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That was a lot of words that somehow managed to not include an apology for acting abusively and rudely.
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Murder isn't inherently evil? Are you high?Anzyr was speaking about murder as a legal thing---that is, murder is unlawful killing. If you replace "murder" with "unlawful killing" you get But That seems pretty obviously true to me.
It doesn't make any sense to say a bard cannot be lawful.Alignment: Any. That's the joke. In 3.5, bards weren't allowed to be lawful. Pathfinder (rightfully) changed that. Yet the restrictions on barbarians, druids (you can be a lawful druid or a good druid, but not both!), monks, clerics, and paladins were kept.
An alphabetical listing is far superior for all spell lists for all purposes except specialty schools and spell focus (and subsequent) feats. Wouldn't an even better listing be to do it alphabetically but have something marking school? It'd be like the superscripts put on spells with material components.
Alignment restrictions on classes. They disallow certain combinations of character/mechanical concepts. I don't have any problem with the concepts being prohibited, so I throw out the rule. It doesn't make any sense to say a bard cannot be lawful.
Challenging a marid or a merfolk to a swimming contest and winning would be quite satisfying, at least to me. If you can enjoy winning a swimming contest, more power to you. If I was GMing and had a player whose character concept was based around being an amazing swimmer, I'd try to include situations where their amazing swimming ability mattered. I'd also try to include other scenarios where their character can shine (or at least contribute competently), so they don't get stuck in an Aquaman role---good at one very narrow thing, but hopelessly useless for anything else. Because ultimately, what matters at the end of the day is that the people playing the game have fun. Poorly balanced rules may add to my workload as a GM, but they don't completely negate the possibility of fun. The thing is, I don't think someone should have to learn to get their satisfaction from swimming contests in order to happily play a fighter.
So keep swimming relevant. If you're in a major town that has a harbor, lake, or river nearby, chances are they have swimming races; if they don't, start one. There are ways to keep swimming relevant at higher levels. For example, the party could go to a merfolk kingdom at the bottom of the ocean. Or they could travel to the Plane of Water to visit marids. These are the sorts of exciting adventures that are appropriate for mid-to-high level characters. Unfortunately, the fighter doesn't fare very well in these sorts of circumstances. It takes more than a really high swim modifier to breathe at the bottom of the ocean.
To clarify, as I don't want my question to be lost among all the comments, my question is about moderation policy. A lot of people have commented putting a lot of stock in the specific event that prompted me to post this. However, my concern regards the larger trend and what that means for moderation policy. At least to me, the moderation is far from transparent, and it's not clear why Paizo staffers appear to be above the most important rule. 137ben's comment here nicely captures my thoughts on this. There seems to be a disconnect between the written rules and actual moderation policy. I am seeking clarification on that disconnect.
How about Greater Trip+Mythic Vital Strike+Wolf[with trip special attack]=Infinite attacks. You walk up, trip the enemy, take an AoO to bite and trip the enemy, rinse and repeat until you miss or fail to trip. That's not infinite; with probability 1 you get only finitely many attacks out of that.
See, this is why I make people roll for their numbers. 4d6 take the best three,assign them how you choose. Also, if a player is going to start out higher than first level, they don't get to pick their magic items without consulting with me and it's going to be just enough to survive. They want potent and cool stuff? Great, that's why you participate in the adventure! The problem is not the class, it's letting the playing purposively build it to exploit the rules. Um, rolling for stats doesn't prevent people from optimizing or "powergaming" their characters. And there are issues with giving new PCs just enough equipment to survive. It's a milder form of making the new PC start at a lower level than the rest of the party. In Pathfinder, wealth is power.
You take all the abilities from both classes. The only time you have to do something more than that is when two classes have the same ability. The order you take the two classes shouldn't matter. A gestalt character with 20 levels in 2 classes gets both capstones and a 1st level character starts with 1st level abilities from 2 classes.
I have to ask... what is it that you hypothetically are looking to achieve in opening this thread? What good is supposed to come from this? In what way is anyone going to benefit from this? Personally I try to ask myself those kinds of questions before I post, here or elsewhere. I'm seeking clarification on moderation policy. In particular, I'm seeking to understand whether this double standard wherein some Paizo staffers act abusively and disrespectfully is intentional. I was quite earnest in my question about whether there is an unwritten exception in the rules. If there is, then I'll know not to expect otherwise. I understand that asking these sorts of questions does run the risk of tempers flaring, but that is why I'm trying to keep my posts here as calm and respectful as possible.
I get the basic idea of gestalt, but what is it, exactly? Basically, you pick two classes each level and take the best from each. You take the better BAB, the better number of skill ranks, etc. and grab abilities from both classes.
Using gestalt rules is generally a good idea for solo adventures. What class does your player want to play? Some classes have a much easier time at solo adventures than others.
This feat may interest you. It has a limit (100 gp) on how expensive the material components can be, but it's enough to cover a non-masterwork sword.
I recently saw a thread closed with the message "Locking. If you have feedback on specific products, please post in the appropriate forum. Additionally, abusive comments towards any paizo.com community member, staff or otherwise, is not OK here." (emphasis mine). There were definitely abusive comments in the thread; moderating it was a good thing! However, it reminded me of a short exchange I had with a Paizo staffer the other day. I feel that Mr. Reynolds's comments towards me were abusive and disrespectful. That thread was eventually locked, but for unrelated reasons. The thing is, this isn't the first time I'm observed such behavior from staff members. I'm not going to link to a catalog of such posts. That would be inappropriate and witch huntish. But there seems to be a general trend. Abusive and disrespectful behavior seems to be tolerated when it comes from staffers. Is there some unwritten exception in the "don't be a jerk" rule that I'm unaware of? Otherwise, it seems like the rule is being unevenly enforced.
Another thing of note is that cross racial relationships are typically frowned upon in pathfinder, so that can cause the DC of a check to seduce to come up. Where is it stated that anti-miscegenation laws and views are common in Pathfinder or Golarion?
The secret of Pathfinder is that something being a class skill isn't prescriptive to that character being the party's expert of that skill. This isn't 3.5, where if something wasn't a class skill, putting 20 skill points into q cross-class skill only got you 10 ranks. Any fighter can still get a base +20 to Perception, Stealth, or any knowledge they want. At high levels, the difference between a class skill and a non-class skill is small. The +3 is dwarfed by ranks, ability modifiers, item bonuses, etc. But at low levels, it is quite a difference. In 3.5, you could have +2 to a cross class skill at 1st level. In Pathfinder, that's only +1. It's not until 4th level that the cross class skill bonus is higher in Pathfinder than 3.5.
Are Paizo writers on drugs?
But I always try to be a GM whose game I'd like to play in (which I attribute most of my success to), which I think gives people the impression I spend more time as a PC then I actually do. I think this is really the best way to GM. If even I wouldn't enjoy my own game, why would anyone else?
I suggest playing the game from the GM's side of the screen. My favorite* argument to see when talking about tabletop games is this sort of "if you GMed you'd agree with me" thing. It's my favorite* because clearly your experience as GMing is the only GMing experience and someone could only disagree with you because they've never GMed before. It's certainly not possible for someone to both GM and think it's really narrow-minded to assume all bards are foppish minstrels while all fighters are manly heroes beloved by kings and peasants alike. * By "favorite" I mean rather the opposite.
There are roles that people play in the world by virtue of their character's appearance and participation, AND by people's perception of them, not just their character class. Sure. There's more to a character than their class. But of course, a character's appearance and participation is up to the player, not due to their class. Not all fighters look the same. Not all bards look the same. Etc. A narrow example: A fighter and a sorcerer walk into a town that is beset with monster problems. Which PC are the simple townsfolk likely to approach? The townspeople are looking for a hero. They don't even know what a "sorcerer" IS. If they realized it was someone with magic in their blood, they might be afraid of him/her and would be indifferent at best, suspicious and fearful at worst. Why does a fighter look more a hero than a sorcerer? What does a hero even look like? An extreme example: A group of adventurers (cleric, fighter and bard) is seated at an important dinner with the king and his general. The king wants to discuss a problem with bandits. He sees the fighter as the group's warrior leader, and the cleric as the group's spiritual heart. The bard? Well, to a king a bard is entertainment. The player playing the bard attempts diplomacy roll after diplomacy roll until the king announces "If this one opens his mouth again, take him to the dungeon." That would just be bad GMing.
claiming "roleplaying" is a bad defense of the Fighter's inability to do anything out of combat.Agreed. Because not doing things out of combat is roleplaying a Fighter. Not agreed. The problem is that the fighter class lacks the mechanics to back up whatever roleplaying you want to do. That doesn't mean doing nothing outside of combat is the correct way to roleplay a fighter.
The more fluffy books have a lot of really weak feats in them. I think changing them (either to be feats or making them stronger) is a really reasonable thing to do. Some of the Totem Spirit options are better than most traits, but not by much.
Roleplaying works against your argument though Tengu Verymuch as a character who is bad at Diplomacy and has low Charisma should well... act like it. So roleplaying makes a Fighter even more useless out of combat then the skill mechanics. Did you ever see Guts in the Flashback handle talking to people when Griffith could do it? Of course not, Guts knows how to roleplay his lack of out of combat ability... by not doing anything out of combat and leaving it to other people... C'mon, this is a bad argument. I think it's perfectly reasonable for someone to want to roleplay a character who's competent in combat and in social situations. The dashing swordsman archetype is a thing. The fighter class is really bad at doing this and mechanically nudges the player towards dumping Cha. But that doesn't mean that people should be told they're only roleplaying the fighter correctly if they sit quietly in the background when out of combat. The problem is the fighter class, not the people who get tricked into taking a trap option.
The ARG race building rules are broken to the point of being near useless to a GM, let alone letting players have unrestricted access. I think it's certainly a cool idea to sit down with your player and work out together a custom race for their character. But I wouldn't use the ARG race building rules as anything more than a very rough guideline.
The Fighter is now both less useful in Combat and is still worse then the Sorcerer at Social Situations, since the Sorcerer can rely on his Charisma (automatically making him better than the Fighter til at least level 5 and spells to overcome any skill deficiencies. Also a Single point (ahaha) in Diplomacy will net the Sorcerer 4 + CHA to Diplomacy which will beat the Fighters investment up to level 9+ without even needs spells or any other investment (and this is why you should just not play a Fighter). Also, blaster sorcerers don't have to invest all their spells known into blasting spells.
The problem is the resources it takes to make a fighter competent in a variety of combat situations. That is the fault of the system. That and the limited resources available to the fighter; they get pretty much nothing but feats and +1s to things in combat. A fighter needs to spend feats on being competent in her main style of combat, as well as a backup (sometimes you need to put down your falchion and pick up your longbow). If you want to do more than HP damage, you have to spend feats on that. If you spend a few feats on being good at tripping, that's feats that aren't being used elsewhere. Spending multiple feats on something that'll become obsolete at higher levels isn't a good trade (unless you know you'll never reach those levels). Sure, the fighter has a built-in way to retrain, but that just doesn't work on feat chains. The fighter also has to spend feats on shoring up her defenses, picking up Iron Will and the like. Because the fighter has to use her one main resource (feats) to cover many things, she actually doesn't have too much of that resource to spend on improving her out of combat ability. Also, the feats available to her really aren't that great at improving out of combat ability. Compare the fighter to classes that don't have the issue, say the bard and inquisitor. A bard or inquisitor optimized for combat will still have things to do outside of combat, even if they spend all their feats on improving their in-combat ability. They still have skills---they both get 6+Int skills per level and have class abilities that give them more bonuses. They both have spells to use out of combat. While a bard or inquisitor will probably spend many of their spell slots and spells known on combat spells, they have enough to also use utility spells. Even the barbarian, the class whose entire shtick is getting angry and hitting things really hard, has more to do out of combat than the fighter. Barbarians have more skills and access to rage powers like Spell Sunder. They can even spend their feats on those rage powers!
I honestly don't know much about the genealogy of critical race theory. Sorry, I don't know the answer to your question.
Postmodernism doesn't really mean anything. It's just a broadly applied word used to tar large swathes of intellectual traditions and paint them as the same thing. So critical race theory is postmodern (in the sense that the word "postmodern" has no doubt been used to describe it) but it also isn't postmodern (in the sense that calling something postmodern is pretty much meaningless). There's a reason I used scare quotes around "postmodern" in my previous post.
As far as I can tell, "scientific realism" is neither. The process of science is based on examining reliably replicable data whose truth or falsity can be empirically determined. If this type of data is completely absent from a field of discussion, I can not realistically define it as science. You seem to be laboring under the misunderstanding that scientific realism is supposed to be a replacement for science or a kind of science. That's not the case. It's a philosophic position about science. It shouldn't be defined as science because it isn't science. Judging from your comments, you yourself are a scientific realist. You think that "scientific theory construction aims to give us a literally true story of what the world is like, and that acceptance of a scientific theory involves the belief that it is true". Or, as you put it, you think "the process of science is based on examining reliably replicable data whose truth or falsity can be empirically determined". I'm not sure why you're criticizing scientific realism. That doesn't mean it isn't useful and educational to deconstruct gender roles and language on an academic level. However I am of the opinion that the people like Cori Marie who are getting their butts out there in the real world to fight for our rights are exponentially more useful and educational than any amount of high-end postmodern philosophical discourse that has a limited audience by its nature.It appears that you think "postmodern" academics aren't involved in any activism and only sit in ivory towers talking at each other. That's not the case. Consider, for example, the law professor and critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw: Or consider the post-structuralist philosopher Judith Butler:
The criticisms you are pointing towards "postmodern" academia are the same anti-intellectual criticisms pointed towards academia in general. The idea that academics are useless and never engage with anything outside the ivory tower is a prevalent, though false, idea among the American public.
I don't see what any of that has to do with what I wrote.
Do you think your posting behavior and attitude are more likely to get the staff to answer your about specific rules questions you want answered*, or less likely? Is the implication here that you'll refuse to respond to the at least sixty-something people who have asked for a response to this ice tomb hex issue because you don't like how one person is talking about it?
"Learn to enjoy being useless" isn't very good advice. There's nothing wrong with playing an incompetent character (assuming the rest of the group is all for it and are okay with the consequences). However, it should be something you do on purpose, because you built your character that way, not because you accidentally picked the wrong class. Suppose there was a Fighter* class which was like the Fighter, except it could contribute out of combat. You could play a Fighter* who's bad at diplomacy or whatever while someone who wants to play a Fighter* but not be bored when out of initiative order could do so. Everyone wins.
Look up Zarus if you don't mind non-Golarion specific. He's technically Lawful Evil, but that's just other races being jealous; he's more LN to humans. I could definitely see him having Paladins That's an odd way to spell Pelor.
And I second the request for a definition of scientific realism. I think van Fraassen does a good job giving a concise definition of scientific realism: Scientific realism is the position that scientific theory construction aims to give us a literally true story of what the world is like, and that acceptance of a scientific theory involves the belief that it is true. Accordingly, [scientific] anti-realism is a position according to which the aim of science can well be served without giving such a literally true story, and acceptance of a theory may properly involve something less (or other) than belief that it is true. Anti-realism isn't really a single thing. Different anti-realists have different ideas on what it means to accept a scientific theory, what the aims of science are, etc. Further, anti-realism doesn't require one to think that scientific theories don't work, contrary to what some naive scientific realists thing (see, for example, this xkcd comic). It's empirical fact that scientific theories have been deployed to produce e.g. technology. Regardless of whether you think electrons are real physical objects or whether you think they are abstract objects, ideas postulated to explain certain phenomena (or you may be agnostic on the question), computers still work. And of course, being a scientific realist doesn't mean one thinks every current scientific theory is true. Recognizing something as bad science doesn't require one to think one way or the other on this issue. Realists and anti-realists can agree that the rash of computer generated nonsense papers being published in computer science journals is a bad thing.
What am I missing? There's a feat that gives you an extra spell known.
From earlier in the thread: Now, maybe there are trans and cis people that depend on opposition identity ("I'm not a man") within a binary to assert a claim over their gender identity ("therefor, I am a woman")... Now, I am going to go out on a limb here and say that I don't think that either trans or cis people need opposition identity to assert a claim over their gender identity. I think cultivating a gender ought to be a positive process, where we appropriate the elements of our gender and accumulate our identity... It isn't enough that people want or need to be the gender that they are, medical discourse makes gender a negative process, one where suffering is the "critical element of gender dysphoria." Opposition identity is found in statements like "I'm not a man, therefore, I am a woman". It's one's identity being defined in terms of what one is not, rather than in terms of what one is. To my knowledge it's not a standard term. On the other hand, I'm not aware of any standard term for this phenomenon.
Okay... Then don't participate in the conversation if you think it's overly specialized and useless.You are in the LGBT thread, on a gaming forum. It seems that you want to have a conversation that is very heavily focused in the language and viewpoints of a specialized field that other folks here have said is inaccessible to them. Sometimes there are conversations in this widely ranging thread about topics I know nothing about or about things I find uninteresting/overly specialized. And that's okay! There are many conversations I'm not interested in, but that of course doesn't mean everyone else is uninterested in them. My solution is simple: I don't jump into those conversations. Also, there is irony in someone who's used specialized medical jargon telling others to avoid jargon.
And I think you're trying to have an extremely specialized discourse that no one else is volunteering to participate in. Okay... Then don't participate in the conversation if you think it's overly specialized and useless. If I am in the hospital about to get treatment, my ER doc will not, and really had better not, stop what s/he is doing to get a Gender Studies degree before treating me. I expect to be treated with dignity and with the effective practice of medicine. Both of those things are important, and neither of them require a sociology and gender studies background. I don't think it requires a specialized background to understand that multiple disparate things are grouped into "sex". I don't think it requires a specialized background to note that this categorization is rife with variety and exceptions. Pointing you to a reference for a specific idea isn't the same as saying that anyone who has not read that reference is incapable of working in medicine. Please stop putting words in my mouth.
So some medications, like isotretinoin, can cause serious birth defects....Sigh... the conflation of being a woman and being (potentially) pregnant all rolled into strict barriers placed on medical access for women. And all for clear skin! sigh what's a girl to do? This is actually a really good example of a case where saying what we mean, instead of just collapsing everything into sex, would be good. Rather than saying that women should jump through hoops for this specific acne medicine, we should say that it's not appropriate for people who are or may become pregnant. This doesn't cut off the possibility of someone classified as a man being pregnant. It also doesn't equate woman with potentially pregnant person. Focusing on what we mean, rather than collapsing everything to sex, would benefit cis women here. Cis women who don't want and don't intend to get pregnant wouldn't be forced to jump through these hoops due to some paternalistic concern about their reproductive capacity. This isn't something that's just for the benefit of trans and intersex people. Not collapsing many disparate things into the single category of sex benefits everyone.
For a high standard of general medical care, you really do need to know that this particular patient was born transgendered and may have different care needs than someone who was born cisgendered. Of course. Everyone in this thread seems to agree on this obvious point. I don't know why you seem to think this point is in dispute.
I think something similar is happening with this idea of body sex versus brain sex. The idea of a prediscursive body is important in modern western medical science. It informs how transgenderism is considered. We can't excise just that one idea while leaving everything intact without causing harm to a lot of people.It is more than just an idea, and you can not excise anything in science that happens to be inconvenient or politically incorrect. It simply is what it is, and we need to proceed rationally and humanely from there to achieve a good standard of patient care. I think you don't understand the content of the ideas you are criticizing. You've characterized opposition to certain trends within medical or scientific practice as politically motivated. I can see the rhetorical use in positioning yourself as a defender of truth and science against irrational political interests. The problem is, this is a mischaracterization. Take the critique of the idea of prediscursive body. You've presented it as political correctness gone overboard, an attempt to excise an inconvienent truth. But that's a misunderstanding. I know it's kinda unsatisfactory to just suggest someone read several hundred pages, but if you want to understand, you should read Gender Trouble.
Oh, I missed this earlier: Women don't have prostates. A MtF transgender might have a prostate. We can complete this syllogism: therefore "MTF transgenders" aren't women. You might want to reword your post (if the time hasn't lapsed) to not say that trans women aren't actually women.
Want to argue that it's BADWRONG to change what drugs you are giving a patient based on their race? With respect, I don't see anyone in this thread making any claim remotely like this and I don't understand why you felt the need to bring this up. There was some discussion about whether some specific drugs were race-dependent, but no one was moralizing it. Knowing and adjusting for the specific genetics and physiology of your patient, including the factors influenced by race and sex, including both your external birth gender and any hormonal and physiological changes since then in the process of gender transition, is a very good idea if you don't happen to want to accidentally harm your patient. I don't see what you are reading in this thread that is saying otherwise.
The problem is, the idea that their bodies being a certain sex as prewritten by medical professionals is the entire basis for what led to the rise of gender reassignment surgery. It's basically the assumption that makes the surgery actually considered a sound medical practice within medicine. Because it comes with it a possibility: The mind does not match the body. The mind not matching the body, with the body being a prewritten determination, indicates that something is malfunctioning. And since medical science predicates upon fixing malfunctions within the human body, the idea that the biological sex is prewritten and does not match the mental gender creates a scenario where a correction of the biological body to match the mental gender is an approved course of action and actually considered beneficial to the patient. I think this raises an important point. Whatever the problems with the current establishment, it is the current establishment. Our lives are shaped by it. I'm reminded of the ongoing issue of "gender dysphoria" being in the DSM. Clearly, transgenderism isn't a mental disorder and hence shouldn't be in the DSM. At the same time, this categorization is what makes it possible in the current system for a lot of trans people to receive medical attention, be covered by insurance, etc. Just removing gender dysphoria from the DSM without changing anything else would lead to material harm to a lot of trans people. I think something similar is happening with this idea of body sex versus brain sex. The idea of a prediscursive body is important in modern western medical science. It informs how transgenderism is considered. We can't excise just that one idea while leaving everything intact without causing harm to a lot of people. At the same time, the idea that all trans people fit a narrow spectrum of experiences, that all trans people desire the same process of medical treatments, hormone therapy, surgery, etc., is false. It excludes a lot of people. We're in a situation without an easy solution because the real world is shitty like that. What does it mean that some people pursue hormone treatment and surgery even though they are not strictly necessary for the experience of being trans or of transition? I don't think it really means anything. Hormone treatment and surgery aren't necessary for the experience of being trans, but they are necessary for some people's experience of being trans. There isn't only one way to be trans. I do think there is something to be said about how the system of making trans people jump through hoops to receive medical treatment has shaped behavior. I was reading something a month or so ago (I believe it was a piece by Julia Serano, but I'm not absolutely certain) about some psychiatrists referring to their trans patients as deceptive and lying. What was happening was that these trans people were presenting themselves so as to try to convince the doctors that they were "truly" trans, that they fit the checklist of things being watched for. That way, they'd be allowed to transition. Their patients were just trying to make their lives livable in the only way made available to them, but the psychiatrists pathologized them for this. Rather than being a problem with a system which forces people to subject themselves to powerless situations, it must be a problem with these individual trans people. That totally makes sense! The point is, the power within the medical establishment will influence how trans people act. Are people meeting the standards of being a trans person because those standards are accurate, or is it because they are acting that way so that they can receive necessary medical treatment?
Oh, my point wasn't that the patient was or wasn't upset. My point was that the confusion arose out of the equating of man with prostate-haver. Of course, just changing how medicine is labelled won't immediately change how pharmacists and doctors think about these things. This is how we'd get your scenario of the pharmacist wanting clarification to make sure the prostate medicine is intended for the female patient. But since the confusion arises out of this collapse of men with prostate-havers, the way out of this confusion is to move away from this collapse, even if it takes time for the confusion to dissipate. disciplining medical surveillance Michel Foucault much?
How is labeling medicine "for a man" different from "has a prostate" if you can't tell by looking at someone. After all, you can't see someone's prostate. The pharmacist in question would have had the same problem regardless. "Patient appears to be a woman. Women don't have prostates. Has a mistake been made." I don't understand your point. It seems like your scenario is completely analogous to what happened in Bob_Loblaw's story. Which would mean that labeling the medicine as for prostate-havers does not put an additional burden on doctors and pharmacists.
Venture Officers are representatives of Paizo as official coordinators. Thanks for the clarification!
What additional burden is being placed on doctors and pharmacists? If the medication in question was labeled as for people with prostates, how does that place any additional burden on doctors and pharmacists? you know you are biologically a man but look like a woman I hope it's not necessary for to me to explain in this thread why that phrasing is problematic.
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