Sitri's page

There has been a lot that has been said in this thread since I last posted. While part of me wants to respond to a lot of them individually, it just isn't going to happen.

Other than simply not liking it, I don't think I have seen an opposition opinion that has lacked hypocrisy.

People cry for more sexy men, there are many threads comparing what that means to different people and what they look like. Everyone seems to support it or stay silent. Many exposed men with what I imagine to be sex appeal get printed in the new iconics lineup.

People have threads wanting more instances of homosexuality. Most people on the boards are supportive of the idea, the few that aren't have the decency to be honest and say they can't really argue why they don't like it other than the fact that they don't. Material gets published with homosexuality in a positive or neutral light.

People want more transgender material. Material gets published.

People say they want sexy women. A flood begins where claims are made of being sexist. This is evidence of a horrible society. There are claims of women being subjugated. Women who share this want of material are ignored while people keep spouting off that this is a desire of piggish men. A high ranking staff member comes in and sarcastically dismisses the concern. Nonsense about realistic battle gear is cited as evidence the women should be dressed in their massive, frumpy layers, despite the same standards not being expected of the men.....or the 32423143 other things in the game that split from realism.

Who exactly is the group of privilege here? I really couldn't hope to count the number of hours of enjoyment I have gotten out of this game. But I can safety say as a matter of principle, I have never been more disappointed by it.

Not really seeing the censored thing maybe people are seeing intent in the artwork thats not actually there?

If memory serves Paizo tend to be fairly hands off with fine details about the iconics (They provide race/ethnicity/gender and basic armour/weapon but thats about it) letting wayne have a pretty free reign with the art and since he dosent seem to frequent these forums all that much I doubt any of his desicions were based on any threads on them.

I saw a similar post, but I wouldn't expect them to openly say they made a request to sterilize female art after the recent outcry against sexy women on the boards. It is a very poor marketing decision that couldn't be defended objectively.

Of course it is possible that this was all a coincidence and the artist(s) just happened to take this route at this time, but I don't think it likely.

Sitri wrote:

I restricted the statement to the females because they are the new iconics who seem to be censored.

Women being fully clothed = censorship? I'm wearing jeans, a tee and a light running jacket right now. I'm more or less covered up. Have I been censored?

Strawman

Marketing explicitly uses sex to sell. Fantasy and sex have extreme overlaps.

People complain about one aspect of sex and that aspect disappears from future marketing and fantasy. That looks a lot like censorship to me. This is especially true when they are pushing borders in new avenues of sexuality for other demographics that are on the party line.

Sitri wrote:

But I argue that an across the board opposition to this extremely natural pleasure is putting undue pressure on many of the same people who are claimed to be protected.

Speaking for myself, I'm not feeling any under pressure as a result of the designs of the new female iconics. I'm quite happy with how they look and what they're wearing.

If Paizo suddenly started removing and deleting old pieces of Iconic art and replacing them with more covered up versions, your censorship analogy might make more sense. But they haven't, so it doesn't.

Composition fallacy.

You don't speak for all women. If Paizo is truly the inclusive, progressive company they are made out to be (in fairness I do think they mostly do this well) the shouldn't say that an effort should be made to restrict the sexuality of one group.

And following your logic, if NBC decided that in all future recorded shows women must wear burkas, it would still be censorship. It wouldn't change anything if normal reruns could still be seen.

It’s not at all a bad thing that the new iconics are covered up. Two things.

(1) Covered up in the iconic portrait still leaves plenty of room for more revealing sexiness elsewhere. And that’s a better way to do it. These characters’ primary characteristic is not “to look sexy for the players.” But more importantly …

This is utterly subjective and I firmly disagree. Since there isn't an objective way to determine the truth of this statement, and since people obviously have different opinions, wouldn't a mix in the new lineup be more appropriate?

(2) There are some problematic cultural dynamics at play here, and it’s important to lean against them. Whether you realize it or not, your posts play into those problematic dynamics. I’m not saying this to accuse you of being a bad person or anything. But observe how these posts might read to others. It’s a *great* thing that the game’s iconics do not follow a “practical and dangerous men, sultry and seductive women” rule.

I would agree with your first sentence, but from the opposing side of the fence. I think it is problematic that people claim that women, or men for that matter, should be covered up, and that is the appropriate direction to move.

You recognize, in a follow-up post, that women are sometimes interested in artwork of sexy females. But in both posts, you restrict “sexy” strictly to female characters. But of course there are a great many people—and I’m one of them—that are much more interested in sexy men.

I'm reminded of a thread that was knocking around for a while about why there aren't male gods of love and beauty in the setting. Most of the initial responses were something like, "because females are obviously more attractive, duh!”. Speak for yourself!

What your complaint reads as is the thought that the way things ought to be is that women in the game’s artwork should be depicted sexily for the enjoyment of the players, who are assumed to be straight men.

I restricted the statement to the females because they are the new iconics who seem to be censored. The men as a whole are far more exposed. Whether their art fits "sexy men" or not I really can't say. By reading the thread you referenced it is clear I am not a good judge of that. All I can say is I can see people b$!#! about sexy looking female art and then in the new release of the Iconic art, it looks like there is a conscious effort to hide bodies of the females.

But of course, women aren't for the purpose of looking sexy for your pleasure. And some of us want sexy men too. Given the problematic dynamics (historical and unfortunately ongoing) surrounding the participation of women and gay men in gaming (and more broadly nerd) culture, this is a bad thing. It sends all the wrong messages. So I conclude that it’s a *great* thing that the game’s iconics do not follow a “practical and dangerous men, sultry and seductive women” rule—Paizo gets major credit for their commitment to diversity in gaming.

If I would say people are for anything, I would absolutely say they are for sex. More specifically, we are gene replicators that are programmed to want to engage in the act which replicates more genes.

Do you feel you were not marketed to in the sexy factor of the new males. Perhaps this is a problem I can't see, but as far as I can tell this is the opposite of the truth. If you can say this is a true statement, I would not fault you for saying you want a little more fantasy in your fantasy game.

It sends the wrong message according to whom? An ex girlfriend of mine, head of the pediatrics and asthma wings of a major hospital, was forced to wear a hijab while vacationing in Egypt because the locals thought the slightly exposed cleavage of her B-cups was sending the wrong message. She likened the experience to having to wear a scarlet letter.

I had another girlfriend, who when talking about why women are more prudish than they would like to be, told me it is because they fear what other women will think of them.

This argument often gets painted in the light of the "majority" or "strait men" putting pressure on women to be how the men want them. But I argue that an across the board opposition to this extremely natural pleasure is putting undue pressure on many of the same people who are claimed to be protected.

Again. This is *not* to say you’re a bad person, or that you intended any of this. But whether you intended it or not, it illuminates the problem here, -snip-

:-)

Likewise

The fact that it is a specific Dragon seems like fluff to me. I don't have the specific text in front of me, but I don't remember reading anything that would explicitly block the normal rule of feat swapping.

I hated RiddiWipple. I almost died to his trap; I thought I was dead for about 30 seconds. When I got the boon I got the dragon Nogthletepp....or something close.....that character is long retired now and I forget the exact name I gave it. No one ever thought twice about it.

I don't think it fair to say "as much as the next male." It implies that only males are interested in attractive female portrayals.

Easily the most sexual characters I have seen were played by female players. I can think of four ladies off the top of my head which each use more innuendo and overt sexuality than the entire sum of male players that I have played with combined. Enjoyment of sex isn't just for men.

@Magnuskn I doubt the same people get so worked up by the lack of helmets or backpacks on all the characters.

I have read several threads somewhat lately where people have been complaining about art where some of the women display some level of sexuality. I can't help but think that contributed to the very sterile looking new iconics. If they pull up the brawler's belt a half inch, the entire female lot is ready to go for 1960's prime time television decency standards. Obviously there are some people that are very happy about this, but does anyone besides me find this a bad thing?

Next thing you know these people will start slow playing these outsiders. Will the horrors never end? >.>

The druid thinks "BUT HE IS A PRIME APE" is a good argument for why his animal companion should be able to use its climb speed on the ceiling of a cave.

You'd look like Elton John. :)

Sitri wrote:

Matthew Downie wrote:

Sitri wrote:

If for some reason they rule those that make the save count towards the HP total, my characters are going to start buying house centipedes.

As GM I'd rule that bugs don't have hit dice. Otherwise you'd get situations like this:

GM: The bone mage casts Circle of Death... here! Catching the entire party. You're under 40HD total so you all have to make a save or die.
Player: Ah, but there's a tree there in the middle. There must be hundreds of insects living on and under that tree. Forty of them have to save or die. Everyone else is fine.

In a home game, this issue doesn't really matter that much, you can rule how you like. In PFS where GMs are mandated to follow the rules, this would also be a violation.

A swarm of thousands of centipedes has nine hit dice. Therefore by RAW a jar of dozens of centipedes has less than one hit dice.

So if part of the name matches with a swarm, you can combine and divide them with impunity to pick and choose what bits of text to use from each regardless of size, HD, or other mechanics? Sweet; I am going to start using swarm skin to have all my diminutive centipedes trample for 1354d6 damage. >.>

At my high school they removed voluntary prayer time because those that did not participate were activtyl and harshly picked on.

I believe the same thing would happen here.

The difference being those not praying have no way of removing themselves from the situation other than lying and possibly violating their own morals. (It is also worth mentioning that it is using government money to at best create a waste of time for many people and at worst create unconstitutional pressure isn't a fair comparison to what we are talking about here.)

If a person doesn't want to pay someone back for a consumable, all they have to do is not accept it in the first place.

I have only seen one person run snowball, but he missed all the time with it. Yes it was nice when it worked as planned, but I would say that was less than 25% of the time. However, I can see how it could be a cheap, strong skeleton to build into a stronger spell effect at higher levels.

Illusion derail

Paizo has said many times that they often depart from the rules of their predecessors and will not be bound by their language or intent, but even if that wasn't the case, I don't see anything in the old spells that helps to clarify this issue.

Well in that post, the first quote is still important in regard to Save=Partial even under the opposite interpretation. Also, trying to write it any other way gets clunky fast. I started to try and write out an alternative that would get this same meaning across but use all terms more precisely and gave up after about one minute of staring at the screen.

As far as redundancy in the last quote, it does seem that way but I am not ultimately convinced. It is not the only instance of redundancy that can be found in the rules, and it could just be added for clarity. EDIT: It is redundant regardless which interpretation you use.

At the least, I saw another instance of suggesting that just making a save is not being affected on that very page. With the save=affected reading, if you make a save (negates) against a damage dealing spell while you are casting, you would not need to make a concentration check, but if you make a save (negates) against a non-damage dealing spell, you would need to make a concentration check. This doesn't make any sense.

Every time I see campaign specific crunch, I assume it is just to maximize copyright on a game inherited through OGL.

I don't tend to spend a lot on consumables, I play a lot of casters and I have a few go to consumables that make all their lists just to get me through in a pinch. I don't even buy bullets for my gunslinger (caster dip for Abundant Ammunition.) However, I would be inclined to buy a few more party friendly consumables under the proposed setup. Most of my characters have gold sitting on them, I just view consumables as a lost resource and don't like to buy them. If I end up dying where a consumable would have saved me, I am cool with it, but there are only about 5 players that I would seriously consider paying for their resurrection. IF I could put my excess gold into a contingency account (read: Breath of Life Scroll or some other similar consumable) that others could replenish when used, I would be happy to do so.

I don't see it as a huge issue of people fighting about who pays for it. Now if someone is alive prior to using the consumable, all you have to do is ask if they would like to use yours and replace it at the end of the scenario. If you do not have a chance to ask them this, I see very few different ways this could play out.

Scenario 1
Bill dies.
Betty casts BoL from her scroll.
Betty: Did you want to replace the scroll I used earlier to keep you alive?
Bill: Yes I can do that! Thank you so much. Lets hug it out and I will promise not to touch you inappropriately while we do.

Scenario 2
Chris dies.
Betty casts BoL from her scroll.
Betty: Did you want to replace the scroll I used earlier to keep you alive?
Chris: Hell no. I didn't ask you to cast it on me, that is on you.
Betty: Let it be known that the asshattery is strong in Chris, he does not like to reciprocate the things that people do for him.
No one ever gives Chris anything again.

Dylos wrote:

kinevon wrote:

TriOmegaZero wrote:

...the bad guy can only hit on a 20, but is using a x4 crit weapon.

The main bad guy is using an x4 crit weapon, and has three minions with high crit range weapons, and Butterfly's Sting...

But luckily none of the minions can use butterfly's sting because none of them worship Desna.

I beg to differ

I started laughing out loud, but when asked why I lacked the ability to articulate it.

A guy really likes his fighter to fly. Now that it cost him 150 gp he does it at least once every adventure. I don't feel it was really necessary for him to be able to fly, maybe the combat ends 1 round earlier. But if I don't pay him 150 gp to 'reimburse' him I am accused of not being a 'team player'.

With consumables effectively 75% off I can see some folks using them left and right as long as they are being subsidized by others.

If someone claimed I wasn't a team player for not paying for a potion they bought and drank to fly, I couldn't care less what that person thought of me; he is clearly a dumbass.

This thread is about being able to give back the equivalent things that people give to you in a scenario.

-snip-

I'd love a fantasy illustrator to come out with a portfolio of illustrations of what 'real' adventuring and adventurers look like. I doubt it will happen however, because 'that's not what the market wants'.

I get to live my real life all week, I like some fantasy in my fantasy.

Note: You may use any item that you find during the

scenario for free until the end of the scenario, but you
must purchase the item when the scenario is over in
order for your character to be able to continue to use the
item. This rule is most applicable to consumables such as
potions, scrolls, and so on, but also applies to weapons,
magic items, and so on.

Having no listed price doesn't mean you purchased it for nothing. I wouldn't let someone take pebbles from the previous scenario either. Although, if they asked if they could pick some up on the ground of this one I would tell them to go for it.

Additionally

Every

Chronicle sheet lists all of the loot that can be found during
the scenario, with the exception of minor items available to
every Pathfinder Society character.

Why would someone worship and evil deity?

...Because good is dumb.

-Dark Helmet

It is a little odd that I would be miserable at table with something so ridiculous but it makes me laugh so hard to read.

Fine, if you want to talk rules, let's talk rules:

Quote:

The leadership of this organized play community

assumes that you will use common sense in your
interpretation of the rules. This includes being
courteous and encouraging a mutual interest in
playing, not engaging in endless rules discussions.
While you are enjoying the game, be considerate of the
others at the table and don’t let your actions keep them
from having a good time too. In short, don’t be a jerk.

Quote:

It is impossible for the campaign management staff to

cover every possible situation or rules interpretation. As such,
you may encounter rules combinations or questions during
the course of a scenario that aren’t covered in this book or
the official Pathfinder Society FAQ. In these cases, the Game
Master has the freedom to adjudicate the rules as needed to
ensure a fun and fair gaming experience is had by all.

Quote:

A Game Master (GM) is the person who adjudicates the

rules and controls all of the elements of the story and world
that the players explore. A GM’s duty is to provide a fair
and fun game.

A GM has to find a balance between fair and fun. If he thinks, that a player is exploiting a rule beyond common sense, he may interprete the rule otherwise. He has the freedom to adjudicate the rules as needed to ensure that everyone has a fun and fair gaming experience.

From a RAW perspective the intimidation was perfectly legit. However your GM took his freedom to adjudicate the rules as he felt this was needed to ensure the fun of the rest of the group. Is this unfair to you? Probably! Would every GM have done this? Probably not.

This does not
mean you can contradict rules or restrictions outlined in
this document, a published Pathfinder Roleplaying Game
source, errata document, or official FAQ on paizo.com.
What it does mean is that only you can judge what is right
for your table during cases not covered in these sources.
Scenarios are meant to be run as written, with no addition
or subtraction to number of monsters (unless indicated
in the scenario), or changes to armor, feats, items, skills,
spells, stats, traits, or weapons.

You are very clearly in what you think is RAI rather than RAW. You want bodies to be a liability and therefore want to make special provisions to make that happen.

I do not think the body must be special liability. I think the spells authors fully plan on you moving the body to a safe place. I also think the porter's intended purpose was to move things. So I don't agree with your RAI.

I told you another way earlier in which the body for Magic Jar is in no danger and it doesn't involve the porter. For shadow projection, there is no distance limitation on the body and shadow; leave it at home or in the pathfinder lodge with a 1k shawl of life keeping and your body is never in danger. Bodies do not have to be liabilities.

The extra benefit clause for vanities is very clearly spelled out. The vanities cannot make skill checks, help lift you to a higher ledge, act as a lookout, block charging lanes, or do anything else you would have a normal person do that is not in their defined purpose. Moving things is the defined purpose of a porter.

If you think the porter drops the body by RAW that is fine, I do think there is some wiggle room for that interpretation, but that means he would senselessly drop the ring you had him carrying too. Lets not make special rules about mechanics for only certain things because we think that is RAI and then present it as RAW.

I asked about this a while ago when one of my players in a home game wanted to use it for a familiar with no cap. I asked on the boards and didn't get a whole lot of help, other than a few people saying it should be capped. There was a couple of people that implied that at one time this was a animal companion only feat, it was only later versions that included the familiar. If this is true, it was likely an oversight when updating the feat to not include language more appropriate to the familiar.

1) Feat argument-I don't have a dog in this fight, but I am inclined to err on the side of the player here as well. This alone isn't really enough to leave the game in my opinion, but you do raise some other decent points.

2) Faction argument-I liked every faction having something to do every mission also. I also didn't like all the stupid "here is something to find" missions. I have mentioned before that multiple factions could share goals, good goals, in a scenario. They could regularly swap who they share with and their motivations could be different. I really think this could solve a lot of the current problems.

3) Staff argument-I think both John and Mike do a really good job of keeping an even tone, even when people are being belligerent. However, I would say your concerns are very accurate with some of the other staff. I have both seen and been the recipient of some very inflammatory language and accusations both out of the blue and while trying to politely disagree with staff.

This has changed from a "Boot this guy because it is best for the game" to "boot this guy because it is best for the kid" issue for me.

Granted playing PFS is much better than out getting drunk and high, but at fifteen I wouldn't wouldn't want my son out at midnight on a school night for any reason........I would also change school districts if he was in one that said they didn't give homework because they don't want to stress out the students.

...your party doesn't have a tank and your wife starts emasculating a table full of guys for not wanting to play hard mode.

Two people died (three if you count one saved by breath of life) and we were one round from failing the mission.

EDIT @The All Seeing Eye Thank you. I hadn't seen this before and I am glad I read it.

Tirisfal wrote:

Sitri wrote:

Looking on your homepage, I see that gender inequality is something you devote a lot of time writing and thinking about. I am sorry to have pushed a hot button with you, but I do think you are finding sexist condemnations in my words where I have not actually expressed it. Every word you read in my posts to be demeaning to one gender, I would be willing to endorse describing individuals of the other as well.

I like how if a man is an expert and well educated in a field that's he's passionate about, he's considered an expert and well educated in that field.

If a woman is an expert and well educated in a field that's she's passionate about, it's called a "hot-button issue" for her, and that she's being "uppity" about it.

How often has anyone started an argument with SKR with "Looking on your homepage, I see that gaming is something you devote a lot of time writing and thinking about. I am sorry to have pushed a hot button with you..."

There's another way the tabletop gaming community is like the videogaming community. :(

Apparently the political ideas on the gaming forums are like the pop news, individuals are much happier to jump on a sound byte of someone saying something they want to agree with rather than bothering with the veracity of the claim.

In the interest of simplifying my posts down to an earlier sound byte I can identify with, I will repeat part of that post.

My advice? Don't try so hard to be insulted. It blocks your brains from actual thought.

Cheapy wrote:

And for what it's worth, there are more female iconics that are modestly dressed (merisiel, kyra, lini, seelah) than there are ones that are either immodestly dressed or...possibly immodestly dressed. The title of this thread implies that all female iconics are dressed scantly, when the majority aren't.

True. However, you might also note that the ones I listed are more visible.

By more visible, do you mean eye-catching, attractive, and memorable? I would agree with that, but I consider those things characteristics of both good art and good marketing. As far as quantity, I don't know that I have seen one group more than others.

I think this push to be less sexy is actually a regression. From the time when I was a kid, standards for dress for public, on TV, in magazines, on bill boards, in concerts, and in store windows has become significantly more relaxed.

Most of this increase in public sexiness is largely based on marketing a fantasy. But we want less fantasy in our fantasy art? Keeping sexiness in the art is a wise marketing strategy. Ceteris paribus, if I had the choice to buy/play/get involved in a game that looks sexy and attractive or a game that looks plain, I will choose the former every time. If I were to make this thread examining the differences between the iconics and more recently released art, I would phrase it in the terms of the newer art being too boring, safe, and PC. I can still remember the lamia pictures from monster manuals I haven't seen in a quarter of a century, but I couldn't tell you what I ate three days ago. That sounds like successful art to me.

The two groups that I see most opposed to sex appeal are those that profit from guilt and those that feel an unwanted need to compete on this metric. In either case, I find these motivations much more "impure" and "bigoted" than those of people that embrace sexuality. The double think employed by many people in this country (USA) is often astounding to me. The same people that get all uppity when a woman shows some skin, are often the same people that get all uppity when talking about countries that force women to wear Burqas.

Yes, absolutely. It's 2014. Why is Paizo clinging to an art style that makes female characters into sexual objects and sends the message that rpgs are only for straight men?

I know/have known several strait women, as well a gay men and women, who not only appreciate the female figure but would take issue with your hasty generalization.

Just out of curiosity, Have you seen any boons that made you suspicious?

I was a little skeptical about this one at first, but the footnote put my mind at ease.

But as Walter has pointed out, the current system does not provide an incentive for players to RP per their faction when they know a priori that nothing they can do in this scenario will have any impact on their faction.

Perhaps your earlier misinterpretation of my post was based on the fact I didn't make this point clear. The faction missions now do give some good chances for RP, but as stated here it comes up too rarely to have a huge impact (unless you metagame the characters to the scenarios as previously discussed). I too like the idea of faction goals always having some mechanical incentive, even if it is minor, in every game.

As I tried to explain before, I don't want a mechanical bonus to "win", I want this so no one can think I am wasting time by role playing.

To further Chris's idea from earlier about season long tracked goals, it would be fun to have options about which ones to take that would suit different character styles. It might be one Osirians task to collect undead specimens, while another annotates the details of different traps, or another collects and interprets certain ancient writings. It would give a character a repeating schtick that I find fun to work into characters anyway.

I think part of Korthis' frustration comes from the fact that he identified the line of logic being used to "disprove" him, explained that he didn't make that leap in what "functions as" means, and then instead of providing links or similar precedence that shows the extent of "functions as" people have repeatedly asserted that he is simply wrong in his understanding of the term.

He agreed that it didn't work a long time ago, he just did not agree with the initial reason given. I also have to admit, that if I had a passing interest in rule, and then someone came in insulting my reasoning ability without provocation and making assumptions in their rebuttal logic at the same time, I just might be pissed enough to argue it also.

First off, my last few posts have come off as a little shrill, for that I appologise (it's what sometimes happens when you post without enough sleep). As for why people who want more races, particularly those who want to open up everything I feel have less moral weight behind it is twofold.
First off, in PFS Golorian is a world set up with certain facts built it, for example, humans are the most dominant race, Cheliax worships devils, Andoran doesn't allow slavery etc. Everyone who plays in PFS accepts these 'givens'. When you alter the racial demographics too much you are changing one of these basic facts, rather like getting rid of Andoran.
Secondly, I would say, look at the GM stars. I wouldn't say it's everyone, but the players who have put in a lot of time and energy GMing, setting up games, and basically giving their blood sweat and tears tend to be on the 'lets not open up too much' side of things. I think that should carry some weight. Also many of them have been in past organized play systems like Living Greyhawk and Living City. I wasn't there, but I have heard a lot of people talking about having tables where a Lizard man, 2 Drow, and an Assimar walk into a bar in a major city and it's a 'lets blend into the crowd' mission. Basically, the 'lets let everything in' attitude detracted from the game, and resulted in a loss of players over time.

Sitri wrote:

Of course my perception could be biased, but I see a lot more vitriol, personal attacks, and entitlement coming from the "I want less race options at

...

Thank you for the explanation. I do think that people deserve props, rewards, whatever for donating their time and efforts to making PFS run. I know it takes a lot of work and volunteer hours to make happen. I also know that many times it can be thankless work.

But I am also a little reluctant to say stars should be the metric for dictating what is best for PFS, because I think high stars can often ironically lead to a mentality that isn't always concerned with what is best for PFS. If you look at people who have started to view PFS as a job instead of fun, those that get the most pleasure at events from the death of players, those that seem disappointed when no one dies, those that actively try to attack the wealth of characters, those that are the most hostile towards builds that players put a lot of time and effort into making work efficiently, are all 3+ star GMs. This is not to say that all high star GMs burn out, but it does happen. Because of this, I personally don't think that heavily weighting the opinions based on stars is going to lead to the most collective fun. The whole purpose of this game is to have fun, and less fun equals less profit.

The problem with the attitude that buying a book deserves some reward, is that I bought the book AND when to a Con.

I don't have insight into market analytics at Paizo, but I am inclined to wonder why your con attendance matters for this point. Perhaps con attendance generates much more revenue than I realize. At the Comicon I went to here, I don't think Paizo saw any direct profits.

I would think that books that open up races would be ones that people would be more inclined to buy. I can easily see people dodging a book purchase on a feat or item here or there in a build. If it came up, only a small aspect of the character is invalidated. However, if it ever were to arise that someone was using an illegal race, that would invalidate an entire character. This leads me to think race books should sell better than your average other book that is being sold to make a PFS legal build. I would be very interested in seeing if my speculation on these sales are accurate. If so, the Blood of Angels and Demons saw a spike after opening up those races to the public, and they should have higher sale rates than similar products.

Cons obviously do lead to revenue, but is the amount gained by con limited race, item, etc boons more than what would be made by treating those same things as free market items? Right now I have zero chance of buying the Dhampir book, but I would do so almost immediately if I could build a PFS character with it. Judging by several of these threads, I think a lot of people would do the same for other races they are interested in.

In addition to your "Well I have done more" mentality possibly not making the most business sense, it can be used to justify all sorts of silly things. When I was in the military, this mentality was pretty rampant, and I always thought that it was a flaw in reasoning based on some variation of band-wagoning or ad populum to trick people into doing all kinds of irrational things that they wouldn't normally do. I have seen a lot of people deny themselves health, time, family, nourishment, self improvement, and dignity in the name of "some people do more for less."

Question regarding the "CODzilla" issue...as it's never been a problem at our table.

If the Shaman had the 1/2 BA progression, would that minimize the problem ?

I don't see a Shaman as being a melee brute...it's just not what I think of, or how I would build a shaman.

Even a shaman calling on "battle spirits" should be calling up spirits to fight FOR him...not buffing him into a melee brute.

I CAN however see a shaman using summoning spells to call "spirits" to fight for him, so maybe he needs a unique summoning list ?

I can certainly see an Ulfen shaman calling up Einherji or Valkyrie to fight for him :)

I don't either. In all honestly, I don't expect CoDzilla to be a huge problem here, because this class is so MAD. Like I said, I haven't tried to really work that angle, but I had to really lower both my dex and con well beneath what I am used to to make a decent caster out of this (this is offset by the medium armor and D8HP). I suspect that the melee version of it would likely run into the inverse problem of not having the points to go around to fill out the mental attributes.

When ever I read the Dark Whatever people are writing about I keep thinking of Dexter and the Dark Passenger. If this idea of a Dark Spirit were pursued (I am a bit intrigued by it) what if it were the one to deliver hexes? Hexes are delivered based on a 30' fly speed of the Dark Spirit instead of within 30' of the Shaman? It may or may not take up a large space in the way an ethereal swarm would.

after some rest, I gave some more thought into the idea of a "shared body" idea for shaman. then, cause I was slightly bored at home, I wrote down some ideas for a shaman class. as it's a decent amount of text, i'll stick it in a spoiler field. with that said, here goes:

** spoiler omitted **...

While I have never put much thought into a melee version of the Shaman, I like a lot of what you have done here.

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As to the people above still wanting the druid list, you do realize that there are spirits that can still give you that theme right? Why paint all shamans into that corner?

In a previous thread I said that I built a level 5 shaman as an NPC and that I couldn't find half the spells I prepped when he switched from the cleric to the druid list. I was mistaken in my numbers, there wasn't a single spell I had prepped that could be found on the druid list.

While this is my favorite class from this book, I lost all interest in playing it when it changed to just the plain druid list. When we got the augments, I built one again to play as a PC. I only write down the spells I think I might end up prepping on my divine characters' sheets, and for my new shaman the majority of my spells on the sheet are from that tiny augmented list, not the druid list. I simply don't care about most druid spells. I am not saying that people who do are wrong, but I am saying that people that would choose to force that flavor on someone needlessly are wrong. This class can be so much better than that.

For comment number four, how about combining the familiar alterations and manifesting fluff currently in play? I think both ideas bring some really great flavor to the class, but if the familiar is falling a little flat, those ideas can still be cannibalized. The spirits won't use the animals as a vessel, they use the shaman as a vessel. Instead of having a familiar it would look something like this for the bones spirit:

A shaman who selects the bones spirit are cadaverously thin, with sunken eye sockets and dead eyes that stare off into the distance. Their bodies have a faint smell of the grave.

When they use a special ability of this spirit, a strange ghostly wind seems to whip their hair and cloths about, and their unpleasant stench grows more prominent. The shaman ghostly glows and seems nearly transparent. The shaman is under the effects of a blur spell for a number or rounds equal to the shaman’s class level.

If desired, what triggers the effect could be more specific. Instead of special ability, perhaps specify hex or spell.

LadyWurm wrote:

Some of the classes in this playtest have been fantastic right out of the gate. Some have been problematic but promising. But the Shaman...I'm not seeing it. I mean, I'm not sure what the point of this class even is. What role is it filling exactly? I mean, sure it's kinda nice to have an alternative to the Oracle for similar abilities, but...eh.

It's not a bad idea for a class, I just feel like it doesn't really have any direction or niche at current.

+1

I think both the Shaman and Hunter suffers from the same problem.
The hunter is just a nerfed druid (lacking some important ranger spells) and the Shaman is just a more powerful version of the Oracle.

Another problem with the Shaman is the spell list. As pointed out by many the Druid list lack a lot of appropriate spells, but so does the Oracle list and the Oracle list comes with yet three more problems.

Oracle list means we probably going to get one more Codzilla class (Divine Favor, Divine Power, Righteous Might etc.).

Oracle list makes this class Orcale 2.0. I’m not saying it is better, but it sure is similar.

Oracle list and we now have 3 full casters using the Cleric list but only 1 class using the Druid list.

Listing all druid/cleric casters, with full caster leve:

Cleric list:

Cleric

Oracle

Inqvisitor

Warpriest

Shaman

Druid:

Druid

Hunter

I think the problem is obvious: We will have 3 full casters and 2 casters with 6/9 spell progression using Cleric list vs. the druid and Hunter.

Inquisitor has its own list.

But what is the need for this affirmative action towards spell lists? It isn't like all lists are created equal or that there is some obligation to have list proliferate in equal amounts. I don't hear anyone saying we need more classes that use the paladin, magus, or inquisitor list. I think there is a very good reason not a lot of classes use the druid list, it is tailored to an extremely niche theme. You can have lots of different types of clerics based on how you want to focus your spell efforts, this naturally leads to being more usable by different themed classes. The idea that we need something to share this other list is a complete non-starter for me.

I still think far and away the best thing that could happen to this class would be that the spirits selected would have a more dramatic impact on the spell list, as Nighttree first suggested. Even if it didn't increase the hexes gained, perhaps just have access to more spirits that do nothing but provide a chunk of spells (perhaps a school.) While it may be more limiting than just giving the full cleric list, I think it would provide a fun level of customization.

I am hoping the druid list isn't set in stone. The only dev input I have heard about spells was something to the effect of "we are thinking about changing to the druid list" and then shortly after "make it so." The two reasons I have seen on here for it are "Some of the spells have shaman flavor that the cleric doesn't have" and "we only have one class using this list so far."

As to the first argument, the same can be said in reverse (possibly to greater effect). As to the second argument, does it really matter? It was an afterthought to fill this somewhat open niche, is it that important?

I used the cleric casting shaman as a 5th level NPC along with several of his animated dead in a home game against four 3rd level, optimized PCs. I didn't post anything about it here because the tactics were pretty far from the norm for story purposes, but it felt like a fun character that I could enjoy playing as a PC (even though it did burn out of juice very quickly). But around half of the spells I had prepped I did not find on the druid list.

I was not immediately opposed to the druid list idea, admittedly I never played one and didn't know what was fully on it. I read the list, saw what I was losing, saw what I was gaining, and took my first level Shaman I built for PFS and turned him into an Arcanist.

I still read this thread regularly hoping for some development on the spell front. It sounds like the spell list and the etymology of class name have all but dominated this thread. I find that kind of a pity, because the wandering spirit idea seems like such a hit that I would like to see more energy devoted to it. But it appears that for many people, myself included, this very cool idea is taking a back seat at the moment.

Lets not get into demands. Thats not how this works. We like to keep some aspects of our stat uses "silo'd" to maintain a certain level of consistency. This is why there is no Wis based arcane caster and why there is no Int based divine caster. At the moment, this is not something we are looking at changing. Charisma is the ground where the two casting camps meet, which is fine as that stat can take a bit of the load without becoming too unbalanced.

As an aside, I am hoping to get the revision out this week.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer

I hadn't heard "silo" used in this context before so I hit the quick google search button. What I got was not what I was expecting.

1. silo
A word to describe well-endowed, horse-like men.

Honestly, I don’t know. When they say you can play a necromancer, what they are essentially saying is that you can play the guy who ‘dug up your grandma’s bones and then stitched them together with arcane power to make her fight to the death on his behalf.’

No one has ever quite explained how doing that, isn’t an act that would automatically turn you into an evil monster.

Heck, maybe it wasn’t grandma’s bones, maybe it was a child who died in a logging accident a month ago, or a father who died defending his family from a goblin raid, or maybe just their pet, Fido. How turning any of those people into your personal, shambling bone and meat shields never seemed like something that wouldn’t automatically turn you evil. But hey, maybe I’m just not open minded enough. And we’re not even getting into the desecration of the personal dignity of the remains of the deceased. Heck, I'm sure some the folks on this board would consider it 'neutral' behavior if it was their loved one, who was used in such a manner.

I’m just glad that my Priest of Pharasma isn’t troubled about such things, he's more of the, “How do you want to do this? One in the head or one in the heart?” kind of guy. He seems to get it, much more than me, and he's not exactly interested in an intellectual debate with necromancers, unless there is a resolution that ends with said necromancer, meeting Pharasma's justice.

I donate blood on a somewhat regular basis and I have signed away all rights to any of my organs after I die. If someone else can benefit from them, I think it the good and noble thing to do to allow them to do so, even if I see no benefit and I don't even know them. Other people are better off for having access to the resources my body produced naturally, and it really doesn't even cost me anything to allow them to do so.

While I know it is a very common sentiment for people to want to preserve their bodies after death, I would feel like an obnoxious prick to say "When I am dead and have absolutely no use for my former body, make sure no one else can benefit from it in any way either........until of course nature breaks down my molecules and they get transferred into other living things. Damn you mother nature! Why do you hate me so?"

While I still love the flavor of this class immensely, the MAD issue is starting to weigh more and more on me. I like to play a lot of casters, particularly debuffers. Prior to the release, I expected anything x-witch to be a new debuffer. After reading it, I realized the unique debuffs weren't really that great but it was still a full caster with awesome flavor and a cool new versatile mechanic. So I started trying to build one and I started running into problems. My baseline assumption for casters is max casting stat, I juice every DC for every full caster I have made to the max and I still see my spells fail much more often than I would like. It didn't take me long to realize that 18 wisdom wasn't happening here. But then as I am juggling stats, I am having a hard time even keeping wisdom at 17, so I bump that down again. I start thinking maybe I will just try and avoid save spells and abilities, but really that is what I wanted out of this class from the start. I am starting to see a buffer/healer here (which admittedly a witch and and oracle could be) but unable to specialize in anything else.

Perhaps it is my preconceived notions about what I was going to do with this class, but I probably going to hold off on creating one now and see what others experience.

While I am glad someone up thread clarified that all prepared divine casters use wisdom (the thought process on where wisdom casting came from drove me nuts) I would be very happy to either see that tradition scrapped, make a shaman spell list that could be called arcane, or use the fact that it is also a spontaneous caster to shift the casting stat back to charisma.

For a little while I played a gunslinger cleric of Dranngvit who was hellbent on punishing wrongdoers. Any time a player would do something I thought transgressed against an innocent, I would have my character write down in a journal (as I wrote down on my character sheet) the name of the offending character, the type of offense, and "Awaiting arbitration," that was what I called it when I killed a wrong doer. So mechanically I didn't screw over any one else's character, but from a roleplay point of view, my character planned to track these people down and inflict justice on them at a later time when it didn't compromise the mission. It was a fun way for me resolve what otherwise might have led to nasty moral dilemmas.

This is my favorite class that I have read in the guide. I love the flavor and mechanics involved. However, mechanically this feels more cleric than oracle to me. Apparently I am alone on this judging by the above comments. I suppose I was expecting either spontaneous casting or charisma dependent casting as the oracle contribution to the spell side of things. The wisdom casting threw me for a bit of a loop when I read it. What does wisdom have to do with either class?

Originally I wished they had used different words for hexes since they are distinctly different from witch hexes, but an above comment about having feats ready to go to augment this class made me rethink that decision.

I had a little confusion at first in that I thought the familiar was the spirit, so I thought maybe you get a second familiar when you get a wandering spirit. A second reading of the class features cleared that up for me, but from a fluff perspective a little clearing up of exactly how the wandering spirits manifests itself would be nice. Does the familiar take on the characteristics of the wandering spirit also as if being possessed by it too? Does the shaman have the tells associated with the wandering spirits when manifesting one of those powers? As it reads now, I don't think so. But either of both of those things would be a cool way to physically represent this extra unseen presence that is affecting you.

I think there is a typo in the first paragraph "Familiars also aid a
witch by granting her skill bonuses."

I have to admit to being completely dumbfounded by anyone upset about more choices being made available. I am simply unable to follow the chain of thoughts that lead to such frustration. I can't even read such posts without the spirit of William Wallace screaming in my head.

Is consuming a human's seed an evil act if he is a big meanie?

My first response would be like many others, this is an out of character issue, it is best settled out of character. But if the guy won't listen, the GM won't help and you won't leave, I think your next best option is to UMD a wand of Command Undead. It would be pretty pricey to refresh every few days, but it would be pretty satisfying to turn this guy into your personal outhouse. If he does kill you, make your next character a caster so you can make use of this spell or feat for free.

I found it quite amusing that when trying to solve the problem of undead in public, one of your first thoughts was to cut their heads off and shove them in your lady parts.