Tridus wrote: From Paizo's description, the problem seems to be less "the deal with AoN itself is expensive" and more "the deal with AoN has had a side effect of us sending Cease & Desist letters to people that keep thinking art being on AoN means its free for anyone to use". The thing is, I can pull the exact same images off demiplane. I'd have the same expectation of free use as AON and they'd have to send the same Cease & Desist letter if I used them. This means they saved nothing other than forcing people to move to another site for free images. For instance, I can go to Demiplane right now, click rules, Ancestries and Jotunborn: i payed nothing and right there are 2 Jotunborn images I can download. How is that different than AON? Nothing says the images are copyrighted. So 'they're trying to save on Cease & Desist letters' seems like a red herring unless they're removing images from everyone. Of course that would just mean people that wanted images just pull them off a pdf and then someone else sees it and copies it and then the same Cease & Desist letter would have to go out... And lets be honest, how many people do you really think that copied images from AON and legitimately thought they were free use vs how many just thought they wouldn't get caught?
Lightning Sentinel wrote: Is using heavy armor asap something every character does? Every character? no. Some will go for light armor/unarmored ASAP. Generally people invest in saves, and as it relates to armor, this means maxing Dex or getting the Bulwark trait on your armor. Medium armor doesn't help with either. So someone going heavy might start with the dex they are going to have throughout their levels and use medium until they can afford Heavy Bulwark armors. People that can't or aren't going Heavy buff dex and eventually have enough that they get the same AC with light/no armor which has less bulk, less strength requirements, less check penalties. With 4 stat increases from level ups, you have to go out of your way to avoid increasing your Dex [it's a save] to keep medium armor relevant long term.
The Raven Black wrote: And I am also pretty sure that, had they given AoN some respect, in the spirit of their 8 year partnership from which Paizo definitely benefited, then AoN would not have been so incensed that they decided to throw this on the public place and hurt Paizo's reputation as much as they could. AON has a week to remove assets from the site so I'm not sure "incensed" and "throw this on the public place" fits as they had to let people know why content would be vanishing. 'Hey, things are going to vanish and here's why' seems like a perfectly reasonable/rational thing they had to do and it wasn't a situation of their own making. It had to be done, and in public, so i don't really see what else could have been done on their side.
My thought are that can be ok for a one shot type character. If you're playing a character for the long run, they aren't good. Since it's not heavy armor with Bulwark, you're most likely going to toss some points into Dex for saves and maybe a better chance at a ranged attack but the natural armors are locked into a single set of stats; this means you'll likely find yourself under the max or over the max a lot of the time you have it. If you find yourself a build you're comfortable never changing your dex, it's fine but it's benefits basically equate to getting the hefty hauler feat and 8gp...
Tridus wrote: For certain definitions of "works". Identifying creatures is far from guaranteed and if that fails, you need some help in the form of things like Dread Striker or a trip buddy. Especially with DC's for rolling again vs same creature going up one difficulty each time [and stopping rolls at incredibly hard (+10 DC)] plus AP's liking to throw Unique creatures in [+10 DC]. I love the idea of mastermind but if you follow the actual RAW, it can be really bad.
moosher12 wrote: Sure, Paizo is eating costs on upkeep for litigating against bad actors taking the pictures and running. And it sounds like the royalties were to pay for that upkeep. It also sounds like while Paizo was in the green, they seemed to be willing to eat the upkeep until things became tight. But my question is: Is that cost outweighing the amount of players that Archives of Nethys brings in who become future customers? The thing is, the same images are on demiplane right now. So taking them off Archives of Nethys saves them nothing. They'll still have to litigate, as anyone that wants free images to use just switches sites. So this saves them the free PDFs sent to Archives of Nethys? As to royalties, as a site run off of donations and minimal ads, I'm not sure anyone could reasonably expect royalties from them to sustainably pay for anything, especially with the volatile, AI-driven surge in server costs from hardware prices due to massive global data center expansions and escalating cloud computing rates. Honestly, IMO, the fact that Archives of Nethys didn't cost them anything put them ahead of the curve.
TheFinish wrote:
The FAQ page isn't exactly user friendly, using page numbers vs subjects and not having any kind of search option. This means you have to know exactly what you're looking for and find the page numbers before finding the errata you want. So track down the PDF section, screenshot that, track down the errata and screenshot that and then possibly do some copy/paste/removal to get the finished rule... Someone would REALLY need it to be official to not just use AON and instead jump through those loops.
Ravingdork wrote:
I've also noticed several spell attack spells. Just have to go back and see how many the Magus can pick up.
25speedforseaweedleshy wrote: despite never donate enough to aon to make paizo care There was NEVER a moment where this was ever going to be a reality and this was known going in by both parties. AON's business model wasn't a secret. If Paizo thought that this was a cash cow opportunity for some reason, that's on them. 25speedforseaweedleshy wrote: somehow player feel like they own those art now No one thinks that. What people do think is that it diminishes AON's value as a tool to advertise the game. You show a prospective gamer a few entries and the images can pull them in. Make a token for your VTT game and maybe they want to buy a book. There isn't really a downside I can see. Demiplane has all the images so anyone can just take the pictures from there; people go to AON because it works better, loyalty and knowing they do a good job. So easy access to the images isn't the issue. It just makes more work for everyone involved. Now if they'd said 'we're pulling out in the hope it drives more traffic to demiplane', I could believe that as that makes some sense. All the reasons they gave in the blog? Not so much. Really people are more upset on principle and on it just seeming to be a baffling call. It seems equal parts scummy and shooting themselves in the foot and the losers are us, AON and IMO themselves.
Zoken44 wrote: Again, I have things I could criticize Paizo on here, but I get why they are ending the agreement. It sucks, but it makes sense giving the state they are in. and you want to know what makes me say this kind of thing. Over on Blusky one of the people I've seen defending Paizo, saying their financial position is that bad... IS ONE OF THE PEOPLE THEY JUST LAID OFF. If THAT person say it makes sense for Paizo to act this way, I'm gonna listen. I just can't see it as a financial decision as I can't see the savings to be made here. They are still going to be paying the same people for the same work and don't see the time devoted to AON meaningfully changing their workload. None of the things listed are unique to AON. They are still going to have to send out DMCA's, still going to send out PDF's/images to demiplane, ect. Where is the savings?
agnelcow wrote:
I will often give a book/page reference but the answer if often a combination of book and FAQ where you have to combine them to get the answer; it's why AON is so popular because it does that for you AND makes it a single readable rule VS the book rule plus something like 'replace the 3rd and 4th sentences in the 3rd paragraph to "X,y and z and remove the 5th sentence."
Unicore wrote:
You don't have to rewrite or end the contract wholesale; amendments [change/remove/modify] or addendums [add] are a thing. While these follow the same requirements as a normal contract, they don't required the same level of work as the majority of the work is already done in the main contract. This is especially true if the changes are simple and both side agree from the start [wrangling back and forth over specifics can easily be the biggest source of billable hours]. Honestly, if they regularly do contract law of a specific type, it can pretty boilerplate. It's a cost sure, but in this case I think it'd be a small one time one compared to the free publicity and good will AON will continue to brings in.
Finoan wrote:
I don't know that I really buy that though as they still have the same costs: lawyers to review and follow up on contracts: the review was done already and what exactly is there to follow up past the initial contract? finance employees to review and enter royalty statements: they have other licencing contracts so they are filing these statements anyway so I question how much additional effort this is. And as mentioned, it's always been $0 so not much to change from the last statement. licensing staff to provide assets and other support: e-mailing a pdf or a document file and a picture folder? Again, yes it's time spent but how much really? additional work for our legal and licensing teams to draft DMCA: Again, they need to do this already with Nexus/Demiplane. I can pull images off them right now and they have to send DMCA's if I did. IMO, these are costs that they'll continue to have to spend and at nearly identical levels as before; you'll still be paying financial employees for filing paperwork, still paying lawyers to look over contracts, still have licencing folks sending out assets. I don't think AON frees up a tangible amount of time to impact the bottom line in any meaningful way.
Skills say "Each time after the first that you'd become trained in a given skill, you instead allocate the trained proficiency to any other skill of your choice—though if the skill is a Lore skill, the new skill must also be a Lore skill." Generally lower levels of requirements are included so I'd say yes as Expert is inclusive with Trained. For instance, if a feat had Trained in Athletics as a prerequisite and you were Expert in Athletics you can take it. The same would be true of gaining Trained in a skill you're Expert in IMO; you'd get Trained in another skill.
Baarogue wrote:
Ah, I'm sorry too as it seems I wasn't clear enough in my 1st post. ;)
Baarogue wrote: I read that first sentence as spelling out which spells you can use Learn a Spell on. If you don't normally have access, such as if a spell is uncommon, you can Learn it if you find it on a scroll as loot or another spellcaster who knows it shares their knowledge. If it's common, all you need is to buy its scroll to try and Learn it If it's meant to say that, then there's no need to tie it to the sentence in the Necromancer gaining leveling up as it'd be used for gaining any uncommon spell learned and not the ones from level up. "Each time you gain a level, you add two occult spells to your dirge, of any spell rank for which you have spell slots, chosen from common occult spells or others you gain access to and learn via Learn a Spell." The above bolded contains text never happens with repository of spells but reiterates the rule for adding spell repertoire when added with the leveling up. Using Learn a Spell grants access AND adds the spell to your repository of spells; this means that if you use Learn a spell at level up to get access, you have already added it before you get the opportunity to use your level additional spells as the same activity that grants access also adds it. This means you'll only ever add a common spell at level up for repository of spells. Learn a Spell: "You can gain access to a new spell of your tradition from someone who knows that spell or from magical writing like a spellbook or scroll."
This is why Wizard, for example says "Each time you gain a level, you add two arcane spells to your spellbook, of any spell rank for which you have spell slots, chosen from common spells of your tradition or others you gain access to and the Learn a Spell reference is "You can also add spells to your spellbook with the Learn a Spell activity." Witch and Magus are worded similarly. In conclusion, it's just plain wrong to reference Learn a spell for level up additional spells for repository of spells but would be expected for spell repertoire.
Yeah, Learn a Spell gives 2 options, for repository of spells or spell repertoire; since Necromancer is clearly not a spell repertoire caster, and are called out as preparing spells, what's left is having a repository of spells. And having a repository of spells means "automatically added" spells when Learning a Spell. Where things go off the rails, IMO, is the sentence about learning a spell to gain access, which makes it seem like it's talking about the repertoire option of Learn a Spell. It should drop the learn a spell part or spell out the exception if it's some weird level up method that breaks the normal rules.
Gisher wrote:
Not Ravingdork, but I know I'm loving it. 14 extra cantrips and 12 extra prepared cantrips? Yes please. Having an improved Conceal Spell is just icing on the cake.
Yoon Ju-won wrote: The general question here is whether Necromancer get to add extra spells to their dirge with Learn a Spell or not. From my perspective, this is explained under Learn a Spell saying: "A spell you learn is added to your repository of spells, such as a spellbook for a wizard, familiar for a witch, or spell list for a cleric or druid. If you have a spell repertoire, such as a bard, it's not automatically added since you can only know a limited number of spells. Instead, you can select it when you add or swap spells." Learn a Spell only gives 2 option [repertoire or repository] and necromancers clearly don't have a repertoire so it'd automatically added as per the repository sentence. IMO, what needs errata is the sentence quoted by Yoon Ju-won, as it's written as if the class had a spell repertoire; if it's a prepared caster like it's presented as, it needs to be changed to say Learn a Spell adds the spell to it's Dirge and if it's some weird departure just for level up spells, it needs to call that out as diverging from normal.
Unicore wrote: I don’t think there are any spells the animist can use with Channeler’s stance that only do persistent damage. Their argument is that status bonuses to damage can be applied to persistent damage that doesn’t do other damage as well. Blistering Invective from Lamentation of Sinister Deals [Pathfinder #223: Hell's Destiny pg. 226] has 2d6 persistent fire damage as it's only damage.
exequiel759 wrote: Meanwhile, I was really hyped for the runesmith before release and now that I could read the class I don't know what to think about it. I don't think its bad, but I think its a really complicated class that requires the player to actually know the ins and outs of the class so I need time to read and think about it. Myself, I feel about the same as the playtest. Runesmith doesn't have enough payoff, IMO, for its complexity. Necromancer is the flipside, where I enjoyed it being fairly simple with varied playstyles available out of the box.
John R. wrote:
The other creature could be your familiar or eidolons. A Fey Summoner with Living Nexus could pretty much power up at will.
Violet_Jade wrote: It seems pretty clear from the remaster of eidolons that they are only meant to be unable to use magic items specifically (except with the eidolon trait), meaning there's nothing stopping an eidolon from wearing a backpack, using a toolkit to Repair things or a healer's kit to Treat Wounds, drinking alchemical elixirs, and similar other nonmagical item activities. I think that's really neat when factoring in the shared HP pool and the ability to take separate exploration activites. Not really. They kept the same text that caused confusion in the pre-remaster. Key Terms, Eidolon:
Note that it doesn't say MAGIC item, but just plain old "item". As such, nothing has really changed with Eidolons and using items. If it's meant to be just magic items, it would have been SUPER easy to add magic before the two parts I bolded and it still would have fit into the space available in that sidebar. Since that didn't happen, it makes it even less clear IMO.
WWHsmackdown wrote: Seems like trimming words for space while getting the same point across Yeah, Learn a Spell says "A spell you learn is added to your repository of spells, such as a spellbook for a wizard, familiar for a witch, or spell list for a cleric or druid. If you have a spell repertoire, such as a bard, it's not automatically added since you can only know a limited number of spells. Instead, you can select it when you add or swap spells." Since the necromancer has a "repository of spells", a new spell is added. IMO, it doesn't need a specific call out and the instances of callouts in other classes are just redundant. The text in Necromancer seems like it thinks the class has a spell repertoire when it doesn't, though, IMO, as it doesn't say you can ONLY use Learn a Spell at level ups; the type of caster you are [repository vs repertoire] determines if a learned spell is "automatically added" or not.
Gisher wrote:
Interesting. I guess I have enough ad-blockers to filter all of it out. AestheticDialectic wrote: It's my opinion that beyond any balance concerns, a magus that can spellstrike every turn is going to be monotonous at best, and encouraging poor play patterns at worst. Starlit span is an excellent example of how it is monotonous Assuming we all agreed it was monotonous, some people like simple repetitive options for combat. Not everyone wants/needs their turns to be varied and constantly changing to have fun; for some, roll hit once and roll big damage numbers is all they want/need from combat.
Crouza wrote: Well, I was wrong. RIP wave casting I guess. F@*+. I'm doing a jig on wave casting's grave! *dance* Theaitetos wrote: Image with all the Magus stuff (so you don't have to scrub the video) THANK YOU!!!
Finoan wrote:
Yep, for several reasons Careful Retreat doesn't work. Now Defensive Retreat works, allowing Step up to three times as a free action, but it's not going to be a reastive move away from something.
Finoan wrote: Minions don't have Reactions. So if it is an ability that says, 'as a reaction...' then the Minion still couldn't do it. A Commander always has the option with Drilled Reactions [assuming they can do the action]: "Once per round when you use a tactic, you can grant one ally of your choice benefiting from that tactic an extra reaction."Finoan wrote: Also, if the Commander is giving a singe action to use outside of turn, that isn't enough actions to use the 2-action ability Careful Withdraw that Legchair has. I wasn't implying they could, just giving an example of when a Companion [or minion in general] could act out of turn.
HammerJack wrote:
I'm talking about giving an action outside the Companions turn, not readying a Tactic: IE, another character playing a Commander can make your Companion get an action outside your turn unlike your Command that's limited to your turn.
Animal companions only get actions on their turn with Command: Mature Animal Companion Your animal companion has greater independence. During an encounter, even if you don't use the Command an Animal action, your animal companion can still use 1 action that round on your turn to Strike or Stride (or Burrow, Climb, Fly, or Swim if it has that Speed). It can do this at any point during your turn, as long as you aren’t currently taking an action. If it does, that’s all the actions it gets that round—you can’t Command it later. Animal Companions An animal companion is a loyal comrade who follows your orders. Your animal companion has the animal and minion traits, and it gains 2 actions during your turn if you use the Command an Animal action to command it So, even if you Command an Animal out of turn, it does nothing. Now something like a Commander could give the Companion actions out of turn, as that's their thing.
Errenor wrote: What, then? An intrinsic trait? No action is required for a weapon to have deadly; it just IS Deadly. As such, it's not an effect. Trait
I can see a Strikes damage as an effect but traits? They exist outside an action and as such trying to tie it to a definition that doesn't work IMO; a sword doesn't need an action to be Slashing or Trip.
KOReldor wrote: So, I've been looking at an Inventor's innovations - specifically, weapon innovations. If an Inventor has Weapon Innovation and chooses to have a Light Mace (which is one-handed and has the agile, finesse, and shove traits), takes Advanced Design as his initial modification and chooses his Light Mace to take on the qualities of a Nodachi (which is two-handed and has the brace, deadly d12, and reach traits), am I correct in believing it loses the agile, finesse, and shove traits and NEEDS to used with two hands? It says it uses the "statistics" of the chosen advanced weapon, but it doesn't say it changes traits. Then again, one could argue that the traits are part of the statistics. Advanced Design is telling you to skip the "level 0 common simple or martial weapon of your choice" stats altogether and pick "level 0 advanced weapon of your choice". So you don't 'choose to have a Light Mace' at all. So it never has the Light Mace stats but goes straight to the Nodachi stats. The "You can instead" phrase is giving you an another initial option, not modifying the first option.
ScooterScoots wrote:
You know, natural language is so limited, it couldn't say 'immunity to [harmful] spells' or 'immunity to [damaging] spells' but had to only state "immunity to spells" that allows loopholes... :P
The Raven Black wrote:
They often 'fix' things I wouldn't call broken, are overly conservative and have a tendency to overcorrect IMO. The Raven Black wrote: Spamming Sure Strike on a Magus, Fighter or Gunslinger build seems pretty strong and those are just the cases that spring to my mind. Are these classes that tend to have the actions and resources to do it? Non-ranged magus have issues spellstriking as much as they want to do to action constraints, so burning through Studious Spells and then drawing scrolls for extra actions? doesn't seem overpowered. Fighters and gunslingers have less slots to use and often have both hands occupied so more actions to use a scroll, so how much spam is there? And don't forget they have to spend feats in the archetype dedication [needing a +2 cha that none of those classes need] and more for more slots. This seems much to do about nothing. The Raven Black wrote: Come to think of it, spamming it on a Fortissimo Warrior muse Bard feels pretty excellent too. Not sure what Fortissimo or Warrior muse particularly gains from the spam: at low levels when courageous anthem is still useful, you don't have a meaningful number of slot/scrolls to spam enough to change anything and once you can, a +1 status bonus is pretty much useless. The Raven Black wrote: Me, I like the idea that the intent is indeed immunity to spell damage only, just badly worded. I'd disagree. I think it's intended to work on harmful spells. Seems off brand that they keep immunities to spells as long as it doesn't deal damage. I'd agree the removal of immunity for beneficial spells is likely not intended.
Finoan wrote: If the RAW is ambiguous and broken, and we have to pick one of the options, I'm still going with the option that the immunity is only to the spell damage (or resistance to spell damage). You're equating unintended with broken. It may very well be unintended but I haven't really seen anything broken or even it be ambiguous. I think you can play "Any immunity or resistance you have to spells is suppressed" as/is and nothing would go off the rails. If there is something that's actually broken, I'd like to see someone post it.
Finoan wrote: It is not huge mental gymnastics to conclude that this does not mean that it also bypasses the cooldown 'temporary immunity' that some spells have to prevent them from being spammed and overused. The issue is that there are harmful spells, like blindness, that also have temporary immunity built in, so it's not such an open and shut case as you make it out to be. I can 100% see it being intended for the curse to bypass the temporary immunity of such spells. The issue becomes that they use the same mechanic to prevent useful spell spam as they do harmful spell spam. They need more than what they've printed if they want to make it clear what's meant to be bypassed, as trying to link it to 'damage' doesn't cut it as there are harmful damage spells that can have temporarily immune [say Touch of Death, Siphon Life, Fatal Aria, Buzzing Bites, Power Word Kill, ect]. It needs to say 'Any immunity or resistance you have to [harmful] spells is suppressed' for it to work the way you think it does.
Finoan wrote: There might be a case for not allowing it if Reloading a weapon required wielding the weapon to begin with. The argument would be "You can draw, pick up, or hold an item that needs two hands using only one hand, but you need to subsequently change your grip to hold it in two hands if you want to wield or use it." IMO, reloading would fall under using it. The counter argument would be that "Switching your grip to free a hand and then to place your hands in the grip necessary to wield the weapon are both included in the actions you spend to reload a weapon" is a more specific rule.
Unicore wrote: Rituals can be preformed repeatedly and take hours days to prepare. It is narratively useful to have something like a wish that can only be cast once and do things way beyond cast any xyz spell. I don't really see the narrative difference between a ritual that requires a McGuffin to use [so it can't be used repeatedly] and a spell McGuffin that can't be used repeatedly. Kalaam wrote: Basically 1 round cast time versions of what would be ritual effects is what I expect. The kind of thing that will have narrative impact and some mechanical one. Most rituals wouldn't be meaningfully impacted by a time reduction in casting; most are out of combat utility or require more time after use.
FWCain wrote:
Amphibious is the closest you're going to find. As a familiar, it's not hard to imagine familiars getting a little boost, like breathing underwater instead of being able to hold their breath like IRL. Familiars can take magical abilities like Levitator, so breathing water seems fine. Finoan wrote:
Lol They also have Gills, which just lets you breath underwater. Who picks that when you can take Amphibious?
The Raven Black wrote: For example, I would not call DEX a god stat in PF2. Dex covers 2 saves [AC and Reflex], several skills, To Hits with ranged and Finesse attacks and a common Initiative roll [stealth]; just by sheer volume, Dex covers more ground that other stats. I'd say it's the easiest stat to max out and build around.
Baarogue wrote:
I explained; there is no rules or text for how one uses it as an improvised weapon other than improvised weapon ARE simple weapons. IE, always improvised as they are always a simple weapon. Also no rules/text exists for a way to use an item as an improvised weapon other than to wield it and the exact same requirements exist for using an item and wielding a weapon: holding it in the number of hands requires to use it. Please point out anything I've said that incorrect or misleading. Baarogue wrote:
Let me point out the important part that disproves what you're saying: "Improvised weapons are simple weapons." Not acts as one for the attack, but are simple weapons:IE always a weapon. It seems to me that you've tried to do what you claimed I did; cherry picking sections of the text that seems to prove your point while ignoring the parts that don't. There is NO text saying improvised weapon are at some point not treated as simple weapons, only that the ARE simple weapons. As such, I stand by my statement "that a torch is always an improvised weapon" as there is no mechanism in the game to wield/use it as not a weapon but use it as an item and the text plainly calls it out as a weapon as it can be used as an improvised weapon. If it was meant to only be a weapon while attacking, they'd have to word it like shield bash ["shield bash is not actually a weapon"], but then it doesn't work with things that require a weapon like stances. Baarogue wrote: Should a Weapon Improvisor not benefit from such spells just because what they're "wielding" isn't technically a weapon? As pointed out, they are 100% simple weapon. Second, they already can use handwraps of mighty blows, so I don't see any reason they can't use those spells. Heck, as simple weapon you could just put the runes on the improvised weapons, though it's a bad idea on an archetype that breaks their weapons.
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