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From experience, sweeping in-universe rationales for game mechanic changes tend to be extremely awkward and rarely (if ever) satisfying to read or experience. Especially given that often these universes don't tend to work all that hard to remain rules compliant in the first place. It's also not always practical. Like consider your request re: Drow. If the point of removing Drow is to disentangle official setting material from other licenses and IP, then telling a story about where all the Drow went is literally undermining that.
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I don't think I've ever heard 'core' used to describe the whole line of rulebooks. For that matter, I think this is the first time I've heard someone call APG core either (though core+apg is a common combination I see). Like when I see a "core only" game online, it usually refers to literally just that, only the CRB for player facing options. This is true of both PF2 and PF1 (and D&D for that matter, for games that only want to use the original set of books).
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Sibelius Eos Owm wrote:
Yeah, but you answered a different on a technicality (what license was the book published under) than was asked (was the book built for the remaster). So it was worth pointing out the disconnect.
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Sibelius Eos Owm wrote:
Even though the developers themselves have said that the book was written to remaster standards using remaster terminology, you'd still say it doesn't count?
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Captain Morgan wrote: which was meant be balanced by being a glass cannon This is the only part of the post I disagree with. They're a little squishier than some of their contemporaries, but arguably in a better spot than a lot of post-CRB martials, especially those that rely on non-defensive secondary stats (like the Inventor, Magus, Investigator, and Thaumaturge). The rogue is pretty clearly middle of the road here.
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Themetricsystem wrote: The better question is what benefit there is in NOT continuing to make new remaster books, of which I think there are very few and the only one I can think of is that it would be easier and less expensive (in the very short term) to simply issue errata for incompatible content and books like SoM and basically every other non-remaster book and set up a new print run for it versus the cost of creating entirely new books that fix all that stuff and repackage it. I think you're skipping over the most compelling reason I've heard. That Paizo is a company with a very limited workflow pipeline that means the Remaster has left us with like an over year gap between RoE and WoI. How much of an appetite is there going to be for buying Secrets of Magic again, or Guns and Gears again, or Dark Archive again, as full priced books with a handful of small updates and pushing back new content even further? Player Core had a lot of good will because of the way the OGL/ORC thing shook out, but even still there's been some (marginal) negativity over how little the product actually changed the system given its high price point. That's only going to get worse if they keep doing it. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think you're understating the work this would take from Paizo, and overstating how much people want to buy a book they already own again.
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The most interesting thing about this story for me is the acknowledgement from the narrator that parts of the story seem somewhat implausible... especially with the story seeming to go out of its way to call out a couple of gods and their followers as foolish and ineffectual, which is practically a running theme of these stories at this point.
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Finoan wrote:
It doesn't really. It effectively renders the character nonfunctional and will require some sort of GM intervention to address (whether that's through uncommon options, some sort of narrative play, or a new character entirely). ... But that's the same situation you'd be in if the Summoner had gotten Doomed 4 instead, or if you were playing a Barbarian or Fighter or Wizard or Ranger and got hit by a similar effect. The fact that the Summoner is essentially operating as two bodies adds a narrative quirk here that might be interesting to play around with, but mechanically this is about what you'd expect to happen. Quote:
I don't think it runs afoul of 'too bad to be true' because rendering a character non-functional as the result of an instant death mechanic is the normal expectation for those abilities. The only reason it looks weird is because you have two characters in one package, but the summoner and eidolon are fundamentally entangled in a way that even witches and their familiars aren't, so that's not a comparison that quite works.
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Finoan wrote: Why according to RAW does the Eidolon die? Isn't the answer to this fairly simple? In this scenario the eidolon is subject to an effect that says that they die. That's it, that's the answer. Now from there we can go dig into eidolon rules to figure out if there's a reason that doesn't work or doesn't make sense to allow even if it does, but "Why should this mechanic function normally" is not a question that logically makes sense for how Pathfinder is constructed. Abilities don't need to give themselves permission to do what they say they do.
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Ultimately despite its popularity free archetype is more of a suggestion, a fragment of an idea, than a complete alternate ruleset, so I think it's hard to talk about how it 'should' be run in that sense too much. Regarding the issue of feat pools: I think it's better to not separate the pools. While juggling the dedication limit can sometimes be really frustrating, it's something the designers consider core to the game and sometimes forces us to rethink how to put a character together in a way that's not necessarily bad (personally I think the game would be fine without it, too, but it is what it is). Regarding the multiclass rule your GM has proposed: I'm sort of confused. Are you saying that multiclass characters are given fewer feats than characters who take non-multiclass dedications? If so that seems kind of strange and I'm not sure why, as multiclassing is somewhat unremarkable (there are some exceptional combos, but some really weak ones too). Or do you mean that a multiclass character has to spend their free archetype feats at 2, 4, and 6 before having the ability to take a second dedication? If that, that's pretty much normal and exactly how someone not taking a multiclass dedication would work too.
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Unicore wrote:
Does fireball do six instances of damage because you roll 6d6 instead of 1d6*6?
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Cordell Kintner wrote: It's overpowered and makes the game not fun when you can just know everything. But you don't get to "Just know everything" you get to somewhat reliably succeed at checks to get fed whatever information the GM wants to feed you. Recall Knowledge as an action is highly restrictive and entirely within the GM purview. There is no possible way to abuse it (unless the GM chooses to give that to the player, which isn't really abuse). It's only really 'overpowered' in the sense that a lot of knowledge based options in PF2 are written really badly, but not really the thaumaturge's fault.
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The Raven Black wrote:
My only real gripe is that instead of being a prophecy about the death of Erastil it's more like the prophecy of a monster that happens to kill Erastil along with a bunch of other deities. It's supposed to be his story but you could take him out of it and wouldn't have to even change much. The story is very interesting but I feel like it doesn't do quite enough with the brief for me.
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One sort of interesting thing here is that a couple of them seem to deal with the divine consequences of deicide and the others don't. Urgathoa and Pharasma's deaths both fundamentally change the fabric of the setting on a cosmological scale, while the other deities' deaths don't really seem to have any broader implications outside their immediate significance (Asmodeus' leads to a lot of changes, but they're more political than metaphysical). Not sure if that's just a writing choice, or an implication that some of the divine portfolios just aren't as important. Of course, the whole thing is an in-universe narrator examining what-if scenarios written by another in-universe figure, so the whole thing could be written in some twisted and unreliable way to begin with (like zezia's observations earlier in this thread that many of these stories portray the followers of the fallen deity as incompetent or capricious). keftiu wrote: Urgathoa's is the odd one out here, as she seemed to almost welcome her end. One thing that sort of stands out to me is there's a bit of a subversion of her principles. Urgathoa is a survivor who abhors the idea of any kind of self sacrifice... and while her end isn't sacrificial, there's something somewhat ironic about her actual death being the thing that breaks cycle of life and death, which is sort of a win condition for her.
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Even stacking rules aside, both triggers are specific. Rolling twice from the braggart effect is not the same as being offered misfortune for the purpose oF Curse Maelstrom. The effects have nothing to do with each other and don't interact at all (except as previously stated that you can't stack them)
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The lich king thing for Urgathoa, hm? A really lame trope, but since this is basically just a what-if anyways it's an easy enough piece of fiction to ignore. Bigger shame is the news that they're going to be breaking the Prismatic Ray. I always thought it was one of the more interesting Pantheons Paizo had.
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Trip.H wrote: It is a good example of a real flaw caused by a mismatch of system design, and one that does not need to be there. I mean nothing really 'needs' to be there it's all an arbitrary combination of systems built to taste. The fact is though that a significant enough proportion of respondents preferred things this way that Paizo felt it better to do so. It's also something that can be relatively easily mitigated (by becoming trained in the skill or taking untrained improvisation) if it's really something you're concerned about, so it's hard to really place this as some major thing. Quote: and then there is that contradiction where the stronger the PCs get, the *more* impossible it is to do actions they are untrained in. That's somewhat of a mischaracterization. "more impossible the stronger the PCs get" implies that you're somehow getting worse at tasks as you level up... but that's not true. You just aren't improving. The character's ability to succeed at a task never changes. That's... not a contradiction at all, it's just not being good at something.
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Trip.H wrote: That is a serious and unnecessary system problem that apparently did not exist in the past rule-set. Is it actually all that serious? The problem, as described, is that someone who puts absolutely no investment in a skill is not going to be able to pass leveled checks. That doesn't seem all that serious, after all the person in question has not even taken the bare minimum of steps to give themselves any boosts in that skill. Again, for a number of people during the playtest this was specifically a desirable outcome. Like I agree it's kind of weird and maybe not as useful as some people think, but treating it like some major, fundamental flaw in the game rather than just a personal taste thing seems way off base.
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Deriven Firelion wrote: PF1 did swarms better. PF1 swarms were goofy. Some of them were resistant to physical attacks (which makes some sense) while others were just mystically immune to physical harm entirely. Meanwhile somehow having hundreds of an animal together would give them the ability to tank explosions that would incinerate them individually. Oh and no matter how much you picked away at it, the swarm never lost effectiveness until hitting 0 and instantly dispersing. ... Despite that, a swarm of 300 rats actually only has four times the HP of a single individual rat. So even with damage halved someone stabbing the swarm would only need to deal enough damage to kill eight rats for the other 292 to evaporate. ... I'm not saying PF2 swarms are better, but it's weird to talk about PF1 swarms as if they made any kind of sense at all or had even a modicum of verisimilitude.
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Finoan wrote:
This one is always really tricky because often times adventures have puzzles designed to be player facing, not character facing in the first place. So all the normal concerns about roleplaying and character design are sort of just abruptly tossed aside to begin with... which can feel really bad if there's a mismatch.
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Sintog wrote:
Two things: -Bond Conservation lasts until the end of your next turn, so by design you'll likely be using your free drain/extra cast on the subsequent turn. -Remaster changed the requirements of Bond Conservation to work the way you describe in your first example (it now requires the last action to be Cast enabled by Drain)... though mechanically this change doesn't actually mean much. Either way there isn't really a serious flaw, it's just something you have to spread out over multiple turns most of the time.
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I hope they make the curse more dynamic early on too. The idea of ramping penalties and benefits is a pretty cool one, but there also isn't much of a ramp. For the first 10 levels of the game you're spending most of your time in minor or moderate, so there isn't really much of a build up. And then it never progresses any further after getting your Major upgrade at 11 (since Extreme is more of a generic thing). Having more of a progression from the get go would let the Oracle lean into that idea of ramping intensity, which is a theme the class kind of plays with but doesn't commit to enough to be satisfying (sort of a perennial pf2 problem though). I do sort of like the idea of separating them from focus spells. As is now I feel like half the oracles I run into will waste focus points just for the sake of activating their curse benefit, and the other half will avoid their cursebound spells entirely because their mystery's curses are garbage. Both seem like design issues. ... I also hope they look at individual mystery balance more, for that same reason, but that also seems like something Paizo has opted to skip for the Remaster.
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Finoan wrote: But all indications point to that being the intent - from the name of the activity, to the subordinate actions rules, to listing out the Sustain a Spell action by name. On the other hand, the ability very notably uses different (and otherwise both peculiar and needlessly verbose) phrasing than pretty much every other ability in the game with a subordinate action. That seems like a pretty strong indication too, and I'm not sure it's reasonable to dismiss that out of hand.
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PossibleCabbage wrote:
I mean, there's a difference between creating some specific scenario outside the normal bounds of the game and expecting the GM to make a call on it and claiming that it is an concrete feature that a certain ability prevents you from making stealth checks without anything like that even being mentioned. No one's suggested GM's aren't allowed to make judgment calls about things.
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Deriven Firelion wrote: If the designers did not mean for that to interfere with skill actions like Stealth or Invis or what not, they should have made that pretty clear. I mean, flip that around for a second. If an ability was intended to wholesale prevent you from using certain actions, shouldn't it be important to mention that somewhere? No one's assuming you can't concentrate while raging or cast spells in a battle form, stuff like that is written into the ability. Point of fact is that, outside some reminder text examples, abilities don't tell you when they don't prevent you from doing something.
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YuriP wrote:
But it didn't avoid complaints. And they also are filling that space with their own, new type of cavern elves... so clearly it's not a design space they wanted to just wholly abandon.
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Kaspyr2077 wrote:
Unreliable and treacherous... but you don't assign any malice?
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I mean it says Step. It even uses the capital letter. And Step says you can't Step into difficult terrain. One point of clarification, Step prevents you from stepping into difficult terrain, not out of. So the most correct answer to your question is "Depends on what the square you're moving into looks like" since being within difficult terrain doesn't matter.
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Puna'chong wrote: I suppose we do disagree, because the action economy is inherent to the alchemical items. You can't separate the action economy from their use and say that, once you do, they're actually good. Why can't I? When one of the core issues is action economy, it seems prudent to be able to say that. Things like Quick Bomber or a Rogue's Poison Weapon feat make their respective items vastly more effective, so I'm not really sure why pointing that out should be off the table. Quote: The fact that the Alchemist can't use a bomb any better than anyone else without at least one feat that does nothing more than shore up a problem inherent to the bomb is just icing on the cake. It's not 'icing on the cake' when it's the main thing holding the class back (and even then, only barely in the case of the dedicated bomber). Like I'm just not sure what good it does to gnash our teeth about 'fundamental' problems and willfully ignore the specifics of the issues and how to fix them in favor of just pining after 1e.
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Puna'chong wrote:
While I like the 1e spellcaster model, I sort of disagree here. There's some awkwardness from items, the biggest problem Alchemists have tend to come from utilization issues, not the items themselves. In terms of raw output, most alchemists have the potential to be pretty decent... but then they stumble over themselves with action economy, accuracy, and feat tax issues. In other words, it's the opposite. A lot of alchemical items are good, but the actual alchemist chassis is terrible at everything other than making those items accessible. Alchemical items are somewhat broken, but mostly in the sense that they're a subsystem that's not really accessible to anyone else.
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Finoan wrote: If we are ignoring the activity and subordinate actions rules when looking backwards because that scenario wasn't in the list of examples, then why are we enforcing it when looking forwards? Why not allow 'your next action is...' abilities to trigger on the first subordinate action of an activity? I think you're misunderstanding the position a bit, because in no case are we ignoring or enforcing subordinate action rules. They have nothing to do with this mechanic. Nor are you 'ignoring' activity rules if you use the paradigm that allows this to work. Characterizing it as enforcing/ignoring is missing the point and implicitly defining one side as fraudulent (which is fair if that's your position, everyone is going to have one, but it's important to understand where each argument is coming from, otherwise we don't really have an informed opinion). ... I was going to use your example as a starting point, but that's not how bond conservation works so I'm not sure what you were going for, so instead looking at the OP's If you view an activity as a container with elements inside it, then you run into this: Everstand Strike > Devoted Guardian which obviously doesn't make sense, because Everstand Strike is not raising a shield. But if you instead view an activity as part of a series of things you do, then you get Everstand Strike > Strike > Raise A Shield > Devoted Guardian, under which the combination makes perfect sense, because the last thing you did was raise a shield. Quote: Why not allow 'your next action is...' abilities to trigger on the first subordinate action of an activity? From the former perspective, it doesn't make sense because the next thing in line is the container, from the latter perspective it's the same as asking why you can't Spellshape > Stride > Cast A Spell. Part of the problem stems from people treating all these different triggers as identical when they clearly aren't. Regardless of perspective, it doesn't really make sense to argue that a certain ability should have certain restrictions because an entirely different ability that works in an entirely different way has certain restrictions. Quote: Again I have to point out that the examples illustrate the rules. The examples don't define the rules. Right, but neither the examples nor the rules are particularly illuminating here.
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Guntermench wrote:
No we aren't, the book is completely silent on the topic. If anyone could actually point to a specific line that says "this is how this interaction works" or "this is how activities work" then there wouldn't be much of a discussion here. I don't really get the posturing, tbh.
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Guntermench wrote:
Yeah, but there's only a consistency issue if we accept a certain premise on how activities work. That's part of the problem. Both conclusions make complete logical and consistent sense within their respective frameworks, while making zero sense in the other framework.
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As people here have helpfully illustrated, there's debate over whether activities function like a 'chain' or a 'container', with the rules providing no explicit guidance and the examples in the book missing this particular type of interaction. Best you can do is gather the available information and ask your GM.
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I'm sort of befuddled by this idea that they're just dead weight at low levels. Even at the absolute worst baseline, an EB throwing kineticist is basically a ranged martial who also happens to probably have some free AoE damage or healing or battlefield control (or maybe all three) in their kit. They're certainly not perfect and definitely want to scale into everything they need, but the hyperbole here is kind of goofy.
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Aenigma wrote: After all, where's the fun in adventuring in a world devoid of ethical dilemmas? I haven't seen anyone at Paizo or in this thread suggest this, so I'm not really sure who you're replying to. Quote: There ought to be monsters, slavers, and criminals who revel in all manner of evil deeds There are. Not so much slavers and rapists, because Paizo doesn't really want to write about them, but that hasn't really precluded Pathfinder (or D&D in general) from including lots of villains for PCs to fight. Quote: If goblins and kobolds are now portrayed as allies rather than murderous and deranged creatures who think nothing of enslaving and butchering humans, it begs the question of why they exist at all. Well, presumably because a writer thinks they're interesting and wants to tell stories about them. This feels kind of non-sequitur. Quote: Imagine if Tolkien had suddenly decided, 'Oh, I believe orcs are depicted as too malevolent in my book. It's clearly discriminatory and detrimental to readers' mental well-being. I'll revise this aspect. Henceforth, orcs in Middle-earth are a proud warrior race who vehemently oppose slavery and rape.' If he had really done that, I highly doubt his legendarium would have become as famous and masterful as it is. So you postulate that Tolkien's success doesn't have to do with his worldbuilding or storytelling ability, but specifically because it had orcs that behaved in a certain way?
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