gbonehead's page

Things around here are vastly different than they used to be, so it's hard to say for sure but I'm pretty darn certain the order reporting part of the software is busted.

Back in the day, the monthly threads would always say "this month's subscription orders are complete" or something similar, but now there's only an "estimated completion" during the initial post.

I would guess a person would run a report for the month's subscription orders, and when that report showed zero items outstanding, they'd post it was complete.

So, this results in the following conclusions:

1. For some reason the "end of shipping" post has gone by the wayside, which is a crying shame because it makes the next one a guess.

2. The "orders complete" report is broken. Or no longer exists. Or something :)

Again, with the loss of the "end of shipping" posts (at least I've been unable to find any for the past few months), it's hard to state that as a fact, but I have pretty strong evidence that if it does exist (and if anyone uses it) it's broken, since my subscriptions haven't shipped since last Spring (i.e. Spring 2022).

I'm not reporting this as a customer support issue because I still have a morbid curiosity what the heck is up - I'm reporting this as a software bug becuase I certainly hope there's a "orders complete" report that someone in CS is actually using, and if so it's broken :)

Hello favorite people!

Not sure whether we should ask for help here or over on GameOn...

Ah, it seems things have changed and email is now the only support option. We'll send this in an email.

Thank you!
Amy & Burt Smith
House of Books and Games LLC

The first transport is away! The first transport is away!

Just sharing my excitement that for the first time since very early in 2020, one of my subscription shipments actually shipped without someone poking the order beast :)

That is truly a cause for celebration for me - and I owe a HUGE thank you to Tonya for making it happen!

Opsylum wrote:

I was literally just bargain hunting for these. :p Still can't find Wormwood Mutiny for anything less than $100. Sigh...someday.

Seriously though, if Paizo did start doing this, they'd have another subscription out of me in a heartbeat. Probably not, because 1e's kind of done and conversions to 2e are complicated, if Kingmaker's anything to go by. Still, one can dream.

It sounds like you might be interested in a print-on-demand option. For those asking for reprints of collected material, would you be interested if they were just 1:1 reprints rather than changing form factor or contents of what was between two covers?

We would 100% carry those at our shop. That would be awesome.

Hey out there,

Something's definitely wrong with the way the order beast generates my subscription orders.

None of them have shipped correctly since early this year - they always get stuck in Limbo until someone pokes them (last time it was Jeff Alvarez in early September so June, July and August would ship).

So ... according to my records my September, October, November and I'm sure soon December orders will just be ... falling forever like Loki?

:)
-b

As always, I say you all are the best :)

Will let me know his team is still chugging away on subscription orders and they hope to be wrapping those up tomorrow.

Just wanted to let you know, you all are still the best anywhere. Your patience is mythic, and your support is epic.

And as some people out there may know, I love my mythic and epic :)

All I can say is I sincerely hope they never use this GameOn thing for crowdfunding again.

It is very, very buggy, and painful, and so very very lackluster compared to how Kickstarter campaigns are run.

Our shop does retailer Kickstarters all the time, especially the wonderful Steve Jackson Games ones, and fighting with the GameOn interface and the way it's run was like going being back in the days of dial-up Internet and BBSes.

Except BBSes were fun :)

(you kids get off my lawn!)

Ah!

I see my mistake. Even though the title of this thread is Pathfinder Second Edition Subscription Questions for some inexplicable reason I came here thinking I'd see Pathfinder Second Edition Subscription Answers.

0:)

(now I'm sitting here wondering if Sparky knows Clark Griswold)

While I eagerly await a resolution to the second part of my April shipment, I have a timely question for anyone to answer, customer service or otherwise...

Can I purchase Paizo gift certificates using pre-purchased Visa or MasterCard gift cards?

My intent is to continue using store credit to pay for my monthly subscriptions. But I'd prefer to use Visa or MasterCard pre-paid gift cards to purchase the store credit.

Thank you in advance for a response. This directly affects how I go about paying for my upcoming May subscriptions.

(I've asked a similar question in the past w/o receiving an answer, so I've posted this same question in the April thread).

You can. I've done it. The primary thing you need to do is go onto the gift card web site and set up your name/address on the gift card so Paizo's back end card validation will work.

How exactly you go about that depends on the gift card, but every gift card I've ever purchased has had a web site that goes along with it.

By doing this like they do Paizo:

- gets the inevitable bunch of "YOU KICKED MY PUPPY I'M NEVER GOING TO BUY A NEW EDITION" people to vent their steam off,
- gets the equally inevitable bunch of previously permabanned people who return under new accounts (hoping to inflict some damage on Paizo as revenge for their permaban) kicked squarely out of the field,
- delivers me a ton of quality Schadenfreude.

And all this happens before the actual playtest begins. It's a win-win-win situation.

I've come to a realization that is going to save me a lot of time between now and August and probably over the next year:

It really doesn't matter to me what Paizo does with 2E. It's not like I'm going to ragequit my subs or anything. I'll run my current campaign until the 2E rule set has enough depth and contains enough high level/high power options, then I'll finish up the current campaign and start a new one using the stuff I've subscribed to over the years.

It's what I did when WoTC shut down 3.5E (I didn't close down that campaign until Mythic was available as an alternate to Epic - not until 2013 in fact) and it's what I'll do now. Or based on that probably closer to 2024 :)

Unfortunately, the major difference will be that unlike the 3.5E/Pathfinder thing, I'm definitely getting the impression that P2E materials will *not* be particularly compatible with P1E. Shame, but doesn't really change my plan much - just means I won't be able to use any of the shiny new books (which is unlike last time around).

This will save me untold hours reading pointless arguments about guesses as to what the rules are. Now that's a win :)

I dunno.

There's so many layers of context and table conventions and everything else that I don't really care about this issue.

Frankly, you're always going to have some characters that are more powerful than other characters in certain circumstances. If you didn't, it would be a bland system - that was my complaint about 4E - it felt like every single class was the *same* class, just with different skinning on it (I don't claim to be an expert on 4E, but we did play and run it for several years).

I don't really care about level dips. There will always be options that are better than other options, and people who want to min/max their character will choose those options.

*shrug*

These things wax and wane. In my prior campaign, we had one guy who dipped into like 5 classes, and for part of the campaign he was a monster. Then as things progressed, he started complaining about how his character was under powered ... and it was - because the level dips meant that he didn't have a focus and while the single class characters developed a small set of great powers, he had a large bag of more limited powers.

I never cared, and I'm not sure why other people do. Sure, it makes balancing encounters a bit harder - so what? That's the challenge for me, just like the challenge for them is overcoming the encounters.

And that crazy mythic fighter that can do hundreds of hit points per round turns out to be completely useless when the task isn't to crush some foe but instead sneak into an enemy keep or to smooth talk their way out of a situation.

To say it differently, if your campaign is purely murder hobos who kill things and take their stuff, you will have all sorts of problems with players who min/max. If that's not the only focus and you mix it up, then I believe it becomes less of an issue.

I agree with Nathanael. I'm not sure what the huge issue is with Charisma. It's been around since the age-old days of AD&D, has always been an largely ignored stat for many classes and I'm not sure why there needs to be some grand purpose to it now.

I mean MAD is bad enough for some classes as it is, now we're adding Charisma to every single class's list?

Not like I have a lot of control over this, it seems pretty clear it's a done deal, but it seems like a solution in search of a problem.

I'm confused though, by one thing.

Everyone keeps talking about how it's "simpler." Simpler than what?

Old: There's a potion. Someone drinks it. the potion is gone. Done.
New: There's a potion. Someone wants to drink it but has to check their resonance, potentially make a roll, then track their resonance. And also, track that the potion is gone. This is simpler than only tracking a potion? In what conceivable way?

For the vast majority of items, there is no tracking. Resonance to use your sword? Really? That can't be right.

I really wish there'd be a useful summary of what the rules actually are. This trying to glean rules from a podcast is kinda dumb. It's not like the rules aren't finalized yet. They've been under development for 2 years and the Playtest Book has to be finalized by now or there'd be no way to get it printed by August.

I'd really really like some of these unhelpful teaser blogs to actually be helpful previews of the rules that are already done. I don't mean set in stone, because obviously they'll change between the playtest and the final version, but it's no help to anyone having GINORMOUS threads speculating about how all this stuff works when it's already known, just not revealed to us.

Health bars. Mana bars. Resonance.

This is sounding scarily like the whole part of 4E that made me extremely unhappy.

See, I don't like when the game reminds me I'm playing a game. Every time there's some awkward mechanic that exists for no other reason than to fix some gameplay issue, it's like someone comes up and smacks me in the face and says "hey! don't forget you're playing a game!"

It runs entirely counter to me trying to run a game and not ruin the immersion in what's actually happening.

Granted, this is all based on some stuff in a podcast, but it makes me nervous - that was a major problem I had with 4e, and a comment like "we've invented mana bars" doesn't help much :/

Hear me out.

Sure thing

I'll be the first to tell you, Mythic is broken, no one uses it ...

Danger, Will Robinson.

... and it piles more complication onto a game that is already overly complicated at high level.

Yep. The game gets complicated at high levels. Turns out that happened with epic, or even pre-epic, and with Pathfinder high-level (say 10+) even without mythic. Not quite sure how that's avoidable or if it's even desirable to avoid it.

But there are two very good reasons to incorporate something resembling Mythic into the mid-to-high-level progression (say, level 7 and above) of the base game. The first is it'll help close the gap between casters and non-casters, by letting non-casters be unabashedly superhuman in a genre famous for enforcing realism selectively.

Ah, everyone's favorite whipping boy, caster/martial disparity. Having run very high level games for very many years, let me say while it does have relevance, it's also not really that big of a deal, especially in Pathfinder. In our epic game, we had a wizard who could drop repeating split twinned maximized disintegrates and it was still the fighter who tended to take many opponents out. In the current game, the fighter tends to one-shot many opponents and the others basically keep him standing and aim him. And keep the cleric alive.

The second is that, as I see it, the quality of high-level play is what will make or break PF2. 3rd edition D&D, including PF1, already works mostly well at the low levels. If high-level gameplay doesn't meaningfully improve, there's little reason for fans of older editions to switch.

A reasonable argument but a strawman. With Paizo retiring 1E, people effectively have three choices: stay with 1E (and no new material other than what 3PP may put out), switch systems (likely to 5E) or switch systems to 2E. People will not be making this decision based on the effectiveness of high-level play.

High levels are where things go pear-shaped, as casters start to run away with the game, and crunch overload makes the game increasingly cumbersome to play (let alone run). This is why PFS ends at level 12, most APs end at level 15-17, E6 is a very popular set of houserules, and—most importantly to this argument—5e's solution was to stretch the low-level experience across all 20 levels.

Nope, can't let this one slide. Sure there's more work involved in playing and running a level 20/mythic 10 game than running a level 5 game. How could it not be so? If it were the same, why bother? However, the richness of the options and the utter madness of the possibilities both for the GM and characters makes it more than worthwhile. Believe me, I know what kind of work it takes to run these things. That's what I do. But you're misinformed if you think that Mythic was any easier than Epic, and if you think there's some magic bullet that will have Pathfinder 2E make 25th-level play "easy" you're living in a pipe dream. High level play will never be easy, and it shouldn't be. High level play is the reward for learning enough of the game through low-level play to actually participate.

In my opinion (and it's just that), 4E came the closest to making high-level play simple, and you know what? It was dull. Boring. There was nothing to distinguish high-level play from low-level play other than scale. Sure, it was easier to run, but there was nothing that made me want to. For all it was touted to be, Mythic has made high-power play even more complicated than epic becuase it's an all new bag of rules on the side, but so what? It's high-power, high-level play so my table is okay with that.

PF2 can differentiate itself from its predecessor, from 5e, and from the large number of other fantasy RPGs out there, by making the high levels both playable (streamlined and well-balanced) and by making them feel like high levels whether you're playing a spellcaster or not—in other words to keep the power ceiling high for everyone, not just casters. A tall order, but well worth it.

I don't recall the 45th level fighter feeling like he was running into a ceiling, and I suspect the figher 30/mythic 15 that will be the equivalent will be in the same boat once we get there (probably in 2019). I'll check back in. Remember, the fighter and wizard and everyone else are part of a team and they're working together ... they're not (usually) fighting each other and having complementary strengths and weaknesses is useful.

A major obstacle will be, as I mentioned, the additional complication that Mythic adds to the system. But I think this can be partially alleviated by making a slimmed-down version of Mythic part of the universal progression rather than being a parallel system bolted on to the core. For example, the abilities could run on existing class resources (Stamina, Ki Points, etc) rather than an additional pool of Mythic Power. Character levels are an easy substitute for Mythic Tiers. Many fiddly little abilities of marginal usefulness that exist only to fill in dead levels (see Monk), could be outright replaced by Mythic progression—though I do believe it should remain part of universal progression rather than having (for example) Champion path abilities parcelled out among Fighter, Barbarian, etc. Combined with an overall streamlining of the base game's rules for 2e, adding pared-down and more thoroughly edited/tested Mythic mechanics to the game at high levels need not make the game overly complex.

Hey! I've seen that! It's called the Epic Level Handbook and we loved it!

Now, one of the goals of mythic was to allow low-level characters to have mythic power, but in practice I think that just complicated things and having a single progression as opposed to an orthagonal progression is actually simpler.

Anyways, just some observations from having done this stuff for years. Like, literally - we started running an epic campaing in 2006 and that's pretty much what I've run every since. Going a little slower with the current campaigns - one is level 15/mythic 9 while the other is level 16/mythic 1, so we're still low on the power curve (from my point of view), but we'll get there. And if anyone thinks I'm stopping at level 20 or mythic 10 they're deluded :)

The new tiles thing is very cool.

Perhaps we can now turn our attention to the flip mats. While I do like the flip mats, I find them very hard to use in practice, as they are very, very specific.

For example, I was excited about Bigger Keep then it turned out to be "Oddly Shaped Keep On An Island With A Bridge And Boats". I really, really would have preferred just a big rectangle - I could pull that out any time I needed a keep ... now I can pull out the Bigger Keep for those dozens of times I need a keep on an island with a bridge ... oh poop.

Same goes for the forest, and all the other ones ... it's never just a forest, it's a forest with some giant rocks and a hugely distinctive crevice/pit thing, etc., or a swamp with a ruin.

Ironically, even though I buy every single flip mat, I find myself using plain old 1" chart paper and drawing my own generic maps of forests and rivers and the like so that I don't have to deal with outcroppings and standing stones and other weird stuff next to my plain old river.

So ... please keep that in mind for future flip mats ... I'm sure that making general flip mats is very boring for the designers, but I'd vastly prefer a map that is boring for them but I can use dozens of times than one that is fun for them but I have to write my whole game around to use ... once :)

That's one of the reasons I got rid of the double subscription I used to have. In concept, I figured that I could use two of a mat as a larger area, but in practice that never worked because they were so specific. If I'd gotten a plain ol' river, I could easily make a longer river by putting two maps next to each other. But take a look at "Deeper Forest" for example. One side has a giant rock and a big hole leading off the mat, while the other side I would not call "Deeper Forest" at all ... I'd call it ... I dunno ... stonehenge with waterfall? Certainly neither is something you're going to pull out as a generic location.

So please ... once in a while make them kinda generic ... that way I can use them more than once.

Subparhiggins wrote:

thflame wrote:

May I request that Feats be sorted in the final book based on what Classes/Ancestries/etc. they apply to as opposed to strictly alphabetical order?

I agree please put them in different sections. At the very least they'll be separated by charts, but having a 1, 2, 3 kind of set up with each type would definitely be easier for players to sort through.

We have some ideas about how to order things. My absolute favorite for ease of building was Jason's idea to put the class feats by level instead of alphabetically (with a sidebar giving them all alphabetically). That way you can directly compare the newest feats at your new level (not that you can't go back and take a lower-level one if you like) and that single change more than tripled the speed at which I can choose my class feats.

Argh! Please, no!

Brings back horrific memories of trying to find 4E powers, which were alphabetically separated by class and level, and if you didn't know both class and level good freakin' luck finding them!

Things are bad enough now with things scattered across my 30+ hardbacks which at least are (mostly) in order. Yes, Advanced Class Guide, I am glaring at you.

Wow, this certainly brings back memories of being told how unplayable epic games were. I certainly hadn't been running an epic campaign for years at that point so I clearly had no idea what I was talking about.

I'm not going to debate damage output, it really doesn't matter. Really.

The same thing is true for mythic play that was true for epic play, namely that once you realize information is the true coin of the game and that plot is more important that opponents you'll be able to play at literally any level/tier (for once literally is being used correctly. Boo yah!).

Is it a hell of a lot of work to run? Hell yeah, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't. Do they sometimes one-shot things that I thought might be a challenge? Of course. Are there games where we have zero combat whatsoever? Yep. And if there's no combat, the fact you can have DPR bajillion becomes sorta irrelevant.

(but it can be quite fun though :)

I'll be honest, I've started some combats and after a round or two said "you'll have no problem with this, I'm just going to move on, everyone take (roll) 34 damage" and have never heard a complaint about skipping combat so they can get to plot elements.

A final interesting aspect of crazy power level games is that I never ever worry about how they're going to solve a problem. When I'm writing material for low-level games, I always make sure there's at least two ways to resolve predicaments, ideally three - the martial way, the caster way, and the thinky way. Now, I don't bother, I just set up a scenario.

"At the end of the last game they activated the portal, which teleported them elsewhere, but elsewhere has been partially destroyed by an asteroid and the location is actually in space, so they'll have no air and be falling within 5-20 feet of a rough cliff. Any who are within 100' of the destination will be attacked by a dozen fallen (Bestiary 6) who haunt the place. And it's a heavy gravity area so it's 1d10 per 10 feet with no limit because there's no air to slow the fall."

How the hell would they get out of that? No clue.

Would some of them die? I suspected so (I was wrong, I didn't think of casting rope trick ... they wanted to use sanctum but that takes a minute and you fall a long way in a minute).

Would the fallen make it more challenging? I figured so, but hadn't expected it to be solely because they clogged the rope trick so others couldn't get in (serendipitously protecting themselves from the cleric's channels).

Would some of them take massive falling damage? Probably (wrong again, the wizard immediately threw a wall of force below the lowest character).

Does this mean there almost certainly won't be an AP set in Ibdylos? While I'm miffed about that, I'm also excited about the incoming APs and understand the issues around 20th-level, Mythic Tier 10 PCs.

Dunno about level 20/tier 10, but I can say that level 15/tier 8 characters are challenging, yep. They just took out Bezravnis without much trouble (he's not mythic, after all).

I'll check back in 6 months, the players will probably be at level 20/tier 10 right about then. But ... what I'm really curious about is what happens at 20+/10+.

gbonehead wrote:

And your tags are still different than mine for no apparent reason, too!

Not really different, I just have some more. Or am I missing something?

I believe we have the exact same subscriptions, but yours are called out separately for some reason ... but I checked with customer service and supposedly Charter covers the lot.

Most puzzling.

If I were you I wouldn't ask about it, you might lose the extra ones :)

Now to be a bit more relevant:

That is what happens when things don't sell well. Then you stop making them.

I like the modules. I'm not creative enough to do my own stuff, and I don't want to use single books from APs or non-Golarion material during periods we aren't actually running an AP. The modules fill in the gaps nicely. Heck, as I've already said, I'm tying several in to our CoCT campaign, too.

The modules have always been the least useful thing for me (okay, maybe the Map Folios, but they're pretty darn cool), primarily because I do write pretty much all my own content - thus, only the last couple pages of a module and any cool unique items are about all I use.

I suspect in fact suffering of the module line is because it's really hard to come up with that many good new module ideas and a lot of what might have been developed into the module line instead ends up as PFS material - which is fine by me.

Actually, I've ordered it via this website and it's on my shelf now. I'd still like a PDF, though

Now you're just rubbing it in :)

And your tags are still different than mine for no apparent reason, too!

Curiouser and curiouser ....

(checks the Product Catalog & Schedule again just in case)

Indeed, like the action of not canceling the line and announcing products instead.

Example.

Oh I dunno.

I'm one of Paizo's biggest fans, but things like that module that aren't part of any subscription and aren't listed in the product releases and I end up missing out on just irritate me. Seems like it kinda defeats the purpose of being a superscriber.

And a third-party, out-of-print, impossible to get ahold of module certainly is no indicator about the health of Paizo's module line.

Yeah. Though the waiting doesn't really get any easier no matter how many years you've been going through it :)

Lissa,

Trust me, after I tried watching the second one with Sands, I skipped the third. The first is the only one that counts. Sort of like Highlander.

I have no idea what you're talking about. There's only one Highlander movie.

WOOHOO!!!

that is all

gbonehead wrote:

Sharaya wrote:

I see that there are still some other raised hands in here. I'll double check y'all on Monday!

As always, you all are the best :)

I think I should have a bunch more tags, but I'm no longer sure how the tags actually work so I could be perfectly fine.

I've double checked your account and done some poking and prodding to make sure everything is set up correctly/you shouldn't get duplicates.

And your Charter Superscriber tag should cover everything :D

Most Excellent. You are everything one could hope for in a Ray of Funshine :) Thanks!!!

Oh great and powerful web developers!

Can how the forum tags work get added to a FAQ somewhere?

As the who/what/where seems to get ever more complicated (and in some cases contextual), it's hard to know whether tags are even correct.

I think this might even benefit you all, as having a place to refer to when working on the engine might help avoid accidental omissions, etc. I know it helps me in my code to have something like that.

(for example, I'm pretty sure Zaister and myself should have the same tags, but I am not sure and have nothing to refer to in order to be sure :)

I figured this was being taken care of. I'll just quietly raise my hand here too :)

Thanks!!
-burt

gbonehead wrote:

Now I'm curious. Let's see what my tags have to say for themselves.

From the preview, looks like I'm not a Starfinder Charter either :/

All you have to do to get that status is subscribe to the Starfinder Accessories line (or, if you have already done that, get the Paizo folks to straighten the status of that subscription out for you) before the Starfinder Core Rulebook ships in August.

Think I'm going to give it a little time to settle down. The web site's being wonky and the order engine hasn't sent me a confirmation, so if it's still an issue on Monday .... then I'll worry about it :)

Are we going to be seeing a third printing of this, given it's unavailable once again?

gbonehead wrote:

I find that if you listen to the people who actually matter and ignore the background noise

Don't want to put words in your mouth, so just a question: Who are those people who actually matter?

Because I think that this is a very dangerous train of thought that can easily be misunderstood as: There are important and there are second class forum citizens. Which is the very first step in making people feeling unwelcome here.

Dhampir984 wrote:

I found myself feeling not welcome and generally like I wasn't even playing the same game, since apparently the style I tend to play is much more relaxed than many others here.

I can relate to that as my style seems to be much more casual than other peoples' style and quite often, I land in discussions with people who I feel have a totally different style of play than I do. Still I feel that it's a shame if you found yourself being not welcome here because of that. Because most of the time, the boards here are a very welcoming place and what I talked about with gbonehead seems to be much more prevalent in nearly every other forum I've been so far.

"The people who acually matter" is a personal decision, just like favorite RPG, class, programming language or brace style.

For me, it's people who tend to have interesting, thoughtful posts that actually say something, as opposed to being argumentative, rules-lawyery, or simply appear to be posts for the sake of saying something.

But yeah, I will 100% say there are first-class and second-class posters, but not for the reasons you seem to be implying - I'd say that each individual is in charge of their own destiny rather than it being some elite clique they have to prove they're worthy of.

I dunno. I find that if you listen to the people who actually matter and ignore the background noise, the forums are a wonderful place to hang out and chat with like-minded folk.

Just gotta have that thick skin allowing you to ignore the noise :)

I just don't have the time any more to be on the boards all the time - it's been a long while since I had a job where I could slack a third of the time and still get my work done!

I have found, however, that when I read the boards I tend to read some people's posts and skim the majority of them. But that's probably just a "you kids get off my lawn!" thing :)

Gorbacz wrote:

...when suddenly, out of the blue, despite me being REALLY NASTY THIS YEAR, somebody drops some Paizo store credit on me. Anonymously. Without any message or hint as to their identity or intentions.

I appreciate the gesture, but if this is some elaborate romantic plot, I'd like to re-state the following, I am:

a) married
b) happily
c) not into halflings
d) a talking bag

Anyway, thanks a lot, anonymous scoundrel/scoundrelette.

That's happened to me before. I'm forever grateful to the anonymous giver, but always wonder what I've done to deserve such a gift.

Maybe it was Gorbacz :)

Well that is disappointing.

I .. am ... very ... DISAPPOINTED!

I'd like to thank my Secret Santa for getting my latest subscription shipment into First Ten discount level. I shall think of you as I read Worldscape #3.

Wait a minute ... how'd you get #3 already! I just got #2!

I just think some Compendiumy books are overdue. I imagine the developers don't want to drive away customers with "repeats," but with the incredible number of rules, feats and spells scattered throughout the published materials, having compendium-style books to collect a bunch of that stuff all together would be heaven for me as a GM.

I'm sooooo tired of trying to remember whether a given rule is in the glossary, or the combat chapter of the CRB, or the universal monster rules, or a stealth rule hidden in the text of a feat, etc.

Hell, most of the time I just make some crap up that sounds like it makes sense and say "I'll look it up later, we'll do this for now," because it's just not worth it derailing a combat to look up the rule for an obscure situation.

Note that is completely different from desiring a new rule set. I most definitely do not - but updated organization of the rules after 8 years? Yeah, I can go for that.

Heck, 3.5e was collating the rules after less than 4 years - 3.5e was first published in 2003, and the Rules Compendium came out in 2007, only 4 years later - and the Spell Compendium came out in 2005, only 2 years after the rul set started. So I'd actually say a Rules Compendium for Pathfinder is sorta overdue :)

BigNorseWolf wrote:

...putting the toilet paper on the roll so it comes from the bottom instead of the top?

Isn't that the way it's *supposed* to go? Just sayin'.

Dammit! They removed that darn unlike button again!

I just like how she still used the "Customer Service Dire Carebear Manager" in there. Hopefully it won't get redacted :)

Awesome, thank you so much!

P.S. Oh no! No more ray of funshine?!?

*insert clever welcome here*

*witty retort*

I was a charter, then I lost my job and the subscription had to go for a few years. It's a shame really because I had started with Dragon back in 1985. I hate breaking streaks.

I would pay my mortgage, electric and phone bills late before I would lose that Charter tag.

I'm not saying I have I'm just saying I would.

(not that I'm necessarily saying I haven't, either :)

GreyWolfLord wrote:

Allow a sensible advancement in epic levels that continue the trend of how the characters have been advancing

No can do. Differences in saves and BAB progression really matter as you go past 20.

And to what end? Level 15+ characters are already so insanely powerful and capable, that there is no sort of fantasy adventure you cannot run in that level range, unless you artificially try to level up the setting just to make people buy your mythic or whatever book, like Paizo currently does.

Ah, the old "nobody needs rules for levels above 20" chestnut :)

I know a couple people online here who might find that view quaint.

(by the way, I agree about the save/BAB progression - that's why I think the old 3.5e epic rules did it right and the pp. 406-407 guidelines in the CRB didn't)

gbonehead wrote:

You are not the only one :)

Good to know!

I can only find 13 Paizo Charter Superscribers: Costa, David Cornwell, Dragnmoon, Gary Sarver, gbonehead, Kata. the ....., Nikosandros, M. Sean Molley, Paul Ryan, Russ Taylor, theprofessor, Wizened and Zaister. I'm certain there's others, and it's really hard to tell about the Paizo folks.

The big thing, of course, is the "Charter" part of it. All the others tags can come and go, and the number of Paizo Charter Superscribers could theoretically climb to that elusive value between 500 and 1000, but once someone's Charter tag is gone, that's it, it ain't comin' back. Barring extenuating circumstances (see earlier in thread).

Vic Wertz wrote:

Reckless wrote:

Chris Ballard asked how many Charter superscribers were left, which I don't think has the same answer as how many Charter subscribers there are.

You're correct—my mistake.

There are a lot fewer than 500 Pathfinder charter superscribers, and still fewer Paizo charter superscribers.

It seems so. Of all the people who posted here so far, I'm the only one with the "Paizo Charter Superscriber" tag. But I can't be the only one, I hope! :)

You are not the only one :)

The biggest problem, I found, was that some things just made no sense at that size. Even if a 500-foot-long beetle notices the damage you do to it, do feats like Stunning Strike make any sense?

The reality is that creatures above Colossal really need an extension of the size rules. I was kinda hoping it would be there in the Mythic stuff, but I suspect it was just too squirrelly of an issue. Under 3.5e, there was a book called the Immortals Handbook Epic Bestiary Volume One (there never was a volume two) that had a decent section on expanded sizes, but it didn't really address some of the core issues.

Maybe sometime there will be Ultimate Monsters, with some optional rules on expanded size. For now, I'd recommend staying away from creatures above Colossal except as plot devices :)

Personally, I always wanted to see some rules for diminished effects beyond certain size differences - for example, damage is by medium creatures is halved for every size category above Colossal, so when Big Mac the All-Beef Barbarian hacks at King Mogaru, his damage is quartered even before DR or any other modifiers, and Big Mac's ally Small Fry the Halfling Rogue is in even worse shape, doing 1/8 the damage because he's Small instead of Medium.

I never actually fleshed any of that out; truly ginormous creatures were tough enough as it was, but some end results and corner conditions of the rules (flanking? 5-foot steps?) ended up sort of silly.

Shem wrote:

This is getting not fun.

Agreed.

I have a strong suspicion this is a lot less fun for the Paizo staff than for us. After all, we're just waiting for stuff to be shipped, they're in a rowboat beached in the middle of the Bay of Fundy watching the tide roll in ...

(I suspect the worst part of it is that they can't do a heck of a lot about it because it feels like a lot of it has been an ever nastier series of software glitches ... which then require manual adjustment ... which then makes the backlog even worse ...)