Shadow Kosh's page

I think I'm possibly the only person in the world to prefer the original movie to the show, so I don't actually give a damn about this. I didn't watch the old one (apart from a few episodes to determine I didn't like it), I won't be watching this.

I liked the show, but I do think that the original movie had a lot more fun. At time TV Buffy seemed intent on wallowing in it's own teen angst b*~$*+&*. I actually found I preferred the odd-numbered seasons a lot more than the even numbered seasons, for whatever reason.

Plus Kristy Swanson was way hotter than Sarah Michelle Gellar.

If there is a DVD release that has all the episodes in the correct order, I am unaware of it. My personal DVDs most certainly are NOT in the order prescribed by The Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5: Master Episode List, but is in the order in which the episodes originally aired. Again, it's nothing major, but having watched both orderings, the one I linked is better, and JMS has endorsed it.

http://www.tvguide.com/news/the-flash-season-5-spoilers-new-harrison-wells/

New Wells Confirmed. Not that I think anyone had any doubts.

I'm probably alone, but the whole "the team doesn't function without some version of Harrison Wells" thing has gotten pretty old and stale, at least for me.

I hadn't realized how much I'd been missing Ralph (after the initial shock and loss). I do hope he will be sticking around next season.

Also, he does a certain Marvel character's signature thing, but since he is supposed to be ridiculous, it works for him.

Reed actually came after both Plastic Man and Elongated Man.

So last night episode was intriguing. Not only for the current climate of racial politics and such, but for the fact we got introduced to ANOTHER relatively unknown Kryptonian God. Weird but interesting.

The whole "they will hate me because I'm black" thing really just killed the momentum of the episode (much like the similar moment where J'onn talks about being a black man a few episodes back). The writers seem to think that there's no need to ever use a scalpel when nuclear bomb is available. I'm not opposed to them having a political agenda, but they could at least make some effort to not make it stick out like a sore thumb.

Has anyone told Oliver Queen that he automatically is a beloved hero instead of a hated vigilante since he's white? Maybe he should have just shown them his skin color during that whole trial thing. (This is based on what I've read, I don't actually watch Arrow.)

I'm going on the theory that Flash interferes in such a way that causes Devoe's stupifying ray to retroactively affect the entire Arrowverse going back at least 6 years, although with less extreme results. It would help explain a large number of decisions that characters across all the shows have made.

I really like Adrienne Palicki and she's had hella bad luck with TV shows, and I particularly liked her as Bobbi. I think now she's involved in other projects so we're probably not going to see her back in the MCU any time soon. :( )

She's on The Orville, but that show for some reason skipping 2018 and season 2 won't begin until early in 2019 (from what I have read). Dunno what else she's involved with.

And hey, we never expected to see Hunter again either...

I think part of the reason for the initial glut of Drizzt clones was more for the mechanical advantages of being a drow, which IIRC were pretty hefty in 2nd edition.

I think the totems are too spread out. They should give them all to one bearer to use against Malus. Maybe fit them into a gauntlet or something.

Maybe they are waiting for us to have the books in our hands (and had a week to read them) before they completely revise the entire 2nd edition to our varied whims?

They might also just wait until Pathfinder 2nd edition has been in print for a while, and start up again with stealth rule changes via errata. Like they continually did with PF1

I just don't get the wait. We could all have alpha rules now while the real playtest is still getting changed.

Paizo could have thousands of people pouring over their current rules and pointing out unexpected combos or expressing confusion about wording.

Right now it feels like I'm being marketed too not that I'm being invited for feedback and it doesn't make me feel good about 2e.

Feedback will be welcome in about four months.

For now, the healthiest mindset is to compile questions you want to explore when the final document becomes available. It's going to be big, so knowing what we care about will help us focus on the parts that matter to us.

Let's be honest. The window between the release of the playtest and the scheduled release of Pathfinder 2.0 is pretty short. They aren't looking for any feedback that suggest any major changes. They're looking for minor tweaks to what they already have essentially set in stone.

"One man's trap is another man's treasure."

So i'm assuming that the first thing you do when building a character is to make sure to get Prone Shooter?

Notice those rules for replacing a lost familiar? Or a lost spellbook? Or the cost of an extra spellbook? That means those are meant to be attacked, sundered, burnt, lost. No magic user should be traveling around with their entire library.

One of the problems is that if you mention doing any of these things on this forum, people basically think that your players should take turns punching you in the face before blackballing you from the RPG community at large.

We saw no body for Ultron.

Even if we had, that means nothing, given that it's Ultron.

Could I suggest PF1 and PF2 for the two editions of pathfinder?

1E and 2E are pretty well established abbreviations for AD&D, so there’s a pretty significant risk of people misunderstanding that terminology if it’s applied to pathfinder. PF1 and PF2 are unambiguous.

I second this. While it's not all that confusing at the moment in the Pathfinder Playtest forum, eventually (and actually pretty quickly) Pathfinder 2.0 will actually release, and both editions will be discussed more in all the different forums. The terms "1E" and "2E" have referred to AD&D 1st edition and AD&D 2nd edition for longer than Paizo has existed, and are still discussed quite a bit in the forums. Using PF1 and PF2 will help to avoid a lot of confusion.

one is always better off broadening their horizons not limiting them.

Honestly, I prefer to insert one-shots in an entirely different system whenever I'm involved in a lengthy campaign. I think that system fatigue is definitely a real thing (as is fatigue of similar types of adventures...I wonder if either of those is as least partially a factor for John Lynch 106's group.)

A tinkerer / mechanic / steampunk inventor type of class, that is explicitly stated to be NOT powered by any form of magic. Comic book / webcomic Girl Genius "Sparks" as the primary inspiration.

I'd like a mix of half page, full page, 1.5 page, and 2 page monsters, whatever length is necessary to get a good mix of crunch and fluff. I do like how Alien Archive had stuff like extra equipment and so on, but it doesn't fit everywhere.

Agreed. Give each monster the space that it needs, whether that be a half-page or 12 pages. I'd love to see ecology, strategies, etc...but they aren't necessary for all monsters. Fit the format to the monster, don't fit the monster to the format. I know that 2E is supposed to be more Golarion-infused, but if Golarion-specific info could be set aside from the rest of the monster entry, that'd be good. Not everyone who plays Pathfinder uses Golarion. A final section for monsters that need it could be the "___ in Golarion" section. (Much like the later monster manuals for 3.5 did, with sections for Ebberon and Forgotten Realms).

As for extra stuff like equipment or the like, if it is included, I'd rather it be relegated to an appendix and referenced in the appropriate monster entries.

Nathanael Love wrote:

No one wants to keep casters awesome, it's all "how can we make it so that martial are better in every way and laugh at the people dumb enough to still roll casters"

I want casters to be awesome.

Casters can be SUBSTANTIALLY nerfed, and they would still be awesome.

Can this be another paper cut?

That Paizo cease relying on their customers to search an FAQ, rather than print/post an actual errata?
Many players/GMs don't consider FAQs to be official changes; it's 'just the opinion of some guy on the forums'.

Having a policy that errata can only be compiled, if a book goes to a new printing, means many books will never see their content formally clarified and corrected.

On a somewhat related note:

Have errata be actual errata, not stealth rule changes. A large number of the "errata" that Paizo has issued have NOT been correcting mistakes, it's been flat-out changing a rule. This is actually a good way to DISCOURAGE the sales of physical books, in my opinion. Why by a physically book that will have more and more of it's rules altered, when you can buy the PDF that will be updated to whatever the "new" rules are?

Wheldrake wrote:

like a drop of devil's blood or a tuning fork of a very specific frequency. Those things should've had a material cost associated with them from the start

Depending on the society I can see tuning forks being under 1 gold.

The thing is, it's not just a tuning fork. It's a tuning fork that's specifically tuned to the frequency required for [insert plane of existence here].

That was a major plot failure of the season. There is absolutely no logic in Whizzers death. It was simply a plot device to heighten the tension early in the show, but when the big reveal comes out it makes no sense whatsoever.

Yeah, it's almost as if the first half of the show was written independently of the second half, and the people writing the first half weren't in on the big reveal.

Arssanguinus wrote:

It looks like, though, the parts that are most bothersome are set in stone and input on them isn't going to matter much save for tweaking around the edges, unfortunately. It does seem like there is one specific subset that is being catered to, and hard.

I'm not sure, but if they're set in stone it seems like a horrible way to go into a playtest. It defeats the point. "We'll listen to feedback and tweak accordingly, unless it's something we just want to do anyway in which case you can pound sand." That's not a good mindset. As I've said in another thread, "This new system is worse than the old one, go back and tweak that instead of this new thing." is a valid response to changes. I just have to hope that Paizo is as open-minded as they're expecting us to be. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt because they've been good in the past.

The playtest is gonna be too short for it to have have substantial impact. It's pretty much just looking for minor tweaks to what they have already set in stone.

In a nutshell Pathfinder became the exact game it tried not to be; 3.5 D&D with it's rules bloat and unnecessary library of books that add nothing to the game except more rules.

I'm not sure Pathfinder ever tried to avoid becoming this.

1) What rules are preventing you from converting Masks of Nylarthothep to Pathfinder 1e? I genuinely don't see any rules that would prevent you converting an adventure to another system.

I've converted between systems that were vastly different mechanically many MANY times. I'd actually say that big mechanical differences are much less problematic than big tonal or playstyle differences. For example, the example you gave....Call of Cthulhu probably isn't the best system to try to convert to Pathfinder, not because of the mechanical diferences, but because of the vast difference in how the game is played.

Paizo hasn't updated the PRD in a couple years despite releasing material under the OGL, and I can't help but wonder if they aren't going to jettison their (now) 1sr Edition PRD. It costs money to maintain this stuff, and while they'll keep first edition in print, and keep selling PDFs, it isn't clear whether they'll keep the PRD site up. I understand if they don't, but I really hope they keep the PRD site going.

It's just hypertext, so it's fairly inconsequential in terms of storage space. So they will probably keep it up for as long as they have a website. However, the chances of them actually updating the PRD to include the newer releases since they stopped bothering has pretty much dropped to 0%.

Since Paizo is putting out that converting between the systems is trivial, publishing official PDF's already converted to PF1 should be trival.

You underestimate the time and expense that layout takes.

To much division of resources, but i believe harnmaster does this and hackmaster at least attempted two versions of the same rules-set for different tastes. So, I don't know, maybe.

A fair number of 3PP either put out products that are dual-stat or put out versions of their products for different systems. Frog God Games supports both Pathfinder and 5E, as well as their own Swords & Wizardry system.

A complete reevaluation of the spell lists.

Honestly, the spell list needs to be redone to the point where I would suggest throwing away everything except a minimal description of each spell with absolutely NO mechanics, then rebuild the spells from there.

I find it a bit amusing that people basically want 100% compatability with Pathfinder 1.0. My system of choice for D&D-esque games is Swords & Wizardry. Other than picking an appropriate monster replacement, I am perfectly capable of converting on-the fly. And I do this conversion on-the-fly from some radically different systems.....D&D (any edition), Rifts, Paranoia, ...basically anything i can make the basic story fit (and I can make some odd choices fit).

Of course, it's a bit easier to translate to a simpler system. But still, i manage to convert from systems that S&W has no DNA in common with, aside from being an RPG.

Paladinosaur wrote:

James, do you like The Princess Bride?

No.

The hell? UNSUBSCRIBE

That doesn't change the fact that OPF has a slower prep time, and that NPF is being built to reduce that concern, because plenty of people preffer to reduce prep time, including new players.

To be fair, we don't know that Pathfinder 2.0 will actually have reduced prep time.

They have claimed it will, but they've also spent the past decade vigorously denying that the caster/martial disparity was an actual thing.

Whats the working definition of hero here? Guy who can slaughter a million goblins without breaking a sweat? That sounds more like supers than heroes. If i fought iron mike tyson he'd whip my ass. If iron mike fought me and 9 of my buddies he'd get beat. I think Mark mentioned this same line of thought earlier. You are either cool with being super or you are not. Paizo is cool with it so there is no worry about BA in PF2.

I seem to be in a pretty small club with my workding definition of "heroic". Maybe it's influenced by the fact that I played Call of Cthulhu for a long time before I ever touched one of the d20-spawned editions of D&D. For me, true heroism is when the character throws themselves at the forces of evil, knowing they are outmatched and almost certain to die, but that they might save others with their sacrifice. A band of near-demigod 20th level heroes slaughtering a band of goblins....not all that heroic.

I like vancian and limited casting so I didnt like the idea of unlimited cantrips in 5E.

Um.....does anyone else want to tell him, or should I?

If all of my existing books are usable with little to no adjustment I will gladly adapt to PF2.....if not......I'm not interested.

If they maintain compatibility at that level, why bother buying Pathfinder 2.0 at all? Just use pathfinder 1.0 rulebooks to run Pathfinder 2.0 adventures.

People wanted a "continued 3.5", for sure, but they also wanted a fixed 3.5. PF1 tried to do both, which is why things are "backwards compatible" but enough things changed that NPCs take quite a bit of work to convert, and a lot of content was outright replaced (e.g. many options from the PHB reprinted in the CRB) or rendered obsolete (e.g. all but the most powerful Prestige Classes).

PF2 could very well be a similar change. I would at least wait for the actual rules to be released before announcing that PF1 content is invalidated/scrapped/etc.

To continue on from my last post, the desire for backwards compatibility is very much a two-edged sword. If you keep the degree of backwards comparability than some posters here want, you run into the exact problem I noted in my last post...it's essentially repackaging Pathfinder 1.0. This will piss people off because it's just reselling them something they already purchased. In addition, the problems that have plagued the Pathfinder system since 8 years before it was even released will STILL plague it.

On the other hand, if you actually try to fix those problems, and make the new edition actually different enough to warrant a purchase, then you WILL lose those customers for whom backwards compatibility is a sticking point.

Regardless of what they do, there will also be some people who stick with Pathfinder 1.0, because it's what they are comfortable with. There will be others who jump ship to another system because the end of Pathfinder 1.0 makes a good jumping off point. They might eventually come back to Pathfinder, but they might not.

There WILL BE customers lost with this edition change. Paizo seems to think that it's worth the gamble to see if they can gain more than they lose. While I'm not a fan of their system, I do wish them luck. They do fairly good adventures, and have a fairly competent setting (assuming you don't mind a rather haphazard j+*saw puzzle of a setting). I've used thier stuff for other systems, and I doubt that Pathfinder 2.0 will change that (although if the early portion of Pathfinder 2.0's life cycle is mostly devoted to conversions of existing Pathfinder 1.0 material, they'll loose my interest long before they bother with anything new).

Or the PS2 instead of the PS4?

So you are saying that the hardware / game system will be better, but the software / adventures will, on the average, be worse.

They obviously decided that 5e's popularity is not a flash in the pan (which it is)

It's been well over three years. No how matter how many times you parrot out "It's only a flash in the pan!"...it's not.

Most of the arguments here for a new system are reminiscent for 4e, yet gamers still felt that they were losing a great deal of support with it coming out. I myself felt that way when all the splat books I got really were worthless. Especially if I wanted to continue doing organized play. And then Paizo came along with Pathfinder and gave us something to use our old stuff while also getting more support, both rules-wise and adventure-wise.

The thing people are forgetting is that Pathfinder was built on giving 3.5 fans most support, both ruleswise and adventurewise. And now a decade later, we're faced with the same issues that WotC dealt us. I'm not really happy about this, no. I like 3.5 and I'd rather not see a full blown new edition that invalidates any support for the books I bought from Paizo. I don't like 5e and truthfully, I'm not a fan of Starfinder. If Pathfinder 2e is going to be like those, I just don't see myself shelling out more money for it. Especially if they are pulling the plug on supporting PF1.

I'm not happy with this. If my GM were still alive, he'd be very sad about hearing this.

I have a feeling that Pathfinder 2.0 is going to be Paizo's own 4th edition, in many ways.

I have seen a plethora of old names in these threads, people I haven't seen on the forums in years. The old guard will see what Paizo does before they throw themselves out.

I'm definitely not old guard, but I will admit to mostly reading through the Pathfinder 2E stuff out of morbid curiosity, and it basically seems like a losing situation for Paizo all-around. Probably helps that I don't really have a horse in this race, I moved on to other systems years ago.

From what I've read of the plans for Pathfinder 2.0, it seems like some of the changes seem to be aimed at doing things akin to 5E. I'm not sure that's really the best idea. Fans of 5E already have 5E. Changing things to be more like 5E probably won't bring many of them to Pathfinder, and stands a decent chance of getting existing Pathfinder fans to abandon ship (to extend the ship metaphor even further). I'm not sure that a PF/5E hybrid will gain any more fans than it stands to loose.

On the other hand, if they keep compatibility to the extent that some of the bigger fanboys want them to, there's barely a point in putting out a new edition (other than reselling the last decade's worth of content in a new package). If they keep compatibility, then all the stuff that's broken will STILL be broken.

(Although I do find it amusing that some of the stuff I've seen actually has them finally acknowledging the caster/martial disparity as a real thing, and not just some "conspiracy theory cooked up by people with an agenda" that they've officially tried to paint it as in the past.)

No one is being throw out, although there are a few who are loudly jumping overboard.

I wouldn't say overboard. There's a whole lot of ships currently sailing on the RPG ocean. If you don't like the direction the ship you're currently on, then it's a pretty good bet you will be able to find one that's going a lot closer to the direction you like.

they're not producing new content either, which kills the system dead.

That's the popular theory / justification for bloat around here, but if that's ACTUALLY the case, then why is 5th edition, a system that has had very little rules expansion in the three years since the core books came out, beating Pathfinder so handily?

You don't have to be constantly spurting out splatbooks of bloat like a man with diarrhea overdosing on laxatives in order to avoid your system dying. 5th edition finally puts this old chestnut to rest.