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My prediction that Paizo would funnel all of its settings into one GURPS-esque system is coming true. Given that PF2 is basically the cornerstone of ORC, it being suited to a wide variety of genres is exciting. Way yoo soon to count the chickens, but if this goes really, really, really well, it could be the beginning of a golden age.
Interesting that voicing inpopular opinions brings out the vultures. As good as the moderators are at filtering overt abuse, there's something to be said about the subtle smugness that can fester on these forums, especially when the conversation features a lot of regular posters versus just a few people. For a place that autocensors profanity, these forums can be surprisingly toxic at times. I suppose it's the homefield advantage that emboldens people siding with the company and defending its decisions to engage in a lot of condescension and smarm. (Granted, it could easily be a lot worse, and I recognize the hard work and reasonable impartiality of the moderators in keeping it as good as it is.)
However, I still think people are reasonably annoyed by what has turned out to be SF1's relatively short lifespan. 3.0 and its successors represented a unique situation where what was basically a single system was playable and actively worked on by either WotC or Paizo for more than twenty years. A lot of us who came into the hobby during that period aren't used to edition changes being an inescapable reality.I agree but you know this was an exception and that normally a TTRPG system doesn't survive for so long time without a new edition. You're probably right that PF2 being more popular than SF1 is a significant influence on this decision (to say nothing of the OGL crisis which I think it's fair to say is the cause of it here), but, regarding the industry more broadly, do you really expect me to believe every TTRPG publisher just happens to have non-cynical reasons to massively inconvenience their entire consumer-base every 5 years in a way that just happens to make them more money?
However, I still think people are reasonably annoyed by what has turned out to be SF1's relatively short lifespan. 3.0 and its successors represented a unique situation where what was basically a single system was playable and actively worked on by either WotC or Paizo for more than twenty years. A lot of us who came into the hobby during that period aren't used to edition changes being an inescapable reality.I agree but you know this was an exception and that normally a TTRPG system doesn't survive for so long time without a new edition. Right, but the reason this situation is so uncommon is corporate sleaze. All your TTRPG books become outdated after five years for the same reason your phone is deliberately designed to break after two years. No product can ever be allowed to endure in its usefulness because that would eliminate the need to buy another one. Your analysis of Paizo's motives later in your comment gives them a lot of benefit of the doubt. It's entirely possible they've simply realized that the edition treadmill is a way to maximize profits at the expense of the consumer, and have decided they'll switch to it now because it will make them more money. That's why everyone else does it. How likely is it, really, that Paizo is a special exception?
An increase in sales wouldn't exactly go against the point that frequent edition changes are a sleazy business practice. Sleazy business practices generally persist because they increase sales. I agree that edition changes are not inherently sleazy. I think most edition changes are annoying cash-grabs and basically the RPG equivalent of manufactured obsolescence, but the OGL crisis is absolutely a unique situation and I agree that we should view this edition change more charitably than that. However, I still think people are reasonably annoyed by what has turned out to be SF1's relatively short lifespan. 3.0 and its successors represented a unique situation where what was basically a single system was playable and actively worked on by either WotC or Paizo for more than twenty years. A lot of us who came into the hobby during that period aren't used to edition changes being an inescapable reality. Time will tell whether this edition change is a situational result of the OGL crisis or the start of a new precedent where all our books are now going to be rendered obsolete by edition changes within a decade of buying them, something Paizo used to be above. Hopefully, this combined PF2.5/SF2.0 thing Paizo is creating will last as long or longer, but maybe not, and if not, that's a shame, because for a while there it was possible to have your books continue to be part of a living system for a long time after you buy them.
I don't know, but maybe his alt was the account that offered to share his campaign plans with Paizo so that their SF2 setting didn't go astray and conflict it. Lots of megalomania and delusions of significance running around on the internet these days.This response confuses me. What actions are you even talking about? All anyone has done is post their opinion on the forums, and no one in this thread seems to have been especially rude. What is it that anyone needs to be held accountable for?I'm just trying to help people like you and TOZ understand why the people reacting negatively to this have a reasonable perspective and aren't just a bunch of haters whining because of change. You can view the previous posts made by any given alias by clicking on their name and navigating to "posts." No post matching your description seems to have been made by "TriOmegaZero," "TOZ," or "Starfinder TOZ." While he does have a bunch of other aliases I did not look through, I suspect he did not say such a thing, and you are simply thinking of someone else. (Also, my impression of TOZ is that he's a basically rational person, despite his status as a very devoted Paizo fan giving him a pro-company bias. I don't think it would be in-character for him to say something ridiculous like that.) That said, if you can find where someone made a post like that, please share it with me, as that sounds hilarious. I'm actually insulted by TOZ being presented as the model of unpaid Paizo shill and not me. I demand an apology. How do you contact the moderators around here? I mentioned him because he was the person I was responding to in the comment that WatersLethe had initially replied to. Rest assured that it is my desire that everyone, shill, contrarian, and in-between (I like to think I'm in-between), be empathetic and engage in healthy perspective-taking when discussing these things.
I'm just trying to help people like you and TOZ understand why the people reacting negatively to this have a reasonable perspective and aren't just a bunch of haters whining because of change. This response confuses me. What actions are you even talking about? All anyone has done is post their opinion on the forums, and no one in this thread seems to have been especially rude. What is it that anyone needs to be held accountable for?
Nope, nor do I think anyone has those stats. In 3 years when the population of Starfinder players triples I'll rest my case.The ratio of people who bounce off of PF2 because of its rules is incredibly lower than the ratio who bounced off of SF1 because of its rules. All your subjective complaints about PF2 pale in the face of this inexorable truth. An increase in sales wouldn't exactly go against the point that frequent edition changes are a sleazy business practice. Sleazy business practices generally persist because they increase sales. That said, their newfound compatibility is probably going to make SF and PF players blur together in a way that would make that comparison meaningless. Starfinder is effectively being made into a subsystem within Pathfinder rather than its own game. This will result in a lot of people who don't otherwise play SF dipping into it for content for their PF games. This will likely increase sales in a way that will not translate into actual SF play. (To be clear, I'm not saying that's a bad thing. The compatibility is almost certainly going to be the best thing about SF2, and I look forward to liberally mixing them in precisely the way I'm describing, but this also happens to mean that you won't be able to assume everyone who buys SF2 books actually plays or runs SF2.) It is possible that all of this will go really well and we will enter a decade-long golden age of a popular and well-managed -Finder 2e engine populated by multiple fun and mutually compatible games. I hope that happens, and I think it's plausible that it will happen. I'm not trying to say this is some devilish betrayal. I'm just trying to help people like you and TOZ understand why the people reacting negatively to this have a reasonable perspective and aren't just a bunch of haters whining because of change.
They're going through editions a little fast here. Yeah, orc forced them into doing it early, but it’s still annoying.PF2 came out ten years after PF1. SF2 is missing that by a year, or two? Starfinder 1e was released back when most people were still under the impression that Paizo was above the industry's usual vices, including the manufactured obsolescence of regular edition changes that has been plaguing the RPG industry for decades. A lot of Paizo's early fans were people who gravitated to Pathfinder as a continuation of 3.5 because they didn't want to go along with WotC's shift to 4e, and were under the impression there was never going to be a Pathfinder edition change. You're right that a 6-8 year edition cycle is typical of what an average TTRPG company would do, but Paizo is usually far better than the average TTRPG company, and it's disappointing to see it sink closer to the level of its competitors on this occasion. Hopefully, this is a one-time thing resulting from the shift to the ORC license, and the 2e-based finder system that results from this will remain current for a long time.
That is not why drow were removed. It was because they are a WotC IP whose use in Pathfinder was reliant on the ogl. I was openly critical of how Paizo handled the actual process of their removal, and I stand by what I said back then, but keeping them around 100% unchanged with the serial numbers still on was never an option, and none of Paizo's decisions there were motivated by wokeness.
1: I guess I'm more of a cynic than you, but I don't take it for granted that paizo thought of and consciously rejected every alternative to what they did, nor do I take it for granted that, If they did think of and reject it, they did so exclusively for sympathetic reasons. I don't consider it noble or sympathetic for them to make themselves 100% litigation proof with an annoying retcon if they had the option to make themselves 99% litigation proof without one. I regard that as a predictable-from-a-corporation but still objectively bad compromise of artistic integrity. 2: There are ways of occupying those spaces without precluding the idea that drow occupied them ten years prior. This would place a minor restriction on what stories they could tell, but I think preserving the pretense that this is all one cohesive universe would be worth that cost.
On the contrary, isn't this exactly what they said they would do by reframing the idea of drow as an in-universe lie?In official ORC published material, they never will say "The Drow were never here."You don't have to say they were never there. You can just not say they were ever there. A few options: 1: Covertly state what became of the drow by noting the occurrence of a large disaster that wink may have eliminated entire species from the Darklands wink. 2: Avoid stating anything that fully precludes the hypothetical possibility of drow having once existed as described. Is there any published material explicitly stating that beholders never existed in the Darklands? Is there any Starfinder material explicitly stating that there's no such thing as a jedi? Not that I know of. No one thinks this creates a legal problem.
In official ORC published material, they never will say "The Drow were never here."You don't have to say they were never there. You can just not say they were ever there. On the contrary, isn't this exactly what they said they would do by reframing the idea of drow as an in-universe lie? In fact, isn't that more legally dangerous than just never mentioning them again at all?
You don't have to say they were never there. You can just not say they were ever there. There is also no published material explicitly stating that the daevites do not exist on Golarion. This does not In any way leave the door open for someone to claim in a court of law that they're somehow canon in a way that is legally dangerous.
I see one minor difference. The second case allows a GM with an existing history to fill in the blanksPlease elaborate on the contradiction you perceive.… so which is it?Yes. I would. My beef is not with The removal of the drow has such, It is with the explicit and retroactive nature of that removal. I would have preferred that the matter just not be acknowledged rather than acknowledged in a way that explicitly purges 7% of existing material from continuity. This here is the thing that I am saying they should have done.
Please elaborate on the contradiction you perceive.… so which is it?Yes. I would. My beef is not with The removal of the drow has such, It is with the explicit and retroactive nature of that removal. I would have preferred that the matter just not be acknowledged rather than acknowledged in a way that explicitly purges 7% of existing material from continuity. You don't have to abandon the entire darklands to talk around the specific locations that should definitely have drow in them. If for some reason you had to revisit those locations, just insinuate that something about them recently changed rather than canonizing a new, mutually exclusive version of them that overtly denies what was once there.
James Jacobs told us he has plans for overwriting some setting locations that have been written about previously, probably in some up coming adventure paths.Yes. I would. My beef is not with The removal of the drow has such, It is with the explicit and retroactive nature of that removal. I would have preferred that the matter just not be acknowledged rather than acknowledged in a way that explicitly purges 7% of existing material from continuity. This would be fine. This is the exact thing I'm saying they should have done.
On the contrary, aren't they explicitly saying that it was always empty, rather than just that it has come to be empty now?
James Jacobs told us he has plans for overwriting some setting locations that have been written about previously, probably in some up coming adventure paths.Yes. I would. My beef is not with The removal of the drow has such, It is with the explicit and retroactive nature of that removal. I would have preferred that the matter just not be acknowledged rather than acknowledged in a way that explicitly purges 7% of existing material from continuity. This, right here, is the specific thing I do not like. Everyone on your side of the debate has been arguing that the drow always a minor element of the setting. If that's true, why is it necessary to explicitly purge them--and with them, everyone's Second Darkness & Shattered Star playthroughs--from continuity rather than just leaving them unmentioned from now on? Shattered star was the first a p I ever ran, and the fact that acknowledging its events in other adventures at my table now creates an explicit continuity error is what bothers me. Replacing the drow with something else would not cause the same problem because it merely alters the events of Shattered Star rather than deleting them.
Yes. I would. My beef is not with The removal of the drow has such, It is with the explicit and retroactive nature of that removal. I would have preferred that the matter just not be acknowledged rather than acknowledged in a way that explicitly purges 7% of existing material from continuity.
Is there actual confirmation of this or is this just speculation? My understanding was that replacing the drow was exactly what they had decided not to do, hence the retcon deleting them rather than altering them.
They could have treated them like Folca and just not acknowledged them going forward, leaving the door open for people to employ their own headcanons. They've specifically chosen to deny us that freedom. Let me elaborate on the Folca example I used. Folca, we have been assured, is never going to be mentioned in published material again, and, because explaining his disappearance would require mentioning him, we will never be told why. Those of us who are invested enough in the setting to care can make up a story on our own to explain what happened. I, personally, like to imagine that Andoletta killed him. While this is not officially true, it's also not officially untrue. There's nothing official that disproves it. If published material had just stopped mentioning drow, I'd be free to imagine that something happened to them, or that they're just hanging out off-camera. Instead, the retcon we've been given is such that the drow explicitly never existed. Cities they once ruled are now officially, canonically, objectively, mysterious ruins which they have never inhabited. This is the one, true, correct answer, and any coherent-canon-preserving story I make up in my head about why they're not around anymore is objectively wrong.
This seems wildly at odds with how common drow are throughout published material. It's too 12:00 AM for me to go looking for prooftexts now, but they're all over the corpus. There's no way they've secretly been rare this whole time. Cavalier orders were never in-universe organizations, and were never portrayed as such in setting material.
I'm also worried this will set a precedent that retcons of this size are just a thing that Paizo will do sometimes now, The decision to stop including Drow in new material was forced on Paizo. The decision to close the door on any coherent continuity regarding what happened was not. They could have treated them like Folca and just not acknowledged them going forward, leaving the door open for people to employ their own headcanons. They've specifically chosen to deny us that freedom. Now that they've done that once, who's to say they're not going to do it every time something they previously wrote becomes inconvenient?
That example was off the top of my head. My broader complaint is that instead of replacing them with something else, it seems like they've left a hole. Removing Drow from the darklands is like removing humans from the surface world. Now I'm left wondering what species most of the population are if they're not humans anymore. Serpentfolk are not a valid answer because being rare is part of their fundamental concept. If they're now as common as drow, how is it that they're angry about having lost their old empire and being replaced by humans? That resentment is half their ethos and without it they're just some scaly dudes. I'm also worried this will set a precedent that retcons of this size are just a thing that Paizo will do sometimes now, which means all setting material is cheapened by its liability to be taken away.
I understand why the Drow couldn't be retained as is or under that name, but deleting them rather than replacing them seems like a massive error. You could have replaced them with some cool original creation (it could have been as different as they wanted and I would've been fine), but instead we get a retcon that leaves half the darklands in limbo to the point where Golarion as a setting is now incoherent. If the drow were never there, what happened all the times they showed up? What species was the vampire the Sihedron heroes encountered when they went into the darklands? Who in the darklands has been taking all those slaves? It's like in Doki Doki Literature Club when Monika deletes Sayori. This does not leave the rest of the game intact but without her in it. The whole thing is a glitchy mess now. I feel genuinely betrayed as someone who was invested in this setting, not because I particularly care about the drow, but because now the precedent is set that any aspect of the setting is liable to be awkwardly ripped away. I'm left wondering why I should let myself become invested in any aspect of the setting if this is just going to happen to it.
I played with four players, a wizard, a bard, a druid and a paladin. The druid had a cat animal companion. It will matter later that the bard did not have Soothe because she did not know that it existed. The druid could cast healing, but never would up doing so except on her cat. It is notable that as a dwarf who dumped Charisma, the Druid had 0 resonance points. The four of them, at least as far as I could tell, did well against the ooze. It seemed to be about the right difficulty to be handled by them. As soon as they entered the second room with the goblins, things went south for them. It was an extremely difficult fight, during which both the wizard and cat were knocked down, but not killed. (The wizard said an hour later that he thought he'd been wrong and actually had died, but as it'd been a while by the time he noticed and he might have been mistaken, I continued the game with him alive.) The goblins were generally managing two attacks per round, and the second attack hit decently often. I will note, though, that the PCs were inhibited by the fact that the dancing light alerted the goblins while everyone was still in the hallway and the party was stuck in a choke point as a result. They were low on resources and health by the time they were done. They went to continue, and the Druid used burning hands to deal with the centipedes with decent ease. However, they were so drained and damaged after those three encounters that they took the loot they'd gotten so far and left the dungeon. I decided that since they'd been in there such a short time, they could use the rest of the day as downtime. As a result, they were able to sell the gear. Either there were no listed rules for how much gear sells for, or I wasn't able to find them, so I ruled that it sold at full price, on the basis that was the only value ever technically associated with the loot. This allowed them to restore themselves pretty well by purchasing spell-casting services. (I assumed a level 1 cleric with 18 wisdom was easy to come by.) They went in the next day. They briefly encountered the fungus but ignored it when they realized there was no reason to deal with it. There were no failed saves before they made this decision. Only because I specifically prompted them to maybe actually use an exploration mode action did they seek and manage to find the hidden loot in the larger chamber. They never checked the pool for the statue and therefore didn't notice it on their first trip through that room. They signaled the goblins with the armor trap. They caught the statue trap. None of them could disable it, but they avoided passing in front of it. The next goblin fight was more brutal than the last, and half the party was knocked down. This was likewise hindered by the fact that they were essentially in a single file line in the hallway when initiative was triggered. The cat reached dying three, but no one actually died. The druid again made a big dent in the enemy with burning hands. I awarded her a hero point for being MVP. This one fight left them so resource deprived that they went to leave again, but because I again prompted them to use an exploration mode action, they found the statue. The bard picked it up without thinking and triggered that encounter, which they actually dealt with without too much trouble. For the second time, they left the dungeon and sold what they had gotten so far to buy healing and spell-casting services. I believe the paladin was knocked down but didn't die in the fight with the skeletons. From there, they used a grappling hook to scale the cliff and get to Drakus' room. Once again, they were in a single file line in front of the door because they alerted Drakus and he won initiative. He therefore got into a one on one with the paladin. The cat tried to get through Drakus' space and was knocked down by the attack of opportunity when he failed. The wizard miraculously managed to get through his square, but was cut down not long after. The Paladin fell soon after. The druid and bard fled. They both jumped down the cliff, managing to take only a few points of damage. They left. Drakus used the other door hoping to cut them off. He passed by the statue trap without problem due to his symbol of pharasma, but the rat activated it when he tried to exit the room. This killed him. Drakus caught up to the Druid and killed her, sucking her blood when she was down and he had no more enemies to deal with. The paladin then rose back up, only to be made quick work of. Had there been a cleric, they would have been better off, but clericless parties shouldn't be invalid. The core problem was that they didn't have enough healing resources to deal with the damage the enemies were doing, especially since the enemies' second attack meant that they only rarely failed to land at least one successful hit in a round. This wasn't just a matter of them not entering all of their fights at full hp. They straight up couldn't handle more than 2 encounters per day. I'll end on a positive note. I expected to miss attacks of opportunity and have positioning not matter with them gone. It totally mattered, and I don't wish to see them come back. Edit: It turns out selling rules are in the equipment section, but not in the game mastering section. I don't know how I ever would have found them without ctrl+f. Why isn't this rule listed along with the "selling" downtime activity?
So the party was in a room which, due to a trap, was covered in burning oil. One of the characters decided to use create water to put themselves out. I checked if they could make a knowledge check, and when they couldn't, I let them do this, and then have the fire explode because that's what happens when you try to put an oil fire out with water. I had it do 4d6 damage with a reflex save for half, as that's what the fire was doing to them every round. This did not put this character (it was Kyra actually) into existential Danger. She had plenty of Channel energies left, and was taking a little enough damage each round with a reflex save that she could have healed herself properly with a concentration check. This was a high-level sanctioned module. Technically, we were playing in campaign mode, which was necessary because it allowed us to use higher-level versions of the pre generated characters. Most of the players at the table were using their society characters' sheets. As we were technically playing in campaign mode, I'm pretty sure my word was law, but the player in question got so mad that they stormed away from the table. I just wanted to get other people's opinion about that situation? Was I wrong to have something damage him even though it wasn't technically in the rules? Have this not been a campaign mode table, would I have been allowed to do that? There's nothing in the rules about how create water affects fire in any circumstance. I suppose the most RAW thing to do would be to have it not do anything. At the time I didn't know the relevant rules off the top of my head, which is probably something I should have looked up before running this. Still, after looking at some footage of water being thrown onto oil fires on YouTube, I feel like I could have Justified treating this like a high-level Fireball or something. Having it just affect him and do his little damage is it did seems merciful compared to what would happen in real life.
1: Yes. 2: No.3: I've never touched either. 4: High level play is the most frustrating to me of Pathfinder's problems. 5: I think it's not only a good idea, but a decently high priority. 6: I'm not sure what this means. To give up on accessibility altogether would mean creating a game that cannot be played. That wouldn't be worth any benefit. Otherwise it's a trade off and there's no simple way to answer this question. 7: I'd probably not want to bother with multiple rules sets for the same game like that. 8: IDK.
The "Flipping around" complaint is valid. Too many rules refer to other rules that are pages away. Maybe this happens more than I perceive in other books, but it doesn't seem that way to me. Creating my first character took about an hour on account of this, when I sense it ought to have taken half that time. Admittedly, I did this from my phone, which makes the scrolling problem as bad as possible, but it would be nice to not have the problem at all.
It's a good sign that I've already seen threads about how the rogue is both too powerful and not powerful enough. Hopefully that means the rogue is well balanced.That's... not how it works. At all. That means someone is wrong. Someone just need to math out who's who. There's no way to math out whether being good at skills is better than being better at combat.
The guy who upgraded his armor is less likely to be hit and receives a bonus on saving throws. Granted, the latter doesn't matter in a duel between two paladins, but that's an extremely specific situation. In normal play, the increase to saves has a 15% chance of turning one result into the next better one for you.
What other numbers are hard capped?
A store with the resources to acquire or manufacture a +4 sword probably also has the resources to make itself difficult for low level characters to rob. None of the kingdoms ban high-power weapons, because the ones that did were eaten by the monsters no one could save them from because no one could do enough damage.
maybe he's playing in a blasted apocalyptic world where the Undead rule as god-kings and the forces of good fight a gurilla war from the darkness and don't have stores to buy things fromMy question then becomes why hasn't the 14th level paladin purchased a magic weapon to wield? Even with tithing and giving to the poor he could still certainly afford one. That's a very specific campaign concept, and the GM should adjust the difficulty of the enemies he puts the PCs up against if he's going to have them play with a lower amount of gold.
Bane tho
We will also be providing an even more streamlined process for what we expect to be the two most popular options: "I just want the Rulebook" and "I want all the playtest stuff"For free pdf products you eliminate the add to cart and buy for $0.00 steps Do you think you can get the website not to melt?
It drives me nuts that a system is broken in both ways at the same time by the community.That's how you know it's balanced. Or wildly inconsistent. No one has asserted that multi-classing as a whole is simultaneously overpowered and under-powered. Rather, the problem with multi-class builds is that they are wildly off-curve in most cases. Many combinations which sound like cool concepts don't work or are clearly worse than their pure-classed peers, whilst certain combinations, particularly those involving dips, are far ahead of curve because they get the right combinations of abilities, or simply more abilities than their single-classed peers.
... I'd say that, fundamentally, a Cavalier is a swordy guy who gets to have a horse animal companion so that he doesn't have to mess with buying horses and having them die instantly to area of effect at higher levels. Definitely, "get a horse animal companion" is an option that should exist for everyone who could reasonably be a knight. Perhaps one feat for a horse animal companion would be too much, so perhaps the first could grant a first level horse and the second cause it to advance.
While this is somewhat true, preventing this is, I think the reason one's ability to take dedications is limited. Supposing we agree that taking three feats (counting the dedication) in an archetype makes it no longer count as dipping, you can only have one dip on a character at any given time, and only four archetypes total if you take none of your own class feats. The worst abusers of multi-classing were characters like the four way multiclass I mentioned in another post, who had several skill mods in the 25+ range and several more at 20+ at level eight. Honestly, compared to that, the fighter dip is tame, as much as it disgusts me on an aesthetic level as someone who values role-playing.
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