gharlane's page

Are there any currently published or planned to be plubished books that won't be in the kickstarter? I noted that both the Fey and blood handbooks went beyond the original system--will they be in the handbook or remain separate.

Out of curiosity, have you ever seen a high-level full Vancian caster (Wizard, in particular) in play?

It seems to me that the issue Merlin cross mentioned may get into a GM that makes it too easy to refresh spell points. I mean, darkness with a tone of effects can be done--but it's likely that you'll blow most, if not all of your spell points to do it, restricting you to basic effects for a good long while.

But that's the kind of balancing act that also, as pointed out exists for Vancian casters--if a caster can just blaze away without worrying about using up his spell slots, he can often just utterly OBLITERATE his enemies--in the encounter.

I'd mention that now that sphere's of might is out, you can pretty much create any fantasy style character you want. the two systems come about as close as pathfinder/3.5 systems can to a truly flexible system without being a Hero or M&M style point-buy system.

One of the problems I have with racial alignment is well, how is it a race of sociopathic lunatics that are one step away from knifing each other survive as a threat? Neutral and Chaotic evil groups should have a hard time surviving as a group of bandits, much less running a society.

Mind you, I'm not saying that they can't dislike and act that way to outside groups, but internally, they really need a more stable platform.

This is sort of the problem with defining *everything* by a single racial Alignment. Sapient beings are more complex than that by far.

Lady Firebird wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I have never seen a Drizzt clone in the wild. I've seen plenty of good-aligned "dark elves" but none of them particularly evocative of the famous Forgotten Realms character.

Often, the whole thing is a buzz word that the person complaining can't even accurately expound upon. In my experience, the people who rabidly hate on these alleged "Drizzt clones" are often far more toxic and harmful to a good game than the objects of their ire.

I like dark elves and I like the idea of going against the grain. As exceptional heroes are wont to do. That might take the form of my Drow Monk who seeks personal power out of a desire to personally throw down Lolth and break the tyrannical hold over her people. Or it might be a mischievous Drow Sorceress whose passion is only matched by her elemental power, facing gods and monsters for their secrets and for the love of a good challenge. Or maybe I have other ideas. Surely other players have just as many ideas.

Likewise, I'm feeling the same vibe here: Goblin hate is honestly far worse than the goblins themselves.

The issues is when you can no longer claim to be "going against the grain" and it's not a single special snowflake but a blizzard of them. When you go to a tavern and can't swing a dead cat without hitting 16 heroic goblins and/or drow, to pushes credulity past the breaking point and ruins what 'playing against type' is.

That's the main issue with core goblins: how common they will be. So it's NOT goblin hatred but core goblin hatred. It's one thing if your goblin is a rarity for being able to get along with others but it's something entirely different when there is a flood of them.

I recall a joke game one of my old DM's ran in college. We were all playing angsty drow who were good and fighting the power, and after a desperaate mission to the underworld to find out what evil the now silent drow kingdoms were playing we found...

At most what this one goblin could do is eventually become so famous in a given town that he finally after many adventures and lots of effort puts the stigma behind him. Mind you, HIS stigma, any other goblin still is in for it when they also first appear.

Which is another problem about goblins--you can do that, but it suddenly makes it all about the goblin. It devours the rest of the plot, because you're always having to explain why nobody kills the goblin. It turns them into the precious Mary Sunshine character that devours everyone elses storyline.

Comical adventurs aside, Goblins are a race that A. eats babies (literally, in some of the source material it's mentioned that is a sign of a growing goblin infestation) B. Love torture for its own sake, such as burning people alive. C. Are the kind of idiots that are likely to burn down their own village. They're the insidious fusion of a kender and a rabid halfling.

Now could avoid all that by.... not playing a goblin, just someone who wears a goblin suit, but for some reason doesn't act like a goblin. But given how much of their cultural baggage and attitudes you have to drop to make them at all group friendly, you're not really playing a goblin anymore. So why waste the page count in the core?

Robotech is probably more or less gone--HG loses the rights in 2021, and after that they have... the name robotech and the story. Nothing else that was used via licensed products.

Ideally, trap options are removed via rigorous playtesting.

Paizo's general response to playtesting does not fill me with confidence.

Oh, I don't think that anyone doubts that Paizo could pull off the description for goblins in such a way that they could be non-evil creatures with a fondness for fire and explosions.

The question is how on Golarion they'll do so in a way that doesn't invalidate a decade of lore that describes the race as being 99.9% evil, sadistic, and insane.

Yeah. Goblins in Golarian aren't just pyro's, they're pyros who enjoy lighting babies on fire to hear them scream. Getting over anti-goblin racism requires modifying the race to where every other goblin isn't going to try and murder you and burn your house down and not even really have a good reason for it.

And I've always hated that, because Goblin's should be extinct or on their way to extinct. They're stupid, violent, cowardly, and will always antagonize something more powerful than they are. Even evil races shouldn't like them, because they're useless and destroy resources that others can use.

And again, there are a ton of other species in Golarian that are far more interesting. I think Paizo has mistook "we think this is a funny race" for "we think this is a race that needs to become a part of the core."

Goblin's as written are a walking advertisement for extermination. They're a literal plague, that will--not if, will, destroy the region if they're allowed to breed, and produce nothing of value.

So, if they want to make them not a plague, you get a horde of GINO's (Goblin's in Name Only), if they keep them, anything like the stupid, murderous (let us remember, having goblins in teh region is generally the source of most of your vanishing children, who they ate), backstabbing plagues, then you get the traditional horde of "But I'm playing my character!"

If not, then why use them? Paizo has loads of damned species that are far more interesting than Goblins, from just about every viewpoint.

Goblins: 2Es Kender.

A feat should be a fairly big deal, and if you're needing a chain, it should be a VERY big deal, giving you capabilities that are both interesting and mechanically useful.

Pathfinder has far, far too many feats that are either borderline useless, or are just there to keep you from grabbing the good feat that has them as a pre-req.

I think adventures and campaigns will likely be the least impacted--after all, you can just have blank stat blocks in your main copy and then have a PF1/PF2 file for publication, as many groups do for 5E right now.

So those products will continue along since once the cost of producing the product is taken into account, the cost of creating state and NPC blocks for two systems won't be that big.

Now, new rules systems? Such as Drop Dead's sphere's of power? Those may be more of an "either or" the degree depending on just how different PF2 is. OTH, they have loyal customers who might say, want new product for their PF1.5 games (which is to say, first edition pathfinder, but with massive compenents effectively replaced by 3PP rules systems).

This is very concerning to me, because a lot of the best spells in PF1E were ones that didn't scale with CL anyways (or if they did only scaled by duration). Consider the Haste vs Fireball, for example. Even if Haste never improved beyond 5 round duration it would still be very usable at 20th, while Fireball would go obsolete almost immediately if its damage didn't scale.

Yeah. One of hte biggest power imbalances between casters and martials has nothing to do with the damage but the flexiblity and the ability to pull out spells that can do stuff that a martial flat out can't.

While I still enjoy PF1 I also know that RPG's reach critical mass after a certain time and these things are neccessary from a business point. It also allows for a chance to make improvements that cant be done under the current system.

Of course players will be lost because they don't care to convert for whatever their reasons may be, but typically enough stay to bring on new players, and things continue going uphill.

Will it? The thing is, if they're trying to make it simpler and faster, well that is D&D 5e's territory. So they're not just trying to compete with people who liked old pathfinder, but an already existing and popular system.

Then there's the fact that, much like Pathfinder's origin, there's a huge number of third party publishers out there, many of them quite good. It's not like the old days, when if you wanted to play at all, you had to go with the new edition because it was that or just stick with what you have with nothing new coming out.

If it is completely incompatible, I predict it won't be nearly as successful as Paizo is hoping for.

If I can't easily convert/transfer the three Pathfinder 1st edition campaigns I'm running into 2nd edition, then I have no use for a second edition.

There's no reason to wipe out everything that came before, especially when it sounds like the setting is treating the change as no change at all.

I want to support Paizo on this, but if I have to wait another several years to play an Occultist like I could do before, I'll just keep my money instead of investing it into this new system.

This is where a number of my friends are at. The problem is that if you have widely used PF stuff as well as 3rd party stuff and it suddenly becomes in compatible, well, as you said--if it's going to take five years to get to my specific class, I'll just go off and play something else. If all the AP's are useless now, there's not much reason to play 2E.

Or to put it differently, WOTC tried to do something dramatically different and incompatible with 4e--how did that work out for them?

Because to be honest, I have a lot of older Paizo products and use a fair amount of third party stuff, spheres of power, to use one example. So if the system is tremendously difficult to update stuff to, it's likely that I'll either stick with 1E or just mosey on to Onyx Path or M&M.

Now granted, that puts the writers in a bit of a bind--if you don't make some pretty fundamental changes, people start wondering why you're trying to get them to buy edition 1.1, but on the other hand, a fair number of players either have lots of old paizo product they haven't gotten to yet, or third party stuff, so some attention should be paid to trying to figure out how to make upgrading easier.

So, I'm currently using sphere's of power and finding it to be pretty much everything I wanted.

But one of my players has some concerns about the conjuration sphere, because he wants to play a more "on the fly" conjurer, coming up with new spirits to fit the situation rather than a single or small number of contracted pets.

The problem for me, rules wise, is that the conjuration sphere is a very powerful sphere, and letting someone conjure a pet like that, on the fly, gives them an extremely powerful swiss army knife.

OTH, there are a lot of fantasy characters that pretty well do just that, so it's not like the concept isn't unknown.

I have a few, rather unfleshed ideas.

1. Add feats that allow for reconfiguration, but the summoned creature takes a hefty "level penalty" in terms of its abilities, giving up power for flexibility.

2. Allow it, but require a magic foci that has to be created and expended with every reconfiguration, making it expensive enough to make that doing so poses a real cost.

The thing is that it needs to have an opportunity cost that doesn't leave anyone else with the conjurer sphere feeling like a chump for not taking it.

Also, if you can already do this somewhere and I merely had a critical fail on reading, just point out the rule and let me slink away with my shame.

If you want to lay a conan- or Soloman Kane style "limited magic" campaign, using the Scholar "caller" archtype and the knacks found later in the book-- everyone else has to use the dabbler and ritual feats, which pretty well defines most of the wizards we find in the more pulp settings-- not that powerful compared to your normal pathfinder setting, but since a wizard is quite literally a one in a million find, they are very powerful compared to most of the people they face.

It's fairly... distinct. XD They're built around a Sequence mechanic, which starts with an Opener (attack a foe, heal an ally, etc.), goes through link components (impaling a creature with the Lancer sphere, moving up to an enemy, etc.), and closes off with a finisher (ending the sequence and providing a useful effect, like resolving an attack as a touch attack). Knowledge of different spheres grants unique options to integrate into a sequence.

Given the breadth of options, it's quite flexible, but you need to really know your choices and have a sense for what you want to do. I can see people making reference cards or something when playing the Prodigy.

Yeah. It's a really neat class, but I'd say it's not a class for a beginner. It does require some consideration and planning, although it definately rewards the player with a very flavorful experience that is far different from most other classes. It's also very, very flexible, which can make it useful if say, you have a small party.

You know what I remember? Those ABSOLUTELY huge books, Exalted 3, other books that can be used as rulebooks or impromptu blunt weapons for the zombie apocalypse.

I think a combined SOM/SOP hardback would be perfect!

(Seriously, if possible, I'd certainly buy it)

Now note, Im not talking about which one is better--I've played both and love them both. What I mainly wonder about is what happens if you have both systems in a campaign? Are there likely to be ugly interactions? Is one dramatically more or less powerful than the other? Things like that.

I've been thinking--for a low level magic hybrid, how would adapting the conscripts sphere specialization work? "magic" could allow say, access to a low progression magic ability with a few bonus talents and maybe a few other bennies. The conscript is paying for it, in lost feats, but it might be suited for a combat mage in a low magic setting.

Are you planning to do expansion books for this like you've been doing for Spheres of Power?

If so, one thing I'd love to see would be a product adding tech improvements for setting where the technology is more advanced--IE, a technician's inventions are a bit underwhelming if say you're running a late 19th or early 20th century style setting.

I've got to agree with Painful Bugger, this class is a real disappointment. Even if you ignore spells, the Druid class is better at shifting than the Shifter. To make matters worse the archetype I was looking forward to most, the Oozemorph is basically unplayable at low levels, you can only maintain humanoid form for 1/hour per level a number of times per day equal to 1/2 your level. That means that at 1st level you can be in humanoid form for 1 hour a day. Sounds bad, but it gets worse, when in ooze form, in addition to other restrictions, you can't hold items. So I hope the rest of the party is cool with carrying your stuff.

That looks pretty bad. I mean, the druid gets a 9th level spell progression, and wild shape and other bennies, so if they're better than the shifter at shapechanging, well, why not play a druid? The oozemorph is just bad design.

Good news, I have sphere's of power, so I can fairly easily come up with a tradition for a shifter using that system.

TriOmegaZero wrote:

Malefactor wrote:

Is the Shifter better at shapeshifting than the druid (i.e. can it turn into more creature types, are the forms they take more powerful than a druids etc...)?

No. It gets to choose a limited number of aspects with minor and major forms. At 1st level, it gets to take on aspects for a number of minutes per day. At 4th level it gets wildshape but only for its chosen aspects. As it gains levels, more aspects are granted.

Sigh.... another class classed in its own game... Are there at least good archetypes?

This has actually moved the book out of my "I'll probably buy it column." If your "It's all about shapeshifting" class isn't better than the druids, especially considering a druid *also* gets 9/level casting, I think you have a serious problem, especially given how many good shapeshifting 3rd party classes there are.

Kryzbyn wrote:

How's the gish book looking so far?

Adam's pushing to wrap up playtesting and start getting everything packaged up this weekend so it can go into layout.

Nice! So we're looking at a November Release?

Dragon78 wrote:

I wouldn't call gnolls, "fluffies".

Nonsense. Gnolls are anthropomorphic hyenas, and hyenas are adorable.

You know, it's funny, but with a lot of the modern work being done on how Hyena packs form and interact, you could actually make a real good case that the Gnolls would be more likely to be nice than the "noble lion" people.

Note, if you want to run a Conan style campaign with SOP and SOM, it's actually pretty easy. Use the basic talents from SOM, but for any wizards in SOP, you can allow them only a few basic talents, with most of their powerful spells being used as incantations. A wizard may have a few incantations of Monster Summoning VI ready, but if he's caught unprotected, or exhausted (say, because he's preparing to summong one of hte dark gods Conan wizards were so fond of), he'll be largely restricted to basic sphere talents that aren't really overwhelming against a sullen eyed barbarian's good steel.

So what is the look at clockwork creations like? How common were they in Azlant and did they have anything better than a giant spring to power them?

Heh, another question-- how easy would it be to use this system for a wild West setting? Revolvers, lever action rifles, no (or little) armor, and most hand to hand being with things like knives, bayonets or clubs rather than swords and maces?

Less Camalot and more "True Grit?"

I'll be buying this ASAP, but one question-- the Gish book--Sphere's of power already has several classes oriented around te "magic fighter", so will the book be an expansion of them, or a totally new take on things?

So, has anyone had a chance to give it a read yet? I'm currently money poor, so I have to be selective. From the front cover, I'm assuming we can do fantasy T-1000, but how flexible is it? If I wanted to use a class to try and do a pathfinder version of Exalted's Lunars, how close could this come?

So, has anyone given it a read yet? How is it?

Tacticslion--remember that if you're exposed on the road you may be in worse danger than if you find a place to shelter in place. I would suggest making certain you know of any shelters or safe areas on your projected evacuation route in case you can't get out of the danger area.

I am sad that Paizo didn't deicide to murder the sacred cow of alignment interacting with rules. Oh well, I guess we'll still have "how many castings of death knell on dying space-chickes do I need to break bad?" threads after all.

Amen brother. My fondest hope is that one day, Alignment will be taken out, burned and then the ashes scattered to the wind, with the sole exception of spiritual beings such as angels and demons.

hey'll get it at 5th or 4th.

However, the reason they decided against shapeshifting at game start was simple. New players. They want all classes to be relatively easy for a brand new player to sit down and play a level 1 version, and any form of wild shape at level 1 will confuse things dramatically. Thus they tried to give a few options for the flavor of shapeshifting, while giving the players some time to get used to the class and system.

You know, by the time your picking up books like advanced wilderness, I'd be surprised if more than a few players were new at all. It also seems like a case where if that's the main reason, they're also harming the utility of the class by toning down it's defining trait.

Okay, thanks! The creation sphere makes me happy-- more options for summoners :).

I was wondering if anyone knows what the schedule is for the spheres of power expansion products? They've all been so good that I'm hoping for more, especially since it feels a bit limiting for players who are focusing on sphere's that haven't yet been expanded.

I'm bummed--finally got enough money for the KS and its closed. Color me sorrowful.

That being said, is there support for gunslinger type characters, and not just the early renaissance style so often seen--I'd really kill for a rules system that could, with minimal tinkering, let you run a 1880s gunfighter or for that matter, 1920s gunsel.

So, when the blurb was talking about going to different worlds, was it mainly mentioning Carcosa, or can our adventurers go other places as well?

This is the big thing. If you're a surviving Jedi, you realize at some point that the REpublic was destroyed, at least in part, because the entire Jedi order was played, from start to finish by the very thing you were supposedly preparing to fight.

Remember how seriously the Jedi take following the "will of the force" in many cases. I wouldn't be surprised if more than few interpreted the events surrounding order 66 to be a big clue from the force-- the time of the Jedi order has ended. Heck, they might even oppose luke in his attempts to refound the order (correctly, as the events in TFA show).

Don't forget the feats that let you hold a ritual a'la a normal spell.

so here's a question-- is there any published material for SOP that can allow someone to pick more talents if they pick them at a downgraded level, IE, a high caster getting two, rather than one talent if those talents are calculated as a midcaster? In other words, jack of all trades, master of none? I was thinking of working on something like this, but I don't want to duplicate it if it's already been published somewhere.

For me, what I want, and what will determine whether or not I keep buying more starfinder products is the following:

1. I setting that feels like science-fantasy, not fantasy with some reskinned magic items we call tech. That means that technology should be freely available if you have the money, regardless of level types. It should be relatively easy to fix. It should feel different from magic.

2. If we have cyberware-- the same thing. If you need ot, use some sort of essence mechanic a'la shadowrun, but don't treat it like magic. Magic is not technology and the two are fundamentally different and nothing loses me faster than failing to understand that.

Pretty much this-- I have a few friends who are in love wth the Kineticist, both the base form and the various third party stuff out there. I intend to be using Spheres of Power for the main setting, so are there any issues, balance wise, I need to be thinking of?

One interesting thing is that with this, along with the other Kineticist material out there, I could see a very viable campaign with this being the only form of "magic" available to people.

I don't think it will fail or split Paizo in half. For one thing, many people who just play pathfinder will probably grab aspects of Starfinder.

And, since it's in the future, you don't have the problem you get with things like Starjammer, where some players feel that now planetary adventures have been made to look irrelevant in the face of the mighty Elven Armada. STarfinder is in the future-- it has no impact on Pathfinder itself.
Which is actually a pretty smart decision.

I don't think it's useful-- the entire point of tech in Pathfinder is that it's rare, special and due to the difficulty in duplicating it, something of strictly limited influence on the setting. A high-tech setting isn't going to have any of that-- a blaster is something you buy lik eyou'd buy a (non-magical) sword, and will have to be balanced and handled like that.

You know, these classes sound like they'd be perfect for vampire NPC's with teh ability to have two, relatively separate lives.