Themetricsystem's page

Yes, maintaining correct inventory is one of the hardest things a retail outlet does. I used to do it at the video store, and the number of employees who sold stuff without so much as writing a receipt was appalling. But with "modern" UPC codes and scanning, all you need to do is buy software that tracks that s***.

The problem with that thinking is that you forget what happens at the intersection of you needing an OLD part, which if I understand is indeed the case, and the rollout of easier scanning-based computer-managed inventory systems. When those things started being affordably rolled out it was almost certainly AFTER the part that you're looking for had been bought and was at one point on their shelves so it existed on the original inventory listing and was at one point cataloged as being in stock when it was actually used or otherwise transferred when that inventory system wasn't well maintained by staff. When they transitioned to the new system they simply imported the old inventory list they had been using and it integrated all the errors from beforehand that WOULD be easy to avoid going forward as they'd have a new SKU scanning system but it predates all that and there doesn't even exist a SKU in their building to scan to say it isn't present. Couple that with less NEED to do regular and thorough inventory searches to rebuild it from the ground up and what you get is a ton of ghost items in inventory that are only ever discovered when that item is requested and some poor employee has to go look for it when in reality a tech probably transferred it to another location a decade ago and then the paperwork for updating the inventory either never got done by mistake/incompetence or there was human error involved with handling that tracking system manually.

I ran into this type of thing every single day at my former job doing systems work for a supermarket chain maintaining all manner of computers, inventory lists, merchandise return claims, fraud paperwork, scan-law reports, and pricing issues. The company had switched to a new inventory system twice while I was at that job and the one they used shortly before I took that position was indeed about as manual and yardstick as you can imagine ANY business could afford to get away with in the mid 2010s after dragging their feet on modernizing their business for fifty odd years.

It seems perfectly fine to allow that use as part of their Kingdom role and duties and could even been a good monthly source of a reason and location to introduce your random encounters and events.

They can use their time in a productive way, fulfill their role, and you can use that location and conveniently enough the map itself that you would draft for whatever encounters you place there, multiple times and gradually update it with growth changes. Shoot, even could have them and their various guilds/organizations of the Kingdom to rally around performing regular Plant Growth Rituals in order to reforest an area.

You could do it to help offset the harvesting of natural resources from your region, give your party a small recurring BP discount due to you creating FUTURE timber resources (which would in effect help ensure the lumber prices in your area have high confidence that supply won't dry up and stabilize the price), or even simply just employ this as a means to SPREAD the wilderness further.

I don't see any way that this could break your game at all, besides, like others noted it would be a MASSIVE undertaking even if the PC took 8 hours a day five days a week for every month Kingdom cycle in order to really put a meaningful dent into populating a Hex as they're actually each quite immense as is. Any such PC would be equipped with sufficient Nature skill or other Lores to personally know without even researching that they'd HAVE to space the saplings out with at least 2 squares between each of them (perhaps staggering them instead of doing neat rows or just going wild without a pattern) in order to avoid branch and root crowding which would make that wood fail to grow and be viable for industrial harvesting.

On the note of the COMBAT utility of that ability though, now that's an entirely different beast. It is, hands down, one of the best defensive abilities in the system and runs circles around what Shields can do before the phalanx fighter gets out of bed, so to speak. It's not broken, but it is more than solid so I would suggest that you brush up on how to handle combat and try to prepare yourself and probably the party for the prospect of how the combats will play out with new obstacles sprouting up frequently and the defensive benefits it offers the party.

It's the gestures of the spellcasting that relate to the Manipulate Trait, basically, you're waving your body around to cast the spell.

You don't need any vine to "enchant" at all, the description even states that the vine in question appears out of thin air, you don't need to be in a jungle or forest to use it at all, underwater, in jail, outer space, doesn't matter it just works.

Not directly related, but one thing that reloading has going for it is that your turns go super fast compared to most other players. Move, fire, reload is such a snappy turn that it makes me appreciate crossbow users for saving us all time. True chad reason to use em.

As silly as it is to agree with this I had the same experience in the early days when newer player made a Ranger and went with a crossbow and his turns were always consistently took a tenth of the time that the Sorcerer and Fighter and the group required.

Are alchemical bombs thrown weapons?

Is it 2019? Am I taking crazy pills?!

In all seriousness, I'm hoping the PC2 takes a freaking bulldozer to the lot where the Alchemist and Alchemical Item rules currently stand and rebuild it as something universally functional and consistent. Maybe like a little splash pad or a STEM workshop for kids, they need science more than ever these days.

It's a double cicada brood year up around my parts. They're due to crawl out in about a month give or take a week depending on the weather/temperature if I understand correctly and apparently, it's going to be a LOUD one this time around since it's one batch of more regular 13-year bugs and another 17-year species that lined up together this time around.

Clock that with the total eclipse that will be visible here and it's going to be a weird spring.

I'd say no, let the Thaum have one blind spot when it comes to weaknesses, they already get to invent their own fanfic nonsense for the other 95% of creatures to trigger weakness based on the invented aversion the player created about holding up a crusty sock or some other silliness.

Witch is absolutely not the right Class choice here, I don't care what the lore calls it, the PF2 Witch is quite simply incompatible with what the protag of those games does and can do.

Simiarly, I think you might be a bit disappointed by the fact that at her weakest, Cereza is already more powerful and higher level than you could ever hope to achieve in a level 1 - 10 AP so unless the GM is interested in doing a bunch of extra legwork to give a ton of special new nigh-game breaking special abilities to all the PCs (be it through ad-hoc stuff or via a higher than appropirate level Relic using the Relic rules) then you're going to come away from it feeling unsatisfied but then again, that's one of the biggest problems with trying recreate a character from many other forms of entertainment as powerscaling of their stories have no obgligation to be linear or balanced against a world full of equals.

I'd suggest you start with Gunslinger, Way of the Spellshot and grab the Diabolic Sorcerer MCA to tie yourself mechanically to your pact with Devils (they call them demons/infernals in the home setting but they forge and make contracts with mortals to lend them power and that is the role of Devils in Golarion).

If you don't go with Gunslinger as your base Class and want to use firearms as your main offensive schtick then you are doing the closest thing that PF2 has to intentionally building an unplayably bad PC without intentionally making one that is bad as a joke/thought exercise.

I don't have the stats and whatnot for it but I once played an incredibly fun Leshy Fighter with Grasping Reach, Lunge, plus a Battle Axe in order to wield the Battle Axe in two hands and give it 10 ft Reach and then use the remarkably good Lunge specific Attack that gives you another 5 ft of Reach to grant you a WHOPPING thirty-six squares around your person in which you can make Lunge attacks during your turn and 22 squares around you that you can use AoOReactive Strike against. Sure, it's a two-handed d6 Weapon at that point but you're a FIGHTER and unless you fail to invest in Str properly or are fighting exclusively +2-+5 PL creatures you're going to land crits on enemies every three of four attacks.

I only played that character twice in a one-shot (two-shot, but whatever) and I had an absolute blast with him, sure his lower damage dice at d6 was very aggressively mid but Fighter Accuracy, Crit Spec bonuses, and the sheer tactical advantages it provided was just awesome with the upside being that even with ranged foes about I could simply hide behind cover and break LoS denying their actions and still reliably get Reactions against melee opponents who need to close the gap.

The last people on earth that I care about offending with my fantasy game are those who seriously weigh their own "deeply held" religious views that were created to control or deprive the common man from rising up against those who pull the levers in society against the make-believe created for enjoyment and fun and decide that their own cult bible says what is going on is evil or objectionable.

This might be the hottest takes I've dropped in this community to date but, if anything, I'd much RATHER trigger such a person immediately so I can tell them to find another group and, as nicely as possible, suggest that they stay away from roleplaying entirely. I'd rather a billion people consider me a heretic than agree with the notion that art, in any form, should conform to the comfort of religious groups and faiths, full stop.

Freedom of expression is more important than the hurt little feelings of supposedly religious folk, it is the responsibility of the viewer/consumer to decide if a piece of art is right for them, NEVER the other way around, that is the most important and foundational pillar of freedom of expression.

Everyone stop looking at the Alchemist and his weird half-baked science fair project, you trying to poke holes in his theory is making the guy self-conscious and sad that he didn't work harder.

Besides, I heard the Alchemist went on a DOPE trip to Florida during Summer Break and is going to come back a changed man, just you wait, the new remastered Alchemist is going to be the coolest kid in school, and everyone's going to love him and he will most certainly not still suffer from the same exact acne, lack of self-esteem, performance anxiety, severe drug problem, personality disorder, overambitious attitude, and sloppy handwriting that has him skating by with merely passing grades and no dates.

I used to be on the fence about the Improvised Weapon question but I fell off some time ago.

It's not clear how it should be run so the GMs have to make a call, the one I made is that things are only EVER treated as Weapons via the Improvised Weapons rule while they are actively being wielded AS an Improvised Weapon. The main reason for that is to interpret it in a more generous manner would make it so that anything/everything in the game would be considered a Simple Weapon literally at all times up to and including body parts and that's a can of worms that is best left closed and on the shelf IMO.

The biggest example of where this leans into bonkers territory is when you evaluate the Shifting Rune and the fact that if it's allowed you could use the Shifting Rune to turn any Weapon or Object used as an Imp Weapon into ANY other standard piece of equipment in the universe that has the same general handedness which is just busted, especially if you don't end up artificially limiting Shifting to only allow the new forms be selected from either Common equipment or things the party already has "Access" to.

Cole Deschain wrote:

Calistria… …without causing too much real-life depression.

The problem is… she has a ton of really positive messages in there that people don’t see or skim over.

I really think that you have it backward, the majority of her themes are generally ones that push followers to what most people consider unethical behavior.

Two of her three edicts revolve around pursuing your own selfish desires and the third dictates that the follower seek out payback/vengeance when they're stopped from being selfish.

Her A features a requirement for devout worshipers act in a reactionary and petty way by never letting a slight go unanswered.

All of her Domain Spells are all about taking personal control away from others and forcing your own wishes over the free will of others.

She is a figurehead and model for liars and conmen while encouraging violent or humiliating retaliation for those who follow her guidance to exact a price from anyone who stands in their way from seeking pleasures of the body and hedonism.

The themes of being sure to tend to your wounds first is just about the ONLY positive thing about her and even then that is simply a dictation to ensure the survival of her followers. Nobody in their right mind should ever trust a sworn and loyal follower of hers with their coin or life because they will always seek out short lived thrills and personal gratification over the needs of others while lying, manipulating, and tricking anyone they believe opposes them.

I can't see how anyone can look at her and think that the directives and themes that she represents is even halfway good or encourages ethical behavior.

[ snip ]Fair enough. KC, I certainly respect you enough to take the advice so I've edited it out on your account. I still assert and think that my point stands that a lot of people are super hung up on the idea that sexuality is in itself a virtue and are misconstruing themes that involve it as imparting "goodness" onto big C. Beyond self-preservation and a subjective interpretation that sex=good there is very little else left in her lore that makes her complicated if anything he's a blunt tool and her main benefit to the setting is that she brings a kind of forbidden sex appeal to a game that is otherwise supposed to be mass market consumable and family-friendly.[ /snip ]

I don't see why not, that is, unless you're REALLY trying to play up the whole detachable and modular parts schtick. If that's what you're going for Automaton would be better suited to your needs as they have feats to do that stuff which the Android lacks.

The crawling hand is Tiny, but does NOT list its reach as 0 feet.

So you're saying that the crawling hands' reach surpasses its grasp?

*Not sorry

Great, now you have me thinking about dozens of cobbled-together and magically powered short-wave AM Radio stations all having a radio war over the frequencies to blast out the particular brand of insane religious broadcasts.

I don't see any reason why it wouldn't trigger if they're trying to take possession of the backpack since they're trying to take it and whatever is in it for themself.

I gotta agree with shroudb and say that Holy Light/Chilling Darkness are hard to beat for a thematic Spell to put on the Weapon if you don't have side-loaded access to Hydraulic Push or something silly like an Amped Psi Cantrip via dipping into Psychic) via some expanded Spell Access shenanigans. Bonus if you're fighting a Holy or Unholy creature as you'll REALLY rack up the numbers if you do so.

Generally speaking, you never want to put a Spell in such a Weapon that provides a Saving Throw of any sort because you're cutting the effectiveness of it by around 50%, or even more than that if you happen to be fighting anything higher level than yourself. You CAN do it if you want to do more tricky stuff like apply conditions/debuffs and so forth but you'll need to get used to being disappointed by getting less than stellar results out of what you're hoping to be a nice little burst.

Yeah, I don't abide by any interpretation that says the water is motionless or even remotely calm, in my mind it HAS to be extremely lively in there. I know this is fantasy and all but I cannot fathom the wall actually existing in any way that can be interacted with if there isn't some STRONG flow of water moving from the outer surface inward in a one-directional manner:

(Clouds in the sky for prof pic spacing)

>|W|<
>|W|<

Anything else would either suggest a completely impenetrable force (not the damage type) that holds the water in place or an absolutely insane amount of surface tension that, when broken by something/someone entering it, would cause the entire wall to explosively empty where the tension is broken.

I also agree that the DC for the Swim Check should probably just match the Spell DC of the caster who created it plus or minus any circumstance bonuses/penalties depending on the actual situation and any beneficial or mitigating factors at play at the moment.

Setting aside Kingmaker, what is your go to Thaumaturge build? I am working on a free archetype build which has access to the asp coil. I know you like the champion and sentinel archetypes, and I found myself drifting in that direction...

Hmmm....

My parents and betters always taught me that it's better to ask and receive a no than not to ask at all so I might as well: Does have an extra 8 or 10 grand lying around rotting a hole in their bank account they'd be willing to part with? I'd LOVE to buy a home instead of renting but the down payment requirement is just so far out of reach with the family living paycheck to paycheck and it's just so... demoralizing. I'm already paying 30-40% MORE every month for rent than a mortgage plus adding in the cost of property tax divided across the year would cost in my area but without the extra capital up front, the bank/CU would rather see me drain my bank account to pay landlords every month than pay THEM for a 30-year loan.

[ sarc ]No, you don't get it, there is no way it should ignore the Armor or equipment they're wearing/using, that stuff is literally PART of the Character once held or worn, after all, casting magic to alter someones appearance or actual form alters their equipment, teleporting someone moves all of their equipment and doesn't leave them naked. This is even evidenced by the fact that you can never sunder somebodies equipment directly (except in a very few and extremely rare circumstances, almost all of which are done by monsters not players) but only ever attack their person which is not actually much of a change at all since attacking their equipment is the same thing as attacking their body, only Shields get special treatment in this manner and ONLY if the one wielding the shield actively decides to trigger that distinction while spending extra actions AND reactions to do so. [ /sarc ]

The primary benefit, from the standpoint of the business, would be that they're making a new book and can generate income from it and at the same time shed OGL connections with their baby, they only spent millions of dollars, delayed almost all of their product lines, probably canceled some number of projects outright, and pivoted an entire department to create and support the remaster.

To me, assuming they'll continue making copies of books that are defunct and have to be fixed is like assuming that Paizo is going to cycle back to the physical copies and PDFs of the Pathfinder Second Edition Playtest book and update it to be in line with the new ACTUAL rules.

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.

Issuing errata costs them time and money while at the same time doing very little to increase revenue even IF they do end up putting out new print runs of old books with fixed applied to them, on the other hand, no matter WHAT content it includes a new book will always generate an order of magnitude more income than a new printing of an old/existing one even if MOST people who own the book that some/most of the content that is included in the remaster book that it was lifted from never buy the remaster book.

Magic is, in the most general terms, something that alters reality in a way that is explicitly different than how it COULD be done via mechanical, chemical, or biological processes (if it indeed is possible to accomplish something similar/identical in those ways at all which is not always the case).

I think the "bridge" people are talking about is the fact that this story and the characterization depicted here that Goka is effectively a carbon copy of South Korea complete with the same names you'd find there (this, in particular, is one thing that sticks out the most, the rest of the "western" nations have very few, if any, NPCs or important characters with names like Charles, John, Aaron, Dwayne, Audrey, Jennifer etc), the types of food, everpresent advertising, themes, bird-measuring surrounding schooling/education, and the cultural obsession with both esports and pop music/idols.

I thought that Tian Xia was supposed to be loosely based on Asia in general and that the lore related to the nations of it was going to be inspired by it rather than the regions being depicted by way of intentionally leaning into stereotypes about said cultures. Sure, the content of the story doesn't lean into negative stereotypes and connotations of SK much but the connection between the region and this real nation is so on-the-nose it might as well have been lifted from a piece of fiction written for an anachronistic alternate universe where magic exists on earth.

Maybe it's just this story that will be an outlier and the setting info won't lean so heavily into real-world cultural and regional parallels, but at this point, with this being a promotional piece to sell the book and drum up hype I'd think it would align with the intent and tone of the book.

Anyone in doubt that there will be more repackaged pre-remaster books that get a complete repackaging and facelift isn't looking at the incentives for them to do so.

Right now they're finally JUST starting to get to the point where they can wrap up and put out all the stuff that had to be put on hold because they felt the need to start and follow through with the remaster project, they haven't even really had much time to breath at all since the thing put them at least 6-12 months behind their original plan.

Once they wrap up all the stuff that was already in the pipeline and had to be put on hold due to the remaster I can just about guarantee that they're going to cannibalize and redo as much of the PF2 OGL era material as they possibly can in the form of PC3 and PC4 at LEAST, there is absolutely no reason for them to have chosen a number system for the Player Core line if they only ever intended to put out two books, instead the would have kept the same name scheme they've used for over a decade and used Player Core and the Advanced Player Core names. It may be 2026 before we see PC3 but I'm confident it will arrive eventually and probably cover most if not all of the Classes other than maybe Kinetecist that haven't seen the remaster touch-up.

RIP my theory and along with it any faith in the identity of the God being at all related to the pseudo ascension of demi-god super-humanoids globally (universally?).

My next guess would have to be Torag then since it's a pretty well-documented fact that JJ holds little love for Dwarves.

Drejk wrote:

Do you use reinforced boots, or is there a little risk regarding feet?

(I would not be surprised if Big Norse Wolf might want to dispute the latter notion)

She already has reinforced boots.

It's one of those things that everyone in the Midwest gets upon reaching adulthood regardless of profession or need.

I can confirm this, every sane and non-silver spoon pampered upper-crust person I've ever personally known over the age of fifteen or so has simply just owned a pair, they are an assumed part of any wardrobe just like shorts for warm weather seasons or a spring/fall jacket.

I have a WFH deskjob that literally never requires me to leave my office in terms of being productive and I own two pair of sufficiently protective hard-toe/steel-toe boots. My son, at nearly four years old even has some adorable size 11 ceramic-toe winter boots, it's as normal around here as reflective shades on a state trooper.

I'm going to say that if there's one thing I am confident PF3 will not do it's "become more like 5e."

They may well drop Vancian spellcasting entirely, but they're surely not going to do what the competition does.

I'd take that bet any day of the week. If there is one Paizo has done over the years, and done well, it is taking design and narrative inspiration from what previous editions of D&D did successfully to one degree or another and refining/improving them. PF1 took what 3.X did and made it way better, PF2 took what 4e did, threw in Action/turn economy improvements, and polished the daylights out of it while abandoning pretty much everything that differentiated and made PF1 better than 3.X.

5e has gone GANGBUSTERS and Paizo is already leaning pretty heavily into differing to gm interpretation for a ton of things versus writing comprehensive and consistent rules that smoothly connect mechanically and eschewing the responsibility of vague or inconsistent wording in rules as being something the GM needs to manage on their own instead of relying on the actual rules.

I can't imagine PF3 drops anytime in the next five years and there are a TON of things that could change in that time but one thing I can't imagine they'll do is try to take a step AWAY from what has made 5e so successful for new and casual players which is where that system really shines.

I wonder if the book, or perhaps an information blog/dev post could shed some light on the baby centaur problem...

Not to fire back at you or be rude but I don't think you know what marrow is, it's not simply bone or even the stuff inside the outer casing of bone, it's the living fatty tissues inside of bone that manufacture blood.

The only bones that have any meaningful live marrow content in them are live ones or at the very least bones that belonged to a VERY recently deceased creature. You CAN get cuts of meat with cross sections of bone in them with cold/frozen preserved marrow that is perfectly good for ingesting but that is still no more alive than the meat it's attached to.

So, unless the poppet was JUST created, I'm talking crafted out of raw materials from a very fresh kill in the past 1-2 days, then the marrow would have long rotted away and even then, assuming that marrow rot would harm such a poppet in the first place would imply that the poppet would suffer, take damage, or even die because it was made with such raw wet bone material as it naturally dries out and the tissue dies which I don't think is ... quite right.

Since there aren't any kind of mechanical rules, traits, or other guidance relating to skeletal systems you have to infer the intended meaning (something I actually despise doing most of the time but here it is not reasonable for the game or rules to be thorough enough to flesh this out [not sorry]) from the words they used to describe it.

Now, I could envision someone going out of their way to make a SUPER edgy poppet that was JUST created prior to them picking up the character that IS made from freshly slain creature bones and perhaps even giving them a really macabre need and personality trait that the PC feels the need to constantly replace parts of their body to replace dry bones with wet ones on some grounds that their bones drying out actually physically or mentally causes them some great pain (or inversely they're addicted to the pain of their bones drying out) but that's not exactly in the same ballpark as the normal poppet which is described as being made of more traditional materials.... so I guess a player and GM could manufacture a scenario where applying those effects to it could make sense but that would be more than a little bit contrived.

I misread the post, it's not the Rogue who is confused, it's the ally so my comment wasn't relevant.

Either way, I don't think there is any way to disable SA other than to use a weapon that isn't eligible for benefiting from it.

That's a simple no, even in the most compatible scenario where a player intentionally creates a Poppet made almost entirely out of bone that is still not LIVING bone and it wouldn't have any live marrow to rot away, the bones it would be made of would be long dead as they were harvested from whatever creature they came from before the poppet was created.

I'm not really seeing any valid justification for allowing the Rogue to disable SA here, even against YOURSELF if you can't target another creature.

Being allowed to pull your punches because it is an ally (or yourself) goes against the entire point of the condition which is that you can't think straight and have to randomly determine who you must attack.

Akira Toriyama has passed away at 68.

This is a sad day.

You could say that again... I don't think thee is any artist who impacted and inspired me more in life than him. I'm not one to believe in an afterlife but if one does exist, I hope he finds his throne in the next realm.

On March 1st we lost one of the most influential, inspired, and talented artists in modern times.

It would be a stretch to say that there is anyone whose work in television and video game animation is more highly respected and impactful. I am not the type of person who is frequently emotionally impacted by the loss of an artist or actor but there is a sinking hole in my heart knowing of his passing. There are few creators who I have held in such high regard and would label as the GOAT (greatest of all time) in their field but he stood and will continue to stand as the legend among legends.

Rest in power Akira, your art has touched the lives of billions and the legacy he leaves behind will stand for generations to come.

Paizo is extremely cagey about the term "brothel" and the lore abjectly rejects that any official Church of Calistra runs as one for reasons that I assume are related to how people carry negative connotations of the term, instead, they employ "sacred prostitutes" which, from my perspective is splitting hairs by saying they operate pay-for-sex operations on the grounds of it being important to their faith first rather than it being something done to generate income. In other words, the difference between a "run of the mill" brothel and nearly identical services provided by the church is that they don't "do it for the money" but instead they're motivated by filling the role of providing an affordable lay as a sacred act except that those who are part of the church who are motivated to do that work are also similarly encouraged to lie, deceive, and cheat in order to benefit themselves.

Every church of Calistra is encouraged to create and celebrate local holidays that commemorate grand acts of trickery, the only thing/trait that is more well-known about that church it would be their role in supporting and building the sex work industry.

Given the abandonment of alignments in the system and the push to judge acts and people exclusively on their actions and behavior I don't really think there is any reasonable justification on hiring any open worshipper of any Deity whose main areas of concern involve deception, lying, trickery, and to a lesser degree being beholden to your emotions and primal uges. If the entire group/organization would hire such a Cleric are also adherents to Calistra it could be justified but otherwise, that would simply be inviting trouble.

Anyone paying money to a Cleric devoted to a Deity that represents the domain of Trickery is a fool who deserves to be parted from their coin and left penniless in a ditch.

An Abadar Prophesy would go SOO hard in communicating just how fundamental he is to literally every government and business on the planet (not to mention whatever extraterrestrial life which knows of and has a cultural place for him).

His death would unfurl consequences powers of magnitude greater than every real-life economic collapse in known history.

So, March is reading month and as usual, my daughter's elementary school sent home contest materials related to student reading goals and also prize giveaways for all of the top readers in the school with prizes for each class as well.

It has the usual stuff, a free DURING SCHOOL trip to the local Arcade to play anything they want for a full hour, a couple of bicycles, some tokens for the book vending machine, uniform free day passes, that kind of stuff but on top of that the first place prize for every classroom is entry for the bike plus arcade trip prize drawing is one "GameBoy Video Game Player" which has me MAJORLY scratching my head.

Nintendo hasn't produced a "GameBoy" in over a decade... are they giving away ancient hardware for which you'd have to buy hard-to-find cartridges, some kind of Temu knock-off emulator handheld, or are they actually giving out ten Switches? I don't know, and frankly, I'm not exactly comfortable calling the school up to talk to the Principal to ask about it because, well, that's embarrassing for me as well as them. I'm sure there are a ton of kids at the school who have already been confounded by it too because they'd certainly know better and aren't old enough to feel awkward calling out the staff.

It is a GREAT school, I love the staff and leadership (the principal is a fully sleeve tatted up wiccan hippie who pours WAY more time and money into the job than is actually required) but looking at that reminds me just how much of the world is still run by out of touch boomers. I mean, it's not the biggest thing in the world, certainly, it shouldn't be for educators but the fact that a two-page, nicely made pamphlet for a formal contest went out advertising for a giveaway of such a far-fetched prize is just strange to me and showcases just how "alone" the staff is in actually creating and organizing stuff for the school as they clearly didn't have anyone under the age of 50 even glance at the material before it was put up online and in the backpack of every student.

It wouldn't bother me so much but my daughter punches WAY above her weight in terms of academics and reading, as it stands now her standardized test scores and educational development grade for reading and writing (except handwriting neatness) are in the range they expect of 3rd-grade students by halfway through the schoolyear and she's the youngest 1st grader in the school so if we stay on top of it and she focuses on it (which is the HARD part as she inherited the family generation curse of ADHD) then she will VERY likely be in the running to win the "GameBoy Video Game Player" prize for her classroom so it's like this floating question mark of an itch that I'm just not prepared to make a phonecall or email to try to clarify.

I still maintain that nothing other than it being Nethys kicking the bucket would make any sort of sense for the consequences we already know are in the pipeline in terms of magic blood dusting/raining down to possess and empower all manner of creatures and people.

It's not hammers raining down from the sky and people of all sorts sprouting beards and precious metals/gems from their bodies, it's raw magical divine energy that falls and settles on the universe.

Besides that, Nethys has very little skin in the game when it comes to the setting, he is basically neutral to almost every other Deity, Pantheon, and in-setting organization and does little to nothing to interfere with or contribute to the major goings-on in the world. His areas of interest and domains are all handily covered by Deities that are far more engaged in the setting and generally considered more "interesting" since they are, ironically enough because he was once a mere human who didn't even need a shiny god-stone to ascend, given way more personality and have human-like qualities.

If you're into being decked out in all manner of high-fashion clothes, jewelry, and play a Cleric who finds self-expression to be a virtue you can always also go with The Resplendent Court Pantheon as well.

That has the benefit of giving you five Deities you worship, avoiding some of the more do-gooder anathema that Abadar has as well as dodging the whole weird bank/financial institutionalism and bureaucracy involved with his church alone. Since it's something you're pairing with a miniature you could doll it up pretty well and actually go ham on it with all manner of rings, maybe even get some actual tiny metal chains to put around their neck and so forth as a project to transform it into something special.

You're going to have to try your best at all times to shine like a diamond, ditch any notion of being "low key" (even for the purposes of survival), and abandon any hope of joining an organization that has a uniform code but that's not too bad. These types of Clerics would also be a perfect fit for someone looking to take the best Archetype printed to-date for PF2 (Objective fact, not sorry), the Dandy.

Such a delightful story! Does this prelude character options?

Doubtful, these types of blogs are generally just promotional articles meant to hype up a product and sometimes the author which seems to be the case here given the blog links to all of their socials and some products they made/are making.

The system is in GREAT shape to make for a good video game but for it to work as software at least a good 50% of the system would need to be polished, tweaked, and overhauled to tighten the belt on mechanics and eliminate vagueness and GM fiat which would be a big task since the majority of Traits are "guidelines" and don't often actually spell out exactly how they should be applied, especially when it comes to creature types but MOST of that could probably be handled well enough by the developers since they'd need to make each area, encounter, and creature from the ground up to use in the game anyhow. I've long griped that the system could have been soo much better if they only hired some CS programmers as consultants to find, provide feedback, and insert solutions for the numerous holes created by the reliance on rule 0 which, in my opinion, was a mistake and was a cop-out to avoid having to force more consistency across the rules and reduce crunchiness.

In addition to that the devs would need to fix the problem relating to the "Action, Actions, action, actions" as well as the "Attack, Attacks, attack, attacks" phrasing and probably differentiate each of their meanings with brand new phrasing as well as make a ton of decisions based on what each rule that uses those terms mean for the actual game, these are all things that have been left unfixed and up to table variation but that cannot exist in a video game.

They'd need to cook up a whole new and greatly expanded set of Skill functions, Feats, and Abilities that correct the feels-bad-man friction relating to just how underwhelming and forced those systems currently are, again, largely due to just how much the game leans into "ask your GM" to help lubricate improvising checks to make sense for the context your characters find themselves in.

Lastly, they'd need to do something about the Medicine Skill uses and feats related to it because if converted into a game it would essentially necessitate that the first thing ANY combination of party members would have is someone who spent their early Skill Training and Feats into that for easy and reliable out of combat healing that consumes no resources. I'd personally suggest that those few options should just be made baseline functions of the Medicine Skill at Trained and offer Expert or higher level Feats that help improve them for those who wish to specialize in it as that goes most of the way toward killing that necessary feeling Feat Tax.

Are you talking about Evil as in, their Alignment, or Evil as in the Trait? The difference between the two is HUGE.

It is named Pouch but the rules call it a bag, almost the entire description is entirely unchanged with the exception of the name of the item itself, and strangely enough, the term extradimensional which was replaced by magical in the first half but then two sentences later it goes back to calling it extradimensional. I know that the OGL crisis had an oppressive air and quality of urgency to it but to me this looks like the serial number filing on this was done in a rather sloppy manner.

Regardless, I don't see any useful reason to treat the two things as mechanically different in any way whatsoever as I think that EVERYONE here knows that the only reason that the name was changed relates to the rush to protect the game system from possible future threats. In that sense, I don't see the narrative OR mechanical role it is meant to play as having changed even a little bit, if a GM would allow a BoH to take an item the Pouch should as well.

Also, on top of all that, the item NEVER had any sort of description or definition that related to the size of the opening at all, nothing in inches/feet and nothing in bulk.

We were discussing with a friend some time back how you can be a perfectly fine follower of Baphomet by just being a guy that messes with maps, street signs or roadsigns, no other "evil" required.

Edicts Confuse paths and roads, outwit your foes instead of overpowering them, pace labyrinths
Anathema Kill something that cannot significantly harm you, bargain with Asmodeus

All of these are incredibly tame, and it did lead to the idea of a breather quest tracking "a dangerous demon lord cultist" who is just a dude stealing street signs to annoy people. For the glory of Baphomet, of course!

(also, the fact that "confuse paths and roads" is vague enough that a guy with a terrible sense of direction technically fits caused no end of mirth too)

That's Wiley Coyote to a T.

The nearest equivalent IMO would be two appropriate tier spell Wands with a Spell they already know on them. It's a bit less flexible as you'd have to pick the Spells but it comes close.

It requires holding the wand so that's a bit of an inconvenience but you do also get the possibility to overcharge it though so it's a bit of a trade-off. No bonus on the Tradition Skill checks either.

Themetricsystem wrote:

Remember, we now know for a fact that all of the setting info is intended to be interpreted as and should factually be considered to be coming from an unreliable narrator

We do? Did I miss something during the decades?

It's a fairly recent position, but yes, the operating assumption for the setting and lore info is that most if not all of the information presented that isn't purely mechanical is being presented as written by a character within the setting with their own knowledge, biases, agendas, and perspectives on whatever it is that's being presented about the setting. It's something of a contrivance for how to justify retcons, changes to the setting, creative shifts from older material, and also as a kind of way to make more murky the things that are said about any given thing that the players and GMs aren't directly dealing with at the table to give everything a bit of flexibility in that most stuff can very simply written off or explained by saying the in-world authors who scribe down the setting info and explanations could have been misinformed, ignorant, or just plain lying.

You can learn more about this kind of thing and discussion surrounding it with JJs own input here for more context but the general broad strokes of it is narration of the setting info should be assumed to be unreliable at most times but ESPECIALLY when it's created as a work/article/writing of an in-world NPC such as is the case with all of these blog posts who are penned by someone in-setting.