brock's page

DM_aka_Dudemeister wrote:

Hythlodeus wrote:

Have you learned NOTHING from WotC?

Don't piss off your costumers who are invested in the system that's already there

But more importantly, they're still going to be selling soft covers of Pathfinder 1st Edition. So your favourite game isn't going anywhere :)

It isn't? I bet new modules and APs will be released 2nd edition only. the game setting is actively dead for all purposes if no new content is written.

I'm sorry, but that's a huge deal breaker

They are not killing the 1.0 compatibility license. People can carry on making 1.0 stuff as long as people want to buy it.

I don't recall a previous edition bump from a company where they both continued selling the old version, and allowed third-parties to continue making stuff for it. Unprecedented!

Gulthor wrote:

Although I don't expect Paizo to continue to create new content for PF "1", do you plan to continue to sell material for the original version of Pathfinder (particularly Adventure Paths)?

I, like many others, have active disinterest in switching to a new version of the game, but there are still decades left of AP's left for our group to explore, and we'd like to continue supporting your company, even if we don't go down this road with you.

Please see the FAQ, especially the question But I don't want to change editions! I want to play Pathfinder First Edition forever and ever and ever!

At the point at which it is no longer feasible to keep those pocket editions in print physically, I see that they remain 'in print' digitally. Will you consider putting them up for 'Print On Demand' at that point, or are the print on demand services still below the quality level that your happy for Paizo products to go out at?

"A tiny chunk" is likely insignificant.

Easy to say until it's asphyxiating halflings bouncing off your windshield. :)

Every time a Drift engine is used, a tiny portion of a random plane is torn from its home...

... might tear away a chunk of hell and leave you flying through a cloud of furious devils.

If this happened to a world populated by most mortal creatures, they would die, lost and alone. So using a Drift drive is an inherently selfish and evil act. You are risking the death of other creatures for your gain.

I'm sure the intent wasn't to make it an issue for Starfinder Society, but now that it's occurred to me, I'm going to have to think of a way to explain it away. Any ideas?

What would be really great was if Paizo decided to provide the Goblin boon (or another rare boon) for those who donated a certain amount to this charity. We'd jump up the donations pretty quickly!

That would cause a massive argument about 'pay to play'/'pay to win'. Some people are really touchy about getting stuff for paying more.

However, if Paizo were to donate a cool boon as a second raffle prize, that might also boost donations.

Marks thread for future use when someone one rolls low on a Knowledge check to identify a monster.

Not that, Tri, the other one...

Giving someone 'the finger'.

No Pathfinder agents were harmed during the process of bringing you this intel.

Yeah.... about that... :)

OK, let's kill this by looking at the question from another angle:

BNW and TO have convinced me. I think the wording on activating a scroll could be more useful though, by stating you have to pick a class to activate it as. That would clear up the other questions nicely.

Sorry for the derail.

If you could make a UMD check to emulate the spell class feature, all you'd need to do would be to make the dc 20 check, rather than the harder dc 20+caster level (just noticed that isn't spell level)

That's a good point. Does the 'Spells' class feature give you the spell list, or does having levels in the class give you the spell list?

Squiggit wrote:

I find it dumb precisely because it's weird from a worldly angle. A wizard cannot aim a spell through a bay window even if the spell has no physical effect that needs to pass through the window, but a stone wall with a 1cm slit that's sufficiently long can give that same wizard impunity to cast any spell in their arsenal, even with spells that project effects that shouldn't be able to fit through a 1cm gap.

Assuming it's a bay window with ordinary glass, a lightning bolt can easily destroy said window and then affect whatever is on the other side... including your strawman.

I'd probably go with a scorching ray against a strawman.

i'm a strict believer that Role playing and fluff should be just as important and taken just as seriously as mechanics

Ok then.

If the rules matter you could just say you have to pick a class you're pretending to be when you use it and stick by those rules.

As far as I can tell, that is exactly how it works. There is no difference between an arcane or divine scroll, so the rules depend on the person who is casting it.

CRB page 490, Chapter 15: Scrolls, subsection Activation, sub-subsection Activate the Spell, last sentence: wrote:

Using a scroll is like casting a spell for the purposes of arcane spell failure chance.

Now I presume that using divine scrolls is like casting divine spells and so no arcane spell failure is possible. However in PFS I don't get to presume so I'm looking for clarification as to whether that's a correct assumption, or if the sentence is saying that ALL spell casting off of scrolls incurs spell failure chances.

You don't need to presume. This is talking about arcane spell failure, which does not apply to divine spells i.e.

Using a divine scroll is like casting a divine spell for the purposes of arcane spell failure chance (none).

I doubt the Boneyard needs a full book but some coverage would be nice. You can't adventure in a place that's lifeless.

I have some Pomegranate seeds that disagree with you.

well yes the alchemist can still die from a sword though the heart or decapitation. but he/she has no fear of time killing him/her.

Killed by a falling grandfather clock, how ironic.

brock, no the other one... wrote:

Last time one of my characters saw him, he was being beaten to death in a puddle of his own vomit by a Pathfinder who seemed to have some form of personal grudge against him. Nothing to do with me, I just threw the Ghast retch flask at him.

Torchbot. Any time you defeat him it's a torchbot.

A shame. The gentleman delivering the pummelling seemed to be finding it incredibly cathartic.

claudekennilol wrote:

Then the GM is going to have to be a dick and tell me no. I'm not putting holes in my shirts just for an extra 1-4 on a skill check.

I cut the tines off of mine and gorillia glued a small round magnet onto the back. Another magnet will stick it through the shirt. I even sewed a magnet to my hat so i can hot swap them out like benny from the mummy.

Pinned all mine to a lanyard to wear round my neck for maximum Benny :)

I know in the past when keeping a pregen despite 'bad things' happening, you didn't actually process the cost of the 'bad thing' until the chronicle is applied. So a 1st level character getting a 7th level pregen chronicle with a death wouldn't pay the chosen equity payment until that chronicle applied. You would decide at the time the GM is giving you the chronicle, and it would be noted on it, but the fee wouldn't come due until you get the rest of it too.

To my understanding, that has never been the case in PFS. You have to pay to clear the conditions on the pregen at the end of the session, or the character it was attached to was marked dead. This is why the rule of being able to reassign to a different character number came about.

I'd be a lot happier to assign pregens to real character numbers if this deferred payment thing was true.

Jegus, it's an expensive improvised grenade that requires two rounds of action and a weapon obtainable only from a meatgrinder 3-7 that could become nonfunctional by glitching at any time.

I get it that everyone's too cool for leniency school and a tad too enamoured with their own words, but I'd cut this guy some good ol' slack.

Anyone cool enough for this tactic is going to dual-wield their powder-kegs and laser pistols, and get this off in a single round, penalties be damned! :)

This is the kind of situation where the GM should always try to say "Yes, but..." rather than "No."

If a player can't put in some time of their own to get their character in order so I can easily inspect it and ensure they have the necessary reference documents... well, maybe they should go play at someone else's table.

There is a subset of players for whom that kind of organisation is just alien to their being. They literally can't do it. A subset of that subset are actually cheating, and a further subsetting gets us to the ones that are cheating on purpose. It would be a shame for the default response to disorganised players to become "go and play a game from a different publisher", just because we want to 'catch' the cheaters.

The only productive thing we can do here is noodle ideas on how to make it easier for people to track this stuff with the minimum effort and thought on their part.

Someone commented on writing down the source of stuff when you take it. How about an AR form, similar to the ITS, that has Ability Name, Book, Page, as columns and you write a new line on it whenever you add something to your character?

[ Edit ]

As an option, a GM could initial and PFS# a line if they have checked the player can provide a copy on request.

Quote:

You also need to inform the GM of any additional resources you're using pre-game so the GM can familiarize them self with the rules you're using.

And this is done never. Assume most of the people at the table have stuff outside of core.

If my standard GM preamble didn't contain this right at the start:

I'd never get any tips on what stuff I should be reading up on to build my own characters! :)

Admittedly, my next words are usually "Very cool! I'll trust you to be able to tell me the rules that apply to that as needed."

I disagree. Since illusion rules from the CRB are ambiguous, and a GM has to come up with a ruling, there is nothing illegal about a GM 7sing Ultimate Intrigue to help inform then how to make that ruling.

True, but if we want them to be used we first need to make sure the player base knows they exist, and then make sure they have easy access to them.

Rather than make that page of UI legal via Additional Resources, it would be better to copy/paste the appropriate text straight into the Campaign Clarifications document. That way it is available to all.

I'm noodling ideas on how to do this without it causing bookkeeping problems, and avoiding the idea of replaying an old scenario 4 hours after you first played it. This one hit my brain out of left field.

There are those that dislike the expansion of the allowed races beyond a certain point, claiming that it makes PFS feel like a trip to the zoo. What if we split off a third stream of the campaign and have PFS / Core / Menagerie options?

Most of the currently legal races would remain in PFS. Menagerie would open up another set of races that could only be played at tables that were formed from that group of races alone.

Would a third chance to replay be enough?

What about allowing replay after 4 years, but for a no-credit chronicle? In other words, you don't have to be making a table up to 4 to replay if the scenario is more than 4 years old, but you get a 0XP/0PP/0GP chronicle when you do so — you play only for fun.

I only am currently eligible to play 2 scenarios and a few modules everything else I have played. I'm not the only one in this boat. But I'd love to play the stuff I played at the start of my PFS career again. For most of them so much time has passed i don't recall the details anyway.

If you've played that much, do you really need more credit on more official characters? Why not just get some like-minded people together and play the old scenarios not-for-credit?

It is far more enjoyable to actually get to participate in the fight rather than have it end after the party's first actions. Character building your way to victory removes a lot of the enjoyment along with the risk.

I disagree with this as an axiom. It can be true, but isn't universally true. Not every person in the Pathfinder society wants to get involved in a fight.

There are certain characters that I play where if someone combat-focussed were to 'pull their punches' and avoided dropping the enemy, just so that I got a chance to 'participate', I'd be quite annoyed (presuming they did so because they thought that was the 'right' way to play the game and didn't discuss their intentions before hand). With those characters, I'm not there to fight, I'm there to 'translate the runes', and I make that clear in the introductions.

This is why this issue is purely an out-of-character issue to resolve, and can't (shouldn't) be resolved mechanically. It is impossible to develop a set of mechanics that adequately serves the play styles of all people, permuted into all possible combinations of tables. People are just going to have to be honest about their expectations and talk it out.

I'd also say that there are certain players who get more fun out of crafting their characters than playing. Playing is just a chance to field-test the stuff that they had fun crafting. And that's also a perfectly fine way to play the game.

Although it can be annoying to encounter a build that stomps a particular scenario, that build is going to be especially weak in other scenarios through it's career — it balances out. If it's causing out-of-character problems with the other players at the table, then the right way to handle it is with an out-of-game chat around the table, not an in-game change.

or did I just not get enough sleep last night?

Sleep well. :)

I have to confess, my wallet is secretly glad of this gap between sets.

claudekennilol wrote:

Problems it creates (as has been pointed out by others):

Not using a pregen to round out a party as it isn't as equipped as their own PC--it might provide a different skill set that is simply needed but isn't as survivable. Now when people show up and there are 4 rogues in an elemental-themed scenario, when previously one of them might switched out for a heavy hitter such as Oloch or Amiri. Now they'll be more likely to stay as what they originally brought because they have their own breath of life scroll, or have a higher AC, or just simply don't know the pregens well enough to feel comfortable enough to ensure their own survival--even though that would better the table overall.

Nothing in the new rules prevents this switch from happening.

I'm not going to play a pregen when it increases the level of risk to that character that I either otherwise would have played, or that I wasn't even planning to play. So in that case, yes the rule change has prevented the switch from happening.

It is an increase in risk because I am not as familiar with the abilities of the pregen, and because the pregen doesn't have the range of equipment that I've bought to combat certain situations.

you can apply it to a character you already have and live on the edge applying the rewards earned to a specific character

Also note that one person's 'living on the edge' is another person's 'unacceptable level of risk'. For sufferers of anxiety disorders, risk outside of their normal comfort zone (the previous rules) and/or outside of their control (not their character), is a big thing.

Encouraging people not to play is not my stance either, but you can apply it to a character you already have and live on the edge applying the rewards earned to a specific character or apply it to a non-existent character from the beginning. In the second case you might die in which case no big deal or you might succeed providing yourself with some cool stuff on another character down the line. I don't think its a big deal letting people apply it to an empty character slot I just think whatever choice they make they should have to stand by it.

I largely agree with you, but I think that the resources needed from the base character to clear the conditions on the pregen need to be finely tuned to be fairer than they are at present, otherwise the result will be to drive people away from playing pregens, and in scenarios where pregens are the only option.

There was no risk, and no dead character because the player could just shift the chronicle to a non-existent blob.

It's known as an opportunity cost. That chronicle is now unavailable for ever - they have lost the opportunity to gain it.

If the player could have successfully completed the scenario with their own character, but failed it due to playing a pregen to be helpful to the rest of the table, there was a risk and a consequence to that player.

Forgive an ageing guy talking to himself...

I am as happy playing a game with a character when there are no future consequences of failure as I am when failing will result in the 'death' of 30 hours of play.

I should note that what I am not happy with is losing the results of hours of play due to factors that are outside of my ability to properly affect. An example of that is when I am playing with a character that I haven't created. You could argue that I had a choice not to play, but encouraging people not to play PFS is not what PFS is about.

I'm happy with a penalty, but not with having to resolve the expensive conditions a 7th level pregen can expect to receive using only the 1/2 gold gear and whatever resources my 3rd level character has. It seams mean to beat the poor thing to death with sticks well above it's pay-grade.

... risk needs to be part of the equation so that our choices and actions at the table have meaning. Otherwise the GMs might as well just narrate the scenario to us.

This is a true statement for some people who play PFS, probably a majority. It is not true for all people who play PFS. It also depends strongly on the meaning of "meaning".

I am as happy playing a game with a character when there are no future consequences of failure as I am when failing will result in the 'death' of 30 hours of play.

To me, it's about the roleplaying and the story created by the interaction of the people at the table. Not whether the numbers on my piece of paper mechanically beat the numbers in the scenario and survive to be computed upon another day - that is fun, it's just not why I do it.

See Feynman's quote about physics giving practical results.

And I will only be making revision suggestions based on the parameters set by the leadership team. Unless they change thier mind on how they want things to work, my suggestions will be to clean up the language currently in the guide. Focusing on that will be much more productive.

I would ask you to make suggestions based on what you think best for PFS and what you have read here, rather than pre-cull them down to what you think the team want to hear.

They want there to be a real risk of death for solely the purpose of there being a risk of death.

Which is fine, but it has to be a fair risk, and there is some debate on where that line lies, especially with 'sight unseen', mandatory, pregens.

To avoid the abuse of using a pregen instead of a legal character for the purpose of avoiding the risk of death. And so folks won't play stupid or overly risky with a pregen knowing there is no longer lasting risk, and thus unduly endangering the real characaters at the table.

Apparently this has been enough of a major issue in enough regions that a solution was required.

The latter should be handled robustly by the GM at the table. This will still occur if the player in question pre-assigns the pregen to a character number they don't care about. So press the point to GMs and players that asking the pregen player to leave the table should be the solution in this case, or treating it as PvP where the pregen players actions can have no negative effect on the other characters. If players are in this situation and the GM refuses to step in, they should walk away and talk to a VO.

The former, I don't consider as much of an issue as it doesn't impact others. If someone wants to take a character number all the way to retirement by playing pregens instead, it's not really prevented me from having fun.

Postulate : We need a rule that is clear, concise, and simple, and which also doesn't discourage people from playing a pregen in situations where it's helpful to have them do so.

We've already talked about completing the paperwork next time you see a GM if you don't have your chronicle stack with you. We've also talked about the pregen being a proxy for your real character at that point in future time.

Why not just write down the cost of clearing the conditions on the chronicle gained by playing the pregen, and any gold gained (including by selling equipment) and worry about whether the character is dead at the point in future time when the chronicle stack catches up and the player can show the correctly completed stack to a GM?

It's simple, and it doesn't penalise someone who is helpfully trying to get a high-level game to run by killing off their lower level character prematurely.

Yes, some people will simply throw away the chronicle gained by playing the pregen. I suggest that is less bad for PFS than the result of forcing people to handle the conditions using only the resources on the pregen and the chronicle. If we open the door to allowing people to use not present chronicles, then it increase the risk of cheating anyway.

To nosig & pH unbalanceds' point - I think those of us that get to enjoy the fertile plains of Minnesota and our 15+ tables of games every week do not understand the limited replay opportunities of other regions.

Agreed. It should be standard procedure to accept what other people say are their experiences of play. We have vastly different play cultures and habits by nation and state, and most of us don't get to experience anywhere near the full spectrum.

What if, we were to handle pregen death by filling in the cost of clearing the conditions as a negative number in the 'Gold Spent' box on the chronicle being handed out, and left it at that?

When the player fills in the rest of the sheet, whether that be immediate or much later on (depending on the level of the character being applied to), the end total has to be a positive number or the character is declared dead at that point?

• People don't have to bring the chronicles for characters that they don't think they will need.
  
• People don't risk losing a character due to low gold just because they had to play a high-level pregen.
  
• You gain the chance to plan ahead to have enough gold/prestige to save the character.
  

Would that be the golden triple of: simple, provides risk, doesn't put people off?

Keirine, Human Rogue wrote:

But I think what Torrquan is getting at, why should a new player have to look up that information up in the FAQ, when 99% of the rest of character creation is in the guide?

Very few class-specific rules rules exist in the Guide. It is a place for general rules as they apply to all characters. Specific rules such as companion HP, spellbooks, etc belong in the FAQ, IMHO. Even "simple" classes like fighters have questions regarding their builds. Again, all of that belongs in the FAQ

I disagree. Rules belong in the guide (if PFS specific) or the CRB. If you need to consult the FAQ to get a rule, it's missing and should be an errata to either the guide or CRB.

The FAQ should be clarifying only.

What problem is this even intended to solve?

That is something that there is great value in making clear in all endeavours. It's never as obvious to the rest of the world as it is in the mind of the person who is writing down the solution.

Although we unfortunately have no official Paizo preview this week

I'd like to say sorry on behalf of the UK for kidnapping Erik and forcing him to come and game at PaizoCon UK over the weekend. I'd like to but ... totally not sorry! :)

Tuesday, and only two post-con posts. It's almost as if everyone is too knackered to type or something ;)

@Rei contact Chris, maybe something happened :)

Totally full at present, but Chris will keep a list for last minute contact in the event of anyone having to drop out at the last minute.

Typical Remain stupidity, calling it an emergency budget. Yes, if Article 50 had been triggered immediately and it was clear that we were going to lose the financial passport, then that style of emergency budget would have been necessary. Phrasing it in the terms he did though just made it seem like scaremongering.

Really, this situation is utterly shambolic. There are good reasons to consider, at some point, a planned and measured exit from the EU, if necessary. This isn't the way to do it, and this is not the time to do it.

In fairness, the country was also lied to by the 'remain' camp, who promised some sort of financial apocalypse, and George Osborne going crazy with a budget hatchet within days of any 'leave' vote.

It's good to be even-handed, but there is a material difference between misdirection (I won't label the Leave campaign as liars), and prediction. The first stirrings of the financial pain it has been predicted this will cause have been felt, and if we lose London's 'financial passport', that is £35B of tax going into the budget that has to come from somewhere else (it will only be a proportion of that, probably).