Zexcir's page

Hardcover APs. As someone who has been subscribing on and off since Dungeon Magazine. I'm looking forward to this change. It is better for shipping costs, environment as well as the shelf space. I like the fact that everything is all in one book versus needing to pull out multiple books when I'm trying to prep either forward looking or reverse looking. Huzzah!

Interesting rules lawyering discussion happened in a game the other day.

Let's say you are on a cliff next to water and there is a straight drop. You are engaged with a creature or player with Attack of Opportunity. Can you take a Step into open air, and fall into the water to prevent an attack of opportunity?

Secondly if you can, then can you use a swim move or move if you have a swim speed?

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Similar scenario If it is true you can Step and fall to avoid AoO: Assume you have a fly speed. Can you step off the cliff. Fall, and then fly?

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One of the things we were unsure of is if an "Open Space" is considered Difficult Terrain.

Thank you

Glad to see you are raising the prices of the PDFs, they are undervalued IMO and I hope that it helps make sure that people are paid fair wages in times of increased inflation.

Congratulations on your retirement <3! I have been a huge fan of Paizo since ~2003. When I think of Paizo I always think of Lisa Stevens at the helm. Glad to know you still have ownership while also handing the reins to a capable team.

Congrats, Jim!

Best of luck to Jeff with the health issues.

That's the thing: the vibe I've been getting has been "if it's not optimized, it's not worth your time or ours."

TO be honest I wouldn't put too much stock into advice forums.

As a player; I played a caster Herbalist and put all my feats into that dedication until 6th level and then added a dedication into fighter. It created a lot of flavor and actually came in handy. I really enjoyed that character.

As a GM half my players don't even really care to learn the rules and play un-optimally. WE've had a few people create off the wall combinations that are "watered down." We all still have fun and no major deaths.

That's the thing: the vibe I've been getting has been "if it's not optimized, it's not worth your time or ours."

TO be honest I wouldn't put too much stock into advice forums.

As a player; I played a caster Herbalist and put all my feats into that dedication until 6th level and then added a dedication into fighter. It created a lot of flavor and actually came in handy. I really enjoyed that character.

As a GM half my players don't even really care to learn the rules and play un-optimally. WE've had a few people create off the wall combinations that are "watered down." We all still have fun and no major deaths.

Thank you for the strong stance <3

It's a shame that nothing the Leads can do to appease the passionate few. Good try though.

I however have faith in the future and believe people make mistakes and can change. If I didn't have that belief it would be a sad world where people aren't allowed to make mistakes and learn from their pasts. The world would not have a chance to become better.

This is nice, but pathfbuilder already has everything for free. But this will be a great selling point for people moving from 5e to PF2e :D

Huzzah! That was faster than I expected.

Yoshua wrote:

So, it is a grey area.

Paizo, including their website, specifically operate within Europe and are, therefore, required to comply with EU data protection requirements, including the General Data Protection Regulation.

This was (at least two instances of) a malicious breach by senior management of the company that went unrectified for at least several weeks in one case and almost two years in the other.

In fact, ast least one such breach was doubled down on by that senior manager, who is the president of the company to this day.

Fines in this instance can stretch up to 5% of global turnover per instance to a maximum of €20m, again per instance.

It is hard to see how deliberate malfeasance would not attract the maximum penalty.

I love a lack of grey areas arising from respect for personal data.

I work in this area and have to deal with GDPR data and it's a very murky murky area. It's so loose that some of the best GDPR lawyers around are unsure to answer some of the "problems" I've ran into. Most of the GDPR stuff has to do with data processing itself. In GDPR for example; Names aren’t always considered personal data. AND it also depends on what you consent to give those companies in their Terms of Service. There are some protections that GDPR gives consumers: the right to be informed, the right of access, the right to rectification, the right to erasure, the right to restrict processing, the right to data portability, the right to object and also rights around automated decision making and profiling... Again most of these are around making sure that algorithms don't go rogue or that information doesn't "leak" in biased ways. Part of the murkiness is that company can store encrypted data about a user as long as it's "necessary to run its business." Also GDPR only offers protection to EU citizens. So if a company was found breaching some GDPR policy it has to apply to the EU; which is why many companies segment their businesses to still do additional things with non-EU data. (GDPR is still somewhat new so I am not an expert. I also believe that every country should have many of the GDPR protections).

Zexcir wrote:

Working in a Union was one of the worst working experiences in my life, so I hope if this goes well, good luck.

I think unions largely depend on where you work. Being a teacher in a teacher union, I have greatly enjoyed the collective bargaining.

Great point! This was manufacturing. They're would be times when we'd have to do an "offsite job." Spend one hour driving there, work for two hours then drive back so that we could "eat lunch" in the cafeteria which was protected by our union rights. I mean I get it, but I'd rather eat my lunch in the truck and finish the job most the time. It always annoys me me when people would pull the union card to do stuff like this....

Working in a Union was one of the worst working experiences in my life, so I hope if this goes well, good luck.

Love Ron's work. Thanks for the fiction!

Hello Community,

...

Great to hear from you, but it would be great to see Paizo's voice and leadership practice what it preaches and actively take the day off on any company holiday without feeling pressure to communicate. Especially since the community has several times expressed concerns about the mental well being of overcommited to the amount of work.

Have a wonderful rest of the day

Have I complained about feeling overworked and burned out before? Yes, and my manager listened, restructured the department, and things got better. And that happened because the Exec team approved the change.

Awesome for sharing openly and honestly!

I do want to be fair and acknowledge that Aaron mentions working twelve days in a row as an aside, and we don't know any of the circumstances under which he chose or felt obligated to do so. That said, I do think it's worth talking about here. Working twelve days in a row should be recognized as an aberration.

I think it's weird how people on here are speculating how others are being treated which are causing people to respond on their own personal experiences. I know in my own personal experience I love my company enough to work 12 days in a row especially during large releases. I don't think it should be recognized as a negative thing necessarily. I think as long as the people and the organizations work together as Aaaron shared above. I am privileged enough in my field where I wouldn't work for a company I couldn't passionately engage and work extra hours to make sure a project or launch is successful... I would not want government or people to interfere with that either.

Clear policies are good, Paizo should have a clear policy. Even if it's not made available to the customers, the employees should know how things are working. Customers knowing that there is a clear policy will alleviate some of their concern about unfair treatment of people they care about.

Clear policies aren't always clear. My current office has tried to create clearer more inclusive policies; but people keep being alienated in different ways. To help prevent any issues we now have pages of policies that no one really understands to the full extent. One of the things that happened right before the pandemic is that no one can have personal items at their desks. Instead you can only have company approved items for decorations that they have preselected. If you have any decorations on your desk someone will come and talk to you.

Just because you have "clearer" policies doesn't mean they are clear in every way possible and sometimes can create unintended side effects.

As I've mentioned before, they most definitely do. I've seen it happen. I've DONE it. You might not agree with me on that and that's fine. But that doesn't make you right here.

Justification and Legal Justification are two different things, I agree but they're not really that far apart.

I've not quit in solidarity; I've definitely quickly found another job after seeing someone I care about unjustly let go, but that's because I'm selfish and want to keep a roof over my head. I've also seen people unceremoniously let go and they take a few key people with them to their next gig. It actually happens quite often in the tech industry.

Buhlman's follow up post and all of Mona's posts are great examples on how to take personal accountability even if you don't know in the moment that you are screwing up. Respect for that, and gives me hope for the future of senior management with them on the team. People are people and when we know better we do better.

Both of those statements are personal statements and not company statements. They were also addressing behavior specifically assigned to them that gives them a negative light. WHICH by the way is Slander. I'm wondering if Jessica [Edit: autopilot mistake earlier :|] understands the legal repercussions there (well maybe she does, she's been pretty quiet).

Jeff appears incapable at this time to accept responsibility on behalf of himself or the company for the missteps in the past, and current issues beyond 'we now clean the rugs regularly'

His responses represent the company not the individual. I understand that it's hard to separate the two, and it's dissatisfying, but organizations do that to protect the entity beyond the individual.

To all the "They can't respond because legally..." comments, they really, really can. It begins with two words. "We're sorry."

"We're sorry so many people have cause to feel we haven't lived up to the standards we aim for, sorry that we may have lost your trust through our actions or inactions, sorry that we didn't do better."

Thats how you start, no legalese or concerns about contracts or employee firings. Just ownership, acceptance that you need to do better, followed by actual actions over time proving your commitment to it.

I still wouldn't. Let's just look at ridiculous examples how statements or art can be used against a company in legal battles... Example: Apple's spent twenty minutes dissecting various Banana related art that Epic has created for their game... A lawyer will twist anything you say in court...

Now, obviously, this was a joke. It was a small lighthearted moment during an antitrust-focused court case. But after Apple criticized Epic for hosting the Itch.io storefront and with it, its “so-called adult games,” Epic’s attorney simply couldn’t let Apple get away with implying that its naked banana was inappropriate.
Two excerpts about the Banana being naked and then in a tux...
“If we could just put on the screen a picture of Peely — is there anything inappropriate about Peely without clothes?” Epic’s attorney asked Weissinger two hours later.
“It’s just a banana man,” Weissinger was forced to respond.

I also see no apology or admission of wrongdoing of any kind, just multiple "Well we had an email about it 3 years ago, so its not our fault!" level sidesteps.

Nor should they. From a legal standpoint they should neither address nor admit anything without consulting a legal team.

Yeah. Read through this a couple of times. I feel the words are right and I thought that was what I was looking for, but an ominous ambiguous future hope for something better isn't what I signed up for when I bought full into Pathfinder 2e.

That's definitely why I am here too. Paizo has been ahead of its competition on inclusion in its products for many years and it's disheartening to hear that's not the case in every corner of the office at every level. With the release of Mwangi Expanse being so recent it seems like they are still moving in the right direction. My hope is that the PaizoAccountability will help improve the lives of their LGBTQIA+ employees.

An actual HR person again. This is a dumb vacancy. If they empower this person to protect upper management from themselves, it can help a lot (eventually). Although it's also not a magic bullet or anything. Dedicated HR staff aren't going to magically change the company culture, and most of their day-to-day job shouldn't have anything to do with escalating complaints to leadership and dealing with toxic managers.

HR Doesn't protect the people. HR protects the company. If there was an HR person I bet that as part of the fired person's packet is that any negative publicity would leave them liable for a lawsuit. I know at my company that has a very positive image offers a hard to pass up packet to prevent their image from being smeared.

- No longer mandatory to share hotel rooms (directly addresses one of the complaints)

I agree that this is great since it's archaic to force those to share. I just hope this doesn't come at the cost of fewer cons / travel or employees who choose to share rooms are the ones who go to cons. I've had that happen at a previous company that was a fortune 500.

Great post. There are many of us without pitchforks looking for you to appease us by having people fired or stepped down. Those of us who have worked at any great organization understands that work environments are never perfect and politics happen no matter what you do. With that said it's great to hear that there are actionable and measurable steps being taken.

Bump. Does anyone know if this is a typo. This came up in Malevolence.

Adventure Paths ARE Society games. Your use of Society Game appears to claim that they are not.

Either you don't understand what counts as a Pathfinder Society game, or you are using some definition of the word that is highly unusual, since it appears to exclude a great many Society games and gamers.

So you are just being pedantic. I know the difference. I didn't use enough words in my posts for you to understand what I understand. Your statement added no value to the overall thread and I didn't need your input to understand.

I can't wait to play an Investigator. This is the class I've been looking forward to the most.

I will be throwing in even though I own most of these. Glad to see continued commitment on Paizo's part.

While we cannot afford to cancel or delay the Adventure Path, we want to show our commitment to remedying our earlier choices through action.

Sadly, this is just unfortunate timing on Paizo's part and no foresight would have prepared you to a common trope. For example True/Fictional Crime books and podcasts are 20-40% of consumption. I appreciate the dedication to the community to release a statement. With that said; there are several members of the community that are either military, veterans, cops, ex-police, children of police, security guards, etc etc... Personally this is an AP that I have been looking forward to and am still looking forward to it. Esp given James S. was involved in the process.

Is this an insensitive topic at this time in the US? Yes. This is a lose-lose conversation, and no matter what response you have is pandering from one audience. As to "remedying our earlier choices through action?" Are you going to remedy every choice you've made as an organization? I own APs that are outright more offensive than this topic. At what point do you even have a product line as a company?

All - Thanks for all the advice and support. I read through many of the responses and talked to her this afternoon. I told her straight up I wanted to have a serious conversation and compromise about it, because it's not something I'm going to stop doing all together. The reason why I posted it in here, under gamer life, is because I figured that I wasn't alone with this. All my RL friends who I game with don't have an issue with their significant others and them gaming. In fact I game the least out of all my friends. And I'm glad I did, because there were A LOT of GREAT points that I used during my conversation earlier. Although she still doesn't like that I'm continuing to game I think that the conversation will help in the long wrong.

She had several things that she said about it.

1. She thinks the minis are ridiculous and something our son should be playing with them, not "grown men."

2. She's embarrassed that her husband is involved in the hobby and would prefer if I played poker or something else. She said many times she doesn't want to tell her friends when they ask what I'm doing during the times she goes out while we are gaming.

3. She said she would prefer me to spend that extra time with her. After talking on this topic, I reminded her how much time her and I spend together and this is really the only time I hang out with my friends... To which she actually agreed with because she realized how much I take her out to dinners/movies etc.

4. She would prefer for me to cut it shorter because it takes up most the day. I agreed that I would try to cut it to 6 hours, but I had to explain to her that some of the time we are gaming, it's us catching up on each others lives since we all work and have families. During this point I tried to talk her into playing with me but she refused.

One thing I want to note is that during the conversation she goes "The last time you guys gamed, you all were constantly laughing about the dumbest s***. I heard and it didn't sound entertaining or fun." My response was: "We were laughing a lot? Isn't that a good thing? We were laughing because we were hanging out with people that we enjoy and it makes us happy. If it makes us obviously happy, why would you complain about it?" That kind of gave her a "Oh, well.." so no comment really, but I hope it made her think.

I can understand some of her points, but like many people in this forum it's a major part of our lives and something we wouldn't want to give up.

Thank you all for your comments/advice.

How long you been married? Is this recent? A slow progression, getting worse suddenly? Is it possible she doesn't like the PEOPLE you game with, rather than the hobby?

We have been married for 5 years and she has disliked it the whole time. however her outward annoyance is steadily increasing and she complaims to her friends more. However the last time we fought she knew she was in the wrong and bought nme a gaming book. but the next time we gamed she complained for 20 mins after. it just sucks

thanks for the advice. I'm going to try to sit down and talk to her. I don't see my friends much other than game nights. which is why we kind of go long we catch up on the last two weeks too. I will see about moving the sessions to someone else's house every other game if the noise is the issue. I just know that gaming is something I see me and my friends doing long turn and I don't want to feel selish at the same time.

I have been GMing for about 12 years now and my wife hates it. I am at the point that I don't know what to do. She used to tolerate it and now more and more she mocks me about it or will have an argument about it. Our group gets together for aboit 6-8 hours every 2-3 weeks. A good portion of the game we are just socializing and chit chatting, but my wife just thinks we are acting like kids who don't want to grow up. I am 27 and we have one kid. Does anyone have any advise on what I could do? I feel like we argue about something that I have done for a long time and love doing.

We actually had this discussion in our group. After talking about it we figured that it was priced just fine. Because it stacks with the belt and it doesn't really take up a competitive slot like neck/ring/belt.

The other part to consider is that the gloves can help out any character and not just archer only characters. So a fighter doesn't have to worry about putting them on when he has to pull out his bow to hit nasty flying critters.

When you get up on him don't just attack him. Ready an action... I like to use Vital Strike. Ready Vital Strike for when he is about to take move or Cast a Spell. That way he has to make a concentration check regardless of casting defensively and or moving away.

Greg A. Vaughan is my favorite adventure author of all time. If it has his name on it, I am buying it.

The cover is amazing! I can't wait!!

This isn't creative though.. this is trying to get away with not taking a feat, when a feat is normally required to do it.

Its really that simple.

-S

Really, "S;" let us look at this more closely!

Deflect Arrows (Combat)
You can knock arrows and other projectiles off course, preventing them from hitting you.

Prerequisites: Dex 13, Improved Unarmed Strike.

Benefit: You must have at least one hand free (holding nothing) to use this feat. Once per round when you would normally be hit with an attack from a ranged weapon, you may deflect it so that you take no damage from it. You must be aware of the attack and not flat-footed. Attempting to deflect a ranged attack doesn't count as an action. Unusually massive ranged weapons (such as boulders or ballista bolts) and ranged attacks generated by natural attacks or spell effects can't be deflected.

Specifically it says "Attempting to deflect a ranged attack doesn't count as an action." That is completely different than readying an action to attack the arrow, which would deflect it if hit. They take up their entire attack to deflect a projectile compared to a feat which allows them to do it for free and there is no chance that they would fail at deflecting the projectile.

Still not convinced? Let's look at the economies of action. Let's say the person is a 5th level Ranger with two weapons and all the feats. They could use their turn to attack 2x let's say: 1D8+4 & 1D6+2 dmg they could do and they are trying to take their turn to do something that is much more restrictive than the feat deflect arrows could do, which is why it's a "Creative solution" that isn't overpowered, to block a 1D8 dmg(more if it's a boss, but most likely a minion). The ranger is giving up their attack or action to play tactically. Of course this is assuming they could use that attack for other purposes.

Now let's say 3 enemies come through, all of them with bows. Allowing a player to deflect 1 arrow, with their turn instead of say charging the enemy with their readied action, there are still 2 arrows coming their way and they only get to deflect one of them. A person with the deflect arrows feat could charge dealing, let's say 1D8+4, deflect the arrow for free wihtout making an opposed roll (compared to the person without the feat), and get within range.