but if we are real here, as the groups reach higher levels the encounters have a lot of hp, someone needs to reduce them an default small arm damage just was not cutting it.

And while I am repeating myself, I think ranged meta mostly means that guns are more viable, and with operative and soldier, the players have some rather nice tools that work at range.

Some folks might prefer a game with barely any melee combat, but that is certainly not me, while I enjoy using a sniper rifle, there is always the urge to take up a sharp sword and get very close to the enemy.

As Xenocrat has mentioned, the condition is subject to a lot of discussion thus it is a GM call. It would be lovely if the PF2 team could release a FAQ entry about it - personally considering the various cases this could happen, getting stunned during your turn is way too brutal to be applied like this.

Also, that title is at the very least not very respectful, you might want to reflect on that.
This is a playtest, minor changes to how the rules are structured, and how exceptions are written will likely get sorted out in time.

For the exterior map, just use the map and ignore the walls and the furnishings other than the ladders and guns.

Honestly it's the interior map that's confusing, since you have to ignore the ladders and guns without telling the players the map does double-duty and they might need to be on the hull later.

A separate map wouldn't have hurt.

They actually made one/altered the map, for the Foundry module, looks really neat.

I am personally fine with the state of things, Operative feels like a great attempt to give players who want to play a ranged rogue the right tools, and in general, a lot of the power that is related to guns is part of class design.

I am also in favor of this direction, a lot of it is just re-stating that the GMs actually do have some freedom.

As others have mentioned, unfortunately in recent years it has become an unfortunate reality that a lot of copy and paste and other errors have found their way into scenarios.

I believe that the team is trying to work on these issues but with the current volume, giving GMs more freedom seems like the right call.

I agree with a lot of the things the preceding posters have said, but I would actually suggest that we go slightly further:

As HMM has mentioned, sometimes delays happen or your time slot gets shorter, in situations like that it seems vastly preferable to cut one of the less essential fights instead of the final encounter.
Empowering GMs to make that call would be my preferred outcome.

To be honest, I would say the same could apply to subsystems, especially those where the outcome is pretty minor, but the system nonetheless takes a lot of time to resolve.

Frankly speaking, I would be fine if players could opt to skip it and go with the worst outcome of a particular interaction.

---

Of course, we could go ahead and simply run everything in adventure mode, similar to how APs work, considering how rarely players are earning less than 10 treasure bundles, large parts of the process feel like an empty ritual.

That is more extreme than what is suggested here, but I hope we can consider what org play scenarios can cut down on when we look at SFS2.

Yeah, I don't see it either, it is very, very different for e.g. an elemental barbarian.

Lovely, thank you Starfinder Team ^^

It's unclear and I am going with the opposite interaction, in the class it sounds like reminder text, but in situations like this, I am going with the default condition entry.

A clarification would be beyond welcome.

I think that is a good way to describe it, after all if the thing you have taken cover behind is no longer between you and the enemy, I would expect it to do anything.

Personally, taking cover has not really worked out in my playtest games, particularly A Cosmic Birthday, moving away always made more sense.

That sounds great, thank you for listening. The Community Use Policy has created a lot of great products and services, and it would be a shame to lose that type of motivated volunteer and innovative project.

Kineticists are welcome to play in space anyway, there is no reason to do significant changes like that to a class that is pretty much a martial weapon user, the class already takes some great inspiration from the kineticist.

Hello Starfinders!

I made a couple game aids that I hope you find useful for these playtest scenarios.

Ready? Let's dive in.

The 'It Came from the Vast' Pawnset

Loot Sheets

There is a lot of loot, so I made cheat sheets. The loot is color-coded by room so that you can cut it up as strips to hand it to players as they find stuff, and to help you sort the loot back afterwards.

I'm hoping that all of you find this helpful as we're diving into this new ruleset!

Hugs,
Hmm

I do not have an in-person game scheduled but these are great, thank you for taking the time to share them with all of us.

I am very much against giving players permanent advantages for which groups they have played in or people they have played with. It was bad enough in PFS1 when people got carried into the upper tiers and thus significantly increased their income.

There are other arguments against this proposal but honestly, this type of thing is better suited for a campaign of a game like FF14 where crafting gets a lot of attention.

I think the closest you can get in PFS2 to being a crafter who provides items to others is being an alchemist or similar class that has a daily amount of items to share,

I am quite excited, particularly for the Starfinder Second Edition Playtest Deluxe Adventure Pack (Foundry VTT), those dice just look amazing ^^

Captain Concierge approved dice rolls.

Thank you Andrew, the dice are lovely and the holographic captain is just a delight.

So happy someone convinced Zemir to exchange his sword for the staff of lamplighting.

Avi Kool wrote:

The price for the elixir of gender transformation is something we discussed a lot! I initially set it much lower, but we worked together to make it something that fits in the rules of the game. My overall intent was that we create a version of HRT that is both more accessible to a layperson in the world of Golarion as well as reflecting a bit more accurately what it's like to take HRT in the real world. Love hearing your thoughts!

I’m curious, is the elixirs PFS legal? I would love to play an alchemist who does the transformation elixirs for trans folks?

While it has happened that org play has sanctioned blog entries before, since this is a preview of Players Core 2, which releases in August, it's likely only a matter of time until the book gets sanctioned.

A blog is a cool thing, but being in a new Core book gives it so much more exposure, which is pretty darn neat.

Love all the representation (particularly they bisexual characters as they can be so easy to miss and forget), and happy pride to everyone.

That new elixir is a very welcome addition to the PF2 ruleset.

Very hyped for the SF2 playtest... also KITTY!!

So the Pathfinder Society has a lot of leadership NPCs. We have:

* 10 members of the Decemvirate
* 3 Masters (of the Swords, Spells, and Scrolls 'schools')
* Zarta Dralneen (Head archivist)
* The 6 heads of the current factions

That's already twenty right there before we even get to all of the individual Venture Captains that run the various lodges (some of whom, like Ambrus Valsin, pop up constantly) or other recurring NPCs.

When it comes to getting players - new or old - to understand how all of these connect to how the Pathfinder Society organization works, much less to get invested into these characters' possible plotlines, I feel the sheer 'org-chart bloat' at the Society's top works against itself. A player’s ability to care about any specific one of these leading NPCs gets spread too thin for any of their fates to have much of an impact.

In contrast, Starfinder has had ongoing storylines about multiple faction leaders that work in part because the number of faction heads are kept low and focused enough for players to get to see them and their personalities more.

I'm curious what other people think about this. Do you think the Society could use a trimming/consolidation? Or if not, what ways could the large cast of leaders be juggled to have them make an impact?

NOTE: whether of not the Decimverate should be masked and anonymous leaders is likely a separate topic. I'm curious about people's thoughts on the leadership's numbers, not their IDs (though if you want to argue the Ten should be revealed to just so happen to be existing faction heads to drop the numbers down, feel free :p)

I agree with your subtle and reasonable suggestion to throw all former and current members of the Decemvirate into a wood chipper, they are clearly compromised due to those weird Azlanti artefacts.

Thank you, regular errata are very appreciated particularly for those of us with at least one leg in the org play sphere.
EDIT: Might it be possible to add something like a "last updated on [date]" entry to each errata section, to make it easier for GMs and players to check if there are recent errata?

The Monk's Tangled Forest Stance also has a very interesting way of tackling this topic

Looking forward to the new season, particularly since it has a chance to advance the plot with the Watcher Lord has not moved much in this edition.

Starting a season with a delicious dinner sounds like a marvelous way to start the season.

I miss the time when the Maze of the Open Road was a closely guarded secret, using it for field trips sort of trivializes it, but I guess we have crossed that threshold seasons ago.